Handbook of the Changing World Language Map 3030024377, 9783030024376, 9783030024383, 9783030024390

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Stanley D. Brunn Roland Kehrein Editors

Handbook of the Changing World Language Map

Handbook of the Changing World Language Map

Stanley D. Brunn • Roland Kehrein Editors

Handbook of the Changing World Language Map With 1057 Figures and 294 Tables

Editors Stanley D. Brunn Department of Geography University of Kentucky Lexington, KY, USA

Roland Kehrein Research Centre Deutscher Sprachatlas Philipps University Marburg, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-02437-6 ISBN 978-3-030-02438-3 (eBook) ISBN 978-3-030-02439-0 (print and electronic bundle) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Language makes the world. Language is a, or the, most important feature of the planet’s past, present, and future. Language unites, separates, and transforms humankind. The exact number of languages in our past and at present is unknown. It far exceeds the number estimated by language specialists and linguists as these refer only to human spoken and written languages. All of these languages serve as communication but communicating means more than utilizing a linguistic system. Communication also means the application of symbols, images, and silences, all forming other variations of language. Considered in this light the number of languages used in the past and present is unknown. The same thinking applies when looking into the future. The planet and its populations and cultures are rich in the creativities that accompany how, what, and where we communicate. The above context forms the framework for this volume and its more than 200 chapters on language. It is much more than spoken and written languages, but languages associated with preparing, reading, and interpreting maps; the languages associated with music, art, literature, gender, technology, and architecture; languages of silences; body languages; translations; languages associated with branding products and names of places and how to “read” a landscape; the teaching and translation of languages; and language policies of states. Our objective is to address commonly associated topics about languages, including official or state languages, languages of indigenous groups and peoples, and disappearing and endangered languages. But we wish to expand the research on language to explore additional venues of communicating about places, landscapes, technologies, maps and mapping, ethics and laws, and cultures and environments. In this light we welcome the contributions of those from many different disciplines and ways of looking at the world. The volume contains 215 chapters in 23 parts. Some parts are with many contributions, such as Linguistic Minorities and Majorities (21 chapters), Language and Technology (15), and Language and Identity (14), and some with very few such as Indigenous People’s Languages (4), Language and Gender (4), Languages of Boundaries and Borders (3), and Nonhuman Languages (3). There are 339 authors; many chapters had more than one author. The authors come from over 50 different countries and more than a dozen different disciplines and interdisciplinary programs in universities around the world. All continents are represented except Antarctica, which has no permanent residents. The chapters address language and linguistics v

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topics in more than 50 different countries. They include senior scholars who have spent a lifetime studying a specific language or language topic but also youthful professionals who often introduce some topics and methodologies in some innovative, different, and important ways. All chapters in the volume are original; many authors accepted our challenge to introduce a new topic to the disciplines and fields studying languages. We also asked authors to not only place their thinking and research in some familiar disciplinary or transdisciplinary conceptual framework but also to include references for the novice as well as serious scholar and to identify some promising and important research directions in their conclusion. Graphics, especially maps, were considered important features of chapters; many of these are original and will stimulate further research about language issues on all continents and major world regions. The genesis for this undertaking began in early 2015 following Brunn’s The Changing World Religion Map (Springer 2015). His longtime interests in languages (since childhood) stimulated his interest to editing a volume on multiple language issues and topics across the sciences and humanities. It was originally considered to address only language and linguistic issues, but it expanded in the past 2 years with Roland Kehrein agreeing to serve as co-editor and increase the contribution of linguists. Both the language and linguist scholarly communities share much in common, especially when it comes to looking at the importance of place and region. The volume is enriched by the contributions of scholars from all disciplines who study issues about language and communication. Both editors have lifelong interests in language learning, using, teaching, and cultures at local, regional, and global scales. As editors, collectively we contacted several hundred individuals in the past 5 years. Many of those were invited to contribute chapters, and others were asked to recommend potential authors. The volume of emails sent by the editors to authors (confirmed and potential), the publisher, reviewers, and other contacts around the world exceed 5000. All chapters were reviewed by the editors before acceptance; some also were reviewed by professionals in specific fields. This volume could not and would not have seen the light of day without the cooperation of the authors, reviewers we asked to evaluate chapters, and several additional key participants. First and foremost is Donna Gilbreath who has worked with Stan on four previous books with Springer. Her talents, energy, creativity, and commitments as Managing Editor are and were extraordinary. She not only worked with authors on drafts and revisions but also prepared the chapters and submitted them to Springer representatives. Donna’s husband, Richard, also provided invaluable cartographic assistance to authors; again, his professionalism has ensured that the graphics and maps are of the highest quality in the printed and digital editions. The Springer crew included Aldeena Raju and Sarah Mathews, both of whom prepared the final product for publication; their commitment, dedication, and professionalism may be hidden, but it is apparent in the final copies of chapters appearing in the printed edition and in the digital edition. Finally, we acknowledge the longstanding support from Evelien Bakker, Bernadette Deelan-Mans, Michael Hermann, and Stefan Einarson, all who have helped shepherd the book from its inception to final production. Stan has worked with these committed professionals

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on previous Springer volumes and values enormously their efforts to promote quality, innovative, and significant research products for multidisciplinary and international scholarly communities. Finally, both editors are aware of the pioneering effort in this project. We believe chapters and parts will be useful in undergraduate and graduate classes and seminars in linguistics, modern languages, the social and natural sciences, law and medicine, diplomacy and public policy, and technology programs and workshops looking at the familiar and emerging in language and communication fields. They could also serve as sessions of professional meetings where cutting-edge research themes are discussed. We have enjoyed working on it with many others around the world, especially authors, who have educated us about salient topics and silent lacunae that need to be explored in this volume and in disciplinary and transdisciplinary future research. We consider this project, the printed volume and the digital products, as beginning steps to advancing research on the geographies, histories, cultures, and policies of language. There remains much more research that is needed, and it is our fervent hope that in the coming decades some of the topics suggested in the introduction and in the chapters by authors will see the light of day. September 2019 Lexington, USA Marburg, Germany

Stanley D. Brunn Roland Kehrein

Introduction: State of Knowledge and Research Challenges

“In the beginning was geography.” Anonymous

Introduction The above quote shows the importance of geography since the earliest humans were on the earth. We could also add the words mapping and language which also have been associated with humankind’s development, activities, travels, and communications and curiosity. Developing the intersections of these keywords, namely, geography, mapping, and language, has been the stimulus for this volume. We consider our tasks as editors of this multivolume project threefold. First is to provide an assessment of “where we have been,” that is, the current knowledge base we use in studying a particular place or region or a specific graphic or cartographic or GIS-related approach and the importance of language and linguistic analysis as a key component in human understanding. To accomplish this end, we present major reference works, that is, articles, chapters, and books that will aid those interested in these topics. Thus, the references listed at the end of this introduction need to be seen as a foundation for those exploring familiar and even unfamiliar topics. Our second objective was to present a state-of-the-art base about what is currently being studied by scholars studying language from various perspectives. This inquiry led us to contact known and well-known scholars who have studied language as part of their research career but also to identify others who work in related fields or those who welcome the opportunity to work on a language topic, theory, or region that has long been a fascination. We gave them an opportunity. Third, we look into the future and suggest in this chapter some important, valuable, and tantalizing research challenges that still await investigation. These would include investigations in familiar scholarly terrains but also those willing to venture into some terra incognita where language and mapping will or may yield some interesting and valuable insights into human advances in culture, development, and society.

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Our Past: Where We Are Today Below we will introduce approaches to the study of languages from different perspectives and disciplines. These remarks will be followed by an extensive – though definitive and comprehensive – list of references to relevant studies. We do not list all but wish to provide a starting point for those embarking on the fascinating interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary topics and conceptual frameworks that intersect geography, cartography, and language.

The Present: The Contents of This Handbook Our search for current research on languages, mapping, and places in the past several years has stretched across many scholarly disciplines and communities and the contributions of many individual scholars working in small and local places as well as those studying some feature at a regional or global level. This initiative has been extended to reach out to those who have published on language, language mapping, and linguistic topics throughout their research career. We invited them to contribute an original contribution to this volume. The search continued to include friends and their own professional networks across disciplines or in other world regions. We wished to include both junior and senior scholars to extend research on a timehonored topic or submit a chapter on some new topics they felt merited research. No continent was spared extending our search. We are grateful for the many who welcomed our invitation to contribute to the study of a little or well-known topic, approach, or subfield. To our knowledge, there is no other existing reference source printed or digital in any language that purports to accomplish what we set out to do, that is, present a basis for what we know about the specific topic. We also know of no existing scholarly journal or journals that have addressed the focus of our volume or the themes of many sections. We feel certain that both the printed and digital editions of this book will be useful for members of numerous scholarly communities in the coming decade and beyond, both to obtain a reading on the current state of knowledge about a subject or region and to extend our knowledge base to new language communities and regions. That there is a digital edition will mean that authors themselves will have opportunities in the coming years to update their chapters, should they wish, with new references, maps, photos, and graphs as well as text. The book contains 215 chapters that are organized into 23 parts, each containing chapters that relate to the part title or theme. There are parts dealing specifically with mapping and languages and a number looking at issues about language and heritage, identity, technologies, as well as linguistic minorities and majorities, endangered and disappearing languages, and nonhuman languages. Specific parts examine language as related to gender, place names or toponyms, policy, and law and also music, art,

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film, and religion. How one reads a landscape is also a part. The final parts explore language as related to instruction, learning, technology, translation, and product branding. The number of chapters in a part varies which reflects the depth of the knowledge base about some topics. For example, there are many more chapters about language heritage, place names, and endangered languages than about nonhuman languages, gender, religion, and the political landscapes. All 215 chapters have in common that language – in a broad sense – and its relation to geographical space is studied. Language – in the predominant meaning of the word – as the most important means of human communication is intrinsically tied to human beings making use of this powerful tool. This connection has a number of implications: 1. There are regions in the world where no (human) language can be found, since these regions are – for whatever reasons – uninhabited by human beings. These geographic regions have to be shown in maps displaying language(s) and discussions of languages. 2. Concerning language mapping there are generally two types of maps that can be differentiated, a differentiation introduced by Thun (2000). First, there are “language maps” or “maps of languages” displaying the geographical distribution of languages or linguistic varieties (i.e., subsystems of languages like regional dialects). Historically, the first maps on which language was depicted (Scultetus 1593 [published in Blaeu and Blaeu 1645]; Klaproth 1823) were language maps, but what is most interesting is that the authors did not refer to language names but to names of groups of speakers. The second type of maps are called “linguistic maps” that displayed the geographical distribution of “competing” linguistic variants, for example, the expression for the notion “village” in dialects of Slavic languages cited in the chapter by Rabanus (Chap. 6, “Language Mapping Worldwide: Methods and Traditions,” the third figure). Since the end of the nineteenth century in linguistic research, there is a tradition of creating linguistic maps for research purposes. The first linguistic atlas was compiled by the German scholar Georg Wenker in 1878. This atlas, and many other linguistic atlases dealing with German dialects, is accessible free of charge on the Internet platform REDE SprachGIS which is introduced by Limper, Pheiff, and Williams (Chap. 196, “REDE SprachGIS: A Geographic Information System for Linguists”). Additional chapters on several aspects of language mapping can be found in the first three parts of the handbook. 3. Since communication forms an integral part of human and thus social life, language is principally subject to dynamic processes of variation and change (Part VI: Linguistic Minorities and Majorities). Such processes can be the result of an accommodation (or synchronization) between speakers (e.g., in multilingual or multiethnic societies as described in the chapters of Part VII: Linguistic Variations and Patterns of Language Use), but they can also be triggered by language policy, by extralinguistic needs such as technological innovations, or by any creative language use in the arts, music, film, or commercials.

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4. Although linguistic varieties are dynamic systems changing together with their speakers’ societies, they always remain stable to a certain extent. This mixture of stability and dynamics forms the precondition for the relevance of linguistic varieties in the construction of sociocultural groups. Language is thus one of the core factors in the process of constructing social identity, a theme discussed in many chapters of Part IV: Language and Identity. In many societies, especially in industrialized nations, other perceptible symbols of sociocultural identity, like clothing, jewelry, or customs (dancing, special dishes, or songs), are only of minor relevance nowadays. Hence, for people in many parts of the world, preserving and even revitalizing their language forms are important activities in the efforts to prevent their sociocultural identity from extinction. Such efforts can often be observed in societies where (linguistic) minorities and majorities coexist and where the majority often has more social and political power (Part V: Language and Heritage). This power relationship may involve a suppression of minority languages (e.g., indigenous languages) which in the worst case may lead to language endangerment or even the disappearance of languages (Part VIII, Multilingual and Multiethnic Societies, and Part IX, Endangered and Disappearing Languages). 5. Global migration, technological progress, and the use of new media and social media are important factors for a general increase of intercultural and interlinguistic communication. These processes are often accompanied by severe challenges but also new and important opportunities in many fields of the (digital) humanities including teaching and learning languages or translation. Issues related to these fields of research are dealt with in chapters of the final parts of the handbook. Besides linguistic symbols forming languages proper, other perceptible phenomena of the environment are also “speaking” to us (humans) and to other living creatures. Hence, these phenomena may also be called to form some kind of language. They can assume several forms. One is the landscape in which human language occurs on signs, billboards, buildings’ walls, etc. This landscape itself can be “read” and analyzed as a system of symbols expressing “meaning.” Such an expression holds for both natural and manufactured phenomena forming part of a society’s heritage (e.g., architecture, artwork of any kind, but also formerly inhabited deserted areas). Another form relates to maps as constructed by professional geographers/cartographers or by laypersons that form semiotic entities displaying relations to the mapmaker, to the map reader, and to objects of the real world. Moreover, maps are always compiled with a specific intention (Girnth 2010). This intention can be the documentation of geographical facts or space-related data that provide the map reader orientation in the world, but maps can also be constructed to manipulate their readers in a certain way, for example, maps showing the geographical distribution of a national language in order to make a claim for a specific territory. Chapters dealing with the languages of the landscape and the construction of maps are included in Part I, Geography, Language and Mapping, and Part XVIII, Language of and Language in the Landscape.

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What Is Next? We asked individual authors or author teams to include in their summaries or conclusions some thoughts about topics they thought merited investigation in the future. These insights are considered important materials in each chapter as they reflect on the research they would like to see carried out. We are much indebted to the authors for suggesting some very promising research directions. We also know from our own experiences in studying geography, mapping, and language that there are still additional topics that merit study. We list below some topics we believe merit serious investigation by members of many scholarly communities in the social and natural sciences and in the humanities. Some can/might be studied by a single individual while others in small groups of two or three who come from different disciplines, countries, and learning environments. We can imagine groups of linguists, cartographers, and photographers working in one group and environmental scientists, GIS specialists, and EU or UN members working in another. While there is much value in individual scholarly efforts, also author teams coming from different languages, religions, ideologies, and cultural and scientific backgrounds often enrich the research design and methodology. Language study is without question cross-cultural, disciplinary, environmental, philosophical, graphic, and cartographic. Some examples of future research we would like to see developed are stated below. They should stimulate the inquiring mind and challenge our imaginations and intellectual capacities, especially of those who “think” and conduct research outside traditional “boxes.”

Topics for Potential Future Research • The games children play, whether “low-tech” traditional games or “electronic games” played by individuals or groups • The global high-tech gaming industry which is multicultural and international for children and adults • The languages of sports as each sport has a specific lexicon and playing field and the diffusion of these terms to new cultures and populations engaged in international competition • The languages of food preparation, not only those preparing foods in traditional ways but national, regional, and international cooking schools, institutes, trade fairs, and listservs • The words and lyrics and histories behind national anthems, many of which trace roots to early political regimes, colonial roots, and missionary activities • The importance of missionaries and missionary organizations in fostering literacy programs in the past and present • How refugees and new immigrants are changing the face of rural areas and secondary and tertiary cities in Europe, Australasia, and North America (we overemphasize urban/suburban areas)

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• The historical importance of missionary radio not only in broadcasting but in promoting literacy programs in the past and at present • The regional backgrounds and accents of national radio and television newscaster • The assignments and travels of regional television and newspaper reporters in places (such as Africa) where there are few reporters compared to Europe and North America • The “filling in” of places with new toponyms of landscape features, for example, the increased densities of names in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, the circumpolar regions, and also the ongoing explorations of planetary universes and surfaces • The early use of colors by cartographers to distinguish “others” and “foreign places” • The role of color in promoting places and tourism • The role of the cosmetic industry to promote beauty through visualization, new colors, and color names • The emergence of “green” (as an adjective and verb) in lifestyles, conservation, energy, architecture, consumerism, religion, tourism, scientific, military, and politics • The language of “secularism” in global religions and belief systems • The openness accompanying political and religious freedoms in the names of children • The “mapping of silences” on the Internet and social media usage • The production and consumption of digital mapping enterprises and impact on online literacy • The role of gender, skin color, and age in visible marketing images for the latest information and communication technologies • The emergence of new religions and belief systems in places where they were introduced by new diasporas or accepted by in situ populations in multicultural urban settings and rural environments • The languages of gender, transgender, queer, elderly (youth, middle, and senior elders) populations and those of new immigrant groups learning languages in formal class settings, from children in schools and those in multiethnic work settings • The changing demographics of book clubs and reading circles • The role of book clubs (face-to-face or online) as venues for fun, learning, and community togetherness and engagement • The promotion of book clubs (face-to-face or online) by publishers (topic, gender, age, lifestyle, race/ethnicity, faith community, etc.) • The founding, funding, and networking of language museums and exhibits • The language of diplomacy (not only words but body languages) • Reading the positioning of world leaders in official group photos (who is next to whom, on first and last row, etc.) • The role of translating and interpreting in EU courts, UN peacekeeping forces, and multinational emergency venues and disease • Typologies of language endangerment across various cultures

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• How the impact of new roads and highways in urban areas linking city centers and suburbs or separating once unified communities now result in new dialects and how bridges and high-speed trains linking previously separated rural people result in new speech varieties • The short- and long-term impacts of singular major sporting and diplomatic events on a homogeneous or ethnically diverse culture • How the lexicons regarding gender, climate change, and globalization are introduced (or not) in the training of next-generation religious leaders and legal scholars • How the influx of refugees in European, North American, and Australian urban and rural areas is affecting the speech patterns of in situ populations and the newcomers • How the location, placement, and images of monolingual or bilingual outdoor advertising (whether state or private sector) affect the consumer cultures’ attitudes toward others, minorities, women, and environmental politics • The internationalization of children’s naming • The influence of Hollywood, Bollywood, and other emerging global “woods” on emerging contemporary consumer cultures • The subtle (or blatant) image of gender harassment and racial discrimination in promoting visual images to sell information technology products in magazines, television, social media, and outdoor advertising • The language of sports broadcasting, masculine or gender neutral • The legal challenges to the logos and images of college and professional sports teams • The growing interest in those who are “silenced” by others; these include exploited and abused children, women, coworkers, prisoners, victims of human trafficking and abuse (all ages), and disabled and marginalized ethnic groups • The communication systems of migratory animals (birds, those beneath the surface, and marine life) Department of Geography University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky, USA Research Centre Deutscher Sprachatlas Philipps University Marburg, Germany

Stanley D. Brunn

Roland Kehrein

References Blaeu, G., & Blaeu, J. (1645). Terrarumorbisterrarumsive atlas novus in quo tabulaeetdescriptiones omnium regionum. Amsterdam. Girnth, H. (2010). Mapping language data. In A. Lameli, R. Kehrein, & S. Rabanus (Eds.), Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation: Vol. 2. Language mapping (pp. 98–121). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

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Klaproth, J. (1823). Asia polyglotta nebst Sprachatlas. Paris: J. M. Eberhart. Thun, H. (2000). Altes und Neues in der Sprachgeographie. In W. Dietrich & U. Hoinkes (Eds.), Romanistica se movet. . . Festgabe für Horst Geckeler zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (pp. 69–989). Münster: Nodus. Wenker, G. (1878). Sprach-Atlas der Rheinprovinz nördlich der Mosel sowie des Kreises Siegen. Nach systematisch aus ca. 1500 Orten gesammeltem Material zusammengestellt, entworfen und gezeichnet. Manuscript (hand-drafted onto printed base maps) held in the archives of the Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas.

Recent Research on Language, Culture, and Geographic Space

The references below include some important historical or classic works dealing with language, linguistics and language, and linguistic mapping in the geography, social sciences, and humanities literatures. While not complete, it will provide the reader access to many sources used in the past and by current scholars across the curricula. Not included are the individual chapters in many edited volumes that need to be consulted for case studies. Abel, E. L., & Kruger, M. L. (2008). Going to the devil. Names – A Journal of Onomastics, 56(2), 95–105. Adegbite, W. (2004). Bilingualism-biculturalism and the utilization of African languages for the development of African nations. In A. L. Oyeleye (Ed.), Language and discourse in society (pp. 13–31). Ibadan: Hope Publication. Adegbite. W. (2003). Enlightenment and attitudes of the Nigerian elite on the roles of languages in Nigeria. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 16(2), 185–196. Aghlara, L., & Tamjid, N. H. (2011). The effect of digital games on Iranian children’s vocabulary retention in foreign language acquisition. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 29, 552–560. Agnew, J. (1996). Mapping politics and how context counts in electoral geography. Political Geography, 15(2), 129–146. Aikio, A. (2007). The study of Saami substrate toponyms in Finland. Onomastica Uralica, 4, 159–197. Aito, E. (2005). National and official languages in Nigeria. Reflections on linguistic interference and the impact of language policy and politics on minority languages. In J. Cohen, K. T. McAlister, K. Rolstad, & J. MacSwain (Eds.), ISB4: Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on bilingualism (pp. 18–38). Somerville: Cascadilla Press. Akinnaso, F. N., & Ogunbiyi, I. A. (1990). The place of Arabic in language education and language planning in Nigeria. Language Problems and Language Planning, 14(1), 1–19. Alexander, N. (1999). An African renaissance without African languages? Social Dynamics, 25(1), 1–12. Alinei, M., et al. (Eds.). (1983–). Atlas Linguarum Europae (ALE). Assen/Maastricht/Rome: van Gorcum/Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato. xvii

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Allen, S. (2007). The fate of Inukitut in the face of majority languages. Bilingualism or language shift. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(3), 515–536. Alsup, J. (2010). Playing with language: Poetry as children’s literature. First Opinions, Second Reactions, 3(1), 4. Ammon, U. (1995). To what extent is German and international language? In P. Stevenson (Ed.), German language and the real world (pp. 25–54). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ammon, U., et al. (2006). Sociolinguistics. An international handbook of the science of language and society. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter (24 chapters). Anokhina, T. (2013). The linguistic lacunicon: Cognitive mapping in schemes and terms. Journal of Education, Culture and Society, 1, 166–174. Aragon, L. V. (1996). Twisting the gift: Translating precolonial into colonial exchanges in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. American Ethnologist, 23(1), 43–60. Arel, D. (1995). Language politics in independent Ukraine. Towards one or two state languages? The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 23(3), 597–622. Asher, R. E., & C. Moseley (2007). Atlas of the world’s languages. New York: Barnes and Noble. Auer, P. (1984). Bilingual conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Auer, P., & Schmidt, J. E. (Eds.). (2010). Language and space: An international handbook of linguistic variation: Vol. 1. Theories and methods. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Austin, F. K., & Sallabank, J. (Eds.) (2011). The Cambridge handbook of endangered languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (23 chapters). Avanesov, R. I., et al. (Eds.). (1965–2008). Slavic linguistic atlas (5 vols.). Moscow/ Wrocław/Warsaw/Kraków/Zagreb: Nauka/Ossolineum/Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN/Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti/IRJA RAN. Ayub, A., & Tyler-Smith, C. (2009). Genetic variation in South Asia: Assessing the influence of geography, language and ethnicity for understanding history and disease risk. Briefings in Functional Genetics, 8(5), 395–404. Backhaus, P. (2006). Multilingualism in Tokyo: A look into the linguistic landscape. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 52–66. Bais, H. R., et al. (2004). How plants communicate using the underground information superhighway. Trends in Plant Science, 9(1), 26–32. Barbour, S., & Carmichael, C. (2010). Language and nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barni, M., & Bagna, C. (2009). A mapping technique and the linguistic landscape. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 126–140). New York: Routledge. Barni, M., & Extra, G. (Eds.) (2008). Mapping linguistic diversity in multicultural contexts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (16 chapters). Bartel, R., et al. (2013). Legal geography: An Australian perspective. Geographical Research, 51(4), 339–353. Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell. Bell, D. V. J. (1955). Political linguistics and international negotiations. Negotiation Journal, 4(3), 233–246.

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Trudgill, P., & MaClagan, M. (2003). Linguistic archaeology: The Scottish input to New Zealand English phonology. Journal of English, 31(9), 103–124. Tusting, K., & Maybin, J. (2007). Linguistic ethnography and interdisciplinarity: Opening the discussion. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11(5), 575–583. Twomey, S. (2007). Reading “woman”: Book club pedagogies and the literary imagination. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 50(5), 398–407. Tyagi, Y. Z. (2003). Some legal aspects of minority languages in India. Social Scientist, 31(5/6), 5–28. Uddin, S. M. (2006). Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, ethnicity and language in an Islamic state. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Ushiyama, H. (1969). Toozai Hoogen-no Kyookai [The boundaries between Eastern and Western Dialects]. Nagano: Shinkyoo Insatsu. Ustinova, I. P. (2004). English and emerging advertising in Russia. World Englishes, 25(2), 267–277. Van Driem, G. (2007). Endangered languages of South Asia. In M. Brenzinger (Ed.), Handbook of endangered languages (pp. 303–341). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Vawda, A. Y., & Patrinos, H. A. (1999). Producing educational materials in local languages: Costs from Guatemala and Senegal. International Journal of Educational Development, 19(4–5), 287–299. Vretanes, P. A. (2002). Open GIS. Web feature service interpretation specification. OGC 01-065r1. Version 1.00. Wane, N. N. (2008). Mapping the field of indigenous knowledges in anti-colonial discourse: A transformative journey in education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 11(2), 183–197. Warner, S. L. N. (2001). The movement to revitalize Hawaiian language culture. The green book of language. San Diego: Academic. Wenker, G. (1889–1923). Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs. Manuscript (handdrafted onto printed base maps) held in the archives of the Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas and in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Wenzhou. P. (1999). Euphenism. The mapping of culture onto language. Journal of Foreign Languages. Wheatley, J. (2006). The status of minority languages in Georgia and the relevance of models from other European states. SSOAR 25: 37 and ECMI Working Paper 26. Williams, C. H. (1988). Language in geographical context. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Williams, J. P. (1985). Preliminaries to the study of the dialects of White West Indian English. Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. New West Indian Guide, 59(12), 27–44. Wilme, L., et al. (2012). Toponyms for centers of endemism in Madagascar. Madagascar Conservation and Development, 7(1), 30. Wilson, J., & Stapleton, K. (2003). Nation-state, devolution and the parliamentary discourse of minority languages. Journal of Language and Politics, 2(1), 5–30. Winter, J., & Pauwels, A. (2003). Mapping trajectories of change – Women’s and men’s practices and experiences of feminist linguistic reform in Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 26(1), 19–37.

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Contents

Volume 1 Part I 1

2

3

4

5

Geography, Language, and Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Bahry

3

Austronesian Archipelagic Linguistic Diversity Amid Globalization in the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meriam A. Bravante and William N. Holden

43

Mapping the World’s Languages: From Data via Purpose to Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bernard Comrie

61

Expanding the Map of the Literary Canon Through Multimodal Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Crag Hill and Jennifer Dorsey

77

Transforming Narratives of a Caribbean Downtown Neighborhood: Community Mapping and “No Man’s Land” in Kingston, Jamaica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Howard

91

6

Language Mapping Worldwide: Methods and Traditions . . . . . . Stefan Rabanus

103

7

Dialect Typology: Recent Advances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melanie Röthlisberger and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi

131

8

Study of Linguistic Areas: Evidence from Cultural Words, Semantic Maps, and Spatial Reference in Southeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stefanie Siebenhütter

157

xli

xlii

Contents

9

10

11

Preparing a National Sociolinguistic Map for Equatorial Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott Smith

181

Visualizing Dialect Variation on a 3-D Interpolated Map: A Case Study in Chiang Mai, Thailand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paporn Thebpanya, Sudarat Leerabhandh Hatfield, and Jay Lee

189

Mapping Cantonese: The Pro-Cantonese Protest and Sina Weibo in Guangzhou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wilfred Yang Wang

201

12

Revising the Language Map of Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changyong Yang, William O’Grady, Sejung Yang, Nanna Haug Hilton, Sang-Gu Kang, and So-Young Kim

13

Characterizing the Language Boundaries of the Arab Middle East and North Africa: A Geolinguistic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moran Zaga and Ronen Zeidel

Part II 14

The Language of Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Symbolics, Syntactics, and Semantics: Teaching a Language of Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phil Gersmehl

215

231

247

249

15

Map Design for the Color Vision Deficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dave Hobbins

16

The Map’s Changing Role: A Survey of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fritz C. Kessler and Terry A. Slocum

289

Language of Maps for Blind and Partially Sighted People: Expressive and Perceptive Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elaine Kitchel and Fred Otto

319

17

275

18

Maps as Language/the Language of Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judith A. Tyner

333

19

Maps/Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Denis Wood

341

Part III 20

Language Mapping and Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Linguistic Geography’s Role in Clarifying the Linguistic Situation in Specific Language Regions in Southeast Europe Luchia Antonova-Vasileva

...

353

355

Contents

21

xliii

Slovene Nouns and Adjectives: Non-standard Use of Dual Number from 1925 to 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tjaša Jakop

375

22

Exploring Linguistic Diversity in India: A Spatial Analysis . . . . . Rajrani Kalra and Ashok K. Dutt

391

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries Arjen Versloot

......

405

24

Linguistic Geography of the Nostratic Macrofamily Barney Warf

..........

443

25

Mapping Language Variation and Change in the USA and Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas A. Wikle and Guy H. Bailey

459

Part IV 26

27

28

29

30

31

32

Language and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Language and Pain in the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Claudiana Nogueira de Alencar, Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho, and José Ernandi Mendes

471

473

Linguistic Marketplace of Osh, Kyrgyzstan: From Bazaar to Bizarre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emily R. Canning

491

Immigration, Language, and Conflicting Ideologies: The Czech in Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eva Eckert

511

Northern Ireland and the Union “Fleg”: Linguistic Associations in a Disputed Geographical Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brendan Gunn

529

Languages and Space-Related Identity: The Rise and Fall of Serbo-Croatian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Jordan

541

Spatial Distribution of Regional Dialects: Interplay of Language, Community, and Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alfred Lameli

563

“Spanish Languages” as a Polysemic Expression: Territories, Borders, and Geopolitical Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rubén C. Lois-González, Jorge Olcina Cantos, and Miguel PazosOtón

583

xliv

33

Contents

Cultural Wisdom in Design and Planning: Linguistic Terms from Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sanjoy Mazumdar, Yurika Yokoyama, Shunsuke Itoh, and Nana Fukuda

601

34

Food, Language, and Identity in Singapore’s Hawker Centers . . Kelly Ong

35

Aztlán and Mexican Transnationalism: Language, Nation, and History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Magnus Pharao Hansen and Kurly Tlapoyawa

667

Place Names and Kazakh Song Making in the Western Mongolian Steppes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer C. Post

685

Practicing Language: The Dynamic Language Geographies of Young Migrants’ Talk in London and Glasgow . . . . . . . . . . . . Sophie Shuttleworth

707

36

37

629

38

Hebrew in the Daily Life of Israelis Stanley Waterman

.......................

725

39

Ethnic Self-Perception of Georgian Teenagers in Moscow: Role of Language and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dionysios Zoumpalidis and Julia V. Mazurova

743

Volume 2 Part V 40

Language and Heritage

............................

757

Textual Politics of Alabama’s Historical Markers: Slavery, Emancipation, and Civil Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew R. Cook

759

41

Mayan Languages in the United States María Luz García

....................

791

42

Traveling Libraries and Bookmobiles: How Librarians Have Served and Empowered American Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isaac Willis Larison

805

Mayan Languages and Guatemala Law: Shifting Identities and Ideologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judith M. Ixq’anil Maxwell

823

43

44

The Language of Architecture and the Narrative of the Architect: An Essay on Spatial Orientation and Cultural Meaning in Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lourens Minnema

843

Contents

45

46

47

Speaking Maya, Being Maya: Ideological and Institutional Mediations of Language in Contemporary Yucatan . . . . . . . . . . . Catherine R. Rhodes and Christopher Bloechl

861

Afrikaans Language Monument: A Contested Monument for a Contested Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Annemarie van Zyl

885

Cultivating Memoryscapes: The Politics of Language at Plantation House Museums in the American South . . . . . . . . . . . Emma J. Walcott-Wilson

901

Part VI 48

xlv

Linguistic Minorities and Majorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Trajectories of Language, Culture, and Geography in Postcolonial Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sadia Afrin and Lawrence Baines

915

917

49

Amish Language Research: A Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cory Anderson

50

Roma: A Nation Without a Homeland, Common Language, or Written Language – A Case Study of Plovdiv, Bulgaria . . . . . Krasimir Asenov

963

Decoding Geopolitical Language in New Constitutions: An Analysis of Contemporary Constitutional Content . . . . . . . . . . . . Josiah R. Baker

981

51

939

52

Changes in the Sociolinguistic Ecology of Jewish Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1027 Sarah Bunin Benor and Bernard Spolsky

53

Visualizing the United Nations’ 2001 “Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations” Through Postage Stamp Issues . . . . . . . . . 1037 Stanley D. Brunn and Anton Gosar

54

Heritage Languages and Bilingualism in the United States . . . . . 1047 Steven L. Driever and Nazgol Bagheri

55

Linguistic Shift and Heritage Language Retention in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1069 James Forrest, Phil Benson, and Frank Siciliano

56

Minority Language Groups in the State System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1087 Kathryn L. Hannum

57

Language and Social Space in Nelson Mandela Bay Lloyd Hill

. . . . . . . . . . 1105

xlvi

Contents

58

Bulgarian Language in New Places Worldwide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1131 Ana Kocheva

59

Hausanization of Nigerian Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1145 Ibrahim Badamasi Lambu

60

Language of Rusyns in Slovakia: Controversies, Vagaries, and Rivalry of Codification Discourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1155 René Matlovič, Kvetoslava Matlovičová, and Viera Vlčková

61

Languages of Iran: Overview and Critical Assessment . . . . . . . . 1171 Sanan Moradi

62

Complexities of the Arabic Language in France Noumane Rahouti

63

The Lesser Used Languages in the European Union: A Study in Political Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1217 André-Louis Sanguin

64

Preservation of Magahi Language in India: Contemporary Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1235 Ram Nandan Prasad Sinha

65

Between Orality and Electronic Culture: Understanding the Changing Conception of Community and Language Use among Roma (Gypsies) Using “Medium Theory” . . . . . . . . . . . . 1255 Christopher Smith and Caitlin Maddox

66

From Trade to Regional Integration: The Checkered History of Kiswahili in Uganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1267 Isabella Soi

67

Changes in Population Structure by Mother Tongue in East Serbia in the Last Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1281 Rastislav Stojisavljević, Dajana Bjelajac, and Bojan Djerčan

68

Minority and Language Issues in Comparative Context: Slovenes in Italy, Ireland, and Wales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1289 Colin H. Williams and Milan Bufon

Part VII

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203

Linguistic Varieties and Patterns of Language Use . . . . .

1321

69

English Unbound: Dictionaries, Dialects, and Boundaries . . . . . . 1323 Michael Adams

70

Dialect Variation in Kentucky: Eastern Kentuckian Perceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1337 Jennifer Cramer

Contents

xlvii

71

Vertical Language Change in Germany: Dialects, Regiolects, and Standard German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1357 Roland Kehrein

72

Rural Mountain Dialects: Teaching the “Voiceplace” in Appalachia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1371 Lizbeth Phillips, Grace Bradshaw, and Amy Clark

73

Relevance of Arabic Dialects: A Brief Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1383 Genevieve A. Schmitt

74

Language Homogeneity and Diversity in Human Collectivities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1399 Herman Van der Wusten

Part VIII

Multilingual and Multiethnic Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1417

75

The Place of the French Language in Arabic-Speaking Mediterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1419 Jean-Louis Ballais, Mohamed Al Amrawy, Mohamed Al Dbiyat, Laurence Charbel, Bernard Geyer, and Lyamine Mezedjri

76

Changes in Population Composition and Mother Tongue in Serbia’s Vojvodina Province . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1433 Milka Bubalo Živković, Tamara Lukić, and Rastislav Stojisavljević

77

The Dynamic Linguistic Cartography of Dili, Timor-Leste: Negotiating Languages in an Urban Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1455 Alan Silvio Ribeiro Carneiro

78

Mapping Linguistic Diversity in the English-Speaking Caribbean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1469 Caroline Myrick, Nicole Eberle, Joel Schneier, and Jeffrey Reaser

79

Language Continuities and Ruptures in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1489 Brian K. Ray and Anne Gilbert

80

Reorganization of States and the Politics of Official Languages in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1509 Mahendra Prasad Singh and Ramesh Chandra Dhussa

81

Mapping Visible Multilingualism in Brussels’ Linguistic Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1525 Mieke Vandenbroucke

xlviii

Contents

Volume 3 Part IX

Endangered and Disappearing Languages

............

1545

82

The Challenge of New Intercultural Maps: Indigenous Language Revitalization Between Brazil and Aotearoa/ New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1547 Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire, Chang Whan, Marcus Maia, Marcia Gojten Nascimento, Peter Petrucci, Beatrice Mari Ropata Te-Hei, and Krystal Te Rina Warren

83

Mapping Linguistic Vitality and Language Endangerment . . . . . 1571 Maggie Canvin and Irene Tucker

84

Vanishing Nomads: Languages and Peoples of Nakai, Laos, and Adjacent Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1589 James R. Chamberlain

85

Language Endangerment: Diversity and Specificities of Native American Languages of Oklahoma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607 Emmanuelle S. Chiocca

86

Khoisan Click Languages of Africa: Present, Past, and Future Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1627 Menán du Plessis

87

Language Endangerment in Nigeria: The Resilience of Igbo Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1643 Ngozi Ugo Emeka-Nwobia

88

Language Revitalization and Engagements in the Amazon: The Case of Apurinã . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1657 Sidney da S. Facundes, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Marília Fernanda P. de Freitas, Bruna Fernanda S. Lima-Padovani, and Patrícia do Nascimento Costa

89

Language as Tool of Exclusion and Dominance of Southeast Nigeria’s Indigenous Peoples: A Historical Perspective . . . . . . . . 1675 E. Chinwe Obianika

90

Indigenous Language Revitalization in Early Care and Education: An Overview of the Available Literature . . . . . . . . . 1695 Melody Redbird-Post

91

Revitalization of the Ainu Language: Japanese Government Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1711 Yukio Yotsumoto

Contents

Part X

xlix

Indigenous Peoples’ Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1729

92

The Changing Kichwa Language Map in Ecuador . . . . . . . . . . . 1731 Gregory Knapp

93

Linguistic Landscape of Panama in the Early 21st Century: An Indigenous Orthography Striving to Decolonize . . . . . . . . . . . 1743 Ginés A. Sánchez Arias

94

Indigenous Languages, and Past and Present Language Policies in the Americas: The Case of Canada, Bolivia, Mexico, and French Guyana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1761 Krzysztof Ząbecki

95

Promoting and Preserving Indigenous Languages and Cultures in the Americas Through Video Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1785 Krzysztof Ząbecki

Part XI

Language and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1803

96

Gender and Delineation of Intimsphäre in Muslim Hausa Video Films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1805 Abdalla Uba Adamu

97

The Gendered Language of Gravestones: A Comparative Study of Central and Northern Appalachian Cemeteries . . . . . . . . . . . . 1839 Amy Clark, Alana Johnson, and Dalena Mathews

98

Language of Parenting: Poland’s Efforts to Promote New Fatherhood Through Outdoor Advertising Campaign . . . . . . . . . 1853 Rafał Koszek, Agnieszka Świętek, Marcin Semczuk, Mariusz Dzięglewski, and Stanley D. Brunn

99

Mother Tongue and Language Practices of Pashai-Speaking Communities in Afghanistan and the Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1883 Rachel Lehr and Jennifer Fluri

Part XII

Nonhuman Languages

............................

1901

100

Prosaic, Poetic, Psychedelic, and Paranormal Communications of Plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1903 Chris S. Duvall

101

Communication, Identity, and Power in the Horse World . . . . . . 1921 Pauliina Raento

l

102

Contents

Geographies of Nonhuman Animal Communication and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1943 Julie Urbanik

Part XIII

Place Names and Toponyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1959

103

Place Names as Strategic Political Communication: Analysis of Geographic Language in US Presidential Debates, 1976–2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1961 Matthew D. Balentine and Gerald R. Webster

104

Pre-Slavic Minority Languages and Geographic Names in Northwest Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1981 Kathleen Braden

105

Cartographic Examination of French Toponymic Spatial Patterns in the Mississippi River Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1999 Marcelle Caturia and Peter Anthamatten

106

Street and Place Name Changes in Kolkata: India’s First Modern City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2023 Priyanka Ghosh

107

Role of Place Names in Relating People and Space Peter Jordan

108

Origin of Sea Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2053 Ferjan Ormeling

109

Bushman (San) Influence on Southern African Place Names . . . . 2069 Peter E. Raper

110

Poetics and Politics in the Naming of Brazilian Towns . . . . . . . . . 2083 Jörn Seemann

111

The Board of Geographic Names and the Removal of Derogatory and Offensive Toponyms in the United States . . . . . . 2097 Fred M. Shelley

112

The Language of a Globalized World: Naming the Present Day and Its Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2107 Marcin Wojciech Solarz

113

The Mount McKinley-Denali Controversy and the US Board on Geographic Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2121 Douglas L. Vandegraft

114

Commemorative Custer Place Names on the American Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2139 Gerald R. Webster

. . . . . . . . . . . 2037

Contents

115

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Place Names and Natural Disasters in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2157 Yukio Yotsumoto

Volume 4 Part XIV Language of Political Organization, Boundaries, and Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2173

116

The Language of Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2175 Victor Konrad, Jussi P. Laine, Ilkka Liikanen, James W. Scott, and Randy Widdis

117

Visual Expressions of States, Culture, and Nature: Borders, Boundary Markers, and Borderscapes Across a Dynamic China and Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2193 Tom Ptak

118

Language of Reorganizing Electoral Space Ryan Weichelt and Gerald R. Webster

Part XV

Language Policy, Laws, and Ethics

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2207

..................

2235

119

Language Policies, Immigrant Assimilation, and Minority Group Advancement in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2237 Christopher Daniel

120

Legal Latin’s Legacy in Modern Languages and Systems of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2261 Roger S. Fisher

121

South Korea’s Developmentalist Language Policies: Linguistic Territoriality in the Global Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2277 Hyeseon Jeong

122

Linguistic Prescriptivism in Present-Day Poland: The Normative Attitudes of the Speakers of Polish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2291 Krystyna Kułak

123

Abortion Referendums in Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2311 Theresa Reidy

124

Plagiarism Across Languages and Cultures: A (Forensic) Linguistic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2325 Rui Sousa-Silva

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Contents

Part XVI

Music, Art, Photography, and Entertainment . . . . . . . . .

2347

125

Speaking the Language of Art in Central Asia: Old Archives and New Alphabets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2349 Aliya de Tiesenhausen

126

Soundscapes as Critical Tools of Analysis Christabel Devadoss

127

Language Crossing, Fluid Identities, and Spatial Mobility: Representing Language, Identity, and Place in an AmsterdamBased Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2381 Nesrin El Ayadi and Virginie Mamadouh

128

Continuity and Change in the Visual Language of National Geographic: A Geographic and Image Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2399 Alyson L. Greiner, Shireen Hyrapiet, Verenise Calzadillas Macias, and Jaryd Hinch

129

Languages of Food and Dance in East Kentucky: Gathering ’Round the Table and the Dance Floor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2421 Abby Huggins

130

English as a Sacred Language in German Evangelical Worship Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2441 Deborah Justice

131

Narrative Formula Through the Geography of Transformers: Age of Extinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2455 Chris Lukinbeal and Laura Sharp

132

India’s Cultural Architecture and Society’s Role in Shaping It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2479 Pooja Mahathi Vajjha

133

Art as a Language: An Atlas of Seasons Where Time and Space Intersect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2511 Kathleen O’Brien

134

Lyrical Geographies and the Topography of Social Resistance in Popular Music in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2535 Chris W. Post and Mark Rhodes

135

Language of Everyday Teenagers in Their Music Peter J. Taylor and Thomas L. Bell

136

The Cuban Lexicon Lucumí and African Language Yorùbá: Musical and Historical Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2575 Amanda Villepastour

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2363

. . . . . . . . . . . . 2559

Contents

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137

National Anthems and National Symbolism: Singing the Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2603 Stanley Waterman

138

Language/Music Contacts and Exchanges: Nomadic Mongolian Music Transformations in Ordos Area in the Early Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2619 Xiaohong Zhang and Hongzhong Zhuang

Part XVII

Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2635

139

Challenges in Translating the Qur’ān – Translating the Untranslatable: Omission/Ellipsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2637 Ahmed Allaithy

140

Islamic Veiling Meets Fashion: Struggles and Translations . . . . . 2673 Anna-Mari Almila

141

Library Holdings of Religious Fundamentalist and Secular Universities: “Where the Twain Seldom Meet” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2695 Stanley D. Brunn, J. Clark Archer, Gerald R. Webster, and Robert Watrel

142

Rhetoric of Technoscience in North Indian Vernacular Asceticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2719 Antoinette E. DeNapoli

143

Redefining Religious Criticism for Development of Worldview Literacy in Religious Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2743 Dorthe Enger

144

Construction of the Concept of Religion in the United Nations’ General Assembly: From Human Rights to Dialogue and Harmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2761 Karsten B. Lehmann

145

Anglophone Christian Worship’s Changed (and Changing) Language in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2777 David W. Music

146

Language and the Internationalization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2799 Daniel H. Olsen and Samuel M. Otterstrom

147

Sociocultural Influences on Linguistic Geography: Religion and Language in Southeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2825 Stefanie Siebenhütter

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Contents

Volume 5 Part XVIII

Language of and Language in the Landscape . . . . . . . .

2845

148

Reading the American Cemetery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2847 Gillian Acheson and Chelsie McWhorter

149

Reading the Cultural Landscape of Nebraska: Historical Markers, Literature, and Living History Reenactments . . . . . . . 2871 J. Clark Archer, Jill A. Archer, and Katherine Nashleanas

150

Languages of Water: Arapaho and Hawaiian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2903 Kate A. Berry, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, Katrina-Ann R. Kapāanaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira, and Iva Moss Redman

151

Roadside Development as a Biography: US Highways Speak . . . 2921 Wayne Brew

152

Changing the Symbolic Language of the Urban Landscape: Post-socialist Transformation in Kyiv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2941 Olena Dronova and Eugenia Maruniak

153

Silence as the Language and Landscape of Abuse . . . . . . . . . . . . 2973 Donna Gilbreath

154

Taglish, Glutathione, and the Halo-Halo Discourse of Billboards in Metropolitan Manila . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2995 José Edgardo Abaya Gomez Jr.

155

Linguistic Landscape of Uzbekistan: The Rise and Fall of Uzbek, Russian, Tajik, and English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3015 Dilia Hasanova

156

Reading North Dakota’s Contemporary Landscapes: Stories of Devolution, Dereliction, Dynamism, and Curation . . . . . . . . . . 3029 Mike Jacobs, Brad Rundquist, and Karl Bauer

157

Alternative Languages of Landscape Analysis: Visualizing Geography Through Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3061 David J. Keeling

158

The Horizon: Ontology and Conceptualization David M. Mark and Gaurav Sinha

159

Cognitive Map-Making of Long-Distance Transhumance: The Royal Drove Road of Cuenca, Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3097 Hendrikus Joseph Pardoel

160

“Reading a River” Through Google Scholar Hyperlinks: Comparing Four Major International River Systems . . . . . . . . . 3119 Sarah Praskievicz

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3077

Contents

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161

Landscape as a Language Without Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3141 Edward Relph

162

Graffiti as Communication and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3155 Hunter Shobe

163

Power of Language in Mass Tourism: Narrative Strategies of Finnish Tourist Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3173 Vilhelmiina Vainikka

164

Reading the Landscape in Antler, North Dakota: Repeat Photography in an Atrophying Northern Plains Town . . . . . . . . 3185 William A. Wetherholt and Gregory S. Vandeberg

165

Visualizing the Languages of Nature, Society, Power, and Politics in Contemporary Kazakhstan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3209 Kristopher D. White

166

New York Chinatown Now and Then: Tracing Its Changing Images Through Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3223 Shaolu Yu

Part XIX

Language, Environment, and Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3237

167

Reading the “State of the Planet” Through United Nations Stamp Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3239 Stanley D. Brunn

168

Language of the Weather Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3261 James R. Carter

169

Anthropocene Discourse: Geopolitics After Environment . . . . . . 3287 Simon Dalby

170

Climate Science Language in US Secondary School Student Textbooks, 2002–2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3301 Jean Eichhorst and Lisa K. Millsaps

171

Islands Speaking the Climate Change Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3319 Pantelina Emmanouilidou

172

The Language of Australian Human-Ecological Relationship: Identity, Place, and Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3333 Justin Lawson and Jonathan Kingsley

173

Language Issues in Weather Forecasts, Reporting, and Climate Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3349 Coli Ndzabandzaba

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174

Contents

Knowledge, Language, and Antarctica: Teaching, Studying, and Theorizing at the Ends of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3363 Hanne E. F. Nielsen

Part XX

Teaching and Learning Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3383

175

Kazakh Transnational Multiliteracies: Building Intergenerational Communities of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3385 Nettie Boivin

176

Frank Laubach and Ruth Colvin: The Global Reach of Local Literacy Sponsors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3407 Julie Nelson Christoph

177

Rise of Online Higher Education, Global English Collisions, and the Academic American English Dialect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3425 Basil Considine

178

Language Passports: The Multilayered Linguistic Repertoires of Multilingual Pupils in Flanders, Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3443 Fauve De Backer, Stef Slembrouck, and Piet Van Avermaet

179

Teaching Brazilian Sign Language in Higher Education Through Virtual Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3459 Ana Luisa Borba Gediel

180

Language Games Children Play: Language Invention in a Montessori Primary School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3475 Federico Gobbo

181

Playing with Language in Multilingual Classrooms: From “Shoes” to “Sjoes” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3489 Karijn Helsloot and Fleur Daemen

182

Writing Children’s Geography Books: Challenges, Experiences, and Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3507 Markku Löytönen and Taina Kaivola

183

Language Preservation Through Curricular Activities: A Case Study of Javanese Language in Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3521 Sri Rejeki Murtiningsih and Indah Puspawati

184

Translanguaging and Language Ideologies in Education: Northern and Southern Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3533 BethAnne Paulsrud and Jenny Rosén

185

Challenges of (Global) Migration for Language Policies and Language Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3549 Jörg Roche

Contents

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Language and Education Quality in Kyrgyzstan: Demographic and Geographic Analysis of National Scholarship Test Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3563 Duishon Shamatov, Totukan Dyikanbaeva, and Ulukbek Omokeev

Volume 6 Part XXI

Language and Technology

........................

3577

. . . . . 3579

187

Loosening the Linkages Between Language and the Land Lawrence Baines and Gul Nahar

188

Maps Ranking Countries as Innovators in Information and Communication Technologies, and Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3595 Stanley D. Brunn and Richard Gilbreath

189

Learning Geography Through Mobile Gaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3619 Michael A. Davis

190

Sustainability of Ethnic Groups in Vojvodina, Serbia: Role of Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3633 Bojan Đerčan, Dajana Bjelajac, and Milka Bubalo-Živković

191

Defining the Geographic and Policy Dynamics of the Digital Divide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3653 Melissa R. Gilbert and Michele Masucci

192

Mapping Language in the Age of GIS Michael F. Goodchild

193

Minority Language Communities and the Web in Italy . . . . . . . . 3683 Teresa Graziano

194

Multidimensional Mapping and Spatial Communication Through the Virtual Umwelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3703 Trevor M. Harris

195

Visualizing Regional Language Variation Across Europe on Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3719 Dirk Hovy, Afshin Rahimi, Timothy Baldwin, and Julian Brooke

196

REDE SprachGIS: A Geographic Information System for Linguists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3743 Juliane Limper, Jeffrey Pheiff, and Anneli Williams

197

Wikipedia: Mirror, Microcosm, and Motor of Global Linguistic Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3773 Virginie Mamadouh

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3673

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Contents

198

Writing the World in 301 Languages: A Political Geography of the Online Encyclopedia Wikipedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3801 Virginie Mamadouh

199

Participatory Geographic Information System (PGIS): A Discourse Toward a Solution to Traditional GIS Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3825 Coli Ndzabandzaba

200

Speech Synthesis: Text-To-Speech Conversion and Artificial Voices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3837 Jürgen Trouvain and Bernd Möbius

201

Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in the Digital World: Toward the Democratic Access to Information in the Periphery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3853 Claudia Wanderley

Part XXII

Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3865

202

Uneven Geographies of Foreign Language Translations, Classes, and Interpreters in Capital and Gateway Cities . . . . . . . 3867 Stanley D. Brunn

203

Autonomous, Algorithmic, Simultaneous Translation Systems in the Glocal Village: Consequences and Paradoxical Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3891 Sam Lehman-Wilzig

204

Folktales and Printed Translations Across the Indian Subcontinent: The Travelling Tales of Niret Guru . . . . . . . . . . . . 3911 Lopamudra Maitra Bajpai

205

Language and Translation Policies Toward Minority Languages in China and the USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3923 Duoxiu Qian and Shuang Li

206

Predictive Turn in Translation Studies: Review and Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3939 Moritz Schaeffer, Jean Nitzke, and Silvia Hansen-Schirra

207

Emergence of the Latin Alphabet in Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus: A Brief History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3963 Maganat Shegebayev

208

Bible Translation as Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3971 Eberhard Werner

209

Science of Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3985 Eberhard Werner

Contents

Part XXIII

lix

Language and Product Branding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3999

210

Branding of an Ethical Development Narrative: Fair Trade, Gender, and Peru’s Café Femenino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4001 Dayna Cueva Alegría

211

Geographic Language of Wine Labels: Libations, Land, and Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4017 Nicholas P. Dunning and Wyatt Gemmer

212

Mutating and Contested Languages of Wine: Heard on the Grapevine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4033 David Inglis

213

Spread of Flower Symbolism: From the Victorian Language of Flowers to Modern Flower Emoji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4059 Susan Loy

214

Craft Breweries and Adaptive Reuse in the USA: The Use and Reuse of Space and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4083 Neil Reid, Margaret M. Gripshover, and Thomas L. Bell

215

The Semiofoodscape of Wine: The Changing Global Landscape of Wine Culture and the Language of Making, Selling, and Drinking Wine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4103 John P. Tiefenbacher and Christi Townsend

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4147

About the Editors

Stanley D. Brunn, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. His childhood years were spent living in different states; before he graduated from high school, he lived in six Midwestern states, perhaps explaining why he is passionate about geography, landscapes, places, languages, faith communities, and human and environmental diversity. He has more than 5 years of university teaching and research experience in the United States and 20 other countries around the world. His US experiences have been at the University of Florida, Michigan State University, and the University of Kentucky, where he has been since 1980. He has taught in major universities in northern, southern, and eastern Europe (15 different) as well as in Central Asia, China, Australia, and South Africa. His research interests cover a broad array of topics within urban, economic, social, information/communications, geotechnology and cyberspace, time-space intersections, law, political, and environmental geography, geographical future, as well as disciplinary history. He has traveled in more than 100 countries and made over 200 presentations at conferences in the United States and internationally. He has authored, edited, or co-edited more than 20 books and published more than 100 articles in major national and regional journals and written nearly that many chapters, many with colleagues in other countries. Some have yet to see the light of day. The research scale of his studies includes local and regional arenas as well as global scales. In recent years he has become interested in the geographies of silences and abandonment, disciplinary intersections and interdisciplinary studies, global language and religion issues, cyberspace and regional development, and social, racial, and political injustices. His geographical lxi

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About the Editors

interests continually expand to develop deeper appreciations of art, music, drama, and poetry. His eclectic interests are always searching for topics that have not been studied that need to be studied. He has received numerous awards and honors in his lifetime for his disciplinary service and scholarly record. He also is a lifelong stamp collector which recently has emerged as one of his retirement research foci. Also, he has written a weekly poem for the past 3 1/2 years which he sends to friends around the world; all have a focus on social, political, and environmental justice about issues he feels compassionate about locally, nationally, and globally. His global network of friends extends to those with intersecting interests to empower community, national, and international interfaith and environmental groups. Geography, in his mind, is to be lived, experienced, and shared with those hoping to make the world a more peaceful, just, and safe place to live, work, experience, and empower fulfillment. His living motto is “to whom much is given, much is expected.” Roland Kehrein is a Professor at the Research Center Deutscher Sprachatlas at the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. As a scholar of German Linguistics specializing in variation and change of regional languages, he is the author and co-editor of several books in this field and related areas. Among these are two international handbooks: Regionale Variation des Deutschen. Projekte und Perspektiven (2015) and Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Vol. 2: Language Mapping (2010) (two volumes) published in the well-known series Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science. In addition to his books, he has written numerous articles in the field and he is continuously presenting his research at relevant international conferences. Since 2016 he is chief editor of the academic journal/book series Germanistische Linguistik. He is regularly involved in review processes for conference contributions, articles, and research proposals and supervises student projects at B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. levels. Roland Kehrein is also a well-known forensic consultant specialized in dialectal analysis and carrying out casework for prosecution and defense.

About the Managing Editor

Donna Gilbreath has worked with more than 500 chapter authors around the world to bring their manuscripts from drafts to publication. She has edited journal articles, book chapters, and reports in a broad range of fields, including geography and anthropology in the humanities, as well as public health, cardiology, and cancer in the medical sphere. Donna has an M.A. from the University of Kentucky (UK), where she majored in geography and specialized in cartographic techniques. As a cartographer, she has produced numerous maps and other graphics for the Atlas of Kentucky, the Kentucky state park system, and the UK Program for Archaeological Research. Donna is currently an editor/graphic designer at the UK Markey Cancer Center. In addition to her job in the United Kingdom and her work with Stan’s books, she designs and edits materials for Explorations by Thor, a custom agri-tour company. Donna lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband of 28 years, Dick Gilbreath, who is also a cartographer and who created several maps for this book. In her spare time, Donna enjoys traveling, walking and hiking, visiting her children, and having cookouts in the country with her mother and siblings.

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Contributors

Gillian Acheson Department of Geography, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, USA Michael Adams Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Abdalla Uba Adamu Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria Sadia Afrin Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Mohamed Al Dbiyat Institut Français du Proche-Orient, Beirut, Lebanon Ahmed Allaithy Department of Arabic and Translation Studies, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates Anna-Mari Almila London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, London, UK Mohamed Al Amrawy UMR ESPACE, Aix-en-Provence, France Mansourah University, Mansoura, Egypt Cory Anderson Truman State University/University of Akron, Wayne College, Millersburg, OH, USA Peter Anthamatten Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO, USA Luchia Antonova-Vasileva Institute for Bulgarian Language, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria J. Clark Archer Department of Geography, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA Jill A. Archer Lincoln Public Schools, Lincoln, NE, USA Krasimir Asenov Plovdiv University, Plovdiv, Bulgaria lxv

lxvi

Contributors

Nazgol Bagheri Department of Political Science and Geography, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA Stephen Bahry Comparative, International and Development Education Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Guy H. Bailey University of Texas—Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, USA Lawrence Baines Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Josiah R. Baker Economics Department, Methodist University, Fayetteville, NC, USA Timothy Baldwin School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Matthew D. Balentine Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA Jean-Louis Ballais Pôle Géographie-Aménagement-Environnement, Marseille University, Marseille, France

Aix-

UMR ESPACE, Aix-en-Provence, France Karl Bauer Department of History and American Indian Studies, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA Thomas L. Bell Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA Sarah Bunin Benor Contemporary Jewish Studies, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, CA, USA Phil Benson Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Kate A. Berry University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA Dajana Bjelajac Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Christopher Bloechl Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Nettie Boivin Department of Language and Communication Studies, Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan Kathleen Braden School of Business, Government, and Economics, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, USA

Contributors

lxvii

Grace Bradshaw Appalachian Writing Project, Wise County Public Schools, Wise, VA, USA Meriam A. Bravante Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada Wayne Brew Social Sciences, Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell, PA, USA Julian Brooke Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada Stanley D. Brunn Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Milan Bufon Science and Research Centre, Koper, Slovenia Verenise Calzadillas Macias Houston, TX, USA Emily R. Canning Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, Israel Jorge Olcina Cantos Department of Geography, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain Maggie Canvin SIL International, Dallas, TX, USA Alan Silvio Ribeiro Carneiro Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil James R. Carter Geography–Geology–Environment Department, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA Marcelle Caturia Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO, USA James R. Chamberlain Vientiane, Laos Laurence Charbel Libanese University, Beirut, Lebanon Emmanuelle S. Chiocca Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Julie Nelson Christoph University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, USA Amy Clark Department of Communication Studies, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Wise, VA, USA Teresa Cavazos Cohn University of Idaho, McCall, ID, USA Bernard Comrie University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Basil Considine Writing Center, Abilene Christian University, Abilene, TX, USA Matthew R. Cook Department of Geography and Geology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA

lxviii

Contributors

Jennifer Cramer Department of Linguistics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Dayna Cueva Alegría Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Fleur Daemen Studio Taalwetenschap, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Simon Dalby Department of Geography and School of International Policy and Governance and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada Christopher Daniel Kentucky State University, Frankfort, KY, USA Michael A. Davis Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Kutztown, PA, USA Claudiana Nogueira de Alencar Universidade Estadual do Ceará, UECE, Fortaleza, Brazil Fauve De Backer Linguistics Department, Centre for Diversity and Learning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho Universidade Estadual do Ceará, UECE, Fortaleza, Brazil Marília Fernanda P. de Freitas Faculty of Letters, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil Antoinette E. DeNapoli Department of Religion, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA Bojan Đerčan Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Christabel Devadoss Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA Ramesh Chandra Dhussa Department for the Study of Culture and Society, Drake University, Des Moines, IA, USA Bojan Djerčan Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, University in Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Jennifer Dorsey East Central University, Ada, OK, USA Steven L. Driever Department of Geosciences, University of Missouri, Kansas City, MO, USA Olena Dronova Department of Economical and Social Geography, Faculty of Geography, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine Menán du Plessis Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Contributors

lxix

Nicholas P. Dunning Department of Geography and GIS, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA Ashok K. Dutt University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA Chris S. Duvall Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Totukan Dyikanbaeva Department of Russian Philology, Osh State University, Osh, Kyrgyzstan Mariusz Dzięglewski Institute of Philosophy and Sociology/Social Research Lab, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Cracow, Poland Nicole Eberle University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland Eva Eckert Department of Social Sciences and Languages, Anglo-American University, Prague, Czech Republic Jean Eichhorst Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Nesrin El Ayadi Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ngozi Ugo Emeka-Nwobia Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria Pantelina Emmanouilidou OMIJ/CRIDEAU, CIDCE, University of Limoges, Limoges, France Dorthe Enger Hasseris Gymnasium, Aalborg, Denmark Sidney da S. Facundes Graduate Program of Linguistics and Literature, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil Roger S. Fisher Department of Humanities, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada Jennifer Fluri Department of Geography, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA James Forrest Department of Geography and Planning, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia Nana Fukuda Hokkaido University of Science, Sapporo, Japan María Luz García Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA Ana Luisa Borba Gediel Language Department, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil Wyatt Gemmer Department of Geography and GIS, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

lxx

Contributors

Phil Gersmehl Michigan Geographic Alliance, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA New York Center for Geographic Learning, New York, NY, USA Bernard Geyer CNRS, UMR 5133 – Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, Université de Lyon, Lyon, France Priyanka Ghosh Department of Liberal Education, Era University, Lucknow, India Anne Gilbert Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada Melissa R. Gilbert Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Donna Gilbreath Handbook of the Changing World Language Map project, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Richard Gilbreath Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Federico Gobbo ACLC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands University of Turin, Turin, Italy José Edgardo Abaya Gomez Jr. University of the Philippines– Diliman Flagship Campus, Quezon City, Philippines Michael F. Goodchild Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Anton Gosar Department of Geography, University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia Teresa Graziano University of Catania, Catania, Italy Alyson L. Greiner Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA Margaret M. Gripshover Department of Geography and Geology, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, USA Brendan Gunn Dialogue/Dialect Coaching Services, Belfast, UK Kathryn L. Hannum Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA Silvia Hansen-Schirra Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germersheim, Germany Trevor M. Harris Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA Richard Gilbreath has retired.

Contributors

lxxi

Dilia Hasanova Faculty of Language, Literature, and Performing Arts, Department of English as a Second Language, Douglas College, New Westminster, BC, Canada Sudarat Leerabhandh Hatfield English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), Lone Star College – Creekside Center, The Woodlands, TX, USA Karijn Helsloot Studio Taalwetenschap, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Crag Hill Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Lloyd Hill Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa Nanna Haug Hilton Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Jaryd Hinch Ponca City, OK, USA Dave Hobbins Applied Forest Management Program, University of Maine at Fort Kent, Fort Kent, ME, USA William N. Holden Department of Geography, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada Dirk Hovy Department of Marketing, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy David Howard Sustainable Urban Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Abby Huggins Hindman Settlement School, Hindman, KY, USA Shireen Hyrapiet Geography and Anthropology, Houston Community College, Houston, TX, USA David Inglis Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Shunsuke Itoh Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo, Japan Mike Jacobs College of Arts and Sciences, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA Tjaša Jakop Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia Hyeseon Jeong School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia Alana Johnson Speech and Language Pathology, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA The University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Wise, VA, USA

lxxii

Contributors

Peter Jordan Institute of Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Deborah Justice Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Setnor School of Music, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA Taina Kaivola Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Rajrani Kalra California State University, San Bernardino, CA, USA Sang-Gu Kang Department of English Language and Literature, Cheongju University, Cheongju, South Korea Katrina-Ann R. Kapāanaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira University of Hawai`i, Mānoa, HI, USA David J. Keeling Department of Geography and Geology, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, USA Roland Kehrein Research Centre Deutscher Sprachatlas, Philipps University, Marburg, Germany Fritz C. Kessler Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA So-Young Kim Department of British and American Cultures, Tongmyong University, Busan, South Korea Jonathan Kingsley School of Health Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia Elaine Kitchel Louisville, KY, USA Gregory Knapp Department of Geography and the Environment, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA Ana Kocheva Institute for Bulgarian Language, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria Victor Konrad Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Rafał Koszek Euroclear Bank, Kraków, Poland Krystyna Kułak Faculty of English, Department of Older Germanic Languages, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań, Poland Jussi P. Laine University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland Ibrahim Badamasi Lambu Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Department of Geography, Bayero University Kano, Kano, Nigeria Alfred Lameli Department of German Linguistics, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Contributors

lxxiii

Isaac Willis Larison Literacy Education Program, Marshall University, South Charleston, WV, USA Justin Lawson Health, Nature and Sustainability Research Group, School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Jay Lee College of Environment and Planning, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, China Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA Karsten B. Lehmann Kirchliche Pädagogische Hochschule, Vienna/Krems, Vienna, Austria Sam Lehman-Wilzig School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Rachel Lehr Department of Geography, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA Shuang Li KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Ilkka Liikanen University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland Bruna Fernanda S. Lima-Padovani Graduate Program of Linguistics and Literature, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil Juliane Limper Research Center Deutscher Sprachatlas, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany Rubén C. Lois-González Department of Geography, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, Spain Susan Loy Literary Calligraphy, Moneta, VA, USA Markku Löytönen Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Tamara Lukić Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Chris Lukinbeal School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Caitlin Maddox Wewoka, OK, USA Marcus Maia Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Lopamudra Maitra Bajpai Symbiosis International University, Pune, India Virginie Mamadouh Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands David M. Mark Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, Amherst, NY, USA

lxxiv

Contributors

Eugenia Maruniak Institute of Geography, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine Michele Masucci Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Dalena Mathews The Bristol Herald Courier, Bristol, VA, USA The University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Wise, VA, USA René Matlovič Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia Kvetoslava Matlovičová Department of Geography and Applied Geoinformatics, University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovakia Judith M. Ixq’anil Maxwell Department of Anthropology and Linguistics Program, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA Sanjoy Mazumdar University of California, Irvine, CA, USA Julia V. Mazurova Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia Chelsie McWhorter Department of Geography, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, USA José Ernandi Mendes Universidade Estadual do Ceará, UECE, Fortaleza, Brazil Lyamine Mezedjri Skikda University, Skikda, Algeria Lisa K. Millsaps Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IOWA, USA Lourens Minnema Department of the Comparative Study of Religion, Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Bernd Möbius Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany Sanan Moradi University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA Sri Rejeki Murtiningsih Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia David W. Music School of Music, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA Caroline Myrick Department of Sociology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA Gul Nahar Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Marcia Gojten Nascimento Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Contributors

lxxv

Patrícia do Nascimento Costa Faculty of Letters, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil Katherine Nashleanas Department of Geography, University of NebraskaLincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA Coli Ndzabandzaba Institute Grahamstown, South Africa

for

Water

Research,

Rhodes

University,

Hanne E. F. Nielsen University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia Jean Nitzke Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germersheim, Germany Kathleen O’Brien Visual Artist, Harrodsburg, KY, USA William O’Grady Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii – Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA E. Chinwe Obianika Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria Daniel H. Olsen Department of Geography, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA Ulukbek Omokeev Department of Journalism, Osh State University, Osh, Kyrgyzstan Kelly Ong University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ferjan Ormeling University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Samuel M. Otterstrom Department of Geography, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA Fred Otto Louisville, KY, USA Hendrikus Joseph Pardoel Krakow, Poland BethAnne Paulsrud Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden Miguel Pazos-Otón Department of Geography, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, Spain Peter Petrucci Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Magnus Pharao Hansen Department for Crosscultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Jeffrey Pheiff Research Center Deutscher Sprachatlas, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany Lizbeth Phillips Appalachian Writing Project, Washington County Public Schools, Abingdon, VA, USA Chris W. Post Department of Geography, Kent State University at Stark, North Canton, OH, USA

lxxvi

Contributors

Jennifer C. Post University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Sarah Praskievicz Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA Tom Ptak Department of Geography, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA Indah Puspawati Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia Duoxiu Qian Beihang University, Beijing, China Stefan Rabanus University of Verona, Verona, Italy Pauliina Raento Faculties of Management and Communication, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland Afshin Rahimi Computer Science Department, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Noumane Rahouti Education and Psycholinguistics, Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA University of Caen – Basse Normandie, Caen, France Peter E. Raper Unit for Language Facilitation and Empowerment, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Brian K. Ray Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada Jeffrey Reaser Department of English, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA Melody Redbird-Post College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Iva Moss Redman Arapaho Middle School, Arapahoe, WY, USA Neil Reid Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA Theresa Reidy Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland Edward Relph University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Catherine R. Rhodes Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Mark Rhodes Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA Jörg Roche University of Munich, Munich, Germany Jenny Rosén Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Contributors

lxxvii

Melanie Röthlisberger University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland Brad Rundquist Department of Geography and GISc, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA Ginés A. Sánchez Arias Panama City, Panama André-Louis Sanguin Department of Geography, University of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France Moritz Schaeffer Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germersheim, Germany Genevieve A. Schmitt Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Joel Schneier University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA James W. Scott University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland Jörn Seemann Department of Geography, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA Marcin Semczuk Department of Regional Economy, Cracow University of Economics, Cracow, Poland Duishon Shamatov Graduate School of Education, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan Laura Sharp School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Maganat Shegebayev KIMEP University, Almaty, Kazakhstan Fred M. Shelley Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA Hunter Shobe Department of Geography, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA Sophie Shuttleworth School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK Frank Siciliano Department of Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia Stefanie Siebenhütter Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Munich, Germany Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany Mahendra Prasad Singh University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, India National Fellow, Indian Institution of Advanced Study, Shimla, India

lxxviii

Contributors

Gaurav Sinha Department of Geography, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA Ram Nandan Prasad Sinha Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara, Gujarat, India Bihar Magahi Mandal, Patna, Bihar, India The Center For Geosheelitic Studies, Patna, Bihar, India Stef Slembrouck Linguistics Department, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Terry A. Slocum Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Christopher Smith Tecumseh, OK, USA Scott Smith SIL International, Bata, Equatorial Guinea Isabella Soi Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy Marcin Wojciech Solarz Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland Rui Sousa-Silva Universidade do Porto – Faculdade de Letras/CLUP, Porto, Portugal Bernard Spolsky Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Rastislav Stojisavljević Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Faculty of Philosophy, Department of History, University in Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Agnieszka Świętek Department of Geography, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Cracow, Poland Benedikt Szmrecsanyi KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Peter J. Taylor Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK Beatrice Mari Ropata Te-Hei Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Paporn Thebpanya Department of Geography and Environmental Planning, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA John P. Tiefenbacher Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA Aliya de Tiesenhausen London, UK Kurly Tlapoyawa Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

Contributors

lxxix

Christi Townsend Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA Jürgen Trouvain Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany Irene Tucker AIM Cartography Information Services, SIL International, Dallas, TX, USA Judith A. Tyner Department of Geography, California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA Julie Urbanik The Coordinates Society, Kansas City, MO, USA Vilhelmiina Vainikka Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland Pooja Mahathi Vajjha Hyderabad, India Piet Van Avermaet Linguistics Department, Centre for Diversity and Learning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Herman Van der Wusten Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Gregory S. Vandeberg Department of Geography, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA Douglas L. Vandegraft US Board on Geographic Names, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Sterling, VA, USA Mieke Vandenbroucke Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and Linguistics Department, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Annemarie van Zyl Afrikaans Language Museum, Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa Arjen Versloot Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Amanda Villepastour The School of Music, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen Indigenous Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Viera Vlčková University of Economics, Bratislava, Slovakia Emma J. Walcott-Wilson Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA Claudia Wanderley Centre for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science, University of Campinas (CLE-UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil Wilfred Yang Wang Melbourne, VIC, Australia

lxxx

Contributors

Barney Warf Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA Krystal Te Rina Warren Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Stanley Waterman Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel Robert Watrel Department of Geography, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA Gerald R. Webster Department of Geography, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA Ryan Weichelt Department of Geography and Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI, USA Eberhard Werner Eurasia, SIL International, Kandern, Germany William A. Wetherholt Department of Geography, Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD, USA Chang Whan Museum of the Indigenous People-FUNAI, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Kristopher D. White College of Social Sciences, KIMEP University, Almaty, Kazakhstan Randy Widdis University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada Thomas A. Wikle Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA Anneli Williams Research Center Deutscher Sprachatlas, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany Colin H. Williams St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Welsh, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK Denis Wood Raleigh, NC, USA Changyong Yang College of Education, Jeju National University, Jeju, South Korea Sejung Yang Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii – Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA Yurika Yokoyama The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Yukio Yotsumoto College of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan Shaolu Yu Urban Studies, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, USA

Contributors

lxxxi

Krzysztof Ząbecki Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Warszawa, Poland Moran Zaga Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel Ronen Zeidel The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel Milka Bubalo Živković Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia Xiaohong Zhang Center for Historical Geography Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China Hongzhong Zhuang School of History and Culture, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, China Dionysios Zoumpalidis Department of General and Applied Philology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

Part I Geography, Language, and Mapping

Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia

1

Stephen Bahry

Contents 1 2 3 4 5

Globalization and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Central Asia as a Nexus of Interchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Soviet Demographic Change in Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changing Demographics of Contemporary Tajikistan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multilingualism and Plurilingualism in Demographic Change: The Case of Tajikistan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Promotion of International Languages in Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Flows of International Students to and from Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Central Asian Students Abroad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 International Students in Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Globalization in Central Asia: Multiple Language-Based Social Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Theorizing Language and Globalization Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7 8 10 12 15 18 25 25 28 30 31 33 35

Abstract

Interest in languages and language is increasing worldwide, particularly in connection with globalization and the international spread of English. This phenomenon raises questions not only about bilingualism, but also about multilingualism of society and plurilingualism of individuals and language policies, particularly in areas where decolonization and/or recent interdependence have brought them into question and made possible policies that presuppose different relations between the state, language(s), and communities found within a polity. Together with these changes has come a shift from reductionist approaches to language and society dealing with one language and one community at a time in S. Bahry (*) Comparative, International and Development Education Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_4

3

4

S. Bahry

favor of a more realist, pluralist, ecological approach that attempts to deal with all the languages within a given social and geographical space. This chapter presents a little known but exemplary case of a region where all of the above factors are at play: multilingual Central Asia, and the recently independent post-Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Keywords

Central Asia · Globalization · Language ecology · Linguistic variability · Mapping ethnic diversity · Multilingualism · Plurilingualism · Post-Soviet · Kazakhstan · Kyrgyzstan · Tajikistan · Turkmenistan · Uzbekistan

Many advances have been made in recent years in the study of linguistic variability over geographic space and the graphic display of this variation alongside development in the study of sociolinguistic variability (Chambers and Trudgill 1980). In addition, much attention is now given to the study of social multilingualism and individual plurilingualism (Cenoz and Gorter 2013), with more attention being turned in recent years to the ecology of languages (Calvet 1999; Hornberger 2002). One especially diverse language ecology is the region of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan; Fig. 1). A range of Turkic and Iranian languages are indigenous to this region, while many other languages have entered this ecology in recent history (Bahry 2016a). While long acknowledged as a highly multilingual region, relatively little work on mapping the linguistic diversity of Central Asia through either geographic space or social space has been done. This chapter begins with one well-known map of the spatial distribution of ethnic groups of Central Asia produced by the CIA, and which is often taken to represent the distribution of ethnic languages (Fig. 2). This map will serve as an entry point to the problematic aspects of mapping ethnic groups and their languages. It is not a simple matter to distinguish sharply between languages in a dialect continuum; nor in highly multilingual areas is it simple to draw linguistic boundaries between areas where various languages are spoken. The mapping of language variation also requires data of a minimum quality and quantity. Areas in this region where two or more languages are spoken present challenges for analysis and for geographic display. Language was only one of many factors influencing complex PreSoviet identities of Central Asians, but the Soviet regime defined Central Asian nationalities and national languages through the process of the delimitation of nationalities and required everyone to officially register as belonging to one nationality, with language being a major criterion. Following discussion of the limitations and challenges of using such maps, the chapter proceeds to discuss some recent work that attempts to deal with linguistic complexities of the region. Soviet era research focused on multilingualism in this region studied almost exclusively the degree of bilingualism of Central Asians in Russian and paid little attention to other types of bilingualism (Guboglo 1984, 1986), and failed to deal with the asymmetrical sociolinguistic phenomena. Dwyer (2005) examined a similar language ecology in neighboring Xinjiang, China, and

1

Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia

5

Fig. 1 Political map of the Caucasus and Central Asia, 2008. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

classified the languages, types, and directionality of bilingualism and the domains of use of languages and identifying a social hierarchy of languages displayed graphically. Bahry (2013) adapted Dwyer’s approach to literature on languages and bilingualism in Afghanistan and developed a graphic partially displaying the language hierarchy of this country. After independence, Soviet researchers participated in a UNESCO project and were able to publish some more nuanced data including statistics on language use and bilingualism (Wurm et al. 1996). Bahry (2016a) has synthesized some of these data and displayed graphically the hierarchical language ecology of one region including degree and directionality of bilingualism(s). Clifton (2005) produced a series of single language studies on vitality of the Pamiri languages of Tajikistan that survey use of Pamiri, and Tajik languages, presenting statistical results in tabular form, while Bahry (2005) argued for Pamiri–Tajik bilingual education. Bahry (2016b) in examining societal multilingualism and personal plurilingualism converted tabular data on frequency of use of Shugni (Pamiri), Tajik, and Russian languages in one district to graphic form allowing for the stark illustration of the social spaces filled by each language in this language ecology. The chapter concludes with discussion of the implications of

Fig. 2 Central Asia and its major ethnolinguistic groups. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

6 S. Bahry

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Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia

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recent increases in mobility and cross-border migration and trade and the entry of English and other international languages for the language ecology of Central Asia, followed by arguments for improvements in theoretical conceptualizations and gathering of empirical data and the use of graphic methods in more fully mapping the social, linguistic, and geographic space of Central Asia.

1

Globalization and Language

What exactly is globalization? Certainly, concerns about large-scale processes affecting much, if not all, of the world have been evident for some time, long preceding the term globalization. Braudel (1979/1992) and his school’s approach to la longue durée, historical change over extremely long periods of time and vast expanses of space, culminated in an encyclopedic work on intensifying worldwide interchange, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century: The perspective of the world, which effectively deals with the phenomenon of globalization without ever using the term. Nevertheless, there are researchers for whom language is explicitly linked to globalization (Blommaert 2010; Street 2008). Fairclough, for example, most well known for his methodological work on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2013), is quite aware, for example, in “Language and Globalization” (Fairclough 2007, 2009), of multiple ways in which language is relevant to globalization, but his explicit focus is on language as discourse, that is, the multiple ways of speaking about the world that may occur in any particular language, and even be found in more than one language. Thus, discussion of neoliberal discourses of globalization that largely originated in the USA in the English language can be discussed separately from the language(s) in which they are expressed and their origins in any particular society. While globalization discourses could be found in other languages in principle, the bulk of research literature on globalization is in English about discourses in English, thus leaving researchers on globalization who publish only in English part of globalization as linguistic standardization and reduction of diversity. Fairclough’s emphasis then is less on the actual linguistic phenomena than on the linguistic meta-phenomena of globalization; that is, how globalization is represented in language, and how various representations of globalization themselves both reciprocally contribute to actual processes of globalization and are also affected by these processes, since neoliberal economic discourse is itself “partly discourse that is globalizing and globalized” (Fairclough 2009, p. 318). Thus, normative views under current world conditions about languages in society, the economy, the political system, and the education system, that is, language policy and globalization, would then fall under the category of representations of language and globalization (Ricento 2010). Indeed, much of the English-language research on reform in post-Soviet Central Asia discusses debates on “language policy,” that is, on what language practices should be permitted and/or promoted by the state, and the implementation of these policies (Bahry et al. 2008, 2015, 2016; Crisp 2009; Dave 2004; Fierman 1991,

8

S. Bahry

1998; Kirkwood 2009; Landau and Kellner-Heinkele 2001, 2012; Schlyter 2001, 2003; Shorish 1984; Wright 2000). This literature could be seen as an example of discourses about, and representations of, language that may themselves be both globalized responses to international language policy discourses but also globalizing discourses that have the potential of increasing Central Asia’s global interconnectedness. There are some, however, who argue that not only discourses, but specific languages are significant in globalization: . . . the existence of shared languages or language capacities is the key infrastructure of intercultural communication and interaction. We can apply the idea of globalization to language in a number of ways. The first and most obvious is the diffusion of any one individual language across the globe. The second sense in which language or language capacities have been globalized is through the diffusion of bilingualism or multilingualism, easing the transmission of cultural products and ideas. (Held et al. 1999, p. 345)

This chapter will thus touch upon language as discourses in Central Asia, but pay greater attention to the languages in which various discourses may be unknown, ignored, resisted, or taken up and put into practice, with varying degrees of adaptation or distortion. This includes the languages learned by individuals and groups, and the varying access that the language repertoires of individuals and groups affords to multiple social networks, which may influence exposure to and potential adoption of new practices and discourses, and entry into new national, regional and global networks. These plurilingual language repertoires and multilingual networks may arise as response to global dynamics that can also trigger further globalization (Bahry 2016a, b).

2

Central Asia as a Nexus of Interchange

If we define globalization as increased contact, communication, migration, and trade across wide distances, there is no doubt that Central Asia, as a historical crossroads at the heart of Eurasia, has been at the center of contact among civilizations, migrations of peoples, and transmission of goods and ideas throughout history. Studies of the prehistory of humankind and its spread out of Africa across Eurasia towards the Americas no longer rely on archaeology alone but now include the analysis of current genetic distribution as a tool to trace the earliest migrations. One key finding of such studies is that Central Asia’s current population exhibits one of the highest levels of genetic diversity of any of the regions of Eurasia. This current genetic diversity is taken as traces of major historical and prehistorical population movements into and across Central Asia. Mitochondrial and Y-chromosome haplogroups typical of East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and Europe and population movements from several millennia ago all contribute to Central Asia’s current makeup (Heyer et al. 2009; Zhang et al. 2007). Archaeology, however, studies only the artifacts that a people leave behind them, allowing us to trace changes over time and across space of material culture(s).

1

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9

Two major interpretations of such large-scale changes in material have been made: (1) cultural diffusion, where ideas spread by contact with neighboring cultural groups; and (2) demic diffusion, where material culture is brought to new locations through migration of entire peoples. More controversial is the approach of Cavalli-Sforza (2000) and others who link genetic, cultural, and linguistic spread as part of demic diffusion. Prehistoric movements of people and/or material culture can be studied via genetics and archaeology, the introduction of writing into a region introduces documents whose content forms evidence about populations, and whose language also gives some evidence on this question. In prehistoric times, what languages were spoken by any given group could not be addressed by any direct evidence but could only be argued for by inference from later documented linguistic data. Some scholars have argued for the origins of horse-drawn chariots in Central Asian followed by an outward spread along the grasslands of the steppes, based on a combination of archaeological evidence and shared vocabulary related to horse and vehicle technology (Anthony 2010; Hiebert 1994; Zhang et al. 2007). In early, but historical times, we have more definite information about how Central Asia functioned as an intermediary between languages, cultures, and economies with its location adjacent to and between the three great early civilizations: Mesopotamia, East Asia, and South Asia. Travel and trade between these civilizations was facilitated by the Eurasian steppe which ran east-to-west from todays’ west China to the eastern fringes of Europe north of the Black Sea. The role of the Silk Road in East-West material exchange is well known, but no less important was the movement of people and their cultures. The most well-known examples are the spread of Buddhism from India via Central Asia to China and the spread of Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam from the Middle East via Central Asia to west China, mediated to a great extent by multilingual Central Asian traders via their networks (de la Vaissière 2005; Hansen 2012; Pieterse 2006; Sen 2012; Walter 2006). A recent study has examined the question of why the Arabic language after its transplantation to Central Asia with the Islamic conquest and its initial replacement of many of the functions of East Iranian languages, Khwarezmian and Sogdian, especially as languages of administration, science, and religion, saw the range of its use shrink dramatically, to be replaced by another Iranian language, New Persian, in a process that is reminiscent of the recent history of the Russian language in Central Asia (Bahry 2016a). Human geographers have also contributed to the study of spread of peoples, and the diffusion of innovations, traditions, artifacts, and cultures, and more recently including language The Gravity Model, for instance, explains interaction between populations and their mutual influence as a function of population and distance. Seemingly entirely deterministic, with no place for language, culture, or individual agency, such elements indeed must be added to the model as a factor k that adjusts brute results to take into account cultural and linguistic difference, affinity or resistance, as well as political factors such as state borders and openness of frontiers to crossing in and out (Britain 2013; Chambers and Trudgill 1980; Dias 2010; Hägerstrand 1967; Mahajan and Peterson 1985; Rogers 2003).

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3

S. Bahry

Post-Soviet Demographic Change in Central Asia

Post-Soviet Central Asia has seen considerable change in ethnic composition of the region and its constituent republics, according to official published population statistics, which may reflect movement of populations, as well as recategorization of individuals’ ethnicity (Heleniak 1997; Robertson 1996). More recent statistical data are now available for each republic, which will be examined in this chapter. As is evident from Table 1, there are several common trends in each republic of the region. First, there is a large increase in each titular nationality within its own titular republic in both absolute and relative terms. Second, in most cases, there have been moderate increases of each titular nationality in other republics of Central Asia. Exceptions to this trend are for the Uzbeks of Tajikistan, who show a moderate decrease in numbers, and of Turkmenistan, who have dropped to less than half of the 1989 statistics; Kazakhs, who show a moderate decrease in Kyrgyzstan, and near disappearance from Tajikistan; Turkmen, who have seen a moderate decrease in Tajikistan; and Kyrgyz, who have seen a moderate decrease in Tajikistan. Third, non-titular Central Eurasian nationalities, showed a mixed pattern. For Tatars, there is an overall large decrease in the region as a whole, while for Uighurs, there is a moderate increase in the region, which is in fact quite large in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Finally, Russians and other Soviet nationalities who migrated from outside Central Eurasia under the Russian Empire or during Soviet rule have all shown a major decrease in numbers in every republic, ranging from a reduction by 16% of ethnic Koreans to 80% of Central Asian Germans, while the Russian population of the region has been reduced by 46% (The massive reduction of Central Asia’s Germans, deported by Stalin from the Volga region during WWII, has been in part dependent on Germany’s offer of return to all ethnic Germans in the former USSR to Germany (Ronge 1997). The influence of the USSR and its dissolution on movement of populations can be seen in two ways: (1) USSR’s weak internal republican boundaries, permitting increased movement within the Soviet Union, while central government policies increasingly promoted migration within the USSR, particularly of European Russian-speakers, as constituent republics were increasingly limited in their ability to influence population policy; (2) external Soviet boundaries were virtually nonporous, such that movement to/from contiguous regions such as Xinjiang, South Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran was virtually nil, in contrast to the relatively high mutual influence that would be predicted by a gravity model. Thus, the movement of peoples, goods, ideas, and policies within the Soviet period resembles globalization in a sense, but due to lack of openness to the world, could best be referred to as a broad regionalization. As we can see, the disappearance of the Soviet border and the Soviet political and economic system has been associated not simply with the reduction of the Russian population of the region, but a retreat of Soviet Europeans, which on the face of it is a deglobalization. Yet this can also be seen as a return to levels that might be expected based on a gravity model of interaction between populations without the extraordinary support of the Soviet system.

Turkmen

Tajik

Kyrgyz

2014 na 42143 na 11244547 521252 246777 105400 3685009 203108 60295 301346 181928

Kazakh

Kazakhstan

3846 25514 14112 6534616 332017 183301 103315 6227549 331151 182601 896240 957518

1989

Kazakhstan

*

Uzbek

Uighur

Kyrgyzstan

899 33518 2229663 37318 550096 36779 18355 916558 72282 9187 108027 101309

Korean

Russian

Tajikistan

1989

Belarusian

Turkmenistan

2014 2683416 4168161 2483148 7479339 16539762 257716 321089 9519958 1171555 237662 1234417 1135741

German

Uzbekistan

121578 933560 174907 808227 14142475 35762 183140 1653478 656601 29427 153197 39809

1989

Uzbekistan

Ukrainian

5966100 na na na 126000 na na 113400 na na na na

2014

Turkmenistan

2536606 3149 634 87802 317333 1308 2848 333892 39257 9200 35578 4434

Tatar

15171 6373834 60715 595 1016445 276 634 34838 6495 104 1090 446

2014

1989

2014 15171 50200 4193900 33700 836100 52500 16800 369900 28100 1000 14500 8500

1989 20487 3172420 63832 11376 1197841 566 13431 388481 72264 7247 41375 32671

Tajikistan

Kyrgyzstan

Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia

Sources: 1989 census data from Bahry et al. (2008, p. 206), Kazakhstan Committee on Statistics (2014), Kyrgyzstan National Statistics Committee (2014), Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012), Turkmenistan, CERD (2004), and Uzbekistan, CERD (2010) Note: Uzbek figures for Tajikistan include small Turkic tribal groups that were previously counted as Uzbek

-100

-50

0

50

100

Latest

6144203 7793426 4496122 12141097 24461877 299553 270514 5116106 468275 82030 402238 195636

Central Asian Region

Turkmen Tajik Kyrgyz Kazakh Uzbek Tatar Uighur Russian Ukrainian German Korean Belarusian

150

1989

2683416 4168161 2483148 7479339 16539762 257716 321089 9519958 1171555 237662 1234417 1135741

Nationality

Central Asian Republic

Table 1 Soviet–post-Soviet demographic in Central Asia: composition of population by official ethnic category. The figure represents percent change between 1989 and 2014 (or “latest”)

1,588

1 11

12

S. Bahry

Despite these region wide trends, there are evident differences among nationalities within the region. The titular nationality has increased in all republics, but has doubled in Tajikistan and more than doubled in Turkmenistan, while increasing by just over half in Uzbekistan. All Central Asian nationalities have decreased in this period in Tajikistan, although Ferrando (2008) argues that some of this increase in the titular Tajik nationality in Tajikistan is due to large-scale recording in some districts of people as Tajiks previously recorded as Uzbeks. At the same time, all have seen increases in Uzbekistan, and all but the Kazakh population has increased in Kyrgyzstan. Changes in population of the two Central Eurasian nationalities, Tatars and Uighurs, are quite distinct: the Tatar population has decreased by 60% in the region, but this ranges from reductions by 91% in Tajikistan, to 39% in Kazakhstan, while the Uighur population shows a modest, but even, increase in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The demographic derussification mentioned above is not even in strength across the region; however, the ethnic Russian population has diminished by 91% in Tajikistan, 66% and 60% in Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, and 45% and 41% in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, respectively. It is noteworthy that other non-Central Eurasian nationalities show even greater rates of decrease than do ethnic Russians: in the mid 60% range for Ukrainians and Belarusians, and by over 80% for Germans, reaching 99% in Tajikistan. Central Asian Koreans’ population shows a modest 16% increase in Kazakhstan, and modest decreases by less than 20% in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and 95% in Tajikistan. The stark decrease in German population is likely influenced by Germany’s policy of repatriation of ethnic Germans from the post-Soviet space; the Korean population, in contrast, has received support for their language and culture from South Korea, but no similar offers of repatriation (Diener 2008; Adamz 2015; Schenkkan 2011). One element in the decision of Russians returning to the Russian Federation may be low language proficiency in Central Asian languages: of those resident in Central Asia in 1989 just before the dissolution of the USSR, 1% of Russians in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan claimed to be able to speak the titular language of the republic, while this proportion rose to 3% in Uzbekistan and 5% in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan (Dornis 1997, p. 91).

4

Changing Demographics of Contemporary Tajikistan

One of the most complete data sets is from Tajikistan, for which statistics are available for 1989, 2000, and 2010 censuses. Similar patterns to those of the region as a whole are evident, but intensified. The titular Tajik ethnicity has doubled from 1989 to 2010, while the numbers of all other Central Asian nationalities, with the exception of the Lyuli (Central Asian Roma) have decreased (Table 2). This decrease is relatively small for Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, and Turkmen, but is quite large for Azeris, Kazakhs, and Central Asian Jews, whose populations have dwindled. Some of the decrease in the Uzbek statistics may derive not from recategorization of nationality

1

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Table 2 Central Asian nationalities in Tajikistan 1989–2010 Census data Nationalitya 1989 2000 Tajiks 3,172,420 4,898,382 Uzbeks 1,197,841 936,703 Kyrgyz 63,832 65,515 Turkmen 20,487 20,270 Kazaks 11,376 936 Central 4879 15 Asian Jews Azeris 3556 798 Roma 1791 4249 Uighurs 566 379 Revived 79,546 Turkic Categories Ming 243 Durman 3502 Lakai 51,001 Kunghurot 15,102 Kataghan 4888 Yuz 1053 Barlos 3743 Semiz 1 Kesamir 13

2010 6,373,834 926,344 60,715 15,171 595 2

2000–1989 Number 1,725,962
261,138 1683
217
10,440
4864

371 2334 276 128,382


2758 2458
187 79,546

268 7608 65,555 38,078 7601 3798 5271 47 156

243 3502 51,001 15,102 4888 1053 3743 1 13

% 54.4
21.8 2.6
1.1
91.8
99.7
77.6 137.2
33.0

2010–2000 Number 1,475,452
10,359
4800
5099
341
13

% 30.1
1.1
7.3
25.2
36.4
86.7


427
1915
103 48,836


53.5
45.1
27.2 61.4

25 4106 14,554 22,976 2713 2745 1528 46 143

10.3 117.2 28.5 152.1 55.5 260.7 40.8 4600.0 1100.0

Source: Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012, 3:7–11) and author’s calculations a Includes only groups with a recorded population greater than 500 in 1989

status, perhaps to Tajik nationality, but almost 80,000 to smaller tribal Turkic ethnic categories, which Soviet policy had earlier merged with the broad Uzbek category. The enormity, however, of the reduction of other, non-Central Asian, Soviet nationalities (Table 3), by over 90% in all cases, which amounts to a near total exodus, is remarkable. These changes are clearly a case of demographic desovietization, rather than derussification, since we see a general reduction of all non-Central Asian Soviet nationalities that does not mainly affect ethnic Russians in the region; in fact, the demographic reduction is even greater for other nationalities than for Russians. Even more unexpected is the rapidity of the increase in nationalities from outside the former Soviet frontier (Table 4). The groups with the three largest populations in 2010, Arabs, Afghans, and Turks from Turkey, respectively, all come from the not too distant Muslim world. However, when we look at the groups with the three largest absolute increases, third place is occupied not by Turks but by Chinese, presumably migrants from neighboring regions of western China. The category “Chinese” likely represents all immigrants with Chinese passports regardless of ethnicity. Moreover, several groups who began with small numbers in 1989 have

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Table 3 Other CIS nationalities in Tajikistan 1989–2010 Nationalitya Russians Tatars Ukrainians Germans Koreans Jews Ossetians Belarusians Crimean Tatars Bashkirs Armenians Mordvins Chuvash Laks Bulgars

Census data 1989 388,481 72,228 41,375 32,671 13,431 9701 7861 7247 7214 6821 5651 5519 2512 1398 1072

2000 68,171 18,939 3787 1136 1696 182 960 464 138 872 995 300 195 147 64

2010 34,838 6495 1090 446 634 34 396 104 18 143 434 42 47 2 19

2010–1989 Number
353,643
65,733
40,285
32,225
12,797
9667
7465
7143
7196
6678
5217
5477
2465
1396
1053

%
91.0
91.0
97.4
98.6
95.3
99.6
95.0
98.6
99.8
97.9
92.3
99.2
98.1
99.9
98.2

Source: Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012, 3:7–11) and author’s calculations Includes only groups with a recorded population greater than 500 in 1989

a

Table 4 Nationalities from beyond CIS in Tajikistan, 1989–2010 Nationality Arabs Afghans Turks (Turkey) Chinese Iranians India &/or Pakistan British

Census data 1989 2000 276 14,450 2088 4702 768 672 58 24 388 306 13 245 1 43

2010 4184 3675 1360 801 473 262 104

2010–1989 Number 3908 1587 592 743 85 249 103

% 1415.9 76.0 77.1 1281.0 21.9 1915.4 10,300.0

Source: Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012, 3:7–11) and author’s calculations

seen enormous rates of increase from 1989 to 2010, by over 1000% rates of increase, for Chinese, Arabs, Indians & Pakistanis, and Americans, and remarkably by more than 10,000% for British residents and Americans. These results differ somewhat from what would be expected from a simple application of a gravity model, where population size and proximity have the greatest weight. The simple gravity model would predict a much greater number of Iranians and similar numbers of Chinese and South Asians. At the same time, the increases of English speakers, especially British and Americans, are greater than a simple gravity model would predict. However, the gravity model includes a factor k which can be estimated from empirical data to compensate for anomalous results

1

Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia

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such as over/under prediction, thereby estimating the strength of barriers to mobility that state frontiers and policies as well as linguistic /cultural differences between centers may pose. Thus, the language similarity between Iran and Tajikistan may act as a moderate positive factor, while the Farsi-Tajik dialectal differences in the variety of Persian, the Arabic-Cyrillic script differences in the written language, the Shia-Sunni religious difference between Iran and most of Tajikistan, as well as the different paths by which Iranian and Tajik Persian have modernized their vocabulary, may act as a strong negative factor (Beeman 2010; Perry 1999). The greater number of migrants from China relative to India and Pakistan may result from a linguistic factor, if migrants from China are speakers of Turkic or Iranian languages from Xinjiang and not monolingual Chinese speakers. However, the enormous rate of increase in migrants from the United Kingdom cannot be easily accounted for by the gravity model: one could posit a large value of k for interaction between Tajikistan and the UK, but this should not be arbitrarily done. There seem to be no cultural or linguistic grounds for such a large movement to Tajikistan. This may indeed constitute an extreme case of a group that seems to come to Tajikistan through extraordinary process of globalization as opposed to a more typical locally or regionally restricted migration process. One might posit that these English speakers have been involved in trade, diplomacy, or activities of International non-governmental organizations (INGOs), but such personnel would not normally be counted in the census. These numbers ought to represent such personnel who have somehow become residents of Tajikistan. The rapid increase in Arabs may not necessarily result from in-migration.

5

Multilingualism and Plurilingualism in Demographic Change: The Case of Tajikistan

Much attention was paid by Soviet (Desheriev 1976; Guboglo 1984, 1986; Khasanov 1987) and western (Anderson and Silver 1983; Silver 1975) scholarship to language loyalty, bilingualism, and language shift among the Soviet Union’s non-Russian nationalities, while more has been published on language change since independence in post-Soviet European republics (Bilaniuk and Melnyk 2008; Brown 2005) than Central Asian states. Soviet censuses did not gather data on language use initially, but only on “native” language. Researchers investigated changes within nationalities in proportions claiming the national language as “native,” and the implications of these data for understanding processes of language shift and russification of non-Russian ethnicities. At the same time, it was questioned whether “native” language data reflected actual language use, or simply the “heritage” language of respondents (Anderson and Silver 1983; Arel 2002; Crisp 2009; Silver 1975). Ferrando (2008) argues that census categories themselves may be unreliable for some categories and districts in the 2000 census in Tajikistan, whether by individuals categorizing themselves or officials recategorizing members of a minority

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nationality as belonging to the titular nationality. Ferrando claims this is a major explanation for the drop in proportion of the “Uzbek” nationality from 1989 to 2000. Later Soviet and post-independence censuses have also gathered data on second language “ability,” which allows levels of bilingual and language shift to be assessed more accurately than from “native” language statistics. This question offers only a few choices: (a) language of one’s own nationality; (b) Russian; (c) other; or (d) monolingual (Ferrando 2008). Nevertheless, this statistic can be used for most nationalities as a provisional minimum reflection of the degree of language shift away from the language of one’s nationality, which can also be used to assess the relative degree of post-independence language shift towards the titular language and Russian. The 2010 census of Tajikistan census provides fairly complete and recent data on ethnicity and language which can provide perspective on globalization and language in the region (Tajikistan Statistics Agency 2012). As can be seen in Table 5, knowledge of Tajik among Central Eurasian nationalities is greater than knowledge of Russian for six groups, yet significant language shift to Tajik is not evident, except for Roma and Uighurs. Among Tatars and Azeris, knowledge of Russian is much greater than knowledge of Tajik, while for Kazaks, high knowledge of Russian and Tajik are found together. Interestingly, numbers suggest strong plurilingualism is among Central Eurasian nationalities, except the majority Tajiks. Graphic presentation of these data allows us to more clearly perceive the multilingual social space of Central Asia. Figure 3 shows the knowledge of languages as a space bounded by a colored line. The overlap of these spaces suggests a relatively balanced social multilingualism and by inference a high degree of individual plurilingualism among Central Eurasian nationalities. As can be seen in Table 6, knowledge of Tajik among former Soviet nationalities is over 30% for four groups and above 20% for all. At the same time, knowledge of Russian is high for all groups, greater than knowledge of Tajik for all groups. There is some evidence of language shift to Tajik: ranging from 2.4% of Russians to 10.6% of Russians claiming Tajik as the native language. Evidence of language shift to Russian is higher: Russian is claimed as native language more often than the language of the nationality for Belarusians, Armenians, and Germans in Tajikistan. Figure 4 reveals even more starkly the hierarchization of language knowledge, Russian > own language > Tajik > other languages, in other words, a highly asymmetrical multilingualism. All nationalities show over 60% plurilingual, except ethnic Russians at 40%, still not insignificant in contrast with Soviet times. These statistics suggest that either titular language promotion is succeeding in increasing knowledge of Tajik among these former Soviet nationalities, or in contrast, that they have led more monolinguals to emigrate from Tajikistan. The results for nationalities that originate beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union are displayed in Table 7. As is evident from the table, several of these groups show high levels of multilingualism, with, first of all, high knowledge of their nationality’s language (NB census deems English as “language of another

Language of own nationality L1 L2 T 99.7 0.1 99.8 97.9 0.3 98.2 90.0 0.1 90.1 97.5 0.4 97.9 34.8 0.7 35.5 61.5 1.5 63.0 66.6 0.8 67.4 67.9 1.6 69.5 14.5 – 14.5

Tajik L1 99.7 1.5 1.1 2.4 18.5 7.2 7.9 11.9 85.0 L2 0.1 31.0 31.1 52.2 23.6 22.8 33.9 21.6 9.9

T 99.8 32.5 32.2 54.6 42.1 30.0 41.8 33.5 94.9

Russian L1 0.0 0.1 0.3 0.1 2.2 26.2 13.1 16.4 0.3

Source: Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012, 3:7–11) and author’s calculations L1 first language, L2, second language, T, Total a Includes only groups with a recorded population greater than 500 in 1989

Groupa Tajiks Kyrgyz Turkmen Uzbeks Uighurs Tatars Kazaks Azeris Roma L2 29.0 11.4 10.7 10.1 23.9 45.3 42.5 57.4 1.8

Table 5 Native and second languages of Central Eurasian nationalities in Tajikistan T 29.0 11.5 11.0 10.2 26.1 71.5 55.6 73.8 2.1

Other language L1 L2 0.2 5.8 0.5 6.4 8.6 10.9 0.0 0.2 44.6 26.4 5.0 11.9 12.4 7.4 3.8 7.0 0.2 12.3 T 6.0 6.9 19.5 0.2 71.0 16.9 19.8 10.8 12.5

Monolingual % 65.1 50.9 47.2 37.1 25.4 18.4 15.3 12.4 7.6

Plurilingual % 34.9 49.1 52.8 62.9 74.6 81.6 84.7 87.6 92.4

1 Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia 17

18

S. Bahry

Fig. 3 Multilingual space for Central Eurasian nationalities in Tajikistan, 2010. Knowledge (L1 + L2) of Tajik, Russian, Language of Own Nationality, and “Other” Language (%). (Source: Prepared by author from Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012))

Tatars 100 Tajiks

80

Turkmen

60 40 20

Roma

Kyrgyz

0

Uzbeks

Azeris

Uygurs

Kazaks

Language of Own Nationality Russian

Tajik Other Language

nationality” for US citizens). Afghans show high figures for language of own nationality, presumably Pashto or Dari Persian, and also high levels for Tajik (Dari and Tajik are the respective national standard Persian of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, differing largely in the borrowing in Tajik of Russian lexicon and Cyrillic script). Noteworthy is the high level of knowledge of Tajik claimed by Turkish emigrants from Turkey, which is higher than that of Russians, and of English-speaking emigrants from the UK and USA, whose levels of Tajik knowledge come close to those of Russians, despite their more recent arrival in the country, which suggests perhaps preimmigration language training, or a high level of learning once arrived in Tajikistan. At any rate, this is contrary to the experience of many Russians coming to Central Asia in the Soviet period for whom learning of Central Asian languages was a relative rarity under conditions of asymmetrical local-Russian bilingualism (Bahry et al. 2016; Guboglo 1984, 1986; Khasanov 1987; Korth 2005). Figure 5 shows a relative balance among nationalities of multilingual knowledge with less hierarchization and asymmetricality evident.

6

Promotion of International Languages in Central Asia

Many countries have organized agencies for promotion of the language and culture of the country internationally, such as the Alliance Française (France), founded in 1883, the British Council (United Kingdom), founded in 1934, the Goethe Institut (Germany), founded in 1951, and the Japan Foundation, founded in 1972. More recently, similar agencies have been established, by China in 2004 (the Confucius Institute), the

Language of own nationality L1 L2 T 94.0 0.8 94.8 50.0 1.0 51.0 41.4 2.9 44.3 46.7 0.8 47.5 49.8 3.6 53.4 29.8 1.6 31.4 54.1 1.8 55.9

Tajik L1 2.4 8.1 3.8 3.9 7.4 10.6 3.2 L2 30.6 25.0 23.9 18.5 22.0 24.2 27.0

T 33.0 33.1 27.7 22.4 29.4 34.8 30.2

a

Source: Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012, 3:7–11) and author’s calculations Includes only groups with a recorded population greater than 500 in 1989

Groupa Russians Ossetians Ukrainians Koreans Germans Belarusians Armenians

Russian L1 94.0 40.4 53.9 45.3 39.7 55.8 41.5 L2 0.8 25.0 29.4 40.2 40.6 42.4 40.2

T 94.8 65.4 83.3 85.5 80.3 98.2 81.7

Other language L1 L2 3.7 8.2 1.5 10.6 0.9 6.1 4.1 9.3 3.1 7.6 3.8 7.4 1.2 7.6

Table 6 Percent of native and second languages of other former Soviet nationalities in Tajikistan, 2010 T 11.9 12.1 7.0 13.4 10.7 11.2 8.8

Monolingual % 60.4 38.5 37.5 31.2 26.2 24.4 23.5

Plurilingual % 39.6 61.5 62.5 68.8 73.8 75.6 76.5

1 Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia 19

20 Fig. 4 Multilingual space for former Soviet nationalities in Tajikistan, 2010. Knowledge (L1 + L2) of Tajik, Russian, Language of Own Nationality, and “Other” Language (%). (Source: Prepared by author from Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012))

S. Bahry Koreans

100 80 Belarusians

60

Ukrainians

40 20 0 Ossetians

Germans

Russians

Armenians

Language of Own Nationality

Tajik

Russian

Other Language

Russian Federation in 2007 (Russkiy Mir Foundation), and the Republic of South Korea in 2009 (Korean Culture and Information Service), and the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2015 (the Sadi Foundation), and partially corresponding in function in the USA, the Peace Corps. All of these governmental organizations are active in Central Asia, whether sending language teachers, language teacher trainers, or funding and other support for the major language of the home country. The Goethe Institute of Germany is active in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan with centers in Almaty, Astana, Karaganda, Kostanai, Pavlodar, and Ust-Kamenogorsk in Kazakhstan and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. In addition to its attention to German as a Foreign Language instruction and related cultural activities, the Goethe Institute sees as an important part of its activities as teaching German as a Heritage Language in six language centers located in areas of settlement of the German minority of Central Asia (Goethe Institute n.d.). The Iranian government language promotion foundation has stated that its ultimate goal is promotion of Persian worldwide, but that initially it will concentrate its efforts on Persian-speaking countries such as Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Indeed, it has conducted instruction in Dushanbe among health workers on the Persian alphabet in support of the use of Iranian medical textbooks in Tajikistan (Tehran Times 2015, December 23). Standard spoken Tajik and Iranian Persian are quite similar, but modern academic terminology differs considerably. In particular, corpus development of Tajik medical terminology has been based largely on borrowing of Russian terms, which themselves often derive from European languages. Thus, while Iranian Persian medical terminology has also been influenced by European languages, the channel and form of this influence will follow a different route, such that Iranian medical textbooks likely cannot simply be used by Tajikistan medical personnel without some study and/or training in contemporary academic/scientific Iranian Persian.

Language of own nationality L1 L2 T 63.1 0.2 63.3 23.2 0.5 23.7 17.7 0.0 17.7 87.5 7.7 95.2 83.5 0.4 83.9 82.8 0.4 83.2 98.1 0.1 98.2 97.7 0.1 97.8

Tajik L1 20.8 6.5 1.6 1.9 5.5 5.7 0.6 1.9 L2 37.6 42.7 27.4 26.9 19.5 5.7 3.2 0.9

T 58.4 49.2 29.0 28.8 25.0 11.4 3.8 2.8

a

Source: Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012, 3:7–11) and author’s calculations Includes only groups with a recorded population greater than 500 in 1989

Groupa Afghans Turks/Turkey Americans British Iranians South Asia Chinese Arabs

Russian L1 L2 0.3 8.4 0.5 11.5 0.0 22.6 1.9 19.2 4.2 20.9 0.0 38.5 1.0 10.7 0.1 14.5 T 8.7 12.0 22.6 21.1 25.1 38.5 11.7 14.6

Table 7 Native and second languages of nationalities from beyond CIS in Tajikistan, 2010 (%) Other language L1 L2 15.8 14.7 69.8 5.7 80.6 12.9 8.7 12.5 6.8 27.9 11.5 42.0 0.2 4.0 0.3 15.2 T 30.6 75.5 93.5 21.2 34.7 53.5 4.2 15.5

Monolingual % 39.2 39.5 37.1 33.7 31.3 13.4 81.9 69.4

Plurilingual % 60.8 60.5 62.9 66.3 68.7 86.6 18.1 30.6

1 Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia 21

22 Fig. 5 Multilingual space for non-CIS nationalities in Tajikistan, 2010. Knowledge (L1 + L2) of Tajik, Russian, Language of Own Nationality, and “Other” Language (%). (Source: Calculated by author from Tajikistan Statistics Agency (2012))

S. Bahry Afghans 100 Arabs

80

Turks (Turkey)

60 40 20 Chinese

Americans

0

South Asia

British Iranians

Language of Own Nationality Russian

Tajik

Other Language

The Korean Culture Center, located in Astana, Kazakhstan provides showings of Korean films, and conducts instruction in Taekwondo, oriental medicine, Korean cooking, and dancing as well as courses in the Korean language. According to the center’s website, there were 2150 students of the center in 2011 (Korean Cultural Center n.d.). The Korea Foundation (2014) reports that it also supports Korean language study in Central Asia at the university level through its Global e-learning consortiums that are partnered with Kazakhstan Eurasian National University; American University of Central Asia and International University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan; and the Tajik State University of Commerce. The Korea Foundation also provided financial support for the Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages to host a Central Asian “Olympiad,” a regional Korean language competition, as well as providing six Korean language study fellowships in South Korea for Central Asians. Central Asians studying in South Korea who were fluent in English were also encouraged to join in a Korea Foundation-funded Korea-Central Asia Youth forum (Korea Foundation 2014; Korean Herald 2014, October 21). Korea Foundation activities included participation of volunteer teacher trainers in workshops designed to improved instruction in Korean in Central Asia (Korea Foundation Newsletter 2014, May). Government-sponsored activities seem to focus on sending a limited number of professors to lecture on Korean Studies at universities and volunteer Korean as a Foreign Language teacher trainers with no explicit mention of language instruction and cultural support for the Korean Diaspora in Central Asia. In contrast, there are a large number of South Korean volunteers coming to Central Asia to promote Buddhism and Christianity, with Protestant missionaries from Korea frequently providing informal instruction in the Korean language to the Korean minority in urban and rural areas in the region (Oh 2012, 2013).

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23

French government support for their language is broader than that of the Korean Foundation, but focused more narrowly, primarily on Kazakhstan. The Alliance Française operates four centers in Kazakhstan that offer French language instruction, using native speaker teachers when available. At the same time, two state schools in Kazakhstan have programs with French medium of instruction with some support from the French government. One of these is a section of the Miras School in Astana, Kazakhstan, whose regular program is trilingual in Kazakh, Russian and English, in which international French and francophone students can study with Kazakhstani students in a curriculum two-thirds French and one-third Kazakhstani, with the French portion of the program taught by five teachers from France. In addition, a French language kindergarten and elementary school with two French teachers has been opened in Almaty. Some support for Kazakhstan’s French teachers in the rest of the country is provided (Culture France Kazakhstan n.d.; Peyrouse 2013; UZ Daily 2014, November 11). Moreover, a French development NGO ACTED is active in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It mainly supports basic education, but also adult French language learning, for example, at the Bactria Cultural Centre in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (ACTED 2015, August 3). The Turkish government has similarly set up a foundation, Yunus Emre Enstitüsü, that operates Turkish language schools in Astana and Akmola, Kazakhstan. In addition, there are several/many private schools in the region where Turkish is a medium of instruction. Some of these were previously run by a nongovernmental Muslim foundation, which was widely praised by some in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan for its quality, multilingual local-Russian-TurkishEnglish education, but which have nevertheless been closed or taken over by the state (Akçalı and Engin-Demir 2012; Bahry et al. 2016; Clement 2013; Peyrouse 2010; Yunus Emre n.d.). The Russian Federation has also organized a foundation, Russkiy Mir (Russian World) to provide information, cultural contact, and Russian Language instruction and support for Russian Language teaching around the world. Regarding its purposes, it states that they were created: в целях популяризации русского языка и культуры как важных элементов мировой цивилизации, поддержки программ изучения русского языка за рубежом, развития межкультурного диалога и укрепления взаимопонимания между народами [in order to promote Russian language and culture as an important element of world civilization, support Russian language study programs abroad, the development of intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding among peoples]. (Mir n.d.)

This is similar to the stated soft-power purposes of most other international language and culture foundations around the world. When discussing the clientele of Russkiy Mir as those with a sincere interest in Russia, they mention several categories: “россияне, и соотечественники за рубежом, и представители эмиграции, и иностранные граждане [Russians, and compatriots abroad, and representatives of the expatriates, and foreign nationals].” The foundation operates Russian Centers

24

S. Bahry

and Offices with three centers and two offices in Kyrgyzstan; three centers and two offices in Kazakhstan; four centers in Tajikistan; five offices in Uzbekistan; and none in Turkmenistan (Mir n.d.). Nevertheless, despite the lower presence of the Russian language in postindependence Central Asia, there remain a considerable number of Russian-medium schools, and Russian-medium programs within mixed-medium schools, as well as universities using only, predominantly, or some, Russian as medium of instruction, and the status of the Russian language is still high in the region (Aref’ev 2012; Bahry et al. 2016; Nagzibekova 2008). Nevertheless, Aref’ev’s report warns that the continued reliance of Central Asian higher education in medicine and sciences on Russian language teaching combined with the reduced number of native-speakers of Russian in higher education institutions risks lowered Russian language proficiency, and resulting lowered professional standards (Aref’ev 2012, pp. 120–126). The British Council has been active in English-teaching in Central Asia with an office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and hosted its regular international conference on Language and Development in Tashkent with a special focus on Central Asia (Coleman et al. 2005), while the Canadian International Development Agency funded a language program implemented by Aga Khan Foundation Canada for several years at a university in Mountainous Badakhshan (Bahry 2003). However, the broadest institutional presence of an English-speaking organization has been the USA’s Peace Corps, which had played an active role in providing English-speaking staff to Central Asia as volunteer Health Care workers or English teachers. The scope of this activity was quite broad: over 500 volunteers served in Uzbekistan from 1992 to 2005; 1176 in Kazakhstan from 1993 to 2011; 1135 in Kyrgyzstan from 1993 to 2015; and 735 in Turkmenistan from 1993 to 2013. In addition to these volunteers bringing the English language to Central Asia, serving at times rural as well as urban locations, they received some training in Russian, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen, living in homestay families, and on their return, increasing knowledge of these languages and awareness of Central Asia in USA. Peace Corps never operated in Tajikistan, and has suspended its operations in the rest of Central Asia over the last 10 years (McCarthy 2015, October 29; Peace Corps n.d., 2005, June 6; US Embassy, Uzbekistan 2003, October, 31). One of the most recent linguistic “soft-power” agencies, founded in 2004, is China’s Confucius Institutes (Ngamsang and Walsh 2013; Yang 2010). Before the founding of this society, knowledge of Chinese in Central Asia was rare, with crossborder trade often mediated via nationalities residing on both sides of the border, with access to multilingual networks; for example, some Uighurs resident in Central Asia were bilingual in Russian, while some of those resident in Xinjiang, China were bilingual in Chinese (Bahry 2016a; Sadovskaya 2012) (See also Bahry 2003: while working in 1998 at Khorog State University, Mountainous Badakhshan, Tajikistan, the author conducted informal oral Chinese classes in anticipation of the opening of a direct road to Xinjiang, China). Yet since 2004, the network of Confucius Institutes in Central Asia has been growing rapidly, with four full language centers hosted at universities in Kazakhstan; three university-based centers in Kyrgyzstan, and four classrooms, two of which are

1

Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia

25

located in secondary schools; and two university-based institutes in each of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (Confucius Institute n.d.). Confucius Institutes operate through partnerships with universities in other countries and both provide native speaker teachers, but also provide training for teachers of Chinese as a Foreign Language from other countries. A parallel organization, Program of International Overseas Volunteer Chinese Language Teachers, recruits, trains, and places young Chinese language teachers in secondary schools in countries such as Thailand, where the state is rapidly expanding Chinese language study within the school system (Gil 2008, 2015; Hartig 2012; Yang 2010).

7

Flows of International Students to and from Central Asia

The gravity model of influence suggests that interaction between territories is largely a function of the two population sizes and the distance between the two, but that interaction is also affected by other factors, which include cultural and linguistic similarity or difference. This section explores interaction between Central Asian republics and other territories in terms of flows of postsecondary students out of and into Central Asia and how knowledge of international languages such as Russian and English and the use of these languages in tertiary education may affect these flows, particularly if the flows differ notably from would be expected based on population size and distance alone.

7.1

Central Asian Students Abroad

The UNESCO Institute of Statistics has available data on global flow of tertiary level students (UNESCO n.d.). Supplemented by data on foreign students in China from Institute of International Education (IIE n.d.), Table 8 displays these data on number of international students from each republic by country and further organizes the data into regional groupings according to geographic and sociopolitical and linguistic criteria: Post-Soviet Central Asia and Other Post-Soviet, where knowledge of Russian language is high and it is or has been used as a post-secondary medium of instruction; and Post Socialist (Eastern Europe, former Yugoslavia and Mongolia), where there is a moderate knowledge of the Russian language; English as first language countries; Regional Neighbors (China, Turkey, Iran, and Mongolia); Other European; Arabic-speaking; Southeast Asia, and Other East Asia (except China), while South Asia, Africa, and Latin America are excluded as regions hosting fewer than 1000 students. This table shows that, despite the demographic desovietization of Central Asian population since 1991, the attraction of the former Soviet space outside Central Asia, especially of Russia, for postsecondary study remains the highest of all regional destinations, about six times higher than the attraction of Central Asian countries, or its regional neighbors, China, Turkey, Iran and Mongolia.

26

S. Bahry

Table 8 Number of international students from Central Asia, by origin and destination (regions receiving >1000 students), 2012 Students FROM ➔ IN # Russia Ukraine Belarus Azerbaijan Other PostSoviet Post-Soviet China Turkey Iran Mongolia Neighbors Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Uzbekistan Turkmenistan Central Asia USA United Kingdom Canada Australia New Zealand Ireland English L1 Germany France Italy Austria Other European Europe Czech Republic Poland Romania Bulgaria Hungary Slovakia Slovenia

Kazakhstan 59,425 35,106 350 206 45 195

Kyrgyzstan 6606 3215 30 11 25 32

Tajikistan 10,344 6458 422 145 23 24

Uzbekistan 23,125 10,211 2072 43 17 224

Turkmenistan 41,294 10,128 14,053 8153 177 69

Total 140,794 65,118 16,927 8558 287 544

35,902 9522 10 7 19 9539 – 4357 123 47 4 4531 1884 1725

3313 n.a. 4 4 4 8 963 – 162 11 4 1140 250 78

7072 n.a. 364 51 4 415 476 885 – 8 8 1377 299 31

12,567 n.a. 251 4 4 255 5588 1219 199 – 4 7010 426 129

32,580 n.a. 5887 4 4 5891 1090 369 160 100 – 1719 170 73

126 142 43 44 3964 695 346 132 105 260

81 12 4 4 429 494 89 28 57 121

12 4 4 4 354 109 16 12 95

27 27 15 4 628 789 140 78 35 32

9 4 4 4 264 43 19 6 9 213

255 189 70 60 5639 2130 610 249 218 721

1538 1174

789 87

237 14

1074 173

290 11

3928 1459

401 55 83 39 16 11

15 4 19 16 7 4

23 4 15 4 4 4

73 4 5 9 9 4

40 95 32 4 4 4

552 162 154 72 40 27

91,434 9522 6516 70 35 16,108 8117 6830 644 166 20 15,777 3029 2036

(continued)

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Towards “Mapping” a Complex Language Ecology: The Case of Central Asia

27

Table 8 (continued) Students FROM ➔ Post-Socialist Europe Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates Egypt Other Arab Arabspeaking Malaysia Other SE ASIA Southeast Asia South Korea Japan Other East Asia

Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan 1802 180 110

Uzbekistan 285

Turkmenistan 210

Total 2587

291 377

361 22

385 35

51 125

110 66

1198 625

54 16 768

109 28 520

215 28 663

75 28 279

19 24 223

472 124 2453

1089 12

44 20

25 20

379 27

51 21

1588 100

1105

64

45

406

72

1692

211 57 276

80 75 163

36 27 71

411 202 621

18 19 45

756 380 1176

Sources: UNESCO Institute of Statistics (n.d.) and Institute of International Education (n.d.) Values >0 & 5 students), 2012 (N) Students IN ➔ FROM # Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Central Asia Georgia Russian Federation Azerbaijan Republic of Moldova Ukraine Armenia Belarus Post-Soviet India China Turkey Pakistan Mongolia Afghanistan Iran, Islamic Rep. Nepal Regional Neighbors Korea, Rep. Japan East Asia (except China) Germany Syrian Arab Republic

Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan 19,287 11,148 4357 963 476 885 1090 369 5588 1219 8117 6830 6639 1644 927 147 6

41 152

32 24 12 8504 392 897 262 28 656 334 6

18

2575 48 6 54 23 14

8 1146 1137 385 772 778

Tajikistan Uzbekistan 1148 228 123 47 162 11 8 160 100 199 644 166 6 92 52

Turkmenistan Total 81 63,675 4527 1136 8 1377 1719 7006 8 15,765 6645 2715

10

98 128 12

62

198 158

0

22 12

54 25

194 42

21 3172

388

51

0

73

21 6208

0

66 6 72

18 0

18

0

50 24 20 9810 1657 1294 1056 818 656 633 73

23 14

Sources: UNESCO Institute of Statistics (n.d.) and Institute of International Education (n.d.) Values 70 years Gender Male Female

n

%

173 64 18 45 56 124

36.04 13.33 3.75 9.38 11.67 25.83

237 243

49.38 50.62

Mapping lexical variation on 2-D maps. Four hundred and eighty data points were interpolated and displayed on the hillshade layer. As illustrated in Fig. 2, the majority of people in Chiang Mai preferred Variant #1 to Variants #2 or #3 when describing the word “dark.” This variant, however, was not commonly used in Mae Cham district, where its city center is located. More than 70% of the population in this area used Variant #3 (local dialect), while only 30–50% chose Variant #1. In Phrao district, which is located in the northeast of Chiang Mai Province, there was an overlap between Variants #1 and #3. Nonetheless, most people favored Variant #1. Overall the patterns indicated that Variant #2 was not commonly used in Chiang Mai. Visualizing lexical variation on 3-D maps. The interpolated surfaces of Variants #1, #2, and #3 were overlaid onto the 3-D terrain data (Fig. 3). These 3-D views allow us to visualize the spatial pattern of lexical variation in relation to its topography. As shown in Fig. 3a, Variant #1 was widely used throughout Chiang Mai Province, especially in lowland areas on the eastern, southeastern, and northwestern edges of the province. In the highland areas, where mountain ranges lie in generally north-south orientation, only 30–50% of the people used Variant #1. Figure 3b illustrates that in provinces on the west side of Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain range in Chiang Mai, less than 10% of the people used Variant #2. On the contrary, the percentages of people who used Variant #2 gradually increased to 40% on the east side of Doi Inthanon. When examining spatial patterns in Fig. 3c, we found that people who lived in the northeastern and western edges of the province, particularly on the west side of the mountain range, used both Variants #1 and #3. Less than 10% of the people in these areas used Variant #2. Variant #3 was also predominantly used in Mae Cham district (>90%) where it is surrounded by Doi Inthanon in the east and the Salawin National Park located in Mae Hong Son Province, in the west. Likewise Phrao district has a similar setting to Mae Cham district, and the majority of people used both Variants #1 and #3. Phrao is set in a wide, rice-filled valley where the Khun Tan Range stretches from the north to south along the eastern side of the district (see also Fig. 1). Approximately 50–70% of the population in Phrao used Variant #1, while 33% of the population were still used Variant # 3, which is Chiang Mai dialect.

10

Visualizing Dialect Variation on a 3-D Interpolated Map: A Case Study in. . .

197

Fig. 2 Spatial patterns of three different variants used for the word “dark.” (Modified from Thebpanya and Hatfield 2016)

5

Conclusion and Discussions

In this study we created 3-D views of the linguistic diversity surfaces, using lexical data of Chiang Mai dialect as an example. As shown in Fig. 3c, the local dialect (Variant #3) is only preserved in two districts in Chiang Mai Province: Mae Cham and Phrao. Interestingly, with similar landscapes, these two areas are set in the valley, surrounded by mountains on both sides. Mae Cham is one of the remotest spots in northern Thailand. It is approximately 147 km from Muang Chiang Mai, the provincial capital. However, getting there from Muang Chiang Mai is quite difficult because Mae Cham valley is bounded to the east by Doi Inthanon. The shortest route between Muang Chiang Mai and Mae Cham requires travel through winding mountain roads. Phrao, on the other hand, has better access to Muang Chiang Mai and it is only 100 km away. Half of its population retain Variant #3. There are two main roads – routes 107 and 118 – running from Muang Chiang Mai to the north. However, neither of these main arterial roads are running through Phrao district. Route 107 runs to Chiang Dao district, west of Phrao, while route 118 runs to Chaing Rai Province, east of Phrao. Isolation has preserved Phrao from tourism, dynamic markets, and real estate development. The district has no economic prospects beyond rice and orchard crops.

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Fig. 3 Visualizing spatial patterns of (a) variant #1, (b) variant #2, and (c) variant #3 on 3-D maps. (Modified from Thebpanya and Hatfield 2016)

Thailand, like many other Asian countries, comprises several ethnolinguistic groups who speak their own dialect. Out of 70 spoken languages in the country, 14 are severely endangered and could die out in the next 50–100 years (RILCA 2015). One of the reasons for this linguistic deterioration is the government’s unofficial policy of promoting standard Thai as the medium of instruction in all schools. Overall, the combination of topographic relief and 3-D interpolated surface of variant offers an additional possibility for development of language maps in educational contexts. Moreover, it provides a visual depiction of a landscape, which gives a different perspective to viewers. This technique has proven valuable in facilitating data exploration and enhancing visualization. It also serves as a useful tool to detect some variants that might be at risk of falling out of use. Finally, we believe our contribution serves not only as an example for adopting GIS and geospatial analytics to linguistic research but also as an effective means of visualizing linguistic data.

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Mapping Cantonese: The Pro-Cantonese Protest and Sina Weibo in Guangzhou

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Language, Power, and Digital Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Tuipu, Spatial Politics and the Pro-Cantonese Protest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter explores the reproduction of Guangzhou’s local identity during the pro-Cantonese protest in 2010 on Sina Weibo, one of the most popular social media platforms in China. Specifically, the chapter posits that Cantonese is one of Guangzhouers’ bodily doings and Weibo is also part of the Guangzhou body. Henceforth, Cantonese was not merely the source of contention, but the local language enabled the reconfiguration of the local subjectivity through the practices of digital place remaking. By examining the collected Weibo data during the protest, it is found that Cantonese facilitated a series of cultural practices and physical doings on Weibo that enhanced the spatial mobility of the Guangzhou body during the protest. The intertwining between Cantonese and Weibo emancipated the Guangzhou’s body from the cultural authorities of the Chinese state by allowing it to reproduce and reassert its locality and individuality. Cantonese, the Guangzhou city, and Weibo were co-constitutive in configuring the spatial mobility of the Guangzhou body, allowing it to be simultaneously presenting within the virtual and physical worlds and transiting between the social and cultural spaces of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. This chapter has the potential to W. Y. Wang (*) Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_100

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contribute to our knowledge of digital media and society by connecting geo-lingual research with those studies of digital media culture and politics. Keywords

Cantonese · Geo-identity · Guangzhou · Sina Weibo · Spatial mobility

1

Introduction

One of the key policy initiatives of the Communist Party of China in the 1950s was to promote Mandarin (putonghua), which is based on the Beijing dialect. The policy has since been enforced across major cities and as a result, local dialects are generally not permitted to be used on broadcasting media and educational institutions in China (SARFT 2005). However, Guangzhou has had a different experience, where Cantonese is used for daily communication and on local broadcasting media – an attempt to attract and retain Hong Kong’s and overseas Cantonese investors during the early years of China’s economic reform (Cheung 2001). Against these policy and historical contexts, on July 25, 2010, more than a thousand people marched on the streets of Guangzhou to protest against the provincial government’s attempts to abolish Cantonese on Guangzhou television. Despite an official warning, this mass gathering was organized through Sina Weibo (microblog), one of the most popular social media services in China (J.M. 2010). Under tremendous public pressure, the provincial government withdrew the edict on Cantonese and issued official support of the preservation of the language. This chapter explores the reproduction of Guangzhou’s local identity during the pro-Cantonese protest on Weibo. Specifically, this chapter argues that Cantonese reconfigures the spatial mobility of the Guangzhou body through Weibo. “Spatial mobility” refers to a body’s capacity and the degree of autonomy of its motion to travel between different social spaces, physical places, and virtual spheres. Such capacity of movement is enabled and conditioned by (1) the nature and affordances of the technologies and (2) the geographic structures that are constituted by different social flows and forces. In other words, the body’s spatial mobility can be expanded or limited because of the technological advancement and the changing power relations in the society. The former relates to Boyd’s (2010) notion of the technological affordances, in particular those to do with digital media, the latter is a notion of relativity that links to the symbiotic relationships between individuals and the institutions. In order to properly develop this notion, the Cantonese language is considered as part of Guangzhouers’ bodily doings and Weibo is also part of the Guangzhou body. Henceforth, Cantonese is not merely the source of contention but the local language enabled the reconfiguration of the local subjectivity through the practices of digital place remaking. By examining the collected Weibo data during the protest, it is found that Cantonese facilitated a series of cultural practices and physical doings on Weibo that enhanced the spatial mobility of the Guangzhou body during the protest. The intertwining between Cantonese and Weibo emancipated the Guangzhou’s body

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from the cultural authorities of the Chinese state and allowed it to reproduce and reassert its locality and individuality. Cantonese, the Guangzhou city, and Weibo were co-constitutive in configuring the spatial mobility of the Guangzhou body, allowing it to be simultaneously presenting within the virtual and physical worlds and transiting between the social and cultural spaces of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. The line of inquiry here hence emphasizes on the poetic relationship between people, place, and digital media during a political event. This chapter has the potential to contribute to our knowledge of digital media and society by connecting geo-lingual research with those studies of digital media culture and politics.

2

Language, Power, and Digital Media

This section puts forward two premises. First, I contend that since language is part of the human body (DeFrancis 1984) and that a living body produces itself in space and it also (re)produces that space (Lefebvre 1991), it represents and reproduces people’s sense of spatiality and locality. Second, I draw on literature of digital embodiment (Farman 2012; Evans 2015) to further postulate that digital media renders new opportunities to transform the mode of transmission and form of presentation of language and, hence, reconfigures the mobility of our living bodies. Throughout the human history, language has been an important component for individuals to acquire their realms of existence (Nietzsche 1989) and to develop their senses of being and knowing with the greater world (Bucciferro 2012). Edwards (2009: 53) identifies three main characteristics of language: first, a language is a system, which implies rules and regularity of practice; second, “this system is an arbitrary one inasmuch as its articular units or elements have meaning only because of users’ agreement a convention”; and third, language constructs community. As a primary bodily doing that is vocally expressed, aurally received, textually written and symbolically visualized (DeFrancis 1984), language can be seemed as one of those ‘representational practices’ described by Boellstorff (2016) that enact ‘meaning.’ Castells (2009: 55) goes further by stating that language “provides the linkage between the private and the public sphere, the past and the present.” In other words, language is inherently a spatiotemporal process that “expands” living bodies horizontally across social spaces to forge interpersonal networks and connections; it also “stretches” living bodies vertically across time to experience the temporal transformations between the past and present. The common linguistic knowledge – such as the grammatical rules, syntactical structures, and expressions – carry people’s shared experience and memories of a geographic place. It is also precisely because language is a system that generates social meanings and guides everyday doings (Edwards 2009); social and cultural institutions also exploit language to protect, to rationalize, and to justify their domination and status quote. This is why Castells (2009: 52) sees language as “a system of codes” that allows the symbolic interaction “without worshipping of icons other than those merging in the communication of everyday life.” Scholars have noted that nation states play a crucial role “on promoting dominant linguistic varieties as national

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languages and subjugating others to their subordinate status” (Gao 2012: 449). Note that the promotion of a national language is vertically imposed from the top with a clearly defined purpose to construct a (homogenized) sense of nationhood (Tan 2006) and the promotion of a dominant language generally works through the two mechanisms of standardization and exclusion (Phillipson 1992). Standardization refers to the systemization of the rules of linguistic presentations, textual expressions, and aural verbalizations; exclusion refers to the marginalization of the variants that represents different interpretations of the language-constructed reality. In other words, the dominant language constructs a homogenous space that marginalizes or even eradicates any variants outside of its agenda and value system. It creates a proper space that transcends the relevancy of the individuality and subjectivity of the local bodies. As a representational practice of the living bodies, language helps us to experience the physical places (everyday surroundings) and the imagined space (the nation). Language brings us into different spatial realms and acts as the agent and vehicle to articulate one’s sense of being and knowing. Language is then a crucial site of power contestations by possessing the capacity to enable what Casey (1993, 1996) coins as “implacement”: “there is no knowing or sensing a place except by being in that place, and to be in a place is to be in a position to perceive it” (1996: 18). Farman (2012: 40–41) further explains that embodied implacement is both informational (the sense of being) and directional (the sense of knowing) and very much a social-acquisition process that develops in relation with lived experience over time. However, with the advent of digital media, our embodied experience with the physical place is further complicated and diversified. As Farman (2012: 4) puts, “the uses of [mobile] technologies demonstrates an intimate relationship between the production of space and the bodies inhabiting those spaces.” Embodiment is no longer a two-way interaction between the human body and physical place but since the digital media is now part of the body (Farman 2012; Evans 2015); the subtle three ways embodying process define new modes of sociality, ways of doings, and ways of being. Since digital media is part of the human body that we experience the world with digital media (Evans 2015: 10–11), people’s experience with the world will eventually involve the convergence of the digital and the physical. In citing Castells’ concept of the networked society, Marolt (2013: 65) points out that even though the “network” is the dominant organizing mechanism in society today, individuals continue to craft identities on their own, “with one foot in their physical and the other in their virtual everyday lives.” In other words, the living body’s motions between the virtual and the physical become more instant and constant – even occurring simultaneously through digital media. The digital embodiment thesis, of course, relates to Boellstorff’s (2016) recent critique of the “derealization of the digital” in academic writings, which states that the digital virtual is one of the persistent context of social immersion. Boellstorff’s conceptual distinction between the “virtual” and the “physical” is useful to analyze the body’s motion and mobility afforded by social and technological transformations. Henceforth, “simultaneousness” is a concept that indicates that the body no longer needs to make a conscious choice to move between

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the material and virtual worlds. The act of switching on and off, connecting and disconnecting are becoming less a physical act but more a sense of existence and being. As Farman (2012: 49) writes, “our sensory-inscribed experiences of geographic space are always informed by the ways we represent that space.” The practices of space representation and place making then would have to be conducted simultaneously across the virtual and the physical realms. This simultaneity enhanced living body’s mobility across different scales and types of spatial realms. At here, the following sections turn to China as the country presents itself as an excellent example to illustrate the potential tensions and conflicts of such a digital embodied language. This is particularly the case that language has become a key practice for the Communist Party of China to exert and prolong its power dominations. Next section then provides a brief overview of language policy in China and the pro-Cantonese protest.

3

Tuipu, Spatial Politics and the Pro-Cantonese Protest

According to Lefebvre (1991), the living body is “the space itself” and it also produces the (new) space, along with its motions (170–171). Since the previous section establishes that language is part of the body that further facilitate people’s embodied experience with place and technology, it is only logical to posit that any attempt to control language is essentially an effort to control the space that generates social meaning. This is long practiced by the Chinese rulers. As Gao (2012) points out, since the Qin Shihuangdi (The First Emperor, 259 BC–210 BC), unifying the Chinese language has been a key concern for Chinese rulers. The current Communist Party of China government has enforced a Mandarin policy (tuipu) throughout China. As Wang (2001: 9) wrote, the ultimate goal of tuipu policy was to make Mandarin the only spoken language in schools, broadcast media, government bodies, and public arenas across China. In 2001, an Order of the President was issued by the then-president Jiang Zemin to legislate tuipu (Chinese Government 2000) (hereafter referred to as the “language law”). The linguistic policy had such a focus because it would help in the construction of a uniform national identity for China. As stated in Article 5, Chapter I, in the language law: The standard spoken and written Chinese language shall be used in such a way as to be conducive to the upholding of state sovereignty and national dignity, to the unification of the country and the unity of the nationalities, and to socialist material progress and ethical progress.

In order to achieve such a purpose, the language law specifically states that Mandarin shall be used as “the basic language in education and teaching in schools” (Article 10, Chapter II), and “shall be used by the broadcasting and TV stations as the basic broadcasting language” (Article 12, Chapter II). This echoes China’s “Code of Professional Ethics of Radio and Television Hosts of China” issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), where article 21 of the

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code requires that “broadcasting hosts shall be the role model to actively promote the popularization of Mandarin, use standard and correct form of written Chinese, and defend the integrity of the motherland’s spoken and written language.” The fact that the Communist Party of China was so keen on enforcing the tuipu policy and standardizing the Chinese language underpins the view that language carries great weight in supporting the Communist Party of China’s power domination. As DeFrancis (1984) argues, Chinese is not a single language, but, instead, it is a collection of different linguistic variants that are spoken and used across China. Each linguistic variant represents a specific cultural expression and social imagination in relation to the particular local experience over time. It then appears that the promotion of Mandarin Chinese, one of the many variants of the Chinese language, is an attempt to construct a homogenous sense of knowing and imagination of the Chinese geography in order to construct a unified notion of nationhood (Judge 2002). Consequentially, the promotion of Mandarin as the only official language in the Chinese public realms (Wang 2001) ultimately involves the eradication of other variants of Chinese. In Nanning, for example, the capital city of Guangxi, where Cantonese has been a dominant language since the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), less than 30% of the population now speaks it. This was due to the enforcement of tuipu on the city since the early 1990s, when Cantonese was prohibited in public and educational venues. The tuipu policy, therefore, aims to transcend the past and the significance of local place. Local place in China becomes, in Relph’s (1976) term, “placeless,” as it is increasingly being detached from its localized history and folk culture. Instead, local culture and history are increasingly being manipulated and narrated in a way that suits the interests of political and social elites (Oakes 2000). The promotion of a national language is an act to rationalize and naturalize nation states’ authorities and rules over individuals (Gao 2012), who continue to display their identities and to assert the sense of existence through the regional and local linguistic varieties in conducting their everyday lives (Lai 2011). The linguistic tension between the Chinese state and individuals is well illustrated by the pro-Cantonese protest in Guangzhou. Public anger in Guangzhou was triggered by a legislative proposal put forth by Ji Keguang, the vice-chair of the proposal committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Guangzhou on July 5, 2010. The proposal suggested Mandarin (putonghua) become the “principal” language for Guangzhou Television’s news and current affairs programs advocating the use of Mandarin during prime time programming (Zhu and Tan 2010). This proposal was made in the backdrop of an earlier online opinion poll conducted by the CPPCC Guangzhou, showing that of the 30,000 respondents, only 20% supported using Mandarin as Guangzhou TV’s principal broadcasting language, while 80% supported Cantonese (Xinhua 2010). As mentioned earlier in the chapter, Guangzhou had a “softer” implementation of the tuipu policy comparing to other major Chinese city for economic reason (Cheung 2001). The linguistic autonomy allowed Guangzhouers to access Hong Kong’s media and popular culture, which they have learned about the ideas of liberal society, free speech, equality, and subversion (Fung and Ma 2002). In other words, Cantonese has reinforced Guangzhouers’ sense of locality and cultural subjectivity, which

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are often deemed to be very different with the rest of China (Wang 2015). However, Guangzhou’s linguistic autonomy is being undermined in recent years. According to the local Yangcheng Evening News (Anonymous 2010), some schools in Guangzhou are enforcing the Mandarin-only policy, both inside and outside the classroom, and students will be penalized for speaking Cantonese in the school yard. The accumulated dissatisfactions against the governments’ language policy related to the increasing volume and circulation of protest-related messages on Weibo despite the local authorities’ intervention (Li 2010a, b). On July 25, 2010, thousands of people responded to these messages and gathered at the subway exit of Jiannanxi subway station at 5:30 p.m. Local police were quick in action and the government deployed riot police to the scene. Protesters were shouting the slogan – Fuck your mother! Go all out! – a battle slogan that was used by a famous Cantonese General in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), and singing a famous Hong Kong rock band Beyond’s songs while condemning the provincial officials, especially Ji Keguang, of suppressing local culture (J.M. 2010). The protest ended peacefully as protesters walked away gradually at about 6:30 p.m. The provincial government also later issued a statement that denied any intentions to eradicate Cantonese and the proposal was also scrapped altogether. As the inquiry mainly concerns the role of Cantonese in enabling Guangzhou people’s capacity to travel between and across different spatial realms and social spaces, the study primarily interested in those online and offline practices co-constituted by Weibo and Cantonese. Online data were collected by running a search of the protest slogan “Support Cantonese” (Cheng Yueyu), as the key phrase on Weibo’s indigenous search engine. The keywords search was conducted with the “Time” and “Location” filers enabled. The research period was July 23–28, 2010, 2 days before and 1 day after the protest (July 25, 2010); and Guangzhou was the “location” set in order to generate entries that were only posted by people who identify themselves as living in Guangzhou. The primary aim of the analysis was not to code the data according to the content of the Weibo posts and then counting the number of a particular “key phrase/words”; instead, the analysis focuses on those online practices and bodily doings contributed to the formation of Guangzhou’s local identity throughout the protest. Since the researcher could not physically see the bodily doings and practices of Guangzhouers because the research was conducted after the protest in 2010, this information needed to be obtained through reading into the collected Weibo entries. The researcher reads through all the data at once to obtain an overall impression of the major themes and discourses. Each entry was then unpacked in detail and categorized it based on its content. The method of categorization allowed the analysis to examine each post against the immediate context it refers to. Table 1 shows the findings. As shown in Table 1, the data fell into three broad categories namely: Information, Rationale, and Slogan. The Information category includes entries seeking for confirmation of any news and information relating to the protest; the Rationale category includes those entries stating the reasons and rationales of the protest; the Slogan category contains those entries making an expression about the protest. By

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Table 1 Data categories for the pro-Cantonese protest Labels Information Protest information

Count

Example

149

Personal plan on protest day Future actions (second protest in HK) Information about censorship Rationale Cultural and historical uniqueness of Cantonese Linguistic and identity rights

55

“Can anyone tell me if the pro-Cantonese gathering will still go ahead? I heard the police have disapproved the public gathering application” “I will just go by the gathering location on my way home” “We will have a second gathering to support Cantonese on 1 August at Hong Kong” “Look, Weibo and zf (government) are deleting my post! Why am I not allowed to express my view?”

Seeking external supports Alternative actions

19 21

Slogan

66 n = 393

7 16

38 22

“Cantonese is a much more sophisticated language with 9 pitched tones while Mandarin only has 4” “I can endure the government misusing my tax, demolishing my house, and social inequalities; but how dare they try to take away my right to speak my mother tongue! I can never endure that because Cantonese is who I am” “Look, even foreigners are supporting Cantonese” “Maybe we can have more community activities about Cantonese culture rather than having a protest” “I support Cantonese forever!”

gaining an insight into these three broad categories, I was then able to further inquire the methods Guangzhou Weibo users deployed to search for protest-related information amid the state’s interventions. The inquiry also led me to identify some of the commonly used online and physical practices that enabled the circulation of this information. I pay specific attention to the use of Cantonese language and Weibo feature as either mentioned or reflected by these entries and found: 1. The majority of the Weibo entries were typed in Cantonese expression instead of the official Mandarin expression. 2. More than one third of the entries collected contained visual or audio materials (such as a visual image or a video) embedded with the entry. 3. A quarter of the Weibo entries were posted through a mobile device. These three observations illustrate the motions of the practices and tactics Guangzhouers adopted throughout the protest. The focus on these bodily practices across the online and physical realms reveals languages as both the site of contestations and they reproduce the social and cultural spaces of Guangzhou city. The discussions to follow hence focus on the specific techno-lingual aspects of the pro-Cantonese protest in reproducing and representing the Guangzhou identity.

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Discussion

The fact that Guangzhouers needed to protest for their linguistic rights reflects the deepening tensions between the nation state and individuals over the issue of cultural representation and identity formation in China. The Chinese government’s attempt to control and maintain its power over the local places is evident from the data. A Weibo user (23:12, 24/07/2013) uploaded a screenshot that showed the protest location “Jiangnan Xi Metro Station Exit A” (江南西地铁A出口) was determined to be “sensitive,” and no results can be generated by online search engines for the eve of the protest. This confirms with King et al.’s (2013) observation that the primary aim of China’s censorship is to prevent the mobilization of collective actions rather than to suppress dissents. In other words, the censoring mechanism work on the rationale to seize control of the local social spaces in order to restrict people’s mobility to form protest networks, to allocate protest resources, and to mobilize participations. However, as Castells (2009) states, since most people around the world still live and conduct their everyday lives in local places, any attempts to control and manipulate these places will face resistance from below. The subversive sentiments were reflected by the fact that the majority of the Weibo entries were typed in the Cantonese expressions rather than the official Mandarin expressions. This practice itself signifies a tactic of resistance that exists within the vision of the enemy. As de Certeau (1984) writes, tactics live within the proper space created by the dominant; Cantonese also resides within the lingual-political space dominated by the Communist Party of China, yet, it challenges such power structures from within. Typing Cantonese became a shared practice among Guangzhou’s Weibo users in their online communications. Cantonese became the code to protest and the language of the resistance. The use of Cantonese is particularly obvious in the protest’s main slogan: “Fuck your mum! Go all out!” is in Cantonese, a battle slogan used by a famous Cantonese General in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). “Slogan” in this sense was not merely an outburst of one’s grievance but it performs one’s identity. It is worth noting that unlike Mandarin, there is no standardized format of written Cantonese, and Guangzhouers have never learned the written expression of their language in a systematic way (such as school or text book); instead, it was an ad-hoc, self-initiated social acquisition in light of the protest, an act of defense to reject the expansion of the state’s power. In other words, Cantonese created a new cultural space for Guangzhouers to come together and to engage with the protest. The re-making of the Guangzhou community eventually led to the re-mapping and re-navigation of the Guangzhou city. In doing so, Cantonese was visualized and audioized. As Yang (2008: 126) pointed out, “the most obvious feature of internet contention is its symbolic and discursive form.” Among the 393 entries, 102 contain either visual images or videos. These visual and audio representations diversify the representation of Guangzhou’s cultural uniqueness. For example, there is an image of a box containing many old Cantonese expressions and words, which are placedistinct and culturally specific. A video of “Let an old Guangzhou Doctor Teach you Cantonese,” shows a middle-aged man speaking in traditional Cantonese tongue and

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introducing “old local saying” of medical jargons. Many of those expressions that are rarely used today have been recollected and presented on Weibo. Guangzhou’s city culture and landmarks are exploited, too. An image of an animated robot, whose name is “BBQ Guangzhou,” is holding different cultural products, such as a Cantonese style roast duck, a road sign of one of Guangzhou’s oldest streets, and a bottle of Pearl River soy sauce. These digital representations of Cantonese and its associated culture mapped a temporal trajectory that connects the past and the present. These online visualizations of the Cantonese and the local culture express a sense of continuity. The historicizing of Cantonese as one of most ancient languages in China sets to dismiss the dominant cultural and social status of Mandarin, which was indeed a contemporary reinvention based on the Beijing dialect in 1956 (Gao 2012). Hence, the sense of pride and local subjectivity were conveyed in relation to the spatiotemporally of Cantonese. The re-construction of the Guangzhou place and the Guangzhou self were further sustained and reproduced through confronting with the authorities and Cantonese increased the mobility of protesters in bypassing the authorities’ constraints on the one hand and enabling the Guangzhou body to transmit between the virtual and the physical worlds. In addition to foster a sense of community, Cantonese fooled the online censorship, the very system that attempts to regulate it. Cantonese expression can bypass the Mandarin-based censorship system. For example, a Weibo user (24/07/2013) spelt “police department” as gung on bou in Cantonese, instead of gong an bu in Mandarin. Another user (25/07/2013) referred to “the government” (政府) as “square tiger” (正虎); the pronunciations of the two words are identical in Cantonese but not in Mandarin. Therefore, it seems like Cantonese was crucial to produce a new site of protest, a new space that existed within the authorities’ watch, to make political claim. The scope of this newly created social space was further fueled and expanded by Weibo’s technical features of “Like,” “Repost,” and “Comment.” Drawing on Boyd’s (2012) insights of technological affordances, these technical features ensured the longitudinal of these posts to be archived, spread, and replicated across the public networks of Weibo as well as within Weibo users’ personal networks. Weibo supported and sustained the new social space created by Cantonese to challenge and resist the government’s control from within. Further still, some users (25/07/2013), for example, posted a screenshot of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily’s (the newspaper’s website is banned in mainland China) coverage of the pro-Cantonese protest. The news report detailed the time, location, and rationale of the protest; this information is banned on Weibo and other Internet services in China but became available through screenshot images. Others (24/07/2010), on the other hand, uploaded a photo that was a screenshot from Hong Kong’s Golden Forum; the image provided information about the second protest in Hong Kong. By transforming protest-related information from textual to visual, an image file evaded the “sensitive words detection” system. While screen capture is clearly a new protest tactics afforded by Weibo’s technical advantages of visualization and mobility, it was Cantonese that develops the cultural connections that generate the cross-border cultural imaginations between Guangzhou and Hong Kong. It appears that Cantonese not only enabled the Guangzhou body to be simultaneously

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presenting across the virtual and the physical, the language also permitted the mobility of the Guangzhou body to travel between the social and cultural spaces of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Such cross-border networks formation also redefines the Guangzhou identity through Hong Kong’s liberal social values and cultures. Hong Kong’s Cantonese pop music, in particular those of Beyond’s, normally express the idea of freedom, liberty, and individuality (Ko 2010), became the anthems of the protest, and were shared on Weibo and sung on the street. Hong Kong’s media and popular culture highlight Guangzhouers’ self-perceived liberal and diverse social and political values, which contrast with the Communist Party of China’s ideology of constructing a homogenous and united national identity (Wang 2015); these references to Hong Kong also reproduced and reinforce that idea that the Guangzhou body is closer to the liberal Hong Kong rather than the political center of Beijing. These vernacular tactics illustrate that Cantonese and Weibo were both part of the Guangzhou body, which continue to redefine and shape the people’s embodied experience with the city and its transformations. Yet, the technology and the language also redefined each other’s capacities in delivering and re-inventing the required networks and communities to functionalize the protest. The typing of Cantonese and the visualization of subversive texts and messages, Cantonese and Weibo seem to have co-constituted new mobility for the Guangzhou body to travel between the online and the offline, to travel across Hong Kong and Guangzhou’s social spaces. It appears that those subversive tactics were less the conscious acts and plans to facilitate a political movement; but instead, they were just part of the natural and collective social doings and cultural beings of the Guangzhou body in responding to the power expansion of the state. Resistance, in this case, was not merely about making a political claim but also about the re-making of a local subjectivity through reconfiguring the spatial mobility of the body. These highly fluid tactics coordinated what Farman (2012) would term as the reconfiguration of body and space through the use of digital media that new space can be created through a digitized body. Or, to draw on Boyd’s (2010) notion of the networked public, the protest network formed during the pro-Cantonese protest was not merely as a result of Weibo’s algorithmic structures and logics – these terms were too technical; instead, the networked public was forged through the co-constitution between Cantonese, the city, and Weibo as part of the Guangzhou body and part of the local everyday lives.

5

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the reproduction of the Guangzhou identity throughout the pro-Cantonese protest in 2010. Specifically, it seems that the co-constitution of Weibo and Cantonese reconfigured Guangzhouers spatial mobility through reproducing a series of bodily doings and online practices during the protest. By looking into the intersections and overlapping between Cantonese and Weibo, it appears that Guangzhou’s Weibo users were able to be present themselves within the

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online and physical worlds, and move across Guangzhou and Hong Kong’s social spaces simultaneously. While such enhanced spatial mobility is rendered by Weibo’s technical advancement of visualization and transnationality, Cantonese also afforded the expansion and sustainability of the protest network by fooling the online censorship and the governments’ intervention in bringing Guangzhouers together. This chapter has hopefully highlighted some crucial aspects other than those of the technological and the political, in advancing our knowledge of popular politics, lingual-identity reproduction and place representation in a digital era.

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Revising the Language Map of Korea

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Changyong Yang, William O’Grady, Sejung Yang, Nanna Haug Hilton, Sang-Gu Kang, and So-Young Kim

Contents 1 The Changing World Language Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Language and Dialect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Language of Jeju Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Dutch and Norwegian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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C. Yang College of Education, Jeju National University, Jeju, South Korea e-mail: [email protected] W. O’Grady (*) · S. Yang Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii – Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] N. H. Hilton Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] S.-G. Kang Department of English Language and Literature, Cheongju University, Cheongju, South Korea e-mail: [email protected] S.-Y. Kim Department of British and American Cultures, Tongmyong University, Busan, South Korea e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_110

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4.3 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

As linguists develop a deeper understanding of the properties of individual varieties of speech, they often find it necessary to reclassify dialects as independent languages, based on the criterion of intelligibility. This criterion is applied here to Jejueo, the traditional variety of speech used on Jeju Island, a province of the Republic of Korea. Although Jejueo has long been classified as a nonstandard dialect of Korean, evidence from an intelligibility experiment shows that it is not comprehensible to monolingual speakers of Korean and therefore should be treated as a separate language, in accordance with the usual practice within linguistics. This finding calls for a revision to the standard language map of Korea. Keywords

Jejueo · Korean · Language · Dialect · Intelligibility

1

The Changing World Language Map

The language map of the world is changing at a faster rate than at any time in history. On the one hand, revisions are necessary to accommodate the rapid loss of linguistic diversity in many regions around the globe, as languages lose their speakers at an unprecedented rate due to urbanization, economic pressures, and the loss of traditional homelands, among other factors (Austin and Sallabank 2011; Grenoble 2011). Indeed, relatively few languages have a secure future. The top 16 languages in the world are spoken by about 55% of the population (Maffi 2011, p. 12), while 96% of languages are spoken by just 3% of the population (Bernard 1996, p. 142). The UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages (2003, p. 2) estimates that 50% of the world’s current languages are losing speakers and that as many as 90% of all languages may be lost by the end of the twenty-first century. On the other hand, changes are also needed in response to the identification of previously unknown or unrecognized languages. Such discoveries were especially common during the twentieth century, which saw the number of known languages grow from an estimated 1000 in the early 1900s to around 7000 by the end of the millennium (Anderson 2004). As linguists and anthropologists gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic situation in various remote parts of the world, they have been able both to identify previously unknown languages and to reassess the status of speech varieties that had been incorrectly labeled as dialects. This chapter focuses on one such case involving the language map of Korea.

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Discussion of this matter begins with a brief review of the distinction between “language” and “dialect,” a contentious issue that has influenced the topography of many language maps. It then turns to a case study involving Jejueo, the variety of speech traditionally used on Jeju Island, one of nine provinces making up the Republic of Korea (hereafter “South Korea”). The methodology that was employed to assess the possible language-hood of Jejueo is then outlined, including the use of a parallel study of Norwegian and Dutch to establish a baseline for interpreting the results for Jejueo. The chapter concludes with some general remarks about the status of Jejueo and the implications of the reported findings for the linguistic landscape of Korea.

2

Language and Dialect

For much of modern history, the distinction between language and dialect has been largely political: the speech of a bigger or more powerful community is a language, whereas the speech of a smaller or less influential group is a dialect. Max Weinreich (1945) summed up this view with a famous aphorism: “A language is just a dialect with an army and a navy.” Another, perhaps more ubiquitous force also comes into play, namely, national identity. It has long been recognized within the field of sociolinguistics that language is a major marker of national unity (e.g., Haugen 1966, p. 927, Fishman 1972, p. 44). This in turn often leads to a “one nation – one language” ideology that denies language-hood to a community’s minority languages. Both Koreas have long maintained, independently of each other, that Korean national identity is embodied in a shared single indigenous language (e.g., King 2007, p. 233), preempting discussion of possible additional languages in their territory. For the most part, modern linguistics rejects politically motivated definitions of language-hood by insisting that the distinction between dialect and language should be based on linguistic considerations. For linguists, a dialect is simply a variety of speech with its own distinctive characteristics of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. As varieties of speech change over a period of centuries, each in its own unique way, they typically become less and less alike. At the point where speakers of one dialect can no longer understand speakers of another dialect, the two varieties of speech are classified as separate languages. In other words, the key linguistic criterion for distinguishing between dialects and languages involves intelligibility: when two dialects cease to be mutually comprehensible, they are classified as separate languages (Hockett 1958, p. 321ff; Casad 1974; Gooskens 2013). History offers many examples of the emergence of new languages as the result of dialect divergence. The languages now known as French, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian were once all varieties (dialects) of Latin. Over time, each evolved in different ways, ultimately reaching the point where speakers of one could not understand speakers of the others. The evolution of English, German, Dutch, Swedish, and Icelandic took place in a similar manner. All were once dialects of

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Germanic; now, thanks to the different changes that each underwent, they are recognized as separate, mutually unintelligible languages. Dialects diverge slowly and incrementally, with the result that the contrast between dialect and language is not always clear-cut. A common “cutoff” point for drawing a line between dialect and language is a comprehension rate of 70% (Bouwer 2007; Kosheleva and Kreivnovich 2014): a higher score is interpreted as evidence that the two speech varieties are dialects of the same language, and a lower score is taken to indicate that they are separate languages. Even though there is undoubtedly a gray area on the language-dialect continuum (see Okura (2015) for a review), numerous clear-cut cases exist, including many that go unrecognized for long periods of time. Just such a case is found in South Korea. The twofold goal of this chapter is to illustrate how linguistic experimentation can help distinguish a dialect from a language and, at the same time, to propose a more accurate language map for Korea.

3

The Language of Jeju Island

According to the standard view, the language map of South Korea is monochromatic, reflecting the country’s supposed linguistic homogeneity (Fig. 1). (For now, the situation in North Korea is set to the side.) Jeju Island lies about 35 miles southwest of the Korean mainland. Approximately 700 square miles in size, it is dominated by Hallasan, whose height of 6500 ft makes it the highest mountain in South Korea. Known for its temperate climate, its stone statues (dolhaleubang), and its female divers (haenyeo), Jeju Island has become a major tourist mecca in East Asia. Yet, many of its foreign visitors are unaware of the unusual variety of speech still used there by its older inhabitants and known by a variety of names: Jejueo (the new official name designated by the provincial government), Jeju(n)mal, Jejudo(n)mal, Jeju satuli, and Jeju bangeon, among others. According to recent UNESCO estimates, Jejueo is spoken with varying degrees of fluency by 5000 to 10,000 people, a small fraction of the island’s population of more than 600,000. Jejueo is uncontroversially related to Korean, as illustrated by numerous similarities in the vocabulary and morphosyntax of the two languages. Table 1 gives examples of some of the lexical similarities that point toward a genetic relationship, as well as some of the differences that suggest that the two are nonetheless distinct from each other. (For the purposes of exposition, Jejueo examples are written in the so-called Revised Romanization developed by South Korea’s National Institute of Korean Language.) The traditional view, espoused by the National Institute of Korean Language and the Ministry of Education, as well as by many linguists (e.g., King 2006, p. 276; Yeon 2012, p. 11; Sohn 1999, p. 74), is that Jejueo is a nonstandard dialect of Korean. For that reason, its use has been strongly discouraged, both in school and in public life. In fact, however, there is good reason to think that Jejueo is an

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Fig. 1 The language map of South Korea, according to the “standard” view. (Based on map by Hae Sung Park)

independent language and probably has been for hundreds of years. The key evidence comes from the criterion of intelligibility. Reports that Korean speakers have difficulty understanding Jejueo date back to at least the 1500s. Kim Jeong, the author of the Topography of Jeju Island (published in 1552) and a visitor to the island for 14 months starting in the summer of 1520, made the earliest surviving comment on the island’s speech. He noted that he had encountered many unfamiliar words and expressions but that, with time, he learned the language “like a child learning a barbarian language.” Eighty years later, in 1601, Kim Sangheon spent 6 months on Jeju Island as a secret inspector for the government in Seoul. He too was struck by what he heard there, complaining in his travelogue Namsarok that he had trouble understanding the islanders’ speech.

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Table 1 Comparison of some Korean and Jejueo vocabulary Korean bam bi namu abeoji so kkoch gamja

Jejueo bam bi nang abang swe gojang jiseul

Meaning night rain tree father cow flower potato

Communication would only have become more difficult in the decades that followed. A ban on travel to the mainland was imposed in 1629 and lasted until 1828, increasing the island’s isolation and deepening the linguistic divide between Jejueo and Korean. It is no surprise that today’s visitors who are fortunate enough to hear Jejueo report that they cannot understand it at all. In sum, the anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that Jejueo is a distinct language. According to the intelligibility criterion, if speakers of Korean find Jejueo incomprehensible, then it is a distinct language – and the language map of Korea must be modified. The goal of this chapter is to test this conclusion with the help of a rigorous comprehension experiment.

3.1

Participants

The choice of participants for the study was driven by two considerations. First, because most fluent speakers of Jejueo are middle-aged or older and because age is in general an important factor in psycholinguistic studies, all participants were selected from the same 52-to-68 age range. Second, it was necessary to select participants from various parts of Korea in order to ensure that there was no dialect continuum in which Jejueo might be comprehensible to speakers living in the nearby southernmost parts of the Korean mainland, but not to speakers in the Seoul area, which lies much further to the north. A total of 56 people participated in the experiment: 10 native speakers of Jejueo, whose results on the comprehension test would serve as a baseline against which to measure the performance of the other participants, and 46 monolingual speakers of Korean who had no significant previous exposure to Jejueo – 23 from Seoul, 11 from Yeosu, and 12 from Busan. The latter two cities are located in the southernmost part of the Korean Peninsula (Fig. 2) and are known for their distinctive varieties of Korean.

3.2

Materials

Various tests have been used in the literature to measure crosslinguistic and crossdialectal comprehension. Some studies employ written texts, and some make use of

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Fig. 2 The four locations for the intelligibility study. (Based on map by Hae Sung Park)

oral materials; some assess comprehension of words, while others focus on sentences and even narratives. Gooskens (2013) offers a general review of the vast literature on this subject. The objective in designing an intelligibility test for Jejueo was to create a task that involved the sort of language use that goes on in ordinary interpersonal communication about everyday matters (Hockett 1958, p. 323). For that reason, the test focused on the ability of residents of the Korean mainland to understand a simple narrative spoken in Jejueo. (A reverse version of this task testing the ability of Jejueo speakers to understand Korean would not be useful, as all Jejueo speakers also speak Korean.) The narrative was derived from the “Pear Story” (Chafe 1980; https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=bRNSTxTpG7U), a silent video that depicts a series of events that begins with a man on a ladder picking pears. Two fluent native speakers of Jejueo watched the video and described the events in Jejueo as they unfolded. The two versions of the story were then merged into a single script that eliminated false starts, pauses, incomplete sentences, and the like. An audio recording was then made of the script being read aloud by a highly fluent female speaker. In order to maximize the participants’ attention and concentration, only the first minute and nine seconds of the narrative, which consisted of a string of 22 clauses containing 118 words, was used. For ease of analysis, the narrative was divided into five segments, varying in length from 1 to 3 clauses as reproduced below in English. (The actual Jejueo text and audio file are available upon request.) Segment 1: (I) hear a chicken crowing in the distance. A person who didn’t hire a helper is picking pears up at the top of the tree. (He/she) drops about two (pears) down to the ground.

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Segment 2: After picking a lot of pears and putting them into (his/her) pocket, (he/she) came down the ladder. Segment 3: (He/she) is popping all the pears into the basket. Segment 4: (He/she) is carefully polishing the things [pears] that (he/she) dropped, with a bandana that (he/she) took off from around (his/her) neck, and putting them into the basket. Segment 5: And then (someone) came under the pear tree from a distance pulling a goat. After looking at the basket, (he/she) limps away again with the goat.

3.3

Method

Participants first listened to the entire test portion of the narrative without interruption (and without seeing the video). The recording was then replayed segment by segment. After each segment, the participants were asked to respond in writing to one or more written questions designed to test their understanding of what they had just heard. In order to make the task as easy and straightforward as possible, the questions were formulated in Korean, and the participants were encouraged to respond in that language as well. In all, there were nine questions, presented below in English. The actual script of the narrative and details pertaining to the scoring of the responses are available at the following URL: https://sites.google. com/a/hawaii.edu/jejueo/stuff/jejueo-intelligibility-test Questions (and answers) Segment Segment 1

Segment 2 Segment 3 Segment 4

Segment 5

Question 1. What kind of noise was described at the beginning of the story? 2. How many people appear in the story? 3. What is the person in the story doing? 4. What is the person in the story doing (now)? 5. What is the person in the story doing (now)? 6. What is happening in this part of the story? 7. What appeared with the person in this part of the story? 8. What is the person in this part of the story doing? 9. How is the person in this part of the story walking?

Answer A chicken (crowing).

One. (He/she) is picking pears in the tree alone. (He/she) comes down the ladder, with his/her pocket full of pears. (He/she) is putting all the pears into a basket. (He/she) is polishing the fallen pears with a handkerchief from (his/her) neck and putting them into the basket. A goat. (The person) came under the pear tree pulling the goat, looked at the pear basket and then left (limping) with the goat. With a limp.

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Table 2 Percentage of correct responses to the comprehension questions Jejueo native speakers 89.21%

Seoul 9.92%

Yeosu 6.00%

Busan 6.14%

Participants received one point for each correct piece of information. In the case of some questions (e.g., 7), where there was only one piece of relevant information (“a goat”), just one point was awarded. However, in questions such as 6, where there are potentially three pieces of information that could be reported (polishing pears, using a handkerchief to do so, and placing the pears in a basket), up to 3 points could be awarded. The maximum total score was 19.

3.4

Results

Table 2 reports the mean percentage of correct responses by each participant group. As can be seen here, there is a vast difference between the ability of the native speakers of Jejueo to respond correctly (89.21% correct) and the performance of the other three groups, which ranged from a mere 6.00% to 9.92%. Moreover, whereas approximately 52% of the responses by the mainland participants either consisted of “I don’t know” or were left blank, there was only one response of this type by a participant from Jeju Island. The contrast between the comprehension scores of the Jejueo speakers and those of the other participants is so large that no statistical analysis is required. However, the difference among the scores of the three groups of monolingual Koreans (ranging from 6.00% to 9.92%) calls for scrutiny. An analysis of variance showed that the effect of region is significant, F (2, 43) = 3.997 and p = 0.03. However, post hoc comparisons conducted with the help of Hyunah Ahn using the Bonferroni adjustment indicated that the mean percentage correct for the Yeosu and Busan participants did not differ significantly from the score for the Seoul participants: Seoul and Yeosu ( p = 0.07) and Seoul and Busan ( p = 0.09). In other words, the apparently higher level of success attained by the Seoul participants compared to the other two mainland groups is not statistically significant and requires no explanation.

3.5

Discussion

The results of the comprehension test show a stark contrast. Whereas speakers of Jejueo responded to the comprehension questions with a level of accuracy approaching 90%, the other groups had an average success rate of less than 10%. Evidently, Jejueo was not intelligible to monolingual speakers of Korean, regardless of whether they speak Seoul Korean or one of the regional varieties found in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. This conclusion is further reinforced by the results of a self-assessment survey that was conducted in conjunction with the experiment. The survey asked the

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Table 3 Self-assessment scores for comprehension (scale of 0 to 10) Survey question Before experiment After narrative After questions

Jeju Island 8.0 8.1 8.3

Seoul 1.78 0.65 0.41

Yeosu 1.72 0.27 0.30

Busan 1.16 1.08 0.75

participants to rate their ability to understand Jejueo by circling the appropriate number on an 11-point scale that ranged from 0 (“not at all”) to 5 (“quite a bit”) to 10 (“everything”). 0 not at all

1

2

3

4

5 quite a bit

6

7

8

9

10 everything

The survey question was posed three times in the course of the comprehension experiment: once right before participants heard the narrative, a second time right after the narrative, and a final time after they had finished responding to the comprehension questions. Table 3 presents the findings. Here again, a sharp contrast is evident between the Jejueo speakers on the one hand and the Korean monolinguals on the other. The former group indicated a strong ability to understand Jejueo from the beginning (8 on the scale) and slightly increased that assessment as they progressed through the experiment. In contrast, the three groups of monolingual Koreans acknowledged at the outset that they had a very limited ability to understand Jejueo (less than 2 on the scale), and they ended up lowering their self-assessment in the course of the experiment to less than 1 – the equivalent of “almost nothing.” In sum, taken together, the results of the comprehension task and of the supplementary survey point to a clear-cut conclusion: Jejueo is not comprehensible to monolingual speakers of Korean. By the intelligibility criterion, it therefore deserves to be treated as an independent language, not as a dialect of Korean. Now a new question arises. Is there a way to understand the relationship between Jejueo and Korean in terms of some other pair of languages, whose status relative to each other is already well established? Dutch and Norwegian offer an interesting example in this regard.

4

Dutch and Norwegian

Dutch and Norwegian are Germanic languages, whose family relationship can be easily observed in the large number of cognates in their vocabulary – as is also the case for Korean and Jejueo of course. At the same time, though, Dutch and Norwegian are also uncontroversially recognized as distinct languages, raising the possibility that they might provide an instructive baseline against which to measure

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the performance of the participants in the Jejueo study. With this possibility in mind, an experiment was designed to determine the extent to which Norwegian is intelligible to speakers of Dutch.

4.1

Participants

Twenty-eight native speakers of Dutch (16 females and 12 males) participated in the study, none of whom had significant prior exposure to Norwegian. Because both Dutch and Norwegian (unlike Jejueo) have fluent speakers of all ages, no attempt was made to restrict the age of the participants, who were between 19 and 68 years old.

4.2

Materials

The Norwegian test materials consisted of a native speaker’s retelling of the Pear Story, not a direct translation of the Korean narrative. It consisted of 14 clauses, containing a total of 87 words. It was divided into 7 segments, each of which was followed by one or more questions – for a total of 11 questions.

4.3

Method

The same method used for Jejueo was employed for Norwegian. The Dutch participants first listened to the entire narrative without interruption. The recording was then replayed in segments, each of which was followed by one or more written questions in Dutch, to which the participants responded in writing (in Dutch). (Both the text and the questions are available upon request.)

4.4

Results and Discussion

The average success rate for the Dutch speakers on the comprehension questions for Norwegian was 9.89%, which falls into roughly the same range as the success rate of the monolingual Korean speakers in the Jejueo study. Moreover, a selfassessment survey similar to the one used in the Jejueo study yielded comparable results. On average, the Dutch speakers estimated their ability to comprehend Norwegian at 2.3 on the 11-point assessment scale before the study began; they then lowered their mean self-assessment to 1.18 after hearing the narrative, and lowered it still further to 1.05 after trying to respond to the comprehension questions. The conclusion seems obvious. If Norwegian and Dutch are to be considered distinct languages based on the criterion of low comprehensibility, then the same

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conclusion should be drawn for Jejueo and Korean, for which intelligibility levels are comparably low. This further supports the claim that Jejueo should be classified as an independent language.

5

Conclusion

In the past, it has been suggested that Korean is part of a Koreo-Japonic language family that could perhaps be placed in a still larger Altaic grouping along with Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, as depicted in Table 4 (based on the summary offered by Sohn 1999, p. 18). However, this idea has proven to be highly problematic (Vovin 2009), and it is not uncommon these days to see Korean classified as an isolate – a language with no living relatives. In fact, though, Korean is not an isolate; it has a sister language, Jejueo, whose origins can be traced back to the same ancestor, either Kodaegugeo (Old Korean) or Chungsegugeo (Middle Korean). Jejueo is therefore not just part of the cultural heritage of Jeju Island; it is part of the heritage of all of Korea. It more than merits its place on language maps of the Korean Peninsula, past and present. Two revisions in particular are called for. First, an accurate language map of the southern part of Korea prior to 1950 should capture not only the generally accepted fact that the dominant variety of speech used by the indigenous population of Jeju Island was Jejueo but also that Jejueo was and is a language distinct from Korean (Fig. 3). Second, an accurate contemporary language map should show that there are currently two languages on Jeju Island, the endangered traditional language (Jejueo) and the now dominant Korean (Fig. 4). It is important to note in closing that this is by no means the end of the story. According to the traditional view of linguistic variation on the Korean Peninsula, there are five major “dialects,” two in North Korea (Hamgyeong and Pyeongan) and three in South Korea (Central, Gyeongsang, and Jeolla), as illustrated in Fig. 5. An obvious question now arises: is it possible that one or more of these speech varieties might qualify for language status, just as Jejueo does? It has been suggested that Hamgyeong may well be an independent language (e.g., Alexander Vovin, Table 4 One version of the Altaic language family, including sample members Koreo-Japonic Korean

Japanese

Turkic Turkish Tatar Kazakh Uzbek Uyghur etc.

Tungusic Evenki Manchu Orok etc.

Mongolic Mongolian etc.

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Fig. 3 A language map for South Korea recognizing the dominance of Jejueo on Jeju Island prior to 1950. (Based on map by Hae Sung Park)

Fig. 4 A language map of contemporary South Korea recognizing the continued existence of Jejueo. (Based on map by Hae Sung Park)

personal communication), but the only way to answer this question for any of the supposed Korean dialects is to establish the degree to which they are intelligible to monolingual speakers of standard Korean. It is to be hoped that the eventual resolution of these issues will lead to the creation of a more definitive language map for Korea.

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Fig. 5 The five major “dialects” in the Korean Peninsula (Based on map by Hae Sung Park)

Acknowledgment This work was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2015-OLU-2250005). Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Anderson, S. (2004). How many languages are there in the world? Pamphlet prepared for the linguistic Society of America. http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/faq-how-many-languages-are-there-world Austin, P., & Sallabank, J. (2011). Introduction. In P. Austin & J. Sallabank (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of endangered languages (pp. 1–24). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Bernard, R. (1996). Language preservation and publishing. In N. Hornberger (Ed.), Indigenous literacies in the Americas: Language planning from the bottom up (pp. 139–156). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bouwer, L. (2007). Intercomprehension and mutual intelligibility among southern Malagasy languages. Language Matters: Studies in the Languages of Africa, 38(2), 253–274. Casad, E. (1974). Mutual intelligibility testing. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Chafe, W. (Ed.). (1980). The pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Norwood: Ablex. Fishman, J. (1972). Language and nationalism: Two integrative essays. Rowley: Newbury House. Gooskens, C. (2013). Experimental methods for measuring intelligibility of closely related language varieties. In R. Bayley, R. Cameron, & C. Lucas (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. 195–213). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Grenoble, L. (2011). Language ecology and endangerment. In P. Austin & J. Sallabank (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of endangered languages (pp. 27–44). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Haugen, E. (1966). Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist, 68, 922–935. Hockett, C. (1958). A course in modern linguistics. New York: Macmillan. http://www.ling.upenn. edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html King, R. (2006). Dialect variation in Korea. In H. Sohn (Ed.), Language in Korean culture and society (pp. 264–280). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. King, R. (2007). North and South Korea. In A. Simpson (Ed.), Language and national identity in Asia (pp. 200–234). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kosheleva, O., & Kreivnovich, V. (2014). Dialect or a new language: A possible explanation of the 70% mutual intelligibility threshold. International Mathematical Forum, 9, 189–192. Maffi, A. (2011). Linguistic diversity: What’s the fuss all about? Terralingua Langscape, 2(8), 3–12. Okura, E. (2015). Language versus dialect in language cataloguing: The vexed case of Otomanguean dialect continua (Vol. 46, pp. 1–19). University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics. Sohn, H.-M. (1999). The Korean language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages. (2003). Language vitality and endangerment. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Language_ vitality_and_endangerment_EN.pdf Vovin, A. (2009). Koreo-Japonic: A re-evaluation of a common genetic origin. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Weinreich, M. (1945). The YIVO faces the post-war world. YIVO Bleter: Journal of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, 5, 3–18. Yeon, J. (2012). Korean dialects: A general survey. In N. Tranter (Ed.), The languages of Japan and Korea (pp. 168–185). New York: Routledge. Alekano Culture. Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Characterizing the Language Boundaries of the Arab Middle East and North Africa: A Geolinguistic Analysis

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Moran Zaga and Ronen Zeidel

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Relationship Between Language Community, Territoriality, and the State . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Significance of the Arabic Language in History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Role of Language in the Setting of International Borders of the Arab States . . . . . . . . 5 Significance of the Arabic Language Since Emergence of the Arab States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Comparing the Linguistic and Political Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

232 233 234 236 238 241 243 244

Abstract

For many decades, the political structure of the Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa (i.e., the Arab world) has demonstrated relative stability. Although much has been written about the colonial borders of the region and very few attempts were made to challenge them, the international borders were generally taken for granted. However, in the last decade, the intensifying expression of civil society and non-state organizations in the region has weakened these borders, especially by increasing cross-border activities. This trend can be related to the long-lasting prominence of the ethnolinguistic affiliation of the Arabic-speaking community. Pan-Arab solidarity is primarily an emotional and a cultural phenomenon, but it does also represent territorial manifestation that can be roughly confined by imaginary ethnolinguistic borders. As Pan-Arabism and modern M. Zaga (*) Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel e-mail: [email protected] R. Zeidel The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_115

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nationalism represent conflicting territorial manifestations, many struggles arise, especially with the growing weight of the society versus the state. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the significance of the linguistic borders in comparison with the political borders of the region. This type of examination entails a multidisciplinary approach that includes historical and theoretical analyses of linguistics, sociology, and geography, with a particular focus on borders and territoriality. The geographical prism provides an important view on the spatial level, as well as on the symbolic level of these sociopolitical phenomena. Keywords

Arabic · Geolinguistic · Linguistic borders · Language community · Soft/hard boundaries

1

Introduction

The Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa can be divided into a variety of significant social categories, linguistic, ethnic, religious, cultural, and more; however, the current political division is based on none of the above. This chapter focuses on one dominant social category that does not coincide with the political division: the language community. When one is looking at the political map of this region and compares it with the linguistic map, the most outstanding fact is the fragmentation of the Arabic-speaking region into several political entities with international borders. This disparity calls for an investigation of the role that language has played in setting the borders of the Arab world and the reason for its lack of representation. Another discrepancy between the political and the linguistic maps appears in the existence of large cross-border language communities of Berber and Kurdish speakers that became minorities under the political partition. The formation of modern political borders in the Arab Middle East has interrupted many social patterns and trapped conflicting patterns inside mutual political units. The gap between the social and political borders is clearly manifested nowadays, and language provides significant evidence of that. However, the deep solidarity within the Arab-speaking community has not been diminished due to the state divisions nor has the solidarity within the minority language communities in the Arab world. The prominence of the linguistic factor within the region raises the question of territorial identity hierarchy – political versus linguistic. The time factor of about a century since the drawing of these borders provides an appropriate perspective in order to grasp the significance of these disparities. The Arab world encompasses all states where Arabic is the official language: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Nevertheless, as Arabic is one of the official languages of non-Arab states in the region (Israel) and outside (Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Comoro Islands, and Somalia), these areas falling outside of the designated region will only be mentioned briefly.

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Characterizing the Language Boundaries of the Arab Middle East and North. . .

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The Relationship Between Language Community, Territoriality, and the State

Many scholars debated on the definition of language community, some focusing on the language criterion itself and some on other additional categories, such as political, social, and historical (Bloomfield 1933; Fishman 1971; Labov 1972). It is difficult to summarize these varied interpretations into a single theory, but all agree that the language community is a social and political construct (Busch and KellyHolmes 2004). A language community represents a salient identity in the Arab world, one which coincides with the ethnic identity of the Arabs. Arabic is used as an official language of the Arab states and serves as a main identity feature to the majority of the society. The theoretical discussion of social groupings, communities, collective identities, constructs, and group solidarity lays a fundamental ground for understanding the significance of the Arab peoples in the sociopolitical stratum of the region (see Suleiman 2003). More specifically, the relationship between the sociological and spatial perspectives produces a better comprehension of the region’s framework. The fundamental assumption of linguistics considers language as the basic criterion for social division (Busch and Kelly-Holmes 2004). For geographers, however, the linguistic social division is merely an outcome of territoriality. Territoriality represents an ideological sphere where collective identities are bounded in a territorial definition (Jabareen 2015, p. 52; Lefebvre 1991, p. 94). In this view, the Arabic-speaking peoples who formed a language community created their own area of space and developed their own particular territorial identity. The dynamic relationship between space and language is constantly shaping and reshaping the communities’ territorial definition, while stronger linguistic bonds lead to stronger (imaginary) social boundaries. A focus on the territorial aspect allows us to examine the linguistic borders versus the political borders. Škiljan’s theoretical model distinguishes between “soft boundaries” and “hard boundaries” of language communities (Škiljan 2001, pp. 90–91). The soft type refers to subtle differences in language, which can be ascribed to nuances between Arabic dialects (Fig. 1). While multiple colloquial Arabic dialects divide the society into various designations, many are mutually understandable. Hard boundaries, which are the case in point, refer to an obvious distinctive feature that will be familiar to every member of the community. In the Arab world, a hard boundary can refer to the conceptual boundaries between the Arabic-speaking community and other language communities, such as Kurdish, Berber, Turkish, and Persian A main idea in linguistic theory asserts that the nation-state has evolved according to “one state = one nation = one language” equation (Busch and Kelly-Holmes 2004). The notion of political borders that coincides with social (mostly linguistic and ethnic) borders is a main ideology from which the nation-state derives its legitimacy. These theoretical grounds strengthen the assumption that language serves as a main political tool in the nation-building process of modern states and is designed to create an imaginary unique community. However, in our case, the

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Fig. 1 The “soft boundaries” between Arabic dialects

Arabic speakers constitute a broader community than the nation-state. The statenation-language formula is far from describing the political borders in the Arab world since the Arab nation is practically divided into several states, disregarding prominent social categories. In comparison with the European nation-state model, the legitimacy of the Arab states has been challenged since their emergence, and some are still debating on the very essence of their definition as nation-states. According to Keating (2001), some nations are stateless and bounded by culture (language among other criteria), as seems to be the case with Arab nationalism. The link between language and ethnicity in the Arab world is hard to separate, as shown in Kedourie’s famous quotation: “There is no clear-cut distinction between linguistic and racial nationalism” (Kedourie 1966, p. 71). Both affiliations represent an alternate consciousness of group boundaries than the individual nation-state group. In order to comprehend the struggle between them, it is important to acknowledge these boundaries as both social and territorial.

3

The Significance of the Arabic Language in History The production of space, having attained the conceptual and linguistic level, acts retroactively upon the past, disclosing aspects and moments of it hitherto uncomprehended. (Lefebvre 1991, p. 65)

Adoption of the Arabic language by Islam in the seventh century was a major turning point for the sociopolitical future of the Middle East. Between the seventh and the ninth centuries, Arabic was the official language of a political entity named the Islamic Caliphate, which covered the entire region of the Middle East and North Africa. Under the Islamic Caliphate, Arabic spread through the conquered territories. During the Umayyad dynasty, Arabic became the official language of governance

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(696 AD) (Lewis 1970, p. 75). At that time, the main languages in this region were Aramaic (Syria), Greek (Syria and Egypt), Persian-Pahlavi (Mesopotamia and Persia), and various Arabic dialects as a spoken language (Arabia) (Chejne 1969, p. 52; Rahman 1989, p. 58; Spuler 1995, p. 37). In a relatively short time, Arabic became the majority language within the Caliphate territories. Three main factors contributed to this process: (1) expansion of Islam and its political power, (2) the role of the literate elite in spreading the language throughout urban centers and increasing its prestige, and (3) governmental policies that included establishment of Arabic as the official language of the Caliphate, transition to the use of paper, and implementation of a postal system during the Abbasid dynasty regime – all strengthened the common denominator under the flag of Arabic (Lewis 1970, pp. 92–93). The Arabic language served as a powerful integrative factor. With the beginning of the use of paper for mass production, oral traditions diminished and were replaced by common historical and religious narratives (Muir 1924, p. 434). The communication developments of paper and a postal system encouraged socialization and solidarity across the caliphate, in a way that is similar to modern globalization processes. Those changes promoted feelings of cohesion and unity as well as a gradual fading of social boundaries between castes; these factors allowed a process of nation-building. The dissolution of the Islamic Caliphate during the ninth century resulted in disintegration of Arabic language use as well. The independent sovereignties in Persia restored high status to Persian and its broad usage. Similarly, the struggle over political control in North Africa empowered the Berber tribes and their cultural dominance, with its linguistic expression. Probably the most significant process that decreased the Arabic dominance was the various Turkish dialects that have penetrated the region with the powers of Seljuk and later Ottomans (Chejne 1969, pp. 80–83). Turkish became the official language of the long-lasting Ottoman Empire (~1300 to 1918) and gained a high level of prestige. Under Ottoman rule, elites and high officials had to acquire the Turkish language and accept cultural assimilation in order to maintain their status (Wimmer 2002, p. 160). Despite the important role of Turkish, the fragmented nature of the empire allowed most of its inhabitants to keep using their own local languages. Among them was Arabic, which remained the majority language in the Arab territories, though it was considered to be a provincial language. Even though Arabic lost its political status, it continued to represent the local culture and, of course, the religion. Therefore, it was clear to the Ottomans and Arabs that the language served as a separating category (Masters 2013, p. 16). The inferiority of Arabic in the Middle East came to an end with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and independence of the Arab states in the twentieth century. At this point in history, language had an ideological role as a superior definer of a nation. After a long period of a nonbinding linguistic link between the ruler and its people, language became a compulsory item in achieving a sense of nationalism (Edwards 2009, p. 208). Thus, it is essential to emphasize the importance of the transition phase from the Ottoman Empire to the modern states, a phase that symbolized, above all, a shift in the meaning and functionality of language in this region.

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Under the influence of European nationalism, ethnicity became the dominant definition of the society and lead its way to Arab nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth century (Holt 1996; Suleiman 1994; Tibi 1981). With the growth of printed and electronic media, Arabic restored its political and social power, spreading common narratives to the local society. Thus, language became a main tool for identity construction and a central vehicle for the definition of an Arab people in the modern political framework (Holt 1996, pp. 15–19).

4

The Role of Language in the Setting of International Borders of the Arab States

In the course of these political-cultural developments, the language factor was strikingly unrepresented in the emergence of the Arab states. The same can be said about the ethnicity factor. None of the post-World War I (WWI) border agreements mentioned these factors as a basis for political division in the region. Exceptionally, the earlier Hussein-McMahon and Sykes-Picot engagements considered the ethnic identity of Arabs as the ultimate legitimate basis for border delimitation. In nonbinding letters of 1915–1916 between Sir Henry McMahon, Britain’s High Commissioner in Cairo, and Sharif Hussein of Mecca, discussion evolved around the territorial question for the future of an “Arab nation” (IOR 1915): Hussein to McMahon, July 14, 1915: “Whereas the whole of the Arab nation without any exception have decided in these last years to accomplish their freedom, and grasp the reins of their administration both in theory and practice. . .” McMahon to Hussein, August 30, 1915 “. . .we confirm to you the terms [. . .] in which was stated clearly our desire for the independence of Arabia and its inhabitants, together with our approval of the Arab Caliphate when it should be proclaimed. We declare once more that His Majesty’s Government would welcome the resumption of the Caliphate by an Arab of true race.”

As can be seen in the following letters, the correspondence evolved around the details of delineation, in which it was clear that the ethnic and linguistic factors played a decisive role: McMahon to Hussein on October 24, 1915: “The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded.”

The widely mentioned Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916 that was composed during WWI portrays a similar approach, though more hesitant, of establishing an Arab state. The agreement suggests for the first time the option of several political entities, though united in the form of an Arab confederation (IOR 1916). Sir Edward Grey to Paul Cambon, May 16, 1916: “It is accordingly understood between French and British Governments – 1. That France and Great Britain are prepared to recognize and protect an independent Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States. . .”

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The ethnic consideration was significantly addressed in the agreement, though without a stated reference to linguistic division. The words “Arab” and “Arabs” were widely used, but the boundaries were indicated in a general manner as the agreement was not designated to delimit local sovereignties (the decisions regarding the partition of the Middle East referred to division of spheres of influence between Britain and France in the region and did not determine the political order of the local powers). Nevertheless, the great powers that were party to the agreement drew a suggested outline for the future Arab state: Sir Edward Grey to Count Benckendorff, May 23, 1916: “. . .starting from the region Merga Var, the frontier of the Arab state shall follow the crest-line of the mountains which at present divide the Ottoman and Persian Dominions.”

In the armistice arrangements of WWI, Sir Mark Sykes issued a memorandum stating that: Sir Mark Sykes, October 1918: “. . .we do not consider that any areas should remain even nominally under Ottoman rule except such as are properly speaking Turkish.”

Mention of the language criteria, as appeared in Sykes’ memorandum, was exceptional in the common terminology of the correspondences, and, again, it referred to the outer boundary between the Arabs and the Turks. These ideological perceptions of borders were ignored shortly afterward in two dimensions: first, toward the imaginary external border that confines the Arab world, and second, with respect to the internal division of the region, regardless of the sense of unity of the Arabs. From that moment in history, language and ethnicity were no longer a factor for the formation of future states in the region. Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Lebanon, and the district of Mosul were frequently discussed by the great powers as separate territories, in contrast with the Hussein-McMahon understandings. This can be related to the political developments after 1916 that included the rise of local leaders (such as Emir Faisal in Syria), the rise of nationalist movements (such as in Egypt), and the understandings with different ethnic groups (such as the Armenians and the Zionists). The border negotiations that followed regarded the idea of internal divisions as taken for granted. The San Remo Convention of April 24, 1920, and the “Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Turkey” of August 10, 1920, known as the “Treaty of Sèvres,” mentioned the states of Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Palestine, Hedjaz, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunis, and Morocco (“Treaties” 1924). Whether or not the reference to these states indicated recognition of their independence is open to discussion; however, merely mentioning them symbolized the partition of the Middle East and North Africa that was already obvious to the great powers, as opposed to the Sykes-Picot agreement. Outstanding evidence of the local narrative can be found in Emir Faisal’s letter to Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby in 1920 (TNA 1920):

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Fig. 2 The linguistic borders versus the political borders

Emir Faisal’s letter to Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby: “It is with great appreciation that I put on record recognition of Conference at San Remo that Syria and Mesopotamia are both independent States. This decision of Conference has been arrived at, as all the Arabs believe, in accord with desire of independent Syrian nation and in spirit of justice and humanity. As regards question of Palestine, I have not noticed in your Lordship’s letter enough clearance to suggest recognition that this country is an inseparable part of Syria, though Palestine geographically, ethnographically, traditionally, economically, and from point of view of language and national desire can in no way be separated from Syria. Moreover, there is to be found amongst the correspondence between His Majesty Hussein and his Excellency Sir H. McMahon a letter in name of Great Britain, dated the 25th October, 1915, which recognized Palestine to be within Arab Empire, whose limits as therein defined are accepted by British Government.”

The apparent contradiction between the desire to split up the Syrian state from the other Arab territories and the desire to annex Palestine on the basis of a joint language is clearly demonstrated here. Of course, one cannot separate the political ambitions and interests of the ruler, but it is the same approach that eventually became a reality, i.e., divided Arab states on the political level and nationalethnolinguistic consciousness on the narration level at the same time. The eventual borders were not conceived as ideological lines, rather as a representation of balance of powers and ad hoc diplomatic developments (Fig. 2).

5

Significance of the Arabic Language Since Emergence of the Arab States

The Arabic language comprises 3.3% of the world’s languages and the majority of Middle East languages (Central Intelligence Agency – The World Factbook 2013). Arabic represents the notion of a united sociopolitical construct under mutual

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agendas and beliefs. Its widespread use across the globe, especially in the religious context, confers strong and prestigious identity. Classical-textual Arabic plays an important role in unification of the language, as well as the identity. Furthermore, it is a crucial definitive factor for the biggest ethnic group of the region, the Arabs. As such, it preceded Islam which has a strong connection to the Arabic language, carrying it beyond the Arab world. Arabic is a major factor within the Arab-Muslim society as the main communication language in this region, as the language of prayer, and as a historical and cultural agent (Chejne 1969, pp. 3–4). Both political Islam and Arab nationalism constitute pan-ideologies which provoke the current political partition of the Arab world. Yet, Islamism represents a universal idea, while Arabism represents stronger territorial ties (Suleiman 1994, pp. 20–21). Although linguistic affiliation does not necessarily correspond with territoriality, the external borders that confine the Arab states can be seen as linguistic lines: the southern borders of North Africa and Sudan, the northern border of the Middle East with Turkey, and the northeastern border with Iran. However, these borders were either old historical borders or reflections of the topography – the border agreements clearly specify topographical features as a basis for delimitation. In fact, some of them cut linguistic groups (Kurds, Tuareg, Berber, and also Arabs). The establishment of Israel in 1948 created the first political and ethnolinguistic border in the heart of the Arab Middle East. However, even this exceptional case did not strictly follow linguistic lines (despite its revival in Europe, Hebrew became a national language in Palestine. It was given an official status in the Mandate in 1922, along with Arabic and English). Underneath the territorial states, Arabic asserts its predominant status. Arabic, in its literary form, is the common language of people from Morocco to Oman and serves as the sole official language of 15 Arab states. Except Israel, in all other countries of the Arab world, Arabic is the language of the vast majority, often the only language spoken. The local dialects that were emphasized once the borders were demarcated were still within the theoretical spectrum of soft boundaries. These dialects did not revoke the status and functionality of textual Arabic as the official language of the state. However, this cultural affinity, created by the Arabic language, has so far failed to transform into a political reality. Pan-Arab solidarity is primarily an emotional and a cultural phenomenon. Although the territorial Arab states all over the region are still lagging behind in the formulation of a particular national identity, Pan-Arab nationalism is not, at present, in a position to challenge the territorial states. Although attempts to unify Arab states occurred during the mid-twentieth century, they are no longer taking place. The scale of regional cooperation in the Arab world is small compared with other language regions, such as Latin America, and even with multilinguistic regions such as Southeast Asia and Africa. In other words, Arabic does not provide the motivation to form significant political, economic, and military unification throughout the Arab world. Widespread solidarity across the Arab world expressed during the “Arab Spring” was only possible because Arabs share the same language and, through it, can create a community of solidarity. It is only natural for a language spoken

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over such a wide territory to be so divided, and the differences between the various dialects of Arabic are smaller than the differences between dialects of Italian, a language spoken over a much smaller territory. Therefore, every linguistic analysis of the political borders in the Arab region should start with the fragmentation of Arabic. Everything else is derived from this fact. Arabic, therefore, is the “elephant in the room” in our story. It is due to the significance and binding nature of Arabic that most of the emerging modern Arab states had to devote a greater effort in the project of nation-building, compared to other nation-states, as they did not differ from one another regarding a particular language or ethnicity. Interestingly enough, the territorial states made no attempt to construct a unique form of the language; rather they used the language as a political tool to gain control over linguistic minorities within their borders. The most prominent languages of native ethnic minorities living in the Arab world are the Kurdish and Berber families of languages. Through a centralized process of Arabization, the governments acted firmly to impose the Arabic language over the various ethnic minorities. In most of the Arab states, the demarcation of internal administrative borders tendentiously ignored social divisions of ethnic minorities and linguistic lines. In Morocco, Berber concentrations form a cohesive area covering most of the interior. Yet, the area is fragmented into provinces, preventing the establishment of a Berber region. Similarly, Darfur in Western Sudan is fragmented into three provinces, maintaining the name Darfur. Even the region forming the independent South Sudan was previously divided into a number of provinces and was not considered a single region. Only two Arab states maintain provincial borders more or less following linguistic lines. In Syria, the northeastern province of Hasakeh is where most of Syria’s Kurds live. The three provinces forming the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq – Suleimaniya, Irbil, and Dohuk – are home to most of the Kurdish population of that state. The Kurdish struggle in Iraq was both territorial and linguistic. Language was often used to define Kurdish territories and is still used by the Kurds to expand these areas. If Kurds ever declare independence, these administrative borders will form their national territory. Kurdish languages have been part of the Kurdish struggle for self-determination from the beginning in the early twentieth century. When, since the 1920s, Kurds were entrapped in four states (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria), language was a major vehicle for attaining self-rule and preserving Kurdish culture. Yet, Kurds have had modest or no political achievements as far as the Kurdish language is concerned. Although some improvements were made, notably in Turkey after 2002, Kurdish is not an official language in any country except Iraq. The process in Iraq was gradual: Kurdish was acknowledged as the official language of the Kurdish region as early as 1970, but then it was not an official language on a state level and even in the Kurdish region shared the status with Arabic. The constitution of 2005 made Kurdish, along with Arabic, one of the two official languages all over Iraq, and in Iraqi Kurdistan, it is de facto the first official language.

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The Amazigh (Berber) are a significant native ethnic and linguistic group in North Africa, particularly in the westernmost states of the Arab world: Algeria and Morocco. In Morocco 28–40% of the population are Amazigh, and in Algeria, although almost all the population is Arab-Berber in origin, only 15% identify themselves as Berbers. Following a mostly civil struggle, the Tamazight language received an official status in Morocco in 2011 and in Algeria as late as 2015. However, in both countries there are people, especially Berber intellectuals and activists, who doubt the implementation of that new status for the language. Unquestionably, in Arab states where the native ethnic language was granted an official status, Arabic is by far the dominant language and the first official language. The language of the minority is much weaker and spoken only by the minority. Kurdish hardly ever mixed with Arabic and until recently educated Kurds were more likely to use Arabic than Kurdish. There were many more Arabized Kurds than Kurdified Arabs. It appears that in North Africa, Tamazight and Arabic (particularly the local Moroccan dialect known as Darija) blend more easily into each other. However, if 99% of Algerians are of Arab-Berber origins and only 15% identify themselves as Berber, this is an indication of the hegemony of Arabic. In both Morocco and Algeria, the estimates of Berbers in the population are based on speaking one of the Berber languages. As the language of religion, administration, and culture, Arabic managed to repress Tamazight and Kurdish to the point that their very survival was in danger. Yet a stubborn struggle in which language was a major issue succeeded in protecting the language and in achieving a mainly symbolic official status for it. The struggle for preservation of the language was inevitably also a struggle against repression by Arabic. Thus, the language was spoken publically; intellectuals would use it often in the diaspora; and parents would call their children with typical Kurdish or Berber names, defying official prohibitions. Special attention was given to the education system, requesting use of the native language in schools instead of Arabic.

6

Comparing the Linguistic and Political Boundaries

Both the Arabic language community and the Arab state represent dominant sociopolitical constructs. In this view, both constructs possess hard boundaries which can be tested in a comparative study. Barth and his successors made a remarkable contribution to the study of collective identities when they suggested focusing on social boundaries (Barth 1969; Jenkins 1997; Laitin 1992; Wimmer 2002). According to the Eisenstadt and Giesen theoretical model, a collective identity is formed when society constructs social boundaries (Eisenstadt and Giesen 1995, pp. 72–102). Just as with the modern idea of international boundaries, social boundaries determine the distinction between the community and the “others.” With no linguistic distinction between the Arab states, the Arabic language formed a competing cross-border community.

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For many centuries in regional history, the borders maintained a vague idea and dynamic nature. Since the early twentieth century, political borders have become a prominent factor in the reality of the Middle East, and their nature turned into sharp and solid lines of permanent character (even though they were constantly changing). According to social scientists, the borders became sociopolitical constructs on their own since they comprised an essential function in the nationalist agenda (BrunetJailly 2005, p. 636; Newman and Paasi 1998, p. 187). Language boundaries are usually represented in a territorial dimension as zones of transition, where the density of this phenomenon weakens (Busch and KellyHolmes 2004; Melis 1996). In many cases around the world, the zonal nature of linguistic borderlands was adjusted to act according to the sharply defined nature of political boundaries. Moreover, the institutional efforts confined the “natural” language distribution into the artificial linear division of the state (Custred 2011, pp. 270–272). The nation-state consciousness provided another contribution to this transition process. However, in our case, the Arab nation consciousness competes with that of the nation-state and serves as another layer of territorial identity with alternate border definition. None of the local dialects of Arabic was effective enough to turn into a distinctive hallmark of a territorial Egyptian, Iraqi, or even Moroccan nation or, as the article points out, to transform soft boundaries to hard boundaries. No Arab state ever used the local dialect to establish its own identity, and, in most cases, it has been brushed aside by politicians and intellectuals alike who favor the literary language. In other words, the political borders failed to function as components in the nationalist agenda on that perspective, and the linguistic borders remained confined in what we call “the Arab world.” The magnitude of widespread Arabic emotions strengthens the community’s imaginary borders. The influence of the Arabic language was shown during the 1990s in the emergence of electronic media, especially the Qatar-based “Al Jazeera” TV channel, catering for spectators all over the Arab world and crossing territorial borders, criticizing Arab regimes from Morocco to Oman. The impact was even more dramatic in the eruption of the “Arab Spring” which was more “Arab” than a “spring.” That a suicide of a Tunisian vendor in a peripheral town was so rapidly transformed into a regional tsunami can be explained only by the affinity created largely by ethnolinguistic consciousness. As this affinity grows stronger, the territorial states become weaker, as was seen in the “failed state” process of Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. With regard to boundaries, a greater expression of language borders affects the political borders by adding the latter a variety of symbolic meanings. Instead of being merely an ad hoc manifestation of power balance, the political borders are more inclined to represent ethnolinguistic minorities, religious sectors, cultural differences, and more. This tendency is demonstrated in the dissolution of several Arab states into social and sectarian fractures (yet still within the international borders). The deep solidarity that the Arab community possesses has not seriously challenged the post-WWI regional order so far, yet it has served as a source of regional imbalance and a major trigger to the sweeping failed state process.

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Conclusion

Arabic plays a significant role, both politically and socially, in showing territorial manifestations. The relationship between language, state, and territoriality can explain fundamental sociopolitical struggles in the Arab region through a geographical prism. The analysis of these relations has been addressed in several dimensions: 1. The territorial dimension that analyzes discrepancies between the political and linguistic borders appears to be ambivalent. On the one hand, the outer borders of the Arab region are in fact linguistic, even though the language criterion was barely mentioned in the delimitation negotiations. In the North and the East, Arabic is separated from Turkish and Persian, strong and hegemonic languages in their own right and hallmarks of nation-states. In the South, it is separated from African languages. On the other hand, the language factor was totally ignored in the process of setting the international borders between the Arab states. The consequence of this omission is that the Arab territorial states find it hard to construct a cohesive and stable national identity and are bound to continue the ongoing process of producing one, with mixed results. 2. The sociopolitical dimension focuses on the distinction between the language community and the state community. Considering the assumption that both constitute sociopolitical constructs, they equally possess borders of common significance, though on a different scales. To a large extent, this view explains the regional instability and the collision between the two dominant constructs. 3. The conceptual dimension shows that some features between the political borders and the language community are common to both, while some are distinct. A focus on the behavior of these boundaries reveals that a stronger phenomenon sweeps the other to act in a similar manner. When the individual nation-states were at the peak of their power, the linguistic boundaries clung to the state’s borders through an institutional process. The various linguistic laws which summed up in a prominent Arabization process confined to the jurisdiction of each state. In recent years, the rise of civil society (as was seen in the Arab Spring demonstrations) emphasized social features such as language communities, and some progress was made to recognize the language rights by state institutions. Intensification of this phenomenon encourages multiple cross-border or inter-regional dynamics which reduce the strength of international borders, in general. 4. The last examined dimension was the representation of language contacts within the Arab world, whose frontiers are characterized in restless struggles. It is in relation to other native languages, such as Kurdish, Tamazight, and African languages in South Sudan, that the “war of words” is being fought. As languages of minorities, these languages are considered inferior to Arabic and were repressed by Arabic to the point of near extinction. The very intimate connection between these peoples and their languages turned language into the focal point of

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their struggle. The reaction was sometimes a policy of Arabization enforced by the government to marginalize the other languages. More recently, however, the trend has changed toward a recognition of the languages, sometimes giving them an official status. Eventually, the fact that the multistate map has not been translated into a multi-linguistic map leads to an ongoing struggle between the different territorial perceptions. Although it is a relatively straightforward argument to recognize the importance of the Arabic language, this “elephant in the room” should be given more attention by political and academic circles. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Barth, F. (1969). Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget. Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language history. New York: Holt, Rinehard & Winston. Brunet-Jailly, E. (2005). Theorizing borders: An interdisciplinary perspective. Geopolitics, 10, 633–649. Busch, B., & Kelly-Holmes, H. (2004). Language boundaries as social, political and discursive constructs. In B. Busch & H. Kelly-Holmes (Eds.), Language, discourse and borders in the Yugoslav successor states (pp. 1–12). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Central Intelligence Agency – The World Factbook. (2013). The world factbook. Retrieved 02 18, 2016, from Languages: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/ 2098.html#135 Chejne, A. (1969). The Arabic language: Its role in history. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Custred, G. (2011). The linguistic consequences of boundaries, borderlands, and frontiers. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 26(3), 265–278. Edwards, J. (2009). Language and identity: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Eisenstadt, S., & Giesen, B. (1995). The construction of collective identity. European Journal of Sociology, 36, 72–102. Fishman, J. A. (1971). Sociolinguistics: A brief introduction. Rowley: Newbury House. Holt, M. (1996). Divided loyalties: Language and ethnic identity in the Arab world. In Y. Suleiman (Ed.), Language and identity in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 11–24). Surrey: Curzon. IOR. (1916). The Sykes-Picot agreement, April – October 1916. IOR. L/P&S/18/B259. London. IOR (India Office Records). (1915). Correspondence with the Grand Sharif of Mecca (HusaynMcMahon Correspondence), September 1914 – March 1916, British Library. India Office Records. L/P&S/18/B222. Great Britain. Jabareen, Y. (2015). The emerging Islamic State: Terror, territoriality, and the agenda of social transformation. Geoforum, 58, 51–55. Jenkins, R. (1997). Rethinking ethnicity: Arguments and explorations. London: SAGE. Keating, M. (2001). Plurinational democracy: Stateless nations in a post-sovereignty era. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kedourie, E. (1966). Nationalism. London: Hutchinson University Library. Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Laitin, D. (1992). Language repertoires and state construction in Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Lewis, B. (1970). The Arabs in history. London: Hutchinson’s University Library. Masters, B. (2013). The Arabs of the ottoman empire, 1516–1918: A social and cultural history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Melis, L. (1996). Frontière linguistique. In H. Goebl, P. Nelde, Z. Stary, & W. Wölk (Eds.), Kontaktlinguistik. Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung (pp. 175–180). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Muir, W. (1924). The caliphate: Its rise, decline and fall. Edinburgh: J. Grant. Newman, D., & Paasi, A. (1998). Fences and neighbours in the postmodern world: Boundary narratives in political geography. Progress in Human Geography, 22(2), 186–207. Rahman, H. (1989). A chronology of Islamic history, 570–1000 CE. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co. Škiljan, D. (2001). Languages with (out) frontiers. In Redefining cultural identities: Southeastern Europe (pp. 87–100). Institute for International Relation, Zagreb. https://www.culturelink.org/ publics/joint/cultid04/Svob-Djokic_Redefining_Cultid_SE.pdf#page=95 Spuler, B. (1995). The age of the caliphs: A history of the Muslim world. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishing. Suleiman, Y. (1994). Arabic sociolinguistics: Issues and perspectives. London: Curzon Press. Suleiman, Y. (2003). The Arabic language and national identity: A study in ideology. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Chapter 2. Tibi, B. (1981). Arab nationalism: A critical enquiry (Ed. & Trans: Farouk-Sluglett, M., & Sluglett, P.). New York: St. Martin’s Press. “TNA”. (1920). The national archives. Letter from Faisal to Allenby, 27 April 1920, FO 371/5035. “Treaties”. (1924). The treaties of peace 1919–1923 (Vol. II). New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Wimmer, A. (2002). Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Part II The Language of Maps

Symbolics, Syntactics, and Semantics: Teaching a Language of Maps

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Contents 1 Wake-Up Call: Remembering a Map of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Mapping as Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Encoding a Location on a Treasure Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Primary-School Maps and Children’s Atlases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Putting a Rug in a Classroom Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Parallel Networks for Processing Spatial Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Models of Cartographic Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Kuhnian Revolutions in Academic Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Role of Geospatial Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Map Comparison: Using Maps to Discern/Describe Spatial Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Conclusion: Becoming an Expert Map Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 One Last Example, from a 2018 Geography Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 One Last Point, Do Map Projections Cause Misperceptions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Maps are attempts to communicate, but is mapping a language? Like verbal texts, maps carry several kinds of messages at the same time. Many map symbols represent facts about specific places. At the same time, their positions on the map can reveal distances, directions, patterns, feature associations, and other spatial relationships. Unfortunately, human brains seldom remember shapes and sizes accurately. A workshop “game” helps us understand why – the human visual system processes incoming images through multiple, parallel pathways, only some of which typically lead to conscious awareness. Decades of research by cartographers have given us a

P. Gersmehl (*) Michigan Geographic Alliance, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, USA New York Center for Geographic Learning, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_172

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number of useful “rules of thumb” about symbol selection, size, visual hierarchy, color sequences, type design and placement, and so forth. More recent research by psychologists and neuroscientists (aided by new brain-scanning technology) has put some of those principles on more solid theoretical grounds. Together, these two lines of research lead to the disturbing conclusion that some popular educational approaches are unlikely to be successful. Educators should approach the teaching of the “vocabulary” and “grammar” of maps by observing what happens in effective foreign-language lessons. Students should be encouraged to practice the basic skills with well-designed maps about topics worth knowing. These activities help students acquire a stock of mental maps of causally important information, which their brains can use to help interpret the spatial patterns, feature associations, analogic positions, and other spatial relationships that they might perceive on new maps. It’s like learning how to learn! Keywords

Map · Communication model · Spatial reasoning · Spatial pattern · Spatial association · Spatial analogy

1

Wake-Up Call: Remembering a Map of Africa

The Wake-Up Call is a true story. When teachers see it in professional development workshops, they usually react with an odd mix of recognition and astonishment – recognition that they have, in fact, seen something like this in their own classrooms and astonishment at how extreme it is, when stripped of extra details and shown on a single page. The Wake-Up Call has four short chapters: • Chapter 1: The Viewing. Students in a college class watched several short videos and photo essays about African environments – savannas, rainforests, deserts, etc. They discussed possible human uses of these environments. Along with each viewing, the instructor projected an “ecoregion” map of Africa from the course textbook, with an animated dot to show the location of the photo or video the students were viewing at the time. • Chapter 2: The Assignment. At the end of the hour, the instructor projected the map again and urged the students to study it carefully, “at least once during the holiday break,” because it provides useful background for understanding a wide range of topics, including historic empires, present-day land use, and headline issues such as malaria, desertification, Ebola, and even the locations of some recent terrorist incidents. • Chapter 3: The Quiz. Right after the holiday break, the instructor distributed a blank map of Africa with a simple oral instruction: “Draw lines on this map to divide Africa into 3–6 natural regions, and label each region with a few words or phrases to describe what it is like there.” • Chapter 4: The Result. Figure 1 is a half-page handout, which the instructor used to start another discussion. The handout shows the textbook map, plus four

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Symbolics, Syntactics, and Semantics: Teaching a Language of Maps

STUDY MAP

QUIZ ANSWERS

NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS IN AFRICA

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Farming Cattle

Agriculture coffee, cocoa

Mountain

Forest Desert Urban

Desert Trees

Herding

Farming

E QUATOR

Herding Chaparral Desert Grassland Shrubland Savannah Rainforest Mountain (complex)

Farms

Cattle Farms

Desert

Forest

DryTrees Hills

Fig. 1 Study map and student responses to a quiz 1 week later. (Scanned and colorized from student responses in the author’s college Human Geography class)

student answers. To facilitate comparison, the answers were scanned, traced, and colored with the colors that the textbook map used for the same general idea. These maps clearly show that human brains find it hard to remember even a relatively simple thematic map accurately. This should be viewed as a major wakeup call for anyone who thinks that maps can automatically communicate durable information in textbooks, newspapers, or class presentations. The question for this chapter is simple – can we figure out what happened and then use that information to design more effective maps? In short, if there is a “language of maps,” can we learn from this experience to use it more effectively?

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Mapping as Language

A map is an attempt to communicate, but is mapping a language? Let us assume it is (since an editor did put this paper in a book about language!), and ask a narrower question: How is it similar to or different from other languages? One difference is obvious. Languages have symbols (vocabulary) and syntax (rules of grammar), but the dimensions of verbal sentences and visual maps differ. A word in a spoken or written language has a representational meaning plus a meaningful position in a chronological order. Symbols on maps also have representational meanings, but they can have two- to four-dimensional meanings: horizontal and vertical position plus extent in both dimensions. And an animated map can also have

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dimensions of timing and duration. To show teachers how this can make map reading different from verbal reading, our teacher-workshop agenda has a treasuremap “game” right after the African-environment Wake-Up Call.

3

Encoding a Location on a Treasure Map

The projector shows a “map” of an imaginary room. Small rectangles represent nine identical books on nine square tables that are also identical, except for their colors. After describing the location of the door and the observer, the instructor says that a $50 bill is hidden under the book on the table identified by a pointer on the screen (Fig. 2). The teachers are asked to think silently for 15 s about how they will remember where the “treasure” is. Then, they have 30 s to explain to each other what clue they are using and to decide whether they chose the same clue. The discussions often go longer than 30 s, because teachers sitting at the same table rarely choose similar clues. After the class comes back together, the teachers assemble a list of ideas about how they might remember the location. After each suggestion, they “vote” with a show of hands. Here are the five most common suggestions, with the numbers of votes they get from typical groups of 30 elementary or middle-school teachers: “On the table near my right hand” – 2 or 3 out of 30.

Fig. 2 “Treasure Map” showing a treasure under a book on an orange table. (Screenshot from a presentation at many teacher workshops)

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“On the orange table” – up to a third of the male teachers and more than half of the female. “On the table in the middle of the front row” – a fifth of the group, more likely male. “Under the book in the front middle of its table” – another fifth, more likely younger. “On the middle table on the door side of the room” – up to a handful, and further questioning often reveals that they come from schools with corridors that intersect at right angles, rather than a single long hallway. Some other answer – between 0 and 3 in a typical group of 30. The presentation then goes on to show the map of another room. This room also has nine books on nine tables, but the door is in a different place, and six of the tables have numbers (Fig. 3). The numbered tables are the six most frequently chosen by previous groups. Numbering them makes it easier for the teachers to talk about them. The group goes down the list, and typically at least 4 of the numbered tables will be chosen by at least 2 out of a typical group of 30 teachers. Then the location of the treasure is revealed – on table 6, where the book is in the same position on its table (upper right corner) as the table is in the room. Out of about 800 teachers who participated in a workshop that featured this activity, only 3 chose that one, and 2 of those were recent graduates teaching an advanced placement class in high school. The Wake-Up Call and the Treasure Map offer a lot of raw data from which to make inferences. Depending on the focus of the workshop and the time available, the discussion with teachers can go several different ways from this juncture.

Fig. 3 Map of a similar room with a treasure hidden on one of six numbered tables. (Screenshot from a presentation at many teacher workshops)

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Primary-School Maps and Children’s Atlases

If the group is mostly primary-school teachers, the next presentation has some maps of Africa from a collection of elementary-school readers and atlases. Nearly all maps in books intended for young children use the same map “vocabulary” – green and tan colors to show forest and desert, with small drawings of typical animals, plants, and/or buildings (like the pyramids) placed in various locations on the map. Ask a group of teachers how many have seen a map like that, and all hands are likely to go up. This leads to a loaded question: “If the college students had actually ‘learned’ an image of Africa from that map, would they have messed up the quiz so spectacularly?” The presentation then zooms in on one of the maps, and the teachers are asked to think about different ways in which students might encode the location of a small picture of a millet grain. (This symbol is located near Timbuktu, a trading center in a millet-based empire that might appear in a seventh grade World History class, and therefore it is intuitively relevant for a teacher interested in building an appropriate foundation for inquiry in a future class.) Some children will remember the grain symbol as being “next to the gorilla” – that’s privileging the idea of proximity. In other words, table 1 in the second room! Others will remember “in the light green area” (color association, table 2), “between the camel and the oil well” (sequential position, table 3), “in the north part of Nigeria” (analogic position within an enclosed area, a form of spatial hierarchy, table 4), and so forth. In short, the children unconsciously use the same kinds of clues to help remember the location of something on a map that the adult teachers used to remember the location of the treasure in the table game. And, even more important, they have the same potential for later confusion when they are asked to remember the location. Actually, the potential for confusion starts even before they “go into the next room.” It happens because human brains are lazy – they seldom work any harder than they have to. This is obvious when we watch young children doing a task with a map or classroom model.

5

Putting a Rug in a Classroom Model

Starting in 2007, a New York public school tried an “experiment.” The goal was to use ideas from modern learning theory to design mapping activities that would also support reading and math objectives (especially good sources include Blades and Cooke 1994; DeLoache et al. 1997; Dow and Pick 1992; Liben and Yekel 1996; Loewenstein and Gentner 2005; MacConnell and Daehler 2004; Newcombe and Huttenlocher 2000; Plumert and Spencer 2007; Tada and Stiles 1996; Uttal 2000; and the journals of national geography educators, especially the NCGE in the United States and the Geographical Association in the United Kingdom. Some results from that uncontrolled “experiment” have been reported in Gersmehl and Gersmehl 2011; some of the educational materials that were developed for the Harlem classes can be downloaded from www.ourspatialbrains.com/primary-school-geography/).

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Here, let us focus on just one observation from that school. This observation offers a useful insight into how young children view a map or model – in other words, how they process a message written in the language of maps. For 5–15 min each day for about a week, the children had been adding information to a model of their classroom. This activity actually had a preliminary scaffold activity, in the form of a hand-sized rubber school bus that triggered a discussion about models: “What’s this?” “A school bus!” “It can’t be a school bus – a school bus is big; I can’t fit in this one; it doesn’t even have a door.”

Eventually, the teacher leads the students to agree that it’s a model of a school bus. In other words, it represents a school bus – and the students now have two new words for their weekly vocabulary list. (Those words also have obvious relevance in their reading and math classes.) The classroom model started as a big box with drawings of the classroom windows taped to one inside wall of the box. One of the students’ first tasks was to “turn the model so that it lines up with our room.” This simple but important task helped give children “ownership” of the model, as a representation of the room. Over the next few days, the students added pieces of colored paper to the walls of the model to represent the greenboard, a poster, the alphabet, and other things attached to the walls in the classroom. At first, the teachers presented symbols to the students, who debated only their location – “Here is a model of the greenboard; what wall should we put it on?” Later, students got to choose symbols – “Here are two things that could represent our door. Which one is better, and where should it go?” Still later, the teachers brought in large letters – N, E, S, and W – and used them to “name the walls in our room” and then had students put small versions of the letters in their classroom model. Eventually, the students could suggest and debate the choice of symbols and then place them on the appropriate walls on their model classroom.

(Note that each activity also had an explicit Language Arts component, such as making up a model sentence to describe the choice of symbol for the door. In effect, the teachers were capitalizing on the high interest in the model to address a Language Arts objective that is often viewed with less interest.) So far, the students have been doing tasks that reflect a child’s point of view, looking sideways at a vertical wall in the classroom and in the model. The next group of short activities involved comparing and talking about points of view. These could use a block with different colors on its faces and small dolls to represent a dog and a bird. Putting the dog on the table facing the block – “What color block does the doggie see?” Holding the bird above the block – “What color block does the birdie see?”

The goal was to get students to articulate that the color depends on the point of view of the bird or the dog (Newcombe and Huttenlocher 1992). This can be a

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difficult concept at first, but a bird’s-eye view is crucial for understanding a map as a representation of the world. Then came “rug day” – the day of the observation that is the topic of this entire section. Each classroom had a colorful rug where the children sit for story time. The teacher held up a drawing of the rug, at appropriate scale, and asked students to put the rug symbol “where it should go in the model of our classroom.” This was a highinterest activity. Students vied for the privilege of being the one to place the model rug into the model classroom. Several teachers did a great job of putting students into groups and having different groups place the rug without seeing how the others did it. This gave many more students a chance to solve the problem on their own. The results are illuminating. In every room we observed, students would approach the model and place the rug right in the middle – in some cases, highfiving each other and smiling about a job well done. Several teachers noted this and learned how to phrase a really important follow-up question: “Good job! But is the rug really in the middle, or is it closer to the windows (or the greenboard, the E-wall, whatever is appropriate in a given classroom)?” Hearing this, the students went back to the model and pushed the rug closer to the wall or corner where it was in the room. Observing the process, you could almost see their minds shift gears, moving from a simple enclosure perspective (“it’s inside the room”) to a more complicated and accurate proximity perspective (“it’s inside the room and closer to the greenboard wall”). Neuroscientists now have a pretty good idea why this happens. It has to do with how human brains process incoming visual information. And that, in turn, gives great insight into both the power and some limitations of a language of maps.

6

Parallel Networks for Processing Spatial Relationships

The Harlem students had at least two and sometimes three different ways of deciding where to put the rug in the model. In the workshops, 30 teachers often chose as many as 5 or 6 different ways of remembering which table had the treasure under its book. Research, aided in recent years by brain-scanning technology, strongly suggests that human brains encode all of these possibilities, and more, at roughly the same time. They use parallel brain networks that are linked in complex ways with the primary visual cortex and the hippocampal area that interprets spatial relationships and connects them with memory networks. Each brain network helps to organize spatial knowledge in a different way, by emphasizing relationships that are verbally captured by terms such as proximity, enclosure, alignment, sequence, association, analogy, and so forth (Gersmehl and Gersmehl 2007; see also Anderson et al. 2016; Cavina-Pratasi et al. 2010; Shigihara and Zeki 2014; Silson et al. 2013; and the classic Rumelhart et al. 1987; for a similar perspective on reading verbal languages, see Coltheart et al. 1993; Dehaene 2009). The problem is that the condition we call “consciousness” is usually aware of only one of those “modes of spatial reasoning” at a time. There are good

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evolutionary reasons why this is so, but the topic is very complicated, far beyond the scope of this chapter, and still quite controversial (Mashour 2018). Let us, therefore, tease out just one idea that is relevant for a discussion of map language: many people, especially those well-versed in symbolic reasoning (like teachers!), can “push” their brains to switch to several different modes. This enhances their ability to retrieve and recall information from a map, but it also makes it much harder to do a rigorous inquiry about the process (e.g., with a brain scanner or an attempt to design a test). Unfortunately, that difficulty has not stopped several journals from publishing articles that feature elaborate statistical analyses of utterly misguided “tests” of spatial reasoning, tests that were based on the premise that one can design a verbal or visual prompt that reliably engages the same network in every test taker’s brain. (Note: no references are cited here – if the authors of those articles read this chapter, they should recognize themselves, and meanwhile the reader of this chapter should remember the principle, not the names of authors of misguided and deeply flawed research!) Here is the principle, in three sentences. Human brains process incoming spatial information with multiple networks, some operating in a specific order and others in parallel, more or less at the same time. Depending on a complex mix of intention, genetics, prior knowledge, expertise, and the nature of the map itself, a person may privilege one or more of these networks. Because of this complexity, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to design a test question that reliably engages the same network(s) in every reader. The actual research base for these three sentences is enormous – more than 4500 relatively recent research reports in more than 300 professional journals, in a wide range of disciplines that includes neurobiology, vision science, cognitive and educational psychology, architecture, linguistics, and even robot engineering, as well as cartography, geography, and geographic information systems. As in any rapidly expanding arena of inquiry, it is important to do a brute-force review, checking all abstracts, rather than trust a keyword search. (The search was aided by the spectacular University of Minnesota electronic library, plus four flights a month between Minneapolis and New York, and a dozen rides every week standing on New York subways, where one could not use phones, laptops, newspapers, or even books if they required frequent page turns!) A keyword search is not likely to find all important articles, because people in different disciplines often use different words or phrases to describe the same basic idea. For example, you might recall that the most common clue used by teachers in the Treasure Map was the color of the table. Geographers call this a spatial association, a tendency for two features to occur together in the same places (like Anopheles mosquitoes and malaria, to cite one highly relevant example – Fig. 4). Census researchers call this a correlation; some cognitive psychologists in the 1990s called it a feature conjunction; robot engineers call it an environmental regularity; and the authors of one of the most important neuroscience articles called it statistical learning. A keyword search using any of those terms is not likely to find the other articles (and many more in other disciplines), even though they are all relevant to an understanding of how human brains and visual systems process a map (for a range of

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Identifying the Carrier of Malaria

P A The dots show communities that have many cases of malaria

Which of these “itchy little critters” A.Anopheles, a kind of mosquito P. Phlebotomus, a kind of sand flea is most likely to be a carrier of malaria, the disease shown on the big map?

Fig. 4 Using maps to help identify the vector of malaria. (Simplified from a student activity in www.mi6thgradeclass.com)

perspectives, see Arguin and Saumier 2000; Dessalegn and Landau 2008; Elliffe et al. 2002; and especially Turk-Browne et al. 2008). Moreover, the difficulties cited earlier make it unwise to draw a conclusion from a single research study on any topic. For example, in 1 year, two groups of researchers reported opposite conclusions about feature conjunction in the same journal (Buckley and Gaffan 2006; Cate and Köhler 2006). For a short and already somewhat dated summary of 100 important research studies, see the Appendix to Chap. 6 in Gersmehl 2014; other even older summaries are in Gersmehl and Gersmehl 2006, 2007, 2011; I started another update in 2017 and then realized that I no longer had the “advantage” of the subway – a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that after 6 years of just ordinary scholarly diligence, I am already at least 2700 articles behind, at the rate relevant articles had been appearing when I moved away from New York in 2012. Despite these complications, one important take-home message is simple. Students do not just “get information” from a map (as many educational standards such as the Common Core seem to assume; a copy can be downloaded from http://www. corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/). This message is especially true for the kind of map that is frequently used in primary-school books and atlases. Those maps are prepared by contract cartographers, not authors, and selected by a focus-group process that is similar to the legendary Coke-vs-Pepsi blindfolded taste tests. Unfortunately, the kind of map that typically “wins” a publisher’s focus-group evaluation is the colorful one with a swarm of attractive pictures on it: “Kids really like looking at this map.” Both classroom observation and academic research strongly suggest, however, that this

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kind of map is not effective in communicating durable messages about either location or spatial patterns to young children. And the color map of ecoregions that is commonly used in textbooks can be just as ineffective, as demonstrated by the college students (and dozens of research articles). To see why this happens, it might help to examine past efforts to construct a model of the process of communication with the language(s) of maps. That enterprise occupied the attention of academic cartographers for nearly half a century.

7

Models of Cartographic Communication

Maps can serve different purposes in ordinary life: • Road maps (mall maps, golf course maps, etc.) are created to help guide movement. People study them to identify their position in space and to choose a route toward a destination. • Reference maps are made to store information about places. People study them to learn facts about a specific place in the world. • Thematic maps are designed to communicate the geographic patterns of specific topics (themes). While noting the value of the first two kinds of maps, and the considerable amount of overlap between the categories, this chapter will focus on thematic maps. These maps have the most flexible “languages” and therefore demand the greatest attention to the linguistic principles of communication. To paraphrase Canadian cartographer Len Guelke, a thematic map can convey two qualitatively different kinds of messages (Guelke 1977; for a semanticist’s take on this topic, see Rescorla 2009). At a basic factual level, the map can tell you about a specific condition (e.g., temperature, population density, predominant religion) at a given place of interest. This is useful information, but a data table or verbal description can provide that kind of information more accurately and often more easily. The more important purpose of a thematic map is to convey a message about the arrangement of features, their spatial pattern within an area, their associations with other features, and their distance and direction from each other and from other features. Confusion about the goal of the map may help us understand why the focus-group process may be ineffective in selecting the most appropriate map for a textbook. People in a focus group tend to see the map in isolation, as a kind of stand-alone aesthetic object to be evaluated. As a result, they are likely to focus on the attractiveness of the map and the ease of decoding the symbols. Meanwhile, an educator is more concerned with the ability of a map to communicate a clear message about relative positions, overall geographic patterns, color and feature associations, and other spatial relationships. Just like a prose writer has to balance precision of vocabulary against readability of paragraphs in choosing words, a thoughtful mapmaker has to weigh the clarity of

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local symbols against the salience of overall patterns in order to design a map for educational purposes. To make any map, the mapmaker must simplify the world, just like a writer has to decide what aspects of a big, complicated scene or event to describe in words. Then, the mapmaker chooses colors and symbols to represent specific features at specific locations in the world. In the mid-twentieth century, cartographers began to think about the process of mapping in terms of models based on the communication models used in information theory at the time. One early effort could be called the linear model of communication, which describes a unidirectional flow of information through the processes of observation, encoding, decoding, and reconstruction (Fig. 5). This model has the twin virtues of simplicity and support for an important hypothesis, namely, that one can test the efficiency and effectiveness of map communication by comparing the original landscape and the reconstructed image. This insight resulted in a modification of the model, bending a linear path into a nearly circular arc (Fig. 6). Variations based on these two models provided a solid rationale for several decades of investigation into the effectiveness of different map projections, color sequences, size gradations, type styles, dot placement, and other symbolic “vocabulary.” For example, if we want a map reader to perceive one circle on a map as twice as large as another, we actually have to make it about 2.4 times as large, because human perception of size is nonlinearly scaled (Flannery 1971; Gilmartin 1981). Other similar rules apply to topics such as color selection, gray shading, line widths, type size and orientation, and so forth (MacEachren 1995 is a good example among many summaries of this effort to develop a more scientific basis for map design; Kosslyn 1993 and 2006 are parallel summaries of principles for graph design, even more solidly rooted in vision science, psychology, and neuroscience). Several decades later, neuroscientists used brain scanners to find reasons for the nonlinear nature of perception and numerical cognition (CohenKadosh et al. 2005; Dehaene 2003; Longo and Lourenco 2007; Nieder and Miller 2005; Siegler and Opfer 2003). After a few decades of examining the effectiveness of map symbols, however, researchers concluded that the psychophysics of perception could not predict the response of every map reader with equal accuracy. Individual differences in map-reading skills and strategies often resulted in different interpretations of the

REAL WORLD

Cartographer’s Conception

MAP

Map Reader’s Conception

Fig. 5 A linear model of cartographic communication. (Redrawn from Robinson and Petchenik 1975)

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REAL WORLD Map reader’s reality

MAP

Cartographic language

Cartographer’s Conception

Cartographic language

Map maker’s reality

Map Reader’s Conception

Fig. 6 A circular model of cartographic communication. (Redrawn from Koláčný 1969)

same map. In effect, map readers often come to a map with a specific goal in mind, and that strategic intent can affect their map-reading tactics (Thorndyke and Stasz 1979). Others pointed out that we have no error-free way of recording the original landscape. An enormous number of analysts and pundits have noted that if a verbal description would be adequate, a map would be unnecessary. Some kind of record of the “original landscape” is needed, but even a photograph is in an important sense an interpretation of the landscape, not a completely objective record. At the other end of the information pipeline, we also lack a reliable way of peering into the map reader’s mind to see the reconstructed image. If we ask a map reader to construct a map or verbal description of his or her interpretation of the first map, we have just jumped on another loop of a never-ending spiral of interpretation, mapmaking, map reading, and reconstruction. The next generation of map communication models tried to address some of these limitations by adding various kinds of reverse pathways and feedback loops to the model (Rossano and Morrison 1996; see also Fig. 7, from an introductory university course called The Language of Maps, which was taught to more than 8000 students in the 1990s).

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Kuhnian Revolutions in Academic Geography

While this discussion about communication models was continuing in the academic subdiscipline of cartography, there were two revolutionary changes in the broader discipline of geography. One was the rise of postmodern criticism of the role of language, media, and totalizing narratives in the formation and maintenance of power structures within society. The other was the rapid development of computer-assisted information processing. Cartography was not sheltered from either process.

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Fig. 7 A feedback model of cartographic communication. (Redrawn from Gersmehl 1991)

Postmodern critiques of cartographic practices rightly emphasized that a map is a human attempt at communication, and it is more nuanced than just the mechanical transmission of facts about locations, conditions, and connections (Harley 1989). Ensuing discussions generally paralleled other postmodernist discourses about art,

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photography, poetry, and propaganda. This ground has been deeply plowed elsewhere, albeit too often with contumeliously obfuscatory procLAmations that now seem almost quaint when read from the perspective of a citizen in the year 2018 political era of social-media bots, alternative facts, and fake news! That prose style, however, is at least partly a result of a process of expertise reversal that is the focus of the last part of this chapter. Here, let us just note that of a range of perspectives that extends around the alphabet from Sokal to Soja, the former now seems more persuasive, and at least one oft-cited guru of the social-construction-of-reality crowd has in essence recanted, appalled by how some of his statements have been (mis)used (Soja 1989; Sokal and Bricmont 1998; de Vrieze 2017). And with that, let us go on to look, equally briefly, at the role of digital technology in the language of maps.

9

The Role of Geospatial Information Systems

Early experiments in computer-aided mapping added some new stakeholders to the cartographic arena, as a wide range of people in public agencies and private companies quickly realized its value as an accurate and inexpensive way to store and display all of their laboriously compiled and updated records of the locations of (and spatial relationships among) supply sources, warehouse inventories, truck routes, water mains, electric wires, sewer pipes, property lines, and so forth (oh, and military targets!). Early computer maps, drawn on line printers, were almost spectacularly clunky. Today, critics note the opposite problem, namely, that the glossy animated map displays in phones, display screens, and virtual-reality headsets have become so lifelike that they mask all of the algorithms and processing steps that intervene between the real world and the display of, for example, the location of a new restaurant and the route that you should take to get from your house to it. Any of these topics – business inventory mapping, government agency infrastructure mapping, GPS-enabled route mapping, consumer locational assistance, virtual-reality displays, military threat assessment, etc. – would deserve an entire chapter. Constraints of space and expertise, however, point us toward a much narrower topic: the use of map languages to instruct children (and, by extension, adults) about the features in the world that a citizen might wish to know.

10

Map Comparison: Using Maps to Discern/Describe Spatial Associations

As noted before, it is a limiting trap to view a map primarily as a repository of information about a specific place. Psychologist David Uttal says that this view of map communication is like looking at a line graph in order to find a single number, like the population of China in the year 1990. This information is of course useful, but we can get that kind of fact from a data table; the real message of a line graph is

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about the trend through time, the rate of change, and how that compares with what happened in other countries. The same principle applies to maps. The unique value of a thematic map is its ability to help us compare features in one place with other places, to see how the places are connected, and to note regional clusters, gradients, associations with other features, and analogies with other places, in short, to aid in doing all of the various modes of spatial reasoning that were listed earlier, when we were looking at a Treasure Map or the Wake-Up Call about Africa. In each case, the prior presence of a good collection of mental maps of important geographic phenomena makes it much easier to interpret a new map of some feature of interest. Dubbed the Matthew Effect (“to those who already have much, more shall be given”), this has been widely recognized in both the narrow field of cartography and the broader field of literacy in general (Gregg 1999; Pfost et al. 2014). The Matthew Effect has enormous implications for the design of media maps and for the development of curricular materials for elementary and secondary schools. For one thing, it calls into question the conventional first chapter or series of lesson plans about map skills. In the old days, those chapters and lesson plans tended to focus on projections, scale, color conventions, and categories of symbols. The treatments were often abstract, and students rightly dissed them as boring and seemingly irrelevant. The pendulum has swung to a different extreme in many modern textbooks and course outlines, which often try to teach map skills by using maps of supposedly “child-friendly” topics such as UFO sightings, heroic battles, zombie invasions, or the geographic patterns of preference for different brands of soft drink. These topics may indeed grab attention, but at the end of the day, the student has gained little factual knowledge to aid in interpreting other maps. Moreover, these activities can communicate a subliminal message that maps (and geographic analyses in general) are about trivial things – sort of a Jeopardy-game view of geographic understanding. A more desirable approach is to teach map skills as they are needed, in the context of a well-structured sequence of intuitively important problems that students try to solve. One can help novice students with this inquiry by carefully designing coherent packages of maps, graphs, and text. Since students will be spending a lot of time interacting with these maps, they are likely to retain better memories of the details of their spatial patterns (if the maps are well designed and students are guided to do effective kinds of map reading – see below). In short, maps that are used to teach map skills in the early years of school should be chosen not just for their effectiveness in teaching the map skill but also for their usefulness in comparing with other maps in the future. This can be illustrated with an example that links directly with the Wake-Up Call about African environments at the beginning of this chapter. The example starts with the assumption that the optimum time to start learning some languages of mapping is at the same time as the formal verbal and mathematical languages – in other words, in primary and elementary schools. Longtime observers of American education will note that these are precisely the educational settings where topics like geography, history, science, and the visual arts have been

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squeezed out of days that are increasingly devoted to direct instruction in the reading and math topics that are the focus of standardized tests – but this, too, is a huge topic, which does not fit into this chapter without taking up the rest of the space. So let us just rue the wrongheadedness of that approach and proceed with a description of a composite school, one that includes a total of nine first-grade classrooms from public schools in Harlem, an immigrant neighborhood of Queens, New York, and two small towns in rural northern Michigan. In first grade, teachers and students read a story about animals together. The suggested story is about camels, for two reasons – camels are “fun” (they chew sideways, sound like Chewbacca, and spit at people they don’t like), and their geographic pattern is worth knowing. Teachers could also choose stories about gorillas, giraffes, lions, kangaroos, or polar bears, but we do not recommend stories about penguins, chipmunks, rats, cockroaches, or any other animal whose geographic pattern is either hard to generalize or not very useful in interpreting other maps. In short, one should apply the same criteria to learning a language of maps that foreign-language teachers use in choosing vocabulary for a reading exercise – namely, how useful are these specific “words” in a dual role as illustrations for a grammar skill right now and as bits of knowledge that can add to a vocabulary base that is useful for future learning? After reading the story, a teacher might point to a camel symbol on the kind of colorful pictorial map described earlier, but only to inform the student that this kind of map is not very useful in answering real questions about camels. The teacher then hands out a very simple but carefully designed thematic map, and the students do a very specific map skill with it (Fig. 8). In this case, the skill is to draw a line around a bunch of symbols in order to group them into a region and then to make a verbal description of that region: for example, “Camels like to live in a big area in the northern part of Africa.” To succeed in this process, of course, students need to learn two separate skills: how to draw around a bunch of symbols and what “north” means on a map. A well-planned curriculum should therefore include a series of prior lessons in which students make an evermore-complex model of something intuitively relevant, such as their classroom in a wooden box (Remember our Harlem kids? Fig. 9 has two examples of their room model, and one of their activities was to identify the desk “region” of their room by stretching a string around the purple boxes in the model). Naming the walls of their classroom is a good first step, and it has the side benefit of being useful for some kinds of classroom management. For example: Line up along the north wall so we can walk to the library.

The wall names can also be used for stand-up games, like: Simon says all girls should turn to face the east wall.

After watching good teachers make use of ideas like these, it is hard to avoid a simple conclusion: people are not “born with” a sense of direction. It is much more accurate to say that some people gain a better sense of direction by being raised in

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THE CAMEL REGION OF AFRICA Task: Draw a line around the general area where you think camels like to live.

SAMPLE ANSWER Describe the location of the camel region. Use direction and position words.

Camels Camels

“I think camels like to live in the northern one-third of Africa. They do not live near the equator.” Important: The process of regionalization must be modeled and taught. It is not intuitively obvious to everyone!

Fig. 8 Identifying the “camel region” in Africa. (Simplified from a student activity developed for the Michigan Geographic Alliance)

Building a Classroom Model - Step by Step

Screenshots from a 75-frame training presentation to help teachers lead students in building a classroom model that is a solid foundation for future mapping activities.

Fig. 9 Building a classroom model. (Photo of a classroom model used in teacher workshops at Coloma, Michigan)

families and taught in classrooms where direction was a meaningful construct at the time when certain brain networks were developing links with other networks (for three perspectives on this enormous topic, see Cornell et al. 2003; McNaughton et al. 1991; Prestopnik and Roskos-Ewoldsen 2000).

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The point of both the direction games and the camel read-along is to help build a solid foundation for future inquiry. In this case, drawing a boundary around a group of camels in primary school (and describing their “region”) becomes a useful schema that can help students learn from other maps in the future, e.g., maps of Arab and Berber nomads in a World Cultures class, of deserts in a World Geography class, and of the spread of Islam in a World History class. At the scale of the continent of Africa, maps of these topics are essentially identical (Fig. 10). To facilitate the deliberate linking of inquiries in different grades, the Michigan Geographic Alliance has prepared a suite of “clickable” maps of major world regions (these are currently accessible at ss.oaisd.org/big-ideas-clickable-maps.html). Each of these electronic maps has about 30 layers of information that can be turned on or off as desired. The layers on the Africa clickable include maps of camels, ecoregions, fires, languages, religions, trade routes, and colonial claims, among other topics. The purpose of these maps is to allow easy comparison of a carefully selected set of features that are spatially associated because they have a common causal influence (an inductive category of spatial patterns; see Pinker 1999). In Africa, a very strong causal influence is latitude; in South America, the Michigan Geographic Alliancedesignated “Big Idea” is elevation; in China, population density; in Australia, distance; and so forth. This effort is worth describing in some detail because its goal is to construct curricula that deal with mapping as a multi-stranded language, in which individual symbols do not just represent features at places, but taken together can also communicate geographic patterns, spatial associations of features, analogical relationships, and other spatial concepts. This puts this kind of cartography in a different basket from a whole swarm of electronic maps designed as media for the storage and

CAMELS AND OTHER THINGS IN AFRICA Malaria

Elephants

Arabic

Islam

Languages

Camels

Which three things are geographically like the camels shown on the big map, and which three things are different?

Fig. 10 Camels and other things in Africa. (Simplified from a student activity developed for the Michigan Geographic Alliance)

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delivery of facts about specific places (“roll your pointer over the Taj Mahal to get the year it was built”). A “different basket,” however, is an overlapping category, not a superior group or a replacement. None of this discussion is intended to downplay the value of maps as repositories of facts about places. Computers have made this role much easier, because “interactive” symbols can bring up a data display when the user moves the pointer over a symbol. Figure 11 is a useful public-domain example – it has a swarm of pictorial symbols that are visually similar to the children’s map of Africa described above, but with two big differences. First, the overall spatial pattern of energy facilities is less important than the detailed associations with features such as water bodies or population centers at a local scale. To facilitate this analysis, the map software allows the user to zoom in on any area of interest. Second, the nature of that local association is greatly influenced by the specific details about the energy production or transmission facility. For this reason, the map is designed so that when the pointer highlights a symbol, a small page on information about a specific power plant or other energy facility appears on the screen (Fig. 11). Financial websites feature similar graphs of things like stock-market prices. Moving the pointer to a specific position on the graph causes the price at a specific time to pop up. In both cases, the viewer gets a general impression of relationships as

Fig. 11 Information about the Monroe coal-fired power plant. (Source: US Energy Information Administration, June 2018; US government open data policy)

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well as the ability to uncover more information about any small part of the overall display. In that respect, it is similar to an online translation program that offers a general translation of a sentence or paragraph into another language, plus the ability to place the pointer over a specific word and get alternative translations that are linked in the semantic memory of the program and might therefore be appropriate at some times. The difference, as noted earlier, is that both the horizontal and vertical positions and extent are important parts of the message of a graph or a map. In all cases, the value of the specific information is enhanced if the reader knows how to read the entire map or graph, like a surrounding paragraph, to gain context. In a nutshell, that is the purpose of a map, which uses a culturally conventional symbolic “vocabulary” and “syntax” to communicate a multi-stranded message about local facts and spatial relationships over a larger area. One spectacularly good example of this kind of map is the “number of residents” part of The New York Times Immigration Explorer. This online map uses carefully chosen colors, carefully stacked scaled circles, and carefully arranged sliders to create an easily analyzed display of national patterns for any census year or census-identified source country. It also allows the user to zoom in on smaller areas and to slide the pointer over any individual county to get information for that county (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/ 20090310-immigration-explorer.html?_r=).

11

Conclusion: Becoming an Expert Map Reader

A map is a spatially organized arrangement of visual or tactual symbols that are intended to be decoded, analyzed, and interpreted (Muehrcke 2005). Compared with a novice, an expert map reader is able to use more different modes of spatial reasoning and to apply those schemas more effectively (Harel et al. 2010; Bar 2007). Moreover, the expert also already has “memorized” a wider range of mental maps that can be compared with the patterns, gradients, associations, symmetries, and other arrangements that can be seen on a given map. As a result, the expert is able to gain more information from the map, in a much shorter period of time, than the novice can. What experts are not able to do, in many cases, is explain to a novice what they are doing in order to gain information from the map. This, of course, is a pervasive problem in all domains of human knowledge. It’s like walking down a flight of stairs – if you do it often enough that the task becomes routine, and then someone asks you to explain how you are moving your legs, or even if you just think about it while you are walking, it slows you down. In short, the kinds of metacognitive clues that are helpful to a novice in any field – map reading, chess playing, welding, foreignlanguage learning, or even stair climbing – can often interfere with an expert’s efficiency in the situation (Downs and Liben 1991; Kalyuga et al. 2003; Lee and Kalyuga 2011; Rey and Buchwald 2011; Veenman and Elshout 1999). The path to map-reading expertise is easy to describe, but it takes time and guidance to accomplish: use the skills of spatial reasoning often enough, with a

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variety of useful maps, that the skills and the encoded information become routine schemas that can be applied without conscious thought. This lets you preserve attention for the relationships that emerge as a result of different kinds of spatial analysis. In this respect, map reading is like any other language. We have to “overlearn” the vocabulary and the details of grammar and syntax and in effect turn them into unconscious schemas, and then we can apply our full attention to the semantic meaning of a text. What makes map reading different from “sentential” languages is that part of the syntax consists of the multidimensional spatial relationships among things of the map (see Guelke 1977; Rescorla 2009).

12

One Last Example, from a 2018 Geography Journal

Imagine a table of data about a controversial topic like forcible evictions from rental property. The table itself is not likely to suggest any hypotheses about causation (though, in time, a diligent researcher or an artificial intelligence might be programmed to tease out and evaluate some plausible possibilities). A human analyst, however, might display the data on a map in order to inspect the spatial arrangement of the addresses of evicted individuals and families. A novice looking at that map might apply a fairly simple form of reasoning, like counting dots and concluding that there are a lot of evictions in one part of the map. Meanwhile, the pattern of dots might trigger a sense of recognition in the expert: “it looks like something else I’ve seen before.” In that sentence, “looks like” can mean that the dots are located in the same general area, have a similar directional gradient, are bunched or spread out in a similar way, and so forth. In other words, the expert infers that the feature of interest is organized according to one or more of the spatial schemas that seem to be at least partly hardwired into human brains (and were used to remember the location of the treasure in the room with nine tables – see Gattis 2001). The expert map reader might then compare the spatial arrangement of other features that might be causally related to the observed evictions. In this particular case, the comparison led to the conclusion that a very high percentage of the evictions occurred within a few blocks of the stops on a proposed public transit system, even though that system served only a small fraction of the area of the city (Maharawal and McElroy 2018). This topic, of course, is part of a complicated social-justice issue that involves gentrification and tax laws that privilege passive real estate investment income as capital gains. In short, the geographic pattern of evictions turns out to be a symptom of a process that seemed to be transferring wealth to those who already have power and privilege. A language of maps, therefore, turns out to be one of the tools that humans can use to help unravel these causal associations and move toward a more just society. This is true, if we are able to use the language to communicate more than just “there was an eviction at this address.”

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One Last Point, Do Map Projections Cause Misperceptions?

Map projections don’t matter as much as some people think, because we don’t remember sizes or shapes very well anyway – if we did, we would have to waste another big bunch of brain neurons remembering grandma’s new face every time she turned or tilted her head or moved a little closer or farther away. Just as we learn how

Fig. 12 Map projections and misperceptions

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to remember her face without actually remembering its size or exact shape, we do the same thing with buildings and billboards and bathrooms and North America on maps (Fig. 12). Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Map Design for the Color Vision Deficient

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Dave Hobbins

Contents 1 Color Blindness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Universal Design and Color Universal Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Perception of Color by the Color Vision Deficit Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Map Design Recommendations and Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The golden rule of map design states that one should carefully consider both a map’s purpose and its audience. Maps designed for the general public frequently fail to consider the portion of our population with color vision impairment or color vision deficiency (CVD), known more commonly as color blindness. Recent studies indicate that over 5% of our Caucasian male population are susceptible to congenital or inherited color vision deficiency. CVD also can be acquired from chemical exposure, injury, illness, medication, and aging. With the exception of aging, little or no data exists on the number of people impaired by any of these non-congenital causes. The predominant color impairment from congenital CVD is a red-green differentiation problem, whereas blue is considered universally recognizable by the congenital group. However, recent research has revealed that as many as 20% of those studied over the age of 72 suffer from a blueyellow defect that increases with age to nearly 50% at age 90. This acquired blueyellow defect also is the predominant CVD for those suffering from chemical exposure. This chapter examines the effects of CVD and attempts to illustrate the impact of color choices on visually impaired audiences. It shows that the acquired D. Hobbins (*) Applied Forest Management Program, University of Maine at Fort Kent, Fort Kent, ME, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_46

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CVD population is growing and suggests colors and alternatives in map design to minimize that impact. Finally, it introduces several tools that may be used in selecting appropriate colors or used to evaluate color choices when designing maps.

Keywords

Map design · Color blindness · Color vision deficiency · CVD · Acquired CVD · Color vision impairment

1

Color Blindness

A number of factors are at play when designing maps. Robinson et al. (1995) describe these as “Controls on Map Design.” Regardless of who you read, two of the top considerations in map design are its purpose and its audience. Robinson states that purpose “is the essential determinant” of the final form of a map. We wish to design a map, or any graphic for that matter, that will clearly convey its purpose to the target audience, based on the sophistication and perception of that audience. We use color extensively to decorate, to enhance, and, in the case of maps, to distinguish and rank features in communicating our purpose or findings. How we select and use color has an impact on our audience’s ability to interpret those findings and understand our message. This chapter deals specifically with the use of color for populations where color discrimination can be a challenge. But first, let’s define color blindness. Color blindness is a misnomer. Most people, even those considered “color blind,” can see some color. Complete color blindness is rare. The American Optometric Association (AOA 2014) uses the term Color Vision Deficiency (CVD). Color vision impairment is another term in use (Brewer 2005; Gardner 2005; Jenny and Kelso 2007). The AOA defines color vision deficiency as “the inability to distinguish certain shades of color, or, in more severe cases, see colors at all.” CVD is a common condition. It is reported in many sources that inherited (congenital) color blindness can occur in as much as 8% of Caucasian male populations (Okabe and Ito 2008). Kalloniatis and Luu (2015) summarize data from several sources, including estimates by Wright (1952), to list the prevalence of congenital CVD by percent. Table 1 shows that over 8% of males and 0.4% of females suffer from congenital CVD. Those suffering dichromacy have a missing or nonfunctioning cone photopigment, leaving only two photopigments to create color combinations. According to the data in Table 1, dichromacy accounts for less than 3% of the population, predominantly male, whereas the majority of males inheriting CVD deal with anomalous trichromacy. In anomalous trichromacy, an individual has three functioning cone photopigments but one cone has a shifted peak sensitivity (Kalloniatis and Luu 2015). This occurs predominantly in the green cone photopigment (see Table 1).

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Table 1 Occurrence of inherited color vision deficiency. (After Kalloniatis and Luu 2015) Deficiency type Anomalous trichromacy (weak sensitivity) Protanomaly (red) Deuteranomaly (green) Tritanomaly (blue) Dichromacy (cone photopigment missing) Protanopia (red) Deuteranopia (green) Tritanopia (blue)

Male %

Female %

1 5 Rare

0.01 0.4 Rare

1 1.5 0.008

0.01 0.01 0.008

More recently, Xie et al. (2014) conducted a study of 5960 preschool children in Southern California. They reported that among boys, 1.4% of African-American children, 3.1% of Asian, 2.6% of Hispanic, and 5.6% of non-Hispanic white children had color vision deficiency. “The prevalence in girls was 0.0–0.5% for all ethnicities” (Xie et al. 2014). While the source of the data in Table 1 is perhaps an estimate of congenital CVD, the 2014 study of children provides a more realistic and recent picture of the situation, especially in multiethnic populations. Nevertheless, CVD is not just an inherited condition. Acquired CVD can result from other causes such as disease, injury, chemical exposure, and aging. Diseases resulting in potential CVD include diabetes, glaucoma, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic alcoholism, leukemia, and sickle cell anemia. Injury to the optical nerve or retina also may result in CVD (AOA 2014). Other causes include medication, chemical exposure (e.g., fertilizers, styrene, toluene, PCE, solvents and mercury), and aging. Literature and library research were unable to reveal any numbers for those suffering CVD resulting from illness and injury. Nevertheless, these causes are documented. Gobba and Cavalleri (2003) reported that “occupational exposure to several solvents, metals and other industrial chemicals can cause impaired color vision in exposed workers,” usually resulting in a blue-yellow color defect. A combination of blueyellow and red-green loss was less frequent. Additionally, they reported that the eyes may be unequally involved and that impairment is correlated with exposure levels and may be reversible in some cases. In a literature review of color vision and occupational chemical exposure, Iregren et al. (2002) reported that the higher rate of defect in the blue-yellow dimensions may result from a greater sensitivity of the blue cone photopigment to disease and exposure to various drugs and chemicals. Although we do not have hard data for the number of individuals who have acquired CVD from injury or illness, a blue-yellow defect appears to be the predominant acquired CVD (Gobba and Cavalleri 2003; Iregren et al. 2002). A recent study has provided insight into the rate of acquired CVD in an elderly population. Schneck et al. (2014) tested 865 Californians, between the age of 58 and 102, for color vision defects. Individuals who self-identified as having congenital CVD were excluded from the study. Two different color tests were applied and resulted in a failure rate of 21% and 36%, respectively. Those failing both tests

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numbered 17.5%. Approximately 75% of those who failed either test showed a blueyellow defect. And the failure rate increased with age. For one test (Farnsworth D-15), the blue-yellow defect increased from less than 10% for the 62-year-old group to just under 40% for the 93-year-old group. In the other test (Adams D-15), a blue-yellow defect was demonstrated at just under 10% for the 62-year-old group. The 72-year-old group and older groups all exceeded 20%, with the failure rate increasing with each age group to just under 60% for the 93-year-old group. Again, the predominant acquired CVD is a blue-yellow defect. The aging population is growing in many developed countries. Vrenko and Petrovic (2015) cite the 2001 CIA report, Long Term Global Demographic Trends, that estimates the 2050 population for those 65 years or greater to be 1.5 billion, up from 420 million in 2000. The 65 and older age group will increase from 6.9% of the population in 2000 to an estimated 16.3% of the population in 2050. The 2001 report estimates that “Europe and Japan will face the most immediate impact of aging” with a median age increasing up to 53 and 55 years, respectively (CIA 2001). If we examine raw numbers, the potential audience is enormous. The World Factbook 2013–2014 estimates the male population of Japan and Germany at 39,723,220 and 61,582,663, respectively (CIA n.d.). If we apply the rates found in the Xie et al. (2014) study to these values, they translate into 1.9 and 2.2 million individual males that may suffer congenital CVD, respectively. The population of seniors 65 years and older in Japan and Germany for 2015 is estimated at 33,750,203 and 17,345,633, respectively (CIA n.d.). Using the Schneck et al. (2014) study results, and applying the failure rate of 21% and the blue-yellow defect rate of 75%, this translates into a potential audience of 5.3 and 2.7 million seniors afflicted with acquired CVD, respectively, in Japan and Germany. Applying this same method to the 2015 population estimate for the United States (CIA n.d.) yields a potential senior population of 7.5 million with a blue-yellow defect from acquired CVD. Again, these values represent an enormous number of affected individuals and an enormous potential senior audience. The ideas and concepts of Universal Design (UD) apply to this topic. The basic premise of UD is to provide access to information to as many of the population as possible. Map design must employ this concept. Recent research indicates that potential audiences suffering acquired CVD may exceed the 5.6% suffered by the Caucasian male population. Knowing your audience matters. Jenny and Kelso (2007) describe color-impaired vision as “one of the most widespread physiological conditions to hamper map reading.” Numbers support this statement, and therefore, map design that incorporates multiple visual variables and, more specifically, color choices that consider CVD are both logical and prudent.

2

Universal Design and Color Universal Design

Universal Design is a term coined by Ron Mace founder of the Center for Universal Design. He defines it as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized

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design” (Center for Universal Design 2008). The idea has expanded into education and curriculum development (Universal Design for Learning – UDL), with the premise that curricula should “give all individuals equal opportunities to learn” (National Center on UDL 2015). The concept clearly includes color. The Color Universal Design Organization (CUDO) is a nonprofit formed in Tokyo that promotes the use of color design in hopes that information “be accurately conveyed to as many individuals as possible” (Color Universal Design Organization 2015). Their website information is based on work created by two research scientists, Masataka Okabe and Kei Ito, who published a paper on making scientific graphics userfriendly to the color blind (Okabe and Ito 2008). The CUDO website information was translated into the Color Universal Design Handbook by EIZO NANAO Corporation (2006), a manufacturer of premium display monitors. The three principles of CUD are to: 1. Choose color schemes that can be easily identified by people with all types of color vision, in consideration with the actual lighting conditions and usage environment. 2. Use not only different colors but also a combination of different shapes, positions, line types, and coloring patterns to ensure that information is conveyed to all users including those who cannot distinguish differences in color. 3. Clearly state color names where users are expected to use color names in communication. These principles lend themselves to mapping and the use of multiple visual variables. They parallel the recommendations of many web and map design authors that will be presented in the recommendations section (Brewer 2005; Clark 2002; Jackson et al. 1994; Jenny and Kelso 2007).

3

The Perception of Color by the Color Vision Deficit Audience

Humans evolved a system of cones in the retina with photopigments that are sensitive to three regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. These cones are named for their photopigment sensitivity, to short (blue), medium (green), and long (red) wavelengths or S, M, and L, respectively. Although there is an overlap in sensitivity, which adds to the system’s complexity and perhaps adaptability, these photopigments have approximate peak sensitivities to wavelengths of 426, 530, and 557 nm, respectively (Gardner 2005; Merbs and Nathans 1992). A simplified explanation is that, as light activates these cones based on their sensitivity, the three responses combine to form a color in our brain. One theory that explains this is trichromacy. A mixture of the three cone responses combines to produce almost any hue or color (Kalloniatis and Luu 2015). Here hue is defined simply as a dominant color name. Figure 1 illustrates a simplified version of trichromacy, where red and green combine to produce yellow, green and blue to

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Fig. 1 Illustration of the trichromacy theory of color (D Hobbins)

produce cyan, and blue and red to produce magenta. This is an additive color process. Figure 1 does not show white, which would result when all three base hues, blue, green, and red, are combined at full intensity. Any color shade can be produced based on changing the intensity of the combined hues. To paraphrase Clark (2002), one cannot predict what another person sees for color, especially those with CVD. The following is an attempt to explain some of the issue, albeit a simplification. For those with dichromacy, color is generated by combining the output of only two functioning cone photopigments. Protanopia results from a missing or nonfunctioning red cone photopigment. Protans see color by combining the inputs of the functioning blue and green cones. As a result, protans cannot distinguish between red and green hues. However, reds appear dark, but lighter shades of red and black appear the same. The lightness of red matters and this fact can be used to advantage (Clark 2002). Figure 2a illustrates the visible spectrum in color “normal” vision. Figure 2b is an attempt to illustrate what a protan may see. The graphic was captured using ColorOracle, a tool discussed later in the chapter (Jenny 2013). Figure 3 illustrates the red and black lightness issue. Figure 3a illustrates shades of red and gray for color “normal” vision. Figure 3b illustrates a protan view of those color shades. Note how the lighter shades of red and gray are indistinguishable. In deuteranopia, the green cone photopigment is missing or nonfunctional. Here hues result from the inputs of the blue and red cones. Deuterans also cannot distinguish reds and greens (Clark 2002). In Fig. 2, compare A and C. Note how the range from green to red in color “normal” vision is reduced to a faded yellow for deuterans. Note also how the reds do not appear as dark as with protanopia. There is little lightness compensation for deuterans. The most common congenital CVD problem is not dichromacy but an anomalous trichromacy. Here all three cones are present but peak sensitivity for one cone is

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Fig. 2 Comparison of color “normal” vision (a) with dichromacy views, protanopia (b), deuteranopia (c), and tritanopia (d) created using ColorOracle. (Figure (a) from the USGS electromagnetic spectrum image, USGS. (2015). Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change, Introduction to Remote Sensing. Retrieved: 3 November 2015 from https://earthshots.usgs.gov/earthshots/ about#ad-image-1-0)

Fig. 3 Illustration of shades of red and black with RGB values in (a) color normal vision and (b) protanopian vision using the ColorOracle (D Hobbins)

shifted. For protanomalous CVD, the shift is away from the “red” or 557 nm peak. For deuteranomaly, by far the most common congenital condition, the green cone peak sensitivity shifts away from 530 nm. Deuteranomalous individuals have much better red-green discrimination and better shade discrimination than those suffering from deuteranopia, as it is a reduced trichromacy rather than a dichromacy problem (Clark 2002; Gardner 2005). The third dichromacy problem is tritanopia. Congenital tritanopia is very rare but is equally inherited by both males and females. Here individuals have trouble distinguishing blues from greens and yellows from violets. This is illustrated in Fig. 2d using the ColorOracle. Where tritanopia is rare, “acquired tritanopia” appears very common and results in a “similar” CVD. colourblindawareness.org (n.d.) reports it as similar to an anomalous trichromacy. Schneck et al. (2014) reported that aging produces a

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tritan-like condition and that the most common age-related diseases (glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and diabetic eye disease) all produce blue-yellow color vision anomalies. The AOA (2014) states that “disease or injury damaging the optic nerve or retina can also result in loss of color recognition.” Other authors discuss “acquired tritanopia” or a blue-yellow defect as the predominant color defect resulting from injury, chemical exposure, medication, and disease (Sharpe et al. 1999; Gobba and Cavalleri 2003; Iregren et al. 2002; AOA 2014). Where tritanopia is a failure of the additive color process, age-related tritanopia may be as well or may result from a yellowing of the lens (National Eye Institute 2015). Where yellow lens pigments occur, they act as a filter, a subtractive process, by absorbing blue light (410 nm), resulting in a “blue blindness” (Salvi et al. 2006) or disruption of blueyellow vision. People with this condition have difficulty distinguishing blue from green and yellow from violet. The web page colourblindawareness.org (n.d.) points out that CVD resulting from aging is varied and changes with time. It may not be noticeable by individuals and may not show up on tests in its early stages. Figure 2d is one representation of CVD in aging populations, but more needs to be done to better capture the wide range of conditions and perspective views that actually occur.

4

Map Design Recommendations and Tools

Good map design begins with a clear understanding of the map’s purpose and its audience. This chapter focuses on the CVD audience, but any map that effectively addresses that audience will be readable to a broader audience. In considering the CVD audience, remember that the oldest age group will be the most disadvantaged in map reading. In addition to color defects or poor color discrimination, aging populations also suffer other visual declines. Although high contrast acuity is reasonably well maintained on average with age, significant vision impairment occurs under conditions of reduced contrast, reduced luminance, or glare. Also, greatly reduced stereopsis and severely restricted peripheral fields are reported (Haegerstrom-Portnoy et al. 1999). Vrenko and Petrovic (2015) point out that small fonts, some text and background color combinations, background images, and blinking texts are all problems for seniors. These limitations must be considered in designing maps for seniors and the general public. Jenny and Kelso (2007) have it right when they say that “greater clarity can be brought to maps by” using supplemental visual variables, by annotating features, and by choosing unambiguous color combinations. Vector maps that utilize multiple visual variables and feature annotation will greatly impact the speed with which a viewer can decipher a map. When feature ranking or importance is expressed with color alone, it becomes a problem for some viewers. “The most important issue is not to use color as a primary means to impart information” (Karagol-Ayan 2001), if at all possible. Vrenko and Petrovic (2015) remind us that Lloyd (1997) reported two things that produce a pop-out effect when an audience is searching a map for a feature. One is when a target symbol has a unique feature, regardless of the number

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of other symbols on the map. A second variable is color, especially when combined with shape. Vector point features readily can make use of unique symbols and colors. For distinguishing point classes, Jenny and Kelso (2007) state that “the best solution is achieved by combining the use of different geometric shapes with varying hue.” For line features, they warn that line width must be applied with care. A better solution is to directly annotate lines with labels, thus clarifying ambiguous colors and reducing the need for a legend (Jenny and Kelso 2007). Most color recommendations focus on red-green color blindness (Brewer 1997, 2005; Clark 2002; Gardner 2005; Jenny and Kelso 2007). All refer to Brewer’s work which is mostly summarized in Designing Better Maps published by ESRI Press in 2005. She recommends the use of color names as opposed to measures. Although this eliminates a number of potential color combinations, it is more useful in designing maps. Clark (2002) recommends you stay with shades for which you have no doubt that they can be described by simple color words. First, consider what not to do when designing graphics. For the acquired CVD population, avoid combinations of light blue and green. When dealing with the red-green CVD population, do not use red on black or black on red and green on red or red on green. Do not mix beige/yellow/orange with red and green (Clark 2002). Brewer (2005) recommends avoiding magenta and cyan. Avoid desaturated colors like rust and olive. Any combination of red-orange-brown-yellow and green is potentially confusing. Any combination of magenta, gray, and cyan is potentially indistinguishable to that population. Be sure your symbols and background have good contrast (Brewer 2005). What colors can be used? Brewer recommends the use of the following color pairs: • • • • • • • • • •

Red and blue Red and purple Orange and blue Orange and purple Brown and blue Brown and purple Yellow and blue Yellow and purple Yellow and gray Gray and blue

Consider these complementary color combinations when designing vector maps so that features can stand out from each other and from their background. Color becomes a challenge when using continuous data. In the realm of raster maps or images, Jenny and Kelso (2007) illustrate Brewer’s (1997) recommendations for continuous-tone raster data. Brewer (1997) suggests that you vary the lightness on the red-orange-yellow end; omit yellow-green, to avoid confusion with orange; and, for bipolar data, omit green and use a red, orange, yellow, light

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blue, dark blue scheme, with the data pivot point at the yellow/blue transition. Be sure to examine Jenny and Kelso’s (2007) excellent example of this modified spectral scheme for continuous raster data. However, Fig. 4 is an attempt to illustrate how such a color scheme would appear. The top view in Fig. 4 illustrates a color “normal” view, followed by the three perspective views as modified by the ColorOracle, protant, deuteron, and tritan, respectively. The recommended color scheme does appear to work on all perspective views and appears to work well for the tritan perspective view (Fig. 4d). When there is a need to rank continuous data in vector choropleth maps, one way to approach this task is to employ one or more of the available, free online tools. ColorBrewer2 (http://colorbrewer2.org/) was specifically created to aid in map design (Brewer et al. 2002). It permits you to set the number of classes, the measurement level of the data (sequential, divergent, or qualitative), and the data feature type (point, line, or polygon), as well as several other options. One option is the color-blind safe checkbox which, when checked, provides recommended hues that are readable to most red-green CVD viewers. There are 16 color schemes, 10 multiple hue options, and 6 single hue options, listed as color-blind-friendly, under sequential data. The HEX, RGB, and CMYK values for each recommended hue also are available. Those values can be used in your software to build your own color scheme. Also, from the downloads menu, you can access an Excel file of color schemes and a style file for use in ArcGIS, as well as several other useful items. In experimenting with ColorBrewer2 and using ColorOracle to evaluate the results, it was found that the color-blind safe options in the ColorBrewer2 worked not only for the red-green CVD group but also for the acquired CVD (tritan-like) group. Minimizing the number of classes is important. ColorBrewer2 provides up to nine hues or shades for each scheme. For the acquired CVD (tritan-like) group, the available color schemes all appear to work well within a five class perimeter. However, based on experimentation with ColorOracle, once you exceed the five recommended classes, some multi-hue color schemes are less likely to provide colorblind-friendly solution for the tritanopia defect group. This reinforces the general rule to minimize your classes whenever possible.

Fig. 4 Illustration of a raster color scheme in (a) normal, (b) protan, (c) deuteron, and (d) tritan view. (Modified with ColorOracle from the NASA wavelength frequency image, NASA. (2015). Imagine the Universe, What’s the Frequency, Roy G. Biv? Retrieved: 3 November 2015 from https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/educators/lessons/roygbiv/)

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After building your map or graphic, it will be useful to employ Coblis or ColorOracle to evaluate your product. Both provide a prospective view of what a protaniopian, deuteranopian, or tritanopian might see. Coblis (Wickline and the Human-Computer Interaction Resource Network 2001) is a tool that is used online. You import a file. When processed, the image will simulate one of the selected prospective views. ColorOracle (http://colororacle.org/) was programmed and tested by Jenny and Kelso, respectively. It is a downloadable tool that permits the user to change their computer screen to simulate the perspective of a person with dichromatic CVD. Windows, Mac, and Linux versions are available. On the web page, several tabs permit access to design recommendations and links to other tools and resources (Jenny 2013). Again, when designing vector maps, employing multiple visual variables, annotating features, and choosing unambiguous color combinations is imperative. When generating choropleth maps from ranked continuous data, employing the aforementioned tools will aid you in generating the best possible color choices for a CVD audience.

5

Summary

Purpose and audience are crucial to the success of one’s map design. If color is being used exclusively to convey ranking or importance of map features or objects, then it is critical that one considers the intended audience. One can expect a minimum of 5% of a Caucasian male audience to suffer from congenital CVD. If the audience includes individuals over 65 years of age, it is important to remember that, as the age of the viewer increases, as many as 50% of your oldest audience members may have acquired CVD issues. By considering the above recommendations, avoiding problem color pairs and desaturated colors, annotating, and using multiple visual variables, the principle of Universal Design can be achieved, and more importantly, visual access can be achieved for the broadest possible audience. Further research will help us better understand the tritan-like view of the acquired CVD group. Not only is this group increasing in number, but the perspective views of acquired CVD may be as varied as their causes. Is the tritan-like condition of acquired CVD the same perspective view as those suffering tritanopia? What is the range of perspective views of the acquired CVD group? Gardner (2005) points out that there is a “lack of research into the perception abilities of the color-vision impaired, especially related to cartographic design.” He further points to a need for empirical studies to evaluate the “difficulty of color differentiation for those with impaired color vision.” Culp (2012) also points out the “deficit in studies on accessible maps for readers with the acquired form of CVD.” The tools we examined were designed for the congenital dichromatic CVD group, and although it appears that the tools address the needs of the tritan CVD group, research specific to the acquired CVD or tritan-like group is needed to clearly understand what they see and what can be

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done to address their needs. As the average age of people increases in developed countries, there is an increased need to better understand the perspective views of the acquired CVD population and address those results in map and graphic design.

References American Optometric Association. (2014). Color vision deficiency. Retrieved 26 May 2015, from http://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/eye-and-vision-problems/glossary-of-eye-and-visionconditions/color-deficiency?sso=y Brewer, C. A. (1997). Spectral schemes: Controversial color use on maps. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, 24(4), 203–220. Brewer, C. A. (2005). Designing better maps: A guide for GIS users. Redlands: E.S.R.I. Press. Brewer, C., Harrower, M., & The Pennsylvania State University. (2002). ColorBrewer 2.0. Retrieved 2 June 2015, from http://colorbrewer2.org/ Center for Universal Design. (2008). About UD. The Center for Universal Design. Retrieved 28 May 2015, from http://www.ncsu.edu/ncsu/design/cud/about_ud/about_ud.htm Central Intelligence Agency. (2001). Long-term global trends: Reshaping the geopolitical landscape. Retrieved 20 Apr 2015, from https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/ Demo_Trends_For_Web.pdf Central Intelligence Agency. (n.d.). The world factbook 2013–2014. Retrieved 28 Dec 2015, from www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ Clark, J. (2002). Building accessible websites. Chapter 9: Type and color. Available from http:// joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter09.html Color Universal Design Organization. (2015). CUDO English pages. Retrieved 29 May 2015, from http://www.cudo.jp/summary/cudo_e Colour Blind Awareness. (n.d.). Retrieved 12 Jan 2016, from http://www.colourblindawareness. org/colour-blindness/acquired-colour-vision-defects/ Culp, C. M. (2012). Increasing accessibility for map readers with acquired and inherited colour vision deficiencies: A re-colouring algorithm for maps. The Cartographic Journal, 49(4), 302–311. EIZO NANAO Corporation. (2006). Color Universal Design handbook. Retrieved 29 May 2015, from http://www.iar.unicamp.br/lab/luz/ld/Cor/Color%20Universal%20Design%20handbook. pdf Gardner, S. D. (2005). Evaluation of the ColorBrewer color schemes for accommodation of map readers with impaired color vision. M.S. Thesis, Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved 28 May 2015, from http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/ColorBrewer/Steve_Gardner_thesis_ PSU.pdf Gobba, F., & Cavalleri, A. (2003). Color vision impairment in workers exposed to neurotoxic chemicals. Neurotoxicology, 24(2003), 693–702. Haegerstrom-Portnoy, G., Schneck, M., & Brabyn, J. A. (1999). Seeing into old age: Vision function beyond acuity. Optometry and Vision Science, 76(3), 141–158. Iregren, A., Andersson, M., & Nylen, P. (2002). Color vision and occupational chemical exposures: I. An overview of tests and effects. Neurotoxicology, 23(2002), 719–733. Jackson, R., MacDonald, L., & Freeman, K. (1994). Computer generated colour: A practical guide to presentation and display. New York: Wiley. Jenny, B. (2013). Color Oracle: Design for the color impaired. Retrieved 1 June 2015, from http:// colororacle.org/ Jenny, B., & Kelso, N. V. (2007). Color design for the color vision impaired. Cartographic Perspectives, 58, 61–67.

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Kalloniatis, M., & Luu, C. (2015). Color perception by Michael Kalloniatis and Charles Luu. WebVision. Retrieved 7 May 2015, from http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-viii-gabacreceptors/color-perception/ Karagol-Ayan, B. (2001). Color vision confusion. TEWM of Digital Technology. Retrieved 15 Jan 2016, from http://www.co-bw.com/DMS_color_vsion_confusion.htm Lloyd, R. (1997). Visual search processes used in map reading. Cartographica, 34(1), 11–31. Merbs, S. L., & Nathans, J. (1992). Absorption spectra of human cone pigments. Nature, 356, 433–435. National Center on Universal Design for Learning. (2015). About UDL. Retrieved 28 May 2015, from http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/whatisudl National Eye Institute. (2015). Facts about color blindness. Retrieved 12 Jan 2016, from https://nei. nih.gov/health/color_blindness/facts_about Okabe, M., & Ito, K. (2008). Color Universal Design (CUD) – How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to colorblind people. J*FLY. Retrieved 11 May 2015, from http://jfly. iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/color/ Robinson, A. H., Morrison, J. L., Muehricke, P. C., Kimerling, A. J., & Guptill, S. C. (1995). Elements of cartography. New York: Wiley. Salvi, S. M., Akhtar, S., & Currie, Z. (2006). Ageing changes in the eye. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 82(971), 581–587. Schneck, M. E., Haegerstrom-Protnoy, G., Lott, L. A., & Brabyn, J. A. (2014). Comparison of panel D-15 tests in a large older population. Optometry and Vision Science, 91(3), 284–290. Sharpe, L. T., Stockman, A., Jagle, H., & Nathans, J. (1999). Opsin genes, cone photopigments, color vision, and color blindness. In K. R. Gegenfurtner & L. T. Sharpe (Eds.), Color vision: From genes to perception (pp. 3–51). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Vrenko, D. Z., & Petrovic, D. (2015). Effective online mapping and map viewer design for the senior population. The Cartographic Journal, 52(1), 73–87. Wickline, M. and Human-Computer Interaction Resource Network. (2001). Coblis (Color Blindness Simulator). Retrieved from https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/. Wright, W. D. (1952). The characteristics of tritanopia. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 42(8), 509–520. Xie, J. Z., Tarczy-Hornoch, K., Lin, J., Cotter, S. A., Torres, M., & Varma, R. (2014). Color vision deficiency in preschool children. Ophthalmology, 121(7), 1469–1474.

The Map’s Changing Role: A Survey of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers

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Fritz C. Kessler and Terry A. Slocum

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Selecting Articles to Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Developing Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Cartography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 GIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Remote Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Quantitative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Qualitative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Evaluating the Overall Appearance of Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Evaluating the Use of Various Geographic Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Cartography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 GIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Remote Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Quantitative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Qualitative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

290 293 294 294 297 297 298 299 299 301 302 306 307 308 311 313 315

Abstract

Recently, researchers have lamented the decreasing use of maps in refereed journals. Yet, what might have replaced the map if in fact it is less frequently used has not been offered. New theoretical perspectives (e.g., critical cartography and deconstructionism) have called into question the role that maps play and thus may have spurred on a F. C. Kessler (*) Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. A. Slocum Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_50

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greater use of text. But substantial developments in geographic techniques have taken place: in cartography itself and in geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, quantitative methods, and qualitative methods. The basic question this study asks is what role have these developments played in map use? In this chapter, the authors perform a detailed content analysis of the role that these various techniques have played over the 1940–2010 period for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. This study hypothesized that recent developments in geovisualization, geovisual analytics, and new Web mapping techniques would have a positive impact on map use, but little evidence of this was seen. At issue here is the need for an interactive graphical framework (which is absent from the static nature of Portable Document Format files). The results show that although maps are used less frequently in journal articles, particularly in the last three decades, the level of integration with articles has been relatively steady in terms of words contained in figure captions, words in the main text used to describe thematic maps, and the number of times maps were referenced. Both GIS and remote sensing have significantly impacted the discipline of geography. The results also suggested, however, that GIS was used in only about 20% of articles over the 1990–2010 period and that only 12% of the articles integrated remote sensing in the analysis during this period. Quantitative methods saw a rapid increase from 1940 to 1970 but became relatively stable from 1970 to 2010. Qualitative methods were frequently used prior to 1970, infrequently used in the 1970–1980 period, and then there was a resurgence of usage after 1980, with the development of new qualitative approaches. Articles that used quantitative methods were more apt to utilize thematic maps, while articles containing qualitative approaches were generally less apt to use thematic maps. Keywords

Cartography · History of cartography · Map use · Geographic techniques

1

Introduction

Over the last 20 years or so, several researchers have stressed the importance of maps to geography and lamented the decreasing use of maps in refereed journals. James Wheeler (1998) was one of the first of such researchers. In an editorial appearing in the journal Urban Geography in 1998, he quoted Carl Sauer (1956: 289), who stated: Maps break down our inhibitions, stimulate our glands, stir our imagination, loosen our tongues. The map speaks across the barrier of language; it is sometimes claimed as the language of geography.

Similarly, John Borchert (1987: 388) emphasized the importance of maps to geography: “Because of the distinctive subject matter of geography, the language of maps is the distinctive language of geography.”

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Wheeler noted that maps were a requisite part of regional study from the 1920s into the late 1950s, but that various new theoretical approaches arguably led to a shift away from maps, including the quantitative revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, the Marxist approach beginning in the 1970s, the humanistic approach of the late 1970s and beyond, and later, social theoretical, feminist, and postmodern approaches. Wheeler also argued that the declining use of maps was a function of lack of cartographic emphasis in graduate programs. To see whether the data actually supported his perspective, Wheeler made counts of maps appearing in eight refereed journals from 1980 to 1996 and generally found a decreasing use of maps in these journals. For example, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (TIBG), which Wheeler (1997) found was the most cited geography journal from 1991 to 1994, declined from a peak of 17.97 maps per 100 article pages in 1985–1988 to a low of 6.72 maps per 100 article pages in 1993–1996. In a fashion similar to Wheeler, Ron Martin (2000) wrote an editorial for TIBG, in which he also noted the decreasing use of maps. Although he did not conduct a formal survey, Martin noted that in the last 5 years, he had found only 50 maps in 2000-plus pages of TIBG, which equates to a rate of 2.50 maps per 100 article pages; this suggests that the use of maps continued to decline in TIBG after Wheeler’s survey. Martin also scanned through several other leading refereed journals and found a low incidence of maps. Like Wheeler, Martin felt that the decreased use of maps was a function of new theoretical approaches. He stated: Attention has focused on the theorization and meaning of space and place, and as a result these notions have become much more complex concepts, construed as fluid social and discursive constructs rather than pregiven, fixed and external material entities, and thus not easily reduced to or represented in the form of ‘conventional’ maps. In some respects it might be argued that our mapping techniques have lagged behind our new conceptualizations of space and place. (Martin 2000: 4)

Martin further argued that new mapping methods were being developed based on GIS but that these tended to be data-rich and thus were not appropriate for human geography, which at that time was emphasizing an in-depth inquiry involving a small number of cases. In a commentary in Environment and Planning A, Martin Dodge and Chris Perkins (2008) again lamented the decreased use of maps. They stated: Physical geographers may map their results on occasion, but most human geographers somehow feel that mapping is a pursuit beneath them, or somehow antithetical to progressive work. They may deconstruct the cultural significance of different media, but they only rarely make and use maps. The map as an artefact is apparently seen as tainted, embodying descriptive, naive, and acritical values – part of an ocularcentric orthodoxy central to many positivist knowledge claims, and rejected by numerous researchers.

Using data they computed for TIBG, Dodge and Perkins found a decline from an average of 2.5 maps per article in 1989 to under 0.5 maps per article in 2006. Paralleling Wheeler’s comments on the lack of cartographic emphasis in graduate

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programs, they found few recent PhDs explicitly focusing on mapping in the United Kingdom, and they found that departmental map collections in the United Kingdom were being diminished. Like Martin, they noted the rise of GIS, suggesting that “spatial analysis offers more powerful tools than cartographic representation” (Fisher 1998; Dodge and Perkins 2008: 1272). Furthermore, like Wheeler and Martin, they noted the rising importance of theory in geography. They stressed, however, that the situation in the United States differed from the United Kingdom, as in the United States there was active mapping research, readily available cartographic data, professional networks fostering collaboration, and a large GIS industry, and that cartography was an important component of the national geographer’s meeting. Evidence suggests that these characteristics still hold true in the United States today. Paralleling the “McDonaldization” of the food industry, Dodge and Perkins (2008: 1273) also noted the creation of “Mc-Maps” on the Web, maps “made with easy-to-use technology, [that] are also cheap to produce, and seductive at first glance, but can also leave a nasty taste in the mouth.” They argued that such maps lack lasting impact, have supplanted more desirable alternatives, and are of low quality. One result of the production of such maps is the British Cartographic Society’s Better Mapping Campaign (Spence 2011), which is a set of seminars intended to promote good map design. Although the Web can be used to create undesirable maps, Dodge and Perkins (2008: 1274) noted the potential of map mash-ups that combine heterogeneous sources and have “the potential to deliver radical and empowering alternatives that have so far been largely absent in the rhetoric of participatory GIS.” Finally, Dodge and Perkins noted the emerging field of critical cartography (Crampton and Krygier 2006), which evaluates the authority, assumptions, and questioning that maps propose (Crampton 2010: 15). A key notion of critical cartography has been the deconstruction of maps; Dodge and Perkins (2008: 1275) argued that “new maps need to be constructed as well as deconstructed.” In related work (Kessler and Slocum 2011; Slocum and Kessler 2011), the authors focused on evaluating the design of thematic maps in three geographic journals over the course of the twentieth century: the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (AAAG), the Geographical Journal (GJ), and the Geographical Review (GR). As part of this analysis, the authors also examined the frequency of map use by computing the percentage of articles in each year that contained maps. Articles were sampled at 20-year intervals beginning in 1900 and ending in 2000 (they started at 1920 for the AAAG due to lack of data). For the AAAG results showed that the percentage of articles containing maps increased over time, with the highest occurring in 2000, with 85% of articles containing maps. Similarly, for the GJ, the percentage generally increased over time, although the peak was in 1980 at 95.2% rather than 2000, where the value was 84.6%. In contrast, for the GR the peak was in 1960 (92.3%) and the percentage was distinctly lower early and late in the century (32.8% in 1900 and 60.0% in 2000). The fact that the results for the AAAG and GJ are opposite to those suggested by Wheeler and Martin may be a function of the coarse measure that was selected (the percentage of articles containing maps was computed rather than the number of maps per 100 pages). When the results were

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reanalyzed using Wheeler’s measure, it was found that all three journals decreased in terms of the number of maps per 100 journal pages from 1980 to 2000, the period that Wheeler and Martin emphasized (from 24.25 to 11.63 for the AAAG, from 20.06 to 16.93 for the GJ, and from 20.34 to 6.61 for the GR). Although the above references suggest that map use has generally decreased in refereed journals, no one has analyzed specifically what might have replaced the map if in fact it is less frequently used. There seems to be the presumption that the various new theoretical perspectives have led to a greater use of text but, at the same time, these new theoretical perspectives have been developing; there have been substantial developments in geographic techniques: in cartography itself and in geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, quantitative methods, and qualitative methods. In the present paper, the authors will make a detailed content analysis of the role that these various techniques have played over time for one journal, the AAAG, a refereed publication for geographers. Since the authors of this article are not aware that anyone has attempted to analyze the use of a broad range of geographic techniques in academic journals, it was considered reasonable to examine only a single journal.

2

Selecting Articles to Survey

Articles in the AAAG were analyzed at 10-year intervals beginning in 1940 and ending in 2010; these 10-year intervals are termed the base years. The decision to start at 1940 was made because this year was clearly before many changes in technology and associated methodology took place (e.g., before the quantitative revolution and the use of computers to analyze spatial data and display maps). Initially, a sample of 20 articles from each of the base years was envisioned because it was felt that 20 articles could provide a sense of the character of articles published in a base year and yet not be onerous given the detailed data collection originally envisioned. Unfortunately, for some base years, 20 articles were not published, and so the decision was made to select articles from adjacent years. If adjacent years were used, then the specific issues used for that year were those that fell closest to the base year. Table 1 provides a summary of the articles sampled from each of the base years. From Table 1, note that for 1940, 1950, 1960, and 2000, a sample from adjacent years was needed in order to arrive at the desired sample size of 20 articles. For the remaining years, a random sample was taken from the larger number of articles for the base year. Since the articles in each base year constituted either the entire population or nearly the entire population of articles for that year, statistical tests were not performed in subsequent sections. To provide a feel for the nature of articles published in each decade, articles were assigned to one of four categories: human, physical, human-physical, and techniques (Table 1). For 2010, articles were assigned to these four categories using the four major sections of the journal: environmental sciences (to physical); people, place, and region (to human); nature and society (to human-physical); and methods, models, and GIS (to techniques) following the approach used by Price (2010).

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Table 1 Summary of data collected for the AAAG for each base year

Base year 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

No. of articles in sample 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

No. of articles by subdiscipline in sample Range of years sampled 1938–1942 1949–1951 1959–1960 1970 1980 1990 1999–2001 2010

No. of articles in base year 5 5 19 37 29 24 16 36

Human 9 9 8 13 14 13 8 9

Physical 4 8 6 4 4 3 2 2

Humanphysical 7 3 6 3 2 3 8 4

Techniques 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 5

Only research articles were surveyed, thus excluding presidential addresses, review articles, biographies, reports, book reviews, and obituaries. The Forum section for 2000, the Centennial Forum for 2010, and the special issue on Climate Change for 2010 were excluded because these were shorter pieces that did not fit the typical research article. Furthermore, articles that focused on the development of new techniques were excluded, as the study’s goal was in how techniques were used, as opposed to the development of new techniques. This explains the lack of techniques articles in early years (see Table 1); in later years (e.g., 1990–2010), techniques articles may still have included new developments, but there also was a major emphasis on the applications.

3

Developing Hypotheses

Proponents of content analysis (e.g., Riffe et al. 2005) often argue the importance of developing a set of hypotheses to be tested. Although the novelty of analyzing the use of geographic techniques in refereed journals suggested more of an exploratory approach, it was also assumed to be useful to briefly survey the history of the various techniques and attempt some general hypotheses.

3.1

Cartography

The authors have reviewed developments in thematic mapping over the course of the twentieth century (Slocum and Kessler 2015), noting that many of these developments took place during the Desktop Computer Mapping Era (1977–1990) and the Internet Era (1991 onward). Many of these later developments are subsumed under the term geovisualization (MacEachren et al. 1992; MacEachren 1994; for an overview of related techniques see Slocum et al. 2009), which has evolved into geovisual analytics (Kraak 2008), or using computer-based systems to combine the

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visualization capability of humans with the computational power of computers to make sense out of large geospatial datasets. There have also been a number of new mapping techniques developed specifically for the Web. Probably best known are the virtual globes (e.g., Google Earth and World Wind), but there is a vast array of Web mapping software (Muehlenhaus 2014; Peterson 2014). With the development of these new cartographic methods, new mapping methods appearing in refereed articles may be seen. In fact, if it was assumed that maps were occurring less frequently, given these extensive developments, it would be reasonable to hypothesize that maps would be more likely to appear in journal articles toward the end of the twentieth century and in the beginning of the twenty-first century when these developments were taking place. Despite the promise that technology has offered the field of cartography, one can argue that the use of maps may have been tempered by the emergence of critical cartography and postmodernism. As described by Crampton and Krygier (2006), a main tenet of critical cartography examines the assumed apolitical stance that the field of cartography once took. More specifically, critical cartography challenges the assumed power that is embedded in authoritarian cartographers such as professional map-making enterprises and government agencies. These entities produce maps and thus knowledge behind a veil of supposedly superior scientific understanding. Another critical voice applied to the field of cartography was postmodernism. According to Fernández et al. (2014: 12), a basic characteristic of postmodernism is questioning the rise of Western culture and knowledge that is produced by this culture. They further argue that “knowledge and truth are always relative to a particular culture or to a historical period.” Huffman (1996) explained that a postmodern critique of cartography involves examining maps, which are constructs of a particular culture. Maps can therefore be treated as a language and analyzed to uncover, among other things, hidden meanings and political agendas. These ideas were initially articulated in a particularly influential article appearing in 1989: Brian Harley’s “Deconstructing the Map.” Harley was one of the earliest voices of critical cartography. He began with the argument that maps are instruments that exhibit power. This power was largely controlled by Western-centric political structures that used maps to influence knowledge and space. He continued with his critique suggesting that maps should be read as texts to uncover the hidden meanings and metaphors. This idea was elaborated on by Wood and Fels (1986) in their critique of the “North Carolina Official State Highway Map.” In their critique, Wood and Fels discussed how maps are encoded with information and through this encoding maps are not necessarily self-explanatory. As an example, the casual map reader may not grasp that the meaning of the sign representing mountains on the North Carolina map looks like two eyes and an eyebrow (i.e., the hills are watching you) or that the coloring and numerousness of the roads suggests that this network is the lifeblood of the state. As Edney (2015: 9) outlines, some of the lasting effects of what Harley wrote have “prompted scholars to look at cartography in new ways and so to ask new kinds of questions about maps” and “promoted a positive interest in pre-modern and non-Western mapping traditions.” Despite the popularity of

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Harley’s “Deconstructing the Map” being the “most-cited article in Cartographica” (Rose-Redwood 2015: 4), critics of his propositions exist. For instance, Dodge and Perkins (2015: 38) argue that Harley’s stance where maps and their cartographic knowledge are created by powerful institutions for the benefit of the few against the interest of the many creates an atmosphere of negative and gloomy worldviews. Moreover, Dodge and Perkins argue that such myopic thinking “misses so much of the positive potential that is also inherent in cartography and the sheer joy of mapping” and that Harley targeted the “powerful knowledge through which cartography justified its existence, not the playful exercise of mapping in banal contexts (Dodge and Perkins 2015: 38).” They argue that such playful mapping defines much of what the Web offers to everyday individuals. Harley could not envision such an environment as he passed away in 1991 prior the advent of the Web. Harley also reflected on the impact that technology had on cartography. For instance, he commented that as cartographers began to “embrace computer-assisted methods and Geographical Information Systems,” the result became a ubiquitous “culture of technics” (p. 2). Moreover, it is this technical adherence to measurement, classification, and standardization that facilitated cartographers’ claim to their craft being scientific and therefore producing a “true” map (Rose-Redwood 2015: 2). In addition to GIS, other technologies such as Web mapping services, wiki-based maps (e.g., Open Street Map), location-based services, and GPS devices have fundamentally changed the way in which mapping is practiced. For example, personal GPS devices have reduced the authoritarian cartographic power of institutions and facilitated the rise of individual data gathering and sharing through volunteered geographic information (VGI). Lin (2015: 43) reflects that VGI creates an “increasingly blurred line between the map-maker and map user” and that new kinds of mapping technologies have also seen “new forms of social division and a growing digital divide.” No longer are map-makers tied to institutions or other authoritarian sources for data and maps. These spatially enabled technologies assist individuals when collecting their own data, shaping their own representation of the landscape, and creating new knowledge. Much has transpired on the technical side of mapping since “Deconstructing the Map” was published. However, this technological progress has also been held to a critical review. For instance, since the 1980s, GIS has seen tremendous inroads not only in geography but also in spatially related fields. This growth has been viewed critically by some as ushering in the death knell for cartography. For example, Jordan (1988), during his tenure as president of the American Association of Geographers, denounced GIS as “non-intellectual” and Wood (2003) left no room for doubt that “Cartography was Dead (Thank God!).” This wrangling over the “death issue” of cartography has largely passed by and attention has turned to critically evaluating other spatially based technologies. For example, as Ellwood et al. (2012) suggest, the emergence of VGI and Web-based mapping services has raised new questions about privacy of and ownership of geospatial data. Concerns over privacy also extend to geo-surveillance where technologies are used to track individual movements, create racial profiles, and spy on groups of people. Furthermore, Sui et al. (2013) extend the critique to demonstrate that the Internet does not create an equal playing field. In fact, there is a considerable

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disparity between those who have and those that do not have connectivity to the Internet. A map appearing in the Business Insider (Engel 2014) shows global Internet connectivity. On this map, the United States and Western Europe have the greatest number of people that have Internet access (although there are gaps in these geographic areas). However, most of Africa, Asia, and South America show huge voids where connectivity is absent. In what Crampton (2010) calls the digital divide, Internet access creates a disparity of knowledge and power between those that have and have not. Technology will continue to evolve and create different types of maps and mapping techniques that the authors are not aware of in 2016. And, to keep this technology in check, the critical voices that trace their lineage back to “Deconstructing the Map” will still be heard. It is clear that the effects of critical cartography and postmodernism have been felt by cartography. This study hypothesizes that the impact of critical cartography and postmodernism would be to reduce the number of maps appearing in journal articles. As an extension, the authors postulate that the decrease in map use would result from a more conscious examination of the role of maps and stem from a greater sensitivity to the power that maps could have on the reader. Finally, it is important to note that since the bulk of the work in critical cartography did not appear until after 1990, this negative effect on mapping likely would not appear until the chosen 2000 and 2010 base years.

3.2

GIS

As any geographer is well aware, the field of GIS has transformed the ways in which geographers analyze spatial data and conduct research (for an overview of GIS developments, see Madden 2009). As such, cartographers have often complained that a focus on GIS has detracted from cartography course offerings and thus possibly diminished the quality of map design (Fitzsimons and Turner 2006). In a similar vein, it would seem reasonable to presume that GIS analysis methods could displace maps, as Dodge and Perkins (2008) suggested. From a historical perspective, GIS was initially developed in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that software became widely available – Coppock and Rhind (1991: 32) indicated that by the end of the 1980s more than 2000 systems of Earth Systems Research Institute (ESRI) GIS software were being sold for personal computers each year. Thus, it is reasonable to hypothesize increased GIS use by those publishing in refereed journals at this time and that the frequency of use likely increased as GIS continued its rise in popularity (e.g., in 2015 the ESRI user conference had approximately 16,000 attendees, whereas the national Association of American Geographer’s meeting had only about 9000 attendees).

3.3

Remote Sensing

Remote sensing has had less impact on the field of geography than GIS, but certainly it is a very important component of the modern geographer’s toolbox. Two key components of modern remote sensing are the satellite-based system for

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acquiring imagery and the software that enables digital processing of these images. Satellite-based imagery did not become available until 1972 when the first Landsat system was launched (CORONA was available prior to this, but that was a secretive military program) and it wasn’t until the early 1980s that a version of the popular ERDAS Imagine software was made available for personal computers (Baumann 2015; The Field Guide 2009). Thus, one can hypothesize that remote sensing involving both the visualization and analysis of digital satellite imagery was probably not common in refereed journals until at least the mid-1980s. If remote sensing was used more frequently after 1980, then this impact may be exhibited as more detailed thematic maps, reflecting the fine cell sizes characteristic of remotely sensed images.

3.4

Quantitative Methods

From a historical perspective, quantitative methods in geography are often associated with the quantitative revolution of the 1950s and 1960s (as Wheeler noted). Stewart Fotheringham (2006: 237) argues, however, that although there was “a relative demise of the quantitative approach within geography during the 1980s and 1990s,” there has been a resurgence of the approach in recent years. Summaries of some of the recent developments in quantitative geography can be found in Fotheringham (1997, 1998, 1999), Fischer and Getis (2010), and Fotheringham and Rogerson (2008). Thus, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that there would be an increased use of quantitative methods in early base years, then a leveling off or possibly decreased use of quantitative methods, and finally a revitalization of the use of quantitative methods toward the end of this study period. One weakness of maps is that they rely on a subjective visual assessment by the reader; as such, readers may see patterns that are not statistically significant. Since statistical approaches can avoid this subjectivity, it is reasonable to hypothesize that quantitative methods would replace more traditional mapping approaches, as Wheeler already suggested. The second author (Slocum 1990) has analyzed the use of quantitative methods in almost 600 articles in 14 major geographical journals between 1956 and 1986. For that study, articles were split into three categories: mainstream (characterized by one or more of 90 quantitative methods), descriptive-tabular (characterized by either descriptive statistics or tables, but no mainstream methods), and non-quantitative (having neither mainstream methods nor descriptive-tabular information). Figure 1 displays the percentages with which articles fell in each category for each of the time periods; here we can see the dramatic increase in mainstream methods over time and the corresponding decrease in the other categories. One wonders whether this trend continues beyond 1986 or whether the use of quantitative methods reached a plateau or decreased in usage. This question can’t be answered fully by examining a single journal, but hopefully the results of this study will provide some perspective on it.

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Percent of Articles

100% 80% Mainstream

60%

Descriptive-tabular

40%

Nonquantitative

20% 0% 1956

1966

1976

1986

Fig. 1 Quantity of articles, by quantitative method, 1956–1986. (Data from Slocum 1990: 90)

3.5

Qualitative Methods

Like quantitative methods, qualitative methods have been used for a very long time, but the range of qualitative methods has expanded in recent years (Hay 2010; DeLyser et al. 2010), and mixed methods (using quantitative and qualitative approaches) are now common (e.g., Elwood 2010). Meghan Cope (2010) argues that the documented history of qualitative methods began in 1988 with the publication of Eyles’ and Smith’s Qualitative Methods in Human Geography. Although qualitative approaches were used prior to this time, Cope indicates that there are two differences when comparing present approaches with earlier ones. One is that early researchers did not call their work qualitative methods and thus were not as explicit with their methodology. The other difference is that earlier researchers often failed to assess their methodology in critical ways; for instance, a researcher using a focus group today would be more apt to critically assess their role in directing the focus group. Given the recent developments in qualitative methods, this study hypothesizes that these methods should surface in the literature from roughly 1985 on. Based on the comments by Wheeler, Martin, and Dodge and Perkins, this increased use of qualitative methods would be associated with a decreased use of thematic maps.

4

Evaluating the Overall Appearance of Articles

Before examining the role of each of the geographic techniques, the authors of this study thought it would be useful to evaluate the overall appearance of articles published in the AAAG. As one skims through an article, one can ask what component (text, maps, graphs, tables, etc.) has the greatest visual impact and how do these relative components change over time? To examine this characteristic, each article was divided into the following categories: text, maps, remotely sensed images, tables, graphs, diagrams, photographs, drawings or paintings, reproduced documents, equations, and computer algorithms. Since maps were the primary focus of this study, map types were further subdivided into locator maps, thematic maps, historical maps, and physical diagrams. This division of map types follows the

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earlier work by Kessler and Slocum (2011: 297–298) except that the term “locator maps” was used here rather than “general reference maps” because it was felt this better depicted their purpose (typically to show the location of the study area or study data). Reproduced documents refer to documents that have been reproduced in an article such as postcards, posters, and text documents. Equations are typically set aside from the text and numbered in parentheses; however, equations were also included that were not numbered, if they seemed distinct from the text. In measuring the extent of equations, any text that was necessary to understand the meaning of the equations was included. To measure the visual impact of all categories, Adobe Acrobat Pro was used to calculate the percent of area covered in each article by the various categories. In calculating the area covered by text, titles, abstracts, footnotes, references, or appendices were included. Figure 2 displays mean values for each year for the eight categories that had a mean of at least 2% area covered for a category in any 1 year. Clearly, text had by far the greatest visual impact, ranging from a low of 61.0% in 1980 to a high of 78.2% in 2010. Over the 70-year period, the general trend for text appears to be upward. Since the categories other than text are considerably lower than the text category and overlap one another in Fig. 2, it makes sense to view them in a separate graph where the text category is removed, as in Fig. 3. Here note that the thematic maps category is highest in all years, ranging from a high of 15.5% in 1950 to a

Page Area Covered (Mean Percent)

Thematic maps Equations

Photographs Locator maps

Graphs Diagrams

Tables Text

100 80

70

62

66

63

72

74

78

61

60 40 20 0 1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Page Area Covered (Mean Percent)

Fig. 2 Mean page area covered per base year, by category, including text

Thematic maps

Photographs

Graphs

Tables

Equations

Locator maps

Diagrams

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

Fig. 3 Mean page area covered per base year, by graphic category

1990

2000

2010

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Table 2 Number of articles per category, by base year. The maximum for each cell is 20 Text Thematic maps Tables Graphs Locator maps Diagrams Photographs Equations Remote sensing images Drawings/ paintings Historical maps Physical diagrams Reproduced documents Algorithms

1940 20 15 7 3 12 3 9 0 4

1950 20 16 9 2 8 4 4 0 1

1960 20 14 8 11 6 5 7 0 1

1970 20 17 17 9 6 10 5 3 2

1980 20 13 15 8 6 7 5 6 1

1990 20 12 15 11 7 6 7 3 2

2000 20 13 16 10 12 8 7 1 0

2010 20 13 14 8 2 9 4 7 0

Totals 160 113 101 62 59 52 48 20 11

1

1

1

1

0

1

2

1

8

3 2

0 0

0 0

0 1

0 0

1 0

0 1

0 0

4 4

0

0

0

0

0

1

2

1

4

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

low of 6.2% in 2010 and that the trend is noticeably downward over time. The next highest category appears to be tables, with a low of 3.5% in 1940 and a high of 10.2% in 1970. Interestingly, the overall trend for tables seems to be curvilinear, with a distinctive peak in 1970. The next highest category is arguably photographs, with a high of 8.7 in 1940 and a low of 1.8 in 2010, and the general trend appears to be downward over time. There also appears to be a downward trend for locator maps and an upward trend for equations. Those categories not displayed in Figs. 2 and 3 had no year with 2% or more area covered and were found in relatively few of the 160 articles examined. This fact is emphasized in Table 2 where the number of articles within which each of the categories appeared for each year is shown (here the categories are sorted on the totals column). Note, for example, that there were only four articles containing reproduced documents and one article containing computer algorithms. In contrast, 113 of the 160 articles contained at least one thematic map. Also note that only 11 articles contained remotely sensed images and that these images were actually most common in 1940; the images from 1940 appeared to have been taken with a traditional camera but from an airplane.

5

Evaluating the Use of Various Geographic Techniques

In this section, the role that each of the geographic techniques (cartography, GIS, remote sensing, quantitative methods, and qualitative methods) played in articles published in the AAAG from 1940–2010 was evaluated.

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F. C. Kessler and T. A. Slocum

Cartography

This study focused on thematic maps since they were by far the most commonly used type of map and split them into the following categories: cartogram, choropleth, dasymetric, dot, flow, geologic (including geomorphologic), isarithmic, land use, prism/fishnet, proportional symbol, miscellaneous, cell-based quantitative, and cellbased qualitative. The first 11 categories were taken from Kessler and Slocum (2011). The last two categories were added after examining maps from 2000 and 2010, several of which had a fine cell-based appearance that did not seem to fit any traditional categories and seemed distinct enough that they were excluded from the miscellaneous category. Figure 4 shows examples of cell-based approaches. Table 3 depicts the percentage of articles in each year that contained one or more thematic map. In this table the thematic mapping methods are arranged from the method having the highest mean for all years to the lowest mean for all years (see the last column in the table). As with prior research (Kessler and Slocum 2011), the miscellaneous method was clearly the most common, indicating that there are many thematic techniques that do not fit traditional thematic mapping categories. At the bottom of the table, there appear to be several thematic methods that occurred infrequently throughout the 1940–2010 period; in fact, there were no occurrences of either cartograms or prism/fishnet maps in any year. As suggested earlier, the cellbased maps occurred only in 2000 and 2010 and they did not exceed 10% in either year. Proportional symbol, geologic, flow, and dasymetric maps all had mean values below 10% and no year exceeded 20%. Figure 5 provides a visualization of the results for those five thematic methods that occurred most frequently. Again, it is apparent that the miscellaneous category was dominant throughout the bulk of the 1940–2010 period. The dot method was quite variable in its occurrence, ranging from a low of 5% in 1990 to a high of 30% in 2000. The choropleth method appeared to trend upward from 1940 to 1980 where it peaked but then has been less common since then. The choropleth method has received some criticism in recent years (e.g., Crampton 2004), and so one wonders how this might have impacted its use. Land use appears to have been more common early in the period, whereas isarithmic usage has been more variable. Another aspect of cartography that was considered included the degree to which maps were integrated into the articles. This integration was quantified as a count in the number of words in an associated figure caption, number of words used to describe the map in the body of the article, and number of times the map was referenced. It was hypothesized that these counts and the degree to which maps were integrated into the articles as reflected by these counts decreased over the study period. First, the number of words that were contained within each map’s figure captions was totaled. The assumption was that the number of caption words suggested the map’s importance (e.g., more caption words equated to greater importance). Second, the number of words that each author used in the main body of the article to describe the map was counted. It was presumed that a greater number of words used by the author to describe the map implied that the map was viewed with an increased importance in supplementing information

Fig. 4 Examples of the fine cell-based appearance of some maps from more recent issues of the AAAG (2000 and 2010). (Left) map depicting the likelihood of hurricane storm surge in Georgetown County, South Carolina (Cutter et al. 2000; used with permission) and (right) map depicting farmland quality in the Three Gorges region of China (Jim et al. 2010; used with permission)

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Table 3 Percentage of articles containing maps, by map category Thematic method Miscellaneous Dot Choropleth Land use Isarithmic Proportional symbol Geologic Flow Dasymetric Cell-based quantitative Cell-based qualitative Cartogram Prism/fishnet

1940 60 25 5 35 20 10

1950 40 25 10 30 25 0

1960 40 25 10 20 5 20

1970 45 20 20 15 15 5

1980 40 20 30 5 20 15

1990 30 5 20 5 5 10

2000 25 25 15 10 5 5

2010 30 10 20 10 15 10

15 20 5 0

10 10 0 0

20 0 5 0

10 5 0 0

5 0 15 0

10 5 0 0

5 10 0 10

0 0 0 10

9.4 6.3 3.1 2.5

0

0

0

0

0

0

10

0

1.3

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0.0 0.0

Miscellaneous

Choropleth

Land use

Dot

Mean 38.8 19.4 16.3 16.3 13.8 9.4

Isarithmic

Percent of Articles

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Fig. 5 Percent of articles containing maps, by map type

within the article. Third, the number of times a map was referenced in a journal article was tallied. The presumption was that the number of times a map is referenced in the article body indicated the level of integration that map had with the article (e.g., more frequent references in the article implied an increasingly valuable contribution that the map was making to the article). As further analysis of the integration of text and maps used in the articles, the authors were curious whether or not the number of words used to describe maps changed over time and whether the frequency of references to maps changed over time. The basic assumption was that if the number of words used or frequency of reference increased at some particular time, then authors at that time were viewing maps as more important to integrate with their text.

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The following procedures were implemented when making the counts described in the preceding paragraph. The analysis began by downloading each journal article in PDF format. Next, the number of words contained within each map’s figure caption was counted. To count the words, the words were copied and pasted from each figure caption into Excel, and then a formula was developed in Excel that totaled the number of words. There were some exceptions to the specific figure caption words that were counted. Words used to indicate which data sources were used to compile the map or legend information were excluded, as these words were not specifically used to explain the map. Next, the number of words in the main text of the article used to describe the map was counted. Again, the words from the main text of the article were copied and pasted into Excel. A formula then was used to derive the word count. Here, only words that were used to directly explain the mapped pattern were tallied. Then, not only were the number of direct references to a map tallied (e.g., Fig. 2, or “the map”) but also indirect references (e.g., “the map. . .”) that clearly suggested a specific map. The total number of figure caption words, main text words, and map references for each article for each base year were summarized. As a way to mitigate the considerable range of summed values for each raw total, a mean and median score for each year was computed, which then was used as data for this study’s analysis. Figure 6 shows plots of the mean (a) and median (b) number of figure caption words used for each year. Also shown are error bars (1 standard deviation for the mean and the 25th and 75th percentiles for the median) for each year. Figure 6a shows no clear trend to the data, as the mean values across all years are very similar. Figure 6b, however, hints at a possible upward trend in the data between 1970 and 2000. Figure 7 shows plots of the mean (a) and median (b) number of words used in the main text to describe the maps for each year, along with associated error bars. Figure 7a plot shows a trend line that is essentially flat, which suggests no overall increase or decrease across the years. In contrast, Fig. 7b shows an initial decrease from 1940 to 1960, a gentle increase from 1960 to 1990, and finally a slight decline

Fig. 6 Average number of words in figure captions. (a) Mean  1 standard deviation; (b) median and 25th and 75th percentiles

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Fig. 7 Average number of words in main text. (a) Mean  1 standard deviation; (b) median and 25th and 75th percentiles

from 1990 to 2010. The lack of a clear trend in Figs. 7a and b suggests little overall change across the years for the number of words used to describe the maps. Figure 8 shows plots of the mean (a) and median (b) number of times maps were referenced for each year, along with associated error bars. Figure 8a shows little change in the number of times maps were referenced between 1940 and 2000, with the trend line more or less flat. A slight decline, however, is visible from 2000 to 2010. Figure 8b shows the same basic unchanging trend line between 1940 and 2000 and a decrease from 2000 to 2010. With the exception of the decrease between 2000 and 2010, Fig. 8a and b suggest little change to the number of figure references.

5.2

GIS

To analyze the use of GIS, the number of articles in each base year that explicitly mentioned the use of GIS was tabulated. None of the articles that mentioned GIS but appeared to have only mapped the data (as opposed to analyzing the data) were counted, as analysis of spatial data is generally considered a key characteristic of GIS (only one article, from 2010, was eliminated by this rule). In Sect. 3, it was observed that not until the 1980s did GIS software became widely available. The analysis of the use of GIS certainly supported this, as Table 4 shows that prior to 1990 no articles in any base year utilized GIS and that only one article did so in 1990. In contrast, six articles in 2000 and three articles in 2010 explicitly mentioned GIS. One problem with using counts is that some authors may have utilized what some might call GIS techniques, but they chose not to use this terminology; for instance, in 2010 an article by Gober et al. (2010) mentioned “downscaling” and an article by Ramankutty et al. (2010) described extensive data processing. A detailed summary of how GIS was used in each article was planned, but unfortunately many of the articles were not explicit enough in their GIS use for such an inclusion.

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Fig. 8 Average number of map references. (a) Mean  1 standard deviation; (b) median and 25th and 75th percentiles

Table 4 Number of articles that explicitly mention use of GIS, by base year GIS in article

1940 0

1950 0

1960 0

1970 0

1980 0

1990 1

2000 6

2010 3

In Sect. 3, section, an increased use of GIS might be associated with a decrease in maps. This was clearly not the case with the articles identified in the study as explicitly mentioning GIS, as all but one of them included thematic maps. It is true, however, that the resulting thematic maps often differed from the traditional thematic maps mentioned in cartographic textbooks. As pointed out in the cartography section above, special categories for the cell-based maps shown in Fig. 4 had to be created.

5.3

Remote Sensing

Like GIS, remote sensing (specifically, digital satellite imagery) is a rather recent development. This study also focused on examining the extent to which remote sensing techniques (e.g., geometric rectification, radiometric correction, and supervised classification) were described as part of the data analysis in the articles. It was presumed that the number of articles discussing remote sensing techniques would increase, particularly between 1970 and 2010. This time period coincides with the launch of Landsat, the US government satellite program, in 1972. Other sensor platforms came into existence much later. In this study’s analysis, each article was examined, noting instances when the author discussed satellite imagery and remote sensing techniques. According to Table 5, the total number of articles discussing the use of remote sensing techniques was only seven across the time period, with none of these appearing before 1990. These seven articles investigated physical geography topics such as rainfall patterns, climate change, environmental conditions,

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Table 5 Number of articles that explicitly mention use of remote sensing, by base year Remote sensing in article

1940 0

1950 0

1960 0

1970 0

1980 0

1990 2

2000 4

2010 1

Table 6 Articles that use quantitative methods, by base year Articles using quantitative methods Number of quantitative methods used

1940 1

1950 3

1960 5

1970 13

1980 11

1990 12

2000 10

2010 9

1

4

7

16

18

17

17

18

geomorphology, and land cover change. Human geography topics included labor location and land quality, policy decisions and environmental impacts, and human control over the environment. Sensor platforms mentioned in the articles included Landsat (thematic mapper, enhanced thematic mapper, and multispectral scanner), Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT), and QuickBird. Given the increased awareness of climate change and concern for environmental degradation and the data richness afforded by satellite sensors in the past 30 years, an increasing number of articles that made use of satellite imagery and associated remote sensing techniques was expected, but this was not observed. Several reasons for the small number of remote sensing techniques reported were postulated. First, there can be a considerable cost associated with some satellite imagery (especially if the imagery was processed and corrected by a third party). Second, imagery that is freely available usually requires specialized software to process and correct, which can also be costly. In addition, there is a requisite knowledge level that is needed to use the software to process and correct the imagery based on the desired output. Simply put, the authors suspect that many geographers do not have the necessary funds, available software, or the requisite knowledge to make full use of satellite imagery in their research. Collectively, these reasons may help explain why the number of articles that made use of remotely sensed imagery was lower than what was presented in this study’s original hypothesis.

5.4

Quantitative Methods

The use of quantitative methods in the AAAG from 1940 to 2010 is summarized in Tables 6, 7, and 8. The first row of Table 6 specifies the number of articles (out of 20 in each base year) that used one or more of the methods shown in Tables 7 and 8. Looking at the first row of Table 6, there were very few articles using quantitative methods prior to 1970, with a higher number of articles using quantitative methods from 1970 on. The rapid transition from 1970 to 1980 supports the findings of Slocum (1990) mentioned previously. Looking at the data from 1970 to 2010, it also

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Table 7 Non-modeling quantitative methods used, by base year Method Analysis of variance Parametric Friedman (nonparametric) Kruskal-Wallis (nonparametric) Bivariate correlation (including graphical methods) Chi-square Cluster analysis COFECHA (for tree-ring dating) Convergence of iterated correlations Data transformations Difference of means Directed graphs Factor analysis Graph theory Harmonic analysis Indexes (e.g., dissimilarity index) Kappa-related statistics Local indicators of networkconstrained clusters Mann-Whitney U Markov chains Monte Carlo simulation Moran’s I Multidimensional scaling Normality test Paired samples t-test Partial correlation Point pattern analysis Second-order analysis Principal components analysis Rank correlation Spearman’s r Single sample test for mean Skewness-kurtosis tests Test of sigma convergence Vector analysis von Neumann ratio test for homogeneity Wentworth method for determining slope

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

1

2000

2010

4

2

1 1 1

2

1

6

5

8

1 2

2

1

4

1 1 1

1 2 1

1 2

2

3

3

4

3

1

2 1

1

2 1 1 3

1 1

1

1 1 1

1

2 2

1 1

1 1 1

2 1

1 1

3 1

2 1 1 1

1 1 1

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Table 8 Modeling quantitative methods used, by base year Method Agent-based model of elk movement Bivariate regression (including graphical methods) Box model of atmospheric dispersion Bush-Mosteller learning Canonical correlation Clark and Burt’s model of residential relocation General linear model Geographically weighted regression Logistic regression Movement of sand by wind Multiple regression Generalized least squares Ordinary least squares Polynomial regression Spatial lag model Test of beta convergence Two-stage least squares National Hurricane Center SLOSH Net radiation Shift-share algorithm Stream flow Temperature and precipitation distributions over year Time series ARIMA Urban residential age structure Water planning simulation (WaterSim) Water use and availability

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010 1

1

4

1

4

1

1

1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1

4

3 1

2

1

1 2 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

appears that a plateau for quantitative methods usage in the AAAG was reached as the values for these base years appear similar, although there is some hint of a drop-off in later years, with the two lowest frequency years being 2000 and 2010. The second row of Table 6 specifies the number of different quantitative methods used in each year. As with the article frequency data in the first row, there is a large jump in magnitude between 1960 and 1970, and the number of methods used from 1970 on

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is relatively constant; in this case, however, 2010 is one of the higher values, which contradicts the lower number of articles value for that year. Tables 7 and 8 are broken into non-modeling and modeling approaches, respectively, a common way of dividing quantitative methods. In contrast to the relatively limited use of GIS and remote sensing methods, one is struck by the broad range of methods that have been used. Only a few methods (e.g., bivariate correlation, bivariate regression, and ordinary least squares), however, have been used repeatedly over many base years. Several methods used in 2010 reflect some of the recent developments in quantitative methods mentioned in the “developing hypotheses” section. For instance, Yamada and Thill (2010), Harris et al. (2010), and Jongsthapongpanth and Bagchi-Sen (2010) utilize local indicators of network-constrained clusters, robust methods for geographically weighted regression, and a spatial lag model, respectively. Earlier it was hypothesized that quantitative methods might replace more traditional mapping approaches because quantitative methods avoid subjective visual assessment. To test this hypothesis, articles from 1970 to 2010 were divided into those which utilized one or more quantitative methods and those which used no quantitative methods, and then the mean percent area covered by thematic maps was computed for each group in each base year. If the original hypothesis is correct, then it would be expected that the mean values for the articles not using quantitative methods would be higher. Table 9 displays the resulting mean values for these two groups in each base year. Here the mean values for percent coverage were actually considerably higher for articles using quantitative methods in 1970, 1990, and 2010. For 1980 and 2000, the mean values were higher for articles not using quantitative methods, but the magnitudes of difference were not as large as those for the other base years. Thus, overall the results suggest little support for the notion that articles using quantitative methods are apt to use fewer thematic maps; to some extent, the opposite seems to be true.

5.5

Qualitative Methods

To examine the effect of qualitative methods on map use, each article was evaluated first to determine which qualitative methods were used in the article. The qualitative methods were divided into the four major groupings shown in Table 10: oral methods, questionnaires (using open-ended questions), textual material, and participation approaches. These categories were developed from a survey of textbooks using qualitative methods; Hilary Winchester and Matthew Rofe’s (2010) introductory chapter in Iain Hay’s Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography was Table 9 Mean percent area covered by thematic maps, by base year Articles using quantitative methods Articles not using quantitative methods

1970 11.56 6.10

1980 6.82 10.05

1990 7.54 1.50

2000 4.12 4.96

2010 10.49 0.57

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Table 10 Qualitative methods used in AAAG articles, by base year Number of articles using qualitative methods Oral methods Unstructured interview (including oral and life histories) Semi-structured interview Structured interview Focus groups Interaction with audiences Questionnaires (openended questions) Textual Creative (poems, fiction, films, art, music) Documentary (maps, newspapers, planning documents) Landscape Participation Participant observation Participatory mapping

1940 13

1950 14

1960 12

1

3

4

1970 7

1980 5

2

2

1990 14

2000 12

2010 12

2

7

4

1

1

4

3

2 2 1

1

1

1

3

2

1

10

10

6

6

1

9

8

9

7

6

3

2

4

3

9

5

1

2

3

1

2

1

5

4

found to be particularly helpful in this task. One must of course take care in applying these categories to the early years of the survey because, as was discussed earlier, the nature of qualitative methods and approaches has changed over time. For example, a reading of the landscape in 2010 is certainly different from a reading of the landscape in 1940. Also, the meaning of the various categories has changed, as have the approaches to qualitative research. Referencing the work of Cope (2010), previously it was noted that early researchers were not explicit with their methodology. This was found to be the case, as prior to the 1990 base year, researchers did not carefully specify the nature of their methods used. Thus, the authors often had to infer that the landscape was examined or that participant observation was utilized. Even for the more recent base years, the authors of this present work sometimes had to infer which specific qualitative methods were used; for example, an author might indicate that interviews were done, but the precise nature of those interviews was unclear. When in doubt, it was assigned to be an unstructured interview. In spite of the above limitations, the tallies in Table 10 provide a good general overview of the use of qualitative methods for the articles that were examined. The first row of the table displays the number of articles (out of 20) in each base year that utilized one or more of the qualitative methods listed in the body of the table. Based on the tallies, a definite trend is observed, with relatively high values from 1940 to

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Table 11 Mean percent area covered by thematic maps, by base year Articles using qualitative methods Articles not using qualitative methods

1990 2.64 11.10

2000 3.23 6.90

2010 0.82 11.07

1960, lower values in 1970 and 1980, and higher values again from 1990 to 2010. Presumably, the lower values are associated with the rise of quantitative methods usage in 1970 and 1980 (compare with Table 6). Interestingly, both quantitative methods and qualitative methods usage remain relatively high from 1970 on. In addition to qualitative methods usage increasing from 1990 on, there appears to also be a greater variety of qualitative methods used. For instance, note the great variety of interview methods that were utilized in 2000 in Table 10. Table 10 certainly supports the increased presence of qualitative methods, but is this presence also associated with a decreased presence of thematic maps? To test this hypothesis, articles from 1990 to 2010 were divided into those which utilized one or more qualitative methods and those which used no qualitative methods, and then the mean percent area covered by thematic maps was computed for each group in each base year. Table 11 displays the resulting mean values for these two groups in each base year. In all cases, the mean values for articles not using qualitative methods were higher than those using qualitative methods. The results thus support the notion that qualitative methods appear to have led to a reduction in the use of thematic maps.

6

Conclusions

A decrease in the use of maps suggested by other researchers is confirmed by this study. Based on the space allotted to thematic maps, the overall trend is downward over the 70-year study period, with the space allotted being lowest in the three most recent base years in the study period (1990, 2000, and 2010). In contrast, the use of text exhibits the opposite trend: there is an overall upward trend, with the space allotted to text being highest in the three most recent base years. Given developments in geovisualization and geovisual analytics and the range of new mapping techniques developed for the Web, these changes were hypothesized to likely have had a positive impact on the use of maps. However, little evidence of this impact was observed. There did appear to be a need to create specialized categories for cell-based maps, but there were no obvious signs that these new cartographic methods had impacted the use of maps in the Annals. One problem is that these new techniques often require an interactive graphical framework in order to take maximum advantage of their capabilities. The static nature of PDF files typically distributed in the online journal environment does not permit this interaction. Given statements made by other geographers and this present research, the authors of this research hypothesized that the degree of map integration with journal articles would decrease during the 70-year time period. This was not the case as this

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study’s analysis showed that the degree of map integration was rather steady. In this analysis, the number of words contained in figure captions, the number of words used in the main text of each article to describe the maps, and the number of times a map was specifically referenced in the body of the article were evaluated. In all cases, the results remained rather steady over the time period. The results did, however, show that the number of times maps were referenced in an article was steady from 1940 to 2000 but showed a decline between 2000 and 2010. This finding suggests that this decrease during the latter portion of the study period was due in part to the influence of critical cartography and postmodernism. Overall, these results suggest that the map is still viewed as an integral component to reporting research (even though the number of maps used has decreased). One hypothesis was that an increased use of GIS after the 1980 base year would be observed and that this increased use would have a negative impact on the use of maps. Results suggest that GIS was in fact only used after the 1980 base year, but this increased use did not correspond to a decreased use of maps, as thematic maps were commonly present in articles that utilized GIS. Another hypothesis was that the use of remote sensing would be seen after the 1980 base year. This hypothesis was seen, but remote sensing was infrequently used (only seven articles in the 1990–2010 period utilized remote sensing techniques). The associated hypothesis that fine cell-based maps would be more common was also supported by the need to create the specialized cell-based thematic map categories. In terms of quantitative methods, the authors hypothesized an increased use of quantitative methods in early base years, then a leveling off or possibly decreased use of quantitative methods, and finally a revitalization of the use of quantitative methods toward the end of the study period. There was an increased use of quantitative methods early in the period, with the most obvious increase occurring during the 1940 to 1970 base years. There was not an obvious decrease in the frequency of quantitative methods usage after 1970 or a clear indication of resurgence in frequency of use after the hypothesized decrease, as the number of articles using quantitative methods was similar from the 1970 to the 2010 base year, as was the number of different methods. Several articles, however, in the 2010 base year reflected the novel quantitative methods that have been developed in recent years. Another hypothesis was that an increased use of quantitative methods would lead to a decreased use of thematic maps. The opposite was found that articles using quantitative methods were more apt to utilize thematic maps. In terms of qualitative methods, it was hypothesized that the effect of new qualitative methods would be apparent beginning with the 1990 base year and that this would correspond to a decreased use of thematic maps in this and subsequent years. Qualitative methods beginning with the 1990 base year did increase, as the majority of articles in the 1990–2010 base years made use of one or more qualitative methods; this was in contrast to the distinctly lower usage of qualitative methods in the 1970 and 1980 base years. Qualitative methods also were used commonly in base years prior to 1970, but authors in these base years often were not explicit in stating the nature of qualitative methods used. Beginning with the 1990 base year, it was also observed that a greater variety of qualitative methods was used. Regarding the

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use of thematic maps in qualitative articles, it was found that articles using qualitative methods were less apt to use thematic maps. Throughout the 70-year study period, it was noted that two agents of change have impacted the field of cartography: spatially related technologies such as GIS and the Web. Technologies such as desktop mapping, GIS, GPS, programming languages, and remote sensing came to fruition during this 70-year period and enabled new ways to capture spatial data (e.g., raster), store spatial data (e.g., relational databases), develop mapping software (e.g., through JavaScript), and create representations of spatial data (e.g., animation). One can only expect that these technologies will continue to be developed and offer new and exciting ways to create maps. On the other hand, the Web has also revolutionized the way mapping is done. No longer is map-making held by authoritarian institutions or official agencies. Access to the Web has facilitated the presence of VGI that enables everyday users to create maps of data they collect and upload to websites using personal GPS devices, mobile map applications, and locationbased services. It is difficult to envision what the Web will offer map-makers in 10 or 20 years, but the authors believe that the map will continue to be regarded with a high degree of relevance for representing our world and beyond. During most of the 70 years that this study examined, the Annals was a printed document delivered though the postal service. The Web has fundamentally changed this delivery model. At the most basic levels, the Web now offers publishers the opportunity to make their journals available in a digital online version (in html or PDF formats). Even though html and PDF formats have been around since the early 1990s, this idea of converting a printed document into html or PDF is rather simple and does not take advantage of the full level of interactivity that the Web allows. For example, enhanced PDF documents can offer video, interactive maps and graphs, and narration that are embedded directly into the document. While this enhanced PDF model has great appeal, most of the publishers who offer enhanced PDF journals have limited interaction (e.g., embedded hyperlinks that make tables or figures larger on screen). Part of this slow adoption may rest in the need to change authors’ conceptions of what kinds of interactivity are possible in an article and provide them with technical support on how to create these kinds of interactive features. Despite this, once the publishing world and authors become more knowledgeable about the interactive environment, a transformation in the possibilities for communicating information will take place. And, a part of that transformation will certainly include maps.

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Language of Maps for Blind and Partially Sighted People: Expressive and Perceptive Skills

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Elaine Kitchel and Fred Otto

Contents 1 Expressive Considerations for Tactual Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Processes and Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 A Difference in Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Receptive Considerations for Tactile Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Expressive Considerations for Low-Vision Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Receptive Factors for Low-Vision Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Cartographers create maps to be read by other people who may know nothing about cartography. The cartographer uses expressive conventions that must be learned and interpreted by the user, who in turn employs receptive skills and techniques. Both expressive and receptive skills are involved in the fascinating transfer of symbolic information from one person to another. In the world of blind and partially sighted people, these expressive and receptive skills are different in many ways from those used by the sighted. Tactile cartographers must learn numerous guidelines for the development of tactile maps and charts, bearing in mind that the tactile sense is restrictive compared to sight. Print maps allow the use of color, variations in fonts and print sizes, overlapping layers of symbols, and other visual features. The tactile map-maker uses none of these, instead using tools and conventions unknown to most print cartographers. And how does the learner who is blind interpret maps and come to understand that a map is a set of symbols for a real place? How does the learner with low

E. Kitchel · F. Otto (*) Louisville, KY, USA e-mail: fl[email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_128

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vision learn that she may use color to infer real meaning with regard to maps? To teach the receptive side of mapping with blind or low-vision readers requires training, experience, and specific techniques that are discussed here. Keywords

Cartography · Conventions · Interpretation · Map skills · Tactile · Teaching

Maps are created by people who are skilled in the cartographic arts, to be read by other people who may know nothing about cartography. The cartographer uses a set of expressive conventions that must be learned and interpreted by the user who engages receptive skills and techniques. Both expressive and receptive skills play strong roles in the fascinating transfer of symbolic and cartographic information from one person to another. In the world of blind and partially sighted people, these expressive and receptive skills are different in many ways from those used by the sighted. On the expressive side, tactile cartographers must learn numerous guidelines for the development of tactile maps and charts; some variables include production media, quality of design, and Braille notation. While print maps allow the use of color, standard map symbols, manipulation of text to follow rivers or denote the size of cities, and other visual features, tactile map-makers use none of these. Their tools and conventions are unknown to most print cartographers, and they must keep a fine balance between enough information and too much information. Regarding receptive factors, how does the learner who is blind interpret maps? How does she come to understand that the map is a set of symbols for a real place? How does the learner with low vision learn that she may use color to infer real meaning with regard to maps? How may they each come to understand concepts such as scale or longitude and latitude? To teach interpretive map skills to learners with visual impairment or blindness requires training, experience, and an energetic spirit. This article will detail some of the considerations for the creation (expressive side) and interpretation (receptive side) of maps when users are blind or partially sighted.

1

Expressive Considerations for Tactual Readers

The entry point for understanding tactual learning is to consider how the sense of touch differs from the sense of sight and what the differences entail for the map designer and the map user. With an appreciation of these differences, a thoughtful designer can move past the common assumptions or misconceptions about blind readers and toward a meaningful communication based in a nontypical sensory mode. While the sense of sight is considered a “distance sense,” meaning it detects objects at a distance, the sense of touch depends on proximity or direct contact. In contrast to the field of view allowed with typical vision, the field of view for touch is defined by what the hands contact. The number of receptors for touch present in the skin is quite

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small compared with the quantity of visual receptors; likewise the area in the brain devoted to the haptic (tactual) process is small compared with that given to the visual process. These factors dictate that the perception of graphic information by touch occurs sequentially. It is pieced together through a series of tactual impressions. What can be gained through the sense of sight in an instant must be taken in piece by piece through the sense of touch and assembled into a meaningful whole. A consequence of this difference for the design of maps is that the palette of usable conventions for encoding information is restricted. Consider the variety of ways in which printed maps typically present different kinds or levels of information: through colors, shading, line types, symbols, type fonts, variations in type size and orientation, and overlapping images, among others. Of these options, the palette for tactual readability, as suggested by research, includes only a limited degree of shading (in the form of raised textures), line types, and point symbols. Additionally, the tactile map designer must be careful not to overload the image with too many variations in line and texture lest the task of decoding becomes too laborious. Research on legibility of tactile elements in graphics has established requirements for the size and spacing of point, line, and areal symbols in order for them to be perceived and recognized by touch. For example, two graphic elements of information require at least 1/800 (3.5 mm) of separation to be recognized as different. Likewise, polygonal shapes need individual sides of 1/200 (14 mm) or longer to be recognizable. Similar guidelines dictate the size and shape of point symbols and lines for tactual readability; these are based on the size and sensitivity of the average reader’s fingertips, among other factors. Examples in Fig. 1 are some areal (texture), line, and point patterns tested for their discriminability. Some were produced with thermography, the type of process used

Fig. 1 Texture patterns, line styles, and point symbols tested for discernibility among the visually impaired. The stars indicate symbols that proved to be highly distinguishable by touch. (Source: After Nolan and Morris 1963)

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to make raised print and images on business cards, greeting cards, and invitations, though the relief in these samples was greater than is typically found in commercial applications. Others were produced in vacuum-formed plastic (Nolan and Morris 1963). Approximately one-third of the symbols in each group shown here (denoted by star symbols) proved to be highly distinguishable by touch. Among the areal symbols, certain stripe patterns were viewed as discriminable while similar patterns with different spacing were not. Among the lines and point symbols, many items that are readily discriminated by sight were not easy to discern from one another through touch. Many are tested, but few are chosen, so to say, when it comes to selecting symbols that can reliably be identified by the tactual sense. These are some indications of the restrictive nature of tactual perception compared with sight. The size and spacing requirements of Braille loom large as a factor where written labels are needed. Braille writing has very specific parameters; it is designed so that each individual element or “cell” fits under the fingertip, and the raised dots within each cell are spaced to be discriminable. As a general rule, Braille requires the same space as a 24-point monospaced print font. Unlike print, Braille permits no variation in size or, generally speaking, in orientation, so accommodating Braille labels or keys within a map design requires considerable planning, creativity, and sometimes distortion of the image. In Fig. 2, note the space needed for the Braille label “Scale in miles” just above the scale bar. Within the palette of usable line, point, and areal symbols, some are “go-to” symbols, while others are of limited application. The often-stated rule is that tactually prominent symbols should be used for the most important features of the tactile map or diagram. As an example, a campus map made for a student might employ the highest level of relief to show the student’s dorm or the building where Fig. 2 Vinyl map showing raised symbols and Braille labels. (Source: American Printing House for the Blind)

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most of her classes will be held; this becomes the focal point of the map from which other places take their relative positions. Likewise in the case of a political map, this rule suggests it would not be appropriate to use a strong texture to denote the ocean if the land is meant to be the focus. In actual practice, the rule regarding tactual prominence is treated more as a guideline, depending on the production medium used for the particular map, for reasons discussed below.

2

Processes and Materials

Tactile maps are produced in a great variety of media. Some are built up through collage, using cardboard, string, fabrics, and other common materials; some are embossed on paper or plastic sheets, either by hand or mechanically; still others are output on raised-ink printers. Sometimes a single copy is made and given to a reader; in other cases the original copy becomes a master from which numerous molded (thermoformed) copies are made. Each medium offers its own advantages and disadvantages for ease of production, cost, tactual distinctiveness, and usability with different populations. These differences have had a wide impact on efforts to standardize tactile map creation and help to explain why, when it comes to any particular map design, the rules are often made to be broken. In terms of tactual readability, hand-sculpted or collage maps are generally considered to be the highest standard. Where numerous features requiring discrimination are presented, these maps provide sharp, crisp definition of symbols, a variety of textures, and variations in relief. The three-dimensional quality of crafted images also allows for subtle variations in shape or texture that are not available through other production media. Figure 3 shows detail from a thermoformed, hand-built relief map; note the detailed relief and the distinctive textures used for political boundaries and for water. In another part of the spectrum of tactile media are processes that are valued for quickness and ease of use. These are typified by electronic Braille embossers which are used to emboss dot graphics or sheets of plastic film which “pucker” into raised lines when the user draws on them with a stylus or pen. The former requires a large initial expense for the equipment, but in locations where Braille is regularly produced in quantity, such a device may be on hand already; in this case to produce an embossed copy from an onscreen image is as simple as printing a document, and any number of copies may be made at little cost. In the case of the drawing film, the advantages are a much more modest expense and the ability of instructor and student alike to produce a raised image instantly by hand. This medium is ideal for on-thespot illustration of a concept, although like dot graphics it offers little or no variation in relief or texture. Figure 4 shows a graph produced by a dot embosser and an outline map made on the drawing film. In between the more sculptural processes and the simple embossing techniques discussed are other production methods; each offers different advantages and drawbacks

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Fig. 3 Molded relief map of Southeast Asia (detail), made by American Foundation for Overseas Blind circa 1950. (Photo courtesy: American Printing House for the Blind)

in ease, cost, and usefulness for a given application. While a few large producers, such as the American Printing House for the Blind and the National Braille Press in the United States and government-sponsored agencies in other countries, may employ all the available processes, the typical small producer of tactile materials will use one method, possibly with some unique handcrafted additions. The expressive side of tactile mapping is thus anything but standardized. Every map designer is relatively gifted or restricted by the production medium and what it can meaningfully convey, as well as by the designer’s skill in using the palette of symbols. A thoughtful designer understands that a set of symbols known to be tactually discernible in one medium may not have the same properties in a different medium, because of differences in relief, profile, texture, or sharpness, and chooses among them accordingly. Among the tricks of the trade for tactile graphic creators are two that deserve mention here. First is the practice of splitting a complex image into two or more images, each with a different layer of information taken from the original. For example, a political map that shows the capitals and major exports of African countries may be broken into a map showing country names along with borders and cities and another map showing only the exports. The reader may need to switch between the maps to integrate all the information, but this is preferable to having one map with unreadable tactual clutter. Figure 5 illustrates this practice with two embossed paper maps of Southeast Asia, one showing an overview and another showing capital cities. (The images also illustrate the differences in detail between thermoformed and embossed maps referred to above.)

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Fig. 4 Dot embosser and tactile drawing film images

Fig. 5 Information divided over multiple maps. (Embossed maps for the blind in seven folders, published by the Works Progress Administration 1936) (Photo courtesy of American Printing House for the Blind)

The second practice is to distort aspects of an image, either to make it more tactually readable or to accommodate needed symbols and labels. Thus the designer may slightly enlarge Luxembourg on a map of Europe to give the reader a tactually discernible area to perceive.

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A Difference in Perspective

A final consideration related to the expressive aspect of map design, and one that leads to a discussion of the receptive side, is that print maps are made with a sighted audience in mind. In general, maps are readily comprehended by sight because they give an image or translation of a spatial layout that corresponds with what a sighted person would see, typically from above. The blind person does not have an aerial view. Nevertheless the blind reader must learn to interpret maps presented in this way. The blind reader performs a further translation in order to relate the view from the vertical perspective to the physical world, which is encountered sequentially and only on the horizontal plane. Schools consider it important for all students, sighted or blind, to have experience and skill in reading maps. While GPS and advancing technologies hold promise for helping blind users navigate from one location to another, map reading promotes interpretation, spatial understanding, directionality, and other skills, and it is an indispensable aid in geography, history, social studies, and related work. Like their sighted peers, blind students show different attitudes toward maps, ranging from enthusiasm to indifference. They also need practice to acquire their skills. We should bear in mind, however, that maps are always in the “native tongue” of sighted learners, more or less, while for blind persons, they are more like a “second language.”

4

Receptive Considerations for Tactile Maps

Because sighted children in modern societies are exposed to pictures from the earliest age, there is seldom any need for specific instruction to help them relate images to corresponding objects in the outer world. While young students are often given practice in making simple maps, it is always assumed that sighted students are familiar with the basic purposes of maps and that this knowledge is absorbed through early exposure, not only to maps but to pictures in general. In the absence of near-constant exposure to imagery, blind learners have far fewer opportunities to develop a natural connection between images and their corresponding objects or locations in the physical world. Instruction in map use for blind students, therefore, typically begins with the concept that “maps represent real places.” This concept, regarded more or less as a given for sighted students, is a necessary starting point when teaching blind students how maps are used. A strong foundation for connecting maps with actual locations can be formed when students have a combination of cognitive and physical (kinesthetic) encounters with mapped environments. To this end, a sequenced program of instruction developed at the American Printing House for the Blind in the 1970s lays out a ladder of operations leading to map skills, which was summarized by Franks and Cozen (1982) as follows: • Using critical concept vocabulary (i.e., on/off, toward/away, along/across, near/ far), student describes the relationship of self and a chair in various placements.

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Some placements are arranged by the teacher, others by the student as instructed by the teacher. Student describes relationship of self and a rectangular table in various arrangements. Student describes relationship of self and a circular table in various arrangements. Student works with arrangements of tables and chairs together. Student works with large symbols (squares, circles, and triangles) representing tables and chairs in various arrangements.

All the stages involve creating maps after an examination of the environment and arranging the environment after an examination of maps. The physical movement in this interplay helps students to be active agents in their learning and builds a kinesthetic feeling for the symbolic terrain of maps. A common misconception about blind persons is that their sense of touch is highly enhanced as a result of their lack of sight. This assumption has probably led to untold numbers of missed learning opportunities, because the faculty of touch must be cultivated and integrated with other faculties if it is to reach its full potential. Specific hand skills considered essential to tactual learning include line tracking, shape and symbol discrimination, and scanning. In the past two decades, recognition of the need for specific interventions to promote hand skills has brought many new products to the market, most of which are also linked with early literacy, play, or puzzle-solving. The hope among developers is that a generation of blind learners will grow up with the ability to use their hands in active, purposeful ways to read tactile material. With a solid foundation of hand skills, vocabulary, and positional concepts, students can progress to the specific skills needed for practical map use, such as directionality and scale. These can be taught to blind learners in the same way as to sighted students, provided the materials and examples used are given in an accessible format.

5

Expressive Considerations for Low-Vision Readers

Conventions used in enhanced format maps for persons with visual impairments include: • 16–18-point print • Sans serif fonts • Sixty-nine specific colors, no red except International Dateline and Greenwich Mean Time • Colors that can provide adequate contrast for both people with visual impairments and those with color perception deficits • No more than three layers of information on any single map, with additional layers added by use of transparent overlays • Labeling features such as names of rivers that follow the curvatures of the waterways, or dots that have white or yellow halos around them for capital cities.

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Tools and conventions for use by the student with low vision are more obvious than those used by the student with blindness. Most people will recognize that large print is often a useful option. But large print alone does very little to help the student with low vision decode a map. Research has shown that color, enhanced spacing, increased letter height (and sometimes width), and clean fonts without serifs, when combined together as “enhanced formatting,” often make a map more useful, more readable, and more enjoyable to use (Evans and Kitchel 2002). The American Printing House for the Blind, an agency charged by the United States government to design and produce educational materials for students with low vision and blindness, has developed 69 different guidelines for development of its maps. When used, these guidelines have been shown to promote better usability, improved decoding by users, and greater user enjoyment (Evans and Kitchel 2003). Some of the more frequently used guidelines are: • Use of 18-point font as a basic standard is best. Occasionally, when a map contains many long words, 16-point may be necessary to accommodate all the words. Care must be taken to make sure all the words are necessary. • A wide-bodied, sans serif font is used. The most recommended fonts for use by students with low vision are APHont, Verdana, Tahoma, and Antique Olive. Arial, though a sans serif font, is not recommended because the letters are too close together (Evans and Kitchel 2003). • Generous t-heights and x-heights are helpful to users who have low vision. APHont and Verdana are the sans serif fonts that have the most generous t-heights and x-heights, both 1/8 in. at 18-point font size. • Use of many shades of blue, brown, gold, and black and white in political and thematic maps suits virtually everyone. Even 99% of people with color perception deficits can see these colors. Often other colors are used as well, but when they are, the cartographer uses the VisiBone filter to determine how the maps will look to people with color perception deficits (see Stein 2005). If the politically or thematically identified areas are not distinct from one another, revisions should be made until they are. Because of certain eye conditions that reduce sensitivity to the color red, block it entirely; red is only used for Greenwich Mean Time and the International Date Line. • The spacing of letters and elements on a map can make it more readable, or altogether unreadable. Space between letters and space between lines of text are the most important. Fonts should be chosen based upon generous spaces between letters, which is known as kerning. APHont and Verdana are the best English language fonts because of their generous kerning. Spacing between lines of text should be 1.25 spaces (Evans and Kitchel 2003). • Continuous text, such as that found in legends, instructions, and descriptions, should always be aligned on the left, no indentations. There should not be alignment on the right since it causes large spaces to occur between words. One

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must think of the student who uses a magnifier to read her map. If there are indents or large spaces between words, she may assume she is at the end of the line of text, or she may miss the opening line of the text because it is indented beyond the field of the magnifier (Evans and Kitchel 2003). The most frequently used labeling features include names of rivers that follow bends in the waterways. Icons used for resource maps must be 36 pixels  36 pixels; this is the smallest an icon can be and still be read by a person with low vision who uses a magnifier. Most lines such as latitude and longitude are 1.5 points in width at the very least. No more than three layers of information should be included on a map. For example, political boundaries, capital cities, and primary waterways along with their names would constitute three layers. If more information is needed, a clear overlay that contains the additional information is the best choice so the additional information may be separated out if necessary.

Figure 6 has examples of two maps with a similar theme, namely, the states of the former Soviet Union. Note that the second map is not a direct adaptation of the first but demonstrates the difference in usability for low-vision readers that the enhanced format guidelines can produce. The main improvements are in color choices, area outlines, and print size, and attention has been given to foreground/background contrast.

6

Receptive Factors for Low-Vision Readers

Just as it is with people of typical vision, users with low vision must be taught what map symbols are and what they mean. They need practice with the maps and the various magnifying devices that are often used. Receptive and decoding skills are sometimes slow to develop when the user has a limited field of vision. Users with low vision are taught a methodical way to scan a map as they move from left to right across it and down from top to bottom. It is often difficult for the user to piece together all the little bits of information he or she has gleaned to understand the overall look and concept embodied in a particular map. However, over time, his/her visual memory is able to store more information, and he becomes better at decoding the information and putting it together as a single image. Experience and reports from hundreds of users of maps that conform to enhanced format guidelines have shown that users can more easily decode, use, and enjoy them. It is sometimes astonishing the facility that even young students with visual impairments can develop. With skillful teachers and carefully constructed materials, persons with blindness and visual impairments can develop the receptive abilities they need to read and interpret maps. The authors urge all persons who wish to expand access to maps for this audience to visit www.aph.org/ to learn the rules and conventions for tactile and enhanced print maps.

