The Ethnic Process: An Evolutionary Concept of Languages and Peoples [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9783110803051, 9789027976031

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Diagrammatic Representation II: The Ethnic

Setting

Society begins with the NEON A TAL ETHNIC ENDO WMENT at the environmental junction

/

Ethnic

v>\

HUNTING

Process

T H E D I F F E R E N T I A T I N G LANGUAGE Evolves specifically and reciprocally with the traditionally associated human group. Reflects habitat, history, home

MYTHOLOGY

"S? FAMILY

N O M A D I C LIFE GENS

VILLAGE S E T T L E M E N T Ethnic Society

CITY STATES

(clan)

TRIBE

EMPIRES PEOPLE (nationality)

NATION S T A T E S R E G I O N A L STATES

SCIENCE

NATION

T H E E T H N I C P R O C E S S E N S U R E S AN E T H N I C F O R M OF SOCIAL O R G A N I Z A T I O N

PRINCIPLES 1. Emergent Peoples, one after the other, have Deen freeing themselves from colonial oppression. 2. Only a liberated homeland provides the conditions for struggle against social oppression. 3. The power of the 'still, small voice' - the small nation - is increasingly effective numerically. 4. Mounting tensions for Social Good and Scientific Curiosity are bound to characterize the new milieu.

OBJECTIVES 1. Abolition of national sovereignty, national borders and nuclear arms. 2. Replacement of Superpowers by cultural and spiritual influences of the small nations. 3. Elimination of poverty, disease, crime and ignorance.

5. Universally, a child must know an international language in addition to his native tongue.

T H E F U T U R E - A W O R L D OF ETHNIC N E I G H B O U R H O O D S

o r> £L W < 0 ST o"

T H E E T H N I C PROCESS: AN E V O L U T I O N A R Y C O N C E P T OF L A N G U A G E S A N D PEOPLES

Contributions to the Sociology of Language

20

Joshua A. Fishman Editor

M O U T O N P U B L I S H E R S • T H E H A G U E • P A R I S • NEW Y O R K

The Ethnic Process An Evolutionary Concept of Languages and Peoples

Levic Jessel

M O U T O N P U B L I S H E R S • T H E H A G U E • P A R I S • NEW YORK

ISBN: 90-279-7603-1 Jacket design by Jurriaan Schrofer © 1978, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands Printed in Great Britain

to Ethel, Wife, critic, counsellor

Contents

Foreword by Professor Joshua A. Fishman Preface Introduction P A R T ONE: R E F L E C T I O N S ON QUESTIONS OF ETHNICISM Chapter i / Aspects of ethnicity A. Ethnic humanism; B. Natural history of the ethnic process; C. Race and ethnicity; D. Rise of the "ethnics"; E. Liberal universalism and the ethnics; F. The challenge of ethnicism. P A R T TWO: UTOPIAN INTERNATIONALISM AND T H E ETHNIC PROCESS Chapter 2/Fromm: nationalism and internationalism . A. General attitudes to nationalism; B. Incestuous nationalism; C. The revolution of nationalism; D. Nationalism and internationalism; E. Nationalism — genuine and spurious; F. Dream and reality. Chapter 3/Sapir: a people, and its language . A. Relationships; B. Language and Culture; C. Correlation between language and group; D. That peculiar feeling; E. Utopia and the prevalence of prejudice. Chapter 4/Whorf: the differentiation of language A. Introduction; B. Universalistic preconceptions; C. The language basis; D. The thinking mechanism; E. Linguistic relativity and world view; F. The dilemma of differentiation; G. World view and ethnic view; H. The ethnic process; I. Conclusion.

8

Contents

. . 1 2 3 Chapter 5/Chomsky: the quest for universals . . A. Universalistic motivations and self-hatred; B. Significance of differentiation; C. On genetics; D. The Chomsky position; E. On evolution; F. Innate ideas; G. Mind and ethnicity; H. Beginnings of the ethnic process.

P A R T T H R E E : T H E E T H N I C PROCESS A N D T H E SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE Chapter 6/Ethnic and social groups A. Impedimenta; B. Ethnicity; C. Environmental stress; D. Gumperz: the social group; E. The sociology of language.

165

Chapter 7/Theories of causality A. Ervin-Tripp: diversity and fundamentals; B. Grimshaw: the primordial ethnic principle; C. Correlation; D. Suppression of the ethnic factor; E. Labov: coming to grips; F. Genetics and the ethnic process; G. Biology and society.

180

Chapter 8/Special facets of the ethnic process . . . . A. Symbolism; B. Behavioral stimuli and ethnic dynamics; C. A L I Y A : an adaptation to the ethnic process; D. Maladies of dispersion; E. And the Lion Shall Lie Down with the Lamb.

204

Chapter 9/Obscuring of the ethnic process . . . . A. Scratching a little deeper; B. A cognitive arrest; C. Ambivalence or divergence?; D. Surrogates and the "boss"; E. A sociolinguistic dilemma.

216

PART FOUR: EVOLUTION AND THE ETHNIC PROCESS Chapter 10/Nationalism and the ethnic process . . .231 A. Groundwork and gestation; B. The small nations; C. The origins of nationalism; D. Ethnic content and significance; E. Utopian inauthenticity in the age of nationalism; F. Toward a world of ethnic neighborhoods; G. Millennium. Bibliography

255

Index

261

Diagrammatic Representation I

Front Endpaper

Diagrammatic Representation II

Back Endpaper

Foreword

During the past decade social science research on ethnicity has grown greatly in quantity and at least somewhat in quality. The sociology of language will also doubtlessly experience a further quickening of interest in this topic. Much — almost everything about the relationship between language and ethnicity — remains to be clarified and systematized. Ethnicity continues to be, by and large, a topic without intellectual roots. We have lost contact with all that social philosophers over the ages have said about it. Dr. Jessel recaptures a little of this for us