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Fig. 6 Comparison of typical print map (top) and enhanced format map (bottom). (Top: Map courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps, used with permission; Bottom: Large Print Atlas of the World, American Printing House for the Blind)

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Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Evans, W., & Kitchel, E. (2002). Design features used in maps for students with low vision. Louisville: American Printing House for the Blind. Evans, W., & Kitchel, E. (2003). Survey of useful features of maps used by 200 students with low vision. Louisville: American Printing House for the Blind. Franks, F., & Cozen, C. K. (1982). Instructional guide for maps represent real places: Map study I. Louisville: American Printing House for the Blind. Nolan, C., & Morris, J. (1963). Tactual symbols for the blind (Final report OVR-RD-587). Louisville: American Printing House for the Blind. Stein, R. (2005). Color deficient vision. Retrieved from http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/

Maps as Language/the Language of Maps

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Judith A. Tyner

Contents 1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338

Abstract

The communication model for maps based on an analogy to telephones and radios has fallen into disfavor. However, maps do communicate and do so through what might be termed a cartographic language. Like written communications, maps can be descriptive, narrative, expository, and persuasive, and symbols, color, typeface, text, and projections are all used to communicate information to the map user. I look at how maps communicate and how they have been seen as language. Keywords

Maps as communication · Language · Symbols · Color · Typefaces · Projection · Generalization In February of 1998, a US Air Force plane flying lower than regulations allowed in Cavalese, Italy, cut the cables of a ski gondola plunging 20 people to their deaths. The gondola was not shown on the maps the pilots used (Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1999). In August of 2009, a woman and her child touring in Death Valley followed a road indicated on her GPS map as passable and became stranded for

J. A. Tyner (*) Department of Geography, California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_92

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5 days until found by park rangers. The child died before help arrived (Sacramento Bee, January 30, 2011). In both of these cases, a map, either paper or GPS, lacked information or provided the wrong information. The maps failed to communicate. In the 1960s and 1970s, the communication model became very popular. In this paradigm, the map was treated as a system analogous to telephones or radios in that the map was the medium, the cartographer input data, the map user received data, and the data could be corrupted by “noise” in the form of poor symbol choices, too small type, etc. Theoretical cartographers created models of this system, which became progressively more complex. At the height of the vogue, the models became so cumbersome and complex – one resembled a Persian rug with patterns, arrows, and circles – that they were more difficult to read and interpret than the maps they analyzed. These overly complex diagrams and the idea that a map was like a phone system fell into disfavor. Unfortunately, the proverbial baby was thrown out with the bath water. In the past several years, the “communication model” of cartography has been dismissed especially among critical cartographers, and some reject the entire concept of communication. Largely this is owing to researchers’ misunderstanding of the ideas of maps as communication; the current belief seems to be that the communication model was based on a search for the one best map. Jeremy Crampton (2001: 235) described the communication theory as making “assumptions that maps are unproblematic communication devices.” I believe that, quite the contrary, cartographers were originally looking at how to improve maps, not find one perfect map type for each job. Cartographers understood the many problems of making unambiguous maps. They looked at the difficulties of generalization, color choices, and symbolization. They were seeking to make cartography more scientific and perhaps establish standards – a way to improve maps by looking at various map elements. The “poor” choices could be ruled out. My own work on persuasive cartography looked at and analyzed the subjective aspects of map communication on a particular type of map. I certainly did not view maps as “unproblematic communication devices” but rather examined the ways in which maps are used to persuade in wartime propaganda, religion, real estate promotions, mythology, and advertising, in short, what made a map persuasive. In my view, the most useful “model” of cartographic communication was that of Cornelis Koeman (1971) who proposed: “How do I say what to whom?” to which Harold Lasswell (1966) added “with what effect.” This is analogous to written or spoken communications. Thus, the map as a communication system in its simplest form is creating serviceable, informative maps for the map user. In written or spoken communications, there are essentially four types of communication or styles. These are exposition, narration, description, and persuasion. These same styles apply to maps as well. • Expository maps explain. These are the primary maps that are found in textbooks and other explanatory texts. Thematic maps are probably the most common of these. Most cartography books focus on explanatory mapping; Mark Monmonier’s (1993) Mapping It Out is subtitled Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

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• Narrative maps tell a story. These are the kinds of maps often used in literature to illustrate the plot. Maps in history books and articles are often used to tell the story of an event, such as a military battle; maps in travel writing are usually narrative, telling the story of a trip. Narrative maps are often found with newspaper stories. • Descriptive maps describe or show. The ubiquitous shopping mall maps marked “you are here” are descriptive maps but so are most road maps and even topographic maps. Maps for tourists, which are often pictorial, are descriptive maps. • Persuasive maps are designed to convince the reader of something – to buy a product or an idea. Thus, we have advertising maps and propaganda maps. Journalistic maps especially of political topics are often designed to be persuasive. Beginning in WWII persuasive maps, especially those that are propagandistic, have been studied in some detail (Wright 1942; Spier 1941; Tyner 1974, 1982, 2015; Monmonier 1993, 1996; Muehlenhaus 2012, 2013; Herb 1989, 1999). Mark Monmonier’s (1996) How to Lie with Maps examines this type of map. Persuasive maps are not inherently “bad”; they may be used to promote “good” causes as well as “bad”; they are used by environmentalists as well as political propagandists. In a sense, of course, all maps are persuasive. They state, “I am objective.” “I am true.” The average map user is not aware that maps can and do have agendas. Of course, many maps combine two of these four functions, and as with writing, one can have an expository map that is also persuasive or a narrative map that is descriptive. Map communications, like written communications, use “words” or a “language” to achieve the communication. Communications, written or spoken, use some form of language. Cartographic communication, thus, would use a cartographic language. Brian Harley, in one of his last articles, described maps as “a graphic language to be decoded” (Harley 1990: 4) John Pickles said: . . . maps have the character of being textual in that they have words associated with them, that they employ a system of symbols with their own syntax, that they function as a form of writing.., and that they are discursively embedded within broader contexts of social action and power. (Pickles 1991: 193)

Cartographic theorists have proposed maps and language as a metaphor (Andrews 1990) and as a natural language (Head 1984) or even suggested a language paradigm for maps (Kent and Vujakovic 2011). Many of these proposals were in reaction to the disfavor with the cartographic communication model based on electronic information theory. There are many definitions of language, but here I will use a simple one – a system of communication that allows the exchange of ideas. In this sense it is the entire map that communicates. The “words” used on maps include symbols, color, typography, text, and projection. One of the objections to maps as language concerns the way or sequence in which maps are read. Written communications, unlike maps, must be read in a linear fashion from start to finish in order for them to make sense. Monmonier noted:

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Although written language allows authors to announce goals, discuss sources, explain research strategies, narrate events, and summarize arguments, prose has a sequential, linear structure that can be painfully insufficient for discussing places, regions and spatial relationships. (Monmonier 1996: ix)

You cannot start in the middle of a text and read outward, but a map can be read in any order and still be understood. Symbols have often been called the language of maps but much more is involved. Symbols are only one part of the language. In addition, color, typography, text, and even projections are a part of the language of maps. Symbols are marks on a map that stand for something. They may represent objects, places, numbers, and ideas. Symbols may be static, dynamic, pictorial (mimetic), or abstract; they may be points, lines, or areas; they may vary in shape, size, hue, tonal value, texture, or orientation. Thus, there is an abundant variety of “words.” Cartographers analyze the nature of symbols through the “visual or graphic variables,” i.e., the appearance of the symbols. There is not complete agreement on the number of visual variables, but size, shape, hue, tone, pattern or texture, and orientation are commonly accepted. These are then applied to point, line, or area symbols to create a rich dictionary of marks that can be used on maps. Symbols may be dynamic, e.g., giving a sense of motion such as stylized flames or bomb bursts, or static, e.g., simple dots or squares. More elaborate symbols can be pictorial using drawings of mountains, or waves on the ocean, bird’s-eye views of buildings, and other graphics on the map. Andrews (1990) extended the language metaphor by comparing symbols to nouns and the graphic variables as adjectives and combinations of symbol and variable as sentences. From time to time, there have been efforts to standardize the symbols on maps. However, this has had limited success. For certain specific map types, such as topographic maps, it is useful; a detailed legend is not needed, and the symbols are unambiguous. Standardization has been most successful for maps of critical incidents so that there is no ambiguity for first responders. However, except for these very specific needs, standardization has not been accepted, just as specifying that only certain words could be used in writing. Color or hue, as one of the variables, is especially important in communicating on maps. The psychological effects of color have been studied for at least two centuries. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, remembered mostly as the author of Faust, wrote Theory of Colors in 1810. While he was especially interested in the physics of color, he also examined what would now be considered color psychology. He looked at the allegorical and symbolic uses of color, which are important in cartography. Arthur Robinson, in 1967, specifically looked at color psychology in cartography. He noted that color acts as a clarifying and simplifying element, it has “remarkable effects on the subjective reactions of the map reader,” and it aids in the perceptibility of the map (Robinson 1967: 50). Not listed by Robinson, but also of importance in cartographic communication, color attracts attention, and it leads the eye. We often take a simplistic view of color on maps – red is hot, blue is cool, blue represents water, and green represents vegetation – and we violate these rules at the peril of the map being rejected by the user, but the use of color is far more complex. Color has different meanings in different cultures. The symbolism of color is important in

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conveying information. For example, in the western world, white is the color of weddings and happiness, but in China it is the color of funerals and sorrow. There are many metaphors and similes, such as “seeing red,” “purple prose,” “blue Monday,” a “red letter day,” a “yellow-bellied coward,” “paint the town red,” and “green with envy.” These metaphors have been widely used in propaganda maps, such as showing the enemy in yellow for cowardice or in a greenish yellow that is considered an unpleasant color in the western world. But they are also used on “scientific” maps. Red and yellow can be perceived as degrees of danger or permission. Color perception, or how map users see colors, has been studied in cartographic design, and this led to color schemes for terrain that used cool colors for lower elevations and warm colors for higher elevations based on the idea that cool colors appear to recede or be farther away and warm colors appear to be closer. Stereotypes have water shown in blue, even when it is polluted and actually brown. There have been studies on which colors are perceived by the color blind. Cynthia Brewer (2015) has produced an online tool, ColorBrewer2.org, that aids in choosing colors for maps. Text, of course, works much the same way as words in a spoken or written communication, but the text on maps is usually more brief. Space is at a premium on most maps, and there is the belief that too much text will clutter the map, much like being too verbose in speaking or writing. The written text on a map is usually confined to a title, the legend, names of locations and features, and some supplemental material, such as sources. For maps, these perform the function of title, table of contents, sources, etc. for a book. They introduce, show, and explain. Text can take on subtle meanings on maps just as in writing. Inflammatory text can be used, for example, in maps with a political agenda. Not just the words, but the typeface or font used for actual words becomes significant in the language of maps. Type can be used symbolically to say more than the meaning of the words they represent. Typefaces have been said to have personalities and this can set the tone of the map. Type can project a mood. Arthur Robinson (1952) noted that Old Style letters appear dignified. Sans Serif forms appear up-to-date, clean-cut. Eugene de Lopateki described Bodoni as cold and austere, but Goudy Old Style as elegant and slightly feminine (de Lopateki 1952). While some of these descriptions seem perhaps silly and over-the-top, typeface does set a tone. For example, using a script or gothic face for a map of Silicon Valley companies would be jarring but might be appropriate for a map of Medieval Europe. Ariel, a sans serif face, would have the wrong “feel” for a map of Shakespeare’s England. This is akin to using a poor choice of synonym in an essay. The variety of typefaces available when creating a map by computer has widened the possibilities. Maps are projected. They represent the round earth on flat paper, and this cannot be done without distortion except for a very small area. Size, shape, orientation, and even location may be distorted. This fact has been exploited by propagandists, can be used to emphasize details, but often occurs accidentally when a mapmaker is unfamiliar with the characteristics of projection. There is no analogy to projection in written or spoken communications, but projections do communicate information. Like written words, maps are not purely objective although that was an assumption and the goal in the early communication paradigms. There was a search for

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objective maps and the belief that such maps could be created using scientific principles. Many map users assume that maps are always “true” or “accurate.” Maps are often seen as the epitome of accuracy and map or mapping is frequently used as analogy for precision. Thus, we have the tragedies described in the introduction to this chapter. People trust maps. The problem is compounded when the map is on a GPS or produced by GIS. There is often the belief that maps on these systems are accurate because they were not made by humans but by computers, so no human error is involved. There are even some who believe that the maps on a GPS are beamed down from satellites. Of course, both of these beliefs are incorrect. Humans create GIS maps and only the coordinates of a GPS are sent by satellite. The GPS maps are created by humans and do not automatically update information. J.K. Wright in his landmark article, “Mapmakers Are Human,” said “maps are drawn by men [sic] and not turned out automatically by machines, and consequently are influenced by human shortcomings” (Wright 1942: 527). Of course, now maps can be created by machine, but they still have human input; what the machine “draws” is determined by a human designer. Like written or spoken language, one finds biases on maps and omissions, whether necessary, as in generalization, deliberate in persuasion, but also accidental. Like reading written language, maps require critical thinking skills. In the past 25 years, there has been a new branch of the field, critical cartography. This is usually dated to Brian Harley’s work, especially his benchmark article “Deconstructing the Map” (Harley 1989). In critical cartography the map is viewed as a “text” to be deconstructed and analyzed as written texts are. Harley’s work was originally aimed at historic maps but has now been applied to modern maps as well. However, Harley was not the first to recognize that maps needed to be analyzed carefully and that they are not unbiased communications. Others have followed (see references), and all of these articles and books operate on the idea that maps are communications or texts, which can be analyzed much like written communications.

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Conclusion

While maps do not function exactly the same as written communications, using a particular language, they do convey information to the reader and accomplish this by means of lines, colors, marks, and patterns that function in an analogous way as language.

References Andrews, J. H. (1990). Map and language: A metaphor extended. Cartographica, 27(1), 1–19. Brewer, C. (2015). Designing better maps: A guide for GIS users. Redlands: ESRI Press. Crampton, J. (2001). Maps as social constructions: Power, communication and visualization. Progress in Human Geography, 25(2), 235–252. Harley, J. B. (1989). Deconstructing the map. Cartographica, 26(2), 1–20.

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Harley, J. B. (1990). Introduction: Texts and contexts in the interpretation of early maps. In D. Buisseret (Ed.), From sea charts to satellite images: Interpreting North American history through maps (pp. 3–15). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Head, C. G. (1984). The map as natural language: A paradigm for understanding. Cartographica, 21(1), 1–31. Herb, G. (1989). Persuasive cartography in geopolitik and national socialism. Political Geography Quarterly, 8, 26–31. Herb, G. (1999). Before the Nazis: Maps as weapons in German nationalist propaganda. Mercator’s World, 4, 26–31. Kent, A. J., & Vujakovic, P. (2011). Cartographic language: Towards a new paradigm for understanding stylistic diversity in topographic maps. The Cartographic Journal, 48(1), 21–40. Koeman, C. (1971). The principle of communication in cartography. International Yearbook of Cartography, 11, 169–175. Lasswell, H. D. (1966). The structure and function of communication in society. In B. Berelson & M. Janowitz (Eds.), A reader in public opinion and communication. New York: The Free Press. de Lopateki, E. (1952). Advertising layout and typography. New York: Ronald Press. Monmonier, M. (1993). Mapping it out: Expository cartography for the humanities and social sciences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Monmonier, M. (1996). How to lie with maps (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Muehlenhaus, I. (2012). If looks could kill: The impact of different rhetorical styles on persuasive geocommunication. The Cartographic Journal, 49(4), 361–375. Muehlenhaus, I. (2013). The design and composition of persuasive maps. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, 40(5), 401–414. Pickles, J. (1991). Tests, hermeneutics and propaganda maps. In T. J. Barnes & J. T. Duncan (Eds.), Writing worlds: discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape. London: Routledge. Robinson, A. H. (1952). The look of maps. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Robinson, A. H. (1967). The psychological aspects of color in cartography. International Yearbook of Cartography, 7, 50–59. Spier, H. (1941). Magic geography. Social Research, 8, 310–330. Tyner, J. A. (1974). Persuasive cartography: An examination of the map as a subjective tool of communication. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Los Angeles. Tyner, J. A. (1982). Persuasive cartography. Journal of Geography, 81(4), 140–144. Tyner, J. A. (2015). Persuasive cartography. In: History of cartography, Vol. 6. Cartography in the twentieth century (pp. 1087–1095). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press Wright, J. K. (1942). Mapmakers are human. Geographical Review, 32, 527–544.

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Contents 1 Precedent Existential Proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Postings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Tools for Governing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Talk on and Around the Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Sign systems infected with language, and constructed out of elements dependent on language, maps nonetheless are neither a language (or a form of language) nor structured like a language in any way. Physically embodying human locative knowledge, maps are exploited by “language” to advance arguments about the world, generally in the service of the status quo, that is, of our current system of nation-states. Here “language” is to be taken as referring to the cognitive substrate from which concepts arise, concepts which, when wed to a mark, constitute the postings out of which maps are built. These postings conspire to construct the propositions that maps shape into the arguments they make about the world. Keywords

Maps · Language For a long time, people thought, and talked, about maps as though they were representations, as though they were pictures. This is pretty hard to understand if you’ve ever looked at a map. Most of them bear so little resemblance to the world or anything in it that maps were long thought to require legends to make things D. Wood (*) Raleigh, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_109

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intelligible, legends that in any case never made it plain why on one map Europe looked much larger than South America, while on another it was half its size, and both in colors no one ever saw except on a map. To give just a single example. No, even the most persuasive maps make terrible pictures, almost every one of them omitting the clouds, the night, and all the commotion, but all of them omitting almost everything to let them concentrate on . . . this or that. Selection they call it – selecting the features of interest – and it’s useful; it’s necessary, but, along with so many other things, it’s fatal to the picture theory of the map. But if they’re not representations, what are they? I once wrote a paper called “The Map as a Kind of Talk” (Wood 2002). I wanted to make it plain that this was about an alternative to the representational idea, but it was a way I’d been thinking about maps for the previous 20 years, more and more strongly, as talk, as discourse, as active participants in the hullabaloo we call life. But as a kind of talk, I never meant that maps were literally talk. They’re not any more than they’re pictures. Maps aren’t made with graphic equivalents of morphemes, nor do they have anything like the syntactical structure of spoken language, despite the rise, in the 1970s and 1980s, of clatter about “the language of maps,” about “maps as natural languages,” about “cartographic language.” A lot of this, I think, grew out of people staring too long at the diagrams made by proponents of the “communication model” of cartography, the tubes, the arrows, running from “reality” or from “the world,” through the map or the mapmaker (or both as connected by further arrows), to the “map reader.” This arose in cartography in the 1960s, in response to the popularity in the 1950s of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver’s “communication model.” Shannon was an electrical engineer and his “information theory” was engineering applied to “communication” – and hugely important – but as a result “signal” and “noise” became important concepts in cartography where they had little use. Why? Because maps aren’t communication devices transmitting the world through themselves to the reader. They’re not telephone lines. They’re the opposite. Like the things we say when we talk on the phone, maps are the content. The things we say: they’re the heart of the matter. They’re what does stuff, not the language in which they’re encoded, or the medium through which they’re transmitted. Which is why we can translate books from one language to another and experience them in different media. It’s not the language or the medium that matters (or not all that much), but the stuff coming through them: the things, the ideas, the concepts, the propositions. Yes, the propositions. Propositions are “a plan or scheme suggested for acceptance,” says a popular dictionary, and this’ll do for a start. That’s what maps do: they advance a plan, a scheme for acceptance. Or rejection. Rather than representative, maps are performative. Maps do rather than denote. Rather than pointing to things existing independently in an external world, maps like talk help bring the world as we know it into being. In the end, the map is nothing more or less than a vehicle for the creation and conveying of authority about, and ultimately over, territory, the most potent, in this day and age, this side of police and military power. The map claims

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this authority as the social manifestation of what it presents as its intrinsic and incontrovertible factuality, a factuality constructed through the social assent given to the map’s propositions. These propositions are realized through the fundamental spatial/meaning propositions that I and others call postings (Wood and Fels 2008; Krygier and Wood 2009). The posting is a simple proposition of the form, “this is there.”

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Precedent Existential Proposition

Note: two parts to this proposition. The first is the most daunting. This, what is this? If you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll find something about it being a word used to indicate a person, thing, idea, state, event, time, and remark. Person, thing, idea, and event – and this list could be extended to include all generic nouns – are all instances . . . of the pointed to, of the signified. That is, thises arise from the cognitive domain in which we divide the world into the parts that we, individually and/or collectively, think about, talk about, point to, use, make, visit, and so on. Thises are the things that maps are of. They frequently include things like streets, mountains, counties, rivers, cities, forests, states, nations, crops, and all the rest of the mappable world. These all, of course, are conceptual categories, which is to say, they’re thinking we do about what the things we call rivers and countries are. When we say something is a forest, a city, what we’re saying is that it’s a member of the class of such things, a class that resides and is continuously reconfigured in some sort of cognitive domain, conceptual space, conceptual universe, content space, content plane, semantic field. To say (out loud) that something’s a city or a river means that the signified – the concept, content, categorical type, or whatever we’re going to call it – has been wed to some sort of vehicle, to a sound capable of carrying the concept, content, categorical type out of the conceptual universe into the world of speech. To put it in other words, we have to marry the concept (city, river) to . . . a sound or to a mark or to something else from the material world that others can perceive. This pertinent expressive element – from the plain of expression and from the domain of signifiers – we call the signifier. The marriage of signified and signifier we call a sign (Saussure 1959; Barthes 1973; Eco 1976). Aggregations of signs on a map comprise systems of signs – supersigns and super-supersigns – and it is from these systems that the higher-order propositions arise that enable maps to . . . control our lives. Thinking about maps as systems of signs isn’t very trendy these days, but it remains fundamental: everything else – all the action and all the performativity – that maps may or may not engage in is carried by the signs. They’ve got to be where one begins. I mean, that’s what maps are: collections of signs on paper or a screen. Collections of signs. They’re not collections of marks. The difference between inert marks and active signs is that signs lead to some kind of action. Why else make signs, why else advance propositions, unless to affect the state or behavior of another? Without this motivation it’s hard to understand why people would make,

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publish, and disseminate maps. The sign theorist who made this point most straightforwardly was Colin Cherry, who defined a sign as “a transmission, or construct, by which one organism affects the behavior or state of another, in a communication situation” (Cherry 1957, p. 306). Contrast his definition of a sign with those of Saussure, Barthes, and Eco that we’ve just alluded to. It’s as though they came from different worlds, which in a way they did. Although written in the 1950s, Cherry’s definition of a sign is a generalization of C. S. Peirce’s, which Cherry distinguishes, “by the requirement that a sign must be capable of evoking responses which themselves must be capable of acting as signs for the same (object) designatum” (Cherry 1957, p. 220). Peirce’s sign formed an essential part of his idea of logic – his approach was philosophical not linguistic like Saussure’s – and a sign, Peirce said, was “something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity” (Peirce 1931–1935, Vol. 2, para. 228). Peirce distinguished three triadic semiotic relations of significance, of which the second trichotomy of the sign consisted of his famous icon, index, and symbol, ad infinitum (almost literally, since Peirce identified 66 classes of signs). No matter how deep we dive, we won’t be finding many points of contact between Peircean and Saussurian signs, nor between Cherry’s somewhat individual transformation of the Peircean sign and the Saussurian sign, which is too bad, because the Saussurian sign lacks the motivation of Cherry’s sign and Cherry’s sign desperately needs Saussure’s clarifying and simplifying formalism. Analytic linguistic speech-act theorists like J. L. Austin are in a third world altogether, which again is too bad, because Austin’s efforts at understanding what one is doing in saying something – especially his concept of the performative (yes, it originated here) – would be so much more valuable if they ever made contact with communication theory and/or semiology (Austin 1962). Understanding maps – and how they do what they do – really requires Peirce’s and Cherry’s motivation, Saussure’s sign, and Austin’s performativity.

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Postings

So let’s take the idea of a house and marry it to a mark of some kind, that is, to an element from the domain of signification, say, a ■. In a map, this union of the house idea and the ■ mark takes place on the map’s sign plane. This is to say that on the map’s sign plane, the ■ is understood as a house. The map’s sign plane differs from other sign planes by virtue of its indexicality, that is, the convention that locations on the cartographic sign plane are signs themselves. The concept they embody is “location x,y in the world,” while their mark is simply their x,y location on the map. When a ■ is located on the cartographic sign plane, the ■ is understood not as any house but as the house at that location in the world. That is, the cartographic sign plane acts as an index to which house in the world the ■ is a sign for, meeting in this way Peirce’s conditions for an indexical sign function. We call this location of the ■ on the sign plane of the map a posting: this, the house, is posted there where the map says it is in the world: this is there. Thises may

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be located at more than one there (there could be many houses) and a there may be populated by many thises (as when weather maps post temperature, pressure, wind speed, and wind direction at a common there). Multiple this is there propositions (or postings) create and comprise the territory of the map. This territory becomes the subject of the map’s action. Here, for example, are the houses along a block face, that is, the houses facing the street along one side of a block (Fig. 1). Note that in addition to posting seven houses, we have varied our ■ to post the ground plans of the individual dwellings. Considered as the sign of a unitary block face, this assembly of individual postings can be thought of as a synthesis, as a supersign, as, that is, a sign composed of more elemental signs. Such supersigns can be piled up endlessly and constitute postings of supersigns. Here, for example, is a whole neighborhood (Fig. 2), a neighborhood comprised of blocks among which is the block face of Fig. 1. The neighborhood too can be thought about as a synthesis, even as a supersign, though here the streets inferred – even though they’re not posted – suggest that we’ve moved up a level in the hierarchy, perhaps to that of a super-supersign. This illustrates the way relationships among the thises and theres within the cartographic sign plane can facilitate exchanges of meaning. A further example, the coincidence of this map with a map of an engrossing school district, is enough to send the kids who live in this neighborhood to that school. Such relationships are precisely syntactic, but this is a spatial, in fact a geographic syntax, not the syntax operating in language that governs the relationships among words. Kicked farther downscale this example can be made to yield the argument in an almost incontestable form (Fig. 3). Just as the relationships among the thises enabled us to infer the streets along which the houses had been built, this further shift in scale

Fig. 1 A block face comprised of elemental house postings

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Fig. 2 The neighborhood that includes the block face of Fig. 1 – Boylan eights in Raleigh, North Carolina

makes clear the way a coincidence of theres – as here between the block face and the neighborhood and between the neighborhood and this portion of a city – affords and affirms the mapping of authority (political, cultural, religious, scientific) over territory and its constituent thises, potentially at many levels. The neighborhood is Boylan Heights, an older inner-city neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina, a portion of whose downtown appears in the upper right. Further reductions in scale would reveal Raleigh in Wake County, Wake County in North Carolina, and North Carolina in the United States. The relationships among the thises on this map fall under the sway of the nation, the state, the county, the city, and any number of intermediate authorities, including police districts, school districts, fire districts, soil and water conservation districts, and so on, practically ad infinitum. These too can be mapped, as Fig. 4 makes plain. Boylan Heights, here in gray, is posted within, smallest to largest, a couple of service routes (newspaper, mail), city service districts (police, fire, garbage, planning), a state election district, and Wake County school attendance areas. The largest of those shown here – Washington Sixth Grade, Daniels Middle, and Broughton High School Attendance Areas – run right off the map. These all nest themselves within still more encompassing entities: the City of Raleigh, Wake County Soil and Water Conservation Districts, Wake County, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, the fourth US Congressional District of North Carolina, and, larger than even these, North Carolina, the United States, NAFTA (and other multinational trade organizations), NATO (and other multinational defense alliances), the United Nations, etc. At this point the map’s conveyance of authority over territory is patent. Fundamental spatial/meaning propositions called postings make formal linkages with each other and propose the existence of blocks, neighborhoods, school districts, police precincts, cities, and all the higher-order social constructs that comprise the

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Fig. 3 The center is Boylan Heights, the neighborhood composed of block faces (Fig. 2), which were built up from the posting of houses (Fig. 1). Here the neighborhood is surrounded by Raleigh’s downtown (upper right), North Carolina’s Central Prison (to the upper left of the neighborhood), and other features of the city, state, and nation

social/political world with which we’re so familiar. Ultimately the factuality of the map’s propositions rests on the social assent given the map by those in the universe that the map embraces, and this factuality endows the map with enormous authority. It’s the authority wielded by the map – an authority great enough to nearly . . . go without question – that gives the map its overwhelming utility in contemporary human affairs. It spares the state the necessity of enforcing the state of affairs embodied in the maps . . . with police, with armed force, with the military. It’s a kind of weapon, wielded just this side of armed force. Of course initially the propositions advanced by such maps may be rejected. Indeed many are hotly contested. What results is a battle between maps advancing alternative propositions. Few maps see the light of day without such battles. In the end the stronger force prevails – which is to deny none of the changes, compromises, revisions that the battle produced – and a map is published which in fact can no longer . . . be contested. This map’s proposition may be resisted, but the forces working through the map will, for example, permit you to vote for only those

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Fig. 4 Map of some of the (very many) administrative and service districts within which the neighborhood of Boylan Heights (in gray) is embedded, along with the block faces that make up the neighborhood and the house postings that make up the block faces

candidates for office, to receive only these services for the taxes you pay, your kids to attend only the school proposed. For the time being . . . these maps may have to be remade every 10 years or annually or even more often, but while they’re in force, they’re in force. The force behind this map is of course that of the school board, but behind the school board is the force of law. Again, ultimately it is that of the police, the military. Those who lived through it cannot forget the national guard enforcing the rights of

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black kids to attend schools previously closed to them as attendance zones were redrawn in the wake of Brown versus the Board of Education. When required, the gloves do come off. The power of the map, however, is such that this display of force is seldom called for. Once a map has been published, it is pretty much taken as a description of the way things actually are. And if this is the way things are, what’s the point of resistance? The map’s propositional character becomes . . . hard to see. All maps work this way, though the behaviors bound may vary widely. Instead of dwelling and going to school, they could be knowing this and knowing that. My favorite example has always been the mapping of tree species against topography. “These two things go together,” the map says, and as a consequence, to know two things . . . is to know a third, for example, that a given species is a slope specialist. The knowledge brought into being this way – constructed this way – is no different from other behavior that is brought into being by a map. After all, knowing this or knowing that and going here or going there are equally behaviors and are equally caught up in the larger frame of social action. I want to say this isn’t about power (as the school board example so patently is) but about knowledge but . . . what’s the difference?

3

Tools for Governing

Nor is it simply the conveyance of authority, for in every instance the map is equally implicated in the construction of authority. Recall Fig. 4: every one of the borders shown or implied there was originally envisioned on maps. Take North Carolina’s, for instance, which followed from a 1663 grant by King Charles II to the Lords Proprietors – a bunch of crown loyalists – of what Charles thought about as Carolina; which was to say, everything from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Ocean between 31
and 36
north latitude. Since 31
north is 70 miles south of the present northern border of Florida, this was an enormous swath of territory, which a second grant in 1665 extended by moving the border north 300 (to give Carolina control over the Albemarle Sound and its shipping). Since the grant had been made on a small-scale map of the continent, where exactly 36
300 was on the ground was essentially unknown. Do I need to add that this embroiled the governors of Carolina and Virginia in endless controversy? Still, it took until 1710 for the governors to finally appoint surveyors . . . whose work was a complete disaster. It then took another 18 years before a second attempt was made. This time the surveyors – by the end, all Virginians – ran a line west until they ran out of food, for 237 miles. Twenty-one years later, the line was run another 90 miles, and this continued, through confrontations with the Shawnee and the Cherokee, the American Revolution, and all the rest. The way surveys like these were supposed to be carried out was by laying rods or chains out on the ground. Usually the line was a known border and the problem was merely to determine its length, but here the critical issue was its latitude, that is, the border’s route across the land. The only way to do this was by shooting the sun.

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For a long time, this had been done with cross-staffs, though with improved accuracy since the middle of the seventeenth century. (It wouldn’t be until 1757 that the sextant was invented.) After determining the latitude at the eastern end of the line, no minor achievement given the acrimony between the parties, chains – since the mid-seventeenth century, these would have been 66-foot Gunter’s chains (though there were competitors) – were laid out along a line determined by using a circumferentor or a surveyor’s compass (since the nineteenth century, a theodolite). A pin would be emplaced at the chain’s end, and this is used as the starting point for the chain’s next run, everything being regularly checked with the cross-staff or sextant and circumferentor or surveyor’s compass. At the end of the day, the surveyors had to post the distances and directions physically walked to a plat or a sketch map drawn to scale with dividers and rulers (Linklater 2003, p. 18). Well, that’s how it was supposed to have been done, but, this being real life, in the end, the survey wasn’t an attempt to fix the parallel of 36
300 but to run an approximation between specified natural objects agreed upon as a reasonable by the two governors’ agents (at least until the Carolinians had left the party) (Byrd 1929). And simply to begin, the survey had to run through the Great Dismal Swamp, which almost scotched the whole thing right off . . .. But accepting all that – and everything that followed (for centuries!) – note the sequence of mappings involved. First the grant was made by ruling lines on a smallscale map of the continent. Then these mapped lines – for a similar process later took place with respect to Carolina’s southern and western borders – were laid out on the ground in a series of measurements, typically recorded in a notebook, that were subsequently posted to a map. Sooner or later the resultant large-scale map would be scaled down for certification and filing, and this was the map that provided the basis for property ownership and other mapmaking which depended, for the assessment of things like applicable laws, taxes, and the like, on the location of the state border on the ground. Determining, updating, correcting, and maintaining North Carolina’s borders has been and remains an ongoing process, as does the determining, updating, correcting, and maintaining of all the rest of the borders within which the neighborhood of Boylan Heights finds itself. For example, Wake County recently reposted its border with Franklin County. One reason for this was that when the border was last posted in 1915, the surveyor’s propositions included terms – trees, stones, fence posts – that no longer exist, which meant that the propositions could no longer be tested, that is, neither affirmed nor denied. A more immediate cause, however, was the decision a few years earlier to jog the border around a handful of lots misposted, thanks to the errors of contemporary surveyors, that is, jogged around lots that had been posted to Wake County (instead of Franklin) in accordance with propositions the counties subsequently came to deny. Then rather than repost the lots to Franklin, the counties agreed to jog the border – that is, to repost it – around the misposted lots. But while jogging the border, the assessors and surveyors uncovered a host of other irregularities and decided it was time to resurvey the entire line and undo the jog. Elsewhere in North Carolina, the borders of Guilford, Orange, and Alamance Counties are being reposted, and nationally the situation is common (DeConto 2009: A1).

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Of course all of the lots that were moved from one county to another found themselves embedded in a different territorial hierarchy; that is, their school districts, electoral districts, and so on changed. Within the county the Preddys found themselves in a similar situation when the City of Raleigh reposted its border, moving the Preddys into the city, a reposting Raleigh carried out when it recognized that the part of the county the Preddys lived shared a conceptual type with other thises within the city, namely, similar demands for services. This reposting of city and county borders was itself caught up in the hierarchical structure in which the cities and counties are embedded: the new borders had to be approved not merely by Raleigh’s city council and the commissioners of Franklin and Wake Counties but by the North Carolina General Assembly, for successively smaller units of government are defined within larger units of government (to ensure a more perfect union, I mean, registration). States, too: they’re similarly caught up in the hierarchical structure in which they’re embedded, and so their disputes have to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the United States. International borders have to be adjudicated. . . yes, well, and there’s a train wreck for you! It is this ceaseless circulation of meaning within the sign plane of the map that makes the map the potent instrument for management that it is. Its ability to present ontological propositions (such as the existence of counties, zoning districts, and ecological domains) as locative ones (that are located here) gives the map an unrivaled ability to transform desires, guesses, suppositions – you name it – into facts, facts that the map then composes into territories that it hierarchically layers to permit the transmission of authority, along with all the rest of the combinatorial legerdemain this opens the door to.

4

Talk on and Around the Map

In this scenario maps are free of language. In fact, they’re anything but. They’re embedded in language, infected with language, surrounded by language. The map plane itself is usually established with language, by its title (Boylan Heights, Raleigh, United States, North America), by reference to a reference grid (of latitude and longitude, a State Plane Coordinate System, or any of numerous other reference systems), or by other words on the map. And there are tons of words on maps, the title (and ancillary text) quite often, but mostly names of the endless features the map posts. Besides these, maps are accompanied by a paramap, which tells us how to approach it. The paramap can be distinguished into the perimap and the epimap. The perimap is all the textual and other material not part of the map proper, but appearing with it on the same sheet, page, or screen. This includes things like the title, who made the map, when, how, and so on. It includes the legend, the scale bars, text blocks expanding on the map’s subject, photographs with their captions, callouts, and any other elements. It not infrequently overwhelms the map itself, but with the ostensible goal of helping the map on its feet. The epimap has a related function, but carries it out away from the map. It includes things like articles that

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may accompany the map, say in a magazine like the National Geographic, as well as articles in which the map has been embedded. It includes comments made about the map, very common in today’s blogs, but drawing on a long heritage of map commentary. It includes press releases, marketing copy, advertisements, indeed the whole cloud of stuff generated to promote or situate a map. Still, though surrounded and pervaded by language, though exploited, often ruthlessly by language, the map itself, though certainly a sign system, is not language, even less a picture. And it is precisely out of its differences from these other sign systems that its value arises, a complementary value enriching human communication with a locative dimension the others ultimately lack and providing a tool, even a weapon, that as much as anything makes the modern system of nationstates possible.

References Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barthes, R. (1973). Elements of semiology. New York: Hill and Wang. Byrd, W. (1929). Histories of the dividing line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina. Raleigh: North Carolina Historical Commission. Cherry, C. (1957). On human communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DeConto, J. (2009, February 5). Redrawn lines, redrawn lives. News and Observer. Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Krygier, J., & Wood, D. (2009). Ce ne’st pas le monde (this is not the world). In M. Dodge, R. Kitchin, & C. Perkins (Eds.), Rethinking maps (pp. 189–219). New York: Routledge. Linklater, A. (2003). Measuring America: How the United States was shaped by the greatest land sale in history. New York: Plume. Peirce, C. S. (1931–1935). Collected papers of Charles S. Peirce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saussure, F. (1959). Course in general linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wood, D. (2002). The map as a kind of talk: Brian Harley and the confabulation of the inner and outer voice. Visual Communication, 1(2), 139–161. Wood, D., & Fels, J. (2008). The natures of maps: Cartographic constructions of the natural world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Part III Language Mapping and Documentation

Linguistic Geography’s Role in Clarifying the Linguistic Situation in Specific Language Regions in Southeast Europe

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Contents 1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

Abstract

Ancient culture of the Balkan Peninsula is known for its originality and wealth. Along with this, there are specific linguistic phenomena in the Balkans, such as the Balkan linguistic league (Balkan sprachbund), supported by some and denied by others. The culture reflects the common features in languages from different families (e.g., definite article in the Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Albanian), which, on the one hand, unites them and, on the other hand, distinguishes them from their relative languages (cf., e.g., similarities and differences between Bulgarian and Serbian). The common features of languages from the so-called Balkan linguistic league are reflected to varying degrees in its individual representatives as well as in their dialects. The study of the development of these phenomena at the dialectal level is extremely complicated, but their depiction with the aid of linguistic geography provides a good opportunity to outline the unified areas at different linguistic levels – phonetic, morphological, and lexical. In this chapter, a study of selected maps from the voluminous editions of the Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects, its associated Generalising Volume, and the European Linguistic Atlas (Atlas Linguarum Europae) will be made by

The publication is related to the work in the project: “Geolinguistic Study of the Relationship between Bulgarian and European Dialectal Lexis” (GSBEUDL) – Fund “Science research” of the Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Bulgaria – No. DH 20/11, 11.12.2017. L. Antonova-Vasileva (*) Institute for Bulgarian Language, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_134

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comparing dialectal maps of some phenomena from the atlases of other Balkan countries (e.g., Atlasul lingvistic rom^ a n). This discussion will help draw conclusions about the course of common language phenomena. Particular attention is paid to the Bulgarian and Albanian languages, which are usually characterized as representatives of highly developed Balkan phenomena. Keywords

Dialectology · Bulgarian language · Balkan linguistic league · Linguistic geography In the Balkan Peninsula (Fig. 1), located in the southeastern part of the continent of Europe, one of the oldest proofs of a developed human culture has been found. From this discovery, it is sufficient to note the Treasure of the Varna Chalcolithic necropolis which dates back to about 5000–4400 BC. The Valchitran, Lukovit, Hotnitsa, Dabene, Pereshchepina, Preslav, Rogozen, and Panagyurishte Treasures

Fig. 1 Map of the Balkan Peninsula

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may be also added to the Varna treasure (see https://www.10te.bg/lyubopitno/10-tenaj-izvestni-sakrovishta-otkrivani-v-balgariya/). They are all stately proof of a high material culture in the northern part of the Balkans – Bulgarian lands from which, via the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea are seen as the cultural bridge between Asia, Africa, and Europe several thousand years. Language is a main element of culture – a main means of communication, of exchange, storage, and creation of cultural values. But while researchers of material culture may physically touch treasures that are archaeological discoveries, researchers of language are faced with greater difficulties when they try to restore its history. Although sometimes one may count on recovery of reliable material objects such as written records, they quite often still represent insufficient fragments of arbitrary signs and symbols. Numerous phenomena of language reality, for example, data about the language of a number of ancient peoples that did not possess or did not systematically use script, data about the historical development of a given language whose cultural history was subjected to foreign rule and destruction, information about the unity and differentiation in a given language and interactions between a group of languages, which led to their approximation or differentiation, remain out of their range. Similarly, the possibility for studying language peculiarities of regional variants in their spatial context (i.e., on linguistic maps) attains great significance. The geographic spread of the Bulgarian language in the Balkan Peninsula, as already mentioned, is related to the most ancient evidence of a developed civilization. At the same time, one should bear in mind that the bounds of the Bulgarian linguistic continuum do not coincide with modern state borders of the Republic of Bulgaria. This is a situation that is completely natural for the modern linguistic picture of the continent of Europe; compare, for example, the spread of the German language (König 1978). In reality, the bounds of the Bulgarian linguistic continuum spread in an east-west direction from the Black Sea to the Morava River (in Eastern Serbia) to the western part of the Republic of Albania. Officially recognized Bulgarian minorities live in both regions. In a north-south direction, the language encompasses a region from the valley of the Danube River to the Aegean Sea. It is well known that in the territory of European Turkey and Greece, there exists the “Pomak” population, a Bulgarian population of Muslim confession whose dialects are identical with those of the Bulgarian Muslims in the Rhodopes. In addition, there is a Christian “Slavic-speaking” population whose dialects also represent a natural continuation of the Bulgarian dialects in the south. The common typological peculiarities, which are naturally related to the unity of the morphological system as well as to the system of the prosody, manifest themselves in all this linguistic territory (Fig. 2; BDA. GV 2001). Within these linguistic bounds, a great number of dialectal differences at the phonetic and lexical levels manifest themselves, but the differences in grammatical elements usually are significant phonetically. The study of the dialectal phenomena within the Bulgarian linguistic continuum and of the areas it diffused to adjacent languages related to it in a linguistic geography context is of special importance. That is because it delineates clearly the spread of linguistic phenomena in the

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Fig. 2 General typological features of Bulgarian dialects in their historical bounds (BDA. GV 2001, p. 55)

presence of a limited amount of written records from the culture of a people, the history of which we find written proof in foreign sources even from the fifth to the seventh centuries (Bogdanov 1976; cf. Structure of the First Bulgarian Empire during the IX–X century, available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Structure_of_the_First_Bulgarian_Empire_during_the_IX-X_century.png). Work on the Bulgarian Dialect Atlas (BDA) started in the period 1948–1950. The first volume of BDA, South-eastern Bulgaria, was a collective work of the Institute for Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, and the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow. The Russian part was directed by Prof. S. B. Bernshteyn, and on Bulgarian part by Prof. Stoyko Stoykov. Initially the network of settlements for BDA included the villages with old local populations within the borders of the Republic of Bulgaria. Prof. St. Stoykov prepared and published the outline for research on the dialect of the settlements. The outline discusses selected topics that relate to the main purpose, that is, to reflect the territorial distribution of phonetic, morphological, accentual, syntactical, and lexical phenomena that shape the dialectal division of the Bulgarian language. More significant dialectal features that are found in larger parts of the Bulgarian linguistic territory and that enable outlining main isoglosses were also covered. More attention was paid to the phonetic and lexical features that are more characteristic of the dialects. When presenting a number of dialectal phenomena from the field of phonetics, they were orientated to the Old-Bulgarian shapes. This focus is obvious from the first question in the contents:

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• Question 1. What vowel is pronounced instead of ъ (from Old-Bulgarian ъ) • Question 4. Is the vowel ъ retained or is it dropped in an open syllable (instead of Old-Bulgarian ъ or ь) • Question 5. What vowel is pronounced instead of е (from Old-Bulgarian little nasal ѧ) • Question 14. What vowel is pronounced instead of accented е (from Old-Bulgarian ѣ) In single cases, references are also made to Proto Slavic, for example: • Question 40. What vowels are pronounced instead of the group шт (from *tj) • Question 41. What vowels are pronounced instead of the group жд (from *dj). BDA, Vol. 1–South-eastern Bulgaria, was published in 1964. Later, another three volumes were published, respectively, for the dialects in North-eastern Bulgaria, South-western Bulgaria, North-western Bulgaria, all under the direction of Prof. St. Stoykov. In 1972 Yordan N. Ivanov published BDA, Bulgarian dialects from Greek Macedonia, 1–Drama region, Serres region, Sidirokastro region and Nea Zichni region. This is the first atlas published in Bulgaria about the Bulgarian dialects outside the contemporary (modern) state borders. As the author states, he himself is of a refugee family. He collected the material for the atlas among the emigrants from Eastern Greek Macedonia in the Gotse Delchev region, the Petrich region, the Sandanski region, and the Plovdiv region, but also from citizens of Northern Greece, native speakers of the Bulgarian dialects, who came to visit their relatives in Bulgaria during meetings with fellow-countryman, family meetings and other events. In 1986 Rangel Bozhkov published BDA, North-western Bulgarian dialects in Tsaribrod and Bosilegrad regions (now day in Eastern Serbia). Under the direction of Blagoy Shklifov, the BDA, Bulgarian dialects from Greek Macedonia, 2–Western Greek Macedonia was prepared, but it was not published. Under the direction of Prof. Ivan Kochev, the Thracian Dialect Atlas was prepared (South Thracian dialect in Greek end Turkey), but it remained in the Archives of BDA only. In all BDA regional volumes, a main problem in mapping arose with the use of the colored circle. Circles colored in eight colors were used and in case of lack of the main colors, circles with figures inscribed in them were added. On the lexical maps, the formative variants were mapped with the same color, but with different shapes. All regional atlases also show the continuation of the dialectal areas irrespective of the modern state borders. When working on the atlases by geographical parts, however, there is a discrepancy in the color rendering of the maps, which has an effect in the published volumes even between the individual parts within the state borders. For this reason, the idea of creating a Generalizing volume (GV) of BDA, which provides for the unified presentation of the dialectal phenomena, emerged. Work on the BDA.GV started under the direction of Prof. Ivan Kochev. In 1988 the BDA.GV Introductory part was published. The maps were based on materials gathered from more than 2300 settlements, from existing published

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volumes, from the additionally created regional archival volumes using Bulgarian and foreign printed sources, as well as from field material. These sources facilitated the creation of maps showing the distribution of phenomena in the whole territory of the Bulgarian linguistic continuum. In this part of the atlas, the distributions of the phenomena are not mapped using dots, but hatching. In 2001 BDA.GV Parts I-III, Phonetics, Accentology, Lexicology were published at “Trud” Publishing House in Sophia. In Fig. 3, we see from map No. F 21 what a distribution of Old-Bulgarian ѫ looks (BDA.GV 2001). In the BDA.GV maps, the circular signs are not used, rather unified coloring of each area is performed and each color is defined in the legend. This approach was adopted following the example of the German publication, Atlas zur deutschen Sprache (König 1978). While the point method of mapping may be considered suitable for representation of the phenomena at each pattern, the areal type of delineation using hachures or a single color patterns showing areas of similar dialectal phenomena has an advantage of being able to differentiate easily regions with major linguistic differences. From this point of view, it is more suitable when the goal is to summarize the diffusion of dialectal peculiarities in linguistic atlases where there are united linguistic systems such as German language dialects or those shown in BDA.GV. In 2016, under the guidance of M. Tetovska-Troeva, BDA. GV. IV, Morphology was published at the Prof. Marin Drinov Academic Publishing House in Sofia. The typological peculiarities of the Bulgarian language, already outlined on first

Fig. 3 Map No F21 (Author El. Kyaeva) – Reflexes of the Old Bulgarian ѫ in words of the type зъб, мъж (tooth, man) – Old-Bulg. зѫбъ, мѫжъ (BDA. GV 2001, p. 61)

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map of BDA.GV.I-III, turn our attention to the linguistic phenomena uniting the whole territory of the Bulgarian linguistic land. Most of the maps, as already mentioned, represent morphological phenomena (the analytical nature of the nominal system in the case of nouns and adjectives; the presence of article morpheme in the case of nouns and of the doubled object in the sentence; the analytical expression of comparative and superlative degrees in the case of nouns, verbs and adverbs; the analytical expression of the infinitive with to-construction; the presence of a rich verb system with a greater number of forms for past and future tenses; the analytical expression of the forms for future tense by means of particles; and the presence of a renarrative mood in the case of verb). The Atlas contains 145 color maps, comments, lists, and indices that reflect the most telling peculiarities of the morphological system. The most important inflectional types of the main grammatical categories have been mapped. These include gender and the number of nouns, adjectives, pronouns; article morphemes for singular and plural; different case forms in the case of pronouns; endings and forms for present, imperfect, aorist and future tense; participial forms, etc. Maps are included that interpret some syntactic structures, for example, the different methods for expressing a relationship in the case of subordinate attributive clause. This generalizing volume is of areal type. It also follows the principle of a chronological orientation in interpretation of the dialectal phenomena. For this reason, it may be defined as the first systematic diachronic study of Bulgarian morphology. At the same time, the typological differentiation of the dialectal changes according to the interlingual criterion (innovations that have emerged on a domestic basis) and later borrowed ones (innovations that have emerged because of influences between the Bulgarian language and other contact languages at dialectal level), which have been made in BDA.GV. 2001 part III – Lexicology and is also retained. In the map legends the colors run the gamut from warm to darker shades. Distinct dialectal differences appear on the maps that are the result of intralingual contacts. The diachronic (by stages) presentation of the dialectal phenomena is also realized by in the colors used. Dark red and shades of red correspond to the Old Bulgarian regions on the map. Warm colors (brown, orange, yellow) show domestic linguistic features and cold colors (blue, green, grey, purple) show newer linguistic phenomena and borrowings (Fig. 4). In the title of each map and in the keys or map legends, the recorded Old Bulgarian forms, to which the mapped dialectal appearances correspond, are written. The forms standing most closely to Old Bulgarian are brought to the foreground and after that the dialectal transformations. In this way, both the visual notion of the chronology and the spread of the most archaic appearances and their continuants are achieved. This procedure allows the reader to observe graphically the continuity between the Bulgarian dialects and the oldest written Slavic language – Old Bulgarian, thus confirming the unity of the Bulgarian language in the past with today (BDA.GV 2016). The study of the Bulgarian language at a dialectal level affects a number of similar phenomena with the other languages that have been widespread since ancient times on the Balkan Peninsula. Оn the one hand, they are representative of different language families: Bulgarian language (along with the dialect continuum in the

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Fig. 4 Map No M116 (Author L. Antonova-Vasileva) – Particle to form the positive form for future tens for 1 person singular ще пера (I will wash) (BDA. GV 2016, p. 142)

Republic of Macedonia) and Serbian belong to the family of Slavic languages, Romanian is a Roman language, and Greek and Albanian languages have a distinct place between Indo-European languages (see ALE, vol. 1, Neuvième fasc., 2015, p. XXIV). On the other hand, the languages on the Balkan Peninsula show a number of common features – such as the analytical formation of the forms for future tense. The volumes of the Bulgarian dialect atlas help to trace their distribution to a central part of the region. Most often, scholars focus on investigating purely linguistic features that are common between the Balkan languages in spite of their kindred differences. They determine similar peculiarities within this community of different language levels – phonetic, morphological, morphosyntactic, lexical, etc. For example, Savitska (Sawicka 2014) investigates phenomena in the field of phonetics cf. the presence of processes of accommodation between the vowel system and the consonant system, in manifestations of softness correlation in the case of consonants, the reduction of vowels, and the presence of the schwa (ъ) sound functioning as a phoneme and related to the matter of the reflex of the big nasal vowel (yus – ѫ ) and the back yer (ъ ). According to Savitska, a Bulgarian-Romanian area that is characterized by high percentage of palatal consonants and by presence of assimilative palatalization (especially in the eastern part) is delineated on the Balkans. The study of the data of linguistic geography is of great importance in confirming these conclusions. It shows that in this case the matter in hand is rather a reflection of the peculiarities of the eastern Bulgarian dialects that are north of

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the Danube River, where until the nineteenth century they were part of the dialectal continuum of the Bulgarian language. In the Albanian language in whose territory the presence of Slavic substrate is also observed (Selishchev 1981), we can show the similar phonetic parallels. This feature corresponds to the fact that the general Slavization of the region in the fourth–sixth century AD, outside of which the southernmost part of the Greek linguistic territory only remains, was acknowledged by Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos in tenth century as one where “The whole land became Slavic and became barbarian.” The eastern Bulgarian dialects, as Savitska herself shows, are related with respect to a number of peculiarities to the northeastern part of the dialectal continuum of the Slavic languages. In her terminology they belong to a more ancient Eurasian type. The maps in BDA.GV show that the Bulgarian linguistic continuum is united in its whole southernmost part where these archaic features manifest themselves in more dense ones: dialects in the eastern part of Aegean Macedonia and Thrace, or in mosaic regions of spread and dialects in the western part of Aegean Macedonia. This observation is related to a number of phenomena such as the presence of wide reflexes of the yat (ѣ ) that most often is the main reason for the emergence of the softness correlation. In the southern area, the widespread use of the positional palatalization of the consonants before front vowels, of reflex of ъ instead of the big yus (ѫ ) and the back yer (ъ ) of the presence of reduction of the wide vowels to narrow ones, is also observed (BDA.GV 2001) (Figs. 5 and 6). Examples of data in BDA.GV. I – III are confirmed by maps in the all-Slavic dialect atlas (All-Slavic Linguistic Atlas – ASLA 1988) – cf. • No. 1, map No. 21: лʼàто// лʼàту (summer) – the village of Ossa, Thessaloniki Region, the village of Livadochori, Serres Region, the village of Petroussa, Drama Region, as well as the village of Boboshticë, Korçë Region • map No. 25: нивʼàста (bride) – the village of Ossa, Thessaloniki Region, the village of Livadochori, Serres Region, the village of Petroussa, Drama Region, as well as невйàста – the village of Boboshticë, Korçë Region • map No. 39: сʼềмʼ¨ (seed) – the village of Ossa, Thessaloniki Region, сʼàме – the village of Livadochori, Serres Region, the village of Petroussa, Drama Region, as well as the village of Boboshticë, Korçë Region (ASLA 1988, PhGS. No 1). From the examples given, it becomes clear that the dialects in the eastern part of Aegean Macedonia form one area with the east Bulgarian dialects with respect to the reduction of the vowel е: е > и i >or е > (a sound between e and ə, as well as the variants ъ and а of the same kind with respect to phonetic nature (cf. Kochev 1983) – according to OLA, • No. 6, map No. 3 (ASLA 2011, No 6): иднò (one) – Trеbino (Trebno//Tremno), Ptolemaida Region, идùн – Ossa, Thessaloniki Region, аднò – Kerasies, Edessa Region, Marmaras, Serres Region, Panorama, Nea Zichni Region

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Fig. 5 Map No F3 (Author T. Kostova) – Reflexes of the Old Bulgarian ъ in a final closed syllable in words of the type петък, пясък (Friday, sand) – Old Bulg. пòι__êι__, пýñι__êι__ (BDA.GV 2001, p. 61)

• map No. 20: йѐсън (autumn) – Furka, Doirani Region, Marmaras, Serres Region; Panorama, Nea Zichni Region; Kaynarca, Kırklareli Region • map No. 37: вичѐра (dinner) – Furka, Doirani Region; Trеbino, Ptolemaida Region; Kerasies, Edessa Region; Ossa, Thessaloniki Region; Livadochori, Serres Region; Petroussa, Drama Region; Marmaras, Serres Region; Mikro Dereio, Alexandroupoli Region, etc. • map No. 54: ръшѐто (sieve) – Moschochori, Kastoria Region; Furka, Doirani Region; Panorama, Nea Zichni Region; Mikro Dereio, Alexandroupoli Region; рêшѐту – Livadochori, Serres Region; ришѐту – Kerasies, Edessa Region; Marmaras, Serres Region • map No. 70: сірци (hard) – Ossa, Thessaloniki Region; Livadochori, Serres Region; Petroussa, Drama Region; Mikro Dereio, Alexandroupoli Region, etc. (ASLA 2011. PhGS. No. 6). From the examples listed, it becomes clear that the dialectal area represents one common pattern, although a broken line that encompasses the dialects of the southwest – Korçë Region, Kastoria Region – passes through the western and eastern part of Aegean Macedonia – Edessa Region, Ptolemaida Region, Thessaloniki Region, Serres Region, Drama Region – and reaches Thrace – Alexandroupoli Region, Kırklareli Region.

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Fig. 6 Map No F34 (Author El. Kyaeva) – Reflexes of the Old Bulgarian ı under stress in front of no palatal syllable or no palatal consonant in words of type дядо, хляб (grand father, bread) – Old Bulg. äıäî, õëýáú (BDA.GV 2001, p. 92)

The picture in the case of lexical phenomena is more varied because the element of borrowing is most strongly developed. Here, not only the processes of Slavization and Romanization of the Balkan Peninsula emerge, but also of the Ottomanization that followed later, which became a reason for the entry of a huge amount of borrowings from Turkish or from Arabic via Turkish language. From BDA.GV. III – Lexicology, one may show many maps that indicate the borrowing of lexemes from different Balkan and European languages into Bulgarian language (BDA.GV 2001) (Fig. 7). The map shows the different lexemes in the Bulgarian dialects: cf. , , , , , , , , , , , . When investigating the lexis to determine the relationships between the dialects in Europe, special attention also deserves to be paid to the European Linguistic Atlas (Atlas Linguarum Europae – ALE). Its beginning was in 1965 at the International Congress of Geolinguistics in Marburg (Germany). At present, linguists from 27 countries are engaged in work on the ALE. In this publication, a complete linguistic geography investigation in the field of phonology, onomasiology, lexis, syntax, morphology, and word-formation is envisaged. At this stage, the onomasiology section, which includes 546 questions, has been thoroughly explored. It encompasses a system of notions organized according to

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Fig. 7 Map No L31 (Author L. Antonova-Vasileva) – The names of картофи (рotatoеs) (Atlas – BDA. GV 2001, p. 425)

Rudolf Hallig and Walter von Wartburg in these parts: Universe, Man, Man and Universe, for example, Sky, Weather (meteorology), Water, Relief, Plants, Space and spatial relationships, Time and temporal relationships; Man, Body, Motions and actions, Health and diseases, etc. To investigate lexemes that denominate those notions from 1975 to 1979, dialectal material from questionnaires was collected and analyzed. The final version of the questionnaire of ALE was published in 1979 (see https://www.lingv.ro/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=81& Itemid=107). The material collected was processed by specialists in dialectology from the national committees of each country and submitted to certain authors who prepared the map, authors who were selected by the International Committee of the Atlas. ALE is the first continental dialect atlas. Its scope is determined using purely geographic criteria. In the territory of continental Europe, the dialects of languages from five different language families (Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Caucasian, Semitic) are reflected. Some specific languages such as the Basque language, Greek, and Albanian are also added to this. The listed language families include a total of about 80 languages. The dialectal material is collected from a network of settlements, which number 2,631 points. So far, 9 fascicles of ALE have been published, with each volume representing 2 related books: Maps and separately Comments to maps. Characteristic is that the comments of ALE contain not only

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indices of the mapped lexemes and linguistic explanations to them, but also detailed historical, semantic, and ethnological information. For each map there is a detailed discussion of its major features and dominant lexemes. From the map for the denomination of rye in ALE, which is prepared by a Bulgarian team, one may draw the conclusion that the archaic features in the lexical system are retained to a strongest degree in the area of the Greek and the Bulgarian linguistic continuum – cf. the denominations βρίζα – in northern Greek dialects, and брица in Bulgarian dialects which is inherited from Thracian (see Georgiev 1997; Detschev 1957), while the Albanian and the Romanian languages are strongly affected by the process of Romanization and present notions inherited from the Latin secalae. Also denominations derivative of Latin are even found in the Greek dialects, which naturally reflects the cultural history of the Byzantine Empire and the fact that it turned into an eastern part of the Roman Empire. In the Bulgarian language, the denomination of Slavic origin ръж , which is a natural consequence of the Slavization of the Balkans, which, as already mentioned, is also seen in its most archaic form at phonetic level is also widespread. But even in the case of the variegated picture of the lexical differences in the dialects, the discovery of archaic peculiarities inherited from antiquity is related above all to the Bulgarian and the Greek areas. More complicated is the question with the phenomena at morphological level which exactly unites the Balkan languages together with the Bulgarian language in the whole territory of the Bulgarian linguistic territory that separates it from other Slavic languages. This finding is based on the assumption that the exact morphological peculiarities represent the stable element in the linguistic structure, while the dialectal variants manifest themselves at phonetic and lexical levels (cf. Hudson 1995, pp. 40–44). Here the question emerges about this morphological unity. Interesting in this respect are the observations of some scholars who specifically look for an explanation for linguistic peculiarities of the ethnic picture in the Balkan Peninsula in antiquity. As an example, one may cite the investigations of Paliga (2014) who developed the idea that the Slavic, Romanian, and Albanian ethnogeneses represent three aspects of the problem of the evolution of the ancient population on the Balkans, viz., the Thracian one, that inhabited wide regions from the northern Carpathians, through the valley of the Danube River to Haemus (present-day Balkan Mountains); the Illyrian one which may be related to the Thracian one or the Greek one that considered those who migrated from Central Europe. All the three ancient ethnic elements were strongly influenced by the processes of Romanization. The most weakly Romanized territory, according to Paliga, is the Carpathian area, and most strongly Romanized is the Albanian language that is considered as direct successor of the Thracian one. According to the Bulgarian scholars, the most unaffected territory by the Romanization remains the south-Danubian ethnic element (Georgiev 1997). This region reflects the views of relationships of Albanian language origins with the language of the most ancient inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula. Some lexemes uncharacteristic of the Slavic languages that are included in the Bulgarian language are defined as borrowings from Albanian. So, according to All-Slavic Linguistic Atlas, the lexeme буза

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is borrowing from Albanian into Bulgarian (ASLA 2009, SL-D No 9: к. №. 3, L 1335, pp. 32, 33). However, ASLA does not take into account that the word is spread in large part of Bulgarian language territory – right in the center as well in the South East and South West. In the dialects the lexemes has two different, but related with respect to the designatum meanings for “cheek” and “lip,” which are included in the dialects in the territory of the Republic of Macedonia, Northern Greece and Turkey (BDA.GV 2001: m. No L 71–72) (Fig. 8). The other dialectal lexemes with meaning “cheek” on the map of Bulgarian dialects are: (fixed in Old-Bulg.), , , – all from Slavic origin, and – phonetically close to . The word буза is inherent in the literary Bulgarian language; it is close to words in Sorbian, German, and Latin and has parallels also in the territory of Romania (ALRR 2005: m. 133, 134; Saramandu 2014). In my thinking, the origin of the word is not from Albanian. Prof. J. Siatkowski shows the presence of lexemes such as puzza “kiss,” German Buss, dialectal (Siatkowski 2012, p. 34). Putje corresponds to those words in Albanian. In the Albanian language (Meyer 2007, p. 96), buzë means “lip,” which shows that this is probably a common lexeme between the Slavic languages, German and Albanian. The Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary also shows parallels with Latin bucca, as well as Lithuanian bucˇ “sound during a kiss,” Polish buzia, buziaczek “kiss, face” (BED, Т. 1, 1971, p. 87). We may also add the Albanian buzëqeshje

Fig. 8 Map No L 72 (Author M. Tetovska-Troeva) – The names for буза (cheek) (Atlas – BDA.GV 2001, p. 466)

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“smile” to those lexemes which are close with respect to meaning. According to BED, it is more probable that the lexeme was inherited from Balkan (Daco-Moesian substrate). The closeness to Latin and German shows possibilities for seeking its origin even in more remote epochs from the history of the European linguistic culture because the denotatum related to labeling a main part of the human body could leave permanent imprints in the lexical system. Similar phenomena are observed, for example, in the case of the denominations for “tooth,” as well as in the case of a number of kinship terms such as “brother,” “sister,” etc. To trace back the correctness of those assumptions, data about the linguistic continuum of the contemporary peoples inhabiting the Balkan Peninsula and Eastern Europe is of great importance. In it, we may discover and learn that the Albanian language, unique as it is, was Slavicized before being Romanized. It is widely known that, in older periods of the development of the Balkan languages, the territory of contemporary Albania was inhabited by Slavs (cf. Selishchev 1981, p. 5, 23). From the analysis of the toponymy in Kastoria and Korçë Regions, Selishchev concludes that the Slav population was autochthonous in these places (Selishchev 1981, p. 316). In the more recent linguistic literature, Desnitskaya describes wide penetration of Bulgarisms into Albanian (Desnitskaya 1968, p. 137). In her opinion, as a whole, the historical problem of the Slavo-Albanian linguistic relationships may not be reduced to mutual influences in zones of border contacts. The type of the borrowings in Albanian shows that they are a result of the existing bilingualism between the rural population, which is seen from the fact that the prevailing part of the “Slavisms” in Albanian represent “regional,” i.e., dialectal lexis (Desnitskaya 1968, p. 122; pp. 120–147). Community between Bulgarian and Albanian is found not only at lexical level. One may also note parallels in the case of a number of grammatical morphemes, for example, the ending -о-ве for plural of nouns, known from Old Bulgarian: (see BDA.GV 2016) (Fig. 9). The data from a number of maps in BDA.GV.IV show that the extension of the ending -ове encompasses the whole Bulgarian linguistic territory. It is found in different phonetic variants: -ове > -ве > -ои > -уи //-уй in the east, and also in the west: -ове //-ови > -ои > -ой . Contemporary data about the dialects from the Gora region in the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Albania show that nowadays one may note the ending -ове > -ое//-ои//-ой is widespread in the case of the monosyllabic masculine nouns – cf. in the Gora dialect (northern Albania): сùнове (sons – more rarely); -ои: снèгои (snows), цàрои (kings); -ой: стàпой (canes) (Antonova-Vasileva 2016). The same endings also have been noted more southward in Debar Region – мрàзове (frostes); in Korçë and Prespa Regions (Southern Albania) – cf. -овʼе//-ойе: цвèтойе (colors – more rarely); -ови – внукòви (grandchildren – more frequently), as well as in Prespa Region: разбòйве (looms), чàсови (hours), like in Albanian in the case of a number of nouns banor “inhabitant,” – banorëve; toka “earth” – tokave and many others. Some morphemes in Albanian coincide with article morphemes in

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Fig. 9 Map No M6 (Authors Iv. Kochev, L. Vasileva) Endings for plural of monosyllabic masculine nouns of the type град, син (city, son) – градове, синове (cities, sons) sənēwend > snjond (with accent shift from the ē to the w). The various spellings in the charters show that the actual phonetic realization may have varied, such as [joː] , [joˑw] , [jɔˑw] , and *[jœˑw] > [jæˑw] . Early Modern Frisian. In the Early Modern period, the continuations of dominate the dialectal landscape (the blue symbols in Fig. 2b). In the periphery, one may observe two deviating forms. The form sneæn seems to continue the form snyewnd in the charters in the same northeastern region. In the

416

A. Versloot

Table 1 Case studies Item sneon – saterdei “Saturday” wat – het “what” flesk – fleis “flesh, meat” koft – kocht “bought (p.p.)” kommen “come (p.p.)” hawwe: a-e, w-b “to have” kriget – krijt “to get”

Linguistic domain Lexicon

Period 1300–2000

Lexicon Lexicon

1700–1850 1550–1950

Verbal morphology: irregular past participle Verbal morphology: irregular past participle

1400–2000

Verbal morphology: root vowel and consonant alternations Verbal morphology: root alternations

1300–2000

1700–2000

1550–2000

goes – guozzen “goose – geese”

Nominal morphology: irregular plural

1600–2000

dagen – deagen “days”

Nominal morphology: irregular plural

1400–1900

hûs – huzen/hu´ske/ thu´s “house(s)/DIM/at home”

Phonology

1550–2000

Comment Competing Old Frisian lemmas Dutch loanword Dutch loanword Multiple Dutch loan allomorphs Multiple language internally and contactinduced shifts Multiple language internally induced shifts Multiple language internally and contactinduced shifts Multiple language internally and contactinduced shifts Multiple language internally and contactinduced shifts (Ir)regular sound change

southwest, the forms sneeuond and snieoun (in the legend under sneeon(d)) continue a form without accent shift, hence, from Old West Frisian *snēwend. There are no traces of saterdei, but note that the region with such forms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is poorly represented in the data from the Early Modern period. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The form saterdei (re)appears in the nineteenth century (Fig. 2c). A farmer-poet from the central region uses both words alternatingly in 1828, and the word emerges in the eastern part of the province in later sources from that century. The pair “Saturday – Sunday” is phonetically close in Frisian [sn(j)ø̃ˑən] and [snẼˑɪn] and leads easily to confusion among second language speakers, which were numerous in the eastern and southeastern peat and wasteland cultivation areas in the nineteenth century. The (north)eastern pronunciation with *[snẼˑən] for Saturday (see the previous paragraph) may have been even more confusing, facilitating the introduction of the loan translation saterdei from neighboring regions (Du. zaterdag). Given the scarcity of the data, it is not excluded that the form saterdei has always been in use since the Middle Ages in the southeast portion of the province. The form saterdei spread rapidly in the following years (Fig. 2d), but then its spread came to a halt, being perceived as dialectally marked in present-day speech.

23 A

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries B

sniond / saterdei (Saturday) 1420-1540

snioun (Saturday) 1618-1779

number of tokens 8 5 1

number of tokens 27 14 1

snyond snyound snyawn snyewnd saterdei

C

417

sneeon(d) snioun sneun sneæn

D

sneon - saterdei (Saturday) 1828-1886

sneon - saterdei (Saturday) Kapteyn, 1937

number of tokens 7 1 % sneon

% sneon 100.00%

100.00% 90.00%

65.00% 30.00%

75.00%

snien snjeon sneon saterdei

0.00%

E

15.00%

snien snjeon sneon saterdei

0.00%

sneon - saterdei (Saturday) Survey 2016, >*1978

% sneon 100.00% 65.00% 30.00% 15.00% 0.00%

saterdei sneon

Fig. 2 “Saturday” (a) Middle Frisian, (b) Early Modern Frisian, (c) (re)introduction of saterdei in the nineteenth century, (d) “Saturday” in the twentieth century, (e) distribution of saterdei and sneon in 2016 from informants born in or after 1978. (Data from the Language Survey 2016; Stefan et al. 2015)

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A. Versloot

The form with the preserved -j- (snjeon), which existed earlier, may be inspired by the written language in the 1937 survey. The spread of the form saterdei in the late twentieth-century FAND (not shown), based on speakers born in the years before the Second World War, is similar to the one from the Kapteyn survey from 1937 in Fig. 2d. Figure 2e, based on information from speakers born in 1978 or later, shows that very little has changed since, as can be seen from the bright dots, which have been projected against the background of Fig. 2d. The map also illustrates the dialect mixture, taking place in the cities and larger towns. The successors of earlier sneeuond and snieoun were only found in the southwest portion in the nineteenth century and tend to disappear in the twentieth century. In the FAND, only the dialect of Hindeloopen attests to sniend.

Case 2 “What” (Pronoun)

2.2

The pronoun “what” is hwet in Old Frisian, but Old West Frisian, in particular, has a specific development here to hot, hat, and haet. The form hot seems more northern and is somewhat older. At the beginning of the Early Modern period, the form het < hǣt < hāt is the dominant form, with incidental attestations to hat and hot. Figure 3a shows that it remained dominant until the middle of the eighteenth century. In only 50 years, it was entirely replaced by the Dutch loanword wat in most dialects. Figure 3b shows the situation in the second half of the eighteenth century, where het was pushed to the ultimate southwestern and northeastern corners. The dialectal contrast in the northeast was short-lived. The form het (hat) survived only as a dialectal peculiarity of the southwestern dialects of Hindeloopen and Molkwerum.

84%

82%

63%

39%

het - wat (what) 1756-1811

% het

% wat

1850 18%

1825 16%

1800

1775

1750

1725

1700

1675

1650

1625

1600

37%

61%

97%

91%

98%

98%

100%

B 100%

100%

A

number of tokens 150 76 2 % het (hat) 100.00% 65.00% 45.00% 0.00%

het (hat) wat 1778 = average year of the attestations

Fig. 3 “What” (a) Transition from het to wat in the late eighteenth century, (b) distribution of het and wat in the late eighteenth century

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Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

2.3

419

Case 3 “Flesh/Meat” (Noun)

Old and Middle Frisian. The common noun for “meat” in Modern West Frisian is fleis, related to Dutch vlees and English flesh from PGmc. *flaisk-. Old West Frisian had flask. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the word appears as flaesck, flaasch, in compounds, flasck-, flaeschhouwer “butcher.” The Dutch form in those days is fleis(c/k), vleis(ch). The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The seventeenth century shows alternatively flasck, flaesch/k, and flesck (cubes in Fig. 4a). In the eighteenth century (circles in Fig. 4a), there are nearly only forms that attest to /flEsk/ (vlesch, flesck, etc.). The modern form fleis appears for the first time in a text from Heerenveen printed in 1765. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The modern form fleis spreads in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Fig. 4b, c). In the adjacent Low Saxon dialects, the form was fleis. In the Friso-Dutch dialects of the old A

fla(a)sk - flesk (meat) 16th - 18th century

16-17th c. flaask flesk tokens 18th c. 7 4 0 18th c. flesk fleis

B

C

fleis - flesk (meat) 1856-1895

fleis - flesk (meat) Hof 1933: Fr. Dial.geogr.

number of tokens 4 3 1 % fleis 100.00%

% fleis 100.00%

75.00% 25.00% 0.00%

75.00% flaask flesk fleisk fleis

25.00% 0.00%

fleis flesk

Fig. 4 “Meat/flesh” (a) between 1550 and 1800, (b) distribution of fleis and flesk in the late nineteenth century, (c) distribution of fleis and flesk in the early twentieth century

420

A. Versloot

cities, also known as Town Frisian (but fundamentally Dutch; for the spread of these language varieties, see Fig. 1), the form fleis(ch) was current since the sixteenth century. Whether the instances of fleisk are contaminations of fleis and flesk or represent a regular development of flesk/flêsk is difficult to judge. Nowadays, the archaic form has become entirely obsolete in the West Frisian standard language and its dialects, excluding Hindeloopen flesk, West-Terschelling fleisk, and Schiermonnikoog fla(a)sk. The latter two dialects are hardly spoken anymore.

2.4

Case 4 Past Tense and Past Participle of “to Buy”

Middle Frisian. Old Frisian had two different lemmas for “to buy” and to “sell”: kāpia and sella. Kāpia was a regular, weak verb: past participle and past tense kāpad(e). Middle Dutch had kopen and verkopen, with an irregular past tense and past participle (ge)kocht, in Holland (ge)koft. Triggered by contact with speakers of Dutch in the trading centers of the Frisian cities, the word sella was replaced by the Middle Frisian loan translation forkaepia (Fig. 5a). With these changes came the irregular past tense forms forkoft, which proves the particularly Hollandish origin of the form (Fig. 5b). Parallel to this morphological borrowing, regular past participles of the type of Middle Frisian (for)kaepet tended to lose their final -t. This development started off in the south as can be seen in Fig. 5b (dark blue sections of the pie charts). The Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries. Data from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are very scarce and show only two points from the northwest, with a continuation of the competition between weak, historical, and innovative, irregular forms. Data from the middle of the eighteenth century show that the original regular weak form was restricted to the southwest. The late eighteenth century also witnesses the introduction of the form kocht, which is a new loan from Standard Dutch (ge)kocht, replacing the earlier specifically Hollandish form koft. Its first appearance in the northeast can be an effect of the date of the sources, rather than of geographical relevance (Fig. 5c). The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In the 100 years between Fig. 5c, d, the Standard Dutch-based form kocht (Dutch gekocht) spread rapidly, replacing the Hollandish dialectal form koft. The form koft appears only incidentally in 1886 and reappeared on Schiermonnikoog in the late twentieth century in the deliberately archaizing recordings of the MAND. The historical weak form keape remains present in the south, albeit mostly alongside the irregular, borrowed form kocht. The former, morphologically regular form receives support from system internal pressure; the latter, irregular form is supported by the contact with Dutch. Many of the maps in this chapter show rapid shifts and the elimination of minority forms. It is interesting to see how the competition between two variants with different types of backing in the grammar can be so long-lasting. The impact from the two sources (“Dutch” and “internal system”) have apparently reached some kind of an equilibrium.

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

421

Fig. 5 “To buy” (a) Replacement of sella “to sell” by forkaepia in the late fifteenth century; (b) the rise of koft 1480–1540; (c) keape, koft, and kocht in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; (d) keape, koft, and kocht in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

2.5

Case 5 “Come” (Past Participle)

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. The past participle of the verb “to come” has a mutated vowel in the earliest Old East Frisian texts: kemen from a Proto-Frisian < *ǥikumin. The oldest text from West Friesland (late thirteenth century) attests to an unmutated form komen. Charters from the first half of the fifteenth century from the northeast confirm the original existence of the mutated form also in West Frisian (Fig. 6a): kem(m)en, kammen (in the map included under kemmen). The form kom(m)en may be an analogical levelling from the infinitive or influenced by Middle Dutch. After 1470, kommen is the only form until the early sixteenth century. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. A reduced form komn is attested for the first time in 1506, next to dominant kommen (1502). The reduced form was morphologically enhanced by the addition of an extra /d/ (first attestation of komd

422

A. Versloot

Fig. 6 (a) The past participle of komme “to come” in the fifteenth century, (b) kommen 1570–1670, (c) kommen 1700–1870, (d) kommen 1871–1895

1535). In the period 1570–1670, there is a nearly random mixture of forms (Fig. 6b). The form komd seems to be somewhat preferred in the north, but there is definitely no strict boundary. The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. After a gap in the sources between 1666 and 1701, komd is nearly the only form attested. A new kôm appears for the first time in 1707, probably in the southeast, and again 1779 (as kaom *[kɑ:m]) from the northeast. The form komd was the dominant form at least until the middle of the nineteenth century (Fig. 6c). The Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Data from the late nineteenth century witness a remarkable comeback of the form kommen, next to a clear establishment of the kaam, kôm forms (Fig. 6d). The origin of the form kommen can be sought in a combined influence from Dutch and Town Frisian. It is not a continuation of the late mediaeval form. The spread of the form kommen continues in the twentieth century (Fig. 7a, b).

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

A kommen etc. (to come, past part.) born: 1900-1930

423

B kommen etc. (to come, past part.) born: 1940-1967

number of tokens 6 3 0

number of tokens 8 4 0

komd kommen kaam kôm

komd kommen kaam kôm

C kommen: spread from the 1900-1930 to the 1940-1967 generation

100.00% 60.00% 8.00% 0.00% increase ‘kommen’ 20th century

Fig. 7 kommen by informants (a) *1900–1930, (b) *1940–1967, (c) increase from A to B

Figure 7c shows the expansion of kommen between the two generations of Fig. 7a, b for the regions where the interpolated average use of kommen is more than 30%. The absolute spread of kommen is shown in the same map with a green circle. The map shows that kommen penetrated the southwest and southeast of the province. Synopsis. The past participle of komme “to come” has undergone at least three transformations during the last 700 years (Table 2). The earliest Old Frisian form kemen with the historically expected i-mutation is captured in the earliest charters from the northeast, being a late adopter of linguistic innovations. The form was uniformly kommen for more than half a century, when komn arose. This non-salient past participle form was replaced either by adding the marker -d from the weak verbs (komd) or by applying the so-called A-B-B-ablaut schema, common in the historical ablaut classes 2: komme – kôm/kaam – kôm/kaam. The latter form was productive in the eastern and southeastern dialects. The weak form komd remained dominant for almost two centuries, only to be replaced by a newly created strong form kommen which was borrowed from Friso-Dutch (Town Frisian)

424

A. Versloot

Table 2 Schematic depiction of the changes in the past participle of komme “to come” in West Frisian over the last 700 years NE

1940 kommen – kām kommen – kôm kommen kommen – komd

in the cities (see Fig. 1). This form spread rapidly and eliminated first the form komd from its last refuge in the southwest in less than 100 years and continues its expansion into the eastern regions, creating a nearly homogeneous distribution of kommen, 500 years after this was the case earlier in the history of West Frisian.

2.6

Case 6 “To Have” Paradigm: Vowel and Consonant Reshuffling

Old and Middle Frisian. The present tense paradigm of “to have” appears in Old West Frisian as habba (inf.), habbe – habbath (1st sg., pl.), 3rd sg. heweth, havit. The verb has the root vowel -e- throughout the present tense in Old East Frisian. The alternation of root vowels is historically fairly complex and related to the verb’s origin in the Germanic third weak class (Heinzle 2014). The fifteenth century sees mostly haet in the third person singular, which was subsequently palatalized and shortened to het, although the form hat is sometimes also found. In the course of the history, we see a contrast between the vowel of the second and third person singular of the present tense on the one hand and the infinitive and other present tense forms on the other. Modern Frisian. The result of the vocalic changes was a paradigm with seemingly “a-e-alternation” but brought about by entirely different pathways than in German strong verbs. Parallel to the word “what,” with which the third person was homophonous, there are attestations to hat in the northern part of the province in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. However, during the seventeenth century, the habbe – hab – hest/het-schema becomes the single pattern in West Frisian. Things start changing in the course of the eighteenth century. The vowel -e- is levelled throughout the present tense paradigm in the southwest – possibly supported by the Dutch form hebben – while the first traces of a general root vowel -a- are found to the east (Fig. 8a, b). In the nineteenth century, the root vowel -e- slowly spreads further direction northeast in the infinitive and other forms of the present tense, while at the same time, large-scale levelling of the -a- to the second and third person takes place (Fig. 8c, d).

23 A

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries hawwe (to have, infinitive & present tense), vocalism 18th C.

E A

C

hawwe (to have, infinitive & present tense), vocalism 19th C.

E A

B

425

hawwe (to have, 2nd & 3rd person singular present tense), vocalism 18 th C.

E A

D

hawwe (to have, 2nd & 3rd person singular present tense), vocalism 19 th C.

E A

Fig. 8 The root vowel in the second and third person singular present tense and in the rest of the present tense and infinitive forms in the eighteenth century (a, b) and in the nineteenth century (c, d)

The results are three competing paradigm schemas: an original A-E-schema (habbe – het) and two-levelled schemas, E-E (hebbe – het) and A-A (habbe – hat). A map for the period 1600–1750 is not shown, because the schema A-E is nearly ubiquitous. The E-E-schema is found for the first time in Hindeloopen in the late seventeenth century (in nearby Workum one finds habbe in 1681). Figure 9 shows the presence of E-E in the wider southwest, while the A-A-schema is developing in the center of the province in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, the E-E-schema spreads from the southwest and the A-A-schema toward the east. The historical A-E-schema is pushed back to the extreme northeast and, surprisingly, to the zone between the E-E and the A-A-zones. Entirely independent of the development of the root vowel, there are major changes in the word’s consonants (Fig. 10). The consonant -b- is weakened to -wfairly rapidly around the middle of the eighteenth century in a northwestern and

426 A

hawwe (to have), paradigm 1750-1800

A. Versloot B

hawwe (to have), paradigm 19th C.

A-A

A-A

A-E

A-E

E-E

E-E

Fig. 9 The paradigm of “to have” in (a) the second half of the eighteenth and (b) the nineteenth century

A

hawwe (to have), consonantism 18th C.

B

hawwe (to have), consonantism 19th C.

ha he haw hew hab heb

ha he haw hew hab heb 17 9 1

Fig. 10 Consonantism of “to have” in (a) the eighteenth and (b) the nineteenth century

central region. The same development takes place in Town Frisian and some dialects in North Holland (especially those bordering the Zuiderzee). Another development is the loss of /b/ or /ʋ/ in the first person and a general truncation of the plural form to ha [ha] or he [hE] (not further distinguished in this approach). It is widespread but most prominent in the southwest in the eighteenth century. Its dominant locus shifts to the northeast in the nineteenth century, for which I cannot see a clear reason. The forms with de w-sound spread rapidly; the forms with -b- are pushed back to the southern half of the province. The vowel alternation in the paradigm is further reduced in the twentieth century. The archaic pattern A-E is only found once among the informants of the MAND in the extreme northeast (Fig. 11a, b). The E-E and A-A-zones form

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

427

Fig. 11 The verb “to have” in the twentieth century (a, b) MAND, (c, d) according to the FA-survey 1993 for two generations

two adjacent blocks, dividing the language area in two. The b-consonantism is more and more losing ground: the habba variant becomes rare (mostly short ha, with a new side form har (Veenstra 1989), while the southern form hebbe is supported by Dutch (hebben). The short form is expansive in the east but note that short forms are also very common as prosodic variants throughout the rest of the region. Figure 11c, d shows the ongoing shift in the paradigmatic vowel alternation in the twentieth century. The left-hand map, showing the pattern in speakers born before 1925, shows a clear overlap with the MAND data in Fig. 11a, b, with speakers of a similar age. In the speech of the younger generations, there is a spread of the E-Epattern in the northwest, against a retreat in the southeast. The most remarkable in these developments may be the entirely independent geographical directions and distributions of the vocalic and consonantal alternations.

428

A. Versloot

2.7

Case 7 “Receive(s)” Second and Third Person Singular of krije

Some trends are very gradual and linear. The change in the second and third person singular of the verb krije “to receive, to get, to obtain” serves as an example of such a development. The present tense verb forms were Old Frisian krigia (infinitive), kriga(s)t second and third person singular, and krigiath plural. The forms with palatalized -g- are found since ca. 1480: krije, krye. In the early modern paradigm, the -g- was also present in the past tense and the past participle krige(n). Analogical pressure in the singular paradigm created a new form for the third singular: krijt. (The examples are from the more frequent third person. The map, however, was based on data from both persons.) The forms kriget and krijt are in competition in the northwest and center of the province in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the eighteenth century, the form krijt became the only form in the northwest and started spreading into the periphery. In the twentieth century, the form kriget was pushed to the periphery of the province (Fig. 12a). The restructuring in the present tense comes together with a reform of the past tense creating a strong paradigm, infinitive krije – krijt, past tense kriich, past participle krigen (cf. Dutch krijgen – krijgt; kreeg; gekregen), against a weak class 2 paradigm krije – kriget; krige; krige. The spread of the forms does not entirely coincide (of course), and in the eastern regions, one can observe mixed paradigms, often krije – krijt; krige; krigen (Fig. 12b). Altogether, the restructuring is very slow and diffuse (compared to the dynamic changes in keapje).

2.8

Case 8 “Goose: Geese”

From the Sixteenth Until the Nineteenth Century. The noun “goose” is a so-called Proto-Germanic root noun, which means that it had an i-mutated plural form in Old Frisian (as well as in Old English): sg. gōs, pl. gēs. It is only incidentally found in Middle Frisian sources (ghees Sn.Rb). Figure 13a shows real singulars and first elements of compounds under the heading “singular,” juxtaposed to the plural forms. Some seventeenth-century sources attest to the result of what is called local markedness, where the relatively frequent plural form gies supersedes the singular form – which runs contrary to the common direction of analogical levelling of irregular forms (Tiersma 1982). A similar development can be observed in Modern Icelandic: singular gæs, plural gæsir (with a new plural ending), cf. Danish singular gås, plural gæs. In the 1666 source, the instances of gies are found in the singular, while goes- is only found in the compound goeseplom “goose feather.” In the 1614 source, the form g^ a ns- is only used once in the compound gantscheyen “goose eggs.” The levelling from the plural to the singular created a uniform paradigm for the singular and plural, which was functionally imbalanced. This difference was resolved by the introduction of a loanword from Dutch gans, with a regular plural ganzen (note the years of attestation in the map).

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

429

Fig. 12 (a) The gradual spread of the form krijt between 1550 and 1990. (b) Paradigms of krije in the late twentieth century

The result of this development can be seen in the nineteenth century (Fig. 13b). In the southwest, the forms for the singular and plural are g^ a ns [gɔ͂ːs] – g^ a nzen [gɔ͂ːzən], in the northeast the archaic paradigm with goes – gies was still in use, and the intermediate zone was dominated by goes [guˑəs] – guozzen [gwozən]. The alternation [uˑə] and [wo] is a common morpho-phonological pattern in West Frisian (Tiersma 1999, pp. 17–20). Figure 13b shows that the Dutch loan form was occasionally also used further to the east, especially in the singular. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. According to Hof (1933, p. 137), the form gies was only sporadically used in the extreme northeast in the 1920s. The singular forms are illustrated by the results from the survey by Kapteyn (1937). Apart from g^ a ns and goes, the hybrid forms goas (= g^ a ns with elimination of the nasal) and gûns (= goes with insertion of the nasal) are mentioned in the data. The form goas was already mentioned in the nineteenth century. The form gûns was also found by Hof. A more fundamental development is a second instance of the local markedness effect where the singular goes [guˑəs] is replaced by the new singular form guos [gwos], which was reanalyzed from the plural form guozzen. In this case, the singular-plural contrast is retained (contrary to the seventeenth-century development), and in fact, the paradigm becomes entirely regular. This development is concentrated in the east. The regional distribution of the dominant patterns is based on Hof and Kapteyn together (Figure 13c). Figure 13d shows the distribution among older speakers in the late twentieth century. The hybrid forms were not mentioned there, but we see a remarkable paradigmatic mixture of the two base forms g^ a ns and goes in the northeast and the south with a singular g^ a ns but a plural guozzen. This pattern is already observable in the nineteenth century (Fig. 13b). Peripheral Frisian dialects in the east, adjacent to the Low Saxon-speaking regions, opt entirely for the Dutch-based forms. The situation in the southeast seems particularly volatile (compare Fig. 13c, d).

430

A. Versloot

Fig. 13 Singular and plural of “goose” in (a) the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, (b) the late nineteenth century; goes includes incidental goas, guos. (c) Singular of “goose” in the early twentieth century. (d) Singular and plural of “goose” in the late twentieth century

2.9

Case 9 “Days” (Plural)

Old and Middle Frisian. The plural of Old Frisian dei “day” is in Old West Frisian degan in the nominative and accusative, degena in the genitive, and degum in the dative. Due to vowel harmony caused by an -a in the unstressed syllable, the root vowel of the nominative and accusative turned into -a- in many parts of the region in the fourteenth century, while some regions were less affected. Figure 14a shows the geographical distribution of vowel harmony in the better attested phonologically parallel example of wessa(n)/wassa(n) “to be/being.” At the same time, the vowel quality in the unstressed syllable was reduced to [ə], creating the Middle Frisian paradigm nominative and accusative dagen, genitive degena, and dative degum/ en. The case system survived into Middle Frisian until the end of the fifteenth century. After 1490, the distribution of the root vowel -a- and -e- no longer correlates with the (historical) case, and /a/ becomes the dominant vowel (Fig. 14b). At the same time,

23

wessa(n) –wassa(n) (to be), vowel harmon y 1420-1470

B

431

Percent -a- as a root vowel

42%

58%

28 15 1

15.0%

-1430 wassa(ne) wessa(ne)

15%

30.0%

0%

Trend Vowel Harmony 100.0%

0.0%

69% 67%

71%

89% 92%

100%

A

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

1430-1460 1460-1490 1490-1510 nom/acc.

1510-

dat.

Fig. 14 (a) Vowel harmony in “to be” the fifteenth century, (b) the levelling of the root vowel throughout the plural paradigm of “days” in Middle Frisian

this vowel /a/ was lengthened in open syllable since ca. 1430 to /a:/. The lengthening is earlier in the west than in the east. The early lengthened /a/ merged with the Old Frisian /a:/ and became /E:/ in the late fifteenth/early sixteenth centuries. It is mostly spelled . Otherwise it remained /a:/. Figure 15a shows the concentration of the /a:/ in the east (blue), of the fronted /E:/ (written ) toward the west (light brown), while the remainders of the forms with short /E/ are concentrated in the southwest (brown). The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The forms with /E/ < Middle Frisian degen and /E:/ < Middle Frisian dāgen became further intertwined due to the general tendency (at least since the sixteenth century) to shorten vowels in disyllabic words, such as plurals. For example, compare laam – lammen “lamb (s),” which could turn dǣgen into dægen. Western forms with /E/ in the Early Modern period can therefore go back either to Middle Frisian degen or dāgen(!). The /E:/ developed into /ɪ.ə/ in the seventeenth century. The Early Modern period shows three divisions, which correspond etymologically more or less to the Middle Frisian division: /a:/ (dagen) in the east; /ɪ.ə/ (deagen), alternating with /E/ (deggen) in the west; and only /E/ in the extreme southwestern town of Hindeloopen (Fig. 15b). The sixteenth-century northeastern form can be interpreted as a relic of the /E/ region in the northeast (see Fig. 14a). The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The data from the late nineteenth century attest to a drastic change in the geographical distribution (Fig. 15c). The form with /a:/ has become dominant on the mainland. This may be due to support from the parallel form in Dutch: dagen. Hindeloopen sticks to deggen and the information from the island of Terschelling is ambiguous as to whether it continues deagen or deggen. For the rest of the province, the form deagen is only mentioned once in Workum for the early nineteenth century. In the late nineteenth century, it is already replaced there by dagen. This change is basically also the

432

A. Versloot

Fig. 15 The plural of “day” in (a) Middle Frisian, (b) the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. “/I. e/”= /ɪ.ə/; “/e/”= /E/, (c) the nineteenth century

situation found in the late twentieth-century survey of the MAND. Both Terschelling and Hindeloopen have dêgen (with /E:/), which is most likely the continuation of Middle Frisian degen.

2.10

Case 10 “House(s)/DIM/at Home”

The word “house” is Old Frisian hūs. This vowel quality is often preserved in West Frisian, such as in mûs [muːs] “mouse,” lûd [luːt] “loud,” or dûke [dukə] “to dive.” In other contexts, the vowel is palatalized, especially before -n: tu´n [tyn] “garden” and du´n [dyn] “dune.” Especially in the context before -s, there is some mixture, compare mûs [muːs] “mouse” ~ u´s [ys] “us” < OF mūs, ūs. These examples illustrate a correlation between shortening and palatalization. This can very well be observed in the forms of the word for “house.” The base form is hûs [huːs], but the plural is mostly huzen [hyzn̥] and the diminutive (DIM) hu´ske [hyskə] “small house,” both with a short vowel. Compounds mostly use the palatalized form, such as in hu´sbaas

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

433

Fig. 16 (a) Palatalization in the simplex “house” between 1550 and 1720, (b, c) vocalism of “house” in simplex and derivations/compounds in the seventeenth (1720) and eighteenth (1720–1800) century

[hysbaːs] “landlord.” Palatalization (and later diphthongization) is a general development in Dutch, for example, huis [hœˑys] and tuin [tœˑyn]. See also Hof (1933, pp. 198–269) for an extensive discussion of the palatalization of OF ū in West Frisian. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the word for “house” appears with spellings such as hoes, huwz, and hous which are interpreted as [huːs], while huus, houys, and huys are considered to render [hyːs]. Figure 16a shows that spellings suggesting palatalization popped up everywhere in the province but especially in the southwest and northeast. This geographical pattern turns out to be consistent also in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Figure 16 shows the complex variation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The left parts of the circles visualize the vowels in the simplex; the right parts of the circle show the development in the plural, diminutive, and other compounded

434

A. Versloot

Fig. 17 (a) Vocalism of “house” in simplex and derivations/compounds in the nineteenth century. (b) Vocalism of “house” in simplex and derivations/compounds in the twentieth century

and derived forms (such as thu´s “at home”), which tend to have a [y] in the modern language. A trend toward a split development in these two categories is already visible from the beginning, but the contrast is enhanced in the course of time. A curious development toward [ø] is found in the southwest in the eighteenth century (e.g., plural ). The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries show somewhat more consistent results, with three base patterns: [yː]~[y], [uː]~ [u], and [uː]~[y]. The last is dominant and also applied in Standard Frisian. The palatalized vowels are used in the southwest and on the islands, while the back vowel is dominant in the southeast. In the sixteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, there is some presence of the [yː] in the northeast, although in different localities. The palatalized vowel spreads rapidly from the southwest in the course of the twentieth century, which leads to an elimination of the paradigmatic root vowel alternation (Fig. 17a, b).

3

Interpretations

When viewing the series of case studies in the previous section, one can conclude that West Frisian dialects as they appear in recent dialectological surveys are not fairly stable language varieties from the sixteenth century, which had been preserved nearly unaltered into the late nineteenth century. Apart from that overall answer, it will be worthwhile to see, whether this small sample can tell us something more: where and when do changes occur in time and place, and are some dialects more archaic than others? The sample is too small for final answers, but the sample may at least give directions for further extensive evaluations. Note that there is no agreement among

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

435

Table 3 Locus of innovations in time and place, in relation to the linguistic domains and influence from Dutch. Innovations with grayish bold face in the “region” column managed to spread over (nearly) the entire province in their time (some have been superseded by later developments). Italics means that the form is the preferred form in the West Frisian standard language

436

A. Versloot

dialectologists about the number and type of features that should be used for a proper evaluation of dialect differences and changes. The main division of German dialects is based on the expression of the High German Consonant Shift only (König 2001, p. 147), and the main division of West Frisian is based on just five phonological features (Hof 1933, pp. 13–24, 35–42). Other approaches build on possibly large number of features, such as Nerbonne (2009) for German or Van der Veen (1986) for West Frisian. We will simply take the case studies at face value to see whether any tentative trend can be found.

3.1

Sources of Change

Table 3 lists all the changes in the ten case studies, when they arose for the first time and in which part of Frysl^an, to which linguistic domain they belong, and whether they reflect influence from Dutch, varieties of Dutch, or Low Saxon, labelled under “Dutch.” Because most case studies include various innovations, there are 21 rows in the table, instead of 10. The map series do not show an overall dominance of sources of changes, which take place in every century of the studied timeframe. Contact with Dutch plays a major role in many instances, but its impact is varied: from mere loanwords (wat) to structural similarity (krije-krijt-kriich-krigen) or support of local forms (dagen). Contact does not always lead to a full overlap with Dutch, as the krije- example (Dutch krijgen-krijgt-kreeg-gekregen) and the fleis-example (Dutch vlees) show. So even after including such “Dutchisms,” Frisian retains its distinct linguistic profile in many instances. Closer scrutiny reveals a couple of patterns when it comes to specific features, periods, and regions. Lexical innovations always refer to influence from Dutch or Low Saxon, which is obvious. Four out of five take place in the eighteenth century or later, which may point to an increased impact from Dutch over the centuries. The three lexical innovations from the east and southeast ( fleis, saterdei, and wat) are potentially Low Saxon but are all three supported by Dutch and Town Frisian as well. Especially in the southeast, there was quite a mixture of people in the process of cultivating the peat and wasteland areas leading to various contact phenomena in the language (Dyk 2011). Independent influence from Low Saxon, including potential influence from Low Saxon Groningen in the east, is absent in the sample. A second pattern concerns the relation between region and period: in the current sample, innovations from the northwest (the region with the cities and their Dutch-based Town Frisian) and the southwest (the region geographically closest to Holland) are on average overrepresented in the fifteenth to seventeenth century, while innovations from the east are more prominent in the period from the eighteenth to twentieth century. This corresponds with the relative importance of the old cities in the Late Middle Ages and the lively contacts between the towns in the southwest of the province with Holland in the maritime economy of the Dutch Golden Age. The later centuries saw a growth of population in the east, together with a decline of economic activities in the old cities and coastal towns. Town Frisian lost its social

23

Historical Dialectology: West Frisian in Seven Centuries

437

prestige in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Innovations from the north and east are altogether rare. A third pattern concerns the correlation between region and the influence from Dutch. When we exclude lexical innovations, which are per definition from Dutch or Low Saxon, we observe that 8 out of 11 innovations whose origin lie in the west reflect a direct or indirect impact from Dutch. Five out of six non-lexical innovations from the (north)east represent language internal innovations in the morphology and morpho-phonology (such as the past participle forms komd and kaam/kôm or the innovative singular form guos from the plural guozzen). All in all, it seems that the south (both the southwest and the southeast), where Frisian is/was geographically or in terms of travel connections in close contact with Dutch, seems to be the soft spot for external influence. This impression is confirmed by Hof (1933, p. 29). There was, additionally, the impact from Dutch/Town Frisian through the historical cities, concentrated in the northwest of the province, until the early twentieth century. The demographic expansion of Frisian into the east and southeast of the province in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, leading to a much more balanced distribution of people away from the primary contact zones with Dutch, brings about a more balanced geographical locus for linguistic innovations, with more space for language internal developments. Finally, it has to be reiterated that all the observed patterns are only based on a small set of examples and cannot be more than tentative.

3.2

Archaic Dialects?

When the geographical distribution of dialectal features is not very old, i.e., cannot be dated to the sixteenth century or even earlier, it may be that specific varieties are archaic representing relics of earlier larger regions. Some twentieth-century dialects show undisputable strong similarities with the shape they have in earlier sources, such as Elfdalian (Sweden) around the year 1700 (Ringmar and Steensland 2011) or North Frisian dialects around the year 1600 (Ziesemer 1922; Smith 2012). A West Frisian dialect that is commonly perceived as archaic and is relatively well documented in history is the dialect of the small city of Hindeloopen (de Boer 1950). The dialect is not by default comprehensible to speakers of the common West Frisian dialect. It is compared in Table 4 to the dialect of Achtkarspelen (east in Frysl^an), which is part of the dialect continuum of West Frisian and mutually intelligible with West Frisian spoken in other parts of the province, albeit it the strongest outlier in the continuum (Van der Veen 1986). Table 4 lists for the features in the case studies, which of the present-day forms used in those two parts of the province is the most archaic one. In the case of “what,” e.g., the Hindeloopen dialect has the continuation of the Old Frisian form as het, while the Achtkarspelen participated in the introduction of Dutch wat. In some instances, both have an innovative form, as in komd and kaam, which superseded earlier late fifteenth-century kommen, which itself was an innovation.

438

A. Versloot

Table 4 Comparison of the levels of archaism of the dialect of Hindeloopen (H) and Achtkarspelen (A) for the ten case studies in this chapter

“Saturday” “What” “Flesh/meat” “To buy” “Come” (p.p.) “To have” (paradigm present tense) “To receive” (paradigm) “Goes” (sg./pl.) “Days” “house”

Hindeloopen snien = variant het = archaism flesk = archaism kaipe (weak) = archaism komd = 17th c. innovation hebbe – het = 16th c. innovation krije = moderately innovative g^ a ns = 17th c. loanword deggen = variant hu´s – huzen = 16th c. innovation

Achtkarspelen saterdei = innovative/variant wat = 18th c. innovative fleis = 19th c. innovative kocht = innovative

Archaic dialect H(?) H H H

kaam = 18th c. innovation

–

hawwe – hat = 20th c. innovation

–

krije = archaic

A

guos = 19th c. phonological modification of the archaic form goes dagen = variant hûs – hûzen = archaism

A – A

The table shows that the dialect of Hindeloopen is not outstandingly more archaic than the Achtkarspelen dialect. The archaisms of Achtkarspelen are probably not perceived as such, because they match with (the more archaic form of) the standard language and the dialect is part of the main dialect continuum of West Frisian. So, even when the Hindeloopen dialect comprises a lot of archaisms compared to the common dialect, it also shows a lot of innovations that do not appear in the common dialect or at least not in the entire dialect continuum and/or are not part of the West Frisian standard language. Dahl (2015, pp. 228–229) discusses a similar case in Swedish dialects, where the dialects which retain many archaisms compared to the standard language exhibit a lot of innovations at the same time. However, the innovations in Hindeloopen (in this sample of case studies) are of a fairly early date, and we may hypothesize that the similarities between the seventeenth- and twentieth-century versions of the dialect of Hindeloopen are stronger than for the Achtkarspelen dialect.

4

Conclusions

The map series are entirely in line with the statement that any dialect map can only be interpreted as a frozen picture of a constant movement. The maps show that the changes in the West Frisian dialects did not come to a halt in the sixteenth century. The boundaries were hardly ever stable and continue their dynamism into the twentieth century. The changes are also not restricted to some shifts over a couple of kilometers, but in various examples, one can see a completely different

23

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439

distribution of forms from century to century. The changes are definitely not slower in the eighteenth and nineteenth century than in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. This means that the language of the oldest generations is not an echo of two or three centuries ago but merely the local or idiolectal manifestation of a supra-local vernacular of one generation earlier (Goeman 2000). To sum up, Frisian seems to be one of the few languages (if not the only one) that can offer a detailed reconstruction of geographical shifts in dialect features since the Late Middle Ages, when the language was typologically still comparable to late Old English. The resulting picture does not lend support to the suggestion that the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century dialects of the oldest generations are in any form particularly “old” (i.e., received their major shape not later than the Early Modern period). The Frisian dialects of the late twentieth century differ as much from the dialects in the late nineteenth century as these differ from those in the late eighteenth century, etc. In the case of Frisian, where the vernacular remains a supralocal means of communication up till the present day, the shifts of variants remains highly dynamic. For language areas where dialects lose their social function, the recent developments are indeed of a profound different nature, eventually leading to dialect death. Seemingly “archaic” dialects are first of all different and geographically isolated, rather than profoundly more archaic: while they may preserve archaic features no longer found in the majority of dialects, they show various local innovations at the same time. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Linguistic Geography of the Nostratic Macrofamily

24

Barney Warf

Contents 1 The Theorization of the Nostratic Macrofamily . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Evidence for Nostraticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Geographies of Nostratic Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Concluding Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Historical linguistics has been thoroughly revolutionized by a series of discoveries in anthropology, genetics, and archeology. This transformation has shed new light on the prehistoric roots of languages and unexpected commonalities among major linguistic families. Rather than comprising discrete categories, many language groups are now seen to have common origins. In particular, the hypothesized – and increasingly, empirically verified – macrofamily known as Nostratic seems to have given rise to families as diverse as Indo-European, Ural-Altaic, Dravidian, Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian, and Eskimo. This chapter explores the gradual theorization of Nostratic in the twentieth century, the linguistic and genetic evidence of its existence, and its geographical dimensions, including its homeland and dispersal. It concludes with comments concerning its implications for the geographic study of languages. Keywords

Linguistic geography · Nostratic · Major world language families · Indo-European

B. Warf (*) Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_101

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Language is fundamental to what it means to be human. It is simultaneously a means of organizing thought, a way of communicating, i.e., producing and sharing meaning, and a vehicle for understanding sensory impressions of the world, that is, of converting sensations into perceptions. Language is the architecture of thought, how we bring the world into consciousness. Because language structures how we think, it plays an enormous role in shaping perceptions and behavior. It is simultaneously a neurological, psychological, social, and spatial phenomenon. Conventional approaches to the geography of language – largely constructed by non-geographers – have emphasized a series of distinct language families, each of which contains hundreds, if not thousands of separate tongues. Groups such as Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic (also called Afrasian, i.e., Arabic and related languages), Sino-Tibetan, Dravidian, and so forth are familiar to anyone with a grounding in the world’s cultural and linguistic landscapes (Fig. 1). The histories of each of these have been thoroughly explored: the story of Indo-European, for example, traces its roots to nomadic tribes in the steppes of central Asia stretching from Anatolia to Ukraine to Kazakhstan (Renfrew 1989; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1990; Anthony 2007), spreading from this homeland either through violent conquest or the more gradual diffusion of agriculture. This once-solid approach to historical linguistics has more recently been called into question. Rather than discreet families that emerged in isolation from one another, newer interpretations began to emphasize the common roots to many of these families deep in the prehistoric past. Even in the nineteenth century, speculations arose that Indo-European was related to Semitic, Kartvelian, and Uralic languages. This trend accelerated exponentially in the mid-twentieth century. As Ruhlen (1994, 2) notes, “To continue pretending that there is no evidence for linguistic prehistory prior to 4,000 B.C. will no longer do.” Revolutions in genetics, with which languages are closely associated, as well as painstaking work by linguistics, archeologists, anthropologists, and others have begun to reveal a startlingly different image of how language families emerged. Far from being separate and distinct, it has become increasingly clear that many of the world’s languages shared a common ancestor, a move that delves into “linguistic paleontology,” the reconstruction of proto-languages and their cultural and geographical contexts (see Lamb and Mitchell 1991). By far the most famous and advanced of these theorizations is the Nostratic macrofamily of languages, which is believed to have emerged in the late Paleolithic or Mesolithic era (roughly 12,000–15,000 BCE) in central Asia. Different views of the Nostratic family include different groups of tongues (Renfrew and Nettle 1999). All definitions agree that it subsumes Indo-European, by far the world’s largest group (with almost half of the world’s population); Kartvelian (Georgian and the languages of the South Caucasus); Uralic (including Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian), Turkic and Altaic languages (including Mongol, Manchu, Korean, and Japanese); Dravidian (spoken in southern India); and AfroAsiatic (Arabic, Hebrew, Kushitic tongues such as Amharic and Somali and most of the ancient languages of the Middle East). Other definitions maintain that it subsumes Sumerian and Eskimo-Aleut.

Fig. 1 The world’s major language families. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Image-Human_Language_Families_(wikicolors).png)

24 Linguistic Geography of the Nostratic Macrofamily 445

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Nostraticists argue that this superfamily arose among hunters and gatherers who likely inhabited the Fertile Crescent, the Caucuses, or the Zagros Mountains of Iran around the end of the last glacial period, the Würm (Pulgrum 1995; Bomhard 2008), spilling out from their posited homeland to invade South Asia, Europe and Russia, the Middle East, North Africa, and possibly the New World. Around 12,000 to 20,000 BCE, this group had no agriculture, no horses, and no metal and yet succeeded, albeit unintentionally, in setting the stage for the globe’s linguistic geographies for many millennia. The expansion of Nostratic occurred roughly at the same time as the domestication of the dog and the widespread growth of flint tools, and yet because they had no metal or writing, relevant archeological evidence is scarce. As Kerns (1994, 154) states, “I am convinced that the spread of the Nostratic speaking peoples was occasioned by the spread of the Mesolithic culture, for it occupied the right positions in time and space, and its characteristic features are compatible with the residual vocabulary of the Nostratic families – it was the last of the pre-agricultural eras in Eurasia.” The Nostratic expansion may have been facilitated by the Younger Dryas cooling period, which may have reduced extant hunting and gathering populations in Eurasia. The implications of the Nostratic hypothesis are enormous. If confirmed empirically – no small task – it suggests that the bulk of humanity speaks languages derived from a relatively small group of nomads. Tongues as diverse as Portuguese, Malayalam, Inuit, and ancient Egyptian could be distantly related. Moreover, it suggests that reconstructing ancient macrofamilies is no mere linguist’s fantasy but a feasible scientific endeavor that could be applied to other hypothesized macrofamilies. This chapter proceeds in several steps. It opens with a review of how the Nostratic thesis was generated, work that borrowed heavily from the discovery of Indo-European but was advanced mightily by Russian scholars, until it won adherents in the US Second, it briefly summarizes the evidence for Nostratic, including comparative linguistics of word roots among different families and more recent work by geneticists. The third part turns to the geography of Nostratic, including the identification of its homeland, how it grew, diffused, and ultimately broke apart and where in the world languages descended from this group are found today. The conclusion holds that Nostratic offers a means of enriching the stagnant field of the geography of languages.

1

The Theorization of the Nostratic Macrofamily

The reconstruction of Nostratic in many ways resembles the long and successful project that unveiled the Indo-European language family. Credit for the first theorization of Indo-European goes to the famed eighteenth-century British judge and scholar Sir William Jones, stationed in Calcutta and considered one of the founders of modern linguistics, who presented a paper in 1786 to the Asiatic Society of Bengal noting resemblances between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. Throughout the nineteenth century, affinities and similarities among languages stretching from Iceland to Bangladesh were uncovered, with the origins of Indo-European traceable

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to invasions of South Asia around 2000 BC (the “Aryans,” after which names like “Ireland” and “Iran” are derived). This work established morphological similarities between modern Indo-European languages and ancient tongues such as Hittite and Sanskrit. The identification of Indo-European opened the door and became the model for subsequent reconstructions of dead languages and their linkages to one another. Such attempts are inevitably confounded by the complexities of linguistic change, including changes in pronunciation, grammar, and syntax. Essentially, if the discovery of Indo-European pushed the frontiers of linguistic origins back to 2000 BCE, then Nostraticists similarly attempt to push it back another 10,000 years. The origins of explicit attempts to understand the Nostratic macrofamily may be traced to the Danish linguist Holger Petersen (1867–1953), who published an early article on the similarities between Indo-European and Semitic languages in 1903. He drew upon an earlier tradition of comparative linguistics, which searched for commonalities in vocabulary and grammar across languages to establish relationships and was widely used in the determination of Indo-European as a macrofamily. Speculations about similarities between Indo-European languages and Uralic, Altaic, and Afro-Asiatic ones began as early as the eighteenth century, and in Henry Sweet (1900) hypothesized a macrofamily that included Indo-European, Altaic, and Sumerian. Petersen coined the term nostratisk (German nostratisch, French nostratique), Anglicized as Nostratic; he defined the term (1931, 338) “as a comprehensive designation for the families of languages which are related to Indo-European, we may employ the expression Nostratian languages (from Latin nostrās ‘our countryman’),” a term sometimes viewed as ethnocentric. The Nostratic hypothesis was met with intense opposition from the start and still faces considerable skepticism today. Traditional linguistics denied the existence of cognates shared by different language families, arguing that linguistic boundaries were impermeable. Indo-Europeanists, in particular, were hostile to the idea that the language family they studied could share commonalities with other families and derided comparative linguistics as a method for excavating ancient macrofamilies. Going deep into prehistory was dismissed as a flight of fancy. As Ruhlen (1994, 14) notes, “Instead, linguists adopted the convenient fiction that Indo-European has no recognizable alternatives. According to this view the comparative method is useful for only 5,000–8,000 years, which just happens to be the assumed age of Indo-European!” Modern Nostratic studies flourished in the 1960s, and originally the field was entirely a Russian undertaking, albeit owing much to the pioneering efforts of Holger Peterson. Its two leading proponents, and arguably the founders of Nostraticism, were Vladislav Illič-Svityč (also spelled Illych-Svitych) and Aharon Dolgopolsky, both of whom worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which led scholars to label them and their followers the Moscow School (Bomhard and Kerns 1994; Bomhard 1996). Illič-Svityč assembled the first Nostratic dictionary with more than 600 etymologies of Nostratic words; for example, the Nostratic word for berry, *marja (the asterisk is the universal symbol for a reconstruction), is similar to proto-Indo-European *mor, proto-Altaic *mür, proto-Uralic *marja, and proto-Kartvelian *mar-cow (see Table 1). Similarly, Dolgopolsky (1998) notes that the words for “I” and “you” in

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Table 1 A sample of reconstructed roots of Nostratic languages

Me You We Who Father Heart Stone Water Storm Cattle Honey To pierce To cover To tremble To turn To listen To knock To bend To lift To kill To swell To bare To go To ripen To darken To shine To cleave To hasten

Proto Indo-European me ti/tu we ko ba kerd wed ber poku medhu bhor

ProtoUralic min ti me ku

ProtoAltaic mine ti ba

ProtoKartvelian men si men

ci ma ppa

mkerd kiwe

mete pura

ProtoEskimo

ken ba

wete purki

ProtoDravidian

kwa wet

bur hőkür

qata kew

ProtoAfroAsiatic ti min kwo b kard kwa bwer

burv

mattu put

bur

buri

bur

por

bur

pattay

petk

pat

pat

mura kul

qur

mer kel

mor kwu

t’ek

tugi

t’kat

tuk

t’ak

k’er

keru

k’erd

karrai

k’lde q’wal ber

kol paru

k’al qwal bar

par po poli

bar baw bala

pheth mer klieu

kule

k’el k’wel bher bar bhew bhul

bol

bhlend

balai

bal

bhel bhek pher

pakka phr

Source: Ruhlen (1994); Bomhard and Kerns (1994)

pala

bel

paku

bak

para

phar

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Finnish, minna and sinna, resemble Turkic min and sin and Kartvelian man and shan. He argued that Nostratic included 50 consonants and 7 vowels and that its grammatical meanings were expressed through a rigid word order rich in stops and affricates. He notes (1998, 80) that “The speakers of Nostratic had a fairly good knowledge of anatomy. The words usually do not distinguish between the human body and that of animals, but we may guess that their main interest was in the latter. In addition to words referring to easily observable and identifiable parts of the body (head, leg, horn, tail, etc.), they had special terms for inner organs and inner substances.” Based on his study of 250 contemporary languages, Dolgopolsky (1994, 2838) elaborated further, asserting that the Nostratic parent language “had, most probably, an analytical grammar structure with a strict word order (sentence-final predicate; object preceding the verb; nonpronominal attribute preceding the head; a special position for unstressed pronouns) and with grammatical meaning expressed by word order and auxiliary words.” Illič-Svityč even composed a poem in Nostratic (Wright 1991, 68), which is inscribed on his tombstone (the first rendition is in the technical specifics of applied linguistics): /K̕elHæ wet̕ei ʕaK̕un kæhla/ /k̕at͡ ɬai palhVk̕V na wetæ/ /ɕa da ʔak̕V ʔeja ʔælæ/ /jak̕o pele t̕uba wete/ Language is a ford across the river of Time, It leads us to the dwelling place of those who are gone; But he will not be able to come to this place Who fears deep water

Other Russian Nostratic scholars in the Moscow School included Sergei Starostin (1989), who postulated the existence of a Dené-Caucasian macrofamily that encompassed North Caucasian, Sino-Tibeto-Burman, and Na-Dené tongues of western Canada and perhaps even Basque and Etruscan; he was also instrumental in reviving the theory that Japanese is an Altaic tongue. Because not only languages but the study of languages is always political in nature, it is not surprising that the Nostratic hypothesis generated significant debate. Whereas the idea found widespread reception among many Russian scholars, American linguists, with a few exceptions, took a much dimmer view and were often outright hostile. Early critics asserted that specialists in Indo-European languages were reluctant to admit ties to other language families, especially those spoken by people in regions colonized by Europeans. (Similar skepticism greeted the discovery of Indo-European itself: how could English be related to the barbaric peoples of Bengal?) In the context of Cold War hostilities, the Russian effort at Nostraticism was ill-received. Some argued that it was an attempt to assert affinities between Hebrew and German, a form of bridge-building in the years after the Holocaust or at worst was merely a Soviet pretext to find common ground among the enormously

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diverse linguistic groups of the USSR (Wright 1991). During the 1960s, American linguistics was overwhelmingly synchronic in nature, a by-product of the enormously influential work of Noam Chomsky, whereas the corpus of work on Nostratic was diachronic. Nonetheless, eventually the Nostratic thesis began to acquire an American following, which eventually took the lead in scholarship on this topic. American converts to Nostraticism included Allan Bomhard (1996, 2011), Michael Ruhlen (1994), and Joseph Greenberg, as well as the famed British linguist and archeologist Colin Renfrew. Attempts to construct the Nostratic proto-family reflect varying strategies within linguistics. Traditionally the discipline has been divided between “lumpers” and “splitters”: the former group languages into a few families based on linguistic similarities, while the latter are skeptical of such categorizations and decompose them into constituent parts. Militant lumpers, Nostraticists maintain that traditional linguistics has been too timid in classifying the world’s languages: rather than dozens of major language families, they argue, in prehistory there were only a few from which all others are derived. Indeed, some of the hostility aimed at the Nostratic hypothesis by American linguists was due to their preference for splitting, in contrast to the Russian preference for lumping. Americans accused the Russians of being sloppy; the Russians accused the Americans of being insufficiently adventurous. By far the best known of the lumpers is the esteemed Stanford University linguist Joseph Greenberg, arguably the world’s best known linguistic typologist and a proponent of Nostratic (and even larger language groupings). Although his approach has been roundly criticized and been the subject of much debate, Greenberg’s methodology nonetheless occupies a central role in modern comparative linguistics. Based on decades of research studying African and Native American languages, Greenberg looked for ancestral affinities inductively, grouping words from different languages that meant the same thing and watching for phonological parallels and similarities. Of course the criteria for asserting that words are related are up for debate and confounded by linguistic change. Starting in 1987, Greenberg argued for the existence of a Eurasiatic family that encompassed all of the northern parts of that continent. For example, he noted that in all Eurasiatic tongues, the first person pronoun begins with “m” (Indo-European me, Turkic men, Korean ma, Japanese mi, Eskimo ma) and the second person pronoun with “t” (Indo-European tu/thou, Mongol ti, Eskimo t). All Eurasiatic languages use a “k” sound to indicate a question (e.g., Latin qu as in quo, Finnish ko, Japanese ka, Turkish kim, Aleut kin) and an “n” sound to denote a negative (English “no,” Japanese nai). All of them use similar sounds to indicate the singular (Afro-Asiatic tak, Indo-European dik, as in “digit,” Altaic tek, Eskimo-Aleut tik). The Eurasiatic family overlaps considerably but is not identical to Nostratic and includes Ainu, the indigenous tongue of Japan. Ruhlen offers a contrast between the two macrofamilies (Fig. 2). While there is considerable overlap, the Eurasian family includes several indigenous Siberian tongues and Eskimo-Aleut, which extended the Nostratic macrofamily into the New World. Gradually, Greenberg (2000) and others (e.g., Hodge 1998) began to accept that Eurasiatic was but one, albeit large, branch of the Nostratic macrofamily.

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Fig. 2 Contrast between Nostratic and Eurasiatic Macrofamilies. (Source: redrawn by author from Ruhlen (1994))

Upon converting to Nostraticism, Greenberg argued there was a distinction between a northern tier (his Eurasiatic) and a southern tier composed of Afroasiatic and Dravidian. (Similarly, Kaiser and Shevoroshkin (1988) differentiate between an eastern branch – Uralic, Altaic, and Dravidian – and a western one, including Indo-European, Kartvelian, and Afro-Asiatic.) Bomhard and Kerns (1994, 157) concurred, arguing that “the importance of Indo-European in this is crucial in that it serves as an intermediate link, linguistically as well as geographically, between Kartvelian, Sumerian, and Afroasiatic on the one hand, and the Circumpolar group (Uralic-Yukaghir to Eskimo-Aleut) on the other. . . . Why does Indo-European resemble Afroasiatic in phonology and vocabulary, but the Circumpolar group in syntax and morphology?” Various scholars have explored the relations between Nostratic and Indo-European (Vine 2010), Afroasiatic (Appleyard 1999), Dravidian (Zvelebil 1990), Altaic (Vovin 1998), and Kartvelian (Manaster-Ramer 1994). How closely these are related has been debated at great length; for example, Treloar (1999) holds that Uralic languages are more closely related to Indo-European than are Afro-Asiatic ones. Carrying the lumping strategy to its logical end, and even more intriguingly, some radical lumpers assert that Nostratic was one of a small group of language superfamilies from which all modern tongues are derived (Shevoroshkin 1990). Other hypothesized superfamilies include Austric (including Austronesian, Daic (Kadai), Miao-Yao, and Austroasiatic in Southeast Asia and the Pacific), Amerind (a superfamily postulated by Greenberg to include the vast majority of indigenous tongues of the New World), and a hotly disputed proto-Sino-Caucasian, which included Sino-Tibetan, the languages of the North Caucuses, Na-Dene in North America, and possibly Etruscan and Basque. Was Nostratic related to these other superfamilies? Bomhard and Kerns (1994, 153) maintain that “Nostratic languages did not exist except as part of Dene-Caucasian until the waning of the Würm glaciation, some 15,000 years ago.” Starostin went even farther and proposed a Borean (northern) macrofamily that included Nostratic, Austric, and Dené-Caucasian. The outer limit of this search leads to a hypothesized super-macrofamily commonly called proto-world. As Wright (1991, 63) puts it, “there must have been a single language whose progeny went on to occupy almost all of Eurasia and the New World. Call it proto-SCAN: Sino-Caucasian, Amerind, Nostratic.”

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The Nostratic thesis has become one of the most heated controversies of contemporary historical linguistics and has inspired an enormous body of literature. In 1988, the first international symposium on the topic was held at the University of Michigan (Menges 1989). Debates over the validity of the notion hinge large on the amount and types of evidence available and the techniques used to interpret it, particularly the ways in which similarities among different families may be confirmed with confidence.

2

Evidence for Nostraticism

Does the Nostratic thesis hold up to empirical verification? Two bodies of evidence may be marshaled in this regard, linguistic and biological. To ascertain the linguistic evidence involves delving into the arcane details of linguistic analysis, a task performed by both proponents and opponents of Nostraticism. The bulk of the linguistic evidence involves the search for cognates with similar sounds in different languages across diverse families (Salmons and Joseph 1998), following the approach established by Joseph Greenberg. Appreciating the method used for doing so involves plunging into a highly technical and occasionally arcane linguistic world of glottalics, sibilants, aspirants, laryngeals, implosives, pharyngeals, fricatives, affricates, allophones, and palatalized alveolars, among others. In addition to similar vocabulary roots, detailed work in comparative linguistics by Indo-Europeanists, Dravidianists, Altaicists, Uralicists, and scholars of Afro-Asiatic have pointed to morphological similarities in infinitives, participles, suffixes, interrogatives, and gender. Nostratic linguists hold that some phonemes are more stable than others, particularly pronouns. A small sample of such work is presented in Table 1. Nostraticists, particularly Bomhard (2008), emphasize that all Nostratic roots began with consonants. A more comprehensive listing can be found in Dolgopolsky’s Nostratic dictionary, available online at https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/196512, with more than 700 entomologies. Oswalt (1998) conducted statistical analyses of these correspondences and concluded the similarities were unlikely to have occurred through random chance. Since the relation between sounds and meanings is arbitrary (a notion established long ago by Ferdinand de Saussure), widespread similarities among languages must be more than coincidental. Hage (2003) goes as far as to attempt to reconstruct the Nostratic kinship system, arguing that the vocabulary points to a “deep time” system of bilateral cross-cousin marriages that was inherited among all the daughter families. At this point it is worth emphasizing that Nostraticism has met with enormous skepticism. Critics argued that languages change too quickly to trace their roots farther than a few thousand years, that there was limited empirical evidence for Nostratic, that its proponents used a sloppy methodology and were prone to errors, and that searching for a long-lost macrofamily was akin to looking for Big Foot. Some critics pointed to several errors in Illič-Svityč’s reconstruction of the Nostratic phonological system, particularly the assumption that all vocal stops were voiceless,

24

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as in Indo-European languages (a notion since dismissed). However, Ramer (1997) defends Nostratic against allegations that its proponents assert unrealistic shifts in word sounds, noting that the proposed alterations are not that different from those found in well-studied families such as Altaic. Many skeptics argued that similarities across language families could be due to borrowing or coincidences rather than a common ancestor and that the similarities across Nostratic tongues were not significantly different from those that could occur randomly (Ringe 1995). Dixon (1997, 44) went as far as to claim that “There is no reputable historical linguist anywhere in the world, who accepts the claims of Greenberg and the Nostraticists,” surely an overstatement given that the debate persists to this day. If Nostratic has not been universally accepted, neither has it been decisively refuted. Another, more recent line of evidence pointing to the Nostratic family comes from contemporary genetics, which has revolutionized linguistics using molecular analyses of DNA. Genes and languages move through time and space in remarkably similar ways. Because historically there was limited gene transfer across major linguistic divides, similarities in mitochondrial DNA tend to resemble linguistic ones. In particular, the work of population geneticist Cavalli-Sforza (2000) and Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994), which compared genetic and linguistic diversity, offered great support to the Nostratic interpretation (and Greenberg’s linguistic taxonomy of Native American languages): across the globe, broad linguistic categories exhibited similar genotypes (see Campbell 1999). Studies of haplotypes, allele frequencies, and gene frequency clines confirm broad similarities among Nostratic speakers. Barbajuni et al. (1994) found that the genetic evidence for the “Nostratic demic diffusion” model indicated that similarities among Nostratic families were due to migration, not cultural dispersion of words (cf. Barbujani and Pilastro 1993). Moreover, because genetic and linguistic evolution both occur along systematically predictable lines that allow the reconstruction of the past, the evidence indicated that the timing of entry of particular genetic groups into various parts of the world corresponded with the linguistic prehistory of that area. Genetic groupings match linguistic ones across the globe. Of course, these parallels are confused by languages that do cross genetic borders (e.g., Indo-European languages imposed on Indigenous peoples worldwide) or genes that cross linguistic borders through immigration and colonialism.

3

Geographies of Nostratic Languages

As a subdiscipline, the geography of languages seems to have fallen asleep. What was once a vibrant field that drew upon and contributed to linguistics has produced virtually no scholarship in the last two decades. Geographers do have a healthy interest in the nature of language, its relations to power, and how it shapes thought and representations of the world but, astonishingly, pay virtually no attention to how languages change over space and time. Despite centuries of colonialism, globalization, and cultural imperialism, the world’s linguistic landscapes remain remarkably

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diverse today (Austin 2008). From an historical and geographical perspective, it is quite possible that much of this diversity arose from a single source, Nostratic. The geography of Nostraticism takes several forms, including the search for the Nostratic homeland, the macrofamily’s diffusion and differentiation into daughter families, and the contemporary distribution of languages descended from this linguistic tree. The search for the geographical homeland of Nostratic is based largely on the reconstructed vocabulary and the known origins of daughter languages. It has been widely accepted that proto-Dravidian likely began in Iran (including Elamite); protoIndo-European originated in either Anatolia or Ukraine; proto-Afroasiatic started in the Levant; Kartvelian’s origins lie in the Caucuses; and Altaic tongues have a homeland in Turkmenistan. If all of these spiraled out of Nostratic, its homeland was likely to be situated roughly in the center of their respective places of origin. Dolgopolsky (1998) held that the vocabulary of Nostratic supported this view. For example, he suggests that it contained words for subtropical flora and fauna such as cereals, fig trees, leopards, hydra, and antelopes. It also had words for flint and snow. It lacked any words pertaining to agriculture. Kaiser and Shevoroshkin (1988, 315) argue that “The several hundred Nostratic roots/words reconstructed by Illič-Svityč and Dolgopolsky reveal a rather primitive society of hunters and gatherers who had no bows and arrows, no domesticated plants or animals [except the dog].” Dolgopolsky concluded that the origins of Nostratic lay somewhere in the Middle East. Similarly, Bomhard (2008, 237) says “I believe that the Mesolithic culture, with its Nostratic language, had its beginning in or near the Fertile Crescent just south of the Caucuses, with a slightly later northern extension into Southern Russia in intimate association with woods and fresh water in lakes and rivers.” From this point of origin, starting around 12,000 BC, Nostratic diffused in multiple directions, giving rise to the language families we know today (Fig. 3). The first to split off was Afro-Asiatic (or Afrasian), which is the branch the most

Fig. 3 Hypothesized branches of the Nostratic macrofamily. (Source: redrawn by author from Bomhard (2008, 28))

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Fig. 4 Diffusion of Nostratic languages from their homeland. (Source: redrawn by Darin Grauberger from Bomhard (2008, 248))

linguistically different from other Nostratic tongues, spreading into the Arabian peninsula, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa (Fig. 4), the southernmost expansion of the Nostratic macrofamily. Kartvelian made the short jump into the South Caucuses. About 8000 BC Dravidian veered away from its Iranian birthplace into the Indus River valley (Bomhard 2008) and later into the southern tip of India. What would become Greenberg’s Eurasiatic macrofamily arose from Nostratic speakers moving to the northeast, into Central Asia around 9000 BC, from whence they split into Indo-Europeans on the one hand and Uralic and Altaic speakers on the other. Smaller branches populated Siberia and ultimately crossed the Bering Straits to become Inuit-Eskimo. Some Nostraticists argue that this process involved the penetration of regions formerly occupied by the Dene-Caucasian macrofamily, displacing it and perhaps borrowing words from that group. “This accounts for the fact that non-Nostratic languages in Eurasia in historic times have been found mostly as relics in mountainous regions. Exceptions are Chinese . . . which . . . probably represent post-Nostratic reemergences of Dene-Caucasian speakers from their relic areas” (Bomhard and Kerns 1994, 155). As it disintegrated, Nostratic gave rise to a series of mutually unintelligible tongues, much as Latin gave way to various Romance languages as the Roman Empire collapsed. Today, the languages that originated in Nostratic dominate the linguistic geography of the globe (Fig. 5). Millennia of expansions by Indo-Europeans, Arabs, Turks and Mongols, including migrations, the steady diffusion on the heels of agriculture, and, more recently, colonialism, led the families descended from Nostratic to occupy all of Europe, Russia, the Middle East, South Asia, North Africa, Australia,

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Fig. 5 Contemporary distribution of languages originating in Nostratic macrofamily. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nostratic_Languages.png)

New Zealand, and most of the Americas. Only China, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa are excluded. The number of speakers of languages descended from Nostratic today is roughly 5 billion, or three-quarters of the planet’s population.

4

Concluding Thoughts

Is it remotely possible that the vast bulk of humanity today speaks languages descended from a common ancestor? Every language family had to begin somewhere, by someone. According to the Nostratic thesis, roughly 15,000 years ago as small group of Mesolithic hunters and gatherers spread out from a homeland in southwest Asia and gave rise to families such as Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Uralic and Altaic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, and Eskimo, an enormous conglomeration of languages today includes tongues as varied as Somali, Icelandic, Finnish, Mongol, Telugu, and Korean. When viewed in this light, the once-distinct boundaries between major language families become porous and permeable; rather than fixed categories, they may be seen as historical (or prehistoric) products of millennia of migrations. What began as the “Moscow School” became increasingly Americanized in its orientation, and the Nostratic thesis has provoked enormous debate among linguists and anthropologists. A voluminous body of evidence, including similarities in word roots, grammatical structure, and, increasingly, genetics, has buttressed the Nostraticist claim despite continuing skepticism. What was once regarded as far-fetched now has an aura of respectability. This debate has given comparative linguistics a rich paleontological dimension, leading to fruitful interactions with anthropologists and geneticists. There is no reason geographers cannot draw from and contribute to this debate.

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The Nostratic thesis holds several potential opportunities for the discipline of geography. One is a route to help revitalize the moribund field of the spatiality of languages, which in contrast to the robust literature on geography and religion has stagnated for several decades. The Nostratic thesis points to the deep origins of the world’s linguistic landscapes in prehistory – an enormously long and profoundly important era studiously ignored by geographers – and indicates that processes such as diffusion and colonization are hardly confined to capitalism, as is often widely assumed. Geographies do not materialize out of thin air – they are brought into being by long-term dynamic social relations that may stretch back long before the dawn of agriculture. Such a conceptual maneuver injects a badly needed diachronic dimension into the geography of languages. At a time of rapid language death throughout the world (Crystal 2014), knowing how language families came into being is essential. Finally, if the Nostratic thesis is confirmed – and growing evidence suggests that this may be the case – then there is a pressing need for similar work on other hypothesized macrofamilies, such as Sino-Dene-Caucasian and Amerind. Language is a deeply spatial artifact, closely intertwined with relations of power, gender, and the neurology of consciousness. Geographers dismiss the spatiality of language at their peril and miss the opportunity to engage in some of the most fascinating debates of this historical moment.

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Cavalli-Sforza, L., Pizaa, A., & Menozzi, P. (1994). History and geography of human genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Crystal, D. (2014). Language death. Cambridge: Canto Classics. Dixon, R. (1997). The rise and fall of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dolgopolsky, A. (1994). Nostratic. In R. Asher (Ed.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 5). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Dolgopolsky, A. (1998). The Nostratic macrofamily and linguistic paleontology. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Gamkrelidze, T., & Ivanov, V. (1990). The early history of Indo-European languages. Scientific American, 262, 110–116. Greenberg, J. (2000). Indo-European and its closest relatives: The Eurasiatic language family, volume 1, grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hage, P. (2003). On the reconstruction of the proto-Nostratic kinship system. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 128(2), 311–325. Hodge, C. (1998). Continuing toward Nostratic. Eurasian Studies Yearbook, 70, 15–27. Kaiser, M., & Shevoroshkin, V. (1988). Nostratic. Annual Review of Anthropology, 17, 309–329. Lamb, S., & Mitchell, E. (Eds.). (1991). Sprung from some common source: Investigations into the prehistory of languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Manaster-Ramer, A. (1994). Clusters or affricates in Kartvelian and Nostratic? Diachronica, 11(2), 157–170. Menges, K. (1989). Nostratic linguistics. The first international symposium. Anthropos, 84(6), 569–573. Oswalt, R. (1998). A probabilistic evaluation of North Eurasiatic Nostratic. In J. Salmons & B. Joseph (Eds.), Nostratic: Sifting the evidence (pp. 155–216). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Pedersen, H. (1931). Linguistic science in the nineteenth century: Methods and results (trans: Spargo, J.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pulgrum, P. (1995). Proto-languages in prehistory: Reality and reconstruction. Language Sciences, 17(3), 223–239. Ramer, A. (1997). Nostratic from a typological point of view. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 250(1–2), 79–104. Renfrew, C. (1989). The origins of Indo-European languages. Scientific American, 261, 106–114. Renfrew, C., & Nettle, D. (Eds.). (1999). Nostratic: Examining a linguistic macrofamily. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Ringe, D. (1995). Nostratic and the factor of chance. Diachronica, 12(1), 55–74. Ruhlen, M. (1994). On the origin of languages. Stanford: Stanford University Pres. Salmons, J., & Joseph, B. (Eds.). (1998). Nostratic: Sifting the evidence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Shevoroshkin, V. (1990). The mother tongue: How linguists have reconstructed the ancestor of all living languages. The Sciences, 30(2), 20–27. Starostin, S. (1989). Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian explorations in language macrofamilies. Bochum: Universitaetsverlag Dr. Norbert Brockmeyer. Sweet, H. (1900). The history of languages. London: Dent. Treloar, A. (1999). The Nostratic theory. Antichthon, 33, 99–109. Vine, B. (2010). Indo-European and Nostratic. Indogermanische Forschungen, 96, 9–35. Vovin, A. (1998). Nostratic and Altaic. In J. Salmons & B. Joseph (Eds.), Nostratic: Sifting the evidence (pp. 257–270). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Wright, R. (1991). Quest for the mother tongue. Atlantic Monthly, 267, 39–68. Zvelebil, K. (1990). The Dravidian perspective. In C. Renfrew & D. Nettle (Eds.), Nostratic: Examining a linguistic macrofamily (pp. 359–366). Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Mapping Language Variation and Change in the USA and Canada

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Thomas A. Wikle and Guy H. Bailey

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Early Efforts to Document American English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 European Atlas Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Linguistic Atlas of New England and American Regional Atlas Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Isogloss Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Statistical Methods and Quantitative Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Contributions of the Regional Atlas Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Automation and Thematic Mapping in Language Variation and Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Changing Priorities and New Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

460 461 461 462 463 463 464 465 466 467 468

Abstract

Maps are indispensable tools for representing the geographic distribution of languages and language features. For scholars interested in a single language, maps reveal patterns and relationships that are important in the delineation of dialect boundaries. Over the last hundred years, the types of maps used by American language scholars have changed considerably. In this chapter, we trace events that have shaped methods used to represent spatial variation in word usage, grammar, and pronunciation. We begin by exploring large-scale

T. A. Wikle (*) Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] G. H. Bailey University of Texas—Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_107

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projects that documented variation in American English such as the Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE), launched in 1929 by members of the American Dialect Society (ADS). In subsequent years, the ADS provided support for other regional atlases aimed at representing individual language features and identifying dialect areas. Along with examining the benefits and shortcomings of early methods for representing language features, we examine the role of scientific cartography in influencing dialect mapping during the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. For example, new visualization techniques, quantitative analysis methods, and computer-based systems enable language features to be studied over both space and time.

Keywords

Dialect boundaries · Isogloss · Mapping · Visualization

1

Introduction

Dialects are powerful markers of identify. A person’s vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar can reveal an affinity with a social group or hint to a past or present connection to a region or place such as southern Appalachia or a city like Boston or New York. While there may be disagreement over the exact boundaries of dialect regions, most persons recognize differences that set apart large areas such as New England and the Southeast USA. Maps are ideally suited for the study of languages. For example, maps can be used for revealing language patterns, comparing distributions, and identifying change over time. While the identification of dialect areas has remained an important objective of language research, the function and utility of language and dialect maps have experienced considerable change. Today, spatial databases and geographic information systems (GISs) have mostly replaced paper maps for exploring language variation. In fact, within the last half-century, three overlapping developments have impacted the use of maps within language research. The first are evolving research priorities among scholars whose initial focus on documenting language features and dialect boundaries has transitioned toward studies of socioeconomic factors that influence language distributions such as migration, immigration, and social class. A second factor has been the emergence of quantitative methods that have moved language mapping from mostly descriptive applications to exploratory methods for uncovering complex patterns and relationships. Finally, technological innovations have enabled language scholars to utilize data in new ways. Given the longstanding use of maps in language research, it seems improbable that only limited attention has been directed at the evolution of dialect and language mapping. In this chapter, we examine historical methods used in capturing, archiving, and visualizing American English together with newer techniques for investigating socioeconomic correlates to language and dialects that have been driven by advances in automation and data sharing.

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Early Efforts to Document American English

English is a relative newcomer to the Americas. When the first English-speaking community was established at Jamestown in 1607, the continent was occupied by persons speaking Dutch, Spanish, French, and indigenous languages. As settlements extended westward and northward, English-speakers adopted words used by persons they came into contact with. For example, chowder comes from the French, sleigh from the Dutch, and squash from indigenous language speakers. Following independence, American leaders looked for ways to draw distinctions between American and British English. Although the United States was not established as an Englishspeaking nation, the English language was viewed as a factor that helped unite former colonies, creating interest among scholars in identifying and documenting “Americanisms.” Among early projects to examine variation in American English was a survey of word usage published by the Reverend John Witherspoon in 1781 (Atwood 1986). The nineteenth century was a period of rapid demographic change as American settlers crossed the Appalachian Mountains and British loyalists (Tories) populated southern Ontario (Chambers 1997). Along with westward movement of the population, waves of immigrants arrived from Europe including thousands seeking relief from the 1845 Irish potato famine. By the mid-1800s, Russians, Poles, and immigrants from southern European countries, especially Italy, began arriving in US cities. With an increasingly diverse population, scholars began raising questions about how social and demographic changes might be influencing regional patterns of English.

2.1

European Atlas Projects

Unlike contemporary language studies that utilize mechanical recordings for later analysis, early efforts to capture and archive spoken words relied on trained fieldworkers (Longmore 2007). The first large-scale efforts to document language variation were initiated in Europe during the late nineteenth century. Among the most comprehensive was Georg Wenker’s exploration of German dialects in the late 1870s, published as Deutscher Sprachatlas (linguistic atlas) and involving more than 40,000 schoolmasters who were asked to translate sentences into the local dialect (Wrede 1926–1956). Another was Jules Gilliéron’s Atlas linguistique de la France published in the early 1900s with 2,500 maps based on data collected in rural areas (Gilliéron 1902–1910). Early linguistic atlases were relatively simple. In lieu of cartographic symbols, text was added to maps with the goal of recording locations where specific features were present. Success with European language projects soon generated interest in documenting the geographic extent of features unique to American English. The first comprehensive project was initiated by George Hempl in 1896. Using 1,600 responses to a postal questionnaire, Hempl constructed simple diagrams for comparing word usage across four quadrants: West (states extending from St. Louis to California),

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South (southward from the Mason Dixon Line), Midland (St. Louis to New York), and North (New York to the Dakotas). Although highly generalized, Hempl’s approach became a starting point for later efforts to identify dialect boundaries (McDavid 1971).

3

The Linguistic Atlas of New England and American Regional Atlas Projects

By the late 1800s American language scholars began discussions about documenting language features and dialects over the entire continent. In 1889, the American Dialect Society (ADS) was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the goal of developing a dictionary of American dialects. The first comprehensive project for capturing spatial variation in common word usage was initiated in 1929 with New England selected as the initial study region and Hans Kurath serving as project director. A native of Austria, Kurath was a professor of German and linguistics at Ohio State University. While traveling as a graduate student, he had observed variation in speech patterns that convinced him of the need for a systematic survey of American English. Along with recording word usage in target communities, Kurath and his colleagues wanted to identify correlates of language features with physical and cultural landscape elements. The New England project involved rigorous fieldwork with native-born informants selected from rural communities across 213 communities in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. A total of 416 local residents participated in the project. Kurath’s cartographer subsequently created base maps measuring seven and a half by 9 in. with detail such as rivers, towns, and state boundaries included for testing assumptions about language features and landscape characteristics. In a departure from European atlases, geometric symbols were used in lieu of lettering for representing language features. The first publication by Kurath’s team appeared in 1939 as the Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE) (Kurath 1949). Maps presented within LANE represented three categories of language information: grammar, pronunciation, and words that New Englanders used that had the same meaning. With the success of LANE, ADS members resumed discussions about a larger project that might document language features and dialect patterns throughout North America. However, it was soon apparent that financial constraints would become a barrier to the completion of a continent-wide survey. In lieu of a single project, Kurath and ADS colleagues planned a series of smaller atlas projects to explore elements of American English across contiguous groups of states using procedures employed with LANE. Initiated in 1933 and completed in 1974, the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS) was aimed at capturing pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar in southern states, including West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and parts of Florida and Georgia, as well as Middle Atlantic states, including Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and New Jersey. Among language features, LAMSAS fieldworkers asked informants about their use of words with the same meaning, such as dragonfly versus darning needle, porch versus stoop, and stairs

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versus stair steps (Nerbonne and Kleiweg 2003). In contrast to LANE, which was completed over a short time span, LAMSAS fieldwork was delayed by events taking place in the 1930s and 1940s such as the Great Depression and America’s involvement in World War II. Utilizing data from 1,162 interviews, LAMSAS maps had shaded boxes showing where a feature was present and open boxes where a feature was absent. Another project that began in the 1930s was Albert Marckwardt’s, Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States, designed to explore language features across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Kentucky. Initiated in 1938, fieldwork was also interrupted by World War II before being resumed in 1948 and finally completed in 1977 with 564 interviews.

3.1

Isogloss Mapping

Although useful for archiving data, maps showing feature locations were not especially helpful for identifying larger patterns or making comparisons. Resembling contour lines, the isogloss map emerged as a technique for showing geographic regions associated with individual language features. In contrast to contour lines, which connect points of the same value, isoglosses were lines positioned between points (informants) having dissimilar elements of grammar, pronunciation, or word usage. Kurath’s A Word Geography of the Eastern United States (Kurath 1949) is among the best-known publications featuring isogloss maps. Some of Kurath’s maps depicted dialect boundaries with thick lines representing major dialect areas, but without also showing the locations of informants. Along with showing the geographic extent of a single feature, isoglosses were also used for identifying where the spatial area of two or more language features coincided. Isoglosses running close together and in parallel were characterized as forming a “bundle” that hinted at the presence of a dialect boundary (Maguire 2011). For example, a prominent bundle of isoglosses in Harold Allen’s Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest represents boundaries corresponding to several language features. Running along the border between South Dakota and Nebraska, isoglosses show the northern limits of informants using the terms butter beans and nicker and the southern extent of persons who pronounce the /u/ in loam and use the word Dutch cheese. Bundles of isoglosses that form enclosed regions (enclaves) have been described as identifying a “core” dialect area that might be surrounded by a “periphery” having fewer isoglosses in close proximity. Along with isoglosses, scholars have represented language distributions using other linear symbols such as isophones that represent the limits of phonological features and ioslexes, showing the boundaries of lexical features (Crystal 1997).

3.2

Statistical Methods and Quantitative Mapping

Atlas projects initiated after the Second World War took advantage of new statistical methods that were sweeping through colleges and universities. Among the largest post-war projects was the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, which involved 1,121

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interviews carried out between 1968 and 1983 in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. An important objective of this atlas was to document language elements that characterized Black speech. Fieldworkers used worksheets for capturing and organizing information about features of southern speech, which were coded for computer processing and analysis with informants selected using a grid that corresponded with settlement patterns. Atlas fieldwork in western states faced unique challenges. For example, compared to the relative homogeneity of communities in eastern states, much of the West was settled by US migrants and immigrants from several continents whose cultural and ethnic diversity complicated the delineation of dialect boundaries. Funding was another challenge. With modest budgets to support fieldwork, the directors of western atlas projects had difficulty collecting a sufficient number of interviews, leaving large spatial gaps. For example, Carol Reed’s Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Northwest included just 49 informants from a region that encompassed Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Other projects included David Reed’s Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific West with 270 interviews from California and Nevada completed between 1952 and 1959 and William R. Van Riper’s Linguistic Atlas of Oklahoma with 57 interviews captured between 1960 and 1962.

3.3

Contributions of the Regional Atlas Projects

A look back provides an opportunity to consider methods, contributions, and shortcomings associated with regional atlas projects. On the positive side, it seems likely that much of today’s research involving American English would be difficult without benchmarks established by LANE, LAMSAS, the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, and other regional atlas projects. Although the atlas projects were completed over different time periods, they were successful in capturing snapshots of language elements during a time of rapid social and economic change within the USA. At least some of the features identified by atlas fieldworkers were shown to be rapidly disappearing. On the basis of data collected and interpreted through the regional atlas projects, language scholars recognize three major dialect regions in the USA: (1) a Northern Dialect that included New York, New England, and parts of North and South Dakota, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan; (2) a Midland Dialect extending east/west that included a northern subdivision made up of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and a southern subdivision with characteristics of southern speech that encompassed Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri; and (3) a Southern Dialect that included the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and other southern states. At the same time that they served as important archives, the atlas projects were subject to criticism. As noted by McDavid (1984), a lack of coordination among project leaders resulted in atlas fieldworkers using widely different data protocols. Others have suggested that regional atlas projects maintained a bias in favor of older informants (Pickford 1956) or were plagued by inconsistencies in methods used in the delineation of dialect boundaries (Davis 2000).

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Finally, in contrast to atlas projects carried out in Europe, the directors of American regional atlas projects published maps showing only a fraction of the data they collected.

4

Automation and Thematic Mapping in Language Variation and Change

Beginning in the 1960s, scholars began exploring new methods for analyzing and visualizing language distributions. For example, mainframe computers offered alternatives for analysis of statistical data and construction of simple thematic maps. Although crude and unappealing by today’s standards, thematic maps created by overprinting alphanumeric characters offered a research tool for testing assumptions. An advantage of automated methods was production speed; maps that previously required days or weeks to construct could be generated in minutes. At the same time, the introduction of output devices such as pen plotters made maps more visually appealing. Along with new quantitative methods, language maps were influenced by growing interest in psychological aspects of map compilation (Crampton and Krygier 2006). For example, the publication of Arthur Robinson’s The Look of Maps: An Examination of Cartographic Design (1952) brought interest in maps as communication devices, while Bertin’s (1973) theories involving the manipulation of visual variables affected the thinking about map design. Academic geography was also experiencing change with the introduction of spatial models such as Hägerstrand’s (1967) concepts of diffusion adopted by language scholars such as Trudgill (1974). Although popular because of their simplicity and ease in interpretation, some language scholars expressed concern over the limitations of isogloss maps. For example, Davis (2000) and Sibler et al. (2012) observed that isoglosses represent approximations of language distributions often constructed without well-conceived and defendable rationale. Another problem was the meaning of lines used for representing boundaries. When interpreted by a map reader, an isogloss implies abrupt change, described by Kretzschmar (2003, p. 135) as representing an “unwarranted appearance of precision.” Isogloss maps are also less suitable for showing quantitative data since a single line cannot represent the internal structure of distributions such as the percentage of persons using a lexical feature. Finally, isoglosses work well where boundaries of language features coincide but may introduce confusion if boundaries overlap. Language scholars have worked to develop more systematic and data-driven methods for determining the placement of isoglosses. For example, Shuy’s (1962) grid-count method replaced overlapping isoglosses with thicker lines, while Goebl’s (2010) “honeycomb maps” utilized Thiessen polygons centered over the locations of informants. Other types of thematic maps have emerged for showing spatial distributions of American English. For example, Atwood’s Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States (1953) used shaded geometric symbols to represent the presence of a feature and open symbols where a feature was absent. Likewise, Atwood’s Regional Vocabulary of Texas (1962) used clusters of filled or open dots

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to show the location of informants. Another innovation was Harold Allen’s Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest (1973), which utilized bar graphs and pie charts superimposed over states to show ratios of feature use. In terms of design, Frederick Cassidy’s Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE; Cassidy and Hall 1985) was especially innovative when introduced in 1960. DARE was the first survey to examine data from the 48 contiguous US states and among the earliest to utilize data processing and computer mapping techniques such as value-by-area cartograms that scaled state sizes in proportion to their population (two atlas project initiated in Europe, the computer developed Linguistic Atlas of England and the Atlas Linguarum Europae, were the first to utilize computer mapping methods.). DARE maps featured dots superimposed over states to show informants associated with a language feature, offering a simple method for comparing distributions. Data collected through DARE was also featured in Carver’s (1987) American Regional Dialects with open and closed symbols used to record where lexical features were present or absent and larger symbols to represent universal use (Benson 2003).

5

Changing Priorities and New Technologies

Along with technological changes, the 1960s ushered in new research objectives focused on uncovering social and ethnic correlates to language. In particular, work by Labov (1963) in New York City and Wolfram (1969) in Detroit helped establish an emphasis on understanding spatial variation in language variation and change by looking at social attributes of populations, such as group membership. Among other findings, Labov (1972) demonstrated r-less pronunciations, where words like “park” are pronounced “paak,” as markers of social status in cities such as Boston. Other advances were introduced in the 1980s, such as mapping software that could be operated on inexpensive desktop computers (Perkins 2003). For language scholars, the advantages of new methods lay not so much in capabilities for creating attractive maps but in possibilities for the interactive identification of spatial relationships and exploration of patterns and trends. Quantitative mapping gained popularity for uncovering relationships and making comparisons (Taylor 1983). For example, Pederson commissioned quantitative maps generated directly from Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States data, becoming the first atlas project to utilize computer-generated choropleth maps drawn with administrative areas such as states or counties showing raw feature counts or population-adjusted ratios. In contrast to maps using isoglosses, choropleth maps could represent language distributions with less subjectivity since enumeration areas were symbolized on the basis of data rather than a decision made by the map maker. Since enumeration areas were often stable, choropleth maps were ideal for comparisons over time. However, the choropleth method was subject to limitations since it was poorly suited for display of more than a single feature at a time. Although less affected by the map maker’s decisions, choropleth maps had an element of subjectivity since decisions had to be made about range values. Beyond difficulties in representing internal variation,

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choropleth maps were found to be unsatisfactory for representing language data that is unevenly distributed across a region of interest. Compared to the precise boundaries on isogloss maps, quantitative maps generated through the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States were sometimes disappointing. Along with the development of thematic mapping techniques, language scholars have looked for other ways for identifying boundaries associated with language features and dialects. For example, Preston (1989 and 1999) experimented with mental maps drawn by informants on the basis of personal knowledge about language and a geographic region. Advances in computer hardware and software functionality during the 1990s offered new methods for analyzing and visualizing language data. Among the most significant was the introduction of GIS mapping for managing, analyzing, and visualizing language data. GIS facilitates the interactive exploration of data and other spatial information stored in “layers.” For example, a user can display various combinations of phonological, lexical, and grammatical data together with physical features such as rivers, roads, and urban areas, along with socioeconomic data like population growth and ethnicity. In addition to addressing longstanding interests among language scholars for identifying the association between language features and other data, GIS offers statistical and modeling tools. A relatively small number of language scholars have utilized GIS for functions beyond generating maps. For example, using LAMSAS data, Kretzschmar generated density-estimation maps for showing probabilities in the use of lexical and phonological features (Kretzschmar and Light 1996). Another project involving LAMSAS shows the “connectedness” of communities by plotting where the term fair was used in response to a question about improvements in the weather (Kretzschmar 1997). While computer processing and mapping software have brought benefits for creation and display of maps, the Internet has changed the way language and dialect data and maps are shared and disseminated. For example, Kretzschmar and colleagues at the University of Georgia offer capabilities for downloading regional atlas datasets through a website called The Linguistic Atlas Project (see http://www. lap.uga.edu/Site/LANE.html). Likewise, data collected through DARE are accessible through a website maintained at the University of Wisconsin (see http://dare. wisc.edu/maps). More recent projects that utilize the Internet for disseminating research findings include Labov’s Atlas of North American English, which display phonological data captured through Telsur (TELephone SURvey) (see http://www. atlas.mouton-content.com) (Labov et al. 2006). One of the newest frontiers of dialect research has become possible through the popularity of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which facilitate the display and analysis of words tagged with geographic coordinates (Eisenstein 2014).

6

Conclusions

After more than a hundred years, the basic mapping techniques pioneered by Wenker and Gillièron in the late 1890s continue to be influential within dialect research. Within the USA, atlas projects carried out between 1929 and 1980 have documented

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language features that were rapidly changing. Initially, isogloss maps were used for showing the geographic area associated with features and how language features coincided with settlement patterns. During the second half of the twentieth century, the emphasis of dialect research shifted. In lieu of static representations of feature boundaries, scholars began using quantitative methods such as thematic mapping for comparing the internal structure of language distributions and their association with socioeconomic characteristics of populations. In recent years, GIS and the Internet have introduced tools allowing interactive exploration of language datasets. Some types of language data can now be collected using Internet websites and information from social media postings. As noted by Wieling and Nerbonne (2015), new digital tools have brought a resurgence of interest in data collected through the regional atlas projects.

References Allen, H. B. (1973). The linguistic atlas of the upper Midwest (Vol. 3). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Atwood, E. B. (1953). Survey of verb forms in the eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Atwood, E. B. (1962). Regional vocabulary of Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, Austin. Atwood, E. B. (1986). The methods of American dialectology. In H. B. Allen & M. D. Linn (Eds.), Dialect and language variation (pp. 63–97). Orlando: Academic Press. Benson, E. J. (2003). Folk linguistic perceptions and the mapping of dialect boundaries. American Speech, 78(3), 307–330. Bertin, J. (1973). Semiology of graphics: Diagrams, networks, maps. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Carver, C. (1987). American regional dialects. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Cassidy, F., & Hall, J. H. (1985). Dictionary of American Regional English DARE. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Chambers, J. K. (1997). The development of Canadian English. Moderna Sprak, 91(1), 315. Crampton, J. W., & Krygier, J. (2006). An introduction to critical cartography. ACME Journal, 4(1), 11–33. Crystal, D. (1997). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. New York: Blackwell. Davis, L. M. (2000). The reliability of dialect boundaries. American Speech, 75(3), 257–259. Eisenstein, J. (2014). Identifying regional dialects in online social media. MS, Georgia Institute of Technology. https://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/52405. Accessed 1 May 2016. Gilliéron, J. with Edmont, E. (1902–1910). Atlas linguistique de la France. Paris: E. Champion. Goebl, H. (2010). Dialectometry: Theoretical prerequisites, practical problems, and concrete applications (mainly with examples drawn from the “Atlas linguistique de la France,” 1902–1910). Dialectologia, 1, 63–77. Hägerstrand, T. (1967). Innovation diffusion as a social process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hempl, G. (1896). Grease and greasy. Dialect Notes, 1, 438–444. Kretzschmar, W. A. (1997). Generating linguistic feature maps with statistics. In C. Berstein, T. Nunnally, & R. Sabino (Eds.), Language variety in the South revisited (pp. 392–416). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Kretzschmar, W. A. (2003). Mapping Southern English. American Speech, 78(2), 130–149. Kretzschmar, W. A., & Light, D. (1996). Mapping with numbers. Journal of English Linguistics, 24, 343–357.

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Kurath, H. (1949). Handbook of the linguistic geography of New England. Providence: Brown University Press. Labov, W. (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 19, 273–309. Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W., Ash, S., & Boberg, C. (2006). The atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer. Longmore, P. K. (2007). ‘Good English without idiom or tone,’ the colonial origins of American speech. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 37(4), 513–542. Maguire, W. (2011). Analyzing variation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McDavid, R. I. (1971). Sense and nonsense about American dialects. In J. V. Williamson & V. M. Burke (Eds.), A various language: Perceptions in American dialects (pp. 12–21). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. McDavid, R. I. (1984). Linguistic geography. In J. W. Hartman (Ed.), Needed research in American English (pp. 4–29). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Nerbonne, J., & Kleiweg, P. (2003). Lexical distance in LAMSAS. Computers and Humanities, 37, 339–357. Perkins, C. (2003). Cartography: Mapping theory. Progress in Human Geography, 27, 381–391. Pickford, G. (1956). American linguistic geography: A sociological appraisal. Word, 12, 211–233. Preston, D. (1989). Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ views of areal linguistics. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, D. (1999). Handbook of perceptual dialectology. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Robinson, A. H. (1952). The look of maps: An examination of cartographic design. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Shuy, R. (1962). The Northern-Midland dialect boundary in Illinois. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Sibler, P., Weibel, R., Glaser, E., & Bart, G. (2012). Cartographic visualization in support of dialectology. In Proceedings, AutoCarto 2012. Columbus, Ohio. Taylor, D. R. F. (1983). Graphic communications and design in contemporary cartography. Chichester: Wiley. Trudgill, P. (1974). Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society, 3, 215–246. Wrede, F. (1926–1956). Deutscher Sprachatlas. Marburg: Elwert. Wieling, M., & Nerbonne, J. (2015). Advances in dialectometry. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1, 243–264. Wolfram, W. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Part IV Language and Identity

Language and Pain in the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil

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Claudiana Nogueira de Alencar, Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho, and José Ernandi Mendes

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Pragmatics, Cultural Grammar, and Language-Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Campesino Movement of Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Agency and Pain in MST Toponyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Decolonial Turn and the Grammar of Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Final Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In recent years, the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, MST) has become part of a larger group, the M21 movement. The M21 movement gets its name from one of the activist martyrs of state assassination, Jose Maria Filho, who was fighting against the fact that agribusiness was using toxic chemicals as pesticides. The M21 is a movement against agribusiness, government collaboration with landowners, and efforts to deprive people of lands that are rightfully theirs. It consists of 33 communities impacted by this invasion of agribusiness. Prior to each M21 meeting, the landless hold a ritual, where one group represents their experiences on a central stage, in a ceremony laden with symbols, religion, music, and dance, as well as banners, to express the work that they have been doing since the previous meeting or the work that they aim to do to improve their circumstances. This chapter is an attempt to provide an insightful account on how this subject emerges in speech acts from that ceremony and narrating pain. Drawing from the author’s ethnography in Limoeiro do Norte and

C. N. de Alencar (*) · S. M. G. de Carvalho · J. E. Mendes Universidade Estadual do Ceará, UECE, Fortaleza, Brazil e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_3

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focusing on events such as “the homage to the martyrs,” the author explains how the narratives of the landless were shaped by violence and trauma. Based on insights from the critical languages studies, an attempt is made to explore the relations between language and pain with emphasis on the social role of linguistics and its contributions to a better understanding of social life. Keywords

Critical language studies · Decolonial studies · MST · Pragmatics · Languagegame · M21 movement

1

Introduction

In this chapter, according to the cultural pragmatics perspective, a study is presented on the production of toponyms by the Landless Workers’ Movement as a language-game that establishes a cultural grammar of pain, seen as a means of resistance of this campesino social movement. In this grammar, the speech act of naming, in the production of toponyms, is part of a mystique of pain that comprises a type of agency and is inscribed in a new subaltern cosmology, associated with a transmodern decolonial project. In order to follow the traces and routes of this cultural grammar of pain, continuities are observed between the pragmatic conceptions of language as action (Austin 1962) and of language as a form of life (Wittgenstein 1958) – and the conceptions of the Latin American decolonial studies, such as word-world (Freire 2006), and coloniality of power/knowledge/being (Quijano 2005; Grosfoguel 2009). To establish this articulation requires methodologically rethinking the traditional semantic/pragmatic analysis procedures, so as to slowly trace the associations and interactors by the signification of their way of life.

2

Pragmatics, Cultural Grammar, and Language-Games

Pragmatics can be understood as a study perspective that involves looking at language arising out of daily linguistic practices. The pursuit of meaning as an entity undertaken by semantics is substituted by the idea that meaning equals linguistic use. Contributions to this view of meaning as use were made by the philosophers John Austin (1962) and Wittgenstein (1958). Austin uses the metaphor of the theater to show that it is insufficient to focus on language as a product in the verification of sentences or declarative propositions, the same way neopositivist philosophers used to when they pictured language as a representation of the world. Austin, on the other hand, focuses on process and faces languages in action. Making use of language would be more than using words to describe the world; it would be an act of doing things with words. In this way, speaking would be thought of as performing acts, speech acts. So, there would be speech acts of questioning, promising, complaining, advising, naming, or even of declaring, describing, or stating realities. Stating, in the production of sentences such

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as “a community leader was murdered for fighting in defense of the environment,” would also indicate an act, a performance. In this perspective, every stating utterance would also be a performing utterance. In the same direction, Wittgenstein says that the use of language is a form of life. The forms of life are inscribed in several activities, in several practices, considered by Wittgenstein as language-games. Accordingly, reciting a poem, solving a mathematical calculation, singing a song, appreciating, cursing, and praying would be examples of the practices seen by Wittgenstein as language-games. To the philosopher, “the meaning of a word is its use in language” (Wittgenstein 1975: P.I. § 43). Wittgenstein asserts that instead of looking for the essence of language, one should be following the flows and processes of the several linguistic activities of daily life, as he states on his Philosophical Investigations. But how many kinds of sentences are there? Say assertion, question, and command? There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what are referred to as “symbols,” “words,” and “sentences.” And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, come into existence, and others become obsolete and forgotten (Wittgenstein 1975: P.I. § 23). This way, one may notice the dynamic perspective of language processes that point out the historicity of games, their situational character, their similarities, and differences. In this dynamic, grammar is established by cultural rules that offer an always temporary stability to the meanings of a language-game. In order to distinguish this grammar of daily cultural practices from the so-called internal grammar of a language, the term cultural grammar is used, which is related to the work of Veena Das on the grammar of pain with a Wittgensteinian perspective (Das 2007). The author notes the inability of language to represent pain and human suffering or even the impossibility of language representation in the face of extreme violence. The terror caused by collective deaths, the decimation of peoples, and the martyrdom of wars is understood as a dimension of what cannot be spoken, placing violence and its destructive force on the fields of the extraordinary. However, Veena Das recognizes that this extraordinary violence, which cannot be spoken, can be “shown” through what is speakable on daily language-games. So, the cultural grammar of pain would be made possible by means of a network of semantic constructions and discursive performances established in everyday cultural practices (Silva and Alencar 2014). Using this grammar, it is possible to unite the discursive with the political, and nature with culture, once Wittgenstein explains that all forms of life are naturally collective and cultural. Thus, pain can only be expressed in a language-game that is always collective. Cultural practices, seen as intensive daily interchange, are also establishers of a cultural grammar of pain. Here it is possible to articulate the concept of form of life with the knowledge of Latin American thinkers. The grammar of pain can be better understood with an understanding that the relation between emotions and languages establish a “continuity between the biological and the social or cultural aspects,” as presented by Humberto Maturana (1998: 7). This contiguity between language and reality can also be found in Paulo Freire (2006: 11) who considers the ways that “language and

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reality are dynamically bound together.” These thinkers facilitate an understanding that what is linguistic and nonlinguistic cannot be separated in the construction of meaning (Harris 1981). Through this path, the concept of language can be amplified in order to see the elements of the world (also called the extralinguistic aspect) as establishers of languagegames, or better said, subjects, institutions, ideologies, time, and space are not extrinsic to language but rather delimited and specified by determined language-games. Therefore, research objects are outlined not as objects but also as agents, once the focus lies on linguistic processes as a means of action, as forms of life. This perspective will be applied to the emancipatory discursive practices of counterhegemonic networks and associations, such as the rural social movements, specifically in this chapter, the Landless Workers’ Movement. Such “objects” have been chosen not only to be observed as providers of linguistic data but also to be subjects in the experimentation of new forms of life, new languages, or simply to be heard. The author started to research the routes and dynamics of these movements and practices by their language-games traces in order to investigate how these groups use language in the corporeality of the word-life in the constitution of their forms of life, in the overcoming of their suffering, in the improvisations, and in the reenactment of daily transformations. To follow the linguistic flow and routes of the subjects in their daily life, according to Viveiros de Castro (2002: 123), means to refuse the explanation of concepts “in terms of the transcending notion of context (ecological, economic, political etc.).” Despite the majority of the production about the MST having been made under the paradigm of political economy, in this work the conservative dichotomy between politics and cultural studies is questioned, through proposal of a cultural pragmatic (Alencar 2009). This construct seeks to understand the place of language in the historical constitution of social, political, cultural, and economic problems originating from the logic of violence of the capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal world system (Grosfoguel 2009). In order to reach this understanding, it is necessary to look at the daily linguistic experiences in which cultural grammars are historically built in a number of language-games. The cultural pragmatics, thus, intend to look at the languages of cultural practice and their grammar historicity – intersubjective experiences that are specific to the actual subject’s daily life – to try and transcend the cultural and economic reductionism, by means of the understanding of the linguistic experience of the oppressed people and their word-life (Freire 1970). This perspective of this linguistic research aims to “cross the street” that separates the academy from the cultural and traditional knowledge and practices” (Alencar 2015b: 141).

3

Campesino Movement of Resistance

The campesino movement in Brazil is not only a socio-territorial movement; neither is it limited to an organization of poor peasant families of old land tenants or minor farmers that have been expelled from the land by the growing industrialization of

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agriculture. In opposition to the highly excluding socioeconomic systems, this movement has, above all, its own list of claims toward construction of a fair and equitable society, and for this it articulates several social actors that occupy a subordinate position such as quilombolas, riverside communities, indigenous peoples, exploited and fragmented workers in big cities, and landless, homeless, and hopeless people. So, the campesino movement is marked by daily struggles for education, food sovereignty, work, and social justice. Not all peasant movements in Brazil and Latin America – marked by oligarchies and authoritarian regimens – share this background. But among them, with its broad range of struggles and growing recognition by intellectual leaders committed with social change, as well as diverse social organizations, is the Landless Workers’ Movement (Fig. 1). Regarding its reach, the MST is not restricted to the fight for Agrarian Reform in Brazil, organizing rural workers around localized matters that are common to the agrarian issue: territorialization (life in land), deterritorialization (expulsion from land), and reterritorialization (new access to land). The movement also assumes a transnational nature, including in its agenda global and multifaceted struggles, embracing in its claims a variety of themes such as biodiversity, agrobiogenetics, food security, gender and sexuality relations, consumption, hunger, and poverty in contrast with economic development. Inside this transnational scenario, the activist actions online have taken place in several social media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the MST’s official homepage. This has allowed MST to receive support from other campesino and social movements’ networks from Latin America and throughout the world. Its official website (www.mst.org.br) brings manifestations of solidarity from thousands of social militants and popular movements from abroad that oppose the repressive and criminalizing actions suffered by the MST in Brazil. A few examples are the Latin American Coordination of Countryside Organizations (Cloc)-La Via Campesina, Latin American Institute of Agroecology (IALA) Guarani, Colombian Peoples’ Congress, the Workers World Party, National Confederation of Gremial Associations and Small Farmers Organizations of Chile, and Confederation of the Small Farmers’ Syndicate (ÇİFTÇİ-SEM) – TURKEY, and ALBA Social Movements Canada. In the denomination of these movements, one can perceive the commitment with the popular and campesino struggle that approximate the ideals of struggle for the land and for social justice proposed by the MST (2016). But how can a movement that deals with the local issue of access to land by the less favored classes as a major locus for human work and dignity bridge the barriers of specific problems pertaining to the nation-states, breaking the boundaries imposed by the social divisions in groups victimized by the late capitalism? In order to understand this question, it is necessary to consider the MST as a decolonial critical response that treads from the left-wing fundamentalism to attain the named transmodernity, as proposed by the liberation philosopher Enrique Dussel (1997, 2001), by his articulation with a transnational network of social movements, La Via Campesina (the Campesino Path). La Via Campesina was established in 1992

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Fig. 1 Landless workers. (Photo by the author)

by several peasant movements; today it is one of the most active social movements with an international outreach (Niemeyer 2006). This international articulation of peasant organizations of small and medium farmers, agriculture workers, rural women, and indigenous peoples represents the confrontation of euro-centered modernity through a “multiplicity of decolonial critical responses that depart from subaltern cultures and epistemological places of the colonized people of the whole world” (Grosfoguel 2009). Assembling more than 100 million peasants from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe, this anti-capitalist global network may contribute to establish the intercultural northsouth dialog, promoting the decolonization of power relations in the modern world, once it represents “an autonomous, pluralist movement, with no political ties, nor economic, or of any other nature. It is formed by national and regional organizations, whose autonomy is carefully respected” (Via Campesina do Brasil 2002: 5). La Via Campesina’s social movement network arises in a context in which national governments and big international companies associate with create free trade zones, common markets, and customs associations that open national economies, facilitating the mobility of goods, services, and capital to a multiplicity of flows coming from outside the borders of the nation-state. Because of that, an assimilation between territories, moved by the added value, occurs, and this assimilation is globalized by the production of goods and unified by the financial system. In this present context of globalization, the land becomes a source of great profit as a business opportunity for the foreign capital, considering that the developmental model has chosen the agribusiness as the prospective promise of vast green areas and elimination of hunger. However, such promise is never fulfilled. In an autophagic

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movement, this model explores natural resources and does not care for the wellbeing of the rural worker, once it uses paid labor in an intensive and temporary manner aiming for the massive production of goods with highly sophisticated techniques and using great extensions of land for monocultures addressing the external market. Because of that, the logic behind the agribusiness for export is characterized by “high concentration of land, modernization of agricultural machinery, formation of paid labor mass and increase of supplies that raise productivity” (Carvalho and Mendes 2014). This current capitalist development model has “penetrated not only in urban, but also in rural areas, deeply modifying the relation between society and nature and the way of living of peasant communities.” This is how the cultural memory of ancestral traditional practices of land care and cultivation have been systematically erased by a developmental model of exploitation of natural resources and deletion of cultural practices of peasant communities. About this, Pontes et al. (2013: 3214) state that: The contemporary society context in which the axes of the Rio +20 about “green economy for the elimination of global misery and governance for the planet’s sustainability” are inserted is characterized by a globalized system in which the production of commodities with high environmental impact and effects on the speculation of land value is destined to peripheral countries, along with the assassination of local leaders by landowners, monoculture plantations with heavy use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and displacement of populations due to “development works.”

It is against this picture that the MST, in the state of Ceará, in the region of the Jaguaribe Vale (Fig. 2), joins another network of social and academic movements, the Movement 21 (M21), establishing a form of life that resists the agribusiness economic model and all its evils: expulsion of peasants from their territories, cultural amnesia of the tradition of the country people, and degradation of the environment by massive use of agrochemicals. According to Alencar et al. (2015: 162): The M21 was established after the assassination of the community leader and environmentalist José Maria Filho, also known as José Maria Tomé (. . .). Zé Maria was murdered for reporting the illegal appropriation of land by the agribusiness and the poisoning of the food, air and water springs. Carrying on with Zé Maria’s struggle, the M21 also reports land fraud according to market demands and criminalization of social movements; expanding phenomena in the Chapada do Apodi area, on the borders of the states of Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte. The name of the movement is a tribute to the environmentalist, remembering the April 21st 2010, day of Zé Maria do Tomé’s assassination.

From the political and academic articulation of a movement that emerges as a necessity to continue the struggle of someone who has lost his life in defense of his people, the author would like to analytically explore the problem of the establishment of a language of pain, which is common to liberation discourses found in campesino movements – despite the diversity of their ethnic and cultural backgrounds and forms of oppression and violence that contextualize such discourses.

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Fig. 2 Map of municipal and district boundaries, Jaguaribe Vale Planning Zone (Source: IPECE) (http://www2.ipece.ce.gov.br/atlas/). Circumpunct – Municipal headquarters. Dot – District headquarters. Light-green boundary – District. Dark-green boundary – Municipal. Blue boundary – Jaguaribe Vale Planning Zone

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Agency and Pain in MST Toponyms

As educators on MST training courses (UECE Extension Course, formation of educators in rural settlements, by the National Program of Education in Agrarian Reform Areas, realized in the Bernardo Marin II Settlement, in Russas, Ceará, Brazil), the authors intended to develop the power of the word as a means of struggling and aimed to show students from many settlements and camps who were training to become rural educators that language was not only a way to lead to action; it was rather an action itself. In order to put to practice theoretical linguistic perspectives inside the classroom, the authors experimented with the idea that stemmed from Paulo Freire (2006: 11) which states that “language and reality are dynamically bound.” This liberation theorist said that “the reading of the world always precedes the reading of the word,” yet there is much more to be understood than the simple idea that for every text, there is a context, and the context comes first. The distinction between what is linguistic and what is nonlinguistic lies in the establishment of meanings (Harris 1981). The authors intended, therefore, to amplify the concept of language in order to think that the elements of the world (extralinguistic) are constitutive of the language or, better said, subjects, institutions, and ideologies; time and space are not extrinsic to language but rather delimited and specific to certain language-games. The notion of language as a “form of life,” from the second phase of the thought of the Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein (1958), would be that of an anthropologichistorical, dynamic, and dialogic nature – a continuation of his famous first phase logic, according to which “the limits of my language are the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein 1981). In this way, the authors experimented with the group the linguistic materiality in the corporality of the word-life, announced by Paulo Freire. Using the word-world as referenced in A import^ a ncia do ato de ler (the importance of the act of reading; Freire 2006: 11–13), the author states that the first “texts,” “words,” and “letters” are the context of early childhood itself, words that “incarnate in a series of things, objects. . . in the whistling of the wind, in the clouds, in the sky, in its colors, in its movements.” During the reading and writing class, young campesino students were invited to go to the fields (Fig. 3); take a walk by plants, flowers, and gardens; and speak of the word as a transformative power. Before the production of written texts about forms of life or history, a collective oral text was built outside the classroom walls, during that walk by the fields. With closed eyes the students were asked to quote their generative words, from which they built the meaning of their existence, of that training course, of their struggle, and of their dreams. The words took the form of names of people, places, events, objects, feelings, and activities. At that moment, the authors were surprised by the profusion of toponyms and anthroponyms referring to “land martyrdom.” The words-life which Paulo Freire spoke about, in that context, in that reality, were words of death. In the generative words produced by the students, names of people who have died in the struggle for the land or in the struggle to defend social justice were part of their

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Fig. 3 Training course on land education – Russas – Ceará. (Photo by the author)

daily lives. They were names used in the MST’s organizational structure: brigade names – that is, a geostrategic grouping of about 500 families that live in Agrarian Reform camps and settlements of a specific region (Bernat 2009: 3) – camps, settlements, schools, etc. The MST celebrated their dead, the land martyrs, by naming their geopolitical spaces and their organizational places after them. The speech acts of naming were “enlightened” by this mystique of celebration of suffering as a struggle reaffirmation, a constitutive element of the movement’s cultural grammar: the grammar of pain. The students said that this tribute through acts of naming is common all over Brazil. As a matter of fact, the authors investigated the toponyms used by the MST to designate their settlements and camp sites and noticed that the homage to those who have died in the struggle for the land, in the struggle for life, was a rule of this grammar. The language of pain of the campesino movement builds up, through the linguistic action, the bounds between territories, rural settlements, and the history of struggle for agrarian reform and social justice (see Fig. 4, which is a map of settlements in the territories of Ceará). Figure 4 shows a concentration of settlements in the north and in the central region of the state of Ceará. This concentration is due to the fact that the area used to

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Fig. 4 Map of rural settlements in Ceará, 2016. (Source: IPECE (http://www2.ipece.ce.gov.br/ atlas/)). Circumpunct – Municipal headquarters. Red box – Federal Rural Settlements. Yellow box: State Rural Settlements)

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be the location of the state’s great latifundia and which showed a tendency for desertification. Because of that, the predominance of nonproductive land caused many land conflicts with more intense and stronger actions by the Landless Workers’ Movement in the region. The reterritorialization of these latifundium areas into rural campesino settlements is, therefore, the product of the intense campesino struggle in this region. From now on the focus will be on linguistic aspects of this reterritorialization through the speech act of naming. In order to deal with the act of naming and its historical conditions of production, it is necessary to enter the field of onomastics, the study of proper names that constitute the lexicon of a language. As a subfield of onomastics, the focus will be on the toponymy of names of places and geographic designations, considering physical, human, anthropic, or cultural aspects (Dick 1990). So as not to consider the toponym as a linguistic product, it is studied through a pragmatic perspective, considering the naming language-game, connecting it with the forms of life of the campesino movement. In this game, the speech act of naming is also a way of resistance. The history of these struggles against the late capitalism and its forms of biocultural destruction establishes a grammar of resistance of the campesino peoples. In Eldorado dos Carajás, for instance, the settlement was named “Assentamento 17 de Abril” (April 17 Settlement) after the massacre which took place on that date in 1996, in Eldorado dos Carajás, in the south of the state of Pará, North Brazil. In the episode, 19 peasants who were fighting for the land were exterminated by the state police and local landowners. The name was given as a way to revive the history of struggle of the landless in that area. In the speech game of naming, the toponym “Assentamento 17 de abril” is an act of tribute to those who have fallen on that date and also a speech act of reporting against rural violence, the cause of death of many landless workers. Besides that, establishing a map of martyr names, the local school was named after Oziel Alves Pereira, a tribute to the 17-year-old boy who was also killed on the same massacre. On the Jaguaribe Vale, the region in which this research was carried out and where the Movement 21 is based, the toponym “Acampamento Zé Maria do Tomé” (Zé Maria do Tomé Camp) was chosen to name the campsite related to the MST (Fig. 5). It is formed by hundreds of families from the Chapada do Apodi area, who have been struggling for land, water, and the survival of their sons and daughters. That toponym is an act of resistance against the agribusiness development model that was installed in the region, causing the poisoning of soil and water by the massive use of agrochemicals and careless attitude toward the security and wellbeing of the rural workers. The act of naming the camp after the anthroponym “Zé Maria do Tomé,” gathering the two sides of onomastics (anthroponymy and toponymy), is an act of performance by the campesino movement, for the toponym is a tribute to José Maria Filho, also known as “Zé Maria do Tomé.” Once a farmer and a community leader in the Chapada do Apodi, in Limoeiro do Norte, Zé Maria used to protest against the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the consequent poisoning of the water by big agribusiness companies (see Prada 2017). He also questioned the land concentration

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Fig. 5 Zé Maria do Tomé Settlement. (Photo by Elitiel Guedes Source: Cáritas Diocesana (http://ce.caritas.org.br/))

in the biggest fruiter pole of the state of Ceará. Because of his reports, he was killed with 25 bullets, and his murderers remain unpunished. By the act of naming the settlements and camp sites with toponyms that refer to the martyrdom of those who have fought for the land, for the water, and for life, the MST celebrates their dead and pays tribute to all those who by their struggle in defense “of socialist society or the Agrarian Reform in Brazil are put as an example to be followed, in the same way those in the history of humankind who have fallen in defense of the working class” (Bezerra Neto 1999: 38). This resistance performance by the campesino movement is not only realized in the Jaguaribe Vale, in the state of Ceará, the aim of this study, but also in all Brazilian regions. As a means of illustration, Table 1 shows a few toponyms that designate rural settlements in many Brazilian states. Whether they are environmental activists such as Wilson Pinheiro and Chico Mendes, leaders of rural syndicates such as Margarida Alves and Expedito Ribeiro, religionists engaged with the Pastoral Land Commission such as Father Josimo and Dorothy Stand, or militants of the Landless Workers’ Movement itself such as Antônio Tavares and Oziel Alves Pereira, the campesino movement pays tribute to those who have been brutally murdered in the struggle for the rights of the rural people, naming their settlements after these martyrs of the land. Here, the speech acts of naming are speech acts that produce toponyms of reverence to the victims of land martyrdom (Alencar 2015a). In the languagegame of naming, such acts are signified by the activists as a call to “take the

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Table 1 Toponyms of rural settlements in Brazilian states. (Source: Author) Settlement Settlement Wilson Pinheiro Settlement Margarida Alves Settlement Padre Josimo Settlement Antônio Tavares Settlement Oziel Alves Pereira Settlement Expedito Ribeiro Settlement Chico Mendes Settlement Irmã Dorothy

City Rio Branco Piranhas Macapá Crixás Governador Valadares Santa Bárbara Matel^andia Quatis

State Acre (AC) Alagoas (AL) Amapá (AP) Goiás (GO) Minas Gerais (MG) Pará (PA) Paraná (PR) Rio de Janeiro (RJ)

place” of the other in the struggle for liberation, as can be observed in the statement of the activist Rosa: “we are the successors of the struggle of these folks that gave their lives believing a change was possible, they didn’t surrender, they didn’t give in” (Statement taken by Bonfim (2011: 35) at the MST state office in Ceará). The same discourse can be found in the statement of MST leaders about the mystique, when they affirm that “these celebrations develop processes of sensitization to resistance, in spite of the risk of violence and even death in the intent to pursuit a dignified life” (Stédile and Sérgio 1993: 56). This exultation of the pain and suffering of those who have dedicated to the campesino movement’s cause is part of the cosmology of liberation that dialogically trespasses the movement’s discourse of resistance, found in their leader’s texts: “We would rather die fighting than die from starvation – the peasants say [. . .] they make the resistance a collective political attitude, an instrument of struggle. They’re willing to risk their lives in order to attain more life” (Stédile and Sérgio 1993: 56). Stédile and Sérgio’s statement refers back to the topic of the sacralization of pain and suffering. It can clearly be seen by the way this mystique of pain, which celebrates death as part of the subaltern cosmology of the MST, is coated with a liberating quality. There is a clear dialogic relation with the Christian mystique, as described by the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff (1998: 23): The word mystique is an adjective of mystery, which means to perceive the hidden, unsaid character of a reality or of an intention. It does not have a theoretical content, but it is linked to the religious experience in initiation rites. The person is led to experiment, through celebrations, chants, dances, role-playing, and realization of ritualistic gestures, to a revelation or an enlightenment that is kept by a determined and closed group. According to Asad’s investigation about the agency and the pain on Christian and Muslim traditions, it can be understood that the pain can be eagerly embraced by those who are stricken by it and “transformed into something else than that which was firstly planned” (Asad 2000: 45). This consideration can be applied to the language of pain, used in the MST mystique, once those who die in the struggle are considered true martyrs of the land, whose broken body, just like Christian martyrs, should be taken in a subverted way and “interpreted as symbols of victory against the society of power” (Asad 2000: 45).

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In this sense it can be seen how the mourning for land martyrdom is recontextualized in a cultural grammar of pain that transforms grief into struggle. Recontextualizing the mystique of the MST, the 21 Movement resumes the elements of the struggle’s pain and realizes every April, month of the assassination of environmentalist Zé Maria, the Pilgrimage of Zé Maria do Tomé. During this mystique, activists from various movements raise posters with pictures of the numberless dead that have fallen in the struggle for campesino rights. In the mystique, pain takes on a dimension of encouragement, commitment, and resistance to continue with the work of those who have passed away (Fig. 6). By analyzing these processes of resistance that have been erased by the hegemonic discourse, a movement of decoloniality is created from the perspective of the knowledge and resistance tactics by the subaltern side of the system – the colonial capitalist world.

5

The Decolonial Turn and the Grammar of Resistance

Many Latin American thinkers unite forces to criticize modernity considering the fact that it has been established from the coloniality itself. The concept of coloniality of power arises from the thought of the Peruvian scholar Anibal Quijano (1989), but the idea was already present, though with specific distinctions, in Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation, in Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, and in

Fig. 6 The Pilgrimage of Zé Maria do Tomé Mystique. (Source: Cáritas Diocesana (http://ce. caritas.org.br/))

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Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory. The coloniality has many facets (of power, of knowledge, and of being) that show that “colonial relations in the economic and political spheres have not ended with the destruction of colonialism.” To Grosfoguel (2009: 126), The expression “coloniality of power” designates a fundamental process of structuring of the modern/colonial world-system that articulates peripheral places of the international division of labor with the global ethnic-racial hierarchy and with the subscription of migrants from the Third World in the ethnic-racial hierarchy of the global metropolitan cities. The peripheral Nation-states and the non-European peoples live today under the regimen of “global coloniality” imposed by the United States, through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Pentagon and NATO. The peripheral zones are kept in a colonial situation, in spite of their liberation from a colonial administration.

In this way, the production of knowledge can be seen as part of education. Education is a struggle against the violence of the oppressors, “stated in the longing for freedom, justice and struggle of the oppressed, for the recovery of their stolen humanity” (Freire 1970: 32). The liberation philosophy by Paulo Freire, realized in the MST educational syllabus, constitutes a radical project against the coloniality of power (Quijano 2009) that establishes colonial/racial hierarchies that animalize the human being in order to purge him/her, condemning him/her to the oppression that enslaves him/her silently.

6

Final Considerations

The liberation mystique found in the toponyms produced in acts of naming is part of a subaltern cosmology of the MST, established from a grammar of pain. With it, the Landless Workers’ Movement transforms its own mystique in an act of promising to all the wronged and poor people of the world, to the “damned of the land,” an expression by Fanon (1979). It is this cosmopolitan mystique of liberation, caring for those who are chained in subordinate positions, that will provide the campesino movement with the cosmopolitan nature of their subjectivities, in the amplification of the peasant category for those who are wronged. So, the Brazilian campesino movement, through this agency of pain that embraces the suffering of the “martyrs of the land,” articulates with a transnational network of social movements, sympathized by the language of suffering with the indigenous, black, feminine, and peasant America. It was noticed, in the speech act of naming, the establishment of a new form of agency of the campesino social movements that seek to subvert the pain caused by the oppressor/ruler/colonizer through toponyms that become signs of struggle, signs that perform the forms of life of the agents, inserting them in a collective history. This comprehension, obtained from the perspective of cultural pragmatics, placed by the subaltern side of the colonial difference, has tried to promote a dialog between the critical studies of Latin American intellectuals that think the “coloniality of power,” the “coloniality of being,” the “coloniality of knowledge,” the “pedagogy

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of the oppressed,” and the “transmodernity” (Freire 1970; Dussel 1997; Mignolo 2000; Grosfoguel 2009), and the critical studies on language (Rajagopalan 2003; Alencar 2014), proposing a new pragmatic approach, concerned with questioning the colonization of thought in the formalization of linguistic theories and in the linguistic oppression of the other, reaching for liberating social ethics through the role of linguists. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Alencar, C. (2009). Por uma Pragmática cultural: cartografias descoloniais e gramáticas culturais em jogos de linguagem do cotidiano. Projeto de Pesquisa. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística Aplicada da Universidade Estadual do Ceará. Fortaleza. Alencar, C. (2014). Pragmática Cultural: uma visada antropológica sobre os jogos de linguagem. In: D. Silva, C. Alencar, D. Ferreira (Orgs.), Nova Pragmática: modos de fazer (pp. 78–100). São Paulo: Cortez. Alencar, C. (2015a). Na periferia dos estudos da linguagem: práticas culturais discursivas do Movimento Sem Terra. Revista Passagens, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação da Universidade Federal do Ceará, 6(1), 72–92. Alencar, C. (2015b). Pragmática cultural: uma proposta de pesquisa-intervenção nos estudos críticos da linguagem. Discurso: sentidos e ação, São Paulo, Universidade de Franca, v.10, 141–162. Retrieved from web page: http://www.unifran.edu.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ vers%C3%A3o-onlineCole%C3%A7%C3%A3o-Mestrado-em-Lingu%C3%ADstica-Vol.-10. pdf. Accessed 5 July 2017. Alencar, C. N., Carvalho, S. M. G., & Mendes, J. E. (2015). Práxis educativa e discursiva no Movimento 21: transgressões de fronteiras e hibridismo emancipatório. L&S Cadernos de Linguagem e Sociedade, 16, 160–175. Asad, T. (2000). Agency and pain: An exploration. Culture and Religion, 1(1), 29–60. Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bernat, I. (2009). Os acampamentos e assentamentos do MST como expressão do conflito capital x trabalho. Luta pela terra e identidade campesina na área de influência da Brigada Salvador Allende, Região Noroeste do Estado do Paraná In: Revista Pegada – vol. 10 n.2 1 dezembro. Bezerra Neto, L. (1999). Sem-Terra aprende e ensina: estudo sobre as práticas educativas do movimento dos trabalhadores rurais. Campinas: Autores Associados. Boff, L. (1998). Alimentar nossa Mística. Mística: uma necessidade no trabalho popular e organizativo. Caderno de Formação (20–46). São Paulo: MST, n.27. Carvalho, S. M. G., & Mendes, J. E. (2014). Práxis educativa do Movimento 21 na resistência ao agronegócio. Interface Journal, 6(8), 45–73. Das, V. (2007). Life and words: violence and the descent into the ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press. de Niemeyer, C. B. (2006). Contestando a governança global: a Rede Transnacional de Movimentos Sociais Via Campesina e suas relações com a FAO e OMC. 2006. Dissertação (Mestrado) Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro. Dick, M. V. d. P. A. (1990). A motivação toponímica e a realidade brasileira. São Paulo: Edições Arquivo do Estado. do Bonfim, M. A. L. (2011). Queres Saber como Fazer Identidades com Palavras? uma análise em pragmática cultura da construção performativa do sem terra assentado no MST-CE. Dissertação (Mestrado em Linguística Aplicada), Universidade Estadual do Ceará -UECE Fortaleza.

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Dussel, E. (1997). Filosofía de Liberación. México: Edicol. 1977. Tradução em português: Teologia da Libertação: Um Panorama de seu Desenvolvimento. Petrópolis-RJ: Vozes. Dussel, E. (2001). Hacia una Filosofía Política Crítica. Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer. Fanon, F. (1979). Os Condenados da Terra (2nd ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro. Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (2006). A import^ a ncia do ato de ler (em três artigos que se completam). São Paulo: Cortez/Autores Associados. Grosfoguel, R. (2009). Para descolonizar os estudos de economia política e os estudos pós-coloniais: Transmodernidade, pensamento de fronteira e colonialidade global In: B. d. S. Santos & M. P. Meneses (Orgs.), Epistemologias do Sul. Coimbra: Edições Almedina. Harris, R. (1981). The Language Myth. London: Duckworth. Maturana, R. H. (1998). Emoções e linguagem na educação e na política. Belo Horizonte: UFMG. Mignolo, W. (2000). Local histories/global designs: Essays on the coloniality of power, subaltern knowledges and border thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. MST (2016). MST recebe solidariedade internacional de organizações e militantes. http://www.mst. org.br/2016/11/07/mst-recebe-solidariedade-internacional-de-organizacoes-e-militantes.html. Accessed 20 Dec 2017. Pontes, A. G. V. et al. (2013). Os perímetros irrigados como estratégia geopolítica para o desenvolvimento do semiárido e suas implicações à saúde, ao trabalho e ao ambiente. Ciênc. saúde coletiva, Rio de Janeiro, v. 18, n. 11, 3213–3222. Prada, P. (2017). Why Brazil has a big appetite for risky pesticides. Reuters Investigates. Retrieved from webpage: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/brazil-pesticides/. Accessed 11 Mar 2017. Quijano, A. (1989). Paradoxes of Modernity in Latin America. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 3(2), 147–177. Quijano, A. (2005). Colonialidade do poder, eurocentrismo e América latina. In: E. Lander (Org.), A colonialidade do saber: eurocentrismo e ciências sociais (pp. 227–278). Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO). Quijano, A. (2009). Colonialidade do poder e classificação social. In: B. d. S. Santos & M. P. Meneses (Orgs.), Epistemologias do Sul. Coimbra: Edições Almedina S.A. Rajagopalan, K. (2003). Por uma lingüística crítica: linguagem, identidade e questão ética. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial. Silva, D., & Alencar, C. (2014). Violência e significação: uma perspectiva pragmática In: D. Silva, C. Alencar, D. Ferreira (Orgs.), Nova Pragmática: modos de fazer. São Paulo: Cortez. Stédile, J. P., & Sérgio, F. (1993). A luta pela terra no Brasil. São Paulo: Página Aberta. Via Campesina do Brasil. (2002). Histórico, natureza e linhas políticas internacionais: cartilha da Via Campesina. São Paulo: Mimeo. Viveiros de Castro, E. (2002). O nativo relativo. Mana, Rio de Janeiro, 8(1), 113–148. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations. Bilíngue Alemão/Inglês. G.E.M. Anscombe & Rush Rhees (eds.), Translation: G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1975). Investigações Filosóficas. Translation: José Carlos Bruini. São Paulo, Nova Cultural (Os Pensadores). Wittgenstein, L. (1981). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Transl. by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness. With the Introduction by B. Russell. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Linguistic Marketplace of Osh, Kyrgyzstan: From Bazaar to Bizarre

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Contents 1 Monumental Erasure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Our Common Cosmopolitan Tongue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Vanishing Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Teaching (In)Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In June 2010, Kyrgyzstan’s “Southern Capital” of Osh became host to a violent conflict in which hundreds were killed and thousands of homes destroyed. Outsiders labeled the events an “ethnic conflict,” but where do the residents of Osh believe the responsibility lies? Surprisingly, “language” is one explanation offered by Kyrgyz in particular, who comprise a majority of Kyrgyzstan’s population, but only a slim plurality in Osh. Shortly before the violence began, a leader of the minority Uzbeks publicly demanded that the Uzbek language receive official recognition, and many Kyrgyz reacted angrily to what they perceived as an act of separatism. The politicized nature of language in the former Soviet sphere has roots in the Union’s successful reification of ethnolinguistic linkages that were previously tenuous. This chapter explores the fruits of this reification project in examining the relationship between language ideologies and ethnic identity in Osh before and after the conflict. Based on 20 months of fieldwork conducted from 2008 to 2014, this study argues that the ambivalence surrounding code choices and language purity stems metonymically from con-

E. R. Canning (*) Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_206

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cerns about the success of the “nation” as a whole. To demonstrate this phenomenon, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Russian schools are compared and analyzed according to language pedagogy and ideology. The current yoking of ethnicity and language in the classroom problematically prevents Uzbeks from integrating into what could become a more pluralistic model of citizenship. The Soviet ideal of the “friendship of peoples” still lingers in local memory as a distant, but nevertheless tangible dream. Keywords

Language · Ethnicity · Boundaries · Kyrgyzstan · Conflict · Education

Cүйүүгө чек жок. Süyüügö chek jok. In love there are no borders. ~Kyrgyz proverb

On a gray January morning in 2013, Kyrgyzstan’s military sent four counterterrorism agents to a school in Osh for a serious infraction: a few kids had refused to complete their homework. The flagrant lack of respect for authority that these students demonstrated as they exchanged barbed insults with their teachers would have otherwise gone under the national security radar, if it were not for the fact that they took place in an ethnic minority Uzbek school and that the assignments they had neglected were from their Kyrgyz language class. The location of the school at the edge of an Uzbek neighborhood in Kyrgyzstan’s ethnically mixed “Southern Capital” was significant given that the Kyrgyz population of Osh has only in the last few decades begun to match the number of Uzbeks who continue to occupy desirably central property in the town. The timing of this incident was equally noteworthy for it occurred two and a half years after several hundred people were killed in violence that was carried out largely along ethnic lines. The exact nature of the June 2010 “events” as they are referred to remains shrouded in rumors and varies significantly depending on the ethnicity of the person describing them, but regardless of its precise origin, the government’s “Unit 10” which focuses on “nationalism, extremism, and terrorism” had its reason to fear any sign of rebellion, no matter how small. Language, however, is no trivial matter in former Soviet states and remains particularly contentious in southern Kyrgyzstan. In fact, many cite a speech given by a prominent Uzbek politician calling for Uzbek to be recognized as an official language of southern Kyrgyzstan as one of the key factors that fomented unrest leading up to the June 2010 events. One of the most common explanations among the narratives of the dominant ethnic group is that Uzbeks organized the “war” to seek some form of political autonomy, and thus, their continued lack of integration into Kyrgyz society represents a danger. The “nationalism,” therefore, that “Unit 10” is concerned with is therefore a code for “ethnic separatism” and not the brand of nationalism that is sanctioned by the state. Rather Kyrgyz nationalism has flourished in Osh since 2010, with new monuments of national heroes and signs promoting Kyrgyz language proliferating en masse. Since education is a primary site of promoting a sense of national belonging, the schools in particular have undergone

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immense changes in the past few years. The number of hours per week of Kyrgyz language has nearly doubled from 2 to 4, murals of Manas (a Kyrgyz epic hero) dominate school hallways, and the availability of state exams in Uzbek was cancelled. Despite these changes, however, the saturation of such nationalist ideologies into the minority populations remains uneven and contradictory. Focusing on the symbolic landscape of Osh, this study argues that that state rhetoric yoking ethnic identity and language actually undermines their homogenizing “Kyrgyzification” project. Instead of encouraging assimilation or multiculturalism, the most commonly perpetuated language ideology rather reminds Uzbeks that any threat to their language represents a threat to their ethnic group as a whole. Unfortunately, this growing sense of minority alienation reverses the expanded inclusiveness Uzbeks experienced in the previous decade. Morgan Liu’s ethnography of Osh, Under Solomon’s Throne, describes how the Uzbek minority in the 1990s prospered and began to perceive themselves as Kyrgyzstani citizens during the 2000s. Unfortunately, the events of 2010 reversed this trend abruptly and entirely, and many well-educated Uzbeks see no future for their children in Kyrgyzstan. My Uzbek host father in particular, whose children all live abroad, said that he hoped they would never return to live in their hometown. Russia is a popular option for many Uzbeks, whereas Europe and the United States offer more prestige, but are far less accessible to the average citizen. This desire for opportunities abroad is reflected in linguistic choices as well. This older generation of Osh residents, raised during Soviet times where ethnic identity was subsumed under a shared Soviet citizenship, largely spoke in Russian as an interethnic lingua franca. Nowadays, the sound of Russian on a public bus or in another public place can turn heads and occasionally even incite censure when the speaker is ethnically Kyrgyz. Thus, the trend of “Kyrgyzification” not only manifests itself in iconography and rhetoric, but in language choice. A language shift is occurring in Osh whereby the younger generations of Kyrgyz speak almost exclusively in Kyrgyz rather than Russian, and Uzbeks for the first time are commonly code switching to Kyrgyz in public spaces. The exception to this rule would be the local elites and intelligentsia, who continue to speak in Russian, as Russian influence continues to dominate in higher education as well as in business. Osh’s current language shift is not merely a steady move from Russian to Kyrgyz, but also involves an intergenerational reversal. When lower and middle-class Kyrgyz and Uzbeks would speak to one another in previous eras, the similarity of the two Turkic languages as well as social exposure of each group to one another afforded Kyrgyz and Uzbeks the opportunity to simply speak in their respective mother tongues. Kyrgyz and Uzbek are still quite distinct in that Kyrgyz from the North often claim not to understand the language at all, whereas southerners can understand it easily due to physical proximity with Uzbek speakers and culture (e.g., television stations in Uzbekistan are easily accessible). Although the languages are both Turkic, about as different as French and Spanish or Dutch and German. If one of the speakers were to linguistically accommodate, then the “majority” ruled: that is to say that the Kyrgyz speaker would speak in Uzbek. The population of Osh until

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the late 1970s and early 1980s was overwhelmingly Uzbek, and only in the last 20 years has the Kyrgyz population begun to become the majority in parts of the city and suburbs. Obtaining official statistics for urban Osh (as opposed to the province, which is also named Osh) is almost impossible, due to the fact that Osh is “supposed” to be Kyrgyz. At the time in which the current state boundaries were delineated, Osh had an “Uzbek” population, but the city ultimately went to the Kyrgyz Republic. Today gerrymandering is a frequently employed strategy to reduce the political impact of Uzbeks in Osh, and official statistics are only recorded for Osh province, which has a clear Kyrgyz majority given that it includes rural areas. Although no doubt linguistic accommodation occurred on both side before the events, it was not until after 2010 that a large number of Uzbeks began speaking in Kyrgyz in public spaces. Yet in addition to this language shift, where the Soviet generations of Kyrgyz knew Uzbek well while the younger Uzbek generations tend to speak better Kyrgyz than their parents, an indexical shift is also occurring within Kyrgyz language itself. Since the southern dialect of Kyrgyz remains heavily influenced by Uzbek phonology and lexicon, the 2010 events (described by some journalists as ethnic cleansing), had the effect of promoting a “cleansing” of the Kyrgyz language of its Uzbek elements. Thus, in a narrow sense, there is a larger scale language shift occurring in Osh, both at the level of Kyrgyz dialect (register choice) and at the level of code (language) choice. At a broader theoretical level, this case study demonstrates how language practices and ideologies work on the one hand to reify the rigidity of ethnic boundaries, but on the other hand also unveil their fragility and permeability. In that sense, this research must delicately negotiate the various models with which we understand ethnic boundaries, for highlighting their constructed nature can appear to discount the very real consequence of ethnic essentialism. McIntosh (2009, p. 47) maintains a similar balance in her work in Kenya, for “Folk representations of ethnic fixity may hide the shifting and socially constructed qualities of ethnicity that contemporary scholars seek to unmask, but. . . the rise of essentialist models of ethnicity. . . has had concrete and sometimes painful effects.” Therefore, rather than relying exclusively on constructivist or essentialist modeling, this study seeks to incorporate the diverse viewpoints from both sides of the spectrum in order to provide a more holistic understanding of how ethnic boundaries can both form and flounder. This research, conducted over a 20-month period in southern Kyrgyzstan between 2008 and 2014, is also uniquely positioned to describe a period of intense change for the city of Osh. This research will analyze the effects of conflict not just on language, but also how the residents of Osh construct their notions of self and Other in the aftermath. In the common understanding of what happened in June 2010, among the people of Osh, the press, and within some of the political science literature, this was a classic case of “ethnic conflict.” Yet many scholars who know Central Asia from a more intimate perspective question the appropriateness of the “ethnic” label (Reeves 2010; Schoeberlein 1994; Megoran 2007). This research addresses the tension between “ethnicizing” the conflict from one point of view, but also weigh conflicting “emic” versus “etic” perspectives. Megoran in particular highlights the

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tendency among Area Studies specialists in the region to foment a “discourse of danger” (Heathershaw and Megoran 2011; Megoran 2000) that can both aggravate locals, who feel reduced to “ethnically primed” individuals as well as ignore more pressing structural problems that usually contribute to conflicts. On the other hand, there is also a danger in ignoring the issue completely, for in spite of nations being etically determined as “imagined” (Anderson 2006), the manner in which such identities are often imagined as essential and innate has very “real” consequences. Wilmsen and McAllister (1996, p. 2) echoes this sentiment in stating that although the premise of primordialism is flawed, “if the phenomena are real in their effects, they are real.” When it comes to truth and the nature of reality, an even greater tension exists when discussing what actually happened during the June 2010 events. The narratives remain highly contradictory depending on the ethnicity of the person who recounts them, and yet the two accounts are only contradictory through their similarity. Although popular coverage of the violence pitted the Kyrgyz population as aggressors against minority Uzbek victims, most Kyrgyz claim that they were equally, or to a significantly higher degree, victims of the conflict. Having been present as a researcher in Osh before, during, and after the conflict offers an unusual opportunity to articulate from a first-hand perspective the consequences of the 2010 events.

1

Monumental Erasure

At the edge of an Uzbek mahalla (traditional Uzbek neighborhood – Fig. 1) on the way to the airport, a sign promoting interethnic friendship once greeted passing cars and pedestrians. The sign was likely placed in this liminal space because it marks a passageway between Osh’s “two cities”: a Soviet-constructed bus stop (Noviy Avtovakzal) and a traditional Uzbek neighborhood. The purpose of the message, reading “friendship” in Osh’s three primary languages (Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Russian), no doubt was intended to encourage interethnic harmony following an eerily similar period of violence that occurred almost exactly 20 years before the June 2010 events. Ironically, it was precisely after the violence of 2010 that the sign was dismantled, and in its place (as of 2014) is an advertisement for making affordable international calls. Perhaps the inclusion of the Uzbek text was deemed too controversial, for many continue to blame language as the lightening rod of the conflict. Many Kyrgyz in particular cited a speech by the Uzbek politician Batyrov, calling for Uzbek to be recognized as an official language, as having incited people to the violent actions in the summer of 2010. However, the sign, which contains two iconic renditions of doves with state flags instead of natural coloring, proves problematic even in response to the 1990 events (Fig. 2). This is because the indexical representation of the Uzbek community, reflected in the dove on the left (see image below), utilizes the flag of Uzbekistan to establish its spatiotemporal contiguity. Therefore, in spite of the sign’s message of friendship, it subtly links Kyrgyzstani Uzbeks to a foreign state – adding fuel to the complaint that Uzbeks who are “unhappy” with their minority status can simply “go home” to Uzbekistan.

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Fig. 1 Uzbek Mahalla (neighborhood) at the base of Mount Solomon in Osh. (Photograph by author, 2013)

Fig. 2 Trilingual Peace Billboard following 1990 Conflict in Osh. (Photograph by author, 2010)

Although this memorial of the 1990 violence was ultimately hidden from view, several other monuments have mushroomed throughout the city following the June 2010 events. One Uzbek acquaintance explained to me his understanding of why so many public funds had been devoted for “decorative” purposes while thousands of homes still laid in rubble. He recounted how some elderly Uzbek man had once told

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the mayor of Osh at the time, Melis Myrzakhmatov, that Kyrgyz were a “people without history” (Wolf 1982). The mayor therefore felt compelled to “prove” that this statement was false, by featuring several prominent Kyrgyz historical figures, all at major entrance points to the city. On the road that leads from the airport into the city, one can find Manas, the hero whose epic exploits rank him as the number one nationalist symbol in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan (Fig. 3). His statue has already replaced an existing female statue in Bishkek (called Erkindik, or Freedom), which some interlocutors interpreted as subtle critique of the female president at the time, Roza Otunbayeva. Erkindik was holding a tunduk, and reportedly some commentators said that a woman is not strong enough to hold it up, implying that a woman is also not strong enough to lead Kyrgyzstan. However, his statue in Osh was supposedly designed to outdo the capital as “the tallest equestrian statue anywhere in the former Soviet Union” (Shishkin 2014, p. 7). Based on its positioning on the road to the airport, a massive Manas is therefore the very first image that any outside observer will have of the city of Osh. If there had lingered any doubts as to the true character of the city, it would quickly be known as quintessentially Kyrgyz. The second major monument to send a clear message to those entering the city, this time from road to Bishkek, is Alymbek Datka. Alymbek Datka, unlike Manas, is a recent historical figure rather than mythic in character. He already has a museum in Fig. 3 Manas statue. (Photo: Yakov Fedorov [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)])

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the park beneath Mount Sulayman dedicated to him, but his legacy of uniting Kyrgyz clans in the nineteenth century is somewhat overshadowed by that of his wife, Kurmanjan Datka, who, by comparison, has the main street of Osh named after her. Kurmanjan already had a monument in the city constructed in her likeness decades ago, is the star of a recent biographical epic film that is the most expensive in Kyrgyz history, and is the face on the 50 som bank note. Yet Alymbek Datka’s monument is far more elaborate than his wife’s, and it occupies a more menacing presence facing anyone who enters Osh via its largest thoroughfare (Fig. 4). Behind him hovers a tunduk, suspended mid-air like an alien hovercraft, as well as a fiercelooking tiger stalking in the foreground. During the violence, much of the rumors in circulation involved an attack from much larger forces coming from outside the city. In particular, Kyrgyz were concerned that an Uzbek army was mobilizing in Uzbekistan and would cross the border on the third day of the violence. Given these rumors, it does not appear to be a coincidence that the three new monuments are all facing outside the city in the direction of a potential intruder. In particular the final monument of Barsbek in the neighborhood of Zapadniy is facing towards the road to Uzbekistan. The proliferation of tunduk is one of the most dramatic instances of the ethnicization of space is occurring in Osh. The tunduk, which is the cross-hatching pattern at the top of a traditional Kyrgyz yurt, is an icon that dominates public space in both Osh and Bishkek. Yet the irony of the sign’s usage is that it evokes the traditional nomadism of Kyrgyz culture, and yet it is employed to claim specifically

Fig. 4 New Alimbek Datka Monument in Osh. (Photograph by author, 2013)

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urban spaces. This proliferation of a nomadic housing structure in the city therefore speaks to, what Megoran (2012) refers to as the profound “insecurity” of Kyrgyz nationalism. Neither of Kyrgyzstan’s two largest cities were historically dominated by a Kyrgyz population; Bishkek has remained under heavy Russian influence while the southern urban centers were primarily populated by Uzbeks throughout the twentieth century. Even the use of “Uzbek” has semantically shifted over time, but eventually the term became applied to town-dwellers who spoke in a Turkic language (as opposed to the nomadic Kyrgyz and Kazakhs). The tunduk as a metonym for the home and nation has the effect of reassigning space, which is precisely why it was chosen as a primary emblem for the flag of Kyrgyzstan (Fig. 5-left) as well as for the recently incarnated “flag of Osh” (Fig. 5-right). Elsewhere tunduks loom as large as flying saucers (e.g., see Alimbek Datka monument above) or as tiny as teacups (e.g., as a decorative emblem found in fences). The most dramatic juxtaposition is perhaps near the Alimbek Datka memorial on the road to Bishkek, where a badly scarred Uzbek neighborhood was partially hidden from view by a wall with yurts on display. The rhetoric of the “common home” that united people of disparate nationalities which was prevalent during the Akayev era (Kyrgyzstan’s first president) appears to have faded, for the yurt is a housing “type” that can only index the belonging of one particular ethnic group within the city of Osh. Meanwhile behind the yurt-covered concrete wall, the slow mahalla reconstruction for many Kyrgyz represents a shameful reminder of the past rather than evoking what the city could become: beautiful and modern. As Liu affirms in his ethnography of Osh, Uzbek neighborhoods (mahalla), though an unmistakable facet of urban life, were often seen as the antithesis of what a “modern” city should be. In fact, the mere utterance of the word “mahalla” evoked contempt among one nationalist Kyrgyz politician, who a mutual acquaintance informed me had warned his assistant “never to utter that word” when she used it to describe reconstruction efforts. The implication was that the word did not belong in a Kyrgyz or Russian sentence. This actually makes sense in that it is such a culturally infused term, which evokes an entire set of spatial and hierarchical relationships that are utterly independent of state power. The use of Uzbek language in any form (even its phonetic inflections) has become an indexical lightening rod in postconflict Osh. Perhaps therefore it is unsurprising that even deep in mahalla

Fig. 5 Flag of Kyrgyzstan (left) and New Flag of Osh (right). (Wikipedia Commons, 2018)

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Fig. 6 “Mother’s Tongue is Mother’s Milk” Banner in Osh Town Center. (Photograph by author, 2012)

spaces where few Kyrgyz dare to tread, one cannot find a trace of written Uzbek. Many Kyrgyz would express shock or dismay when I mentioned living in a mahalla, asking whether or not it was “frightening” to live in such a “dangerous” neighborhood, as if mahalla shared the connotations of the word “ghetto.” (On Adir is one such example). The only sign with Uzbek words belonged to a faded butcher storefront that was tellingly no longer in use. Even Russian nowadays is much more difficult to find in Osh than in Bishkek. The very center of town, called “Aravanskaya” (as of 2013), had a sign strung up over the intersection that reads in Kyrgyz, “My mother tongue – my mother’s milk” (Fig. 6; the sign’s original text was ene tilim – ene su’tu’m). This statement invokes an imagine of wholesome purity, subtly admonishing anyone who might contaminate this purity though language mixing. Russian signs are no longer exhibited in this central space. However, language is but one of several sediments that have recently settled onto Osh’s scarred, yet simultaneously gleaming new surfaces.

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Our Common Cosmopolitan Tongue

Although the language has suffered as far as the quality of education has concerned, Russian will continue to endure as Central Asia’s prestige language due to the tenacious power of local Russo-centric language ideologies. A friend named Altinay in Osh shared an instructive anecdote about how language and power continue to operate in the region, in spite of the fact that Russian no longer occupies the same political status it once did. Altinay said that she had once met a Kazakh mother who lamented that her children did not speak any Kazakh, which remains relatively common in heavily Russified Almaty. Therefore, this mother had a brilliant plan:

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she would send her children to live with relatives in the village for the summer, assuming that by the time they returned they would surely be fluent in Kazakh. The mother returned to the village 2 months later as promised, but much to her chagrin, rather than master their “mother tongue,” the children had instead taught the entire village to speak Russian. It is evident than even though the Soviet era ended nearly two and a half decades ago, the legacy of the highly unequal linguistic marketplace continues to impact everyday code-choices as well as language ideologies. Although census data indicate that in 1999 only one-third of Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were fluent in Russian, nevertheless, Kyrgyz is perceived as “underdeveloped” and under threat. For instance, Pavlenko (2008, p. 210), who cited these census data in her findings, also discussed a program signed into law in 2000 to “revitalize, standardize, and modernize the Kyrgyz language (first and foremost in vocabulary) with the goal of introducing it as the language of administration by 2008.” Pavlenko records a whopping 70% of the population is fluent in Kyrgyz, and yet the language is framed as needing “revitalization.” The modernization component clearly evokes the damage done by Russian language ideologies, which long countered that Russian was the vehicle through which one could receive modernity. This “lack of vocabulary” is indeed a legitimate concern based on the high percentage of loanwords, in particular those used in science and technology. For instance, a popular Kyrgyz film Svet Ake, translated as The Lightening Thief in English, literally means “Electricity Older Brother.” Ake, or older brother, is typically added to male names to denote respect irrespective of actual kinship, but the word svet (electricity) is from Russian. Russian thus remains irrevocably tinged with development and progress, and like Svet Ake, in bringing light to dark, rural corners of the Kyrgyz Republic. Although the tangible effects of this development remain in that svet is (mostly) present, Russian does not persist as a lingua franca in rural areas. Madeleine Reeves recalls an urban-educated teacher placed in the rural South, who upon entering a primary school classroom speaking Russian was alarmed to find that all of the children burst into tears, saying that they were afraid of Russians (DeYoung et al. 2006, p. 191). Therefore, although the language may have faded, the ideologies linking them to vastly unequal power structures linger on in everyday life. In spite of the fact that Russian imposes this rather intimidating semiotic baggage, there are hopeful signs of the language’s continued vitality, particularly in the capital of Bishkek. There on the shady tree-lined promenades young groups of friends link arms, speaking in prose that would make Pushkin proud, and yet their Russian would raise eyebrows or even criticism from a passerby in Osh. In Osh if one asks a Kyrgyz person over 40 where they are from, they might answer Osh at first, but on further prompting will most of the time one will discover the rural origins of their birthplace. In Bishkek, however, the urban roots often extend generations back, and the divide between the recent rural arrivals is much starker. Since this does produce a significant amount of social tension, a recent television program called Dorm (Общага – Russian slang for “dormitory”) addressed this division as well the equally pressing issue of ethnic tensions. The show’s six main characters, three males and three females, mirror the American sitcom Friends with regard to gender dynamics and romantic entanglements, but the show is much more progressive than its American

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counterpart for its diversity. Though the three male characters are all Kyrgyz, one of them, Azamat, is a loveable but hopelessly guileless country bumpkin. One example of how Azamat proves his naiveté is that his slick shaardyk (urban) roommate is able to convince him that thongs are all the rage in male urban fashion and succeeds in getting him to wear one. Of the female characters, one is Kyrgyz, one is Uzbek, and another is Russian. What unites this diverse cast of characters? They all share a dormitory, and they all speak in Russian together. Among the three native languages spoken by the six characters, Russian remains the most ethnically neutral language and allows each character to be seen more as an individual rather than as a Kyrgyz or Uzbek. The series was obviously aimed more at addressing Kyrgyz and Uzbek tensions than Kyrgyz and Russian tensions, which is a minor issue compared to the urban-rural or NorthSouth divide. Yet the show’s characters still pepper their Russian with words and phrases from their mother tongue. Azamat switches languages most often; he is first introduced rambling in Kyrgyz about how he lost his only T-shirt while getting mugged just moments after arriving in Bishkek. An even more startling language choice occurs in the opening scene of the first episode, where a conversation between Tahmina and her mother is shot entirely in Uzbek. The scene was depicted as filmed in Osh. Although Russian subtitles are included in such instances, the indexical intent behind each character’s code choices would be best understood by an urban audience. For instance, Azamat valiantly speaks in Russian even though his accent betrays his rural origins, but he switches to Kyrgyz immediately when speaking to a police officer, who he eventually realizes is from the same village as his family. Chinggiz, the series’ main heartthrob, strums his guitar singing in English. The actor himself lived in the United States, and indeed funding for the show came in part from the US Embassy in Bishkek. Chinggiz addresses his urban peers in Russian, and speaks with his esteemed elders in Kyrgyz. Even the Russian character, Nadya, surprises viewers when she suddenly addresses her future mother-in-law in Kyrgyz. The switches often index a form of respect, or in some instances even humor, but ultimately Russian is a powerfully equalizing force for the characters. Even Azamat, who struggles with the language, is ultimately able to woo sweet Nadya as his future spouse. After all of these decades, Russian has remained the “great and powerful” language its cherished ideologies purport it to be, and yet its promise lies not in its reputed superiority, but in the faded, but still lingering Soviet dream of druzhba narodov – the friendship of peoples.

3

Vanishing Signs

On Navoi Street, past swaying poplar trees and heaps of charred rubble, one can find the sole public remnant of Osh’s trilingual character: a faded butcher advertisement for “meat” [et (Kyrgyz), go’sht (Uzbek), and myasa (Russian) – Fig. 7]. The stand itself has been abandoned, while a still active Uzbek butchery next door has a sign that only displays the Kyrgyz et. Since the June 2010 events

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in which hundreds of people were targeted and killed along ethnic lines, the public presence of Uzbek has been drastically diminished in southern Kyrgyzstan. Yet this process of erasure did not simply happen overnight, but was rather part of a longer trajectory of increasing alienation of Uzbeks from the cultural and political life of Kyrgyzstan. This re-spatialization of Uzbek from the public sphere to private homes is not simply a result of the recent conflict, but rather a consequence of a larger discourse that promotes ethno-national, territorial, and linguistic isomorphism. Thus, until a more inclusive notion of Uzbek citizenship can be promoted within a shared Kyrgyzstani framework, interethnic relations will remain cold, strained, and cordial at best. Language and ethnicity, inextricably bound as a result of the Soviet legacy, continue to be reinforced in local schools as providing a privileged position to members of the titular nationality (Kyrgyz). Meanwhile, the most zealous promotion (or protection) of Kyrgyz language occurs at Uzbeks schools, which find themselves in an awkward and precarious position of trying to maintain their language and culture while proving themselves as loyal Kyrgyzstani citizens. This task is nearly impossible when the current model of citizenship does not include the possibility of ethnolinguistic pluralism. Yet Uzbeks have adapted in a fractally recursive (Irvine and Gal 2000) manner by relegating Uzbek life to their interior mahalla neighborhoods and by displaying Uzbek language in only the most private, inner spaces of local schools. At the entrance of Amir Timur Academy (school names and personal names are pseudonyms), one can find all the trappings of the state present in its full regalia. The flag of Kyrgyzstan, a portrait of the Kyrgyz epic hero Manas, and a variety of Kyrgyz

Fig. 7 Trilingual Butcher Shop Sign in Uzbek Neighborhood in Osh. (Photograph by author, 2012)

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slogans greet the visitor. One would be initially hard-pressed to locate any signs of Uzbek language or culture (Fig. 7). Passed the crimson fanfare that adorns the school’s shining face for any visiting government officials, one can detect small chinks in the armor of ethno-linguistic homogeneity. Upstairs and down a hallway, however, one can find murals that would provoke any Kyrgyz nationalist’s pure outrage. There one can find a painting of Osh’s famed sacred mountain, Mount Solomon, and at its feet lie a miniature army of Central Asian cavalry decked in royal finery. Indeed, the portrait of the band’s leader appears unmistakably to be that of Bobur, the Mughal emperor who was born in Andijan (close to Osh, where he supposedly was raised) and spent his twilight years in India after having conquered large swaths of the subcontinent. Although at the time of Bobur’s reign in the sixteenth century he would not have been labeled Uzbek (a category that did not exist as an “ethnic” concept, but rather a Persian-speaker of Turkic descent), he is now widely appropriated in the post-Soviet context as “Uzbek” in identity. Thus, to find this “Uzbek” leader basking in the shade of Osh’s sacred “Kyrgyz” mountain would seem preposterous, and yet here it was, tucked away in an upstairs hallway of an Uzbek language school. Nearby is another mural with three women in traditional Uzbek costume standing in front of Bobur Theatre – an undeniably Uzbek cultural institution (Fig. 8). As such, while signs of Uzbek language in culture have been erased in public space, the interior of Uzbek schools remains a relatively private one. This description of this privacy as “relative” is due the fact that clear “Uzbek” signs were not explicitly forbidden from public view, but rather tucked away in places that a visiting official would be unlikely to observe and perhaps even obscured (e.g., a coat rack was placed in front of one Uzbek historical mural, which was located down

Fig. 8 Painting of Bobur Theater in Uzbek School in Osh. (Photograph by author, 2012)

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a long hallway on the second floor). This mirrors the organization of mahalla spaces, where the meaningful social interactions occur in hidden, sheltered courtyards away from the prying public eye.

4

Teaching (In)Tolerance

A Kyrgyz second grader timidly approached her teacher for some additional pieces of paper for a class assignment. When the teacher asked her how many sheets she wanted, she hesitated and spoke softly, “bitta” (one). The teacher’s face grew flushed, and with a livid tone she snapped at the girl: “Sen Kyrgyzsingby?” (Are you Kyrgyz?) Thoroughly ashamed, the girl returned to her seat. How could a simple counting word produce such outrage in this mono-ethnic Kyrgyz classroom? Bitta, though used not uncommonly by Kyrgyz in the South, happens to be the word for counting the cardinal number “one” in Uzbek. The standard suffix of Kyrgyz, however, would be bir öö, rather than ta. Thus, as a result of this failure to conform to the standard dialect or the perceived “pure” form of Kyrgyz, for her teacher, the girl’s “mixed” speech became an iconic index of her “corrupted” ethnic identity. Schools in Osh have become the most active agents in reifying or challenging previously murky ethno-linguistic boundaries (Fig. 9). Yet whether or not boundaries become increasingly policed or remain blurred depends on each school’s

Fig. 9 Kyrgyz classroom in Osh. (Photograph by author, 2012)

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language medium of instruction and particular demographics. Kyrgyz teachers and the Kyrgyz government on the whole are most invested in maintaining sharp boundaries, whereas minority language educational institutions (Uzbek and Russian) often ignore or blur ethnolinguistic distinctions. However, the very rhetoric of the state that is used to meld ethnic and linguistic identity together with the intent of strengthening the nation can be simultaneously deployed by Uzbeks to retain their own language and culture, thus never encouraging their social or linguistic integration into Kyrgyz society. The anxiety that Kyrgyz express through instances of correction in the classroom is not primarily geared toward policing the imagined external boundaries that separate Kyrgyz and Uzbek, but rather to police the internal frontiers (Stoler 1997, 2002) of what constitutes a true Kyrgyz. Drawing from the work of German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Stoler (1997, p. 199) paraphrases his notion that “the purity of the community of the community is prone to penetration on its interior and exterior borders.” Educational settings in Osh remain the ideal bastions of protecting these vulnerable, permeable frontiers, precisely because, on the one hand, schools are lumped into ethnolinguistic aggregates and thus serve an emblematic role in representing nationalities, and on the other hand, the public nature of student-teacher interaction allows the opportunity to cultivate a sense of shame among those who do not properly police the frontier. Since formal education is intimately bound with the forming of “imagined communities” (Anderson 2006), classroom observations proved an ideal site from which to observe tensions surrounding language and ethnic identity. Although Anderson presents language as one (if not the) key loci around which nationalist (imagined) sentiments are cultivated, his model does not fit as neatly with former Soviet and multilingual societies like those in Muslim Eurasia. During 20 months of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, this study compared Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek language medium schools to detect how each system’s language ideologies either buttressed or challenged existing models of citizenship. The data collected encompasses 55 of Osh’s 60 primary and secondary schools. Primary, middle, and secondary schools are generally not separate entities in Kyrgyzstan. Thus, all the schools mentioned here include from first grade up to junior year of high school (with the exception of some of the private schools). Twenty-four of which are Kyrgyz, 20 of which are Uzbek, and 10 of which are Russian. The remaining six are private schools that offer courses in some combination of Russian, English, and Turkish. More extensive periods of ethnographic observation lasted for 1 week in six of the schools; three of which were Uzbek, two of which were Kyrgyz, and one of which was a private Russian-medium school. In spite of the linguistic medium of choice, both public and private schools are required to teach the “state language” of Kyrgyz. Kyrgyz is referred to as the “state language,” whereas Russian has been labeled the “official language.” Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyz has gradually been replacing Russian in the political sphere and remains more dominant in the southern capital of Osh as a language of daily communication than in the capital Bishkek, where Russian still tends to dominate in daily life. While the requirement to study Kyrgyz in school has existed

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for some time, its enforcement has come under increasing pressure since the Osh 2010 events in which over 400 people were killed in the span of 4 days. Although the precise causes of the conflict remain highly contested (Megoran 2012, p. 4) with economic disparities rather than ethnic difference underlying its roots (Reeves 2010), the “events” as they are referred to today remain commonly understood (emically and etically) as an “ethnic conflict.” This has shaped the contours of interethnic communication today in Osh, where the “linguistic marketplace” (Bourdieu 1991) has taken a dramatic shift from Russian and Uzbek to Kyrgyz in Osh’s public life. This withdrawal of Uzbek from public life has intimately affected public education, which officially speaking has guaranteed the right of ethnic minorities the opportunity to study in their native tongues. This is an excerpt from Kyrgyzstan’s constitution cited by European Commission for Democracy through Law, citing the “freedom to choose the language for education” (1994, p. 192). Regardless, higher education is no longer available in Uzbek (Vela 2011), exit exams cannot be taken in the language (Toloev 2014), and secondary schools have been shut down (Eurasianet 2013). Meanwhile a profusion of Kyrgyz nationalist symbols has emerged in the wake of the fading public presence of Uzbek. It is the spaces that have the greatest Uzbek presence that have been subjected to the most vigorous campaigns of erasure. In the schools this manifests itself primarily in the form of iconography on display across the walls of hallways and classrooms, but also in more insidious manners via course content and pedagogical practices. Yet this very rhetoric that isomorphically links ethnicity, language, and nation implicitly undermines the very unity that such ideologies explicitly promote. If the Kyrgyz language is integral to the strength of the Kyrgyz nation, then Uzbeks will likewise aim to preserve their schools with their own mother tongue as the medium choice, for their language is also crucial in maintaining group cohesion.

5

Conclusion

Morgan Liu characterizes the city of Osh itself as an “idiom of exchange,” and this spirit of bustling transaction is most epitomized by the city’s bazaar. Stretching across miles of the center of town and in increasing danger of being dismantled entirely since the 2010 events, [The bazaar was largely burned down during June 2010 and the city run by a Kyrgyz nationalist vowed repeatedly that it would not be rebuilt] – but people continued to come and sell their wares there anyway. When I asked a mixed group of students at Osh State University what they thought about the project, they said it would be nice to be a “modern” city with indoor shopping malls rather than maintain its traditionally (now ethnicized) form of commerce. The bazaar brings together Kyrgyz and Uzbeks into the same socioeconomic space unlike other regions of the city. Yet it was precisely during the moment of most intense interethnic strife in 2010 (whether real or perceived) that the bazaar no longer became the natural backdrop of a typical former Silk Road trading hub. Rather it became something other, something undesirable – its thoroughly Uzbek character

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was suddenly shameful and needed to be relocated or hidden from view. The bazaar remains a solemn reminder of the city’s mixed ethnolinguistic past, which is contrary to the aspiring modernity and monolithic history that the city’s shiny new facade of Kyrgyz monuments is intending to express. Uzbeks who want to protect their homes and business from future “pogroms” (how Uzbeks perceive the 2010 events) have retreated up the hill to expand a mahalla far from the city center, in a neighborhood called On Adir (Fig. 10). They can shop there to patron exclusively Uzbek business, while the central bazaar remains chaotically under construction and with an uncertain future, transitioning from bazaar to bizarre. Osh’s linguistic marketplace has taken equally dramatic and bizarre shifts in what may be considered an appropriate code choice in a given context. As this chapter has illustrated, pushes for greater use of Kyrgyz combined with the erasure of Uzbek from public life has created a heightened level reflexivity in language choice. Not only must the language be the correct language, but also the correct register: removed of all traces of contaminated southern Kyrgyz speech. At the same time, making such a strong case for the strength of Kyrgyz language as metonymically tied to the strength of the people has simultaneously undermined the nationalist project of encouraging the language’s wider use. What incentive do Uzbeks have for favoring Kyrgyz if their own identity will dissolve should they choose to abandon their mother tongue? Ultimately the strength of the wider global marketplace trumps the government’s initiative to promote Kyrgyz. As long as Uzbeks can make a better

Fig. 10 Uzbek Butcher Shop in On Adir Neighborhood in Osh. (Photograph by author, 2012)

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living for their families by working in Russia and through mastering Russian, the national language of the former Soviet Union will continue to thrive as the preferable alternative to the traditional tongue of recent nomads. Considering that violence blamed on interethnic tensions has already occurred twice in Osh (1990 and 2010) since the Soviet Union’s dissolution, this does not seem to offer a pleasant prognosis for the city’s future. However, if Uzbeks are made to feel that they belong as well, which only requires a reframing of the rhetoric linking nation and nationality, future conflicts could be much more easily mitigated. The reason that education serves as a primary focal point of this investigation is because schools are the places where children learn what it means to be a citizen of a particular state. How teachers demonstrate this connection for their students will have a tremendous impact on the future, but they can either pull their students into the wider “imagined community” or continuously remind them of their outsider status. Either future is possible, because they both exist simultaneously in Osh today. While violence is often sensationalized by the media as an inevitable boiling over of previously simmering tension, the true battle remains on the ideological front: can a group maintain a separate sense of identity also be treated as equal citizens? As far as Osh is concerned, only time will tell. These ideas matter because they can help us better make sense of the world, and they can also change it for the better. Although this study lacks specific policy recommendations, the act of establishing connections beyond one’s own familiar world can ease tensions a great deal. One of the most heart-warming moments of field work in Osh occurred in an Uzbek school while watching my 18-year-old Kyrgyz research assistant, Nuray, chat with two 16-year-old Uzbek girls. The Uzbek girls earnestly asked Nuray whether she was a student, whether she had siblings, and where she lived, while Nuray responded in a sweetly Kyrgyz-accented Uzbek. Eventually they started talking about boys, and both parties shared a startling revelation. The Uzbek girls said that they thought Kyrgyz boys were more handsome, while Nuray insisted that Uzbek boys were better looking. The three girls looked at one another with shocked expressions and then burst out laughing. They were all teenage girls that shared the same daydreams, but until that moment, neither of them had experienced each other’s very different worlds. It is in these moments that the narcissism of minor differences, that is, emotionally investing in distinctions over shared experience, fades in significance. In other words, to see one’s own image reflected back in another’s visage not only has the capacity to break ethnic boundaries. It reveals that they were never really there to begin with.

References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revised ed.). London: Verso. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DeYoung, A. J., Reeves, M., & Valyayeva, G. K. (2006). Surviving the transition?: Case studies of schools and schooling in the Kyrgyz Republic since independence. Greenwich: IAP.

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EurasiaNet. (2013). Kyrgyzstan: Uzbek-language schools disappearing. EurasiaNet.org, March 6. http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66647. Accessed 25 Jan 2015. Heathershaw, J., & Megoran, N. (2011). Contesting danger: A new agenda for policy and scholarship on Central Asia. International Affairs, 87(3), 589–612. Irvine, J., & Gal, S. (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P. V. Kroskrity (Ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities (i.e. politics), and identities. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press. McIntosh, J. (2009). The edge of Islam: Power, personhood, and ethnoreligious boundaries on the Kenya Coast. Durham: Duke University Press. Megoran, N. (2000). Calming the Ferghana Valley experts. Central Asia Monitor, 5(5). Megoran, N. (2007). On researching “ethnic conflict”: Epistemology, politics, and a Central Asian boundary dispute. Europe-Asia Studies, 59(2), 253–277. Megoran, N. (2012). Averting violence in Kyrgyzstan: Understanding and responding to nationalism (Russia and Eurasia Programme paper, 3). London: Chatham House. Pavlenko, A. (2008). Multilingualism in post-Soviet countries: Language revival, language removal, and sociolinguistic theory. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Multilingual Matters, 11, 275. https://doi.org/10.2167/beb275.0. Reeves, M. (2010). The ethnicisation of violence in Southern Kyrgyzstan. openDemocracy. https:// www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/madeleine-reeves/ethnicisation-of-violence-in-southern-kyr gyzstan-0. Accessed 19 Feb 2015. Schoeberlein, J. (1994). Conflict in Tajikistan and Central Asia: The myth of ethnic animosity. Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 1(2), 1–55. Shishkin, P. (2014). Restless valley: Revolution, murder, and intrigue in the heart of Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Stoler, A. L. (1997). Sexual affronts and racial frontiers: European identities and the cultural politics of exclusion in colonial Southeast Asia. In F. Cooper & A. L. Stoler (Eds.), Tensions of empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois world. Oakland: University of California Press. Stoler, A. L. (2002). Carnal knowledge and imperial power: Race and the intimate in colonial rule. Oakland: University of California Press. Toloev, C. (2014). Kyrgyzstan Ends Uzbek-Language University entrance exams. Transitions Online, May 13. http://www.tol.org/client/article/24298-kyrgyzstan-ends-uzbek-language-uni versity-entrance-exams.html. Accessed 25 Jan 2015. Vela, J. (2011). Kyrgyzstan: Where the restaurants in Osh have new names. EurasiaNet, July 12. http://www.eurasianet.org/node/63866. Accessed 15 Jan 2015. Wilmsen, E. N., & McAllister, P. (1996). The politics of difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolf, E. (1982). Europe and the people without history. Oakland: University of California Press.

Immigration, Language, and Conflicting Ideologies: The Czech in Texas

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Eva Eckert

Contents 1 Introduction: Languages, Maps, and Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Language, Distance, and Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Politics of Non-integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Changing the Maps and Creating a Speech Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Mapping Czech onto the Ideological Space of the American Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Language Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Changing Texas Czech Identity: Displacing the Language and Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The nineteenth-century mass migration to the agricultural regions of the USA created conditions for the formation of cultural enclaves. These enclaves flourished usually for up to three generations before they began to merge with the majority culture. Their speakers exhibited particular attitudes to the home language and nation as well as strategies of maintaining self-identity and defending a parallel sociolinguistic presence. The eventual atrophy of the immigrant language (resulting from cultural marginalization, isolation from the resource culture of the homeland, contact with English or another majority language and the pressures of Americanization) became a signal of assimilation manifested in language variation and change affecting the lexicon, grammar, and stylistic range as well as expansion of one’s social networks. Among the immigrant languages, Czech in Texas represents a particular code of Czech that illustrates these characteristics and outcomes. Tombstone inscriptions in

E. Eckert (*) Department of Social Sciences and Languages, Anglo-American University, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_31

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Texas cemeteries map out the layout of the once prosperous enclave and represent an unusual resource to study primary language data. As artifacts of a vernacular culture, they literally stand for a culture and language that no longer exist. They also attest to the practices of ethnic and religious exclusion, social non-integration, and economic noncooperation that is a survival strategy by social autarchy. Keywords

Cemetery inscription · Identity · Ideology · Immigration · Language contact

1

Introduction: Languages, Maps, and Identities

Mass migration to the agricultural regions of the USA, South America, Russia, and elsewhere occurred mostly during the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It created conditions for the formation of stable cultural enclaves established in agricultural settings. Tombstone inscriptions in Texas cemeteries map out the layout of the once prosperous enclaves and represent an unusual source of primary written language data. Among the information revealed through the tombstone inscriptions, I focus on those documenting the local policy of non-integration practiced by Czech Moravians immigrating to Texas between 1850 and 1920. This de facto practice is evident in the displacement of the Czech language that happened relatively late (mostly from the 1950s on) and fairly quickly. The displacement occurred out of the community rather than within at the time when the community dissipated in the process of a gradual transfer of its members to Texas towns. The program of non-integration that had preceded the transfer is evident, among others, in the paucity of Czech-German and Czech-American narratives of intermarriage, including those engraved into cemetery tombstones. Wright (2014, p. 81) explains the interrelationship between maps, groups, and language ideologies noting that our position in a particular setting and in relation to our neighbors determines our self-identity; maps give us a certain view of ourselves as part of larger groups. This proposition is relevant to the position and identity of Czechs in the homeland and in Texas. From the center of Europe, Czechs and Moravians migrated to the center of Texas where they joined the German-speaking migrants (see also Konecny and Machann 1993; Rippley 1994). The territory settled by Moravians overlaps the larger area settled by Germans two decades earlier (Fig. 1; Baird 1996; Gilbert 1972). The edges and corners of the Moravian land indicate areas into which they moved when the center became congested. While this overlap left linguistic traces in place names, it left very few in intermarriages and tombstone inscriptions (only a handful of Czech-German marriages were recorded among the Fayetteville Catholic church records for 1872–1896, for instance). The tombstones where the lines of script in Czech alternate with German text, documented in several town cemeteries such as Industry or Fayetteville, are rare. Modern place names such as Czech Praha, Moravia, Breslau, Dubina, Rosanky, Roznov, or Nechanitz and German Frederichsburg, Shiner, Ammansville, Frelsburg, Ellinger, or Weimar continue to recall the intra-ethnic pattern of settlement

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Fig. 1 Overlapping settlements of Czech and German immigrants. (Map by Dick Gilbreath, University of Kentucky Gyula Pauer Center for Cartography and GIS; based on a map by S. Baird)

characteristic of the early stages of immigration (see also Praszałowicz 2005). The tombstones also illustrate the subsequent stage of Czech-German ethnic disintegration and socioeconomic dissociation. Comparing maps of 1810 with those of subsequent decades reveals a sudden onset of European “civilization” in Texas. Not a single town as known today appears on a Texas map from 1810. In the 1830s the Spanish opened a colony to immigrants in Central Texas, safely shielded from Indian territories, that became a nucleus of European settlement. Further settlements arose along migration trails (Fig. 2), around fortifications built for colonizers’ protection and in vicinity of Spanish Catholic missions. The Old San Felipe Trail, which connected San Felipe and Bastrop, stimulated heavy German immigration in the 1830s. German immigrants’ participation in conquering the Indian prairie and pushing the American frontier further west was certainly beneficial to how Germans fit into the Texas community at large. Fayetteville was originally settled by Germans with the first Czechs living there in 1854 (see also Fehrenbach 1968). The first German settlers came in the 1830s and 1840s, sponsored by the Prussian noblemen’s society seeking out new markets for Germany and supporting its maritime trade. Thousands of immigrants from Northern and Central Germany were recruited to settle down where Castroville, Fredericksburg, and New Braunfels stand today. The migrant population was diverse in terms of geographical origin, religion,

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Fig. 2 Major routes of trade and immigration. (Map by Dick Gilbreath, University of Kentucky Gyula Pauer Center for Cartography and GIS; after Jordan 1966)

and socioeconomic status and thus very much unlike that of Czech immigrants, which gave them an integration edge and advantage over Czech settlers. By the 1850s when the very first immigrants from Bohemia and Moravia arrived, the eastern, southern, and central regions of the state were sparsely settled by AngloAmericans and European immigrants primarily from Germany. Unlike Germans, Czechs did not establish a single settlement prior to the Civil War, and their earliest grave markers date from the 1860s.

2

Language, Distance, and Cooperation

The triad of language, distance, and wealth are powerful factors determining migration outcomes and predicting the degree of socioeconomic cooperation among communities. The theories of economic geography and its gravity models of spatial interaction account for the practical implementation of this idea. The basic model of

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economic gravity explains the determining factors of cooperation through the concept of “attractors” and “detractors.” The factors causing mutual attraction are closeness of languages, legal systems, religions, or cultural habits. The detractors are represented by the actual geographic distance and various physical and institutional impediments to cooperation. The empirical and quantifiable relevance of these factors has driven research in economic development focused on cooperation. For instance, Egger and Lassmann (2012) claim that a shared language increases cooperation on average by 44%, and Fidrmuc and Fidrmuc (2014) estimated that learning the partner’s language can boost cooperation by 30–60%. However, the gains achieved through attractors can be curtailed if the detractors of linguistic, cultural, economic, or social distance dominate. Thus, the proximity of the Czech and German communities in Texas, higher income per capita in the German communities, and Czechs’ proficiency in German would imply that the Czech community benefitted from socioeconomic attraction, and the negative role of geographic distance was small. In theory, Czechs and Germans in Texas were bound to cooperate. In contrast, the potential for the Czech-American cooperation would be much weaker. Had the Czech community taken advantage of the favorable attractors, its socioeconomic development and social integration could have been considerably faster. In Texas, Czech immigrants positioned themselves well inland, in the immediate neighborhood of German speakers, and on the relatively fertile blackland ideal for the purpose of intensive farming (Kulhavy 2000). Despite geographical proximity and Czech Moravians’ familiarity with German as the school-imposed and the official administrative language, the distance of Czechs from Germans was perceived in both communities as culturally, socially, and economically immense (see also Hannan 1993; Jeleček 2002). This finding, confirmed by tombstone data on kinship and also by ethnic press, is unexpected. Also, maintenance of the distance appears counterproductive to the mutual benefit of socioeconomic cooperation yielding advancement and stability. These factors indicate that the Czech immigrants pursued not only economic success, which implied ownership of fertile land, but also the vision of freedom and independence. They yearned to free themselves from German sociopolitical dominance, military service, and economic bondage to their overlords they had experienced in Moravia. Texas represented their chance of independence so that they could realize their nationalistic aspirations and those of exclusive land ownership (see also Řepa 2003). Although the factor of religious freedom was of an utmost relevance to Moravian Brethren, for Moravian Catholics an unrestrained practice of religious faith seemed self-evident. However, this expectation collided in Texas with the Protestant majority (of mostly Anglo-American Baptists and Methodists and German Lutherans. The immigrants transferred to Texas the essential aspects of their European identity characterizing them in terms of ethnicity, religious faith, and agricultural setting (see also Anderson 1993). Unlike the national self-confidence of German-speaking immigrants related to German Confederation at home, that of Moravian immigrants was constructed only in Texas within a new community representing the homeland. It may seem as a paradox that they did not acquire an American identity until the time they left their community in the second half of the twentieth century.

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The immigrants had not advanced further out from Central Texas until the end of the nineteenth century when the soil to farm was all used up in the nucleus location. In the 1860s through the 1890s, they chose to settle with other immigrants from the Czech homeland in order to reinforce the practices of collective farming and sharing, as well as religious and cultural habits (see Kulhavy 2000 for relevant maps). With time, they perceived certain geographical spaces in Texas as well, and, at that time, they clarified their boundaries with respect to German speakers, Americans as well as Czechs living in the neighboring states. In Texas they endowed the Czech space with a particular ideology of language, land, and nationhood. They emphasized intentional cultivation of the home language through engagement of community members in amateur theater and opera, local Czech press, religious practices, and music bands. Traditional values attached to language, culture, and religion served to exclude German and English speakers and prolong non-integration of their community.

3

The Politics of Non-integration

In sum, the trade-off between cultural sustainability and economic prosperity was biased in favor of the former. A powerful detractor delaying Moravians’ integration into the American culture was not knowing English and perceiving the cultural, religious, and economic distance between them and the Americans as a chasm. But that they distanced themselves from German speakers in Texas is not readily comprehensible. Language familiarity is a critical factor inducing integration and cooperation, and most Czechs from Moravia were familiar with German, which could have served as an early bridge for them into the American space. However, in the Moravian homeland, Germans and Austrians were economically in the position of overlords entitled to an upper social status, access to which was closed off for the Moravian village population of the emigration regions. Social status of subordination thus served as the detractor of cooperation and remained powerful even in Texas where the social and economic distance automatically decreased; Texas was well established by then as a land characterized by democracy and free-trade capitalism. The refusal to associate with Germans was a powerful obstacle that prevented ethnic cooperation in Texas. This distance grew even larger through mutual unwillingness to acknowledge different religious affiliations (i.e., mostly Lutheran among the Germans and Catholic or Brethren among the Moravians). When the Moravians finally established their own parallel institutions, they did so emphatically through national and religious attachments. Nationalistic attitudes and religious affiliation formed boundaries of the community and determined the shape of individuals’ social networks (Milroy 1987; Milroy and Gordon 2008). They also served as the factors rationalizing an explicit selfexclusion from potential local and statewide networks of economic cooperation. The situation did not change until external factors of historical events (such as WWII), infrastructure of roads, and attractions of the city life (such as to study

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and develop professionally) became viable options attracting immigrant descendants away from the community. These lowered the geographic barriers distance, which motivated the younger generation to change the strategy and enter the Anglo-American community in Texas cities.

4

Changing the Maps and Creating a Speech Community

Czech reached Texas through the Moravian dialects that led rather insular lives within their respective isoglosses of rural regions of northeastern Moravia until they came into daily contact in Central Texas. Despite a presupposition of regional and ethnic homogeneity, the Moravian immigrants shared neither a dialect nor an ethnic identity although they came from neighboring regions in Moravia. Their identity was local and related to regional dialects, dress, and traditions until the Czech national revival reached into Moravia in the late nineteenth century (Eckert 2003). For that reason and to be able to form a well collaborating community in Texas, the immigrants first had to come to terms with their national identity. The designation “Texas Czechs” refers to Moravian ethnic groups unified in Texas through the shared landscape within which they formed a single speech community. They agreed upon being unified not only through the agricultural setting but also their respect for standard literary Czech that had been elevated in Bohemia to the status of national language already by the middle of the nineteenth century. Culturally they were aligned much more closely with the distant Moravia in Europe than with the American cultural progress before WWI. Their “wealth” was used to attract more migrants (and their labor) from Moravia rather than to benefit from the capital abundant in the USA. This strategy tied the Moravians to intensive farming (in contrast to extensive farming of the Texas cowboys that was more capitalintensive). The Moravians were moving into Texas by large groups drawing from particular homeland villages. For instance, 10% of the population of the village of Mniší emigrated already before the Civil War, and almost 25% came from Mniší by 1900, which depleted its population down to mere 454 individuals in 1900. Twenty-five percent of the population (i.e., 1,422 individuals) emigrated from the nearby town of Frenštát by 1914. Similar proportions have been recorded for the villages of Bordovice, Tichá, Vlčovice, and others (Šimíček 1996, pp. 36, 87–89; Šimíček 1999). The settlement pattern in Texas was shaped by massive population transfers, and as a result, as many as 220 Moravian families lived in the town of Fayetteville by 1904. Hostyn counted 50 families already in 1869 and 115 families in 1939 (Naše dějiny [Our History]. 1939, pp. 243–253). The town of Ellinger had 1200 mostly Moravian inhabitants by 1890 although it was established by German immigrants 30 years earlier. In 1858 German Lutherans established High Hill into which Moravian families immigrated already in 1860 (Lotto 1902; Fayette County 1996, p. 67). Moravian immigrants gradually expanded out from their original locus by adding land to their property rather than subdividing it when they were in need of sharing the land within the family.

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Mapping Czech onto the Ideological Space of the American Nation

At the time of their arrival, immigrants became targets of the Know Nothing movement of Protestant nativism active throughout the nineteenth century and directed mainly against Catholics (Daniels 1997: vii–viii). Policy of the Know Nothing movement was taken on by the American Party in 1854, when it proposed a 21-year minimum stay in the USA to qualify for citizenship, national offices being held only by Americans as the “native born citizens,” and restrictions on Catholics or Protestants married to them not being eligible to run for any office. By the end of the nineteenth century, specific actions were directed against speaking and teaching foreign languages – in particular, German was the most visible and representative of the foreign languages in the USA (especially in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas). Teachers of German, German parochial schools, and German speakers per se experienced accusations and attacks since speaking foreign languages was considered anti-American and disloyal. For instance, in Nebraska a German teacher was tried in 1919 for teaching German to a minor (below 14 years of age), which was considered a particularly vulnerable age, detrimental to one’s psychological growth due to exposure to non-American concepts (Leibowitz 1974). German immigration peaked in the 1880s, while Czech immigration continued until the 1920s. Toward the end of that period, immigration flow experienced a profound conflict with the American ideology of national unity that required English fluency and assimilation for the sake of achieving civic homogeneity understood as the foundation upon which to solidify the American nation. The only language supposedly capable of rendering its unique political concepts was English. The Naturalization Act of 1906 required aliens seeking naturalization to speak English; the relationship between languages and thought was understood in the folk linguistic theory as deterministic (Mertz 1982). Texas public schools followed the English-only law since 1918. The ideology of American English as the exclusive channel of cultural awareness and the road to citizenship was overtly prioritized. Americanization emphasized the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, teaching American history and government in English, and the restriction on teaching foreign languages. Speaking in a foreign language in public was discouraged. Immigrants became visible and vulnerable. Across the USA teaching German was proscribed in all educational institutions, and in many states it was prohibited even to speak German in public. In comparison to Germans, the numbers of Czechs were insignificant. Yet, it was Czechs who sought to build an ethnocentrically oriented nation within the American national context and whose national awareness peaked in Texas. Americanization of the 1920s conflicted head on with building ethnic nations locally and with alternative lifestyles of immigrants practicing their traditions in agricultural settings. Leibowitz (1974) notes that the Language Act of 1920 followed recommendations of the Survey Commission directed against foreign language schools in Hawaii that, in sum, accused such schools of putting loyalty to the USA in jeopardy through exposure to foreign ways of thinking, behaviors, and cultural traditions (Leibowitz 1974,

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p. 14). At that time, the Department of Education limited foreign language education to 1 h a day and prescribed courses, textbooks, as well as teacher qualifications such as the ability to speak, write, and read English and know American history (Leibowitz 1974, p. 24). Practicing one’s existence in a cultural niche through particular traditions, habits, and religion and sustaining its ethnic and national networks and institutions exposed Moravians in Texas to criticism and mockery, especially for continuing to live in seclusion and not speaking English well. But the fact is that they hardly had to and could have built settlements based on a non-American infrastructure because their non-integration had so far been tolerated. They had their language space delineated and worshipped God, worked the fields, attended schools, banked, schooled their children, and all else necessary to sustain their speech community in Czech. The hysteria directed against Germans did not spill over to the Czech community in Texas where the farms kept expanding and farming remained the occupation for a great majority of immigrant descendants even in the interwar years. As a result of the pressure to mingle and the need to escape notice, German settlers became urbanized already by the turn of the nineteenth century, as census reports and cemetery data indicate. This social strategy is documented by tombstone inscriptions. For instance, in the town cemetery at Ellinger, 60% of inscriptions were in German in the 1880s, while Czech inscriptions accounted for 12%. In the 1920s, half of the inscriptions were in Czech but only 2% in German (Janak 1997). At this point, providing numerical comparison of the population numbers and mobility is helpful and necessary. In 1850 Texas had 213,000 inhabitants, in 1860 it had 604,000 inhabitants, and in 1900, it had 3,050,000 (Wikipedia 2016). In 1880, 2,700 “Bohemians” and 35,000 Germans lived in Texas, out of which over 10,000 owned farms and more than half lived in towns (10th Census 1880, Population, v. 1: 847). Twenty years later 23,000 Texas Czechs (who had at least one parent born in Bohemia or Moravia) practiced agriculture and only 120 of them lived in cities larger than 25,000 inhabitants. According to a 1927 report, over 77% “Bohemians and Moravians” were engaged in farming and accounted for 3.2% of the total of American farmers. This proportion was higher than for the English, Scots, or Germans. The number of Germans declined to 157,000 between 1900 and 1930 (i.e., 6.5% of the total Texas population; Jordan 1966, p. 54). In 1930, 49,000 Czechs and more than three times as many Germans lived in Texas (judged by the “country of origin”), out of which 60,000 Germans were urban and 94,000 rural, compared to 6,000 urban and 43,000 rural Czechs (15th US Census 1930: v. 2, Population).

6

Language Contact

Language contact is a complex phenomenon whose individual strains, intensity, and onset of effect are difficult to disentangle. Languages of immigrants overtly refer to people with whom they have sustained contacts. Immigrant languages thus reveal the imperfect and ordinary state of a language. They model real languages that feed

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onto lexical and grammatical resources of their neighbors and leak out into them at the same time. Tombstones in Central Texas document Czech immigrants’ language over the period from the 1860s to the 1960s. My inscription data number about 200 tombstones, divided among Czech, Czech hybrid, and English, collected over 30 or so Czech cemeteries in Central Texas rural regions, all marked by a Catholic or a Brethren church. Only with subsequent decades was the periphery of the enclave moved further to the north (where the town of West was established) and other directions as well. Texas Czech thus represents a particular contact language that originated due to the immigrants’ mobility unto a new sociocultural context. The inscriptions that go back to the 1860s spread over the Texas Czech territory where they record language contact and shift. The eventual atrophy of the contact language resulted from its cultural marginalization, isolation, and distance from the resource culture of the homeland, ongoing contact with English, and the pressure of assimilation. It is manifested in borrowing words and grammar patterns, language mixing and hybridization, and eventually a shift (Fig. 3). Tombstone inscriptions go beyond the ritualistic language one typically encounters in tombstones. Semantic data engraved consist not only of dates, names, and epitaphs but also personalized

Fig. 3 The inscription seems to be entirely in Czech but a closer inspection shows that the dating follows an English (or German) convention, and so does the name, which does not record the child’s gender by an ending on the last name Ginzel. The standard epitaph contains dialectal features of regional pronunciation (i.e., vocalic shortness, pronominal morphology in nasˇa for nasˇe and phonetic spellings)

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biblical verses and greetings. Vernacular texts and features of Moravian dialects predominate over formal features of standard Czech. Such usage contrasts with the polished language of immigrant press that was edited with care to eliminate dialectal pronunciation and lexical items (Eckert and Hannan 2009). Unlike Moravian regional dialects, the immigrants saw Czech as a multifunctional code that gave a shape to their nation and invested considerable resources into cultivating formal Czech in immigrant press, teaching, preaching, and formal speaking. The texts in immigrant press manifested contact of several language codes (i.e., Moravian dialects, standard Czech, English, and German), and it was within the editors’ power to determine the final shape of the printed word and the degree to which these codes were left to interact. In the inscriptions it is not unusual that formulaic ritualistic openings and closings interlay with dialectal pronunciations retelling biblical verses. However, the narrative content specifying reasons for migration or death, developing kinship in detail, and personalizing epitaphs yielded to the vernacular. Even if the style was meant to sustain the ritualistic norm established over several generations for the purpose of venerating ancestors (Cox et al. 2010, p. 8), the vernacular writing embellished the style through idiosyncratically chosen lexical items, oddly positioned diacritic marks, and phonetic spellings (Figs. 4 and 5). The ever-present contact with English is uncontested. Except for the earliest tombstones raised from the 1850s to the 1870s, all inscriptions contain traces of English. With an exception of a couple of tombstones engraved fully in English in the 1960s (and there were many more from the subsequent decades), they were inscribed in Czech with English lexical and grammatical patterns mixed in Figs. 6 and 7. They also revealed the intention of recording Czech ethnicity. Their authors seemed to take advantage of stone permanency and visibility to maintain historical memory and continuity of Czech cultural identity. Once the immigrant quota took hold and immigrants stopped arriving, the only innovation in the immigrants’ language happened through English. Czech showed stable internal variation rather than gradual attrition until the 1930s on average. It was only in the 1920s that Czech ceased renewing itself through authentic Moravian Czech. The Czech hybrid was characterized by lexical borrowings (that were incorporated grammatically to diverse degrees), English morphosyntax of names and dates but Czech syntax in the narrative content. Variation in the inscription language reflected the actual variation among usages of individuals who used English place names, idioms, locally relevant vocabulary items, and administrative phraseology and English to access the domains of law, higher education, and trade that were located outside the Czech community space. The most important breakthrough that came in the 1930s was that those in the productive age started trading farming for city living. Demise of Czech thus happened when immigrant descendants lived in American Texas towns where they found Czech useless and irrelevant. Although their shift to English was detected in the cemetery inscriptions, it happened outside of the rural community (Janak 1997).

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Fig. 4 The inscription excludes almost all the vocalic length markers, which is likely a reflection of dialectal shortness

Fig. 5 The inscription is in standard Czech and does not stray away from it and uses all declensional endings correctly. However, the text layout follows an American standard design that arranges the information into parallel texts describing the father and the mother

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Fig. 6 Minimal text is entered onto this tombstone, engraved in 1961 and 1969. In contrast to the stone on its right, it records all the data in Czech (and places the diacritic signs correctly). The chalice stands for the Moravian Brethren faith

7

Changing Texas Czech Identity: Displacing the Language and Land

To become “fully American” and benefit from the opportunities opened to rising opulence, immigrants had to give up their social networks and foreign languages and refrain from using them in public and master American political concepts in the process of learning English. Transformation of local Czech identity to American identity (i.e., that from foreign Catholic farmers ignorant of the grand American ideals of democracy, freedom, and individual success to true Americans) happened through the process of required assimilation. Imposition of Americanization and immigrant quota sealed the Czech community in time and space since very few additional immigrants joined it in the 1920s and later (see also Carpenter 1927). Growing ossification of Texas Czech could never be turned back after that. Texas Czech sounded in the settlements for as long as people had worthwhile reasons to remain on their farms. But after WWII and agricultural restructuring of the American South, very few did. The fact that the Czech immigrants committed themselves to long-term cultivation of Texas land – and this contribution was acknowledged – enabled them to be eventually accepted as American citizens. The community finally began to integrate into the Anglo-American spaces, as it was long expected to. When Texas Czechs mostly of the third and fourth generation stopped relating to the space as only theirs

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and entered the geographical context of American Texas, they naturally ceased to maintain the language attached to the Texas Czech space as well. The Texas Czech community was sustained for over a century. The immigrants continued migrating into rural areas in high numbers until after WWI. They remained clustered over a relatively small territory in settlements where they farmed on small lots they passed on to their children (Fig. 7). Individuals used their Czechlish up to the middle of the twentieth century. Rather than turning bilingual, the community used its Czech with English mixed in until the middle of the twentieth century when its members were mostly elderly and its life cycle had exhausted. Depopulation of the community went hand in hand with a transformation from Czech monolingualism to English monolingualism that marked true Americans. After WWII the inscriptions were authored or commissioned increasingly by individuals returning occasionally to the settlements to celebrate Czech religious holidays and to bury their parents and grandparents. Their Czech was naturally overpowered by English of their new neighborhoods and social networks to the degree that, as the stones attest, they inscribed Czech texts without

Fig. 7 Czech settlements. Distribution of Czech Settlement in Texas: Each dot represents a KJT (Czech Catholic Union of Texas) society chartered between 1889 and 1988 or an SPJST (Slavonic Benevolent Order of the State of Texas) lodge organized between 1897 and 1977. Since almost all Texas Czech communities had a KJT society, an SPJST lodge, or both, this should be a good indication of the distribution of Czech settlement in Texas. (Map by Dick Gilbreath, University of Kentucky Gyula Pauer Center for Cartography and GIS; after Janak 1991)

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understanding their literal meanings. The towns and farms were gradually abandoned since the core of the community consisting of the church, school, and farm ceased to function as its adequate support. My data on gradual abandonment of traditional Czech settlements come also from immigrant press reporting on priests leaving and schools closing and from readers’ letters bemoaning instability of families and a lack of intergenerational transfer of Czech language. Particular features of cemetery texts and tombstones illustrate the ongoing non-integration. The inscriptions demarcate the eventual language shift characterized by an increase of English borrowings, stylistically flat texts, and compressed textual content. Tombstones reflect language atrophy and provide a cultural context emblematic of individuals’ integration into American social networks. The descendants’ social networks reaching into the homeland weakened until they became irrelevant. Czech marked the territory and defined the immigrants’ identity in Texas for as long as it was the language of the community. Comparison of the early and late tombstones and texts reveals a turnover in the type of stone from simple limestone to stately marble that affected how long and detailed the inscriptions could have been and who was capable of carving them. Czech dialectal and phonetic texts were replaced by standardized and predictable English texts in which Czech features in spelling, names, and epitaphs occurred irregularly and merely with a symbolic meaning. Inscriptions estimated as authored by fourth-generation descendants suggest that their authors were unable to untie Czech and English in the way they used words and syntactic patterns. Czech and English became fused, and English eventually dominated as the matrix language of the inscriptions (MyersScotton 1997) where suffixes marking dates, names, and places were misplaced, grammatical agreement ignored, prepositions omitted, word boundaries obliterated, and words decomposed. English phrases were translated literally, and Czech words and even epitaphs transferred from inscription to inscription, regardless of their context, with the result of mismatching age, status, or gender. Despite compromises in grammar and spelling, inscription authors seemed obstinate about writing in what they understood to be Czech, motivated by parents’ last wishes and their own image of Czech identity. But they used Czech words, names, diacritics, and suffixes to decorate the stone and to mark Czechness rather than as features integral to Czech grammar. It is impossible to draw a line between the processes of intra-language ossification and the simultaneous external exposure to English, since the 1950s increasingly through the media. Czech migrants’ image of bounded spaces marked by in-depth farming of small fields, churches, and cemeteries gradually dissolved and was replaced by that of unbounded Texas farmland and pasture, English fluency, and American citizenship. They began to enter the global American context and reformulate the mental image they had of their geographical niche (Wright 2014, p. 91). In sum, Czechs and Germans in Texas could have cooperated intensively. In contrast, the potential for the Czech-American cooperation was weak from the start. In addition to that, the Czech community in Texas challenged the natural process of integration via intensive cooperation and exchange with the close German neighborhood. They sacrificed their potential economic gains to cultural and religious

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integrity and the sense of collective independence. The Czech Anglo-American cooperation evolved at a slow pace and was not used as a substitute for the CzechGerman cooperation. The immigrants imposed a new shape onto the land and prairie of the Texas interior, marked out their fields, and laid out the cemeteries to root down their existence. Blank maps of the beginning of the nineteenth century were gradually filled with new toponyms by its end. Over the second half of the twentieth century, migration out of the agricultural regions changed Texas maps once again. Today the place names they record on maps refer mostly to cemeteries.

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Brendan Gunn

Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ulster as “Ireland” and “the United Kingdom” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialect as Ideological Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The DUP and Ulster-Scots Pronunciation Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialect Regions and Associated Pronunciations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The “Good Friday Agreement” and a New Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The “Flag Protest” and Associated Linguistic Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sinn Fein and the Articulation of National Aspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Irish Language and Ulster-Scots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Present Day: The “Fleg” Dispute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The geopolitical situation in Northern Ireland is that six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster are contained within the United Kingdom while the other three lie within the Republic of Ireland. Two existential states exist within the geographical area of Northern Ireland: one is avowedly British while the other determinedly Irish. A set of dialect variations operate in this phenomenological contrast to express which identity a speaker adheres to. More recently linguistic factors in the political situation have returned to the fore. They manifest themselves in two ways: 1. A referencing back to Ulster-Scots as a basis for a Protestant British state (to the extent that classes in Ulster-Scots are regularly held in pro-British areas in opposition to the rise in usage of Irish Gaelic and the large numbers of people learning the language which is seen by many as a threat to the British character of Northern Ireland). B. Gunn (*) Dialogue/Dialect Coaching Services, Belfast, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_42

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2. A denigrating of the dialect of pro-British speakers, e.g., “raising” of “open front vowels,” is seen as part of a social group which is characterized as reactionary and belligerent: the factor is evident in the realization of the word “flag” as “fleg” to the extent that strident pro-British advocates are given a derogatory label of “fleggers” (referring to their constant use of the Union Flag as an emblem of loyalty to the crown and the British state). This paper will outline these existential linguistic phenomena in terms of the historical background to their constituents and the contemporary context in which they operate. Keywords

Language and national identity · Language and social standing · Politics · Northern Ireland

Your face, voice, name will tell those master of such scholarship, as the veins of a pebble readily encapsulate an exact geology, the lava flows, the faults, the glacial periods, the sediments which formed and grip us locked and rocked in the cold tides that beat on these disastrous shores. (John Hewitt “For Any Irishman”)

Northern Ireland is a portion of the island of Ireland but is politically contained within the United Kingdom (Fig. 1). It consists of six out of the nine counties of the ancient province of Ulster. A portion of the Northern Ireland population wishes to retain this link to the United Kingdom, which is the status quo at the time of writing. Another part of the population wishes to leave the United Kingdom and become unified with the remaining 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. These opposing views create strong reactions and radical, often violent, assertions of identity. Many of these assertions are obvious in the display of semiotic emblems such as flags, marching bands, and sporting traditions which hold great significance for different communities. Less immediately recognizable are linguistic patterns which those strongly connected to these different identities demonstrate in their speech. These patterns form a framework around an existential expression of either “Northern Ireland” which is a territory of the United Kingdom or “the north of Ireland” which is an annexed region of the Republic of Ireland. The existential constructions underpinning such descriptions show two entirely different perspectives of the same objective geographical area and form a particular political entity for a speaker according to the strength of their perception of what these fields, mountains, rivers, and coasts actually mean to them. The phenomenological spaces created in the dual perspectives are unquestioned by their adherents

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Fig. 1 The United Kingdom. (Wikipedia “fair scholarship usage permission)

and go as far as phonological features of Ulster dialect systems to maintain each existential “truth.” In this chapter, I will concentrate on dialect features which can be identified as markers for particular political outlooks at the polar ends of opinion. I will also trace their change over time according to developing circumstances in the region. For the majority of speakers, these features may or may not be brought into their speech systems in various degrees and so might be categorized as being less important to them than those at either end of the political spectrum. To place the relevant dialect features in context, it is necessary to briefly outline Ulster history and the resulting demographics that feed into phonetic identity markers.

1

Ulster as “Ireland” and “the United Kingdom”

Following an event known as the Flight of the Earls in 1607, the ancient Gaelic order in Ireland was destroyed. Under King James the 1st, the area of Ulster began to be colonized by settlers from both England and Scotland. Speech patterns brought to Ireland by these settlers mixed with the old Gaelic language to create a particular dialect system showing influences from each new wave of people. Particularly strong were (and are) Scottish pronunciations of English, known as “Lallans” or Lowland Scots. These pronunciations have definite dialect features such as:

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1. Retroflexion (curling of the tongue tip backward from the alveolar ridge behind the upper teeth). 2. Palatalization (slight retraction of the tongue tip toward the hard palate during articulation of “s” giving a sound often represented by “sh” in orthography). Connections between these features and those of the Scotch-Irish along the Appalachian Mountain range still survive from the period when Ulster Presbyterians set out for the New World. The origins of these features began with James the first granting a charter to the liveried companies of London in 1610 to form “The Honourable The Irish Society.” This led to the prefix of “London” being attached to the old Gaelic settlement of “Derry” or “Doire” (the Gaelic word for an oak grove). The emerging city was officially known as Londonderry and the title spread to the surrounding county. To this day the city has two identities coincident with the binary description of the six counties of Ulster mentioned above. A person can live in “Derry” and therefore be perceived as Irish Nationalist and Catholic or in “Londonderry” and be perceived as pro-British and Protestant. In actual fact, the majority of people in the region from both communities refer to “Derry,” and it is seen as making a political point to put an extra stress (in terms of physiological breath output) on the two syllables of “London.” Subsequent to the London companies’ annexation of County Derry (evident in such place names as Draperstown), many more settlers arrived, and after 1640 this influx accelerated with more and more Scottish planters coming to the fertile soils of Ireland’s northern territories. A final victory by the Dutch King William the third over James the first cemented the Protestant identity of England and its colonies, including Ireland. The flood of immigrants after the decisive Battle of the Boyne (river) in 1690 created the Ulster identity which continues to modern times. The resentment of the native population to the loss of their lands and rights also permeated the country and has echoes in the phono-semantic phenomenological constructions accepted by differing groups within the area as unassailable “truth.” The subjective nature of “truth” finds validation in social phenomena such as that suggested in this connection between land and speaker. Phenomenologists refer to “signification” as the output of phonology and syntax for a particular speaker which contains inference and meaning within the actual sound chosen for expression. These significations can also be referred to as codes of identity and are organizing devices for the navigation of social life as understood by the speech community sharing the codes. The phenomenologist Richard Lanigan outlines this process when he says: The circularity of expression and perception is assumed as a reversible semiotic of livedexperience. With respect to language. . .one is aware of this fact in the experience of speaking. This is to say, language is a symbolic code which is used by man to express his perceptions . . . which reflect(s) his value orientation towards a situation. This value orientation can become a structure of social direction which is contained, then, in the possible meaning of language. (Lanigan, R., Speaking and Semiology, Mouton, The Hague. 1972. (p. 175))

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We have already looked at a few of the features which are included in existential speech in Northern Ireland and carry the import of these significations for various speakers. We will now expand on the idea to see how a semiotic “grammar” operates to establish and maintain the phenomenological “truth” for its users.

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Dialect as Ideological Code In the sociolinguistic literature, there is frequent reference to speech “codes” which reflect a speaker’s existential identity within society. Many of the factors influencing the actuality of the codes are obvious – social stratification, regional background, and personal choice. The additional factor of choice from an ideological perspective adds another dimension to an understanding of how physical speech connects to abstract constructions such as subjective truth for a speaker. Merleau-Ponty. (Merleau- Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge Keegan Paul, London, 1962. (p 178))

refers to this process when he remarks that: . . .words, vowels, phonemes are so many ways of ‘singing’ the world, and . . . their function is to represent things not, as the naïve onomatopoeic theory has it, by reason of an objective resemblance, but because they extract, and literally express, their emotional essence. (In the case of existential descriptions of Northern Ireland, this notion has expanded to include the context of organizing actual geographical spaces into an ideological entity)

There is a linear relationship therefore between the circumstances of a speaker learning their native language style and the form their speech takes after life experience and choices are brought into play. Simply put this happens as (Fig. 2): So, then, the articulatory “hardware” we all share as human beings along the upper reaches of the pulmonary system from the trachea to the oral and nasal cavities is programmed with existential “software” to project the subjective reality emanating from the brain of each speaker. How, then, does this manifest itself in the dual identities of Ulster? We have already mentioned two phonetic processes (retroflexion and palatalization) which are part of the pro-British “code.” Such features are specific to the idea of choice as signals of affiliation, that is to say, we are concentrating on the third aspect of a speaker’s sound system, personal choice, as the element which defines the code of political expression. In other words, we must identify speakers who have adopted Language

Dialect

Idiolect

the basis of a child’s spoken system according to country or speech community

variations from the standard base of a language shaped by region, historical demography and community choices

personal phonetic choices made by an individual speaker and integrated into their speech system



Fig. 2 Linear progression of language



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phonetic features of places most strongly associated with their ideological base even though such features are not part of their original dialect system. In order to do this, we will look at the polar edges of political opinion in Ulster. These can be identified in two political parties – the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the independent Ireland aspirant Sinn Fein (SF). Reflections of current political situations appear to mirror the implication of the adopted identity code for those speakers using it. In the case of the DUP, the articulation of Ulster-Scots features for non-Ulster-Scots speakers appears to have diminished as the influence of the party’s founder, Ian Paisley, an Ulster-Scots dialect speaker, waned. For SF a transition over time from a power base in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland to Belfast in the north exhibits a reduction in features associated with southern Irish dialect sounds. Temporal changes can be identified in political patterns then, and over the course of an agreed peace between the different aspirations for the area of Ulster, a slight neutralization of the codes can be identified. However, as political tensions were raised by various issues, a re-emergence of code identities can be charted, albeit the codes undergo natural adaptations over the course of political developments until we reach the current situation in which one particular dialect feature, contained within pronunciation of the word “flag,” has become a social marker for a political viewpoint.

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The DUP and Ulster-Scots Pronunciation Choices

As mentioned above, two particular phonetic forms are strongly associated with Ulster-Scots dialects and are historical artifacts installed into speech during the plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century. Initially identified with a rural constituency where Ulster-Scots dialects have their strongest base, urban members of the DUP adopted various degrees of retroflexion and palatalization during the ascent of the party to prominence under its leader, Ian Paisley. In the 1970s and 1980s, he maintained a forthright opposition to any engagement of the pro-Irish section of the Ulster populace in the government of the area. As his oratory swayed many of his followers to believe an apocalypse of Irish unification was imminent, he was able to go as far as bringing large numbers of people onto the streets of the province in a series of “Carson Trail” rallies, named for the hero of Protestant Ulster, Edward Carson, who campaigned against home rule for Ireland in the early twentieth century.

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Dialect Regions and Associated Pronunciations

In Fig. 3, Ulster-Scots areas indicated were the original main base of support for the DUP. The retroflex and palatal articulations of “r” and “s” in these areas are associated with a strong pro-British outlook. This can be an especially close

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Ulster Scots Mid-Ulster English South-Ulster English S. Hiberno-English

Londonderry

Area of detail

Belfast ULSTER

Fig. 3 Dialect regions of Ulster. The Ulster-Scots areas (turquoise) in the east of Ulster are the heartland of DUP support, and the phonetic features of the adopted DUP code for non-Ulster speakers emanate from these areas. It should be noted that the Ulster-Scots area in the west of the province is in the county of Donegal which is part of the Irish Republic and therefore resides within a different political system to that of Northern Ireland. (Inset map from Wikipedia “fair usage” for scholarship permission)

relationship when emotive or contextual words are used by a speaker. Thus “terrorist,” “Ulster,” and “security forces” may demonstrate the articulations, for most of the time they are in an utterance by a DUP member. In relation to the existential nature of the dialect, these pronunciations have also varied over time, though not as much as SF which lost southern Irish pronunciation completely as northern members took control of the organization. As the influence of Ian Paisley was diluted and finally removed, in the last period of his life, the strength of the Ulster-Scots dialect weakened somewhat, reflecting the increasing number of younger urban members from Belfast City and mid-Ulster dialect regions. Paisley also included a preaching style learned in the southern United States into the political statements he made due to the connection between the DUP and the Free Presbyterian Church which Paisley founded as his reaction to what he saw as the ecumenical leanings of the main Presbyterian Church toward other Protestant sects and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. Evincing an uncompromising biblical fundamentalist approach to life in general, he applied the principles of the Old Testament to the politics of Ulster. As a result, many listeners found it difficult to distinguish between a Free Presbyterian sermon in Ulster-Scots and a political speech deriding those he saw as the “enemies of Ulster.” The style influenced many in his religious-political movement and, again, only diluted after he stepped away from the DUP and the Free Presbyterian Church.

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So far, the retroflex and palatal articulations of standard “r” and “s,” respectively, are quantifiable as dialect features indicating a subjective view of a geopolitical entity. The third main feature associated with the DUP dialect adaptations is glottalization of “t.” What this means is that the articulation of “t” (behind the teeth on the alveolar ridge) is replaced by a glottal stop (complete closure of the glottis within the trachea and a resulting silence or hiatus in articulation) in various positions within a word. The most obvious place this can be heard is in the middle of a word, e.g., “beTTer,” “maTTer,” and “keTTle.” This sound is another common feature of Ulster-Scots dialect and was most strongly employed during the Carson Trail rallies by Paisley’s deputy Peter Robinson who succeeded his mentor as head of the party and currently sits as Northern Ireland’s First Minister in the devolved parliament in Belfast. Robinson is a Belfast native and his original dialect was that of East Belfast. Paisley’s influence on his speech has waned over time as he assumed power within the DUP and at the time of writing contains more standardized, middleclass articulations of the three features than it did during the mobilizations of the 1980s. In my original work on the subject, for example, I quantified the percentage of glottal stops against standard “t” and found a direct correlation between the venue for the rally and the percentage of “glottals.” An Ulster-Scots dialect area, Newtownards, saw 27.3% of “t” in the middle of a word articulated as a glottal stop compared to 18.1% in Portadown, an area where the mid-Ulster dialect pertains (Gunn, B, ‘The Politic Word’, Unpublished DPhil Thesis, University of Ulster, 1990). So, then, a further mechanism for adapting to each particular location seems to operate alongside the main system of ideologically driven speech in a conscious or subconscious identification with the target audience. This theme is reflected in the writings of Maurice Halbwachs who suggested that: The whole art of the orator probably consists in his giving listeners the illusion that the convictions and feelings he arouses in them come not from him but themselves, that he has only divined and lent his voice to what has been worked out in their innermost consciousness. (The complete report seeks to analyze a complete set of factors leading to and crucial for the impact of the flag decision at Belfast City Hall after December 2012. Speech, through oratory, inference, and semiotic reference, is the major element in the events which unfolded after the decision was announced.) (Hawlbachs, M. (1992). On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.1992, (p. 45))

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The “Good Friday Agreement” and a New Situation

The Good Friday Agreement of 1994 set out a number of strategies for a shared government in Northern Ireland between Unionists wishing to maintain the United Kingdom and Nationalists wishing to unite Ireland. In the intervening period, the DUP has become the biggest party in Northern Ireland, and a new

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generation of urban non-Ulster-Scots speakers has entered it. The strong UlsterScots dialect features have been diluted and replaced in many cases by a more standardized version of a middle-class style to the extent that Robinson will often ameliorate the “r” when it comes after a vowel and reduce the amount of articulation it receives. This gives an approximation of many English dialects which do not have “r” after vowels. Thus “NoRRthern IRReland” is sometimes articulated as “Nothin Island” without the vowel length of the English version being included. Such pronunciations might be construed as the current version of the DUP ideological dialect which seeks to establish middle-class authority and a strong connection to the United Kingdom’s seat of power in southern England. This reflection of existential circumstances in speaker’s grammar is mentioned by the sociolinguist Hudson who states: The individual speaker is presumably moulded more by his experience than by his genetic make-up. And his experience consists in fact of speech produced by other individual speakers, each of whom is unique. (Hudson, R. (1980). Sociolinguistics, C.U.P., Cambridge, (p. 12))

In this DUP dialect, the individual personality of the party’s founder, Ian Paisley, and its stronghold in the Ulster-Scots community demonstrate how this molding can reflect a view of meaning and identity and the definition of an objective geographical space as a place confirming an ideological viewpoint. Hudson (1980: 12–13) goes on to sum up how this phenomenological experience develops into an individual’s “truth”: We can imagine a person constructing a model of the community in which he lives (at a more or less conscious level presumably) in which the people around him are arranged in a ‘Multidimensional’ space i.e. showing similarities and differences relative to each other on a large number of different dimensions or parameters-such as how some particular word or phoneme is pronounced and the model he builds up consequently covers linguistic parameters as well as variables of other types. The particular model which he constructs will reflect his own personal experience.

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The “Flag Protest” and Associated Linguistic Features

From 1994 until 2012, the process of devolved government proceeded with a number of crises between Unionists and Nationalists but nothing compared with the eruption of protest and unrest precipitated by a Belfast City Council decision on December 3, 2012, to restrict the flying of the United Kingdom flag to 18 days a year in line with councils throughout the wider United Kingdom. In the ensuing period, a feature of Ulster-Scots came into prominence once more. The relevance of this feature to the current situation in 2012 will be considered in its contrast to the dynamic of the SF ideological dialect as it changed in conjunction with unfolding events.

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Sinn Fein and the Articulation of National Aspiration

Sinn Fein (“Ourselves,” Irish Gaelic) has lobbied for Irish unity since its inception in 1905. Over the century it became associated with physical force politics and during the period of Northern Ireland’s “troubles” between 1969 and 1994 was castigated by its opponents as the mouthpiece of the militant Irish Republican Army. After the peace process began in the north of Ireland, the party has progressed to become the second largest in the region and shares power with the DUP in a devolved government known as “Stormont” after the colonial-style complex that houses the state structures of Northern Ireland. Modern Sinn Fein emerged from a split in the Nationalist movement, now firmly referred to as the Republican movement after 1970 when disagreement about how to proceed toward a united Ireland led to two distinct organizations being formed. Before this point the power base of the Republican movement was in Dublin, and its leaders were from southern Ireland. The emerging leader from this point was Gerry Adams from West Belfast. At the time of the Republican split, Adams had some features of southern Irish speech in his speech system. Briefly the main elements in this existential and ideological dialect were: 1. Blocking of the “th” in words (often mistaken as “D” or “T” but actually between the teeth as opposed to behind them), e.g., “Doze” (those), “Der” (their), “Ting” (thing). 2. Aspiration in the articulation of “d” and “t” (i.e., the release of extra air during articulation), e.g., “rijectidh” (rejected), “Dath” (that), “boath” (about). 3. Vowel in “sitju EHshin” (situation). This vowel is realized in Belfast and in Northern Ireland in general as a diphthong and is pronounced “sitjeeuhshin” in the region. As the power base of Sinn Fein shifted northward and into West Belfast particularly after 1970, the change was reflected in Adams once again using the Northern forms in words such as those above. This became heightened when a strong form of West Belfast dialect became prominent in the ranks of Sinn Fein. The existential projection of this northern-based ideology appears to find expression in lengthening of vernacular vowel features so that “Behlfast” (Belfast) becomes “Bayuhlfawwst.” It does seem that the existential phenomenology of a change in the political structure of the organization has been reflected in such strategies.

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The Irish Language and Ulster-Scots

Concurrent with Sinn Fein’s rise as a strong Irish Nationalist force was, and is, a promotion of the ancient Irish language, Gaelic, as a medium which should be encouraged and fostered to the extent that it could be equal with English as a medium in Ireland.

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To many Unionists this was anathema, and to counteract Sinn Fein attempts to keep Gaelic on the political agenda, they decided to promote the Ulster-Scots version of Lallans as the medium of expression for essentially what is the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. The movement has promoted Scottish culture, such as country dancing, bagpiping, and highland games as its basis rather than anything connected with the island of Ireland in an attempt to vindicate the notion of Ulster being a separate entity to the rest of the land mass. The definition of Ulster-Scots as a dialect or a separate language has been the subject of rancorous debate with its proponents refusing to recognize the substratum of English within its system and its opponents deriding it as an older dialect form now part of an artificial ideological construction. Thus, linguistic issues remain to the fore in the forming of identities in Ulster.

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The Present Day: The “Fleg” Dispute

The decision to restrict the flying of the United Kingdom flag on Belfast City Hall sparked violent street protests during December 2012 and on the following period. The restriction was seen by Unionists and UK “Loyalists” (a term which has become associated with working-class Unionists) as an erosion of their position within society and an attempt by Nationalists and Republicans to undermine the British nature of the six-county Ulster. Belfast City Council had been famous as a bastion of discrimination against the Nationalist population for most of its history, but the gradual increase in Nationalist representation, especially after the peace agreement in 1994, made Unionists who were opposed to compromise vehemently energized against the prevailing situation. The restriction of flag flying on the council’s headquarters led to a furious reaction of riot and destruction and a subsequent repolarization of attitudes within Northern Ireland. The amount of damage and the statements emanating from some quarters of Unionism resulted in a stigmatizing of working-class Loyalists in particular. This stigmatization has been directed toward Loyalist language styles and one originally Ulster-Scots feature, in particular, that of “raising of front vowels.” What the term means in reality is an articulation of standard “a” with the lower jaw in a closer juxtaposition with the upper jaw. This feature arrived with the “Lallans” speakers into the northeast of Ulster and became inculcated into vernacular speech across the province. Thus, the word “flag” has a vernacular realization as “fleg.” In the official report into the disturbances around the flag protest, I identified this feature as the main object of derision by speakers who oppose the issue being followed by the protestors: Most hurtfully to the protestors, the working-class East Belfast pronunciation of ‘flag’ was rendered phonetically as ‘fleg’ and it became a social marker to insist on this pronunciation as a way of mocking the protestors. To those on the receiving end the mockery seemed like that of grammar school pupils sneering at those in secondary modern. It inflamed and

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angered the protestors but it did not stop them. (Nolan, P., Bryan, D., Dwyer, C., Hayward. K., Radford, K., Shirlow, P. (2014). The Flag Dispute, Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, Queens University Belfast. Section 36)

The mockery has increased on social media and much of the satire rests on (a) malapropisms by Loyalists in statements and on websites and (b) a perceived lack of education and social awareness based on the linguistic features of Loyalist expression. The promotion of Ulster-Scots has currently stalled somewhat in light of the flag protests, even with the establishment of “Tha Boord O’Ulster Scotch” (sic) which seeks to give more prominence to the speech form. Sinn Fein has continued to promote Gaelic, and its use by Sinn Fein members in the chamber of the devolved government has been met with sarcasm and derision by DUP representatives.

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Conclusion

In conclusion then we can suggest that Northern Ireland provides a microcosm for the analysis of how an objective geographical area can be subjectively organized by its inhabitants into coexistent, diametrically opposite entities through language. That the phenomenological connection between the articulatory process of speech and an abstract concept of political identity can be quantified provides a model of how land and populations negotiate with physical geography to create subjective “truths” about the nature of that land.

Languages and Space-Related Identity: The Rise and Fall of Serbo-Croatian

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Language as a Community Builder and Its Association with Space-Related Identity . . . . 3 Main Types of Relations between Language and Space-Related Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Languages as Markers of National Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Languages as Markers of Regional Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

When Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) formulated his concept of the cultural nation in contrast to the civic nation, he defined nations by a group of people sharing elements of culture, e.g., language, religion, historiography, arts, dining, clothing, and other aspects of lifestyle, but he put language at the top of his rank list. A group of people speaking a common language, he argued, forms a nation. This concept of a cultural nation has spread over wide parts of Europe and was well received especially in Central, East, and Southeast Europe. But it is not only that cultural nations are based on already existing languages. It is sometimes also the other way round: national ideas are shaped

P. Jordan (*) Institute of Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_47

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on the basis of other cultural elements like denomination or historiography. And only after a national idea had already developed – or parallel to its development – a language is codified or intrinsically developed further. How a language is codified or into which direction the intrinsic development of an existing language goes is again closely related to national/political ambitions (inclusive or exclusive/reductive), to the image of self a nation or to where the innovation center is. These are all very geographical aspects relating language as an element of culture to space. A case in point is the rise and fall of a Yugoslavian national idea and (later) Yugoslavia and the almost parallel rise and fall of the Serbo-Croatian or CroatoSerbian language. When the national idea developed, a common language of Croats and Serbs, Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian, was codified or standardized. When Yugoslavia, originally conceived as a nation-state of the Yugoslavian nation (composed of the three tribes Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs), had already in the interwar period failed to reflect this ideal and was after the second, Titoist Yugoslavia finally dissolved, the successor states developed and partly even created (codified) their own languages. Croatia reacted very fast by elevating its actually widely spoken version of the Serbo-Croatian into the rank of an official language and by purifying it from “strange” elements. This was very necessary to enforce its national identity and to make it resistible against regionalist aspirations as well as traditional and partly prestigious dialects. Bosniaks used the years after the Dayton Agreement to develop the variant of Serbo-Croatian spoken in Bosnia-Herzegovina to support their Muslim national identity by preserving and underlining the Turkish and other oriental linguistic elements. Although this language is termed “Bosnian” now, it is much less a language including all nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina than the earlier Bosnian variant of Serbo-Croatian. Serbia reacted to the fall of Yugoslavia and the political developments in the 1990s and 2000s by abandoning its earlier aspirations to include all speakers of Serbian (also in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro) and to make its standard language acceptable for all of them but directed it toward the standard of educated city dwellers of Belgrade. Montenegro started its efforts of language building parallel to its gradual dissociation from Serbia in the later 1990s and in close connection with its development of a Montenegrin cultural nation, while Montenegrins had conceived themselves as an integrated part of the Serbian cultural nation before and only as a civic nation of their own. The chapter focuses on the successor languages of Serbo-Croatian. But this case is very typical, and its analysis bears a strong potential for transfer to situations elsewhere.

Keywords

Cultural nation · Common language · Yugoslavia · Serbo-Croatian language · Serbia · Montenegro · Identity · Change

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Introduction

Geographers do not so much regard language. There is no explicit subdiscipline in analogy to the study of other cultural population characteristics like religion (religion geography) or ethnic affiliation (ethnic geography) – a subdiscipline that could be titled “language geography.” Geolinguistics is indeed a field of studies in the anglophone world as much as géolinguistique is in the francophone and geolinguística in the Spanish-speaking world. But they are rather affiliated to linguistics or regarded as interdisciplinary fields with just a few geographers engaged in them and far from covering all relations between language and linguistic communities on the one hand and space on the other. Their pendant in Germanspeaking linguistics is “language geography” (Sprachgeographie). Also this branch of linguistics, however, restricts itself on studying the spatial variation of words and pronunciations within a given language – so just on one out of the variety of spatial aspects of language (Goossens 1969; Goebl 1984, 1992, 2004; Auer and Schmidt 2010). In consequence, also not too much is available from a cultural-geographical point of view about the relation between language and space-related identity – a topic with a specific geographical touch. Some studies in linguistics and also in political sciences, however, approach the relation between language and space-related identity quite closely and can be read with great profit in this context. Among them is certainly the handbook of contact linguistics (Goebl et al. 1996), Language, Space and Power: Urban Entanglements (Vuolteenaho et al. 2012), with a focus on the linguistic cityscape and city branding, and Language and Nationalism in Europe (Barbour and Carmichael 2000), as well as the works of political scientist Tomasz Kamusella, such as The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (Kamusella 2009) or Scripts and Politics in Modern Central Europe (Kamusella 2012) heading at the relation between national identities, language, and script. After having explained the role of language as a community builder and its relation to space-related identities in principle, this chapter will present the main types of relations between language and space-related identities by characteristic examples.

2

Language as a Community Builder and Its Association with Space-Related Identity

“Different factors create identity: territory, language, symbols, history, contact, functional relations, mutual interest, and education” (Schönwald 2013: 119). When we address language as an aspect of space-related identity, we refer to two factors mentioned here: territory and language. So we depart from the assumption that an individual or a group of people has – due to their strive for territoriality, immanent to human beings at all levels of human community building – entered into a relationship with a certain territory or section of geographical space and has made this relationship an aspect of personal or group identity and that this identity is supported

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by an additional factor or characteristic: language. We will more or less disregard the question of identity building with individuals but focus on communities in the sense of social groups sharing a common identity. Not postulating from the beginning that language was a stronger factor in spacerelated identity building than others mentioned above, e.g., (common) history, it has certainly very suitable capacities for community building and therefore also as identity markers of group identities. Language includes individuals into a community and excludes others at the same time. This capacity is due to three facts. The first is evident: Language is a system of signs or codes and has to be acquainted to communication partners, should communication succeed. Somebody not skilled in the code system of a community will get a chance to be integrated only if this community is very welcoming, tolerant, polite, and educated, e.g. able to speak a trade language or the language of the outsider. Secondly, language as a sign system corresponds to a system of concepts categorizing complex and otherwise unconceivable reality (Fig. 1). Only by this categorization, complex reality becomes conceivable. Without language the categorization of complex reality into a system of concepts would remain the individual achievement of a person, since it was not possible to communicate and to share it with others. We would not be able to produce a group culture, shared meanings (Hall 1997) in the sense of at least roughly similar interpretations of the world, of complex reality. Every language stands for and reflects a system of concepts that characterizes a culture and makes a group of people, a community, looking at least slightly different at our world, i.e., at complex reality. Thus, people speaking the same language have roughly the same system of concepts, which makes living in a community much easier. It is true that language is not the only means of communication. Also by facial expressions, gesticulation, music, painting, map symbols, mathematics, and others, we can communicate. But these means are either less precise or restricted to certain fields. The evolution of a certain concept system by the means of a certain language is driven by common interests of individuals as well as by the fact that the group of people communicating intensively with each other resides compactly in a certain territory, a certain section of geographical space, and faces a distinct natural environment. Different environments prompt the evolution of at least slightly different concept systems, and – in consequence – languages. For communities residing at the northern fringes of America and Eurasia, for example, snow and ice play an important role, and thus the communities are inclined to develop various concepts for these features, to subdivide these concept fields into a larger number of subconcepts than others, and to attribute corresponding words of a language to them. The same applies to communities of coastal dwellers with a seafaring tradition like the Croats residing along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea: Winds are significant natural features there and are very important for them. Consequently, they divide the concept “wind” into various subconcepts and assign to them different

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Fig. 1 Relation language – concept system – complex reality

words of their language depending on wind direction and force. They speak, for instance, of jugo, when the wind comes from the South; of bura, when it is a forceful, cold wind sliding down the slopes of the coastal ranges and stirring up the coastal water to a foam; of burin, when the wind comes from the same direction but is weaker (usually in summer); and of maestral, when it comes from the open sea and brings refreshing air in the early afternoon of hot summer days. The third factor that makes language including individuals into a community and has a less including effect on others (language is not strictly excluding in this case) and thus a means of community building is closeness. This applies to several hierarchy levels (scales) of human communities, first and foremost to the lower levels. Closeness can be generated by special words for a concept or by the specific pronunciation or intonation of a given language. Families, partners or parents, and children, for example, like to create special words for some concepts not understandable for others and develop in a way a (for outsiders) “secret language.” There are also subgroups in a wider community or society using specific words and developing a specific language variant such as the younger generation, workers, fans of sport clubs, hunters, fishermen, prostitutes, and criminals (Girtler 1996). They separate an in-group knowing and using these keywords from outsiders. Also the specific terminology of sciences may be regarded under this aspect. Closeness is also the main community-building factor with dialects or vernacular languages. They differ by words, sometimes also by grammar, but most importantly by pronunciation and intonation. As soon as we meet somebody speaking the same dialect, we feel to have something in common with him/her – even if we may be very different in terms of social affiliation, age group, or other characteristics. This is not as clear with standard languages. Standard languages in the sense of codified languages with a grammar and a dictionary are constructs and correspond only in exceptional situations to the actually spoken language. They are used on the stage and in official speeches, while in our daily intercourse a colloquial language, a colloquial language with dialectal coloring or a dialect prevails. At least by pronunciation and intonation a standard language varies by groups of speakers.

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The German standard language, e.g., the official linguistic standard in Germany, Austria, Switzerland (together with French, Italian, and Romansh), Luxemburg (together with French, Letzeburgisch), and Belgium (together with Dutch and French), establishes communality just at the cognitive, not at the emotional level. A German from the North and a Bavarian will not feel closeness just by speaking the same standard German. Standard languages are therefore community builders just due to the first and second factors (because they enable communication and reflect a common concept system), not due to the third (they do not connect people by conveying closeness). They are, nevertheless, frequently styled symbols of group identities and acquire in this way, on an abstract level, a kind of connecting quality. From what has been said so far, it should have become comprehensible, why languages are community builders and are therefore also regarded as markers of their identity. Whether they contribute also to the building of communities with a spacerelated identity depends on whether a community speaking a certain language is territory-based and has developed a relation to this territory and styled this relation a marker of its identity. When we take into account that (1) language is not a phenomenon existing independent of speakers – an abstract system as it is sometimes regarded by linguist; (2) but does have speakers, who form a network, a linguistic community, even as an essential condition for the development of a language; (3) individual speakers as well as the linguistic community in total have a certain location in geographical space; and (4) territoriality in the sense of a special relation to a section of geographical space is a basic attitude of human beings, all traditional languages are characteristics of human communities that have relations to a section of space and cultivate their space-related identities. Newly invented languages like Esperanto or Loglan – languages lacking a compact community of native speakers – are exceptions from this rule. This means that traditional languages commonly spoken by a territory-based community have the capacity of being markers of space-related identity. It is just the question, how they rank in relation to other identity markers like religion or history.

3

Main Types of Relations between Language and Space-Related Identities

Due to the relations explained in the former section, languages function indeed often as symbols and markers of national, ethnic, regional, and local group identities. This is true for standard languages as well as for dialects or vernacular languages. Most current nations define themselves primarily by language, although language may also rank second to other characteristics like religion or history as an identity marker. Nation building can be based on an already existing language. But language may also follow an already existing national idea or develop parallel to the process of nation building.

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Also for group identities related to subnational units like regions, landscapes, valleys, or populated places, standard languages can be essential ingredients. More frequently, however, these are dialects or vernacular languages.

3.1

Languages as Markers of National Identities

When Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) formulated his concept of the cultural nation in contrast to the civic nation, he defined nations as communities having some characteristics of culture in common. But among all the various cultural characteristics, he conceived language as ranking first. His concept of the cultural nation has spread over wide parts of Europe and gained ground especially in Central, East, and Southeast Europe.

3.1.1 Nation–Building Based on an Already Existing Language On the background of Herder’s concept of the cultural nation, two prominent nations emerged: the German and the Italian. German vernacular languages were already in the High Middle Ages conceived as closely related, but not before the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) translation of the Holy Bible from Hebrew and Greek into the language of his surroundings, East Middle German, by introducing also many elements of Upper German, a first German standard language developed. It spread over all German-speaking lands, also to the North, where a very different vernacular language was and is spoken (Lower German) (König 1978; Stark 2012). This common German standard was the basis for the idea of a German nation. It developed in the first half of the nineteenth century not the least as a reaction to the Napoleonic occupation, but also driven by the French enlightenment, was near to be politically effectuated already in 1848 and ended in the political manifestation of the German nation’s space-related identity, the formation of the corresponding nation-state Germany in 1871. This state, however, included only a part of the community conceived as the German nation in Herder’s cultural-national sense, e.g., not the Germans in Austria-Hungary and Switzerland. Similar developments occurred in other societies affected by Reformation: with Slovenes, Czechs, Poles, Estonians, or Finns. Italian had been developed to a prestigious literary language by the literates Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) and thus arrived at a first standard already in the late Middle Ages. Petrarca and Boccaccio came from Tuscany and Dante from Ravenna in the Romagna. But he, too, derived his literary language from the Tuscan dialect, since he spent most of his lifetime in Florence at the court of the Medici, the cultural center of the wider region in this era. Based on prestigious literature in a common and sophisticatedly developed language, an Italian national idea emerged from the beginning of the nineteenth century very much for the same reasons as the German, albeit later also in reaction

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against Austria with its possessions in northern Italy. The corresponding nation-state emerged between 1861 and 1870.

3.1.2

Languages Developed as an Identity Marker Based on an Already Existing National Idea or Parallel to It But – as mentioned before – it is not only that national ideas are based on existing languages. It is sometimes also the other way round: nations are shaped on the basis of other cultural elements like denomination or historiography, and only then, as an additional element, they create or standardize the corresponding language. A case in point and a very significant example is the building and abandoning of the Yugoslavian national idea accompanied by language construction. It is worthwhile to study it in some detail. The rise of the Yugoslavian national idea and Serbo-Croatian. A certain sense of cultural community between the Southern Slavs developed first in the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces (1809–1813/1815). They comprised territories with Slovenian as well as Croatian and Serbian population. The dialects spoken in these territories had much in common. On their background and driven by the idea to achieve cultural community, in the early nineteenth century both the Serbian language and Croatian were codified based on the Štokavian dialect group, the dialect group with the widest spread of all Southern Slavonic dialects. Figure 2 shows the distribution of the dialect group, which is subdivided into three subdialects or variants: (1) the ijekavian variant, (2) the ekavian variant, and (3) the ikavian variant. These variants differ not so much by words but by spelling and pronunciation. For example, while the ijekavian variant uses mjesto for “town, settlement, place,” the ekavian variant uses mesto and the ikavian variant misto. The codification of Serbian by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864) close to the colloquial language was based on the ekavian variant of the Štokavian dialect, which is the dialect spoken in the largest part of Serbia proper except in the southeast, where the Prizren-Timok or Torlakian dialect is spoken. A first grammar book of Serbian was published in 1814, a first larger dictionary in 1818 (Ivić 1971). Also the codification of the Croatian language by Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s was based on the Štokavian dialect, although the Croats would have had every reason to start from the Kajkavian dialect, the dialect spoken in Zagreb and its northern surroundings. But in “Illyrian sympathy” with Serbs and indeed very rationally thinking, they decided to construct their language based on the larger dialect group, not spoken only by Croats but also by Serbs, which offered the better perspective for the later standardization of a common language. Contrary to Serbian, however, they choose the ijekavian variant spoken in larger parts of the Croatian territories as well as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and even in southwestern parts of Serbia proper – so indeed also the most widespread variant. Not basing the Croatian standard language on the Kajkavian dialect meant nevertheless a sacrifice, since Kajkavian was a well-developed dialect with a rich literature and had also its apologists (Lončarić 2002). To choose the other “truly Croatian” dialect, the Čakavian, spoken mainly on the Istrian peninsula and on the islands, was out of question, since it was already at that time a dialect on retreat and

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Fig. 2 Languages, dialect groups, dialects, and dialect subgroups in former Yugoslavia. (Map by Dick Gilbreath, University of Kentucky Gyula Pauer Center for Cartography and GIS; Data from Okuka 2012)

could stand the competition with the other two dialect groups only up to the turn from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century (Nehring 2002). Thus, standardizing their two languages based on the same dialect group brought Serbian and Croatian in very close relation to each other and was a good precondition for a later Serbo-Croatian standard language. It meant, however, at the same time the exclusion of Slovene and Bulgarian from a common language development. If Croatian had been standardized based on the Kajkavian dialect, which is close to dialects spoken on Slovenian territories, it would have been easier to integrate Slovene. Another major reason for the separate development of Slovene, however, was that the Slovenes had right in this critical period a bright poet, France Prešeren (1800–1849), who wrote his famous lyrics in Carniolan dialect (Grdina and Stabej 2002). In 1824, also Bulgarian, the other Southern Slavonic language, took a development, which led away from unification of all Southern Slavonic languages in the spirit of Illyrism. The parting of Slovenes and Bulgarians meant on the other hand even closer ties between Serbs and Croats and an acceleration of efforts to create a common standard language. In 1850, already under the auspices of Yugoslavism, a movement for the political unity of all Southern Slavonic people, the “Viennese Agreement on a Standard Language” (Becˇki književni dogovor) was signed. This was not much more than an expression of intent to create a common standard language. Its

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practical application lasted up to 1867 in Bosnia, 1868 in Serbia, and 1877 in Croatia-Slavonia (Rehder 2002). Codification of the common Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language, as it was officially called, lasted still up to the end of the nineteenth century. From the very beginning, this common language had some severe problems: • The Serbs were not ready to switch to the ijekavian variant, which would have been the more widespread, although the Croats had sacrificed their “own” Kajkavian dialect in favor of the common Štokavian. This meant that SerboCroatian or Croato-Serbian continued to exist in two parallel variants: The ekavian (so-called Serbian) variant and the ijekavian (so-called Croatian) variant. Serbo-Croatian remained in this way an incomplete language as much as the Yugoslavs remained an incomplete nation. • Among the Croats, a subdominant opposition against this common metalanguage continued to exist but did not become dominant before the 1920s. • Standardization processes stopped to continue at the end of the nineteenth century and turned rather into the contrary thereafter. • Only the Serbs considered Serbo-Croatian as a real and functional language and Serbian and Croatian as regional or style variants of this language, while among Croats the opinion was prevailing that Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian was just an abstract system that is realized in two “concrete variants” (Croatian, Serbian) as well as in two “standard expressions” (Bosnian, Montenegrin). The latter was also the opinion of most linguists. This does not mean that (at least in the beginning) not also Croats wished to evolve Serbo-Croatian into a functional language without any subsystem. But experiences in the interwar period, in the first Yugoslavian state, drove them gradually to the opinion mentioned before. Within these limitations, Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian functioned as the official standard language of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks (officially “Muslims in the ethnic sense”) and Montenegrins up to the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991 with the interruption of the Croatian Ustaša state from 1941 to 1945. It coexisted with the “concrete variants” Croatian and Serbian and the “standard expressions” Bosnian and Montenegrin. “Bosnian standard expression” was the title for a version of SerboCroatian with special reference to linguistic specifics used by Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, i.e., for instance, Ottoman words for administrative features from Ottoman times. It was not confined to the Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, so it was to have an integrative function, but in practice it was little more than an ideological fabric (Okuka 2002). The “Montenegrin standard expression” integrated some words from regional dialects. In the whole period from the end of the nineteenth century up to the end of the second Yugoslavia, especially from the foundation of a Yugoslavian state in 1918 onward, Belgrade used to deny or disguise the coexistence of variant languages or standard expressions, while Zagreb emphasized them. This was especially true during waves of Croatian nationalism, e.g., during the “Croatian Spring” at the end of the 1960s (Okuka 2002).

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Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian was also the official language of the Yugoslavian Army and other official and semiofficial federal institutions, also in Slovenia and Macedonia, where otherwise Slovene and Macedonian (since 1945) functioned as official standard languages. It was also taught and understood in these other republics and had the role of a lingua franca. Federal institutions were inclined to use the ekavian (Serbian) variant (Okuka 2002). The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the rise of successor languages. Already in the process of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, in Croatia’s first constitution of 1990, Croatian was proclaimed as the only official language in Croatia, and a few years later it became clear that also Serbian and Bosnian had succeeded Serbo-Croatian. This immediate switch from one language to three others was possible, because at least two of these other languages had always coexisted and were already used. The replacement of a metalanguage by national languages corresponded to the logics of the nation-state concept implemented by the successor states. Croatia invested all efforts (through the educational system, the media) to implement its national language as soon and radical as possible. This had besides the existence of a ready-to-go language and a Croatian tradition starting in the 1920s to put their own language in the first line with very good political reasons. Croatia is a culturally rather heterogeneous country. The main divide parts the Central European interior from the Mediterranean coastland. But also the inhabitants of smaller regions like Istria, Dalmatia, the Lika, Slavonia, or the Hrvatsko zagorje (i.e., the hinterland of Zagreb) cultivate distinct regional identities and dialects (Budak et al. 1995). On the territory of modern Croatia, three dialect groups are spoken: Štokavian, which was chosen as the basis of the Croatian and the Serbo-Croatian standard languages, Kajkavian, and Čakavian. At least Kajkavian can be regarded as a regional standard language and has a rich literature. Not to declare Croatian the exclusive official language as soon as possible would have meant to risk a linguistic division of the country into eventually three languages and the support of centrifugal forces, which are anyway strong enough. Thus, the proclamation of Croatian as the official language was in the interest of Croatian national cohesion and a political must. The decision was also immediately and radically effectuated, mainly by restitution of the state of affairs before the development of Serbo-Croatian in the middle of the nineteenth century. Old Croatian words were reintroduced, foreign words avoided (e.g., karta for map was replaced by zemlijovid, geografija for geography by zemlijopis, avion for aeroplane by zrakoplov). Much effort was invested to stress the differences from Serbian (kolodvor for railway station instead of Serbian stanica; glazba for music instead of Serbian muzika). A characteristic of Croatian (contrary to Serbian) is also the preservation of the infinitive: Molim platiti for “I would like to pay” instead of Serbian Molim da platim (Wingender 2002). Today Croatian is without any doubt a functional standard language, very important for national identity and national cohesion. Bosnian (Bosanski) is today the official glottonym for the language of the Bosniaks – the Bosnian Muslims. Contrary to Yugoslavian times, when Bosnian

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as a “standard expression” of Serbo-Croatian had the function of identifying the all-Bosnian specifics of Serbo-Croatian spoken by Bosniaks as well as Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was in this way a means of integration, it is now tailored to one national group in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to the Bosniaks, and not spoken by the two minority groups in the country. On the other hand, it is also the language of Bosniak minorities residing outside Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, the Muslims in Sandshak. Linguistically and from the viewpoint of an independent observer, it would therefore be more precise to call it Bosniak (Bosˇnjacˇki), since it is, first, not the all-Bosnian language and, second, spoken also by people outside Bosnia. It was the intention of the Bosniaks, the majority group and political elite in the newly independent country, to underline the country’s unity against Serbian and Croatian territorial claims also by a specific language. The intention, however, to make it the common language of the country could not be effectuated, since Serbs as well as Croats in Bosnia did not accept it. So it had rather a dividing effect. In 1992, a first dictionary of specific Bosnian words was published. Since 1993, Bosnian is besides Serbian and Croatian, all of them in the ijekavian variant, an official language of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1995, the orthography was codified. The Dayton Accord of December 1995 acknowledged Bosnian as one of three official languages. In 2000, a Bosnian grammar was published (Völkl 2002). Further standardization is going on. Bosnian replaces many Serbo-Croatian words by words derived from Ottoman (the predecessor of Turkish), which had been the official language throughout more than three centuries and up to 1878. This refers especially to concept fields like Islam, law, administration, state, craftsmanship, clothing, food, beverages, trade, monetary services, construction, army, arms, toponyms, music, games, and emotions (Völkl 2002). By some words also Ottoman suffixes are used. Very characteristic is also the use of Ottoman or oriental names; some names are even originally Bosnian. The Serbian language at first just changed its name from Serbo-Croatian to Serbian. However, having lost the perspective of becoming the integrative language for a couple of nations and a larger territory, modern Serbian displays a trend of going back to the roots and of strict standardization. This is anyway an ambitious undertaking, since modern Serbian is still a polycentric language with several variants: the ekavian variant of Serbian is spoken in the larger part of Serbia; the ijekavian variant is spoken in southwestern parts of Serbia proper, Montenegro, Bosnia, and among Serbs in Croatia, everywhere with local specifics. In a period of subordination under Belgrade, the official authorities of the Serbs in Bosnia (Republika Srpska) supported between 1993 and 1998 the ekavian variant (contrary to the official Bosnia-wide regulations) but then returned to the autochthonous ijekavian. Also the Serbs in Croatia switched between 1992 and 1995 to the ekavian variant. In the southeast of Serbia proper and among Serbs in Kosovo, the Prizren-Timok dialect group is spoken – a dialect group with Balkanic elements and different from Štokavian, which forms the basis of the Serbian standard language.

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In 1997, a commission for the standardization of the Serbian language was installed. The model for standardization is the ekavian variant of Štokavian. However, contrary to the times of Karadžić, it is no longer the rural colloquial language but the idiom of the educated urban society in Belgrade and Novi Sad (Neweklowsky 2002). Montenegro’s constitution of 1992 still says that the “ijekavian variant of Serbian” is the official language. (It should run “of Serbo-Croatian,” since Serbian never had an ijekavian variant.) In accordance with the political movement for separation from Serbia and independence, however, during the 1990s a movement for a Montenegrin ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity other than Serbian evolved, although Montenegrins had always conceived themselves as Serbs in the cultural sense. It elaborated a Montenegrin standard language other than Serbian that stresses regional specifics, reintroduces words of the old Serbian language before the reforms of Vuk Karadžić arguing that Montenegro was the cradle of Serbian statehood and in Montenegro the oldest, the original Serbian was spoken. The initiator of this movement was the linguist Vojislav Nikčević supported by the Matica Crnogorska, the Montenegrin Homeland Society, and a group of Montenegrin writers. In 1993, Nikčević published a monograph using the Montenegrin language. In 1997, he edited an orthography with three additional letters (Schubert 2002). Still, this language is accepted only by a part of the former Serbo-Croatianspeaking population. But if public authorities and the educational system continue to support this language, it is just a question of time, when at least the younger generation takes it over. The case of Serbo-Croatian and its successor languages shows a significant parallelism of language development on the one hand and the rise and fall of national identities and nation-states on the other. This is no surprise, since dominant political groups, national movements, and, of course, the state and its institutions are the main driving forces in language policy. It shows also that language development is affected by external relations and political dependencies. Most indicative are the following aspects: • Serbo-Croatian remained an incomplete language as much as Yugoslavian nation building could not be completed. • Croatian was urgently needed by the newly independent country to promote national identity and cohesion. • Bosnian was redefined from a “standard expression” of all Bosnians into the language of the Bosnian Muslims. So it lost its integrative function for all national groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina in accordance with the political fragmentation of this country. • Serbian lost its perspective of becoming the language of a larger region and shows – like many retrogressive political and cultural movements with no longer need for integrative functions – signs of purism. • Montenegrins conceiving themselves as a cultural nation not earlier than from the later 1990s onward felt the need to support their nation building by a standard language of their own.

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Macedonian – a language for a new nation. Macedonian was codified as a new standard language on the basis of a regional (not national) consciousness that did already exist and since the conception of a new nation was politically opportune. Macedonian nation building was fostered by the communist partisan movement at the end of World War II addressing the Slavonic population of the cultural landscape Macedonia, who had earlier affiliated itself in the national sense to Bulgarians or Serbs. Up to 1913, affiliation to a Bulgarian national identity was predominant. When in 1913, as a result of the Second Balkan War, the territory of modern Macedonia was awarded to Serbia and became in 1919 a part of the first Yugoslavian state dominated by Serbs; its Slavonic population was subjected to a radical Serbianization. All tuition occurred in Serbo-Croatian, Serbian civil officers occupied the leading positions, Serbo-Croatian became the exclusive official language, and the SerbianOrthodox Church took over, what had earlier belonged to the Bulgarian-Orthodox Church, the region was called “South Serbia.” This colonizing attitude had a repugnant effect on a population that had looked at Serbia and the Serbs with some sympathy before. Between 1941 and 1944, Bulgaria as an occupation force allied with the German Reich conducted a similar policy of Bulgarianization and earned the same bad feelings for it as the Serbs before. Both experiences, in addition to an already well-established regional identity, paved obviously the way toward developing a Macedonian national identity. It was favored by the macro-political situation: political weakness of all neighbors, Stalin’s wish to restructure the Balkans (e.g., not to attach Macedonia to Bulgaria), and last, but not least, Tito’s attempt to build a federal and nationally balanced second Yugoslavia, for which a Serbian domination had to be avoided (Troebst 1994; Sundhaussen 2012). Thus, together with the proclamation of a Macedonian nation and the implementation of a federal republic, Macedonian was established as its standard language in 1944. It had been based on a central-Macedonian dialect, the idiom of Pelagonia, linguistically equidistant to Serbian and Bulgarian (Srbinovski 1995; Hill 1995, 2002; Preinerstorfer 1962, 1998). In 1957, Macedonian national identity was completed by an independent Macedonian-Orthodox Church, which was in 1967 elevated to the rank of an autocephalous church – in the Byzantine-Orthodox sphere an indispensable attribute of a nation in the full sense. Romanian – a language to reflect a new identity. Romanian is a new EastRomance language that was codified in the course of Romanian nation building. Before, the people later called Romanians spoke Wallachian dialects with many Romance elements, but also many Slavonic and other ingredients. These dialects were written in Cyrillic script. As a standard language, Wallachians were using Daco-Slavonic or a trade language (Greek, French). As the cradle of the Romanian national movement as well as the Romanian standard language functioned the Greek-Catholic Church of the Wallachians in Transylvania (inside the Carpathian arc), at that time under Austrian, later AustroHungarian rule. It had been founded in 1697 as a church in union with the Roman-

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Catholic Church, was in juridical and dogmatic terms an integrated part of it, but practiced the Byzantine rite. Under political aspects, it was an expression of the Western orientation of Transylvanian Wallachians and for this reason also supported by the central authorities in the imperial capital Vienna. Vienna supported this church also to enforce the loyal Wallachians against the powerful and rather illoyal Hungarian landlords in Transylvania. Right due to its Western and Roman orientation, this church advanced from 1770 onward to the cradle of the Romanian national movement. Its priests were partly educated in Vienna and Rome and met there traces and symbols of the Roman past of their own lands. They had the path-breaking idea of styling the humble herdsmen culture of Wallachians to successors of the Romans in the Balkans and to name them Romani (the ethnonym for Romanians in their language) (Boia 2003; White 2000). This elevated their countrymen to the heights of European history and culture and had of course also to be accompanied by a truly Romance language, which was subsequently constructed. It was based on Wallachian dialects, but by eliminating a lot of non-Romance elements and by introducing new words for concepts not needed in herdsmen’s dialects from other Romance languages, mainly Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. This established a comprehensive literary language functional in all concept fields. It was at first written in Cyrillic, but from the 1830s onward in Roman script – an exception among Orthodox nations but fully in line with the idea of a Romance identity. From this germ inside the Carpathian arc, in closer contact with the European West and the ideas of enlightenment and very well affected by them, this Romanian national idea in combination with the new Romance language sprang over to the Danubian principalities Moldavia and Wallachia, the proper corelands of the Wallachian, now Romanian nation, but up to 1878 under Ottoman sovereignty.

3.1.3

Larger Space–Related Identities Not Supported by a Symbolic Language There are, however, some nations lacking language as an identity marker. In a global perspective, prominent examples are Canada, South Africa, and India. Canada gets along with two languages (English, French), in combination official at the federal and exclusively official at the provincial level (Cartwright 1988). South Africa has 11 official languages at the country level, while locally always some of them have official status. In India, Hindi and (not with completely the same status) English are official languages nationwide and have an umbrella function for the myriad regional languages. In Europe, prominent examples are Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria. In Switzerland three standard languages with the quality of identity markers of large neighboring countries (German, French, Italian) are spoken without any variation also in Switzerland. Obviously, common history, the specific political-administrative system and economic success convey identity enough to replace a common language as identity marker of the Swiss nation. Ideas to establish a Swiss standard of German, the largest linguistic community in Switzerland, were abandoned mainly for the

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reason that such a standard would have to be based on one of the rather divergent canton dialects disadvantaging all others. Belgium with its three official languages (Dutch, French, German) is another case in point but much less convincing. It rather demonstrates that it is difficult to keep a country together without a common language. The Belgian problem is accentuated by the fact that the two main groups, Dutch and French speakers, were subject to an inversion in terms of economic success and prestige. The formerly more prestigious group and language (French-speaking Wallonians) are today in the economically inferior position. Also Austrian cultural identity is not defined by language but by Austria’s specific history. While Austrians conceived themselves in the interwar period as Germans in the cultural-national sense, after the shock of World War II all relevant political forces promoted with great success a specific Austrian cultural-national identity different from the German (Thaler 2001) – an attitude and process very similar to the Montenegrin as described before. In a situation, when the German language was stigmatized by the events of World War II and the Holocaust, in the 1950s even attempts were made to establish an Austrian standard language. They were abandoned later, since it seemed after all preferable to remain a part of the wider Germanspeaking community and since it would have been difficult to define an Austrian standard. There exists an “Austrian dictionary” with quite a number of “Austriaspecific” words, but many of them are used only in some parts of Austria, and many are used also outside Austria, in southern Germany, especially Bavaria (Fussy and Steiner 2012; Wiesinger 2008). All these cases without a language as a national identity marker have, however, also in common that hardly an inhabitant would affiliate himself/herself in the first line to the nation. In Canada it would – if it was not the hometown – rather be the province (e.g., Quebec); in South Africa the ethnic group; in India the ethnic group or federal state; in Switzerland the canton; in Belgium the regions Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels, or the German-speaking community; and in Austria the province. Obviously, a national identity not supported by language as an identity marker remains rather faint. The question, whether a common identity can emerge without a common language and, more precisely, a common language as an identity marker, arises also with the European Union (EU). At the moment (2019), the EU recognizes 24 official languages and does this for two declared main reasons: to reflect Europe’s cultural variety as an essential part of its identity and to grant all citizens and their representatives equal opportunities in political and democratic participation. In practice, this proves to be very complicated and certainly also impedes the evolution of a European supranational identity. In September 2006 – still in a relatively euphoric phase and before the global economic crisis – only about 15% of the respondents in all EU countries answered on the last Eurobarometer survey in this respect asking “How frequently do you feel European?” with “Often,” about 50%, however, with “Never” (European Commission 2010). Should the European project fail – and some indications point into this direction – it will fail for the principal reason that the nation-states were not

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ready to reduce their powers in favor of the common project and that national ideas were not overcome. That 24 national languages are maintained and at the European level not replaced by a common “European” language (of course in addition to national and regional languages at sub-European levels) is the symbolic expression of these attitudes. Alternatives to the current situation would be the following: 1. To elevate English, the by far most frequent trade language in Europe and anyway a polycentric language with several variants – so not anymore the “property’ of the United Kingdom (Seidlhofer 2011) – to the rank of the common European language. 2. To revive an old European cultural language, e.g., Latin. That the revival of an (almost) extinct language is possible, show the examples of Irish and Hebrew. Latin, however, would be symbolic only for Europe’s western cultural sphere, not for the byzantine east and southeast. 3. To establish an invented, “neutral” language like Esperanto (see Greimel 2003; Jeleń et al. 2002).

3.2

Languages as Markers of Regional Identities

3.2.1 Standard Languages as Regional Identity Markers Also regional identities are frequently marked by standard languages. Spain is a good example. After the end of the authoritarian Franco regime in 1978 and in the course of the democratization process, finally all major regions of Spain were granted competences of self-government. Those of them with dominating or coexisting individual standard languages (Catalonia, Valencia, and the Baleares with Catalan or Valencian; Galicia with Galego; the Basque provinces and Viskaya with Basque) elevated them to the rank of official languages besides Spanish (in the field of toponoymy in Catalonia, Galicia, and the Baleares even exclusively) and styled them markers of regional identity (Batlle 2012). Except Basque, which is a language on retreat and even in Basque families only partly spoken as a family language, these are vigorous and in the case of Catalan even expanding languages. But also small and otherwise regressive standard languages with only a few native speakers left are frequently styled markers of regional identities and expand in symbolic public representation. Cases in point are West Frisian as an identity marker of the northern Dutch province Friesland or the Celtic language Scottish Gaelic, which has its imprint on the linguistic landscape not only in small areas in the Northwest of Scotland, where it is still actively spoken, but also in larger parts of the Scottish Highlands. Also in the former Communist East of Europe, minority cultures with their standard languages are used to provide regions with a specific coloring: The small group of Sorabians in eastern Germany with their two languages (Upper and Lower Sorabian) enjoyed wider public attention and representation already in GDR times;

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the Kashubians with also two standard languages in a region near Gdańsk in Poland, however, benefit from a later reorientation of Polish minority policies starting in 2005. It seems that the general trend toward globalization and uniformity prompts reactions of closer affiliation to regions and emphasizing the specifics of regions.

3.2.2 Dialects as Regional Identity Markers Notwithstanding the importance of standard languages, it is clear enough that dialects are the major symbols of regional (and local) identities. A dialect is the “naturally” grown, autochthonous language that emerged through a closer communication group or community, through a bottom-up process, in contrast to the standard language with its rather constructed character and top-down implementation. This does not mean that a dialect cannot be functional in several concept fields and codified and have its literature. In contrast to standard languages, however, dialects are not clearly delimited but have fuzzy boundaries with one dialect gradually shifting into the other. Usually the spatial range of dialects corresponds to historical political entities of all ranks and kinds, within which they once functioned as the colloquial language. It is therefore no surprise that parts of the world with a tradition of political particularism have the most distinct dialects. Their distinctiveness was preserved up to the present day the more this former political particularism has in modern times been transformed into federal and decentralized political structures, which was frequently the case. It is, however, also true that dialects undergo an erosion process due to the influence of the media, but even more importantly due to the fact that mobility in our post-agrarian societies has increased and the former local and compact communication groups have been replaced by widespread networks. Nevertheless, some dialects enjoy a similar renaissance as standard languages as markers of regional identities for the same reasons mentioned in this other context. They are, however, hardly spoken anymore with all their specifics but in a moderate version as a kind of colloquial language with a dialectal coloring. A part of Europe with a lot of dialects still spoken are the regions of the former Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation with its particularism that was later transformed into federal and decentralized states: Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Czechia, northern Italy, and the Slovenian lands. Also Poland and Hungary with their oligarchic systems, weak central powers, and rather autonomous counties during longer phases of history left such traces in spite of later centralization (Okuka 2002). In contrast, centralistic France eradicated everything in this respect. Even in the French-speaking part of Switzerland – much in contrast to the German-speaking part – no dialects persisted. Whether a dialect qualifies as a regional identity marker is, however, still another question. It depends on the prestige of the dialect, i.e., on the prestige of the community of its speakers or at least its promoters. In this respect, we observe, e.g., within Germany, a gradient from the South (Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg)

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toward the North and within the German-speaking part of the Alps (Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol) from the West to the East. While in the German-speaking Swiss cantons the local dialect is so prestigious that it can be used in all communicative situations, i.e., also in official speeches as well as in television and broadcasting, in Vienna – at the eastern fringe of the Alps – even parents using dialect for communication among themselves would not dare to educate their children in this language being afraid that they would be stigmatized as social outsiders in kindergarten and school. This has to do with the fact that in Switzerland, Bavaria, and in the western Austrian Alpine provinces (including what is today South Tyrol) a layer of free farmers independent of noble landlords had emerged very early and dialect was their language. So it was the language of the leading social group. In contrast, in eastern Austria with its dependent farmers, in fact agricultural workers, subordinated to a landlord up to 1848, the local dialect was the language of the ground layer of the society, while the upper classes spoke something near to the standard language or French. In consequence, dialects are certainly major markers of regional identity in all German-speaking Swiss cantons, in Bavaria, South Tyrol, and the western Austrian provinces Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Carinthia, and Styria. Salzburg is a less obvious case, since it is composed of regions with rather divergent dialects. So they mark rather identities on the regional microscale than the overall provincial identity. A similar situation exists in Upper Austria, where dialects are still prestigious but vary within the province.

4

Conclusion

Language is very important for social cohesion and community building. Since most human communities are territory-based and have developed a space-related identity, language is in most cases an important, if not the primary, marker of space-related identities. This is most obvious with national identities, which can develop on the basis of an already existing language or the appropriate language is constructed accompanying or after nation building. While it is always a standard language that supports and marks national identities, regional and local identities can also be marked by dialects or vernacular languages. It depends, however, on the prestige and communicative value of a dialect, whether it is used as an identity marker. There are, however, also remarkable space-related identities getting along without being supported or marked by a symbolic language. From their faint identity, it could, however, be concluded that this is a disadvantage, the European Union being a striking example. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Spatial Distribution of Regional Dialects: Interplay of Language, Community, and Action

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Speech Community as a Community of Aligned Acting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Sociocultural Discourses in German Dialectology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Background in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Primacy of the Linguistic Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 A Change of Perspective in the Twenty-First Century: Primacy of Both the Speakers and the Speech Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Empirical Insights into the Interplay of Language Areas, Speech Communities and Nonlinguistic Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Language Areas, Attitudes, and Political Actions in the USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Language Geography, Mobility, and Economic Behavior in the Federal Republic of Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

564 565 568 568 572 573 573 575 578 579

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the connections between linguistic and nonlinguistic acts performed by members of communities which are primarily defined in geographical terms. It will become apparent that surprisingly often people from the same community make similar decisions from a variety of linguistically and nonlinguistically relevant options for action. The discussion begins with some early reflections within the scientific discourse which reveal concepts such as “border” or “language area” to be strongly influenced by the mental representation of speakers. As will be demonstrated, there is a close link between these mental representations and identity- or culture-based behavior. This behavior affects both the linguistic and the nonlinguistic dimension. On the one hand, this is illustrated A. Lameli (*) Department of German Linguistics, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_192

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by the scientific discourse in the German tradition, and, on the other, by two more recent examples which empirically analyze the connection of language and nonlinguistic behavior. The first example is dedicated to the connections between speech communities and political behavior in the USA. In contrast, the second example focuses on the connections between speech communities and economically relevant behavior in Germany. In both cases, there are statistically significant effects which indicate a strong interplay of language, communities, and action. Keywords

Dialect · Language variation · Cultural identity · Politics · Economics

1

Introduction

In many nations, it is not very difficult to discern a speaker’s origin by his or her speech. Obviously, there are regional patterns of language and, what is more, these patterns have been considerably stable over long periods. This, in turn, is why language is a nearly perfect means for the expression of one’s social or cultural identity. Language stores strong indexical information (Silverstein 2003), which is formed by in-group behavior. Besides language, there are further means of social or cultural expressions, such as attitudes or stereotypes, which have been intensively studied in linguistics (e. g., Preston 1999; Long and Preston 2002). It is well known that there are also strong connections between linguistic variation and nonlinguistic behavior. These connections concern both influences on language by the environment and, vice-versa, influences by language on the social behavior of communicators (MacFarlane and Hay 2015). While studies in this field indicate the social impact of language within communicative practice, far less considered are the closer links between language, here with reference to regional varieties, the speech community, and action outside the communicative practice. What is behind, for example, strong correlations between the spatial borders of dialect regions and the spatial borders of marriage behavior (Lameli 2014)? Even though the interplay of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena is firmly anchored in the consciousness of researchers since the early days of dialectology and even more so since the emergence of sociolinguistics (Chambers and Trudgill 1998), there is only little known about it on the larger scale. This chapter, therefore, outlines in a more general sense some important interdependencies between linguistic and nonlinguistic acts performed by geographically defined members of speech communities. In what follows, I briefly discuss some early work dedicated to striking parallels between cultural phenomena and dialects, which will then be contrasted with more recent studies in the field. In so doing, the conceptual progress in dialectology as well as current developments in linguistics and the social sciences will be highlighted. This is undertaken with recourse to a model case, which is found in German dialectology. This line of tradition is especially suited for a more narrow discussion, as there is a rather long and eminent debate about significant parallels of language

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and nonlinguistic phenomena. In contrast to other nations such as France, Spain, or England, the German landscape was fragmented into very small territories without a centralistic pan-German authority until 1871. This is why in Germany, at least until the end of WWII, dialects, costumes, traditions, and other particularities of social life are fragmented on a very small scale. It will be shown that this historic fragmentation explains contemporary nonlinguistic acts to some extent, which is why it becomes possible to identify specific geographically relevant borders that affect both individual and social behavior. Against this background, the next section places the subject in a more general framework. Section 3 turns to the German tradition by dividing the existing sociocultural studies since the nineteenth century into two phases. The starting point is the more traditional focus on the linguistic area as the primary reference point of scientific discourse (Phase 1). This focus subsequently shifts to the members of the speech community as the actual subject of discourse (Phase 2). Building on this change of perspective, Sect. 4 offers deeper insight into recent work on the connection between linguistic variation and extralinguistic – in this case political and economic – aspects of action. The presented studies allow a more integrative view on the embedding of regional varieties in the historically grown social environment of people. Finally, Sect. 5 offers concluding remarks.

2

The Speech Community as a Community of Aligned Acting

In his Theory of Social Action, Luckmann (1992, p. 4) takes a clear stance by writing: “Action [. . .] makes society” (my translation). Consequently, definitions of social groups typically are based on communities of such individuals, which are united by common, that is, interindividually aligned or synchronized action. This applies also for speech communities, as the American philologist Bloomfield (1933, p. 42) has already noted. For Bloomfield, the speech community includes part of a more comprehensive cultural dimension, but, being based on an individual’s higher human cognitive capacity (speaking), it is the most important type of all social communities. Bloomfield, however, though seeing relations between speech communities and political, economic, or cultural groupings, assumes no actual coincidences: “Cultural features [. . .] are almost always more widespread than any one language.” This is somewhat different than what the Romance philologist Coseriu (1974, p. 53) states. For him, “the systematic [i.e., what is related to the language system], the cultural, the social and the historical coincide” (my translation). Regarding, however, “the limits of the various systematic, cultural, social and historical structures” (Coseriu 1974, p. 53; my translation, emphasis in the original), that is, the concrete scope of these categories, it must be assumed that their coincidence is not a necessary condition of social communities. Boundaries are thus more likely to be relational rather than absolute; they are also more likely to be vague rather than concrete (see also Allen et al. 1998, p. ix).

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An example for such historically grown relationships is provided by Maurer in the framework of the culture-oriented dialectology of the early twentieth century. Using a cartographical representation, Maurer (1942: Map 48) relates dialect variants of the southwestern part of Germany to the historical territories in this region (Fig. 1). While there is an almost complete coincidence in the dialect borders with the historical territories in the western part of the map, there is nothing similar in the eastern part. Thus, in the sense of Coseriu, there is a partial coincidence in the linguistic and historical structures. In addition, other studies reveal further nonlinguistic phenomena which (partially) coincide with the linguistic or territorial patterns. Among them are the confessional boundaries, which from the early modern times until the twentieth century often coincided with the historical territories of southern Germany, too. As, at the same time, confessional boundaries typically are boundaries of marriage, it becomes clear that the consolidation of “spaces” is determined to a considerable degree by synchronized acts in various fields of social life. It is, to express it in a more modern style, “through the practice of routines, over time and on a mass scale, at the level of both individual and institutions, that ‘places’ and ‘regions’ emerge” (Britain 2010, p. 79); emphasis in the original). As indicated, these routines only concern a part of the culturally

Fig. 1 Maurer’s map representing the southwestern part of the German language area (Maurer 1942: map 48). As the ancient territory of Alt Württemberg (gray area) in both the western and the northern part fairly coincides with the language borders between the dialect variants Schnee vs. Schnai (“snow,” black line) and scho vs. schau (“look” imparative, dotted line), Maurer interprets this map as an example of the interplay between nonlinguistic phenomena and dialects

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conditioned or identity-forming spectrum of human action, so that an absolute equation of language and all other phenomena of social or cultural actions are doomed to failure. Without a doubt, language, here dialect, forms an essential aspect of cultural identity. Chambers and Trudgill (1998, p. 100) also identify this connection at the level of the individual linguistic sign. The authors explain: “In a broad sense, isoglosses [i.e., borderlines of dialectal variant distributions] may be thought of as one aspect of the local culture of the region which they delimit, insofar as a distinctive regional speech contributes to a sense of community.” Consequently, it requires the place-making, that is, the constructivist step towards a common geographic reference range in which individuals can see themselves as members of a particular social, cultural, and/or linguistic community. This view is echoed by more recent perceptual studies, which demonstrate very clear “places” and “regions” in the conceptualization of the language geography by linguistic laypersons (see Stöckle 2014 for the region discussed by Maurer). Fairly often, the places and regions are material complexes, for example, settlements, which then as cities are attributed a specific meaning. But it also may well be that such reference points are nonvisible ones. An example is provided by the former inner-German state border. This border is usually invisible in Germany today but still has a conceptual effect (see Auer 2004; Palliwoda in press). This is why Werlen (2008, p. 279) points out from the perspective of social geographers that: Physical-material conditions [...] have no impact on subjective and socio-cultural conditions. Subjective and socio-cultural meanings are imposed on material things without becoming part of the matter. Spatial conditions can therefore only be understood as media of orientation of everyday actions. (Werlen 2008, p. 279; my translation) [Physisch-materielle Gegebenheiten weisen [...] keine Wirkkraft für subjektive und sozial-kulturelle Gegebenheiten auf. Subjektive und sozial-kulturelle Bedeutungen werden materiellen Dingen auferlegt, ohne dass sie zu Bestandteilen der Materie werden. Räumliche Gegebenheiten können folglich lediglich als Medien der Orientierung alltäglichen Handelns verstanden werden.]

However, most work in dialectology to date is focused only on the description and analysis of language structure and language systems. This is a methodologically derived simplification which runs the risk of neglecting the speaker and the communities of speakers as acting people. In this respect, Auer (2013, p. 5) calls for empirical studies and theories “that bring back the speaker as a major factor in geolinguistic variation.” Auer’s perspective enters the context of recent sociolinguistics, which defines a third wave of variation studies (Eckert 2012). Linguistic homogeneity at the place, as it was often constructed in dialectology, gives way here to a concept of dynamic heterogeneity. In studies of this branch of research, it is typically assumed that speakers assign different social meanings to individual language variants depending on the particular context. For individual linguistic signs, indexical fields are assumed (Eckert 2008), which, depending on the situational requirement, follow functionally determined and ideologically partly different oriented mechanisms of order (for the concept of “indexical order,” see Silverstein 2003). Linguistic variation constitutes from this point of view, “a social semiotic

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system capable of expressing the full range of a community’s social concerns. And as these concerns continually change, variables cannot be consensual markers of fixed meanings; on the contrary, their central property must be indexical mutability” (Eckert 2012, p. 94). While, for example, sociolinguistics under the influence of the early Labovian work attributes language mainly to social factors, it also implies a categorical fit or static conditionality. More recent studies emphasize people’s options for action, leading to a more dynamic conception of language variation and change. For example, Glauninger (2012) describes the complexity of such processes under the consideration of both the object-level (i.e., the language itself) and the meta-level (i.e., speaking about language) with the concept of meta-sociosemiosis. This means a process of sign production taking place in a concrete speech community. The produced sign is used to refer to speakers of other speech communities. The challenge for language geography in the future will be to connect such semiotic approaches with linguistic and nonlinguistic practices of geographically identifiable social groups in order to reconcile “the spatial [...] as a dimension of action” (Werlen 2008, p. 279, my translation). Lameli (2015) highlights some implications of such a functional approach, using the example of a salient linguistic phenomenon, the compensation of /r/ by /l/ (so called lambdazism) in central Germany which can only be adequately explained by the nonlinguistic behavior of in-group members. A theoretical framework which is dedicated to the interaction of linguistic spaces, community, and action is thus applied in a broad linguistic way. According to Eckert (2012, p. 97f.), it has to treat “speakers not as passive and stable carriers of dialect, but as stylistic agents.” In conjunction with this thinking, the question of social and cultural self-location should also be discussed, as this is an essential source of the individual design of action (see Schütz and Luckmann 1984). Even if there are a considerable number of approaches, a comprehensive theory has not been worked out so far. For the moment, therefore, much has already been gained, if one looks at some important empirical results. In the following, German dialectology is used as a model case, standing as the pinnacle of probably the most intensive debate addressing the connection of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena. Looking at the development of this tradition, it is well positioned to exemplify different views on language in those sociocultural relations, which are not only relevant from a historical perspective but also from a contemporary one.

3

Sociocultural Discourses in German Dialectology

3.1

Background in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Primacy of the Linguistic Area

An awareness of the social dimension of dialects is as old as dialectology itself. Already in 1821, the Bavarian linguist Schmeller differentiates between a common rural pronunciation and the speech of the bourgeois class in the cities and the pronunciation of the educated in his grammar on Bavarian dialects (Schmeller

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1821, p. 21). This synchronic description stands in contrast to the question of dialect change, shifting the focus from the social to the cultural dimension. For much of the nineteenth century, the assumption of dialects as the historical continuants of the Germanic tribal languages is almost dogmatically prominent. In this view, the borders of dialect regions are seen as the borders of Germanic tribes. But as soon as larger data collections become available, a new perspective arises. In his study on Swabian dialects, Fischer (1895, p. 84) concludes that in many regions, the borders of the postmedieval duchies, dioceses and confessions coincide with the language borders. In particular, the political borders reveal striking coincidences with the distribution of dialect variants. For Fischer (1895, p. 87), the cohesiveness of the regions can “only derive from the traffic-inhibiting effect of such political boundaries.” In the case that two neighboring regions differ in linguistic terms, “traffic across the border was too small to allow the given model to go beyond to have an influence on the other side” (Fischer 1895, p. 84). Haag (1900, p. 140) also realizes that “nearly all language boundaries [...] coincide with political traffic barriers, old ones and new ones” (my translation). Therefore, for Haag, too, it is the territories which stimulate the evolution of language areas and, in the further course, guarantee the stabilization of these areas over a period of nearly 300 years. Based on similar findings in the material of the Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs (Linguistic Atlas of the German Empire), Wenker (2013[1889]) addresses the demand for an “explanatory dialectology” (Wenker 2013[1895], p. 955) which aims at a narrower understanding of the interplay of language and political and sociocultural issues. But it is Wrede who explicitly formulates a research program, which he argumentatively leads back to what he calls the “social-linguistic moment”: It [i.e. the social-linguistic moment; A. L.] covers all of the linguistic phenomena and changes in whose explanation the individual does not apply, where on the contrary only the interaction of many individuals comes into consideration, where manifold cultural influences and all possible traffic acts, where above all population mixtures are the basis. [Es umfaßt alle die sprachlichen Erscheinungen und Wandlungen, bei deren Erklärung das Individuum im Stich läßt, wo vielmehr allein das Aufeinanderwirken vieler Individuen in Betracht kommt, wo mannigfache Kultureinflüsse und alle möglichen Verkehrsakte, wo vor allem Bevölkerungsmischungen zu Grunde liegen. (Wrede 1963 [1903], p. 310; my translation)]

This approach developed into a productive research focus in German dialectology during the first half of the twentieth century. The respective studies have found their way into reference books under the etiquettes of the “extralinguistic method,” “cultural-space research,” (Kulturraumforschung) or “cultural morphology” (Kulturmorphologie), and they received a significant boost by the often interdisciplinary work of Frings (see Aubin et al. 1926). The basic idea behind these studies is to make history, that is, a regional history, usable as a means of explaining the variation, change, and stability of regional varieties. Against this background, the factors of language change are set in nonlinguistic ways, be it in the social contact between the German tribes and Romans in the Rhine region or the mixtures of medieval settler streams in eastern Germany. In contrast, linguistic stability is seen as

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a connection with territories, which, the aforementioned relevance of traffic aside, entails its own administrative structures, legal formations, and much more. As a whole, the argumentation in this phase is based on the macrolevel, where speech communities are defined in concrete nonlinguistic contexts (e.g., marriage). For some authors, in an almost positivistic sense, any speech community is the expression of nonlinguistic effects and processes of language history. Seen this way, human beings live within their prescribed limits, among which boundaries represent one of several manifestations of human existence. Needless to say, this definition leads to an overemphasis of the concept of borders. Finally, it is Bach (1950) who provides a synopsis of the scientific results of his time. And it is also Bach (1950, p. 62 et seq.) who equates the concept of the linguistic “core area” (“Kernlandschaft”) introduced by Haag (1900) within the concept of the cultural landscape, which is, from Bach’s perspective, shaped not only by administrative concerns, customs, and legendary material but also by craft techniques or clothing. Bach’s (1950, p. 63) largely unconsidered constructivist examination of the concept of space reveals a fairly modern view, though he failed to present a ready-made theory bringing together language development and the sociocultural dimension: The ‘spaces’ of which we are talking here are [...] not immediately to be understood as spaces in the geographical sense; they are actually groups of people in space; these groups are broken down by space, with their uniformly designed or graduated speech acts, concepts and other common goods (conceptions of artificial structure, rituals of clothing, etc.). The ‘spaces’ of both linguistic geography and also cultural geography therefore do not exist in nature [...], rather, they adhere only to man and his spiritual world; they are sociological, not geographical entities. [Die ‘Räume’, von denen hier die Rede ist, sind [...] unmittelbar nicht als Räume im geographischen Sinne aufzufassen; es sind eigentl. im Raum und durch ihn aufgegliederte Menschengruppen mit ihren einheitlich gestalteten oder gestaffelten Sprechhandlungen, Begriffen und anderen Gemeinschaftsgütern (Baugedanken, Kleidersitten usw.). Die ‘Räume’ der Sprach- und weiterhin der Kulturgeographie sind also nicht in der Natur vorhanden [...], sondern haften vielmehr nur am Menschen und seiner geistigen Welt; es sind soziologische, nicht geographische Gebilde (my translation; emphasis in the original)

With this statement, Bach already strikes the tone of a modern social geographer. From this perspective, people’s actions are due to those abstractions which are passed down through generations. Bach thus identifies the relevance of mental representations that have a retroactive effect on all expressions of social and cultural practices including language. At the same time, he overcomes the somewhat too schematic dependency of language borders on traffic areas, which had long been regarded as primarily decisive, by reevaluating “traffic” in a “socio-psychological” (“sozialpsychologisch,” Bach 1950, p. 65) manner and linking it to the experiences and evaluations of the language partners. However, this definition remains without a larger response. On the contrary, from the current perspective, Bach’s statement sounds like the concluding remark of the culturally oriented approach which has subsequently disappeared from the scene to some extent. Due to the limited coincidences of the very different phenomena, the process of referring language to the cultural practices of human

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beings could only be successful if it led to a routine of atomistic comparison. This point was reached when the atlas of German folklore (Atlas der deutschen Volkskunde; ADV), inspired and promoted by linguists among others, aimed to prove the spatial comparability of social practices. However, when the ADV appeared in the late 1930s, disillusionment and even disappointment arose in view of the absence of the anticipated extensive coincidences (see Cox and Zender 1998, p. 169). Similar to Maurer’s map, there are only partial coincidences of particular phenomena in particular regions, thus making it difficult on the aggregate level to identify clear-cut regional patterns of cultural coherence between language and, for example, traditions of agriculture, medicine, marriage rituals, eating habits, costumes, religious practice, or popular beliefs. An overall pattern that enables a well-defined overall spatial classification is simply not identifiable. The subsequent neglect of this branch of research was accelerated by the fact that culturally oriented studies were exploited beyond the narrower disciplinary boundaries in a nationalist discussion between the 1920s and 1950s (see Knobloch 2010). Thus, in the twentieth century, other topics, above all those of the languagesystematic nature, were able to gain the upper hand. Today, however, it is accepted that the early approaches have certainly identified an important core. Thus, in his dialectometric work on Bavarian-Swabia, Pickl (2013) undertakes a statistical examination of prominent linguistic factors on a lexical scale. His study confirms the results found in traditional dialectology: rivers only exceptionally influence the borders of linguistic areas, while political borders influence them significantly if they coincide with ancient territorial borders. After all, this provides statistical evidence, at least for a subarea of the German-speaking world, that the basic assumptions formulated around 1900 apply. This result is important because, in contrast to previous work, it was not achieved on the basis of the evaluation of individual isoglosses but in an intersubjective analysis of local mass data. Against this background, it is not really surprising that the sociocultural approach in the publication of the German atlases continues to this day. It is common practice, as Fischer (1895) already had undertaken, to offer historical interpretation aids in modern dialect atlases. In addition, there is information on more recent nonlinguistic practices. The Linguistic Atlas of the Central Rhine Area (Mittelrheinischer Sprachatlas; Bellmann et al. 1994–2002) provides an example with a map on commuter flows, offering information about an important aspect of social dynamics in the area in question. The Linguistic Atlas of Bavarian-Swabia (Sprachatlas von Bayerisch-Schwaben; König and Wellmann 1996–2009) also provides nonlinguistic information. This atlas focuses on the everyday behavior of the atlas informants by offering information on, for example, where the informants go when they say they are going to town among other things. Such information serves the interest for nonlinguistic explanations for linguistic stability on the one hand and for recent linguistic changes on the other (for a non-German example, see the Atlas of North American English; Labov et al. 2006). It also documents a changed scientific perspective on sociocultural conditions by taking the speaker-centered microperspective in addition to the more distanced macroperspective. The sometimes

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schematic view on the language area thus gives way to an integrative analysis of speech communities, which takes cultural imprints into account as well as specific actions of the speakers.

3.2

A Change of Perspective in the Twenty-First Century: Primacy of Both the Speakers and the Speech Community

So far, it has become clear that “spaces” are due to the constructions of speakers. Against this background, it is possible to argue that the coherence of linguistic regions is always accompanied by the coherence of the mental representations about these regions. While Bach, for example, is still proceeding in an interpretive manner, more recent research projects explicitly address these mental representations in a more analytical way. In this regard, it is particularly gainful to observe the relationship between speakers’ mental representations of language and actual language change. The project Frontière linguistique au Rhin Supérieur (FLARS) provides an example for this. For FLARS, surveys are carried out at 43 sites in the Franco-German border region regarding both informants’ linguistic competence and their specific view on the overall linguistic situation. On the linguistic level, the results point to divergence processes in the dialects along the state border. In a sense, this confirms the old assumption of the relevance of political boundaries. Taking traditional studies into account, it could be stated that this border region has also grown historically (Baden vs. Alsace), but this would neglect an important point. In fact, the boundary is old, but the divergence processes are new. According to Auer et al. (2015, p. 323), this thinking is motivated by a current change in the conceptualization of the border area. While the region was traditionally perceived as a coherent language area (which it is following common dialect classifications, see Wiesinger 1983), younger speakers now manifest a different perception of the region. For these speakers, there are separated language areas in Germany and France. In this way, the psychological component becomes immediately tangible as a factor in the formation of linguistic regions. The authors assume: that the national states with their national standard varieties did not achieve their factual and ideological full coverage of their covered national territory until the second half of the twentieth century, and that they not until then had their effect in the oral language of the ‘peripheral’ (off-center) regions (Auer et al. 2015, p. 325; my translation) [dass die Nationalstaaten mit ihren nationalen Standardvarietäten erst in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts das von diesen überdachte Staatsgebiet faktisch und ideologisch vollständig erreichen und auch in der mündlichen Sprache der ‘peripheren’ (zentrumsfernen) Gebiete ihre Wirkung entfalten]

Against this background, the linguistic divergence is to be understood as a cognitive aftereffect of the historical formation of national borders. As a result, the linguistic reference point for the language partners in the region is no longer the regional language systems (dialects) but the superposed standard languages in Germany and

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France. The consequence of this cognitive reorientation, which essentially represents a reassessment of geographically distributed communities as speech communities, is a new formation of the language area along the political border. In this way, language geography, speech communities, and speech acts are closely linked.

4

Empirical Insights into the Interplay of Language Areas, Speech Communities and Nonlinguistic Phenomena

The above example of the FLARS project was chosen because it illustrates the interaction of nonlinguistic conditions, mental representations, and linguistic acts in a speech community that differentiates itself based on these factors. In addition, this chapter now presents two more comprehensive analyses which are particularly wellsuited to illustrate both the relevance and the scope of the interaction of language areas, speech communities, and nonlinguistic parameters of action. The first example is dedicated to the connections between speech communities and political acts. It focuses on a linguistic boundary which will be discussed with reference to nonlinguistic facts. Even though this chapter is dedicated to the German tradition, the linguistic situation in the USA is introduced in more detail, as this is where the most comprehensive analysis of this kind has been conducted. Essentially, the example cited above on the connection between speech communities and territories can be continued in a different context. Against this background, the USA example serves as further evidence on a linguistic scale. The second example looks at more recent developments in Germany on a broader scale. It takes as its starting point the interrelationships between speech communities and economic acts.

4.1

Language Areas, Attitudes, and Political Actions in the USA

In the third volume of the Principles of Linguistic Change, Labov (2010, pp. 208–235) raises the question of the historical and social conditions under which language exists and language change takes place (see also Labov 2012). Labov focuses on the so-called North/Midland border, which is in the eastern part of the USA where historically the settlers began their trek west. Linguistically, this border represents a particularly stable boundary, especially in terms of lexical, but also phonological contrasts. A peculiarity arises from the fact that the northern system of short vowels is currently undergoing a language change against standard American. According to Labov (2010, 2012), this Northern Cities Shift not only strengthens the linguistic coherence of the north but also intensifies the existing social differentiation between the north and the Middle/South region, which can be traced back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the manner of the abovementioned extralinguistic method, Labov demonstrates, for example, north-south differences in the techniques of house building and woodworking, which are in line with the linguistic border. He argues that the transportation routes

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of this region were laid out in an east-west direction and that a north-south route connecting the two regions was missing for a long time. As a consequence, linguistic leveling processes were more likely to occur along the latitude than along the longitude. At the same time, the social demarcation of the northern and southern communities, the Yankees and the Southerners, has increased. This is another finding that could be placed within the sociolinguistic paradigm (cf. also the northern and southern opponents in the Civil War). So far, Labov is on the traditional dialectological terrain. He leaves this field with an analysis that relates the linguistic differences to concrete attitudes and practices. First, Labov (2010: 219 et seq.) refers to a differentiation in political attitudes in which a clear spatial separation could be proven. Strikingly, the core areas of two groups, the so-called moralists and individualists, sort themselves out precisely along the North/Midland border: the northern group increasingly focuses the state’s duty of care and sees the main task for the state in securing a good life for people; the southern group, on the other hand, tends towards an utilitarian view according to which the state should not interfere too strongly in the private interests of the individual. In line with this are, second, differences in the USA presidential elections in 2004. A regression analysis shows that, in addition to the size of the cities, dialect area membership is a significant variable in explaining electoral behavior, doing so better than the classification according to federal states (Labov 2010, p. 224). According to this reasoning, there is a clear preference for the Democratic candidate in the northern dialect area. According to Labov (2010), the effect is similar for the year 2000 but is weakened for 2008. What is most striking is the fact that examining voting behavior concerns not only attitudes but also real decisions. Taking a closer look at the states in which the death penalty is or is not implemented reveals an indication that this behavior has historically evolved. Once again, it is the states of the northern dialect area where the liberal thinking, in this case the rejection of the death penalty, has been opposed since the middle of the nineteenth century. At the same time, a different attitude to slavery (north – against) and religious conservatism (south – pro) is reflected in the two regions. Labov makes another remarkable finding concerning the electoral behavior of the Americans, taking a look at the vote on the American Civil Rights Act of 1964, which did fundamentally strengthen the rights of African Americans. By separating the votes of the House of Representatives according to their origin, Labov (2010, p. 234) demonstrates that it is not primarily party membership that explains the electoral behavior (Democrats vs. Republicans) but rather membership to the southern or the northern dialect area. The dialect distribution thus better reflects electoral behavior than the actual party affiliation. Labov (2010, p. 208) draws conclusions from thinking on “long-standing ideological oppositions on a national scale” which still influence both linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior today. Language is thus integrated into a dynamic set of cultural, social, and political views and actions. In the regions under consideration, it is one of many means of social expression used by people. Labov (2010, p. 235) states:

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As long as these ideological differences persist, speakers may be more likely to align their productions towards those around them who share their own identity and world-view. And along the linguistic and cultural border, they may be less likely to accommodate to others whom they perceive as holding different or hostile views.

In this line of thinking, Labov takes up a typical “in-group/out-group” scheme, which explains a multitude of social actions. It is also clear that the individually addressed nonlinguistic social conditions or actions have no causal explanatory power for the linguistic phenomenon. Rather, they are intersecting phenomena that follow a specific spatial order. Methodologically, this reasoning makes it clear that in addition to the local factors commonly analyzed in sociolinguistic studies, such factors which have a greater historical depth and are more global in scope must also be taken into account. In a sense, Labov, as a sociolinguist from the very beginning, has returned to the roots of dialectology. At the same time, however, he goes beyond it by locating the ideological content in the language itself and thus placing the speaking individual at the center. In so doing, the semiotic value of language, which is an important part of the self-preserving power of what one might call the social system, comes to the fore.

4.2

Language Geography, Mobility, and Economic Behavior in the Federal Republic of Germany

According to the above statements, it is not surprising that connections such as those made by Labov in the political realm can also be observed in other dimensions of human existence. Particularly in economics, several studies which deal with the connections between language and economic factors have been presented in recent years (“The Economics of Linguistic Diversity” in terms of Ginsburgh and Weber 2011). The assumption of such a connection is justified when both language and economic action form communicative systems in the broader sense. For language, this certainly does not have to be specifically emphasized. However, the communication-theoretical foundation of economic behavior requires a more detailed elaboration. In the simplest case, economic action can be described as a stimulus-response model: someone offers something, another accepts it or not. On an extended level, a strategic moment could be incorporated into such a model: someone is thinking about what to do to get someone else to accept the offer while the other is thinking about what the offer is for. Based on similar considerations, Akerlof and Kranton (2000) have developed a model that identifies identity – understood here as “a person’s sense of self” (Akerlof and Kranton 2000, p. 715) – as a central factor in the economic behavior of all actors involved in an interaction. This reasoning can be directly linked to the above considerations. The relevant studies examine the question whether language supports economic exchange. It is striking that for a long time only linguistic relations between nations were considered in this context. To demonstrate the significance of this work, a metaanalysis by Egger and Lassmann (2012) can be discussed. The authors evaluate

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81 scientific papers in which a total of 701 languages were examined for their influence on international trade flows. The result is clear: if the trading partners’ countries share the same language (official language or spoken variety in a multilingual context), the trade volume increases by an average of 44%. A series of related publications, on the other hand, goes one step further, systematically linking economic activities in the Federal Republic of Germany with the spatial distribution of historical dialects. Here, dialects serve as a proxy for cultural identity. The underlying idea is that if it is possible to prove the influence of language on economic activity, it can be assumed that, due to the strong cultural impact of dialects, this influence should also be culturally based. In a first study, Falck et al. (2012, first published in 2010) analyze the cross-regional migration flows in Germany. The authors analyze all internal moves of the years 2002–2006 on the level of the German NUTS-3 regions. The basic assumption is that each person attaches a specific value to the region in which they are a resident. This value can be determined by two factors: (1) the economic quality of the region (e.g., salary structures, employment rate, and price level) and (2) the subjective relation to the region (e.g., sense of home, cultural identity, social acceptance). In so doing, an economic factor is contrasted with a more emotional one. It is also assumed that the two factors influence each other. Based on this finding, a gravity model is set up in which both factors are taken into account. Migration is understood as a function of the sum of the specific economic characteristics in the source and target districts added around the pecuniary and emotional costs of a move. While the economic characteristics are operationalized via district-specific parameters, the pecuniary costs are measured via the geographical distance and the travel time between the districts. Dialect similarities (Lameli 2013) between the districts are chosen as a means of approaching the emotional costs. The assumption is not that people will choose their relocation according to the dialects but rather that the dialect regions can be taken as a proxy for regions of cultural similarity. In addition, numerous other factors were considered in separate analyses, which could potentially serve as another proxy for cultural similarities or could have a further influence on the relocation behavior (e.g., historical territories, degrees of urbanity, industrial structure, religious boundaries, political borders, FRG vs. GDR, soil quality, height differences, age, and gender). As a result, the study demonstrates a statistically significant effect of the dialectal similarity between the starting point and destination of migration. If one excludes the moves explained by the geographical distance, the significant effect is still there. As far as the other influencing factors are concerned, the historical territories in particular must be emphasized. Their influence, which has been recognized already in the nineteenth century, still has a significant impact today. The modern political borders (above all the federal states) also contribute to explaining migration behavior, as expected. Falck et al. (2012, p. 237) conclude from these results that there are: intangible cultural borders [. . .] that impede economic exchange. These intangible borders [. . .] are enormously persistent over time; they have been developed over centuries, and so they are likely to be there also tomorrow.

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This result is important as it demonstrates a significant connection between dialects and nonlinguistic action in a mass analysis for the first time. Further results were achieved in some follow-up studies. It is well known, for example, that welleducated people who are willing to take risks tend to move over long distances (Jaeger et al. 2010). In an evaluation of 994 persons, whose social, economic, and behavioral data are collected via the so-called Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, cf. Wagner et al. 2007). Bauernschuster et al. (2014) find that exactly these persons significantly often exceed the cultural areas indicated by the dialect data. All in all, the dialect data explain this migration pattern statistically much better than, for example, the geographical distance. As these two studies show, mobility is highly associated with a preference for cultural familiarity. Special incentives, such as higher education, are needed to overcome this (see also Falck et al. 2018). While these studies start in the private sector, another study explicitly focuses on the business sector. Lameli et al. (2015) analyze the influence of dialect similarity on trade. The study is based on trade flows from 24 groups of goods between 1995 and 2004 in 101 German transport districts (>4 million observations). Here, too, the similarity in dialect has a significant influence but is individually considered weaker than the factor “travel time.” Using the example of the Augsburg transport district, the authors illustrate this connection (Fig. 2). Augsburg is located in the south of Germany where two major dialect groups exist, the Alemannic group which is mainly located in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg and the Bavarian group which is mainly located in the federal state of Bavaria. Augsburg is special in that it belongs to the Alemannic (more precisely to the Swabian) linguistically, while it lies politically in Bavaria. The authors find that Augsburg shows a significantly increased trade volume only in Swabia (i.e., Baden-Württemberg), not in Bavaria. This corresponds almost perfectly with the linguistic similarities found in Augsburg. A more recent study (Seitz et al. 2017), which focuses on strictly financialoriented action, shows similar results with regard to the risk behavior of German banks. Here, too, there is a significant coincidence with dialect similarity, which cannot be explained by any other factor. In the question of how high they set their risk deposits, the decision-makers obviously orient themselves on the behavior of other banks and in turn prefer those that are located in a dialect region as similar as possible. What can be seen here is a special trust in the decision-makers of one’s own cultural area – mirrored by the language area – which is once again significant in-group behavior. The examples could be easily extended. However, it has already become clear that actions are first dependent on individual conditions, that is, biography, attitudes, etc. Second, people’s actions have cultural imprints which go much further than what is generally assumed. In particular, this is illustrated by economic behavior. These connections do not, however, speak in favor of a positivist cultural imprint but rather illustrate the dynamic coexistence of linguistic and nonlinguistic actions. As it turns out, people – whether consciously or unconsciously – do weigh rational and emotional aspects and bring them into subjective harmony, as, for example, in the case of trust in the banking sector. As becomes also clear on closer examination of the microlevel, language is even an extraordinarily important decision-making factor

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Fig. 2 Coincidence of dialect similarity and trading flows in case of the Augsburg transport district. (a) Dialect similarity for Augsburg (black polygon): green = high dialect similarity, pink = low dialect similarity. (b) Significant internal trade flows for Augsburg (black polygon); trading spots of residuals of benchmark regression: red = significantly strong amount of trading, blue = significantly weak amount of trading. The map is overlaid by the dialect classification of Wiesinger (1983), separating the Swabian dialect region in the western part of Augsburg from the Bavarian region in the East of Augsburg

(seen, for example, in the Heblich et al. 2015 laboratory study). In a significant number of cases, the individual construction of one’s own community (in-group), which is usually associated with increased trust, influences both the linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior of the individual.

5

Concluding Remarks

This chapter outlines the speech community as a community of aligned acting. It has been demonstrated that, surprisingly frequently, people from the same community make similar decisions from a multitude of linguistically and nonlinguistically relevant options for action. Furthermore, it becomes obvious that this social behavior is also relevant from a geographic perspective. Luckmann’s theory can be referred to as a conclusion. For Luckmann (1992, p. 5; my translation), the “area of action [....] is surrounded by a social ‘fence’” which is “designed by the individual (by one’s

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will, interests and knowledge).” The studies mentioned above have indicated that, in order to remain in the picture, the fence can be overcome but still provides a favorable point of orientation. This is why there are coincidences of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena in some regions and differences in others. The most relevant motor of both change and stability is the identity related or culturally related mental constructions of the people in the regions. In this regard, the example of the Franco-German border region reveals a fundamental change of linguistic geography based on realigned abstractions. Consequently, the fundamental freedom of action implies possible changes of the existing social relations from the outset. From this perspective, the correlations between political and linguistic action are remarkable, since they illustrate, considering the comparatively recent history of the USA, the short time period in which social identities can consolidate into diachronic cultural identities. What Eckert (2012) defines as linguistic variation, namely being a semiotic system that is capable of expressing the social concerns of a community, applies, in this regard, to all the social variation phenomena mentioned above. If at the beginning of this chapter reference was made to the possibility of locating people on the basis of their language, it can, therefore, also be assumed for other courses of social action, at least to a certain extent. Even though this chapter mainly focuses on the German tradition, the example dedicated to the political scene in the USA indicates crosslinguistic analogies. As it also became clear, dialectology is very open to these connections already in its early phase, but is, in Germany, sometimes too strongly bound to the concepts of space and border (see Gauchat 1903 for a very different discussion in France). The extent of the interdependencies can only be captured by taking into account the cognitively reasoning and socially acting individual. This, in turn, would lead to a sharpening of the connections between language geography, community, and action. It would, therefore, be highly desirable if linguistics were to become even more open to interdisciplinary approaches in the future as well as if other disciplines were to become more open to linguistics. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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“Spanish Languages” as a Polysemic Expression: Territories, Borders, and Geopolitical Identities

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Rubén C. Lois-González, Jorge Olcina Cantos, and Miguel Pazos-Otón

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Spain, a Multicultural Country: Rich in Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Mother Tongues of the Spanish Territories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Languages and the Territorial Issue in Spain: A Geopolitical Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Spain is the country with the most complex geolinguistics issues in the whole of Europe. On the one hand, it is the territory of origin for a language spoken by more than 400 million people across the world, especially in the United States. On the other hand, at least three other joint official languages (Catalan, Basque, and Galego) coexist alongside each other in Spain and are the mother tongues of approximately 18% of the country’s citizens. So, Spanish languages are accompanied by complex territorial issues and are even superimposed in many regions and towns, creating very powerful geopolitical identities. Of these identities, the most significant is the one generated by Spanish or Castilian. This is one of the main languages used on a global scale, from the United States (where it is spoken by more than 40 million people) to the far south of Latin America, with the exception of Brazil. In this immense country, the hegemonic use of Portuguese does not pose any serious problems for communicating with

R. C. Lois-González (*) · M. Pazos-Otón Department of Geography, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] J. O. Cantos Department of Geography, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_58

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the Spanish-speaking citizens in all its neighboring countries. As can be deduced, the fact that Castilian was born in Spain and has spread from there brings huge advantages when it comes to fostering the global expansion of its economy, leading a highly influential cultural community and acting (together with Portugal) as a bridge between the European Union and Latin America. In the interior areas of Spain, more than 10 million people speak Catalan, a little fewer than 3 million speak Galego, and 850,000 speak Basque. It is true that all these citizens know and are able to speak Spanish too; although by keeping these territorial languages alive, they are expressing a strong sense of their own identity and this has been used by the 1978 Spanish Constitution as a key factor for regarding Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia as nationalities, compared to the term region that applies to most of the country’s autonomous communities. As the paper discusses, the Spanish language issue is a complex one and provides many possibilities for analysis. These possibilities lead to a better understanding of how linguistic geography is fundamental for interpreting political and cultural geography and the set of territorial representations that flourish in Europe.

Keywords

Spain, Geolinguistics, Official and co-official languages, Spanish-Castilian

1

Introduction

The term Spanish and the expression Spanish language(s) are subject to some debate. We can say that we are dealing with multiple meanings and that from this polysemy, it is possible to construct an academic analysis like ours (Lois et al. 2000; Burgueño 2002; Olcina-Cantos 2013). The most spoken language in Spain today used to be known as Castilian, since it was the language of the medieval and modern Kingdom of Castile, which was gradually gaining dominance in Spain. We are facing a situation similar to that of the English language in the United Kingdom, although the original name in this case has been retained to refer to the language. At the same time, in Spain there are other spoken languages such as Catalan, Basque, or Galician, to name the three most important which have remained and which are the mother tongues of about 20% of the population (Burgueño 1997; Lois et al. 2000). Finally, the conquest and domination of much of the United States by the Crown of Castile (later the Spanish Crown) justify that a large majority of Spanish speakers live on that continent and that far from leading to an abandonment of the Spanish language, it has strengthened its use in most of these territories. It is a use that is also linked to the existence of an Association of Spanish Language Academies, which integrates 23 of them nationally, and that extends throughout the four continents where this language has roots (Cervantes Institute 2015). This is without prejudice to each of the academies being named with the name of their country (Mexican Academy, Cuban, Argentina Academy of Letters, etc.).

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According to various estimates by international agencies, Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and English. With regard to English, we can say that Spanish has even more native speakers, but the generalization of the language born in the British Isles in education and as an authentic lingua franca of the globalized world of the twenty-first century gives it a number of users much higher than Chinese itself. Based on various sources, Spanish clearly exceeds the number of speakers of Hindi, Arabic, Russian, French, and German. It is considered that speakers of each of these languages is higher than 1% of the world population, while Castilian or Spanish represents 6.7% (Cervantes Institute 2015). Official estimates from the Government of Spain regarding the language predict that in 2030 Spanish speakers will account for 7.5% of the planet’s inhabitants. Therefore, Spanish is presented as a global language used on every continent, although its highest concentration corresponds mainly to the United States and secondly to the Iberian Peninsula and in general to Europe where it is learned by hundreds of thousands of people every year. According to statistics compiled by the Cervantes Institute (2015) – the official body responsible for teaching and promoting the Spanish language, similar to the British Council, Confucius Institute, Goethe Institut, or the Alliance Française – an estimate of the number of Spanish speakers in the world gives us a figure of between 467,801,000 and 558,977,000 today, as shown in Table 1. In regard to sovereign nations with Spanish as their official language, they are spread throughout Central and South America, excluding Brazil, the Guianas, and various Caribbean islands (Fig. 1) but include the more than 40 million speakers in Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina and more than 10 million in Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Cuba (Cervantes Institute 2015). In this important region of the world, well-represented native languages are preserved in Paraguay (over 30% of the population speaks Guarani or Portuguese as their first language), Guatemala, Bolivia, and Peru (with about 15–20% of speakers in Amerindians languages). Outside the United States, Spanish is spoken as the mother tongue of a large majority of citizens of the Kingdom of Spain and its knowledge is compulsory for all. And in Africa, the former colony of Equatorial Guinea maintains the officialdom and the predominant use of Spanish (Cervantes Institute 2015). Among the countries where the language is not official, the United Table 1 Breakdown of Spanish speakers in the world in 2016 Number of speakers 423,252,000 44,549,000 69,922,000

21,252,000

Category of speakers People belong to native Spanish speakers in countries where Spanish is an official language Native speakers in countries outside the Hispanic world (most notably the United States) Speakers with a limited knowledge of the language from countries where Spanish is spoken and also countries with significant Spanish-speaking communities Defined as the group of foreign language learners

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Fig. 1 The Spanish language in the World. (Source: Authors’ elaboration)

States excels (with between 40 and 52 million speakers if we consider native proficiency speakers or those with limited knowledge of the language), the rest of the European Union with more than one million (immigrant families of Spanish or Latin American origin), the microstate of Andorra where it is the majority spoken language, and in Israel, Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, or Algeria where more than 100,000 speakers with Spanish as their first language are recorded. Among the countries where Spanish is used as a second language, or in a limited way, Morocco stands out with more than 1.5 million speakers, particularly in the old colonial domain of the North (Cervantes Institute 2015). In the following pages, we will focus on Spain, a country in Southern Europe characterized by its multiculturalism and its wealth of languages. The next section will focus on knowing the native languages of the Spanish territories, their different legal status, and recent dynamics in their everyday use. The final section will focus on developing a geopolitical reading of the relationship between languages and territorial issue. Finally, we will end with a brief conclusion.

2

Spain, a Multicultural Country: Rich in Languages

Language is the most important sign of the identity of people. Along with territory, it is the outstanding heritage received from ancestors and tries to stay alive for future generations. Language and traditions shape the culture that survives thanks to the will of the people, who identify with its values. The formation of political and administrative structures must be based on the respect for the traditions and language of the people. This is always a complex fitting process that requires constant dialogue; otherwise, the new administrative reality is doomed to the emergence of continuous conflicts that can result, if the positions are distant, in painful breakups (Fusi 2000).

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The history of the Spanish language dates back to the pre-Roman period (Menéndez-Pidal 2005), in which the people situated on the mainland spoke their own language (Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Tartessians, Aquitanians) as well as the colonizing peoples (Phoenicians and Carthaginians) who influenced the Hispanic Latin conferring the peninsular romance languages with several of their features. The Romanization of the mainland led to the deep Latinization of most of its territory. The pre-Roman languages were declining in use and were limited to rural and isolated areas. However, within the general linguistic unity, territorial arrangements based on belonging to one or another provincial organization were evident. Strabo, in his Geography, first century BC (Estrabón 1991), highlights this fact by noting that among the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, there was, even then, a diversity of languages. This linguistic unity would not be interrupted with the fall of the Empire. The Visigoth period (Centuries V–VIII) did not mean any fracture from the previous period. Hispanic Latin, while losing contact with the Latin from Rome, continued its evolution according to its dialectal peculiarities. In the medieval period, the Latin dialects became the new Romance languages (Gimeno-Menéndez 2004). The Iberian Peninsula was in a unique situation throughout these centuries: the establishment of the Islamic civilization and the later stages of the Christian reconquest. These facts would determine the development of political organizations and social and cultural contacts within the Christian kingdoms and contacts with the Muslim kingdoms. Romance dialects spoken in the part of the Iberian Peninsula dominated by Arabs were known as Mozarabic and remained alive, albeit with diminished use, until the fifteenth century. And thanks to Mozarabic emigrations, Arabisms spread through areas that barely met the Muslim ruling. The advance of the reconquest, from the north to the south of the peninsula, also resulted in a fragmentation within the Romance languages: northern dialects, mainly from the Latin spoken there, in which traces of pre-Roman and Romanization linguistic conditions partly remain; and on the other side, southern dialects, relating to the particular conditions of the reconquest and repopulation. In the tenth century, Medieval Castilian or Castilian Romance emerged, as an evolution of Late Latin, which would run until the readjustment of the Castilian consonant system that took place in the late Middle Ages. This Medieval Castilian, with its pre-Roman influences, expanded south of the peninsula, while the reconquest advanced (Menéndez-Pidal 1980). In this historical context, King Alfonso X the Wise (1252–1284) institutionalized the Schools of Translators of Toledo, from which there emerged a standardized form of Medieval Castilian (Alfonsino Castilian) that would be used as a cultured language in court and by the writers of the time. It should be noted that Castilian did not spread throughout the peninsular territory by imposition but merged with other existing languages, first in the Spanish area, and then throughout the rest of the Christianized territory. Not only proper Castilian dialects but also those of nearby Aragon, Leon or Navarre areas decisively influenced the formation of this proto-Spanish. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish underwent a series of changes that transformed the Medieval Castilian into Early Modern Castilian, also called Spanish Golden Period (Barrajón-López and Alvarado-Ortega 2010). In this period, theoretical corpus of the

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N

11th century se

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Fig. 2 Location of languages in Spain in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. (Prepared by Mateo Varela Cornado; adapted from Lapesa 1981; Menéndez-Pidal 2005) Fig. 3 Expansion of Castilian/Spanish. (Prepared by Mateo Varela Cornado; adapted from Lapesa 1981; Menéndez-Pidal 2005)

Spanish language appeared that would help establish it, such as Grammar of the Castilian Language by Antonio de Nebrija (1492) (Lapesa 1981). From this Early Modern Spanish and after the conquest and colonization of the lands of the New World, the Spanish-based Creole languages emerged. Finally, in this historical evolution of the Spanish language, it was not until the eighteenth century when the phonology and grammar allowed it to be referred to as Modern Castilian. In 1713 the Royal Spanish Academy was founded as a body responsible for promoting the language unit and ensuring a common standard of Castilian (Figs. 2 and 3). There is a prominent fact in the evolution of the Spanish language and that is the maintenance and conviviality with the mother tongues that, from the evolution of the Romance languages (Catalan and Galician) or those derived from their own not Indo-European evolution (Basque), continue their evolution from the late Middle Ages to the present (Navarro-Sánchez 2006). This is a characteristic feature of Spain where despite the promotion of Spanish as the primary language since the emergence of the modern States by different governments has not meant the extinction of the other three languages that are currently official in their territories (Basque, Catalan with its dialectal varieties, and Galician). This accounts for the strength of languages

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in the Spanish territories and the maintenance of a linguistic diversity that usually goes back to the Middle Ages and, in some case, before the Romanization period. Catalan evolved from vulgar Latin and experienced its biggest changes between the seventh and eighth centuries, but it was not until the twelfth century that it would form its own corpus gradually, differing from the Occitan languages. Of its original core in the eastern Pyrenees (Rosellón, Ampurias, Besalú, Cerdanya, Urgell, Pallars, and Ribagorza counties), it extended to the south during the reconquest in successive phases: Barcelona and Tarragona, Lleida, Tortosa, the ancient Kingdom of Valencia, Balearic Islands, and Alguer; and with the medieval expansion of the Aragonese crown it spread in various territories of the western Mediterranean. In 1907 Prat de la Riba created the Catalan Studies Institute as the agency responsible for the linguistic normalization of Catalan. Galician evolved from the vulgar Latin that was spoken in the province of Gallaecia. The medieval Galician or Galician-Portuguese became very important in the Middle Ages as the language of troubadour poetic creation. The oldest document written in medieval Galician was the jurisdiction of Castro Caldelas in 1228. From the twelfth century, which was when Portugal became independent from the Kingdom of Leon, a division between the two types of language that later consolidated occurred: the current Galician and Portuguese. After a long period of Castilian domination which led to the disuse of Galician in the public domain (known as the dark centuries), in the late nineteenth century with the literary movement “Rexurdimento,” Galician became a literary language and gained dissemination as a language of public use which continues until today. In 1906 the Royal Academy of Galicia for the protection of the Galician language was founded. Meanwhile, Euskera had its own evolution from the old Aquitanian language. After the fall of the Roman Empire and the formation of the primitive Kingdom of Pamplona, Basque had a period of expansion in the context of the repopulation promoted by the reconquest. In the late Middle Ages, Basque suffered a setback in its area of influence, as a result of the expansion of Medieval Castilian and French. However, in the modern period Basque was widely spoken in Guipuzcoa, Vizcaya, the northern half of Alava, and northern Navarra. This situation remained almost unchanged until the nineteenth century when industrialization and the rise of liberalism caused a major setback to the use of Basque. In 1918 the Royal Academy of Basque Language was created for the promotion and normalization of Basque. In all three cases, Galician, Catalan, and Basque, the Franco dictatorship meant the loss of recognition as an official language in their territories. Since 1976 there has been official recognition of these three mother tongues and the respective Statutes of Autonomy of the Basque Country, Navarra, Catalonia, and Galicia set the officialdom of these languages in their respective territories. We must not forget that other Spanish territories not considered “historical” in their regional conception rightfully claim the existence of native languages or dialects and their recognition as official languages (Bable, Leonese, Aragonese) (Lois et al. 2000). The names of the languages in the Spanish territory have sometimes been controversial, promoting academically nonexistent differences to highlight political grandstanding (Moreno 2015). To start with, the very name of the Castilian or

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Spanish language has historically fostered debates which are today surpassed. The Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts (RAE 2005) illuminates this issue: “To designate the common language of Spain and many nations of America and which is also spoken as their own in other parts of the world, Castilian and Spanish are valid terms.” The controversy over which of these names is more appropriate today is surpassed. The term Spanish is more advisable for lack of ambiguity as it univocally relates to the language spoken today by 400 million people. Even though it is synonymous with Spanish, it is preferable to use the term Castilian to refer to the Romance dialect born in the Kingdom of Castile during the Middle Ages or the dialect of Spanish spoken today in that region. In Spain, the Castilian name is also used when it refers to the common language of the State in relation to the other co-official languages in their respective autonomous territories, such as Catalan, Galician, and Basque. In other cases, as indicated, artificial differences between languages of common trunk have been promoted by certain political positions to the point of creating official linguistic standardization bodies to differentiate them from the original mother tongue. This is the case of the Valencian dialect of Catalan, which is spoken in territories of the former Kingdom of Valencia and whose origins date back to the time of the repopulation conducted by inhabitants of the Catalan counties after the conquest carried out by Jaime I. In Asturias, the official name of the mother tongue, Asturian, has been imposed by the Law on the promotion and use of Asturian 1998, as opposed to “bable,” with historical roots and also recognized as an official name in the legal text, but not socially rooted. This linguistic diversity of the Spanish territory has not had many approaches from the geographical discipline and in particular since 1978 with the establishment of the State of the Autonomies. Highlights include works by Burgueño (1997, 2002) and Lois et al. (2000). In contrast, it is surprising that the geography of Spain manuals that have been published in our country in the last three decades have not included any explanatory section of the linguistic diversity of our country. Since the publication of the first map of languages in Spain in 1923, books on the geography of Spain (school or university textbooks) had more or less broadly mentioned the issue of the languages spoken in our country, and, in some books, a map with their territorial distribution was reproduced. Since 1978 the explanation of linguistic diversity has disappeared in the geography of Spain university textbooks, and it is barely mentioned in primary or secondary education geography texts. Other disciplines have come to occupy the place of geography in the cartographic representation of languages and linguistic varieties in Spain (Olcina-Cantos 2013). Spain is a multicultural and multilingual country. This diverse reality was reflected in the 1978 Constitution and has been developed in the Statutes of Autonomy of those Autonomous Regions with mother tongues (Cubero 2013). Article 3 of the Constitution states that “Castilian is the official language of the Spanish State. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it.” But it notes that “The other Spanish languages are also official in their respective Autonomous Regions and according to their Statutes.” And, it explicitly recognizes that “the wealth of the different language variations of Spain is a cultural heritage that will be the object of special respect and protection.” The languages spoken in the

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Spanish territory and officially recognized by the Statutes of their respective Autonomous Communities are Basque (Basque Country and Navarre), Galician (Galicia), Catalan (Catalonia, the Balearic Islands), and Valencian (Valencia) (Gargallo 2000). And in some regions, special protection is given to mother tongues spoken in their territory and thus reflected in their regional texts, as with Bable in Asturias and the dialects in Aragon. It is interesting that in the process of reform, some statutes of autonomy of Spanish regions have experienced a priori; the language issue was not a priority, but articles in defense of the linguistic modalities have been included. This is the case of Extremadura (Boletín Oficial del Estado 2011), Andalusia (Boletín Oficial del Estado 2007a), Castile and Leon (Boletín Oficial del Estado 2007c), and Aragon (Boletín Oficial del Estado 2007b). Another important fact relating to the protection and promotion of mother tongues in historical communities is that in their basic autonomous texts, the official character of the mother tongue, together with Castilian, is always highlighted and the right and duty to know and use the two official languages; it also indicates that no citizen may be discriminated against on the grounds of language (Fig. 4). The issue of mother tongues is no small matter in running a State. The report on the use of languages in the network, developed by the Cervantes Institute (2011), indicated that in the historical regions of our country, 18.2 million people coexist with their mother tongues and of those 11.5 million are able to read in their mother tongue (Cervantes Institute 2011). However, the reality of respect for the mother tongues is different in the autonomous regions with co-official languages, and the current situation of their regular use is based on promotion policies set up over the years in each of them. The linguistic fitting is undoubtedly the biggest problem of our young democracy today and can only be solved by the recognition of the minorities and dialogue without impositions (Tusell 1999). It is the most sociocultural aspect sensitive to the development of strong civil reactions of which there are many examples in the contemporary history of Spain (the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Second Republic). Being part of a State and thus the imposition of cultural values to the detriment of those that identify their own territories cannot be done by force because, sooner or later, problems and conflicts arise (Nogué 1998). Multicultural territories, such as ours, require complex management, and this should be both understood and respected, or it will result in segregation processes (Olcina-Cantos 2013).

3

The Mother Tongues of the Spanish Territories

Unlike other countries, such as Canada, Finland, Switzerland, and South Africa, where different languages are co-official in the whole of their territory, in Spain there is a hegemonic position of the “common language of all Spaniards,” that is, the Spanish language, among all the mother tongues. This has been a constant throughout the contemporary history of Spain, and from our point of view, it can be identified as an important generator of center-periphery tensions and discomfort by the linguistic minorities.

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Fig. 4 Diversity of languages in the Spanish territory. (Prepared by Mateo Varela Cornado; data adapted from Spanish Linguistics Promotor)

As mentioned above, Spanish is the only language that the Constitution expressly mentions and elevates it to the rank of the only required language in the whole of the State (first-level language). From here we find a gradation in the importance and the official treatment of different languages in four levels (Table 2). A detailed analysis of this complex sociolinguistic picture found in Spain leads us to detect important differences in usage levels and in communities of speakers of the different mentioned languages. If we begin our analysis with the languages that are co-official in their respective autonomous regions (Catalan, Basque, and Galician), we find very different situations. Basque is the only peninsular language that does not belong to the Indo-European language family and therefore does not derive from Latin. This has been crucial to understanding recent developments. The pressure from the Castilian language on Basque-speaking areas, along with the huge interlinguistic distance, has favored a process of systematic replacement of Basque by Spanish over recent centuries. Basque used to be spoken in the present territories of La Rioja and Aragon, but today it is only spoken in the Basque Country autonomous region and part of Navarre. Of the three co-official languages in Spain, it is the one with the most complicated situation, despite the great recovery efforts made in the Basque Country autonomous region (and to a lesser extent in Navarre). Indeed, in the Basque

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Table 2 Linguistic categories in Spain Level 1 2

Status Official language Co-official languages

3

Linguistic modalities

4

Language without any official recognition

Language and territory Castilian, throughout the Spanish territory Catalan in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and Valencia (called Valencian); Galician in Galicia, Basque in the Basque Country, and part of Navarra; Aranese in Catalonia Asturiano and “A Fala” or “Eonaviego” in Asturias, Aragon and Catalan in Aragon, Galician-Portuguese in Extremadura Arabic, Caló, Chinese, English, German, Romanian, etc.

Adapted from Doppelbauer (2008)

Country, more than half of the population (50.6%) do not speak or understand Basque, while the percentage of fully bilinguals is 32%. In the case of Navarre, the percentage of people who do not speak or understand this language is 80.8%, while only 11.7% are fully bilingual (Basque Government 2013). Since achieving autonomy, the Basque government has developed a very active language normalization policy, with two pillars. The first has been the definition of an educational model with three types of schooling depending on the vehicular language: Spanish only, mixed, and Basque only, to be chosen by the parents, which we will discuss later. The second has been the continuing education in Basque and the positive discrimination when accessing jobs and getting promotions in the civil service (primary and secondary school teachers, universities, hospitals, and regional police). Despite all these efforts, the declining trend in the use of Basque (not to their knowledge) continues in different age groups, due to the pressure of Castilian and the leading role of Spanish in the media. In regard to Catalan and Galician, both are Romance languages, although their social-linguistic situation is certainly different. Galician is, of all official languages, the one with, in relative values, the highest percentage of speakers of the total population in its territory of reference. According to official data of the Galician Statistics Institute (IGE 2014), in Galicia, 96.13% of the population understands Galician well or very well, and 87% state they are able to speak it very well or well. Galician is today a predominantly rural language linked to the lower classes, although the preservation tradition and political vindication of Galician dates back to the nineteenth century. Unlike in Catalonia, where the prosperous Catalan bourgeoisie class raised the flag of the language as the core of their nationalist aspirations and class image, in Galicia elites and ruling classes always used Spanish, or at least until the arrival of the democracy in 1978, with some anecdotal exceptions. This explains, therefore, the traditional existence of diglossia in the modern and contemporary history of Galicia. Castilian has always been the cultural, power, prestige, and language, while Gallego was reduced to familiar, domestic, and private settings. With the 1981 Statute of Autonomy, Galician became official in Galicia and the authorities began a recovery process (linguistic normalization). Since then there have been significant advances, such as the consolidation of standard rules (a controversial

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process by the excessive distancing from the Galician-Portuguese common trunk). There has also been an increase in Galician reading and writing skills in younger people who have been schooled in Galician. However, the number of Galician speakers is declining among younger age groups not only in cities but also in peri-urban and rural areas. Older population groups are those who are still mainly using the language of Galicia. We are therefore witnessing an increase in the public and symbolic presence of Galician in the political and administrative life, parallel to an increase in reading and writing skills of this language. However, Castilian is increasingly spoken among groups of a younger age, which in the medium to long term is a clear threat to its survival. The case of Catalan is considerably different for several reasons. To begin with, in Catalonia there is no diglossia situation such as that in Galicia. Catalan usage and skills are lower in percentage terms than is the case of Galician, but this is due to the migration to Catalonia from other parts of Spain over recent decades. According to official data from 2013 (Catalan Government 2015), 94.3% of the population understand Catalan, and 80.4% are able to speak it. In any case, the second generation of these migrants is already proficient in Catalan due to the language normalization process driven by the Catalonian Government in recent decades. Catalan already had a written standard established before the Franco dictatorship and has a significant social regard, backed by the emergence of the Catalan nationalist movement and, in recent years, the sovereignty movement. In 2006 the Catalan Parliament passed a new Statute of Autonomy that included the definition of Catalonia as a nation. It also decreed that all resident citizens in Catalonia were obliged to know Catalan, as well as Spanish. The new Statute which was endorsed by a referendum was challenged by the Popular Party and was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 2010. This opposition by the State to a language immersion policy in Catalonia and the recognition of the multinational character of the Spanish state is at the origin of the Catalan sovereignty drift in recent years and reflects the malaise of the population against the opposition from the central State to the deepening of the Catalan self-government. In addition to Catalonia, Catalan is spoken in the autonomous region of the Balearic Islands and thus is officially stated in its statute (Balearic Catalan). On the contrary, in Valencia, it has adopted the name of Valencian language, against the general approach taken by the philologists that said Valencian is a variety of Catalan. However, political criteria have been linked to identity feelings in Valencia and Catalonia which have led to the adoption of this name. In the Balearic Islands Region, Catalan is understood by 93.1% of the population, and 74.6% can speak it (Govern de les Illes Balears 2003). In Valencia (Valencia Government 2011), 74.4% understand Valencian, and 54.3% can speak it. Table 3 shows the use of regional languages in Spain in 2010. As shown in the table, Catalan is, by far, the second most understood language in Spain (by which we mean reading literacy, using data from the Cervantes Institute). If Catalonia and Balearic Islands add Valencia (respecting the majority philological criteria), we reach a total of almost nine million people. If we refer to speakers, Catalan is the tenth language in the European Union. The second minority language

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Table 3 Use of languages in Spain (2015)

Autonomous region Catalonia Valencian region Balearic Islands Basque Country Navarra Galicia Subtotal autonomous regions with their own language

2015 Population 7,508,106 4,953,482 1,106,753 2,189,093 640,339 2,717,749 19,115,522

Population able to read their own language (2014) 5,750,348 2,620,391 924,138 1,657,143 145,051 2,282,909 13,379,980

Total population able to read their own language 9,294,877

1,802,194 2,282,909 13,379,980

Source: Linguistic surveys and reports in autonomous regions with own languages. INE (National Statistics Institute); Cervantes Institute

community in Spain is Galicia, with less than two million readers, and the third, Basque-speakers, with more than 1.8 million people. The last of the co-official languages which we must mention is Aranese, the language of the Aran Valley and with co-official status throughout Catalonia. Of the population of the Aran Valley, 80.7% is able to understand it, and 55.61% are able to speak it, according to official data of 2013 (Catalan Government 2015).

4

Languages and the Territorial Issue in Spain: A Geopolitical Reading

As suggested throughout this work, there is a direct relationship between spoken language and territorial identity. An unsatisfactory and slightly conflictive relationship which often defines double belongings to the Catalan and to the Spanish, to the Galician, and to the Spanish, but it is also the object of discussion and geopolitical reflection. Thus, in the following pages, we will address four new issues: (1) the interpretation of Castilian/Spanish as the language of all Spanish citizens and the debates around this issue, (2) the association between territories with co-official language and the historical nationality legal formula contained in the 1978 Spanish Constitution, (3) languages and the education system in their compulsory levels, and, finally, (4) the threatened and minority languages of the Spanish territory at present. All official documents and laws enacted in Spain insist on considering Spanish as the language of the nation; Spanish is mandatory for all people. This legal mandate has been fulfilled without any doubt, but has been and is subject to debates and controversies of a geopolitical nature, episodically reappearing in the news, expressing certain territorial cohesion problems in the country (Ninyoles 1997). Thus, in a simple classification, neo-centralist positions that seek to raise this mandate to the status of dogma can be identified, and those that question the very

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continuity of Spain as a nation-state, at least as it is defined today, do not consider these legal precepts acceptable (Núñez-Seixas 2013). Among the first critics of the languages legal framework in Spain are parents’ movements. They are mainly in Catalonia, in the context of nonpermanent residence and question the obligation to learn Catalan at its schools. The same people, who number no more than several dozen, have reported their children’s situation in Court. Their complaints focus on the right to study Castilian and confine Catalan to a less relevant position. Although some of their demands have been accepted by the Spanish Supreme Court, the Catalan Autonomous Government (the Generalitat) has not applied them in their entirety in an unusual example of unrest and disobedience, which affects very few cases. However, what really matters is that these specific conflicts have great impact in the conservative press of Madrid, which insists on concepts such as “imposition” of Catalan, “eradication of Castilian,” or “the violation of individual freedoms,” opening a debate with little social base but one that usually excites favorable positions to a strengthening of power and centralist discipline in the country. At the other level, many thinkers and intellectual sovereignists and Basque, Catalan, and, to a lesser extent, Galician separatists argue that the only legitimate language for their territory is their own language, accusing Spanish of being a colonial or imperialist language. This debate goes back to the early twentieth century but has been reinforced in recent times when advocates of the exclusive official status of Catalan have reacted to the curious proliferation of Catalonia independence movement advocates that speak Castilian, such as Su´mate, who are well established in towns with high immigration in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Grup Koinè 2016). A second important issue is the link between the expression historical nationality and the existence of a co-official language in certain territories of Spain. No doubt this legal concept was included in the 1978 Constitution to avoid the term nation, which is much more restrictive in Spanish than in English. The nationality referred to those autonomous regions that had enjoyed a short period of recognition of self-government in the Second Republic (1931–1936) showing a strong personality expressed in their culture and their own language. The term is thought to apply to Catalonia, Basque Country, and Galicia, which could quickly claim their autonomy and differentiate themselves from the simple regions, corresponding with most of the other autonomous regions that had been constituted (Aja 1999; García-Álvarez 2002). Thus, Catalan, Basque, and Galician were presented as fundamental attributes to differentiate region nationalities, although this process has been considerably complicated since the 1980s. On the one hand, Andalusia has successfully claimed to become a historical nationality even though its inhabitants only speak Spanish, by appealing to a strong historical and cultural personality. Furthermore, different territories such as Navarre (which speaks partly Basque), Valencia, and the Balearic Islands (with many variants of Catalan) have introduced in their Statutes of Autonomy the national or nationality expressions, using both a secularly forged personality and their cultural and linguistic identity. Therefore, the existence of an official language is a strong argument to qualify certain autonomous regions and give them more powers, compared to those which have been relegated to the simple status of region (Fig. 5).

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Fig. 5 Administrative regions of Spain. (Prepared by Mateo Varela Cornado)

Recognition of the co-official languages has meant its generalization in the educational system similar to Spanish. The teaching model is intended so that all children and young people can express themselves in Castilian and, if applicable, in the other official language of their territory (Argelaguet 1998; Siguán 2001). However, the paths taken to ensure this objective are different across Spain. Thus, in most of the country, only Spanish is taught without an option to learn another language like Catalan, Basque, and Galician. In Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, teachers decide what language to teach, with compulsory subject courses in another language, and in Galicia the approach is similar, although it has established a list of subjects to be taught in Spanish and another list of subjects in Galician. In regard to the Basque Country and Valencia, families choose the kind of education: from Basque/Valencian-Catalan as the vehicular language with one subject in Castilian, and the opposite, one subject in their own language, as well as bilingual options. On a practical level, this legal framework means that in the Basque Country, a large majority of children are educated in Basque thanks to a very popular language awareness advocacy, while in Valencia, Castilian still has a strong hold. In other cases, some minority languages (Asturian, Aragonese, and Arabic) have taken timid steps toward their recognition for optional teaching. However, in all the situations discussed, official linguistic analysis agrees on the widespread knowledge of Spanish among young people and their ability to express themselves in their co-official language, reflecting a remarkable success rate of implemented educational models.

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Finally, the geopolitics of languages in Spain poses another problem that of threatened or minority languages in local and very specific contexts (Lois et al. 2000). Among them, those official languages spoken in certain areas of a neighboring autonomous region where there is no protection. This is the case of Catalan in the east of Aragon and Galician in areas of western Bierzo and Castilian-Leonese Alta Sanabria or in western Asturias. In general, this situation is accompanied by restrictions on their use and their decline, although steps have been taken to introduce the teaching of both languages in schools and high schools of Castile and Leon and Aragon (but not in Asturias and where authorities deny that Galician is spoken). Meanwhile, the situation of Portuguese in the frontier town of Olivenza (Portuguese until the early nineteenth century) is very threatened, contrary to what happens with Arab or Berber in the Spanish cities of North Africa, Ceuta, and Melilla, where they are incorporated in primary and secondary education. Finally, the Caló language spoken by gypsy communities remains as a way of colloquialism, little standardized, in the context of increasingly asserted penetration of Castilian as the language of the whole nation.

5

Conclusion

Language is the most important sign of identity of the people. Spain is a multicultural and multilingual country, whose societies have been forged through history with this differentiating and enriching feature. Currently, over 19 million inhabitants use mother tongues in our country, 40% of the population in the territories with co-official languages (Galicia, Basque Country, Navarre, Catalonia, Balearic Islands, and Valencia), to which we should incorporate the languages spoken in other regions and recognized in their Statutes of Autonomy that do not reach a role as prominent as the former ones. Of this volume of population residing in bilingual territories, 70% can read the mother tongue, indicating a very high degree of understanding. In the territories with mother tongues, their understanding has improved over the last three decades. There are more people literate in their mother tongue. And that also applies to listening. The problem is that, on numerous occasions, the language has become a weapon of struggle and confrontation between political forces, which has resulted in a social conflict in some areas. So there are bilingual regions where, under a ruling political party, mother tongue policies contrary to promoting their standardized use have been applied. Except in the Basque Country since the 1980s and in the last period, in Catalonia and other bilingual autonomous regions, it is interesting to see that people know, understand, and read more and more in the mother tongue, but it is used less and less. The emergence of multilingualism programs that use English as an excuse for the “no” promotion of their mother tongue in some cases, and the selflessness and disincentives for the promotion of mother tongues by certain rulers in those territories (generally conservative governments), has led to this worrying situation. And it is not merely a language issue. The lack of respect for the mother tongue from positions of imposition of Castilian as a language commonly used in our country is

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having a rejection effect in bilingual territories that have led to positions of disbelief in the central State and irreversible separation attempts. Political action is decisive in this matter and should be oriented toward the absolute respect for the identity of the people who make up a society, such as the Spanish, whose historical roots are based precisely on the existence of territories where mother tongues are spoken and whose use should be protected and promoted. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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lo Colom, Repensar el Estado. Crisis económica, conflictos territoriales e identidades políticas en Espan˜ a (pp. 115–125). Publicaciones de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. Real Academia Española (RAE). (2005). Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. Madrid: Ed. Santillana. Siguán, M. (2001). Bilingüismo y lenguas en contacto. Madrid: Alianza Ed. Tusell, J. (1999). Espan˜ a, una angustia nacional. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Valencia Government. (2011). Conocimiento y uso social del valenciano 2011. Valencia. Available in http://www.ceice.gva.es/web/fondo-estadistico-documental

Cultural Wisdom in Design and Planning: Linguistic Terms from Japan

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Sanjoy Mazumdar, Yurika Yokoyama, Shunsuke Itoh, and Nana Fukuda

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Theoretical Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Concepts Related to Nature and Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Japan and Japanese View of Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Concepts About the Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Concepts Regarding Japanese Values, Views, Way of Life, Preferences, and Social Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Concepts Concerning People and Built Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Cultures have different ways of viewing, understanding, and acting on the world and have developed words, linguistic terms, and concepts for these. These linguistic terms in turn provide a window into what people of that culture value. Here, Japanese linguistic terms and concepts are examined to obtain their emic or local meanings and to acquire a deep understanding of the cultural ideas S. Mazumdar (*) University of California, Irvine, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] Y. Yokoyama The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] S. Itoh Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] N. Fukuda Hokkaido University of Science, Sapporo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_130

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and principles embedded, a picture of the sensitivities required, sensibilities expected, contextual knowledge created, and substratum of wisdom generated. These are categorized as concepts concerning (a) environment and nature; (b) Japanese values, way of life, preferences, and social relations; and (c) people and the built environment. This work draws on three theoretical frameworks: ideas about linguistic relativity, conceptual resources, and ways to understand culture-design relationships. The conclusion suggests that such a geography of language study highlights language relativity and islanding, and emphasizes the special sensitivities and sensibilities utilized, and the reservoir of cultural wisdom that can lead to research and professional work with deeper knowledge and greater potential. Keywords

Linguistic concepts · Cultural wisdom · Values · Lifestyle · Design · Planning · Linguistic relativity

1

Introduction

Around the world people have different ways of viewing, understanding, and acting on the environment, on humans, and on other beings and words for identifying these (Snyder 1995). The professional, scholarly, and scientific discourse is similar (Franck et al. 2012). Words, phrases, and concepts in a language, that is, linguistic terms, can become windows into what and how people of that culture value, prize, and ignore. What view of the world do these assume, what relationships and aspects do they consider crucial, what do they deem unimportant, what distinctions are valued, and what philosophical, ontological, theoretical, epistemological positions as well as sensibilities and sensitivities might be involved? These questions point to examining a particular cultural way of looking, understanding, and acting. This has implications for both scholarship and practice, especially in this era of globalization, as there are good alternatives available. Here, we describe a few linguistic concepts and terms used in Japan, focusing on ones that reveal answers to the above questions. Specifically, we are interested in terms that inform us about environmental design, planning, urban design, and architecture, as well as the cultural and social relationships with the environment construed. “Environment” is being interpreted broadly with the focus on the way human-environment relations are viewed.

1.1

Theoretical Frames

Three theoretical frameworks assisted in developing these thoughts. In the subject area of culture and language, Edward Sapir (1929) and Benjamin Whorf (1956) emphasized “linguistic relativity” suggesting that the unique vocabularies of

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languages influence the speakers’ interpretations of their world. Language in turn affects how we see the world and how we act on it (Sapir 1929). For example, the Navajo language lacks active verbs, and “this linguistic feature is perhaps related to the passive nature of the Navajo people,” and the Hopi language “does not recognize the categories of time and space that we do” (Robertson 1987, p. 79; Whorf 1953). A comment similar to Churchill’s “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us” can be made: “Cultures construct language, and in turn, language affects culture” (cf. Hall 1969, p. 106; Snyder 1995). Language can be seen as “the vehicle of culture” (Kindaichi 1978, p. 8), words the “index of culture” (Kindaichi 1978, p. 8) and “language can be looked upon as a reflection of culture and not simply as a tool for the transmission of thought” (Kindaichi 1978, p. 8). We suggest further that linguistic terms enable the identification of phenomena and noumena considered significant, transmission, communication, and discussion about these, and that words both enable and constrain visions of the world and its possibilities and also facilitate appropriate actions. In environmental philosophy, the question of environmental ethics receives renewed attention as western Judeo-Christian philosophy confronts eastern HinduBuddhist-Jain-Shinto. Larson (1989) argues strongly against the idea of seeing eastern ideas as “conceptual resources” (Callicott 1987) to be taken for use by the West much as economic resources have been. Considering Eastern philosophical ideas as unfinished raw materials that must be processed in the West for their value to emerge is ethnocentric and fails to give proper credence to those ideas. The terms and ideas discussed here will hopefully impart a balance to this thinking by providing a glimpse into cultural sensitivities, sensibilities, and wisdom. Within environmental design research in the subject area of culture and design the relationship between culture and design as well as the designs of various cultures have received attention (Rapoport 1969; Hall 1959, 1969; Mazumdar 1985). There was some previous work on language – as systems of communication, signs, meaning, and semiotics (cf. Rapoport 1990/1982). However, the role of language in culture and design was not emphasized, and what these reveal about the relationships failed to receive much attention (some exceptions will become evident later). A few caveats concerning language. In Japan, the language (Nihongo) used is intended to make the receiver think, construct an idea or image, and aid the person arrive at a thought, not simply be a recipient of a constructed idea (Chang 1982, pp. 136–138). Japanese words may be complex, formed by agglutinating (sandhi in Sanskrit) two or more words (e.g., yuki-dama or snowball, mono-no-aware), and have several layered meanings, circularities, irony, and different historical frames. Abstract ideas might require simplification or representation in order to enable comprehension. For example, the complex idea of Brahman is made somewhat accessible as Saguna Brahman through representations, images, and sculptures with many hands or heads that indicate superhuman powers and abilities. Many and fine-grained terms signal the importance of fine distinctions. “There are more than twenty words in the Japanese language to describe the different types of rain, according to the seasons or winds” (Masuda 1970, p. 9) much as Inuit Eskimo and Central Siberian Yupik have 40 to 53 words for snow, and the Saami of northern

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Scandinavia and Russia have 180 (Magga 2006). Translating and explaining in English provide an insufficient idea of the richness, and emic or local people’s understanding remains elusive (e.g., Snyder 1995). Nevertheless, this exercise of studying linguistic concepts as a device that helps formulate, identify, recognize, record, transmit, share ideas, and possibly spur imagination and thought makes sense not only in understanding how a culture views its environment but also because it teaches us that there are many ways of seeing the environment, of understanding it and the interrelationships, and of acting on the environment in the ways we view, plan, and design. These have much to offer, teach, and cast light – reflexively – on one’s own. With our interest in space, planning, and design, we examine a few of the myriad concepts used by the Japanese. The loose three-part categorization is intended to emphasize certain components that may not be clear in a complete taxonomy. Any remaining ambiguity will hopefully stimulate further thought.

2

Concepts Related to Nature and Environment

2.1

Japan and Japanese View of Nature

Japan consists of 430 inhabited (of 6852) islands with most of its 127 million persons located in four large ones. Approximately 70% of Japan is uninhabited mountains and forests; the inhabited areas are mainly in valleys, plains, and flat coastline areas. With an area of 145,000 mi2, Japan is only 0.28% of the world’s landmass but the location of more than 20% of the world’s strong earthquakes (magnitude 6 and above) (Japan Institute of Country-ology and Engineering 2011). Tsunamis, typhoons, heavy rains, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and heat are other natural disasters occurring in Japan. Nature in Japan offers fertile soil that aids farming, and many hot springs used for relaxation and healing. The islands have varied terrain and climate, distinct seasons, and much beauty in scenery of mountains, forests, oceans, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and more. “Japan’s climate varies between extremes: subtropical and oceanic in the summer, with warm rain and high humidity, and semi-frigid continental winters, with cold and snow” (Masuda 1970, pp. 8–9). Japanese philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji (1935) examined fūdo (milieu, disposition, environment) (Hagino et al. 1987, p. 1160) and suggested that Japanese people have monsoonish characteristics, which are mostly “submissive and persevering” (Baek 2016). The Japanese love of nature has been described (Watanabe 1974) and its beauty, seasons, and time of day extolled in classical literature. Arntzen (1997, p. 54) goes farther: “The imagery of Japanese poetry for more than a thousand years was drawn almost exclusively from natural phenomena of the four seasons.” For example, the Pillow Book draws attention to nature:

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“In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them. In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is! In autumn the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; more charming still is a flock of wild geese, like specks in the distant sky. When the sun has set, one’s heart is moved by the sound of the wind and the hum of the insects. In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well this fits the season’s mood! But as noon approaches and the cold wears off, no one bothers to keep the braziers alight, and soon nothing remains but piles of white ashes.”

(From The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon (1001) translated by Ivan Morris (1967, p. 1) by permission of © holder Oxford University Press (www.global.oup.com), emphasis added; cf. also Moriguchi and Jenkins 1996, pp. 45, 65, 67, 68 for Kamo no Chomei’s attention to seasons and times) It is curious then that for a long time, the Japanese did not have a word for “nature.” “[T]he traditional Japanese understanding of the natural environment does not make a sharp distinction between the human world and a supposedly pristine (i.e., human-free) wilderness” (Kalmanson 2017, p. 29). Humans were seen on a continuum with nature,

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nature as part of humans and humans as part of nature not apart from it (Kasulis 1998; Kyburz 1997; cf. Kelley and Francis 1994, p. 97), which led to a connectedness with nature (Satoh 1989). Saito (1985, p. 248) states: “. . . nature and man are essentially the same, rooted in the same principle of existence.” These ideas, viz., “humans in nature,” the inseparability of humans from nature, nature as a state rather than an entity, and not seeing nature as an object apart from humans, may have precluded the need for a word for it (Satoh 1989). Nonetheless, though jinen, or nature as it is, was derived from Taoist ideas, using the same kanji, shi-zen was introduced in the nineteenth century for a dualistic sense of nature or natural (Tellenbach and Kimura 1989; Kyburz 1997; Ritchie 1999; Kalmanson 2017). In Japan, religion was influenced by culture, but religion also influenced the relationship between humans and nature. Buddhism did not see humans and nature as opponents or as objects; rather, both were components of the world as Buddha in a harmonious relationship (Iwai and Yamamura 1997). Buddhism fostered a love of nature (Suzuki 1959, pp. 349, 355, 362 ff). The physical world was seen as the body of the Buddha; it could teach if one developed the “Buddha eye,” according to Kūkai and Dōgen (Parkes 2008; Shaner 1989). In the Ko-Shinto (old Shinto) view, nature was seen as imbued with gods and spirits; elements of nature such as sun, moon, mountains, oceans, rocks, forest, trees, flowers, and wind were believed to have life, and gods were believed to descend or exist in these and other things. Later Shinto continued to emphasize that kami (spirits/gods) could exist or be manifest in yorishiro, which could be elements of nature or animals. Accordingly, these were considered sacred and worshipped (Nishida 2010). Many Shinto shrines exist in close proximity to sacred trees, rocks, etc. Shimenawa straw ropes and shide or more respectfully o-shide (zigzag folded paper streamers) are placed on trees and objects to mark and invite hi or spirit there (Nute 2004, p. 12). Folded paper strips in shrines are called gohei. Animals, such as deer, roaming on the grounds of Shinto shrines (e.g., Nara and Itsukushima) are not uncommon (e.g., Shaw 2008). The concept of human-in-nature and not separate from it is credited with valuing nature and living in harmony with it. This contrasts with the “Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man” (White 1967, p. 1207) and the domination of nature view (attributed to Kant; Deutsch 1989, p. 260). Shinto values and ideas, including Shinto’s hi, the spirit of kami, and “holistic attitude of respect for nature,” could be an inspiration for an ecological attitude for the future, suggest Shaw (2008, p. 323) and Imanishi (2002). Behavior was discrepant from attitude (above) claimed Tuan (1968), and Kalland and Asquith (1997, p. 6) found it puzzling to reconcile the behavior in cases of “massive pollution” (mentioning four in 1960s and 1970s) and thereby asserted that the claimed “love of nature” idea was a myth. Such behavior, especially after the effects were known, was callous and terrible (Kato et al. 2018). This large subject cannot be addressed fully here, but this may not be such a puzzle. Asquith and Kalland’s (1997) book did not point out how the love-of-nature idea failed (was the idea flawed, unimplementable, could not have prevented pollution, was socialization incomplete?).

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They did not state whether there were any competing ideological positions or dissonance, that is, conscientious opposition to the love-of-nature view. Some, such as Satoh (1989), have suggested that the humans-in-nature outlook may have depressed the idea of nature as an object for preserving or destroying, which might have led to pollution without restraint or guilt. Many then believed that nature would dilute and eventually absorb the effluents and discards of production; releasing domestic or industrial waste into the river or earth thus may not have been seen as problematic as it is today. The dilution and absorption belief must be ongoing as trash is continuing to be buried, effluents disposed of in water, car exhaust and home smoke released into the air, dead buried in the soil, etc. Air pollution, which also destroys the environment and has major health consequences for humans, was not seen as a major “problem” in the West until a few decades ago. The earlier beliefs may have required a care of nature that could have become primarily ritualistic. The distance between philosophical concepts/ideas and the ability to translate into practice might have been high; but today, in spite of laws, polluting behavior continues in the USA (Shaw 2008, p. 311; also Kelley and Francis 1994, p. 179). Moreover, this old philosophy without clear directives encountered rapid industrialization with an alien kind, speed, and magnitude of pollution. Kalland and Asquith (1997) did not state whether the principles effected instances of avoidance of destructive acts and neglect to note that rapid industrialization has led to similar pollution in many places, whether there was love of nature or not. Was industrial pollution in rapidly industrializing Japan out of the ordinary compared to say Britain and the USA as they industrialized; and are not similar conditions present in China and India in 2018? Kalland and Asquith’s assumption that “love of nature” would result in no pollution and the myth stance seem essentialized and untenable. From another (non-European) perspective, it is not impossible to imagine that both love of nature and pollution could co-occur. Use of ideological and etic positions to denigrate or discard philosophies that earlier effected good, and continue today even though the context has changed, may not be fair. Furthermore, despite Kalland and Asquith’s rejection, Parkes (2008) and Shaw (2008) and others seem to find value in the idea! Important here is that the concepts love of and harmony with nature provide philosophical attitudes, the existence of which is not denied even by Asquith and Kalland (1997). These constitute a language for discussion (see also Shaw 2008; Suzuki 1959). Indications exist of care for nature or its elements. “Seven gods live in one grain of rice” acknowledges sacredness in all of nature. Mottainai is regret for waste. The Buddhist derived saying of itadakimasu before a meal expresses gratitude and appreciation for the food and the sacrifices endured in its production and implies commitment to not waste food (cf. Ritchie 1999) (but, today food waste is high in Japan). Yuki-tsuri are structures to protect trees during destructive times, such as heavy snow and storms. Satoyama literally means the area between settlement and mountain wilderness. In the foothills farmers have over 400 years cultivated rice with consideration to wildlife; their actions have created an ecosystem that continues. Satoyama fukei refers to a nostalgic cultural landscape, especially sustainable coexistence of nature and farming. The satoyama initiative now highlights and attempts to build on this ecological and supportive approach of living in harmony with nature. Though this

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thinking does not meet the demands of hard-core environmentalists who demand nature remain untouched by humans, it nevertheless provides a reasonable way to coexist with nature, a form not existing in too many places and, therefore, worth consideration.

2.2

Concepts About the Environment

Several Japanese concepts focus on features of the environment they value. Mujo refers to transience, transitoryness, impermanence, inconstancy, and ephemerality, a concept Buddhism emphasized. Mujo implies that the world and everything in it, including humans, and especially nature is impermanent and always in change, like a flowing river, described beautifully in Kamo no Chōmei’s Hōjōki: The flowing river never stops and yet the water never stays the same. Foam floats upon the pools, scattering, re-forming, never lingering long. So it is with man and all his dwelling places here on earth.

(From Hojoki: Visions of a torn world by Kamo-no-Chomei (1212) translated by Moriguchi and Jenkins (1996, p. 31) by permission of © holder Stony Bridge Press, Albany, CA) That nature in Japan with its beauty and colorfulness would be seen as the abode of many gods did not surprise Terada (1948). But nature’s frequent changes due to seasons and unpredictable natural disasters, e.g., earthquakes, storms, and floods, made mujo an important felt and experienced concept, not just an abstraction with little application in life (Terada 1948; Watanabe 1974, p. 281). Hakanasa, a related concept, refers to the evanescence and fragility of life, especially of nature. It too emphasizes appreciation of the seasons especially their ephemerality. Utsurou (to change) and utsuroi (noun) call attention to transformation in time, experience, or space. Transition in time is exemplified in the changing of seasons, sunlight, moonlight, moving water in a stream, etc. Transition in experience relates to sensing movement, especially the moment of movement and includes an appreciation of the transition from one form or state to another (Isozaki 1979). For example, many Japanese travel to experience, momijigari, autumn colors and the ephemerality of the season of sakura or cherry blossoms (hanami), especially the falling petals as they leave the flowers on the tree and slowly flutter on a wavy path to

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the ground, appreciated in part because these are so short-lived. Autumnal foliage is appreciated in the USA also but more for the colors than for their transitoriness. Moreover, the Japanese remind themselves of the seasons by incorporating utsuroi into their food; kaiseki ryori course meals include seasonal foods of course but also an item from the season just past (nagori) and one from the season to come (hashiri) (Ohno 2012). Spatial transition is highlighted in Japanese garden landscaping (Ohno 2012). Uki or transitory is related to ukiyo or a transitory world. Ichi-go ichi-e reminds people that moments are few and fleeting; they could be once in a lifetime or the last, and, therefore, to be cherished. Sensitivity as well as awareness and appreciation of the impermanent present are highlighted by mono-no-aware or pathos and desolation for evanescent mono (things) (Motoori 2010). These words and others emphasize impermanence featured in many poems, Haiku, music, photographs, and art. Fuzei means aesthetic sense, atmosphere, appearance, or taste that could be evoked by objects. It is similar to mono-no-aware and omomuki or sensibility and appreciation for rustic, short-lived, or fleeting. Iki is straightforward, simple, unpretentious beauty. Shibui refers to understated elegance, old-fashioned but appealing, simple, and subtle. Miyabi implies sophisticated, elegant, refined, gorgeous, not crude, but could also include mono-no-aware. Keikan is landscape, especially the features and appearance of the natural or constructed environments. Gen-fukei combines gen or original with fukei, a physical and psychological landscape or scene that is remembered; it stays on in the mind and includes emotional connections due to experiences, stories, and religious connections and causes yearnings or nostalgia, much like psychic homelands (Okuno 1972; Takeuchi 2014). Nostalgia can be expressed also for the ephemeral present, as in mono-no-aware. Natsukashii are fond memories stimulated by an object or sensation. Watanabe (1974) suggests that this view of nature and the environment enables the Japanese to develop a kind of emic and projective sensibility that facilitates a sensitivity toward enjoyment and pathos for nature and its elements. Myoue, a monk author, in a twelfth-century poem asked the moon if she is cold (Watanabe 2003). Frisch (1963) described how this sensibility led to viewing monkeys as individuals with character traits and changed the study of monkeys. These concepts highlight the embedded sensitivities and sensibility, much extolled in poetry, toward nature and the environment that figure deeply and prominently in the consciousness of the Japanese and form inspiration for incorporating into life, arts, and design.

3

Concepts Regarding Japanese Values, Views, Way of Life, Preferences, and Social Relations

Several concepts in the Japanese language provide a way to understand Japanese values and views. Zen Buddhism sought kono-mama (tathatā in Sanskrit), meaning isness or suchness (Suzuki 1959, p. 16), and encouraged sammai, oneness or unification (Sanskrit samādhi, Suzuki 1959, pp. 182, 223), between subject and

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object, persons, animals, and things to attain personal revelation like phenomenological insight (such as ishigokoro, seeking through the “Buddha Eye” “what the particular rocks ‘want’” (Parkes 2008, p. 308) and Louis Kahn’s “What does the brick want?”). Several Japanese words seek a deeper enlightenment and understanding, including learning an emic or local view (Watanabe 1974; Frisch 1963; Parkes 2008, p. 307; Shaw 2008). Kenshō refers to seeing the true nature or obtaining a brief glimpse of enlightenment. Satori entails a deeper spiritual experience, understanding, and profound enlightenment (Suzuki 1959, p. 16). Daigo-tettei means deep or lasting enlightenment. This kind of enlightenment affects the way of design of many Japanese designers. Kokoro is mind and heart, and makoto no kokoro implies truth and sincerity and “the Shinto virtue of a truthful, resonant responsiveness to the world” (Shaw 2008, p. 320) which exhorts a person to “break down the boundaries between the self and the world” (Shaw 2008, p. 317). This amounts to sincerity in living in harmony with nature (Chang 1982, p. 73). Recall that in Shinto, although all of nature is potentially sacred, kami can appear anywhere. Places where kami’s presence has been felt are marked with shimenawa straw ropes, shide or o-shide (zigzag folded paper streamers), or a boundary indicated by a torii gate. Thus, religions in Japan, particularly Shintoism and Buddhism, have influenced attitudes (Suzuki 1959; Shaw 2008; Littleton 2002). Kurokawa (1988, p. 63) states: “Buddhist philosophy made indispensable contributions to the shaping of Japanese culture.” Myō is mystery or spiritual rhythm, wonderful and beyond ordinary. Yūgen, a related term, connotes profoundness and mystery, something unfathomable, impenetrable, beyond, or eternal. Not everything is known; there is mystery beyond what is visible or knowable. These terms tap into, emphasize, and extol the subconscious and unconscious, that is, beyond learning of logic, skill, and perfection, as exemplified by the phrase: “Tea is Tea only when Tea is no-Tea” (Suzuki 1959, p. 311 citing Prajn˜ ā philosopher). Ochitsuku means calmness, composure, stability, steadiness and to restore presence of mind. It relates to comportment and character and refers to maintaining one’s calm and composure. But it can also apply to the character of a space, e.g., a house can have ochitsuki or calmness. The opposite, ochitsukanai, means without calm, restless. Shakankan suggests that there is beauty in taking one’s time, thereby emphasizes mindfulness and presence, not being solely goal-focused. For the Japanese, an overall philosophy and sense of aesthetics impact life, art, and design. Wabi refers to a sensibility, feeling and an aesthetic mode that expresses a thing’s “inherent nature” (Nute 2004, p. 99), and to simple, unpretentious, imperfect and austere (Okakura 1919, p. 3; Kurokawa 1988, p. 71; Chang 1982, p. 40). It also means independence from worldly things, which is viewed as leading to quietness, tranquility, humility, and loneliness, as well as a freedom from ego and from seeking ostentation and social status. This idea of poverty is related to mu, meaning to be without, not have, nothing, and to a state of emptiness or nothingness or shūnyatā (Sanskrit) in the Buddhist philosophy of prajn˜ āpāramitā, which includes nonaction and no-abode (Suzuki 1959,

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pp. 180, 296). Sabi refers to impermanence, an acceptance, and even longing for signs of the ephemeral, of aging, such as a fallen flower, patina, or rust, and of nostalgia for the present (Isozaki 1990). It also means unselfconscious, a feeling of aloneness or solitude and tranquility, i.e., Sanskrit shānti (Suzuki 1959, pp. 24, 284). This enables the acceptance, and even valuing, of marks of age and imperfection, the models for which are Rikyu’s appreciation for a cracked leaky bamboo “Onjōji vase” and a repaired broken tea caddy “Unzan Katatsuki” (Suzuki 1959, pp. 325, 323). Wabi-sabi is used together to indicate impermanence, imperfection, and emptiness. This idea inspires simplicity in life, avoidance of ostentation, and acceptance of flaws and blemishes, especially natural ones, as in aesthetics they make for uniqueness and could display and honor aging. Shibui also refers to simple, subtle, understated beauty that reveals more as it is explored. Fūga implies simple, natural elegance, a longing for wabi or sabi and enjoyment of nature, not material comfort (Suzuki 1959, p. 257). Relevant to these is chisoku, a combination of chi, meaning wisdom (Suzuki 1959, p. 284), and soku, meaning sufficient, implying being satisfied with what one has. These terms indicate the Japanese valuing of simplicity and marks of aging, use, and imperfection. To the Japanese aimai, meaning ambiguity, vagueness, ambivalence, and uncertainty, is not a problem and may even be desired in many instances. Aimai enables creativity and is used creatively. Many concepts related to space have an aimai quality to them. Mitate means likeness (Isozaki 1990), visual analogy, seeing new meanings, or uses that could be layered or juxtaposed. It too can enable creative use, innovative referents, and humor due to juxtapositions especially when combined with asobi, intellectual playfulness or amusement. For example, Japanese dry gardens use gravel, rocks, and bushes to create mitate of water, islands, and mountains (Fig. 1). Utsushi can mean inspiration, emulation, or appropriation. Some Japanese words denote both social relationship and physical entity, thus linking them. Ie can mean extended family, household extended to include ancestor spirits, as well as the physical house (Littleton 2002, pp. 58, 90; Jeremy et al. 1989). Cultural norms of care extend to all in the family unit including ancestors. Tatemae is the expected formal face presented to the outside world. Tatemae can be of oneself or of one’s unit, such as family or group. House residents read behavioral cues and design features of the house to adjust their interactions to maintain wa or benign harmony. “[C]onformity is enforced to a large degree by the loss of tatemae that an individual – and consequently his or her ie, school, employer, or other social group – would suffer as a result of violating part of the social code” (Littleton 2002, p. 59). Informality exists in or amongst ie. Even among ie gradation of more or less formal self-presentations occur. In contrast, honne refers to true feelings. These concepts help create face and maintain harmony and ensure precedence of the family or group over the individual. Omote denotes the outside world of shakai (a nineteenth-century word analogous to society or public) and seken or community, where traditional human relationships with implicit norms and rules prevail. Here, formal outer-worldly presentation and behavior are appropriate, and inner thoughts or feelings are not revealed but submerged. Thus, behavioral and spatial are both implicated. Seken includes family,

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Fig. 1 Mitate of Mt. Fuji – Suizen-ji Joju-en garden, Kumamoto City. (Photo: Shunsuke Itoh)

relatives, neighborhood residents, and community members, who by watching and offering help may ensure that cultural norms are followed. En means connections, ties, and blood relations. It emphasizes an individual’s or family’s connections with others. It also refers to periphery, the wooden floor inside and outside buildings (described later). Kehai is the sensitivity to subtly feel or detect the indication, sign, or aura of persons. Kikubari is the thoughtfulness with which consideration is given to others’ unvoiced desires. These sensitivities have enabled the people to live considerately with others in houses with little visual or aural privacy (Ritchie 1999; Becker 2017; Morley 1985, pp. 37, 40).

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Concepts Concerning People and Built Environment

Next are many Japanese words providing glimpses into people-built environment relationships, especially those regarding the traditional house. To the Japanese, neighborhood (go-kinjo, cho), wherein houses are located, is a combination of physical area (kinjo), neighbors (go-kinjo-san), and psychological community (kaiwai). Kyoyu-kukan and kyoyu-ryoiki are modern terms to describe communal spaces. The neighborhood might be anzen (safe), provide sumiyasui (feeling of comfort), easy relations with neighbors, and even be miryokuteki

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Fig. 2 Roji (alley), oku – Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo. (Photo: Yurika Yokoyama)

(of special and charming character) with narrow roji, (moss covered) alley or residential streets (Kurokawa 1988, p. 54) (Fig. 2), with houses facing each other sharing omote (Yokoyama 2012) (Fig. 3), and possibly along with hokora or small neighborhood shrines (Nishi and Hozumi 1983, p. 48). (Older hokora continue to exist, but, except for shrines attached to large housing projects, building new neighborhood shrines is becoming less common.)

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Fig. 3 Omote toward street; sudare on upstairs windows – Kamishichiken, Kyoto. (Photo: Yurika Yokoyama)

Oku can imply the hidden, innermost core or area of a place as well as unfathomability, mystery, and depth (Maki 1979). The idea of creating unfathomability by the strategic placement of significant elements (e.g., buildings, gates, paths, vistas, and scenes), and mystery by not exposing the entirety to any vantage point, but enabling changing views with shifting viewpoints, “esteems what is hidden” and is intended to create in the mind of the viewer self-discovery and reflection (Maki 1979, 2008; Ohno 2012; Hall 1969, p. 106; Minami and Yamamoto 2000) (Figs. 2, 4, and 5). Such neighborhoods have “topological” oku (Inoue 1985, p. 144; Maki 1979, p. 53) (Fig. 2) where “space is never revealed in its full extent all at once but is shown instead a bit at a time” (Inoue 1985, p. 146), that is, “movement space” (Inoue 1985, pp. 146, 141; Futagawa and Itoh 1963). These create interesting social spaces for residents of neighboring houses (Funahashi and Li 2002; Inoue 1985, p. 144; Yokoyama 2012). Words added to oku indicate additional properties.

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Fig. 4 Outside oku in approach sequence using transitions of climbing steps, turning, providing an experience of going deep inside – Jozan-ji, Shisen-do, Kyoto. (Photo: Shunsuke Itoh)

Maki (1979) explained that in the horizontalness of towns in Japan, okuyuki, spatial depth, and mysteriousness were created by the layout and layering, winding zigzag paths, and trees that hide the building from some viewpoints and create a sense of oku and okuyuki as well as suspense, mystery, and accentuation (Figs. 2 and 5).

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Shrines nestled in mountains, streets that create not-directly-accessible innermost deep space, and gardens of traditional tearooms are examples. The addition of suffixes to oku and ura to refer to areas farther from that place indicates a preference for a location-/object-centric view. In traditional Japanese house design oku, spatial and psychological depth, is achieved by the placement (Maki 1979) as well as arrangement of rooms in relation to adjacent rooms (Inoue 1985, p. 144) (Figs. 6 and 7). Front rooms could be zashiki (parlor, drawing room, formal tatami room) (Kurokawa 1988) and multipurpose (Nute 2004, p. 70), as there is no furniture to “determine” the usage, or later i-ma or (Western style) living room. Okuzashiki (Maki 1979, p. 54) rooms, located in the most oku area, are offered to intimate friends and sometimes parents. These rooms can have ochitsuki or calmness. Mā, another deep concept, can imply interval, gap, negative space, nothingness or no-thing-ness (Nitschke 1966, 1988; Bognár 1989), interstice, or spatial betweenness (Mazumdar 2009). It is seen as a space-time concept and as having human and spatial dimensions (Nitschke 1966). Pointing to its complexities, Isozaki (1979) suggests that ma can imply several sub-concepts: himorogi, a place where kami descends, marked by kekkai (enclosure), shinkyo (round mirror), or rissa (conical shapes of white sand); yami, world of darkness from which kami appears; suki, aperture or gap space surrounded by walls; utsushimi, space or place where life is lived; hashi, edge of and bridge over gap; utsuroi, sensing the moment of movement or change from one state to another; susabi, signs of phenomena appearing and disappearing in a space or void; sabi, signs of the ephemeral or transitoriness; and michiyuki, the space-time dimension, division, and marking of space by or for movement, such as ma between stepping stones that regulate the pace of movement. Ma and mu are equivalent to shūnya (Sanskrit, zero or nothing) and shūnyatā or nothingness (Suzuki 1959, pp. 180, 296; Kurokawa 1988, p. 55), which are seen as the source of creative energy in India (Correa 2003, p. 8; Kane 1988), where pause is used in meditation and yoga. Ma is negative space that allows creativity, reflection, and coexistence of dissimilar items and has cultural meanings; its absence can be sensed. Sensing ma requires more experiential sensitivity than conceptual apprehending (Pilgrim 1986). “The reality of the room, for instance, was to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and walls, not in the roof and walls themselves” (Okakura 1919, p. 60 describing Lao-Tse’s emphasis on vacuum). Consciousness of ma has contributed significantly to the Japanese sense of space and in design, planning, and aesthetics has led to the focus on the space than the container (e.g., walls, floor, and roof) (Figs. 6 and 7). The practice of inserting ma is called madori, the same word used for floor plans, says Kurokawa (1988, p. 56), who also states, “the gap left unfilled and undone becomes a transitional, complex, silent, multivalent space” (Kurokawa 1988, p. 67). Desire for ma has led to leaving emptiness in buildings, openness, minimalism, and calmness in Japanese wa-shitsu or traditional tatami (reed mat) rooms (Figs. 6, 7, and 8), and use of the center of these spaces. These together create the impression of wa-shitsu as the appearance and atmosphere or tatazumai. Ma has led to the use of quiet times in theater, music, poetry and negative, open space, yohaku in painting, sculpture, ikebana (art of

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Fig. 5 Outside Oku in approach sequence using transitions of climbing more steps, turnings, providing an experience of mystery in traveling toward the inside – Jozan-ji, Shisen-do, Kyoto. (Photo: Shunsuke Itoh)

Fig. 6 Oku, ma, inside building, house; tokonoma, washitsu, tatami, shoji – Minka (folk house) in Shirakawago settlement, Gifu prefecture. (Photo: Yurika Yokoyama)

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Fig. 7 Oku, ma, shoji, fusuma, genkan – inside a merchant minka traditional (Yoshijima) house (nineteenth century), Takayama, Gifu prefecture. (Photo: Yurika Yokoyama)

flower arrangement), and calligraphy. Student artists are advised to leave some white or unmodified space, to appreciate the beauty of empty space or yohaku no bi (Inoue 1985, p. 135). Mujo is an important idea in Buddhism and in Japanese gardens and landscaping wherein consciousness of transience guides the design, selection of elements, location, and more. Mujo in the past influenced house design and construction through an emphasis on horizontalness (being close to the land), use of space, and utilization of reusable and degradable materials such as wood, bamboo, straw, earth, tiles, paper, etc. worn or damaged by weather, age, use, insects, etc. Mujo has led to their appreciation as sabi aesthetic. Old wood beams are still reused. Mujo induced in traditional homes an appreciation of transient natural phenomena, such as shadows cast on shoji screens and fusuma partitions (Figs. 6, 7, and 8), as well as art, where marks of transience are valued and featured (Nute 2004, p. 73, Fig. 102). Exteriors of houses could be kabe (wall) of tsuchi (earth) or amado wood storm shutters (Nute 2004, p. 72). Sudare are screens made of straw, bamboo or other materials sometimes decorated with objects, silk or other material, hung on exterior windows and openings (Fig. 3) to control interior visibility, light, and breeze. Houses have several kinds of shikiri, space dividers or partitions, to shitsuraeru or organize space and events. Shoji are wood-framed translucent paper panels that slide on grooves and divide space (Figs. 6 and 7). Fusuma are wood-framed opaque paper panels that slide on grooves, partition space (Fig. 7), and may have painting or art on them. Byōbu mostly are panels with decorative painting or calligraphy used to

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Fig. 8 Tokonoma, washitsu, tatami – Tenchu-zan Raikyu-ji, Takahashi city. (Photo: Shunsuke Itoh)

partition space, enclose for temporary privacy, or control breezes. Tsuitate are freestanding screens. The emphasis is on the spaces and volumes created and not as much on the walls. Altering the location and design of partitions with time of day or change in season achieves a transformation of character, ambiance, and space. Light modulation is accomplished by manipulating the shikiri, e.g., shoji and fusuma screens. During some periods these would be completely opened for high illumination from sunshine and a view of nature outside, where, except for minimal framing, the house almost disappears. At other times their placement leads to creation and enjoyment of yami, darkness, and void; these are believed to create ma, from which kami (spirit) could emerge. At still other times, their careful placement leads to mild-modulated lighting, the kind celebrated by Jackuchu Itoh’s paintings. Through their design and careful placement, they could become part of komorebi, the changing drama of sunlight or moonlight filtering through tree branches and leaves to cast impermanent dynamic shadows (Nute 2004, p. 73), enabling residents to enjoy the play and movement of light and shade on screens, creating a dynamic romantic and poetic ambiance in the home much cherished by the Japanese. These thereby provide consciousness of light conditions, season, and time of day. Wa, in addition to group harmony and awareness of interpersonal connections, also means Japanese atmosphere or character, and a room with this is washitsu (Fig. 6). In Japan, space is an integral part of culture, not just as a setting for the presence and activation of culture. Tokoro is place, site, location, and situational context, which might include history (see also Kelley and Francis 1994). Basho also means place.

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Fusui, geomantic notions about appropriateness of location, orientation, and building design influenced by Chinese feng shui, are still seen by some as important for houses and the safety, health, and well being of inhabitants. Hōgaku refers to living an appropriate and satisfactory life according to geomantic principles of divination, which apply to marriage, major journeys, building, and major alterations to houses (Kalland 1996, p. 17). For this, ideas about location and orientation of the land chisō (Nute 2004, p. 24) and houses kasō are considered. Katayoke are attempts to reduce the effects of hazards and unfavorable directions. Hoe means direction, and yoke is avoid; hoyoke induces avoidance of the northeast-southwest axis for house entrance, kitchen, and lavatory (Nute 2004, p. 24; Chang 1984, pp. 66, 68; Taut 1958, pp. 29–31). West needs protection from the devil, but east is viewed as an inauspicious direction. South is a good direction for houses to face (Inoue 1985, p. 145; Chang 1984, p. 66). Onmyōdō, influenced by Chinese yin yang, the five elements, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism, includes beliefs about ways to live healthy lives utilizing ideas about the elements, nature, and directions to make propitious or “lucky” selections. Jichinsai are (Shinto) rituals prior to building to seek permission, forgiveness, blessings, protection, and appease the land spirits (kami) (Nute 2004, p. 68). Aesthetic philosophy affects houses. Smallness is valued as in the saying “okitehanjo, nete-ichijo”: a sleeping person takes one tatami, a sitting person only half. Kamo no Chomei’s acceptance of a small 10-ft2 humble dwelling, wabi-zumai (Suzuki 1959, p. 284), containing only the bare necessities included consciousness of mujo and wabi-sabi. His hut was appropriate for priests as it also sought seclusion from the nuisances of seken or society, but it became an inspiration for less destruction of nature and mottainai, reduction of waste in the process of human dwelling, which are among the environmental concerns of the twenty-first century. Houses are usually not ostentatious but sparse in wall décor, except for those on byobu and fusuma (Fig. 7), and in the zashiki and cha-shitsu a place, tokonoma (Figs. 6 and 8), where changing displays may be made. Displays include a vase with a flower or two on the raised base or side and a kakemono, hanging calligraphic, painting, or combination scroll (Figs. 6 and 8), selected to relate to the guest. The emphasis is on minimal display, not on ostentatious exhibition, so the guest is seated with the tokonoma to the back or side so as not to flaunt the display. Omote has spatial implications; it is the physical front (Fig. 3), and ushiro is back, and ura is back or backyard. Mae indicates front where formality, tatemae, is expected and necessary, and uchi implies inside as well as inner society of family and the place where one can be honne or informal. Engawa, related to and materialization of en, is a veranda that fully or partly skirts a building, mostly traditional houses. Engawa is at the plinth or house floor level where house residents can sit outside, enabling conversation and making or maintaining connections with relatives, neighborhood residents, and others. Engawa can also mean the (wood) floor just inside the windows (hiro-en). Thus, engawa can be seen as of both inside and outside (Kurokawa 1988, p. 54). This inside-outside distinction can be made to disappear by opening or removing the amado or storm shutters and shoji or fusuma partitions (Figs. 6 and 7) (Nute 2004, p. 72) or made

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stark by closing them. Engawa facilitates consciousness of the connection between interior space and exterior nature, by permeability, placing within reach, overlap with, accessibility to, and experiencing outside nature while inside or not fully outside and the inside while not being in (Figs. 9 and 10). Japanese architecture and planning professionals combine han (half), gaibu (outside), and kukan (space) (Kurokawa 1988, p. 55) as han-gaibu-kukan to refer to space between soto, outside, and uchi, inside. Engawa usually has deep overhanging hisashi or eave that impedes sun and rain. As the hisashi does not fully prevent it, during tsuyu, rains, a portion of the en gets wet and is called nure-en, a word and space that raise consciousness of rain’s effects (Fig. 10). Tiled roofs and kusari-doi or rain chains channel rainwater, providing visual and aural enjoyment of rain (Sandrisser 1992). The engawa enables direct sensorial experience of nature (rain, sun, summer breeze, wind, smells, humidity, and sounds) (Mazumdar 2003, 2008). These indicate, if not a love of environmental elements, an acceptance of their unexpected presence and occasional fury. Although the concept of “connection” existed in the West, it was not important enough to similarly influence house design. Katei conceptualizes house and garden as one entity (Nute 2004, p. 22). It might have a kaki or fence, or even a hei or perimeter wall, with a mon or entry gate. Inside the mon might be an outer garden. In the house there may be one or more niwa or small garden and an uchiroji or inner yard. External space, landscape, or scenery borrowed and integrated by design into a garden or home is called shakkei (Futagawa and Itoh 1963, pp. 143, 151; Kurokawa 1988, p. 58; Nitschke 1988; Nute 2004, pp. 21–22) (Figs. 9 and 10). An external, even remote, scene can be “captured,” ikedori, with framing members concealing the foreground to make it appear an extension of the home garden (Nute 2004, p. 21). Structural members, screens, curtains, and windows of different shapes in various horizontal or vertical locations may be designed to frame views of outside nature most aesthetically. Incorporated into even small and narrow houses, these provide access to and enjoyment of nature as well as facilities for viewing and appreciating natural phenomena, such as the changing seasons and the transience of the moon and moonlight. The engawa can be extended to become tsukimidai, a moon-viewing platform (Kurokawa 1988: Fig. 5; Nishi and Hozumi 1983, pp. 134–135; Nute 2004, p. 78, Fig. 109). In these ways nature is brought into the home and through design the house and its residents are made aware of, enjoy, and become part of nature. The Japanese language lacks a word for privacy (Hall 1959, p. 152), and the traditional Japanese house lacked separate rooms for individuals (Nute 2004, p. 103) and solid sound-insulated interior partitions providing acoustic privacy (Morley 1985, pp. 37, 40). Additionally, above the partitions and beams, there might be ranma or transom panels of carved wood, mostly quite beautiful, designed to enable airflow and ventilate the spaces (Masuda 1970, p. 106). These also permit humidity, moisture, heat, cold, and sound to pass through. As a result, in such kukan (space) kehai, sensitively and intuitively sensing if others are nearby, and kikubari, considerateness, by speaking softly, are important for maintaining wa or harmony and character, even among ie or family.

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Fig. 9 Engawa, shakkei – Tenchu-zan Raikyu-ji, Takahashi city. (Photo: Shunsuke Itoh)

Many houses have a kamidana, a Shinto altar on a high shelf containing articles and offerings to kami (Nute 2004, p. 75; Lewis 2018, p. 143). There may also be a butsudan, an altar dedicated to Buddha and ancestors (Nute 2004, p. 74; Lewis 2018, p. 143). Even though the Japanese declare themselves to be non-religious, they visit hokora, inari, jinja (Shinto shrines), and tera (Buddhist temples) (Ito 1972, p. 170), and at the home altar, they pay respect or pray and offer rice, water, salt, sake, flower, fruits, sweets, and incense sticks. Kamidanas and Butsudans can still be found in many homes and even in temporary housing of disaster victims but are becoming less common. The house mostly has a genkan or entry vestibule (Inoue 1985, pp. 145, 158), at the level of the land outside, from which one must agaru or step up onto the floor

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Fig. 10 Engawa, nure-en, shakkei – Entsu-ji, Kyoto. (Photo: Yurika Yokoyama)

level to enter (Fig. 7). Genkan is where outdoor shoes are removed to prevent dirt from entering the abode. Spaces are highly regarded for their ambiance, ability to enable selfimprovement, skill development, and knowledge creation. Respect is offered by bowing at the entrances of hokora, inari, jinja, tera, and dojo (dōjō), places of contemplation, meditation, enlightenment, and immersive learning of the way (Suzuki 1959, p. 128).

5

Conclusion

There is thus a rich array of Japanese linguistic concepts that indicate special culture–design connections, philosophical contemplation, and development in matters relating to space, humans, and nature and describe the many interactions the Japanese have with their environment. These words also foster special sensibilities, entail the consciousness and reading of spaces, and enable mindfulness of even transient phenomena. Awareness of these has led us to a search for emic understanding of Japanese views. In this endeavor, theories in the three subject realms both enriched our approach and understanding and helped us enrich the theories and practices in turn. Consideration of the geography of languages leads to awareness of the relativistic nature of

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language (Sapir 1929; Whorf 1953, 1956) as well as linguistic islanding with provinces of meaning, as in the case of Japan, for example. Language is not solely an instrument of expression and communication (Kindaichi 1978); it aids conceptualization, affects values and lifestyle, and is contextual as Larson (1989) claimed. It also spurs action. The concept terms described here show translation of theoretical, philosophical, or ideational terms into action words that help the environment; examples are yuki-tsuri and satoyama. The Japanese ways of relating to nature may indicate enjoyment, love of, and respect for nature. Awareness of changing seasons, utsuroi and the interface of climatic features through their inclusion by the design of engawa are examples. Though the moon is enjoyed by many cultures, the particular interest and enjoyment in moon viewing through specially designed windows, niwas, engawas, and tsukimidais, is special. This study reveals a unique sensitivity toward space, environment, nature, and design. Some concepts, such as ma, are deeply philosophical, involve an ontology and epistemology, are difficult to apprehend and describe, but are nonetheless pervasive, acquired by, understood, and even desired by many Japanese. This special sensibility brings cultural identity and character and leads to deep desires, yearnings, and preferences that affect the lifestyle emphasized as important by Rapoport (1995, p. 223). Embedded in the terms described is also cultural wisdom. Cultural wisdom relates to sensing the environment, knowing techniques and preferred solutions, and valuing particular modes of action. These ideas, developed and fine-tuned over the ages, are culture and context sensitive. Language is changing; some of the ideas discussed above are not valued as much these days. With new materials and capabilities, older techniques could be superseded. The ostensible aim of progress has led to a willful disregard for cultural wisdom and much environmental damage and degradation that too needs to be considered. Larson’s (1989) caution has merit and could be added to, as noted. Looking at linguistic terms as an approach to visualize, experience, and understand the culture–design relationships shows much potential. Similar studies can be conducted in almost any culture, for example, India, Korea, and China. Such studies will add significantly to more in-depth knowledge about local cultural wisdom, understandings, situated value topologies, and more. These might be useful to those who seek to create a way of design to carefully understand culture, wisdom, and tradition and incorporate the learnings in design. This can transform design and help train more conscientious, considerate, sensitive, compassionate, and wise researchers and professionals who do not discard these without due consideration. Cultural wisdom is available for this.

References Arntzen, S. (1997). Natural imagery in classical Japanese poetry: The equivalence of the literal and the figural. In P. J. Asquith & A. Kalland (Eds.), Japanese images of nature: Cultural perspectives (pp. 54–67). Surrey: Curzon Press.

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Food, Language, and Identity in Singapore’s Hawker Centers

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Identity in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Hawker Centers: Food, Language, and Identity in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Humble Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Hawker Centers Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Hawker Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Banal Representations of Nations and Geographical Territories in Hawker Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Multiracial Hawker Centers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Racial-Language Mixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Hawker Food Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Hawking Histories: Role of Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Discussion and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In the nation of Singapore, eating has been described as a “national pastime,” and hawker food is often described as the true representation of the Singaporean identity. Unlike the itinerant street hawkers in the nation’s colonial and early independence days, Singapore’s hawkers now operate from permanent stalls with proper amenities in large open-air complexes: hawker centers. Past research has shown that the nation’s script of multiracialism dominates the method of governance, as well as the process of identity formation in Singapore. This is whereby members of the nation are categorized according to four “official” races (Chinese, Malay, Indian, and “Others”) and mainly identified K. Ong (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_164

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according to the mother tongue languages (Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil) ascribed to each dominant racial group. Thus, language and identity are tightly bound together in both public and private domains in everyday life. However, Singapore is a rapidly urbanizing global city, and foreign-born workers constitute as much as a third of its total workforce today. ‘creating diasporas with multiple linguistic allegiances and perceptions of belonging that are no longer identified purely with territory’ (Valentine et al. 2008, p.376). Moreover, beyond the written and spoken form, language is a communication of the mind, spirit, and soul. What is the role of language and food culture in the process of identity construction in the everyday life? How can hawker centers contribute to a ground-up understanding of identity, and the ways in which languages are used (operationalized) in the everyday life? This study aims to answer these research questions with the analysis of food, language, identity, and space in five hawker centers. Keywords

Food culture · Nationalism · Identity · Language · Everyday life

There is something very Singaporean, even very patriotic about ordering a cup of kopi C siew dai (coffee [Malay] with evaporated milk [Hainanese] and less sugar [Hock Chew]) and drinking it with kaya toast. (Tay 2010: 214)

1

Introduction

Singapore is a nation-state that was founded in 1965 and that has a total population of 5,610,000 as of 2017 (Singapore Department of Statistics 2017). The citizen population of 3,440,000 (61.3% of the total population) is classified as 76.1% Chinese, 15.0% Malay, 7.4% Indian, and 1.5% Others. Prior to the nation’s independence, Singapore was a British colony (1819–1940) that was temporarily occupied by the Japanese during World War II (1942–1945). After the British granted internal self-governance to Singapore in 1959, the nation shared a brief period of merger with its neighboring country, Malaysia (1963–1965). The trade of hawking has existed since the 1800s and has “grown up” with the nation (Kong 2007: 15). The modern manifestation of street hawking can be seen in hawker centers, which are large open-air complexes that offer a wide variety of tasty and affordable ethnic foods, and the cost of an average meal is SGD 3.50–6 (approx. USD 2.54–4.35). Thus, it is of little surprise that they are much-loved eating places among residents and visitors from abroad (Independent 2009; Tan 2018; Groundwater 2018). Kong (2007) piques that the term “hawker center” is so familiar in Singapore, that its irony is not apparent or taken for granted in everyday life. This is because a hawker is a person that travels around selling his wares, generally advertising them by shouting. In contrast, Singapore’s hawkers have permanent stalls with proper

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facilities such as water and electricity, and nonverbal advertisements such as celebrity recommendations are the norm of food advertisement in hawker centers. Thanks to globalization and the new media ecology, there has been increasing recognition of Singapore’s hawker food and centers, and some hawkers shot to international fame when they were awarded the much-acclaimed Michelin star in 2016 (Han 2016; Levius 2017). The high sales and prices of famous hawker recipes also made local headline news (Yeo and Singh 2014; Chua 2016), such as the sale of Kay Lee Roast Meat Joint to a former loyal customer for SGD 4 million in 2014 (approx. USD 3.17 million). What is less known, perhaps, is that Singapore’s hawker centers are one of the most institutionalized food places in the world. Virtually all aspects – from the cleanliness of public washrooms to the hygiene of hawker food and stalls, and the stall bidding process to the prices of food – all are subject to scrutiny and regulation by institutions and governmental authorities such as the National Environmental Agency of Singapore. While food centers and markets clearly exist outside of Singapore, it is arguable that none of them are subject to the level of planning and regulation of Singapore’s hawker centers, and yet carry such a heavy weight of tradition (hawking) and national identity. As a major economic hub and global city-state, Singapore has been experiencing rapid urbanization and immigration in recent years, and a third of its total workforce is comprised of foreigners (OECD 2013; Wong 2015; Teng 2018). These changes have led to a questioning of the Singaporean identity, as residents perceive that the Singaporean citizenship and permanent residence permits are increasingly being commodified in the name of economic progress or “survival” (Teng 2017; Han 2017; Tan 2017a, b). Several authors have also described the changing face of hawking, for example, it is no longer a surprise to find international cuisine such as Pad Thai and Italian pasta in hawker centers (Kong 2007; Tay 2010; Tan 2016). While some celebrate the presence of nontraditional hawker food, others have expressed doubt and lament over the loss of heritage in hawker centers. Previous studies have shown that food culture has the ability to construct, reproduce, and reconstruct identity (Caldwell 2002; Avieli 2005; Ichijo and Ranta 2016; Mendel and Ranta 2014; Schermuly and Forbes-Mewett 2016). Ichijo and Ranta (2016) mention that although the relationship between food and national identity has been extensively studied in anthropology and cultural studies, the reverse is not true for writers on nationalism and national identity. This is despite the fact that other issues such as religion, popular media, and education have been researched and written about regarding the imagination, construction, and reproduction of the nation (Hastings 1997; Edensor 2002). In the case of Singapore, while several authors have extensively documented the relationship between Singapore’s hawker food and identity (Kong 2007; Tay 2010; Duruz and Khoo 2015; Tan 2016; Kong and Sinha 2016), few have brought out the role of spatial layouts and placemaking, language and nationalism (multiracialism) in hawker centers. On the other hand, hawker signages have been studied by students and academics largely in the field of linguistics and communication (Neo and Soon 2012; Yeoh 2014); however,

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these empirical findings have yet to be geographically mapped, visualized, and studied in relation to hawker centers as place-processes. This study explores the role of language and food culture in the process of identity construction within the context of everyday life in the case of Singapore’s hawker centers. It also attempts to initiate a discussion about the role of place in food culture and identity. How can hawker centers offer us a bottom-up understanding of food, language, and identity in Singapore and inform us about the ways in which language is used by members of the nation in everyday life? This chapter will first address the topic of identity in the case of Singapore, and it will focus on how the main method of governance (multiracialism) influences the process of identity construction in the nation. Next, it will explain the history of hawking and the meaning of hawker food to members of the nation, followed by how hawker centers are places where food culture, language, and identity intersect in everyday life. This study will then explore how hawker centers can contribute to the existing knowledge about food culture, language, and identity in Singapore with the research findings on five hawker centers, which includes 501 signboard headers and their spatial constituents.

2

Identity in Singapore We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation. National Pledge of Singapore (National Heritage Board 2007)

Several authors have described how the nation of Singapore was “imagined” and established according to universal concepts that would serve to unite a diverse ethnic population (Hill and Lian 1995; Ortmann 2009: 29; Rocha 2011). These universal concepts are the ideals of multiracialism, multiculturalism, multilingualism, multireligiousity, and meritocracy. Ortmann (2009) explains that as the nation’s past was wrought with ethnic tensions and corruption, the new national leaders elevated the concepts of multiracialism and meritocracy as the “two key founding myths of the Singapore state” (Ortmann 2009: 30). Hence, a new theory of multiracialism that would incorporate the other universal ideals (e.g., multilingualism, multireligiousity) was created, marking the foundations of a new multiracial nation (Rocha 2011). This is otherwise known as the CMIO, referring to the racialized framework of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and “Others”: “separate, but equal, races making up a unique and compelling Singaporean identity” (Siddique 1990; Chua 2003; Rocha 2011: 104). Ackermann (1997) describes that the “Others” category consists of ethnic communities as diverse as “‘Eurasian’, Filipino, Armenian, Jewish, Arab, people of ‘Caucasian descent’ and Japanese” (Ackermann 1997: 455). As a form of acknowledgement to the presence of four different racial groups in the nation, four different languages were established as the official languages of Singapore: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. Of these, English language

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functions as an institutional and shared language among the four different racial groups, and Malay functions as the symbolic national language “in the Roman script” (Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, Part XIII). Mahbubani (2014) remarks that Singapore is an “abnormal country,” as most Singaporeans do not speak the national language of Malay. This is with the exception of being able to sing the national anthem in Bahasa Melayu which is a duty that is encouraged, taught, and compulsory in schools and used in formal ceremonies in Singapore. Under Singapore’s bilingual education system (1996), English is the language of instruction in schools, and Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil serve as the second or Mother Tongue languages for the Chinese, Malays, and Indian racial groups, respectively. This “natural” second language is determined according to patrilineal racial lines and is assigned regardless of “whether or not the language was spoken within the family in question” (Chua 2003; Rocha 2011: 112). By 1981, nearly all television and radio shows that used “dialect“ languages were banned, to encourage the use of mother tongue languages (Johnson 2017). This development caused many to feel alienated and “cut off” from society, such as among the older Chinese generations who understood little to no Mandarin (Chua 2005; Lee 2014). The conception of a multiracial nation with four different racial groups and languages is also reinforced in the public and private spheres of everyday life, such as in institutions and day-to-day conversations. From the national calendar to broadcast media, race-related festivals and elements such as Chinese New Year (Chinese) and Hari Raya Puasa (Malays) are observed in day to day life, causing one to continually imagine and experience a multiracial nation (Ackermann 1997; Chua 2003; Rocha 2011). Apart from these, management and institutional structures such as public housing, identification cards, and official forms often contain questions regarding one’s race. The scripting of a multiracial nation can also be witnessed in the urban landscape, public signage, and heritage districts serve to represent the language and “culture” of each racial identity: Chinatown for the Chinese, Kampong Glam for the Malays, Little India for the Indians, and Joo Chiat for “Others” like Europeans and Peranakans (Kong and Yeoh 1994, 2003; Yuen 2006; Henderson 2010). Scholars have observed that English is increasingly becoming the de facto first language or mother tongue among younger Singaporeans, and there have been significant changes in how languages are used in Singapore today (Bolton and Ng 2014; Shang and Guo 2017; Tables 1 and 2). Moreover, the continued nonacknowledgment of mother tongue languages in the “Others” racial category causes them to be viewed with doubt and suspicion, as seen from the experiences of Kristangs (Portuguese Eurasians) such as Mr. Andre D’Rozario and Ms. Anthonisz: Growing up in Singapore, all of us could really relate to not having a mother tongue, not having something to call our own. You got pink IC [Singaporean citizenship] or not? Your English very good ah? Your grandparents from where? (Lam 2017)

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Table 1 Languages most frequently spoken at home in Singapore Year 1957 1980 1990 2000 2010

English (%) 1.8 11.6 18.8 23.0 32.3

Mandarin (%) 0.1 10.2 23.7 35.0 35.6

Chinese dialects (%) 74.4 59.5 39.6 23.8 14.3

Tamil (%) 5.2 3.1 2.9 3.2 3.2

Malay (%) 13.5 13.9 14.3 14.1 12.2

Source: Bolton and Ng (2014: 311) (reproduced with permission) Table 2 A comparison of English and mother tongue language use in Singapore, as preferred home languages Racial group Chinese

Malay Indian

Language English Mandarin Chinese dialects English Malay English Tamil Malay Other “Indian” languages

1980 (%) 10.2 13.1 76.2 2.3 96.7 24.3 52.2 8.6 14.9

1990 (%) 21.4 30.0 48.2 5.7 94.1 34.3 43.5 14.1 8.1

2000 (%) 23.9 45.1 30.7 7.9 91.6 35.6 42.9 11.6 9.2

2010 (%) 32.6 47.7 19.2 17.0 82.6 41.6 36.6 7.9 13.2

Source: Bolton and Ng (2014: 312) (reproduced with permission)

From Tables 1 and 2, we observe how the theory of multiracialism (CMIO) not only forms the core framework of governance but it is also a strong determinant in one’s sense of identity and belonging in the nation. This is facilitated by institutional structures and informal affairs in day-to-day life, where race is reinforced as a visible and grounded form of identity among Singaporeans. Several authors have pointed out that the “hybrids” (mixed races) and ethnic minorities are often relabeled or excluded from the nation’s narratives of identity and belonging, and their experiences of racial discrimination are rarely publicly acknowledged (Chua 2005; Velayutham 2007; Rocha 2011). Thus, the Singaporean identity is mainly measured according to one’s ability to identify himself or herself among the dominant racial categories and perform his or her ascribed identity accordingly (Hill and Lian 1995; Ackermann 1997; Velayutham 2007). Benjamin (1976: 124) remarks: Singapore’s multiracialism puts pressure on Chinese to become more Chinese, Indians to become more Indian and Malays to become more Malay.

As a response to the rise of interethnic marriages and changing demographics of Singapore, the government began recognizing Eurasians as an official ethnic group in 2006 and enables residents to register double-barreled racial identities (e.g., Indian-Chinese) as of 2011 (Pereira 2006; Rocha 2011; Immigration and Checkpoints Authority of Singapore 2011). However, it was emphasized that the

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double-barreled racial identity would constitute one’s primary race, that is, not the race before (or after) the hyphen; thus, one’s education and socio-economic advantages would be characterized by the primary (double-barreled) race. Figure 1 provides a summary of this section and demonstrates how linguistic and ethnic identities in Singapore have transformed under the nation’s theory of multiracialism (CMIO). As a global city-state with transnational flows of people, languages, cultures, and identities that can no longer be purely determined or identified by geographical territory, the modern relevance of the CMIO framework has been brought into question in recent years (Au-Yong 2016; Cheng and Chua 2017; Siddique 2017). How can members of the same nation view themselves as Singaporean, first and foremost, instead of belonging to a certain race? “I order ‘two kosong’ at a prata shop. Nobody thinks twice about my skin colour being more like the prata dough than the person making it. “We’re all same-same, mah!”” – Lim Shu Ming, 15-year-old student. (NDP 2003: 68)

3

Hawker Centers: Food, Language, and Identity in Singapore

Whereas the previous section discussed how hawker centers have “grown up” with the nation (Kong 2007: 15), this section illustrates the relationship between the trade of hawking (hawker food and centers) with language and identity, and what they mean to a vast majority of Singaporeans.

3.1

Humble Beginnings

Unlike the image of furnished hawker centers that can be found in virtually all parts of the nation today, Singaporean hawkers before the 1980s were makeshift street vendors. They made a humble living of selling hawker food without “potable water supply, electrical supply, sewerage and drainage systems, toilets, lighting and bin centres” (Kong 2007: 31). The business of street hawking flourished in colonial and postwar Singapore, as it required little start-up cost and capital. As the efforts of the government were directed towards economic stabilization in postwar Singapore, it was an attractive business for those who were unemployed or had little formal education (Kong 2007; Ortmann 2009; Rocha 2011). However, street hawking was soon found to be incompatible with the government’s vision of the Singaporean nation. As the hawkers did not have access to proper amenities such as waste facilities, food and liquid waste disposals in public areas were a common sight, and their streetside locations obstructed vehicle and pedestrian flows (Fig. 2). Moreover, most of the street hawkers operated “illegally”: it was estimated that only a quarter to a third

Fig. 1 Racial identities in Singapore. (Source: Author)

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Fig. 2 A scene of street hawking at Sago Lane in the 1970s. (Source: Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (used with permission))

of them were licensed in the early 1950s (Kong 2007). This made them vulnerable targets of the police force, as their hawking equipment would be confiscated during police inspections or raids. The former Head of the Hawkers Department explains: At that time [1960s], the government had the objective of turning Singapore into the cleanest country in Asia, and street hawking were among the challenges to be surmounted in pursuit of that goal. (Kong 2007: 30)

Thus, it has been said that the “survival of any individual hawker’s trade depended on his ability to escape the unfavourable attentions of the police” (Kong 2007: 26). Some street hawkers even resorted to the “protection” of gangs and secret societies in attempts to safeguard their livelihoods. While street hawkers were viewed unfavorably by the government, most of the Singaporean public were sympathetic to their plight, as they were seen as respectable people who tried to make an honest living (Kong 2007). The latter may be best described as ka-ki-kang (become your own boss) entrepreneurialism or the “village boy” myth (Duruz and Khoo 2015: 59), whereby one becomes “one’s own boss” based on personal merits of hard work and resourcefulness. These factors gave a common ground of understanding among the Singaporean population, ka-ki-nang: “we are all of the same kind.” This refers to the acumen that we are all ordinary people, who are striving to make a proper living in the same land. Apart from this

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shared sense of identification, the street hawkers (and their food) were a significant part of everyday life. Many Singaporeans today can still remember the days of street hawking, where their “calls would be heard well before they came within sight, titillating salivary glands building up expectations” (Kong 2007: 134; Duruz and Khoo 2015). Food writer Sylvia Tan recalls: [R]oving hawkers worked out a system of food delivery whereby shop-house dwellers would lower baskets whenever they heard the food calls, and in this way, exchange cash for food. . .The food calls were distinctive – you could not mistake the nasal cry of the loh kai yik man for the guttural calls of the ap bak (braised duck) man; nor the clacking of bamboo clappers of the noodle man for the mee goring man’s insistent clanging of frying implement against wok. (Tan 2004: 71–73)

Hence, street hawkers made everyday life more vibrant and colorful, and their higgledy-piggledy stature added a certain charm to the modernizing nation (Kong 2007).

3.2

Hawker Centers Today

Well, I think that if there were no hawker centres in Singapore, it would be like the end of the world! – Daniel, a 13-year-old Singaporean (Kong 2007: 161)

Today, hawker food still serves to embody memories of growing up and living in Singapore. Kong (2007: 27) mentions that it is perhaps thanks to the Hawker Inquiry Commission that hawkers have remained part of the Singaporean landscape. This has eventually led to the modern planning and construction of hawker centers and market-cum-hawker centers, whereby each planned location would ensure a steady flow of customers, and facilities (lighting, shared tables, basic ventilation systems, public toilets, sewage, bin centers) could be built as long-term investments for both hawkers and members of the public. As of 2017, there are approximately 110 government stand-alone hawker centers and market-cum-hawker centers, housing more than 6000 cooked food stalls (National Environment Agency of Singapore 2018). Studies have described how these large open-air complexes serve as meeting and eating points among people from all backgrounds and walks of life: the housewife, “the CEO and office cleaner,” (Kong 2007: 19), students and families with both the young and old, and not to mention the ubiquitous neighborhood uncles who gather together to lim kopi (drink [Hokkien] coffee [Malay]) (Fig. 3). Despite stark differences in age, social status, and racial backgrounds, nearly all are equal when it comes to queuing up at your hawker stall of choice, embarking on the indomitable task to find empty seats during the office lunch hours, and sharing a table with strangers at the hawker center – Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others eating together under one roof, in the tropical heat. The Singaporean culture of chope (reserve in Singlish) with tissue papers or simple objects on seats and tables only adds to the local drama of everyday life at the hawker center.

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Fig. 3 A mid-morning scene at Maxwell Hawker Centre, August 2018

This is a significant difference from eating at air-conditioned food places like food courts, cafes, fast food chains and restaurants that can be found in virtually all parts of the modern city-state, and which most Singaporeans are well able to afford (Kong 2007; Simkins 2011; TODAY 2014). These food places tend to offer only a single version of a food item, whereas there can be up four to five different hawker stalls selling their own versions of char kway teow or nasi lemak in the same hawker center. The former has also been dubbed commercialized and standardized by some Singaporeans. A 2006 survey revealed that nine in every ten respondents ate out at least once a week in hawker centers, food courts, restaurants, and other eating places (Kong 2007). It was also discovered that virtually all (93.8%) respondents consumed food from hawker centers, in the form of takeaways or eating at hawker centers, with a sizeable proportion (44%) doing so at least once or twice per week. A recent report in 2014 also found that four in five of more than 750 Singaporean adults consume hawker food when they are not dining at home (Shandwick 2014). Not only do these statistics inform us about the culture of eating out in Singapore but they also help us to imagine how hawker food and centers are a vital part of day-to-day life for many Singaporeans, providing an elusive taste and place for home (Kong 2007; Duruz and Khoo 2015). Hawker food is no ordinary food. . .is neither elegant nor classy, but it embodies the essence of being Singaporean. (Tay 2010: 2) I was among some New York feeders who wormed our way in when we heard that the [Singapore Day] festivities would include Singaporean dishes prepared by a dozen hawkers flown in for the occasion. Six thousand people stood patiently in line for a go at some food from home – completely ignoring the government exhibitions and the requisite rock band.

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As they waited, they spoke of the stands they head for when they can manage the eleventhousand-mile trip to Singapore – the coffee shop in their old neighborhood that has the best kaya (a sort of coconut custard, served on toast), the fried-prawn-noodle stand in Marine Parade they always visit the first day back, the place with the best halal version of chicken rice. Nobody I spoke to mentioned any restaurants. (Trillin 2007)

Scholars have pointed out that while hawker food in Singapore is largely identified along ethno-racial lines, such as mee rebus associated with Malays, mee goreng with Indians and wonton mee with Chinese, some dishes are so mixed or hybridized in culinary influences, they are perhaps best described as strictly Singaporean (Lee 1992; Kong 2007: 108; Koh 2017). One example is Indian rojak, which is a salad-like mix of tofu, potato, fishcake, cuttlefish, vegetables, and other battered ingredients – served with a most crucial finishing touch, a chili sauce that is thickened with sweet potato. Kong (2007: 108) remarks, “This must be a surprise for visitors from India.” Other examples of Singaporean innovations include chili crab and bak kut teh, the latter referring to an aromatic pork rib soup that can be traced back to Chinese immigrants. “It’s so Chinese and yet, it’s not in China. This is what I mean: we came up with a third taste,” said Mr. Seetoh, a famous food critic in Singapore (Kong 2007: 108). Not only does the mix of interethnic culinary flavors constitute the identity of hawker cuisine, the time-established names and identifications given to hawker food also bears testament to a Singaporean identity: everyday life as a melting pot of languages and cultures. As suggested previously, the names of hawkerfare are often word combinations or Anglicized versions of languages that are spoken in Singapore. For instance, if one would like to order a cup of black coffee without sugar in Singapore, one would say “kopi (Malay) o (Hainanese) kosong (Malay).” While these expressions may appear strange at first sight, hawker food lingos are but another banal or normal aspect of everyday life for most Singaporeans. Singaporebased Irish writer Laura Schwartz laments about the difficulty that expats have in ordering food: Perhaps the onus is on expats to learn some new rules, especially in hawker centres...Know what you want to order by the time you get to the front of the line, order (in ‘Singlish’ or Chinese, if necessary), bring your own tissues, pay with cash, and retreat quickly to a table with your meal. (Schwartz 2014; Chew 2014)

It might be of little surprise then, that Singaporeans are proud of a hawker food/ center culture that is still ultimately theirs: a bottom-up food culture and language that only “we” can speak, understand, and have the rights to challenge. Hawker centers are everyday spaces of belonging and home, where “we” are being cooked for, fed and have a place in “regardless of race, language or religion” or social standing. In this section, we have briefly witnessed how hawker food and centers are associated with a sense of identity, home, and belonging in the nation. They embody “multiple levels of sedimented history” (Kong and Yeoh 1994: 55), and are everyday spaces of encounter where people from all backgrounds and walks

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of life can sit and eat “together-in-difference” (Ang 2001; Duruz and Khoo 2015: 15). While hawker centers can be viewed as merely affordable eating places in the banality of day-to-day life, they are a “microcosm of Singaporean society” (Kong 2007: 19) and meaningful place-processes that embody manifold experiences of growing up and living in Singapore, for both hawkers and their satisfied customers. Moreover, the “hot and humid” setting of hawker centers serve as a physical reminder of the past (no air conditioners) and present geographical location of Singapore: a first world global city-state situated in the tropical region of Southeast Asia. Hence, one invariably “chooses” and “consumes” (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008) the nation in hawker food and centers over other alternatives. At the same time, the trade of hawking has always been part of an ongoing project of urbanization by the Singaporean government, as hawker centers continue to be reinvented and remodeled according to the changing times today (TODAY 2017; Boh 2017). Thus, hawker centers function as a food-and-nationalism axis (Ichijo and Ranta 2016), whereby food culture and national identity are blended together in place within the context of the everyday life.

4

Research Methodology

According to Brubaker et al. (2006), discussions regarding ethnic and national identity often come “predictably packaged with standard sets of qualifiers” and tend to neglect explanations about how ethnicity and nationhood are constructed in detail (Brubaker et al. 2006: 7). Thus, a “wait and see” approach (Fox and MillerIdriss 2008) is undertaken, whereby “the research agenda is designed to leave people to their own devices” (Brubaker et al. 2006; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 556; Goode and Stroup 2015). It utilizes a vernacular understanding of food culture, language, and identity and conceptualizes the everyday as an object of analysis (Brubaker et al. 2006). This is such that the quotidian, that is, the empirical phenomena would not be restricted to national or ethnic categories, which are often defined by institutions (Skey 2011; Goode and Stroup 2015). Although a “wait-and-see” methodology and vernacular understanding of food, culture, and identity may appear naïve, they take into account the crucial assumption that the nation, food culture, language, or identities do not necessarily pervade the minds and consciousness of individuals at all times in everyday life (Fox and MillerIdriss 2008). In this manner, vernacular identifications and categorizations would be used to distinguish the relationship between food culture, language, and identity. Unlike the strict degrees of rules and regulation that the Singapore government enforces in nearly all “big and small matters in people’s lives,” the approach towards public and private signage is rather lenient and laissez-faire unless they contain defamatory remarks or offensive language that threaten to disrupt racial harmony (Shang and Guo 2017: 187).

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Thus, this study uses empirical data consisting of 501 pictures of hawker stall header signboards from 5 different hawker centers (Table 3 and Fig. 4). A signboard header is defined as the top part of signage that serves as the main description for the hawker stall and is publicly visible at all times. The other signboards were not analyzed for practical and feasibility considerations. As hawker food signboards are assumed to be voluntary and nonrestrictive in nature, it is appropriate for studying food, language, and identity according to a wait-and-see and vernacular research approach. The five hawker centers were chosen as they carry with them various histories and cultural connotations and are located in different planning districts of the country. The 501 header signboards constitute all of the available hawker food signboard headers that were available at the time of the visit (94.9% total) and were taken from 6 to 15 March in 2017 and between 9 and 10 AM on each occasion. This timing was for practical reasons of lighting and photographing the signboards before the lunch-hour crowds. These header signboards are analyzed according to a coding framework (Fig. 5) that is based on the theory of multiracialism (CMIO). While the “vacant” stalls may contribute to a slightly different image or representation of hawker centers, the number of stall unit signboards (501) is still adequate and sufficient for the subsequent analysis in this study (88–100%).

5

Hawker Stories

This section largely comprises maps and spatial visualizations of hawker centers, to facilitate an understanding of how they may be imagined and experienced. Thus, the contents of this section are organized and ordered on the basis of scale and method in which one can approach food, language, and identity from the bottom-up details found in the everyday life.

5.1

Banal Representations of Nations and Geographical Territories in Hawker Food

Ichijo and Ranta (2016) mention that the banal representation of nations in food has become so commonplace and banal that consumers are often oblivious to them and how they construct their understanding of food culture and national identity. They “construct and reproduce what nations are, not only in terms of produce and dishes, but also in terms of images, traditions, scenes, people and geography, through, for example, the choice of language, context and photographs” (Ichijo and Ranta 2016: 6). These suggest that the spatial identities attached to hawker food and signboards (Fig. 6) provide powerful frameworks of understanding the Singaporean nation, in terms of its food culture, languages of use, and ethno-national identities that reside within. The banal representations of other national cuisines also remind us of “our” food boundaries and qualitative differences (real and imagined) between “us” and “them,” causing particular individuals and groups of people to identify and negotiate their sense of place and belonging among these ethnic and national food cultures.

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Table 3 Background of hawker centers in this study

Name of hawker center and description • Bedok Interchange. The name “Bedok” has been existent since the time of Singapore’s British colonial history, and the area was known as a Malay kampong (village). Its name is likely derived from the Malay word “Bedoh,” as there used to be a mosque that would sound its drums five times daily to signal the prayer times • Although the origins of the hawker center are uncertain, it likely began as a branch of the bus interchange in the town center of Bedok. This was where illegal street hawkers would set up makeshift stalls to sell their fruit and products in the 1980s. A writer recounts that “HDB officers had to be deployed daily to curb the problem” • Changi Village. In 1927, a local settlement sprang up near the British military camps at Changi Point and formed an enterprise to cater to the needs of the military and their families. It was a place of recreation and provision outside the military camps and became known as Changi Village, and it continued to flourish after the end of World War II • However, after the British announced that Singapore would be granted independence in 1972, “the once blooming suburbia had become a struggling kampong” (National Heritage Board 2007) • This phenomenon caused the Singapore Government to introduce plans with regards to the reinvention of Changi Village in 1975, leading to construction of Changi Village hawker center • Maxwell Road. Formerly known as Maxwell Market, this place was established in 1928 and served as a government co-operative store during the Japanese Occupation in Singapore (1942–1945). In 1987, the wet market was converted into a food center and housed hawkers who were relocated from China Square • It is a popular tourist destination and contains the famed Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice hawker stall with the likes of American celebrity chefs such as Anthony Bourdain and Gordan Ramsay (Farley 2015) • It was upgraded at a cost of SGD 3.2 million or approx. USD 2.4 million in Sep 2000–May 2001

Location and accessibility (Number of available signboards out of total in each hawker center) • Directly located next to Bedok MRT (mass rapid transit) station, which was constructed in 1989 • It is also surrounded by residential buildings, shopping centers, coffee shops, and other food eateries and is within close proximity of schools • 70 (out of 70)

• Located at the far east coast of Singapore, Changi Village Hawker Centre is surrounded by residential buildings, cafes, beach, and leisure facilities • The location is accessible by several buses and not within close proximity to an MRT station. It takes an estimated 1 h 20 min (6 .4 km) to walk from Pasir Ris MRT station • 70 (out of 70)

• Located in the Central Business District of Singapore and near several institutions and office buildings • It is approximately a 6–10-minute walk from nearby MRT stations, one of which is Tanjong Pagar, which was built in 1987. • 98 (out of 103)

(continued)

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Table 3 (continued)

Name of hawker center and description • Old Airport Road. As suggested by the name, this hawker center was established after the closure of Kallang Airport in 1955 • When it was established in 1958, it was known as Jalan Empat Market, and provided the area with 172 stalls for fresh and cooked foods. By the 1960s, the available stalls were inadequate to accommodate all of the street hawkers who had gathered at Kallang estate. The continual growth and exacerbation of the “hawker problem” eventually led to construction a new complex building, Old Airport Road Food Centre • It underwent a major facelift and upgrading in 2006–2007, costing the governmental authorities SGD 5.8 million (approx. USD 4.3 million). • Tekka Centre. Founded in 1915, it was first called Kandang Kerbau Market, as the surrounding district was associated with the cattle and meat trade • By the 1930s, it was famous for being the “people’s market,” as it was popular among different ethnic groups and offered a wide variety of fresh and cooked food products, and retail goods • It has since been redeveloped into a residential-cum-shopping complex, where the hawker food stalls are located on the third floor. Its name was “hanyu-pinyinized” into Zhujiao Centre in 1981. This met with some conflict and contention, and it was renamed Tekka Centre in 2000

Location and accessibility (Number of available signboards out of total in each hawker center) • This building complex is largely surrounded by residential buildings, the most famous of which was Dakota Crescent, one of Singapore’s oldest public housing estates • Located within close proximity to the city center, it is a popular place of visit among locals and tourists alike. It is now within walking distance from Dakota and Mountbatten MRT stations, which were built in 2010 • 160 (out of 168)

• Located within the Central Business District and in the “Little India” Heritage District and is within close proximity to heritage buildings and landmarks • It is directly next to Little India MRT station, which was constructed in 2003 • 103 (out of 117)

For instance, a Tamil-educated Singaporean Indian man of Sri Lankan descent is reminded of his diasporic identity and inability to speak Sinhalese when he sees the “Sri Lankan Foods” signboard, causing him to reassert his Singaporean identity in the physical space of the hawker center. Figures 7 and 8 were generated using the “real” banal representations of nations and geographical territories in hawker food (Table 4). While it is debatable whether hawker foods with national and geographical references are representative of the food culture(s) in these places, there is a certain degree of truth to the ethnic and place origins of Singapore’s hawker food, as seen in the examples in the next section. For instance, Teochew Kueh reminds us of the presence of the Teochew (Chaozhou)

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Fig. 4 Locations of all hawker centers and market-cum-hawker centers in Singapore, 2017, indicating the five selected centers for this study

ethno-linguistic group in Singapore and for “Sri Lankan Foods” the presence of Sri Lankan immigrants in Singapore. As seen from Fig. 7, the banal representation of hawker food culture largely focuses on the continent of Asia and some nations are more represented than others. For example, while the country of Malaysia was not explicitly mentioned, several of its geographical territories like Ipoh and Penang were frequently cited in hawker food in this study (see Fig. 7 and Table 4). This development is likely due to ensuing “food fights” or national claims to heritage food between the two neighboring countries and the establishment of Singapore’s food and national identity as distinct from that of Malaysia’s (Loh 2009; Sood 2010; Lahrichi 2014; Loh 2018; Duruz and Khoo 2015). Loh (2018) remarks that while food is one of the reasons that Malaysians and Singaporeans do not see eye-to-eye, it is also a factor that unites them. Loh cites the 2018 MasterChef UK crispy chicken rendang incident in which Singapore joined forces with Malaysia and Indonesia to rally for culinary justice that chicken rending should not be crispy (Keating 2018).

Fig. 5 Coding structure of hawker signboard headers

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Fig. 6 Hawker signboards. (Left) “Traditional Teochew Kueh” suggests examples of kueh eaten by the Teochew or “Chaozhou” community in Guangdong and diasporas around the world like Singapore. The Chinese characters hint that the Teochews belong to a broader Chinese identity. (Right) “Sri Lankan Foods” presents images of the food eaten in Sri Lanka such as fish curry with rice. The Sinhala language characters suggest that Sinhala is used and spoken amongst Sri Lankans

Fig. 7 Geographical extent of banal food representations from five hawker centers in Singapore. Considering the geographical location and physical size of Singapore, hawker food compounds the geographical imagination of hawker centers and the nation by several thousand times

Although the crispy chicken rendang incident suggests that the relationship between food culture and national identity is complex and subject to change, it also demonstrates how banal food representations may reflect vernacular and on-theground understandings of food and identity, e.g., Singaporeans enjoying ipoh hor fun and pontian wonton mee on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, the banal representations of nations differ across hawker centers, as seen from the comparison between Old Airport Road and Tekka (Fig. 8).

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Fig. 8 The description ought to be: Geographic extent of banal food representations in Old Airport Road (Top) and Tekka Centre (Bottom)

While the banal world of food imagination stretches to Western Europe in Old Airport Road hawker center, Tekka’s contains a greater focus on South Asia (Fig. 8). This brings out the importance and role of place, where one’s impression of food, language, and identity, as well as the extent of globalization in Singapore

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Table 4 Banal food representations in hawker centers Banal Food Ref.

Category Nations

States & Districts

Cities

a

References Afghanistan China India Indonesia Italy Japan Korea Singapore Sri Lanka Thailand Chettinad (Tamil Naidu, India) Fujian Guangdong Hainan Hong Kong Johor Bahru Kerala Muar Pontian Taiwan Chaozhou Chong Qing Fuzhou Ipoh London Penang Shanghai Tokyo

Hawker Centre

Bedok 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0

Changi 0 0 1 0 1 0 6 0 1 0

1 0 3 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 1 0 2 0 0

3 0 3 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0 1 0 0

Maxwell 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 9 0 0 1 0 0 2 1 1 1 0 0 1 1

Old Airport Road 0 0 1 0 2 3 0 0 0 4 0

Tekka 1 0 3 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1

Total Count 1 3 5 1 3 5 1 10 1 8 1

4 1 3 6 1 0 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

0 0 2 2 0 1 1 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

11 1 20 10 1 1 2 1 2 11 1 2 4 1 3 1 1

The ancestral land of origin among several Singaporean Chinese today Estimated as Tamil Naidu

b

may be dependent on the hawker center(s) visited. Among the five centers studied, Tekka contains the only representations of Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, as well as specific states and regions in India (Kerala and Chettinad). The reason may be due to the location of Tekka Centre in the Little India Heritage District of Singapore, where it was intended to showcase various Indian identities according to the national script of multiracialism.

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Altogether, hawker centers and hawker food culture serves as a platform of imagination, construction, and reproduction of nationhood in the context of the everyday.

5.2

Multiracial Hawker Centers

Thus far, it has been shown that nationalism in Singapore is largely characterized by the theory of multiracialism, whereby it penetrates virtually all aspects of life for members of the nation. This section provides an imagination of how hawker centers would look through the lens of multiracialism by providing some examples of “hawker stall identities” according to the logic of multiracialism (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Other, or CMIO) (Fig. 9). As seen from Fig. 10, the levels of racial diversity and hawker stall mixing differ among the hawker centers. Tekka Centre provides the best example of this among the five hawker centers in the study, as it has a more equal distribution of the four racial groups, compared to the dominance of Chinese stalls in all other hawker centers. Moreover, racial mixing (same row) among the four CMIO stall identities can only be found in the case of Tekka Centre (intra-row mixing). Table 5 illustrates how the composition of race-related language(s) in each hawker center differs, and how the dominance of a Mother Tongue language over all others may contribute to a certain understanding of a hawker center. For instance, the dominance of the Chinese language in Old Airport Road Hawker Centre (84%) over all other race-related languages creates an impression that the hawker center has a dominant Chinese character and mainly offers Chinese cuisine. Without any prior knowledge or first-hand experience of dining at hawker centers, one may perceive that Malays and Indians are largely separated or excluded from hawker centers or among the Chinese-dominant rows of stalls. While this may

Fig. 9 Chinese stall indicators are the Chinese language (top left); Malay stall indicators are Islamic symbols (Crescent and Moon) and Arabic blessings, the Malay language and hawker food identified as Malay (e.g., Nasi Ayam Penyet) (top right); Indian stall indicators are hawker food identified as Indian (e.g., Chapati, Naan) (bottom left); “Other” stall indicators are food identity (pasta and risotto is associated as Italian food), banal representation of Italy via the Italian national flag in print

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Fig. 10 Multiracial hawker center layouts

Table 5 Composition of languages in hawker stall header signboards (numerical and percentage) Hawker centers/ languages* English (non-pinyin) Chinese Malay Indian Arabic (Islamic blessings) Other

Bedok (70) 58 (83%) 43 (61%) 11 (16%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%)

Changi Village (88) 80 (91%) 53 (60%) 29 (33%) 1 (1%) 26 (30%) 0

Maxwell (98) 82 (84%) 74 (76%) 7 (7%) 0 2 (2%) 0

*Each stall header signboard may contain more than one language

Old Airport Road (160) 141 (88%) 135 (84%) 15 (9%) 1 (1%) 0 4 (3%)

Tekka (103) 97 (94%) 48 (47%) 31 (30%) 33 (32%) 31 (30%) 0

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Fig. 11 Food tray return carts in hawker centers. (Left) Halal and the languages of Malay and Tamil; (right) non-Halal and the Chinese language

be true to a certain extent, it largely stems from a practical and religious need to separate cutlery and utensils from Halal (mostly Malay and Indian) and non-Halal (mostly Chinese) food stalls, and food tray return racks are often placed at the end of the same row or column at hawker centers as seen in Fig. 11.

5.3

Racial-Language Mixing

According to the framework of multiracialism, a mother tongue language is assigned to each dominant racial identity. Hence, the mixing or intersections of Mother Tongue and religious languages (Arabic) attached to racial identities are viewed as racial transgressions or boundary crossings. An example of this can be seen in Fig. 12. Because the placement of multiple racial languages can be viewed as a form of marketing to more consumer groups, these racial transgressions may go unnoticed or ignored in the banality of everyday life. As a conservative approach, common food names such as satay, rojak, otah, and laksa were not classified as Malay or Indian languages, due to the nature of their mixed influences in Singapore. Due to this restriction and the limited scope of this study, only three maps of racial-language mixing were generated (Fig. 13). As seen from Fig. 13, the low numbers and percentages of language mixing (5.7%; 0.625%; 4.8%, respectively) based on the available signboard headers suggest that the representation of mother tongue and religious languages (Arabic for Muslims) are outward indicators of one’s identity. In the case of Tekka Centre, it was discovered that the Malay and Indian signboard headers would contain Chinese subtitles (e.g., Mohd Hanifa Drinks in Fig. 12), but the reverse was not

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Fig. 12 Mixing of mother tongue and religious languages. (Top) Toa Payoh Rojak has Chinese and Arabic characters, and the latter is often associated with the religion of Islam in Singapore; (bottom) Mohd Hanifa Drinks contain Malay and Chinese characters

Fig. 13 Racial-language mixing: Changi Village Hawker Centre (top left), Tekka Centre (top right), and Old Airport Road Hawker Centre (bottom)

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true, for example, in Chinese food stalls having Malay or Tamil subtitles. This suggests an internalization of Chinese-majority dynamics among the Malay and Indian ethnic minority groups (power differences), even if the intention behind the Chinese subtitling was merely for commercial reasons. Therefore, the mixing of racial and religious languages in space suggests that they are bold acts of racial boundary transgression (or subservience), serving to reinforce or challenge existing mindsets pertaining to how food, language, and identity are performed in the nation.

5.4

Hawker Food Culture

One of the key characteristic features of hawker centers among food places in Singapore is the variety of food and brand specializations offered by individual hawkers. As Hainanese chicken rice is often dubbed the national dish of Singapore (Songkaeo 2014; Farley 2015), Chicken Rice Nation is a description for how it may serve to bind a people together (Fig. 14). As hawker food is also known as food for sharing, satay and rojak are selected for the depiction of the local food culture in Singapore (Kong 2007) (Fig. 15). For the purposes of this study, what constitutes Singaporean chicken rice takes reference from the Hainanese version. This excludes other types of chicken rice sold at hawker stalls, such as ayam penyet and nasi ayam.

5.4.1 Chicken Rice Nation As seen Fig. 14, there were cases of Hainanese-style chicken rice stalls found in Chinese and Malay hawker stalls (e.g., Bedok, Maxwell); however, in most cases, it was only sold in Chinese hawker stalls. This finding also suggests that there is a strong Chinese racial dominance in the production and sale of this national dish. While this understanding is congruent with a Hainanese-Chinese identity, it gives us food for thought on how it is a national and majority-dominant dish. 5.4.2 Satay and Rojak for Sharing Figure 15 shows that satay and rojak stalls are found in Chinese and Malay hawker stalls in some hawker centers (Bedok and Maxwell), and in Chinese, Malay and Indian hawker stalls within others (Changi Village and Old Airport Road). This suggests that satay and rojak have a higher potential than Hainanese chicken rice when it comes to crossing food and racial boundaries. Although the satay-rojak hawker stalls in this scenario sell either Satay or Rojak (or both), this finding suggests that hawker food that is designed for group sharing may hold greater potential for blurring real and perceived racial differences, in hawker centers and beyond.

5.5

Hawking Histories: Role of Place

This section attempts to visualize the processes involved in the trade of hawking and place-making in each hawker center. As suggested previously, the trade of hawking in

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Fig. 14 Chicken Rice Nation: Bedok Interchange HC (top left), Changi Village HC (top center), Tekka Centre (top right), Maxwell HC (middle), and Old Airport Road HC (bottom)

Singapore existed in the colonial era and before the turn of the twenty-first century. Thus, street hawkers who are still in operation today carry with them rich histories and traditions that were once rooted in place. Their stall signages serve as both memories and reminders of the buildings and streets that no longer exist or function in the same way in modern Singapore (Fig. 16). An example of this is “Hock Lam Street,” which was located in the civic district, and that was comprised of rows of shophouses and street hawkers selling food and trade wares. It was purposed for redevelopment in the late 1970s. Not only do these historical entities serve as memories of the past, they also function as local food “awards” as they symbolize culinary tradition and authenticity.

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Fig. 15 Satay and Rojak for sharing: Bedok Interchange HC (top left), Changi Village HC (top center), Tekka Centre (top right), Maxwell HC (middle), and Old Airport Road HC (bottom)

Hence, these hawker stall “awards” play an integral role in the process of placemaking of each hawker center, as the reputation and stall composition of each hawker center is neither the same nor equal. For the purpose of this study, hawker stall “awards” refer to both official awards (from food competitions or institutions) and a local recognition of hawker stall accolades, the latter including newspaper mentions (Fig. 17), local celebrity and television show recommendations, and pictures of esteemed people like the President of Singapore patronizing the hawker stall. As many hawkers do not display their awards, location, or year of origin on the header signboard, Fig. 18 provides a glimpse, albeit incomplete, of the hawking histories and process of place-making at hawker centers.

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Fig. 16 A “Hock Lam Street” Beef Kway Teow Hawker Stall at Old Airport Road HC

Fig. 17 Example of hawker food stall awards

Singaporean hawkers express their hawking histories and identities in distinct ways resulting in unique “heritage” maps of each hawker center (Fig. 18). For instance, while hawker awards (only) were featured most prominently in Tekka Centre, while that of place (only) was most prevalent in Maxwell HC. The year of origin was a prevailing aspect in Bedok Interchange HC and Old Airport Road HC. The specifies of place mentions also differ from hawker to hawker, in that it ranges from specific buildings and floor levels such as “People’s Park” and “Blanco

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Fig. 18 Hawking histories: Bedok Interchange HC (top left), Changi Village HC (top center), Tekka Centre (top right), Maxwell HC (middle), and Old Airport Road HC (bottom)

Court 3rd Floor” to specific street names such as “Kallang, Geylang 5th Street” and “Albert Street” and the mentioning of neighborhoods like “Hougang” and “Orchard.” Altogether, these identifications and representations of place by hawkers reveal investments of meaning and value as well as the distinctiveness of material culture in each hawker center. Figure 19 is a flow map of hawker origins where the sources are the geographical approximations of places mentioned in the hawker stall header signboards. The destination(s) are the individual hawker centers where the hawker stall is located. The magnitude of hawker flows is not reflected (i.e., five mentions of “China Street” appears the same as a single mention). Nonetheless, it helps us to visualize the life of

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Fig. 19 Flow map of hawker origins

street hawking and various extents of movements that some hawkers have made before settling down in certain hawker centers. One can also imagine the sense of place and identity that hawkers have in a nation that is ever-changing, and how people, food, and places are interconnected and hawker centers as geographically “networked” within a broader system of operations.

6

Discussion and Conclusion

Singapore’s hawker centers constitute a complex combination of food, languages, and identities. They are places of geographical imagination and representation, providing characteristic understandings of hawker food origins and the Singaporean nation, as well as that of food cultures in other nations. The banal representations of food also serve as reminders of the various ethnicities that exist in the Singapore society and show how vernacular understandings of food and identity politics may be revealed in which nations and places are mentioned (or not), as seen from the case of heritage food “wars” between Singapore and Malaysia. At the same time, hawker centers are institutions that invariably reproduce the nation’s theory of multiracialism, as the attachment of race-related languages to ethnic food reproduces existing racial identities, when those ethnicities are subsumed within broader racial groups.

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This study has demonstrated that the banal representation of food, intersections of mother tongue and religious languages in space, and the nature of hawker food have the potential to blur food and racial boundaries in the nation. They serve as reminders that there is more to “Chinese-ness,” “Malay-ness,” and “Indian-ness” in the population demographics of Singapore (Kong 2007: 108), and the visibility of minority and “new” immigrant hawker cuisines inform consumers that there are actual faces, languages, and cuisines behind each ethnic group, especially among those casted in the “Others” racial category. As hawker food is also relatively low in cost, accessible and frequently eaten among Singaporeans, it has the potential to be “an entry point, both theoretically and methodologically, for thinking through broader bodyenvironment-place relationships” (Del Casino 2015: 805). Hence, the role and power of place and space in hawker centers is observed to conceptualize and challenge the meaning and contents of racial identity in Singapore, albeit in the real and imagined forms. Therefore, hawker centers function as a “food-and-nationalism axis” (Ichijo and Ranta 2016): they are organizational structures, where the trade of hawking is institutionalized, and are unique places which construct, reproduce, and challenge nationalism. Each hawker center has its own unique history and process of becoming (Pred 1984; Yeoh and Kong 1996: 53) and blends food, language, and identity in the context of the everyday life. Scholars on nationalism have emphasized that nations and national identities are “not just the product of structural forces” (Fox and MillerIdriss 2008: 554) nor fixed categories, and that it is ordinary individuals are the key actors who “make them real” in the course of their social interactions and activities in their daily lives (Thompson 2001: 24; Antonsich 2015). Thus, in addition to the above characteristics, the individual experiences of walking, chopping, eating, talking, sweating, and hawking at the hawker center forms a part of the national production of vernacular and on-the-ground understandings of food, language, and identity in Singapore. In relation to broader food and nationalism discourses, the case of Singapore’s hawker centers reveal that everyday places are not only public places where food culture may be located in a nation: they carry much potential to generate, reproduce, and challenge both nationalism and food culture(s). The findings of this study have revealed the potential of food to unite and divide a people, and support the understanding that nationalism is no longer abstract but substantial to the individual, when the nation becomes physically embodied in the form of food (Avieli 2005). Lastly, the spatial dimension is an immutable foundation that cannot be removed from one’s encounters in the world. While neither space and place carry permanent meanings nor can exist as a “concrete way of belonging” (Duruz and Khoo 2015: 180), the process of place-making is still crucial in helping us to understand how relations are built in space and place, and why traditional food is often regarded as an anchor of national identity when all else shifts. In this study, a “wait-and-see” (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008) and vernacular approach (Brubaker et al. 2006; Skey 2011; Goode and Stroup 2015) was shown to be particularly useful in understanding how food, language, and identities are expressed and experienced on-the-ground. They enable an analysis of empirical data

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and phenomenon that do not neatly fit within ethnic or national categories and inform us about the role and function of food culture in the everyday nation. Jurafsky (2014) reminds us that the language of food “helps us understand the interconnectedness of civilizations and the vast globalization that happened, not recently, as we might think, but centuries or millennia ago, all brought together by the most basic human pursuit: finding something good to eat” (Jurafsky 2014: 4). Hence, while vernacular terms and understandings are loaded expressions that may mean different things to different individuals – chicken rice in Singapore’s hawker centers may be known as “Singaporean Chicken Rice” to a tourist, “Hainanese Chicken Rice” to a Singaporean Chinese, and “Chinese Chicken Rice” to an expatriate – they enable us to perform the task of understanding “the actual processes of meaning making and the exercise of vernacular power that are constitutive of social identities” (Goode and Stroup 2015: 718). Suggested additional research on this topic would include a cross-analysis between colonial racialism and postcolonial multiracialism as expressed in the culinary and sensory landscape of hawker centers (Goh 2008; Cheung 2014; Low 2013), and the interviewing of the hawker stall owners behind the choice of design in their header signboards. A broader research could also include the analysis of cultural and religious symbols in hawker signage, such as red lanterns (associated with Chinese) and pictures of Hindu gods. Although Anglicized Chinese characters (pinyin) were not considered as English languages for the purposes of this study, it is debatable about what constitutes English in the Singaporean context, if vernacular terms such as “yong tao foo” are so common and widely used that even non-Mandarin speakers can understand what they mean. A future reproduction of this study would also reflect the stability of hawker stalls in hawker centers, as well as its transformations as place-processes. Hawker centers have “grown up” with the nation and provide room for both continuity and change to be established in an ever-changing society. They bring the “nation” back to its immigrant and ka-ki-nang roots, reminding the people of Singapore that we share the same space (place, country, and land) while we eat “together-in-difference” (Ang 2001; Duruz and Khoo 2015: 15). Hawker centers have been emblematic of various stages within Singapore’s nation-building project and will continue to embody expressions of identity, language, and belonging among the majority of Singaporeans. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Aztlán and Mexican Transnationalism: Language, Nation, and History

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Magnus Pharao Hansen and Kurly Tlapoyawa

Contents 1 Aztlán and Nahuatl: An Imagined Nation and Its Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Homelands: Nahuatl, Uto-Aztecan Languages, and the US Southwest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Aztecs and Aztlan: Mythology, History, and Metahistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Nahuatl as a Language of Colonialism and Nationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Nahuatl and Aztlán in the Chicano Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion: Language, Territory, and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This article explores the roles of the indigenous Nahuatl language in the production of the imagined nation of Aztlán, a central idea in the US Chicano Movement. It adopts a theoretical approach from linguistic anthropology, attending to the role of language as a source of historical knowledge about the past and also as a medium for the production of metahistorical narratives. It describes the history of the Nahuatl language and its speakers and how the idea of Aztlán has been used first as a source of identity among the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of Mexico, then as a symbol of Mexican national origins, and finally as a source of identity and dignity among Chicano people in the United States. It is argued that just as the Nahuas saw the Nahuatl language as defining a pan-Nahua identity including politically separate city-states, today Chicanos use the Nahuatl language and its related cultural practices to embody a transnational community. M. Pharao Hansen (*) Department for Crosscultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] K. Tlapoyawa Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_68

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Keywords

Language history · Indigenous · Pre-colonial · Nahuatl · Aztec · Mexico · Dialects · Linguistic diversity · Secret language · Symbolism

1

Aztlán and Nahuatl: An Imagined Nation and Its Language

Language has had a central role in the study of nationalism and the nation-state, both as part of the symbolic fabric that primordialist conceptualizations see as constitutive of the ethno-national collective, but it is also as the medium of discourse through which national communities imagine themselves into being. In nationalist ideologies that tie together “one state, one language, one territory,” a language is taken to define the boundaries of a space and to assign the legitimate political control of it to the language’s speakers. However, contrary to primordialist assumptions, the concepts of language and nation are not stable entities, but rather highly malleable, and they can be leveraged ideologically in surprising ways. This chapter describes how the indigenous Mexican Nahuatl language and the idea of Aztlān, the mythical homeland of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples, have come to occupy a key function both in the official nationalism of the Mexican state and in popular forms of Mexican ethno-nationalism within and beyond the current boundaries of the Mexican nation-state. The aim is to elucidate how ideologies about language, history, and indigeneity are recruited to construct a political narrative of heritage that ties the Mexican-American community to the territory it inhabits. Within the field of Chicano studies, a number of scholars have focused on Aztlán nationalism as an ideological crux for the construction of Chicano identity, spirituality, and cosmovision. Gómez-Quiñones and Vásquez (2014) frame the development of the Aztlán ideology within the struggle for Chicano political rights. Miner (2014) focuses on pictorial and graphic practices, especially those associated with the low-rider subculture, as one way that Chicanos resignify the US Southwest, turning it into Aztlán. Other studies have focused on religious and spiritual practices (De La Torre and Zúñiga 2013). Doubtless, all of these practices are important ways that Chicanos relate to the territory. However, this chapter explores the relation between Chicano consciousness and the imagined nation of Aztlán through the lens of linguistic practices and ideologies – an approach from the field of linguistic anthropology (see, e.g., Schieffelin et al. 1998). Moving beyond Benedict Anderson’s 1983 concept of nations as imagined communities (Anderson 2006), this chapter focuses on the double role of the Nahuatl language in the conceptualization of the imagined nation of Aztlán. Faudree and Pharao Hansen (2014) have argued that the relations between language, society, and history can best be studied by approaching the nexus of relations simultaneously as history and as metahistory. Language is historical because it represents an archive of social relations among its speakers, spreading socially across generations and across landscapes. But it is also metahistorical because humans use language as the medium with which to narrate their past – making the past socially active in the present.

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Following this theoretical approach, the chapter demonstrates that Nahuatl participates in the construction of Aztlán in two ways: as a historical basis and as a metahistorical instrument. In this perspective the role of Nahuatl in the production of Aztlán nationalism is twofold: (1) as the historical link that defines the territory and its relation to an indigenous population and to the Mexican nation and (2) as a central medium of thought and practice through which an imagined nation can be made to exist as part of the everyday lives of Chicano people.

2

Homelands: Nahuatl, Uto-Aztecan Languages, and the US Southwest

Nahuatl is a Native American language belonging to the Uto-Aztecan language family. It was the main language of the Aztec Empire that dominated much of Mexico in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it was also the language of many smaller city-states and communities striving to maintain their political independence in the face of Aztec expansionism. In the process of Spanish colonization of Mesoamerica, the Nahuatl language maintained an important function, as the main vehicular language through which colonizers communicated with indigenous communities and often also as the language of communication between indigenous communities speaking different languages. Today the language is spoken natively by more than a million indigenous Mexicans who speak dozens of different local varieties that often have limited mutual intelligibility. Speakers of Nahuatl, however, do not generally consider themselves to form a nation in the sense that, for example, North American native nations do, but rather maintain ethnic identities based on their local communities and political relations. But as a language in which much of the documentation of the Aztec culture is written, Nahuatl is also a language that is studied intensively by scholars of Mexican history. It is in this function, as a tie between the Aztec civilization and the modern Mexican nation, that Nahuatl has come to occupy a role as a language of nationalism and recently also as a language of transnationalism. The Uto-Aztecan language family has its center of diversity in northern Mexico and the US Southwest, including languages such as Ute, Paiute, Hopi, Shoshoni, Kawía, Tongva, Comanche, Yaqui, and Tohono O’dham. Several of these languages are spoken on both sides of the US-Mexican border. Extending further north are only the Shoshonean or Numic branches of the family, with some languages spoken as far as Oregon and Idaho. In northwestern Mexico languages such as Huichol and Tepehuan belong to the family, but in southern Mexico the only Uto-Aztecan languages spoken are those of the Nahuan branch of the family, some of which have historically extended as far into Central America as Nicaragua (Fig. 1). Today Nahuan languages are spoken in indigenous communities in central Mexico by more than a million speakers, and in El Salvador by a couple of hundred people, though revitalization efforts are ongoing. The Uto-Aztecan language family got its name when it was discovered that the Mexican Aztecan languages (as the Nahuan languages were called then) were related to the Ute languages of the United

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Fig. 1 Spread of the Uto-Aztecan languages from ca. 3000 BCE to 1700 CE. The map represents a synthesis of classification from Hill (2011) and Merrill (2012) and the migration scenario from Shaul (2014). Hill’s scenario reverses the direction of migration

States. The languages of the family are very different, and linguists estimate that at least 5000 years have passed since the ancient proto-Uto-Aztecan community began to split up. This means that the different branches of the family are as different from each other as are the branches of the Indo-European family. For example, the Nahuan languages of Mexico are as distantly related to the Numic languages of the Colorado River as the Germanic languages of Northern Europe are to the Indic languages of Northern India. Linguists establish language families based on the comparative method. When patterns of sound and grammar in different languages are compared and show regular correspondences that are too complex to be due to simple chance or to borrowing between them, then historical linguists assume that the two languages descend from a common ancestral language. By further comparing the systematic correspondences between the languages, they can make predictions about the characteristics that the

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ancestral language must have had and then proceed to reconstruct the system of traits and features that eventually evolved into the languages spoken today. The reconstructed protolanguage essentially embodies the imagination of the linguist who produces it, based on his or her understanding of the different languages involved and the process of change that could have affected it. The creation of the reconstruction also involves another process of imagination, namely, imagining the community who originally spoke the protolanguage, what they were like and where they lived. In the same way that the grammar and sounds of a protolanguage can be reconstructed by extrapolating the features shared by all the related languages back in time, ancestral culture and habitat can also be reconstructed. The location of ancestral homeland of a linguistic family is usually inferred by two methods: first, by reconstructing shared vocabulary and analyzing whether it gives any hints to the ecological context in which the protolanguage was spoken and, secondly, by applying the principle that the center of diversity is also likely to be the center of dispersal. This principle is based on the logic that migrations away from the center will generally represent only a subset of the internal variation present in the center of origin (a phenomenon called the founder effect). This assumption also produces the smallest and shortest number of migration events for the ancestral groups to arrive in their present locations, which means that it is generally also the more parsimonious explanation. However, the comparative method is in the end a historical pursuit, one that produces narratives, and not a method of natural science that produces facts. While all of these imaginative processes are fettered by the basic empirical facts and by the application of a rigorous methodology of comparison, none of them are able to determine with objective certainty what happened in the past, and the narratives will always depend partially on a given historian’s own imaginative capacities and subjective perspectives. Understood as the reflection from which a community can be inferred, the reconstruction of protolanguages, proto-cultures, and homelands are in this way essentially the production of imagined communities, even though they rely on an empirical methodology. Since the inception of historical linguistics in the eighteenth century, the concept of language families has provided ample fodder for political imaginaries: ideologies such as pan-Germanism or Aryanism both build on originally linguistic conceptualizations of community. The fact that these imaginations have an empirical basis and that they are produced by scholars lends them a significant authority that serves as a solid foundation for more overtly political imaginations of the community. Currently linguists are debating two competing hypotheses for the location of the Uto-Aztecan homeland. The traditional view, which continues to enjoy the broadest support in recent work, holds that the Uto-Aztecan languages originated somewhere in the US Southwest. Some proposals have placed it in the Mojave Desert going into northern Sonora (Fowler 1983). A more recent proposal by Shaul (2014) places it in the area of the California Central Valley, proposing a southward spread of Southern Uto-Aztecan languages through the “Tepiman Corridor” into northern Mexico and spread of the Northern languages into Death Valley and Nevada. The competing proposal by Jane Hill (2001, 2012) argues that the Uto-Aztecan homeland was in

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northwestern Mexico within the cultural area of Mesoamerica and proposes that all of the protolanguages, except proto-Nahuatl which remained behind and continued to practice maize agriculture, moved northward and gave up agriculture for hunting and gathering lifestyles. Hill’s proposal breaks with the principle of considering the center of diversity the most likely center of spread. The etymologies that she has used to argue that Northern Uto-Aztecan languages must have practiced agriculture sometime in the past have been widely challenged (Kaufman and Justeson 2009; Merrill et al. 2010; Merrill 2012; Shaul 2014). The discussion shows widely varying perspectives in making hypotheses regarding the locations of linguistic homelands and illustrates how the choice of homeland scenario is also motivated by preferences for alternative narratives that support different political potentials. In Hill’s narrative all Uto-Aztecan language communities can be considered intrusive into the US Southwest but also the inheritors of the Mesoamerican cultural tradition. In the traditional view, Nahuatl speakers are considered technologically primitive intruders into the advanced Mesoamerican culture area, evoking the motif of the European “Barbarian Invasions.” In this way the debates about how to access the deep history of the Uto-Aztecan languages are also entangled in webs of metahistorical discourse. By paying joint attention to language both as a historical object (the signs left by the past) and as a metahistorical object (the medium in which the past reaches us), it is possible to achieve a clearer view of the past, as well as insight into the ways it can be put to use in the present, for example, in nation-building. The following sections trace how the relationships between the Nahuatl language and Aztlán and Mexican politics have been constructed in three historical periods: (1) among the Aztecs of pre-invasion Mexico where the concept of Aztlán originated, (2) within Mexican nationalist ideology as it developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and tied the language to the production of a Mexican nation-state, and (3) in Mexican-American and Chicano communities in the United States from the second half of the twentieth century until today.

3

Aztecs and Aztlan: Mythology, History, and Metahistory

The concept of Aztlán has its origin in the ethnohistoric and mytho-historic narratives recorded by Nahuatl speakers in the Spanish colonial period. As with most Mesoamerican origin myths, these narratives present a migration motif in which Nahuatl-speaking ethnic groups shared a common origin in a place that they eventually abandon in search for a place in which to build their own city-state. The best known descriptions of these Aztlān migrations have been recorded by authors representing the Mexicah, Texcocah-Acolhuah, and Tlaxcaltecah ethnic groups. The meaning of the Nahuatl word Aztlān is a matter of some debate. The locative suffix -tlān means something like “place by X,” but there is no clear match for the root as-. It could be a shortened form of the word aztatl, meaning “egret” (some sources also describe the place as Aztatlān), or it might be an old or shortened form of the word ahaztli or “wing.” In any case, the word aztec (Nahuatl aztecatl) is

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derived from the place-name and means “inhabitant of Aztlān.” Note that this work employs a distinction between the original Nahuatl word Aztlān which stresses the first syllable and pronounces the second syllable as a long vowel (marked by a macron) and the Chicano usage Aztlán which adds an acute accent to mark word stress on the second syllable of the word following Spanish orthography. Colonial documents differ on the ethnic identities of the various Aztec groups that participated in the migration, but it is interesting to note that each of these groups was considered politically autonomous. Three of the groups, the Mexicah, the Tepanecah, and the Texcocah-Acolhuah, joined forces to form the triple alliance that comprised the so-called Aztec Empire. But several of the other groups, prominently the Tlaxcaltecah, were political and military opponents of the Aztecah of the triple alliance. The term Aztecatl then was an identity that joined together separate political communities under a single pan-ethnic identity based on a shared language and a shared myth of origin. These myths have been preserved in several colonial manuscripts (codex). Perhaps the most well-known document of this migration is the Codex Boturini, which provides a detailed account of the Aztlān migration in the form of pictograms and ideograms. Placing the exit from Aztlān in the year cē tecpatl (“one flint”), the Codex Boturini presents Aztlān as a small island. Utilizing a standard Mesoamerican convention to represent travel, a set of footprints mark the journey of the migrants (Fig. 2). They are led by four teomamahqueh (priests), the first of which (often identified as Tezcacoatl) carries a sacred bundle representing Huitzilopochtli, the tutelary teotl (deity) of the Aztlan migrants. The Codex Ramirez affirms that these groups spoke Nahuatl, stating “The indians of this New Spain, according to the uniform statement of their own histories, proceed from two different nations.” The first of these they call the Nahuatlacah, which means “people who speak intelligibly and clearly.” The term Nahuatlacah remains in use as a collective label for Nahuatl speakers. The history of the migration from Aztlān can be found in other manuscripts dating to the early colonial era. The Mapa Sigüenza, Codex Mexicanus, Codex Azcatitlan, Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, Mapa de Cuauhtinchan, and the Codex Aubin all relate the migration of Nahua-speaking people into central Mexico. In particular, the Codex Aubin makes note of the moment that one group of Aztlān migrants was instructed by Huitzilopochtli to change their name: Auh cah niman oncān oquincuepilih in ī ntōca in Aztecah. Oquimilhuih, ‘In axcān aocomo amotoca in amaztecah, ye ammexicah.’ Oncān oquinnacazpotonihqueh inic oquicuihqueh in ī ntōca in Mexicah. Codex Aubin, 1576 (orthography has been standardized to the Andrews-Campbell-Karttunen-system and punctuation normalized) Authors’ translation: “And then, there he [Huitzilopochtli] changed the name of the Aztecah. He told them: ‘You are no longer called Azteca, now you are Mexica.’ There they put feathers in their ears. In this way the Mexica took their name.”

It was this group, the Mexicah, that would eventually penetrate Lake Texcoco and establish the city-state of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The Mexicah considered themselves

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Fig. 2 The Aztecah leaving the Island of Aztlān by boat. The square glyph above the footprints record the year cē tecpatl, “one flint”. (From the sixteenth-century Codex Boturini)

to be former Aztecs and, as such, recent arrivals in central Mexico. In his “Historia de Las Indias de Nueva Espan˜ a,” Dominican friar and chronicler Diego Durán (1537–1588) recounted a story told to him by his Nahua informants in which the Aztec ruler Motecuzoma Ilhuicamina (ca. 1398–1469) sent emissaries north to search for Aztlān, which they visited and described as an earthly, magical paradise upon their return. This suggests that Nahua people in the sixteenth century, now nominally Christian, continued to tell each other stories about the land of Aztlān. Durán describes the location of this land as northeast toward La Florida (a term which in this period included the northern part of the Mexican Gulf Coast) (Durán 1994, p. 10). This motif of Aztecs longing toward their ancient home was adopted also by later Chicano authors (e.g., Leal 1989). As for whether the Nahua Aztlān narratives reflect actual historical events and whether a historical Aztlan existed, this has been a matter of scholarly debate. Reviewing the ethnohistorical sources, archaeologist Michael E. Smith has argued that linguistic and archaeological evidence appear to support the historicity of a Nahua migration from the north into the Valley of Mexico (Smith 1984). Other archaeologically based accounts suggest that Nahuas entered central Mexico from the area called the Bajío in the Mexican Northwest probably around 600 AD

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(Beekman and Christensen 2003). Archaeology however has not found support for the claims of any specific site as being the location of “Aztlān” but support the origin of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples in an area northwest of Mexico City. In recent years, the island of Mexcaltitán de Uribe in the state of Nayarit has been touted by some, particularly the local tourist board, as the original “Aztlān” (Jáuregui 2004). Hence, archaeological evidence does not support the notion of an Aztec homeland in the US Southwest. But this does not mean that Nahuatl speakers were not present in the US Southwest before the Spanish invasion. Archaeologists working at Hohokam sites and in Chaco Canyon have noted trade goods originating in southern and central Mexico, as well as architectonic influence, leading them to suggest that central Mexican trade networks reached well into the Southwest (Lekson et al. 2007, pp. 167–168; Riley 2005). Perhaps then, Nahuatl-speaking long-distance traders, the so-called pochteca, did maintain a presence as guests in the Southwest in the late postclassic period (ca. 900 BCE–1500 CE).

4

Nahuatl as a Language of Colonialism and Nationalism

The Colhuah-Mexicah used Nahuatl and the shared origins of its speakers, the Aztlán migrants, as a unifying ideology, but with the Spanish invasion and the fall of the Mexica Empire of the triple alliance in 1521, Nahuatl took on a different set of functions. The Spanish invaders allied with one group of Aztecah, the Tlaxcaltecah, against the triple alliance and succeeded in defeating it. The Mexicah and other central Mexican Nahuatl speakers subsequently became allies of the Spaniards and accompanied them as the process of conquest extended south into Central America (Matthew 2012) and north into the deserts that are today the US Southwest. In this process Nahuatl was used as a vehicular language in the communication between Spaniards and natives; it was widely used for evangelization and even in the communication between different non-Nahua indigenous communities. For many native groups, Nahuatl became simply another language of colonialism, arriving hand in hand with Spaniards and the Spanish language. Speakers of Nahuatl, particularly from the area of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, participated in founding many of the early Spanish settlements in the Southwest, including Santa Fe, New Mexico, and San Antonio, Texas. Nahuatl-language chronicles from the seventeenth century refer to the Spanish province of Nuevo Mexico in Nahuatl as Yancuic Mexihco, literally “New Mexico.” In this period the idea that the Aztec homeland was located in the US Southwest was included in the chronicles of Spanish settlers of New Mexico, such as New Mexico Governor Fernando Peñalosa and Franciscan friar Alonso de Posada, both of whom mentioned a land called Tehuayo located to the northwest of New Mexico, close to the Great Salt Lake (Carson 1998, p. 39). Posada specifically argued that this kingdom of Tehuayo, which had been described by explorers traveling with Juan de Oñate as a rich and advanced society, was the ancient home of the Mexican Aztecs. In the sixteenth century, it was common that colonial authorities propagated narratives of rich unconquered kingdoms such as Cibola

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and El Dorado, in an effort to raise support for expeditions of conquest. It seems that this could also well have been the intentions of the Governor of New Mexico and the identification of Tehuayo as the Aztec homeland (Carson 1998, p. 72). Criollo Jesuit scholar Francisco Javier Clavijero also included the mention of Tehuayo in his 1781 Historia de Antigua Megico, claiming that the earliest Spanish expeditions to the area encountered Nahuatl-speaking Indians with large cities (Clavijero 1826, p. 212). In this way the northern territories were tied into the nascent national symbolism of Mexico. In Mexico, the independence movement made ample use of Aztec symbolism in an effort to claim status as legitimate inheritors of the Mexican territory. The ideology of mestizaje (mixed ancestries) idealized Mexican national culture as a harmonious mixture between European and Indigenous cultural and racial-biological elements. The idealization of indigenous heritage, however, did not extend to the indigenous population but remained at the symbolic level as a kind of historical and archaeological fetishism of the Aztec heritage. Mexican nationalist intellectuals conferred status to the written Nahuatl of the colonial period of a “classical language” worthy of academic scholarship, all while they actively sought to eradicate the spoken indigenous languages in order to assimilate the Indians into the nation-state. As Mexico achieved independence in 1821, the strict racial division of Spanish colonial society was abolished, and all inhabitants were considered equal Mexican citizens under the law. Many Nahuatl-speaking communities quickly assimilated into the Spanish-dominated society and gave up their languages and cultures. This also happened in the Southwest where Nahuatl had probably ceased to be spoken before Mexico ceded the territory to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. However, memories of both Indian and Spanish heritage lingered among the many Chicano, Tejano, and Californio families who saw themselves stripped of political power, civil rights, and land possessions in the transition to US rule. The memory of the lost territories also lived on as a phantom pain in Mexican national imagination. In this period of the defeated national sentiment, Mexican intellectuals seized on the earlier attempts to tie the Aztlan myths to the lost northern territories. In fact, John Disturnell’s 1847 map of Mexico, which was the map used as a basis for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, mentioned three “ancient Aztec residences”: one in the territory between Utah and the Grand Canyon, another on the Gila River, and another in northern Sonora (Fig. 3). Most likely, original prints used by the New York book trader, travel writer, and mapmaker Disturnell had used the reports by Peñalosa and Posada to chart the territory and therefore included the areas they had claimed to be the Aztec homeland. These “Aztec residences” could also be archaeological sites such as the Pueblo and Hohokam sites which in the nineteenth century were considered to be too “advanced” to have been built by the indigenous peoples who currently inhabited the region and which he therefore attributed to “Aztecs.” Miner (2014, pp. 48–49) has pointed out how the use of mapping practices to erase the presence of living indigenous groups and their political organization, while enshrining the indigenous cultures of the past into a national mythology, is a common strategy of settler colonialism; Miner also notes how the map’s invocation

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Fig. 3 Detail from Disturnell’s 1847 map, with two “Aztec residences” circled: the first on the Upper Colorado River (top circle), the second on the Gila River (bottom circle). From Disturnell, J. (1847) Mapa de los Estados Unidos de Méjico, California &c.: segun lo organizado y definido por las varias actas del congreso de dicha Républica y construido por las mejores autoridades. New York: Lo publican J. Disturnell. ([Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc. gov/item/2012593364/)

of the Aztec past, tying it to the lost territories, fused this idea into the national mythology. In the 1860s French lexicographer Remi Simeon visited Mexico as a scientist of Emperor Maximilian, and in using Clavijero as a source, he added the word tehuayo to his large dictionary of Nahuatl and translated the word as the “province septentrionale d’où seraient venues les tribus de la’Anahuac” (the northern province from whence the tribes of Anahuac (basin of Mexico) came) (Simeon 1885, entry Tehuayo). Simeon had studied with Joseph Aubin who published the earliest known mention of Aztlān in the Nahuatl language; the 1576 manuscript is now called the Codex Aubin (see Aubin and Dibble 1963). Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the idea of the Aztec homeland being located in the northern territories must have been a forceful way to express the national longing for the lost lands. It seems likely that these ideas were part of the way that the Mexican public discourse understood the relation to the lost territories, influencing different spheres of public knowledge production from the making of maps to the making of dictionaries.

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Nahuatl and Aztlán in the Chicano Movement

In the twentieth century, the identification between the Aztec homeland and the former Mexican territories in the US Southwest resurfaced in the context of the Chicano Movement. The concept of Aztlán as a Chicano homeland first appeared in print in “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán,” an ideological program presented at the 1969 Denver Youth Conference. Most historians credit the poet Alurista with introducing Aztlán as the symbolic motherland of the Chicano people, as his poetry contributed to the preamble of “El Plan.” Organized by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales in hopes of developing a unified ideological direction for the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement, the Denver Youth Conference is notable for two reasons. First, participants adopted “Chicanismo” as the underlying principle that would characterize their struggle for civil rights. Second, it was the first official declaration of Aztlán as representing the mytho-historical homeland of Chicanos. The conference came to be seen as a pivotal moment in the formation of emergent Chicano identity and had an undeniable influence on what was to become known as the “Chicano Movement” or “El Movimiento” (Martínez and Vásquez 1974; Gómez-Quiñones and Vásquez 2014, pp. 80, 148). The “Plan” evoked different layers of Mexican nationalism and political activism. It drew associations from the Nahua migration myth, Alfonso Caso’s description of the Aztecs as “people of the Sun,” Emiliano Zapata’s statement that the soil belongs to the one who works it with his hands (which was also invoked by the United Farm Workers’ Movement), Jose Vasconcelos cliché of the natives as a “bronze race” and the idea of Chicanos as the civilizing force of the US Southwest, and the national pain of the dispossession of the Mexican northern territories. In this way Alurista and the authors of the Plan skillfully converted the idea of Aztlán into a nexus, uniting central ideologies of Mexican-American history and political concerns: In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal ‘gringo’ invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent. (“Plan Espiritual de Aztlán,” 1969)

By fusing the Nahua idea of Aztlan with the lost Mexican territories as symbolic homeland of the US-Mexican community, Chicano identity was intertwined with the Aztec imagery so prevalent in postrevolutionary Mexico, and by extension, with the Nahuatl language (Fig. 4). One aspect of the ideology inherent in the Plan was refashioning Chicano identity to that of an indigenous, Native American people. This possibility emerged from the ideology of Mexican mestizo-nationalism, which maintained that Mexicans were

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Fig. 4 The location of Aztlán in the Chicano national imagination. Corresponding to the territories lost in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

“mixed” of equal parts Native American and European heritage and biological ancestry. Within the framework of the US racial logic, with its use of the one drop rule for African American racial membership, and the blood quantum rule for Native American tribal membership, the mestizo could indeed be considered a half-blood Native American, even though within the Mexican racial logics, the mestizo was characterized exactly by having severed cultural and ethnic ties with an indigenous community. The Chicano claim to indigeneity was reinforced by the work of Native American scholars like Jack Forbes, who with his “Aztecas del Norte” (1973) accepted the validity of attempting to return to a pre-colonial heritage. Nonetheless, Native American communities often have not taken kindly to the Chicano claim to Native American identity nor accepted their calls to unity among the indigenous people of the American continent (Saldaña-Portillo 2015). Having no direct ties to indigenous communities in Mexico or the United States, Chicano activists tended to take the romanticized figure of the Aztec warrior as the core symbol of their ethnic heritage. This association became even more pronounced with the arrival of Aztec dance traditions from Mexico to the American Southwest in the 1970s. Based on rural devotional dances originating in the Mexican Bajio area, conchero dance became a highly visible part of the Mexican Nationalist Movement (Aguilar 2009). Dancers dressed in brightly colored Aztec costumes with colorful feathers and rattles on their legs. They formed into hierarchically organized calpulli groups, based on the neighborhood structure of Nahuatl cities (Rostas 2009). Gradually the conchero dance tradition became influenced by the Movimiento

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Confederado Restaurador de la Cultura de Anahuac (MCRCA), a Mexican nationalist and indigenist organization founded by Rodolfo Nieva Lopez in the 1950s, with the intention of revitalizing Mexico’s imperial Aztec past. Much like Afrocentrists who claim that black Africans had spread culture throughout the world, the MCRCA promoted a worldview in which Aztec culture was preeminent and responsible for the fluorescence of world civilization (Odena-Güemes 1984). The MCRCA had its main influence in urban middle- and working-class communities (Friedlander 1975). Its practices mixed Mexican nationalism; neo-Aztec religion (also prominently influenced by New Age ideas); the use and promotion of the classical Nahuatl language, including the practitioners taking Nahuatl names; and a new form of Aztec dance (de la Peña 2002, 2012). Eventually the neo-Aztec dance style, which had fused with ideological influence from the MCRCA, became so prominent that a rupture between the traditional Catholic conchero dance style and the more aggressively neo-Aztec variety occurred (Rostas 2009). Aztec dance allowed many Chicanos to become active participants in a cultural movement that satiated their thirst for identity by creating the space to assert themselves as indigenous people. One of the first Aztec dance groups to be established in the United States was named Xinachtli de Aztlán (“seed of Aztlán”), founded in Austin, Texas, in 1977 by famed dance captain Andres Segura (Poveda 1981). The solidarity created through the practice of dancing, taking Nahuatl personal names and studying and practicing neo-Aztec spirituality, created a powerful sense of community and agency which served as a fertile soil in which the burgeoning sense of Chicano indigenous identity could take root (De La Torre and Zúñiga 2013). The etymology of the word Chicano is disputed. Those in the Chicano Movement subscribe to the notion that it ultimately derives from Mexicah, which was changed to Mexicano by the Spanish, and shortened to Chicano sometime later. Others have rejected this idea and suggested that it is a corruption of the term chicanery (Shorris 1992; Navarro 2005: 389, note 43). Many Chicanos have adopted the spelling Xicano, deliberately using the letter X which in Nahuatl stands for the sh sound, in order to more clearly show the word’s origin as being related to Nahuatl and to the Mexicah people. Regardless of any etymological dispute, this perceived connection to the Nahuatl language has inspired many Chicanos to study Nahuatl as heritage language (Villarreal 2011). Some study the language at universities or through reading independent studies of colonial grammars and dictionaries, while others travel to Mexico to study the language in communities or make connections to Mexican Nahuatl speakers living in the United States. In East Los Angeles, the charter school Semillas del Pueblo teaches Nahuatl to children at all grade levels, inviting nativespeaking teachers from Mexico. Some Chicanos who practice neo-Aztec religion even compose Nahuatl versions of medicine songs utilized in Native American peyote ceremonies. These medicine songs represent a new evolution in the ongoing cultural negotiation of Chicanos, who use the songs to more clearly define themselves as indigenous people with roots in both Mexico and the Southwest. The colloquial renaming of American states to Nahuatlized versions is also a

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common practice among Chicanos, with terms like Tejaztlán, Califaztlán, Arizonaztlán, and Coloradaztlán, serving as politically charged and culturally assertive declarations of Aztlan as occupied space (Poveda 1981). Perhaps the most visible Chicano organization to utilize Aztlán imagery is the student group known as MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). Founded in 1969, MEChA is a national organization with chapters active on many university and high school campuses that have a large Chicano enrollment. The preamble of the MEChA national constitution declares: Chicano and Chicana students of Aztlán must take upon themselves the responsibilities to promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlán.

This concept of “liberating Aztlan” remains a point of contention among many in the Chicano community. While some seek the literal separation of the southwestern United States and the formation of an independent Chicano nation, others view the idea as purely symbolic. As Chicano scholars Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez note: For many, Aztlán is simply about bringing a dignity to themselves at a time when they perceive a full-scale attack against their culture via an encirclement of forced assimilation policies. And the irony is that these policies – which manifest themselves in national movements against immigration, affirmative action, bilingual education and ethnic studies, plus the militarization of the U.S./Mexico border – are essentially fueling that quest for dignity. (Gonzales and Rodriguez 1998)

Roberto Rodriguez has also been on the forefront of efforts to present the Disturnell map as evidence for the historical status of the Southwest as an Aztec homeland and hence as the homeland of Chicanos who see themselves as descendants of the Aztecs (Miner 2014, p. 49). Rejecting the need for a geographic location of Aztlan, Chicano author and literary scholar Luis Leal ends his essay “The Search for Aztlán” stating that “whosoever wants to find Aztlán, let him look for it, not on the maps, but in the most intimate part of his being” (Leal 1989, p. 13) This search for an intimate Aztlán is exactly what many Chicanos pursue by using linguistic and spiritual and genealogical practices, to create embodied links to the imagined territory. Nonetheless, in the minds of many Anglo-Americans, the Nahuatl language practices of Chicanos have become a menacing threat associated with violent gang culture (see Valdemar 2011, for an example of this negative stereotyping of Nahuatl language practices by a former LAPD officer). For this reason, in some periods even the possession of Nahuatl language materials has been prohibited in California prisons, as police have considered the use of Nahuatl by prisoners to be a potential security threat, fearing its use as a language of secrecy. Whether the liberation of Aztlán is to be taken literally or seen as purely symbolic matters little to anti-immigrant organizations in the United States who view the very

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concept of Aztlán as a serious threat to American sovereignty. Anti-immigrant organizations have labeled the Chicano Movement the “reconquista” movement, a nefarious plot by those they term “Aztlanistas” who desire the overthrow of the United States. These groups often utilize the imagery of Aztlán as promoted by Chicanos to demand the further militarization of the border and as a recruiting tool for anti-immigrant hate groups. The idea gained increased notoriety in 2006, when US nationalist groups after journalist and conservative pundit Lou Dobbs showed a map of Aztlán in his CNN program and tied the influx of Mexican immigrants to the ideology of liberation, suggesting a general conspiracy of immigrants to reconquer the US Southwest (the reporters in fact found the map on the website of a white supremacist organization). Despite this backlash, the idea of Aztlán as a Chicano homeland remains firmly ensconced in the hearts and minds of Chicano activists, students, professionals, artists, and Aztec dancers alike.

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Conclusion: Language, Territory, and Identity

This chapter has traced how the Aztec idea of Aztlán has been used in three eras for varying political purposes. These different ideologies have drawn, albeit selectively, on whichever scientific knowledge was current in the period in which they operated, using knowledge from mythical narrative, from explorers’ accounts, as well as from philology, geography, and historical linguists. The proto-Uto-Aztecan ancestors of the Nahua people left the Southwest, moving southward into Mexico in a gradual process spanning several thousand years. The Nahuas kept some memory of this migration process in their myths of ethnic origin, but for them Aztlán was the place of common origin of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples, and they do not seem to have associated Aztlán with a specific geographic location. As Spaniards and their Nahua allies moved into the northern deserts, the idea of a rich northern Nahua kingdom yet to be conquered was used as a motivation and justification for colonial expansion. After independence and the loss of the northern colonies, the myth of the Aztec northern homeland became a metaphor for the intimate connection between central Mexico and the severed northern territories. Finally, in the transnational Mexican community, the idea of Aztlán came to serve as a way to build belonging and local identity among the marginalized communities that could draw ancestral ties back to the colonial Nahua and Spanish presence. Just as speaking Nahuatl and was the defining feature of the Aztlán migrants who came to found the city of Mexico, contemporary “Northern Aztecs” often use the Nahuatl language as a way to embody their identity and their sense of belonging. The language itself has now become a metahistorical link tying Chicanos to narratives of their past. Given the Chicano Movement’s ideological focus on decolonization, it may seem ironic that the Nahuatl language arrived in the US Southwest exactly as a result of Spanish colonial expansion, that the identification of an Aztec homeland with the US Southwest was originally used as an argument for continued conquest, and that the Chicano conceptualization of the territory of Aztlán corresponds to the difference between the northern border of Colonial New Spain and the current borders of the

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Mexican state. But then, this is exactly how the nationalist geographic imagination works, reimagining the territory and its cultural history to fit the most pressing political concerns of a community. The power of Aztlán lies in its ability to subvert the given geographical arrangement of the US and Mexican nation-states, demonstrating the contingent and arbitrary nature of national border and supporting a form of transnational or even para-national identity. After all, in the deep historical perspective, the Chicano slogan that “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us” is indeed true. Today, as in the sixteenth century, the Nahuatl language is again spoken widely in the US Southwest, by Chicano cultural activists who tend to adopt colonial Nahuatl as a heritage language but also by recent immigrants from Mexico who speak some of the many different contemporary varieties. In the future perhaps these two groups of Nahuatlacah will work together and use the Nahuatl language to sustain the transnational community of Aztlán.

References Aguilar, M. E. (2009). The rituals of kindness: The influence of the Danza Azteca tradition of Central Mexico on Chicano-Mexcoehuani identity and sacred space. PhD dissertation, The Claremont Graduate University. Anderson, B. (2006; originally 1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso Books. Aubin, C., & Dibble, C. E. (1963). Historia de la Nacion Mexicana: Reproduccion a Todo Color Del Codice de 1576 (Codice Aubin). Madrid: J. Porrúa Turanzas. Beekman, C. S., & Christensen, A. F. (2003). Controlling for doubt and uncertainty through multiple lines of evidence: A new look at the Mesoamerican Nahua migrations. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 10(2), 111–164. Carson, P. (1998). Across the northern frontier: Spanish explorations in Colorado. Boulder: Johnson Books. Clavijero, F. J. (1826). Historia antigua de México y de su conquista (Vol II). Translated from Italian by J. J. Mora. London: Ackerman Strand. de la Peña, F. (2002). Los hijos del sexto sol. Un estudio etnopsicoanalítico sobre el movimiento de la mexicanidad. México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. de la Peña, F. (2012). Profecías de la mexicanidad: entre el milenarismo nacionalista y la new age. Cuicuilco, 19(55), 127–143. De La Torre, R., & Zúñiga, C. G. (2013). Chicano spirituality in the construction of an imagined nation: Aztlán. Social Compass, 60(2), 218–235. Duran, D. (1994). The history of the indies of new Spain, translated, annotated and with introduction by Doris Heyden. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Faudree, P., & Pharao Hansen, M. (2014). Language, society, and history: Towards a unified approach? In N. Enfield, J. Sidnell, & P. Kockleman (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 223–245). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forbes, J. D. (1973). Aztecas Del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan. Greenwich: Fawcett Publications. Fowler, C. S. (1983). Some lexical clues to Uto-Aztecan prehistory. International Journal of American Linguistics, 49(3), 224–257. Friedlander, J. (1975). Being Indian in Hueyapan: A study of forced identity in contemporary Mexico. New York: Saint Martin’s Press. Gómez-Quiñones, J., & Vásquez, I. (2014). Making Aztlán: Ideology and culture of the Chicana and Chicano movement, 1966–1977. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

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Gonzales, P., & Rodriguez, R. (1998). Aztlan draws ire of anti-immigrants. Column of the Americas. Universal Press Syndicate, April 10, 1998. Accessed at http://www.mexica.net/ mecha/undersiege.php Hill, J. H. (2001). Proto-Uto-Aztecan: A Community of Cultivators in Central Mexico? American Anthropologist, 103(4), 913–934. Hill, J. H. (2011). Subgrouping in Uto-Aztecan. Language Dynamics and Change, 1(2), 241–278. Hill, J. H. (2012). Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a Mesoamerican language. Ancient Mesoamerica, 23(01), 57–68. Jáuregui, J. (2004). Mexcaltitán-Aztlán: un nuevo mito. Arqueología mexicana, 12(67), 56–61. Kaufman, T., & Justeson, J. (2009). Historical linguistics and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica, 20(02), 221–231. Leal, L. (1989). In search of Aztlan. In R. A. Anaya & F. Lomeli (Eds.), Aztlan: Essays on the Chicano homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Lekson, S. H., Windes, T. C., & Fournier, P. (2007). The changing faces of Chetro Ketl. In S. H. Lekson (Ed.), The Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Chaco Canyon Series, pp. 155–178). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Martínez, E. S., & Vásquez, E. L. (1974). Viva la raza! The struggle of the Mexican-American people. Garden City: Doubleday. Matthew, L. E. (2012). Memories of conquest: Becoming Mexicano in colonial Guatemala. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Merrill, W. L. (2012). The historical linguistics of Uto-Aztecan agriculture. Anthropological Linguistics, 54(3), 203–260. Merrill, W. L., Hard, R. J., Mabry, J. B., Fritz, G. J., Adams, K. R., Roney, J. R., & MacWilliams, A. C. (2010). Reply to Hill and Brown: Maize and Uto-Aztecan cultural history. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(11), E35–E36. Miner, D. (2014). Creating Aztlán: Chicano art, indigenous sovereignty, and lowriding across Turtle Island. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Navarro, A. (2005). Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlan: Struggles and change. Walnut Creek: Rowman Altamira. Odena-Güemes, L. (1984). Movimiento Confederado Restaurador de la Cultura de Anahuac. México: SEP Cultura, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. “Plan Espiritual de Aztlán.” (1969). Available at http://clubs.arizona.edu/~mecha/pages/PDFs/ ElPlanDeAtzlan.pdf. Accessed 13 Apr 2016. Poveda, P. (1981). Danza de Concheros en Austin, Texas: Entrevista con Andrés Segura Granados. Latin American Music Review/Revista De Mu´sica Latinoamericana, 2(2), 280–299. Riley, C. L. (2005). Becoming Aztlan: Mesoamerican influence in the greater southwest, AD 1200–1500. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Rostas, S. (2009). Carrying the word: The Concheros dance in Mexico City. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Saldaña-Portillo, J. (2015). Indigenous but not Indian? Chicana/os and the politics of indigeneity. In R. Warrior (Ed.), The world of indigenous North America. New York: Routledge. Schieffelin, B. B., Woolard, K. A., & Kroskrity, P. V. (Eds.). (1998). Language ideologies: Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Shaul, D. L. (2014). A prehistory of western North America: The impact of Uto-Aztecan languages. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Shorris, E. (1992). Latinos: A biography of the people. New York: W.W. Norton & Houghton. Siméon, R. (1885). Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl ou mexicaine. In Imprint Nationale. Paris. Smith, M. E. (1984). The Aztlan migrations of the Nahuatl chronicles: Myth or history? Ethnohistory, 31, 153–186. Valdemar, R. (2011). Do you speak Nahuatl? Policemag.com. Accessed 21 Feb 2016 at http://www. policemag.com/blog/gangs/story/2011/01/do-you-speak-nahuatl.aspx Villarreal, B. M. (2011). El náhuatl en Los Ángeles: el papel de la lengua indígena en la creación de la identidad chicana. Mester, 40(1), 81–100.

Place Names and Kazakh Song Making in the Western Mongolian Steppes

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Contents 1 Place Names and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Music and Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Song Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This study focuses on Mongolian Kazakh place names in Kazakh language used by herders in rural Bayan Ölgii, Mongolia, to mark sites that have social, historical, and political significance for individuals and local communities of pastoralists. Their songs reference and describe lands where Kazakh people have lived and traveled. As they map their movement, they share information about social and ecological values and emotional attachment to the land. The herders reject some national Mongolian language names and have established their own Kazakh names for places they frequent. Using song genres and performance styles passed down in close-knit communities, their songs reflect not only their rootedness in place, but also the significance of mobility. They also mobilize their communities to act in support of the land in the face of change and claim space for their pastoralist activities. The frequent references to specific places by Kazakh name, using the two-string dombyra and older highly respected Kazakh song genres are part of an ongoing effort to maintain a local language and a way of life and to claim land that during the last 25 years has been entangled in social and political processes of change.

J. C. Post (*) University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_127

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Keywords

Kazakh language · Ethnomusicology · Place names · Mongolia · Mobile pastoralism

In late summer in 2006, in the small city of Ölgii in far western Mongolia, the author sat with Beket in his office poring over topographic maps produced by Mongolian government supported organizations. The task was to locate place names referenced in songs and tunes performed by local Mongolian Kazakh musicians. Beket, a Kazakh biologist who focuses on ecosystems in Bayan Ölgii and nearby Khovd provinces, was drawn into the research as a guide for visits to some of the mobile pastoral families in remote regions of this mountainous province where local music and other sound practices have been maintained for generations. A resident of Ölgii city (pop. 28,000), Beket was raised in the more rural Deluun district where he spent part of his adult life and frequently visits family members who still reside there. Beket’s work with plants and landforms and his cartographic projects to diagram ecological zones has taken him to locations throughout this ecologically diverse region. In fact, he frequently travels in the province with both Mongolian and European scientists for extended periods to engage in research. This modern mobility connects Beket in unique ways to the nomadic lives of his Kazakh compatriots, although his research territory is framed as a broad ecologically defined region that he studies using scientific values he learned during his academic training in Russia. Tracing place names mentioned in songs and noting them physically on maps emplaced Beket in these landscapes as a scientist who studies local resources, but because his familial roots were in one district, he did not have insider knowledge about local place names outside of his home territory in around the town of Deluun. During the meeting, he often puzzled over names referenced in songs. There were local Kazakh names for lakes and valleys cited by singers, other Kazakh names of places well known throughout the province, and the names written in Mongolian language on government issued maps. Yet rural Kazakh herders do not always use the Mongolian place names recorded on official documents. Beket was thus constantly engaged in a process of translating these names from a national to a regional language and making an effort to identify places linked to a local knowledge, all the time negotiating his own position as scientist and Kazakh researcher invested in the project professionally and, increasingly, on a personal level. The geographic landscapes and musical genres and styles that are a piece of his heritage are part of the personal-, social-, environmental-, and politically charged history shared with other Kazakh people who have deep roots in Mongolia. The author’s work with Beket during that period (2006–2008), and fieldwork in the region in the years following, offered opportunities to look for links between the physical environment that impacts the everyday lives of herders, and the language expressed in specific song forms that plays such a significant role in maintaining Kazakh identity in Bayan Ölgii, Mongolia. In rural Kazakh communities in western Mongolia, music is often connected to individual, family, and community space and place. Musicians describe locally shared scenes in their song lyrics and depict their environment and its rich resources

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across expanses of land in narrative melodies played on the long-necked lute dombyra. This mapping of their landscape not only reinforces their connection to places and lifestyles they value but expresses attachment to and investment in the future of their homeland or tughan zher (Post 2007). Kazakh performances of locally created songs provide opportunities for residents to recite and remember histories, linking them to ancestral relationships through language and musical practice. They use music to solidify a shared connection as Kazakhs, but also as communities bonded specifically to the Mongolian landscape, thus reinforcing a unique Mongolian-based Kazakh identity (Diener 2007). Naming Kazakh places in songs is part of this process: a river name, a valley, or a significant site that was named by an ancestor conjures images of place and maps the land for the local Kazakh people (Fig. 1). This study focuses on Kazakh songs featuring place names to mark sites that have social, historical, and political significance for individuals and local communities. The songs map land and reference and describe places where Kazakh people have lived and traveled. Many of the songs share information about their ecological values and emotional attachment to the land. The Kazakh herders reject some of the national Mongolian language names found on printed maps and instead use their own Kazakh names for places they frequent. They offer names that link directly to their histories and ways of life, such as locations that relate to their movement generations ago into the lands they now occupy, and names of sites where valued grasslands are located for their livestock. These actions reinforce historical and contemporary ties to the land, they mobilize their communities to act in support of the land in the face of change, and they claim space for pastoralist activities in Bayan Ölgii province. Their musical genres and performance styles are passed down in families and close-knit communities and their songs reflect not only their rootedness in place, but also the significance of mobility. The names recited in songs evoke past as well as contemporary movement and they reveal the spatial complexity of the steppes where the Kazakh residents herd their livestock (Jacobson-Tepfer and Meacham 2012). In performance, their music contributes to the maintenance of key Kazakh vocal and instrumental styles, significant in an increasingly globalized twenty-first-century Mongolia. The frequent references to specific places by Kazakh name, using older highly respected Kazakh song genres, often punctuating songs with instrumental accompaniment on the two-string dombyra, are part of an ongoing effort to maintain a local language and a way of life. In many ways their songs about place also claim land for their Kazakh compatriots who have been entangled in social and political processes of change in recent years. Fieldwork for this research on music in this largely rural Bayan Ölgii province began in 2005 and continued during the following years, through 2018, in the spring and summer months. Methods for learning about place name songs included the use of open-ended questions in semi-structured interviews with a focus on the significance of the Mongolian homeland to the Kazakh herders. Other areas of inquiry included physical locations referenced by singers and geophysical and social information about specific sites. Narrative information about the location of sites and identification of their positions on a topographic map constituted the primary way information was

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Fig. 1 Bayan Ölgii province. District centers are identified (in black) along with some of the locations referenced in songs presented in this paper (in green). Many of the latter are in the Mongolian Altai Mountains near the Chinese border. (Map courtesy of Donna Gilbreath)

recorded. Travel to specific sites referenced in songs occurred when possible, although most were too distant for the herders who needed to focus on their daily life needs; they could not afford to take a day trip to revisit a seasonal place there was no immediate need to access. Interviews, valued songs, and visits to selected sites allowed herders to engage in diverse ways with places and their histories.

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Place Names and Language

During the last two decades, scholars who study local and indigenous practices in geography, anthropology, and other social sciences have shown growing interest in place name research (toponymy) that is linked not only to expressing relationships to lands, but also demonstrates underlying concerns about identity, land rights, and the impact of recent social and political changes due to shifting national and international policies and programs. In geography scholars have moved from etymological and taxonomic work toward a focus on “power relations in geographical naming” (Berg and Vuolteenaho 2009). Rose-Redwood et al. writing on the development of new directions in place-name study state that “the act of naming is itself a performative practice.” They challenge earlier research on toponymy that focuses on spaces with fixed identities to argue for the importance of “critical analysis of the social and political struggles over spatial inscription and related toponymic practices” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010, pp. 454–455). Several recent case studies illustrate some of the changes in place name study, especially those related to mapping and power. Taylor (2008, p.1767) documents a practice of mapping among the Khwe San in Namibia to secure land rights and to re-claim their histories that were marginalized by colonialism and apartheid. Place names by these indigenous peoples have been used as tools to encourage Khwe San to “speak their past, in order to recover their ‘traditional knowledge’ and their history” (Taylor 2008, p. 1766). This naming took place to counteract threats related to their settlement patterns. Similarly, working among indigenous groups in British Columbia, Rose-Redwood (2016) also used place name study as a method for addressing reclaiming indigenous toponymies as part of a decolonization process. Toponymic research by Hobbs (2014) among the nomadic Ma’aza Bedouins in Egypt, originally from northwest Arabia, demonstrates that their naming of landforms, plants, water sources, and pathways asserted their claim to the lands where they resettled. The sung poetry of the Afar nomads in Ethiopia studied by Balehegn (2016) addresses their animate and inanimate environment metaphorically, symbolically, and realistically to communicate about and better understand local ecologies. Included in verses of their songs are species names, place names, and other information that is needed to maintain their skills as nomads. Migration routes in the sung poetry include names of places and the character of the land as a method for sharing valuable information to guide the herders. Mapping, as performative spatiality that embodies personal history and community values, is expressed by anthropologist Ingold (2000, p. 155) as “wayfinding,” a navigational process in which people “feel their way” through a world that is itself in motion, continually coming into being through the combined action of human and non-human agencies.” Ingold identifies mapping as “the narrative re-enactment of journeys made, and of maps as the inscriptions to which such re-enactments may possibly give rise.” Thus, cartographies that feature maps and place names can be used to carry community knowledge that expresses a society’s needs and values. Ethnomusicologists have also addressed place naming and power relations as well as other outcomes linked to critical expressions of identity in connection with

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land and landscape. Roseman, who researched the rainforest dwelling Temiar of Malaysia in the 1980s, was able to identify place naming and mapping practices through studies of music and other narrative traditions. She noted, Rights to geographic ranges, household plots, garden plots, and fruit trees were not claimed in writing or entered on pictorial maps. But they have been encoded in Temiars’ ethnohistorical recountings, origin legends, and the dream song histories that mark the areas people lived on, ranged across, and, in our terms, “claimed” as theirs. (Roseman 1998, p. 114)

Roseman identifies Temiar narratives, legends, and dream songs as historical and political documents that express agency and entitlement to land, demarcate kinship groups by place of origin, and show territorial range of individuals. In fact, she says they “sing their maps. . . in their epistemology of song composition and performance; melodically, in contours of pitch and phrasing; textually, in place names weighted with memory” (Roseman 1998, p. 196). A song map “gives voice to the landscape itself” (p. 115). Some of Roseman’s work echoes that of anthropologist Feld (1996) who links the language in poetry, map-making, and music in discussions of sound as poetic cartography in the song paths of the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea. Feld (2007, p. 185) suggests that they “sing the forest as a poetic fusion of space and time where lives and events are conjoined as vocalized, embodied memories.” In discussing names, Feld (2012, p. 135) also states that a song may express “journeying” as the singer builds and repeats images of trees, waterfalls, and other elements, “because someone is taking you somewhere in song” and that “all songs are sung from the point of view of movement through lands.” Furthermore, he says, Singing a place name is not a descriptive act, but rather one that “impregnates” identity into place, tree, water, and sound names, because Kaluli are known by the lands on which they live, the places they cultivate and frequent. (Feld 2012, p. 135)

In his work with the Chayantaka in Bolivia, ethnomusicologist Solomon explores the social practice of place making in musical performance and identity construction. By naming and describing places of origin in songs, he says, “singers identify themselves with their respective landscape, embodying their community identity in their land in the act of singing the verse” (Solomon 2000, p. 258). He explores their “affecting presence” stating: “to name a place is to call it into being by identifying it as an entity separate from the surrounding space. . .” and “to encounter a culturally defined place is to encounter the experiences and feeling of those who came before and made that place, and interpolate those experiences and feelings with one’s own” (2000, p. 275).

2

Music and Place

Kazakh herders living in Bayan Ölgii province of Mongolia have been custodians of these lands for generations. Their families arrived in Mongolia from China, many in the nineteenth century. The region is bordered by the Altai Mountains and the land is

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valued for its fine livestock grazing in spring and summer, and high valleys that provide protection from winter winds and cold. The Kazakhs today make up less than 5% of the population in Mongolia, yet they comprise 90% of the population in Bayan Ölgii. As the nation moved forward after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Mongolia rejected communism in favor of a democratic government structure, interest in nationalism, privatization, globalization, and engaging with world economies took a toll on rural lifestyles and values throughout the country (Finke 1999). For the Kazakhs, their separate religious values as Muslims in a largely Buddhist nation, their Turkic language, and unique forms of cultural expression have challenged the Mongolian government (and many people residing outside the province). Mongolian Kazakhs have also been invited to repatriate to Kazakhstan, described by scholars who have charted their long association with China, as an imagined homeland (Barcus and Werner 2010). Many families have been divided due to decisions to move made by individual members of families, thereby fragmenting a once tightly knit kinship-based social system (Post 2014; Barcus and Werner 2015). And recently residents in the Altai Mountain regions have experienced reduction in mountain snows and the appearance of dry riverbeds, lakes, and springs; extreme winter conditions have contributed to the loss of substantial numbers of livestock (Chuluun et al. 2017). Yet the Mongolian Kazakh herders who remain express deep commitment to the land, they value their ecological knowledge, and they maintain their identification as both Kazakhs and Mongolian citizens (Post 2017). Kazakh musicians in Bayan Ölgii are impacted by a multitude of musical influences that are also related to social and political changes, although rural and urban peoples tend to support different musical genres and styles. The performances of folkloric ensembles established and maintained during the long Soviet-Mongolian relationship continue in the Ölgii city theatre and in popular music that reaches them through the airwaves from Kazakhstan, Kazakh China (in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), Russia, Ulaanbaatar, and beyond. In Mongolian Kazakh countryside communities, some of these modern musics are shared as well. For example, young dombyra performers play some of the more popular narrative instrumental tunes (küi) or sing popular Kazakh songs that are transmitted via radio and television from Kazakhstan and Kazakh China. Yet older styles of singing that are seldom maintained in urban areas continue to be valued and performed in the rural places as well, including poetic genres related to epic practices, such as didactic and descriptive zhyr, terme, and tolghau, and the lyrical and formulaic song genre qara oleng. These are sung in informal performance environments and performed and enjoyed in social settings at gathering places for celebrations (toi) such as weddings and other life-cycle events. In all, poetic and lyrical expression in these genres is especially valued; the melody is typically a vehicle for the meaningful lyrics. The genres maintained in the countryside are focused on place and some still utilize a recitative style of singing that is rarely heard in Ölgii city or in Kazakhstan. The prototypes for zhyr, terme, and tolghau have a rich history in Turkic-speaking traditions and are well known to researchers who have studied historical Central Asian musical practices, especially the singers of oral epics and social commentary songs: the baqshy, zhyrau, aqyn, and ashyq (Reichl 2000; Kunanbaeva 2002). In Mongolia aqyns are highly regarded in Kazakh communities for their proficiency

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as poets and improvisers, their ability to use the two-stringed dombyra skillfully to accompany their delivery, and for their advice and contribution to the Mongolian Kazakh historical and contemporary narrative. The rural Mongolian Kazakh singers of terme and tolghau present compositions they have written themselves as well as songs from earlier generations. The songs they learned were either transmitted orally or printed in collections that are available in the province. They generally sing their own composed terme and tolghau from memory, although many singers also preserve their lyrics in small wide-lined school notebooks or on loose sheets of paper. The songs are often formulaic in content. Typically, performers set the scene by identifying place, naming locations and describing geographic features; establish sociality and social place by referencing family and auyl in the context of supporting relationships; identify and reinforce Kazakh identity using references to widely practiced traditions; praise God; and sometimes deliver a warning or provide advice for listeners. As an example, a terme by Deluun singer Minäp retells the history of his family’s arrival from China (over the Altai Mountains), acknowledges their connection to Islam, names and describes places they (and their ancestors) frequent throughout the year, addresses current local issues, provides social commentary, and offers advice. While locally written songs express personal responses to places and people, landforms and wildlife, their performance in social settings indicates that they contain sentiments that are widely shared, and even an older terme by a poet no longer living contains elements that listeners are able to connect to in their daily lives. This is often done through references to place. In contemporary local practice the Bayan Ölgii made long-necked lute dombyra is used to provide melodic and rhythmic accompaniment, although songs of this type are also sometimes sung without instrumental accompaniment. Singers’ rhythmic patterns played on the instrument punctuate their lyrics; the accompaniment plays an important expressive role especially when communicated in a series of eighth notes followed by an accented quarter that compels the audience to listen. The melodies used for the songs range from a recitative style to tunes more closely related to melodies found in local folk and some popular songs. Traditionally, musicians used shared melodies drawn from family repertoires, although this began to change in the mid-twentieth century with the widespread popularity of the radio and other media. Today the terme genre is also promoted in popular media from Kazakhstan and Kazakh China, although the musical style exhibited in these performances is more lyrical and subjects focus on topics of broad rather than local interest. Interestingly, some rural singers have adopted melodies from the mediated songs of China and Kazakhstan for their terme.

3

Song Paths

The Kazakh language songs in rural western Mongolia that communicate about resources and family histories ultimately reveal how residents view and value their landscape. Songs by both older and younger generation Kazakh song-makers

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address the continuity and disruption in the lives of the Kazakh people today. Songs also map seasonal and daily movement and the networks of social relationships connected to the complex history of Kazakh people in Bayan Ölgii. They are linked to kinship networks that include family and community identification with tribal division (zhuz), tribe (taipa), clan (ru), and residential unit (auyl), and reveal patterns of movement as they tend their livestock daily and move their residences seasonally. Kazakhs depend on the ability to move for their livelihood. Singers of songs containing local place names reside in all regions of the district, and performers are both young and old, but gender appears not to be equally represented in the songs about meaningful Kazakh places. While both women and men sing and play dombyra in rural homes and at social gatherings and are promoted through the media in popular music, most songs focused on place were written and sung by men, including anniversary songs typically written by a local aqyn to celebrate a district center or sum that references people and nearby geographic sites and the less formal terme and tolghau preserved in notebooks and performed at local toi that are filled with names of local places. An exception may be found in the genealogical terme sung by men and some women. In these kinship songs, an individual’s family history is traced by name and clan giving the singer the opportunity to recite lineage for seven generations, and frequently significant family sites are referenced as well. In the countryside, women’s roles as caretakers of the household including cooking, childcare, and morning and evening milking keep them from traveling as widely as men do during their herding, searching for lost animals, and socializing to share and gather critical information about land change and local grazing lands. These household responsibilities may be a reason they have not engaged with this song style. As Mongolian Kazakhs in the province construct narratives in song that reference specific Kazakh-named places, they maintain Mongolian and Kazakh language names to broadly represent two kinds of places. Places that are administered by the government, such as the name of a district or regional center (e.g., Deluun, Tsengel) or an administrative unit (e.g., Sogog, Dayan), are referred to with their Mongolian names. Sites maintained through daily life practices, especially herding, are referenced using Kazakh names. The Kazakh names may be direct translations of Mongolian place names or unique names created by a local community. Occasionally an explanation for how a place was named is included song lyrics. I was introduced to local place name songs in 2005 by an older man who was herding near Syrghaly, a region in the Altai Mountains near the Chinese border. He had worked as a lumberer on the Khovd River many years before and was able to sing fragments of an old-style qara oleng naming places along the river. Noting my interest in place names, he suggested I continue to travel east toward Deluun to find a young man who sang a widely enjoyed terme about Deluun district written by a local poet several decades before. We traveled to find Tileubek Musa (Fig. 2) who was happy to sing a song he had performed many times at toi. It begins, “Let’s sing in praise of place names. . ..” In fact, he referenced 55 named places in the 18 verses he sang, some with Mongolian and others with Kazakh names. The geographic region noted ranged from the borderland area in Khovd province to the east of Bayan

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Fig. 2 Tileubek Musa with his brother beside him plays dombyra to accompany his song at his winter home in Deluun. (Photo: J. Post 2005)

Ölgii, to points throughout the district of Deluun. The song transports the singer and listeners around the district’s boundaries – and carries the singer from place to place to identify significant landforms and reveal the poet’s and each singer’s and other residents’ unique relationship to the land (Interview with Tileubek Musa, Deluun, June 29, 2005). He sang, Zherding atyn maqtaiyn Saiyrlyqtan bastaiyn Ulty bulaq zhalghasy ay Zherining ösken mal basy ay Bayn-Enger basaiyn Döröö kölmen asaiyn Kök tumsyqpen Kök-adar Eki ortasy köl adyr Qara khatuu Diektep Suyq köldi zhiektep Qyzyl Khatuu zheleyin Muza kölge keleyin Zhalghas tur ghoi Qulzhasy ay Saghsaidy tüzy quldashy ay Qaita keldim Mysaiym Ata qonys bul saiym

Let’s sing in praise of place names Starting with Saiyrlyq Ulty bulaq continues from there How the livestock grow Let’s pass Bayn-Enger Let’s cross Döröö köl Kök tumsik and Kök-adar Between them it is hilly Go over high Qara khatuu And the bank of Suyq köl And go at a gentle trot to the Qyzyl khatuu And come to Muza köl Qulzha is next to it, Then go straight to Saghsai Going downward again Musayin This valley was my ancestor’s place

The Deluun song with Mongolian locations (e.g., Saghsai, a district center; Bayan Enger, a smaller town on the border between Bayan Ölgii and Khovd provinces) and Kazakh sites (lakes, springs, mountains) indicates the unique vocabulary used and valued by the Kazakh residents in Bayan Ölgii who navigate the two languages in relation to policy and other official documents versus their daily movement in support of their family and community where they seldom use Mongolian language (in fact many rural herders are not fluent in Mongolian). In some ways the song typifies a style found in these place name songs that appear

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throughout the province. Songwriters show connections to the land they occupy by naming landforms, from valleys to mountain peaks, and valued places, such as mineral springs. They may celebrate a region identified with clan or auyl and name significant family places such as seasonal settlements and burial sites, or mark and celebrate key local or regionally valued places. They show movement by referencing successive places that are reached during herding, seasonal migration, or an individual’s lifetime. In Minäp’s long terme about his homeland he depicts himself on his horse riding from place to place where he sees valued, primarily Kazakh-named, places along the way (Interview with Minäp Qazanbay, Zhalghyz aghash, June 17, 2007). At mid-point in his 55 verse song he references Baruyn as the site where he is settled with his family in Zhaghyz aghash (Fig. 3). Audio ex. 1 Minäp sings the song he wrote about his homeland, opening his terme with: “A breeze is blowing from Bessala [a five-valley region where he summers] / The clouds cover its peaks and fog is moving in / Homeland is everyone’s passion / We say that atameken [motherland/fatherland] is our golden cradle. I flew from your mountain pass like a fledgling / I didn’t leave like a qiran [mountain eagle] flapping my wings to the sky / As one of many who lives among you / I want fit in like one of your building blocks.” A man in his late 70s when he sang this in 2007, by the time he reached verses 41 and 42 (cited in the chapter) his voice was halting and his memory waning. He sings unaccompanied, which suits his style well here since he extends the end of each phrase. Küngeyi Baruynnyng Kӧl darasy Astasar Küytin zhaqqa bir ashasy Aynalyp miner zhaqqa kilt qarasam Asylyp zhatyr zhynggha Aqsay basy Kelemin endi qaytyp saydy quldap Qyzkülki möldir bulaq ünin tyngdap Qara shym arzhaghynda Tileudi atam Mängilik mekeninde zhatyr buldap

The sunny slope of Baruyn is named Kӧl dara One of its branches goes to Küytin If I turn back and look at to my riding side [left] The beginning of Aqsai is hugging the peak Now I come down from the hill The sound from the stream was like a girl’s laughter My grandfather Tileudi is behind Qara shym Where he rests in his everlasting home

Seasonal places are referenced frequently as well. When Zhapar in Shegertai sings an old tolghau by local poet Takhir that features commentary on specific herding sites, he begins by naming his seasonal settlement locations: his qystau (winter place), zhaylau (summer place), and küzei (autumn place). In his song, he refers to his zhaylau as Buzau köl. In Kazakh, buzau is a calf and the small lake he refers to near Dala köl has the Mongolian name Tugal nuur; tugal means calf in Mongolian. Zhapar and his listeners value the knowledge of places named by the old poet and imagine this in relation to their own seasonal movement. The characterizations of each site also remind listeners of the rhythms of their lives in each of their seasonal locations (Interview with Zhapar Qapish, Shegirtai, July 13, 2005). This becomes apparent in the discussions that take place following the singing of these place name songs.

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Fig. 3 Coming down from the Altai herders settle near Zhalghyz aghash özen (river). After rains, the river rushes through a wide valley that is popular for zhaylau and where Minäp’s settlement is located, Baruyn. The river is marked on Mongolian maps as Gants modny gol. Both zhalghyz aghash (Kaz.) and gants modny (Mon.) mean “single tree.” Local herders note that the name acknowledges the almost complete absence of trees in the region. (Photo: J. Post 2008)

Audio ex. 2 Zhapar sings the first three verses of Takhir’s tolghau accompanying himself on dombyra. His tempo is relatively fast paced for this style of song. Qys qystauym Qoshqarlyq Tughan zherdi eske aldyq Malyn baghyp kün keship Meken alghan az khalyq Meken alghan az khalyq Zhaz zhaylauym Byzau köl Tarikhta bulay köl Qos saqtauly kedeyding Qos buzauy ölgen zher Qos buzauy ölgen köl Küz küzeui Kemel ghoy Boran küni ony ghoy Dauyl küshti Soqqanda Kimde kimge kiyn ghoy Kimde kimge kiyn ghoy

In winter, my qystau is Qoshqarlyq We remember our homeland Spending our days herding livestock My people settled there My people settled there In summer my zhaylau is Buzau köl This lake has a history like this: In this place a man tried to save A couple of calves that died in this place A couple of calves that died in the lake In autumn my küzei is Kemel It is stormy every day Whenever there is a strong storm It is difficult for everyone It is difficult for everyone

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Fig. 4 Dayan Lake settlement region in the Altai Mountains near Örmegeyti. (Photo: J. Post 2015)

Local movement and place attachment is documented in songs and place naming by several singers residing near Dayan Lake, close to the Chinese border and a favorite site for summer settlements due to the easy access to water and the fine grazing land. Erbolat’s terme features his, and his family’s, movement connected to daily herding as well as travel to socialize with relatives and friends. Erbolat’s family also travels over 100 km from their winter home in Ulaankhus to spend the summer at Dayan Lake. Place names featured in his song include the names of their two primary encampments for herding Oiqaraghai (Fig. 4) and Örmegeyti as well as other locations significant to their family. He notes mountains, lakes, valleys, and streams by Kazakh name, notes specific colors, and implies sound. In one section he references Syrghaly, a Mongolian army base often referred to as Sirgal, and the name used by Kazakh herders for the region with two large lakes near Dayan that are marked on Mongolian language maps as twin Khoton and Khurgan Nuur (nuur means lake in Mongolian). Herders never use these names, but call the region and lake Syrghaly. In the full song he first references the mineral spring Aqsu in the northwest then moves down to Syrghaly and the wide valleys of Sumdy ayryq and Suynbai. He goes down to Eki durgin, then moves to and the valley Qasqyr dara and hollow Ydyq oyyq. He moves down to the rocky Quz qiya and the rocky stream Tastybulaq and arrives at his spring place, Oiqaraghai with Dayan Lake nearby. He references the rocky Zhol tumba and Tas ötkel, followed by Sary buyra (Fig. 5) and Tukbir buyra locations along a winding road near Dayan. Erbolat’s summer place is in Örmegeyti; he then looks across toward the Altai mountains to China referencing the road Zholasha that crosses over and the majestic mountainous Altai land, Darasha. Erbolat’s youthful images also include elements of high value to herders: water, healthy grasses, berries, fish, and a mineral spring (Interview with Erbolat Köshigen, Örmegeyti, June 13, 2007). The following is an excerpt from his 12-verse song.

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Fig. 5 Sary buyra, with rich grazing land, is reached by a winding rocky road. Erbolat references the pine trees and the benefits of the abundant water and shade for livestock. The site is not listed on Mongolian maps. (Photo: J. Post 2015)

Audio ex. 3 Recorded in 2007 when Erbolat was 25, the five verses included in the chapter occur at the end of his performance. The melody he uses he actually heard on a commercial recording of terme from Kazakh China (in Xinjiang). He accompanies himself on dombyra and includes brief musical interludes that punctuate his lyrical melody. Quralghan Dayan köli köl bulaqtan Qanqyldap aqqy qazy qanat qaqqan Qalqytyp qaz uyregin tolkqyn atqan Qayrandap sansyz balyq kölde zhatqan Zhol tumba, Tas ötkelding aralary Zhamylghan Zhasyl kilem zhaghalary Zhas bolsa zhidek pisip zhangarady Zhemisin terer auyl balalary Sary buyra, Tükpir buyra qaraghaily Salqyndap bes tülik mal aralaydy Syldyrar bulaqtardan saizhayly Su izhpey bes tülik mal taramaydy Körikti Örmegeyti zhaylauy da Köngildi kökte qustyng sairauy da Kök oray kök zhalghyndy koynauy da Kölinde kök balyqtyng oynauy da Aqqan su zhemis zhidek arasany Aybyndy körcetkendey Darashany Altaydyng asuy der Zholashany Arba zhol col aradan ary asady

Dayan Lake is made by many springs Its swans and geese cry and flap their wings And geese and ducks dance on its waves Fish swim visibly in the lake Between Zhol tumba, and Tas ötkel Its shores wear a green carpet In summer, berries grow anew Auyl children gather the fruit Sary buyra and Tükpir buyra have pine trees Five kinds of livestock wander and cool off there They are comforted by the bubbling spring They would never leave without drinking its water Beautiful Örmegeyti is also its summer place Its birds sing happily in the sky On the lower slope of the green meadow Blue-green fish play in the lake Its flowing water, berries and mineral springs Darasha shows off its majesty We say Zholasha is Altai’s pass And a cart road crosses over from there

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Fig. 6 Approximate locations referenced in Erbolat’s terme are noted on the map above in red. The song identifies places and also represents movement from north to south, from Aqsu to Syrghaly and sites nearby, then to his spring and summer places (Oiqaraghai and Örmegeyti) at Dayan Lake

Erbolat’s references in his song to Kazakh places across a wide expanse of land (Fig. 6) show the extent of his movement as a herder and breadth of knowledge about the land he has gained from this travel. It is significant to note that the land he references is entirely within the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park administered by the Mongolian government where thousands of Mongolian and international tourists travel every year for brief visits to camp, climb, and ski. The Kazakh people call the five peaks Besboghda, rather than Tavan Bogd. Länkhan, from Tsengel, who spends the spring at Syrghaly (Fig. 7) and has his zhaylau at Aqsu, near Besboghda, looks at the mountains and their peaks, but focuses on the sunny northern slopes and the way the landform engages him with daily life (Interview with Länkhan, Syrghaly, June 10, 2014). In his song, qomdyq refers to the indentation where a saddle is placed between the two humps of the Mongolian Bactrian camel. He sings, Besboghda osy Altaydyng erkesindey Shyngdary otar qoydyng cerkesindey Keng alqap kynggeyim men teriskeyi Tüyenning qomdyghy men örkeshindey

Besboghda is like Altai’s spoiled child Its peaks are like the sheep in a flock The sunny (künggey) northern (teriskey) slopes have a wide area Like the qomdyq between a camel’s humps

Pilgrimage to natural sites is a valued activity for residents throughout Central Asia who seek spiritual and medical health and healing. The practice demonstrates

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Fig. 7 The lakes at Syrghaly are a popular location for Kazakh summer settlements. They are backed by the Altai Mountains that sit on the Chinese border and are part of the Mongolian Tavan Bogd National Park. (Photo: J. Post 2014)

that these residents continue to maintain both Islamic and pre-Islamic beliefs (Montgomery 2007; Dubuisson and Genina 2011). Kazakhs in Mongolia travel to local mineral springs (arasan) to drink waters and present offerings by tying white cloth near the spring (Fig. 8). In Bayan Ölgii, Aqsu arasan is the most widely referenced site in conversation and in songs, although other provincial mineral springs, such as Shegirtai, Zhalghyz aghash, and others are also mentioned (Interview with Leskhan Altaykhan, Tolbo, August 1, 2013). As Leskhan sings in one verse, he describes places around an arasan near his settlement in Tolbo. Audio ex. 4 A single verse of Leskhan’s much longer song about tughan zher (homeland). He uses a family melody and sings without accompaniment. His brother sings another song about homeland that the family has shared for several generations using the same melody. Tikküngei, Ülken Surytas, Taldybulaq Arasab aghyp zhatyr tasy qulap Zhalghasqan Zhadaghaimen Kishi Surytas Bul özi uly küngey zhatqan sulap

Tikküngei, Ülken Surytas, Taldybulaq The arasan runs over rocks from here Zhadaghai and Kishi surytas are connected These great sunny hills are lying down

And Zardykhan in Deluun sings about the Shegirtai arasan and its nearby lands, including Dala köl (Fig. 9) and Suyq köl, two lakes that are also widely valued for summer settlements due to the abundant grasses (Interview with Zardykhan Mubarah, Deluun, May 17, 2007).

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Fig. 8 Zhalghyz aghash arasan, healing waters for heart health; white cloth offerings. (Photo: J. Post 2015)

Audio ex. 5 Two verses from Zardykhan’s terme about Deluun show the significance of place names and also illustrate the recitative style of singing that uses an understated style of dombyra accompaniment. Arasan Shegirtaiym aymaghym ay Qaratau Qoshqarlyghym qaymaaghym ay Uyirtti Zhalghiz aghash zhaylauym ay Dala köl suyq köl qoinauy ay

My Shegirtai arasan site My Qaratau, Qoshqarliq are at the top My mountains of Uyirtti and Zhalghyz aghash My Dala köl and Suyq köl shores

Other expressions of claiming space using Kazakh language names are accomplished by showing detailed knowledge through descriptions of sites and by making connections to Kazakh expressions of identity and belonging. Oktyabr sang as he sat in a field near his summer yurt in Tövshin köl (Deluun), naming and describing his homeland region, including winter and summer settlements. Referencing his zhaylau and naming places nearby he demonstrates his knowledge of these sites which he references first in a verse, “Let me sing about as many of them as I can / Would it be a good thing to pick just some of them?” In just two verses of his 18 verse tolghau, he names 16 places, using descriptive detail to show his knowledge (Interview with Oktyabr, Tövshin köl, June 23, 2007). Kharusty, Zhingishke say, Qusty basyng Tiske asha, aq domaraq marzhan tasyng Aqunty, Öbilzingmen Ulaan ömöö Bereyin sanap aytyp taumen tasyn Shaganüi, Orta quys, Qumdy kungey Teriskey, Ershaqqanmen Sary quys Kökzhalmen, Ayutumsyq, Shirik aqunty Qarasai biteu toghay bolghan zhynys

Kharusty, Zhingishke sai, Qustybas Where there is a kind of coral rock Aqunty, Öbilzing, and Ulaan ömöö I can count every rock in these places Shaganüi, Orta quys, Qumdy kungey Teriskey, Ershaqqan. and Sary quys Kökzhal, Ayutumsyq, Shirik aqunty Qarasai is covered with trees

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Fig. 9 Part of Dala köl in Tolbo, recorded as Tal nuur on Mongolian maps. Zardykhan references the shores of this lake in his song. Other singers from Tolbo and Deluun identify this lake and its surroundings as a popular zhailau site. (Photo: J. Post 2018)

Similarly, Suyenish living in Ulaankhus northwest of the provincial capital of Ölgii shows his knowledge of the land and connects places to Kazakh lifeways as he sings about his tughan zher, his homeland (Interview with Suyenish Zhensiqbay, June 6, 2014). In his song he references qymyz which is fermented mare’s milk traditionally prepared in a bag made of leather. Tughan zherding maghan qymbat dalasy Surshoqynyng suretine qarashy Etegi keng, basy suyir köringen Apalardyng qymqz quyghan cabasy Qalasyngba Qaratauym Zhyrlanbay Khas batyrsyng qaru alyp turghanday Qayyrkhan tau Kertasyngmen Örtasyng Zhas kelinning zhasau zhugin zhighanday

The steppe of my tughan zher is valuable to me Just look at the image of Surshoqy The bottom is wide, the top is cone-shaped It looks like grandmothers’ qymyz filled leather skin How can I sing without mentioning Qaratau? You are like the warrior holding a weapon in his hand Qaiyrkhan, Kertas and Örtas mountains They are as beautiful as the dowry of a new daughterin-law

Even more emotional responses to specific sites are also shared through place names. Oktyabr sings about his physical attachment to his homeland, “If I go away from my homeland / When I think about it my ribs become separated [I miss it]” and looking at the mountains near his winter place, including mountains such as Bürkit tau (known as Burged uul in Mongolian) he sings, “When I look at Bürkit’s high peak / It makes me feel like crying.” Zardykhan sings about locations used by

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Deluun residents for seasonal settlements, “My Aqunty, Bughy, Zholsai, Burghysty / I greet you with an embrace like a migrating bird.” Entanglement with nature is expressed in these song lyrics as well, as Zardykhan greets places he values, as a bird returning yearly to the same place, or Oktyabr sings as a bird, “I was raised, then molted on high peaked Burkit Mountain / I have stretched my wings to meet difficulties.” These expressions of relationships to places and the entities that inhabit a location using Kazakh language show the involvement of both humans and nonhumans, and even animate and inanimate beings, in the daily lives of herders. Kazakh herders work with nature (tabighat) and its resources on a daily basis, and they focus on communicating and successfully sharing space with nature in order to live sustainably in their environment. The well-being expressed in song lyrics is aligned with this fluid relationship.

4

Conclusion

All of these actions in connection with place names serve to mobilize rural Mongolian Kazakh communities in the face of social, political, ecological, and economic changes that are impacting daily lives in the province. Singers take a sweeping view of their land and focus on the most meaningful sites. They use carefully constructed language to draw boundaries singers and their regional and local communities draw through this shared knowledge and images of place. The use of language to connect with specific spaces and places and to reinforce locally and regionally focused commentary on place, action, and movement in different social settings reinforces community values, especially when names of family members and revered ancestors, tribes, and clans are named as well. Mobilization also occurs in musical performances which are embedded with social expectations that songs reinforcing connection to place will continue to be shared. A dombyra may be passed around in a tightly packed a yurt to invite people to contribute to the discourse in song, thus giving voice to community members. The celebration of shared histories, common lands, understood sentiments, and mutual recognition of the need to know the land in order to be successful herders are at the heart of the linguistic and musical production. The music offers a unique juxtaposition of a lyrical vocal style rhythmically punctuated as the performer strikes the strings of the dombyra. Kazakh song-making and map-making in the Mongolian landscape marks places for local residents and contributes to the maintenance of Kazakh language in a country where there is increasing focus on the promotion of Mongolian language. Kazakh rural residents in Mongolia are fully aware of their tenuous position in a country concerned with nation building and economic progress and yet they remain protective, even defiant, about their long-held relationship to this nation. It is significant to note that many of the terme and tolghau people sing map spaces on borderlands, at the edge of a district or province, and many focus on land that nudges the Chinese frontier where lands have been contested for hundreds of years, and yet where most of the Mongolian Kazakh residents’ ancestors have come. Both the Kazakh and musical languages, including the poetic and political power of the terme

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and tolghau, also draw boundaries between those who know these places, and can comprehend the significance of their songs, and those who do not. Embedded in the place names and expressed in their lyrical style are the most valued and essential elements in the everyday lives of Mongolian Kazakh herders, including ready access to water, wide expanses of land for their livestock, healthy grasses, freedom to move, yet an ability also to return to ancestral places that are filled with the history of their families and communities. Their songs and the citing of names of specific places encourage listeners to embrace the Mongolian land. They also emphasize the distinctiveness of their locality; incorporate social and cultural values that are connected to nomadic life; share knowledge; and reinforce the value of and links between language and identity. The singers claim land with songs by expressing their personal and family history in this place and sharing information on valued places in eloquent detail and with great pride. The visual, kinetic, and acoustic pictures of landscapes, the song-making, map-making, and place-naming that Kazakh musicians provide for their communities not only expresses Kazakhness (Kazakhshylykh), it reinforces the residents’ identification with Mongolia. The Kazakh singers of Mongolia sing their land; they map their social, historical, and cultural lives fusing space and time (Feld 1996), as they embody community identity in place names and with shared musical styles and performance practice (Roseman 1998). By repeating place names, singers reinforce individual and communal experience of “those who came before and made that place” (Solomon 2000, p. 335) thus allowing them to identify, claim, and care for these Kazakh ancestral places and spaces in the Mongolian landscape. Acknowledgments Research support was provided by the Center for Middle East Studies, University of Arizona, US-Mongolia Field Research Fellowship Program, sponsored by the American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS), the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC), and the US Department of Education; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Academic Outreach and Ada Howe Kent Fellowships at Middlebury College; and travel support from the Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, and the School of Music, University of Western Australia. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Balehegn, M. (2016). Ecological and social wisdom in camel praise poetry sung by Afar nomads of Ethiopia. Journal of Ethnobiology, 36(2), 457–472. Barcus, H. R., & Werner, C. (2010). The Kazakhs of western Mongolia: Transnational migration from 1990–2008. Asian Ethnicity, 11(2), 209–228. Barcus, H. R., & Werner, C. (2015). Immobility and the re-imaginings of ethnic identity among Mongolian Kazakhs in the 21st century. Geoforum, 59, 119–128. Berg, L. D., & Vuolteenaho, J. (2009). Critical Toponymies: The contested politics of place naming. Farnham: Ashgate. Chuluun, T., Altanbagana, M., Ojima, D., Tsolmon, R., & Suvdantsetseg, B. (2017). Vulnerability of pastoral social-ecological systems in Mongolia. In W. Yan & W. Galloway (Eds.), Rethinking resilience, adaptation and transformation in a time of change (pp. 73–88). Cham: Springer.

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Diener, A. (2007). Negotiating territorial belonging: A transnational social field perspective on Mongolia’s Kazakhs. Geopolitics, 12(3), 459–487. Dubuisson, E., & Genina, A. (2011). Claiming an ancestral homeland: Kazakh pilgrimage and migration in inner Asia. Central Asia Survey, 30(3–4), 469–485. Feld, S. (1996). Waterfalls of song: An acoustemology of place resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. In S. Feld & K. H. Basso (Eds.), Senses of place (pp. 91–135). Santa Fe: SAR Press. Feld, S. (2007). Sound worlds. In P. Kruth & H. Stobart (Eds.), Sound (pp. 173–200). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feld, S. (2012[1982]). Sound and sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics, and song in Kaluli expression (3rd ed.). Durham: Duke University Press. Finke, P. (1999). The Kazaks of Western Mongolia. In I. Svanverg (Ed.), Contemporary Kazakhs: Cultural and social perspectives (pp. 103–139). New York: St. Martins Press. Hobbs, J. J. (2014). Bedouin place names in the eastern desert of Egypt. Nomadic Peoples, 18(2), 123–146. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge. Jacobson-Tepfer, E., & Meacham, J. E. (2012). Place names in the Mongolian Altai: Cultural shifts and sensibilities. Historical Geography, 40, 111–131. Kunanbaeva, A. (2002). Kazakh music. In V. Danielson, S. Marcus, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), The Garland encyclopedia of world music: The Middle East (pp. 949–964). New York/London: Routledge. Montgomery, D. W. (2007). Namaz, wishing trees, and vodka: The diversity of everyday religious life in Central Asia. In J. Sahadeo & R. G. Zanca (Eds.), Everyday life in Central Asia: Past and present (pp. 355–370). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Post, J. C. (2007). ‘I take my dombra and sing to remember my homeland’: Identity, landscape and music in Kazakh communities of western Mongolia. Ethnomusicology Forum, 16(1), 45–69. Post, J. C. (2014). Performing transition in Mongolia: Repatriation and loss in the music of Kazakh mobile pastoralists. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 46, 43–61. Post, J. C. (2017). Ecological knowledge: Collaborative management and musical production in western Mongolia. In J. C. Post (Ed.), Ethnomusicology: A contemporary reader (Vol. II, pp. 161–179). New York: Routledge Press. Reichl, K. (2000). The oral epic: Performance and music. intercultural music studies (p. 12). Berlin: VWB Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung. Roseman, M. (1998). Singers of the landscape: Song, history, and property rights in the Malaysian rain forest. American Anthropologist, 100(1), 106–121. Rose-Redwood, R. (2016). “Reclaim, rename, reoccupy”: Decolonizing place and the reclaiming of PKOLS. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 15(1), 187–206. Rose-Redwood, R., Alderman, D., & Azaryahu, M. (2010). Geographies of toponymic inscription: New directions in critical place name studies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(4), 453–470. Solomon, T. (2000). Dueling landscapes: Singing places and identities in Highland Bolivia. Ethnomusicology, 44(2), 257–280. Taylor, J. J. (2008). Naming the land: San countermapping in Namibia’s West Caprivi. Geoforum, 39, 1766–1775.

Practicing Language: The Dynamic Language Geographies of Young Migrants’ Talk in London and Glasgow

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Contents 1 Introduction: The Importance of Language in Young Migrant’s Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The Convergence of People and Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Language, Identity, and Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Language Geographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Migrant Children Geographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Introducing Study Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Talk, Identity, and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Language as a Shared Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Dialect Acquisition and Humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The Formalization of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Language and Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion: The Social and Spatial Geographies of Young Migrants’ Language Use . . . . 5.1 Language, Identity, and Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Framed by work across the fields of language geographies and migrant geographies, this chapter sets out to explore language as a social category that can be used to explore notions of identity and integration. Specifically, this chapter draws on empirical research from a 2012 research project alongside doctoral work about young migrants in Britain. Through the voices of migrants aged 14–24, associated practitioners, and English language teachers, this chapter reveals the saliency of language (chiefly speech) in the production of identities and the promotion of integration. Through mobilizing theories relating to identity performance and building upon the notion that words do “real” work in the world, S. Shuttleworth (*) School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_82

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this chapter shows how young migrants understand the role of language in their lives and use it to “represent the self,” uncovering how they understand language to be implicit in positioning oneself in situated social encounters and society more broadly. While attentive to questions of representation, this chapter also reveals more about the situated dynamics and practice of “talk,” highlighting how and what language is used with whom and where, as migrant children seek to “get-by” in communicative registers. The chapter concludes by discussing the dynamic social and spatial phenomena of young migrants’ language practices and revealing how they are temporally and spatially variable. Keywords

Childhood and youth, Language acquisition, Migration, Identity performance, Language and integration, Language as practice

1

Introduction: The Importance of Language in Young Migrant’s Experiences

1.1

The Convergence of People and Languages

Migration has been a constant feature of human history, and humans have taken part in migratory movements since the very early beginnings of human life. Moving away from the common dichotomy of emigration-immigration, migration is a less specific term that allows for many possible trajectories, time spans, directions, and destinations. Migration takes place for a number of reasons; it can be voluntary or forced, temporary or short term, and can be mono-directional or more varied, and it is deeply embedded in global rhetoric, specifically when looking at the movements of refugees and “illegal” migrants. With these multiple movements and migrations of people came changes, variations, overlaps, and conflicts within and between languages. Thus, language and migration can be historically mapped around the world, through territories and across borders; for language is not bound by political borders but is adjustable over time and space (De Saussure 1974). Migratory routes change, fade and are created over time; these different paths foster different comings together of people, cultures, and languages, culminating in new linguistic landscapes (Massey and Jess 1995). This convergence and contact of languages and people has led to distinct spaces of multilingualism, and it is some of these multilingual spaces that are the focus for this chapter. By exploring young migrants’ unique language geographies, the work language does in creating and maintaining identities, and helping (or hindering) integration will be explored.

1.2

Language, Identity, and Integration

Contemporary migration has led geographers to reflect critically on the relationships between mobility, identity, place making, and belonging (Valentine et al. 2008). This

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chapter explores the role of language in connecting or disconnecting young people from other people and places, examining the notion that language is a situated practice and can remake identities in local contexts. Language serves as a marker of identity; it has the ability to signal membership of a certain group, and for many migrants, language is vital in aiding their membership of exiled groups away from their “homes” (Segrott 2010). Moreover, language is vital for self-identity and representation of the self, something that is fundamental to settlement in a new community. People speak, write, or read certain languages as a result of complex experiences and relationships; therefore, using language to communicate and to understand these experiences is vital in becoming part of a wider society. Language has the ability to do “real” work in the world, changing and shaping societal norms and values at the same time as possessing affectual qualities that impact people on a very personal level. Identities are not only represented by what language is spoken but also what variations of that language. Of particular interest to language, geographers researching speech and identity is the notion of dialect acquisition, including slang, accents, and colloquialisms, all working to create or project certain identities. Languages are so fundamental to our day-to-day lives that they are often taken for granted, and considered to be purely a mechanism for communicating ideas. However, the very sense of who people are, where they belong and why, how they relate to those around them, and their experiences of the world, all have language at the center (Joseph 2010). Language structures every-day spaces, in that most spaces have norms or even regulations about how communication ought to occur (Valentine et al. 2008), and if one works outside of these norms, there is risk of exclusion and isolation. Drawing from work in language geographies and migrant geographies, this chapter will take language as its central theme and explore the role it plays in the creation and performance of young migrants’ identities.

2

Theoretical Framework

2.1

Language Geographies

2.1.1 Social Geographies of Language Talk is crucial to all, or at least most of, human activity (Laurier 1998). The space of speech has often been overlooked as a field of study, despite calls from Tuan in the early 1990s, who encouraged geographers to consider the role of speech in their studies, something which started to gain traction but was not sustained, despite places and spaces being shaped by, and shaping, speech (Brickell 2013). However, the recent reemergence of language geographies has been built around a renewed interest in and awareness of the power of speech. The social context of speech has come to the fore in a range of subjects including human geography (Jackson 1989), recognizing that the culture of communication is often based on the verbal over other forms of communication, such as visual and gestural (Valentine and Skelton 2007). Increasingly, there has been a focus on ideas of talk and its inherently social nature,

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but it is vital to recognize that different kinds of speech acts do different kinds of work; from the words humans “speak” in their heads, to words sung, to words shouted across a room, each speech act is unique (Withers 1993; Philo 2011). Spatial imaginings are embedded in speech, and some suggest that words do not have meaning until they are uttered (Pred 1989); talk is responsive, rhetorical, and has a vast array of purposes; it is so much more than representational (Philo 2011). Debates in language geographies at the time of the cultural turn focused on conversation and routine, and everyday encounters with words as a means to making and understanding social life and space (Laurier 1998). This move to focus on conversation paved the way for conversation analysis, focusing on how things are told over what is told; “Aspiration, inspiration, correction, co-telling, overlaps, loudness, emphasis – language as a social action and dialogue as a social object” (Laurier 1998, p. 38). Conversation is different from other forms of talk, allowing for spaces of interruption, agreement, attentiveness and supportive murmurs; revealing the affectual qualities words can have, their meaning and interpretation result of how they are spoken, not because of what is said.

2.1.2 Performance and Practice During the cultural turn in the 1990s, geographers became more interested in the notion of practice. Practice is used here as a catchall term, including ideas around embodied practices, whereby the body is used to express, interpret, and respond, creating a corporeal encounter. Furthermore, practice can include notions of performance, and how people can “perform” their identities. This can be through a range of methods, but when looking at language, geographers have begun to examine how language is performed to include or exclude people and to establish hierarchies of social status. By considering language as a practice in itself, it is possible to begin to unearth the way people utilize language to express, affect, and understand the world. A turn towards practice can be seen as one way that individuals can use a repertoire of norms and systems to present themselves in a range of situations (Stirk 1999). Language is intrinsic to practice in that it comes from both internal and external influences and experiences, meaning that, through practice and embodied performance, language geographies can be approached from a range of viewpoints. Ontologically, language is held to be a means by which understandings can be shared, the boundaries of a culture can be defined, and practices can be reproduced. Epistemologically, it is through the representation of thought in language that the meanings of members of a culture can be grasped. (Stirk 1999, p. 35)

Contemporary geographical work that looks at space, affect, and embodiment in relation to linguistic studies has begun to raise awareness about how the two are linked. Language is an enlivened act; how human actions are planned, enacted, and maintained are all a result of language (Philo 2011); whether this language is an internal narrative or external expression, it constitutes thoughts, emotions, and actions.

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A renewed focus on speech and performativity by geographers has helped to push the linguistic turn past its focus on discourse and textual analysis, exploring how people’s lives are entwined with the auditory. This focus has led to a better understanding of interactions and encounters through which people’s identities are presented in the world (Brickell 2013). This idea that people perform their identities through language use has become sustained in geography (Sullivan 2011); however, according to Giddens (1979), people also perform language through both individual and collective identities, developing the argument that language helps maintain and reproduce social life, playing on social constructions of identities (Stirk 1999, p. 36). The concept of performativity recognises that ‘the subject’ is constituted through matrices of power/discourse, matrices that are continually reproduced through processes of resignification, or repetition of hegemonic gendered (racialized, sexualized) discourses. . .Butler profoundly challenges traditional notions of human identity, moving away from treating identity as a natural attribute to recognising that there is no foundational moment in the doing of identity. Subjects continually perform identities that are prescribed by hegemonic discourses. (Nelson 1999, p. 337)

The idea that people are constantly adapting their identities and then performing them to others in response to their surroundings is one that is prevalent in more recent work on identity. This emphasis on language and performance redresses past views on language, with geographers previously stating that performance is the opposite of language, arguing that language is set and unchangeable while performance is spontaneous and creative (Rogers 2010). What this chapter seeks to show is that language too can be spontaneous, creative, and certainly not set in stone. Language is dynamic and has a range of qualities that can be embodied by users, and it has a wealth of affectual qualities depending on how it is used: One of the central arguments in this chapter is that it is important to look beyond what is said and focus on how it is said, as this can have just as many consequences.

2.1.3 Linguistic Communities Mid-twentieth century thinking in Geography commonly thought that language was a cultural trait that belonged to a group of people (Breton 1991); while this is not necessarily a false allegation, it is a somewhat simplistic approach to a complex issue. Language is seen to be something that makes, and is made by, shared social and cultural values. Communities with a shared language are often also defined by age, gender, class, and so on, leading to the understanding that there can be multiple linguistic communities within a singular social category (Jackson 1989). According to Wartburg (1969), language communities aid feelings of belonging by creating an intellectual and cultural domain, a collective heritage through written works and the spoken language (Breton 1991). Language allows for memory traces and for rules and norms to be shared (Pred 1989), facilitating patterns of social life that occur locally, it actively shapes and orders communities and wider society. Language directly constitutes social space for those whose language is entered into the shared surroundings, but there is also an exclusionary role to language, and many are

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excluded from communicative environments as a result of not speaking the correct, or desired, language (Valentine and Skelton 2007). Different members of a speech community use their linguistic resources differently. Some of the differences are individual and others social, concerning social networks, stratification, level of education, gender, minority status etc., as well as attitudes towards speech styles. Some styles are highly regarded, others looked down upon, and these distinctions correlate with the perceived and actual social status of their speakers. (Coulmas 2013, p. 11)

Language is crucial for constructing and performing cultural identities for individuals and for the communities to which they feel they belong (Harris 1980 cited in Jackson 1989). Sounds, words, signs, and systems are created, adopted, and maintained to help reinforce feelings of a collective community (Brickell 2013). One critique of studies on linguistic communities comes from Brickell (2013), who suggests that researchers’ tendency to ignore the importance of speech means that they are overlooking the flexibility of meaning and what speech can convey in certain social spaces or situations. The notion of linguistic communities reveals the power of language in creating a sense of place or belonging for people, and how it can exclude those outside the community. Moreover, the notion of deviant language (Pred 1989) shows how those who differ from the norm may be extradited from their linguistic community for not following the desired linguistic rules and regulations.

2.2

Migrant Children Geographies

Like adults, children migrate across borders for numerous reasons and in a variety of circumstances (Hek 2005; Bhabha 2008). Recent studies have focused on family reunification or children who migrate with their families; however, research about independent child migration is largely absent from the field. Migrant children present a difficult challenge to researchers and politicians alike; they have a multitude of needs and are independent and autonomous yet vulnerable and passive. Dobson (2009) argues that migration research is all too often adult-centric and divorced from the experiences of children; she calls for a greater focus of children as agents in their own right as this is the only way to truly understand their migration experiences. The responsibility of adults to protect children is deeply embedded in western societies (Boyden 1997). This dates back to Rousseau and early romantics, believing children are separate from adults and should have a childhood of safety and happiness, innocence, and purity (Giner 2007; Kehily 2013). Burman (1994) suggests young refugees and asylum seekers are seen as “passive objects of a western gaze” (p. 238). The western world regards childhood as a period of dependency; children are in need of nurture and caring relationships. This cultural value that is attributed to childhood and the notion of needing to protect and care for children is reinforced when images of poor, sick, or suffering children are seen. They sit uneasily within the psyche, violating and changing the western notions of childhood (Burman 1994). “Having to think about children, who, just maybe, manage without

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them, is threatening to adults as it questions some of the dominant assumptions about childhood” (Ennew 2000, p. 14). Children who have “lost” their innocence raise concern and are seen as children who have been needlessly contaminated through contact with the adult world (Kehily 2013). The tension between this universal childhood and the more contextualized childhood that challenges the intangible boundary between childhood and adulthood is especially significant among migrant children (Sigona and Hughes 2010). Considering children as migrants upsets the way childhood is traditionally seen (UNICEF 2005), turning them into either innocent victims or pathological threats, but nevertheless children out of place (Huijsmans 2008).

2.2.1 Identity As mentioned earlier in the chapter, identities should be seen as fluid and relational, and this is particularly true for young migrants, who find themselves negotiating multiple identities at home, school, or in the community (Sporton et al. 2006; Valentine et al. 2009). Young migrants’ identities are often situated in the context of the “child migrant” identity (Adams 2009). This marker has multiple social, cultural, and political connotations and implications for the young people. Therefore, intersecting this label with other markers of identity is often important for young migrants as they seek to integrate into society. Young people are located in a range of other narratives not of their own making; it is therefore important that they are able to make sense of themselves within these discourses. In addition to markers of difference, young migrants’ identity practices and affiliations are further shaped through their experiences of mobility. For many young people, their experiences of mobility and cultural change have left them with a feeling of homelessness or a rootless identity with no strong attachment to place (Sporton et al. 2006). The significance of place, in terms of birth, upbringing, and ancestry is highlighted in the processes of identity formation and can serve to marginalize someone through a process of “othering” (Ross et al. 2008). However, due to the large-scale movement many migrants have faced, these identity markers are more fluid and can be intersected and reworked through social interactions, cultural practices, and over time (Kiely et al. 2001). Both Ross et al. (2008) and Hopkins (2004) found that for young people in Scotland adopting practices that conveyed “Scottishness” were important in identity formation. Things such as accent, drinking Irn Bru, and taking part in Scottish festivals or days (e.g., Burn’s Night) all helped young migrants to claim a Scottish identity. What this reveals is that identity markers such as birthplace, race, ancestry and upbringing disrupt connotations of Scottishness with being white, being born in Scotland or having Scottish ancestors, meaning that the idea of being “Scottish” is salient, and attainable for minority ethnic groups (Ross et al. 2008). Identity is now recognised as something that is continuously changing, non-static and non-essentialised . . . The creation of hybrid forms of identity, which create links between different forms of belonging, have been widely researched . . . In this way . . . identity ‘is not confined to an ethnic group, but is an amalgam, neither purely religious nor specifically

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ethnic, that may be linked to forging identity as a culture of resistance’ . . . In terms of national identity formation . . . there are a series of identity markers being used by people to assert their identity: place of birth, ancestry, place of residence, length of residence, upbringing and education, name, accent, physical appearance, dress and commitment to place. (Hopkins 2004, p. 265)

A large part of identity formation comes from how others perceive you in relation to themselves. Perceptions can stem from visible differences such as skin color, or not speaking the same language, or can come from broader discourses in society about certain groups of people, separating “us” and “them.” For example, participants in Hopkins’ (2004) study felt that: Markers of ‘Muslimness’ have heightened in significance as a result of the events and aftermath of September 11th 2001. In particular, dress choice, young men with beards and skin colour are recognised by the young men as markers that identify people as Muslim, and therefore as a threat. These markers have a powerful influence in determining the experience of young Muslim men’s everyday lives in Scotland. (Hopkins 2004, p. 261)

Research has shown that those belonging to a “majority” group are less likely to acknowledge their heritage and how this impacts their identity and relationships with others (Phoenix 1998). Ross et al. (2008) found that those from white Scottish backgrounds showed a lack of awareness of their own ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and instead emphasized their interests and personality when discussing their identity and social relationships. This echoes other research that shows that young people often base their friendships upon likes and dislikes rather than religious or ethnic identities (Sporton et al. 2006; Dobson 2009; Adams 2009; Valentine 2000). Despite this, young migrants often place the largest emphasis on their nationality when seeking friendship. In communities with a large proportion of migrants, the emphasis on nationality aids cultural understandings, provides easier communication, and can help new migrants access existing networks of friendship and support (Wells 2011; Darling 2011).

3

Introducing Study Sites

This chapter stems from three pieces of research carried out in London in 2012 and Glasgow in 2014 and from 2014 to the present. The research in 2012 took place at a children’s center run by The Refugee Council in Croydon, South London, where there is a high number of refugee and asylum-seeking adolescents, often living with foster families or independently. The second piece of research explored the effects of media representations on young migrants in Glasgow. Here the focus was on ways in which national newspapers presented young migrants and how this affected their day-to-day life. Counter-narratives were also explored; interviews with language teachers and practitioners were carried out in order to gain an understanding of what was happening in practice. The third piece of research that forms the basis of this chapter is the author’s doctoral work; this is being undertaken at various third sector

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and community organizations in the northeast and south of Glasgow, again where there are large numbers of young migrants. The focus here is on the role of language in the production of identities and promotion of integration. Each of these projects contributes something unique to the chapter, working to reveal the ways young migrants from a range of backgrounds use language in processes of settlement, integration, and identity formation.

4

Talk, Identity, and Performance

The remainder of this chapter will use empirical evidence from the aforementioned projects to reveal the practice of language among young migrants. It will explore how talk and performance of language work to create and maintain identities while being attentive to processes of integration and the role of language in these processes.

4.1

Language as a Shared Identity

Bringing together linguistic communities and collective identities, the role of language in creating shared feelings of belonging becomes apparent through ethnographic studies. Language can be treated as a shared commonality between people, and for young migrants at risk of isolation, this can become a key way of building social networks and aiding feelings of belonging. As explored earlier in this chapter, by treating language as a social category to which people identify, it enables friendships to be built, regardless of nationality. Shared languages have the ability to overcome or flatten out social differences. Through ethnographic work, the power that language holds for people who are new to the city and are without any social networks can be revealed. There are an increasing number of Kurdish asylum-seekers coming to the UK, with a number of them being relocated to Glasgow. Primarily, they identify as Kurdish, with the country from which they come as a secondary marker of identity. There are numerous tensions between Kurdish minorities across these countries, yet Kurdish people, who have a shared language and belief system, are more likely to stick together than if they meet other people from their country. ‘Ali [a pseudonym] came in a little later than usual. He looked particularly worried about something today, after finding out his story last week, I’m not sure whether to ask him too much or not. He walks around the table, past the Eritrean guys and Hai and Nam, to come and sit next to me. On my other side are two guys from Iran. I introduce Hozan to them and explain that they too are from Iran, he says hi and is friendly to them, yet adamantly claims that he is from Kurdistan and speaks Kurdish, not Farsi. There are no attempts by Ali or the other two to try to speak to each other for the next 10 minutes. Then Ali gets out his phone and shows me a text from his friend, I’m surprised to see that it is written in English, it reads ‘I’m outside buddy, come get me’, he looks at me as if to ask if he can go and get his friend. I say of course and he returns with his friend whose name I don’t quite catch. He is a very

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serious and shy young man, who looks totally petrified. I ask Ali some questions about him as his English is better and he explains that he is also Kurdish. “From Iran?” I ask. “No, Iraq, but we’re friends because we are both Kurdish together, we are not ISIS, we don’t fight people, but we are Kurdish together and that’s why he is my friend here, he understands me.” (Field Diary, Jan. 22, 2016)

This excerpt from a fieldwork diary exemplifies how language can bring people together or segregate them depending on how people choose to identify themselves. Although Ali is from Kurdish Iran, he views the Iranian part of his identity as less important than being Kurdish, thus he is more interested in meeting and spending time with other Kurds over other Iranians. This is prevalent among Kurdish migrants. In a number of classes, students have stressed that they are Kurdish over their official nationality, often getting excited when they meet other Kurdish migrants. Another example of people choosing certain elements of their identity over other parts is evidenced in the following excerpts, this time exploring the Romani language, which is used by Roma people from Slovakia and Romania. From working with the Roma community in Glasgow, it is clear that the Romani language is not used as often as Slovak or Romanian – many of the young people’s first languages. The Romani language is used on a small number of occasions, and even then, the students use it somewhat tentatively, as if they are unsure about it. From speaking to the Roma students, tensions that lie between the Romanian and Slovakian Roma in Glasgow become evident. There are approximately 4,000 Roma people living within a network of about 6 streets, meaning that they are close neighbors, which only serves to fuel community tensions. From time spent with the young people, it has become evident that they identify more willingly with their nationality rather than as being Roma. ‘Paula (the teacher) is halfway through explaining the task but two of the girls start talking across the large table in a different language, another of the girls on the far side also begins to join in the conversation. Paula asks them to stop talking but then Babora tells Paula she is just explaining the task to Krisztina. Paula looks a little surprised and says to the girls “So you can understand each other, I thought you were from different countries?” The girls all glance at each other, and around at the rest of the class, before Barbora turns back to Paula, “Yes we are, but we all speak gypsy language,” “Yes, we are gypsies” Krisztina adds.’ (Field Diary, Nov. 19, 2016)

This encounter sparked several paths of intrigue. Firstly regarding how the girls utilized their shared language to help each other out, despite the fact that these two communities do not often mix with each other. This reveals the way mutual languages can be mobilized in order to support and include others. It has become apparent that young people will often do their utmost to include others by either translating for friends or classmates, or trying to find a common language. This is evident in the following extracts, which reveal the way that common languages can move beyond political boundaries.

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‘Samir came to sit at the table with me, it was his first time at The Refugee Council today and he seemed a bit overwhelmed by the noise and boisterous behaviour that was going on in the next room. He doesn’t know anyone and speaks very little English. He sat quietly with me for about half an hour. Adnan then came bouncing over with a big grin on his face. I introduced Samir to Adnan, who shook his hand and started speaking to him. Adnan then explained to me that they both speak Arabic and that he would look after Samir today. Samir seemed to perk up a bit and with a bit of persuasion went off with Adnan to the back room where a group of other boys were playing table football.’ (Field Diary, July 31, 2012) ‘Admir, Erion and Xhevdet (Albanian guys) were sat around chatting. Adam and his sister, Marisha, (newly arrived from Russia) were sat with them. I went over to chat with them all. The Albanian boys kept slipping into speaking Albanian together, however, they then always tried to translate what they were saying into English, or, using Google translate to translate it into Russian for Adam and Marisha so they could join in and understand what was being said.’ (Field Diary, Aug. 14, 2012)

The second thing of interest from the extract above (Nov. 19, 2016) is the way the two girls identified as gypsies and said that they spoke “gypsy language.” This shows how identities that have been prescribed to people by those outside of their communities are embodied. In the UK, “gypsy” is considered to be a derogatory term to use when discussing the Roma community, yet here were two members of that community mobilizing this label. This is likely to have impacts on the way they navigate their day-to-day lives, their mobility, and how they position themselves in society more broadly. As a result of informal conversations with young migrants, it has become clear that language is seen to be a large part of who they are and is seen as something that is personal to themselves and their friends. By communicating with others in their first language, young people are able to create a sense of collective identity among their peers, and in turn, this helps to create feelings of belonging. Adams (2009) found that communal identity among young migrants can significantly help in periods of integration and settlement. This creation of communal or shared identities can be a positive experience for many young migrants; however, there is also a risk that they can work to highlight differences between groups of young people. In the classroom, there is often separation of different language speakers. ‘There is some segregation today, although they are all working on the same task they are only speaking to their friends in their first languages. The teacher keeps reminding them and encouraging them to speak English and to help each other, which they do for a short while, but before long turn back to their friends and slip back into their first language. I feel that it is more a confidence and comfort thing than not actually wanting to speak to others though.’ (Field Diary, Aug. 8, 2012)

This separation does not present too much of an issue when there are large numbers of people who speak the same languages. However, when there are classes with one or two people who speak a certain language, exclusion can occur, with those in the minority often missing out on peer-to-peer support and becoming withdrawn from the class.

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‘Chien always requires a bit of extra help, and when he asks the Eritreans a question some of them laugh at his accent and his inability to pronounce certain sounds in English. Today the teacher took the register and when she got to Chien, who was sat next to me said “oh no, he’s going to need some extra help today, maybe he should sit at a table with you Sophie and you can work with him.”, “where are your other friends from Vietnam?” She asked Chien. “They are sleeping” he replied, “Ok, well you can stay with the main class for now, and if it gets too difficult you can sit with Sophie”. She then turned to me and said “I suppose it’s good he is by himself, it means he has to work extra hard.” (Field Diary, Jan. 22, 2016)

This particular encounter was surprising. For the rest of the lesson, Chien was ignored by everyone else in the class, despite trying his best to join in, which was not helped by the teacher’s attitude to having a student who is slightly below the level of the class. Being a minority in the classroom can risk hindering their education due to the fact they are less likely to participate. When classes are mixed, it is important that the teacher encourages students to speak English to try and highlight the commonalities between everyone in the room. When teachers encourage English to be spoken, there is increased interaction between all students in the class, and this has been found in both the 2012 project and in current research. This echoes work by Walker (2011) who stresses the importance of encouraging students to speak English within the classroom and to each other as this increases participation, which works to aid integration.

4.2

Dialect Acquisition and Humor

Acquiring a new language also means acquiring a new dialect, yet it has been found that second dialect acquisition can be particularly challenging (Siegel 2012). Colloquial language is a distinct feature of the Glaswegian dialect. Dialect and colloquial language are important parts of English acquisition for young migrants, particularly in aiding feelings of belonging. This next section explores the different ways young migrants acquire and use these, as well as exploring their use of humor and the impacts this has, particularly around notions of “Scottishness” and identity. For many young people, fitting in with peers is vital in processes of integration, and speaking with the “right” accent or with the local dialect is an important step in creating a collective identity linked to language, increasing feelings of belonging and decreasing isolation. Research with young migrants in Glasgow shows that there is some evidence of dialect acquisition, especially among the Roma communities who have been in Glasgow for a number of years. Many of the young Roma students use the words “aye” for yes, and “naw” for no, both of which are Glaswegian terms. Despite the fact that they have an extremely low level of English language proficiency, the use of such terms appears to be integrated into their linguistic repertoire, presenting interesting questions about both dialect and language acquisition. Many of the Roma students have limited contact with native English speakers, yet have picked up aspects of the dialect and accent, but not picked up the language; suggesting that dialect acquisition occurs separately from language acquisition. There appears to be an eagerness among the research participants to understand people with whom they interact on a day-to-day basis. Often they ask the teachers

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what certain words or phrases mean, yet on other occasions they share what they have learnt, as in the two extracts below: ‘Hadi and I were sat in the meeting room waiting for the teacher to print some things off, we were talking about Glasgow and the conversation moved on to the weather. Hadi looked at me and began to giggle, ‘In Scotland’, he began, ‘In Scotland, people say “It’s fuckin’ Baltic”’ I laughed and nodded, “they do” I said, and laughed again. He laughed with me and repeated his newly learnt phrase. I was still laughing, he said it a few more times, each time trying to put on a Scottish accent.’ (Field Diary, Oct. 29, 2015) ‘When I walked through the doors all of the guys had already set up the classroom and were chatting while Sally (the teacher) got ready to start the class. Awet was reading something out of his notebook and when he saw me he grinned and called me over. I went over and stood behind him and Daniel. “Listen to what I know” Awet said, “Cheesin’, smiling, greetin’, crying, messages, shopping, pure, very, wheesht, shhh, boggin’, dirty. . .” I was laughing and asked him where he had learnt these words, “and, and, bampot, stupid person” he said this quite loudly and the rest of the class burst into laughter, as did Awet. Sally looked over at me and we both laughed too. He explained to me that he had learnt them at the weekend because he heard someone say wheesht and so decided to look up what it meant on the internet, and this led him to a ‘Glaswegian dictionary’. He closed his notebook and said “I can be Scottish now.”’ (Field Diary, Dec. 8, 2015)

Both of these field diary extracts exemplify the ways in which young migrants strive to pick up certain words or phrases. Both Awet and Hadi were proud of what they had learnt and by sharing it with their teachers they were able to validate that what they had learnt was correct. Moreover, there seemed to be an eagerness to make their teacher laugh, again validating their use of the English language and their ability to pick up phrases. The use of humor can be very difficult in a second or third language and requires knowledge of certain linguistic intricacies, as well as cultural knowledge to be successful. The intricacies of a language that are required to use humor and communicate are not necessarily taught within the classroom but are picked up through processes of integration and settlement which can often take a long time or not happen at all for young migrants. This is demonstrated by the fact that when the young people are speaking their first languages with friends or others from their community, they are highly animated, making each other laugh with lively and outgoing conversations taking place. Yet when they speak English to their friends and peers, they become more serious, using more formal language and are far less animated. By observing their conversations, it is evident that humor is important in integration and communication with their peers, but because many of the students find it difficult to use humor in English, there remains a barrier between certain groups in the classroom. Young migrants’ use of humor reveals one aspect of the situated performances of language, demonstrating how different identities can be performed when speaking their first languages or when they are speaking English. Moreover, when they are speaking informally with their friends, they use language to bond and build social capital, yet in a classroom setting where English is required, their focus is on educational and linguistic attainment as opposed to making friends or integrating with classmates. Different language performances depend on the social encounter and the language in which it takes place, revealing how speaking certain languages can accentuate, or suppress, different character traits.

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The Formalization of English

Learning English in a classroom environment means that young migrants learn formal English, a kind of bureaucratic language that is only useful in certain, more formalized, encounters. While this kind of English is unarguably useful and can be applied in practical situations, it overlooks the more informal day-to-day language that will aid processes of integration with their peers. In the previous section of this chapter, the way dialect acquisition occurs separately from language acquisition was explored, and it is dialect acquisition that is important to feelings of belonging and identity formation. This exemplifies how language taught in the classroom is not necessarily beneficial for all encounters, particularly social encounters with native English speakers. The syllabus for English classes and the content of textbooks is set by the Department for Education and Learning; therefore it can be argued that young migrants are taught aspects of English that the government believes they should know upon arrival in the UK. However, it is important to understand that not all English learners have the same needs, and if integration is a key aim of English language education, then the syllabus needs to offer flexibility in relation to who is learning. Young migrants have a distinct set of needs, and this ought to be reflected in the syllabus, with a focus on English for social purposes as well as the grammatical and formal application of English. The formalization of English which takes place in learning environments is contested by some teachers; from first-hand experience, they feel that young migrants benefit more from practical English skills that will help them on a dayto-day basis. Yet a paradox arises; while they understand that this is a more beneficial approach to teaching English, one of the aims of these classes is to help students get into college, and in order to get into college a certain level of the grammar and syntax systems that make up formal language needs to be attained. Thus, issues arise around what students want to learn versus what they need to learn in order to gain a qualification in English, which will in turn provide opportunities for further education or employment.

4.4

Language and Integration

‘We would always say that’s (language) the major barrier to integration and it’s the first step towards integration, so you can start using services, you can get more out of your services, you can participate in the culture, you can start to build a network of friends. So I mean it’s absolutely the key barrier to overcome, yeah.’ (John, May 29, 2014)

Inconsistent access to education remains a challenge. Dependent on the young migrants’ age, the quality of education and language services can vary drastically. Younger migrants have a statutory right to be put in to mainstream schooling. This makes it easier for them to learn English, develop social networks, and reduce segregation.

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Beirens et al. (2007) explored provisions that could prevent isolation of young refugees; these were: integration into schools, access to services, and the development of appropriate provisions. From interviews carried out with language teachers, the importance of learning English in the appropriate environment was highlighted. Learning English facilitates class participation, subsequently increasing overall integration (Candappa 2000; Beirens et al. 2007). Making the education policy for young migrants more streamlined is deemed to be of great importance in Glasgow and access to other kinds of education, not just language classes, was seen to be a key development. Education not only provides young migrants with a range of opportunities for integration but also helps to build resilience and confidence, which is vital for these young people to be able to cope in the UK. This is echoed in the literature which states that school is vital in developing social and emotional skills and providing structure and routine (Macaskill 2002). Moreover, integration in schools leads to integration in the community, thus creating tolerant and welcoming communities (The Prince’s Trust 2002). ‘(Being in school) makes it much easier for them to learn English because they’re hearing it all the time. And it makes it easier for them to integrate because they stop being an asylum seeker and they become an individual. I mean, it’s not that simple and it is a challenge for them But I do think being surrounded by people makes it easier for them to become a person rather than just an asylum seeker.’ (Marie, June 19, 2014)

Segregation from Scottish communities is theorized by Vanderbeck and Dunkley (2004) who suggest that young people reproduce broader societal discourses, resulting in the “othering” of young people who are different. Subsequently, networks of inclusion and exclusion are produced, often distancing the “other” from the mainstream. Social and cultural geographers have recognized how space and place are often central to processes of exclusion (Vanderbeck and Dunkley 2004). Jones (2001, p. 37) has called for more recognition of how young people “operate their own specializations” in places they occupy and the wider impacts this agency has on societal activities.

5

Conclusion: The Social and Spatial Geographies of Young Migrants’ Language Use

5.1

Language, Identity, and Integration

Languages are an integral part of who people are, and they are the foundation for how people communicate and present themselves to the world. Different identities are performed through different kinds of speech acts as well as in relation to which language is being spoken. Shared languages are a key way of building collective identities that can help to aid feelings of belonging and processes of integration. They can also work to overcome other social differences and are used to support others, particularly in a classroom environment or to welcome new migrants into the

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shared space. In saying this, languages can also exclude people, and in classes where there is a dominant linguistic community, those in the minority can be excluded from conversation, risking further isolation and reduced participation. It is also possible to argue that in some instances, there is a will to exclude, and those members of a dominant linguistic community purposely refuse to speak English so those in the minority cannot be included. This kind of exclusion works to cement feelings of collective identity for the dominant group, strengthening social bonds and feelings of belonging, while at the same time having an adverse effect on minority students. Young migrants’ situated performance of language can be evidenced through their use of humor and the differing ways in which they speak to their friends and teachers. When speaking with friends, they use informal language to create social bonds and integrate with others from their community, while speaking with teachers present a more formal interaction. Those with more advance language skills are often eager to build a bond with their teachers; this is done through humor and also by showing the teacher other aspects of language that they have acquired outside of the classroom. Processes of integration occur at different rates for different people; moreover, integration is not mono-directional, and what integration may mean for one person is not the same for another. For some, it is not only just about learning English but also it is about making friends, accessing college, and feeling part of a community. Research has revealed how young people are more likely to participate in class if there are others from their community in the class with them, perhaps because of increased confidence or having friends by their side. Some young people have spoken about their loneliness due to not having any friends who speak the same language and by not having any reason to leave their homes. Community-based English classes provide a forum for young people to meet others in similar situations, as well as improving English language skills. Young migrants have distinct socialites and spatialities of language use; in line with Parks (2015), the author argues that there is a sought after familiarity, specifically around language for these young people. The young people in the research are all bi- or multilingual, which in turn opens up many possible enactments of identities and self-representation. This chapter has shown how young people’s decisions about how they perform language – one aspect of presenting identities – are shaped by the spaces they occupy and the encounters that take place. Thus, language is a situated social practice that does not exist in a vacuum but is variable over time and space.

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Hebrew in the Daily Life of Israelis

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Contents 1 Prologue and Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Language Revival, Jews, and Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Revival Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Where Am I? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 What Language Should I Speak? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 How Does Hebrew Change? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Hebrew in the Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Coda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Hebrew is the everyday language of Israel. Its revival as a spoken language, which took place over the past 150 years, is considered by many a miracle. However, the route to the adoption of Hebrew was not straightforward as it fought off opposition from other languages, especially Yiddish, to become the premier language of the Zionist project. Today, despite the presence of a million and a half Arabic speakers and over a million Russian speakers, its main competition comes from English, the current global lingua franca. Notwithstanding, Hebrew can be seen and heard everywhere – from radio and television, through newspapers and magazines, to place names, street signs, and store fronts. Keywords

Hebrew · Israel · Language revival · Immigration · Place names

S. Waterman (*) Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_125

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Prologue and Introduction

Hebrew is the everyday language of Israel. This is a significant detail because language helps organize thought and to intellectualize and recognize reality. Hebrew is not the only language spoken or heard in the country, but it is Israel’s premier official language. It is the one that people who employ an alternative first language are most likely to use for communicating with others who speak a different mother tongue. The status of the language is solid and its use broad. Moreover, it is dynamic, with widespread usage in private and public places. The National Library estimates that over 7000 books were published in Israel in 2016 of which 89% were in Hebrew. As a country, Israel has primarily grown and developed around immigration and immigrants. Overall, Hebrew is viewed as the main language of Jews in Israel and as a symbol of national membership, although there is now more tolerance towards maintaining other languages than there was when Israel became a state (Shohamy 2008). The former imposed “Hebrew-only” policy with respect to Jewish immigrants has ameliorated in many ways. Not only is Hebrew the premier official language of the State of Israel, but it is the language essential to Israeli identity and as such, it carries much cultural baggage. There are newspapers, media, theater, and art in Hebrew, and it is the language of instruction in most schools, which are divided into four different tracks: statesecular, state-religious, independent religious (mostly Haredi), and Arab, as well as private schools reflecting the educational viewpoints of particular groups of parents and those based on the curriculum of another country. The primary language of instruction is Hebrew in most schools except in the Arab track where Arabic is used, and in Torah study in some (Ashkenazi) independent religious schools where Yiddish is used. Although it is an ancient language, it is easier for a native Hebrew speaker today to read and understand texts such as the Old Testament than it would be for a native English speaker to read and understand Chaucer or even Shakespeare. But although an old language, it is also a truly modern one in which plays are created, books written, ideas discussed, interviews conducted, articles published, and dictionaries compiled. It has also developed a plethora of slangs and jargons (Rosenthal 2007). On arrival, most immigrants spoke languages other than Hebrew, but many, especially the men, would have had some prior knowledge through its use in the Jewish liturgy. Once arrived, although their initial absorption into the country’s daily life might have been affected mainly through their mother-tongue and with other speakers of whatever language that might have been, sooner rather than later, they encountered the entirely predictable and inevitable fact that lack of Hebrew was a handicap. They needed facility in the language to broaden their horizons, enhance their employment opportunities, and, perhaps more importantly, the life opportunities of their children. All this does not mean that other languages are unspoken, unheard, and unread in the day-to-day life of the country seven decades after independence and more than a century after the Zionist project got underway in earnest. In neighborhoods in which

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recent immigrants are predominant, Amharic, Russian, or French, for example, can be heard on the streets and there are radio and TV broadcasts, newspapers (Table 1), and signage (Figs. 1 and 2), in those languages, too, as well as others. However, long gone are the days when newsagents displayed a plethora of daily newspapers in other European languages, including German and Hungarian. As with schools, in today’s Israel, there are two major exceptions to the predominance of Hebrew. The first is in parts of the country in which Arabic is the day-today language of the local population. Nevertheless, it needs noting that acquiring a command of Hebrew allows Arab citizens open communication with the Jewish majority and the ability to integrate into the life of the country through society, education, and economy. The second area in which the predominance of Hebrew is muted is in neighborhoods, mainly but not solely, in Jerusalem and in Bnei Braq in the Tel Aviv Metropolitan region, which are inhabited mainly by strictly Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, where Yiddish can be heard on the streets. In addition to Jewish immigrants and native Arabic speakers, there are at least a quarter of a million overseas workers in Israel who form their own communities and who speak mainly Romanian, Thai, and Tagalog. However, even in diehard areas of non-Hebrew usage, all but the most insular xenomaniacs have to lapse into the language of the majority in order to further their needs, especially if those needs are dealt with by people and organizations such as government agencies who come from outside their vernacular areas.

Table 1 Israeli daily and weekly newspapers, 2016, by language Name Al-Ittihad Al-Madina B’Sheva Calcalist Courier Globes Haaretz Hamodia Israel Hayom Israel Post Jerusalem Post Kul al-Arab Maariv Makor Rishon TheMarker Vesti Yated Ne’eman Yedioth Ahronoth

Languages Arabic Arabic Hebrew Hebrew Russian Hebrew Hebrew, English Hebrew, English, French Hebrew Hebrew English, French Arabic Hebrew Hebrew Hebrew Russian Hebrew Hebrew

Frequency Daily Weekly Weekly Daily Daily Daily Daily Daily Daily Daily Daily Weekly Daily Weekly Daily Daily Daily Daily

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Israel

Founded 1944 2004 2002 2008 1991 1983 1919 1950 2007 2007 1932 1987 1948 1997 2008 1992 1985 1939

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Fig. 1 This sign in Yarkon Park, Tel Aviv, says “Defibrillator” in five languages. (Top to bottom: Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian, and Amharic.) (Photo by the author)

Fig. 2 A bus sign in Tel Aviv says “Thank you” in Hebrew, English, Russian, Arabic, and Amharic, the latter four transliterated into Hebrew. (Photo by the author)

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Having said all this, it is worth noting that the former imposed “Hebrew-only” policy with respect to Jewish immigrants has ameliorated in many ways. Hebrew had enjoyed uncontested centrality as the language through which native Hebrewspeakers, Arabic-speakers, and immigrants could use to intercommunicate until the 1990s. After that, the state abandoned its strict policy of Jewish immigrant Hebrewization, which the Zionist enterprise proposed in its time, in favor of a “hands-off” policy that recognizes the value of multiple languages and cultural pluralism, especially those immigrants from the former Soviet Union who could develop their own closed linguistic communities, with newspapers, TV channels, and extracurricular activities. There were almost three-quarters of a million Russian immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel in 2017, with the number of Russian speakers higher than that (CBS 2017). They are dispersed throughout the country with large concentrations in cities such as Ashdod, Bat Yam, and Beersheba. Finally, the government has gradually adopted policies that take multilingualism and multiculturalism to be educational goals. Moreover, with the privatization of electronic media, state-controlled promotion of the formal standard is virtually impossible and a burgeoning private industry of teaching English has developed in the country, further undermining the predominance of Hebrew (Dor 2004). And just as the appearance of satellite television over 20 years ago enabled Israelis to see what the rest of the world was saying about events without passing through the filter of state broadcast media, social media have enhanced this phenomenon. Although Hebrew is extensively used on social media within the country, the global ubiquity of social media means that facility in English is essential. As a consequence, more parents feel that their children will be deprived with a lack of English. The only other languages in Israel to have extensive use on social media are Russian and Arabic, but they are used for communication and dissemination among specific groups. However, Israel being small, with an emphasis on creating homogeneity among varied immigrants and a relatively short time frame, what is missing is a dialect map of Israeli Hebrew. So instead of regional dialects, there are social dialects, including literary Hebrew with high linguistic norms, standard written Hebrew, standard spoken Hebrew, nonstandard Hebrew, and the Hebrew spoken by certain groups in Israeli society, such as soldiers who have developed a military lingo and slang (including many acronyms) that often oozes into “civilian” Hebrew. There is also the language of strictly Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews whose Hebrew contains Yiddish expressions, interspersed with abbreviations and idioms (often in Aramaic) from the yeshiva world. There is also the Hebrew spoken by kibbutz members, which includes unique expressions for daily kibbutz life. Other groups include taxi drivers, sports commentators, tour guides, prisoners, Israeli backpackers, and teenage girls. The language used in postmodern literature is also often a separate category, setting new language norms by combining high Hebrew with foreign words, flouting conventions, sidestepping the rules, using slang, making no commitment to “clean” language, and even making intentional language errors to position protagonists in a particular sociolinguistic and sociocultural milieu (Nevo 2011: 3).

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Language Revival, Jews, and Hebrew

In these days of information oversupply, Wikipedia, source of user-created and userdriven knowledge, serves many as a starting point in a search for basic material on whatever catches their fancy and of which they have little prior knowledge. As a user-based source, the information it provides is sometimes factual and deep whereas at other times, it can be a shallow take-off point that leads nowhere at best and supplies us with useless or misleading information at worst. Nevertheless, a study by Giles (2005) published in Nature when Wikipedia was still relatively new, considered it no less accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica, perhaps a surprising result considering how Wikipedia articles are written. It appears that disputes about content accuracy on Wikipedia are usually resolved by discussion among users. Among the more than 5.5 million items available on Wikipedia’s English version is a motley “List of Revived Languages” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ revived_languages), including, among others, Ainu, Belarusian, Cornish, Latin, Occitan, Sanskrit, and Hebrew. The opening paragraph contains the rejoinder: “The only substantial success story in the field of language revival is Hebrew; all other cases are projects of limited success.” The entry might also have added that those other languages were never entirely dead but rather were moribund. For example, Celtic languages such as Irish and Scots Gaelic, into which considerable effort and resources have been invested in their regeneration over the past century or more, have only met with rather mixed and limited success. Welsh, another Celtic language, differed somewhat as it was “caught” while there were still hundreds of thousands of native Welsh speakers and readers at the start of the twentieth century. Although the century saw a decline in their numbers, the tide had turned by the end of the millennium suggesting that any further decline has been assuaged for the time being (Williams 2017). Not only is Hebrew the only true success story in the roster of languages revitalized, but it also has a different history and tells a rather different story than others. Whereas most other examples of language revival were attempts to resuscitate tongues displaced by languages spoken and written by conquerors or colonizers, the revival of Hebrew was neither an example of a heroic last act of defense nor a demonstration of defiance. It never died out in its written form, neither for public purposes (such as religious and nonreligious literature, philosophical treatises, science) nor for private needs (including personal letters and business correspondence). It was spoken by people in Jerusalem and Safed; Torah scholars taught and lectured in Hebrew; Yemenite Jews taught in Hebrew; between the ninth and sixteenth centuries, medical studies in Europe were conducted inter alia in Hebrew too; spoken Hebrew was heard among Italian Jews until the end of the sixteenth century (Nevo 2011). And when Jews speaking different vernaculars met up with one another, it sometimes happened that Hebrew was the only language comprehensible to one and all, especially so in the case of men. In other words, Jews were able to speak Hebrew and did so when the need arose (Ornan 1984). Rather it was a conscious effort to change the status of a language from one used in narrowly explicit settings to one that would be used by everyday people in unremarkable

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circumstances. This was all closely intertwined with the emergence of Jewish nationalism – Zionism – which in turn was related to the evolution and burgeoning of complementary nationalisms in areas in which Jews were numerous; this situation was especially true of Central and Eastern Europe. This is connected to a situation in which Jews were an ethnic and religious minority when nationalisms were defined largely by language and religion. Jews discovered that in an era of nationalism, they were not Poles, Russians, Hungarians, or whatever and as such did not fit in with new national historical identities and myths. Anti-Semitism, a constant issue, was always present in one form or another not just in Central and Eastern Europe but in more “enlightened” countries as well. It took the Dreyfus Affair (see: Ehrman 2011; Harris 2013) in late nineteenth century France for the initiative to politicize a nascent Jewish nationalism. The response of Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist and founder of modern political Zionism, to that hatred was to suggest moving Europe’s Jews beyond its reach, to Palestine. His detailed blueprint, Der Judenstaat (1896), considered every factor except how the Arabs already living there might react (Schama 2017). The decline of minority languages coupled with the fact that language has almost always been placed at the heart of nationalist movements thereby promoting and encouraging distinctions prompted Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, a Russian-speaking Jewish physician from an area of extreme national conflict on the Polish–Russian borderlands, to create Esperanto as an artificial international language. As a person dedicated to promoting tolerance, Zamenhof hoped that his invention would moderate national distinctions. However, the upshot of his experiment, and it was an experiment, is that in the 130 years since its invention in 1887, its success could only be described as hardly noticeable or moderate at best. Estimates have it that anywhere from 2 to ten million people use Esperanto as a second language and around 1000 families worldwide use it as a first language – hardly a story of impressive triumph. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that socialist-oriented Jews were among the most fervent advocates of fin-de-siècle invented tongues, including Esperanto, as they promised to avoid the linguistic imperfections and politics of domination characteristic of imperial languages (Halperin 2012). Other Jews from the same region, in Poland and the Russian Empire, however, were more effective in realizing their philological aims. Zionism was launched towards the end of the nineteenth century as a movement to relieve the maltreatment of Jews in Eastern Europe. It was not, however, the only such option available to Jews, mostly the young who wished to rid themselves not only of a life of persecution among gentile populations, but also of an historic Jewish past based on religion. Zionism was in competition with other movements at the time, such as the Bund (Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Litah, Poyln un Rusland or The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia), a secular Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire. The Bund remained an important component of the social democratic movement in the Russian empire until the October Revolution of 1917; the Bundists adopted not Hebrew as their language, but Yiddish, their mothertongue. Whereas Zionism advocated nationalism and place as a means of liberating

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Jews, the Bund focused specifically on culture, in particular through the medium of Yiddish as the cement of Jewish emancipation. Ultimately, the Bund came to contradict Zionism strongly seeing what it advocated – emigration to Palestine – as a form of escapism. Its converts were mainly Jewish artisans and workers, as well as members of a growing Jewish intelligentsia. Both Zionism and the Bund were, however, only parts of a struggle within the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe for a change in their situation. Others became active within the Communist party and sought their emancipation through revolution. Yet others emigrated, many of them seeking freedom through assimilation into the societies and cultures into which they had sought absorption, adopting the mores and culture, and the languages, of their newly found lands of refuge. However, when Zionism was launched towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the eventual goal of creating a Jewish nation state, Hebrew, the only language common to all Jews whatever their provenance, was conceived as the only language to adopt if it was to achieve this aim. They had other languages from which they could have chosen. After all, these “dreamers” of a Jewish national state mainly spoke Yiddish, Russian, or perhaps German. They might have selected French, which was then the language of diplomacy; or they might have chosen English, the language of the most successful of the colonial powers of the day and the one that was to become the world’s lingua franca in the following century. However, because of the unique relationship between the Hebrew language and Jewish people wherever they happened to be, and because this close association extended across almost three millennia, Hebrew was perceived as the only proper choice (see Safran 2005). These same optimists visualized that the people who would live and work in the Jewish state-to-be would speak, read, and write in Hebrew. More than that, they would dream in it and they would court through it. In other words, there should be nothing special about Hebrew when it was re-energized, nothing that would distinguish it in the way it would be used from any other daily language, except by its alphabet, its grammar, and its lexicon. In the process, it would be rejuvenated, recharged, and revitalized. Of course, Hebrew had never been a dead language nor was it even a language that had fallen into disuse. Although its usages had become attenuated, it had survived and was employed throughout the centuries of Jewish diaspora. It was regarded as a holy language and applied in prayer (and for most Jews or, Jewish males, at least that meant that until the nineteenth century Hebrew was used daily) and in other religious rites, quite in contradiction to the contemporary use of Hebrew. And, as already noted, to a much more limited extent, it was also exercised when needed as a language of business transactions, commerce, and simply communication, among Jews, whatever their provenance. Nevertheless, Jews had lived among gentile neighbors in the diaspora for almost two millennia, people with whom, whatever their social relationships, there was also a need to communicate. In doing this, they utilized whatever language their specific diaspora situation placed them – Arabic, Persian, German, Polish, Russian, or a host of other languages. In the process, they became adept at developing crypto-Jewish

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languages, for example, Yiddish (Judeo-German), Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Dzhidi (Judeo-Persian), or Judeo-Arabic, among others, each of which had several dialects, usually based upon their specific geographical setting (see Benor 2008).

3

The Revival Begins

The figure usually credited with breathing life into the Hebrew language revival, thawing it from its semifrozen state into one that could be spoken once more, is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (born Eliezer Perelman in modern-day Belarus). Notwithstanding, Ornan (1984) has pointed out that the will to revive Hebrew had been exhibited perhaps 20 years before Ben-Yehuda’s arrival, including the publication of Hebrew newspapers in Jerusalem. Although the spirit of a language revival was already in place, it took the arrival of Ben-Yehuda in Jerusalem, to breathe life into it. In fact, Hebrew’s revival as a vernacular need to be seen in context for as early as 1856 the Haskalah, an intellectual movement, sought to expand traditional Judaism to a secular domain and to appropriate the use of Hebrew for the purposes of secular and national ideologies (Ben-Rafael 1994; Spolsky 2001). Several myths envelop the story of Ben-Yehuda. One legend has it that when he was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, he met a Jew from Jerusalem with whom he spoke Hebrew. An alternative parable would have us believe that he insisted on speaking Hebrew to every other Jew he met, an approach that must surely have met with long periods of silence. Whatever the truth, Ben-Yehuda, a lexicographer, produced the first Modern Hebrew dictionary. The British historian Cecil Roth accredited his contribution to the Hebrew language as follows: “Before Ben-Yehuda, Jews could speak Hebrew; after him, they did.” What he proposed was to transform Hebrew speech into something constant and permanent (Nevo 2011). Ben-Yehuda spoke Hebrew with his wife who, apparently, understood little of the language and spoke even less (perhaps resulting in an aural environment that was a mirror of what has come to be regarded as the standard model of a normal marriage). And somewhat to his wife’s chagrin, Ben-Yehuda’s son was protected from any contact with languages other than Hebrew in his childhood, thereby becoming the first native Hebrew speaker of the modern era. (Ben-Yehuda and his son even became the subjects of a popular song by composer Matti Caspi and lyricist Yaron London and sung by Chava Alberstein.) Lest there be any misunderstanding, an extensive body of written Hebrew was extant. After all, the Old Testament was a Hebrew compendium of narratives and laws. It was also a potted and, at times, imagined history of the Israelites /Hebrews/ Jews. The Talmud, a written compendium of what had previously been orally transmitted commentaries on Jewish law, appears in both its Babylonian and Jerusalem versions in Hebrew and a related language, Aramaic, the language spoken in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Prayers, too, were recited in both Hebrew and Aramaic. In addition, many of the “Jewish” languages, whether Yiddish, Ladino, or Persian Jewish dialects or others, were written in Hebrew script. The sounds were one thing; how they were written and transmitted to others was something else.

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Hebrew had also been a literary language through the ages but, and this is important to understand and merits repeating once more, it was not a first spoken language. Hebrew poetry appears in the Old Testament itself – the Song of Songs, the Psalms, The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1–18) all sound like poetry when read in the Hebrew original. Hebrew poetry also blossomed in mediaeval Spain and elsewhere long before the language’s modern revival; many of these verses were also absorbed into the Jewish liturgy as it developed. It is probably safe to say that many passages today would not instantly be recognized as poetry having mutated through their use in prayer into a mixture of babble and mantra. These sources of Hebrew and Aramaic were familiar to most early Zionists and would have comprised an integral part of their early personal education and consequently were deeply entrenched in their memories. Nevertheless, for all the romance contained in the story, the conscious decision by early Zionists to adopt Hebrew as their everyday language was not without struggle. There was much potential for conflict as in these formative years the Zionist movement was primarily a secular affair. Many who migrated to Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century went not only to shift Jewish nationalism from dream to reality, but also actively to take refuge from what many perceived as the constraints of a life governed by religion and religious practice. Thus, although the religious sources existed and provided a significant measure of their early education, they were also in part rejected as unsuitable to the new life they had in mind.

4

Where Am I?

One of the first objectives of the Zionist project in Palestine was to assign names to settlements. Welding language and territory, place names are predisposed to implications in nationalist projects and discourses of identity (Azaryahu 2012a). Place names in Israel as elsewhere are an inherent part of the cultural landscape, their dual nature manifested in the creativity they express. Place names reflect past Jewish nationhood by imprinting the landscape with biblical and other historic names, which emphasize centuries old cultural continuity in the country. They also reflect the Zionist ideology of redemption of the Jewish people in its ancient land; this depiction is expressed by place names commemorating military heroes and the Zionist movement’s founders (Fig. 3). Names of Arabic origin often transliterated from the ancient Hebrew names also strengthen the sense of cultural continuity. In terms of naming, things changed after the establishment of the state. There was a relative decline in the use of the National-Zionist theme for naming, although the use of ancient names and names reflecting natural and rural elements remained strong as did the use of names of reflecting military heroism (Cohen and Kliot 1981). Though the revival of the Hebrew language undertaken by and associated with Zionism as a restorative project of nation-building is usually considered the major accomplishment of modern Jewish nationalism, a less well appreciated aspect of the “Hebraicization of Israel” was that of “Hebraizing the map.” This was “a state-promoted national project

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Fig. 3 Ben-Yehuda Street, Tel Aviv. (Photo by the author)

whose objective was designed to affix Hebrew names to all geographical features in the map of Israel” (Azaryahu and Golan 2001). The official place names of British Mandate Palestine had been mostly Arabic or perpetuated Christian traditions and thus they were foreign from the perspective of Jewish nationalism and its commitment to Hebrew and to the Jewish historical geography of the land. The government of the new state conceived and legitimized the production of a distinct Hebrew toponymy in modern Israel. This process began in 1949 with the Hebraicization of the Negev Desert (Azaryahu and Golan 2001). For Hebrew speakers, the Hebrew names affixed to landscape features replaced, from a Zionist perspective, “foreign” Arabic names. The national Hebrew map of Israel was designed to assert the Jewish identity of Israel, thereby conflating cultural and territorial aspects of Jewish sovereignty. As a consequence, the government established the Governmental Names Commission to oversee and effect the Hebraicization of the national map (Azaryahu and Golan 2001). This rewriting was more than just a translation or transcription; it amounted to writing a Hebrew text rather than rendering an existing text in Hebrew. It was a primary text of Zionist restoration and, as Azaryahu and Golan (2001) put it, “integrating the language of the landscape in the sphere of the emerging Hebrew

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culture and in integrating Zionist ideology into the spatial practices of everyday life,” highlighting the symbolic re-appropriation of the Jewish homeland in the framework of national independence (Azaryahu and Golan 2001). Over 7000 Hebrew names had been officially determined by 1992. It is worth noting that the Hebrew map of Jewish Israel has not replaced the Arabic map as Arabic toponymy persists in the form of Arab folk geography and in Palestinian maps that assert the validity of Arabic place names. Consequently, Hebrew and Arabic toponomies persist as two versions of a shared and contested national homeland. Occasionally, even the most ardent Zionist might slip into the former vernacular and refer to a topographic feature by its erstwhile Arabic name. It is not just in settlement names through which Hebrew pervades the landscape. Just as every settlement bears a name, so does every street in every town and a primary issue in this respect is the official status accorded to place names in official signage (Azaryahu 2012b). As Gade (2003: 431) has noted, “The visuality of linguistic expression can become a vehicle for identity politics and policies.” Another early semantic issue in the Hebrew revival story was an agreement on affixing a name to a region that has had numerous names throughout its history. In the Jewish lexicon, Eretz-Yisrael (“The Land of Israel”) was a traditional name for an area of indefinite geographical extent in the Southern Levant. It was, however, just one of several, including “The Promised Land,” “The Holy Land,” and “The Land of Canaan.” By the time, the Zionist movement had gathered momentum; these names had begun to play second fiddle to “Palestine,” a name derived from Philistia (The Land of the Philistines) and which had been used by the Greeks and Romans. By the late nineteenth century, Palestine was little more than an all-purpose term and the region that was to become Israel/Palestine was a minor part of the Ottoman sanjaks (administrative divisions) of Damascus, Beirut and Jerusalem. When the British ruled for three decades after 1918, the name used by the government of the day was “The British Mandate Territory of Palestine.” Nevertheless, in keeping their desire for Hebraization, the Jewish representative bodies in Mandate Palestine referred to the territory in English as “The Land of Israel/ Palestine” and in Hebrew or more generally by the term Eretz-Yisrael. When Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared on May 15, 1948 that “. . . we, members of the People's Council, representatives of the Jewish Community of Eretz-Yisrael and of the Zionist Movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British Mandate over Eretz-Israel and . . . hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. . .” (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1948)

“Israel” effectively became the name of the state and is used by all except its most implacable enemies, who refer to it as “Occupied Palestine.” Eretz-Yisrael had been the name most frequently used by Jews living there when the state came into existence. And it was difficult for many to dissociate themselves from what had become an almost mythical nomenclature and to associate with the newly declared political entity, a democratic republic that had been created in a

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truncated version of what had been Palestine/Land of Israel. So when people referred to “Israel,” were they thinking of the state with clearly defined, albeit temporary, boundaries or was it some more indistinct territory implied by Eretz-Yisrael, a term that lingered on, not least in the school curriculum where pupils were taught, inter alia, the geography and history of Eretz-Yisrael which understandably also contributed to some confusion? Ambiguity and equivocation were magnified 19 years after the declaration of statehood when, in June 1967, the Six-Day War left Israel in possession of the parts of Mandate Palestine that had not been part of Israel after the Armistice Agreements. The question was: What was Israel now? What were the boundaries? Did it extend into all Eretz-Yisrael, chimerical though that might have been? The Six-Day War not only added confusion to the territorial taxonomy; rather it enhanced, augmented, and embellished it. Between 1949 and 1967, that part of Mandate Palestine that had not become Israel and had been administered by Jordan was referred to as “The West Bank” with the small territory along the coast centered on the city of Gaza known as “The Gaza Strip.” Diverse political views engender diverse names for the same territory. Today, not all Israelis refer to the West Bank as such for its conquest by the Israel half a century ago led to a plethora of alternative names. Some called The West Bank and Gaza “The Occupied Territories,” a name now sometimes and by some people used solely for the former. However, this is “an unmentionable” among supporters of the current Israeli governing coalition for whom “Occupied Territories” simply cannot be as the land had been divinely pledged to His people. “Administered Territories” has a softer ring and though it had been used for some time, it has more or less fallen into disuse. Others euphemistically use the term “The Territories” as if taken for granted that people can mentally insert “occupied” or “administered” if they wish. Still others, in outbursts of political correctness, employ “Israel/Palestine,” so as not to offend either side, even though this nomenclature is more than likely to exasperate both sides to the conflict (see Yehoshua 2018). The official maps of the Israel Surveys Department do not expressly use a name at all but maps of local authorities beyond the 1949 Armistice Line, with the exception of Golan, do not seem to appear. Meanwhile, as nationalism in Israel seems to have been appropriated by rightwing activists and their supporters to such an extent that they confuse nationalism with patriotism and it now appears as if people with opposing views can never quite be nationalists, the Israeli right-wing has unearthed biblical Samaria and Judea for use when referring to parts of the West Bank north and south of Jerusalem, respectively. Local Councils established over the past half century have invoked names out of Jewish history such as The Jordan Valley, Mount Hebron, Mateh Binyamin (evoking the ancient territory of the Tribe of Benjamin), or Shomron, all designed to strengthen the ties between the settlements in these areas and the historic connection between the regions and ancient history. And as in all fairy tales, the story doesn’t end there. In the on-and-off discussions about a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine (or between Israelis and Palestinians), for every image there is a mirror image. So if many Israelis say “No

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[state of] Palestine, many Palestinians say “No Israel” – even though that reality cannot be ignored. Also when Palestinian officials refer to “Occupied Palestine,” and this is interpreted in the West and elsewhere to mean the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria), what is never clear is whether they are referring to those areas that Israel occupied after 1967 or to the parts of Mandate Palestine that became Israel in 1948 as well! Such are the language muddying and obscurities of diplomacy and politics.

5

What Language Should I Speak?

Today, especially in “the free world,” information can be exchanged virtually unhindered. Individual households might decide on whether they should possess a television or have internet. Those who so wish are now exposed to information and ideas from diverse sources, ersatz or authentic, and one has to be proactive to avoid this. It is now increasingly difficult not to be aware of knowledge that would have formerly been filtered by local media sources, if not censored by state and religious agencies. More often than not, this information arrives via the medium of English. Exposure to English among the population at large has grown in more subtle ways, too. Younger people increasingly obtain news and information on current events via the Internet. And although newspapers may offer online editions, these often come with a pay wall so that people interested in uncovering current events in Hebrew will resort to free websites, including blogs. Schwarzwald (2007) notes that the influence of foreign cultures on Hebrew, particularly American, is visible in academia, music, and in ordinary daily life, as speakers slide into English words and expressions. And rather than fight the English influence, Hebrew is absorbing it, with borrowed words and expressions slipping directly into Hebrew, especially in the spoken language. Three examples out of hundreds include l’fakses (to send a fax), l’arghen (to organize), l’fabrek (to fabricate). Exposure to languages other than Hebrew starts in school; English is taught as a foreign language, in some cases as early as Grade I. In higher education, Hebrew has always had to compete with other languages and English has long since become the predominant language. Although instruction in Israeli universities is in Hebrew, it is almost inconceivable that anyone wishing to pursue a higher degree could suitably achieve this without a modicum of competence in English, something that may cause disgruntlement. Yet it is nevertheless inexorable. Some politicians of a nationalistic bent might deprecate what they perceive to be overexposure to foreign languages because it may lead to the absorption of ideas adversely affecting how people think (and thus vote) as well as contaminating their patriotism. They rail against contact with ideas that do not tally with theirs. (Of course, some of this hostility to foreign languages might be related to the lack of competence of those very politicians who might find difficulty in making their views understood outside a Hebrew-language environment.) The homepage of the official Government website (gov.il) is detailed and easy to use – if you read Hebrew. However, the web pages of most government departments also provide information in English, Arabic and Russian, most with links to documents that appear in Hebrew only.

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How Does Hebrew Change?

A feature of all languages is that they are in constant flux. Some words fall out of use, whereas other words can remain within a lexicon while changing their meanings. Speakers and writers may borrow words from other languages when their own language fails to provide one and they also invent new words for situations and objects that had not existed previously. Some languages appropriate words and phrases with consummate ease without fear of defilement (English is a splendid example). Other languages are more concerned with “purity” and set up institutions to protect what they see as the wholesomeness of their language along the lines of the Académie française, established in the seventeenth century as the authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of French. Along these lines, the Israeli government established the Hebrew Language Academy (Ha-Akademya la-Lashon ha-Ivrit), which replaced the Hebrew Language Committee (Vaʻad ha-lashon ha-ʻIvrit), which had been created by Ben-Yehuda in 1890. Its objectives were similar to that of its French counterpart and it is the officially recognized body for supervising the introduction of new words into the Hebrew language. It is headed by a president and comprises 39 full members with several additional advisory members and is a self-perpetuating organization as the current members select the new members. Significantly, there are honorary members, most of whom live abroad (six in the United States, two in the United Kingdom, and one each from the Netherlands, Germany and Israel), thereby acknowledging that there are Hebraists beyond the confines of Israel. The members are authors, poets, and translators, experts in Hebrew language and literature of all time periods, and there are three permanent and central committees: grammar, Hebrew terminology, and words for general usage as well as many professional committees in varied fields. All proposals are brought before the general assembly for ratification. Whereas once the Academy adopted a top-down approach and was proactive in the invention of new words to be used in the vocabulary, today there are sufficient “plain speaking people” to ensure that this happens “naturally.” Today, much of its work is reactive, responding to requests by professional organizations for suggestions for appropriate words in Hebrew for new inventions and processes. Paradoxically, the word akademya itself illustrates the difficulty perceived in reining in and dominating language change as it is itself a loanword and in equal irony, the learned men and women of the Hebrew Language Academy have not yet invented a pure Hebrew word to replace “Professor”!

7

Hebrew in the Diaspora

Hebrew used to be the language of all Jews. It was lashon qodesh, literally the Holy Tongue. It was the language of prayer, the language through which God purportedly communicated with His people and the people communed with and glorified Him. There are still strictly Orthodox groups both within Israel and the Diaspora that shun

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the use of spoken Hebrew for precisely this reason although, unlike in Israel, there are no real-world repercussions of this in New York or Antwerp. And because of this, and the fact that there was little need to do otherwise, it was not a spoken language among Diaspora Jews except in some exceptional cases of practicality. However, from the Enlightenment on and with the ability of individuals to choose whether or not to practice religion, Hebrew in the Diaspora declined in significance to many Jews. One of the features of the Enlightenment was the emergence of communities that did not subscribe to Orthodox rites and prayers. Essentially, these communities rewrote the liturgy and increasingly used the vernacular as part of the rites of worship in the synagogue. The Enlightenment also accelerated a process that had existed since the Jewish Diaspora came into being, namely, assimilation. Not only could Jews choose to worship in the local tongue, but they could also choose not to be Jewish, i.e., to abandon the faith altogether by converting to Christianity to further their individual prospects. The long and the short of these processes is that Hebrew in the Diaspora remains the language of the liturgy in Orthodox Jewish communities and only partially so in so-called “progressive” congregations. In this sense, Hebrew is a language to be scrutinized – read but unspoken. And although many Diaspora Jews can read Hebrew, in the sense that they can recite prayers, a considerable proportion of those are unable to understand what they have read, incapable of translating the Hebrew into their vernacular. Hebrew in the Diaspora has developed many characteristics of a foreign language; it is not used in the speaker’s macro-world, but nevertheless, it also has second language attributes related to the speaker’s micro-Jewish world associated with Jewish belonging, identity, cultural uniqueness, and heritage (Shohamy 1989) and as such, as it had been historically perceived as a unifying national, social, and cultural value. Schwarzwald (2007) has noted that there is a decline in the status of Hebrew and the motivation to study it in Diaspora communities today. And there is very little obligation to teach Hebrew as a spoken language. This situation affects the perception of Israel’s status and Jewish attachment to the country. In Jewish schools outside Israel, there is a fundamental issue of whether to teach in the vernacular or in Hebrew. However, unless Diaspora Jews, of whatever religious complexion, have a connection with Israel, it is unlikely that any will ever have cause to speak or read Hebrew. None of this should come as much of a surprise, given that Zionism, which espouses the hope that all Jews will return to the ancient homeland, would mean, in its most intense form, the dissolution of the Diaspora. In this sense, Hebrew has been relinquished to the Israelis alone to do with it what they will. This is not to say that Hebrew is totally an Israeli preserve. There are many universities throughout the world in which Hebrew is taught, more often than not these days as a prerequisite for courses in Jewish or Judaic Studies, much as Latin and Ancient Greek might be a precondition for studying for a degree in Classics. As of 2016, 116 universities and colleges in the United States – and not just at Ivy League institutions or those with large Jewish student enrollment – had Jewish or Judaic Studies programs of which the Hebrew language was an integral part (http:// www.jewish-studies.com/Jewish_Studies_at_Universities/USA/).

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However, the emphasis tends not to be on an appreciation of Modern (Israeli) Hebrew, but on the use of Hebrew for understanding Jewish history and culture. This lack of knowledge of Hebrew among Diaspora Jews is a major component in an ever-deepening chasm between Israeli Jews and secular or non-Orthodox Jews in the Diaspora. And an additional point. As a language with under ten million native speakers, Israelis behave like speakers of other languages that are not widely spoken by people abroad in that they seldom expect foreigners to be able to manage in their language. So when such an individual does turn up, they are often in a quandary as to how to behave, given that the normal state of mind is that if they speak Hebrew, the stranger will not comprehend them and they are free to say what they wish without fear of being understood. A wonderful example of this was when Virginia Dominguéz, a non-Jewish Cuban-born American anthropologist began a seminar presentation in the Department of Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Hebrew. She described the expression of disbelief on the faces of her audience when they realized that she had understood all the small talk around the seminar table prior to her presentation (Personal communication, 13 Dec. 2017).

8

Coda

In the space of not much more than a century, Hebrew has become once again a spoken language. In Israel, it has become an everyday language that people read and in which people speak to one another, expressing their innermost feelings and emotions. It has developed most of the good and bad points of other languages, most of which have evolved over much longer periods of time, but then it has sources that stretch back over three millennia as a written language upon which to draw. Its presence is apparent in the landscape as toponyms and other place names and it appears on street signs and shop fronts, not to mention notices and advertisements everywhere the eye turns. Perhaps the only significant way in which it differs geographically from other languages in common use is that it is not possible to construct a dialect map of Hebrew in Israel. When the emphasis has been on immigrant absorption and integration, on nation-building and to some extent, uniformity, what dialects exist are related to immigrant provenance and other social and cultural factors. A century is simply insufficient time for spatial dialects to have evolved. That apart, the story of Hebrew in Israel is little short of miraculous.

References Azaryahu, M. (2012a). Rabin’s road: The politics of toponymic commemoration of Yitzhak Rabin in Israel. Political Geography, 31, 73–82. Azaryahu, M. (2012b). Hebrew, Arabic, English: The politics of multilingual street signs in Israeli cities. Social and Cultural Geography, 13(5), 461–479. Azaryahu, M., & Golan, A. (2001). (Re)naming the landscape: The formation of the Hebrew map of Israel 1949–1960. Journal of Historical Geography, 27(2), 178–195.

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Benor, S. B. (2008). Towards a new understanding of Jewish language in the twenty-first century. Religion Compass, 2/6, 1062–1080. Ben-Rafael, E. (1994). Language, identity and social division: The case of Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CBS. (2017). Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. http://www.cbs.gov.il/www/population/805/im_ new2015.pdf. Cohen, S. B., & Kliot, N. (1981). Israel’s place-names as reflection of continuity and change in nation-building. Names, 29(3), 227–248. Dor, D. (2004). From Englishization to imposed multilingualism: Globalization, the internet, and the political economy of the linguistic code. Public Culture, 16(1), 97–118. Ehrman, J. (2011). The Dreyfus affair: Enduring CI lessons. Studies in Intelligence, 55(1), 21–30. Gade, D. W. (2003). Language, identity and the scriptorial landscape in Quebec and Catalonia. Geographical Review, 93(4), 428–448. Giles, J. (2005). Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature, 438, 900–901. Halperin, L. R. (2012). Modern Hebrew, Esperanto, and the Quest for a Universal Language. Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society, 19(1), 1–33. Harris, R. (2013). An officer and a spy. London: Hutchinson. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (1948). Declaration of Establishment of State of Israel. Available at http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/declaration%20of% 20establishment%20of%20state%20of%20israel.aspx. Accessed May 5, 2018. Nevo, N. (2011). Hebrew language in Israel and the diaspora. In H. Miller, L. Grant, & A. Pomson (Eds.), International handbook of Jewish education, International handbooks of religion and education (Vol. 5, pp. 419–440). Dordrecht: Springer. Ornan, U. (1984). Hebrew in Palestine before and after 1882. Journal of Semitic Studies, 29(2), 225–254. Rosenthal, R. (2007). On the future of Hebrew: Five areas of concern. In N. Nevo & E. Olshtain (Eds.), The Hebrew language in the era of globalization, Studies in Jewish Education (Vol. XII, pp. 179–191). Jerusalem: Magnes press. Safran, W. (2005). Language and nation-building in Israel: Hebrew and its rivals. Nations and Nationalism, 11(1), 43–63. Schama, S. (2017). Belonging: The story of the Jews, 1492–1900. London: Bodley Head. Schwarzwald (Rodrigue), O. (2007). Trends in modern Hebrew. In N. Nevo & E. Olshtain (Eds.), The Hebrew language in the era of globalization, Studies in Jewish Education (Vol. XII, pp. 59–81). Jerusalem: Magnes Press (In Hebrew). Shohamy, E. (1989). Hebrew curriculum in Jewish schools. In E. Olshtain, D. Zisenwein, & E. Shohamy (Eds.), Hebrew as a unifying force in Jewish education in the diaspora (pp. 45–54). Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Publishing (In Hebrew). Shohamy, E. (2008). At what cost? Methods of language revival and protection: Examples from Hebrew. In K. A. King, N. Schilling-Estes, J. J. Lou, L. Fogle, & B. Soukup (Eds.), Sustaining linguistic diversity: Endangered and minority languages and language varieties (pp. 205–218). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Spolsky, B. (2001). Language in Israel: Policy, practice, and ideology. In J. E. Alatis & A.-H. Tan (Eds.), Language in our time: Bilingual education and official English, ebonics and standard English, immigration and the Unz initiative (pp. 164–174). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Williams, C. H. (2017). The lightening veil: Language revitalization in Wales. Review of Research in Education, 38(1), 242–272. Yehoshua, A.B.. (2018, April 20), Time to say goodbye to the two-state solution. Here’s the alternative. HaAretz.

Ethnic Self-Perception of Georgian Teenagers in Moscow: Role of Language and Culture

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Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conceptual Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Russian-Georgian Cultural Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Schools with an Ethnocultural Component in Moscow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Georgian School in Moscow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Spatial Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Linguistic Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Identity and Cultural Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter examines the role of language and cultural space in shaping and/or reshaping the identity of both first- and second-generation Georgian teenage students in the state secondary school in Moscow with a Georgian ethnocultural component. By analyzing the students’ linguistic behavior in the classroom, an attempt is made to examine how students negotiate their identity and sense of belonging while outside Georgia. More specifically,

D. Zoumpalidis (*) Department of General and Applied Philology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia e-mail: [email protected] J. V. Mazurova Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_149

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this study shows how Georgian students (re)shape their identity in light of linguistic, cultural, and spatial changes taking place in the institutional settings of the Moscow school. The language of instruction in the school is Russian. However, taking into consideration the fact that the majority of the school teachers are ethnic Georgians, it appears that this has implicit (and in some cases explicit) underpinnings in relation to the students’ ethnic identity orientation. The results demonstrate that high institutional support at school as well as the students’ high sense of group belonging which is encouraged by the school’s administration and teaching staff contributes to students’ identity construction process. The evidence indicates that the blurring of ethnic and cultural identity boundaries in the context of the Russian capital city has an effect on the students’ linguistic behavior at different levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon). Keywords

Translanguaging · Migration · Identity · Belonging · Georgians in Russia

1

Introduction

In today’s increasingly globalized world, schools are being transformed by a growing number of immigrant students. This introduces serious challenges in relation to educating more linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse students. In other words, globalization requires more complex skills from students in order to equip them to be competitive in a globally interlinked economy (see Levy and Murnane 2004). However, as Banks (2009, p. 309) points out, it is often the case that ethnic minority students are marginalized in school, and when treated as the “other,” they tend to emphasize their ethnic identities and develop weak attachments to the nationstate. Similarly, migratory waves to Moscow, from conflict-affected areas of the post-Soviet space especially right after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, have reshaped the linguistic and cultural character of schools in the Russian capital city. High migrant influx to Moscow required the provision of equal educational opportunities for children of different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. However, the current language policy in the educational sphere in Russia requires linguistic unification where Russian is used as the only language of instruction. The Georgian diaspora appeared in Moscow in the seventeenth century and played an important role in establishing contacts between two countries. Despite the political conflicts of the last decade, quite a large Georgian community stays in Moscow including newcomers, temporary visitors, and those who live in Moscow on a permanent basis. A distinctive feature of Georgians is a heightened level of ethnic identity. In this chapter, we examine the ethnic Georgian students’ attempts to (re)shape their identity in light of new educational, social, political, and economic realities of Moscow, Russia. Section 2 outlines the conceptual framework. Section 3 provides historical details about cultural relations between Georgia and Russia. In Sect. 4, we briefly outline the current situation of schools with an ethnocultural component in Moscow. Section 5 is dedicated to the Moscow school with a Georgian

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ethnocultural component. In Sect. 7, we discuss the results in relation to students’ trespassing linguistic, ethnic, and cultural boundaries. Section 8 provides concluding remarks.

2

Conceptual Framework

Language ideologies can be described as “certain ideas and views about a language that can be reflected in the purpose of communication and appropriate communicative behaviour” (Woolard 1992, p. 235). Within the language ideologies framework, different languages are ascribed different values, that is, high versus low prestige (Blommaert et al. 2005). Since ideologies about language are frequently employed in order to reach a high level of homogeneity in a nation-state, where the use of just one (usually majority) language is regarded as a norm, ideologies of monolingualism are widely implemented at different levels of society (Flores and Beardsmore 2015). As far as education is concerned, Blommaert and Van Avermaet (2008) argue that ideologies of monolingualism are imposed not only at the level of nation-state policies but also through the institutions at the meso level, i.e., schools. In this regard, the ultimate goal of monoglossic ideologies is to “develop student proficiency in the dominant language of society, with little or no interest in the development of the home language” (Flores and Beardsmore 2015, p. 208). However, as Gogolin (2002) argues, since many multilingual schoolchildren use lower prestige languages at their home, they are often with reluctance vis-à-vis their home language at school. Teachers, in turn, are expected to abide by the imposed language ideologies and conform to the majority language of instruction teaching practices. However, this may not always be feasible in a multilingual/multicultural classroom where children with varied proficiency in the target language come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In the case of teachers sharing ethnic/cultural/linguistic backgrounds with students, communication in the classroom may be facilitated when both teachers and students resort to translanguaging practices (Garcia and Wei 2015). Translanguaging in education refers to the use of “one language to reinforce the other in order to increase understanding and in order to augment the pupil’s activity in both languages” (Lewis et al. 2012a, p. 40). Garcia (2009), however goes beyond the use of two separate languages in education arguing that translanguagings are multiple discursive practices in which bilingual students perform bilingually “in the myriad multimodal ways of classrooms – reading, writing, taking notes, discussing, singing, etc.” (Garcia 2011, p. 147). Garcia and Kano (2014) explain further that translanguaging in education is: a process by which students and teachers engage in complex discursive practices that include ALL the language practices of ALL students in a class in order to develop new language practices and sustain old ones, communicate and appropriate knowledge, and give voice to new sociopolitical realities by interrogating linguistic inequality. (cited in Garcia and Wei 2015, p. 225)

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In addition, translanguaging is argued to mediate students’ identities. In this regard, new language practices emerge in interrelationships with old ones without competing or threatening an already established sense of being (Garcia and Wei 2015). In the present study, we are interested in identifying how students negotiate their identity(ies) and sense of belonging under the influence of dominant language ideologies in the Russian educational system on the one hand and those that are cultivated in the school with a Georgian ethnocultural component, on the other. It is likewise important to analyze how translanguaging practices help students to cross linguistic and cultural boundaries and how perception of homeland can potentially influence their ethnic identity construction in Russia.

3

Russian-Georgian Cultural Relations

The relations between Georgia and Russia date back hundreds of years: they were established at the end of the fifteenth century, and the first official alliance (Treaty of Georgievsk) was signed in 1783. For more than a century, Georgia was a part of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet Union period, Georgia became one of the 15 Soviet Republics (1921–1991). When the country regained its independence in 1991, the bilateral diplomatic Russo-Georgian relationship witnessed a serious decline, especially during the presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili (2004–2013). According to Souleimanov (2013, p. 109): in the recent decade, mutual anxiety between Russian and Georgian officials has grown to unprecedented proportions threatening to affect the milieu of inter-ethnic relations on the level of individuals that has always been marked by a relatively high degree of mutual sympathy.

Since the military conflict in 2008 and the subsequent recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent entities by Moscow, Russia and Georgia have no diplomatic ties. Nevertheless, Russia and Georgia and the nations of the two countries have had close religious and historical ties for centuries, and despite the current political climate, people continue to communicate at personal levels and to maintain economic and cultural ties. Different aspects of Georgian culture – art, literature, and especially cuisine – are very popular among Russians, while the tourist flow to Georgia from Russia has experienced a remarkable increase over the last few years. The Russian language has a long history in the Georgian culture. In the second part of the nineteenth century, the Georgian elite had to demonstrate knowledge of Russian. During the Soviet era, Russian was the language of interethnic communication in Georgia; many people learned it at school. Russian was also the language of art and literature, and famous Georgian writers wrote in both languages (Megrelishvili 2014, pp. 288–289). In other words, Russian enjoyed a high level of prestige in the republic. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Georgian educational system changed: the role of the Russian language decreased with English

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taking the lead. However, in recent years, the demand for learning Russian as a foreign language has witnessed some increase due to the intensification of economic and business connections between the countries including the booming sphere of tourism (Megrelishvili 2014, p. 295). According to Arefiev (2017, p. 46), in 2014–2015, there were two schools where Russian was used as the language of instruction and 65 bilingual schools with classes for Russian-speaking children where 13,900 Russian-speaking schoolchildren studied. 275,000 Georgian schoolchildren learned Russian as a foreign language starting from 5th or 7th grade. Besides, around 1000 students (mostly of the philological specialization) in Georgia received their education in Russian at the university level. Thus, most of the Georgian adult population arriving in Moscow who received their education during the Soviet time know Russian at least to some extent (some of them exhibit native-like proficiency), but as for children, their knowledge varies considerably and depends on a number of factors including age, language behavior within the family domain, individual psychological characteristics, and learning abilities.

4

Schools with an Ethnocultural Component in Moscow

The general language policy of the Russian government is directed against the segregation of migrants’ children in some special schools: nonnative speakers and children of other ethnic background must have the same educational opportunities and hence the same program while studying together with Russian-speaking children. For this reason, there are practically no schools intended for children of a single ethnicity exclusively: all schools with the so-called ethnic component enroll children of various ethnic backgrounds. The children of diplomats and expatriates can be considered as an exception insofar as the embassy schools are out of scope in the present study. Some state educational organizations have already changed the “ethnic” component in their name to a “multicultural” component. The increasing trend toward integration of migrants and the centralization of the educational system can be further illustrated by the Federal Law “On the Education in the Russian Federation” adopted in 2016. According to this law, the national component (including ethnic languages) no longer has any official status and may only be included in the educational program in addition to the compulsory classes. This law concerns only Russian-speaking members of the Federation, while the situation in the regions with additional official languages (such as Tatarstan and Tuva, among others) is different. Another example of the centralization of the educational system is the recent process of combining Moscow schools into larger units. There are several reasons for that, including financial, but in any case, the consequence for small “ethnocultural” schools is that they get integrated with other ordinary schools with predominantly Russian-speaking children. Nevertheless, in Moscow there are several schools with an additional ethnocultural component, including Tatar, Arab, Greek, Korean, Jewish, Lithuanian, Azeri, Armenian, and Georgian, among others (Arefiev 2017, p. 58).

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Georgian School in Moscow

The history of the Georgian school goes back to 1988, when a kindergarten for children with a Georgian background was opened in the center of Moscow. A primary school directed by the member of the Academy of Sciences, Shalva Amonashvili, was opened a year later. In 1993, the school complex was reorganized as a secondary school with a Georgian ethnocultural component, and in 1994, a small Georgian Orthodox Church was opened in the school territory. In 2001, the school received the status of State Educational Institution Secondary School No 1331 with the Georgian ethnocultural component. By 2006, the number of students reached 800. It is during this period when the political relationships between Russia and Georgia deteriorated. In 2006, due to the espionage scandal, hundreds of Georgians were deported from Russia allegedly for violating migration rules. The military conflict in South Ossetia in 2008 resulted in a mass exodus of Georgians from Russia. As a consequence, the number of Georgian students decreased accordingly. In 2016, the school was structurally merged with the Moscow school No 1231 and moved to a new building while retaining its autonomy and teachers. In 2017, there were around 300 students, but not all of them were of Georgian background. Thus, during the last 10 years, the number of children studying the Georgian language and culture at school in Russia decreased dramatically. According to Arefiev (2017, p. 46), in 2007–2008 there were over 500 schoolchildren learning Georgian as a subject at school (two state schools No 1331 and No 184 and two private schools), but in 2016 there were only 30. However, our own data show that this number is higher. Nevertheless, it cannot be directly compared with the number of the Georgian-speaking people in Moscow: even according to 2010 census, which hardly covered all the Georgian-speaking population, there were 38,923 ethnic Georgians with 28,064 of them Georgian-speaking (Koryakov 2017).

6

Methodology

Questionnaire. The questionnaire was specifically designed for students. In total, 74 schoolchildren filled out the questionnaire. It was designed in the Russian language. The questions elicited demographic (e.g., age, gender, place of birth, etc.), linguistic, and sociolinguistic (e.g., what language(s) are perceived as mother tongue, what languages one can speak/write/read and how well, etc.), language use (e.g., which language(s) is(are) employed within the family domain and which in the school), language choice (e.g., which language(s) is(are) chosen by the students when they address teachers within/outside the classroom), language attitudes (e.g., would you like to learn Georgian/Russian/other language better and why?), and finally, language and identity information (e.g., is it important to speak Georgian in order to be considered Georgian?). A few control questions were also included in the questionnaire. Interview. In total 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted: four individual and eight group interviews. Two interviews (plus a follow-up interview) were

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conducted with the headmaster; one interview was conducted with a teacher of history and another with a teacher of the Russian language and literature. Eight group interviews were conducted with schoolchildren in 7th, 8th, and 11th grades. All real names have been substituted by pseudonyms. Observations. Observation of verbal interaction of students during different lessons in 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grades was conducted. Likewise, the students’ verbal behavior was observed outside the classroom in the corridors of the school during the lesson breaks and during national celebrations organized by the school.

7

Results and Discussion

7.1

Spatial Boundaries

Spatial boundaries can shed light on to what degree people wish (or do not wish) to associate themselves with a particular territorial entity, and hence, exhibit increased or diminished emotional attachment to (demonstrate a positive attitude to or aversion from) a host country and a country of origin (or symbolic motherland). This in turn may be reflected in the linguistic behavior of informants (as Interview 3 shows below). The vast majority of students who were interviewed demonstrated a high degree of emotional attachment to Georgia. Interestingly, even those students who were born in Moscow named Georgia as their motherland, emphasizing that this is the place their parents and their roots were from. Interview 1: Lali, female, 15 years old, 8th grade, born in Moscow: My motherland is Georgia, I think. . . My parents are from there, and all, although I was born here.

Typically, these children live in Moscow most of the time (besides summer holidays and occasional visits to their Georgian relatives). During the interviews, many expressed the idea that they like living in the city and that some of them would like to stay in Moscow and get their higher education in Russia. Nevertheless, when, especially older students, speak about Georgia, they refer to it as “their” country while Russia is often mentioned as “the other country.” Interview 2: Nino, female, 15 years old, 8th grade, born in Moscow: I like it here in Moscow, I feel comfortable here. I like big cities Compare with: Tbilisoba (the day of Tbilisi) – we love this festival. For us. . . In Georgia it may not be a big event, but for us. . . in the other country it’s a very big holiday, because all our people gather together.

The data of the interviews reveal an interesting phenomenon: when children speak about things related to Georgia, or recall some events happened there, their Georgian accent, while speaking Russian, becomes more salient. In the

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following interview excerpt, the second word xorosho “well,” which is related to Georgia, is pronounced with more perceptible accent than the first one, which is similar to Russian. Since identity is a psychological variable (Fishman 1999), it could be assumed that Nugzar manifests, in this way, his Georgian identity as well as his belonging to Georgia. Interview 3: Nugzar, male, 13 years old, 8th grade, born in Moscow Interviewer: How do you like it in Russia? Nugzar: I live well, but all the same, in Georgia, it is warmer there. . . it is very good there, and it is not so here. (Rus) Zhivjotsja-to xorosho [xərəʂo], no vsjo ravno v Gruzii tam teplee, vsjo. Tam xorosho [χarəʂo] ochen’. A tut chto-to ne tak.

Another instance of spatial boundary trespassing can be observed in the linguistic landscape of the school. On each floor of the school’s corridors as well as in the area of stairs between the floors, thematic pictures or posters related to the Georgian culture, literature, architecture, and traditions can be found. For instance, on the fourth floor’s corridor, large posters featuring main heroes of famous Georgian literary works are exhibited (Fig. 1). Interestingly, some teachers also feel the need to not only teach the content material to the Georgian students but also to pass on culturally loaded knowledge as well as their vision of what it is to be Georgian. In this regard, it appears that the physical environment of the school contributes to the construction of a Georgian identity. In other words, it can be argued that ethnic Georgian identity is supported and reinforced by the school’s administration and with the help of the actual space of the school’s premises, where, as mentioned earlier, Russian curriculum is followed.

Fig. 1 Posters with Georgian literary heroes in the corridor of the school. (Photo: Author)

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Linguistic Boundaries

The Georgian ethnolect is a variant of the Russian language spoken by ethnic Georgians. In this chapter, we consider only the data of regional ethnolect of the Georgian schoolchildren living in Moscow. Certain phonetic, grammatical, and lexical particularities of the speech are determined by the linguistic interference. The strength of the accent depends on such factors as the age of acquisition, linguistic environment, and typological features of the mother tongue (L1). The major feature of the Georgian ethnolect is a very specific and recognizable phonetic accent. There is a whole series of anecdotes about Georgians speaking the Russian language with jokes on their typical mistakes, which usually are told in a specific phonetic manner. The differences between the Russian and Georgian languages at phonetic and phonological levels lead to language transfer. Two languages belonging to different language families show a high level of dissimilarity. The Georgian language (like other South Caucasian languages) possesses a very complex consonant system, which includes glottalized and aspirated plosives, uvular and laryngeal consonants that are absent in Russian. On the other hand, palatalized consonants, which are an important feature of the Russian phonology, have only a phonetic status in the Georgian system. The vowel systems of the two languages are similar at the phonological level but demonstrate a lot of differences in the positional realization: Russian possesses a phonological stress and a whole system of vowel reduction depending on the position of the stress. The stress in Georgian is fixed and does not influence the quality of the vowel (Aronson 1990, p. 18). Also, in a Russian syllable, a hard or soft consonant influences the quality of the next vowel, but Georgian demonstrates the opposite strategy: the vowel of the syllable modifies the previous consonant (Mujiri and Kapanadze 2014, p. 95). The Russian morphology is fusional, featured by many historical alternations, while the Georgian morphology is predominantly agglutinative (Rudenko 1940, p. 20). The main features of the Russian speech of Georgian schoolchildren at the phonological level can be summed up as follows: (1) insufficient or lack of vowel reduction, (2) wrong stress or prosody, (3) [i] instead of [ɨ]; (4) uvular fricative [χ] instead of velar [x], (5) confusion of palatalized and non-palatalized consonants, (6) aspiration of the affricates [tʲɕ] and [ʦ], (7) hard postalveolar consonants [tʃ] and [ʃ] instead of [tʲɕ] and [ɕː], (8) glottalized plosive consonants instead of plosive, and (9) glide [w] instead of fricative [v]. The main grammatical features which cause interference are fusional morphology (vs. agglutinative in Georgian) and opposition of three genders (no category of gender in Georgian). In addition, mistakes in verb formation and verbal agreement are common. The lexicon of the Georgian children and teenagers is featured by the use of the Georgian loan words (like satsivi, khachapuri – names of dishes) with Georgian phonetics. (For a more detailed analysis of the peculiarities of the Russian speech of Georgian schoolchildren based on the interview data, see Mazurova 2017). Due to all these linguistic factors, it is very difficult for a number of Georgian bilingual children whose L1 is not Russian to get rid of the phonetic features audible

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in their accent, although many children make deliberate efforts to improve their pronunciation. Even those who were born into a Georgian family in Moscow and live in the Russian language environment have not fully mastered native-like pronunciation/speech. One additional factor is that students acquire the pattern of their parents’ speech, who are speakers of the Georgian ethnolect themselves. It should be noted that in the present study, we consider only the families where both parents are Georgian-speaking, and Georgian is a language of the family communication. What is of interest is the attitude of children to the Georgian accent in Russian. All children interviewed, with Russian as L2, note in the interviews that the accent was the main challenge in their acquisition of Russian, and they had difficulties with understanding while speaking Russian in class. When they overcome this difficulty, they start to demonstrate a negative attitude to the strong accent of less-skilled speakers, even their parents.

7.3

Identity and Cultural Boundaries

In terms of nationality, the vast majority of students identify themselves as Georgians. However, when it comes to the question “who do you feel you are” a shift towards the Russian cultural component of their identities can be observed; nearly half of the students (44.5%) reported as having a Russian vestige in their identity, that is, “Georgian-Moscovite” and “Russian-Georgian.” Givi, a teacher of the Russian language and literature, maintains that it is highly important to put emphasis on teaching both the Russian language and Russian literature not only to the Georgian students but also to students of other ethnic groups who are present in the school. Interview 4: A group interview with a teacher of the Russian language (Givi) and a teacher of the Georgian language (Maya). Givi: I believe we need to familiarize children, our students, certainly with the great Russian culture in the first place. I say this as a teacher of the Russian language because our classes are multinational. . .in the 7th grade there are 5 nationalities . . . Givi: The role of a teacher, not neglecting the national culture (Georgian, interviewer), maintaining traditions (Georgian, interviewer). . . Givi: Customs, values. . . is to familiarize them with the great Russian culture in the first place.

It is indicative that in the above interview excerpt, Givi calls both the Russian language and the Russian culture “great.” He likewise emphasizes that the teaching of the Russian language and culture should be done in the first place. This suggests that following the dominant language ideologies, it is vital for all students, regardless of their ethnic, cultural, and religious background to become fluent speakers of and be literate in Russian in order to be ready to take the unified

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state exam and, most importantly, to be able to fully participate as citizens in the multilingual host society. At the same time, Givi stresses that the learning of the Russian language and culture should not be conducted at the expense of the Georgian language and culture. On the contrary, it is stressed that the Georgian language, culture, traditions, and values must not only be maintained but cultivated as well, promoting the local, school-level language ideologies. It could be argued that Givi highlighting the importance and the value of the Russian language and culture promotes equal cultural and linguistic balance, adopting a bicultural approach in his pedagogical practices. In this regard, instances of translanguaging practices between Georgian students and Georgian teachers are not uncommon both during the lesson and outside the classroom walls. Consider the results in Tables 1 and 2 that show students’ responses to the questions: “what language(s) do you use in the lesson when you address a Georgian teacher?” and “what language(s) do you use outside the classroom when you address a Georgian teacher?”, respectively. The results in Table 1 demonstrate that that the majority of students reported they use only or mostly Russian in a Russian-speaking lesson, a fact that conforms to the language ideologies promoted at the state level. However, around one-third of students reported to use Georgian along with Russian when they addressed the Georgian-speaking teacher. This suggests that teachers do not only understand and acknowledge the linguistic needs of some students but also make room for meaningful communication in the classroom in order to ensure that all students receive appropriate linguistic input, and that they produce adequate linguistic output, and are cognitively involved throughout lesson (Lewis et al. 2012b). The need for translanguaging practices is confirmed by a remarkable increase in the number of Georgian students (more than half; see Table 2) using both Georgian and Russian languages (or only/mostly Georgian) when they address teachers of Georgian ethnic origin outside the framework of official language of instruction use. Table 1 Self-reported data on what language(s) students use to address the teacher during a lesson In-classroom language(s) use Only/mostly Georgian Equally Georgian and Russian Only/mostly Russian

% 0 29.8 70.1

Table 2 Self-reported data on what language(s) students use to address the teacher outside the classroom Outside-of-classroom language(s) use Only/mostly Georgian Equally Georgian and Russian Only/mostly Russian

% 6.7 56.7 36.4

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Concluding Remarks

The data shows blurring of spatial, linguistic, and cultural boundaries when it comes to students’ identity construction. The school’s institutionalized support plays an important role in (re)shaping students’ identity in light of the localized language ideologies highlighting the Georgian linguistic/cultural/national element in the context of the Russian school curriculum. The measures adopted by the school’s policy could be argued to be aimed at students’ fostering bilingual/bicultural identity that will allow them to bridge the two cultures: (1) following the dominant language ideologies, students make an attempt to improve their Russian language skills which does not seem to threaten their identity as Georgians; and (2) students negotiate their bilingual and bicultural identities in light of transnational lifestyle in/outside the classroom walls. It was likewise argued that the multilingual urban space of Moscow makes the cultural and linguistic boundaries permeable both for Georgian students and for the Georgian teaching staff. Acknowledgments We would like to thank the Russian Foundation for Basic Research that funded the present project, № 16-04-00474.

References Arefiev, A. L. (2017). Nacional’nye i inostrannye jazyki v rossijskoj sisteme obrazovanija. Moscow: Institute of Social-Political Research, RAS. Aronson, H. I. (1990). Georgian: A reading grammar. Bloomington: Slavica Publishers. Banks, J. (2009). Diversity, group identity, and citizenship education in a global age. In J. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education. New York: Routledge. Blommaert, J., & Van Avermaet, P. (2008). Taal, Onderwijs en de samenleving. De kloof tussen beleid en realiteit. EPO: Berchem. Blommaert, J., Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S. (2005). Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication, 25, 197–216. Fishman, J. (1999). Sociolinguistics. In J. Fishman (Ed.), Handbook of language and ethnic identity (pp. 152–163). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flores, N., & Beardsmore, H. B. (2015). Programs and structures in bilingual and multilingual education. In W. Wright, S. Boun, & O. Garcia (Eds.), The handbook of bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 205–222). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Garcia, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the Twenty-First century: A global perspective. Malden: Wiley/Blackwell. Garcia, O. (2011). Educating New York’s bilingual children: Constructing future from the past. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(2), 133–153. Garcia, O., & Kano, N. (2014). Translanguaging as process and pedagogy: Developing the English writing of Japanese students in the US. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turn in languages education: Benefits for individual and societies (pp. 258–277). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Garcia, O., & Wei, L. (2015). Translanguaging, bilingualism, and bilingual education. In W. Wright, S. Boun, & O. Garcia (Eds.), The handbook of bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 223–240). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Gogolin, I. (2002). Linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe: A challenge for educational research and practice. European Educational Research Journal, 1(1), 123–138. Koryakov, Y. B. (2017). Jazyki Moskvy po dannym perepisi 2010 goda. Rodnoj jazyk, No. 2, 24–44. Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2004). The new division of labour: How computers are creating the next job market. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lewis, G., Johnes, B., & Baker, C. (2012a). Translanguaging: Developing its conceptualization and contextualization. Educational Research and Evaluation, 18(7), 655–670. Lewis, G., Johnes, B., & Baker, C. (2012b). Translanguaging: Origins and development from school to street and beyond. Educational Research and Evaluation, 18(7), 641–654. Mazurova, Y. V. (2017). Typological features of Russian as spoken by bilingual schoolchildren of Georgian descent. Rodnoj jazyk, No. 2, 121–141. Megrelishvili, T. (2014). Russkij jazyk v Gruzii. In Russkij jazyk v mnogorechnom sociokul’turnom prostranstve. Ekaterinburg: Ural University Press. Mujiri, S., & Kapanadze, I. (2014). Teaching difficulties and linguo-didactic description of Russian and German languages vocalism in the Georgian auditorium. Russkij jazyk i kul’tura v zerkale perevoda (pp. 88–101). No. 1. Rudenko, B. T. (1940). Grammatika gruzinskogo jazyka. Moscow and Leningrad. USSR Academy of Sciences. Souleimanov, E. (2013). “A wonderful country in the Caucasus. . .”: A brief history of Russo-Georgian relations in the Pre-Soviet era. International Journal of Russian Studies, 2(1), 109–118. Woolard, K. (1992). Language ideology: Issues and approaches. Pragmatics, 2(3), 235–249.

Part V Language and Heritage

Textual Politics of Alabama’s Historical Markers: Slavery, Emancipation, and Civil Rights

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 History of the Alabama Historical Association’s Marker Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Textual Politics, Historical Responsibility, and Surrogation in Historical Marker Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Textual Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Historical Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Surrogation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Content Analysis Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Discourse Analysis Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Civil Rights Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 African-American Historical Markers and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Other Marker Programs in Alabama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In light of recent protests and debates over Confederate symbols, markers, and flags after the 2015 Charleston shooting, the South remains fertile ground for critically reflecting on the role of history in shaping the present. State historical marker programs are a near ubiquitous feature of the United States’ commemorative landscape, used to retell history at important sites. However, geographers and other memory studies scholars have not devoted much time or effort in

M. R. Cook (*) Department of Geography and Geology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_21

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researching historical markers, in part because they are often considered mundane or they are ignored in favor of researching stand-alone monuments or other memory projects. Engaging with textual politics – the belief that language, words, and narrative are politically active within commemorative landscapes – along with the concepts of historical responsibility and surrogation, this chapter presents an analysis of the Alabama Historical Association’s marker program and its presentation and interpretation of African-American history. Findings include that historical periods of slavery and emancipation have largely been ignored, while the Civil Rights Movement is more widely represented and celebrated as a success story. Keywords

Historical markers · Textual politics · African-American history · Alabama

1

Introduction

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white male, entered a mid-week prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and allegedly opened fire on the congregation with a handgun, killing nine African-Americans parishioners. Following the attack, police investigation and media reporting revealed that Roof had taken photos of himself wearing a jacket with two obsolete flags – those of Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia – used as emblems by white supremacists. Other photographs found online showed Roof burning American flags, brandishing pistols and Confederate flags, and visiting many Confederate heritage sites and slavery museums. Roof’s personal website (lastrhodesian.com – no longer active) contained a manifesto in which he called blacks “inferior” and said “someone has to have the bravery to take it [a race war] to the real world, and I guess that has to be me” (quoted in Robles 2015: n.p.). After years of struggle and debate in South Carolina and other southern states over publically displaying and celebrating Confederate symbols – particularly the Confederate battle flag – in official political iconography and landscapes such as statehouse grounds, Roof’s allegedly murderous actions finally broke the stalemate in many southern states and cities with growing calls to remove these symbols from the landscape (Kurtz 2016). Efforts to erase Confederate symbols have had varying degrees of success at different scales of government. For example, successful legislation at the state level can be seen in South Carolina’s July 2015 law that removed the Confederate battle flag from the Columbia statehouse grounds after decades of controversy (Holpuch 2015; for more on the flag’s controversial history in heavily racialized and religious debates, see Alderman and Campbell 2008; Webster and Leib 2016). However, at the time of writing this chapter, other political actions to remove the battle flag and other Confederate symbols from state flags, license plates, and statehouse grounds in states such as Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi have not yet been successful (Guarino 2015). As Leib (2011) and Webster (2011) have both argued, easily recognizable

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cultural signifiers such as flags and license plates play a large role in maintaining national loyalty among its citizenry as part of repetitious, “banal” nationalism. In the US South, high levels of nationalism among traditional white southerners may be superseded by loyalty to southern Lost Cause mythology, giving symbols like the Confederate battle flag status as “the southern civil religion’s most sacred object” (Manis 2005: 166). In contrast to the oft-drawn out state-level processes, political actions at the local scale have tended to occur either swiftly or not at all. For example, several Mississippi cities – including Columbus, Clarksdale, Oxford, Hattiesburg, Grenada, Magnolia, Vicksburg, and Jackson – have stopped flying the state flag of Mississippi, which includes a representation of the Confederate battle flag, in official capacities following city council decisions or mayoral executive orders (Guarino 2015). The trend to stop flying the Mississippi state flag continued in October 2015 following student-led resolutions at the University of Mississippi and University of Southern Mississippi, but 12 separate bills to change or remove the flag died in committees in the Mississippi state legislature in February 2016 without a majority support among Republican legislators (Atkin 2016). However, in response to these acts of removal, an estimated 23,000 people have attended at least 173 pro-Confederate rallies and protests held across the USA as of August 2015 (Fig. 1, documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and reported in Ingraham 2015). Despite the rhetoric that pro-Confederate rally attendees often cite – namely, that the flag represents “heritage, not hate” – the involvement of documented hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups in planning and attending rallies tends to undermine those claims. As demonstrated by pro-flag rallies, counter rallies by groups supporting racial equality and the removal of Confederate symbols, state legislature decisions, and local ordinances, the American South remains fertile ground for research that critically reflects on the ways that history and public memory shape contemporary debates over race relations and white supremacy. Nowhere is this more apparent today than the intersection in time and space of actors such as neo-Confederates and Black Lives Matter protestors – essentially forces for and against the continued privileged position that Confederate history and ”Old South” glorification have enjoyed throughout much of the South since the end of Reconstruction. However, in the midst of the Charleston massacre’s aftermath and swirling debates surrounding the status of the battle flag, Southern states’ historical markers – some of which also glorify the Confederate South, Lost Cause mythology, and white supremacy – have largely been left out of the conversation. This may be due to a tendency for the general public and scholars alike to think of historical markers as largely banal or less important parts of commemorative and historical landscapes. References to the history of the Confederate States of America, its most celebrated citizens and generals, and the Lost Cause portrayal of the Confederacy as a heroic fight – against great odds and over states’ rights rather than slavery – dot the southern landscape through monuments (Winberry 1983; Savage 1998; Leib and Webster 2015), amusement parks such as Georgia’s Stone Mountain (Essex 2002; Zakos 2015), and historic roadside markers (Alderman 2012; Hanna and Hodder 2014). This chapter

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Fig. 1 Locations of pro-confederate flag rallies after the Charleston 9 shooting on June 17, 2015. Symbol size corresponds to number of attendees (Data source: Southern Poverty Law Center (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2015/07/16/mapping-hate-pro-confederate-battle-flagrallies-across-america, accessed 12 July 2016). Cartography: Linda Sylvester)

focuses primarily upon the latter, examining one of the largest and oldest historical marker programs in Alabama, a state that has long found itself embroiled in controversy over Confederate symbols (Webster and Leib 2001, 2002). This chapter builds upon the work of Alderman (2012), Cook and van Riemsdijk (2014), Hanna and Hodder (2014), and other memory studies scholars by paying critical attention to the role of language in creating memorial landscapes. Highway historical markers are commemorative media that have proven fruitful for scholarship on the narratives that communities author as part of the normative order of remembering the past (Gulley 1993; Alderman, 2012). Roadside markers and other informational memorials such as plaques give historical events a materiality that seems part of ordinary cultural landscapes. However, as Dwyer and Alderman (2008a), Doss (2010), and Cook and van Riemsdijk (2014) assert, public commemoration has become more open to debate in the recent past, and the general public now has greater agency to add the history and experiences of less socially powerful groups to memorial landscapes. Borrowing and expanding upon the research methodology that Alderman (2012) used to investigate the textual politics of state historical highway markers in North Carolina, this research investigates the ways in which three major periods of African-American history – slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement – are represented in (or absent from) Alabama’s historical marker memoryscape. In particular, the chapter asks if the finding of Alderman (2012) that African-American history is largely excluded from public memory in North Carolina holds true for markers created by the Alabama

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Historical Association (AHA) and in what ways Alabama’s memorial landscape may differ. It also addresses broader questions in this research on commemorative justice and the relative inclusion or exclusion of African-American history inscribed into the cultural landscape as text and about how race and racial history are remembered in the South. Alabama’s historical markers make for interesting textual-political investigation for many reasons. First, Alabama is steeped in racialized history like much of the US South, and this history includes a complex amalgamation of white supremacy, AfricanAmerican resistance, and successes and failures for both sides across many decades. Second, Alabama’s historical marker program is organized by a private organization – the Alabama Historical Association – and privately funded by individuals and local groups, in contrast to Alderman’s (2012) study of North Carolina’s public program run by the state government (Alabama Historical Association 2015a). Third, the Alabama Historical Association began its marker program to commemorate important historical sites and individuals in 1949, presenting a sufficiently large enough set of markers to evaluate for patterns. Finally, the AHA is not the only organization in Alabama to install historical markers, which opens the door for comparison between the different organizations’ (including the Alabama Historical Commission and various cities’ historical marker programs) missions and ultimately results in how fairly they represent Alabama history. Although the AHA maintains a website listing with all of its own markers, a searchable (but incomplete) database of markers from the many marker programs across the state of Alabama is maintained by the private website Latitude 34 North. Major objectives of this research are twofold. The first is to conduct a critical (if selective) reading of the words and language used on the historical markers to identify presences and absences of African-American history in Alabama’s public memorial landscape. The second objective is to utilize discourse analysis to investigate whether (and if so, how) African-American history is discussed selectively or in potentially unjust ways socially and historically. The remainder of this chapter first briefly outlines the history of the AHA and its marker program and then turns to relevant cultural-historical geographic literature. Second, the methodology used to analyze the AHA markers is explained. Third, the results of the analysis are discussed in detail, organized thematically by the historical periods of slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, the chapter concludes with some observations of the analytical limitations and continued usefulness of this kind of textual research.

2

History of the Alabama Historical Association’s Marker Program

According to Claire Wilson’s (2011) overview of the AHA’s history, several Birmingham businessmen began the organization in 1947 for the purpose of better promoting the state’s history. Although initially comprising mostly men, the early organization did include some women in prominent roles, including Marie Bankhead Owen (head of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, ADAH) and Maud McLure Kelly, another ADAH employee who was elected

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secretary-treasurer for the new association. The early association was a fairly balanced collaboration between professional historians at Alabama’s many universities and amateurs with an interest in local history. Combined with the fact that the early organization was entirely white, other aspects of Wilson’s (2011) institutional history hint at reasons why the early marker program was overwhelmingly dominated by its focus on white history told largely through white sociopolitical lenses. For example, according to Wilson (2011), the first annual AHA meeting in 1948 emphasized Alabama’s early statehood (an era dominated by the wealthy planter class) and included tours of the First White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery. Wilson (2011) also mentions that while women were included in the association from the beginning, many board members opposed the appointment of a local historian, Margaret Pace Farmer, to serve as the first female president of the board. The typical hallmarks of a conservative Southern region continued beyond merely opposing female leadership, however, up to the AHA resisting the integration of African-American historians and scholars until 1973. It was not until Auburn history professor Allen Jones pushed the organization to integrate in 1972 that it finally considered membership to African-Americans. Despite initially rejecting the membership of Robert D. Reid, one of Jones’s African-American colleagues at Auburn, the board relented in 1973 after Jones threatened a lawsuit that would have generated bad publicity. For new markers to be established, an individual or group seeking a marker must submit an online application with basic information such as the proposed marker’s subject, location, whether funding (sponsors must pay between $2000 and $2600 for markers to be crafted by Ohio-based Sewah Studios) and permission for placement has been secured, and a written draft with sources for the proposed marker text. These applications are submitted to the chair of the Historical Marker Committee at the ADAH, currently Scotty E. Kirkland. Once submitted, the committee, which includes professional historians, editors, writers, etc., works to confirm the historical accuracy of the proposed marker and reserves the right to not include any text that cannot be verified through local materials and archives or through sources such as the Encyclopedia of Alabama or The Alabama Review. After working with the individual or organization on the final text, the AHA committee chair places the order with Sewah Studios. The marker is delivered to the individual or group for final installation, though the AHA provides a list of procedures for placement.

3

Textual Politics, Historical Responsibility, and Surrogation in Historical Marker Programs

3.1

Textual Politics

Geographers have long been interested in studying how public memory shapes people’s understanding of space, place, and historical events that occurred at particular sites (Harvey 1979; Foote 2003; Dwyer 2004; Dwyer and Alderman 2008a). However, in spite of the fact that one of the longest-standing approaches in cultural

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geography research involves reading the landscape as “text” (e.g., Duncan 1990) or as a materialized “discourse” (Schein 1997), few geographers conduct research on the texts or discourses actually manifested in or on commemorative landscape features such as historical markers, monuments, and street names. Nearly all commemorative media found in memorial landscapes rely on text – language, words, and narratives – as visual and even verbal instruments that retell important historical information. These narratives typically give the appearance of being banal and politically neutral, but as Alderman (2012: 358) argues, words “are deeply implicated in the social construction and contestation of history.” Textual narratives found on historical markers help fill in what Brunn and Wilson (2013) have called “geographical silences” that result from uneven knowledge levels people possess about places, but as Schriffin (2001) also asserts, language is inherently part of the power relations in struggles to commemorate past events and claim public space. This signifies that those with the power to establish historical markers can equally challenge or perpetuate geographies of silence pertaining to historical events. Because historical markers like state highway markers or commemorative plaques tend to be visually less striking than other commemorative forms, it is perhaps not surprising that geographers and other memory studies scholars have largely overlooked them. Alderman (2012) contends that the relatively plain appearance and frequent presence of historical markers sometimes lull people into believing that markers are ideologically innocent or somehow beyond possessing social or political power over historical perspectives. Alderman (2012) and other scholars counter this misconception in their research on the sociopolitical nature of public memory and the texts used for commemorative devices. Legg (2005), for example, argues that public memory always simultaneously occurs with selective forgetting and the processes by which narratives are selected to remember and forget are fundamentally social and political. Social and political power are also bound up in decisions over who has the agency to commemorate in the first place – be it the state, the general public, select scholars, or historical societies (Doss 2010; Alderman and Inwood 2013; Cook and van Riemsdijk 2014). Questions that scholars have sought to answer by researching textual politics include how and why people acquire historical knowledge and perspectives from the commemorative landscape. Cook and Alderman (2015) argue that the inclusion of certain texts in the commemorative landscape not only provides historical information to the public but also has the potential to evoke historical empathetic responses in those individuals who encounter the text. In the case of their research on the Stolpersteine Holocaust memorial project, Cook and Alderman (2015) studied text including the names and fates of Holocaust victims embedded in sidewalks across Europe and various responses that the public had when encountering the memorial stones. However, an emphasis on textual politics should note that many people often consume commemorative landscapes uncritically, not questioning what and whose pasts are present/absent. For example, Berlin (2004) found that a major point of conflict in struggles to commemorate slavery concerns the use of language in determining how much (or little) to discuss slavery and how to characterize enslaved communities and their owners. Many antebellum plantation tourism sites in the USA

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very unevenly narrate the history of slavery through text and images used in their tours and marketing endeavors. The result has largely been the absence, invisibility, or lack of a full discussion of slavery on plantation tours and in advertisements like brochures and websites (Butler 2001; Eichstedt and Small 2002; Modlin 2008; Carter et al. 2014). Hanna and Hodder (2014) argue that systematic commemoration of America’s racial history from colonialism through slavery and the Civil War to Emancipation, Jim Crow, and the broader struggle for Civil Rights is needed through monuments, historical markers, performances, and even virtual tours. Using qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) to perform content and discourse analysis of commemorative text found throughout the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Hanna and Hodder (2014) contend that textual landscapes are an ideal starting point to determine how African-American history is integrated into Fredericksburg’s broader historical narratives. Aided by GIS’s spatial analysis capabilities, Hanna and Hodder (2014) found that histories of slavery and emancipation are incredibly rare within the city’s memorial landscape, despite the fact that several markers discussing those themes are located within highly visible and (“visitable”) locations in Fredericksburg. While Hanna and Hodder’s (2014) study is specific to Fredericksburg’s historic landscapes, their findings are strongly mirrored throughout many other southern landscapes of memory, including Alabama’s historical markers.

3.2

Historical Responsibility

Recent research in geography, history, and memory studies demonstrates that many southern heritage tourism sites tend to ignore or resist socially just forms of historical responsibility. Scholars have devoted much attention to the role of plantation tourism destinations – a dominant sector within southern heritage tourism – in largely suppressing African-American history and the brutal realities of American chattel slavery (Butler 2001; Buzinde and Osagie 2011; Dwyer et al. 2013; Carter et al. 2014; Cook 2016, among others). This suppression may take the form of what Connerton (2008: 60) has called “forgetting as repressive erasure,” relegating historical events or people to obscurity or oblivion. In the South, selective forgetting alongside historic preservation and public memory is strategic but also deeply seated. Many examples of repressive erasure can be seen in the literature on slavery and plantation tourism sites. In their study of plantation tourism semiotics, Buzinde and Osagie (2011) use the lens of cultural citizenship to study marginalization of African-American history, looking closely at the relative discursive exclusion of enslaved communities’ heritage at plantation tourism sites and museums. They note (2011: 44) that the discursive dominance of whites’ cultural citizenship – over the enslaved community’s – at many southern plantation tourism sites ultimately results in “a social engineering that celebrates dominant value systems while marginalizing subaltern histories.” As Modlin (2008) demonstrated in his research on North Carolina plantation sites, many plantations not only repress the history of slavery but also rely on a series of myths to deflect public attention away from slavery and

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discourage visitors from seeking more information about the enslaved. These examples, from the much larger body of literature, are demonstrative of what often results at plantation sites that shy away from historical responsibility. In contrast to these sites, however, there also exist plantations and museums that present more historically accurate and inclusive information about slavery and its aftermath. Focusing on Mississippi and Louisiana, for example, Cook (2016) reports on two plantations and a museum that employ counter-narratives of slavery to present historical narratives in more socially just and responsible ways. Rallying the cry for historical responsibility in the US South, Griffin and Hargis (2012) argue that the US South has much in common with newly democratizing nations, particularly after the major accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. Griffin and Hargis (2012) argue that prior to the 1960s, most of the South was in no way a true democracy, but much like former dictatorships or authoritarian countries that transition to democratic rule, a number of legal and social changes have been enacted – often painfully – such as the end of de jure Jim Crow and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. In their comparison, however, Griffin and Hargis (2012: 5) rightly point out that just because the contemporary “South” (a term that encompasses both southern states/institutions and southern people) has become “more equitable, more humane, more just, and more tolerant” than it was in 1965, it does not have carte blanche rights to forget its past. Instead, Griffin and Hargis call for greater historical responsibility, particularly in the form of restorative justice and reconciliation projects. While Griffin and Hargis (2012: 9, emphasis original) highlight that there exists no exact formula for reconciliation and historical responsibility, “each state, each locality, and each generation in the South will have to hew its own path toward redress and restitution, toward repair and redemption. . . [and] we have a responsibility to exact elemental justice for all of us, including our brothers and sisters across the color line.” Tying historic responsibility to counter-narratives and counter-memory, Legg (2005: 181) argues that “subaltern” groups (non-dominant classes, races, castes, or nations) establish sites of counter-memory that provide “an alternative form of remembering and identity” and challenge dominant groups that write selective historical narratives. As seen in North Carolina (Alderman 2012) and in the history of the AHA outlined earlier, powerful white elites have historically been the primary group responsible for historical marker programs that embed history into the cultural landscape. While such decisionmaking processes might seem to be relatively objective, Alderman (2012: 360) argues that the process does not happen in a vacuum: [J]udgments of historical significance are made in dynamic temporal and social contexts. Much more than innocent statements of historical fact, highway markers are culturally relative texts that. . .reinforce a certain world view that allows some social actors and groups to be seen and heard more than others.

Thus, historical markers are not neutral purveyors of history; rather, they are inherently determined through political processes that play key roles in the construction of historical responsibility or irresponsibility in the American South.

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Surrogation

The third theme informing this chapter is that of surrogation. Recognizing the contentious nature of public memory and texts used to represent those memories, Alderman (2010: 91) argues that the politics of remembering African-American history, particularly slavery, should be studied in terms of surrogation: the recognition that “societies create commemorative surrogates to the fill the void in memory and identity left open by slavery.” Alderman asserts that the violence, death, and forced migration inherent in historical slave-holding societies leave emotional, historical, and personal voids – similar to what Eichstedt and Small (2002) have called symbolic annihilation in the context of plantation tourism sites. Social groups and individual actors wishing to retell enslaved communities’ histories must then rely on surrogates, often textual in nature, to “stand in” and fill these voids, an act that Lambert (2007) notes is rarely, if ever, fully successful at meeting expectations to fill the voids. Dwyer et al. (2013) add that, within the context of African-American heritage, some elements of slavery’s suppressed public memory are simply unrecoverable and, therefore, surrogates may take forms varying from sites of heritage and memory to real individuals like Harriet Tubman or even characters like Alex Haley’s Kunta Kinte. In terms of historical markers like those created by the Alabama Historical Association, the commemoration of African-American history will not only be difficult but, in light of the politics of surrogation, always, necessarily, be incomplete. Alderman (2010) found while researching debates over a monument commemorating the enslaved in Savannah, Georgia, that Savannah’s African-American community was divided over the monument’s text. Some felt the description of the Middle Passage was excessive, while others in the community deemed the text to be insufficient. This demonstrates that finding commemorative surrogates for slavery may often involve a struggle over saying too little versus saying too much. Next, the methods that were used to study the Alabama Historical Association’s marker program are described.

4

Methodology

This research draws upon content analysis and discourse analysis as the two primary methods. Supplementing these desk-bound methods, the author also photographed a small sample of markers during August 2014 fieldwork in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In Alabama, he photographed markers that are part of the Alabama Historical Association’s program and other historical markers in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Montgomery. In terms of textual analysis, one common method used in the study of historical markers is content analysis (e.g., Modlin 2008; Alderman 2012; Hanna and Hodder 2014). Content analysis is a relatively simple method of counting the number of times particular words, themes, and people appear within a text. The full text database for Alabama’s markers was obtained through an Internet search for “Alabama historical markers.” Upon discovering that at least two

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separate organizations coordinate and sponsor historical markers in Alabama, the author decided to focus only on those created by the older Alabama Historical Association rather than those created by the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC). Preservationists use the AHC markers to indicate sites, buildings, and objects that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage, or the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register. The AHA markers are more in line with other state highway historical markers, such as those found in North Carolina (Alderman 2012), and they memorialize significant events and people in addition to locations. After narrowing down the study, a document containing the text of all historical markers listed on the AHA website was compiled (Alabama Historical Association 2015b). The index of markers revealed that of Alabama’s 67 counties, 65 have at least one marker. Counties without a marker include Cleburne (northeast Alabama) and Lamar Counties (northwest Alabama). Geneva County (southern Alabama) was one of the most recent to get its first marker in 2015 for the historically AfricanAmerican Countyline Missionary Baptist Church, while Winston County (northwest Alabama) received a marker in 2015 commemorating its first 9-1-1 call in 1968. All of these counties are fairly rural, with populations under 23,000 and relatively low population densities. Unlike North Carolina, which limits their historical markers to a small amount of text (Alderman 2012), Alabama’s marker program is less restrictive, and many markers contain detailed historical accounts spanning both sides of the marker. After compiling each county’s text, the document numbered about 89,000 words. Because of the document’s size, it was deemed impractical to perform content analysis by hand. Instead, NVivo11 was used to run an automated word frequency query for the 1000 most commonly used words (with a minimum of three characters to exclude single letters like N, S, E, W used as abbreviations for the cardinal directions and common two-letter words). The resulting count uses NVivo11’s combined words feature to include stemmed words like plurals, possessives, and various verb tenses. For example, the query for “slave” returns a count of the number of times “slave” and “slaves” are found in the text. The results of the automated content analysis provided interesting findings in and of themselves, as discussed in the following section, but they also informed themes and keywords that were used to inform the discourse analysis. The first content analysis of the marker texts was conducted in 2013. However, upon revisiting the research in 2015, the author found that the AHA website had been removed from the state government webserver to a private website, alabamahistory. net. Since most of the AHA markers created since the 1980s include the year the markers were created, it was relatively simple to perform a second search for new markers in October 2015. The research text database was updated with information and text from 20 new markers from 2013 to 2014. A third search was performed in August 2016, finding 22 markers created in 2015. Content analysis was then rerun to include all the markers through 2015, and only those results are included here. Reading the 42 newest markers’ text revealed that they share much in common with the initial findings, but they also give new insights that are incorporated into the discourse analysis.

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Turning now to discourse analysis methodology, this method begins with Foucault’s (1980: 131) conceptualization that discourse – a “regime of truth” – is tightly woven into the fabric of all societies. Using this definition, discourse analysis attempts to understand and uncover the mechanisms, power relationships, and ideologies that produce and reproduce shared ways of talking and thinking about the world (Waitt 2010). Discourse analysis is a powerful method for revealing societal structures, power relationships, and identities (Dittmer 2010: 282). Waitt (2010: 217) argues that discourse analysis is well established in geography as a method to critically analyze the ideas “used to make sense of the world within particular social and temporal contexts.” Finally, although discourse flows through many media, text and language operate as key vehicles for both discourse and discourse analysis, demonstrated by the work of several geographers and memory studies scholars. Examples include Anderson’s (1991) study of historical racial discourses in Vancouver, Marshall’s (2004) study of the changing discourses of war memorials in Britain, Modlin’s (2008) examination of narratives told on historic plantation tours, and Alderman’s (2012) analysis of North Carolina historical markers. Discourse analysis employed in this research investigates how three significant periods in African-American and US history – slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement – are presented in just or unjust ways vis-à-vis what Dwyer and Jones (2000) have called dominant white socio-spatial epistemology. The analysis was informed by Price (2002) and Alderman (2012), who argue that state historical markers (in North Carolina) present a version of history dominated by events and people most significant to the white community. The research investigates if this pattern of commemorative exclusion holds true in the AHA’s historical markers and in what ways Alabama’s memorial landscape may differ. Delving deeper into these three historical periods, the period of “slavery” was defined as lasting from early American colonization through the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment; “Emancipation” is bookended from the time of Reconstruction through Jim Crow until the beginning of the 1950s; and finally, “Civil Rights” and “Civil Rights Movement” are used interchangeably to refer to the longer history of the Black Freedom Movement beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and continuing to the present. This represents an intentional challenge to the conventional textbook method of bookending the Civil Rights movement using key dates without critically recognizing the longer, ongoing struggle for civil rights.

5

Content Analysis Findings

The NVivo11 content analysis query revealed that most of the top occurring words were consistent with previous research on historical markers such as in Alderman (2012). (See Table 1; Fig. 2.) From this count, several common categories are apparent in the AHA’s marker text. The first of these is the importance of religion and, in particular, marking historically significant houses of worship. Frequently

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Table 1 The 25 most common words on Alabama Historical Association markers Word 1. Church 2. Alabama 3. First 4. County 5. Schools 6. Buildings 7. Site 8. States 9. Montgomery 10. War 11. Baptist 12. Built 13. City 14. Named 15. Street 16. Serving 17. House 18. John 19. Creek 20. Road 21. South 22. Land 23. William 24. Indian 25. Year

Similar words Churches Firsts Counties School, schooling Build, building Sites State, stated, stately, states’ Warring, wars Baptiste, Baptists Cities Name, names, naming Streets Serve, served, serves Houses, housed, housing Johns, John’s Creeks Roads Lands, landed, landing, landings Williams, Williams’ Indians, Indians’ Years

Count 789 681 618 501 440 376 330 314 304 280 278 264 249 237 233 232 230 223 198 196 196 195 190 189 186

occurring words in this category include church, Baptist, Methodist, congregation (s), and Presbyterian. The importance of religion is consistent with Alderman’s (2012) North Carolina study. General terms with civic or state implications – such as Alabama, county, school(s), building(s), state(s), serving, houses, and city – are used frequently, as are additional geographic terms such as site, streets, creek (which may refer to both the water feature and the Native American people) road, south, and land. Only two terms that are connected to time and history appear in the Top 25: First and Year. Other words in the Top 25 include common names (John and William), Alabama’s capital city (Montgomery), and war. Of greater importance for this chapter are terms that refer to racial and ethnic groups. Interestingly, the term Indian and its plural and possessive forms are used on the historical markers 189 times – so frequently that they appear in the count of 25 most common words. With the exception of Creek – which may or may not refer to ethnic identity – Indian and its variants show up more than any other racial or ethnic term. Given that many of Alabama’s historical markers were placed before the current age of what has been termed by some as political correctness, it is not all that

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Fig. 2 Wordcloud of the 25 most common words on Alabama Historical Association markers (Source: author)

surprising that Indian shows up instead of Native American. Only three signs use the term Native American, and these signs were all erected in recent years: in Tuscumbia in 2008 (Colbert County) and in Socopatoy (Coosa County) and Huntsville (Madison County) in 2014. It is also common to encounter the term Negro, used 16 times, instead of Black or African-American on older historical markers, though some of these referents are to proper names such as baseball’s Negro League. The next most frequent potential racial or ethnic term is black(s) – the 88th most used term, with 104 appearances – while white(s) is used 72 times. African-American is used 46 times and Afro-American only once and almost entirely on signs created since the 1990s. Content analysis alone is not an insightful enough method to elucidate why or how these terms are used, but it is important to remember that both white and black may refer to the color of anything – not just a person’s skin pigmentation. It is also instructive to consider that white racial narratives have been socially constructed as normative throughout much of Alabama’s history, and therefore the term white may be used less frequently because it is considered to be the societal default or unquestioned norm. Moving on to the historical time periods under consideration, slave and slaves appear 48 times, while slavery only appears twice, enslaved is used on a single sign, and bondage, chattel, and enslavement are not used at all (Fig. 3). The infrequent references to slavery and related terms would seem to indicate wishes on the part of the Alabama Historical Association or the general public that proposes the historical markers to largely avoid discussions of slavery’s more painful aspects, or they may indicate how politically difficult it can be to find appropriate surrogates for the enslaved. Another example of how the African-American historical-geographical experience has traditionally been silenced in public memory can be seen in the use of the term plantation. Plantation(s) are invoked 34 times on 25 AHA historical markers, but only 9 of these markers have any mention of slaves or

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TENNESSEE Lauderdale

Limeston

Jackson

Madison

Colbert Lawrence Morgan

Franklin

De Kalb Marshall Cherokee

Cullman

Winston

Marion

Etowah Blount Lamar

Fayette

Walker

Calhoun

St-Clair

MISSISSIPPI

Talladega

Tuscaloosa

Pickens

Shelby

Tallapoosa

Coosa Chilton Hale Perry

Dallas Marengo

Lowndes

Butler Monroe

Washington

Crenshaw

Wilcox

Clarke

Chambers

Lee

Elmore Macon

Montgomery

Autauga

Sumter

Randolph

Clay

Bibb Greene

Choctaw

GEORGIA Cleburne

Jefferson

Russell Bullock

Barbour

Pike

Henry

Dale

Conecuh

Coffee Covington

Escambia

Geneva

Houston

Mobile

0

6-10

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FLORIDA

50 km 30 mi

d.maps.con

Baldwin

Fig. 3 County map showing the distribution of Alabama Historical Association historical markers containing the words slave(s), slavery, and enslaved. Cartography by author; base map from d-maps.com (http://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=6552&lang=en)

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African-Americans. Of these nine, none of the markers give any indication of the hardships of enslaved life. Looking at the other time periods, Emancipation is used five times (though abolition is never referenced), and the phrase Civil Rights appears 26 times. The full phrase Civil Rights Movement occurs just 10 times, and freedom movement is not used at all. Interestingly, the phrase civil rights appears on signs in only five counties: once each in Bullock, Calhoun, and Madison counties, twice in Dallas County, and 21 times in Montgomery. For comparison, Confederacy is used 29 times and Confederate appears 126 times across 37 counties (Fig. 4), while the phrase Civil War is found 80 times in the complete marker text across 30 counties. As a spatial pattern, it is worth noting that the Confederacy is commemorated in more than half of all counties in Alabama (for comparison, slavery appears on markers in less than 15 percent of counties), and these markers are concentrated not just in Alabama’s major cities like Montgomery, Birmingham, Mobile, and Huntsville but counties with relatively small populations like Baldwin, Pickens, Dallas, Bullock, and Colbert. This seems to indicate that many Alabamians remain enthusiastic about the Confederacy, and the Lost Cause still plays a major role in Alabama’s commemorative landscape despite the fact that Alabama was not the site of any major military battles during the Civil War. Finally, the content analysis on Alabama’s historical markers supports the hypothesis of many memory scholars that the Civil War dominates public memory in the USA. The keyword Civil War is used 80 times and War Between the States appears 14 times on 13 signs, while other wars are mentioned far less often. These include the Indian Wars (24), Spanish-American War (9), War of 1812 (16), World War I (15), World War II (17), Korean War (3), and Vietnam War (2). In light of the significance Alabamians place on Civil War and Confederate history in their efforts to research, request, pay for, and install AHA markers, it is worth nothing that when taken together, Civil War, War Between the States, and Confederacy referents clearly outrank the eras of slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement, saying much about their relative importance within the state of Alabama. It is also worth noting that despite the presence of War Between the States occurring on markers spanning much of the program’s history (the earliest marker using the text dates to at least 1965 and the most recent was established in 2014), 2016 marker guidelines from the AHA include a Historical Marker Style Sheet that states the preferred style is to now refer to the “Civil War or sectional crisis rather than War Between the States or any other iteration unless in direct quotation” (Alabama Historical Association 2016: 9, emphasis added). This indicates an explicit shift in the organization’s thinking of how history is represented in their markers. The term War Between the States, while not used much during the war, became one of the more popular names for the war in the South. According to Bob Bradley, a former curator with the ADAH (quoted in White 2011), more than 50 names for the Civil War exist in the written record and archives. The fact that people have used so many names to refer to the Civil War, Bradley argues, points to a larger issue: that people cannot agree on what caused the war and what it accomplished. Dr. George Rable, professor of Southern History at University

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TENNESSEE Lauderdale

Limeston

Jackson

Madison

Colbert Lawrence Morgan

Franklin

De Kalb Marshall Cherokee

Cullman

Winston

Marion

Etowah Blount Lamar

Fayette

Walker

Calhoun

St-Clair

MISSISSIPPI

Talladega

Tuscaloosa

Pickens

Shelby

Tallapoosa

Coosa Chilton Hale Perry

Dallas Marengo

Lowndes

Butler Monroe

Washington

Crenshaw

Wilcox

Clarke

Chambers

Lee

Elmore Macon

Montgomery

Autauga

Sumter

Randolph

Clay

Bibb Greene

Choctaw

GEORGIA Cleburne

Jefferson

Russell Bullock

Barbour

Pike

Henry

Dale

Conecuh

Coffee Covington

Escambia

Geneva

Houston

Mobile Baldwin

6-10

1-5

11-20

>20

50 km 30 mi

d.maps.con

0

FLORIDA

Fig. 4 County map showing the distribution of Alabama Historical Association historical markers containing the words Confederate(s) and Confederacy. Cartography by author; base map from d-maps.com (http://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=6552&lang=en)

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Alabama (also quoted in White 2011), argues that the term War Between the States, in particular, became popular in the South because it emphasizes states’ rights and deemphasizes slavery’s role in the conflict. While at first blush, the frequency of the mentions of Civil War, War Between the States, and Confederacy over the historical narratives of slavery, Emancipation, and Civil Rights may seem like a mere numerical priority, but what is more striking is that Alabama’s public memory is so skewed toward white hegemonic narratives. Simply painting the AHA marker program’s pallid commemoration of AfricanAmerican history as numerical under-representation is too easy an excuse. The silences found through this content analysis surrounding African-American history shows that most of Alabama’s memorial landscape tends to ignore or understate the realities of slavery and post-Emancipation African-American history while foregrounding the antebellum period and Civil War. Further, the disparate numerical and spatial patterns of commemorating white history vis-à-vis black history are reflective of other trends, such as the inconsistent historical preservation of sites important to African-Americans. However, as discussed below, there does exist the possibility for some optimism about the inclusivity of African-American history in more recently created markers, and greater nuance can be teased out of a deeper analysis of the AHA markers that do address African-American history.

6

Discourse Analysis Findings

6.1

Slavery

Moving beyond content analysis, racial (in)justice in Alabama’s memorial landscape can be more completely studied using discourse analysis. Here, the results of a deeper reading of historical markers that mention slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement are discussed. Beginning with slavery, Alabama’s historical markers present an incomplete historical narrative of African-American life in the South. The two most common reference to slaves found on the AHA historical markers are indicators that churches included slaves or former slaves among their members and markers at cemeteries where slaves were buried. This echoes McCutcheon’s (one of the interventions found in Nagel et al. 2015) reminder that African-American churches should be understood as historical institutions not only relevant in the context of organizing during the Civil Rights Movement but also having roots as a private body separate from whites during slavery. Twelve churches and four cemeteries have an AHA historical marker referencing slavery, but these markers say very little about the conditions of slavery or the lives of the enslaved. This amounts to very passive accounts of the lives, hardships, and contributions of enslaved Africans by simply presenting the enslaved numerically, perpetuating their objectification. Seven markers (mostly established in the last decade) mention that enslaved people labored on the structure being memorialized. These include enslaved carpenters, bricklayers, canal diggers, and artisans at various plantations and two skilled

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bridge builders. Given how recently they were established, the markers focusing on enslaved labor indicate at least some degree of a shift in public recognition of slavery in Alabama. In addition, four relatively recent historical markers present biographical sketches of former enslaved people – Horace King, Elijah Cook, Delaware Jackson, and Georgia Washington – who went on to become successful businessmen, politicians, or educators. While this number fails to even come close to adequate representation for the multitude of former slaves who went on to achieve success, it does indicate improvement over older markers. These instances of remembering slavery are in line with Alderman and Campbell’s (2008: 338) findings that sites of enslavement across the USA are undergoing symbolic excavation, or “the unearthing of difficult and long suppressed (and repressed) historical narratives. . .through memory work, the construction and representation of the past.” However, while these markers make a much-needed addition to Alabama’s memorial landscape, they are still the product of a relatively whitewashed public memory focused on the “exceptional” slave (one myth highlighted by Modlin 2008, as a common deflection tactic employed by plantation tourism operations) rather than slavery’s more brutal historical facts. Two markers in Montgomery, Alabama’s capital, also stand out as particularly noteworthy for their discussion of slavery. Montgomery’s historical marker memoryscape stands out from the rest of the state not only for its sheer number (as might be expected in the state capital) but also for its greater emphasis on African-American history. The first marker related to slavery entitled “A Nation Divided” takes steps to counter the oft-repeated Southern narrative on the causes of the Civil War by acknowledging that slavery – not states’ rights – was the major factor leading up to the war. The second marker goes farther than any other to spell out the realities of slavery at the Montgomery Slave Market, describing how slaves were sold at auction along with property and livestock (see Fig. 5 for the marker text). In the text from the most recent (2013–2015) AHA markers, slavery continues to be relatively marginalized in the state’s public history. Many of the trends observed in the content analysis continue to be seen in these 42 markers, with churches and civic structures like schools gaining a majority of new markers. References to the Civil War also abound in the text, with multiple appearances of Confederate/ Confederacy. Two markers highlight the lives of former Confederate soldiers, one discusses the Battle of Decatur, and another sign is dedicated to a Union Civil War encampment in Jackson County (the northeastern-most county in Alabama, east of Huntsville). In contrast, slavery is mentioned on a single marker, also in Jackson County. This marker tells the history of Averyville, a “freedmen’s community” established in 1865, but today Averyville is no longer a recognized community and the marker is located on Avery Street in Stevenson, Alabama. The back of the marker goes on to recount the history of a freedman named William Councill, Averyville School’s most famous student who went on to help establish the university that would become Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University in Huntsville. This follows the pattern of markers referring to slavery largely in passing and giving limited focus to select former slaves’ accomplishments.

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Fig. 5 Alabama Historical Association marker Montgomery’s Slave Markets, located near 115 Montgomery Street, Montgomery, Alabama (Photograph by author)

6.2

Emancipation

Turning to the next historical era, Emancipation here refers to the period lasting from the end of the Civil War through Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, to the early 1900s. Both as a time period and social concept, Emancipation is least represented on Alabama’s historical markers in terms of the number of markers, and a detailed discussion of African-American history during the post-Civil War period is largely absent. This is not too surprising in light of how quickly Emancipation and Reconstruction gave way to the birth of the Klan and white political backlash to Emancipation through the passage of Jim Crow laws and legalized segregation (Foner 2014). Many of the markers commemorating Emancipation-era events discuss the creation of schools for former slaves and their descendants, including Sheffield Colored School, Alabama A&M, Selma University, Alabama State University, and two Rosenwald Schools. A marker from 2005 commemorates the city of Freetown from its creation by former slaves in 1867 to its population decline following World War II. Two other markers commemorate annual Emancipation Day celebrations, and seven signs reference Reconstruction. Only four signs referencing Reconstruction make mention of events and people important to African-American history: Antioch Baptist Church in Mount Meigs, which had both white and black members before and after Reconstruction; South Jackson Street in Montgomery, home to African-American John W. Jones, state senator for Lowndes County during Reconstruction; Horace King, the former slave and expert bridge builder (Fig. 6); and Hunter’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, known as the “father of Negro education in Tuscaloosa” (Fig. 7).

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Fig. 6 Alabama Historical Association marker Horace King, located at the Tuscaloosa Riverwalk, Tuscaloosa, Alabama (Photograph by author)

Fig. 7 Alabama Historical Association marker Hunter’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, located at 1105 22nd Avenue, Tuscaloosa, Alabama Photograph by author

In contrast to findings that slavery continues to be referenced relatively infrequently in the 42 newest AHA markers created in 2013–2015, Emancipation features heavily on several new markers. The first such marker, located in Madison County,

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recounts the history of “Buffalo Soldier” regiments made up of freed AfricanAmericans after 1866. The marker explains how Native Americans on the Western Frontier gave troops the “Buffalo Soldier” nickname and includes information on famous African-American regiments fighting in the Spanish-American War. The other major Emancipation-era theme addressed in the newest markers is that of early “freedmen” (a gendered term that comes from the post-slavery Federal Freedmen’s Bureau) education efforts. New markers in Averyville (in Jackson County, mentioned above), Morgan County (a relatively rural county south of Huntsville), Pike County (south of Montgomery, home to Troy University), and Randolph County (a large but rural county bordering Georgia) discuss post-Emancipation and earlytwentieth-century efforts to educate African-Americans. Of these counties, all but Jackson are relatively small with African-Americans making up high percentages of their populations. The newest round of markers in 2015 continues the trend of improvements to the geographical silence surrounding the Emancipation period, with three signs created to designate historical African-American schools (particularly Rosenwald Schools, named for Sears CEO Julius Rosenwald, who in collaboration with Booker T. Washington worked to improve rural African-Americans’ access to education beginning in the 1900s) and Countyline Missionary Baptist Church in Geneva County, established in 1882. Despite these newest markers’ contributions, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related terms such as freed, freedmen, and freedom (used 14 times in the context of ending slavery) make so slight an overall appearance in the AHA’s historical marker collection that it is worth speculating on why Emancipation is so historically marginalized. First, the Emancipation era is likely subject to many of the same forms of trivialization and ignorance as its predecessor, chattel slavery. As Baptist (2014) argues, historians from the late nineteenth century onward have minimalized the political-economic contributions the slavery system made to the early USA. Further, the history of slavery and African-Americans from Emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement is often constrained to a single chapter in most elementary and secondary schools’ history textbooks, leading to widespread ignorance of slaves’ and later freed communities’ lives, jobs, and living conditions. If any attention is given to the time from Emancipation to the early 1900s, historians, authors, and teachers alike tend to focus on select heroes and well-known figures such as Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, and W.E.B. Du Bois. This is similar to what Lee et al. (1998) call the “heroes and holidays” approach to teaching the Civil Rights Movement – an educational practice that focuses more on teaching basic facts of key Civil Rights events and figureheads at the expense of teaching anti-racism and multicultural values that were key to the movement.

6.3

Civil Rights Movement

Several themes and patterns arose out of the discourse analysis of AHA markers focusing on Civil Rights. The first of these reiterated the content analysis finding that churches are key sites of memory in Alabama. Several markers mention that

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churches birthed and housed organizing and resistance efforts during the Movement. The second pattern apparent after a close reading of markers related to Civil Rights is confirmation of the argument made by Alderman et al. (2013: 171) that the “Movement’s popular image has congealed into a celebratory collection of names and dates, the sum of which is a vague, nearly mythic retelling.” By focusing almost exclusively on major events and figures of the Civil Rights Movement – the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the march from Selma to Montgomery, Rosa Parks (Fig. 8), and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – most AHA markers present a narrow understanding of the social complexity, geographic expanse, and everyday individuals’ personal involvement in the Movement. For example, some of the Movement’s most tragic historical events like the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham by four KKK members go completely unmentioned on any of the markers. In fact, the only marker mentioning any act of white terrorism during the Civil Rights Movement is the January 31, 1956, bombing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s parsonage house on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery. It is useful to consider early AHA markers in light of Dwyer and Alderman’s (2008b) argument that there are two ways of remembering the Civil Rights Movement: the “Won Cause” method focusing prominently on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Southern integration during the well-defined 14-year period from 1954 to 1968 vs. the “One Goal, Many Movements” approach, which recognizes everyday people and multiple organizations that contributed to the broader geographical and historical struggle. According to these narrative frames, it is safe to say that early

Fig. 8 Alabama Historical Association marker Rosa Parks Branch Library, located at 1276 Rosa L. Parks Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama (Photograph by author)

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AHA markers tend to fall within the “Won Cause” framework – or, again, what Lee et al. (1998) call the “heroes and holidays” approach – because they focus on King and his ministry at various churches, Rosa Parks, and the successes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march. However, as the AHA historical marker program has expanded over the last decade, it has started to shift away from the “Won Cause” framework to the “One Goal, Many Movements” method of teaching Civil Rights. Of the most recent historical markers (2013–2015), one presents detailed, graphic information about mob violence against Freedom Riders in Anniston, Alabama; another highlights the violent murder of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a northern seminarian working to integrate the Episcopal church in Selma in 1965; and several signs in Montgomery commemorate lesser-known black and white individuals who were active in the Movement. These include Georgia Gilmore, Bertha Pleasant Williams, Juliette Hampton Morgan, Dr. Vernon Johns, Jo Ann Robinson, Thelma Glass, Irene West, Mary Fair Burks, the Honorable Rufus A. Lewis, Rev. M.C. Cleveland, and E.L. and Dorothy Posey (Fig. 9). While the newest 20 markers created in 2013–2014 do not refer directly to Civil Rights events, two signs built at historically black schools (discussed in Sect. 6.2) do include the history of their closing because of federally mandated school integration. This oft-overlooked element of the Movement – mentioned on only four markers – was largely absent from the AHA marker text prior to 2013. In the 2015 round of new markers, six markers discuss Civil Rights events including two more detailed markers for the Montgomery Bus Boycott; one about the George Washington Carver Homes Project in Selma where Dr. King and other leaders lived while organizing the Selma March; a marker discussing the 1963 desegregation of Auburn University by Harold Franklin; the aforementioned marker Fig. 9 Alabama Historical Association marker The E.L. Posey Parking Lot, located at 56 N. McDonough Street, Montgomery, Alabama (Photograph by author)

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covering the murder of Jonathan Daniels; and a marker at the Montgomery County Circuit Court highlighting important Civil Rights legal cases from 1956 to 1960 and sit-ins and marches from 1960 to 1965.

6.4

African-American Historical Markers and Gender

Although hinted at in the preceding analysis, it is worth noting in greater depth that the small number of historical markers devoted to African-American history – and the improvements made over time – is also largely skewed toward male-dominated historical narratives. Women do not feature prominently in much of the markers’ text, particularly those subsections of markers that discuss slavery, emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement. For example, only six women are mentioned by name on any marker with connections to slavery and almost entirely in passing as being connected to churches or being married to an important African-American man. The sole exception is a marker devoted entirely to Miss Georgia Washington, a freedwoman who founded the Peoples Village School in Mt. Meigs in 1893 for black students. Washington, trained at Hampton Institute in Virginia and encouraged by Booker T. Washington to found the school, grew the enrollment from 4 to 100 students in the first year of the school, finally retiring in 1936. As reflected in the small number of markers discussion Emancipation, only two women are mentioned at all in this set of markers: Elizabeth Borden, a woman (of unspecified race) who deeded five acres of land for the erection of Bethel Hill Missionary Baptist Church, and Henrietta Starkweather, a teacher in Averyville (an 1860s freedman’s community). Women’s roles in the Civil Rights Movement has a slightly larger presence in the AHA markers’ text, though the emphasis is clearly skewed toward the “Won Cause” framework of commemorating civil rights in its focus on Rosa Parks, discussed in depth across seven Montgomery markers. Nine other women are mentioned, through only three, Georgia Gilmore, Bertha Pleasant Williams, and Jo Ann Robinson are discussed in any detail. Overall, this reflects the tendency for historical markers to be the realm of not only white history but largely male-dominated history as well.

6.5

Other Marker Programs in Alabama

As mentioned above, the Alabama Historical Association is not the only organization with a historical marker program in the state of Alabama. While photographing AHA markers during fieldwork in Montgomery, the author photographed a few markers that also address difficult histories, including two markers detailing the city’s slave trade and another describing the police murder (and subsequent coverup) of an African-American man named Bernard Whitehurst in 1975 (Figs 10 and 11). The Alabama Historical Commission’s Black Heritage Council and the City of Montgomery, respectively, established these markers. These marker programs are worth discussing because they represent other organizations outside of the AHA that have shown a willingness to emphasize people, events, and places of importance to

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Fig. 10 Alabama Historical Commission’s Black Heritage Council marker Montgomery’s slave traders, located in downtown Montgomery (Photograph by author)

Fig. 11 City of Montgomery historical marker Bernard Whitehurst and the Whitehurst Case, located in downtown Montgomery (Photograph by author)

Alabama’s African-American history. The Alabama Historical Commission’s marker program, for example, only began in 1975 and focuses primarily on properties and individuals with connections to the National Register of Historic Places or the Alabama Register of Landmark and Heritage. Because of its political mandate, the

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AHC’s marker program is smaller in scope than the AHA’s program. Additionally, the AHC was founded after the Civil Rights Movement, and its Black Heritage Council (established in 1984) only commemorates places with historical significance to African-Americans. Subsequently, it is not a stretch to suggest that the AHC’s marker program pays relatively greater attention to African-American history than the AHA. In line with the findings of Alderman (Alderman 2000, 2002) on the contentious politics surrounding the commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Alabama’s multiple marker programs, their institutional histories, and the emphasis of their markers’ texts all demonstrate how politically contentious it can be to represent African-American history.

7

Conclusion

This chapter has presented research on the commemoration of African-American history as found in the Alabama Historical Association’s marker program. Revisiting the objectives of the research, this chapter provides a selective-but-critical reading of AHA historical markers and identifies the relative presence and absence of AfricanAmerican history across the periods of slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil Rights Movement. Discourse analysis revealed that African-American history is discussed selectively in the AHA marker program, and the inclusion of African-American history has improved in recent years but still has a long way to go to be on an equal footing with dominant white Southern narratives of history. I argue that a more socially just version of this memorial landscape could be accomplished if the AHA and other historical marker creators devote more conscious attention to the history of Alabama’s African-Americans, from slavery and Emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement and the broader freedom struggle that continues even into the present. Further, as Inwood and Alderman (2016) remind us in light of the Charleston massacre, challenging historical narratives like the Lost Cause by taking down the Confederate Flag – while admirable and necessary – is not the same as a long-term solution to structural racism and inequality in our society. Inwood and Alderman, drawing on Till’s (2012) notion of memory work, argue that commemorative change, combined with traditional activism, can be the impetus for increased political consciousness that can lead to political change. Through the interventions of individuals and groups who research, propose, and ultimately pay for the markers, the memory of some aspects of Alabama’s racialized past – particularly the Civil Rights Movement – has been inscribed in the landscape in a more comprehensive way for present and future generations. Viewed through the lens of historical responsibility (Griffin and Hargis 2012), the recent increase in Alabama’s historical markers that openly and frankly address slavery and other historical events important to AfricanAmericans presents a remarkable challenge to the typically white-dominated control of commemorative landscapes. Still, there is much work to be done. A quick Internet search for other key African-American historical events revealed that many are still missing from Alabama’s historical marker landscape. These include any mention of lynching, the formation of the early Black Panther Party in Lowndes County, or the Tuskegee

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Institute (aside from one marker about World War II fighter pilot, Sherman W. White, Jr.). This research can also be greatly expanded, as it only begins to delve into issues of social justice and textual politics in the South, and there are inherent methodological limitations in relying solely on content and discourse analysis. Future plans for this research are to expand the analysis into other Deep South states – particularly Mississippi and Louisiana – to evaluate textual politics in these former slave states’ historical markers, as well as expand the methodology to include qualitative interviews of key players in each state’s historic marker program(s) to understand the political decision-making processes. At a time when it seems that so many activists are waging fights for social justice causes across the US South, one could be forgiven for (mistakenly, in the author’s opinion) thinking that historical markers are a trivial part of these causes. Critical historical geographers and other scholars (e.g., Alderman 2010, 2012; Alderman and Inwood 2013; Buzinde and Osagie 2011; Hanna and Hodder 2014) are quick to argue that censure or willful forgetfulness of slavery, Jim Crow, and other racially discriminatory projects throughout US history continue to have negative repercussions on efforts to rectify and reverse racial discrimination in the present. In light of ongoing Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements, this research reminds us, too, that black history and black geographies matters.

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Mayan Languages in the United States

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María Luz García

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Research on Maya Communities and Language in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Place of Mayan Languages in US-Based Maya Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Mayan Languages and Discrimination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Mayan Languages in Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Mayan Languages in Social Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Mayan Languages in the Courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Future of Mayan Languages and Mayan Languages in the USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Digital Resources for Maya Communities in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The family of Mayan languages is composed of some 30 distinct languages that are natively spoken in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. In recent years, speakers of these languages have immigrated to the United States in rapidly increasing numbers and have formed communities in rural and urban locations throughout the country. This chapter considers the place of Mayan languages in Maya communities throughout the USA from both an institutional and an interactional perspective. In schools, courts, and social services, the formal codification and informal effects of dominant language ideologies have had serious consequences for the speakers of Mayan languages. Meanwhile, ideologies and practices of language use vary across communities with different histories and different dynamics, as speakers of Mayan languages come into contact with

M. L. García (*) Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_210

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native speakers of other Mayan languages, Spanish, or English. This chapter concludes with reflections on the implications that the growth of Maya communities in the USA has for the continued vitality of Mayan languages and their place among communities of speakers. Keywords

Maya · Immigration · Diaspora · Linguistic ideology · Institutional language

1

Introduction

Thirty distinct Mayan languages are spoken throughout southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Although these languages are genetically related to each other, they are not mutually intelligible. Likewise, the social contexts in which they are spoken are quite different, and some languages, like Itzaj, have only 30 speakers, while other languages, like K’iche’, have almost a million speakers (Aissen et al. 2017). Even the more widely spoken languages, however, are threatened by social and economic pressures that favor the use of Spanish or English, making the future of Mayan languages uncertain. Recently, use of Mayan languages has taken a new direction as speakers of Mayan languages have immigrated to the USA and formed communities in both rural and urban locations throughout the country. Some US Maya communities, like Yucatec communities in California, have their roots in the Bracero program of the 1940s, which sponsored the immigration of workers from Mexico to the USA. Others, like the Q’anjob’al communities in Florida, first arrived as refugees fleeing the violence of war in Guatemala in the 1980s. Since the early years of the 2000s, the presence of Maya communities has grown significantly in response to transnational economic, social, and political changes. For example, Ixil communities, especially those in Virginia, Ohio, and Florida, began to grow more recently and expanded significantly after 2006. These communities range from rural areas centered around food processing jobs, to higher income suburbs where day labor is needed, to towns with easy access to agricultural work. In each of these different environments, Mayas have relied on each other for companionship as well as access to employment and everyday information about establishing households in the new locations. As their numbers have grown, communities have formed. This chapter considers the role of language in these communities, first by introducing the diversity that exists among communities and then evaluating language-related issues that speakers of Mayan languages face. It considers the presence of Mayan languages in US institutions like courts, schools, and social services, as well as the role that language plays in everyday interactions of Mayas in the USA. Ideologies about the use of Mayan languages, Spanish, or English, and the role of language as both constructing and reflecting culture are key. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of these observations about the use of Mayan languages for communities of speakers, for those who work with speakers, and for the continued vitality of these languages.

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Research on Maya Communities and Language in the United States

No reliable information is available on the number of Mayas in the USA today, though estimates range from 500,000 to 1,250,000 (Huitzil 2014, pp. 32–33). In part, this is a result of the difficulty that community members with limited Spanish or English proficiency have in responding to questions on census forms, and in part because those who lack legal documentation status or live in mixed status communities often do not respond to census questionnaires. Likewise, even in qualitative studies, the names of cities with large Maya communities are often left anonymous or given pseudonyms. Nonetheless, general trends for the growth of Mayan communities in the USA in the past 15 years have become clear as indigenous populations from Latin America are among the fastest growing immigrant groups in the USA. Although there is quite a bit of diversity in Maya communities in the USA, some patterns are noteworthy. More recently established Maya communities often began with the arrival of young men. In later stages, women also began to travel to the USA, at times with their children, and unaccompanied minors also arrived in significant numbers. As communities became more established, families were either reunited in the USA or new Maya families were formed. In large part, this transition from temporary migration to longer term migration coincides with changes in US immigration policy which made it more difficult for people to travel back and forth. State-sponsored violence as well as political and economic instability have been factors affecting the increasing number of Mayas in the United States. Guatemala’s prolonged period of civil war from 1960 until 1996 targeted Mayas in what the United Nations has now officially deemed genocide of four of Guatemala’s Maya populations. Continued violence as well as the economic destruction left by war has contributed to the growth of Maya communities in the United States. Likewise, in southern Mexico, violence and economic instability have contributed to larger Maya communities in the USA. However, in the case of Maya communities that trace their origins to Mexico, older labor agreements like the Bracero Program, which provided temporary contracts to laborers from Mexico, also led to the creation of Maya communities in the USA during an earlier period.

3

The Place of Mayan Languages in US-Based Maya Communities

Maya communities vary greatly with regard to use of Mayan languages in public spaces. Factors like frequency of interactions with members of other language communities, the degree to which multilingualism was present in the wider US community before Maya communities were established, and the length of time that the community has been established all affect the place of Mayan languages in US-based Maya communities.

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Mayan Languages and Discrimination

Because of the close association among language, ethnicity, and race in Guatemala and the USA, use of Mayan languages has often been stigmatized in both overt and covert ways among Mayas themselves and between Mayas and non-Mayas. One subtle but pervasive indication of this discrimination occurs through the use of the word “dialect” to refer to indigenous languages. In academic work on linguistics, “dialect” refers to a variety of a language spoken by a particular group of people. Given this understanding, the English language has several dialects – British English, Southern English, African American English – and every speaker of English speaks some dialect or another. Mayan languages likewise have various dialects, but, like English and German, the Mayan languages K’iche’, Ixil, Yucatec, and Q’anjob’al are all distinct languages rather than dialects of each other and are not mutually intelligible. Speakers themselves often refer to their languages as dialects, and in fact this usage is quite common in Guatemala. In the Guatemalan context, Romero (2012, p. 22) notes the use of “dialect” to refer to the widely held belief in Guatemala that Mayan languages are not fully formed languages but rather “dialects,” “lacking a grammar, a literature and the wherewithal to express modern ideas and complex thoughts.” Mayas and non-Mayas, in the USA and Guatemala, who use this term to refer to Mayan languages are often not aware of this background. Many consider “dialect” the appropriate term because of a misconception that the languages are more closely related or because they are not the national language of a country (like Spanish and English are, for example). Regardless of the intentions of individual speakers, continued use of the term perpetuates a devaluing of the status of Mayan languages by reinforcing ideas about Mayan languages that are not true, by marking them as distinct from and somehow less than the dominant languages that they come into contact with, and by allowing a history of negative associations with the term and with the languages to persist. A large number of Mayan speakers in a community do not necessarily coincide with public use of Mayan languages. Some speakers fear that use of a Mayan language marks them as different and may result in the community being targeted as undocumented or otherwise set apart (B’atz 2014). Many Maya communities, like those in Los Angeles, for example, are surrounded by a larger Latino community in which Mayan languages may be stigmatized and a part of larger discrimination against indigenous people (B’atz 2014, p. 199). In some spaces, English speakers fear that the use of distinct Mayan languages in a multilingual community could be divisive (i.e., that school children use their native language to insult children who speak another language or that privileging one language in a public forum will create resentment among speakers of the other language). As a result, Spanish or English are often encouraged over the use of Mayan languages in public spaces. However, this view comes from a language ideology that is dominant in the United States that monolingualism is normal and necessary for unity, but this ideology is not one that is shared in other communities throughout the world and throughout history. It is important to note that Maya communities in Guatemala and Mexico have a long history of multilingualism, and in fact, many Mayas in the USA speak more than one

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Mayan language. However, the immigrant context, lack of knowledge in the USA about the distinctiveness of Mayan languages and their role in Maya communities, and narrow ideologies of monolingualism that dominate in the USA negatively impact the use of Mayan languages in public spaces in the USA.

3.2

Mayan Languages in Schools

The patterns of recent Maya immigration to the USA have had a significant impact on schools. The increase in immigration during the past 12 years has included a high proportion of minors. In addition, although initially immigration was mainly accomplished by young men (both minors and adults), today, Maya communities include a significant number of families including children, some of whom were born outside the USA and some born in the USA. School experiences of children who speak Mayan languages vary depending on the history of the wider US community and that of their parents’ community of origin. For example, Ixil children arriving in Ohio more often come from smaller, more rural towns in the Ixil area and often speak less Spanish than Ixil children arriving in Virginia. Ixil children arriving in Virginia more often come from the larger city of Nebaj where Spanish is used much more widely, particularly among school-aged children. Both the Ohio and Virginia communities now include a significant population of Ixil children born in the USA. Many of these children do not speak Ixil, and in fact, some do not speak Spanish either as parents place a high priority on assuring that their children have access to English from an early age. Likewise, school districts where Ixil children arrive in Virginia have a longer history of work in recent years with students who do not speak English, whereas for many Ohio communities where the Ixil children arrive, school districts have only recently begun to make provisions for the education of non-English speaking students. Although in some cases teachers have welcomed these new students and the incorporation of cultural and linguistic diversity into their classes, in other cases, teachers or administrators have resisted these changes. As powerful institutions of socialization within the community, schools play an important role in creating and reflecting attitudes and ideologies that are more broadly shared in the community. Discrimination against indigenous people in Spanish- or English-speaking communities is present in schools as well. For example, the Oxnard School District in California prohibited students from using the term “oaxaquita,” which literally means “little or childlike person from Oaxaca,” referring to a southern Mexican state with a high population of indigenous, largely non-Maya people. In this context, the term was used pejoratively to refer to people from Oaxaca, and it was being regularly used as an insult in the schools (Baquedano Lopez and Janetti 2017, p. 166). In addition to such overt practices of discrimination, assessment practices in schools often disadvantage Mayan language speaking children. For example, the elaborate and highly structured storytelling practices that Maya schoolchildren are socialized into in their homes and communities do not map onto more temporally linear structures of academic discourse. However, a lack of awareness that all

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speaking is a culturally particular and patterned activity allows mainstream Englishspeaking practices to be taken for granted as an invisible and unmarked norm while Maya children are then assessed as lacking or deficient (Baquedano Lopez and Janetti 2017). Another trend that is common in US schools and also reflects wider social patterns is the erasure of indigenous identities and with them the erasure of indigenous languages. In Ohio, Ixil, K’iche’, and Awakateko speakers are collectively referred to along with non-indigenous Mexicans as “Hispanics.” Likewise, in San Francisco, Yucatec schoolchildren are rarely identified as Yucatec but are referred to collectively along with indigenous and nonindigenous children from Latin America as “Latino.” This pattern of identifying Mayan language speaking children only as “Hispanic” or “Latino” is common throughout the country. As a result, children receive second language instruction relying primarily on Spanish (though in some cases even access to Spanish is limited), a language that is not related to Mayan languages, even though in many cases children have limited fluency in Spanish. Furthermore, such practices obscure recognition of the children’s native language, their cultural background, and the discursive practices of their community. Eventually this mismatch between instruction and student background often leads students to fall behind academically (Baquedano Lopez and Janetti 2017).

3.3

Mayan Languages in Social Services

Building on the 1964 Civil Rights act, in 2000, former president Bill Clinton issued an executive order requiring any agency receiving government funding to provide clients with access to interpreters who speak their language. Although this was an important first step towards access to social services, linguistic, cultural, and social barriers persist. Institutions often hesitate to dedicate funds to hiring professionally trained interpreters of indigenous languages, instead “making do” with a Spanish interpreter or informal translations by a family member. Furthermore, communicational norms of indigenous language speakers and those working in US institutions may differ significantly. Speakers of Mayan languages may consider medical interactions to be between a doctor and an entire family rather than a strictly doctorpatient interaction. In these Maya approaches to medical interactions, any participant can ask or answer a question at any time, and the family as a group makes decisions about treatment options (Barrett and Cruz 2016). In interactions involving siblings, older siblings may be responsible for conveying information on behalf of younger family members, and younger family members who may be patients may feel that conveying this information themselves is disrespectful (Barrett and Cruz 2016). Maya norms of conversation which involve a listener repeating part of what was said in the previous turn in their own response may frustrate or confuse providers of social services who may confuse repetition for agreement. Likewise, limitations on the time and resources that service providers can put into effective communication limit the access of speakers of Mayan languages to resources in the USA (Barrett et al. 2017).

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Other concerns also limit the degree to which speakers of Mayan languages access social services. Fear of the consequences that applications for social services could have for legal status prevents many Mayas from applying (Huitzil 2014). Others find the process of applying for social services to be inaccessible as a result of bureaucratic complexities and the significant time required. This process is made more difficult by assumptions about language use. Many institutions lack not only access to Mayan language interpreters but also to Spanish speaking employees. Likewise, governmental and nongovernmental organizations designed to work with immigrant and refugee communities often do not prioritize hiring Spanishspeaking employees. Print materials are likewise inaccessible. Although Mayas are often more literate in Spanish than in Mayan languages, the type of Spanish used in such materials is often dense and difficult to understand and depends on cultural knowledge that may not be shared. As a result, access to social services or participation in government activities like paying taxes often depends on speakers of Mayan languages making use of Maya social networks for assistance. In other cases, social services have not only been inaccessible, they have also been detrimental to speakers of Mayan languages in the USA. The inability of social service workers to interact with parents who primarily speak Mayan languages has been a significant factor that can play a part in Maya parents losing custody (temporary or at times permanent) of their children. In some cases, speaking an indigenous language without speaking Spanish or English has itself been claimed as endangering a child, whereas in other cases, a failure to seek out qualified Mayan language interpreters has resulted in a lack of access to legal counsel. Additionally, communication failures have precipitated involvements with legal or immigration systems where again inability to interact with speakers of Mayan languages can contribute to a loss of custody. However, the problem often goes unnoticed due to the tendency to group Maya families under broad categories like “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Likewise, language often serves as a proxy for other forms of racial and cultural discrimination so that problems centered around language use cannot be isolated from other social factors. The best-known case of such discrimination is that of Cirila Baltazar Cruz, a Chatino (a group that is indigenous to Oaxaca but not Maya) mother whose daughter was taken from her after a social worker falsely accused her of being a sex worker even without access to a Chatino language interpreter. Even after the allegations were proven false, Baltazar Cruz again lost custody of her daughter after English speaking foster parents argued that the mother’s inability to understand English would cause “developmental problems” for the child, and the judge agreed (Romero 2015, p. 157). Although she eventually regained custody of her daughter, the courts nonetheless requested that this mother learn English before being reunited with her baby (Andrapalliyal 2013, p. 174). The logic that linked language, culture, and the well-being of children was also a factor in the case of María Luis, a K’iche’ woman who lost custody of her children for four years. Legal problems began after this mother took her 1-year-old daughter to the hospital for a respiratory infection and did not return for a follow-up appointment which she was informed of only in Spanish, not her native language. After the missed appointment resulted in a visit from social services accompanied by the

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police, Luis’s immigration status came into question, further complicating interactions with police. As her two children were placed in foster care, she was deported, and social service workers did not inform her of the possibilities for regaining custody after deciding that the children “would be better off staying in the U.S.” (Briggs 2012, pp. 273–274). Such possible repercussions in which communicational difficulties or language discrimination might lead to intervention of the state prevent speakers of Mayan languages from accessing medical care for themselves and children.

3.4

Mayan Languages in the Courts

As the number of Maya immigrants to the USA has increased in the past 10 years and as policy changes have pushed speakers of Mayan languages through immigration courts at increasingly fast rates, problems facing speakers of Mayan languages in US court systems have become especially acute. The problem is not only a lack of qualified interpreters for some languages or institutional failure to seek out qualified interpreters, but discursive differences that are at the intersection of language and culture between speakers of Mayan languages and the discourse of US court systems. Identifying and addressing these differences and the miscommunications and injustices that result are especially difficult given the language ideologies that govern courtrooms as well as structural obstacles in how court systems operate. The lack of interpreters for some Mayan languages has gained public attention in recent years. This is particularly the case for languages like Ixil and Q’eqchi’ in which the number of speakers in the USA has increased dramatically yet very few speakers have the legal status required to seek training and interpret freely. Because these are “lesser spoken languages,” there is very little accountability for interpreting. Brody (2017) notes that in her own experience as a Tojolab’al interpreter, larger, more established interpreting companies do not adequately assess the performance of interpreting in Mayan languages that have smaller communities of speakers in the USA. However, organizations like the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binaccionales (FIOB – Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations), Mayab’, and Mayan Interpreters have focused on training speakers of indigenous languages as interpreters. FIOB, which has been offering trainings since 1996, reports that native speakers of indigenous languages who are trained and qualified interpreters face a lack of recognition for their professional status as many in official capacities seek to discredit or undermine their work as indigenous language interpreters. As a result, speakers of Mayan languages have limited access to systems of justice in a language that they are comfortable speaking. Compounding the difficulties for speakers of Mayan languages in US courts, popular language ideologies are institutionalized in US court systems in ways that prevent Mayas from having access to systems of justice. Court systems in the USA are governed by a principle of “referential transparency” in which words are taken to be simply vehicles for referential meaning which is either true or false but does not consider the other ways that we use words to make meaning (poetically or as a way

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to align our own speech with that of others, for example). This privileging of reference allows words to be detached from cultural and discursive context and assumes that they can be unproblematically transferred from one language to another without a loss of meaning (Haviland 2003, p. 767). However, this way of thinking about language inhibits courtroom communication involving the speakers of Mayan languages. Brody (2017, p. 162) notes inattention to cultural differences limiting communication between speakers of Mayan languages and non-Maya interpreters, including factors such as body language, eye contact, and conversational and discursive norms. Maya participants have different expectations about the discourse appropriate for courtrooms and the roles of the various participants. In circumstances in which an immigration officer or a judge expects cross-examination, Maya interviewees, witnesses, or defendants often expect that they are being called upon to provide a narrative of their experiences. These narratives have very specific conventions within Maya contexts of speaking. The fact that these conventions are not shared by those who do not speak Mayan languages results in incomplete understanding of Maya narratives or a perception that Maya participants are being uncooperative. Mayas struggle with the unfamiliar question-and-answer format of asylum interviews which do not permit the types of narratives that they feel are appropriate. Questions about an interviewee’s occupation in Guatemala, for example, might be common in an asylum interview but fall outside the scope of the narrative that asylum seekers expect to provide. As a result, the Mayan speaking interviewee often continues with their narrative while the interviewer becomes increasingly frustrated at what is perceived as a refusal to answer basic questions. Language ideologies that focus only on the referential meaning of language without accounting for discursive and cultural differences are often so taken for granted that they are invisible even for those working on behalf of Mayas. As a result, it can be difficult for public defenders and immigration lawyers to understand the causes of communicational difficulties even with the assistance of a qualified interpreter. Because their focus is primarily on the referential meaning of words, the possible explanations that attorneys have for misunderstandings are limited to problems of lexical translation (i.e., there may not be a word for “judge” or “third degree” in Mayan languages). Although differences in vocabulary are undoubtedly present, they fail to explain miscommunications. When explanations move beyond perceived deficits in Mayan languages, lawyers, judges, and interpreters have come up with strategies that consider the different communicative norms of Mayan language speakers from that of the courtroom (Brody 2017). Mayan languages are used less frequently in immigration legal proceedings as a result of policies designed to speed the processing of immigrants through the immigration court systems. Operation Streamline, implemented in 2005, requires federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all persons crossing the national border unlawfully. As a result, court dockets have been overburdened and as many as 80 defendants are tried en masse during hearings in which they plead guilty in order to avoid the possibility of lengthy prison sentences (Lydgate 2010). In such hearings, speakers of Mayan languages are not offered interpretation in their native languages.

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Some speakers have been able to contest these proceedings on the grounds that they did not have access to counsel nor were they able to understand the proceedings themselves and therefore their right to due process was violated. These issues of language access are persistent through various levels of the immigration system as border patrol agents who are not bilingual in Spanish are provided 8 weeks of training in Spanish and are not required to recognize indigenous people’s right to communicate in their primary language (Gentry 2015, p. 11), though the Department of Homeland Security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement have published language access plans on their websites, albeit with uneven implementation (Newdick and Romero 2019). In fact, policies for determining the need for an appropriate Mayan language interpreter are inconsistent and largely undefined throughout the US immigration system (Gentry 2015).

4

The Future of Mayan Languages and Mayan Languages in the USA

Growing Maya communities in the USA are changing the story of Mayan languages. On the one hand, many Maya children being raised in the USA are not acquiring Mayan languages at the same rate as Maya children in Mexico or Guatemala. Structural and overt racism often discourage speakers from using their native language in public spaces or from passing the language on to children. Many Maya parents in the USA view the loss of indigenous languages as inevitable, whereas acquisition of English is seen to be something “valuable” for the child (Bishop and Kelley 2013). In Ixil communities in Ohio, parents often actively seek out and pay a higher price for a native English-speaking babysitter, seeing this as an investment in the future of their children. As a result, by age five, some of these children no longer understand Ixil and are at best passive speakers of Spanish, regardless of the fact that their parents do not speak English. In addition, communities of speakers in the USA are also separated from the contexts of some of the wider domains in which Mayan languages are used in Mesoamerica. They are physically separated from grandparents and other elderly community members as well as Maya priests and other practitioners of specialized language. However, although the monoglot ideology of the USA is so naturalized that it often seems inevitable, it is important to recognize that this is only one possible ideology regarding the relationship between language and community. Maya communities have existed in multilingual contexts for hundreds of years, and although powerful ideologies in the USA that normalize monolingualism have impacted Maya communities, in many cases, this norm of multilingual community living has continued in the USA. Just as in Mesoamerica if not more so, Maya communities in the USA live in close proximity to speakers of other Mayan languages, and multilingual activities are common (Fig. 1). In The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South, Leon Fink (2003) cites a labor organizer who noted that at a labor protest, organizational meetings were regularly translated into seven or eight Mayan languages as workers together devised strategies. In Virginia,

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Fig. 1 Maya students participate in an art workshop with the Immigrant Worker Project in central Ohio. (Photograph by Jogendro Kshetrimayum)

some native speakers of K’iche’ relate that they learned to speak the Ixil language fluently not in Guatemala, but in the USA because they had been living and working with Ixil speakers in the USA for several years. Likewise, some Maya couples in Ohio married across language groups and have since learned their spouse’s language which they regularly speak in the home, even if children are not acquiring these languages (in part a consequence of long work hours or work schedules that do not coincide with children’s school schedules). The future of Mayan languages is also impacted by the presence of Mayas in the USA as advanced students and scholars. Maya linguists trained in US universities have conducted large-scale and high-quality language documentation projects (Vázquez Álvarez 2011; Mateo Toledo 2008, 2012, 2017; Can Pixabaj 2007, 2015) that have contributed significantly to the academic understanding of Mayan languages. They have also gone on to lead community-based initiatives in Mexico and Guatemala to discuss norms for the standardization of written Mayan languages, and they have led courses and workshops for Maya teachers and other university students who will teach Mayan languages. Their projects have resulted in the production of Mayan language texts for use in Maya communities. Some of these efforts have begun to make use of social media as linguists, writers, and Mayan language rights activists regularly make use of Mayan languages on Facebook, perhaps the most popular form of social media use in Maya communities. This use promotes the visibility of the written use of Mayan languages in a domain that is currently dominated by Spanish and English in the social media use of speakers of Mayan languages. Although Mayan languages appear relatively infrequently in social media use, there is relatively more presence of Mayan languages through videos uploaded to Facebook accounts. Live videos of events in Guatemala

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help connect communities to current events in their home towns, allowing them to participate vicariously in church services or comment on meetings and news broadcasts from afar. Other Maya community leaders in the USA have been active in nongovernmental agencies and have focused their efforts on making language services available to Maya communities in their interactions with state institutions. The Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binaccionales, the Liga Maya, and Mayab’ are all run by indigenous people of Mesoamerica. These organizations prioritize training of native speakers to interpret in Mayan languages. They work together with Maya communities in the USA and organizations, offices, and government services that work with Mayas to ensure linguistic rights of speakers of Mayan languages. Mayas in the United States have likewise been active within their own communities to promote the use of Mayan languages and knowledge about the languages (Fig. 2). Several Catholic churches offer regular Masses, religious instruction, and religious activities that are primarily in Mayan languages. Organizations offering classes in Mayan languages are especially prominent in California, particularly in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas where Maya communities are large. In San Francisco, Asociación Mayab’ regularly holds classes in Yucatec Mayan while in Los Angeles, B’atz (2014) reports well attended Q’anjob’al and K’iche’ classes as well as the use of Mayan languages in community celebrations reminiscent of celebrations in Guatemala but adapted to US contexts. These activities reflect the

Fig. 2 Sawdust carpets by Hector Castellanos in Hispanic-Maya celebration in central Ohio. (Photograph by Jogendro Kshetrimayum)

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central role of language in the way that Maya identities are perceived and experienced in the United States and represent an act of resistance to continued discrimination as it is often practiced through the use of language (B’atz 2014).

5

Digital Resources for Maya Communities in the United States

Asociación Mayab’ http://www.asociacionmayab.org/index.html Chqeta’maj le qach’ab’al K’iche’!: A Beginner to Advanced Level K’iche’ Online Course https://tzij.coerll.utexas.edu/ Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binaccionales http://fiob.org/en/ Mayan League http://www.mayanleague.org/

References Aissen, J., England, N. C., & Maldonado, R. Z. (Eds.). (2017). The Mayan languages. London: Routledge. Andrapalliyal, V. (2013). The CPS took my baby away: Threats to immigrant parental rights and a proposed Federal Solution. Harvard Law & Policy Review, 7, 173–197. B’atz, G. (2014). Maya cultural resistance in Los Angeles: The recovery of identity and culture among Maya youth. Latin American Perspectives, 41(3), 194–207. Baquedano Lopez, P., & Janetti, G. (2017). The Maya diaspora Yucatan-San Francisco: New Latino educational practices and possibilities. In S. Salas & P. R. Portes (Eds.), US Latinization: Education and the New Latino South (pp. 161–183). Albany: State University of New York Press. Barrett, R., & Cruz, H. (2016). Healthcare interactions in indigenous Mesoamerica. South Eastern Medical Interpreters Asssociation continuing education seminar. Lexington. Barrett, R., Cruz, H., & García, M. L. (2017). Difficult interpretations. Anthropology Newsletter, 58 (4), e142–e145. Bishop, L. M., & Kelley, P. (2013). Indigenous Mexican languages and the politics of language shift in the U.S. In C. Benson & K. Kosonen (Eds.), Language issues in comparative education (pp. 97–113). Rotterdam: Sense. Briggs, L. (2012). Somebody’s children: The politics of transnational and transracial adoption. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Brody, M. J. (2017). Court interpretation of an indigenous language: The experiences of an unexpected LSP participant. In M. K. Long (Ed.), Language for specific purposes: Trends in curriculum development (pp. 157–167). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Can Pixabaj, T. (2007). Jkemiik yoloj li uspanteko: Gramática uspanteka. Guatemala: Cholsamaj. Can Pixabaj, T. (2015). Complement and purpose clauses in K’iche’. Doctoral dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin. Fink, L. (2003). The Maya of Morganton: Work and community in the Nuevo new south. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gentry, B. (2015). Exclusion of indigenous language speaking immigrants in the US immigration system, a technical review. Ama Consultants. Haviland, J. B. (2003). Ideologies of language: Some reflections on language and US law. American Anthropologist, 105(4), 764–774.

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Huitzil, C. M. (2014). Lost in translation: transnational indigenous migrants re-defining social services in Los Angeles, California (Masters Thesis). Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, Texas ScholarWorks. Available at http://hdl.handle.net/2152/40931 Lydgate, J. J. (2010). Assembly-line justice: A review of operation streamline. California Law Review, 98(2), 481–544. Mateo Toledo, B. (2008). The family of complex predicates in Q’anjob’al (Maya): Their syntax and meaning. Doctoral Dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin. Mateo Toledo, B. (2012). Complex predicates in Q’anjob’al (Maya): The verbal Resultative. International Journal of American Linguistics, 78(4), 465–495. Mateo Toledo, B. (2017). Q’anjob’al. In J. Aissen, N. C. England, & R. Z. Maldonado (Eds.), The Mayan languages (pp. 533–569). New York: Routledge. Newdick, V., & Romero, O. (2019). Interpretation is an act of resistance: Indigenous organizations respond to “Zero tolerance” and “family separation.” Forum, 50(1), 30–34. Romero, S. (2012). “They Don’t get speak our language right”: Language standardization, power and migration among the Q’eqchi’Maya. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 22(2), E21–E41. Romero, O. (2015). Indigenous migrants and language barriers in the US. Diálogo, 18(2), 157–157. Vázquez Álvarez, J. 2011. A grammar of Chol, a Mayan language. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Texas Austin.

Traveling Libraries and Bookmobiles: How Librarians Have Served and Empowered American Communities

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Librarians: The Problem Solvers of America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Private Libraries for Public Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 One Small Act Creates a National Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Wheels of Progress Turn Slowly in the Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Melvil Dewey and the Traveling Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Teacher Collections, Todays Traveling Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Book Wagon: Serving the Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 American Libraries Get Rolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Over There: Sending Books to Soldiers in Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Libraries and Schools: Building a New America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Stepping Back to Move Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Pack Horse Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Books for All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter is a brief historical overview of Traveling Libraries and bookmobiles. In addition, it is an acknowledgment of the services librarians have provided (and continue to provide) to citizens in their communities. An attempt has been made to demonstrate how from the inception of lending libraries more than 300 years ago, librarians had one goal in mind. They have done their best to bring books and readers together. They have not been deterred by war, poverty, distance, or geography. Librarians have used a variety of means to satisfy our

I. W. Larison (*) Literacy Education Program, Marshall University, South Charleston, WV, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_176

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insatiable need for having a good book to read. Therefore, a few words have been offered regarding several colorful services librarians have used in the past – book boxes, the first book wagon, and the Pack Horse Libraries of the 1930s and 1940s during the Great Depression. While most of the information shared here celebrates opportunity and the independent spirit of America, not all American citizens were so fortunate to receive services. Heroic efforts were made to provide reading materials to soldiers during times of war and to those living in remote and isolated areas, but a disproportionate number of African Americans were neglected and underserved. Finally, ideas regarding the importance of providing books to families and children cannot be understated. Researchers have made it abundantly clear. If children are going to learn to read, they must have books. So, hurrah for librarians! Their dedication to providing the best in library services has built a nation of readers. Keywords

Bookmobiles · Lending libraries · Library war services · Pack horse librarians · Traveling libraries

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Introduction

This chapter explores how forward-thinking individuals and librarians have served their communities through the development of libraries and library services in the USA. First, a brief history is offered regarding how and why the first libraries were established in America. Second, information about particular projects and programs will illustrate how the industrious nature of librarians led to the development of services for citizens in rural and isolated locations. Finally, a discussion of special services shows how determined librarians have enriched the lives of Americans during times of great hardship. This is not a comprehensive exploration of the topic of traveling libraries and library services in America. Much of what is presented here are the highlights of events, the tiny pieces of the history of library services in America and the people who have made them a reality. It is loosely chronological and touches upon some of the major shifts in the development and organization of efforts to get books into the hands of readers who live in remote and/or isolated communities.

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Librarians: The Problem Solvers of America The oldest libraries were storehouses, first and foremost; as their lending privileges were extended to larger numbers of persons, they tried more and more to aid their readers; they classified their books, arranged them systemically, and catalogued them. But not until very recent years did the library begin to conceive of its duties as extending services to the entire community, instead of being limited to those who voluntarily entered its doors. (Bostwick 1910, p. 1)

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The history of mobile libraries in America is a small part of the unique American library story landscape. Librarians by nature are problem solvers and they have not been thwarted in their efforts to bring books to people in remote places who are unable to make the trek to the nearest library. Some of the solutions they have designed to get books and people together are not uniquely American, but they exemplify what is good and true and beautiful about the American spirit. Librarians have trod a meandering path in their efforts to get books to American readers before settling on the use of bookmobiles. Similar schemes abound in other parts of the world where librarians have used an array of animals from donkeys to elephants to transport books. What is singular in America is the colorful tapestry of ideas, innovations, and knowhow demonstrated by dedicated educators and librarians. They have worked (and continue to work) for the betterment of others by bringing them the latest and best books they have available to inform and entertain citizens of all ages. In America, the persistent desire to get books into the hands of readers has evolved over several centuries. It began before the United States of America was even a nation.

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Private Libraries for Public Consumption

In the late 1700s, Anglican priests laid the foundation for establishing the first public lending libraries in the British Colonies and thus the seed was planted for the idea of the modern-day bookmobiles too. Dr. Thomas Bray sought to make books available to missionary priests a little over 300 years ago in the Mary Land Colony (Fig. 1). It was his goal to help these missionary priests further their education and theological studies. This effort to support the clergy in their goal to spread the Gospel was dependent on making books available to those living and serving in remote areas. Nearly 200 years later the same idea was at play with the creation of the first bookmobile when a librarian sought to make books available to the people in the community she severed. As a consequence, bookmobiles have been in existence for more than 100 years in America in some form or another. The push to make books readily accessible and easily available through lending libraries to clergy began in the American Colonies around 1711. Diane Bradshaw (2010) cites Dr. Thomas Bray, an English clergyman, as the one who conceived of the idea. He was instrumental in spreading the notion of free lending libraries in the southern colonies of Virginia and Maryland. Bray began this venture in North America in the late 1690s intending to support the clergy and the landed gentry in their thirst for knowledge. These lending libraries were first set up in Anglican Churches throughout what is now the state of Maryland. They were commonly referred to as Parochial Libraries. Bray wanted to continue educating the clergy as well as the gentry by allowing them to “borrow” books they needed in order to pursue theological and humane knowledge.

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Fig. 1 Reverend Thomas Bray, Late Seventeenth or Early Eighteenth Century. (Source: https://www. encyclopediavirginia.org/ media_player?mets_ filename=evr11617mets.xml. Taken from Charles Knowles Bolton, The Founders: Portraits of Persons Born Abroad Who Came to the Colonies in North America Before the Year 1701, Vol. I (1919)/Public Domain)

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One Small Act Creates a National Movement

Dr. Bray wrote letters to obtain books from authors and solicited donations of money from merchants and the Society of the Propagation for the Gospel in Foreign Parts for the libraries. Dr. Bray’s passion for creating the lending libraries was well documented even some 200 years later by Bernard Steiner (1896) in his publication found in the American Historical Review. Word about these lending church libraries slowly filtered out to other communities. And, in 1711, approximately 15 years after the establishment of the first Parochial Library in 1697, the first public lending library (is believed to have been) formed in Boston. However, according to another Anglican priest, Reverend John Sharpe, who traveled between Maryland and Connecticut as a missionary, there were at least four public libraries in addition to the one in Boston at this time. Regardless, collections grew and lending libraries were established through donations. Even Reverend Sharpe donated his collection of books (more than 230 volumes) to New York City before his return to England in 1713 with the express purpose that a lending library would be established. However, the New York City Library did not

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become a reality until 1729 with donated books primarily on religious topics. From this meager beginning of Parochial Libraries, there are now nearly 120,000 libraries of all sorts in America and nearly 860 circulating bookmobiles with at least one bookmobile operating in every state. The states with the largest number of bookmobiles are Kentucky (98) and California (69) (Dankowski 2018).

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The Wheels of Progress Turn Slowly in the Beginning

The creation of bookmobiles, like the creation of lending libraries, grew from the vision of several key individuals who believed getting books into the hands of people was their express purpose in life. But settling on the use of bookmobiles as the vehicle for accomplishing this goal took a circuitous route. One key individual who is credited with designing and instituting the first bookmobile in America was Mary Lemist Titcomb. She bargained with the Washington County Library Board of Trustees in Hagerstown, Maryland, reassuring them that her idea to send out a book wagon would be economically feasible and yield patronage results. “The practice of taking public books out of library buildings and into communities – a practice that came to be known, in a fascinating phrase, as ‘library extension’ began with the emergence of traveling libraries in the 1890s” (Attig 2014, pp. 7–8). The use of a book wagon was just the next step in her efforts to promote the county library. She had employed the use of Traveling Libraries (literally wooden boxes filled with books) for the people in Washington County where she served as the librarian (Attig 2014).

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Melvil Dewey and the Traveling Libraries

The Traveling Libraries idea was introduced by Melvil Dewey (famous for the Dewey Decimal system) and had been around for more than a decade (Fig. 2; Passet 1991). These small collections of books could easily be placed in a post office, a general store, and even with an individual in the community who would agree to be the caretaker of the books. Melvil Dewey, a graduate of Amherst College in 1874, established the first library school and is one of the founders of the American Library Association. Dewey, who was the chief librarian at Columbia College and directed the state Library of New York, began establishing these small library collections in 1892. The Traveling Libraries remained in use long into the 1940s. The collections consisted of 30–100 books and were sometimes placed with volunteer caretakers in their homes. These collections were portable and rotated about every 6 months – some were even taken aboard trains and sent to lighthouses for use among people living in the maritime regions. The Traveling Libraries were invaluable to people living in more remote places far from a public library and in states where county and state libraries were nonexistent or in the early stages of operation. This was the case in Chester County, South Carolina in 1904 where mule drawn wagons brought boxes of books to patrons. The idea lives on today through the modern incarnation of teacher collections.

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Fig. 2 Traveling Library Box – Vermont ca 1904. (Source: Library in Vermont, Fourth Biennial Report of the Board of Library Commissioners of Vermont, 1901–1902. St. Johnsbury, VT: Caledonian Co., 1902/ Public Domain.)

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Teacher Collections, Todays Traveling Libraries

Today, one might see how this idea continues with the teacher collections from the public libraries. They are akin to the Traveling Libraries. Private and public school teachers throughout America contact their local public libraries to make requests for materials to supplement their school and classroom libraries. Teacher collections allow teachers to gather a substantial number of books to focus on a particular topic in their classrooms. Generally, a school library may not be equipped with enough books on a particular topic of study so a teacher will call or visit the local public library and discuss the topic with the librarian and request books for a grade level or age range. The books are checked-out on a special teacher collection card and made available to the students in the classroom until the project is completed. Teachers have the use of the books for a month or so and then return the books to the library. While the Traveling Libraries were an ingenious invention and a helpful way to make books available to citizens, a Traveling Library did not respond to the more immediate needs and interests of patrons. Bookmobiles however did. They were (are) a more efficient means of addressing the needs of the readers located in remote and isolated communities where they live.

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The Book Wagon: Serving the Community

The first, true bookmobile in America (in actuality a horse-drawn wagon) was designed and developed by Mary Lemist Titcomb in 1905 roughly 200 years after the first public library in the USA opened. Ms. Titcomb had apprenticed as a librarian in Concord, Massachusetts. There were no degree programs for librarians at this time. After completing her apprenticeship, Ms. Titcomb came to work in

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Fig. 3 Washington County, Maryland Book Wagon – Circa 1905. Book wagon – Hagerstown, MD – 1905. (Source: Western Maryland Regional Library)

Hagerstown, Maryland, in the Appalachian region where she dedicated 31 years of her life as a librarian serving all the nearly 50,000 citizens of Washington County. Approximately half of these residents were not living in the city proper. Thus, she designed her first book wagon and carried about 200 volumes to the people in the outer reaches of the county (Fig. 3). This, mobile collection of books, became the model for other libraries across the country and continues today. The first motorized bookmobile was not introduced until 1912. Prior to having the books taken about on a wagon, Ms. Titcomb had made books available at post offices and general stores. Getting the books into the hands of all the county residents was her goal. She believed if people could not get to the books, she would take the books to the people. The original book wagon was similar to the horse drawn carts used by peddlers or itinerant craftsman of the day. It had finished shelves on the outside and a storage space in the center for books and supplies. The wagon could hold as many as 2,500 books. Having once been mistaken for a funeral wagon, Ms. Titcomb had the wagon brightened up with bold colors. The Washington County book wagon went throughout the county driven by the library janitor, Joshua Thomas, who dispensed the books also. During the first 6 months the book wagon was in operation it made 31 trips throughout the county. Mr. Thomas had grown-up in the county and was familiar with the many unmarked roads. His trips covered sometimes as many as 30 miles in 1 day. And, on occasion, it took him an entire day just to reach a destination. Attig (2014) included a map of Washington County, MD, with information about the library wagon routes in his dissertation (Fig. 4). This map first appeared in the 1967 publication of the book, Bookmobiles and Bookmobile Service, by Eleanor Frances Brown.

Fig. 4 Washington County, Maryland Area Map from 1910 with Population Numbers, Deposit Stations, Library Wagon Routes, Sunday School Libraries, Railroads, Trolley Lines, County Roads, and Additional Territory covered in 1908–1909. (Brown 1967, p. 84; Reproduced with permission from the Washington County Free Library, Hagerstown, Maryland)

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American Libraries Get Rolling

The success with the Washington County Public Library bookmobile set a precedent for future ventures regarding community bookmobile services in other states. People wanted access to books and librarians were determined to find ways to make that happen. Getting books to people in remote areas was challenging and changed over time. Services were dependent on community initiatives, the physical geography of the region, and the economy. The success of the book wagon in Washington County had been the spark other locations needed to begin similar programs. In 1909, Ms. Snipes, the librarian in Plainfield-Guilford Township, Indiana, expressed her dismay regarding the inability of the library to reach rural patrons. She had made use of book boxes in schools, but these efforts seemed inadequate. A book wagon seemed like the perfect solution. In Washington County, Maryland, a motorized vehicle had replaced the horse drawn wagon in 1912 (Fig. 5) after the book wagon met with an unfortunate accident, but it was not until the fall of 1916 that the Plainfield-Guilford motorized bookmobile went into operation. These first motorized bookmobiles could cover more territory in less time. And forward-thinking librarians were in favor of embracing new technology. Ironically, events in Europe with the outbreak of World War I, prompted librarians to seek any means necessary to increase circulation of materials to those eager for books and other reading resources.

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Over There: Sending Books to Soldiers in Service

The Library War Service was an outreach program established by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1917 to provide reading materials to WWI soldiers training at military camps here in the USA and serving in the military abroad. The ALA worked in conjunction with other nonprofit organizations and collected more than 10 million publications and $5 million dollars to establish nearly 40 libraries to serve soldiers in the military. Hundreds of thousands of books were shipped Fig. 5 Washington County, Maryland Bookmobile – Circa 1912. Motorized Bookmobile – Hagerstown, MD – 1912. (Source: April 1, 1916 issue of “Country Gentleman” magazine. Illustration for article “Feeding the Book Hungry”/Public Domain)

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to soldiers overseas. By 1918, nearly 250 small military camp libraries were in operation and an equal number of navel and marine vessels were outfitted with libraries too. The ALA wanted to supply at least one book for every soldier (Barcelona 2017). Most of the books the soldiers read were informational in nature, but classic works of literature, poetry, and serials were popular among soldiers too. Advertisements for donations of books were circulated among the American public and the response of donated books and materials was overwhelming. Books were collected at public libraries across America and shipped to the military camps here and abroad. The Camp Sevier Library in South Carolina like most camp libraries was a fully functioning library. The librarians who served in the Library War Service libraries wore military style uniforms similar to those serving in the Red Cross. The War Service Library project led to the establishment of additional library efforts (Figs. 6 and 7). Books in braille were provided to soldiers who were wounded in battle and no longer able to see. Library departments were established in the various branches of the US military and the American Library in Paris was created and is still in operation as the largest English-language lending library in Europe today. The Library War Service worked in concert with military leadership to combat low rates of literacy among soldiers from socially isolated and rural areas. They created portable libraries that brought books to soldiers who had had little opportunities for education and learning to read.

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Libraries and Schools: Building a New America

The heroic efforts on the part of librarians were demonstrated again in the 1920s and 1930s (Fig. 8). Philanthropists helped to secure funding for the construction of state and county libraries. And the role of the library shifted to a focus on adult education. Library associations gained prominence and federal support for libraries grew as well. During the great depression, libraries struggled to continue services, but as Fig. 6 Library War Service, Camp Sevier Library, South Carolina, ca 1918–1919. (Photo: http://www.loc.gov/ pictures/item/2007682011/)

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Fig. 7 Library War Service Library Truck, San Antonio, Texas, c. 1917. (Source: U.S. soldiers getting library books from truck, Kelly Field Library. [Between 1917 and 1919], Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/92510822)

Fig. 8 Bookmobile near Rockville, Maryland, 1928. (Source: Rockville Fair, Maryland. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc. gov/item/2016852880/)

before hardship led to ingenuity and the establishment of services to rural patrons through programs like the Pack Horse Libraries. The development of compulsory elementary and secondary education in the 1890s went hand-in-hand with the establishment of free public libraries. From 1890 through 1930, many states developed state and local public library associations. Libraries played a huge role in educating the public and providing resources to communities. These were coupled with the growth of the middle class. However, state and local governments could not just establish a public library. They had to have a consistent source of funding to support the library services. As the number of

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citizens increased, communities had a stronger economic tax base to fund public libraries. Three elements had particular influence on the development of libraries. First, there was another large influx of immigrants to the USA from the 1880s to the 1920s (Plummer 2000). Immigration to the USA in large numbers had begun in the 1890. The public librarians realized the need to help immigrants learn more about being American. . .This was an important responsibility for the public library to assume. Second, these individuals needed to learn about America and they needed to learn how to speak English. Third, children were required to be in school. This was due to a shift in child labor laws. People quickly discovered there were wonderful educational opportunities afforded to them because of the development of public schools. These changes in society provided a rich climate for demanding access to free public libraries. Library lending services had to become more sophisticated because the public demand for books increased. Better roads and better vehicles to carry the books made it possible to reach more patrons. However, the downturn in the economy in the late 1920s resulted in the Great Depression. This presented a unique set of problems for libraries in rural areas. But, as in the past, this new set of challenges was met with an equal amount of ingenuity and creative problem solving.

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Stepping Back to Move Forward

During the Great Depression when fuel was scarce and money was tight a group of dedicated librarians (mostly women) used horses and mules to carry books to people in the rural areas of the Appalachian Mountains. The Works Project Administration (WPA) instituted the Pack Horse Library project to serve patrons in these isolated regions (Fig. 9). The women delivered books to people living in these remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains from 1935 through 1943 on a weekly basis – often taking time to visit and read to individuals (Boyd 2007). There were about 30 different libraries in the Appalachian Region that served a total of 100,000 people. The books had been donated for the project and the American Library Association paid the women’s salaries. The librarians made regular stops to mountain schools in addition to their standard routes and tailored the collections they brought to fit the needs of the people they served. For adults, the collections were mostly on current events. The books for the project were rotated among the librarians much the way the Traveling Libraries had worked in the past. The Pack Horse Library project has been written about in books for children.

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Pack Horse Libraries

The first Pack Horse Library got its start in 1913. It was based on an idea put forth by May F. Stafford. She worked under the direction of the owner of a local coal company near Paintsville, Kentucky. He provided the funding for the project. Unfortunately, he died in 1914 just a year after the program had begun. The project ceased until 1934 when Elizabeth Fullerton, a project manager for the WPA decided

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Fig. 9 Pack Horse Library Project – Hindman, KY – January 4, 1938. (Source: http://newdeal.feri. org/library/i15.htm, Works Projects Administration/Public Domain)

to reuse the plan for getting books to people in the remote reaches of the Eastern Kentucky Appalachian Region (McGraw 2017). Each program location had a librarian on site to oversee the day-to-day library operations. The librarian was responsible for cataloging donations and repairing books, managing and organizing the books for delivery, and overseeing the book carriers. Some of the library locations had as many as 10 women working as book carriers for the library. The book carriers used their own horses or mules for the project and were responsible for delivering books to mountain schools or peoples’ homes. Other efforts to bring books to people living in rural and isolated communities sought to overcome not only the barriers of geography, but racial barriers too. One such program, the Book Mission Project was begun in the 1890s and continues today.

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Books for All

Derek Attig (2014) writes extensively about the history of traveling libraries and the impact the bookmobile and other book lending programs had on rural communities in his dissertation, Here Comes the Bookmobile: Public Culture and the Shape of Belonging. His research indicates how the motivation for sharing books through programs like bookmobiles and the Book Mission Project with those in isolated communities was an attempt to build solidarity among people across cultural, racial, and social lines. Attig (2014) writes about the efforts of people in cities sharing books with those in rural areas, Northerners sending books to Southerners, literate individuals reading to those unable to read themselves. His research findings indicate that too often these noble efforts by individuals and the support in government

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funding for schools and libraries served to help maintain barriers and division and the status quo of segregation in rural areas rather than lessen it. The progress made in compulsory education, the establishment of libraries, and library services in rural and isolated communities were subject to the political and social structures of the time. And while attempts were made to eliminate social and racial injustice, they remained. Two charitable organizations were established by individuals in the 1890s that sponsored programs and services aimed to break racial barriers, supply books and opportunities for children and families, and fight social/economic injustice. They were the Book Mission, founded by Sarah Brigham and the Lend a Hand Society, founded by Everett Hale. These individuals and their organizations worked in concert with private individuals and relief agencies on a number of issues. In addition, they endeavored to send books to schools, libraries, prisons, and even YMCAs to address the needs of people in rural areas and living in poverty. Below is a map (Fig. 10) of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, from 1938 which shows the Williamsburg County Bookmobile routes. Bookmobiles and book lending projects served African Americans living in rural areas too (Fig. 11). But racial divisions in America remained among people. The same social and political divisions were realized through offering poorer quality library services and materials to people of color. The law regarding the establishment Fig. 10 Map of Williamsburg County South Carolina (1938). (Source: Lend a Hand Society Records, 1843–1982, Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. Reproduced with permission. Reproduced in Attig [2014, p. 85])

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of libraries and library services for African Americans was decided with the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision in 1896. Like everything else libraries remained “separate, but equal” until the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1954. This was especially true in Appalachia and the Southern States. But African Americans were prohibited from using libraries in the North too. “During a period of self-actualization that began in 1828 and lasted for almost 100 years, more than 50 African American literary and library societies were founded in northern cities” (Wheeler et al. 2004, p. 42). Services were limited and books and materials in the African American communities were often the castoffs of the white community as in Rockingham County, North Carolina. Rockingham County put its first bookmobile into service in 1936. The second bookmobile came into service in 1953. At this time the first bookmobile was refurbished and made available to patrons in the African American communities. These great delays in services and materials demonstrate how slowly things changed for people of color despite the passage of eight decades from the Civil War. Social attitudes and political barriers remained and African American citizens did not benefit in the same manner as whites even when there was an upsurge in appreciation of African American writers from the 1920s to the 1940s. The time period, typically referred to as the Harlem Renaissance, saw African American writers gain prominence and their works of literature celebrated among a wider audience of readers. Although, these advances may not have been seen for some time in the kinds of books and materials offered to library patrons living in more isolated areas of the country. Many researchers (Teale and Sulzby 1986; Allington and Gabriel 2012) discuss the importance of parents reading to their children and children learning to read and develop literacy through having access to books and text materials on a daily basis. There are numerous extension services provided by libraries these days to improve literacy rates among children and adults.

Fig. 11 Rockingham County, North Carolina Bookmobile, ca. 1941–1949. (Photo: Rockingham County Public Library)

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Bookmobiles, family literacy programs, providing books by mail, having talking books, bilingual books, etc., assist an array of patrons who might have difficulty getting to the library or who might need specially formatted materials. Regardless of the format, the key element is getting books into the hands of patrons. There have been many changes regarding how library services are delivered to patrons over the course of 300 years in America. There have been challenges with all the advancements and changes in services, whether it was initiating the Parochial Lending Libraries, developing the Traveling Libraries, the use of Pack Horse Libraries, and/or the use of bookmobiles. Through all these shifts, librarians have been the one constant factor – always pushing for better services and more opportunities for patrons. In the most recent 50 years, libraries have begun to move into offering more media resources and digital services in addition to the traditional print materials. Today most libraries have an array of eBooks, DVDs, CDs, and audiobooks, etc., too. Some libraries have whole departments devoted to materials in a digital format. Each new innovation and/or delivery method has served (and continues to serve) its purpose. Dedicated, hardworking, creative librarians work tirelessly to accomplish one goal. . .Provide information and opportunities to people through print and media services. This article adds to the body of literature about libraries and library services. It is a brief review of a series of small, but pivotal events in the history of libraries over the course of 325 years in America. It explores the role of Traveling Libraries and bookmobiles as a primary source of reaching library patrons. In addition, information about Parochial Libraries has been included to show the connection between religious leaders in colonial times and the early days of lending libraries. Specific types of library services have been presented in the article and connections have been made between the availability of services and public benefit. Finally, a quick nod has been made to programs that have come and gone over the years. These are uniquely American library programs and particular library services that have had a lasting impact in America and abroad. Future researchers might focus on how librarians conduct outreach to specific populations in their communities, their partnerships with schools, and their efforts to remain a viable and contributing entity as we move further into the digital age. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Allington, R. L., & Gabriel, R. E. (2012). Every child, every day. Educational Leadership, 69(6), 10–15. Attig, D. (2014). Here comes the bookmobile: Public culture and the shape of belonging. http://hdl. handle.net/2142/49657. Accessed 22 Aug 2018 Barcelona, L. (2017, March 20). The books they read: Library war service in WWI. Retrieved from https://archives.library.illinois.edu/ala/the-books-they-carried/ Bostwick, A. E. (1910). The American public library. New York: the Appleton Company.

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Boyd, D. (2007). The book women of Kentucky: The WPA Pack Horse Library Project, 1936–1943. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 42(2), 111–128. Retrieved from http://www. jstor.org/stable/25549400. Accessed 22 Aug 2018 Bradshaw, D. (2010). On the road again: A look at bookmobiles, then and now. Children and Libraries, 8(1), 32–35. Brown, E. B. (1967). Bookmobiles and bookmobile service. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press. Dankowski, T. (2018). By the numbers: Bookmobiles stats on the fleets that deliver library services. American Libraries, 49(3/4), 15. McGraw, E. (2017). Horse riding librarians for the Great Depression’s bookmobiles. Smithsonian. com retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hostory/horse-riding-librarians-weregreat-depression-bookmobiles-180963786/ Passet, J. (1991). Reaching the rural reader: Traveling libraries in America, 1892–1920. Libraries & Culture, 26(1), 100–118. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542325 Plummer. (2000). Libraries, immigrants, and the American experience. The Library Quarterly, 70(2), 269–271. Steiner, B. (1896). Rev. Thomas Bray and his American libraries. The American Historical Review, 2(1), 59–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/1833614. Teale, W. H., & Sulzby, E. (1986). Emergent literacy as a perspective for examining how young children become writers and readers. Norwood: Ablex. Wheeler, M., Johnson-Houston, D., & Walker, B. (2004). A brief history of library service to African Americans. American Libraries, 35(2), 42–45. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/ stable/25649066

Mayan Languages and Guatemala Law: Shifting Identities and Ideologies

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Spanish Colonial Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Post-Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Focus on Educating the Indigenous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Standardization and Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion: Law of Unintended Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In the sixteenth century, Spanish clerics sought to learn the indigenous languages of Guatemala to better proselytize, but early Bourbon reforms had ruled these languages inadequate vessels for the gospel. In 1646 Antonio de Lara was dispatched to proscribe the indigenous languages and hasten adoption of Spanish as the language of Guatemala. Since then government initiatives until the late twentieth century continued to promote assimilation. Not until the Peace Accord on Indigenous Identity and Rights of 1995 was the right of Mayan peoples of Guatemala to speak their languages and maintain their cultures acknowledged. In 2003 the Congreso Nacional decreed that government educational, health, security, and legal services should be available to speakers of indigenous languages. In 2010 the Ministry of Education began requiring that all national schools K-12, public and private, teach the indigenous language of their region. After 500 years of repression, the Mayan languages are being acknowledged as such, as opposed

J. M. I. Maxwell (*) Department of Anthropology and Linguistics Program, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_219

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to “dialects” or “tongues.” Their speakers are emerging from the shadows to speak their languages in public. Identities are being renegotiated, while many Maya still seek to pass as non-indigenous, others are defining new ways to be indigenous, and new Maya ethnicities are being declared and seeking official government ratification. Keywords

Peace Accords · Language and identity · Bilingual education · Language revitalization · Cultural resurgence · Legal linguistic landscapes

1

Introduction

Prior to the Spanish invasion, there do not seem to have been explicit laws governing the use of languages in Mayan territories, which stretched from the Yucatán Peninsula and Chiapas down through what are today Guatemala, Belize, northern El Salvador, and northern Honduras. While Mayan languages predominated, there were Nahuatl enclaves in Guatemala and a strong settlement in northern El Salvador. Trade with the Aztec empire was extensive (Smith 1990; Chapman 1957) and pervasive enough for loanwords to enter the Mayan languages, as attested in classical period (250–900 BCE) inscriptions (Macri and Looper 2003) and in early colonial documents (Maxwell and Hill 2006). A standard Ch’olan language was used by the elites of the Maya Lowlands as the language of their inscriptions (Justeson et al. 1985), though local languages would have been spoken by local populations, including local elites (Wichmann and Lacadena 1999). Xinca was also present within the southern Mayan areas. Mayan loanwords in Xinca (Campbell 1972) indicate the relatively higher prestige of the Maya languages and the cultural terms lent. All these languages coexisted within the Mayan space, each used in its own domain.

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The Spanish Colonial Period

In 1524 the Spanish, led by Pedro de Alvarado, arrived in Guatemala. In the early years of the colonial period, Spanish clerics avidly studied and documented the major Mayan languages of Guatemala, in particular, K’iche’ and Kaqchikel. Fray de Varea (ca. 1699), Fray Thomas de Coto (1983), and Fray Pantaleón de Guzmán (1984) published excellent dictionaries of Kaqchikel. Fray Ximénez (1703) and Fray de Vico (ca. 1555), noting the close relatedness of K’iche’, Tz’utujiil, and Kaqchikel, published trilingual glossaries. These dictionaries were to serve the Spanish clerics as they strove to evangelize through the use of the vernacular languages. De Vico also produced a magnum opus, Theologia Indorum, copies of which were circulated among Guatemalan clerics in manuscript form for a generation after his death. This work was reconstructed from surviving manuscripts and translated by Sparks, Sachse, and Romero in 2017 (see De Vico 2017). Theologia Indorum, which

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provides a rich ethnographic account of the religious beliefs of the Kaqchikel and K’iche’, sought to persuade them of the superiority of Christian doctrine by contrasting their tenets and practices. De Vico apparently first composed it in K’iche’ and then immediately translated it into Kaqchikel. This work, of over 1000 folio pages, clearly lays out the Church policy in the New World. Evangelization proceeded apace with the Spanish clerics, studying and preaching in the indigenous languages. Sparks (2011 and forthcoming) argues that the orders that subscribed to nominalist philosophy (Franciscans and Augustinians) were disinclined to use indigenous words for key religious concepts, preferring adaptations of Spanish terms (e.g., Kaqchikel/K’iche’/Tz’utujiil tyox < dios). In contrast, the Thomist scholarly bent of the Dominicans and Jesuits led them to develop indigenous translation equivalents (e.g., K’iche’ Tz’aqol B’itol “lit. Creator, Perfectioner” for “god”). However, these linguistic accommodations were cut short in 1646 with the arrival of Don Antonio de Lara, sent by the new Bourbon king to proscribe the continued use of indigenous languages by the clergy and by the natives themselves. The indigenous peoples as new subjects of the crown were to speak Spanish and, thus, be effectively integrated into the Spanish culture and polity. Linguistic assimilation became the official government and ecclesiastical policy and remained so for the next 500 years. Spanish clergy and their indigenous successors imparted mass in Spanish. Spanish was the official language of education, business, and politics. Mayan literacy in their own languages diminished, reduced to “ear” spellings based on Spanish orthographic conventions. The de Parra alphabet was forgotten. Spoken Spanish became more prevalent, replacing indigenous languages in most public spaces shared with non-Maya. Indigenous people retained their own languages in their homes, in the fields, and in market transactions with fellow townsmen (Fig. 1).

3

Post-Independence

In 1821 the Captaincy General of Guatemala declared its independence from Spain. The amalgamated states of the Captaincy, Chiapas, Guatemala (including the area later to be known as Belize), Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, dissolved their union. Guatemala became an independent country. Its government, however, continued to view indigenous peoples as less than full citizens. Their separate languages and cultures were seen as a hindrance to the formation of a modern nation-state. At the same time, the indigenous population could be exploited as a labor source while being afforded few government services. Justo Rufino Barrios, president from 1873 to 1885, confiscated indigenous lands to supply land and labor to the United Fruit Company. His administration saw the beginning of the system of debt peonage that would supply indigenous workers to other landowners as well. This system kept indigenous people in debt and at manual labor for many successive regimes. Then during his 15-month presidency, Carlos Herrera y Luna sought to improve the workforce through education, beginning a campaign, dubbed desanalfabetización (“dis-illiteracy”). His successors, José María Orellana and Lázaro Chacón González, furthered this initiative and established normal schools.

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Fig. 1 Indigenous languages of and near Guatemala. Font size is proportional to the number of speakers. Wasteko, not shown, is to the North in the state of Tabasco

This education was Spanish-based and meant to be assimilatory, fitting the indigenous people to the national mold. However, Jorge Ubico Castañeda, President of Guatemala from 1931 to 1944, curtailed these programs to focus on economic salvage from the depression.

4

Focus on Educating the Indigenous

In 1945 Juan José Arévalo Bermejo became President of Guatemala. Having earned his doctorate in philosophy and education sciences in Argentina and teaching at universities there, he returned to Guatemala to take up the mantle of the presidency. He brought with him a concern for the education of the indigenous people of Guatemala and re-established the literacy campaigns as well as a “Popular University” to teach reading, writing, general knowledge, civics, morals, and hygiene (Fuentes Oliva 2007). Arévalo was followed by Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, president from 1951 to 1954. He continued the indigenous education initiatives but also

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sought to bring about land reform, putting lands back into indigenous hands. The US CIA-inspired coup of 1954 put a stop to these reforms, and government attention to the indigenous peoples waned. Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Meanwhile a young Christian missionary, William Cameron Townsend, had come to Guatemala in 1917. Based in the Kaqchikel community of Santa Catarina Barahona, he soon realized that his parishioners could not read the gospel. Firmly believing that all peoples should have direct access to the scripture, he founded the institution known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) to train lay linguists from the United States of America to translate the four gospels. These linguists, under his tutelage, soon worked with most of the Mayan languages of Guatemala, as well as with languages in México, and then throughout the world. SIL became the adviser to the governments of México and Guatemala regarding the indigenous languages (Hefley 1984). II Congreso Lingüístico. By 1984, many different groups were working with indigenous languages in Guatemala, with little or no coordination or agreement on orthographies. The government had continued with its literacy campaigns, under different agencies, including Socio-educativo Rural (Ministry of Education 1972). SIL was active in more than 20 communities. A lay institution, the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM), was founded in 1972 to train Mayans to become linguists, so that they could work on their own languages, developing technical and pedagogical materials needed by their communities. Each organization had developed its own writing system, spelling, spacing, capitalization, and punctuation conventions. The Guatemalan government wanted a single agreed on orthography in which to communicate with its Mayan citizens. They, therefore, convened a national conference on linguistics with the stated goal of arriving at a set of principles for writing the indigenous languages and establishing official orthographies for the then 21 Mayan languages of the country. (Today there are 22 officially recognized Mayan languages in Guatemala. The original 21 are K’iche’, Q’eqchi’, Kaqchikel, Mam, Poqomchi’, Tz’utujiil, Achi, Q’anjob’al, Ixil, Akateko, Popti’, Chuj, Poqomam, Ch’orti’, Awakateko, Sakapulteko, Sikapapense, Uspanteko, Tektiteko, Mopan, and Itzaj. In 2003, the Guatemalan Congreso issued Decreto 24-2003 recognizing Chalchiteko as the 22nd Mayan language of the country.) All the groups working in literacy training, national and private education in the indigenous areas and writing on and in the indigenous languages, were invited to attend. In a rare move, the government decreed that all participants, foreign, national, Maya, and non-Maya, would have a voice in the plenary discussions but that only the Maya would have the vote. As a result of this procedure, an official orthography was chosen that was essentially the alphabet of the PLFM minus the 7, which had represented glottal stop. An apostrophe was chosen to replace this symbol, and the new writing system, the alfabeto unificado, was sent to the Congreso de la República for ratification. The ratification process dragged out for 3 years, but in 1987 the unified alphabet was made official (Acuerdo 1046-87 [Agreement #1046-87]). Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG). An unforeseen outcome of the II Congreso Lingüístico was that the Mayan intellectuals brought together at this summit would agree to continue to collaborate and set goals for the

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development of their communities. Their first objective was the establishment of an Academy of Mayan Languages so the Maya could have a continued say in the policies affecting their languages and speakers. They lobbied the Congress throughout the years of the orthography debates and, in 1990, convinced the legislatures to establish the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) (Decreto 65-90). This Academy was a semiautonomous branch of the Guatemalan government. Though not funded for the first year, thereafter it had a budget devoted to producing materials for the teaching and dissemination of Mayan languages. Many Mayan activists and intellectuals expected the ALMG to immediately start standardizing the languages and producing teaching materials, dictionaries, and grammars. Though they eventually did undertake such projects, the ALMG officials spent the greater part of their first year travelling to the 21 participating linguistic groups, engaging in community projects (often reforestation), and explaining their mission to the townspeople. As the only completely Mayan branch of the government, the ALMG soon found themselves swamped with requests for nonlinguistic guidance, including economic and social initiatives. While staying within their legal purview, the ALMG became a clearinghouse for connecting Mayan activists, co-ops, and organizers with international support through embassies and non-governmental organizations. The ALMG became a partner of and collaborator with the Ministry of Education. Programa Nacional de Educación Bilingüe Bicultural (PRONEBI). Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education was rekindling its interest in indigenous languages. In 1982 it began a pilot program to provide indigenous language materials for the first 4 years of schooling. The Programa Nacional de Educación Bilingüe Bicultural (PRONEBI) 4 established the Programa Nacional de Educación Bilingüe (Acuerdo Gubernativo No. 1093-84). It began with the four languages having the most speakers and schoolchildren: K’iche’, Mam, Q’eqchi’, and Kaqchikel. Those developing the new textbooks broke from prior models of straight translation of Spanish materials with an eye to provide rapid transition to the Spanish language in order to create new texts with new graphics, both of which were to highlight Mayan cultural norms and linguistic categories. The mathematics taught was base 20 rather than base 10, though this decision was reached after much debate over this divergence from the standard Spanish language national curriculum. The new Mayan-based curriculum was successful in the pilot schools. Elementary school dropout rates plummeted, test scores, even though based on assessments in Spanish, increased. The program was expanded to include a fifth language, Q’anjob’al. This too was well received by students and their parents. In 1975, Acuerdo Gubernativo No. 726-95 promoted this pilot program to be a permanent division of the Ministry of Education. PRONEBI morphed into the Dirección General de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural. Its purview expanded to include all the 21 languages of Guatemala at that time. In 1996 Kaqchikel Cholchi’, the Kaqchikel branch of the ALMG was selected by PRONEBI to develop a core list of neologisms needed to effectively teach Mayan elementary school children. This list (Maxwell et al. 1997a, b, c, and d, 1998) was

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then shared in a series of workshops with ALMG workers in the other linguistic communities so that cognate forms could be developed. Education, though still European in style, had regained some Mayan language and cultural content at the primary school level. Also, in 1995 the government further aided Mayan education by establishing the Programa de la Niña (“Program for Girls”), which provided incentives to parents to allow their female children to attend school. Previously many families had sent only their sons, or perhaps a single daughter, to school, preferring to have the girls work in the home, learning to weave, cook, and care for children. Peace Accords. In 1995 the Acuerdo sobre Identidad y Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas de Guatemala was signed, one fascicle in the series of documents referred to as the Peace Accords, which brought about an end to the 35-year genocidal war that devastated indigenous communities. The Acuerdo sobre Identidad affirmed the rights of indigenous peoples to their languages and their cultures and to education and government services made available in these languages. However, once peace was established, the insurgents demilitarized and with implementation imminent, the Guatemalan government stated that provisions of the Accords went against both the 1985 Constitution and numerous laws. They, therefore, called for a referendum, a national popular vote, where each required change to law would have to be ratified, though there was an option to accept or deny the changes in toto. University students from the San Carlos (national) University, Rafael Landívar, and Universidad del Valle spent months visiting Mayan communities explaining the ballot issues and urging people to ratify the proposed changes. However, the referendum was soundly defeated. Amidst many charges of fraud, reports of whole communities’ ballots being lost or miscounted, and claims of intimidation, the government was absolved of having to comply with any of the promises made in the Acuerdo sobre Identidad (Carey 2004). Still, Mayan activists and their allies vowed not to give up on their dreams for recognition of their rights to exist and prosper as autochthonous communities. Legal advocates observed that Guatemala was a signatory of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention. Provisions of this agreement, in fact, outstripped those of the Acuerdo. They asserted indigenous people’s rights to their lands and to their religious practices, their customary law, and worldviews, in addition to their languages and cultural identity. Moreover, signatory nations were charged with providing government services in indigenous languages and facilitating the autonomous economic and cultural development of these communities. In 1998 the Guatemalan government established a new division of the Human Rights Ombudsman’s office to deal with indigenous rights. The president of Guatemala set up a separate division answering directly to the presidency to deal with the rights of indigenous women, Defensoría de la Mujer Indígena (Decreto Gubernativo 525-99). Nonetheless, indigenous people felt frustrated that their voices were ignored. Protests continued across the country. A 2003 uprising in Iximche’ (Tecpán) Guatemala saw the municipal building, the police station, and the mayor’s home burned (Benson and Fisher 2009). Further reform was called for.

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Ley de Idiomas. In 2003 the federal government enacted the Law of Languages. This law affirmed that the government would provide basic services (police protection, judiciary, education, and health) to indigenous communities in their languages. Police. Immediate steps were taken by police in tourist areas to be sure they complied with the law. Officers patrolling the streets of the United Nations World Heritage site, Antigua Guatemala, sported name tags, which for the few who were indigenous, gave the name of their heritage language, using the formula “I speak X.” However, police less in the public eye did not advertise or demonstrate indigenous language fluency, and no programs were instituted to provide instruction in any of the Mayan languages. In less than a year, the name and language tags had disappeared from the streets of Antigua. Judiciary. The judicial branch of government also set out to comply with the 2003 language law. They established an Indigenous Affairs division, and with the support of the Adenauer Foundation of Germany, it began to train speakers of Mayan languages as court interpreters. As with so many government initiatives, speakers from the four most populous language groups were the first recruits. This cohort, almost entirely male, was charged with learning the basic legal concepts of the Guatemalan system and then translating these into Mayan words or phrases that would be intelligible to Mayan clients who might need to interact with the court system. This training continues to date. Federal courts in the central Guatemala highlands now have interpreters assigned as judicial aids; however, many report (personal communication 2014) that they are not actually allowed to interpret for Mayan defendants or plaintiffs during trials. Some certified translators stated that their supervising judges routinely sent them on errands elsewhere before hearing cases with Mayan participants. Nonetheless, the Indigenous Affairs division of the Judiciary Branch continues to train new court translators, to develop neologisms for official legal terminology and to provide training for judges in the productive use of trained indigenous language interpreters. These initiatives calling for integrating indigenous languages and peoples into the state judicial system have been paired with explorations in granting limited judiciary autonomy to indigenous communities. Various communities, especially in the Departments of El Quiché, Alta Verapaz, and San Marcos, have experimented with trying offenders before traditional indigenous authorities. The Congress is currently considering constitutional revisions to explicitly acknowledge consuetudinal (i.e., customary) law (Prensa Libre December 27, 2018). Health Care. Centros de Salud (Health Centers) provide the principal access to government sponsored health care in most indigenous communities. Many of these posts are irregularly staffed with physicians. Often patients are attended by nurses or medics. All medical students in the country are required to spend a term in the field working at these health centers, as one of the final placements in their internship years. These students do not obtain training in the language of the community to which they are sent, even though they receive some orientation to working with an interpreter, should the clinic have one, and in working with partially fluent family members who may accompany monolingual patients. The few indigenous medical students are not placed in communities that speak their languages. In 2017–2018 the

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two indigenous students in their final years of study at the national university, the San Carlos, speakers of Kaqchikel and Q’anjob’al, were placed in the Poqomchi’-speaking region of Alta Verapaz. These two young men decided to write their graduation thesis on the effect of lack of a common language between doctor and patient on healthcare delivery (Chanquín and Delgado 2018). They interviewed the medical students placed in two largely indigenous departments, the staff of the clinics where they were placed, and the patients. Not surprisingly, they found that neither the students nor the patients were satisfied with the quality of health care provided. Tellingly, at the thesis defense, the chair of the examining board noted that this thesis, the first to cover a sociocultural topic, highlighted a grave problem that needs to be addressed. Education. In the first years after the passage of the Ley de Idiomas, little language reform was seen in the schools. The Dirección General de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural (“General Directorate of Intercultural Bilingual Education; Guatemala” or DIGEBI) schools continued but were not expanded. DIGEBI routinely sent supervisors to its schools to assure that the indigenous language was being taught and the Mayan cultural materials, including the base 20 math texts, were being used. These inspectors routinely found that little or no instruction was being offered in the language (Ixnal Cuma Chávez, Saqb’alam Ajquejay, Jun Ajpu’ Chacach, personal communications 2005–2008). Teachers complained that they did not have enough time to teach the Mayan language or the Mayan materials as they were hard-pressed to cover the required standard curriculum. Moreover, they did not know how to teach the language, not having themselves been taught in or about the languages. Schools run under the auspices of the central (non-bilingual) Directorate of the Ministry of Education continued to employ Spanish language only instruction. Nonetheless, some schools had indigenous teachers who made individual efforts to teach in the indigenous languages. The Ley de Idiomas did not produce immediate reform with all dependencies adopting linguistic pluralism, training their staff to speak in the languages of the people they served, and providing access to their services in the languages of the clients. But the law did stipulate that the Mayan languages were full languages, not dialects, or unsystematic streams of noises and animal sounds as often maintained. The fact that some police officers briefly affirmed that they had some knowledge of an indigenous language and that jobs were becoming available for court interpreters brought Mayan languages into mainstream domains increased not only their “visibility”/audibility but also their prestige. In the 1970s non-Maya schoolteachers regularly referred to the Mayan languages as dialectos or lenguas and were prohibited from using them in schools. Now they were not only permitted but officially sanctioned. Teachers and students began to speak of the idiomas Mayas (Mayan languages) of Guatemala. Fission. Also, in 2003, a “new” Mayan language was ratified. The town of Aguacatán was the seat of one of the 21 officially recognized Mayan languages, eponymously named Awakateko. However, this community was an amalgam of associated villages. The urban core was transected by a river. The barrio south of the river had previously been a separate municipality but had been annexed in 1888.

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Linguists working with speakers from Aguacatán (north and south of the river) found there to be little dialectal variation (Larsen 1974; Law 2013). However, southside residents felt that their schools and community centers were not benefitting from the stipend awarded the Awakateko branch of the ALMG. Rather than attempt to persuade the linguists of the ALMG that they spoke a language variety different enough to qualify as a separate language, community members went directly to the Congreso de la República. They argued that they have always been separate culturally and linguistically and that the 1888 annexation did not change their lifeways or language practices. The Congreso readily agreed with their petition to be recognized as a separate linguistic community and emitted a new decree: decreto 24-2003, which declared Chalchiteko to be a language in its own right and amended the charter of the ALMG to include it as the 22nd Mayan language of the country. The ALMG tried to dissuade the Chalchitekos from breaking away from Awakateko. In particular, the ALMG linguists were disturbed by the desire of the Chalchitekos to abandon the unified alphabet, established by Acuerdo 1046-87. The Chalchitekos wanted to use other spelling conventions to distinguish their language from that of their neighbors (Maxwell 2003). However, the community was adamant that they were and would remain separate from Awakateko and that they deserved the federal funds that would come from their new status as a language group. The community prevailed and the ALMG now includes Chalchiteko. New National Curriculum: More Neologisms. In 2004 the Ministry of Education was contemplating a major curricular reform. A panel of international experts, of national educators, and Mayan scholars had developed a comprehensive new curriculum for national schools, grades K-12. The new curriculum sought to incorporate more indigenous cultural material within the mainstream coursework, though, despite the input of the Mayas on the panel, remained folkloric in orientation. Maya themes injected into the curriculum dealt with non-Western musical instruments and traditional handicrafts. Mayan worldview, rather than being affirmed, was presented as illogical. An exercise in a kindergarten primer asks the students to circle all those elements that are absurd, the elements in question being representations of Mayan cosmology. The Ministry, committed to implementing this new curriculum bilingually, went beyond the DIGEBI structure. The indigenous language groups with at least 1,000 children entering first grade were to receive materials in their languages to implement the new curriculum. The ALMG insisted that these new materials be loanword-free. Since centuries of domination had barred linguistic development in fields under hegemonic control, many technological and scientific fields had been wrested from Mayan control. Mayan speakers in dealing with such fields and concepts borrowed heavily from Spanish, and, to an extent, from English, speakers of Mayan languages when using these loanwords were then told that their own languages were incapable of dealing with modern terms and life and so should be relegated to the historical dustbin. To combat this negative stereotyping of the creativity and potential of the Mayan languages, the linguistic resources of the language were to be brought to bear to create neologisms for the new curriculum textbooks. Thirteen language groups met the enrollment criteria, but a university educated researcher could not be found for the last language group, so only

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12 language groups were represented (Maxwell and Adán Francisco 2004; Maxwell and Antonio Benicio Ross Montejo 2004; Maxwell and Carlos Bernardo Caal Tiul 2004; Maxwell and Domingo Solís Marcos 2004, Maxwell and Irma Yolanda 2004; Maxwell and Josefina de los Ángeles 2004; Maxwell and Manuel Bernardo Malchic Nicolás 2004; Maxwell and María Carmela Rodríguez Quiej 2004; Maxwell and Nelsón Maximino Méndez 2004; Maxwell and Salvador Quiacain Rocche 2004; Maxwell and Tomás Luis Miguel Andrés 2004). Lists of required vocabulary, rather than the actual textbooks, were supplied to the researchers, who then split into working groups of more closely related languages. Each group would work a vocabulary set and then share their new creations, explaining the rationale for their selections. This procedure allowed their peers from other language groups to seek cognate forms and create similar words, mimicking the structures if not the phonological makeup of the words. Languages that had suffered rapid divergence during the colonial and early republican periods due to enforced isolation began to rebuild a common core. While each group created forms that were recognizably language specific, they also were built on shared morphological processes and regained a sense of pan-ethnic unity. While the goal of this neologism project was simply to produce new vocabulary to allow the teaching of all the subject matter in the new national curriculum monolingually in the indigenous languages, bringing these language experts and pedagogues together had another effect which was re-affirming the relatedness of the Mayan languages of Guatemala and, hence, their speakers. The neologisms created by the working group of researchers were constantly fed into a feedback loop. The new proposals were shared each week with the linguists of the ALMG working in their home communities and with core teachers in the local schools. Forms that were rejected by these speakers were reassessed and, often, restructured. When the entire list of needed vocabulary had been translated, each researcher called a meeting in a central town within their home area, convening teachers, high school students, elders, and ajq’ija’ (Mayan ritual specialists and spiritual guides). In intensive 2- or 3-day sessions, these speakers vetted the proposed list, ratifying most words, suggesting changes to others. During this ratification process, the community members’ discussions were often cross-fertilized by input from other language groups working nearby. This non-structured sharing also fueled a sense of common cause, shared heritage, and linguistic pride in one’s own language. Much of the new vocabulary required for these monolingual textbooks came from the natural sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics. Each of the 12 language neologism teams created over 2000 new lexical items. The Mam scholars produced nearly 3,000 new lexical items. Ministry of Education Prescribes Indigenous Language Instruction for All Schoolchildren. It had long been noted, quite ironically, that in Guatemala the elite schools of the capital were attended almost exclusively by non-Maya. “Bilingual education” meant instruction in English, French, or German as well as Spanish, while in the Mayan areas, “bilingual education” meant teaching in the indigenous language and Spanish. This Maya-Spanish bilingual education was not aimed at preserving and strengthening Mayan languages while promoting Spanish fluency but was essentially

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assimilatory, that is, aimed at transitioning children from Mayan language fluency to Spanish language dominance or monolingualism (Cojti’ Cuxil 2007). Since the Bourbon reforms, the Mayan people were expected to become bilingual (if not monolingual) in Spanish, while there was no reciprocal expectation that non-Mayan Guatemalans would learn the indigenous languages that surrounded them. However, in 2010 the Ministry of Education dictated that all national schools, public and private, teach the indigenous language of their communities. Those schools in multilingual regions, such as the capital, could select among the languages present. When this policy went into effect, schools scrambled to find people who could teach the Mayan language of their community. At a technical high school in San Lucas Sacatepéquez, in the Kaqchikel area of the central highlands, a physical education teacher was drafted to teach his native Kaqchikel, though he had no preparation in language teaching and had never been taught and could not write in his language. Minimal training was offered by the Ministry of Education with outreach from the Universidad Rafael Landívar seeking to fill in (Maxwell et al. 2015). Other schools, such as the elite secondary school Colegio Boston, just outside of Antigua, hired qualified teachers, such as Lica. Ixnal Cuma Chávez (Cuma Chávez, 2005, personal communication). However, having hired Lica. Cuma Chávez the school refused to ask the students to buy a textbook for the class. The administration did nothing to orient the students to the importance of learning a national autochthonous language. Lica. Cuma Chávez reports that at first her students told her that their maids, gardeners, and groundskeepers were Kaqchikel, to which she replied then they surely had well-kept homes and lands. They also refused to reply to her questions in Kaqchikel, responding instead in English. However, when the first grades came out and it was clear that she was grading them on their homework and class participation, the students settled in to learn and gained an appreciation for the language and the worldview it presented (Cuma Chávez, personal communication). Maya and non-Maya students reported to their parents that they were excited learning words and concepts in Kaqchikel (Guaján Rodríguez, De León, Contreras, Mux Sotz’, González Ticun, Gómez Ovalle, 2005, personal communication). As early as 2012, the Ministry of Education was declaring the program a success, the indigenous students showing large gains in year-end assessments (Ministry of Education 2012). However, as years elapsed and with no further materials, support or supervision or even acknowledgment of successes was provided by the Ministry of Education. Additional funding to schools was not provided to allow hiring of teachers or production of material. Many schools began to scale back on their participation. Colegio Boston eliminated their language classes, opting instead for two guest lectures on Mayan culture during the school year (Cuma Chávez, personal communication). The number of hours a week that language was taught in those schools that retained classes began to drop off, despite Ministry of Education recruitment and testing of native speakers to move into classroom teach slots (Pakal B’alam Rodríguez Guaján, consultant to the Ministry, 2003, personal communication). By

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2018, the Ministry of Education statistics shared with its primary Mayan language publisher Maya’ Wuj showed that 90% of the instructors currently teaching the indigenous languages at the elementary and secondary levels did not speak, write, or understand the languages (Raxche’ Rodríguez Guaján, director of Maya’ Wuj, personal communication). Lic. Rodríguez Guaján and his publication coordinator Nelson Gudiel Chicol Sotz’ were instructed to design teachers’ manuals with dayby-day lesson plans for the scholastic year that would allow non-speaking instructors to teach Mayan languages to their students (Rodríguez Guaján and Chicol Sotz’, 2017, personal communication). The directive to teach indigenous languages in the national schools remained in force, but the resources, human and material, to do so properly have not materialized. Nonetheless, the pervasiveness of the program and its salience for students and their parents have changed the national dialogue about indigenous languages. The common parlance now refers to the Mayan languages, as well as Xinca and Garífuna, as indigenous languages of Guatemala. Children who know a few words cheerfully intermix them with their Spanish. Parents and grandparents in non-Maya homes are responding to simple greeting and thanking routines (de León de Contreras, 2000, personal communication). Welcome signs began to offer indigenous greetings (Figs. 2 and 3). A Bigger Slice of the Pie. While the efforts on the part of linguistic planners of the ALMG and the Ministry of Education to pool resources, to consolidate linguistic forms, emphasizing the communal Mayan heritage, creating neologisms that share cognate roots and/or morphological structures, efforts to diminish or erase language divisions have consistently met with resistance. In the 1980s, Fernando Peñalosa, a sociologist and activist, noted that expatriate Guatemalans from northern Huehuetenango, speakers of Q’anjob’al, Chuj, and Akateko, could converse using accommodative structures of their languages. Moreover, didactic materials prepared for one language group could be used by the other two (Peñalosa 1986). He proposed that the three languages declare themselves one and pool their resources. This was done to a degree by the Los Angeles-based cooperative Ixim, but appeals to the communities in Guatemala to do likewise were rejected. Similarly, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, linguists Nikte’ Sis Ib’oy and Saqijix López Ixcoy working on their respective languages, Achi’ and K’iche’, discovered that the grammars are nearly identical (Sis Ib’oy 2000), a fact that led to their jointly publishing their descriptions as a grammar of K’iche’ (Sis Ib’oy and López Ixcoy 2004). They also found the lexical differences to be minimal. As a result, Sis Ib’oy approached the elders in her home Achi’, and in the politicocultural center of Rabinal, in the Achi region of the central highlands, they suggested that they combine resources with the K’iche’. Her proposal was politely but firmly rejected. The elders pointed to 700 years of traditional enmity between the Achi’ and the K’iche’, an enmity whose culmination is reenacted each year during the Rabinal town festival with the presentation of the dancedrama Rabinal Achi’ (Tedlock 2003; van Akkeren 2000). After several public

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Fig. 2 Sign in Kaqchikel (Maya) and Spanish at major archaeological site. (Photo by the author)

Fig. 3 “Utz Ipetik Wawe’j Nimajay: Attention visitors, this is a sacred place. Please respect it. Take away plastic garbage and bottles that you bring. Fine of Q1000 for leaving trash in the Atitlan Nature Reserve. The Kaqchikel priests and the mayor of San Jorge.” (Photo by the author)

fora and publications, Lica. Sis Ib’oy acknowledged that the community identity was inextricable from its history, and the language ascription had to reflect this. As a linguist serving her community, she suggested in her recent publications Achi’ should be treated as a language in its own right (Sis Ib’oy 2007).

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Standardization and Variation

Most of the Mayan languages in Guatemala have multiple dialects, centered around different municipalities, villages, and barrios (neighborhoods). Some of these variants have histories of differential treatment by earlier language workers, such as the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Socio-educativo Rural, and its successor Comité Nacional de Alfabetización (CONALFA). Now under the all-encompassing aegis of the ALMG, these dialects are amalgamated under the rubric of a single language. Didactic materials and reference materials compiled by the ALMG and the Ministry of Education teach a single standard. A policy decision established after the II Congreso Lingüístico held that the standard language would not be the variant of any particular community, regardless of the prestige, history, or number of speakers residing there. Instead, it would be a hybrid language containing elements from most of the variants but consistently favoring the forms that were morphologically most complete and most archaizing (Maxwell et al. 1997a, b, c, and d). As mentioned earlier, the ALMG continues to insist on the use of the unified orthography ratified by the Congress in 1987. This orthography establishes the symbols to be used for each language but employs the principle that the same phoneme should be represented by the same grapheme across languages. These policies leave many language groups, speakers of some dialects, feeling underrepresented. Some of the letter assignments are unpopular, when the allophonic variation of the phoneme differs from the sound typically assigned that symbol in the Spanish orthography. Ixil is a case in point. During the 2004 ALMG/Ministry of Education new curriculum neologism campaign, the Ixil representative, Domingo Marcos Solis, flatly refused to write w for the sound voiced bilabial fricative of Ixil, preferring v, a symbol associated with this pronunciation in Spanish. While he acknowledged that words in other languages which used the grapheme w were cognate and that these cognates (Ixil and other) were all reflexes of a shared “mother” form in Proto-Maya, he would not accept the principle that Ixil should represent its reflex in the same way as its sister languages (Maxwell and Marcos Solis 2004). Other linguistic communities have refined their orthographies, deviating from the ratified official alphabet, but staying within the set of symbols established by Acuerdo 1046-87. Kaqchikel now represents the full ten vowels of its phonemic inventory (Matzar and Patal 2000). K’iche’, though having ten phonemic vowels, has taken the community-based decision to represent only five (ALMG 2004). These changes reflect the constant regeneration of the linguistic standards set by the ALMG in accord with community needs and evolving practices. The success of the Chalchitekos in declaring themselves separate from Awakatekos in achieving government recognition and gaining membership in the ALMG with its attendant yearly budgetary allotment has been noted by other Mayan communities. The Chuj linguistic community, situated in northwest Huehuetenango, consists of three main municipalities, each with its own dialect. The two most populace townships are Slumal Atz’am (San Mateo Ixtatán) and Koatan (San Sebastián Coatán).

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The two dialect groups centered on these towns share about 70% of their basic vocabulary; however, their grammars are significantly different. Slumal Atz’am has subject-object-verb as the basic word order, while Koatan is object-subject-verb. Each variant has an ergative split triggered by aspect markers, but not the same ones. Each dialect has classifiers that appear with all nouns and categorize them into semantico-syntactic classes. However, they differ in the number of classes and the assignment of nouns to them (Maxwell 1982). Phonologically, the Koatan dialect deletes all vowels with less than secondary stress, while Slumal Atz’am preserves all vowels regardless of stress. This makes the Slumal Atz’am forms more complete. Indeed, the Koatan words, when cognate, can be derived from the Slumal Atz’am forms by a simple deletion rule. The ALMG principle of using the more morphologically/phonologically complete forms in the created standard, therefore, consistently favors the Slumal Atz’am forms. The presidency of the Chuj linguistic community, within the administrative structure of the ALMG, has consistently been held by representatives from Slumal Atz’am; also, the headquarters of the ALMG for Chuj are located there. In 2018 the Koatan community has organized a committee to make a case for independence, first to the ALMG, but failing that with an eye toward direct appeal to the Congress following the Chalchiteko model. In this case, they have good linguistic evidence on their side as well as a separate cultural tradition, especially marked within the realm of formal religious practice. Mam language workers and activists are watching the Chuj/Koataneko drama closely as there are Mam dialects that are nearly as divergent as the Chujs of Slumal Atz’am and Koatan. Max Weinreich (1945) famously noted that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” None of the Mayan languages of Guatemala have armed forces; rather their legitimacy is conferred by law: acuerdos from the National Palace and decretos from the Congreso de la República. The definitions are malleable, not set by linguistic criteria but by the rule of law and those who can sway the legislators.

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Conclusion: Law of Unintended Consequences

The history of linguistic legislation in Guatemala reaffirms the law of unintended consequences. When Phillip the V of Spain decreed that Mayan languages no longer be used in proselytization nor in legal administration of the viceroyalty of New Spain, he sought to integrate the Mayan people into the empire, to make them more effective citizens. However, this act cut the Maya off from reading and writing in their own languages, while few had access to literacy and training in Spanish. It condemned Maya to the margins of the political system governing their lands. When William Townsend Cameron founded SIL and worked with Mayan languages of Guatemala, he wanted to bring the gospel directly to the people, but he also re-established native language literacy. When the Congreso de la República convened a conference on linguistics in Guatemala in 1984, they wanted to eliminate competing orthographies for Mayan languages. This conference provided the meeting ground for Mayan intellectuals, scholars, activists, and pedagogues who then vowed to continue to work as a group to establish an Academy of Mayan Languages,

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a goal achieved in 1987. Once the ALMG was established as a branch of the Guatemalan government, membership therein could be and was dictated by legislative acts, rather than linguistic data, leaving the door open for the negotiation of new language identities. The Ley de Idiomas was meant to guarantee government services to indigenous communities in their own languages. It has not yet achieved this goal, but the ratification of this law began to break down the stereotypes that categorized Mayan languages as less developed, less modern, and more animalistic than Spanish. Finally, when the Ministry of Education decreed that all elementary and secondary schools in the country would teach the indigenous language of their community, all Guatemala children were exposed to a Mayan (or Xinca or Garífuna) language at school. While not erasing anti-indigenous prejudices built up over the last 500 years, this policy does affirm the linguistic status of these speech (and writing) forms as languages. While Guatemala is a long way from full compliance with the requirements set out in the International Labor Organization Convention 169, legislation, beginning with the Constitution of 1985 and coming up to present day, is now affirming the rights of indigenous peoples to their own languages and cultures. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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The Language of Architecture and the Narrative of the Architect: An Essay on Spatial Orientation and Cultural Meaning in Architecture

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Contents 1 The Architect’s Guiding Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Defining Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Functionality and Art of Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Functionality and Language of a City Gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Language of Forms in Architecture and Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Visitor at the Gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Three Basic Relationships Between Humans and Their World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Correlations Between Bodily Subject and Oriented Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Personal Story of the Architect’s Taste and Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 The Guiding Story of the Architecture’s Wider Cultural Framework of Reference . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This essay analyzes whether architecture is a language in the sense of being capable of telling its own story and how to assess the communicative value of the architects’ guiding story that inspired their architecture. The chapter argues that architecture’s “language of forms” is like a language insofar as architecture consists of traceable but in themselves meaningless unities that are built into recognizable patterns and insofar as it has a syntax of rules and conventions that prevent form combinations from becoming arbitrary. It is unlike a language insofar as its patterns and structure lack the semantic quality of making referential statements on the outside world. The same goes for music. The essay

L. Minnema (*) Department of the Comparative Study of Religion, Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_62

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suggests that three basic relationships between humans and their world open up three distinctively orientated spaces: being-part, being-initiating, and being-at-a-distance. These correlate to mood space, movement space, and open space, respectively. The language of architectural forms, then, appeals to the tactile-emotional, mobile-goal-oriented, and visual-contemplative sensitivities of humans instead of translating narratives into architecture. The only story at the architects’ disposal is the story of their own taste and style. Architecture can do without the personal story of the architect’s taste and style, but this story has the added value of making explicit what is already visible, thus functioning like the decoration that illustrates the point. The larger frameworks of reference of cultural traditions that left their mark on architecture tend to be equally or more helpful as “guiding stories,” in cueing and experiencing architectural spaces as meaningful, as the “dry landscape garden” of Ryoan-ji in Kyoto can exemplify. Keywords

Language of architecture · Guiding story of the architect · Architectural space · Architecture as art form · Meaning of architecture

1

The Architect’s Guiding Story

Architects whose architecture is led by a guiding story that inspires them and that they tell their clients and visitors to explain buildings seem to have a very different approach from architects who do not feel the need to tell a story because they hold the view that architecture must speak for itself and tell its own story. In the postmodern age, personal life stories have replaced the grand narratives (Lyotard 1979; Raulet 1987), and there is no doubt that the architects’ guiding stories can inspire. But the building cannot literally portray their story. The question, then, is whether the building can at least evoke their story. Does architecture have something at its disposal that speaks in the sense of telling or evoking a story? Is architecture (like) a language?

2

Defining Architecture

Architecture, according to Jürgen Joedicke, can be described in terms of the opposition between “solid” and “void” (Joedicke 1985, pp. 16–20). The interaction between a “solid” (an extremely dense space) and a “void” (an extremely tenuous space) creates a space. The conscious arrangement (structuring) of this interaction between “solid” and “void” creates an architectural space. If the pole of the “void” dominates, the design of the interaction between “solid” and “void” leads to an open space, to an architectural “spatial field” between solids. An example of this is the German pavilion of Mies van der Rohe in Barcelona (Fig. 1) of which the minimal

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Fig. 1 German pavilion of Mies van der Rohe in Barcelona (Lemon Tree Images/ Shutterstock.com)

Fig. 2 Villa Almerico (Palladio’s “La Rotonda”) in Vicenza (Cristalvi/Shutterstock.com)

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walls indicate only the horizontal contours of the space and leave all the rest open. If the pole of the “solid” dominates, the design of the interaction between “solid” and “void” leads to a contained space, to an architectural “spatial container.” An example of this is Palladio’s Villa Almerico (“La Rotonda”) in Vicenza (Fig. 2) of which the innermost interior, the circular hall in the center, lies sheltered under the central dome while the surrounding interior spaces on all four sides are opened up by corridors that are again furnished with porches with stairs. On the basis of Joedicke’s view that the conscious structuring and shaping of the interaction between “solids” and “voids” create an architectural space, architecture, in the first instance, can be described as “the structuring of space.” Architecture, thus, is defined in terms of space, not of volumes (Giedion 1971; van de Ven 1987; Inoue 1985). Forms, as yet, are not space. The “solids” must be positioned in proportion to each other, have something to do with each other, have a connection or tension with each other, or take positions in regard to each other, before the arrangement radiates the impression of spatial coherence. Loose forms are not perceived as coherent spaces but as sculptures, as isolated volumes. On the other hand, patterns of forms are perceived as coherent spaces, as mutual interaction between several forms of “solids” and “voids,” and as spatial arrangements. Trafalgar Square in London is an example of a square whose character as a square has been maintained despite its function of a traffic artery (Fig. 3). It is the interaction between the surrounding buildings that holds the square together as a “shaped space.” The slenderness of the Nelson Pillar does not have sufficient weight to fulfil such a function. If one would take away Nelson’s column, then the square would not

Fig. 3 Trafalgar Square in London (Neil Mitchell/Shutterstock.com)

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lose its character as a square. But if the Canada House were no longer there, the South Africa House would lose its counterbalance, and the expressive character of the square as a square would suffer accordingly. The interaction that currently holds together the square as a “shaped space” would then less rest on the surrounding buildings and depend much more on the linear design of roads, a line pattern that from above, from the air, and on the drawing table would become visible as a conceptual projection into the flat surface. Certainly, Trafalgar Square is not a flat surface but a sloping surface. The interplay of lines is visible, but it is still the question whether such a line pattern has sufficient spatial radiation to hold the square together as a square. Without the interaction between the surrounding buildings, Trafalgar Square threatens to remain an empty space, that is to say, without contours that together determine the character of the square and are vital to its image. This perceived coherence is crucial: without coherent contours and patterns, a void between buildings does not become a square or boulevard, a plain does not become an example of landscape architecture, and the walls, facades, rooms, and halls do not become a building in the sense of an architectural space but instead become an accidental combination of arbitrary solids and voids that are not attuned to one another.

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The Functionality and Art of Architecture

Architecture, however, aims at more than a functional organization of the space. It aims at structuring space artistically. Architecture, in the second instance, can be described as “the artistic structuring of space.” The architect operates on the basis of the functional organization of space, but this functional organization of space is transformed and is played with. The practical design of the space is exposed to the affective powers of the imagination. The virtual form – that which one imagines being expressed in the form – is more important in architecture than the physical form, that which one observes empirically (Langer 1953, pp. 45–103). Architecture without a vision of the whole is not architecture (Scruton 1980, p. 101). It is not considerations of utility that generate this vision of the whole but the imagination that plays with the phenomena presenting themselves, an imagination that delights in evoking the appearance of the nature and qualities of the phenomena, like an art. Art evokes how things are, and in cultivating the appearances, art underscores, condenses, intensifies, and exaggerates them (Picht 1987, pp. 117–255). Providing this pleasure is the specific, typically artistic function of art. This specific type of functionality demands vision. An architectonic space exists, thanks to arranged positions, relations, and interactions, but gives them a twist. Being an artistic expression, the architectural space also explicitly reveals them, making these positions, proportions, and relations visible in such a way that the space radiates the impression of spatial coherence. An architect is an artist who creates new spatial connections between forms (“solids” and “voids”), in such a way that these connections become orientational, determining locations and directions, or who makes visible existing spatial

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connections between extant forms (“solids” and “voids”). Such a display of coherence is of a different order than the functional show of a furniture showroom. A showroom, in fact, consists of the opposite. A showroom is an empty exhibition space for disconnected “solids” that lack the powerful influence of an imaginative form pattern, an expressionless setting of empty space that fully depends on later outlining and putting in the details. But how “expressive” is the striking “language” of architectural forms and space? Is this language of architectural forms indeed a language?

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The Functionality and Language of a City Gate

An architectural space is characterized by its own nature and by its own contours that are vital to its image. But how expressive is that character? How meaningful is that image? Does such a form pattern or line pattern indicate something understandable? Does it want to say something to us? A door in a wall suggests conditional access to another space. This suggestion is given with the function of doors, just like walls that function as demarcation of and protection from entrance into a space. The crucial question is whether doors and walls want to “tell” us this. Can the suggestions that doors and walls indicate be interpreted as messages and as signs of communication? But what else could doors and walls “proclaim” or “mean” other than their natural functions of conditional access and protective demarcation? A city gate in a city wall underlines this suggestion of conditional access and protective demarcation with towers and battlements. This is for functional reasons: a weak area in the wall is strengthened into a defensive bulwark, and the frightening impression of impregnability of the fortified city is given as a signal. But it is also for artistic reasons: the pride of the privilege to enter and inhabit the city is cultivated and celebrated with the show of flags. This suggestiveness has the power and the intention of making an impression and leaving a mark. Its expressivity could not be more clear. Both the practical purposes and the symbolic intentions of the city gate are obvious. Even the damaged stone in the masonry that betrays earlier gunfire carries the suggestion of impregnability of the city walls and of privilege of the city dwellers (Fig. 4). The language of architectural forms seems a real language but it is not fully one. It appears as a real language because, like a real language, architecture consists of traceable but in themselves meaningless unities that are built into recognizable patterns. Walls and pillars under a roof evoke the imagery of “support,” “bearing power,” and “weight.” According to Gottfried Boehm, what enables people to interpret artistic pictures is the availability of a shared dense matrix or patchwork of in themselves meaningless but graphic and image-like forms that constitutes the potential background to actual comprehensible forms of “language.” Each time the potential image-likeness is transformed into recognizable pictorial patterns, it is basically translated and transferred, either into the realm of art, the realm of expressive images that can be understood as meaningful within their own context, or into

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Fig. 4 City gate in Valencia (Alfonso de Tomas/ Shutterstock.com)

the realm of spoken language, the realm of conceptual categories that are used to attribute characteristics to things. So, both the art forms and spoken languages draw from the same potential of image-like forms that are in the process of taking shape, the recognizable shape of comprehensible images. These images become metaphors that occur both in the “language” of artistic forms and in spoken language and that therefore allow art to be translated into the spoken language of pictorial interpretation and spoken language to be translated into the artistic “language” of pictorial expression (Boehm 1978). Moreover, according to Roger Scruton, the language of architectural forms seems a real language because it holds itself to certain rules and conventions. Thus, certain form combinations are possible whereas other ones are not. Word usage in a sentence is dependent on the syntax of a valid grammar. Form combinations are not arbitrary: the whole has consequences for the details. Conversely, form combinations are decisive for the construction (or demolition) of a total image: the parts have consequences for the whole. Similarly, actual linguistic usage (details) and grammatical deep structure (the whole) are dependent on each other, and their combined action generates a meaningful coherence. Also, in a similar way, the poetic departure from the grammatical rule nonetheless presupposes the rule (Scruton 1980, pp. 158–178). However, this analogy (of mutual dependency of the parts and the whole) between architecture, on the one hand, and language, on the other, is not an analogy between two languages but between style and language, Scruton argues (Scruton 1980, pp. 174–176). An architectural style presupposes that the parts are mutually attuned to each other in a harmonious way, and this harmonious attunement is only possible if a “grammatical” order is operative. But this architectural “grammar” is

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not a syntax in the linguistic sense of the word. Syntax in language is impossible without semantics: structure in language relies on content. The words in a sentence must not only be mutually connected (structure); they must, moreover, be connected with that which the sentence pronounces (content), in such a way that the mutual connection of the words adjusts to the content. For example, both the subject and the object are related to the verb, but for reasons of content, they are not interchangeable within the sentence. And content, in turn, is referential, refers to reality. Thus, one can verify whether a statement (in language) is true or false (in reality). The connection with reality (semantic structure) is incorporated in the syntax, because one can only state things correctly (syntactically) in language which are true or false (semantically) in reality. One cannot state things that do not make sense in terms of reference to content. What one states must refer, as regards content, to something that is traceable in reality; otherwise one doesn’t state anything. The language of architectural forms, therefore, is a “language” without reference to an external reality, a “syntax” without semantics, a structure without content, a pattern without statements, and an abstract painting without title. In it, forms are a rudimentary sort of vocabulary but not more than a supply of forms that appears either familiar or strange to humans, like acoustic motifs that sound familiar or strange to human ears. The expression of sounds is sometimes quite an achievement, but it is only the first step on the way to speaking the language agreed upon, on the way to producing a really referential coherence of sounds. Architecture is not a language, insofar as a city gate does not make true or false statements. In that sense a city gate is an access inaccessible to interpretation or, rather, to communication. The city gate is not lacking in historical references nor in connotations imbued with the symbolism surrounding the show of flags. What the city gate lacks is the marked sense of explicit content regarding its own claim to making a statement or communicating a message beyond the level of sending a signal. Nonetheless, a city gate is usually experienced as a “statement.” Apparently, architectural buildings such as city gates are experienced as somehow meaningful. What kind of transfer of meaning takes place here?

5

The Language of Forms in Architecture and Music

The type of coherence that is produced by the language of forms is intelligible in the way in which patterns are intelligible: they are different from other patterns but still comparable to those patterns, as variations on a theme and variants of a structure. The forms do conjure associations, but these do not have the precise, referential nature of the semantic meaning of words. That is also not their function. The function of the individual forms is to refer to each other, so that a pattern arises that is recognizable as such and is in that sense “intelligible.” The understandability of it takes place at the level of structure, of the recognizability of the structure. Pattern recognition assumes knowledge of structure and a sense of direction, knowing where you are and what you can expect, in order to appreciate the variations of this state. The language of architectural forms is comparable to the language of forms in music.

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In certain regards, the differences between architecture and music are larger than the similarities. Architecture concerns viewing, music concerns listening. Architecture employs wood, stone, concrete, light, etc., as building material, whereas music employs sounds. Architecture is constructed in an empirical space, music in a virtual space and within time. Yet, they do have two remarkable similarities. The first similarity has already been indicated: both languages of form are formal, abstract, and a matter of structural figurations that mutually refer to each other and thus form an internal system. This presents enough coherence that pattern recognition becomes possible. Both in music and in architecture, it is possible to sense what is and what is not attuned to one another, without requiring the pattern to refer to something outside the pattern itself. One tone and one chord refer to the other tones and chords, not to the instruments that produce the tones and chords. In a similar way, the one step-gable refers to other gables, not to the clouds above it. The second similarity is of a totally different order: both music and architecture are able to influence one’s feelings, as a result of which one is moved by being exposed to them. Music and architecture are in themselves not emotional; however, they do affect human emotions. A musical composition in A minor is not in itself gloomy; nonetheless it will likely further sadden those already experiencing gloominess. A city gate is not in itself proud, but it does have an impact on potential feelings of pride and self-confidence in the privileged and powerful city dweller. In both examples, the “language” of forms reinforces the emotions “addressed.” But that is not necessarily the case. Why? The relationship between the language of forms and the “forms” of human emotions is intimate but not automatic. There is an intimate connection: grief-provoking music can sadden us and can mold a feeling into a minor key, just as “cheerful” music can form our emotions into a major key. The tonal structures to a certain degree correspond to the “forms” of human emotions: higher and lower, growth and decline, congestion and flow, conflict and resolution, speed and slowness, stretching and halting, excitement and calmness, and feverishness and dreaminess. All of these are form patterns that characterize both music and emotion. If the synchronization between music and emotion is complete, then they will amplify one another. If not, then emotion will attempt to adjust, and the form the emotion takes will, as much as possible, mold itself to the pattern of forms of the music, or one will turn down the volume or even turn off the music altogether. Due to the leeway of the space between music and emotion, one can not only listen to the music in case but also to the feelings. Through the mirror of the music, one can observe the contours of one’s emotions. Just as music, architecture attempts to make an impression on the human mood through the language of forms. That which the language of forms expresses is not a certain feeling, but a pattern of forms that evokes elementary emotions. Musical “congestion” and “flow,” for example, have a pattern of forms that in architecture can be compared to “stagnation” and “opening up and widening.” An example of “stagnation” are the many traffic tunnels, of which the pattern of forms evokes feelings of being reduced and blocked and of claustrophobia as soon as one enters. Such tunnels are in themselves not claustrophobic, but they do correspond with the “form” of certain emotions, which they are therefore likely to mobilize. An example

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Fig. 5 Michelangelo’s staircase of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence (Raffaello Bencini/ Alinari Archives)

of “opening up and widening” are the rolling stairs that branch off into side steps, as in Michelangelo’s vestibule of the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence (Fig. 5). These sculptural stairs that appear to move toward the visitor and to overflow with advancement – an appearance that is not what one sees but what one sees in it – evoke feelings of tense expectation and dramatic theatrics (van Eck 1995). To return to the example of the city gate, the city gate is in itself not proud but evokes feelings of pride and self-confidence, because it presents a pattern of forms that can be read as the boasting language of forms belonging to an edifice that is full of itself, even to such a degree that the citizens see their own feelings of pride and self-confidence reflected in it as a fundamental pattern. The first gradual difference between music and architecture is that music as a magnetic field of tones has a much more powerful effect on human emotions than architecture does. Architecture is demonstrative and inviting; music is compelling and enchanting. Architecture creates an emotional atmosphere; music creates an emotional identification. An atmosphere develops around you but an identification develops within you.

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The second gradual difference is that music, by its nature, comes about as a movement (through virtual space and time), while architecture rather embodies rest. The degree to which music is a form of movement can be deduced from the fact that it is unnatural to listen to music without moving along to it. To compensate for the passive watching of a classical concert on television, a cameraman will zoom in on the conductor and the violinists, who move vicariously for the concert visitors and the viewers at home. In the case of architecture, the cameraman will either zoom in on the static presence and peaceful or disquieting rest that the building exudes or on the movement of the visitor entering a building, in doing so, making it more dynamic.

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The Visitor at the Gate

How does the visitor relate to the building? Crucial to this scene is that the visitor reports at the gate, and not at the drawing board where the building was designed. For the architectural design, not the idea behind the design is key but the effect of the design on the aforementioned visitor, to be more precise the effect on the sensory perception of the building. Before the visitor forms an idea about the intentions of the architect, the visitor is already exposed to sensory impressions. Before the visitor will have developed conceptual ideas about the building, the visitor becomes physically acquainted with the tangible building. Human beings are open to their environment, but this is not a formal openness, as with a door that opens or closes, indifferent to whomever standing before it. In their openness, human beings display involvement and reveal a questioning attitude, no matter how vague the question. In turn, the environment is like a meaningful answer that was evoked by a sensory and intuitive or attitudinal question. As sensory subjects with a questioning involvement, human beings immediately call forth an environment that is orientated accordingly. The visitors at the gate are not only about to enter a building to make a visit. Rather, they are entering a space that they expect to display the kind of purpose and coherence they are looking for. They expect to be affected by the tangible character of the space and moved by its coherence and sense of purpose. This is how they address the ambience or, rather, how they transform an architectural space into an ambience for their visit. On the one hand, the visitors ask for a visit, not for a home or a hiding place, and this approach determines the degree of meaningful coherence that they will then expect to encounter within the building. On the other hand, the approach of the visitors also means that not any random building will appear but a building that presents itself as a route to, and an ambience of, visits. The building, however, does not automatically match the expectations of the visitors.

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Three Basic Relationships Between Humans and Their World

There are, in my approach, three fundamental ways in which the human being relates to the world. Three fundamental building blocks constitute the relationship. The first stone which is laid is being-part of the world. The second stone which is erected is

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Table 1 Basic human-world relationships Basic humanworld relationships

Being-part Participation Humans are embedded and submerged in the world that surrounds and dominates them and in which they participate

Being-initiating Initiative Humans actively engage in their surrounding world by initiating their own interventions to change specific things

Being-at-a-distance Contemplation Humans take a step back, look at their participation and initiatives, and contemplate their meaningfulness from a distance, from an outsider’s point of view

being-spontaneous, being-initiating things when facing the world. And the third stone which human beings carry along with them and which becomes their amulet is being-at-a-distance from the world (Table 1). In other words, the basic relationship of the human being to reality takes three different forms. Firstly, the human being is part of his or her world. Being intertwined with their world, humans are permeated and surrounded by it, everywhere and all the time. Being submerged in his or her world, the human being is occupied by it, dominated, delimited, determined, its product. Secondly, the human being is spontaneous toward his or her world, initiating things of his or her own. Humans do not take their world as it is, but do something with it, change it in some respects, realize certain possibilities, add something of their own, accomplish something of themselves, and cultivate their natural environment. The world is not just a given complex, but something which can be transformed or contributed to. Thirdly, the human being is at a distance, disengaged, looking at his or her world from elsewhere, taking note both of how his or her world is structured and of how his or her initiatives are doing. It is at this point that room for maneuver (Spielraum) opens up. In this open space, there is room for contemplation and orientation, for playing with possibilities and alternatives, for crossing borderlines and transcending fixed facts, for experiencing freedom from the boundaries of one’s daily life, and for experiencing integration of the entire world complex, oneself included.

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Correlations Between Bodily Subject and Oriented Space

The application of my model to humans relating to their external world is highly relevant to those views of architecture that, since 1900, conceive of architecture as a continuation of the human body. August Schmarsow, for example, argued that the human body is tactile, mobile, and visual in nature and it is in need of a corresponding space (van de Ven 1987, p. 90). In line with this approach, one may suggest that being-part of the external world is primarily a tactile affair,

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being-initiating is more a matter of mobility, and being-at-a-distance is rather visual in nature. There is a lot in the world of human experience that argues in favor of this. In an overcrowded elevator, for example, people will be inclined to fall silent spontaneously. By entering the elevator, people have entered the tactile danger zone of someone’s intimate body space. They have come too close. There is a threat of unwanted intimacy. The only way of warding off the danger one can come up with is building a wall of silence between one’s own body and the personal body of the other. In an elevator people are too much part of the tangible presence and physical integrity of a stranger. It is not being-at-a-distance but being-part that comes into play. Being-initiating, bodily speaking, is expressed in the need to move. Even prisons have, if they are geared to the basic needs of human beings, walking spaces where prisoners are given an airing. Being-at-a-distance is not primarily a matter of mobility but visual in nature. For example, when human beings are asked a puzzling question, they have to think about before answering, and they need some play, some elbow room, some mental space for maneuver, and some scope for thought, for seeing the larger picture, in order to cope with the chaotic complexity of the issue. For this reason, human beings tend to automatically turn their eyes away from the interrogator, literally looking away, avoiding eye contact that would not allow for the physical and mental distance and open space needed to give their thoughts free rein. Instead of looking for direct eye contact, they turn their gaze toward wide vistas in the distance, remote perspectives far away where the world lies open before them, and toward emptiness and the abyss. Human beings need this open space literally and figuratively in order to distance themselves from their world. Dom Hans van der Laan (1977; Padovan 1989) developed a threefold model of architectural space that illustrates my point as well. The intimate space of van der Laan’s cell that gears to the need to be at home corresponds to the relationship of being-part. The walking space of the court that meets the need to leave the closet corresponds to the relationship of being-initiating. The extensive visual field of the domain that expresses the need to be able to see further than what is within walking distance corresponds to the relationship of being-at-a-distance (Table 2). Elisabeth Ströker uses a different vocabulary from van der Laan but the analogies are striking. Her “mood space” or “central space” corresponds to his intimate “work space” and “cell,” her “movement space” or “action space” corresponds to his

Table 2 Three correspondingly orientated spaces Basic human-world relationships External-material world

Being-part The tactile body Cell Mood space Atmospheric space Intimate space

Being-initiating The mobile body Court Movement space Action space Directional space

Being-at-a-distance The visual body Domain Open space Visual field Free space

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“walking space” and “court,” and her “open space” or “Anschauungsraum” corresponds to his “visual field” and “domain” (Ströker 1975, pp. 16–155). The nature of mood space, in my approach, is characterized by being-part. Mood space, according to Ströker, is not measurable or quantifiable. It is qualitative, animate, and abundantly expressive; it constitutes surroundings, the “atmospheric”; the mood-affected being becomes aware of it in its own immediacy. This awareness is not cognition; it is much more a being gripped, being moved. While the space does indeed exercise its “effect,” it does not stand in any causal relationship with purposeless experience; rather it “imparts itself”; it “speaks to you.” The absence of specific directions, positions, and distances in this space corresponds to the absence of intentionality and detachment in the experiencing bodily subject. One’s phenomenological location in mood space cannot be determined. The nature of action space, in my model, is characterized by being-initiating. Action space, according to Ströker, is formally defined as the “wherein” of potential actions. Actions, as realizations of a plan, are intentional. This intentionality is directed in space toward a center of action. Action space is thus a centered, inhomogeneous space. What makes it an orientated space is its directional inequality. Each “where” and “there” is localizable by means of specific directions, right, left, up, down, forward, and backward, where the forward dimension is the one into which action space actually extends via the forward movement of the body. The respective plan of action determines the fact that “directly” does not signify a path along a straight line but, rather, the quickest way to make the goal achievable. The multiple “to-what-end” [Woraufhin] of intentionality makes action space a transitional space. Distances are measured according to their functionality. The nature of visual space, in my model, is characterized by being-at-a-distance. Visual space, according to Ströker, is a perspectival and horizon-bounded space, centered on the sensually contemplative bodily subject. Positioned at the edge of visual space, the bodily subject belongs nonetheless to lived space. The contemplated object at hand, viewed from shifting perspectives, stands freed of any functional connection to other objects. This positional unconnectedness of the object of contemplation renders visual space indifferent to any movement or change in objects. It makes it an open space of free play and a room for maneuver and longdistance space, a homogeneous void. The mood space, the movement space, and the visual space are different in character and are different kinds of lived space, triggered by the respective sensitivities and attitudes of those present. Being-part, humans are primarily tactile, tentative, and emotional in a mood space. Being-initiating, they are primarily mobile, active, and goal-oriented in a movement space. Being-at-a-distance, they are primarily visual, contemplative, and open-minded in a visual space. It is at this fundamental level that architecture is situated, not at the more differentiated level of the story. Lindsay Jones (2000) seems to illustrate this point in the way he makes a threefold distinction between sacred architecture as orientation, as commemoration, and as ritual context. His three basic forms of sacred architecture actually correspond to spatial forms of being-part, being-initiating, and being-at-a-distance, respectively.

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The Personal Story of the Architect’s Taste and Style

The “language” of architectural forms is not suited for the task of translating narratives into architecture, not even by means of evocation. The only story at the architects’ disposal is the story of their own taste and style. It is the story of their own development, their personal life story of the way in which their taste and style have evolved. To tell this story of the evolution of one’s own taste and style is not of overriding importance as far as the architectural experience is concerned. And yet, it can be helpful to commissioners and visitors alike to take cognizance of the personal story of the architect’s evolution because such a story can actually add a dimension to the architectural experience. Informed commissioners and visitors may trace and recognize the story so as to enable a more intense experience. If the architecture is impressive, the additional story will take nothing away from its merits. The spatial effect will not be spoiled but strengthened because the story makes explicit and underlines what is already visible, just like a pencil with eyeliner underlines the contours and the light of the eyes. The story, then, functions like the decoration that illustrates the point, a point that was already made. The story beautifies the architecture or, rather, exhibits its beauty. That is why, in the end, the story is not about the architect whose evolution led to this kind of architecture but about the kind of architecture as a consequence of that evolution. Paradoxically, this shows that architecture can do without the story of the architect but not the other way around. The personal story of the architect’s taste and style cannot replace the architecture itself. It is the visitor’s act of physically entering the building that should reveal whether the building feels the way the architect meant it to be felt, not the architect’s story explaining it.

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The Guiding Story of the Architecture’s Wider Cultural Framework of Reference

However, the visitor cannot fully experience the building without some knowledge of the general cultural framework of reference of its design. A sense of the architecture’s rootedness in wider cultural traditions from the past and present is indispensible. Without the preparatory guidance of a wider cultural framework of reference, no meaningful experience takes place because things then happen to you that you cannot place and that you therefore cannot experience as meaningful. The Japanese garden architecture of the famous “dry landscape garden” (kare-sansui) of Ryoan-ji, the “Peace Dragon Temple” in Kyoto, can illustrate this final point (Fig. 6). The novelty of this type of landscape garden for Japanese contemporaries in the Muromachi period (1338–1573) was that the use of real water had been abandoned completely. Nevertheless, the first visitors in 1488 will have immediately understood that this architectural space belonged to the genre “landscape garden.” The names and personal life stories of the garden architects of the dry landscape garden of Ryoan-ji are unknown. However, the cultural-historical and religious contexts are

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Fig. 6 Ryoan-ji dry landscape garden in Kyoto, Japan (Nirun Nunmeesri/Shutterstock)

well-known, so it is still possible to at least reconstruct a number of “guiding frames of reference” that left their mark on its garden architecture. The landscape garden of Ryoan-ji stands, first of all, in the Shinto tradition of worshipping nature. Basically, man-made recreations of shinto, divine islands, and shinchi, divine ponds, recall Japan’s creation myth and reflect Japan’s geography of mountainous islands scattered in the ocean (Nitschke 2007, p. 15). This landscape garden stands, secondly, in the early Heian tradition (794–1185) of Chinese influenced large-scale landscape gardens imitating the external forms, inner energy, and seasonal workings of nature (Keswick 1978). The landscape garden stands, thirdly, in the Chinese tradition of landscape painting (Nitschke 2007, p. 66; Vanderstappen 2014). Chinese landscape paintings are not just there to be contemplated visually from a distance but to be drawn into mentally. This is called “mind travelling” (woyou) (Law 2011). The visitor observes and follows the “scroll garden,” as if the landscape painting is being unfurled before his eyes (Slawson 1987, pp. 80–83). This dry landscape garden stands, fourthly, in the Chinese-Japanese tradition of Zen Buddhism. Chinese professionals in (landscape painting and) garden architecture who had fled the Yüan take-over of Song China would have designed the new Chinese-styled gardens of warrior residences and Zen monasteries alike, not as Zen gardens but as gardens of recreation and contemplation (Inaji 1998, p. 40; Kuitert 2002, pp. 129–138). Zen had no difficulty appropriating this style as its own. The notion “dry” (kare) means “dried-up” but also “withered” (Nitschke 2007, p. 89; Wicks 2004, pp. 113–114; cf. Weiss 2013). In their embodiment of impermanence

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and unconstrained spontaneity, the natural forms manifest the very emptiness that the depth dimension of the natural forms consists of. But they also reflect the state of consciousness of the visitor. If the visitor is a tourist, then he or she will see an ocean with islands in it or a landscape with mountains. A tourist, after all, looks for signs that mean something significant. If the visitor is a Zen novice, then he may see a representation of “impermanence” or “emptiness.” A Zen novice, after all, longs for signs that mean nothing significant, nothing substantial, sheer impermanence, and nothingness. The novice may notice that the rocks are not mountains but like mountains, that the gravel is like an ocean, and that this quality of likeness is not just a quality of paintings but of the entire world, that is to say, another form of illusion. If the visitor is a Zen master, then the garden will empty his mind and eliminate all conceptions of gardens and emptiness occupying his mind. After all, the Zen master longs for nothing. Zen even goes so far as to invite one to eventually let go of all possible referential frameworks in order to let the experience of reality itself sink in and then freely break through (Minnema 2002; Vos and Zürcher 1964). It is from within the Zen framework of this garden architecture that the personal life stories of many Zen monks were lost and mentally laid to rest in this garden, in favor of the one Zen Buddhist experience of spatial impact that the architectural language of forms of this architectural space invokes: the awakened experience of nature.

References Boehm, G. (1978). Zu einer Hermeneutik des Bildes. In H.-G. Gadamer & G. Boehm (Eds.), Seminar: Die Hermeneutik und die Wissenschaften (pp. 444–471). Frankfurt a/Main: Suhrkamp. Giedion, S. (1971). Architecture and the phenomena of transition. In The three space conceptions in architecture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Inaji, T., & Virgilio, P., transl. (1998). The garden as architecture: Form and Spirit in the Gardens of Japan, China and Korea. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Inoue, M. (1985). Space in Japanese architecture. New York/Tokyo: Weatherhill. Joedicke, J. (1985). Raum und form in der Architektur: Über den behutsamen Umgang mit der Vergangenheit. Space and form in architecture: A circumspect approach to the past. Stuttgart: Karl Krämer Verlag. Jones, L. (2000). The hermeneutics of sacred architecture: Experience, interpretation, comparison. Vol. 1: Monumental Occasions: reflections on the eventfulness of religious architecture. Vol. 2: Hermeneutical calisthenics: A morphology of ritual-architectural priorities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keswick, M. (1978). The Chinese garden: History, art and architecture. Contributions and conclusion by Charles Jencks. London: Academy Editions. Kuitert, W. (2002). Themes in the History of Japanese Garden Art. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (first edition 1988. Themes, Scenes, and Taste in the History of Japanese Garden Art. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.). Langer, S. K. (1953). Feeling and form. A theory of art. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Law, S. S. (2011). Being in traditional Chinese landscape painting. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 32(4), 369–382. Lyotard, J.-F. (1979). La condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Minnema, L. (2002). The paradox of Koan. Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 3(1), 21–29.

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Nitschke, G. (2007). Japanese gardens: Right angle and natural form. Köln: Taschen Verlag. Padovan, R. (1989). Dom Hans van der Laan: Architecture and the necessity of limits. Maastricht: Stichting Manutius. Picht, G. (1987). Kunst und mythos. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett/J.G. Cotta. Raulet, G. (1987). Singuläre geschichten und pluralistische ratio. In J. le Rider & G. Raulet (Eds.), Verabschiedung der (post-) moderne? Eine interdisziplinäre debatte (pp. 275–292). Tübingen: Narr. Scruton, R. (1980). The aesthetics of architecture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Slawson, D. A. (1987). Secret teachings in the art of Japanese gardens: Design principles, aesthetic values. Tokyo/New York: Kodansha International Ltd.. Ströker, E. (1975). Philosophische untersuchungen zum raum. (Erster Teil: Der gelebte Raum) Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. van de Ven, C. (1987). Space in architecture. The evolution of a new idea in the theory and history of the modern movements. Assen/Maastricht/Wolfeboro: Van Gorcum. van der Laan, D. H. (1977). De architectonische ruimte. Vijftien lessen over de dispositie van het menselijk verblijf. Leiden: E.J. Brill. van Eck, C. A. (1995). Metafoor en betekenis: Over het interpreteren van de vestibule van Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurentiana. In F.R. Ankersmit a.o. (Ed.), Hermeneutiek en Cultuur: Interpretatie in de kunst- en cultuurwetenschappen (pp. 126–156). Amsterdam: Boom. Vanderstappen, H. A. (2014). In R. E. Covey (Ed.), The landscape painting of China: Musings of a journeyman. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Vos, F., & Zürcher, E. (1964). Spel zonder snaren. Enige beschouwingen over Zen. Deventer: N. Kluwer. Weiss, A. S. (2013). Zen landscapes: Perspectives on Japanese gardens and ceramics. London: Reaktion Books. Wicks, R. (2004). Being in the dry Zen landscape. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 38(1), 112–122.

Speaking Maya, Being Maya: Ideological and Institutional Mediations of Language in Contemporary Yucatan

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Contents 1 Introduction: The Maya Language and People in Yucatan Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Being “Maya” and the Problem of “Maya-ness”: Language, Ethnicity (?), Identity . . . . . . 3 Contemporary Research on the Yucatec Maya Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Language Ideologies and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Institutional Authorizations and Everyday Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Limitations of a Structure-Focused View and a Case for a User-Centered View of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Research on the Yucatec Maya language has shown increasing interest in the socio-cultural aspects of the language and its use – said differently, scholarship has shifted from a focus on the language to a focus on its speakers and their use of the language. In particular, recent work is showing that speaking Maya is being directly tied to ideas about what it means to be Maya. In light of this, authors survey current scholarship that studies the relationship between Maya, the language, and Maya, the people. In particular, the focus of this chapter is on conceptions of Maya language and personhood, particularly on how scholarly

C. R. Rhodes (*) Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA e-mail: [email protected] C. Bloechl Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_215

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and popular conceptions of these are intimately tied together – both contemporarily and historically – and how they relate to processes of social identification on the Yucatan peninsula. The conclusion points to the importance of studying the language in use. Keywords

Yucatec Maya language · Language use · Language practice · Personhood · Identity

1

Introduction: The Maya Language and People in Yucatan Today

Yucatec Maya (hereinafter Maya, for the name [maaya] its speakers give it) is widely spoken on the Yucatan peninsula, which comprises the Mexican states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche. According to recent census estimates (INEGI 2004), there are some 800,000 speakers of the language, which displays regional variation but is mutually intelligible across these variants. Some linguists (“La Maya” 2012; “Fidencio Briceño” 2014; Guerrettaz 2013) consider Maya to be the second most widely spoken language in Mexico, following Spanish, and the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the country. Some official statistics (INALI 2008; INEGI 2000) cite Nahuatl as the most widely spoken Indigenous language in Mexico with approximately 1.4 million speakers, but those who question this ranking do so on the grounds that not all dialects of Nahuatl are mutually intelligible, while all dialects of Maya are. Today, a variety of practices and projects are focused on the Maya language and its speakers. One encounters Maya publications, music productions, broadcasts, and (increasingly) signage in public spaces. Maya language and culture are regularly discussed or celebrated at public events, such as those commemorating International Mother Language Day and the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Generally, the discourse of participants in these various efforts presumes and promotes bonds between Maya language and Maya personhood. Currently, the language is undergoing significant processes of institutionalization and standardization. Maya is now the language of instruction in some primary schools and universities, and it will soon be a language of instruction in some secondary schools. Today, schoolteachers may take a Maya language test in order to qualify for work in certain communities. Additionally, Maya speakers can now be certified as interpreters to work in legal settings. The establishment of linguistic norms (Sp., normas) has accompanied these institutional changes. Mexico’s National Institute for Indigenous Languages (INALI), in collaboration with the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), recently produced a book of writing norms for the language (INALI n.d.). Promotional materials for this book appeal to the nexus between language and cultural identity. As explained on the INALI website (https://site.inali.gob.mx/Micrositios/normas/maya.html), Maya is one of the most studied languages, by its speakers and non-speakers, who have admired the conception of the world that Maya thought and culture present. By encouraging the

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production and use of texts by Maya speakers, the establishment of writing norms, the INALI claims, will drive the development and diffusion of the contemporary Maya language and, therefore, its culture. (Authors’ translation; on the subject of norms and variation in written (Yucatec) Maya, see Brody 2004, 2007). Maya language is thus conceptualized, in this and related projects, not only as a vehicle for the culture and worldview of a particular sort of person – i.e., an Indigenous citizen of a certain cultural group – but also as a national resource in need of formal administration. In 2003, the Mexican national government issued a law for the linguistic rights of Indigenous peoples, the “Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas,” which explicitly mandates expanding the social range in which Mexico’s Indigenous languages are used. This includes promoting access to knowledge of them; fostering the preservation, knowledge, and appreciation of the Indigenous languages in public spaces and through the media; developing and certifying or accrediting a range of bilingual professionals; and developing norms for the languages, which provided the impetus for the INALI-SEP norms described previously, among other efforts (CNDH 2018[2003], p. 5). For example, this is particularly evident in the work of state-run Maya radio stations. Mexico’s Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples operates three radio stations on the peninsula that offer broadcasts in Maya: Radio XEPET in Yucatán, Radio XENKA/XHNKA in Quintana Roo, and Radio XEXPUJ in Campeche. The mission, in keeping with professed national commitments to multiculturalism and multilingualism, offers institutional recognition to Maya speakers qua Indigenous Mexican citizens – with specifically linguistic rights. Programming content at these stations regularly emphasizes and endorses connections between Maya language and identity. In addition to reporting the news, informing listeners about government programs, and playing music, the radio stations are cultivating self-consciously Maya listening audiences. In light of recent trends showing that speaking Maya is being directly tied to ideas about what it means to be Maya, the chapter includes a survey of current scholarship that studies the relationship between Maya, the language, and Maya, the people. In particular, the chapter focuses on conceptions of Maya language and personhood – and on how scholarly and popular conceptions of these are intimately tied together, both contemporarily and historically (see also Rhodes 2016, p. 33). The authors further show how ideas about Maya personhood are linked to processes through which people come to be socially identified as Maya in practice and discuss some Maya speakers’ uptake of and resistance to these typifications, along with avenues for further research.

2

Being “Maya” and the Problem of “Maya-ness”: Language, Ethnicity (?), Identity

In recent years, projects centered on Maya language, culture, and identity have been underway at a variety of institutional locales in the Yucatan (see, e.g., Berkley 2001; Castañeda 2004; Hervik 2003; Eiss 2008). Research is also being conducted on Maya speakers in diaspora, particularly in the San Francisco Bay area. It suggests

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that, following Merida and Valladolid, San Francisco, CA, may be one of the largest communities of Maya speakers, on or off of the peninsula (compare Cesario 2014 and INEGI 2004, 2005). Speakers of Yucatec Maya refer to their language as Maya (maaya), but do not typically identify themselves as Maya. As Castañeda explains, Yucatec Maya speakers use an array of identity terms that are “based on cross-cutting criteria of class, gender, and language, but not ethnicity” (2004, p. 53). These include masewal/macehual, óotzil, catrín, and mestizo (see also Berkley 1998; Gabbert 2001; Hervik 2003; Loewe 2010). Compared to other parts of Latin America, Mattiace (2010) observes, Yucatan shows a relative lack of political mobilization around ethnic identity. Many Maya speakers simply do not self-identify in ethnic terms, and some actively reject the “Indigenous” or “Maya” categories (e.g., Castañeda 2004, p. 38; Gabbert 2001). Historical evidence of Maya identity, too, is scarce. Restall (2004) writes of a modern “Maya ethnogenesis,” and Gabbert (2004, p. 161) characterizes Maya ethnic identity in Yucatan as “ethnic consciousness in the making”; (see also Fallaw 1997; Restall 1997; Gabbert 2001; Eiss 2008). In this chapter, instead of approaching Mayaness as an ethnic category, it is considered a category of personhood that is variably understood in practice, and discussion is focused on how processes of social identification interface with notions of personhood on the Yucatan peninsula, in particular among Maya speakers. Projects involved in the crafting of Maya identity often employ essentialisms that obscure their politics and historicity. In fact, contemporary formulations of Maya identity emerge through interactions between the Mexican state, nongovernmental institutions, academics, and Maya- and non-Maya-speaking actors. Such institutional mediation is especially visible in the domain of language. Increasingly, Maya appears in formal, professionalized domains of use in which Spanish has been dominant (e.g., publications, classrooms, radio broadcasts). These developments, which have been intertwined with the standardization project mentioned previously, are not simply opening up new channels for the use of Maya. Rather, they reveal an ongoing remaking of language. This is most noticeable in the linguistic purism at work in standardized Maya. Proponents and users of the register typically employ neologisms or archaisms in order to avoid Spanish loans commonly incorporated in Maya speech. It is largely Maya-Spanish bilinguals with formal education who control this purified register. Their linguistic prescriptions – and the ideologies that motivate them – both resonate and conflict with those of vernacular speakers, who have long distinguished between Maya that is “pure” and that which is “mixed” with Spanish (Berkley 1998, 2001; Armstrong-Fumero 2009; Guerrettaz 2013, 2015; Pfeiler 1998; Rhodes et al. 2019). Generally, in its social and institutional authority, the purified standard is further vernacularizing the Maya vernacular. While standardization is a means to official recognition of Maya ethnolinguistic identity at national and broader scales, it also produces important social differentiations of language within Maya speech communities.

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Contemporary Research on the Yucatec Maya Language

People’s ideologies about the Maya language differ from their opinions about Maya speakers. Sima Lozano, Perales Escudero, and Be Ramírez (2013, p. 173) emphasize this in their article about bilingual, Maya-Spanish-speaking Yucatecans’ attitudes about the Maya language and its speakers. While the language is valorized by bilingual Maya-Spanish and monolingual Spanish speakers in the capital, bilingual Maya-Spanish and monolingual Maya speakers are less valorized. This insight illustrates the importance of focusing on the language speakers and their uses, as such an insight might be lost from a strict focus on the structure of the language. The contemporary literature on the Maya language is showing an increasing tendency towards taking Maya speakers (including those at various points along a spectrum of Maya and Spanish language use) into consideration. Reflecting trends in this literature, the following discussion is organized under two basic rubrics: language ideologies and identity, and institutional authorizations and everyday life.

3.1

Language Ideologies and Identity

Language ideologies, while variously defined (e.g., Gal and Irvine 1995; Irvine and Gal 2000; Kroskrity 1992; Silverstein 1979, 1996; Woolard 1998; Wortham 2001), include ideas about how language use can point to certain types of people or ways of being in the world. Kroskrity (2004, p. 497) defines language ideologies as “a more ubiquitous set of diverse beliefs, however implicit or explicit they may be, used by speakers of all types as models for constructing linguistic evaluations and engaging communicative activity.” Said differently, “. . .language ideologies are beliefs, or feelings, about languages [and the people who use them] as used in their social worlds” (Kroskrity 2004, p. 498). They create links between types of talk and, often widely circulating models of, types of persons. Language ideologies can be grouped into at least two types – monoglossic and heteroglossic. Monoglossic language ideologies tend to view languages as discrete, bounded wholes that “exist independently of one another, divorced from their social contexts” and find monolingualism to be natural and, by contrast, code mixing or translanguaging to be unnatural and “flawed because it does not adhere to ‘native standards’ of [the one language] or ‘foreign standards’ of [the other language]” (Allard et al. 2014, p. 337; see also Silverstein 1987). Heteroglossic language ideologies understand multilingualism as normal; resist coherent, bounded classifications of languages; and even resist distinguishing neatly between codes (Blommaert 2010; Errington 2008; Heller 2007; Hill 1993; Mannheim 2016; Silverstein 2005). Such ideologies view linguistic practices “along continua” and find “that using one language in the learning of another is both a natural process and an asset” (Allard et al. 2014, p. 337). Understanding that ideas about language and its

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use are central to understandings of how people come to be socially identified, adhering to monoglossic or heteroglossic language ideologies could hold great significance for processes of social identification. Further, when these ideologies are institutionalized, they can carry increased political power and social significance. Texts published in and about the Maya language readily engage the perceived boundaries between the Maya and Spanish languages and, perhaps in a way of particular importance to Maya language speakers, issues of Maya linguistic purism vis-à-vis the Spanish language. In marking boundaries between Maya and Spanish, publications authorize the practice and its attendant ideologies in both oral practice and in print. These practices and their ideological formations circulate widely and frequently across contexts and mediums as they move on and off of the page and into and out of spoken and written discourse. They have also generated sites of scholarly discourse and debate. Some positively evaluate and encourage these efforts (Lehmann 2018), while others have focused on their limitations vis-à-vis vernacular language practice (Rhodes et al. 2018; see also Rhodes 2016). These different approaches to understanding the functions of linguistic purist ideologies illustrate a difference in ideological focus themselves – some centered more explicitly on language structure and others focused more explicitly on language speakers and their use of language in practice. Language ideologies, as Kroskrity (2004) tells us, are multiple and diverse; socially and culturally embedded and, thus, not neutral; explicit and implicit; partial and situated; evaluative and communicative; and held by everyone. As such, they are not static but, instead, are often constructed in and through practice. Cru (2016) and Rhodes (2016) both identify higher education as a key site through which language ideologies can be affected, in particular for Maya speakers. Cru (2016) describes shifts in Maya speakers’ language ideologies who have pursued graduate education outside of the Yucatan peninsula, while Rhodes (2016) finds similar processes for a students who have studied their undergraduate degrees on the peninsula, but specifically those who have studied something related to Maya language or other cultural practices. While Rhodes (2016) observes a university context in which language ideologies that valorize vernacular language use and linguistic variation foster speakers’ confidence in and use of Maya the language, in a different university on the peninsula, Canché Teh (2014) finds that hegemonic language ideologies discourage the use of Maya in the university context. Indeed, Canché Teh (2014) insightfully points out that, historically, schools have been largely responsible for shift away from Maya language use (see also Rhodes 2016) and that, perhaps, they are not the obvious site for fostering a revalorization of the language. Yet, as Cru’s (2016) interviewees point out, and Canché Teh (2014, p. 90) also notes, universities should be considered spaces that permit dialogue about the importance of the (Maya) language. Canché Teh (2014, p. 90), along with many other local scholars, activists, and educators, emphasizes the importance of creating spaces outside of the home where Maya language can be used. The following discussion explores how formal schooling can be both repressive and liberatory.

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Discussions of formal education in the context of the Yucatan peninsula (not to mention most other places in the world) by necessity beg a discussion of modernity. Because language practice is often one of the primary social diacritics of Maya-ness affected through formal schooling (Rhodes 2016), the role of formal schooling in the Mexican modernizing and amesticizing project is not insignificant (see Heath 1972 for a historical discussion of the effects of schooling at the national level in Mexico). It is important to note, however, that while mestizaje is widely understood as a mixing of Indigenous and European blood, on the Yucatan peninsula “mestizo” either refers to someone who is wearing ‘traditional Maya’ dress or more generally means “Maya.” Time further functions as a central trope of modernity, in which the past is projected as enduring and unchanging and the present (and imagined future) as ephemeral and fleeting. Schooling is often the first place that monolingual Maya speakers encounter and come to speak Spanish, as such Spanish is linked to formal education and to Mexican modernity, while Maya is linked to a romanticized idea of Indigeneity located in the past. Indeed, as Sima Lozano and Perales Escudero (2015, p. 130) point out, ideas about the Maya language and its use are connected to discourses about temporality. In their discussion of language ideologies about Maya, they find that Maya is not associated with modernity; this association is reserved for English (Sima Lozano and Perales Escudero 2015). Their work (see also Sima Lozano 2011; Sima Lozano et al. 2013; Sima Lozano and Reyes Velázquez 2016) shows how ideas about a language and about its speakers can be quite different things. Discussion then turns to ideas about how different registers of Maya are also associated with discourses about temporality and understood under modernity. While ideas about types of talk and ideas about people who speak in certain ways are not always or necessarily the same, they can indeed be linked. Recent work has pursued linkages between language and identity among, and in the vicinity of, Maya speakers. For example, as Cru (2016, p. 126) writes, “[i]n Yucatán, language purism indexes more than a mere concern about language contact and variation and is better understood within the broader picture of efforts to legitimise Maya and the social position of some of its speakers.” Here, speaking a certain way – perhaps by avoiding instances of lexical items perceived to be Spanish in one’s Maya language use – can, as Cru (2016) points out, index or point to someone as being a certain kind of speaker. This, of course, extends to language use in other, nonspoken contexts as well. The remainder of this section points to three, inter-related processes – social identification, personhood, and enregisterment – at work in the relationship between language ideologies and identity. In explaining how people come to be socially identified in practice, Wortham and Reyes (2011, p. 142) point to how identity is “situationally emergent”; as such, it is understood to be an ongoing process of formation that is contextually and spatiotemporally contingent (e.g., Levinson 2011). As Wortham (2006) argues, explanations of identity, or better-said, processes of social identification, must attend to resources and processes that take place across different timescales. Wortham (2006) goes on to address the conundrum that the information people use to make sense of self and others in social practice can be interpreted in a range of ways. He asks, how

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is it that people successfully identify themselves and others in social practice? Another question is how does a Maya speaker who uses Spanish-origin lexical items in their speech come to be socially identified in a particular way in practice? How does purging Spanish-origin lexical items from one’s writing position that writer to be understood to hold certain language ideologies and, thus, perhaps to be a certain kind of person? As is suggested above, the answers to these questions can only be found by attending to resources across spatio-temporal scales. Widely circulating ideas about or, models of, personhood exist in Yucatan and, as people become familiar with these, they can use them to understand and interpret individuals’ behaviors in given instances of practice. However, those instances of practice also point to and help to sustain and shape the more established ideas about types of persons upon which they draw and which they inform. Thus, individual instances of practice and models of personhood mutually inform one another – these are in a push and pull relationship that has often been described as affording different processes of emergence and constraint (Wortham 2006). Following Kockelman (2006, p. 15; see also 2012), personhood can be understood as a locally and socio-historically constituted, contextual, contingent, relational, and dynamic process that is bound by the laws of causality, the intentions of self and others, and the limits of reflexivity. The models of personhood that are produced in and through these processes are drawn upon, made, and re-made in instances of social identification in practice. Agha (2007) discusses the perceivable elements of practice that can help in making these cross-scalar connections. He describes a process called enregisterment – this is when diacritics, or socially perceivable things, come to be linked to a social persona and come to be recognized by someone(s) as linked to that persona, and then the resultant emblems can be used to identify a given person with that social persona in practice (Agha 2007). When this happens, “someone can read that persona from that thing” (Agha 2007, p. 235). As Rhodes (2016, p. 77) discusses, these readableassociations are not arbitrary – they only work to socially identify someone in a given instance of practice when certain, co(n)textually relevant (see Silverstein and Urban 1996) and appropriate combinations of these come together and are understood by participants in a given interaction. In the case of Maya speakers in the Yucatan, what come to count as diacritics of Maya-ness and that can then work to create enregistered emblems of Maya-ness shift over time and place (e.g., compare Rhodes 2016 and Thompson 1974). Thus, understanding what contributes to socially identifying someone as Maya in practice must be interrogated empirically, as these processes are contingent and contextual, just as are the ideological formations that inform these processes. To illustrate this with another example from the Yucatan, Sima Lozano and Perales Escudero (2015, p. 130) illustrate how ideas about speaking Maya are linked to ideas about the past and about access to history, particularly that of the peninsula. They also emphasize that the value placed on the Maya language by non-Mayaspeaking Spanish speakers has much to do with the value foreigners (particularly “gringos”) place on it. Thus, learning and speaking Maya for these nonspeakers links them to foreigners and English-speaking Americans in particular. This is not

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insignificant. What is important to note is what speaking Maya does not link these nonspeakers to, namely, contemporary Maya speakers. It is the idea of the Maya of the past – who are frequently constructed as not being the ancestors of the contemporary Maya, by both non-Maya and Maya speakers alike in Yucatan – or the English-speaking foreigner that lends the Maya language prestige in these framings. This study lays the groundwork for more extended research that can illustrate through empirical evidence the valorizations and ideologies in practice. Such work would allow us to see how ideologies do important work in Maya speakers’ and nonspeakers’ everyday lives. Such a study would need to attend to the socialethnic identifications of speakers and nonspeakers. Some Spanish speakers from Merida (Yucatan state’s capital and the largest city on the peninsula) are in a unique position to valorize the Maya language, to want to learn it, and even to learn and use it, without having their social-ethnic positionalities called into question. This is not the case for everyone on the peninsula. Speaking Maya lends prestige to some, while it “Mayanizes” others. Indeed, Sima Lozano and Perales Escudero (2015) and, as they point out, Be Ramírez (2011) explain how speaking Maya can be used to point to or make one feel Yucatecan, which is drawn from, at base, Yucatec Maya culture. This typically works, however, as long as one is not and could not be identified as Maya. There are, of course, exceptions to this. Note the growing trend among university-educated Maya speakers who work on and with the Maya language in professional capacities. Among some of these individuals, there is a tendency to (re-)valorize Maya language use and to affirm its association with Maya-ness. However, this is typically an active project among individuals whose professional efforts relate to and depend upon Maya language and other cultural practices and whose Maya-ness has been brought into question through associations with practices stereotypically recognized as non-Maya. In these cases, strengthening claims to Maya-ness can contribute to professional expertise. This trend could be less prevalent outside of contexts in which individuals work on and with the Maya language and other cultural practices. In wider professional contexts, it has been observed that people do not typically associate themselves with diacritics of Maya-ness intentionally. Further, as Thompson (1974) describes, for some individuals and in some contexts, a shift away from Maya-ness may be favorable and/or may even pass largely below the awareness of the individual(s) in question. Some individuals on the peninsula may not be routinely associated with Maya-ness but may be associated with Indigeneity. These individuals may see speaking Maya as associating them more readily with Maya-ness, which often is not a desired end. Further research is needed on the ways in which conceptions and enactments of Maya-ness and Indigeneity intersect on the peninsula, including with linguistic practice. As Maya speakers seek new contexts in which they can use this language, studies that illustrate the multiplicity of identifications individuals experience vis-à-vis Maya language use will be needed. Indeed, these authors note how their interviewees “feel” that it is necessary to learn Maya, but research on whether they actually learn it in practice is needed. These authors point to the need for further research on this topic (Sima Lozano and Perales Escudero 2015, p. 132).

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Identity, or being understood as being a certain kind of speaker or person, depends upon social information across scales. In a given interaction, a person who uses language in a certain way can only be thought of as being a certain kind of person when a more widely circulating idea about types of people who use language in certain ways exists. In the case of Yucatan in particular, numerous authors point to the importance of Maya language use as a key element of Maya identity (e.g., López Santillán 2011). However, it is not a sufficient condition for identifying some as Maya. Foreigners who speak Maya, for example, are readily and consistently identified as non-Maya (see Wortham 2006 on processes of social identification more broadly). Further, someone who is readily identified by others as Maya may have that identification brought into question if the person is found to not actually speak Maya (e.g., Rhodes 2016). Thus, it is a specific conglomeration of resources, which are differentially interpreted within and across time, space, scale, and context of use that can be drawn upon to make sense of people in practice, including linguistic practice. The authors emphasize that ideas about and enactments of identity cannot be disentangled from ideas about and enactments of language. That is, language and identity are not parsable entities. Further, the contingent resources produced and drawn upon in these processes are ideologically informed and hold significant implications for how people go about their everyday lives, as their valences can both open doors and limit access to participation in a range of activities.

3.2

Institutional Authorizations and Everyday Practice

Indigenous sociopolitical movements in Latin America often emerge from the ground up, so to speak. However, as Sima Lozano, Perales Escudero, and Be Ramírez note (2013, p. 173), Maya language and cultural advocacy in Yucatan is largely administered by governmental agencies (see Cru 2017 for a discussion of grassroots language revitalization). The norms for writing Maya, aforementioned Maya-language radio stations, Maya-language teacher and interpreter certifications, and formal education from the elementary to the undergraduate university levels all involve state-mediated regimentations of the language. In each, formulations of linguistic expertise are observed that differentiate Maya speech and speakers. Institutionally authorized forms and their circulations vary greatly from vernacular language practices. And the individuals engaged in their creation vary greatly from those of monolingual, vernacular Maya speakers. Indeed, as has been pointed out, it is precisely contact with Spanish that presents a need to regiment Maya. As discussed above, policing the boundaries between Maya and Spanish only becomes necessary when Maya and Spanish are both in play. This is particularly salient in institutional contexts. While ideologies and practices found within institutionalized settings often circulate beyond those settings and may not even originate within them, their existence within and authorization through affiliation with institutionalization can lend them great degrees of power. To take the case of Maya language purism, purist language

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ideologies and practices circulate widely on the Yucatan peninsula – both in institutional settings and in everyday life. Often, the purist ideologies espoused and practiced in institutionalized settings did not originate in these. However, when institutions authorize these expert practices as correct in an authoritative fashion, those evaluations can be particularly influential. As Carr (2010) explains, enactments of expertise depend upon and constitute social distinctions between experts and laypeople. These distinctions are made all-the-more powerful and authoritative when the objects in question are ones that are “relatively inaccessible or illegible to laypeople” (Carr 2010, p. 22 [drawing on the work of Urban 2001 and Dumit 2000, 2004]). Such is the case with the language structure of Maya – the object of Maya linguists and preservationists – as it lies considerably beyond the limits of most speakers’ awareness (see Silverstein 1981). Returning to the example of language ideologies discussed above, when widely circulating ideas about the more correct nature of purist Maya language practice is taken up and authorized in institutional settings, this can lend strength to those widely circulating purist ideologies. Indeed, as numerous authors illustrate, (bilingual) vernacular speakers readily orient to and use ideas about two registers of Maya jach maaya and xe’ek’ maaya – the former considered to be particularly authoritative and authentic because it does not mix Maya with Spanish and the latter considered to be less authentic because it readily mixes Maya with Spanish (e.g., see discussions of jach and xe’ek’ maaya in Berkley 2001; Briceño Chel 2000, 2002; Colazo-Simon 2007; Cornejo Portugal and Bellon Cárdenas 2009; Cru 2014, 2016; Gabbert 2001; Guerrettaz 2013, 2015; Hervik 2003; Pfeiler 1998; Pfeiler and Hofling 2006; Vrooman 2000). When these evaluations of language become particularly significant is when they are linked to ideas about what people who speak in these ways are like – more or less authentically Maya. As institutional efforts have valorized the more purist forms of Maya – ones that police the perceived or constructed boundaries between Maya and Spanish, both in writing and speech – this holds implications for who can participate in certain types of knowledge production in the Maya language. For instance, Rhodes (2018) points to how students seeking Maya language interpreter certification are subject to the purist language ideologies held by those administering the certification exams. Students who adhere to strict bounding of Maya and Spanish as distinct linguistic codes and who do not employ what are perceived to be Spanish-origin lexical items in their oral interpretations are more readily certified as interpreters than those who use the more vernacular, Mayanized Spanish-origin lexical items in their interpretations. These preferences have also been further institutionalized in the INALI’s glossary of legal terms for Mayalanguage interpreters. Rhodes further discusses the implications of the terms used to replace the Mayanized Spanish-origin lexical items in these institutionally authoritative, purist products. Yet, pointing to institutionally authoritative language ideologies and practices as strictly purist would be inaccurate. In fact, as Cru (2016) and Rhodes (2016) argue, it is precisely experience with authoritative institutionalizations of the Maya language and practice, specifically the experience of studying Maya in a higher education setting that can provide exposure to and the impetus for a shift toward more

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heteroglossic language ideologies. However, it is important to note that not all higher education programs focused on sociolinguistics or Maya linguistics necessarily provide an ideological frame that challenges popular ideological accounts of the language (e.g., see contrasts between Canché Teh 2014 and Rhodes 2016). Formal projects of Maya language are thus creating avenues for social mobility and differentiation. Educated Maya-Spanish bilinguals have more control over the standardized (purist) register than do vernacular Maya speakers, which increasingly affords social and economic opportunities. While it is beyond the scope of this discussion, research is also needed on the registers of Spanish that are in play in a range of contexts of Maya-Spanish language contact. Educated and highly educated Maya-Spanish-speaking bilinguals do not use the same register of Spanish as do those with less or no formal education; further, the Spanish of monolinguals who may be identified as “Indian” or “Maya” by self and/or others is not the same register of Spanish spoken by more educated Maya-Spanish-speaking bilinguals. For certain speakers, the Maya language can be a resource for professional advancement, political engagement, or academic study. The same opportunities are not typically available to vernacular speakers, who increasingly confront anxieties about the “correctness” of their Maya. At the same time, standardized Maya is commonly esteemed by vernacular Maya speakers who do not use this prestige register, in part because it mediates official recognitions of Maya language (broadly) and culture. And so, the language practices and ideologies radiating from institutional sites are quite variably incorporated into the communicative habits of Maya speakers. Ethnographic research of the sort discussed here is illuminating the complex and contingent nature of Maya speakers’ everyday engagements with projects that model and manage their language. Cru’s (2017) study of bilingual (Maya-Spanish) rappers in Yucatan, for example, reveals emergent “grassroots” efforts to legitimize and promote Maya. Cru explains that, in contrast to the education system, which promotes literacy and standardized Maya, “the oral use of Maya by these youths in popular music celebrates bilingualism and extends the functions of the minoritised language in a playful, modern and creative way, emotional aspects which have not been a priority for institutional language policy and planning” (2017, p. 492). Cru’s (2017) study prompts us to return to the point that modernity is a salient construct in both highly institutionalized and more informal settings in which Maya language is in use. Guerrettaz (2013) points to how bilingual (Maya-Spanish) education teachers in the Yucatan strongly emphasize the “past” as the locus of the “pure” form of Maya they seek to learn and use in the classroom. This ideology about the location of purer, more authentic forms of Maya language use and other cultural practices is not unique to the Yucatan, however, as it is used throughout the world in Indigenous and Native communities and other politically nondominant communities to locate and contrast certain practices with contemporary ones. And, in the Yucatan, while individuals and institutions are engaging a modern/Maya dichotomy, many people are actively pursuing alternatives to this frame. For instance, López Santillán (2011) rejects the distinction and interprets urban Maya professionals in the capital city, Merida, as not only not rejecting Maya-ness but as actively engaging it as a form of social and cultural capital, while simultaneously

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working to resignify Maya-ness and Indigeneity in the face of symbolic violence people experience from being associated with it. Other authors, in their discussions of how “youth” is understood, particularly in gendered ways (Pérez Ruiz 2015), and how globalization is experienced and practiced (Lizama Quijano 2007) by Maya peoples today, are further problematizing this dichotomous modern/Maya frame. While institutionally authorized forms and uses of the Maya language are indeed powerful, the extent of their effects on Maya speakers’ everyday lives and vernacular language use have yet to be fully seen or documented. These effects are real and palpable and range from increased social mobility to anxiety and other forms of psychological violence. And they are being felt in the contemporary moment, so how their effects will inform language practice and psychological states is in-the-making. An attention to these effects will necessitate an attention to the heterogeneous nature of Maya speakers (across registers) and their uses of the language across contexts of use, and also to the heterogeneous nature of scholarship being produced in and about the Maya language. Gaining a deeper understanding of what motivates individuals to use and to authorize Maya language in certain ways in certain contexts – including in the production of scholarly findings – is key to understanding this heterogeneity. Also needed is attention to how everyday actions constitute and make possible institutional policies and practices whose effects play out at wider scales (see Carr and Lempert 2016 for a discussion of this theoretical frame). Contemporary ethnographic work on the Yucatan peninsula is shedding light on the complex and contingent nature of conceptions of Maya ethnic personhood and the processes of socially identifying self and others with these.

4

Limitations of a Structure-Focused View and a Case for a User-Centered View of Language

Research conducted on the Yucatan peninsula shows an increased emphasis on language users and their uses of language in a range of settings. This trend notwithstanding, a good deal of work and popular discourses remain focused on the language itself, rather than on actual speakers and communicative practices in context. (For approaches that carefully wed the study of linguistic structure and lived communicative practice see Hanks 1984, 1990; Lucy 1992, 1993; Lucy and Gaskins 2001.) Presumably, this owes in part to the histories of the disciplines that largely inform these projects: anthropology and linguistics. Making anthropology a science was a concern before the discipline even came into being. Whether the lineage is traced to Montesquieu’s, and later Comte’s, “science of society,” to Rousseau’s rationalism (Barnard 2000, p. 21), or to the later adoption of monogenesist theory to explain human origins, the preoccupation with science has, and for some anthropologists continues to be, central to the discipline. One of the ways anthropologists attempted to make the discipline more scientific was through an appeal to linguistics. Indeed, the salience of linguistics as science is clear when it is understood that the responses to this perspectival shift –

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poststructuralist and postmodernist critiques went so far as to explicitly claim that ethnography was allegory, not science (see Clifford 1986). While lauded as scientific and as a window into humans’ inner mental states, the approach to linguistics that informed this particular scientifizing turn in anthropology was also considered to be deeply reductionist (Barnard 2000; Ahearn 2017). It proceeded from Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1959) efforts to create a science of signs – semiology. Saussure’s approach to studying language – the signifying system par excellence, was revolutionary. It pushed studies of language out of historical linguistics and into a focus on synchronic language use. However, Saussure’s concern was not with the use of language but instead with, how, at a given point in time the stable structures of language are drawn upon to make the social contract – communication – possible. Thus, he is credited with founding structural linguistics traditions, which are still widely practiced today. For Saussure, it was the heterogeneous change over time that was impossible to describe accurately. The synchronic and diachronic parts of language (langage) are interdependent, but, Saussure thought, they could not be studied within a single framework. Language structure (langue) lay in the domain of linguistics while language use (parole) was the responsibility of other disciplines, such as psychology, physiology, sociology, history, and literature. The use of language was also viewed as secondary, subordinate, to the study of language structure, without which, Saussure argued, its use was not possible. Indeed, he argued that, “[a] science which studies linguistic structure is not only able to dispense with other elements of language, but is possible only if those other elements are kept separate’ (de Saussure 1986[1916]: 14)” (Ahearn 2017, p. 8). While the effects of Saussurean linguistics were vast, even serving as the foundation of theories that proposed to lay bare a grammar of culture (the structuralism alluded to above), today contemporary linguistic anthropology stands in stark contrast to this tradition. While the field recognizes and draws upon some of the concepts furthered by Saussure, today linguistic anthropologists reject the possibility of a distinction between langue and parole, instead arguing that language is lived social practice that must be understood in context. This does not entail a rejection of grammar or its relevance to humans’ abilities to communicate, but it refuses to premise or privilege it in communicative practice. This complicates an ability to clearly demarcate the boundaries of language or define it at all without reference to its use. This understanding of language, which is viewed as one among many forms of communicative practice, differs greatly from popular conceptions of language, as well as the understanding of language held by many linguists today. Here, the effects one or the other ideological orientations to language can have on our understandings of the phenomena in question are highlighted, as well as how these ideologies are institutionalized and historicized and, as such, linked to different mechanisms of power and authority. At base, the distinction between structural linguistic and contemporary linguistic anthropological approaches to understanding language lie in incompatible epistemological and ontological frameworks. The former approach (in the Saussurean tradition) focuses on languages as referential systems. It often goes hand-in-hand with the aforementioned monoglossic ideologies about language, which

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“. . .conceive of languages as coherent wholes that exist independently of one another, divorced from their social contexts” (Allard et al. 2014, p. 337). Contemporary linguistic anthropological perspectives, by contrast, attend to language use in sociocultural context. They draw on important contributions from Saussure but locate these insights within a larger picture of language as a social-semiotic phenomenon. For instance, Jakobson (1960) points to the multifunctionality of language, in which it simultaneously serves referential as well as expressive, conative, poetic, phatic, and metalinguistic functions (see also Rosaldo 1982). To understand this range of functions, linguistic anthropologists appeal to a Peircean (Peirce 1955 [1940]) semiotics that attends to a triadic relationship of signification that requires an understanding of sign meaning by someone (or something) for whom it is a sign (see also Kockelman 2007). This framework encompasses symbolic, iconic, and indexical ways in which signs can come to signify in practice. Further, linguistic anthropologists locate language use in practice in order to account for the ways in which different resources can contribute to processes of emergence and constraint (see Bourdieu 1977, 1990 and Foucault 1994 for discussions of emergence and constraint) and how ideologies about language (see Kroskrity 2004), as discussed herein, inform these processes. (See also Ahearn 2017 for an overview of these concepts.) Language use is taken to be ideologically mediated, and boundaries between languages are seen as sociohistorical rather than “natural” facts. It is through institutional and ideological work, according to this view, that linguistic structure comes to be naturalized as language. The convention is further reinforced through the reification of the linguist as expert on language structure, for the linguist defines this object and the criteria by which it is evaluated (see Carr 2010, p. 23 for a discussion of the evaluation of expertise). Formulations of linguistic expertise are amplified and further sedimented through their institutional instantiations. Institutions, again following Carr (2010), authorize experts and their expertise and provide spaces through which these can emanate and circulate, authoritatively. They also serve to enregister expert forms and, in so doing, can contribute to their naturalization. Thus, instead of highlighting their social conventionality, these enregistered forms can seem “. . .objective rather than socially constituted, invariant rather than malleable, autonomous rather than dependent, eternal rather than historical, universal rather than relative, and necessary rather than contingent” (Parmentier 1994, p. 176; see also Rhodes 2016). These processes obscure power inequalities central to their formations (Carr 2010; Keane 2001; Mertz 2007; Mitchell 2002; Rabinow 1996; Scott 1998; see also Rhodes 2016, pp. 130–131). As Carr (2010, p. 26) points out, Goodwin (1994) “. . .suggests that a ‘coding scheme typically erases from subsequent documentation the cognitive and perceptual uncertainties’ (p. 609) of expert actors and leads them to view the world (and its artifacts) in line with the perspective it establishes.” Central to the functioning of these coding schemes are language ideologies, which formulate links between language use and categories of personhood (Kroskrity 2004; Silverstein 1976, 1979; Woolard 1998; Woolard and Schieffelin 1994). Carr (2010, p. 26), again following Goodwin (1994), writes, “[i]t is precisely the widely held ideas that language primarily functions to denote preexisting states and that those states are the inner

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property of speakers that so frequently naturalize expertise as something one has rather than something one does.” What the authors want to emphasize are the implications that adhering to one or the other of these schemes holds (see also Hill 2002; Irvine and Gal 2000). Following the belief that language is a means for referring to the world and that it is the external representation of preexisting, internal mental states leads us to very different conclusions than does the belief that language and its uses are world-making resources. Central to this distinction are concerns at the heart of the ontological turn in anthropology (see Bessire and Bond 2014) – is a really-real world out there, beyond the limits of our perception, or does it only exist in our making? Scholarship of Maya language that tends towards one or the other of these perspectives has effects for how it defines and interprets its objects of analysis. Two tendencies are evident in these orientations: scholars who tend to understand language as a lived practice through which worlds are made tend to focus on language speakers and their experiences of language use in practice; scholars who tend to understand language as a natural human system with predefined (scientific) categories that structure and even make possible human experience tend to focus on languages, often independent of their contexts of use. While this is not particularly surprising, what is significant is that: (1) the ideologies about the primacy of linguistic structures is so pervasive that even scholars who do not privilege these ideologies and who attempt to focus on lived language use and the practices of language users still fall subject to pervasive ideologies about language structures and their effects; and (2) that these structuralist ideologies, while ostensibly about languages have implications for language speakers. A failure to account for language speakers in the study of languages has significant implications in practice and may even serve to counter the intended objectives of scholars who make languages the foci of their analyses.

5

Conclusion

In closing, this chapter highlights a few extra points that become salient when one focuses on the use of language. These insights are offered from the Yucatecan context, but they will be of relevance to other geographic settings in which the practice and study of politically nondominant languages are in question. A focus on language use, even when it has as its goal an understanding of language structure – which is not to be minimized – requires a siting within communicative practice. Investigating co(n)text is far from a static undertaking, as it requires an attention to circulation across time and space in order to make sense of any given instance of language use. Thus, it engages fundamental tensions between processes of emergence and constraint – creative and innovative uses of language and the reliance on broader structures – both linguistic and not, that make it possible to communicate at all. When language users are up front and center in analyses of language, the ethics of interaction can – and must – be made primary. This ethical focus is at the level of the subject-object of research and the production of scholarly findings about that

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research. That is to say, it asks researchers to take into consideration not only their own motivations in conducting and disseminating scholarly findings and the effects these may have, but also those of their interlocutors, attending to the heterogeneity of these in practice. What have been widely referred to as language revitalization movements, can then be interrogated as proceeding from a range of motivational frames – some that actually may work to reproduce or strengthen the processes of language shift they claim to be trying to address. Contemporary Maya language use is fraught with tensions. There is great heterogeneity across Maya speakers as well as between Maya speakers and nonspeakers. Further, Maya language and personhood are regularly conceptualized in relation to each other, in relation to Spanish, and in relation to modernity. Widely circulating metapragmatic stereotypes of Maya-ness and non-Maya-ness inform language practice and help to position Maya language users. Often, essentialisms are key to articulating to this modern frame, in making Maya-ness and Maya language use legible to the nation-state and its entities. Sometimes these formulations are strategic; at other times they unreflexively inform practice. Thus, there is also heterogeneity in how people are engaging, resisting, reifying, refusing, and redefining the modern/ Maya frame. Some, as suggested above, are drawing upon these metapragmatic models of Maya-ness to strengthen their claims to it in practice, particularly when their lived experiences (in both institutional settings and everyday life) call these associations into question. Others are proposing alternatives to this frame and some are refusing the referent “Maya” altogether, yet perhaps while simultaneously drawing upon stereotypic ideas of it even through this rejection. Some further appear to be redefining the frame – instead of rejecting it, wedding the apparent dichotomies “modern” and “Maya” into a single frame. The modern Maya can be seen rapping in villages (Cru 2017), participating in university linguistics classes (Rhodes 2016), broadcasting on the radio (Bloechl 2018), and engaging in a range of professional activities in the capital (López Santillán 2011). This refusal to choose is creating new ways of being Maya, something that is only visible when one approaches and understands language in ways that account for its embodied, co(n)textual, contingent, and communicative nature and functions in users’ lives. Much of the scholarship on this topic is in-the-making. Many of the sources included here are theses, dissertation, presentations, and institutional resources. This ongoing work is emerging largely out of contexts in which Maya speakers themselves are conducting and determining the focus of this research. While Maya language structure has long captured scholarly attention, this burgeoning focus on Maya language speakers and their uses of language is nascent, and some authors are integrating both approaches, attending simultaneously to language use and structure (Pool Balam and Le Guen 2015). What the authors have hoped to show is that, as we move to include both structure and use in our understandings of language, determining linguistic boundaries becomes much more difficult. Attention to both dimensions clarifies the interrelatedness of linguistic and social norms, both in terms of meaning-making and institutional practice. Pragmatic values complicate questions of mutual intelligibility. What it means for native speakers from two different groups to say the “same” thing, structurally, may not be the “same” thing practically. Taking

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an expansive, inclusive, and practice-based view of language helps us understand why speakers who share a morpho-syntactic code may not share the same “language.” Whereas Saussure (1959, p. 77) emphasized the primacy of language structure, linguistic and semiotic anthropological approaches have demonstrated the inherent social ground of language, as well as the mutual interdependence of structure and use. Herein, the authors have sought to illustrate how privileging structure instead of communicative practice limits our gaze and what we can come to understand about the making of meaning and social worlds.

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Afrikaans Language Monument: A Contested Monument for a Contested Language

46

Annemarie van Zyl

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Primary and Secondary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Historical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Afrikaans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 History of the Monument and Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Monument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Premise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Symbolism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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This chapter is loosely based on an the article “Die Afrikaanse Taalmuseum en -monument: 40 jaar later” co-authored by A van Zyl and J Rossouw, which was published in the Journal of Humanities, no 56 (2–1), 2016. A. van Zyl (*) Afrikaans Language Museum, Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_96

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Abstract

The Afrikaans Language Monument (ATM) in Paarl, South Africa, was erected on the foothills of Paarl Mountain to celebrate the history and development of the Afrikaans language. It is a large and imposing nonfunctional structure, richly imbued with symbolic meaning. There is also a museum for the Afrikaans language in the same town, making it the only language in the world with a monument as well as a museum dedicated to it. Afrikaans is still viewed by many as the language of the oppressor, owing to its connection to the apartheid government, rendering the monument a hotly contested site. This chapter poses the question of whether the changed sociocultural climate in the country – from the apartheid government in the 1970s to a democratically elected government today – has affected the attitude of the broad South African public toward the monument and if so, what those changed attitudes translate to in terms of the viability of the institution as a tourism destination and a national place of commemoration. The comparative, qualitative method is employed by comparing attitudes displayed toward certain aspects pertaining to the monument during the building and planning phase in the 1960s and 1970s and responses to the same aspects 40 years later, with the aim of putting cultural changes into perspective against the broader background of the country’s sociopolitical and cultural development. Although some South Africans still view the efforts of the ATM to transform their events and exhibitions to attract people from across the spectrum as mere political window dressing, very significant changes are visible in visitor demography and numbers, pointing to a greater acceptance of the monument as a cultural rather than political icon. Keywords

Afrikaans · Language monument · Language museum · Monumentalizing language · Cultural change · Apartheid

1

Introduction

This chapter describes the history of Afrikaans, one of South Africa’s indigenous languages, and of the Afrikaans Language Monument (Fig. 1) in South Africa. It examines perceptions of and attitudes toward the monument more than 40 years after its erection in the light of the enormous social, political, and cultural changes the country has undergone since. The monument, erected on the foothills of Paarl Mountain in the town of Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa, is a well-known tourist destination attracting a considerable number of visitors each year. It is not generally known that there is also a museum for the Afrikaans Language in Paarl, situated in the center of town. The monument and museum form part of the same entity, named the Afrikaanse Taalmuseum en -monument (Afrikaans Language Museum and Monument, or ATM).

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Fig. 1 The Afrikaans Language Monument. (Image Gerald Hoberman)

As far as could be established, Afrikaans is one of only four languages worldwide to have a monument built in its honor (discounting the replicas of the Dhaka Shaheed Minar erected in various Bangladeshi communities over the world), and it seems to be the only language in the world with a monument as well as a museum dedicated to it (ATM 2016: 28).

1.1

Theoretical Framework

Attitudes regarding the Afrikaans Language Monument have changed considerably since its establishment in 1975. This chapter explores the way cultural change in the country as a whole can be traced through the changing attitudes that have developed toward the monument over four decades. The question posed is whether the changed cultural climate in the country has indeed affected the attitude of the broad South African public toward the monument and if so, what those changed attitudes translate to in terms of the viability of the institution as a tourism destination and a national place of commemoration. The comparative, qualitative method is employed by comparing attitudes displayed toward certain aspects pertaining to the monument during the building and planning phase in the 1960s and 1970s and responses to the same aspects 40 years later, with the aim of putting cultural changes into perspective against the broader background of the

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country’s sociopolitical and cultural development. Each contested aspect of the monument is examined consecutively by comparing opinions of 40 years ago to current attitudes, either contrasting or equating them to one another. Ultimately, conclusions are drawn from these findings. The Burden model for cultural history (Fig. 2) is utilized to contextualize language as an aspect of cultural history within the total sphere of human existence. The model expresses the field of cultural history by means of a three-dimensional, multilayered sphere encompassing and contextualizing all aspects of the subject (Burden 2000). It is possible to position a specific field of study within the broader framework, thereby gaining insight into the seemingly simple yet extremely complex structure within which it functions. By positioning language on this model, it emerges as placed in the sphere of the nonmaterial (intangible) culture, as opposed to material (tangible) culture. It is placed exactly on the convergence of the lines of modern and traditional as well as patrician (upper) and folk (lower) culture, thereby proving that language is one of the most basic, most inextricable aspects of human culture across all levels of human endeavor. The placement of language in the center of the sphere illustrates the extent to which it is connected to all other aspects of life and thereby forms an essential, integral part of all human activity.

Fig. 2 The Burden model for cultural history. (Image courtesy M Burden)

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1.2

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Primary and Secondary Sources

For the responses engendered by the initial phase, the researcher relied mainly on information gleaned from the media of the day, as well as the minutes of meetings held by various subcommittees of the Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee (Afrikaans Language Monument Committee, or ATMK), from which a fairly clear and detailed picture emerged. For current responses, information was drawn from a market analysis performed by the ATM itself (ATM 2009), a visitor demography study commissioned by the institution (McDonald 2013) and, most notably, the findings of an independent Australian researcher who conducted a doctoral study on the monumentalizing of language, with the Taalmonument as case study (Smith 2013). Information and opinions posed in project papers written by graduate and postgraduate students in South Africa as well as other countries also informed this chapter (Pieters n.d.; Van Tonder 1994; Simos 2012). Finally, conclusions are drawn from these comparisons regarding the past and the way forward.

2

Historical Background

2.1

South Africa

South Africa has experienced radical political change since 1975, when the monument was built. Only a year after its erection, black schoolchildren took to the streets to protest against forced education in Afrikaans, in what became a bloody uprising leading to student protests all over the country. This was the spark for nationwide rebellion, which lasted until the election of a democratic government in 1994. During the 1950s–1970s, the Nationalist government, embracing a white supremacist ideology which implemented the infamous apartheid system, was at its height. By classifying the country’s inhabitants according to race, and bestowing privileges such as separate amenities on all levels of public life, job reservation, and almost exclusive access to tertiary educational institutions upon those classified as white, the government aimed to uplift the white Afrikaner race after the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) and the two World Wars. Although the country was still a British dominion when the Nationalist government came into power in 1948, members of the ruling party and heads of government bodies were almost exclusively male, white, and Afrikaans-speaking, and state mechanisms actively fostered and promoted the language. South Africa not only became the pariah of the world due to its political model; internally forces were at work to overthrow the apartheid regime. The country made history by negotiating a peaceful process in the early 1990s, whereby control of the government was relinquished by whites and handed over to the black majority. The first democratic elections were held in April 1994, and Nelson Mandela became the first black man to lead the country.

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Afrikaans

Afrikaans is one of the youngest languages in the world, unofficially recognized as an independent language in the latter half of the 1800s, and eventually declared a full official language in 1925. Afrikaans developed as a lingua franca from the seventeenth-century Dutch spoken by officials and employees of the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Companjie, or Dutch East India Company), which colonized the Cape in 1652 for merchant purposes. They introduced many people from other European countries, notably Germany, who served mainly as seamen and soldiers. The colonists made contact with indigenous tribes living at the Cape through trade and employment as laborers. Shortly after establishment of the merchant colony, the VOC started importing slaves to meet their labor needs. The slaves, who were mainly from the Indonesian archipelago, Madagascar, and certain West African countries, brought their own languages with them, and many had a working knowledge of Malayo-Portuguese, a lingua franca used by the seafaring community. In the ensuing trade and labor situation, a simplified form of Dutch, incorporating many foreign words and phrases, developed. As little as a few decades after establishment of the colony, visiting Dutch officials noted in their official documents that the language spoken at the Cape deviated from the Dutch spoken in the Netherlands. In 1806, England wrestled the colony from the Dutch and immediately imposed strict Anglicization measures, which included enforced use of English in all areas of public life and banishment of Dutch. It was, however, impossible to enforce the private use of English at the expense of the Dutch derivative most locals were speaking at the time. In the 1870s, Arnoldus Pannevis, a Dutch linguist, emigrated to South Africa and settled as a teacher in Paarl, a small but culturally very lively village situated about 50 km (30 miles) from Cape Town, the main harbor city of the country. Pannevis began propagating the idea that the language spoken by the local people had so far deviated from the original Dutch that it could no longer be classified as a Dutch dialect but had actually evolved into an entirely autonomous language. He proposed that the language, being from Africa, be called Afrikaans. Deeply religious, he was particularly concerned about children and people of the lower classes who were not able to understand the commonly used Bible, which was written in High Dutch. He therefore agitated for the translation of the Bible into Afrikaans for their benefit. Pannevis was instrumental in the founding of the GRA (Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners or Society of Real Afrikaners), a society that was formed with the aim of formalizing Afrikaans as a written language rather than just a spoken patois. The society had its inaugural meeting in the house of a prominent businessman in Paarl on 14 August 1875. The GRA soon grew into an active society and printing house which published extensively in the “new” language, among others, a newspaper called Die Patriot and many books. They met with very stern opposition initially, as the language was generally looked down upon as a substandard patois for use by the lower classes. Culturally and physically cut off from Holland, most people did not realize that they themselves were speaking a derivative that they still called Dutch but which was actually far removed from the original language.

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Afrikaans Language Monument: A Contested Monument for a Contested Language 891

The painstaking efforts of the GRA paid off over the next 50 years with gradual recognition of the Afrikaans language in churches, schools, courts, tertiary institutions, and eventually the state itself.

3

History of the Monument and Museum

3.1

Monument

The first initiative for erection of a language monument in Paarl dates back to 14 August 1942 at a commemoration of the historical founding of the GRA. At a subsequent public meeting in the Paarl Town Hall in September 1942, a committee was established with the aim of taking the initiative forward (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1942). It took more than three decades for the vision of that initial group to be realized. Fund-raising and awareness drives were held nationally. Eventually, in 1964, 12 architects were invited to take part in a competition to design the monument. South African architect Jan van Wijk won the competition (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1966; Van Wijk 2014: 41). Symbolism. Van Wijk designed a purely symbolic, nonfunctional structure with strong architectural lines, richly imbued with meaning (Fig. 3). He had used the writings of two well-known Afrikaans authors, CJ Langenhoven and NP Van Wyk Louw, to inspire this design (Van Wijk 2014). 1. To the left (west) of the approach to the monument stand three columns (A), representing the languages and cultures of Western Europe – Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, and others. No single column represents a specific language; the number three was used due to its indivisibility. The columns progressively diminish in height to express the diminishing influence of the European languages on Afrikaans. These columns begin as separate structures which then merge into an ascending arc to form part of the main outline of the monument. The tallest of the three is roughly 13,5 m (44 ft) tall. 2. To the right (east) of the approach is a podium (B), which represents the southern tip of Africa. On this podium are three round convex mounds, symbolizing the influence of the indigenous South African languages. These structures progressively increase in size, thereby indicating the increasing African influence on the language. They are positioned in an arc that connects with the monument’s main curve, thereby connecting them physically as well as spiritually. 3. The Malay language and culture is represented by a wall (C) on the stairs leading toward the monument. The wall is positioned between the arcs of Western Europe and Africa so that it is separate from yet united with these two forces. 4. Where the two arcs of Western Europe and Africa meet (D), a bridge is formed, symbolizing the fusion of languages from these two continents, as described by author Van Wyk Louw.

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Fig. 3 Afrikaans Language Monument symbolism key. (Image Gerald Hoberman)

5. The main column or spire of the monument (E) represents a rapidly ascending arc, as the accelerated growth of the language was described by author CJ Langenhoven. This column stands in a pool of water, further reinforcing the concept of Afrikaans as a living, growing entity requiring sustenance for its continued existence. The spire is approximately 57 m (186 ft), with its tip blunt and open, to indicate continuing growth. The play of light inside the monument, caused by the pond and openings in the main column, symbolizes the language as a gleaming tool, another Van Wyk Louw symbolism. 6. A second, shorter column (F), representing the Republic of South Africa stands in the same pond. This free-standing column does not relate to Afrikaans specifically but is an integral part of the whole. It is hollow, and open to Africa, indicating the continuous interaction and discourse taking place between Afrikaans, South Africa and Africa. Erection. The exacting task of erecting the monument took a little more than 2 years. The monument was completed and inaugurated in 1975, 100 years after the founding of the GRA.

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Afrikaans Language Monument: A Contested Monument for a Contested Language 893

The structure was a feat of engineering at the time. The complex task of positioning the monument proportionally correct was achieved by building scale models, which were then mathematically converted into precise geometrical arcs. The arcs were projected onto a three-dimensional system of axes utilizing 1100 reference points to determine the outlines of the structure. The resulting geometrical model was used to construct shutters, or molds, made up of a metal framework lined with marine plywood. Each section of metal piping was shaped to the requisite curvature on site (Van Wijk 2014: 42). A special concrete mixture consisting of cement, white sand, and pulverized Paarl Mountain granite was cast into the shuttering. Because the architect wanted to reflect the color of the rocks on the site, he insisted on using the grayish-brown outer layers of the mountain granite as well as the bluish inner layers. The texture of the rocks on the site was imitated by removing the outer cement layer of the hardened concrete with pneumatic hammers, so as to expose the granite chips embedded in the mixture. The main spire was built to withstand wind speeds of up to 160 km/h (Van Wijk 2014: 51).

3.2

Museum

Initially it was not the intention of the committee to erect a museum as well as a monument. In a happy coincidence, the Paarl house where the GRA was originally founded in 1875 came on the market at the same time that the committee was at the height of its activities. The importance of the building was realized and it was bought for the purpose of converting it into a museum. A history professor attached to the University of Stellenbosch was appointed to implement the conversion. He conducted extensive research and traced numerous artifacts relating to the history of the language, the inhabitants of the house, and the historic events of 14 August 1875. The museum was inaugurated on 14 August 1975, on the centenary of the founding of the GRA (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1964–1975).

4

Challenges

Monuments are the visual concretization of certain ideas, ideals, values, and ideological belief systems and as such are always subject to criticism (Smith 2013: 58). They very often act as sources of controversy, and in the period before their erection and afterward, friction is generated regarding not only the message the monument conveys but also the manner in which it is conveyed or planned to be conveyed (Eldridge 2003: 25). The Afrikaans Language Monument is no exception. Over the years, the monument remained physically unchanged but by far not unchallenged (Simos 2012: 1). In the 1970s, it was challenged on every imaginable front, not only regarding the basic premise of building a physical structure to commemorate a language but also regarding many other aspects such as symbolism, ideology, aesthetics, location, and function.

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Premise

The very idea of building a tangible structure such as a monument for an intangible aspect of heritage, namely, language, was questioned during the initial phases in terms of the necessity, practicality, and advisability of such an undertaking (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1964–1974). Various opinions were aired, among others, that a language could not be expressed in concrete form, that monuments are built for past glories which would then signify the demise of Afrikaans, and that the written expression of a language, rather than a physical structure, should be regarded as its monument (Van Niekerk 2000). In his address delivered during the inauguration of the monument in 1975, Prime Minister B.J. Vorster addressed these concerns in a typically flamboyant fashion. He said (author’s own translation and abridgement): If your mother were just a woman, and your flag just a cloth, your national anthem just a poem, and your language just a means of communication; then for you this monument will be a lifeless structure of concrete and granite. Afrikaans has had to prove itself against overwhelming odds, and has done so admirably, and that is the reason why a monument has been erected in its honor. (Vorster 1975)

In studies today, the basic premise is seldom questioned (Smith 2013), probably due to a greater acceptance and awareness of the importance of memorials dedicated to intangibles as well as to some form of struggle.

4.2

Ideology

Afrikaans and its relationship to the other languages of South Africa is and has always been a contentious issue, mainly due to its strong links to the apartheid government. This implies the monument as a site of contestation (Simos 2012: 1; Smith 2013: 135). With the nearing inauguration in 1975, and in the light of the growing political awareness of the 1970s, the objections to the monument took on an increasingly political undertone. Many critics maintained that the government of the day openly “hijacked” the monument as a powerful symbol of Afrikaner nationalism (Hugo 2009: 109). The exclusion of all communities other than the white Afrikaans-speaking one by the committee during the initial planning and fundraising phases contributed to alienation and the perception of the monument as an apartheid symbol. The contradictory actions of the committee, by accepting almost unanimously the inclusive symbolism as proposed by Van Wijk, while at the same time excluding all other communities from the planning process, sent the message of white elitism and exclusivity. This negation of the very significant role that indigenous and slave languages played in the development of Afrikaans, and of the extensive use of the language in the colored community, engendered a storm of protest, led by anti-

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Afrikaans Language Monument: A Contested Monument for a Contested Language 895

apartheid activists and propagated by the media. It eventually forced the inclusion in the inauguration event of a significant number of people from other races. However, for many activists it was a case of too little, too late, and they still refused to attend the proceedings (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1968–1975; Die Burger 1971; Die Suid-Afrikaan 1995; Sunday Times 1975). Through the years since its inauguration, many Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, among them academics from across the color spectrum who felt alienated from the monument and its raison d’être, voiced their displeasure in the written media, television debates, and other public platforms (Die Suid-Afrikaan 1995). This still happens today, albeit to a much lesser extent. Political viewpoints remain the leading cause of criticism levelled at the monument. In an article published as late as 2004, it was argued that the iconography of the monument and the way in which it is presented seeks to symbolically impress the right to the country, language, and nationhood that white Afrikaans speakers have allegedly claimed for themselves, on the environment (Beningfield 2004: 509). Although the country in 2016 is a transformed, multiracial, multicultural society, many South Africans are still deeply suspicious and view the efforts of the ATM to transform their events, exhibitions, and educational programs to attract people from across the entire spectrum of the population as mere window dressing (Van Zyl and Rossouw 2016). It is therefore no surprise that the commentary of a relatively large number of respondents in Smith’s study was politically inspired (Smith 2013: 259). Many still negatively associated the monument with apartheid, while on the other hand, others viewed it as a symbol of determination, solidarity, and national pride (Smith 2013: 244).

4.3

Symbolism

Although the general symbolism embodied in the monument, and especially the way in which Van Wijk expressed it architecturally, was met with an overwhelmingly positive response from the Planning Committee in the 1960s, the inclusion of the influence of indigenous languages on the development of Afrikaans engendered strong opposition from a small conservative faction led by the previous chairman of the committee. According to them such references were “historically incorrect.” The disagreement eventually led to a total schism in the ranks of the committee and the community at large. Sanity, however, prevailed, and the symbolism as initially visualized by Van Wijk was accepted unchanged (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1964–1974). The criticism of the symbolism as conceptualized by van Wijk was unfounded in 1975 and still is 40 years later. When a new language develops, it must of necessity be influenced by the indigenous languages spoken in the area (Le Cordeur 2010; Van Rensburg 2012: 16). The unassailable fact that the indigenous languages of South Africa have played a formative role in the development of Afrikaans is illustrated, among others, by the many indigenous words incorporated into its vocabulary, such as dagga (cannabis), dagha (mortar), boegoe (buchu, a herb),

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kwagga and njala (quagga and nyala, kinds of antelope), aikôna (definitely not), donga (erosion furrow), tambotie (tamboti, kind of tree), kierie (walking stick), makietie (party), indaba (discussion meeting), pasella (free), kaia (house), and tollie (young ox) (Steyn 2014). Despite his very specific exposition of the meaning during the planning phases, the architect also strongly put across the point that he had envisaged a monument imbued with very rich symbolism, which speaks for itself, as it were, and leaves onlookers to find specific meaning according to the viewpoints held by each (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1973; Van Wijk 2014: 21). This is very much in keeping with current ideas about symbolism and meaning-making. Russell Staiff, for instance, holds that visitors should never be forced into a specific interpretation of a cultural object such as a monument and that, should information be offered, it should be objective and inclusive in all respects (Staiff 2014). Smith (2013) presents the argument that a case could be made for the ATMK specifically stipulating the abstractness of the monument to allow them (in collaboration with the government at the time) to ascribe to it an ideologically driven symbolism at will. One of the respondents in Smith’s survey also held this viewpoint, stating that in his opinion the intricate symbolism of the monument was purposely conceptualized to aid undisputed acceptance of the offered official interpretation by the visitor, whereby a specific ideology might be promoted (Smith 2013: 258). These opinions mostly correspond with the political criticism aired against the monument but are not in keeping with the vision of the architect, which was already emphatically stated during the planning stages (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1973; Van Wijk 2014), and not conveniently manufactured with the benefit of hindsight.

4.4

Aesthetics

As for aesthetic appeal, opinions were deeply divided in the 1970s. It was a very modern structure for its time, and while admired by some, others found it strange and alien and would have preferred something in a traditional vein which would be more understandable in terms of appearance and symbolism (Die Burger 1971). Many of the comments reflecting unfavorably on the appearance, however, were in fact aired by protestors against the perceived ideology the monument portrayed, rendering the criticism worthless in terms of aesthetic considerations. References to the so-called phallic appearance abounded and are still occasionally heard today (Huigen 2008) – a clear attempt at discreditation and reduction to object of ridicule without any objective basis (Van Zyl and Rossouw 2016). Current visitor comments equally reflect a wide spectrum of opinions, from the very favorable to descriptions such as bizarre and definitely ugly, proving the validity of the old adage beauty is in the eye of the beholder (Smith 2013). That it is undoubtedly a striking structure is upheld by the fact that the monument has been included in a book on the 500 most iconic architectural structures in the world (Cattermole 2008: 383), the only South African building to receive that honor, and one of only four on the African continent.

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Afrikaans Language Monument: A Contested Monument for a Contested Language 897

Location

The general opinion regarding the location of the monument was initially that it should be placed in the center of town, where a core of buildings intimately linked to the history and development of Afrikaans is still found today. A strong lobby for greater visibility and therefore greater public consciousness won the day, and the monument was erected on the foothills of Paarl Mountain at the entrance to the town, where it can be seen from all directions from a distance of up to 50 kilometers (30 miles) (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1964–1973). Time has proven that the choice of location was the right one. A less dramatic monument in the center of town would by this time have been forgotten or ignored, as is the case with many small, inconspicuous monuments throughout the country and the world. The location of the monument against Paarl Mountain is dramatic and imposing and experienced as such by many visitors, although some respondents in Smith’s survey criticized the high visibility, feeling that the structure is not in harmony with the surroundings. Others felt exactly the opposite, illustrating the large diversity in individual tastes and ideas (Smith 2013).

4.6

Function

Regarding functionality, the initial idea of the planning committee was to erect a functional building where the language could be practically promoted and showcased, among others, by offering language training and creating a reference library of rare Africana books and documents. By the time the invitation went out to the architects, however, the idea had radically evolved into the concept of a symbolic, nonfunctional structure (Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee 1964) albeit situated in a functional landscape conducive to family recreation and edutainment. This idea also met with disapproval in the 1970s, with many people of the opinion that the language would best be served by a functional space actively promoting its use (Coombes 2003). With the acquisition of the museum, however, that initial vision of the committee was inadvertently realized. The museum houses and preserves an extensive collection of Africana books and documents directly related to the development history of the language and boasts research facilities such as a dedicated reading room and the services of a qualified researcher. Various short courses geared toward the promotion and preservation of the language in general and the written word in the wider sense are offered by the museum, leading to a vibrant, dynamic facility working in tandem with the monument.

5

Conclusion

Afrikaans is still in certain circles linked to the apartheid government and associated ideas such as oppression and loss of freedom, which has led to an aversion to the language among a large percentage of the South African population (Smith 2013:

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134). In light of this, it remains a challenge for the Afrikaans Language Monument to retrain public focus onto its inherent cultural values and away from the political ideologies with which it has been invested. The challenge this objective poses is to incorporate the monument into an inclusive past shared by all (Marschall 2005). For the monument to act as bridge builder, all communities must accept it as portraying a part of their shared heritage. For them to accept and internalize the ideas, ideals and values represented in the monument, they must experience the portrayal of the shared past to be faithful to the facts, inclusive and not exclusive, and reconciliatory rather than aggressive (Van Zyl 2016). Great strides have been made in that direction, due to specific targeting of markets not previously reached. The various events and activities hosted and offered by the institution have proved extremely successful and draw visitors from all over the spectrum of South African communities (Van Zyl and Rossouw 2016). The exhibitions were all extensively reworked and transformed to ensure inclusivity, reconciliation, and honesty, all the while endeavoring to include and welcome all groups without alienating some in the process. Marschall (2005) argues that new political dispensations create a group identity by a process of selective commemoration and the fabrication of a usable history and that the erection of suitable places of commemoration forms an important part of that process. Accordingly, there was an escalation in the number of monuments and other memorials erected in South Africa since the end of the apartheid era with the specific purpose of solidifying ethnic and group identity (Marschall 2005: 18). After 1994, Afrikaans lost its privileged position as one of the two official languages of South Africa and became 1 of 11 official languages, with English as the generally accepted common language, thereby creating a renewed struggle for recognition and preservation of the language. Although much older than the monuments built after 1994, the Afrikaans Language Monument in spirit forms part of the body of post-apartheid monuments in South Africa which portray a struggle against oppression and quest for freedom and self-determination. According to Smith the monument has, by means of the recognition and promotion of Afrikaans, become the symbol of renewed struggle for preservation of the language (Smith 2013: 136). The monument is slowly shaking its apartheid stigma, and with its unique history and position in the South African physical and spiritual landscape, it is increasingly reinventing itself as a unifying influence (Simos 2012: 1) and builder of bridges (Van Zyl 2016). The popularity of the monument is growing year-on-year, with an increase in visitor numbers as well as in the diversity of visitors from across the spectrum. While the foreign visitor component has traditionally constituted at least 50% of the total number, local visitor percentages are steadily on the increase, pointing to growing acceptance of and identification with the monument as a national symbol in the broad South African community.

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References Afrikaanse Taalmonumentkomitee (ATMK). (various years). Unpublished meeting Minutes. ATM (Afrikaans Language Monument). (2009). Marknavorsing. Unpublished internal ATM document. ATM (Afrikaans Language Monument). (2016). The Afrikaans Language Monument: From concept to being. ATM information leaflet. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/IsabeauBotha/ taalmonument-information-booklet-2016. Accessed Jan 2017. Beningfield, J. (2004). Native lands: Nation, language and landscape in the Taal Monument, Paarl, South Africa. Social Identities, 10(4), 509–525. Burden, M. (2000). Die metodologie van kultuurgeskiedenis. South African Journal for Cultural History, 14(2), 17–29. Cattermole, P. (2008). Architectural excellence: 500 iconic buildings. Ontario: Firefly Books. Coombes, A. E. (2003). History after apartheid: Visual culture and public memory in a democratic South Africa. Durham: Duke University Press. Die Burger. (1971). Die eg ou-Kaapse gaan tot niet, 2 November. Die Suid-Afrikaan. (1995). Taalmonument: Fallus of Volkskat? (53), 33. Eldridge, R. (2003). An introduction to the philosophy of art. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hugo, D. (Ed.). (2009). Halala Afrikaans. Stellenbosch: Protea Boekhuis. Huigen, S. (2008). Taalmonumente. In Van Volksmoeder tot Fokofpolisiekar, Kritiese opstelle oor Afrikaanse herinneringsplekke. Stellenbosch: SunPress. Le Cordeur, M. (2010). Kaapse Afrikaans. Die Burger, 17 March. Marschall, S. (2005). Forging national identity: Institutionalising foundation myths through monuments. South African Journal of Cultural History, 19(1), 19–35. McDonald, Z. (2013). Waarom besoek plaaslike bruin mense as ‘n reël nie die ATM nie? Unpublished internal ATM document. Pieters, H. (n.d.). The Taalmonument: Monument for what? Unpublished master’s thesis, Department of Arts & Heritage, University of Maastricht, Belgium. Simos, C. (2012). Paarl Taal Monument: Struggle during apartheid and post-apartheid. Unpublished semester project, Department of Architecture, University of Cape Town. Smith, S. (2013). Monumentalising language: Visitor experience and meaning making at the Afrikaanse Taalmonument. Unpublished doctoral thesis, School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia. Staiff, R. (2014). Re-imagining heritage interpretation: Enchanting the past-future. Farnham: Ashgate. Steyn, J. C. (2014). Ons gaan ‘n taal maak. Pretoria: Kraal Publishers. Sunday Times. (1975). Top Nats intervene. 27 April. Van Niekerk, A. (2000). Taalmonument aan die suiderhang van Paarlberg. Die Taalgenoot, 8/9(69), 6–9. Van Rensburg, C. (2012). So kry ons Afrikaans. Pretoria: Lapa. Van Tonder, J. B. (1994). The Taal Monument: An analytical study. Unpublished semester project, Department of Architecture, University of Pretoria. Van Wijk, J. (2014). Taalmonument. Tokai: Historical Media. Van Zyl, A. (2016). Monuments: Building walls or building bridges? Unpublished lecture, Symposium of the South African Society for Cultural History, southern region, Stellenbosch, 30 September. Van Zyl, A., & Rossouw, J. (2016). Die Afrikaanse Taalmuseum en -monument in die Paarl: 40 jaar later. Journal of Humanities, 56(2–1), 295–313. Vorster, B. J. (1975). Unpublished address (sound recording and transcription).

Cultivating Memoryscapes: The Politics of Language at Plantation House Museums in the American South

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Contents 1 Sowing Seeds of Memorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Growth in the Field of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Ecology of Memory on the Plantation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Establishing Slavery in History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Cultivating Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

For every story told, there is a decision made not to tell another story. At plantation museums, the decision to tell a story typically privileges the stories of the white elite. Scholars of memory and heritage tourism have found that plantation house sites dedicate considerable resources to telling stories of planters and “southern belles” but fail to provide substantive interpretations of slavery and the enslaved. In this chapter, I approach language heard and read at plantation sites as inherently political and examine the influence of language on physical spaces and places of memory. The majority of plantation museums were founded on traditions of erasure, apologist attitudes, and Lost Cause ideologies. However rooted plantation museum historical interpretation is in overtly racist placenarrative, they are far from static. Narratives at plantation museums are both deliberate and organic. Histories sold and told at memory sites grow and change as they are performed by tour guides and consumed by visitors. Navigating space

E. J. Walcott-Wilson (*) Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_99

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and verbiage of plantation memoryscapes is a dialectic process, and narratives are in a constant state of becoming as they are subverted, adapted, and reified. This essay situates the plantation museum in the broader conversation about slavery, memory, and the vitality of narrative. Keywords

Public memory · Slavery · Historiography · Museums · Plantation

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. . . One of the principle ways in which we acquire, hold, and digest information is via narrative. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is created. Toni Morrison (1994)

1

Sowing Seeds of Memorial

In her 1853 “Appeal to the Ladies of the South,” Louisa Bird Cunningham called for the preservation of Mount Vernon, the then-deteriorating home of George Washington. Warning that “Northern money-grubbers” or foreigners may purchase that “shrine of republicanism,” she raised money among women of the South and eventually formed the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (West 2013). Employing a rhetoric swirling with Southern honor, Southern culture, and Southern gender roles (set in direct contrast to Northern ways of life), she fostered new realms of remembering, the physical realm of the house museum and the ideological realm of domesticity, as central to public morality. Patricia West writes that a national cultural shift to the “cult of domesticity” increasingly prioritized the “moral power of the home environment.” Catherine Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, emphasized the “parlor as a cultural podium.” The public parlors of house museums, West writes, would become these cultural podiums as Cunningham and others set out to preserve specific memories and memorial spaces, deliberately promulgate certain ideologies and histories, and cater to growing tourist audiences. Mount Vernon was the first plantation home museum and its founding established a template for other memorializing efforts. Women’s groups, North and South, engaged in fundraising activities, petitioned local, state, and federal governments for the appropriation of certain properties with historic and patriotic value, and curated public spaces of (feminine) virtue and nationalism. Hidden barely below the surface of fundraising and legislative language, the slavery question haunted efforts to preserve sites that have always been theaters of contradiction and contestation. The continued negotiation of contested histories is still found in the subtleties of fundraising letters and tour guide scripts. It is a truism that for every story told, there is a decision made to not tell another story. At plantation house museums, these decisions typically privilege stories of the white elite. Scholars of memory and heritage tourism have found that plantation house sites dedicate considerable resources to telling stories of planters and

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“southern belles” but fail to provide substantive interpretations of slavery and the enslaved (Carter 2016). At the core of this chapter are the unfolding memory politics at plantation sites today. The origins of a site, its subsequent development, and everyday interactions never escape the domain of politics or of language. This chapter can hardly be comprehensive, but I hope to provide a primer for understanding the power of inherently political texts, vocalizations, and naming practices employed at many plantation house museums. Plantation museum narratives are both deliberate and organic. Like seeds planted in the soil on a plantation, the memory of the place is cultivated. Narrative is inseparable from the context of its own creation, contingent in its surroundings, physical and imagined. It grows and changes; it depends on its caretakers but is not fully in their control. The plantation museum is a discursive and rhetorical space, and the language used therein is more than a delivery mechanism; it is formative. It is important to examine the confluence of many types of historical arguments as an assemblage that gets inscribed and reinscribed physically and phenomenologically on the landscape. The “podium of culture” described by Catherine Beecher remains a forum for both curated and contested meaning (West 2013). While I focus primarily on memory at plantation house sites, it is important to examine so-called “counter-narrative” sites (Butler et al. 2008; Eichstedt and Small 2002). There have been numerous comparative studies of house museums that address the visibility and invisibility of slavery at plantation museums and counter-narrative sites, including Eichstedt and Small’s Representations of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums, as well as the politically and culturally contingent origins of house museums and narratives of “Confederate Culture,” the “Lost Cause,” and the “Old (and New) South” by historians such as Karen Cox (2003) and Patricia West (2013), among others. I aim to expand on these numerous works by highlighting how the rhetorical contributions of museums are enmeshed in a broader discursive potpourri of American memories of slavery. As memorial sites, all plantation museums are making an historical argument about the enslaved who worked there. Slavery may be invisible or obscured, but the site and the institution can never be decoupled. Neither can race from slavery. But what is slavery? How do visitors conceive of slavery and race when they leave the museum? The answers can be found in the language at museums, in the spaces of invisible argument, in the dialectic of ideological origins and visitor interests, and in the dominant and counter-narratives. The historical argument is created, recreated, and challenged in the performance of memory at sites of slavery. The driving force behind much plantation house museum research today is to challenge the penchant of those sites to reify, if not actively espouse, Lost Cause narratives of the Confederacy (Eichstedt and Small 2002). Those narratives, deliberately constructed by organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), cast the characters of an invented Old South: contented mammies and lazy field hands living harmoniously with a benevolent planter class in the idyllic prelude to an unjust war fought by heroic underdogs to defend states’ rights (Cox 2003). Despite the work of many museums and historians to present more balanced histories, these ideas are surprisingly sticky and have been produced, reproduced,

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and renegotiated in popular media and academic history. Lost Cause narrative frames and the postwar adaptation of proslavery ideology have deep roots. The Lost Cause narrative and its white supremacist origins are woven into the physical and imaginary landscape of plantation museums that often present tourists with a time-frozen picture of the Antebellum South. At the very least, these stories are foundational to the development of many Southern heritage sites, and many plantation museums still exclude from their narratives the vast majority of the plantation population and fail to acknowledge the existence of race-based slavery. Sites that deliberately move against the white-washing tendencies of traditional plantation house museums have been interpreted as counter-narrative sites. For instance, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana is dedicated to portraying the brutality of slavery, and museums like Old Slave Mart in Charleston, South Carolina, are dedicated to telling the story of the slave trade. These memorial spaces present a drastically different historical argument. Eichstedt and Small write that “while white-centric sites typically valorize white ways of organizing the world and erase any significant contribution of African Americans, Black-run sites contest the dominant narrative and are organized around a different set of valorizations—of struggle and resistance against brutality, of resilience in the face of injustice, and of dignity in the face of inhumanity.” The content itself, the distribution of information, and the objectives of these sites seem to be the inverse of what you may find at a traditional plantation house museum. More difficult to glean is the historical argument for the meaning of slavery and race. Often located in the same town or along the same stretch of road, these apparently disparate sites participate in a local dialogue of heritage tourism and memory, anchoring intangible memory to physical space. That dialogue shapes meaning visitors take back to their homes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Texas. The memory practices surrounding the civil war play an important role in the preservation of plantation museums as frozen in the antebellum period. As a tour guide on a civil war battlefield from 2011 to 2015, I conducted tours of a house owned by yeoman slave owners when the war spilled into their front yard. I participated in the active, daily construction of public memory and experienced the institutional challenges in addressing the nature of slavery and enslavement. My path to this work has been extremely personal and sometimes tumultuous. Throughout this chapter, I call on experiences that I have had teaching, learning, changing, ignoring, and seeking histories of slavery. My personal memories of public history work and my experiences doing fieldwork at plantations present their own analytic possibilities that inform my work. In the three sections to follow, I present an argument for the significance of arguments in memory work, at plantation house sites, and in the historiography of slavery. Triangulating the politics of language in plantation house museums requires excursions into multiple fields and perspectives. This review of the historiographical and epistemological foundations of memory, slavery, and race also situates the plantation house museum as a powerful actor in the making of memory. It is not a stage where people present a succession of successful or unsuccessful arguments; it is the assemblage of parts that make up the narrative of the museum and the influence of stories beyond its fences.

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Growth in the Field of Memory

In a speech for the American Association for State and Local History, David Blight said that “place is at the heart of how we understand the past” (2007). Memory begins at home, over the kitchen table, in the sidewalks around your neighborhood, or at church. Memories are contested, and spaces of memory can be found first in the very local. Muddy footpaths, hands pressed into concrete, gravestones for cats. Memories grow and change and are lost as they are written onto the physical and imagined landscape. This is a multi-scalar phenomena, playing out in public in visible and invisible ways. Memory is a powerful thing. Here I barely scrape the surface of the deep repositories of memory work. But it is important to parse out some interpretations that emphasize the spatiality and flexibility of memory. In the last few decades, the study of public memory has exploded across academic disciplines. Predictably, geographers have turned their lens to the spatial elements of memory and the production of place. This “memory turn” was a natural outcropping of earlier examinations of landscape symbolism and has extended across the human geography subfields (Cosgrove 1984; Harvey 2001; Lowenthal 1975, 1985; Tuan 1974, 1979). The politics of commemoration, national identity and patriotism, heritage tourism, and multitude other forms of memory work are paths to core theoretical questions about violence, capitalism, racism, and heteronormativity (Foote and Azaryahu 2007; McKittrick 2013; Tyner et al. 2014). Much of this work is predicated on the premise that memory is manufactured in the domain of interactions, utterances, and various literatures. Most importantly, the materiality of the landscape reflects an active construction of place (Hoelscher and Alderman 2004). The study of memory, once only the focus of psychology, has expanded in definition and scope as other disciplines have sought to understand their epistemic lineages and foundational assumptions (Hoelscher and Alderman 2004). Memory is a social activity, an active and binding force of group identity (Anderson 2006; Blight 2009). The work of memorializing organizations like the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association gains entrance into a broader story; beyond a local effort to preserve important sites that espouse the bond of a community, it is a vernacular and institutional contribution to a national narrative (Anderson 2006). History produced at museums and tourist sites inherits conventions both hermeneutic and phenomenological. At the point of interpretation – when someone leads a tour or writes a brochure – that inheritance is found in the way people use language and the way they read history. The structure of a society or organization is not deterministic; it is actively shaped by the actions of agents past and present. Recall the example of Mount Vernon; Louisa Bird Cunningham sought to expand the reach of domestic morality through commemoration. It was not an edict from on high that raised the $200,000 to purchase Washington’s home; she operated in formal and informal ways to raise capital. She operated within a rigid system of Southern gender roles, and her commitment to Southern femininity took her to the edges of what once would have deemed appropriate. She wrote a new form of femininity into physical existence.

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The political complexities of language carry the politics of memory work from the discursive to the material and back again. As demonstrated by Southern women establishing early house museums through channels of government, the politics of language is particularly explicit in, well, politics. Writing laws, resolutions, and edicts depends on the malleability and function of language. The flexibility of language complicates the pursuit of precision and clarity. Language makes and breaks laws in the courtrooms and on statehouse floors. College syllabi grow longer every year, and no one reads the volumes of fine print that accompany every phone update or online purchase. Explicitly political language binds; it moves from the rhetorical to the material via well-established pathways and institutions. When you step from the senate chamber, language does not lose its political or social importance. It is formative in the daily negotiations of place, space, and memory.

3

Ecology of Memory on the Plantation

What is slavery? At first blush this question seems simplistic. However, historians have debated the nature of American slavery and the slave trade from the birth of the discipline of history. Anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists continue to puzzle over its functions and contradictions. Is it a feudalistic system grounded in cultural hegemony? A uniquely capitalist system that pivoted on the exchange of human bodies as commodities? (I will expand on these ideas further on) Was slavery primarily a tool of the state, a master pawn in the political game of American governance, or the deliberate entrenchment of racialized caste system? Most historians write today about slavery as a confluence of multitude factors, and new monographs, theses, and manuscripts published every year parse out the meaning of slavery then and its consequences now. Increasingly the sights of scholars and public historians turn to the act of making slavery. Epistemic shifts and historiographic maneuvering pull slavery into the forum of the social. How is slavery remembered? Eichstedt and Small’s Representations of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums (2002) has been a force in this ballooning of interest in the memory of slavery. Their framework for analyzing content in plantation house tours emphasizes presence and absence of themes and stories related to slavery, which has been replicated by geographers, historians, and sociologists. They follow the guides, literally and discursively, through narratives of enslavement at plantation museum sites. Through language employed on tour and on signage, they identify strategies of obfuscation – symbolic annihilation, trivialization and deflection, segregated knowledge, and relative incorporation – as part of a broader “racial project” that reinforces the virtue of whiteness by relegating interpretations of slavery to a minor subplot or the historical dustbin. Building directly on this work, geographers have expanded plantation museum research to analyses of representations in websites (Alderman and Modlin 2008; Dwyer 2004) and historic markers (Alderman and Modlin 2013; Dwyer 2006), in tour guide-visitor interactions (Dwyer et al. 2013; Modlin 2008), and in the

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development of broader narrative economies (Carter et al. 2014). Central to these works are dialogic considerations of museum-making. The construction of historical narratives relies on discursive assemblages rather than the proscriptions of a singular power. Visitors at a site bring their own sense of personal and collective memory, and their interactions with the physical and interpretive space in a museum become member to the dialogic community. Alderman and Modlin (2008) examine the creation of meaning in the daily interpersonal space of the museum. . . .comments, questions, and conversations from tourists are not unproblematic transmissions of information. Rather, the spoken words of tourists represent “political utterances” that play a crucial role in the cultural political constitution and mediation of the southern plantation museum as a place for coming to terms with the history of enslavement or continuing to allow the trauma of slavery to slip into obscurity.

Maintaining and subverting dominant narratives blooms from the dialectic of remembering. Tourists at plantation sites are active participants in the making of place and formation of memory. The emergence of power in linguistic and dialectical terms has been central to postmodern and queer theory, and geographers have increasingly understood performativity and performance as formative of power relations, agency, and social constructedness (Gregson and Rose 2000). In her piece on tour guide learning and performativity, Amy Potter (2015) writes that tour guides do not merely follow a script, but play a more active role in the creation of narratives than previously understood by researchers. When I started guiding tours, I knew very little about slavery and even less about the civil war. However closely I followed the strategies of other guides or read the materials provided at the house; there were always inconsistencies and disagreements. A woman who volunteered as a guide liked to say “historians tell it like it was,” but it was clear that no one agreed on what it was. Guides are regularly in the position to define difficult histories based on their own biases and experiences, and it has a significant impact on the way slavery, race, and violence are portrayed to visitors. This narrative flexibility is often shrouded in official language, uniforms, or a claimed adherence to “truth.” The deconstruction of those official or standing histories has been under the lens of critical theory for some time, but scholars increasingly emphasize the elastic and dynamic process of narrative creation as a social process in which tour guides play an important role. Plantations and other sites of enslavement are widely acknowledged to be racialized spaces. It seems common sense that a discussion of American slavery would be a discussion of race. However, at many plantation house museums, a dialogue about race is conspicuously absent (Adams 2012). Even when interpretations of those sites by tour guides, films, and signage include slavery and enslavement as central elements, they typically omit a discussion of race or racialization. Given the material consequences of racist discourse in the nineteenth century, what will result from a continued erasure of legally enforced racial hierarchy in the US South? The practice of deracializing enslavement effectively colorblinds historical memory, thereby fostering notions of a “post-racial” society – which presupposes a

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“post-racism” society (Omi and Winant 2014). And it does not take many plantation house tour excursions to realize we are not in a post-racism society. Omi and Winant’s (2014) comparative-historical approach is instructive here. Their theory of race as a “Master Category” finds the construction of race in almost infinite dimensions; they use the concept of “racial projects” to express that complexity as racial projects work to manufacture race at the macro- and micro-levels (and everywhere in between). One of their central arguments is that race is defined externally – by perceived phenotypic markers and other corporeal signifiers and by sociopolitical structures that assign significance to those perceived differences. The racialization of bodies is also an internal navigation of self-definition and experiences that interact with the broader ideological and political conditions in the United States. The institution of the museum and political fortitude of Lost Cause narratives hold membership in the structural forces that make and remake race a social reality in which oppression, violence, and marginalization rely on racializing the Other. Race is an intrinsically political phenomenon. The invisibility of slavery at plantation museums is only eclipsed by the invisibility of race. Similarly to the erasures described by Eichstedt and Smalls, race can be hermeneutically divined from the coded language that conceals it. The memories navigated at the museum are embedded not only in the structural enforcement, multidimensional politics, and materiality of racializing bodies but operate as racial projects that specifically revolve around a race-based institution. The most vital contribution plantation museums make to the discourse of race is their silence.

4

Establishing Slavery in History

To identify slavery in the abstractions of memory, it is imperative to ground it in the broader historical debate over the nature of slavery itself. Historiographies of slavery are abundant, so I am focusing on two books that approach the language and meaning of paternalism and slavery. Their divergence on the question of paternalism, as pseudo-feudal culture or as a tool of a capitalist slave system, is a tension evident in the interpretation of slavery at plantation house museums. Elements of both historical arguments are impressed on the landscape of memory as well as academic history. The rhetorical space of the museum translates the evolving academic approach, reproducing the language of paternalism, capitalism, and ideology uncovered by historians. Both histories presented here constitute vital arguments in the making of slavery and the ways in which it is remembered. Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1976) is regarded as an essential, if controversial, contribution to constructing a history of American slavery. Grounded in his thesis that paternalism was the guiding principle of Southern society and the slave system, he disrupted the idea of a purely “evil” slave system by proposing that paternalism-as-hegemony enabled the cultural development and resistance of enslaved people as much as it did their brutalization and bondage as chattel. That monograph and his shorter volume, The Political Economy of Slavery (Genovese 2014:1965), established a new paradigm in the making of the

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antebellum South. There have been countless challenges to Genovese’s thesis that advance a more nuanced portrayal of the slave system. Walter Johnson (2001) responds to what he sees as the profusion of over-generalizing Marxist structuralism with depth rather than breadth in Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market which depicts the slave market rather than the planation as the nexus of domination and resistance. Since each position centers economic and social life in spaces now converted into museums, they inform a comparative approach to dominant and counter-narrative sites. In Soul by Soul, Johnson forms a rich portrayal of the antebellum slave market. The slave market was not peripheral to the economic, social, and bodily experience of slavery but defined the system itself. He is critical of a penchant for aggregation to represent the extent of slavery and the slave trade; writing it ignores the daily lives of the enslaved and their slavers. The proslavery ideology is embodied, maintained, reshaped, and subverted in the daily transitions, negotiations, and resistances in the slave market. He places an emphasis on the information exchange among enslaved people and the use of coded language used by enslavers during transactions. The dreams of Southern whites were riding on the bodies of enslaved blacks, and those dreams were often dashed by uncooperative people who shaped their own stories as their bodies were being stripped down and examined for sale. This is a more sinister mutuality than the one described by Genovese. Johnson writes that paternalist language was a technology of justification not an amorphous mediating force. The exemplar of the slave system and paternalism in process could be found in the slave market, not the plantation. This creates an altogether messier picture than the portrayal of daily plantation life. Johnson draws from Benedict Anderson’s (2006) conceptualization of nationalism, emphasizing the importance of memory and communication. The personal experiences shared by slaves in travel and behind walls galvanized as an indigenous anti-slavery ideology, forming an “imagined community.” Performances in the slave market were mediated by an undercurrent of traded information. Johnson looks to the writings of Solomon Northup and others to illustrate the “boundary-blurring doubleness” of being sold. Using the cache of information about buyers to perform their own commodification, slaves could conduct a subaltern negotiation of their futures. The picture of daily, deliberate resistance undermines the Genovese thesis of accommodation, which asserts a level of cooperation between enslaved to enslaver. Accommodation to paternalism is the host of a subtler resistance in Roll, Jordan, Roll, manifesting in the creation and practice of semiautonomous religion, selfeducation, merrymaking, domesticity, adornments, indigenous foodways, care networks, black femininity and masculinity, and naming conventions. The squelching of African traditions, he writes, led to their recreation in the language of paternalism; the brutalization of enslaved would-be patriarchs forged new and vibrant expressions of blackness. In this way, Genovese’s portrayal depicts paternalism as a paradoxical essence of Southern culture. Genovese argues that paternalism permeated the South, including the hearts and minds of the enslaved. Genovese certainly tells a history of resiliency, even autonomy, but within the context of paternalistic Southern “hegemony.” This approach lends primacy to the

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structure of a system that keeps white men in power as necessarily reproduced and reinforced by everything in that system. He writes about the (in)humanity of punishment as a definitional substructure that curtailed the brutality of slaveholders as much as it brutalized the slaves who “proved themselves good Hegelians.” His argument is similarly Hegelian, as his subject, paternalism, emerges from a web of mutual recognition. Paternalism as “prevailing ethos” mediated all social behavior, no matter how vicious or banal. The enslaved could claim their humanity in the system that sought to minimize it through religion, daily practices, and the adaptation of African spirituality. Through the adaptation of slaves and the adherence of poor whites to a system that benefited the rich, violence was ideologically incidental, if economically necessary. Johnson does not argue that Genovese “denies” his subjects “agency,” but rather that he denies them reality in favor of theory. To subsume the systemic resistance of enslaved people into the discursive fantasy of a modern aristocracy belies the material consequences of everyday resistance on everyday bodies on a broader culture of resistance. Johnson presents a starkly different view of these relationships and the culture that supports them. In the slave market, the language of paternalism could only be maintained by violence. Instances of violence or betrayal did not signal a breakdown of paternalism; they were part and parcel. Following the sale or capture of people from the Upper South, to their commodification, racialization, and sexualization in the marketplace, to their mediated freedom, Johnson directs us to a sensory history of the slave trade. This argument places the principle of chattel at the center, meaning that planters in the Antebellum South were not representatives of an Old-World form of aristocracy that distinguished them from the bourgeoisie capitalists of the North because they were dependent on building capital in saleable people, people with a price. The price and cost of slaves and the system at large are measured differently by these historians. Genovese’s pre-capitalist depiction largely ignores the trade in slaves, though he draws as heavily from Solomon Northup as Johnson does. The messiness he describes at the plantation can be chalked up to contemporary exigencies and external capitalist influence rather than the inherent violence of the system. In contrast (and response), Johnson portrays slavery’s messiness in visceral detail: the frailty of white masculinity and chattelized bodies, racial mercuriality, and the duality of performing self-commodification. The controversy surrounding Genovese’s work has kept lively a debate about agency and social theory. In his article On Agency (2003) and his monograph Soul by Soul (2001), Johnson tackles both. Most importantly, he masterfully and mercilessly topples structuralism as a useful historical lens: The worshipful admiration of the aesthetics of domination which has seethed through the humanities—the thrilling fear that the world is built out of the phantasmic dreams of powerful people—must be cooled with the recognition that dreams, even the dreams of powerful people must be made material if they are to become true. And in the slave market, slaveholders’ dreams could not become true without slaves—without people who could look back, estimate, manipulate, and sometimes escape. (Johnson 2001)

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Both histories built a world of dualities, both recognizing the centrality of resistance and naming its opposite. Accommodation was to shape the world of the masters by adapting to it, accommodating one’s own form as commodity. Domination was exerted and reshaped in the forge of the marketplace, a more sinister and visceral mutuality. The reproduction of white domination carried through the language of paternalism into the postwar period, the development of Lost Cause narratives, and the birth of the plantation house museum. Part of the challenge in historical research is the hermeneutical task of finding reality in subjectivity (and perhaps finding that subjectivity is reality). Diaries, narratives, personal remembrances, and physical representations all make their own argument about what slavery was and what role it played in American life and in American memory. Perhaps most importantly, the rosy vision of a pastoral South was not simply a fiction created with the advent of edutainment or ubiquity of Gone with the Wind images or even with the very deliberate construction of those memories by ladies’ garden clubs and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was a core element of planter self-image and the material construction of hierarchy.

5

Cultivating Complexity

Karl Marx wrote that “the tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living” (Marx 1907:1852). In his logic, the freedom from memory would be a most fortunate, and achievable, circumstance. However, it appears the way people cope with nightmares of the past has been to resolutely remember them more and differently. Plantation house museums did not form in a vacuum or spring into existence as a stage to be populated by actors without anterior identities; it is the formulation of individual and situational practices. It is the actors and the institution reinforcing and reconstituting preexisting and dominant narratives. The increased interest in plantation house museums and other historic sites is increasingly turning toward a framework of performative space where the assemblage of parts – the tour guides, the utterances of visitors, and the phenomenological inheritances – are in constant motion and negotiation. Place, space, nor person can exist outside the matrices of power and discursive relations that define them and that those power structures are reproduced by performances of the everyday (Gregson and Rose 2000). Dominant structures are clearly not static or immovable; this is demonstrated by the “foldingin” and “acting out” of different narratives over time. As in the slave market, the narrative shapes reality. The language that is planted, cultivated, and manipulated over time has material consequences. We cannot find the museum solely in the interpretive text or in the utterances of guides and the objects they use to guide their stories, but in the ever-evolving nature of the museum story. The names inscribed above entryways and the names worn on tour guide name tags. Name tags on the breasts of memory makers, who curate their own version of every past, constructing a vision of the past that a visitor may or may

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not carry home with them. Understanding the discourse of the plantation museum as a political process in which the past is made, unmade, and remade in the context of the present catapults a debate over what happened then to what happens now. The fear of admitting a political past, the commitment to curatorial neutrality, or even historical integrity, reaffirms the static veneer of a past deliberately constructed to serve political purposes. The political origins of museums are a launching pad to recognize political presents and futures. The interpretation of plantation museums, slave market museums, and local history museums participate in a dialogue that makes the memory of slavery. Seeking meaning of the nature of slavery and race reenvisions historiographical interpretations at the center of museums’ rhetorical constructions. The past. . .is the mirror in which we may discern the dim outlines of the future, and by which we may make them more symmetrical. Frederick Douglass, 1884 (Blight 2002)

References Adams, J. (2012). Wounds of returning: Race, memory, and property on the postslavery plantation. Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books. Alderman, D. H., & Modlin, E. A. (2008). (In)visibility of the enslaved within online plantation tourism marketing: A textual analysis of North Carolina websites. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 25(3–4), 265–281. Alderman, D. H., & Modlin, E. A., Jr. (2013). Southern hospitality and the politics of African American belonging: An analysis of North Carolina tourism brochure photographs. Journal of Cultural Geography, 30(1), 6–31. Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. New York: Verso. Blight, D. W. (2002). Beyond the battlefield: Race, memory & The American civil war. University of Massachusetts Press. Blight, D. W. (2007). A slave no more: Two men who escape to freedom, including their own narratives of emancipation. New York: Harcourt. Blight, D. W. (2009). Race and reunion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Butler, D. L., Carter, P. L., & Dwyer, O. J. (2008). Imagining plantations: Slavery, dominant narratives, and the foreign born. Southeastern Geographer, 48(3), 288–302. Carter, P. L. (2016). Where are the enslaved?: TripAdvisor and the narrative landscapes of southern plantation museums. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 11(3), 235–249. Carter, P., Butler, D. L., & Alderman, D. H. (2014). The house that story built: The place of slavery in plantation museum narratives. The Professional Geographer, 66(4), 547–557. Cosgrove, D. E. (1984). Social formation and symbolic landscape. London: Croom Helm. Cox, K. L. (2003). Dixie’s daughters: The united daughters of the confederacy and the preservation of confederate culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Dwyer, O. J. (2004). Symbolic accretion and commemoration. Social & Cultural Geography, 5(3), 419–423. Dwyer, O. J. (2006). Contradiction and confirmation on the cultural landscape: The case of America’s civil rights memorials. In R. Romano & L. Raiford (Eds.), The civil rights movement in American memory (pp. 5–25). Athens: University of Georgia Press. Dwyer, O., Butler, D., & Carter, P. (2013). Commemorative surrogation and the American South’s changing heritage landscape. Tourism Geographies, 15(3), 424–443.

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Eichstedt, J. L., & Small, S. (2002). Representations of slavery: Race and ideology in southern plantation museums. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Foote, K. E., & Azaryahu, M. (2007). Toward a geography of memory: Geographical dimensions of public memory and commemoration. Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 35(1), 125–144. Genovese, E. D. (1976). Roll, Jordan, roll: The world the slaves made. New York: Vintage Books. Genovese, E. D. (2014). The political economy of slavery: Studies in the economy and society of the slave south. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Gregson, N., & Rose, G. (2000). Taking Butler elsewhere: Performativities, spatialities and subjectivities. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18(4), 433–452. Harvey, D. C. (2001). Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7(4), 319–338. Hoelscher, S., & Alderman, D. H. (2004). Memory and place: Geographies of a critical relationship. Social and Cultural Geography, 5(3), 347–355. Johnson, W. (2001). Soul by soul: Life inside the antebellum slave market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Johnson, W. (2003). On agency. Journal of Social History, 37(1), 113–124. Lowenthal, D. (1975). Past time, present place: Landscape and memory. Geographical Review, 65, 1–36. Lowenthal, D. (1985). The past is a foreign country. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Marx, K. (1907). The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (15th ed.). Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company. McKittrick, K. (2013). Plantation futures. Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 17(3 42), 1–15. Modlin, E. A., Jr. (2008). Tales told on the tour: Mythic representations of slavery by docents at North Carolina plantation museums. Southeastern Geographer, 48(3), 265–287. Morrison, T. (1994). Nobel lecture in literature, 1993 (abridged ed.). New York: Random House Audio. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2014). Racial formation in the United States (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. Potter, A. E. (2015). “She goes into character as the lady of the house”: Tour guides, performance, and the Southern plantation. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 0(0), 1–12. Tuan, Y. (1974). Topophilia: A study of environmental perceptions, attitudes, and values. Eaglewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Tuan, Y. (1979). Landscapes of fear. New York: Pantheon Books. Tyner, J. A., Inwood, J. F. J., & Alderman, D. H. (2014). Theorizing violence and the dialectics of landscape memorialization: A case study of Greensboro, North Carolina. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(5), 902–914. West, P. (2013). Domesticating history: The political origins of America’s house museums. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Part VI Linguistic Minorities and Majorities

Trajectories of Language, Culture, and Geography in Postcolonial Bangladesh

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Variation Within Bangla Bhasha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 New Socioeconomic Classification: A Creation of Modern Education Based on Usage of Language and Recolonization by the Elite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Evolution of Bangla and Bengali Culture Through Generations and Geographical Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The Bangla language was instrumental in transforming East Pakistan into Bangladesh. The departure of all foreign authorities, by 1971, gave the country a path to pursue its independence and cultural sovereignty. However, the existing situation of the country promulgates a cultural inequity toward its own heritage. This chapter discusses the traits and trails of colonialism in Bangladesh in order to showcase the acculturation of a postcolonial country into a mishmash of competing aims. Class distinctions, geopolitics, social communities, educational policies, and manipulation of language have played crucial roles in the struggle to forge a new identity while maintaining an emotional attachment to the language and culture of the past.

S. Afrin (*) Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Baines Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_2

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Keywords

Bangladesh · Colonialism · Identity

1

Introduction

Both Mr. Rezaul Karim and Mr. Shakil Ahmed hold Master’s degrees in accounting and work as lecturers at two different colleges in Bangladesh. However, Mr. Ahmed gets paid 300% more than Mr. Karim. The substantiation for their difference in salary is not apparent in terms of education or experiences, as they are almost identical. The reason Mr. Ahmed gets paid 300% more than Mr. Karim is because Mr. Ahmed possesses some facility with the English language, whereas Mr. Karim only speaks Bangla. Although Bangla was established as the official language of Bangladesh after independence, Bangla is not the language of commerce and power. The total geographic area of Bangladesh is relatively small, only 147,570 km2, and the country is home to praiseworthy historical and sociopolitical achievements. Independence from the first colonial power, the British Empire, was earned in 1947. After political partition of the former British India, the region of today’s Bangladesh was named East Pakistan as a part of the Muslim state of Pakistan (Anwaruddin 2013). Bangla known as Bengali in English, the mother tongue of East Pakistan, was rejected as the official state language in favor of “Urdu,” the language of West Pakistan after Pakistan was formed. However, a new language law, elevating Urdu to official status, was greeted with derision by most citizens of the region who spoke Bangla. After several protests decrying the imposition of Urdu, the Pakistan government outlawed all protests and public meetings of any sort during the uproar. On February 21, 1952, a group of students from University of Dhaka organized a peaceful public protest but met with government crackdown; many were killed by the police. The deaths of men, women, and children over the right to speak their own language resulted in ongoing protests and global outrage. The language movement is considered one of the precursors of the liberation war of Bangladesh (Akanda 2013). Later, UNESCO declared February 21 to be International Mother Language Day for recognition, preservation, and celebration of mother languages worldwide (Simpson 2007). Years of oppression culminated in a bloody revolt that eventually led to the birth of a new nation, Bangladesh, in 1971 (Fig. 1). In fact, the name Bangladesh is a combination of two words. Bangla is the name of the mother tongue and desh means country in Bangla. Despite the tumultuous fight over its legitimacy, Bangla remained under siege as a language mostly due to the proliferation of English historically and to the spread of Hindi culturally, the dominant language of nearby superpower, India. The irresistible influence of other languages on Bangla in the current geopolitical context is the topic of this chapter. Nearby India, Myanmar, and China have had a significant impact on Bangla language and culture. Over the course of history, the land upon which Bangladesh

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Fig. 1 The geographic location of Bangladesh in South Asia. (Source: Cacahuate [Own work based on the blank world map]/CC-BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)

stands has been subject to an incredible diversity of linguistic and cultural influences. Though there are many scholarly definitions of culture, the following seems appropriate for Bangladesh: Culture is a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures and behavioral conventions that are shared by a group of people, and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behavior and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behavior. (Spencer-Oatey 2008, p. 3).

The operative word in the definition is “fuzzy” as the long, blended history of different dominant cultures over the landscape and the invasion of neighboring cultures have always dispersed the influence of Bangladeshi culture. Social trends, language, and customs have been dramatically affected by the geopolitics of the region.

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Bangladesh has a rich language and abounds in dialects delineated by region and microculture. However, the language variation poses a challenge to people unaware of “the regional quirky dialects of the Bengali language [which] are peculiar to particular communities” (IML Research and Information Team 2013, p. 1). Figure 2 shows how Bangladesh is divided into separate regions and thus can be perceived as how dialects are distributed geographically. The tone, vocabulary, and accents of people endemic to a particular region are quiet distinctive and may vary significantly from the mass who use the common version of spoken Bangla bhasha (bhasha in Bangla means language).

Fig. 2 Regional divisions of Bangladesh. (Source: http://www.wpclipart.com/geography/Coun try_Maps/B/Bangladesh/Bangladesh_regions.jpg.html)

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Variation Within Bangla Bhasha

Before discussing the intra-country diversity of Bangla bhasha, it will be useful to review a brief history of the language. Bangla is the official language of Bangladesh as well as of the Indian state of West Bengal. Due to the geographical and historical attachment, it is also the co-official language of the states of Tripura, Cachar, Karimganj, and Hailakandi districts of southern Assam, as well as of the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands (“Bengali language”). Moreover, in Neil Island and Havelock Island, Bengali speakers are the majority. Interestingly, Bangla is honored by being an official language in Sierra Leone as a tribute to the Bangladeshi peacekeeping force working under the United Nations. However, each version of Bengali possesses crucial differences in both the spoken and written forms (Simpson 2007). For example, the Bangla (with intra-country variations) spoken in Bangladesh and the Bangla spoken in West Bengal are significantly different in pronunciation of words, usage of suffixes, and meaning. Nevertheless, being the language of over 200 million native speakers, Bangla is among the top 10 most spoken languages in the world. Further, “Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit languages” (New World Encyclopedia 2016, n.p.). Bangla includes words from many other languages, including Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Dutch, French, and English. The history of the land under different regimes of foreign rulers accounts for such characteristic of the language. The number of English words used is significant, however, because of the lengthy colonization by the British Empire as English had infiltrated and shaped Bangla bhasha. Many call Bangla bhasha a “cocktail” metaphorically to summarize how the language has evolved over time. With over 60 language varieties spoken in Bangladesh, linguistic diversity is impressive. Among those 60 varieties, 13 belong to ethnic minorities in the southwestern regions (Islam 2011a). Thus, the distinctions of Bangla dialects are multifarious and often surprising. A discussion on Bangla bhasha held at North South University in Bangladesh reiterated the various aspects of the language, and the following excerpt of a report on the discussion delineates a crucial fact about regional dialects: People other than those who belong elsewhere may have to be ready to face eccentricity and twist of meaning. Sometimes, it could be daunting to have a bitter response from other community members when the meaning rendered by the speaker in his own dialect is different from the listener’s. (IML Research and Information Team 2013, n. p.)

Indeed, the southwestern and northwestern dialects, such as Sylheti, Chittagonian, and Chakma differ markedly, and so speakers from those regions may not be understood by speakers from other areas. With the dialects come accents that challenge any listener outside the indigenous communities. In other words, accents carry a great deal of identity with the dialect. Figure 3 provides a brief idea about zones with distinctive language variation. The southwestern areas are heavily influenced by India. Among the most discreet dialect-speaking populations, there are those who live in the northern districts

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Fig. 3 Zones in Bangladesh with distinctive language variation. (Source: Furfur [Based on Population and Housing Census 2011, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, July 2011]/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA 4.0/GFDL)

(Bogra, Dinajpur, Kushtia, Pabna, Rajshahi, and Rangpur) and those who live in the southern districts (Sylhet and Chittagong). Some unique dialect-speaking tribes also live in valley areas, whose dialects do not align with either the northern or southern groups, and within the two streams, other minorities exist as separate communities with their own particular language, social structure, and lifestyle (Simpson 2007). Within dialects spoken by regional communities, there is also variation in the usage of certain words, which indicates class distinction based on education and

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socioeconomic status. For example, there are three words for the pronoun “you” in standard Bangla, each representing a level of honor or social relationship of the addressee with the addressor: apni is for someone highly honorable or senior; tumi is for someone intimate or for someone of same age or rank; and tui is for juniors who are friends or relatives as well as for someone from a lower rank. However, in the lower class, generally tui is used for all dismissing the distinction between seniors and juniors. Tui is an everyday example of code switching (i.e., changing from one language or dialect to another), and sometimes code switching appears in unpredictable ways. For example, in the Chittagonian dialect, oune is the alternative to apni, but tui is used in reference to both tumi and tui, only with a slight nuance in pronunciation while meaning tumi. Thus, sometimes the dialects of neighboring areas are intelligible for mutual understanding but are not meant for distant communities. Due to this reason, the concept of “Standard Bangla” emerged, and it was designed to provide a common platform for communicating, similar to the edict to use English during the colonial era. Apart from indigenous dialects, Bangla bhasha can be divided into two basic styles in terms of affiliation with formality and ancestry: 1. Shadhu bhasha (shadhu = “chaste” or “sage” and bhasha = “language”) is the old style of Bangla and was more of a written than spoken language with longer verb inflections and more of a Pali-/Sanskrit-/Totshomo-derived vocabulary of the past (Banglapedia 2016). Over time, the use of this version became narrow: “. . .use of Shadhubhasha in modern writing is uncommon, and restricted to some official signs and documents in Bangladesh as well as for achieving particular literary effects” (IML Research and Information Team 2013). 2. Cholito bhasha (cholito = “current” or “running”), also known as Standard Colloquial Bengali, is the popular written and spoken Bangla style, which incorporates a great deal of colloquial idioms and shortened verb forms. This form was first introduced in formal practice in 1914 and gradually gained popularity through the pen of famous scholars (IML Research and Information Team 2013). Historically, Cholito bhasha was modeled on a specific dialect that was spoken in the Shantipur region of West Bengal, India. During the time when West Bengal and Bangladesh were undivided, the educated or elite group, who contributed in developing, formulating, and navigating this less complicated and acceptable style of Bangla, emanated from Calcutta (a city of West Bengal in India). As a matter of fact, the standardization of Bangla bhasha included many traits of the west central dialect of West Bengal from the nineteenth century (Kumar 2016). However, when Bangladesh separated politically from India, Bangla began to shed West Bengal influences on syntax, pronunciation, and lexical meaning. It has been observed in the media that people of Bangladesh identify them as Bangladeshi, as opposed to Bengali (Simpson 2007). In Bangladesh today, the Standard Bangla bhasha is a mishmash of Bangladeshi cultural interests and practices. Diglossia (a situation in which two distinct varieties of a language are spoken within the same speech community) is rampant as the

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media, institutions, and formal environments are closely aligned with the written form of Standard Bangla and the “elites,” whereas local communities speak dialects of their indigenous culture. Most importantly, the majority of citizens in Bangladesh know more than one variety of Bangla; the varieties are generated from comparatives such as urban or rural, regional or standard, and institutional or communal. Therefore, spoken Bangla is multifarious and highly mutable as well as undefinable by hard and fast rules. Religion also plays a role in creating a divide in the language communities of Bangladesh. The two major religious communities, Muslims and Hindus, use different words related to their religious traditions to denote their ideas. Muslims are inclined to use more Arabic-Persian words, whereas Hindus are drawn toward using more Sanskrit/Pali words (IML Research and Information Team 2013). To trace the elements in Bangla that create obstacles to adoption of a single language, Bangla bhasha must be analyzed through multidimensional factors related to the country’s development besides factors of regional dialectical variation. While the diversity within the language is affecting the “unity” of the linguistic identity of the nation, most of the discussion of Bangladesh is focused on the influence of English. Even though English is the language of colonial oppression in Bangladesh, it is also the language of global commerce.

3

New Socioeconomic Classification: A Creation of Modern Education Based on Usage of Language and Recolonization by the Elite

Apart from the pre-existing socioeconomic differences in Bangladesh, Standard Bangla and mastery of English have created a new structure of social classes. The new classification is as follows: speakers of regional dialects and ethnic languages remain at the bottom; speakers of both dialect and Standard Bangla compose the middle class; and fluent English speakers along with Standard Bangla form the elite group. Although the British left Bangladesh more than half a century ago, vestiges of their rule remain intertwined within the fabric of Bengali culture. Hasan and Rahman (2012) contend that English creates a sense of achievement among citizens of Bangladesh but also acts as a form of recolonization. “Language defines and determines one’s place and identity in the world” (Hasan and Rahman 2012, p. 1). This statement helps to explain why the postcolonial society of Bangladesh is becoming more drawn toward English and also why the nation should consider resistance to English as a form of linguistic imperialism. Indisputably, English provides some people of Bangladesh a more profitable position in the society. In job sectors, multinational companies want their employees to be well-versed in English. People are indirectly being discouraged to learn Bangla, for it does not bring any material benefit. (Hasan and Rahman 2012, p. 2)

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To be more specific, the business sector and private companies belonging to different industries require English skills as a “must” to get hired, and they tend to select candidates who have English skills, even from a pool of candidates with similar qualifications. Industries according to their demand for English speakers are as follows with respective percentage: (1) services 78%, (2) banking 75%, (3) IT and technology 72%, (4) retailing 62%, (5) mining and quarrying 42%, (6) manufacturing 28%, and (7) construction 20% (Euromonitor International 2010). A report investigating the impact of English in the job market and investment sectors confirmed that as Bangladesh is growing more in the private sectors and actively recruiting foreign investors and international openings, there is no alternative to English for communicating and pursuing bilateral relationships, especially at the top echelons of a workforce (Euromonitor International 2010). CEOs and managing directors, as well as engineers, administrators, executives, and managers, are expected to communicate in English with foreign partners. Therefore, anyone who works in a national organization, bank, or university is at a decided disadvantage if they cannot speak English. Because Bangla confers little social or fiscal advantage, English is deeply embedded into the social and cultural system as a result of the failures erupting in Bangladesh after independence. Under the circumstances, students who have learned through the Bangla medium often fall victim as many cannot communicate well in English. They are left behind when it comes to jobs. Due to strong competition for jobs, a degree does not guarantee immediate employment. Graduates with a better command of English generally find jobs faster in private companies, where English is more in demand than in public institutions. (Euromonitor International 2010, n.p.)

Opposing the notion of “development” based on skills in demand in the foreign market, Bangladesh needs to develop and nurture its language before aspiring for national development. Consider that while English speakers constitute 3% of the population of Bangladesh, they comprise the upper class and live in the most expensive neighborhoods in the nicest part of the cities. What about making acquisition of knowledge accessible for the rest with an attempt to connect them with the entire knowledge bank of the world? The drive toward English promises higher individual salaries, while it undermines the cohesiveness of the country. Any attempt to make Bangladesh an affluent nation would prove to be futile until and unless hundreds of writers, poets and orators are produced in Bangla, and history, philosophy and reference books are written and published in Bangla. Writing in another language [here in English] may ensure personal gain, but it will not help in making a developed nation. (Hasan and Rahman 2012, p. 6)

Unfortunately, English in today’s Bangladesh is perceived as a key to desirability, credibility, and a livable wage. The more Bangladesh attempts to increase her global footprint, the more she encourages the proliferation of English. For example, growth in the garment industry, IT industry, and manufacturing areas

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has boomed, making the literate society well aware of the power of English in the international arena (Islam 2011a). In spite of the growing demands and attention toward English, the National Curriculum and Textbook Board in Bangladesh stated that “our students are very weak in English and as a result they can’t apply English in their practical life successfully” (Islam 2011b, p. 3). To illustrate the claim, very few literates in Bangladesh can speak English fluently even after completing a college degree. The signboards and advertisements outside urban areas, except on few main roads, are in Bangla as the majority cannot read English. High school graduates may know the rules of English grammar, but they have difficulty with the most basic comprehension. The primary education system is considered responsible for the weak foundation in English, as it is based on rote memorization. Moreover, even after decades of requiring the study of English in the school system, teachers lack training, and textbooks are antiquated (Islam 2011b). Though the public school system is often criticized for not being able to make suitable adjustments, little has been done to change the dominant instructional style from memorization and recitation. However, quality of education and English language skills of students of public school system vary in context of urban and rural areas. Meanwhile, the English medium school system has the backing of the privileged elite class of Bangladesh. After independence, all English medium schools were terminated in the process of “Bengalizing,” which emphasized “Bengali in all spheres” (Banu and Sussex 2001, p. 1). The process mostly affected four crucial and formal areas of the state: administration, education, law, and media. Later, the laws have allowed the establishment of English medium schools in the private sector, which have flourished in a dramatic way in the last 20 years, creating a “parallel English medium educational system” (Banu and Sussex 2001, p. 131). Today, English medium schools in Bangladesh are all private and, thus, focus on educating the children of the wealthy class (Imam 2005). The English medium school system not only instructs in English, but also they model themselves as much as feasible on the British educational system. In English medium schools, though Bangla is a compulsory subject in the curriculum, it is not very popular among the English medium students. As in Bangla medium school English is just one subject to learn through its grammar and few narratives, Bangla remains in the same status in English medium schools. As a result, most students who attend English medium schools cannot read or write in Bangla with confidence and critical approach taking it as their mother language. Even many English medium school students know less about Bangladesh national history than Greek or Roman history (Imam 2005). In other words, “the syllabi of these schools create students who are generally apathetic towards their own country and culture due to lack of proper courses in Bangladesh history and culture and the minimal importance they get” (Prodhan 2016, p. 15). However, the home environment or parental preference plays a great role to foster Bangla language competency of English medium students. While many parents eagerly develop their children’s Bangla language skills beside English language learning institutionally, many parents do not desire much for their children’s Bangla language competency (Zahan, personal communication, March 14, 2017).

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In the English medium schools, the “O” (ordinary)-level and “A” (advanced)level students read books prescribed by and produced in the UK. Students take exams in a designated place called the British Council in the capital, Dhaka, an establishment representing British educational programs and heritage. Exam papers are sent in sealed envelopes to the UK for evaluation. The questions on exams relate to the UK, not Bangladesh. After passing high school, the English medium school students have the opportunity to study in any institution in Bangladesh; however, most choose to study abroad (Imam 2005). The students of English medium schools also tend to showcase their incompetency in Bangla as a source of pride (Sultana 2014a). As a chain reaction, the English medium school students have a tendency to consider Bangla medium school students as inferiors (Imam 2005). To feed the rising needs and aspirations of middle class guardians, less expensive schools with English language-based curricula gained popularity. They follow the same UK-based curriculum in all grades, but till 8th grade, they often adjust the curriculum and include materials from international publishers who produce different versions of grade-specific textbooks to accommodate cultural features in the content considering different zones (e.g., Asia) of the world (Zahan, personal communication, March 14, 2017). Sometimes English books that are written and published in India and Bangladesh are on the recommended book list too. Simultaneously, many urban Bangla medium schools across the country established an English version of their curriculum. These schools use the Bangla curriculum translated into English and adopt English as the medium of instruction without replicating the hard core British educational system (Imam 2005). Overall, these Bangla medium schools through their section offering English version study attempt to enhance students’ reading and writing skills in English, besides their competence in Bangla. Good pronunciation in English is an attractive skill acquired in expensive English medium schools where the teachers and administrative personnel may be citizens of English-speaking countries. Imam (2005) noted that some internationally affiliated organizations founded their own schools in response to the demand for “standard” English medium schooling. Among the fluent English-speaking group in Bangladesh, those who can sound like native speakers or close to native speakers through their accents are admired as elites (Sultana 2014a). Mostly, the acceptance of anglicized pronunciation of Bangla is widespread among the privileged. Similar to divisions among people with English language acquisition, speakers of Bangla bhasha are divisible with its many dialects based on region, socioeconomic status, religion, and generations. The spoken form of Bangla is separated from the written form. Each of the regional dialects comes with unique characteristics, such as accents, “borrowed” words from countries nearby, and socioeconomic history. However, the influence of all these variables is more prominent in dialects compared to the official Standard Bangla, the written version. In a practical sense, modern education cannot accommodate dialects in Bangladesh. In particular, the dialects of the southern hill areas are incomprehensible to Standard Bangla speakers. Therefore, the speakers of regional dialects of Bangla suffer a double challenge (or double colonization) in the present educational system because they must learn Bangla in its

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“Standard version” and English with its foreign features. As a college student in Bangladesh, I always noticed tribal students hanging out in groups. They appeared to be isolated in common gatherings, and many of them had difficulty communicating effectively in Standard Bangla. Figure 4 shows geographic regions associated with dialects, as well as the complexity and multifarious influences. The central region of the country (represented by light orange and labeled Bengali) consists of people speaking a comparatively understandable, standard version of the language. All other colors dispersed across the different geographic areas indicate the extent to which Bangladesh is fractured with dialects. Although 98% of people living in Bangladesh are ethnically classified as Bengali, the presence of so many dialects raises questions about the extent to which Bangla is serving as a unifying force for the country (Simpson 2007). That is, which form of Bangla should serve as the official tongue? “Standard Bangla” generates a concept of having uniformity in speaking, which proposes one ideal and homogenous system of speaking derived from written form (Lippi-Green 2011). Standard Bangla being accepted as “standard” and adopted

Fig. 4 Dialects of Bangla in Bangladesh. (Source: MapMaster [Own work]/CC-BY-3.0)

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uncritically by the common people is actually a product of a power play (Hasan and Rahman 2014). To compete in the job market and to participate in the society of Bangladesh, linguistic minorities are expected to embrace Standard Bangla. Indeed, it has become common for companies to use interviews to ensure that hired staff will be able to communicate properly with clients in Standard Bangla (Rahman 2014). In society, dialects are associated with lower social status, and thus, urban elites often avoid coming in contact with the dialect-speaking lower classes. Some concerned parents keep children in daycares instead of in the care of maidservants to prevent their children from being influenced by the dialects of the servants. There is a strong attempt among some parents to avoid the risk of their children learning the nonstandard version of Bangla or the dialect of the lower class, even if the servant is from the same region of the country as the parents. The goal is “belongingness to the educated class” (Hasan and Rahman 2014, p. 7). People in Bangladesh cling to dialects for their old or rural relatives, but in formal places, they avoid identification with any regional tone. Indirectly, schools reinforce social prejudices and the correlation of Standard Bangla with upper middle class-elite identity (Hasan and Rahman 2014). As a matter of fact, the typical middle class family must manage the complexities of both Standard Bangla and regional dialect based on their interaction in different places affiliated with personal and professional causes. In general, the middle class is able to readily code-switch as the situation dictates. However, their insufficient proficiency in English remains as an obstacle for being identified as the upper class, and they generally do not meet the criteria to be considered for the highest-paying jobs. For example, a graduate student from statistics from a divisional institution with language proficiency only in Standard Bangla is more likely to find a job with a local company at a lower salary. Companies in different districts of Bangladesh dealing with local clients do not require English to be used with high proficiency, and so the middle class finds their way to fit in those professional contexts with their proficiency in Standard Bangla. As a matter of fact, the distinction between urban and nonurban job environments emerges from the requirements of companies based on the backgrounds of the clients they serve and their business location. English speakers are concentrated mainly in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, as well as in Chittagong in the south and Sylhet in the east of the country. This is because most large companies are based in these cities, and the majority requires English speakers. (Euromonitor International 2010, p. 95)

However, the standard of living among those in non-urbanized establishments does not afford them smooth passage to achieve better economic conditions. If they attempt to change their fate, they have to mold into a degree program that offers either English or computer skills to enter into the rapidly changing economy dominated by global necessities. The language issues related to social identity are so acute in Bangladesh that marriage often becomes a public display attesting to one’s quality and acceptance as a suitable life partner. It is common to hear that a girl

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or a boy was rejected as a suitable candidate for marriage because they spoke in an unsuitable dialect (Rahman 2014). After the middle class, the bottom of the socioeconomic classification includes significantly less literate speakers of Bangla dialects. They are the most affected by language-based social identity and discrimination in Bangladesh. Climbing the ladder to the upper classes is virtually impossible for the less literate. “The people who use dialects while speaking consciously or unconsciously are deprived of getting good jobs” (Rahman 2014, n.p.). The lack of bilingual proficiency limits job prospects. Clerical jobs in offices, local transportation jobs, and salesmanship are typical jobs of the less literate. They know the basics enough to read and write in Bangla, but most interactions tend to be communicated through dialect. Low-paying jobs for the less literate make basic survival a daily challenge. After the barely literate group, the illiterate group is the class upon whom all other classes can look down, not only because of their socioeconomic position but also because of their use of dialects. The regional dialects of the illiterate are the most stigmatized of all. Often, the lower classes are viewed as incapable of communicating in a “Standard way” because of their overreliance on their dialect and ignorance of Standard Bangla. Servants, cleaners, sweepers, public transport drivers, construction workers, and free-labors – all who live by their physical abilities – form the bottom class. Thus, socioeconomic classification is inextricably linked to language and is reflective of financial status in Bangladesh.

4

Evolution of Bangla and Bengali Culture Through Generations and Geographical Implications

In terms of identity, culture, and language, Bangladesh is evolving every day. In Bangla, there are direct loan words of English, which stand as the most commonly used words, often replacing their Bangla counterparts. Words like hotel, chair, table, gas, X-ray, pneumonia, and computer have been in the Bangla vocabulary long since (Simpson 2007). Moreover, words such as railway station, drawing room, and hall are not used only by the literate but also are found among all speakers. Assimilated English words are written in the Bangla alphabet as words and are prevalent in written documents. For example, “road number” is spelled in the Bangla alphabet as রোড নম্বর, which is in fact close to transliteration of those English words and sounds like road nombor. Instead of using the Bangla word rāstā (রাস্তা) for “road” and shonkha (সংখ্যা) for “number,” the present Bangla language uses English words in this way (Fig. 5). There is a nuance in the pronunciation of the word “number” in Bangla by a change of two alphabetic sounds: in Bangla spelling, the sound of “number” is nombor. Generally, the inclusion process of English words in Bangla is casually run by educated and semi-educated groups (Simpson 2007). The growth of English words in the Bangla lexicon can be traced over generations, but it has accelerated over time. Nevertheless, the trend of absorbing more English words is addressed as a commodity fluctuating with fashion.

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Fig. 5 Common signs use transliteration of English. Top: Sign board of the Bulbuli Departmental Store. The indicated words are the transliteration of “departmental store,” and it has other English words and alphabets in its address, which are transliteration too. Bottom: a nameplate of a house. It has English word and alphabet transliterated to write the address. The second line contains ড, which is transliteration of D and রোড for road. (Source: Image courtesy of Dr. Md. Shahabuddin and Md. Kamal Hossain)

In the early 1990s there was actually a move towards eliminating English words from Bangla and reinstating their Bangla equivalents, particularly in education and in public domain. Commonly used English words like post office or operation were replaced with Bangla words, and university professors showed themselves keen to develop precise Bangla terminology in their various fields. A few years later attitudes relaxed again, and English loanwords once more seemed welcome and in vogue. These fluctuations can be seen as waves of fashion which do not succeed in reaching the deeper layers of people’s linguistic identity, which in Bangladesh seems to be very firmly rooted in Bangla. . .Almost all Bengalis think that Bangla is the most beautiful language in the world. (Simpson 2007, pp. 48–49)

The coexistence of two viewpoints, “desiring English” and “admiring Bangla,” is mostly visible among upper middle class individuals under the age of 40. While they act in the pop culture of the moment, they also have strong allegiances to native culture and identity. They listen to foreign music, learn about western musical instruments and lyrics, eat foreign cuisine, gather at Westernized coffee shops, and wear western fashion-inspired casual clothes. Their conversations in Bangla are spontaneously punctuated with English words and Western ideas. However, there are differences in the perception of using English within the group. Some of them identify the fast integration of English in Bangla as a forced transgression and join the debate of suggesting that English is a “killer language” (Ceramella 2012). Others

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perceive English as a second language to reach the world outside and profess their educational standard inside the country. When it comes to celebrating cultural occasions, the young upper middle class changes into traditional Bangladeshi attire, makes traditional food choices, attends cultural events, and practices typical Bengali greetings and expressions without missing a beat. They are pro-Bangla in that they “stick to traditional Bengali festivals, particularly in the observation of national trends in the fashion of Bengali culture (e.g., Pohela Boishakh)” (Khan 2013, p. 268). When they compose songs, they use Bangla words carrying deep contextual and cultural implications with western musical instruments, such as guitar and drums. This group is fond of both Hollywood and Bollywood, but they also embrace the rich culture of Bangladesh. They tend to read Harry Potter either in English or in Bangla translation as well as they devour the literary works of Bangladeshi science fiction writer Md. Zafar Iqbal. In short, they develop expertise in both English and Bangla to better negotiate their global market value while remaining true to Bangla bhasha (Sultana 2014b). Interestingly, the comparatively supportive older generation sees the young generation through a dual lens. The older generation’s analysis attempts to acknowledge the necessity of English and attachment to Bangla, no matter how much disproportionately the use of both of the languages might appear in functional life of the youth. However, unaware of the complexity and potential of bilingualism, the older generation is alarmed by this notion, and they criticize the youth as being hypnotized by western culture and language. Sultana (2014a, p. 52) identifies “sense of flexibility in identity, choices of molding and shaping thoughts,” and “opportunity to have versatile taste” as key factors that promote bilingual practices. In contrast to the bilingual young generation, the other group residing at the top of the socioeconomic spectrum shows a noticeable disconnect with Bangla bhasha, culture, and identity. The elites educated in English medium institutions continue to exhibit their English skills outside the institutional premises. Their curriculum, being an agent of the UK-based education, shapes their mind set as foreigners within a native cultural atmosphere as the British educational curriculum does not include the study of Bengali culture or literature. As a consequence, the students of English medium schools take Bangladesh as a temporary nest before flying to Englishspeaking countries elsewhere (Imam 2005). In other words, English medium schools, considered as carriers of colonial values and ideologies, tend to produce “unconscious hybrids” (Al-Quaderi and Al Mahmud 2010) by distancing students from Bangladeshi culture, history, and literature. The idea of global utility is central to private English medium schools. The implications of globalization are associated with a notion of excluding “Banglaformed national identity” (Imam 2005, p. 479) undermining the public school curriculum, which is considered to breed a less globally ready citizen. In this scenario, the young generation who cannot readily afford an education that offers a strong foundation in English, such as those in rural schools or vocational institutions, are continually relegated to the lower classes. Thus, assumption nexus, “the set of social beliefs and practices by which people accept the superiority of a specific

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language speaking population” (Ramanathan 2005, n.p.), is alive and prominent in Bangladesh. India also influences the Bangla bhasha as Indian movies and TV channels hold popularity parallel to local media productions in Bangladesh. The geographical position of India and the historical connections between the two countries have initiated “certain types of acculturation and cultural intrusion” (Khan 2013, p. 268). The national language of India, Hindi, has a great influence and acceptance in the local culture of Bangladesh. It is understood by a significant proportion of the population in Bangladesh, and so various words, expressions, and proverbs become assimilated in the pop culture. For example, the Hindi counterpart of the English word “beautiful” is khubsurat, and in Bangladesh, one will find ladies beauty parlors or dress stores named with khubsurat instead of the Bangla counterpart shundor. The Internet has given birth to a new, distinct, and complex process named “virtual urbanization” to connect and form a generation with varied backgrounds totally distant from each other. This is a term used by Golam Rabbani Shihab, who has done research in current youth culture in Bangladesh. According to Shihab, cheap Chinese smartphones, apps, and data service have created a consumer consciousness throughout the country. In rural areas, even where computers are rare sightings, adolescents and young adults get a taste of the world via Facebook and other social media. The use of language and its expressions is shaped and reshaped to and fro in the virtual platform where implicit, short but sharp, intellectual, innovative, humorous, mixed cultural, and smart expressions and word choices as well as word remaking are common and fluid. The capacity of reaching the unreachable through social media has initiated the construction of virtual urbanization, and people in the network develop literacies densely populated with English language expressions. Not only virtual urbanization is significant in creating and recreating trends in the history of evolution of Bangla bhasha, but also actual urbanization interferes with Bangla. There is an element of “acceptance” and “preference” for using Bangla as an urban dialect. This reality can be explored through analyzing the transition made in folk songs of Bangla in recent years. Folk songs, which are part of the heritage and rich culture of Bangladesh, stand upon and treasure the sophisticated, epigrammatic, regional, contextual, and ingenious meaningful words of Bangla bhasha. Local instruments, usually handmade, accompany the lyrics where the nature of Bangla folk songs emphasizes lyrics, emotion in vocal tone, vibrant intonations in voice level, and the philosophical wit embedded in the messages through words. However, Bangla folk songs have reemerged as part of pop culture, often with a global twinge. For example, a line of a famous Bangla folk song (translated in English) is “The path of truth, nobody agrees to take.” In a simple sense, path may appear to refer to way of life. However, the word path in the original folk song was ponthe – a word that also connotes aspects of philosophy, activity, resolution, and sensibility. This word originated in a place at the north of Bangladesh, now known as the district Khushtia. In the pop version of the folk song, ponthe was replaced with kaze – a word meaning only activity, thus changing the complex nuance of the meaning in the song.

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Of course, “Language never freezes at one point in time because of the change brought into it by speakers, at every moment, in every utterance” (Sultana 2014a, p. 42). While this is just one example of language transmogrification, the trend across Bangla bhasha seems inexorably set on “dimunization” rather than expansion. In 2012, the High Court formally tried to slow the intrusion of foreign words into Bangla (Sultana 2014a, b). Media were told to stop broadcasting programs with unacceptable spoken forms of Bangla bhasha. Shamsuzzaman Khan, a renowned writer, expressed support for maintaining the sanctity of Bangla and reaffirmed that Bangla should not be turned into a street language: “It’s like a developer is constructing a building uprooting the graves of their forefathers” (The Express Tribune 2016). However, decreeing the banishment of foreign words is unnatural, particularly in a country with such a rich stew of languages and dialects. There is futility in any conviction that Bangla can be compartmentalized as a separate entity from English, considering its colonial past and hegemonic global role. It is comprehensible that these young adults’ voices are unrestrainable and insuppressible, when they are nurtured by the symbolic capital, sustained by the ideological role of English in the society, and nourished by the enticing and exotic ideas and images of the Western media. (Sultana 2014a, p. 42)

Thus, language is influenced by a boundless set of social, historical, and political factors (Sultana 2014a). The only stable language is a dead language.

5

Conclusion

Today, English is the most widely spoken language in the world with about two billion speakers (Baines 2012). This position occurred as the outcome of numerous historical and political events as well as systematic development of the correlation between English language skills and economic gain. The report, English Language Quantitative Indicators: Cameroon, Nigeria, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Pakistan, (Euromonitor International 2010), shows how global job markets, private sectors, economic growth, government investments, and educational systems have become increasingly intertwined with the proliferation of English. The report also asserts that though Bangla is used prominently in various dialects across the nation, by 2015, the percentage of people speaking English in Bangladesh will reach 25%. The correlation between English skills and economic advantage has been reiterated throughout this chapter. The average minimum wage indicated by the Bangladeshi government was U.S. $66.00 per month in 2009, while the average starting salary for an English-speaking professional was U.S. $354 per month. (Euromonitor International 2010, p. 87)

Today in Bangladesh, most companies require English for both internal and external communication, so that workers are expected to have a good understanding of English. Because of the highly charged economic and political environment, Bangla

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is, for better or worse, in competition with English. However, attempting to control the proliferation of English seems impossible. Unfortunately, while the tidal wave of foreign language and culture washes over the country, the beauty of the Bangla language and its trove of literary treasures remain largely inaccessible to the outside world. Alain Mabanckou, a prominent Congolese Francophone author, writes in French about the new generation situated in African culture, literature, and history. Mabanckou in his novel Blue White Red sketched the unspoken life of a migrated African in Paris as well as his life in native culture. The following excerpt from the novel gives a glimpse of an African father’s concern about his son before his flight to Paris: “Suddenly he turned serious. He warned me to be careful in life. I saw where he was heading. [He said] Don’t touch White men’s women. He had heard from one of his friends, a cook who had lived in Europe, that a White man wouldn’t hesitate to use a gun or a chainsaw over business about a woman, while we, in our country, could marry several women if we wanted to” (Mabanckou 2013, p. 74). Many of the social, political, cultural, and psychological issues highlighted in Mabanckou’s work are similar to issues in Bangladesh. Mabanckou’s works are translated into more than 20 languages at present, and his work has received significant worldwide attention. In contrast, most Bangla literature is not translated into English, let alone into French. Perhaps one exception is the work of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore had his collection of poems translated into English and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, winning accolades as the first Bengoli writer to glorify Bangla literature. However, other than a few volumes of Tagore’s poems, there are precious few translations of Bangla literary pieces available beyond the borders of Bangladesh. Even few of Tagore’s essays and short stories have been translated into English and remain largely lost to the world. The excerpt below taken from a short story named “A Wife’s Letter” demonstrates how literary pieces can serve as powerful cultural and intellectual tools. Here a wife writes to her husband recalling from the past when the husband’s family first went to pay a visit to the wife’s family in order to see and choose her as a prospective bride: When your uncle – a distant relative – came with your friend Nirod to view your prospective bride, I was twelve. We lived in an inaccessible village where jackals would call even during the day. Fourteen miles from the railway station by ox-cart, then six more on an unpaved road by palanquin; how vexed they were. And on top of that, our East-Bengal cookery. Even now your uncle makes jokes about those dishes. Your mother wanted desperately to make up for the plain appearance of the first bride with the good looks of the second. Otherwise why would you have taken all the time and trouble to travel to our distant village? In Bengal no one has to search for jaundice, dysentery, or a bride; they come and cleave to you on their own, and never want to leave. (Tagore 2016)

Bangla may not be at risk of extinction as some languages are, but any language limited to one particular geographical location risks stagnancy and decay. There seems to be little impetus for anyone to develop Bangla language skills. Moreover, due to English being the language of social media and technology, the younger generations in Bangladesh increasingly seek proficiency in English (Euromonitor

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International 2010). In a way, the English language and Western culture have begun a social recolonization of Bangladesh (Imam 2005). Additionally, the promotions of and investments in English language learning and literacy under various auspices, such as nongovernment organizations, World Bank, and the Asian Bank, are transforming the thought process and attitude of the people of Bangladesh while not necessarily improving their overall literacy. The results of this encroachment are not distant from the consequences of the colonial past (Imam 2005). To configure an effective approach to meet ever-changing and inevitable demands of the world economy, ex-colonies hit by diaspora, immigration, hegemonic hypnotism, and an ongoing identity crisis may want to reconsider their language policies. While it may be economically advantageous to know English, it is socially and psychologically important for a citizen of Bangladesh to be able to read, write, speak, listen, and think in Bangla. Language policies must strive to establish a link between the local language and the outer world. In this regard, Norton (2010, p. 350) refers to a recursive notion of creating bonds beyond conditions: Every time we speak, we are negotiating and negotiating our sense of self in relation to the larger social world, and reorganizing that relationship across time and space (As cited in Hasan and Rahman 2012, p. 3).

Otherwise, one language will thrive, and the other will become superfluous, thereby limiting the possibilities for expression. Imam (2005) states that ideal language policies cannot be devoted to promoting a dominant language for global competency or for “saving” culture and heritage through a return to the native language. Thus, Imam claims that there is no alternative for building a stable and primary literacy in the first language. Establishing Bangla as the cornerstone of the educational system is the first requirement. Such measure reenforces that the root of modernization is not in learning English; it is in learning about the world, beginning with the country in which one resides. Second, a balanced, well-developed, interactive, resourceful, and culturally familiar learning environment in English needs not to be a grammar-based or rote memorization-based one and utilize American or British referents. Literary works translated from Bangla into English or written pieces in English by Bengali writers are abundant and should comprise the curriculum. In fact, English is a tool; it needs not to become a set of values. English language teaching should draw examples and explanations from Bengali culture and language because “there is a profound difference between English language courses molded to fit the national context and English language courses that treat national context as irrelevant” (Imam 2005, p. 481). While English may be necessary in the current milieu, it also poses a threat to the national identity. That is, idolizing English as the ultimate solution to prosperity may lead to the disenfranchisement of local languages and cultures. Despite the fact of incursion led by English and other languages as well as negative social affiliations of the language within its own borders, Bangla remains among the top 10 most commonly spoken languages in the world. Yet, only a

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handful of higher education institutions in the United States (including University of California at Berkeley, The University of Chicago, University of Washington, and Columbia University) offers Bangla as a foreign language or offers any courses on Bangla language, literature, culture, or history. It is high time for a counter-discourse (Pennycook 1995) to place Bangla in the context of the wider world. Indeed, Bangladesh has an incredible history; Bangla language is fascinating and powerful; and Bangladeshi culture and arts are distinctive, deep, and rich. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

References Akanda, S. A. (2013). Language movement and the making of Bangladesh. Dhaka: The University Press Limited. Al-Quaderi, G. G., & Al Mahmud, A. (2010). English literature at English-medium schools of Bangladesh: The question of culture. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 18(2), 211–226. Anwaruddin, S. M. (2013). Neoliberal universities and the education of arts, humanities and social sciences in Bangladesh. Policy Futures in Education, 11(4), 364–374. Baines, L. A. (2012). A future of fewer words? The Futurist, 46(2), 42–47. Banglapedia: National encyclopedia of Bangladesh. Retrieved 21 Nov 2016, from http://en. banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Sadhu_Bhasa Banu, R., & Sussex, R. (2001). English in Bangladesh after independence: Dynamics of policy and practice. In B. Moore (Ed.), Who’s centric now? The present state of post-colonial Englishes (pp. 122–147). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Ceramella, N. (2012). Is English a killer language or an international auxiliary? Its use and function in a globalised world. International Journal of Language, Translation and Intercultural Communication, 1(1), 9–23. Euromonitor International. (2010). The benefits of English on individuals and society: Quantitative indicators from Cameron, Nigeria, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Retrieved 20 May 2015, from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/Euromonitor%20Report%20A4. pdf Hasan, S. M., & Rahman, A. (2012). The status of Bangla and the English language in post-colonial Bangladesh resistance versus utility. Language in India, 12(1), 14–23. Hasan, S. M., & Rahman, A. (2014). Standard dialect ideology in Bangladesh: A field study. Language in India, 14(10), 184–197. Imam, S. R. (2005). English as a global language and the question of nation-building education in Bangladesh. Comparative Education, 41(4), 471–486. IML (Institute of Modern Languages) Research and Information Team. (2013). IML discourse 1: NSU holds discussion on ‘Bangla Bhasha.’” Retrieved 30 May 2016, from www.northsouth. edu/assets/files/English/IML/Archive/A5-standardizing-bangla-for-website.docx Islam, M. (2011a). A pragmatic language policy in relation to English: Bangladesh contexts. Language in India, 11(12), 47–57. Islam, M. (2011b). Teachers’ understanding and practice of CLT in Bangladesh. Language in India, 11(11), 372–386. Khan, M. I. (2013). Social changes in contemporary Bangladesh. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh (Hum.), 58(2), 263–276. Kumar, R. S. (2016). Bengali: One language, multiple variation. Retrieved 1 Nov 2016, from http:// www.indianscripts.com/Articles/Bengali-One-language-Multiple-Variations.html

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Lippi-Green, R. (2011). English with an accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge. Mabanckou, A. (2013). Blue white red (trans: Dundy, A.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. New World Encyclopedia. (2016). Bengali language. Retrieved 1 Nov 2016, from http://www. newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bengali_language Norton, B. (2010). Language and identity. In N. H. Hornberger & S. L. McKay (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language education (pp. 349–369). Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, A. (1995). English in the world/The world in English. In J. W. Tollefson (Ed.), Power and inequality in language education (pp. 34–58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prodhan, M. (2016). The educational system in Bangladesh and scope for improvement. Journal of International Social Issues, 4(1), 11–23. Rahman, S. (2014). Social inequality for language in Bangladesh: A survey on minority and dialect using people. ENH Community Journal, 1(1). Ramanathan, V. (2005). The English-vernacular divide: Postcolonial language politics and practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Simpson, A. (2007). Language and national identity in Asia. New York: Oxford University Press. Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008). Culturally speaking: Culture, communication and politeness theory (2nd ed.). London/New York: Continuum. Sultana, S. (2014a). Heteroglossia and identities of young adults in Bangladesh. Linguistics and Education, 26, 40–56. Sultana, S. (2014b). Young adults’ linguistic manipulation of English in Bangla in Bangladesh. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 17(1), 74–89. Tagore, R. (2016). A wife’s letter. Retrieved 1 Nov 2016, from http://www.parabaas.com/transla tion/database/translations/stories/gStreerPatra1.html The Express Tribune. (2016). Bangladesh bans ‘Banglish’ to protect local tongue. Retrieved 2 Sept 2016, from http://tribune.com.pk/story/337843/bangladesh-bans-banglish-to-protect-localtongue/

Amish Language Research: A Review

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Description of the Amish Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Theorizing Amish Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Domain-Isolation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Functionalist-Role Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Other Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Within Amish scholarship, the topic of Amish language use has the highest quantity of publications second only to health research. The Amish have been of interest because they not only use English but also two variants of German: Pennsylvania Dutch (or Pennsylvania German), which is primarily spoken, and an historic High German, which is primarily sourced from written texts. This they maintain after 200–300 years since they migrated from Germanic Europe to North America. Yet, a synthesis of Amish language publications is lacking. In this chapter, two major theoretical approaches are employed to achieve an understanding of the Amish language situation and change. The domain-isolation theory emphasizes a dichotomy between the Amish and the surrounding world. The world threatens to assimilate the Amish by drawing them into regular contact. The consequence of regular contact is that English

C. Anderson (*) Truman State University/University of Akron, Wayne College, Millersburg, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_187

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overtakes Amish social domains, where the German variants would normally be used. The functionalist-role theory approaches language survival from the understanding that languages survive when they have functional uses. The Amish languages are functional because they are associated with roles that express community values. Functions and roles do change, as does the language. Hence, the borrowing of English forms into German is not a corruption from the world but rather demonstrates the adaptation of the German variants, especially Pennsylvania German, to new demands. This theory is used to try to understand the Amish culture producing the language situation as is rather than in opposition to an outside world. The chapter also briefly reviews a small body of literature addressing Amish naming patterns for people. Keywords

Amish-Mennonite · High German · Anabaptist · Pennsylvania German · Domainisolation theory · Functionalist-role theory

1

Introduction

The various Amish affiliations, taken as a single religious tradition, constitute one of North America’s fastest growing populations, with a doubling rate of just over two decades and a population of around 250,000 in the decennial 2010 Religious Congregations and Membership Survey. The Amish are primarily located in Pennsylvania (59,025), Ohio (26,895), and Indiana (19,361), though they have spread to neighboring states including Wisconsin (14,935), New York (12,205), Michigan (10,410), Missouri (9,893), Kentucky (8,454), Iowa (7,288), and Illinois (6,378). Their presence is especially strong in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states, with a few communities in the Great Plains, Deep South, New England, and Rocky Mountains. In Canada, Amish were isolated to Ontario (4,394) for years, though now have communities in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Manitoba. The Amish are projected to be approaching 350,000 people for the 2020 census (Donnermeyer 2015; Donnermeyer and Anderson 2015; Donnermeyer et al. 2013). The Amish religion is part of the larger Anabaptist tradition in Christianity, which began in the 1520s at the dawn of the Protestant Reformation. They sought a form of monasticism for commoners, a strict community of the devoted who voluntarily chose by adult baptism to follow Jesus Christ’s teaching as fully as possible. The Anabaptist movement spread across much of Germanic Europe, from the lowland provinces in the north to the mountains of Switzerland and Austria. The Amish, a stricter faction of Anabaptists from the German-French-Swiss border region, moved to America in the 1700s and early 1800s (Beachy 2011). They brought from Europe the German dialects of their home provinces. Since this migration, they have managed to retain their German dialects, unlike many other European immigrants of the time. Consequently, as the Amish grow and spread, so do their languages. This chapter first describes the language situation among the Amish. It then provides a thorough

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review of the literature about Amish language use. The literature suggests two major approaches to understanding Amish languages. The domain-isolation theory pits the Amish in opposition to an outside society that threatens to assimilate them, including their in-group language. Hence, the Amish try to remain semi-isolated, protecting their social domains from outsiders so they can use their in-group language and switch to English as seldom as possible. The functionalist-role theory views the survival of in-group languages as the consequence of those languages’ functionality. In-group languages for Amish are functional because they are tied to roles that, ultimately, express core values of the culture, including the need to distinguish the sanctified church community. In-group language convergence with English is a sign of language viability, not necessarily assimilation, because the language is adapting to meet new demands. Though these two perspectives dominate the Amish language literature, the chapter also briefly reviews two other small streams of language research about people’s names before the conclusion.

2

A Description of the Amish Languages

The Amish follow a Christian religion that, through a history of endogamy and a doctrine of religious sectarianism, also constitutes a distinctive ethnicity and social system. This ethno-religious group uses English and two variants of German, an archaic High German of the Luther Bible and the Pennsylvania German variant – or “Pennsylvania Dutch” as it is commonly called and as Louden (2016) defends – originating from the mix of German dialects in colonial Pennsylvania. The Amish language situation is one of diglossia, of American English and Pennsylvania German, perhaps also triglossia in some cases, for those mastering High German (Enninger 1979). American English is learned in Amish private schools, if not also informally in the home and community prior. It is not only taught in school; it is the formal language of education, a continuation from when Amish attended public schools prior to school consolidations. Amish is taught using English textbooks and as the language of instruction for all subjects, so any Amish students not bilingual before starting school become so quickly. The dialect of spoken English is not fixed but tends to follow the dialect of the region. The English dialects found in Ontario, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, for example, tend to show up in Amish-spoken English. English is also the standard language for reading and writing. Internally produced Amish publications – e.g., The Budget community newspaper, the Family Life periodical, school curriculum, and trade-based newsletters – are almost entirely in English (Fishman 1988). Pennsylvania Dutch is the first language children learn. It is an oral language – unstandardized – and varies in dialect primarily between the Pennsylvania version and the Midwest version (Keiser 2003a, 2012). Though attempts to write the language have been made, even to translate the Bible into Pennsylvania German, these writings are seldom consulted; they have no fixed place in the Amish language world.

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High German is the language of sacred texts and, when spoken, is done when reading these texts, as during church services. The Luther Bible, the Martyrs Mirror (a seventeenth-century book of Anabaptist martyr stories), the Ausbund and Liedersammlung hymnals, the prayer book, and important confessions of faith and historic documents pertaining to church matters are in High German. These texts are in Gothic fonts, stressing their sacredness (Enninger 1988), and are recited or sung in church services (the expository portions of preaching tend to be Pennsylvania German). The texts are a part of people’s personal book collections and are studied privately in the home, especially among the older men and in affiliations considered more restrictive in lifestyle and material matters. The written German has so evolved that an Amishman’s letter would be somewhat difficult to decipher for one fluent in modern German. For example, a talented undergraduate German student translated an Amish document from the 1950s. What was originally translated “because of the shameful pride that is in the brotherhood, and also drifts the shameful outsider or wrong belief where one comes and another wants to join into the Christian brotherhood - of ‘certainty of salvation’. . .” was corrected by an elderly Amishman to “because of the shameful pride that is in the brotherhood, of the shameful, strange, or foreign belief that wants to spread to the Christian brotherhood, of the Belief of ‘certainty of salvation’. . .” The written German text is “Wegen der schädliche Hochmuth wo in die Gemeinden kommt, und auch zimlich vorkommen wehen den Schädlichen fremden oder verkehrten glauben wo ein kommt und ein reiszen will in die Christlichen Gemeinden, von, ‘Gewiss von der Seligkeit’. . ..” A few Amish communities have an additional dialect. The Adams County and Allen County, Indiana, communities descend from the French province Alsace and the Canton Berne, Switzerland, respectively. They, and the younger communities populated with people originally from their community, use dialects brought from these areas, Alsatian or Bernese German. These communities also use Pennsylvania German to communicate with other Amish communities, so they are really managing three dialects of German, if not four (Alsatian and Bernese, since the Adams County and Allen County settlements are only 35 miles apart, and interaction between is common) (Thompson 1994, 1996). Similar to the Amish, other plain Anabaptist religious traditions migrated to North America and brought their variants of German along. The Swiss Mennonites occupied similar European provinces as the Amish and also carried their language to Pennsylvania in migrations paralleling the Amish. The communal Hutterites, which originated in Moravia at the dawn of the 1520s Anabaptist movement, moved eastward, eventually into Ukraine by the late 1700s. They then migrated to North America in the 1870s. Today, they are spread throughout the upper American and Canadian Great Plains. They use Hutterisch, originating from the Carinthian German of Austria, as the Amish use Pennsylvania German (Katz and Lehr 2012; Packull 1995). Similarly, the Old Colony Mennonites, whose origins were from northern Germany and the Netherlands, migrated to Ukraine in the late 1700s and then to North America in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Today, they are spread throughout the Canadian Great Plains as well as several Latin American

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countries, namely, Mexico, Belize, Columbia, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina. Their lingua franca is Plattdeutsch, a variety of Low German. All of these groups would use High German in religious contexts, including the Luther Bible (Driedger 1973; Good Gingrich and Preibisch 2010; Werner 2016). Most plain Anabaptist religious traditions manage a German variant, the High German, and a national language, namely, English or Spanish. The Amish varieties of German have evolved separately from their European counterparts. The Amish migrated from Germanic Europe from the early 1700s through the mid-1800s, settling in Pennsylvania, Ontario, and the American Midwest; no European communities remain today (Beachy 2011). Amish often lived near other nonsectarian Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, so they were not a speech island unto themselves. Through the twentieth century, however, the nonsectarian Pennsylvania Germans largely lost their German varieties, with younger generations becoming monolingual American English speakers (Louden 2016). The Amish religious tradition, as with other Anabaptist traditions, have a range of denominations, from the strict Swartzentruber Amish and the Seymour, Missouri, groups (Petrovich 2017), to the Beachy Amish-Mennonites, who in all but a few remaining practices are unrecognizable as Amish (Anderson 2011). It’s not the goal of this study to dissect these denominations, although the boundaries between affiliations include the following matters: extent of church discipline, technology permitted, theological beliefs and especially evangelical versus humility theology, community practices including dress patterns and young adult activities, and shared identity rooted in historical circumstances (Petrovich 2017). The utilization of Pennsylvania German also varies widely across these denominations, from almost exclusive use through the week for many members to those with no open use of Pennsylvania German, relegated to private conversations in homes where the language is known within the family (Brown 2011; DeHaven 2010; Johnson-Weiner 1992; Raith 2003). The importance of this continuum is that any generalizations must be made cautiously about who “counts” as a Pennsylvania German speaker but rather to address the subject in terms of relative un/stability of the minority language (Louden 1989). Indeed, language use does not always follow lines of relative assimilation, as the Holmes County, Ohio, Amish community is considered very “Dutchy” though progressive in social and religious life, while the Kalona, Iowa, Amish are comparatively conservative for Old Order Amish though use more English (Keiser 2003b). Even the Holmes County Beachy AmishMennonites, certainly among the most progressive of all churches in the Amish tradition, are apt to use the language throughout the week despite switching to English for church services (Downing 2015). To account for this relative stability, several studies have correctly focused on a single geographic community and examined language use as is within the community (Moelleken 1983; Raith 2003; Wandt 1988); this is more appropriate than the either/or fallacy of “who uses German” and “who doesn’t” based solely on denominational association. The inclination to approach language use with the either/or fallacy is that the Amish themselves make a substantial distinction between those who prescribe

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German forms for religious ceremonies and those who use English, prescriptions that can make or break denominational alliances. Due to historic precedents, the Amish of all levels posit a correlation between accepting the operation of automobiles and the acceptance of English in church services. An unmentioned causal variable is usually assumed: a progressive mentality that accepts these two changes in tandem. Nevertheless, the criteria of real Amish using German and rejecting automobile operation does not work for the purposes of language study, if for no other reason than the existence of exceptions confounding the Amish’s own distinctions. Namely, several communities of Amish exist that use English in church – the intentionally seeker-friendly communities who try to make their communities accessible to converts – while two affiliations of automobile-using Amish-Mennonites retain German in church, in addition to using German songbooks and the Luther Bible. Still, the distinction of using German in religious ceremonies is of interest in describing the language situation, for it demonstrates a commitment to the language to the degree that it is hallowed symbolically. Altogether, six major horse-and-buggy Amish affiliations – Swartzentruber, Kenton-Paoli, Andy Weaver, Old Order, New Order, and New Order Christian Fellowship, as well as several unaffiliated churches (Petrovich 2017) – and two automobile-using Amish-Mennonite affiliations, Tampico (with exceptions in Wisconsin and Iowa) and Midwest Beachy (Anderson 2012), constitute the affiliations in the Amish tradition that elevate the prestige of German to the placement of prescription for religious ceremonies, where it becomes part of the sacred enactment of community values and beliefs. What is probably the largest plain Anabaptist church assembly in North America is a German-speaking Tampico Amish-Mennonite congregation near Buffalo, Missouri (Figs. 1 and 2). Those affiliations within the Amish tradition that do not use German in church services but may use it in other ways include an array of Amish-Mennonite affiliations – Berea Amish-Mennonite, Ambassadors Amish-Mennonite, Mennonite Christian Fellowship, Maranatha Amish-Mennonite, Beachy Amish-Mennonite, and unaffiliated Amish-Mennonites – and several independent horse-and-buggy Amish communities, notably Smyrna, Maine, and Unity, Maine, which have several outside converts. The locations of the churches in the Amish tradition are mapped in Figs. 3 (Amish), 4 (Amish-Mennonites), and 5 (both outside North America).

3

Theorizing Amish Languages

Scholars of Amish languages – who come from a variety of fields including linguistics, geography, sociology, German studies, and anthropology – are primarily concerned with explaining the Amish language structure and then also the use of Pennsylvania German, which often makes implications, short or extended, about

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Fig. 1 The Pleasant View Amish-Mennonite Church in Buffalo, Missouri, has a population of around 1,000, making it possibly the largest single assembly of plain people in North America. (Photo by the author)

Fig. 2 Interior of the Pleasant View Amish-Mennonite Church. Pennsylvania German is used during church services. (Photo by the author)

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Fig. 3 North American locations of Amish (Old Order) churches. (Data courtesy of Joseph Donnermeyer)

Fig. 4 North American locations of Amish-Mennonite churches. (Church data created by the author)

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Fig. 5 Global locations of Amish and Amish-Mennonite churches. (Church data created by the author)

conditions that could lead to English monolingualism. In Amish studies, the subject of language is the most cohesive body of literature (Anderson 2017a: 16) and has several short reviews (Brunt 1986; Enninger and Raith 1988; Erbay 2013); it is also second in publication quantity after Amish health practices. Despite these strengths, the theoretical perspectives regarding Amish language use have not been well articulated. Two major theories of language appear in the literature, what I refer to as the domain-isolation theory – which owes its intellectual legacy primarily to assimilation theory, albeit with only a weak engagement of assimilation theory’s propositions – and functionalist-role theory, which fuses the insights of these two broader theories from anthropology and sociology. This is the first time these two perspectives have been synthesized and juxtaposed, although several publications have empirically tested specific, competing claims characteristic of these theories (e.g., Enninger 1987; Keiser 2003b; Louden 1991).

4

Domain-Isolation Theory

The first theory is what I’ll call the “domain-isolation” theory, for lack of an existing term. No thorough explanation of the domain-isolation theory has been made. It is more a default assumption, especially because it represents the emic Amish understanding of language, so scholars are inclined to reproduce uncritically what they hear from Amish. The Amish social world consists of multiple “domains” (also, “occasions” or “places”) with each domain determining the language used (Frey 1945; Huffines 1980b; Kopp 2003; Moelleken 1983). The domains of Pennsylvania German include the home, the Amish community, and the church. The domain of High German is the church as well, especially for sacred texts. The domain of English is the social world

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beyond the Amish, such as some workplaces and in commercial exchanges. The Amish school is also the domain of English, as it is the language of instruction. In all, Amish must use spoken English for, say, business purposes and for education, but they would not use English if they did not have to. The retention of German correlates with Amish geographic and social isolation (Adkins 2011; Buffington 1941; Erbay 2013). Hypothetically, Amish society, in its purest form, would be found in total isolation, the ideal of the “separation from the world” doctrine (Romans 12:2), with every domain being their own for optimal language protection (Sağlamel 2014). Linguistically, the in-group German dialects would be the only ones used in total isolation. English is a worldly language, to be avoided because of their separation doctrine. Amish only use spoken English when they have to, on “forced” “occasions” that “demand it” – namely, when speaking with non-Amish (Hostetler 1963[1968,1980,1993]: 139–140; Smith 1961: 311–312). They have to use it sometimes, because it is the language of the society in which they live, and they do have to interact with this modern society even if in select, negotiated ways. Yet, the more the Amish use English, the more their domains become part of the world (Moelleken 1983). Hence, the Amish stigmatize English to keep it at arm’s length. The language carries negative prestige, as it is the language “of high culture and worldly society, a language of sophistication at odds with [a] lowly spirit,” “the verbal currency of a vain society” (“evil society” in 1st ed.) (Kraybill 1989[2001]: 57). It is the language of articulate Amish in large cosmopolitan Amish communities, who turn concrete nonverbal symbols of separation (e.g., clothes and technology restrictions) into reasoned theologies with fewer lived out practices (Hostetler 1981). For an Amishman to use English often represents his worldliness, and for groups to allow English in church represents a path to assimilation (Johnson-Weiner 1998). In all-Amish schools, children do learn English, but it is as a skill needed for life to interact with the dominant society; the school is setting a boundary against and placing a stigma on English even as it is used. For example, they use archaic public school textbooks or Amish-produced English textbooks to signify their caution about the language (Johnson-Weiner 1997, 1999, 2006, 2007: 19). Adding to the emphasis on English as a foreign language, the spoken and written English of the Amish has frequent enough interference from German to merit mention, e.g., accent, phraseology, or noteworthy limitations in vocabulary (Frey 1945; Kraybill 1989 [2001]: 56–57; Rohrer 1974; Smith 1961: 311–312). Some domain-isolation theorists disagree on this point, although their disagreement is more a defense against authors purportedly making the Amish look stupid than a position consistent with their overall view – as with Hostetler’s (1963[1968,1980,1993]:139-140) indirect reply (“without noticeable accent” and “little difficulty in speaking correct English”) to Smith’s (1961:311-312) characterization (“mixed-up English” and “frequent improper use of English”) (Donnermeyer 2017). A core premise of the domain-isolation theory is the dichotomy between the Amish and the outside world, with a continuum of Amish compromise between the two poles. More English, whether in English-contaminated Dutch or in complete use of English in certain insider domains, is the result of growing contact and

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dependence on the outside world (Dow 1988; Huffines 1991, 1994, 1997; JohnsonWeiner 1992, 1998; Kraybill 1989[2001]). Thus, the domain-isolation theory predicts that linguistic assimilation occurs alongside social and spatial assimilation. While a default position on language structure in the social sciences, in strongly empirical studies, especially of linguists, the domain-isolation position is generally dismissed on several grounds. First, even as the Amish are a recognizable social system and culture distinct from others, the insider/outsider dichotomy is not so simple. Indeed, scholars of the Amish have long recognized a lively interface of assimilation-neutral relations between the Amish and “English” from highly to sparsely populated regions of North America, even as Amish in-group consciousness persists with no clear relationship to relative isolation (Knight 1980; Loomis and Jantzen 1962). Second, enough plain Anabaptist groups exist that use German sparingly or not at all, including relatively strict ones, to raise questions about the correlation of linguistic assimilation and identify loss. Third, systematically collected data generally does not support the domain-isolation, especially when the data find English in use for some in-group occasions and some language switching during conversations (Enninger and Wandt 1979; Louden 1991). Much of the evidence amassed to the domain-isolation theory comes from anecdotes and broadly scoped ethnographies.

5

Functionalist-Role Theory

The competing theory to domain-isolation – best represented by Werner Enninger, Mark Louden, and the earlier works of Marion Lois Huffines – is a fusion of functionalist theory and role theory. The theory reached a zenith in publications in the 1980s and 1990s, especially with the publications of the three aforementioned as well as others, but has been spottier since, with only a few recent works by Loudon and Steven Hartman Keiser, as well as several book chapters by others. Both domain-isolation theory and functionalist-role theory recognize something distinct about the Amish from surrounding social systems and cultures. For domainisolation theory, the Amish are positioned as in opposition to the outside world, with geographic and social isolation a better method for preserving the in-group languages. For functionalist-role theory, however, the Amish are of the culture they are in (American or Canadian) and are a recognizable subgroup. Therefore, social and especially geographic isolation are not necessarily equated with better language maintenance. Instead, research focuses on addressing the properties of the Amish social system in itself, primarily how members affirm, signify, and challenge identity to one another. It also focuses on the nature of external linkages, but without the assumption of an inside/outside exclusivism and antagonism. Instead, language changes are mostly internally driven, even as recognition is given that language contact may accelerate language change when internal conditions are receptive (Fuller 1999). The functionalist part of the theory posits that the three Amish languages all service real-life communication demands, which accounts for language persistence.

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Language evolution, then, including the borrowing of English elements into German, is not evidence of language decline but evidence of language functionality: it is adapting to new demands, not necessarily declining or disappearing. Language loss occurs, rather, when its function becomes redundant with another language; the cost to maintaining two is high, so the one without redundant functions (English) is retained (Enninger 1979; also see Huffines 1992). This does not necessarily prescribe the society’s assimilation as the cause, though neither does it exclude it as one possibility. Language functionality is directly tied to role relationships, in contrast to the “domain” and “occasion” emphasis of the domain-isolation theory. This part of the theory is most thoroughly addressed by the brilliant but relatively unrecognized German sociolinguist Werner Enninger, whose contributions are summarized in Anderson (2017b). In short, roles are determined by appearance in a pre-interactional evaluation of the other. For the Amish, nonverbal cues, namely, personal appearances – grooming and garment patterns – are configured based on a society-wide shared catalog acquired through socialization (Enninger 1982, 1984a, 1985b). Other appearances of lesser consequence but still holding role information include buggy and home styles (Enninger and Scott 1985; Scott 1992[2001]). The entire catalog of roles, expressed through appearances, is the product of internalized, shared norms based on core group values. When roles are recognized and enacted through verbal and nonverbal communication, the social event, the parallel of the problematic “domain” in the domain-isolation theory, is established. People’s conformation to the role-specific norms of a social event helps reinforce the core societal values – see especially Fig. 2 in Anderson (2017b: 295), replicated from Enninger (1979). Appearance suggests the role to be enacted and triggers the language associated with the role relationship and social event. Enninger (1986a: 202) has meticulously diagramed the role system and corresponding languages he found in one Amish community. Pennsylvania German is the role exclusively of “our people” or the “brotherhood network.” It is functional for many in-group roles and carries prestige. It is especially important in defining in-group roles, drawing attention to the collective access the enacted community has to God (Raith 1980). In this way, Pennsylvania German, as a social boundary, acts more as a positive representation of in-group identity than as a negative boundary against other social systems (Louden 1991), namely, the personified nemesis of domain-isolation theory: the world. In that in-group roles are largely spoken in Pennsylvania German, one must be socialized Amish from birth – both acquiring Pennsylvania German and internalizing a value system that prioritizes generational continuity over proselytization – to represent these roles (Enninger 1986a). English is both “their language” – what is perceived as the dominant culture – and “our language” because it is in everyday use (Enninger 1999). As with Pennsylvania German, English carries prestige (Enninger 1999; Louden 1991) and is functional – exclusively functional for out-group roles as with domain-isolation theory but also functional for some in-group roles. Hence, depending on the nature of the role, two Amishmen may be using English or a mixture of Pennsylvania German and English

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– as may be found in a business transaction or “baby talk” of women to an infant – whereas the same two Amishmen in a situation of heightened in-group awareness, as when speaking after a church service, are more liable to signify the coreligionist role with Pennsylvania German due to a role change (Enninger 1979; Louden 1991). High German is a language functional almost exclusively for religious ceremonial roles, not unlike the role of Latin for some Catholics and Hebrew for ultra-Orthodox Jews. High German scriptures, songs, and extemporaneous sermons (which mixes Pennsylvania and High German in some proportion), when read or delivered in church services, all have a certain pace, musical intonation, and formulaic delivery that functions to subjugate the speaker’s personal charisma to collective worship (Enninger and Raith 1981, 1982). The only other major role enactment requiring High German is upper-level students and teachers during lessons at school, when German is being specifically taught (Enninger 1999). In addition to language selection, role identification and enactment triggers rules and culturally specific patterns of interlocution, further confirming at all stages of conversation the, especially in-group, roles being enacted and the group values role enactment represents. Conversational openings are optional since visual cues provide assurance of empathy; what verbal openings are given are non-emotional/ matter-of-fact (“so you’re back again” or “there you are then”) so as not to be taken as insincere. In the transaction, interactants have a higher tolerance for pauses because much information is exchanged nonverbally. Speaking privileges are opened through the silence following a sentence (interruption is rare). Privileges must be explicitly given to vertically lower participants (e.g., teacher to school students, elder to young adult). Men and women often converse separately because privileges are more easily negotiated within genders, each gender having its own status hierarchy addressing gender-specific role expectations. Constraints on language include (1) the quantity, not too much talk and not repeating messages sent nonverbally, so as not to come across as domineering or forceful; (2) quality, no lies or irony, which negates the value of being honest and open; (3) relevance, speaking of community affairs, not speaking of phenomenal fiction, and not speaking of community-disrupting topics such as theological quarrels; and (4) manner, no embellished, lofty, refined language, including honorific terms that privilege some over others or signal social distance (e.g., pastor, doctor, sir and ma’am), endearments that are too emotionally intimate or suggest that endearment can’t be taken for granted (e.g., darling, sweetie), and conversational lubricants that indicate a listener’s attention and sympathy isn’t assumed (e.g., oh, okay, right, mhm) (Enninger et al. 1989, following “Grice’s Maxims of Cooperative Conversation”). For functionalist-role theorists, language adaptation signals viability – not language corruption and worldliness as domain-isolationist theorists argue. A static language, on the other hand, signals language death. Huffines has contributed greatly to our understanding of language adaptation with a series of publications in the 1980s and 1990s, comparing the strategies of language maintenance between sectarian Pennsylvania German speakers (namely, Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites) and nonsectarian speakers (ethnically Pennsylvania German and often affiliated with a mainline Protestant church such as Lutheran or Reformed). Huffines

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argues that the Amish have functional contexts to use their Pennsylvania German, whereas nonsectarians do not, speaking it mainly at deliberately arranged language club events or among the elderly. That the nonsectarians have no other way to emphasize their peoplehood than with language places a greater functional load on the language to maintain identity but without an outlet. Sectarians, on the other hand, have many other modes of identity, including dress, so the language as a marker of identity is redundant to other markers (Huffines 1980a, b). Consequently, Huffines, as well as Enninger (1979, 1980; Enninger and Wandt 1982) and Louden (1989), finds that sectarian Pennsylvania German is destabilized so that it can converge with English forms, which then ensures ongoing language functionality. One example is Amish using Pennsylvania German to discuss modern economic matters internally, whereas if they held to strict Pennsylvania German, the language would be limited due to, if nothing else, vocabulary (Raith 1988). Nonsectarian Pennsylvania Germans hold to “pure” German rules to protect this final symbol of ethnic identity. The language rules that converge with English for sectarians and do not converge for nonsectarians include the word order of progressive aspect (Huffines 1986c), progressive constructions, use of the auxiliary duh, use of the adverbial als (Huffines 1986a), use of German dative case (Huffines 1989a, b), and use of zu as a marked infinitive (Huffines 1990); these changes are summarized in Huffines (1988). Louden (1992, 1997) adds further convergence evidence in syntax (case, tense/aspect, and infinitival complementation), lexicon (borrowed words), and child-naming practices; few changes appeared in phonology. For functional-role theorists, language change may be due to purely internal demands. One demand, argues Silke Van Ness (1992a, 1992b, 1995), is for every generation to distinguish itself from prior generations. In her research of Holmes County, Ohio, New Order Amish (a more progressive denomination of horse-andbuggy Amish), she found in the early 1990s that young women were leading changes in language structure. The changes included the decline of the dative case – predictable given English has no dative case equivalent – but also a counterintuitive change, replacing female-specific articles (e.g., die or sie) with neuter or male articles when referring to women. Van Ness observed that young women often had jobs in the service industry (e.g., restaurants, stores, and in-home maids and nannies) among monolingual English speakers, while men – young and old – and older women find employment in Amish businesses or remain at home; see Kreps et al. (1994) for examples of household head occupations. What seems to set up a domainisolation confirmation is rejected because the gender article change is simply not a case of convergence with English. Van Ness instead proposes that young women want to distinguish themselves from older generations and they find themselves in social settings during the week allowing them to quickly innovate and diffuse language changes. Thus, the internal demand for generational distinction is sufficient cause for language change, and those at the forefront of the change just happen in this case to have sustained contact with non-Amish (see also Costello (1997) for another case of complex internal changes). Because Amish identity is primarily internal and languages are meant to be functional, functional-role theorists argue that there is minimal German interference

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with English because such interference serves no function. Amish already have a whole array of practices that visually identify them as distinct, clothing being among the most important, and having interference will hinder communication. Data from several studies support the argument that Amish speak English clearly and with only occasional, inconsequential interference. Nonsectarian Pennsylvania Germans, on the other hand, tend to have interference in spoken English, as if to assert a Pennsylvania Dutch identity. Identity assertion in language is unnecessary for Amish (Enninger 1987; Enninger et al. 1985; Huffines 1980a, 1984, 1986b; Raith 1977). If anything, Amish English is characteristic of regional accents, not in contrast to. What, then, is the functional-role theory explanation of language loss for the Amish? What it is not is language change; change is associated with viability. What it is is a decline of language use. This is due by and large to the same in-group demands that make a language functional to begin with. Researchers have postulated several major causes (even as data are still very preliminary – there’s a tendency in Amish linguistic studies to document the change in detail but merely speculate about possible causes). One internal factor is a shift in values. Enninger’s model of the social system is rooted in values that produce socialized norms, and these norms flesh out the role system. Values can shift, especially as Amish role enactment moves from role taking (pulling from the system of pre-existing roles) to role making and negotiating. Value shifts, then, are the product of many micro interactions – variables engaging one another cyclically as both cause and consequence – that accumulate into system changes. Values such as the emphasis on having a distinctive social system called the church have provided support for an in-group language. Enninger has gone so far as to surmise that if the Amish were to settle Latin America, that English could eventually take the position of in-group language just as well as Pennsylvania German in North America (Enninger 1986a). A common value change reoccurring across Amish history is some acknowledgment that the church has a religious responsibility to outsiders. This may be as small as sending funds to non-Amish and para-Anabaptist mission programs such as Christian Aid Ministries and Wycliffe to an out-and-out attempt to proselytize and convert people into the church. Directly converting people is rare, even among Amish groups espousing missions, and most who do convert are those who take personal initiative to seek out and join, not proselytes. Such a great shift in values as having a responsibility to outsiders may lead to a church division or a progressing of the affiliation. Since the focus of mission is on outsiders, English becomes the most functional language in groups with this emphasis. The ultimate value shift is the rejection of the need to define a total system in-group (DeHaven 2010; Raith 1980, 2003). The domain-isolation theorists have also noticed the association between a mission emphasis and loss of language, but here, missions are considered just another external force of assimilation and not as an internal value shift that reorganizes language use without necessarily spelling total assimilation (Hostetler 1981; Johnson-Weiner 1998). Other values that, when shifting, would reorganize the

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functionality of language use include the understanding of separation and the two kingdom (church and world) concept, church discipline and social shunning (1 Corinthians 5), the salience and extent of member obligations to the church, and idealized occupations (from agricultural to professional) (Wandt 1988). A second internal factor bringing about language decline is a disassociation of an in-group language with the in-group. That is, the Amish come to understand in-group roles as independent of language choice and independent of values (Huffines 1980b). This is commonly the case among Amish-Mennonites, who have accepted religious texts and materials that are in English (e.g., King James Version of the Bible, evangelistic-style preaching, Sunday school bulletins, and Protestant religious literature) (Brown 2011; Fuller 1996, 1999, 2005). A third internal factor specifically addresses the loss of High German. As the number of roles associated with High German declined, the cost to learn the language increased. Yet, important religious texts are in High German, so the language is not easily discarded as superfluous. The individual’s relation with the language is mainly as a reader trying to understand the text, not reproducing the language and formulating new phrases (Enninger 1984b). Beyond that, ministers must be able to recite the German texts in church, and room has been made for them to insert English translations when German words are not well understood (Meindl 2010). In such a situation, the language has become destabilized with a loss of old rules and no new rules replacing them, resulting in various renditions of German, usually collapsing distinctions into English or Pennsylvania German patterns (Enninger 1984b, 1986b; Raith and Lehmann 1989). High German is taught in school to upper grades, but German instruction is a more recent innovation to curriculum and consequently is the weakest part of instruction (Enninger 1999). Thus, German is destabilized and becoming a classic language, due to its decline in role association and, therefore, the high cost of learning and retaining. A fourth internal factor is that the population fails to reproduce itself. When migration to America halted in the early 1920s, many ethnic groups gradually lost their language because it failed to be functional. For the Amish, the high level of natural increase and successful socialization of offspring acts in the place of an immigration flow (Huffines 1986c). Long-established communities that have low retention rates and therefore remain numerically small may not be able to assign as great a functionality to Pennsylvania German as growing, established communities (Keiser 2003b). Fifth, in some communities, different dialects of Pennsylvania German are in use due to people moving in from varying communities; this is usually the case in younger communities. Namely, differences in dialect exist between Pennsylvania and the Midwest and between the Swiss/Alsatian communities of Indiana and other Amish. The shared language of all is English. Two values push English to the fore in role relations: the ability to communicate and not emphasizing factions within the churches, as the use of different dialects might (DeHaven 2010; Johnson-Weiner 1989). Finally, functional-role theorists do acknowledge group assimilation as a possible cause of language loss. As the bulk of relationships shift from primary to secondary

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and as social networks move from integrated to segmented, the roles associated with an in-group language decrease, as do a range of distinctive practices that signal the primacy of a single, dense network (Raith 1980, 2003). This is often accompanied by a stigma on the in-group language and embarrassment on the part of the speaker to be identified as knowing the language (Raith 1977).

6

Other Research

While most language research has focused on the above questions of language structure and stability, a small body of literature also addresses names. Several studies address the common practice of giving nicknames. Practices include first name abbreviation, a physical trait (“Red” Eli for his red beard), habits, humorous happenings (“Gravy Dan”), added names of parents or spouse, addition of middle initial, the occupation (“Carpenter Dan”), or where one lives (“Holmesville Joe”) (Mook 1968). Nicknames are given not only because endogamy and common naming practices mean that people need to be distinguished (Smith 1968) but also because nicknames can serve as an evaluation, especially a slight stigma against an unaccepted behavior (“Heavy Henry” or “Rat Dan”) (Enninger 1985a; Troyer 1968). Two studies have also noted the ability to identify Amish settlements geographically through surnames, as the Amish have a limited number of such surnames. These surnames also indicate the origins of the Amish, e.g., certain names are associated with Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Amish, while others are associated with the Midwest (Cross 2003; Kent and Neugebauer 1990). However, with the increasing availability of Amish settlement data, these methods anymore have limited applicability.

7

Conclusion

Language work among the Amish has been thorough compared to other subareas, although it has lacked cohesion and synthesis. This chapter has analyzed the literature and identified two prominent trains of thought: domain-isolation theory and functionalist-role theory. This review favors the functionalist-role theory; it is a more nuanced theory with empirical backing, while the domain-isolation theory is a light proposition and more a default position of popular assumptions. Functionalist-role theory has four particular advantages. First, it is a dynamic theory with a mechanism for social change. Language changes are a response to functional demands within the social system, from new roles to generational turnover. Domain-isolation theory is static, having no explanation for change other than group assimilation – cultural doom. Second, functionalist-role theory permits variety in actual language practice: from community to community, from affiliation to affiliation, and in the many social events in Amish life including the numerous unnamed and mundane social events. Actual language use is a product of the local situation, so the actual practices among Amish communities can vary without

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needing to assume one community is more “worldly” than another when English is used more frequently or more English patterns end up in German. Third, the relationship between language use and other variables is clearly understood. Language is an expression of a role triggered by nonverbal signals. In domainisolation theory, language is one of several variables all vaguely correlated along a continuum of separation and worldliness. Fourth, deep within Enninger’s theory of functionalist-role theory is symbolic interactionism, which allows for actor agency and, hence, room for outcomes that are more the product of power struggles, resource conflicts, and alternative meaning-making. Hence, the theory, taken as a whole, avoids some of the common critiques against strict functionalism.

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Enninger, W., & Wandt, K.-H. (1979). Social roles and language choice in an Old Order Amish community. Sociologia Internationalis, 17, 111–133. Enninger, W., & Wandt, K.-H. (1982). Pennsylvania German in the context of an Old Order Amish settlement: The structural instability of a functionally stable variety. Yearbook of German-American Studies, 17, 123–143. Enninger, W., Hostetler, J., Raith, J., & Wandt, K.-H. (1989). Rules of speaking: The case of the Old Order Amish. In W. Enninger, J. Raith, & K.-H. Wandt (Eds.), Studies on the languages and the verbal behavior of the Pennsylvania Germans II (pp. 137–166). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH. Erbay, Ş. (2013). The Amish: A distinctive cosmos serving well for a philological dualism. Narrative and Language Studies, 1(1), 1–19. Fishman, A. (1988). Amish literacy: What and how it means. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Frey, J. W. (1945). Amish ‘Triple-Talk’. American Speech, 20(2), 85–98. Fuller, J. M. (1996). When cultural maintenance means linguistic convergence: Pennsylvania German evidence for the matrix language turnover hypothesis. Language in Society, 25(4), 493–514. Fuller, J. M. (1999). The role of English in Pennsylvania German development: Best supporting actress? American Speech, 74(1), 139–153. Fuller, J. M. (2005). The sociopragmatic values of Pennsylvania German (“Dutch”): Changes across time, place, and Anabaptist sect. In J. Cohen, K. McAlister, K. Rolstad, & J. MacSwan (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on bilingualism (pp. 800–807). Sommerville: Cascadilla. Good Gingrich, L., & Preibisch, K. (2010). Migration as preservation and loss: The paradox of transnational living for low German Mennonite women. Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies, 36(9), 1499–1518. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2010.494825. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech arts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic. Hostetler, J. (1963[1968, 1980, 1993]). Amish Society (4th ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hostetler, J. (1981). Discourse and cultural survival: An Amish case. Working Papers in Culture and Communication, 3(2), 23–38. Huffines, M. L. (1980a). English in contact with Pennsylvania German. German Quarterly, 53(3), 352–266. Huffines, M. L. (1980b). Pennsylvania German: Maintenance and shift. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 25, 43–57. Huffines, M. L. (1984). The English of the Pennsylvania Germans: A reflection of ethnic affiliation. German Quarterly, 57, 173–182. Huffines, M. L. (1986a). The function of aspect in Pennsylvania German. Yearbook of GermanAmerican Studies, 21, 137–154. Huffines, M. L. (1986b). Strategies of language maintenance and ethnic marking among the Pennsylvanian Germans. language sciences, 8(1), 1–17. Huffines, M. L. (1986c). Verbal aspect in Pennsylvania German. In W. Enninger, J. Raith, & K.-H. Wandt (Eds.), Internal and external perspectives on Amish and Mennonite Life 2 (pp. 1–17). Essen: Unipress. Huffines, M. L. (1988). Pennsylvania German among the plain groups: Convergence as a strategy of language maintenance. Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, 11(3), 12–16. Huffines, M. L. (1989a). Case usage among the Pennsylvania German sectarians and nonsectarians. In N. Dorian (Ed.), Investigating obsolescence: Studies in language contraction and death (pp. 211–226). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Huffines, M. L. (1989b). Convergence and language death: The case of Pennsylvania German. In W. Enninger, J. Raith, & K.-H. Wandt (Eds.), Studies on the languages and the verbal behavior of the Pennsylvania Germans II (pp. 17–28). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH.

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Huffines, M. L. (1990). Contact phenomena in language maintenance and shift: The Pennsylvania German infinitive construction. American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures, 2(2), 95–108. Huffines, M. L. (1991). Pennsylvania German: ‘Do they love it in their hearts?’. In J. Dow (Ed.), Language and ethnicity: Festschrift in honor of Joshua A. Fishman on occasion of his 65th birthday (pp. 9–22). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huffines, M. L. (1992). Language change and enabling strategies of Pennsylvania Anabaptists. In K. Burridge & W. Enninger (Eds.), Diachronic studies on the languages of the Anabaptists (pp. 166–181). Bochum: Brockmeyer. Huffines, M. L. (1994). Amish languages. In J. Dow, W. Enninger, & J. Raith (Eds.), Internal and external perspectives on Amish and Mennonite Life 4 (Vol. 4, pp. 21–32). Essen: Unipress. Huffines, M. L. (1997). Language contact and the Amish. In J. Dow & M. Wolff (Eds.), Languages and lives: Essays in honor of Werner Enninger (pp. 53–66). New York: Peter Lang. Johnson-Weiner, K. (1989). Keeping Dutch: Linguistic heterogeneity and the maintenance of Pennsylvania German in two Old Order communities. In W. Enninger, J. Raith, & K.-H. Wandt (Eds.), Studies on the languages and the verbal behavior of the Pennsylvania Germans, II (pp. 95–101). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH. Johnson-Weiner, K. (1992). Group identity and language maintenance: The survival of Pennsylvania German in Old Order communities. In K. Burridge & W. Enninger (Eds.), Diachronic studies on the languages of the Anabaptists (pp. 26–42). Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer. Johnson-Weiner, K. (1997). Reinforcing a separate Amish identity: English instruction and the preservation of culture in Old Order Amish schools. In J. Dow & M. Wolff (Eds.), Languages and lives: Essays in honor of Werner Enninger (pp. 67–78). New York: Peter Lang. Johnson-Weiner, K. (1998). Community identity and language change in North American Anabaptist communities. Journal of SocioLinguistics, 2(3), 375–394. Johnson-Weiner, K. (1999). Educating in English to maintain Pennsylvania German: The Old Order parochial school in the service of cultural survival. In N. Ostler (Ed.), Endangered languages and education (pp. 31–37). Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages. Johnson-Weiner, K. (2006). Teaching identity: German language instruction in Old Order schools. In J. Brown & L. Hopkins (Eds.), Preserving heritage: A Festschrift for C. Richard Beam (pp. 13–25). Topeka: Society for German-American Studies. Johnson-Weiner, K. (2007). Train up a child: Old Order Amish & Mennonite Schools. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Katz, Y., & Lehr, J. (2012). Inside the ark: The Hutterites in Canada and the United States. Regina: University of Regina Press. Keiser, S. H. (2003a). The origins and maintenance of dialect differentiation in Midwestern Pennsylvania German. In W. D. Keel & K. J. Mattheier (Eds.), German language varieties worldwide: Internal and external perspectives (pp. 117–135). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Keiser, S. H. (2003b). Pennsylvania German and the ‘Lunch Pail Threat’: Language shift and cultural maintenance in two Amish communities. In When languages collide (pp. 3–20). Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Keiser, S. H. (2012). Pennsylvania German in the American Midwest. Durham: Duke University Press. Kent, R., & Neugebauer, R. (1990). Identification of ethnic settlement regions: Amish-Mennonites [sic] in Ohio. Rural Sociology, 55(3), 425–441. Knight, J. (1980). The Old Order Amish: Lessons from Kansas ethnography. Plains Anthropologist, 25(89), 229–233. Kopp, A. (2003). Language attitude across society and generations in a Pennsylvania German speech island. In W. D. Keel & K. J. Mattheier (Eds.), German language varieties worldwide: Internal and external perspectives (pp. 87–115). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Kraybill, D. (1989[2001]). The riddle of Amish culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kreps, G., Donnermeyer, J., & Kreps, M. (1994). The changing occupational structure of Amish males. Rural Sociology, 59(4), 708–719.

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Roma: A Nation Without a Homeland, Common Language, or Written Language – A Case Study of Plovdiv, Bulgaria

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Origin of the Romani Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Overview of Roma Language Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 The Roma Community in One Bulgarian City: Plovdiv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Challenges for the Scholarly Community Studying the Roma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Regardless of the Roma presence in Bulgaria for over six centuries, today our macro-society, as well as a certain number of researchers who study that community and their language, still do not possess enough knowledge, nor do they differentiate well enough the cultural matrices of the different Roma communities. Today over 100 Roma groups and subgroups live in Bulgaria. Exactly how many of those groups actually belong to the Roma ethnic group is hard to say. The cultural unification of the Roma and their attribution to the imaginary Roma community and its respective groups, subgroups, and communities with close cultural characteristics to those of the true Roma create both a terminological and a classificatory chaos. This confusion reflects directly on the correct knowledge about the culture of these communities and on the results of the policies for intervention. In this chapter, the reader is introduced to the cultural features of the largest Roma community in Bulgaria, called millet, Turkish gypsies, and yerlii. The research is based on studying the four Roma neighborhoods in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

K. Asenov (*) Plovdiv University, Plovdiv, Bulgaria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_218

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Keywords

Roma culture · Roma language · Roma identity · Bulgarian Roma · Millet · Turkish gypsies

Your homeland is not where you were born; it is where you were fed. Roma proverb

1

Introduction

For centuries, on the European continent, as a silent witness to the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, a certain community has existed that is also stigmatized and persecuted and invisible and intrusive. In short, it is a people without a homeland and without a script of their own, the gypsies. Their origin, veiled in mystery, suppositions, and legends, continues to be a center of debate and conjecture among scholars. Who are the Roma? The native Dravidian population of Mohenjo-daro or of its destroyers, the Aryans? Chaldeans-diviners or subjects of the pharaohs? The servants of ancient Atlanteans, who coded the entire knowledge of the mythical civilization in the aural vibrations of their language – Romanes – or maybe they are descendants of nomads and herdsmen from the Iranian Plateau? With no written tradition of their own, the Roma know their history as told and retold by “others,” by “strangers.” This is why that history often remains distant and unrecognizable for the greater part of the members of various Roma communities today. The absence of historical narratives from their own sources “liberates” the Roma from their past. Memory comes with duty; “amnesia” liberates. Freed from their past, just like the mythical lotophagi (or lotus-eaters – the mythical tribe which used to inhabit the Libyan coast of Africa and eat the fruit of the lotus. Anyone who tasted this fruit would forget their past). Roma people can be part of any history – that of khan Asparuh of Bulgaria, of Saint Basil the Great, of the pharaohs, of the Gupta dynasty, of the Hephthalites or Sheikh Ardashir I Papak, of Sheikh Bahram Gur, etc. At the same time, any territory can be recognized as their homeland. While a significant number of the peoples of Oikumene, after the unwritten period that lasted until 3000 BC, started describing their cultural, military, technological, and other achievements, the Roma continue to lack their own script, famous and popular archeological and cultural monuments. Without a heroic epos, mausoleums, pantheons, cenotaphs, or any other powerful nation-shaping instruments, without any consciousness for a shared historical and cultural belonging, and without a collective identity that is scattered across the world, and also dependent and fragmented, the Roma are deprived of the usual factors determining the formation of a nation, which in turn predetermines the absence of a Roma state. It is important to mention at the very beginning of this chapter that due to the lack of their own historical memory, the historiography which today provides information about the Roma is not the history of the Roma. It is a history about the Roma, written

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by non-Roma people, who normally do not know the culture, the language, and the rich diversity of gypsy/Roma groups and communities. Some communities create their culture by remembering and preserving (i.e., the Jewish imperative “. . .observe and remember. . .” which is part of the hymn Lekhah Dodi that greets “Queen Shabbat” as she arrives), while others, like the Roma, forget and borrow. The crossing of cultural boundaries with ease is a phenomenon that is a characteristic of the Roma communities. The facility with which they borrow cultural models from other communities, after which they adapt or tailor those models to their needs, is amazing. Free of the burden to preserve their own centuries- or millennia-long cultural models, the Roma create their own eclectic cultural samples which can easily be replaced when the need arises. Although the vast majority of the Roma in Plovdiv are Muslims, over the last decades, they have embraced the Christmas holidays as part of their own cultural calendar. Since recent times, Valentine’s Day has turned into a holiday that brings pleasant emotions to the younger ones. The day of St. George is also celebrated among the community in one form or another. Interestingly enough, religious pilgrimage to sacred places and temples (tekke) of the heterodox Aliani people (a religious sect in Islam) is also popular among the Roma in Plovdiv – an interesting phenomenon, provided that more than 90% of the population of these neighborhoods confess orthodox Islam. Another element of the culture of the studied community that contradicts their official confession is the cult of and communication with domestic spirits called Baba or Bubba. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, dozens of small houses “inhabited” by domestic spirits, usually located in the yard, existed in the Roma quarters of Plovdiv (Fig 1). Since the introduction of more radical Islamic sects in the city, much of those small spirit houses have been knocked down, and now very few have remained. The burning of candles and prayers in front of icons in Orthodox temples is also a common practice for part of the population of the Roma quarters. Nontraditional names such as Ronaldo, Melissa, Susanna, Fabian, Silvia, Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus), Harun (Aaron), Idris (Enoch), Hawa (Eva), etc. are becoming increasingly common.

1.1

Origin of the Romani Language

When discussing the ethno-cultural characteristics of the Roma communities, it is necessary to take into account the lack of written culture of their own. This phenomenon creates significant limitations for understanding the various Roma communities. The cultural models created by the Roma display low temporal continuity. Without their own historical memory and memoirs, the cultural memory of the Roma is “mobile” – it moves along with the community itself. The temporal range of that memory does not exceed 60–70 years. Everything that happened to them before that time is “wrapped” in amnesia – origin, migration, and cultural patterns. All that is remembered is all what can be verbally learnt from parents and

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Fig. 1 A domestic spirit house in Harman Mahala, Plovdiv

grandparents. Therefore, language plays the role of a “reservoir,” a “bank,” where the cultural identity of the community is preserved. The scarce information about the historical, demographic, and sociocultural processes of these communities, usually residing in ethnically delineated “ghettos,” is a consequence of them lacking their own epigraphic habits. No written artifacts have been left by the community that describe their lifestyle, culture, or history. Thanks to the interviews with the oldest people in the Roma neighborhoods, recordings have been made of part of their history, cultural models, and changes in their spoken language from the beginning of the last century to the present day. In this way, many rituals, customs, and occupations have been described, some of which have long been abandoned in the community, such as Martufal (a spring ritual of virgins), a ritual of cleansing after an act infidelity, a child stealing ritual, rituals of conceiving, love spells, separation spells, etc. Despite the lack of “reservoirs” for preserving their own cultural heritage, the members of the Roma communities continue to be the living carriers of their own cultural distinctiveness even today. Unlike other peoples with a “written” history, the Roma are phenomenal in their successful preservation of their own (separate,

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dynamic) authenticity. It is most often the case that the culture of a people is a consequence of their history. Deprived of their history, the Roma are also deprived of a wide range of stable cultural models – archeological, historical, architectural, and written, among others. The lack of an epigraphic transfer of the specific culture is compensated by the Roma community with an intensified vivid verbal communication. It serves to forge exceptionally stable and durable familial and generational ties, and at the same time, it serves as a prerequisite for the high levels of social support within the family, across generations, and within the community itself. Therefore, the role of the language of communication is invaluable for the Roma communities; in fact, it is the main component which the entire Roma culture is built on. The interest in Romani language, or Romanes, as it is more often referred to in Bulgaria, therefore, is quite justifiable. Temporally speaking, the language is the most sustainable cultural capital that Roma communities possess. In this respect, Russian researcher Sanarov (1971) is skeptical: he states that everything known today about the Roma, for certain, is just the story of the origin of their spoken language. Moreover, it is unsure whether the ancestors of the present-day Roma were the original bearers of the Romani language spoken today in Europe (Sanarov 1971, pp. 59–67). In fact, in a detailed study of the original gypsy language, another Russian scholar (of Armenian origin), Papazyan (1901), states that linguists consider the Romani language a mixture of seven languages spoken in India: Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Odia (formerly romanized as Oriya). In its present form, the Romani language does not resemble any of these languages due to the influence of languages of the different countries where the gypsies lived or resided long enough to lose the original grammar of their own language. At the same time, many of the words have been replaced or have lost their original meaning. Famous Slavicist Franc Miklosich believes that the gypsy language is very close to one of the modern Indian languages spoken in the province of Sindh (modern-day Pakistan), which borders the Balochistan province in the same country and used to be under the rule of the Bombay (Mumbay) rajas. That is why the Gypsies themselves have often used the Sindhi endonym (Sinthi) to designate and maintain their ethnic identity. Many linguists assume that the homeland of the gypsies is India, while the tribe from which they originate is that of the Jats from the Sindh region (Papazyan 1901, pp. 93–157). The language of the Roma is also the basis on which the most widely disseminated thesis about their origins is formed, that is, the one that locates Roma ancestors in the Indian subcontinent. This hypothesis is based entirely on the discovery of the theology student István Vali, who in 1763 discovered a great similarity between the Romani dialect of the Hungarian gypsies and the language of a group of students from southwestern India. Independently, in 1777, German Johann Rüdiger compared various gypsy words with dialects from Hindustan; he too discovered a certain similarity. Following the publication of these results in 1782, the Indian origin of the gypsies has been considered to be undisputedly proven (Pamporov 2006, pp. 12–13). However, Alexey Pamporov challenges that thesis, considering that it is built entirely on linguistic studies, which implicitly hide probable catches. The same

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author adds: “... in other words, the positioning based on the modern language groups, especially of nomadic and semi-nomadic type, is academically incorrect, since it is often not known where they come from” (Pamporov 2006, pp. 12–13). Some believe that language itself cannot be the only definite identifier of ethnic identity, as this assumption is prone to hidden traps – the use of a particular language does not a priori assign its bearer to the ethnic community which is the original bearer of that language.

1.2

Overview of Roma Language Research

Between 1900 and 2003, over 2560 scientific papers exploring the Romani language (Romanes) were published worldwide. Attempts to systematize the knowledge of gypsies have been made since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Andrew Borde in 1547 is considered the first researcher to publish a scientific work devoted specifically to the gypsies. In 1677 in Leipzig, Jakob Thomasius, with his philosophical treatise, made the first attempts to establish a scientific discipline called romology. The works of German researchers Grellman (1783, 1787) and Rüdiger (1782, 1785), who in their studies substantiated the theory of the Indian roots of the gypsy language, mark a new stage in the study of that language. Systemic linguistic studies of the gypsy language can also be found in the works of Pott (1844–1845) and Miklosich (1872–1880). Based on studies of the gypsy language, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, detailed studies of the various dialects of the gypsy language were also published. The publications of Finck (1907) and Patkanov (1887) dealt with various aspects of the Lomavren language, the language spoken by the Bosha (Posha, Lom) gypsies in Armenia, as well as in limited areas of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Syria. Lomavren is a language spoken by a very small group of gypsies and is threatened with extinction. The language of the Dom gypsies (Domari language) was also thoroughly explored in 1914 by Macalister. In modern times, the use of new methods for studying world languages, such as glottochronology, provides us with new information about the changes of the gypsy language over time. Through this method it is possible to analyze the degree of proximity of the dialects of the gypsy language in Europe and Asia, as well as their relationships with the Indo-Aryan languages of Hindustan. While in the nineteenth century researchers from around the world began to systematically examine all aspects of gypsy culture (including the language and its dialects), genealogy, as well as their numbers and locations, in Bulgaria this kind of scientific interest and research is missing during that period. This statement does not belittle the work of generations of Bulgarian researchers including Drinov (1883, 1936), Sarafov (1883, 1903), Irechek (1899), Ishirkov (1910), Popov (1916), Mishaykov (1920), Danailov (1930), Chankov (1935), Batakliev (1930), Deliradev (1937), Miletich (1902), Romanski and Razboynikov (1918), and others who, in one way or another, broach the gypsy subject in their works from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Analysis shows that the scientific interest in gypsies in

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the abovementioned authors’ works is too fragmented and in a way episodic, which is a consequence of both of the public and the political attitudes at that time. The latter were directed more toward the Turkish and the Greek communities in Bulgaria but also because of the purely objective difficulties that accompanied someone studying the gypsies, considering that many of them still led a nomadic or seminomadic way of life, which made them difficult to locate, count, and study. Following the communist coup in 1944, the subject of the ethnic structure of the population and of the Bulgarian gypsies was cast on a new ideological and political basis. Changes in the number and distribution of the gypsies in most cases were limited to presenting the demographic structures of the population by ethnic group and the number of gypsies by administrative district, especially following the 1965 census (Sugarev et al. 1974). This “information gap” was further strengthened following the 1960s and during the yet another so-called revival process, which was the turning point of the long-term policy of assimilation by renaming the Muslim gypsies and the Muslim Bulgarians (known also as Pomaks). A more considerable interest in the Roma research field in Bulgaria only developed in quite recent times, since the 1990s, and that mainly among ethnologists and sociologists. In contrast, Bulgarian historians remained out of the picture. In spite of their late inclusion in the Roma debate, some prominent Bulgarian researchers managed to impose Bulgarian tsiganology (or romology – the scientific field of studying the language, the culture, and the history of the gypsies/Roma) on an international level, thanks to their extensive research. Among those researchers are Marushiakova and Popov (1993, 2000, 2012) and Pamporov (2006, 2007, 2009). In recent years there has been a significant increase in number of publications dealing with the various Roma communities in Bulgaria in the field of local studies. These include the research by Sabotinova (2002) and Kolev and Krumova (2005). In the field of family system, there are studies by Zdravkov (2009, 2012, 2013); in gender studies and violence in Roma families, the studies by Karamihova (1998, 2002, 2003a); in leadership studies are publications by Nunev (2008); and in the ethnic structure of the population and in particular of the Roma are studies by Bozhikov et al. (1993), Geshev (1995), Ninov (1999), and others. The subject of Roma evangelists was dealt with by Slavkova (2008). Today, it is safe to say that the interest in Roma communities in Bulgaria and their culture is not decreasing, but on the contrary, it is on an upward swing. What is the state of the Roma language in the Plovdiv Roma neighborhoods? The results unambiguously show that the disappearance of the Romani language in the studied quarters of predominantly Roma population, not only in Plovdiv but in other cities as well (Asenovgrad, Pazardzhik, Haskovo, Burgas, and Varna), is due to both natural and subjective factors: the inability of the individual Roma communities to update their language, to generate new words, and to adapt them to the new conditions, raising the need for constantly borrowing new words from the surrounding macro-communities. The Romani language is not well-adapted to the constantly changing world. The linguistic layers of the Romani language allow its use mainly on a daily, social, and household level. Borrowing of foreign words undoubtedly leads to a decrease in the authenticity of the Romani language, at the expense of the

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growing number of loan words. As a result, the effectiveness and resilience of the collective cultural body of the Roma are diminishing. And if the insufficient amount of hemoglobin in the blood leads to anemia and the body becomes sick, the lack of authentic words and terms in the Romani language leads to linguistic anemia, which causes the cultural body of the Roma to gradually lose its vital strength and significance. The other important and in this case subjective factor for the disappearance of the Romani language is the emergence of a flexible self-identity, which can be referred to it as faceted identity. Just like the several facets formed during processing of precious stones, the Roma studied here have several identities. This can be attributed to the effort Roma people make to avoid the negative gypsy stigma. Usually in such cases, the Roma identify themselves as Turks – within Bulgaria itself and as Turks or Bulgarians while abroad. By maintaining the myth of their non-Roma origin, the Roma adopt newer social roles which drastically divert them not only from their Roma identity but also from the Romani language. The new habitus (see Bourdieu) predetermines new behavior and actions, for example, speaking in Turkish language, dressing as Turks, shopping in Turkish shops, watching Turkish television, going to a mosque, meeting with Turks, etc. In those cases, the Romani language is a burden, and it is abandoned, or it is used as a secret language in other situations. In both cases, Romani language appears to be impractical, unprivileged, and unprestigious, and as such begins its expulsion from the cultural matrix of the studied communities. The vast majority of the people in the Roma quarters of Plovdiv neighborhoods consciously adopted Turkish as their mother tongue, while the rest use Bulgarian. It is a phenomenon which has to do with avoiding discrimination and persecution on the one hand and with the mere physical survival in certain historical periods. In this respect, with regard to the ease which foreign cultural elements are loaned, a rather interesting question can be asked: having adopted Turkish, Bulgarian, or other languages, didn’t the Roma in fact adopt the language called Romani/Romance just as well? In fact, at the dawn of their formation as an ethnic group or at some point later – during their early migrations – is it possible that the Roma adopted their language from its original bearer?

1.3

The Roma Community in One Bulgarian City: Plovdiv

The cultural identity of the community studied here (who define themselves as millet) has been formed mostly within the nuclear and the extended family then in the next of kin or in the “clan” and only then in the community (these processes are typical of the community in the Roma quarters of Plovdiv, as well as of other millet communities across Bulgaria (in Asenovgrad, Pazardzhik, Haskovo, Stara Zagora, Varna, Burgas, etc.)). Bearing in mind this arrangement of dependency, the nuclear and the extended family play a key role in the formation of the culture of the Roma. As far as the community itself goes, its role is more supportive rather than formative. The community is that unifying frame within which the families create their cultural models. This is why the connections inside the nuclear and the extended families

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display almost the same level of intensity and have the same power of influence. The families construct the network of kinship, whereby the line of kin has representative functions and affords invaluable symbolic capital. Within the limits of the quarter, it is not that important whether one is educated, wealthy, or famous – unless one does not belong to a big and powerful family, they are vulnerable. These are the clans that build the community. The community in the Roma quarters of Plovdiv is definitely an acephalic one (with no single leader), while the internal relations are regulated by potestarian mechanisms (from the Latin potestas – power). Potestarity is a form of public authority in pre-class and early class societies which have no political and state institutions and attributes. In the Roma quarters of Plovdiv, the vast majority of the residents do not define themselves as Roma or gypsy, irrespective of the fact that the population around them identifies them as such. This starting point calls for an a priori revision and adaptation of the scholarly apparatus which is used when researching communities that define themselves as Roma – burgudzhii (a Roma subgroup of predominantly Orthodox Christian confession, whose main trade is blacksmithing); kaldera (the kalderashi Roma are also known as “Serbian” or “Hungarian” gypsies, whose traditional religious orientation in Bulgaria is the Eastern Orthodox Christianity, while those in Western Europe and North America are Catholics; the name of this gypsy subgroup derives from caldera – the Romanian for cauldron); ludari (or rudari, who identify themselves as Vlachs or Vlach gypsies and speak a dialect of the Romanian language); kalaidzhii (a Roma subgroup of Orthodox Christian confession, known for the bride markets they organize, where the kalaidzhii community from all over the country gathers in order to buy or sell a girl for a bride); zagundzhii (an unprestigious Roma subgroup who immigrated from the lower Danube plain (Wallachia) in Romania; millet (the largest Roma community in Bulgaria who speak Turkish language and are of Islamic confession, while the vast majority identify themselves as Turks; Plovdiv is the center of that community), etc. Some of the members of this Roma group are still practicing seasonal nomadism. Living scattered, to preserve their community, they organize bridal markets in different places in Bulgaria, which facilitates endogamous marriages (Fig. 2). Because of the significant cultural differences (more than 100 Roma groups and subgroups are identified in Bulgaria), the representatives of the different Roma groups often use Bulgarian language to communicate with each other. The way the population of the four Roma quarters (Stolipinovo, Sheker Mahala, Haji Hasan Mahala, and Harman Mahala) in the city of Plovdiv has been defined, namely, as Turkish gypsies or Horohane (Fig. 3) Roma, yerlii (or even more incomprehensible correlations such as erlii and arlii), serves as a good example of widespread use of terms which have been inadvertently introduced into the scholarly language for lack of knowledge of the language of the respective ethnic community. At the heart of the ambivalence in defining the local Roma people as yerlii is the ignorance among scholars of the existing Turkish language dialects. Given that the genesis of that definition can be chronotropically attributed to the Ottoman period (the term yerlii, as Pamporov states, was introduced by Bernard Gilliat-Smith in 1916 (Pamporov 2008, p. 16). This anachronism in present conditions undoubtedly

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Fig. 2 At the brides market: girls of the kalaidzhii Roma group for sale

brings ambiguity and even misinterpretation. The majority of the population of the four ethnically distinct neighborhoods of Plovdiv is usually defined as Roma of the yerlii group or Horohane Roma, meaning they are Turkish gypsies. These exonyms encounter fierce resistance from the community residing in the abovementioned neighborhoods. The word yerliya has a Turkish root – yer, meaning a place (geogr.) – but in the neighborhoods of Plovdiv, it above all means land. Hence, the yerliya is perceived as “a person possessing land,” “a wealthy, rich person.” Pamporov, therefore, very correctly notes (Pamporov 2008, p. 16) that the term yerlii is merely introduced (Pamporov 2008, p. 16) for “academic convenience” and that such a Roma group does not actually exist. The argument that many of the yerlii or Horohane Roma (Turkish gypsies) still speak Romanes is misleading. In field studies in 2015, it was found that the so-called Turkish gypsies in the abovementioned Plovdiv neighborhoods actually speak Turkish, dotted with archaisms which in the modern Turkish language have been dropped or are only used in some isolated areas of Turkey. Examples include mekteb, school (instead of okul); beygir, horse (instead of at); karı, woman (instead of bayan, kadın, hanım); kızan, child (instead of çocuk), etc. The isolation of Turkish-speaking ethnic communities in Bulgaria, from the liberation (1878) until the end of the last century, stopped the dynamics and modernization of their spoken language, which in turn required borrowing from the Bulgarian language, in order to achieve fullfledged communication in line with the new socioeconomic, technological, political,

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Fig. 3 Location of the four Roma quarters and micro-quarters in Plovdiv

etc. conditions. Research has clearly shown that in the spoken Turkish language of the population of the Plovdiv neighborhoods in discussion, Bulgarian words and expressions are still constantly present. After the political changes at the end of the last century and through the free access to the electronic media of Bulgaria’s southeast neighbor, a process of “upgrading” the Turkish language in the Plovdiv Roma neighborhoods began. The use of the term yerlii for the local Plovdiv Roma adds additional polysemy to the correct ethnic definition of this population. Some believe that the Turks and the autonyms Turks and millet, as the vast majority of the Turkish-speaking community in the Plovdiv Roma neighborhoods (including Harman Mahala) identifies themselves, are more correct. For the smaller non-Turkish-speaking Roma community, it

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is appropriate to use the term Roma/gypsies-burgudzhii, as they identify themselves. Fieldwork in the studied neighborhoods reveals that the population is divided into two groups: (1) Turks, who also use the autonym millet as their ethnic marker, synonymous to Turks, and (2) Roma, who identify themselves as gypsiesburgudzhii. The latter often use the exonym Horohay to refer to the Turkishspeaking community of the neighborhood, who in turn refer to the Roma as çingene or burgudzhii. Irrespective of the technological communicative affordances which eliminate the spatial and geographical dimensions qua limitation, cohesion (e.g., marriages, cultural, commercial, joint activities, etc.) is not observed between the different locally distinct Roma communities at this stage (e.g., between the populations of Stolipinovo quarter – the largest Roma “ghetto” in Europe and the Roma quarter of Humata in the town of Lom, or, e.g., with Maksuda quarter in Varna). This finding reveals there are considerable cultural differences among the different Roma communities. It also shows that the mechanistic typologization of the separate Roma communities in Bulgaria, which is reproduced on various levels, is an atavistic process revealing deep ignorance in the field of Roma studies. Still, it should be stated in no vague terms that the degree of integration of the different Roma communities in the macro-society in Plovdiv is not the same. The factors that influence the levels of integration are directly related to the culture, the attitudes, and the ethnic, social, and spatial distance between the Roma on the one hand and the macro-society on the other hand. Durable and stable deprivation (the state of being deprived of certain benefits) or negative stereotypes regarding the Roma communities have appeared in all countries with any Roma population. The lack of solidarity of participation in the sociopolitical and economic life, their inequitable treatment, their asymmetrical integration in policies, the presence of assimilatory aspirations, and the enforced westernization of the Roma are only some of the universal problems these communities face. Here westernization should not be equated with modernization, but should be regarded more as an attempt at marginalizing Roma culture and imposing Eurocentrism (mostly in its Anglo-Saxon version) onto non-western communities such as the Roma. This does not mean there is some existing Occidentalism with regard to the Roma people today. On the contrary, during fieldwork in Dortmund, Germany, the author found out that the greater part of the members of the Plovdiv Roma diaspora living there actively and successfully use the achievements of the western civilization without losing the essence of their own identity, which, by the way, is very difficult to fit into the familiar ethno-cultural matrices. The failure on behalf of the non-Roma to typologize, differentiate, and decode the cultural matrices of distinct Roma communities on national and international level predetermines the results from the integration policies. The next to nonexistent cultural diffusion between the macro-society and the community discussed above is in one particular location, Harman Mahala quarter in Plovdiv, which generates increasing difficulties in the communication between the two. Seen as both absurd and often incomprehensible to the society in general, the world of the “ghetto” is not critically reflected upon by its inhabitants. Ground-based

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field research into the two cultural systems developing within the frame of the same city (Plovdiv) reveals there are various processes operating in sometimes sharply different ways.

2

Challenges for the Scholarly Community Studying the Roma

Even though it cannot be said that there is a lack of goodwill on behalf of the central and the local (municipal) authorities in Bulgaria, the, respectively, responsible structures at the EU level or some of the nongovernmental and international donor organizations for solving the “Roma issue,” it appears that besides goodwill and financial resources, in-depth studies of the separate Roma communities and their areas of residence are needed. Research has made it amply clear that most of the currently adopted contemporary theoretical models and methodological instruments in the humanities about cultures and societies very often “gasp for air” when it boils down to researching and describing in detail and in addressing in an academically appropriate way a certain aspect of Roma everyday life, culture, and history. The lack of sufficient knowledge about the separate Roma groups is obvious. This “gasp” in fact hinders the process of creating successful policies for intervention and the inclusion of the various discrete Roma communities into a wider society. The reasons for this “gap” are to be found in the high levels of heterogeneity of Roma communities and in the lack of a sufficient number of studies on the Roma conducted following the Anthropology at Home method. Usually anthropologists adopt this method to study their own cultures through fieldwork in their own countries (communities) (Jackson 1987; Munthali 2001; Peirano 1998). If more studies based on that method enrich this scholarly field, they would clarify some of the misapprehensions and quasi-scientific theses which regrettably saturate the current scientific literature dealing with the Roma, published in Bulgaria, and around the world. All in all, it can be claimed that the most important cultural marker of the inhabitants of the ghettoized urban structures of Plovdiv is actually their inscriptionless culture, which predetermines their unequal position, as opposed to other ethno-confessional communities. Spatial segregation eventually leads to high levels of unemployment and low educational levels of the residents. The lack of their own written culture shapes or influences to a great extent their everyday life, their life strategies, their position in the social structure of the city, and their roles as a peripheral and service community. This perspective leads to the formation of an implicit ethno-confessional “detonator,” which for many researchers and institutions is still invisible. New social actors such as the Roma, migrants, people from the “periphery,” and other marginalized communities increasingly declare their presence in the backstage, and it is only a matter of time to actively engage in the “play” taking place on the big stage. In that same context, Herbert Marcuse thinks that beneath the mass of the conservative majority of people lies a layer of outsiders, exploited, persecuted, representatives of other races and of other skin color, unemployed, and

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incapacitated. Remaining beyond the democratic processes, their lives are the embodiment of the immediate and real need to reject the unbearable conditions and institutions. In this sense, their opposition is in itself revolutionary, whether they themselves are aware of it or not (Marcuse 1994). Assuming that the Roma communities in Bulgaria are part of these layers (outsiders, people with different skin color, and vastly unemployed), they are part of the new proletariat (in the sense of opposition to the macro-society). Those same Roma, who were forced by the Communist regime in Bulgaria to stop their usual nomadic lifestyle 60 years ago, and some 30% of them nowadays work and live in Western Europe. Undoubtedly, this has a direct impact on the cultural and social image of this population. The newly acquired social confidence allows them to take prestigious urban areas (in Bulgaria and Europe), which until recently were a privilege of the macro-society representatives only – city centers, fancy restaurants, bars, shops, etc. The forming Roma elite, although not united, claims active participation in local authority bodies and various other institutions. The robust demographic profile of the Roma communities, the strong and intense family-bonds and relationships, and their readiness to do unprestigious and hard, physical jobs allows us to conclude that the Roma – despite the lack of common language, own writing, and culture – will continue to be present on the European scene for a long time to come. Unfortunately, despite the great interest in the Roma, the funds that are being invested for their integration into the European macro-societies prove to be spent ineffectively, lacking the expected results. What is needed to be done to overcome this problem? The answer to this question is a capital rethinking of the policies toward the Roma. Successful policies can only be based on good-quality scientific research done by professionals who know in detail the cultural matrix of each Roma group which the authorities want to invest in. Minding that the Roma groups in Bulgaria alone are over 100, it is hardly prudent to apply the same policies for the Roma in Romania, Greece, Hungary, Germany, or Bulgaria. Often, there are cardinal differences between the Roma in Bulgaria, to the extent that they can actually be identified as separate ethnic groups. It is therefore necessary for field researchers to apply scientific methods that allow them to describe the characteristics of the particular Roma group by producing an ethno-cultural map for that same group. That map needs to be sufficiently detailed so as to answer all questions related to the studied group: spatial location (distinct area or scattered, spotted spatial distribution), boundaries of the area the group inhabits (permeable or not, clear or fuzzy), the type of area (naturally formed or institutionally created – as this is of importance), and whether the community is monolingual, bilingual, or trilingual. It is also important to trace family and friend networks and connections so as to know who forms the public opinion in the community, what social networks they use, and with whom they communicate, because if parents have until recently arranged their children’s marriages, young Roma people today find their future partners mostly through Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, etc. It represents an interest for us, and assumingly for other researchers studying the Roma, how the Roma people in Bulgaria communicate on social networks, provided they do not have their own writing: Do they use the Latin alphabet or the Cyrillic alphabet? Do they prefer pictograms or audiovideo links?

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These are significant transformations of the Roma cultural matrices generated by global social networks and should be the subject of profound research. Another important aspect that deserves the researchers’ attention is the figure of the informal Roma leader. Why is their role so ambivalent? Are they genuinely interested in aiding the integration process or merely imitate activity by diverting funds? (Given that once the problems of the community are solved, the informal leader will go “out of business,” and informal leaders usually have no other income than the integration funds provided). Another important element that will help the elaboration of better quality programs for Roma problem solving is that the researcher speaks the language of the studied group. Over the long years of studying the Roma, it has been found that it is very important what the Roma interlocutors tell us, but it is also important how they say it or what they are not saying. If one does not know the cultural codes of the studied community, it is very likely that the research is compromised to a varying degree, which affects the effectiveness of the future policies based on any given research. The Roma people talk vividly; their speech intonation and the kinesic and paralinguistic elements of their communication are rather rich and ornamented. That unique nuance, so characteristic of the Roma, can only be captured by a researcher who has a more in-depth knowledge of the Roma culture. Finally, it is important to note that the Roma can be fruitfully studied precisely through the localized discourse – within research projects on the locally distinct Roma communities and their areas of residence. This would provide a more realistic idea of the individual culture, state, and needs of the specific Roma community. That will allow the elaboration of policy measures which would be explicitly designed for a given Roma group. Only then can the expected results be more visible. The need for a careful reading of the new demographic, social, ethno-cultural, etc. processes is imperative and is in the interest of all Europeans societies. The hundreds of Roma groups living across the Old Continent can harmoniously fit in the cultural diversity of the European nations. Because the Roma are not foreigners to Europe, they were here long before some of today’s European ethno-national communities were even formed.

References Batakliev, I. V. (1930). Chepino. In: Yearbook of Sofia University (GUS) (Vol. XXVI). [Батаклиев, Ив. 1930. Чепино. – В: Годишник на Софийския университет (ГСУ), кн. ХХVI.] Borde, A. (1547). The Fyrst Boke of the introduction of knowledge. Ed. F. J. Furnivall. London: N. T. Teübner [Early English Text Society]. Bozhilov, I., et al. (1993). History of Bulgaria. Sofia: Hristo Botev. [Божилов, И. и кол., 1993. История на България. София: Христо Ботев.]. Chankov, G. (1935). The population of Bulgaria. Sofia: “Kazanlashka dolina” Publishing [Чанков, Ж. 1935. Населението на България. Печатница “Казанлъшка долина” – София]. Danailov, G. (1930). Research on demography of Bulgaria. [Данаилов, Г. 1930. Изследвания върху демографията на България.] Deliradev, P. (1937). The Rhodopes as a settlement area and a mountain system. Sofia: “Gladston” Publishing [Делирадев, П. 1937. Родопите като поселищна област и планинска система. Печатница “Гладстон” – София].

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Slavkova, M. (2008). The gypsies-evangelists in Bulgaria. Sofia: Paradigma. [Славкова, М. 2008. Циганите евангелисти в България. София: Изд. “Парадигма”.]. Sugarev, Z., et al. (1974). Demography of Bulgaria. Sofia: “Science and Аrt” Published [Сугарев и кол. 1974. Демография на България. Изд. “Наука и изкуство”, София]. Zdravkov, Z. (2009). The role of the Roma family – an ethnographic view. In New Research in Romology. [Здравков, З. 2009. Ролята на семейството при ромите – етнографски поглед. – В: Сб. “Нови изследвания в ромологията”.] Zdravkov, Z. (2012). Marital kinship among the gypsies (according to data from field studies among some gypsy groups in Central Northern Bulgaria) // Epohi, year XX, v. 1. [Здравков, З. 2012. Родство по сватовство и кумство при циганите (по данни от теренни проучвания сред някои цигански групи в Централна Северна България) // Епохи, година ХХ, кн. 1.] Zdravkov, Z. (2013). Family and kinship structures in the gypsy groups in Bulgaria. Veliko Tarnovo: “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” University publishing. [Здравков, З. 2013. Семейни и родствени структури при циганските групи в България. Велико Търново: УИ “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”.].

Decoding Geopolitical Language in New Constitutions: An Analysis of Contemporary Constitutional Content

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 983 2 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 983 2.1 Factors Relevant to the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984 3 A Constitution’s Many Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985 4 Conforming to a Global Constitutional Model? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 986 5 Content Analysis Factors to Consider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987 6 International Advisors of Recent Constitutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987 7 The Legacy of American-Style Self-Determination and Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 988 8 Western European Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 989 9 Constitutional Themes as Geopolitical Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 10 Historical Ethnic Composition Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 991 11 The Path to Independence of Post-Cold War States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993 11.1 Croatia’s Path to Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993 11.2 Czech Republic’s Path to Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994 11.3 Estonia’s Path to Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995 11.4 Ukraine’s Path to Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995 12 Territorial and Geographic Content in Constitutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 12.1 Czech Republic’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 12.2 Poland’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997 12.3 Montenegro’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997 12.4 Serbia’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997 12.5 Tunisia’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 998 12.6 Croatia’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 998 12.7 Estonia’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 998 12.8 South Sudan’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999 12.9 Ukraine’s Geographic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999 13 Structural Differences Within Constitutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1001

J. R. Baker (*) Economics Department, Methodist University, Fayetteville, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_6

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14 Key Word Scanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Comparing Results: Post-Cold War States Versus Post-9/11 States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Serbia’s Conformity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Tunisia’s Conformity and Path to a New Constitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 South Sudan’s Conformity and Path to Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Montenegro’s Conformity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Results for Post-9/11 Constitutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Table 13: Geopolitical Key Words from Geography Textbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Concluding Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1002 1004 1004 1008 1008 1009 1010 1014 1019 1024 1025

Abstract

A nation’s constitutional text reflects how the state perceives its citizens and its prescribed place in the world, including its official territorial and cultural relations with the international community. These indicators or “geopolitical messages” are rarely obvious to the casual reader; yet successfully decoding them can yield valuable insights with respect to understanding how the newborn state perceives itself and its relationship with the outside world. The progress (or lack of it) of human rights is a key international issue examined in this chapter. This chapter summarizes a study that sought to decode geopolitical messages contained within a number of relatively recent national constitutions. The study’s core purpose identifies and analyzes geopolitical messages in constitutions to determine to what degree, if any, that these selected constitutions reflect increasing conformance with internationally accepted human rights standards. Critical to the study’s usefulness was the selection of a standard that the international community considers legitimate. For this reason, the study selected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United Nations adopted in 1948. The introduction, below, elaborates upon the selection criteria. Since progress over time was a factor, the study selected four post-Cold War constitutions (Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland) and compared them with four others that were created after September 11, 2001 (South or Southern Sudan, Montenegro, Serbia, Tunisia). Ukraine became the ninth study subject because of its unique geopolitical status between Russia and the European Union (EU) and for its substantial number of constitutional revisions at the end of the Cold War, in 2004, and in 2010. Ukraine’s constitution, therefore, effectively qualifies as a constitution from both eras. This study focuses on the primary question: Do “post-9/11” state constitutions conform to UDHR human rights standards more closely than “post-Cold War” constitutions? The study’s hypothesis is that post-9/11 constitutions did indeed more closely conform to global standards. Keywords

Human rights · Geopolitical messages · Post-Cold War · September 11 · New countries

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Introduction

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). While that document is generally considered to be a direct result of mankind’s horrific World War II experiences, UDHR roots go much deeper. Scholars identify UDHR philosophical concepts inherent to the Magna Carta (1215), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), the US Constitution, and its Bill of Rights. The UDHR codifies 30 fundamental rights. Its ambitious authors intended to articulate a global human rights standard for future use. Although Americans (under Eleanor Roosevelt) wrote most of its contents, representatives from other regions of the world collaborated on its draft. According to The Guinness Book of World Records, other than the Bible, the UDHR remains the most translated document in world history. The degree to which the UDHR has met its framers’ expectations is beyond the scope of this study. There is, however, reasonable consensus that it remains the most viable modern standard with respect to global human rights. That consensus qualifies the document for this study’s purposes.

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Methodology

The methodology in this study is divided into three general parts. First, the historical and demographic background is a brief historical and demographic narrative that incorporates past and current state issues which help explain the context of each newly created country. The prevailing internal conditions, such as ethnic composition, also are addressed to illustrate the concerns faced by its founders. Second, key word scanning is used to determine a constitution’s degree of conformity to international guidelines. This study used the Microsoft Word search function to scan for key words in each of the nine selected constitutions. The scanning process used 50 key words from 27 articles within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Conformity is indicated by the proportion, frequency, and order by which each selected constitution shares the same key words as the UDHR standard model. Last, a content analysis of the scanning results infused with key historical and demographic factors helps explain the circumstances and conditions which resulted in each country’s degree of conformity to global standards. The content analysis depends upon identifying and applying 50 UDHR key words. (Table 7 identifies them, along with each word’s respective location within the declaration.) These key words were electronically scanned through each of the nine constitutions, recording not only if the words were found but also where these key words appeared in each constitution, the frequency by which those words appeared, and other data necessary for comparisons. History’s Impact. No one questions the historical impact on such important tasks as writing a national constitution that addresses events such as World War II, the Cold War, civil wars, annexations, oppression of minorities and ethnic groups, and

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so on. Each historical event in this study had to be of sufficient importance to at least one of the nine states’ constitutional development efforts to warrant the reasonable assumption it influenced constitutional authors’ work. Researchers identified key historical events from each nation’s history, listed them, and then described how each event could have logically impacted each constitution’s authors.

2.1

Factors Relevant to the Study

Factor One. A constitution’s age may affect its conformance to global ideals. This is because the international conformance imperative appears to have become more effective over time. This factor obviously helped formulate the study’s working hypothesis, that the more recent constitutions would reflect superior conformance to UDHR principles than would older documents. Factor Two. Global social pressures, to include markedly expanding social media usage, were tending to empower minorities in many world regions while the study’s nine constitutions were under development. Along with a constitution’s age, this also helps to explain why newer constitutions conform more closely to generally accepted human rights standards. The increasing political and ideological power of social media also may provide evidence of eroding sovereignty and an ever-increasing interdependence among countries worldwide. Exogenous factors appear to overwhelmingly influence the identity, geopolitical claims, and functionalities of these new states. Factor Three. Insofar as a constitution’s textual conformity to international standards is concerned, regional organizations (i.e., the EU) wielded greater influence over states with homogeneous populations than did the broader global community. Factor Four. Since constitutions serve as ideological and functional documents, they frequently adhere to a common, two- or three-part format: • Most importantly, Preambles serve as identity proclamations and reaffirmations. They also explain the new state’s birth, usually by summarizing its historical background. • The second section of most constitutions contains the bulk of its text. This content usually describes the foundations for its rule of law, its various governmental functions, and procedures. • Many constitutions also include specific “articles,” frequently as a final section. These generally elaborate on specific points introduced in either the Preamble or main body. However, these “articles” can play a more elaborate role, as they do in the American Constitution where Articles I through VII enumerate all powers allocated to the government. Factor Five. Most of the geopolitical messages relevant to this study’s purpose appear within the nine constitutions’ Preambles. Some messages, however, are found within the main body of the text in constitutional articles that directly address defense, international relations, and citizens’ rights.

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A Constitution’s Many Purposes

International Recognition/Legitimacy. Constitutions aim to compel recognition from other sovereign governments, preferably those with substantial international influence. Newborn states traditionally free themselves from transnational, often imperial authorities by gaining recognition from extant sovereign states (Krasner 1999). Absent of such recognition, the real prize – legitimacy – is a dead letter. Especially for smaller states with nonhomogeneous populations, winning recognition from influential international players can be challenging. Framers must rely upon a complex brew of logic, verifiable truth, relevant history, format, and language to accomplish it. A highly interconnected and interactive global political environment can significantly influence the language of new constitutions. Increasingly, a new state must demonstrate its intent to conform to international norms as a means to gain legitimacy from the international community. This modern imperative fosters a philosophical dependence, even subservience. Thus, contemporary constitutions focus less on nationalistic or territorial claims that project their political autonomy. Instead, newborn states must exhibit and evoke a morally acceptable purpose to their world audience (Reus-Smit 2011). Seven More Constitutional Tasks. All constitutions aim to establish and legitimize the new state by proclaiming its identity, its rules, and how it will exercise its powers (Blaustein and Flanz 1995). • • • •

First, they enumerate the state’s functions. Second, they claim and define the state’s boundaries (Blaustein and Flanz 1995). Third, constitutions define the relationship between government and citizens. Fourth, they must describe a rational and functional legal foundation to legitimize state-sponsored activities. • Fifth, the constitution articulates the government’s purpose and role in the newly created society. • Sixth, they seek to claim and express a state’s sovereignty. • Last, constitutions address their country’s place within the global community and the state’s geopolitical perspective. These tasks are often accomplished within their Preambles. Empower Minorities. According to Tolz (1993), a constitution’s legal rhetoric and organizational structure may conceal its true political intentions and ideals. Goldscheider cites evidence that ethnic minorities often influence a new constitution’s language. Countries with substantial minority populations, especially if they have recently experienced turmoil (i.e., succession, semiautonomous movements, significant demographic shifts) with non-dominant or neighboring ethnic groups, are challenged by internal and external pressures to gain acceptance. Serbia is an excellent example of a country that tried to rebrand itself with its 2004 constitution. Oltay further notes that sizable minorities can force states to address, clarify, and itemize specific rights for citizens and inhabitants within their constitutions. For

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example, sometimes ongoing ethnic or cultural conflicts may demand addressing specific rights. A state’s response, or lack of one, may indicate its real geopolitical perspective. Interestingly, international powers frequently assume that states with homogeneous populations neglect or intentionally omit specific human rights because they do not expect scrutiny from other international actors (Baker 1996). This fact can negatively impact the recognition-legitimacy calculus.

4

Conforming to a Global Constitutional Model?

The study selected two sample groups. Group one consists of Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, and Poland. Group two consists of Montenegro, Serbia, South Sudan, Tunisia, and Ukraine. Comparing these two groups of states will help discover whether a trend toward conformity with the UDHR is increasing. These countries were selected because of their status as relatively recently created states. The first group represents states created in the 1990s. The second group consists of states formed after September 11, 2001. This study will determine if those states emerging in the 1990s expressed their national identities using more independent language than those emerging in the early twenty-first century. If international influences do significantly diminish a state’s sovereignty individuality (in relation to the how the state expresses its national interests), then the results will show that new constitutions mimic human rights standards of the status quo regardless of their territorial size, ethnic mix, or geographic location. Mimicry is a consequence of increasing availability of near-instantaneous telecommunications (i.e., general Internet and cell phone usage, the practice of texting, and social media usage). Recent technologies also expose clandestine or oppositional geopolitical messages sooner and subject them to increased global scrutiny. A second expected consequence of this study will examine if states that lack internal competing interests (i.e., ethnicity diversity) do express more independent, autonomous geopolitical ideals. Endogenous factors that affect the constitutional draft process usually involve negotiations between established and revolutionary interest groups (Baker 1996). Their efforts can become particularly troublesome, even contentious, because the authors thrust political ideals into an untested mechanism with a new organizational structure that is operated by a presumably inexperienced regime (Stanley 1996). The global community, via innumerable telecommunication linkages, may also function as a considerable intervening variable during the drafting process by implicitly and explicitly adding economic and political pressures. Behaving as a vast socioeconomic mechanism, today’s world community exerts its ideals in ways that cannot compare with what American framers encountered while crafting the first widely accepted modern constitution (Goldscheider 1995). Since then, America’s Lockean-based enlightenment principles (Woodward 1995) gradually surged in popularity, especially after winning the Second World War in 1945. By the twenty-first century, America’s constitutional language, consequently, served as an undeniable, indelible blueprint for shaping world governmental norms.

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The UDHR is the best example of this, as it was Americans who ensured the document would synthesize the US Constitution’s ideals with mid-twentieth century concerns in order to mold the intended global model.

5

Content Analysis Factors to Consider

This section emphasizes key factors in examining how the post-Cold War and post9/11 countries’ constitutions conform to Western liberal democratic ideals. First, readers should consider how prevailing politics influenced each of the nine constitutions’ drafting process. The authors’ background, ideological leanings, and economic interests might be embedded within their constitution’s words. Also, others who assisted in drafting the document undoubtedly influenced the final product. Second, demographic conditions (i.e., recent migration trends and ethnic composition) may markedly affect demands for stronger, or at least more detailed, statements concerning human rights. Such internal conflicts might shape the new state’s governmental structure. Third, specific or unique geopolitical themes (i.e., articulate descriptions of territorial claims) may explicitly proclaim the new state’s geopolitical perspective (Baker 1996). Fourth, common key words found among all of these new constitutions illustrate the global community’s overall influence and affirm its groupthink mentality. Fifth, the number of words, articles, sections, and chapters dedicated to specific issues (in our case, human rights) within a constitution may reveal its degree of importance or lack thereof. Last, scanning key words from the UDHR will determine the proportion and frequency of content conformity. The official English translation of these new constitutions is used for the scanning process because these are the versions produced for a global audience.

6

International Advisors of Recent Constitutions

Almost all new states lacked a democratic heritage and struggled with lingering effects of post-colonialism or authoritarianism. Often these states inherit economic turmoil and have endured periods of political instability. These challenging circumstances undermined their confidence in their ability to independently draft their own constitution. Since the states under consideration here were drafting constitutions that sought to combine functional and ideological elements, those involved in the writing process frequently sought assistance from European and American experts when constructing their new legal frameworks (Reus-Smit 2011). These foreigners, whether paid consultants or volunteers, inevitably aimed to infuse the new constitutions with globally acceptable democratic standards (Schwartz 1991). Dr. Herman

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Schwartz (American University School of Law) explained how many American experts perceived their role: “I am essentially a sounding board for what has happened in the world” (Anderson 1990). But international advisors do not have to be physically present to influence development of a modern constitution. As noted earlier, global community standards can markedly affect new states’ geopolitical environments and thus how they identify themselves. Despite achieving nominal political independence, the nine countries in this study were almost all substantially interdependent, if not dependent, upon world trade and sustaining amicable international relations. Belonging to a de facto global village, where states incessantly interact within an ever-evolving socioeconomic mechanism, means that their governments possessed substantially less autonomy than might have been the case in the past. Increased connectivity between a state and innumerable external contact points enhances the global socioeconomic mechanism’s influence. This can generate unplanned results. For instance, traditional political maps can no longer accurately portray a state’s true autonomy because traditional maps cannot reflect the enhanced foreign influence from the modern era’s increasingly robust global connectivity mechanism. Political borders have thus gradually diminished in importance. This phenomenon can also affect a new constitution’s authors. Authors of modern constitutions operate in an environment characterized by near-instant communication. This means near-instant access to advice and support. It also can mean nearinstant, but less welcome, attention from domestic and international kibitzers. Left unmanaged, outsiders can watch each disagreement, draw ill-founded conclusions, and possibly insert themselves into the constitution writing process. A new state’s constituents usually receive assurances that their new constitutions reflect their own collective will, thanks to a national referendum or legislative approval. Depending upon the strength of international influence (some might say, “interference”), such assurances may be inaccurate. The veneer of internal democratic acceptance can intersect with technical elitist experts, resulting in a product that may have been designed to appease the world community rather than internal constituents.

7

The Legacy of American-Style Self-Determination and Democracy

Since President Woodrow Wilson popularized his principle of self-determination after World War I, constitutional texts have placed a greater emphasis on ethnic groups representing themselves. Wilson’s self-determination imperative helps account for the proliferation of new states that seek to define themselves both by ethnic composition and their legal commitment to human rights for all citizens (Reus-Smit 2011). Consequently, recent constitutions typically contain four functions:

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• First, they establish parameters that specify government’s responsibilities and power limitations. This function explains the government’s role and defines operations within its machinery: structure, branches, and agencies. • Second, constitutions list their citizens’ rights and duties. • Third, they generally define constitutional amendment procedures. • Fourth, constitutions advocate and form a national legal framework. This effort may define the new state’s flag, colors, seal, motto, anthem, territory, and official language(s). In theory, constitutions encapsulate an emerging identity by expressing the perspective of a newly defined group of people who are transitioning into a nation. Yet, despite celebrating a unique or independent identity, when reviewing this study’s nine constitutions, there is a remarkable consistency and a lack of originality. For example, they all advocate four common themes: rule of law, human rights, multiparty parliaments, and private property (Schwartz 1992). Another legal trend is that citizenship is becoming less critical as a qualification for rights. They tend to emphasize inherent human rights and giving a voice to all people regardless of a person’s legal status. These components underscore the global standard model’s overall impact.

8

Western European Influence

In the 1990s, experts from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, France, and Switzerland directly helped draft the Eastern European constitutions (Anderson 1990). Consequently, these constitutions avoided generalities and contained longer, more detailed language similar to those in Western Europe, which are less philosophical and more specific than the US Constitution (with the exception of the specific issues involving the right to bear arms and no quartering). Germany’s constitution, as a recent example, has 15 chapters and 146 articles compared to the United States with its Preamble, 7 articles, Bill of Rights, and 16 additional amendments. Other than geographic proximity, Reske offers two reasons why Eastern Europe preferred adopting a Western European rather than an American-style constitutional structure: • First, its leaders aspired to join the European Economic Union. Adopting the Western European constitutional model would, they believed, help their fragile, market-based transitional economies become stronger candidates. Membership would not only qualify them for EU subsidies but would also enhance continental and global trade opportunities. For example, the Czech, Croatian, and Estonian Post-Soviet era constitutions all predated the EU’s official formation in 1995. • Second and a more emotionally compelling reason, Eastern European states embraced Western European political ideals. They sought to permanently

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sever ties with their oppressive communist past. In particular, bitter opinions against powerful, unaccountable executive and judicial branches of government encouraged longer, more detailed constitutions (Schwartz 1992). By adopting the Western European constitutional model, the Eastern European states adopted a codified legal system rather than one based on precedents and judicial review. America, nonetheless, exerted some influence. For example, the American Bar Association’s Central and Eastern European Law Initiative (CEELI), otherwise known as the American Bar Association’s Central and Eastern European Law Initiative, sent seasoned law professors and judges to observe and assist during the draft processes (Reske 1991). The Americans offered advice on individual and minority rights and creating separate branches of powers. The CEELI also conducted technical legal assistance workshops in all Central and East European countries (D’Alemberte 1991). Peter Kresak of Komenius University (Bratislava, Slovakia) summarized the role of the American experts: “American lawyers bring to the table their experience, scholarly discussion, and their ideas” (Reske 1991). Schwartz also acknowledged that Eastern European constitutions were influenced by American ideals, stating, “In the final product [of the Czech bill of rights], I can find traces of our [United States] influence. They knew what they wanted, but I helped alert them to potential problems . . . concerning speech, the right of access to information about the government, and economic and social rights” (Reske 1991).

9

Constitutional Themes as Geopolitical Messages

By defining a state’s physical realm and reflecting its perceived spatial holdings, constitutions communicate their claims to their inhabitants, neighbors, and the world beyond. Since authors generally craft constitutions on the brink of independence, they typically express and highlight the state’s primary geopolitical aspirations and objectives at certain periods of time. For example, the Ukrainian and Estonian constitutions combine pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet geopolitical elements in portions of their present constitutions. Common constitutional themes include individual rights, political functions, and territorial claims. Regarding human rights, geopolitical elements state how ethnic groups are to be treated and if they apply to any specific geographic regions (i.e., Ukraine’s Crimea) (Goldscheider 1995). Sometimes the new government’s specified functions and divisions of labor (i.e., local, regional, federal responsibilities and organizations) reflect geopolitical influences (Baker 1996). This portion also reflects the state’s intent with respect to how it will manage its endogenous geopolitical interests. Last, constitutional texts also often explicitly define and describe territorial claims. Articulating these components is necessary because political states cannot exist without possessing an exclusive space and by stating intent to exercise authority within it (Krasner 1999).

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Historical Ethnic Composition Factors

Despite a constitution’s inherent requirement to forge a new national future, their texts frequently contain residual elements – sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious – from a former colonial or imperial governmental configuration (including communist regimes). Prior political arrangements shape how a new state expresses its identity and newfound sovereignty, especially if the country has emerged from contentious events (i.e., civil wars, civil unrest, invasions, etc.). Historical events can help indicate its authors’ values and priorities. Memories of harsh economic conditions and traumatic periods of human suffering may explain why worries about past events persist (Schwartz 1991; Bertsch 1990). Table 1 shows each of the nine countries’ former political arrangement and its effective independence date or dates. Table 2 shows each country’s ethnic composition based on the most recent data. As stated before, this factor might significantly influence the language of a constitution. Table 3 illustrates examples of historical factors embedded within each constitution. All of these states, except Tunisia and South Sudan, fell within Soviet or Yugoslavian communist sphere of influence and were embroiled in the Cold War’s ideological conflict (Woodward 1995). All of the following states broke free from larger political unions, except for Poland. Bold font highlights key past grievances that these new documents addressed. All nine constitutions cited and embraced such general democratic elements as plural parties, political equality, and free elections. A key word scan revealed that “democracy” appeared in all constitutions at least 5 times (Tunisia), up to a maximum of 19 times (South Sudan), with a total of 93 appearances. “Democracy” was therefore the sixth most frequent of the selected 30 geopolitical key words (see Table 13). Consequently, all nine countries claimed a democratic form of governance. Each one specifically supported political pluralism and promised that citizens would not face discrimination for their political beliefs.

Table 1 Independence dates and political status Country Estonia Croatia Czech Republic Montenegro Poland Serbia South Sudan Tunisia Ukraine *

Effective date* 1920, 1991 1991 1992 2007 1992, 1997 2006 2011 2014 1917, 1992, 2004

Former state Soviet Republic Yugoslavian Republic Union with Slovakia Yugoslavian Republic Soviet Satellite State Yugoslavian Republic Sudan Tunisia Soviet Republic

Empire Russian Austrian Austrian Ottoman German-Russian Austrian British French Russian

The examined Ukrainian and Estonian constitutions include pre-Soviet and post-Soviet portions

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Table 2 Country ethnic composition State Estonia Croatia Czech Republic Montenegro Poland Serbia South Sudan Tunisia Ukraine

Largest ethnic group Estonian Croats Czech Montenegrins Poles Serbs Dinka Arabs Ukrainians

Percentage of the population (%) 69 90 90 45 94 83 15 98 80

Table 3 Prior regime influence in new constitutions Country Croatia

Czech Republic Estonia Montenegro

Article 15

90 122 80

Residual regime Yugoslavia

Soviet Satellite Soviet Union Yugoslavia

Poland

133

Soviet Satellite

Serbia

55

Yugoslavia

South Sudan

42

Sudan

Tunisia

5

France

Ukraine

47

Soviet Union

Example The freedom. . .of all national minorities to express their nationality, to use their language and script, and to exercise cultural autonomy shall be guaranteed A court alone shall decide about guilt and penalty for criminal offences The land boundary of Estonia is determined by the Tartu Peace Treaty of 2 February 1920 Forceful assimilation of the persons belonging to minority nations. . .shall be prohibited The. . .limitation of the freedoms and rights of persons and citizens in times of martial law. . .shall not limit the freedoms and rights specified in Articles 30, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 47, 48, 53, 63, and 72 Constitutional Court may ban. . .activity. . .aimed at violent overthrow of constitutional order, violation of guaranteed human or minority rights, or inciting of racial, national and religious hatred The State shall. . .provide for the care of the combatants, the wounded heroes and heroines, the families of martyrs Tunisia is part of the Arab Maghreb and works towards achieving its unity Citizens in need of social protection are provided with housing by the State

Note 1: The following variations of key words (in the same sequence as shown in the above list) were included in the scanning: “territories,” “democratic,” “Euro,” “European,” “sovereignty,” “army,” “armies,” “motherland,” “sea,” “seas,” “island,” “islands,” “lands,” “border,” “borders,” “boundaries,” “wars,” “wartime,” “defense,” “church,” “mosque,” “emergencies,” “air space,” “airports,” and “indivisibility” Note 2: The key word count excludes proper pronouns Note 3: Regarding the word “colors,” pertains to national colors

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Traditional territorial themes were surprisingly sparse among the nine constitutions. For example, “boundary” was cited a mere 31 times, with no country having more than 8 times (Serbia and South Sudan tied for the most) with Montenegro not mentioning “boundaries” a single time. This scanning result also included very closely related words to “boundary” such as “borders,” “border,” and “frontier.” Three states (Croatia, Czech Republic, and Estonia) specifically cited the indivisibility of their territories, expressing their intent to establish permanent borders. Unlike the others, Ukraine addressed land usage, but did not specifically mention its territorial borders at the beginning. Instead, Ukraine dedicated an entire chapter of its constitution to the issue of its borders (which will be discussed later). In recent years, beginning in 2014, Ukraine has endured ongoing territorial disputes and other border-related problems with Russia, including losing the Crimea Peninsula and several oblasts along its eastern frontier.

11

The Path to Independence of Post-Cold War States

The ensuing chaos and hardships stemming from communism’s collapse in Eastern Europe altered the political environment to such a degree that leaders appealed to the West for economic and political support (Singer and Wildavsky 1993). International acceptance meant imitating Western Europe’s multiparty, democratic form of government. Eastern European conditions of high unemployment, high inflation, and lack of available credit (Baker 1993) all presented a pressing need to strengthen links to Western Europe. Leaders such as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised favorable trade arrangements (Baker 1996), improved access to a larger labor market, future EU subsidies, and other forms of financial assistance (Baker and Green 1996). All of these European countries, except Ukraine, joined the EU and NATO. Since post-Cold War states all received their independence and drafted or substantially revised their constitutions after the end of the Cold War, this section will briefly review each country’s path toward independence. Note that Poland is not included here because it was technically an independent country during the Cold War period. Because the post-9/11 states obtained independence as a result of a variety of events, the background explanation for them appears in Sect. 15.

11.1

Croatia’s Path to Independence

A constitution’s historical section offers considerable insight as to how the state’s founders perceived their civilization’s evolution. For example, Croatia’s constitution mentions how the Croats arrived from the East in the seventh century and eventually formed a Croatian identity a thousand years ago. Like the Czech Republic, Croatia shares a Catholic heritage and remained under Austrian-Hungarian control until 1919 (post-World War I). Despite centuries of imperial rule, Croatia experienced

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only limited Hungarian and German colonization. Its geographic location along the cultural edges of East and West Europe meant that it served chiefly as a military outpost. Once Austria-Hungary withdrew, Croatia’s population became nearly homogeneous. However, during Marshal Tito’s dictatorship (1945–1980), ethnic Serbs and Bosnian Muslims were moved into Croatia to promote cultural harmony and to accommodate industrial and development plans (Eterovich and Spalatin 1964), thus diluting Croatian homogeneity (Eterovich and Spalatin 1964; Beloff 1985). In doing so, Tito’s geopolitical objectives ignored historically established informal cultural boundaries (Woodward 1995). In the 1990 elections, 10 years after Tito’s death, 89% of ethnic Croats voted for a separatist political party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), who sought “Croatian equality and independence.” Claims of Serbian discrimination (Seroka and Pavlovic 1993; Cuvalo 1990) fueled demands for substantial autonomy, which culminated in a declaration of independence after a successful June 1991 national referendum. Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia responded by instigating a war, causing 10,000 deaths. Though Croatia won its struggle, lingering tensions, territorial disputes, and ethnic settlement problems persisted for many years (Rand McNally and Manley 1995). Geographic features such as Croatia’s mountainous areas and its Adriatic coastline, ideal for tourism, were notable sources of dispute. Croatia’s 1996 constitution, written after the Bosnian War, included constitutional amendments covering human rights, individual freedoms, and citizenship (Council of Europe Press 1995) for ethnic Croats. For example, Article 3 states “the rule of law and a democratic multiparty system are the highest values of the constitutional order of the Republic of Croatia.” Also, Article 60, under “Criminal Acts,” addressed human rights concerns after the Bosnian War: . . .every action, stimulation, organization or helping with the action which could endanger the existence of certain national and ethnic community or minority, provoke the national hatred, be conducive to discrimination or putting into an unequal position is forbidden and punishable.

11.2

Czech Republic’s Path to Independence

Though landlocked, the Czech Republic’s central location makes it a natural distribution hub between East and West Europe. Its modern political borders were largely shaped by the Austrian Hapsburgs who transformed the former Holy Roman Duchy of Bohemia into a province conforming to its imperial cultural standards. From the Battle of Mohács (1526) until October 1918, Hapsburg dynastic policies imposed and crafted a Catholic cultural homogeneity. For example, the Battle of White Mountain (1620) forced an outward migration of 150,000 Protestants. In 1624, all non-Catholic clergy members were expelled. Before 1644, Bohemia’s population dropped from 3 million to 800,000 (Mamatey and Luza 1972).

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When the Czech Republic initially obtained its independence, Austria’s imperial legacy lingered, leaving it with an ethnically diverse society (Korbel 1977). The 1930 census, for example, showed that Czechs and Slovaks comprised only 67% of the population, with Germans (over 22%), Hungarians (5.5%), and Ruthenians (over 4%) consisting of the remainder. Yet, wartime events and consequences during the German occupation (1938–1945) resulted in a nearly homogeneous nation. Between 1945 and 1989, the Czech Republic remained under Soviet dominance (Bertsch 1990) as a union within the communist Czechoslovakian state. After internal pro-democracy pressures and considerable civil unrest, the Soviet-backed government relinquished its control. Later, in December 1992, economic policy differences between a highly urbanized, industrialized Czech Republic, and its eastern rural Slovakia partner resulted in a peaceful dissolution and a new constitution (Rand McNally and Manley 1995). Czech homogeneity persists. In 2014, the Czech Republic’s population was 94% Czech, and over 90% were nominally Catholic. Almost everyone spoke Czech.

11.3

Estonia’s Path to Independence

Despite many centuries of imperialism under Germans, Danes, Poles, Swedes, and Russians, Estonians have resiliently retained a unique language and culture. In 1918, after Russia’s Czarist regime collapsed, Estonia gained its initial independence which lasted a mere 20 years. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (between Hitler and Stalin) effectively granted Soviet control over the Baltic states (with the exception of a small portion of German-controlled Lithuania). Less than 2 years later, in 1941, a sudden German offensive resulted in seizing Estonia away from the Soviets. When the Soviet Union reasserted control in 1945, ethnic Estonians comprised approximately 95% of its postwar population. Almost immediately after Estonia’s reincorporation into the USSR, tens of thousands of Estonians were deported to the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and other faraway places. Aggressive Russian colonization and “russification” policies commenced, which included imposing internal travel restrictions and discriminatory industrial plans which favored ethnic Russians and moved them into Estonia. By 1989, the proportion of ethnic Estonians reached a nadir of 61%, while ethnic Russians peaked at over 38% (Raun 1991). Demands for independence surged in 1990, resulting in a referendum which readopted their 1918 constitution on June 28, 1992. Today, ethnic Estonians have increased slightly to 68.7%, while Russians have diminished to 25% (Statistics Estonia 2018).

11.4

Ukraine’s Path to Independence

Primarily situated along the fertile lowland plains on the Black Sea’s northern shore, Vikings, Tatar Mongols, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and Germans have governed Ukraine over the centuries. Though Ukrainians are Eastern Slavs with common historical and cultural ties to Russia, Ukraine’s 40 million people have their own distinct religious traditions (Ukrainian Orthodox or Ukrainian Catholic) and their

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own language (Ukrainian) (Baker and Green 1996). Ongoing geopolitical disputes complicate accurate calculations involving the proportion of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. For example, in March 2014, Russia unilaterally annexed the Crimea. Soon afterward, ethnic Russians exerted de facto control of two oblasts along Ukraine’s eastern front. Like Estonia, Ukraine declared its independence when Czarist Russia collapsed in 1917. However, Bolshevik forces immediately invaded and later coerced Ukraine into becoming a Soviet Republic in the newly formed U.S.S.R. in December 1922. Unrest and discontent continued, particularly in the Western Ukraine. Later, in the 1930s, failed Soviet economic policies, particularly collectivized agriculture, resulted in five to eight million Ukrainians starving to death. Some scholars (Dolot 1985; Davies and Wheatcroft 2004) claim that the mass starvation of Ukrainians weakened the country’s aspirations for independence but also profoundly convinced many Ukrainians that Moscow did not represent their best interests. When Germany initially invaded Ukraine in 1941, many Ukrainians quietly applauded the effort, only for the Reich’s anti-Slavic policies to crush their hopes (Baker and Green 1996). In 1945, the Soviets resumed control and reconstituted the country’s current borders (except for the Crimea) which continued until December 1991, when Ukrainian leaders again demanded independence. Since the Soviet Union ceased to exist later that month, Ukraine finally, and peacefully, gained its independence.

12

Territorial and Geographic Content in Constitutions

Territorial and geographic elements in constitutions reflect how countries define their physical boundaries and practical relations with neighboring states. Given that this component seems practical and almost mandatory, these recent constitutions yielded surprising results.

12.1

Czech Republic’s Geographic Content

The Czech Republic hardly had any geographic content and barely mentioned territorial matters. Only Article 11 addressed its boundaries, which states (key geopolitical words are bolded): . . .the Czech Republic constitutes an indivisible entity. The state frontiers whereof may be changed only by a Constitutional Act.

The Preamble offers two other indirect exceptions: referring to the Czech Republic as “Lands of the Crown of Bohemia” and in the “Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms,” which is an entirely separate document dedicated to human rights, which states:

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. . .mindful of the bitter experience of periods when human rights and fundamental freedoms were suppressed in our homeland.

This passage undoubtedly was written in memory of the 1968 Soviet invasion. Though that traumatic experience and its lingering aftermath did not affect the Czech Republic’s borders, its authors (like most adult Czechs) vividly remembered that event when they drafted their constitution 23 years later. Given that the Czech Republic’s present borders nearly mirror the former Duchy of Bohemia established in the tenth century, no substantial border disputes or external threats persist. A need to proclaim its thousand-year-old boundaries likely seemed unnecessary (Baker 1996).

12.2

Poland’s Geographic Content

Poland offers a second example of vague, sparse geopolitical content in that its constitution never describes its territory or land. Instead, it mentions past ideological struggles in its Preamble (referring to the Second and Third Republics) and in Article 13 of how “Nazism, fascism, and communism” threatened Poland’s freedom as the nation struggled for independence. Yet, still, they neglect mentioning any borders or their neighbors. They only address one country, The Holy See or Vatican City: Relations between the Republic of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church shall be determined by international treaty concluded with the Holy See. . . (Article 25)

12.3

Montenegro’s Geographic Content

Of the nine constitutions, Montenegro had the least explicitly geopolitical content, consisting of a single vague reference in Article 3, “. . .Montenegro is unified and inalienable.” Montenegro’s peaceful separation from Serbia and avoidance of any territorial turmoil during the Bosnian War (unlike Croatia) likely contributed to its lack of concern. Also, like the Czech Republic, Montenegro’s current boundaries closely resemble what it has claimed for centuries.

12.4

Serbia’s Geographic Content

The fourth state, Serbia, has experienced many recent territorial issues and disputes with Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania. Yet, it has only one geopolitical reference in Article 8, with 37 words, stating: Serbia is inseparable and indivisible. Border. . .is inviolable; may be altered. . .(by) amend(ing) the Constitution.

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Tunisia’s Geographic Content

Tunisia is the last example of sparse geopolitical content. Except for its Preamble and Article 5 referring to Tunisia as “part of the Arab Maghreb,” there are no direct territorial references or explicitly geopolitical descriptions. Like the Czech Republic and Montenegro, Tunisia’s boundaries have not changed for many decades. No lingering substantial territorial disputes threaten its statehood. Drafted in 2013, following their Arab Spring Revolution in 2011 (which effected many Northern Africa and Middle Eastern states), Tunisia’s constitution calls for a future Pan-Arabic unification, reflecting considerable fervor for their collective regional Arabic identity in Article 5: The Republic of Tunisia is part of the Arab Maghreb and works towards achieving its unity and takes all measures to ensure its realization.

12.6

Croatia’s Geographic Content

In contrast to the other six, Croatia, Estonia, and South Sudan had considerably more geopolitical content. Likely in response to having battled Serbs and Bosniaks over claimed territories in the 1990s, Croatia’s constitution explicitly addressed its geopolitical perspective in Article 2: • “The sovereignty of the Republic of Croatia is inalienable, indivisible, and non-transferable.” • “The sovereignty of the Republic of Croatia encompasses its land, rivers, canals, internal maritime waters, territorial sea, and all air space above these.” • “The Republic of Croatia, in accordance with international law, shall exercise sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the maritime zones and seabed of the Adriatic Sea.”

12.7

Estonia’s Geographic Content

Three foreign invasions and the resulting forced annexations in the twentieth century likely inspired Estonian authors to strongly emphasize territorial matters in their constitution. The Russian Federation casts an ominous shadow upon its tiny neighbor. Ethnic Russians still compose 28% of Estonia’s population (Statistics Estonia 2016), which adds further concerns about preserving current borders. Estonia dedicated three chapters to territory and national defense (Articles 2, 121,122), which specifically addresses Estonia’s geopolitical claims: • “The land, territorial waters and airspace of the Estonian state are an inseparable and indivisible whole. The Riigikogu shall ratify and denounce treaties of the Republic of Estonia.”

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• “. . .the land boundary of Estonia is determined by the Tartu Peace Treaty of 2 February 1920 and by other international boundary agreements. The sea and air boundaries of Estonia shall be determined on the basis of international conventions.” • “The ratification of international treaties which alter the state borders of Estonia requires a two-thirds majority of the membership of the Riigikogu.”

12.8

South Sudan’s Geographic Content

Having emerged from Africa’s longest civil war (1955–2011), South Sudan’s Preamble articulates its protracted and costly struggle for independence and offers a historical review of how colonial era treaties formed its boundaries. An explicit explanation is in Part 1: . . .bordered by Sudan (north), Ethiopia (east), Kenya and Uganda (south), Democratic Republic of Congo (southwest), Central African Republic (west).

Although the youngest of this study’s selected countries, South Sudan’s constitution has the most words: 28,118 (see Fig. 1). In contrast, Estonia has the oldest and shortest constitution (11,541 words), or about 41% the size of South Sudan’s document. In South Sudan’s case, its lengthy constitutions likely underscored its pressing need to meticulously define its claimed domain and identity. This observation also tends to explain the general trend toward lengthier new constitutions (see Fig. 1).

12.9

Ukraine’s Geographic Content

Ukraine’s constitution arguably contains the most geopolitical content. As is the case with Estonia, its constitution’s origins were originally drafted after Russia’s 1917 Revolution. Incorporation into the Soviet Union, and other pivotal twentieth century events, led to multiple constitutional revisions. Last revised in 2004, since the 2010 constitutional changes were negated in 2014, Ukraine’s authors were quite aware of ongoing internal disputes with the nation’s ethnic Russian population. Bolded words within Article 37 illustrate their geopolitical concerns: The establishment and activity of political parties and public associations are prohibited if their program goals or actions are aimed at the liquidation of the independence of Ukraine, the change of the constitutional order by violent means, the violation of the sovereignty and territorial indivisibility of the State, the undermining of its security, the unlawful seizure of state power, the propaganda of war and of violence, the incitement of inter-ethnic, racial, or religious enmity, and the encroachment on human rights and freedoms and the health of the population. Political parties and public associations shall not have paramilitary formations.

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Preamble Word Count

Total Word Count

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Fig. 1 Indexed total word count and actual Preamble word count of constitutions

Five other articles address Ukraine’s territorial and preservation concerns: 1. “. . .preserve(ing) the gene pool of the Ukrainian people is the duty of the State” (Article 16). 2. “The creation and operation of any armed formations not envisaged by law are prohibited on the territory of Ukraine. The location of foreign military bases shall not be permitted on the territory of Ukraine” (Article 17). 3. “Defense of the Motherland, of the independence and territorial indivisibility of Ukraine, and respect for its state symbols, are the duties of citizens of Ukraine” (Article 65). 4. “The territorial structure of Ukraine is based on the principles of unity and indivisibility of the state territory” (Article 132). 5. “The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an inseparable constituent part of Ukraine” (Article 134). Last, unlike the other eight constitutions, Ukraine dedicated two chapters addressing its political boundaries: Chapter IX, the “Territorial Structure of Ukraine” (Articles 132–133), and Chapter X, the “Autonomous Republic of Crimea” (Articles 134–139). Ukraine’s geopolitical concerns are not unwarranted. For example, in 2014, the Russian government sponsored an unsanctioned referendum in the Crimea which consequently supported its annexation into the Russian Federation. This act violated Articles 2 and 73 in the Ukrainian Constitution, for example: • Article 2: “The sovereignty of Ukraine extends throughout its entire territory. Ukraine is a unitary state. The territory of Ukraine within its present border is indivisible and inviolable.” • Article 73: “Issues of altering the territory of Ukraine are resolved exclusively by an All-Ukrainian referendum.”

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Persistent civil unrest led by ethnic Russians continues to plague Ukraine’s eastern oblasts. These sporadic, yet significant armed confrontations between informal Russian paramilitary groups and Ukrainian armed forces have resulted in de facto losses of additional territories near its eastern border.

13

Structural Differences Within Constitutions

Organizational divisions and their textual sequence indicate the significance of state priorities. Prioritization of constitutional elements is often apparent by the order and content of its articles. For example, if human rights are addressed before a government’s lists of functions, this indicates a higher priority. Total and proportional word counts within a constitution’s specific sections also allow comparisons and contrasts in determining a state’s values and ideals. Figure 1 displays the total word count and the Preamble word count for this study’s nine constitutions. Please note, in Fig. 1, the indexed total word count is adjusted downward by two decimal places (i.e., Croatia’s total word count is really 13,850 but is shown as 138.5), so it would fit with its corresponding Preamble word count (which represents its actual amount). At 697 words, Croatia had the longest Preamble, while Serbia had the lowest, a modest 96 words. Since Preambles typically function as proclamations, they convey a state’s freshly minted identity by citing historical references and present-day ambitions. For some countries, the Preamble has a different label. For example, Croatia uses “Historical Foundations” and Ukraine calls it “Foundation for Social Order.” Nonetheless, the variation in a country’s Preamble’s length evokes several questions. First, does Croatia’s much larger Preamble serve a geopolitical purpose? Second, was Serbia’s very short Preamble a reflection of its attempt to mend fences with the world community by quietly and meekly announcing its new order? Last, was Tunisia’s lack of a Preamble a symptom of its lack of concern about losing its national identity, when it already yearns for greater Arab unification while facing no imminent threat of invasion from its neighbors? Table 4 tries to answer these questions by providing examples of each constitution’s statement of national identity within its respective Preamble. Since a state’s Preamble usually summarizes its origin and formation of its identity, it often conveys a unique geopolitical perspective. For example, as shown in Table 4, the Czech Republic’s relatively short 157-word Preamble begins by presenting a national image of the “Czech Crown” lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Longer Preambles will usually explain a state’s historical foundation such as Croatia’s “millennial national identity” or Poland’s “one thousand years’ heritage” also shown in the above table. Sometimes Preambles affirm a primary philosophical purpose such as “committed to (a) democratic and civic Montenegro.” Last, functional components such as Serbia’s proclamation that “the Province of Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of the territory” also project the state’s geographical claims, underscoring its territorial claims and ambitions.

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Table 4 Proclamation of statehood in Preambles Country Croatia Czech Republic Estonia

Historical and national identity statement The millennial national identity of the Croatian nation The ancient statehood of the lands of the crown of bohemia

Tunisia Montenegro

Poland Serbia South Sudan Ukraine

Guarantee the preservation of the Estonian people, the Estonian language and the Estonian culture through the ages Inspired by the heritage of our civilization, accumulated over the travails of our history We, as free and equal citizens, members of peoples and national minorities who live in Montenegro: Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosniacs, Albanians, Muslims, Croats and the others, are committed to democratic and civic Montenegro From our over 1000 years’ heritage The province of Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of the territory of Serbia Our long and heroic struggle for justice, freedom, equality and dignity in South Sudan Based on the centuries-old history of Ukrainian state-building and on the right to self-determination realized by the Ukrainian nation

Aside from proclaiming a state’s geopolitical perspective, Preambles also usually declare their form of government. For example, every country in this study adheres to, or intends to practice, a form of democracy. Table 5 illustrates how all of these new states have embraced a democratic governmental system, reflecting globalization’s influence on contemporary political philosophical. In addition, Table 5 provides evidence that external political pressures have influenced the fundamental content of recent constitutions. Next, Table 6 reveals persistent language uniformity among these states’ constitutions. Each of these nations proclaims sovereignty; yet, such claims are suspect because their constitutions use quite similar language in almost the same text locations (i.e., the Preamble). Their high degree of linguistic and structural conformity is evident by their constitutions possessing quite common, often almost identical language and nearly uniform locations with their texts. This lack of originality supports the idea that exogenous forces, such as a globalization of political philosophy, are significantly influencing how these newborn states express their beliefs and identities.

14

Key Word Scanning

As mentioned previously under Sect. 2 at the beginning of this chapter, each constitution’s degree of conformity to international guidelines was determined by scanning its content with key words within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Fifty key words from the UDHR’s 27 articles were used. The process used

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Table 5 State political systems Country Croatia Czech Republic Estonia Tunisia Montenegro Poland Serbia

South Sudan Ukraine

Proclamation statement (location) An independent and autonomous, sovereign, and democratic state (Preamble) A free and democratic State founded on respect for human rights and on principles of civil society, as a member of the family of European and World democracies (Preamble) Independent, sovereign democratic republic (Article 1) A republican, democratic and participatory system, in the framework of a civil state founded on the sovereignty of the people (Preamble) A state in which the basic values are freedom, peace, tolerance, respect for human rights and liberties, multiculturalism, democracy and the rule of law (Preamble) Democratic state ruled by law and implementing the principles of social justice (Article 2) Based on the rule of law and social justice, principles of civil democracy, human and minority rights and freedoms, and commitment to European principles and values (Article 1) Committed to establishing a decentralized democratic multi-party system of Governance (Preamble) A democratic, social, law-based state, aware of our responsibility before God, our own conscience, past, present and future generations (Preamble)

Table 6 Persistent presence of state claims of sovereignty Country Croatia Czech Estonia Montenegro Poland Serbia South Sudan Tunisia Ukraine

Sovereignty statement The historical right of the Croatian nation to full sovereignty, has manifested itself The sovereignty of the law The independence and sovereignty of Estonia are timeless and inalienable (Article 1) To live in an independent and sovereign state of Montenegro In 1989, the possibility of a sovereign and democratic determination of its fate The sovereign state of Serbia The independent and sovereign South Sudan shall be governed A civil state founded on the sovereignty of the people Expressing the sovereign will of the people

the Microsoft Word search function to determine if each constitution shared the same key words with the UDHR standard model. Next, this study tabulated the appearance frequency of each word. Finally, an analysis of these results revealed the degree of conformity to global standards. Below are the selected key words matched with their accompanying article within the UDHR. A “key word” is an easily identified word that applies to an individual’s rights. These cited items, and their sequence within the document, summarize the global community’s explicit values.

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Comparing Results: Post-Cold War States Versus Post-9/11 States

Next, Tables 8 and 9 show the frequencies of key words, taken from the UDHR (see Table 7), found in both groups of constitutions. The scanning results show that among the Post-9/11 states, Serbia had the most frequent use of key words (775 occurrences) and Tunisia had the least (277 occurrences). These Post-9/11 states had an average frequency of 582. Among the post-Cold War group, Poland most frequently used these key words (582 occurrences), while Estonia did so the least (338 occurrences). Comparing the post-Cold War group’s 461.75-word count average (in Table 9), the overall increase of key word frequency found among Post-9/11 states represented about a 26% increase. If non-European states are extracted from the Post-9/11 group calculation, the average word count frequency increases to 665, or about a 44% increase. This outcome is further supported by Estonia, by far the oldest of these selected countries (see Table 1), having the lowest frequency among the European states (only Tunisia was lower). Thus, the newer constitutions exhibit greater conformity to the UDHR. Figure 2 illustrates this correlation between a constitution’s age and its proportional conformity to the UDHR. Figure 2 shows the total frequency of key words. The “total words” results were indexed by adjusting downward by two decimal points (i.e., Poland’s total word count is 198.4, instead of 19,840), and “total key words” results were adjusted downward by one decimal point (i.e., Poland’s total key word count is 58.2, instead of 582), so they would fit in the figure. These results convey the consistent correlation between a constitution’s age and conformity to the UDHR. Note that Estonia (partially drafted in 1920 and 1992) had the least number of key words, while Poland’s 1997 constitution had the most key words. Next, Fig. 3 reveals the age and total UDHR Key Words for Post-September 11th group of constitutions. Figure 3 shows that for post-9/11 states, the relationship between a constitution’s age and its total key words is less consistent. However, as previously noted, this group’s overall average of total key words is substantially greater than the average found in post-Cold War constitutions. Next, Fig. 4 presents the degree of content conformity to the UDHR, as measured by the percentage of key words found in each respective constitution (Countries are listed from most recently written (top) to the oldest (bottom)).

16

Serbia’s Conformity

The results showed that only Estonia and Tunisia’s constitutions had a conformity percentage of less than 90%, meaning that the others contained at least 45 of the 50 selected key words from the UDHR. In Serbia’s case, not only did their constitution contain every key word, but it also had the highest total frequency of key words (775).

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Table 7 The universal declaration of human rights, key words and locations Key word Belief, believe(s), believer(s) Dignity Equal, equality Free, freedom Human rights Inalienable Justice Right(s)

Location Preamble Preamble Preamble Preamble Preamble Preamble Preamble Preamble

Freedom of speech Language National, nationality, nationalities Political Race/color Religion(s), religious Sex/gender Liberty, liberties Life Property, properties

Preamble Article 2 Articles 2/15 Article 2 Article 2 Article 2 Article 2 Article 3 Article 3 Articles 3/17 Article 3 Article 4 Article 5 Article 5 Article 7 Article 9 Article 10 Article 10 Article 11

Security Slave/forced labor Degrading Torture Protection Arrest(ed)/detention Fair, fairly Independent, independently Guilt, guilty/innocent, innocence Family Home/residence Honor/reputation Privacy Leave/return

Article 12 Articles 12/13 Article 12 Article 12 Article 13

Movement Asylum Marry, marriage/consent Community Thought/conscience Opinion/expression

Article 13 Article 14 Article 16 Article 18 Article 18 Article 19

Comments

Excludes freedom of speech

Rights in general; excludes human and property rights

Relating a person’s national origin

Pertaining to race or ethnicity

Referring to private property

Referring to a place to live Excludes use in constitutional oaths Referring to people leaving or returning to the country

Relating to personal consent

(continued)

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Table 7 (continued) Key word Assemble, assembly

Location Article 20

Association(s) Will, free will Culture, cultural Unions Work(ing) Rest/leisure, non-working Child, childhood Medical, medicine Mother, motherhood Education(al) Participate, participation

Article 20 Article 21 Article 22 Article 23 Article 23 Article 24 Article 25 Article 25 Article 25 Article 26 Article 27

Comments Relating to the right to assemble; excludes proper nouns Of the people, or citizens

Relating to employment matters Relating to vacation, not working

Excludes proper nouns

Table 8 Total UDHR-model key word frequencies, post-Cold War states Country Totals: Highest Lowest

Montenegro 578 8 7

Serbia 775 18 7

South Sudan 637 17 9

Tunisia 277 0 35

Ukraine 643 15 5

Total 2910 NA NA

Average 582

Table 9 Total UDHR-model key word frequencies, post-9/11 states Country Totals:

Estonia 338

Czech 435

Poland 582

Croatia 492

Total 1847

Average 462

Why would Serbia so stridently abide by international standards? Constitutional authors had to be well aware of Serbia’s role as the primary aggressor and instigator of the Bosnian War and in the Kosovo crisis during the 1990s and beyond. Ambitions to repair Serbia’s tarnished global image and reputation united all of Serbia’s main political parties to draft a politically correct constitution. After the public approved their new constitution via national referendum, Serbian President Boris Tadic applauded the result, stating that the citizens supported a “European Serbia” (Hawton 2006). Serbian constitutional conformity to UNDHR content persists throughout its 200 articles. Among other issues, those articles guarantee human and minority rights, abolish capital punishment, and ban human cloning. In addition, they eliminate former vestiges of the collapsed Yugoslavian communist regime, such as social assets, and replaced them with proclamations concerning private, corporate, and public properties (including rights for foreign citizens to own property). Serbia’s conciliatory constitution also placated internal strife by granting the province of Vojvodina limited financial autonomy. Serbia’s constitution explicitly cites “European values and standards” and grants special protection to consumers, mothers, children, and ethnic minorities. Clearly, Serbia has made a strong statement

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Poland (1997)

Croatia (1996)

Czech Republic (1993)

Estonia (1920; 1992)

0

20

40

Total Words

60

80

100

Total Key Words

120

140

160

180

200

Key Word Ratio

Fig. 2 Total indexed UDHR key words, within post-Cold War state constitutions

Tunisia (2014) South Sudan (2011) Montenegro (2007) Serbia (2006) Ukraine (2004) 0

100

200 300 400 500 Key Words in Constitutional Texts

600

700

800

Fig. 3 Total UDHR key words, within post-9/11 state constitutions

Tunisia South Sudan Ukraine Montenegro Serbia Poland Croatia Czech Rep. Estonia 0

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 Percentage of Conformity

Fig. 4 Conformity rates, percentage of UDHR key words in constitutions

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concerning its interest in normalizing relations with the Europe Union and European neighbors of many ethnicities (Serbia’s neighboring states are Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo (although Belgrade still legally claims it, despite a declaration of independence)).

17

Tunisia’s Conformity and Path to a New Constitution

In contrast, Tunisia, with the lowest conformity rate of 80%, had the least frequency total of 267, or about 36% of Serbia’s final tally. These results indicate that Tunisian leaders might be less concerned with appeasing outside influences or ethnic minorities. Unlike Serbia, Tunisia is an ethnically homogeneous country, whose neighbors (Algeria and Libya) share a common North African Arabic ethnic identity. For example, Tunisia’s constitution affirms North African ethnic homogeneity five times by referring to “Arab unity,” “Arab identity,” “Arab nation,” and “as part of the Arab Maghreb.” Despite Tunisia’s constitution and leadership not expressing desires to integrate their society or economy into the EU, French sociopolitical pressures (Tunisia was a French colony until 1956) still exert considerable influence. For example, although its constitution reflects Islamic preferences (Article 74 demands that the President must be a member of the Islamic faith), for the first time throughout the Arab world’s legal history, Tunisia’s constitution aims for women to equally participate as elected officials. Article 46 states, “The state is working to achieve parity between women and men in elected councils” (Sallon 2014). Tunisia’s radical provision (by current Arabic standards) imitates the French gender parity constitutional provisions of June 6, 2000, which amended Articles 3 and 4. In France, this constitutional revision (which took nearly 20 years, starting with President Mitterand’s 47th proposition in 1981) strongly encouraged greater electoral participation by offering an equal number of male and female political party candidates for national and municipal elections. As previously noted, Tunisia’s constitution strives for a nearly identical goal. French media widely praised the Tunisian government for including these provisions (Sallon 2014).

18

South Sudan’s Conformity and Path to Independence

South Sudan’s constitution has a strong, 94% UDHR conformity rate. Its 637 key UDHR words rank third highest, after Serbia and Ukraine. The best explanation for this may center on its arduous origins. South Sudan finally won independence in 2011 but only after emerging from two horrific, protracted civil wars (1955–1972 and 1983–2005) between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Christian-Animist tribes in the South sought independence from Islam’s overwhelming dominance in Khartoum and throughout northern and central Sudan. South Sudan’s lengthy civil

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war reflected part of the historic struggle underway between two geographic realms: Islamic-Arabic Northern Africa and Christian-Animist sub-Saharan Africa. The conflict resulted in two million deaths from war, famine, and disease. They also displaced (often repeatedly) another four million, nearly 80% of the population. Aside from atrocities which included mass killings and slavery, the civilian death toll was among the highest of any war since the World War II (Refugees News 2001). Thus, after fighting so desperately to obtain freedom, South Sudan’s high conformity rate and UDHR key word total reflect a national passion for acceptance and recognition by an international community that supports human rights.

19

Montenegro’s Conformity

In 2007, Montenegro peacefully separated from Serbia, establishing its first full independence since incorporating with Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in 1922. Prospects of joining the EU propelled this effort, in addition to the desire to further distance itself from Serbia’s sullied reputation. The Montenegro constitution’s 96% conformity with the UDHR, as well as its 578 total key word count, confirms its solid adherence to world human rights standards and underscores its eagerness to embrace EU political and philosophical ideals. For example, the constitution states that Montenegro is a “civic, democratic and environmentally friendly country with social justice, established by the sovereign rights of its government.” Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosniaks, Albanians, Muslims, and Croats are all described as “free, equal and loyal to a civic and democratic Montenegro” (Beta Saturday 2007). Their new constitution ended Serbian as the sole official state language by recognizing Bosnian, Albanian, and Croatian as other official languages. To further promote its proclaimed multicultural inclusiveness, Montenegro’s constitution also guarantees separation of religion and state. After their national referendum for independence from Serbia succeeded, President Milo Djukanovic proudly and happily told the media, “Montenegro is now (having) European quality of life.” New President, Ranko Krivokapic also said, “(this will) enable (a) faster step of Montenegro towards European integration.” Figure 5 shows the frequency of UDHR key words found in post-Cold War constitutions. Since two key words, “rights” and “free(dom)” (excludes “freedom of speech”), appear substantially more often than the other 48, they were excluded from Fig. 5 and placed in Table 9. Among this group, Croatia had the highest conformance rate with the UDHR at 96%. Though the Croatian constitution does not contain the most key words (Poland’s constitution does), it still has the “highest counts for individual key words,” as Table 10 confirms below. Table 10 shows the countries with the most and least frequent key word results. Table 10 does not include all of the key words in the scan. The complete list is found under Table 18 in the Appendix.

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dignity inalienable human rights justice speech belief equal race/color sex/gender language religion political nationality property life liberty security slave/forced labor torture degrading protection arrest/detention independent fair guilt/innocent privacy family honor/reputation home/residence movement leave/return asylum marry/consent thought/conscience community opinion/expression assemble association will culture work unions rest/leisure medicine child education participation

30 28 26 24 22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Estonia

Czech

Croatia

Poland

Fig. 5 Frequency of selected UDHR key words, in post-Cold War states’ constitutions

When considering the recent history, ethnic composition, and relations with neighboring countries, the results in Table 10 are not surprising. Croatia’s human rights troubles with Bosnia, for example, were well-documented during the 1990s. The Croatian constitution mentions “protection” 28 times compared to Estonia’s three times. • “Human rights” appears 13 times yet not once in Estonia’s constitution. • In Poland’s case, a country that wrestled with an unpleasant period of martial law, “arrest” appears 22 times while appearing only once in Estonia’s constitution. • “Unions” which played a pivotal role in Poland’s quest for greater political autonomy are mentioned 12 times compared the neighboring Czech Republic’s three times. • “Religion” appears 20 times in heavily Catholic Poland compared to Estonia’s six times. Religion’s disproportionate influence in Poland’s 1997 constitution is likely attributed to Pope John Paul II (1978–2005), the first Polish Pope, who played an inspirational role in ending Poland’s communist regime (Applebaum 2005).

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Results for Post-9/11 Constitutions

Figure 6 shows the scanning results for the Post-9/11 state constitutions when compared to UDHR key words. Except for Tunisia, these more recent constitutions had more key words in their text than the post-Cold War group. In order to fit large numbers more

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Table 10 Significant most frequent key words results, UDHR, and postwar constitutions Highest country Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Croatia Poland Poland Poland Poland Poland Estonia Estonia

Significant key word Human rights Equal Race Gender Nationality Protection Independent Leave/return Opinion Association Culture Religion Liberty Arrest Home Unions Justice Language

Frequency 13 24 4 3 18 28 18 5 5 13 14 20 11 22 12 12 8 13

Lowest country Estonia Estonia Poland All others Poland Estonia Estonia Estonia Poland Czech Republic Estonia Estonia Czech Republic Estonia Estonia Czech Republic Czech Republic Poland

Frequency 0 8 1 1 6 3 6 1 2 5 4 6 3 1 2 3 0 3

conveniently into this chart, the study indexed the values by two decimal points. For example, the study rounded “total words” numbers down by two decimal points (e.g., South Sudan’s total word count in Fig. 6 appears as 281.18, instead of the precise number: 28,118). Similarly, the study rounded “total key word” results down by one decimal point (e.g., Serbia’s total key word count appears as 77.5, instead of 775). While documents’ length and key word frequency did not consistently increase, the key word ratio (i.e., the number of key words per total words) did increase fairly consistently from 2004 to 2014. Figure 7 shows the frequency of UDHR key words found within post-9/11 states’ constitutions. Since two key words, “rights” and “free(dom)” (excludes “freedom of speech”), appeared a substantially greater number of times than the other 48 key words, the study excluded them from Fig. 7 and placed them in Table 12. Please note Serbia’s constitution contains the greatest number of UDHR key words. Table 11 contrasts most frequent with least frequent UDHR key word usage results for post-Cold War constitutions. Table 11 isolates the most significant UDHR key words for analysis. Table 11 shows that Serbia, South Sudan, and Ukraine yielded the most significant findings with respect to UDHR key word usage. Among this group, Serbia clearly stands out. For example, its constitution mentions “human rights” and “equal” 40 and 33 times, respectively, compared to nine and eight appearances of these words in Tunisia’s constitution. “Protection” also appears 55 times compared to Tunisia’s eight.

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Tunisia (2014)

South Sudan (2011)

Montenegro (2007)

Serbia (2006)

Ukraine (2004) 0 Total Words

50

100

150

200

Total Key Words in Constitutional Texts

250

300

Key Word Ratio

Fig. 6 Total indexed UDHR key words, within post-9/11 state constitutions

60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 dignity inalienable human rights justice speech belief equal race/color sex/gender language religion political nationality property life liberty security slave/forced labor torture degrading protection arrest/detention independent fair guilt/innocent privacy family honor/reputation home/residence movement leave/return asylum marry/consent thought/conscience community opinion/expression assemble association will culture work unions rest/leisure medicine child education participation

0

Montenegro

Serbia

South Sudan

Tunisia

Ukraine

Fig. 7 Frequency of UDHR key words in post-9/11 states’ constitutions

It is important to keep in mind that Serbia played a central role in the Balkan Wars and other armed conflicts prior to adopting its new form of government. Table 11 thus provides clear evidence of (Serbian capital) Belgrade’s obvious interest in demonstrating official Serbian intent to conform to international human rights standards. Like Croatia

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Table 11 Most significant UDHR key words frequency results, post-Cold War constitutions Highest country Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia Serbia South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan South Sudan/Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine

Significant key word Human rights Equal Language Religion Protection Arrest Child Leave/return Asylum Marry/consent Opinion Assemble Association Dignity Belief Race Gender Life Slave Independent Education Community Justice Culture Mother Property Free Security

Frequency 40 33 20 34 55 29 25 4 3 11 14 5 14 15 10 5 12 33 7 28 25 27 14 25 5 29 71 33

Lowest country Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia South Sudan Tunisia Montenegro South Sudan Tunisia Ukraine Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia/Serbia Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia Ukraine Tunisia Tunisia Montenegro Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia Montenegro Tunisia

Frequency 9 9 3 4 8 6 2 1 0 1 4 0 4 5 2 1 0 3 0 3 6 0 3 9 0 5 31 11

in the post-Cold War group, Serbia’s recent history, ethnic composition, and relations with neighboring countries clearly contributed to its high rate of conformity. In South Sudan’s case, the fact “independent” appears 28 times is impressive. Thirty-three appearances of “life” also send an important message, especially in contrast to the word’s appearance only three times in Tunisia’s constitution. “Justice,” “belief,” “slave,” “gender,” and “community” all other represented high key word counts connected to events in their many decades of horrendous living condition during their war for independence. Regarding Ukraine, it is of no surprise that “culture,” “free,” and “security” were all highs. Among the states in this study, Ukraine alone has lost territory since its independence and is at risk of losing more oblasts, possibly the entire country once again to neighboring Russia. Ukraine’s response by including these key words reflects their passion to remain free from Russian influence, preferring to abide by world community standards instead.

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Table 12 Word count for “rights” and “free” in post-9/11 states Rights Free

Montenegro 116 31

Serbia 172 68

South Sudan 99 49

Tunisia 58 37

Ukraine 131 71

Total 576 256

Table 12 indicates the highest and lowest result in bold. For example, Serbia’s high of 172 key word occurrences for “rights” (compared to Tunisia’s 58 times) while Ukraine barely beat its high for “free” at 71 (compared to Serbia’s 68). Both states are striving to gain greater acceptance and belonging among the world community. Threatened by its recent past as a pariah state, Serbia desires a better reputation, while Ukraine seeks to maintain its independence from Russian incursions and possible occupation (as they have experienced before).

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Table 13: Geopolitical Key Words from Geography Textbooks

The next step in conducting content analysis for the two sets of constitutions includes identifying and using words that reflect commonly used geopolitical themes and issues. Below is a list of nationalist-themed key words and words often found in the political geography chapters of geography textbooks. Next, Fig. 8 shows the frequency of the selected common geopolitical words when scanned in the post-9/11 constitutions. Figure 8 shows the frequency of commonly used geopolitical terms found within the post-9/11 constitutions. Table 18 in the Appendix lists this chart’s entire numerical findings. Serbia (in orange) and Ukraine (in dark blue) were tied for having the most frequent occurrences of these specified geopolitical terms in their constitutions. Below lists the most frequently found geopolitical words in Serbia’s constitution. The bolded most frequent key words were ones that Serbia and Ukraine shared. For Serbia, the following geopolitical words occurred the most times, with their frequency totals in parenthesis: • International (33), emergency (30), territory (23), war (20), relations (12), flag (9), boundary (8), coat-of-arms (6), identity (4), and anthem (4) Given Serbia’s notorious role in the Balkan Wars, having “international” and “emergency” on the most frequent list reflects its focus on international affairs and emergencies. “Relations,” “war,” and “territory” also suggest emphasis on foreign matters. The remaining most frequent items (“flag,” “boundary,” “coat-of-arms,” “identity,” “anthem”) reinforce Serbia’s public image and territorial claims. Having lost more than half of its pre-1991 territory, Belgrade unsurprisingly included “territory” and “war” the most. Regarding Ukraine, the following geopolitical

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Table 13 Geopolitical key words 1. Territory 2. Democracy 3. Europe 4. Sovereign 5. Flag 6. God 7. Symbol 8. Resources 9. Independence 10. Military

11. Armed forces 12. International 13. National security 14. Identity 15. Homeland 16. Water/land 17. Aggression 18. Boundary 19. War 20. Peace

21. Relations 22. Defense 23. Coat-of-arms 24. National colors 25. Anthem 26. Church 27. Emergency 28. Air 29. Indivisible

Note: The following variations of key words (in the same sequence as shown in the above list) were included in the scanning: “territories,” “democratic,” “Euro,” “European,” “sovereignty,” “independent,” “army,” “armies,” “motherland,” “sea,” “seas,” “island,” “islands,” “boundaries,” “border,” “borders,” “frontier,” “wars,” “wartime,” “warfare,” “defense,” “Christian,” “Islam,” “mosque,” “emergencies,” “air space,” “airport,” “airports,” and “indivisibility” 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

Montenegro

South Sudan

Tunisia

air

indivisible

Islam

emergency

colors

anthem

defense

coat-of-arms

relations

war

peace

boundary

water/land

aggression

identity

homeland

international

Serbia

national security

military

armed forces

independence

symbol

resources

flag

God

Europe

sovereignty

territory

democracy

0

Ukraine

Fig. 8 Frequency of select geopolitical key words, in post-9/11 constitutions

words (with their frequencies included in parenthesis) appeared the most times in its constitution. The bolded terms were tied with Serbia, as previously mentioned: • Territory (23), defense (23), military (20), national security (19), sovereignty (9), indivisible (9), coat-of-arms (6), symbol (5), homeland (3), and aggression (3) Aside from measuring individual word frequency totals, the sum combination of all selected key words revealed another perspective of the outcome. In this

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case, South Sudan yielded the highest total frequency of geopolitical key words with 290 compared to Tunisia’s lowest overall sum of 119. Unlike South Sudan, Tunisia did not experience war with its neighbors and possesses an ethnically homogeneous society, which reduces its compelling need to assert its identity and geopolitical claims. In South Sudan’s case, their horrific decades of warfare (which continues internally) evoked an urgency to project their new status in a manner that zealously conformed to the UDHR as a means of obtaining their much longed for recognition and acceptance from the global community. Next, Table 14 shows each post-9/11 constitution’s total frequency and their sum of low- and high-count key words. For each measurement row, the highest group’s results are bolded, and the lowest are in italics. Table 14’s “total low” tabulates the sum of lowest frequency counts of a key word for each country. For example, since Tunisia did not have the word “indivisible” in its constitution, it received one “total low” to its designated column. Also, since Tunisia mentioned the word “international” only four times, less than the others, it received a second “total low.” Table 14 shows that Tunisia had the highest sum (16) of “total lows” for the selected key words compared to Sudan’s lowest number (5) of “total lows.” In contrast, the “total high” tabulates the sum of each country’s highest frequency counts of key words. In this case, Serbia and Ukraine shared the highest number (10) of “total highs” indicating that they had the highest frequency for the most selected key words. Meanwhile, Montenegro had the lowest sum (3) of “total highs.” Whenever two or more countries tied, all were given a “total high” or a “total low.” In circumstances when all countries yielded the same key word frequency count, no “total high” or “total low” count was added. As noted previously, Serbia’s and Ukraine’s highest sums of “total highs” are likely in response to armed conflicts with their neighbors. For Serbia, warfare and subsequent loss of territories with Kosovo (with Albanian involvement), Bosnia, and Croatia created a need to conform. In Ukraine’s case, ongoing civil uprisings with ethnic Russians have also included substantial territorial losses. Having the most “total highs” might indicate that Serbia and Ukraine strongly seek to solidify their own national identity. In Tunisia’s case, as previously noted, having the highest sum of “total lows” may reflect its less urgent need to articulate its geopolitical identity due to having no imminent external threats. Next, Fig. 9 shows the outcome of the geopolitical key word scan for the post-Cold War constitutions. Table 14 Total post-9/11 state geopolitical key word frequencies, sums of high and low word counts Key words Total frequency Total low Total high

Montenegro 157 12 3

Serbia 227 8 10

S. Sudan 290 5 7

Tunisia 119 16 4

Ukraine 222 7 10

Total 1015 NA NA

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Figure 9 shows the frequency of commonly used geopolitical terms found within these selected post-Cold War constitutions. Table 19, in the Appendix, lists Fig. 6’s entire numerical outcome. Croatia (blue) with 10, followed by Poland (yellow) with nine, had the most frequent occurrences of these specified geopolitical terms within their constitutions. Regarding Croatia, the following words were most frequent in its constitution, with its number of occurrences in parenthesis: • Europe (39), peace (17), international (14), war (10), aggression (10), sovereignty (7), national colors (4), independence (3), identity (3), and flag (twice) Regarding Poland, the following words were most frequent in its constitution, with its number of occurrences in parenthesis: • National security (45), territory (15), water/land (6), boundary (5), symbol (5), defense (5), God (3), homeland (3), and anthem (3) Figures 5 and 6 also reveal the total number of frequencies for these selected key words. In Croatia’s case, it also had the highest total frequency of geopolitical key words with 218 compared to the Czech Republic’s lowest sum of 101 (see Table 14). Unlike Croatia, the Czech Republic has not recently experienced war with its neighbors and (like Tunisia) has an ethnically homogeneous society. As previously noted, in the 1990s Croatia engaged in armed conflicts with neighboring Bosnia and 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

Estonia

Fig. 9 Frequency of select geopolitical key words, in post-Cold War states

air

indivisible

emergency

colors

Christian

defense

Poland

coat-of-arms

relations

war

peace

boundary

water/land

aggression

identity

Czech Rep.

homeland

international

national security

military

armed forces

resources

Croatia

independence

God

symbol

Flag

Anthem

Europe

Sovereignty

territory

democracy

0

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Serbia where sizeable numbers of Croatian minorities also live. In contrast, the Czech Republic’s independence resulted from a peaceful divorce with Slovakia in 1993. Prague (the Czech capital) has not experienced any armed conflicts since the 1968 Soviet invasion. That possible threat has vanished when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Its most equivalent successor, the Russian Federation, no longer poses an immediate geopolitical danger because other countries now separate the two countries (such as Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine). With 169 geopolitical key words, Poland had the second highest total frequency. Though ethnically homogeneous and having peacefully transitioned away from communism in the early 1990s, Poland endured Soviet-invoked martial law in the early 1980s which prompted demands for greater geopolitical independence (Baker 2006a, b). Both Poland and Croatia strongly sought to solidify a national identity free from a formidable neighbor’s unpopular influence. Separating themselves from Moscow and Belgrade also meant drafting a constitution that would appease the European Union, which they both subsequently joined to boost their efforts in demonstrating their newfound autonomy. Next, Table 15 shows each post-Cold War state’s total frequency and the sum of their low- and high-count key words. The highest and lowest groups’ results are bolded for each measurement. Table 15’s “total low” tabulates the sum of lowest frequency counts of a key word for each country. For example, since the Czech Republic did not have the word “war” in its constitution, it received one “total low” to its designated column. Also, since the Czech Republic mentioned the word “international” only once, less than the others, it received a second “total low.” Table 15 shows that the Czech Republic had the highest sum (16) of “total lows” for the selected key words compared to Croatia and Poland’s lowest sum (7) of “total lows.” In contrast, the “total high” tabulates the sum of highest frequency counts of a key word for each country. In this case, Croatia had the highest sum (10) of “total highs” indicating that it had the highest frequency for the most selected key words. Meanwhile, Estonia had the lowest sum (3) of “total highs.” As with Table 14, in the event of a tie, two or more countries were given a “total high” or a “total low.” Also, in circumstances when all countries had the same key word frequency count, no total high or low count was tabulated. As noted previously, Croatia’s highest sum of “total highs” may be in response to having engaged in armed conflicts with neighboring Serbia and Bosnia. Having the most “total highs” might indicate that Croatia, like Serbia and Ukraine in Table 14, strongly seeks to solidify its national identity. In the Czech Republic’s case, as Table 15 Total post-Cold War state geopolitical key word frequencies, sums of high and low word counts Key words Total frequency Total low Total high

Croatia 218 7 10

Czech Rep. 101 16 4

Estonia 115 12 3

Poland 169 7 9

Total 603 NA NA

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Decoding Geopolitical Language in New Constitutions: An Analysis of. . .

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Table 16 Conformity rates, matching key words in constitutions

Croatia Czech Republic Estonia Poland Montenegro Serbia South Sudan Tunisia Ukraine

Conformity Percentage 96 94 86 98 96 100 94 78 98

Total Key Word Frequency 492 435 338 582 578 775 637 277 643

Yellow = most frequent, Blue = least frequent

previously noted, having the highest sum “total lows” may reflect its less urgent need to articulate its geopolitical identity due to having no imminent external threats. In the Appendix, Charts A and B illustrate the “total highs” and “total lows” of geopolitical key frequencies for post-Cold War states and post-September 11th states, as shown in Tables 16, and 17.

22

Concluding Comments

When comparing results from the post-Cold War and post-9/11 groups, there is a trend toward increasing conformity, higher individual key word totals, higher overall key word totals, and increased geopolitical content compatible with the UDHR among the newer constitutions. Factors that influenced conformity include relations with neighboring states (i.e., Ukraine and Serbia’s recent/current armed conflicts) and regional ambitions (i.e., the EU, the Arab Maghreb, or African unity such as in South Sudan’s constitutional Article 43). Ukraine’s high degree of conformity may be attributed to its hopes of retaining its territory and national identity. Additional geopolitical content (i.e., their chapters dedicated to territorial matters) reinforces Ukraine’s sense of urgency. Serbia’s high conformity offers a different explanation. Their new constitution is purposefully more inclusive of other ethnic groups. Its highest frequency of UDHR key words reflects its need for acceptance from the world community. Another observation from these findings is that constitutional drafts are becoming longer, addressing more specific issues, and are increasingly crafted by a collaborative, interdependent process and environment. Consequently, the Post-9/11 constitutions exhibit more political philosophical conformity. Their constitutions aspire (i.e., Tunisia and South Sudan) to impress outsiders while also expounding in greater details the more functional portions of their document. Public pressures may seem subtle, but the common language used (e.g., “democracy”) illustrates a profound impact that is tantamount to groupthink. The magnitude of such an overreaching

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Table 17 Item frequency for post-Cold War states Key Word 1) dignity 2) inalienable 3) human rights 4) right 5) free 6) justice 7) speech 8) belief 9) equal 10) race/color 11) sex/gender 12) language 13) religion 14) political 15) national 16) property 17) life 18) liberty 19) security 20) slave/forced labor 21) torture 22) degrading 23) protection 24) arrest/detention 25) independent

Estonia 1 2 0 114 41 8 0 6 8 2 1 13 6 10 8 8 7 7 3 1 1 1 3 1 6

Czech 4 2 7 131 65 0 1 3 11 2 1 5 10 15 9 11 11 3 12 1 1 1 26 9 10

Poland 10 1 1 141 69 6 1 4 19 1 1 3 21 20 6 11 10 11 21 1 1 1 21 22 7

Croatia 2 2 13 105 57 3 1 0 24 4 3 11 10 14 18 5 10 7 11 2 1 0 28 11 18

Total 17 7 21 491 232 17 3 13 62 9 6 32 47 59 41 35 38 28 47 5 4 3 78 43 41

26) fair 27) guilt/innocent 28) privacy 29) family 30) honor/reputation 31) home/residence 32) movement 33) leave/return 34) asylum 35) marry/consent 36) thought/conscience 37) community 38) opinion/expression 39) assemble 40) association 41) will 42) culture 43) work 44) unions 45) rest/leisure 46) medicine 47) mother 48) child 49) education 50) participation Key Word Totals:

1 2 0 6 3 2 2 1 0 10 2 1 3 1 3 1 4 9 8 0 1 0 7 10 3 Estonia 330

1 4 1 3 2 4 3 2 2 9 4 5 4 3 5 0 5 6 3 0 3 0 6 5 3 Czech 435

4 2 2 8 3 12 4 2 1 29 5 8 2 2 9 1 10 13 12 1 1 2 17 14 9 Poland 576

1 4 1 5 1 11 3 5 1 14 4 6 5 1 13 1 14 8 5 1 1 1 12 10 4 Croatia 489

7----12 4 22 9 29 12 10 4 62 15 20 14 7 30 3 33 36 28 2 6 3 42 39 19----Total 1830

Yellow = most frequent, Blue = least frequent Note 1: The following variations of key words (in the same sequence as shown in the above list) were included in the scanning: “rights,” “freedom,” “injustice,” “believe,” “believes,” “beliefs,” “believer,” “believers,” “equality,” “languages,” “religions,” “religious,” “nationality,” “nationalities,” “properties,” “liberties,” “arrested,” “independently,” “unfair,” “fairly,” “guilty,” “innocence,” “honor,” “marriage,” “assembly,” “association,” “cultural,” “working,” “medicine,” “motherhood,” “childhood,” “educational,” “participation,” and “communities” Note 2: Regarding “race/color,” pertains to race or ethnicity Note 3: Regarding “property,” means private property Note 4: Regarding “hono(u)r,” excludes use of “hono(u)r” in oaths Note 5: Regarding “home/residence,” meaning a dwelling

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Note 6: Regarding “leave/return,” refers to someone leaving and returning Note 7: Regarding “marry/consent,” related to personal consent, not consent between governmental bodies Note 8: Regarding “assemble,” excludes Assembly, as a proper noun. Relating to the right of assembling Note 9: Regarding “will,” relating to an individual’s “free will” Note 10: Regarding “work,” related to vacation, or not working Note 11: Regarding “rest/leisure,” related to vacation, or not working Note 12: Regarding “education,” excluded proper nouns

influence is the manifestation of a global political philosophy and geopolitical neocolonialism that reflects what President George H. W. Bush famously proclaimed as “the new world order.” Thus, the Universal Human Rights Declaration acts as philosophical soft power that subtly applies political pressure unlike hard powers (i.e., military threats or occupations as previously witnessed in traditional empires). Conforming to one form of government and having a nearly identical list of values (see Table 7) constrain a state’s independent voice, its expression of character, and autonomy because their national ambitions are harnessed and tainted by their inability to act freely. The consistent, over 90% content conformity to the UDHR underscores that document’s philosophical hegemony. Thus, the global political philosophy consensus of compliance greatly diminishes a state’s territorial claims and geopolitical ambitions with the exception of regional external influences (e.g., European states hoping to join the EU). Another geopolitical example is the Russian-Soviet residual influence which affects the wording of Estonia. For example, Estonia’s defensive response included chapters dedicated to preserving its sovereignty. Such geopolitical contents help explain Estonia joining NATO shortly after its independence. Unlike Estonia, Ukraine adopted a conciliatory approach with Russia by not joining NATO or the EU. The 2014 Crimean annexation and ethnic Russian military forces occupying portions of eastern Ukraine underscore a sovereignty crisis for Ukraine’s constitution (see Table 13). Ethnic Russian communities continue challenging Estonian and Ukrainian nationalist (see Table 3) interests. Therefore, absolute dominant population percentage does not play a central role in determining a state’s desire to create a pro-human rights image; rather it is determined by the international community’s perception and the minority population’s distribution within the state’s territory. The ethnic Russian population in Ukraine referred to in constitutional Chaps., “Territorial Structure of Ukraine” and 10, “Autonomous Republic of Crimea” represents a concentrated geopolitical force that threatens ethnic Ukrainian dominance. In contrast, by joining the European Union and NATO, Estonia is less geopolitically threatened despite its large ethnic Russian population. As predicted, ethnic homogeneity, as witnessed in the Czech Republic and Poland, acts as a centripetal, stabilizing force which reduces the necessity of including geopolitical content in constitutions. In contrast, Ukraine’s significant ethnic Russian population directly contributed to its sizable geopolitical content.

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Table 18 Numerical findings of key word frequencies from the UDHR in post-9/11 states Key Word 1) dignity 2) inalienable 3) human rights 4) right 5) free 6) justice 7) speech 8) belief 9) equal 10) race/color 11) sex/gender 12) language 13) religion 14) political 15) national 16) property 17) life 18) liberty 19) security 20) slave/forced labor 21) torture` 22) degrading 23) protection 24) arrest/detention 25) independent 26) fair 27) guilt/innocent 28) privacy 29) family 30) honor/reputation 31) home/residence 32) movement 33) leave/return 34) asylum 35) marry/consent 36) thought/conscience 37) community 38) opinion/expression 39) assemble 40) association 41) will 42) culture 43) work 44) unions 45) rest/leisure 46) medical 47) mother 48) child 49) education 50) participate

Key Word Totals:

Montenegro 6 1 17 116 31 3 1 7 20 3 3 15 21 13 39 18 6 42 25 4 2 2 28 12 10 5 3 4 3 4 8 4 1 2 7 8 9 6 3 8 2 14 9 5 0 3 2 11 7 0

Montenegro 578

Serbia 5 2 40 172 68 6 1 7 33 4 7 20 34 22 1 11 6 10 14 6 1 1 55 29 16 2 3 1 4 1 7 3 4 3 11 6 14 14 5 14 3 20 10 5 1 1 4 25 19 3

Serbia 775

S. Sudan 15 1 28 99 49 14 0 10 16 5 12 10 27 23 5 9 33 5 31 7 3 3 14 6 28 10 2 3 9 2 5 2 3 0 7 0 27 8 2 7 11 17 3 5 1 3 2 15 25 7

S. Sudan 637

Tunisia 5 0 9 58 37 9 0 2 9 1 0 3 4 7 7 5 3 2 11 0 2 0 8 8 17 9 2 1 2 0 2 4 2 2 1 2 0 5 0 4 2 9 4 4 1 0 0 2 6 5

Tunisia 277

Ukraine 7 2 22 131 71 14 2 4 19 2 1 14 11 30 9 29 12 1 33 2 1 1 37 14 3 1 12 1 7 4 5 0 3 2 7 2 12 4 1 10 4 25 15 6 3 8 5 9 15 5

Ukraine 643

Total 38 6 116 576 256 46 4 30 97 15 23 62 97 95 61 72 60 60 114 19 9 7 142 69 74 27--22 10 25 11 27 13 13 9 33 18 62 37 11 43 22 85 41 25 6 15 13 62 72 20---

Total 2910

Yellow = most frequent, Blue = least frequent Note 1: The following variations of key words (in the same sequence as shown in the above list) were included in the scanning: “rights,” “freedom,” “injustice,” “believe,” “believes,” “beliefs,” “believer,” “believers,” “equality,” “languages,” “religions,” “religious,” “nationality,” “nationalities,” “properties,” “liberties,” “arrested,” “independently,” “unfair,” “fairly,” “guilty,” “innocence,” “honor,” “marriage,” “assembly,” “cultural,” “working,” “medicine,” “motherhood,” “childhood,” “educational,” “participation,” and “communities” Note 2: Pertaining to race or ethnicity, includes “color” Note 3: Relating to the word “honor,” excludes use of “hono(u)r” in oaths Note 4: The word “consent” as it relates to personal consent, not consent between governmental bodies Note 5: The word “work” as it relates to employment

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Table 19 Numerical findings of geopolitical key words, post-Cold War state constitutions Key Words 1) territory 2) democracy 3) Europe 4) sovereign 5) flag 6) anthem 7) God 8) symbol 9) resources 10) independence 11) military 12) armed forces 13) international 14) national security 15) identity 16) homeland 17) water/land 18) aggression 19) boundary 20) war 21) peace 22) relations 23) defense 24) coat-of-arms 25) colors 26) Christian/Islam 27) emergency 28) air 29) indivisible Total

Croatia 8 14 39 7 2 2 0 1 3 10 7 14 33 3 1 4 10 1 10 17 7 3 12 4 1 0 2 0 3 218

Czech Rep. 11 16 5 0 1 1 0 3 1 0 12 1 26 0 1 2 1 1 0 4 3 5 1 1 1 2 1 0 1 101

Estonia

Poland

Total

Differential

1 7 2 1 1 0 0 0 1 3 4 6 17 2 1 0 4 3 6 11 5 4 15 1 1 2 14 2 1 115

15 6 0 2 1 3 5 0 2 10 9 12 45 2 3 6 0 5 3 8 4 5 11 3 3 1 5 0 0 169

35 43 46 10 5 6 5 4 7 23 32 33 121 7 6 12 15 10 19 40 19 17 39 9 6 5 22 2 5 603

14 10 39 7 1 3 5 3 2 10 8 13 28 3 2 2 10 4 10 13 4 2 14 3 2 2 13 2 NA

Yellow = most frequent, Blue = least frequent Note 1: The following variations of key words (in the same sequence as shown in the above list) were included in the scanning: “territories,” “democratic,” “Euro,” “European,” “sovereignty,” “army,” “armies,” “motherland,” “sea,” “seas,” “island,” “islands,” “lands,” “border,” “borders,” “boundaries,” “wars,” “wartime,” “defense,” “church,” “mosque,” “emergencies,” “air space,” “airports,” and “indivisibility” Note 2: The key word count excludes proper pronouns Note 3: Regarding the word “colors,” pertains to national colors

This high conformity rate exists because of the Bosnia conflict. Ethnic composition, particularly a history of ethnic turmoil, can contribute to conformity. Serbia, with the highest conformity rate, is more homogeneous than Estonia and slightly more than Ukraine. External considerations again manifested greater influence than internal ethnic population compositions. Recent or current armed external struggles, such as Croatia’s involvement in Bosnia, impact the state’s projected geopolitical image. In conclusion, ethnic homogeneity, age of constitution, recent political events, and regional influences influence linguistic conformity to international human rights. Political states are continually pressured by instant global communication to acknowledge and recognize minorities within its constitutional text. The degree of conformity is affected by minority population density and its distribution within a landscape and by the degree of external scrutiny based upon recent or current ethnic group relations. Thus, the state’s dominant titular population is more restricted from

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Table 20 Numerical findings of geopolitical key words, post-9/11 state constitutions Key Words 1) territory 2) democracy 3) Europe 4) sovereign 5) flag 6) God 7) symbol 8) resources 9) independence 10) military 11) armed forces 12) international 13) national security 14) identity 15) homeland 16) water/land 17) aggression 18) boundary 19) war 20) peace 21) relations 22) defense 23) coat-of-arms 24) colors 25) anthem 26) Christian/Islam 27) emergency 28) air 29) indivisible Total

Montenegro 7 8 3 4 5 0 5 4 8 0 19 25 2 1 0 0 0 0 17 4 4 19 3 1 2 0 16 0 0 157

Serbia 23 12 1 6 9 0 4 10 10 0 12 33 2 4 0 6 0 8 20 3 12 7 6 0 4 4 30 0 1 227

S. Sudan 9 19 0 5 3 7 2 37 7 9 23 22 14 1 1 51 2 8 15 17 3 4 2 0 2 0 20 7 0 290

Tunisia 5 5 0 4 3 14 1 18 14 13 9 3 5 0 2 4 3 2 1 4 2 0 0 0 1 5 1 0 0 119

Ukraine 23 6 0 9 2 1 5 4 11 20 13 18 19 1 3 11 3 7 3 3 0 23 6 0 3 2 17 0 9 222

Total 67 50 4 28 22 22 17 73 50 42 76 101 42 7 6 73 8 25 56 31 21 53 17 1 12 11 84 7 10 1015

Differential 18 14 3 5 7 14 4 33 7 20 14 30 17 4 3 51 3 8 19 14 12 23 6 1 3 5 29 7 8 171

Yellow = most frequent, Blue = least frequent

expressing their sovereign geopolitical views if cultural and ethnic diversity exist to challenge them. Overall, the trend toward a globalized political philosophy, which stifles state individuality and embraces a culture of conformity, continues.

Appendix Chart A: Geopolitical Key Word Frequency, Post-9/11 States (See Table 8) Ukraine Tunisia South Sudan Serbia Montenegro 0

2

4

6 # of Highest

8

10

12

14

16

# of Lowest

Chart B: Geopolitical Key Word Frequency, Post-Cold War States (See Table 9)

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Decoding Geopolitical Language in New Constitutions: An Analysis of. . .

1025

Poland Estonia Czech Rep. Croatia 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

# of Lowest

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

# of Highest

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Changes in the Sociolinguistic Ecology of Jewish Communities

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Jews offer a noteworthy example of the geography of language. Beginning with the migration of Jews from ancient Palestine to other areas in the Middle East and continuing through contemporary migrations to and from the State of Israel and the Americas, Jews have dispersed throughout many parts of the world. In most of these migrations, Jews have, within a generation or two, adopted a variant of the local language, yielding such Jewish language varieties as Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Malayalam. Much of their linguistic distinctiveness has involved lexical influences from the Hebrew and Aramaic of Jews’ sacred texts, but there are also lexical and grammatical influences from former languages and other sources. We analyze Jewish communities as existing on a continuum of linguistic distinctiveness: some have spoken varieties almost identical to those of their non-Jewish neighbors, with only the addition of a few Hebrew words, and others have revealed significant differences in pronunciation and grammar. In the

S. B. Benor (*) Contemporary Jewish Studies, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. Spolsky Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_9

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cases of the two best known diaspora Jewish languages, Yiddish and Ladino, Jewish communities maintained a language for several centuries following migration, enriching it with influences from the new local languages with which they were in contact. Contemporary Jews continue the age-old practice of Jewish linguistic distinctiveness, creating new language varieties like Jewish English, Jewish Swedish, and Jewish Mexican Spanish. This chapter describes the history of Jewish migrations through the lens of language, adding to our understanding of the role of migration and language contact in language ecology. Keywords

Jewish languages · Jew · Language contact · Diglossia

1

Introduction

When it comes to the geography of language, Jews offer an interesting example. They are a diasporic group, having migrated in antiquity from Palestine to locations around the Middle East and North Africa and eventually to many areas of Europe, Asia, and the New World (Spolsky 2014, 2016). Jews are also a religious group, sharing rituals and sacred texts throughout their dispersion. In contrast to some other diasporic groups, which maintain a shared spoken language, Jews have generally acquired variants of the local language for vernacular use, leading to language varieties like Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Malayalam, and Judeo-Arabic. In addition, a few Jewish communities have maintained a separate language following a migration or language shift, most prominently Yiddish (Judeo-German in Eastern Europe) and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish in Ottoman and Balkan lands); these are known as “post-coterritorial Jewish languages” (Benor 2008). In modern times, emancipation, migration, the destruction of much of European Jewry, the expulsion from Arab lands, globalization, and a return to an independent Jewish state initiated major changes. Many of the long-standing language varieties are now extinct or endangered, and Yiddish, once the most widespread Jewish language, is limited to segregated Hasidic communities and post-vernacular use among others. In the State of Israel, a revernacularized Hebrew has flourished, with the added effect of changing diaspora Jews’ relationship to their holy tongue. And modernized Jewish communities in the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere are still creating new Jewish language varieties, incorporating influences from Hebrew and other diaspora Jewish varieties. (See, for example, Benor (2009) on Jewish English; Dean-Olmsted and Skura (2016) on Jewish Latin American Spanish; Klagsbrun Lebenswerd (2016) on Jewish Swedish; and Rosenhouse (2016) on Jewish Hungarian.) Aside from post-coterritorial Jewish languages, most Jewish language varieties can be seen as existing along a continuum of distinctiveness in relation to the local non-Jewish varieties. Some differ only by the incorporation of in-group terminology particularly related to religious observance, and others have systematic differences in grammar and pronunciation. This chapter discusses this continuum of

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distinctiveness, offering historical and linguistic information on Jews throughout the world. (Details about this history can be found in Spolsky (2014), and other useful resources are Weinreich 2008[1973] and Lowenstein 2000. Details on each of the language varieties can be found in Kahn and Rubin 2016.) In each community, there is a dynamic sociolinguistic ecology (Haugen 1971), meaning how groups of people engage with multiple languages and language varieties. There is also a situation of triglossia (see Ferguson 1959 on diglossia), involving a language used by local non-Jews, a Jewish variety based on it (or based on a previous local language), and the Hebrew-Aramaic of sacred texts and often other written uses. There is a long history of scholarship about the languages spoken and written by Jews (see surveys in Wexler 1981 and Sunshine 1995). Much of this literature includes debates about what constitutes a “Jewish language” and what is just a “dialect.” We consider this question to be unproductive (see Benor 2008), so we use the term “Jewish language variety” or, sometimes, “Jewish language” to refer to any language used distinctively by a Jewish community. Some scholars consider Jewish languages to include only those written with Hebrew letters, but others have critiqued this stance (see Fishman 1985). Much of the literature on Jewish languages excludes contemporary Jews (e.g., Weinreich 2008[1973]; Paper 1978; AlvarezPéreyre & Baumgarten 2003; Myhill 2004), but some researchers have incorporated them in their comparative analysis (e.g., Gold and Prager 1981–1987; Gold 1981, 1985, 1986; Rabin 1981; Steinmetz 1981; Fishman 1985; Prager 1986; Weiser 1995; Spolsky and Benor 2006; Benor 2008; Hary 2009; Kahn and Rubin 2016). There are a few primary reasons that Jewish languages have differed from their non-Jewish correlates (see details in Bar-Asher 2002; Benor 2008; Hary 2009). First, Jews have lived in various degrees of segregation, often being excluded or excluding themselves from full membership in the surrounding society. This has led to small or large differences in pronunciation, grammar, intonation, and lexicon. Second, Jews have over the ages written, studied, and recited Hebrew and Aramaic sacred texts, and these languages have influenced the spoken and written languages of Jews, primarily in lexicon (hundreds of borrowed words and phrases from Hebrew and Aramaic) and orthography (many Jewish communities, especially in the past, have written their language in Hebrew characters). Third, Jews’ history of migration has led to distinctive features, including influences from earlier Jewish languages and regional dialects. Finally, in the 20th and 21st centuries, Modern Hebrew in the State of Israel has contributed lexicon, discourse markers, and systems of Hebrew pronunciation in Jewish communities throughout the world. To understand the many situations of language contact in Jewish communities, we turn to the concept of linguistic repertoire. Gumperz (1965) defined a repertoire as “the totality of linguistic forms regularly employed within the community in the course of socially significant interaction.” This can involve multiple languages or multiple varieties of the same language (we distinguish between these hesitantly because deciding whether two ways of speaking are the same language is ideologically fraught), and people use different languages/varieties in their repertoire in different situations and with different audiences. Ray Jackendoff’s parallel architecture (2012) suggests a linguistic mechanism for Gumperz’s understanding of

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repertoire. Language items, whether lexical or grammatical, carry semantic, syntactic, and phonological information and are also marked for sociolinguistic appropriateness, laying down with whom and in which situations they can be used. Jackendoff limits this to style, but it seems reasonable to add the full spectrum of sociolinguistic criteria. Applying these approaches to Jewish linguistic history, we argue that individuals have not used a “pure” labeled language like Aramaic, Hebrew, or Judeo-Arabic, but rather a dynamic repertoire of items from each of the varieties to which they have been exposed. Jews’ speech may have resembled that of their non-Jewish neighbors, but it was influenced to varying degrees by the Hebrew and Aramaic of the sacred texts, the Jewish languages spoken before the most recent language shift(s), and – in modern times – the Modern Hebrew of Israel. In each verbal encounter (spoken or written), a speaker would be able to choose the items that were most likely to be comprehensible or socially acceptable. This practice continues today. The authors of this paper are Jews and native speakers of English from the United States and New Zealand, respectively. We are both religiously engaged, and we regularly recite prayers and study texts in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew and, to a lesser degree, Rabbinic Aramaic. We have both spent time in Israel, and the second author currently lives there; we are proficient in Modern Hebrew. When we speak English to someone who is Jewishly knowledgeable, we sometimes use Hebrew and Yiddish words, as well as Yiddish- and Hebrewinfluenced intonation and other distinctive features. But when we speak to someone who is not Jewish (or is Jewish but is not enmeshed in Jewish social networks), we avoid these distinctive features. And when we speak about Jewish topics or in religious settings, we use more Hebrew words than when we speak about notspecifically-Jewish topics. This dynamism is a significant feature, allowing for the addition of new items in a changing linguistic environment. It is this kind of model that accounts for the development of the many Jewish varieties of language as Jews have migrated from one locale to another.

2

History

Tracing the history of these varieties as they developed in the diaspora over the centuries, then, is largely a matter of following the course of the Jewish migrations, forced or voluntary, that followed the expulsion from the homeland and brought Jews to virtually every part of the world. We begin our world tour in the Babylonian exile in the sixth century before the Common Era. The Hebrew monolingualism of the early kingdom was broken first by the Babylonian exile and the forced transfer of other populations into Judah, leading to a slow shift of many speakers to a Jewish variety of the Aramaic that was taking over much of the ancient Middle East. It was Aramaic that provided the basis for the local Jewish vernaculars, the literary language of the Babylonian Talmud, and the Neo-Aramaic varieties which survived the Islamic conquest and some of which are still spoken by immigrants in Israel today (Khan and Napiorkowska 2015). To this

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was added the Greek of new settlements and government. As a result, by the end of the millennium and the time of the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, most Jews in Babylon and Roman Judea spoke a Jewish variety of Aramaic, the language in which much of the New Testament was composed. Other Jews, especially if they had contact with the Roman government in Palestine or if they lived in the growing diaspora around the Mediterranean, knew and spoke Greek (Sperber 2012), which developed into a Judeo-Greek that spread into France and Slavic lands (Coverly 2003). In some parts of Judea, especially in the South and later in Galilee, Hebrew remained the vernacular (Spolsky 1983). In addition, after the destruction of the Temple, a sizeable proportion of the Jewish population finally acceded to rabbinic urging to teach boys Hebrew starting at age six (Botticini and Eckstein 2012). Throughout the Jewish world, this responsibility was passed from fathers to local Jewish primary schools, producing in time a literate (male) population able to handle the switch from farming to commerce and professions, and establishing Hebrew as a unifying written language of Jews who spoke diverse vernaculars. In the Mediterranean diaspora, the main variety was initially Greek; it was influential also in Roman-governed Palestine (there were over 1000 Greek words in Talmudic sources). Greek was the principal Jewish variety in the towns which later became the nuclei for Christianity, including much of Italy. This developed into the variety labelled Judeo-Greek. In North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, it was in time replaced by a variety of Arabic, the early history of which can be traced back to the Jewish tribes that Muhammad fought and that his successors expelled from Saudi Arabia. Judeo-Arabic evolved in the communities living in the isolating conditions laid down by the Pact of Omar for Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians living in countries under Islamic domination. The implementation of the various provisions of what is known as dhimmitude varied from time to time and location to location, but it included restrictions on interaction: no admittance to Quranic education, no use of normal Arabic names or seals, separate bathhouses for women, bans on the building of religious institutions, no Islamic servants or slaves, houses built lower than those of Muslims, and no riding on horses and camels (Fierro and Tolan 2013). Despite these restrictions, Jewish communities in Arab lands did acquire Arabic, distinguishing it with Hebrew words and other features. Many Jewish religious books were written in what Blau (1965, 2002) labeled Middle Arabic, and spoken varieties developed that were in some cases quite similar to local non-Jewish varieties and in others so different to be mutually unintelligible (Hary 2012). Many Jews shifted away from Judeo-Arabic in the modern era when offered the choice of learning colonial languages like French in Algeria and Tunisia, Spanish in Morocco, Italian in Libya, and English in Egypt. When Jews were expelled from Arab lands after the United Nations recognition of Israel in 1948, they shifted to Hebrew in Israel and (Jewish varieties) of local languages in France, the Americas, and other new areas of settlement. With the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century, Jews came there together with the invading Berbers and Arabs, bringing their JudeoArabic into contact with the local Romance varieties that later became Spanish. These Jews, known as Sephardic Jews or Sephardim, acquired Spanish (as well as

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Portuguese and Catalan) and modified it by adding Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic features. At the end of the fifteenth century, Spanish-speaking Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal and migrated mainly to Ottoman-ruled territory in North Africa, the Balkans, and Turkey. However, unlike most other Jewish communities, they did not shift to the local languages. Instead they maintained their Judeo-Spanish for several centuries away from the Iberian Peninsula (Bunis 2010). In Morocco, descendants of these migrants developed a Judeo-Spanish variety known as Haketia, influenced by Arabic (Bentolila 2010). In the Ottoman Empire and Balkan regions, their Judeo-Spanish, known as Ladino, Judezmo/Dzhudezmo, or Spanyolit, incorporated influences from Turkish, Greek, and Slavic languages. Ladino developed into a major Jewish written variety but was replaced in Turkey first by the French introduced in Alliance Universelle Israelite schools and then by the Turkish spread under Atatürk by compulsory schooling (Rodrigue 1990). Similarly, Ladinospeaking immigrants to the Americas and Israel adopted the local languages while maintaining some post-vernacular attraction to Sephardic language and culture. Today only a few thousand elderly speakers of Ladino remain (Bunis 2018). The Jewish diaspora spread into Christian Europe through a number of different routes, not just through Spain. There were Greek-speaking Jewish communities in what is now Italy, including Jewish slaves brought there after the destruction of the Temple. Although many of the Jews in Italy were restricted to ghettos, they acquired local Italian dialects and incorporated Hebrew words and distinctive pronunciations, yielding several varieties of Judeo-Italian, including Judeo-Roman, Judeo-Venetian, Judeo-Piedmontese (called by the speakers lason akodes), and Judeo-Livornese (Rubin 2016). During Roman times, Jews also migrated from Mediterranean communities to the south of France, where they developed a Jewish variety of Provençal known as Judeo-Provençal or Shuadit, and further north towards Paris, producing in the form of glosses and poetry the evidence of a Jewish variety of Old French (Levy 1941). Another route was from Greece via the Danube to Slavic regions, where Jews acquired Slavic languages, as attested in Old Czech or Judeo-Slavic glosses in manuscripts. Prague was an important Jewish site, where the Jews eventually adopted German from Bavarian invaders. By the turn of the second millennium, Jews had settled in Germanic lands and acquired local Germanic languages. Even in Germanic regions, the Jews’ German was influenced by Slavic languages, in addition to Hebrew and Aramaic, and developed distinctive grammatical structures. This Judeo-German eventually became known as Yiddish. When Jews migrated from Germanic lands to Slavic lands in the sixteenth century, they maintained their Yiddish language, incorporating more influences from local Slavic languages. Eastern European Jews developed a robust religious and secular Yiddish literature, publishing hundreds of thousands of books and periodicals, as well as producing theater and film. Yiddish was the most widely spoken Jewish language variety in history, spoken by about 11 million people in the early twentieth century. It is still spoken today by elderly Holocaust survivors, robust communities of Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews, and small pockets of Yiddish enthusiasts. In addition, there is post-vernacular interest in Yiddish especially in the Americas and Europe (Shandler 2005).

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In Persia, Judeo-Persian developed by the eighth century CE, and many Jewish texts were written in the fourteenth century. Diverse variants of Judeo-Persian and Judeo-Median were written and spoken throughout what is now Iran, in cities and towns like Isfahan and Yazd. Bukharan Jews developed Judeo-Tajik in the eighteenth century in Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent, and other areas of what is now Uzbekistan. Judeo-Tajik was for a brief time recognized by the Soviet Union, and there continues to be some use by Bukharan immigrants to Israel. Judeo-Tat, also known as Juhuri, has been spoken and written by communities in the Dagestan region of Azerbaijan and Russia and is still transmitted to children in one primarily Jewish town (Shalem 2018). In the Crimea, a Jewish Turkic language variety known as Krymchak developed but is now extinct. A related variety known as Karaim was used by Karaite Jews in Baltic countries and is now endangered (Jankowski 2016). Jews in Georgia spoke Judeo-Georgian, a variety of Georgian with Hebrew borrowings. In India, the Jews of Cochin in Kerala developed a variety of Malayalam, and it is still used by some immigrants to Israel. In North Africa, alongside Judeo-Arabic, a Jewish variety of Berber was used. In Ethiopia, Jews mainly spoke Amharic or Tigrinya; because their version of the Bible was in Ge’ez and they did not follow rabbinic liturgy, their languages there were not influenced by Hebrew or Aramaic. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Emancipation and Enlightenment of Jews in Europe brought many sociological and linguistic changes. Jews were able to integrate more fully into local societies and settle in territories previously off limits to them, and many did so, even as some remained segregated (like the Hasidim and the Misnagdim). In the first half of the twentieth century, secular Yiddish literature and culture flourished in Moscow, Warsaw, Vilna, and New York, and the Ladino press was vibrant in Salonika and Istanbul. Many of those who survived the Holocaust shifted from Yiddish and Ladino to local languages, creating Jewish varieties of Russian, Polish, German, Hungarian, French, English, and Scandinavian languages. Large waves of Jewish migration to the Americas and smaller waves to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa led to Jewish versions of English, Latin American Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. These new Jewish language varieties are influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic, as well by the earlier Jewish language varieties, depending where the migrants originated. Jewish Hungarian, Jewish Russian, Jewish Swedish, and Jewish English are heavily influenced by Yiddish, because Yiddish speakers made up the majority of Jews who shifted to Hungarian, Russian, Swedish, and English. Jewish French spoken by Jews who left North Africa is heavily influenced by North African Judeo-Arabic. In the same way, Jewish Mexican Spanish is heavily influenced by Yiddish, Ladino, and/or Syrian Judeo-Arabic, depending on the ancestry of the speaker. Most of these contemporary Jewish language varieties also borrow lexicon and other features from Modern Hebrew, dependent on the strength of the community’s connections to the State of Israel and the presence of Israeli emigrants. Finally, many of the language varieties have other distinctive features, especially in more insular communities. For example, Jewish English as spoken by Orthodox Jews includes distinctive vowels, intonation patterns, and grammatical structures largely derived from Yiddish.

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In addition to these, several new Jewish language varieties are developing among Jews who have immigrated to Israel and their descendants, including speakers of Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Russian and other former Soviet languages, English, Amharic, Hungarian, Malayalam, and French. These varieties tend to incorporate many influences from Israeli Hebrew, especially in lexicon, and they may maintain other distinctive features, as well as elements that have disappeared in the immigrants’ countries of origin. Lacking a current census or survey, it is difficult to assess the state of these many Israeli varieties; there are studies showing evidence of post-vernacular use, including theaters that perform in Yiddish or Judeo-Arabic, occasional or regular meetings of small groups of enthusiastic language speakers or learners, some nostalgic performance of folk songs, and some signs of renewed interest in the varieties among descendants of immigrants. In addition, more recent immigrant varieties, like Israeli Russian, Israeli French, and Israeli English, are vibrant due to continued migration from those language areas. There is no longer the official or unofficial condemnation of diaspora languages that was true before and in the early years of the State of Israel, as it is now accepted that they are not a threat to the hegemony of Hebrew.

3

Conclusion

As this short overview demonstrates, the Jewish people have a long, complicated history of migration and language shift. In a few cases, most notably Yiddish and Ladino, Jewish communities have maintained a language for several centuries following a migration. But in most of their peregrinations, they have adopted a variant of the local language, enriched by influences from their sacred texts, ancestral languages, and other sources. Contemporary Jewish communities continue this longstanding tradition of migration, language shift, and language distinction, adding a contemporary source of influence: the Modern Hebrew spoken in the State of Israel. Today, Yiddish persists as a post-vernacular variety and an isolating language for some Hasidim, and other immigrant communities maintain their heritage languages in post-vernacular ways. But for the most part, Jews in Israel tend to speak Hebrew, and Jews outside of Israel tend to speak the dominant language, with some diglossic use of textual Hebrew and Aramaic and Israeli Hebrew, which influence their primary languages to varying extents. Assuming that Jewish communities in the future continue their millennia-long history of migration and engagement with sacred texts, they will, we may safely guess, also continue their history of multilingualism and Jewish linguistic distinctiveness.

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Visualizing the United Nations’ 2001 “Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations” Through Postage Stamp Issues

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 UN Celebration Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Background to the Dialogue Among Civilizations Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Promoting the Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 A Stamp Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 “Dialogue” Stamps Issued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Countries Not Issuing Dialogue Stamps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Ongoing Scholarly Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Throughout United Nations’ history, the organization has celebrated “years” for many humanitarian, environmental, and human welfare concerns. All these efforts relate to the organization’s major goals of promoting inclusion, diversity, security, and peace. The UN declared that 2001 would be “Year of Dialogue among Civilizations” to call attention to the importance of supporting communication in its various forms among peoples around the world through a common stamp design that appeared in 60 countries. This chapter explores the background to this year, its provisions, and examples of stamp issues.

S. D. Brunn (*) Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] A. Gosar Department of Geography, University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_189

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Keywords

UN Year · Dialogue · Postage stamps · United Nations

Dialogue among civilizations constitutes an essential stage in the process of human development that is both sustainable and equitable. It humanizes globalization and lays the basis of an enduring peace, by nurturing conscience and a common base for human existence rooted in history, heritage and tradition. http://www.unesco.org/dialogue/en/ackground.htm

1

Introduction

As the major intergovernmental and international organization devoted to peace, security, human rights, and environmental awareness, the United Nations acknowledges these aspirations through its programs and official resolutions. Various governmental and nongovernmental organizations are invited to recommend “years” for the UN’s attention, either in the form of official resolutions, planning conferences, or issuing stamps to note the event. The history of UN sponsoring official days, years, and decade are described in this chapter. Specific attention is paid to the 2001 UN Year of Dialogue among Civilizations, its history, the official resolution, the postage stamp designed for this event, and examples of the stamp-issuing countries.

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UN Celebration Years

The United Nations confirms and reaffirms its goals and objectives in many different ways. These include resolutions passed by the General Assembly and announcement of UN days, years, and decades. Examples of these events are often acknowledged. Some of these events are associated with the issuance of postage stamps. The history of declaring international years in scholarly and government communities precedes the founding of the United Nations in 1945. For example, the International Polar Year was declared in 1882–1883 and again in 1932–1933. The International Geophysical Year was celebrated in 1957–1958 to mark this group’s 75th Anniversary. The first celebration year associated with the UN’s human rights concerns was the World Refugee Year in 1959–1960. During the last four decades of the last century, there were 4 designated years in the 1960s and 11 in the 1990s. In the first decade of the present century, there were 29 years associated with a specific topic or theme. From 2010 to 2018, there were 21 years. The year 2016 was the Year of the Pulses and 2017 the Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, and for 2019 three years have already been designated: the Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, Year of Moderation, and Year of Indigenous Languages. The total number of International Years from 1959 to 1960 through those planned for 2019 is 85. Examples are shown in Table 1. They reflect the varying missions of the UN addressing issues of human rights, peacekeeping, and environmental awareness.

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Table 1 Examples of United Nations years Year 1959–1960 1965 1967 1968 1971 1975 1979 1986 1990 1993 1994 2002 2008 2014

Description World Refugee Year International Cooperation Year International Tourist Year International Year of Human Rights International Year for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Prejudice International Women’s Year International Year of the Child International Year of Peace International Literacy Year International Year for the World’s Indigenous People International Year of the Family United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage International Year of Languages International Year of Small Island Developing States

Source: www.un.org/en/sections/observances/international-years/index.html

Looking into the future, the UN has declared 2022 as the Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture, and 2024 will be the Year of Camelids. Many of these UN years have been commemorated with UN stamps issued from the New York office or the offices in Vienna or Geneva.

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Background to the Dialogue Among Civilizations Year

The origin of the idea for a “Dialogue Among Civilizations” year is traced to the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, who proposed a year to promote dialogue and exchange among countries and cultures where there are sharp differences in religious and political ideology. In part, the genesis stemmed from Samuel Huntington’s popular 1993 article in Foreign Affairs and his 1996 book, Clashes of Civilizations, which were seen by many as focusing on religious and cultural divisions and conflicts as the chief sources of disorder in the contemporary world. The origin of the term is traced to an Austrian philosopher, Hans Kőchler, who in a 1972 letter to UNESCO suggested such a conference be organized. Earlier he had organized an international and cross-cultural conference on the theme “The Cultural Self-Comprehension of Nations” with the support of other world leaders. The UN General Assembly (1998) proclaimed 2001 as the Year of Dialogue among Civilizations. This resolution GA/RES/53/22, supported by many UN members and UNESCO, was: to plan and implement appropriate cultural, educational and social programmes to promote the concept of dialogue among civilizations, including through organizing conferences and seminars and disseminating information and scholarly material on the subject. http://www. unesco.org/dialogue/en/background.htm

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This resolution, with some provisions, was passed earlier in February 2000 as Resolution 54/113. The celebratory year expressed a number of opportunities: to emphasize that the present globalization process does not only encompass economic, financial, and technological aspects, but must also focus on human, cultural, spiritual dimensions, and on the interdependence of humankind and its rich diversity.

The official UN wording, in the website cited above, goes on to state that: Globalization and the resulting free movement of ideas and human beings allow unprecedented encounters between individuals, societies and culture. But it also profoundly affects lifestyles and patterns of behavior, decision-making processes and methods of governance, creativity and forms of expression. Against this dynamic background there is a need for a renewed commitment to promote and develop international cooperation and understanding on the basis of the recognition of the equal dignity of individuals and of societies and the uniqueness of their contributions to human advancement.

This celebratory year complements many of UNESCO’s commitments including efforts to promote peace, moral solidarity, ethical standards, and human welfare initiatives across a wide front. The year was also a logical follow-up to UNESCO’s “International Year for the Culture of Peace” in 2000. It almost goes without saying that this organization is the leading international organization committed to advancing humankind’s aspirations across the global; thus the Year of Dialogue among Civilizations fits perfectly within its overall framework.

4

Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly

The specific wording of Resolution 53/22, United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations that was adopted by the General Assembly, is as follows: Reaffirming the purposes and principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, which, inter alia, call for collective effort to strengthen friendly relations among nations, remove threats to peace and foster international cooperation in resolving international issues of an economic, social, cultural and humanitarian character and in promoting and encouraging universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, Recognizing the diverse civilizational achievements of mankind, crystallizing cultural pluralism and creative human diversity, Aware of the positive and mutual beneficial interaction among civilizations has continued throughout human history despite impediments among from ambivalence, disputes and wars, Emphasizing the importance of tolerance in international relationship and the significant role of dialogue as a means to reach understanding, remove threats to piece and strengthen interaction and exchange among civilizations, Noting the designation of 1995 as the United Nations Year for Tolerance, and recognizing that tolerance and respect for diversity facilitate universal promotion and protection of human rights and constitute sound foundations for civil society, social harmony and peace, Reaffirming that civilizational achievements constitute the collective heritage of mankind, providing a source of inspiration and progress for humanity at large,

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Welcoming the collective endeavor of the international community to enhance understanding through constructive dialogue among civilizations on the threshold of the third millennium. 1. Expresses its firm determination to facilitate and promote dialogue among civilizations; 2. Decides to proclaim the year 2001 as the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations; 3. Invites Governments, the United Nations system, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and other relevant international and non-governmental organizations, to plan and implement appropriate cultural, educational, and social programmes to promote the concept of dialogue among civilizations, including through organizing conferences and seminars and disseminating information and scholarly material on the subject and to inform the Secretary-General of their activities; 4. Requests the Secretary-General to present a provisional report on activities in this regard to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session, and a final report to the General Assembly at its fifty-fifth session.

A brief history of this year is described in the UNESCO website (www.unesco. org/dialogue/en/background.htm). The UN General Assembly in November 2000 passed a resolution to commemorate this year. Member states were encouraged to devote efforts to promote dialogue among their own populations and cultures, but also to regional and global efforts as well.

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Promoting the Year

The United Nations through its Secretary-General and the Department of Public Information engaged in a number of programs and activities with member states around the world (United Nations 2001, 2002). These included public service announcements, a brochure and poster in three UN official languages (English, French, and Spanish), a website in the six UN languages, a bilingual press kit, various media events in New York, over 100 poetry readings worldwide on the subject, and an essay writing contest in cooperation with Seton Hall University (in the United States). The New York office reported that there were more than 200 activities around the dialogue theme in various cities including Athens, Rabat, Dakar, Rome, Moscow, and elsewhere. The UN also identified a Group of Eminent Persons to prepare a book, Crossing the Divide (see Picco and Aboulmagd 2001), on the year’s subject which was published in the six official UN languages and used in press kits, various nongovernmental organization activities, and discussion groups worldwide. Governments responded to this year in different ways. Austria initiated dialogue with various religious groups in seminar settings. Germany selected 90 projects in support of the year. Japan developed a Global Youth Exchange Program and with cooperation of the United Nations University (2001), developed a series of workshops for children and also a seminar promoting Japan-Islamic dialogue. UNESCO sponsored an International Congress on Interreligious Dialogue among

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Fig. 1 Stamp competition for “Year of Dialogue among Civilizations,” designed by Urška Golob. (https://www. linns.com/news/worldstamps-postal-history/2016/ december/year-of-dialogueamong-civilization-anuncommon-common-designissue.html. Reproduced with permission)

Central Asian countries that was held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and a similar exchange program was held in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the cooperation of Polish and Lithuanian governments. And there were countries that issued a postage stamp or small set of stamps to celebrate this year.

6

A Stamp Issue

Almost a year before the November 2000 meeting, the Islamic Republic of Iran proposed to the Universal Postal Union, an umbrella organization of member states, that there will be an international stamp design competition open to all member states to suggest a design that addressed the goals and objectives of the international year. Citizens of many countries were informed of this year and were invited to submit designs to the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union. Designs came from artists in 28 countries; the four finalists came from designers living in India, Iran, Poland, and Slovenia. Their entries were sent to the Universal Postal Union headquarters in Geneva. A jury included a Swiss artist, a Swiss designer, and representatives from the Swiss government, the United Nations, and the Islamic Republic. The winner was chosen at the meeting of the World Association for the Development of Philately in Madrid in October 2000. The winning design was by Urška Golob, a freelance designer and illustrator from the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia (Fig. 1). The website describes the design as:

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. . . a simple drawing of children in a communication circle around the world. The children represent the four main races of the world. Through the use of a letter, a parcel, telephone and computer, the design emphasizes the importance of communication among young people. http://www.unesco.org/dialogue/en/background.htm

Yaghmaie (2016) described it as a “common design by the vast majority of stamp-issuing entities that participated in this issue.” “It was one of the largest common-design issues in philatelic history and unusual in that the vast majority of participating stamp issuing-entities where neither colonies or represented by a central stamp agent who designed and produced the issue.” The artist stated that in 1999 the Post of Slovenia organized a design competition to commemorate the year and her design was selected. When asked about the design she wrote: I wanted to portray the post service (mostly analogue at the time in the world) as a major communication medium between people.

She wanted to depict: Peoples, Nationalities, Religions and Believers. An illustration of 4 individuals, each showcasing a different race seemed appropriate. The idea came in a flash, soon after I learned about my task. (Personal correspondence, 3 September 2018)

7

“Dialogue” Stamps Issued

The Slovenian artist’s design for the dialogue stamp appeared on a stamp issued by Slovenia, but also in 60 other countries in 2001 (Fig. 2). In addition, other countries also issued a stamp with this design as one of the several dialogue stamps. Counties that had some different designs included Belarus, Aruba, Nepal, Peru, Portugal, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe. Tanzania and Zimbabwe each issued four stamps. Other themes on dialogue stamps included teaching in classrooms, children encircling a globe, faces speaking, letter writing, and the winner of the national artistic competition (Zimbabwe). Altogether 84 stamps were issued celebrating this year.

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Countries Not Issuing Dialogue Stamps

Most countries, including UN members, failed to issue a stamp or set of stamps to commemorate this year, which is not unusual as for many UN Years many countries do not issue them. The United Nations itself did not issue a stamp on the dialogue theme. Nor did approximately 100 UN members, including some leading world economic and political powers such as the United States, China, India, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, France, Italy, South Africa, Argentina, Japan, Sweden,

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Fig. 2 Countries that issued stamps for the United Nations’ 2001 “Year of Dialogue among Civilizations.” (Map by Cartographer Dick Gilbreath 2018)

Norway, Finland, Denmark, Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Pakistan. Many small countries, including ministates, also did not issue a dialogue stamp; this list includes Thailand, Kenya, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Democratic Republic of the Congo, many countries in Latin America and Africa, and many ministates in the Pacific Basin and the Caribbean.

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Ongoing Scholarly Activity

The year served as a stimulus for a number of scholars in the humanities and social and policy sciences to advance our thinking about dialogue among cultures, societies, and states where religion, ethnic diversity, and differences existed (Hayoe and Pan 2001; Picco and Aboulmagd 2001; Ahmed and Forst 2005; Petito 2007; Michael and Petito 2009; van der Giessen 2001). The dialogue across culture concept was seen as a way for those in the intellectual and diplomatic communities to explore commonalities rather than promote conflicts or terrorism in words or in military terms. The words and concepts examined and the languages used in understanding at citizen and official levels by governments and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations remain keys to advancing our understanding of others on the planet. The dialogue concept is considered as more than a set of words in a UN resolution or official document, but as a symbol of how humans communicate about what, which was an underlying theme in the stamp designs and stamps issued. Ongoing UN efforts continue with member states initiating and promoting programs and holding seminars in various locations that build on the dialogue’s initial goals. An “Alliance of Civilizations” proposal launched which

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aims to address the need for a committed effort by the international community – at both the institutional and civil society levels – to bridge divides and overcome the prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions and polarization that potential threaten world peace. (United Nations 2005, p. 2)

This same view, expressed in the final paragraph of the same document, acknowledges the importance of language, dialogue, and cross-cultural communication: The call for dialogue has planted its seeds in a resistant terrain but the seeds have not died. The strategy that has been outlined – comprising global partnership, role models, shared narratives and focus on the hearts and minds of the young – suggests a way forward. (United Nations 2005, p. 5)

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Ahmed, A. S., & Forst, B. (Eds.). (2005). After-terror: Promoting Dialogue among Civilizations. London: Polity Press. Hayoe, R., & Pan, J. (2001). Knowledge across cultures. A contribution to Dialogue among Civilizations. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Huntington, S. P. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72, 22–49. Huntington, S. P. (1996). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of the world order. New York: Simon and Schuster. Michael, M. S., & Petito, F. (Eds.). (2009). Civilizational dialogue and world order. The other politics of cultures, religion and civilizations in international relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Petito, F. (2007). The global and political discourse of Dialogue among Civilizations: Mohammed Khatami and Václav Havel. Global Change, Peace and Security, 19, 103–126. Picco, G., & Aboulmagd, A. K. (Eds.). (2001). Crossing the divide. Dialogue among Civilizations. South Orange: Seaton Hall University Press. United Nations. (1998). General Assembly. Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly. 53/22. United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations. 53rd session, Agenda item 168. United Nations. (2001). General Assembly. United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations. Report of the Secretary-General. 2 November 2001. United Nations. (2002). General Assembly. United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations (2001). Report of the Secretary-General. 12 February 2002. United Nations. (2005). General Assembly. United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations. Report of the Secretary General. 16 August 2005. United Nations University. (2001). International Conference on the Dialogue of Civilizations. Conference Report. http://archive.unu.edu/dialogue/conf-report.pdf van der Giessen, H. (2001). Dialogue among civilizations. International Journal of World Peace, 18, 3–5. Yaghmaie, P. (2016). Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations: An uncommon common-design issue. Linn’s Stamp News. 25 December. http://www.linns.com/news/world-stamps-postal-history2016/december/year-of-dialogue

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Steven L. Driever and Nazgol Bagheri

Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geographic Patterns of Language in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Relationship Between Languages in a Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Brief History of Bilingualism in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spanish/English Bilingual Community and Spanglish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bilingual Education in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Three Types of Bilingual Education Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 The Move Away from Bilingual Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Bilingual Education Makes a Comeback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Bilingualism in the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Bilingualism is the ability to use two languages with some fluency. More Americans are bilingual than ever before, not only residing in large metropolitan areas but also widely dispersed in rural counties. Using a map that shows counties where 10% or more of the residents age five and older speak a language other than English at home, we discuss the current geographic patterns of language in the United States. Because languages within the same country interact in many situations, we review Mackey’s three concepts of geolinguistics: power, attraction, and pressure. That model helps us understand why immigrant language minorities usually shift over

S. L. Driever (*) Department of Geosciences, University of Missouri, Kansas City, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] N. Bagheri Department of Political Science and Geography, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_28

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three generations from monolingualism in their native language to bilingualism and finally to monolingualism in English. The arrival of new immigrants, however, can reinforce a minority-language group and introduce new languages. We review the history of US bilingualism in its many ethnic varieties and the nativist reactions in favor of English. The largest bilingual community consists of English/Spanish speakers. We analyze this non-monolithic community’s increasing use of Spanglish, a liberal mixing of Spanish and American English. Emergent bilingualism among children who speak a heritage language at home requires bilingual instruction in the classroom. Three types of bilingual education programs are discussed. Although political forces have hampered bilingual education, two-way immersion programs have become popular. We close with a prognostication of the future state of bilingualism and multilingualism in the United States. Keywords

Bilingualism · Ultilingualism · Spanish · Spanglish · English language learner

1

Introduction

In the United States most of the population is conventionally labeled “monolingual.” Because English is not only the country’s dominant language but also the most widespread international language, the average American gets by each day just using English, even when traveling abroad to most tourist destinations. More Americans, however, are bilingual than ever before because of increased international labor mobility and other forces of globalization. Bilingualism is the ability to use two languages with at least some degree of fluency (Field 2011). The two languages can be dialects as the terms “language” and “dialect” are rooted more in social and political discourse than in linguistic theory. Chinese, for example, is a language group of at least seven largely mutually-unintelligible languages usually considered to be dialects. On the other hand, Norwegian and Swedish are regarded as separate languages, although they are generally mutually intelligible (Garcia 2002). Where bilingualism occurs, multilingualism is also likely to exist. A bilingual person is often able to speak different varieties of a language (typically the native one) according to whom he/she is speaking and the situation; i.e., there are levels of formality (register) in which language style usually varies. For example, young, educated blacks may speak Standard American English, but preserve certain African American Vernacular English forms in their speech which they revert to when they are in informal settings with peers, such as at a high school football game (Linnes 1998). The shifting between two language codes, typically one high and the other low, in non-overlapping domains is referred to as diglossia; the domains may be the home, neighborhood, school, work, or other locales (Afendras 1969). Most of us are bilingual because we are polysocial and shift from one language code to another to satisfy needs associated with particular places (Mackey 1973). If we enlarge our scale of analysis to the community, many languages may be spoken, especially in large, urban settings.

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Geographic Patterns of Language in the United States

In the United States, bilingualism is the result of two geographic processes. The first is territorial expansion of settlers into lands formerly controlled by Native Americans or by non-British colonial powers. The second is immigration of ethnic or religious communities that bring their native languages with them. In both cases, there are powerful forces of assimilation that encourage the minority group to adopt the language of the majority, but among the minority community there are countervailing forces to preserve its culture and heritage language (Butters 2000; Shin and Alba 2009). In 1890 the US Census Bureau started inquiring about the languages that people used. The language survey was part of the Decennial Censuses, with some interruptions, through the year 2000. Beginning in 2005, questions about the languages spoken at home have been posed each year in a fully implemented American Community Survey. People in the United States who are 5 years of age and over (who reside in three-million housing-unit addresses and comprise a representative sample of the entire population) are asked if they speak a language other than English in the home. For those answering “yes,” the second question is what is that language, and the third question is how well the person speaks English – “very well,” “well,” “not well,” or “not at all.” The Census codes a list of 382 languages, but data sets are available only for 39 languages and language groups (Ryan 2013). About 21% of the population in the United States speaks a language other than English in the home, although most individuals in that group (58%) claim to speak English “very well” (Ryan 2013). The Federal government considers anyone speaking English less than “very well” to need assistance with English in some situations. Our first map requires explanation (Fig. 1). Five language categories in the map’s key identify counties where 10% or more of the people age five and older speak that language at home. The category of “Various non-English languages” indicates counties where there is considerable diversity of non-English languages spoken in the home, almost always with no single minority language reaching the 10% threshold. We discuss later the few instances when more than one minority language in a county in this category has exceeded that threshold and the case of Bristol County, Massachusetts, where only Portuguese passes it. The base map for Fig. 1 was first created using 2007–2011 American Community Survey language data, which identified the counties to be labeled “Spanish.” We then used 2009–2013 language data from Statistical Atlas (2015a) to identify counties to be assigned to the other five language categories. The county assignments to all six language categories were crosschecked against the US Census Bureau’s 2009–2013 American Community Survey county-language data, and any discrepancy was resolved in favor of the latter. The process was time consuming and inevitably involves a possibility of human error as there are over 3100 counties in the USA. Spanish. The most widespread minority language in the USA is Spanish (which in the Census also includes Spanish Creole languages). Spanish is spoken at home by an estimated 38 million individuals age five and over, of

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Fig. 1 Counties where 10% or more of the residents age five and older speak a language other than English at home. (Source: Authors)

which 2.8 million are non-Hispanics (Gonzalez-Barrera and Lopez 2013). It is important to note that the Census does not indicate how well or how often Spanish (or any other non-English language) is spoken in the home or the linguistic heterogeneity that characterizes this increasingly widespread language (García et al. 2011). The majority of the Spanish speakers at home, some 56%, consider themselves as speaking English “very well” and can be considered bilingual (Ryan 2013). At work outside the home, they may speak English exclusively. Although over 40% of the Spanish speakers at home speak English less than proficiently (i.e., “well,” “not well,” or “not at all”), many are emergent bilinguals and are eager to learn more English. Spanish speakers’ US heartland extends from northern California to the TexasLouisiana border. We can observe some systematic geographic variations in that large region (Bills et al. 1995). First, with increasing distance from the US-Mexican border, the more likely the usual three-generation decline in Spanish usage (monolingual Spanish – bilingualism – monolingual English). Second, those in rural areas are less likely to use English. Third, in cities, the further from the US-Mexican border and the higher the unemployment rate, the more likely there is a decline in Spanish usage. The unemployed need English to search for work. Beyond the heartland, concentrations of Spanish speakers are found in rural counties with

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large-scale agricultural operations such as apple orchards in central Washington and poultry breeding and processing in northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri; increasingly many of these rural Latinos own family farms. Polycentric communities of Spanish speakers are found in many large metropolitan areas where vibrant economies support large service sectors and never-ending construction activities (Driever 2003, 2004). Native North American Languages. The next largest contiguous geographic areas in Fig. 1 with at least 10% of the people who speak a language other than English represent “Native North American languages.” Native North American language speakers number some 372,000, most of whom reside in the American Indian and Alaska Native area, a complex Census Bureau term that includes federal and state American Indian reservations, off-reservation trust land areas, Alaska Native regional associations, and various Alaska and state statistical areas designated for native peoples (Siebens and Julian 2011). Over 80% of the North American language speakers can speak English “very well.” The American Community Survey codes for 169 different native North American languages, some of which are spoken by only a handful of people as most are not taught to children. Even Navajo, the most widespread Native North American language, with some 140,000 speakers, is witnessing fewer children fluent in it, both on the reservation in northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and southeast Utah and beyond the tribal homeland (Crawford 1995). San Juan County, in the northwest corner of New Mexico, belongs to the category of “Various non-English languages” because both Navajo (21.9%) and Spanish (10.2%) are widely spoken at home. Navajo is spoken in homes throughout the county, but Spanish at home is confined almost entirely to the northeast portion of the county, outside the reservation. Cibola County, NM is in the same category because the Keres and Navajo languages (22.9%) and Spanish (20.7%) are spoken at home. French. There are other notable areas where at least 10% of speakers use a language other than English in the home. Varieties of French have been important for many years in northern New England, especially in Aroostook County, Maine and in Coos County, New Hampshire, both of which may be considered extensions of the francophone region of the St. Lawrence Valley. Other varieties of French are spoken in southern Louisiana parishes. Margaret Marshall (1982) found that the French speakers are mostly bilingual (French/English) and use three mutually intelligible dialects. Riverfront French, spoken by descendants of French and German colonists who settled land grants along the Mississippi, is closest to standard French. Acadian French is spoken by descendants, often referred to as Cajuns, of settlers expelled from Acadia (Nova Scotia) in 1755. Creole French, known locally as Gombo, is spoken by descendants of slaves and whites who worked with blacks on plantations. Speakers of all three dialects can code switch (i.e., switch dialects) depending on the audience, topic of conversation, and the speaker’s mood. Because English is more prestigious and essential for communicating with outsiders, it is encroaching on all three French dialects. Although Louisiana vacillated for many years in whether to preserve or abolish its French, since 1968 the state has recognized its French heritage as essential to its culture and identity. Louisiana currently has

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26 French immersion schools with a goal of English/French bilingualism and will help a community start such a school if at least 25 parents of pre-school children sign a petition to that effect. Then the local school board must provide an elementary education in English and French (or any other non-English language so requested). The main constraint on French immersion has been the lack of qualified language teachers (CODOFIL 2014). German. German is spoken at home by at least 10% of those age five and older in scattered counties from Holmes County, Ohio, the center of the largest Amish community in the world, to Liberty County, Montana, where there are three colonies of Hutterites. In Holmes County, almost half the residents speak either Pennsylvania Dutch (a hybrid German dialect spoken by Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites) or German. Although speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch use it for daily communication outside the home, most are bilingual in English. People in the three Hutterite colonies speak Hutterisch (a German dialect), standard German learned in school, and English. Where German is widely spoken in some other counties, it is overshadowed, especially in the Southwest, by Spanish. Gaines County, Texas, for example, has a large Mennonite community that moved there from Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1978 in search of new farmland (Bramlet 2010). Its children are supposed to learn German as a second language in school, but increasingly these young people are monolingual English speakers or even study Spanish in school, as a large percentage of the county’s population speaks Spanish. Most of the Gaines County Mennonites and the Spanish speakers also speak English “very well” (Statistical Atlas 2015b). Asian and Pacific Island languages. Although significant concentrations of speakers of Asian and Pacific Island languages at home are found in the California counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, and San Mateo, they are outnumbered by Spanish speakers at home there. In the mainland United States, San Francisco County, Santa Clara County, California, Alameda County, California, and King County, Washington are the only counties where speakers of Asian and Pacific Island languages at home (26%, 23%, 18%, and 11%, respectively) outnumber other such minority-language speakers. In Aleutians East Borough, 33% of people age five and over speak Tagalog at home, 13% Spanish, and 11% an African language, reflecting high demand for non-local labor in its commercial fishing and fish processing industry. Speakers of East and Southeast Asian languages face a great challenge in learning English, but that does not mean economic isolation, because usually in a household the head and children speak English “very well,” while the spouse and older relatives know some English. Portuguese. Portuguese is spoken at home by 12% of the population in Bristol County, Massachusetts, just east of Rhode Island. Portuguese immigrants, mainly from the Azores, moved there starting in the early nineteenth century when the city of New Bedford became the center of the US whaling industry; in the late nineteenth century, many Portuguese immigrants in Bristol County filled jobs in the textile, apparel, and fishing industries. Between 1965 and 1975, southeast Massachusetts experienced an even larger wave of Portuguese immigrants, most reuniting with family. Starting in the 1980s, Brazilians arrived in significant numbers, and more

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Fig. 2 Number of Languages spoken in the 15 largest metropolitan areas, 2009–2013. (Source: Based on data from US Census Bureau 2015b)

recently Portuguese speakers from Africa have joined them (MAPS 2016). In Massachusetts and Rhode Island over 200,000 people speak Portuguese in the home. Most of them are first or second generation Americans, with just over half speaking English “very well.” Metropolitan Areas. The 15 largest metropolitan areas are very diverse in the number of languages spoken in the home (Fig. 2). The number of languages spoken in these areas is less correlated with population size than with the percent of the population foreign-born and with the diversity of the origins of recent immigrants, both of which are usually larger in certain counties of US port-of-entry metropolitan areas with international airports. Table 1 shows the percentages of people age five and older speaking a language other than English in the home and the percentages of foreign born in select metropolitan areas: The Detroit metropolitan area is the only one of the 15 largest in which no county above the national average of 20.9% of people age five and older speak a language other than English in the home. Finally, one should not assume that the county with the central city always has the highest percentage of non-English speakers. Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Georgia, and San Francisco, California metropolitan areas all have one or more suburban counties with higher percentages of nonEnglish usage in the home.

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Table 1 English/Other language in select metropolitan areas in the USA

Metropolitan area Miami-Dade, FL Bronx, NY Queens, NY Brooklyn, NY Manhattan, NY Los Angeles, CA Orange, CA San Mateo, CA San Francisco, CA Harris, TX Dallas, TX

English not spoken at home 72.2 57.6 56.5 46.4 49.4 56.8 45.6 46.0 44.6

Percent foreign born 51.5 34.0 47.8 37.5 28.9 34.9 30.3 34.4 35.5

42.9 41.4

25.3 23.1

Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2015a

3

The Relationship Between Languages in a Country

William Mackey (1973) constructed a theory that furthers our understanding of geolinguistics. He argues that the interaction between languages in any territory can be understood via the concepts of power, attraction, and pressure. Linguistic power is the force of the dominant language derived from its recognition as the standard for legitimate practices (Bourdieu 1991). Such power depends on the number of speakers and their dispersion, mobility, wealth, ideology, and culture. The attraction of a language to those who speak another language depends on its difference in status (based on the number of speakers of each language), geographic distance (from the listener or reader), and interlingual distance (degree to which the languages resemble each other). Linguistic pressure occurs when geographic distance is nil, and there is contact and interpenetration of the languages. Then the greater the imbalance of linguistic power and the greater the lingual attraction, the more pressure is placed on the minority-language users to adopt some or all of the majority’s language. That minority might then exhibit conceptual acculturation, engage in linguistic borrowing, change the language spoken at home, become diglossic, or exhibit bilingual interference (using elements of one language while writing or speaking another). It is possible for a waning minority language to be regenerated in response to a social or political movement that agitates for upgrading its use, but as the gap in power widens between the dominant and minority languages, a renaissance of the weaker language becomes less likely. Since Mackey’s pioneering work in geolinguistics, English has become more dominant as an international language, thanks largely to the Internet (80% of which is in English), satellite TV, and expansion of international trade and travel. About 400 million people speak English as their mother tongue, another 300–500 million speak it fluently as a second language, and perhaps another 750 million speak it as a

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foreign language (Mydans 2007). English is not monolithic even in countries where it is the main language, let alone across the globe, but the world has never before witnessed such a powerful language.

4

A Brief History of Bilingualism in the United States

In the 13 colonies that later formed the United States different languages flourished as different ethnic and religious groups arrived on their shores. Benjamin Franklin complained that Pennsylvania was becoming a colony of “aliens” who would Germanize “us” instead of “our” colonizing them (Read 1937). In all the Middle Colonies many slaves and indentured servants used two or more languages. After the formation of the nation-state in the 1780s, federalism allowed the states to defend their ethnic interests and local cultures (Lindenfeld and Varro 2008). French was spoken in the Mississippi Valley, in the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and in the St. Lawrence Valley into northern New England (McDermott 1941). Dutch was often spoken in the Hudson Valley, rural parts of Long Island, and in northern New Jersey. Well into the twentieth century the German language and culture were strong not only in Pennsylvania but also in parts of Ohio, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and towns west along the Missouri River (Wilkerson and Salmons 2008). In 1839, Ohio was the first state to authorize bilingual education in German and English, at the parents’ request (Thompson and Hakuta 2012). Spanish was the dominant language in the Southwest after the Texas Annexation of 1845, the Mexican Cession of 1848, and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853–1854. Spanish usage expanded and became more variant as Mexican immigrants crossed an open US-Mexico border that was fenced and patrolled only after the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and was subject to the modern control apparatus only starting in the 1930s. Heavy immigration from Norway and Sweden in the last half of the nineteenth century led some to think that Scandinavian tongues would dominate Iowa and Minnesota (Read 2002). Even when the number of Norwegian-speaking monolinguals was at its height, however, their shift toward English outside the family, neighborhood, and church happened rapidly as economic survival demanded it (Haugen 1969). The same is true for the more numerous and urban Swedish Americans. Italians, second only to the Germans in immigration to the United States from 1820 to 1975, created in every state urban enclaves often associated with a city or region back in Italy. To facilitate interdialect communication, the Italian Americans used a koine of Standard Italian or interspersed their dialogue with American English; their lingual flexibility made it easier for them to abandon Italian and adopt English (Correa-Zoli 1981). Other than providing a reservoir of vocabulary, Native American languages were too numerous, diverse, and subject to linguistic pressure from English to serve as linguistic substrata for American English (Hills 1929). West African languages not only have contributed vocabulary to English but also served as linguistic substrata in the development of Black English. Due to spatial proximity of blacks and whites in the Antebellum South, Black English and the English of white Southerners tended to converge, except for Gullah (also known as Geechee or Sea Island Creole),

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an African-English creole spoken on some of the Sea Islands off South Carolina and Georgia by small enclaves of descendants of slaves that took over rice plantations abandoned in the Civil War (Turner 2002). Reaction against the many languages spoken in the United States is first codified at the federal level with the Naturalization Act of 1906. It required that for any immigrant to become a naturalized citizen he/she would have to be able to speak English (Rubal-Lopez 2007; Olson and Woll 2002). After leaving the Presidency in 1909 and up to his death in 1919, Theodore Roosevelt was an outspoken advocate for the Americanization of immigrants, which meant, among other things, requiring that they learn and speak English. The following excerpt is from a letter read on his behalf at a New-York-City “All-American concert” sponsored by the American Defense Society, of which he was the honorary president: We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers of a pollyglot [sic] boarding house; and we have room for but one, soul [sic] loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people. (Roosevelt 1919, p. 2)

In 1919, the Americanization Department of the US Bureau of Education adopted a resolution requiring all elementary schools, public and private, to conduct instruction in English. By 1923, 34 states had decreed the same resolution (Baker and Jones 1998, p. 546). German was the initial target of these resolutions because of World War I, and the anti-German sentiment scared not only German Americans but also Scandinavian Americans into sometimes forbidding the use of their heritage languages even in the home. Where there were many school children of Mexican heritage, such as in southern California by the late 1920s, students were expected to learn English and American manners and hygiene. The Latino students who struggled in school due to insufficient English comprehension were often labeled “retarded” (Galicia 2007). Despite all of the measures to rapidly force immigrants to Americanize and speak only English, bilingualism has remained prevalent in the United States, and there is mounting evidence that much of the country has never ceased being bilingual. Using 1930 US Census data, Seth Arsenian (1937) estimated that 25% of the US population was bilingual and that in New York City, with its large concentration of immigrants, 60% of the population was bilingual. In four rural counties of Pennsylvania, half of the 20,000 school children were bilingual in 1939 (Jensen 1962). In the last half of the twentieth century, multilingualism was facilitated with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which replaced quotas favoring immigration of northern and western Europeans with an immigration law that emphasized reuniting families and admitting skilled labor. The Immigration Act of 1990 provided for an increase of immigrants from “underrepresented countries.” Between 1965 and 1995, there was a 300% increase in immigration over that experienced in the previous three decades, with many immigrants arriving from Southeast Asia, Korea, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa (U.S. Immigration Since 1965 2010).

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The increased level of immigration unleashed nativist sentiments again. In 1981, US Senator S. I. Hayakawa (Republican, California) introduced the English Language Amendment (to the US Constitution), which would have made English the official language of the country; the measure, however, never came to a vote in the Senate. In the 1980s the modern English-only (Official English) movement called for the official status of English as the national language. The Movement’s adherents consider the use of English necessary to ensure national unity and loyalty to the country (Nuñez-Janes 2002). US English (founded by Hayakawa in 1983), the oldest and largest group in the English-only movement, bases its arguments for Official English on concerns that Spanish threatens English in the country and on the growing percentage of households in which adults speak a language other than English and do not speak English “very well” (U.S. English, Inc. n.d.). Now, 31 states have laws declaring English as their official language, which means only that official state business must be conducted in English except where the use of other languages is permitted.

5

Spanish/English Bilingual Community and Spanglish

Using the US Census, figures for those who speak Spanish in the home and also speak English “very well,” we calculate that there are over 21 million members of the Spanish/English bilingual community. Our number is conservative as the Census language data are based on survey samples and do not take into account Spanish/ English bilinguals who do not speak Spanish at home. This bilingual community varies regionally, socially, contextually, and generationally. For example, in northern New Mexico, where Hispanos have resided for over 400 years, the prevailing non-English language among older people is Traditional New Mexican Spanish, the oldest variety of a European language spoken in the United States (Bills and Vigil 1999). Its grammar is Mexican-like, but its lexicon has many archaisms (e.g., vide for vi (I saw) and cuasi (almost)), dating back to the late sixteenth century, and English loanwords (e.g., cherife (sheriff), troca (truck), and telefón (telephone)) (Travis and Torres Cacoullos 2013; Lerner 1974). Travis and Torres Cacoullos found that both Traditional New Mexican Spanish and English are used with family, friends, and coworkers, but English was preferred for television and reading, and Spanish was favored for radio. The two researchers also discovered that the popularity of Castilian Spanish as a foreign or second language in the schools had stigmatized Traditional New Mexican Spanish for most speakers under 60 years of age. Most of the Spanish/English bilingual community speaks Spanglish, a liberal mixture of Spanish (of different varieties) and American English (of various dialects). Spanglish may be defined as Spanish with numerous borrowings from English or as a variety of English heavily influenced by Spanish. Spanglish, however, should not be confused with Chicano – an ethnic dialect of English, common in California and the Southwest and found in some other places like Illinois. Chicano has with

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some Spanish loanwords, Spanish pronunciations, and other Spanish-substrate influences and may be spoken by monolingual or bilingual individuals (Frazer 1996; Fought 2003). The basic mechanism underlying Spanglish is code-switching, a mixing of lexical terms from English and Spanish in the same conversation, often in the same sentence. Youth who learn English and Spanish at the same time (English in school and the larger community; Spanish in the home and neighborhood) typically engage in code-switching without realizing it. Garcia (1983) found that Spanish/English bilingual children in the Southwest showed 15–20% incidences of switched language utterances. Because the youth speaking Spanglish often have not had formal instruction in Spanish, they tend to use not only “real” Spanish words but also employ anglicisms (e.g., chequear (to check) and lonchar (to lunch)). Older individuals who have learned one language then another – sequential language acquisition – code switch depending on the audience and when the vocabulary of the language initially used in the conversation is no longer adequate. When Carlos Vera (1971, p. 149) discussed the instruction of Spanglish in New York City schools, he referred to it as “una enfermedad crónica” (a chronic illness). Most researchers, however, have viewed Spanglish more sympathetically. Garcia (1983) considers Spanglish to be an intermediate phase of language acquisition when speakers use the lexicon, morphology, and syntax of both languages. According to Garcia, these individuals later develop two language systems. In her study of the lower East Side of New York City, Bonnie Urciuoli (1985) found that Puerto Rican Spanish/Puerto Rican English speakers who code switched were not alternating between two systems, but between a selection of elements within a continuous system in which grammatical and lexical differences of the two languages are minimized (e.g., “I’m sorry, que I forgot”). She further discovered that whereas the Puerto Ricans and blacks had fluid interaction and considered each other mutually intelligible, the Puerto Ricans had no interwoven speech community with white Anglos due to an imbalance of class and authority. Spanglish is not only the amalgamation of two languages but also of two cultures. It is an identity marker in many Latino communities, serving as a symbol of binational identity, bilingual competence, and mixed culture. It is often the preferred form of discourse with family and friends as well as with anyone who initiates a conversation in Spanglish because switching seamlessly from one language to another at key moments enhances communication. Since the late 1980s, all the Los Angeles media with significant numbers of Latinos in their markets have used some Spanglish as the best means to connect with that audience (Rothman and Rell 2005). Because Spanglish is an everyday language practice in Latino communities, Ramón Martínez (2010) has urged that it be used to boost the academic literacy development of emergent bilingual students who still lack fluency in English. After observing a sixth-grade Los Angeles classroom for an academic year, Martínez concluded that Spanglish is a semiotic tool that allows students to shift voices for different audiences and to communicate subtle nuances of meaning, both specific literacy skills. He believes that students who use Spanglish could apply those skills

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to their development of literacy in English. Advocates of Spanglish were cheered when the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy) decided to include the word “espanglish” in the 2014 edition of its Diccionario de la lengua espan˜ ola. They are unhappy, however, that the Academy, a guardian of the Spanish language, defines Spanglish not as an emerging language, but as nothing more than bilinguals code-switching: “Modalidad del habla de algunos grupos hispanos de los Estados Unidos en la que se mezclan elementos léxicos y gramaticales del español y del inglés” (Mode of speech of some Hispanic groups in the United States in which lexical and grammatical elements of Spanish and English are mixed). (Real Academia Española 2014, p. 945)

6

Bilingual Education in the Classroom

Educators have long debated both the teaching of foreign languages to monolingual English-speaking students and the best way to instruct English Language Learners so that they acquire fluency in English while keeping apace of English Language Proficient peers in other academic subjects (Fig. 3). The term Limited English Proficiency students, although technically distinct, is used interchangeably with English Language Learners in practice and in this chapter. The United States is one of the few countries where most citizens are usually considered monolingual. Many educated Americans are opposed to requiring students to learn a foreign language. After World War II, many argued that exposing young children to a second language would inhibit their intellectual development because of language interference (Singer 1956). More recently, a widespread argument has been that students need not learn a foreign language because English is a universal language. These positions are wrong. Students who learn a second language engage in a cognitive activity that enhances problem-solving in the first language (Bialystok 2001). One who travels abroad or practices a profession that serves the public will have to communicate sometimes in a language other than English. Unfortunately, despite the tangible as well as intellectual benefits of learning a second language, less than 1% of American adults are proficient in a foreign language they studied in a US classroom (ACTFL 2016; Friedman 2015). English language learners are estimated to be 4.4 million (9.2%) of all students in the public schools (NCES 2015). Their bilingual instruction is vital because of its role in determining how well they learn all academic subjects and, thus, how well prepared they are for adult life. The Federal government has supported bilingual instruction since the 1960s. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in educational institutions on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin. Title VII of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 provides for grants to support bilingual programs, bilingual teachers’ aides, and teachers from non-English speaking backgrounds. The Equal Opportunity Education Act of 1974 defines a denial of equal educational opportunity to include “failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede

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Fig. 3 English Language Learners by State, 2011–2012. (Source: Kena et al. 2014). Map is from U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics!

participation by students in its instructional programs” (Garcia 2002, p. 34). In response to the federal legislation and the Department of Education’s call for “affirmative steps” to help limited-English-proficiency students, states, starting with Massachusetts in 1971, began mandating bilingual education programs (Chin et al. 2013). Lau v. Nichols (1974) bolstered bilingual education at the local level when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Chinese-American students against the San Francisco Unified School District. Those students, who spoke little or no English, had claimed that their civil rights were violated by their not receiving adequate educational support, and the Supreme Court ruled that “school districts receiving federal funds must act to correct students’ linguistic deficits to ensure that they receive an equal education” (Bon 2016).

6.1

Three Types of Bilingual Education Programs

Transitional Bilingual Education. In this program, the heritage language is emphasized in the early grades (often for only three school-years), then instruction of English is highlighted (often for just one school-year), and lastly students are mainstreamed into regular instruction-in-English-only classes. The early curriculum

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typically does not address the history and culture associated with the mother tongue. The major shortcomings of the program are that it is subtractive (of the heritage language) bilingualism and that students are mainstreamed into English-only classrooms too soon to do academic work in English successfully, which requires 5–10 years of bilingual education for English language learners (Rubal-Lopez 2007; Palmer 2011; García et al. 2011). Maintenance Bilingual Education. In this program, instruction is in English and the heritage language, with the goal of competency in both languages (additive bilingualism) while mastering academic subjects. Program completion is not emphasized because skills developed in the heritage language are transferred into English. Additive bilingualism also is fostered through community-based heritage-language schools, formed to preserve ethnic identities and cultures, that offer classes in the evenings or on weekends (Wiley and Valdés 2000; Ebsworth 2002; Liu et al. 2011). Two-Way Immersion. At the start of this program, ideally half the students speak one language, the other half speaks a different language, and all students are integrated in all lessons (content instruction and language development), half of which is in one language and the other half in the other language (Rubal-Lopez 2007; Valdés 1997). Whereas the minority-language group maintains proficiency in its language and scores higher on standardized tests, if the other group’s first language is English, it usually does not achieve second-language fluency because of the power and attraction of English in US society (Garcia 2002; Christian et al. 2000). Two-way immersion in US classrooms makes more sense if the two languages are cognate and if English is one of the languages, although those Englishspeakers may not gain fluency in the second language and should use Standard American English, which is not the case in many inner-city public school districts (Valdés 2002).

6.2

The Move Away from Bilingual Education

Since the 1990s there has been a shift away from transitional and maintenance bilingual education toward English-only programs for English language learning students (Soto 1997; Galicia 2007; Thompson and Hakuta 2012). Three states eliminated most of their bilingual programs via ballot initiatives: California with Proposition 227 (1998), Arizona with Proposition 203 (2000), and Massachusetts with Question 2 (2002). Proposition 227, the model for later initiatives, stipulates that limited English proficiency students are to be taught English in sheltered English immersion for a period not normally to exceed 1 year, after which they are mainstreamed into regular classes taught in English. Parents must sign a waiver to keep their children in a bilingual education program (Monzó 2005; González and Portillos 2007). In 2001, the Bilingual Education Act was repealed and replaced with No Child Left Behind. The latter’s Title III, known as the English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act, authorizes funds for English-language acquisition programs via a formula grant program, with federal

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grants based on the number of limited English proficiency and immigrant students (NABE 2016). Title III states that limited English proficiency students must attain English proficiency and meet the same academic standards in all content areas as other children are expected to do. All students are assessed annually through standardized tests written in English; limited English proficiency students also take English-language proficiency tests (Menken and Solorza 2014). The word “bilingual” never appears in Title III, and its goal is subtractive bilingualism. Although between 2011 and 2016 the Obama Administration approved waivers to 41 states, California CORE districts (a collaboration of 10 school districts located in the San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno, and Los Angeles/Orange County areas), Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico from adhering strictly to Title III, in exchange they were expected to implement accountability plans that reward high-performing schools and pressure low-performing schools, many of which have large numbers of language-minority students (Reforming No Child Left Behind 2016). No Child Left Behind and reactionary state ballot initiatives have created an ominous environment for bilingual education. In California, students falling short of state learning targets in math and English have forced educators to focus on preparing them better for the assessment tests (Blume 2015). Transitional bilingual education programs at the secondary level in California, where they are needed to accommodate recent teenage immigrants, have declined in number and enrollment. At the elementary level, California’s maintenance bilingual education programs have almost disappeared, replaced with English-as-second-language or Structured English Immersion programs meant to mainstream English language learning students quickly.

6.3

Bilingual Education Makes a Comeback

Two-way immersion programs are the only form of bilingual education that is growing rapidly. There were 458 programs in 31 states and Washington, D.C. in 2015 (Table 2). Two-way immersion is usually English/Spanish, but other combinations are offered where there is sufficient demand. In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, for example, in addition to Spanish/English (50/50 to 90/10), some schools have classroom instruction in Spanish/Japanese (90/10), Spanish/Mandarin (50/50), German/English (90/10), Korean/English (50/50), Armenian/English (50/50), Italian/English (90/10), and French/English (90/10). All of these programs in greater Los Angeles aim for 50% of instructional time in English by fifth grade. Public schools that offer two-way immersion classes have become popular with ambitious parents seeking a competitive edge for their children, who not only learn a second language but also do better in English and math than students in non-dual language classes, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status (Marian et al. 2013; Collier and Thomas 2014). Compared to their monolingual peers, bilingual students also have greater metalinguistic awareness, enhanced metacognitive skills, better learning strategies, more creativity, and better academic performance in college (Jensen 1962; Shin and Alba 2009; Adesope et al. 2010).

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Table 2 States with the most two-way immersion programs in 2015

State(s) California Texas Illinois New York Oregon New Mexico Florida, Massachusetts Colorado

1063 Number of programs 150 63 39 31 21 19 12 11

Source: Center for Applied Linguistics (2016)

Pro-bilingual forces are fighting for more bilingual education programs for all students who need them. Using compliance reviews of the Civil Rights Act’s Title VI, the US Department of Education has pressured many school districts to ensure equal access to educational opportunities for English language learners (Maxwell 2011). In response, the New York City Department of Education, which operates the city’s public schools, vowed in 2011 to create 125 new bilingual education programs beyond the 351 it already offered (Menken and Solorza 2014). The Los Angeles Unified School District, however, responded in 2012 by increasing remedial programs to assist English language learners who were struggling to become proficient in English (Jones 2012). Because the educational outcomes for most minoritylanguage students in California do not meet Common Core State Standards, State Senator Ricardo Lara sponsored SB 1174, the Multilingual Education for a TwentyFirst Century Act. It would repeal most of the provisions of Proposition 227, support structured English immersion with teachers who know the students’ heritage language, and give parents the right to choose the language-acquisition program best suited to their child. In line with its rationale, SB 1174 also recommends native English speakers receive instruction in another language. This bill was on the November 2016 ballot as Proposition 58 and had substantial backing from many quarters (Frost 2014). Proposition 58, with the official title “ENGLISH PROFICIENCY. MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION. INITIATIVE STATUTE,” passed with over 72% support among voters (California Proposition 58 . . ., 2016).

7

Bilingualism in the Future

Regardless of the contestation over language in daily life or in the schools, bilingualism of a substantial part of the population and multilingualism in culturally diverse communities will increasingly characterize the United States. It is possible that this country could become a de facto English/Spanish bilingual nation where most of us will choose to speak Spanish in certain contexts; depending on how one defines language, we may then be said to be speaking Spanglish. A cultural change that profound would depend on the power, attraction, and pressure of English relative to Spanish diminishing. Current demographic and linguistic trends,

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however, do not support the idea of a decline of English-language usage in this country. The number of immigrants arriving in the United States has trended downward since 2005, from eight million between 2000 and 2005 to six million between 2008 and 2013 (Pew Research Center 2015). That drop coincides with a growing share of younger US Latinos born in this country. Of Latinos ages 5–17, 88% in 2014 (vs. 73% in 2000) spoke English at home or at least spoke it “very well” and for ages 18–33, the figure is 76% (vs. 50% in 2000) (Krogstad 2016). Clearly, there is a language shift to proficiency in English in the second generation and to reliance on English in the third generation. English will remain the dominant language in the United States. As the language of science and technology and the world’s lingua franca, English has sufficient attraction and power to continue to thrive. In many locales, however, the mix of languages will be greater as critical masses of immigrants, sustained by new arrivals, choose to preserve their heritage languages while learning English. Those Americans prone to holding nativist sentiments will continue to feel their space threatened by linguistic pressure from languages they do not understand. The American identity, however, need not depend on language exclusivity. Any rise in US bilingualism and multilingualism, already apparent in so many places (see Fig. 1), should be embraced for its contribution to our communal social capital.

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Linguistic Shift and Heritage Language Retention in Australia

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James Forrest, Phil Benson, and Frank Siciliano

Contents 1 2 3 4

Toward a Multilingual or a Monolingual Society? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Review and Data Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Linguistic Demography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geolinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Geolinguistic Map of Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 A Geolinguistic Map of Melbourne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Analysis of linguistic shift, heritage language retention, and the geolinguistics of post–World War II immigrants to Australia from non-English speaking backgrounds indicate the general acceptance of English as the language of choice. For many, linguistic shift is largely completed in the second generation. For fewer, heritage languages are largely retained into the third generation. However, while Australia will remain multilingual so long as immigration from non-English speaking sources continues at the rate of recent years, the general conclusion from intergenerational evidence of languages spoken at home from the 2011

J. Forrest (*) Department of Geography and Planning, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] P. Benson Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] F. Siciliano Department of Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_37

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Australian census is the demise of the use of heritage languages in the medium term except where they may be preserved independently of the home environment. Keywords

Linguistic shift · Heritage languages · Immigrant first through third generations · Geolinguistics · Melbourne · Australia

1

Toward a Multilingual or a Monolingual Society?

Australia is a land of immigrants, its population composition reflecting three main historical periods. More than 150 years of Anglo hegemony followed initial European settlement in 1788. The post–World War II period was one of increasing cultural diversity, first of European immigrants from the later 1940s until the early 1970s, then a much wider sourcing of immigrants following the demise of the White Australia policy in the early 1970s. A 2017 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that 28% of today’s Australians were born overseas, including 16% from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB), with 18% of these speaking a language other than English at home. Government attitudes to the increasing population diversity of immigrant streams following World War II until the mid-1960s embodied a policy of assimilation. Immigrants from non-English speaking backgrounds were expected to shed their cultures and languages and become indistinguishable from the host population. From the mid-1960s until the early 1970s, when the last vestiges of the White Australia policy were removed, there was a policy shift to integration, with recognition of hardships caused by previous assimilationist policies and the need for migrant assistance and welfare. From 1973, a policy of multiculturalism operated. NESB migrant groups were encouraged to form state and national associations to help maintain their cultures and to promote the survival of their community languages and heritage within mainstream institutions (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2007). In a speech, while tabling a government report on post-arrival programs and services for immigrants, then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser spoke of a multicultural Australia and the value of linguistic and cultural maintenance (see Ozolins 1993, p. 1). A decade ago, the development of the linguistic aspects of multiculturalism led Clyne et al. (2008, p. 1) to characterize Australia as an increasingly multilingual nation, but this is only true of the languages of recently arrived migrants. Of linguistic shift away from community languages spoken at home among first generation immigrants, Karidakis and Arunachalam (2016, p. 7) noted that about one in four aged 5 and older from non-English speaking backgrounds spoke only English at home, although the shift was not uniform across a range of birthplace groups; higher levels of education were positively associated with linguistic shift. First through third intergenerational analysis of NESB ancestral groups in Sydney (Forrest and Dandy 2017) extended these findings. They showed that most immigrant

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groups – 90% and more among those from most European origins – had undergone linguistic shift by the second generation, while among those from the Middle East and many parts of Asia, two-thirds and more were speaking English only at home in the third generation. However, both gender and level of education ceased to be significant beyond the first generation. There is also evidence of higher levels of heritage language retention in enclave areas with higher ancestral group concentrations in Australia’s major immigrant receiving cities (Kipp 2007) and in some rural areas (Chiswick and Miller 1995). Nevertheless, the overall pattern is a shift away from community or heritage languages in Australia, toward a monolingual nation with minimal heritage language retention beyond the second or third generations, though this process is far from uniform among NESB ancestry groups.

2

Review and Data Issues

Quinquennial censuses provide the basis of many Australian studies on linguistic shift, English proficiency, and the distribution of immigrant languages, mainly focusing on the major cities, notably Melbourne and Sydney (Clyne et al. 2008). This body of work has examined language shift among first generation immigrants, in fewer cases extending to both the first and second generations (e.g., Clyne 2003; Khoo et al. 2002; Kipp 2007), and in one recent case among the first three generations (Forrest and Dandy 2017). For example, Clyne and Kipp (1997) used data from the 1996 Australian census to compare concentrations of languages other than English in Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide. Others have focused on English language proficiency within a “human capital” framework and relationships with socio-demographic aspects of the immigrant population (e.g., Chiswick and Miller 1995; Chiswick et al. 2004). Yet others have examined the importance of immigrant segregation, minority language concentration, and the importance of linguistic enclaves in reducing the acquisition of English language skills (Chiswick and Miller 1999) linked to the retention of heritage languages (Forrest and Dandy 2017). Many of these Australian studies have been based on censuses up to 2001. We are aware of only one analysis from the 2006 census (Clyne et al. 2008) and two from the 2011 census: Karidakis and Arunachalam (2016) of first generation immigrants for Australia as a whole, and Forrest and Dandy’s (2017) analysis of first through third intergeneration English proficiency and linguistic shift among non-English speaking ancestry groups in Sydney. Data on which most of these studies are based derive from two census questions. The first asked if the respondent speaks a language other than English at home, with instructions to indicate if English only or if not to nominate one heritage language. Some problems have been identified with this question (Clyne 2003): only one language other than English (LOTE) could be identified, so additional languages used in the home were not counted. Respondents who answered “no” may live alone and may use a LOTE only elsewhere, in the homes of parents, relatives, or friends, or in community settings; such use is not recorded. Nevertheless, the home language question is considered the best available (Extra and Yagmur 2010) and “probably the

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most promising indicator for obtaining basic information on the increasingly multicultural composition of nation-states and societies” (van der Merwe and van der Merwe 2007, p. 7). For Clyne (2003, p. 22), its advantage is as a predictor of maintenance: “If a language is not transmitted in the home, it is not likely to survive another generation.” The second question asks for self-assessment of how well the respondent speaks English and provides output for English only and English plus another language along with, in both cases, if English is spoken very well, well, not well, or not at all. This is an important question. Linguistic shift is often seen as indicative of assimilation, while conversely, heritage language retention may be taken to indicate reluctance to integrate (Clyne 2011, p. 62). However, achieving proficiency in English as a second language does not necessarily mean losing one’s heritage language. Bilingualism plus proficiency with English may be overlooked if this second question (level of proficiency with [spoken] English) is not examined alongside linguistic shift. Using an online facility called Tablebuilder, the Australian Bureau of Statistics provides two ways to cross index measures of language maintenance and shift. One, applicable to the first generation of immigrants, is by place of birth, but this can be problematic. Clyne (2003) concluded that using birthplace made it impossible to compute first generation language shift for immigrants from multilingual countries, and indeed for countries where English was widely used as a first language. Research based on birthplace also ignores a second and much more productive approach that may largely overcome Clyne’s concern. This is the use of ancestry data, which relates to cultural background. In the first generation, for example, immigrants born in Vietnam represent two major language groups, Vietnamese and Chinese; birthplace alone cannot identify this difference. Ancestry can. At the 2011 census, respondents were asked to nominate up to two ancestries, and 39% of them did so.

3

Linguistic Demography

The proportion of theAustralian population using a heritage or community language at home reflects historical changes in immigration policy relative to absolute numbers admitted annually, changes in source countries before and after the ending of the White Australia policy in the early 1970s, and linguistic shift. European languages, reflecting immigration source areas in the later 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s (the post–World War II period) are now mostly in decline, while Middle Eastern and Asian languages are surging. Italian, for instance, has been overtaken in absolute terms by Mandarin Chinese, as has Greek by Arabic and Cantonese. Tagalog (Filipino) now ranks ahead of all European languages except Italian and Greek, while Hindi is rapidly catching up on the third ranked European language, Spanish. The other major influence, to which we now turn, is the intergenerational transmission of heritage or community languages, as opposed to linguistic shift to English as the language of the receiving or host society. While this generally follows patterns established in the literature, with linguistic shift largely occurring in the

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second and third generations, as Clyne and Kipp (2006, p. 17) have noted there are significant variations from one speech community to another. Rumbaut (2004, p. 1161), however, notes a lack of consensus about what constitutes a generation, in particular its use in kinship or demographic contexts. Generation in the Australian census relates to kinship. Thus, in compiling Table 1, the first (immigrant) generation embraces both parents and their children born overseas. The second is where the children of immigrants are born in Australia but both parents are born overseas. A 2.5 generation includes children born in Australia, as is one parent (mother or father) and the other parent is born overseas. The third (or third-plus) generation comprises the grandchildren of immigrants and both parents all born in Australia. In general terms, Table 1 shows that most European ancestry groups had experienced high levels of linguistic shift by the second generation, with the exception of Greeks and those speaking the languages of the former Yugoslavia. Among those with non-European heritage languages, the intergenerational shift to English was lower in the first and second generations and much more varied. With the exception of those from Thai, Indonesian, Japanese, and Lao language backgrounds, nearly all displayed a shift to English below 10% in the first generation. With the continuing exception of people with Greek, Serbian, and Macedonian but less so Croatian language backgrounds, those with European ancestries sustained levels of shift in the second generation approximately 20% higher than among non-Europeans, some of the latter exhibited high levels of shift, with 40–50% now speaking English only in the second generation. These were people with Indonesian, Thai and to a lesser extent Chinese language backgrounds. This pattern was largely sustained into the third generation, but with significant proportions of many with non-European heritage languages now showing high levels of linguistic shift, around 80% or more; Turkish speakers (58% shift) were the only obvious exception. Meanwhile Serbian and Macedonian speakers had significantly raised their proportions of those who had shifted to English only. The 2.5 generation largely displays the same trends as previously identified in the second generation, but with one significant difference. This is the consistent and substantial difference among those from non-European language backgrounds according to whether the mother was born overseas and father born in Australia, or father was born overseas and mother in Australia. Higher, sometimes much higher, levels of linguistic shift in the 2.5 generation are observed when the mother is Australian-born, which is consistent with Labov’s (1990, p. 205) conclusion that “women are generally the innovators in linguistic change.” Conversely, lower levels of linguistic shift occur among the 2.5 generation with European ancestries and mother born overseas, apart from those from the former Yugoslavia and Greece. Among non-European ancestry groups, lower levels of linguistic shift are apparent among Afghan and Vietnamese speakers, but also among those of Assyrian, Turkish, Laotian, Chinese, and East African language backgrounds. In their study of trends in heritage language retention and linguistic shift in Australia in the decade to 1996, Clyne and Kipp (2006, p. 19) concluded that shift was always higher in the second generation than in the first, and that in most cases the rank ordering of language shift was the same in the second generation as in the

Dutch French German Italian Greek Bosnian C Bosnian M Croatian Macedonian Serbian Hungarian Polish Russian Ukrainian

1st generation (%) Speaks Speaks English own only language and English well 65 35 39 59 53 46 22 60 10 60 12 65 4 74 20 65 7 68 9 71 38 56 38 55 24 64 34 55

0 0 0 0 0 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Speaks own language and English, but not well

2nd generation (%) Speaks Speaks English own only language and English well 94 6 76 24 89 11 61 39 30 69 51 48 23 77 56 43 31 69 40 60 79 21 77 23 71 29 76 24

2.5 generation Mother born overseas (%) Speaks Speaks English own only language and English well 98 2 88 12 96 4 88 11 66 33 54 45 23 76 85 14 64 36 71 24 93 7 93 7 91 9 91 9

2.5 generation Father born overseas (%) Speaks Speaks English own only language and English well 99 1 91 8 97 3 88 12 64 35 57 42 24 76 87 13 62 37 73 26 96 4 96 4 94 6 92 8

3rd generation (%) Speaks Speaks English own only language and English well 99 1 98 2 99 1 95 5 74 25 87 13 71 29 92 8 75 24 84 16 97 3 98 2 96 4 94 6

Table 1 Ancestry groups: Intergenerational linguistic shift and proficiency with English among those aged 10 and older. (Source: 2011 Australian census)

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10 3 4 5 4 9 9 4 7 10 16 3 16 15 8 7 2 6

73 71 67 69 74 77 64 80 56 62 67 57 77 70 69 62 71 78

Note: C Christian, M Muslim

Lebanese C Lebanese M Iraqi Kurdish Assyrian Iranian Turkish Sudanese Khmer Lao Thai Vietnamese Indonesian Chinese Japanese Korean Afghan East African

0 0 0 2 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

34 9 25 14 20 35 17 31 31 35 55 11 56 33 42 20 12 29

65 90 74 85 80 64 82 65 68 64 45 87 43 66 56 79 86 69

37 9 75 47 60 74 40 69 68 71 42 56 80 81 65 70 42 59

63 90 25 53 40 26 59 31 32 29 18 43 19 19 34 30 58 41

40 10 79 79 82 89 58 83 80 89 89 84 89 93 84 81 84 84

59 88 21 21 18 11 41 17 20 11 11 16 11 6 16 19 16 16

92 26 64 57 72 77 69 50 63 65 95 37 72 97 95 61 90 63

8 72 36 43 28 16 30 50 37 35 5 61 24 3 5 39 10 37

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first. While their first finding was sustained using 2011 Australian census data, the second was not. Between the first and second generations, just under a third (10 ancestry groups) were more than five places different. Bosnian and Lebanese Christians experienced major linguistic shifts, rising to fourth and second rank respectively, as did Bosnian Muslims (to ninth place); Lebanese Muslims, on the other hand, regressed more than five places, as did the Sudanese and Turks. Between the second and third generations, nearly 45% (14 cases) were more than five places different in the rankings. However, particular cases tell a larger story. Among those of Chinese ancestry, linguistic shift involved just 8% in the immigrant generation, rising to 42% in the second and was virtually complete (95%) in the third. Clyne and Kipp (2006, p. 19) saw this as reflecting a pragmatic view aimed at providing their children with the best possible access to English and to Australian education. Among those whose heritage language was Macedonian, on the other hand, linguistic shift involved some 7% in the first generation, rising to 31% in the second, and just 75% in the third. Clyne and Kipp (2006) associated this with the first and second generations remaining closely socially networked in local churches and schools, and while there has been some movement to outer suburbs in the third generation, this has not resulted in any substantial shift. Whereas, among the other major immigrant groups from Southern Europe, the Italians, 22% in the first generation, rose to 61% in the second and 95% in the third. Smolicz (1981) attributed this in part to differences relating to language as a “core value” in cultural identification, which was not of strong concern among those of Italian background. But some ancestry groups, particularly Lebanese and Bosnian Christians, “stalled”; after a very high level of shift to English between the first and second generations, there was no further shift into the third, even though there was a relative degree of further shift as suggested by the rankings.

4

Geolinguistics

The term “geolinguistics” (Williams and van der Merwe 1996) has been used to describe the study of the spatial distribution of languages and language varieties. It mostly involves mapping using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the use of quantitative spatial analysis methods (Hoch and Hayes 2010) toward improving the effectiveness of modern language maps (Luebbering 2013). The approach to mapping languages spoken at home used here is different, in that it focuses not on mapping individual languages, but rather on similarities among overall profiles or the mix of languages present in sub-areas. An entropy grouping procedure is used to group sub-areas (Statistical Areas Level 4 in census terms for Australia as a whole, and suburbs for Melbourne) in terms of the mix of languages present (on the entropy grouping procedure, see Forrest and Johnston 1981). The number of groups selected is determined once the profiles in one group of areas are more similar within than they are similar to the mix present in other groups of sub-areas. An advantage of this analytical approach is that results show how one group merges into another thus avoiding any implication that each group is a virtually separate entity. We apply this

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approach to Australia as a whole, and to Melbourne, one of the two main (with Sydney) destinations of post–World War II immigrant streams.

4.1

The Geolinguistic Map of Australia

National averages for the distribution of languages spoken at home across Australia among those aged 10 and older – younger children are excluded because they are still learning English at school – are shown in Table 2. The accompanying graphs (Fig. 1) show greatest emphasis on English in language group 1, ranging to where English is relatively least important in group 9 (with the exception of group 7 and its high Indigenous languages presence). The nine groups account for 90% of variation in language or language group distributions across Australia. Because of their complexity and size, the graphs are designed to show the relative presence above or below the national average for each language or language group shown in Table 2. For example, the average level of English-spoken-at-home nationally is 92% (Table 2). The graphs (Fig. 1) show the presence of English in the home compared with that average, i.e., the bar is above the national average for English (in green) for language groups 1 through 3, but below (in red) for all other language groups. Several major features dominate the distribution of languages across Australia (Fig. 2). Most noticeable is the absolute dominance of English. As shown in Fig. 1, in entropy groups 1–6 between 89% and 97% speak exclusively English at home, although in the graphs for groups 4–6 the bars for English fall below the national average for English spoken at home. Only in the metropolitan and major urban areas is the use of English substantially lower, 83% in group 8 areas and 68% in group 9 areas (see Figs. 1 and 2). Indigenous language groups (1.3% of the Australian total of languages spoken at home) have been included at the national level (but not for Melbourne) to complete the picture. The next largest group nationally is Chinese (1%), followed by Arabic, Indian, and Southeast Asian languages, all about 0.6%. From a geolinguistic viewpoint, there is a clear distinction between dominantly English-speaking areas in non-metropolitan parts of the settled, southeast and southwest of the country on the one hand, and on the other the sparsely settled regions of inland and “remote” Australia (groups 6 and 7), where Indigenous languages have an important minority presence (6% and 40% respectively). A second feature is the standout position of the metropolitan areas (groups 8–9), as the focus of post–World War II immigration and a wide range of languages other than English spoken at home, highlighted by the number of heritage language with bars above the national average line (see Fig. 1). A third feature is the relative paucity of rural regions (groups 4–5) where a non-English, non-Indigenous, language is present to any degree; rural Australia is largely a “white” (Anglo) landscape. Non-English, non-Indigenous languages are mostly found in “cultural islands” (Burnley 2001, p. 69), with significant heritage language concentrations in areas of intensive agriculture mostly too small to show up at the national level. Among those large enough to show up are the languages of the former Yugoslavia, and Italian (group 4), in wine growing and (formerly) major tobacco growing

English 91.78 Baltic 0.01 Burmese 0.05

German 0.34 Hungar’n 0.05 Hmong 0.02

Dutch 0.33 E. Slav. 0.09 Khmer 0.32

Scand’n 0.06 Yugoslav 0.47 Thai 0.14

Finnish 0.03 W. Slav 0.14 SE Asia 0.62

French 0.17 Iranic 0.12 Chines. 0.95

Greek 0.41 Mid. E. 0.69 Japan. 0.12

Iberian 0.32 Turkic 0.10 Korea 0.13

Italian 0.75 Dravid’n 0.19 Indigen. 1.27

Maltese 0.06 Indian 0.66

Table 2 National (language) entropy groups, Australia. Note: White = Language; shaded = language group. Values represent the percent of each language (or language group) spoken at home. (Source 2011 census)

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Linguistic Shift and Heritage Language Retention in Australia

Languages match Table 2

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English German Dutch Scandinavian Finnish French Greek Iberian Italian Maltese Baltic Hungarian Eastern Slav Yugoslav Western Slav Iranic Middle Eastern Turkic Dravidian Indian Burmese Hmong Khmer Thai SE Asian Chinese Japanese Korean Indigenous

55

Groups match Figure 2 Group 11

Note the descending importance of English in the gray shaded area from Group 1 to Group 9 Group 22

Group 33

Group 44

Group 55

Group 66

Group 77

Group 88

Group 99

Fig. 1 Graphs show the relative presence above (green bars) or below (red bars) the national average for each language or language group from Table 2. With the exception of group 7, the emphasis on English (first bar on each graph) ranges from high in group 1 (dark blue circle) to low in group 9 (dark red circle). Note that the circled group numbers match the map of Australia shown as Fig. 2

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Darwin 8

5

Language group and number of groups (n)

7

1 2

Brisbane

3

8

4

6

8

2

6

Sydney

2

Adelaide

N

0

5

1

1

Perth

400 km

800

8

9

3

Canberra 8

7 8 9

(19) (12) (3) (2) (2) (3) (1) (5) (2)

Melbourne 4 9

Hobart

Fig. 2 Geolinguistic map of Australia, by Statistical Area (Level 4)

districts of the New South Wales and the Victorian Riverina, and in western Victoria. The industrial Geelong region, southwest of Melbourne, and the Illawarra, including Wollongong, south of Sydney, are examples of major industrial centers which attracted large numbers of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s, unlike the major metropolitan areas which attracted a much broader immigrant base.

4.2

A Geolinguistic Map of Melbourne

Seventy-five percent of people in Melbourne aged 10 and older speak English at home (Table 3). The next most used language group is Chinese (4.2%), principally Mandarin (2.3%) and Cantonese (1.5%), after which come Italian (2.8%) and Greek (2.6%), then Vietnamese (1.9%), the languages of the former Yugoslavia (1.5%), Arabic (1.4%) and languages spoken in India and Pakistan (each 1%). After these are a large number of languages spoken by relatively small groups of people across the city. It is important to bear these absolute percentages in mind when speaking about “above average” concentrations of different languages used at home in different parts of the city. Graphs of the distribution of languages spoken at home across Melbourne (Fig. 3) reflect the ethnic mosaic of the city, which is illustrated in the maps of Melbourne in Fig. 4. They show the social distance between middle to upper socioeconomic status in Melbourne’s east (Figs. 3 and 4, groups 1–4) and immigrant groups from non-English speaking backgrounds especially in the industrial districts to the north and west of the city (Figs. 3 and 4, groups 5–15). Equally important, the distribution

English 74.76 Hungari 0.15 Iranic 0.33 Thai 0.16

German 0.46 Russian 0.38 Arabic 1.42 Malay 0.09

Dutch 0.18 Bosnian 0.14 Assyria 0.23 Filipino 0.68

Afrikaan 0.10 Croatia 0.49 Turkish 0.81 Canton 1.55

Scanda 0.08 Macedo 0.59 Tamil 0.64 Mandari 2.28

French 0.34 Serbian 0.38 Indian 1.03 Chinese 0.41

Greek 2.62 Polish 0.35 Singhal 0.54 Japan 0.18

Portug 0.10 Albania 0.14 Pakista 0.99 Korean 0.21

Spanish 0.66 Roman 0.10 Burmes 0.11 SS Afr 0.47

Italian 2.84 Hebrew 0.16 Khmer 0.22 Pacif is 0.24

Maltese 0.52 Pashto 0.03 Vietnam 1.85

Table 3 Languages spoken at home, Melbourne. Note: White = Language; shaded = language group. Values represent the percent of each language (or language group) spoken at home

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Languages match Table 3 English German Dutch Afrikaans Scandinavian French Greek Portuguese Spanish Italian Maltese Hungarian Russian Bosnian Croatian Macedonian Serbian Polish Albanian Rosman Hebrew Pashto Iranic Arabic Assyrian Turkish Tamil Indian Singhalese Pakistani Burmese Khmer Vietnamese Thai Malay Filipino Cantonese Mandarin Other Chinese Japanese Korean Sub-Sah. Afr. Pacific Island.

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Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

Group 6

Group 7

Group 8 Group 9

Group 10

Group 11

Group 12

Group 13

Group 14

Group 15

Fig. 3 Relative presence above (green bars) or below (red bars) the Melbourne average for each language or language group from Table 3. Note: The group colors match Fig. 4

highlighted in groups 5–15 also reflects the high level of intermixing of immigrant groups with English speakers, hence a complex pattern of languages. There is little evidence here of the level of segregation of particular ethnic groups noted in cities of many overseas immigrant-receiving nations (Johnston et al. 2007). Even in

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Melbourne Language groups 1–15

AUSTRALIA

0

20 km

Melbourne

Language groups 1 (75) 2 (55) 3 (37) 4 (29)

Language groups 5 (41) 6 (8) 7 (18) 8 (12)

Language groups

Language groups

9 (29) 10 (6) 11 (37)

12 13 14 15

(17) (19) (36) (26)

Fig. 4 Geolinguistic maps of Melbourne, by statistical area (suburbs). The color keys on each map correspond to the language groups in Fig. 3

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dominantly English-only speaking eastern Melbourne, there are above average concentrations of Dutch and German speakers, merging into a wider range of Eastern, South Eastern and Southern European and some Asian languages and language groups. In the northern and western parts of Melbourne, English only becomes less dominant, mostly around 60–70%, but in two cases (Groups 14 and 15) falling to as low as 45%. Chinese speakers have an above average presence in three main areas, in east- and west-central parts of Melbourne (Groups 13–15), with a smaller above average presence further south in the higher status St Kilda area (Group 7). There are greater concentrations of Cantonese speakers in the western inner-city sector (Group 13), and of Mandarin speakers south of the inner city in the St Kilda area (Group 7). Japanese speakers are mainly located in higher status areas in the mid-western suburbs (Group 3) and South Melbourne (St Kilda) areas (Group 7). South and South East Asian languages are more concentrated in the eastern, inner city region (Groups 14–15), with South Asians (Group 11) also with an above average presence (Group 11) southeast of the inner city; South East Asians also have a presence closer to the city (Group 13) and in the inner west. Above average concentrations of Italian speakers are mainly located in the industrial north (groups 5, 9) and outer western suburbs (group 6). Melbourne’s Greek speakers are located in the mid-north (group 5) with Italian, but mainly in inner city and middle distant eastern suburbs (group 15), intermixed with speakers of many Asian languages. Speakers of the languages of the former Yugoslavia are concentrated in various parts of Melbourne: in the industrial areas to the north, but also in middle southeastern and southwestern suburbs. Eastern European language speakers are mainly located in the western suburbs (groups 11–12), but with Russians (notably Russian Jews) especially concentrated in the inner south (group 7), while Poles (most notably Polish Jews) are more scattered in western and innerto-middle eastern suburbs, especially in the Hebrew-Yiddish speaking higher status suburbs with the Russians (cf. Forrest and Kusek 2016). Middle Eastern languages are more widely scattered across the city, but with a significant concentration to the mid-north (group 10). Smaller but above average numbers are located in the outer western suburbs (group 6), in the middle to outer northern (groups 9–10) and western suburbs (group 13). Like many other immigrant groups from non-English speaking backgrounds, most of those speaking Middle Eastern languages are located in Melbourne’s major lower socioeconomic status industrial suburbs to the north and west of the city.

5

Conclusion

Analysis of linguistic shift and the geolinguistics of post–World War II immigrants to Australia from non-English speaking backgrounds highlight several major features. One, relating to linguistic shift, is the general acceptance of English as the language of choice. For many this process is complete by the second generation. For fewer, such as Greek, Macedonian, and Vietnamese, heritage languages are retained

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at least into the third generation, the grandchildren of post–World War II immigrants. However, the general conclusion of the evidence from languages spoken at home as recorded in the 2011 census is the demise of the use of heritage languages in the medium term except where they may be preserved independently of the home environment. Geolinguistically, the evidence for Australia as a whole confirms the primary destination of post–World War II immigrant streams as the major metropolitan and other major urban centers, commonly industrial cities in the case of the latter. Rural Australia remains largely an Anglo landscape, apart from local concentrations of non-English based languages in particular, commonly intensive agricultural areas, and of course the presence of significant Indigenous minorities in inland regions. Within the major metropolitan areas, the example of Melbourne is one of, first, a bifurcation of the city into two main parts, one comprising higher socioeconomic status suburbs – in Melbourne’s east – and the other, with a few exceptions like some Mandarin Chinese speakers, and Russian or Polish Jews, in largely working-class suburbs in the city’s west and north. The other aspect is the very substantial intermixing of ethnic immigrant languages with English throughout the northern and western areas where they are concentrated. There is little if any evidence of any one linguistic group being noticeably concentrated or segregated from others. In this respect, the future for Australia as a multicultural society appears secure. Its future as a multilingual society, however, is much less certain. It may be that Australia will remain multilingual only as long as immigration from non-English speaking sources continues at the rate that it has in the past several decades. Several factors in current patterns of global migration may slow down the rate of linguistic shift. These include the increasing proportion of professional, transnational migrants whose children maintain ties with their home countries through social media and frequent home visits. There is also the possibly of more positive social attitudes toward multilingualism and heritage language retention in the future Australia. Whether these factors are sufficient to have a significant effect on heritage language maintenance at national and local levels will become apparent in future censuses. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Burnley, I. H. (2001). The impact of immigration on Australia: A demographic approach. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Chiswick, B., & Miller, P. (1995). The endogeneity between language and earnings: International analyses. Journal of Labor Economics, 13, 119–131. Chiswick, B., & Miller, P. (1999). Immigration, language and multiculturalism in Australia. Australian Economic Review, 32, 369–385. Chiswick, B., Lee, Y., & Miller, P. (2004). Immigrants’ language skills: The Australian experience in a longitudinal survey. International Migration Review, 38, 611–654.

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Clyne, M. (2003). Dynamics of language contact: English and immigrant languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, M. (2011). Multilingualism, multiculturalism and integration. In M. Clyne & J. Jupp (Eds.), Multiculturalism and integration: A harmonious relationship (pp. 53–73). Canberra: ANU E Press. Clyne, M., & Kipp, S. (1997). Language maintenance and language shift in Australia, 1996. People and Place, 5(4), 19. Clyne, M., & Kipp, S. (2006). Australia’s community languages. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 180, 7–21. Clyne, M., Hajek, J., & Kipp, S. (2008). Tale of two multilingual cities in a multicultural continent. People and Place, 16, 1–8. Department of Immigration and Citizenship. (2007). Fact sheet 6 – Australia’s multicultural policy. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Extra, G., & Yagmur, K. (2010). Language proficiency and socio-cultural orientation of Turkish and Moroccan youngsters in the Netherlands. Language and Education, 24, 117–132. Forrest, J., & Dandy, J. (2017). Proficiency in English, linguistic shift and ethnic capital: An intergenerational analysis of non-English speaking background immigrant groups in Sydney, Australia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01434632.2017.13159498. Forrest, J., & Johnston, R. (1981). On the characterisation of urban sub-areas according to age structure. Urban Geography, 2, 31–40. Forrest, J., & Kusek, W. (2016). Human capital and the structural integration of Polish immigrants in Australia in the first, second and third generations. Australian Geographer, 47, 233–248. Hoch, S., & Hayes, J. (2010). Geolinguistics: The incorporation of geographic information systems and science. Geographical Bulletin, 51, 23–36. Johnston, R., Poulsen, M., & Forrest, J. (2007). The geography of ethnic residential segregation: A comparative study of five countries. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97, 711–738. Karidakis, M., & Arunachalam, D. (2016). Shift in the use of migrant community language languages in Australia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37, 1–22. Khoo, S.-E., McDonald, P., Giorgas, D., & Birrell, B. (2002). Second generation Australians: Report for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Kipp, S. (2007). Community languages and the 2001 Australian census. In A. Paueals, J. Winter, & J. Lo Bianco (Eds.), Maintaining minority languages in translational contexts (pp. 13–29). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Labov, W. (1990). The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change, 2, 205–254. Luebbering, C. R. (2013). Displaying the geography of language: The cartography of language maps. The Linguistics Journal, 7, 39–67. Ozolins, U. (1993). The politics of language in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Rumbaut, R. G. (2004). Ages, life stages and generational cohorts: Decomposing the immigrant first and second generations in the United States. International Migration Review, 38, 1160–1205. Smolicz, J. J. (1981). Core values and cultural identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4, 75–90. van der Merwe, I. J., & van der Merwe, J. H. (Eds.). (2007). Linguistic Atlas of South Africa. Language in space and time. Stellenbosch: Sun Press. Williams, C. H., & van der Merwe, I. J. (1996). Mapping the multilingual city: A research agenda for urban geolinguistics. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 17, 49–66.

Minority Language Groups in the State System

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Nations and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Minority Language Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Chapter Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Catalonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Galicia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Wales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Wallonia and Flanders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Sámi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Old Order Amish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Roma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Minority language groups exist in almost every state in the modern system. Most of these language groups are in constant negotiation for rights and status within the framework of their given state government. The extensive body of literature on minority languages tends to concentrate on individual cases, leaving the complex task of comparison largely unsatisfied. Each minority group has elements that give them more or less power within the state. These power elements include group history, speakership, territoriality, and economic sway in the form of elite speakers. The degree to which language groups are able to effectively lobby for rights and receive concessions from the state has a great deal to do with the relative power of a given minority language group. This chapter introduces a model for K. L. Hannum (*) Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_43

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the comparative study of minority language groups within the state system. By considering minority group power and state concessions along different axis within the same plane, a clearer picture begins to emerge of how groups are able to consolidate power and appeal to the state system. The chapter begins with an overview of language and national identity, after which the model is introduced with a variety of cases plotted. These cases are then further explored in the remainder of the chapter. As the model shows and the cases explain, the distribution trend shows minority language groups with more power are able to achieve greater concessions, and those with less power tend to receive little recognition within the state system. Keywords

Minority languages · Nationality · Language rights · Language prestige

1

Introduction

Language is a key component in the social and political valorization of national identities. Over the course of history, minority language groups have been consistently marginalized in favor of creating an ideal nation-state, a political territory in which all citizens display common social traits of belonging and identify each other through those common displays of culture. Traits such as style of dress, manner of greeting, traditional practices, and language are relational reference tools (Brubaker et al. 2004; Wimmer 2004), acting as identifiable traits of national identity. Language is the most salient of these tools, as it must be used every day to communicate, and it is not easily morphed or hidden like other group traits. As such, language acts as a marker of social boundaries, delineating where one group ends and other begins, as well as highlighting the difference in nationality between groups. For hundreds of years, states have undertaken nationalization projects to fill out their borders with a homogenous citizenry who speak the same language (Anderson 1991; Wallerstien 1991). Such nation building was intended to unify the state, strengthen internal cohesion, and solidify external boundaries against other states. As the modern world was partitioned into the state system we know today, language groups were subsumed into these nation-building projects and forced to abandon their own national cultures to become part of one idealized official nation-state (Connor 1978). Minority language groups usually survive by existing on the periphery of the central state and do so in one of two ways; protected in the countryside away from governmental control, or spoken by elites, usually in a regional city. In the last three decades, the rise of regionalism has allowed many of these peripheral groups to re-establish their national language as a civil entity. Minority language groups have evolved in their assertion of rights by binding their language to a territory (usually an established political region), utilizing regional devolution, and appealing to suprastate entities to achieve a variety of social and political concessions. Due to the salience of the nation in today’s social imagination, most groups claim their unique language is evidence of a historic nationality and bind

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themselves to a territory for greater recognition. Through the process of sub-state nationalization, language and national identity has become inextricably linked. By looking at a handful of examples and comparing their attributes of language power to their level of representation, this chapter briefly explores the nature of minority language groups within the state system and the level of recognition they have been able to achieve as national entities.

2

Nations and Language

Identity is of critical importance when considering territorial social norms, such as language use. Theoretically, language is but one marker of identity, yet due to its everyday use, its high visibility, and its importance in not just social and cultural, but in economic and professional spheres, language becomes much more important than an arbitrary identity badge in the real world. The extent to which groups or individuals should be able to survive by speaking their first language, much less express their national identity though use of their language, has been explored by Skutnabb-Kangas (1998, 2008) and Robert Phillipson (1998, 2000, 2009) in the Linguistic Human Rights (LHR) literature. Proponents of LHR stress that all minority languages should be accorded some degree of protections and governmental support. Problematic to these views are questions of what constitutes a group, and which groups have a legitimate language to protect. These questions often become debates as to the origin and history of nations. Arguments about the origin of nations have stratified into two camps; primordialists and constructivists. Primordialists believe that national ethnic groups have existed in one form or another since before recorded history, predating the state system and therefore have no responsibilities to conform to that system. This view also supposes that national groups have been able to define themselves by some binding factor for the length of their existence, namely a common language. The primordial position has been held by scholars such as Smith (1986), Armstrong (1982), and Nietschmann (1994), as well as nationalists who themselves tend to prefer this explanation of their origins, The majority of academic commentators on nationalism, including Gellner (1983), Hobsbawm (1990), and Anderson (1991) tend to take the constructivist position, believing that nationalities have been created by the rise of the nation-state itself. They argue that before the creation of the nation-state, the idea of “nations” had no salience in the popular or political imagination, and that groups had been changing under waves of invasion, imperial rule, and other accidents of history with no regard for a sacred national identity. These scholars posit that the rise of industrialization was able to consolidate groups into what we think of as nations, through a widely circulated and standardized language. Despite these parallel debates, the reality on the ground is that groups continue to nationalize and influence geopolitical developments regardless of what their actual origins may be. Territoriality is central to claims of nationhood, as institutional reach is crucial for establishing a national identity worthy of protecting (Amin and Thrift 1995). Borders exist and are strengthened by institutional networks, which operate at various

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territorial scales. Group identities are created and cultivated though institutional practices, such as the standardizing and dissemination of language. The extent of such practices depends upon the territorial reach of institutions. National identities have bound themselves to territories, thought of as the homeland of primordial nations (Smith 1983). Such national territories, however, must find homeland within or across state borders as they lie. National groups such as the Welsh work for political concessions within recognizable territorial borders, while others such as the Basques, see their rightful nation as stretching outside their established region in Spain, as well as into southwestern France. Defined borders are used to form cohesive territorial identities through the assignment of political and social space (Newman 2003; Paasi 2003). These territorial identities are the personal and social (Paasi 2009) in addition to the political and civil (Taylor 1994) meanings ascribed to place. These identities can exist at the sub-state or supra-state level. Territorial identities have proliferated since the 1980s, calling into question how territorial subgrouping has affected the Westphalian state system. Regional, local, borderland, and altogether non-territorial identities have resulted from, and been influenced by, devolution away from the central state (Ohmae 1993; Taylor 1996; Kaplan 2000). Territories, be they states, regions, or locales, are multifaceted, often overlapping in their boundaries, and most importantly must be treated as symbolic and flexible constructs of social and political power (Newman 2010). Territories that contain a uniquely defined group of people are poised to claim more power as national entities. The nation, and in particular the nation-state, is highly meaningful as an imagined community of ethnic, linguistic, and religious camaraderie within state boundaries is still the goal of many state building projects. Nationalization operates as a process of binding a group of people to a territory, which works to politicize and elevate the meaning of space (Williams and Smith 1983). The binding process is often a homogenization effort, an attempt to make everyone culturally similar, so that the citizenry will respond to national cues in the same way (Scott 1999), recognizing national sameness when their fellow citizens replicate those cues, and national difference when they don’t. The state, as a territorially bounded container for its people and resources, operates to monitor social order and provide communication and movement through government institutions, an organized economy, and circulation system (Greer and Orleans 1964). Standardization and replication of a common language is key to the state’s mission of social monitoring.

2.1

Minority Language Groups

Despite homogenization efforts, there remain minority language communities in practically every country on earth. Often existing in peripheral regions of states, these minority groups have been able to claim some degree of national legitimacy, by appealing to the ideal of the nation-state, and the generally agreed upon rights of national groups in the state system. Over the past few decades, political entities at the sub state level have become savvier in asserting distinct identity as a means of securing political rights. Countries and regions solidify their identity against other

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regions (Neumann 1996; Triandafyllidou 1998) in order to gain the maximum amount of political leverage possible. Specific cultural signs and symbols, such as language, religion, dialects, foods, and names, help express national and/or regional identity (Laurie and Marwin 1999; Sletto 2002; Simon et al. 2010). Minority language groups invariably experience some type of dissatisfaction with their status, and will seek concessions ranging from basic recognition to autonomy. Sociolinguist Kloss (1971, 1977) pointed out the important distinction between tolerance-oriented and promotion-oriented language rights. Tolerance-oriented language rights ensure the right to use and preserve one’s first language (usually a minority language) in the private sphere of national life. In other words, these languages are tolerated for use in any private social, cultural, economic, or pedagogic situations but would not be fostered by the state. Quite simply, these languages are allowed to exist and nothing more. Promotion-oriented languages, on the other hand, are recognized to some extent in the public domain or civic realm of the state (May 2015). Such application of language rights may be very narrow, for example the inclusion of a minority language in official documents, or very broad, such as recognition in all state institutions and garnering of the right to self-government and decision making for the minority language group. In the 1980s, many sub-state territorial groups began to assert more political rights, kicking off a period of fragmentation in which territorial groups broke away from the central state. In many cases, claims of independence were sanctioned by the demonstration of a unique national identity that was being suppressed under the central government. Other states with aggravated internal nations turned to a model of devolution in order to quell threats of separatism. Devolution from the central state to regional entities, as well as the proliferation of suprastate entities such as the European Union (EU), and the European Assembly of Regions provided an outlet for state dissention, and a platform for bargaining outside of internal state relations. International, interregional, and translocal connectivity have also dramatically reshaped statist power structures over the last 30 years. Global connectivity and horizontal information flows have eroded the hegemony of the traditional state, and given more economic, political, and social leverage to sub state entities (Mac Giolla Chríost 2007), allowing linguistically unique nations and regions to reimagine their place within the hierarchical system.

3

Chapter Framework

To understand the nature of minority languages today and their existence within a language tolerance or promotion continuum, this chapter presents a model of minority group political representation and political power (Fig. 1). This model utilizes the work of Mikesell and Murphy (1991), who developed a framework for comparing minority group status and aspirations. This model deals exclusively with minority language groups and their political status within a representation continuum. The model here incorporates another important element to political representation, that of power. Languages are generally measured against a set of criteria, which distinguish

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Fig. 1 Minority language group concessions (horizontal axis) and power (vertical axis) within the state system

their power as a unique entity deserving of rights for its speakers (Mackey 1973). Such criteria include substantial number of speakers, long and distinct history, territoriality, and economic power in the form of elite speakers. These power criteria are represented along the vertical axis, the top being all criteria, and the bottom being none. These criteria exist in a state of flux, changing along with the language itself. These criteria cannot truly be ranked as far as political influence, since they interact with each state and group differently. However, they have been set up along the axis here by degree of difficulty to attain. For example, most groups can argue some sort of unique history, yet it is more difficult to show history within a given political territory, and even more rare for speakers of a minority language to be elites of political territory. Speakership, although difficult to maintain, is given less weight than territory in the state system therefore it has been placed on the bottom half of the model. The representation status of minority groups cannot be codified into neat groups, but are more accurately placed within a spectrum, representing degrees of representation from no acknowledgement to complete political independence. This spectrum is represented by the horizontal axis in the model, which runs counter to the power axis. Included are benchmarks along this axis to indicate recognizable concessions granted, meaning that cases placed to the right of these points have realized this level or a greater amount of recognition. Different governments allocate different levels of power to these concessions, and their realities are experienced differently, therefore

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we must allow a visible degree of flexibility between markers, accounting for differences in governmental concession expressions. For example, two language groups might have both achieved participation, yet for one that may mean the inclusion of their language on official documents, and for the other it might mean that plus a percentage of seats in parliament. In this case, the latter group would have a greater degree of representation, and be placed to the right on the former group in the model. Some key minority language groups are plotted in the model, each quadrant representing a different socio-political atmosphere for each group. Minority group aspirations operate in a different plane (see Mikeskill and Murphy 1991). Minority group aspirations are often indicative of how groups see themselves and the status of their language, but not necessarily tied to actual power criteria. The cases selected are current and well-known minority language groups, each of which illustrates a slightly different realization of language group power and governmental representation. Due to the large number of minority languages in Europe and the vide variety of power and state structures at play in European national language debates, this chapter emphasizes some of these current and publicized negotiations through the number of European cases selected. By representing these cases along a spectrum, I hope to make it clear that there is no neat categorization of language groups and representation, but that each case represents a variety of factors that goes into the unique political reality each group experiences. Furthermore, this model works to sidestep a common pitfall of generalization, which assumes an unchanging nature of its subjects. By addressing the idea that nationalism and language are (at least partially) constructed entities, the model expects to account for future positional shifts of cases within the same framework. The benefit of a model for analyzing the nature of minority language groups is the ability to compare between cases at a glance, and glean information about the power criteria that builds languages as more likely, or less likely to be represented within the state system.

4

Cases

4.1

Catalonia

One of three historic communities of Spain, Catalonia is a linguistically and culturally unique region, located in the north east of the state. Catalonia has long enjoyed a prosperous measure of self-rule within Spain, benefitting from their Mediterranean geography and early industrialization into textile production. Catalan elites drove industry and were thus in control of the economy. Waves of centralization from Madrid beginning in the seventeenth century hardened Catalonians into nationalists, led by the strong regional government and boisterous elites. Language became the primary token of a Catalan identity separate to that of Spain. In 1978, regional devolution allowed for the co-official status of Castilian (Spanish) and Catalan within the region of Catalonia, as well as returning a large amount of self-rule to the regional government and representation in the Spanish parliament. Catalan speakership is spread throughout Catalonia and the neighboring communities of

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Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, and a small number within the microstate of Andorra. Catalan is spoken primarily in Catalonia, where is has linguistic rights on par with Castilian, demarcating its territoriality. Many are still unsatisfied with Spanish rule however, and Catalonia, much like Scotland, continues to debate separation and full autonomy. Surrounding this debate, language remains the galvanizing issue of both moderate and stalwart Catalonian nationalists to this day. Due to a combination of factors at play in this case, the language community within Catalonia has amassed a great deal of power for its linguistic rights. In conjunction with the high degree of power it wields, Catalonia has achieved the greatest degree of autonomy on the spectrum, and continues to eye separatism. This combination places them in the upper right hand corner of the model. Catalan has a long and rich history, the first text dating to the fifteenth century. Catalan experienced literary renaissance in the late nineteenth century, and survived the brutal Franco dictatorship in the twentieth century. The number of speakers of Catalan has increased since democratization in 1978. The language is taught within a popular immersion school environment to those who choose it, and is a mandatory subject for those who don’t choose it. The communities of Valencia, Balearic Islands, and to a lesser degree Aragon also speak Catalan yet differ in their application of language laws. Should Catalonia separate from Spain, the implications for Valencia and the Balearic islands would be drastic, as Catalan speakers in these communities may wish for the same autonomy. The most difficult of the criteria for minority languages is that of economic power. Catalonian elites have remained loyal to the language, providing it with the necessary prestige level to survive despite in-migration and repression during the Franco era.

4.2

Galicia

The second Spanish case included in the model is Galicia, located in the north west of the state. Galicia had been a marginalized community within Spain up until the democratic turn in 1978. The historic community had experienced linguistic suppression since its inclusion in the kingdoms of Castile and Leon in the middle ages. Castilian elites came into the region and began dominating urban centers, taking control of land and the church. Consequently Castilian became the language of higher prestige, as Galician was spoken primarily by the many farmers and fisherman of the agrarian region. Linguistic suppression continued through the Franco era to democracy in 1978. Today, Galician is a co-official language within Galicia along with Castilian. Galician has experienced an accelerating language shift in the last 30 years, as urban areas of Castilian dominance swell in population and rural areas are abandoned. Unlike Catalonia, Galicia is not particularly nationalistic. Galicians are generally conservative and tend to vote mainstream, yet the demand for linguistic rights is central to the Galician nationalist party and their supporters. Galicia has achieved nearly the same status as Catalonia on the spectrum of autonomy. Both regions have autonomous governments and retain rights to all decision-making surrounding

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regional affairs and languages, yet Galicia falls short in their degree of participation in Madrid. Looking at the power axis, Galicia retains high speakership numbers, a politically bounded territory, and a rich history. Missing in the Galician community is elite speakership, which severely handicaps the economic power of the language group to be able to achieve prestige. Speakership is high, split roughly half and half between mostly or only Castilian speakers and only or mostly Galician speakers. The majority of Galicians are comfortable using both languages in a diglossic social framework, where Galician is the in-group language of family and friends, especially common when in rural areas, and Castilian the out-group language of formal gatherings and business meetings, more common to urban places. Galician has a history beyond the Roman Empire, sharing linguistic roots with Portuguese before evolving into a CastilianPortuguese hybrid after Spanish inclusion. Territorially, Galician inhabits its own politically defined autonomous region, with a small number of borderland speakers who inhabit the neighboring region of Asturias. The aforementioned diglossia in the region speaks to the lower prestige of Galician being associated with rural economy and lifestyle, and Castilian being associated with the urban equivalents. Castilian is the traditional language of the elites, and although this may be changing as national officials and academics advance the use of Galician, economic power is still communicated with Castilian.

4.3

Wales

Similar to the Galician case, the Welsh language group exists within the semiautonomous region of Wales in Western Britain. Welsh speakership has been on the decline since the beginning of the twentieth century, with a slight uptick in the 1990s. English became the dominant language of industry as Wales was infiltrated with English owned coal production, whereas Welsh remained a language of rural farmers and livestock herders. Today, speakership is still concentrated in rural areas, particularly in the north west of the region. Linguistic decline has fueled the Welsh separatist platform, as the language is seen to some as the only token which can truly demonstrate the uniqueness of Wales. On the horizontal concession axis we can see that Wales has achieved semiautonomy within the devolved United Kingdom. Welsh is the co-official language of the region along with the majority language of English. The Welsh assembly is bilingual, giving Welsh speakers more attention and linguistic protection. Welsh representatives to the UK parliament also have the power to speak Welsh. Welsh is now promoted within the region through all public institutions. Although a portion of the population is nationalistic and aims at separatism, the region has not achieved all power criteria needed to parlay into a bid for separatism. Wales rests at territory on the power axis, indicating that they have a wellestablished territory and history, yet has modest numbers and little economic power. Welsh, along with Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic, has a rich history and pre-roman roots. Within the UK, Welsh had been suppressed in favor of the language

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of the central state, leading to resentment of the British. Territorially, Wales is an established bilingual region, though there is disagreement as to what constitutes the Welsh language community, as speakership is much lower in the south and in cities (Jones and Fowler 2007). Today, roughly 25% of the Welsh population understands and speaks the language (https://statswales.gov.wales), yet the majority of these speakers are spread thinly throughout northerly rural municipalities. Concomitant to rural speakership is a lack of economic power. Business and commerce is conducted using English, and the majority of elites in Wales are of English decent. Cities as economic hubs have long been normalized spaces of English, leading to a decline of Welsh in the process.

4.4

Wallonia and Flanders

Linguistic conflict has divided the people of Belgium since before the creation of that state in 1830. Incepted to stop influence from Dutch speaking Holland, the Kingdom of Belgium solidified French as the dominant language of public domains early on, despite the majority of citizens being Flemish speakers (a dialect of Dutch). French was the de facto language of prestige in the state due to the early industrialization of the south (what is now Wallonia), establishing French speakers as economically dominant social elites. Dutch speakers in Belgium began the Flemish movement to secure linguistic rights in an increasingly repressive French bureaucracy. Co-official status was given to both French and Dutch in the early twentieth century, yet Flemish speakers were still unsatisfied with the marginalized treatment their provinces were receiving. The French speaking provinces of Wallonia in the south of Belgium were developed in reaction to growing Flemish nationalism in the north. Some Wallonian national groups favored joining France as a new province, while others favored administrative separation of Dutch and French speaking areas and the establishment of a federal model. An agreement upon a federal arrangement was reached in 1963, establishing two unilingual territories within Belgium with a third bilingual territory. Wallonia became solely French speaking, Flanders solely Dutch speaking, and the capitol of Brussels officially bilingual. Despite this agreement bringing political and social stability to Belgium, support for separatism continues in Flanders while the economic and social prestige of French endures. Dutch speaking Flanders has history, numbers, and territoriality, yet lacks economic power. These criteria place Flanders beside territory, yet below economic power on the vertical axis. Flanders was once included in the lower Netherlands, the former Flemish speaking territory of Holland. Flemish speakers rallied for their rights against a repressive centralized Dutch government to create the state of Belgium we know today. Flemish speakers have always been the majority language group in the state of Belgium, with about 60% of speakers. These high numbers obscure the low prestige of Dutch within Belgium, which is due to its lack of relative economic power. Wallonia was first to industrialize, clustering elites in the southern zones of economic productivity, whereas Flanders remained largely rural and agrarian. Farmers and tradesmen in the region continued to speak Dutch, yet the need to

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switch to French increased though more frequent economic transactions. In 2000, some 60% of Dutch speakers were also fluent in French, whereas only 17% of French Belgians could also speak Dutch (Ginsburgh and Weber 2006). This indicates the value of speaking French within Flanders, and the relatively low economic value of speaking Dutch in Wallonia. Despite their lack of elite speakers and economic power, Flanders has been able to rally for more autonomy and even push for separatism in recent years. Parties within Brussels have been working for more Flemish autonomy within the existing federal framework (May 2012). French speaking Wallonia has been placed near Catalonia on the power axis, as they have history, numbers, territory, and economic power. France periodically held territories in southern Netherlands throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, expanding linguistic influence though administrative use. French thus became the normalized language of public function, limiting Flemish speakership to the northern regions and subduing its written function (Howell 2000). French remained the dominant language of elites and the educated in southern Netherlands, a trend which carried over after the establishment of the Belgian state in 1830. Due to this elite speakership, French was able to re establish itself as the language of administration and public domain, and continued to attract speakership. With the advent of industrialization, urban centers of the francophone provinces swelled with population and wealth, further advancing the prestige level of French. Wallonia was a reactionary creation to the Flemish national movement, after which official monolingualism was declared throughout within the territory. Despite the sovereignty shared by both of Brussels’ nationalistic language territories, Flanders still holds a lesser degree of power, while Wallonia retains elite speakers, as it is still a wealthier monolingual French speaking territory.

4.5

Sámi

The Sámi are an ethnic group whom primarily reside across the northern regions of Sweden, Norway and Finland. The majority of Sámi live in Norway, and speak a dialect called North Sámi among other less prominent Sámi dialects. Ethnically and linguistically distinct from other Scandinavian people, Sámi tribes have worked for recognition and participation within the framework of their respective states, gaining modest concessions over time. On the horizontal axis, Sámi have been placed to the left of the participation benchmark, since they have their own language protections and promotion laws, as well as their own parliaments, which negotiate with central state governments for concessions. Despite these structures, the Sámi are still highly dependent on Central governments, and have no say in the composition of those governments, limiting participation in state politics. The Sámi have historically been an economically depressed group within Scandinavia, yet were isolated enough to be left alone. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Christian missionaries began to infiltrate and convert the Sámi, beginning their forced assimilation to into “modern” society. Nationalism, particularly in Norway, further repressed the linguistic and cultural heritage of the

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Sámi, as the “one language one nation” ideology was implemented. In the 1960s, the Sámi language began to be taught in schools. Parliamentary bodies were inaugurated in the late 1980s, resulting in far greater participation and self-administration. Sámi parliaments in Sweden, Norway, and Finland do not operate territorially, but rather by self-assigned ethnic identity (Marten 2015). With help from Sámi parliaments, Finland and Norway passed laws protecting Sámi linguistic rights in the 1990s. These laws made Sámi an official language in the North Sámi core areas. The Sámi have achieved impressive political concessions considering their relative lack of power as a language group. The group clearly has a strong history in the area, yet are lacking strong numbers, territory, or economic power. As such, they have been placed below speakership on the vertical axis. The Sámi have been in northern Scandinavia for at least 5,000 years (Broadbent 2013), and are considered an arctic indigenous group, included in the circumpolar Arctic Council of Indigenous Peoples (www.arcticpeoples.org). The number of Sámi speakers is estimated to be about 30,000 total, roughly half of whom reside in Norway, and one fourth in both Sweden and Finland, as well as a very small number in Russia. These numbers are split further when we consider that there are seven Sámi dialects, only a few of which are truly mutually intelligible. There are very few monolingual Sámi speakers, the vast majority being bilingual in the language of the state in addition to one or multiple Sámi dialects. Territorially, the majority of Sámi live in the northern Norwegian provinces of Finnmark and Troms, stretching to the extreme northern provinces of Sweden and Finland. This area is not politically delineated as a Sámi province in the way that Catalonia or Wales are, despite language laws which apply here. Since the population is distributed throughout four different states, territorially binding the group would prove incredibly difficult. Rather, the Sámi have lobbied for representation and participation separately, within their respective states. While there are Sámi elite, the majority of whom work to represent the group politically, there is not a significant number of elite Sámi speakers in the Scandinavian system to lend them any economic power within their respective states.

4.6

Old Order Amish

Old Order Amish have survived as a language and culture group for over three centuries though isolation from the English-speaking world. Old Order is the designation of Amish who reject progressive changes in lifestyle and in the church. The Amish speak both English and their primary language of Pennsylvania Dutch (i.e., Deutsch) a misnamed German dialect (Fishman 2016). Within the Amish community, the term English is used to refer to any non-Amish people and traces of non-Amish cultures. Like many Amish traits, Pennsylvania Dutch has been retained from the old world, and functions as a cultural barrier to keep English influence out as well as to recall lineage and tradition in everyday life. The Amish use English if they must, yet in the Old Order communities Pennsylvania Dutch is the first language of choice. Parochial schools protect Amish children from the influence of English language and culture in American public schools. In the past this was a contested issue as education

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requirements sometimes conflicted with Amish beliefs. The ability to educate their own was decided in a supreme court case which ruled that schools were in conflict with freedom of religion (Hostetler 1993) Due to their ability to educate their own and remain isolated the status of Old Order Amish within the United States is indicated in the model by their placement on the left of the horizontal axis, resting at education rights. This indicates that the Old Order Amish communities are situated within a tolerance-oriented status as a language group, as is the general tone toward any language group other than English in the U.S. The power criteria amassed by the Amish over the course of their existence within the U.S is considerable, especially when taken into account the threats to survival facing such a relatively small and isolated community within a very large and rapidly developing state. Amish communities have history, adequate numbers, and a relative amount of territoriality through which they have been able to secure isolation and a more or less self-sustaining lifestyle. They have been placed just below territoriality, indicating that they have not achieved official territorial status, yet have a degree of unofficial territoriality in the abstract “Amish Country” of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Old Order Amish split from the less conservative Mennonite Amish in the late 1800s, establishing a different sect that choose isolationism from impeding changes to the church. In the mid twentieth century many thought the Amish would die out and gradually conform to modern society, yet their numbers have more than doubled since 1990, and Old Order Amish remain one of the fastest growing communities in the world (Kraybill et al. 2013). They now reside in over 20 U.S states and 1 Canadian province, centering within over 1,200 church districts. The most densely populated Old Order Amish clusters remain in Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. Amish Territory is delineated by their heavy presence in certain counties of Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are posted with both official and unofficial signage warning drivers to watch for horses and buggies, and attracting tourists looking for Amish experiences, handicrafts, and foods.

4.7

Roma

The Roma are a large group of dispersed migrants who typically live on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities. The Roma are thought to have travelled to Europe from India, bringing with them the unique Indo-Iranian language of Romani. Roma communities exist around the world, yet the largest concentrations of Roma are found in Central and Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and the former Soviet states. The Roma have been severely persecuted throughout the world, experiencing social stigma and community exclusion. Organization and political representation are fairly new phenomenon for the Roma. In part due to their denial of citizen rights and dependence on the mobile economy, the Roma have retained Romani (in its various dialects) as a primary language within their tight knit communities (Matras 2015). The majority of Roma speak Romani as their first language, and for a significant percentage of Roma adults it is their only language. The Roma have been placed to the left of “recognition” on the horizontal axis, as they are minorities with little

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political representation and virtually no state language planning programs. This placement indicates their lack of recognition or participation in the majority of the state systems in which they reside. Yet their placement to the right of “no concessions” shows their growing demand for recognition via new organizations such as the World Romani Congress. The Roma have a low level of power as demonstrated by their placement below speakership the vertical power axis. Group history of the Roma before their arrival in South Eastern Europe in between the tenth and thirteenth centuries had been unclear until recently. Speculation designated their origins as Middle Eastern, most specifically Egyptian, lending them the widely used nickname “Gypsies.” Study of the language of Romani has since helped to decipher India as their place of origin (Matras 2004; Bakker and Kiuchukov 2000). Roma histories within individual states are more difficult however, as their traditionally mobile lifestyles and lack of participation in local communities leave a blurry idea of territorial attachments. Speakers of Romani are estimated between 2 and 20 million, yet the large number of countries in which they reside splits this figure. The fragmentation and economic marginalization of the collective Roma population weakens their power through numbers, although organizations have emerged in the last two decades that continue to lobby for Roma recognition and rights within Europe. Territoriality has always been the biggest obstacle to Roma recognition or rights. As a historically migratory people, the Roma have never been allowed claim to any state or section of a state they might call home. A lack of territory has kept them as outsiders to European society for centuries. Ostracized from community after community, the Roma developed an identity as a mobile, economically depressed and disenfranchised people.

5

Conclusions

The framework provided in this chapter offers some insight into the importance of language to minority group identity, and the interactions of minority groups and state systems. Position along the horizontal spectrum of governmental representation tends to coincide with movement up the vertical power axis. The cases plotted on the model here show the correlation between power criteria and state concessions; there are no cases in the lower right or upper left of the plane. This is not to say that no case could ever fall into these corners, they certainly could give the circumstance of group and state, but the average distribution would hold as groups who have more power criteria tend to amass more political clout. Political aspirations are the genesis of movements toward autonomy, yet aspirations and concessions are not always comparable. Political aspirations of minority language groups are less tied to power criteria and are more associated with fear, anger, or dissatisfaction from governmental repression or inaction. Repression only strengthens the aspirations of minority groups as adversity hardens the determination for rights and in many cases increases a desire for ethnic difference from the oppressor (Nordlinger 1972; Edwards 1985). However, as we have seen in the variety of cases

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outlined, there is a degree of group power that prerequisites change even in repressive circumstances. When repression is extreme over many generations, groups will inevitably lose power and subsequently the ability to change their status. This has occurred in the case of most indigenous peoples such as the Sami, where groups have been overwhelmed by new technologies, huge populations and diseases, leaving the group stripped of numbers, economic ability or territory. Migratory groups with unclear territorial history are especially vulnerable as disempowered people. The Roma have been outsiders since their arrival in Europe. Their lack of history within Europe has perpetuated theories about their origins and nature, subsequently lowering their perceived legitimacy. Groups with no power in the basic form of claim to historical legitimacy have little chance of being allowed to participate in political activity where they might secure rights. On the other end of the spectrum are groups that have been able to leverage their power for political concession. Instead of eliminating or handicapping these groups, repression has strengthened them, given them a stronger sense of shared history and a goal toward self-determination. Groups such as Catalonia thrive on their sense of history, past repression, and their growing numbers while using their solidified territoriality and economic power to push for separation. Attaining a general understanding of minority language group dynamics within the state system contributes to a better understanding of the global processes by which groups and states negotiate (or do not negotiate) for a host of rights. Achieving a broader level of knowledge of the system and stipulations in place helps to piece individual cases into a macro-scale context where greater knowledge can be gleaned though comparison. The interest in minority groups and languages has tended to stay within specialized studies of individual cases. Yet nationality and identity issues within the state system are a global theme, and the similarities of these problems overshadow the peculiarities. That being said, no two minority language groups are the same, nor are any two states exactly the same. Given the messy reality of our world, a degree of flexibility is appropriate for any model, especially one dealing with the slippery subjects of language and group identity. The model in this chapter presents a needed comparative framework for the further study of minority language groups within a fluid categorization spectrum. The model attempts to consider the ever-changing nature of politics as well as of group power while demonstrating the connection between these two variables. This chapter has only chosen a handful of minority language cases to be placed within this framework. The variety of state concessions and language group power dynamics of the world state system provides ample material for utilization and improvement of the framework provided.

References Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (1995). Globalization, institutions, and regional development in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso Books.

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Language and Social Space in Nelson Mandela Bay

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Depicting “Languages” in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Overview: Key Conceptual Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Enumerating South African Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Individual Monolingualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Territorial Uniformity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 A Political Sociology of ‘Languages’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Port Elizabeth and Nelson Mandela Bay: A Brief Spatial History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The British Colonial Town (1815–1901) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Industrializing City (1902–1947) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 The Apartheid City (1948–1994) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 The Post-apartheid Metropolitan City (1995–2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Language and Social Space in Nelson Mandela Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Metro-Level Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Mapping Sociolinguistic Inequality in Nelson Mandela Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between language and social space in the city of Nelson Mandela Bay. Established in 2000, Nelson Mandela Bay (which includes the previous municipalities of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, and Despatch) is one of eight post-apartheid metropolitan municipalities in South Africa. Using a series of maps that draw on South African census data (2011), the chapter L. Hill (*) Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_132

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explores the continuing high levels of social inequality in the city. Inequality in Nelson Mandela Bay remains highly racialized, and the map-based analysis focuses particular attention on the complex intersections of language, race, education, and geographic place. The empirical analysis is prefaced with a brief spatial history of the Port Elizabeth region, which sketches the development of the city during the colonial and apartheid periods. A critical linguistic ontology frames the sociolinguistic analysis: “languages” are conceptualized as political constructs, not objectively discrete and autonomous entities. The methodological corollary of this theoretical position is a cautious orientation to the use and interpretation of census data on the 11 official South African languages. The analysis emphasizes the historical co-production of the official categories for language, race, and urban geography and uses these categories to provide an overarching sense of socioeconomic inequality in the city. Keywords

Nelson Mandela Bay · Port Elizabeth · Language · Race · Census

1

Introduction

Nelson Mandela Bay (2011 population: 1,152,114) is one of eight metropolitan municipalities – or “metros” – established in terms of the South African Municipal Structures Act of 1998. The metropolitan city was established on 5 December 2000 (“Municipalities” 2018). In this chapter, the metropolitan city of Nelson Mandela Bay (still commonly referred to as Port Elizabeth) provides the context for both a map-based discussion of urban language trends and a more general theoretical treatment of the relationship between language, social space, and socioeconomic inequality in South Africa. The chapter is subdivided into three main sections: Sect. 2 provides a theoretical and methodological discussion of census geography and census language; Sect. 3 presents a brief spatial history of the territory that currently falls under the jurisdiction of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro; and Sect. 4 uses 2011 South African census data to present a sociolinguistic profile of the city. This chapter develops a critical theoretical orientation to both “languages” and “geographical space.” Languages are not objectively discrete entities, and geographical space is not an inert backdrop or canvas for depicting languages. To map census languages is to simultaneously reproduce a national or regional ideological tradition of thinking about named languages. In terms of this critical orientation, both census language categories and the categories of census geography need to be historicized. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the brief spatial history therefore provides both historical background and a vocabulary for exploring the 2011 census data. The analysis focuses particular attention on the historical co-production of categories associated with language, race, and geographic place. While both languages and place names in the Nelson Mandela Bay region have changed over time, an overarching pattern – articulated in terms of the distinction between “township” and “suburban” spaces – persists in the postapartheid period.

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Depicting “Languages” in South Africa

2.1

Overview: Key Conceptual Questions

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People speak – this is a mundane and universal practice. But the extent to which speaking is manifested within “languages” (plural) is a perennial issue among language scholars. To what extent can “a language” (or “a dialect”) be thought of as a relatively autonomous system, with properties that cannot be reduced to those of individual speakers or their “idiolects”? Any attempt to map languages assumes this systemic quality to some degree, but this assumption also tends to underpin a wide range of theoretical orientations to the question of how languages become recognizable within a wider context or environment (often referred to as “society”). In this section a contextualized discussion of how the official South African languages are enumerated and mapped precedes a more fundamental discussion of the theoretical orientation that undergirds my use of census data. References to “languages” are marked to draw attention to the central theoretical issue: the existence of “languages” as relatively discrete and autonomous entities. This section can be summarized as an attempt to address the following questions: • What (official) languages are counted in South African censuses? • How are the official language categories produced? • How are the official languages mapped? Or, in other words, how are official language categories combined with the spatial categories of census geography? • How should we understand “languages” more generally? Or, in other words, to what extent can an analysis of official statistics shed light on complex language trends in postapartheid South Africa?

2.2

Enumerating South African Languages

Figure 1 is my own construction, but it is also an official artifact to the extent that it deploys official categories produced by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). The use of official statistics imposes both ideological and methodological constraints on a researcher, and here these relate to the manner in which languages and geographical spaces are defined and counted. Notwithstanding these constraints, the map was explicitly designed to counter (or at least minimize) a widespread trend associated with attempts to map languages: the tendency to assume (and reproduce) a close correspondence between a nominal language form (e.g., “English” or “isiXhosa”) and a cultural form (e.g., “the English” or “amaXhosa,” see Peires 1981). To this end, Fig. 1 consists of two language layers, both of which aggregate language in small territorial units (subplaces). This map serves to both illustrate broad trends and explore key assumptions implicit in the process of mapping the official South African languages. Figure 1 combines two distinct sets of official categories used during the 2011 census: firstly, the 11 official languages, as inscribed in South Africa’s first

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Fig. 1 Distribution of South Africa’s 11 official languages (2011 census data)

democratic constitution (1996), and, secondly, the various levels or constellations of units associated with census geography. With respect to language, the two layers draw on the two language responses solicited during the 2011 census. The census asked, “which two languages does (name) speak most often in this household?” Layer 1 (in color) depicts the first response to this question. Here all subplaces in which a majority of respondents indicated an official language are color-coded. Subplaces in which no single language predominates are coded yellow and labeled “multilingual/no majority.” Examined in isolation, layer 1 would overstate both individual monolingualism and the territorial concentration of language speakers. The addition of the second layer therefore provides a better approximation of sociolinguistic complexity. Here all subplaces in which more than 50% of respondents did not indicate a second language response are hash-coded. Hash-coded subplaces predominate in rural areas. In census terms, 64% of respondents in urban areas indicated a second language (spoken in the “household”), compared with just 33% in “farm, traditional, or tribal areas.” The large scale of Fig. 1 masks more than it reveals and presents numerous problems of interpretation. Aggregating responses using smaller geographical units (subplaces) and a localized frame of reference – in the analysis that follows – goes some way toward remedying these problems. But a more detailed geographical analysis cannot resolve more fundamental theoretical issues associated with the delineation and measurement of discrete “languages.” As with other forms of official statistics, census data on language are produced by the state primarily for the purpose of managing nationally defined populations. When applied to official statistics, GIS mapping techniques tend to produce relatively “flat” visual correlations between variables. Any association depicted in this way is therefore not simply a “fact”: it is

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rather the product of theoretical assumptions about “languages” and methodological choices associated with the process of mapping official language categories onto a particular set of official geographical categories. Two simplifying assumptions in particular tend to produce this “flat” visual association between language and territory: individual monolingualism and territorial uniformity.

2.3

Individual Monolingualism

Unlike the 1996 and 2011 censuses, the 2001 census contained just one question on language. Mapping the responses to this single question will tend to convey the idea that South Africans are monolingual. This assumption is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it overstates the systemic coherence of the official languages, relative to both other official languages and the unofficial “dialects.” IsiXhosa, for example, forms part of a larger group of mutually intelligible Nguni languages, which includes isiZulu, SiSwati, and isiNdebele. The official Nguni languages are color-coded in shades of green in Fig. 1, while the other major category (the Sotho languages) is presented in shades of blue. The language marking “isi-” prefix is shared by these languages. Unprefixed references to these languages (e.g., “Xhosa” or “Zulu”) are common, but this usage often conflates the broad official language categories with more specific cultural, regional, and class-marked subjectivities. Secondly, the monolingual assumption masks the fact that South Africans tend to acquire a second or third unrelated language, usually for educational or careerrelated reasons. This is most obvious with respect to English, but Afrikaans and isiZulu are also used as lingua francas in various regions of South Africa. English is conspicuously absent as a color-coded territorial entity in Fig. 1, and this can be explained in terms of the concentrated and predominantly urban distribution of first language English speakers. If “English” is defined as the first or predominant language spoken at home, then English speakers make up just 9% of the population (Census 2011). Defined in this way, the largest languages are isiZulu (22%), isiXhosa (16%), and Afrikaans (13%). But the 2011 census question asked respondents to list the two languages that they spoke most frequently in their household. This phrasing is still biased toward the home domain, but it nevertheless breaks with the monolingual assumption and allows for a census-based analysis of two variables that approximate what linguists refer to as an individual’s language “repertoire.” According to Hymes (1996, p. 33) “a repertoire comprises a set of ways of speaking. Ways of speaking in turn comprise speech styles, on the one hand, and contexts of discourse, on the other, together with relations of appropriateness obtaining between styles and contexts.” The South African census privileges the household as context, but given this limitation, if “a language” is defined more broadly as “in the household repertoire” – i.e., operationalized as either the first or second language spoken in a household – then English (41%) is the most widely used language in South Africa, followed by isiZulu (27%) and Afrikaans (19%).

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Territorial Uniformity

The second simplifying assumption evident in Fig. 1 is the nationalist orientation implicit in the selection of the various territorial units associated with census geography. As with the homologous variable “race” (or “population group” in South African census terminology), the visual representation of census data on language requires a degree of critical circumspection. As Anderson (1991, p. 168) notes, the “real innovation” of nineteenth-century census-taking was “not in the construction of ethnic-racial classifications, but rather in their systematic quantification” (italics in original). But census-taking has also played a profound role in the historical construction of national, ethnic-racial, and linguistic classifications. Census-taking in South Africa therefore presents us with an instructive example of a more general process: the historical co-production of the categories associated with national territory, race, and language. [Note: In South Africa the official race categories – as reflected in the Census 2011 variable “population group” – are “black African,” “colored,” “Indian or Asian,” “white,” and “others.” In both academic and popular discourse, the term “black” can refer to the first category or be used in a more generic sense, referring to the first three categories. In this chapter, I adopt the latter sense for “black” and follow the common practice of using the term “African” to denote the census category “black African.” This usage also resonates with the common practice of referring to nine official “African languages” (i.e., a category that excludes English and Afrikaans).] Christopher (2004, p. 146) notes that the first postapartheid South African census in 1996 was also the first to formulate “a uniform language question for the entire population regardless of race.” The official prioritization of race over language dates back to the first enumeration conducted in the Cape Colony in 1865. Questions on language first appeared in the 1918 census, but prior to 1946 these were restricted to white respondents. After 1946 “African” respondents were only presented with African indigenous languages, while “white,” “colored,” and “Asian” respondents were presented with a choice of English or Afrikaans. The racialization of “language” through the selective operationalization of the census variable was further compounded by the ethno-nationalist use of census geography associated with the implementation of grand apartheid. Beginning with the independence of the Transkei in 1976, the policy of separate development (or apartheid) culminated in the extension of nominal sovereignty to four territories: Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (collectively known as the TBVC states). Figure 2 presents the ethnolinguistic ideology that underpinned the creation of “independent homelands” and “self-governing territories.” The contradictions inherent in the attempt to reconcile the putative ethnolinguistic logic of the homelands with the racial political economy of the wider system were particularly evident in the Eastern Cape (which includes Nelson Mandela Bay), where two “sovereign” states were allocated to isiXhosa speakers. The implication of this process for census geography was that these four territories were simply scythed out for independent census-taking, rendering census-based maps that resemble an incomplete jigsaw puzzle (see, e.g., Van der Merwe and van Niekerk 1994).

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Fig. 2 Historical association between languages and the apartheid homelands. (Source: Rogers (1976). The International Defence and Aid Fund no longer exists, but permission to reprint was obtained from the successor organization – the Canon Collins Educational & Legal Assistance Trust)

2.5

A Political Sociology of ‘Languages’

Can the methodological nationalism implicit in the use of census categories – both geographical and linguistic – be circumvented? I argue that it cannot – but a critical analysis of census data is nevertheless useful. There are no “strict scientific procedures” (van der Merwe and van Niekerk 1994, p. 2; also see Donnelly 2003) for mapping languages, because the census data set is quintessentially a political construct. The language cartographer therefore needs to engage critically with the normative assumptions that underpin the production of official statistics. In the current South African context, a key assumption is the reorientation of census-taking toward the development objectives of the post-1994 democratic state. Thus, national affirmative action goals justify the continued enumeration of race, while a more inchoate commitment to cultural diversity and the need for language planning underpins the constitutional enshrinement of 11 official languages. But these post-apartheid development goals cannot be taken at face value, and the analysis that follows highlights patterns of continuity with the apartheid period.

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Post-1994 language planning, for example, has tended to employ a simplistic commitment in “mother tongue instruction,” tacitly assuming that “languages” are autonomous entities and thus ignoring the apartheid legacy of mother tongue language policies (Hartshorne 1987; de Klerk 2002). A tendency to ignore the complex historical entanglement of race and language is also evident in numerous attempts to map South African languages. This tendency takes two forms: either by ignoring race altogether (van der Merwe and van Niekerk 1994) or by presenting the relationship between the census variables as a simple correlate or “coincident” (Christopher 2004). My analysis will therefore pay particular attention to the (continuing) co-production of language and race in a specific urban setting. In so doing, my intention is to both acknowledge and minimize the epistemological problems associated with the use of census data as a means of visualizing “languages.” This is done, firstly, by embedding the analysis in a critical conceptualization of “languages” and secondly by historicizing geographical space, using maps that deploy the lowest meaningful unit in South African census geography – the subplace. The Census 2011 metadata file (Stats SA 2012) defines “subplace” as the “second (lowest) level of the place name category, namely a suburb, section or zone of a township, smallholdings, village, sub-village, ward or informal settlement.” As the smallest named entities in South African census geography, subplaces have local meaning and – to varying degrees – agential capacity to foster historical associations between language and territory. In what sense can languages be said to exist as discrete and hence enumerable entities? In this chapter, I adopt a critical orientation to so-called natural languages. Drawing on the work of heterodox language scholars (notably Roy Harris and Pierre Bourdieu), I argue that there can be no global or bird’s-eye view of “languages.” As Makoni and Pennycook (2005, p. 143) have noted: [at] the heart of the problem here is the underlying ideology of countability – what we call census ideology in sociolinguistics. The idea of linguistic enumerability is based on the dual notions of both ‘languages’ and speakers of those languages being amenable to counting. It has been widely attested that there is a massive disparity between the number of languages that linguists believe exist and the number of languages that people report themselves as speaking.

Within national and wider regional contexts, discrete languages are historical and political constructs, which emerge in tandem with wider ideological frameworks or metadiscursive regimes. In both Harris’ (2003) “integrational linguistics” and Bourdieu’s (1991) “economy of linguistic exchanges,” we find similar critiques of general linguistics and the widely exported notion that languages can be studied as autonomous objects, “over and above the existence and activities of the linguistic communities which support them” (Harris 2003, p. 62). “Languages” are political constructs and socially entwined objects, but the specificity of political form emerges within a political economy. Census-taking is therefore the preeminent political process that institutionalizes named languages as discretely imagined objects. Official languages – as enumerated by a census – therefore constitute an example of what Bourdieu (1985,

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p. 725) calls “classes on paper.” As theoretical entities, “languages” begin as classes on paper, but their potential to serve as a means of mobilization is an empirical issue, which Bourdieu articulates in terms of the potential to function as a “probable class.” He argues that statistical analysis is “the only means of manifesting the structure of the social space’ in which probable classes emerge.” Spatially referenced census data can therefore provide important insight into the changing political status of official languages. But as the word “paper” suggests, official languages have varying degrees of materiality, to the extent that they are manifested in official grammars, artifacts, and institutions. Moreover, in the absence of qualitative research on the subjective appropriation about these languages, my analysis in this chapter can say little about the shift from nominal to probable class or, in other words, on the extent to which census-based language trends suggest the emergence of new cultural forms or “groups.”

3

Port Elizabeth and Nelson Mandela Bay: A Brief Spatial History

3.1

Overview

The current metropolitan boundary of Nelson Mandela Bay brings together under one municipal administration a number of previously distinct towns and territories. The metro was established in December 2000, following the amalgamation of the municipalities of Port Elizabeth (PE), Despatch, and Uitenhage. Figure 3 presents a selection of subplaces (based on the 2011 Census) that form the contemporary correlates of the places discussed in the following brief spatial history. The table in Fig. 3 lists these subplaces in order of establishment and indicates their historical race designations – in terms of the Group Areas Act of 1950. Read in conjunction with this table, the map provides a schematic sense of “racialized location,” the core theme that informs this brief history. The narrative that follows is subdivided into four periods: • 1815–1901: The predominantly British and Anglophone colonial town of Port Elizabeth, municipal segregation, and the establishment of “inner locations” for African residents • 1902–1947: The industrializing and segregating city, rapid in-migration, and the establishment of the “outer locations” • 1948–1993: The apartheid city, forced removals, and creation of “group areas” • 1994–2017: The postapartheid city and the establishment of the single metropolitan administration

3.2

The British Colonial Town (1815–1901)

There is perhaps no better position to appreciate the colonial layout of Port Elizabeth and Nelson Mandela Bay than the intersection of Govan Mbeki Avenue and Russell

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Fig. 3 Nelson Mandela Bay: 2011 subplaces corresponding with selected historical places mentioned in the spatial history

Road. Govan Mbeki Avenue is named after the veteran ANC leader and father of the second president, Thabo Mbeki. For most of its history, dating back to 1815, it was known as Main Street. Hemmed in by “the Hill,” the early town expanded initially on a south-to-north coastal axis. “South End” and “North End” were early designations, marking the more commercial edges of the town. This was also the first axis of social class distinction, and Frescura (1992, p. 2) argues that racial segregation traces its origins to this early demarcation. The steep incline to the west became the second axis of geo-social separation – evident in the mid-nineteenth-century distinction between the “town below” and “the Hill” – the more fashionable quarter of the town that new forms of transport made increasingly accessible (Bodill 1984). Russell Road arcs up this incline – through Central – to become Cape Road, which traces the westward expansion of wealthy and still predominantly white Port Elizabeth. The central subplace (indicated in Fig. 3) incorporates the old “town” and “the Hill.” Russell Road separates the old town from a region known as Richmond Hill. In Richmond Hill, two streets up from Russell Road is the currently very fashionable Stanley Street – which boasts a wide range of restaurants. The historical significance of this spot is, however, not commemorated and hence not recognized by locals: the territory between Stanley Street and Russell Road was the site of Port Elizabeth’s first African “location.” The “Native Strangers Location” was established in 1855, on what was then the outskirts of the town. A site adjacent to the London Missionary Society was selected: the impulse to both Christianize and control “strangers” reflected the increasingly ambiguous state of African in-migrants in the mid-nineteenth-century town. By 1854 imports to Port Elizabeth had exceeded those of Cape Town despite having a

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substantially smaller population. By the early 1970s, PE – by then known as the “Liverpool of the Cape” – was the major commercial and financial hub of the Cape Colony (Mabin 1986, p. 279). One consequence of growing prosperity was the emergence of proto-segregationist town planning and a new residential class structure. British settler attitudes to “colored and Malay” residents were relatively tolerant, but the desire to control and relocate African migrants grew steadily after 1850. A key factor in this process was the growing value of property. Native Strangers Location was the first of the “inner locations” established between 1855 and 1896. Like the rings of an onion, sites reserved for African residents mark successive outer boundaries of the nineteenth-century town. Thus, a location at Cooper’s Kloof (off Albany Road) was established in 1877; reservoir location was established (near present-day Mount Road) in 1883; and Racecourse location was established in 1896, in what is currently the suburb of Newton Park. In 1896 a location was also established in what was then the independent municipality of Walmer. This is the only inner location that remains today (recently renamed Gqebera – see Fig. 3).

3.3

The Industrializing City (1902–1947)

To the north, the central region becomes North End, and Govan Mbeki Avenue eventually splits into Commercial Road and Grahamstown Road. These two roads trace the main trajectories of commercial and industrial development: road and rail structure the history of both industrial zoning and the racialized urban planning of the twentieth century. Commercial Road heads in the direction of Uitenhage – the oldest town in the metro – and eventually to Graaff-Reinet, a key center in the agrarian hinterland of the nineteenth century. The Grahamstown road connects Port Elizabeth with the old cultural capital of the eastern colony. But this route out of the city also traces the city’s pivotal railway link to the late nineteenth-century mining economy: to Kimberley – via Cradock – and later to Bloemfontein and Johannesburg. In the early twentieth century, Port Elizabeth shifted from a predominantly Anglophone town to a demographically complex and increasingly stratified industrial city. Between 1875 and 1911 (just after the establishment of the Union of South Africa), the population rose from about 13,000 to 41,000, and by 1951 the population had increased fivefold to around 200,000 (Christopher 1987). In 1875 predominantly English-speaking settlers constituted 70% of the population, while Mfengu- and Xhosa-speaking Africans made up 15%. In 1951 the population of African residents (by this stage uniformly recorded as Xhosa-speaking) had risen to 35%, and the total number surpassed that of white English and Afrikaans speakers before the establishment of the Republic of South Africa in 1961. In the late nineteenth century, Port Elizabeth was both a point of settlement and a thoroughfare for people, goods, and money traveling to key towns in the agrarian hinterland (notably Graaff-Reinet, Grahamstown, and Cradock) or to the mining town of Kimberley. Kirk (1991, p. 313) notes that:

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in 1882 alone an annual total of 1,845 Africans arrived and 5,742 departed, the majority listing Kimberley as their destination. The Town Council, made up primarily of merchants and anxious to regulate the movement of black workers, viewed housing segregation as one way to control “vagrancy” while encouraging migration to other work centres.

During the early twentieth century, as Port Elizabeth became a major center of industry, the demand for labor rendered this image of African laborers as temporary “strangers” increasingly untenable. In 1901 an outbreak of Bubonic plague provided the local pretext for the closure of the inner locations, but PE also instantiated a new national trend toward greater urban segregation. From this time the twin processes of spatial planning (locating) and population control (dislocating) became increasingly formalized. In terms of the Native Reserve [Urban] Locations Act No. 40 of 1902, the Cape governor could proclaim “native” locations in or near urban areas (Baines 2004, p. 80). New Brighton was consequently established in 1903, one of the first two locations established in terms of this law. New Brighton was also the first of the “outer locations” or the African townships that today are typically associated with the industrial rim of the city and post-1948 apartheid urban planning. Industrial development extended along the Grahamstown road and in the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage corridor. A Ford motor factory was established in 1923, and growing motor-related industries earned the city the nickname “Detroit of South Africa” (Baines 2004, p. 79). During this period, growing numbers of white Afrikaans-speaking workers began settling in the northwestern suburbs, and a new race-class dynamic changed the working class structure of the town. As Port Elizabeth extended, the impetus for racially segregated city planning came increasingly from the new colonial state. The systematic segregation of the city began in the 1920s, when the first suburbs reserved exclusively for “whites” and “coloreds” were built.

3.4

The Apartheid City (1948–1994)

The National Party election victory in 1948 conventionally marks the beginning of the apartheid era. Two pieces of legislation – both passed in 1950 – were pivotal to the aggressive implementation of urban segregation under apartheid: the Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act. The former underpinned the legal classification of the population in terms of four race categories, while the latter extended this classification system to residential areas – creating “white,” “Bantu,” “colored,” and “Asian” suburbs (Frescura 1992). Furthermore, the “White South Africa” policy sought to stem – and even reverse – the “influx” of African migrants into urban centers. Figure 2 shows how language and culture were appropriated in an effort to establish “sovereign” African territories in predominantly rural areas. In Port Elizabeth and the surrounding towns, apartheid urban planning unfolded in two stages. The first phase focused on African residents: the “pass laws” introduced strict control over movement and residence; these restrictions and forced removals accounted for the rapid growth of township space, first in New Brighton and then in

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the new locations of KwaZakele (1956), Zwide (1968), and Motherwell (1982). Christopher (1987, p. 200) notes that by 1985, only 4% of the African population lived outside designated locations. Port Elizabeth was officially zoned under the Group Areas Act in 1961 (Frescura 1992), but this marks the beginning of the second stage: the effort to create racially distinct group areas in non-African suburbs. Land appropriation and forced removals followed the proclamation of white suburbs in previously mixed or predominantly colored areas (notably South End, Fairview, and Newton Park). The resulting territorial enclosures created a sharper white-colored distinction in communities that shared much in the way of history, religion, and language (notably Afrikaans). “Asian group area” was a misnomer in Port Elizabeth: Malabar was designated “Indian” and Kabega Park was – before deproclamation in 1984 – the only Chinese group area in South Africa (Harris 1999). The 1985 census revealed the extent of residential segregation in Port Elizabeth: in a population of 502,000 just 3.4% lived outside their own designated group areas. But facing growing internal opposition, international isolation, and economic decline, the National Party government began to relinquish the notion that African migrants could be kept out of cities. Influx control was abandoned in 1986. In Port Elizabeth, the recognition of permanent status for African communities gave rise to a new form of administrative segregation, when in 1981 African townships were consolidated to form the separate municipality of Ibhayi (Frescura 1992). This half-baked initiative to include urban Africans in city administration came at a time of growing internal mobilization against apartheid institutions. Consequently, “ethnic” urban authorities lacked legitimacy and – like the homeland administrations – became targets for resistance. Cherry (1994) notes that within Port Elizabeth’s townships, a “broad Africanism” tended to prevail over “ethnically based nationalism.” The “language of mobilization” – she argues – was universal in PE’s African townships in the 1980s.

3.5

The Post-apartheid Metropolitan City (1995–2011)

Apartheid urban planning produced a starkly fragmented and unequal constellation of white centers and peripheral township spaces. Apartheid legislation specified that group areas should be separated by buffer strips of at least 100 m wide. In Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, and Despatch, these buffer areas included industrial areas – such as Struandale – and natural features, such as the Swartkops River and its escarpment. In Fig. 4 some of these historical buffer zones are evident in the white “industrial or underdeveloped” subplaces. South Africa’s first democratic municipal elections took place in 1995, and a nationwide process of municipal restructuring followed. In the Port Elizabeth region, as in other urban centers, the new demarcation was based on the principle of “One city, one tax base” (Mabin 2006). This phrase captures the idea – actively asserted by anti-apartheid civic associations in the 1980s and 1990s – that integrated local government should take the form of a metropolitan municipality with a unified tax base and the capacity to distribute resources to areas of highest need. The Nelson

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Fig. 4 Nelson Mandela Bay main places

Mandela Bay Metro was therefore established in December 2000, and Fig. 4 reflects the demarcation that forms this basis of the new city. In Fig. 4, main place boundaries are indicated in orange, while official race category percentages are calculated at subplace level. The main place boundaries and nomenclature are indicative of broad group area racial divisions that were inherited from the apartheid period. The 2011 subplace pattern suggests important changes in a number of areas. But when read in conjunction with the maps presented in the next sections, Fig. 3 suggests the continuity of an overarching suburb-location logic underpinning spatialized inequality in the metro. Continuing spatial segregation has shaped metro politics in the democratic era, with the African National Congress (ANC) drawing most of its support from African township areas and the Democratic Alliance mobilizing support in historically white and colored neighborhoods. In the 2016 municipal elections, the ANC lost control of the metro, a result attributed to factional division within the party and voter disillusionment with maladministration and corruption (Olver 2017).

4

Language and Social Space in Nelson Mandela Bay

4.1

Overview

This section draws on Census 2011 data to explore the relationship between language and spatial inequality in the metropolitan city of Nelson Mandela Bay. Building on theoretical considerations discussed in the first part of this chapter,

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this section strives to minimize the difficulties associated with the use of census language data. This is done in three ways: firstly, by comparing census data on “first” and “second” language to provide a qualified visual sense of language patterns in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan area; secondly, by focusing on the complex intersection of geographic place, race, and language as factors in the general reproduction of inequality; and, thirdly, by using the historical context provided in the previous section as a means of interpreting the maps presented below. This section explores language trends at two levels. To begin with, a metro-wide overview of language and social inequality is presented. These aggregate statistics are then disaggregated spatially, using a series of maps that draw on subplace-level data.

4.2

Metro-Level Analysis

As noted in the conceptual analysis, this chapter breaks with the common tendency (in South Africa and elsewhere) to take census statistics on language at face value. So, whereas the census asked for the two languages spoken most often in the household, there has been a tendency to take the first response as a relatively simple indicator of “mother tongue” speakers (of 11 discrete South African languages). My analysis of language trends in Nelson Mandela Bay therefore begins with Table 1, which reflects the different ways in which responses to the two census questions can be tabulated. If the first response to the census question is taken as an indicator of “home language,” then IsiXhosa speakers (53%) constitute the largest language community in the metro. IsiXhosa speakers also make up the largest category of ostensibly “monolingual” speakers (i.e., respondents who did not indicate a second household language), both in absolute terms (21% of the metro population) and as a proportion of the total first language speakers (40% of IsiXhosa speakers, 32% of English speakers, and 21% of Afrikaans speakers). Table 1 indicates that 33% of the metro claim to speak “no other languages.” At first glance, one might consider this a measure of monolingualism, but this would be misleading. South Africans tend to be very multilingual, that is, most have more than one language in their “repertoires,” where repertoire is understood to refer to language use across a range of domains or contexts. The census question refers specifically to the “household” domain and therefore understates the use of languages outside the home. As Table 2 shows, this can be demonstrated with respect to education. Table 2 shows that among respondents who claim to speak no second language (in the household), the majority are on the low end of the qualification spectrum. But more than 15% of Afrikaans and isiXhosa speakers with a matric or higher qualification claim to speak no other languages. This figure is implausible – unless respondents are referring exclusively to the home domain – given that further education and training (FET) and higher education are conducted overwhelmingly in English. Given this home domain bias in the phrasing of the census language question, census statistics tend to give a poor sense of multilingual repertoires. The “first or second language” column in Table 1 – which tabulates respondents who selected a given language as either their first or second response – therefore provides

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Table 1 Main official languages in Nelson Mandela Bay IsiXhosa Afrikaans English All other Grand total

First language 612,804 333,441 152,988 52,881 1,152,114

53% 29% 13% 5% 100%

First or second language 627,057 54% 451,182 39% 758,481 66% 74,250 6% 166%

No second language 245,730 21% 70,737 6% 48,906 4% 10,980 1% 376,353 33%

Table 2 “No other second language” responses in Nelson Mandela Bay

IsiXhosa Afrikaans English All other languages Total

N/A (%) 19 17 11 22

Grade 9 (NQF level 1) or lower (%) 47 46 31 40

Pre-matric FET (NQF levels 2–3) (%) 17 17 15 16

Matric (grade 12 or NQF levels 4–5) (%) 15 18 32 19

Bachelor’s degree (NQF level 6) or higher (%) 1 2 10 3

Total 245,730 70,740 48,909 10,980 376,359

South Africa’s National Qualifications Framework (NQF) defines broad levels within the education system. The last two levels are Further Education and Training (FET) and Higher Education and Training (HET)

a (slightly) better approximation of the repertoire frequencies of the official languages. Using this variable, English is then the most widely understood language and, as Table 4 shows, also the main lingua franca in the metro. Table 3 cross-tabulates the Census 2011 variables “first language” and “population group” (race). As noted in the historical discussion, the official language and race categories have been co-constructed through their association with colonial and apartheid urban planning. This pattern persists to a considerable extent in the postapartheid era, as the maps presented will show. Language correlates with race such that the (in)ability to speak isiXhosa tends to mark both a linguistic and a racial boundary. Thus, isiXhosa speakers constitute the largest language category (53%) in the metro, and this language category becomes recognizable through its construction as “black African” (99%) and its continued association with historically black and marginalized regions of the city (as well as other regions in the Eastern Cape). English and Afrikaans, on the other hand, are often presented as dominant mediums, but this assumes cultural coherence across the official race categories and across the historical colored-white group areas divide. As noted in the previous section, white English-speaking South Africans (WESAs) have a long history of dominance in the region. During the apartheid period, this dominance was diluted as a result of cultural convergence with upwardly mobile white Afrikaans speakers. Whiteness was thus manifested in mutual cultural assimilation (English-Afrikaans bilingualism) and sociolinguistic closure. Closure came most notably by means of exclusive access to elite educational institutions and

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Table 3 Languages cross-tabulated with official race categories

Afrikaans English IsiXhosa All other Grand total

Black African (%) 6 19 99 67 60

Colored (%) 66 29 0 11 24

Indian or Asian (%) 1 6 0 2 1

White (%) 27 45 0 12 14

Others (%) 1 2 0 8 1

Grand total (%) 100 100 100 100 100

Table 4 Cross-tabulation of first and second languages in Nelson Mandela Bay

IsiXhosa Afrikaans English All other Total

IsiXhosa (%) – 2 3 7

Afrikaans (%) 4 – 63 5

English (%) 55 77 – 57

No other languages (%) 41 21 34 31

Total 602,622 329,691 145,560 35,964 1,113,837

a corresponding “bilingual habitus” (Hill 2009) that transmitted patterns of reciprocity and privilege into other public and private sector domains. Table 4 provides a crude sense of this cultural overlap: about 77% of Afrikaans speakers in the metro indicated English as a second language, while 63% of English speakers chose Afrikaans as their second language. The corresponding figures for white respondents are even higher: 87% and 73%, respectively. There is however a tendency in the South African literature to use first language statistics in a manner that conflates primary language and ethnic identity. A particular manifestation of this trend is the tendency to conflate the status of “English” and the socioeconomic status of first language English speakers – a practice that obfuscates the growing post-1994 role of English as a lingua franca and a resource for both social mobility and social stratification. While Table 4 gives a sense of the status that English currently enjoys as a lingua franca in Nelson Mandela Bay, it does not reveal anything about the socioeconomic status of different categories of English speakers. In order to provide a better sense of how languages correspond with emerging stratification trends in the metro, the broad trends are disaggregated in the following analysis of five maps.

4.3

Mapping Sociolinguistic Inequality in Nelson Mandela Bay

This section is built around five maps, which draw on Census 2011 data at subplace level to form the basis of an exploration of sociolinguistic inequality in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. My analysis moves from a visual depiction of the census data on the three main official languages in the metro to a more detailed

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discussion of how language intersects with race and social class – in which I focus specifically on education. The maps and accompanying analysis can be summarized as follows: Figure 5 depicts first language as percentage categories at subplace level. Figure 6 presents subplaces coded in terms of significant combinations of the Census “population group” (race) and “language” (first language) variables. Figures 7 and 8 represent an education-based social class construct, as explained in the discussion of Table 5. Figure 9 depicts the English “first or second language” variable, as calculated in Table 1.

As indicated in the discussion of Fig. 4, the Census 2011 main place boundaries provide a general sense of the old apartheid group areas, and as such they provide a rough baseline for inferring patterns of continuity and change with respect to residential segregation since 1994. The most striking continuity evident in Fig. 5 is the continued concentration of IsiXhosa speakers in dense township spaces (notably the main places of iBhayi, Motherwell, and KwaNobuhle, as well as the Gqebera subplace). Within the historically white Port Elizabeth main place, significant new concentrations of IsiXhosa speakers can be found at the coast (Central, Humewood, and Summerstrand) and in the central suburb of Overbaakens. A noteworthy pattern in Fig. 5 is the relatively low concentration of Afrikaans speakers (relative to English speakers) in the Port Elizabeth main place. Many of the Western suburbs that have been color-coded yellow (“no language majority”) were predominantly white and Afrikaans speaking before 1994 (e.g., Kabega, Linton Grange, Framesby, and Cotswold). By contrast, high concentrations of Afrikaans speakers (75% or more) are found mainly in the historically colored Bethelsdorp main place (including the subplaces Bethelsdorp, Arcadia, Schauderville, and Helenvale – the latter a very poor suburb that is notorious for gang activity). High concentrations of English speakers (75% or more) on the other hand are found in relatively more affluent suburbs. These are both historically white (e.g., Greenacres and Linkside) and historically Indian (Malabar) or colored (e.g., Parkside and Gelvan Park). This pattern, along with the predominance of majority English (light purple-coded) subplaces in the Port Elizabeth main place, suggests a growing association between competence in English and residential status. The South African census categories “population group” (race) and “language” can be treated as discrete variables, but – as noted in the previous section – this practice tends to obscure the historical co-production of these categories. Thus, a comparison of Figs. 4 and 5 reveals a broad correspondence between the census variables race and language: “isiXhosa” correlates with “black African,” while English and Afrikaans correspond broadly with the remaining race categories. This general patterning is the product of a complex history of spatial manipulation

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Fig. 5 First language as percentage of subplace in Nelson Mandela Bay

Fig. 6 First language and race, subplace categories in Nelson Mandela Bay

(colonial and apartheid urban planning) and the cultural appropriation of specific places. Figure 6 provides a better sense of the complex conjunction of race and language in Nelson Mandela Bay. The most important patterns evident in this map can be summarized as follows:

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Fig. 7 Black (BCIA) residents with grade 11 or lower (% of subplace population) in Nelson Mandela Bay

Fig. 8 Black (BCIA) residents with grade 12 or higher (% of subplace population) in Nelson Mandela Bay

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• A predominantly white suburban (75%+) English and Afrikaans core in the Port Elizabeth main place • Predominantly white suburban Afrikaans areas in the historically Afrikaans towns of Uitenhage and Despatch, but few remaining in the western areas of Port Elizabeth • Predominantly Xhosa-speaking (75%+) subplaces (coded dark blue) in the historically black townships Table 5 Language, race, and highest education level in Nelson Mandela Bay

White English White Afrikaans Black English Black Afrikaans Black isiXhosa Others Grand total

Grade 9 (NQF level 1) or lower (%) 19.0

Pre-matric FET (NQF levels 2–3) (%) 12.6

Matric (grade 12 or NQF levels 4–5) (%) 43.5

Bachelor’s degree (NQF level 6) or higher (%) 19.9

5.5

22.3

19.3

41.0

11.9

89,760

9.8

33.1

15.8

32.2

9.1

52,785

10.1

48.5

20.7

19.3

1.5

221,511

10.5

44.5

21.1

21.6

2.3

608,379

24.3 10.9

32.5 40.4

15.8 19.7

22.4 24.6

5.0 4.5

101,715 1,142,463

N/A (%) 5.0

Grand total 68,313

Fig. 9 English (first or second language) as percentage of subplace in Nelson Mandela Bay

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• Significant levels of Xhosa speaker settlement in historically white Port Elizabeth (notably the Central subplace and Overbaakens) • Historically colored township spaces (orange coded) where English speakers predominate (75%+) subplaces, located close to historically white suburbs • Predominantly Afrikaans-speaking (75%+) subplaces (coded light green) in the historically colored townships The final two maps deploy the census variable “highest educational level,” which – when mapped in conjunction with language and race at subplace level – provides a better sense of social class divisions within the metro than the preceding maps. Table 5 summarizes the process used to produce these maps: the census variables for race and language are combined and cross-tabulated with highest educational level, and two broad categories (marked by the red boundaries) form the basis of the following maps. The analysis that follows uses a broad composite indicator for “black” – combining the census categories “black African,” “colored,” and “Indian or Asian” (abbreviated as “black (BCIA)”). Table 5 provides an overarching sense of educational inequality in Nelson Mandela Bay. White English and Afrikaans speakers (color-coded dark blue in the table) tend to predominate within the highly educated segment of the population, with more than 60% of white English speakers having completed grade 12 (commonly referred to as “matric”) or a higher-level qualification. Matric is widely recognized as a basic requirement for entry to the job market, and a bachelor’s degree tends to have a significant impact on earning potential (Cloete 2016). The privileged educational position enjoyed by white English and Afrikaans speakers reflects the colonial history, as well as their current predominance within the Port Elizabeth main place. Cape Road, running through the PE main place, is an important new axis of postindustrial development, comprising a wide range of small service-based businesses. The Port Elizabeth main place also contains most of the best schools, with English and Afrikaans as the main languages of instruction. Zoning regulations have tended to restrict access to those living in close proximity to a school, which in turn has reinforced the racial logic of suburban planning. Also, notably in the table is the extent to which English correlates with higher educational attainment across the broad black-white division. At the other end of the educational spectrum, black Afrikaans and isiXhosa speakers (color-coded dark orange in the table) are predominant in the much larger segment (77% of the metro) with less than a grade 12 qualification. Figure 7 shows the extent to which residents with lower qualifications predominate in historically black and colored township areas, to the north and west of the Port Elizabeth main place. Figure 7 depicts the distribution of black (BCIA) residents with grade 11 or lower in the 250 Nelson Mandela Bay subplaces. This map shows the educational inequality between historically white suburbs and black and colored township spaces. In most township subplaces, more than 50% of the population has a grade 11 or lower qualification, and these are typically the areas with high levels of unemployment. By contrast, in the historically white suburbs of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, and Despatch, less than 10% of the population falls into this educational category. In both

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Figs. 7 and 8, predominantly industrial and underpopulated subplaces (less than 1000 residents) are color-coded white. While Fig. 7 suggests the extent to which the apartheid residential geography has been reproduced in the postapartheid era, Fig. 8 provides some indications of change. This map depicts the distribution of black (BCIA) residents with grade 12 or higher. It suggests the extent to which access to education (and associated high paying jobs) is facilitating access to historically white spaces. Noteworthy points of black settlement in historically white areas are on the PE coastline (North End, Central, Humewood, and Forrest Hill) and in Overbaakens. The historically Indian Malabar stands out to the north, while the townships of KwaDwesi and KwaMagxaki also have more than 30% of the subplace population in this upper educational bracket. Mapping English as either the first or second language (Fig. 9) makes the socioeconomic status of English even clearer. English is used by more than 80% of inhabitants in the overwhelming majority of subplaces situated in the Port Elizabeth main place. By contrast, relatively low levels of English use are evident in many historically colored areas and African township spaces in particular. Clearly evident in this map is the high level of English use in historically white Afrikaans and English suburbs. When read in conjunction with Figs. 7 and 8, the last map provides further evidence for the reproduction of a white bilingual habitus, centered on the economic hubs of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, and Despatch. In other words, it is not simply “English” that stratifies but rather bilingual habits/practices acquired through educational provision in historically white English and Afrikaans spaces. Historically, these would have been wealthy spaces associated with markets for English-Afrikaans bilingualism. The maps presented here suggest that these spaces persist, but English is clearly the dominant medium. English is, however, not simply a lingua franca; it is both a resource for social mobility and social closure, and geographic place mediates this distinction.

5

Conclusion

The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality was established in 2000, forming part of a broader process of consolidating municipal authorities in major urban areas. This reform process was motivated in terms of the need to address the apartheid legacy of racial segregation, administrative fragmentation and extreme inequality. Covering a territory of just less than 2000 km2, the metro incorporates previously distinct urban entities, the oldest of which (Uitenhage, 1804, and Port Elizabeth, 1925) were established during the Dutch and British colonial administrations. The initial economic development of the region occurred during the British administration of the Cape Colony, and the town (later city) of Port Elizabeth emerged as the cultural and economic hub of the region. The spatial history of the region can be summarized in terms of four periods: the nineteenth-century British colonial town, the early twentieth-century industrial city, the post-1948 apartheid city, and the postapartheid city. Between 1815 and 1901 predominantly British in-

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and through-migration underpinned the growth of Port Elizabeth. An early template for racial segregation was established during this period, as the word “location” became associated with a series of African settlements on the successive outer boundaries of the town. The establishment of New Brighton in 1903 was significant for two reasons. Firstly, New Brighton was the product of a shift from city- to colony-/state-level policies aimed at controlling and segregating African migrants – policies that anticipated the more ambitious and disruptive urban planning of the apartheid period (1948–1994). Secondly, New Brighton was the first of the “outer locations,” and its establishment marked the beginning of the racialized urban structure that is still evident in the city today. Urban planning during the apartheid period can be explained in terms of a significant upscaling of the racialized logic of location and dislocation. In this chapter my analysis of the 2011 census-based language trends is consequently framed in terms of the logic of “location.” In South Africa, “location” (Afrikaans, “lokasie”; isiXhosa, “ilokishi”) is no ordinary word – it denotes “black urban space.” And in Nelson Mandela Bay, “location” has come to signify the marginal location and dislocation of IsiXhosa speakers in the first instance. The broad architecture of colonial and apartheid urban planning is still clearly visible in the maps presented. While the metropolitan city was established in an effort to transcend the divisions of the past, these divisions are also encoded in the new census geography – in the forms of the major main places. The persisting pattern involves core economic spaces in which white English and Afrikaans speakers still predominate (the Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, and Despatch main places), surrounded by relatively poor and predominantly black areas (the Bethelsdorp, iBhayi, Motherwell, and KwaNobuhle main places). iBhayi, Motherwell, and KwaNobuhle contain the poorest neighborhoods in the metro, and more than 90% of the residents in these “locations” are isiXhosa speaking. Bethelsdorp is historically “colored” and predominantly Afrikaans speaking, but here too we find a significant number of isiXhosa speakers (constituting 28% of the Bethelsdorp main place). Notwithstanding this overarching pattern of continuity between the apartheid and postapartheid periods, the maps presented also show significant changes. The racial profile of many “suburbs” (historically connoting “white”) has changed considerably. At the macro level, the proportion of IsiXhosa speakers in the historically white main places is still small (Port Elizabeth 21%, Uitenhage 18%, and Despatch 33%), but the subplace-level analysis suggests some interesting new trends. In this chapter census data on language forms the basis of an attempt to map and analyze language and socioeconomic trends. A critical linguistic ontology informed this analysis: the “languages” in question were presented as political constructs, and the historical co-production of the official categories for language, race, and urban geography was emphasized. The analysis suggests an overarching pattern of continuity with the apartheid period – articulated in terms of the distinction between privileged “suburban” spaces and marginalized “township” or “location” spaces. Language and geographic place complicate this overarching assessment, and it is difficult to assess the role of language using census statistics alone. The maps presented here nevertheless suggest the overarching socioeconomic status associated with English. This

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status is filtered through specific geographic places and situated language use. Education mediates the demand for situated language use, and the education maps provided a sense of class divisions in the city. Inequality remains highly racialized, and the analysis suggests that wealth still correlates with predominantly white suburbs and a predominantly white bilingual English-Afrikaans habitus. Acknowledgments The South African Census-based research used in this chapter formed part of a project – Language and Urban Social Space (2014–2016) – funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa (Grant 91563).

References Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Baines, G. (2004). A progressive south African city?: Port Elizabeth and influx control, ca. 1923–1953. Journal of Urban History, 31, 75. Bodill, T. S. (1984). Knockfierna. Looking back. The Journal of the Historical Society of Port Elizabeth, 23, 101–110. Bourdieu, P. (1985). The social space and the genesis of groups. Theory and Society, 14, 723–744. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Cherry, J. (1994). Traditions and transitions: African political participation in Port Elizabeth. History Workshop paper, University of the Witwatersrand. Christopher, A. J. (1987). Apartheid planning in South Africa: The case of Port Elizabeth. The Geographical Journal, 153(2), 195–204. Christopher, A. J. (2004). Linguistic segregation in urban South Africa, 1996. Geoforum, 35, 145–156. Cloete, N. (2016). Free higher education – another self-destructive South African policy. Centre for Higher Education Trust (CHET) paper. Donnelly, S. (2003, August 14). Language and the census. Mail & Guardian. Frescura, F. (1992). Port Elizabeth – an abridged history of the Apartheid City. Unpublished paper. Harris, K. (1999). ‘Accepting the Group, but Not the Area’: The South African Chinese and the Group Areas Act. South African Historical Journal, 40(1), 179–201. Harris, R. (2003). On redefining linguistics. In H. Davis & T. Taylor (Eds.), Rethinking linguistics. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Hartshorne, K. B. (1987). Language policy in African education in South Africa, 1910–1985, with particular reference to the issue of medium of instruction. In D. Young (Ed.), Bridging the gap between theory and practice in English second language teaching. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman. Hill, L. B. (2009). The decline of academic bilingualism in South Africa – a case study. Language Policy, 8(4), 327–349. Hymes, D. (1996). Ethnography, linguistic narrative inequality: Toward an understanding of voice. London: Taylor & Francis. Kirk, J. (1991). Race, class, liberalism, and segregation: The 1883 native strangers’ location bill in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 24(2), 293–321. de Klerk, G. (2002). Mother-tongue education in South Africa: The weight of history. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 154, 29–46. Mabin, A. (1986). The rise and decline of Port Elizabeth, 1850–1900. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 19(2), 275–303.

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Mabin, A. (2006). Local government in South Africa’s larger cities. In Democracy and delivery: Urban policy in South Africa (pp. 135–136). Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council. Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. (2005). Disinventing and (re)constituting languages. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: An International Journal, 2(3), 137–156. “Municipalities” (Municipalities of South Africa). (2018). Available at https://municipalities.co.za/. Accessed 10 May 2018. Olver, C. (2017). How to steal a city: The battle for Nelson Mandela Bay, an insider account. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball. Peires, J. B. (1981). The house of Phalo – A history of the Xhosa people in the days of their independence. Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Rogers, B. (1976). Divide and rule: South Africa’s Bantustans. London: International Defence & Aid Fund. Statistics South Africa. (2012). Census 2011 metadata. Available at http://www.statssa.gov.za/ census/census_2011/census_products/Census_2011_Metadata.pdf. Accessed 4 June 2018. Van der Merwe, I., & van Niekerk, L. (1994). Language in South Africa: Distribution and change. Stellenbosch: Department of Geography, University of Stellenbosch.

Bulgarian Language in New Places Worldwide

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Ana Kocheva

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Bulgarian Language in the Neighboring Balkan Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Bulgarian Language in the Former Soviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Bulgarian Language in Central and Western Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Bulgarian Language in Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Bulgarian Language in the Americas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Bulgarian Language in Australia and New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Bearing in mind the number of Bulgarians in the language continuum (the language of Bulgarians in the old historical-geographic regions, Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, within and outside the state borders) and adding to it the number of Bulgarian-speaking persons from the new places worldwide (the old-time, historical, and new, economic immigration), the total number of the Bulgarian-speaking people on this planet is roughly 15 million. This suggests the paramount role that the Bulgarian language has for the unification and preservation of the nation even under the circumstances of intensifying globalization. Keywords

Bulgaria · Population estimate · Emigration

A. Kocheva (*) Institute for Bulgarian Language, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_140

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Introduction

Immediately after the Liberation of Bulgaria (1878), the Bulgarian nation was the biggest in the Balkans – its population exceeded five million, the Greek and Serbian ones exceeded two million each, and the Albanian population was below one million. Resulting from natural population growth, the Bulgarian nation’s numerical strength reached nine million half a century ago. In the meantime, a trend of population decline through emigration began following a few futile wars for unification (the Second Balkan War, the First and Second World Wars) and political turbulences (the September Uprising, the incessant rotation of cabinets each with a different geopolitical slant until and after September 9, 1944, and especially since November 10, 1989). Also because of purely economic reasons both in the past and today, the Bulgarian nation in the country Bulgaria currently numbers between six and seven million people, and roughly three million remain in neighboring countries, numbers which are the result of varying degrees of forcible or natural denationalization. Varying extents of the assimilation of millions of ethnic Bulgarians are also seen in new places where they migrated – Europe, the Americas, and Australia where Bulgarian immigration communities are large as well as in Asia and Africa where immigrant numbers are insignificant. It is also important to bear in mind that in the first decade of the twenty-first century, 564,331 persons left the country, and the trend of high mortality and a low birth rate continue. Recognizing these results, it is hardly surprising that today the Bulgarian nation is one of the most aging worldwide. Meanwhile, with the process of emigration, the Bulgarian language has appeared in new places. Language use in the new places is the result of several factors. 1. Emigrant population density. Language use depends on the numerical strength and compactness of the Bulgarian migration population and also whether Bulgarian is recognized as the language of a national minority in a foreign country. 2. Generation. Where the Bulgarian language appears as a minority language in places across the world, it exhibits a strong generational character. While usage is strong among those of the first generation of emigrants in a new country, it becomes limited with the second generation and finally with the third generation almost becomes a mere family memory. The chapter discusses the extent to which the Bulgarian immigrant language has been preserved in particular countries and settings. 3. Emigration waves. Emigration waves are important in nurturing, maintaining, and preserving the use of the Bulgarian language. In the United States, these numbers are substantial. The earliest emigration wave at the beginning of the twentieth century was of economic nature; the second wave, in the 1930s (after 1923), of political (communist) nature; the third wave, after September 9, 1944, again political but this time of anti-communist nature; and the fourth – After November 10, 1989 – Again for predominantly economic reasons. This continuity has contributed to the perpetuation of the Bulgarian language in that country

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for nearly a century. A similar picture of the Bulgarian immigrant communities is observed in a few European countries. 4. Supporting institutions. Preservation of the Bulgarian language abroad benefits significantly from supporting institutions created in countries with Bulgarian immigrant communities. These institutions include public organizations, associations and societies, Bulgarian special interest clubs, Bulgarian schools, church communities, cultural centers, various news media (newspapers, radio stations, television channels), etc. their precise number in any country is not known, but their importance is recognized as being important in its use and preservation. 5. Language form. Given the diverse forms of the Bulgarian language that exist, that is, literary, colloquial, dialect, regional, and literary-regional ones, it is important to establish in general what is the prevalent form of both the spoken language and the written register, if any actually exists. 6. Bulgarian-speaking. Since this chapter focuses on linguistic issues, we will refer to Bulgarian-speaking emigrants/immigrants. It denotes all ethnic Bulgarians (by origin) who continue to use various forms of the Bulgarian language regardless of their religious denomination or new nationality. When considering these six issues in general, a current perspective casts light on them and suggests that the ongoing and detailed focus needs to be addressed. At present research dealing with Bulgarian language issues is available only for the Bulgarian settlers in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Austria, and Slovakia. The statistics used may appear contradictory and inconclusive. They have been borrowed from different press releases by the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad (SABA) which in turn has received the figures from official and unofficial governmental and nongovernmental (local and foreign) channels and institutions, Bulgarian immigrant organizations abroad and scholarly research done by professionals in various institutes. For this reason, numerical data should be considered in the way they have been used in preparing Fig. 1. Another essential point to consider is the self-identification of immigrants themselves, that is, those who communicate in Bulgarian in the countries where they live. These estimates have also been quoted using data from SABA and from Kolev, J. (2013). Maika Balgaria I neinte cheda po sveta [Mother Bulgaria and her children in the world]. Based on past and recent immigration history, I discuss the following patterns of contemporary, not historical, Bulgarian speakers.

2

Bulgarian Language in the Neighboring Balkan Countries

In Turkey, according to data from SABA from different years 1960, 1993, 2007, Bulgarian-speaking persons (Christians and the so-called Pomaks) vary from 270,000 to 600,000. These figures do not include Bulgarian ethnic Turks deported

Fig. 1 “Map of the Bulgarian language in new places across the world.” (Source: BAS (2014))

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during what is known as “The Revival process” (forceful renaming) for whom the Bulgarian language is second in their use. These speakers are Bulgarian Muslim expatriates who settled in Turkey after the War of Liberation in 1878 and after the Balkan wars (1912–1913). In Greece the unofficial number of Bulgarian economic immigrants who live in dispersed locations varies from 200,000 to 250,000. In Serbia the precise number of non-autochthonic Bulgarians is not known. Regarding the Serbian Banat that emerged after the breakdown of the Austrо-Hungarian Еmpire, statistics report about 6,000 Bulgarians. The number of Bulgarian-speaking persons from the Republic of Macedonia and Aegean Macedonia is more than 20,000. In Croatia the emigrants of Bulgarian descent vary between 8,000 and 10,000, most having a high educational status. The Bulgarian-speaking persons from the Republic of Macedonia are roughly 11,000, and about 15,000 according to selfestimates. Supporting Institutions: one association and one magazine, Rodna rech (Native speech). In Slovenia the number is not clear due to lack of clarity in the names providing ethnic identity, for example, “Yugoslavs,” “nationally indefinite,” and the like. Only 168 persons reported themselves as Bulgarians, but self-estimates place the numbers as about 5,000. One of the largest and relatively old Bulgarian diasporas is in Romania. In Romania official Romanian statistics have strongly downsized the number of Bulgarians to 8,029; of which 7,000 are based in Banat. The number of Bulgarian-speaking persons in the Republic of Macedonia comes to 731. The Banat Bulgarians are Catholics who live predominantly in the Municipality of Timisoara. Of course, statistics fail to capture dozens of Bulgarian Orthodox Christian villages in the region of Bucharest whose residents are mostly involved in vegetable growing. In self-estimates the number of Orthodox Christian Bulgarians in Romania exceeds 170,000; some studies claim that this number exceeds one million. Most of these Bulgarians have already been denationalized. The Banat Bulgarians alone have been awarded a national minority status and have their own deputy in Parliament. Bulgarian Language Forms. These include: (a) dialect forms – Northeastern Bulgarian (mainly Moesian and Balkan Range) types for Orthodox Christian Bulgarians from the Wallachian Plain, and Banat-Bulgarian (Palćena) type which stemmed as Eastern Bulgarian (Rhodope and Moesian) characteristics merged with Northwestern Bulgarian (Torlak) characteristics in the language use of Paulicians (Catholic Bulgarians). They left Bulgaria in the seventieth century in the wake of the Chiprovtsi uprising’s failure and settled in Banat, Austria-Hungary, today located in Romania in the main; (b) a literary-regional form of the Bulgarian language in Banat created on the basis of the local dialect with Latin script in the 1860s; it has a substantial amount of literature; (c) Bulgarian literary language in all its forms. Supporting Institutions: four schools, one high school, one Sunday school, one newspaper, one magazine, specialized radio and TV broadcasts in Bulgarian.

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Bulgarian Language in the Former Soviet Union

Successor of the old-time Russian Empire, the former USSR spread on two continents – Europe and Asia. This background gives us a good reason today (after its breakdown) to study the Bulgarian immigration separately in each of the new countries with regard to the continent it belongs. Focusing not so much on continental geography, but on the former large state, is done here in connection with the general displacement policy conducted toward Bulgarian settlers during different periods of time. The displacement policy caused an even greater dispersion of the Bulgarian diaspora from the European valleys of Moldova and Ukraine via the steppe and desert parts of Central Asia to the barren icy fields of Siberia. Emigration to the Russian Empire (and USSR) resulting from the strength of waves and by years can be classified as follows: large (1782) and substantial (1773, 1790, 1801–1812 and 1830–1837 to Bessarabia). After Bessarabia was returned to Moldova following the Crimean War, some of the Bulgarians in Bessarabia migrated to the Sea of Azov region. (After 1878 Southern Bessarabia became part of Russia again). In the aftermath of 1871, large groups of Bessarabian and Tauric settlers were displaced to Central Asia, Siberia, and the Far East to cultivate new farming land. From 1918 until 1940, Bessarabia was returned to Romania. Romanian language lessons became mandatory for the Bulgarians there. The Bulgarian side put up strong opposition to the new rules, triggering forceful deportation by the Romanian side of Bessarabian Bulgarians to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. In the aftermath of the October Revolution and more notably in the 1930s during collectivization, thousands of hardworking Bulgarians were deported to Siberia as kulaks, and thousands died due to famine caused by severe drought. Following 1923, a new wave of Bulgarian immigrants (communists) arrived in the USSR, more particularly in Ukraine and Crimea. On June 28, 1940, the Soviet Army entered Bessarabia and banished the Romanian administration, although for a short while only. In the summer of 1941, the Romanian troops reclaimed the region. Following the Battle of Stalingrad, Bessarabia fell back into the borders of the USSR. The Bulgarian population was again in disgrace because of the alliance between Germany and the Kingdom of Bulgaria during the war. A large part of the Bessarabian Bulgarians (about 60,000) was punished for that and displaced to the interior of the country (Ural, Siberia, and Central Asia). In 1945–1946, Bessarabia suffered another major drought, and 30–50% of Bulgarians died due to famine. Today, in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, the Bulgarian population is again subject to ordeals. The Bulgarian path to Golgotha is yet to be travelled. Nevertheless, regions which were rightfully termed “a new Bulgaria” in the past, even today, host compact and numerically impressive communities of ethnic Bulgarians who dutifully keep their national roots and also the Bulgarian language. In Moldova Bulgarians have been awarded the status of a national minority. In official statistics (apart from Chisinau where they are 10,000), their number in the southern part of the country (under a 1986 census) reached 88,419 (apart from the Gagauz who emigrated in the past together with Bulgarians from Northeastern Bulgaria – Orthodox Christian and the bilingual, Turkish-speaking, and Bulgarian-

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speaking, population whose number comes to 241,877). In unofficial figures, Moldova is the home of about 250,000–300,000 Bulgarian-speaking persons. Bulgarian Language Forms: (а) dialect forms (mainly) of the Eastern Bulgarian types (Balkan Range type, sub-Balkan Range (Sliven and и Yambol types) Moesian (Silistra and Eastern Rhodope types)) and Northwestern Bulgarian types (Vidin type and Byala Slatina type – represented meagerly) and (b) a literary Bulgarian form. Supporting Institutions: a number of organizational structures and associations; Taraclia State University, schools with classes in Bulgarian, newspapers, magazines, radio and television broadcasts. In Ukraine and Crimea, official statistics in 1926 counted 92,078 Bulgarians. In 1979, they were 238,000, and the Bulgarian language was identified as mother tongue by 164,000 persons. In 1989, Bulgarians were already 233,800, and Bulgarian as mother tongue was admitted by 162,000. According to unofficial data obtained from other Ukrainian publications, the number of Bulgarians in Ukraine varies from 600,000 to 800,000. Bulgarian Language Forms: dialect forms (mainly): of the Eastern Bulgarian (Balkan Range, sub-Balkan Range, Moesian and Thracian) types and Western Bulgarian (Shopi) type. Supporting Institutions: 19 associations, cultural centers, clubs, publishing houses with more than 1000 released books and teaching centers. In the Russian Federation, Bulgarians do not have the status of a national minority. They are scattered and unorganized across the huge country with numbers roughly 30,000 to 35,000. In self-estimates they are more than 50,000. Kazakhstan is the home of about 7,000 Bulgarians (official estimates). The first wave under Stalin’s regime was fueled by the forceful displacement from Bessarabia. The second wave occurred after the Second World War and was also linked to forceful deportation. The third wave was in connection with the campaign to cultivate the virgin lands. More than 2000 Bulgarians live in Uzbekistan. They are the heirs of the Bessarabian Tauric Bulgarians deported during the Stalin period.

4

Bulgarian Language in Central and Western Europe

Regardless of various Bulgarian immigration waves in central and western parts of the European continent (Fig. 2), the main wave and so far the largest is the early immigration wave of the Bulgarian market gardeners. The famous Bulgarian vegetable growers migrated to all continents at different times and left a lasting vestige as a result of their productive work and with grateful memories among the locals. However their work proved longest-lasting and most productive in Central and Western Europe. It is exactly there that one of the positive figurative meanings of the ethnonym Bulgarian implies “a skilled vegetable producer, masterful market gardener.” This is the case in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Austria. Bulgarian market gardeners are found also in Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and even in Central Asia, but this fame originally emerged in Central and Western Europe.

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Fig. 2 Bulgarian language speakers in Europe. (Inset from Fig. 1)

In Hungary based on the results of highly respected market gardeners of the past, the number of Bulgarians later grew. Today the numbers are estimated to vary from 5,000 to 7,000. Some sources even give an estimate of up to 20,000. To these numbers, we should add the 2,000 settlers of Bulgarian origin from Macedonia. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, official estimates point to 5,000 Bulgarians and unofficial statistics to somewhere between 16,000 and 20,000. As early as 1901, a Bulgarian association of market gardeners functioned in Bratislava. The Macedonian Bulgarians were known as good confectioners – estimates of their numbers are

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about 2,000 persons. The number of Bulgarians in Slovakia has declined; it now exceeds 1,000 with most based in the capital, Bratislava. The Bulgarians in Slovakia who live mainly in Bratislava are officially recognized as a minority and receive state subsidy for cultural projects. Bulgarian Language Forms: (a) a dialect form (non-basic) from the Central Balkan Range and the Southwestern Bulgarian types and (b) a literary form (mainly in cities where many Bulgarians have high professional status). Supporting Institutions: (a) in the Czech Republic: eight Bulgarian cultural and educational organizations, one secondary school and one Sunday school, a Bulgarian church community, one magazine, one bulletin; and (b) in Slovakia: one union, one club, two Orthodox Christian communities, one secondary school, one magazine. In Austria the Bulgarian expansion began with the arrival of the first market gardeners along the Middle Danube in the early twentieth century. Only a small group of their heirs survive today. Present-day immigrants are of quite a different mix – highly qualified people involved in business, science, and the arts who reside in Austria’s large cities. In 2005 they numbered up to 30,000. Bulgarian Language Forms: (a) a dialect form (non-basic) – from the Northeastern Bulgarian type – and (b) a standard form both spoken and written. Supporting Institutions: four associations, one cultural center, Wittgenstein House, one research institute attached to Wittgenstein House, one cultural and information center, one Bulgarian-Austrian school, Orpheus school, one Bulgarian Sunday school, three magazines, radio and television broadcasts. In Germany the number of Bulgarians in official statistics is 61,854 persons (excluding 12,000 university and postgraduate students). Roughly the same number (62,295) is reported in estimates about the emigrants from Macedonia who speak other forms of the Bulgarian language. Bulgarian Language Forms: (a) a mixed dialect form (non-basic); (b) a written regional form of the Bulgarian language from the Republic of Macedonia; (c) a literary Bulgarian form, written and spoken, Northeastern Bulgarian type; and (d) a literary form both written and spoken. Supporting Institutions: many German-Bulgarian and Bulgarian associations and organizations, student associations, church communities and schools, radio and television broadcasts and programs. Without doubt the highly developed German organizational culture has influenced Bulgarian immigrant organizational life. In Spain, the number of Bulgarian immigrants has been constantly rising since 1995: from 200,000 to about 300,000. Spain is the most preferred settlement destination for many Bulgarians. Bulgarian Language Forms: (a) a mixed dialect form but mainly of the southeastern Bulgarian (Rhodope) and Southwestern Bulgarian types and (b) a literary form but in a number of cases subsiding. The number of Bulgarians has been steadily rising in Italy, France, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland (Eire), Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark. In Italy the number of Bulgarians has grown from about 12,000 to 70,000 since 1989. The number of Bulgarian-speaking persons from Macedonia is even larger, officially at 89,071 and, in self-estimates, 100,000.

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France is the home of 35,000 Bulgarians; there are 2,300 immigrants from the Republic of Macedonia, and in self-estimates they number 12,000. In Portugal the number of Bulgarian immigrants was officially announced at 7,000 in 2001 but has increased ten times since then reaching 70,000 today. Forms of the Bulgarian language include (a) various dialects, but particularly Southwestern Bulgarian and Rhodope, and (b) literary. Institutions supporting the Bulgarian language: these include two associations and one Bulgarian Orthodox Christian community with a chapel. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the home of roughly 100,000 Bulgarians with a trend to grow to 150,000 (for those seeking dual citizenship). In the Kingdom of Belgium, Bulgarians registered in 2010 were 7,443 but are twice as many in self-estimates. Together with the Bulgarian-speaking persons from Macedonia (about 12,000), they account for a notable layer of society. In Ireland (Éire), Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark, the number of Bulgarians (in official statistics – in each country) is about 3,000, and about 12,000 in total. The Bulgarian-speaking persons from Macedonia, according to various statistics, are quoted as 60,000 (in Switzerland), 10,000 to 15,000 (in the Netherlands), and 12,000 (in Denmark). In official statistics, Sweden is the home of 3,508 Bulgarian immigrants and in unofficial estimates about 10,000 persons; the Bulgarian-speaking persons from Macedonia are 3,669 in official estimates and Macedonian statistics (unofficial) point to somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000. In official statistics, about 1,580 Bulgarians live in Norway and almost the same number of Bulgarian-speaking persons from Macedonia, that is, about 4,000. In Poland the official number of Bulgarian immigrants is 1,000 with a trend likely to increase to 2,000, a number roughly the same as the number of the Bulgarian-speaking persons from Macedonia.

5

Bulgarian Language in Asia

The situation in Asia regarding language (with the exception of Israel, Dubai, and Qatar) displays insignificant numbers of Bulgarian immigrants. Against the background of the current war in Syria, it is not clear how many Bulgarians have remained in that country from the earlier numbers of 1,500–2,000 persons. In Lebanon they are 550. In Kuwait more than 50 mixed families are reported with one medic in each of them; in Jordan, about 1,000; in China, about 150; and in Japan, more than 600. Only in the United Arab Emirates federation, 5,000 Bulgarians have been counted, and of them 4,000 are based in Dubai and are engaged in hotel management and landscaping. The issue of the Bulgarian language of the Bulgarian Jews in Israel and their descendants for whom it is not mother tongue has some specific implications. The number of Bulgarian-speaking Israeli Jews today is 50,000. They reside predominantly in the city of Jaffa which has almost merged with Tel Aviv. The Jews have not

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only preserved their Bulgarian language but use every occasion to express their gratitude to the country which rescued them from extermination until when they left in the 1950s. The Bulgarian language has only insignificant presence in Africa. Exceptions include first of all the Republic of South Africa where the Bulgarian language is spoken by 50,000 to 60,000 persons; there are new settlers from all parts of Bulgaria and where it is maintained by three Bulgarian cultural centers and two Bulgarian Sunday schools. Another exception is Libya where 15,000 Bulgarians lived prior to the war (the current number is not clear).

6

Bulgarian Language in the Americas

In the United States, the number of Bulgarian settlers following the latest or fourth emigration wave (since November 10, 1989) has grown to 300,000 (Chicago alone is the home of more than 50,000 Bulgarians). Bulgarians from all parts of the country tend to immigrate to the United States. In Canada Bulgarian settlers arrived in several waves, with the earliest emigration dating from 1912 and the most recent one since the democratic changes. The latter immigrants are young and highly educated; self-estimates place the numbers at roughly 180,000 and those from Macedonia about 150,000. There are more than 5,000 Bulgarian persons in Mexico and 10,000 in Honduras but only 100 in Cuba (Havana). In Argentina today the old-time and new Bulgarians number from 75,000 to 80,000. The number of the Bulgarian-speaking persons from Macedonia has reached 30,000. In Brazil the situation is similar to Argentina. The large number of settlers (about 60,000) resulted from the creation at the end of the nineteenth century of the propaganda-based Association for Recruitment of European Emigrants promising land and fast wealth. The difference in the policies of Argentina and Brazil on this issue is in that following the changes in Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1990, a new wave of emigrants headed to Argentina while Brazil did not see such a process. Another feature of the settlement of Bulgarians in Brazil in the past was that to a certain extent it did not run voluntarily but rather ended up as a forceful deportation of the population.

7

Bulgarian Language in Australia and New Zealand

The problem with estimating the number of Bulgarians in Australia and New Zealand is rather complex due to advanced processes of denationalization of ethnic Bulgarians rooted in the old place after tearing off parts of the Bulgarian ethnic territory by conquerors. The issue of the Bulgarian nature of the language spoken before and after that break off remains unclear and is subject to proof regardless of the foreign ethnic labels attached to it. Ethnic Bulgarians in both an

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old and a new place, even when they cease feeling like Bulgarians under the influence of foreign (national, political, ideological, and cultural) propaganda, remain Bulgarian-speaking in the end and as such retain their status of a rightful subject of study of the linguistics of the Bulgarian language based both on the language itself and also on its new forms in case such forms have been created to conceal its original immanent character. Hence, Australia and New Zealand are the home of three types of Bulgarians with a single ethnic origin: some of them with preserved national awareness and others with altered one. All three types speak the same language, that is, they have never stopped being Bulgarian-speaking. This gives rise to the strange phenomenon of the existence of Bulgarian-speaking “Macedonians” and Bulgarian-speaking “Greeks.” Naturally, prior to the emergence of the Republic of Macedonia, there was no such division in Australia: the Macedonian Bulgarians being similar to the Thracian and Dobrudzha ones used to retain not only their respective regional names but also their generic ethnic name – Bulgarians. Unofficial statistics suggest that the number of Australian citizens of Bulgarian descent and language is roughly 220,000. Emigrants from Aegean Macedonia who arrived there with Greek passports following the Civil War in Greece account for the largest share among them. The share of settlers from Vardar Macedonia, Moesia, and the Balkan Range is smaller. Since the changes in 1989, immigrant flow from Bulgaria has intensified.

8

Conclusions

Arising from the above review of the existence of the Bulgarian language across the world are a few keynote conclusions. The erstwhile idea of the Bulgarian diaspora and of the Bulgarian language that it keeps is rather incomplete not to say scarce and at times even incorrect due to distorted ideological reasoning along with insufficient political, public, cultural, and research interest. Not only the “ordinary” Bulgarian citizens but also the prevalent share of intellectuals, including a few linguists, are not aware that apart from Bulgaria in its current utterly limited borders, there are very large Bulgarian communities in other countries around the world either recognized as national minorities or not. Speaking conditionally and figuratively, we can term these communities several “little Bulgarias” or “new Bulgarias” abroad. Such communities are found in Ukraine, Moldova, Argentina, Brazil, and in the United States (more notably in the State of Illinois) where the Bulgarian emigration in official and unofficial statistics approximates 100,000 persons. This issue escalates by the day with a view to the aging of the Bulgarian nation and an incessant process of “drain” of emigrants that has already neared five to six million persons. During emigration waves, the Bulgarians are generally two types: old-time (until the changes in the 1990s) and new-time – after the changes. The process continues to this day. Old-time emigration waves commenced at the end of eighteenth century and were particularly intensive in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. They were prompted by both political and economic reasons. The earliest

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resettlements date back to 1772–1773, 1782, 1790, 1801–1812, 1830–1837, and 1853–1856 as Eastern Bulgarians (predominantly) migrated to Bessarabia. These waves were political in nature (fleeing the yoke) but also economic (gaining land plots for cultivation and sustenance of families in the new place). Mostly economic reasons drove other waves of emigration – of market gardeners to Eastern and Central Europe (above all) – to the Americas and Australia at the end of nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Economic reasons prompted migration to North America (the United States and Canada) in the early twentieth century. In the twentieth century, emigration assumed political character: in the aftermath of 1923 communist; in the aftermath of September 9, 1944, democratic. The picture of political emigration to Europe is quite similar. After 1923 it was communist (to neighboring Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany, and USSR) and democratic – after September 9, 1944 – to Western Europe and America. For exclusively political reasons, multiple displacements were carried out of the Bulgarian population in Bessarabia divided between the Russian Empire (later the USSR) and Romania and then between Moldova and Ukraine. Still later part of this population was forcefully deported to the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia (during the Stalin era), and also to Brazil (by Romanian authorities). Old-time emigration includes migration of religious and political character – in the aftermath of 1878 and 1913 – of Bulgarian Muslims from Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia predominantly to Eastern (Edirne) Thrace (to replace Bulgarian Christians forcefully banished by Turkey during that same time who settled in Eastern Bulgaria). The new waves of emigration (since 1989) continue to the present day. Unlike old-time waves, which were better organized and more compact, these are of diffused (scattered) nature and are due to economic reasons, as emigrants pursue higher wages and incomes. The countries attracting new Bulgarian settlers are much richer or richer than Bulgaria and can offer a great many job opportunities: Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Greece in Europe, Canada, the United States and Argentina in the Americas, Australia, (South) Africa, Cyprus, and Israel in Asia. More compact Bulgarian-speaking communities are seen in southeastern Canada (near the border with the United States), in Chicago, and in the easternmost coastal area of Australia. In the rest of world, in Africa’s Arabic North, China, Japan, etc., the Bulgarian presence is insignificant. In a few countries, a point of balance of the abovementioned types has been reached between old and new Bulgarian settlers resulting from the difference in time of emigration waves’ occurrence. “The map of the Bulgarian language in new places across the world” (see Fig. 1) reflects very distinctly the contrast between Eastern Europe (together with the secondary “internal” migration waves to Central Asia) – with old-time settlers (figures in red) – and Western Europe with new settlers (figures in blue). The New World (the Americas and Australia) occupies a central position. It predominantly received settlers from both types (figures in half-red, half-blue). Bearing in mind the number of Bulgarians in the language continuum (the language of Bulgarians in the old historical-geographic regions, Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, within and outside the state borders) and adding to it the number of Bulgarian-speaking persons from the new places worldwide, the total number of the

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Bulgarian-speaking people on this planet is roughly 15 million (see BAS 2014, 2016). This suggests the paramount role that the Bulgarian language has for the unification and preservation of the nation even under the circumstances of intensifying globalization. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References BAS (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences). (2014). “Map of the dialectal division of the Bulgarian language.” BAS (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences). (2016). Interactive talking dialect map of the Bulgarian language. Available at: http://ibl.bas.bg/bulgarian_dialects/ State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad (SABA). (Various years). Available at: http://www.aba. government.bg/ Kocheva, A. (2017). Smeseniyat ezik na vienskite balgari [The mixed language of the Viennese Bulgarians]. Kolev, J. (2013). Maika Balgaria I neinte cheda po sveta [Mother Bulgaria and her children in the world].

Hausanization of Nigerian Cultures

59

Ibrahim Badamasi Lambu

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Hausa People and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Case Study: The Kano Language Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter reviews the fate of Nigerian languages (including the two major ones) in the hands of Hausa language. The mobility of Hausa-speaking people in trade, business, preaching, and other professions, as well as their accommodative habits, made the language very popular and attractive. Despite the eminent rivalry between this conquering legendary language and its neighboring linguistic partners, Yoruba and Igbo, the popularity of Hausa culture has been strong since time immemorial. Dissemination and broadcasting of the Hausa language by major world radio stations made this statement a gospel. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Voice of America (VOA), Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio France Internationale (RFI), Radio Moscow, People’s Republic of China Radio, and many others within Africa and the Middle East, for example, in Egypt, Ghana and Iran, have settled the dust of antagonism. Interviews with various tribes, like Yoruba, Igbo, and Efik, reveal the strong influence of the Hausa language and culture in their daily activities. The influence is especially evident by its swallowing of the tribal languages of Fulani, Kanuri, Bura, and others. Limited segregation as well as intermarriages with other Nigerians has made the Hausa ubiquitous. The relative simplicity of the Hausa I. B. Lambu (*) Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Department of Geography, Bayero University Kano, Kano, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_53

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lifestyle led them to engage in menial livelihood options such as petty hawking, nail cutting, and guarding; in fact, they interact with virtually everybody. Apart from ethnic groups residing in Hausa-dominated Northern Nigeria, the language is widely spoken in every nook and corner of the country. Military rule during Nigeria’s early age of independence contributed to the spread of the language and even led to an adage that Hausa is a language for every successful Nigerian. In terms of religion, Hausa holds the advantage over Yoruba. Words like Albarka (bless), wahala (troubles), and a’a eh (oh!) are widely used by Yoruba from Kwara to Lagos. The Igbo money mongering made them learn the language in order to maintain customers; therefore, they are accustomed to using terms like wallahi (by God), gaskiya (truly), and haba? (sure?). Many adults state without any reservation that their mother tongue is declining because their children prefer interacting in the Hausa language, even at home, unless halted by the parents. The recent adoption of Hausa by the United Nation as one of the recognized languages adds impetus to the globalizing attitude of the Hausa. The lingering question that remains is why, with all these facts, Nigeria does not have a national language like the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Arabs, and others who were at one time or another colonized in the same way as Nigeria? Keywords

Popular language · Common language · Dominant language · Broadcast language · Culture · Religion

1

Introduction

Nigerian, African, and even global cultures experience transformation. One modification begets another with complication and intricacy based on the complexity of the culture itself (Lambu 2014). Cultural variation may lead to either intercultural conflicts or intercultural amiability, depending on the prevailing conditions of all the cultures concerned. Candidly, intercultural cooperation will be spontaneous when cultural difference leads to serious local, national, or international barriers. In other words, two different cultures will get along if they have common goals. However, cultural dissimilarity would have a very small effect on social interaction if the varied groups have opted to coexist with each other in a stable civil system (i.e., different groups tolerate each other because they have a similar interest). Conversely, cultural dissimilarity would stimulate congenial relationships for people intending to pursue their differences through the use of togetherness (bilateral relationship). It is important to remember that culture has three major pillars: religious culture, political culture, and economic culture. There is no clear-cut boundary that separates religion from polity and economy as each of the three segments interacts with each another. Religion needs resources, politics has political arrangements, and that politics are resources based under different beliefs leading to the ideas of religious economy, religious polity, political economy, and the economy of polity. With full-scale globalization, all three forces of

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culture undergo a series of changes. The medium of expression of religion, polity, and economy is language. It would not be an exaggeration to acknowledge that culture is more important than humankind. Culture defines and differentiates humans from other animals in that it portrays human activities and offers an explanation for human interactions through symbols and linguistic expression. Culture dictates the strongest sense of individual identity in every civilization regardless of its state of growth and development. Culture is also supreme whether the main interest is related to values, meanings, preferences, choices, or decisions. Social issues are very complicated and at times too complex especially when attributes and goals differ and vary within and across societies, that is, the cultures of different societies have personalities that are fully formed and individuated. Also, differences among individuals express the individual values, which consequently transform to societal values. Tribes and linguistic affiliations started long ago, in fact, since time immemorial. Islam and Christianity use various forms of communication between God and humans, angels, Satan, etc. However, precisely how differences in language and dialect have evolved is beyond the scope of this manuscript. Language, attire, architecture, and art change and compete across space and time; weaker ones fade and give way to stronger ones. Usually the diffusion of one culture occurs when adoption, assimilation, and adaptation result in mutilation and the fading of other cultures. Space provides a milieu for social interaction between individuals and groups. Public, intimate, personal, and private spaces stimulate the transfer of ideas. Knowledge and beliefs from person to person change spatially and temporally through verbal expression, body gestures, and other symbolic representations. Space, knowledge, and power dictate which objects are selected for representation. The conceptualization of representation that encompasses other aspects of the broader flows of knowledge, ideas, and values, including practices and presentation (clothes, arts, occupations, speech, etc.), requires a spatiotemporal synthesis. One needs to acknowledge the fact that representations are saturated with power, domination, and struggle through migration and also travel and tours from one place to another. The mixing of people from different areas due to contemporary globalization makes cultures very fluid, dynamic, and imaginary. Even before the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1904, a society in the savanna, popularly known as Hausas, was mobile throughout the region from Dahomey to Ethiopia.

2

Hausa People and Culture

Hausa people are predominantly found in Northern Nigeria especially in Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and other communities like Zaria and Daria. Kano is cited by Mortimore (1975) as the one of the densest Hausa-speaking societies in the whole continent of Africa. The boundaries of Hausa ethnicity and Hausa culture are language, religion, social values, dress, and historical status. On cultural perspective, to identify Hausa people in places far away from Hausa land is the farming and Islamic practice (Paden 1973). As cited by Lambu (2013), religion in Hausa land like Kano is as old as its history due to the fact that various forms of beliefs were

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identified with the people such as those worshipping Jakara stream (Bakin ruwa) (i.e., dark pool) and the magic tree of Madabo (Maisimbiraje) (Adamu 1999, 2007). Idol worshipping was also practiced, for instance, the Tsumburbura on top of Dala hills under the chief priest and the ancient traditional ruler Barbushe before the coming of Islam (Ashafa 1982; Adamu 1999 and Abdurrahman 2005). Islamic religion arrived into Kano as early as 999 and become significant around 1380 (Adamu 1999). Christianity has its initial history in Kano beginning in 1905 with the advent of colonialism (Paden 1973). Religious adherence was the main reason for taking indirect rule in Kano, that is, to avoid mass revolt (Adamu 1999). This may not be unconnected with the long history of the Islamic faith in the area where language, dresses, and greetings are completely interwoven (Adamu 1976). The Kano Emirate which emerged from old Kasar Kano was the largest, most populous, and prosperous of all the Emirates (Ashafa 1982). Hausa culture spread widely especially around the eighteenth century due to expansion of trade and external commerce of Hausa people. Hausa culture spread to Dagonba, Mamprussi, and Asante (Ashanti) kingdoms. Hausa merchants and mallams did not stop at Ghana but moved to BoboDioulasso, Dahomey, and North African countries like Sudan, Morocco, and Algeria (Adamu 1976). Owing to the mobile nature of Hausa people in the past due to trading and religious preaching, much cultural burrowing took place that has greatly modified the ancient culture. Hausa culture was so open, attractive, and enticing that other cultural groups were swallowed (Lawrence 2000; Mu’azzam 2011). The close conceptual relationship between ethnicity and religion has resulted in a typological distinction of religion as either universalistic or particularistic. The former allowed everybody irrespective of ethnic affiliation to join, while the latter imposed restriction on ethnic background. Paden (1973) opined that Christianity and Islam are universalistic in nature but in some cases both are treated as particularistic religions. This is because certain clans regard themselves having an Islamic or Christian identity. It may not be an exaggeration to state that Hausa penetrates into the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, as well as into Europe through the film industry popularly known as “Kannywood.” The language and culture have penetrated nearly all 36 states of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, an assertion vividly seen in the language spoken and dress attire.

3

Case Study: The Kano Language Map

The high level of interaction of Hausa speakers acts as a melting pot for Nigerian cultures (Fig. 1). Language is considered critical to culture because it contains the collective histories and stories of its speakers. When small minority languages become “extinct,” much history and cultural richness are lost. The experience of Kano state showcases the swallowing nature of the Hausa language. Even with processes of cultural homogenization at work, Kano remains the most linguistically unique area in all of Africa, if not the world. Hausa is the official language in the

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Fig. 1 Afro-Asiatic peoples of Nigeria. (Modified from Wikipedia 2015)

palace where no matter how important, visitors (from within and outside the country) are religiously addressed by the emir in the language of Hausa despite the claim that the emirate belongs to the Fulani clan. According to Ethnologue, the African continent as a whole has over 2000 languages (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2016). Kano as a mini-Nigeria has 25–50% of them, mostly around the Fagge and Nasarawa Local Government Areas. An interesting question for geographers is why such linguistic diversity is found in Kano, West Africa, and Nigeria in particular. In the Badawa area, interviews and observation reveal an amazing scenario: in any ten consecutive houses hardly any two belong to the same linguistic origin. Why? The answer to this question is both complex and multifaceted. A partial answer is that Kano is a land of relatively ancient settlement comprised of traders and merchants who traveled far and wide from Kurmi (forest zone) to Gwanja (Kumasi in Ghana). Also the slave trade brought slaves of different origins and backgrounds. With the abrogation of slave trade and slavery, many slaves, especially those who accepted Islam and could not trace their origin, settled in one ward in Nasarawa named “Dakata” from mu Dakata anan, meaning let us stay here. During the colonial period, white settlers further stratified the settlement of the indigenes and migrants. After being commercialized, the Sabon Gari became too expensive for

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many migrants so they resorted to moving to unplanned areas like “Kawo” (derived from KAWO abin da ya sauwaka meaning “just pay what you can afford”). This history is a testimony to the generosity of the Hausa culture, especially to strangers, as well as to the genesis of the swelling of Kano with a metropolitan population of over two million people (NPC 2006). Many scholars believe that the NigerianCameroonian borderland is the source of the great Bantu migrations of 2000–3000 years ago as it provides evidence of long-term settlement of the Kano, Oyo, and Bornu empires in Nigeria. Since the various political and social groupings of Kano were not united (due to local battles and conflicts) until the coming of the British, many tribes were brought to Kano either for security, as captives or as merchants, thus providing another reason or basis for linguistic heterogeneity. Longterm settlement combined with a favorable environment (fertile land and moisture) also influenced growth of a relatively large population by assuring food security and employment in farming and related endeavors. This population was partly divided based on environmental diversity because up to the present the core city was strictly occupied by the sons of the soil, i.e., the native Hausas. Care must be taken not to reduce human linguistic diversity to environmental arguments since culture is more than a language. In the end, it is people interacting with one another that determines cultural forms and processes. In the long run, a major part of the Kano language was strongly influenced by the coming of Islam and trade with Maghreb merchants. Both Hausa and Fulani languages exhibit the influence of Arabic in their vocabulary and structure, but it is not an exaggeration to mention that only relics of Fulfulde remain in urban Kano as many young Fulani-claimed ethnics cannot speak the language well and have never followed a cow in their life. The amalgamation of Arabic and Hausa continues to play a role, as is illustrated by the fact that Kano remains a meeting ground for three of Africa’s four major language groups: the Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Kanuri. Apart from the Hausa-Fulani amalgamated group, some dissolved IslamizedYoruba ethnics live in Ayagi quarters, Nufe around Tudun Nufawa, and other Muslim and Christian migrants occupy various business positions. There are markers other than language that clearly define ethnicity, especially in present day Kano. Speakers of Bura (a Chadic language closely related to Marghi) saw themselves traditionally as two ethnic groups, Bura and Marghi. The Bura mostly adhered to Islam in Kano and to Christianity elsewhere or to a local indigenous religion. They originally lived in small, autonomous areas that expanded and split as the population grew in Giginyu, Kawo, and Badawa. The Marghi had the same local economy as the Bura, but some were Muslim, and they lived in more northerly architectural styles. The Bura and Marghi resisted splitting into subgroups as they recognized a central ruler (emir) in a capital town (Biu). There was a strong movement in the 1980s among many Bura speakers to unite the two groups based on their common language, location, and interests in the wider society. Given long-standing conflicts that separated them as late as 1990, however, their common ethnicity was open to question. Once a stranger is or becomes Muslim, he can marry a wife from the community.

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Cultures are dynamic and change in response to interactions with other cultures, common goals, and enemies. Religion, economics, and politics are the pillars of culture; language is used to express these. Language represents space, knowledge, and power and is, therefore, influenced by migration, interaction, and conflict. Individuals’ values, preferences, choices, and decisions are a product of their culture which in turn further defines the culture. As they change, some cultures are subsumed, and others dominate depending on their ability to adopt, assimilate, and adapt. Hausa culture extends back to 500 AD. Leadership is based on lineage, and the traditional religion has blended with Islam. Hausa is spoken by more than 50 million people in Africa, especially in West and Central African states. Hausa language gained popularity among Nigerians for several reasons. (1) The simple lifestyle of Hausa-speaking people allowed them to adopt any livelihood option available to them, with availability superseding desirability (see Lambu 2012, 2013, 2016a, b). Occupations such as nail cutting, barbing, hawking, guarding, and so on are patronized by Hausa people, and these increase their association and interaction with other cultures. (2) Hausa culture is tolerant of other ethnic groups, which has promoted positive interaction and intermarriage with immigrants, from traders to slaves to colonists; (3) Nigerian children tend to prefer Hausa to their ethnic language, perhaps because it enables them to communicate with others in a highly diverse region; through Hausa, Nigerians can enjoy movies and music, broadcast news, and university education. A case study of Kano illustrates these points. This discussion illustrates that ethnicity and cultural identity in Kano are not rigid. It also illustrates the cultural complexity found in very small areas of Kano, like Badawa, where cultural diversity is very pronounced (Lambu 2013). In this case, two groups of people speak the same language (Hausa) and perform similar economic activities, although their religion may differ. Differences exist, however, not only in religion but in political organization and preferred settlement type. Thus, while some people might consider these two groups one ethnic group, there are good reasons that they are not united.

4

Summary and Conclusion

This discussion illustrates that ethnicity and cultural identity in Kano are not rigid. It also illustrates the cultural complexity found in very small areas of Kano, like Badawa, where cultural diversity is very pronounced (Lambu 2013). In this case, two groups of people speak the same language (Hausa) and perform similar economic activities, although their religion may differ. Differences exist, however, not only in religion but in political organization and preferred settlement type. Thus, while some people might consider these two groups one ethnic group, there are good reasons that they are not united. Hausas marry from other tribes (if they belong to Islamic faith) but hardly ever allow their daughters to marry into other linguistic groups

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(non-Muslims). Quite often marriage takes place between a Hausa man and Fulani woman, but the reverse is seldom practiced even with the Fulani who are almost twin brothers. This habit contributes to the melting of other languages into Hausa. Hausa language and culture suit a popular adage “Hantsi leka gidan kowa” (the sun rays shine in every home). It is the culture that if one gives an inch, it will take many miles. The Hausa-Fulani nomenclature is a cultural deception used to console the swallowed Fulfulde by allowing them to assume some existence. The beginning of the Dandal Kura radio broadcast in Hausa language is a signal for Kannuris’ voluntary surrendering to Hausa captivity. Many settlers from Yoruba, Igbo, and others, despite their attempt to resist the culture, have children who are almost 50% likely to become being Hausanized. The rate at which Hausa language is spreading and swallowing other larger languages from both Northern and Southern Nigeria is alarming. In the near future, all things being equal, Hausa is going to dominate the entire nation. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Abdurrahman, A. (2005). Socio-cultural and political communication; a study of Sallah festivals in Kano. Kano: Munawara Books International. Adamu, M. (1976). The spread of Hausa culture in West Africa. Savanna, 5(1), 3–13. Baraka press. Adamu, M. U. (1999). Confluences and influences: The emergence of Kano as a City state. Kano: Munawwara Book Foundation. Adamu, A. U. (2007). Chieftaincy and security in Northern Nigeria a century of transformation 1903–2003, past. Arewa House: Tellettes Consulting Company Limited. Ashafa, A. M. (1982). The Islamization of Kano before the Jihad. Kano Studies, 1(3). Kano studies series. Lambu, I. B. (2012). An assessment of the contribution of religious places in metropolitan Kano, Nigeria. Techno-Science Africana Journal, 7(1). Lambu, I. B. (2013). People’s awareness and attitude on biogas as an alternative domestic energy use in urban Kano. Academic Research International, 4(6), 626. Part-III: Natural & Applied Sciences. Available at: www.savap.org.pk www.journals.savap.org.pk. Lambu, I. B. (2014). A geographical analysis of religious landscapes of Kano metropolis. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Geography, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. Lambu, I. B. (2016a). The cultural forces and women livelihood options in rural areas of Kano State, Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 3(2):146–156. Lambu, I. B. (2016b). Waste or wealth: The cultural crux behind scavenging in urban Kano State, Nigeria. Pyrex Journal of Research in Environmental Studies, 3(3):19–25. Available at: http:// www.pyrexjournals.org/pjres. Lawrence, E. H. (2000). Promoting Progress in cultural change matters. New York: Basic Books. Lewis, P. M., Simons, G. F. & Fennig, C. D. (2016). Ethnologue: languages of the world. Dallas: SIL International. Mortimore, M. (1975). Peri-urban pressures. In: Moss, R. and Rathbone, R. (eds.) The population factor in African studies. 189–305. University of London Press.

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Mu’azzam, I. (2011). Preliminary notes on the Kanawa identity: Beyond “Indigeniety.” crises. Abuja: National Workshop on Citizenship and Indigenity Conflict in Nigeria by CDD, IPCR and OCIWA. Paden (1973). Religion and political culture in Kano. Berkeley: University of California Press. National Population Commission (2006). Federal Republic of Nigeria 2006 Population and Housing Census, Priority Tables Vol. VII Population Distribution by Age, Sex, and Educational Attainment, State and Local Government Area, NPC, Abuja Nigeria.

Language of Rusyns in Slovakia: Controversies, Vagaries, and Rivalry of Codification Discourses

60

René Matlovič, Kvetoslava Matlovičová, and Viera Vlčková

Contents 1 Statistical Data About Rusyns and Their Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Present Status of the Rusyn Settlement in Slovakia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Discourses on Codification of the Rusyn Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Church Slavonic Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Russian Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Ukrainian Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Rusyn Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1156 1158 1159 1161 1163 1164 1166 1168 1169

Abstract

Slovakia is a rather young country in Central Europe that was established on 1st January 1993 after the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia. The development of national and language structure of the population in Slovakia is closely related to the changing geopolitical, social, and cultural context. One consequence of this complicated history is a relatively high degree of language diversification. The territory of current Slovakia was a part of the Hungarian Kingdom up to 1918. After World War I, Slovakia became part of Czechoslovakia. During the World War II period (1939–1945), the southern part of Slovak territory was occupied by R. Matlovič (*) Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia e-mail: [email protected] K. Matlovičová Department of Geography and Applied Geoinformatics, University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovakia e-mail: [email protected] V. Vlčková University of Economics, Bratislava, Slovakia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_61

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Hungary, and the rest of the area was established as the Slovak state under the influence of Nazi Germany. After the World War II, Slovakia was part of Czechoslovakia once again up to 1992. This period was mostly connected with totalitarian communist regime (1948–1989). Sociopolitical and economic changes that began in 1989 created a new situation for national and language minority development. The restoration of political freedom and plurality led to emancipation of minority languages and cultures. Slovakia has several minority languages. According to the population census in 2011, Slovak language as a mother tongue was declared by 78.6% of Slovak citizens. The most important minority languages declared as a mother tongue are Hungarian (9.4%), Romany (2.3%), Rusyn/Ruthenian (1%), Czech (0.65%), Ukrainian (0.1%), and German (0.1%). There are also groups with Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian, and other mother tongues in Slovakia. Our chapter deals with the Ruthenian/Rusyn language, which codification was very long and complicated process. Keywords

Post-socialist transition · Minorities · Language development · National structure of population · Language structure of population · Ruthenians/Rusyns, Slovakia

1

Statistical Data About Rusyns and Their Interpretation

The number of Rusyns living in the territory of Slovakia has been tracked since 1880 (Table 1 and Fig. 1) when language affiliation was included for the first time in the statistical census. This particular census is very important because it helped contradict the myth based on identification of the national and religious affiliations. Until then the idea that appurtenance to the Greek Catholic Church (also referred as the Rus´ faith) automatically meant the Rusyn ethnicity prevailed. Some overestimated numbers of Rusyns made before 1880 (e.g., Magocsi 2016) stemmed in this belief. Results of the 1880 census confirmed that the great part of Rusyn Greek Catholics (97%) adhered to the Greek Catholic Church. On the other side though, only half of the Greek Catholics living in the territory of the Prešov Eparchy affiliated with the Rusyn mother tongue (Šoltés 2004). When interpreting the data about the language and ethnic structure of population in Slovakia, it is necessary to bear in mind methodological differences between individual censuses, above all the methodology adopted in the statistical survey and the definition of nationality. Censuses carried out in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1880–1910 recorded the mother tongue of the population as the determining attribute of ethnic identity. However, since 1900 mother tongue was often confused with preferred language. This difference might have led to the statistical Hungarization (magyarization) (Benža et al. 2015; Tišliar 2007). In 1919, an additional population census was carried out, and the interviewed persons freely declared their own ethnic (tribal) identity. Rusyn was one of the options; mother tongue was not among them (Benža et al. 2015; Tišliar 2007). In 1921 ethnic (tribal) identity was directly verified as the main trait associated with the mother tongue. The Ruthenian (Carpatho-Russian) ethnicity was in the common

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Table 1 Number and proportion of population claiming Rusyn and Ukrainian ethnicity and mother tongue living in the territory of Slovakia in 1880–2011. (Sources: Benža et al. 2015; Tišliar 2007; Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic)

Census year 1880 1890 1900 1910 1919 1921 1930 1950 1961 1970 1980 1991 2001 2011

Rusyn mother tongue Number % 78,941 3.21 84,787 3.28 84,906 3.04 97,014 3.31 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 49,099 0.93 54,907 1.02 55,469 1.03

Rusyn ethnicity Number % – – – – – – – – 81,332 2.78 88,983 2.97 95,359 2.87 – – – – – – – – 17,197 0.33 24,201 0.45 33,482 0.62

Ukrainian mother tongue Number % – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 9,480 0.18 7,879 0.15 5,689 0.11

Ukrainian ethnicity Number – – – – – – – 48,231 35,435 38,959 36,849 13,281 10,814 7,430

% – – – – – – – 1.40 0.85 0.86 0.74 0.25 0.20 0.14

Fig. 1 Percent of population claiming Rusyn and Ukrainian ethnicity and mother tongue living in the territory of Slovakia in 1880–2011. (Sources of data: Benža et al. 2015; Tišliar 2007; Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (Elaborated by Kvetoslava Matlovičová))

group along with the Russian and Little Russian (Ukrainian) ethnicities. In 1930 the ethnic identity was verified by the mother tongue. The 1950–2011 censuses included an option for the population to adhere to ethnicity “inwardly felt” as the right one. But the Rusyn ethnicity was not tracked from 1950 to 1980. In 1950 and 1961, the Ukrainian and Russian ethnicities were in a common category, while in 1970 they were separated. In the 1991–2011 censuses, Ukrainian and Rusyn ethnicities appeared, and mother tongue was also tracked. The 2011 census sheets asked for the most common language used in a household (Benža et al. 2015; Matlovič 2005).

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The number of Rusyns in the territory of Slovakia slowly increased by the end of the nineteenth century. The negative aspect was the economically motivated migration to the United States at the turn of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when about 150,000 Rusyns left (Botík 2007). The number of Rusyns in the current territory of Slovakia peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century amounting to 3.3% of total population. Of the Rusyn population living in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1910, 21.6% lived in the territory of Slovakia. Following the geopolitical changes that took place after World War I and the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, the confused self-identification of Rusyns led to a temporary decline in 1919, but then the number of Rusyns returned in 1921 and 1930. The overall numbers of Rusyn, Russian, and Ukrainian ethnicities which increased during the interwar period were also due to immigration of Russians and Ukrainians. But the end of the World War II brought about serious changes. The share of Rusyns and their percentage sharply decreased as the result of migration processes. On the one hand, it was the resettlement in the Czech boundary areas after the displacement of Germans; about 20,000 Rusyns took part in this resettlement. On the other hand, some groups emigrated in search of work to the Czech industrial regions (Konečný 2015). The exchange of population (with an option to choose citizenship) between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union was another ongoing process. From 1945 to 1947, 12,401 inhabitants (optants) of Slovakia moved out the Western Ukrainian Oblasts of Volyn, Rivno, and Zakarpattia (Transcarpathian oblast) (Beňušková 2006). Additional factors also intervened such as the communist regime enforced ukrainization, the eradication of the Greek Catholic Church, and the forced conversion to the Orthodox Church in the 1950s meant to follow the Soviet pattern. Some Rusyns turned down the Ukraine option and preferred to remain in Slovakia or to join the Roman Catholic Church (Konečný 2015). Between 1964 and 1968, the number of Rusyns increased with the first wave of re-optants (70% of optants) coming from the Soviet Ukraine. The second wave of re-optants (1,806 persons) arrived to Slovakia in the 1990s (Beňušková 2006).

2

The Present Status of the Rusyn Settlement in Slovakia

The 2011 census data reported 33,482 Rusyns or 0.62% of Slovakia’s population. And 55,489 persons, that is, 1.03%, cited Rusyn as their mother tongue. A gradual drop in number and proportion of Ukrainian ethnicity members occurred from 1991 to 2011 in Slovakia and also those declaring Ukrainian as a mother tongue. These results confirm the gradual assertion in search of identity (or branding) of the Rusyn ethnic population in Slovakia (Matlovič and Matlovičová 2012). In terms of spatial distribution, the Rusyn population is concentrated in Northeast Slovakia (Fig. 2). The population reporting the largest percentage of Rusyn mother tongue (5.9% of total population) is the region of Prešov. This region has 86.7% of all Rusyns in Slovakia. The region of Košice where Rusyns amount to 0.67% of population and 9.53% of all Rusyns in Slovakia ranks second. It is followed by the region of Bratislava with 0.1% of Rusyns and 1.86% of all Slovak Rusyns. Only

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Fig. 2 Municipalities in Slovakia where Rusyns exceeded 10% of the population in 2011 (Elaborated by Kvetoslava Matlovičová)

1.91% of Rusyns live elsewhere in the country. At the district level, Rusyns prevail only in the Medzilaborce district where they represent 57.72% of the population. They also live in these districts: Snina (24.56%), Svidník (24.34%), Stropkov (14.06%), Stará Ľubovňa (12.25%), Humenné (7.11%), and Bardejov (6.96%); 79.43% of all Rusyns in Slovakia are concentrated in these districts. As far as individual municipalities are concerned, in 2011 there were 216 municipalities where the proportion of Rusyn population exceeded 10%. They are mostly small villages. Of the 216 municipalities, 178 reported that the Rusyn population was less than 500; 108 municipalities had fewer than 200, and in 59 there were less than 100 inhabitants. More than 50% of the share of Rusyns were found in 110 municipalities, and more than 75% Rusyns lived in 26 municipalities. The largest shares of inhabitants with the Rusyn mother tongue were in the following municipalities: Ruský Potok in district Snina (95.52%), Ruská Volová in district Snina (93.69%), Obručné in district Stará Ľubovňa (92.68%), and Michajlov in district Snina (90%). A very large majority of these are very small communes with under 200 people. The proportion of Rusyns reached more than 10% only in three Slovak towns: Medzilaborce (51.18%), Svidník (29.8%), and Snina (14.36%). In absolute numbers of Rusyns living in villages and towns in 2011, they were Svidník (3,493), Medzilaborce (3,485), Humenné (3,293), Snina (2,976), Košice (2,609), Prešov (1,758), Bardejov (1,680), Stakčín (995), Stará Ľubovňa (937), and Kamienka (901, and Bratislava (865).

3

Discourses on Codification of the Rusyn Language

Rusyns, in spite of major efforts of several generations of intellectuals and enthusiasts, did not succeed in codifying their language at the time of a national revival in the nineteenth century. Geopolitical circumstances were also not favorable for the

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solution of the issue during the great part of the twentieth century. This situation was also complicated by interpreting Rusyn identity (Plišková 2012). Konečný (2000) rightfully concluded that this was the result of several synergistic factors. One was the aforementioned frontier nature of geographic position of the Rusyns settlement regions, both in the figurative and literal sense of the word and its prevailing rural character. If the concept of Jacobs (1970) about the key role of cities in civilization’s progress of mankind is applied, the absence of any distinctive urban center was a major handicap for Rusyns. Both larger urban centers of the Rusyn, that is, Prešov (now in Slovakia) and Uzhhorod (now in Ukraine), were outside the compact settlement region of Rusyns; the function of administrative centers was assumed by the Greek Catholic Church (Danilák 2006; Magocsi 1994). Confusion and contentious issues were also manifested in the field of identification and self-identification of Rusyns. Their interpretation requires a consistent application of the contextual approach. With the changing geographical and historical context in the region, the significance of some ethnic identities differed. Rusyns themselves use for their identification derived from the noun Rus. It creates a confusing situation because it is not possible to relate it to the geographical notion Russia and Russian as occasionally happens. The notion Rus and its derivatives have been used for reference purposes for eastern slaves or their territories since the Middle Ages. The ethnonym Rusyn was also used for inhabitants of Galicia and Bukovina (as parts of Austro-Hungarian Empire) or even in a more general sense to Belarusians and Ukrainians. This issue is further complicated by the fact that ethnonyms “Rusyn,” “Rusnák,” “Rusňák,” or historical “Karpatorus,” “Karpatorusín,” “Uhrorus,” “Malorus,” and “Ruthén” did not refer only to the ethnic or national identity but to one’s confession, that is, an identification with the eastern branch of Christianity (Greek Catholic or Orthodox Churches) or an affiliation to a peculiar regional community (Gajdoš 2004; Magocsi 2016). An ethnographic classification of population in the Rusyn area of settlement is an additional aspect. Terms like Lemkos, Boykos, Hutsuls, Verkhovyntsi, and Dolynians are used, although Lemko is used not only in terms of ethnography but in Polish where it has been used since the beginning of the twentieth century for Rusyns living in Southeastern Poland, west of the San River (Magocsi 1999, 2016). The latest sociological research in Slovakia showed that the ethnonym “Rusín” prevails there. “Rusnák” is less used. Ukrainian inhabitants preferred the term “Rusín-Ukrajinec” or “Rusín/Ukrajinec,” that is, artificial constructs aimed at a compromise (Gajdoš et al. 2001; Baumgartner and Gajdoš 2002; Konečný 2015). Authors involved with various aspects of the codifying and emancipating processes of Rusyns were many (e.g., Danilák 2006; Haraksim 1997; Jabur 2000; Konečný 2000, 2015; Koporová 2016; Magocsi 1996, 2006, 2016; Plišková 2004, 2007, 2012, 2015; Sopoliga 2011; and Vaňko 2000). There is no consensus on the origin of the Rusyn language. But the fact that the oldest documents written in the Rusyn language are from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may serve as a starting point (Dudášová-Kriššáková 2015). In the eighteenth century, the first attempts to process and interpret the history of Rusyns in the Kingdom of Hungary appeared. The study of Slovak author A. F. Kollár O poˆvode, rozvoji a živote Rusínov

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Uhorska/About Origins, Development, and Life of Rusyns in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1749 (Konečný 2015) serves as one example. According to authors involved with the history of Rusyn language codification, four discourses exist: Church Slavonic discourse, Russian discourse, Ukrainian discourse, and a Rusyn discourse.

3.1

Church Slavonic Discourse

This is oldest of the four discourses. It dominated from the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth century. Its key actors were the Greek Catholic clergy whose influence increased after the Mukachevo Eparchy was declined under the jurisdiction of the Eger diocese in 1771. The determining factor in its growth was the development of schooling which was facilitated by the Theresian and Josephian school reforms. The clergy followed the deep-rooted tradition of using Church Slavonic as the liturgical language. As the oldest grammar of the language used by Rusyns in the territory of Slovakia from 1770, it was authored by a Basilian monk A. Kocák. It was based on the Carpathian version (edition) of the Church Slavonic language (Magocsi 1996). Development of Slavonic languages followed the line from the primeval Indo-European, over primeval Slavonic, to Old Slavonic. The primeval Slavonic language unity terminated due to the divergent development in the second half of the first millennium A.D. It was when the Old Slavonic detached from the primeval Slavic language. Its base was in the language of Bulgarian-Macedonian Slavs living northeast of Thessaloniki. It was merit of the Thessaloniki brothers Constantine and Methodius and their mission that in 863, the Old Slavonic language and the first Slavic script arrived to Great Moravia, that is, the territory of Slovakia (Dudášová-Kriššáková 2015). The Church Slavonic language developed in the Middle Ages (tenth to twelfth centuries) precisely from the Old Slavonic. It thrived especially in areas where the eastern rite (Slav-Byzantine), that is, Orthodox and later Greek Catholic Churches were pursued. Its character varied because it developed individually in several dispersed areas and reflected the local influences of live dialects. It is how several varieties (so-called editions) of Church Slavonic developed in the twelfth century. The Carpathian edition of the Church Slavonic developed in the seventeenth century (Dudášová-Kriššáková 2015). M. Štec (2005) asserts that it is only a Carpathian subedition of the Ukrainian edition of the Church Slavonic. Church Slavonic fulfilled the function of both the standard and liturgical languages from the twelfth century until the period of national awakening in the whole area of Eastern Slavs. The cultural and emancipation objectives though were not the only motive. From an instrumentalist point of view, in the background of this Church Slavonic discourse, there also were political interests, above all the massive nature of the movement. Rus´ faith, as the Greek Catholic confession was referred to in the contemporary context, was concerned with integrating believers regardless of their ethnic origins (Konečný 2000).

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Fig. 3 The statue of A. Dukhnovych in Prešov, Slovakia (photo by René Matlovič)

Church Slavonic reached its limits given its archaic nature. It was only used in the church environment in creating a spiritual literature and use in liturgy. It was not a live or currently used language at the time. It became a barrier to the success of the Church Slavonic codification discourse (Plišková 2007). Some Rusyn intellectuals tried to solve the problem by supplementing the Church Slavonic by Russian with vernacular elements. But this hybrid alternative lacked any fixed grammatical system for the competing discourses. In this hybrid language, for example, the term of “jazycˇie-jazychye” is used which has a pejorative connotation (Plišková 2007). This solution was also promoted by a prominent Rusyn writer and priest, A. Dukhnovych (Duchnovič) (Fig. 3), whose changing attitudes, however, introduced confusion into the codification discourses. Dukhnovych firstly discerned the lowly form of language, the dialects, from the high form of the Church Slavonic enriched by the elements of Rusyn dialects and the Russian language. In the 1850s, he gave preference to the Russian discourse and treated the Rusyn dialect with great contempt. He strictly negated the Ukrainian discourse (Plišková 2015). In spite of his disparate attitude, Dukhnovych is highly respected as a prominent personality of the Rusyn movement). It might have been one of the reasons that the Rusyn codification process itself was concluded with a great delay

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compared to other languages. When the attitude of the codification process actors reflected the changing social context, the social-constructivist nature of codification became fully evident. The Church Slavonic discourse lost its position in the 1850s. Eventually it would be pushed out of the scene by the other three rival codification discourses.

3.2

Russian Discourse

The Russian discourse emerged in the 1850s and maintained its influence until the 1950s. It was associated with the promotion of standard Russian as the base for the codification of the Rusyn language. The main actors were members of secular Rusyn intelligentsia. As the rural Rusyn area did not offer them the appropriate conditions for personal progress, they left mainly for Russia for study and work. Some maintained contacts with compatriots in the spirit of Slavonic solidarity as they were fascinated by the grandeur and power of the Russian nation and the Russian state and relied on the idea that it could provide protection to all Slavs. They referred to their compatriots as Karpatorosses and supported the representatives of the Russian discourse at home. One of impulses for the Russian discourse was the presence of Russian troops invited by the Austrian Emperor which helped to suppress the 1849 revolution in the Kingdom of Hungary. The main actor of these efforts was A. Dobriansky, who as a civil commissar provided contact with the Russian Army and the Vienna emperor court (Konečný 2015). Among the original supporters of the Church Slavonic discourse was A. Dukhnovych; he also joined the Russian discourse (Plišková 2007). The dominance of the Russian discourse lasted until the Austrian-Hungarian compromise of 1867. Later, the Hungarian government, which suspected imperial interests of Russians to promote the Russian language and the Orthodox Church, tried to weaken its influence and started to lend support to the Rusyn discourse and its activists who found support with the Kingdom of Hungary. A great part of the Greek Catholic clergy adopted the line of the Hungarian government, and gradually it assimilated into the Hungarian culture (Konečný 2015; Plišková 2007). The influence of Russian as a literary language of the Rusyn intelligentsia was perpetuated in schools, although only as a voluntary subject. However, the majority of the Rusyn periodicals appeared in Russian. But in everyday life, it was not the genuine Russian but rather the Carpathian version of the Russian language with vernacular and Church Slavonic elements, so-called jazycˇie (Konečný 2000). Russian discourse also outlived the disintegration of Austria-Hungary in 1918. Rusyns in Czechoslovakia were administratively separated. The western part lived in Slovakia in a position as an ethnic minority. The eastern part lived in the SubCarpathian Rus (as a part of Czechoslovakia) where, apart from Czech language, they were allowed to use the local language as a second official language (Plišková 2007). The rivalry between the competing discourses (Ukrainian and Rusyn) was manifested more openly in that time. The Russian discourse was strengthened by the immigration of the Whites in the Russian civil war in 1917–1923. Along with a part

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of re-emigrants from the United States, they bolstered the Orthodox movement with its base in the monastery of Jovo Počajovský in Ladomírová, which led to uncertainty among Greek Catholics. Generally, however, the Russian discourse still maintained its influence within the environment of the Orthodox Church and among an older generation of intelligentsia and farmers (Konečný 2015). After the World War II, the Russian discourse still resounded in older generation of intelligentsia. But the geopolitical circumstance contributed to its suppressing in favor of the Ukrainian discourse. After 1989 it was shortly revived in the Rusyn Carpatho-Russian Society. Later Russian discourse faded out, because most of its followers were at an advanced age. The relationships of the Russian discourse with the other competing discourses were qualitatively different as the result of the above arguments. It kept the relative respect to the Church Slavonic discourse which was criticized for its archaic nature and practical uselessness. The relationship to the Rusyn discourse was superior in terms of dignity and cultural superiority in the Russian nation and language compared to the low prestige of the Rusyn dialects. The Russian discourse was also characterized as being in a superior position to the Ukrainian discourse as the Ukrainian language was considered part of common-Russian area along with the Russian and Belarusian languages. It also led to some misunderstanding between Ukrainian for Rusyns living south and west of the Carpathians (Plišková 2015).

3.3

Ukrainian Discourse

The Ukrainian discourse started to formulate itself in the last third of the nineteenth century, outside the territory of Slovakia in regions north of the Carpathians, that is, in Eastern Galicia and Bukovina (nowadays Ukraine). The center was the city of Lviv. It had a distinct counter-Polish and counter-Russian orientation. It included the Rusyn dialects as part of the Ukrainian language, which was considered an appropriate base for the codification of literary Rusyn. The Ukrainian discourse reached the territory of Slovakia only at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of the members of the Rusyn discourse, also referred to as the patriots (Konečný 2015; Plišková 2007; Haraksim 2004), joined this effort. The Ukrainian discourse was strengthened by the in-migration of Galician Ukrainians after the defeat of its shortly existing independent status: the West Ukrainian Folk Republic in 1918–1919 and the Ukrainian Folk Republic in 1917–1920. It stimulated the idea that Rusyn national existence might be solved within a great Ukraine, an idea accepted by part of the Rusyn intelligentsia (Konečný and Gajdoš 1998). The Ukrainian discourse obtained support of the Czechoslovak government in Prague whose motive was to weaken the pro-Hungarian orientation of a part of the Rusyn intelligentsia and Greek Catholic clergy. Expert support for the Ukrainian discourse was provided by the Prague philologist, I. Pankevych, originally from Galicia. He proposed the Verkhovyna Rusyn dialects that were closer to the Galician Ukrainian language as a basis for the standard language (Plišková 2015). The Ukrainian discourse was preferred by the government also in relation to the

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Russian discourse that seemed to evoke potential imperial ambitions of a united Russia and later Soviet Union. In spite of this support, the Ukrainian discourse in the territory of Slovakia in the interwar period did not reach any distinct success. It was represented by some activists in branches of the Prosvita organization (Konečný 2000; Plišková 2007). But the development in Slovakia was influenced by a fierce competition of the codification discourses in the region of Subcarpathian Rus which was also part of Czechoslovakia. The Ukrainian discourse was soon gaining strength especially in 1930 when A. Voloshyn announced the introduction of the Ukrainian orthography (Konečný 2015; Plišková 2015). During the existence of the Slovak State (1939–1945), the Rusyn emancipation endeavors were suppressed. However, the Slovak government supported assimilation and the slovakization of Rusyns. But the Ukrainian discourse was surviving as it leaned on support of the Ukrainian organization of Ukrainian nationalists in the German Reich (Konečný 2015; Plišková 2015). After World War II the position of the Ukrainian discourse was distinctly strengthened and eventually achieved a monopolist nature. It was the result of two key factors. The first was the solution to the question of future of the Subcarpathian Rus which became part of the Soviet Ukraine in 1945 (Šmigeľ 2006). The second factor was the installation of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and its transformation into a satellite of the Soviet Union. It meant the adoption of the Soviet policy regarding the identity of Rusyns which in its frame were considered Ukrainians. The Greek Catholic Church as the base to the Rusyn discourse was abolished in 1950. The regime preferred the Orthodox Church. After 1951 the ukrainization of the Rusyn media, cultural institutions and education has occurred. Paradoxes were not rare as when part of the Ukrainian discourse activists (including I. Pankevych) were impeached because of bourgeois nationalism (Šmigeľ 2006). Ukrainian discourse maintained this monopoly until the social and political changes in 1989. The liberal environment that emerged after the fall of the communist regime in 1989 made it possible to renew the competition between the three codification discourses: the Ukrainian, Rusyn, and Russian. As was mentioned above, the Russian discourse was fading out, so the two last decades are only characterized by the rivalry between the Ukrainian and Rusyn discourses. The Ukrainian discourse is supported by the organization Zväz Rusínov-Ukrajincov Slovenska/Union of Rusyns-Ukrainians of Slovakia (Gajdoš 2004). After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, some personalities formerly marginalized by the communist regime (e.g. J. Bača, M. Mušinka) became the principal actors of the Ukrainian discourse. They univocally rebuffed the revival of the Rusyn discourse (e.g., Bača et al. 1992) by labeling it antiscientific and historically not justified. They linguistically classify the Rusyn dialects into the North Carpathian dialect group of the West Ukrainian dialect (Čižmárová 2013). They interpreted the term Rusyn as a synonym of Ukrainian and refused the codification of the Rusyn language. In some linguistic acts also primordialist arguments referring to the common origins of the Ukrainians and Rusyn surfaced (Mušinka 1997). However, also there were examples where the Rusyn and Ukrainian discourses coincided such as when they disagreed about

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moving the national and ethnic broadcasting of the Slovak Radio from Prešov to Košice in 2003. Also there was concern about the permanent critique of slovakization of believers who were pursued by the management of the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches (Gajdoš and Konečný 2005); this was another part of their common agenda. But the numbers in the census (see Table 1) clearly show the weakening trend of effects and significance of the Ukrainian discourse. The question regarding its potential was bolstered by an economically motivated immigration from Ukraine (Šoltés 2005).

3.4

Rusyn Discourse

The Rusyn discourse is characterized by the idea that Rusyns are independent nation different both from Russians and Ukrainians. Its origins date to the end of the 1840s. It was likely the activities and the language act of the Slovak nationalist, Ľ. Štúr of 1846, who recommended that Rusyn use their own language (Plišková 2015). This might have been the source of inspiration. A. Duchnovych published the first elementary textbook based on the Rusyn lexis in 1848. Although he wrote the majority of his books in the Rusyn dialect, he finally adhered to the Russian discourse (Plišková 2007, 2015). The Rusyn discourse was revived only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was prized by a generation of Rusynophiles, so-called patriots. They emphasized that standard Russian is not an adequate base because simple people and even leaders of the Russian discourse could not master it. In using the Rusyn discourse, they found support from the Hungarian government. In 1883, the Csopei’s Hungarian-Rusyn dictionary with the grammar inspired by the Rusyn dialects of Dolynians was published. By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the polemics between the representatives of all three discourses fully broke out on pages of the contemporary press (Plišková 2007). Rusyn discourse was comparatively weak, as part of the Rusyn intelligentsia was magyarized for pragmatic reasons and another part saw their salvation from the magyarization in support of the Russian discourse. After the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Rusyns, as an ethnic minority, achieved their right to use mother tongue in public administration (in communes where there was at least 20% of the Rusyns lived). The principal institutional actor of the Rusyn discourse was the Greek Catholic Bishopric of Prešov followed by the Russian National Party and later also the Russian National Committee. Gradually the network of schools with tuition teaching the Rusyn language expanded. Regarding the absence of its codified form, jazycˇije, that is, its hybrid form was used. Tuition was often influenced by the language skills of teachers. The initiative of the Greek Catholic Bishop P. P. Gojdič (Goidych) who promoted the standardization of the Rusyn (also referred to as the Carpathian-Russian) tuition language was not easily accomplished (Plišková 2007, 2015). By the time the Slovak State in 1939 emerged, the Rusyn discourse had fallen in disfavor with the Slovak authorities as it was suspected of being disloyal to the new state. The main protector of interests of the Rusyn discourse was again the Greek Catholic Church headed by Bishop Gojdič (Plišková 2007).

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After the World War II the restoration of Czechoslovakia and installation of the communist regime in 1948 entered an extra unfavorable period for the Rusyn discourse. It was violently suppressed as the governmental authorities who preferred the Ukrainian discourse. A great part of the Rusyns though were ostracized and found themselves associated with Slovak identity (Plišková 2007). The atmosphere shortly eased in 1967–1970 when Zväz Rusínov-Ukrajincov Slovenska/Union of Rusyns-Ukrainians in Slovakia obtained some space for the Rusyn discourse on pages of the Ukrainian periodical “Nove žytťa.” After this short period, the adverse situation returned and lasted until 1989 (Plišková 2007). A group of Greek Catholic priests led by F. Krajňák, which started to prepare an edition of ecclesiastical books in Rusyn vernacular at the beginning of the 1980s, was an exception (Plišková 2012, 2015). A new situation came after social and political changes and fall of the communist regime in 1989. The Rusyn discourse was practically immediately revived when at the beginning of 1990 supporters raised the request of the codification of the Rusyn language on the basis of the “Labyrščyna” dialect. Regarding the fact that the Unions of Rusyns-Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia was controlled by the Ukrainian discourse, representatives of the Rusyn discourse founded an organization of their own: Rusyn Renascence. Periodicals in the Rusyn language “Rusyn” and “Narodny Novynky” appeared. The division between the Ukrainian and Rusyn discourses was definitely confirmed by May 1990 (Gajdoš 2004). Its contention of the controversy culminated when the Ukrainian National Theatre in Prešov was renamed the Theatre of Alexander Dukhnovych; additional arguments emerged concerning the control of the Museum of Ukrainian Culture in Svidník and in the division of the ethnic radio broadcast in Ukrainian and Rusyn. The Rusyn discourse was definitely headed to the codification of the Rusyn language. In 1992, an International Congress was held in Bardejov spa. It started a consistent work on the codification of the language and adopted several fundamental principles. Codification was meant to be based on a live vernacular of Rusyns; each region was supposed, following the model of the Romansh in Switzerland, to create a proper variety of standard language on the basis of the most widely spread dialect in a given area while the graphic system of the Rusyn language would be the Russian alphabet. Subsequently, it was presumed that interregional Rusyn language, so-called koine, will be created. Work on preparation of such variety was based on two most widely used dialects, those of the West Zemplín and the East Zemplín, started in Slovakia (Jabur 2000; Plišková 2007). Codification efforts of Rusyns in Slovakia peaked on 27 January 1995 as a result of the ceremonious act of codification in Bratislava. In this way the emancipation process of Rusyns entered another phase when it is necessary to implement the language in individual spheres of daily life. The still unachieved aim was the codification of interregional Rusyn language, that is, koine (Konečný 2015). The present level of use of the Rusyn language has been assessed in detail by A. Plišková (2012). No changes have been observed in recent years. The only elementary school applying the Rusyn language in its tuition is the village of Čabiny which in 2008–2016 served an example. It had to close because of a lack of students. Since 2013, there has been a bilingual Slovak-Rusyn elementary school in village of Kalná

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Roztoka. Positive also are the activities of the Institute of the Rusyn Language and Culture at the University of Prešov founded in 2008. Apart from university studies, the Center also conducts research and organizes the Summer School of Rusyn Language for interested people from all over the world. The use of Rusyn language in public administration is limited. In 64 communes with more than 20% proportion of Rusyns (2011 census), Rusyn is used in official contacts. Visible proof is provided by the signage indicating entry and exit of these municipalities and on the signs on public administration buildings (Správa. . . 2016) in these communes. These efforts are a relatively promising situation for the use of the Rusyn in literature, media, and theater. The main institution focusing on this effort is the Theatre of Alexander Duchnovych in Prešov, which apart of Rusyn has performed one play a year in Ukrainian since 2009. Rusyn language is used in three public periodicals (Rusyn, Narodn^ y novynk^ y , InfoRusyn), in two church periodicals (Blahovistnyk, Artos), in radio and television in Slovakia, and in several Internet portals (www.rusyn.sk, http://www.rusyn-rusnak.szm.com, www.holosy.sk, etc.) and social networks. Table 1 shows the increasing trend in adherence of the inhabitants to the Rusyn ethnicity and the Rusyn mother tongue.

4

Conclusion

The extremely complicated codification process of the Rusyn language in the territory of Slovakia depended on several factors which are discussed. The point was made at the outset about the frontier geographical location of the Rusyns, the lack of cultural and economic progress, an absence of urban centers, confused and unclear attitudes of the key actors associated with Rusyn identity, and the interference of external geopolitical and power ambitions. The codification process shows clear features of social construction of national identity where the language engages in four discourses: Church Slavonic, Russian, Ukrainian, and Rusyn. The process of social construction is concerned with individual actors of these discourses who adapted to the current context and who changed their positions. The instrumental character of the process is also obvious, when there was an effort in a rational choice which would bring power or material benefits. Language acts were also sometimes tinged by primordia list or emotional arguments. Finally, after more than 200 years, the codification process was concluded in 1995. The Rusyn discourse, which was used first of all the sociolinguistic and linguo-cultural arguments within the frame of social construction of the Rusyn identity, finally won. It emerged successfully in a direct confrontation with the Ukrainian discourse where it looked to for support in independent linguistics. In terms of a dichotomy related to power ideologies, that of authenticity established itself and the ideology of anonymity, represented by Russian or Ukrainian discourses, failed. From the psycholinguistic point of view, Rusyn dialects triumphed in spite of being continuously questioned for a lack of dignity and respect and also promoting ongoing cultural diversity in Europe.

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Acknowledgments This chapter was supported by the Slovak Research & Development Agency under contract No. APVV-15-0306 and the Scientific Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic under contract No. VEGA 1/0049/18. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Languages of Iran: Overview and Critical Assessment

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Part I: The Linguistic Map of Iran: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Contending Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Languages in Iran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Part II: Change in the Linguistic Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Linguistic Policies of the Modern Iranian State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Minorities in Pursuit of Linguistic Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Concluding Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Iran is a linguistically diverse country. Persian (Farsi) is the language of the majority and the official language of the state. Other than Persian, and in order of the estimated number of speakers, the languages of Iran include Azeri, Kurdish, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Luri, Arabic, Balochi, and Turkmen; smaller languages such as Qashqai, Taleshi, Baadi, and numerous other local languages. Moreover, various dialects and subbranches of different languages add further diversity to Iran’s linguistic geography. Deeply rooted in history, different languages in Iran play crucial roles in various regional and ethno-national identities in the country. Since its formation, however, the modern state in Iran has attempted to change the country’s linguistic landscape in favor of Persian. In its efforts to build a homogenized “nation-state,” the Iranian state has deployed various mechanisms such as standardized universal education in Persian, monopolizing the media, and demographic change through internal migration. These efforts have in turn led to the

S. Moradi (*) University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_137

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augmentation of linguistic minorities’ sense of identity, and therefore, intensifying their struggles for preserving their languages. Keywords

Iran · Language · State · Minorities

1

Introduction

Language is a major and dynamic element of culture and the diffusion of languages often affects the diffusion of cultures. Language is not only the primary mode of communication but also the instrument with and within which we make sense of the world and of ourselves. Language, as such, is a prominent component of identity. Not surprisingly, questions of identity are often connected to questions of language (Jones 2009). People often feel strongly about their language, and by extension their identity, especially when they view them as being threatened (de Blij and Murphy 2003: 112). Furthermore, language influences senses of place and belonging and has significant implications for spatial interactions (Murphy 1998: 34). Language is implicated in power, especially its main official loci of concentration, the state. For these, and a host of other reasons, language is well represented in modern geographical inquiry (Jackson 1989; Segrott 2001), most prominently in geographic studies of ethnicity and nationality. In fact, language, its distributions, as well as its relations with social power and identity are among the most enduring themes of geographic scrutiny (Wither and Wills 2009: 411–412). Geography’s increasing interest in language in the latter part of the twentieth century was part of the “linguistic turn” in social sciences. Scholars like Foucault, Derrida, and Bourdieu led new theoretical and philosophical approaches that put language at the center of questions of power, identity, and knowledge (Jones 2009; Wither and Wills 2009: 412). The modern territorial state has been the most significant institution influencing language, especially the emergence of standardized languages (de Blij and Murphy 2003: 112). The relationship between the state and language is complex, however. An overwhelming majority of states include multiple languages, and states have deployed different linguistic policies and strategies. Another thorny issue is that there is little agreement over the definition of “language” itself or what constitutes a language (Murphy 1998: 34). While the discipline of linguistics has made significant efforts to define and classify languages, the definitions, categorizations, and interrelationships of languages often depend heavily on specific contexts (Jackson 1989: 156). For example, it is common knowledge that Danish and Norwegian are distinct languages, while in fact they are not only mutually intelligible but are also close to being different dialects of the same language. In contrast, speakers of a variety of mutually unintelligible languages in China commonly consider themselves to be speaking “Chinese” and are seen by the outside world as such (Crystal 1989: 284–285; cited in Hassanpour 1993: 573; see also Murphy 1998; Murphy et al. 2008).

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The sheer number and diversity of languages around the world and their multifaceted relations with the state and other social processes have encouraged scholars to conduct case studies. This chapter elaborates on the interrelations between spatial social processes and state policies on the one hand and language on the other in the context of Iran. With a population of over 80 million and an area larger than Britain, France, and Germany combined (Fig. 1), Iran is a highly diverse and dynamic country. As such, depicting a reasonably accurate map of the languages in Iran and explaining the social and political complexities associated with language are daunting endeavors. A few major issues contribute to the precariousness of such endeavors, including contradictory arguments over the number of speakers of different languages, disagreements over the definitions of what constitutes those languages and determining where to define the “cut-offs” between interrelated dialects. Moreover, while linguistic categories are static, languages and populations that bear them are mobile and dynamic. Bi/multilingualism is also increasing. While usually individuals consider one language as their mother tongue or first language, identification with language is not always straightforward, especially in bi/multilingual households and communities. The first part of this chapter provides a general overview of origins, typology, and distribution of major languages in Iran. The second part turns the discussion to critically assessing the dynamic forces that are actively changing that general picture. The main instigator of such changes, the chapter argues, is the efforts on

Fig. 1 Iran–Europe overlap. (Source: overlapmaps.com)

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the side of the state to “promote and expand” the official language: Persian (Farsi). The chapter pays special attention to the role of universal education in this regard. The chapter also examines the impact of the media and interprovincial migration as major forces that are changing Iran’s linguistic geography. Finally, the chapter explores the increasing efforts of linguistic minorities to preserve their mother tongues. Such efforts result, among other factors, from a reaction to the hegemony of the Persian language on the one hand and the rising popularity of human rights discourse among minorities on the other.

2

Part I: The Linguistic Map of Iran: An Overview

Iran is a linguistically diverse country. Persian is the language of the majority and the official language of the state. The next most common language is Azeri. Interestingly, while much of the literature uses the term “Azeri” in discussing both the ethnic-national group and its language, many native Azeris insist that they are “Turks” and their language is Turkish (see Elling 2013: 65). The term “Azeri” is used throughout this chapter. Other than Persian and Azeri, and in order of the estimated number of speakers, the languages of Iran include Kurdish, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Luri, Arabic, Balochi, and Turkmen; smaller languages such as Qashqai, Taleshi, Tati, Baadi and many other local languages. Moreover, various dialects and subbranches of different languages add further diversity to Iran’s linguistic geography. Since questions on language are excluded from official census questionnaires, the number of speakers of different languages in Iran is subject to estimation, often on the basis of ethnicity (cf. Tohidi 2009: 300). Usually, scholars use the population of different provinces to estimate the number of speakers of different languages. This method, however, is problematic for various reasons. Boundaries of provinces do not overlap with boundaries of linguistic communities. This means that at times, “ethnic” provinces or even counties have populations that speak different languages. Besides, the population of the speakers of different languages protrude outside the provinces with which they are nominally affiliated (Elling 2013: 21). This is itself the result of mismatch between popular perception of ethnolinguistic regions and the administrative boundaries of provinces (Figs. 2 and 3). For example, one would assume that the speakers of Azeri are found within the two provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan. In practice, however, the Azeri region only partially overlaps with the two provinces. Almost the entire populations of Ardebil, and Zanjan provinces are Azeri, while there are still substantial numbers of Azeris in provinces like Hamadan (mainly two northern counties) and Qazvin (mainly southwestern parts and in the city of Qazvin), as well as in major cities like Arak, Karaj, and Tehran. On the other hand, West Azerbaijan has a mixed Azeri-Kurd population. South and west of the province has Kurdish majority. In cities like Mahabad, Bokan, Sardasht, Piranshar, Oshnavieh, and Chaldiran, Kurds are the outright majority; in places like Takab, Shahindej, Maku, and Salmas Kurds reside in substantial numbers; and in cities like

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Fig. 2 Iran’s administrative divisions. (Source: ESRI)

Naqadeh, Miandoab, and Khoy Kurds constitute smaller portions of the population. Aside from Kurds and Azeris, smaller minorities like Armenians as well as Assyrians and Chaldeans (speaking neo-Aramaic languages) also live in the West Azerbaijan province (see Fig. 3).

2.1

Contending Perspectives

Linguistic diversity in Iran and the significance of languages in collective identities of different communities are often acknowledged to various degrees. However, certain perspectives tend to downplay the significance of non-Persian languages and discount their contributions to the sense of identity among Iran’s diverse population (see Yarshater 1993; Zarrinkub 1974). Specifically, the “Persian-National paradigm,” as Matin Asgari (2012: 174) puts it, places Persian language at the center of Iranian identity and thereby neglects the identity-making capacity of non-Persian languages in Iran. For example, in his primordial account of Iranian/Persian identity that infuses language and race, Yarshater (1993: 141) maintains that “Iranian identity is clearly asserted in the inscriptions of Darius the Great (522-486 B.C.), who as an Aryan and a Persian was fully conscious of his racial affiliation and proud of his national identity” (see also Matin Asgari 2012: 174). In another example, which also

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Fig. 3 Iran – languages and religions. (Source: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps)

mixes linguistic arguments with race, Zarrinkub argues that during the early Islamic era “the Persian language not only helped Aryan Iranians withstand the Arab invasion but also incorporated and disseminated Islam, the same way that the Aryan language of Latin enabled the spread of the Semitic Christianity” (Zarrinkub 1974: 45; cited in Matin Asgari 2012: 175–176). Other similar perspectives not only share this primordial, racialized approach to the Persian language and Iranian identity but have also added essentialist, organic, and romantic dimensions to their analyses. A prime example of such an account is Meskub (1992: 40–41), where he argues that language is the best means of creating an “organic collective” out of “scattered people.” He goes on describing the Persian language as the only “abode of [Iranian] nationality” (Meskub 1992: 40–41). Meskub further gives a romantic tone to his argument and describes “Iranianness” as “a tree [grown] on the soil of the Persian language” (1992: 44). Adopting an older-brother approach, the “Persian-National paradigm” maintains

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that the Persian language has formed a national identity for non-Persian speakers in Iran, thereby implying that non-Persian languages spoken in Iran are incapable of supporting “national” identities. Meskub (1992: 190) claims that Persian has “brought into being a literature and a culture which has linked and brought together all non-Persian speaking peoples in Iranian lands.” As Boroujerdi (1998) points out, Meskub has endowed the Persian language with an inherent power and has neglected the crucial role of the state apparatus in the hegemony of the Persian language that has enabled it to affect non-Persian minorities. Another problematic of Meskub’s argument is that he implies a static, primordial “Iranian land.” However, throughout its history, ‘Iranian land’ has gone through multiple territorial formations and (re)borderings (see Kashani-Sabet 1999). More important, official and popular understandings of Iranian land have been ambiguous and shifting throughout history. One more shortcoming in Meskub’s argument is that he implies a one-sided interpretation of the relationships between Persian and non-Persian languages, in which it is only Persian that has influenced all other “non-Persian speaking peoples, nurturing their souls.” Like any other linguistic exchange, however, the relations between Persian and non-Persian languages in Iran have always been mutual, and non-Persian speakers have not been mere mute recipients. The Persian-National paradigm bloats “Iranian,” a modern political-geographical construct, with ethnolinguistic homogeneity to argue that all or a decisive majority of languages spoken in Iran are “Iranian.” Such a perspective would have had a point if by “Iranian” it meant a linguistic family composed of various languages, although it would still have needed to acknowledge millions who speak Turkic and Semitic languages in Iran (Elling 2015: 2535). Nonetheless, by “Iranian” writers in the Persian-National paradigm mean “Persian” (Boroujerdi 1998). This paradigm assigns a “central” position to Persian and subsumes all other languages as dialects of Persian based on the level of their similarity to Persian. Such scholars contribute to the domination of the Persian language by defining all other languages based on their position to the dominant language, Persian (Hassanpour 1992: 167). Furthermore, the paradigm’s “scholarly” work provides “scientific” support for the Iranian state’s Persian-centric policies. This reading of language in Iran also simultaneously follows, reaffirms, and contributes to the established “preserve Persian” policy of the state, a policy that has effectively marginalized all other languages in Iran. From this perspective, any resemblance in vocabulary or pronunciation is seen as an evidence that other languages are mere dialects of Persian. For example, the Kurdish word roj (meaning day) is taken as a “local” variant (Hassanpour 1993: 575), of the Persian rouz. This paradigm, of course, finds it inconvenient to cite the fact that Danish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible, yet they are still distinct languages (Crystal 1989: 284–285; cited in Hassanpour 1993: 573; Murphy et al. 2008). The Persian-National paradigm neglects the fact that there are no clear-cut criteria to distinguish language from dialect and as the often-cited phrase sums it up, “a language is a dialect with an army behind it” (Murphy et al. 2008). Thus, the Persian-centric approach that denies the existence or relevance of other languages in Iran hides its political agenda behind

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loosely structured “scientific” objectivity, and the “omission and commission of facts” (Hassanpour 1993: 573).

2.2

Languages in Iran

Languages in Iran generally belong to three different language families. Most languages belong to the Indo-European language family and its Iranian subfamily. This group includes Persian, Kurdish, Luri, Balochi, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Tati, and Taleshi among others. The second group of languages is the Altaic language family, which includes Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, and smaller Turkic languages. The AfroAsiatic family with its Semitic subfamily forms the third language family in Iran. The most distinct member of this group is Arabic, but it also includes smaller communities of Assyrians. The following section provides a general overview of major languages of each language family, spatial distribution, and interconnections (see Fig. 3).

2.2.1 Iranian Languages The Iranian family is the most widely spoken language family in Iran. While there are also other members of the Iranian subfamily in Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and the Caucasus, this chapter is limited to the current day Iran. Members of the “Iranian” language family show significant variation in their linguistic structure and vocabulary. A close equivalent might be the category Germanic, which is neither limited to Germany nor to the German language. While German and English have the same roots, their differences make them mutually unintelligible. The same applies to Persian and Kurdish. While Persian and Kurdish have similar roots, they are not mutually intelligible. One major difference renders this analogy problematic, nevertheless. While institutions of independent states have supported both German and English, this has not been the case for Kurdish (or other non-Persian “Iranian” languages in Iran). For this political reason, non-Persian Iranian languages have long been influenced by the institutional power of Persian. With this introductory note, the position of Persian, Kurdish, as well as other languages of the Iranian subfamily is explained. Persian. Persian is the language of the majority of Iran’s population and the official language of the state. The main characteristic of the Persian language is its demographic, geographic, and political centrality. The official position of Persian means it is the only language that, in Bourdieu’s (1991: 45) words, has enjoyed the “institutional conditions necessary for its codification and imposition.” Modern Persian has evolved from its earlier ancient and middle variants and draws on a rich literary and poetry tradition, which makes Persian speakers take deep pride in their language (Curtis et al. 2008: 92). Modern Persian uses a modified version of Arabic script. Besides, Persian has also borrowed extensively from Arabic lexicon. In addition to geographic proximity, the advancement of Islam has been a decisive factor in influencing Persian. In fact, it took a great deal of effort for the Iranian political and cultural authority to revive the Persian language; hence Ferdowsi’s

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Shahnameh testimony of “taking great pain to revive Persian” (“Bassi ranj bordam be-din sal si; Ajam zende kardam be-din parsi”). Boroujerdi (1998), however, cautions that some scholars of Iranian studies have often given too much credit to the language of Ferdowsi while ignoring the social historical milieu that affected the reception of his poetry among his contemporaries and later generations. In line with the official state policy of promoting Persian, the Academy of the Persian Language and Literature (Farhangestan-e zaban va adab-e Farsi) has launched a campaign to purge “alien words” in Persian either through reviving archaic Persian equivalents or by coining new words. The campaign of “purifying” Persian from foreign words as well as the idea of establishing a Persian language academy date back to the early years of nation-state-building in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century (Tavakoli-Targhi 1990). Amanat (2012: 19) points to Jalal al-Din Mirza’s late nineteenth century Nameh-ye Khosravan, as “the first truly nationalist history textbook in Persian written in a ‘pure’ style free from Arabic.” The establishment of the Academy in 1935 during the reign of Reza Shah was a major development in the “purification” campaign. Besides, the purification of Persian from “alien words” has long had a racially loaded nationalist undertone. Echoing early romantic, Germanic theorists of nationalism, some Iranian scholars have gone as far as describing the “purity of the Persian language” as essential to “Iranian nation’s racial and mental structure” and its “way of life” (Boroujerdi 1998; see Yarshater 1993: 142). The purification campaign initially focused on removing Arabic words. More recently, especially with the Islamist discourse rising to power after the 1979 revolution, the campaign has increasingly included replacing words borrowed from European languages, especially French and English. Among the earliest Arabic words that were replaced with Persian equivalents, one could refer to este’mal changed to karbord [meaning application, use], mamlekat to keshvar [meaning country, state], and mahkameh to dadgah [meaning court of law]. And a few examples of European words that have been replaced with Persian words may include machine and automobile changed to khodro [meaning car, vehicle], terminal changed to payaneh [meaning terminal], and referendum changed to hameh-porsi [meaning referendum]. It is necessary to point out that the campaign has had mixed levels of success. While some “Persian” substitution words have found a firm place in day-to-day conversations, others are rarely used or are not used at all. For example, most Persian speakers would use “keshvar” instead of “mamlekat,” but they are still far more likely to use “machine” rather than “khodro.” Although governmental organizations and institutions are often required to use “Persian” equivalents in their official correspondence and documents. Still, many foreign words have proven to be simply irreplaceable, such as television, football, and shampoo. In some cases, foreign words have been literally translated and used. For example, sib-zamini [meaning potato] is a literal translation of the French word pomme de terre, which, of course, itself is an invention made by the French to refer to something that was brought from the Americas. According to many within the Iranian public and even the state media outlets, however, making Persian equivalents is often unnecessary and redundant. Quite often, the public finds newly coined words

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to be awkward and inconvenient. As a result, many prefer to use more established words that “make sense” despite being “foreign.” Moreover, at times, new words introduced to replace foreign words are themselves “foreign” (see tabnak.ir 2013). In another twist to this issue, some speakers even sprinkle their daily parlance with English or French loanwords to show off a higher cultural capital. Traditionally, Persian is predominant in the central parts of the Iranian Plateau, which hosts the large urban areas like Tehran, Karaj, Arak, Isfahan, Yazd, Shiraz, Kerman, and Mashhad, although almost all those cities are also home to significant number of minorities. There is no consensus over what percentage of the population speaks Persian as the mother tongue. However, most estimates place the number of native Persian-speakers between around 50% (Doerfer 1998: 276; Halliday 1978: 12; Tohidi 2009: 300) to over 60% of Iran’s population (Curtis et al. 2008: 91; see also Elling 2013: 19). This variation in estimates is partially due to disagreements over what is Persian. Subsequently, different local dialects or even separate languages are sometimes categorized as “Persian.” This situation has led to different classifications and, consequently, different estimates of the percentage of native Persian speakers. Generally, those who provide larger percentages for Persian speakers consider such languages as Bakhtiyari, Gilaki, and Mazandarani as “Persian.” On the other hand, those who subscribe to smaller percentages in their accounts of the number of Persian speakers consider Gilaki, and Mazandarani as separate languages. Such languages are mutually unintelligible with Persian, have different grammatical and linguistic structures (Perry 2001: 548), and are even from a different branch of Iranian languages (Elling 2013: 19). Politically and socially, however, many speakers of Bakhtiyari (and Luri), Gilaki, and Mazandarani populations increasingly consider themselves as “Persians.” This is especially the case with newer generations who are more likely to be educated and reside in urban areas. The growing identification of the speakers of Bakhtiyari/Luri, Gilaki, and Mazandarani as “Persian” has also influenced their relation to their ancestral languages. In many urban areas of greater Luristan (a cultural area in western and southwestern Iran), Gilan, and Mazandaran, for example, speaking Persian is associated with higher social and cultural status. Such an attitude is also fueled by the larger social discourse that at best values speaking in Persian and, at worst, looks down upon speaking non-Persian languages or even ridicules speaking Persian with an accent (see Elling 2013: 65; Saleh 2013: 143). Echoing Bourdieu (1991: 49), such conditions have compelled people to “collaborate in the destruction of their instruments of expression willingly.” In other words, many speakers of “devalued” [non-Persian] languages are ashamed of speaking their mother tongues and instead seek social and cultural prestige, as well as socioeconomic mobility, through speaking Persian. This situation echoes the process that Bourdieu (1991) describes as “symbolic violence” (see also Hassanpour 1992: 133; Thompson 1984: 42–72). In the context of Iran, some speakers of minority languages readily stop speaking their mother tongues because the dominant social discourse has persuaded them that speaking Persian would elevate their social status. Greater economic opportunities that come with proficiency in Persian also augment the social perception that makes Persian a more fashionable language.

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Kurdish. Kurdish is the second largest member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family (Haig and Paul 2001: 398) and the third largest language in Iran. The number of Kurds is itself a matter of debate with estimates varying from 7% to 10% (around 6 to 9 million) of the total population of the country (Elling 2013: 20; Hassanpour 1994: 3; Tohidi 2009: 300). The Kurdish speech area includes Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan (except for its northeast and easternmost parts), and Ilam (except for its southeast), as well as small communities in western strip of Hamadan and north-west Luristan (McCarus 2009: 587; Samii 2000: 131). Outside of the mainland Kurdistan, a significant number of Kurds also reside in North Khorasan, and to a lesser extent in Alborz mountains, central Iran, and Baluchistan. These exiled Kurdish communities were originally forcefully removed from their ancestral lands in Kurdistan by the Safavids, especially Shah Tahmasb I (Izady 1992: 102). Besides, a significant number of Kurds have migrated from Kurdistan due to economic and political reasons and have settled in major cities in central Iran, including Tehran, Karaj, Qazvin, and their metropolitan areas or outside of the country, in diaspora. Kurds in Iran speak different dialects. For example, Kurdish dialects spoken in Ilam and Kermanshah are quite different from those spoken in Mahabad or Urmia, or even those further to the north along the border with Turkey. Kurdish dialects, however, largely change in a continuum, meaning that differences between neighboring towns and villages are often minimal, making it possible for neighboring towns to understand each other (Haig and Paul 2001: 398). Written Kurdish uses a modified Arabic script (Kreyenbroek 1992: 71; McCarus 2009: 589). Under the influence of Turkey’s Kurds, however, there has been a tendency to use Latin script as well. Despite its lack of official status and constant political repression (Haig and Paul 2001: 403), Kurdish literature and poetry have played significant roles in preserving the language. Arguably, the exclusion of Kurdish from official education and bureaucracy has, ironically, protected it from losing its vocabulary through importing loan words. This is in stark contrast with Iran’s language of bureaucracy, Persian, which has been heavily influenced by Arabic, and other languages. Subsequently, Kurdish has preserved many old words, for which Persian simply uses Arabic equivalents. For example, there are Kurdish words for society (komelga), economy (abur), and politics (ramiyari), while Persian uses Arabic equivalents, jame’eh, eqtesad, and syasat, respectively. Luri. Luri is the third largest in the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Lurs comprise about 2% of Iran’s population (Elling 2013: 20; Tohidi 2009: 300). The Lur-speaking area (greater Luristan) stretches from the central western Iran along the border with Iraq all the way to southwest covering western Fars Province and touching the northern shores of the Persian Gulf. As such, the Lur-speaking area largely separates the Arab part of Khuzestan in the southwest from predominantly Persian-speaking central Iran. The Luri region includes almost the entire Luristan Province except for its Lak Kurdish northwestern corner, Chaharmahal-and-Bakhtiyari, and Kohgiluyeh-and-Boyerahmad, along with southern Hamadan, southeast Ilam, western-most parts of Isfahan, western Fars, northeastern Khuzistan, and north-western Bushehr.

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Both geographically and linguistically, Luri is situated between Persian and Kurdish. Historically, most scholars affiliated Luri with Kurdish. In late twentieth century, however, this linguistic-anthropological classification has shifted towards a more political categorization that has tended to classify Luri with Persian (see Hassanpour 1992: 20). For example, the Luri word for “I say” is “eygom,” which is similar to the southern Kurdish term “eyjim.” In Persian, this word becomes “miguyam.” Other examples are the Luri words “kur” (boy) and “piya” (man), which their Kurdish equivalents are “kur” and “piyaw.” Persian equivalents are “pessar” and “mard,” respectively. However, unlike the Kurdish language, which became a rallying point for a distinctively “Kurdish” identity, Luri has become increasingly integrated and assimilated into Persian. The Shiite-Islamic characteristic of the post-revolutionary political power played a major role in luring Shiite Lurs towards the Persian center and distancing them from the predominantly Sunni (and largely secular) Kurds, who mostly opposed the establishment of a Shiite theocracy in Iran. Moreover, the written form of Luri never developed considerably, perhaps due to the absence of a distinctively “Luri” social and political movement. Consequently, Luri has remained by and large an oral language. Nevertheless, it has a rich folklore music and poetry tradition, which has mostly survived in rural and tribal areas. The most notable literary work in Luri is Baba Tahir’s poetry. Gilaki. Gilaki speakers constitute around 4–5% of Iran’s population. Gilaki is an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch, predominantly concentrated in Gilan Province. Geographically, Gilaki is limited in the northwest to the Azeri region, in the west and southwest to smaller Tati communities, in the south to Persian-speaking central Iran, in the east to Mazandarani-speaking region, and in the north to the Caspian Sea. Gilaki also borders another less-known Iranian language, Taleshi, which is mainly concentrated in northwestern Gilan province (Dalby 1998: 226). As the result of decades of state assimilationist policies, Gilaki has been heavily Persianized (Dalby 1998: 226; Perry 2001: 548). Today, Gilaki has largely receded from urban areas and is spoken largely in rural communities. Nonetheless, its situation between the forested northern slopes of the Alborz and the Caspian Sea has played a major role in relative isolation of Gilaki and its survival. Due to this relative seclusion, the Gilaki language has retained many words from previous centuries. In contrast, Persian has lost many of its older lexicon under the influence of modern life (Dalby 1998: 226). However, unlike Azeri or Kurdish, Gilaki has not had a robust literary and political movement that could have increased its chances of survival. Mazandarani. Mazandarani is the language of around 4% of the population in Iran. The speakers of Mazandarani mostly reside in Mazandaran Province as well as western parts of Golestan province. Mazandarani belongs to the northwestern branch of Iranian language family and shares vocabulary and origins with Gilaki and to a much lesser extent with Persian. Mazandarani speakers are limited in the north to the Caspian Sea, in the west to Gilan, in the south to the northern slopes of the Alborz Mountains, and in the east to a patchwork of Turkmen and Turkic-speaking communities in Golestan Province (Dalby 1998: 226). Written Mazandarani has a long

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history and the famous Marzban-Nameh, a classic literary tale, was first written in Mazandarani in the tenth century and then translated into Persian. The relative seclusion of the region, however, has helped preserve the language. Even Islam arrived in the area close to a century after it arrived in other parts of present-day Iran. Similar to Gilaki, today Mazandarani is mostly limited to rural areas while urban population have mostly adopted Persian. Increased rates of assimilation into Persian has encouraged some scholars to classify Mazandarani (and also Gilaki) as “Persian,” while in fact linguistically Mazandarani and Gilaki are from a different branch of Iranian languages than Persian (Elling 2013: 19). Balochi. Balochis constitute around 2% of Iran’s population (Tohidi 2009). Similar to the speakers of other minority languages, however, it is difficult to have a clear grasp of the number of Balochis since the government often understates minority populations (Jahani 2001: 59; Jahani and Korn 2009: 634). Balochi belongs to the northwestern branch of Iranian languages subfamily that is most closely related to Kurdish and Tati. On the linguistic map of Iran, however, the Balochis are largely located in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan (Jahani 2001: 59; see Fig. 3). The historic larger Baluchistan region also includes parts of South Khorasan, eastern Hormozgan, and eastern Kerman (Doshoki 2016). Outside of Baluchistan, there are smaller Balochi communities in Razavi Khorasan, North Khorasan (Jahani 2001: 59), Golestan, and Mazandaran. Iran’s Balochis are part of a larger Baluchistan region that extends into southwestern Pakistan and to a lesser extent into southern Afghanistan (Dalby 1998: 65). Written Balochi has mainly used the Arabic alphabet. In none of the countries that have divided Baluchistan has a written Balochi been fully developed (Jahani and Korn 2009: 635). Due to its political and social marginalization, Balochi is mostly limited to traditional occupations that do not require higher education (Jahani and Korn 2009: 635). Throughout the twentieth century, Balochi has gone through a massive wave of assimilation. As a result, in urban areas of the Iranian side of Baluchistan, Persian has influenced Balochi heavily (Jahani 2001: 59; Spooner 1967: 52). Since the mid-twentieth century, and especially in recent decades, Balochi activists and language academies have sought increasingly to revive the Balochi language. Most of these efforts, however, have concentrated on the Pakistani side of Baluchistan and among the Balochi diaspora in the West (Dalby 1998: 65; Jahani 2001: 60–63; Spooner 1967: 51–52). Nonetheless, only a small elite Baloch knows how to write in its mother tongue; the language still faces the threat of extinction (Jahani and Korn 2009: 635). Perhaps, Balochi’s best hope for survival lies in its rich oral tradition that consists of numerous pieces, romantic and epic, poetry and prose (Dalby 1998: 65; Jahani 2001: 59; Jahani and Korn 2009: 635). Most of the Balochi folklore and poetry is in the Coastal or Rindi dialect, which creates a continuity along the coasts of the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea in Iran and Pakistan (Dalby 1998: 65).

2.2.2 Turkic Languages Various Turkic languages spoken in Iran are part of the larger Altaic language family (Golden 1998: 16). Azeri constitutes the most widely spoken Turkic language in

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Iran. Closely related to Azeri, yet mutually unintelligible, are Turkmen and Qashqai languages as well as smaller Turkic languages, such as Afshar and Khalaj. Azeri. Azeri speakers constitute between 24% and 30% of Iran’s population (Boeschoten 1998: 5; Riaux 2008: 45; Tohidi 2009: 300; Doerfer 1998: 276). This means that 14–21 million Azeri speakers live in Iran. Many Azeri activists in Iran, however, would likely claim larger numbers. In any account, Azeri is the secondlargest language in Iran, after Persian (Elling 2013: 65; Riaux 2008: 46). In Iran, Azeris form an outright majority in East Azerbaijan, Ardebi, and Zanjan provinces. Significant numbers of Azeris also live in Qazvin, West Azerbaijan, Hamadan, Markazi, Alborz, and Tehran. There are still proportionately smaller Azeri populations in major cities like Arak, Mashhad, and Qom. While the larger portion of Azeris live in Iran, a smaller portion live to the north of the Aras River in the Republic of Azerbaijan (Dalby 1998: 58; Johanson 2001: 52). Historically though, Azeris are descendants of the Saljuk-Turkic tribes who migrated from Central Asia westward in the mid-eleventh century (Dalby 1998: 655; Elling 2013: 29–30; Johanson 2001: 52). Azeri is a branch of Oghuz Turkish and related to the Turkish spoken in Turkey, but Azeri has been influenced by Arabic and Persian more than Turkey’s Turkish (Riaux 2008: 46). Immense variations in estimates of Azeris are due to a few reasons, including disagreements over what is “Azeri.” The considerable diffusion of Azeris outside the traditional Azerbaijan heartland in northwestern Iran makes it difficult to estimate how many Azeris live outside of Iran’s larger Azerbaijan region. Riaux (2008: 46) states that Azeris are scattered all over Iran, and Tehran has the highest Azeri population. The difficulty is compounded as well by the increasing rates of assimilation into Persian or bilingualism. Assimilation is especially pervasive in Tehran and other large cities of central Iran (see Elling 2013: 64). As a result of decades of assimilation of Azeris in Tehran, one could encounter individuals who describe their identity, in impeccable Persian, in a phrase like “My parents are Turks [but I’m not].” Similarly, Doerfer (1998: 276) explains that in one of his encounters, in response to his question of someone about the person’s language the person responded: “If you speak Turkic to me, I am a Turk, and if you speak Persian, I am Persian.” This socio-linguistic phenomenon is perhaps a testimony to the larger historical, social, and political processes in Azeri-center relations in Iran. Arguably, Azeris are integrated in the political system in Iran more than any other minority group, especially after the 1979 revolution that gradually but decisively changed the identity of the sovereign from Persian to Shiite-Persian. The increasing importance of Shiite identity provided more possibilities for the largely Shiite Azeris to assert their presence and influence in the social, economic, and political life of the country. Subsequently, shifting away the emphasis from the Persian element to the Shiite element opened some room for the Azeri language, and the increased attention to Shiism paved the way for the largely Shiite Azeris (see Riaux 2008). However, it is necessary not to overestimate the effects of Azeri assimilation into Persian and their integration in the political life of Iran. The large

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Azeri minority in Tehran wields considerable amount of power and decisionmakers view Azeri demographic power as a serious national security issue (Saleh 2013: 120). Unlike the Azeri in the Republic of Azerbaijan which uses Latin alphabet, Azeri in Iran is mainly written in Arabic alphabet (Dalby 1998: 58). Written Azeri, especially poetry, has a long tradition. However, it was the rise of the Turkic Safavid dynasty that promoted Azeri literary writing in an entirely new level (Elling 2013: 30). Besides, oral and folklore prose and poetry have been integral components of the Azeri language since its arrival in Azerbaijan and continue into the contemporary times (Dalby 1998: 58). Turkmen. The Turkmen are a Turkic-speaking group in Iran who form around 2% of the population (Tohidi 2009: 300). Turkmen speakers are primarily concentrated in the northern part of Golestan province in northeastern Iran, in the Turkmensahra region, and are also connected to the larger Turkmen population across the border in the Republic of Turkmenistan (Boeschoten 1998: 5; Dalby 1998: 655). A smaller enclave of Turkmen speakers is located in eastern Iran where the borders of Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan meet (Boeschoten 1998: 5). It is believed that similar to other Turkic tribes the Turkmen were originally nomadic tribes who hailed from Central Asian steppes between the sixth and eleventh century CE (Dalby 1998: 655). Qashqai and other Turkic speakers. The Qashqai and other Turkic speakers, such as Afshar and Khamseh, form roughly around 1% of the population in Iran. The Qashqai speak a Turkic language, which is related to but clearly different from the Azeri spoken in Tabriz (Boeschoten 1998: 5). Historically, the Qashqai have been semi-nomadic cattle herders scattered between western half of Fars, the southwestern corner of Isfahan, and highlands of the provinces of Kohgiluyeh-andBoyerahmad and Chaharmahal-and-Bakhtiyari (Boeschoten 1998: 5). Almost all the Qashqai are settled these days (Doerfer 1998). Other than the Qashqai, and distinct from the Azeris, many communities speaking various Turkic languages and dialects are scattered in different parts of Iran. Historically, such communities have been concentrated in such areas as southwestern Hamadan, between Qom and Arak (Khalaj speakers), in Sirjan, Kerman, and in the trio Khorasan provinces in eastern Iran (Doerfer 1998: 273–275).

2.2.3 Semitic Languages Semitic languages constitute the third large family of languages spoken in Iran. Arabic is the main Semitic language in Iran, but Assyrian is also spoken in much smaller communities, mostly in Urmia (Orumiyeh) and West Azerbaijan (Elling 2013: 32). Arabic. Arabic speakers number around 3% of the population in Iran (Tohidi 2009: 300). However, minimalist and maximalist estimates provide numbers as varied as a little over 1% and up to 6%, respectively (Elling 2013: 36; see Bani-Torof 2005). Most Arabs in Iran have historically been concentrated in the province of Khuzestan (formerly known as Arabistan), especially in its southern and western parts (Elling 2015). This geographic

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location ties the Arab population in Khuzestan to the larger “Arab World” in Southwest Asia and North Africa. The second area of concentration of Arabic speakers in Iran is the province of Hormuzgan, especially in its western half. Smaller Arab communities also dot southern Fars and the coastal areas in the province of Bushehr. Arabic has a rich written tradition; its alphabet has evolved from Phoenician through the mediation of Aramaic (Carter 2001: 23; Glassé 2013: 57). The rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. encouraged efforts to preserve Arabic since Muslims believe that the words of God in the Quran must remain unchanged (Glassé 2013: 58). The official and sacred position of Arabic in various Islamic dynasties that ruled much of Southwest Asia, including the Iranian Plateau, also led to its immense influence on neighboring languages, especially Persian. While Arabic continues to be the sacred language of religion, ironically in contemporary Iran Arabs face challenges in learning their language and are targets of assimilation into Persian (Bani-Torof 2011). Although Arabic is part of the official school curricula, it is taught only in secondary education, after the students have been well versed in Persian. Besides, the Arabic taught in schools is not meant to prepare pupils for daily conversations but to enable them to read the Quran and other Islamic texts such as the hadith. Arabic also has a very significant oral tradition, which dates back to pre-Islamic times. The creation, recitation, and memorization of folklore poetry were the dominant form of art among tribes, which itself was a reflection of their nomadic lifestyle (Glassé 2013: 60).

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Part II: Change in the Linguistic Landscape

The general picture of languages in Iran, their distribution across space, the number of their speakers, and their relations with each other is changing. These changes have both linguistic and spatial dimensions. Linguistically, Persian is increasingly and disproportionately, affecting minority languages. This unequal dynamic reflects the state’s longstanding policy of linguistic assimilation through promoting Persian (Saleh 2013: 63). Spatially, the Persian-speaking area is expanding into minority regions. This expansion occurs through two major mechanisms: acculturation and assimilation mainly through standardized education and the media on the one hand and physical movement and population resettlement mainly through interprovincial migration on the other. State policies influence both these mechanisms, decisively. Successive governments in Tehran have long sought to project the country as a homogenous, primordial Persian nation (Zia-Ebrahimi 2016: 164). The state controls all official cultural instruments that shape language, including centralized universal education and the media. Besides, the state also has the final say over development policies and allocating budget for different provinces. As such, state policies translate into different levels of development, which in turn contribute to unequal interprovincial migration flows.

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Linguistic Policies of the Modern Iranian State

Contrary to Iran’s multilingual character (Tohidi 2009: 299), the Iranian state has imposed Persian as the only official language in the country (Farhi 2005: 18). This imposition dates to the early twentieth century when the first Iranian constitution, adopted in 1906, made Persian the only official language (Hassanpour 1992: 125). The implementation of this policy, however, had to wait until Reza Shah incarnated as the first “modern king” after he seized the throne through a military coup that ended the Qajar Dynasty (Hassanpour 1992: 125). Persian became the official language of Iran at a time when only roughly 50% of its population spoke Persian as a mother tongue (Boroujerdi 1998; Halliday 1978: 12; Hassanpour 1992: 126; Higgins 1984: 47; Sanasarian 2000: 9, cited in Tohidi 2009: 299). At the time, a wide range of intellectuals (from both right and left) supported Reza Shah’s nationalistic measures, including forced sedentarizing of tribes, suppressing minorities’ movements, and designating Persian as the official language. These intellectuals saw a powerful centralizing state as the only chance for turning Iran into a modernized “nation-state” (Atabaki 1993: 55). The drive towards “one country, one nation” and Persianization resulted in a condition for non-Persian languages that was unaccommodating at best and hostile at worst (Elling 2013: 94). The monolingual policy that aimed at establishing a homogenized nation-state was also at odds with the centuries-old historical geography of the country that was based on acknowledging regional differences (Elling 2013: 123). However, this acknowledgement of regional diversity, primarily represented by the concept of mamalek-e mahruseh (a decentralized system of governance), must not be read in modern ethno-national terms. At the time when mamalek-e mahruseh was in place, ethnic identities in Iran (including Persian) had not yet been crystalized. Instead, the mamalek-e mahruseh system was based on local and regional power-sharing arrangements and recognition among traditional tribal elites on the one hand and the royal court on the other. This fact undermines the pre-modern nostalgia that some have constructed around pre-Pahlavi Iran as a democratic “quasi-federative” utopia (see Elling 2013: 173). In 1920, Ayandeh, a popular magazine – perhaps influenced by the nationalistDarwinist discourse of the time in Europe – asserted that the very “life” of the nation was in danger, unless the state expanded Persian into minority regions, thereby “eliminating” regional cultures to preserve “national unity” (Abrahamian 1982: 124–125; see also Atabaki 1993: 56–57). Moreover, the article forcefully advocated for the “replacement of non-Persian place names with Persian ones” (Abrahamian 1982: 124–125; see below for Arabistan among others). The author of the article, Mahmoud Afshar, further laid out a practical blueprint that urged the state to use a combination of demographic engineering and linguistic assimilation to eliminate minorities (Atabaki 1993: 57). Affirming the “Iranian” identity of Azerbaijan another popular magazine, Iranshahr, published an article in response to a conference held in Istanbul during which a “pan-Turkist” participant had urged the newly established Republic of Turkey to advocate for the rights of Azerbaijanis in Iran (see Atabaki 1993: 55). The article notably ended with a poem by Aref, a radical Constitutionalist, on the Turkish language that says (Atabaki 1993: 55–56):

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The Turkish tongue should be torn out by roots. The legs it stands on should be cut off in this land [Azerbaijan/Iran]. Sweep across the [Aras] bearing the Persian tongue! Oh, breeze of dawn, arise! Tell the people of Tabriz: The pleasant land of Zoroaster is no place for Genghiz!

The recognition of Persian as the only official language has effectively marginalized non-Persian tongues and alienated non-Persian ethnic identities (Boroujerdi 1998). Nonetheless, the Article 15 of Iran’s constitution states: The official language and script of Iran, the lingua franca of its people, is Persian. Official documents, correspondence, and texts, as well as text-books, must be in this language and script. However, the use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed in addition to Persian.

This article has elevated Persian as the language of the sovereign political power, and other languages have been left as purely “cultural” and only of “local” relevance (see Vali 1998). Granting official position to Persian and marginalizing minority languages has long been at the core of the state’s project of creating a homogenous “nation-state” through suppressing non-Persian ethnonational identities (McDowall 2004: 222–223; Salehi-e Amiri 2006: 349–350; Samii 2000: 129–130; TavakoliTarghi 1990; Tohidi 2009: 307). Furthermore, the homogenizing discourse and policy of the state has deemed difference in language to be threat (emphasis added) to its official unitary identity (Farhi 2005: 12; Fazel 1985: 84; KashaniSabet 1999: 216). State authorities are often concerned that granting any official position to minority languages would effectively make them de facto national languages of their respective populations, thereby undermining territorial integrity and a national identity narrowly defined based on Persian. In efforts to degrade minority languages, state intellectuals and the nationalist state discourse often reduce such languages to mere “dialects” of Persian, despite stark linguistic distinctions (Elling 2013: 152–153; McDowall 2004: 3). Furthermore, extreme segments of Iranian nationalism have gone as far as labelling Persian as “the Iranian language” (Boroujerdi 1998: 43; Elling 2013: 43), which is a baseless fabrication with no linguistic correspondence. As Elling (2013: 19) points out, one should not conflate “Iranian” as a linguistic [family] with “Iranian” as a modern political-territorial entity. Obviously, these two do not overlap completely. A similar example from the European context would be the linguistic category, “Germanic,” which refers to a linguistic family that includes German, English, among others. It would be preposterous, thus, if one considered “Germanic” as an (ostensibly German) overarching “language,” with English as one of its “dialects” (see Hassanpour 1992, 1993).

3.1.1 Education Universal education continues to be dominated and monopolized by the state and, therefore, by the Persian language (Rust 2012). Even though Iran’s constitution contains provisions for education in what it described as “regional and tribal

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languages” (Iranian Constitution, Article 15), in practice, minorities face a “de facto ban” when they want to teach and learn their mother tongues (Elling 2013: 52; 2015: 2537). While in some cases, non-Persian languages have been officially and forcefully banned (Hassanpour 1992: 126–127; Higgins 1984), more often the state has resorted to less coercive and more subtle policies that serve to keep minority languages in an ambiguous realm of informality and inferiority. Echoing Bourdieu (1991: 6), “the rise of the official language has relegated minority languages to the status of patois, defined negatively and pejoratively.” Through adopting more subtle policies, the Iranian state has consistently prevented non-Persian languages from rising to prominence (Kreyenbroek 1992: 80). Such policies have led to a situation in which non-Persian languages are not legally banned, but in practice, it is very difficult to teach them (see Yildiz and Taysi 2007: 107). In the absence of mother tongue education, millions of minority children are forced on the first day of school to take on the challenge of mastering an entirely different language as their medium of instruction (Rust 2012), which adds to usual anxieties of the first year of school. Minority activists often have to turn to NGOs to teach their languages. Gaining official permission for such institutions, however, is often very difficult. Article 26 of Iran’s constitution provides provisions for civil organizations, including NGOs, but the judicial authorities often accuse such organizations of violating what they vaguely call the “principles of Islam and the Islamic Republic.” Article 26: Political parties, societies, political and craft associations, and Islamic or recognized minority religious associations may be freely brought into being, provided that no violation is involved of the principles of independence, freedom, national unity, Islamic standards and the foundations of the Islamic Republic. No person may be prevented from joining, or compelled to join, one of the above.

Once the NGOs start operating, they often face numerous obstacles, including pervasive governmental surveillance (The Guardian 2016; see also Elling 2013: 66, for an account of state crackdown on Azeri cultural and linguistic institutions). For these reasons, minorities have long complained that in practice they cannot freely implement the parts of the constitution that allow them to educate in their mother tongues (Saleh 2013: 64). Another challenge facing education in minority languages is that parallel regulations and institutions with significant executive powers usually limit the power of the constitution and contradict its provisions. In a clear departure from the constitution, the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution (n.d.), highest institution of cultural authority, excludes any reference to minority languages and clearly identifies its goal as “promoting and disseminating” Persian (Elling 2013: 52; sccr.ir). The Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution was initially established after the 1979 revolution by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Under a different name, the initial task of the Council was to “purify” the cultural atmosphere of college campuses through identifying and purging “non-Islamic elements,” namely, secular, feminist, and minority professors, students, and associations. Currently, the Council is in charge of making macro cultural policies and monitoring the general cultural

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condition of the country. More specifically, the Council makes sure that all forms of cultural production and communication, including film, music, educational institutions, and the Internet, are in line with state’s interpretation of Islam (sccr.ir). This fundamental policy has been stated clearly in the council’s 1991 charter, the Principle of Cultural Policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The importance of the principles of the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution derives from the fact that the council is the main office in implementing cultural and linguistic policies. Similarly, the Academy of Persian Language in Iran explicitly states the “expansion of the territory (emphasis added) of the Persian language” (author’s translation) as one of its main objectives (persianacademy.ir). The Academy, whose major goal is promoting Persian, is often dotted with state intellectuals who harbor disapproving perspectives regarding minority languages. This is consistent with a very common sentiment among broader intellectual community in Iran. “Iranian intellectuals overwhelmingly are not well disposed toward regional dialects and languages” (Boroujerdi 1998). Linguistic assimilation is going on unabatedly in contemporary Iran, in order to create a homogenous Persian nation (Saleh 2013: 143). Not only is Persian the sole recognized language in the highly centralized national education system but also the central government has monopolized the design and publication of the curricula and textbooks (Rust 2012). Even where teachers and students are from the same linguistic minority, teachers are obliged to follow the centralized curricula and textbooks (Rust 2012). The idea that Persian is “the only language” in Iran is very dominant in Persianmajority parts of the country, and minority students are told that their non-Persian languages are in fact “dialects” of Persian (Saleh 2013: 129). It is necessary to say that the Persian public, especially in Tehran and larger cities, is often courteous and even welcoming towards minorities in their everyday life. Nonetheless, it is also common knowledge that it is uncomfortable to speak Persian with a minority accent. A significant segment of the Persian public also maintains that Iran is a nation of the Aryan race and Persian language (Saleh 2013: 129). This perspective clearly echoes the Persian-National paradigm of nationalist intellectuals elaborated above. Foreign-based nationalist-secular media especially satellite TV channels and their public commentators have played a significant role in disseminating such “Aryan-Persian” discourses on language and identity, often through selective and romanticized representations of the Persian language and Iranian history. According to Asgharzadeh (2007: 206), the effective ban on non-Persian languages has perpetrated a “racist” educational system in which the state denies students from minority backgrounds a full development of their talents.

3.1.2 The Media The Iranian media is entirely dominated by the state. In fact, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) is directly appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. Khamenei occupies the most powerful position within Iran’s political system and rules for life. The Iranian media,

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therefore, promotes Persian language, as well as the dominant state ideology (Saleh 2013: 119). Aside from nationwide channels, the state has also established various provincial TV channels since the 1990s with the ostensible goal of “promoting local cultures.” On the surface, such channels have led to new attention and debates about minority languages and cultures (Elling 2013: 59–60). Ethnic activists, however, complain that provincial channels fail to provide sufficient and enriching programs for minority cultures (Samii 2000: 133). Usually, the provincial channels’ programs are split around half in “local languages” and the other half in Persian. This situation occurs despite the Persian language domination in the state’s broadcasting outlets. Moreover, provincial channels lack independence in policy-making, which makes them merely execute the decisions dictated from Tehran. In numerous cases, minority activists have complained that programs of provincial channels do more harm than good to minority languages and cultures (see Samii 2000: 136). Many minority language activists complain that provincial channels often degrade local cultures. Iranian linguistic minorities can point to many movies or TV programs that ridicule minority languages and cultures (see Elling 2013: 65; Saleh 2013: 128). Most notably is the persistent unhappiness of Azeris that the state broadcasting system has consistently mocked their language and culture. For example, in May 2006, thousands of angry demonstrators took to the streets in numerous cities in the Azeri region, and also in cities like Tehran that have large Azeri populations, to protest a cartoon published in the Iranian government’s official newspaper, Iran. The cartoon depicts a cockroach asking “what?!” in Azeri, and Azeris saw this as an insult to their language (Riaux 2008: 45). Many Azeris believe that the goal of the state is to systematically make them ashamed of their own language (Saleh 2013: 128). Besides, many Azeris believe that their language is losing its vigor and vocabulary due to inundation by Persian words (Samii 2000: 137). Similarly, other minority languages are also increasingly affected by Persian (see Nazari and Routamaa 2012). Another critique aimed at provincial channels maintains that although children are among the least familiar with Persian, children’s programs in provincial channels are almost exclusively in Persian. It is quite common for minority children to mix many Persian words when they speak their mother tongues. Ironically, however, the younger generations are far more likely to have “ethnic names” that are often distinct from Persian and Arabic/Islamic names of previous generations. This trend perhaps shows that linguistic minority parents consciously try to counter the linguistic hegemony of the state through choosing distinctly ethnic names for their children. This trend is especially noticeable among Kurds and Azeris. In recent decades, however, the rise of new technologies of communication, especially satellite television channels and the Internet, has challenged the state monopoly (Saleh 2013: 119). Satellite television channels have allowed Iran’s minorities to not only watch programs and receive news from perspectives different from the official state narrative but they have also increased minorities’ confidence in their respective cultures (Saleh 2013: 119).

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3.1.3 Interprovincial Migration Deliberate efforts to alter the demographic composition of the country, mainly through interprovincial migration, is one of the major mechanisms of linguistic change in Iran (Saleh 2013: 143). There is a consensus among many scholars that Iran’s peripheral minority provinces are among the least developed areas, based on various development indices (Aghajanian 1983; Doshoki 2016; Higgins 1984; Riaux 2008: 56). Peripheral provinces, largely home to linguistic minorities, lag far behind the center, especially Tehran, which is home to the Persian majority (Amirahmadi and Atash 1987; Sharbatoghlie 1991; Gheissari and Sanandaji 2009). Decades of data on economic and social indicators demonstrate a wide gap between predominantly poor provinces of the periphery and more prosperous provinces of the center (Moradi 2014). Numerous scholars (including Aghajanian 1983; Amirahmadi and Atash 1987; Amirahmadi 1989; Elling 2013; Saleh 2013) have pointed to the state’s security approach to peripheral provinces and speculated on the effects of such a discourse on interprovincial inequality. Historically, Tehran, as the center of the political power, has taken much more resources from the periphery than it has given back (Higgins 1984: 49; Javan 2001: 362). Most notably, the center of political and economic power in Tehran has been the sole receiver and redistributor of oil dollars, which are extracted from the periphery (Aghajanian 1983: 221, Moghadam 1984: 231). To date, there is a significant economic gap between Tehran and the rest of the country (Bahrami 2018). Additionally, urban-centric approaches to development and neglecting rural areas further induced migration from more rural peripheral provinces to the more urbanized Tehran and other cities of central Iran (Bayat 1997: 29; Javan 2001: 362–367; Sharbatoghlie 1991: 88–90). One of the direct outcomes of underdevelopment is the greater force of push factors that drive populations away from poor provinces. The lack of economic and social opportunities in Iran’s peripheral regions – where most linguistic minorities live – along with attractions of living in large cities has encouraged waves of interprovincial migration from the periphery to the core. Since the first nationwide census in 1956, almost all peripheral provinces have experienced high levels of out-migration (Javan 2001). Throughout decades, ethnic provinces have had negative migration balances, meaning that they have constantly lost population in favor of central provinces (Javan 2001). Most notably, from 1956 to 2006, East Azerbaijan province has constantly sent out the highest number of migrants, mostly to Tehran and other central provinces (Javan 2001: 341). Except for the 1996 census, province-to-province data on internal migration are not available. However, the data for 1996 show that over 57% of all the migrants who left East Azerbaijan entered Tehran province (Iranian Statistics Center). Adding to the regular interprovincial migration was the 8-year war against Iraq, one of the longest wars of the twentieth century that generated enormous and successive waves of internally displaced peoples (IDPs), the vast majority of them being Arab, Kurdish, and Lur minorities (Elling 2013: 57). Many towns and hundreds of villages were ruined and as the conflict dragged on many IDPs, who had sought safety in central areas of the country settled in those areas permanently and did not return to their original homes. Linguistically, the net result of these

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massive waves of population exchange has been assimilation into Persian. Most migrants settle in new urban milieus of central Iran where Persian is the only language in both state institutions and informal communities of neighborhoods (see Samii 2000: 138). Although at times these migrants form “ethnic enclaves” through congregating with other migrants who speak the same language, in the long term these ethnic enclaves function as springboards for assimilation into the larger surrounding Persian-speaking community. The out-migration flow from minority provinces of the periphery coincides with an in-migration to those provinces from the Persian-majority provinces of the center. For example, from 1956 to 2006, Khuzestan province has been receiving the secondhighest number of internal migrants, following Tehran [formerly part of Markazi province], which – not surprisingly – has been Iran’s number-one destination for internal migrants (Javan 2001: 330; Sta). The volume of these migrations into minority provinces and the facilities that state institutions often provide for Persian-speaking migrants have prompted many among ethnic minorities to consider these migrations as the state’s conscious effort to alter the linguistic composition of the country. Elling (2013: 55) refers to “anger among local [Balochi] population” against allegedly state-orchestrated flow of Persian-speakers to Baluchistan. Balochi activists also complain that the government uses incentives such as subsidized housing and free land for Persian-speaking population to settle in Baluchistan (Samii 2000: 134). This situation has added to predominant sentiments among the Balochis that the expansion of the Persian language threatens their language and ethnic identity (Jahani 2005). A similar condition exists in Kurdistan, where the state offers subsidized “organizational housing” in designated neighborhoods or districts to government employees, especially those in armed forces. These government employees are brought overwhelmingly from outside of Kurdistan. Similarly, the influx of non-Arabs in Ahwaz has caused resentment among the historically predominant Arab population of the city (Elling 2013: 70). The IranianArab writer and activist, Bani-Torof (2011) complains that the government has “confiscated hundreds of hectares of land from Arab farmers.” According to Amnesty International report (2006: 4), Iranian government has confiscated Arab lands and has relocated Arab villagers in Khuzestan province to build Arvand Free Trade Zone. While there is no official census regarding linguistic groups, it is widely believed that Ahwaz and Khuzestan province have lost their Arab majority (see Elling 2013: 36). Sir Austen Henry Layard (1846) characterized Ahwaz as an Arabinhabited town (Layard 1846: 33–34). At that time, Khuzestan was called Arabistan, and along with Luristan, Gurjistan (nowadays Republic of Georgia), and Kurdistan, it was among the semi-independent Wilayats of the Qajars (Layard 1846: 50). In pursuit of eliminating cultural identity of non-Persian regions, Reza Shah changed the historic name of Arabistan to Khuzestan. In the Third International Forum on Minorities in Switzerland, Bani-Torof refers to his encounter with governmental statistics that reveal the settlement of “around 833,000 non-Arabs in the city of Ahwaz only between 1996 and 2006.” However, the governmental policy of demographic engineering in minority regions dates back to the very first decade of the formation of the modern Iranian state, the 1920s (see Atabaki 1993: 57). In April

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2005, thousands of Arabs took to the streets of Ahwaz to protest the leaked letter that allegedly showed the government’s plans to change the demographic makeup of the province. The protests gradually grew to other cities in the province. According to the Amnesty International, at least three were killed and hundreds were injured or arrested (Elling 2013: 75). More than a decade later, in January 2018, Arab population in Ahvaz took to the streets again to voice their protest against the government’s discriminatory policies and its attempts to change the demographic makeup of the province. While the government acknowledges the changes in the demographic composition of Khuzestan province, it denies that such changes have been planned and executed by the government (Sharafedin 2018). Because of decades of linguistic assimilation and demographic engineering, many smaller linguistic communities face imminent total extinction, a process that increasingly threatens the most important repositories of cultural heritage in Iran. For example, even though Khalaj Turkic speakers of central Iran are one of the most linguistically rich communities of Turkic languages, they might totally disappear by the mid-twenty-first century (Doerfer 1998: 276). State policies – of both the Islamic Republic and its predecessor monarchy – especially universal education in Persian, as well as increasing modernization and urbanization are the prominent causes of such linguistic extinction. While Doerfer (1998: 276) estimates the Khalaj population a mere 28,000 in the latter part of the twentieth century, much larger linguistic communities are also on their way towards linguistic extinction. The case of various Luri speakers is especially noteworthy. Decades of assimilation and degradation of the Luri language and culture has made millions of Lurs, especially younger generations, almost entirely alienated from their Luri heritage. In fact, for many younger Lurs, it is almost a stigma to speak Luri. Thus, a rich language like Luri will probably be forgotten within a few decades.

3.2

Minorities in Pursuit of Linguistic Rights

The right to education in mother tongue and the official recognition of minority languages have been at the forefront of the demands of minority activists in Iran (see Elling 2013: 49). Recent decades have witnessed a surge in cultural and political awareness of minorities seeking to preserve and promote their distinct languages. For example, many Azeri activists have strived for promoting the Azeri language, especially since it has been the main difference between Azeris and Persians (Higgins 1984: 59; Riaux 2008). While Persian citizens in Iran have been struggling for the “freedom of expression,” Iran’s minority citizens have been struggling for the “freedom of language,” in addition to, and as a precondition of the struggle for freedom of expression (Bani-Torof 2011). The freedom of language is essential to the freedom of expression, because minorities would not be able to use their freedom of expression, unless they are able to express themselves. A sense of shame and even stigma often comes with speaking Persian with a minority or “local” accent (Saleh 2013: 143), especially if the accent is influenced by Azeri, Arabic, or Luri. Many minorities are keenly and bitterly aware of the fact that speaking Persian with an

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accent puts them in a disadvantaged position. In Bourdieu’s terms, minorities’ speech in Persian with a regional accent manifests the lower “value” that the sociocultural landscape of languages in Iran gives to their speech, and it also reaffirms their less powerful “objective positions” (see Bourdieu 1991: 66–84). Aside from state repression, censorship, and social stigma, minorities have faced various problems in promoting their languages. One major challenge is that after decades of universal education in Persian and assimilationist policies, many literate minorities cannot read and write their own mother tongues properly (see Riaux 2008). Moreover, due to the lack of standardization, Iran’s minority languages demonstrate considerable internal variations, sometimes even making their dialects hardly mutually intelligible. Riaux (2008) explains how Azeri activists have tried to create a standardized “national” language for all Azeris living in Iran. The Kurds and other minorities have also tried to form their own standardized languages. The key factor that unifies disparate dialects and variations of each minority language is the cultural and political opposition to assimilationist projects and the denial of linguistic rights by the state. This opposition has led to a linguistic-national phenomenon that Hassanpour (1993) aptly described it as “turning linguistic disunity to linguistic unity,” meaning that many minority members think of themselves as the speakers of a common language, even though their dialects are different from one another. This sense of unity also provides further evidence for the widespread theoretical understanding, which maintains that language is subjective, dialectical, and its relationships with national identity are mutual rather than unilateral. In other words, national identities construct languages as much as vice-versa (Hassanpour 1993). Minorities in Iran have increasingly tied their pursuit of linguistic rights to broader discourses on human rights and democracy. On the other hand, Iranian state has tied, implicitly and explicitly, minorities’ efforts to protect their languages with – real or imaginary – political plots to “Balkanize” Iran. In a clear expression of the state’s security approach towards minorities, the Minister of Intelligence, Ali Younesi in 2004 linked minority activities with “ethnic crises” that were allegedly orchestrated by the outside powers against the Islamic Republic of Iran (Farahmand 2004; cited in Tohidi 2009: 304–305). The state has utilized such arguments to justify its harsh position on cultural expressions of minorities, including literary assemblies that seek to hold sessions, classes, and conferences, and publish journals in minority languages. State’s “security approach” has also led to the heavy militarization of minority regions. Citing statements from the Minister of Interior, Doshoki (2016) argues that only half of the budget dedicated to the state’s military apparatus could eradicate poverty in Sistan and Baluchistan province. Similarly, Elling (2013: 54) points to the heavy militarization in Khuzestan and Kurdistan provinces during and long after the war against Iraq (1980–88). It is apt to say that in such a context, “the literary is the political” (The Guardian 2016). Due to the highly politicized atmosphere surrounding minority languages, many literary figures and associations that publish in minority languages express their desire for promoting their linguistic and political rights in indirect, metaphoric, and even romantic prose (The Guardian 2016). For many, only a fine line separates what the state power allows them to write and what would land them in jail. Faced

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with the state’s security approach, minorities have often attempted to mobilize broader discourses of human rights and democracy. At the same time, the state has also persecuted minority human rights activists for reasons such as contacting international cultural and human rights organizations such as UNESCO and Amnesty International (rferl.org 2017). In the months immediately after the 1979 revolution, the Kurds established Kurdish schools (Kreyenbroek 1992: 80), an experience they had previously repeated during the Mahabad Republic in 1945–46 (McDowall 2004: 242). Kurds also put forward the demand for establishing a Kurdish university. The central government, however, declared the Kurdish university illegal before it was even opened (Kreyenbroek 1992: 80). The government shut down Kurdish schools after its forces pushed the Kurdish parties out of towns. While the state often utilizes security discourse to suppress minorities’ quest for the promotion of their languages, many activists argue that the plurality of languages and the right to education in minority languages is never a threat to a democratic state (Blum and Hassanpour 1996: 325). Besides, minority activists often request the state to implement its own constitution, which has allowed education in minority languages (Tohidi 2009: 302). Many activists argue that the state’s aversion to do so is an effort to erase the minorities’ mother tongues, and subsequently, a major component of their identities (Hassanpour 1993: 372). Similar to the literature case, the history of music performed in minority languages has witnessed numerous musicians being arrested, tortured, and exiled for performing in their mother tongues, or for expressing their political views through their music (see Blum and Hassanpour 1996). The prominent Kurdish folk singer, Hassan Zirak (1921–1972) represents a prime example of this struggle. Zirak had to cross the border between Iran and Iraq multiple times during his short, but prolific life, each time escaping the persecution of a state and taking refuge in the territory of the other. Not surprising, the stories of these exiles and refugee-like life is a prominent theme in Kurdish music that has lived on to this day. Finally, it is necessary to keep in mind that almost all linguistic minorities in Iran have spatially extended into neighboring countries which has enabled them to communicate with their co-ethnic cousins. Despite challenges of border control, minorities have formed a wide variety of spatial relations across the border. They have established and distributed print publications, electronic media, and have produced intellectual as well as artistic contents. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of an independent Republic of Azerbaijan, many Azeri activists and intellectuals found both inspiration as well as a new space for writing and publishing in their mother tongue (Riaux 2008). Similarly, the establishment of an autonomous Kurdistan Region in Iraq in 1991 provided a more open space for many Kurds in the Iranian side of the border to work and publish in Kurdish. This condition is also the case for Balochis, Turkmen, and Arabs. While in times of political repression, these cross-border exchanges have taken a clandestine form, in times of relative political opening they have been formally recognized through granting governmental permission. During the reformist Khatami presidency, for example, cultural activities in minority languages saw an opening. As a result,

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students and activists organized book fairs, lectures, and poetry reading sessions, which often included publications, scholars, and literary figures from neighboring countries presenting their works. At the same time and with the proliferation of satellite TV channels since the 1990s, minority activists have found a new avenue to promote their language and culture (see Hassanpour 1998; Romano 2002). Satellite TVs and dishes are banned in Iran, but their widespread use has made it difficult for authorities to monitor. Every now and then, however, the state cracks down on satellites and brings down dishes from the rooftops of apartments and houses. In Persian-speaking cities, the ban on satellites is mainly the state’s attempt to prevent the free circulation of news and information. In minority regions, however, the state’s ban on satellites functions the double role of both disrupting the circulation of information, as well as hindering potential avenues of minority culture. While some of these satellite TV channels operate from neighboring countries, others are run by diaspora communities in Europe and North America.

4

Concluding Notes

Iran is a multilingual country. However, because the state does not include its citizens’ language in official census data, there is no accurate account regarding the number of speakers of different languages in the country. Subsequently, scholars have resorted to estimating measures in their investigations of languages in Iran. While there is a consensus that Persian is the language of the majority, the number of its speakers is a matter of debate. It is generally believed that between 40% and 50% of the population in Iran speak a language other than Persian as mother tongue. The linguistic landscape of Iran is highly dynamic. Motivated by the “one country, one nation, one language” discourse, the modern Iranian state has long tried to create a homogenized nation-state through promoting Persian and suppressing minority languages. In doing so, the state has resorted to a number of policies and practices including designating Persian as the only official language and the language of universal education, the exclusion of non-Persian languages from the educational system, establishing Persian monopoly over the media, and exploiting interprovincial migration – impacted by core-periphery economic inequality within the country – for demographic engineering. The state policies in “promoting Persian and expanding its territory” have led to increasing efforts from minorities to protect their languages. At the same time, the rise of new mass media has challenged the state’s monopoly over modes of communication and has also boosted awareness and confidence of Iran’s linguistic minorities. As a result, linguistic demands have squared prominently in minorities’ struggles for political, social, cultural, and economic equality within Iran. From a broader theoretical perspective, the modern state’s tendency toward linguistic homogenization has gone hand in hand with its drive to centralize power (Hassanpour 1999: 223). Yet as state’s sovereignty is increasingly challenged by processes from below and above state level (Agnew 2005), ethnic minorities also become more resolute in pursuing their collective political and cultural rights,

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including linguistic rights (Luke 1997: 8; cited in Hassanpour 1999: 224). Minorities’ pursuit of linguistic rights is part of the larger global discourse on human rights that aspires to establish more just human societies (Kontra 1999). Scholars and activists concerned with minority issues in Iran have also increasingly framed their arguments in the context of the larger debates on human rights, including linguistic rights (see among others Asgharzadeh 2007: 7; Saleh 2013: 67–70). It remains to be seen how the Iranian state would respond to the increasing demands of its restive minorities and to what extent Iran’s minorities would succeed in achieving their linguistic rights. It is necessary to emphasize that minorities’ linguistic rights should not be viewed in a vacuum. Minorities’ efforts for achieving linguistic rights should be understood in the larger context of minorities’ struggles for political-territorial recognition within their respective regions. Studying linguistic geography in Iran faces two technical and political challenges. The main technical difficulty is the lack of official census data on languages in Iran. Related to the technical challenge is the political sensitivity that surrounds linguistic studies in Iran. The state not only refrains from providing data on languages but also actively cracks down on scholarly efforts that aim to explore the linguistic landscape in the country. The state regularly suppresses minority languages (unpo.org), and even minor efforts to depict a linguistic map of Iran would face state reprisal. Such technical challenges and political sensitivities have made studying linguistic issues of Iran a precarious endeavor. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Thompson, J. (1984). Studies in the theory of ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tohidi, N. (2009). Ethnicity and religious minority politics in Iran. In Contemporary Iran: Economy, society, politics (pp. 299–323). UNPO. (2009, February 24). Southern Azerbaijan: Language restrictions in Iran. UNPO.org. https://unpo.org/article/9274?id=9274 Vali, A. (1998). The Kurds and their “others”: Fragmented identity and fragmented politics. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 18(2), 82–95. Wither, C., & Wills, J. (2009). Language. In D. Gregory, R. Johnston, G. Pratt, M. J. Watts, & S. Whatmore (Eds.), The dictionary of human geography (5th ed., pp. 411–412). Chichester/ Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Yarshater, E. (1993). Persian identity in historical perspective. Iranian Studies, 26(1/2), 141–142. Yildiz, K., & Taysi, T. B. (2007). The Kurds in Iran: The past, present and future. London: Pluto Press. Accessed though https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/reader.action?docID= 3386329&ppg=113 Zarrinkub, A. (1974). Na sharqi, na gahrbi – ensani [Not Easterns, Not Western – Humanist]. Tehran: Amir Kabir. Zia-Ebrahimi, R. (2016). The emergence of Iranian nationalism: Race and the politics of dislocation. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Contents 1 Historical Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Colonial France and the World Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 From Colonials to Immigrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Perceptions of the Arabic Language in France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Childhood: Arabic as a Language of Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Assimilationist Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Narrative of Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The Enemy from Within: The Grand Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Legitimacy of the Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Critics of the Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Language and Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Toward Possible Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 The Future of France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Diversity and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Including the Minority in the Public Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Language and Freedom: The Importance of French and Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

When the Family Reunification Acts of 1976 (Regroupement Familial) was passed in France in 1976, thousands of North Africans working in France, most of whom served in the French Army during World War II, were

N. Rahouti (*) Education and Psycholinguistics, Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA University of Caen – Basse Normandie, Caen, France e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_73

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able to bring their wives and children onto French territory. This marked a turning point in French history; today, second-generation men and women of North African descent comprise an increasing percentage of the population of France. Most speak slang Arabic with family and French outside the home. In urban areas, French youth use a few Arabic words in their everyday French. Some people in France consider Arabic the language of the “other,” whereas some consider it the language of insubordinates. In a country that promotes assimilation, the Arabic language has become a point of contention raising the question of what it means to be French: is it more a matter of principles or a matter of customs? The country is facing a turning point in its cultural history as it has the option of reevaluating its politics on assimilation and incorporating minority cultures into the public sphere. This chapter approaches the issue from the perspectives of postcolonial theories and social justice. Keywords

Postcolonial theory · Social justice · African · French · Second-generation immigrants · Immigration · Nationalism · Discrimination · Racism · Islamophobia

Language is culture. It has the ability to carry history, codes, and practices of certain groups over the years. There is a dialectical relationship between individuals and language as they both influence each other. People have the ability to model their language, and language has the ability to model human thoughts. In a way, language is an extension of humanity: denying individuals their language (s) is denying them part of their humanity. As individuals began to settle and acquire territories, language began to be associated with particular geographical places. In the modern world, it has become easier for people to move and migrate to new territories, and language has migrated with these individuals for better or for worse. Today, France is facing a turning point in its history. Because of its previous colonial campaigns in Africa, it has “welcomed” immigrants from North Africa, namely, from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, who were mainly employed as construction and industrial workers. The percentage of North Africans in France is estimated to represent about 10% of the country’s population (INSEE 2012), making them the biggest second-generation minority group in Europe. This ethnic group is often identified by its language – Arabic. Nevertheless, the Arabic spoken in North Africa is considered to be a dialect of “classical” Arabic. Classical Arabic is officially no one’s native language but has to be learned through academic education (Maamouri 1999). This chapter describes how the Arabic language is regarded in twenty-first-century France and suggests implications for today’s society as well as for future generations.

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Fig. 1 Algerian soldiers holding the French Flag along with their decoration during WWI, 1917 (Source: Merly R / album de la guerre 1914–1919, l’illustration Paris 13 rue Saint-Georges année 1927 / Public Domain)

1

Historical Perspectives

1.1

Colonial France and the World Wars

During the nineteenth century, France, as a colonial superpower, possessed colonies and protectorates all over the world, including many countries in Africa such as Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, and Cameroon. When the First World War was declared in 1914, France recruited heavily from its colonies (Fig. 1). Thousands of infantrymen from these colonies were summoned by the French Army to fight on the front lines against the Germans. Soldiers from the colonies who survived a major battle were granted leave, but both civil and military authorities were reluctant about these soldiers coming into contact with French society because, as Karim Miské (an Arab-French documentary filmmaker and writer known for his threefold documentary Muslims of France: Colonials, Immigrants, Citizens) stated, “this might give them bad ideas about liberty and equality that they might be tempted to take home with them.” Therefore, colonial conscripts were settled in separate camps run by the French Army. When the war ended in 1918, some of the soldiers stayed in mainland France to work in factories and sent most of their revenue to their families back home. The living conditions were harsh but it was seen as temporary. There was an implicit agreement between the colonial and the colonized that the latter would work in France for a few years and go back to their home country afterwards. During the Second World War, France used the same strategy of recruiting soldiers from

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its colonies to fight on the front lines. When Paris was liberated from the Nazi occupation in 1944, many Arabs were among the resistance, but the exact number remains uncertain in historical records. These men were born as Africans and gave their lives for France, but postwar France did not fully recognize their sacrifice. When the war ended in 1945, some of these soldiers stayed in France, but most of them went back to their countries, which remained occupied.

1.2

From Colonials to Immigrants

Between 1948 and 1952, the US Marshall Plan gave France the necessary financial resources to rebuild a country that had been destroyed by the war. As most of the male labor force had been killed on the battlefield, France turned to its colonies to bring the necessary tradesmen to rebuild the country. When workers from the African colonies arrived, they generally lived in prefabricated houses (made of metal and wood) in slums that were usually situated outside of cities, with the intention to work, make money, and go back to their countries of origin. However, as their services were still needed after the initial construction, these workers’ wives and children rejoined them. It was the Regroupement Familial (Family Reunification Acts of 1976) which marked a turning point in the country’s history. Suddenly, the status of the colonial evolved to that of immigrant. It was in this context that my father arrived in France. Although he was Moroccan by nationality, he was born in Algeria in 1952 and attend a French school there (Algeria was then under French occupation). After the Algerian Revolution that led to its independence in 1962, he returned to Morocco. In 1973, my father signed up for a 6-month work contract at a factory in Marseille, France (Fig. 2). Since he was able to speak and write in French, he ended up staying there to work as a translator between North African workers and French owners. He also helped new immigrants with paperwork. Even though his residency card stated that he was a factory worker, language had granted him the status of resident and, to a certain extent, a degree of freedom. My mother and older sister joined him in France in 1979, and my sister was able to attend a French school. My older brother and I were both born in the South of France, and by French law, we were granted citizenship through the principle of Jus soli – the right of the soil.

2

Perceptions of the Arabic Language in France

2.1

Childhood: Arabic as a Language of Resistance

I was born in 1986 in Montpellier, France, and by then, the story of my parents was a very common situation in France. For my parents, it was always important to teach us Berber, a dialect of Morocco, as that was the most obvious part of the cultural heritage they could transmit to us. As I grew up, it was understood that Berber and Arabic were the languages at home, whereas French was the language of the outside

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Fig. 2 Kaddour Rahouti, Moroccan immigrant, during his first months in France at the workplace, 1973

world. Subconsciously, I developed a vision of the French language as superior to Berber or Arabic. I remember a classmate greeting me in Arabic one day saying “Salam.” The teacher took us aside and explained that this was the language of our parents but not our language. Some of the students in my school began speaking more Arabic as a way to defy authority. As a result, I myself, started to perceive the Arabic language as the language of insubordinates. Even white French students began using some Arabic in order to join the bad kids. The Berber and Arabic languages were part of my identity, an identity I perceived as alien to French culture. I was French, born and raised in France, but I still needed to leave part of who I was at home if I wanted to fit in outside. My teacher, and later, society, would help me understand that speaking Arabic did not align with what it meant to be French, or at least, what I had been told being French was.

2.2

The Assimilationist Model

Hostility toward the Arabic language in France has its roots in a much greater problem: French policies promote an assimilationist model. France advocates a political model where newcomers need to assimilate (although the common word used in the public sphere is integrate) into the nation and adopt its customs. One of the shortcomings of this view is that ambiguity exists in defining “newcomers” and which “culture” they need to integrate into. In today’s France, second- and sometimes third-generation immigrants still need to integrate into the country. In other

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words, although I was born and raised in France, I still needed to integrate into it. The Jus soli principle has allowed me to belong to the State, but not to the Nation.

2.3

The Narrative of Integration

The narrative built around the idea of integration is at the core of the problem. Integrating the minority into the nation implicitly means that the minority is perceived as being part of the outside. Needing to integrate into a circle implies one is already outside of it. The narrative underlying the political use of the concept of integration is that the minority is alien to the nation, or what we define as the nation. The limits of what is considered the nation is the authority of an integrator, an individual already belonging to the nation, whose validation would grant the integrated the status of French. The second-generation immigrant does not integrate the nation, but is integrated into the nation. This implies that in the process of integration, they remain the object rather than the subject of their integration. One important mistake would be to think that the integrated and the integrator are opposed in a relationship of oppressed-oppressor. Rather than being opposed, they are accomplices in the discrimination of the former. This means that the integrated participates in her own discrimination by the language she uses. In the narrative of integration, speaking Arabic is perceived as an act of resistance. Reevaluating the paradigms by which an individual belongs to the nation would imply a reevaluation of the use of Arabic. Rather than using Arabic to defy, Arabic should be used to confirm our belonging to the nation. How can using Arabic reaffirm French culture? This idea will be further developed in Sect. 3 of this chapter. By thinking “they will never accept us the way we are,” the minority already believes that they need to be accepted or, using the common terminology, integrated. Rather than seeking to be accepted or integrated, they should instead seek to be respected. In this scheme, the minority and the majority both accept their roles in the social script that is determined by the narrative of integration. This narrative builds a structure with two possible reactions: “they need to be integrated and live by the norms defined by the dominant culture” or “they do not accept us, so we don’t accept them.” This binary reaction builds an idea of “us” and “them” that has been at the core of heated debates and recent theories generating antagonism among citizens.

2.4

The Enemy from Within: The Grand Replacement

This idea of “us” versus “them” has led to theories such as the “Grand Replacement” (Camus 2011). The Grand Replacement is a vision arguing that there is a voluntary process of substitution of a population within the French territory. Its author, Renaud Camus, an extreme right-wing activist, explains that the ethnic and religious minorities – North African, African, and Muslim minorities – are colonizing France with the help of the elites and the media. Camus (2012, p. 9) said “The Great Replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different

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people.” As a consequence, there is a fear that France is losing its historical and cultural heritage. According to Camus, this phenomenon is not only observable in France but in other Western countries such as England and Germany. At the core of this theory is a problem of identity. Camus claims that Europe has had a long heritage of cultural cohesion that is being destroyed for the benefit of capitalist corporations and political institutions. This forced process of globalization has jeopardized the identity of “Native French” and has generated a strong revival among nationalist movements in Europe in the last decade. Second- and third-generation immigrants born on French territory are not considered native by Camus if they do not have a European ethnic heritage, that is to say if they are not Caucasian. Therefore, a second-generation immigrant from Poland is considered “more French” than a third- or fourth-generation immigrant from Algeria as the former is less of a threat to European Heritage (or the version of the heritage that is defined as legitimate).

2.5

Legitimacy of the Theory

This fear of the “other” is understandable and is not unique to Europe alone. The aspect of their identity that individuals choose to put forward is what they see as being their whole identity. For some, it is their “Europeaness,” for others, it is their religion. When individuals feel that their identity is threatened, their reaction is to fear the threatener and to defend an idealized picture of identity. This idealized picture is often simplified and translated into customs and traditions but does not highlight underlying principles. In a similar way, there is some reluctance in the Muslim world to question certain practices and reassess them in the light of their objectives. Although this work does not intend to tackle problems of the Islamic world, it is important to state that just as there exists a fear of Islamization of Europe, there also exists a fear of Westernization of Islam. Some Islamic movements promote a total rejection of “modernity” and the West and a revival of “the original Islam” or what they perceive as being so. Although a fair critique of eurocentrism and “progress” would be necessary, a total rejection would be extreme. When individuals are afraid of the present and lose hope in the future, they tend to cling to the past, or an idealized picture of the past. Being hostile to the “other” can seem like a normal reaction. However, what is normal is not automatically just.

2.6

Critics of the Theory

Camus is often seen as a white supremacist by his opponents. While French sociologists Raphaël Liogier (2014) and Patrick Simon (2014) argue that the demographic data presented by Camus is manipulated and inaccurate, other historians, such as Pascal Blanchard (2013a) and François Durpaire (2006), highlight the colonial past of the country and the contribution of former colonies in maintaining a certain French prestige.

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Liogier explains that the “Muslim invasion” is a myth and that the rate of growth of the African and North African populations is normal compared to other groups and has been since 1980 (about 1.1%) (Liogier 2014). The European country with the highest rate of growth, England (3%), the so-called expansion of Islam would transform England into a Muslim majority country in 6,000 years granted that the growth rate of other groups remained stable. Liogier perceives the manipulation of the data as serving extreme nationalist groups and promoting the idea of a “Muslim invader” undermining the French vivre-ensemble. Regardless of the accuracy of the data, the argument of “let’s not forget that before they came here, we were there” highlights a historical and complex relationship between France and its Mediterranean neighbors. The reevaluation of history and of historiography (the way history was written) is opening new perspectives into the French past. Blanchard highlights the presence of Muslims in France and their contribution to key events in the country’s history, such as the French Revolution and World War II. For example, during the years preceding the French Revolution of 1789, some Muslims and Arabs already lived in the country. Some were traders and sellers, others were pilgrims making a stopover in the South of France, and others were students from the Ottoman Empire (Blanchard 2013b). On December 24, 1789, a bill was passed asserting “equality between Mahometans (Muslims) and French citizens” (Buchez and Roux-Lavergne 1834). This bill was an agreement with the Ottoman Empire who granted the same rights to French individuals living there. Another example of the Muslim presence in French society was the role of the Grand Mosque of Paris during World War II. The Grand Mosque provided Jewish refugees with false paperwork and served as a secret refuge to avoid their deportation to concentration camps (Satloff 2006). Sources do not agree on the exact number of Jews saved, but figures vary from a hundred to more than a thousand: “one account by Albert Assouline, a North African Jew, estimates that 1,700 freedom fighters found refuge in those tunnels” (Knox 2015: p. 76 add page number for direct quote). This act of resistance is barely recalled in history books and school curricula. Blanchard revisits our common past to shed light onto forgotten stories and put emphasis on the contributions of “the other” in the building of French culture, ideals, and its glorious past.

2.7

Language and Religion

Many perceive Arabic not only as “the language of the other” but also as “the language of Muslims.” It is in a post-9/11 context that the status of the Arabic language has taken on a new dimension and become, for some French officials, the language of terrorism. Recent data published by Europol show that only 2% of European terrorist attacks are linked with Islam, thus deconstructing the claim that most terrorist attacks are related to Islam (https://www.europol.europa.eu). Social and political contexts have built a narrative around the status of Muslims in France and more generally Muslims in the West.

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There have been recent incidents involving the use of the Arabic language. In this section, I describe two examples of incidents perpetuated or allowed by the institutions toward the language. The first example illustrates Arabic as representing the culture of the “other,” and the second example illustrates Arabic as representing the religion of the “other.” Box 1 Arabic as the “Culture of the Other”

At the end of the school year, kindergarten and primary schools in France usually organize a fair, and parents are invited to see their children sing, act, etc. In June 2015, two teachers of a primary school in French Corsica organized a song performance with their students. Corsica is a French island in the Mediterranean Sea where nationalist groups have been fighting for political independence from French sovereignty. For the end-of-the-school-year show, the two teachers planned to have the children sing “Imagine” by John Lennon. What became problematic for some families was that the two teachers initially decided to have the children sing in five different languages: French, Corsican, English, Spanish, and Arabic. Some families showed their reluctance toward Arabic and called the school to express their discontent. Others threatened the teachers and explained that they would interrupt, or at least, boo the performance if the Arabic language was still maintained. Nothing had been mentioned about the other foreign languages. According to local and national newspapers and news channels (e.g., France 3, Libération, L’express), after lodging a complaint against the parents, the teachers decided to cancel the performance as a matter of safety. On the night of June 16, graffiti written in Corsican was found in front of the school reading “Arabi Fora” (“Arabs Get Out”) and “Lingua Corsa” (“Corsican Language”) (Simon 2014). Some nationalists consider language and culture an important part of their fight for independence and have taken action by vandalizing elements of society containing the French language (which allegedly represents the language of the oppressor), such as road signs that are written in both French and Corsican (Fig. 3).

Box 2 Arabic as the “Religion of the Other”

In November 2013, an airport security officer from the city of Nice was suspended for having greeted a colleague in Arabic, saying “as-Salam ‘alaykum” (May peace be with you). This is a greeting used by many Muslims and Arabs all over the world. When the security officer asked for an explanation, his employer explained that the decision was not his but that of the Préfet (Prefect, i.e., the State Representative for the county/department). (continued)

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Fig. 3 Corsican nationalists and language (Dominec 2003)

Box 2 Arabic as the “Religion of the Other” (continued)

According to local and national newspapers (Metronews, Islamophobie.net, Air-Journal, le Parisien), the Prefect of Alpes-Maritimes, which is in the southeast of France, explained that he decided to suspend the airport employee because greeting in Arabic is both an “act of Proselytism” and an “act of Radicalization.” In other words, according to the state official, the use of “as-Salam ‘alaykum” was both an impediment to the French principle of secularism (Laïcité) and a sign of religious radicalization. It is important to note that France implements a strict interpretation of secularity – the separation of the state and religion – that has been a point of contention between the government and the Muslim community. The airport employee requested judicial help from the Collectif Contre L’Islamophobie en France (CCIF), an organization that provides financial and legal help to victims of Islamophobia in France. As the victims of Islamophobia usually belong to lower social classes and because legal procedures are costly, the CCIF has become particularly active in the past few years. On December 12, 2013, the CCIF lawyers won the case: the court decided in favor of the employee and he was able to resume his professional activity.

Both of these examples illustrate the tensions over the Arabic language as representing, in the eyes of the institution, not only a socioeconomic group but

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also a religious group. The complexities of the Arabic language in France represent a phenomenon which is fairly new: Muslims in the West, born and raised in a Western culture with a religion that is often associated with the Arab world. This duality in their identity sometimes represents a scourge and a contradiction both in the eyes of the individual and the institution, creating a situation of anomie. According to French sociologist Emile Durkheim, anomie is a social condition where the norms of behavior are unclear and disorganized to the individuals of a society. It is when individuals are expected to simultaneously act in one way and the opposite. For example, in today’s French society, the country promotes the “right of the soil” and the celebration of diversity, but at the same time, minorities are forced to leave part of their diversity to integrate into the country. This type of confusion between members of a society and the expectations of the prevalent public norms leads to a condition of anomie. It is in this confusion that the Arabic language finds its complexities in twenty-first-century France.

3

Toward Possible Solutions

3.1

The Future of France

It is only in light of the objectives that the means start to make sense. Before negotiating possible solutions, one essential element is to determine what these solutions are for. It is only by answering the question of where we are trying to get as a country that we will start suggesting solutions as to how to get there. France is not only a country defined by its colonial past, but it is also a country of ideals and principles. It is a country of human rights, where some of the brightest minds have imagined a society framed by liberty, equality, and fraternity among humans. Although these ideals have not been fully realized, a constant effort has been made to improve society and to come closer to them. With the postwar waves of immigration, reassessing these ideals requires fair treatment among citizens regardless of their religious, social, or linguistic background.

3.2

Diversity and Justice

The diversity that is present in France today marks a turning point in its history. Although I do not see diversity as a threat, I am not among those who see it as a blessing either. Diversity is not a burden, nor is it a chance. I try, through my work, to stay critical and avoid these two clichés. Diversity is a challenge. It is neither good nor bad; it is what we make out of it as a nation that is good or bad. It is the opportunity to reaffirm our principles through the reevaluation of our customs. Should France be defined as the country where men are white or where men are just? What is our priority as a nation: our customs or our principles? By only sticking to their customs, individuals can contradict their principles. It is in the acceptance of the diversity of customs and not in the uniformization of differences

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that the common principle of justice can be respected. Although perceived as the language of “the other,” North African Arabic is the language of the minority in France. Language does not belong to a land; it belongs to humans. We live in a world where humans move, and therefore, where languages move, evolve, and make us evolve. The second-generation North African minority was born and raised in France, and as a result, North African Arabic is now “a language of France.”

3.3

Including the Minority in the Public Sphere

The purpose of reconsideration of the Arabic language is not to reject but to transform the French public sphere. Diversity does not erase the mainstream culture, but makes it richer. The French dominant culture needs to open up and let in the “other France” (Keaton and Diawara 2006), not as an act of charity for the oppressed population but as an act of humanity, love, and justice toward the whole country (Freire 1970). An assimilationist point of view may perceive additional cultural aspects as a threat to mainstream culture. It purports to protect the traditions of a country; however, the aim of reconsidering the status of the Arabic language, and the status of the minority speaking it, is not to reject the culture but to make it richer and more comprehensive. This will be possible by including all the members of society in order to be faithful to our democratic principles. A culture that does not evolve to accommodate social changes eventually dies.

3.4

Language and Freedom: The Importance of French and Arabic

Freedom is inherent in our thoughts. Since language is the externalization of thoughts and reflection, language is an instrument of freedom. Therefore, it is essential for the oppressed groups to learn the language of the country they live in. In other words, the solution is twofold: France needs this linguistic diversity in order to reaffirm its principles of justice and freedom. North African minorities need to have a mastery of French in order to emancipate themselves, become subjects of their history, and reaffirm their belonging to France, not as it is defined by the rest of the society but as it is defined by themselves. In the process of emancipation, both the oppressor and the oppressed have a role to play and need to collaborate to shape a new society, a society that is better for everyone.

4

Conclusion

Language’s very first purpose is to communicate. It serves to link and connect people together and to the world. Naming things whether they are material or not is one of the first connections that humans have established with their world. However, within

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these connections, different types of relationships can be established. Language is the instrument through which relationships of power and domination are created, but it also has the capacity to liberate and free people from this domination. It is both a means of oppression and emancipation. While the current narrative is asking the minority to choose between French and Arabic in order to belong to the nation, an alternative would be to choose both French and Arabic and thus to redefine what it means to be French. When the conservation of customs betrays the application of principles, it becomes necessary to reassess these customs to preserve what holds us together. In a way, belonging to France, or to any other society, is first and foremost a matter of principles over customs and traditions.

References Blanchard, P. (2013a). Colonial culture in France since the revolution. Paris: Indiana University Press. Blanchard, P. (2013b). La France Arabo-Orientale: Treize Siècles de Présences. Paris: La Découverte. Buchez, P., & Roux-Lavergne, P. (1834). Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Française. Paris: Paulin. Camus, R. (2011). Le Grand Remplacement. Neuilly-sur-Seine: D. Reinharc. Camus, R. (2012). Interview with CBNnews on December 10. Dominec, F. (2003). Corsican nationalism [jpg] retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi can_language in 2016. Durpaire, F. (2006). France Blanche, Colère Noire. Paris: O. Jacob. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques) (2012). Immigrés et descendants d’immigrés en France. dossier de presse. [National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. Press release to immigrants and descendants of immigrants in France.] http://www.insee.fr/fr/ppp/comm_presse/comm/dossier_presse_complet_web.pdf. Accessed 6 Dec 2015. Keaton, T. D., & Diawara, M. (2006). Muslim girls and the other France race, identity politics, and social exclusion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Knox, A. Cited in http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/01/10/muslim-workers-heroic-actions-savedjews-caught-in-paris-kosher-supermarket-attack-video/. Accessed 18 Aug 2015. Liogier, R. (2014). Le mythe de l’invasion arabo-musulmane. Le Monde diplomatique, no 722. http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2014/05/LIOGIER/50422. Accessed 6 Dec 2015. Maamouri, M. (1999). Literacy in the Arab region: In D.A. Wagner, R.L. Venezky, and B.V. Street (Eds.), Literacy: an International Handbook. Colorado: West View Press. Satloff, R. (2006). The Holocaust’s Arab Heroes. The Washington Post. http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601417.html. Accessed 18 Aug 2015. Simon, P. (2014). Le fantasme du” grand remplacement “démographique. LeMonde.fr. http://www. lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/06/18/menaces-apres-des-chants-en-arabe-a-l-ecole-les-institut rices-corses-soutenues-par-la-ministre_4656542_3224.html. Accessed 6 Dec 2015.

The Lesser Used Languages in the European Union: A Study in Political Geography

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André-Louis Sanguin

Contents 1 The Lesser Used Languages: Some Theoretical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Lesser Used Languages in Unitary States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Lesser Used Languages in Decentralized States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Lesser Used Languages in Federal and Quasi-Federal States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Lesser Used Languages: Resistance or Surrender? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion: An Uncertain Future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The speakers of the lesser used languages are living in the European Union within different scales of fragility. Some theoretical considerations emphasize two paradigms at work with the lesser used languages: center-periphery and dominating majority-dominated minority. The EU small languages are used in very different contexts according to the nature of the State (unitary, decentralized, federal). Emigration, bilingualism, mixed marriages, and globalization are frequently acting against the lesser used languages. Between resistance and surrender, the native speakers of the endangered languages in the EU have their own future in their hands. It is a matter of money but above all a matter of collective will. Many native speakers are passive. They no longer want to speak their small language and to fight against the linguistic majority. In the middle of the twenty-first century, some lesser used languages will have disappeared, while others will resist due to new forms of communication. In most cases, the linguistic minorities moved from a stage of resistance to a stage of tolerance and indifference. Those communities suffer a crisis of identity and a process of hybridization. They speak

A.-L. Sanguin (*) Department of Geography, University of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_78

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the language of the majority. They imitate the national, international, and globalized models. The lesser used languages come up against a double wall. First, they are not exportable and they are not learnt by other speakers. Second, the small number of their speakers and the absence of mass effect have a negative weight upon them. Keywords

Assimilation · Bilingualism · Hybridization · Lesser used languages · Linguistic identity · Stateless linguistic groups

Language cannot be understood in isolation from place. Language is a cultural construct which reflects the changing history and geography of the places where it develops. It can decline or even die when its native speakers find themselves in marginal circumstances from a social and political point of view. The map of languages in the European Union is a testimony of the winners and losers in the struggle over nation building during the last two centuries. Given the closed tie between language and nationalism, it is not surprising that speakers of the European lesser used languages have not always fared well in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These small linguistic communities have to struggle against linguistic assimilation by dominant language communities. For a long time, few states adopted a generous attitude toward their small languages. A slow change occurred with the implementation of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1992, even if some states have not ratified it. According to UNESCO, those small languages are classified on a gradual scale of fragility: vulnerable, definitely endangered, severely endangered, and critically endangered (Wurm 2010).

1

The Lesser Used Languages: Some Theoretical Considerations

The problems of the EU lesser used languages are often the matter of an unfortunate confusion between two concepts: stateless linguistic groups and national minorities. A national minority is a linguistic group that lives in the border area of one state but its language belongs to the neighboring state. The result is double. First, a national minority enjoys always a powerful linguistic hinterland (Hungarians in Romania close to Hungary, e.g.). Second, a national minority is concerned by the mass effect and dynamics of its own linguistic hinterland. The situation is much more difficult for the speakers of lesser used languages because they are small peoples which have to defend alone a language spoken nowhere else. They have no linguistic hinterland (Austin and Sallabank 2011). Those small peoples live within old historical territories. The lesser used languages consequently are not to be confused with the languages of immigrated populations in Europe (Arab, Turkish) or Romani (Gypsy), which are non-territorial languages. Because some small languages are

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the official languages of small EU countries (Maltese, Luxembourgish, Estonian, Slovene) they cannot be considered as lesser used languages. The geography of the EU lesser used languages raises irreparably a double paradigm: center-periphery and dominating majority-dominated minority. Regarding the center-periphery dimension, the small linguistic communities are often located in various geographical peripheries: Atlantic Finisterres (Gaelic in Scotland and Eire, Welsh in Wales, Breton in France, Galician in Spain), islands (Corsican, Sardinian), country margins (Basque in Spain and France, Frisian in the Netherlands), and former or present disturbed borderlands (Sorb in Germany, Kashubian in Poland, Ladin and Friulan in Italy). The dominating majority-dominated minority dimension is recurrent for the small language communities. Their native speakers count between thousands and dozens of thousands. The lesser used language groups are placed at the crossroad of three spatial-political logics: dissymmetry, assimilation, and autonomy. With the logic of dissymmetry, the small community accepts its status of minority but aims at safeguarding its linguistic and cultural specificity. With the logic of assimilation, the small community amalgamates with the linguistic majority. It losses its linguistic and cultural identity, but it reaches a social rise. With the logics of autonomy, the solution consists of implementing a linguistic territory protected by the law where the lesser used language can better preserve its linguistic and cultural specificity (De Schutter 2008). Those small peoples are always the subject of a spatial overlapping by a more numerous external populations. The risk is the disappearance of the collective memory through a loss of the linguistic identity and the adoption of the majority language. The withdrawal and the discrediting of the identity signs translate the decline of the community consciousness. Some small linguistic communities no longer want to continue to exist and to be recognized as linguistic minorities. Clearly speaking, leaving the linguistic group appears to many members as the solution for a better life. The reasons for scuppering can appear more convincing than the reasons for maintaining. The great danger which threatens them is the plurilingualism of superposition. The majority language is spoken within their historical areas and is omnipresent in the media, schools, jobs, and public institutions. In brief, the small linguistic communities are in a daily bath with the majority language and are submitted to a process of deculturation (Hogan-Brun and Wolff 2003). There are different ways to offer a significant panorama of the EU lesser used languages. They could be presented according to a geographical classification or a linguistic affiliation. If they are located in unitary states, decentralized states, or federal and quasi-federal states, the lesser used languages are living in very different contexts. This is the choice which is proposed below.

2

The Lesser Used Languages in Unitary States

Sami. In the northernmost part of Sweden and Finland, the Sami language is spoken by the Lapps, the only EU indigenous people (Baer 2005; Kent 2014). They number approximately 20,000. Among them, 9,000 in Sweden and 3,000 in Finland are true

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native speakers (Toivanen 2001). Both regions have some primary and secondary schools which propose some education in Sami. Sami radio broadcasts 40 h per week. The small people enjoys a Sami Parliament (Samediggi) in its historical region, the first one in Sweden and the second one in Finland. The Samediggi is in charge of allocation of national funds for culture, language, and schools (Laurence and Morkenstraum 2016). The weight of Swedish and Finnish languages is important to only a small group of people, few of whom can even write their own language. The Sami often feel that the schools do not contribute to strengthening the Sami children’s identity. The result is that many lost their mother tongue (VeliPekka 2004). The laws of the central state are of little use because they are symbolic and not coercive. It is clear that the small number of speakers has a negative effect on the future of the Sami language which is considered by UNESCO as severely endangered (Wurm 2010). Gaelic. The situation of the Gaelic language in the Republic of Ireland (4.6 million inhabitants) is absolutely paradoxical. It is the first official language in the country before English, even if 96% of the population is English-speaking. Among the Irish citizens, 260,000 have a good knowledge of Gaelic and 70,000 speak it. This language is concentrated in Gaeltacht, an area of Western peninsulas (Ball and Fife 2005). The Irish state thought to reverse the course of history by a revival of Gaelic, a language in danger of extinction. The result was a failure. Ireland was not able to do with Gaelic what Israel has done with Hebrew. In spite of many linguistic laws, Gaelic remains the language of a small minority of Irish people (Hindley 1991). Except in Gaeltacht, English is the language of education at all levels. There is no daily newspaper in Gaelic. A Gaeltacht local radio broadcasts exclusively in Gaelic (80 h per week), and a TV station offers 5 h per week in Gaelic. The results of the government policy are disappointing because the means enforced by the government are unsuccessful. A certain pessimism invades the Gaeltacht population. Gaelic remains a symbolic and identity language without real usefulness in daily life, especially urban life. Gaelic appears as a decorative language. The Irish population is attached to this language of the ancestors (bilingualism of streets and road signs), but the number of native speakers decreases year after year. Gaelic is a definitely endangered language according to UNESCO (Wurm 2010). Breton. France, archetype of the unitary centralized state, has four lesser used languages: Breton, Basque, Occitan, and Corsican. The territorial retreat of Breton has accelerated during the last two centuries (Ball and Fife 2005). Its linguistic area is reduced today to the westernmost part of the peninsula. Brittany has 3.2 million inhabitants, but there are just 172,000 native speakers (among them 35,000 daily). Around 16,000 pupils attend courses in Breton within bilingual primary and secondary schools (including the associative network Diwan). There is no daily newspaper in Breton. Four small local radios broadcast partially or totally in Breton. The regional public TV broadcasts 100 min in Breton per week, while a private TV broadcasts 2 h per week. The bilingual road signs, the Breton place names, and the Breton flag all over Brittany cannot delude the external observers. Breton has no official status in France. Only the Regional Council of Brittany funds some programs and initiatives. For the majority of Breton people, the Breton language is a cultural

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and historical indicator, an element of local identity but also a symbolic decoration and an appeal for national and international tourism (Gemie 2007). According to the Public Office of the Breton Language, the native speakers would be 20,000–90,000 around the year 2050. Breton is considered as a severely endangered language by UNESCO (Wurm 2010). Occitan. The Occitan language covers the southern third of France in a historical region named Occitania. It was an important cultural area in the Middle Ages which spoke a Romance language different of that of the Royal Court in Paris. The area was linked to the civilization of troubadours and Cathar heresy. Unfortunately, Occitan is not a unified language due to the existence of six variants (Austin and Sallabank 2011). The decline began when the King Francis I established French in place of Latin as the official language of the kingdom. The French census has no linguistic elements. So, it is very difficult to know the exact number of the Occitan-speaking people: around 200,000–500,000. The Occitania inhabitants have no Occitan identity. The transmission of Occitan in the family environment has practically stopped (Austin and Sallabank 2011). The associative network Calandreta has 60 primary schools and 3 secondary schools with education by full immersion in Occitan for 3,500 pupils. Around 70 public schools propose courses in Occitan. Eighteen local radio stations broadcast partially or totally in Occitan, but their respective area of coverage is limited. An online TV station broadcasts 6 h per day in Occitan. A weekly newspaper prints 900 copies. Around 300 titles per year are published in Occitan (books, CD, DVD). However, Occitan is considered by UNESCO as a severely endangered language (Wurm 2010). Basque in France. The Basque Country in France represents only 15% of the historical Basque Country’s area and two-thirds of the Department of Atlantic Pyrenees. The real Basque-speaking people number 52,000, namely, 22% of the French Basque Country. Education in Basque is practiced according to three methods: total immersion, bilingual form, and optional language. Around 4,000 pupils receive an education in Basque in the primary schools and 3,000 pupils in the secondary schools. The associative network Ikastola has 3,400 pupils (10 nursery schools, 20 primary schools, 4 secondary schools). This relatively favorable context is justified by several factors: proximity with the Spanish Basque Country which is the true linguistic bastion, presence of radio and TV stations in Basque on the Spanish side, success of the schools in Basque, and interest of young people (16–24 years) for training in Basque. Five radio stations are operating in Basque on the French side. The small language is used at home and with relatives, a little in the shops, and not at all in the public administration (Harrison 2007). On the other hand, the Basque collective awareness is strong. The local population feels that the language is endangered. Basque is declared vulnerable by UNESCO (Wurm 2010). Corsican. Corsica is the only French region with a special status: the territorial collectivity of Corsica has a parliament (Assembly of Corsica) and a government (Executive Council). Since 2015, a coalition of pro-independence and pro-autonomy parties manages the island. The total population is 323,000 inhabitants, but Corsican native speakers (partially or totally) are around 150,000–160,000. The island suffers an important migratory pressure from continental France. In daily life, more people

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speak French than Corsican on the island. Retreat of the Corsican language has been the general trend for 20 years. Corsican is the language of relatives and friends with no official status, and French is the administrative language (Crepaz 2014). Regarding equal bilingual schooling, 20% of primary school pupils and 7% of secondary school pupils are registered. Corsican is a facultative or optional subject (2 or 3 h per week) in other secondary schools. There is no daily newspaper in Corsican, but there are half a dozen publishers. The public TV station broadcasts 40 min per week in Corsican, while five local radio stations have programs with 30–40% in Corsican. The bilingual road signs lend some tourist and exotic visibility to Corsican. The present autonomist power in Corsica clashes with the linguistic hostility of the French state. Corsican is considered by UNESCO as a severely endangered language (Wurm 2010). Frisian. The Netherlands include the Frisians, a small community which uses a language that is part of the great family of Germanic languages. The Frisian people survive in the northwestern corner of the country along the North Sea in Friesland, one of the 12 Dutch provinces (Austin and Sallabank 2011). Friesland has a population of 649,000 inhabitants. Among them 450,000 persons are Frisian speakers. Through the clauses of the 2001 Agreement on the Frisian Language and Culture, the Friesland authorities recognize Frisian as a co-official language in the province. Frisian is used in oral communications with the citizens. Ten municipalities use it as the administrative language with their inhabitants. Most of the Friesland primary schools have Frisian as education matter for 10–30% of the weekly program. Around 5% of the pupils follow 1 h of Frisian per week in the secondary schools. A local radio station proposes a 70-h program in Frisian, while a private TV broadcasts 2 h per day and a public TV 50 min per week. In the absence of a daily newspaper in Frisian, a monthly is published with 5,000 copies. Frisian is present on bilingual road signs but not everywhere in the province. In short, the status of Frisian remains precarious because the central state leaves to the Friesland authorities the responsibility of the small language (Harrison 2007). The Frisian issue is not considered very important by the Dutch government, and the Friesland government has limited power and few financial resources. According to some specialized observers, local speakers fight for the Frisian language not for its survival but mainly for its identity value. UNESCO has classified Frisian as a vulnerable language (Wurm 2010). Kashubian. The Kashubs are a small linguistic community which is localized in the former Polish Corridor (1919–1939) between Gdansk and the Baltic Sea (Obracht-Prondzynski and Wicherkiewicz 2011). Kashubian is a Slavonic language that Poles do not understand. According to the 2011 Polish census, around 80,000 persons speak Kashubian daily in their historical region. This lesser used language was recognized as a regional language by the Polish Parliament in 2005. About 30 municipalities are Kashubian-speaking. After the First Partition of Poland (in 1772), Kashubia became a part of Western Prussia within the Kingdom of Prussia. The easiest way for the Kashubs was the Germanization which favored social and professional promotion. Other Kashubs played the card of Polonization in order to participate in the national Polish revival. After the independence of Poland

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in 1918 and creation of the Polish Corridor by the Allies in 1919, the German inhabitants left the area and were replaced by Poles who formed quickly 80% of Kashubia’s population. Suddenly, the Kashubs suffered a Polonization process and were pushed into the background. Later, the Communist period (1944–1989) was not favorable for the Kashubs because the government forbad the use of the small language. The proximity of the Tri-City agglomeration (Gdansk, Sopot, Gdynia) increased the pressure to use the Polish language. Within ten municipalities where at least 20% of the inhabitants are Kashubian speakers, the municipal organizations use Kashubian as a language of communication (Dolowy-Rybinska 2011). Around 259 schools with 9,700 pupils offer some courses in Kashubian (1–3 h per week). In spite of this fact, the young Kashubians speak Polish. There is no daily newspaper in Kashubian and a TV station broadcasts 30 min per week in the local language. The road signs are bilingual. It is not sure that an institutionalized bilingualism will be able to save this lesser used language in its historical area. The Kashubs seem to have a stronger feeling of ethnic identity than a feeling of linguistic identity (ObrachtProndzynski 2007). Kashubian language is severely endangered according to UNESCO criteria (Wurm 2010).

3

The Lesser Used Languages in Decentralized States

Italy has 20 regions. Among them, three contain some lesser used languages: Friulan in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Ladin in Trentino-Upper Adige, and Sardinian in Sardinia. Friulan. Friulan is a Romance language derived from vulgar Latin. FriuliVenezia Giulia is an Italian region with a special status that is localized along the border with Austria and Slovenia. Friulan is mainly concentrated in the provinces of Gorizia, Pordenone, and Udine. It is recognized as a regional language by a 1999 Italian law but without any effective consequence. Due to a multitude of dialectal variants and absence of standardized form, it is not very integrated into the school system. Friulan is present as an optional subject in some primary and secondary schools. There is no daily newspaper published in Friulan. A private radio station broadcasts a weekly program of 70–80 h in Friulan which has an audience of 35,000 people (Sierp 2008). Since the 1960s, Friulan has been losing ground within families. Young Friulians are under the influence of the Italian media, and the native speakers themselves do not believe very much in the future of their language. Friulan remains a language of the countryside and is almost absent in the cities. The small language is institutionalized very little in the region, except the formal existence of a 2007 local law on the promotion of the small language. Friuli-Venezia Giulia has a population of 1.2 million inhabitants which has been stagnant for several decades because of a migratory process toward the richest Italian regions. Friulan is more visible in the province of Udine. The road signs are bilingual in order to grant a small visibility to this language. The partitioning of the historical Friulan area into three provinces results in a difference of treatment among the Friulan-speaking population. Despite the Italian law and the Friulan law about the language, the passive behavior of the Friulans makes its linguistic future very uncertain (Crepaz 2014).

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Even if around 520,000 people are native speakers, Friulan is considered by UNESCO as a definitely endangered language (Wurm 2010). Ladin. Ladin is a Romance language that is localized only in the Dolomites (Northern Italy). Even if they are geographically juxtaposed, the 18 Ladin-speaking municipalities are distributed among 3 provinces (Bolzano, Belluno, Trento). Around 30,000 inhabitants are Ladin speakers (Hogan-Brun and Wolff 2003). This small people of alpine farmers moved into the tourism and hotel trade about 40 years ago. Education of Ladin in the primary schools is developed in South Tyrol (Bolzano) according to a trilingual formula (German, Ladin, Italian). Ladin language is a facultative matter in Trento and absent in Belluno. A Ladin weekly is published in 3,000 copies. The public radio broadcasts 4.5 h per week in Ladin as well as a private radio with 4 h per week. Public TV offers 10 min per week in Ladin. About 20 books are published each year in Ladin with a circulation of 100–400 copies (Sierp 2008). If the linguistic situation seems stable in South Tyrol and Trento, it is less favorable in Belluno. The Ladins of South Tyrol benefit from ethnic proportionality regarding access to jobs in the public and semipublic sector. The proportionality is calculated according to the result of the last census. So, around 2% of these jobs are reserved for Ladins. In all Ladin places, road signs are trilingual (Ladin, German, Italian). The geographical grouping of the Ladins and their very strong density in the Ladin municipalities are the key factors which seem to save the small language. Nevertheless, because of the weak number of speakers (30,000), Ladin language is classified as definitely endangered by UNESCO (Wurm 2010). Sardinian. Sardinian is a Romance language relatively close to Italian and Corsican. It is spoken in Sardinia, an Italian region with a special status. Sardinia has a population of 1.6 million inhabitants. Among them, 1.3 million are supposed to be native speakers. Sardinian has a colloquial form generally passed from mouth to ear and had few written form in the past (Hornsby and Agarin 2012). The 1998 regional law 26 and the 1999 Italian law 482 recognize Sardinian as a protected language which needs promotion and improvement. As often in Italy, the laws are incentive and not coercive. The use of Sardinian is not a right but a simple eventuality. The imbalance is great between the theoretical right and real practices. The linguistic face remains essentially Italian in Sardinia. Italian occupies all social functions of the public life. Practically speaking, there are no primary and secondary schools in Sardinian. The use of Sardinian in the radio and TV networks is extremely rare. Two TV stations (public and private) broadcast 30–60 min per day in Sardinian (Sierp 2008). The small language remains a language spoken at home by around 20–25% of the families. Italy and Sardinia have not implemented vigorous policies (O’Riagain 1999). The Sardinian language is menaced in its future because it has no legal recognition in public life. In the UNESCO classification, Sardinian is definitely endangered (Wurm 2010). Scottish Gaelic. Scotland and Wales are two Constituent Nations of the United Kingdom. They enjoy devolved administrations and have proper parliament and government. Among the devolved powers, language is under their responsibility. English is the mother tongue for 98% of Scottish people. Scotland has around

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5.3 million inhabitants. Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language, is an official language of Scotland along with English since 2005. According to the 2011 census, Gaelic is spoken by 57,000 speakers which are pushed back and concentrated in the Highlands, Hebrides, and Western Isles (Ball and Fife 2005). Despite this difficult situation, the Scottish Parliament adopted the Gaelic Language Act in 2005. This law is essentially bureaucratic and strictly cultural. No linguistic rights are assigned to Gaelic. The Board of Gaelic Language (a public Scottish office) is in charge of promotion of the small language. The Scottish authorities accept the use of Gaelic in some municipalities of the Gaelic-speaking area. The present situation of Gaelic has slightly improved in schools. Around 2,500 pupils of the primary schools receive a bilingual education within 61 schools, while 2,500 pupils of the secondary schools have access to Gaelic teaching. Some Scottish newspapers publish one-page columns in Gaelic. The public radio BBC broadcasts regularly in Gaelic, and 300 h per year are devoted to Gaelic by the public and private TV (BBC, ITV). Given the low number of Gaelic speakers, the context seems relatively favorable (McLeod 2006). Two key reasons explain this change: first, the will to open up the Gaelic islanders with electronic media in their language and second, the nationalism of the government and parliament where the Scottish National Party has been in power since 2007. However, the collective imagination of the majority of Scottish people is expressed in English. Consequently, Gaelic rans the risk of remaining a decorative language or an identity language that is used in place names and restaurant menus, but not in true life. Gaelic is definitely endangered according to UNESCO (Wurm 2010). Welsh. The linguistic situation of Wales strongly contrasts with Scotland. Wales has had a National Assembly and a Welsh Government since 1999. Welsh, a Celtic language, covers the western half of Wales (Ball and Fife 2005). Among a total population of 3 million inhabitants, the true Welsh speakers in 2011 were 562,000. The decline has been constant and regular for 120 years: the native speakers numbered 910,000 in 1891. However, Welsh is treated on an equal footing with English since the 1993 Welsh Language Act and the 1998 Government of Wales Act. The Welsh Language Board is the main instrument of linguistic planning. Welsh was recognized as a co-official language of Wales in 2010. The road signs are bilingual in the districts with a majority of Welsh speakers. The school situation seems acceptable for Welsh. In fact, 32% of primary schools and 22% of secondary schools propose the Welsh language in their curricula. Four daily newspapers are published only in Welsh. Radio Cymru (a BBC station) broadcasts 20 h per day in Welsh. A TV station broadcasts integrally in Welsh. The presence of Welsh is partial in other radio and TV stations of Wales. It is important to consider that the National Assembly for Wales does not have the powers of the Scottish Parliament (Aitchison and Carter 2000). The Plaid Cymru, the only Welsh nationalist party, has very few deputies in the Welsh Parliament which is occupied by the classical British parties. Today the number of Welsh speakers is very low, and English appears as a steamroller in this historical nation of the United Kingdom. Welsh is declared vulnerable by UNESCO (Wurm 2010).

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The Lesser Used Languages in Federal and Quasi-Federal States

Germany as a federal state or Spain as a quasi-federal state apply the principle of subsidiarity and the separation of powers between the federal level and the federated or quasi-federated level. Does this political mechanism favor the small endangered languages? Sorbian. Sorbian is a small Slavonic language which is located on either side of the limit between Saxony and Brandenburg, more precisely in the border districts with Poland. This historical region is called Lusatia. Unfortunately, the Sorbian language is divided into two regional variants: the Upper Sorbian area is in Saxony (Bautzen region) with 40,000 speakers, and the Lower Sorbian area is in Brandenburg (Cottbus region) with 20,000 speakers. There were 150,000 Sorbian speakers in 1900. Around 35,000 Sorbs today are able to master their native language in colloquial and written ways. The 1990 German Reunification Treaty has an article devoted to the linguistic rights of the Sorbs. The German federal government takes into account the Sorbs in the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In practice, the federal government has delegated to Brandenburg and Saxony the linguistic policy toward the Sorbs (Foy and Thiele 1996). The constitutions of Brandenburg and Saxony contain articles for the protection of the Sorbian language. So, within seven Brandenburg districts and eight Saxony districts which are recognized Sorbian, the small language has the status of co-official language with German. Bilingual services of the local administration are offered in just five Brandenburg municipalities and seven Saxony districts where the Sorbian minority is sufficiently concentrated. Road signs and public advertising are bilingual in the historical Sorbian region. There are 19 primary schools and 3 secondary schools in Brandenburg which propose an education in Sorbian (second language or foreign language). Sixty primary schools in Saxony offer a Sorbian education (compulsory or facultative), and they register 4,000 pupils, while 5 secondary schools propose an education in Sorbian (compulsory matter or foreign language). Public radio broadcasts 7 h per week in Sorbian and public TV 30 min per week both in Saxony and Brandenburg. A daily newspaper is published in Upper Sorbian and a weekly in Lower Sorbian. Brandenburg and Saxony have created the Foundation for the Sorbian People in the general framework of defense and improvement of the small language. The Foundation is financed by federal Germany, Saxony, and Brandenburg. This funding allows the economic survival of some important Sorbian institutions: Domowina (Union of the Sorbs of Lusatia), Macica Serbska (Society of Sorbian Research), and Sorbische Institut (Sorbian Institute). Even if the Sorbian minority is small, it obtained linguistic rights that are relatively substantial. By means of an agreement, Saxony and Brandenburg have adopted a joint policy of promotion for the Sorbian language and culture. On one hand, the rights of the Sorbs are legally protected within a historical territory clearly defined. On the other, the Sorbs are submitted to the enormous weight of

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the German language and to a pervasive social bilingualism. In the last analysis, the use of Sorbian depends on the choice of the Sorbs themselves. This choice is easy in the districts mostly Sorbian-speaking. It is more difficult in the cities where the Sorbs are just a small minority. Mixed marriages strongly reduce the number of Sorbian speakers in an urban environment. In brief, even if the Sorbs of Saxony and Brandenburg benefit from great legal protection, substantial financial aid, and an acceptable school system, it will be always difficult for them to survive in Germany in the middle of an assimilationist German language. Between resistance and integration, hybridization and assimilation, the Sorbs are slowly becoming an invisible minority due to the biculturalism inherent in their history (Hornsby and Agarin 2012). German is the language in which the Sorbs are educated. Sorbian is a second language linked to family tradition. The fall of the Sorbian birth rate and the industrialization of Lusatia have negative consequences for the Sorbs. The biculturality of Lusatia is only a one-way appearance because the Germans do not learn Sorbian and do not know the Sorbian realities. The Sorbian languages are declared definitely endangered by UNESCO (Wurm 2010). Galician. Spain is a quasi-federal state because its 17 communities are selfgoverning. Six communities use a language which is not Spanish (Catalan, Basque, Galician) and benefit from linguistic powers. Galicia (2.8 million inhabitants) is the historical territory of Galician, a lesser used language close to Portuguese and Spanish. Galician was forbidden under the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1975) exactly like Catalan and Basque. Galicia has suffered an economic decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which was accompanied by a massive emigration toward Western European countries and the more dynamic areas of Spain. The Autonomous Community of Galicia has recognized Galician as a co-official language with Spanish. It seems that 56% of the Galicia population speaks Galician. People in the cities speak Spanish, while people in the countryside speak Galician. All Galicians are bilingual. Galician failed to emerge as a normal language in formal communications (colloquial and written). It is less and less spoken by young people (Harrison 2007). All Galician governments since 1978 have elaborated different measures to ensure promotion of the language in a standardized and normalized or artificial form. The lack of real social equality between Spanish and Galician is a clear reality in Galicia. The Galician government and the local administrations are under the legal obligation to use both languages. Road signs and public advertising are bilingual. Galicia has important linguistic institutions: Royal Galician Academy, Institute for Galician Language, Observatory of the Galician Language, and Department of Linguistic Policy. Galician is declared a language of education at all grade levels at parity with Spanish. In fact, the teaching of Galician is not equal everywhere because the time allocated to Spanish can be greater. Many Galicians do not believe it necessary to learn their own language at school. Today almost all pupils of secondary schools receive courses in Galician for 3 or 4 h per week. The written medias in Galicia mainly use Spanish. The first and only daily newspaper in Galician (O Correo Galego) was established in 1994. A monthly (Galicia Internacional) and some

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cultural, educational, and literary magazines are published in Galician. A public radio and 12 local radios broadcast in Galician around the clock. A public TV broadcasts 13 h per day in Galician and a private TV 100 h per week. The Galician government distributes specific grants for editions in Galician. It seems that many Galicians do not believe in the value of their language. They prefer to use Spanish which ensures social promotion. The collective linguistic consciousness is not well developed in Galicia because Galicians do not know the vigorous nationalism employed by Catalans and Basques. The Galician government is not nationalist, and Galicians do not accept the emergence of a new Galician language that is standardized, normalized, and a little artificial. UNESCO considers Galician as a vulnerable language (Wurm 2010). Basque in Spain. Basque language is spoken in Spain not only in the Basque Autonomous Community (or Euskadi) but also in the Northern third of Navarre (61 municipalities among a total of 172 in Navarre). The Basque Autonomous Community has a population of 2.2 million inhabitants. Among them, 30% are fluent speakers in Basque. Navarre has 645,000 inhabitants and 10% of this population speaks Basque. Since the status of autonomy in 1979, Euskadi is governed by the Basque Nationalist Party, which is a moderate party with Christian democratic tendencies. Navarre mostly declined to unite with Euskadi in a 1980 referendum. Basque has a co-official status with Spanish in Euskadi. The Euskadi linguistic policy covers only three sectors: local administration, media, and education. The Basque government produces bilingual civil servants in order to guarantee administrative services in Basque, but the administration of the central government (Madrid) in Euskadi is not concerned by this policy. Basque is the most used language in the field of education. The only unilingual education in Basque is proposed by the Ikastolas, a network of associative schools. Pupils have 16 h per week in Basque in the primary schools and 25 h per week in the secondary schools. The rest of the weekly program is delivered in Spanish. It is clear that emigration is a powerful phenomenon which threatens the future of Basque language. Basque is not a Romance language and has no proximity with Spanish, Catalan, and Galician. The citizens coming from other parts of Spain do not learn Basque (Ruiz Vietez 2001). Basque has a real presence in the media. Six radio stations have programming in Basque from 7 to 16 h per day, and two TV stations operate totally in Basque. All road signs are bilingual in Euskadi. Around 52,000 persons are Basque-speaking in Northern Navarre. As of 1982, Basque is a co-official language only in this Basque-speaking area of Navarre. Bilingualism is required for local and Navarre administration in this area where the parents have the right to choose the language of education for their children. Basque media in Navarre includes one daily and two weekly newspapers and one radio station and one TV station. Basque speakers comprise 10% of the Navarre population, but their linguistic rights are well protected by the Navarre government. Their rights are more important than in the French Basque Country. Because of the acceptable situation of Basque in Spain (Euskadi and Navarre), this language is classified vulnerable by UNESCO (Wurm 2010).

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The Lesser Used Languages: Resistance or Surrender?

The lesser used languages have benefitted from a new political atmosphere and a better perception over the past two or three decades in the European Union. This transformation comes from an important legal text, the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The Charter aims at protecting and promoting the lesser used languages in private and public life because they are considered a threatened aspect of European cultural heritage (Council of Europe 2010). Some EU countries have not ratified it. Political elites concerned by the lesser used languages are afraid to act against public opinion if they support the small languages. Many linguistic majorities are not interested in investing in small languages, which are considered an expression of backwardness and poverty. The European Commission does not have the legal force necessary to impose a single policy. In the particular context of each State, the lesser used languages are taken into account with ups and downs. An intrinsic situation remains for many small languages (O’Riagain 1999, 2001). They suffer from different dialectal variations, and the construction of a standardized, unified, and normalized language comes into conflict with the native speakers. The standardized language sometimes has difficulty winning (Occitan, Sardinian, Friulan). Education. The dynamics generated by the European Charter have encouraged the creation of educational institutions devoted to the lesser used languages. The statutes however are very different (public schools, private schools, associative schools). Generally, there are very few schools where the full curriculum is delivered only in the small language. Most of the time, the private and associative schools propose this kind of education. Frequently the lesser used language is included in a bilingual curriculum. Sometimes the lesser used language is just an optional subject. The number of pupils concerned by a small language curriculum is more important in the primary schools than in the secondary schools. Often the schools with a lesser used language curriculum are only a small part of the educational network of the concerned historical area. In other words, with a few exceptions (Wales, Euskadi, Galicia), the number of pupils of a small language is reduced compared with the total school population. This numerical inferiority generates difficulties in financing and teacher training. The school issue of the lesser used languages is almost always the power of the regions and not of the central State, but it is obvious that regions or other local administrations do not have the same budgetary resources as the central State. Media. Another challenge facing the lesser used languages is the media. Some small languages have a daily newspaper at their disposal but only where the market of readers is sufficient. Weekly and monthly magazines are the most frequent written media. The situation of the publishing houses is much more difficult. Depending on the number of native speakers, some dozens or hundreds of new titles per year are published, often textbooks and books for children and teens. The publishing is possible only with financial aid from local administrations. Translation of foreign titles is rare (Priestly 2008). In fact, publishing and translation come up against the financial cost and the small size of the reader market. Radio and television meet very

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different contexts. If they are supported by the autonomous government or by local administration, the number of hours in the regional language is important. The radio and TV stations which broadcast in full in a small language are an exception. Those stations have a limited broadcasting area and consequently do not reach all native speakers. The small size of the audience does not allow economic cost-effectiveness of those stations. On one hand, they are not part of a large national network because they are local or associative. On the other, the audience that frequents those stations does not represent the whole of the native speakers (O’Riagain 2012). Road signs and public advertising. The material elements that allow a strong visibility for lesser used languages are road signs and public advertising. This linguistic presence in the public landscape is sometimes misleading. Crossing Ireland, Occitania, or Brittany would suggest that the entire population speaks the small language because road signs are bilingual. The reality is different: the visible language is not a valid indication of the spoken language. The most direct consequence of the European Charter has been however the creation of a bilingual road sign system. All EU countries have implemented this policy including the unitary centralized states. This cheap system gave satisfaction to native speakers. The demographic process at work in the linguistic territories occupied by the small language speakers has an influence on the future of these populations. First, emigration empties the human resources of the small linguistic region. Second, immigration brings the population of the majority language which submerges the lesser used language. Third, bilingualism and mixed marriages are frequently acting against the small language. The Internet. Some think that lesser used languages can reassure their future thanks to the Internet. But, do the new information and communication technologies inhibit or facilitate regional languages? Is the European Charter still relevant in the information age? What is the exact impact of Internet on the lesser used languages? Is it a double-edged sword that presents challenges and opportunities? The use of Internet supposes the inclusion of native speakers themselves in the creation of their own materials (McMonagle 2012). The task is immense. How many producers for how many users? Some data express the very relative weight of lesser used languages with the example of Wikipedia. Basque is the language most represented in Wikipedia with around 200,000 produced references and 26,000 visitors per month. Next is Occitan, which has 21,000 produced references and 12,000 users per month. At the other end of the spectrum, the languages with the lowest visibility on Wikipedia are 13,000 references for Scottish Gaelic, 5,000 for Sardinian, 4,900 for Kashubian, and 3,100 for Friulan. For some small languages, Internet allows the development of online courses, online magazines and dictionaries, as well as Internet radio and television, blogs, and forums (O’Riagain 2012). Through the media and Internet tools, a small language can still play an important role of preserving the group’s ethnicity. Defenders of the small languages think they can be stabilized by finding new niches of occurrence. Revitalizing these languages means bringing a situation in which they can be used in all domains of life, both private and official. In other words, survival of lesser used languages is linked to existence of primary interpersonal ties of a group for which the small language is very important. Those

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niches are the new forms of media and not the small language learnt as a foreign language by the pupils in schools. Probably the lesser used languages in the EU will not function in the future as they did in the past; modern media do offer them some chances for survival; however, we cannot expect a miracle to happen.

6

Conclusion: An Uncertain Future?

Native speakers of lesser used languages have their future in their own hands. It is a matter of money but above all a matter of collective will. We often observe in small linguistic areas that the minority is very active but the majority is passive. Many native speakers no longer want to speak their small language and fight against the linguistic majority. Regarding the lesser used languages, all their speakers are bilingual and speak the language of the linguistic majority (Harrison 2007). This bilingualism is not mutual because the speakers of the majority language never learn or speak the small language. Many native speakers today consider the future through the tourism of their linguistic territory. Tourists visit their region because it offers a local color, a scenery, and an exoticism. On the one hand, tourism brings visibility, frequenting, and money. On the other hand, welcoming tourists is an easier way of expression of ethnic belonging. An explanation of the weakening of lesser used languages lies in Europeanization, i.e., the cultural normalization through the EU (Crepaz 2014). Speakers of small languages have normal and peaceful relations with speakers of majority languages because there is no context of hostility or conflict. This weakening threatens the identity of these small peoples. Furthermore, English is slowly becoming the EU lingua franca and seems very popular among young people. To a larger dimension, the cultural effects of globalization have direct consequences on the lesser used languages which are mixed into an extra-national context. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages contains no references to the new information and communication technologies. There is no European program which is aimed at fighting against the digital divide faced by the lesser used languages. The actors who introduce the lesser used languages on the Internet are often cultural activists, movements, and associations, except the cases where the small language is that of the autonomous government. Finally, the collective psychology of small peoples speaking an endangered language is hybrid. Today for many members of these linguistic communities, the small language is not an essential part of their own identity. For example, Breton identity does not seem to be threatened by a lack of knowledge of Breton language. Speakers of lesser used languages have difficulties accessing and participating in political decision-making across Europe because their small languages are de facto excluded from national and European levels (Hornsby and Agarin 2012). In the middle of the twenty-first century, it will be necessary to draw up a contextual inventory of the lesser used languages. Some will disappear; others will resist because they will have found a communicative function due to their presence in modern forms of media, in the schooling system, and other possible niches. Europeanization, globalization, and smallness are the main adversaries of the lesser

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used languages. Political struggle supported by an autonomous government is not the solution to save a small language in the European Union today. For example, Scottish nationalism has few relations with the Scottish Gaelic. In most cases (except Basque and Corsican), the linguistic minorities moved from a stage of resistance to a stage of tolerance and indifference (Austin and Sallabank 2011). Those minorities suffer a crisis of identity because they speak the language of the majority and because they imitate the national, international, and Anglo-American models. Both behaviors generate a process of hybridization. The lesser used languages come up against a double wall. First, they are not exportable and they are not learnt by other speakers. Second, the law of the small number and the absence of mass effect have a negative weight upon their future. The loss of linguistic memory is a phenomenon which can go very fast.

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McMonagle, S. (2012). The European charter for regional or minority languages: Still relevant in the information age? Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 11(2), 1–24. O’Riagain, D. (1999). The importance of linguistic rights for speakers of lesser used languages. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 6(3), 289–298. O’Riagain, D. (2001). The European Union and the lesser used languages. International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 3(1), 33–43. O’Riagain, D. (2012). Some reflections on the new media and lesser used languages. Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 11(2), 37–41. Obracht-Prondzynski, C. (2007). The Kashubs today: Culture, language, identity. Gdansk: Instytut Kaszubski. Obracht-Prondzynski, C., & Wicherkiewicz, T. (2011). The Kashubs: Past and present. Bern: Peter Lang. Priestly, T. (2008). Promoting lesser-used languages through translation. Transcultural, 1(1), 68–80. Ruiz Vietez, E. J. (2001). The protection of linguistic minorities: A historical approach. International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 3(1), 5–14. Sierp, A. (2008). Minority language protection in Italy: Linguistic minorities and the media. Journal of Contemporary European Research, 4(4), 303–321. Toivanen, R. (2001). Saami in the European Union. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 8(2–3), 303–323. Veli-Pekka, L. (2004). The Sami people: Traditions in transition. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Wurm, S. (2010). Atlas of the World’s language in danger. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.

Preservation of Magahi Language in India: Contemporary Developments

64

Ram Nandan Prasad Sinha

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Origin and Diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Decline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Rejuvenation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Agitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Current Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1236 1239 1243 1244 1245 1247 1248 1251 1251 1252 1253

Abstract

Magahi is a language with a glorious past, a subdued intermediate period, a vigorous present, and a promising future. It is the language of the people of Magah, formerly known as Magadha which emerged as a small kingdom around its capital Girivraja (now Rajgir) in central Bihar. Magadha gradually expanded to be one of the world’s largest empires of the time (third to fourth century BC), extending from the Bay of Bengal in the east to the Hindukush Mountains and Afghanistan in the northwest, and the River Cavery in the south. Subsequently, Magah reduced to its present form between River Ganga in the North, River Sone in the west, the escarpment of the Chhotanagpur Plateau (of Jharkhand State) in

R. N. P. Sinha (*) Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara, Gujarat, India Bihar Magahi Mandal, Patna, Bihar, India The Center For Geosheelitic Studies, Patna, Bihar, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_204

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R. N. P. Sinha

the south, and the Kharagpur Hills in the east. Magahi, in its older form, expanded as the official language of the empire (though not as the spoken language) as is evident from the presence of Ashokan rock edicts over the territory. Contemporary Magahi is now confined more or less to the original Magah. This Magahi is believed to have evolved from the Vedic Sanskrit following the path: Sanskrit1 indicating a foreign emphasis and values 1 and 1.0 indicating some support for the hypothesis that swing states are strategically emphasized. However, three of the election cycles returned coefficients 1 [shaded] indicates specific emphasis on swing states) Year 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Candidates Ford v. Carter Carter v. Reagan Reagan v. Mondale Bush v. Dukakis Bush v. Clinton Clinton v. Dole Gore v. Bush Bush v. Kerry McCain v. Obama Obama v. Romney

Swing state coefficient 1.35 0.89 No mentions 2.45 1.25 0.44 1.56 1.17 1.25 2.00

use. For example, the first of the 2004 debates between Governor George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry was intended to focus on foreign policy. Nevertheless, Senator Kerry mentioned Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa (Table 3, Example 2). Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin were won by a margin of about 2% or less of the popular vote. This anecdote, along with other recent examples (see Table 3), supplements the analyses and provides some support that candidates do attempt to show intimate knowledge of the swing state electorates.

6

Conclusion

Geographic language and political debates mark an interesting intersection between political geography and communication studies. Both are politically important in their own right. Geographic language, especially place names, can be imbued with political meaning and imagery, and political debates reflect some commitment to liberal democratic ideals. The purpose of this chapter was to highlight this intersection by investigating the strategic potential, and use, of geographic language in one of the US’s most important and widely viewed campaign events. We did so by examining two ways in which candidates could theoretically use geographic language. First, we analyzed the differences in use of foreign and domestic terms between incumbents and challengers. Our hypothesis that incumbents would emphasize foreign references and challengers would emphasize domestic references reflects aspects of strategic political communication theories. We measured candidate emphasis using a comparative ratio between foreign and domestic place name references. The findings supported our hypothesis. On average, incumbents used more foreign place names than challengers and challengers used more domestic place names than incumbents. Further, we found that in every election cycle, incumbent ratios were higher (reflecting more foreign emphasis) when compared to the challenger. Arguably, in order to gain strategic advantage,

1976

M. D. Balentine and G. R. Webster

Table 3 Anecdotal examples of swing state references Candidate [Timea] Gore [16.20]

Bush [18.07]

Gore [59.11]

Ex. 2 Kerry [19.02]

The First Gore-Bush Debate – Tuesday, October 03, 2000 “Let me give you one quick example. There is a man here tonight named George McKinney from Milwaukee. He’s 70 years old, has high blood pressure, his wife has heart trouble. They have an income of $25,000 a year. They can’t pay for their prescription drugs and so they’re some of the ones that go to Canada regularly in order to get their prescription drugs. Under my plan, half of their costs would be paid right away.” “Secondly, if you’re a family of four making $50,000 in Massachusetts, you get a 50% tax cut. Let me give you one example. The Strunk family in Allentown, Pennsylvania, I campaigned with them the other day. They make $51,000 combined income, they pay about $3500 in taxes. Under my plan, they get $1800 of tax relief. Under Vice President Gore’s plan, they get $145 of tax relief. Now you tell me who stands on the side of the fence. You ask the Strunks whose plan makes more sense. There is a difference of opinion. He would rather spend the family’s $1800 and I would rather the Strunks spend their own money.” “I would like to tell you a quick story. I got a letter today as I left Sarasota, Florida. I’m here with a group of 13 people from around the country who helped me prepare. We had a great time. Two days ago we ate lunch at a restaurant. The guy that served us lunch gave me a letter today. His name is Randy Ellis. He has a 15-year-old daughter named Caley, who is in Sarasota High School. Her science class was supposed to be for 24 students. She’s the 36th student in that classroom. They sent me a picture of her in the classroom. They can’t squeeze another desk in for her, so she has to stand during class. I want the federal government, consistent with local control and new accountability, to make improvement of our schools the number one priority so Caley will have a desk and can sit down in a classroom where she can learn.” First Bush–Kerry Debate – Thursday, September 30, 2004 “I’ve met kids in Ohio, parents in Wisconsin places, Iowa, where they’re going out on the Internet to get the state-of-the-art body gear

Margins In 2000 Gore won Wisconsin by 0.22%

Bush lost Pennsylvania by 4.17%

Gore lost Florida by 0.01%

Kerry lost Ohio by 2.01%, Wisconsin by 0.38%, and Iowa by 0.67% (continued)

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1977

Table 3 (continued) Candidate [Timea]

Ex. 3 Obama [1.14.16]

Romney [1.26.31]

Ex. 4 Obama [20.58]

Romney [21.55]

Romney [2.45]

The First Gore-Bush Debate – Tuesday, October 03, 2000 to send to their kids. Some of them got them for a birthday present.” Third Obama-Romney Debate – October 22, 2012 “In fact, just recently steelworkers in Ohio and throughout the Midwest— Pennsylvania—are in a position now to sell steel to China because we won that case. We had a tire case in which they were flooding us with cheap domestic tires—or—or cheap Chinese tires. And we put a stop to it and as a consequence saved jobs throughout America. I have to say that Governor Romney criticized me for being too tough in that tire case; said this wouldn’t be good for American workers and that it would be protectionist.” “You said by now we’d be at 5.4% unemployment. We’re 9 million jobs short of that. I’ve met some of those people. I’ve met them in Appleton, Wisconsin. I met a young woman in—in Philadelphia who’s coming out of—out of college, can’t find work.” Second Obama–Romney Debate – October 16, 2012 “So, I’m all for pipelines. I’m all for oil production. What I’m not for is us ignoring the other half of the equation. So, for example, on wind energy, when Governor Romney says ‘these are imaginary jobs.’ When you’ve got thousands of people right now in Iowa, right now in Colorado, who are working, creating wind power with goodpaying manufacturing jobs, and the Republican senator in that—in Iowa is all for it, providing tax breaks to help this work and Governor Romney says: ‘I’m opposed. I’d get rid of it.’” “I don’t have a policy of stopping wind jobs in Iowa and that—they’re not phantom jobs. They’re real jobs. . .. I appreciate wind jobs in Iowa and across our country. I appreciate the jobs in coal and oil and gas.” “Your question is one that’s being asked by college kids all over this country. I was in Pennsylvania with someone who had just graduated—this was in Philadelphia—and she said, ‘I’ve got my degree. I can’t find a

Margins

Ohio and Iowa were decided by margins of 2.97% and 5.81%, respectively

Pennsylvania was decided by 5.38%

Iowa was decided by 5.81% and Colorado by 5.37%

Pennsylvania was decided by 5.38%

(continued)

1978

M. D. Balentine and G. R. Webster

Table 3 (continued) Candidate [Timea]

The First Gore-Bush Debate – Tuesday, October 03, 2000 job. I’ve got three part- time jobs. They’re just barely enough to pay for my food and pay for an apartment. I can’t begin to pay back my student loans’.”

Margins Pennsylvania was decided by 5.38%

a

All times with the exception of the October 22, 2012 debate were collected from the Presidential Debates – C-SPAN Video Library (2016)

incumbents attempt to demonstrate their foreign policy expertise during debates while challengers, typically lacking foreign policy experience, attempt to guide discussion toward domestic issues. We also found a pattern of performance suggestive of the importance of candidate advantage. Incumbent victories were characterized by incumbents’ ability to demonstrated greater foreign policy knowledge. On the other hand, incumbent losses were associated with instances in which superior foreign policy expertise was not evident or successfully communicated. Geographic language is especially important within the context of US electoral system. We hypothesized that because of the importance of swing states to electoral victory, candidates would strategically use geographic language that resonated with the voters in those locations. We analyzed the emphasis on swing states during debates by comparing swing state references to all domestic references. There was modest support for our hypothesis. It is possible that candidates do not intentionally use swing states associated language in debates to try and connect with voters since it might be viewed as pandering. This may be considered an ill-advised maneuver since debates occur on a national stage. Instead, candidates may rely on campaign stops to connect with swing state voters. In spite of the limited support for our hypothesis, the anecdotal examples are intriguing and suggest analysis of this hypothesis should continue. It is particularly interesting that in some of the debates focusing on foreign policy, candidates still manage to mention swing states and their constituencies. An alternative explanation may be reflected in the broadcasting/narrowcasting dichotomy and the seeming geographic paradox it reveals in debates. Debates are broadcasting events but participant rhetoric can nevertheless subtly narrowcast by mentioning specific states and cities. Debate performances can alter poll numbers and elections outcomes. Thus, participants attempt to navigate these events with caution by minimizing differences in an effort to appeal to moderate voters nationwide. This does not negate the need to distinguish oneself from the opponent or the importance of voters in swing states. Modest referencing of important states may be a cautious way of balancing broadcasting and narrowcasting messages such that strategic utility is maximized. In any case, the noted conundrum for presidential candidates suggests that further attention should be given to developing a political communication theory that is more informed concerning the complexity of strategic geographic language.

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1979

References Alderman, D. H. (2008). Place, naming and the interpretation of cultural landscapes. In B. J. Graham & P. Howard (Eds.), The Ashgate research companion to heritage and identity. Burlington, VT: Ashgate http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=438418. Bakir, V. (2016). Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles. https://nls.ldls.org.uk/welcome.html?ark:/81055/vdc_100029369418.0x000001. Balentine, M., Frazier, J., & Webster, G. (2014). Geographic place name use in the 2012 presidential debates. In J. Clark Archer, F. Davidson, E. H. Fouberg, K. C. Martis, R. L. Morrill, F. M. Shelley, R. H. Watrel, & G. R. Webster (Eds.), Atlas of the 2012 elections (pp. 63–66). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Benoit, W. L. (2007). Communication in political campaigns. New York: Peter Lang. Benoit, W. L., & Airne, D. (2005). A functional analysis of American vice presidential debates. Argumentation and Advocacy, 41(4), 225–236. Benoit, W. L., & Hansen, G. J. (2001). Presidential debate questions and the public agenda. Communication Quarterly, 49(2), 130–141. Berg, L. D., & Vuolteenaho, J. (Eds.). (2009). Critical Toponymies: The contested politics of place naming. Farnham: Ashgate. Cohen, S. B., & Kliot, N. (1992). Place-names in Israel’s ideological struggle over the administered territories. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82(4), 653–680. Commission on Presidential Debates. (2016). Accessed 14 Aug 2016. http://www.debates.org/. Dionne Jr, E. J. (2016, April 19). Ted Cruz and the Revenge of New York Values. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/04/19/ted-cruz-and-therevenge-of-new-york-values/. Fridkin, K. L., Kenney, P. J., Gershon, S. A., & Woodall, G. S. (2008). Spinning debates: The impact of the news media’s coverage of the final 2004 presidential debate. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 13(1), 29–51. Goodey, B. R. (1969). Messages in space: Some observations on geography and communications. North Dakota Quarterly, 37(2), 34–49. Hellweg, S. A., Pfau, M., & Brydon, S. R. (1992). Televised presidential debates: Advocacy in contemporary America. New York: Praeger. Holbrook, T. M. (1999). Political learning from presidential debates. Political Behavior, 21(1), 67–89. Jamieson, K. H., & Birdsell, D. S. (1990). Presidential debates: The challenge of creating an informed electorate. New York: Oxford University Press http://site.ebrary.com/lib/alltitles/ docDetail.action?docID=10087132. Kendall, K. E. (1997). Presidential debates through media eyes. American Behavioral Scientist, 40(8), 1193–1207. Lakoff, George. (2008). The political mind: A cognitive Scientist’s guide to your brain and its politics (Reprint ed.). New York: Penguin Books. Lilleker, D. (2006). Key concepts in political communication. London/Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Manheim, J. B. (1991). All of the people, all the time: Strategic communication and American politics. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. McCammon, S. (2016). Will Cruz’s Distaste For ‘New York Values’ Hurt Him With New York Voters? NPR.org. Accessed 29 July 2016. http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473328280/willcruzs-distaste-for-new-york-values-hurt-him-with-new-york-voters. McKinney, M. (2008). Debates. In L. L. Kaid & C. Holtz-Bacha (Eds.), Encyclopedia of political communication (Vol. 2, pp. 160–165). Thousand Oaks: SAGE. McKinney, M. S., & Carlin, D. (2004). Political campaign debates. In L. L. Kaid (Ed.), Handbook of political communication research (pp. 203–234). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. McKinney, M., & Chattopadhyay, S. (2007). Political engagement through debates: Young citizens’ reactions to the 2004 presidential debates. American Behavioral Scientist, 50(9), 1093–1111.

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Morris, E., & Johnson, J. M. (2011). Strategic maneuvering in the 2008 presidential debates. American Behavioral Scientist, 55(3), 284–306. O’Loughlin, J., & Grant, R. (1990). The political geography of presidential speeches, 1946-87. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80(4), 504–530. Payne, J. G., Golden, J. L., Marlier, J., & Ratzan, S. C. (1989). Perceptions of the 1988 presidential and vice-presidential debates. The American Behavioral Scientist, 32(4), 425–435. Pew Research Center. (2008a). http://www.people-press.org/2008/11/13/high-marks-for-the-cam paign-a-high-bar-for-obama/. Pew Research Center. (2008b). http://www.people-press.org/2008/10/22/most-voters-say-newsmedia-wants-obama-to-win/. Pfau, M. (2002). The subtle nature of presidential debate influence. Argumentation and Advocacy, 38(4), 251–261. “Presidential Debates – C-SPAN Video Library”. (2016). Accessed 14 Aug 2016. http://www.cspanvideo.org/topic/PresidentialDebates. Saenz, A. (2016, February 2). Cruz Credits Attack on Trump’s ‘NY Values’ in Iowa Win. ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-cruz-credits-attack-donald-trumps-york-values/story? id=36658796. Sheets, P., Domke, D. S., Wells, C., Lingle, C. J., Ballantyne, A., Al-Sumait, F., & Cordingley, K. (2011). America, America: National identity, presidential debates, and national mood. Mass Communication and Society, 14(6), 765–786. Sutherland, C. L., & Webster, G. R. (1994). The geography of the 1992 U.S. presidential debates. The Geographical Bulletin, 36(2), 83–93. Varnum, A. (2016). ‘Hope’ Springs Eternal...Or at Least for This Election Year. International Documentary Association. Accessed 10 Apr 2016. http://www.documentary.org/magazine/ hope-springs-eternalor-least-election-year. Webster, G. R. (2008). A review of: ‘Putting voters in their place: Geography and elections in great Britain. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4), 951–952.

Pre-Slavic Minority Languages and Geographic Names in Northwest Russia

104

Kathleen Braden

Contents 1 Constructing Place and the Role of Language: A Framework for Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Linguistic Hegemony and Critical Toponymy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Contested Space and Processes of Toponymic Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Commodification of Place Names as New Linguistic Hegemony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1982 1983 1988 1991 1995

Abstract

Substrate toponyms of Finno-Ugric origin in northwest Russia demonstrate the proposition in critical toponymy theory that place names, especially in contested spaces, are expressions of power relations. Special attention is given to hydronyms – place names for water features. Non-Slavic ethnic groups in the region are a declining percent of the population, and people speaking a Finno-Ugric language as their primary tongue are diminishing with urbanization, modernization, and continued Russification, even in the post-Soviet period. The employment of indigenous place names to attract Russian tourists creates commodification of place identity and presents itself a new form of hegemony. Keywords

Critical toponymy · Hegemony · Commodification · Place construction

K. Braden (*) School of Business, Government, and Economics, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_11

1981

1982

1

K. Braden

Constructing Place and the Role of Language: A Framework for Analysis

Consider the interplay of language and geography: the place name “Moskva” for the capital city of the great Russian state may not even be of Slavic origin. Named for the river that flows through it, Moscow’s toponymic origins are disputed. It could be derived from the Russian word for “marshy” or, just as plausibly, be from the FinnoUgric terms mos (to darken) and ka (water) or from a Finno-Ugric term meaning “calf ford.” The irony may not be lost on geographers, who know that the idea of place is dynamic and a social production. The spirit of past cultures that dominated northwest Russia still can be found in the names left behind on the landscape. Linguistic scholars examine the calques (loan words), lexemes (basic units of meaning), and other structural elements of place names to determine substrate of past ethnic groups (Saarikivi 2007; Mullonen 2007), formulating linguistic theory on how place names are created and evolve. The role of place names to evidence hegemonies may be set within the theoretical framework of critical toponymy, a movement to take toponymy beyond mere cataloging of place names and instead, analyze their political and cultural implications. In the introduction to their book on critical toponymy, Berg and Vuolteenaho (2009) warned that there is not always a precise definition of what is meant by the action of naming as a concept, similar to the way geographers have evolved the concept of place from a fixed item on the map to an organic, social construct. Because of potential confusion between geographers and linguists in defining the process of naming, the book editors suggested that place names should be understood as social facts “embedded in intricate cultural interrelations and tension-filled conceptions of space” and furthermore, they accepted that place may be embedded in “uneven power relations” (Berg and Vuolteenaho 2009: 9). If geography means “description of the earth,” certainly humanity has needed language first to formulate the attributes that give shape to places. Mapping and naming go hand-in-hand. The delineation and identity of a special section of the planet cannot be realized without the descriptor that gives rise to the toponym. Yi-Fu Tuan (1991) warned fellow geographers that we cannot overlook the crucial role of language in the core, place-making activity of human geography. “Speech is a component of the total force that transforms nature into a human place” (Tuan 1991: 685). He identified the power behind the process of naming: that it can call something into being and “wipe out the past and call forth the new” (Tuan 1991: 688). Naming a place, therefore, can be a kind of hegemonic act to replace one culture with another and such actions may have a moral dimension. But the myths and stories of the past at times persist to define geographies. Simon Schama (1995: 16) explored the relationship between recognition, myth, and the making of place identity in his book, noting the persistence of the past: “Landscape and Memory has been built around such moments of recognition as this, when a place suddenly exposes its connections to an ancient and peculiar vision of the forest, the mountain, or the river.” Water, in particular, seems the earth landscape element that holds special memories and Schama, as he devoted all of part two of his book to water, wrote about the number of rivers that hold the primordial fluvial myth and mystery. In

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1983

fact, water is such an important part of the landscape, it has its own sub-field in the study of place naming: hydronymy. I explore below the proposition that water seems the element that still holds the most persistent imprint of the old Finno-Ugric languages on northwest Russia. In addition to cultural and historical significance of toponyms, some researchers are starting to combine toponymic studies with onomastics (the analysis of proper names), etymology of geographic feature names, and physical geography to attempt reconstruction of past environmental conditions in a territory (see, for example, Ahlqvist 2006). As language creates place identity, the naming of places in turn helps create the identity of a culture. Geographers are fellow-travelers with linguists, anthropologists, and historians in examining toponymy. Tuan (1991) cited the Dreamtime of Australian aboriginal populations in creating myth and story to describe landscape. Rautio Helander (2009) has examined the right to determine toponyms within the broader context of rights to language and identity for the Sámi people as they confront the “Norwegianization” of place names within their territory. Likewise, Thornton (1997), in his review of significant place name studies by anthropologists, has examined the importance of indigenous place names for North American Indian culture and argued: Place names are a particularly interesting aspect of culture because they intersect three fundamental domains of cultural analysis: language, thought, and the environment. . .toponyms, both by themselves and in the context of narratives, songs, and everyday speech, provide valuable insights into the ways humans experience the world and appropriate images of the landscape to interpret and communicate their experiences. (Thornton 1997: 209)

Thus, places are often contested territories and toponymy reflects the hegemonic power struggle that Tuan, Rautio Helander, and Thornton describe. The Uralic language group represents the tongues spoken by people who witnessed the influx of Indo-European languages historically, including the Slavic group. But even as they competed with various Indo-European languages, the Uralic ones also apparently borrowed from them and then were gradually squeezed into the remaining islands of languages still spoken today in Europe, including Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian. In Russia, remnants of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) languages are still found within minority groups of the Russian Federation (Table 1) and in recent years, continually represent a smaller portion of speakers in their home territories. A few of the Uralic languages are rapidly becoming extinct, leaving only the shadow of distant ancestors in the places they originally named.

2

Linguistic Hegemony and Critical Toponymy

Indigenous place names are often lost or modified when a more powerful group moves in and takes control of territory. In their collection of essays on critical toponymy, Berg and Vuolteenaho (2009) noted the connection of toponymy with

1984

K. Braden

Table 1 Finno-Ugric populations in Russian Federation, 1959, 2002, 2010

Language Khanty Mansi Komi Udmurt Mari (includes Meadow Mari, Mountain Mari, Eastern Mari) Mordvinic (includes Erzya and Moksha)

Percent of Russian population 1959 2002 2010 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.36a 0.20 0.16 0.52 0.44 0.39 0.42 0.42 0.38

1.03

0.58

0.52

Finnish Karelian

0.06 0.14

0.02 0.06

0.01 0.04

Veps Vote Ingrian (Izhorian people) Estonian

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.01 0.07

0.0 0.02

0.0 0.01

Geographic area of Russian Federation Khanty-Mansi, Yamal-Nenets Khanty-Mansi, Yamal-Nenets Komi Republic, Perm Kray Udmurt Republic Mari Republic, Bashkortostan

Mordvinian Republic, Samara oblast’, Penza oblast’, Ulyanovsky oblast’, Orenburg oblast’ Leningrad oblast’, Karelian Republic Karelian Republic, Tver oblast’, Murmansk oblast’, Leningrad oblast’ Leningrad oblast’, Vologda oblast’ Leningrad oblast’ Leningrad oblast’ Leningrad oblast’, Pskov oblast’

Source: http://www.statdata.ru/nacionalnyj-sostav-rossii Included in permanent population

a

a tendency to standardize and systematize names at the national level for the sake of modernization and technocratic-administrative convenience, leading to “toponymic silencing” (see also Kalinin 2000). In their discussion of critical toponymy, Rose-Redwood and Alderman (2011) argue that toponymy is not merely a cultural enterprise, but has political, social, and economic aspects that call for a political theory of place-naming. The authors cite the importance of linguistic hegemony in creating a more critical engagement with toponymy: [political toponymy] must also address the broader politics of language. An unequal balance of power characterizes the geography of language in the world, where the hegemony of certain languages grows at the cost of minority languages. (Rose-Redwood and Alderman 2011: 4)

While toponyms may be the visible expression on the map of hegemonic past processes, they do not receive the same attention to culture rights as do the parent language from which they are derived. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was signed in Strasbourg in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe and Russia, as a member state of the Council, became a signatory in 2001 but has yet to ratify it (Zamyatin 2012; Kozhemyakov 2008). The goal of the charter is to encourage the protection of historical minority languages. The Charter may be set against a backdrop of varying expressions of linguistic rights under national laws and

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1985

Fig. 1 Russian Federation political units with Finno-Ugric culture groups. (Map by Kathleen Braden)

international expressions of the need to maintain language diversity (Koenig 2001). Dating back to the days of the Russian empire or subsequent Soviet Union, Russia has a long and complex history of promoting Russian as the dominant language of economic and political life, as well as offering symbolic service to preserving the multitude of languages spoken across the country. The present Russian Federation holds 100 minority languages, but by article 68 of the constitution, official languages other than Russian can only be recognized for units with status as 1 of the 22 internal republics. The classification within the Finno-Ugric group is the subject of much scholarly disagreement, but in general, the languages are divided into Finno-Permic and Ugric (Kurs 1994, 2001; Lallukka 2001; Taagepera 1999) with sometimes related Samoyedic groups included. In the Russian Federation, the group includes Finnish, Mordvin, Erzya, Komi, Mari (divided into Meadow and Mountain Mari), Khanty, Mansi, Komi, Karelian, Vepsian, Votic, Izhorian (Ingurian), Saami (though sometimes included as a separate group), Udmurt, and Moksha. Figure 1 shows the current political units within the Russian Federation that hold remaining concentrations of Finno-Ugric speakers. The Merya language was once present in the Kostroma and Yaroslavl areas, but is now extinct. Likewise, the Meshchera people who lived between the Oka and Klyazma rivers and were thought to speak a dialect of Mordvin, have now largely disappeared as a separate culture. Finno-Ugric groups along the Volga have been impacted not only by Slavic pressures moving into their territory over the centuries, but also by Turkic influences (Table 2). The Udmurt people, for example, were heavily influenced by Tatar rule and the Mari people had extensive interaction with Volga Bulgars (Lallukka 2001).

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Table 2 Key events in Slavic- Finno-Ugric relations Event Eastern Slavs move toward Lake Ladoga Eastern Slavic tribes of Indo-European language group expand northward to Lake Il’men region Finno-Permic people establish merchant republic at mouth of Dvina River Krivichi and Slovene Eastern Slavic tribes in Novgorod region interact with Varangian leadership Novgorod on Volkhov River noted in 9th century chronicles and probably included Finnic and Votian settlements (Lallukka 2001) Slavic settlements push into Muromian and Merian regions on Upper Volga River and into territory of Vepsians near Ladoga and Onega Lakes and Votians between Ladoga and Peipsi Lakes (Lallukka 2001) Slav Christianize and control Karelian territory, Novgorod expands into Karelia Votians, Izhorians, and Ingrians under control of Novgorod state Principalities Suzdal and Vladimir penetrate into Finnic and Volgaic populations’ territory: Vepsians, Merians, Muromians, Maris, Moksherzians (Lallukka 2001) but also under control at times of Kazan Khanate Komi populations Christianized Mansi and Khanty people resist Muscovy expansion Russians colonize Udmurt territory and is annexed by Muscovy Russian army conquers Kazan. Moksherzians, Hill Maris, Meadow Maris, and Udmurt divided in loyalties to Moscow or Kazan All Finno-Ugric peoples east of Estonia and Finland under Russian rule Uprisings against Russians by Maris, Khantys, Udmurt, Moksha Linguistic awakenings among many Finno-Ugric intelligentsia First Duma includes Moksherzian and Udmurt representatives Congress of the Smaller Peoples of the Middle Volga, various congresses or conferences of different Finno-Ugric groups Finland and Estonia declare independence Council of Nationalities formed within USSR Various internal political-geographic designations created for Finno-Ugric nationalities Soviet government repression of linguistic, cultural, and political movements among Finno-Ugric peoples Karelia entered by Finnish Forces during World War II; Ingrian (Izhorian) areas occupied by Germans; Finno-Ugric culture groups in Leningrad area under repressive pressures by both Germans and Soviet forces Supreme Soviet votes to end USSR; Russian Federation emerges Article 68 of the Russian Constitution gives internal republics the right to establish state languages alongside Russian as language of the Russian Federation Russia signatory to Council of Europe Charter on Regional and Minority Languages

Time period 5th century 9th–10th centuries 9th century 9th century 9th century 10th century

11th–13th centuries 11th–12th centuries 12th–15th centuries

Late 14th century 15th century 1489 1552 1600 17th century 19th century Early 20th century 1917–1918 1917–1918 1924 1920s–1930s 1930s World War II

1991 1993

2001 (continued)

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1987

Table 2 (continued) Event Mari people circulate petition for stronger cultural rights Finno-Ugric Cultural Center of the Russian Federation established by law Seventh World Congress on Finno-Ugric and Samoyed People held in Lahti, Finland

Time period 2005 2006 2016

Many of the remaining peoples are losing native speakers very rapidly. In 2005, The Economist reported on the political pressures both inside and outside Russia to help preserve these disappearing cultures: An appeal from the Foundation for the Salvation of the Erzya Language described the position of its people, who live mainly in the central Russian republic of Mordovia as ‘critical and even hopeless’ because of the Russocentrism of the education system and public broadcasting. (The Economist 2005: 73)

In her review of legal protection for linguistic diversity in Russia, Iryna Ulasiuk (2011: 71) noted the urgency of language protection in Russia because of the threat of extinction faced by many minority languages. Debate over conservation of minority languages dates back to Tsarist time in the Russian empire. It was also a contested topic in the USSR, with Lenin hesitant in early Soviet years to impose Russian as the dominant language in non-Russian republics. But competitive processes of Russification and indigenization vied for policy throughout Soviet history, depending on the regime in power (see Blitstein 2001; Taagepera 1999; Tulun Oǧuzhan 2013), culminating in the realization on the eve of Soviet devolution that a national awakening of many groups could occur after the break-up (Ulasiuk 2011). In the postSoviet Russian Federation, with the rights of republics to use their own indigenous languages alongside Russian as the state language, Ulasiuk (2011: 76) noted that they have been “quite enthusiastic about proclaiming their own state languages” and that most have made the language of the titular nationality the official language of the republic. But it may be too late for many of the languages. Despite the legal guarantees, the Finno-Ugric groups continue to lose the percent of the population who speak the indigenous language, as indicated in Fig. 2. Several reasons may be proposed for this fact. First, the migration of various groups from rural to urban areas in the twentieth century may have hastened the loss of language. Second, during the Soviet times, it was apparent that lack of ability to speak Russian would be a setback for economic or political advancement. Even when given the opportunity to have children taught in indigenous languages in schools, many parents opt for Russian (Taagepera 1999; Lallukka 2001). Within the framework of language loss and critical toponymy, I explore below Finno-Ugric toponyms of Russia as (1) expressions of past landscapes, (2) the visible results of power struggles between dominant and minority cultures, and (3) commodities that may be “traded” or monetized for the sake of tourism

Percentage

1988

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

K. Braden 97

99 94

89 75

95

78 69 71

71

91

88 72

65

77

89

71 63

57

1939

51

49

1979 36

1989

27 15

Mordvin

Udmurt

Mari

Komi

Karelian

ca. 2010

Veps

Fig. 2 Percent of Finno-Ugric people in the USSR who consider their indigenous language to be their first language. (Sources: Konyukhov 2008: 141; Rosstat 2010: 248 (for Karelian and Veps ca. 2010 data)). Note: Present-day (i.e., ca. 2010) values are for the titular republics of Russian Federation, whereas the Soviet era data is reported for all of the USSR and uses the phrase “configured as native language.” For example, p. 250 of Rosstat report notes that 62.8% of Komis in Komi Rep. spoke Komi; p. 270, 70.7% of Mordvins spoke Mordvin and 72% of Mari in Mari-el Republic spoke Mari; p. 272, 65% of Udmurts spoke Udmurt as native language. Despite the different reporting terms, the data suggests a continued decline in number who use indigenous language in the internal republics as first language

development. This last phenomenon is particularly problematic because, just as modernization creates pressure for assimilation that might cause extinction of an authentic culture, tourist marketing may create a false, mythologized narrative of cultures and territoriality, reified in celebration of indigenous toponymy that no longer relates to a living language.

3

Contested Space and Processes of Toponymic Formation

If critical toponymy theory outlines contested power struggles that occur over geographic space, the competition is often fiercest in borderland regions. In the case of Russia, a good example is the Russian-Estonian borderland. Alena Pfoser (2014) refers to this place as a “discursive battlefield,” but she also outlines the development of national narratives in the region and the reliance on memory by local populations. Borderlands have a special character because they are zones of contact and in her interviews with Russian speakers in Narva, Estonia, Pfoser found memories of the past helped people make meaning of their current situation in independent Estonia. Do borderland toponyms have special significance for people who perceive themselves to be marginalized? Anthony Smith (1996) has explored the process of regaining a national identity through cultural purification and reestablishment of a vernacular language. He notes that “ethnoscapes” need to be made pure again, with alien cultural elements removed, in order to regain a sense of territorial power or ownership for a nationality group. This process has been uncertain for the various Finno-Ugric peoples who inhabit territories at the margins of the Russian (and then Soviet) state, as well as

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1989

along the Volga river Russian heartland areas. Lallukka (2001: 18) in analyzing the status of east Finnic minorities on the eve of the USSR break-up wrote: “it goes without saying that a cohesive Finno-Ugric culture withered away a long time ago. Moreover, a common linguistic origin as such is not sufficient proof for establishing joint ethnic ancestry.” He goes on to outline the historic process by which the east Finnic nationalities had been reduced to minorities in their own lands: • • • •

Movement of an alien culture into territory through a borderland Acculturation as declining cultural influence Assimilation in which ethnicity is no longer pertinent to group identity Conformity to the dominant culture (Lallukka 2001)

But the evidence of original culture may remain, even along contested borderlands, as well as in former culture hearths of previous ethnic groups in the form of oikonyms (settlement names) that are not linguistically extinguished, even if the indigenous languages is no longer spoken as a living tongue. Sample oikonyms derived from underlying Finno-Ugric substrata are shown in Table 3. Ekaterina Zakharova (2015: 75) noted that toponyms can then be used for analysis to “reconstruct the main stages and pathways of colonization of the land, determine the nature of contacts between cultures and languages, and form conjectures about land use.” Table 3 Sample Finno-Ugric origin oikonyms Name Keunges Lavna Pit’kyarv’i Murom Kandalaksha Suoyarvi Izhevsk or Izhkar Yugorsk Ardatov Kizel Kudymkar Nytva Yoshkar-Ola Penza Kotlas Nyandoma Kondopoga Kostomuksha Lakhdenpokhya Pitkyaranta Totma

Location Murmansk obl. Murmansk obl. Leningrad obl. Vladimir obl. Murmansk obl. Karelian Rep. Udmurt Rep. Khanty-Mansi N.O. Mordvinian Rep. Perm krai Perm krai Perm krai Mari Rep. Penza obl. Arkhangelsk obl. Arkhangelsk obl. Karelian Rep. Karelian Rep. Karelian Rep. Karelian Rep. Vologda obl.

Origin Saami Saami Veps Finno-Ugric Karelian Finnish Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric Mordvinic Komi Komi Komi Mari Komi or Nenets Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric Karelian Finno-Ugric Karelian + Finnish Karelian Finno-Ugric

Meaning Waterfall Peat Long lake Ethnonym Corner inlet Swamp lake Winding (Izh River) Word for river Surname Ardat Birch-spruce forest Kudimov’s town Boggy place Red town Dry river Bay ? Ending for “river” Bear +end of bay Lake Far end of bay Long shore Swampy place

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Much as a geologist might excavate topographic layers to appreciate past processes, oikonyms and other toponyms act like guide fossils to offer a glimpse into past competition for space and even characteristics of economies and landscape patterns now extinct, for example, through toponyms derived from words for wildlife, plants, soils, fish, or topographic features in earlier cultures. Kert and Mamontova (1976), in their exploration of Karelian toponyms, even created a taxonomy of place name meanings related to natural features, animals abundant in past centuries, or now-extinct lifestyles and economies. To Lallukka’s description noted above, Zakharova (2015) added the notion that patterns of assimilation are very gradual, with a long period of bilingualism that can give way to dual place names: in the case of northwest Russia, old cadastral books from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries still listed original Finnic place names alongside Russian translations. Scholars of toponymy in the Russian Federation have provided a rich, detailed investigation of pre-Slavic toponyms in region-by-region case studies of areas such as Pskov oblast’ (Manakov 2008), Murom-Oka region (Beilekchi 2008), the Mari Republic (Vorontsova 2011), the Onega region (Mullonen 2008), the northern Dvina basin (Kochev 1984), and the Volga-Kama river system (Kuklin 1998; Arslanov 1995; see also Helimski 2006). The challenge for linguists is the complex social processes that modify oikonyms and other toponyms over time, much as geologic layers can be uplifted and folded. Sometimes, the names are amalgams (hybrids) of both Slavic and pre-Slavic terms: new lexemes or units of morphological analysis are created though calquing: borrowing words via a literal translation of the meaning. Mullonen (2008) has provided perhaps the most well-known scholarship on the hybridization process of toponymy in northwest Russia, showing that not only terms for places, but also landscape types and people’s surnames may indicate a melding of Russian and local languages, a process of phonetic integration. Thus, the Russian ending for a small river becomes linked to a Finnic term to create the place name Lokrechka or the western upland shore of the Azhnebnavolok peninsula becomes Kimberegi (with the Russian term bereg for shoreline). Zakharova (2015) noted that these types of place names are common in the Russian North: the name Kivi/järviI becomes Kivozero with the basic component (“lake”) translated into the dominant culture language, Russian, but the attributive descriptor (kivi, probably meaning “rocky”) left in the original Finno-Ugric language. Likewise, Ahlqvist (2001: 463), in examining the substrata for the Yaroslavl region along the Volga River, traced place names to the now-extinct Merya language, noting that “loss of material culture may not be accompanied by loss of language” as long as toponyms still existed on the landscape. Borders are often demarcated by rivers; it is therefore not surprising that a special branch of toponymy has emerged for the study of water features (hydronomy) as they facilitate movement of people and goods into zones of colonization. Rivers can establish a core identity of a people as the descriptor of the water is then used for the surrounding landscape and turned into a term of national identification: the Angles, who gave their name to the idea of England, once lived in a continental region which meant “river bend” (Ettema 2005).

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1991

Table 4 provides sample hydronyms from northwest Russia that are believed to be of Finno-Ugric origin. Many of the Finno-Ugric hydronyms in northwest Russia have significance in Slavic history. For example, the Ugra River (Fig. 3), Kaluga oblast’, was the scene of a 1480 stand-off between Grand Prince Ivan III and the armies of the Great Horde. Similar to oikonyms, hydronyms can indicate past cultural dominance by analysis of elements such as suffixes. The old Finno-Ugric term for river- jokemay still be present in the ending “ga” for so many river names in northwest Russia (Ahlqvist 2001). Thus, like the example of Moscow noted above, the name for the beloved feature that epitomizes the Russian heartland (Volga River) may actually have an imprint of the previously dominant Finno-Ugric culture in its name (Room 1996; Pospelov 2003). Other suffixes for lakes or rivers that demonstrate the remnant of Finno-Ugric cultures include zha, khnta, sha, nga, ki, nda, ma (as in Il’ma, Kerma, Korma, Pakhma), and many others (Ahlqvist 2001; Table 4). Descriptors such as “in” related to the word “big” show up in names like Inobozh or Inopash, indicating great water bodies (Ahlqvist 2001). Even parallel hydronyms found far outside the northwest in West Siberia, might be evidence of how widespread Finno-Ugric languages were in past centuries (Table 5; Kuklin 1998; Petrov 2014). In fact, Saarikivi, in exploring toponyms of the Arkhangelsk region, has argued that the historic hearth of the Proto-Uralic linguistic group was probably in the northern taiga zone because of evidence gleaned from hydronyms for rivers and the earliest dates of the spread of Slavic people into the region may be guessed by morphological adaptations of substrate toponyms that occurred (Saarikivi 2007). Thus, oikonyms and hydronyms bear witness to processes of invasion, colonization, settlement, modernization, and cultural suppression. But are such processes only matters for past histories? With the advent of the tourist industry into the Russian northwest, we might consider a recent social process that produces new meanings of place, often capitalizing on perceptions of significance carried by these toponyms in creating a mythologized past.

4

Commodification of Place Names as New Linguistic Hegemony

The Grand Duchy of Novgorod colonized Finno-Ugric lands through both settlement and Orthodox missionaries to the still-pagan Finno-Ugric groups. By the year 1600, all of the people east of Estonia and Finland were under Russian rule. Most remained rural and illiterate until, in the 1800s, there was a cultural awakening and books began to be printed in indigenous languages. Scholars, writers, and religious leaders led the way (Taagepera 1999). The latest form of hegemony from the dominant Slavic culture might arrive with a train ticket: a Russian tourist who, ironically, might seek to experience a lost culture assimilated by her Slavic ancestors but still imprinted in the toponymic imagery of her destination. An analogous case may be noted in terms of naming rights in the state of Hawaii. Douglas Herman examined the persistence of indigenous place names even after

1992

K. Braden

Table 4 Sample Finno-Ugric hydronyms in Russian Federation Name Adzva Agan Alatyr’ Bolshaya Kogshaga Chusovaya

Location Tributary of USA Khanty-Mansi A.O. Mordvin Rep. Mari-El Rep.

Origin Komi Khanty Mordvin Mari

Meaning Floodland-water Unknown Unknown Unknown

Perm kray

Komi

Il’men Insar Inta Issa Izhma Izhora Kama Kem’ Kivach Kolva Konda

Novgorod obl. Mordvin Rep. Komi Rep. Mordvin. Rep. Komi Rep. Leningrad obl. Udmurt Rep. Mordvin Rep. Karelia Komi republic Khanty-Mansi A.O.

Kos’va Ladoga Lyunda Mezen Mga Moskvaa Msta Nevaa

Perm kray Karelia Mari-El Rep. Komi Rep. Leningrad obl. Smolensk and Moscow obl. Novgorod obl. Leningrad obl.

Niva Northern Dvina Northern Sos’va Okaa Okhta Onega Oyat Pechora

Murmansk obl. Vologda, Arkhangelsk obl.; Perm kray Khanty-Mansi A.O.

Finnish Mordvin Nenets Maybe Mansi Komi Ingrian-Izhorian Udmurt or Finnish Mordvin Finn Komi Finnish or southern Samoyed Komi Finnish Mari Komi Finnish Finno-Ugric Finnish Finnish, Karelian or Saami Finnish Baltic-Finnish

Fast river or river in deep valley Small lake Big swamp Abundant water Full of fish “River” Maybe “winding” “Big river” “Big river” Stormy, impetuous Fish + river Long Dry or shallow Alodejoki low place river Possibly “residential” After Mos’ tribe Egg river Calf ford or dark water Black Swampy river or swift river Fast-flowing, turbulent Deep river

Komi

Sleeve-river

Flows to Volga Leningrad obl. Karelia Leningrad obl. Komi Rep.

Mari Izhorian or Votic Finnish Vepsian Komi, Nenets

Pinega Ponoy Suoyarvi Sura

Arkhangelsk obl. Murmansk obl. Karelia Mordvinian Rep.

Finnish Saami Karelian Mountain Maria

“Aka” older sister Bears Main river Creek Maybe “forest inhabitant” Little river Dog Swampy lake “River” (continued)

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1993

Table 4 (continued) Name Svir’

Location Leningrad obl.

Syas’

Novgorod and Leningrad obl. Perm kray Arkhangelsk obl. Smolensk and Kaluga obl. Trib of Pechora Perm kray Vologda obl. Leningrad obl. Komi Rep. Kirovsk and Volgda obl. Mari-El Rep.

Sylva Uftyuga Ugraa Usa Vishera Vologda Vuoksi Vychegda Yug Yunga a

Origin Pre-Baltic, Finnish, or Veps Pre-Baltic or Finnish

Meaning Deep

Komi-perm Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric Komi Finno-Ugric Vepsa Finnish Komi Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric

Melt water Convergence ? Tributary Northern river White Flow “Meadow river” “River” Ravine with water

Osprey

Disputed

Fig. 3 Ugra River, Kaluga oblast’, demarcating a line of forts that protected Muscovy from Tatar raids. The river was the scene of a 1480 stand-off between Grand Prince Ivan III and the armies of the Great Horde. (Photo by Kathleen Braden)

takeover by the Caucasian, continental culture. While many Hawaiian names are retained on the landscape, they are part of what he calls the “anti-conquest” language because while local sovereignty was lost and the Hawaiian language made almost

1994

K. Braden

Table 5 Select parallel hydronomies of West Siberia and Volga-Kama Region West Siberia Bui river (Shaksha system) Ik river (Berda system) Iksa river (Chaya system) Kiner river (Kondoma system near Altai Republic) Kuksha river (Tom system) Ona river (Uda system) Suma river (Chulym system) Usa river(Tom system) Shergarka river (Ob’ system)

Volga-Kama Bui river (Vyatka system, Kirov oblast) Ik river(Kama system, Tatarstan) Ir-Iksa river; Iksha river (Great Kokshaga system) Kiner river (Kirov oblast) Kuksha river (Rutka system) Ona river (Lazh system) Sumka river (Volga system) Usa river (near Kazan) Shurgarka river (Yushut system)

Source: Kuklin (1998: 25–27)

extinct, cultural terms (“aloha” for a greeting) and toponyms became “a commodity intended to develop a unique sense of place for the Islands. . .and to create a local identity for the predominantly non-Hawaiian population” (Herman 2009: 122). Indigenous toponyms are turned into something quaint but meaningless for the tourist trade. This phenomenon is part of a general commodification of place that is increasingly prevalent in the global travel economy. While authentic cultural hearths are diminished due to forces of modernization and homogenization, tourists seek out the mythology of a past that perhaps did not really exist or seek expressions of culture in museums, dress, shows and displays, music festivals, and architecture. Part of the package also includes place names and descriptions of landscape that conform to the narrative that is marketed. As noted above by scholars such as Schama and Tuan, mythology is an important component of human relations to landscape and creation of place. In the case of many areas of past Finno-Ugric dominance, the tourist ruble is indeed being drawn to this created narrative of the “native people.” Because of general impoverishment of rural areas in northwest Russia, the income may be welcomed, and the local, increasingly elderly, population eager to conform. Journalists Geary and Zarakhovich reported on a trip to Veps territory in Russia, where running water, heating, sanitation were largely absent from villages. They wrote: “what’s left of Veps culture can be seen in Sheltozero’s museum. Located in a simple log house, it looks like a traditional Veps home” (Geary and Zarakhovich 2005: 44). When Geary visited an actual home in the town, the owner worried that the culture was being lost because no one was actually speaking the language or teaching it to children. Another example is tourism to the Mari-el Republic, which is marketed on social media as the place with Europe’s last pagans, centered on the magical and sacred spot of Mt. Chuksha. The internet is replete with advertisements in Russian for tour agencies that will give people an “authentic” visit to the real Russian north, the place of beautiful lakes and forests, monasteries, and, of course, the ancient Finno-Ugric people. The definitive 2012 guidebook for Russians, 500 Places of the Russian

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1995

North That One Should Visit, promises “you will be interested to encounter local original culture” (Khotenov 2012: 3). Paanayarvi National Park in Karelia lures the tourist with the idea that “along the shores you can see the traces of deserted Finnish and Karelian villages” (Khotenov 2012: 31). The park was created by the Russian government in 1992 and its website notes an idealization of “native people living in harmony with nature” (http://paanajarvi-park.com. Accessed 25 June 2016). Scholars from the Mordvinian State University explored how toponymy contributes to this creation of imagined space for tourists: “considering the current tendency for development of the international and internal tourist market, one can use not only natural and cultural-historic conditions, but also toponymic features for the creation of tourist attractions and images of territory” (Karyakina and Saraikina 2014: 596), a phenomenon that Medway and Warnaby have referred to as “place branding,” linking critical studies of toponymy in this field with marketing literature. As in Herman’s essay on Hawaii, the authors found that branding can lead to McDonaldizing space because branding might potentially undermine the vitality of places and instead, project a kind of universal reality (Medway and Warnaby 2014: 164). Herman noted in his study that the Hawaiian language is suppressed, but street names and place names retain a token cultural respect and create a “local identity for the predominantly non-Hawaiian population. That virtually no one understands the place names attests to their anti-conquest positioning: without meaning, unable to speak” (Herman 2009: 22). Finno-Ugric toponyms in the Russian Federation have received a wealth of taxonomic and historical attention. The origins of these place names are picked apart, every particle of the name analyzed, results debated and contested, and articles and dictionaries published. Institutes of Finno-Ugric culture house scholars and hold conferences. But further work via a critical toponymy approach that fully considers past and present hegemonic forces would be valuable. Tourist agencies promote places with toponyms of northwest Russia that present a picturesque image. But the remnant Finno-Ugric people who live here do not speak the languages of their ancestors. The meaning of the toponyms are fading from everyday speech and the place names becoming ghosts on the landscape.

References Ahlqvist, A. (2001). Substratnaya toponimiya Yaroslavskogo Povolzh’ya (Substrata toponomy of the Yaroslavl Volga area). In A. Gerd & G. Lebedev (Eds.), Ocherki istoricheskoi geografii: severo-zapad Rossii slavyaniye i finny (Essays on historical geography of Northwest Russia, Slavs and Finns) (pp. 436–467). St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Press. Ahlqvist, A. (2006). Ancient lakes in the former Finno-Ugrian territories of Central Russia: An experimental onomastic-palaeogeographical study. Slavica Helsingiensia, 27. Arslanov, L. (1995). Ugro-samodiiskiye element v toponomii vostochnogo predkam’ya (UgricSamoyedic elements in toponymy of eastern pre-Kama). In G. Arkhipov (Ed.), Uzlovye problem sovremennogo Finno-ugorvedeniya (Key problems of Finno-Ugric studies) (pp. 279–281). Yoshkar-Ola: Marii Scientific-Research Institute. Beilekchi, V. V. (2008). O Finno-Ugorskikh toponimakh v Murmanckom pooch’ye (On FinnoUgric toponymies in Murom-Oka region). Izvestiya Samarskogo nauchnogo tsentra Rossiyskoy

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Veps and ethnocultural transformation in the XX century) (Vol. XXIV, pp. 39–56). Helsinki: Studia Slavica Finlandensia. Mullonen, I. (2008). Toponimiya Zaonezh’ya: Slovar’ i istoriko-kyl’turnymi kommentariyami (Toponymy of the trans-Onega: Dictionary with historical-cultural commentary). Petrozavodsk: Russian Academy of Sciences. Petrov, D. D. (2014). Sakral’naya toponimiya Respubliki Komi i yeye paralleli v geograficheskikh nazvaniyakh russkogo severa, Urala i Zapadnoy Sibiri (Sacred toponymy of the Komi Republic and its parallels in geographic names for the Russian North, the Urals, and West Siberia). Vestnik arkheologii, antropologii i etnografii, 24(1). Retrieved 1 Oct 2015, from http://cyberleninka.ru/ article/n/sakralnaya-toponimiya-respubliki-komi-i-ee-paralleli-v-geograficheskih-nazvaniyah-r usskogo-severa-urala-i-zapadnoy-sibiri Pfoser, A. (2014). Between Russia and Estonia: Narratives of place in a new borderland. Nationalities Papers, 42(2), 269–285. Pospelov, Y. (2003). Geografichskiye nazvaniya Rossii (Geographic names of Russia). Moscow: Knizhnaya Nakhodka. Rautio Helander, K. (2009). Toponymic silence and Sámi place names during the growth of the Norwegian nation state. In L. Berg & J. Vuolteenaho (Eds.), Critical toponymies: The contested politics of place naming (pp. 253–266). Surrey/Burlington: Ashgate. Room, A. (1996). Placenames of Russia and the former Soviet Union. London: McFarland & Company. Rose-Redwood, R., & Alderman, D. (2011). Critical interventions in political toponymy. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 10(1), 1–6 Retrieved 1 Oct 2015, from http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/879/735 Rosstat (Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation). (2010). http://www.gks.ru/free_ doc/new_site/perepis2010/croc/Documents/Vol4/pub-04-09.pdf. Accessed 28 June 2016. Saarikivi, J. (2007). On the Uralic substrate toponymy of Arkhangelsk region: Problems of research methodology and ethnohistorical interpretation. In R. Pitkänen & J. Saarikivi (Eds.), Borrowing of place names in the Uralian languages (pp. 45–109). Debrecen/Helsinki: Onomastica Uralica. Schama, S. (1995). Landscape and memory. New York: Vintage Books. Smith, A. (1996). Culture, community, and territory: The politics of ethnicity and nationalism. International Affairs, 72(3), 445–458. Taagepera, R. (1999). The Finno-Ugric republics and the Russian state. New York: Routledge. The Economist. (2005). The dying fish swims in water, 377(8458), 73–74. Available online at http:// www.economist.com/node/5323735. Accessed 17 Aug 2016. Thornton, T. (1997). Anthropological studies of native American place naming. American Indian Quarterly, 21(2), 209–228. Tuan, Y.-F. (1991). Language and the making of place: A narrative descriptive approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684–696. Tulun Oǧuzhan, M. (2013). Russification policies imposed on the Baltic people by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Uluslararasi SuÇlar ve Tarih, 14, 139–160. Ulasiuk, I. (2011). Legal protection of linguistic diversity in Russia: Past and present. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 32(1), 71–83. Retrieved 17 Jan 2015, from https:// doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2010.536237 Vorontsova, O. P. (2011). Iz istorii izucheniya gidronomii Respubliki Mariy El (From the history of hydronomy studies of Marii-el Republic). http://komanda-k.ru/2011/mariiel/из-истории-из учения-гидронимики-республики-марий-эл. Accessed 7 Oct 2015. Zakharova, E. (2015). Geographical terms of Finnic substrate origin in the toponymy of eastern Oboneh’e. Esuka-Jeful, 6-1, 75–89. Zamyatin, E. (2012). Russia’s minority language education & the European language charter: The Finno-Ugric Republics. University of Helsinki. Available at http://www.peace.ax/images/ stories/Konstantin_Zamyatin.pdf. Accessed 7 Jan 2016.

Cartographic Examination of French Toponymic Spatial Patterns in the Mississippi River Basin

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Francophone Settlement in North America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 New Approach for Toponymy: Integrated Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Geospatial Data Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 French Toponym Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Spatial and Statistical Analytical Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Historical and Cultural Research Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Spatial Patterns Across the Mississippi River Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Spatial Patterns Across Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Historical and Cultural Dynamics for Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Place-names, or toponyms, represent both location and symbolic meaning. In this chapter, we examine how mapping the spatial distribution of toponyms across landscapes can reveal otherwise hidden cultural patterns. This study uses spatialstatistical methods to visualize general spatial patterns of French place-names in the Mississippi River Basin and describes a qualitative historical and cultural analysis of sociopolitical patterns at the more local scale of Minnesota. The resulting maps enable us to better understand how and why French toponymic power changed over time and provide useful insights to the region’s geography and history. M. Caturia (*) · P. Anthamatten Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_170

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Keywords

Toponymy · Cartography · Mississippi River · France · Integrated methods · Map analysis

1

Introduction

Toponyms, or place-names, have a dual nature because they convey both location and cultural meaning in a single word or phrase. The process of place-naming enables people to define where we are in the world, what a space means to us symbolically, and to communicate our sense of place to others (Tuan 1991). Placenames mentioned, even as part of ordinary discourse, can provide “a readily available window onto the structure and significance of other peoples’ worlds” (Basso 1988: 101). The view through that window is filtered through the lens of one’s own cultural background as different cultures experience and bestow names upon places in different ways. This research examines the cultural lens of French colonial exploration and French-Canadian settlement across the Mississippi River watershed basin, with a focus on Minnesota and the resulting spatial patterns of French toponyms. It concludes with a discussion of the insights this analysis yields about underlying sociopolitical power structures and dynamics.

1.1

Francophone Settlement in North America

The French Empire colonized North America from about 1500 to the mid-1700s, eventually influencing more than half of the continent. The Mississippi River provided important access to the continental interior, from the north through Minnesota and from the south via Louisiana (Fig. 1). French explorers, missionaries, and voyageurs focused their efforts on building a fur trade, rather than on outright conquest (Labine 2016), and so consequently the French colonial presence was light. Cultural mixing with indigenous communities was encouraged and common (Harris 1990), resulting in a distinctive French-indigenous (Métis) blended culture. This colonial period also marked the onset of French exploration and influence in the region that is now Minnesota. According to Labine (2016), French and FrenchCanadian explorers and fur traders mapped the area starting in the late 1600s, followed by the construction of forts and trading posts to interact with indigenous communities. By the early 1800s, the fur trade was in decline and traders with Métis roots settled in place and became farmers in much of the region, where French was the predominant language. In the 1820s–1840s, many Francophones also migrated from Québec, France, and other parts of the United States to Minnesota to escape political instability and seek economic opportunities (Labine 2016). A series of ox cart routes known as the “Red River Ox Cart Trails,” connecting settlements in Manitoba with the riverboat landing in Saint Paul, Minnesota, were heavily used for travel and trade (Fig. 2).

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Fig. 1 Extent of “New France” in North America, 1534–1741. (Source: www.historymuseum.ca/ virtual-museum-of-new-france/colonies-and-empires/colonial-expansion-and-alliances. Modified with permission from French Explorations in North America Map, Canadian Museum of History, Virtual Museum of New France)

Following Minnesota’s statehood and admission to the Union in 1858, new waves of non-French speaking immigrant settlers began arriving in the region, and French became gradually replaced by English as the common and dominant language for business and social interactions (Labine 2016). As French exploration and settlement developed across North America, the participants (e.g., explorers, traders, and settlers) named and mapped natural and cultural features – such as rivers, lakes, or populated places – along the way. But how might we better understand where and why the resulting toponyms developed?

1.2

New Approach for Toponymy: Integrated Methods

Recent scholarship in geography advocates using an integrated methodological approach that combines modern spatial-statistical methods to visualize spatial patterns, with traditional historical and interpretive techniques to better understand the historical and cultural dynamics producing such patterns. One of the

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Fig. 2 Red River Ox Cart Trail routes. (Modified from: Commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_ River_Trails_Locator_Map_cropped.PNG. Authors: US Census, Ruhrfisch, and Kablammo. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this image under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation, with no Invariant Sections, no FrontCover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GNU_Free_ Documentation_License,_version_1.2)

advantages of integrating multiple methods is that it can aid in identifying toponymic “footprints” that represent where place-names existed during particular points in time (Fig. 3). Such an approach can provide novel perspectives on the data and reveal expressions of culture and power that would otherwise remain hidden. Fuchs (2015) suggests that attention and dedicated effort toward the development of such approaches can assist in revitalizing research in the field of toponymy within geography. Through quantitative analysis, toponymy can push back against previous

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Fig. 3 Revealing historical “footprints” of toponymic patterns and context

criticism of being “an old and largely discredited field” (Goodchild 2004, p. 712) and associated with “antiquarian empiricism” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010, p. 455). Fuchs (2015) was the primary inspiration for the general methodological approach of this study, i.e., integrating spatial analysis at a general scale with historical-cultural analyses at local scales to visualize and analyze toponymic patterns that might otherwise remain hidden. Whereas Fuchs’ research focused on German and Germanic toponyms across the US Midwest region, this research examines French toponyms within the Mississippi River Basin.

1.3

Research Questions

This study demonstrates an integrated quantitative-qualitative approach to the study of French place-names located within the Mississippi River Basin of North America, by addressing the following research questions: • What kinds of spatial patterns can be identified within the French toponymic landscape across the Mississippi River Basin? • What are possible underlying sociopolitical reasons for the observed patterns? • What can this work tell us about how expressions of French power changed over time in the region?

2

Methods

This research used different types of spatial analysis to visually represent spatial patterns of French place-names, followed by historical and cultural research to examine the underlying sociopolitical causes of the identified patterns within a limited project extent.

2.1

Geospatial Data Acquisition

The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database provides a collection of spatially enabled toponymic features within the United States. GNIS point

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features and their associated attributes are publicly available to download in pipedelimited text file format. The latest version of the GNIS features grouped by state was obtained from the US Board on Geographic Names website (2016), and the text files were converted into point shapefiles and projected using Microsoft Excel and ESRI ArcMap 10.2.2. Hydrology, governmental units, and census data for both the Mississippi River Basin and Minnesota extents were downloaded from the US Geological Survey Science Base (2016a), US Geological Survey National Map (2016b), Minnesota GeoSpatial Commons (2016), and National Historical Geographic Information System (Minnesota Population Center 2016) web-based geoportals. The lattercompiled census data were from the American Community Survey for the year 2015 and contained total population and total ancestry counts by county. The American Community Survey ancestry information was self-identified, meaning that the survey respondents could write in any answer in response to the question “What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin?” (US Census Bureau 2015). The ratio of the number of people self-identified as having French or French-Canadian ancestry compared with the total population per county was calculated to determine “Percent French or French-Canadian Ancestry.”

2.2

French Toponym Identification

French toponyms were identified and tagged in the acquired GNIS point data layer. For this study, “French” toponyms were defined as those which originated directly from French or Canadian French (Québecois), were French in the past and directly translated into, corrupted into, or replaced by place-names in a different language (usually English). Toponymic “generics” (e.g., the word “lake” in “Lake Superior”) were excluded from consideration. In some cases, French toponyms were derived from already-existing indigenous place-names (Labine 2016). The reference text for identifying the French origins of GNIS entries was a gazetteer of French placenames providing nationwide coverage of the United States (Coulet du Gard and Western 1977). The authors consulted authoritative published works for each state and worked with local place-name experts to complete the gazetteer. They listed toponyms covering various geographic feature types, such as natural (e.g., lake, stream, bluff) and sociocultural (e.g., city, township, county) features. Locational precision was limited in many cases because Coulet du Gard and Western (1977) did not provide specific spatial references for toponyms. Most place-names were instead listed by county, and features spanning more than one county (such as rivers) were identified only by state. Populated places, in contrast, were usually listed by county and ZIP code and could be located with a high level of confidence. In addition, the gazetteer did not include all possible French place-names. For example, the “Cache la Poudre” River in Colorado, a well-documented French toponym (Dawson 1954), was not included. However, Coulet du Gard and Western (1977) was used because it was the only authoritative French gazetteer identified as providing coverage (and thus consistent analysis) across the entire Mississippi River Basin.

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The GNIS was searched for each gazetteer-listed French toponym using ArcMap 10.2.2. If a matching record could be identified in the GNIS database, the corresponding point feature was marked as French in origin. To address the potential limitations described above, the GNIS database was also searched online (US Board on Geographic Names 2016) for variant toponyms, that is, any other name(s) by which the feature is or was known.

2.3

Spatial and Statistical Analytical Techniques

The identified French toponyms were analyzed using several quantitative techniques in order to facilitate the visualization of spatial patterns. All analyses were conducted using ArcGIS 10.2.2 tools and extensions (including Spatial Analyst and Geostatistical Analyst), with all geospatial datasets in the USA Contiguous Equidistant Conic (EPSG 102005) projection. Basin-wide processing included all counties intersecting with any part of the Mississippi River Basin watershed boundary, and statewide analyses extended to counties located within a 100-km buffer around the state boundary. The percentage of French place-names relative to all similarly classed toponyms were calculated by county and state, providing a normalized comparison. The Average Nearest Neighbor (ANN) tool indicated whether place-name points had a clustered or dispersed distribution pattern. ESRI’s Optimized Hot-Cold Spot Analysis tool (ESRI 2014) identified statistically significant spatial clusters of high values (hotspots) and low values (cold spots), using the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic (yielding a zscore with an associated probability value p) and point features aggregated by county. The Kernel Density tool calculates the density of point features in a neighborhood around those features, based on a kernel function to fit a smoothed continuous-value surface to each point (ESRI 2014), and served to validate the area-based hotspot analytical results similar to Fuchs’ work on Germanic toponyms (2015). Kernel Density parameters included no population field (i.e., feature counts only), area units in square kilometers, Nearest Neighbor resampling method, and default bandwidth and cell size.

2.4

Historical and Cultural Research Methods

Following spatial pattern visualization and analysis on a basin-wide scale, historical and cultural research techniques were used to examine French toponyms in Minnesota. This work relied on toponymic history and origin information from four sources: Coulet du Gard and Western (1977), Upham (2001), Labine (2016), and Board on Geographic Names (BGN) decision information attached to GNIS records. These cultural and historical data were added to the point shapefiles through manual editing. French toponyms across Minnesota were examined within the context of two historical “toponymic footprints”: (1) French colonial exploration and trade (from

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around 1600 to the early 1800s) and (2) French-Canadian settlement (from the early 1800s to around 1860). Research sources did not provide dates for when places were named but rather described (usually very generally) how the naming process occurred. For the purposes of this study, if a place-name was described in one or more sources as having been named by a French explorer or trader, or as having an indigenous root, it was assigned to the “French Empire exploration era” group, whereas it was assigned to the “French-Canadian settlement era” group if it was identified as commemorating a French leader or famous person, American of French heritage, or local French settler associated with that particular time period. Qualitative research was used to identify and map place-names within each historical era by linguistic origin and reference theme. Toponymic linguistic origins were categorized as “Currently French” or “Currently English.” If a place-name of either linguistic origin also possessed indigenous roots, it was assigned to the “Has indigenous roots” category. Reference theme categories were designed to indicate for whom or what a place was named, including “Cultural symbol or event,” “Landscape characteristic or use,” “Place,” and “Person or group.” The existence of variant names, changed spellings, translations, and language corruptions was also noted, based on a subjective evaluation of the information provided in the research sources.

3

Results and Discussion

3.1

Spatial Patterns Across the Mississippi River Basin

A total of 1278 French toponyms were identified within the GNIS database across the 33 continental US states comprising the Mississippi River Basin. Absolute total counts and percentages (relative to all place-names having the same GNIS feature class) of French toponyms per state are presented in Table 1. North Dakota, Louisiana, and Minnesota had the highest relative proportions of French toponyms. French toponyms can be found across the Mississippi River Basin with varying degrees of concentration (Fig. 4). There are notable concentrations near the headwater and delta areas of the Mississippi River. Figure 5 shows a map of French placenames, grouped by county, relative to all place-names of comparable feature classes. The highest percentages of French toponyms exist in counties located along the United States-Canada border in North Dakota and Minnesota, scattered counties in those states, as well as Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and in southeastern Louisiana. The Average Nearest Neighbor analysis reported a Nearest Neighbor Ratio of 0.64 ( p < 0.001), which indicates statistically significant spatial clustering in the French place-name point locations. The basin-wide Hot-Cold Spots (by county) map in Fig. 6 shows statistically significant clusters of high numbers of French toponyms located in a northwest-southeast direction across Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin, most of eastern Ohio, and in southern Louisiana. The Kernel Density analysis results (Fig. 7) confirm observed toponymic patterns and also show

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Table 1 French toponym absolute total counts and relative proportions (out of all toponyms having the same GNIS feature class, in percent %), by state State ND LA MN KS NE OK SC MO IA MI OH

Count 52 155 206 42 49 53 45 46 29 64 53

% 0.96 0.94 0.85 0.5 0.47 0.38 0.33 0.26 0.25 0.24 0.24

State WV WI IL PA IN WY SD NY AL AR MS

Count 38 43 40 61 26 25 11 40 23 20 14

% 0.24 0.23 0.22 0.21 0.18 0.18 0.16 0.14 0.11 0.11 0.11

State GA ID KY MD MT TX CO NM TN VA NC

Count 18 16 19 11 11 22 9 7 11 10 9

% 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.07 0.05 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.03

Fig. 4 Basin-extent simple point pattern map

localized patterns in greater detail, such as some toponymic concentrations around St. Louis, Missouri, and partway up western tributaries of the Mississippi River. Although a concentration exists within South Carolina, it is in fact located outside of the Mississippi River Basin and was, therefore, excluded from further consideration.

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Fig. 5 Basin-extent relative proportions (by county) map

Regional spatial patterns of French toponyms across the Mississippi River Basin revealed major transportation access points used by the French Empire as it explored and colonized the North American interior, specifically: (1) Louisiana enabled access from the Gulf of Mexico northward via the mouth of the Mississippi River; (2) Minnesota enabled access from the westernmost end of the Great Lakes southward via the headwaters and tributaries of the Mississippi River; and (3) Ohio enabled access from Lake Ontario westward via the Ohio River (Harris 1990). Mapping these toponymic patterns also enabled a basin-wide visualization of France’s reliance on major waterways and created a generalized “toponymic footprint” layer.

3.2

Spatial Patterns Across Minnesota

Containing the third-highest relative proportion (0.85%) and the highest absolute total number (206) of French place-names of all the Mississippi River Basin states, Minnesota was selected as the study extent for further quantitative and qualitative analyses. Examination of statewide-scale reference sources revealed that the national-scale reference text had incorrectly identified four toponyms as being of French origin. For example, “Troy Township” in Minnesota is named for the ancient city in Asia Minor (Upham 2001, p. 493) rather than the French city of Troyes as claimed by Coulet du Gard and Western (1977, p. 133). As a result, these toponyms were excluded from further analysis.

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Fig. 6 Basin-extent Hot-Cold Spots (by county) map

Figure 8 presents a point pattern map to demonstrate the overall spatial distribution of the remaining 202 French place-names throughout Minnesota, in comparison to all place-names of similar feature classes (totaling 23,801 place-names). In general, French toponyms appear to be associated with water-based transportation routes such as major rivers (e.g., the southeastern Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers) and larger-sized lakes (e.g., Lake Superior in the northeast, Red Lake and Lake of the Woods along the United States-Canada border, and Lake Mille Lacs in central Minnesota). A noticeable clustering of French place-names is also evident in the northwestern corner of the state, part of the Red River Valley, centered in Red Lake County. The Average Nearest Neighbor tool revealed a Nearest Neighbor Ratio of 0.71 ( p < 0.001), indicating statistically significant spatial clustering in the French placename point locations. Optimized Hot-Cold Spot analysis (Fig. 9) reflects a similar (but refined) pattern to one observed at the basin-wide scale, i.e., statistically significant clusters of high numbers of French toponyms generally oriented in a northwest-southeast direction across the state.

3.3

Historical and Cultural Dynamics for Minnesota

The historical-cultural dynamics shaping these spatial patterns are worth exploring. Within the historical “toponymic footprint” categories, 111 features were associated with French colonial exploration and trade (from around 1600 to the early

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Fig. 7 Basin-extent Kernel Density map, highlighting Minnesota extent

1800s), while 91 features were associated with French-Canadian settlement (from the early 1800s to around 1860).

3.3.1 Linguistic Origin Mapping Qualitative research unearthed noticeably different linguistic origin patterns when toponyms were grouped according to historical era. Within the French Empire exploration era category, there were a similar number of currently French compared to currently English toponyms, with roughly one-quarter to one-third of them having indigenous roots. In comparison, toponyms within the French-Canadian settlement era category were about five times more likely to be currently French than currently English. Additionally, none of the French-Canadian settlement era toponyms had indigenous roots. Specific counts are provided in Table 2, while the spatial distributions of toponyms by linguistic origin are shown in Figs. 10 and 11. 3.3.2 Sociopolitical Power Structures and Distribution The process of place-naming can be considered an expression of personal or group power, directly related to the question: who has the right to name places? When the French explorers recorded and named encountered features, one of their goals was to make sites that were well-suited for trading “visible” – literally appearing on maps – and symbolically for later travelers. They were also tasked with

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Fig. 8 French versus all place-names in Minnesota: simple point distributions

claiming territory for the French Empire, ultimately to establish and legitimize French control of the symbolic landscape (Hartley 1980). Because their recorded toponyms were often based on indigenous place-names, the place-naming process created many linguistic and sociopolitical connections with local Native American nations in order to support trade. Although the French settlers and Ojibway

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Fig. 9 French place-names in Minnesota: Hot-Cold Spot analysis by county

nation members were closely partnered socially and economically, it was the French who selected and recorded the place-names encountered in daily life. As Hartley (1980) stated: “These few Frenchmen wielded a toponymic power far out of proportion to their [population] numbers” (Hartley 1980, p. 47).

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Table 2 French toponym counts for linguistic origin, grouped by historical era Linguistic origin category Currently French (total) Has indigenous roots No indigenous roots Currently English (total) Has indigenous roots No indigenous roots

Historical era French Empire exploration 53 13 40 58 21 37

French-Canadian settlement 76 0 76 15 0 15

How the balance of power to name places changed over time depended on context. For example, before the French Empire’s exploration and fur trading activities in the Minnesota region (1600 to early 1800s), the Ojibway homeland was located east of the Great Lakes (Hartley 1980). Members traveled with and advised the French as part of the fur trade, resulting in the westward migration of settlement into Lakota territory. Ojibway place-names migrated as well, were recorded by the French, and were so inscribed upon the landscape. However, because the French reserved the power to name places, the place-naming process involved cultural displacement and appropriation (Hartley 1980). Later waves of settlement by French-Canadians (early 1800s to 1860s) and other immigrant groups (1860s onwards) added and changed more names to the toponymic landscape, which expressed not only sociopolitical power but also allowed cultural groups to express autonomy and sense of belonging (Fuchs 2015). Key issues related to these processes include the number of places renamed and the ultimate power to make such changes. Fewer places being renamed could indicate that the initial names (and their associated sociopolitical power) enjoyed lasting authority or might suggest “complacency and/or mutual accommodation” among settlers from various ethnic groups (Fuchs 2015, p. 336). Conversely, the French legacy was displaced in locations where many French toponyms were replaced or became historic.

3.3.3 Reference Theme Mapping Strong variations in reference theme patterns became evident when toponyms were grouped according to historical era. Within the French Empire exploration era category, the majority of place-names referenced landscape characteristics or use. In contrast, by far the largest number of French-Canadian settlement era toponyms commemorated a person or group of people. Red Lake County, located in northwestern Minnesota, displayed a noticeable cluster of French toponyms named after people. Specific counts are provided in Table 3, while the spatial distributions of toponyms by reference theme are shown in Figs. 12 and 13. 3.3.4 Cultural Appropriation and Displacement The French Empire’s exploration of the region and establishment of a fur trading network (from 1600 to the early 1800s) were characterized by coexistence and cultural mixing, resulting not in physical displacement, but cultural appropriation and filtering (Hartley 1980). The French mapped and named features they

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Fig. 10 Linguistic origin of Minnesota place-names, by French exploration era

encountered along the way, and some existing indigenous place-names were translated or corrupted into French. Toponyms from the era primarily describe landscape characteristics or use, such as the Roseau River (Ojibway “ga-shashagunushkokawi-sibi” for “reed-grass river” translated to French “Roseau,” after the thick reed growth along river banks) (Upham 2001, p. 505). In some cases, the

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Fig. 11 Linguistic origin of Minnesota place-names, by French-Canadian settlement era

French described their indigenous collaborators directly; for example, the Bois Forte Reservation includes a changed French spelling of “bois fort” (meaning “hard wood,” translated from Ojibway “Sugwaundugah wininewug” meaning “Men of the thick fir woods”) (Upham 2001, p. 303). The French also applied their own names to describe landscape characteristics or use, as for the city of Grand Marais

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Table 3 French toponym counts for reference themes, grouped by historical era Reference theme type Cultural symbol or event Landscape characteristic or use Person(s) Place

Historical Era French Empire exploration 7 69 34 1

French-Canadian settlement 3 13 65 14

(“Great Marsh”) (Upham 2001, p. 139). French explorers and missionaries were also commemorated (e.g., the city of Duluth) (Upham 2001, p. 519), along with political and religious figures (e.g., Hennepin County) (Upham 2001, p. 224). French-Canadian immigration to the region (in the early 1800s to around the 1860s) often resulted from the recruitment efforts of local political or business leaders with French or French-Canadian heritage (Labine 2016). Settlers bestowed many French names on their new communities, and the resulting toponyms generally commemorated people, places, and cultural symbols. French toponyms commemorated French citizens (e.g., Lafayette) (Upham 2001, p. 399), Americans with French heritage (e.g., Audubon) (Upham 2001, p. 30), and local settlers (e.g., Huot) (Upham 2001, p. 478). French geography was also heavily referenced in place-names; for example, there is Gentilly (suburb of Paris) (Upham 2001, p. 456), Lamoille (river in Vermont) (Upham 2001, p. 633), and Terrebonne (town in Québec) (Upham 2001, p. 479). Cultural symbol examples include Bejou Township (“bonjour”) (Upham 2001, p. 340) and Grange Township (French for “barn,” honors the Patrons of Husbandry, a secret agricultural order) (Upham 2001, p. 448). Beginning in the 1860s, immigrants of other ethnic groups eventually displaced French settlements or replaced them as French descendants moved out of the area (Labine 2016). As a result, many French toponyms were directly translated, corrupted, altered in spelling, or completely replaced by English words. Direct translation occurred for the Root River (Upham 2001, p. 11) and Lake of the Woods (Upham 2001, p. 8), for example. Lakeport Township and the Cannon River are actually not English, but rather corruptions of the French settler name “La Porte” (Upham 2001, p. 250) and the French “rivière aux canots” (river of the canoes) (Upham 2001, p. 209).

3.3.5 French or French-Canadian Ancestry Figure 14 shows the distribution of self-identified French or French-Canadian ancestry in Minnesota alongside French place-names. French toponyms generally appear to be most concentrated in northeastern and northwestern Minnesota. However, the toponymic cluster located in northwestern Minnesota around Red Lake County also stands out as having the highest percentage of French ancestry in the state. 3.3.6 Personal Ethnic Identification Because toponyms and personal ethnic identity both represent sociocultural aspects of our society, examining how toponymic spatial patterns align with

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Fig. 12 Reference themes of Minnesota French place-names, by French exploration era

contemporary ancestry data can broaden the scope of an integrated research approach (Fuchs 2015). The area in northwestern Minnesota around Red Lake County appears to contain relatively high rates of both French place-names and French ancestry (Figs. 9 and 14). As noted above, this area of the state included a branch of the heavily utilized

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Fig. 13 Reference themes of Minnesota French place-names, by French-Canadian settlement era

Red River Ox Cart Trails network (Labine 2016). The observed toponymic and ancestry patterns could also indicate a significant French sociocultural impact and stability on a local scale and perhaps a continuation of individual and group sense of belonging, up through modern times.

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Fig. 14 French place-names versus French ancestry in Minnesota

The existence of L’Association des Français du Nord (Association of the French of the North), a nonprofit organization that holds an annual FrenchCanadian/Métis cultural festival in the locale of Huot, located in Red Lake County, seems to support this idea. Their mission statement is to “create understanding of the world’s French heritage. . . while interpreting the role French

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presence has played in the Middle West, particularly in the northwestern Minnesota” (emphasis mine) (L ‘Association des Français du Nord 2018). In summary, toponymic patterns at the scale of the Mississippi Basin showed where exploration for the French Empire generally focused their activities and placenaming efforts and ultimately their overall expression of political and cultural power. Toponymic historical research in Minnesota revealed aspects of local expressions of power through place-naming, by not only the French Empire but also affiliated indigenous tribes and successive waves of Francophone and Anglophone settlers.

3.4

Limitations

The gazetteer used to identify French toponyms at the basin-wide extent (Coulet du Gard and Western 1977) did not include all possible French place-names, which reduced the precision of quantitative analytical results. In addition, Canadian placenames were excluded from this analysis in order to limit the project scope, limiting the accuracy of spatial analytical results for areas along the United States-Canada border. Toponymic researchers must often rely on secondary historical sources to provide qualitative data. Historical sources (and any data derived from them) are always subjective, and secondary sources are not under the control of the researcher. If such sources do not provide place-name attributes, such as spatial references (or alternative locational information appropriate to the scale of the project), possible variant names, or the date created, then more detailed research might be necessary. In some cases, confirming the accuracy of historical information associated with the place-names under study is neither possible nor practical. There is no single and fully complete gazetteer for toponyms at any scale. Toponyms are dynamic; as people arrive, leave, and move, their place-names continually change. As a result, it can be difficult to construct historic and modern toponymic layers without including extensive field study and archival research, a time-consuming and expensive endeavor. Toponymists should, therefore, research each place-name in order to confirm historical information (Lapierre 2000).

4

Conclusion

This study demonstrated an exploratory, integrated research approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to examine spatial patterns of French toponyms across the Mississippi River Basin. Spatial analysis enabled pattern visualization, which was followed by detailed historical and cultural analysis within the focused extent of Minnesota in order to explore the underlying sociopolitical-historical mechanisms for the observed patterns. The visualization of toponymic patterns that might otherwise have remained hidden provided sociocultural background information generally not accessible via commonly used demographic sources, such as census data. Toponymic research can enable cross-disciplinary approaches

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and contribute to greater depth and breadth of research in the field of geography. It also demonstrates how the perspectives and techniques of geospatial science and digital cartography can enhance the process of toponymic analysis and contribute to resurgence of interest in all related fields. This research will focus future efforts on including toponyms from the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base (CGNDB) to enable geoprocessing of features, such as watersheds, that do not follow political boundaries. Modeling the iterative process of conducting historical research at more detailed map scales followed by quantitative analysis to identify patterns for further investigation could also yield important insights. Natural language processing (NLP)-related methods, which seek to automate identification of French toponym “candidates” might assist with optimizing the process for selecting features for analysis. Recent research into toponym text identification on digital map scans (Weinman 2017) could also be useful for constructing historical toponymic layers. This study discussed the multifaceted nature of Minnesota toponyms, which reflect multiple cultural replacements, whereby French place-names replaced indigenous ones, followed by being replaced themselves by English ones. In the wake of renewed interest in indigenous cultures, modern toponymic activities in the United States include nation and non-nation community efforts to rename English placenames to indigenous ones. Examples include “Denali” (Athabascan for “The High One”) replacing “Mount McKinley” in Alaska (United States Department of the Interior 2015) and the renaming of “Lake Calhoun” to “Bde Maka Ska” (“White Earth Lake” in Lakota) in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources 2018). Multiple immigrant populations from various other French-speaking countries reside in Minnesota, and future endeavors could also examine how such political and/or cultural imprints are currently reflected in the toponymic landscapes or develop over time.

References Basso, K. H. (1988). Speaking with names. Cultural Anthropology, 3(2), 99–103. http://www.jstor. org/stable/656347. Coulet du Gard, R., & Western, D. C. (1977). The handbook of French place names in the U.S.A. Newark. Delaware: Edition des Deux Mondes. Dawson, J. F. (1954). Place names in Colorado: Why 700 communities were so named, 150 of Spanish or Indian origin. Denver: J. F. Dawson Pub. Co. ESRI Online Documentation Archive. (2014, August 26). ArcGIS Help 10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2. Retrieved from http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/ Fuchs, S. (2015). An integrated approach to Germanic place names in the American Midwest. The Professional Geographer, 67(3), 330–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2014.968834. Goodchild, M. (2004). GIScience, geography, form, and process. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94, 709–714. Harris, C. (1990). France in North America. In R. D. Mitchell & P. A. Groves (Eds.), North America: The historical geography of a changing continent (pp. 65–92). Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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Hartley, A. H. (1980). The expansion of Ojibway and French place-names into the Lake Superior region in the seventeenth century. Names, 28(1), 43–68. L ‘Association des Français du Nord. (2018). L ‘Association des Français du Nord mission statement. Retrieved from http://www.frenchcanadianafran.org/about-.html Accessed on Jan 15 2018. Labine, M. (2016). They spoke French: A book about French heritage in Minnesota (1st ed.). Arden Hills: French-American Heritage Foundation. Lapierre, A. (2000). From French to English: Some observations on patterns of onomastic changes in North America. Names, 48(3–4), 233–242. https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.2000.48.3-4.233. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. (2018, January 18). State of Minnesota approves Lake Calhoun name change to Bde Maka Ska. Retrieved from http://news.dnr.state.mn.us/2018/01/ 18/state-of-minnesota-approves-lake-calhoun-name-change-to-bde-maka-ska/ Minnesota GeoSpatial Information Office. (2016). Minnesota GeoSpatial Commons [Database]. https://gisdata.mn.gov/ Minnesota Population Center. (2016). National historical geographic information system (NHGIS): Version 11.0 [database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. https://doi.org/10.18128/D050. V11.0. Rose-Redwood, R., Alderman, D., & Azaryahu, M. (2010). Geographies of toponymic inscription: New directions in critical place-name studies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(4), 453–470. Tuan, Y. F. (1991). Language and the making of place: A narrative-descriptive approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684–696. United States Board on Geographic Names. (2016). Domestic names state Gazetteer download files [database]. https://geonames.usgs.gov United States Census Bureau. (2015). American community survey questionnaire archive, 2015 questionnaire. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/methodology/ questionnaire-archive.2015.html United States Department of the Interior. (2015, August 28). Change the name of Mount McKinley to Denali (Secretarial order number 3337). Retrieved from Electronic Library of the Interior Policies (ELIPS) https://elips.doi.gov/ELIPS/0/doc/4185/Page1.aspx United States Geological Survey. (2016a). ScienceBase-catalog [database]. https://www. sciencebase.gov/catalog United States Geological Survey. (2016b). The national map (TNM) download [database]. https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic/ Upham, W. (2001). Minnesota place names: A geographic encyclopedia (3rd ed.). St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Weinman, J. (2017, November 15). Geographic and style models for historical map alignment and toponym recognition. Paper presented at the 14th IAPR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, Kyoto, Japan.

Street and Place Name Changes in Kolkata: India’s First Modern City

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Contents 1 Conceptual Framework for Toponymic Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Rise of Calcutta and Colonization of the Urban Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Decolonization of the Urban Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Chaotic Toponymy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Calcutta, India’s first modern city, was developed along the west bank of Hugli River – a tributary of the Ganges. The city was renamed “Kolkata” in 2001, which generated a great deal of debate among the city’s literary communities and notables. The practice of naming and renaming of streets, parks, and other important places is not new in Kolkata. Not only did the independent government of West Bengal show a passion for renaming the streets and roads of Kolkata, but the colonial government was also not far behind in the naming and renaming spree. Until the first half of the nineteenth century, the street and place naming in Kolkata were based on the city’s geology, flora, and fauna. In the later part of the colonial period, the British government commemorated governors-general and viceroys in street naming. Since independence in 1947, the city’s major thoroughfares, streets, alleys, and parks have been renamed after national and regional leaders as well as social reformers involved in India’s freedom movement and socio-cultural transformation. More recently, renaming of the urban landscape in Kolkata commemorated legendary icons of Bengali film industry such as Satyajit Ray, Pramathesh Barua, and Suchitra Sen. Within a framework of the critical toponymic study, this chapter examines the street and place-name P. Ghosh (*) Department of Liberal Education, Era University, Lucknow, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_174

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changes in the city of Kolkata along with its historical background. It demonstrates that while the renaming of streets and places after independence could be explained by the process of decolonization, a strong sense of nationalism, symbolic capital, and the restitution of justice, the recent toponymic inscription on the city landscape is more chaotic and cannot be explained by a single approach. Although the citizens can request street-name changes to the Road Renaming Advisory Committee of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, the current street renaming is more of an administrative function largely determined by the whim of West Bengal’s ruling party. Keywords

Street and place-name changes · Decolonization · Urban landscape · Justice restitution · Kolkata In 2001, the city of Calcutta was renamed “Kolkata” – a transliteration of the Bengali pronunciation of Calcutta – amidst much public debate (Subramanian 2016). The notable Bengali novelists, poets, and other scholarly persons had argued for a new name for the city reflecting its pronounced linguistic identity in Bengali. Several renowned residents, such as writer and activist Mahasweta Devi and film-maker Mrinal Sen, expressed their opposition to the renaming of the city questioning its ability to integrate with the rest of the world (Kaplan 2010; Dutta 2003). However, the renaming of Calcutta itself and many of its street names following the independence of India is not an isolated story. Many colonial cities in India and elsewhere, such as Nairobi and Singapore, experienced similar renaming as part of the process of decolonization of the urban landscape. In this chapter, colonial and postcolonial street name changes in Kolkata are discussed and described, and it is argued that while the past naming and renaming of places in Kolkata can be explained by colonization, decolonization, nationalism, symbolic capital, and the restitution of justice, the recent toponymic inscription on the city’s landscape is more chaotic and cannot be explained by a singular approach. Section 1 explores the theoretical background of critical toponymic literature to provide a broader perspective on the street name changes. Section 2 focuses on the history and background of place names in Kolkata during the colonial period. Section 3 provides three brief case studies examining the street name changes in postcolonial Kolkata. Lastly, Sect. 4 examines the recent toponymic inscriptions on Kolkata’s landscape.

1

Conceptual Framework for Toponymic Changes

Toponymy is the art of naming a place in terms of geographical location as well as an ideology which provides the validity to that place (Wanjiru and Matsubara 2017). The traditional focus of toponymy was on etymology and categorization of place names which has been recently replaced by the politics of place-naming. In other words, the traditional focus was on cataloguing a list of places and providing detailed

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information regarding the origin of those place names. This practice has been replaced by an examination of a wider political-economic process (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). Also, this critical analysis of place naming is linked to the critical turn in social science which focuses now on the connection between cultural and political processes (Azaryahu 2011). The critical toponymy scholars have moved beyond memory studies and demonstrated the innovative ways different social groups dominate the naming process on a city’s landscape (Wanjiru and Matsubara 2017). Therefore, critical toponymy looks at the power relations between different social groups and how some groups become dominant as compared to others in the renaming of places (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). Besides looking at power relations, the critical scholars also look at “symbolic resistance” which is a process that explores the appropriation of certain artifacts of major cultural groups by the marginalized populations involved in the counter-naming of streets and places (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010; Zeidel 2006). Critical scholars such as Swart (2008) studied post-World War II Germany and Post-Apartheid South Africa and demonstrated that the renaming of streets and places could act as symbolic reparation in which the dignity and social recognition of victims were restored. Some scholars such as Duminy (2014) used the term symbolic transformation instead to explain the restoration of dignity, identity, and public recognition of the victims. Duminy studied Durban, South Africa, and demonstrated how the renaming of place names could restore painful public memory – a result of racial segregation which was deeply entrenched into Durban’s wider socio-political history. Similarly, this kind of symbolic reparation and transformation can be found in postcolonial Nairobi, Kenya (Wanjiru and Matsubara 2017). In Nairobi, the restitution of justice could be explored by using, as an example, the renaming of College Road to Harry Thuku who was one of the renowned political leaders of Kenya. Harry Thuku was arrested in 1922 while protesting against the colonial government’s policy of using the forced African labor. Upon his arrest, many of his supporters came out on the College Road to protest against this injustice caused by the government. Therefore, the renaming of College Road after Harry Thuku restored the dignity of those who were arrested and killed during the protest. Historically, toponymic study has a close relationship with the Cultural Landscape Study developed by the Berkeley School of Cultural Geography in the United States. Inspired by the writings of Carl Sauer – the pioneer of the Berkeley School, scholars from this particular school of geographic thought focused on identifying cultural traits on the landscape (Alderman 2008). For human geographers, the landscape is the product of interactions between human and their environment mediated through culture. Thus, the landscape is always visible on the earth’s surface (Cosgrove 1988 [2008]). The Berkley School also studied the morphology of the landscape as well as the place names in tracing the past settlement and migration patterns of a region and in doing so they also explored the naming pattern (Alderman 2008). However, as mentioned above, with the critical turn in social science in the 1990s, the landscape study went through an enormous change that also influenced toponymic study (Ibid.; Azaryahu 2011). Critical scholars started to look at how landscape manifests power and how one social group exerts more influence than the

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other on the landscape (Matthews 1995). Within the broader framework of critical landscape study, place names are symbolic texts embedded in the landscape which could be read and interpreted differently by diverse social groups and individuals (Duncan 1990; Pinchevski and Torgovnik 2002; Cosgrove 1988 [2008]). Therefore, naming and renaming of places involve materially and symbolically claiming the landscape (Alderman 2008). One such way of claiming the landscape could be explained by the idea of “symbolic capital” – a term originally used by Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1991). Naming of a place can act as symbolic capital as it can be associated with the distinctive heritage of that place which then can be consumed as a product of a bygone era (Mitchell et al. 2001).

2

Rise of Calcutta and Colonization of the Urban Landscape

Today’s Kolkata, the “City of Joy,” which grew up on the left bank of Hugli River, is an amalgamation of three villages – Sutanuti, Dihi Calcutta or Kalikata, and Gobindapur (Nair 1990). In the late seventeenth century, Sutanuti was a growing center for cotton trade, and by 1690, British established a factory at that site (Kosambi and Brush 1988; Nair 1990). All three villages were located in one line, and Kolkata was located in the middle, Sutanuti to its north, and the Gobindapur to its south, which is now occupied by Fort William and the famous Maidan, the open green space in the heart of the city (Nair 1990). The original Fort William was built in 1696 between Sutanuti and Gobindapur which was replaced by the current fort in 1757. In the first half of British rule, place names were based on geology, flora, and fauna (Roy 2014). In terms of toponymy, this type of naming signifies only a geographical place and does not reflect a certain ideology (Azaryahu and Golan 2001). The classic example of this is reflected through the name Sealdah located near the central part of Kolkata; dah means an island and seal means jackal. Therefore, Sealdah means an island where jackals are found (Roy 2014). The name also reveals the city’s geological history indicating that the city was once under the Bay of Bengal (Nair 1987). Similarly, Ballygunge in Southern Kolkata reminds us of the city’s geographic and geologic characteristics because there was a market for bali or sand. It could be easily assumed that these sands came from churs or sandbanks formed by the River Hugli (Nair 1990). Numerous place and street names of Kolkata were derived from indigenous flora and fauna. Bamboo and palms were probably responsible for several street names in Kolkata, some of which are still found today. For example, Taltala Bazar Street and Narkeldanga North Road took their names from tal (Borassus flabellifer) and narkel (Cocos nucifera), two common flora which are abundant in Bengal (Nair 1987). Street names in Kolkata also demonstrate their origins from diverse fauna especially fish and prawns. Thus, topsi (Polyremus Paradiscus), tengra (Mystus vitatus), and Chingri (prawn) have all found their respective place in the city’s landscape through Tapsia Road, Tangrah First Lane, and Chingri Ghata Lane (Nair 1987).

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As British power consolidated in India and Kolkata became the capital of British India, street and place naming commemorated the governors-general and viceroys on the urban landscape. The first interest in urban planning and urban reform in Kolkata can be traced back to Lord Wellesley who was the Governor General of India in 1798–1805 (Chatterjee 1990; Datta 2012). In 1803, he formed several committees and prepared a Minute of a meeting focusing on the urban reconstruction of Kolkata which addressed the fact that the city was a rapidly growing entrepot in Eastern India (Datta 2012). Following the Minute of Lord Wellesley, a Town Improvement Committee, also known as Lottery Committee (30 members), was established to bring order into a rapidly emerging and chaotic Kolkata. The roads and streets built and named under the Lottery Committee reflected the names of colonial rulers such as Wellesley Street and Cornwallis Street (Nair 1987; Chatterjee 1990). Colonial Kolkata also commemorated the Empress of India, Queen Victoria, by erecting a grand memorial and building parks and streets after her name. Queen’s Way near the Victoria Memorial bears testimony to the commemoration of British rulers and administrators in street toponymy (Nair 1987; Roy 2014). Street names such as Amherst Street, Bentinck Street, Rawdon Street, Beadon Street, and Grant Street are some of the names which demonstrated the British claim on Kolkata (Nair 1987).

3

Decolonization of the Urban Landscape

After India’s independence, Kolkata experienced a splurge of renaming streets as part of claiming material and symbolic ownerships on its urban landscape (Alderman 2008). The process of decolonization in Kolkata was accompanied by a strong sense of nationalism, the creation of cultural identity, and integrity (Maloba 1995; Wanjiru and Matsubara 2017). In renaming its streets and urban spaces, Kolkata mostly drew from its freedom fighters and leaders, social reformers, poets, and actors (Chaudhuri 2015). The renaming of streets and other places in the postindependent period can be illustrated by the fact that 168 streets and parks were renamed from 1976 to 2007. The year 1982 was a landmark year in terms of toponymic changes as 27 streets were renamed in Kolkata (Ganguly and Bhattacharyya 2010). The following four case studies highlight the trajectory of street-name changes in Kolkata along with their historical and political background. Park Street: Originally extended from the Chowringhee to Lower Circular Road (Nair 1987), Park Street is one of the most vibrant streets in Kolkata and is known for its night life. The name “Park Street” emerged in the late nineteenth century and prior to that the road was known as Badamtala or Burial Ground Road. The name “Burial Ground Road” was also found in Upjohn’s map of Kolkata in 1794. Colonial Kolkata was spatially divided between white and black town or native town, and Park Street emerged as an entertainment hub for the Europeans (Dutt et al. 2016; Roy 2017). The clubs and cinemas were only for the Europeans and natives were not allowed to enter (Roy 2017). Thus, Park Street clearly demonstrated a “racial hierarchical structure” (Wanjiru and Matsubara 2017) by restricting access to the native or indigenous Indian populations. Some clubs like Bengal Club even went a step further by clearly stating,

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“dogs and Indians not allowed” (Chaliha and Gupta 1990: 55). Before 1858, nobody could imagine Park Street as a place for potential entertainment hub of the white town as it was demarcated by cemeteries towards the Lower Circular end and Asiatic Society at the other (Fig. 1). With the beginning of modern town planning in 1803, along with the establishment of the Town Improvement Committee, popularly known as the Lottery Committee, there was a strong focus on improving the living conditions of the white town (Datta 2012). Development of roads, sewerage, potable water system, and installation of street lights also helped improve the conditions of Park Street and its surrounding areas leading to its emergence as an entertainment hub of the city (Roy 2017). The street and its adjoining areas were thus decorated by grand buildings primarily built by Armenians. The rise of Park Street as a center of late night entertainment could also be explained by the growing need for socialization among Europeans which led to the development of some famous clubs such as The Tollygunge Club, The Royal Calcutta Golf Club, and Calcutta Rowing Club (Karan 2004; Roy 2017). Later in the twentieth century, Park Street and its adjoining areas became the home of several restaurants-cum-bars which entertained customers by providing food, drinks, and Jazz music. During the postindependent period, Park Street went through major changes as the ownership of the restaurants and bars was passed down to Indians. Upper-class people of India understood the value of the iconic status of Park Street, and they assisted in preserving the status by investing in the business of food and music. Several famous jazz bands such as Louis Banks Brotherhood enlightened the city’s night life and attracted younger generations in the 1960s and 1970s (Roy 2017). The impact of decolonization in Park Street was clearly reflected in the renaming of Park

Fig. 1 Park Street has been renamed Mother Teresa Sarani. (Photo by Debarati Mukherjee)

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Street to Mother Teresa Sarani by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (Banerjee 2004). This toponymic change of Park Street to Mother Teresa Sarani in 2002 erased the city’s colonial history and in no way preserved the aesthetic and architectural heritage of the place (Roy 2017). Ironically, the name of the nearby Metro station was never changed after the name of Mother Teresa as the city chose not to completely forget the iconic status of Park Street as a center of entertainment hub (Chaudhuri 2015). For the people of Kolkata, Park Street remains Park Street which still celebrates a bygone colonial period by creating a “symbolic capital” (Alderman 2008) for local pubs and restaurants. Sidhu Kanu Dahar: In the postindependent period, the Esplanade (Row) East was renamed Sidhu Kanu Dahar (Figs. 2 and 3) to commemorate the sacrifices of two Santhal leaders against the oppression of British rulers and local money lenders (Nair 1987). In 1855, under the leadership of Sidhu and Kanu, two Santhal brothers gathered with others to revolt against the colonial power. The two brothers sacrificed their lives, and many others died in the uprising. To date, Santhal people remember the two legendary national leaders and celebrate their glorious past through “Hul Festival” (Sengupta and Lochan 2015). During the British period, the Santhals mostly lived in and around the Rajmahal Hills covering a tract between the Ganges and Brahmani River. They were involved in agriculture and hunting. The land around the Rajmahal Hill was worshipped by the Santhals as Thakur which literally means God. When the East India Company gradually started expanding its power in Bengal, Santhal people’s lives were affected (Sengupta and Lochan 2015). As the British transferred power to the landlords, moneylenders, revenue officers, and police, the Santhals became marginalized in their own land. The

Fig. 2 Esplanade (Row) East was renamed to Sidhu Kanu Dahar. (Photo by Debarati Mukherjee)

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Fig. 3 Signboard showing the direction of Sidhu Kanu Dahar. (Photo by Debarati Mukherjee)

loss of land to outsiders, oppression by the British, and local landlords led the Santhal people to oppose the British Governance. The renaming of Esplanade (Row) East to Sidhu Kanu Dahar can also be explained by the ideas of nationalism and restitution of justice or symbolic reparation (Wanjiru and Matsubara 2017). The restitution of justice signifies justice and identity for the victims of oppression. The renaming of streets after those who fought against the British oppression in India is one of the ways to claim dignity for the political leaders who fought for freedom and independence. B.B.D. Bagh: Today’s Binoy-Badol-Dinesh Bagh or Binoy-Badol-Dinesh Square was known as Dalhousie Square after the Governor General of India, Lord Dalhousie. B.B.D. Bagh is also Kolkata’s Central Business District. In the early phase of Kolkata’s urban development, Dalhousie Square was known as Tank Square which was excavated in the 1770s (Nair 1987; Datta 2012: 22). In 1954, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation renamed Dalhousie or Tank Square to BinoyBadol-Dinesh Bagh after the freedom fighters who attacked Writers’ Buildings in 1930 (Nair 1987). In the eyes of the British government, they were seen as terrorists and part of the growing revolutionary terrorism in Bengal in which Europeans were attacked and assassinated (Sen 1994). The three revolutionaries were inspired by the Chittagong Armoury Raid which was led by Surya Sen and other leaders. In April 1929, Surya Sen and his followers seized the local armory in the city of Chittagong which is located in what is present-day Bangladesh. So, the renaming of Dalhousie Square to Binoy-Badol-Dinesh Bagh by the West Bengal Government demonstrates nationalism, a change in political leadership, and the translation of historical memory into public space (Wanjiru and Matsubara 2017). Ho Chi Minh Sarani: In 1969, Harrington Street which was named after John Herbert Harrington was renamed Ho Chi Minh Sarani (Nair 1987; Roy 2014). The renaming was after the name of the President of Democratic Republic of Vietnam; it

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demonstrated Kolkata’s interconnectedness with global socio-economic and political conditions (Kaplan 2010). In 1958, Ho Chi Minh visited Kolkata for a day and the Calcutta Corporation provided him a civic reception. In response to that reception, Ho Chi Minh acknowledged the revolutionary tradition of Bengal and how people of Bengal contributed to India’s freedom movement as well as support for Vietnam’s resistance to capitalism (Nair 1987). It should be noted that the US Consulate was located on Harrington Street and today it is still located at the same place. Therefore, the renaming of Harrington Street to Ho Chi Minh Sarani was part of a political strategy in which the communist city government wanted to protest against the US effort to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia (Karan 2004; Roy 2014).

4

Chaotic Toponymy

The recent street and place name changes in Kolkata are more chaotic and cannot be explained by a single theoretical lens. Also, it reflects the whim of the current national right-wing government. Since the right-wing government came into power, the renaming of city streets has become dominated by commemorating names of renowned film stars, artists, and literary personalities. After the present Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee came into power in 2011, 35 roads have been renamed (Roy 2014). It is very difficult to find the names of these 35 roads from the existing literature on toponymic changes. However, Table 1 shows the old and new names of some of the major roads and streets in Kolkata (Fig. 4). The spree of naming and renaming of streets often creates problems for the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) to find suitable streets which do not have a name. Sometimes, they need to shorten a particular street to accommodate a new name, for example, the Pramathesh Barua Sarani (i.e., Pramathesh Barua Road) who was the first star of Bengali cinema to accommodate Suchitra Sen, the renowned actress of Bengali film industry. This mere accommodation resulted in only 350 m being allotted to Mr. Barua while Suchitra Sen received a stretch of 2 km. Table 1 Street name changes in Kolkata SI no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Old street name Amherst Street Beadon Street (part) British India Street Cornwallis Street Dalhousie Square Esplanade Row East Harrington Street Park Street Rawdon Street Lower Circular Road

Sources: Nair (1987) and Calcutta Web (2018)

New street name Raja Rammohan Sarani Avedananda Road Abdul Hamid Street Bidhan Sarani Binoy-Badol-Dinesh Bagh (B.B.D. Bagh) Sidhu Kanu Dahar Ho Chi Minh Sarani Mother Teresa Sarani Sarojini Naidu Sarani Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road

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Fig. 4 Kolkata Map

Renaming of streets in Kolkata often creates a dilemma for the CMC to find a suitable stretch of road to fulfill the request of citizens. This dilemma came to the surface when a group of admirers appealed to the CMC for a long stretch of road after the famous Bollywood playback singer Kishore Kumar. The CMC had a hard time finding a suitable stretch of road to satisfy the demand of Kishore fans. Initially, they allotted a 400 m stretch for the renowned singer in Tollygunge, but that was not satisfactory for his fans. In the meantime, the family members of

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famous Bengali writer and novelist Ashapurna Devi requested the CMC to allot a road after her name in Garia where she spent her life. There was already a road after her name at Patuli. So, the road renaming committee decided to satisfy both parties by exchanging these two different stretches of roads. So, Asha Purna Devi was allotted a street at Garia, and Kishore Kumar was given a 3 km road named the Patuli Connector (Roy 2014). In 2016, another hilarious and chaotic situation occurred when the Chief Minister of Bengal wanted to allot a street after the internationally acclaimed film-maker and writer Satyajit Ray. The Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wanted to rename Lee Road after Mr. Ray. While inaugurating the Bishop Lefroy Road where Ray lived from the 1970s until his death in 1992 and made notable films like Nayak, Hirak Rajar Deshe, Ghare Baire, Ashani Sanket, and Agantuk, she requested the CMC to rename the road to “Satyajit Ray Dharani” by saying that “Sarani amra onek shunechhi. Eta Satyajit Ray Dharani korbo (We have heard of enough Saranis. We will call this Satyajit Ray Dharani)” (Basu 2016). Use of the Bengal word “Dharani” instead of “Sarani” created commotion among the dignitaries and public who were present. The word “Dharani” means “earth” in Bengali and cannot be used to denote a road. Soon after the Chief Minister’s announcement, Mayor Sovan Chatterjee called a meeting of the mayoral council to rename Lee Road to “Satyajit Ray Dharani.” The debate on renaming Lee Road touched even the film director Sandip Ray, the son of Satyajit Ray who commented that he did not want his father’s name to replace either Lee Road or Bishop Lefroy Road. Therefore, the recent renaming of streets in the city was based on a single person’s administrative whim as well as an act of power (Subramanian 2016).

5

Conclusion

Historically, toponymic changes on the landscape are manifestations of power and administrative management. Critical scholars have also recently changed their approach in examining the renaming streets and place names from political perspectives. One ethnic group erases the place names given by a different ethnic group in order to inscribe their own claim on the landscape. Examples of such erasure can be drawn from other times, for example, when Norman England removed the place names of Celtic origins (Subramanian 2016). The renaming of streets in Kolkata has gone through several phases. In the British period, the toponymical changes reflected the colonial power on the urban landscape which was replaced by nationalism and a strong desire to reverse the colonial trend. In Kolkata, the naming and renaming of city’s urban landscape are controlled by dominant social and political groups such as the government and the elites of the city. In certain cases, such as the case of the Park Street, keeping the old name through the Park Street Metro Station is creating a “symbolic capital” for the local businesses. As a “symbolic capital” Park Street commodifies the past as well as reinforces the inequality between the city’s elites and the people who cannot enjoy this entertainment hub (Alderman 2008). Renaming of streets and places in Kolkata in the twenty-first century follows a trend of

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commemorating the leading writers, singers, film directors, and actors. Often such renaming creates problems for the common people and the city’s postal and courier services (Roy 2014). Drawing inspiration from the critical toponymic study, this chapter empirically contributes to the politics of place naming in South Asia, more specifically in India. The history and politics of street name changes in Kolkata need further study exploring the local politics of place naming as well as the role of marginal communities in naming and claiming the city’s landscape. Since Kolkata is home to diverse religious and ethnic communities, there is further scope to delve deeper into understanding the role of these communities in controlling and claiming the urban landscape through the process of place renaming.

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Dutt, A., Pomeroy, G., Islam, I., & Chatterjee, I. (2016). Cities of South Asia. In S. D. Brunn, M. Hays-Mitchell, D. Zeigler, & J. K. Graybill (Eds.), Cities of the world: Regional patterns and global environments (pp. 369–410). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Dutta, K. (2003). Calcutta: A cultural and literary history. New York: Interlink Books. Ganguly, D., & Bhattacharyya, C. S. (2010). Wayward city. The Telegraph, April 11, 2010. https:// www.telegraphindia.com/1100411/jsp/calcutta/story_12327326.jsp. Kaplan, R. (2010). Kolkata: The next global city. In Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the future of American power (pp. 155–178). New York: Random House. Karan, P. P. (2004). The non-western world: Environment, development and human rights. New York: Routledge. Kosambi, M., & Brush, J. E. (1988). Three colonial port cities in India. Geographical Review, 78(1), 32–47. Maloba, W. (1995). Decolonization: A theoretical perspective. In W. Ochieng & B. Ogot (Eds.), Decolonization and independence in Kenya, 1940–1993 (pp. 7–24). London: James Currey. Matthews, H. (1995). Living on the edge: Children as “outsiders”. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 86(5), 456–466. Mitchell, C., Atkinson, R. G., & Clark, A. (2001). The creative destruction of Niagara-On-TheLake. The Canadian Geographer, 45(2), 285–299. Nair, P. T. (1987). A history of Calcutta’s streets. Calcutta: Firma Klm Private Limited. Nair, P. T. (1990). The growth and development of old Calcutta. In S. Chaudhuri (Ed.), Calcutta: The living city, volume I: The past (pp. 10–23). Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pinchevski, A. and Torgovnik, E. (2002). Signifying passages: The signs of change in Israeli street names. Media, Culture and Society 24(3), 365–88. Rose-Redwood, R., Alderman, D., & Azaryahu, M. (2010). Geographies of toponymic inscription: New directions in critical place-name studies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(4), 453–470. Roy, S. (2014). Streets short in name game. The Telegraph, March 28, 2014. https://www. telegraphindia.com/1140328/jsp/calcutta/story_18107000.jsp Roy, A. (2017). Confronting epochs: The many faces of colonial and postcolonial park street in Kolkata. Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 3(2), 1–9. http://sanglap-journal.in/index. php/sanglap/rt/printerFriendly/146/183 Sen, S. N. (1994). Revolutionary terrorism. In History of freedom movement in India (1857–1947) (pp. 242–251). New Delhi: Wiley Eastern Limited. Sengupta, S., & Lochan, P. (2015). Santhal rebellion – A counter insurgency against “outsiders” as ordained by a “Thakur”. International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, 3 (4), 102–108. Subramanian, L. (2016). Changing a name of place can be an act of power or about the politics of visibility. The Indian Express, August 9, 2016. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/col umns/kolkata-renaming-bongo-banga-identity-politics-new-name-column-2962397/ Swart, M. (2008). Name changes as symbolic reparations after transition: The examples of Germany and South Africa. German Law Journal, 9(2), 105–121. Wanjiru, W. M., & Matsubara, K. (2017). Street toponymy and the decolonisation of the urban landscape in post-colonial Nairobi. Journal of Cultural Geography, 34(1), 1–23. Zeidel, R. (2006). Naming and counternaming: The struggle between society and state as reflected in Iraq and the Arab sector in Israel. Orient, 47, 201–217.

Role of Place Names in Relating People and Space

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Place-Naming Process and Central Role of the (Local) Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Four Basic Roles of Place Names in Relating People to Geographical Space . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 They Often Highlight Characteristics of Space Important for a Certain Community and Reflect in this Way a Human Community’s Perception of Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Place Names Mark the Territory of a Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Place Names Structure Space Mentally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Place Names Support Emotional Ties Between People and Place and Promote in this Way Space-Related Identity Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

On the background of new cultural geography and after a glance at the naming process, the chapter highlights five essential roles played by places names in relating human to territory: (1) When they are descriptive, they emphasize spatial characteristics that are important for a community – they reflect in this way the interests of a given community and are condensed narratives on the cultural disposition of human communities in history and today. (2) In the status of endonyms (i.e., names used by the local community), place names mark the territory of a community, reflect the general human distinction between “ours” and “theirs,” and have a strong symbolic meaning. (3) In the status of exonyms (i.e., names used by a local community for geographical features outside their P. Jordan (*) Institute of Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_48

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own territory), they indicate the network of relations of a community extending beyond the boundaries of its own territory. (4) They structure space. Often concepts of space are just defined by their names. Place names are not only carriers of spatial concepts and enable communication about spatial structures, but they also contribute to the mental structuring of space. By place names, spatial structures cannot only be described but also be shaped and modified. (5) They support emotional ties between humans and space and promote in this way the formation of space-related identity. Geographical names contribute in this way to space-related identity building, both of individuals and communities. The chapter will not only describe and explain these roles, but also illustrate them by many examples. Keywords

Place names · Descriptive naming · Endonyms · Exonyms · Space-related emotion · Community · Space

1

Introduction

Place names are an interdisciplinary field of studies, almost a point of convergence of several disciplines (Taylor 1998). Linguistics with a focus on etymology and historical sciences regarding place names as windows to the past were traditionally the strongest in this field and continue to be productive (see, e.g., Conedera et al. 2007; Kathrein 2009). This picture has to some extent changed in recent years. Social sciences, especially anthropology and geography, have gained interest in place names and study them in relation to society, political constitution, perceptions of place, and markers of identity. Thus, contemporary aspects come into the foreground, but without disregarding historical perspectives and backgrounds. Yi-Fu Tuan (1977, 1990 [1974], 1991), member of the Berkeley School of Cultural Geography and disciple of Carl Sauer, led the foundations of a geographical approach to place names; Keith Basso (1988, 1996) did it from the angle of cultural anthropology. For both, place names establish or express the relationship between people and geographical space and are thus indicative for perceptions of geographical features as well as for the cultural structure and disposition of societies. They also stress the role of place names as cultural heritage and for the reproduction of group identities. Another important dimension of place names, underlined by Tuan, is power. Name giving is not an innocent process but depends on who has the “saying” in a community or society. The dominant political direction finally defines which name is used in the public and thus gains communicative value. There is very frequently a minority not satisfied with the name, and a change of the dominant political direction means very often a change of place names. Place names are also subject to alternative interpretations and contested histories; they may be regarded as expressing political claims or nostalgia and are thus reasons for political conflict. “Critical toponomastics” is a lively current within contemporary place name research and

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highlights right the role of power in place naming and behind place names. Berg and Volteenaho (2009) and Rose-Redwood et al. (2010) have essentially contributed to this lively current within contemporary place-name research. Within the scope of this direction, this chapter focuses on basic roles that place names play in relating people to geographical space. It is based on the principal works of Yi-Fu Tuan (1977, 1990 [1974], 1991), Keith Basso (1988, 1996), and Don Mitchell (2000) as well as contributions by Botolv Helleland (2009) and earlier works by the author of this chapter (Jordan 2009a, 2012, 2014, 2015a). But before entering the discussion of these roles, it is necessary to have a look at the placenaming process to get a better understanding of the factors involved.

2

The Place-Naming Process and Central Role of the (Local) Community

Three factors are involved in the place-naming process, i.e., when it comes to attribute a place name to a geographical feature (Fig. 1): • The local community in the sense of a group of people, who feel to have a common identity. It can vary in size between family and partnership (related to a flat or house) via inhabitants of a village/town/city/landscape, a nation, and a language community up to the global community (“community of global citizens”). It needs not to be a cohesion group in the sense of a group of people tied by personal relations and almost in permanent interaction. It can also just be an identity group – a group of people feeling to have something in common. They neither need not have personal relations nor to know each other. The community creating and applying place names is not necessarily the same. However, if a community applies place names created by another community, it appropriates these place names and makes them their own. • The community’s culture including language. Culture is understood here in the most comprehensive sense as the totality of all human expressions (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1963; Lévi-Strauss 1946, 1949). • Geographical space subdivided into geographical features. Geographical space is understood here according to Wilhelm Leibniz as the totality of all relations between physical and material features (Weichhart et al. 2006). The only actor in this process is the (local) community. It inhabits a certain section of geographical space (a flat, a house, a village, town/city, region, country), has developed a certain culture, speaks a certain language, and structures complex geographical space mentally into features on the background of its culture and led by its specific (e.g., economic) interests marking these features by place names in their language. Names for geographical features at the community’s own territory can be called endonyms (“names from within”). Endonyms in this sociological sense are symbols of appropriation: Who owns a feature usually has the right to name it. Who has the

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Fig. 1 Features of the placenaming process. (Source: Author)

power to assign the name usually also has the power over this feature or at least responsibility for it. When Genesis 2:20 says that “the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field. . .” this function of naming (in general) is clearly addressed. For geographical features offside its territory, a community usually just adopts already existing place names, translates them into its own language, or adapts them morphologically or phonetically to it. In contrast to names for features on its own territory (endonyms), these are exonyms, needed by a community to mark features offside its own territory sufficiently important to it in a comfortable way (easy to be pronounced, to be communicated). In contrast to endonyms, exonyms are not symbols for appropriation and do not express claims, but indicate the importance of a feature for this community and the relations it has with it (Jordan 2009b, 2015a, b; Woodman 2012). Exonyms just help to integrate this foreign feature into the cultural sphere of a community and help to avoid exclusion and alienation (Back 2002). But it is also true that the use of exonyms is sometimes conceived as expressing claims, especially when exonyms correspond to historical endonyms. This, however, is a misunderstanding, which should be erased, also by a politically sensitive use of exonyms (Jordan 2000). Place naming is executed either by convention between the members of a community or by an institution charged and legitimized by the community for this purpose. Of course, also an individual can attribute a place name to a feature, but such a name will not get into use, assume communicative value, and persist, if it is not accepted at least by the smallest local community. So it is at the end always the community who acts in this process. No community, however, is completely homogenous. It is always composed of a dominant portion and non-dominant subgroups. The dominant portion of a community is of course in the position to decree the use of a place name and to oblige other community members to use it whether they like it or not. So it may happen that the place name applied by the own community assumes for some community members an “exonymic character” in the sense that they have to accept and to use it but that it is not the name with which they can fully identify themselves, which they would use, if this was their own decision. Situations of this kind occur with many place-name

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Fig. 2 Multiple space-related identities. (Source: Author)

changes after a new political regime or direction assumed power – as it was in the eastern part of Europe after World War II, when Communism came into power, and again after the fall of Communism in 1989/1990 (Jordan and Woodman 2016). It is also a fact that we usually do not belong to only one community, but rather to a multitude of them – we have in fact multiple group identities (Fig. 2). These various communities have usually also different relations to space and feel responsible for different sections of spatial reality. We are global citizens, when we engage ourselves in questions like climate change, global disparities in development, etc. Global institutions and organizations support this community (e.g., the United Nations). We are inhabitants of our continent as far as we feel responsible and engage ourselves for this continent. We are citizens of an association of countries like the European Union, members of a language community (e.g., the Englishspeaking), members of a nation, citizens of a country, and inhabitants of a region, a city, a commune, and a village. Almost all these communities are in a way organized and feel responsibility for a section of space. All of these mentioned have certainly also a specific relation to space. But there exist also communities with the same relation to space, because they reside in the same location, and differ just by their cultural identity (ethnic affiliation, language, religion, etc.) – as it is in minority situations, when a given territory is settled not only by one but by several communities. All the community levels mentioned are also active in place naming. But they can attribute names in the status of endonyms (place names “from within”) only to geographical features at their very own level (scale), since the competence for attributing a place name (for applying the endonym) follows the principle of subsidiarity. It is always the smaller community, the community closer to the feature and actually responsible for it, who has the primary right to attribute a name. Thus, the name for the Earth is certainly an endonym in all languages spoken on Earth. Names for individual geographical features on Earth are, however, not anymore endonyms in all languages – even if we all feel to be global citizens. The name for a certain country, e.g., is certainly an endonym in the language of all communities composing the permanent population of this country, while names in the languages

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of non-dominant communities for the capital of this country will be endonyms only if these communities permanently reside in this capital – are a local community there. The Hawaiian name for the United States, ‘Amelika Hui Pū ‘ia, for instance, is certainly an endonym, since Hawaiians are part of the United States permanent resident population, but their name Wakinekona, DC for Washington, DC, the US capital, is just an exonym, because Hawaiians are not a part of its permanent resident population. This principle of subsidiarity is also valid within a certain language community (so, not only when communities with different languages are involved). It frequently occurs that a local population calls a village differently from outsiders (speaking the same language). It happens also with other feature categories, e.g., rivers. While, e.g., the local German-speaking Saxons residing along the upper run of river Mureş in Transylvania call this river Mieresch, the same river is addressed by the also German-speaking Danube Swabians and elsewhere by German speakers Marosch. Thus, Mieresch is the German endonym for the upper run of the river, while Marosch is a German exonym for it. Based on this concept, the endonym can be defined as the place name accepted and applied by the local community and the exonym as the place name not applied by the local community. These definitions deviate, however, from the definitions formulated by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) as documented in its Glossary of Toponymic Terms (UNGEGN 2002: 10). These definitions taken for granted, the endonym/exonym divide corresponds to the divide between space and place in the sense of Yi-Fu Tuan (1977), i.e., the divide between (neutral) space and this section of space, to which a certain human community has assumed relations (“place”). “Naming turns space into place,” as Bill Watt puts it (Watt 2009: 21), is very much to the point, although place naming is certainly not the only agent in this respect.

3

Four Basic Roles of Place Names in Relating People to Geographical Space

Let us proceed now to the roles or functions of place names in relating humankind to territory: Place names (can) have four main functions in relating humankind to territory (or communities to geographical space).

3.1

They Often Highlight Characteristics of Space Important for a Certain Community and Reflect in this Way a Human Community’s Perception of Space

They often describe location (North Dakota), morphology (Rocky Mountains, Great Plains), hydrology (Lake District, Salt Lake City), vegetation (Sequoia National Park), soils (Steinfeld “gravel field”) of a certain place, or functions of a place within

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geographical space: bridge function (Innsbruck “bridge across river Inn”), port function (Newport), and pass function (Cluj “narrowness”). They highlight in this way characteristics that seemed important to the people, who named the place on the background of their culture and their specific interests. Farmers had naming motives different from herdsmen and seafarers different from mountain dwellers (Sperling 2008). We, the people living today, have naming motives different from our ancestors. For us the meaning of the place name can have lost its transparency, e.g., when the name originates from a language spoken earlier and not anymore at a place (Chicago, Oklahoma, Mississippi). The meaning attributed to the feature must not have the same importance for us, since our culture and interests are different from the culture and interests of the people that named the feature (British Columbia, New Brunswick/Nouveau-Brunswick). But it can be assumed that no name was meaningless for the people, who were the first to apply it. Place names reflect the perception of space by a certain community. They are “condensed narratives” about the cultural disposition of a community and are for this reason also keys to settlement and cultural history of a certain place. Since new settlers tend to adopt place names from the already resident population, they meet in a certain place – as it was in all former colonies – toponymic research is a safe way to document the sequence of population and cultural layers. Gottfried Schramm, e.g., proved by toponymic research that – quite in contrast to their own historiography – Albanians were not the first to settle on the territory of modern Albania, but found a Slavonic population layer, when they arrived there in the eighth century A.D. Not all place names, however, exert this function. It is the specific of descriptive place names, while commemorative place names in the sense of place names after persons, peoples, organizations, institutions and events – very frequent in urban space, but also in former colonial lands – have been assigned on the ground of other motives.

3.2

Place Names Mark the Territory of a Community

Place names in the status of endonyms (as names given and/or applied by the local community) are markers of the community’s own territory. This role is exerted by the display of place names in public space, e.g., by signposts or plates, or in documents and publications, e.g., on maps. Their function is similar to flags, coats of arms, labels, or logos. Since this role has already been discussed in the context of the placenaming process, it is not necessary to enlarge on it here. It should, however, be emphasized that it is this role that gives names in general, but place names in particular, always and inevitably a political, sociological, and juridical dimension and that makes them a potential source of conflict (Horn 2004; Eller et al. 2008). Place names mark the territories of all levels and scales of human communities. Already our workplace is usually marked by a name. It is the name of a person (Fig. 3), which in this function assumes the status of a place name indicating that this is the room, where this individual has more rights (and responsibilities) than others.

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Fig. 3 Label functioning as a place name at the entrance to an office. (Source: Photo by Peter Jordan (2014))

At the next level of human communities, a signpost marks a populated place (Fig. 4). When the signpost is bi- or multilingual (Fig. 5), it communicates that not just one community but two or more reside there and share the identity of the place. This works only without conflict, when the dominant community is ready to accept sharing the identity of the place – which is not always the case (Fig. 6). Exonyms do in principal not play the role of marking territories, although it is sometimes attributed to them. This attribution is, as already explained, a misunderstanding and may – besides the intention to standardize according to the “one name for one feature principle” – be a major reason why the United Nations so far recommended by several resolutions the reduction of exonym use (UNGEGN 2015). It is, however, also true that sometimes exonyms are actually used in a demonstrative way to express territorial claims or remind in a nostalgic way of former “possessions,” e.g., when territorial losses of a country are outlined on maps by exonyms (Tátrai and Erőss 2016).

3.3

Place Names Structure Space Mentally

Place names help to subdivide complex spatial reality into features. Every geographical feature (in the sense of a subunit of geographical space) is a mental construct. This is especially obvious with landscapes, cultural regions, or macro-regions lacking concrete or clear limits like current administrative boundaries and “natural boundaries” like mountain ranges or rivers. Up to where Europe extends in the East is obviously just a convention. It is impossible to find clear boundaries of Central or

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Fig. 4 Signpost in front of a populated place, Dorion, Ontario, Canada. (Source: Photo by Peter Jordan (2008))

Fig. 5 Trilingual signpost in front of a town in Romania. (Source: Photo by Peter Jordan (2006))

Southeast Europe in reality. A place name is the vehicle, the instrument in this process of mental structuring of space. Without place names we would not be able to establish a system of space-related concepts, to communicate it, and to maintain it. In many cases (e.g., cultural regions, landscapes), the place name is in fact the only identifier of a geographical feature.

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Fig. 6 Damaged bilingual (Italian/Resian) signpost in Valle di Resia, Italy. (Source: Photo by Peter Jordan (2008))

Dalmatia as a cultural landscape is a case in point. It was a historical unit, but is no current political entity anymore. Its boundaries are flexible and negotiable, conceived by different people in a different way. The concept of Dalmatia exists just by virtue of the name. But this name marks a concept rich in contents: rocky coast, Venetian-type towns, cold wind bora, and tourism. Everybody has an imagination of it. The place name is a tourism brand and repeated by the names of newspapers, hotels and restaurants, ships, etc. Another case in point is the concept of Central Europe. It has been introduced by August Zeune in 1815 (Zeune 1815) as chorographic term without political connotations. In the late nineteenth century and toward World War I, however, it assumed various political meanings and was intensively discussed. Also in the interwar period and up to Europe’s partition into two antagonistic political blocs, it served as a political instrument. Already in the 1980s and after the fall of Communism, it enjoyed a certain renaissance. For practical reasons, the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (Ständiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen, StAGN) and the place-name Committee of Germany with a coordinative function for all German-speaking countries and regions found it necessary to define and outline it in terms of a cultural macro-region (Jordan 2005; StAGN 2015) based on historical factors that had left traces in the cultural landscape; have an influence on human attitudes and behavior up to the present day; are relevant for historical as well as current societal, political, and economic situations; and result in a spatial subdivision that sustains and is not subject to frequent changes. As factors in this sense, the following were conceived: (1) synchronic or diachronic existence of Protestantism and Catholicism, while Orthodoxy and Islam play only marginal roles; (2) shaped – as a specific – by German and Jewish culture in addition to Slavonic, Romance, Hungarian, and other cultural layers (present also outside Central Europe); (3) early

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development of an urban system and an independent urban society in counterbalance to nobility, sovereign, and church compared to East and Southeast Europe; (4) early free farmers independent of feudal landlords; (5) traditions of local and regional selfgovernment as a consequence of early political particularism; (6) politically and economically oriented toward the continent (and not toward overseas); and (7) delayed industrialization compared to West Europe, but much earlier than in East and Southeast Europe. The territorial delimitation derived from these factors (Fig. 7, StAGN 2015) lacks of course empirical evidence, and a study based on other factors may arrive at a very different result. The concept has nevertheless been recommended by StAGN and has assumed a kind of quasi-reality, but exists in fact just by virtue of its name.

Fig. 7 Subdivision of Europe into macro-regions by cultural criteria. (Source: Map by Peter Jordan, cartography by R. Richter, StAGN (2015))

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Place Names Support Emotional Ties Between People and Place and Promote in this Way Space-Related Identity Building

If somebody acquainted with a place reads, mentions, or memorizes a place name, this recalls all the contents of a space-related concept with him/her and reminds him/her of sights, persons, events, smells, and sounds associated with this place and lets “the feel of a place” arise as Yi-Fu Tuan calls it (Tuan 1977). Therefore, it is, e.g., important to render minority place names on signposts (Jordan 2014). They give these communities the feeling of belonging and of being at home there. It is also a kind of an affirmative action, since non-dominant groups are in special need of being affirmed. For them group identity (including spacerelated identity as a prominent part of it) means a daily challenge – much more than for a dominant group. The main task of minority place names on signposts is not information (assuming that somebody could not be able to read the name in the dominant language), but symbolic representation of the minority. By its own place name, the minority is to be affirmed that this is also its place and the minority has a share in its identity. Therefore, it is also important that on the signpost figures the endonym as it is used and written by the minority group. A good example is the rendering of Ukrainian minority names in Cyrillic letters on signposts in Romania (Fig. 8) as it was introduced by the Romanian place name law of 2001 (Jordan 2005, 2006). Would the Ukrainian name have been converted into Roman script, the local Ukrainian community would look at it as alienated and not recognize it anymore as “theirs.” How important place names are for space-related identity and emotional ties can also be seen from emigrants, who frequently take the name of their home

Fig. 8 Signpost in front of a populated place in Romania in two scripts: Romanian-Latin, Ukrainian-Cyrillic. (Source: Photo by Peter Jordan (2008))

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Fig. 9 Signpost in front of a populated place nearby Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. (Source: Photo by Peter Jordan (2008))

with them – as a last tie to their former home or to make the new place more familiar. New Amsterdam and New York are prominent examples. But there are many more such as in the surroundings of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where, e.g., an emigrant group from Breslau in former German Silesia, now Wrocław in Polish Silesia, has taken its name with them (Fig. 9).

4

Conclusions

If one looks at place names from a cultural–geographical point of view, the (local) community is the essential player (and only actor) in the place-naming process using place names as mediators between people and territory to highlight characteristics of a place important for this community, to mark its territory and distinguish between “our own” and “theirs,” to structure space mentally, to support emotional ties to its territory (to turn space into place), and, in other words, to exert territoriality – an essential aspect of human life. Place names have for this reason always and inevitably sociological, political, and juridical implications. The community closer to the feature owning it or feeling responsible for it has the right on the primary name, the endonym. The endonym/exonym divide thus reflects the difference between “our own” and “theirs” and between place and space. This divide is frequently supported by difference in languages, but exists also within a given language. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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References Back, O. (2002). Übersetzbare Eigennamen. Eine synchronische Untersuchung von interlingualer Allonymie und Exonymie. Klagenfurt: Praesens. Basso, K. H. (1988). Speaking with names: Language and landscape among the Western Apache. Cultural Anthropology, III(2), 99–130. Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places. Landscape and language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Berg, L. D., & Volteenaho, J. (Eds.). (2009). Critical toponymies: The contested politics of place naming. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Conedera, M., Vassere, S., Neff, C., Meurer, M., & Krebs, P. (2007). Using toponymy to reconstruct past land use: A case study of “Brusada” (Burn) in Southern Switzerland. Journal of Historical Geography, XXXIII, 729–748. Eller, N., Hackl, S., & Ľupták, M. (Eds.). (2008). Namen und ihr Konfliktpotential im europäischen Kontext. Regensburg: Edition Vulpes. Helleland, B. (2009). Place names as means of landscape identity. In P. Jordan, H. Bergmann, C. Cheetham, & I. Hausner (Eds.), Geographical names as a part of the cultural heritage (pp. 25–31). Wien: Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung der Universität Wien, Kartographie und Geoinformation. Horn, J. (2004). Ortsnamenkonflikte. Lösungswege für mehrsprachige Gebiete. St. Augustin: Asgard. Jordan, P. (2000). The importance of using exonyms – Pleading for a moderate and politically sensitive use. In J. Sievers (Ed.), Second international symposium on geographical names “GeoNames 2000,” 28–30 Mar 2000 (pp. 87–92). Frankfurt am Main: Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie. Jordan, P. (2005). The Romanian Place Names Act 2001 and its implementation compared to multilingual situations in other countries. In Proceedings of the international conference on minority names/indigenous names and multilingual areas, Geonames 2005, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, Frisia, 14–16 Apr 2005 (pp. 59–68). Ljouwert/Leeuwarden. Jordan, P. (2006). Das rumänische Ortsnamengesetz und seine Umsetzung im Vergleich mit Situationen in Österreich. Review of Historical Geography and Toponomastics, 1(1), 7–20. Jordan, P. (2009a). Place names as ingredients of space-related identity. In P. Jordan, H. Bergmann, C. Cheetham, & I. Hausner (Eds.), Geographical names as a part of the cultural heritage (pp. 33–39). Wien: Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung der Universität Wien, Kartographie und Geoinformation. Jordan, P. (2009b). Exonyms as indicators of trans-national spatial relations. Review of Historical Geography and Toponomastics, IV(7–8), 7–16. Jordan, P. (2012). Geographische Namen als Ausdruck menschlicher Raumbindung. Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 154, 67–88. Jordan, P. (2014). The meaning of bilingual naming in public space for the cultural identity of linguistic minorities. Review of Historical Geography and Toponomastics, IX(17–18), 21–24. Jordan, P. (2015a). The endonym/exonym divide: On the state of our discussion, and a final attempt towards new definitions. In P. Jordan, & P. Woodman (Eds.), Confirmation of the Definitions. Proceedings of the 16th UNGEGN working group on exonyms meeting, Hermagor, 5–7 Jun 2014 (pp. 9–17). Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač. Jordan, P. (2015b). The endonym/exonym divide from a cultural–geographical point of view. In J. Löfström & B. Schnabel-Le Corre (Eds.), Challenges in synchronic toponymy (pp. 163–179). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. Jordan, P., & Woodman, P. (Eds.). (2016). Place-name changes. In Proceedings of the Symposion in Rome, 17–18 Nov 2014. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač. Kathrein, Y. (2009). Onomastic research within a project on historical mining sites. The research program “HiMAT” in Austrian Tyrol. Working paper 4. Presented by the head of the Austrian

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UNGEGN delegation, Peter Jordan, at the Session of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), Nairobi, 5–12 May 2009. Kroeber, A. L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1963). Culture, a critical review of concepts and definitions. New York: Vintage Books. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1946). Natur und Kultur. In W. E. Mühlmann (Ed.), Kulturanthropologie (pp. 80–107). Köln/Berlin: Kiepenheuer and Witsch. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1949). Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. Paris: Mouton. Mitchell, D. (2000). Cultural geography. A critical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Rose-Redwood, R., Alderman, D., & Azaryahu, M. (2010). Geographies of toponymic inscription: New directions in critical place-name studies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(4), 453–470. Sperling, W. (2008). Bäume und Wald in den geographischen Namen Mitteleuropas: Die böhmischen Länder. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. StAGN (Ständiger Ausschuss für geographischer Namen). (Ed.). (2015). Empfehlung zur Großgliederung Europas. http://www.stagn.de/drupal/Publikationen%20und%20Downloads. Accessed 30 Dec 2015. Tátrai, P., & Erőss, Á. (2016). Toponymic silence in contested geographical spaces: The neglect of place-name changes in Cyprus and Central Eastern Europe. In: Jordan, P., & Woodman, P. (Eds.), Place-Name Changes. Proceedings of the Symposium in Rome, 17–18 November 2014 (= Name & Place, 5) (pp. 447–463). Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač. Taylor, S. (Ed.). (1998). The uses of place names. Edinburgh: Scottish Cultural Press. Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tuan, Y.-F. (1990 [1974]). Topophilia. A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values. New York: Columbia University Press. Tuan, Y.-F. (1991). Language and the making of place: A narrative–descriptive approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, LXXXI, 684–696. UNGEGN (United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names). (Ed.). (2002). Glossary of terms for the standardization of geographical names. New York: United Nations, ST/ESA/ STAT/SER.M/85. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/UNGEGN/docs/pdf/Glossary_of_terms_ revised.pdf. Accessed 29 Dec 2015. UNGEGN (United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names). (2015). http://unstats.un. org/unsd/geoinfo/UNGEGN/confGeneral.html. Accessed 30 Dec 2015. Watt, B. (2009). Cultural aspects of place names with special regard to names in indigenous, minority and regional languages. In P. Jordan, H. Bergmann, C. Cheetham, & I. Hausner (Eds.), Geographical names as a part of the cultural heritage (pp. 21–24). Wien: Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung der Universität Wien, Kartographie und Geoinformation. Weichhart, P., Weiske, C., & Werlen, B. (2006). place identity und images: Das Beispiel Eisenhüttenstadt. Wien: Universität Wien, Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung. Woodman, P. (Ed.). (2012). The great toponymic divide. Reflections on the definition and usage of endonyms and exonyms. Warszawa: Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography. Zeune, A. (1815). Erdansichten oder Abriss einer Geschichte der Erdkunde. München: Maurer.

Origin of Sea Names

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Theoretical Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Naming Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Geographical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Temporal Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Changes in the Meaning or Scope of Sea Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Naming Sequence, with Southeast Asia as an Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Interim for the Sea Passage Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Demarcation of the Seas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Name Conflicts over Marine Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Seas, gulfs, bays, and oceans have been named since antiquity – for the destinations they led to, for the shores they washed, for their own marine characteristics, or for their explorers. It has been an ongoing process, with the demarcation and naming of the Southern Ocean as the most recent addition. This chapter explores the name-giving process over time, indicating how naming habits changed, as seas were mainly named for nations or mythological figures in antiquity and for their explorers in the twentieth century. The naming process went hand in hand with European exploration, and over time the relation between the names and the named features as perceived by these Europeans changed as well.

F. Ormeling (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_129

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Keywords

Place names · Naming · Changing naming habits · Large water bodies

1

Introduction

Nowadays, sea names are under attack. In the Middle East, the time-honored name Persian Gulf is presently substituted by the name Arabian Gulf by all Arab-speaking countries, even though there already is an Arabian Sea, recognized by all parties concerned, with which it could easily be confused. The name of the sea in between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean peninsula toward the end of the nineteenth century in European atlases gradually tended to be Sea of Japan rather than Sea of Korea. This practice was copied by Japan and is now challenged by both Koreas, which would rather use the name East Sea (of Korea), despite the fact that there is already an East Sea (Ostsee, Oostsee, Östersjön, used by non-English Germanic languages for the Baltic) in Europe, there is an East Sea (Dong Hai) east of China, and there is also one east of Vietnam (Biển Đông). The latter one is called the South China Sea (Nan Hai) by the Chinese, but the West Philippine Sea in the Philippines, and by the Indonesians, parts of this sea are called Natuna Sea and North Natuna Sea. Historical rights are being invoked to support naming claims, such as past usages either codified on maps or embedded in popular culture. Inversely, naming practices are experienced as supporting territorial claims.

2

Theoretical Aspects

On the basis of names inserted in specific locations on maps in the past, people claim the right to use specific names for the features occurring at those locations. For example, both the Republic of Korea and Japan have published collections of old maps that show the names they favored inserted in the sea in between their countries, claiming it was thus proven that it had been called either Sea of Korea or Sea of Japan in the past; Iran and Arab countries have done likewise with old maps of the Persian Gulf. With this chapter the author signals some flaws in their argument. Nowadays, cartographers indicate the extent of a named feature by spreading its name over the area covered by the feature through insertion of space between the letters of the name. This has not always been the practice. Sometimes the name of the feature would be repeated throughout the area covered by the feature. The relationship between the name and its referent might depend on the direction of the traveller: when sailing from Korea to Japan, one would traverse the Japan Sea, and when travelling in the opposite direction, the same feature might be named Sea of Korea. Finally, when seas would be named for adjacent islands, areas, or countries, their names could be experienced as implying that they belonged to these terrestrial

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entities, either in a proximal or a possessive sense. In the first case, the Chinese Sea would be the sea that waters all the shores of China; in the second sense, it would be the sea with all its resources, as possessed by China.

3

Naming Options

What are seas? If one defines seas as large bodies of salt water surrounded wholly or partly by land or islands, one would be struck firstly by the fact that the Caspian Sea (with a third of the salinity of most sea water) would not qualify for the denomination and secondly by the fact that “large” is a relatively vague characteristic. In the Netherlands, the Dutch used to call the shallow inlet of the North Sea that extended some 100 km inland and had a surface area of about 5000 km2 Zuiderzee (South Sea) before it was dammed and renamed IJsselmeer (IJssel Lake), and a tiny inlet of that Zuiderzee called Gouwzee has the same generic label, although its surface area only was some 20 km2. So even if there is a hierarchy between oceans, sea, gulfs, bays, and straits, indicating ever decreasing bodies of water, this hierarchy is interpreted differently in different countries, perhaps depending on their size. For example, in the Netherlands (highest point 322 m above sea level), each hill above 50 m height already qualifies as a “berg,” that is, a mountain. So, as the concept of “sea” is difficult to define in terms of surface area, the author adheres to International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) usage, as was done in their booklet, Limits of oceans and seas (Special Publication No. S-23), last published in 1953, and its updates. Water bodies that are listed there are regarded as seas here. What are seas named after? As an example, the Alboran Sea between Spain and Morocco has been named after the island Alboran situated in the middle of that sea. A possible categorization of sea names, as shown in Fig. 1, would be: Seas named after persons: Aegean Sea, Amundsen Sea, Baffin Sea, Barentsz Sea, Beaufort Sea, Bellinghausen Sea, Bering Sea, Bismarck Sea, Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, Gulf of Carpentaria, Drake Passage, Dumont d’ Urville Sea, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Laptev Sea, Lazarev Sea, Lincoln Sea, Ross Sea, Spencer Gulf, Tasman Sea, and Weddell Sea. Apart from the mythical King Aegeus of Athens after whom the Aegean was named (he threw himself into that sea when he assumed his son, Theseus, had died in Crete), the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, Pieter de Carpentier, and the German statesman Otto von Bismarck, all the other persons seas were named after were active explorers. Seas named after nations: Caribbean, Chukchi Sea, Caspian Sea, Baltic, Arafura Sea, Ionian Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Ligurian Sea, Celtic Sea, and Thracian Sea. It is questionable whether the latter names indeed refer to these nations or to the regions they inhabited. Seas named after cities: Gulf of Aden, Adriatic Sea, Gulf of Akaba, Sea of Azov, Gulf of Campeche, Strait of Hormuz, Strait of Malacca, Sea of Okhotsk, Gulf of Riga, Gulf of Suez, and Gulf of Tehuantepec.

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Fig. 1 Categorization of sea names. Initials on the map refer to seas mentioned above (e.g., AO = Atlantic Ocean). Seas with dual names (such as Pacific/Great Ocean/South Sea) have alternating color bands

Seas named after their attributes: Aral Sea (aral – islands), Black Sea, Gulf of Bothnia (low-lying area), Coral Sea, Kara Sea (Kara denotes hummocked ice), Golfe du Lion (its water is vigorous like a lion), Pacific Ocean (pacific or calm), Red Sea, Sargasso Sea, White Sea, and Yellow Sea. Sea named after a river: Gulf of St. Lawrence. Seas named after adjoining regions: Gulf of Alaska, Bight of Benin, Bay of Biscay, Gulf of California, Cantabrian Sea, Gulf of Guinea, Labrador Sea, Gulf of Maine, and the Gulf of Tonkin. Although on the map in Fig. 1 they have been combined with seas named after adjoining islands, they are listed separately here. Seas named after adjoining islands: Alboran Sea, Andaman Sea, Aru Sea, Atlantic Ocean (after the mythical island Atlantis), Balearic Sea, Banda Sea, Celebes Sea, Ceram Sea, Cretan Sea, Halmahera Sea, Sea of the Hebrides, Java Sea, Lakshadweep Sea, Sea of Marmara, Moluccan Sea, Natuna Sea, North Natuna Sea, Sawu Sea, Sibuyan Sea, Solomon Sea, Sulu Sea, Timor Sea, and Visayan Sea. Seas named after adjoining countries: Arabian Sea, Argentine Sea, Great Australian Bight, Bay of Bengal, East China Sea, South China Sea, Denmark strait, Fiji Sea, Gulf of Finland, Iceland Sea, Indian Ocean, Irish Sea, Sea of Japan, Korea Strait, Gulf of Mexico, Mozambique Channel, Norwegian Sea, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Panama, Gulf of Papua, Persian Gulf, Philippine Sea, West Philippine Sea, Singapore Straits, Gulf of Thailand, and Gulf of Venezuela. Seas named after cardinal directions: Arctic (it originated from Arktos, denoting the Great and Little Bear that contains the North star, Polaris) Ocean, East Sea,

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East Siberian Sea, Inland Sea, Levantine Sea, Mediterranean, North Sea, South Sea (
Pacific), and Southern Ocean. Other seas: Scotia Sea and Geelvink Bay were named for the ships of their explorers. Geelvink Bay is now Cendrawasih Gulf.

4

Geographical Framework

From Fig. 1 one may deduce that apart from mythical King Aegeus (and also the Hellespont, the strait named after a mythical Princess Helle who drowned there), Otto von Bismarck, and Pieter de Carpentier are all seas named after persons and occur in extreme latitudes, far away from Europe. Seas named after nations mostly occur on the fringe of Europe (Celts, Caspians, Balts, Tuscans, Ionians, and Thracians), apart from the Caribbean Indians and the Chukchi on Bering Strait. There seems to be no pattern in seas named after cities, although most of them seem rather landlocked. Most of the seas are named after adjoining areas, and this should not come as a surprise, also in view of the changing attitudes to sea names that will be discussed later. That these areas might be differentiated in regions or countries is rather arbitrary, as some of these areas were either separate administrative units or realms or subdivisions of those at some time or another (Labrador, Bengal, Benin, Biscay (Viscaya), Tonkin). The only cardinal direction that seems to be missing in sea names is the West Sea. In fact, West Sea or Vesterhavet is the name traditionally used in Denmark for North Sea.

5

Scale

Depending on the size of the named hydrographic feature, different naming habits prevail. Coastal cities have a bigger chance of gulfs and straits being named after them than larger objects like seas and oceans (Fig. 2). The properties of water bodies seem to be recognized mostly for larger items (with Golfe du Lion and Gulf of Bothnia as exceptions). Names of persons tend to be preferred for straits, but a caveat must be stated here: only the largest straits that still could be shown on a world map have been incorporated in this study. When collecting strait names from larger-scale maps, one would find for Europe, Great and Little Belt, Strait Bonifacio, Bosporus, Bristol Channel, Pas de Calais, Dardanelles, Strait of Dover, Strait of Gibraltar, Kara Strait, Strait of Kerch, Strait of Messina, North Channel, St. George’s Channel, and The Sound; for Asia, Alas Strait, Bab el Mandeb [“gate of danger”], Balabac Strait, Bali Strait, Bangka Strait, Karimata Strait, Lombok Strait, Luzon Strait, Makassar Straits, Mindoro Strait, Ombai Strait, Palk Strait (palk – eddies), Sape Strait, Sumba Strait, Sunda Strait, Taiwan Strait, and Wetar Strait, to name but a few; in Oceania, Bass Strait, Cabot Strait, Cook Strait, and Torres Strait; and in the Americas, Beagle Channel,

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Fig. 2 Division of names over name categories

Bocas del Dragon, Strait Florida, Strait of Magellan, Le Maire Strait, Mona Passage, Gulf of Paria, Boca de la Sierpe, Windward Passage, and Strait Yucatan. When studying this list of marine features taken from larger-scale maps, one finds that the number of these features, named after adjacent islands (11), after cities (10), or after persons (6), rises with the scale, while the number of marine features, named after properties, adjacent areas or countries, or cardinal directions, drops.

6

Temporal Framework

The Eurocentric character of sea naming is evident from Fig. 3, where the probable dates of naming these seas were categorized. All the seas around Europe were named either in Antiquity or in the Middle Ages, with the Celtic, Cantabrian, and Hebridean Seas excepted. Through the voyages of a few European travellers to Asia in the Middle Ages, a number of names of Asian seas were known as well. With the European discoveries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the scope of European naming changed spectacularly with the addition of the Americas and the Pacific. In the eighteenth century, under the influence of the encyclopedists, the attitudes toward seas changed – as they did to mountains by the way. Instead of impediments to traffic, they came to be regarded as objects worthy of study in their own right. This went hand in hand with studies of ocean currents, prevailing winds, and magnetic variation. As the encyclopedists endeavored to structure current knowledge, people started to define the extent of the named sea bodies and to delimit them against each other. It was in this period that the naming of the seas in between the islands of the Southeast Asian archipelago started, a process that still has not been finished. This was no clear-cut operation as different names were proposed from different sides for many of these sea bodies: the present Celebes Sea also was called Sulu Sea at some time, and the present Sulu Sea was also named Sea of the Philippines and Mindoro Sea. In the eighteenth century in 1710 (on a map by Moll), one sees, in the Philippines, Strait Tanai and Strait San Juanillo for the first time. Even so, this does not mean that

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Fig. 3 Probable dates for the naming of the seas

since then all maps of the region incorporated those names. The largest encyclopedia on the region, from 1724 (Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën) by Valentijn, only shows names of bays on its maps, and the famous map of Murillo Velarde of the Philippines (1734) has as its only marine name the Embarcadero de San Bernardino. The nineteenth century saw further exploration of the Southwestern Pacific and Antarctic waters, as well as the Arctic waters, and in the twentieth century even the least accessible seas were named. This went hand in hand with the naming of intercalary seas, that is, of water bodies that were felt to have been left out, such as the Celtic Sea, the Norwegian and Iceland Sea in Europe, the Argentine Sea in the Americas, and the Lakshadweep Sea in Asian waters.

7

Changes in the Meaning or Scope of Sea Names

The habits and principles in naming seas are relevant nowadays in view of the recent territorial conflicts in East Asia over water bodies and the islands located in them. East Asian countries now find themselves confronted with and opposed to names imposed on their seas by Europeans. The naming habits of these Europeans changed since they came into regular contact with these countries, and the connotations of these names at the time when they were first codified might have changed as well, giving the name a different meaning. Since the era of exploration, the nature of seas as perceived by humankind changed, from impediment to carrier to research object in its own right (the same is valid for mountains that were regarded as impediments at first as well, but in the nineteenth century turned into recreation objects).

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From the manner in which sea names have been inserted on charts and navigational atlases, one gets the impression that there have been at least three different interpretations of sea names, which are termed by the author as (a) embedding seas, (b) directional seas, and (c) territorial seas. The embedding sea concept refers to the view that the waters that border the shores of an island or other feature are called after that feature. Thus, the Java Sea would be the sea that surrounds that island on all sides and the China Sea would be the sea adjacent to the Chinese coastline. The directional sea concept is based on the view that the waters one should traverse in order to get to a feature are named after that feature, so the Japan Sea would be the sea to sail through on the way to Japan, and if one intended to sail on to Korea, the Sea of Korea would have to be passed. This works the same way on land: if one intends to travel from Utrecht to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, one has to take the Amsterdam Road leaving Utrecht. Somewhere halfway in between these two cities, the name of the road would change to Utrecht Road as this would be the road one had to take in Amsterdam when one intended to travel to Utrecht. Finally, there is the territorial sea concept. According to this concept, the boundaries of a named sea feature do not depend on the directions one takes; neither do they refer to an ill-defined marine circumference. Instead, according to this concept, the named sea feature is exactly demarcated; see, for instance, Fig. 4. The textual description of the boundaries of this sea need some 500 words in Limits of Oceans and Seas (IHO 2002 draft version); it begins thus: The limits of the Jawa Sea, situated between the southern coast of Kalimantan and the northern coast of Jawa, are the following: On the North: A line joining Tanjung Kait (3 140 S – 106 050 E), on the eastern coast of the island of Sumatera, eastward to Tanjung Nangka (3 050 S – 106 300 E), on the southern coast of Bangka; thence from Tanjung Nangka northeastward, along the eastern coast of this island, to Tanjung Berikat (2 340 S – 106 510 E), the eastern extremity thereof; thence a line joining Tanjung Berikat eastward to Tanjung Binga (2 360 S–107 390 E), the north-western extremity of Belitung; etc.

While the existence of the territorial sea thus is acknowledged in Fig. 4, proof is still needed for the other two. Robert Dudley’s map of part of the Philippines from his Dell’Arcano del Mare (1646), the first sea atlas of the entire world, illustrates the first sea name concept, the embedding sea (Fig. 5). On both sides of Luzon, one may see the name Il Mare delle Filippine. The other highlighted name is that of the sea strait south of Luzon: “li stretti di Manilia.” On Dutch charts of Java from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the name Java Sea occurs on the same maps both north and south of Java, and even in the nineteenth century, Dutch maps exist that show the name Timor Sea on both sides of the island. As opposed to this embedding sea concept, Fig. 6 might be regarded as proof of the directional sea concept on the map by Bellin of the Japanese archipelago (Carte de l’Empire du Japon, dressée sur les auteurs Japonais, sur les mémoires des

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Fig. 4 Example from IHO publication S-23, Limits of Oceans and Seas, from the 2002 draft, defining the extent of the Java Sea. https://www.iho.int/mtg_docs/com_wg/S-23WG/S-23WG_ Misc/Draft_2002/Draft_2002.htm

Fig. 5 Carta particolare dello Stretto di Manilia nel isole Filippine, from Robert Dudley’s Dell’Arcano del Mare (1646). (Source: National Library of Finland; Available at http://www. doria.fi/handle/10024/59106)

Portugais et des Hollandais 1735). In order to arrive in Japan (for the Europeans until 1800 that was from the south), one had to traverse the Mer du Japon, and if one wanted to proceed to Korea, one had to continue through the Mer de Coré.

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Fig. 6 Carte de l’Empire du Japon, by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1735). The strait south of Kyushu Island is named Detroit de Diemen here, after the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, after whom also Tasmania got its first European name: Van Diemen’s Land

8

The Naming Sequence, with Southeast Asia as an Example

On the first maps of Southeast Asia, published in the sixteenth century, by such cartographers as Gastaldi, Lasso, Ortelius, Mercator, and Van Linschoten, hardly any marine features are named. Van Linschoten (1595) only has a Sinensis Oceanus, a Mare Lantchidul (Laut Kidul is the name for the South Sea in Malay) and a Passage of Santa Clara, between Mindanao and Samar, which is now the Surigao Strait. In the early seventeenth century (Blaeu 1636), the Strait of Manilla (now the strait of San Bernardino) is added to the maps as well as the Strait of Mindoro (now the Verde Island Passage) and the Sunda Straits. These were the only hydronyms in the first half of the seventeenth century. In the middle of that century, some general term for the sea in which the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos were located was used: the East Indian Sea or the Mare dell’Indie, which was not further subdivided, except for all the sea straits that were discerned between the islands – Sunda Strait (first attested 1636), Singapore Strait (1647), Mindoro Strait (1680), Malacca Strait (1688), Bangka Strait

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(1692), as well as those in between the Lesser Sunda isles (Alas Strait (1660), Sape Strait (1688), Sumbawa Strait(1688), and Bali Strait (1700). At that time the pilot guides did not mention sea names either. A Dutch pilot guide from 1664 (Indische Noort) – with 550 names (50 river names, 23 mountain names, 11 names of reefs, 40 names of shoals, 40 capes, 10 cliffs, and 62 bays) – only has the Enseada de Cochinchina (i.e., the Gulf of Tonkin) as a named major water body. In the eighteenth century, in 1717 (on a map by Moll) one sees, in the Philippines, Strait Tanai and Strait San Juanillo for the first time, in addition to the aforementioned names. Even so this does not mean that since then all maps of the region incorporated those names: the largest encyclopedia on the region, published 1724 (Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien) by Valentijn, only shows names of bays on its maps and the famous map of Murillo Velarde of the Philippines (1734) has as its only marine name the Embarcadero de San Bernardino. Sea names were given later. The term Java Sea crops up in 1718 (as the name of an embedding sea); the name Madura Sea was also first attested in 1718; the name Sulu Sea is first used on a map in 1784, Celebes Sea 1784, and Banda Sea 1798; and all other sea names in the archipelagos date from the nineteenth and twentieth century. In the Philippines, the name Bohol Sea only was introduced in 2002, while the previous name of the Bohol Sea, Mindanao Sea, was assigned to the northern part of the Celebes Sea, located within the Philippine Economic Zone, instead. Before the sea names in Southeast Asia were finally agreed upon, there first was a period of sea passage names.

9

Interim for the Sea Passage Names

Western mariners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries discerned a number of compound passages (a passage is a fast route through a combination of sea straits) through the Southeast Asian archipelagos. These were taken by clippers that engaged in the tea trade from China to India and Europe. The obvious route would have been through the Makassar Straits, but that is very difficult to navigate for sailing vessels part of the year. In 1758 a British sea captain, Wilson, when navigating from China to Cape Town, found a quicker passage north of Ceram and called this Pitt’s Passage (present Ceram Sea) after the name of his ship, the Pitt. In continuation of this strait, sailing ships would navigate northward either through the Moluccas Passage (present Molucca Sea) or through the Gilolo Passage (present Halmahera Sea), Bougainville Strait, or Dampier Strait and then on through the Maguindanao Passage and Sulu Sea or around the Philippines and southward through one of the straits between the Lesser Sunda islands, such as the Ombay Passage. The attestations for these passage names can be seen in Table 1. Passages also occurred in the New World: the name Windward Passage was first recorded on maps by John Seller in 1672, while the name Mona Passage is first mentioned by Carey and Lea in 1822.

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Table 1 First attestations for sea passage names

10

Pitt’s Passage 1758 (Wilson) Karimata Passage 1772 Maguindanao Passage 1801 (Cary); Mindanao Passage 1804 Moluccas Passage 1801 (Cary) Gilolo Passage 1801 (Cary) Ombay Passage 1801 (Cary) Surigao Passage 1812 (Arrowsmith)

Demarcation of the Seas

In the nineteenth century, interest emerged in the seas themselves, also due to oceanographic research and expeditions. There was an increasing publication of reference and educational works too, that called for names to designate the topographical objects shown. For educational and scientific purposes collective names, like Greater and Lesser Sunda Isles were coined, and the sea bodies themselves also were demarcated and named, even if some were given names that do not apply any more, such as the name Sea of Borneo. The earliest attestation for these sea names are given in Table 2. One can see from Table 2 that the Philippine Sea names were assigned a bit later than the sea names in the Indonesian archipelago. These attestations are a bit fuzzy because of the issue of changing sea names. The name Karimata Sea, for instance, was used by the Dutch in the nineteenth century for the southern part of what is now the South China Sea, northward from Strait Karimata to the Natuna Islands (Fig. 7). The same map shows that there was uncertainty regarding the name of the sea between Celebes and Mindanao (as both the names Sulu Sea and Celebes Sea are used there) and the name Mindoro Sea or even Sea of the Philippines was used for what now is called the Sulu Sea. Apparently, again and again the idea was held that the South China Sea ended southward at the barrier of the Natuna and Anambas islands. Even if it was called Karimata Sea in Dutch maps and atlases (Van der Aa 1849; Van Gelder 1881), before that, in 1821, a British chart by the hydrographer Norie even named that part of the sea east of Malaya and west of Borneo the Malayan Sea. At present, a similar initiative has been launched, to name it the Natuna Sea, according to the draft 4th edition of the IHO publication Boundaries of Oceans and Seas in contrary to the second edition (1952; Fig. 8) in the preparation of which the Netherlands also participated. In the Philippines, the name Sea of Mindanao was recently changed to Sea of Bohol. In the draft of the 3rd edition of this IHO publication, Names of Oceans and Seas, the seas within the Philippine archipelago were not demarcated as yet, the Sulu Sea excepted. The name Sunda Sea was used in geological texts for the combination of Java and South China Sea (covering the Sunda shelf); it has also been used as an alternative for the combination of Java Sea and Flores Sea or for the Java Sea only (Van der Aa 1849) and also only for the area we now call Flores Sea (as shown in Fig. 7).

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Table 2 First attestations for sea names in Southeast Asia (sources in parentheses)

2065 Sea of Borneo 1646 (Dudley); Makassar Straits 1717 Sea of Java 1718 (Reland) Sea of Madura 1718 (Reland) Sulu Sea 1784 (Laurie and Whittle); 1801 Mindoro or Sulu Sea; 1812 Mer de Mindanao, 1826 Mar de Filipinas Sea of Banda 1798 (Pallas) Mer d’Arafura 1805 (Annuaire pour l’an 1805) Mer de Timor 1809 (Faujas de St. Fond) Mer des Moluques 1646 (Dudley); 1724 (Valentijn); 1813 (MalteBrun) Sea of Celebes 1784 (Laurie and Whittle); Sulu Sea 1801; Mar de Mindanao 1806 Flores Sea 1808 (Charles Smith) Ceram Sea 1855 (Melvill van Carnbee) Sea of Halmahera 1855 (Melvill van Carnbee) Bali Sea 1868 (Globus journal) Sawu Sea 1888 (Tijdschrift Aardrijkskundig Genootschap) Camotes Sea 1913 Decree Official gazetteer Visayas Sea 1831, 1898, 1913 Decree Official gazetteer Mindanao Sea 1912 -Decree Official gazetteer Sibuyan Sea 1913 Decree Official gazetteer Samar Sea 1913 Decree Official gazetteer Bohol Sea 2002 Decree Official Gazetteer

Fig. 7 Detail from an overview map of the Netherlands East Indies in the Atlas van Nederlandsch Oost-Indië by W. van Gelder (1881). (Leiden University Library (COLLBN Atlas 562)

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Fig. 8 Page from the 1952 edition of the IHO publication S-23, Limits of Oceans and Seas (https:// epic.awi.de/29772/1/IHO1953a.pdf)

11

Name Conflicts over Marine Spaces

Having participated in many sessions of United Nations Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names devoted to the item “Features beyond a single sovereignty,” it is the author’s personal experience that there are global differences in the way sea names derived from adjacent areas are conceived by the users. Names like Denmark Strait, Norwegian Sea, Baltic, or Gulf of Mexico are not conceived as having any possessive connotations by the adjacent countries. When long-standing names for the same feature differ between users, both names would often be accepted: the English Channel/La Manche and Pas de Calais/Strait of Dover are examples of officially recognized name pairs. But in Asian waters, sea names seem to be conceived by some adjacent countries as instruments in a battle for regional hegemony or as claims staked, like in the New World names as New England, Nouvelle France, Nieuw Nederland, or Nya Sverige coined in the seventeenth century. In this perception, the Sea of Japan would be the sea owned by Japan, and the name China Sea would infer its possession by China. At the nineteenth-century demarcation of sea names, when oceanographers decided that the Pacific Ocean would stretch to the shores of Japan, the name Sea of Japan was transferred to its present location by European mapmakers, despite the fact that they had previously named that feature Sea of Korea. When the Republic of

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Korea finally arrived at a position in which it could reassert itself globally in the 1990s, it objected against the use of this name and proposed to have two names for the feature, East Sea (Dong Hai, the name Koreans had used for millennia) and Sea of Japan. Japan objected, perhaps because of the possible loss of face involved, perhaps because it thought this would weaken its claim to the Takeshima or Dokdo islands in the middle of this sea. It tried to prevent any discussions on this issue in both the International Hydrographic Organization and the United Nations (through its United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names) in order to maintain the status quo. The UNGEGN tries to mediate in international conflicts over sea names and have accepted resolutions that urge the countries engaged in such name conflicts to engage in bilateral consultations and establish the principles and procedures to follow in such cases. They cannot impose the use of specific names on any country, however.

12

Synthesis

Over time one could witness an increasing spatial accuracy in the definition of the referent of sea names, and this went hand in hand with increased interest in seas as well as an increased consciousness of the implications of the names for the referents. Thence the growth in personal (explorers’) names for seas during the last two centuries that would reflect on the countries these explorers came from. As the majority of sea names is derived from adjacent islands, areas, or countries, one is confronted with different views of the relationship between the name and the referent and especially the view that these terrestrial area-derived sea names have possessive connotations lies at the bottom of present conflicts over sea names. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References Arrowsmith, A. (1812). Chart of the Philippine islands from the Spanish chart 1808. London. Bellin, J. -N. (1735). Carte de l’Empire du Japon, dressée sur les auteurs Japonais, sur les mémoires des Portugais et des Hollandais. Paris. Blaeu, W.J. (1636). India quae Orientalis dicitur et Insulae Adiacentes. Amsterdam. Carey, H. C. & Lea I. (1822). Geographical, statistical and historical map of the West-Indies. London. Cary, J. (1801). A new map of the East India Isles, from the latest authorities. London: John Cary. Dudley, Robert (1646) Dell’Arcano del Mare. Firenze. Indische noort. (1664). [Anonymous pilot book]. International Hydrographic Organization. (1953). Limits of oceans and seas (special publication no. 23). Monaco. International Hydrographic Organization. (2002 draft version). Limits of oceans and seas (special publication no. 23). Monaco. Available at https://www.iho.int/mtg_docs/com_wg/S-23WG/S23WG_Misc/Draft_2002/Draft_2002.htm. Accessed 29 May 2018.

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Laurie & Whittle. (1784). A new chart of the China sea with its several entrances. London. Moll, H. (1710). A map of the East-Indies and the adjacent countries. London. Murillo Velarde, Pedro (1734). Carta hydrographica y chorographica delas yslas Filipinas. Manila.’ Norie, J.W. (1821). New chart of the China sea and the East India archipelago. London. Reland, A. (1718). Insulae Iavae pars occidentalis edente Hadriano Relando; id. Insulae Iavae pars orientalis. Amsterdam: Van Keulen. Seller, J. (1672). A chart of the West Indies from Cape Cod to the River Oronoque. London: John Seller. Smith, C. (1808). East India isles. London: C. Smith. Valentijn, F. (1724). Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën. Dordrecht/Amsterdam: Joannes van Braam and Gerard Onder de Linden. van der Aa, A.J. (1849). Nederlandsch Oost-Indië. Breda. Van Gelder, W. (1881). Atlas van Nederlandsch Oost-Indië. Batavia: W.Kolff & Co. Van Linschoten, J. H. v. (1595). Itinerario, voyage ofte Schipvaert naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien. . .. (pp. 1595–1596). Amsterdam: C. Claesz.

Bushman (San) Influence on Southern African Place Names

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Contents 1 2 3 4

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bushman Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bantu Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Individual Examples of Bushman Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Khoikhoi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Northern Sotho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Southern Sotho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Venda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Herero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Xhosa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Standardization and Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The place names of Southern Africa derive from a wide range of Bushman, Khoikhoi, Bantu, European, and other languages. The Khoikhoi languages are extinct in South Africa, but Khoikhoi place names have survived, albeit in adapted form. The Bushman languages are also virtually extinct, and few Bushman place names have been recorded, but current research reveals Bushman influence on place names in all the other languages in the form of loan words, sound shifts, adaptations, and translations. Only during the last decade has the Bushman toponymic substructure been recognized, a factor that has implications for the standardization of geographical names by the South African Geographical Names Council. Implementation of the South African Geographical Names P. E. Raper (*) Unit for Language Facilitation and Empowerment, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_74

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Council Act, with its objective of “standardization and transformation of geographical names,” has resulted in replacement of many European, and particularly Afrikaans, place names by perceived Bantu names, many of which on further investigation have proven to be of Bushman origin. Since phonological and orthographic adaptations often render the Bushman origins less readily recognizable, individual place names are analyzed in this chapter, employing a variety of onomastic techniques to establish the underlying Bushman words and elements, tracing the phonological processes involved in their adaptation into other languages, and investigating the metamorphoses undergone by phonemes and graphemes in the process. The sheer volume of place names in the various languages in the region precludes a comprehensive survey, and the present chapter therefore concentrates on Bushman influence on Bantu place names. Keywords

Bushman · Place names · Toponyms · Language contact · Bantu · Geographical names

1

Introduction

The oldest place names in the southern part of the African continent are those given by the Bushman hunter-gatherers who inhabited the region for at least 10,000 years (Mountain 2003, p. 18). These people and the pastoral Khoikhoi are said to have been the only inhabitants of the region until about 2,000 years ago (Parkington 2007, p. 77), when the Bantu began to arrive from the Great Lakes regions of Central Africa (Krige 1975, pp. 595–596). From the late fifteenth century, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, German, and other European settlers arrived, and the Afrikaans language came into existence. Language contact took place between these peoples, influencing the toponymic landscape. Some existing names were retained, though frequently adapted to the phonological and later orthographic system of the newcomers; some names were replaced; some translated, in part or in full; some names were hybridized, with generic terms being added; and so forth. In many instances, places were given more than one name, in different languages used by different speakers. The oldest adaptations were presumably into Khoikhoi languages. These were also subsequently adapted into European and Bantu languages and need to be retraced. Werner (1925, p. 117) states that the Bushmen were “the aborigines of South Africa” and that they inhabited the entire subcontinent of Africa “till they were encroached on, first by the Hottentots, then by the Bantu, and finally by the Europeans.” As a result of extermination, assimilation, and integration, many tribes have disappeared, and others are in the process of becoming extinct. In 1925 there were still several tribes in the northwestern part of the former Transvaal and in the Kalahari Desert (Werner 1925). Bleek (1929) recorded that the Colonial Bushmen or /Xam were then almost extinct.

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The Bushmen and their languages have thus become all but extinct within the borders of South Africa, but an unexpected large number of their place names have survived, albeit in adapted and translated form. These may be traced and reconstructed by employing the sound–meaning method (Heine and Honken 2010, p. 11), which involves comparison of place name elements with potential Bushman cognates that correspond to them phonologically and semantically, “using regular sound correspondences as a basis for tracing phonological and morphological features” (Heine and Honken 2010, p. 32). In this investigation, three layers of adaptation and translation are manifested, namely, European (Dutch, Afrikaans, or English) translations of indigenous (Khoikhoi and Bantu) words with Bushman cognates. The term cognate is used in this chapter in the sense of the definition given by Webster (1961, p. 440), namely, “related in a manner that involves borrowing rather than descent from or as well as descent from an ancestral language – sometimes used with with, sometimes with to.” Because language contact is reciprocal, different languages adopting and adapting words from each other’s language, it is not always possible to determine which was the source language. In linguistic reconstruction, “there is no viable means of separating inherited from borrowed material” (Heine and Honken 2010, p. 7). In order to appreciate the Bushman influence on place names from other languages, it is necessary to take note of aspects of the Bushman languages and the other languages involved.

2

Bushman Languages

Since the Bushmen were preliterate and left no written records, there is no possibility of knowing how many and which languages they spoke. Bleek (1929, 1956) recorded words from 29 different Bushman languages and dialects and categorized them into the Northern, Central, and Southern groups, allocating symbols to them, N1, N2, C1, C2, S1, S1a, S2, etc. Later scholars have identified others, and some ethnic names have been changed or added, but Bleek’s works remain the most comprehensive and serve as the basis for comparative purposes in the present investigation. Bushman clicks. The Bushman languages are characterized by suction consonants or “clicks.” / // ! !! 6¼ ʘ

the dental or alveolar fricative click the lateral click the cerebral or retroflex plosive click the retroflex click the palatal or alveolar click the lip click, also called the labial and bilabial click

Accompaniments or effluxes. The clicks are usually pronounced together with the following sound, known as an accompaniment, release, or efflux. These include the aspirated, ejected, fricative, glottal, nasal, and voiced releases. The voiced release

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Table 1 Bushman click phonemes. (After Bleek (1929, 1956) and Traill (1978, p. 138)) Effluxes Voiced

Ejective

Dental g/aa “block, wooden peg” /hoa:ka “dark blue” /nau, n/au “gray” ¯ /xu “bowl, basin” /k”an “shade”

Glottal

/?aka “angry”

Aspirated Nasal Fricative

Cerebral or palato-alveolar g!ãi tse¯a “bush, tree” !howa “pan” !noáʃa, n!oaʃa “hill” !xã: “neck”

Palatal g6¼um “sand” 6¼ha “spring, fountain” 6¼na, n6¼a “flow” 6¼xe: “wind”

!k”au “to cut”

6¼k”a “heart”

¯!?u “bone”

6¼?a: “wild onion”

Lateral g//waa “grave” _//hwã “green” /na, n//a “waterhole” //xu:m “sand” //k”auro “arrowshaft” //?a “waterhole”

Bilabial ʘbu: “to rain gently” ʘho: “bush, tree”

ʘxa: “daughter”

ʘ?o “son”

or efflux is indicated as in /gã, the nasal efflux as in /na, the fricative efflux as in /xã, the aspirated efflux as in /ha, and so forth (Table 1) (Traill 1978, p. 138). Some authorities distinguish prenasalized and pre-voiced clicks in some cases, which are written as g/ã, n/ã, ƞã, g6¼ã, etc. Tone. The Bushman languages are tonal languages, which means that words written identically may have different meanings if their tones differ. A high tone is indicated by the symbol ¯ and a low tone by the symbol _. The symbol ٤ following a vowel indicates that the vowel is “pressed”; a colon indicates that the preceding vowel is a long one. The symbol ? indicates a glottal stop.

3

Bantu Languages

Prefixes or class markers. Bantu nouns, and therefore also place names, consist of two elements, a root and a prefix or class marker. The root contains the lexical, descriptive meaning of the name, and the prefix indicates whether the word (or name) is in the singular or plural, whether it is an abstract noun, and what set of concordial agreement should be used so that the noun agrees with adjectives, pronouns, verbs, and other parts of speech in the sentence (Koopman 2002, p. 267). Typical Bantu prefixes or class markers are Xhosa u, um, i, ili, isi, ama, and ulu; Herero otji, oka, oko, oma, and omi; and so forth. When a Bushman (or other) name is adapted into a Bantu language, a prefix is added (and in the case of locatives, also a suffix, e.g., –eni or –ini, as in eThekwini and eMpangeni). In tracing Bushman adaptations, the Bantu prefix is discounted, and the root is examined for phonological and semantic correspondence. In some cases, however, a Bushman word may, once the original meaning had faded and was forgotten, have been folk etymologically reinterpreted as a Bantu prefix. Bantu clicks. The Bantu clicks are the dental click, written as c; the lateral click, written as x; and the palato-alveolar click, represented in writing by q. The Bushman

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dental click / is represented in the Nguni languages as c, the lateral click // as x, and the cerebral or palato-alveolar ! as q. Bleek (1956, p. 640) states that the alveolar or palatal click 6¼ does not occur in the Bantu languages, but it may be the case that also this Bushman click was represented as q. In many instances, Bushman clicks and their accompaniments or effluxes were replaced in the Bantu languages by other sounds. Vowels. In the Nguni languages, two vowels are not allowed to occur next to each other in a word or name. In other words, juxtaposition of vowels is impermissible in these languages. In the case of juxtaposed vowels, either one of the vowels is dropped, or a consonant or glide is inserted between them. Furthermore, each noun or name must end in a vowel.

4

Individual Examples of Bushman Influence

4.1

Khoikhoi

The adaptation of Bushman names and words into Khoikhoi languages entailed the addition of gender suffixes, b for masculine and s for feminine; the addition of locative suffixes such as –bib, bis, seb, and –ses; and other phonological changes. Bushman origins can be discerned in names where elements do not correlate with known Khoikhoi words. Thus in a river name like Hoanib, the final component nib does not resemble any Khoikhoi word for “river”; it is an adaptation of /i: “to flow,” plus the added Khoikhoi masculine singular ending –b. The following examples demonstrate the omission of clicks when Khoikhoi names are Europeanized, variability of the consonants t and k in Khoikhoi, and Khoikhoi cognates of Bushman words. Tounobis, also encountered as Kunobis, Tunobis, and Kaunobis, is known by the Afrikaans name Rietfontein, which means “reed spring.” The indigenous name has the same meaning, the component tou or kou approximating the Kung (N2) word  //kau “reed” (Bleek 1956, p. 561); the component nobi is comparable to the Sehura (C1a) word xobi “vlei, low land” (Bleek 1956, p. 260) and Naron (C2) word !xubi:sa “vlei, pan” (Bleek 1956, p. 502). The final s is the added Khoikhoi feminine singular ending. The variability of t/k in the name reflects the click and its accompaniment (or release) as perceived by the recorders. Oubron is shown on Kohler’s map of Omaruru as an alternative name for Orotsaub, a settlement some 60 km west of the town of Omaruru. The Afrikaans name Oubron literally means “old source, old well, old fountain” and is a translation of Orotsaub, the component oro or /oro comparable to the /Xam (S1) word tsɂoro “old” (Bleek 1956, p. 220) and tsaub approximating the word /aub “fountain, spring.” Olifantskloof is the name of a mountain pass or ravine to the east of Gobabis in Namibia known by the Khoikhoi name Koankub or 6¼Koan !kub (Nienaber and Raper 1977, p. 724). The Afrikaans name Olifantskloof meaning “elephants’ ravine” is apparently a translation of the Khoikhoi name. The component 6¼Koan is cognate

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with the Auen (N1) and Kung (N2) word 6¼koa “elephant” (Bleek 1956, p. 663) with the addition of the Khoikhoi plural marker n, “elephants”; the component !kub is cognate with the Hie (C1) word !kuu “pass, poort” (Bleek 1956, p. 455) and the final –b the added Khoikhoi masculine singular ending.

4.2

Northern Sotho

The Afrikaans name Blouberg for a mountain west of the Soutpansberg in the Bochum district means “blue mountain.” This is a translation of the Northern Sotho name Chanani, an adaptation of Bushman. R The component Cha is comparable to the Naron (C2) word tschã, also written t ã, “pale blue,” Afrikaans blou; the component nani is cognate with the Khoikhoi word !nani(b), “mountain-side, mountain slope.” Bela-Bela is the Northern Sotho name that replaced Warmbaths and Warmbad in February 2002 (Raper 2004, p. 23). Said to mean “boiling water,” referring to the hot springs there, the name is a reduplication of the verb stem bela “to boil” (Nezar 1994, p. 45), cognate with the Hie (C1) verb bela “to boil” (Bleek 1956, p. 15).

4.3

Southern Sotho

Gildenhuys (1993, p. 76) gives Kwakwatsi as the Southern Sotho name of the Renoster River that flows past the town of Koppies in the Free State. Gildenhuys is of the opinion that Kwakwatsi means “anthrax,” but besides the similarity in sound between the Southern Sotho word for “anthrax” and the river name, there seems to be no reason why the river should be called “anthrax.” The Afrikaans name Renosterrivier means “rhinoceros river,” and the allonym Kwakwatsi appears to have the same meaning. The component Kwakwa approximates the /Xam (S1) word //xwa:ka “rhinoceros” (Bleek 1956, p. 638), //xoa:kən (Bleek 1929, p. 70), the second component -kwa of the name with the /Xam (S1) word !khwa “water,” and the Kung (N2) word k’oã “waterhole” (Bleek 1929, p. 90). The component tsi appears to be comparable to the Kung (N2) demonstrative tsi “this (one) here” (Bleek 1956, p. 227). Maphodi is the Southern Sotho name for Springfontein, a town in the Free State (Gildenhuys 1993, p. 80). The name Springfontein literally means “jump fountain,” referring to an artesian spring there from which the town takes its name. The name Maphodi has the same meaning. The component Ma is the Sotho prefix; the component pho is similar to the /Xam (S1) word ˉpo: “to arise, jump up” (Bleek 1956, p. 158); the component di is comparable to the /Xam (S1) word ¯/i: “to flow” (Bleek 1956, p. 292). Mangaung, the Southern Sotho name for the city of Bloemfontein in the Free State, is said to mean “place of cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus),” from mangau, the plural of ingau “cheetah,” with the addition of the locative suffix -ng (Louwrens 1994, p. 25). In that case, the root of the name, ngau, could be considered cognate

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with the Hie (C1) word khao “cheetah” (Bleek 1956, p. 88). However, as in so many instances where Dutch names preserve the meanings of original Bushman names in translations, that is the case here as well. The name Bloemfontein means “flower fountain,” bloem being Dutch for “flower” and fontein the Afrikaans word for “spring, fountain.” The Sotho name Mangaung has the same meaning: the component Ma- is the Sotho prefix; the stem -ngau is comparable with the /Auni (S4) word _//au “flower” (Bleek 1956, p. 518), where the Bushman retroflex fricative click // approximates the voiced velar nasal ng. The final component ng of the name Mangaung is the Sotho locative suffix, comparable to the !O !kung (N3) demonstrative adverbial locative morpheme ŋ “this, here” (Bleek 1956, p. 141). The original Bushman name thus displays desemanticization and reinterpretation as a Sotho adaptation, the original meaning preserved in the Dutch and Afrikaans translation. It may seem incongruous that two components of the same name derive from different languages, but because the Bushmen were preliterate and left no written records, there is no way of knowing the measure of physical and language contact between the different groups. Also in what are now considered English place names, components from different languages occur in the same name. Thus Tugela Ferry is derived from Zulu and English, Leeu-Gamka from English and Khoikhoi, and Cape Agulhas from English and Portuguese. Gilsprings is derived from the Old Norse gil, “a deep narrow ravine, usually wooded,” and the Middle English word spring, from Indo-European spraia “to jump” (Webster 1961, p. 2209); Glenesk is from Gaelic glean “narrow valley” and pre-English isca “water” (Raper 2004, p. 154); the component garry of the name Glen Garry is derived from Continental Gaelic garu “rough,” and so forth. Thus although the explanation of a Bushman name seems more convincing when both (or all) components are from the same language, hybrid names are not to be summarily dismissed.

4.4

Venda

Not all translations are necessarily linked to a single geographical feature; in some instances, the indigenous name of a natural feature is transferred to and used for a feature made or adapted by human agency. Thus, for example, the name Kamkusi, for a railway siding on the route Waterpoort–Musina, takes its name from a nearby mountain pass with the Afrikaans name Waterpoort, “water pass,” a translation of the Venda name Kamkusi. The component Kam is cognate with the //Ŋ !ke (S2) and /Nu //en (S6) word !kha: and the //Xegwi (S3) word //kha: “water,” comparable to the Eastern Khoikhoi kam “water” (Barrow 1801, p. 219) and the Kung (N2) word kam “damp.” The component kusi is similar to the Hie (C1) word !kuu “pass, poort” (Bleek 1956, p. 455). Madzivhanani is the name of a settlement 46 km north of Thohoyandou in the northern portion of Limpopo Province. It is of Venda origin, meaning “where lakes are found,” from madzivha “lakes” (Raper et al. 2014, p. 289). The component Ma is the Venda plural prefix, and the stem dzivha means “lake,” cognate with the Hie

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(C1) word džiba “lake, pool” (Bleek 1956, p. 33); the Venda voiced fricative vh is a bilabial, approximating the Hie voiced bilabial consonant b. The component na corresponds to the word /na: “to find, see, perceive” encountered in /Xam (S1), //Ŋ !ke (S2), 6¼Khomani (S2a), //Kxau (S2b), Seroa (S2d), !Gã !ne (S2e), //Xegwi (S3), /Auni (S4), Ki/hazi (S4b), Sesarwa (S5), and /Nu//en (S6a) (Bleek 1956, p. 341). The final component –ni is the Hadza (C3) ending meaning “in” (Bleek 1956, p. 146). A hill some 8 km northwest of Punda Maria in the Kruger National Park, at 22 36´ S., 31 010 E., bears the name Shidzivani, as does a tributary of the Luvuvhu River, the confluence being 8 km northwest of Punda Maria. Derived from Venda Tshidzivhani, the name is Shangaan for “at the small pool,” the component dziva cognate with the Hie (C1) word džiba “lake, pool” (Bleek 1956, p. 33). This is the name of a hill, and the final component ni is cognate with the !O !kung word ¯!ni “hill” (Bleek 1929, p. 46).

4.5

Herero

In the Herero name Otjikoko for a mountain some 45 km east-northeast of Omaruru, the segment otji is presumed to be the prefix or class marker meaning “place of.” An alternative name for the mountain is Okozondjuba, meaning “calabash,” from the shape of the mountain when viewed from a certain angle (Raper 2004, p. 288). The distinctive appearance of the mountain presumably led to both names Okozondjuba and Otjikoko, both meaning “calabash.” The segment tjiko of the name Otjikoko R clearly corresponds in sound and meaning to the !O !kung (N3) word t iko(vi) “calabash, small calabash” (Bleek 1956, p. 230). This shows that the Herero prefix is o- and not otji-, as one might have thought. Otjomuise, the Herero name for Windhoek, is said to mean “place of smoke,” referring to the steam seen above the hot springs (Raper 2004, p. 294). The Nama name for the place is /Ai//gams, “fire water” (Nienaber and Raper 1977, p. 176), and the apparently Afrikaans name Windhoek in fact does not mean “windy corner,” as one would expect, but is an adaptation of the Bushman Θwı˜ du “hot water” (Raper et al. 2014, p. 545). It is thus logical that Otjomuise would also mean “hot water,” referring to the feature most likely to be the onymic formative. The component mui approximates the Sesarwa or Tshukwe (S5) word Θpwi “red, hot” (Bleek 1956, p. 686), similar to the Auen (N1), Kung (N2), and !O !kung (N3) word ¯khwi “hot” (Bleek 1929, p. 48); the component se approximates the Hadza (C3) word 6¼e “to rise, come out, flow” (Raper and Möller 2015, p. 399).

4.6

Xhosa

Hogsback, a mountain in the Eastern Cape, is known by the Xhosa name Amatola, also recorded as kwaMathole (Skead 2001, p. 33). It would seem that the resemblance of the mountain to the back of a hog, boar or wild pig was the trigger for the name Amatola both in Xhosa and English, and also in Bushman languages, or that

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the Bushman name was subsequently adapted into Xhosa and translated into English. The component ama of the name Amatola is the Xhosa prefix. The segment to of the component tola is comparable to the /Xam (S1) word /ho, /hō “pig, hog” (Bleek 1956, p. 288), the Bushman dental click / shifting to the Xhosa dental consonant t. The component la is apparently cognate with the //Xegwi (S3) demonstrative la, “there, those, that” (Bleek 1956, p. 129). The variant name kwaMathole displays an interesting phenomenon. The component kwa is generally encountered as an Nguni prefix used with personal names, meaning “place of (a person).” Where it is not connected to a person, the name is regarded as “personalized.” The component Ma of the name kwaMathole is the Xhosa prefix or class marker “used in forming proper names indicating “daughter of,” or with the father’s or grandfather’s personal name, or used with adjectives to form personal names, e.g., uMadala “the ancient one” (Doke and Vilakazi 2005, p. 473). This prefix kwa was thus inserted into the place name because the component kwa was misinterpreted as the Xhosa personal prefix. In this instance, the component kwa of the variant name kwaMathole is a folk-etymological interpretation of the Auen (N1) word /kwa “boar, wild pig” (Bleek 1956, p. 328). The original meaning of the name as “hog’s back” is repeated in the component tho, cognate with the /Xam word /ho “hog.” Another instance of a Bushman place name component being interpreted as a Bantu prefix occurs in kwaStibili, the name of a short river that enters the Indian Ocean 6 km east-northeast of Port Alfred, at 33 350 26 560 E. This river is shown on Wyld’s map of 1844 as Kook R., interpreted by Skead (2001, p. 731) as “Cock’s R., after Cock’s party of 1820 Settlers whose ground surrounded this river.” Several folk-etymological explanations of the name kwaStibili are that it is derived from the Afrikaans word stiebeuel “stirrup” or from the English word steep, referring to the road’s steep descent into the valley. As is frequently the case where a feature has both an indigenous and European name, it seems that Kook is a translation of a Bushman word, or more than one word, of which kwaStibili is an adaptation. The word kook is Afrikaans for “to boil,” synonymous with the component bili, which is cognate with the Hie (C1) word bila “to boil” (Bleek 1956, p. 15), presumably referring to the appearance of the swiftly flowing river down the valley. As regards the prefix or class marker kwa of the name, Skead (2001, p. 731) remarks that “the kwa- denotes personalization, perhaps as someone’s nickname.” A more feasible explanation is that the component kwa is an adaptation of a phonologically comparable Bushman word meaning “to boil,” interpreted as the Xhosa kwa when the meaning of the word was forgotten. The component kwa in this case is comparable to the /Xam (S1) word !khãua “to boil” (Bleek 1956, p. 425). The name kwaStibili is thus tautological, both components of the name having the same meaning. iMandi is the Xhosa name for the Little Fish River. The initial vowel i is the Xhosa prefix; the component ma is similar to the Hadza (C3) word /ama “fish” (Bleek 1956, p. 269). In this case, neither the dental or alveolar nor the first vowel a of /ama has been retained. The component ndi approximates the /Xam (S1) word ¯/i: “to flow” (Bleek 1956, p. 292).

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The Great Fish River is known by the Xhosa name iNxuba. The component (n)xu(b) is comparable to the Kung (N2) words //ou and //au, “fish,” the Kung lateral click // being accurately reflected by the Xhosa lateral click x and the digraph ou and ou being elided to u in the component xu to avoid the impermissible juxtaposition of two vowels. The component ba is perhaps the old Khoikhoi masculine singular ending –b plus the compulsory vowel at the end of Xhosa names and nouns. Hangklip, a mountain some 15 km NNW of Queenstown, has the Xhosa name uLukhanji, also spelled Lukanji, Ulukanje, uluKanji, Lukhanzi, and eLukhanji (Skead 2001, p. 275). The first component in all cases is the prefix ulu. The Afrikaans name Hangklip means “hanging stone.” The component ulu is the Xhosa prefix; the component k(h)an is comparable to the /Xam (S1) word 6¼khaı˜ “steep, slanting” (Bleek 1956, p. 660), while the component ji or je may be comparable to the //Xegwi (S3) word že “stone.” Both Afrikaans and Bushman names are thus descriptive of the feature concerned. The Mooi River is a tributary that joins the Tsitsa River 13 km NE of Maclear. Its Xhosa name is Nqanqarhu, also recorded in the spellings Qanqaru, Qangaru, iQanqaru, iQkanqarhu, and Nganparu (Skead 2001, p. 570). The name Mooirivier is synonymous with the Xhosa name, both names meaning “pretty river.” The component Qan is cognate with the /Nu //en (S6) words !k?ãn “pretty” and !kãŋ “beautiful” (Bleek 1929, p. 20, 1956, p. 407), the Xhosa consonant q representing the palato-alveolar click that is rendered as ! in Bushman, the nasalization clearly retained in the variant Nqanqarhu. The component qarhu is cognate with the /Xam (S1) word /kãr~r~u, /kãnnu “waterhole, pool, water’s pool” (Bleek 1956, pp. 301, 744) and 6¼houru “pond” (Bleek 1956, p. 744). Considering the requirement of the hunter-gatherer Bushmen to refer to a place by its name, it stands to reason that they would find it easier to refer to a waterhole, pool, or some other feature of limited extent rather than to an entire watercourse. The name of such a smaller feature would then subsequently be transferred or extended to refer to the river itself. In some instances, a settlement, town, railway station, or similar feature may take its name from a nearby geographical feature such as a river or hill in the vicinity. This is the case with Nqamakwe, a hamlet 24 km west-northwest of Butterworth and 40 km east-southeast of Cofimvaba. The hamlet is situated south of a hill called Hartebeestkop, an Afrikaans name meaning “hartebeest hillock,” named for the “hartebeest” (Alcelaphus caama) that frequented the area. The Xhosa name Nqamakwe has the same meaning as the Afrikaans name. The first component of the name, nqama, approximates the Sehura (C1a) word 6¼kama “hartebeest” (Bleek 1956, p. 656), the Xhosa palato-alveolar click q corresponding to the Sehura palatal click 6¼ (Bleek 1929, p. 45); the component kwe is cognate with the Kung (N2) word kwe, “place, rock, hill.” The name has recently been standardized as Ngqamakhwe. There is a hill with the name Qanda Hill some 17 km southwest of Ngqeleni (Skead 2001, p. 570), recorded as “Iqanda, or Egg Hill” by Alexander (1840, p. 64), and another Qanda Hill some 5 km east-northeast of Tsolo. In both instances, the name is derived from the Xhosa word iqanda, “an egg” (Holt 1959, p. 20; Skead 2001, p. 648). The component qan is cognate with the /Xam (S1) word 6¼k”a٤n “egg” (Bleek 1956, p. 668), the Xhosa palato-alveolar click q corresponding to the

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/Xam alveolar click 6¼, formerly known as the palatal click (Bleek 1956, p. 640), the symbol ٤ indicating that the preceding vowel a is a “pressed vowel,” indicating pharyngeal roughening. The component da of Qanda is cognate with the Hadza (C3) word !a “hill” (Bleek 1956, p. 369). The English generic term hill is thus tautological. The Double Mouth River 27 km southeast of Komga has the Xhosa name Quku (Skead 2001, p. 899). Here again the English name is a translation of the Xhosa name, which is in turn an adaptation of Bushman. The first component of the name, Qu, corresponds to the /Xam (S1) word !kou “double,” from the verb !kou ¯!kou “to double” (Bleek 1956, p. 445). The Xhosa palato-alveolar click q reflects the /Xam palato-alveolar click !k, and the /Xam digraph ou has been elided to u because the juxtapositioning of two vowels is impermissible in Xhosa. The component ku of the name Qoku is cognate with the (S4) word 6¼ku: “mouth” (Bleek 1956, p. 664). The name uMzimkhulu would normally be explained as “large home,” from umuzi “homestead, village” and mkhulu “it is big” (Koopman 2002, p. 145). However, this name has on several occasions proven to be an adaptation of Bushman names with European translations. In this case, uMzimkhulu is recorded as the Xhosa name of the Ants River (Skead 2001, p. 848). The component uM of the name uMzimkhulu is the Xhosa prefix; the component zim is comparable to the Hie (C1) word sime “ant” and simesime “ants” (Bleek 1929, p. 16, 1956, p. 169). The component khulu approximates the Bushman word 6¼houru “pond” (Bleek 1956, p. 744), the Bushman alveolar click with aspirated efflux 6¼h shifting to the Xhosa aspirated velar consonant kh, the Bushman digraph ou elided to u to avoid the juxtaposition of two vowels, and the Bushman r replaced by the Xhosa l. iLiwa lamaXhalanga is the Xhosa name of a cliff on the New Year’s River in the Albany district. The name means “cliff of the vultures,” from ili-wa “a cliff, krantz, precipice, rock”; maxhalanga is the plural of ixhalanga “the griffon, or Kolbe’s, vulture” (McLaren 1936, pp. 182, 185), i.e., the Cape vulture, Gyps corprotheres (Skead 2001, p. 342). The Afrikaans name for the feature is Aasvoëlkrans, “vulture cliff,” a translation of the Xhosa name. The component xhalang is cognate with the //Khau (S2b) word //‘araŋ “vulture” (Bleek 1956, p. 517), x being the Xhosa lateral click corresponding to the Bushman lateral click //, Bushman r shifting to Xhosa l, ŋ the IPA symbol for the sound ng, and the final a of the name the Xhosa compulsory vowel at the end of a noun. In this case, the final component of the name, ga, is cognate with the //Ŋ !ke (S2) word 6¼kã: “krantz, cliff, precipice” (Bleek 1956, p. 653). This being the case, the Xhosa word iliwa “cliff” is tautological. The word iliwa also occurs in the name iliwa laMagqwira for Doctor’s Precipice or Sorcerer’s Precipice, shown on James Wyld’s map of 1844 as Witches Kranz, 24 km northwest of East London and 8 km north of Fort Jackson (Skead 2001, p. 1044). Kranz is an older version of the Afrikaans word krans meaning “cliff, precipice.” The component ili of iliwa is the Xhosa prefix; the root wa is comparable to the Khoikhoi word //hoa, “precipice, cliff,” “überhängender Felsvorsprung” (Kroenlein 1889, p. 170a1), and the Hie (C1) !goa “mountain” (Bleek 1956, p. 384). Iliwa laMagqira means “cliff or precipice of the sorcerers,” magqwira being the plural of igqwira, “sorcerer, doctor,” i- the Xhosa prefix, the root qgwira

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being cognate with the /Auni (S4) words !gi:xa,¯!geixa “sorcerer,” !ge:xa “doctor, sorcerer” (Bleek 1956, p. 382), the Xhosa voiced palato-alveolar click gq reflecting the Bushman voiced palato-alveolar click !g, the Xhosa fricative r approximating the Bushman velar fricative x.

5

Standardization and Transformation

The South African Geographical Names Council Act makes provision for “the standardization and transformation of geographical names,” where by “transformation” is understood the replacement of offensive, unaesthetic, or “colonial” names by indigenous Bantu names. Particularly Afrikaans names have been replaced, e.g., Ellisras by Lephalale, Piet Retief by eMkondo, Nylstroom by Modimolle, and Warmbad by Bela-Bela. In many instances, the perceived Bantu names prove to be adaptations of Bushman names. Lephalale takes its name from the Palala River on which it is situated, also known as the Rooibok River, “impala river.” The root p(h)ala is cognate with the Hukwe (C2b) word pala “rooibok” (Bleek 1956, p. 156), from which the name of the impala antelope is also derived. The suffix -la of the name Palala may be an adapted generic term meaning “river” that also occurs in river names like Tugela and Pongola, but the components -la of Palala and -le of Lephalale are also comparable to the //Xegwi (S3) and Sesarwa (S5) demonstrative adverbial locative morpheme la and its synonym le “that, there” (Bleek 1956, p. 129). eMkondo, the town formerly known as Piet Retief, is on the Mkondo River, also known as the Assegai River (Raper et al. 2014, p. 328). The name Mkondo means “assegai,” comparable to the (N2) word 6¼ko6¼ko “assegai, knife” (Bleek 1956, pp. 664, 694). The town of Nylstroom (“Nile stream”) was renamed Modimolle, after a high hill with precipitous cliffs nearby, known also by the Afrikaans name Kranskop “cliff hillock” (Raper et al. 2014, p. 333). The component Mo of the name Modimolle is the Northern Sotho prefix; the component dimo is a variant of the Hie (C1) word zimo “God” (Bleek 1929, p. 10), cognate with the Hie (C1) word njimo “high” (Bleek 1956, p. 147). The component -le is cognate with the //Xegwi (S3) and Sesarwa (S5) demonstrative adverbial locative morpheme le “that, there” (Bleek 1956, p. 129). Modimolle thus means “that high one there,” descriptive of the feature later known as Kranskop. A number of settlements, which had taken their names from the farms on which they were situated, were officially given their indigenous names, and in many of these instances, too, it has been detected that these indigenous names were often adaptations of Bushman names from which the farm names were translated. Thus, for example, Volstruisleegte “ostrich hollow” was changed to Dimptshe, where the component Di is the Northern Sotho prefix; the component mptshe approximates the Auen (N1) word mtshu “ostrich” (Raper et al. 2014, p. 93). The settlement name Jakkalsdraai, “jackals bend,” was replaced by Dipodi, where the element Di is the Tswana plural class marker; the component po is cognate with the Kung (N2) word po “side-striped jackal,” and the component di

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approximates the Auen (N1) word /gi, “bend,” the Tswana voiced alveolar consonant d approximating the Auen voiced alveolar click with voiced release /g (Raper et al. 2014, p. 94).

6

Conclusions

Since research into Bushman influence on place names in southern Africa began about a decade ago, it has become clear that many more place names in the region have been derived from Bushman languages than had hitherto been known or suspected. Such influence can be discerned in names from European, Khoikhoi, and Bantu languages. Frequently three linguistic layers can be discerned in place names, namely, the Bushman substructure; the languages into which the name, or components of the name, have been adapted; and the language(s) into which the names have been translated. In many instances, the allonyms have been restricted to the particular geographical feature concerned, where names in different languages, be they adaptations or translations, apply to the same feature. In other cases, the name of a particular feature such as a mountain or river was applied to a different feature in the vicinity, such as a railway station, a farm, a town, etc. Sometimes, or often, an indigenous name for a feature was given in translated form to the receiving feature, such as Hlokoma to Underberg, from /ho “under” and koma “mountain.” As has been noted, most Bushman languages and dialects have become extinct, but Bushman words may be traced through reconstruction of place names, which tend to survive longer than ordinary words, due to their onomastic referential function and use by people speaking different languages. By determining Bushman languages of origin of place names, former patterns of migration, settlement, and contact may be revealed. Linguistic analysis of language contact reflected in the place names is also revealing sound shifts, click replacements, prefix substitution, vowel and consonant adaptation, and other linguistic phenomena, while the determining of authentic origins and meanings of names is useful for the “correct” spelling and standardization of place names by names authorities. United Nations resolutions recommend the recording and preservation of indigenous and minority place names as an important part of the intangible cultural heritage of the people. Current research in this regard is serving to implement these resolutions.

References Alexander, J. E. (1840). Excursions in Western Africa and narratives of a campaign in Kaffirland on the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief (Vol. 2, 2nd ed.). London: Colburn. Barrow, J. (1801). An account of travels into the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798 (Vol. 1). London: Cadell & Davies.

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Bleek, D. F. (1929). Comparative vocabularies of Bushman languages. Cambridge: University Press. Bleek, D. F. (1956). A Bushman dictionary. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Doke, C. M., & Vilakazi, B. W. (2005). Zulu-English dictionary. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand. Gildenhuys, J. G. (1993). ’n Etimologie van die name vir Vrystaatse dorpe en Swart woonbuurtes in die Afrikatale. Nomina Africana, 7(1&2), 60–84. Heine, B., & Honken, H. (2010). The Kx’a family: A new Khoi genealogy. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 79, 5–36. Holt, B. (1959). Placenames in the Transkeian territories. Johannesburg: Africana Museum. Koopman, A. (2002). Zulu Names. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Krige, E. J. (1975). Zulu. In D. J. Potgieter (Ed.), Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (Vol. 11, pp. 595–601). Nasou: Cape Town. Kroenlein, J. G. (1889). Wortschatz der Khoi-Khoin. Berlin: Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. Louwrens, L. J. (1994). A linguistic analysis of Sotho geographical names. Nomina Africana, 8(1), 1–42. McLaren, J. (1936). A concise Xhosa-English dictionary. London: Longmans, Green and Co.. Mountain, A. (2003). The first people of the Cape. Cape Town: David Philip. Nezar, W. (1994). Amptelike Noord-Sotho Plekname (Official Northern Sotho Place Names). Unpublished M.A. dissertation, Rand Afrikaans University. Nienaber, G. S., & Raper, P. E. (1977). Toponymica Hottentotica. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Parkington, J. (2007). Kabbo’s sentence. In P. Skotnes (Ed.), Claim to the country: The archive of Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek (pp. 74–89). Johannesburg and Cape Town/Athens: Jacana.Ohio University Press. Raper, P. E. (2004). New dictionary of South African place names. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball. Raper, P., & Möller, L. (2015). Bushman (San) cognates of Herero place name elements. Language Matters, 46(3), 389–406. Raper, P. E., Möller, L. A., & Theodorus, D. P. L. (2014). Dictionary of Southern African place names. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball. Skead, C. J. (2001). A pilot gazetteer of Xhosa placenames: A preliminary study. Port Elizabeth: Port Elizabeth Museum. Traill, A. (1978). The languages of the Bushmen. In P. V. Tobias (Ed.), The Bushmen (pp. 137–147). Cape Town: Human and Rousseau. Webster, N. (1961). In P. B. Gove (Ed.), Webster’s third new international dictionary of the English language unabridged. Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Co.. Werner, A. (1925). The language-families of Africa (2nd ed.). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.. Wyld, J. (1844). South Africa (Map). London: Charing Cross.

Poetics and Politics in the Naming of Brazilian Towns

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Wordle-ing Brazilian municipalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Place Names as Index of “Brazilian-ness”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Contexts and Meanings of Brazilian Place Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Politics of Place-Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

At the interface between geography and language, the study of place names is among the most exciting topics in modern cultural geography. Toponyms go far beyond the mere naming of places and the linguistic and historical aspects of their origins. Researchers investigate not only spatial distributions and patterns, but also delve into political and cultural practices behind the place names in order to reveal the dynamics of their naming and renaming in time and space and the reasons and agents behind these processes. The aim of this paper is to discuss the naming practices of Brazilian towns (municípios) in the light of national policies and local power structures in the country that result in political and poetic naming strategies. I will present a brief overview of the situation of the country’s 5570 municipalities and analyze how these names have emerged and changed over time. Special emphasis is giving to initiatives such as the “Tupinization” policies during the Vargas Regime (1930–1945) and the recent official efforts by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics to standardize national place names and exonyms. Despite existing naming rules, Brazilian place names

J. Seemann (*) Department of Geography, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_80

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show eclecticism and creativity and can be considered products of official identity and territory-shaping processes as well as popular and common sense initiatives. Keywords

Brazilian place names · Namescapes · Naming policies · Standardization of place names · Spatial history

1

Introduction

In the past, studies on place names have been an almost exclusive dominion of linguists and historians who were interested in tracing back the source of a name, its spelling, and pronunciation without taking into account broader geographical, cultural, and political contexts. For a long time, cultural geographers have recognized place names as providers of “an excellent visible index to the distribution of cultural traits” (Jordan and Rowntree 1976: 216). Their focus has been on spatial patterns of toponyms such as their emergence, diffusion, and cultural transfer (for example, Kaups 1966; West 1954; Zelinsky 1955). More recently, cultural geographers have questioned this particular approach to namescapes as predominantly naïve, acritical, atheoretical, and depoliticized “armchair toponymy” (Rose-Redwood and Alderman 2011: 2) and as “a field that has traditionally been characterized by political innocence to say the least” (Vuolteenaho and Berg 2009: 1). From a critical point of view, place names go far beyond simple words and their etymology. They reveal and conceal narratives, express and sometimes oppress ideas of identity, and carry a strong symbolical function inscribed or even imprinted on the cultural landscape. Under the influence of emerging critical approaches in cultural geography, geographers have become more aware of the political implications, impacts, and influences of place-naming practices at the interface between culture, identity, and power, with an emphasis “not so much on the name itself, but rather on the cultural politics of naming” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010: 457). This new focus addresses questions such as how cultural and political actors seek to control, negotiate, and manipulate the naming process, both in contemporary and colonial contexts. These “critical toponymies” (Berg and Vuolteenaho 2009) open up a wide range of research topics and make use of diverse theoretical approaches. Rose-Redwood et al. (2010) propose three different, but overlapping thematic clusters. First, place names can be conceived as texts in the landscape that are communicated, coded, and decoded. In particular, commemorative names help to reveal “the semiotic association between place naming and political power” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010: 458). Secondly, place-naming can also be a governmental issue, taking into account that these processes are frequently embedded in the broader history of spatial identification, inscription, calculation, and rationalization. In other words, naming is commonly defined and determined by organizing principles imposed by an authority. Lastly, in the political field, place names could also be a bottom-to-top initiative or movement. Instead of seeing naming as a persuasive tool to trigger regional labeling or nationalist feelings, names could also be a symbolic form of resistance, by

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functioning “as a conduit for challenging dominant ideologies as well as a means of introducing alternative cultural meanings and narrations of identity” (RoseRedwood et al. 2010: 463). Critical place-name studies cover a wide range of topics and analyze toponyms on different scales. Studies entail themes such as the renaming of the urban landscape in post-socialist Europe (Azaryahu 1997; Light 2004), the name changes of towns during the Spanish Civil War (Tort 2003), and the symbolic functions of streets, schools, and even commercial establishment in honor of important historical personalities such as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. (Alderman 2000, 2002; Colten 1997). In addition to this, geographers are showing increasing interest in the shaping, reshaping, denial, and assertion of indigenous and regional identities through the politics of naming (e.g., Carter 1987; Herman 1999; Withers 2000). In this paper, I focus on the place-naming practices in Brazil on a regional and national level. Previous case studies on a nation-wide scale have dealt with Turkic and Armenian names in Soviet Armenia (Saparov 2003), renaming of places after the Iranian Revolution in 1978 (Lewis 1982), and place-name changes in India in the light of colonial and postcolonial influences (Kapur 2010). Toponyms are frequently under the influence of naming poetics and politics, an unbalanced relationship between creative ways of wording, based on human values and identities, and knowledge produced by discourse and power (Gersdorf 2009). Naming politics can be defined as practices that aim to regulate and/or control the creation of toponyms and in which power relations have a special impact. Poetics of place names do not necessarily obey rules and laws and refer to a human or humanistic dimension of toponyms, emphasizing local narratives, subjective values, and cultural backgrounds. Brazil is a peculiar place for namescape studies as a contact zone of colonial pasts, a hearth of indigenous heritage, and a crossroads for migration flows, paired with political power relations and naming traditions that are frequently reduced to shallow historical narratives or unquestioned foundation myths. My aim is to analyze Brazilian town names and their different contexts and discuss practices and peculiarities with regards to the country’s poetics and politics of naming. Due to the large number of place names and the extreme diversity of naming narratives in Brazil, this study can only scratch the surface of the topic, and I will restrict myself to the denominations of the 5570 municipalities in the country. In general terms, Brazilian toponyms, from a local creek or hill to the denomination of a state, have a complex story to tell and each would require a separate investigation.

2

Wordle-ing Brazilian municipalities

The 26 Brazilian states (excluding the federal district and the ocean islands) are divided into smaller administrative units that are called municípios (municipalities). The municipal area normally includes an administrative urban center (sede municipal) and districts with their respective towns, villages, and smaller settlements. At present (2016), there are 5570 municipalities in Brazil, whose areas can vary

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Fig. 1 Word cloud of Brazilian municipality names

between roughly one square mile (Santa Cruz de Minas) and country-size dimensions (Altamira in the State of Pará). Figure 1 shows a wordle cloud of this Brazilian namescape, emphasizing the most frequent words. These terms are generally not stand-alone expressions, but part of a composed place name. The prefixes Nova or Novo (new) frequently refer to places that inspired new settlements, paying tribute to their origins. For example, Nova Olinda in Ceará alludes to Olinda in Pernambuco, whereas Novo Hamburgo in Rio Grande do Sul is an immigrants’ tribute to the city of Hamburg in Germany. Directions (North, South, West, and East) are a constant presence in toponyms, mainly in order to avoid duplicated place names and distinguish these locales from others. Very common names contain a locational reference, for example, São Pedro do Sul (in the extreme south of the country) and Juazeiro do Norte (Ceará), which is situated in the Northeast, but only about 200 miles north of Juazeiro in the State of Bahia. Cardinal directions are not always absolute references. In Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in Brazil, there are eight municipalities named after Saint Joseph (São José) including São José do Norte and São José do Sul. However, the town with the generic addition “Sul” is located about 200 miles north from the town in the “North.” In this case, north is not used as an absolute geographical reference, but as a local orientation given by Spanish colonizers in the eighteenth century to denominate the northern border of their occupation in that part of South America. The other locales of São José refer to the historical Jesuit mission region in the west of the state (Missões), yerba mate plantations (do Herval), local landownership (Hortêncio), description of landscape (Inhacorá = fenced field surrounded by nature), gold reserves according to a foundation myth (do Ouro), and harsh physical conditions (Ausentes = absent people). There are 60 municipalities with the name of this saint in Brazil. Besides cardinal directions, another strategy to distinguish names is by adding the name of the respective home state. Piauí, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Tocantins, and Maranhão are frequent geographical markers in place names. Sixty eight out of 224 or about 30% of Piauí’s municipalities carry the name of the state. In Tocantins,

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the most recent Brazilian state created in 1991, 37 out of 139 municipalities are “statonyms.” Apart from the state reference, there are municipalities in Goiás that use the state as a “prefix”: Goianápolis, Goiandira, Goianésia, Goi^ania, Goianira, Goiás, and Goiatuba. Among the most frequent words used in toponyms are first names like José, João, Pedro, Francisco, Antônio, and Maria. However, most of them (with a few exceptions) refer to Catholic saints, martyrs, and apostles, frequently in combination with the words Santo or São (masculine) and Santa (feminine). Santo is used for saints whose names begin with a vowel, for example, Santo Antônio or Santo André. São would be the most frequent term in the wordle cloud, but has not been considered by the algorithm since the word was interpreted as a verb form (são means “are,” the plural form of to be). Physicals descriptions are another frequent toponymic feature, giving emphasis to rivers (Rio), mountain ranges (Serra), hills (Monte), rocks (Pedra), lagoons (Lagoa), fields (Campo, Campos), water bodies (Água/Águas), ports (Porto), and river mouths (Barra). In addition to this, qualitative and quantitative attributes also figure among the predominant words. Grande (Big) is mentioned in the name of 59 Brazilian municipalities, frequently in combination with physical aspects, for example, Arroio Grande (big creek) or Campo Grande (big field). Positive adjectives such as Bom/Boa (good), Alegre (happy), Bonito (beautiful), and Verde (green) are other frequent expressions. Brazil is the country of 19 “paradisiacal” municipalities, including Paradise valleys (Vale do Paraíso, Valparaíso, Valparaíso do Sul) and “high” (alto) places like Alto Paraíso in Paraná, Rondônia, and Goiás.

3

Place Names as Index of “Brazilian-ness”?

The analysis of types and frequencies of place names transmits only a superficial idea about naming practices, since it is exclusively based on a quantification of names without contextualization. Place names are counted, but not scrutinized for their meanings. Almost 50 years ago, Oliveira (1970) carried out substantial research on toponyms, based on the 35,326 geographical names that were registered on the 46 map sheets of the International Map of the World (scale of 1:1000000). Oliveira claimed that “from a statistical point of view, the vocabulary extracted from this geographic-cartographic dataset could be quite representative of Brazilian space” (Oliveira 1970: 61). The Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics published an updated downloadable version of this index at the beginning of this decade (IBGE 2011). For Oliveira, his study “The psychosocial origins of Brazilian toponyms” showed the preferences of the Brazilian people for geographical denominations, which are the result of the cultural complexity of the country (Oliveira 1970: 61). Oliveira was at pains to prove his point by presenting a set of tables showing the percentage of the occurrence of place names in categories such as linguistic origins (Portuguese, indigenous, and others including African names) and thematic categories such as anthroponyms, religion, plants, hydrography, animals, relief, trees,

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minerals, birds, fruits, fish, and rather arbitrary classes such as quadrupeds and optimism. The latter class refers to adjectives and expressions with a positive connotation, for example, big, happy, beautiful, and good. Any other toponyms that did not match with the above-mentioned categories were labeled as “others,” almost 40% of all the place names in the database. The findings of Oliveira’s study were quantified and aimed to establish a comparison between the five macro regions of Brazil (north, northeast, east (today southeast), south, and west-central), which he computed in 51 tables. According to his data, the northern region had a higher percentage of hagionyms (religious names) and toponyms related to rivers than the other four regions. Whereas the majestic sumau´ma tree was most frequently used in plant toponyms in the north, names referring to pine and orange trees were more common in the south. Based on his content analysis in precomputer times, Oliveira (1970: 70) identified traces of the Brazilian national spirit in the names and “allowed” himself to conclude that “according to the Brazilian toponymy, our people are essentially catholic, bucolic, optimistic, and nationalist.”

4

Contexts and Meanings of Brazilian Place Names

A quantitative approach to place names based exclusively on the denominations themselves does not provide details about the naming practices and processes. For this reason, a closer look at the “making” of toponyms can reveal insights into the politics and poetics in the Brazilian namescape. A complete analysis of all the Brazilian town names would go far beyond the limits of this article. Behind the name of each municipality, district, or village is a complex narrative of power, culture, imagination, and history that would fill a complete encyclopedia. Between 1957 and 1964, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics published the monumental Enciclopédia dos Municípios Brasileiros in 36 bulky volumes (IBGE 1957–1964), containing “about 3,000 maps, including those of all municipalities of Brazil and all maps of the states. (. . .) a lavish photographic documentation of Brazil” (IBGE 1957: 7). (The complete encyclopedia is available at: http:// biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/index.php/biblioteca-catalogo?view=detalhes&id=227295.) The first 13 volumes present general historical and geographical data on the country and its five regions, whereas the following 23 tomes address each state separately. For each municipality, a multiple-page entry informs about history and historical origins (including place names), geographical “accidents,” natural riches, population, religion, economic activities, transport, communication, education, urban life, and local “illustrious figures.” Many names of municipalities are related to persons. Frequently, place names refer to the founding fathers, the first settlers, or important local personalities. For example, Zortéa, the last name on the alphabetical list of places, is the family name of an important sawmill owner in that town, whereas Guzol^andia in the State of São Paulo is a tribute to the Guzo or Guzzo family, immigrants from Italy. Tio Hugo (Uncle Hugo) in Rio Grande do Sul honors the late charismatic owner of a local gas

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station; Alpercata (“sandals”) in Minas Gerais refers to Gabriel “Precata” (corrupted spelling of alpercata), a popular personality in town; Moraújo in Ceará is a made-up name that pays tribute to the first two families in the region: Morais and Araújo. América Dourada (“golden America”) in the State of Bahia originally was called Dourados in reference to the family with the same name, before it was changed to América dos Dourados and then to the present name, since there is another Dourados in Mato Grosso do Sul. According to the Brazilian legislation (Decree-Law 5901, 10/21/1943 and Complementary Law 46, 08/21/1984), repeated names of cities and towns should be eliminated (Brasil 1943, 1984). In practice, administrators and planners do not always follow these rules, since decision-making in the naming process does not initiate on a federal level, but on a local and regional scale. There are a considerable number of duplicated names. Bom Jesus is a municipality name in five different states. The saints Helena, Inês, and Luzia occur four times in the country. In the case of Bom Jesus, there is even duplicity in its more specific naming: Bom Jesus do Tocantins is the name of two different municipalities located in the States of Tocantins and Pará. The latter is a reference to the Tocantins River and not the state with the same name. The Brazilian municipalities show a wide range of personal name references, from beloved wives, mothers, and daughters to founding fathers, engineers, and influential local personalities such as merchants, teachers, council members, and clergymen. Brazilian law prohibits the use of names of living persons and commemorative dates for municipalities (Brasil 1943, 1984). However, the present-day Brazilian namescape includes the toponym “May 13,” that is, the municipality of Treze de Maio in the State of Santa Catarina, a tribute to the official day of abolition in Brazil in 1888, and the town of Presidente Sarney in the State of Maranhão, which was called Pimenta (pepper) before its emancipation in 1997 and honors the former Brazilian president and state governor José Sarney, born in 1930 and still alive in 2019. Naming towns after local people is a common practice around the world, including in the United States. However, in the Brazilian context, there is a slightly different connotation. It is not only about the first settlers, but also about large landowners who may still have an influence on the unequal land distribution in the present. These names project power relations, and it is not uncommon to find municipalities with a military title in their names. Colonel, Major, and Captain are not necessarily merit ranks, but patentes, that is, military titles bought by rich landowners for their own prestige and as a license to keep their own armed forces. Local politicians who supposedly improved the life in town figure among the names, side by side with state representatives, including governors. There is even a long list of presidents eternalized by Brazilian municipalities, from progressive Juscelino Kubitschek and populist Getúlio Vargas to lesser known personalities such as former vice-president Nereu Ramos, who remained in the presidency for less than two months after Vargas’s suicide. Even foreign statesmen are included in the list of Brazilian toponyms. President Kennedy can be found on the map in the States of Espírito Santo and Tocantins. The former town looks back to a dynamic name

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change history since the seventeenth century. The original settlement with the name Muribeca (meaning “inconvenient fly”) was successively renamed as Barra do Itabapoana (many different meanings, e.g., “village on elevation” or “furious vasp”), Batalha (“battle,” 1949), and finally Presidente Kennedy (1964); the latter name change occurred by indication from a state politician and as a bow to the Alliance for Progress initiative by the United States in the 1960s that aimed at strengthening political links with Latin America. Many place names in Brazil are indigenous, though not necessarily of indigenous origin. They are easily identified by specific prefixes and suffixes such as ita = stone, i = water, or tuba = abundance. For example, Itapipoca (Ceará) can be translated as exploded rock. Pipoca is also the Portuguese word for popcorn. Ipanema, which is not only a famous beach in Rio de Janeiro, but also a municipality in Minas Gerais, means “bad waters,” which could be interpreted in several different ways: either dirty, sterile, or bad for fishing. Pacatuba (Ceará and Sergipe) implies a large number of pacas, a species of herbivorous rodents native in South America. In his study on the psychosocial origins of Brazilian toponyms, Oliveira (1970: 62) affirms that 32.09% of the more than 35,000 place names in his database, were of “indigenous influence.” At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Brazilian engineer and writer Theodoro Sampaio (1901:3) stressed the strong influence of indigenous names on Brazilian toponyms: “There is no one who does not know of the predominance of Tupi in our geographical denominations. Our mountains, rivers, cities and simple settlements generally carry barbarian (sic) names that the gentiles, previously the dominators [of these lands], applied to them and which the conquerors respected and which today are preferred by everyone, because not rarely, Portuguese names of old localities are changed and replaced with others of indigenous provenance. . .”

His book includes a dictionary of indigenous place names and their etymological meanings. In his list, one can read about municipalities like the almost unpronounceable Pindamonhangaba (“place of the fish hooks”), Caraguatatuba (abundance of caraguatá = Bromelias), and Guaratinguetá (“many white herons”) in the State of São Paulo that are colonial settlements from the seventeenth century. However, it would be a mistake to deduce that all indigenous names are from a long time ago. Despite the large number of municipalities with names in the Tupi language, many of these toponyms emerged in the twentieth century, especially during the Estado Novo and the Vargas government between 1930 and 1945. In this period, many place names were literally “Tupinicized” as an expression of the nationalist and integrative political directions in the country (Seemann 2005) and in accordance to the politically exploited image of the native Indian as sentinel and proto-patriot of the Brazilian nation (Garfield 1997). During the Estado Novo, it was common to replace Portuguese names with indigenous denominations, sometimes as literal translations. For example, Abaiara was a district of the neighboring municipality Milagres (short for “Our Lady of the Miracles”) and carried the name São Pedro, in honor of the apostle Saint Peter. However, in 1938, a decree determined the name change to a different Peter: Pedro Segundo, a tribute to the

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last Brazilian emperor. Five years later, the toponym underwent a free translation into the Tupi language: Abaiara, which means “illustrious man.” Changes on the international geopolitical level influenced the Brazilian namescape, too. National Socialism in Germany and the outbreak of World War II had impacts on place-naming, especially in areas with German immigrants. The fear of a fifth column in the country (Silva Py 1942) led to drastic measures to control the lives of Germanic descendants. The German language was publically banned, and any cultural reference to Germans had to be removed from public spaces, including street names and even town denominations. A prominent example is the municipality of Panambi (“valley of the butterflies”) in the southern State of Rio Grande do Sul, which originally was named Neu-Württemberg by immigrants from Southern Germany in the late nineteenth century. The name was changed to Elsenau in 1901 (Else, the wife of founder Hermann Meyer), Pindorama in 1938 (“land of the palm trees”) and Tabapirã in 1944 (“village of the red roofs”), before its present name was decreed later in the same year. In history, the cultural translation of indigenous words is very ambiguous. It is not uncommon to find different interpretations for indigenous names. In the case of Panambi, the name could stand for “blue butterfly,” “valley of the butterflies,” or “small butterfly.” The official website of the municipality presents the following story: “it is told by the elders that during the time of selection for the name, many butterflies flew over this land of green valleys that is crossed by the crystalline waters of the Fiu´za river, with the blue butterfly being the most prominent species” (Prefeitura de Panambi 2016). The interpretation of the naming process is not based on concrete and trustful sources, but on oral history and hearsays (“it is told”) that cannot be confirmed. Many stories in Brazilian place-naming history are reified, for example, “the town changed its name to. . .” or “the town received the name by decree,” without taking into account the decision-making process. After the Second World War, Brazilian legislation seemed to relax these naming practices and allowed the municipalities to use ethnic references in their names. The original name of Pomerode, a locale of immigrants from Pomerania in the 1860s in the State of Santa Catarina, was Rio do Testo. It was only after its independence in 1958 that the toponym was changed to Pomerode. The municipality of Treze Tílias in the State of Santa Catarina is a reference to the poem Dreizehnlinden (Thirteen linden trees) by the Austrian writer Wilhelm Weber. Immigrants from Tyrol arrived in the region in 1933 where they found favorable physical conditions similar to their homeland, including the vegetation. The Brazilian namescape also includes references to foreign cities and countries. For example, Nova Iorque (brazilianized version of New York) in the State of Maranhão is a reference to the American Eduardo Burnet (sic) who supposedly opened the first commercial business in the town in 1871. Barcelona in Rio Grande do Norte does not refer to the city in Spain, but was the name of a rubber plantation in the Amazon, owned by one of the local leaders. Filadélfia in the State of Tocantins does not allude to “Philly,” but carries the name of Filadélfio Antônio de Noronha, the first landowner in the area, and Doverl^andia in the State of Goiás is a tribute to the local leader Dovercino Borges, and not the town in southern England.

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A final curiosity is Placas in the State of Pará, a municipality which became independent in 1997. The settlement emerged at the margins of the Transamazonian Highway, and its name refers to the large number of plaques erected at the roadside that advertised land reform and federal road improvement projects.

5

The Politics of Place-Naming

In Brazil’s history, the interference of the federal government in place-naming is mainly limited to normative aspects of toponyms as an effort to avoid ambiguities and standardize place names not only according to national parameters but also concordant with the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. The main argument is that the regulation of place names is a decisive support for territorial organization and cartographic production. The website of IBGE’s Centro de Referência em Nomes Geográficos (Reference Center for Geographic Names) lists a number of reasons for this centralization of naming practices, including the economy of money, support for the national census, postal delivery, and search and rescue operations, the control of environmental disasters, and even “national defense, facilitating security operations by land, sea and air” (CRNG n.d.). Knowing the exact name and position of a place is considered essential for these operations. Place names are not handled as cultural objects, but as a support for practical use and political and administrative purposes according to norms and rules. Formal issues such as the duplicity of names, correct spelling, the use of accents, and the translation of exonyms into Portuguese are prioritized over cultural-historical aspects of toponyms. It is not a surprise that the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters), the most illustrious authority on the Portuguese language in Brazil, has been involved in this debate since the beginning of the twentieth century, projecting rules for orthography and word choice to the cultural landscape. The federal government embraced these measures to organize and control space and embedded place names in the administration and organization of the country’s territory. For example, during the so-called Vargas Era (1930–1945), the Decree-Law no.311 (03/02/1938), known as the “Geographical Law of the New State,” demanded that each municipality produced a map of its territory that had to be deposited in two authenticated copies at the Regional Secretary of Geography within one year (Brasil 1938) In article 13, municipal administrators and mapmakers were urged to “satisfy the minimum requisites established by the National Council of Geography” (paragraph 1). In case of omission, a municipality “will be disenfranchised of its autonomy and its territory will be annexed to one of the neighboring towns” (paragraph 2). The Decree-Law no. 5901 (10/21/1943) prescribed more specific “national norms for the quinquennial review of the administrative and judicial division of the country” (Brasil 1943), including a regulation of place names in order to eliminate the repetition of toponyms (article 7). In the case of duplicated names, criteria such as the administrative category (e.g., capital is higher than central town of municipality) and the age of the place should serve as tiebreakers for the prevalence of a toponym. For the creation of new places, administrators were advised to avoid “designations of dates, foreign

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vocabularies, the names of living persons, composed expressions of more than two words, but the adoption of indigenous names and other with a local property are recommendable” (article 7, paragraph III). The IBGE is the driving force behind a recent initiative to create a complete and updated database of the 5570 municipalities in Brazil. In 2011, the institute released the Database for Geographical Names in Brazil (Banco de Nomes Geográficos do Brasil – BNGB), an online interface to retrieve information about geographical features that included location map, coordinates, photos, and historicaladministrative aspects. However, at present, the website has been “under maintenance” without a concrete date to resume its operation. As an alternative, the IBGE website offers access to these data in their CIDADES program. Information on the history and geography of Brazilian municipalities, including infographics and a modest photo archive, can be consulted online (IBGE 2016). The quality of the entries differs considerably, resulting in a mix of foundation myths, superficial descriptions, and bureaucratic presentations of dates, names, decrees, and laws that formalize the status of a place. Little is written about who exactly named the places and why. The sentences generally appear in the passive voice without further information on the decision-making process behind the naming. Placenaming in Brazil is heavily reified and occurs predominantly in accordance with the hierarchy of political power, from top-to-bottom. Many names seem to be taken-forgranted references, as if decrees defined toponyms, and not social and political actors. Name choices are rarely based on a popular vote. Authorities and officials like aldermen, mayors, local personalities, and state representatives evaluate and decide. The namescape of municipalities in Brazil has become very dynamic due to the fact that the number of new independent administrative units has increased considerably during the last few decades. In 1872, only 642 municipalities existed in the country and about double the number in 1911, skyrocketing to 4491 in 1991 and 5570 in 2013 (Silva and Lima n.d.). The creation of new administrative units is guaranteed by Article 18 of the Federal Constitution that concedes the right to create new municípios, based on a feasibility study and a referendum (plebiscite) among the involved population (Brasil 1988). As a result of this, more than 1000 new municipalities emerged between 1991 and 2000, and the administrative independence frequently accompanied the renaming of a place. These recent place-name dynamics in Brazil differ from other places such as the Post-Soviet Eastern European countries where systematic name changes occurred in order to wipe out the political past, and the United States, which is a namescape of towns and counties frozen in time, heavily based on nineteenth-century politics, wars, and local power relations, without taking into account more recent historical processes, events, and personae such as the civil right movement. No county is named after Martin Luther King Jr.

6

Conclusion

This brief analysis of Brazilian place names at a medium scale (names of municipalities) aimed to show the complexity of place name studies. Toponyms go far beyond mere names, but interfere, directly or indirectly, in the production and transformation

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of space and place. By using the terms poetics and politics, I wanted to point out the importance of political, economic, and sociocultural contexts in the process. On the one hand, place names can be signifiers of political power and governmental interference. On the other hand, they can evoke stories and forge identities, creating, in extreme cases, banal namescapes, “names that raise little or no political response [and that] play a key role in the processes of fetishization that efface the social relations that underpin landscapes of dispossession” (Berg 2011: 17). Brazilian place-name studies are still lacking a more critical approach (for an exception, see Felipe 2001). Despite the national focus on the standardization of names, official institutions like the IBGE are also eager to make the population aware of the meaning and impacts of toponyms, pleading for a discussion on the “economic, sociocultural, and historical value of geographic names in order to reactivate the interest in the preservation and the rescue of the Brazilian toponymy” and reintroduce Brazil to the international debate on normative practices (Augusto 2007). In conclusion, the Brazilian namescape remains widely uncharted but still keeps the promise of future investigations.

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Gersdorf, C. (2009). The poetics and politics of the desert. Landscape and the construction in America. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi. Herman, R. (1999). The Aloha state: Place names and the anti-conquest of Hawai’i. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 89(1), 76–102. IBGE. (1957). Enciclopédia dos municípios brasileiros (Vol. 1). Rio de Janeiro: IBGE. IBGE. (1957–1964). Enciclopédia dos Municípios Brasileiros (Vols. 36). Rio de Janeiro: IBGE. https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/index.php/biblioteca-catalogo?view=detalhes&id=227295. Accessed 12 Jan 2019. IBGE. (2011). Índice de nomes geográficos. Volume 1. Escala 1:1000000. Base cartográfica continua do Brasil ao milionésimo – BCIM. http://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/ liv56282.pdf. Accessed 18 Aug 2016. IBGE. (2016). Cidades. http://cidades.ibge.gov.br/xtras/home.php?lang. Accessed 18 Aug 2016. Jordan, T., & Rowntree, L. (1976). The human mosaic. A thematic introduction to cultural geography. San Francisco: Canfield Press. Kapur, A. (2010). The value of place names in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 45(26/27), 410–418. Kaups, M. (1966). Finnish place names in Minnesota: A study in cultural transfer. Geographical Review, 56(3), 377–397. Lewis, P. G. (1982). The politics of Iranian place-names. Geographical Review, 72(1), 99–102. Light, D. (2004). Street names in Bucharest, 1990–1997: Exploring the modern historical geographies of post-socialist change. Journal of Historical Geography, 30(1), 154–172. Oliveira, C. (1970). As origens psicossociais dos topônimos brasileiros. Boletim Geográfico, 29(215), 61–70. Prefeitura de Panambi. (2016). Sobre a cidade. Dados históricos. http://www.panambi.rs.gov.br/ site/ver.php?codigo=5585. Accessed 10 Aug 2016. Rose-Redwood, R., & Alderman, D. (2011). Critical interventions in political toponymy. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 10(1), 1–6. Rose-Redwood, R., Alderman, D., & Azaryahu, M. (2010). Geographies of toponymic inscription: New directions in critical place-name studies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(4), 453–470. Sampaio, T. (1901). O Tupi na geografia nacional. São Paulo: Typ. da Casa Eclectica. Saparov, A. (2003). The alteration of place names and construction of national identity in Soviet Armenia. Cahiers du Monde Russe, 44(1), 179–198. Seemann, J. (2005). A toponímia como construção histórico-cultural: O exemplo dos municípios do Estado do Ceará. Vivência, 29, 207–224. Silva, J.K.T., & Lima, M.H.T. (n.d.). Evolução do marco legal da criação de municípios no Brasil. ftp://geoftp.ibge.gov.br/organizacao_do_territorio/estrutura_territorial/evolucao_da_divisao_ territorial_do_brasil_1872_2010/evolucao_do_marco_legal_da_criacao_de_municipios_no_ brasil.pdf. Accessed 31 Aug 2016. Silva Py, A. (1942). A quinta coluna no Brasil. A conspiração nazi no Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre: Globo. Tort, J. (2003). Los cambios de nombres de los municipios durante la revolución y la guerra civil españolas (1936–1939). Scripta Nova, 7(133). http://www.ub.es/geocrit/sn/sn-133.htm. Accessed 17 Aug 2016. Vuolteenaho, J., & Berg, L. D. (2009). Towards critical toponymies. In L. D. Berg & J. Vuolteenaho (Eds.), Critical toponymies: The contested politics of place naming (pp. 1–18). Farnham: Ashgate. West, R. C. (1954). The term “bayou” in the United States: A study in the geography of place names. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 44(1), 63–74. Withers, C. W. J. (2000). Authorizing landscape: “Authority”, naming and the Ordnance Survey’s mapping of the Scottish Highlands in the nineteenth century. Journal of Historical Geography, 26(4), 532–554. Zelinsky, W. (1955). Some problems in the distribution of generic terms in the place-names of the northeastern United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 45(4), 319–349.

The Board of Geographic Names and the Removal of Derogatory and Offensive Toponyms in the United States

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The US Board of Geographic Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Identifying Potential Name Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Efforts to Change Place Names Associated with Native Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Commemorating Native American History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Other Proposed Name Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Although much of the literature on controversies over the naming of geographic features has been associated with the names of cultural features, the naming or renaming of mountains, streams, and other physical features on the landscape has also been controversial in many cases. In the United States, the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is responsible for determining and authorizing the use of official names for physical landscape features. The Board is charged with resolving conflicts involving the use of offensive or derogatory names. In this chapter, the process of conflict resolution is discussed using recent examples, illustrating the wide range of names that various groups regard as offensive. Keywords

Toponyms · Landscape features · Derogatory language · Native Americans · African-Americans · Name changes

F. M. Shelley (*) Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_177

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Introduction

In the United States, the choice of place names has long been a matter of controversy. Over many years, numerous disputes have arisen over the choice of an appropriate name for particular features on the landscape, including the names of streets and roads, parks, schools, public buildings, and other cultural features. For example, since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), numerous cities have renamed streets in his honor (Alderman 2003; Dwyer and Alderman 2008). More recently, other cities have renamed streets, schools, and public buildings that had been named originally after major figures in the history of the confederacy such as Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (1824–1863), and Jefferson Davis (1808–1889). In other places, monuments to these persons have been torn down or moved (Leib 2012). These changes were made in light of their association with a regime that promoted continued slavery of African-Americans in the South at that time. Controversy over place naming is not limited to cultural features on the landscape. In many cases, selection of the names of mountains, rivers and streams, and other natural features on the landscape is also a matter of controversy and concern. In the United States, decisions over the official names of landscape features are made by the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN). The Board is charged with determining, authorizing, and maintaining the uniform use of names of cities, towns, and landscape features throughout the United States. Many states maintain similar agencies that are authorized to submit recommendations to the Board. Many of the proposed name changes considered by the Board involve efforts to change existing names that can be regarded as derogatory or offensive. For example, in recent years, the Board has given new names to features that were once called Dead Indian Creek, N****r Bill Canyon, and Squaw Creek. The Board has also considered reinstituting the formal use of names that had been given to features by indigenous peoples living nearby. For example, Denali in Alaska was known as Mount McKinley until the name of this mountain, the highest in North America, was changed officially in 2015. The purpose of this chapter is to review the purposes and functions of the Board and to identify and describe proposals before the Board, focusing on proposals to rename landscape features whose names have been regarded as derogatory or offensive.

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The US Board of Geographic Names

In the United States, the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN) has responsibility for determining the official names for cities, towns, and landscape features such as mountains, rivers, and streams (Berlin 2015). The Board also maintains the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) in conjunction with the US Geological Survey (USGS). According to the Board’s website, GNIS is the official repository of domestic geographic names data, the official vehicle for geographic names use by all departments of the federal government, and the source for applying

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geographic names to federal electronic and printed products (https://geonames.usgs. gov/domestic/index.html). GNIS includes the official name of each landscape feature, along with the state and county in which it is located, its latitude and longitude, and its placement on official USGS topographic maps. Over the course of American history and as Euro-American settlement of the United States proceeded across North America, more and more places were identified, described, and explored. Many places were given different names by different persons. In other cases, the same name was given to different landscape features, increasing confusion. Maps produced by different cartographers and different agencies showed different names for the same features, and these names were sometimes spelled in varying ways. By the late nineteenth century, it had become evident that standardization of place names was necessary, such that each feature’s name would be used uniformly and unambiguously throughout the federal government. In 1889, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall (1841–1924) was appointed Superintendent of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey (the federal agency that is known today as the National Geodetic Survey and is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA). As Superintendent of the Survey, Mendenhall contacted several prominent scientists and explorers to express his concern about lack of uniformity and standardization of geographic names. With their support, Mendenhall reported his concern to President Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901). On September 4, 1890, Harrison issued Executive Order 28 constituting what he called the Board on Geographic Names. Mendenhall was named as its chair. Its other nine members represented the State, Treasury, War, Navy, Post Office Departments, the Smithsonian Institution, and USGS. According to the executive order: To this Board shall be referred all unsettled questions concerning geographic names which arise in the Departments, and the decisions of the Board are to be accepted by these Departments as the standard authority in such matters. Department officers are instructed to afford such assistance as may be proper to carry on the work of this Board. (https://geonames.usgs.gov/docs/PPP%202016.pdf)

The decisions of the Board were to be treated as binding across all federal agencies. Harrison’s initial executive order authorized the Board to adjudicate conflicts over nomenclature. However, in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) issued Executive Order 492 that extended the Board’s authority to standardizing geographic names, including implementing name changes. Eventually, the Board began also to standardize names of foreign places. This process was accelerated as the United States became involved in global conflicts during and after World War II. In 1947, the Eightieth Congress enacted Public Law 242, which was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) and established the Board of Geographic Names as currently constituted. Under auspices of Public Law 242: The membership of the Board shall include one representative from each of the Departments of State, War, Navy, Post Office, Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce, and from the Government Printing Office, and the Library of Congress. The Board may also include

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representatives from such Federal agencies as the Secretary, upon recommendation of the Board, shall from time to time find desirable, even though these agencies are in the departments otherwise represented on the Board.

The Board was placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Its mission was to “formulate principles, policies, and procedures to be followed with reference to both domestic and foreign geographic names and shall decide the standard names and their orthography for official use.” In the following year, BGN issued a statement of principles, policies, and procedures. This statement has been revised and updated periodically, most recently in 2016. Today, the mission statement for the Board on its website at https://geonames.usgs.gov contains these words: In this age of geographic information systems, the Internet, and homeland defense, geographic names data are even more important and more challenging. Applying the latest technology, the Board on Geographic Names continues its mission. It serves the Federal Government and the public as a central authority to which name problems, name inquiries, name changes, and new name proposals can be directed. In partnership with Federal, State, and local agencies, the Board provides a conduit through which uniform geographic name usage is applied and current names data are promulgated.

Members of the Board are appointed for 2-year terms every odd-numbered year. The membership for the 2017–2019 period included representatives of the Department of State, NOAA, the Department of Agriculture, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Government Publishing Office, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, the Library of Congress, and the US Postal Service. The Board meets monthly. It should be noted that the Board is not an agency and that its members serve without compensation. BGN is not authorized to give names to geographic features. Rather, it is authorized to make decisions on proposals submitted by others. Some of these proposals are submitted by individuals, while others are submitted by federal agencies, by state or local governments, or by tribal or Native American governments. The BGN website includes a link to an application form by which interested persons can submit applications. Decisions of BGN are made by majority vote of its members, and the minutes of each meeting contain detailed descriptions of the proposed changes under consideration. The minutes for the Board’s meetings between February and May 2018 show that most of its decisions were unanimous. The minutes do not include how individual members voted. However, when decisions were not unanimous, the minutes identify reasons why those in the minority voted as they did. For example, in March 2018, a majority of members voted against a proposal to change the name of Garcia River to P’da Hau. Ten of the 12 members presented voted against the proposal, but the minutes state that supporters “cited tribal support for the proposed changes.” BGN’s decisions are binding only on the US federal government, although it encourages compliance by state and local authorities and by foreign governments.

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Some, but not all, of the states maintain their own boards on geographic names. For example, the State of Arizona maintains the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names (https://azlibrary.gov/about/boards-and-commissions/arizonastate-board-geographic-and-historic-names), which “has statutory responsibility for determining the most appropriate names for place names in Arizona.” According to the Arizona State Board’s website, “The board’s support staff contacts the appropriate local, county and state governmental agencies, Native American tribal governments and also conducts independent, systematic, thorough research for background on the historical and current local usage of a proposed name.” However, the actions of these boards are advisory. Their recommendations are submitted to the BGN for its action. Action on applications on the part of BGN is often a lengthy and time-consuming process, normally taking at least a year and sometimes much longer (Berger 2015). Consideration of these applications can be a slow process for several reasons. In some cases, more than one proposal to change a name is submitted, with each proposal associated with a different proposed new name. Proposed new names must be vetted, in part to avoid confusion with other landscape features with identical or similar names. Accurate spelling must also be considered. As well, BGN must consider and consider objections to proposed changes. Hence it can take up to several years for the Board to make and announce its decisions with respect to proposed name changes.

3

Identifying Potential Name Changes

As a part of its work, the BGN issues periodic reports that contain information about each proposal under its consideration and its decision in each case. Usually, three or four of these reports, which are known as quarterly reviews, are issued each year. Report issues since June 2000 can be accessed on the BGN’s website at https:// geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/quarterly_list.htm. The number of proposals in each case varied between 24 in Review List 422 issued on November 18, 2015, and 140 in Review List 400 issued on June 17, 2009. These reports form the basis of the analysis undertaken in this chapter. It should be noted that the quarterly reviews list proposals, as opposed to discussion of actions taken by BGN. Proposals may be submitted by state legislatures, other government agencies, Native American tribal councils, other advocacy groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), or by individual private citizens. Some of these proposals are to give original names to previously unnamed features, while others are proposals to rename features that already had names. This paper focuses on proposals to change the names of features whose previous names were regarded by proponents of these changes as derogatory or offensive. For example, in 2017, the Board approved a proposal to change the name of a canyon in Grand County, Utah, from Negro Bill Canyon to Grandstaff Canyon (Burr 2017). The canyon was named for William Grandstaff (1840–1901). Grandstaff was a cowboy, rancher, and prospector who was one of the first settlers

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of the region, and he was of mixed African-American and Native American ancestry. The canyon in question had originally been called “N****r Bill Canyon” until 1967, when BGN replaced the derogatory word “n****r” with “Negro” across all geographic features in the United States (Berger 2015). The proposal to change the name from Negro Bill Canyon to Grandstaff Canyon was first considered by the Grand County Council in 2001, but the Council rejected this idea at that time. In 2017, the Council reversed its original decision, and its decision was backed by the US Bureau of Land Management. However, the Tri-State Chapter of the NAACP, which includes the states of Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, opposed the name change (Burr 2017). The Chapter’s representatives pointed out that the word “Negro” is in common used, citing organizations such as the United Negro College Fund and that it regarded the word “Negro” as “not an offensive word.” The matter was referred to the BGN, which despite objections from the local chapter of the NAACP ruled in favor of the name change. Proposals to rename features whose original names were regarded as derogatory are not unusual. For example, Report 410 was issued on May 30, 2012. Among the changes listed in Report 410 were a proposal to rename Negrohead Mountain northeast of Fort Yukon, Alaska, to Tl’oo Hanshyah Mountain; to rename Jew Pond in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire [sic], to Spring Pond; and to rename Squaw Creek in Harney County, Oregon, to its original Paiute name of Ka-Kwi-Tuhu-u Creek. Another case involved a proposal to give a short stream on Prince of Wales Island in the Alaska Panhandle the name of Gandlaay Haanaa, which in the local Haida language means “beautiful stream” (Dobbyn 2011). The stream did not have a formal name prior to this proposal, but it had been called “FUBAR Creek” informally by some local residents. The acronym FUBAR stood for “F****d Up Beyond All Recognition,” and it referred to logging operations that provided old-growth timber to a local pulp mill but filled the stream with sediment, causing landslides that kept salmon away from their spawning grounds in the stream. After the pulp mill was shut down, in 2004, the US Forest Service in partnership with conservation organizations restored the stream, and the salmon returned. Thus, the name change reflects not only the Native American heritage of Prince of Wales Island but also the restoration of the landscape to its condition prior to the logging activities.

4

Efforts to Change Place Names Associated with Native Americans

Most of the proposals to change names that were regarded as derogatory or offensive were proposals to remove names associated with specific ethnic groups. Of these, the largest number of cases involved Native Americans. More than half of the cases referred to the BGN between 2001 and 2018 involved issues associated with Native Americans. These included proposals to rename features that had names seen as

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offensive to Native Americans as well as to rename features with names commemorating the Native American heritage of the area in which they are located. With respect to Native Americans, the changes requested most frequently by BGN were proposals to remove the word “squaw,” a word that was seen as especially offensive, from various landscape features. These included proposals to change the names of places known formerly as Squaw Creek or Squaw Peak. Hundreds of landscape features had names that included the word “squaw,” including 172 in the state of Oregon along (Berger 2015). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the state boards on geographic names in several states requested the removal of “squaw” from all landscape features in their respective states. In 1995, for example, the state of Minnesota ordered all counties to remove the word “squaw” from each of its landscape features (Bright 2004). In 2001, Oregon initiated action to remove this word from all of its landscape features. However, these actions were not binding until proposals were approved by the BGN. Between 1998 and 2015, BGN considered 131 requests to change the names of 108 different landscape features. Of these proposals, 49 were approved by BGN. Two were rejected, and the others were pending, reflecting the relatively slow speed by which applications are considered and upon which they are acted (Berger 2015). In some cases, proposals to eliminate the word “squaw” from place names were accompanied by recommendations to give these features names that reflect local Native American heritage. In 2008, BGN considered several proposals by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana to rename features whose names contained the word “squaw.” For example, BGN approved a proposal to change the name of Squaw Creek in Chouteau County, Montana, to In-moolsh Creek, with the word “in-moolsh” meaning “a cottonwood tree” in the Salish language. Other features whose names had contained the word “squaw” were renamed in memory of individual Native Americans. For example, the second highest hill within the city limits of Phoenix, Arizona, had long been known as Squaw Peak. Its name was changed officially to Piestewa Peak by BGN in 2008 in honor of US Army Specialist Lori Piestewa (1979–2003), who was a Hopi woman from Tuba City, Arizona, and who was the first Native American woman to have been killed in combat in the history of the US military (Myers 2008). The names of still other features whose original names contained other words seen as offensive to Native Americans have also been changed with the approval of the BGN. For example, two separate streams in Oklahoma had both been named Dead Indian Creeks. Following BGN approval, one became Winter Camp Creek and the other became Medicine Woman Creek. Halfbreed Rapids in Montana became Pine Island Rapids. In Idaho, Papoose Creek became ‘Imnamatnoon Creek.

5

Commemorating Native American History

In other cases, efforts have been made to change place names to names reflecting local Native American heritage or to remove the names of persons who were associated with massacring Native Americans in the past. For example, the

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highest peak in Alaska, which is the highest peak in all of North America, was historically known as Denali, a word that means “the high one” or “the high peak” in the Koyukon language spoken by indigenous people who lived in the mountain’s vicinity. However, Euro-American settlers named the mountain in honor of William McKinley (1843–1901), the 25th President of the United States who was assassinated in 1901. The name Mount McKinley was used informally after McKinley first took office in 1897, and the name was made official in 1917. Even after the Mount McKinley name became official, many Alaskans continued to call the mountain Denali. In 1975, the Alaska legislature passed a bill requesting that the name Denali be restored to the mountain. With the support of Governor Jay Hammond (1922–2005), the state petitioned the Board to make this change. However, the proposal ran into political opposition especially from members of the Congressional delegation from McKinley’s home state of Ohio. According to BGN policy, no name change cannot be considered if there is legislation concerning this name change that is pending before Congress. Ohio representatives opposed to changing the name introduced bills concerning the name change, effectively blocking the BGN from considering it. In 2015, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (1956–) announced that the change would take place, on the basis of a law allowing the Secretary to take action in cases in which the Board does not act in “a reasonable period of time.” The change became official later this year, although it continues to be opposed by some Ohio representatives (National Park Service 2017). South Dakota’s highest mountain was known for many years as Harney Peak after William S. Harney (1800–1889). Harney was a US Army cavalry officer who led a detachment of troops that killed 86 Lakota Sioux, half of whom were women and children, in the Battle of Blue Water Creek in contemporary Garden County, Nebraska, in 1855. The battle was also known as the Sioux Massacre. The mountain was regarded as sacred by many Lakota, who also objected strongly to the mountain having been named after a military leader who had been responsible for murdering their ancestors. In 2016, the Board approved a proposal to change the mountain’s name to Black Elk Peak after Hehaka Sapa or Black Elk (1863–1950), who was a Lakota leader and holy man (Neihardt 2008; Associated Press 2016). In 2018, a petition was generated to change the name of Mount Evans in Colorado to Mount Cheyenne Arapaho. The mountain had been named originally for John Evans (1814–1897), who served as the second territorial governor of Colorado between 1862 and 1865. Evans was held responsible for authorizing the Sand Creek Massacre in which 800 cavalry soldiers killed 163 unarmed Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members in eastern Colorado in 1864. The proposed new name was chosen to honor the two tribes whose ancestors had lived in present-day Colorado for hundreds of years prior to the arrival of Euro-American settlers. Nick (2017) has identified and discussed other proposals to change place names with respect to Native Americans.

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Other Proposed Name Changes

Although the preponderance of proposed name changes considered by the BGN has involved Native Americans, proposals to change names considered offensive to many other groups have been considered also. In 1967, the Board declared that the words “n****r” and “J*p” be removed from all place names in the United States. This action was taken unilaterally, without considering proposed changes to the names of places bearing these words on a case-by-case basis. Thus, the word “Negro” replaced the word “n****r” for each feature using that derogatory word, with the word “Japanese” replacing the word “J*p” That proposals involving terms seen as derogatory to Native Americans continue to be handled on a case-by-case basis rather than unilaterally may account for the high overall percentage of BGN cases that involve Native American issues. Nevertheless, proposals to change place names regarded as derogatory to other identifiable groups in society have also been submitted to and considered by the Board. In addition to the Grandstaff Canyon case, many of the places whose names included the word “Negro” after 1967 were changed. In addition to changing the name of Negrohead Mountain in Alaska, Dead Negro Hill in New Mexico became Buffalo Soldier Hill in honor of African-American soldiers who were active during and after the Civil War. Negro Spring in North Carolina became Cedar Valley Creek. Other terms offensive to African-Americans have also been changed. Slave Canal in Florida became Cotton Run Canal, and Coon Lake in Washington became Howard Lake. In 2018, the Board received a petition to change the name of Runaway Negro Creek in Georgia to Burntpot Creek after the name of a nearby island that the creek separates from the mainland. And, it has been proposed to change the name of Negro Pond in Texas to Emancipation Pond. Changes involving other populations have also been approved. For example, Chinamans Arch in Utah became Chinese Arch. In South Carolina, the name Cape Francis was seen as offensive to Huguenot settlers on the grounds that it was named after the French King Francis I (1494–1547), who persecuted Huguenots or French Protestants during the latter part of his reign. The cape became known as French Cape. The names of two landscape features in Idaho whose names were considered offensive to women, Pine Tit and St. Marys Nipple, were changed to Pine Sister and St. Marys Knoll, respectively. And in Florida, Jewfish Creek became Goliath Grouper Creek. In 2018, BGN received a petition to change the name of Kyke Creek in Montana to Steinberg Creek, after an early settler to the region who was Jewish.

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Conclusion

For more than 100 years, the US Board on Geographic Names has been charged with determining the precise names of mountains, rivers, canyons, creeks, streams, and other geographical features on the landscape. Its decisions are binding across the entire US federal government.

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Much of the Board’s work involves reviewing and passing judgment on proposals by state legislatures, advocacy groups, and the general public to change the names of landscape features. Increasingly, many of these are proposals to change the names of features whose original names contained offensive or derogatory language. The extent to which local residents regard the original names as offensive to themselves or others can play a key role in determining whether the Board approves the proposed change. As language continues to evolve and as other once-acceptable language come to be regarded as offensive or derogatory, it is likely that the Board will continue to address such questions in the future.

References Alderman, D. H. (2003). Street names and the scaling of memory: The politics of commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. within the African-American community. Area, 35, 163–173. Associated Press. (2016, August 12). Feds rename Harney Peak, South Dakota’s highest peak, to Black Elk Peak. Rapid City Journal. https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/feds-rename-harneypeak-south-dakota-s-highest-peak-to/article_2234e9de-c1fc-5a44-91b2-e39f3bfb76e4.html Berger, K. (2015, October 28). The Northwest’s “Squaw” problem. Crosscut. https://crosscut.com/ 2015/10/the-northwests-squaw-problem Berlin, J. (2015, September 18). Who decides what names go on a map?” Nationalgeographic.com. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150918-us-board-geographical-names-125th-anniver sary-national-geographic-maps-place-names/. Bright, W. (2004). Native American placenames in the United States. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Burr, T. (2017, October 13). Utah’s Negro Bill Canyon renamed Grandstaff Canyon by federal board. Salt Lake Tribune. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2017/10/12/negro-bill-canyonrenamed-grandstaff-canyon-by-federal-board/ Dobbyn, P. (2011, September 7). In Alaska, a beautiful stream is FUBAR no more. Sit News. http://www.sitnews.us/0911News/090711/090711_beautiful_stream.html Dwyer, O. J., & Alderman, D. H. (2008). Civil rights memorials and the geography of memory. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Leib, J. (2012). A talk of two civil war statues: Teaching the geographies of memory and heritage in Norfolk, Virginia. Southeastern Geographer, 52, 398–412. Myers, A. L. (2008, April 10). Squaw Peak is officially renamed for Piestewa. Tucson.com. http://tucson.com/news/squaw-peak-is-officially-renamed-for-piestewa/article_0b6fd7ed-b6fb5444-9231-8d7ac2283b6d.html National Park Service. (2017). Denali or Mount McKinley? https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/ historyculture/denali-origins.htm Neihardt, J. G. (2008). Black Elk speaks: Being the life story of a holy man of the Oglala Sioux. Albany: SUNY Press. Nick, I. M. (2017). Squaw teats, Harney Peak, and Negrohead Creek: A corpus-linguistic investigation of proposals to change official US Toponymy to (Dis)honor indigenous US Americans. Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 65, 223–234.

The Language of a Globalized World: Naming the Present Day and Its Worlds

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Contents 1 Naming the Present Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2108 2 The Present-Day Worlds of the World and Their Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2115 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2118

Abstract

Both as a species and its individual representatives, humankind has always been confronted with time and space, in the face of which it is, truth be told, powerless. But homo sapiens is also a categorizing (homo categoricus) and naming being (homo nominans). By dividing up and naming time and space, humanity attempts to strengthen its position in relation to eternity and infinity, to manifest its autonomy from them. At least in the short term this is a rational strategy, because the distinguishing and naming of phenomena gives at least the illusion of control over them. The first part of this chapter discusses the names by which the present day is frequently designated, as well as proposed new divisions and terms. Designations considered here include: modernity, postmodernity and related terms, the Industrial Age, the Anthropocene, the Smenocene, the Atomic Age, the post-Cold War era, the postwar era, and the Paris international order. The second part of the article focuses on the contemporary language of global development, including the question of the current usefulness of “big” terms such as “Third World,” “developing countries,” “North,” and “South.” Keywords

Time · Space · Divisions · Names · Present day

M. W. Solarz (*) Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_88

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In the first half of the last century, the renowned Polish geographer Stanisław Pawłowski wrote that “if of history they say that it is ‘the master of life’, then of geography they should say it is ‘the director of life’” (Pawłowski 2010: 282). And in fact, time – in the form of days and nights, seasons, biological cycles, eternity – together with space in the shape of borders, places, territories, distance, infinity, has constricted people’s lives with iron rigidity since our birth as a species. These are phenomena which have not only accompanied humanity since the beginning of our history, but we also confront them constantly in our personal and collective experience. In the face of their power and indeterminacy, confronted by eternity and infinity, humanity is truly helpless. Therefore, looking for a foothold in the rushing stream of history and a world of moving horizon, homo sapiens, as a combination of homo categoricus and homo nominans – a categorizing and naming being (De Soto 2003; Solarz 2009, 2014), divides up time and space into smaller sections and seeks out for them suitable names.

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Naming the Present Day

Unfortunately – and this is indisputable – we have a serious problem with the naming of the period of history in which it is our lot to live, unless of course we merely assign it the next-in-line ordinal number and content ourselves with the label “twenty-first century” (Fig. 1). However, it could be argued, for example, that we live in the “modern” era, because modern means “of the present or recent times.” The concept of “modernity” has a pedigree dating back to the nineteenth century and is associated with the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who introduced the term (modernité) into the language in an article published in 1863 entitled “The Painter of Modern Life.” However, it did not enter widespread use until after the Second World War (Le Goff 2007: 88). The problem with “modern” as a designation for an epoch lies primarily in the fact that every epoch is by definition modern in its own terms, because every epoch is for itself the present day, modern, new, up-to-date. “Modernity” also de facto announces the end of history, because nothing can replace it – all futures, when they become the present, automatically transform into modernity. Modernity is therefore an eternal state to which there is no alternative. A terminological problem is also posed by modernity when it becomes the past, for it then ceases to be modern and in fact should be renamed as ex-modernity. For example, it is generally accepted that the modern era began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the dissolution of feudal society (Bauman 2004: 902), but when we consider the term through the prism of its dictionary meaning, is it really true that the people of that time are the same as us, in other words modern? A further problem is that even in Europe the disintegration of the old order occurred at an uneven pace, here and there continuing even into the twentieth century, and in some places in the world it has most likely yet to be completed. Last but not least, modernity does not have a stable form. It lays claim to eternal duration, but turns out in reality to be ephemeral and fleeting. It poses as permanent, but by definition it is fluid. However, its very mutability makes the term so flexible that the changes that have taken place in the world have forced no change in the name of the epoch it denotes.

21st

21st

EXPLANATION

Irregular centuries: 19th (1815-1914/18), 20th (1914/181990), 21st (1990-)

Standard centuries: 19th (1801-1900), etc.

Now

Vienna

Social history perspective II

Social history perspective I

Human species history perspective

Political-economic-technical history perspective

Economic history perspective

Versaille Paris Yalta Political history perspective

PostModernity

Nuclear Era

Revised geological time scale II

The Language of a Globalized World: Naming the Present Day and Its Worlds

Fig. 1 How can we classify and name the present day? The figure depicts various possible periodizations of human history; however, it does not indicate their interrelations and the length of their individual stages. (Author’s own elaboration)

Westphalia

Modernity

Modernity

Smenocene

Industrial Era

Agricultural Era

Anthropocene

Smenocene

Pre-Nuclear Era

20th

20th

WWI WWII PCW Recent political-military history perspective: 1st World War (1914-18), IP CW Interwar Period (1918-39), 2nd World War (1939-45), Cold War (1945-90), Post-Cold War (1990-) 31W CW PCW Revised recent political-military history perspective I: 31-Year War (1914-45), Cold War (1945-90), Post-Cold War (1990-) 76W PW Revised recent political-military history perspective II: 76-Year War (1914-90), Post-War (1990-) Traditional geological time scale Anthropocene Revised geological time scale I

19th

19th

Holocene

Holocene

Holocene

18th

TIME PERIOD

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Meanwhile, as long ago as the 1980s, the term “postmodernity”came into use to designate a distinct epoch in the history of the West (perhaps even of the world) whose beginnings are most commonly located in the 1960s (Bauman 2004: 902; Szahaj 2004: 935). The emergence of “postmodernity” should – of course – has closed the modern period (after all, “postmodern” explicitly references a period that follows modernity and logically that which is before and that which is after cannot coexist at the same time if they are, as in this case, disjunctive phenomena), but the proposed demarcation of a new era in history and adoption of a new term to designate it did not meet with universal acceptance. Some (like Jürgen Habermas) believe that modernity still continues (Fig. 2). Others, such as Zygmunt Bauman, took an ambiguous stance: modernity continues, and really we do not know what will replace it, but certainly sooner or later a new name will need to be created for the current state of things which is indeed a new social reality. Still others – wanting to avoid sterile discussion but at the same time recognizing the need to give our time its own name distinct from modernity – considered the term “postmodernity” too radical and proposed what they saw as more neutral substitutes – “late modernity” (Anthony Giddens), “second modernity” (Ulrich Beck), “over-modernity” (George

Fig. 2 (a) German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929), “modernity continues”; (b) Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (b. 1925), “modernity and postmodernity co-exist”; (c) British sociologist Anthony Giddens (b. 1938), “late modernity”; (d) German sociologist Ulrich Beck (1944–2015), “second modernity”; (e) French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist Georges Balandier (b. 1920), “over-modernity.” (Images from Wikimedia Commons. (a) Photograph by Wolfram Huke, (b) photograph by Forumlitfest, (c) photograph by Szusi, (d) photograph by International Students’ Committee, (e) photograph by Georges Seguin)

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Balandier), or “reflexive modernity” (Bauman 2004: 902–903). Each of these propositions likely has all the defects of the source concept and also some of its own. For example, “reflexive modernity” pretentiously suggests that previous generations living in an earlier phase of modernity did not reflect upon the world around them. Like “postmodernity,” they all raise the question of what to call the next era. Furthermore, “postmodernity,” “late modernity,” “second modernity,” and “overmodernity” (with the possible exception of “reflective modernity”) cannot, in fact, materialize, since given the meaning of the word “modernity,” if they do become the present they will simply become modernity. The present period can, however, also be viewed from a different perspective in which the historical process is characterized by two great socio-economic turning points – the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions (Solarz 2014: 3–13). Both brought radical change to the world [“the world had slipped its moorings” (Landes 1998: 192)] and provide a basis on which human history to date can be divided into three epochs – preagricultural, agricultural, and industrial. Our era may still be referred to as industrial (Solarz 2014: 4), provided that no new great civilizational turning point akin to the earlier revolutions has already taken place or is currently in progress. The difficulty here is that based on the knowledge we presently possess we are not able to determine if a new great revolution has already dawned, or whether its possible symptoms are only a continuation of current trends. Apart from enormous technological progress, the present day, and essentially the entire industrial epoch, has been marked by massive demographic change. Since 1804 world population has increased by more than six billion. The number of people living today is without precedent (never have so many representatives of homo sapiens been alive at the same time). Of equal importance is the fact that such a great expansion of the world’s population has occurred over a period of just 200 years. This situation has consequences at every level of life – biological, psychological, political, economic, cultural, and ecological (Solarz and Wojtaszczyk 2015: 802–803). Humanity is also transforming the Earth with increasing effect, “now taking Earth’s surface away from Holocene norms” (Castree 2015: 67). For this reason, some authors place humans on a par with the forces which have been molding our planet and life on its surface for billions of years. Therefore, it seems legitimate to search for a name for the present which both takes account of the current role of human beings in the Earth’s ecosystem and makes linguistic reference to it. One proposal for this is the term “Anthropocene” to designate a new phase of the Quaternary period following the Holocene – the last geological epoch recognized by the scientific world – in which we certainly lived until 2002 when Paul Crutzen proposed the Anthropocene idea. “Anthropocene” is intended to express that humanity has become so powerful that it is now able to leave its own “global stratigraphic signature” thus distinguishing modernity from the Holocene and Pleistocene (Castree 2015: 67). By its name it proclaims the power of humanity as the main factor currently changing the Earth (but is this really true?), which de facto means that “Anthropocene” in its own way is announcing the “end of history” and “end of geography.” The term “Anthropocene” is undoubtedly “one of contemporary science’s ‘hottest’ ideas” (Castree 2015: 66), with its supporters and

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opponents, strengths, and weaknesses. It is based on arguments drawn from the results of scientific research, but is also a rhetorical device aimed at shaping environmentally responsible attitudes among non-scientists – governments, businesses, and the public (therefore “Anthropocene,” unlike its predecessors, is not simply a scientific term, but like “Third World” or “developing countries” it can be categorized as a “‘wake-up call’ concept,” or even a politically or ideologically loaded term, which undoubtedly is an obstacle to it achieving universal recognition) (Castree 2015: 66–73). All in all, there can be no doubt that the period from the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution is, due to the accomplishments of humanity, a qualitatively new era against the background of previous history (Solarz 2014: 4) and that is the case even if we cannot speak of a new geological epoch. So this period fully deserves a name associated with humanity, as, for example, “Anthropocene” [it is not excluded that this term will never be recognized as the official name of a geological era (Castree 2015)]. The present period is, however, rather just the latest part of this only vaguely delimited period, but on the basis of totum pro parte, and taking into account the intention of the advocates of “Anthropocene” to use it in reference to contemporary times, the term can be, or already is, one of the names for the modern era. However, “Anthropocene” also represents a trap similar to that of the term “modernity,” for two billion years remain to the certain end of life on Earth, and a further three billion to the end of the existence of our planet. When we consider that the Phanerozoic began around 550 million years ago, and since that time the Earth has seen radical changes in its system of continents, oceans, and shorelines, ice sheets have expanded and contracted, successive species have come and gone etc., and also remember that for the vast majority of this period homo sapiens did not even exist, it is difficult to imagine that in the next two billion years the Earth will not change, evolution will come to a halt and the Anthropocene will last forever with homo sapiens remaining just as we are today. In any case we should remember that truly fundamental changes on a global scale such as most of those just mentioned have thus far been the result of the forces of nature. So on the one hand, the name “Anthropocene” is a reflection of the pride of contemporary humanity, as it bestows on us equality with the forces of nature and implies that with us the history of life on Earth has reached its end (from the perspective of homo sapiens continuing as the dominant species is a “postAnthropocene” even possible?). On the other hand, however, and for precisely the same reason, the name “Anthropocene” is infused with pessimism (over the last half billion years many species have disappeared forever, so what awaits humankind in a period that will be four times longer?). So a “post-Anthropocene” is possible, but most likely without us. Therefore, “Anthropocene,” rather contrary to the intentions of its devisers, is reminiscent of the expression “age of the dinosaurs” in that it denotes a time period distinguished by the exceptional expansion of one species of living beings in parallel with the corresponding unit of geological time. Although the last 200 years have put tools at the disposal of homo sapiens which have allowed us to change the face of the Earth in a particularly spectacular fashion, human beings began to intensively and often also spectacularly transform the Earth’s ecosystem much earlier in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution which occurred

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c. 12,000 years ago (Diamond 1999; Fernández-Armesto 2002; Castree 2015). For this reason, it can be argued that the term “Anthropocene” should not be used to denote the next geological era after the Holocene (where, in fact, can the dividing line separating the two eras be drawn?), but instead the former should perhaps de facto even absorb and invalidate the latter altogether (Castree 2015: 69). As already mentioned, designating the period following the Holocene as the “Anthropocene” also gives rise to the difficult question of what to call the period after that (the problem is solved, however, by the assumption that the Anthropocene will last until the end of the existence of the human race, just as the “age of the dinosaurs” lasted until their extinction). But if we wish to find a name for the present day which refers to humankind and reflects its current role on the Earth, but which does not at the same time remove from the dictionary the terms “Holocene” (the name of the geological era) and “Anthropocene” (but somewhat modifying the meaning of the latter, defining it as the period in Earth’s history from when humankind appeared and became the dominant species up until the present day), it is perhaps worth taking our point of departure from what is probably the most important fact in the history of the planet over the last 200 years, i.e., the spectacular growth of the world’s population. From this perspective, we can delineate and name a new period, parallel to the Holocene or replacing it at some point, which would possibly be part of a redefined (as above) “Anthropocene” [for which subperiods have already been proposed, for example, “The Industrial Era” (1800–1945), “the Great Acceleration” (1946–2015), and “Earth System Stewardship” (from 2016) (Castree 2015)]. The new period could possibly have as its starting point the beginning of the nineteenth century (from 1804) when the world’s population crossed the one billion mark, or perhaps only encompass the twentieth and twenty-first centuries when the global population went into rapid expansion, increasing by successive billions. This new period of such tremendous significance for human and other living beings as well as inanimate nature has been characterized not so much by humankind’s mere existence as by its historically unprecedented size, mobility, and exponentially growing number of interactions (from which de facto flows its Earth-transforming power, the aspect focused on by those who developed the “Anthropocene” concept). Perhaps the leading traits of human society in this period can best be captured by the analogy of a swarm of bees and expressed in the new name “Smenocene” (gr. smenos = swarm + kainos = new). This name, which unlike “Anthropocene,” has no nonacademic ambitions and draws attention not only to the global expansion of homo sapiens in the quantitative sense, but also the complexity of structures and interactions in the contemporary world community. During the debate on the “Anthropocene” concept, a proposal was made to set its beginning as 1945, on the basis of the fact that “fallout from nuclear weapons comprises a clear, worldwide, enduring signal of the ‘human handprint’” (Castree 2015: 69). So perhaps we should simply call the modern era “the Atomic Age” into which we entered when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Out of the First World War (which claimed the lives of about 12 million people) grew the even more searing Second World War (in the course of which more than 50 million people were killed) and which in turn gave birth to the Cold War

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conflict between two superpowers – the USA and the Soviet Union. If the last of these confrontations had “heated up” into a Third World War, then the surely inevitable use of nuclear weapons would have meant that not only would the number of victims have most likely exceeded that of its predecessor, but also the very existence of life on Earth would have been called into question. But at the same time it was precisely the nuclear arsenals of the conflicting parties and their consequent fear of total annihilation which held them back from uncontrolled escalation. Nuclear weapons thus threatened the destruction of the world and at the same time saved it from another global conflict and mass destruction. We still experience nuclear stress (the fear and dread caused by the military policies of at least some nuclear states, and the nuclear power plant disasters at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011), but also nuclear infatuation (we know that nuclear power offers a virtually limitless source of clean energy). Perhaps therefore our modern age is indeed more than anything else the nuclear/atomic era? There are also purely political periodizations. However, with regard to these also the present period seems to have had no luck. The period 1989–1991 saw the end of the Cold War international order, but contrary to historical precedent this did not occur as the result of a great war which was followed by a great international peace conference establishing the foundations of a new international order named on the basis of the place where the relevant treaty was signed or key decisions taken (Kuźniar 2000: 472). This was how the Westphalian system was born in the mid-seventeenth century, and in the nineteenth century the international order based on the Congress of Vienna (the Vienna system), between the First and Second World Wars the Versailles (Versailles-Washington) system, and after 1945 that of Yalta (Yalta-Potsdam), also called the Cold War due to one of its constituent characteristics. The latter is the inspiration for what is probably the most commonly used name for the international order which succeeded the one in place between 1945 and 1990: “the post-Cold War order” (Kuźniar 2000: 472). This term is not only an aberration from established naming traditions, but is simply weak as it is both derivative in relation to the past and implies that the present is a time without qualities. The same applies to the designation of our times as simply “the postwar period,” when quite reasonably we feel that the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War were only individual parts of a 76-year-long global confrontation in the period 1914–1990. Although this was indeed a real “Great War” and the name “postwar period” has its own specific gravity, it still says nothing about our times. However, we are not condemned to have to accept a “no-name order.” A different perspective on contemporary history can assist us to overcome the problem that the contemporary international order lacks its own proper name. For in 1945 there began a new struggle for global domination, a third world war, which, unlike the earlier two, was “cold” and only for this reason never came to be labeled with an ordinal number. The war which took place in the period 1945–1990 was a strange war, both a war and not a war, an always undeclared conflict, in which the two main protagonists never clashed in open and direct combat. The protagonists lived together in a state of quasi-peace. Therefore, since between 1945 and 1990 there was a world war disguised as peace, it could hardly be expected that its completion would be marked by a great peace

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conference, modeled on those of the past. Corresponding to the character of the conflict, what was rather to be expected was a peace conference which was not a peace conference. And in fact in autumn 1990 a meeting did take place between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Paris. On 19 November 1990 they issued a joint declaration in which they solemnly declared that they were no longer adversaries and extended to each other the hand of friendship (Joint Declaration of the Twenty Two Member States of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization 2001). In light of the previously mentioned model for naming international systems, shouldn’t the arguably still relevant international order established after the period of inter-bloc rivalry, bear the name Paris?

2

The Present-Day Worlds of the World and Their Names

The international community, which currently consists of nearly 200 countries, can be divided up on the basis of various criteria and into any number of classes, and as a result the number of possible divisions of the world remains indefinite. Therefore, the set of terms naming the individual segments of the international community is also a collection of an indeterminate number of elements, particularly since completely parallel and independent naming systems may be functioning in various cultural and language spheres (e.g., Western terminology may be quite different from the conceptual network used by the Daesh). However, some divisions and terms are in more widespread use than others. Some concepts are present only in the circle of users of one language, and others have become more universal, functioning in many languages. One of the most important divisions in the contemporary international community relates to the degree of advancement on the path of development. There is no consensus on developmental criteria and indicators, the number of segments and their boundaries, and finally, last but not least, the names of the world’s worlds, and, what is more, this is not to be expected. It should be noted, however, that names like “Third World,” “developing countries,” “North,” “South,” etc., so frequently used in studies of development, in economics or the political sciences, etc., are not just ordinary social, economic, or politological terms, for they are also geographical names of a particular type. They are relatively few in number and encompass large tracts of the Earth, which makes them akin to the names of the continents. Unlike these, however, they are geographically and substantively ambiguous, inconsistent and dynamic, and therefore very contentious. Since development is a process, the geographical names associated with it must be geographically fluid. Also, as a rule, the same segment of the international community is designated by more than one name, which although identical geographically and semantically may not even be close in meaning ideologically and emotionally. So while we have a set of terms [whose emergence was forced by a specific historical juncture occurring in the period from c. 1940 onwards (Solarz 2014)], by which we are able, in a basically satisfactory way, to name all the segments of the international community (we have been using the same concepts for over 30 years), the ambiguous nature of the reality being named and the different biographies of the individual concepts condemn us to continuous miscommunication and misunderstanding.

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The explosion of terms to describe highly developed and underdeveloped countries started during the Second World War, driven by the recognition in the 1940s that development (or rather its lack) was one of the most serious challenges facing all of humanity. The most important and well-known representatives of this type of spatial concepts were coined and popularized over a span of 40 years beginning in 1940. This period saw the emergence and spread of terms such as “Third World,” “developing countries,” “North” “South,” which to this day constitute the core of the language with which we talk about the development and structure of the world. Each of these concepts has its own biography, supporters, and opponents, as well as various advantages and disadvantages (for more on this subject see Solarz 2012, 2014). The baggage of meanings and associations that each of them carries means that they remain attractive, at least to particular segments of those participating in the discourse on development, which explains their longevity. The term “Third World” not only emphasizes a negative assessment of the reality of the countries it is used to designate, but by association with the French “third estate” and French Revolution it can be seen as a call for a radical restructuring of international relations. The term therefore is well suited to be part of the vocabulary of revolutionaries, leftists, alterglobalists, human rights activists, critics of the concept of development, etc. It can be used by politicians both from underdeveloped countries (to build solidarity within their countries and outside and to gain various economic and political privileges) and from countries with a higher level of development (not only to mobilize the international community, but also to build a feeling of superiority and promote negative stereotypes). The term “developing countries” should be favored by, for example, idealists, optimists, progressives, supporters of nonstigmatizing language, politicians from developed countries seeking partners from underdeveloped countries, and politicians from underdeveloped countries who wish to present the global South as an alternative civilization to the West. The concepts of “North” and “South” may attract those who attach great importance to global developmental divisions, inequalities, and the development gap. They may also be adopted by those who are looking for a clear description of the structure of the world akin to that which existed in the period 1945–1990 when the East-West confrontation was the organizing principle of international relations. Advocates of the idea that conflict is the main driving force of history may also find the North-South counterposition useful, along with those conducting research into international terrorism and contemporary global demographic and migration trends (Solarz 2014: 152–153). It needs to be emphasized that each of these “big” terms was born and gained recognition in an era fundamentally different from the present day. The shape of international relations then existing left the scene more than a quarter century ago. The terms “Third World,” “developing countries,” “North,” and “South” first saw the light of day during a period of acute East-West confrontation (brought to an end with the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1989–1991); during a flood of decolonization (terms were developed in order to name a new segment of the international community, but today the processes of decolonization have, in principle, ceased); during highly publicized debates over a new international economic order (today the Western economic model is clearly dominant), etc. The “North-South” terminological pair was the last to enter widespread usage, but that was more than

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35 years ago. Thus, despite the fact that in the past quarter century the world has changed dramatically, there have appeared no new “big” concepts to define the North or the South. All terms coined or popularized after 1990 – “emerging markets,” “countries in transition,” “BRIC,” and similar acronyms, “Next-11” etc. – only relate to relatively small sections of the international community (Solarz 2014: 146–150). While during a period of 35 years following the Second World War terminology was built which still we use to name the world’s worlds, in the 35 years since then, despite extensive criticism of existing concepts, no new “big” terms comparable with the old have been born. In the first three to four decades after 1945, the Cold War and decolonization stimulated and then sustained interest in a whole complex of underdeveloped countries, which required them to be named [the global surge of interest in issues of development and underdevelopment from the 1940s onwards was also to a large extent the consequence of the prewar Great Depression and the Second World War (Solarz 2014: 46–49), as well as a combination of demographic, economic, political, technical, and civilizational change which the international community had been undergoing since the nineteenth century]. After 1980, however, decolonization, in principle, came to an end, as did the Cold War a short time later. And so disappeared the two most important factors which had driven the terminological Big Bang in relation to the names of large segments of the international community distinguished by their level of development. At the same time, the end of the Cold War, collapse of the Eastern bloc, the developmental backwardness of the communist states with the resultant intense and far-reaching internal metamorphosis they experienced, and thus the changing shape of international relations, focused the attention of global public opinion on that subsegment of the international community in the midst of transformation (which had previously been considered part of the global North), thus generating the need for it to be renamed. Here, in large measure, lies the origin of the current popularity of such notions as “countries in transition” and “emerging markets.” The creativity in the field of “small” ideas and stagnation in terms of “big” terms we have noted was also reflected in the birth and popularization of the acronym “BRIC” and associated concepts, which may be a reaction to the crisis of the global leadership of the United States and the West in general [the creation of the BRIC concept is said to have been influenced by reflection on the events of 11 September 2001 (Solarz 2014: 149)]. So perhaps at the present time smaller segments of the international community attract more attention than large conglomerates of countries. This may mean that the language of global development is so saturated with “big” terms relating to large segments of the international community distinguished by their achieved level of development that there is no room for further terms of this type, even though the ones in use may seem anachronistic or otherwise defective. New “big” concepts will perhaps only appear when the international community’s current structure undergoes fundamental change. This prognosis does not however free us from a duty of care to the language we use to talk about global development. It should resemble a French formal garden – well-ordered, regular, and perspicuous – and not, as it does today, an English landscape garden (stylized to appear like nature, with architectural elements

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INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

LDC

DDC

DAC

Third World Developing Countries South

First World Developing Countries North

MDC

Fig. 3 How can we classify and name the present day worlds of the world? (Author’s own elaboration)

reminiscent of the past). Decisive progress in this direction would occur if the current haphazard collection of developmental spatial terms were replaced by a new set in which, for example, the international community were divided into only four segments: the Least Developed Countries (LDC), Developmentally Delayed Countries (DDC), Developmentally Advanced Countries (DAC), and the Most Developed Countries (MDC) (Fig. 3) (subject see Solarz 2018: 64–75). As a result, the language of global development and our picture of the world would no longer be subject to the influence of the terms hitherto so important to our description of the world, and the biographies, contexts, associations, interpretations, disputes, etc., associated with them. Homo sapiens is, now and for the foreseeable future, ultimately powerless in the face of time and space. Undoubtedly, a way in which we can counteract this ongoing species and individual weakness and mark out our autonomy in relation to eternity and infinity, is to divide up and then name the separate parts of these phenomena. That which has been classified and named is tame and harmless. Consequently, time and space divided up and named seem to be entities over which human beings, since it is we who have divided up and named them, have power. Hence, it is certain that to the end of our days homo sapiens will continue to classify and to name time and space, attempting to read the signs of the times in the quest for suitable terms for the present day and its worlds.

References Bauman, Z. (2004). Ponowoczesność. In B. Szlachta (Ed.), Słownik społeczny (pp. 902–914). Kraków: Wydawnictwo WAM. Castree, N. (2015). The Anthropocene: A primer for geographers. Geography, 100(2), 66–75. De Soto H (2003) Bieda może pokochać kapitalizm. Newsweek-Polska, 51–52. Retrieved: 1 Feb 2016, from http://www.newsweek.pl/bieda-moze-pokochackapitalizm,21140,1,1.html

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Diamond, J. (1999). Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies. London: W.W. Norton & Company. Fernández-Armesto, F. (2002). Civilisations. Culture, ambition and the transformation of nature. New York: Simon & Schuster. Joint Declaration of the Twenty Two Member States of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Wspólna Deklaracja Dwudziestu Dwóch Państw NATO i Organizacji Układu Warszawskiego). (2001). In Z. Leszczyński & A. Koseski (Eds.), Stosunki międzynarodowe 1989–2000. Wybór tekstów źródłowych i materiałów (pp. 45–46). Pułtusk: WSH w Pułtusku. Kuźniar, R. (2000). Porządek międzynarodowy in transition. In E. Haliżak & R. Kuźniar (Eds.), Stosunki międzynarodowe. Geneza, struktura, dynamika (pp. 472–492). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Landes, D. S. (1998). The wealth and poverty of nations. New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company. Le Goff, J. (2007). Historia i pamięć. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Pawłowski, S. (2010). Rola geografii w życiu narodów. In S. Pawłowski (Ed.), Geografia. Przedmiot badań, nauczania i zastosowań praktycznych (pp. 282–284). Poznań: Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, UAM. Solarz, M. W. (2009). Północ-Południe. Krytyczna analiza podziału s´wiata na kraje wysoko i słabo rozwinięte. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Solarz, M. W. (2012). ‘Third world’: The 60th anniversary of a concept that changed history. Third World Quarterly, 33(9), 1561–1573. Solarz, M. W. (2014). The language of global development. A misleading geography. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Solarz, M. W. (2018). Many worlds, one planet: ambiguous geographies of the contemporary international community. In M. W. Solarz (Ed.), New Geographies of the Globalized World (pp. 54–76). Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Solarz, M. W., & Wojtaszczyk, M. (2015). Population pressures and the north–south divide between the first century and 2100. Third World Quarterly, 36(4), 802–816. Szahaj, A. (2004). Postmodernizm. In B. Szlachta (Ed.), Słownik społeczny (pp. 935–941). Kraków: Wydawnictwo WAM.

The Mount McKinley-Denali Controversy and the US Board on Geographic Names

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Alaskans Ask the BGN to Change the Name of the Mountain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Ohio Congressmen Take Exception to the Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Opportunity Knocks on the BGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

For thousands of years, the highest point in North America has been known by the Native Athabascans of Alaska as Denali. In 1896, a gold prospector from Ohio decided that the mountain should be named after former Ohio Governor William McKinley, who was running for President that year. The name Mount McKinley was applied to the mountain on Federal Government maps of Alaska beginning in 1898. In 1975, Governor Jay Hammond of Alaska requested that the Secretary of the Department of the Interior officially change the name of the mountain to Denali. However, the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN) did not process the proposal due to the actions of congressmen from Ohio who wanted the mountain to be forever named McKinley. The BGN has a policy of not acting on name issues that are the subject of pending congressional legislation. The consequence of this well-intentioned policy resulted in the repeated introduction of legislation by the Ohio congressional delegation (1977–2015) which had the effect of indefinitely deferring any resolution of the McKinley-Denali controversy by the BGN. In July 2015, an upcoming visit to Alaska by President Barack Obama and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell presented an opportunity for the BGN D. L. Vandegraft (*) US Board on Geographic Names, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Sterling, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_97

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to finally help resolve the issue. The author was the Chairman of the Domestic Names Committee of the BGN at the time and was involved in preparing briefing materials for Secretary Jewell. Keywords

Mount McKinley · Denali · US Board on Geographic Names · Domestic Names Committee

1

Introduction

On August 28, 2015, Sally Jewell, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), issued Secretarial Order No. 3337, which officially changed the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. The mountain, located in the interior of Alaska at an elevation of 20,310 ft, is the highest point in North America. In the opinion of many people, particularly Alaska Natives, the Order did not merely change the name. Rather, it restored the original and correct name to a mountain that looms large, not only on the Alaska horizon, but in Native history and tradition. However, in the opinion of many other Americans, the controversy had not been settled. As they saw it, the mountain known as Mount McKinley since 1897 was forever losing its name, and in some ways its historical identity. This was a loss that would not be easily accepted. As a former Alaskan, I have not only visited Denali National Park many times but am familiar with its history. In 1983, I moved to Anchorage to accept a job as a cartographer with the Federal Government. Denali, which is over 100 miles north of Anchorage, is quite visible from the city on a clear day. The impact of seeing the “stupendous snow mountains” (as Captain George Vancouver described it in 1794) for the first time made me stop and stare (Fig. 1). I had never seen such a massive mound of solid white, so obviously taller than anything else around it. It was easy to see why the Alaskan Natives referred to the mountain as Denali, which means “the high (or tall) one.” After living in Alaska for a couple of years, I became aware that there was a controversy between people who referred to the mountain as Denali and those who called it Mount McKinley. Later, I perceived that the longer a person lived in Alaska, the more likely that they would say Denali. I also observed from talking to people who had successfully climbed (or attempted to climb) the mountain that they also preferred to say Denali. In 2000, I accepted the position of Chief Cartographer for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This promotion required that I relocate to the Washington, D.C. area. In 2003, I became a Deputy Member of the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN). The BGN was established in 1890 by President Benjamin Harrison through an Executive Order and is comprised of representatives from a wide variety of Federal agencies that produce and/or use maps and geographic data. The BGN is responsible for the standardization of geographic names used on Federal products, accomplished through two standing committees: the

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Fig. 1 Denali, May 2015. (Photo by Doug Vandegraft)

Domestic Names Committee (DNC) and the Foreign Names Committee (FNC). Representatives from member Departments and Agencies are appointed to two-year terms and are usually re-appointed for consecutive terms. Besides the BGN, only the Congress (through a public law), the President (through an Executive order or Presidential proclamation), or the Secretary of the Interior have the authority to name or rename geographic features in the US State geographic name authorities assess name proposals for features within their respective state and provide their recommendations to the BGN. As a cartographer, I have a genuine interest in geographic names and became active on the DNC. After 10 years, I was asked to serve as the Chairman of the DNC for the period 2013–2015. During the last week of April 2015, I attended the Council of Geographic Names Authorities (COGNA) annual conference and workshop, which was being held in Anchorage that year. This event provides an opportunity for the BGN to meet with the state name authorities. On the agenda for May 1st was a panel discussion titled The Name Dispute: McKinley versus Denali. Four gentlemen, two of whom are descendants of the men who made the first successful climb of the mountain in 1913, spoke passionately about the need to officially restore the Denali name to the mountain. They proposed that President Obama issue an Executive Order to accomplish this task, and were exploring options of how to move this idea forward. I was quite impressed with the passion and dedication that these men expressed about their

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cause. However, the solution I hoped for was that the BGN would somehow get an opportunity to help resolve this issue, which had been languishing in the files of the DNC since 1975.

2

Background

The mountain now officially named Denali was also known by other names before being dubbed Mount McKinley. The Native Athabascans of the upper Kuskokwim River used the word Denali (pronounced Den-ah-lee) and it is their spelling and pronunciation that is the most often used and which has been universally accepted. However, the BGN file on Denali lists over 30 variant names, most of them from Alaska Native languages and early Russian Explorers. An exception is Densmores Mountain, which was used in 1889 by a group of American prospectors led by a Frank Densmore due to the enthusiasm their leader had when talking about the huge unnamed peak. In 1894, gold was discovered in the creeks along upper Cook Inlet, which brought swarms of prospectors to an area of Alaska that is within sight of the mountain. In 1896, a prospector from Ohio named William A. Dickey ventured north from Cook Inlet up the Susitna River, and after catching glimpses, finally saw the entire mountain from where the town of Talkeetna is now. Dickey believed what he was seeing was surely the highest mountain in North America, and estimated its height at an incredibly accurate 20,000 ft. Upon returning to Cook Inlet, Dickey learned that former Ohio Governor William McKinley had recently been nominated for President of the USA. The Alaska Natives he encountered called the mountain “Bul-shoe” which, according to Dickey, was their word for anything large. Not knowing a unique name that the mountain already bore, he decided to name it Mount McKinley. When he returned home, he wrote an article about his adventures titled Discoveries in Alaska, which was published in the New York Sun on January 24, 1897. This article introduced the mountain and the Mount McKinley name to thousands of American and international readers. McKinley, meanwhile, had won the election and was sworn in as president on March 4, 1897. The new name was apparently well received and began appearing on Federal maps in 1898 with the publishing of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey coastal map of Alaska. That same year, the US Geological Survey began a broad program of exploration of Alaska. This was due primarily to the 1896 discovery of gold in the Klondike River region of neighboring Canada and the resulting rush of prospectors. Robert Muldrow, a topographer with an expedition led by George H. Eldridge, made the first determination of the altitude (20,464 ft) and position (Latitude 63 05’ North; Longitude 151 00’ West) of the mountain using surveying instruments. On July 29, 1901, the BGN held a meeting during which they adopted all of the names that were later compiled into the Geographic Dictionary of Alaska by Marcus Baker, which included Mount McKinley. Baker worked for the

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US Geological Survey, was the Secretary of the BGN, and his entry on Mount McKinley gave credit to Dickey for naming the mountain. President McKinley, who was re-elected in 1900, was shot by an assassin on September 6, 1901, and died 8 days later. After this tragedy, any active opposition to the President’s name being applied to the tallest mountain in the USA (such as there being no connection or association of McKinley to the mountain or Alaska) probably fell on deaf ears. It would be many years until the significance of the assassination would fade from the public memory. Expeditions led by nonnatives to climb Denali began in 1903. The North Peak, which is 840 ft shorter than the South Peak, was successfully climbed in 1910. Hudson Stuck, an Episcopal priest who served as Archdeacon of the Alaska Missions of the Episcopal Church, led a party of three men, including Henry (Harry) Karstens, to the top of the South Peak in June of 1913. Stuck, in his account of the climb titled The Ascent of Denali was the first to write of the irony that the mountain had been named Mount McKinley: No voice was raised in protest, for the Alaskan Indian is inarticulate and such white men as knew the old name were absorbed in the search for gold. (Stuck 1914)

He also noted that the adjacent high peak known by the Natives as Menlale (which means Denali’s wife) had been christened Mount Foraker, after Joseph Foraker, another Ohio politician: So there they stand upon the maps, side by side, the two greatest peaks of the Alaska Range, ‘Mount McKinley’ and ‘Mount Foraker’. And there they should stand no longer, since, if there by right and reason in these matters, they should not have been placed there at all. (Stuck 1914)

Charles Sheldon, a wealthy hunter-naturalist who visited the north slopes of the mountain in 1906 to hunt Dall sheep, is credited with first proposing the idea of a “Denali National Park.” Ten years later, Sheldon, his mountaineer friend Belmore Browne, and Thomas Riggs of the Alaska Engineering Commission were writing the legislation to create the park that would protect the mountain and the wildlife that lived around it. Sheldon and Browne wanted the park to be called Denali, but Riggs preferred McKinley, saying that the word Denali wasn’t “descriptive.” In the interest of getting the bill passed quickly, they relented to Riggs. The bill that created Mount McKinley National Park was signed by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1917. This was the first park to be established after Congress created the National Park Service. Harry Karstens was appointed the first park superintendent. The Federal Government had begun construction of a railroad between Seward and Fairbanks in 1914, and by 1921 the tracks had reached the park. The McKinley name was applied to the railroad station and in 1939 to the first hotel built inside the park. In 1942, the World War II effort required that the US Army field test urgently -needed cold-weather clothing and camping equipment, and the mountain was

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chosen as the location to do this. Bradford Washburn, who established the Boston Museum of Science in 1940, was asked to be the cartographer on the project. He successfully climbed to the summit of the South Peak and began what would become a multiyear professional and personal mission to map the mountain, utilizing aerial photography and on-the-ground verification. Washburn was interviewed by the BGN in 1943 regarding place names on the mountain and expressed his opinion that the mountain should be named Denali instead of McKinley. He climbed the South Peak a second time in 1947, this time with his wife Barbara, who became the first woman to reach the summit. His 1960 map of the McKinley massif is internationally recognized as a cartographic masterpiece. He wrote A Tourist Guide to Mount McKinley which was first published in 1971. He later mapped Mount Everest, and during the 1980s, he and Barbara gave lectures on the mapping of Denali and their many adventures there.

3

Alaskans Ask the BGN to Change the Name of the Mountain

In February 1973, Senator John Sackett, an Alaska Native from Galena, introduced a resolution to the Alaska State Legislature that asked the BGN to change the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. Sackett noted in the resolution that Denali, “meaning Great Mountain” was the traditional Native name for the mountain. Not all Alaskans agreed with Sackett. Many saw the McKinley name as a “household word” that was taught to high school students nationwide and known the world over (the mountain as well as the President). Mount McKinley National Park was a huge tourist draw, and tourist dollars an important part of local budgets. Replacing the name McKinley with a word that very few outside of Alaska had ever heard of did not sound like a wise decision. Eventually the State Legislature sided with Sackett. Senate Joint Resolution No. 6, approved by the legislature on March 7, 1975, requested that Rogers C.B. Morton, the Secretary of the Interior, direct the BGN “to officially designate Mount McKinley as Denali; and be it FURTHER RESOLVED that Mount McKinley National Park be renamed McKinley National Park.” The Resolution passed the Senate by a vote of 13-4 and the House, 24-9. Alaska Governor Jay S. Hammond transmitted a copy of the Resolution to Secretary Morton on March 11, who then sent it to Donald J. Orth, the Executive Secretary of the DNC. The Alaska State Geographic Board, which makes decisions for geographic names shown on state maps, voted to concur with the State Resolution. The National Park Service strongly favored changing the name of the mountain and on May 20, 1975, sent a letter to the Executive Secretary of the DNC stating this opinion. Building on their earlier endorsement, on August 19, 1975, the Alaska State Geographic Board voted unanimously to change the name of the mountain to Denali for official state use on maps and other publications.

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Donald J. Orth served as the Executive Secretary of the DNC from 1973–1990. Orth was intimately familiar with Alaska, having authored the Dictionary of Alaska Place Names which was first published in 1971 and is still considered the “bible” of Alaska place names. Already well aware of the McKinley-Denali controversy, Orth informed the DNC of the Joint Resolution at their monthly meeting on April 8, 1975. The following month, the DNC voted to defer the case for a period of at least 6 months, agreeing that the Resolution involved making a decision of national importance. Time was needed to inform the American people and for the DNC to receive reaction to the proposal. To accomplish this, DOI issued two press releases (on August 4 and December 11, 1975) which summarized the controversy and asked the public for their opinion. These press releases were distributed to newspapers and magazines on a national scale. By the end of September 1975, the approximately 650 letters and petitions received by the DNC were evenly divided on the proposal, including among Alaskans. Comments and statements from elected officials and the public continued to be received in 1976 and into the summer of 1977, totaling approximately 6,000 letter and petition signatures. At their July 14, 1977, meeting, the DNC decided to hold two public meetings on the issue: the first in Washington. D.C. on October 25, and the second in Anchorage on November 10. Based on the information gathered at these two meetings, the DNC planned to render a decision on the name-change proposal at its monthly meeting on December 8, 1977. However, on the day before the monthly meeting, an action took place that derailed those plans.

4

Ohio Congressmen Take Exception to the Proposal

On May 3, 1976, a letter strongly opposing the name change was sent to Secretary of the Interior Thomas Kleppe, signed by all twenty-five members of the Ohio Congressional Delegation. On December 7, 1977, Congressman Ralph Regula from District 16 of Ohio (the Congressional District that William McKinley called home and represented from 1879–1881) introduced House Joint Resolution 672 which directed that “. . .the mountain in Alaska known as Mount McKinley retain such name in perpetuity.” While Resolution 672 did not get adopted before Congress adjourned, the act of introducing the congressional action was enough to prevent the DNC from acting on the name-change proposal. This was because of Policy I, which was a longstanding policy in 1977 and formally adopted on March 12, 1981. Policy I states that: The U.S. Board on Geographic Names will not render a decision on a name or its application if the matter is also being considered by the Congress of the United States. If Congress does not act on the proposed legislation by the end of its second session, the Board will not act on the case for 90 days after the beginning of the next session of Congress. If Congress formally declines to act on proposed naming legislation, the Board will wait 90 days before deciding on the case, unless new legislation is introduced during that period.

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According to Orth, who compiled the document United States Board on Geographic Names – 100 Years of Service: Diary of Actions, Policies and Events 1890–1990 from DNC meeting minutes, the first mention of a policy on names being considered by Congress relates to the effort to have the name of Cape Kennedy in Florida changed back to Cape Canaveral. The minutes from the meeting of July 1969 confirmed that the BGN would not consider or take action on a names issue being considered by Congress. The September 1969 minutes state “Since introduction of legislation in the Congress on the Cape Kennedy/Canaveral name-change issue, the BGN decided that it cannot and will not consider taking any kind of action on the matter.” New bills were introduced in the 96th Congress (1979–1980), both for and against the McKinley-Denali name change. By the spring of 1980, Congress had not yet acted on the matter. The proposal was once again on the DNC docket for consideration at its April 10, 1980, meeting. Because the issue was still controversial, the DNC decided to defer making a decision and hold two more public meetings in November, this time in Salt Lake City, Utah and Washington, D.C. On October 25, 1980, the Alaska Federation of Natives, Inc., passed a resolution accompanied by a petition of close to a thousand signatures, which called for recognition of the mountain’s original name, Denali. By this time, response in the form of letters and petition signatures had been received by the DNC from over 25,000 interested persons. About 68% were in favor of the name change. This percentage held for most of the USA with a slight decrease for Ohio and a slight increase for Alaska. If letters from school children were not included, the percent in favor of Denali would have increased to about 70%. Opposition to the name change was expressed by some Alaskan travel and business organizations such as the Kenai, Anchorage, and Palmer chambers of commerce. The Cordova City Council and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Inc., passed resolutions opposing the name change. Organizations that favored the name change were generally “outdoors” and “nature” oriented. People living in the immediate area of the mountain and in the Fairbanks area also showed strong support for the name change. In November of 1980, Congress passed legislation that changed the name of Mount McKinley National Park to Denali National Park and Preserve and added 2.5 million acres to the park and 1.3 million acres to the preserve, which included lands within the Denali National Monument. President Jimmy Carter was completely on-board with the Denali name, having already issued a Proclamation (on December 1, 1978) that created the Denali National Monument on lands that were inadvertently left out of the National Park. On December 2, 1980, President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which created many new National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges in the state, and added millions of acres to existing parks, refuges, and national forests. ANILCA noted the additional acreage added to the park and preserve, and stated that “. . .the whole is redesignated as Denali National Park and Preserve.”

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At the DNC meeting in December, Orth informed the DNC that Congressman Regula intended to introduce new legislation to retain the name Mount McKinley when Congress convened in January 1981. Several DNC members felt that a decision should be made immediately to finish the case, while others felt that a decision in favor of Denali, which might later be reversed by congressional action, would cause considerable confusion and undermine the purpose of the BGN. The case was deferred until the June 1981 meeting of the DNC by a 5-1 vote. Congressman Regula followed through with his intention, which became House Resolution 722, a bill to “. . .provide for the retention of the name of Mount McKinley.” A Congressional Hearing on the bill was held on June 4, 1981. Orth and DNC Chairman Myrl D. Powell (Deputy Member from the Library of Congress) testified at the hearing, where Orth read aloud the text of Policy I from the recently adopted BGN Principles, Policies, and Procedures manual. The resolution passed the House on August 4, 1981. During his 36 years as a Congressman (specifically from 1977 through his final term in 2008), Ralph Regula introduced a total of 16 bills (or amendments to appropriations bills) to retain the name Mount McKinley. These actions are sometimes referred to as “procedural filibusters.” After his retirement, the biennial introduction of a bill to preserve the name Mount McKinley was continued by the Ohio delegation, first by Rep. Timothy Ryan (a Democrat), followed by Rep. Bob Gibbs (a Republican).

5

Opportunity Knocks on the BGN

During the 2000s, Alaskan politicians periodically reminded the DNC of the controversy and of the encumbrance presented by BGN Policy I. In 2001, the DNC received a letter from Fran Ulmer, the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, who chaired the Alaska State Board on Geographic Names, indicating that the State would be reactivating its quest to change the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. In 2009, the Secretary of the Interior received a letter from Alaska Representative Scott Kawasaki, requesting that the DNC revisit Policy I and revise it to state that if Congress does not act on the issue by the end of 6 years, the DNC would proceed with a vote. In 2012, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced a bill into the US Senate “To designate a mountain in the State of Alaska as Mount Denali.” Senator Murkowski repeated this action in 2013 and again in 2015. In June 2015, the DOI appropriations bill for fiscal year 2016 was published. In the bill, the Senate Committee on Appropriations noted its disagreement with the BGN application of Policy 1: The Committee disagrees with the U.S. Board of Geographic Names’ continued reliance on Policy I regarding applications for geographic name changes. This policy was originally adopted in 1981 by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to prevent confusion by possible conflicting actions of Congress and the Board, but instead has been used as a tool to

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indefinitely delay and prevent consideration by the Board of applications for geographic name changes. Leaving these applications in limbo indefinitely is unfair to the applicants who deserve a decision on their applications.

The news media was also starting to take notice of the controversy. On July 2, The Daily Show, a satiric news show hosted by Jon Stewart on the Comedy Central network, aired a 5 min video clip titled Living in Denali. The video used humor to make the point that William McKinley had no connection to Alaska or the mountain and that the name of the mountain should be changed. On July 9, 2015, the DNC held its monthly meeting in the DOI headquarters (known as the Main Interior Building) in Washington, D.C. Executive Secretary Louis Yost made the committee aware of the Daily Show video, and announced that Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell had been invited to attend an event in Alaska in August that would focus on the ongoing efforts by the US Geological Survey (USGS) to prepare updated topographic maps of Alaska. The USGS had also recently recalculated the elevation of Denali, and would likely announce the revised figure during the visit. Yost pointed out that the name controversy was also likely to be raised. He also reported that, as a result of the recent actions of Senator Murkowski, Kevin Gallagher, an Associate Director of USGS, had asked for a “white paper” on the history of the name change effort and the BGN’s Policy I. A discussion ensued and it was suggested that the DNC should prepare the background information specifically for Secretary Jewell. I stated that this was a great idea, and asked Yost to make the first draft of the white paper. There was also a question as to whether the 1975 proposal from the then-Governor of Alaska (Jay Hammond) to change Mount McKinley to Denali was still active. Yost replied that the proposal was never formally withdrawn and was put on hold by the staff because of the repeated activity in Congress. I was very excited about the white paper proposal, and anxious to see the first draft. As the Chairman, I felt I had a unique opportunity (and a responsibility) to help steer the DNC towards presenting a successful resolution to the issue. My role as the DNC Chairman also meant that I was responsible for orderly processing of the case, without my personal favoritism. In addition to the background on the controversy and the issue of Policy I, the white paper needed to include options to help resolve the issue, including the pros and cons of each possible option. From the very first draft, this was the format that was used. Yost sent me his first draft via email on July 20, 2015. Jennifer Runyon, the senior BGN research staff person who works directly for Yost was also copied. Over the next 2 days, the white paper was shared with a select few others from the DNC: Michael Shelton, a Program Analyst from the National Park Service; Douglas Caldwell, a geographer from the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Chairman of the BGN; Tony Gilbert, the Code of Federal Regulations Coordinator for the Government Printing Office and the Vice Chairman of the BGN; and Jon Campbell, a geographer from the Office of Communications at USGS. All seven of us DNC members reviewed and provided input to the white paper and the accompanying

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Information/Briefing Memorandum. Yost cautioned us that these working documents were confidential and internal to the BGN, and that we must not mention what we were doing to others outside the BGN, especially to members of the media. The “final” DNC documents titled White Paper on Mount McKinley/Denali Name Controversy and Information/Briefing Memorandum for the Secretary were sent to the USGS Office of the Director on July 23, 2015. On the memorandum were given the possible options for action by Secretary Jewell: 1. No action, status quo. Leave BGN Policy I as is. • Pro – The BGN continues to be deferential to Congress. • Con – Individual members of Congress can indefinitely prevent the BGN from taking action on a proposal by submitting opposing legislation. 2. In light of the nearly 40-year impasse in this matter and the unlikely prospect of a resolution, the Secretary asks the BGN to make a one-time exception to Policy I in this instance. • Pro – The proposed name change from former Governor Hammond would be considered after nearly 40 years and would not be blocked by a procedural maneuver. • Con – A precedent would be set for Secretarial intervention, which may lead to further requests to the Secretary to have the BGN make an exception to Policy I, or to any of its other policies. In the extreme, this action may invite congressional reconsideration of the 1947 law that organized BGN. 3. Secretary solicits White House intervention, perhaps in consultation with Alaska and Ohio delegations. To reinforce the singular nature of this geographic name controversy, the President may wish to: (a) Issue an executive order establishing the name Denali; (or) (b) Publicly request the Secretary to intervene in this extraordinary issue. The Secretary would then instruct the BGN to consider this longstanding name controversy as it would any other case, i.e., consider the long-dormant proposed name change from former Governor Hammond (essentially moving to option 2, above.) • Pro – The President would be perceived as acting to restore the name that indigenous peoples have used for uncounted years and the name that the majority of Alaskans prefer. • Con – The President might be perceived as interfering in a matter that is beneath his office and of importance to Ohioans. On August 4, Yost sent the six of us an email reporting that “. . . the information memo and white paper fast-tracked the USGS correspondence process and. . .we were told that it ‘is now in the hands of the Secretary and Solicitor’s Office who are working out final language etc regarding the issue’. This sounds to me like we may be getting a request or directive in the near future.” Yost also shared the white paper and the informational memo with the rest of the DNC via email on August 10 prior to the monthly meeting on August 13. He cautioned all of us that “These are internal BGN documents so do not forward or share them with anyone else.” At the meeting,

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Yost thanked the six of us for our inputs and edits to the informational documents provided to Secretary Jewell. On August 15, Yost made the six of us aware of a simultaneous effort by the National Park Service (NPS). A Decision Memorandum for the Secretary with the subject line Proposal to Rename Mount McKinley as Denali was about to be forwarded to the Secretary by Jon Jarvis, Director of the NPS. The memorandum appeared to be a reassembled version of the DNC memorandum, with DNC Option No. 3 fashioned into a single recommendation and reworded so as to focus on the original 1975 proposal from Governor Hammond: We recommend that you exercise your statutory authority to take action upon the proposal. Based on the existing record of Board consideration of the proposal, grant the proposal and change the name of the mountain to “Denali.”

According to the email chain, the Office of the Secretary wanted to get the final “Mountain Memo” to Secretary Jewell by August 18 when she was scheduled to go on leave. We (the seven DNC members) reviewed the memo and provided comments, which were incorporated into the version that was sent to the Secretary on the afternoon of Tuesday the 18th. According to emails from the Office of the Secretary, Jewell questioned only about what would happen after she signed? In response, the Office of the Secretary stated that they would begin work on a “rollout document”; the email ended with the comment “Thanks, all! This is pretty spectacular!” More emails between the seven DNC members were exchanged the rest of the week, much of it speculating about how and when the action would occur. It was suggested that at some point the Secretary would sign a directive memo asking the BGN make the name official (or some equivalent action). Also that a DOI (or higher) press conference and press release would be scheduled, with a need for talking points by several officials, perhaps including the BGN. Towards that possibility, Campbell offered to begin putting together some talking points. By the end of the week, the media reported that the President and the Secretary would both be in Alaska at the end of August. Our emails now began to relay the concern that an Executive Order would perform the name change. Yost expressed his opinion that any action “. . .should come from the Secretary per her conjoint responsibility with the BGN.” Public Law 80-242 of 1947, which reorganized the BGN into its current form explicitly states that The Secretary may exercise his functions through such officials as he may designate, except that such authority as relates to the final approval or review of actions of the Board on Geographic Names shall be exercised by him, or his Under or Assistant Secretaries. Also, that Action may be taken by the Secretary in any matter wherein the Board does not act within a reasonable time. The seven of us joked that 40 years of inactivity by the BGN would certainly qualify as a reasonable time! On August 20, Yost sent an email along with a new draft of the “Mountain Memo” to the DOI Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science.

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In this email, Yost expressed the consensus of the BGN that: “If any immediate action to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali takes place, the BGN would prefer that it be made by a Secretarial Order rather than an Executive Order. The Secretary has conjoint responsibility with the BGN under P.L. 80-242 in standardizing geographic names for the Federal Government. An unprecedented geographic name change by an Executive Order would set an unfortunate precedent for future presidents. I raise this concern because the President’s upcoming trip to Alaska and this naming issue have been in many recent news articles. The BGN respectfully requests that you convey its opinion on this matter to Secretary Jewell.” Yost received a response back from the DOI Deputy Chief of Staff, stating that “. . .there is a draft memo circulating from Director Jarvis to Secretary Jewell, but it has not yet been sent to the Secretary. Should the memo arrive, I will make sure that the Secretary is aware of BGN’s request. It seems very reasonable.” Also on August 20, Yost shared with the six of us the “Mountain Rollout Plan” that Campbell had worked on. Included in the plan were the background of the controversy; support and opposition; congressional notifications; key stakeholder calls; schedule of events; talking points; and questions/answers. This was the first time I saw the sentence: Today in Anchorage, President Obama will announce that the federal government has officially restored the Alaska Native name of Denali to the tallest mountain in North America, previously known as Mt. McKinley. This designation recognizes the sacred status of Denali to many Alaska Natives. At that moment, the feeling that this was actually going to happen really started to sink in for me. The following day, Campbell sent out the draft talking points for us to review. On August 27, the USGS Press Officer forwarded the draft DOI press release to Campbell, who forwarded it the other six of us for comment. The press release was titled Secretary Jewell Announces North America’s Highest Peak Will Now Bear Native Name. Our group provided some minor edits. The next day we were also asked to review an article that would appear on the Top Story page of the USGS website, titled Old Name Restored to Nation’s Highest Peak. Campbell, knowing that I was a former Alaskan, and that I was absolutely elated by what was happening, asked me to provide a quote for the article. This was an easy task for me; I wrote about the first time I saw the mountain from Anchorage: I will never forget the first time I saw Denali. I had been told that on a clear day you could see it from the city, even though it is over 100 miles away. I stepped out of my house one August morning and there it was: a massive mound of white on the horizon, so obviously taller than anything else around it. I stood and stared and said ‘wow’. It truly is ‘the high one.

The final comment on the press release from our group of seven was in regards to the translation of the word Denali. On August 28, in an email from Campbell to the USGS Press Officer: BGN members are firm in their belief that the English translation ‘the Great One’ should not be included in the release. Preferred sentence: The word Denali is the accepted English

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spelling of an Athabaskan name for the mountain, meaning “the tall one.” The reasoning: We should refer to Denali as “the tall one” or “the high one” but not “the great one.” According to James Kari in “Shem Pete’s Alaska: The Territory of the Upper Cook Inlet Dena’ina” “high” or “tall” are appropriate, but “great” is not.

On that same day (although the DNC didn’t know it), Secretary Jewell signed the Secretarial Order, officially changing the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. ORDER NO. 3337 THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR WASHINGTON Subject: Change of the Name of Mount McKinley to Denali Sec. 1 Purpose. The purpose of this Order is to change the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. Sec. 2 Background. On March 11, 1975, Governor Jay S. Hammond of the State of Alaska, in furtherance of a resolution passed by the Alaska State Legislature, formally requested that the Secretary of the Interior direct the United States Board on Geographic Names (Board) to change the name of “Mount McKinley” to “Denali.” Denali is a local Athabascan name for the mountain, which is the highest in North America and is located entirely within Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The mountain was originally named after President William McKinley of Ohio, but President McKinley never visited, nor did he have any significant historical connection to, the mountain or to Alaska. The requested name change is consistent with the Board’s substantive policies and is supported by the State of Alaska. While the Board does have a policy of deferring action when a matter is being considered by Congress, contradictory bills on this issue have been proposed by various members of Congress since the late 1970s. Under 43 U.S.C. §§ 364364 f, the Secretary of the Interior may take action in matters “wherein the Board does not act within a reasonable time.” The statute also directs the Secretary to “promulgate in the name of the Board ... decisions with respect to geographic names and principles of geographic nomenclature and orthography.” Sec. 3 Authority. The authority for this Order is 43 U.S.C. §§ 364-364 f. Sec. 4 Renaming of Mount McKinley. This Order changes the name of Mount McKinley in the State of Alaska to Denali. Sec. 5 Implementation. The Board is responsible for following its usual procedures to immediately implement this name change, including changing the mountain’s name in the Board’s Geographic Names Information System and notifying all interested parties of the name change. Sec. 6 Expiration Date. This Order is effective immediately and will remain in effect until it is amended, superseded, revoked, or automatically expires. This Order shall automatically expire when the Board notifies me that it has notified all interested parties, changed the name in the Board’s Geographic Names Information System, and taken all other appropriate actions to implement the name change. Sally Jewell Secretary of the Interior

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The DNC was officially notified by Yost via email on Sunday, August 30: BGN, The Secretary of the Interior has changed the name of Mount McKinley to Denali by Secretarial Order. We are not authorized to speak on any action taken by the Secretary, or how or why this action was taken. Therefore, if you receive any inquiries about this do not comment, and refer them to Jon Campbell. Jon is the DOI Communications contact on this matter. Jon will either answer the questions or direct them to the person responsible for that information. You are also cautioned not to give any personal opinions, pro or con, on the name change or how the matter was handled. Answering these types of questions has caused embarrassment for members (and the BGN) who have answered such questions in the past.

For me, not giving any personal opinions on the matter would have been extremely difficult. Fortunately, I wasn’t contacted by the media in those first couple of days. The media began reporting the story that evening, and the seven of us continued to email each other. In an email with the subject line Denali: The Aftermath, Caldwell questioned the wording of the Secretarial Order that said it would eventually expire. He also noted that the Washington Post, reporting on the name change, mistakenly called it “Mount Denali.” Campbell chimed in that several news sources attributed the name change as an action of the President. Shelton answered the question regarding Secretarial Orders, explaining that “They are usually converted into chapters of the Departmental Manual for ongoing policies or procedures. In this case, though, if the GNIS (Geographic Names Information Service) is changed to reflect the new name, and if the entry cites the order number and date, then the Order itself could go away.” Campbell informed us that the USGS Press Officer contacted the Washington Post who corrected their error in subsequent articles. However, he also wrote that while DOI and USGS releases made it clear that the Secretary took the action under the law, a White House announcement clearly claimed it as a Presidential action, which made it “Tough to refute - since in the broadest way, the President is responsible for what his administration does.” On Monday, we started reading about those who were not happy with the name change, especially politicians from Ohio, regardless of their party affiliation. John A. Boehner, Republican from Ohio and then Speaker of the House, said in a statement “I’m deeply disappointed in this decision.” Representative Tim Ryan, Democrat from Ohio, declared “We must retain this national landmark’s name in order to honor the legacy of this great American president and patriot.” Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, tweeted the change as “. . .another example of the president going around Congress.” And Ohio Governor John Kasich, then a Republican presidential contender, also tweeted that the President “again overstep[ped] his bounds” in renaming the mountain. Possibly the loudest tweet came from then Republican

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Presidential candidate Donald Trump: “President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years. I will change back!” As part of our BGN duties, the seven of us worked to prepare a summary of the actions the DNC took to comply with the Order. The summary letter, sent on September 9 to Secretary Jewell from Douglas Caldwell (BGN Chairman), stated that the BGN had: 1. Changed the name of “Mount McKinley” in the State of Alaska to “Denali” in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the Federal Government’s official repository of geographic names in the United States and its territories. This action was completed on August 31, 2015; and 2. Notified all interested parties in accordance with standard practices. This includes the original proponent, the Governor of Alaska; the State Names Authority, the Alaska Historical Commission; the local authority, the Denali Borough; and the interested Federal agency, the National Park Service. This action was completed with the mailing of notification letters on [dates]. While changing the name of the mountain in GNIS was accomplished within 2 h of the news, changing the names of the Mt. McKinley topographic maps for all three scales (1:12,000; 1:24,000; 1:63,360) took about 2 weeks. The products were re-published to reflect the new map names as well as the mountain name. Since there had never been a Secretarial Order made regarding a geographic name, the option was not available as a decision authority in the GNIS database. The options are now BGN Decision, Executive Order, Congressional Legislation, and Secretarial Order. The seven of us were very pleased that a Secretarial Order, as opposed to an Executive Order, was used to change the name. However, we were still curious about the language that was ultimately used in the Order. I contacted an attorney from the DOI Solicitors Office who had conferred with Secretary Jewell over the phone on the issue. He told me that the Division of General Law had drafted the Order, and that it was intended to be a reasonable and simple approach towards resolving the controversy. He added that the Secretary made the final decision as to the wording and that it was well coordinated with the White House. He also said that the experience was a “wonderful day” for the Secretary. September 2015 marked the 125th anniversary of the BGN. On Friday the 18th, the Library of Congress hosted an all-day symposium to commemorate the anniversary, complete with distinguished speakers, special posters, and an “Open House” special exhibit with historic geographic name records on display. I was happy that Donald Orth was able to attend, and I asked him to sign my program. I was positively ecstatic when I saw that the National Park Service had brought a stack of the new maps of Denali National Park. I confess that I felt a high degree of personal satisfaction when I saw that the Denali name had been applied to the nation’s highest peak on the newest federal map of the park. I grabbed a copy and searched the room for my fellow collaborators and asked them to sign the map. Even then, some of them seemed a little nervous about signing their name to something that was still so controversial. Not being satisfied with just signatures, I rounded up

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Fig. 2 The Denali Seven From left to right: Doug Caldwell, Tony Gilbert, Doug Vandegraft, Jenny Runyon, Jon Campbell, Michael Shelton, Lou Yost

the “Denali Seven” for a photograph (Fig. 2). All seven of us, standing in front of the BGN wooden nickel, gave the thumbs up sign.

Further Reading Carter, J. (1978). Presidential Proclamation 4616 – Denali National Monument. Retrieved May 5, 2017, from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=30234 Comedy Central: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart “Living in Denali.” Video clip aired July 2, 2015. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from http://www.cc.com/video-clips/vbp8i5/the-dailyshow-with-jon-stewart-living-in-denali Council of Geographic Names Authorities in the United States. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from http://cogna50usa.org/about.html Geographic Names Information System (GNIS): Denali webpage. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from https://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=138:3:0::NO:3:P3_FID,P3_TITLE:1414314,Denali Jewell, S. (2015). Secretarial Order No. 3337: Change of the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.opengov.ibmcloud.com/files/pressrelease/Denali%20Name%20Change.pdf Korte, G. (2015). Ohio delegation blasts Mount McKinley name change. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/08/31/ohio-delegation-blasts-mountmckinley-name-change/71449964/ LoBianco, T. (2015). Trump vows to reverse Obama’s Mt. McKinley name change. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/31/politics/denali-mt-mckinley-reactionrenaming/

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Newell, B., & Horner, B. (2015). New elevation for Nation’s Highest Peak. Retrieved March 24, 2017 from https://www2.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/new-elevationfor-nations-highest-peak/ Norris, F. (2006). Crown jewel of the north: An administrative history of Denali National Park and preserve. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/ historyculture/park-history.htm Orth, D. J. (1990). United States Board on Geographic Names – Diary of actions, policies and events: 1890–1990. Retrieved March 24, 2017 from https://geonames.usgs.gov/docs/BGN%20 (DNC)%20History%201890-1990.pdf Public Law 80-242. (1947). To provide a central authority for standardizing geographic names. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Public_Law_80-242 Public Law 96-487. (1980). Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/documents/publiclaws/PDF/96-487.pdf Records of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Domestic Names Committee. Files on the Mt. McKinley-Denali name change proposal. Reston: U.S. Geological Survey. Steinhauer, J. (2015). 3,000 miles from Denali, Ohio Fumes over renaming of Mount McKinley. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/us/3000-miles-away-ohiofumes-over-renaming-of-mount-mckinley.html?_r=0 Stuck, H. D. D. (1914). The ascent of Denali (Mt. McKinley). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. U.S. Board on Geographic Names: Principles, Policies, and Procedures: Domestic Geographic Names. Retrieved May 5, 2017 from https://geonames.usgs.gov/docs/DNC_PPP_ DEC_2016_V.1.0.pdf Washburn, B. (1980). A tourist guide to Mount McKinley. Anchorage: Alaska Northwest.

Commemorative Custer Place Names on the American Landscape

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Overview of Custer’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Custer on the American Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The geographic distribution of place names on the landscape reflects the power of different groups vying for control of a locale at different points in history. They further generally present a one-sided version of history from the perspective of those holding power. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the geography of place names in the United States using the surname “Custer.” General George Armstrong Custer was controversial during his life and continues to be so 140 years after his death. In spite of the controversy surrounding his life, his death at the Little Bighorn in 1876 elevated him to the status of a national hero. As a result he was memorialized by the widespread naming of streets and other landscape features “Custer” in the years after he was killed. This project has identified 557 streets and 221 human and physical landscape features named after him including counties, cities, mountains and water bodies. Using cartographic analysis, this chapter finds that Custer features are most plentiful in the American West, with fewer in the South and Northeast. Arguably, Custer’s success as a Union General in the Civil War limited the density of Custer place names in the Confederate South, and his popularity waned in the Northeast after he led the G. R. Webster (*) Department of Geography, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_103

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Seventh Cavalry in a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians on the Washita River in 1868. Notably, some the highest concentrations of Custer place names are found in the locales where Custer undertook some of his most controversial actions. Keywords

Place names · Street names · George Armstrong Custer

1

Introduction

The study of the origins and functions of geographic place names has a long history with disciplines such as history, geography, linguistics, and communications studies making substantial contributions (e.g., Stewart 1975; Room 1997; Monmonier 2006). Geographic place names are “indispensable” to “human communications” and likely existed in even the most rudimentary of languages (Randall 2001:3–5). Such place labels not only aid in establishing locations but may provide information on the character and history of a locale, and even possibly contribute to its development of a “sense of place” (Stewart 1975: 3). As stated by Room (1997: 1), a place name “may relate to a particular characteristic of a natural object, such as the color of a mountain or the speed of a river’s current, or may involve human geography, and associate the name directly to that of the people who are or were the indigenous inhabitants of a place, or who built or settled or conquered it.” The long-standing interest in the study of place names, or toponymy, has led to a significant number of articles on the names on landscapes in Germany (Azaryahu 1986, 1997), Israel (Bar-Gal 1989; Cohen and Kliot 1992), Switzerland (Conedera et al. 2007), New Zealand (Berg and Kearns 1996), and the United States (West 1954; Zelinsky 1967; Miller 1969; Alderman 2000; Rose-Redwood 2008) including articles specifically on Native American place names, among many other areas of focus. Stewart (1995: 243) states that the first scholarly study of place names in the United States was presented two centuries ago in 1816 by Egbert Benson at a meeting of the New York Historical Society. Geographers in the USA have actively studied geographic place names for over a century (e.g., Whitbeck 1911; Waterman 1922; Wright 1929). As alluded to in the quote by Room above, the geographic pattern of place names on a landscape reflects the power of different groups vying for control of a locale at different points in history (Cohen and Kliot 1992). Alderman (2006: 359) states that “Naming also represents a means of claiming or taking ownership of places, both materially and symbolically.” For example, the Washita River in western Oklahoma was known as the Lodgepole River by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, but it is doubtful if any current maps label the river anything but “Washita.” If not beforehand, the power to name the river was taken in November 1868 when seventh Cavalry forces under Lt. Colonel George Custer attacked a village of Cheyenne Indians led by notable peace chief Black Kettle camped along the river killing dozens of older men, women, and children (Greene 2004).

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Another example of the usurpation of the power to label places pertains to the renaming of Alaska’s Denali in 1896 as Mount McKinley by a prospector to honor William McKinley of Ohio, then a candidate for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. The mountain had been known as Denali, the “great one,” for centuries by the Native Alaskans living in the area. As stated by Davis (2015), “Denali’s name [change] has long been seen as . . . a . . . slight, regarded as an example of cultural imperialism in which a Native American name with historical roots was replaced by an American one having little to do with the place.” In August 2015, President Barak Obama announced that the mountain would again be known as Denali. Likewise, members of twenty different Native American tribes are lobbying to have Devil’s Tower, a label they consider offensive, renamed as “Bear Lodge.” The site is sacred to Native Americans, and the tribes argue that the name Devil’s Tower “equates cultural and faith traditions practiced at the site to ‘devil worship,’ in essence equating indigenous people to ‘devils’” (Associated Press 2015: A8). Stewart (1975: 85–162) has identified ten different types of geographic place names (see also Randall 2001). A “descriptive” place name, for example, includes an aspect of the location being labeled in the place name such as “Red Mountain.” “Incident” place names include reference to an event. Thus, Council Bluffs, Iowa is so named due to an 1804 meeting at the city’s site between members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Otoe Indians. Of central importance to this chapter, “commemorative” place names honor someone whether living or dead at the time of the naming. George Washington’s family name, for example, is used for 32 American counties while Abraham Lincoln’s is used for 23 (Stewart 1995: 358). Commemorative place names are generally named after an “eponym,” the person whether real or fictitious, they are named after (Alderman 2002). Among the other categories of place names are “associative,” “commendatory,” “folk-etymological,” “manufactured,” “mistake,” “possessive,” and “shift names” (Stewart 1975: 85–162). Whether as street names or geographic place names, commemorative names generally highlight one version of history that reflects the perspectives of those holding power and authority. Arguably, in addition to honoring an individual, commemorative naming also has a goal of making one version of history more universally adopted. Place names can introduce the “official version of history into mundane settings of everyday life: it is the ostensible ordinariness of street names that allows them to effectively implicate politics and ideology into the practices of everyday life . . .” (Azaryahu 2009: 56). Azaryahu (2009: 56) argues that the impetus for this effort is because “a shared past is crucial to cultural viability and social cohesiveness of ethnic communities and nation-states” (Azaryahu 2009: 56). Notably, such efforts are not always successful with commemorative place names being subject to change due to historical events and societal or sympathetic elites’ reflection on the past. Thus, the end of WWII led Hitler commemorative names to be eradicated in Germany, and the demise of the Soviet Union led commemorative place names for Lenin to be changed (Azaryahu 1996, 1997, 2009).

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Purpose

General George Armstrong Custer is one of the most controversial figures in United States history, and evaluations of his actions and roles in both the Civil War and Indian Wars continue over 140 years after his death (Stiles 2015). Hundreds of books have been written about his life including dozens in the past two decades (e.g., Donovan 2008; Greene 2004; Hatch 2002; Philbrick 2010). Though Custer died in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, fascination with his life continues because he had an indelible effect on the country’s history and geography, including its place name geography. This is most clear in the West where dozens of towns and cities have streets or avenues named after Custer. Likewise, there are numerous counties, cities, parks, and physical features named after Custer (Fig. 1). Thus, Custer’s name on street signs or included in geographic place names is part of the mundane landscape of everyday life, with his commemoration clearly reinforcing a one-sided version of events in the last half of the nineteenth century. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the geography of commemorative street names and place names including the surname “Custer.” Data were collected on all streets in the United States using “Custer,” and for all landscape features, whether

Fig. 1 Examples of Custer placenames and street names. Custer Peak, Lawrence County, South Dakota; Custer City, Custer County, Oklahoma; Monroe, Michigan; Council Bluffs, Iowa. (Photographs by author)

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physical or human, including “Custer.” In total, 557 streets named Custer were identified using MapInfo’s Streetpro database. Additionally, 221 physical and human features were identified from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) using Custer in their names including mountains, gulches, towns, and counties. While clearly not all landscape features named Custer were named after George Armstrong Custer, efforts to verify the origin of the names in the data set identified only two Custer features not named after him, both in Washington State. Notably, the author has been familiar with one of these, the small town of Custer, Washington, for over 40 years and was unaware until recently that the town was named after its first post-mistress whose last name was Custer, and not George Armstrong Custer. In short, the great majority of those passing by the Interstate 5 freeway exit sign for the town of Custer will almost certainly assume that the town is named after the General. Two primary questions are addressed in this chapter: (1) What is the spatial pattern of Custer street signs and place names in the United States, and does it support Alderman’s assertion that “Naming . . . represents a means of claiming or taking ownership of places, both materially and symbolically?” (2) Is the spatial pattern of Custer street signs and place names in the United States suggestive of its formative processes? If so, are these patterns readily interpretable?

3

Overview of Custer’s Life

To understand the distribution of Custer place names, it is important to first provide a brief overview of major events in Custer’s life and military career. George Armstrong Custer was born in New Rumley, Ohio in 1839, but moved to Monroe, Michigan, to live with his older sister and brother-in-law in the late 1840s. Custer met his future wife in Monroe and came to view the city as his hometown. He successfully vied for an appointment at West Point, entering the academy in 1857 at the age of 17. He graduated last in his class of 34 in 1861, which had been depleted with the onset of the Civil War when 22 southerners resigned to join Confederate Forces (Ambrose 1975; Elliot 2007; Hutton 1992). Custer’s Civil War record was impressive, and by its end he was arguably the fourth most well-known Union officer after Generals U.S. Grant, Phillip Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman (Donovan 2008: 53; Wittenberg 2001). He was elevated to Brigadier General of the Second Brigade of the Third Cavalry in June 1863, at the age of 23, making him the youngest general in US history (Urwin 1992: 15). Custer was known for personally leading his troops into battle, and while having some close calls during the war, he was never wounded leading to the phrase “Custer’s luck” (Stewart 1955; Donovan 2008: 91). General Sheridan stated that “Custer is the ablest man in the Cavalry Corps,” and wrote his wife Libby Custer that “there is scarcely an individual in our service who has contributed more to bring about [the end of the war] than your very gallant husband” (Urwin 1992: 21, 23).

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Custer remained in the military after the Civil War ended in 1865, eventually receiving the rank of Lt. Colonel. Whether through postings or expeditions, Custer spent time in Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Montana. There are a number of highly notable events in Custer’s life during the Indian Wars that are important to understanding his cultural elevation and the development of Custer mythology, but three are of critical importance: his massacre of a Cheyenne village along the Washita River in western Oklahoma in 1868, his expedition into the Black Hills in 1874, and his fatal attack of a Sioux encampment on the Little Bighorn River in 1876 (Elliot 2007; Hutton 1992; Leckie 1993; Stiles 2015). In the wake of the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado in 1864, Native American raids on white settlements in Kansas increased in the late 1860s (Donovan 2008: 60; Kelman 2013; Kraft 2011). As a result, demands for military action against the Indians on the southern plains increased, a task eventually given to Custer (Greene 2004). During a heavy snow on November 23, 1868, Custer and 800 men of the 7th Cavalry moved towards the Washita River in the western portion of the Oklahoma Territory. Scouts in advance of the troops came across a fresh trail of warriors presumably returning from a raid in Kansas. Custer followed the trail, and at sunrise the following morning his men attacked a village, killing principally women and children, but also notable Cheyenne peace chief Black Kettle who had miraculously survived the Sand Creek Massacre 4 years earlier. Custer’s official report suggested a pitched and heroic battle in which 103 warriors were killed, but there is little evidence that more than a handful of Indian men of fighting age were present in the village (G.A. Custer 1962; Greene 2004). Custer also took 48 prisoners, all women and children, and in keeping with his concept of “total war” he ordered the village’s 875 ponies shot (Brill 1938; Greene 2004). While Custer’s actions were largely applauded by those in the West, the Eastern press was far less supportive of both Custer and the federal government’s Indian policy with some comparing Washita to Sand Creek (Donovan 2008: 65). In 1874, Custer was given command of a 1000-man expedition to explore the Black Hills, then part of the Great Sioux Reservation in western Dakota Territory (Donovan 2008: 31; Mort 2015). During the expedition, a limited quantity of gold was found though subsequent press reports inferred that there had been major strike, leading thousands of miners to rush to the area (Jackson 1966). After being rebuffed in efforts to purchase the Black Hills from the Sioux, the US federal government developed a scenario to take it in the winter of 1876 by declaring the Sioux had broken the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty. It is notable that the Sioux nation had met regularly during the summers at Bear Butte north of the Black Hills for over a century until too many miners had entered the area to allow such conferences to occur without a high likelihood of conflict (Sandoz 1966). As a result, in 1876, the gathering was moved west to the Little Bighorn River in southern Montana Territory (Jackson 1966). The Battle of the Little Bighorn occurred on June 25, 1876, 2 years after the Black Hills Expedition. The movement of Custer’s 7th Cavalry towards the Little Bighorn was part of organized troop movements including General George Crook

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from Ft. Fetterman near present-day Buffalo, Wyoming, Colonel John Gibbon from Ft. Ellis in Montana Territory and General Alfred H. Terry from Ft. Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory. Four days before the battle, General Terry further divided his troops with Lt. Colonel Custer told to follow an Indian trail which led him towards the lower reaches of the Little Bighorn River in southern Montana Territory. The purpose for these troop movements was to find and engage a reportedly large gathering of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians congregated in the area. Many if not most of these Indians had refused to move to reservations, desiring to continue living in the traditional manner (Donovan 2008; Philbrick 2010). As Custer approached the site of the battle, he divided his 500 men into three battalions to attack the large Indian village in a pincher strategy similar to that he used at Washita 8 years earlier when he had 800 men to attack a village of 200. Estimates of the size of the village on the Little Bighorn vary widely but median figures place its size at approximately 7000 including 2000 warriors (Hatch 2002). All 210 men in Custer’s battalion were killed; 53 men from the other two battalions were killed with another 60 wounded. Estimates of the number of Indians killed range from as few as 30 to as many as 300 (Utley 1994; Hatch 2002). News of the battle’s results spread rapidly as the country was preparing for a July 4th centenary celebration. The battle and Custer became a national obsession, with Custer elevated to hero status. Most iconic were paintings of Custer’s men defending Last Stand Hill to the end with him being the final man to fall, fighting with both pistol and sword, including Custer’s Last Fight by Otto Decker and Custer’s Last Rally by John Mulvany. The Anheuser-Busch beer company distributed more than 150,000 copies of Decker’s work and they hung in bars and homes across the country. Mulvany’s painting, which measured 11 by 20 feet, toured the country with customers paying a small admission fee to see the picture (Taft 1992). Dozens of poems were composed about Custer and the Little Bighorn including one by luminary poet Walt Whitman entitled “A Death Song for Custer” which was published in the New York Times (Leckie 1993: 200). Likewise a stream of books began to appear further developing the Custer myth including Frederick Whittaker’s highly positive two volume Complete Life of George Armstrong Custer in late 1876 (Whittaker 1993a, b). Custer’s image was also promoted in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show which ended with a reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand with Buffalo Bill himself playing Custer (Warren 2005; Donovan 2008). While some criticism did emerge about Custer’s actions, lack of reconnaissance and battle plan at the Little Bighorn, much of it was blunted by military leaders who worried their budget would be slashed if charges of ineptness became widespread. More importantly, many limited their comments out of respect to Custer’s widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer. “Libby” Custer devoted the remainder of her life to elevating her husband’s life and preserving the Custer myth. She wrote three well-received books between 1885 and 1890 promoting her husband’s life which remain in print today (E.B. Custer 1961, 1967, 1994). Libby Custer did not pass away until 1933, 56 years after her husband died at the Little Bighorn. The following year Frederic F. Van de Water (1934) published Glory-Hunter: A Life of General Custer, the first

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book that attempted a critical analysis of Custer’s life and actions. Hollywood was also complicit in developing and elevating the Custer myth by producing dozens of movies as early as 1912, with the 1941, They Died with Their Boots On starring Errol Flynn being the most well-known (Langellier 2000).

4

Custer on the American Landscape

As noted earlier, 557 streets with Custer in their names were identified in the United States (Fig. 2). Only four states (Alaska, Hawaii, Delaware, Vermont) and the District of Columbia have no Custer streets (Table 1). Arguably, the absence of Custer streets in Alaska and Hawaii are due in part to their relative youth among the states, with naming opportunities coming nearly a century after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Likewise both Delaware and Vermont are small states, were well settled, and likely had few naming opportunities available in 1876, and they are located in the Northeast which generally negatively viewed Custer and events on the Washita in 1868. Other states with four or fewer Custer Streets included the Southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi where Union generals were unlikely to be commemorated, and the Northeastern states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Ten states had 20 or more Custer streets including Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Kansas, Montana, Colorado, Ohio, South Dakota, and Nebraska (Table 1). General Custer spent part of 1865 and early 1866 in Texas overseeing

Fig. 2 Counties with at least one “Custer” street

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Table 1 States with most and fewest streets named Custer Top 10 states Texas Michigan Pennsylvania Florida Kansas Colorado Montana Ohio Nebraska South Dakota

Number 49 40 34 26 25 24 24 22 21 21

Bottom 10 states Alaska Delaware Hawaii Vermont Alabama Maine New Hampshire Connecticut Rhode Island South Carolina

Number 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 3 3 3

Calculated by author

the Union’s Reconstruction efforts which likely would not endear him to Texans generally. But the state did experience conflict between Native Americans and White settlers migrating to Texas in the late nineteen century, and given the size of the state, there were clearly many naming opportunities. The higher numbers in Ohio are in part due to the state being his birthplace and a pivotal member of the Union during the Civil War. Similarly, he viewed Monroe, Michigan, as his hometown and commanded the Michigan Brigade during the Civil War. Notably, Custer’s family was originally from Pennsylvania, and the state was a central contributor to the Union’s efforts in the Civil War. Kansas, Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, and Nebraska were all involved in the Indian Wars of the late nineteenth century, with many being in their formative periods as US territories and states with many naming opportunities. The final state on this list is Florida with 26 Custer streets, the fourth largest number among the states. Since it was a Confederate state, this high number would appear to be curious. But Floridians, in 1876, may have had a view of Custer more Western than Southern. Unlike the other states in the region in which there were few armed or bloody conflicts between Whites and Native Americans in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Seminole Wars spilled over in the last half of the century with the Third Seminole War not ending until 1858. American states have substantially different total populations and population densities complicating the interpretation of simple counts of street names by state. To account for such variation, the population per Custer street was calculated and mapped using 2010 census data (Fig. 3). The map yielded a pattern that confirmed the concentration of streets named Custer from Idaho to Kansas and Colorado to North Dakota. We might label this region as the “Custerian West,” where commemoration of Custer has been substantial for over a century. Interestingly, Utah is not included in this region and it is likely because of its level of settlement before 1876 by members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Mormon cities generally adopted a street grid system which measures streets North, South, East, and West in increments of 100 from a center point. As a result there were fewer naming opportunities in Utah. The Northeast and South generally have fewer Custer streets relative to their

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Fig. 3 2010 Population per “Custer” street

more sizeable populations. Clearly Custer’s success as a Union general in the Civil War would not create any substantial sympathy for him in 1876 in the American South, and Custer’s role in the Washita Massacre led many in the Northeast to view him negatively. In addition to the streets named Custer, 221 additional landscape features were identified including “Custer” in their names (Table 2). These included local government subdivisions such as counties, cities, and townships, as well as monuments, museums, mines, cemeteries, streams, and lakes, among others. In total, there are six counties in the United States named after George Armstrong Custer with all being in western states. While Custer County, South Dakota, was so named in 1875 due to Custer’s Black Hills expedition in 1874, the remaining Custer counties in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, and Oklahoma were named after him in the wake of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. There are also three towns named after him in the states of Michigan, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. Notably, Custer City, Oklahoma, is in Custer County which is near the Washita Massacre site. The town of Custer, South Dakota, is also located in a Custer County which is centered on the Black Hills, sacred to the Cheyenne and Sioux. The distribution of these physical and human landscape features was mapped to determine if a geographic patterned emerged (Fig. 4). It is clear from a review of Table 3 and Fig. 4 that there are some distinct clusters of Custer landscape features in southeastern Montana near the Little Bighorn Battlefield, in western South Dakota near the Black Hills, and in central Nebraska centered on Custer County. Secondary clusters are found in western Oklahoma near the Washita Massacre site, in

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Table 2 Human and physical features named Custer Feature Counties Towns Populated places Historical (ghost) towns Townships Schools, museums, halls, courthouses, airports, churches, trails, post offices, campgrounds, golf clubs, monuments, markers, fire houses Mines Cemeteries Parks Mountains, peaks, ridges, hills, bluffs Rivers, creeks, runs, branches, coulees, washes, canals, ditches Canyons, draws, gaps, hollows, gulches Ponds, lakes, bayous, reservoirs

State (number) CO, ID, MT, NE, OK, SD MI, OK, SD GA, ID, KY, MO, MT, PA (2), TX AR, KS, OH, TN IL, KS (2), MI (3), MN, NE (3), SD (2) GA, ID (3), IL (4), IA, KS (2), KY, MI (11), MN, MT (10), NE (12), NM, ND (6), OH, OK (7), OR, PA (2), SD (10), TN, WA (3), WV (3), WI CA, CO, ID, MT (4), ND, SD (4) AR, GA, IL, IA, KS, MD, MI, MT (2), PA, SD, TX, VA GA, IL (2), MI, ND, OR, SD (2), TX CO,ID (2), KS, KY, MT (2), NM, ND, SD(3), WA CA, CO (2), ID, MI, MO, MT(5), ND, PA, TX, WA CO, MD, MI, NV, SD (2), NV CO, ME, MI, MO (195/221)

Total Features 1-3 4-9 10 or More

Fig. 4 Total number of features named “Custer” by county

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Table 3 States with most human and physical features named Custer Human features Montana 28 South Dakota 23 Michigan 20 Nebraska 18 Illinois, Oklahoma 10 North Dakota 8

Physical features Montana 8 South Dakota 5 Colorado 4 Idaho, Michigan, N. Dakota 3 Missouri, Washington 2

Total features Montana 36 South Dakota 28 Michigan 23 Nebraska 19 North Dakota 11

California, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia 1

Idaho, Illinois, Oklahoma 10

Idaho, Kansas 7 Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington 5

Colorado 9 Kansas 8

Source: Calculated by author

southeastern Michigan centered on Custer’s adopted hometown of Monroe, in western Michigan in Mason County where the town of Custer is located, in northeastern Illinois centered on the populated place of Custer Park, in Custer County Idaho, in North Dakota along the route taken by Custer on his way to the Little Bighorn in 1876 (e.g., Custer Campground, Custer Trail Ranch, Custer’s Snow Campsite), and around the small town of Custer, Washington. Notably, a number of states including Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Indiana, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont have no human or physical features named Custer. With a few exceptions, these are generally southern and northeastern states. The number of streets and landscape features were combined to produce a map of all Custer place names (Fig. 5). Not surprisingly, the portion of the country with the largest concentration of place and street names stretches from eastern Washington near Spokane in the Northwest through Idaho, to Colorado to Dallas, Texas, then north through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas (Table 4). Notably, the largest single concentration is in western South Dakota in the Black Hills. In the Black Hills there is Custer County, the town of Custer, Custer Peak, Custer Mountain, Custer Crossing, Custer Gulch, Custer Trail Campground, Custer Cemetery, Custer State Park and Custer Mine, among others. It should be reiterated that the Black Hills are scared to the Sioux and Cheyenne and were still part of the Great Sioux Reservation in 1876. The total number of place and street names including Custer were mapped based on 2010 state populations to account for the sparse populations of many western states (Fig. 6). Not surprisingly, the map is similar to Fig. 3 which mapped only Custer streets by population with a few exceptions. Most significant is that the state of Oklahoma is added to the “Custerian West” region which includes nine states with the addition. Given that Oklahoma includes Custer County and Custer City, this is unsurprising.

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Total Streets and Features 1-4 5 - 13 14 or More

Fig. 5 Total number of features and streets named “Custer,” by county

Table 4 States with most number of streets, human features, and physical features named “Custer”

State Michigan Montana Texas South Dakota Nebraska Pennsylvania Colorado Kansas Florida Ohio

Number 63 60 53 49 40 37 33 33 27 25

Source: Calculated by author

5

Conclusions

As noted above, there are 557 streets named Custer in the United States. Additionally there are 221 physical and human landscape features named Custer, for a total of 778 Custer place or street names across the United States. While these features may to many be part of a non-descript or mundane landscape, the repetitive naming of landscape features after an eponym like Custer clearly promotes one version of

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Fig. 6 2010 Population per “Custer” streets and features

history over another. Such recognition on certain landscapes may also be a form of “cultural bullying.” For example, there are concentrations of Cheyenne and Arapaho Native Americans in western Oklahoma not far from the site of the 1868 Washita Massacre led by George Armstrong Custer. Native Americans traveling along Interstate 40 will drive through Custer County and pass by the exit for Custer City. And although Custer’s 1874 expedition through the Black Hills was instrumental in their theft from the Sioux, the Black Hills have a very high concentration of Custer place names, as noted above. Finally, though Custer was the aggressor and loser at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, his name is far more plentiful on the Montana landscape than either Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse, among the leaders of the victors. Clearly these examples emphasize Alderman’s (2006: 359) assertion that “Naming also represents a means of claiming or taking ownership of places, both materially and symbolically.” They also provide a means of constantly reiterating a one-sided version of history which has long been largely dismissive of the Native American experience in the United States. The above analysis concludes that the distribution of Custer place names demonstrates a clear pattern of regionality with the largest concentrations of Custer place names found in the West, and particularly in those locations in which major events in Custer’s life occurred such as Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Montana. Arguably due to Custer’s much heralded success as a Union general in the Civil War, there are few Custer place names in the South with the exception of Florida. While Florida has only one Custer place name, there are 26 Custer streets in the state making it an outlier that is deserved of additional attention. There are further comparatively few

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Custer place names in the Northeast though these states were in the Union during the Civil War. Arguably, the massacre on the Washita River seriously damaged Custer’s reputation and image in the Northeast to the extent that there was little support in 1876 at his death to commemorate his life and memory. In 1969, Vine Deloria published his well-received book entitled Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. The title was taken from a bumper sticker, “Custer Died for Your Sins” that alluded to the United States government’s violation of the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty giving the Lakota Sioux the Black Hills. As noted by Deloria (1969: 148), breaking such a covenant required a blood sacrifice of atonement, and Custer was that atonement. But this research suggests that Custer in death became even more notable than in life. His death at the Little Bighorn in June 1876 led him to be mythologized and promoted as a national hero (Graham 2000; Leckie 1993). His wife Libby Bacon Custer lived 56 years longer than her husband, and tirelessly promoted his legacy well into the twentieth century. He was further immortalized in paintings, literature, poetry, and the movies to the extent that separating fact from fiction is difficult. Regardless, his name dots the landscape across the United States, most particularly in the West. Van de Water’s critical 1934 book about George Armstrong Custer casts him as being obsessed with “glory.” In spite of his death at the age of 34, if place names are an indication of affirmative notoriety, he arguably had more than a small measure of success in this regard.

References Alderman, D. H. (2000). A street fit for a king: Naming places and commemoration in the American South. The Professional Geographer, 52(4), 672–684. Alderman, D. H. (2002). Street names as memorial arenas: The reputational politics of commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. in a Georgia County. Historical Geography, 30, 99–120. Alderman, D. H. (2006). Place names. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human geography (pp. 358–360). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Ambrose, S. E. (1975). Crazy horse and Custer. New York: Pocket Books. Associated Press. (2015, July 14). At a crossroads: Tribes seek to change name of devil’s tower. Laramie Boomerang, p. A8. Azaryahu, M. (1986). Street names and political identity: The case of East Berlin. Journal of Contemporary History, 21, 581–604. Azaryahu, M. (1996). The power of commemorative street names. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14, 311–330. Azaryahu, M. (1997). German reunification and the politics of street names: The case of East Berlin. Political Geography, 16(6), 479–493. Azaryahu, M. (2009). Naming the past: The significance of commemorative street names. In L. D. Berg & J. Vuolteenaho (Eds.), Critical toponymies: The contested politics of place naming (pp. 53–70). Burlington: Ashgate. Bar-Gal, Y. (1989). Naming city streets – A chapter in the history of Tel-Aviv, 1909–1947. Contemporary Jewry, 10(2), 39–50. Berg, L. D., & Kearns, R. A. (1996). Naming as norming: ‘Race’, gender, and identity politics of naming places in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14, 99–122. Brill, C. J. (1938). Custer, Black Kettle, and the fight on the Washita. Norman: University of Oklahoma. Press.

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Cohen, S., & Kliot, N. (1992). Place-names in Israel’s ideological struggle over the administered territories. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82, 653–680. Conedera, M., Vassere, S., Neff, C., Meuer, M., & Krebs, P. (2007). Using toponymy to reconstruct past land use: A case study of ‘Brusada’ (burn) in Southern Switzerland. Journal of Historical Geography, 33, 729–748. Custer, E. B. (1961). Boots and saddles. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Custer, E. B. (1967). Following the Guidon. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Custer, E. B. (1994). Tenting on the plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Custer, G. A. (1962). My life on the plains or, personal experiences with Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Davis, J.H. (2015, August 30). Mount McKinley will again be called Denali. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/31/us/mount-mckinley-will-be-renamed-denali.html?_r=0 Deloria, V. (1969). Custer died for your sins. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Donovan, J. (2008). A terrible glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn. New York: Back Bay Books. Elliot, M. A. (2007). Custerology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Graham, W. A. (2000). The Custer myth. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books. Greene, J. A. (2004). Washita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1867–1869. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Hatch, T. (2002). The Custer companion. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books. Hutton, P. A. (Ed.). (1992). The Custer reader. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Jackson, D. (1966). Custer’s gold: The United States cavalry expedition of 1874. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kelman, A. (2013). A misplaced massacre: Struggling over the memory of Sand Creek. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kraft, L. (2011). Ned Wynkoop and the lonely road from Sand Creek. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Langellier, J. P. (2000). Custer: The man, the myth, and the movies. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books. Leckie, S. A. (1993). Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the making of a myth. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Miller, E. J. W. (1969). The naming of the land in the Arkansas Ozarks: A study in culture processes. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 59(2), 240–251. Monmonier, M. (2006). From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How maps name, claim, and inflame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mort, T. (2015). Thieves’ road: The Black Hills betrayal and Custer’s path to Little Bighorn. Amherst: Prometheus Books. Philbrick, N. (2010). The last stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the battle of the Little Bighorn. New York: Viking. Randall, R. R. (2001). Place names: How they define the world – and more. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Room, A. (1997). Placenames of the world: Origins and meanings. Jefferson: McFarland. Rose-Redwood, R. S. (2008). From number to name: Symbolic capital, places of memory and the politics of street renaming in New York City. Social and Cultural Geography, 9(4), 431–452. Sandoz, M. (1966). The battle of the Little Big Horn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Stewart, E. I. (1955). Custer’s luck. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Stewart, G. R. (1975). Names on the globe. New York: Oxford University Press. Stewart, G. R. (1995). Names on the landscape: A historical account of place-naming in the United States. New York: New York Review Books. Stiles, T. J. (2015). Custer’s trials: A life on the frontier of a New America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Taft, E. (1992). The pictorial record of the Old West: Custer’s last stand – John Mulvany, Cassilly Adams and Otto Becker. In P. A. Hutton (Ed.), The Custer reader (pp. 424–462). Norman: University of Oklahoma.

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Urwin, G. J. W. (1992). Custer: The civil war years. In P. A. Hutton (Ed.), The Custer reader (pp. 7–32). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Utley, R. M. (1994). Little Bighorn battlefield. Washington, DC: National Park Service. Van de Water, F. F. (1934). Glory-hunter: A life of General Custer. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Warren, L. S. (2005). Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West show. New York: Vintage Books. Waterman, T. T. (1922). The geographical names used by the Indians of the Pacific Coast. Geographical Review, 12(2), 175–194. West, R. C. (1954). The term ‘Bayou’ in the United States: A study in the geography of place names. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 44(1), 63–74. Whitbeck, R. H. (1911). Regional peculiarities in place names. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 43(4), 273–281. Whittaker, F. (1993a). A complete life of General George A. Custer, volume 1: Though the civil war. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Whittaker, F. (1993b). A complete life of General George A. Custer, volume 2: From Appomattox to the Little Big Horn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Wittenberg, E. J. (Ed.). (2001). At Custer’s side: The civil war writings of James Harvey Kidd. Kent: Kent State University Press. Wright, J. K. (1929). The study of place names: Recent work and some possibilities. Geographical Review, 19(1), 140–144. Zelinsky, W. (1967). Classical town names in the United States: The historical geography of an American idea. Geographical Review, 57(4), 463–495.

Place Names and Natural Disasters in Japan

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Scientific Versus Local Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Exploratory Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and a couple of major landslides such as the Hiroshima landslides of 2014, many popular books and magazines discuss the relationship between place names and disasters in Japan; old place names warn people of the danger of places. For example, place names that include Chinese characters of jya (meaning: snake) and nuku (meaning: passing through) have potential for landslides. As Japan experiences more intensive rainfall due to global warming, more attention is given to place names as a predictor of natural disasters. This research is an exploratory study on place names that refer to natural disasters. First, I briefly discuss types of knowledge (local vs. scientific) to highlight the nature of knowledge on places named for disaster. Second, I look at the trend of publication on the topic which endorses the growing interest among the public especially after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Here, I review the existing literature in both academic and nonacademic publications. Then, I discuss my findings from surveys and interviews administered to real

Y. Yotsumoto (*) College of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_111

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estate companies and agents who are stakeholders and believed to be knowledge holders on the issue. In a sense, this study tries to look at the relationship of nature–language–society. Keywords

Place names · Natural disaster · Local knowledge · Scientific knowledge · Hazard maps · Real estate agents

1

Introduction

In Japan, it was the Edo period (1603–1867) when place names became a full-scale subject of study. Distinguished intellectuals of those times such as Arai Hakuseki (a Confucianist and politician) and Motoori Norinaga (a scholar of Japanese national study) examined domain and district names historically. In the modern times of Japan, Yanagida Kunio (a bureaucrat and Japanese scholar who established Japanese folklore) began to study small-scale place names and published a book, The Study of Place Names, in 1936. He conducted place name studies extensively between 1910 and 1933 and established it as a subfield of folklore (Sekido 1988, p. 17). Yanagida is a founder of Japanese folklore but he never had an academic position. From the start of Japanese folklore, many of the studies were conducted outside universities. Even now, knowledge production of place names in folklore is mainly conducted in the lineage of Yanagida folklore. Place names have meanings that indicate geographical features, history, wishes of people who developed the areas, and so forth. In some places, forefathers have implanted meanings to place names for posterity. Thus, old place names sometimes signify danger associated with the place by including topography and the history of calamity. Yanagida postulated that we can learn what kind of attitudes people from ancient times had when confronted by mountains, rivers, and wilderness through identifying motivations to use words related to certain topography when a place is named (Yanagida 1936, p. 25). Since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and a couple of major landslides, newspapers have become interested in the relationship between place names and disasters in Japan. Three top newspapers in Japan have featured 15 articles on the topic over the past 30 years. Nine articles appeared in Mainichi Shimbun, three in Yomiuri Shimbun, and three in Asahi Shimbun. Among these 15 articles, ten were reported after the Tohoku earthquake. Many books and magazines have also been published about the relationship between old place names and warnings of danger in those places. Place names that include Chinese characters of jya (snake) and nuku (passing through) indicate that the places have potential for floods and landslides. A snake has no legs and can swim and wriggle like a water flow of disaster (Dazai 2013, p. 35). Place names which include suna or suka are likely to be tsunami disaster areas. Suna means sand which indicates lapping of water and suka suggests a sandbank. Thus, place names such as Higashi Suna-hara, Nishi Suga,

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and Naka Suga signify areas vulnerable to tsunami (Dazai 2013, pp. 76–77). As Japan experiences more intensive rainfall due to global warming (Emori 2013) and the scientific community forecasts large earthquakes in the Tokai and Nankai regions in the near future (Yamamoto and Yoshimura 2012), more attention is paid to place names as a possible predictor of natural disasters. One of the areas in which we can observe the possible influence of place names as a disaster indicator to society is the real estate business. In this paper, I consider the degree of influence that place names have on the business. I analyzed the websites of real estate companies, and I surveyed and interviewed real estate agents to find out what they know about the issue, whether customers worry about place names when they make decisions to purchase or rent houses, and what general responses the agents have to address such concerns. In a sense, this study tries to look at the relationship of nature–language–society. In other words, I review how topography and a related natural disaster are linked to place names and how its growing awareness is felt in society, specifically in the field of the real estate business.

2

Scientific Versus Local Knowledge

Right after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the importance of local knowledge about place names was reconsidered in anticipation that it may contribute to disaster risk reduction. For example, a stone monument showing the highest point of a tsunami before 2011 was rediscovered; a precept called “Tsunami Tendenko” that encourages people to run away on their own without searching or waiting for family members was appreciated; historical records that warned people about the possibility of disaster were analyzed. This is because the 2011 disaster was bigger than the disaster risk reduction measures (breakwaters, evacuation routes, hazard maps, etc.) that the national and local governments prepared based on scientific knowledge. In some affected areas, local knowledge showed the magnitude of disaster and how to evacuate more accurately than scientific knowledge. Today, contribution of local knowledge to disaster risk reduction is an important topic because it, like scientific knowledge, saves lives (Gaillard and Mercer 2012, p. 96). “Local knowledge” as a concept was initially developed by Clifford Geertz in his book, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, which was published in 1983 (Yanow 2004, p. 12). In recent years, the importance of local knowledge has been discussed and contrasted with scientific knowledge by scholars in many fields (e.g., Yanow 2004 in organizational studies; Purcell 1998, Sillitoe 2007, and Agrawal 1998 in international development; Failing et al. 2007 and Raymond et al. 2010 in environmental management; Mercer et al. 2009 and Gaillard and Mercer 2012 in disaster management; Fischer 2000 in policy studies). Scientific knowledge is characterized as theory-based, abstracted, generalized, expert-constructed, academy-based, technical-professional, explicit, and scholarly.

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Local knowledge is practice-based, context-specific, interactively derived, lived experience-based, practical reasoning, tacit and everyday (Yanow 2004, p. 12). Mercer et al. (2009, p. 217) described local knowledge as: a body of knowledge existing within or acquired by local people over a period of time through accumulation of experiences, society-nature relationships, community practices and institutions, and by passing it down through generations.

This explanation of local knowledge represents the nature of place names well. Chiba (1983, p. 108) thinks that ordinary place names including those that indicate disaster in Japan are three-dimensional space that local people have perceived and been aware of for a very long time. In this paper, I maintain that two types of local knowledge are present in names that refer to disaster: (1) knowledge created by folklorists who belong to local and/or national folklore and place name societies and (2) knowledge that local real estate agents have accumulated and preserved. Whereas folklorists strive for methodological rigor and generalizability, real estate agents do not. In recent years, scientists have shown an interest in place names that indicate disaster. Scientists study the subject using logic and scientific methodology in order to create a tool that can contribute to disaster prevention. Their studies are based on knowledge of place names made by folklorists, but not real estate agents.

3

Literature Review

Publication trends. Publication on the relationship between place names and disaster is growing after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Wisdom of forefathers that was planted in place names has been identified and introduced to people. A book search in the two most widely used internet book stores in Japan (Honto and Amazon) found 15 books that are related to the topic. Ten books were published after the 2011 disaster (67%). Some of the titles are Place names alarm us of disasters – Protect ourselves by knowing the origin of the place names; Be careful about these place names – Large earthquakes and big tsunami will hit towns; Nankai tsunami hidden in place names. Five books were published before the 2011 disaster by a single author between 1986 and 1995. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami was a significant event that stimulated interest in the relationship between place names and natural disasters. The target audience of these 15 books is the general public, and most of the authors are affiliated with Nihon Chimei Kenkyujo (The Japan Place Names Research Center) established in 1981 by the late Kenichi Tanigawa who was known for his research in folklore mostly outside academic institutions and one of the leading figures in folklore in Japan. Old place names are disappearing due to development and consolidation of municipalities. This trend alarmed the Center so it tries to protect old place names by advocating their significance, discovering cultural meanings in place names, and connecting the names to Japanese identity. Many newspaper articles

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on the topic introduce studies conducted by researchers who belong to the Center. Influenced by the Center’s approach to discover meanings in place names, research in these books uses less rigorous methodologies compared to scientific knowledge production; thus, their presentation is subjective from an academic point of view. In Japan, place name studies are carried out mostly by folklorists from outside academic institutions. This is different from toponymy in Europe, which is wellplaced in academic institutions. Also, the place name studies in Japan have not experienced a critical turn, that is, the consideration of power and politics lodged in place names in the Western scholarship of toponymy (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). Nonacademic studies. Dazai (2013) lists 13 major types of place names that indicate floods and landslides which can be detected by pronunciation (Table 1). In these place names, Chinese characters were used as a phonetic symbol rather than its meaning. Thus, understanding the meaning of a place name through interpretation of the meaning of Chinese characters can be misleading. For example, a place name, Ume-damachi, reminds us of a field full of Japanese apricots, as ume in Chinese characters means a Japanese apricot. However, ume indicates land filled up with sand and soil that was carried by floods if we adopt the interpretation of its pronunciation. In many places, Chinese characters with good meanings such as beauty, goodness, and likability are used instead of Chinese characters that match Table 1 Major disaster indicators in place names. (After Dazai 2013, p. 109) Pronunciation Azuki Azabu Ara Ikari Ume Oshi

Kure Taki Tsubakura

Nuku Hanare Kuma Tsuru

Meaning Collapse, the nature of the soil that is easy to collapse Tend to have landslides Get rough, get violent Be furious, overflow Land filled up with sand and soil that were carried by floods Land where an earth bank was cut by floods, land to where sediment was carried by floods Land that was easy to collapse or has collapsed in the past Places that are more likely to be cliffs and tend to have landslides Collapsed land, collapsed land due to landslides Land that often has flash floods and landslides Collapsed or disconnected land due to earthquakes and landslides Tend to have floods because a river has a winding watercourse Land that tends to have floods

Place name examples Azuki-hata, Azuki-zaka Azabu Ara-sawa, Ara-tozawa Ikari-gaseki, Ikari-ta Ume-damachi, Ume-noki Oshi-komi, Oshi-wake

Kuri-u (Kure’s corrupted word form) Taki-nosawa Tsubaki, Tsubame-sawa (Tsubaki and Tsubame are related to Tsubakura) Hira-nuki (Nuki is related to Nuku) Hanare-mori Kuma-kura Tsuru-gasone, Tsuru-maki

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with disaster meanings of pronunciations. So, Ume-damachi uses the Chinese character of ume (meaning: a Japanese apricot) instead of the Chinese character of ume (meaning: filling up). Nakane (2013) selected place names in Aichi and Gifu prefectures that had disasters and/or are likely to have disasters and explains their disaster-related meanings by making reference to an etymological dictionary of place names, various references including historical documents, other place name researchers’ interpretations, and elders’ stories and topographic conditions of the places. His disasterrelated place names are categorized into five groups: cliff place names (e.g., Fuki), marine transgression place names (e.g., Ama-gun), marshy place names (e.g., Ashi-hara), landslide place names (e.g., Nagi-no), and erosion place names (e.g., Hagi-hara). He also shows us the popularity of plant and animal names in Chinese characters to indicate the nature of places (Table 2). Pronunciation of these names is the same as the pronunciation that describes the conditions of places. It is believed that people changed their place names in Chinese character from disaster-related names to animal and plant names to avoid a negative image but to keep a warning of disaster. Studies on the relationship between place names and disaster outside of universities tend to look at pronunciation of place names whether they include the meaning of disaster. Usually researchers investigate a specific area such as a prefecture to see place names which contain the pronunciation that indicates disaster by referring to current and old maps as well as historical documents that include old place names. When they speculate that a place is named after disaster, they try to find whether it actually had disasters by analyzing historical documents and interviewing elders who are knowledgeable about the place. There are two methodological problems in this approach. First, each place name can have many different meanings and attaching a meaning of disaster to a place can be misleading. For example, kura indicates a hollowing out topography. However, the other meaning is warehouses. Kura also comes from iwa-kura which denotes a place where a god is sitting. There is no mechanism to objectively validate which meaning is correct. This is an issue of interpretation. Second, these studies do not address how representative these disaster-related place names are. They describe only places that had disasters. We do not know what percent of the places that use disaster place names actually had disasters or are vulnerable to disaster.

Table 2 Plant and animal place names that indicate disasters. (Based on Nakane 2013, p. 135) Pronunciation Kuri Kaki Kashi Saru Ushi Usagi

Meaning in Chinese character Chestnuts Persimmon Oak Monkey Cow Rabbit

Japanese meaning in its pronunciation Hollowing out Breaking off Tilting Eroding Deplorable (a condition of collapse) Filling up

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Academic publications. Disaster-related place name research in the academic field is methodologically more robust than nonacademic studies. Shibata et al. (2008) take a view that Japanese place names were expressed by a colloquial language before the introduction of Chinese characters. This means that when we interpret place names, the pronunciation of Chinese characters is more important than the meaning of Chinese characters (Furuya 1982, p. 25). Shibata et al. also take a stance that more than 90% of Japanese old place names indicate topographies that are mostly related to cliffs and collapsed geographical features. They tried to test this view in 12 local governments of Fukuoka Prefecture which were selected based on a higher possibility of or more past incidents of landslides. In these 12 municipalities, currently, 396 places are designated as landslide hazardous areas by the prefecture. Using old place name lists published in 1879, 259 places were identified. Among these, 198 places were recognized as disaster-prone areas in which the meaning of the old place names matched the designation of landslide hazardous areas. This is a 76% correspondence. Among those matched place names, three types of meaning were identified: (1) topography of collapse and erosion, (2) marshy topography, and (3) marshy and collapsing topography. In the first type, 17 words were identified such as haru/baru, maru, and naka among which haru/baru are applied in 14 place names. Only three words, Ya, ike, and shio, are used to represent the second type and 15 place names used ya. The third type is represented by the four words e, kuchi, yoshi, and nishi among which e is the most popular word used in eight place names. Kawai et al. (2009) tried to develop a method that can improve an explanatory power of seismic hazard by using bus stop names which can be applied to any metropolitan area in Japan. As discussed above, the meaning of a place name can be interpreted by its pronunciation or the meaning of Chinese characters used. Unlike other studies, Kawai and colleagues choose the meaning of Chinese characters rather than pronunciation. They also adopted bus stop names as a representative of place names instead of administrative place names, names of intersections, school names, station names, and park names. These two decisions were made by a comparative method using various data. While old administrative place names and school names have been replaced with new names due to consolidation and development/redevelopment, station and bus stop names tend to be more consistent. Also, there are more bus stop names that are widely distributed than station names. Thus, bus stop names are considered to represent the topography well. They compared the meaning of bus stop names in both Chinese characters and pronunciations with the topographies and found that bus stop names using the meaning of Chinese characters can explain the topographies better than the pronunciations. They compared bus stop names and topography in three metropolitan areas, Tokyo’s 23 wards, Osaka City, and Nagoya City, to see the degree of correspondence. The topography is measured by two types of soil, soft or stiff. Soft soil is more hazardous than stiff soil seismically. The result shows that 70–80% of stiff soil place names were actually on stiff soil and about 50% of soft soil place names were on soft soil in the three metropolitan areas.

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As these studies demonstrate, studies performed at academic institutions try to identify an effective method of place name utilization for disaster prevention in a more scientific way. Although these studies can lessen the problem of representativeness, there still remains the issue of how to interpret the meaning of place names.

4

Exploratory Study

Interest in place names that refer to disaster is recent, especially after 2011. Jutaku Shimpo, a specialist paper for the real estate industry, wrote about the importance of place names as a warning of disaster referring to a story of the Hiroshima landslide on August 20, 2014, which killed 74 people. The media paid attention to this disaster because it was revealed that the place was once allegedly called Yagi Jyarakuji Ashidani which means “an evil valley of a fallen snake.” As the name was very bad for a new subdivision that spreads at the foot of a forest, Yagi was used instead (Jutaku Shimpo 2014). Jutaku Shimpo’s viewpoint indicates place names’ possible influence on the real estate industry. In order to evaluate the degree of the effect on the industry, I conducted an exploratory study. First, I searched real estate companies that discuss places named for disaster in their homepages. I used the keywords “real estate companies” and “place names that refer disaster” which returned 5.3 million cases. I found 11 real estate companies among the first 700 cases. Checking the first 700 was determined to be enough as these eleven companies were identified in the first 200 cases and no company fitting the criteria was found in the latter 500 cases. I analyzed the contents of places named for disaster in the websites of these eleven companies. Then, I mailed a survey to these eleven companies. The questions were open-ended and could be answered in 10–15 min. The survey was designed to find out why real estate companies post articles about place names that mean disaster and how to treat properties that are located there. Out of eleven companies, only one responded to my request. I sent a reminder to the ten non-response companies but none replied. According to Seiyama (2004, p. 68), usually, the response rate to mail surveys in Japan is 20%. This rate does not distinguish mails sent to government offices versus private corporations. According to Professor Masanobu Fukutani of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, who is an expert in survey research, a response rate of private companies is about 10%. Therefore, this study’s response rate of 9% is very low but not unusual in the Japanese research environment. Next, I mailed a survey to four major industrial associations of the real estate industry in Japan. The questions were a mix of Likert scale and open-ended questions which could be answered within 5 min. The survey asked about the industrial associations’ stance on place names that refer to disaster, including their knowledge on the matter. No association responded to my survey. This was not surprising since the previous survey also had a very low response rate. These industrial associations may not have enough knowledge on place names to provide an agreed-upon opinion as an industry.

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Finally, I conducted a phone interview with real estate companies in Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, Japan. Beppu is a port city with a population of about 120,000 in 2015. Through i-Town Page, an Internet phone book, 46 real estate companies were identified in Beppu City. By close examination of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the companies, the 46 were reduced to 30 due to duplication. Among the 30, one company had discontinued its business, one was a ready-built house business (not really a real estate company), six did not answer the phone, two did not have a phone connection anymore, and three declined my interview. Thus, data for this analysis is from phone interviews with 17 real estate companies in Beppu City, Japan, content from 11 real estate company websites, and 1 real estate company survey.

5

Discussion

Websites. The websites of eleven real estate companies included articles about place names that refer to disasters. The real estate companies introduced the topic either as news or as educational information. Six treated the issue as news under the labels of news, topics, and news and magazines; five presented it as educational information for customers, using headings like useful knowledge, useful information, or a column for living. Nine of the eleven articles appeared in the real estate company web pages after 2012. The other two were not dated. It is likely that inclusion of the information in their homepages was stimulated by the growing publication of books on the topic and major disasters that took place recently in Japan which were widely reported in the mass media (e.g., the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, the Izu Oshima landslide in 2013, and the Hiroshima landslides in 2014). The major theme of these articles was prevention of damage (Table 3), and all the articles were obtained from magazines and books, that is, the information came from secondary sources. Mail surveys. In this study, I mailed surveys to four major industrial associations of the real estate industry in Japan as well as to the eleven real estate companies. I had only one response. The four associations may not have replied because of the nature of local knowledge or perhaps because the topic just recently received media attention and there is no consensus as an industry. A reason for the low response rate from the eleven real estate companies could be that they included the topic on their website for conversation in the form of news or educational information, not as information on which action should be taken. In contrast to large companies and industrial associations, a small-scale locally based company can express its opinions easily because these opinions derive from the owner’s corporate philosophy. The company that responded to my survey is such a company. Here, we call it “Sun Realty” (a pseudonym) and discuss the response. “Sun Realty” in Aichi Prefecture was established in 2013 by Mr. Yamada (a pseudonym) after gaining 13 years of work experience in car and house sales. Motivated by the Hiroshima landslide of 2014, the company published an Internet article entitled “Natural disasters and real estate: points to choose land resistant to

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Table 3 Disaster articles on real estate web pages Publication date No date No date April 12, 2012 November 12, 2013 March 11, 2014 May 24, 2014 June 19, 2014 June 27, 2014 October 14, 2014 December 2014 January 19, 2015

Title of the web page article Prevention of disaster damage: protect ourselves from an earthquake directly under Tokyo: a risk we can find from place names Houses that is good at preventing disaster damage, vol. 3: Selection of a safe house by learning the wisdom of predecessors Know the dangerous places during disaster by place names Safe and secure land that Japanese gods teach us Natural disaster and real estate: points to choose land resistant to natural disasters The relationship between place names and the ground: What is the relationship in your areas? Let’s visit the old figure of the land Points to find a town that can prevent damage by a disaster through looking at maps Place names and disaster About a measure against natural disasters Place names that are related to natural disasters and that worry us

natural disasters.” The reason for publishing it comes from the corporate philosophy that the mission of the real estate company is to inform customers of the facts as much as possible and let them be convinced that they have made the right purchasing decision based on thorough knowledge of the property. Having this philosophy, it is natural that Sun Realty informs its customers of the relationship between place names and natural disaster. In the sales area that Sun Realty covers, some properties are located in places that include references to disaster in their names. Nagoya City in Aichi Prefecture is on the Nobi Plain and faces Ise Bay. The city’s north, west, and south have alluvium soils and in some parts the altitude is below sea level. Thus, Nagoya has areas that tend to flood and has place names such as Ashi-hara, which means a plain of reeds. In the Tokai torrential rainfall of 2002, the Shinkawa Bank in West Ward of Nagoya City collapsed, and the flooded area was called Ashi-hara neighborhood (Nakane 2012, p. 127). In his business territory, Mr. Yamada examines place names and compares them with city hazard maps. If they correspond, he explains to his customers that the possibility of disaster exists. He handled a property called Naru-mi. The place does not face the sea at all, but Naru-mi means “the sea makes a sound” and the property was near the sea before reclamation of a foreshore. He explained the risk associated with the property to his customer in multiple ways. First, he showed the customer an old map that indicates previous disasters and explained that the place name, Naru-mi, predicts a possibility of flood. Second, he shared information from residents living in the area about the local history of disaster. Third, he showed a

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city’s hazard map that indicates it is within a hazardous area. Fourth, he showed its altitude using a Google map. With this multifaceted explanation of risk, he transacted with the customer. Because of his sincere business practice, he continues to have a good business relationship with this customer. Even though a property’s name portends disaster, if it is an attractive property, he will deal with it. According to him, what is required for real estate agents is to inform customers of the facts. Since the Hiroshima landslide of 2014, he has a number of inquiries about place names from customers. In Sun Realty, one in ten inquiries is about names, for example, “Tell me about old place names,” “Teach me about the origin of the place names,” and “Teach me about place names that indicate danger.” For Mr. Yamada, the role of real estate agents is to give appropriate advice to customers based on the origin of place names especially old place names, documents in the past, hearsay, and data on the ground. In Sun Realty, scientific knowledge is represented by hazard maps, and local knowledge is symbolized by place names that have been collected and classified by folklorists. This knowledge is supplemented by Mr. Yamada’s investigation of local areas. These types of knowledge are regarded as important to give appropriate information to customers. Phone interviews. All the real estate companies I interviewed are small-scale local agents handling properties mostly within Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, Japan. Among the 17 interviewees, 8 people knew about places named for disaster and 9 people did not. The agents who knew about them tend to be older and have worked many years in the industry in the city. Four aged agents said koaza (a subsection of a village) names inform us of the likelihood of occurring disasters. They learned the linkage between koaza names and disasters in the city through their long-term work experiences. Two agents learned about places named for disaster through television and the Internet after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. One agent said when he managed an apartment, he realized the link between its name and an earthquake that occurred. Another agent said he learned about the connection through reading reference books for the examination of registered real estate brokers. Koaza names are usually not on the map but they are in the register. Old real estate agents know that koaza names indicate the characteristics of the places – not only disaster but also historical attributes. For example, they know the location of old battlefields during the Warring States period (1467–1568) by place names that usually customers avoid for fear of a curse. They know which areas have solid ground and which areas have soft ground in the city by their place names. Thus, these old agents know a place called Hamawaki (meaning: a side of a shore) used to be reclaimed land. Through transactions, young agents learn koaza names, but they may not have learned their associations with disaster and historical meanings. Many young agents mainly use existing place names of town and districts and do not pay much attention to old place names that appeared in the register as koaza names. On the other hand, old agents who have worked for 30–40 years interacting with the local people have obtained good knowledge of place names and their meanings. They have studied the association between koaza names and historical and topographical features. Among the 17 companies interviewed, 2 have inquiries from customers about place names. Eight companies have inquiries from customers about disaster in

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general, but not in regard to place names. In one of the companies, about 20% of the customers ask a question about disaster – mostly related to tsunami. This type of inquiry increased significantly after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami but it is gradually decreasing. Eleven companies think place names will become more important in the real estate industry, while three companies think it will not. The three other companies did not have any comments on this issue. The major reasons stated for place names becoming important are that there are a growing number of customers who are concerned about disasters; there are properties where disasters occur; place names tell us something important; and any industry needs to take disasters into account nowadays, especially Beppu city, which has the sea (tsunami), mountains (landslides), volcanoes (eruption), and earthquakes. The reason for not becoming important is that instead of emphasizing place names, it is more important to consider hazard maps because they are more scientific and trusted.

6

Conclusion

In this study, I explored the real estate industry’s relationship with the knowledge of place names that refer to disaster, an issue which has gained more importance in recent years. In this concluding part, I situate it in the discussion of types of knowledge (scientific, folklore, and local) in relation to disaster risk reduction. Scientists have long possessed the idea that scientific knowledge is superior, significant, and more valid than local knowledge, which is inferior, insignificant, and not valid due to lack of methodological rigor. However, recent scholarship gradually acknowledges the importance of local knowledge. The field of disaster risk reduction reflects this trend. Some real estate agents mentioned that the knowledge of place names has become less important as we have hazard maps nowadays. However, the majority of real estate agents interviewed believe that place names will become more important in the industry. When we consider the imperfectness of hazard maps in saving lives, the latter assessment is more valid. Hazard maps are maps that show projected disaster areas and locations of disaster damage prevention facilities such as evacuation sites and routes. They are made for the purpose of lessening the damage caused by natural disasters and are utilized to prepare disaster damage prevention measures. To create a hazard map, we need to have scientifically derived geographical information such as the history of the ground in a locality, the characteristics of the ground and topography that can be causes for disaster, a past record of disaster, and evacuation sites and routes (Geographical Information Authority of Japan 2016). Hazard maps are the product of scientific knowledge but provide only a projection. In the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the damage of the tsunami was wider than the range expected by hazard maps. Report of the Committee for Technical Investigation on Countermeasures for Earthquakes and Tsunamis Based on the Lessons Learned from the “2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake” by Central Disaster Management Council indicates that hazard maps created a false sense of security to people and may well have aggravated the devastation by the tsunami

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(Central Disaster Management Council 2011a). In line with the report, Katada (2014) shows that Unosumai-cho district in Kamaishi City, Iwate Prefecture, had a flood area by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that was much wider than the past flood area during Meiji and Showa Eras which is still much more extensive than the flood area projected by the city’s hazard map of tsunami. In Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, where 3,547 people died and 428 people are still missing as of December 31, 2015 (Miyagi Prefectural Government 2016), drowning by tsunami was the main cause of death: According to National Police Agency, 91% of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami victims in Miyagi Prefecture died by drowning (Fire and Disaster Management Agency 2016). This city’s hazard map designated only very small plots of the city as tsunami flood areas, while actual flood areas by the tsunami were much wider as shown on Fig. 1. Hazard maps have three problems in terms of usage: they have a low level of utilization, they are difficult to interpret, and they are distrusted due to their imperfect information. For the first problem, the above mentioned report shows that only 20% of people acknowledged the importance of hazard maps in the survey on evacuation behaviors in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami: Nine percent of people posted a hazard map on the wall, and 11% kept one in their houses and looked at it occasionally (Central Disaster Management Council 2011a). In another survey conducted by Asahi Shimbun (October 24, 2015), 63% of the participants (2,009 respondents) said they do not use hazard maps because: “I never heard of it (5%),” “I do not know it well (45%),” “no hazard map is available in the areas where I live (9%),” “I do not feel anxiety (27%),” and “others (14%).” The second problem

Fig. 1 Predicted and actual tsunami flood areas. (Created by author; data from Central Disaster Management Council 2011b)

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is the requirement of technical knowledge to understand the map. To comprehend it fully, legends need to be understood. This requires a specific ability to decipher (Gaillard and Mercer 2012, p. 102). The third problem comes from a knowledge gap between the scientific and technical experts who create hazard maps and the residents who use them. The survey by Asahi Shimbun mentioned above shows the accounts of people who do not trust hazard maps fully: A 30-year-old woman says “my home is only a couple of hundred meters away from the ocean. I don’t trust the hazard map because the possibility of flood damage it predicts is too low.” A 75-year-old man says “the place I live used to be a marsh. The hazard map should include such information.” A 60-year-old woman says “a junior high school that is designated as an emergency evacuation site is located along a river that is meandering. Even for an amateur, it is not right to designate it as an emergency evacuation site over there.” The real estate industry lags behind other industries such as manufacturing and construction in considering disasters. The industry’s lack of concern over natural disaster is mentioned by local real estate agents in Beppu City. For example, in real estate training courses, there is no topic on disaster nor do they invite experts on disaster for lectures. At the local company level, real estate companies sometimes confuse place names that refer to disaster with hazard maps and topographical knowledge. Also, many young real estate agents do not know about koaza names and they are not eager to learn their meanings. Knowledge of place names is maintained by old real estate agents who have worked in the locality for 30–40 years interacting with local people. The knowledge is idiosyncratic which requires knowledge of local histories, legends, Yamato kotoba (native Japanese words), Chinese characters, and the landscape. It is context-specific knowledge so extensive work experience in a locality is required. Like traditional ecological knowledge, the knowledge of place names held by aged local real estate agents will disappear if we do not put forth any conscious effort to preserve it. Folklorists compensate for it somewhat by their continuous and growing efforts to advance knowledge of place names, although the aged local real estate agents’ knowledge is more contextualized in each locality. In terms of disaster risk reduction, integrating scientific knowledge, folklore, and local knowledge is important. Gaillard and Mercer (2012, p. 95) mention that in order to improve disaster knowledge, utilization of different forms of knowledge is valuable and collaboration of stakeholders working across different scales is necessary. In this study, I agree with Gaillard and Mercer’s assertion. Folklore knowledge improves our awareness of disaster and makes us seek out information of possible disaster risks when we make decisions on where to live. Books on place names by folklorists serve as a catalyst to obtaining a hazard map and seeking information on the meanings of koaza names from local real estate agents whether the koaza names indicate possible disasters or not. Scientific knowledge (revised hazard maps after due consideration of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and other recent severe disasters) shows where the danger is and how to act by knowing emergency evacuation sites and routes. Local knowledge of local real estate agents complements scientific knowledge when hazard maps of an area are unavailable or provide

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insufficient designation of hazardous zones. Because local real estate agents have valuable knowledge about place names that can contribute to reducing disaster risks at the local level, it is important to study this topic further.

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Miyagi Prefectural Government. (2016). The Damage Situation on the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami as of December 31, 2015. Accessed on 4 Feb 2016 at http://www.pref.miyagi.jp/ site/ej-earthquake/km-higaizyoukyou.html. Nakane, Y. (2012). Place names in Aichi: From marine transgression names and place-names of disaster to place-names of metal. Nagoya: Fubaisha. Nakane, Y. (2013). Disaster-related place-names in Aichi and Gifu prefectures: Places that include danger. In K. Tanigawa (Ed.), Place-names are alarming us: Disaster and place-names in Japan. Tokyo: Fuzanbo International. Purcell, T. W. (1998). Indigenous knowledge and applied anthropology: Questions of definition and direction. Human Organization, 57(3), 258–272. Raymond, C. M., Fazey, L., Reed, M. S., Stringer, L. C., Robinson, G. M., & Evely, A. C. (2010). Integrating local and scientific knowledge for environmental management. Journal of Environmental Management, 91, 1776–1777. Rose-Redwood, R., Alderman, D., & Azaryahu, M. (2010). Geographies of toponymic inscription: New directions in critical place-name studies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(4), 453–470. Seiyama, K. (2004). Introduction to social research. Tokyo: Yuhikaku. Sekido, A. (1988). A viewpoint of place-name study and its genealogy: Mainly focusing on placenames of small scale. Rekishi Chirigaku (Historical Geography), 140, 17–27. Shibata, H., Tomoya, I., & Satomi, M. (2008). Availability of an old place-name for disaster prevention planning. Paper presented at the 37th meeting of Japan Society of Civil Engineers held at Hokkaido University. Sillitoe, P. (Ed.). (2007). Local science vs. global science: Approaches to indigenous knowledge in international development. New York: Berghahn Books. Yamamoto, Y., & Yoshimura, C. (2012). Long-period ground motion simulation of TokaiTonankai-Nankai coupled earthquake based on large-scale 3D FEM. Journal of Structural and Construction Engeneering, AIJ, 77(677), 1055–1064. Yanagida, K. (1936). The study of place-names. In The Standard Edition of Yanagida Kunio Collection 20, 1962. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo. Yanow, D. (2004). Translating local knowledge at organizational peripheries. British Journal of Management, 15, 9–25.

Part XIV Language of Political Organization, Boundaries, and Borders

The Language of Borders

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Victor Konrad, Jussi P. Laine, Ilkka Liikanen, James W. Scott, and Randy Widdis

Contents 1 Imagining and Constructing Border Words in a Bounded World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Expanding the Border Lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Expressing the Meaning of Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Writing and Speaking Borders in an Increasingly Bordered “Borderless World” . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Limits and edges of human experience, power, and control have been expressed in language from the time of earliest writing, and likely before then in the spoken words of ordering and bordering space and territory among people. Our brief discussion of the language of borders is not a comprehensive examination of the topic, but an invitation to evaluate how we speak and write about borders that are increasingly a part of our world. This chapter conveys our view of components and processes which help to understand how language of borders emerged, where border vocabularies are headed, and why this matters as we attempt to comprehend how to accommodate global diversity and population in a finite, changing global environment. To accomplish this, we explore the imaginary of border conceptions and social construction of border words, address the expanding V. Konrad (*) Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] J. P. Laine · I. Liikanen · J. W. Scott University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland e-mail: jussi.laine@uef.fi; ilkka.liikanen@uef.fi; james.scott@uef.fi R. Widdis University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_52

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border lexicon, examine the expression of meaning of borders, and assess the efficacy of the language of borders in a world at once more bounded and more” “borderless.” Keywords

Border imaginaries, lexicon, and meaning · Speaking and writing borders · Binaries and parallels · Walls and barriers

Limits and edges of human experience, power, and control have been expressed in language from the time of earliest writing and likely before then in the spoken words of ordering and bordering space and territory among people. In retrospect, we can identify milestones in the development of the language of borders. Some of these moments are documented, like the “birth of territory” in the Treaty of Westphalia, when boundaries were enshrined in international law (Elden 2013). Yet many of the turning points, epiphanies, and realizations in the language of borders remain unexplored and understood only partially. This concerns, for example, the legacy of the American and French revolutions on border language. Also significant is the turn from dynastic rule and related conceptions of sovereignty to notions of popular sovereignty and the language of borders as frames of self-governing political communities. Our brief discussion of the language of borders is not a comprehensive examination of the topic. It is, however, an introduction and an invitation to evaluate how we speak and write about the borders that are increasingly a part of our world and the way in which we are dividing and shaping human spaces, particularly between nations and identities. The chapter conveys our view of several components and processes which may help to understand more effectively how the language of borders emerged, where border vocabularies may be headed, and why this matters as we attempt to comprehend how to accommodate global diversity and population in a finite, changing global environment. First, we explore the imaginary of border conceptions and the social construction of border words. Second, we address the expanding border lexicon. Third, we examine the expression of the meaning of borders through a selection of border terms. Finally, we assess the efficacy of the language of borders in a world that is increasingly both more bounded and more “borderless.”

1

Imagining and Constructing Border Words in a Bounded World

Border words are universal because people, from time immemorial, have imagined difference beyond familiar and proximate spaces and places and their inhabitants. These words are found in every language to convey border types, ranges, intensities, and other variations, as well as origins, processes, and impacts of bordering. Although this study is not a comparative review of how border language has

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emerged in different linguistic contexts, it is important to acknowledge that borders are viewed differently in various geographical, ethnic, cultural, and hence linguistic circumstances. This study focuses on how border language is conveyed in English, although some of the border words are actually derived from concepts developed in other cultures and expressed in English. Imaginaries of difference are evident in the cartographies of indigenous peoples worldwide as they speculate about what is beyond the horizon of sight and experience. Whether it is the “Ultima Thule” of classical European geographies, or the forbidden spaces within and beyond Han Chinese control, imaginaries of difference have led to othering, exclusion, and ultimately the construction of borders, and the articulation of border concepts in writing, drawing, and speech, as well as other forms of communication. Ideas of differentiation are expressed in words to convey unknown and uninhabitable space. These are lacunae at the edge of civilized and human space, places that conjure monsters and barbarians. The edges of these cartographies are largely blank. But, when people migrate, another set of imaginaries takes hold. Space beyond the edge becomes frontier and marchland; direction is asserted; motion is applied; the geopolitical emerges. In the wake of this exploration and conquest, the border becomes adjunct, it moves from far to be near, and it is contiguous. On the one hand, circumstance and circumscription contextualize frontiers into regional, continental, and global scaling, and on the other hand, edges and limits are confirmed by a vocabulary expressing notions of boundaries, defined sides, flanks, and extremities. The lines, after all, separate. Boundless, infinite, and spacious imaginaries are dissected and populated with lines that range from boundaries represented exclusively on maps to the incised barriers of durable fences and walls confirming spatial separation (Fig. 1). Geography offers borders. Rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, deserts, and other natural features provide convenient boundaries, and they have been utilized for millennia to define limits of human habitation, activity, and control. No wonder that their names and descriptions have entered the vocabulary of borders: cordillera, continental divide, strait, and riparian. Some natural mountain features – the Alps, the Urals, the Andes, the Himalaya, and the “Rockies” – are synonymous with both boundary and barrier in vast areas of the globe. They have featured prominently in the bordering of these regions throughout history. Other features, the Great Lakes, for example, provide convenient components for international boundary building, in this case between the United States and Canada. The Great Lakes, as is the case with many geographical features, both separate and connect, and herein lie fundamental characteristics of borders and, by extension, the language of borders. Origins of the language of borders are closely linked to establishing and legitimizing power and possession. Historically, a major shift emerges with the formation of the modern state system and the separation of the concept of state from the person of the ruler (Skinner 1989). Instead of marking the boundaries of the lands in possession of the ruler (Latin estate, English estates), borders are gradually understood as territorial frames of the state in the sense of an organized system of administration under more or less set principles of government (stato, state). Importantly, the language of borders becomes branded not only by these new

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Fig. 1 Walls of the world. Map by Thierry Gauthe, data by Elisabeth Vallet, published in Courrier International – 2015 (available online at https://www.courrierinternational.com/sites/ci_master/ files/styles/image_original_2048/public/assets/images/mur_ds_le_monde8.jpg?itok=eSSqidDr). (Reproduced with permission)

principles but also by the struggle to change the principles and establish alternative modes of rule. In early-modern town republics, town walls are vital elements in pushing back against feudal rule, in enlarging the sphere of self-rule and civic liberties, in organizing free trade, and in establishing the rule of law. Following the American and French revolutions and the formation of modern nation-states, the language of borders is bound to strategies of challenge and survival within not just formal political institutions but also within civil society and new platforms of social and political mobilization, that is, to building nations in the sense of new kinds of self-governing political communities. Within this spectrum, borders and the linguistic weight of borders vary extensively. Some borders, the US-Mexico border, for example, are recognized simply by mention of “the border.” Others are more subtle and need to be qualified like the Mason-Dixon line. Beyond the spectrum of borders

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on the land are boundaries in water – the 200-mile limit – and more recently in space, lunar claims. For centuries, the Great Wall of China has been viewed as the epitome of bordering, a metaphor for border, apparently visible from space. Yet, the walls are a mere 30 feet wide and they blend in with their surroundings. Satellite imagery confirms that the Great Wall cannot be seen from space (Dempsey 2014). The view from space has confirmed and illustrated many other borders and acts of bordering. Satellite imagery has brought precision and resolution to border studies and expanded the language of border delineation. “Forestation, agricultural practices, electrical usage at night, and water usage can all affect the lay of the land and how landscapes of neighboring countries can differ dramatically when viewed from afar” (Dempsey 2014, p. 1). Environmental disasters, pollution, and even weather reporting enhanced by satellite imagery have introduced or enhanced border concepts and language. Among these are the jet stream, hurricane tracks, and pollution plumes. Due to different agricultural policies and demands for food, Kazakhstan and China border the arable. India and Pakistan actually illuminate the length of their contested border at night to create an “orange border” seen from space. North Korea remains a “dark spot” in nighttime satellite images, and this dark spot confirms the exact boundaries with China and South Korea. A classic example of border delimitation by satellite is the line between the Dominican Republic and Haiti where the “deforestation line” is clearly evident by the lack of vegetation cover on the Haitian side (NASA 2002). The recent refugee migrations from Syria and other war-torn nations in the Middle East region are documented by satellite images where borders of Jordan and Hungary are illustrated as “migration dams” (Huffington Post 2016; HRW 2016). Higher-resolution images allowed NATO to confirm Russian roadblocks, troop movements, and other military activity in re-bordering Ukraine and Russia (AAAS 2015). High resolution also expands accessibility of definitive boundary confirmation to a vast consumer market (mytopo.com). Borders are binary constructs. Borders divide and create dichotomies. Yet, borders establish dialectics with a sense of in-betweenness. No matter where a border is placed in a region of indeterminateness, some post-border outs that are actually in, and some post-border ins that are actually out, will be evident (Rescher 2007, pp. 49–50). The border, then, is fraught with contradictions about what is in and what is out, and this construct results in errors of omission and commission, in what Hegel termed “Flussigkeit” (unstable fluidity). Whereas some geographers have called for a critical engagement with this dialectic (Bauder 2011), most scholars have either focused on the “two-faced” (Janus-like) nature of borders or explored the regions of interaction surrounding borders (van Houtum and Pijpers 2007). In this way, the ends of the spectrum of dialectical meaning have been addressed and attributed in border language, but the range and richness of fluidity in-between remains to be articulated. Border language, certainly in English and the European languages, remains hung up on the dividing line, yet it is clear that throughout history the key concepts of the border have been contested constantly and changed. Even today, new concepts and words to express borders and bordering are emerging.

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Expanding the Border Lexicon

Border studies have expanded the lexicon. Whereas disciplinary perspectives on borders characteristically addressed the lines as the limits of territory, more recent cross-disciplinary approaches have considered borders as regions, thus enlarging the aperture to view the spatial content of bordered lands. As a result, many concepts and words have entered the vocabulary of borders. Some of these additions have simply increased the breadth and scope of border understanding. Others, borderlands (Bolton 1921; Anzaldua 2007), borders as social constructs (Paasi 1996), crossborder region (Scott 1999), liminality (Turner 1969), and third space (Dear 2013), prominent among them, have changed, fundamentally, the nature and direction of border studies and the lexicon employed in the discourse of borders. Scholars employ various languages of spatial organization such as empires and borders to frame their interpretations. For example, in his award-winning book The Comanche Empire, Pekka Hämäläinen argues for a view that rejects Frederick Jackson Turner’s binary dividing line between civilization (Europeans) and savagery (Indians) and instead sees the frontier “as a zone of cultural interpenetration” and “as a socially charged space where Indians and invaders competed for resources and land but also shared skills, food, fashions, customs, languages, and beliefs” (Hämäläinen 2008, p. 7). Because the Indian-white frontier transforms all parties, regardless of their relative position of power, it serves to create a kind of a third space of cultural hybridity. With this argument, Hämäläinen attempts to synthesize and reconcile the frontier/borderland dichotomy. Following the example of Hämäläinen and others, borderland historians have begun to rewrite North American history “as a history of entanglements – of shifting accommodations – rather than one of expansion” (Hämäläinen and Truett 2011, p. 347). And yet, the entanglements they study are, for the most part, those of a more distant past, of places and times far removed from the borderlands of today. The idea of bordered land serves as a wall that impedes historical scholars from addressing themes and questions that pertain to the transformations taking place in borderlands during the modern and postmodern eras. While there is still a need to study frontiers and borderlands during the precontact and colonial periods, we must, at the same time, not limit our investigations to places and periods far removed from present-day borderlands. We need to construct conceptual bridges to connect the borderlands of the more distant past and those of today. But what kind of conceptual building materials should we use? And, will these concepts produce a vocabulary that enhances or complicates the border lexicon? Postmodernism, space-time compression, and the deterritorialization/ reterritorialization paradox of globalization provide foundations upon which to build the syntax of a spatial grammar frame (Widdis 2015). The syntax of this spatial grammar, which is used to study borderlands, is centered on the related notions of flows, gateways, hubs, corridors, and networks. These concepts are in part the product of a postmodernist perspective that encourages us to develop tools to help us see, think, and speak about borderland processes and landscapes. Such a perspective lends itself to a view of the borderland as a liminal geographical space/

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historical time, place of ambiguity, and indeterminacy which is constantly in a state of evolution. Flows, corridors, networks, and other related conceptions move us beyond the limitations imposed by essentialist views of nation-states and associated borders and help us to identify and understand those dynamic internal and external forces that configure, entangle, and reconfigure borderlands as they evolve over space and time. The concept of space-time compression serves as an invaluable tool to help us grasp the complexities of borderland evolution. The term, first coined by David Harvey (1989), but an idea that can be traced back to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844), is used by geographers when considering how societies have used transportation and communication technologies to reduce the friction of distance and facilitate the interaction among places. While geographers understand that space- and timeadjusting technologies have existed for centuries, they also recognize that the nature, impact, and pace of such developments have rapidly accelerated during the transition to modernity and postmodernity. Carried to an extreme extent, this concept has been used by those who argue for the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1992), the “end of geography” (O’Brien 1992), the “death of distance” (Cairncross 1997), the “borderless world” (Ohmae 1995), the “vanishing of distance” (Reich 2001), a “flat world” (Friedman 2005), and the “spaces of flows” replacing the “spaces of places” (Castells 1996, 1997, 1998). These phrases constituted the core of a language of advanced globalization which dominated much of the scholarly discourse during the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century period. More recently, it has become obvious that space still matters. Technology may reduce distance but it does not place us all into one location. There are many kinds of spaces just as there are multiple distances, and they all differ according to scale and the degree of connectivity. Because differences exist in space, space cannot be annihilated by time. In fact, one could argue that while time has been compressed, space has been extended, at least for those who live in circumstances in which it is more likely that they can take advantage of such technologies. Technology has created a space paradox: it has reduced distance, thus shrinking space, and expanded the scope of interaction, thus extending space. Space is elastic and its elasticity varies among different groups across different places over time. Processes of space-time compression/space extension have reconfigured nations, regions, communities, and individuals, but the nature of such transformations has varied because they have occurred in different settings. Globalization has not produced a “homogeneous plain,” an “isotropic surface,” or even a “flat world.” Uneven geography ensures that such differentiation exists even in the face of economic, cultural, and social mobilities that reshape but do not eliminate territories (Agnew 1994, 2010), and by their association borders. Indeed, these processes have emphasized borders and expanded the border effect and the border lexicon. In the case of Canada and the United States, uneven economic development has produced differences both within and between borderland regions. Economic flows, in fact, can be regarded as resulting from asymmetries existing between trading partners (Van der Velde and van Houtum 2003). The asymmetrical dimensions of power expressed politically, economically, and socially play a major role in the

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evolution of borderlands. So too does the idea of paradox. Borders and their associated borderlands are full of contradictions. A border acts as both a barrier and a bridge and thus creates its own distinctive region borderland (Knotter 2002–2003). W.H New provides an interesting take on this idea of paradox in his study on Canadian-American relations when he states that the 49th parallel is “itself a synecdoche, a rhetorical part for the rhetorical whole-at once join[ing] and divid {ing} two nation-states, permit[ting] contact, influence, choice, trade. . .and difference as well” (New 1998, p. 6). Even though this part of the border covers only half of the “continental divide,” it has taken the ironic status that both creates and eliminates differences. It is this paradoxical and asymmetrical nature that, in the context of Canada and the United States, has produced a borderland that is a parallax. The regional frame that Canadians use to orient themselves in the territory known as North America is bounded east and west by the rest of Canada and north and south by their transborder relationships with neighboring American regions. These contradictory east-west and north-south forces have created a border parallax. A parallax is defined as “an apparent change in the position of an object resulting from which the change from the direction or position from which it is viewed” (Webster’s 1970, p. 1030). The ideological position, or ideological angle, from which the border is viewed, plays a major role in which its significance has been interpreted. At one extreme is the argument presented by nationalists, in the case of Canada, and exceptionalists, in the case of the United States, who largely ignore the important role that cross-border relationships have played in the development of each other’s countries, while at the other extreme is a position that too readily discounts, at least in Canada, the intrinsic political, economic, social, and cultural forces that contributed to the creation and maintenance of a distinctive country. The emergence of the European Union during the second half of the twentieth century likely did more to expand the lexicon of borders and bordering than any other “border shift” in modern times. Underlying the conceptualization of the EU were several bold moves in the wake of centuries of competition, warfare, alliances, and self-interest among increasingly constricted nation-states whose territories had shrunk from global empires to recidivist territories. These bold moves included placing collaboration, alignment, and integration above territorial demarcation and confirmation within the EU, and the moves were predicated, among other considerations, on the acknowledgment of the changing nature of borders, bordering, and borderlands in Europe. Foremost among these was the acknowledgment of the dynamism and productivity of cross-border regions (Scott 1999). The entrepreneurship of “Euroregions” has been well documented as well as their significance as drivers of regional cross-border cooperation (CBC) (Perkmann 2002, 2003; Anderson et al. 2003). Also evident in the EU, and to a lesser degree elsewhere, have been the growth of cross-border metropolitan regions as in the case of Luxembourg (Sohn 2012) and the linkage and coordination of world cities (Sassen 2002). City twinning at borders is highly developed in the EU but is also a common feature in other world regions (Joenniemi and Sergunin 2011). In many parts of the globe, places like Berlin and Istanbul are acknowledged as cities with significant border

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legacies, whereas Singapore, Juarez, and Jerusalem, among many others, continue to operate as border places in trade, politics, and culture.

3

Expressing the Meaning of Borders

Borders mean different things to different people, and those who have the occasion to cross or inhabit the border gain a variety of insights about how the border works and the impact that the border has on the lives of borderland residents, occasional border crossers, and those who do not cross. Vandervalk (2017) has illustrated in detail how Canadian residents of Stanstead, Quebec, ascribe different meanings to border landmarks and practices than their American neighbors in Derby Line, Vermont, while borderlanders on both sides of the line hold common understanding of cross-border community and shared facilities. Borderland inhabitants construct a border “game” to establish their intimate knowledge of the border and their “ownership” of cross-border territory and practice. Although border “police,” representing national authority, mostly from away, control the border, the locals own the border by right of occupance and continuity. The meaning of the border, and the vocabulary associated with this meaning, is increasingly divergent as security is enhanced. An excellent example of how border meaning varies between cultures is found in the “Medicine Line.” Indigenous North Americans, in this instance the Sioux and related Native Americans, discovered, to their surprise, that the invisible line drawn along the 49th parallel between the United States and Canada was actually a powerful boundary between American and Canadian authorities. The Medicine Line would stop the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from pursuing the Indians south of the line and halt the US Cavalry from overtaking the natives in their flight north. This example illustrates not only that borders divide cultures but also that different cultures recognize different borders. Also, the example emphasizes that there is space and gradient between the material and metaphorical narration of borders: borders and orders mesh as (b)orders (van Houtum et al. 2005). Borders play a substantial role in how we order our world, and borders and related processes occupy and impact an increasing amount of space in doing so. This is borderwork. Rumford (2011, p. 67) proposes that instead of “seeing like a state” (a constraining lens given the increasing heterotopias of contemporary borders), as described earlier by Scott (1998), border scholars should move toward “seeing like a border,” that is, to disaggregate the state and the border in order to conceptualize the multiple actors and sites of bottom-up bordering. Seeing like a border shifts the emphasis in border studies in important ways. As borders can be found “wherever selective controls are to be found” (Balibar 2002, pp. 84–85), seeing like a border does not equate to “being on the outside looking in.” This is to say that bordering processes permeate everyday life, as has been well captured in Urry’s (2007) notion of “frisk society” in which passing through public spaces is akin to the experience of airport security. In aspiring to see like a border, the constitutive nature of borders in social and political life must be recognized (Rumford 2011). Rumford (2008, 2011) argues that the literature, and thus the

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language of border studies, neglects the way in which ordinary citizens, entrepreneurs, and grassroots activists can construct, shift, or even erase borders by creating borders which facilitate mobility for some while creating barriers to mobility for others, appropriating the political resources which bordering offers, as well as contesting the legitimacy of or undermining the borders imposed by others. In addition to broadening the concept of de-/bordering from an exclusive business of nation-states to include citizens, and indeed noncitizens (Isin and Nielsen 2008), Rumford also extends this process from the state’s external borders to the interior of a polity (Amoore et al. 2008). Also, non-status persons use borders to constitute themselves as being political (Rumford 2011; Nyers 2008, p. 162). Borderwork is associated with “a range of claims-making activity, not only claims to national belonging or citizenship, but also demands for transnational mobility, assertions of human rights, and demonstrations of political actorness, all of which can comprise acts of citizenship” (Rumford 2011, p. 68). Accordingly, instead of viewing bordering in terms of securitization, borderwork opens up possibilities and opportunities for humanitarian assistance for those who may coalesce at borders. The argument also contends that the changes to borders are in fact more far-reaching than can be captured by either the idea that “borders are everywhere” or a security-driven re-bordering thesis. Rumford (2011) criticizes the diversity and multiplication of border studies and implicitly the proliferation of border vocabularies. Rather than see borders chop up the world and curtail mobility, Rumford asserts that borders can also actively facilitate movement. He depicts borders as “engines of connectivity” through which bottom-up activity provides border workers with new political and economic opportunities. Furthermore, borders are viewed as a resource, that is, borders are not only recognized as productive and creative, but also borders and border zones are engaged because of their potential (Sohn 2014). Yet, borders remain synonymous with barriers and expressly a proliferation of fences and walls around the globe (Rosiere and Jones 2012; Vallet and David 2012). These constructs are increasingly effective as devices and strategies of separation like the IsraeliPalestinian fence/wall complex, symbolic as the US-Mexico “wall,” and durable in the psyche as the Maginot Line. Although the Berlin Wall was torn down in the 1990s, pieces of the structure still reside in personal and state collections worldwide. Moreover, the language of borders is visualized, promoted, and prolonged by images of border walls at all scales. Walls and all manner of state borders are complex and dynamic multiscalar entities that have different symbolic and material forms maintained by a multiplicity of bordering processes and practices (Laine 2016). Borders are territorial in nature, but increasingly understood as multi-perspectival and complex assemblages (see borderities and borderscapes below). Far from mere static manifestations of state power and territoriality, borders are multiscalar social constructions, part of the political, discursive, symbolic, and material orders that reflect the transformation of space into territory by various social groups and actors and not only by the state. Instead of focusing only on the supranational policy initiatives and global-scale dynamics of integration which downplay the role of borders, or on the implications of the enduring nation-state system and the national-level endeavors that sustain

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their existence, these perspectives must be combined, because the processes of deand re-bordering are not exclusionary, but occur simultaneously. The processes of bordering and cross-border integration interact with each other in the midst of several contextual factors that intervene and influence the dynamics and processes taking place within the cross-border space. The territorial rearrangements implied by globalization force us to rethink our layered analysis and seek to understand how borders contribute to a nested system of territoriality produced by various actors on different scales: at the global (through globalization), national (through the rules established by the state system), or regional and local levels (through the geographical characteristics of territories and societies). One of the main reasons state borders have endured in spite of the global pressures is that they reflect, and thus help us interpret, both the tensions and points of connection within intercultural and interstate relations. Studying the tenacious and at times paradoxical endurance of state borders helps us to better understand the new forms of territoriality emerging from globalization and the multiplicity of actors involved in the management and maintenance of borders. The nation-state in itself is a multiscalar construction, and its borders are constantly negotiated and reconfigured by its actors at different levels. The idea of territorial space is far from defunct or redundant but is rather a continuously relevant form of social spatiality, complementary to networked and fluid spaces. Despite the apparent variability of border configurations, the state still appears to play a crucial role in these interwoven territories and networks. The understanding of the state as a multiscalar construction, constantly negotiated and reconfigured by its actors at different levels, allows us to broaden the scope of our analysis and rethink and transform the spatial formations previously taken for granted in assessing the impacts of globalization more regionally. While globalization continues apace, the nation-state remains the primary agent in this process. Globalization actually enhances the autonomy of nation-states, not so much vis-a-vis other countries but from their own people, for it provides a legitimizing discourse that allows nation-states and governments to impose policies on the grounds of international pressures. Sassen (2006) suggests that globalization is actually partly endogenous to the national rather than the external and that the “global” can be conceptualized as partly inhabiting the “national” and the “local.” While national territories remain bounded by traditional geographical borderlines, globalization is causing novel types of borderings, cutting across traditional borders and becoming evident both globally and within national territory, to multiply. As a result, the purposeful transcendence of state borders has enriched our vocabulary in relation to concepts such as cooperation, synergy, hybridity, and permeability. Cross-border cooperation (CBC), in particular at the regional and local level, has also encouraged us to think and speak of borders as something inherently positive – as sites of re-bordering where, among others, processes of dialogue, common problem-solving, mutual trust-building, and a new sense of place and region can emerge. In more mundane terms, the promise of cross-border cooperation (CBC) is that of providing new political spaces beyond state territoriality that flexibly address social affairs, economic development, minority rights,

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cross-border employment and trade, the environment, and other issues. For example, through such territorially flexible forms of political and economic interaction – both institutional and informal – it has been suggested that greater cost-effectiveness in public investment can be achieved, economic complementarities exploited, the scope for strategic planning widened, and environmental problems more directly and effectively addressed. At the same time, CBC influences the language of borders by also highlighting the complex and often conflictual nature of social interaction across boundaries – it problematizes globalization as both encounter and confrontation, the negotiation of which is seldom straightforward.

4

Writing and Speaking Borders in an Increasingly Bordered “Borderless World”

Recounting borders in a contemporary world where instant cellular communication, extensive sharing of information on the web, immense human migrations, and massive worldwide trade are the norm is increasingly challenging. The border lexicon has become inadequate, and, as a result border study specialists are seeking and developing new ideas and words to convey this enlarging complexity of bordered space and place and the expanding discourse surrounding bordering, re-bordering, and de-bordering. Furthermore, as border studies are contextualized and aligned with contemporary thought and theory in the social sciences and the humanities, novel and hybrid terminologies have emerged to convey an increasingly bordered “borderless world.” Through the efforts of a growing cohort of border specialists around the globe as well as several consortia of scholars and practitioners concentrated in North America and Europe, writing and speaking about borders, as well as representations and communications in art, film, literature, theater, and mass media, have both expanded and aligned. Borders in Globalization (BIG) is an ambitious 7-year project initiated in 2013 that explores borders in the twenty-first century through an international network based in Canada with extensive international dimensions reaching most regions of the world (Brunet-Jailly 2014). BIG connects research to public policy in order to build and extend knowledge of borders and advance border management in Canada and worldwide. The project is framed on thematic (culture, flows, governance, history, security, and sustainability) and regional axes (7 regions of Canada and international) with more than 150 studies generating concepts and advances in thinking about borders across disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. New insights have emerged, for example, in understanding rapid border security evolution in Canada, how indigenous cultural boundaries emerge, and the new boundaries of environmental change in the Anthropocene. Borderscape is an epistemological, ontological, and methodological reconceptualization of borders that is able to grasp the complex border landscapes of an era of globalization and transnationalism. Its aim is to promote the liberation of geopolitical imaginations from the straitjacket imposed by the passive methodological nationalism of the territorial trap. Inspired by the works of Appadurai (1990) and

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Rajaram and Grundy-Warr (2007), borders are seen as spaces of struggle, contest, and negotiation, where new socio-spatial identities that question or reframe territorial accounts of political belonging are found, and may be viewed beyond the identification of transnational flows and new geographies emerging from these borderscapes. Brambilla (2015) and Brambilla et al. (2015) use borderscapes as a way of approaching bordering processes in specific geographical and social contexts, both in borderlands and also wherever a specific border has impacts and is represented, negotiated, or displaced. Borderscapes are thus understood to be local configurations of bordering processes connecting different communities and casespecific reflections of how notions of border and perceptions of identity are conditioned by the interplay of historical, sociocultural, geographic, and political narratives as well as by the experience of living at and with borders. Borderscapes also reflect “local politics” of borders understood as framing of social arenas and political landscapes and strategies of accommodation, adaptation, and contestation – challenging the top-down geopolitical control of borders. The borderscapes concept forms an analytical angle to develop a wider understanding of the contemporary spatiality of politics, providing a political insight into critical border studies based on a multi-sited approach at different levels. The approach not only involves a highly inclusive understanding of borders in space, but it also draws attention to the multiplicity of social spaces where borders are negotiated by different actors. As multidimensional entities, borders are constituted in different symbolic and material forms and functions as well as sociopolitical and cultural practices. Through the borderscapes lens, it is also possible to grasp the dynamic character of borders in space and time. Borders have not been disappearing but they are moving instead (Balibar 2003). Thus, the borderscapes concept registers the necessity to investigate borders not as taken-for-granted entities exclusively connected to the territorial limits of states but as mobile, relational, and contested sites, thereby exploring alternative border imaginaries “beyond the line” (Brambilla 2015, p. 17). Navigating through the borderscapes lens concerned with bridging the metaphorical-material border gap, giving us a chance to rethink what a border is and recognize that there are many different and productive vantage points from which to study them. Borders are highly contentious zones, places that are different from other spatial demarcations; and rather than think of them only in terms of their territorial specificity, we should conceive of them as an ongoing, dialectical process that generates multiple borderland spaces, some of which are not located close to the official international boundary itself. Accordingly, borders are continually made and remade, re-bordered, and de-bordered, in concert with larger circulations of migration, the projects of states, the implementation of trade accords, and the political responses of those living through and in these processes. The resulting intersectional approach to borders assumes borders as spaces for interconnected projects at the intersection of local histories and global designs (Mignolo 2000), pointing to the immediately global import even of the slightest bend of a border (Balibar 2003). Borderity occurs when borderlands can fundamentally empower certain groups and impact on government practices (Amilhat-Szary and Giraut 2015). Borderities

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illuminate the question of how borders can be the site of both power and counterpower. The Schengen border of the EU exemplifies this dynamic. Schengen is also mobile in space and over time. Borderities are emerging forms and functions of contemporary mobile borders. A central concept in understanding borders is then motion. “The premises of [borders in motion] are that borders are always in motion, that our theories about borders need to reflect this axiom beyond acknowledging borders as process and changing quality, and that these theories need to align with the ‘motion turn’ in the social sciences” (Konrad 2015, p. 1). That is, we need to view borders as born in motion, conducting motion and creating motion, and to understand borders as a fluid component of ever-changing and possibly evolving modernity. The intertwining of borders, motion, and culture has led some scholars to focus on the aesthetic forms represented as border images and border narratives as central to the political process of distribution, sharing, and, ultimately, division of what we sense (partage du sensible, Ranciere 2015; Schimanski and Wolfe 2017). This has led to explorations of how choice of form, medium, genre, and aesthetical strategies helps to form and transform borderscapes; how forms, discourses, and genres cross borders into the public sphere; and what problems arise as perceptions of making visible and giving voice empower some, block others, and transform border sites (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017). Borders, borderlands, and particularly border crossings are often connected with wars and migration and consequently with trauma which blocks narrative memory with overwhelming images and makes some people publically and naturally invisible, excluded from politics and ethnicized or racialized (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017). Also, the border may be viewed as a suture. First, the suture is useful for understanding the way that borders are made to appear and disappear. The / between inside and outside is not so much a break, rather it is a knitting of the limits of political communities – always in reference to other communities. . .. Second, the border suture is a permanent line of exception that has come to be disaggregated across space/time, the border effectively hides and reinforces the exposure to decision that all border crossers are subject to. And, in addition to the distinctions made between those that are seen – that perform the correct rituals of confession and obeisance – there is the continual and eternal deferral of that decision: we are only ever admitted provisionally, which might be the grounds for a political empathy between insiders and outsiders, citizens and refugees. (Salter 2012, p. 751)

The major ongoing social shift in modernity has been one of democratization, in which peoples have been given voice, people made more visible, and social hierarchies levelled. This has caused major political shifts such as nation-building and cultural shifts such as the creation of mass-market cultural production. In postmodern, postcolonial, postnational, and post-Soviet times, we have seen a tendency to fragmentation and hybridization of cultural canons, nations, grand narratives, ideologies, materialities, identities, etc., simultaneous with (and perhaps dialectically connected to) a paradoxical resurgence of social differences and hierarchical control. These changes are clearly manifested in public discourses on multiculturalism, neoliberalism, migrant crises, electronic surveillance, subcultures, epidemics, social

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media, terrorism, cheap travel, climate change, and more. In line with these shifts, borders have shifted away from the edges of clearly defined national territories, been externalized or internalized, and become erased and spectacularized in the form of walls and security fences, among other motions. The academic response has been to develop concepts of borders such as borderities, sutures, and borderscapes which are more distributed, flexible, and aware of the connections between borders on many different levels and scales. The challenge is to remain aware of the material violence and injustice present in many border situations and to create analytical tools which are resistant to being pre-opted in order to continue this violence and injustice.

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Visual Expressions of States, Culture, and Nature: Borders, Boundary Markers, and Borderscapes Across a Dynamic China and Asia Tom Ptak

Abstract

Borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes are diverse, so too are the approaches researchers adopt to analyze and understand the phenomena they shape – and are shaped by. Commonly, geographers analyze borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes by examining particular languages they communicate – both overtly and tacitly. Examples include expressions of state power, sites of conflict and contestation, social and cultural containers, channels that lubricate transnational economic activity, or conduits for energy transmission. Borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes, therefore, can either be highly visible representations or subliminal manifestations of phenomena. Generally, border areas are highly idiosyncratic, due to the myriad ways they are delineated and continually shaped by conditions at local, regional, national, and supranational scales. They illuminate both homogeneity and stark inequality due to unevenness in power dynamics, economic wealth, natural resources, or human capital. Depending on specific context, they may also represent sites of conflict or cooperation, both restricting and facilitating flows of people, goods, and capital. In this sense, borders and boundaries can be understood as a language, for their representations and shaping of phenomena. The focal points of borders are commonly found at international crossing points. It is here physical and visual dimensions of abstract policies manifest, in a range of vastly different ways. Through a photographic essay supported by personal narratives, this chapter will illuminate some of the substantial diversity represented in borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes across China and Asia. The differences represent a

T. Ptak (*) Department of Geography, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_71

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range of meanings, objectives, histories, and languages that are communicated and contested in a dynamic, rapidly changing part of the world. Keywords

Borders · States · Territory · Sovereignty · Power · Culture · Movement

Borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes are reflections of human behavior and provide compelling phenomena worthy of investigation. Outside of academic analyses, they are often uncritically assumed to promote analogous meanings; shape distinct, identifiable processes; and create orthodox linear spaces. The realities, however, are commonly quite different, sometimes drastically. Borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes can be complex, messy, dynamic, politically sensitive, and difficult to access. They must always be read and interpreted through a critical lens, similar to the ways geographers and other social scientists study natural, cultural, urban, or political landscapes (Jones 2005). The reading and interpretation of a landscape must be undertaken carefully and systematically, as landscapes are embedded with deep and often conflicting histories, geographies, and natural, cultural, and political meaning. Often, a considerable amount of border phenomena and, hence, border language is not explicit but embedded and hidden. Consequently, one must adopt an approach that utilizes multiple methods. Rather than simply reading or observing, studying a landscape requires the researcher to undertake a broad analysis in a manner that is dynamic rather than static and reflective rather than impulsive. Central to this approach lies the ability of the researcher to ask questions, specifically those which lead to the development of a nuanced and complex understanding of the landscape being studied (see, e.g., Jackson 1986; Lewis 1979). The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate complexities evident, discreet, and obscure, communicated through the language of borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes. Each image presented in this photographic essay was compiled during the author’s explorations through China and surrounding parts of Asia over a 10-year period. Individual images were chosen due to the way they captured a specific slice of the wide array of meanings, peoples, places, activities, diversity, and complexity of border languages. Accordingly, this chapter serves as a vehicle to visually challenge and deconstruct notions of uniformity, linearity, and homogeneity commonly associated with border phenomena. Keeping the previous paragraph in mind, this chapter provides the reader an opportunity to read and interpret various meaning, messages, and language communicated through the borders, border posts, and borderscapes in a complex, dynamic, and rapidly changing part of the world. The history of China’s Great Wall (Fig. 1) is complex and dynamic, so too is the territorial unit now understood as the contemporary state of China. Similar to most boundaries, borders, and even the state itself, China’s Great Wall has existed in a state of continual transformation through time and across space, never representing a single unified narrative. What is little known about the Great Wall

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Fig. 1 A section of the Great Wall at Jinshanling, north of Beijing. (Source: Author)

outside of China is its discontinuous nature. The wall does not stretch uninterrupted from the country’s northeast to its terminus in the west (Hessler 2011). It has always existed as a series of disconnected sections, some vastly different. Sections have been constructed from different materials across distinct periods of time. A more accurate description, therefore, could be “Great Walls.” The walls also served a range of functions, from military barrier, to transportation corridor, to a border that served to regulate and control goods and people. Moreover, due to its discontinuous nature, the Great Wall often functioned more as a conceptual barrier, than a physical one. It is difficult to pinpoint a precise location for the beginning and end of the wall. Officially the wall starts (or ends) at a Zhendong Tower known as the “First Pass Under Heaven” in Shanhaiguan, Hebei Province, although the wall technically extends into the ocean a short distance away in Laolongtou. In Gansu Province, the Jiayu Pass has traditionally reflected the end (or start point), known as the “First and Greatest Pass Under Heaven,” although some historians claim Yumenguan almost 400 kilometers west represents the furthest extent of the wall. What is hard to argue, however, is that the Great Wall represents the most famous visual border on the planet, as well as one of the world’s most recognized and symbolic human-made structures. The Great Wall(s) communicate a language of territory and power, control, and conflict. Border posts are often constructed in ways that acknowledge a culture distinct to a specific region, place, or people. China shares international borders with 14 other states: Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan,

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Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea. Many of China’s border posts have been designed to reflect a local culture. This picture is taken on the Chinese side of the border with Myanmar, in the small city of Ruili, western Yunnan Province (Fig. 2). On the other side of this border post is the small town of Muse. The border post has been designed to resemble a Buddhist temple, reflecting one element of culture. It can also be read as a language, another vital element of culture. At this border post, the design mimics a hollow gu-style temple, one of two designs common in Myanmar, the other being a stupa or pagoda. A hollow gu-style temple is primarily a space for meditation and reflection, worship, and ritual. On the Chinese side of the Ruili-Muse border crossing sits a Border Economic Cooperation Zone. Spending even a little time at this border post will allow you to see men from Myanmar wearing lungyis (a traditional clothing item) and Chinese businessmen making deals, likely over jade which is the legal commodity most commonly traded in the Ruili-Muse area. The Ruili-Muse border post communicates a language of culture and trade, religion, and resources. Humans are undoubtedly a vital element of every borderscape, as they shape phenomena and processes in and around borders and border regions. It is common for villages, towns, and cities abutting a border to carry special conditions concerning the movement of residents on either side. These conditions recognize

Fig. 2 The border crossing post between China and Myanmar in Ruili, Yunnan Province. On the other side is the small town of Muse in Shan State, Myanmar. (Source: Author)

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historical and cultural ties between people located in the border area and allow for these residents to leverage supply and demand dynamics to trade various commodities and services such as labor and sometimes more nefarious activities. It is also common for nationals of either state or territory to end up settling permanently on the opposite side of a particular border (Chen 2005). In the town of Ruili, it is common to see residents of Myanmar conducting business for highvalue items such as jade and teak. Outside of the dominant jade businesses, the local market is a colorful, bustling mix full of diverse items, sounds, smells, and people engaging in business for lower-value items. Here, you can acquire anything from dried fish, fresh flowers or herbs and spices, batteries, hair dryers, or even live snakes. In this image (Fig. 3), women from Myanmar, distinct due to thanaka (a cosmetic face paint made from ground tree bark), occupy their market stall. These women are permanent residents of Ruili; however, they spend significant time across the border in Muse (Myanmar) where long-standing cultural ties and family relationships are still strong. Border markets transmit many languages. Common themes include culture, connections, trade, and labor. International borders and boundary markers are commonly distinct and bold – languages communicating the demarcation of territory and sovereignty (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2007). Often, border posts play host to a range of military equipment and personnel, while others are less militarized and

Fig. 3 Residents of Myanmar – distinct due to the thanaka on their face – are commonplace in the market of Ruili, Yunnan Province. (Source: Author)

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inconspicuous. Borders and border posts are largely shaped by the context in which they find themselves situated. Sitting at the vast edge of China’s mainland in far northwest Yunnan Province is the Dulong River Valley. This valley is one of the most isolated and remote parts of the country, occupied predominately by the Dulong ethnic minority group and inaccessible for a period of winter months as snows render the only road unusable. The Dulong River Valley is one of China’s last wild frontiers, a biodiversity hotspot home to 169 endemic species. At the end of the Dulong Valley, the road abruptly ends – swallowed up by deep jungle. A small residence sits at the road’s terminus where a solitary observer records the number of people passing by each day in a simple notebook. At few hundred feet into the jungle sits a concrete post (Fig. 4), the only formal sign of the border, and travelers from either side pass by it each day with barely a sideways glance of recognition. This boundary marker communicates a language of territory and sovereignty. Borders and border posts commonly reflect a demarcation and meeting point between two distinct entities, often states. This is not always the case, however, as border posts are also used to signify a delineation between people and commonly convey a border between cultures. While images and symbols are used to communicate these types of messages, language is often the most commonly used medium. The Himalayan mountain range plays host to a diverse range of people, cultures, and languages. Often people located in neighboring valleys are culturally distinct, speaking different languages and ascribing to different religions. In the eastern Nepali Himalaya, lower valleys and moderate hilly areas are commonly occupied by Hindus. The closer one moves north toward Tibet and rises in elevation, one will also increasingly move into areas occupied predominately by Buddhists. Mani stones, like those in the picture taken in the Khumbu Valley (Fig. 5), are a way of communicating the dominant presence of Buddhism in the mountains and the end of Hindu-dominated lower areas.

Fig. 4 Alone out in the frontier, a concrete marker is the only formal identification of the border between China and Myanmar. A small path leads into the jungle toward Kachin State in Myanmar. (Source: Author)

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Fig. 5 Mani stones in the Khumbu Valley of Nepal. These stones have been inscribed with “Om Mani Padme Hum,” a Buddhist mantra. (Source: Author)

Mani stones communicate a language of culture, in this case different religions. While the overwhelming majority of borders and border posts have been developed in order to communicate a specific meaning, it is less practical and in some cases impossible for others to do so. The summit of Mount Everest is not only the highest point on the planet (Fig. 6), it also represents an international border between Nepal and China. Although a tripod has been installed at the summit, this particular border will never play host to an official post. The mountain was given its name by the Royal Geographic Society in 1865, in honor of George Everest, a Welsh geographer who was responsible for the great trigonometric survey of India. For local people, however, the mountain is known as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Chomolungma in Tibet. While the border itself is not in dispute, the name of the mountain has generated some controversy, and in recent years, calls have been made to drop the British-imposed name and return to the indigenous titles. The (re)naming of Sagarmatha or Chomolungma as Mount Everest reflects a history of British exploration and conquest, and many local people are keen to reclaim their traditional title. Mount Everest communicates a language illustrating the power of nature and human desire for conquest.

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Fig. 6 The mighty North Face and summit of Mt. Everest viewed from the Rongbuk Monastery in Tibet. The high point in this picture and ridge line descending to the right from the summit is an international border between China and Nepal. (Source: Author)

There are probably few border posts less conspicuous, known, and understood than the treaty pillar in Lhasa’s Barkhor Square (Fig. 7). During the seventh and eighth centuries, the Tibetan Empire controlled areas of western China, including the Tang dynasty’s capital, Chang’an (Xi’an), in late 763. In subsequent centuries, Tibetan rulers preferred to consolidate Tibetan territory over conquering Chinese lands, due in large part to the rise of the Manchu dynasties and Mongol Empire. Between 821 and 822, Tibet and China signed an official peace treaty. A bilingual account of this treaty, including details of borders between the two countries, is inscribed on the stone pillar situated outside the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. The pillar in Lhasa, however, is only one of three where the treaty was officially inscribed. Another is in the city of Chang’an (Xi’an) and the other near the Sino-Tibetan border itself in a town called Qingshui, Gansu Province. Part of the treaty reads as follows: The Great King of Tibet, the Miraculous Divine Lord, and the Great King of China, the Chinese Ruler Hwang-ti, being in the relationship of nephew and uncle, have conferred together for the alliance of their kingdoms. They have made and ratified a great agreement. Gods and men all know it and bear witness so that it may never be changed; and an account of the agreement has been engraved on this stone pillar to inform future ages and generations. Tibet and China shall abide by the frontiers of which they are now in occupation. All to the east is the country of Great China; and all to the west is, without question, the country of Great Tibet. Henceforth on neither side shall there be waging of war,

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Fig. 7 The stone pillar containing the inscription of the circa 822 border treaty between China and Tibet still sits in the Barkhor Square of Tibet’s capital, Lhasa. (Source: Author) nor seizing of territory. If any person incurs suspicion he shall be arrested; his business shall be inquired into and he shall be escorted back.

In Lhasa, a boundary marker communicates a language of territory, sovereignty, contestation, and conflict. The Nu River valley in far northwest Yunnan Province served as a pathway for foreigners to sneak into Tibet illegally when the kingdom was closed to outsiders. The valley represented one route of the ancient Tea Horse Road, and foreigners such as Jesuit monks used the route as a passage into the remote and isolated mountain kingdom. Now administered as the Tibetan Autonomous Region as part of the People’s Republic of China, Tibet is still largely off limits to foreigners. This unmanned border post is located at the far edge of the valley (Fig. 8). In the upper Nu River valley, this border language communicates territory, regulation, and control. In southern Thailand’s district of Satun on the island of Koh Lipe sits an unremarkable and easily overlooked building. While the building itself is unremarkable, it serves an important function as a “forward” border post (Fig. 9). Koh Lipe represents one island in the Koh Tarutao National Marine Park and has seen a surge in tourism since the early 2000s, particularly since movies such as The Beach, staring Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000, and a season of the reality television show, Survivor, were filmed there in 2002.

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Fig. 8 The unmanned crossing signaling the border between Yunnan Province and the Tibetan Autonomous Region in the upper Nu River valley. (Source: Author)

Fig. 9 The immigration checkpoint on the island of Koh Lipe in Southern Thailand. (Source: Author)

The Koh Tarutao National Marine Park sits at the very edge of Thailand’s southern boundary and shares a maritime border with Malaysia. Rapid increases in tourist numbers on Koh Lipe have also been boosted by low-cost airlines utilizing

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the nearby runway on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia. Now it is common to see tourists transiting between the two islands in large powerful speedboats. In order to facilitate the international border crossing that is part of every journey, immigration formalities for passengers must be undertaken on the island of Koh Lipe prior to departure. Here the border language communicates regulation, process, movement, and leisure. It is possible to drive off the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. When traveling west from the capital, Lhasa, one passes through towns such as Gyantse, Shigatse, Lhatse and Tingri. Continuing on from Tingri, travelers bid farewell to the Earth’s highest plateau, it’s desert landscape and plunge steeply into a canyon toward the border with Nepal. From the plateau at just over 15,000 ft (4,572 m) to the border at 5,700 ft (1,737 m), the journey is only 31 miles (50 km) “as the crow flies” and 56 miles (90 kilometers) by road. The transformation is dramatic, from the windswept desert with views of the Himalayan range to the lush green forested gorge in a little over 2 hours. The centerpiece of the border is the Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge, sitting astride the Sun Kosi river (Fig. 10). The river itself illustrates a “no man’s land,” between two borders: neither Nepal nor Tibet. The nondescript buildings on either side give little indication of the border or the peculiar processes underway on each side.

Fig. 10 The Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge and “no man’s land” between Nepal and Tibet. (Source: Author)

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The language of this border communicates regulation, process, trade, and labor. On the descent into the canyon, two frontier towns, Nyalam and Zhangmu, offer clues to a peculiarity, seldom visible in border towns. Due to differences in which side of the road the respective countries drive on (in Nepal vehicles drive on the left side of the road and in China the right), Chinese trucks are not permitted entry to Nepal and vice versa. Consequently, the road approaching the border becomes lined on both sides with trucks awaiting their chance to offload cargo headed for its final destination on the other side. Standing in the middle of the Friendship Bridge, the backup of trucks stretches as far as the eye can see – down into Nepal and upward toward the Tibetan Plateau in China. In this image (Fig. 11), trucks on the Nepalese side of the border are lined up on the only road facilitating access to the border and in a depot used as a holding area. The language of these border phenomena communicates process, regulation, and movement. At the border itself, a remarkable process is underway. As cargo trucks are restricted to transiting the Friendship Bridge, an army of porters is busily unloading trucks and manually hauling their cargo across the international border (Fig. 12). The porters, who are Nepalese men and women, are granted permission to operate on both sides of the border. When cargo reaches the other side, it is reloaded and

Fig. 11 Trucks parked on the Nepalese side of the border lined up on the road or parked in a depot waiting to offload – and load – cargo. (Source: Author)

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Fig. 12 Hordes of porters or “coolies” as they are known in Nepal use their strength to transport goods across the Friendship Bridge between Nepal and Tibet. (Source: Author)

continues its journey either up and out of the canyon toward Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, or down toward Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. The range of images offered in this chapter illuminate the diversity of languages communicated through various borders, boundary markers, and borderscapes in China and across Asia. As this chapter demonstrates, it is always vital to consider the meanings attached to the various border dialects, rather than simply considering a language intrinsically and without context. A careful and systematic reading of any border landscape must be undertaken initially, before interpretation of a particular language can occur. Reading and interpretation provide the basis for an adequate understanding of meaning to develop, as they are often concealed and highly nuanced. The myriad border languages and associated meanings have been inscribed by humans in the form of walls, buildings, roads, stones, and markets and through natural processes which form and shape mountains and rivers. Depending on context, they represent ideas both simple and complex: connection and control, sovereignty and territory, culture and conflict, labor and leisure, movement and power, and resources and trade.

References Chen, X. (2005). As borders bend: Transnational spaces on the Pacific rim. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Hessler, P. (2011). Country driving. New York: Harper Collins. Jackson, J. B. (1986). Discovering the vernacular landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jones, R. (2005). Categories, borders and boundaries. Progress in Human Geography, 33(2), 174–189. Lewis, P. (1979). Axioms for reading the landscape: Some guide to the American scene. In D. W. Meinig (Ed.), The interpretation of ordinary landscapes: Geographical essays (pp. 11–32). New York: Oxford University Press. Rajaram, P. K., & Grundy-Warr, C. (Eds.). (2007). Borderscapes: Hidden geographies and politics at territories end. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Contents 1 American Independence: Representation and Apportionment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Early Apportionment Acts of Single Member Districts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 A Decisive Decade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Race and Redistricting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Current Controversies Regrading Partisan Gerrymandering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Wisconsin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Though redistricting itself is easy to define, the processes utilized in achieving electoral districts are far from it. Perhaps of all terms related to redistricting, gerrymandering encapsulates the many difficulties of reorganizing political space. Defined as the deliberate manipulation of electoral boundaries to favor one party over another, gerrymandering has been a consistent practice at many levels of the American electoral system giving way to a variety of unique terms such as packing, stacking, and cracking. Though a common and controversial practice, many do not fully understand the meaning of the term as well as its impact. Due to the fact this practice is deliberate to gain advantage for one group over another, US Courts have both willingly and unwillingly facilitated the evolution of the both gerrymandering and redistricting. Therefore, the evolution R. Weichelt (*) Department of Geography and Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] G. R. Webster Department of Geography, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_126

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of the terms used to describe redistricting is uniquely tied to the many court cases that are continually altering and defining the process as a whole. The goals of this chapter are to connect the terms to these court cases to better explain the language of redistricting. Keywords

Gerrymandering · Apportionment · Redistricting · Electoral vote · Representation · Political district

The political organization and reorganization of space has fascinated geographers for decades. The US political system closely ties political representation to geography and population. Given the dynamic nature of population change, representation within this system must also be periodically altered. Terms such as apportionment (determining the number of legislators for a given area in relation to population), reapportionment (the redistribution of legislative seats in relation to population changes following a census of population), and redistricting (the redrawing of legislative districts) characterize the process of reallocating representation geographically. The act of reallocation, however, is fraught with complications, as political parties engage in gerrymandering (the deliberate manipulation of space to provide one party an advantage over another) or malapportionment, which refers unequal populations in different constituencies for the same legislative body. This chapter will focus on the language of redistricting and, more importantly, how both legislative actions and subsequent legal reactions by the US Supreme Court have shaped and continue to shape these definitions. The chapter is subdivided into four main sections. Section 1 focuses on early controversies regarding representation and apportionment following American independence. Section 2 examines congressional attempts to define apportionment processes as well as discussions around the use of single member districts. Section 3 pivots toward an expanded role of the federal government during the 1960s, focusing on issues of race and equal population requirements for federal and state legislative districts. Section 5 concentrates on the current controversies of partisan gerrymandering using the US Supreme Court case Gill v. Whitford as a case study.

1

American Independence: Representation and Apportionment

Conflicts over representation served as a catalyst for the American Revolution. In the eighteenth century, Great Britain provided parliamentary representation for citizens living in the American colonies through a system of virtual representation. Therefore, “All Englishmen, including those residing in overseas colonies, were represented in Parliament by the electorates of the shires and the boroughs entitled to send representatives” (Smith and Zurcher 1968: 395–396). Wood (1969) argued this concept was both unfamiliar and outrageous to American colonists who

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assumed that representation would be extended to new geographical units, such as counties or towns. The famous rallying cry of “no taxation without representation” in response to the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765 best captures the frustration of American colonists before the Revolutionary War (Morison and Commanger 1962; Wood 1969). For these and other reasons, Archer and Shelley (1986) argue American colonists preferred territorial representation, representation from a specific geographic area, over virtual representation, and were willing to fight for this right. Upon independence in 1781, Americans ratified the Articles of Confederation, which stringently focused on direct territorial representation of the 13 newly defined states. Each state, independent of its population, was given one equal vote. This loose confederation of states pushed loyalties toward the individual states and away from a unified a country (Smith 1997). This focus on state interests created a number of logistical problems, exposing the Articles to scrutiny a few years later. Representatives gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 with the purpose of proposing new amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but these discussions instead led to the creation of a new Constitution and a stronger federal government with an executive and judiciary branch as well as a redesigned legislature. The new federal system created a representational structure that was geographic by nature, but in the coming years, both physical representation and apportionment for the House of Representatives would drive a wedge between leaders of a young United States (Archer and Shelley 1986). For seats in the House of Representatives, states could choose how they would elect members. Many states simply chose to hold at-large elections. Pennsylvania, for example, was determined in 1788 to have eight members in the House of Representatives. At-large elections were held with 16 persons on the ballot. The eight candidates with the highest share of the vote would be elected. Other states, like Virginia, created districts where representatives were elected by citizens within their boundaries. In 1789, James Madison defeated James Monroe to represent Virginia’s 5th district. It was the only time in US history that two future presidents ran against one another for a congressional seat (Hunter 2011). These varying approaches persisted until the Apportionment Act of 1842, which not only reduced the size of Congress but also eliminated at-large congressional elections (Canon and Egar 2014). On March 26, 1792, a bill was presented to the President of the United States, George Washington, suggesting, as written into Article 1, Section 2 of the US Constitution, that “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states . . . The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand . . .” and the House of Representatives shall be measured at 120 seats. This number was obtained by dividing the aggregate of the US population from the 1790 US Census among the states using 30,000 as the common divisor. The resulting bill created sharp divisions among the President’s closest advisors. Attorney General Edmond Randolph and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson argued the bill was unconstitutional because, they believed, the Constitution required a common divisor (30,000) per state that would establish the

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appropriate size of the House of Representatives, not based on the aggregate of the entire US population. The bill, using the national aggregate, presented to the President, Randolph argued, provided additional members to the eight states with the largest fraction left over by dividing 30,000. The Attorney General would claim such a bill was, “Repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution” (Haggard 2000: 5). Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and Secretary of War, Henry Knox, disagreed with Jefferson and Randolph believing the bill was constitutionally sound. For them, the Constitution was unclear, as Knox wrote, “Whether the numbers of representatives shall be apportioned on the aggregate number of all the people of the United States, or on the aggregate numbers of people in each state” (Haggard 2000: 6). Both he and Hamilton believed this decision should be best left to Congress to decide. Washington sided with Randolph and Jefferson, stating, “the vote for and against the bill was perfectly geographical, a Northern against a Southern Vote” (Founders Online 2018). On April 5, 1792, Washington would veto the bill despite his own fears that doing so would lead to a perception that he was more sympathetic to the South. He argued that with the number of House seats set at 120, no fair solution could be obtained (James 1897). Congress attempted such but failed to override the veto. Instead, it passed a bill on April 10, 1792, using a ratio per state at 30,000 instead of a national aggregate. Congress would also settle on 105 members for the House of Representatives avoiding the apportionment of extra seats, if kept at 120, to the much larger northern states. While apportionment of the House of Representatives remained a topic of discussion until 1930, laws and court cases would shape redistricting policy and the language used to understand the political reorganization of space.

2

Early Apportionment Acts of Single Member Districts

Martis (2008) traced the origins of the term gerrymander and found the first use of the term was printed by the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812. Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill redistricting state senate districts to favor his Democratic-Republican Party. According to Martis (2008: 835), the shape of the newly drawn district resembled that of a salamander, specifically the Essex South District that “had a particularly peculiar sinuous shape.” Other news outlets picked up the story, and to this day, Elbridge Gerry’s name will forever be associated with the pejorative term, gerrymandering. This example of Gerry’s ability to manipulate representative geography in his party’s favor clearly illustrates the power of reorganizing political space. Due to the lack of any constitutional rules regarding redistricting, the early redistricting processes of individual states were left to the states alone through the division of powers of the 10th Amendment to the Bill of Rights. This issue of redistricting would become more federal and controversial in 1840, when for the first time Congress instituted specific rules for the drawing of House of Representative districts. This act stated, “That in every case where a State is entitled to more than

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one Representative, the number of which each State shall be entitled under this apportionment shall be elected by districts composed of contiguous territory equal in number to the number of Representatives . . .” (1840 Census 2017). The act narrowly passed. At the heart of the debate were two main points. The first issue related to the debate of state’s rights. Those in favor of at-large elections for House members argued it was each state’s right to determine its own electoral system. The second argument, for those in favor of electoral districts, was that districts create a more inclusive electoral system allowing for greater minority representation (Flores 2004). Contiguous space (sharing a common border) was introduced as a requirement to achieve the goal of minority representation. This victory was short-lived. In 1844 four states, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, and New Hampshire, held at-large elections instead of by district. Though debate ensued the 1844 Committee on Elections, report determined the elections were valid (Mast 1994). Subsequently, the 1850 Apportionment Act dropped the requirement for mandated districts. Over the next 60 years, no laws mandated either at-large or geographically specific districts, but subsequent apportionment acts would set specific guidelines for the creation of districts. In fact, it would not be until 1967 that Congress passed laws mandating single member districts. The 1862 Apportionment Act, however, restored the requirement that districts be contiguous and the 1872 Apportionment Act reiterated contiguity, but also stated that districts be “as nearly as practicable an equal number of inhabitants” (1870 Census 2017). The 1901 Apportionment Act restated contiguity and equal populations (as did the 1882 and 1891 Acts) but added an additional requirement that districts also be compact. Yet Section 3 of the 1901 Apportionment Act provided no further rules or definition of what a compact district was. Contiguous and compact districts were reiterated in the 1911 Apportionment Act (1910 Census 2017). As the country continued to grow, Congress decided to increase the size of the House of Representatives. In 1890 Congress grew to 356 seats and 386 in 1900 and expanded to 433 seats in 1911, with a provision to add 1 seat for Arizona and 1 for New Mexico upon statehood (1910 Census 2017; Leib and Webster 1998). After completion of the 1920 Census, Congress was again faced with the decision of expanding the House. Continued industrialization bolstered by a war-based economy saw a rapidly expanding population. This population growth was far from uniform. The 1920 Census indicated that for the first time in US history, more persons lived in urban than rural areas. Reapportionment based on these lines would negatively impact rural areas by shifting power to urban areas. Coincidently in that year, the Republicans swept control of the Congress and the presidency. With their power firmly entrenched in rural areas (especially the South), for the first time in US history, Congress would not be reapportioned based on the most recent Decennial Census. During the 1920s Congress vigorously debated whether to increase the size of House of Representatives. Due to inconsistencies in redistricting processes and blatant violations of the 14th Amendment through Jim Crow policies disenfranchising African-American voters in the South, Massachusetts Republican George H. Tinkham suggested apportionment should be based on voting population

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rather than total population. This, he argued, would penalize southern states that disenfranchised voters (Bartlett 2014). On June 18, 1929, Congress passed a pivotal act impacting not only apportionment but also the redistricting practices still used today. Though having a lasting impact, the immediate effects of the law were unknown. The 1929 Apportionment Act established a permanent method for the apportionment of House seats based on shifting populations for each state and at the same time froze the number of seats at 435. However, provisions regarding contiguity, compactness, and equal population were neither repealed nor restated in the act (Mast 1994; Leib and Webster 1998). As it related to the creation of redistricting plans, the act left this decision to the individual states. By 1932 the issues of contiguity, compactness, and equal population were challenged in the courts. Brought forth to a three-judge federal panel, plaintiffs argued that Kentucky and Mississippi violated stipulations set forth in the 1911 Apportionment Act in terms of district contiguity, compactness, and equal population. The three-judge panel agreed Kentucky and Mississippi did violate the rules, but upon appeal to the Supreme Court in Wood v. Broom (1932), the justices determined, based on the 1929 Apportionment Act, that the requirements expired and were not reenacted by the 1929 Act. The justices decided it was the intent of Congress to let the provisions lapse (“Constitutional Right” 1946). Prior to Wood v. Broom, the US Supreme Court had avoided any decisions regarding the rules of redistricting. The Court believed guidelines should be made at the state level or in Congress. This mind-set was reaffirmed in 1946 in Colegrove v. Green. In this case, three Illinois voters filed a lawsuit in US District Court alleging Illinois congressional districts violated the US Constitution and other federal laws due to the fact these districts “lacked compactness of territory and approximate equality of population.” The Northern District of Illinois dismissed the case stating there was no legal framework defining compactness, contiguity, or equal populations. Upon appeal to the Supreme Court, in a plurality opinion (4–3), the Northern District of Illinois dismissal was upheld, echoing that of Wood v. Broom. Writing the opinion, Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter stated, “The short of it is that the Constitution has conferred upon Congress exclusive authority to secure fair representation by the States in the popular House . . . Whether Congress faithfully discharges its duty or not, the subject has been committed to the exclusive control of Congress . . . Courts ought not to enter this political thicket” (Pollack 1962: 82–83; Webster 2013). The three dissenting judges in Colegrove v. Green did provide a rebuttal stating that due to the fact Illinois congressional districts had not been reapportioned since 1901, this denied Illinois citizens equal protection of the laws and the guarantee in Article 1 of the US Constitution of the right to vote for congressional representatives. Between 1842 and up to the Colegrove case in 1946, laws addressing contiguity, compactness, and equal population would be issued, restated, and then subsequently ignored. Both Congress and the Supreme Court levied key decisions defining apportionment, but left open any clear guidelines for the creation of districts. In two rare instances, the Supreme Court supported the 1929 Apportionment Act

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in both Wood v. Broom and Colegrove v. Green, believing processes related to redistricting practices were best left to Congress.

3

A Decisive Decade

The United States saw a much more active federal government in the 1960s. Whether through executive orders, legislation, or the courts, federal actions began to address many levels of inequities throughout the country. For redistricting, this decade would prove to be pivotal in resolving many questions that had gone unanswered in previous decades. Both the Supreme Court and Congress would take unprecedented steps to provide direction in more equitable redistricting processes. But these controversial decisions, while attempting to heal old wounds, would also open new ones. The US Supreme Court took on several important cases regarding the topics of contiguity, compactness, and equal population and also produced landmark decisions of malapportionment regarding race. The first of these cases, Baker v. Carr (1962), questioned unequal populations in the Tennessee state legislature. Plaintiffs in the case argued the lower house of the Tennessee state legislature had not been reapportioned since 1900. By the 1960 Census, district populations ranged from 2,340 to 42,298 people. This equated to a fact that districts containing only 27% of the total population of Tennessee held an absolute majority in the lower house of the Tennessee legislature. The result of this created a silent gerrymander. This term refers to political boundaries that have not changed with shifting population distributions, thereby creating malapportioned districts. Citing Colegrove v. Green (1946), the state of Tennessee argued this was a political question not a judicial question. In the end, in a 6–2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee needed to redistrict legislative boundaries to create districts of more equal population. Chief Justice Earl Warren would declare it as the most important judicial decision in his career with the Supreme Court (Schwartz 1997). Moreover, Baker v. Carr sets a legal precedent allowing federal courts to intervene and render verdicts regarding redistricting cases. Justice Frankfurter wrote the dissenting opinion citing Colegrove v. Green that the Court reversed course from dozens of previous cases ultimately upsetting the separation of powers between the courts and legislatures (Eisler 1993). Effectively, be it federal or state, it is Baker v. Carr that sets legal precedent for testing the equal populations of legislative districts is the most cited Supreme Court Case regarding redistricting with 4,312 citations (Casetext 2018). The Supreme Court did not have to wait long to hear additional cases challenging unequal populations in legislative districts. In 1963 James Sanders, a voter in Fulton County, filed a suit against Georgia’s county unit voting system used for state and federal elections (Gray v. Sanders 1963). This system, dating back to 1917, classified all counties into three categories: urban, town, and rural. Urban counties received six unit votes, towns four unit votes, and rural counties two unit votes. Based on the

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1960 Census figures, rural counties, accounting for only 32% of the population, controlled 59% of total unit vote. Buchanan (2008) found the 3 least populous counties combined for a total population of 6,980, while the largest, Fulton County, had 556,326 people. In the end, the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s voting scheme citing the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice William Douglas cited “. . . conception of political equality . . . can mean only one thing – one person, one vote” (Coenen 2017). Expanding beyond this case, the Supreme Court would revisit Georgia’s unit vote system, and in 1964, in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), they decided that the constitutional requirement in Article 1, Section 2, that Representatives be chosen “by the People of several States” simply means, as nearly as is practical, that one person’s vote in congressional elections is worth as much as another’s. In the same year, the Court would also hear a similar case. In Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Supreme Court was asked to rule on unequal populations in Alabama’s State House and Senate districts. As in Georgia and Tennessee, districts with about 26% and 25% of the state’s population held majorities in both state houses. As with the previous cases, it was found that Alabama’s districts violated the Fourteenth Amendment and needed to be redrawn to equalize populations. In addition, Reynolds v. Sims was further significant because the Supreme Court stipulated that both houses of the state legislature must have their respective districts equal in population. In many states with bicameral legislatures, the state senate was loosely modeled after the US Senate by theoretically giving rural areas equal footing to urban areas. For example, Alabama and South Carolina elected one senator from each of their respective counties, despite population discrepancies. In the end, the Court did concede the difficulty in creating and maintaining evenly populated districts and also admitted there may be some legitimate interests in creating minor population disparities between them, but Chief Justice Warren, author of the opinion, believed geography should never justify districts with highly unequal populations. Furthermore, Warren argued that “legislators represent people, not trees or acres . . . legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests” (McBride 2007). In only a few days, justices would issue a similar opinion in Maryland Committee v. Tawes (1964) citing Reynolds v. Sims requiring Maryland to redraw their districts. These cited court cases are a testament to historic and, to some, overreaching steps taken by the Supreme Court to intervene in electoral processes. While cases like Reynolds v. Sims acknowledged the need for equal population, how much deviation in population between districts still had not been determined. In another landmark case, the 1965 Voting Rights Act abolished restrictive techniques such as literacy tests and poll taxes allowing a new generation of disenfranchised voters to participate in elections. These truths made minority vote dilution through gerrymandering techniques an immediate possibility. Flores (2004) stated that in 1966, North Carolina held a special assembly to authorize nearly half of the state’s counties to adopt at-large elections. Similar tactics were used throughout the southern states.

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After the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, many in Congress feared that courts may begin ordering at-large elections for House members in some states unless a more robust districting scheme was discovered (Flores 2004). While the fear of court intervention was louder than fears of minority vote dilution, one senator, Howard Baker of Tennessee, did argue that “an ethnic group concentrated in one area may have no voice at all if the election is on an at-large basis” (Flores 2004). The Uniform Congressional District Act (1967) stated congressional districts are to be contiguous and reasonably compact. After the 1970 Census population, differences between districts should not exceed 10%. Subsequent cases, Gaffney v. Cummings (1973) and Karcher v. Daggett (1983), confirmed the legality of total population deviations between districts below 10%. The Court would also provide language regarding the shape of districts to their opinion. Justice Brennan stated that when drawing boundaries, they must comply with “traditional redistricting principles” such as compactness, avoiding the divisions of municipalities, and preserving the cores of the prior districts (NCSL 2018).

4

Race and Redistricting

Before the Voting Rights Act in 1965, there was little if any intervention by the courts to address racial disparities pertaining to the political reorganization of space. The lone case, Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), provided some legal precedent regarding racial gerrymandering and geography. Plaintiffs argued that an Alabama statute allowed for officials in Tuskegee to change the city boundaries from a square to a 28-sided figure placing African-American voters outside the city limits, thus preventing them from participating in city elections (Maltz 2011). Tuskegee’s AfricanAmerican population of 5,300 in 1957 far outnumbered the white population of only 1,400 citizens. State senator and executive secretary of the Alabama Association of White Citizens, Sam Engelhardt, proposed Act 140, the redrawing of the city’s boundaries, explaining, “The folks up there feel like I do. Civil rights legislation is going to pass the United States Senate either this year or the next and we’re going to be prepared for it. We couldn’t stand seeing a Negro in the Alabama Legislature” (Fortuna 2011). Figure 1 shows the resulting 28-sided district (City of Tuskegee, Alabama map 1960). This, plaintiffs argued, violated the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The Court decided in favor of the plaintiffs stating that due to race, it constituted a clear example of racial gerrymandering (Taper 2003). The Court was clear that the gerrymandered municipal boundary was intentionally created to deprive African-American voters, but had race not been at the heart of the issue, the odd-shaped municipal boundary would have been considered legal (Norrell 1986). Gomillion v. Lightfoot helped legally define racial gerrymandering as a redistricting process to isolate minority voters. Terms associated with this process include wasted vote gerrymander and excess vote gerrymander. Wasted vote gerrymandering equates to voter dilution and is sometimes known as cracking. This can be accomplished through the creation of large oddly shaped voting districts

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Fig. 1 Racial gerrymander of the city of Tuskegee, Alabama in Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960). (Source: Tuskegee University Archives Repository, www.archive.tuskegee.edu)

or by dividing groups up among several districts to split their strength. Excess vote gerrymandering, also known as packing, concentrates similar voters into as few districts as possible. This can lead to huge victories in a given district for a particular party, but this process effectively removes the ability of those gerrymandered voters to influence elections in other districts. For minorities, both practices have long been used to reduce their electoral power. When combined with other techniques like poll taxes, historic participation in the electoral process was low for most minority groups. To avoid discrimination, the 1965 Voting Rights, in Section 5, required certain states, that is, those shown to have a history or racial discrimination, to submit any changes to elections (i.e., new districts) to “preclearance” by the Department of Justice. Upon submission, federal officials would review all changes to determine if they negatively impacted minority populations. In terms of redistricting, the preclearance clause placed the federal government squarely in the middle of the redistricting processes. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 stated, “Preclearance of a new redistricting plan will be denied only if it causes a minority group to have less opportunity to elect officials of their choice than

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under the current plan.” The first test of the clause occurred in the state of Louisiana. The state Attorney General refused to submit for preclearance a redistricting plan for the New Orleans city council because it diluted the African-American vote by dispersing the voters throughout several districts, even though they comprised 45% of the city’s population. The Supreme Court determined in Beer v. United States (1976) that the plan would need approval because it disproportionally favored white voters and that new districts should be composed of majority-minority wards to place African-American voters in a better position than they were before (NCSL 2018). Specifically, areas with larger minority populations would avoid retrogression. Retrogression is simply the reduction of voting strength of a racial or ethnic minority when comparing an old versus new redistricting plan (Klas 2011). Shortly after Beer v. United States, the Supreme Court heard the case, Mobile v. Bolden (1980), where plaintiffs argued Mobile, Alabama’s at-large city commission elections violated the Voting Rights Act because the at-large districts unfairly favored white candidates. Therefore, plaintiffs maintained, this violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights of African-American voters. The Supreme Court decided, in a split decision, that Mobile’s at-large system, established in 1911, did not violate the Voting Rights Act or the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. The majority opinion stated that the Fifteenth Amendment did not entail “the right to have Negro candidates elected.” Furthermore, they stated that courts should only intervene if intentional vote dilution was present (as with Gomillion v. Lightfoot) and that such evidence must be proven by the plaintiffs. Because of this case, confusion arose over preclearance and how it would be applied. With redistricting plans already in place or in progress after the 1980 Census, pressure on Congress to provide a clearer picture only increased. The US Commission on Civil Rights was asked to investigate the need for another amendment to the Voting Rights Act. The commission issued a report and found while minority participation in elections increased since 1965, a large disparity between minorities and whites existed in election participation. Likewise, the commission found that discriminatory practices were still common throughout the United States (Williamson 1984). In 1982, Congress voted to amend Section 2 of Voting Rights Act, to make clear, that preclearance applied to redistricting plans in states or political subdivisions with a history of official voting-related discrimination. While many saw this interpretation as a major victory toward equality, others felt the amendment was too vague. Williamson wrote, “. . . the standards (of the 1982 amendment) are ambiguous in many instances. Judicial interpretation of the criteria will be required and is likely to present a substantial burden” (1984: 77). The first court case to reach the Supreme Court testing the 1982 amendment was Thornburg v. Gingles (1986). In 1982 North Carolina created a redistricting plan for both chambers of the state legislature and for the House of Representatives. The resulting plan created a number of single member districts among six multimember districts. Plaintiffs in the case argued the multimember districts impacted AfricanAmerican voter’s ability to elect persons of their choice, thus violating clauses in Voting Rights Act. In the end, a split court sided with plaintiffs and provided much needed clarification of the preclearance process that was amended 1982. The Court

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Fig. 2 12th Congressional District of North Carolina, 1993. (Source: http://law.onecle.com, 2007)

provided three criteria to aid plaintiffs in determining whether intent to dilute minority votes in the creation of voting districts was present or not (Grofman et al. 1992). Criterion one: the racial or language minority group is sufficiently numerous and compact to form a majority in a single member district. Criterion two: the minority group is politically cohesive in their voting patterns. Criterion three: the minority must show the majority white population votes sufficiently as a bloc to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate. Furthermore, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs did not need to prove discriminatory intent or causation (Kosterlitz 1987). As a result of the 1982 Amendment to the Voting Rights Act and Thornburg v. Gingles, legal protections were in place, backing Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, for the creation of majority-minority districts. The use of such districts would provide the needed protections for minority populations to be fairly represented at many levels of government. Handley et al. (1998) provided empirical evidence that the creation of such districts increased African-American representation in the early 1990s. Yet critics of such districts have also termed majorityminority districts as Affirmative Racial Gerrymandering. By 1993 North Carolina would once again test the waters of racial gerrymandering through the redistricting of its congressional districts. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), North Carolina voters challenged a 170-mile-long (District 12) African-American majority-minority district created to adhere to the preclearance clauses demanded by the US Department of Justice (Fig. 2). Plaintiffs claimed the oddly shaped 12th District was a clear example of a racial gerrymander and believed it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution (Webster 1997). The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and stated that the preclearance clause of the Voting Rights Act did not require such a district to be drawn where one did not previously exist. Furthermore, the justices asserted the district is “so bizarre on its face and irrational” as to be invalid for its disregard of “traditional districting principals such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions . . . We emphasize that these criteria are important not because they are constitutionally required – they are not – but because they are objective factors that may service to defeat a claim that a district has been

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Fig. 3 11th Congressional District of Georgia, 1995. (Source: http://law.onecle.com, 2007)

gerrymandered on racial lines” (Aleinikoff and Issacharoff 1993: 640). Similar findings were echoed in North Carolina in Shaw v. Hunt (1996) and Hunt v. Cromartie (1999) in the coming years. Following Shaw v. Reno, the standard for the review of racial gerrymandering was unclear (NCLS 2018). In providing further support of Shaw v. Reno, the Court would hear Miller v. Johnson (1995). Due to the fact that Georgia’s AfricanAmerican population was 27% of the total population, 1 of the Georgia’s 11 districts would have to be drawn as a majority-minority district. The resulting district (Fig. 3) was deemed by one justice a “geographic monstrosity” and was determined to be unconstitutional (Leib 1998). Based on Shaw v. Reno, strict scrutiny should be applied whenever race is the reason for district creation, yet as Parker (1995: 48) indicated, the Shaw decision created more questions than it answered. In 1 year, the Court would rule in a similar fashion on Bush v. Vera (1996). Based on data from the 1990 Census, Texas would gain three additional congressional seats. As a result, Texas officials created three new districts, two with majority Hispanic populations and one African-American. Through advances in technology, Texas officials utilized

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census block level analyses to identify specific populations to create complex voting district boundaries which the Court would later concluded were far too complex. The Court felt that Texas officials deliberately drew the district to deny AfricanAmericans the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice (Webster 1997). Preclearance would continue to be an obstacle for many states as they attempted to account for minority populations but also in some states’ attempts to avoid creating districts considered to be racially gerrymandered. In 2013, the Supreme Court would render a surprising decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that would erase the preclearance clause set forth by the 1965 Voting Rights Act and also allow for major changes to other election processes. In the main, states would be allowed to manipulate election laws without having to provide the changes for approval by the Department of Justice via preclearance procedures. Besides the creation of districts, states could change voting days and locations as well as require voter identification to cast a ballot. Because of Shelby, Engstrom (2014) argued that any identified laws would be costly in both time and resources. Though the preclearance requirement has been weakened by Shelby County v. Holder, Cooper v. Harris (2017) reiterated that the use of race in North Carolina, in this case as a proxy for partisanship, was still equated with racial gerrymandering. Therefore, districts were found to be unconstitutional and had to be redrawn. Within the context of race and redistricting, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was monumental both in increasing the ability of minorities to participate in elections as well as defining several redistricting terms related to the political reorganization of space. Davidson (1992) suggested that at least since 1969, the preclearance process has proved to be a significant barrier against further racial discrimination in the redistricting process. This era also greatly expanded the role of the federal government in defining redistricting practices via Supreme Court decisions and congressional legislation. Perhaps the most significant component of the Civil Rights Era related to redistricting was the preclearance stipulation. This clause circumvented state’s rights to redistrict as established by the 1929 Apportionment Act. Due to this and the subsequent court cases, plaintiffs could file lawsuits regarding racial gerrymandering without having to prove any intent to disenfranchise minority voters. Yet based on the findings in Shelby County v. Holder and Cooper v. Harris, racial gerrymandering is not as clear as it was after Bush v. Vera.

5

Current Controversies Regrading Partisan Gerrymandering

Race continues to play a vital role in helping understand the language related to the political reorganization of space. Yet, in recent years, partisan gerrymandering has received increased attention with several pending cases in front of the Supreme Court. Partisan gerrymandering can be defined as drawing districts based on partisanship via election results. As racial gerrymandering techniques typically dilutes/ cracks minority populations or leads to packing via majority-minority districts, partisan gerrymandering certainly uses similar techniques but also includes stacked

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gerrymandering. Stacked gerrymandering is a technique that searches for similar voters and places them in districts to provide additional partisan support. Basically, stacked gerrymandering “stacks the deck” in a given party’s favor. In recent decades the Supreme Court has been somewhat silent regarding the subject of partisan gerrymandering. In Gaffney v. Cummings (1973), the Court would make two major rulings regarding the topic. The first found that for purposes of redistricting, state legislative districts did not require as stringent levels of population equality as congressional districts. The second was that political fairness/equality via partisanship in creating equal populations between districts would be reserved for future court cases. By 1986, this truth would come to a head in Davis v. Bandemer (1986). In this case the Court found that partisan gerrymandering claims may be brought to courts under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution (14th Amendment). This important conclusion placed the burden on the plaintiffs to prove that in drawing such a plan, the plan’s intent was to discriminate. In the deciding opinion Justice White wrote, “In this context, such a finding of unconstitutionality must be supported by evidence of continued frustration of the will of a majority of the voters or effective denial to a minority of voters of a fair chance to influence the political process” Davis v. Bandemer (1986). After the decision of Davis v. Bandemer, no court could define a legal standard for proving partisan gerrymandering. Grofman (1990) suggested that the central issue regarding partisan gerrymandering after Bandemer was whether it was possible to predict elections results with some level of reasonable reliability and, if so, how. After the 2000 Census, Democrats in the state of Pennsylvania sued after the Republican controlled state legislature passed a redistricting plan that they felt clearly benefited the Republican Party. Citing Davis v. Bandemer, plaintiffs felt the plan violated the Equal Protection Clause. Lower courts denied that the Republican plan violated the Equal Protection Clause, but they did rule the districts were unconstitutional because the plaintiffs proved it was possible to redraw districts with smaller differences in partisan votes. In Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004), the Supreme Court rendered a split decision with no majority opinion, so the Court decided it could not intervene in the case. In the proceedings, Justice Anthony Scalia asserted since Davis v. Bandemer no answer to partisan gerrymandering could be found and that the Court was incorrect in its decision in Bandemer. While no decision was officially rendered, Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a concurring opinion regarding Vieth, agreed that no decision could be made in this case, but left open that future cases related to partisan gerrymandering could be heard by the Supreme Court. For Democrats the 2010 midterm elections could not have happened at a worst time. Facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and confusion among voters regarding the Affordable Care Act, specifically the individual mandate, Republicans rode a strong wave of support heading into November. Daley (2016) chronicled the Republican State Leadership Committee’s REDMAP initiative in 2009 to win statehouses and take control of the legislative process. The goals of REDMAP worked, and after Election Day (November 2, 2010), Republicans would take control of the House of Representatives and, more importantly, control of numerous state houses across the country. In Wisconsin, the Badger state would be

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the only state after the 2010 Midterm Elections to completely flip from Democratic control to complete Republican control. Somewhat similar results occurred in Pennsylvania where Republicans gained control of the state House of Representatives and the Governorship after Democrat Ed Rendell was term-limited. These results allowed both state governments to be in complete control of the redistricting process after the release of the 2010 US Census.

6

Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Constitution, Article 4, Section 4, requires districts to be contiguous and compact and to be bounded by county, precinct, town, or ward lines. Both parties create their own plans, and due to this process in three of last four decennial cycles, the impasses required federal court intervention (Keane 2016). For Republicans, because they were in complete control of the Wisconsin government, they were unhindered in their ability to redraw boundaries. Behind the scenes, the Republican leadership required all Republican lawmakers to sign secrecy oaths in advance after seeing how their districts would be impacted (Marley 2013). The resulting Republican congressional districts and state legislative districts were easily approved, and Act 43 was signed into law by Governor Scott Walker August 23, 2011. Upon approval, legal challenges immediately emerged. By March 2012, in a rather quick turnaround, a special panel of federal judges ruled in favor of Democrats and an immigrant rights group, Voces de la Frontera, because two Assembly districts in Milwaukee diluted the voting rights of Hispanics. Judges scolded Republican lawmakers suggesting the redistricting process was “needlessly secret, regrettably excluding input from the overwhelming majority of Wisconsin citizens” (Barbour 2012). Though the judges redrew two Assembly districts providing a more equitable distribution of Hispanic voters in Milwaukee, they did validate all remaining districts defined by Act 43 (Fig. 4). Even though the districts would remain, political upheaval would continue in Wisconsin. Governor Scott Walker became the first governor in US history to survive a recall election in June of 2012, but in only a few months, political tides would swing in back toward Democrats in November. Democrats saw a sizable rebound in support compared to 2010, yet based on the redistricting impacts of State Assembly seats, they found themselves in a sizable disadvantage compared to Republicans. Throughout Wisconsin, Democrats captured over 50% of the votes cast in Assembly districts, but Republicans managed to retain 60% of the seats. State Senate districts, which are a combination of three Assembly districts, saw comparable results. As Scott Walker faced his third election in 4 years in the fall of 2014, Democrats hoped to capitalize on the increased support seen in November 2012. Yet due to the partisan gerrymandering of the Assembly districts, the 2014 Midterm Elections saw hardly any credible challenges to candidates for either party, a pattern that would also occur in 2016. Apart from a handful of elections, incumbents for both parties either easily won their election or ran unopposed (Redistricting Attachments 2011).

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Fig. 4 Wisconsin Assembly Districts 8 and 9. Left: Act 43 district boundaries. Right: federally (current) redrawn boundaries. (Source: Redistricting Attachments 2011)

Frustrated by election results, a few Democratic voters sued the State of Wisconsin, claiming that under Bandemer, Republicans engaged in explicit partisan gerrymandering. The case was appealed to a federal panel of three judges that ruled in favor of the plaintiffs that Wisconsin’s Assembly districts indeed reflected partisan gerrymandering and needed to be redrawn. Wisconsin officials appealed the ruling, and on October 3, 2017, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford. This historic court case is centered on five main questions. The first is whether the district courts violated Vieth v. Jubelirer by suggesting the courts could intervene regarding a statewide redistricting plan rather than a district by district approach (i.e., Voces de la Frontera). The second is whether Act 43 violated Vieth though it followed traditional redistricting principals. The third is whether the district court violated Vieth by adopting a watered-down version of the partisan gerrymandering test employed by the plurality in Bandemer. Fourth, can the defendant’s present evidence they would have prevailed under a gerrymandering test used by the district court? Finally, and perhaps more importantly, can the Court decide if partisan gerrymandering claims can be heard (SCOTUS blog 2018)? While the late Justice Anthony Scalia argued in Vieth there was no proper standard to determine partisan gerrymandering, current conservative justices in Gill v. Whitford are taking a similar line. Plaintiffs in the case disagree and believe that political gerrymandering can be identified through a three-step process. The first is ascertaining the intent in making the map. The second is whether the redistricting has a discriminatory partisan effect, and the final is whether the maps are legitimate (Livni 2017). These general criteria relate to a general idea of compactness. Webster (2013) points out while no federal laws define compactness, most states require some level of compactness. Two traditional methods for mathematically measuring compactness are the Reock measure and the Polsby-Popper measure (Polsby and Popper 1991; Reock 1961). The Reock measure circumscribes a circle around a district with

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Fig. 5 Example of the minimum bounding area for the Reock measure. (Source: McGlone Azavea 2016)

Fig. 6 Example of the ratio areas for the Polsby-Popper measure. (Source: McGlone 2016)

a resulting coefficient being a proportion of the circle’s area that measures how efficiently the area of a district is packed (Fig. 5). The Reock measure has been cited in 54 cases regarding redistricting (Casetext 2018). The Polsby-Popper measure calculates a perimeter of a district with the area of a circle calculated with the same perimeter (Fig. 6). This creates a coefficient of the circle’s area divided into the districts area (Webster 2013: 8). This method has been citied in 23 civil, state, and federal cases (Casetext 2018). Furthermore, Engstrom et al. (2015) reinforced the use of these methods in court proceedings and the importance of maps in testimony. Though compactness measures have been cited in numerous cases, Stephanopoulos and McGhee (2015) state that since Davis v. Bandemer (1986), plaintiffs from 50 cases have argued that districts exhibited partisan gerrymandering; however, none have been struck down. Gill v. Whitford adds an additional tool to measure partisan gerrymandering called the efficiency gap. Created by Nicholas Stephanopoulos and Eric McGhee, this method identifies wasted votes, that is, votes that do not contribute to a victory, making it easier to identify districts that are packed or diluted. Using a similar approach to Cohn and Bui (2017), Wisconsin’s 2012 Congressional District election results can be analyzed with the Efficiency Gap. As Fig. 7 illustrates, for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional Districts, the Democrat received 157,524 votes to the Republican’s 201,720 vote. To win the district, either candidate needed at least 179,835 votes to declare victory. Since Republican candidate won and exceeded the total needed to win by 21,886, these extra Republican votes are considered wasted. In addition, all 157,524 votes that went to the Democrat are also

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Fig. 7 Wisconsin’s 7th District. (Source: Fall General Election 2012)

considered wasted. Table 1 provides results for all of Wisconsin’s congressional districts. In total 916,790 Democratic votes are wasted compared to 497,195 Republican votes, with a net difference of 693,629 Democratic votes. Using the Efficiency Gap method, the net-wasted vote is divided by the total number of all votes. For Wisconsin this equates to an Efficiency Gap of 14.6 that favors Republicans. Mordfin (2017) noted that using the Efficiency Gap in Wisconsin for all elections from 1984 to 2000, the mean-median difference was only 0.1% in favor of the Republicans; however, this number increased to 6.4 from 2012 to 2016. Meaning, there was a 100% probability that in all elections using the Act 43 districts, Democrats were at a distinct disadvantage (Cameron 2017). With the Court split 4–4, all eyes are once again on Justice Kennedy as the deciding vote. Based on past decisions, a definitive opinion against the plaintiffs would solidify the dissenting view of Vieth, that is, absolving the Court from deciding on partisan gerrymandering cases. If Kennedy sides with the plaintiffs, it would be a landmark decision. The impact would provide legal precedent for the Court to decide cases regarding partisan gerrymandering, and it would also set clearer criteria for measuring partisan gerrymandering through the use of the

Congressional district 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Totals

Democrat votes 158,414 265,422 217,712 235,257 118,478 135,921 157,524 156,287 1,445,015

Republican votes 200,423 124,683 121,713 80,787 250,335 223,460 201,720 198,874 1,401,995

Votes to win 182,529 195,449 169,882 162,894 184,832 179,873 179,835 177,732 1,433,025

Wasted vote Democrat 158,414 69,973 47,830 72,363 118,478 135,921 157,524 156,287 916,790 Republican 17,894 124,683 121,713 80,787 65,503 43,588 21,886 21,142 497,195

Table 1 Wisconsin congressional districts and the efficiency gap. (Source: Fall General Election 2012; Cohn and Bui 2017) Net 140,520 54,710 73,883 8424 52,975 92,334 135,639 135,145 693,629

Political party Democrat Republican Republican Republican Democrat Democrat Democrat Democrat Democrat

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efficiency gap metric. Stephanopoulus did indicate they were not asking the Supreme Court to make the Efficiency Gap the only possible measurement for identifying partisan gerrymandering but ultimately that partisan metrics can be identified by the courts as a viable option (Mordfin 2017). Or Kennedy could fall somewhere in the middle as he did in Vieth, forcing everybody back to the drawing board to satisfy the judiciary. Other cases have also brought further attention toward the impact of partisan gerrymandering. In March 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared Republican created districts for Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives exhibited partisan gerrymandering and ordered them to be redrawn for the 2018 Midterm Elections. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Comparisons between the two maps show much more compact districts that some argue will be fairer to Democrats. The most obvious differences can be seen in the Philadelphia area where Republicans created two safe districts in the previous map, but, based on 2016 Presidential Election results, new districts favor Democrats over Republicans (Prokop 2018). Though the Supreme Court did not hear the Pennsylvania case, the Court in mid-2018 is hearing three specific cases regarding partisan gerrymandering. Benisek v. Lamone focuses on the state of Maryland’s use of predication metrics in the creation the 6th Congressional District that favored Democrats. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2016), a lower court found North Carolina’s mandated redrawn 2016 Congressional maps were still exhibiting partisan gerrymandering and needed to be again redrawn. On January 12, 2018, defendants filed an emergency application to stay the lower court’s decision pending an appeal. The Supreme Court agreed, and the pending lower level appeal will be highly influenced by the Gill v. Whitford opinion in June 2018 (Brennan Center for Justice 2018).

7

Conclusions

Though redistricting itself is easy to define, the processes utilized in creating electoral districts can be very complex. Of all terms related to redistricting, gerrymandering encapsulates the challenges of reorganizing political space. Though a common and controversial practice, the full understanding of the term and its impact are far from complete. Both federal and state legislatures as well as the courts have willingly and unwillingly facilitated the evolution of both gerrymandering and redistricting. Therefore, the progression of the language used to describe redistricting is uniquely tied to the many court cases and legislative acts that are continually defining the process. Table 2 provides a list of 21 significant court cases heard by the Supreme Court regarding aspects of redistricting as well as the number of times these court cases have been cited by using the electronic database casetext. com. Topping the list is Baker v. Carr (1962) followed by Reynolds v. Sims (1964). In a spatial context, Brunn et al. (2000) identified the states of origin for a variety of landmark cases to identify any meaningful patterns. Looking at Table 2, and somewhat mirroring the history of redistricting through the courts, southern states are the most common with Alabama and North Carolina listed the most.

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Table 2 Significant redistricting court cases and state of origin. (Source: www.casetext.com) Court case Baker v. Carr Reynolds v. Sims Hunt v. Cromartie

Year 1962

Citations 4,312

State Tennessee

1964

2,382

Alabama

1999

1,985

North Carolina

Thornburg v. Gingles

1986

731

North Carolina

Wesberry v. Sanders

1964

681

Georgia

Gomillion v. Lightfoot

1960

649

Alabama

Mobile v. Bolden

1980

458

Alabama

Shaw v. Reno

1993

437

North Carolina

Miller v. Johnson

1995

354

Georgia

Gaffney v. Cummings

1973

311

Connecticut

Vieth v. Jubelirer

2004

235

Pennsylvania

Bush v. Vera

1996

232

Texas

Karcher v. Daggett

1983

216

New Jersey

Shaw v. Hunt

1996

215

North Carolina

Description State reapportionment claims can be reviewed in federal court States were required to create districts with nearly equal populations Redrawing of the North Carolina’s 12th District violated the Equal Protection Clause Set a three-part standard for reviewing plans challenged under Section 2 of the VRA for diluting minority populations Georgia’s apportionment plan violated the 14th Amendment, providing precedence for equal populations of districts Tuskegee’s redistricting plan was an example of racial gerrymandering, thus violating the 15th Amendment Mobile’s at-large city council districts did not violate the VRA, 14th, or 15th Amendments, intentional vote dilution must be proven by the plaintiffs North Carolina’s reapportionment plan creating majority-minority districts should not override compactness of the district Determined that, in some instances, irregular size or shape of a district can be understand nothing more than racial gerrymandering State reapportionment plans are held at a lower standard than congressional districts and future courts should decide on political fairness of districts Court would not intervene in Pennsylvania claims of partisan gerrymandering, but Justice Kennedy left open that future cases related to partisan gerrymandering could be heard by the Supreme Court Texas redistricting plans were unconstitutional due to the highly irregular shape and should held to “strict scrutiny” Though New Jersey district populations differed by less than 1%, they exhibited partisan gerrymandering Redrawing of the North Carolina’s 12th District violated the Equal Protection Clause (continued)

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Table 2 (continued) Court case Davis v. Bandemer Beer v. United States Maryland Committee v. Tawes Colegrove v. Green

Year 1986

Citations 209

State Indiana

1976

201

Louisiana

1964

176

Maryland

1946

92

Illinois

Wood v. Broom

1932

53

Shelby County v. Holder

2010

9

Kentucky and Mississippi Alabama

Description Partisan gerrymandering claims could be heard by federal courts Supported the “Preclearance Clause” of the VRA because New Orleans City Council districts exhibited retrogression Required both state houses to achieve equal populations Court believed Congress should intervene regarding redistricting practices and not the courts Congressional districts should be “contiguous and compact” with equal number of inhabitants Found Section 4(b) that Preclearance Clause of the VRA was unconstitutional and such decisions should be left to the states

Current redistricting practices and legal interpretations mirror past expectations of government to make decisions in the redistricting process. Early legislative acts and the subsequence avoidance of the courts to intervene in redistricting policies largely left decisions to the states, but, by the 1960s, the federal government’s role in redistricting practices was expanded and aided by major Supreme Court decisions focused on equal populations and racial equality. By the 2000s, however, the pendulum swung back toward greater control by states in the redistricting process. Shelby County v. Holder (2013) eliminated the preclearance clause of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 allowing states to make decisions regarding electoral processes. Though critics fear this will only exacerbate racial tensions, recent decisions have supported racial equality as a key component in redistricting. Regarding partisan gerrymandering, Gill v. Whitford (2017) stands as a monumental case that could change how gerrymandering can be measured. While redistricting can have monumental impacts on individual voters, public understanding of district creation remains low. A Pew Trust poll in 2006 found 47% of respondents did not know who oversaw the drawing districts, a trend that was consistent across socioeconomic groups (Fourgere et al. 2010). Research by Lawrence and Huffmon (2014) found 33% of survey respondents (n = 338) didn’t even know they had been redistricted into a new 7th Congressional District in South Carolina in 2011. These results are troubling because political and non-political districts (schools, police, neighborhood associations, and sanitation districts) have a direct impact on the quality of our daily lives. For these many reasons, scholars, lawyers, political scientists, journalists, and geographers must all be cognizant of the processes and language of redistricting presented in this chapter. Therefore, research

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connected to redistricting language for all types of districts merits attention. Meanwhile, courts and legislatures will continue to be the driving force in both creating and defining the language of redistricting. On June 18, 2018, in a 7–2 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled plaintiffs in the Gill v. Whitford case failed to establish standing to bring their lawsuit. Though the case was not dismissed, justices did provide a limited path to prove partisan gerrymandering. Instead of a statewide view, the Court suggested plaintiffs focus on proving partisan gerrymandering for individual districts. The Court continued suggesting these individual claims should then be reargued at the district court level. Though a majority of the Court agreed plaintiffs lacked evidence of injury through the redistricting process, in a concurring opinion, Justice Elena Kagan suggested the plaintiffs provide better evidence for individual districts that could provide a statewide remedy. Following this ruling, the Supreme Court ruled similarly in redistricting cases in Maryland and, later, North Carolina. Based on these rulings, there is still no legal precedent for proving partisan gerrymandering. Court Cases Mentioned in the Text Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962). Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130 (1976). Benisek v. Lamone (2017). Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952 (1996). Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549 (1946). Cooper v. Harris, 581 U.S. __ (2017). Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109 (1986). Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. 735 (1973). Gill v. Whitford (2017). Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960). Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963). Hunt v. Cromartie, 526 U.S. 541 (1999). Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U.S. 725 (1983). Maryland Committee v. Tawes, 377 U.S. 656 (1964). Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995). Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980). Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964). Rucho v. Common Cause (2016). Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899 (1996) Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993). Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 2 (2013). Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986). Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004). Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964). Wood v. Broom, 287 U.S. 1 (1932).

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Davidson, C. (1992). The voting rights act: A brief history. In Controversies in minority voting: The voting rights act in perspective. Washington, DC: Brookings. Eisler, K. I. (1993). A justice for all: William J. Brennan, Jr., and the decisions that transformed America. New York: Simon & Schuster. Engstrom, R. L. (2014). Shelby County v. Holder and the gutting of federal preclearance of election law changes. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2(3), 530–548. Engstrom, R. L., McCool, D. C., Chapa, J., & Webster, G. R. (2015). Social science expert witness testimony in voting rights cases. National Political Science Review, 17(1), 97–120. Fall General Election. (2012). Wisconsin voter turnout statistics | Wisconsin Elections Commission. http://elections.wi.gov/elections-voting/results/2012/fall-general. Last accessed 17 May 2018. Flores, N. (2004). A history of one-winner districts for congress. The Electoral College – Controversial Elections. http://archive.fairvote.org/library/history/flores/index.html. Last accessed 1 May 2018. Fortuna, T. (2011). Black citizens boycott white merchants for U.S. voting rights, Tuskegee, Alabama, 1957–1961. Global Nonviolent Action Database. https://nvdatabase. swarthmore.edu/content/black-citizens-boycott-white-merchants-us-voting-rights-tuskegee-ala bama-1957-1961. Last accessed 17 May 2018. Founders Online: Memoranda of Consultations with the President. (2018). 11 March–9 Apr . . . National archives and records administration. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jeffer son/01-23-02-0219. Last accessed 15 Apr 2018. Fourgere, J., Anolabehere, S., & Persily, N. (2010). Partisanship, public opinion, and redistricting. Election Law Journal, 9(4), 325–347. Grofman, B. (1990). Unsolved issues in partisan gerrymandering litigation. In Political gerrymandering and the courts (pp. 3–9). New York: Agathon Press. Grofman, B., Handley, L., & Niemi, R. G. (1992). Minority representation and the quest for voting equality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Haggard, R. F. (2000). The papers of George Washington news. GW Papers. http://gwpapers. virginia.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/2.pdf. Last accessed 15 Apr 2018. Handley, L., Grofman, B., Arden, W. (1998). Electing minority-preferred candidates to legislative office. In Race and redistricting in the 1990s (pp. 13–38). New York: Agathon Press. Hunter, T. R. (2011). The first gerrymander? Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 9(3), 781–820. James, E. J. (1897). The first apportionment of Federal Representatives in the United States. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 9, 1–41. Keane, M. (2016). Redistricting in Wisconsin. https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/ redistricting_information/redistricting_2016.pdf. Last accessed 4 May 2018. Klas, M. E. (2011). What’s behind ‘retrogression’? The big word that’s become focus of redistricting debate. Naked Politics. http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/ 2011/11/whats-behind-retrogresssion-the-big-word-thats-become-focus-of-redistricting-debate. html. Last accessed 17 Apr 2018. Kosterlitz, M. J. (1987). Thornburg v. Gingles: The Supreme Court’s new test for analyzing minority vote dilution. Catholic University Law Review, 36(2), 531–563. Lawrence, C. N., & Huffmon, S. H. (2014). Keeping up with the congressmen: Evaluating constituents’ awareness of redistricting. Social Science Quarterly, 96(1), 65–75. Leib, J. I. (1998). Communities of interest and minority districting after Miller v. Johnson. Political Geography, 17(6), 683–699. Leib, J. I., & Webster, G. R. (1998). On enlarging the US House of Representatives. Political Geography, 17(3), 319–329. Livni, E. (2017). What’s at stake in the most important Supreme Court case of the year. Quartz. https://qz.com/1093251/gill-vs-whitford-the-supreme-court-case-on-gerrymandering-might-bethe-most-important-of-the-year/. Last accessed 5 May 2018. Maltz, E. M. (2011). Constitutional spotlight series. 1 May. Marley, P. (2013). Legal costs for GOP redistricting plan top $2 million. ‘Scatman’ paces marathon record-setter. http://archive.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/legal-costs-for-gop-redistrictingplan-top-2-million-b99133178z1-230278471.html. Last accessed 4 May 2018. Martis, K. C. (2008). The original gerrymander. Political Geography, 27(8), 833–839.

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Mast, T. (1994). History of single-member districts for congress. The Electoral College – Controversial Elections. http://archive.fairvote.org/reports/monopoly/contents.html. Last accessed 1 May 2018. McBride, A. (2007). The Supreme Court. Expanding Civil Rights. Landmark cases. Reynolds v. Sims (1964) | PBS. THIRTEEN – MEDIA WITH IMPACT. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/ supremecourt/rights/landmark_reynolds.html. Last accessed 3 May 2018. McGlone, D. (2016). Measuring district compactness in PostGIS. Azavea – Beyond Dots on a Map. https://www.azavea.com/blog/2016/07/11/measuring-district-compactness-postgis/. Last accessed 15 May 2018. Mordfin, R. I. (2017). Proving partisan gerrymandering with the efficiency gap | University of Chicago Law School. Why Do People Obey the Law? | University of Chicago Law School. https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/proving-partisan-gerrymandering-efficiency-gap. Last accessed 17 May 2018. Morison, S. E., & Commager, H. S. (1962). The growth of the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press. NCSL. (2018). Redistricting and the Supreme Court: The most significant cases. http://www.ncsl. org/research/redistricting/redistricting-and-the-supreme-court-the-most-significant-cases.aspx. Last accessed 22 April 2018. Norrell, R. J. (1986). Reaping the whirlwind: The civil rights movement in Tuskegee. New York: Vintage Books. Parker, F. R. (1995). Shaw v. Reno: A constitutional setback for minority representation. PS: Political Science & Politics, 28(01), 47–50. Pollack, L. H. (1962). Judicial power and “the Politics of the People”. The Yale Law Journal, 71, 81–89. Polsby, D. D., & Popper, R. (1991). The third criterion: Compactness as a procedural safeguard against partisan gerrymandering. SSRN Electronic Journal, 9, 301–353. Prokop, A. (2018). Pennsylvania’s new congressional district map will be a huge help for Democrats. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/21/17032936/pennsylvania-con gressional-districts-2018. Last accessed 6 May 2018. Redistricting Attachments. (2011). Wisconsin legislature: 146.819. http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/ 2011/related/rd. Last accessed 12 May 2018. Reock, E. C. (1961). Measuring compactness as a requirement of legislative apportionment. Midwest Journal of Political Science, 5(1), 70–74. Schwartz, B. (1997). How Justice Brennan changed America. In Reason and passion: Justice Brennan’s enduring influence. New York: Norton. SCOTUS blog. (2018). Gill v. Whitford. 2018. SCOTUSblog. http://www.scotusblog.com/casefiles/cases/gill-v-whitford/. Last accessed 5 May 2018. Smith, D. G. (1997). An analysis of two federal structures: The articles of confederation and the constitution. San Diego Law Review, 34, 249–340. Smith, E. C., & Zurcher, A. J. (1968). Dictionary of American politics. New York: Barnes & Noble. Stephanopoulos, N., & McGhee, E. (2015). Partisan gerrymandering and the efficiency gap. University of Chicago Law Review, 82, 831–900. Taper, B. (2003). Gomillion versus lightfoot: The right to vote in apartheid Alabama. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Voting Rights Act of (1965). Pub. L. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437. Webster, G. R. (1997). The potential impact of recent Supreme Court decisions on the use of race and ethnicity in the redistricting process. Cities, 14(1), 13–19. Webster, G. R. (2013). Reflections on current criteria to evaluate redistricting plans. Political Geography, 32, 3–14. Williamson, R. A. (1984). The 1982 amendments to the voting rights act: A statutory analysis of the revised bailout provisions. Washington University Law Revie w, 6(1), 1–77. Wood, G. S. (1969). Representation in the American revolution. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Part XV Language Policy, Laws, and Ethics

Language Policies, Immigrant Assimilation, and Minority Group Advancement in the United States

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Contents 1 English Is the Predominate (But Not Official) Language of the United States . . . . . . . . . . 2 How Did the United States Become Culturally and Linguistically Insular during the Mid-Twentieth Century? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Demographic Changes Generated Linguistic Controversy in Miami, Florida . . . . . . . . . . . 4 National Level “English First” Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 State Designations of Official Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The “English Plus” Movement and Critiques of “English First” Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 English Proficiency and Acquisition of US Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Why Educating Immigrant Youth Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 English Language Learning by Students Enrolled in Public Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Educating Children Who Are English Language Learners: Past Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 Punitive English Only Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 “Sink or Swim” English Only Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Local, State, and National Participation in the Administration of US Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Late Twentieth Century Controversy about Bilingual Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Principles Determining Languages of Instruction in California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Contemporary Approaches Used to Educate English Language Learners in California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1 Structured English Immersion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2 English Language Mainstream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.3 Dual Language Schools (Alternative Programs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Bilingual Education’s Instructional Effectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Retention of Non-English “Mother Tongues” Does Not Impede Immigrant Youth’s Successful Integration into US Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Ethnic Enclaves in American Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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C. Daniel (*) Kentucky State University, Frankfort, KY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_24

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Abstract

English predominates in the United States even though it has not been designated as the country’s official language. Some of the fifty states have official languages; however, controversies have occurred concerning those designations and about imposing language requirements on prospective immigrants. The manner in which children from immigrant households are educated has also been debated. Research has found that children whose home languages are not English can be educated effectively in American schools using either Structured English Immersion, or Bilingual Education, or Dual Language Schools. Additional research has demonstrated that it is often helpful for such youth to selectively retain aspects of their ancestral cultures while becoming literate and fully bilingual in both English and their home languages. Immigrant assimilation takes place over time, frequently facilitated by communication that occurs within ethnic enclaves. There is now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, greater acceptance of cultural and linguistic diversity in the United States than existed during the first half of the twentieth century. Keywords

English · Spanish · Miami · Texas · Policy · Official · Bilingual · Language · Education · Minority · Racism · Immigration · Acculturation · Assimilation

English is the predominant language in the United States, but it is not the only language that has deep roots in the country. Some Indigenous Americans continue to speak their own Native American languages, typically doing so in addition to English. And, expansions of the US during the 1800s brought into the nation areas where French was spoken (Louisiana) or Spanish used (Texas, California, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico). Meanwhile, African-American slaves and their descendants developed a distinctive dialect of American English. Also, even today some African-American residents of the Carolinas and Georgia speak an African-derived creole language known as Gullah (McWhorter 1998). Immigrants also bring languages from around the world to the United States. This chapter focuses primarily on controversies about the use of languages other than English by immigrants and their descendants. During recent decades, efforts have been made to designate English as the country’s sole official language, but that endeavor has been opposed by groups supporting the simultaneous use of English and other languages. The United States does not have a legally designated official language, but various policies across the country address language use. For example, most immigrants seeking to obtain US citizenship must pass an examination administered in English (USCIS 2017a). And, a proposal is currently under consideration, in mid-2017, to have US officials begin taking individuals’ English fluency, or its absence, into account when determining which individuals will be granted admission to the country as legal permanent residents. Practical issues have also arisen

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concerning the education of children from immigrant households who come to school lacking English proficiency. After examining some specific language policies, this chapter will consider whether retention of non-English mother tongues’ supports or impedes immigrants’ advancement.

1

English Is the Predominate (But Not Official) Language of the United States

Why does the United States not have a nationally designated official language? Elsewhere in the world, official languages have sometimes been designated amidst conflicts between ethnic groups that speak different languages. But, amidst the public and commercial life of most of the United States, English has predominated for centuries without ever having been officially designated as the “national language.” Through conquest and annexation, the United States acquired lands in which local people spoke other tongues such as Native American languages, French, Spanish, and Hawaiian. But, most individuals in those populations, while sometimes simultaneously maintaining familiarity with their mother tongues, eventually learned to speak English. In annexed territories that became American states over time, English became the predominant language. Also, each community of non-English speaking immigrants that has come to the United States has developed English fluency, typically doing so over the course of multiple generations. Public schooling and commercial realities have reinforced the predominance of English in American life. Since 1983 an “English First” political movement has sought, thus far without success, to have English designated as the exclusive official language of the United States (US English 2016a). Paralleling this linguistic effort, nativist political groups have advocated restricting immigration into the country. Both of those movements developed in response to changes that have occurred in the scope of recent immigrant flows into the country. Demographic shifts have led to controversies about both immigration laws and language policies.

2

How Did the United States Become Culturally and Linguistically Insular during the Mid-Twentieth Century?

The United States has received immigrants throughout its history, including a large influx of European immigrants, totaling 26 million, between 1871 and 1920. In contrast to previous newcomers who came primarily from the British Isles and Western Europe, the new arrivals mostly originated in Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe, including many Poles, Italians, and Russian Jews (Gerber 2011). In response to that extensive late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigration, nativist organizations advocated passage of restrictive laws. Amidst anti-immigrant

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sentiment the US Congress imposed constraining national quotas in 1921 and 1924, greatly curtailing subsequent immigrant inflows (Gerber 2011). Between the late 1920s and the late 1960s immigration flows into the United States were much lower than they had been previously or would become later. The percentage of residents of the United States who were foreign-born peaked first in 1890 at 14.8% and then in 1910 at 14.7%. The foreign-born percentage then declined until 1970 when it bottomed out at just 4.7% (Gibson and Lennon 1999). After 1970 the foreign-born percentage of the US population increased, reaching 12.9% in 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau 2017). The distribution of immigrants within the United States has long been uneven, with some areas receiving far more of them than others. For example, only 1% of residents of the state of West Virginia were foreign-born in 2010, in contrast to 27% of people living in California (U.S. Census Bureau 2017). Even today some Americans rarely if ever hear languages other than English spoken. Such insularity was even more widespread during the mid-twentieth century, the period following restriction of immigrant flows into the United States. While growing up in a small Ohio town in the 1950s, this writer never heard any language other than English used there (Daniel 2011).

3

Demographic Changes Generated Linguistic Controversy in Miami, Florida

What happens when a previously insular community that has taken for granted its linguistic and ethnic predominance begins to experience proximity with members of a group that speaks a different language? Sometimes members of the historically insular group experience a “cultural vertigo” when they begin to hear languages other than their own being used in public settings such as retail establishments. As communities change, backlash develops against newcomers. Many Anglo-American residents of Miami, Florida, were displeased during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when Spanish speakers settled there, coming primarily from Cuba. Part of the city became known as “Little Havana.” During the 1950s more than 80% of Miami-Dade County’s population had consisted of non-Hispanic Whites, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, non-Hispanic Whites made up only 18% of the area’s population. And, by the early twenty-first century, 58% of Dade County residents could speak Spanish. About half of those Spanish speakers reported that they also spoke English well (Daily News, Latino 2008). Demographic changes produced controversy in Miami-Dade County. In 1973 the City of Miami became officially bilingual, adopting both English and Spanish as the city’s official languages. But, a backlash subsequently developed against bilingualism. As large numbers of Spanish speakers arrived from Cuba, it became advantageous for retail businesses to hire employees who were fluent in both English and Spanish. Being economically disadvantaged by this new reality, some non-Hispanic Whites moved out of the area. And, opposition developed to using public funds to pay for printing government documents in Spanish as well as English.

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Exacerbating local tensions, in 1980 an especially large influx of Cubans, totaling 121,400, entered south Florida on the Mariel boat lift. Later that year critics of bilingualism successfully petitioned for a referendum to be held to eliminate Spanish’s status as Miami-Dade’s second official language. That proposal was enacted by 59% of local voters following intensely emotional debate (Johnson 1980; Clary 1993; Castro 1992). Miami’s “English Only” initiative was ethnically divisive. According to an exit poll, 71% of non-Hispanic White voters supported that measure in contrast to only 44% of Black voters and just 15% of Hispanic voters (Castro, 179). And, more than half of those non-Hispanic White voters told the pollsters that “they would be pleased if the measure would make Miami a less attractive place for Cubans and other Spanish-speaking people.” Miami-Dade’s 1980 anti-bilingualism ordinance prohibited spending county money for “the purpose of utilizing any language other than English or promoting any culture other than that of the United States” (Johnson 1980, p. 1). But, the law allowed exceptions. For example, it continued to be legal for languages other than English to be used for voter information, provision of public services to the elderly, and handling 911 emergency telephone calls (Clary 1993). Miami’s bilingualism controversy concerned immigrants’ status in society, according to sociologist Max J. Castro. Interpreting the 1980 initiative as a potential harbinger of immigration-related conflict that might later occur elsewhere, Castro noted that Latino economic success and cultural expression in Miami violated some other Americans’ long-standing expectations: Immigrants are not supposed to be heard. Immigrants, particularly Spanish-speaking immigrants from a Caribbean island, are expected to be subordinate – numerically, economically, politically, culturally, linguistically, and even psychologically. . .Immigrant culture and language – assumed to have little prestige or usefulness in comparison with the dominant American culture and the English language – are supposed to fade away quickly as assimilation runs its course. (Castro 1992, p. 180)

Passage of Miami-Dade’s 1980 anti-bilingual ordinance did not stop Miami’s “Latinization” from continuing. More Spanish speakers arrived there, and many foreign-born individuals eventually became US citizens and voters. Reflecting those changes, in 1993, Miami-Dade’s 1980 anti-bilingualism ordinance was repealed by the 13-member County Commission, voting unanimously (Clary 1993).

4

National Level “English First” Initiatives

The scope of Miami, Florida’s post-1959 demographic and linguistic transformation was extraordinary, but Miami has not been the only US community that has experienced changes. During the 1970s and subsequent decades, immigration into the United States increased in the wake of changes that liberalized the nation’s immigration laws enacted in 1965 (Gerber 2011). Immigrants both authorized and also living outside the confines of the legal system have helped local economies

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address labor shortages. As the US-born population has aged and become more extensively educated, immigrants have increasingly performed dirty, dangerous, and/or difficult jobs that US-born people have been reluctant to perform. The new, post-1965 arrivals have come primarily from Latin America and Asia (U.S. Census Bureau 2017). Some immigrants have settled in gateway locations that historically have had large immigrant enclaves – places such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami – while others have migrated instead to “new destinations,” including interior cities, small towns, and rural areas where previously most residents had spoken only English. Millard and Chapa (2004) have documented the arrival of Latinos in rural communities in the Midwest, including Ligonier (Indiana), Wheelerton (Indiana), and Postville (Iowa). Other scholars have chronicled Mexican immigration into “new destinations” such as Nebraska (Gouveia et al. 2005), North Carolina (Griffith 2005), and Lexington, Kentucky (Rich and Miranda 2005). As immigrant flows into American communities increased, groups formed to advocate both restriction of immigration (Federation for American Immigration Reform) and designation of English as the official language of the United States (US English, Pro English). In 1981 Senator S.I. Hayakawa proposed that the Constitution be amended to make English the official language of the United States. According to Vickie Lewelling: At first the idea seemed to be primarily a symbolic gesture, giving English, the de facto language of the country, official status. Actually the proposed amendment went further, calling for prohibition of state laws, ordinances, orders, programs, and policies that require the use of other languages. Neither the Federal government nor any state government could require any program, policy, or document that would use a language other than English. (Lewelling 1992, p. 1)

But, no constitutional amendment of this type has been passed, nor have efforts to enact comparable national laws been successful to date. The United States is a federal system with each of its 50 states possessing substantial authority. Within that context some states have made official language designations.

5

State Designations of Official Languages

Since the 1980s two organizations, “US English” and “English First,” have promoted adoption of “Official English” by both the United States as a whole and also by individual 50 states. Thirty-two states have recognized English as their official language, according to a web posting by US English (2016b). Most of those designations have been made since the 1980s although a few occurred earlier. For example, in 1923 Nebraska designated English as its official language. And, during that same year, Illinois made “American” its official language before much later, in 1969, changing the designation to English (Wikipedia 2017). Those official language designations were made within an ethnocentric context. During the 1920s membership surged in the Ku Klux Klan, a racist and anti-immigrant organization.

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And, aroused by their country’s recent participation in the First World War, during the 1920s some Americans became upset that US citizens of German heritage were continuing to speak, write, and publish newspapers in their ancestral tongue. In contrast to the “English First” movement, two states have granted official status to multiple languages. Hawaii lists both English and Hawaiian as the state’s official languages (“Hawaii, Languages” 2017), while Alaska has granted official status to English and also 19 locally spoken Native American languages, including Inupiaq, Siberian Yupik, and Central Alaskan Yup’ik. Sixteen percent of Alaska residents over the age of five can speak a language other than English (State Symbols USA 2017; English Only Movement 2017). Similarly, both Spanish and English were used in New Mexico’s Legislature until 1935. Later in 1992 New Mexico’s legislature passed an “English Plus” resolution “declaring that proficiency in more than one language is beneficial to the nation, that English needs no official legislation to support it, and that proficiency in other languages should be encouraged” (Lewelling 1992, p. 1). Legislatures in three other states, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington, have passed similar “English Plus” (2017) resolutions.

6

The “English Plus” Movement and Critiques of “English First” Efforts

Since coming into being in 1985, an “English Plus” movement has been supported by minority language advocacy groups and language education professionals (English Plus 2017). Recognizing that “proficiency in English is indispensable in American society,” “English Plus” supporters favor providing opportunities to learn English to everyone living in the United States. But, they oppose efforts to designate English as the nation’s official language, arguing that: . . .official English laws are counterproductive; they do not provide increased opportunities to acquire proficiency in English, but they do restrict the rights and access to essential services of individuals who are not yet English-proficient. (Lewelling 1992)

The “English First”/“Official English” movement has sometimes been associated with expressions of anti-immigrant sentiment and ethnic bias. When Senator S.J. Hayakawa founded the organization “US English,” he did so in partnership with controversial anti-immigration activist John Tanton. Tanton later started a parallel group called “Pro English” and simultaneously developed a network of organizations that advocate reducing immigration into the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a Civil Rights organization, notes that Tanton has repeatedly expressed “white nationalist beliefs.” SPLC has drawn attention to Tanton’s communications with other white supremacists and documented extremist statements that he has made (Southern Poverty Law Center 2017). Separately, linguistics scholar Rachele Lawson has applied critical discourse analysis to the

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rhetoric of “English Only” advocates. Her study found the movement’s “real motivation” to be “discrimination and disenfranchisement” (Lawson 2013, p. 1). Controversies about language policy have often been intertwined with debates about both the admission of immigrants to the United States and the subsequent status of those individuals. Processes used to grant applicants US Citizenship are discussed below along with comments about how legal permanent residency is obtained.

7

English Proficiency and Acquisition of US Citizenship

There are three ways in which individuals acquire US citizenship: (1) being born in the United States, (2) being born outside of the United States to US citizen parents, or (3) immigrating to the United States and subsequently undergoing a naturalization process. Most citizens who are born in the United States or are born abroad to US citizen parents grow up in English-speaking households. So, attention has focused instead on the English proficiency of immigrants and their children. Shortly after the United States became an independent nation in 1795, Congress passed a Naturalization Law that permitted immigrants to become citizens after residing in the country for 5 years. There were several additional requirements that had to be fulfilled to obtain naturalized citizenship, but being able to speak English was not one of those mandates. Much later, in 1906, Congress began barring applicants who could not speak English from obtaining naturalized citizenship (Gerber 2011). Currently, in 2017, applicants for naturalization must meet ten “General Eligibility Requirements,” one of which is to “be able to read, write, and speak basic English.” These abilities are assessed during an interview and also through a test during which prospective citizens are required to read aloud sentences that are written in English (USCIS 2017a). However, some older legal permanent residents are not required to fulfill the English language requirement in order to obtain citizenship. Applicants for citizenship who are at least 50 years old who have been legal permanent residents of the United States for at least 20 years are exempt from the English requirement, as are legal permanent residents who are at least 55 years old and have resided in the United States with that status for at least 15 years (USCIS 2017b). English proficiency, or its absence, is not currently considered when officials determine which individuals from elsewhere are granted legal permanent residency or issued short-term permits to work in the United States. Instead, receipt of permanent residency is often based on applicants’ relationship to sponsoring family members who already possess either legal permanent residency or citizenship status. During mid-2017 President Donald Trump expressed support for a legislative proposal that would curtail the family reunification provisions of current law, replacing them with a point system that would favor as prospective legal permanent residents those applicants who have received high-paying job offers, possess English ability, and have extensive education. English ability would be assessed

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using standardized tests with only higher scoring individuals receiving “points” (Kopan 2017). Named the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act, the legislative proposal that President Trump endorsed was introduced into the US Senate by two conservative southern Senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Purdue of Georgia (Cotton 2017). In addition to creating a point system for selection, the Act would also substantially reduce the number of immigrants legally permitted to enter and work in the United States. However, US immigration law is very complex, and it is also the subject of intense controversy. Realistically, no legislation to overhaul the US immigration system is likely to be passed in 2017. However, future debates about changing immigration policy may include discussion about what role, if any, applicants’ English proficiency should play in their selection as legal permanent residents.

8

Why Educating Immigrant Youth Matters

Like many other economically developed countries, the United States currently has an aging population. Much of that population, being retired, is no longer employed. In contrast, most recent immigrants enter the country either as working-aged adults or as the children of those adults. Recognizing the significance of the educational and occupational success of immigrant youth to America’s future, during the 1990s, several foundations funded an extensive longitudinal study of the educational and social experiences that youth from immigrant families were experiencing in San Diego, California, and also in Miami, Florida, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. More than 5,000 youth and their parents were surveyed and interviewed repeatedly as they progressed through secondary school. The study concluded that not all immigrant groups experience upward social mobility. Concerning this “segmented assimilation,” the principal investigators noted: Some of the ethnic groups being created by the new immigration are in a clearly upward path, moving into society’s mainstream in record time and enriching it in the process with their culture and energies. Others, on the contrary, seem poised for a path of blocked aspirations and downward mobility, reproducing the plight of today’s impoverished domestic minorities. . .Were this outcome to become dominant among the second generation, a new rainbow underclass would be the prospect facing urban America by middle of the next century. (Portes and Rumbaut 2001, p. XVIII)

More specifically the researchers observed that “downward assimilation” can occur when immigrant youth emulate US-born youth who drop out of school, join gangs, and abuse drugs (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). But, when adult immigrants bring to the US substantial human capital in the form of advanced education as parents, they can often successfully guide their children toward educational success and away from self-destructive “oppositional subcultures.” But, most immigrants who have come to the United States during recent decades from Mexico have done so

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after previously receiving only limited formal education. In 1990 only 3.5% of Mexican-born adults living in the United States were college graduates (Portes and Rumbaut 2001).

9

English Language Learning by Students Enrolled in Public Schools

In the United States government supported educational institutions are called public schools. Most children growing up in immigrant families attend public schools rather than private or religious ones. Many immigrant children speak languages other than English at home. In 2015, 42.8% of California’s public school students spoke a language other than English at home. About half were considered to be “Fluent English Proficient,” while others were still “English Learners.” In other words, 21.1% of the students attending public schools in California were English Learners (California Department of Education 2017). Within the United States as a whole, 9.4% of public school students were considered to be English Language Learners in 2014–2015. Eighty-three percent of them spoke Spanish at home making Spanish the most common home language of school children learning English in the United States. The second and third most widespread home languages were Vietnamese, used by only 2.2%, and Mandarin, used by just 1.5% (National Center for Education Statistics-NCES 2017).

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Educating Children Who Are English Language Learners: Past Approaches

Historically three different approaches have been used in American schools to educate children and youth who have grown up speaking languages other than English at home: “Punitive English Only” Instruction, “Sink or Swim English Only” Instruction, and “Bilingual Education.”

10.1

Punitive English Only Instruction

Use of the “Punitive English Only” approach has reflected the belief, formerly assumed without question by many Anglo-Americans, that the English language is inherently superior. The cultures of America’s indigenous peoples were especially distained. Today descendants of the original inhabitants of the United States are referred to as “Native Americans,” as “First Nations,” or (perpetuating the geographical error made by Christopher Columbus in 1492) simply as “Indians.” During their first century as an independent nation Anglo-Americans coveting Indian lands frequently harassed and slaughtered the continent’s indigenous inhabitants. Most Native Americans who survived were then forced to live on remote western reservations, occupying lands of marginal value that others did not wish to

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inhabit. Then, beginning in the late 1800s following subjugation of the native peoples by the US Army, efforts were made to eradicate tribal languages and cultures by educational means (PBS 2006). Government officials and Christian missionaries removed many Native American children from their families and transported them to distant Indian boarding schools where Indian youth were taught that their parents’ cultures were inferior. Children living at the boarding schools were forbidden to wear indigenous clothing or to speak their mother tongues; those Native American youth were supposed to always speak and think in English. When caught “speaking Indian,” they were beaten with leather belts (PBS 2006; American Indian Boarding Schools 2017; National Museum of the American Indian 2017). There were more than 120 off-reservation boarding schools that educated American Indians. Many of those schools were located in western states that had Indian reservations, but some others were deliberately developed in places that were distant from students’ families and home communities (American Indian Boarding Schools 2017). For example, some Lakota youth from the western plains were transported to distant Pennsylvania to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School located there. Operating in Carlisle from 1979 to 1918, that school was considered the “flagship” Indian school, the model whose practices educators at other Indian boarding schools emulated (Carlisle Indian Industrial School 2017). The Indian boarding school era lasted until the mid-twentieth century. But, despite having been subject to oppressive measures, some graduates of those boarding schools managed to maintain strong tribal identities and developed the cross-tribal American Indian Movement. Beginning in the 1970s, graduates of the Indian boarding schools led that movement’s protests against oppression of Native Americans (PBS 2006). Treatment of Native Americans at Indian boarding schools may have been particularly harsh, but it was not unique in its employment of the “Punitive English Only” approach to education. In the southwestern United States, Mexican-American children were often subject to “Punitive English Only” forms of instruction until the late 1960s. Texas was one of the states where this occurred. Texas, which prior to1836 was part of Mexico, has had a substantial Spanishspeaking population since the 1700s. But beginning in 1918, laws were passed against using languages other than English in public schools anywhere in Texas. Teachers and school administrators subsequently forbade students to speak Spanish in classrooms, and the use of Spanish in cafeterias and outside on playgrounds was also forbidden. Children who violated those “No Spanish Rules” were punished in various ways, for example, being forced to pay monetary fines, being given extra homework assignments, or being required to stand on a black square, isolated from classmates for 1 h (Valencia 2010, p. 157; Rodriguez 2017, pp. 1–3). Both AngloAmerican teachers and also Mexican-American ones enforced those rules. While living in Kingsville, Texas, from 1978 to 1981, this writer was informed by local Mexican-Americans that until the late 1960s the “No Spanish Rule” was enforced by local schools. More recently, on December 7, 2017, 93-year-old Kingsville resident Eva Arredondo recounted stories to this writer about especially

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memorable experiences that she had while growing up there. Without prompting, she described being reprimanded by a Mexican-American teacher and then required to stay after school and fill an entire tablet with words written repeatedly in English. That memorable event occurred during the 1930s when Eva Arredondo was in the third grade. She was punished for having spoken Spanish to a friend while playing outside the school during recess. Many Mexican-Americans are mestizos with appearances that visibly suggest to others that they possess both Native American and Spanish ancestry. This has affected the group’s status within American society. Inclined to racialist thinking and disparaging both Native Americans and Spaniards, many Anglo-Americans who settled in the southwestern United States during the 1800s regarded Mexican-American residents of the region as racially distinct from themselves and also inferior (Rodriguez 2007). Imposition of punitive “No Spanish Rules” has not been the only aspect of Texas education that has disadvantaged Mexican-American youth. Until the 1960s Mexican-American pupils were often kept apart from AngloAmerican students in Texas, attending separate schools. Sometimes the supposed “language handicap” of Mexican-American children was used as a pretext to maintain segregation. Even if they possessed English fluency, at times MexicanAmerican youth were assigned to attend particular schools simply because they had Spanish surnames. And, in contrast to the schools that Anglo-Americans attended, as late as the 1960s Texas schools serving Mexican-Americans often had “run-down facilities, and equipment, shortened school terms, and large classes taught by underpaid, ill-trained teachers” (Rodriguez 2017, p. 1). But, conditions have been improving. In its Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared racially based school segregation to be “inherently unequal” and thus unconstitutional. Subsequently judges have sought to desegregate and equalize public education in Texas and other states. The Brown decision that struck down school segregation directed against African-Americans in Little Rock, Arkansas, was preceded by a desegregation decision issued in California in 1947 by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. That important but sometimes overlooked case, Mendez v. Westminster, overturned segregation of Mexican-American students by four Orange County, California, school districts. Legal arguments presented during the Westminster case were later reused in Brown v. Board of Education. Also, California governor Earl Warren responded forcefully to the Westminster decision, working with other California officials to completely end school segregation in that state. Later, while serving as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren wrote the1954 Brown decision (Strum 2016; Mendez v. Westminster 2017). Hopes that the Brown decision would improve educational outcomes for minority students have not always been realized. Local implementation of Brown v. Board of Education was often delayed by local conflicts taking place over the course of decades. And, persisting patterns of residential segregation within metropolitan areas have sometimes affected school desegregation efforts. During the 1960s a Chicano/Mexican-American civil right movement developed. In 1968 thousands of Mexican-American students walked out of high schools in Los Angeles, California, protesting against educational policies that they perceived to be

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discriminatory, including suppression of Spanish (“East LA Walkouts,” 2017). Similar school walkouts then occurred elsewhere. In some Texas communities, the protesting students, supported by their parents, insisted that “No Spanish Rules” be dropped (Cronkite 1968). The prohibition against using Spanish in Texas schools officially ended in 1973 when that state enacted its “Bilingual Education and Training Act” (Rodriguez 2017).

10.2

“Sink or Swim” English Only Instruction

The “Sink or Swim” English Only approach to educating English Language Learners is not overtly punitive. School children are not punished for using languages other than English at school. However, all instruction is carried out in English with no adjustment made to accommodate youth who have grown up in households where that language is rarely if ever spoken. Just as some non-swimmers who are thrown into deep water manage to survive by instantaneously learning to swim, some English Language Learners succeed in school even when nothing special is done to assist them. Unfortunately, many others do poorly under those conditions, metaphorically drowning amidst unhelpful English Only instruction. To address this problem, in 1968 the US Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act, mandating that public schools make efforts to meet the needs of students who have Limited English Proficiency. This mandate was reinforced in 1974 by the United States Supreme Court’s Lau v. Nichols decision. Controversies developed, however, concerning the means of serving those children.

10.3

Local, State, and National Participation in the Administration of US Schools

Schooling originated in the United States though collective efforts made by local communities, so almost all public schools are administered under the direction of locally elected Boards of Education. American parents often expect to exercise influence over how their children are educated. And, local school administrators are subject to extensive regulations imposed by state level education officials. Most funding for public schools comes from state and local taxes, with lesser quantities of funds coming from the national government. Funds that local school districts receive from the national government are sometimes earmarked for specific purposes, such as, for example, serving children who have Limited English Proficiency.

11

Late Twentieth Century Controversy about Bilingual Education

Following passage of the Bilingual Education Act, annual federal (national level) funding for that form of instruction increased from just $7 million dollars in 1968 to $150 million by 1979 (Frum 2000). But, during that period opposition to bilingual

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education also emerged, arising partly because expectations of some early supporters of the Act had not been realized. The Bilingual Education Act, it did not specify precisely how its programs were to be implemented. So, local educators determined how much time was devoted to instruction in students’ home languages compared to the amount of time spent teaching using English. Similarly, the Bilingual Education Act did not specify how many months or years immigrant youth would continue to receive bilingual education in their home languages. Some early supporters of the Bilingual Education Act expected that students’ participation in bilingual education classes would be brief, leading to rapid transition into classes taught exclusively in English. Others believed that students could benefit from remaining in bilingual classes longer. Some educators and parents wanted bilingual education to focus entirely on preparing students to subsequently be educated entirely in English, while others sought to have students develop literacy simultaneously in both English and the parental languages. “English First” organizations seeking to establish English as the national language have criticized bilingual education efforts. And, not all immigrant parents, including some with Mexican heritage, have wanted their English Language Learner offspring to be enrolled in bilingual education programs. Some immigrant parents have believed that their children could become more successful if they were instead instructed exclusively in English. Assessing polls conducted among MexicanAmericans during the 1980s, political scientist Peter Skerry found widespread but not universal support among that group for bilingual education. But dissenting from the views of most of their peers, some Mexican-American parents and public officials have strongly opposed bilingual education (Skerry 1993), In 2001 Congress replaced the “Bilingual Education Act” with the “No Child Left Behind” law. Subsequently, national emphasis was placed on assessing student achievement exclusively by means of standardized tests that are administered in English. But, the educational practices of American public schools are also shaped by local and state educators, parents, and community leaders. So, even though bilingual education is no longer being promoted by national officials, it continues to be used in many public schools. One place where this occurs is California, the state whose schools enroll the largest number of English Language Learners, 1.3 million in Fall, 2016 (California Department of Education 2017).

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Principles Determining Languages of Instruction in California

Bilingual education has generated intense controversy in California. By petition voters there can have proposed laws placed on the ballot for subsequent approval or rejection. In 1998 California voters passed, by a 61% to 38% margin, an anti-bilingual education measure called Proposition 227, the English in Public Schools Initiative. Drafted and promoted by a software entrepreneur that law required that most instruction of students with Limited English Proficiency be conducted in English. Proposition 227 was supported by most non-Hispanic White

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voters but opposed overwhelmingly by Latino voters. Latinos voted against Proposition 22 by a margin of almost two-to-one, 63% to 37% (Castro 1998). Following passage of Proposition 227 bilingual education efforts were substantially curtailed in California, but they were not completely eliminated. Proposition 227 permitted exceptions to be made to its restriction of instruction in languages other than English under special circumstances, such as when students’ parents or guardians affirmed that their children “would learn English faster through an alternative instructional technique” (California Proposition 227,1). In the San Francisco area, many parents signed waivers making it possible for bilingual education programs to be conducted using various languages, including Japanese and Mandarin. Students enrolled in those bilingual programs outperformed their peers within the same school districts who received instruction only in English (Benson 2014). Immigration into the United States has been produced by demographic and economic forces, not school policies about languages of instruction. So, passage of Proposition 227 in 1998 did not stop California’s foreign-born population from subsequently increasing, nor did it prevent minorities from becoming a large proportion of the electorate there. In 2016 California’s legislature proposed that the state’s voters repeal Proposition 227. The voters responded by doing so, passing Proposition 58, Non-English Languages Allowed in Public Schools. Lifting restrictions that had been placed on bilingual education, Proposition 58 was approved by California voters by a wide margin with 73% voting in favor of it and just 26% opposed. A Field Poll conducted in September, 2016, correctly predicted that Proposition 58 would pass. That poll anticipated that approximately 69% of voters favoring the measure. And, the Field Poll found majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all favoring Proposition 58, along with majorities of both non-Hispanic White voters and Latino voters (Citrin and Dicamillo 2016). Ballots described Proposition 58 in this manner: Preserves requirement that public schools ensure students obtain English language proficiency. Requires school districts to solicit parent/community input in developing language acquisition programs. Requires instruction to ensure English acquisition as rapidly and effectively as possible. Authorizes school districts to establish dual-language immersion programs for both native and non-native English speakers. . .. (Ballotpedia 2017)

13

Contemporary Approaches Used to Educate English Language Learners in California

The practical effect of Proposition 58 has been to permit California school districts to employ varying approaches to the education of English Language Learners, including the use at times of languages other than English. So, California educators currently employ three types of settings to educate English Learners: Structured English Immersion, English Language Mainstream Classes, and Alternative Programs. Parents’ preferences, individuals’ needs, and pupils’ progress are considered when students are placed in those settings (California Department of Education

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2017). Local school districts exercise some discretion as they implement the educational approaches specified by the California Department of Education. The information below comes from the US School District located in Terrance, California:

13.1

Structured English Immersion

In Terrance, California, students at the “beginning levels” of English language proficiency are mostly taught in English, receiving academic instruction specially designed to meet their needs. Some materials in a student’s home language/primary language may also be used. When reasonable fluency in English is achieved students leave Structured English Immersion and begin taking English Language Mainstream classes (Torrance Unified School District, Structured English Immersion 2017).

13.2

English Language Mainstream

These classes are taught in English, developing both language skills and proficiency in other academic areas. But, instruction takes into account the fact that students are not yet fully fluent in English. And, at times special assistance is given in students’ primary languages. That help is provided by teachers and/or bilingual instructional assistants (Torrance Unified School District, English Language Mainstream 2017).

13.3

Dual Language Schools (Alternative Programs)

The Terrance school district’s web site specifies: The Dual Language Immersion model is an alternative program only available with a parent waiver. Parents have the right to request an alternative instructional program for their children in their primary language. The law requires that the District provide an alternative instructional program if there are 20 or more students at a grade level for whom parents have made such a request. (Terrance Unified School District, Dual Language Immersion 2017)

But, as of late 2017 the Terrance Unified School District apparently did not operate any dual language immersion schools. The dual language Meyler Street Elementary School has a Terrance, California, street address but is operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District, not the Terrance District. At Meyler Street Elementary: Dual Language or Two-Way Language Immersion is a unique educational program where children learn to think, read, write, and communicate naturally in two languages: English and Spanish. Native Spanish and Native English-speaking students study together, beginning in kindergarten, in this intensive K-12 program, to be biliterate in both languages. (Meyler Street Elementary School, Dual Language Immersion Program 2017)

Meyler Elementary states that it is preparing students to continue being educated in both Spanish and English through the 12th grade. However, during the 2017–2018

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Table 1 Dual language programs offered by the Los Angeles Unified School District, 2017–2018 Languages Spanish and English Korean and English Mandarin and English Armenian and English French and English Arabic and English

# of programs/schools 92 13 7 2 1 1

Grade levels offered K-9 K-12 K-8 K-1 K-2 K-1

Data compiled from Los Angeles Unified School District, Dual Language Bilingual School Search Directory, 2017–2018. https://achieve.lausd.net/Page/7524#spn-content

school year, the Los Angeles Unified School District did not yet have available any Spanish-English dual language programs beyond grade nine. Most of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s dual language programs are presented at the elementary school level (Table 1). Dual language schools can help immigrant families retain their mother tongues and cultural heritages, while the children simultaneously become well educated in English. And, those schools enable students from homes where only English is spoken to develop fluency in a second language. Graduates of dual language schools earn certificates or seals of biliteracy. The number of dual language schools in the United States has been growing. Reportedly there were 260 such programs nationwide in 2000, increasing to approximately 1,000 programs in 2005 and 2000 in 2011 (Gross, 2016).

14

Bilingual Education’s Instructional Effectiveness

Proposition 227 was in effect from 1998 until 2016 and led to curtailment, but not elimination, of bilingual education efforts in California. In 2006 the American Institutes for Research (AIR) presented findings from a 5-year study that they conducted for the California Department of Education concerning Proposition 227’s effects. Because there were no state-wide data available concerning the performance of individual students, the AIR researchers relied extensively on surveys and interviews conducted with local California educators. And, they analyzed individual student data from the large Los Angeles Unified School District. The AIR concluded: Nevertheless, the best analysis we have been able to conduct given data limitations indicate that differences across models of instruction –holding constant such critical factors as student demographics – are minimal or nonexistent. (American Institutes for Research 2006, p. 14)

In other words, California’s AIR study indicates that English Learners can be educated equally well using either bilingual education methods or “English Only” approaches. Earlier research had produced similar findings. In 1991 the US

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Department of Education released the results of an 8-year study that compared the effectiveness of English Immersion, Early-Exit Bilingual Education, and Late-Exit Bilingual Education programs. That study analyzed progress made in grades kindergarten through six of English Learners coming from Spanish-speaking households. Compared to the nonimmigrant student norm group, those English Learners entered kindergarten at an academic disadvantage and remained behind throughout their elementary years. But, once in school those English Learners from Spanish-speaking households generally progressed as rapidly as other students did. In other words, the achievement gaps that existed initially between the groups neither increased nor decreased subsequently over time. This pattern occurred for both enrollees in English Immersion programs and also those participating in Early-Exit Bilingual Education. However, students enrolled in Late-Exit Bilingual programs progressed slightly more rapidly than did those in the other groups (Ramirez et al. 1991). Bilingual education, like both Structured English Immersion and Dual Language Immersion, can be used to effectively develop immigrant students’ academic skills. Research about instructional effectiveness does not, however, address the broader question of how retention of non-English mother tongues affects immigrant youth’s movement into US society.

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Retention of Non-English “Mother Tongues” Does Not Impede Immigrant Youth’s Successful Integration into US Society

Segmented assimilation occurs, when some immigrant youth become successfully integrated into American society through upward social mobility, while others are instead downwardly mobile, assimilating into the nation’s self-destructive rainbow underclass (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Over the course of 12 years, from 1988 to 2000, sociologists Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut sought to determine what factors predisposed immigrant youth to either succeed, or not, academically and occupationally. Funded by several foundations, their Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) repeatedly surveyed immigrant youth of various ethnicities and also their parents. This was accomplished with 2,225 immigrant youth in Florida (Miami/Fort Lauderdale) and 2.062 immigrant youth in California (San Diego). Concerning family dynamics, Portes and Rumbaut observed: One of the most poignant aspects of immigrants’ adaptation to a new society is that children can become, in a very real sense, their parents’ parents. This role reversal occurs when children’s acculturation has moved so far ahead of their parents that key family decisions become dependent on the children’s knowledge. Because they speak the language and know the culture better, second-generation youths are often able to prematurely freeing themselves from parental control. (Portes and Rumbaut 2001, pp. 52–53)

Portes and Rumbaut call them phenomena dissonant acculturation and note that it sometimes produced negative outcomes for youth whom they studied (2001,

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pp. 53–54). Ignoring and disrespecting their non-English-speaking parents, some have dropped out of school, joined gangs, and/or become drug abusers. More favorable relationships between parents and children have occurred, however, when consonant acculturation has taken place, with members of both generations learning English and adopting to the new culture at approximately the same rate. When immigrant parents possess human capital, such as higher education, they can often maintain some authority over their offspring as consonant acculturation takes place (2001, p. 54). Unfortunately, working class immigrant parents often have come to the United States with only limited formal education. Portes and Rumbaut have, however, also identified a third pattern of assimilation, one that can potentially benefit immigrant youth regardless of how much education their parents possess: Finally, selective acculturation takes place when the learning process of both generations embedded in a co-ethnic community of sufficient size and institutional diversity to slow down the cultural shift and promote partial retention of the parents’ home language and norms. This third option is associated with a lack of intergenerational conflict, the presence of many co-ethnics among children’s friends, and the achievement of full bilingualism in the second generation. (Portes and Rumbaut 2001, p. 54)

Use of parental languages by immigrant youth does not impede their acquisition of English fluency. Instead, immigrant children’s selective acculturation, including development of literacy in both English and home languages, is associated positively with self-esteem, personal aspirations, and academic performance (Portes 2004).

16

Ethnic Enclaves in American Life

Non-English-speaking populations who have become part of the United States have often resided for generations within ethnic enclaves, continuing to use their ancestral languages while simultaneously learning to speak English and succeed within the nation’s cultural mainstream. For example, the Hudson River valley was settled by the Dutch before becoming subject to British rule in 1664. Growing up in New York State’s Hudson Valley during the last two decades of the 1700s as a fifth generation descendent of Dutch settlers, Martin Van Buren spoke Dutch as his mother tongue. Subsequently Van Buren learned English, pursued a successful career in law and politics, and served as President of the United States from 1837 to 1841 (Wikipedia 2017). English’s predominance within the United States has been so overwhelming; however, that use of Dutch within the territory that had constituted New Netherland eventually ceased. After Van Buren, America’s next President possessing Hudson Valley Dutch settler ancestry was Theodore Roosevelt who grew up speaking only English. Born in 1858 and occupying the White House from 1901 to 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt demanded that early twentieth-century immigrants from Eastern Europe rapidly “Americanize.” He wanted all of them who had “foreign

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sounding” surnames to anglicize those names and threatened to expel from the country immigrants who did not quickly learn English (Jacoby 2004, p. 296). At approximately the same time that President Theodore Roosevelt and automobile manufacturer Henry Ford were advocating forced “Americanization” of immigrants, two University of Chicago sociologists, William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, studied a Polish ethnic enclave and found that it provided immigrants there with valuable consolation and social support (Gerber 2011, pp. 106–107). Arguably, the United States is a “graveyard for immigrant languages.” Over the course of generations, use of ancestral languages other than English ceases. Meanwhile, the existence of ethnic enclaves has often benefited immigrants, their descendants, and the nation as whole. Gerber has noted: Ethnicity may mask this process of accommodation [between immigrants and others] by highlighting difference, but ethnicity has not only been about preserving an old identity. It also has been a central agent of assimilation, because the ethnic group is among the principal sites for absorbing the new rules and behaviors necessary for the immigrants to fulfill their aspirations. (Gerber 2011, p. 108)

17

Conclusion

The United States has not officially adopted English as its national language because its leaders have not perceived it to be necessary to do so. And, in contrast to countries where national identity derives from belief in shared ancestry, history, and/or ethnicity, in the US emphasis has been placed instead on acceptance of shared ideals concerning freedom, liberty, and opportunity (Jacoby 2004). But, this inclusive view of American identity has not always been consistently applied or universally accepted. Movements espousing racism, religious sectarianism, linguistic chauvinism, and anti-immigrant nativism have periodically developed and influenced American politics and society. Historically, the consideration of policies concerning the status of languages has generated controversy in the United States. And such issues may provoke future debate as the status of immigrant ethnic groups shifts over time. Powerful social dynamics will continue transforming the nation, however, regardless of whatever policies are adopted at any given moment. Immigrants bring change to the United States concerning language, cuisine, and many other things, while their descendants simultaneously become fully assimilated Americans.

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Geographic Reach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Expansion of Legal Latin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Persistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Versatility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Closing Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Legal terms that have a Latinate origin are so prevalent in the modern world that virtually every legal practitioner makes some use of them in writing or speaking about the law. The lingering legacy of this “Legal Latin” is a complex sociolinguistic phenomenon. While tradition, colonialism, and elitism are the conventional explanations for the continuing prevalence of Legal Latin in specific legal cultures or jurisdictions, they do not offer a sufficient account for the persistence of the language in the modern world. The best explanation may simply be that Legal Latin has always flourished in a multilingual environment, whether the Roman Empire, Renaissance Europe, the Holy Roman Empire and its successor (the European Union), or the modern world of globalization and international institutions.

R. S. Fisher (*) Department of Humanities, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: rfi[email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_36

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Keywords

Legal sociolinguistics · Jurilinguistics · Loan translations · Calques · Comparative law

1

Introduction

“Legal Latin” means all the words, phrases, and maxims (including naturalized vocabulary and loan translations) that derive from Roman law and have survived in modern languages around the world as a technolect or auxiliary language used by legal professionals. The term “Law Latin” refers to legal words and phrases expressed in the Latin language. Legal Latin is broader in scope. It includes Law Latin but also naturalized and translated words and phrases in a host language that owe their origin to Law Latin. Historically, Legal Latin has always flourished in a multilingual environment such as the Roman Empire or early modern Europe. In the modern world, the legacy of colonialism, increasing globalization, and the expansion of international institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Criminal Court, provide an environment that is ideal for Legal Latin to survive. Although Legal Latin has been described as the “common legal language of Europe” (Ristikivi 2005), traces of Legal Latin surface in languages and territories that have no direct historical or linguistic connection to the Roman Empire, to Roman law, or to the Latin language (Mattila 2013). For that reason, Legal Latin seems more like a “transnational legal language” that transcends national boundaries (Mayrand 2007). Words having a Latinate origin, either directly, through a language descended from Latin, or indirectly, through diffusion resulting from colonialism and globalization, are so predominant in the modern world that no legal practitioner can claim to have learned the law without learning something about Legal Latin. The degree of prevalence of Legal Latin varies from language to language. While all modern nation states have abandoned Legal Latin as the primary language for statutory enactments or legal judgment, traces of Legal Latin survive around the world in legal vocabularies, in concepts derived from Roman law, and in a characteristic style of legal writing that often retains the rhythm and word order of Legal Latin phrases. The kinds of legal texts that use Legal Latin also vary widely: legislation, legal judgments, and legal scholarship differ, for example, in the frequency and nature of Legal Latin terminology (Ristikivi 2009).

2

Geographic Reach

In the modern period, Legal Latin continues to play a role in shaping institutions and legal concepts, even though Latin itself has long disappeared as the primary language of education and scholarship. The Roman civil code and its Legal Latin terminology became remarkably adaptable and served as a kind of legal lingua franca that transcended national borders and native languages. Roman law gave a

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conceptual unity to the legal systems of continental Europe, and Latin terminology played a large role in transmitting those concepts into modern vernacular languages (Wieacker 1981). As a result, there is a common heritage in the legal orders of Europe (and the countries and continents that were colonized by European countries, such as all of North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and India). Lawyers from countries influenced by this common legal heritage, therefore, all speak the same conceptual language regardless of their mother tongues (Tiersma and Solan 2012). Even common-law jurisdictions, such as Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, which share a legal system that presumably derives from the unwritten English “common law,” did not escape the influence of Roman law and Legal Latin. The US constitution, for example, and more recently the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms have both exerted a strong influence on the constitutional enactments of other countries around the world. The principles of the US constitution drew inspiration from Roman ideas of government by committee and assembly, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a direct descendant of English ideas of the “rule of law” that were reflected in early documents such as Magna Carta. The “Great Charter” remains the only legal document expressed in Latin with provisions that still have some force and effect in common-law jurisdictions in the twenty-first century. The common law is also replete with numerous Legal Latin maxims or sayings that express a legal concept in a pithy and easily remembered form such as caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) – a Legal Latinism that is widely known by the public at large. The so-called nemo dat rule in English law is an abbreviated form of the longer principle expressed in Latin that “no one gives good title to property he or she does not own.” Many other terms out of Legal Latin are in daily use in the courts of common-law jurisdictions: for example, stare decisis (the deference of courts to precedent), certiorari (a remedy for procedural error), habeas corpus (a review of the grounds for detention of a person), and mandamus (an order to carry out a public duty). Conventionally, there are at least six legal systems (or “families”) in the modern world: the Western (both common and civil), the Islamic, the Hindu, the Chinese, the Japanese, and a category known as the “chthonic” (the diverse customary legal traditions found in African, Native American, and Australian tribal societies). Geographical boundaries, the traditional basis for mapping the territorial jurisdiction of a country, quickly break down when it comes to legal languages. A country’s legal language is the result of a complex interaction between history, culture, and religion (Pargendler 2012). Mapping Legal Latin in the modern world requires several overlapping maps that identify a country or territory by its official language(s), major religious affiliation(s), membership in one of the world’s major legal families, and membership in international legal organizations, such as the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the European Union. Many jurisdictions defy easy classification because they have overlapping or “mixed” legal systems (such as the mixture of common-law and civil law traditions in the province of Quebec in Canada and in the state of Louisiana in the United States), each of which has a distinctive linguistic signature. Mapping legal “cultures” would be even more difficult than mapping legal languages because they are such a complex amalgam of diverse traditions and influences.

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In addition to its influence on national languages and domestic systems of law, Legal Latin has also left a large impression on the other great system of law in the world today, international law. The founder of modern international law, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), wrote his great treatises (De iure praedae commentarius and De iure belli ac pacis) in Latin, which established Latin as the language of international law. His writings on international law combined the principles and precepts of Roman law with natural law ideas of ius gentium (or the law of nations based on natural law). A common store of concepts, words, and expressions derived from Legal Latin provide lawyers working in transnational organizations with a linguistic storehouse from which they can draw when writing policy papers, for example, or when they need to invoke the majesty and solemnity of law by recourse to Legal Latin’s function as a “display” or prestige language. Jurists often favor words and expressions of Legal Latin in legal documents generated by international agencies such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice (Bar 1999). Legal Latin expressions and maxims often appear, for example, in the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (Fellmeth and Horwitz 2009). Legal Latin terms are also common in treatises on maritime law and public international law governing the relations between states. While international law is usually associated with relationships between governments and international organizations such as the United Nations, a branch of international private law (called “the conflicts of law”) has emerged dealing with how courts handle cases involving parties or interests across national borders. The field of conflicts of laws makes substantial use of Legal Latin. One of the most important conceptual factors in the conflicts of law, for example, is the law that is in force at the place where an event occurred (the lex loci actus). Many terms out of Legal Latin have become common in international legal discourse through the role of European languages such as French (and today English) as the lingua franca of international law. Because English has the largest proportion of legal vocabulary derived from Legal Latin (either borrowed directly from Latin or indirectly from French), the spread of English around the world has also helped spread Legal Latin (Duhaime’s International Law Dictionary online, for example, consists for the most part of English legal terms derived from Legal Latin). This may explain why other languages associated with trade but not law, such as Arabic and Chinese, have not acquired the same degree of worldwide influence. The prominence of Legal Latin in the world today is, therefore, a sociolinguistic phenomenon with deep roots in linguistic, legal, and political history. The Latin language became the mother tongue of the European Romance languages, served as the language of western scholarship until the early modern period, and remains today the language of the historically influential canon law of the Roman Catholic Church. Because of the lingering influence of Legal Latin, Roman law is the only legal system from an ancient civilization that has had a major influence on the modern world through its language and methodology (reliance on written texts, procedural rules, and the concept of precedent). How Legal Latin acquired such a pervasive but often largely invisible (and sometimes even lamented) presence in the world’s legal languages is a question that calls for a multifaceted answer, involving history, politics, and linguistics.

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Diffusion

The diffusion of Legal Latin into the legal vocabulary of other languages began during the Roman Empire, when local languages and dialects had to assimilate and apply the unfamiliar terminology of Roman law to local conditions. With a population in excess of 50–60 million people speaking dozens of languages, the Roman Empire was one of the world’s first multiethnic and multilingual states. Although the empire had a relatively centralized system of administration and unifying institutions such as the Roman army, knowledge of Latin was probably functional rather than fluent in the majority of the population of the empire (Adams 2003). Legal Latin, the specialized language associated with the law and legal process, however, was likely always a secondary or subsidiary legal language. Roman law was the means for uniting disparate peoples under one legal fabric (the phrase civis Romanus sum – “I am a Roman citizen” – was more than the assertion of a nominal right of appeal to the Emperor; it was also a verbal badge of citizenship). Despite the social status of Latin, however, people had to be encouraged to make use of Latin for legal purposes. For example, Justinian’s Digest contained the provision that “judgments shall be given in Latin,” and Gaius’ Institutes provided that “wills in Greek are invalid” (Ostler 2007). Provisions such as these quickly became obsolete as the use of Latin declined in the eastern half of the empire. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, Roman law and Legal Latin disappeared there almost entirely (Ostler 2007). Fragmentary traces of Roman legal doctrine remained in the local Germanic legal systems of the western provinces, but for the most part, Roman law survived only in the Greek-speaking territory of the eastern provinces. The culmination of several centuries of legal evolution led to the celebrated Institutes and Digest, commissioned by the emperor Justinian (527–565) to be a systematic compilation of the Roman civil law. Justinian had to issue the Digest in both Greek and Latin “so that it might be known to all” (Ostler 2007). Although Justinian briefly reunited the western and eastern halves of the former Roman Empire, his law code became the legal system of the eastern, or Greekspeaking, half of the Empire (comprising modern Greece, the Balkan states, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt). The birth of what later became known as the Corpus iuris civilis (the Roman civil law), therefore, took place in a multicultural and multilingual environment, far removed from its parochial origins in the Italian peninsula a thousand years earlier. Byzantine Greek drew heavily on Latin judicial words for its legal vocabulary (Popescu-Mihut 1981). As a result, Legal Latin has also influenced Modern Greek law through the adoption of loan words and doctrinal concepts. Roman law and Legal Latin returned to the western territories of the former empire when a manuscript of the Digest turned up in northern Italy in the late eleventh century. Students from all across Europe flocked to the university at Bologna to study Roman law, which had a corresponding influence on legal discourse in their native languages. Despite the trend toward the use of vernacular languages for government and law during the Renaissance, it was not until the nineteenth century that modern European countries sought to create their own,

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vernacular, versions of Justinian’s Digest, resulting in the Napoleonic Code in France (1804) and the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (1896). Until the early modern period, all the legal systems in Europe relied heavily on Legal Latin, with Latin often being the preferred language for legal enactments, court judgments, legal documents, and pleadings (although trials were usually in the local vernaculars). Today the Latin text of the Codex iuris canonici remains the only authoritative text for the canon law of the Catholic Church. Latin remained the dominant language for legal discourse in Hungary and Poland until well into the nineteenth century (partly because of disagreement over which vernacular language should replace Latin). A common language such as Latin was needed because Europe was, until relatively modern times, more multilingual (like the Roman Empire) than today when “national languages” such as English, French, and German roughly correspond to the territories of their respective nation states. English has emerged as the dominant language of the British Isles, but in the reign of Elizabeth I, more than six different mother tongues were spoken there. Even in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark, and to a lesser extent Norway, Latin was the language of legal discourse until the early modern period (with a corresponding legacy in the modern legal languages of those countries). Latin is also the most important source of borrowed or naturalized legal terminology in languages as diverse as English (Mellinkoff 2004) and Croatian (Socanac 2010). The influence of Legal Latin has been strong even in countries that were never part of the Roman Empire. Finnish, which is not an Indo-European language, has many legal words derived from Legal Latin (Mattila 2013). In Asia, the postcolonial legal systems of Hong Kong (Ng 2009) or India also exhibit the strong influence of Legal Latin (Derrett 1959). The civil code of India, for example, is a legacy of both British imperial rule and continental European civil law. The High Court in Delhi provides an English language list of common legal terms (many of them in Latin) reflecting the influence of English common law on Indian law. Even English common law (which forms the basis for the legal systems and language of the Anglo-American jurisdictions of Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) derives to a substantive degree from Roman civil law, with a correspondingly large vocabulary based on Latinate words. English common law has implanted itself in several countries in the Caribbean (such as British Honduras and British Guyana), Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Malaysia (all former British colonies). Today, at least one-half of the world’s population lives under a legal system that has been directly influenced by Roman law and its legacy, Legal Latin.

4

Expansion of Legal Latin

Legal Latin has inserted itself into modern European legal language (and many other legal languages around the world) through three processes: derivation, naturalization, and loan translation. Derivation means the indirect borrowing of Latin words through word roots, neologisms based on Latinate words, and the affixation of Latin prefixes and suffixes to create new words that have no direct equivalent in the Legal

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Latin of the Roman Empire. The English noun “affidavit” meaning a “sworn statement,” for example, comes from a Medieval Latin verb (affidare). Some derivations are simply adaptations to the morphology of the host language. Thus the Latin word delictum, for example, gives “delict” in English, delicto in Spanish, and delitto in Italian. Similarly, derivations from the Latin word codex have given English (and French) “code,” Italian codice, Spanish codigo, and Polish kodeks. The English word “stipulation” (for an agreement) is a derivation from the Latin noun stipulatio (which had a more specific meaning in Roman law than the English derivation). Even the legal terminology of Indonesia shows several instances of derivations from Legal Latin (Mattila 2013). For example, the noun eksekusi derives from the Latin noun executio (“enforcement”) and kasasi from cassatio (“annulment”). Naturalization means the direct adoption of a Latin word or phrase into the host language without any morphological, phonological, or semantic changes (e.g., the phrases mens rea, viva voce, and sine die are in daily use in Legal English). The common English juridical phrase ratio decidendi (“the reason for the decision”) is a naturalized Latin construction that has no equivalent in Roman jurisprudence. Less obvious, but equally pervasive as derivations and naturalizations, are calques or loan translations, which are often invisible to native speakers without a knowledge of law and legal history (and so often go unnoticed). While English legal terminology tends to favor derivation and naturalization as a means of borrowing, German favors loan translations (which then spread through diffusion of legal terminology to the Nordic countries and to Eastern Europe). Thus, German Gesetzbuch and Dutch Wetboek are loan translations of the Latin phrase codex iuris. The German phrase unbewegliche Sache (“immovable property”) is a calque for res immobiles, and the Legal Latin phrase fons iuris gave rise to Rechtsquelle in German and corresponding calques in Polish, Russian, Swedish, and Finnish (Mattila 2013). The English phrase “burden of proof” and the German word Beweislast are both loan translations of the Legal Latin phrase onus probandi. Many other familiar words and phrases in modern European languages are loan translations of this kind from Legal Latin (such as the English “aforementioned,” which derives from the medieval neologism supradicta). Other common expressions such as the English “prima facie evidence” (equivalent to the German “prima facie Beweis”) show how deeply Legal Latin has insinuated itself into modern legal discourses (even though classical Roman law had no similar concept). The presence of Legal Latin is particularly strong in the languages associated with the civil law systems of continental Europe (primarily Spanish and French but also Portuguese and, to a lesser extent, German). Spanish, for example, has acquired an international standing as the official language of Spain and most countries in Central and South America (as well being the source of the Spanish-based creole languages spoken in the Philippines and Guam). Because Spanish is a Romance language, it is not surprising to find many legal words with roots in Legal Latin such as dole (“fraud” from Latin dolus). Spanish legal languages also tend to share the English tendency to overuse archaisms and Latin phrases and words borrowed directly from Roman law (such as ab intestato or ex aequo et bono) or indirectly from the natural evolution of Spanish nouns derived from Latin (such as abogado or delito).

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Spanish (along with many other European languages such as French and German) also contains several Romano-Graecisms, such as words related to hypotheca meaning “mortgage” (a rare instance where the Roman law borrowed a legal term from ancient Greek, although Legal French in the Canadian province of Quebec eschews hypothèque in favor of the English neologism “mortgage”). As with English legal writing, Spanish lawyers seem to be equally fond of a somewhat hackneyed and archaic writing style, which seems to owe its origins to the Legal Latin writing style of European jurists and scholars from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Borja and Fernando 2013). Legal Latin words often appear in many modern languages in lexico-syntactic construction that are a distinctive feature of legal speech in contrast to other discourses (Mellinkoff 2004). This recognizable style of legal writing persists in many legal languages around the world today due to tradition and conservatism. A recognizably common feature of legal writing is binomials (and even trinomial) phrases in which a borrowed Latinate word appears together with one (or two) non-Latinate words in the host language (Ristikivi 2007). For example, the redundant English phrases “break and enter” or “cease and desist” survive in legal writing even though one of the words alone would suffice in the eyes of those who call for a plainer style of legal writing (Tiersma 1999). The double trinomial phrase “I give, devise, and bequeath the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate” that has appeared in English last wills and testaments for several centuries combines three source languages (Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin) and resembles a magical incantation more than a sentence. Similar redundant phrases appear in other legal languages that have been influenced by Legal Latin (Mattila 2013). The influence of Legal Latin on non-western legal languages is a field that requires further study. Sociolinguists have generally ignored the impact of Legal Latin on the non-western legal languages of the world (although the Finnish scholar Heikki Mattila made important discoveries in this area). Every legal system has its own distinct history, traditions, and practices, all of which defy easy classification. This raises the question of boundaries between law and other cultural practices. At what point does law shift into religion or culture, for example, or is the concept of law so expansive that it can encompass normative rules that do not conform to western notions of the “rule of law”? If we classify legal systems by the source and the manner of administration of law, the dominant feature of western legal systems is the reliance on secular, written texts as a source for law and a strong, central government constrained by liberal values and personal rights. Where Legal Latin has permeated the legal languages of non-western traditions, it is most likely in association with western notions of legality, in the primary division of legal matters into state and private affairs, and in legal codification or constitutional enactments. Non-western legal systems place greater emphasis on tradition, order, and social harmony in contrast to the state as the focus of social activity and to religion and culture in contrast to abstract notions of legality or constitutionality. The dominant feature of non-western legal systems, therefore, is greater reliance on religious tradition and a less centralized or a more dispersed focus of power and authority. Legal Latin is less likely to have penetrated the language of such customary laws or traditions, and so legal systems outside of western legal systems show less

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susceptibility to influence from Legal Latin. Legal systems based on religion or traditional customary law, for example, such as the family law of Islamic, Hindu, or Indonesian legal systems, often use traditional terminology for concepts that are alien to western legal thinking. Without any equivalent western concept, scholars writing about such systems inevitably have to resort to transliterations of the specialized indigenous legal terminology. Despite this limitation, Legal Latin insinuated itself into the legal languages of many diverse countries through postcolonial globalization and worldwide institutions of international law such as the United Nations and the World Bank (and not just in former colonies where European languages and legal systems were transplanted). As a result of western influence and the diffusion of legal terminology, legal systems as diverse as those of China, Ethiopia, the countries of the former Soviet Union, the countries of South America, Turkey, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Egypt (this list is far from complete) have incorporated many terms and concepts derived from Legal Latin. The French Napoleonic code inspired similar codes throughout Europe, the Netherlands, and the colonies of those countries in Africa and Latin America. South Africa is a civil law jurisdiction with roots in the legal system of the Netherlands (Zajtay and Hosten 1969). The German code became a basis for the law codes of Japan, Brazil, and postrevolutionary China. The legal systems of modern China, Japan, and Korea, for example, are a complex amalgam of principles and concepts borrowed from the civil and common-law systems and traditional local practices and customary law. The modernization of Japanese law began in the Meiji period (1868–1912) and was primarily influenced by continental European legal systems of France and Germany (and, secondarily, by Anglo-American influences during the occupation following World War II). Japanese law today is an amalgam of western influences with some lingering traces of indigenous Japanese and Chinese law. A number of terms in Japanese law come out of Legal Latin by means of French and German. Many Japanese law schools have courses on Roman law, and there are several professorships in Roman law in Japan. Phrases such as beneficium excussionis, bona vacantia, and traditio brevi manu appear as calques in Japanese using Chinese characters (which has facilitated their importation into Korean and Chinese). Korea’s modern civil code, promulgated in 1958, is based on western concepts mediated through Japanese colonialism combined with a body of Korean customary law that resembles the English common law. Korea’s legal system is an example of legal “transplantation” in which colonial judges used western legal principles as a means of interpreting and applying traditional Korean rules and practices. The result is that Korea’s legal system has been described as a modern Romano-German civil law system imposed by Japan. Modern Chinese legal vocabulary is a mix of traditional Chinese law (“living custom”) and modernizing terminology borrowed directly from European legal traditions or indirectly from the modernized (and westernized) legal language of Japan. During the communist period, Russian and Marxist legal terminology was also important, but the legal elite were already fluent in the earlier legal languages (at least until the Cultural Revolution). The former colony of Hong Kong is even more complex from a sociolinguistic perspective, exhibiting a kind of legal

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bilingualism that mixes English legal terminology influenced by Legal Latin and native Cantonese legal terminology (Ng 2009). One area for further research is the role of Legal Latin in the legal systems of many Muslim countries, such as Libya, Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt, which were once part of the territory of the Roman Empire and, later, the Byzantine Empire (which itself was strongly influenced by Legal Latin, even though the language of governance was Greek). The legal languages of former French colonies that used French for legal and administrative purposes in northern and sub-Saharan Africa contain a number of calques or loan translations from Legal Latin and French (Mallat 2007; Hanson 1987). French and Arabic terms coexist there in a kind of legal bilingualism (Mattila 2013). While the sources of Islamic law are disputed, Islamic law was influenced by foreign sources, especially Roman law, under the Umayyad dynasty in the seventh century (Schacht 1950). The early history of Islamic law seems to show the influence of legal concepts and practices that are not part of the Koran itself. For example, the concept of the abrogation of earlier law by new enactments or the exegesis of legal texts seems to show the influence of the Roman Digest and its jurisprudence as a model if not a source (Powers 2010). Islamic law was also subject to influence by classical writers such as Aristotle and by converts to Islam during the centuries of the Ottoman Empire. The Mejelle, or 16-volume civil code of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was modeled on European civil codes and was the first effort to codify the Sharia-based law of an Islamic state in all areas except family law (which remained under Sharia law). It has been superseded by subsequent codes of the various countries of the former Ottoman Empire. For example, Indonesia, influenced by the Romano-Dutch law of the Netherlands, has adopted a large number of technical legal terms from European legal terminology (although Indonesia’s legal terminology also includes a number of Arabic legal terms). There are many calques or loan translations of Legal Latin in the legal diction of modern Indonesia. The phrase kekuatam hukum, for example, is a loan translation of the Dutch word rechtskracht, which is in turn a loan translation of the Legal Latin res judicata (Mattila 2013). A dictionary of Legal Latin has recently appeared in the Indonesian language. The popularity of specialized dictionaries of Legal Latin in local vernaculars is evidence for the continuing influence of Legal Latin around the world (Mayrand 2007). Dictionaries of this kind have a long history in Western European languages (first appearing in the Renaissance, often in multilingual formats). Rather than replace the Legal Latin terms and phrases with their vernacular equivalents, dictionaries and glossaries seem to have the effect of entrenching the use of Latin legal terms and phrases in local legal discourses (Verhas 1998).

5

Persistence

History may explain the rise of Legal Latin, and politics may explain why there have been efforts to deny (or resist) the influence of Legal Latin on national legal languages, but Legal Latin continues to surface in many of the world’s legal

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languages. This raises two questions: what can explain such persistence and what is the future of Legal Latin? Legal theorists have long debated whether there are universal legal principles or whether a system of law and its associated legal language are culturally determined. Legal Latin has played a large role in this debate because early comparativists looking for deep structural similarities in the legal systems of the world turned to Legal Latin as a kind of universal legal vocabulary for describing legal concepts. One of the criticisms of early comparative law, however, is its Eurocentric assumption that European legal systems were a norm or standard for comparison of other legal systems. Today, many legal comparativists would regard Legal Latin as simply a form of cultural imperialism or as a historical irrelevance. The modern comparative approach to world law, in contrast, has led to an increasing fragmentation of the concept of law itself as local systems of law come to be differentiated in minute detail and celebrated as unique and immune to foreign influences (De Cruz 2007). The result has been a recognition of differences, or legal pluralism, rather than the discovery of similarities (Bussani and Mattei 2012). The legacy of European colonization will partially explain the influence of Legal Latin in the legal systems of Hong Kong, South Africa, and India, to name a few obvious examples, but it does not explain the influence of Legal Latin on the legal systems of such diverse countries as Finland, China, or Japan. Nor does colonialism fully explain how Roman law has influenced the legal systems of the diverse countries that make up the Islamic world. One explanation for such crossfertilization seems to be that legal systems have been borrowing from each other for millennia (even classical Roman law was subject to foreign influences) although such foreign influences are often overlooked or denied. A better explanation for the persistence of Legal Latin around the world, however, may be the difficulty of translating legal concepts and phrases from one language into another. Legal translation, which involves taking a legal text in one language and creating an equivalent legal text in another language that has the same force and effect (horizontal translation), is one of the most difficult challenges a legal translator can face (Borja and Fernando 2013). Languages are not autonomous systems of meaning and are inextricably part of the culture in which they operate, which means that translation extends beyond the text itself to include cultural practices and semiotics associated with the text. Legal translation is almost a tautology because every language and every legal text have nuances and subtleties that are untranslatable, and “there are no intercultural synonyms” (Curran 2002). Legal translation also takes place within a language or culture (vertical translation) because the interpretation and application of a legal rule within a single language are also forms of translation (Warnke 2003). The difficulty of translation may explain why Legal Latin has persisted. If the translator can use words that are familiar to both the source and the target language, by borrowing or naturalizing a foreign legal term or by using a loan translation, there is less need to find equivalent words in the target language for the same concept. This takes the word translation in its literal sense as the translatio or carrying something over or across from one language to another. For example, the Legal Latin phrase persona iuris (which appears in the form of a loan transition in a wide variety of western languages) serves as a kind of shorthand invocation of the concept that there

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is such a thing as a legal person as opposed to a nonlegal person (Lamalle 2014). The concept behind the phrase went through a variety of “translations” in terms of its legal, theological, and philosophical implications. It has generated a variety of manifestations in the modern world, such as the idea of a corporative or “fictive” legal person. The borrowing through a loan translation of a phrase such as persona iuris from one legal system and language to another presupposes the existence of some conceptual basis that makes the phrase understandable (Pozzo 2006). In other words, a prior shared ontology is necessary so that even if the concept is new to the host language, the possibility for the concept must have had some prior possibility in the language and culture. This may explain why Legal Latin has found such ready acceptance in so many legal languages around the world (because even in the case of non-western legal languages, a local elite was often predisposed through education and socialization to the western thinking that lay behind the concepts expressed in Legal Latin). This raises a question where sociolinguistics and the comparative approach to law intersect. Is it always possible to translate a legal term into another language, or are some terms simply untranslatable (meaning incapable of transfer between languages)? Some legal systems, such as chthonic or traditional legal systems, may not have the same ontological basis for receiving the western concept of the legal person (just as legal words used in those legal systems may have no corresponding terminology in western legal systems).

6

Versatility

Despite having a common root in Roman law or in the Latin language generally, words, phrases, and loan translations derived from Legal Latin have often acquired quite different meanings or nuances in the context of local legal languages and cultures. The use of similar Legal Latin terminology in western-influenced legal systems does not mean that the terminology expresses a shared meaning or concept. Although various scientific disciplines, like law, also exhibit a large Latinate vocabulary, there is an important difference between the sciences and Legal Latin. In the sciences, words of Latin origin usually mean the same thing (which gives the terminology its special value). The case is quite different with Legal Latin. Legal Latin is not a uniform body of terminology, and every language has adopted and applied Legal Latin in a way that is unique to the local circumstances. The laws of inheritance, for example, are culturally determined and usually differ from one legal system to another. Legal treatises dealing with inheritance in French and Finnish, for example, disclose about the same number of Latin expressions and maxims, but the Latin expressions and maxims used in each language are largely different. The explanation is that the laws of inheritance in French and Finnish law are dissimilar, and there is no basis for a common stock of phrases. Similarly, the Legal Latin used in common-law jurisdictions differs from the Legal Latin that is prevalent in civil law jurisdictions (Mattila 2002; Tiersma and Solan 2012). Legal Latin terminology is also often polysemous, and a word or phrase can express several different concepts depending on the context and the intention of the speaker (Ristikivi

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2007). This does not diminish the importance of Legal Latin as an aspect of legal language in the world generally. It simply demonstrates that Legal Latin terminology has taken root in many diverse legal traditions and local linguistic settings, with the result that Legal Latin around the world today is not a unifying or homogeneous body of words. Thus, the Legal Latin phrase ius civile can mean, without more precise specification, the classical Roman law that applied to Roman citizens, the civil law of modern continental Europe, and in general the law that governs relationships between private citizens. The phrase ius commune can refer, depending on the context, to the “common” civil law system of Europe or to the distinctive English system of “common law.” Even within related families of languages, such as English, French, and Spanish, there are rarely instances of true “functional equivalences” in legal terminology. The English phrase “good faith,” for example, is a loan translation derived from the Latin bona fides that is not quite the equivalent of bonne foi in French; the English phrase is a subjective standard of behavior, whereas the French phrase includes an objective standard (Šarčević 1997). Legal Latin poses a particular difficulty for translators working in Romance languages because of false cognates involving technical legal words that are similar to ordinary nontechnical words in the Romance languages (Llopis 2007). At the same time, there are many other terms such as offerre, promittere, and contractum that come out of Roman contract law and have ready equivalences at hand in Romance languages (and in modern English as a result of the influence of Norman French on English legal vocabulary).

7

Resistance

Hostility to Legal Latin and efforts to purge legal language of Latinisms have a long (and futile) history. Efforts to replace Legal Latin by a “neutral” language such as Esperanto or a common “worldwide legal vocabulary” have not succeeded (despite a tendency to deplore and downgrade the role of Legal Latin in the modern world). The first meeting of the International Association of Esperanto-Speaking Jurists took place in 1905, and a surprising number of legal texts such as constitutions and international conventions appear in Esperanto. The idea that Esperanto might become the basis for a common legal language floundered in the area of most difficulty, that of lexicon (Harry 1997). Western speakers of Esperanto tended to convert legal terminology with a Latinate origin into its corresponding Esperanto form (which is simply another illustration of how Legal Latin imperceptibly but almost inevitably insinuates itself into host languages). The most recent manifestation of hostility to Legal Latin is the modern “plain language” movement. Despite such populist efforts to reduce or eliminate the influence of Legal Latin everywhere, especially in Anglo-American jurisdictions (which is ironic given how much English legal vocabulary is Latinate in origin), there have been contrary trends. For example, the frequency of formulaic Legal Latin terminology in the judgments of courts in the United States has been increasing (McLeod 1997–1998), Legal Latin still appears in legal judgments in the United Kingdom (Gray 2006), and Portuguese lawyers have been encouraged in recent years to use Legal Latin (Mattila 2013). The dwindling

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family of socialist legal jurisdictions (which once spanned the globe in widely dispersed countries such as Russia, China, and Cuba, among other countries) defied easy classification based on language, geography, history, and culture. The only unifying feature was ideology and a pervasive hostility to Legal Latin because of its association with anciens régimes and its perceived elitism. With the fall of socialist governments in Eastern Europe, there has been a revival of interest in Legal Latin and Roman law generally, and in some countries, the presence of Legal Latin terminology is actually increasing. There has been a resurgence in the use of Legal Latin, for example, at least in legal scholarship, in countries such as Russia, Poland, and Estonia, as a way to reestablish a connection to European legal traditions before socialist governments sought to institute a new legal order. Eight-six Latin maxims and phrases having to do with the law adorn the external columns of the new Polish Supreme Court building, which was inaugurated in 1999 (Mattila 2013).

8

Closing Remarks

In conclusion, the lingering legacy of Legal Latin is a complex historical and sociolinguistic phenomenon. Legal Latin is neither an endangered nor an extinct language, in the sense that linguists might speak of a living language that is in decline or that has disappeared through population decline or assimilation into a dominant culture. Legal Latin has managed to insert itself into a wide range of legal languages so that virtually all legal systems in the world today carry some traces of the “linguistic DNA” of Roman law in their legal terminology and concepts. The best explanation for the lingering legacy of Legal Latin may simply be that Legal Latin has always been a technolect well-suited to a multilingual environment, whether the Roman Empire, the Renaissance Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, the European Union, or the modern world of globalization and transnational and international institutions (Zimmerman 2004). Legal Latin serves as a kind of legal metalanguage and a common source of legal concepts, words, and phrases. The spread of Legal Latin across medieval Europe foreshadowed the modern trend toward international legal “convergence” as a result of globalized trade, finance, and regulation, which has created pressure on non-western domestic legal systems to adopt western civil and common-law practices and terminology (Harding 2002). The future of Legal Latin is unclear. While some scholars suggest that Chinese might eventually replace English and French as a lingua franca in international law, history suggests that Legal Latin will maintain a strong presence in the legal discourses of the world for some time to come (Mayrand 2007).

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South Korea’s Developmentalist Language Policies: Linguistic Territoriality in the Global Era

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Relationship Between State, Territory, and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Korean Linguistic Territoriality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Making a National Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 From Protectionism to Developmentalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Making a Global Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Language has been one of the state apparatuses for the production and control of national territory. Globalization complicates linguistic territoriality as the increasing mobility of people and the ever-growing domain of the English language appear to disintegrate the exclusive links between language and space. This chapter discusses the changing relationship between the state, territory, and language in the seemingly deterritorializing world through a case study of South Korea’s linguistic institutions. South Korea is an interesting case study because the trajectory of its linguistic territoriality reveals the transition from a postcolonial protectionist ideology to a subimperial developmentalist one. The combination of the country’s anxiety about the looming linguistic extinction, the developmental state, and the 1990s’ rhetoric of globalization culminated into a state project that aims at promoting the Korean language as a global language. At the same time, the state introduced Korean language proficiency requirements into its migration policies, which disproportionately affect Asian migrants. This new language regime illustrates a postcolonial example of expansive H. Jeong (*) School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_150

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linguistic territoriality that is not only shaped by nationalism but also a subimperial desire for a global status. Keywords

Linguistic territoriality · Hegemony of English · South Korea · Developmentalism · Global language

1

Introduction

Efforts to preserve a language and advance its proper use may be culturally motivated, but their implications are politically significant. Being a medium of communication, language promotes a shared worldview and a sense of belonging among its users. Power over language can govern how information flows, how people interact, and how society is structured. “Questions of language are basically questions of power” (Chomsky 2011, p. 191). Language has been a powerful territorial apparatus of the state. It is utilized to divide space, control boundaries, and influence the relationships between people within the boundaries. As a result, language proficiency is widely taken as an indicator of national membership and sometimes loyalty to the state. The increasing mobility of the global era, however, complicates the realities of linguistic territoriality. The ever-growing domain of the English language around the world also makes it seem as if the exclusive links between language and space are disintegrated. This chapter discusses the changing relationship between the state, territory, and language in the seemingly deterritorializing world through a case study of South Korea’s linguistic institutions. There has been a strong discourse on the Korean people’s ethnic and linguistic homogeneity and their link to the Korean peninsula (see Yang et al. (2018) in this series for a discussion on the variety of the Korean language), but the growing hegemony of English challenged the country’s language practices and resulted in a rare postcolonial example of expansive linguistic territoriality. In the next section, the chapter will briefly discuss the literature on the relationship between the state, territory, and language to define linguistic territoriality and identify the scales at which states have exercised linguistic territoriality. Section 3 will examine the case of South Korea, viz., how geopolitics contributed to the production of its national language, how globalization brewed the fear of linguistic extinction and influenced the country’s linguistic ideology, and how the state’s global language policies are conflated with a subimperial desire. The chapter concludes with a review of South Korea’s linguistic discourses and practices and their implications for the study of linguistic territoriality.

2

Relationship Between State, Territory, and Language

Controlling space by exercising power over the things, people, and their relationships within space is a historically prevalent human behavior (Sack 1983). Utilizing language for the territorialization, however, is a phenomenon stemming from the age

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of nationalism (Kohn 1944). The modern state conceptualizes the nation to naturalize its sovereign right to the territory and, in doing so, utilizes language to make the nation into something essential, primordial, and inherent. The idea of a national language cultivates an exclusive relationship between language, society, and the state, irrespective of the linguistic realities of the society (Hobsbawm 1992). This paper refers to any attempts by the state to control language to produce and reinforce control over its physical territory as well as geopolitical and geoeconomic territory as linguistic territoriality. In Europe, print-capitalism and standard language education contributed to creating linguistically and socially homogenous social identities, upon which modern nation-states were built (Anderson 1983). In postcolonial societies, the European model of national language production and standardization was adopted as a strategy to create a postcolonial national identity (Miguel 2004; Zentz 2014; Tinsley 2015; Abdelhay et al. 2016). Monolingualism has been a popular principle of territoriality. By establishing an exclusive link between space and language, the state constructs a territorially grounded national identity. Even when they pursue multilingualism, states create linguistically distinctive administrative regions and adopt policies privileging the language of the majority. Minority languages and the extension of their use in the public sphere are considered to pose a threat to the political and social cohesion of the society and eventually to the state’s territorial integrity. Language has been a state apparatus for migration control as well. Although language requirements were introduced to the migration regime in the name of promoting national cohesion in Western countries, they served the purpose of excluding undesired populations in many cases. A well-known example is the infamous Dictation Test of White Australia Policy, which was a mere ritual to deter the migration of Asian population (McNamara 2009). The test had been disused for decades after Australia promulgated multiculturalism but effectively revived when the 2007 Australian Citizenship Act introduced a citizenship test requiring knowledge of English. English proficiency is not only required for citizenship acquisition but also for temporary migration. Prospective skilled labor migrants are required to demonstrate their language competence by meeting high scores in tests of English listening, reading, writing, and speaking. The language requirement ensures Australia will secure a global supply of flexible labor because temporary migrants are obliged to take the tests for visa extension or conversion (Piller and Lising 2014). Australia is by far not alone in implementing these language-based migration policies. In Canada, the official adoption of multiculturalism in the 1960s mobilized the discourse of linguistic and cultural integration as a socially acceptable proxy for racial ordering and border control (Polanco and Zell 2017). Many European countries have adopted the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages to coordinate language policies on migrant admission, permanent residency, and citizenship (Extra et al. 2009). In these countries, even marriage migrants are denied the right to join their partners based on the results of language tests (Gutekunst 2015; Blackledge 2016). Although the language requirement is justified as a measure taken for migrants’ own interests to facilitate their social integration, economic welfare, and political representation, it works for capitalist states as a gatekeeper to selectively open borders to those with significant

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education and hence potential economic value. The discourse of science and fairness depoliticizes language tests of migrants and obscures the injustice, violence, and burdens associated with those tests (Shohamy 2001; Blackledge 2016). States often exercise expansive linguistic territoriality beyond national borders to facilitate promoting their political and economic interests abroad. France’s production of the linguistic identity of Francophonie is a prime example. After the World War II, France became conscious of its loss of empire and power, as well as the growing domain of the US military and market. By establishing the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, the country created a French-speaking equivalent to the English-speaking Commonwealth to promote the French language internationally and to reinforce international links between France and the countries sharing the language (Amit 2016). France promotes the French language further beyond the Francophone region. A private institution supervised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Alliance Française, offers the French language education in 132 countries around the world through government subsidies (Alliance Française 2018). In a similar manner to France, the United Kingdom has promoted the English language education abroad via the British Council since 1940. The public corporation is sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to offer courses on the English language in 120 countries (British Council 2018). The German government’s Goethe-Institut and the Spanish government’s Instituto Cervantes serve the same mission. Similar efforts are observed in China. In the last decade, the Chinese government has established Confucius Institutes in 142 countries to promote the Chinese language education (Confucius Institute Online 2018). These institutes are mostly hosted by local universities, but they receive financial support and statequalified instructors dispatched by the Chinese government. As the global economy becomes more reliant on transnational communications than ever before, states are increasingly making investments for linguistic expansion.

3

Korean Linguistic Territoriality

3.1

Making a National Language

The Korean peninsula is presumed to have been linguistically homogenous since at least the late seventh century (Park 2014). And yet, the Korean language required vernacularization before it could be the national language of the Korean people. The language lacked a matching writing system until the early fifteenth century, and only the elite could communicate in writing by translating Korean into Chinese, the then hegemonic language of East Asia. It demanded extensive education for the Korean elite to be bilingual because the two languages are phonologically and grammatically different. As a result, the lower class were mostly illiterate. For some time, a simplified writing system called Idu was used to phonetically transcribe the Korean language with a set of modified Chinese logograms, but it eventually went out of fashion as it still required substantial education of Chinese logograms. This lack of a Korean writing system was addressed when King Sejong commissioned his

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researchers to devise a phonetic alphabet for the language in 1443. The newly developed alphabet, which was later named Hangeul, did not automatically replace Chinese. For centuries to follow, the alphabet was reserved for the uneducated – women and the lower class – because the elite averted using it to maintain their cultural and political hegemony (Kyujanggak 2013). The class- and gender-based diglossia in writing came to an end in the late nineteenth century due to the changing geopolitical orders. As the western and Japanese powers challenged China’s hegemony in East Asia, the Chinese language also lost its symbolic and practical value to the Korean elite. In 1894, in responding to people’s voices and the changing world order, King Gojong introduced a series of political, economic, and social reforms to transform the kingdom of Joseon (1392–1897) into a constitutional monarchy. One of the reforms denominated Korean as the national language and limited the use of Chinese in official documents. The Korean language finally gained the status of official language of the nation for both speaking and writing. However, the reforms were cut short by the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula (1910–1945). The Japanese language became the official language of government, commerce, and instruction. In addition, the colonial government eventually eliminated Korean language education from all the curricula, banned papers published in Korean, and prosecuted Korean language scholars for treason. In reaction to the colonial government’s aggressive language policy, the Korean people developed a strong emotional attachment to the Korean language (Kim 2005). The language was politicized into a symbol of the nation’s identity and sovereignty. As soon as the nation gained independence, the Korean government reinstated the Korean language as the only official language of the nation. It also designated the anniversary of King Sejong’s promulgation of the Korean alphabet as a national holiday.

3.2

From Protectionism to Developmentalism

In modern Korea, the role of the state has been pivotal in the development of the national language. Although the Korean War (1950–1953) and subsequent division of the peninsula bifurcated the Korean language in terms of pronunciations, vocabulary, and idioms, the two governments concurred on the idea of maintaining the national language under control of the state and purifying, though with degrees of difference, the language of the traces of Chinese and Japanese languages (Choi 2002). Speaking the Korean language properly was considered as a practice of patriotism. Local dialects were equally discouraged. Whereas North Korea standardized the language against the prevalent practices of Pyongyang residents, South Korea promoted those of Seoul residents. In South Korea, the standardization efforts culminated into defining the standard Korean language as “the language widely spoken in Seoul by refined people” (Ministry of Culture 1988). The state has introduced a series of institutions to standardize the language and educate it to the Korean people, including the 1948 Act on Exclusive Use of Korean Alphabet, the 1964 Presidential decree on the establishment of the National Language

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Commission, the 1976 Presidential decree on the establishment of the National Language Purification Council, and the 1991 Presidential decree on the establishment of the National Institute of the Korean Language (Jeong 2018). The National Language Commission and the National Institute of the Korean Language have the most authority over the development of linguistic norms and policies (National Institute of the Korean Language 2011). The state also intervenes in the Korean language education of overseas Koreans. In the early Cold War era, when South Korea’s primary concern regarding overseas Koreans was the possibility that North Korea could influence and use them for campaigns to demise South Korea, the state maintained a relationship with overseas Koreans by subsidizing “weekend Korean language schools” and supplying them with Korean language textbooks. Especially in Japan, where South and North Koreas’ geopolitical interests collided, the South Korean government dispatched educational specialists and supported the establishment of Korean schools. As South Korea’s economy grew, the state came to perceive overseas Koreans as human capital for the country’s global economic expansion. Educating the Korean language to overseas Koreans and helping them maintain their cultural identity and connections to the homeland was expected to encourage remittances to and businesses with South Korea (Cho 2004). The 1977 Presidential decree on the education of overseas Koreans enabled the government to operate “Korean Education Centers” in global cities with significant overseas Korean population that offer special courses on Korean language, culture, and history for overseas Koreans and fund the establishment and operation of “Korean schools” that offer curricula of both the host country and South Korea. The 2007 Act on Educational Support for Overseas Koreans further strengthened support for overseas Korean education. As of 2017, the government operates 32 Korean schools in 15 countries and 41 Korean Education Centers in 18 countries (Ministry of Education 2017) and supports 1790 weekend Korean language schools in 118 countries (Overseas Koreans Foundation 2017). Despite the government’s promotion of the Korean language and the people’s love for it, South Korea was greatly influenced by the growing global hegemony of English. Its dependence on core economies such as the United States subjected the country to the hegemony of English language and American culture, both discursively and practically. In addition, the presence of US military in the country, as well as the country’s dependence on US aid and market, created exclusive opportunities for those proficient in English. The social Darwinist discourse of national survival that had taken root on the Korean peninsula during the colonial era produced the perception that the ability to command English is determinant to the nation’s survival in the world (Lee et al. 2010). As early as the 1960s, English proficiency has become one of the decisive factors in assessing educational and professional performances. The efforts to defend the Korean language from foreign languages were limited to Chinese and Japanese, but not to English. English expressions have become prevalent in every social domain including academia, business, government, and pop culture as signifiers of modernity, elegance, and grandeur. The government’s neoliberal policies further encouraged the education and use of English in the 1990s (Piller and Cho 2015). Especially in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis,

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South Koreans perceived English as an essential survival gear in the hypercompetitive global market. English language education became a thriving industry, and the country entertained the idea of adopting English as an official language. The idea has been renounced until today each time it was suggested. Nonetheless, English lessons are integrated into all levels of public education curricula since 1997. The obsession with English competency has developed a thriving industry for the English private after-school education in South Korea (Shin 2016). In addition to getting after-school education, an increasing number of college and pre-college students would take semesters off to go abroad and acquire English proficiency in English-speaking countries. The private sector and local governments capitalized on the English fever and adopted a business model called “English village.” South Korean “English villages” are commercial urban areas where one would pay to enter for a day or a few weeks and experience living and studying in an English-only environment (Shim and Park 2008). For individuals, “English villages” are an inexpensive alternative to study trips abroad, and from the state’s perspective, they are urban development projects that redirect a foreign currency outflow (Oh forthcoming). Over 50 “English villages” have been developed across the country since the 2000s. The largest of all is the Jeju Global Education City, which is designed to host 4660 households (Jeju Provincial Government 2014). Unlike other “English villages” where students are exposed to an English-speaking environment for a limited time of their paid entry, the Jeju Global Education City uses English as an official language in the domain of everyday life. It hosts elite educational institutions and provides internationally accredited pre-college education in English. The educational institutions, however, charge exceptionally expensive tuitions, preventing most South Koreans as well as Jeju locals from entering them. The corporatization of English education has become an issue of social division in the country. As the English fever intensified, the state’s ideology toward the Korean language changed from inward-bound protectionism to outward-bound developmentalism. While some scholars observe that globalization put an end to Asian developmental states (Pirie 2008; Wong 2011; Yeung 2014), the discourse of state intervention for national development remains intact in South Korea, if not getting stronger as globalization intensifies (Song 2013; Jeong 2017). Grammarians and linguists, who were overwhelmed by the growing influence of English in the country, provided the rationale for state intervention (e.g., Lee 1999; Kim et al. 1995; Seong 1996; Han 2000). Belaboring the predictions of UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, SIL International’s Ethnologue, and other similar publications that most of the languages in the world would become extinct in decades, they argued that the Korean language should be promoted as a “global language” to survive. Some of them took a further step to assert the superiority of the Korean language: they insisted that the Korean alphabet is scientifically designed to transcribe any language and, to prove their point, tried teaching foreign minority tribes that lacked their own writing systems how to use the Korean alphabet to transcribe their languages (Jeong 2011). In the past when there were no calls for the need to make Korean a global language, Korean language education for non-Koreans had been left to the academia

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and the private sector, both domestically and internationally. State intervention had been limited to some liminal financial support for universities that offered Korean language or Korean studies courses. The combination of the anxiety about the looming linguistic extinction, the developmentalist state, and the rhetoric of globalization of the 1990s culminated into changing South Korea’s language ideology. The Act on Culture and Arts Promotion and its implementing ordinances were amended in 1995 to authorize the Ministry of Culture for strategizing how to promote Korean language education abroad. The Committee for the Globalization of the Korean Language and the International Korean Language Foundation were established as a result to take on the task.

3.3

Making a Global Language

A radical turning point in the state’s language policies was made when the Framework Act on the National Language was legislated in 2005. The Act defines the Korean language as “the nation’s most important heritage as well as momentum for cultural innovation” (Article 2). In addition, it stipulates that the state has the responsibility to protect and develop the Korean language vis-à-vis the changing language environment (Article 4) as well as the responsibility to propagate the language to both non-Koreans interested in learning it and overseas Koreans (Article 19). The International Korean Language Foundation, which was later renamed as the King Sejong Institute Foundation (2017), was mandated to spearhead the curricula development for learning and teaching Korean as a foreign language, the training of instructors, as well as the establishment of Korean language institutions abroad. King Sejong Institutes so established are subsidized by the South Korean government to provide free courses on basic Korean and moderately priced courses on intermediate and advanced Korean. The government further provides subsidies to the institutes for operation and personnel with expectations that the investments would lead to improving the image of the country and its products (National Institute of the Korean Language 2007). As of 2017, there are 170 King Sejong Institutes established in 54 countries (Table 1). Many of the institutes are hosted by local universities or local educational organizations in partnership with South Korean universities. Others are hosted by local institutions affiliated with the South Korean government such as Korean Education Centers and Korean Cultural Centers. Still others are operated by overseas Koreans who used to run weekend Korean language schools. Most of the countries hosting King Sejong Institutes are important trade partners of South Korea. As a matter of fact, one third of the institutes are concentrated in 3 of South Korea’s top 5 trade partner countries: 26 institutes in China, 17 in Japan, and 13 in Vietnam. All three are Asian countries with large populations. Even with the three outlier countries excluded, more King Sejong Institutes are found in Asia than in any other regions. Indeed, the government prioritized Asia when establishing the institutes due to a higher demand for Korean language education in Asia (Ministry of Culture 2007). In the meantime, an even larger number of private businesses of

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Table 1 Global distribution of King Sejong Institutes. (Source: KSIF (2017)) Region Africa and the Middle East Americas

Asia

Europe

Oceania Total

Country Bahrein, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, United States of America, Uruguay Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Vietnam Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom Australia, New Zealand

No of countries (no. of institutes) 6 (6) 11 (22)

17 (96)

18 (42)

2 (4) 54 (170)

Table 2 Number of foreign residents in 2016. (Source: Ministry of Justice (2017, p. 376)) Category Total foreign residents Overseas Korean (F-4) Non-skilled employment (E-9) Overseas Korean (H-2) Permanent residency (F-5) Marriage (F-6)

Number 2,049,441 372,533 279,187 254,950 130,237 121,332

Asian (%) 86.8 76.8 99.9 99.6 97.4 93.4

Korean language education have been established in the region. The high demand for Korean language education in the region might be attributed to the educational or professional opportunities associated with the language proficiency that are made available due to the growing intraregional trade volume and the popularity of K-pop in Asia (Kim 2017). Nonetheless, a review of the country’s migration policy is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of the regional bias. As a matter of fact, the South Korean economy became dependent on migrant labor in the 1990s, and Asian labor migrants consist of the lower tier of the country’s working class (Lee 2010). Korean language proficiency is one of the requirements of application for the South Korean visas that are disproportionately popular among Asians. Table 2 shows the five most popular categories of South Korean immigration visas: F-4 and H-2 are temporary residency visas issued to overseas Koreans that allow employment, education, and business activities; F-5 is a permanent residency visa; F-6 is a family union visa issued to those who are married to citizens or permanent residents; and E-9 is a temporary employment visa issued to those who have secured employment for low-skilled positions. Applications for E-9, F-6, and some subcategories of H-2 and F-5 should include proofs of Korean language proficiency. These are the four

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visa categories, holders of which are over 90% Asian. The demand for Korean language education is higher in Asia because the visas popular among Asians require Korean language competence. The most popular documentation of the Korean language proficiency is the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). One is tested with multiple-choice questions on reading and listening if aiming to acquire Levels 1 or 2, and, additionally, on writing if aiming for Levels 3 through 6. The South Korean government arranges and administers the test overseas through its foreign missions. For example, non-Koreans married to Koreans should take the test to get TOPIK Level 1 or higher before they could apply for the F-6 visa and enter South Korea for family union. In major cities of Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, a unique geography is developing as women married to Korean men live in dormitories to study Korean and prepare for the test. Transnational marriage migrants are becoming a significant part of the country’s working class. Marriage migration to South Korea was first arranged by the private sector in the late 1980s to meet the country’s female deficit and was later encouraged by the state to increase the country’s ever-decreasing total fertility rate (Kim 2006; Lee 2012; Jeong forthcoming). The country’s chronic male surplus due to traditional prenatal preferences for sons, combined with urban migration, created a marriage squeeze for women in rural areas. Commercial introduction services would organize Korean men’s marriage tours to Southeast Asia, from which the men returned with the wives they met only a few days ago. Until 1998, the state granted their wives immediate Korean citizenship upon registration of their marriages, whereas a non-Korean man married to a Korean woman had to apply for a family union visa to enter the country. The outcome of state-sponsored transnational marriage migration was a rapid increase in the number of marriage migrant women from Southeast Asia. Many of these women, who migrated to South Korea where they knew no one but their husbands, were often exposed to domestic violence. In response to critiques that the state turned a blind eye to marriage migrant women’s human rights, the state legislated the 2006 Multicultural Family Support Act that stipulates the responsibility of the state to facilitate marriage migrants’ Korean language education. In addition, it amended the regulations of the Immigration Control Act in 2013 to introduce a preliminary language proficiency test for marriage visa applicants. According to the amendment, the state should assess “if the applicant’s marriage was made in good faith and if the applicant and their spouse would be able to lead a normal married life.” One of the measures of assessment on the applicant’s ability “to lead a normal married life” is their introductory-level proficiency in the Korean language, which the applicant should prove with the qualification of TOPIK Level 1 or higher. The requirement can be met alternatively with an education certificate issued by one of the local Korean language institutes accredited by the South Korean government such as King Sejong Institutes. The Korean language textbooks used for teaching marriage migrant women at these institutes focus on describing everyday life in the domain of home and exemplifying dialogues between family members, suggesting that the women are expected to be homemakers through the education (Laranjo 2017). Indeed, marriage migrant women’s Korean language

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competence has been emphasized with regards to the concern about their ability to rear children properly (Yuk 2016). On the other hand, labor migrants have been required to prove their language competence since a decade earlier than marriage migrants. The 2003 Act on Foreign Workers Employment stipulates that the Ministry of Labor should administer a Korean proficiency test on non-Koreans seeking low-skilled employment in South Korea. The Employment Permit System Test of Proficiency in Korean (EPS-TOPIK) tests E-9 visa applicants on reading and listening with multiple-choice questions. To pass the test, one should earn 80 or higher scores out of 200. The test cannot be substituted with other forms of evidence that prove one’s Korean language proficiency such as advanced level qualifications of TOPIK or a university degree in the Korean language. One of the reasons for this universal requirement is that EPS-TOPIK questions not only knowledge of the Korean language but also industry-specific knowledge. Indeed, the test includes ten questions on knowledge of one of the eight sectors: (a) rubber and plastic, (b) metal and fabricated metal, (c) machinery, (d) textile and apparel, (e) food, (f) electronic and electrical, (g) paper and wood, and (h) chemical and allied. Nonetheless, earning a higher score on the industrial knowledge questions does not increase one’s chance to get employment. This practice suggests that mandating EPS-TOPIK to all E-9 applicants is not to test their industrial knowledge but to use the test scores for simply shortlisting the applicants. As the supply of low-skilled labor is larger than its demand, the bureaucracy finds it objective and convenient to administer one uniformized Korean language test on all applicants instead of devising multiple ways to screen applicants of all trades and industries. Shortlisted applicants undergo a separate skills and experience evaluation, which is determinant for their employment placement (Lee 2016). Once entering South Korea, labor migrants no longer have access to free courses offered at King Sejong Institutes abroad. The government offers instead free online courses for labor migrants.

4

Conclusion

The role of the state has been central in the development of the Korean language. The experience of an aggressive colonial language regime left a void for the state to fill with protectionist policies in postcolonial Korea. In the 1990s, as the global hegemony of the English language depreciated the value of the Korean language, a social Darwinist anxiety about the looming linguistic, and subsequently national, extinction entertained the idea of fostering the language’s global future by making it into a global language. The combination of the anxiety about the linguistic extinction, the developmental state, and the rhetoric of globalization of the 1990s culminated into a developmentalist linguistic ideology replacing protectionism. The state assumed the responsibility to promote the Korean language education for both overseas Koreans and non-Koreans. At the same time, the state introduced Korean language proficiency requirements into its migration policies, which disproportionately affect Asian migrants. In the meantime, Korean language education has become a vibrant

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industry in Asia. This new language regime makes South Korea into a rare example of a postcolonial country exercising expansive linguistic territoriality to broaden its geoeconomic territory. Postcolonial language institutions are not only shaped by nationalism but also a subimperial desire for a global status.

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Linguistic Prescriptivism in Present-Day Poland: The Normative Attitudes of the Speakers of Polish

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Contents 1 2 3 4 5

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Standard Language Ideology and Language Ideology Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Polish Language and National Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Polish Language Policy and Regulatory Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Normative Linguistic Research in Poland and Its Role in the Ideological Language Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Theoretical Background of Normative Interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Standard Language Ideology at Work: Sociolinguistic Consequences of Prescriptively Motivated Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The debate on Polish language in terms of correctness and acceptability of its use remains an important part of cultural, political, and social life in Poland. It is held through various media and different actors, and since it is rooted in the burdensome history of Polish national identity, the debate is infused with a range of ideological and strongly evaluative motivations. Like many European languages, Polish is officially governed by a regulatory body, the Polish Language Council (Rada Języka Polskiego), and semiofficially by popular experts on language correctness. It has to be noted that Polish linguists tend to include evaluative comments on language change and variation in both popular and scholarly books, which clearly has influenced on the overall approach to language correctness not

K. Kułak (*) Faculty of English, Department of Older Germanic Languages, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_120

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only among individuals with no educational background in linguistics but also teachers and intellectuals of different kind. “Proper” Polish is often considered an indicator of intelligence, high social class, and personal good manners, which leads to frequent stigmatization of individuals found guilty of violating the norm, even in the absence of any systematic explanation why certain forms are “wrong,” while others are “right.” The author’s aim is to present the most recent attitudes toward Polish language norm and to discuss their sociopolitical and scholarly grounds and implications on the basis of the analysis of a range of voices in the debate, including an online language advice service, opinion polls, and online discussion groups. Keywords

Polish · Prescriptivism · Language ideology · Standard language ideology · Language ideological debates

1

Introduction

The issue of prescriptivism in present-day Poland is a complex issue, and although it has been discussed by Polish linguists, it has yet to be explored empirically and brought to the attention of international audiences. This chapter is intended to contribute to the study of attitudes of the users of Polish and the role of Polish linguists as motivated by the history of Polish linguistic thought and strongly connected with Polish national identity and its struggles. Section 2 consists of a discussion of the framework of language ideology debates, since it effectively fits the multitude of discourses and agents present in the Polish debate. Then, the historical background is provided to trace back the normative tendencies of Polish speakers and their ties with their national identity and values. This leads to Polish language policy and both official and semiofficial guardians of the language norms, including the Polish Language Council as the most prominent one. What is extremely important in the Polish context is that normative linguistics and linguists play an important role in language policy and the attitudes of the speakers. Sections 3, 4, 5, and 6 offer insight into the activity of Polish normative linguists as well as the theoretical assumptions underlying them. Finally, the social consequences of prescriptive attitudes of the speakers are explored via data from a survey conducted for the Polish Language Council and its replication by the author of the present chapter. The survey data concerning the speakers’ self-declared attitudes to modern Polish is supplemented by the analysis of two online language advice resources: the official Language Advice Service of Polish Scientific Publishers and a popular Facebook group, O języku polskim po polsku. The analysis of questions posted by the users of those resources provides insight into the needs of the users of Polish and the discourse of the pursuit of language advice.

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Standard Language Ideology and Language Ideology Debates

Ideologies are an indispensable part of the social life of a language, whether one considers that reasonable or not. One of the major consequences of this state of affairs is the emergence of a standard language stemming from the issues of those in authority and legitimacy. Although a code of communication shared by all its users can be imagined as a very democratic concept, Milroy (2006: 135) argues that language is “the possession of only a few persons (usually not clearly specified) who have the authority to impose the rules of language on everyone else.” The notion of power over language, however, is not a clear-cut issue, as it has usually been shaped for ages alongside the history of each society; the ideas, values, and beliefs held by its members representing various groups; as well as the discourse of culture and politics. Blommaert (1999) points to the importance of language ideological debates as a subject of investigation since they constitute part of a larger matrix of sociopolitical processes. As such, they can provide insight into the role of a meta-discourse of language, since talking about talking and writing about writing are immersed in sociopolitical reality and infused with ideas and interests exceeding the scope of linguistics. Debates, as a melting pot of opinions, attitudes, values, and both covert and overt agendas, are always connected with a conflict and result in prescriptions and restrictions with real-life consequences not just for languages but for the speakers and their societies as well. Blommaert proposes not to restrict the definition of such debates to particular forms and mediums. In his framework, debates can be understood as “historical episodes of textualization, as histories of texts in which a struggle is waged between various texts and metatexts,” and “historically locatable periods” of such a struggle. In this view debates are channels through which ideologies access the world, though particular social actors are challenged and discussed. Geeraerts (2003: 4) defines an ideology as “a guiding line for social action, a shared system of ideas for the interpretation of social reality, regardless of the researcher’s evaluation of that perspective.” One powerful ideology present in language ideological debates is the standard language ideology, which involves establishing only the acceptable, standard variety of a language, typically by eradicating variability and validating only one variant of any given language feature (Milroy and Milroy 2012). The standard language ideology is manifested thorough the actions of social actors displaying prescriptive attitudes over the course of a language ideological debate. These, in turn, contribute to the process of standardization at an advanced stage and mechanisms responsible for safeguarding the established standards. As Milroy and Milroy (2012: 1) state, “[p]rescription depends on an ideology (or set of beliefs) concerning language which requires that in language use, as in other matters, things shall be done in the ‘right’ way.” This process accounts for the transition of abstract ideas to very solid objects and entities such as style manuals, editor

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guidelines, and language regulatory bodies. Naturally, the existence of strict norms means stigmatization of nonstandard language use and, inevitably, adequate social dynamics, including strengthening the social hierarchy based on identities projected on users of “good” and “bad” language. Prescriptivism is a common attitude held both by the society at large and public figures, including legislators. However, it is not acceptable in the majority of scholarly linguistic circles. Judging language correctness and proclaiming some individual forms and entire dialects desirable or unacceptable are inherently imbued with values, beliefs, and ideologies. Therefore linguists, committed to impartial and accurate description rather than prescription, tend to dismiss it altogether. However, with time, prescriptivism has gained recognition in linguistic research. Cameron (1995: 3–4) being one of the scholars who offered new perspectives on the issue challenged the tendency to leave prescriptivism out of investigation not only because it is a vital factor in sociolinguistic dynamics but also because ignoring it is hypocritical, as “it mirrors the very same value-laden attitudes it seems to be criticizing.” Curzan (2014: 6) continues the discussion of prescriptivism as an important part of the history of language and proposes a distinction among its four strands: standardizing, stylistic, restorative, and politically responsive. The first three types can be generally considered conservative and focus on suppressing language change, a characteristic of prescriptivism as a whole many linguists recognize and do not approve. Politically responsive prescriptivism, on the other hand, involves promoting (or even policing) controlled language innovation, especially in the case of politically responsive neologisms, for example, gender neutral and inclusive forms such as “chairperson.” This take on prescriptivism highlights that it can cater to different values and beliefs than those traditionally associated with it, including standard language ideology, and what is more, it can be observed in the language choices of scholars dedicated to impartial investigation into society and language. A good example is Yoder (2016) who touches upon the evolution of terms such as “sex” and “gender” in scholarly writing. In Curzan’s typology, such changes are not evolutionary, which would suggest their development is free from any intervention, but rather as another form of prescriptivism. The differences in the way those categories are formed pose a considerable challenge for language historians and sociolinguists, just as they do to concerned laypeople, popular language advisors, and public figures.

3

Polish Language and National Identity

Hroch (2003: 136–137), who includes Poland in his discussion of “small European nations,” describes the challenge such nations faced over the course of establishing their literary standard language, which was an essential element of their nationforming. The particular kind of tension concerning language and national identity was also noted by Kamusella (2008: 34), who claims that “languages are much more politicized in Central and Eastern Europe than anywhere else.” Linguistic norms in

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those nations were established on the basis of classic literary works, which were unable to meet all communication needs of a modern society at the time. This means that language codification was not enough as a number of decisions had to be made to enrich a language with neologisms and loanwords so it could be used to all instances and purposes, including legal, social, and scientific advancements, while at the same time preserving its ties with tradition and national identity. Hroch (2003: 77) notes that the process of modern nation-forming was atypical in the case of Poland, which remained a nation state and a multicultural one, until the end of the eighteenth century that was then followed by the period of partitions. Compared to other small nations, Poland has a much longer tradition of cultural activities in the national language, and the history of the struggle for Polish national identity and independence of Polish nation state, which is exceptionally complex and difficult due to the partitions and occupation it suffered. The country’s history inevitably has shaped the debate over the Polish language and its standardization as well as the role of the regulatory bodies and the guardians of “proper” language, including linguists. Grybosiowa (2002: 2–3) notes two periods of social revolution which drove linguistic change: the times of occupation after 1939, when Polish national identity was suppressed, and from 1945 until today with a notable milestone being 1989, when the communist era officially ended. Language was obviously one of the areas of strict control by the regime, known for its intense language policy and censorship aimed at enforcing social changes dictated by ideology. A prominent feature of that era was its famously ritualistic newspeak, characterized also by highly evaluative labels, for example, “liberalism,” used as an unspecified generally negative attitude (Głowiński 1993: 164–167). Although the influence of the language of communist propaganda quickly declined due to widespread negative attitudes to all relics of that period, new challenges, mostly globalization and a surge in loanwords from English, appeared (cf. Lubaś 1996: 157; Sękowska 2007: 45). Other phenomena which have intensified since then are: loss of prominence of the general language, a different interpretation of language as a value, breaking the taboo, lessened respect for the sacred, using language as a tool of language games, lessened language awareness in terms of the differences between spoken and written language, and formal and informal language, informal language gaining prominence. (Grybosiowa 2002: 2)

Warchoł-Schlottmann (2004) addresses the last point arguing that a large gap between formal, or rather formalistic style of the media and public institutions, and everyday informal language was typical of that period. The increased tendency of informal language to influence formal language following 1989 was a reaction to decades of suppressed freedom of expression, also in terms of style. Lubaś (1996: 156) argues that the communist newspeak was quickly weeded out, only to be replaced with a new one, representing the same traits, such as “excessive evaluating, pragmatic, ritual, magical, arbitrary, idiomatic, selective and manipulative use of language” which were caused by social tendencies such as authoritarian ideologies and social structures and widespread manipulation in public discussions.

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According to Grybosiowa (2002), cultivating the Polish language is no longer a patriotic effort, and only very few public figures, including some journalists, take action to do so. Language is not considered an objective value, but a means to an end, a way to gain the upper hand in social and professional situations (also Markowski 2006: 12–14). Lubaś (1996: 159–160) attributes the lessened significance of language as a value to the deconstruction of “cultural universum,” meaning a set of “values, symbols, and myths” which works in a normative way and is imposed on the general population by the intellectual elites called the intelligentsia. Once this construct is gone, variability in norms begins to spread. This concept is closely related to social transformation and the rise of the middle class in Poland, which is considered undesirable by some sociologists and normative linguists alike. The theme of the intelligentsia leading the general population is a notable part of Polish national identity and the changes in social structure caused by the fact that a large portion of the members of this social stratum were murdered and prosecuted during the Second World War and the following communist regime where they are still lamented by Polish public figures and publicists. As Kamusella (2008: 415–416) notes, “Polish was made into the Holy Grail of Polish nationalism” in the nineteenth century which “burdened [the intelligentsia] with the task of spearheading the postulated nation to independence. At that time, there was no clear-cut division between scholars and national activists.” This sentiment could have contributed to the tradition that prevails even today which perceives linguists as the guardians of Polish and all values for which it stands. Grybosiowa (2006: 57–58) attributes the spread of vulgarisms in Polish to the diminishing role of taboo, especially concerning the human body (evidenced by, e.g., displaying pregnancy ultrasound pictures in workplaces) and “the dying voice of protest of the former intellectual elites.” Finally, it should be noted that Catholic clergy constituted an important group in Polish intellectual elites. Thus certain spiritual values can be found in the discourse of ideological language debate, next to purely national ones. Also the secularization of the society post-1989 coincides with the concerns raised by some experts and public figures, notably that the Polish language is threatened by the loss of higher values and subjected to cynical pragmatism. Another widely discussed event was Poland joining the European Union in 2004. Pawłowski (2005: 14–23) notes the facts contributing to a strong position of the Polish language, namely, the population of around 38 million, relatively large in the EU, and linguistic ties with other Indo-European languages with intellectual traditions and values rooted in Mediterranean and Christian cultures with many etymological and grammatical parallelisms. On the other hand, he is less optimistic in terms of the cultural attractiveness of Polish, which may be considered less attractive and useful and associated with stereotypes such as its allegedly unpronounceable, unpleasantly sounding consonant system. Another problem is low prominence of Polish culture and literature in other European countries. Overall, Pawłowski finds Polish not very prestigious compared with other EU languages, which can lead to many negative consequences, including absence of documents and media in Polish across the EU and few initiatives promoting it. This situation means that any

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communication between native speakers of Polish and other languages will inevitably be unsymmetrical, the former being the less favorable one. Pawłowski suggests that the priority of Polish language regulatory bodies and linguists should, therefore, be promoting it in the EU and switching the focus from prescriptive and defensive attitudes to increasing its attractiveness and supporting its expansion abroad.

4

Polish Language Policy and Regulatory Bodies

The very existence of a language policy under official regulations in any country points to the inseparability of language and national identity. The native speakers of a single language can be members of different nations and inhabitants of various countries, each with their own language policy (e.g., English and Spanish). From the perspective of a nation and its identity, the shape, status, and fate of the language spoken by its members are their own internal issue, separate from other communities sharing the same code in terms of purely linguistic signs. The status of Polish as the language of administration, business, and culture in Poland is regulated and protected by official state law including in particular the Act on the Polish Language of October 7, 1999. The Act provides an outline of current language policy in Poland and mechanisms enforcing it, including the Polish Language Council as the official advisory body. The Council is comprised of renowned linguists and Polish philologists, mostly professors of leading Polish universities. The maximum number of members, elected for 4-year terms, is 35. The candidates are suggested by the Polish Academy of Sciences experts. The five particular definitions of language protection listed in the Act are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Ensuring correct use of the language and improving the competence of its users Preventing its vulgarization Promoting the knowledge about the Polish language and its role in culture Promoting respect for regional dialects and preventing their extinction Promoting Polish internationally and supporting Polish teaching in Poland and abroad

The Council issues a variety of publications concerned with, among others, orthography, correctness, names, neologisms, and loanwords including announcements, opinions, and recommendations. In 1999, a new edition of “Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny” (“A Dictionary of Correct Polish”), which was authorized by the Polish Language Council, was released. Chłopicki (2005: 110) attributes those efforts to strengthen the status of standard Polish as a response specifically to the instability of language patterns which followed the end of the communist era and a large influx of foreign vocabulary, especially from English. The spread of vulgar language use and its acceptability is a frequently noted issue in terms of undesirable developments to the Polish language. The subject is one in which the Act has measures to prevent. Markowski (2006: 97–99) analyzes the roots of this phenomenon, which he attributes to the fashion to be “cool” which began in

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the 1990s and which clearly considers vulgarisms undesirable. He does not consider them language errors, but “severe violations of the rules of language ethics and esthetics.” Grybosiowa (2006: 59) poses the question of which is the biggest threat to the Polish language – loanwords, especially from English, or “breaking the language taboo” and leans toward the latter. She points to highly polarized stances that speakers of Polish take on the issue and expresses her concern with the use of vulgar language being justified even by public figures, for example, by language tradition or the expressiveness it achieves, although she does not agree with such arguments. In her opinion it is the proper, traditional norms one acquires at home, school, or university which ensure they respect the taboo and do not approve of vulgarisms. She identifies the disintegration of norms and taboo both in the media and everyday communication as the causes of the issue, although she mentions other factors as well, including the Internet and pop culture but also translators of foreign literature, especially written in English, as gateways to the level of vulgarity “unusual of our [Polish] culture.” In 2000 Walery Pisarek, honorary chairman of the Polish Language Council at the time, penned a letter to the president of Poland (quoted in Bień 2003: 20–21), in which he referred to a new parliament act on standardization as “the first partition of the Polish language,” words heavy with particularly burdensome connotations for Polish national identity. The actual partitions posed a substantial threat to the Polish national identity and involved the imposition of Russian, Prussian, and Austrian respective cultures, administrations, and languages. The imagery evoked by Pisarek suggested that allowing languages other than Polish in any sphere of public life, including business and industry, is an act of ill-advised nonchalance at best, if not treason. The provision of the act in question that inspired such reaction involved the introduction of international and European production standards (e.g., ISO industrial standards) also in their original language. The Polish Language Council considered this change as a beginning of a sudden decrease in the status of the Polish language that had the approval of the parliament. The grave tone of this intervention pointed to any existing images that were considered as threats to Polish; they were an attack on the very idea of Polish independence and nationhood, as well as to the perceived duty of the Council to oppose any such activities by all means necessary. Pisarek’s concerns, however, were not considered by the parliament, and the Act including the provisions he protested was passed in September 2002.

5

Normative Linguistic Research in Poland and Its Role in the Ideological Language Debate

Since ideologies have gained importance as subjects of inquiry and notable factors in language variation and change, the scope of ideological language debates should be carefully examined. These include platforms varying from laypeople’s comments aired during the course of informal to wider public discussions (such as online fora) and scholarly papers. Considering linguists as agents in such debates might be controversial, since it implies that they allow certain ideologies to transpire in their

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work. Ideologically motivated research is not desirable for a variety of wellgrounded reasons, including a high risk of bias. However, the presence of certain components of ideology might be even unavoidable in certain scholarly publications, in particular those concerning language variation related to change and written within normative traditions such as the Polish one. Markowski (2006: 17) points to the general expectations of native speakers of Polish, who turn to language experts for guidance and definite answers to their usage-related questions but also for public defense of the standard language. He traces this tradition back to the interwar period, when an intense interest in eliminating language mistakes was sparked by the general public. Importantly, Poradnik Językowy (Language Guide), now one of the top linguistic journals in Poland was founded as early as in 1900 with a primary role of providing language advice and guidance as well as eradication of errors and promoting “good language practice.” The formula changed after 1938 when some articles devoted to a description of the language system with no prescriptive aspect started being published (Uniwersytet Warszawski n.d.). The status of a linguist in Poland is strictly related to the language policy. It is difficult to name one notable expert on the Polish language who has not been involved in some kind of normative activity or at least has not taken a stance in the standard language debate. The elite of Polish linguists traditionally comprise the Polish Language Council and are involved in popular publications and educational TV and radio broadcasts on the language, especially on issues regarding standard language and language correctness. Even though their stances and opinions are not exclusively prescriptive and are imbued with standard language ideology, the topic of “proper Polish” is the central one in the overall discussion of the Polish language. The linguists who represent rather prescriptive views in the debate include Bańko (2008: 4–5), who explores the relationship between language norm and error from the perspectives of language users with different backgrounds, including linguists and actors, but, prominently, laypeople. In his opinion, it is their interest in acceptable and unacceptable language use which drives the activity of many linguists in forming normative judgments. Bańko himself is in favor of applying multilayered norms in describing Polish, rather than establishing binary categories of norm and error. Saloni, renowned for his work, among others, on “Frequency dictionary of modern Polish” (1990), stands against excessive pro-standard regulations and argues that “a language user who doesn’t want to [observe standard language rules] and consciously deviates from the norms is entitled to do so” (Saloni 1996: 81). Lubaś (1999: 33) draws a distinction between what is justified in his opinion and concerns regarding Polish such as widespread vulgarisms and semantic incapability and others considered trivial and stemming from panic, such as the threat of actual language death, the suppression by an English-derived vocabulary, and a moral downfall of the society. These concerns, however, can be found in the works of linguists who associate language change with a switch from traditional and national values (cf. Lubaś 1996; Grybosiowa 2006 discussed above). The Catholic Church, as mentioned before, traditionally is considered a guardian of moral values which constitute a part of Polish national identity; its role involves also opposing certain phenomena related to language change. An example of a linguist with strong ties

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with Catholic values is Liberek (2006: 10–13), who stresses the role of Catholic Church and its values in refining and preserving the language. He claims that the biggest threat to Polish, which emerged at the turn of century, is “structural atomization,” which he defines as the deterioration of the relationship between humans and their communication system. The loss of higher moral and esthetical values defies the communicative purpose of modern Polish, which should be about convening truth and not just achieving goals.

6

Theoretical Background of Normative Interventions

As discussed above the issue of a standard language, its ties with national identity, and the role of intellectual elites, including prominent linguists in Poland, are fairly specific. It involves a rich body of scholarly sources on normative linguistics and an original set of terms concerning the matter. Normative actions taken toward the Polish language are sometimes referred to as language cultivation (kultura języka) or language pedagogy (pedagogika językowa). Markowski (2004) lists threats to normative linguistics in Poland, namely, the lack of tools to navigate the uncharted territory of Polish as it is used on the Internet; the indifferent attitudes of many users of Polish, in particular the young generation, which displays high susceptibility to the language of advertising and the new media; and, finally, also some linguists. He refers to the latter as “botanists” as opposed to “gardeners,” a division overlapping with the descriptive-prescriptive dichotomy. Markowski (2004: 136) expresses his concern that while the “gardeners” are presently aware of the importance of the actual language use, which can be observed in corpora (especially the most prominent Polish one, the National Corpus of Polish, NKJP), the “botanists” might oppose any kind of evaluative judgments that lead to all innovations in usage becoming acceptable as well as to the end of the efforts of language pedagogy which he considers an undesirable event. Markowski and Podracki (1999) discuss the grounds justifying any kinds of activities aimed at forming habits and opinions of native speakers of Polish. In conclusion, they find the major needs of language users should be met not by the means of language policy, as a restrictive force, but rather language pedagogy. The speakers tend to express their needs through questions and complaints, usually centered on the idea of the existence of an objective, absolute model which can provide definite solutions to all doubts concerning language usage. Other speakers communicate their expectations through calls for action to cultivate and regulate language. While those speakers do not assume the model to be given, they believe it is necessary to construct and maintain it. Both of those positions are normative and prescriptive in nature as they share the idea of the necessity of an expert intervention. However, it can be easily observed how different beliefs result in different kinds of needs to be addressed by professionals. While their discourse is marked with frustration, the sources of such an emotional mode differ. The threat to the language, as it should be used, is interpreted as either the majority of speakers neglecting the desirable model or as the model being handled improperly by both the speakers and

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the guardians of the standard language. The former position requires those guardians to educate the ignorant and unwilling and, not overtly, to provide validation to those striving for the sense of intellectual and ethical superiority due to their concern with proper language as an objective positive value. The latter involves seeking consensus about what linguistic forms exactly should be included in the model, what texts are acceptable sources of those forms, and what actions can and should be taken to maintain it. Markowski and Podracki (1999: 50–51) note that normative linguistics has to be based on the part of the language system which constitutes actual current language behavior, that is, texts, corpora, and observed everyday use. A choice must be made. The selection process involves a judgment which can be questionable as subjective or biased. Therefore, they argue that evaluative criteria based on fully objective basis should be applied in order for normative linguistics to remain reliable and scientific. Two scholars considered the founding mothers of normative linguistics of Polish, Kurkowska and Puzynina, laid out theoretical foundations for establishing such objective evaluative criteria which are nowadays commonly accepted by normative linguists and appealed to more or less consciously by some language users concerned with the standard and correctness. Kurkowska (1986) points to the “ideal language,” that is language which “satisfies all communicative needs of its users in a manner which requires the least possible effort” as the target. The objective evaluation in this sense means assessing all features which bring Polish closer to this state as positive phenomena, while those which do not promote this direction are considered negative. Puzynina (1990) advocates extending this ideal not only to communicative needs but also those including esthetic and ethical ones, which, as “cultivated language use” rather than normative linguistics, are considered by Markowski and Podracki (1999: 53) due to their lack of objectivity, that is, “a type of humanistic thought and not a scholarly discipline.” The idea of the Polish language meeting sophisticated standards of beauty and morality, however, is still commonly understood by both among laypeople and linguists. Markowski and Podracki (1999: 60–61) also discuss challenges facing linguists responding to the needs of the speakers. These include the dilemma of what kind of usage can and should be taken into consideration, especially in times when “terms such as education (educated), culture (cultured) mean (. . .) less and less, when they become increasingly blurry and less useful to a codifier,” and, what is more, when existing scholarly literature on normative approaches to Polish lacks consistent terminology and clear definitions when it comes to terms such as “informal,” “informal form,” “formal,” “official,” “regional,” “regional form,” and the terms of frequency such as “rarely” and “more often.” One of the concepts related to those dilemmas is the existence of two levels of language norm in Polish. According to Markowski (2006: 3–33), the reference norm (norma wzorcowa) consists of “consciously used [elements of language] with the sense of their semantic and stylistic value, which follows linguistic traditions, grammar and semantic rules of Polish and developments currently observed in the language.” He also associates it with speakers having higher education and a sophisticated upbringing who consider the language a value on its own, that is, as attributes of the intelligentsia. This norm is

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expected to be observed in all public contexts. The usage norm (norma użytkowa), on the other hand, is the one observed in informal settings. Its elements are such language forms that allow for efficient communication and achieving the speakers’ goals by the means of persuasion. Thus, the two norms do not differ only in terms on style or how strict the rules are, but there is also an ethical and esthetical factor which has particular social implications. The reference norm is associated with higher moral values of the speaker and with higher social status, even though by definition, the two norms are limited to particular settings which are not directly and exclusively connected with particular social groups. Zgółka (1999: 63) presents his “postulative in nature” reflections concerning the present condition of the Polish language. He discusses the potential dangers for Polish as the dominant language in Poland, namely, the changes caused by the European integration and diminishing language abilities of the young generation due to new technologies and loss of interest in values traditionally associated with language and the culture of its use. One of the tendencies he observes concerns the utilitarian approach to language as a means to an end which is also present at Polish schools. Putting efficiency in focus poses a danger to the ethical aspect of communication and paves the way for eristic and newspeak. His postulates involve teaching school children more about language itself, not only as a medium for literature, but as a source of national identity. This attitude resembles the dynamics of “moral panics” described by Cameron (1995: 83–104), which are social phenomena occurring when an issue is rapidly elevated by the media and other actors in the public debate to the rank of a serious problem with immense consequences for the order and rules of the society. The perceived threat of foreign influences, distorting and dominating the Polish language and, as a result, Polish national identity and certain traditional values held dear by the society, has been observed to intensify following events such as the fall of communism or Poland joining the EU. Some prominent Polish linguists take an active part in those movements and tend to use their authority of guardians of “proper Polish” to call for actions including changing school curricula and legislation (as discussed previously).

7

Standard Language Ideology at Work: Sociolinguistic Consequences of Prescriptively Motivated Actions

In his analysis of the perception of the standard language in seven countries, Smakman (2012: 36–42) found that Poles were more likely to define it as “correct language” than other nations. This was also the most frequent characteristics of the standard they reported, followed by “lingua franca” (the language of communication of all members of the community) and “opposite of dialect.” Those findings are consistent with the needs of users of Polish described anecdotally by Polish normative linguists and observed in the data presented below. A commonly discussed attribute of standard Polish is its correctness, observance of rules, and absence of errors, which are often considered offenses against esthetics (speakers tend to hyperbolize their reactions to grammar “mistakes” in terms of physical disgust or

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even “bleeding eyes”) and intellect (appeals to lack of education and intelligence on the part of offenders). In addition, “incorrect,” nonstandard language often meets with accusations of harming the language and neglecting the values attached to it. Language users who do not conform to the standard may be subject to contempt both in formal and private settings as not only undesirable socially individuals but also framed in discourse as vandals, contributing to deterioration of the society’s common good and society as a whole. This tendency fuels the discourse of moral panics as discussed in the previous section. Understanding standard as a common code of communication and free from dialectal features are another attitudes observable in the language ideological debate both on the level of language authorities and laypeople. Strict policing of dialectal and other nonstandard features is being justified with the need of protecting language norms as the requirement for effective communication. The issue of language perception and ideology among native speakers of Polish remains largely understudied. A notable exception can be found in Bounds (2015), who adapted the draw-a-map technique to examine how residents of Poznań perceive the speech of Poles in different regions of the country in terms of inventing labels of different sort to refer to them. The scarcity of such studies does not mean, however, that the opinions of the speakers are completely ignored. In 2005 the Polish Language Council ordered a phone survey titled “What do Poles think about the Polish language” (Co Polacy sądzą o języku polskim? – wyniki badania CBOS 2005) conducted by Centre for Public Opinion Research. A representative sample of adult Poles (n = 1,133) answered the following four multiple-choice questions (the percentage of responses received in 2005 and 2006 is shown): Question 1. Why should we cultivate the language we speak? a. Hard to tell (2005)/I do not think we should (2016) b. Because Polish is a value which cements our nations and it should be cultivated c. Because I was taught at home to care about my mother tongue d. Because our language is beautiful e. Because if one speaks incorrectly, others treat them badly f. Because speaking correctly helps people communicate g. Because cultured people speak correctly h. Because one just should, but I can’t really justify it Question 2. What bothers you the most in the present-day Polish used in public? a. Hard to tell b. Nothing c. Poverty of vocabulary d. Excessive use of loanwords e. Swearwords f. Sloppy pronunciation g. Too many colloquial words and phrases h. Too many “smart” words

2005 0.6 35.4

2016 1 25

19.4 0.1 4.3 12.3 19.5 8.4 2005a

4 5 4 28 21 4 2016

0.9 0.4 24.1 51.4 86.3 44.7 14.4 23.7

3 2 17 17 16 31 4 3

(continued)

2304 Question 3. Who, in your opinion, decides what is correct in a language? a. Hard to tell b. Famous linguists or institutions dealing with Polish, e.g., the Polish Language Council c. People who have influence on publically used Polish, e.g., journalists d. Everybody who speaks Polish e. The educated part of the society f. Nobody Question 4. Can the way one speaks and writes determine one’s intelligence and manners? a. Hard to tell b. Definitely yes, language is a basic factor determining one’s intelligence and manners c. Yes, a cultured person speaks efficiently and correctly d. Rather yes, a cultured person tires to speak correctly e. Probably, but there are intelligent and cultured people who for some reasons speak incorrectly f. No, I see no connection between one’s language correctness and being a cultured person a

K. Kułak 2005 2.1 41.6

2016 6 59

20.7 22.8 9.4 3.5 2005

5 19 4 0 2016

0.4 37.8

1 29

24.3 14.4 13.7

18 11 30

9.4

3

More than one answer was allowed in 2005

The pattern of responses in the 2005 survey indicate the speakers’ tendency to consider Polish a national value worth protecting from both external and internal threats: In Question 1 – Why should we cultivate the language we speak? 35% agreed that it should be cultivated because of its nation-forming qualities (Answer B). In Question 2 – What bothers you the most in the present-day Polish used in public? The most frequent answers were “swearwords,” 86%, and “excessive use of loanwords,” 51% (Answers E and D, respectively). In Question 3 – Who, in your opinion, decides what is correct in a language? 42% of respondents pointed to Answer B: observe the authority of the Council and renewed linguists in terms of normative judgments. And to Question 4 – Associate standard language use with the user’s personal qualities including intelligence (nearly 38% answered yes). Not surprisingly, the questions were based on certain assumptions (e.g., the language should be cultivated) reflecting the policy of the Council; therefore, some attitudes could not be measured by the means of this survey. The survey has been used as a model for smaller-scale studies, including one I conducted in 2016. The questions were adapted for use in an online survey of a group of 499 Poles over 15 years of age. Although the sample in the study does not allow for a straightforward comparison with the 2005 survey, some conclusions can be suggested: In the 2016 results, the general trends remain fairly similar, although in Question 1, while the role of language as a national value (Answer B) was acknowledged by

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25% of the participants, the most common choice was role of correct language use as a guarantee of effective communication (Answer F, 28%). In Question 2, “swearwords” (16%) were considered less of a bothersome issue than they were by the participants of the 2005 survey, while “sloppy pronunciation” was pointed as “the most bothering” by 31% of the participants (although unlike in 2005, in the 2016 survey, respondents were only allowed one choice, viz., to achieve consistency with the wording of the original question). Interestingly, the role of the language authorities was emphasized stronger in Question 3 in the more recent survey (59%) than in 2005 (41.6%). Finally, the answer patterns for Question 4 were very similar. That is, the number of participants choosing particular answers suggesting increasingly stronger correlation between one’s language use and intelligence was increasing from the weakest connection to the strongest, with a notable exception in the 2016 survey where the pattern was disrupted by a peak in the number of participants who selected “Probably, but there are intelligent and cultured people who for some reasons speak incorrectly” (Answer E, 30%), while the more definite answer (B) was given by 29% of participants. These distinctive trends can indicate some changes in attitudes of the speakers of Polish who may focus on more utilitarian functions of the language (as noted by Grybosiowa 2002; Markowski 2006, discussed above, also evidenced by Smakman 2012), who gradually consider swearwords less of an issue (frequently lamented by some linguists and public figures), and who begin doubting the straightforward correlation between “proper” Polish and intelligence (which can be also partially attributed to the “language as means to an end” attitude). Another example of language usage illustrates similar findings. The Internet has provided a productive medium for the tradition of complaint and opinion-seeking. Language Advice Service of Polish Scientific Publishers is an online language advice column for members of the general public. The answers are provided by language experts including professors of Polish. The service is managed by Professor Katarzyna Kłosińska, who also hosts a language advice program on Polish national radio. The scope of the questions includes such categories as punctuation, meaning of words, dialectology, pronunciation, and text editing issues. The service is fairly popular, and answers to several questions are often published every weekday. I took a closer look at a period of over 4 months, between June 1 and October 11, 2016, during which time 193 entries were published. The aim of the study was to identify the needs and expectations of the users of the service in seeking language specialists, their attitudes to language norms and their role in the lives of individuals and society, and also the way experts addressed those needs and expectations. Entries are categorized by the service according to the relevant area of language study, while in the research I performed, the entries were also divided into three main categories corresponding to the general intention of the author, that is, (1) seeking a correctness judgment, (2) requesting information, or (3) verifying one’s opinion. The first category of entries involved the need for a definite answer to what language form or behavior is correct, while others are not. The entries included in the second

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category aimed at obtaining specialist language knowledge and explanations of language phenomena, including etymology of single words and idiomatic expressions. The last category reflects the need of the users of Polish to achieve the approval of an authority to support their normative judgments, which appears to play an important role in their identity forming and maintaining. Each entry was also labeled as including evaluative comments (answering the question) or not. In this study, evaluative comments involved either judgments of users of Polish who used particular language forms (or made particular language errors) or subjective opinions regarding, for example, esthetic qualities of forms in question as well as comments such as “unfortunately this form is increasingly common.” The distribution of entries in the categories was as follows: 1. Seeking a correctness judgment 2. Requesting information 3. Verifying one’s opinion

71% 15% 14%

Since speaking correct, standard Polish is associated with superior intelligence and social status, some language users may seek the sense of self-worth and even superiority in having their knowledge of norms as well as their serious attitudes to them validated by an expert. Only 20 entries included evaluative comments, often on the part of the experts, who would express their reactions to language forms quoted in the questions using words such as “absurd” or “illogical.” A particular rhetorical device was used in two questions, namely, the authors asked “why do people say. . .,” while the question as a whole concerned particular grammar rule in one case and a phonotactic constraint in the other. This way of forming requests for specialist information may indicate a similar need as the one expressed in the questions aimed at verifying one’s opinion. Their authors were not interested in other people’s motivation, but rather in pointing the obvious errors. Discussion groups and fora provide another media for those normative needs. O języku polskim po polsku (“About Polish in Polish”) is a large (9500 members at the beginning of data collection) moderated group in Facebook created by Ula Łupińska, known as Pani Korektor (Ms. Copy Editor), a freelance copy editor who has gained a considerable social media outreach and managed to keep thousands of users involved in the discussions concerning proofreading, editing, and various linguistic issues. The group allows both specialists and people with no education or experience in the field to both create posts and take part in discussions and answer questions. This mode of communication, in contrast to the traditional model of single exchange between a non-expert and an authoritative figure, enables an almost real-time debate among various agents. This more democratic situation can, of course, prove productive, allowing for brainstorming, exchange of experience, ethnographic observations, and resources, although each person brings her/his own agenda and ideologies to the mix. As a result, the discussion requires constant moderation, not only to maintain civility but also to maintain quality of exchanged information. My data collection covered the period of November 5 to December 31, 2017, during which 100 posts were published. The same methodology as in the analysis of Language

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Advice Service of Polish Scientific Publishers was applied with the following results: 1. Seeking a correctness judgment 2. Requesting information 3. Verifying one’s opinion

50% 18% 32%

Only 4 posts out of 100 included evaluative comments (compared to about 10% in the Language Advice Service sample). Some posts provoked lengthy discussion which sometimes required intervention of a moderator, two of which I will summarize here for illustration. A post devoted to editing issues concerning dates in the Anno Domini dating system, in particular the BC dates. In Polish there is a tendency to use the “p.n.e.” (“before our era,” equivalent of B.C.E.) abbreviation versus “przed Chr.” (“before Christ”). Some Poles advocate the use of the latter claiming that it was eradicated in favor of “p.n.e.” by communist language policy (therefore, using p.n.e. can be considered akin to supporting communism), and although the original post was not concerned with this issue, one member of the group called out the poster to use “przed Chr.” This sparked an unfriendly dispute. Vernacular forms, especially in terms of morphology and inflection, tend to spark controversy as well. A post concerning nonstandard future form of the verb “oglądać,” namely, “oglądnąć,” as opposed to the standard, but irregular, one “obejrzeć” (to watch) divided the community; some members considered this form a regional (Silesian) variant, while others called it a mistake, a particular esthetically displeasing one. For instance, one member commented “It sounds disgusting (sic). Like a peasant who doesn’t know how to speak.” The esthetic quality based on the nonstandardness (no such comments can be found regarding “correct” forms) is directly connected with the evaluation of the intellect and the social status of a speaker and, automatically, of the person who consciously refrains from using such form. Ideology, whether communist or standard language one, is the most notable reason of language-related discord.

8

Conclusion

Standardization, language norms, and protecting language from both internal and external threats, as well as identifying, constitute a large part of language policies in many countries, including fairly monolingual ones, such as Poland. The debate concerning standard language held there is rooted in Poland’s history of national identity forming, struggle to maintain it, and the torch-bearing role the intelligentsia played in it. This gave rise to the tradition of Polish normative linguistic studies and the status and role of linguists in the society. Evidence shows that prescriptive attitudes of the speakers of Polish are based on various factors and validated by tradition, which associates a vigilant approach to language with positive values including not only esthetic but also ethical ones. Observing language rules and norms is often perceived as tantamount to high moral standards and constrictive

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contribution to the society. Such attitudes are closely related to the decisions the speakers of Polish make in order to position themselves and others in their perceived social hierarchy. The individual beliefs of the speakers are often concerned with forming and maintaining their identities, maybe even more so than they are with national identity these days.

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Milroy, J. (2006). The ideology of the standard language. In: C. Llamas, P. Stockwell, L. Mullany (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge. Milroy, J., & Milroy, L. (2012). Authority in language: Investigating standard English (4th ed.). Oxford: Routledge. Pawłowski, A. (2005). Język polski w Unii Europejskiej: szanse i zagrożenia. Poradnik Językowy, 10, 3–27. Puzynina, J. (1990). O pojęciu kultury języka. Poradnik Językowy, 3, 153–162. Saloni, Z. (1990). Frequency dictionary of modern Polish. Saloni, Z. (1996). Głos w sprawie prawnej ochrony języka. In: J. Miodek (Ed.), pp. 71–83. Sękowska, E. (2007). Wpływ języka angielskiego na słownictwo polszczyzny ogólnej. Poradnik Językowy, 05, 44–53. Smakman, D. (2012). The definition of the standard language: A survey in seven countries. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 218, 25–58. Uniwersytet Warszawski (n.d.). Rola “Poradnika Językowego” w kształtowaniu normy językowej i wiedzy o polszczyźnie. I. Program “Poradnika Językowego” i jego ewolucja. https://poradnikjezykowy.uw.edu.pl/page/role. Accessed 19 Jan 2018. Warchoł-Schlottmann, M. (2004). Ekspansja wyrażeń potocznych do języka oficjalnego. Poradnik Językowy, 5, 31–42. Yoder, J. D. (2016). Sex roles: An up-to-date gender journal with an outdated name. Sex Roles, 74(1), 1–5. Zgółka, T. (1999). Zadania edukacyjne w zakresie kultury języka polskiego w szkole. In: J Mazur (Ed.), pp. 63–71.

Abortion Referendums in Ireland

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Referendum Process in Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Abortion Law in Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Learning from Language: The Abortion Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Voting Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Ireland was a conservative outpost on the European periphery for much of the twentieth century. From independence in 1922, the state pursued social policies heavily influenced by religious values, and indeed the 1937 constitution embedded many of these positions in the framework of the state. The constitution included a prohibition on divorce and a statement which strongly favored women remaining in the domestic sphere. These policies were supported by the majority Catholic population, but social values began to evolve by the 1960s. This can be seen in the shifting narratives in the debates on many social and political issues. This chapter will focus on a single issue – abortion. It will undertake an evaluation of the debates on the six abortion referendum question wordings, campaign narratives, and voting patterns. The analysis will provide compelling evidence of remarkable value change in just four decades. Keywords

Abortion · Referendum · Ireland · Conservative · Liberal · Values

T. Reidy (*) Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_169

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T. Reidy

Introduction

In politics values are often discussed as the fundamental beliefs that citizens have about how the world should be organized. Citizens may hold views about social and economic issues, and these may be expressed as specific positions on topics such as democracy, the role of religion, accountability, human rights, gender and diversity, and income equality. Fundamental values and beliefs are shaped by the role of religion in a society, its level of economic development, historical evolution, and embedded philosophical and political norms (Ingelhart 2003; Coakley and Gallagher 2018). Values tend to change slowly over time, and changes can have profound implications for the social, political, and economic lives of citizens within a state. In this chapter, the focus is on value change in the Republic of Ireland (hereafter Ireland) and how this can be identified through the language used in abortion referendum debates over four decades. It will also provide a geographical analysis of voting patterns at the abortion referendums. The chapter is organized as follows: details on the referendum process are provided in Sect. 2, which considers how referendums are initiated, the phrasing of referendum questions, and the rules governing campaigns. Section 3 provides some background context on abortion policy. It begins with an interrogation of debates around the wording of the abortion amendments and the dominant narratives at each of the abortion votes. The analysis reveals evidence of substantial value change on the abortion issue as well as changes in the political power balance associated with the issue. In Sect. 4, a brief overview of how voting patterns changed across the referendum votes is provided using results from each of the votes and mapping of the outcomes. Some concluding comments are provided in Sect. 5.

2

The Referendum Process in Ireland

Ireland has a written constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann) which was introduced by plebiscite in 1937. The constitution was a product of its time, and its language reflected the social conservatism and values of the era. Clauses such as those in Article 41 on the family give an insight into the belief systems of the majority Catholic population. The family has a heteronormative definition, marriage was prioritized, divorce was prohibited (until 1995), and views on the role of women are perhaps best captured by the clause which states that “. . . mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” (Bunreacht na hÉireann [Constitution of Ireland] 1945). This clause had no practical implications, it did not deliver any economic support for women who worked in the home, and, equally, it did not operate as a constitutional impediment to women entering the labor market. A national referendum, the outcome of which is legally binding, is required to make any change to the constitution. Referendums are initiated by the government, and an amendment bill must be passed by a majority in parliament for the question to proceed to the people. The constitution is a prescriptive document and contains

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provisions on the political and legal architecture of the state as well as stipulations on social organization. Referendums were relatively rare in the early decades after adoption of the constitution – no votes took place in the 1940s and just one in the 1950s – but they have increased sharply, and already this decade (2018), there have been ten votes with several more expected. Debates during referendum campaigns are shaped by the historical context, political environment, and the campaign actors, but the precise wording of the referendum question is determined by law and asks citizens to vote Yes or No to a question that asks if they agree with the proposal to amend the constitution contained in the undermentioned bill. Constitutional amendment bills are numbered sequentially. The first abortion referendum was the eighth amendment to the constitution, while the abortion referendum of 2018 arose from the 36th amendment bill. Naming of referendums can be contentious, but the most serious controversies are to be found in the wording of the clauses which are proposed to be inserted or deleted from the constitution (O’Carroll 1991; Girvin 1994). Referendum campaigns have changed over recent decades and have been influenced by the emergence of a more diverse media environment and social media. Campaign communication has become quite heavily regulated, although social media remains outside the remit of many of the campaign laws (Reidy and Suiter 2015). This is an important point as this chapter looks at referendums over four decades. The most important regulations date from the 1990s and early 2000s which means that the earliest abortion referendums (1983, 1992) did not have the strict requirements present today. Following Supreme Court judgments in the late 1990s, governments were precluded from using public funds in support of a specific proposal, and broadcasters were required to give equal broadcast time to both sides in the debate. Partly in response to these decisions, the Referendum Act (1998) provided that a referendum commission be established at each referendum with a specific role to provide information to voters and to promote turnout (Suiter and Reidy 2013). Financial transparency was improved in a series of electoral amendment acts, and a requirement for campaign participants to register with the political watchdog agency was also introduced.

3

Abortion Law in Ireland

Abortion has bedeviled politics in Ireland for 40 years. Six referendum questions were put to the people on four dates between 1983 and 2018. Abortion first emerged on the agenda in the early 1980s. The momentum behind its appearance came from conservative Catholic groups with support of the institutional Catholic church. The Pro-Life Amendment Campaign was established in 1981, and it began campaigning for insertion of an antiabortion clause in the constitution (O’Leary and Hesketh 1988). Ireland was a conservative state, and abortion was already a crime on the legal statutes. But the people involved with the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign were concerned that Supreme Court activism of the type witnessed in the US Roe v Wade case could lead to introduction of abortion in Ireland. Although Irish social attitudes

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had been moving in a more liberal direction, it remained a predominantly conservative country with strongly traditional values in the early 1980s (O’Carroll 1991; Lee 1987). Elites within the conservative majority feared any diminution of their control over the social agenda. The main political parties were persuaded on side, and commitments to deliver a referendum were given and then subsequently delivered by the Fine Gael and Labour coalition in 1983. The 1983 pro-life amendment passed with a two-thirds majority, and abortion moved off the conservative-liberal fault line of politics for a time. In 1992 the case of a pregnant rape victim convulsed politics (Girvin 1993). In what became known as the X case, the parents of a pregnant 14-year-old rape victim approached the authorities about whether DNA evidence taken during an abortion procedure in the UK could be used in the subsequent prosecution of the rape case in Ireland. A legal order was secured to prevent the rape victim travelling to the UK. An appeal to the Supreme Court resulted in a decision with two important aspects. It ruled that there was no absolute right to travel to procure an abortion but also that the threat of suicide was grounds for provision of a legal abortion in Ireland within the wording of the 1983 pro-life amendment (Girvin 1993, 1994). This case brought abortion back onto the political agenda and led to demands for a second referendum to copper-fasten the absolute antiabortion intention of the 1983 pro-life (eighth) amendment. The court ruling on travel was a further complicating variable because Ireland, as a member of the European Union, was committed to free movement of people, and as Brian Girvin (1993) discussed, there were arguments expressed in the months after the Supreme Court judgment that a travel control scheme for women of fertile age would have to be introduced as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. Ultimately, the government went ahead with three further abortion referendums in November 1992. The first question dealt with the right to travel and proposed that “the State will not restrict the freedom to travel between the State and another state.” The second question related to whether it should be lawful for information pertaining to abortion to be made available in the state, and the third question dealt with the availability of abortion, known in public discourse as the substantive issue. The wording made it clear that abortion would be legal in certain life-endangering circumstances but strictly prohibited in all other cases, including the threat of suicide. This proposal was rejected, while the propositions guaranteeing travel and the right to information were approved. A further abortion referendum on the substantive question was put to referendum in 2002. The wording varied slightly from the 1992 proposal, but the thrust of the proposal was the same: to roll back the 1992 Supreme Court judgment. The proposal failed. The general consensus was that it was defeated by a coalition of liberals who had always opposed the pro-life amendment and archconservatives for whom the proposal was not restrictive enough (Kennedy 2002). The direction of debate on abortion changed in the ensuing years, and momentum shifted to the pro-choice side with growing calls for liberalization as support for rolling back the 1992 decision faded. Two pivotal points were to significantly push the liberal agenda forward (see Field 2018 for a more detailed discussion of this timeline). In 2012, Savita

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Halappanavar died in a Galway hospital following complications from management of a miscarriage. Uncertainty about the point at which her life was endangered sufficiently to allow legal medical intervention was a core contributing factor to her death (Health Services Executive 2013). Much as in 1992, when the case emerged, there was public tumult. Action was demanded by women’s groups, leftwing political parties, and a wide spectrum of public opinion. At the same time, a small group of women had also been campaigning for removal of the pro-life amendment on the grounds that they could not terminate their pregnancies legally in Ireland following the diagnosis of fatal fetal abnormality. There were also a growing number of challenges to the existing law both in Ireland and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Abortion rights had become a major social justice issue. Following a three-decade delay, in 2013 the Fine Gael and Labour government moved to deal with the 1992 court decision, and legislation was introduced that provided for legal abortion in cases where the pregnant woman was suicidal (or her life was immediately endangered). In many ways, this legislation galvanized the pro-choice movement, and their agitation, supported predominantly by left-wing parties in parliament, led first to establishment of a Citizens’ Assembly to review the issue and then to establishment of a parliamentary committee to review the Assembly’s report. Finally, the government gave a commitment to hold a further referendum but one which would propose substantial liberalization of abortion provision in Ireland (Field 2018). The sixth referendum question on abortion proposed to delete the pro-life amendment of 1983 and replace it with a statement giving parliament the authority to deal with the issue. In an interesting symmetry across the decades, the liberalizing measure in 2018 also passed by a two-thirds majority.

3.1

Learning from Language: The Abortion Debates

Interrogating the language debates at the abortion referendums reveals a great deal about political and social power, and taking a longitudinal perspective provides key insights into the shifting value positions on abortion over four decades. Language reveals a great deal about core values, but it is especially important when that language is to be inserted into the constitution of a state. In 1983, introduction of the pro-life amendment to the constitution initiated a decades long protracted legal and political debacle. Reflecting the dominance of pro-life groups in the debate, the amendment was named after their campaign and known publicly thereafter as the pro-life amendment (Gallagher 2018). The main opposition party, Fianna Fáil, proposed the wording for the clause that would be decided in the referendum. The wording had support of pro-life groups and the Catholic hierarchy. It stated: The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to the life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right. (Bunreacht na hÉireann [Constitution of Ireland])

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The wording was accepted initially by the Fine Gael party, then in government, and despite efforts to subsequently change it, eventually it became the clause to be decided in the referendum. Following advice from the Attorney General, many Fine Gael members of the government decided to campaign against the referendum. With the benefit of hindsight, like prophecy, the Attorney General warned that the language used in the clause was ambiguous and that it could lead to the introduction of abortion. The Labour Party was also a member of the government but opposed the pro-life wording from the outset. The referendum, and specifically the proposed wording, was also opposed by a number of groups including the leaders of the minority religions, feminist groups, and many small radical left-wing parties. These groups variously highlighted the sectarian dimension to the policy and also the wording which equated the life of a fetus with that of a pregnant woman. As a result of the Supreme Court judgment in 1992, revised wordings of the original 1983 amendment were proposed by governments in 1992 and 2002 and in each case resulted in some contestation (Girvin 1993, 1994; Kennedy 2002). The pro-life movement produced wording in 1992 that was explicitly rejected by the government, which in turn developed its own wording. The final text put to the people allowed for abortion in severely limited cases where there was a threat to the life of the mother, but it excluded suicide. The Catholic Church did not endorse the wording, but it also did not campaign against it. The main opposition party, Fine Gael, was not satisfied and sought a different balance which would also include the health of the mother (Girvin 1993: 121). In 2002 a different approach was taken which minimized some of the discussion of the language on the proposed amendment. The government published a draft law on abortion which would amend the 1983 pro-life wording and set out the conditions under which abortion would be lawful. There was also a condition which required that the draft law would have to be enacted within 180 days, and it could only be changed by subsequent referendum. This method of amendment was very unusual, but the approach did not eliminate the debate and contestation about the precise wording and what it meant (Kennedy 2002). The wording of the 2018 abortion referendum had a complex path to the ballot paper, but essentially only two options were given serious consideration once a decision to hold a liberalizing referendum had been taken. The first, known as repeal simpliciter, intended that the 1983 clause be deleted in its entirety. The second option, which was eventually adopted, was a more robust text which deleted the 1983 clause but included a replacement provision that parliament would have sole authority to make law on abortion. Thus article 40.3.3 now reads as “Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy” (Bunreacht na hÉireann). It is striking that at this referendum, the momentum had moved toward liberalization, the intense contestation about the wording was absent, and the debate was essentially a technical affair among legal experts. Vigorous debates around the specific texts for many of the referendums underscore how contentious the issue was. It also highlights the evolution of power balance in the debates. In 1983, it was the conservative pro-life groups which led the debates and pushed their preferred text. By 1992, government had moved to take

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more control of the agenda; it rejected the wording of the pro-life lobby and developed its own text. Yet in a sign of the ongoing authority of the Catholic hierarchy, Girvin (1993) documented the dynamics at play with the government hopeful that the church would not oppose the amendment. By 2002, values and beliefs had changed sharply, and government was at the fore; it engaged in a consultation process and published a green paper on abortion before proceeding with its mixed constitutional-legislative approach. Finally, by 2018, the core of the debate had moved, and the precise wording was not contested all that much; the substantive issue was front and center with the pro-life movement more concerned with salvaging the pro-life amendment and those on the liberalizing side able to accept both options that were under consideration. The wordings of the constitutional clauses provide some insight into key areas of debate, but it is also useful to investigate the referendum campaigns themselves. Most particularly, documenting the key campaign messages and slogans demonstrates how the debate on abortion evolved over some decades and how power ebbed away from conservative pro-life groups. Paddy O’Carroll described the 1983 referendum as “characterized by an incessant campaign of unparalleled divisiveness, bitterness and rancour” (O’Carroll 1991: 55). In his analysis he asserted that the pro-life side took an absolutist position and that traditional belief systems were at the core of this dominant view. Furthermore, he argued that the political culture of the day did not tolerate opposing views. The absolutism of pro-life campaigners was especially evident in their campaign slogans, the most prominent of which was “abortion is murder.” But their dominance in the campaign was also clear from the broader campaign themes which suggested that a social apocalypse awaited the state with the breakdown of normal social behaviors if the referendum was not passed (O’Carroll 1991). Campaign literature claimed that abortion was never needed to save a woman’s life and that the floodgates would open to widespread abortion if the amendment was not passed (all campaign literature was sourced from https://irishelectionliterature.com/). The initiative lay with the pro-life campaign from the outset; it had demanded the referendum, and it ensured that the debate took place on its territory. Antiamendment groups were often accused of having an “abortion mentality” and desiring a “permissive society.” Their posters foretold controversies ahead and included slogans such as “Catholic State or Irish Nation” and “Raped, Pregnant, No Choice,” but they failed to get significant traction in the debates. The complexity of the issue was not fully considered, and debates were dominated by pro-life views. The 1992 Supreme Court judgment upended the absolutism of the abortion debate. Hard cases which had not been given adequate consideration in 1983 were at the forefront of debates. The pro-life movement, although still a powerful social group, had their position eroded by the failure of the 1983 campaign to deliver the complete prohibition on abortion it promised. Furthermore, the pro-life amendment had done nothing to stop the thousands of women who were travelling each year to the UK to avail of abortion services there. Yet, their core arguments remained very similar, and they received support from the institutional Catholic Church and, indeed, even the pope, in their campaign to roll back the court judgment (Girvin

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1993, 1994). Campaign leaflets continued to proclaim “Abortion is the deliberate and intentional killing of unborn babies,” and they also argued that the “law against abortion does not prevent mothers from receiving all necessary care and treatment for any and every illness during pregnancy.” Pro-choice groups were more visible; they were empowered by a number of events which included the court decision, the election of a liberal woman president in 1990, and growing support for liberal causes. However, the debate remained aggressive with pro-life campaigners suggesting that allowing suicide as grounds for legal abortion would present a slippery slope to widespread availability of abortion. Pro-choice advocates arguing for a No vote included slogans like “Don’t put women’s lives and health in danger,” and although the proposal was defeated, the balance of power remained with the pro-life side, and no government would legislate for the 1992 decision until 2013. In 2002, suicidal ideation entered the lexicon of public debate as a mainstream phrase. Many of the debates from 1992 were repeated, and there were frequent interventions in the debate by mental health specialists who argued variously that suicide never occurred in pregnant women, that it was never seen in Ireland because suicidal women travelled to the UK to procure abortions, and that suicidal ideation was a very real condition for a small number of women. Kennedy (2002: 114) acknowledged the evolution in the abortion debates and discussed how it had moved from an absolutist argument to “a set of moral conundrums,” and this was very clear from the way in which complex medical evidence and mental health terminology dominated the debates on both sides. The campaign was also notable for the combination of extreme pro-life groups and pro-choice advocates on the same side. Adding to the confusion for voters, vote No posters included messages which read “Don’t let them legalise experimentation on babies” (Youth Defence) and from the pro-choice Labour Party “Let’s Trust Women, Protect Women’s Right to Life, Vote No”; some further examples are included in Table 1. The pro-choice campaign was more established by 2002 and had more support across the party-political spectrum as well as in society generally. The campaign was notable for the growing complexity of the issues discussed; medical care for women, mental health, and also the role of new medical technologies such as in vitro fertilization. The absolutism of

Table 1 Sample poster and leaflet messages from the referendum campaigns Referendum 1983 1992 (substantive issue) 2002

2018

Pro-life campaign Abortion is murder Every child is a wanted child Vote no, to protect life, and to reject abortion Babies will die, vote no Abortion, two victims, one dead . . . one wounded A licence to kill, vote no to abortion on demand Vote no, love both

Pro-choice campaign Catholic state or Irish nation? This amendment could kill women Don’t gamble with their [women and children] lives Protect Women’s right to life Don’t step backwards, vote no Repeal the eighth, save women’s lives Trust women, vote yes

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“abortion is murder” no longer dominated. Changes in campaign laws also influenced the parameters of the debate, broadcast debates were required to be balanced equally, and some financial regulation yielded small improvements in the transparency of campaign participation and finance. The absolutist strains of the pro-life movement were still present in the abortion referendums of 1992 and 2002 (Girvin 1993; Kennedy 2002), but the debate was transformed by 2018. The “hard cases,” as they were described, dominated public discussions. Broadcast media allocated significant time for discussion of individual women’s stories which involved rape, fatal fetal abnormality, delayed cancer treatments, as well as those dealing with unplanned pregnancies (Field 2018). The narratives were balanced on both sides, but “abortion is murder” was relegated to the campaign dustbin as the pro-choice campaign used their political momentum and public support to structure a campaign focused on women’s rights and human dignity. On this occasion, the pro-choice campaign won the campaign-naming battle, and the referendum was known as the repeal vote in public discussion, in reference to the wording of the proposal, which was to delete the pro-life amendment. The main campaign group on the Yes side was called “Together for Yes”; it drew a great deal of its campaign strategy from the successful marriage equality vote of 2015 (Elkink et al. 2015). The pro-choice campaign messages and themes included “a woman’s right to choose,” but the complex medical and emotional cases dominated with the personal testimonies of individual women being especially influential (RTÉ and Universities Exit Poll 2018). The pro-life campaign groups were Save the Eighth and Love Both. Their campaign message objectives were the same as those at earlier referendums but with some tempering of the language involved. They retained a complete intolerance of abortion in any circumstance. Ultimately, this left the campaign struggling to resonate with voters now fully aware of the legal and medical complexities of the issues (RTÉ and Universities Exit Poll 2018). Absolutism was replaced with complexity, and the pro-life cause was lost. Table 1 provides a sample of the campaign messages used on posters and campaign literature by groups on both sides of the referendum at each of the referendums and underscores the evolution in the messaging of both sides.

4

Voting Patterns

Voting patterns at each of the referendums are summarized in this section. Figure 1 provides an overview of the results for each question. An important explanatory note for this figure is that the votes have been coded to fit a restrict-liberalize schema. Therefore, those who voted Yes in 1983 voted to restrict abortion provision, while those who voted Yes in 2018 voted to liberalize abortion provision. 1983 was the highpoint for the restrictive vote on abortion. In all subsequent votes, a majority of voters favored a liberalizing position. In 1992, the two liberalizing positions which attracted majority support were those on the right to travel for an abortion and the right to access information on abortion. In both 1992 and 2002, the substantive questions were not supported. Both questions had sought to undo the Supreme Court

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2018 Parliament Authority

Restrict 66

34 50 49

2002 Substantive Issue 1992 Information

57

38

1992 Travel

60

36

1992 Substantive Issue

33

1983 Pro-Life Amendment

33 0

10

20

30

62 66 40

50

60

70

Percent of Vote

Fig. 1 Outcomes of referendum votes in Ireland 1983–2018

Fig. 2 1983 referendum voting results by county. (Source: Jason Kelleher, Irish Political Maps, http://irishpoliticalmaps.blogspot.com/2012/08/referendum-1983-restriction-of-abortion.html)

decision which provided that abortion was legal in certain limited circumstances. In 2018 it is clear that the value position of Irish voters had swung significantly, and a two-thirds majority of voters now supported the liberal proposition. Turnout is not covered in the figures, but it is worth noting that there was a dramatic increase in voter participation in 2018. At the stand-alone vote in 2002,

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Fig. 3 2018 referendum voting results by county. (Source: Jason Kelleher, Irish Political Maps, https://twitter.com/IrishPolMaps/status/1000426907589070849)

turnout had dropped to just over 40%, but this jumped to 64% in 2018. Many more voters were mobilized by the liberal proposal than had been persuaded to vote on conservative questions. Figures 2 and 3 provide more granular information on two of the votes. They present a geographical representation of the Yes votes in 1983 and 2018. Yes was the conservative position in 1983 (Fig. 2) but the liberal position in 2018 (Fig. 3). The section on the right of each figure covers the constituencies in urban Dublin. In 1983, the pro-life amendment garnered majority support in all but five urban constituencies in South Dublin, the most affluent part of the country. The strongest votes in favor of the pro-life amendment were to be found along the western seaboard and in the midlands. These areas of the country were long considered to have stronger traditional values and voted conservatively not just in the abortion votes but also on many other social issues (Sinnott 1995). Voting patterns on abortion were transformed by 2018. All but one constituency had majority support for the liberalizing proposal. Donegal, the remaining majority conservative outpost, had one of the highest pro-life votes in 1983, but even here it is clear that there had been significant change in values on abortion and just a slim majority opposed the vote. The urban-rural divide which was so prevalent in 1983 was still present in 2018, but no longer as pronounced. The most liberal Yes votes were found in the

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Dublin constituencies shown on the right-hand side of the figure, in other large urban areas (Cork in the South East 68.8%, Limerick in the Midwest 66.9%, and Waterford in the South East 69.4%), and also in the suburban area around Dublin. Nevertheless, the scale of the value change in just 40 years is quite remarkable.

5

Conclusion

Abortion was politicized in Ireland in the early 1980s during what were often called the culture wars. A well-organized pro-life campaign maneuvered a referendum which sought to deliver an outright ban on abortion. The 1983 amendment received overwhelming support, and two-thirds of voters supported its introduction. Although the referendum passed, it failed in its objective, and in 1992 a legal route to very limited abortion resurrected the issue, and it dominated politics at several points in the ensuing decades. An examination of the wording of the constitutional amendments and an assessment of the campaign narratives reveals a number of important points. First, the issue was enormously divisive and controversial. Second, the constitutional clause wordings, decisions on which wordings to use, and the campaign narratives all show changes in the power balance on the issue. Conservative pro-life groups dominated in 1983. They influenced the constitutional amendment wording and dominated the campaign with their absolutist narratives and values on abortion. Thereafter, pro-life groups saw their dominance and influence decline. Their capacity to achieve their preferred wordings was diminished in 1992 and 2002, and by 2018 all momentum was with the liberalizing pro-choice agenda. The X case in 1992 cracked open the absolutist “abortion is murder” position of pro-life campaigners, but it would be the early twenty-first century before the full legal and medical complexity of abortion would mainstream in debates, and, thereafter, referendum campaigns became more nuanced, language more diverse, and the personal testimony of those impacted more prominent. Ultimately, the scale of the value change in Irish society is evident in the analysis of the voting results. Over four decades, the conservative majority was replaced with a liberal majority, and the 2018 vote marks not just the introduction of abortion provision but also the resounding retreat of conservative Ireland. The value change discussed in this chapter is also evident in a number of other referendum votes, including the divorce referendums of 1986 and 1995, children’s rights in 2013, and the marriage rights referendum of 2015. These votes are outside the scope of this chapter, but they merit much greater study so that a fuller understanding of value change and shifting power dynamics on social and moral issues can be achieved.

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Field, L. (2018). The abortion referendum of 2018 and a timeline of abortion politics in Ireland to date. Irish Political Studies. Published online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/ 07907184.2018.1500461 Gallagher, M. (2018). On the second 8th amendment referendum, May 2018. Blogpost accessible at https://politicalreform.ie/author/mgallag7/ Girvin, B. (1993). The referendums on abortion 1992. Irish Political Studies, 8(1), 118–124. Girvin, B. (1994). Moral politics and the Irish abortion referendums, 1992. Parliamentary Affairs, 47(2), 203–221. Health Services Executive. (2013). Investigation of incident 50278 from time of patient’s self referral to hospital on the 21st of October 2012 to the patient’s death on the 28th of October, 2012. Dublin: Stationary Office. Ingelhart, R. (2003). Human values and social change. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ireland. (1945). Bunreacht na hÉireann = Constitution of Ireland. Dublin: Oifig an tSoláthair. Kennedy, F. (2002). Report – abortion referendum 2002. Irish Political Studies, 17(1), 114–128. Lee, J. J. (1987). Ireland 1912–1985, politics and society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. O’Carroll, J. P. (1991). Bishops, knights – and pawns? Traditional thought and the Irish abortion referendum debate of 1983. Irish Political Studies, 6(1), 53–71. O’Leary, C., & Hesketh, T. (1988). The Irish abortion and divorce referendum campaigns. Irish Political Studies, 3(1), 43–62. Reidy, T., & Suiter, J. (2015). Do rules matter? Categorizing the regulation of referendum campaigns. Electoral Studies, 38(2), 159–169. RTE and Universities Exit Poll (Radio Teilifís Éireann, UCD, UCC, DCU and KU Leuven University). (2018). Abortion referendum exit poll. Access at https://www.rte.ie/news/2018/ 0525/965899-eighth-amendment/ Sinnott, R. (1995). Irish voters decide. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Suiter, J., & Reidy, T. (2013). It’s the campaign learning stupid: An examination of a volatile Irish referendum. Parliamentary Affairs, 68(1), 182–202.

Plagiarism Across Languages and Cultures: A (Forensic) Linguistic Analysis

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Defining Plagiarism: The Need for Terminological Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Plagiarism Across Time and Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Detecting Plagiarism in the Forensic Linguistics Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Plagiarism Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Finding Forensic Evidence of Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Multimodal Plagiarism Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Plagiarism: The Future Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

A considerably high volume of research into plagiarism has been conducted in recent years, most of which focused on educational approaches. Other studies, however, attempted to establish, especially from a forensic linguistic perspective, the extent to which linguistic analyses like the ones used in forensic contexts could help determine the degree of plagiarism in written assignments. However, most of these focused on the role of the linguist as a forensic consultant and/or expert dealing especially with attorneys and being involved in court cases, and rarely, if ever, have they applied linguistic research into academic plagiarism. Indeed, plagiarism analysis has traditionally focused on determining the uniqueness of a suspect text, while disregarding important cross-cultural circumstances. This chapter discusses plagiarism as a cross-cultural/cross-linguistic phenomenon. It examines the perceptions of higher education students and lecturers/tutors in two different countries in order to assess, firstly, whether speakers from different countries share the same concept of plagiarism, or on the contrary R. Sousa-Silva (*) Universidade do Porto – Faculdade de Letras/CLUP, Porto, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_191

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whether they have different perceptions. Secondly, based on these perceptions, it is asked whether a distinction needs to be made between judgments of intentional and unintentional instances of plagiarism. Thirdly, this chapter discusses the potential role of the linguist in demonstrating the alleged plagiarist’s intention, and the corresponding ethical implications. The chapter ends by arguing that a cross-cultural analysis, combined with an understanding of the legal context, is crucial in detecting and analyzing plagiarism. Keywords

Forensic linguistics · Translation · Academic integrity · Multimodal plagiarism analysis · Language and the law

1

Introduction

Over time, plagiarism has attracted the interest of different disciplines, as well as the attention of the general public. In the academy, plagiarism is considered an unacceptable practice; hence, students are required to properly attribute their sources, lecturers/tutors are more demanding with their students, academic and scientific journals are increasingly intolerant of “unacknowledged” or “improper” text reuse, and university administrations (although not always for the right reasons) encourage and cooperate with investigations of plagiarism. Most cases of academic plagiarism stay within the remit of the academy, but professional careers being impacted by plagiarism done at University are not uncommon. In 2010, a Portuguese university lecturer resigned for plagiarizing parts of her doctoral thesis. In 2011, the German Defence Minister zu Guttenberg (temporarily) renounced his doctorate title and eventually resigned following accusations of plagiarism. One year later, the Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta was accused of plagiarizing large portions of his doctoral thesis and faced pressure to resign. And in 2013, the German Education Minister Annette Schavan stepped down for the same reason. Plagiarism thus has implications out of the academy, even when produced in academic settings, and its consequences span beyond academic work. Several years ago, a journalist of the Portuguese quality newspaper Pu´blico faced accusations of plagiarism; she initially denied the accusations, but later admitted to having plagiarized, when faced with compelling evidence. She apologized to the newspaper audience and managed to keep her job. Years later, the case of Johann Hari, journalist of The Independent, had a different outcome, as he was suspended for plagiarizing news articles. Cases such as those of Guttenberg, Schavan, Hari, or Porta show that, given their high profile, those involved are subject to “public judgment,” in addition to individual scrutiny. They also show that, although plagiarism is considered immoral and an act of deception, it is ultimately the illegal nature of the lifting that leads to legal action. By this token, plagiarism is not only immoral, but also illegal: it is a fraudulent activity, based on knowingly concealing a fact or misrepresenting aspects of the truth. As Ascensão (1992, p. 65) argues, “plagiarism is not a mere

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copy; it is more insidious, because it appropriates the creative essence of the work assuming a different form or shape.” Indeed, the Portuguese jurisdiction – like others – makes a distinction between appropriation and counter-faction: using a work without the author’s permission represents a crime of misappropriation, whereas passing off someone else’s work, in whole or in part, as one’s own, to the extent that there is no marked individuality between the two, is a crime of counter-faction (articles 195 and 196 of copyright and related rights law, whose most updated version (2008) reflects the dispositions of the 2004 EU Directive). However relevant that may be, framing plagiarism within the law presents a serious challenge: finding compelling evidence that a suspect text has been plagiarized. In cases of barefaced, straightforward textual lifting, where the text is copied and pasted verbatim, it usually suffices to compare the suspect text against the potential source text to establish the overlap. However, most instances are far more complex; new detection methods give rise to new plagiarism strategies, which in turn demand new detection procedures. Easy access to information online and to ICT tools that help plagiarize potentially increases instances of plagiarism; fortunately, as Coulthard and Johnson (2007) point out, the same technologies that help plagiarize can also help find plagiarism. Nonetheless, it is a fact that, as plagiarists are constantly faced with the need to reinvent strategies to keep ahead of the detection, plagiarism becomes more subtle and difficult to detect. Since, for the trier of fact, identifying and explaining the manipulation of language in the suspect texts is crucial, courts in different jurisdictions now resort to the expertise of linguists; its potential to assist the trier of fact is enormous. The type of linguistic analysis developed and used by forensic linguistics over the last decades has assisted the deployment of reliable plagiarism detection methods. Forensic linguistics research, which approaches language in interaction with the law, has demonstrated that the likelihood that two or more texts may have been produced independently can be determined accurately. Consequently, this analysis can be used both as an investigative and an evidential tool, not only in legal, but also in ethical contexts. However, one of the main problems in preventing, detecting, and analyzing plagiarism remains: What is plagiarism?

2

Defining Plagiarism: The Need for Terminological Accuracy

When defining plagiarism, dictionaries apparently provide a simple explanation: the Collins English dictionary (online) states that “[p]lagiarism is the practice of using or copying someone else’s idea or work and pretending that you thought of it or created it” (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/plagiarism). A look at another dictionary, however, suffices to show that not even dictionaries of the same language – let alone other languages – are consensual in this respect. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online, for example, states that plagiarism is “when someone uses another person’s words, ideas, or work and

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pretends they are their own” (https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/plagiarism). The differences are even more striking if compared against institutional definitions as the ones adopted by universities, publishers, and professional organizations, where the term “plagiarism” is used as part of specialized language to define the concept technically, accurately, and precisely. To make matters even more complicated, concepts vary across languages and cultures, and so do definitions. Hence, expecting a shared, universal definition of plagiarism is unrealistic, while adopting identical definitions across different countries, languages, and cultures is inappropriate. Therefore, at least one working definition is required to frame approaches to plagiarism detection, analysis, and management – and one that is brief and easily understandable, despite sufficiently broad to ensure a good coverage. In previous research, plagiarism has been defined as “intentionally or knowingly reusing someone else’s words, works or ideas without a proper, clear and unambiguous acknowledgement” (Sousa-Silva 2013, p. 60). According to this definition, certain conditions must be met in order to avoid plagiarism: (a) when reusing any sort of material (text, works, processes, ideas. . .) created by someone else, one must attribute it to the original author(s) in a way that makes it clear what exactly derives from the original and what does not, while providing all the required details of the source (so that the reader can find the original source immediately, if necessary); (b) not meeting these conditions cannot be done intentionally or knowingly. Therefore, both obfuscating the original sources intentionally to pass off someone else’s work as one’s own and acting negligently (i.e., doing nothing to avoid plagiarism, even if not intending to take credit for someone else’s work) are plagiarism. On the contrary, improper attribution to the original sources due to lack of academic writing skills should not be judged as plagiarism, but rather as incompetence – and treated accordingly. From a forensic linguist’s perspective, it is crucial to establish precisely and accurately whether a text is original or a result of plagiarism, as contextually defined. Forensic linguists often provide evidence in legal settings, but not only; as Turell (2013) emphasizes, in a broad sense Forensic Linguistics focuses also on issues that are of public interest. Therefore, in academic as in legal settings, wrong judgments must be avoided at all costs to prevent miscarriages of justice. In academic settings, in particular, misjudging a case as plagiarism can have dreadful consequences for the student/researcher involved. In an article published in September 2018 in The Times, Daniel Sokol discusses how “students are being let down by academic misconduct tribunals” and argues that “lack of legal training and hazy regulations mean people are marked down or even expelled for spurious reasons” (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/students-are-being-let-down-by-aca demic-misconduct-tribunals-0w3frm7nh). It is therefore in everyone’s interest that all and only cases of plagiarism are treated as such; in other words, plagiarism must not be confused with other types of academic/scientific dishonesty, such as data fabrication, salami slicing, ghost-writing, cheating in exams, honorary authorship, and, importantly, self-plagiarism. A flowchart explaining how to handle each case, as originally provided in Sousa-Silva (2013, p. 272), is reproduced as Fig. 1.

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Fig. 1 Flowchart of academic misconduct

Self-plagiarism, in particular, has been subject to dissension within the academic and nonacademic community. The term, which is commonly used to refer to instances where an author reuses her or his own texts without giving credit to him/ herself, raises some issues. The first one is inherently conceptual: although

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plagiarism definitions may vary, it is commonly accepted that plagiarizing involves lifting someone else’s words, work, or ideas. However, in cases of self-plagiarism, as it is generally understood, nothing is taken from someone else, rather on the contrary; the self-plagiarist reuses his/her own material. Therefore, if an author takes credit for his/her own work, then it can hardly be categorized as plagiarism. On the practical side, there are two important issues that should be raised. One is the case where, as often happens with academic publications, an author cedes his/her rights to the publisher. In this case, the material is lifted from someone else’s property (the publisher), although the material was originally written by the author. The second issue has ethical implications: even if the author retains the copyright of the published work, reusing his/her own text will enable a multiplication of publications that will give the author an unfair advantage over others, so it is usually unacceptable in the academy. To circumvent this issue, it has been conventionalized that those who reuse their own text should cite themselves – as they would with others. However, this can be awkward – and unfair. Firstly, self-citation is often regarded as a method of self-praising, and consequently is avoided. Secondly, much of what an individual academic researches throughout her/his life revolves around identical topics, so reusing one’s own concepts (and wording) is to be expected. The alternative to self-quoting is rephrasing the words used previously, which would raise yet another issue: if an author originally worded text as she/he did, it is certainly because she/he thought it was the best possible formulation. Why should then she/he settle for a formulation that is less than perfect, while restraining the reader’s access to a better version – only to avoid repeating him/herself? Of course, the discussion is ongoing, and most would probably argue that repeating one’s own words across different publications (the so-called “self-plagiarism”) is unethical. However, a distinction should be made as to whether such violation should be a type of plagiarism or, on the contrary, of academic dishonesty or misconduct. Another terminological imprecision is the one involving the concept of “plagiarized.” Usually, both experts and laypeople refer to the copy as the “plagiarized” material. Strictly speaking, however, this conceptualization is flawed: the English morpheme -ed, like, e.g., -ado in Portuguese or other morphemes in other languages, means that which is acted upon. Therefore, “plagiarized” should refer not to the text that contains plagiarism, but to the original. Conversely, the nonoriginal, derivative text is called “plagiarizing” text, since this is the text that acts upon the other (the plagiarized), which adopts a passive role.

3

Plagiarism Across Time and Space

In a quote that is attributed to the French author Voltaire, the plagiarist is described very simply as “un estomac ruiné qui rend l’aliment comme il le reçoit: un plagiaire est un faussaire,” literally “a ruined stomach that takes the food as he receives it: a plagiarist is a forger.” This quote reflects some of the basic principles underlying plagiarism, in particular that the plagiarist reuses the product of someone else’s work

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without proper attribution, as if it were his/her own. Portraying the imitator both as an estomac ruiné, who is unable to properly address and manage their sources, and as a faussaire, whose acts are deceitful, the author describes plagiarism as an immoral and illegal act, with social and legal implications. In fact, if we take Garner’s definition of fraud as knowingly misrepresent the truth or conceal “a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment” (2009, p. 731), then we have to aver that plagiarism is a fraudulent behavior. Nevertheless, perspectives of how plagiarism cases should be handled, and whether and how they should be subject to punishment, have not been unanimous over time. Although it has been argued that plagiarism is either immoral (Garner 2009) or unethical (Goldstein 2003), rather than illegal, vast literature on the topic demonstrates otherwise (e.g., Eiras and Fortes 2010 and Finnis 1991), and practice has shown that plagiarism cases have indeed been subject to court trial, as was demonstrated, e.g., by Turell (2008). Unsurprisingly, then, plagiarism has often been associated with metaphors of crime, such as “theft” (Angèlil-Carter 2000), “misappropriation” (Jameson 1993), or “textual kidnapping” (Johnson 1997). Angèlil-Carter (2000) and Jameson (1993), in particular, concur that this association is not independent of the attribution of property rights to intangible goods, in the late eighteenth century and mid-nineteenth century, which granted the right to individual property and required a legal framework to cope with the infringement of those rights. However, it does not always build upon the oversimplified dichotomist relation between the moral – or ethical – and legal grounds. On the contrary, its multidisciplinary nature contributed to the development of different outlooks, spanning beyond a purely moral and/or legal debate. Education and intercultural studies, for example, have addressed plagiarism critically. Firstly, as Howard (1995) argued and Pecorari (2008) later confirmed, in academic contexts differing degrees of penalties are required as instances of plagiarism can indicate a lack of academic writing skills, rather than an intention to deceive. Therefore, the authors claim that text reuse in the academy should be punished when the student intends to deceive the reader, but not when the instances of plagiarism resemble a “patchwork” resulting from the student’s unsuccessful attempt to write academically. Controversially, Howard (1995) contends that such “patchwriting” is part of the educational experience of the students, and should therefore be encouraged, rather than punished. The principles that plagiarism can be equally punished in academic and nonacademic contexts (Angèlil-Carter 2000; Howard 1995; Howard and Robillard 2008; Pecorari 2008), and that, even within academic settings, plagiarizing students should be treated equally, can thus be challenged. Moreover, claiming that (academic) policies against plagiarism – and the corresponding penalties – represent the hegemony of the West, by transferring to other contexts (such as the academic context) provisions that have been established by copyright agreements comprising mostly Western countries, intercultural studies (Scollon 1994, 1995) have challenged the principle that plagiarism is a universal concept, equally understandable by everyone. In 2016, The Times (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/universities-face-studentcheating-crisis-9jt6ncd9vz7) reported that the United Kingdom was going through

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a plagiarism “epidemic” and that non-EU students were more than four times more likely to cheat. The news piece quoted Professor Alderman to state that “[i]n certain cultures it is actually considered meritorious to copy from one’s teachers’ books.” This is an often-used argument for the need to screen international students’ assignments more closely than home students. However, previous studies (e.g., Partridge and West 2003) have shown that there is little evidence to support claims that home and international students differ in the level of deliberate plagiarism, and Williams and Carroll (2009) more convincingly argued that the reason why penalty statistics often show higher levels of instances among international students is that most of these students, who are writing academically in a second language, as they are unable to paraphrase properly, eventually reuse the original text. Carroll’s explanation not only supports Howard’s (1995) argument that most instances of student plagiarism are due to lack of knowledge, rather than intention to deceive, but also points to an important issue: plagiarism among international students is not more an attempt to gain merit from copying from teacher’s books than a lack of language skills to write academically. Cross-cultural perceptions of plagiarism, however, remain a crucial issue in plagiarism studies. If, as Howard (1995) and other authors (e.g., Pecorari 2008) claim, plagiarism, in its most serious form, is the result of the intention to deceive, then unintentional plagiarism (including “patchwriting”) must be judged more leniently, especially as a means to identify problems with the student’s writing and address those problems before the student completes her/his academic training. Likewise, if there are cross-cultural differences in the perception of plagiarism, an assessment of those perceptions is required to address instances of plagiarism justly and fairly. Since it is unclear how different people see plagiarism, it is relevant to assess general perceptions. In a survey previously conducted (Sousa-Silva 2013) to assess students’ and teachers’ perceptions of plagiarism across two different countries (and cultures), United Kingdom and Portugal, students and teachers from all scientific areas of the two countries were invited to participate. The task consisted of rating a set of 12 fictional scenarios (vignettes describing cases of plagiarism) on a Likert scale (from “1” – “Strongly disagree” to “7” – “Strongly agree” with the accusations of plagiarism). The study, which described specific plagiarism cases precisely because definitions tend to be nonconsensual, involved 673 respondents overall, of which 72 teachers and 556 students (i.e., 628 participants) in the final survey. A plethora of definitions are available worldwide, with varying degrees of demand and detail, not only across different cultures, but also across different countries, regions and even institutions, disciplines and textual genres, which shows a lack of consensus over what plagiarism is. It is, therefore, very unlikely that different people, at different times and in different contexts, share an identical – or even similar – concept of plagiarism. A look at the institutional websites of higher education institutions worldwide shows that the plagiarism definitions adopted by each institution tend to be either so similar that, ironically, they could be considered plagiarism, or else they are so diverse and nonconsensual that they fail to provide a definition that is commonly understandable and understood. As a result, knowing

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what plagiarism is may seem obvious to professional academics, but is not necessarily so to students, who may consequently face two main problems. On the conceptual side, untrained students may struggle with what is expected of them when they think and write academically. Conceptualizing knowledge, relating, contrasting, and critiquing other people’s ideas competently requires training and experience, which students (especially early undergraduates) do not always master. Knowledge is required of what types of materials are subject to acknowledgment; whether works and ideas must also be attributed, or just words. Additionally, it is not always evident under which circumstances students should refer to other authors, especially when the original arguments are presented so obviously that they appear to be common knowledge. On the technical side, students often find it hard to cite; understanding the referencing conventions, deciding which details of a reference are required (and which are not); acknowledging other people’s works and ideas; deciding which words to insert in quote marks; how to handle quotes in which some words have been changed, while others remain the same; whether quotations must be always followed by the author’s name, date of publication, and page numbers, even if this can make the text repetitive; and how to handle text translated from other languages, i.e., should it include quote marks. All these issues can be daunting for the inexperienced academic writer. The statistical analysis of the survey results revealed noticeable differences in the perceptions of British and Portuguese students and teachers: UK respondents scored consistently higher than Portuguese respondents, which means that British participants are less reluctant in judging the fictional cases as plagiarism than their Portuguese counterparts. Unsurprisingly, students in both countries tend to score lower than teachers, although, overall, their perception of each case as plagiarism or not is identical. A possible explanation for the different scores and for the apparently less lenient attitude of the British respondents, when compared to their Portuguese counterparts, is that the latter tend to base their judgment on the plagiarist’s intention more than the former; it appears that, for the British respondents, failing to observe the established referencing conventions suffices to be accused of plagiarism, whereas for the Portuguese respondents the suspect plagiarist’s intention is foregrounded (Sousa-Silva 2013). It thus seems plausible to conclude that the tendency to punish is intimately correlated with the perceptions of individual responsibility and accountability, as well as with the availability of preventive measures and procedures. Contrary to the UK, where institutions offer training and assistance to students on academic writing, as well as antiplagiarism guidelines, rules, and regulations, in Portugal such materials are scarce (Glendinning 2014). Likewise, not only has plagiarism detection software been used for longer in the UK than in Portugal, but also British institutions have set institutional procedures for handling cases of plagiarism; in Portugal, on the contrary, the decision is left to a large extent on the hands of the respective teachers (Glendinning 2014; Sousa-Silva 2013). The survey findings also indicate that, although cross-cultural aspects can influence the diverging perceptions of plagiarism, more importantly a distinction needs to be made between intentional and unintentional plagiarism. Notwithstanding the need

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to consider the students’ lack of academic writing skills, suspect plagiarists often plead ignorance when accused of plagiarism. It is thus crucial to be able to distinguish true from fabricated ignorance. Howard’s (1995) claims that a distinction should be made, among inexperienced academic writers, between plagiarism and “patchwriting” cannot be used to justify all instances of academic plagiarism, rather the contrary; “patchwriting” is acceptable early at undergraduate level, but is not to be expected of final year undergraduate, master, or doctoral students. Obviously, the suspect’s intent is difficult to establish, but a linguistic analysis of the suspect texts is able to provide clues to the plagiarist’s intention (Sousa-Silva 2013) as, in most cases, a linguistic analysis showing how the text is manipulated is able to ascertain whether the suspect plagiarized intentionally or inadvertently. A forensic linguistic analysis not only contributes to meet the need (identified by the survey respondents) for a closer analysis and comparison of the suspect passages before determining an outcome that can have serious disciplinary implications, but also demonstrates the relevance of the role of the forensic linguist in judging the suspect plagiarist’s intention.

4

Detecting Plagiarism in the Forensic Linguistics Turn

Finding evidence of plagiarism and demonstrating that it represents a fraudulent activity presupposes the ability to detect the instance(s) of plagiarism and fraud, both of which can be challenging tasks. It is, therefore, unsurprising that courts have tended to punish more easily instances of plagiarism involving financial rights, than those involving moral rights. More recently, however, cases of academic plagiarism have also been taken to court; one such case involves a Portuguese politician, who is allegedly being investigated by the Prosecutor’s office for plagiarism in his PhD dissertation (https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/interior/ministerio-publico-investigaplagio-em-tese-de-doutoramento-de-autarca-5670756.html). Despite the fact that these cases remain confidential until at least the court makes a final decision, linguistic evidence is paramount in demonstrating the lifting. In cases of plagiarism, as in cases of collusion (where two or more people work collaboratively on the same text and pass off each individual document as an original), suspicion can arise from: intuition (where the reader feels that she/he has read the material elsewhere); a systematic, manual, or machine-assisted analysis of the texts to find similar/identical/matching text fragments; or an intrinsic, stylistic analysis of the texts to identify distinct, often clashing writing styles that may indicate multiple authorship. That stylistic analysis is also particularly useful in cases of so-called contract cheating, where a student purchases an essay from someone else (e.g., an essay bank) and submits it as her own, as that analysis enables the identification of the text written by someone else. Forensic linguists have contributed their expertise in all these instances, in academic tribunals as in nonacademic settings alike. Forensic linguistics, which consists of using applied linguistics methods and analyses in forensic contexts, has been used effectively to investigate and

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provide evidence of fraud, e.g. in the detection and investigation of text reuse, including plagiarism and collusion. As reported by Coulthard and Johnson (2007), in academic contexts linguists have been increasingly asked by colleagues to detect, investigate, and/or confirm – or refute – instances of student plagiarism, but the potential of linguistic analysis to prove inappropriate textual reuse in nonacademic contexts has also been demonstrated, especially in providing evidence in court cases. The authors cite the example of the document “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation” – more commonly known as the “Dodgy Dossier” – which the British government presented to the United Nations in 2003 to justify their invasion of Iraq – to discuss the extraordinarily high textual identity between this document and a prior academic article (Al-Marashi 2002). A linguistic analysis of the two texts demonstrated that the official governmental document had been reproduced substantially from the article, with only some changes in spelling (from American English to British English). Similarly, Turell (2008) discusses a case that was tried by the Spanish courts involving copyright disputes, and shows how linguistic evidence was provided that a translation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into Spanish had not been produced independently, but instead derived from a previously published translation into Spanish. Indeed, textual reuse across texts of different genres is not uncommon, although academic and newspaper texts tend to be more easily accused. In SousaSilva (2012), four examples of textual overlap are presented – student assignments, newspaper articles, applications to European funding, and legal contracts (namely, the Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) signed by each Greece, Portugal, and Ireland with the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission) – to discuss how student assignments and newspaper articles are easily considered to be plagiarism, while applications for funding and MoU are not (even if, as is the case of the latter, the textual overlap exceeds 90%). As any investigation of plagiarism will demonstrate, Voltaire’s description of the plagiarist is over-simplistic, and to an extent naïve. It is a fact that plagiarism detection tools and techniques have evolved significantly over the years, but so have methods and techniques used to plagiarize. Instances of verbatim copying are nowadays so easily detectable that they tend to be used only by the sloppy plagiarist, who certainly will know (and probably does not care) that it will not pass unnoticed. Thus, currently the plagiarist is hardly ever someone who produces the materials as she/he receives them, rather the contrary; the skillful plagiarist is the one who manipulates the text in such a way that it is missed by the software, by the reader’s intuition, or even by manual screening using search engines.

5

Plagiarism Strategies

Strategies used by plagiarists have evolved over time, in no small part in response to the development of plagiarism detection tools and techniques; for each new detection method, plagiarists seem to develop new plagiarism strategies. As so often

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happens with criminals, plagiarists tend to be very creative, so plagiarism strategies have become highly sophisticated. In 2017, a Brazilian website (https://educacao.umcomo.com.br/artigo/como-naoser-pego-no-plagio-guia-definitivo-28288.html) posted a guide (in Portuguese) called “How not to be caught for plagiarism – the ultimate guide!” Although, in the end, the post states that the best way to avoid accusations of plagiarism is to attribute the sources, it starts by arguing that the first rule not to be caught is avoid barefaced, verbatim plagiarism; copying entire sources verbatim is easily detectable, so a good plagiarist, it is argued, is the one who avoids “being lazy at the time of being lazy” and does some work to disguise the lifting. Such work can involve, e.g., changing the word order, replacing words with synonyms, alternating fragments of one text with fragments of different texts, and changing quotations. Another plagiarism strategy consists of translating texts from other languages and passing them off as original. The recommendation is to translate in particular texts from languages other than English, since, given that most research is published in English, the reader is more likely not to be acquainted with research in other languages. In this case, if plagiarism is not detected by intuition, then it can be safely assumed that it will pass unnoticed. Although most plagiarism detection systems were designed to process texts in English, and software specifically designed to detect plagiarism in other languages is practically inexistent, they are able to handle text in other languages as well; however, they can only compare samelanguage texts, so there are currently no automated systems to detect plagiarism across different languages. The third suggestion consists of “stealing only the idea,” but not the wording, on the grounds that no one can be blamed for having ideas that are identical to someone else’s. Copyright, it is argued, applies to text, but not to ideas. Indeed, copyright law generally tends to protect the materialization of ideas in any form, but not the idea itself. In other words, for an idea to gain protection from copyright law, it needs to be fixed in any form (text, audio, video, etc.). It is thus unsurprising that courts across different countries have tended to punish plagiarism of ideas if those ideas had been made available in any form, but not if they remained an abstraction in the mind of their author. The post then focuses on plagiarism detection software. It argues that, since teachers cannot possibly know all research conducted in the whole world, institutions worldwide have adopted plagiarism detection software. Consequently, a new need has arisen to evade the detection system. One way to do so, it is suggested, is to replace all blank spaces with white letters, which will be imperceptible to the human eye, while making the software read the whole text as a single, very long word. (This strategy is likely to evade detection systems, but it can easily be spotted in any word processor with spell checker.)

6

Finding Forensic Evidence of Plagiarism

The investigation of instances of plagiarism is usually based on one of three scenarios: (a) if the original texts are known, the analysis focuses on comparing the suspect text(s) against the possible originals to find linguistic data to conclude

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that the suspect text is actually derivative, or otherwise an original; (b) if the text is suspect of plagiarism, but the original texts are not known, the analysis consists of finding intrinsic stylistic evidence that the suspect text is plagiarism or, otherwise, an original; or (c) if two or more texts are suspected of joint, rather than individual production, the linguistic analysis will focus on investigating whether possible textual overlap is due to chance or, on the contrary, a result of collusion. Therefore, the aim of linguistic analyses is to investigate whether textual overlap across different documents is indicative of plagiarism, and whether those instances of overlap are considered a fraudulent activity. At its simplest, this linguistic analysis involves matching the suspect text against the original source(s) and highlighting the identical strings, usually sequences of several words that are copied verbatim from other sources and used without acknowledgment. In cases of verbatim plagiarism, where the original text is lifted word-for-word, a simple comparison of the suspect text against the original suffices to identify the overlapping text (phrases, sentences, or even paragraphs). However, the investigation is considerably more complex when the derivative text is edited, whether to disguise the authorship, or in a failed attempt to write properly. Such changes can consist, for example, of changing the word order or sentence structure, paraphrasing the original text, replacing words with synonyms, altering text fragments with strings of different texts or changing the cohesion and coherence of the original. These strategies, which involve simple to sophisticated alterations in grammar, punctuation, syntax, and semantics or even in vocabulary and discourse, make the detection procedure more difficult, as the sequences of identical words are interrupted, building an apparently distinct original – albeit containing the same, nonoriginal ideas, and possibly reusing some (or most) of the original vocabulary. As a result of reusing a number of identical words in a different order, the common detection procedure fails to identify sequences of identical words of a sufficient length to be marked as plagiarism. As most plagiarism detection tools available operate similarly to the “compare documents” function of common word processors, simple alterations to sentences or word forms (such as changing from singular to plural or shifting from one variety of the language – e.g., British – to another – e.g., American) – will discard a word or chain of words as identical. Even more complex is the case of paraphrasing, in which the text is reworded to a greater or lesser extent. In order to overcome problems of this type, more sophisticated methods and tools are required. Johnson (1997), for example, suggests discarding word chains and functional items, which are closed sets of words (hence likely to be shared anyway), and concentrating on the analysis of shared lexical items. The rationale behind this method is that, when writing about the same topic, different authors are expected to share some of the words, but not most of them. This can be justified theoretically by the principle of linguistic uniqueness (Coulthard 2004; Coulthard and Johnson 2007), i.e., that even the same person writing about the same topic on different occasions is unlikely to use the same words and the same grammar. Therefore, in the hypothetical case of high number of vocabulary shared by two or more texts written by different people, lexical overlap would indicate either that one derives from the other(s), that they were produced collaboratively, or that they lifted from another original. An analysis of lexical overlap, regardless of the word sequence, as well as

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an analysis of the meaning relations holding between words, considering possible syntactic or paradigmatic replacements, is effective in these cases, as the method is resistant to changes in punctuation, grammar, and syntax. Nevertheless, plagiarists often change quotations or alter elements of coherence and cohesion in order to convey a consistent connection to the plagiarist’s reality. The type of lexical analysis described can be of limited usefulness in these cases. Conversely, those instances can be detected effectively by identifying inconsistencies usually revealed in “referential style” (e.g., inconsistent use of imperative or infinitive verb tenses in forms of address), “decontextualization” (e.g., by omitting parts of text that otherwise contribute to contextualizing the text reused), and “inversion of structural elements” that result in conceptual inconsistencies (Turell 2008). An additional plagiarism strategy that raises significant challenges to the detection procedure is “translingual plagiarism” (Sousa-Silva 2013, 2014), which consists of translating texts from another language and using them as her/his own. Such strategy can be easily detected if the reader knows the source and (intuitively) feels that they have read the text elsewhere. However, it is possible that the human reader does not know the original, or, even if she/he does, human fatigue or other information processing factors may interfere with the human detection procedure. The computational systems, on the contrary, are agnostic to fatigue and have an extraordinary information processing capacity but perform rather poorly in comparing texts written in two different languages and detecting instances of plagiarism. Simply put, comparing texts in two different languages is like comparing apples and oranges, and the absence of identical word forms is expected to return either false positives or false negatives. To address this issue, a machine-assisted method was proposed (Sousa-Silva 2013, 2014) to detect plagiarism across texts in different languages. The method, which was successfully tested with real cases of translingual plagiarism, shows encouraging results. It consists of the following steps: 1. Given a suspect text, the linguist searches for indices of foreignness, i.e. linguistic elements resulting from translation that “read unnatural” in that particular language. 2. Based on those indices of foreignness, the linguist is able, in most cases, to establish the source language, if different from the language of the text. 3. The linguist then translates the suspect text into the expected source language, using a machine-translation engine. 4. Next, the linguist searches for particular text fragments of the machine-translated version, using an Internet search engine. In some cases, the original text will be found. If no original texts are found, then (a) the suspect text is original, and not plagiarism; or (b) it was translated from an original in a language other than the one expected – in which case the linguist can repeat the procedure using other languages. Directionality and volume of text reused are two additional relevant criteria to identify instances of plagiarism. Directionality consists of establishing prior authorship, i.e. ascertaining which text(s) plagiarized the other(s). This can be determined

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by the date of publication in most cases, except when the dates of publication are very close, when the texts investigated are produced contemporarily (Turell 2008), or in cases of collusion, where both texts are produced collaboratively. Estimations of the volume of overlap are built on the assumption that the higher the percentage of overlapping text, the more likely it is that two (or more) texts were not produced independently. Hence, they are relevant in both academic and nonacademic contexts. In academic contexts, judgments of plagiarism are often based on the “substantial” text reuse assumption (Coulthard and Johnson 2007). Conversely, in nonacademic contexts, different institutions tend to establish distinct levels (or degrees) of plagiarism (see, e.g., IEEE’s “Guidelines for Adjudicating Different Levels of Plagiarism”). Empirical evidence shows that quantitative measures such as similarity in overlapping vocabulary, shared once-only words, unique vocabulary, and shared once-only phrases (Johnson 1997; Turell 2004, 2007; Woolls 2003; Woolls and Coulthard 1998), by establishing plagiarism thresholds, can contribute to initiating the analysis. However, it is also admitted that “[t]aken in isolation, it is possible that all these measurements do not discriminate sufficiently” (Turell 2008, p. 288) and can be ineffective. Indeed, although a high volume of overlap can be expected in cases of literal plagiarism, that volume tends to drop in cases where the texts are heavily edited, or where only works or ideas – rather than the exact words – are lifted. Conversely, the qualitative linguistic analysis of markers of plagiarism is useful, not only to detect plagiarism, but also to identify, describe, and justify the process behind the textual overlap, and subsequently reveal the sophisticated strategies used while screening the directionality of the lifting. Alternatively, quantitative and qualitative analyses can be combined to determine the quantity and the quality of textual overlap and subsequently establish, given the principle of idiolect and linguistic uniqueness (Coulthard and Johnson 2007) according to which it is very unlikely that two different people produce identical texts on different occasions, whether two or more documents were (a) produced by the same person(s), (b) produced by different people (with or without the knowledge of the other(s)), or (c) based both on a third text.

7

Multimodal Plagiarism Analysis

Linguistics, in general, and forensic linguistics, in particular, is undoubtedly the area in which research into plagiarism has advanced the most, not the least as a result of the high demand for textual plagiarism analysis. The plethora of studies conducted over the last decades, reviewed and scrutinized by peers and used in academic and nonacademic (including legal) contexts alike, enabled the identification of a set of linguistic and quantitative markers that can nowadays be used reliably to ascertain whether a text is original or a plagiarism. It is unsurprising, therefore, that there are more (and more sophisticated) methods and techniques for detecting textual than other types of plagiarism.

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Notwithstanding, a quick look at the media or a quick search online, not to mention court databases, suffices to demonstrate that instances of plagiarism can be found in any kind of material (or in any “mode,” to use Kress’s (2000) terms), be it written texts, speeches, images, films, or music, among others. Thus, a multimodal perspective (Kress 2000) is required. Court cases involving works of art, photographs, films, and music abound. In the visual arts, for example, Jeff Koons’ sculpture “String of Puppies” (1988) has been criticized for strongly resembling Art Rogers’ “Puppies” (1985); more recently, in 2015, Luc Tuymans was found guilty of plagiarism by a Belgian civil court in Antwerp because he used a photograph of the Belgian politician Jean-Marie Dedecker by the photojournalist Katrijn van Giel as a basis for his painting (despite the framing of this work of art as parody); in cinema, Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” (2017) was accused of plagiarizing Paul Zindel’s “Let Me Hear You Whisper” (1969); in music, Lana Del Rey’s “Get Free” was challenged in 2018 for plagiarizing Radiohead’s “Creep” (1993) – who ironically had themselves been sued for “Creep” by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood over The Hollies song “The Air That I Breathe” (1974). Despite the demand raised by cases such as the ones mentioned, plagiarism in areas other than linguistics is relatively under-researched. However, the definition of plagiarism used by linguists can be adapted to other types of plagiarism – including in the visual arts, cinema, and music; in fact, they all have in common the fact that they use language, with their own syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse – even if a distinct type of language. Although plagiarism detection and analysis are comparatively more difficult in cases where multimodal material is used, knowledge gained with linguistics methods has the potential to guide the analysis of plagiarism in other areas. It must be underlined, however, that each mode (like each language) is unique, so should be treated as such, building upon its own characteristics; in other words, each mode has a grammar of its own; Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), for example, present a grammar of visual design to analyze images and Mota-Ribeiro and Pinto-Coelho (2011) explain how the grammar of written language cannot be directly applied to the analysis of images, so a specific grammar needs to be available that “treats images as images” (p. 227). In the case involving Radiohead and Lana Del Rey, as reported in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/music/ng-interactive/2018/mar/26/did-lana-del-reyplagiarise-radiohead-note-by-note-analysis), composer Ed Newton-Rex analyzed the similarity between Del Rey’s “Get Free” and Radiohead’s “Creep.” Firstly, his analysis of the chords shows that, although some chord progressions are shared by hundreds of songs, the particular sequence shared by these two songs is rare in pop music (it is reported in the news piece that, “according to online database Hooktheory, only four out of 17,000 popular hits of the last decades have used this specific sequence,” which is roughly 0.02%). Secondly, the sequence of chords is used in the same way, i.e., with no differences in rhythm. Thirdly, the melodies are very similar. A lay listener would notice the degree of similarity, but the analysis described by Newton-Rex demonstrates that resemblance scientifically. The method used consists of splitting the melody of each song into smaller chunks for individual comparison. The analyst found that many of the chunks (“phrases”) from “Get Free”

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share the same notes as those of “Creep.” Furthermore, these notes are often in the same order and, in the cases where the order differs, the melodies remain unaffected. The method described by Newton-Rex apparently bears similarities to the methods used by linguists to analyze plagiarism in written texts: in all cases, the analyst looks for similarities, overlaps, identical vs. distinct fragments, volume of overlap, and so on. However, each mode is distinct, and thus requires a distinct approach; for instance, fragments of music are not the same as textual fragments, so should be treated differently; likewise, when analyzing images, other imagistic aspects that are specifically visual need to be considered, such as weight, direction, patterns of balance, right and left, shape, form, plane and depth, vertical and horizontal, obliqueness, size and volume, line and contour, textures, composition, and visual salience. As in linguistics, there is a need to look at grammar and vocabulary, but of another type; hence, only experts from each subject area can identify and apply the most suitable tools – and make informed judgments. Plagiarism is also common in reference materials, such as textbooks, dictionaries, and maps, which are often subject to undue reuse. One of the main challenges in demonstrating plagiarism in these materials is that they are all expected to reflect factual data; hence, proving (or disproving) originality can be troublesome. Coulthard et al. (2010) discuss a case of lexicographic plagiarism to demonstrate how a very high degree of similarity can provide evidence of plagiarism, even though words – except for trademarks – are not subject to property. The same can apply to maps. For example, in 2001 Ordnance Survey was paid £20 m by the Automobile Association, who were being accused of copying Ordnance Survey’s maps (https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/mar/06/andrewclark). The case, which involved a dispute over more than 500 AA resources, including maps and atlases, was settled just before the court session was due. Evidence provided by Ordnance Survey included stylistic features and proportions that were unique to their publications, thus revealing the potential of forensic cartography analysis. In order to avoid such instances of plagiarism, lexicographers and cartographers have devised their own mechanisms to protect their property, especially by resorting to pitfalls such as invented words, in the case of dictionaries, and fake towns and trap streets, in the case of maps. However, these pitfalls are not indispensable, even if they will make proving instances of plagiarism easier, as all original materials have some set of features that make them unique.

8

Plagiarism: The Future Challenges

New plagiarism cases hit the news on a daily basis; hence, as previously stated (Sousa-Silva 2013, p. 56), the media plays a dual role as “carrier” and “producer” of moral panics, as argued by Cohen (1972). As more plagiarism cases are reported in the news, fear of others’ plagiarizing increases, and so do the number of cases reported. Therefore, suspicions of plagiarism have to be handled with care, accurately, fairly, and justly, given the serious implications for plagiarists – and their victims.

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Plagiarism, however, is very difficult to handle, from the detection to the final decision. Simply showing that there is some textual overlap does not suffice, since not all instances of textual overlap are plagiarism: quoting someone else’s text properly, for example, is textual overlap, but not plagiarism; conversely, paraphrasing someone else’s text is likely to show a minor textual overlap, but can be plagiarism if not duly attributed to the original sources. In addition, the circumstances of production need to be considered, lack of academic (or professional) writing skills must be judged differently from plagiarism, and cross-cultural factors have to be accounted for when deciding on the outcome of plagiarism cases. Additionally, it is clear that some text genres (e.g. student essays) are more prone to suspicion of plagiarism, whereas textual overlap in other instances (e.g. legal documents) is easily legitimated. Most people would also agree that intentionally or knowingly plagiarizing must be judged differently from plagiarizing inadvertently. The problem, however, lies with establishing the suspect plagiarist’s intention – and, furthermore, demonstrating it. At most, linguists are competent to determine communicative intentions, but are not usually trained to establish the psychological intent. However, a deep linguistic analysis is able to determine the strategies used by plagiarists, and consequently understand how a text was manipulated (Sousa-Silva 2013). In other words, once the linguistic markers are established, and the volume of textual reuse is determined, forensic linguists can make safe assumptions of plagiarism. Ultimately, this can be used as evidence that a text was manipulated to a greater or lesser degree with the intention to pass off someone else’s work as one’s own. An element that complicates even more the plagiarism equation is the origin of ideas. Suspects of lifting someone else’s ideas often argue that different people can have the same idea. When I started researching into plagiarism, I attempted to map all plagiarism instances, relations, and implications, only to find out that the topic is too complex to fit in one sheet of paper. I phrased my unsuccessful attempt to present a comprehensive map of plagiarism as “Pandora’s box” (Fig. 2) and immediately thought that the phrase deserved an article of its own. Alas, it had already been taken by Sutherland-Smith (2005), who ironically admitted in the first line of the abstract that “Plagiarism is viewed by many academics as a kind of Pandora’s box.” In any case, the phrase could no longer be reused (although the map itself, shown in Fig. 3, is original). This personal experience shows that identical ideas can emerge independently, but the one who uses it first is entitled to it; subsequently, it can only be acknowledged. Of course, like with intentions, it is very hard to prove that an idea was not already known to a plagiarist. However, in the online era, pleading ignorance is scarcely an excuse; on the contrary, finding if an idea has already been used is part of the researcher’s role. Certainly, establishing who had the original idea in cases of contemporary production may be significantly more difficult, but not impossible: in forensic cases, only the original author is able to explain coherently the rationale behind the idea. Thus, it is not just the idea that matters, it is also relevant how the author got there.

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Fig. 2 The Pandora’s box of plagiarism

Fig. 3 Pandora’s map of plagiarism

Despite decades of research into plagiarism, many of the issues that remain to be discussed are very complex and deserve further philosophical discussion. Reusing our own materials is one of the challenges. As strongly argued above, there are some instances where reusing our own text is legitimate, but not always; and others, in any

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case, are entitled to disagree. This chapter compiles some views on plagiarism, pondered over a decade of research. It is possible that the attentive reader finds text fragments that overlap with previous work (especially Sousa-Silva 2012, 2013). In my opinion, such reuse is legitimate. From a forensic linguist’s perspective, time can be spent more relevantly on conducting research into the new societal challenges where text is illegitimately reused. Acknowledgments This work was partially supported by Grant SFRH/BD/47890/2008 and SFRH/BPD/100425/2014 FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, co-financed by POPH/FSE.

References Al-Marashi, I. (2002). Iraq’s security and intelligence network: A guide and analysis. Middle East Review of International Affairs, 6(3). Angèlil-Carter, S. (2000). Stolen language?: Plagiarism in writing. Harlow: Longman. Ascensão, J. d. O. (1992). Direitos de Autor e Direitos Conexos. Coimbra: Coimbra Editora. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk devils and moral panics. Oxon/New York: Routledge. Coulthard, M. (2004). Author identification, idiolect and linguistic uniqueness. Applied Linguistics, 25(4), 431–447. Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (2007). An introduction to forensic linguistics: Language in evidence. London/New York: Routledge. Coulthard, M., Johnson, A., Kredens, K., & Woolls, D. (2010). Four forensic linguists’ responses to suspected plagiarism. In M. Coulthard & A. Johnson (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics (pp. 523–538). Milton Park, Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Eiras, H., & Fortes, G. (2010). Dicion{á}rio de Direito Penal e Processo Penal. Lisboa: Quid Juris. Finnis, J. (1991). Intention and side-effects. In R. G. Frey & C. W. Morris (Eds.), Liability and responsibility: Essays in law and morals (pp. 32–64). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garner, B. A. (2009). Black’s law dictionary (9th ed.). St. Paul: West. Glendinning, I. (2014). Impact of policies for plagiarism in higher education across Europe – Results of the Project. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 63(1):207–216 Goldstein, P. (2003). Copyright’s highway: From Gutenberg to the celestial jukebox. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Howard, R. M. (1995). Plagiarisms, authorships, and the academic death penalty. College English, 57(7), 788–806. https://doi.org/10.2307/378403. Howard, R. M., & Robillard, A. E. (2008). Plagiarisms. In R. M. Howard & A. E. Robillard (Eds.), Pluralizing plagiarism: Identities, contexts, pedagogies (pp. 1–7). Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook. Jameson, D. A. (1993). The ethics of plagiarism: How genre affects writers’ use of source materials. Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication, 56(2), 18. Johnson, A. (1997). Textual kidnapping – A case of plagarism among three student texts? The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 4(2), 210–225. Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality. In Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images the grammar of visual design. Oxon and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004. Mota-Ribeiro, S., & Pinto-Coelho, Z. (2011). Para além da superfície visual: os anúncios publicitários vistos à luz da semiótica social. Representações e discursos da heterossexualidade e de género. Comunicação e Sociedade, 19, 227–246.

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Partridge, L., & West, J. (2003). Plagiarism: Perceptions, and occurrence amongst transnational postgraduate students in the Graduate School of Education. In H. Marsden, M. Hicks, & A. Bundy (Eds.), Educational integrity: Plagiarism and other perplexities, Proceedings of the 1st Australasian Integrity Conference, 21–22 November (pp. 149–154). Adelaide: University of South Australia. Pecorari, D. (2008). Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. London: Continuum. Scollon, R. (1994). As a matter of fact: The changing ideology of authorship and responsibility in discourse. World Englishes, 13(1), 33–46. Scollon, R. (1995). Plagiarism and ideology: Identity in intercultural discourse. Language in Society, 24, 1–28. Sousa-Silva, R. (2012). Legitimated plagiarism: An investigation of textual borrowing in official documents. In A. A. C. Teixeira (Ed.), Interdisciplinary insights on fraud and corruption – 1st OBEGEF conference booklet, Porto: Universidade do Porto. Sousa-Silva, R. (2013). Detecting plagiarism in the forensic linguistics turn. Unpublished PhD thesis. Birmingham: Aston University. Sousa-Silva, R. (2014). Detecting translingual plagiarism and the backlash against translation plagiarists. Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito, 1(1), 70–94. Sutherland-Smith, W. (2005). Pandora’s box: Academic perceptions of student plagiarism in writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4(1), 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jeap.2004.07.007. Turell, M. T. (2004). Textual kidnapping revisited: The case of plagarism in literary translation. The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 11(1), 1–26. Turell, M. T. (2007). Plagio y traducci{ó}n literaria. Vasos Comunicantes, 37(1), 43–54. Turell, M. T. (2008). Plagiarism. In J. Gibbons & M. T. Turell (Eds.), Dimensions of forensic linguistics (Vol. 9, pp. 265–299). Oxford: John Benjamins. Turell, M. T. (2013). Presidential address. In Proceedings of the 3rd European conference of the International Association of Forensic Linguists on the theme of “Bridging the gaps between language and the law”. Porto: Universidade do Porto – Faculdade de Letras. Williams, K., & Carroll, J. (2009). Referencing and understanding plagiarism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Woolls, D. (2003). Better tools for the trade and how to use them. Forensic Linguistics, 10(1), 102–112. https://doi.org/10.1558/sll.2003.10.1.102. Woolls, D., & Coulthard, M. (1998). Tools for the trade. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 5(1), 33–57. http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/IJSLL/article/view/ 508/3884.

Part XVI Music, Art, Photography, and Entertainment

Speaking the Language of Art in Central Asia: Old Archives and New Alphabets

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Cultural Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Creation of Art Collections and Art History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Soviet Period: Between Propaganda and Orientalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Between Stalin and Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 New Freedoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Central Asia’s Dip into International Waters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 New Nationalism: Old Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Back to the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

As Kazakhstan, the largest post-Soviet Central Asian republic, prepares to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet in favor of Latin, it manifests the overall transitional flow that the region attempts to follow with varying success over the last 25 years. While official accounts and personal histories diverge, art emerges as a litmus test of the two and half decades of change: social, cultural, and linguistic. The chapter looks at art within a framework of its role as a medium of social and political expression. In this context, artworks – their subject matter but also the media and style – become a form of language. This language in the context of Central Asia at different periods facilitated manifestation of personal opinions, official propaganda, or political dissent. The roots of the Central Asian art world lay in the Soviet system of art production with its characteristic style and limited themes, its coarse criticism, and inventive underground. As a melting pot of cultures, the region became A. de Tiesenhausen (*) London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_139

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even more diverse during the Soviet period ensuring the constant exchange of stereotypical and sensitive outside and inward gazes. Fast-forward to the 1990s, a decade that changed everything, bringing both hope and chaos, providing rich food for artistic production. New international exchanges brought new conversations with the outside world and with Central Asian traditionalism. Understanding of what constitutes art education, criticism, and art itself was uprooted and questioned. In the 2000s involvement with the international art scene at once both created and destroyed the newly established and previously cocooned art world in the region. Questions such as regionalism, traditionalism, antiestablishment, selfediting, and stereotype pleasing came to the fore. The internal art scene was first in disarray and later in renewed form tears itself between the decorative and actionist camps. Both sides are sliding toward Latinization of its forms while not quite sure yet how to transliterate its Cyrillic roots. Keywords

Soviet · Post-Soviet · Central Asia · Orientalism · Nomad · Identity · Nationalism

1

Introduction

As Kazakhstan, the largest post-Soviet Central Asian republic, prepares to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet in favor of Latin, it manifests the overall transitional flow that the region attempts to follow with varying success over the last 25 years. While official accounts and personal histories diverge, art emerges as a litmus test of the two and half decades of change: social, cultural, and linguistic. The chapter looks at art within a framework of its role as a medium of social and political expression. In this context, artworks – their subject matter but also the media and style – become a form of language. This language in the context of Central Asia at different periods facilitated manifestation of personal opinions, official propaganda, or political dissent. The roots of the Central Asian art world lay in the Soviet system of art production with its characteristic style and limited themes, its coarse criticism, and its inventive underground. As a melting pot of cultures, the region became even more diverse during the Soviet period ensuring the constant exchange of stereotypical and sensitive outside and inward gazes. Fast-forward to the 1990s, a decade that changed everything, bringing both hope and chaos, providing rich food for artistic production. New international exchanges brought new conversations with the outside world and with Central Asian traditionalism. Understanding of what constitutes art education, criticism, and art itself was uprooted and questioned. In the 2000s involvement with the international art scene at once both created and destroyed the newly established and previously cocooned art world in the region. Questions such as regionalism, traditionalism, anti-establishment, self-editing and stereotype pleasing came to the fore. The internal art scene was first in disarray and

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later in renewed form tears itself between the decorative and actionist camps. Both sides are sliding toward Latinization of its forms while not quite sure yet how to transliterate its Cyrillic roots.

2

Cultural Background

Central Asia is a vast territory stretching between the Black Sea and China west to east and between Russia and India north and south. For the purposes of this essay, Central Asia denotes the former Soviet republics and Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, which were all part of the USSR and gained independence in 1991. A recent exhibition, “Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia,” which was on display from 14 September 2017 to 14 January 2018, at the British Museum, London, brought attention to a culture previously little known in Britain and the West. Most of the exhibits came from the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and a couple were from the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In fact, in Kazakhstan, Scythians are not only well known but are also seen as great ancestors. This discrepancy of known/unknown characterizes the nature of information exchange, or lack of it, between Central Asia and the outside world. However, when information reaches the outside public, it is received with a great deal of surprise and fascination. Fascination can become a perilous territory where the border between exoticism and genuine interest is easily blurred. Central Asian visual heritage includes Bronze Age petroglyphs, Scythian animalistic design, Islamic architecture of the Middle Ages, and a very diverse variety of textile and carpet making, as well as jewelry. However, a form of taught and exhibited fine art arrived in Central Asia only at the beginning of the twentieth century with the establishment of Soviet power.

3

Creation of Art Collections and Art History

The first galleries in the region were created between 1918 and the 1930s with collections based on transfers from museums in Russia. The first art museum in Central Asia opened in 1918 in Tashkent. It was based on a private collection of Russian and Western art and was soon supplemented by a number of handovers. Thus, the basis for the Central Asian fine art museum collections, which provided a valuable educational resource for future local artists, was a predominantly realist art of the nineteenth century (Nikiforova 1975). Furthermore, in the 1930s museums received art of the earlier periods – such as Russian Orthodox icons. The museum in Tashkent received 34 icons from a museum in Ryazan, Russia (Nikiforova 1975). However, some transfers that came at a later stage were quite different. In 1936 several works from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow came into the collection of what is now the State Museum of Art of the Republic of Kazakhstan named after A. Kasteev in Almaty. One of the works was the Abstract Composition, 1910, by Olga Rozanova, a major representative of Russian avant-garde (Djadaibaev

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et al. 2001). It is very curious that at a time when the entire country was entering a period of heavy political purges and tightening the limits of artistic expression, this abstract work was sent as one of masterpieces to start a collection in the capital of a Soviet Republic. At the same time, geographical remoteness of Central Asia from Russian centers of power allowed a certain amount of freedom of choice to museum curators. The museum in Kazakhstan carried out an extensive amount of acquisitions from collectors, friends, or families of artists which were often seen as undesirable by officials in Moscow or Leningrad – such as Nathan Altman, Pavel Filonov, and Zinaida Serebriakova (Kim 2008). Collections were soon supplemented with works by Russian artists born in Central Asia or who came from Russia. They were arriving for two main reasons: to document the extensive industrial and social changes that Soviet authorities wanted to see and to teach local artists. Some of the most notable representatives were Pavel Benkov and Alexander Volkov in Uzbekistan and Semion Chuikov in Kyrgyzstan. In Benkov’s famous work, Girlfriends (1940) (oil on canvas, 120 cm  150 cm in the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan, Tashkent), two girls are seen admiring a rich harvest of grapes in a lush sun-drenched vinery. The two friends are of visibly different ethnic origin – one has darker skin and long black hair and is wearing traditional Uzbek clothes, while the other has lighter skin, short blond hair, and a modern dress. The picture has a sort of impressionist feel to it in the way that the paint is applied to the canvas and the light is given an almost immediate visual status. However, the subject matter is politically charged on two levels: one depicting high yields from agricultural production and another the multiethnic friendship across the Soviet Union.

4

Soviet Period: Between Propaganda and Orientalism

Alexander Volkov’s multiple works of the late 1920s and 1930s depicting the cotton harvest also speak of agriculture and production. However, both his painting style and the way the subject matter was treated went outside the strict Socialist Realist framework. His works have a monumental feel about them, similar at once to the father of modernism Paul Cezanne, and at some point communist artist hero Diego Rivera. His subjects, although gathering impressive harvests of cotton, do not embody the enthusiasm typical for Soviet paintings. While Benkov’s sun shimmers through the dense foliage, Vokov’s sun is only suggested in the burnt skin of the workers and the weariness expressed on their faces and bodies. Semion Chuikov’s most famous work is A Daughter of Soviet Kyrgyzia (1948) (oil on canvas, 119 cm  94 cm, the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). The painting is a portrait of a Kyrgyz girl walking proudly toward an unseen goal. She is clutching books in her left hand. This work made an opposite journey to the transfer made a decade ago; it went to the State Tretyakov Gallery. It was also widely disseminated across the Soviet Union, printed in school textbooks, and became well known to several generations of soviet children. It is an image of emancipation, talking about progress in education. It is also a work that plays as a metaphor for the entire nation

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or even region: Central Asia as a young emancipated girl on the road to knowledge and freedom. These three artists were among the first art teachers in Central Asia. Local artists were also sent to art institutes in Russia to train. They would return to continue the Soviet art mission to educate and illustrate the changing realities. For some, their own realities were going though transformation. Ural Tansykbaev, an ethnic Kazakh who worked in Uzbekistan, is one such example. His early works include a wellknown Crimson Autumn (1931) (oil on canvas, 118.5 cm  105 cm, the Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art named after IV Savitsky, Nukus). It is once again an image of the heat; even if the tight landscape is filled with autumn colors, there is a sense that the man and his blue donkey are having a brief but well-deserved respite. Flat areas of bright color are similar to Fauvist experiments. The same artist two decades later painted wide realistic landscapes filled with joyous people and electricity. It is a transformation from artistic experimentation to painting by order. The Soviet art system was based on state orders and where painters had a set of subjects that they could depict; success in these meant the artist’s works would be bought and he/she would have a studio to work in as well as the materials needed. Art, together with film, literature, photography, and theatre, was seen as one of the main vehicles for dissemination of information within and outside the Soviet Union. While the early years after the Russian revolution were filled with experiment and avant-garde movements, in 1932 Socialist Realism became the only acceptable style to work in. It was characterized by a realist painting manner and highly positive socialist messages, all associated with the Soviet propaganda machine. One famous phrase sums up the output that was supposed to be created all over the Soviet Union: national in form, socialist in content. “Form” in this case did not imply style or material but an ornamental and visual accent seemingly national, for example, a recognizable Kazakh landscape and Uzbek facial features in oil paintings or use of Kyrgyz decorative motif on otherwise neoclassical architecture. Socialist content meant that Central Asian art, just as that from other Soviet republics, portrayed rapid and successful industrial and agricultural advancement and social changes including the emancipation of women and intra-ethnic friendship. Just as Russian was becoming a lingua franca across the Soviet Union, Socialist Realism became the visual common language. The main themes, as mentioned above, were characterized by the notion of success and progress. The perpetual positivity presented a skewed image of reality, which was desired by the state. One of its facets, which particularly affected Central Asia, was that of orientalism, not in its European incarnation of odalisques in harems, but as a mode of depicting Soviet East as the Soviet Russia’s Other. This form of Soviet Orientalism brought about the creation of a stereotypical image of Central Asians and affected the creation of identities within the region (Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen 2016). Soon, local artists were conforming to the generally accepted norms of depicting Central Asia, including vast empty fields, rich harvests, liberated women at work, educated children, especially girls, and massive building sites. Art works were exhibited in Moscow at All-Union exhibitions, while at the same time paintings executed by artists in the Soviet center presented a

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multiethnic Soviet population marching towards the utopian socialist future lead by white men. By this double helping of visual information, the consensus was formed that white Russian men were leading the progressive change both in Russia and across the so-called peripheries of the Soviet state. The Russian language was seen as a more advanced form of communication – as a form of access to both well-known examples of Russian literature and to translations of world literature and scientific and technical texts.

5

Between Stalin and Independence

Following the death of Stalin and general lessening of the state control over arts, artists in Central Asia began some experimentation with both style and content. Using expressive techniques or tentatively approaching national histories became a form of limited liberation. One of the first women artists of Kazakhstan, Aisha Galimbaeva, often portrayed women in national dress, sometimes in traditional settings, at others in somewhat more decorative format. She created a multilayered work, A Guest from the Virgin Land (1961) (oil on canvas, 100 cm  150 cm, State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan named after A. Kasteev, Almaty). The composition includes two women, one older, one younger, having tea by a window. The older woman is wearing a traditional dress including a head covering. The younger woman is wearing a bright red shirt with a medal on it. They are drinking tea from a traditional samovar and teapot with typically large apples, associated with southern Kazakhstan, scattered around the table. Outside the window are signs of modern architecture and transport. The two women are smiling at each other. This is an image of exchange between the old and new. The context is the massive agricultural experiment, viz., the Virgin Lands in the north of Kazakhstan that were cleared for wheat production and involved a large-scale migration of workers from Russia. In the paintings, all of this information is omitted and the only reference is in the title of the work. The younger woman’s happy face suggests the success of the mission, and the medal underlines her personal achievements. However, inclusion of the traits of tradition and the strong sense of being in Kazakhstan underline the artist’s pride in her own and the country’s roots. By the 1970s artists such as Zhanatay Shardenov were experimenting with landscapes, notably mountains, that are almost un-Soviet or more precisely not political. The manner of use of paint – heavy impasto, swirls – reminded one of Vincent van Gogh. His contemporaries, Abdrashit Sydykhanov and Makum Kisamedinov, also put to test other existing artistic styles such as expressionism and abstraction. In their works, such as Kisamedinov’s Hate (1973) (oil on canvas laid on carton, 50 cm  70 cm, National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Astana), it has an expression on faces that has often become associated with gloom, even with a hint of madness. These changes all pointed to transformations that were well on their way.

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New Freedoms

By the time of perestroika (restructuring) in the 1980s, there was a general sense of revolution. Artists began exploring pre-Socialist Realist avant-garde as well as obtaining a wider knowledge of Western art. This period led to formation of urban youth movements such as Green Triangle and on the other side more mature classically trained artists and architects who began venturing into installation and performance including another colorfully named group, Red Tractor. Green Triangle group’s view was a mixture of hippie lifestyle, rock music, unconventional dress, and all-encompassing creativity – where any art had value as long as it was not official art – and included underground art and folklore. Red Tractor (Kyzyl Traktor) group’s performances appropriated the image and stereotype of nomadic culture, shamanism, and ritual – mixing postmodern irony with modernist desire for original and exotic. While at the height of Socialist Realism, artists were often moving into other creative industries, such as book illustration and publishing in order to survive. By the late 1980s and 1990s, the movement was reversed. This change also affected art criticism. Valeria Ibraeva, editor-in-chief of the art magazine, Oner, became the director of the only Soros Centre for Contemporary Art in Central Asia in Almaty. She curated numerous shows at home and abroad, following the closure of the Centre in 2008; her career focuses on curating and art criticism. During the Soviet period, official and unofficial art were two parallel realities, one visible and one concealed, which sometimes intersected. By the 1990s the two strands started to diverge in an open conflict. As the newly discovered independence meant that nation building was on the agenda, monuments of national heroes started to appear across the squares of the country. At the same time, the eruption of exhibition spaces and artistic freedoms meant that previously unofficial art was gaining its visible platform and also public attention increased with new critical writing and added attention of the mass media. The mass media was, understandably, not sympathetic; the change between old art and new was drastic. Within a decade, artists across Central Asia had accumulated enough material and knowledge to experiment with all major styles created in the West during the twentieth century (Ibraeva 2014). In 1999 the Soros Center organized the exhibition, “Self-Identity: Futurological Prognosis,” which announced the establishment of a new language of art. It included an ironic conceptualism of Sergei Maslov and his love letters to Whitney Huston; pseudo-shamanistic installation and performances by Said Atabekov, Smail Bayaliev, and Moldakul Narymbetov; and discovered material collections by Georgy Tryakin Bukharov, Rustam Khalfin, and many others (Ibraeva 1999). In 2000 Soros sponsored a publication of articles by 15 main art historians at the time on the state of the art in Kazakhstan (Ibraeva and Malinovskaya 2000). The art world became so active and varied that in 2002 the Soros Centre published a directory of artists, critics, curators, galleries, and art centers in the country (Ibraeva 2002). The art scene was booming and international relationships were on the rise. While during the 1990s Western diplomats and businessmen coming to the region

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were the main contacts for Central Asian artists with the outside world, by the early 2000s, the exchange moved over the borders.

7

Central Asia’s Dip into International Waters

In 2005 the first Central Asian pavilion at the Venice Biennale brought the region to the international art scene, thereby gaining widespread recognition. However, while abroad artists were finding that their experiments were easily understood, at home the language of official art continued to be classical. The art scene diverged into two directions: one could be described as “decorative” art; the other has been known as “current” or “actual” art. Decorative art is characterized by use of classical materials, such as oil painting and sculpture, and limited use of themes (especially proclamation of national Golden Age) with strong warrior male characters and beautiful young females. The actual art utilized varying media from video and photography to performance and installation. The subject matter reflected the personal and social changes that were taking place at increasing speed. The Venice Biennale pavilion was entitled “Art from Central Asia: A Contemporary Archive.” It was curated by Viktor Misiano, a Russian curator, and organized by the Kurama Art gallery based in Kyrgyzstan. The pavilion included works by artists from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue did become a form of archive, not only of the post-Soviet or contemporary situation but also of the development of art in Central Asia from the early twentieth century. This region, never before represented at Venice, needed a good introduction, which the catalogue provided in full (Djaparov and Misiano 2005). While the exhibit brought together the concise history of art in the region, it also brought to the foreground several artists whose works define Central Asian art to the present day. These are Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djoumaliev from Kyrgyzstan, Almagul Menlibayeva and Yerbossyn Meldibekov from Kazakhstan, and Vyacheslav Akhunov from Uzbekistan. At the Biennale, a married couple, Kasmalieva and Djoumaliev, presented a video installation called Trans Siberian Amazons, 2004, which documents the travels of small-scale traders and their songs which were popular in their Soviet youth. The video, which is available at http://aspangallery.com/en/exhibition/ contemporarynomadism (as of May 15, 2018), is set into an installation made out of typical checkered sacks that are often used by sellers to carry their goods. It presents a thought-provoking rendering of the change of political and economic situations but also opens up the borders of what borders are, both technically and thematically. The artist duo had their first solo show in Central Asia in 2017 at the Aspan Gallery in Almaty. This gallery opened in 2014 and has been steadily organizing retrospective exhibitions of the artists who took part in the Venice Biennale in 2005. Kasmalieva and Djoumaliev presented some of the more recent works, including a video documenting illegal Central Asian migrants living in New York, as well as photographs of the eternal Silk Road, this time following the

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lives of people who work along the roads between China and Kyrgyzstan mostly providing services to truck drivers. Yerbossyn Meldibekov was an artist with an already established reputation by the time of the first Central Asian pavilion. He has cultivated an image of himself as an artist-barbarian. His images are often about war and conflict but in a strongly ironic and self-deprecating manner. From his typically Uzbek ceramic plates printed with images of heavy armament pulled by camels to sheep’s teeth sticking out of his mouth for Alien (Fig. 1), he is playing with the recognizable language of stereotypes and presents to the West an image that it expects, only to question these expectations. Almagul Menlibayeva is another artist who plays with stereotypes. She is most concerned with women’s rights and the environment. Menlibayeva at the moment is the most successful Central Asian artist in the West and at the same time is actively involved in the cultural program created by the Kazakhstan government, Ruhani Zhangyru, to modernize thinking. She is known for her mesmerizing videos and photographs of women, naked or swathed in fabric, placed into various settings from the steppes to abandoned building sites to former nuclear test centers. Her works from the Aral Beach series deal with both gender and environmental catastrophe. In Fig. 2, a female model is posing as if in a fashion shoot, wearing a military style hat, with a background of rusty boats stranded in the middle of a salty steppe, all which is left of the receding Aral Sea. Artists of this generation approach art as a form of direct connection to the audience which may otherwise not find similar views in the press or publications. The audience may be Central Asian or international. However, the use of a widely Fig. 1 Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Alien, 2008. The sheep’s teeth sticking out of his mouth represent the recognizable language of stereotypes and present to the West an image that it expects, only to question these expectations. (Digital photograph, 100  70 cm. Courtesy of the artist)

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Fig. 2 Almagul Menlibayeva, Aral Beach 2, 2011. The artist combines global environmental issues and socio-political concerns. Duratrans print in light box, 91  122 cm. (Courtesy of American Eurasian Art Advisors LLC, Almagul Menlibayeva © All. Rights. Reserved)

understandable language of contemporary art allows their messages to be not only socially challenging but also visually stimulating. While visual language of art has been going through significant transformation, the actual linguistic situation has been uneven.

8

New Nationalism: Old Identities

All Central Asian countries approached the question of language differently. There was a general idea that national languages should be in wider use, and indeed they became constitutional; however, Russian has remained in wide use, occupying strong positions in everyday communication in urban centers, dominating popular culture and in the media. In 2017 Kazakhstan’s government made a decision to abandon Cyrillic alphabet in favor of a Latin one. At the same time, Kazakh language has seen a steady rise not only in rural areas, where it is the main language of communication, but also in urban areas, strongly supported by the nationalist movement. Linguistic preference reveals one of the curious intersections between the nationalists and the creative elites. There are divisions within the art field itself, as mentioned previously, based on style and subject, but also it seems based on the

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Fig. 3 Saule Suleimenova, Kelin (Bride), 2015. The mother figure overlooks symbolizing both the bride’s traditional fate of arranged marriage and loss of independence and, at the same time, a contemporary lack of care for the environment. Plastic bags on polycarbonate sheets, 600  400 cm. (Courtesy of the artist)

attitude toward nationalism. While on the one side the intellectual and artistic milieu prides itself in left wing and liberal views, at the same time, the question of nationalism is presented as a form of resistance to the Russian hegemony. Where the intellectuals despise nationalists’ views on Islam, nationalists despise the progressive views on gender equality and gay rights. Both camps, however, seem to agree that language, national traditions, and ethnic origin are the cornerstones of national and personal identities allowing one to be more or less Kazakh. Saule Suleimenova works closely with the notions of ethnicity and, in her recent series, utilizes plastic bags as her material. Her “cellophane painting” Kelin, 2015 (Fig. 3), derives from ethnographic photographs taken in Central Asia in the nineteenth century. The word Kelin means bride or daughter-in-law, and in recent years, preceding the “me too” movement in the West, the image of a daughter-in-law became a key battleground image between traditionalists and reformists. This member of the family is traditionally expected to be docile. Historically, bridal fate is associated with arranged marriages, stolen brides, and more generally the loss of independence and any rights. At the same time, Suleimenova’s Kelin is almost a mother figure overlooking what is happening below. All of the “cellophane paintings,” whether images of flowers or administrative buildings with nonsensical queues, are an expression of another frustration, the lack of care for the environment.

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Identity remains one of the most important defining issues for Central Asian contemporary art. Both within the region and on the international scene, there is at once a lack of consensus on what that identity is and a new interest in stepping away from regional or national identities in favor of more globally potent themes of gender equality and environmental protection. In this way, the desire to move to the Latin alphabet is just an expression of the desire to fit in with the wider world which is defined by American popular culture and European history and values.

9

Back to the Future

A new generation of artists is taking a stance that directly questions the disappearance or reconstruction of identities, with a clear criticism of globalization associated with a loss of roots. In Gulnur Mukazhanova’s straightforwardly named Transformation of traditional values during globalisation, 2013 (Fig. 4), we observe faces coming out of a felt mass, merging into a unified whole. The material has strong associations with nomadic culture; felt is a traditional material to make a yurt (nomadic dwelling), as well as rugs and clothes. Syrlybek Bekbotaev, in his piece, Happiness, 2017 (Fig. 5), deconstructs one of the seminal works of the twentieth-century art of Kazakhstan and paints its copy onto a rotating mechanism resembling a clock and lets it tick along. There is almost an Fig. 4 Gulnur Mukazhanova, Transformation of traditional values during Globalisation, 2013. Questioning identity in a global world. Installation series 3, sheep-wool, mixed media, 320  200 cm. (Courtesy of the artist)

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expectation that at some point, all will come together, and we will see the original image, but it never does. Art in Central Asia is a form of language of communication across the region and with the outside world. While in Soviet times it served as an official propaganda machine, in post-Soviet era, artists discovered one new language after another in order to experiment with boundaries of personal and political expression. Identities have been shaped and reshaped by and in art. It seems the latest generation is somewhat skeptical at the possibility of ever finding a one-fits-all cure and is welcoming the brave new world of post-truth and post-identity. Both established artists and the younger generation are searching for new platforms to show their art and be heard. In 2017–2018, Central Asian artists’ works are being shown in locations as diverse as Singapore, Yinchuan (China), Charleroi (Belgium), Gangwon (South Korea), Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), St Petersburg (Russia), Berlin (Germany), New York (the Unites States), Seoul (South Korea), and London (the United Kingdom) (see http://aspangallery.com/en/news, accessed June 3, 2018). There is a notable desire by artists to be viewed as individuals, and less importance is placed on collective identities – and therefore collective exhibitions. At the same time, the international art world with its ever-widening geographical scope presents new opportunities and examples of significance of art in international Fig. 5 Syrlybek Bekbotayev, Happiness, from the series Modernist Paradigm, 2017. The artist may be hinting that time transforms national identity, where it is still recognizable, but as a form of a moving collage. Metal, wood, paint. National EXPO Pavilion, Astana, Kazakhstan. (Courtesy of the artist)

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relations. Central Asian governments as well as individual artists may be weary of following an exclusively Western or Eastern route, but it seems there is no longer any need to do so. In fact, every prize, exhibition, and publication that the artist enters allows her/him access to new encounters – with collectors, critics, and other artists – which in turn establishes a firmer image of Central Asian art abroad and may lead to creation of regional or international art events located in Central Asia. This development seems to be one of the main topics for the future, viz., the possibility of both wider public, officials and younger aspiring artists to access high-quality and diverse art at home. Just as languages develop over time, the art world requires both internal and external stimuli in order to remain an active force in reflecting and engaging in contemporary reality.

References Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, A. (2016). Central Asia in Art: From Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics. London: I. B. Tauris. Djadaibaev, A., Mukazhanova, K., & Kosenko, V. (Eds.). (2001). State Museum of Art of the Republic of Kazakhstan. A Guidebook. Almaty: Kaprint. Djaparov, U., & Misiano, V. (Eds.). (2005). Art from Central Asia: a Contemporary Archive, catalogue of Central Asia Pavilion at 51 Venice Biennale. Bishkek: Kurama Art. Ibraeva, V. (Ed.). (1999). Self-identity: Futurological prognosis. Almaty: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Ibraeva, V. (Ed.). (2002). Contemporary art of Kazakhstan. A directory. Almaty: Soros Centre for Contemporary Art. Ibraeva, V. (2014). Art of Kazakhstan: Post-Soviet period. Almaty: Tonkaya Gran. Ibraeva, V., & Malinovskaya, E. (Eds.). (2000). Contemporary writing on Contemporary art: A collection of essays on contemporary art. Almaty: Association of Art Historians. Kim, E. (2008). The Collection of the Kasteev State Museum of Arts. In Treasures of Kazakhstan. London: Christie’s. Nikiforova, E. (Ed.). (1975). Art Museum of the Uzbek SSR. Painting. Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers.

Soundscapes as Critical Tools of Analysis

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Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Soundscapes as Analytical Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 An Assemblage of Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Musical Soundscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Soundscapes of Language and Accent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Soundscapes as Ways to Assert Hybrid and Non-dominant Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Soundscapes have continued to gain attention in geography as it has recently turned to them for understanding political spaces, identities, and places. Soundscapes have provided insights into music, politics, urban environments within cities, and rural parks. Many scholars have argued that geography’s heavy focus on visuals has ignored the nuances of sound replete in daily life, performances, communities, and diasporas. Examining multiple elements of soundscape such as language, music, and accent allows for a greater understanding of the processes involved in daily life and activities. Sound can be fundamental to and can offer unique insights into our understanding of cultures, communities, and diasporas. This chapter will outline how sound – language, music, and accent – is fundamental to past, current, and future work in geography through insights drawn from previous literature on sound supplemented with examples from various American and Indian Tamil diasporic events and performances in the United States.

C. Devadoss (*) Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_27

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Keywords

Landscape · Soundscape · Identity · Music · Environment

1

Introduction For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. – Attali (1985: 3)

I awake in the morning to banging, clashing, drilling, and the faint beeping, scratching, and thudding of a large piece of equipment grinding in the dirt. I feel annoyed and aggravated by the intensity and sharpness of the sounds. Midday, as I am walking through the university halls, I hear young voices, sometimes deep and muffled, other times high and fast, chattering about classes, drama, and people; feet clacking against and squeaking on a tiled floor; and “Piano Man” by Billy Joel is drifting in the hallway from someone’s office, evoking memories from my high school years playing the piano. That night, after hours of noisy engines and wind whistling around my car, I arrive in Cleveland to attend the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival, the second largest festival of South Indian music in the world. Next to me, a parent scolds their child in Tamil while the child responds to them in English. Children chatter to one another in English, while adults converse in Tamil. Meanwhile, on the stage of the auditorium, a vibrating voice and a myriad of Karnatak instruments, such as the veena (a violin-like instrument), South Indian violin, and percussion-like instruments including the mridangam, kanjira, and thavil echo in the large auditorium. A voice scales – sa, ra, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. A mridangam keeps a rhythm – ti, ra, ki, ta and a voice lulls in long, drawn out tones. I feel mesmerized by my memory of being in Chennai, Tamil Nadu (India) during the December music season. Sounds are a part of an everyday, complex experience in the world. In fact, sounds give us more information about the world than visuals alone (Smith 2000; Revill 2016). Visuals are often given greater attention than sound in geographical research, but sound can highlight nuances of spoken language, music, and accent that shape identities, communities, and practices. In many ways, sounds provide alternative narratives to the visual world by unveiling details or elements that visuals overlook such as language, music, and accent (Kapchan 2016). Sounds generally take longer for our brains to process than visuals and allow us to react more slowly, thus having a greater role in shaping our intimacy with a space, place, or situation (Lawson 2001). Many scholars and geographers have examined soundscapes ranging from urban geography, soundscape ecology, and rural studies of national parks (Raimbault and Dubois 2005; Miller 2008; Pijanowski et al. 2011) to cultural, political, and affective geographies (Smith 1994; Anderson 2004; Jazeel 2005; Revill 2016). Sound is not often credited for its role in identity, community, diasporas, or social and material effects of political discourses, but it challenges and brings nuance to static categories, boundaries, political processes, and identity politics more completely than visuals alone (Smith 2000; Waterman 2006; Revill 2016).

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I have argued before that sound, both music and language, is important, if not crucial to identities – both in everyday life and performance (Devadoss 2017). In this chapter, I build on this concept to crystallize the importance of sound to cultural geography and the understanding of diasporas and communities by bringing together previous research on sound with a few empirical examples in the United States. I revisit music and language, but additionally address accent as a third component to broader notions of sound. I first provide an overview on soundscapes – their role in augmenting and complementing visuals, their role as critical tools of analysis, and their link to affect, emotion, and performance. I then break down the intricacies of soundscapes into music, accent, and language to provide a more nuanced understanding of diasporas and communities, how they can dismantle or challenge national identities to emphasize specific regions, how they can be used to identify difference or ostracize, especially through accent, and most importantly, how these multiple insights provide nuance to cultural geographic research. I will draw on examples from both American gatherings as well as examples from the Indian Tamil diaspora to demonstrate the importance of sound in broader cultural geographic work.

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Soundscapes as Analytical Tools Most of us live complex daily rounds that are often more than not experienced through varied competing auditory and visual representations. . . – Aitken and Kwan (2010: 287)

Familiar soundscapes surface in everyday, banal ways – perhaps through soft or booming chatter of conversations in a university hallway, the inflection, tonality, and accent of broadcast news anchors speaking in the American Standard version of English, yesteryear’s refrain of Elton John’s “Your Song” echoing through a grocery store, muffled engines of traffic, a coffee pot brewing, coats, boots, and winter clothes shuffling and sweeping across a university floor, a fan whipping through a window while birds chirp and a lawnmower roars – and also in more augmented, ritualized ways. Imagine a winter evening in Northeast Ohio, where Americans cross towns and join friends to swarm into barrooms or living rooms for an annual, ritualized event. The fluctuating and muffled crowd noises emanate from the television, while crinkling bags, harsh and chattering voices, crunching chips, and frustrated yells at the TV permeate the atmosphere. Soon, the National Football League theme song plays, signaling the much-anticipated commercial break of the Super Bowl. The significance of sound can vary from person to person and can be produced in augmented ritualized ways like the celebrated American pastime of Super Bowl Sunday or in more actively performed ways like formal performances of South Indian Music at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival held at Cleveland State University in OH. Notably, despite how they are enacted or encountered, sounds abound in various facets of life. Geography has traditionally been a visual discipline and much of geography is grounded in visual analysis (Anderson 1987; Groth and Bressi 1997; Rose 2012; Sharp 2011; Sparke 1998). Visual analysis is especially important to analyzing

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cultural landscapes, film, events, maps, cartographic representations, news and other visual-heavy media (Edney 1997; Groth and Bressi 1997; Harley 1989; Kitchin and Dodge 2007; Monmonier 2007). While there have been many critiques of geography’s emphasis on visuals (Kearns 2010; Kwan 2002; Riley 1997), they are nevertheless important to contextualizing cultural landscapes, identity, discourse, diasporas, and communities. However, visual analyses do not always account for subtle details gained by employing additional senses, especially with regard to performance or experience (Haldrup et al. 2006; Wylie 2005). Riley (1997: 207) describes “vision” as “frustratingly vague” while emphasizing the “vicarious” – the emotional landscape experienced internally by the viewer. Spaces and places are experienced through multiple emotions and senses (Wylie 2005). According to Lawson (2001), senses have an intimacy order wherein a viewer more intimately experiences a place or object based on proximity. Essentially, Lawson (2001) suggests that vision is often the furthest from intimacy because it does not require close proximity. A viewer can be far from an object, yet still see it, whereas, in order to smell, touch, or hear something, the viewer must be close to it. Southworth (1969) is often credited for identifying soundscapes as an important element of the urban landscape. What he refers to as a “sonic sign,” or the awareness of a sound, creates visual images in the viewers’ mind that reinforce an image that they see through sound that they hear (Southworth 1969). While visuals are important to consider, they are part of fluid and complex cultural landscapes (Mason 2008; Riesenweber 2008). The viewer sees the image, but experiences memories and emotions to create or (re)create an experience (O’Keeffe 2007; Smith 2013). Now, many scholars have written on sound’s contribution to geography, thus facilitating an important turn in geographic literature (Anderson 2004; Jazeel 2005; Revill 2016; Saldanha 2005; Smith 1994, 2000; Waterman 2006). A variety of disciplines have addressed sound, such as communication, psychology, health science, urban planning, and environmental studies (Carles et al. 1999; Davies et al. 2013; Szeremeta and Zannin 2009). Geography has focused on sound through the mapping of environmental tones in urban environment within cities or rural and national park systems (Miller 2008; Raimbault and Dubois 2005) and identity, politics, cultural landscapes, and resistance movements (Devadoss 2017; Revill 2016; Samuels et al. 2010; Smith 1994). Sound affects how many people conceive of space and place. Scholars such as Dewsbury (2010) and Wylie (2005) have highlighted how sound, both an environmental component and as language, is not only important to understanding place and space, but also experience. Wylie (2005) clearly and distinctly highlights how sounds made him feel uneasy and invoked a sense of panic during his walk through the woods to the coast on the South West Coast Path in England. In one example, Wylie (2005) is able to link sounds to memories and past experiences: Suddenly the morning silence of the forest was broken by a cry. A loud, ululating cry, one which perfectly mimicked, in every detail of pitch, variation and length, the cry of Tarzan, lord of the jungle, familiar to me from old Saturday morning black-and-white serials. (Wylie 2005: 238–239)

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Sounds are not always organized in the traditional sense, but we often link them to some symbol, meaning, or emotion. “Organization of noise” is articulated through music and language (Attali 1985), because unorganized sound is often deemed as “noise” (Schafer 1994). Noise resembles chaos, something that we cannot understand or manage, which is why gravitation toward organized noise is so strong (Attali 1985; Grosz 2008). Organized noise or “sound” or soundscapes, are reflections of a landscape’s sounds in an organized way (Attali 1985; Grosz 2008; Pijanowski et al. 2011). However, music, and arguably language, are more than just organized sound – they are “humanized sound(s)” that reflect human emotions and thoughts (Waterman 2006: 1). Music and language create pleasure, connecting people to the most basic feelings (Grosz 2008). Our typical understanding of the world is textual, but sounds open up our awareness to emotions, feelings, and moments (Smith 2000). Sound is even important to films and other media. Samuels et al. (2010) demonstrate how film incorporates both an audio and visual narrative. Generally, the sounds incorporated into films requires listeners to focus on particular sounds and textures to enhance a story or broader narrative (Samuels et al. 2010). For example, in various cinemas throughout the world in performed reenactments, the depiction of past wars uses not only visual images of battle, but also explosions, firing guns, or clashing metal swords. Celebrations also incorporate sounds – the Fourth of July reenacts the War of Independence for the United States through booming fireworks, and the Christmas season all over the world has evolved in many ways to signify different sounds such as bells or chimes. Likewise, fictionalized books describe such sounds – from sounds of muffled motors or whizzing cars, to descriptions of battle with clashing swords, or in the more mundane soft whisper or tone of a person’s voice as they speak in a narrative. Even in today’s journalistic practices, it is increasingly common to convey both the visual information of a photograph and the aural and environmental sounds to give the most comprehensive depiction of an event (Jenkins 2007). Sounds are key to our experiences and lives, yet are not often given the attention that visuals receive, despite the fact that they are so engrained in our existence, politics, and experiences (Smith 2000; Revill 2016). In communities and diasporas across the US and the world, aural information is not only a necessity, but is often used as frequently as visuals.

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An Assemblage of Sounds

Soundscapes provide practical, methodological approaches to research, as demonstrated in many studies on urban and rural environments. Researchers have uncovered key findings on ecological impacts and human noise pollution through a methodological focus on sound (Miller 2008; Pijanowski et al. 2011; Raimbault and Dubois 2005). Sound can also be applied in this way to cultural and human geographic work to move beyond theory, especially with attention to music, language, and accent.

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Events put on specifically by the Indian Tamil diaspora as well as a host of other activities in the United States, provides prime examples of how soundscapes can be employed in qualitative human geographic research. Soundscapes can be key to revealing nuances in communities, identities, and gatherings of people especially those that straddle multiple borders and allegiances. As Waterman (2006: 1) indicates, . . .hearing and listening are both vital in the mediation of ideas and the transmission of culture. It might even be true to say that the senses of hearing (and smell) are capable of evoking memories and images more powerfully than things we see. . .

The full extent of sound’s role in identity, national belonging, cultural landscapes, and cultural geographies must acknowledge sound’s multiple roles. Musical soundscapes, spoken language, accent, and even representations of these elements in films or national dialogues are key to conceptualizing how communities use sound to express, recreate, shift between, or solidify identities. The identity politics of the Indian Diaspora rely heavily on sounds, especially within the Indian Tamil community. India is a land of diversity with 22 official languages, hundreds of non-official languages, 29 states, and 7 union territories, a variety of musical traditions that intersect with religion, caste, class, region, art, literature. Often, each region demonstrates a regional loyalty to a specific history linked to modern states (Rangaswamy 1995; Skop 2012). The Indian Tamil diaspora is quite closely connected to language and music. Tamil Nadu’s history has had intricate, deep connections to the Tamil language and various forms of music. Music and language are referenced as early as 300 BCE in classic Tamil texts and literature such as Thirukural, Silapathikaram, or Tolkappiyam. In fact, the second largest Karnatak music festival in the world is held in Cleveland, OH. Karnatak music is a distinct classical tradition of South India and is quite different than North India’s classical Hindustani tradition. The Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana brings together a large South Indian audience, the majority of which have some connection to Tamil Nadu to celebrate the legendary classical Karnatak composer Thyagaraja (Viswanathan and Allen 2004) (Fig. 1).

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Musical Soundscapes

The Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana is the second largest Indian classical music festival in the world (Viswanathan and Allen 2004; Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival 2014). In 1978, a group of South Indian families in Cleveland created it to mimic the Thyagaraja Aradhana in Tamil Nadu and it has evolved into a central cultural performance in the United States today (Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival 2014). The Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana, much like the original celebration in Tamil Nadu, celebrates a legendary Karnatak composer named Thyagarja, who was born in the Kaveri Delta in Tamil Nadu (Arnold 2000).

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Fig. 1 Location of Tamil Nadu in India. (Source: Author)

Music is undeniably important to communities and diasporas and it is especially important to any broader soundscape. Geographical approaches to music contribute to traditional ethnomusicology and musicology fields by incorporating the role of space and place (Jazeel 2005). When addressing soundscapes, music is often the first thing that comes to mind. Because many disciplines such as ethnomusicology, sociology, and even geography have investigated music as soundscape in depth, soundscape is often associated with music. As one of the first pieces to address soundscape within the cultural landscape framework, Smith (1994) lays the groundwork for understanding how sound, especially music, is seminal to cultural

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landscape analysis as well as the performance of identity. Smith (1994) outlines the development of music and how it has shaped specific expressions of identity, arguing that focusing too heavily on visuals excludes the visually-impaired and ignores major art forms like music. Music is integral to many communities and global networks, often blurring the lines between “here” and “there” and subsequently, challenging the concept of singular, static boundaries (Jazeel 2005). Indian identities at events such as the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana are framed around notions of being Tamil, Indian, and American while maintaining many connections to the capital city of Tamil Nadu, Chennai. Karnatak music is both a part of Chennai, but also of Cleveland, and the performances within are quite similar in the two locations. Many musicians play in both Chennai during the city’s “December Music Season,” which showcases many Karnatak concerts and performances linked to Cleveland’s Thyagaraja Aradhana. The performances in Cleveland are recorded and streamed to Chennai by news organization like NDTV in Tamil Nadu. The connection between the two cities revolves mainly around a central classical musical performance. But classical music is not the only venue for maintaining Indian Tamil communities. Hindi is often thought of as one of the national languages of India (though this is continuously debated) (Press of India Trust 2010) and is the dominant language in Bollywood films (India’s Hindi-language film industry equivalent to Hollywood based out of Mumbai). However, popular songs from films recorded in regional languages are played consistently in events organized by the Northeast Ohio Tamil Sangam (NEOTS), a Tamil community organization whose objectives are “to promote the awareness of Tamil culture, Tamil heritage through social, cultural, literary, charitable and educational activities” (NEOTS 2016). Most popular songs are often hits from Kollywood (Chennai’s film industry). NEOTS uses many political and popular Tamil songs throughout the organized events. “Imagined sound,” as Anderson (2006: 145) describes, like national anthems, songs that revere nations and bolster “national pride,” aid in the processes that shape national identities and national communities. The opening of the NEOTS programs begin with Neerarum Kadaludutha, the invocation to the Goddess Tamil or Tamil mother, which is the state song of Tamil Nadu. Frequently, this is followed by the US National Anthem. At the end of the programs, participants sing Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem of India which is written in Hindi. While lyrics of popular songs from Bollywood hit films originally written in Hindi are played in Tamil, the national anthem of India remains in Hindi. Music is also not limited to the Indian Tamil community. Similar uses occur in performances like the US Super Bowl. Every year, the Super Bowl opens with a performance of the US national anthem, reinforcing the national image of an American sport. The half-time show then features entertainment based on American popular music. Meanwhile, all of these songs, including the National Football League theme song that underscores the entire show, echo on televisions of Americans throughout the US. Music is a key, but underemphasized element to the Super Bowl and to any major sports events in the United States. Sounds are subtle, but are weaved throughout many programs. The American identity is

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reinforced not just through visuals, but also through the act of listening (for those who are not in the live audience), singing, and participating in the performances put on by this American sport.

5

Soundscapes of Language and Accent

Music is significantly important to communities, events, and performances, but language just as central. For example, in the case of the Indian Tamil community, Tyagaraja wrote musical compositions mostly in the languages of Sanskrit and Telugu because Tamil Nadu was ruled by Telugu-speaking authorities at the time he was writing. Yet, audience members at events speak mainly in Tamil and many of the musicians on the stage also speak in Tamil. Tamil and other South Indian languages are Dravidian languages, while Sanskrit and Hindi are Indo-Aryan languages from entirely separate language families (Wolf and Sherinian 2000). Tamil ripples and is heavy in the mouth in contrast to the more focused sounds of Sanskrit that arise from the lungs and throat. Much like music, spoken language can be central to performances and everyday experiences (Kanngieser 2012; Smith 1994). Language is another way beyond music to organize “noise” into meaningful sounds (Attali 1985; Grosz 2008). Dewsbury (2010) specifically examines language and words as a raw experience rather than focusing on their inherent meaning alone. He suggests that while language is semiotic, people also feel and evaluate it through tones, timbre, tonality, inflection, pitch, texture, etc. For instance, at some of the Indian Tamil gatherings in Cleveland, people have voiced things like “Tamil is a beautiful language” and expressed that the sound of Tamil is “mighty.” The language is given value and characterized through emotional experiences, not just inherent meanings of the words. The sounds of Tamil are incredibly important to the community. The NEOTS events highlight the importance of language to distinguish Tamil from Hindi in a protective practice. As mentioned before, many of the songs at events are changed from the Hindi language to the Tamil language. People at the events have also mentioned that it is not the meaning of the song, but the language that is important. In fact, every program (all the speaking parts and performances) is facilitated in Tamil. English is only used in the program when it is directed at the children of the second generation who often speak to one another in English. Hindi is not spoken at this event, nor is it emphasized. Power or dominant narratives are embedded within musical performance as well as dominant or official language (Jones and Merriman 2009; Smith 2000). Said’s (1978) concept of Orientalism has been extremely influential in understanding how the West represents the East, but it has also been employed to understand processes of othering and difference in creating certain groups or people as different, inferior, or “not like us” (Anderson 1987). As anthropologist E. Valentine Daniel says “we define who we are, but what we are not” (Daniel 1996: 16). In many cases, sounds are employed to define what is different and “other” as well as what is standard or normalized.

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Recent Bollywood films like Chennai Express have portrayed the sounds of Tamil through antagonists as angry, deep and rough in comparison to the soothing, soft, tones of Hindi spoken by the protagonist. Hollywood films like United 93 open with black screen and a sequence of the sound of Muslims praying before the first visuals are even shown – a direct and purposeful use of sound to project Muslims as “terrorists.” In less direct ways, performances that have been normalized as American like the Super Bowl tend to emphasize singular narratives of American through sounds of American popular music, the use of the English language only, and of course, the standardized accent of broadcasters. Accent and the ways in which a voice projects language are equally important to language, especially in regard to how people listen as Kanngieser (2012) emphasizes. Dave (2013) suggests that accents are generally compared to what is considered standard, normal speech and key to the process of “othering.” She provides the example of the typical “Apu” accent from The Simpsons that has been used to not only differentiate Indians, but also ascribe a singular accent to a diverse body of people who have many different “Indian” accents. Additionally, she analyzes the American accent, though it differs between regions and is often defined by broadcasters and Hollywood in a form of Standard American English, as a way to reinforce a singular definition of American identity – one that limits participation from those who speak in “foreign” or nonstandard accents and can also change based on audience (Dave 2013). Kanngieser (2012) shows how Obama’s perceived speech tones as “black” or “white” were heavily criticized during his campaign. She also emphasizes how higher-pitched, softer voices are thought of as feminine, while lower pitched, louder voices are deemed masculine. The loudness of a voice can also determine power, while silence can be a sign of protest. She posits that the “inflections and modulations of the voice contain forces that we must become more conscious of” (Kanngieser 2012: 348). Accent, or even how one pronounces specific words in a particular language, is also equally important to experiences because it can both be a symbol of pride, but also a way for people to “other” or differentiate (Haldrup et al. 2006; Simonsen 2010). In NEOTS events, accent is quite significant. Many of the young adults and children who attended programs were often simultaneously outsiders and insiders in the communities. Some of the children did speak Tamil, others had one Tamil parent and another from North India. Some understood Hindi, but not Tamil or maybe understand both. Tamil was important to the functions, but not just the language. It was also the way that Tamil was spoken. Accent can determine what part of Tamil Nadu someone is from and can also reveal nuances of class. For example, in more rural parts of Tamil Nadu, Tamil is often spoken in a different pitch and faster than what is audible in larger cities. Also, depending on class, words can change. For example, thanni is the word for water, but sometimes high class Brahmins will use the Sanskrit word jalum instead of thanni. In the NEOTS events, if you don’t speak Tamil or speak with an American accent you are treated slightly different than those who speak Tamil. Though it may not be purposeful and quite subconscious, the way the voice carries and the accent that someone has changes their interactions with

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people at events. An example of this was emphasized at the 2016 Pongal (which is a very important harvest festival in Tamil Nadu) celebration put on by the NEOTS in a skit involving members of the community and their children: The spoken Tamil was audibly much different between the generations in the performance, even to a non-Tamil speakers’ ears. The second generation’s Tamil was much slower, more simple, abrupt, and choppy. It seemed that the program directors divided the generations based on how they spoke Tamil. While the Tamil differed between generations, the official narrative of Tamilness was embedded through sound and performance nonetheless. In the skit, the elder pointed out ways in which the American children were different than those in Tamil Nadu, especially village Tamil Nadu, which was emphasized as some kind of pure form of Tamil. English words like “pizza” or “hamburger” were audible throughout the skit, but Hindi was never spoken. There were multiple layers to language and accent in the skit, but it was nevertheless important to the performance at the event.

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Soundscapes as Ways to Assert Hybrid and Non-dominant Identities

The 2016 Pongal skit references and emphasizes India through a Tamil lens, specifically through sounds. Bollywood lyrics changed from Hindi to Tamil, Tamil hit songs, political songs, division based on accent, and facilitation of the event all in Tamil that emphasizes India, demonstrate a purposeful defining of India through the lens of Tamil Nadu. Sounds can “disrupt ideas of purity and origins,” especially those of singular narratives that are often ascribed by Western scholars (Sharma 2006: 318; Dave 2013). In other words, soundscapes, while they can be used to highlight dominant discourses, can also challenge national boundaries and highlight spaces of hybridity. Differences are constructed through language, music, and accent especially in framing community events, performances, and identities. Often, national identity representations equate society with national boundaries, i.e., Indian (Agnew 1999; Jones 2012; Johnson and Coleman 2012; Lewis and Wigen 1997). Dominant narratives of the nation-state often portray national identity as singular and do not reflect the complexity and heterogeneous nature of places and people (Johnson and Coleman 2012). Identities and processes of differentiation and othering are indeed informed by discourse and dominant performances that utilize sound such as in the Super Bowl, but are realized in subtle, performed ways as well. Haldrup et al. (2006) and Simonsen (2010) demonstrate how dominant discourses such as films, billboards, advertisements, media, socialization, or historical processes may create “othering,” but people experience othering in everyday, banal ways especially through senses in what they call “practical orientalism” – the lived experience of orientalism. As the authors show, people experience real effects of isolation and othering based on senses other than visuals, especially sound. Sounds are deeply ingrained in our experiences in the world, even in recognition of difference.

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Many times, identities are formed as a reaction to, or a means to counteract a dominant narrative (Johnson and Coleman 2012) as evident in the Indian Tamil diaspora that redefines Indian through music and language of Tamil Nadu rather than more Northern state-centric narratives, especially informed by Bollywood (Velayutham 2008). Regions, like Tamil Nadu, though they are complex, fluid, intersectional, shift and change depending on audience, and are informed by multiple social and historical processes that are embedded in practice, can symbolize and serve as “narratives of identity” (Paasi 2003: 480). Many of the festivals described are Indian festivals, but are quite specific to the South Indian, particularly Tamil community and reflected in its soundscapes. These sentiments are also acknowledged by other Indian diasporic communities that do not participate in these events. At a few events that were primarily North Indian in nature, a few people had mentioned that the Thyagaraja Festival was very South Indian as was the music. They indicated that they would not be attending it because it was a South Indian festival. The sounds of the Thyagaraja Festival are South Indian, as indicated by those outside of the South Indian community as well as those within the community. The Thyagaraja Festival program specifically identifies the sounds of Karnatak music as South Indian. The music becomes a way to establish and solidify a South Indian identity. In previous years, programs included maps of the different music of India, labeling the distinction between North and South Indian music traditions. The 2015 program featured a map that highlighted the musical divide between North and South India, and more specifically between Hindustani and Karnatak music. The demarcated musical borders reflected the political borders between North and South Indian states. It is also important to note that none of the official narratives or practices are static. While some things remain the same, others have changed over time. Now, the programs seem to have shifted emphasis to reflect a union of the United States and Karnatak music. The 2016 official program guide for the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana festival refers to Cleveland as “America’s home of Carnatic [sic] Music.” The new map inscribes a heart around Thyagaraja highlighting Cleveland, Ohio as the center location with air travel emphasizing East, West, and North, presumably Canada, India, and perhaps parts of Southeast Asia (Fig. 2). Sounds are not just a product of othering in this case, they are also a way for people to distinguish and solidify or stabilize an identity and community. The link to Tamil and South India through sound is highlighted through maps, languages, instruments, and musical traditions. A particular music or sound is geographically linked to a specific region and place. The South Indian, particularly Tamil nature is emphasized throughout the programs as well as the idea that Karnatak classical music is the most ancient and pure form of Indian classical music. There is an underlying theme that this music is different than other Indian classical music, especially more well-known Northern, Hindustani music or world-famous classical musicians such as Ravi Shankar (though tribute concerts to Shankar are sometimes found in the programs). Music and language are often political and straddle boundaries of spaces and places, illuminating spaces of “in-betweenness” (Jazeel 2005; Jones and Merriman 2009).

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Fig. 2 2016 Cleveland Thyagaraja program guide with map of Cleveland, OH at the center. (Source: Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana)

An identity can be dominant in some spaces and non-dominant in others like the Tamil identity that is dominant in festivals like the Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana, but yet a minority in the larger Indian diaspora functions within Cleveland. Identities and communities can simultaneously be Indian, American, and Tamil and change and shift between those many intersections as well as religion, class, and gender. Sounds, music, language, and accent, are key to revealing these nuances.

7

Conclusion

As many scholars have compellingly noted, soundscapes are extremely important to our daily experiences, politics, performances, and identities. Particularly in communities and diasporas, soundscapes can play a strategic role in navigating and articulating identities and community boundaries. Fixed, essentialist notions of single origins (i.e., the Indian diaspora as a singular community, culture, and identity), dissolve when soundscapes are examined in actual events and performances organized by everyday people. The examples presented in this paper focus on performances and do not even delve into the politics of everyday life, which undoubtedly has more nuance. However, they do serve to illustrate the importance of sound to differentiating specific communities. They also highlight how sound is used to bring people together, as in the case of the Super Bowl, despite that they may be supporting different teams and come from various backgrounds, to unite for a brief minute under the banner of a larger, performed identity of American. Identity, culture, or life are rarely experienced in static, single categories. The literature and evidence presented in this chapter suggest that soundscapes are clearly fundamental to identities, performances, communities, and diasporas and provide additional methods to move cultural geography forward.

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With visual analysis alone, many nuances and histories within everyday life, such as the role of sound in televised events like the Super Bowl, or within diasporic community events of the Indian Tamil diaspora in Cleveland, Ohio might be overlooked. Soundscapes are crucial to providing more nuanced narratives of diasporas, communities, performances, and events, and remain critical tools of analysis. Without examining sound, many lived, embodied experiences of people’s daily lives can be represented as shallow. Purposeful distinction and use of specific soundscapes such as the Karnatak music tradition, Tamil filmi songs, or Tamil language-lead events are many ways in which a diaspora (re)creates or distinguishes particular narratives of identity and community. Comparably, sound used in films and televised events that spill over into everyday lives of Americans have meaning and effect as well. The claims that many scholars have made indeed hold true: the world is not just for looking – it is also meant for listening, and future cultural and human geographic work on sound and additional senses will continue to unveil the nuances of the complex human world. Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Language Crossing, Fluid Identities, and Spatial Mobility: Representing Language, Identity, and Place in an Amsterdam-Based Movie

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Nesrin El Ayadi and Virginie Mamadouh

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Movies as Vistas, Stereotypes as Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Language Crossing and Linguistic Ideologies in the Multilingual City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Language Crossing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Language Ideologies and Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Stereotypes in AMNM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Place Stereotypes: Amsterdam Oud-Zuid and De Bijlmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Two Lifeworlds in Two Neighborhoods: Male Sociolinguistic Adjustment and Female Inflexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 A Symmetrical Crossover After All? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter examines the relationships between language, identity, and place through an analysis of representations used in the Amsterdam urban movie Alleen maar nette mensen (Only Decent People). Stereotypes in movies are useful vistas into the ways language, identity, and place are perceived in Amsterdam, a Western European city characterized by increasing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity and increasing spatial socioeconomic segregation. The chapter deals more specifically with the flexibility in language use envisioned by sociolinguists in their conceptualization of linguistic crossing, which stresses individual agency in the creative use of linguistic repertoires. The chosen movie has been critiqued for its stereotypical representations of race and gender, but it also provides clues about the use of language as a resource to navigate through the city and N. El Ayadi (*) · V. Mamadouh Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_184

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to use for group belonging. The analysis shows that some individuals (including the main character) are represented to be better able at conforming or disaffiliating themselves from certain social environments, stereotypically situated in specific neighborhoods, by making use of languages, while others are less successful to do so. The capability of being flexible and to have control over one’s language use and identity and to use them strategically in different settings is, however, not so much tied to questions of race and ethnicity which are stereotypically imagined but more related to the socioeconomic status, the educational background of the characters, and the ability to cross socio-spatial boundaries in the city. Keywords

Linguistic diversity · Language crossing · Stereotypes · Movie analysis · Amsterdam

1

Introduction

In light of the growing linguistic diversity in multicultural cities, the ways in which individuals use language throughout their daily lives give way to many social clues that are important for the social relations in the city. Individual language use may, for instance, hint at where people are from and whom they identify themselves with. It is, therefore, an important marker for social similarity as well as difference. Additionally, among other features of identification, people make use of their linguistic skills to opt in or out of place as they move across the city. They may consciously or by accident use a specific language variety to conform or challenge the linguistic codes and norms at place. For instance, urban youngsters may use slang and nonstandard forms of the dominant language among peers in the urban periphery, but they will think twice to make use of this during a job interview in the city center if they want to be successful in acquiring the position they are applying. At the same time, they may use slang to challenge the status quo in the classroom or at home. Consequently, language use is not an individual property or a stable competence that should be studied as such but is rooted in everyday spaces of interaction and is produced in and through different social environments of the city (Blommaert et al. 2005; Valentine et al. 2008). Many cities have experienced internal and international migration flows, altering the urban linguistic makeup with more languages coexisting and influencing one another in the same space. Individual linguistic skills have also become more complex and can no longer be tied to traditional speech communities. Examples of language crossing, referring to “the use of language varieties associated with social or ethnic groups that the speaker does not normally ‘belong to’ (Rampton 1995, p. 14),” have become more widespread, and social categories such as ethnicity as well as the language linked to them cannot be regarded as discrete and homogenous. It is against the backdrop of the city and its wide variety of social spaces that language is being formed and adjusted and

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where individual linguistic skills and tools are picked up and (re)negotiated. The city provides its residents linguistic tools to be picked up in life which form the basis of everyday interaction with others. At the same time specific places in the city have certain taken-for-granted rules and norms as to which language varieties are legitimized and which ones are not and, therefore, have a significant effect on individual language use in these places. In this chapter we look deeper into questions of language, identity, and place by analyzing language use in an Amsterdam-based movie Alleen maar nette mensen (Only Decent People, hereafter AMNM) produced in 2012 and based on a semiautobiographic novel published in 2008 by Robert Vuijsje (Crijns 2012). In the movie the main character deploys linguistic strategies to navigate through different neighborhoods in the city. Attention will be paid to the way in which stereotypical representations of both groups and places serve as basis of linguistic practices. Movies are a useful resource to decipher dominant representations of groups, places, and languages. The analysis of these representations in this movie enables us to discuss language ideologies about the normative conventions of specific urban encounters. Van Gent and Jaffe (2016) have recently analyzed this same movie to criticize the way in which spatial imaginaries are used to normalize urban inequalities, with a specific focus on racial and postcolonial dichotomies. This chapter focuses instead on the stereotypical imaginaries of linguistic practices in multilingual Amsterdam. The daily use of language has often been neglected in the study of social diversity, while it remains an important feature of difference. Our main objective is, therefore, to shed light on the way individuals are portrayed deploying linguistic strategies to navigate the city. It is not our purpose to analyze the movie as (socio) linguists would traditionally do, that is, focusing on the lexical, grammatical, or pragmatic aspects of speech encounters. Instead, we are looking at the way language use is shown to affect social and spatial relationships in the city and how language use is portrayed as enabling or impeding feelings of belonging in different social environments within the city. The theoretical part of this chapter starts with the role of stereotypes in movies and how these may be useful indicators in studying social and linguistic diversity. As Kennedy and Lukinbeal (1997) have powerfully put out, “the cinematic is imbedded in our lifeworld – our day-to-day experiences of existence”– and, therefore, should be seen as a powerful tool of understanding the world and how stereotypes come about. In Sect. 2 we also give a brief account on the discussion that AMNM has sparked in the Netherlands and questions it has raised in relation to the stereotypes used in movies. Section 3 is about individual language use and the concept of linguistic crossing that challenges traditional notions of language crossing. The theoretical section ends with a discussion at the intersection of geography and language, focusing on language ideologies and the experience of being in place and out of place through the use of language. The analysis focuses on the ways in which stereotypical imaginaries of language, identity, and place are pictured in the movie AMNM. Section 5 concludes with a discussion about the use of stereotypes in movies in geographical research more broadly and in the study of linguistic crossing specifically. We will also set out how the ability of being flexible and to have control

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over one’s language use and identity are important and how to use them strategically is, however, not so much tied to questions of race and ethnicity. Rather, they appear to be more related to socioeconomic status and educational background and the personal ability to cross socio-spatial boundaries in the city.

2

Movies as Vistas, Stereotypes as Indicators

Movies have been used in political and cultural geographies to research identities and worldviews (Aitken and Dixon 2006; Dalby 2008; Lukinbeal and Zimmermann 2006; Madsen 2014; Shapiro 2009; Woodward 2016). They are useful resources to decipher dominant stereotypes and representations of groups, places, and languages and the analysis of these representations and also those tied to the use of language strategies in this movie. These enable us to discuss language ideologies about normative conventions of specific urban encounters. Stereotypes in movies are useful vistas into the ways language identity and place are practiced and how ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity, as well as segregation and encounters between different groups, are represented. As Reijnders (2010) has argued in relation to TV series: “By placing the story in a perspective that is recognizable to most spectators, the credibility of the series is raised across the board. The plots may be fictional, but the events could also actually have occurred – they could literally have taken place” (2010, p. 42). Like a TV series, moviemakers are also concerned by the credibility of their production; thus, they provide useful insights into the daily life in the city. The creation and maintenance of stereotyping happens throughout many situations, in, for example, “cognitive overload, group conflict, power differences, or a desire to justify the status quo” (Park et al. 2006). In popular culture, through media in fictional movies, stereotyping is used to quickly provide the audience with information about the characters and their expected behavior (Casey 2008; Park et al. 2006). Moviemakers use stereotypes to give the audience easily understandable clues of what is going on and what they can expect from the characters in a given situations. In comedies, stereotyping is typically used to make the public laugh (Bowes 1990; King 2002). However, it is difficult to decipher how these are received by the audience. Stereotypes can be seen as a result of existing social relations, but they may also be actively used to change social relations or create new ones (King 2002; Park et al. 2006). King (2002), for instance, mentions that racial stereotyping in comedy might reinforce these stereotypes but might also work as a parody and as such be an effective way to mock and question stereotyping itself and give members of the audience the possibility to criticize and reject specific stereotypes and stereotyping habits. On the contrary, members of the audience might, however, see their prejudice confirmed, even if the intention of the makers is to demonstrate how ridicule stereotypes are. In his account on the politics of humor, Ridanpää (2014) mentions that although there is a shared belief that humor directed at minorities is essentially insulting, it is also seen to ridicule the processes of “othering.” “Humor possesses a

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shared social purpose for fostering group cohesion and social bonding, as well as the creation and preservation of group identity” (Ridanpää 2014, p. 713). When stereotypes are used in comedy, it remains, therefore, difficult to estimate what effect they have on the audience: do they laugh at them or with them? (Bowes 1990). Even if some people laugh at the stereotypes being used, many laugh with them – even if some members of the audience reject the portrayed stereotypes and see them through. Others will hold the stereotypes as the truth, and their visibility reinforces what they think about social relations and about environments and about specific groups and specific places. Moreover, there is an additional tricky side associated with the use of stereotyping in comedy. Some members of the audience may feel offended or uncomfortable as they might feel that they are the center of mockery. By using comedy as a specific genre, moviemakers and members of the general public would argue that these are unjustified feelings and that those who felt mocked or hurt have missed the point of the movie. In this light, comedy has an alibi to use stereotypes. In the words of Park et al. (2006, p. 160): The nature of the genre and the comedic performance dictate that audiences should not take stereotypes seriously because they are intentionally humorous and that taking offense to stereotypic representations simply signals misreading of the filmmaker’s intent.

The movie chosen for this analysis has sparked a large debate about the use of stereotypes as it touches upon popular representations and ideas of linguistic and ethnic diversity in the city. The movie is situated in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, which is, along with many other Western European cities, a city characterized by a strong and diverse migrant population. It is based on a semiautobiographic novel by Robert Vuijsje which was first published in 2008 and won a prestigious award (“Gouden Uil”). Some have celebrated the book for its accurate description of Amsterdam’s multicultural landscape – “Robert Vuijsje knows all the names, places, and ‘niches’ of Amsterdam and describes them with speed and flair” (Ruyters 2008) and “[he] is able to step into environments that most readers only know from the outside” (Etty 2009) while “not being pretentiously politically correct about it” (Marbe 2009). Others have criticized AMNM for stimulating “colonial sexism” (Nzume 2009) and reaffirming persistent stereotypes about the neighborhood De Bijlmer and its inhabitants (Pronk 2009; Verdooren 2009). Robert Vuijsje himself stressed that the book shows that within a few kilometers one can find a totally different world where different cultures, lifestyles, and music preferences exist without the average Dutch person knowing of it, while at the same time he stated that the story is merely fictional and that everybody might find something in the book to feel upset about (Etty 2009). He further claims that the story centers around a confused character and points out that those who feel discriminated are equally confused (Modderkolk 2009). Since then Robert Vuijsje has published weekly interviews in de Volkskrant (one of the main national newspapers) from 2012 to 2018 on the role of ethnic origins and national background in Dutch society. Of interest is that the discussion below also sparked debates about the very purpose of novels, literature, and movies. Often it was pointed out that

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individuals who felt offended by the novel forgot that it should not be taken too seriously – in line with Park et al. (2006). When the movie was released, Quinsy Gario, who is a well-known public figure in public debates around racism and racial stereotyping in the Netherlands, additionally pointed out the damaging effect of stereotypes used in movies. He stated the following: While the book still gave an option for own critical reflection, the movie does not give you time to think about humiliating, violating and dehumanizing scenes that have been laced together. By placing this under the heading of humour, the audience does not get anything showed but so many violent instances on the humanness of black people, packed in light entertainment. (Gario 2012)

Gario points out that the movie, more than the novel, may have a stronger stereotyping effect as the story loses depth and reflection and the stereotypes become fueled with images and sounds. It also raises the question about the accountability of authors and moviemakers: to which extent can they make use of stereotypes when it is humorous, and when does it start openly hurting people’s feelings? In their analysis of the movie, Van Gent and Jaffe (2016) expose various spatial imaginaries that are used in the movie to normalize urban inequalities, with a specific focus on racial, colonial, and gender dichotomies. They argue that “the film presents the city’s socio-economic disparities through a culturally essentialist lens that relies on raced and gendered clichés and references a spatial imaginary that reflects and reproduces the city’s hierarchies of place and value” (2016, p. 568). Although we reckon that many stereotypes are indeed used in the movie, we do argue that they are not as straightforward as they might appear. Leaving aside the open-ended question whether the audience laughs at the stereotypes or with them – which has not been considered by Van Gent and Jaffe (2016) – remains an important question, and we argue that the movie itself also provides images and clues that counteract the stereotypes it portrays. As we shall see, at the end of the movie, a third character seems to break with the stereotypical imaginaries that have been shown throughout the movie about the black community in general and the black woman specifically. However, before dealing with place and linguistic stereotypes portrayed in the movie, the next section provides a theoretical backdrop to individual language use and its relation to language ideologies at place.

3

Language Crossing and Linguistic Ideologies in the Multilingual City

Unlike other accounts of the movie, this analysis focuses on the way in which languages are being represented and how they are stereotypically used to signify crossings or intersections through different social environments. When referring to languages, we do not refer to the analysis of written text or scripts (e.g., Rogers 2010) or discourse and narratives on places (e.g., Daniels and Lorimer 2012; Davis 2004; Keighren and Withers 2012; Rickly 2017; Smith and Foote 2017).

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Rather this chapter focuses on linguistic diversity in the city and the use of individual linguistic strategies to accommodate for different social environments. Chriost and Thomas (2008, p. 2) argue that there needs to be more scholarly awareness on linguistic diversity in cities as: language remains a potent marker of difference, with linguistic difference often elided with, or subsumed within, ethnic-racial differences. [. . .] Currently, a heightened attention to cultural difference, of which linguistic diversity is a central feature, is re-shaping the social fabric of cities of all sizes and in all parts of the world.

Studying language use in this context is important as it has two social functions that at the same time both foster and impede social cohesion: “on the one hand, language is a means of communication that makes it possible to interact with others; on the other hand, it can be used to strengthen relationships within a group that shares the same language and thereby to intensify that group’s segregation from others” (Mamadouh and El Ayadi 2016, p. 62). Language serves both as a bridge and a wall and is important to account for both when studying social relationships in cities. There has been some work dedicated on social diversity in cities and language as discourses, but as Chriost and Thomas (2008, p. 4) have stated, “what is much less well understood is the specific impact of city life or, perhaps, ‘cityness’ on the range of language behaviours, practices and attitudes of speakers” and the ways in which the city produces and reproduces certain language practices and behaviors. By focusing on stereotypes of language use in relation to identity and places, we try to broaden the scope of research that has been dedicated to decipher how social diversity is played out in the multiethnic or super diverse city.

3.1

Language Crossing

Traditionally, sociolinguists have been preoccupied with investigating the language use of so-called speech communities. Through this lens, individual language use was seen to be attached to their communal background and determined by either socioeconomic class, ethnicity, gender, or other social categories (Labov 1966, 1972a, b). Despite its popularity, this framework has been challenged by recent scholarship in sociolinguistics, especially because in super diverse contexts in cities there are many instances where so-called language crossing can be observed. These language crossings challenge the notion that individuals are tied to their speech community when it comes to their language use. Language crossing occurs when one passes the normative boundaries of the speech community they have been socialized in and display linguistic use normally linked to “others” (Rampton 1995). For example, the diminishing use of grammatical genis thatder in Dutch is often accredited to immigrants and their descendants (Cornips 2008; Nortier and Dorleijn 2008), especially to youngsters with a Turkish and Moroccan background, who are seen to sometimes mistakenly, but often purposely, use the article “de” instead of “het” (marking the masculine or the feminine gender, respectively, the neutral gender in Dutch

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grammar). Also of note is that at times, this is also used by individuals who are not necessarily associated with these linguistic varieties, such as the “white autochthonous urban youths” who are usually associated with the standard form of the dominant language. In this case, an ethnolect – defined by Clyne as “varieties of a language that mark speakers as members of ethnic groups who originally used another language or a distinctive variety” (Clyne 2000, p. 86) (like immigrants) – is used to express a chosen lifestyle. It is also often associated with being tough, streetwise, and masculine (Cutler 2008). Conversely, when adolescents with a migrant background do not use the ethnolect they are expected to use, they are sometimes complimented on speaking the dominant language “without having an accent.” Clearly, individuals maintain stereotypical ideas about people and the languages they are supposed to use, which is often tied to broader social categories with which they are associated. Yet this example shows that individuals can surpass these images linked to their use of language and cross into linguistic behavior normally associated with others. Linguistic varieties are not only often imagined to be tied to ethnicity and citizenship but also to social class. This was used in one of the first movies produced in and on Amsterdam at a time where ethnic and racial diversity was limited: Pygmalion. This Dutch translation of the famous play by G.B. Shaw depicted the life of a young working-class flower girl who gets transformed to a posh lady by extensively working on her linguistic skills. The movie portrays how social mobility is tied to learning different varieties while at the same time also learning the codes and conventions of other social environments. It shows that learning these codes and conventions is full of power issues as certain ways of speaking are considered less useful than others and that “getting rid” of certain ways of speaking even helps social mobility. It also shows that linguistic varieties can be learned, either through the means of standard education at school or, as the flower girl in Pygmalion, through a crucial social contact. Some sociolinguists have now gone further in stressing the role of individual agency in linguistic use which sets the individual away from their communal background and focuses rather more strongly on the speaker. Wei (2011), for instance, stresses “creativity” and “criticality” as being important in the investigation of individual language use in the multilingual and multiethnic city which he specifically referred to as translanguaging. Creativity refers to “the ability to choose between following and flouting the rules and norms of behaviour, including the use of language” and criticality “to the ability to use available evidence appropriately, systematically and insightfully to inform considered views of cultural, social and linguistic phenomena, to question and problematize received wisdom, and to express views adequately through reasoned responses to situations” (Wei 2011, p. 1223). In general, this contrasts with the “routinized” way of speaking discussed above. It implies instead a greater awareness of languages and broad opportunities to engage critically with one’s own language use and to use languages strategically to achieve certain social effects. Consequently, this framework underlines individual agency in language use, transcends social categories, and detaches individuals from communal background, as it allows individuals to choose whom they want to

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be and what language to use to perform that identity. Wei (2011) builds his argument further by showing how the multiethnic and super diverse city in particular enhances criticality and creativity of its citizens as follows: Whilst rapid globalization has made everyday life in late modernity look increasingly routinized, repetitive and monotonous [. . .] the enhanced contacts between people of diverse backgrounds and traditions provide new opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Individuals are capable of responding to the historical and present conditions critically. They consciously construct and constantly modify their socio-cultural identities and values through social practices such as translanguaging. (Wei 2011, p. 1224)

In this chapter we will show that the ability for individuals to use language critically and creatively is not evenly distributed; some individuals are better aware of their linguistic capabilities and remain more successful in using language in a creative manner. Some people may learn different languages or varieties of languages through the educational system, while others may pick this up from contacts living in other social environments throughout the city. Our interest lies mostly in the latter, since we want to analyze how individual language use is also informed by the geographical composition of the city, specifically exacerbated by urban processes such as segregation and concentration. These themes are often neglected in research. The opposite is rather true in geographical research: language use is often undermined and undervalued, while this is crucial for understanding how social relations are played out in the city. As we will show in the next section, language use and language crossing in specific situations are always informed by the socio-spatial content: individuals do not use different languages or varieties whenever they want to and wherever they want to but are either motivated or discouraged by place-specific conditions.

3.2

Language Ideologies and Place

Other important issues that have to be addressed when dealing with freedom and control over individual linguistic practices are the ideological consequences and questions of power as they are related to language practices. With language there is always meaning involved. Coupland (2007) contends that “sociolinguistic resources are not just linguistic forms or varieties themselves, allied to competence in using them. They are forms or varieties imbued with potential for social meaning” (2007, p. 203). Despite the fact that people can challenge normative conventions, these are generalized associations to different varieties, such as “standard” and “nonstandard” forms of any given language, and some ways of speaking are socially valued more than others and, therefore, attributed more power than others. In contrast to varieties associated with lower social classes, ethnic groups, and peripheral regions, standard forms of the dominant language are institutionally validated and seen as a proxy for education, culture instruction, and decency, while vernacular speech is often attributed to lower socioeconomic status, has less prestige,

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and, in certain situations, even entails social stigmatization (Coupland 2009). This implies that in order to get ahead in life, to be socially mobile, it might not be wise to be able to speak only vernacular varieties and have no ability in “standard” forms, as they are not useful for upward social mobility as it is those standard variety of the national or foreign language that enable success at school or in the labor markets. These ideological constraints should also be taken into account when dealing with questions about individual agency in individual linguistic practices, as these constraints determine what is considered normal and deviant behavior. Place is an important variable when it comes to language ideologies. As Cresswell (1996, p. 11) has suggested, “the role of the geographic environment – the power of place – in cultural and social processes can provide another layer in the understanding and demystifying of the forces that effect and manipulate our everyday behavior.” Language ideologies are played out in places and people’s behavior follows from interpreting these places. Although people can interpret places differently, there are “favored, normal, accepted readings and discouraged, heretical, abnormal readings – dominant readings and subordinate readings” (Cresswell 1996, p. 13). In other words, some will feel more compelled than others to adapt their speech to the places they are in. At times though, people will, either intentionally or not, show “abnormal” practices that challenge these taken-for-granted conventions. For instance, it is only when someone starts speaking a vernacular language that a job interviewer will be aware of the implicit language conventions of the company. It is exactly this “inappropriate” practice at this particular place at this particular moment, a practice which is “out of place,” that tells us a lot about the place and, conversely, about how the place helps to shape behavior. This means that even if individuals have wide linguistic resources at their disposal, language ideologies greatly shape the actual linguistic practices in situ. Although it is doubtful that there is a straightforward relation between social categories and individual language use, the individual linguistic repertoire is made out of limited languages and varieties that have been picked up earlier in life. Moreover, there are powerful, space-specific language ideologies at work that determine language use. Although people may play with the languages they know and challenge normative conventions of what is proper in a specific place and what is not, they first have to be aware of these conventions. An important way of learning about these conventions is direct experience but also through media that produces and reproduces popular representations of what is expected and normal behavior in specific places and what is deviant. Therefore, popular culture is a useful resource to investigate these normative linguistic conventions and the ways in which individuals use their linguistic repertoire to challenge these conventions.

4

Stereotypes in AMNM

The movie AMNM depicts the coming of age of David Samuels, a twentysomething young man from a prosperous Jewish family. It is situated in Amsterdam, a city characterized by a strong and diverse migrant population (Crul et al. 2013;

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Amsterdam

D

C

V M

Oud-Zuid C D M V

Central Station Dam Square Museumplein Vondelpark

De Bijlmer

Fig. 1 Neighborhoods Oud-Zuid and De Bijlmer situated in Amsterdam

Kloosterman 2014; Nijman 1999), as many other cities in Western Europe. The main character lives in Amsterdam Oud-Zuid which one is of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city (Fig. 1). As the son of an editor-in-chief of an intellectual news show, he is regularly surrounded with his father’s bourgeois friends, white middleage men, who discuss political and academic issues over glasses of wine. The first scenes of the movie show the rising tension between David and his family, girlfriend, and friends. Since David has decided not to enroll at university – in his circle the only logical step after finishing secondary school – he increasingly feels misunderstood and even excluded. This “out-of-placeness” is exacerbated by the fact that due to his physical appearance, he is often taken for a “Moroccan,” i.e., the descendant of Moroccan immigrants, and, therefore, “not really Dutch.” Indeed, his musing about identity and his uneasiness with his Dutchness is more related to his “Moroccan” looks than to his Jewish origins. He breaks up with his (Jewish) high school sweetheart to search of his true self. For that journey, he goes on a quest for another love – a quest for a black, Surinamese woman from, for him, unknown and racialized territory of an Amsterdam peripheral district known for its modernist high-rise “De Bijlmer” (see Fig. 1).

4.1

Place Stereotypes: Amsterdam Oud-Zuid and De Bijlmer

In order to understand language crossing in this movie, we need to begin with an analysis of the social environments and place-specific conditions where events take place. The movie portrays a clear division between the lifeworlds of David and

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Rowanda, and throughout the movie it shows that integrating the two worlds can be a difficult and tricky task. David is raised in a peaceful and orderly neighborhood. The movie opens with views of the public space in Oud-Zuid, marked by playing children, wanderers, and attractive apartments. Oud-Zuid is a late nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century extension, built south of the main urban park for the higher class in the city. Despite the rapid gentrification of the inner city and surrounding working-class neighborhoods, it remains one of the poshest neighborhoods. The scene in the movie immediately sets out what kind of people to expect in this place, namely, white middle-to-upper-class “Amsterdammers.” This is also stressed by David in a voice-over when an image of Oud-Zuid is shown: There are no so-called allochthones people living in Amsterdam Oud-Zuid. There are no blacks, no Turks and surely no Moroccans. As my mother always says: There are only decent people in Amsterdam Oud-Zuid.

In Dutch formal and informal classification, “allochthones” is the label used to talk about migration. Technically allochthones are people born abroad or with one parent born abroad. The statistics generally distinguish Western from non-Western allochthones. Recently, the Dutch Scientific Advisory Council announced that they would no longer make use of this term, because “the dichotomy of ‘allochthonous’ versus ‘autochthonous’ and ‘Western’ versus ‘non-Western’ is not appropriate for contemporary issues regarding immigration and integration.” Now, they argue, it is more appropriate to use categories such as “citizens with a Dutch background” versus “citizens with a migration background,” which, for some, is still not a sufficient enough of a category to use to address certain groups of the population. The voice-over consequently directs the viewer to consider the link between race, ethnicity, and decency: black individuals and individuals from migrant backgrounds cannot be “decent” and are intrinsically different from the people from Oud-Zuid. It produces a sharp divide between “us in this neighborhood” and “them in their neighborhood.” De Bijlmer is portrayed as a racialized place, a place where people from Surinamese background live in large high-modernist high-rise apartment blocks. This neighborhood was built in the 1970s in the polder Bijlmermeer that became an exclave of the municipality of Amsterdam. It is part of the city’s high-modernist high-rise extension plan to build high-quality housing in a green environment to replace the poor-quality dwellings in the old city. Initially, these large-scale apartment blocks were built by housing associations targeting both the working class and the middle class. But due to the independence of Suriname in 1975 and the migration of Surinamese choosing to remain Dutch, Surinamese households moved in great numbers into this area where dwellings were available when they arrived in the European part of the Netherlands. Up until recently the neighborhood had been stigmatized for diverse social problems: high vacancy rates, poverty, dysfunctional families, crime, and drugs in the early 1980s. This image is still associated with the neighborhood. The neighborhoods in the movie, Oud-Zuid and De Bijlmer, are thus

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not only each other’s opposite in terms of sociocultural status but their physical makeup differs greatly too. The first time that David travels to this neighborhood by metro, he wonders – again in voice-over: The metro connects the inner-city with De Bijlmer, a neighbourhood which has been built the furthest away from the inner-city. Why do all these black Amsterdammers live here?

This question is not answered; instead the movie follows David’s exploration of what makes this environment exotic, or at least different, and, maybe more importantly, his attempts to discover the spirit of the place and his quest for a social context in which he feels at home.

4.2

Two Lifeworlds in Two Neighborhoods: Male Sociolinguistic Adjustment and Female Inflexibility

There is not only a great contrast between the two social environments that David and Rowanda inhabit; they are quite different persons to begin with. Many stereotypes in the story are based on the distinction between the white bourgeois male and the black lower-class woman (see Van Gent and Jaffe 2016). It is the male who goes into the racialized territory to find himself a clearly defined woman – black, big, and hypersexual. This sets out the differences between the two: David, the “white” bourgeois man, who travels to the margins of the city, with a clear objective in mind, and the female counterpart who falls for him without hesitation. Rowanda chooses to date David because she hopes to avoid dating promiscuous black men in her surroundings. Eventually, she breaks up with him when he becomes too integrated and becomes similarly promiscuous himself. These differences between the two main characters are further strengthened when the linguistic differences between them are taken into account. David is depicted as a young man who is capable of navigating between different worlds and adjusting his identity and his language use to the context he finds himself in. He can speak both the appropriate urban slang (highly influenced by Sranan Tongo – the language of Suriname – and other immigrant languages) and standard Dutch. He is therefore able to communicate in different social environments. By learning/knowing/practicing different varieties of the Dutch language, he is shown as being able to connect and disconnect from different social environments as he wishes and, especially in the context of his family surroundings, to play with his linguistic repertoire to challenge established practices. In De Bijlmer – where everybody seems to speak exclusively urban slang – he uses many nonstandard features. Despite some funny unintended linguistic mistakes when he first enters De Bijlmer, indicating some kind of socialization, he is able to gradually pick up “the language of the street”: he starts using the same words but also the same postures and the same stories (e.g., objectifying

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women and boosting about cheating them). By contrast, in Oud-Zuid – where everybody seems to speak standard Dutch and many of David’s peers understand urban slang, but never use it – he rebels by first dating someone his parents do not necessarily accept and then also by crossing into another linguistic variety. He does so to show that he has gained access to community life in De Bijlmer and feels at home there. He also does this to demonstrate both street-wisdom and masculinity. For instance, to show how he has become an expert on the racialized urban outskirt and on black females specifically, he speaks to his friends in a mix of standard Dutch and features of urban slang. David seems able to cross into another linguistic variety whenever he wants to and to be consciously making use of this code, which is in line with what Wei (2011) has termed “creativity” and “criticality.” David’s ability to be adaptive and at time to challenge normative conventions is in stark contrast to Rowanda’s predicament. She seems inflexible and therefore confined within the boundaries of her social environment – unable to use a different language variety than the urban slang she usually speaks, even when she might wish to do so. While David is switching between varieties, she seems unable to do so and is, therefore, unable to cross sociocultural boundaries and seems “locked” in De Bijlmer. In the movie, she only leaves her neighborhood once, to attend the birthday party of David’s mother. This results in Rowanda feeling out of place, not being able to decipher the social codes of this social environment (i.e., that of a white bourgeois birthday). The reverse happens when David’s parents visit Rowanda’s mother and have an awkward dinner in front of the television, something they deem improper. The conversations between them stall as they do not find a common ground or a common topic of interest and ask each other inappropriate questions. The only consensus among their parents is that they find them to form an odd and unlikely couple. This underlines that their lifeworlds are difficult to connect, let alone merge into a common universe. Their relationship seems predestined to fail; it is not only language use itself that makes it a tricky situation, but language use highlights the difference between the two worlds even more.

4.3

A Symmetrical Crossover After All?

During one of his unhappy visits to his parents, David meets a young black Surinamese woman who attends a gathering of David’s father. Rita is an intern of David’s father, and she is studying for a degree in sociology with a minor in media and culture studies. She is perfectly able to voice and defend her opinions on Israeli and Middle Eastern politics among David’s father’s intellectual friends. This triggers a reaction from David in which he accuses her to be a “bounty” (Dutch urban slang which literally refers to being like the chocolate and coconut candy bar, black on the outside but white on the inside, and figuratively to take over white traits). In that context, he clearly uses a feature of another linguistic variety to show Rita that he understands her background and to tell her how she should behave. It generally takes being part of the group to accuse someone of being a race traitor. Of course, Rita does not accept his critique from him. Instead of having a white youngster telling her

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how she should behave, she challenges him on what she sees as his turf: a debate on the state of Israel. This double stereotype (discussing Israeli politics as intellectual pastime par excellence and a dividing topic between different communities in the cities Dutch Jews siding stereotypically with Israel and Dutch Muslims with the Palestinians) contrasts with an earlier encounter between David and Rowanda. At that earlier occasion, David was explaining his family’s tragedy in Auschwitz, but Rowanda did not seem interested; she did not respond to this issue and instead talked about needing to pay a visit to her hair dresser. On the contrary Rita is shown to be knowledgeable and perfectly able to discuss this tragedy on a higher political level. Rita shows that educational background is also important in being able to use language strategically and that language can be learned through education but at the same time needs to be complemented by spatial mobility. It is only at the end of the movie that the two meet each other again, once David has failed: he has been kicked out of his parents’ house and he has been kicked out by Rowanda too, for being no more faithful than other men in her surroundings (i.e., not behaving as the reliable white man she was welcoming into her life). He works in a fast-food restaurant in the inner city – a precarious job stereotypically associated with lower-class migrant youngsters catering stereotypically lower-class customers. David recognizes Rita, although she is dressed entirely differently than during their first encounter at his parents’ house, and enters the restaurant shouting in urban slang and in Sranan Tongo to a group of men. She now looks much more like Rowanda, dressed in a short miniskirt showing off her lower back tattoo and wearing conspicuous golden necklaces. This all makes her more attractive to him, as a possible replacement for Rowanda. Moreover, she also introduces herself under her real name, Sherida. She explains him that she used the name Rita (which has, unlike her real name, a more universal connotation) to get the internship at his father’s newspaper company. It amazes David that, just like himself, Sherida is able to be flexible and adjust to different social environments and that she is also attracted by both worlds and is able to navigate between these different contexts. Like him she has a fluid identity. This shared adjustability and their flexibility allow for a fruitful relationship, and the movie has a happy ending, with both of them paying a visit to David’s family, where Sherida is warmly welcomed, suggesting that culture is the issue, not skin color. And in that endeavor, language and the ability to behave appropriately linguistically are key to social mobility and intercultural engagement.

5

Conclusion

Fiction movies are useful resources to decipher popular stereotypes and representations of groups, places, and languages. Kennedy and Lukinbeal (1997, p. 315) have argued that “the cinematic is imbedded in our lifeworld – our day-to-day experiences of existence” and therefore movies provide powerful tools to understand the world and popular stereotypes and representations. Stereotypes in movies are useful vistas into the ways language identity and place are practiced and how ethnic, cultural, and

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linguistic diversity, as well as segregation and encounters between different groups, are represented. The urban movie Alleen maar nette mensen has inspired many debates in the Netherlands about the stereotypes and the representations it deployed in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender, but language has, as with most urban movies, not been considered in the analysis, even though it provides important tools for understanding how social diversity works in the multiethnic and multilingual city. Especially in the urban context where a heighted mobility has taken place, the linguistic makeup of the city has become more complex with more languages and varieties coexisting in the same place and influencing each other. Individual language use has also become more complex and can no longer – if ever – be tied to traditional speech communities but focuses rather more strongly on the speaker, with speakers being more aware of their linguistic skills and more creative. Examples of language crossing have become more widespread that surpass linguistic boundaries linked to social categories such as ethnicity. By focusing on cinematic representations of language use in the movie AMNM, we have shed light on the interplay of language, identity, and place. Its stereotypical representations of linguistic diversity are insightful. They show how the characters’ use of language is embedded in a specific context and how individual agency is not equally shared. Additionally, but important for geographers, learning different language varieties and different social codes and crossing them are linked to crossing spatial boundaries. Linguistic crossing, creativity, and flexibility in language use are linked to physical mobility through different places and in different social environments. It is in these specific environments where people learn to detect language ideologies and enhance their awareness of normative conventions that they may then chose to endorse or to challenge. This critical awareness of language (as just one of the many tools for identification) is not equally shared and seems limited for those who do not regularly cross spatial and social boundaries and be exposed to other groups. Lastly, urban movies raise interesting questions for further research, especially regarding the differential perception of the geographical imaginaries associated with different language varieties in different locations in culturally and linguistically diverse cities as Amsterdam. Acknowledgments This research received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No. 613344 (Project MIME).

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Alyson L. Greiner, Shireen Hyrapiet, Verenise Calzadillas Macias, and Jaryd Hinch

Contents 1 2 3 4

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geography, Vision, and Visual Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Regional and Country Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Depictions of Non-Westerners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In 1993, the publication of Reading National Geographic brought academic attention to one of the world’s most widely circulated popular magazines. The

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. A. L. Greiner (*) Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Hyrapiet Geography and Anthropology, Houston Community College, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] V. Calzadillas Macias Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Hinch Ponca City, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_185

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authors, anthropologists Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, produced a book that was pathbreaking not only for its interrogation of the “work” and “power” of attractive photographs but also for its insights into how National Geographic is produced and the relations among photographers, writers, and editors. While Lutz and Collins focused their image analysis on the period from 1950 until 1986, this chapter attempts to extend their study. It begins by examining the topics and regions covered in National Geographic from 1990 through 2015. It also incorporates a visual analysis of a sample of the images in the feature articles appearing in the magazine during this time period. The conceptual framework for this chapter draws on representation and visuality, including the ways that photographs create and reflect certain ways of seeing. When Lutz and Collins wrote, globalization was, comparatively speaking, just gathering steam. Thus, a guiding concern involves determining the extent to which the magazine’s coverage of countries, regions, and non-Westerners has since changed. Overall, this study provides considerable support for the work of Lutz and Collins. Major findings call in to question their characterization of National Geographic’s depiction of non-Westerners as “gentle natives” and point to the ongoing use of images in the magazine that depict the world as a predominantly male place. Keywords

National Geographic · Visual language · Content analysis · Representation · Non-Western world

1

Introduction

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what has National Geographic been saying about different regions of the world, its people, and places? What is the visual language of the magazine? For more than a century, National Geographic has brought its subscribers stories that enable vicarious travel and has, in many ways, been the face of the National Geographic Society (NGS). Established in Washington, D.C., in 1888, NGS produced the first issue of the magazine later that same year. The magazine was the result of the intertwining of several different developments, including the professionalization of academic disciplines as well as scholarly and scientific organizations. Contemporary federal initiatives related to the work of the US Geological Survey and the use of maps to take stock of the country’s territorial extent also provided an impetus for the Society’s formation. Although the American Geographical Society (AGS) pre-dated NGS by 37 years, it was headquartered in New York and did not publish a journal. When the AGS and NGS were founded, the academic discipline of geography in the United States was just beginning to take shape. Full-fledged departments of geography did not emerge until the turn of the nineteenth century. Geology, in contrast, had a much more established disciplinary infrastructure. The Association of American Geologists, among geology’s earliest professional organizations in the United States, dates to 1840. More significantly, a reorganization of this society created

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the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1848 with a geology and geography section. Membership was open to academics as well as non-scientists (AAAS 1881). The latter had to be nominated and approved by a majority of the members. The US government’s creation of the Geological Survey in 1879, precursor to the US Geological Survey, drew attention to the mapping and inventorying of national lands. By the time John Wesley Powell was appointed USGS director in 1881, he was well known for his expeditions in parts of the American West, including the area that would become known as the Grand Canyon. Perhaps not coincidentally, Powell served as president of the AAAS in 1888, and he was a member of the Geological Society of America, which was established in New York that same year. Additionally, Powell was one of the founding members of NGS and among the most eminent. In some ways, NGS was ahead of its time or at least ahead of the discipline it was representing and promoting. The absence of advanced study and training in geography at colleges and universities in the United States also meant that there was a dearth of credentialed scholars. Although NGS was established as a scientific society, its founders realized that the growth of its membership would be constrained unless it admitted those “gentleman scientists” who were not professionally trained. From the outset, both the Society and the magazine sought to build a wider, more popular appeal. Long the hallmark of the Society, National Geographic was created to advance the Society’s mission “to increase and diffuse geographical knowledge” (Hubbard 1888, p. 3). The original name of the journal was The National Geographic Magazine. It continued as The National Geographic until February 1960, but since March of that year, it has been simply National Geographic. When first published in 1888, National Geographic was an occasional publication. Within a decade, however, it had become a regular monthly publication. Color was used only sparingly at first. In the second issue of the magazine, colored meteorological maps accompanied one of the articles. The following year some drawings and a map supplement were published in color. Although National Geographic published its first photograph in 1896, color photographs began to appear between 1913 and 1919. The ability to make use of the cutting-edge technology of the time was a source of pride for the magazine and was used in promotional efforts. The table of contents, which ran on the front cover, regularly announced the number of illustrations in each article and emphasized the inclusion of color photographs as well. Indeed, the inclusion of color photographs was celebrated for its educational value (Gayer and Williams 1926, p. 309) (Fig. 1). The origins of the magazine and its mission help explain the selection of content and the approach to that content. Indeed, the magazine’s popular appeal has long been a sore point for many academic geographers (Johnston 2009). This owes in part to the fact that National Geographic seems more interested in entertainment and has long emphasized the unique, the captivating, and the exotic. In their masterful analysis of the magazine, its production, and use of photography, Lutz and Collins (1993) demonstrate that the images in the magazine avoid difficult or controversial topics such as war or conflict and create a contrast between traditional and modern

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Fig. 1 The National Geographic Magazine, November and December 1919 edition covers. The covers include the table of contents and list the number of color illustrations or color pages. (Source: National Geographic Virtual Library: National Geographic Magazine Archive, 1888–1994, from https://www.gale.com/c/national-geographic-magazine-archive-1888-1994, accessed September 11, 2018)

societies. Lutz and Collins studied images in the magazine from 1950 to 1986. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the extent to which more recent photographs in National Geographic repeat these practices or diverge from them. How, or to what extent, has the visual language of the magazine changed since Lutz and Collins conducted their study?

2

Geography, Vision, and Visual Language

Languages consist of symbols whose meanings are agreed upon. Mainstream society privileges languages that are spoken and written, but individuals who are visually impaired often also rely on tactile languages, and those who are hearing impaired may use sign languages, which are one kind of visual language. Adopting an expansive view of language reminds us that illustrations, photographs, and maps – all sorts of visual images – also function as a kind of visual language. Visual images communicate and create meaning through representation. That is, the images not only show us how something is or what it is like; they also come to stand for or symbolize more abstract ideas. In much the same way that one can speak of a

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language of dress or fashion, it is also possible to identify a visual language used in National Geographic. Because of the way photographs represent people, places, objects, and abstract ideas, it can be said that they contribute to the “. . .production of social knowledge” (Hall 1997, p. 42; italics in original). Photographs communicate meaning not only through what they portray but also through their size, composition, and placement within a layout. Long before the photograph, however, maps, sketches, illustrations, and paintings performed much of the work involved in the visual representation of the world’s people and places. These various media provided ways to depict and inventory geographic space, as well as to assert or contest territorial claims. Maps gained currency as both authoritative and legal documents and have been integrally connected to politics, power, and realism. Sketches and illustrations supplemented the documentary record of places and people. Painting, specifically landscape painting, came into its own with the adoption of linear perspective. The ability of linear perspective to render a two-dimensional canvas into a space that appears to have depth is also strongly associated with realism. As Denis Cosgrove (1985) reminds us, landscape painting developed its own visual language in conjunction with the use of linear perspective. Linear perspective cedes control to the viewer in seemingly paradoxical ways. On the one hand, the viewer takes control of the scene through visual appropriation of it, which is facilitated by the viewer standing apart from the scene. On the other hand, looking at the scene also enables the viewer to engage with it and imaginatively participate or interact with it: Landscape is thus a way of seeing, a composition and structuring of the world so that it may be appropriated by a detached, individual spectator to whom an illusion of order and control is offered through the composition of space according to the certainties of geometry. (Cosgrove 1985, p. 55)

As Cosgrove argues, the concept of landscape became a visual ideology in the way that it encoded certain ideas about power, control, order, and social harmony. In a similar manner, it can be argued that National Geographic has developed a visual ideology.

3

Methods

This study began with construction of a searchable database of the articles appearing in National Geographic between 1990 and 2015. For each article, the database included the place or region of the world covered, the number of images, captions, maps, diagrams, size of images, and whether the images were black-andwhite or color, as well as other basic details about each article. In the time period studied, NGS published more than 1,900 feature articles in the magazine with a total of more than 27,500 images. These data were used to track broad trends in the coverage of places over time.

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A sample of the images in National Geographic from 1990 to 2015 was extracted for visual content analysis. Lutz and Collins (1993) treated all regions except North America and Europe as non-Western. Thus, places in Latin America and the Caribbean were classified as non-Western for the purposes of this study. Following the example of Lutz and Collins, articles covering Western regions, including North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, were initially eliminated; however, certain exceptions became necessary. Within North America, articles on Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada were retained if they focused on indigenous peoples. The same criteria were also applied to Australia and Russia. After these adjustments, the study database contained 726 articles. Every third article was selected, but a number of those did not contain images of non-Westerners, so they were eliminated, leaving a sample size of 183 articles. The next step involved determining how best to select the photographs that would be used for coding. Lutz and Collins randomly selected only one photo from each article containing images of non-Westerners, but they do not explain how they did this. Rather than selecting one photo to represent all the photos in an article, in this study multiple photographs from each article were selected using a systematic method based on the total number of photos in each article showing non-Westerners. For articles that had one to five photos of non-Westerners, one photo was randomly chosen from the article. If the article had six to ten photos of non-Westerners, two photos were selected randomly from the article, and so on, up to a maximum of four photos from a single article. Random numbers were then generated for each article such that the random number became the number of the photo selected. That is, a random number of five would be the fifth photo in the article with a non-Westerner in it. Occasionally the random number would lead to a photograph in which the face or faces of the people were not visible. In those instances, another random number was generated and the process repeated until a photograph was selected where the face or faces were visible. In the end, these methods yielded a sample size of 363 photos that were used for coding. All content analysis employs a system of coding. Simply stated, content analysis involves documenting what is present as well as what is absent. It resembles a kind of dissection, whereby the “content” of a text or image is examined, coded, and counted. Codes represent the smallest unit of analysis. According to Gillian Rose (2007, p. 65), the codes should be “exhaustive, exclusive, and enlightening.” For this study, the codes that Lutz and Collins used were generally replicated as closely as possible. Although Lutz and Collins provide their codes in an appendix to their book, those codes are incomplete. For example, they list the generic code “group size” in their appendix, but they do not clarify the specific criteria used to distinguish small versus large groups. By carefully re-reading their book, it is possible to reconstruct some of the specific criteria. In this way, it was determined that Lutz and Collins distinguished between groups they considered “intimate,” “small,” and “large.” Intimate groups had 1–3 people, small groups contained 4–12 people, and large groups had more than 12 people. In other cases, however, their codes were simply too broad; for example, they used a code they termed “activity type of main foreground figures.” Without more information to guide the

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current study, new codes had to be generated. These included manual/farm-related work; retail or commercial work; clerical work, construction; factory or industrial work; protest; fighting or war or violence; market vending or shopping; playing a musical instrument or dancing; and playing games or sports. One difference in the coding between the Lutz and Collins work and this one is that Lutz and Collins coded for skin color using the categories white, black, and bronze. Because of the challenge of making these distinctions and the discomfort in doing so, this study tracked the number of people in a photograph and whether whites outnumbered non-whites or vice versa. In all, an extensive list of 93 different codes was developed, which were grouped into the following broad categories: image format/composition; group size; gender, skin color, and age; visible emotions; attire; location (urban or rural); activity; and wealth indicators. Two of the co-authors coded the images. They conducted several coding trials, compared results, and discussed why they had coded images a certain way. This helped to systematize the process. Using an initial sample of 10% of the photos, the percentage similarity between the two coders came to 93%. The tallies were entered into an Excel spreadsheet to facilitate data and frequency analysis. Before discussing the results of the visual analysis, some of the broad trends in the data compiled for the articles published between 1990 and 2015 are presented.

4

Results

4.1

Regional and Country Trends

A first step in the analysis involved examining the regions and places that were frequently featured in National Geographic articles. According to Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 119), “The magazine has had a long-standing policy of avoiding too frequent coverage of individual areas.” One exception to this rule involves the United States. Places in the United States were the exclusive focus of 404 (21%) of the articles published between 1990 and 2015. With notable consistency, the editors published an average of 19 articles per year focusing on places in the United States between 1990 and 2006. That average dropped to nine articles per year between 2007 and 2015. National Geographic also publishes some articles that have a more global focus. These articles often reference processes or events that occur in or affect multiple regions, or they are simply more broadly conceived as relating to people the world over. This includes articles on topics such as diamonds, glacial melting, fertilizer, food, writing, or human migration. Articles that had a global focus ranked second highest in the 25 years of this study and accounted for nearly 18% of the articles published (Fig. 2). During the 1950–1986 period, Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 120) found that National Geographic articles tended to overrepresent the Pacific and Latin America and underrepresent Africa and Asia relative to their regional populations. Results from this study are very similar and point to an ongoing underrepresentation of both Africa and Asia. In particular, Asia is greatly underrepresented. Although

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Asia is home to nearly 60% of the world’s people, only 13% of the articles in National Geographic focused on Asian places. Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 120) showed that the Pacific was significantly overrepresented in their sample, with articles on the region occurring “more than fifty times” as often as might be anticipated given the region’s population. The Pacific region is still overrepresented in National Geographic today, with articles occurring about seven times as frequently as expected based on the region’s population (Fig. 3). Sub-Saharan Africa was the fourth most frequently featured region of the world, ranking above every other non-Western region. Slightly more than 7% of the articles in National Geographic during the period under study covered

Fig. 2 Number of articles by region, 1990–2015 70% 60% 50%

China

40% 30%

India

20% China

10%

Other

Other

0% Avg Pop

# Art

Africa

Avg Pop Asia

# Art

Avg Pop

# Art

Middle East

Avg Pop

# Art

Latin America

Avg Pop

# Art

Pacific

Fig. 3 Representation of geographic regions in National Geographic, 1990–2015. Avg Pop average population, #Art number of articles

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sub-Saharan places. Within sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa is the most featured subregion and Kenya the most featured country. After Kenya, the countries of South Africa, Tanzania, and Botswana received the most coverage. With the exception of South Africa, almost all of the articles for the other countries during the 1990–2015 period focused on wildlife – for example, lions, monkeys, cheetahs, elephants, and hyenas. Among non-Western places, National Geographic covers a handful of them frequently. Table 1 compares the leading non-Western places appearing in the magazine based on this study and the one by Lutz and Collins (1993). Refer to the discussion in Sect. 3 for the explanation about the classification of places as “non-Western.” Although China was the leading non-Western place featured in the magazine between 1990 and 2015, that number accounted for less than 3% of the articles in the magazine. Articles on the Maya, Aztecs, the Yucatan region, pyramids, caves, deserts, and the border help account for Mexico’s second place ranking. Coverage of Russia has been fairly consistent, with nearly an article on some aspect of the country, its people, cities, or wilderness each year. In 2014, however, three articles appeared on Russia: one on Russia’s far north, one on medical care in remote Siberia, and one on Sochi and the Caucasus region ahead of the 2014 winter Olympics. Clearly, the geography of places featured in National Geographic has changed, both regionally and in terms of specific countries. One characteristic that has stayed the same is that five of the ten most populous countries rank among those most often covered in both the 1950–1986 and 1990–2015 time frames. Mexico and Nepal have held steady on their strong presence in the pages of National Geographic. Table 1 Leading non-Western places featured in National Geographic, 1990–2015 and 1950–1986 Country China Mexico Australia Russia India Peru Egypt Japan Nepal Afghanistan Indonesia Brazil Cuba Iraq Kenya

Number of articles 1990–2015 56 35 30 28 27 25 22

Leading places, 1950–1986 (Lutz and Collins 1993) Japan India Mexico Brazil China Taiwan Hong Kong Indonesia

18 14 11 9

New Guinea Vietnam Egypt Nepal

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Both study periods share coverage of a country at war – Vietnam during the period of Lutz and Collins’ study and Afghanistan during the current study. True to Lutz and Collins’ (1993, p. 122) observation, the importance of a place to American political interests does shape the frequency of its coverage in National Geographic. For example, the magazine published two articles on Iraq during the 1990s, three in 2003, one in 2004, and two in 2006. Since 2006 there has been just one feature article on Iraq. Likewise, two feature articles on Afghanistan were published in the 1990s, eight between 2001 and 2008, and four since 2010. For both countries, the coverage has much less to do with the details of the wars. Instead, the articles place greater emphasis on the return to normalcy following conflict and protecting the cultural and archaeological resources of these countries. With respect to National Geographic’s coverage of China, during the 1990–2015 period, more articles (18 or 30%) focused on economic development than any other topic. Approximately 20% focused on natural sites or physical features, and another 13% were about places in or the region of Tibet. These categories are not mutually exclusive so a single article might have been counted in multiple categories. Overall, the subject matter of the articles in National Geographic tends to emphasize five main themes. First, articles emphasize the beauty and wonder of the environment and the organisms within it. Second, staple topics in the magazine continue to include coverage of the oceans, space, and archaeology. On this note, the frequent coverage of outer space and other planets suggests that the scope of National Geographic is not just global but universal. Third, National Geographic has a fascination with “firsts” – the first Australians, the first skiers, the first pharaohs, and the first Stonehenge, for example. Often the same idea is expressed with slightly different language such as “The Birth of a Religion,” “Pioneers of the Pacific,” “Dawn of Humans,” and so on. The entire January 2015 issue was a special issue called “The Firsts Issue.” On occasion, article authors used “first” to refer to rank in importance and not the chronological first occurrence. Some may see this as privileging the innovator or entrepreneur; however, the emphasis on first in time or first in position also has the effect of constructing a hierarchical perspective that is reductive in the way that it decontextualizes and oversimplifies complex achievements. Fourth, articles in National Geographic also emphasize the “lost,” the “found,” the “lost and found,” or that which is disappearing. Examples of titles of articles in this vein include “Unburying the Aztec,” “Lost Tombs of Peru,” “Lost Herds are Found – Sudan,” “In Search of the Clouded Leopard,” “Vanishing Amphibians,” and “Vanishing Arctic Culture.” Certainly titles like this work to enhance the excitement of discovery, and they may draw attention to the consequences of environmental change. Language like this is also reminiscent of social Darwinism, particularly when references are made to vanishing peoples. Fifth, since 2011 there has been a notable uptick in articles emphasizing science – “The Science of the Teenage Brain,” “High Science” (about marijuana), and “The Science of Delicious” (about taste), to name just a few. In particular, National Geographic published 16 such articles between 2011 and 2018. It also titled its cover story for the March 2015 issue “The War on Science.” National Geographic appears to want to be perceived as a scientifically informed publication.

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Within each issue typically two or three articles focus on a place, one article focuses on a science-related topic, and another article focuses on an animal, organism, or facet of the natural world. The depiction and exploration of remote locations, wildlife, and the discovery and discussion of something “new” such as newly excavated fossils remain favored topics. Typically the December issue includes a feature article on a Judeo-Christian topic. For example, “Mary: The Most Powerful Woman in the World” ran as the cover story in the December 2015 issue. Since the start of the new millennium and notably after the events of 9/11, National Geographic has gradually begun to devote more space in the magazine to topics that have attracted widespread coverage in the news (e.g., Islam; diamonds; obesity; terrorism; use of stem cells, fracking), topics related to popular culture (e.g., hip-hop; Lord of the Rings; Bollywood; storm chasing; Apple stores), and contentious issues (e.g., GMOs, polygamy, hunger in America, cloning extinct animals, malaria, child brides, the impacts of rising seas on coastlines, high-tech trash). Concurrently, there has been a growth of social and environmental consciousness in the topics covered. Consider, for example, articles on healing wounded soldiers, village health workers who save lives in India, crisis mapping, citizen scientists, and urban solutions to environmental problems. By and large, globalization helps account for these changes in the way that it has brought the promises and problems of the world to our doorstep. Coverage of timely topics and issues is much more frequent now than 20 or 30 years ago. It is important to acknowledge, however, that these changes have come about quite slowly. During the 1990s, issues of National Geographic began to include an article on an important news story, such as the environmental devastation caused by the Gulf War, or an article on a place frequently in the news, such as Bosnia or Kosovo. In addition, a 1991 article called attention to challenges affecting the world’s food supply. These sorts of articles were the exception rather than the rule. A comparison of the tables of contents from a 1990 and 2009 issue captures the gradual nature of these changes (see Table 2). Beginning about 2007, National Geographic also published occasional “special reports” and “special issues.” These have also provided venues for addressing more pressing issues. A special report in 2007 covered the global fish crisis. A special issue in May 2008, timed to appear ahead of the summer Olympics in Beijing, focused on China, and in November 2015 National Geographic published its “Climate Issue.” Other changes are also noteworthy, particularly those involving changes to the front matter of the magazine. From the late 1980s until February Table 2 Feature articles from the tables of contents of two issues of National Geographic January 1990 Alaska’s Big Spill: Can the Wilderness Heal? New Evidence Places Peary at the Pole Inside the Kremlin Nest Gatherers of Tiger Cave Dance of the Electronic Bee

March 2009 The Canadian Oil Boom Saving Energy Starts at Home Mystic Waters in China The Sinai’s Separate Peace Path of the Jaguar Blue Whales

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2006, one of the “departments” of the magazine was called “Geographica: The People, Places, and Creatures of Our Universe.” This section provided short discussions accompanied by images or diagrams about selected developments around the world. This department covered topics ranging from the impact of habitat destruction on frogs to an overview of the origins and meaning of Australia’s Sorry Day. “Geographica” has since given way to a department called “Visions,” which features astounding photography. One section of this department is called “Your Shot” and invites the public to submit pictures for possible publication. Other departments in the front matter provide short takes (photos, innovative diagrams, maps, or figures) on a variety of topics from pub attendance to the expanding range of quinoa cultivation to saving soil. For those readers who are, in effect, mainly “browsers” of the photographs and diagrams, this section works to capture people’s attention. Through a series of changes like these, National Geographic has gradually intermixed timely and more sober topics with those that entertain. At the same time, these changes have not only worked to keep the content in National Geographic accessible; they have also given it a participatory dimension as well through the “Your Shot” feature.

5

Depictions of Non-Westerners

The analysis that Lutz and Collins conducted pointed to four major themes in the visual depiction of non-Westerners in the pages of National Geographic. They write, “The people of the third and fourth worlds are portrayed as exotic; they are idealized; they are naturalized . . . and they are sexualized” (Lutz and Collins 1993, p. 89; italics in original). Based on the sampled images, to what extent do these characterizations still apply to National Geographic’s representation of non-Westerners? As noted above, Lutz and Collins rarely shared the specific codes that they used. This study therefore required a kind of reverse engineering that involved working from their findings to try to discern their codes. One of the visual cues associated with portrayals of people as exotic is difference, specifically difference that calls attention to that which is unusual. For Lutz and Collins, this involved photographs of non-Westerners participating in rituals and wearing indigenous dress. The former made up 20% of the photos in their sample, while the latter accounted for more than 50% of the photos in their sample. The data obtained in this study yielded similar results: 17% of the photos showed non-Westerners at ceremonies and 52% of non-Westerners were photographed in traditional attire. Most notably, the number of non-Westerners pictured in traditional clothing has declined significantly since 2003. Prior to that year, National Geographic averaged ten photos per year of non-Westerners in traditional attire but since 2003 that average has fallen to about four photos per year. Body paint, defined as visible decorations on the body exclusive of lipstick or dyed hair, is also associated with depictions of the exotic. Interestingly, however, body paint was present in just 4% of the sample. For Lutz and Collins, color enhances the exotic because of the way it draws attention to the striking qualities

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of a photograph. They used the small number of black-and-white photographs to support this. For this project, however, black-and-white photos occurred in such small numbers that this did not produce meaningful results. One alternative involved coding for “brightly colored.” Slightly more than 21% of the sampled photos were coded as both brightly colored and wearing traditional attire, lending support to the relationship between the importance of color and the portrayal of the exotic. The total count for images containing multiple pieces of jewelry came to 43 or 12%. Like traditional attire or body paint, jewelry is a form of adornment, often has symbolic meaning, and enhances visual allure. Although non-Christian symbols (n = 62; e.g., a mosque, a statue of the Buddha, or non-Christian gods) turned out to be more than four times as common as Christian symbols (n = 13; e.g., cross, Madonna, church), this likely reflects the focus in the sample on non-Western places. Lutz and Collins approach the idealization of non-Westerners in National Geographic in several ways. They relate one aspect of idealization to the use of the portrait because it “. . .allows for scrutiny of the person, the search for and depiction of character. . .[and] may also communicate a message of universal brotherhood” (Lutz and Collins 1993, p. 97). They also identify the portrait as “. . .a staple of virtually all articles” (Lutz and Collins 1993, p. 96) but in a footnote contradict themselves by writing that “[t]he portrait in National Geographic is relatively uncommon in comparison with family and advertising photos, which prominently feature the face or full-body posed portrait” (1993, p. 97; italics in original). Portraits accounted for just 9% of their sample and 10% of the photos coded for this project. Arguably, portraits are a less common medium because they seem more staged, less spontaneous, and thus less “real.” Facial expressions also have communicative value. Smiling people were present in about 33% of their sample and in about 26% of this sample. Lutz and Collins also recorded a higher proportion of smiling children: 14% in their sample versus 3% in this sample. Conversely, in both samples most people were not smiling and had neutral facial expressions. National Geographic does often depict smiling non-Westerners, but the smile may be less about happiness and more about ethnocentrism. For Westerners in particular, smiles help to make the visual encounter with cultural difference more agreeable and less threatening. For this reason, it might be said that the images in National Geographic communicate through a language of silence. War and violence have rarely been featured in National Geographic, and findings from this study suggest that may be even truer today than in the time period Lutz and Collins studied. Their sample included only four photos of fighting or violence. The sample for this project included six photos showing fighting, five photos of people protesting, four photos of people visibly angry, and three photos of refugee camps. Even though Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 98) found that 12% of their sample showed a military presence, they go on to argue that National Geographic depicts non-Westerners as “gentle natives.” Both a military presence and a police presence were uncommon, appearing in less than 4% of the sampled photos for this project. Turning to the frequency of weapons, the sample images were also coded for the presence of any weapons, for example, a machete or rifle. Adding this total to the one

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for photos with a military or police presence, the proportion of the sample rises to slightly more than 10%. It might be said, then, that the propensity for violence is not actually erased from the pages of National Geographic. No codes tracked violence toward animals, and yet some of the most graphic images in National Geographic involved dead animals. Often non-Westerners were also present in these images, making it crucial to read the article and caption to understand the context of the photo. These kinds of images are still being published. For a recent example, see the October 2017 issue which features two two-page spreads in separate articles of non-Westerners cutting meat from an elephant and a reindeer (in, respectively, “The Trophy Hunt Debate” and “Life on the Edge”). What might National Geographic have to say about this? According to the author of a 2004 article on terrorism, “[c]ertain human societies seem to tolerate violence more readily than others” (Lacquer 2004, p. 80). Similarly, a caption that states “old passions unleashed” accompanies a photograph showing the cut heads and bloodied white shirts of Shiite pilgrims commemorating Ashura (Boulat 2003, p. 116). These examples raise questions about the suitability of the phrase “gentle natives” when describing National Geographic’s depiction of non-Westerners. According to Lutz and Collins, part of the way that National Geographic has idealized non-Westerners is through their depiction of the world as a middle-class place. They did not find much evidence in their sample for indicators of wealth or poverty, but it is not clear how they coded for these. With respect to poverty, photos in this study were coded for slums, visible signs of malnourishment, the presence of garbage or trash, dated tools or implements, and people who were shown barefoot. More than half of the sample included at least one of these indicators. This leads us to a different assessment. It is not that National Geographic presents the world as middle class, but rather that it allows readers – who themselves are likely to be middle class – to judge and affirm their place in the world relative to the observed circumstances of others. Photographs allow us to see how non-Westerners spend their time. Such images also work to cast non-Westerners in an idealized way. Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 106) explain that “National Geographic favors the view of a world at work.” It is worth noting, however, that Lutz and Collins include play, resting, and leisure activities in their conception of “activity.” Results from this study are strikingly similar to those presented by Lutz and Collins. People were actively engaged in work in some 63% of their sample and in 60% of the sample for this project. More specifically, people were pictured in ritual activity in 16% of the photos in the Lutz and Collins sample as well as this sample. Play was featured only minimally, appearing in just 6% of the photos coded for this project. Curiously, only ten photos, or less than 3% of the sample, showed schools or education. For this project, additional codes included the types of work, categorized following the conventions of primary (agricultural or manual labor), secondary (commercial, factory, or industrial work), and tertiary activities (service activities). What this revealed is that non-Westerners in the pages of National Geographic are still preponderantly depicted as manual laborers. Almost one-quarter of photographs in the sample showed non-Westerners in these activities, and most of these involved

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non-farm manual labor such as preparing food. Interestingly, there were no gender differences in this category. That is, the total number of photos showing only girls or women and only boys or men participating in non-farm manual labor was identical. Within the sample for this study, only 8 photos showed construction, factory, or industrial work, and just 16 showed retail or commercial activity. Hightech spaces – those with cell phones or computers – were also quite rare and appeared in only 14 photos. To a certain extent, this pattern reflects the lower levels of development in many non-Western countries. On the other hand, the small number of photos of industry may speak to the operation of an aesthetic that guides image selection during the preparation of National Geographic. Accordingly, factories and industry might be deemed unsightly and certainly not exotic. It is also possible that the small number of photos of factories or industry might create the impression that, in the pages of the magazine, non-Westerners are not industrious, further challenging the findings of Lutz and Collins. While preparing the codes to ensure that they replicated those of Lutz and Collins, questions concerning their decision to classify resting a form of activity arose. Thus, by separating resting and sleeping from the “activity” category, almost 40% of the sample included photos with people not engaged in activity. Although Lutz and Collins call attention to the fact that the magazine avoids the depiction of non-Westerners as lazy, this analysis suggests that non-Westerners are very likely to be depicted as inactive. Moreover, who is most likely to be shown inactive varies notably by gender. Boys and men were shown sleeping and resting more than twice as often as girls and women were. A final aspect of the idealization of non-Westerners relates to their depiction in the magazine as “peoples of nature” (Lutz and Collins 1993, p. 109). One expression of this involves the frequency of photos in which non-Westerners are shown against a natural backdrop. This was the case in about 33% of the photos in their sample and 28% of the photos in the sample for this project. If photos showing a person or group photographed with animals are included, the proportion rises to 40%. In addition, non-Westerners were pictured in rural settings more than one and a half times as often as they were shown in urban settings (Fig. 4). Keeping Fig. 4 Percentage of sampled photos in rural and urban settings

Mixed 9% Urban 35%

Rural 55%

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about half of the photos in rural settings continues a trend that Lutz and Collins had detected and which they dated to the late 1970s. Prior to that time the proportion of photographs showing rural settings was even higher. Despite the fact that approximately 54% of the world’s people lived in cities by 2014, the images in National Geographic still retained an emphasis on rural places. The number of photos that were taken outdoors provides another expression of the importance of nature. Within the sample for this project, nearly 70% of photos with non-Westerners were taken outside. Another theme in the depiction of non-Westerners that Lutz and Collins identified relates to the sexualization of them, largely via the inclusion of photos of bare-breasted women. Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 115) do not mince words when describing National Geographic’s modus operandi. They write, “The centrality of a race-gender code to decisions about whose breasts to depict cannot be denied. . .” Their findings showed that black women were most likely to be shown bare-breasted in National Geographic. Across the study period, nearly 17% of the sampled photos showed partial nudity (nudity above the waist). On average, partial nudity continued to appear within National Geographic three times per year. Only eight photos in the sample showed partially nude girls or women. In contrast, 29 photos showed partially nude boys or men. Thus, it appears that during this study period, men were most likely to be shown partially nude. Some evidence for the ongoing use of skin color as an indicator of who would most likely be associated with partial nudity also exists. Of the 60 photos showing semi-nudity, 55 or 92% of them showed non-whites only. Lutz and Collins (1993) discuss some of the nudity in photos of Micronesian women, but do not provide much information about nudity by region. In the sample for this study, sub-Saharan Africa ranked first, with nearly one-third of the photos showing partial nudity taken in that region. East Asia, with 15% of the photos showing partial nudity, ranked a distant second. On its 125th anniversary, National Geographic celebrated its association with nudity and published a one-page chart, “Naked Truth,” that tracks the frequency of nudity in the magazine over time (Zackowitz 2013, p. 30). The chart also identifies certain “milestones,” pointing out that the issue with the greatest number of photos of nudity was published in 1912 and that National Geographic has published more than 500 such photos since it was established (Zackowitz 2013, p. 30). The chart does not label specific years or issues, complicating its legibility. Nevertheless, the 1990s marked a distinct turning point, with significantly fewer photos with nudity than in any previous decade. In defense of its practices, the caption points out that “the magazine’s earliest mission was to document ‘the world and all that is in it.’ Sometimes, in places with very warm climates, what was not in it was clothing” (Zackowitz 2013, p. 30; italics in original). Part of the visual language that National Geographic uses involves the intertwining of several of these themes. Sexualization, for example, becomes interconnected with naturalization and idealization. In the sample, 15% (n = 55) of the photos showing partial nudity were taken outdoors. Of those, 31% (n = 17) were photos shot in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, of the photos that showed partial nudity, fully one-third placed the person or people directly in front

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of a natural feature. According to Street (2000), National Geographic carefully situates nudity in discourses related to education, authenticity, and representations of beauty. In short, this is clever camouflage for enduring practices that objectify women. Some scholars liken these practices to pornography and peep shows (Kappeler 1986; McElroy 1991/92). From another perspective, the findings presented here suggest that photographs in National Geographic construct and reflect a man’s world. Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 107) express a related idea when they write that “Through National Geographic’s eyes, as through the filter of much mass media, the world is mostly male.” Lutz and Collins noted the overrepresentation of men in the magazine, and this study yielded similar results. Specifically, photographs showing only boys and/or men appeared more than twice as often as did photographs showing only girls and/or women (Fig. 5). Even as National Geographic has taken liberties with female nudity over the years, it has done so within the safe confines of its heterosexual norm. Using a code for “genderbending” – that is, images of sexuality or gender that challenge the male-female binary – turned up only a single instance of this: a photograph of a person identified as third gender in Thailand. Apart from this example, one coder explained that he never saw any kind of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender representation. In January 2017, National Geographic devoted an entire issue to the topic of gender and made headlines for publishing a photograph of a transgender girl on the cover. Yet, National Geographic’s discomfort with this topic seems almost palpable. Perhaps out of concern that the subject matter of the lead article, “Rethinking Gender,” might be too radical or provocative, the editorial team placed a safer, more conventional article – “Making a Man” – after it. On the spine of the issue, which lists the major articles, the lead article is retitled “Gender Science,” yet no change was made to the “Making a Man” title. As copyeditors know, this change might have been requested because “Rethinking Gender” has three more letters than

Percent of Sampled Images

70% 60% 1950-1986

50%

1990-2015

40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Boys / Men

Girls / Women

Children only

Elderly

Fig. 5 Trends in the proportion of photos by gender and age. (Source for 1950–1986 data is Lutz and Collins (1993). Note: Lutz and Collins (1993, p. 107) did not code for children only but rather for photos that “focused mainly or exclusively on children”)

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“Gender Science” does, making it too lengthy for the space. Nevertheless, it is possible to imagine that those three spaces could have been regained had “Making a Man” been changed to “Manliness.”

6

Conclusion

Twenty-five years ago, Reading National Geographic provided one of the most in-depth analyses of National Geographic Society and its leading publication, National Geographic. Seeking to understand National Geographic’s representation of non-Westerners, Lutz and Collins (1993) analyzed trends in the frequency with which different countries and regions were featured in National Geographic. They also conducted a content analysis of the images published in the magazine from 1950 to 1986. The passing of a quarter century afforded an opportunity to re-visit that work. In particular, this study attempted to update and replicate a portion of theirs. Theoretically, this study scaffolds onto theirs with one key difference being that this work is situated within the context of visual language. Like words in a language, photographs encode ideas about the people, places, and events in the world. In short, if National Geographic were the only source of information about the world, what would its images tell us? What visual ideology would those images communicate? This study focused on a slightly shorter timeframe, from 1990 to 2015, and also tracked trends in the regions and countries featured. Lutz and Collins conducted their analysis using a single photo from each issue. Their sample size consisted of 568 images. This visual analysis draws on a sample size of 363 images generated by selecting images randomly such that the number of images selected from an article was based on the number of images of non-Westerners in that article. To use the same codes that Lutz and Collins did required some detailed efforts at reconstructing them based on descriptions in their book. With one major exception, the approach used here closely matched that of Lutz and Collins. The exception is that this study lacks a survey of the readers of National Geographic. Without that it is not possible to gauge reader interpretations of some of the sampled images. This is a limitation of this study because part of the complexity of photographs stems from the fact that they have multiple meanings. As a rule, the findings presented here uphold and reinforce those presented in Reading National Geographic. For example, relative to their populations, Asia and Africa continue to be underrepresented in the pages of National Geographic. The Pacific, a region greatly overrepresented in the images in the magazine from 1950 to 1986, is only slightly overrepresented from 1990 to 2015. As Lutz and Collins (1993) predicted, places covered in the magazine do parallel national interests. Thus, articles on Iraq and Afghanistan became more frequent as the United States became more involved in the wars in those countries. Likewise, the rise of China as a global economic power also helps account for how frequently articles on it appear in the magazine. One discernible change since Lutz

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and Collins’ study is that National Geographic allocates more space to and makes a concerted effort to publish on more pressing social and environmental issues. This is not to say that how National Geographic represents the people and places with the non-Western world has completely changed. It has not. Lutz and Collins (1993) showed that National Geographic images not only emphasize the exotic qualities of non-Westerners; the images also idealize, naturalize, and sexualize them. The data from this study support these findings but also lead to some subtle and important differences. On the one hand, coding for this study indicated that brightly colored images, photographs of non-Westerners in traditional attire, and the presence of non-Christian symbols as well as multiple pieces of jewelry provided a visual language and expression of exoticness. The data used here provided less support for the idealization of non-Westerners as “gentle natives.” The results obtained by coding for the presence of weapons indicated that one aspect of the visual language of National Geographic associates non-Westerners with a propensity for violence. Representations of non-Westerners in National Geographic, according to Lutz and Collins (1993), tend to emphasize work or activity. Lutz and Collins even credit National Geographic with avoiding the depiction of non-Westerners as lazy. Using their system of coding, this study obtained similar findings. Ultimately, however, some questions arose about why Lutz and Collins had coded resting as an activity. When sleeping and resting are not coded as activities, the findings here suggest that many images actually do portray non-Westerners as idle, inactive, or not working. Whether the photographs of non-Westerners show them in rural or urban settings, the subjects were idle in more than 10% of the sampled photographs. The visual language of National Geographic works to naturalize non-Westerners in different ways, by presenting them as idle, nude, or exotic. The visual language of National Geographic also works to naturalize the world as a man’s world. The most stunning example of this occurs in the July 2014 issue. In introducing the magazine’s first female editor in chief, Susan Goldberg, National Geographic did not simply include a photo of her. Instead, they chose a photo of her standing alongside her male predecessor, Chris Johns. Moreover, instead of allowing her the opportunity to write her own editorial, the magazine changed the format to an interview style in which she and the former editor are asked questions. The use of the interview format constrains her response and diminishes her voice. Having Goldberg share the limelight with Johns points to enduringly patriarchal practices. In this case, the presence of the former male editor is needed to legitimize hers. Admittedly, National Geographic is quite different today than it was 25 years ago, and the magazine continues to change. The topics are more current and, at times, more controversial. Such topics include hunger in America, child brides, driving while black, questioning whether coal can be clean, and the dangers of cooking over an open fire, to name a few. Since Goldberg’s promotion to editor in chief, the magazine has published special issues on gender and race, among others. It is also important to point out that National Geographic does not always speak with a consistent or single voice. When the April 2018 issue on race was

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published, the online version of the magazine ran this title quote above Susan Goldberg’s editorial: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It” (Goldberg 2018a). However, when the hard copy of the magazine arrived, the title quote was noticeably different and read: “To rise above the racism of the past, we must acknowledge it” (Goldberg 2018b, p. 4). The former quote admits a racist past; the latter quote does not. Clearly National Geographic’s message changes depending on the audience. This editorial draws attention to the fact that the institutional memory at National Geographic is not very deep. In that editorial Goldberg (2018a, b) mentions that National Geographic invited a university professor to examine depictions of race in the magazine. Many of his observations repeat and echo those of Lutz and Collins (1993), but oddly their study is never mentioned. Even as National Geographic does more today to introduce difficult issues, it often resorts to representing them as simple two-sided debates. The question about biofuels, for example, comes down to whether it they are a “boon or boondoggle.” Similarly, the discussion of fracking centers on its promises and risks. Even places are reduced to two dimensions as captured in articles titled, “The Two Worlds of Tonga” or “Tale of Two Atolls.” A two-dimensional perspective offers safety to the magazine because presenting two sides keeps the magazine from having to pick one side and risk offending subscribers and readers. Likewise, in the article on the war on science, there are two camps: the science believers and the science skeptics. A fundamental reason for the latter, the author tells us, is that science “doesn’t come naturally to most of us” (Achenbach 2015, p. 40). Not only are the dualisms embraced; they are depicted as stemming from human nature – as if human thought cannot move beyond such dualisms. National Geographic continues to struggle with maintaining a balance between seriousness and levity. Sometimes difficult issues are presented, but are handled in awkwardly lighthearted ways. This is evident in the way it commemorated the frequency of nudity in the magazine in the 125th anniversary issue. Often, the captions seem to function to communicate lightheartedness. In the December 2014 issue, a photo of Syrian refugees in Jordan shows a young child being tossed in the air. The caption tells us, “A young Syrian refugee gets an airlift. . ..” (Shalopek 2014, p. 100). Occasionally, the captions use wordplay that mocks something depicted in the photo. Two articles on Iraq, published before and during the war in 2003, illustrate this practice. One photo shows clothes hanging on a clothesline in the foreground and smoke from oil fires in the distance. The short title is “[a]wash in war” (Boulat 2003, p. 101). Another photo of Muslims beside the exhumed bones of Iraqis killed during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and buried in graves with no names carries the short title, “Recovering the Past” (Boulat 2003, p. 118). Even though the captions themselves are informative, short titles like this may be all that some subscribers read. They also trivialize the war, may promote indifference to the suffering of others, and prompt questions about the educational value of content like this. Not recognizing or calling attention to the trends in the presentation of photos in National Geographic and other popular media can lead people

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to overlook the ways in which such prominent institutions shape popular understandings of the world. Lastly, a number of possibilities exist for future work. Surveying readers about their interpretations of different images remains an important priority. A richer and more rigorous study of the text in combination with the images, their placement, captions, and size in National Geographic would also extend this research. Are certain images, such as the full-body “portrait,” afforded a certain priority of place within the magazine? The authors of this study did track the changes in National Geographic’s editor in chief, but still more could also be done to correlate trends in the magazine with information about editorial practices and leadership. Because of the 2015 sale of National Geographic to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, the future is ripe for further work to consider how control by a for-profit company will affect the content of the magazine. Although geographers, and certainly academic geographers, have long had issues with National Geographic’s tendency to look at the world through rose-tinted glasses, they also recognize that the National Geographic Society was a major player in supporting initiatives to promote geographic literacy in American schools. This support, which has existed since the late 1980s, also included support for the creation of Geographic Alliance offices in all 50 states. Although the Society continues as a non-profit organization, the severing of the ties between the Society and the magazine through the sale to 21st Century Fox is expected to lead to a considerable loss of financial and instructional support for geographic education efforts in the United States. Moreover, the recent emphasis on articles that focus on the science of addiction, the science of sleep, or the science of sport suggests that already the magazine is de-emphasizing its geographic perspective. On a different note, however, National Geographic Society has partnered with the Fulbright Program to offer a Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship “to expand our knowledge of pressing global issues and build ties across cultures” (Fulbright 2018). In closing, with the successive changes to print publications it seems perilous to predict just what National Geographic will look like in another decade or to speculate on its place in a cyberworld.

References Achenbach, J. (2015). The age of disbelief. National Geographic, 227(3), 30–47. American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1881). Constitution, list of meetings, committees, and members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Salem: Permanent Secretary. Boulat, A. (2003). Diary of a war. National Geographic, 204(3), 94–119. Cosgrove, D. (1985). Prospect, perspective and the evolution of the landscape idea. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 10(1), 45–62. Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship (2018). https://us.fulbrightonline. org/fulbright-nat-geo-fellowship. Accessed 3 Sept 2018. Gayer, J., & Williams, M. O. (1926). The first natural-color photographs from the Arctic. National Geographic Magazine, 49(3), 301–316.

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Goldberg, S. (2018a). For decades, our coverage was racist. To rise above our past, we must acknowledge it. Retrieved 13 Mar 2018, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/ 2018/04/from-the-editor-race-racism-history/ Goldberg, S. (2018b). Editorial: To rise above the racism of the past, we must acknowledge it. National Geographic, 233(4), 4–6. Hall, S. (1997). The work of representation. In S. Hall (Ed.), Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (pp. 15–64). London: Sage Publications. Hubbard, G. G. (1888). Introductory address by the president. National Geographic Magazine, 1(1), 3–10. Johnston, R. (2009). Popular geographies and geographical imaginations: Contemporary Englishlanguage geographical magazines. GeoJournal, 74(4), 347–362. Kappeler, S. (1986). The pornography of representation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Laquer, W. (2004). World of terror. National Geographic, 206(5), 72–81. Lutz, C. A., & Collins, J. L. (1993). Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McElroy, K. (1991/92). Popular education and photographs of the non-industrialized world, 1885–1915. Exposure, 28(3), 34–53. Rose, G. (2007). Visual methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications. Shalopek, P. (2014). Blessed. Cursed. Claimed. On foot through the holy lands. National Geographic, 226(6), 86–111. Street, L. (2000). Veils and daggers: A century of National Geographic’s representation of the Arab World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Zackowitz, M. (2013). Naked truth. National Geographic, 224(4), 30.

Languages of Food and Dance in East Kentucky: Gathering ’Round the Table and the Dance Floor

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Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language and Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other Regional Cultural Trails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Food and Dance Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Carcassonne Community Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Cornbread & Tortillas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Laurel County African American Heritage Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Hemphill Community Center/Black Sheep Bakery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 City of Whitesburg Farmers Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Vision and Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

How do the cultural constructs of food and dance inform our understanding of place and community? This chapter examines the East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail, a project of Hindman Settlement School, which connects people, places, and events in Appalachian Kentucky around food and dance. The chapter reflects upon how language and geography intersect with community-based work centered in cultural gathering practices. It then offers a brief history of the Food & Dance Trail, overview of other cultural trails, approach to information gathering, framework for presentation, profiles of food and dance initiatives, and vision for the future of the project. A. Huggins (*) Hindman Settlement School, Hindman, KY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_181

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Keywords

Food · Dance · Culture · Gathering · Appalachia · Kentucky

1

Introduction

What does it mean to speak through bean seeds saved for generations? What does it say when people gather to square dance in an old schoolhouse-turned-communitycenter where so many people have danced before? What does it communicate to sit at a table spread with Syrian and Lebanese traditional food in the mountains of Kentucky? What is the language exchanged in a performance between Mexican baile folklórico and Appalachian percussive dance? How do we talk about food and dance in our communities with respect for the past, relevance in the present, and sustainability for the future? The East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail, based at Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, Kentucky, ponders these questions as it supports opportunities for gathering around food and dance throughout the region (ekyfoodanddance.org). This chapter considers how food and dance, as socially constructed elements of culture, contribute to meaning, gathering, and diversity within communities in eastern Kentucky, through the example of The East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail. The Food & Dance Trail views both aspects of culture as center points of historic and present-day community gathering. While the project serves as a resource for event and organizational listings, the Food & Dance Trail also aims to facilitate deeper and wider conversations across cultures in eastern Kentucky. This chapter reflects upon how language and geography intersect with community-based work centered in cultural gathering practices. It then offers a brief history of the Food & Dance Trail, overview of other cultural trails, approach to information gathering, framework for presentation, profiles of food and dance initiatives, and vision for the future of the project.

2

Language and Geography

How do people talk about food in eastern Kentucky? It is soup beans and cornbread to feed a crowd, kilt lettuce and onions when springtime comes, wild harvested greens and mushrooms, fresh garden tomatoes, messes of green beans of every shape, stripe, speckle, and flavor. It is sweet corn sold by the dozen all summer long, sauerkraut made when the Farmers’ Almanac signs are just right, chicken and dumplings that stretch a meal, gingerbread good enough to buy a vote, and gas station pizza. It is shaved ice from a roadside stand, spicy kimchi, Mexican restaurants in every town, mamaw’s homemade pull candy, artisan wood fired bread, and a basement full of canned food put up from the garden. It is attentive to seasons and store bought. It is abundant and scarce. It is old and new. It is unique and ordinary. It is complicated, celebrated, too much, and not enough all at the same time.

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How do people talk about dance in eastern Kentucky? It is do-si-do your neighbor, two-step with your partner, pay a dollar for the cake walk, no experience required, all are welcome, and all join hands and circle left. It is flatfoot or clog any which way the music moves you, baile folklórico, folk dancing from around the world, punk shows, hip-hop, late night revelry, and family friendly, for all ages. It is something from the past, something finding new life. It is less common than it used to be, in competition with other forms of entertainment. It is full of smiling faces and tapping feet. It is interesting how it will grow, evolve, and change as time goes on. The East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail brings together languages and geographies of food and dance as it engages with other disciplines of history, culture, agriculture, art, and music. Its very name is a geographic and linguistic choice: The East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail. Its original name was the Heritage Food & Dance Trail. As the project continued, those involved made the decision to leave behind the word “heritage.” In current US society, this word has come to carry connotations of exclusion, racism, and unhealthy nostalgia for the past. Instead of including a word that can be used in negative ways, organizers decided to shift to the geographically descriptive “East Kentucky.” They felt this change opened the project for better inclusion of new and diverse foodways and danceways, broadening – rather than limiting – narratives of who and what is east Kentuckian. There is the question, why just “East Kentucky?” Why not all of Kentucky? Why not all of Appalachia? While there are definite connections to other parts of the state in both the dance and food worlds, the designers of this project wanted to focus on a region of the state that often gets less spotlight – the southeast corner. This project certainly welcomes connections with other parts of Kentucky, urban and rural, seeing natural collaboration with events like Kentucky Old Time Inc.’s Lexington Old Time Gathering and bluegrass culinary experts like Ouita Michel, our generous chef-in-residence at Dumplin’s and Dancin’ in Hindman (kyoldtime.org). The Food & Dance Trail also recognizes the fluidity between eastern Kentucky and other nearby states that share similar geographies and cultures. Often, square dance callers travel from southwest Virginia to Kentucky or from Kentucky to West Virginia. Musicians and dancers cross state lines for camps, festivals, and gigs. The sense of community transcends the political boundaries of state lines. However, to leap into an Appalachian Food & Dance Trail or even just a Central Appalachian Food & Dance Trail would be a huge undertaking for a beginning project. The hills and hollers of eastern Kentucky are enough of a starting place for exploration. Organizers also acknowledge the work that has already happened in other states like Virginia, with The Crooked Road, and West Virginia, with the Mountain Dance Trail. They hope this addition of a cultural trail in Kentucky complements the past and ongoing work in those places (Mountain Association for Community and Economic Development 2016). They hope to explore depths of place in eastern Kentucky, share discoveries and insights with others, and offer encouragement and solidarity for those doing similar work in nearby places. One reality of the geography of eastern Kentucky is that the mountains can keep people and communities historically and presently separated. “As the crow flies” from Hindman Settlement School in Knott County to Pine Mountain Settlement

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School in Harlan County, for example, it is only about 50 miles. But to drive winding roads for an hour and a half through valleys and across hills to get from one nearby county to another can discourage movement between the two places. One goal of this project has been to figure out ways for different places that are potentially separated by geography, to be informed about and support each other’s efforts. This can largely be through electronic connections such as social media, email, and websites. This can also be through physical presence. There are people excited to organize cultural events in one community and participate in them in another. As this network of food and dance enthusiasts grows, people both virtually and physically support cultural opportunities across communities. Organizers intend for Hindman Settlement School’s yearly Dumplin’s and Dancin’ gathering to include networking opportunities for Food & Dance Trail affiliates. The project aims to make space for people doing similar work across the region to be in the same room to share ideas, stories, and expertise. The mountains and hollers affect endless details of eastern Kentucky foodways and danceways. A particular bean seed is saved over generations in a particular microclimate on a particular creek (Best 2013). That bean tastes different than a bean anywhere else. A certain banjo tune is played in a certain tuning in a certain syncopation that evolves with the creativity of the player each time it is passed on to someone new. (Gibson 2000). These cultural details contribute to a pride in the uniqueness of place. However, it is important to recognize that these mountains have been far from isolated and monolithic, but instead filled with many different people and mergings of cultures. The square dances have histories in a mixing of origins from Native American, African American, and European dance styles (Jamison 2015). The foods have influences from immigrant populations that moved here to work in timber, railroads, coal mines, or otherwise (Eller 1982; Lundy 2016). East Kentucky is and always has been a place of people, ideas, and art moving in and out. One hope of this project is to show the variety and diversity of place through perspectives of food and dance. In historic and present literature, film, and other media, the Appalachian region has been characterized through a host of sweeping stereotypes as a region that is isolated, white, racist, uneducated, and dependent on extractive economies (Eller 1999; Smith 1984). While the Food & Dance Trail does not explicitly name these stereotypes, by its nature, it seeks to complicate and expand narratives of what and who is eastern Kentuckian through the cultural lenses of food and dance. While celebrating traditions of square dancing, flatfooting, soup beans, and cornbread, the project also acknowledges foodways and danceways that include the presence of African American, Mexican, Indian, Syrian, and Lebanese cultures in eastern Kentucky communities. The project aims to lift up diverse, creative, and resilient stories that are examples of how people in a place make meaningful, livable communities through art and culture. This new project has further progress to make in highlighting wider ways that people gather around the table and dance floor including foodways and danceways from indigenous, immigrant, and refugee communities. With additional time, research, and relationship building, this project has potential to create an

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evolving story bank and network, representative of the breadth of cultures that have been and continue to be a part of Appalachian Kentucky.

3

History

The East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail emerged from a series of events and conversations that recognized the significance of food and dance to cultures and communities in eastern Kentucky. Both food and dance have been a part of the long history of Hindman Settlement School. Since its inception in 1902, the Settlement School has been a home to agriculture and creative arts, including dance (Stoddart 2002; Whisnant 2009; Englehardt 2011). Today, Hindman Settlement School offers community and regional programming centered in literacy, folk arts, and foodways (hindmansettlement.org). In 2014, the Settlement School hosted the initial Appalachian Food Summit, which convened farmers, chefs, writers, scholars, advocates, and food enthusiasts from across the region to share, learn, and connect over Appalachian food (appalachianfood.com). The Food Summit network has continued to grow in geographic and member scope, having organized additional summits in Heartwood, Virginia (2015), Berea, Kentucky (2016), and Bridgeport, West Virginia (2018) (Brashear 2016). With the experience of hosting a regional food event in partnership with the Appalachian Food Summit, the Settlement School saw an opportunity to organize an event of their own, adding dance as a natural pairing with food. In December of 2015, Hindman Settlement School held the first annual Dumplin’s and Dancin’ weekend event (Huggins 2015). The weekend featured both food and dance workshops as well as a local foods feast and community square dances. Dumplin’s and Dancin’ has continued to be an annual event that welcomes people from near and far to gather in celebration of traditional and evolving foodways and danceways. The event has included workshops in candy making, pie making, kimchi and other ferments, dumplings (of course), flatfooting, dance history, square dance calling, Mexican folk dance, and more (Fig. 1). Coming out of Dumplin’s and Dancin’, Hindman Settlement School and members of the Appalachian Food Summit started imagining what it would look like to recognize food and dance opportunities year-round in eastern Kentucky. The idea of a regional trail featuring public spaces emerged, with inspiration from existing cultural “trail” projects such as the Crooked Road in southwest Virginia and the Mountain Dance Trail in West Virginia (mountaindancetrail.org). In partnership, the organizations were able to hire a project coordinator through the Highlander Research and Education Center’s Appalachian Transition Fellowship (appfellows. org). This fellowship program connects Appalachian leaders with cross-sector projects centered in equitable transition away from extractive economies. The support from Highlander expanded the project’s philosophies to consider how food and dance relate to broader ideas of social justice (Lewis 2012), community building, and regional transition toward diversified economies, including sustainable food systems and creative arts (Hansell 2016; Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

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Fig. 1 Auco Lai teaches kimchi making during Dumplin’s and Dancin’, Hindman Settlement School. (Source: author)

2016; Richards 2013). After participating in Dumplin’s and Dancin’ and the Appalachian Food Summit, the author officially became involved in the Food & Dance Trail as the Appalachian Transition Fellow in 2017 and continued beyond the fellowship, as project coordinator.

4

Other Regional Cultural Trails

In considering what form the East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail could take, designers of this project looked toward examples of other regional trails. The Crooked Road in southwest Virginia is a highly successful nonprofit organization connecting traditional music venues along a 330-mile driving trail from Clintwood to Ferum (myswva.org). Founded in 2004, the Crooked Road now features 9 major music venues, over 60 affiliated venues and festivals, and 26 educational exhibits along the drive (Wildman 2011). The Crooked Road has a traditional music education program, events calendar, and artist directory. The organization also coordinates the annual Mountains of Music Homecoming, a 9-day series of concerts, dances, workshops, and educational opportunities throughout southwest Virginia (Bristol 2018). This trail is connected to other artisan and outdoor recreation networks through a larger umbrella organization called “My Southwest Virginia.” The organization has intentionally connected local and regional music with people, from both inside and outside the region, eager to experience traditional styles of Appalachian

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music. As the Food & Dance Trail continues envisioning its work, the project finds inspiration in the Crooked Road’s organizational structure, dedication to community engagement, and wide participation from both venues and attendees. The Mountain Dance Trail, a project of the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis and Elkins College, was established in 2012 and maintains an online listing of consistent square dances that happen in 13 different communities in West Virginia. The communities stretch from the Virginia state line to the Ohio River, including Marlinton, Dunmore, Monterey, Franklin, Elkins, Helvetia, Pickens, Ireland, Sutton, Morgantown, Weston, Glenville, and Henderson. The specific style of dancing varies from community to community, with dances including big circle sets, four couple squares, waltzes, and two steps. Through interviews and film footage in each of the communities, organizers of the project produced Reel ‘em Boys, Reel ‘em, a documentary (Milnes and Hill 2014) about past and present traditions along The Mountain Dance Trail. The project has also engaged with youth dance education and has sparked excitement among the wider national square dance community through square dance weekends called “Dare To Be Square.” The East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail sees the Mountain Dance Trail as a model regional network that gives enthusiasm and life to traditional dance by connecting interested dancers with regular dance opportunities. Louisiana Dance Halls is another cultural mapping project that planners referenced while imagining the Food & Dance Trail. In partnership with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Lafayette Convention and Visitor’s Commission, the project maintains a website cataloging past and present dances throughout the state. The website (louisianadancehalls.com) includes a map of historic dances, searchable by parish, with accompanying information, pictures, and film footage. There are also listings of current dance halls, festivals, and related organizations. The project uses the term “dance halls” widely to include all spaces where people gather to dance, such as house dances, pavilions, teen centers, meeting halls, nightclubs, bars, and festivals. Louisiana Dance Halls values collective dance memories and gives space on their website for people to share their own dance stories. The East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail finds inspiration from Louisiana Dance Halls’ emphasis on sharing stories of historic and present dances, as well as a map format that presents geographic clusters of dances rather than a set path.

5

Approaches

In addition to considering other cultural trail models, project planners gathered information and built connections through a variety of methods including one-onone conversations, community listening sessions, oral history interviews, and presence at regional events. They spent time talking with people in the region who have been involved in food and dance: people who organize community dances, create pop-up community dinners, own farm-to-table restaurants, coordinate farmers’ markets, and plan local festivals. They asked those individuals to recommend more people to visit as they informally surveyed what was happening in both realms

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of food and dance in the southeastern corner of Kentucky. The geographic scope was and is somewhat flexible, as different people may define “eastern Kentucky” differently. The original parameters were framed by the highways – south of I-64 and east of I-75. Project planners aimed to highlight places off of these main highways, off of the beaten paths. They wanted to create awareness of food and dance opportunities for visitors, but did not want the Food & Dance Trail to solely exist as a tourist resource. They wanted to connect people and places across eastern Kentucky with hopes of facilitating a solidarity among cultural organizers. The purpose has continually been to welcome people from near and far to participate in cultural activities and to expand stories of what it means to gather around food and dance in eastern Kentucky. Beyond one-on-one conversations, project planners also organized a series of community listening sessions in different locales throughout eastern Kentucky. Through community contacts, they facilitated discussions of local food and dance in Perry, Harlan, Lawrence, Rowan, Floyd, and Knott Counties. Participants gathered at local libraries, colleges, community centers, and extension offices to share ideas for this project, hear tangible examples of food and dance happenings, and listen to ideas of what people would like to see in their communities. These listening sessions were effective not only in gathering information but also in connecting with organizations and venues that were later receptive to joining the Food & Dance Trail. In most of the places where listening sessions took place, there are now Food & Dance Trail affiliates as the project has taken root. As the project expands, additional listening sessions would be helpful in gaining more community input, expertise, and participation (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Community listening session, Pine Mountain Settlement School. (Source: permission of Hope Hart)

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To move beyond the survey style of the listening sessions toward gathering deeper stories, the Food & Dance Trail conducted a series of oral history interviews (Portelli 2010; Smith 2008) with people who have been involved with food and dance in the region. Thus far, 12 audio interviews and transcripts are archived in Berea College’s Oral History Collection, and audio excerpts and transcripts are available on the Food & Dance Trail website. Throughout these interviews, food and dance emerged as central to community gathering and caretaking. Randy Wilson of Knott County spoke of dance as a vehicle for people to be together (personal interview, June 29, 2017). Paulina Vazquez of Letcher County described music and dance as beautiful ways to connect people across cultures (personal interview, October 6, 2017). Kristin Smith of Whitley County noted how they set up their restaurant, The Wrigley Taproom, to be a welcoming community space (personal interview, June 19, 2018). Darlene Campbell of Letcher County expressed her hope that people feel a sense of family when they walk into Campbell’s Branch Community Center for supper and dancing on Friday nights (personal interview, May 26, 2017). Becky Cornett of Perry County spoke of the open table of hospitality and generosity her mother practiced through food (personal interview, March 6, 2018) (Fig. 3). Bennie Massey of Harlan County talked about his mother’s all-purpose sauce as a metaphor for the way people take care of one another (personal interview, December 2, 2017). What seems woven throughout these interviews is the importance of food and dance as reasons for people – past and present – to be with one another, making meaning, enjoyment, and nourishment together. More than mere dots on a map, these interviews expand the narratives of food and dance through the voices of people who generously practice and share these aspects of culture within and beyond their communities. Through story sharing and relationship building, the Food & Dance Trail hopes to continue to be a catalyst for exchange and learning across communities and cultures.

Fig. 3 Rebecca and Michael Cornett, oral history interviewees. Perry County, Kentucky. (Source: author)

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Fig. 4 Community square dance, Hindman Settlement School. (Source: permission of Hope Hart)

The Food & Dance Trail communicates through an email listserv, online events calendar, and Facebook page. The project has sparked Hindman Settlement School to host more regular community potlucks and dances (Fig. 4). Some affiliate organizations, such as Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, have collaborated with the Food & Dance Trail to organize events together. Cowan hosted a “Dare To Be Square” weekend, the first of its kind in Kentucky, in March 2018 (Huggins 2018; cowancreekmusic.org). The weekend featured dance and music workshops to encourage new square dance callers and traditional dance enthusiasts. Other schools and organizations have also approached the Food & Dance Trail as a resource to help organize and communicate new events.

6

Framework

While much of the success of the project is intangible – establishing trust, building relationships, and telling stories – the Food & Dance Trail has created a useable framework for sharing knowledge about food and dance events and spaces on its website (Fig. 5). Through the different methods of community outreach, the project has connected with 24 different affiliate organizations to join the Food & Dance Trail thus far. Affiliate organizations include farmers’ markets, food businesses, community centers, nonprofits, and festivals. On the website, each affiliate has a place on a searchable map and an accompanying profile explaining what food and dance opportunities the organization offers. Corresponding events are included on an events calendar (Fig. 6). It is important to note that this project has potential to be ever-

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Fig. 5 East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail website. (Source: author)

Fig. 6 East Kentucky Food & Dance locations. (Map prepared by Dick Gilbreath, Cartographer, from data provided by the author)

expansive in discovering the diverse spaces where communities gather around food and dance in the region. The process is ongoing and evolving. The initial stages have created a structure that can be added onto and adapted as knowledge and connections grow. In addition to the map, profiles, and events calendar available on the website,

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there are stories shared through oral histories, films, and photography. Visitors to the site have opportunities to share their own food and dance stories as well. The process of creating this project has been collaborative through the participation of community members in one-on-one conversations, listening sessions, oral history interviews, film projects, event organizing, and event attendance. In addition to support from Hindman Settlement School, the Appalachian Food Summit, and the Highlander Research and Education Center, the project has also benefited from resources from many other places including Appalachian Regional Commission, Brushy Fork Institute, Country Dance and Song Society, Kentucky Arts Council, Kentucky Oral History Commission, Kertis Creative, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

7

Food and Dance Profiles

The following profiles highlight a few of the affiliate organizations of the Food & Dance Trail. These include community centers, an artist collective, a food business, and a farmers’ market.

7.1

Carcassonne Community Center

One of the cornerstone community dances in Kentucky happens monthly at the Carcassonne Community Center near Blackey, in Letcher County. Thought to be the longest running dance in Kentucky, and possibly the country, regular dances have been happening here since the mid-1960s (Spalding 2014). Folks trek up the winding mountain road to an old schoolhouse-turned-community-center nearly every second Saturday. A live band of local musicians – likely playing fiddle, banjo, guitar, and bass – sets up for an evening of big circle dances and hoedowns with an occasional waltz, two step, or reel. People gather in the kitchen for concessions like soup beans and cornbread, spaghetti plates, or hot dog suppers. Some people are there to dance. Many are there to simply gather – sharing a meal, socializing with friends and neighbors, and listening to the tunes. As square dance caller, Randy Wilson, noted about Carcassonne during an oral history interview, “the important thing is to be together” (personal interview, June 29, 2017). The dance and food are vehicles for people to gather with one another. Randy is one in a long line of square dance callers, including recent predecessors like Wid Fields and Charlie Whitaker, who called dances in the Carcassonne big set style. Typically, in a Kentucky big set, dancers form one big circle around the room, standing next to their partner. The caller and their partner, or an experienced couple, often lead a short four-person dance figure with the neighboring couple. The figure is passed along the circle to other pairs until everyone has danced it. Figures have certain names and patters that give cues to the dance and also include playfulness and rhyme. One might hear the caller saying something like,

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Around that couple, take a little peek, back to the center and swing your sweet. Around this couple peek once more, back to the center and swing all four.

Or Chase the rabbit, chase the squirrel, chase that pretty girl around the world. Now the possum, then the coon, chase that polecat around the moon. (Caudill 2018)

Although these square dance calls have a certain language, the figures are demonstrated and repeated enough for the beginner to catch on. It’s a dance meant to be inclusive to different experiences and ages, in a spirit of community that nods to the old while welcoming the new. In between big circle sets at Carcassonne, there are often fast tunes played for individual flatfooting, commonly referred to as a hoedown. People of all ages take to the floor with their own personal percussive footwork inspired by the music. The evening always includes at least one cake walk where dancers move around a circle of numbered paper plates and stop on a number when the music stops, hoping to hear their number called to win a cake or another treat. Every Carcassonne dance ends with a dance in long lines called the Virginia reel. At the end of the night, the proceeds from the door, cake walk, splitthe-pot raffle, and concessions go back into supporting other gatherings at the community center. At the writing of this chapter, Carcassonne Square Dances happen every second Saturday from 6 to 9 pm, March through November, except for October, which happens on the third Saturday (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7 Carcassonne Square Dance, Carcassonne, Kentucky. (Source: author)

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Cornbread & Tortillas

Cornbread & Tortillas is an artist collective that facilitates conversations between Appalachian and Latinx cultures through food stories, dance performance, and community engagement (cornbreadandtortillas.com). The collective sees art as a form of activism to celebrate diversity and build unity. Artists with Cornbread & Tortillas are based in different parts of Kentucky and perform and teach workshops in eastern Kentucky and beyond. During their performance in Hazard in 2017, the group shared their own food narratives in their own languages, patterned with traditional and creative Appalachian and Mexican folk dances. Afterward, the community shared a meal inspired by both cuisines (Fig. 8). The event was connected to a series of dinners called “A Seat at the Table,” which illuminates the presence of diverse foodways in eastern Kentucky. A Seat at the Table has also hosted dinners of Indian, Syrian, and Lebanese food. This group is in the process of collecting more stories and organizing more events to expand what it means to talk about food and community in eastern Kentucky (Fig. 9). Cornbread & Tortillas is featured in one of the films on the Food & Dance Trail website and through an oral history interview with Paulina Vazquez. Though they are not a specific stop on the Food & Dance Trail map, they are certainly a group that the project wants to lift up as they do important work of bridging communities across differences through food and dance. As Paulina said in an interview, “What better way to bring people together and to laugh and to talk about connections than music and dance and things that we all love” (personal interview with Paulina Vazquez, October 6, 2017).

Fig. 8 Cornbread & Tortillas performance, Hazard, Kentucky. (Source: author)

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Fig. 9 A seat at the table dinner featuring Indian cuisine, Hazard, Kentucky. (Source: author)

7.3

Laurel County African American Heritage Center

When Wayne Riley was interviewed for a short film for the Food & Dance Trail, he said, “Food soothes the soul. You can set down with food and people that normally won’t set down with you will set down and eat with you” (East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail: Film 2017). Wayne directs the Laurel County African American Heritage Center in London, Kentucky. Their center serves as an African American heritage preservation site. They also help local farmers and gardeners with all aspects of the food process, from preparing soil to harvesting vegetables to preserving food. They partner with institutions like Grow Appalachia and Kentucky State University to offer agriculture education and resources for any interested people in the community (growappalachia.berea.edu). Food serves as a gathering point and a unifier for the work that they do. The Food & Dance Trail is glad to feature the Laurel County African American Heritage Center as an affiliate organization and in the short films on their website (lcaahc.org).

7.4

Hemphill Community Center/Black Sheep Bakery

Every Friday night, regulars and newcomers fill the floor at Hemphill Community Center in Neon, Kentucky, two-stepping and waltzing to the sounds of local bluegrass and country bands. Their weekly Friday Nite Pickin’ event brings people together through music, dance, and food. While concessions have always been a part of their events, Hemphill has recently added a brick oven for baking artisan breads, pizzas, and desserts. The new food business is called Black Sheep Brick Oven Bakery and

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Fig. 10 City of Whitesburg Farmers’ Market, Whitesburg, Kentucky. (Source: author)

employs people who have been formerly incarcerated (Appalshop 2018). Organizers at Hemphill see the healing value of food, not only as a gathering point but as a means of creating healthier communities through skill building, job opportunities, and fresh starts. Hemphill has also created intergenerational skill sharing programs that connect youth and elders around traditional Appalachian food and art.

7.5

City of Whitesburg Farmers Market

In downtown Whitesburg on a Saturday morning or a Thursday afternoon, there is a lively farmers’ market featuring local vegetables, crafts, music, summer meals for children, food access programs, and more. This farmers’ market has been especially active at the intersection of health and food (letchercountyfarmersmarket.com). They have a walking program where people earn vouchers for vegetables at the market by walking there. They also offer a FARMACY program, in partnership with Mountain Comprehensive Health Corporation, for people who have diet-related health issues to use prescriptions for vegetables at the market (Stricklett 2016). This market is intentional about creating welcoming public spaces where people see the value in fresh local food and want to gather in community (Fig. 10).

8

Vision and Limitations

The Food & Dance Trail is a growing network of places, people, and stories. As this project continues, it hopes the framework allows for growth in the number of affiliate organizations as well as in the geographic coverage of eastern Kentucky counties represented. Organizers hope to continue to be in communication and collaboration with similar projects in neighboring Appalachian states, with whom they share significant cultures and geographies.

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Project planners especially hope to collect deeper and broader stories of food and dance. They hope that these stories might widen what it means to grow, harvest, prepare, and share food in this region. They hope that these narratives might expand what it means to move together through community dance. Their intention is to honor diverse foodways and danceways of the past while encouraging traditions to grow and evolve into the future. They hope to continue to offer support for existing and emerging events and organizations. They want to be a part of a movement of people, working together to create livable and sustainable communities where people have opportunity to stay, build, and thrive in this region. The Food & Dance Trail’s scope is limited mostly through resources. They are currently only able to hire a part-time coordinator. Funding for art-centered projects is scarce – if not in danger of being cut – forcing competition, rather than collaboration, among regional arts organizations. There are countless nooks and crannies, especially with regard to food, in eastern Kentucky (Engelhardt 2015; Lundy 2016; Smith 2016). More time and resources are needed to explore, develop relationships, and share stories. The Food & Dance Trail hopes that its thoughtful beginnings continue to create space for more ideas and connections to flow.

9

Conclusion

How do languages of food and dance impact the way we approach this work and our communities? How do we talk about food and dance in ways that respect cultural rootedness but aren’t exclusionary and trapped in unhealthy nostalgia? How do we express culture in a way that is relevant in the present but does not ignore the diverse ancestors who have come before us? How do we approach food and dance in a way that encourages sustainable practices for our people and communities in the future? The answers to these questions are the greatest challenges and opportunities of this work. If we can remember the past, be in the present, and act with mindfulness of the future, we are doing meaningful work. This particular work happens to be through the perspectives of food and dance in eastern Kentucky. However, such an approach, considering language, geography, and culture, is important for all place-based community work, wherever one’s spot on the map. Just as the East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail has been inspired by other cultural trails, organizers hope this project encourages more opportunities for diverse story sharing, intentional gathering, and continued commitment to creating livable communities.

References Appalachian Food Summit. https://www.appalachianfood.com/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Appalachian Transition Fellowship. http://www.appfellows.org/. Accessed 20 Aug 2018. Appalshop. (2018). Kentucky coal camp community launches brick oven bakery. https://www. appalshop.org/news/kentucky-coal-camp-community-launches-brick-oven-bakery/. Accessed 25 Aug 2018.

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Best, B. (2013). Saving seeds, preserving taste: Seed savers in Appalachia. Athens: Ohio University Press. Brashear, I. (2016). Appalachia is a borderland: Lessons from the third annual Appalachian Food Summit. Renew Appalachia, September 20. Bristol, J. (2018). The crooked road’s mountains of music homecoming kicks off tomorrow. Bristol Herald Courier. June 7. Caudill, M. (2018). Southern square dance calls. Unpublished Manuscript. Cornbread and Tortillas. https://cornbreadandtortillas.com/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Cowan Creek Mountain Music School. http://cowancreekmusic.org. Accessed 22 Aug 2018. East Kentucky Food & Dance Trail. (2017). Film, produced by Kertis Creative, Louisville: Hindman Settlement School. http://ekyfoodanddance.org/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Eller, R. D. (1982). Miners, millhands, and mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Eller, R. D. (1999). Forward. In D. B. Billings, G. Norman, & K. Ledford (Eds.), Back talk from Appalachia: Confronting stereotypes. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Engelhardt, E. S. D. (2011). A mess of greens southern gender & southern food. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Engelhardt, E. S. D. (2015). Appalachian chicken and waffles: Countering southern food fetishism. Southern Cultures, 21(1), 80–81. Gibson, George. (2000). The Banjo in Appalachia: Part 1 of 2. Kentucky Explorer. Grow Appalachia. https://growappalachia.berea.ed. Accessed 23 Aug 2018. Hansell (2016). Film, directed by Tom Hansell, Charlottesville: Virginia Film Festival, 2016, DVD. Hindman Settlement School. https://www.hindmansettlement.org. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Huggins, A.. (2015). Dumplin’s and Dancin’ in Appalachia. Southern Foodways Alliance, December 17. Huggins, A. (2018). Kentucky dare to be square, Hindman Settlement School. April 17. Jamison, P. (2015). Hoedowns, reels, and frolics: Roots and branches of Southern Appalachian dance. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kentucky Old Time, Inc.. http://www.kyoldtime.org/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Laurel County African American Heritage Center. https://lcaahc.org/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Letcher County Farmers’ Market. https://www.letchercountyfarmersmarket.com/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Lewis, H. M. (2012). In P. Beaver & J. Jennings (Eds.), Helen Matthews Lewis: Living social justice in Appalachia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Louisiana Dance Halls. http://louisianadancehalls.com/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Lundy, R. (2016). Victuals: An Appalachian journey, with recipes. New York: Clarkson Potter. Milnes, G. & Hill, B. (2014). Reel ‘em, Boys, Reel ‘Em DVD. Augusta Heritage Productions. Elkins, WV. Mountain Association for Community and Economic Development (MACED). (2016). Trail models review. Unpublished manuscript. Mountain Dance Trail. https://mountaindancetrail.org/. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Portelli, A. (2010). They say in Harlan county: An oral history. New York: Oxford University Press. Richards, M. (2013). The benefits, opportunities and challenges of creating local and regional food systems in Kentucky. Sustainability (Fall/Winter), (27):10–17. Smith, H. E. (1984). Strangers and kin: The history of the hillbilly image.. Film, directed by Herb E. Smith. Whitesburg: Appalshop. Smith, R. C. (2008). Publishing oral history: Oral exchange and print culture. In T. L. Charlton, L. E. Myers, & R. Sharpless (Eds.), Thinking about Oral history: Theories and applications (pp. 169–182). Lanham: Altamira Press. Smith, L. (2016). Electric jell-O: Refrigeration brought the jiggle to rural Appalachia. Gravy, 58. https://www.southernfoodways.org/electric-jell-o/

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Spalding, S. E. (2014). Appalachian dance: Creativity and continuity in six communities. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Stoddart, J. (2002). Challenge and change in Appalachia: The story of Hindman Settlement School. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Stricklett, K. (2016). Farmacy program promotes healthier lifestyle. WYMT, August 10. The Crooked Road. https://www.myswva.org/tcr. Accessed 16 Aug 2018. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. What do we mean by a just transition for Appalachia?. Accessed 20 Dec 2016. Whisnant, D. E. (2009). All things native and fine: The politics of culture in an American region. Chapel Hill: UNC Press. Wildman, S. (2011). On Virginia’s crooked road, mountain music lights the way. The New York Times, May 20.

English as a Sacred Language in German Evangelical Worship Music

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Deborah Justice

Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Sacred Languages in Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 English as a Non-native Language of Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Singing English in German Churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Singing in English at CityChurch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Protestantism has been in Germany since the Reformation, but over recent decades, a new strain of international evangelicalism has been challenging the country’s centuries-old religious institutions. Outside groups – and now their local German offshoots – are promoting an international evangelical aesthetic that is changing German Protestant worship. Rather than being an American postWWII legacy, much of this new evangelicalism comes from transnational post-denominational groups with roots in the English-speaking world, such as Hillsong (originally based in Australia), Vineyard (based in the United States), and Campus Crusade for Christ (also US-based). The combination of new music, language, and theology has spurred a domino effect of interrelated changes: from causing Germans to increase their physical involvement in praise to changing the linguistics of worship. Although sermons are in German and the liturgical lingua franca is German, many of these new German congregations (substantial percentages of which are not fluent English speakers) draw roughly half of their praise songs from English-language sources and sing the songs in the D. Justice (*) Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Setnor School of Music, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_160

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original English. How does English-language music play a key role in this foreign style of Christianity being perceived as modern and desirable in Germany? What values does this linguistic blend promote? Based on field research in multiple Franconian congregations since 2009, this chapter suggests that English-language German worship practices hold modern, cosmopolitan cache while also reinforcing links to imagined communities of global evangelicalism. As such, this chapter explores the social and theological impact of evangelical English as a sacred language in native German congregations. Keywords

Protestant · Religion · Evangelicalism · Music · Theology · Germany · English · Sacred language

1

Introduction

May 2012. An unconventionally situated church in Germany is holding Sunday morning worship services. CityChurch, as it is named, meets in a movie theater in the urban center of Würzburg, Bavaria. While the church’s mission is to reach out to young adults, it regularly draws a range of worshippers, from teenagers, university students, and young families to a few middle-aged Baby Boomers and older people. This morning, the faint scent of Saturday night’s popcorn lingers in the theaterturned-worship-space, as a chalice and loaf of bread are projected onto the cinema’s big screen. The congregation is celebrating the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. This ceremony is one of the most sacred in many branches of Christianity because it commemorates Christ’s last meal with his followers, during which he laid out the template for the ritual. The praise band, Fig. 1, sets the initial mood by laying down a quiet groove with electric guitar, bass, and drums. The pastor begins to speak over the music, initiating the ceremony by invoking familiar words, Denn in der Nacht, da er verraten wurde, nahm er das Brot. . . (On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread. . .) The praise band continues to play quietly in the background. The leader begins singing in a soft, earnest tone, O Gott, du bist mein Schutz (Oh God, you are my shelter). The band plays and sings while members of the congregation pray and leave their tiered theater seats to partake of bread and wine. Most congregants sing along with the music as they file forward to eat and drink the elements. They also sing as they return to their seats. Serving the whole congregation takes long enough that the band transitions into a second song. Now, they are singing, “Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down, here I am to say that you’re my God.” Without missing a beat, many members of the congregation sing along. Changing languages in the middle of a solemn ceremony may seem surprising, but such insertions of English-language worship songs in German services have become common practice at this congregation and many like it. Many questions, expanding from the local to the global, arise: Why are increasing numbers of Germans using English-language music in their services? How does this Western

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Fig. 1 Praise band at Würzburg CityChurch. (Photo: Deborah Justice, May 2012)

European example relate to English as a second language in worship around the world? What connections exist between globalized popular music, sacred musical styles, and non-native English as a sacred language? How does the choice of worship language influence congregants’ engagement with sacred music on linguistic, theological, and experiential levels?

2

Sacred Languages in Worship

The use of English in German worship services highlights a fundamental localversus-global tension pervading every religion since humans decided to gather and worship. As religions grow, tensions often develop between those who want new believers to conform to original ways of practice and those who see adaptations in practice as facilitating the spread of truth to other people. As believers work to spread their religion, they often have to change the medium in which the original message was presented, which also brings the potential of reinterpreting or changing elements of the religious system. As belief systems grow geographically, sonic elements – including language – are often among the first elements under pressure to change. This impulse has not emerged in the modern era; rather, as political scientist Susanne Rudolph notes, “religious communities are among the oldest of transnationals: Sufi orders, Catholic missionaries, and Buddhist monks carried word and praxis across vast spaces before those places became nation-states or even states” (1997, p. 1). As societies have changed and modernized, the basic urge to spread spiritual trues has nevertheless remained. As a still-popular turn-of-the-century American Christian children’s song exhorts: “This little light of mine. . .hide it under a bushel? No! I’m gonna let it shine!” When people believe that they have found truth and transcendence, their push to speak and sing this wisdom beyond a community of origin often tends to outweigh protective impulses.

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Questions quickly arise, however, about how to let such light shine. How much innovation, or “deviation,” is appropriate? Should the language of worship shift to attract and accommodate new believers? Should linguistic shifts happen in musical elements of worship, spoken liturgies, or more? How may these linguistic choices carry broader theological implications? As religious movements and media spread, broader philosophical conversations resonating with Peirce’s semiotics and the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Van der Leeuw emerge from new congregations and contexts. Sacred linguistic practices often become semiotic bellwethers of their respective religious practices. Theologically speaking, two main approaches dominate. First, many groups believe that worshiping in a particular language carries sacred value such that religious texts lose efficacy in translation. For example, the Qu’ran being recited in Arabic retains a central importance for most Muslims, just as many Jewish communities read Torah in its original Hebrew. Often, these linguistic choices reflect the religion’s cultural origins. For native speakers and members with heritage within these religious communities, these identity connections through language and religion often resonate with other ties to their heritage. For non-native speakers of these languages, the added weight and authenticity given these original tongues often helps propel their use in religious service beyond the realm of the everyday to the liturgical and takes on a symbolic, often mystical value. Ascribing greater value to a liturgical value can also happen when the language is not the original language of the religion, nor the original language of the communities practicing the religion. When the Catholic Church moved away from Latin with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in 1963, many worshippers bemoaned the loss of this liturgical language, even though it was not a language that they spoke fluently. Some worshippers felt that the sense of mystery and removal from daily life diminished, while others complained that the sense of sacred global unity decreased. As Irish Catholic Domhnall O’Huigin explains, “The only difference between a Latin Mass celebrated in Ulan Bator and a Latin Mass celebrated in Lima is the celebrant's accent” (2013). Here, worshippers experienced liturgical language as evidencing a shared truth and its divine power to unite people globally. In contrast to this first approach of retaining particular languages in sacred practice, many other religious traditions focus on removing linguistic barriers and translating texts into multiple languages for spiritual use. While the Catholics discussed above feel that Latin enables a transnational, globally unified Church, other Catholics – not the least of which those who implemented the Second Vatican Council’s policies – believe that using local languages in the liturgy allows many worshippers to participate more deeply because they understand the words better. Rather than relying on congregants to respond to a general sense of Holy Mystery, these reformers believe that worshippers will have a more effective experience by understanding the words used in the Mass. Similarly, many other religious groups believe this type of intellectual linguistic comprehension is central to the most meaningful sacred experiences. For these groups, a sense of “natural revelation” of the divine through affectual experience

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or awe of the sublime should be supplemented with more focused, specific doctrinal knowledge. As such, translating everything from Bibles to musical resources has been a major focus of much Christian missionary activity for the past few centuries. In the twenty-first century, many translation groups like Summer Institute of Linguistics, New Tribes Missions, and more continue to see themselves as fulfilling Jesus’ command – recorded in Matthew 28:16–20, which Christians have labeled the “great commission” – to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth by providing Christian texts translated into local languages. Both approaches to language in worship have been used historically, and both continue through the present. Many areas of the world have long supported rich cultural intersections, such that most inhabitants of these areas are poly-lingual to varying extents. Between historical trade routes and colonialism, and now modern globalization and the Internet, multiple approaches to non-native languages in worship often coexist in relatively close proximity. Analyzing people’s use of languages in worship requires an eye to both histories of linguistic flows and attention to the impact of new globalizing media.

3

English as a Non-native Language of Worship

The use of English-language songs in a Bavarian church holds particular interest as English is neither the native language of most of the worshippers nor is it the original liturgical language of Christianity. This case study points to European languages as they have been used to spread Christian belief systems in recent history. Before moving on to the specific use of English-language music in German worship, this analysis will step back to briefly consider the broader context of English as a European language of Christian proselytization. The history of European colonialism runs rife with instances of colonizers bringing their linguistic and religious preferences into their conquered territories. As such, similar to European languages as a whole, the use of English in non-native worship contexts has often negotiated (post)colonial power struggles. On one level, European language dispersion has often signified conflict between colonizers extending their political and religious boundaries. Parallel to sonic and religiolinguistic conflicts in North America, anthropologists Schieffelin and Doucet (1998), for example, have documented how languages came to represent spiritual and sonic territories in the Caribbean. According to their study, in Haiti, English became inextricably intertwined with Protestantism, while French served as the language of Catholicism (1998). The use of English as a non-native language in worship came to symbolize both liturgical and political dominance. Across the colonizing history of Western Christian missionary work, European languages were frequently cast as the “real” or “appropriate” languages of worship, just as Christianity was promoted as the only “true” religious option. Eurocentric missionaries and elites often pushed agendas of cultural imperialism so strongly that, by the twenty-first century, local people’s linguistic beliefs had often followed paths of symbolic violence such that they use their colonizer’s lingua

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franca for worship. Caribbean ethnomusicologist Jo-Ann Faith Richards’ research critically analyzes this trend by exploring the theological implications of such attitudes toward local languages versus English for postcolonial worshippers. Asking “Can I Be Truly Jamaican and Truly Christian?”, she analyzes how the local Patwa language is balanced with English in worship to problematize differing levels of fluency across colonizing, creole, and native languages: When I was a small child, I used to think that God didn’t speak Patwa (Jamaican Creole). I drew this conclusion because it was never used in church. As I grew older, I got to know that God is omniscient; He knows everything! So I drew the conclusion then that it wasn’t that He didn’t understand Patwa; it was that He didn’t like it. It was therefore never to be used when communicating with or about Him in the congregation. Eventually, as I grew a little older, I noticed that they would sometimes use Patwa in open air “crusade” meetings. At this point I said, “Aha! God doesn’t mind Patwa as long as it is used outside of His sacred space or sanctuary.” More time passed, and I noticed that in an evening service, during testimony time, Patwa speaking was allowed. At this point, I said, “Aha! So God doesn’t mind Patwa as long as it is not used in the holy divine worship service held on Sunday morning!” (2011)

Richards summarizes her concerts by asking, if Christians are Biblically called to worship “in Spirit and in Truth” (John 4:24, New International Version), should this truth “not just be the truth of who God is, but the truth of who the worshipper is” as well? “A true worshipper will be using his or her own language and music in worship, or it may be argued that the worship is not authentic” (ibid.). Considering the theological basis of an omniscient God shared across the vast majority of Christianity, an all-knowing God can understand a local language, like Patwa, as well as English. Yet, for humans in today’s globalized contexts, language choices continue to enact ontological power. With 20% of the world speaking English to varying degrees of fluency (Crystal 2009), understanding the emergent role of non-native English as a sacred language is central to understanding contemporary religious practices. The centrality of Englishlanguage worship music within rapidly expanding evangelical movements merits considerable analysis, in terms of sonic, social, and spiritual impacts. The rest of this paper begins to explore these broader issues by returning to the case study of one faith community – a community that is representative of hundreds more like it – that is singing globally popular English-language worship songs in southern Germany.

4

Singing English in German Churches

Given the long and prominent history of Germany as a central cultural and theological force in Western Christianity, Germans generally have not struggled with wondering if God approves of their native tongue. With the Germany’s Christian religious history beginning with a few early medieval monks bringing the religion to resistant locals, expansion to predominant, politically sanctioned-Christianization, central role in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, and substantial

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contributions to Christian theology from World War II to the present, most Western theologians would be more apt to debate whether a German term or an English term more accurately reflects an aspect of God than to question a German word’s value. Bavarians choosing to worship in English as a globalized non-native language carries levels of complexity. While no postcolonialism locally contextualizes this newly intensified use of English, as religious scholars Vasquez and Marquardt note, “it would be theoretically naïve and strategically dangerous not to acknowledge the ideological baggage that has become associated with globalization in recent years.” (2003, p. 2). Over recent decades, English-language music has been part of a new strain of evangelicalism and has been emerging alongside Germany’s centuries-old Protestant institutions. This activity is not coming only from local German sources but rather from internationally based Christian groups which are working alongside local Germans. Engaging global dynamics similar to those described in Monique M. Ingalls and Amos Young’s edited volume The Spirit of Praise: Music and Worship in Global Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity (2015), Germans are participating in the globalized evangelical Christian community to adopt a twentyfirst-century musical and linguistic aesthetic that is changing their traditional Protestant worship. Rather than being an American post-WWII legacy in Germany, much of this new evangelicalism comes from transnational, post-denominational groups with roots in the English-speaking world, such as Hillsong (originally based in Australia and treated extensively in Riches and Wagner (2017)), Vineyard (based in the United States), and Campus Crusade for Christ (also US-based). When these faith communities branch out into Germany, they tend to have most of their services (sermons, liturgy, prayers, and other spoken sections) in German, but their music incorporates English. Since parent groups like Hillsong and Vineyard not only use but also produce English-language music and worship materials, roughly half of their praise songs come from English-language sources and congregants are expected to sing the songs in the original English. The combination of new music, language, and theology has spurred a domino effect of interrelated changes in German churches, from causing worshippers to increase their physical involvement in praise to changing the linguistics of worship to impacting embodied theologies. Focusing on the linguistic component of this religious shift, I explore what role English-language music plays in this foreign style of Christianity being perceived as modern and desirable in Germany. Based on field research I conducted in multiple congregations in the Franconian region of Bavaria between 2009 and 2013, this chapter suggests that English-language German worship practices hold attractive modern, cosmopolitan cache while also reinforcing links to imagined communities of global evangelicalism. In terms of an overall religious landscape, Germany’s population has been contributing to broader changing Western trends. While individuals remain inter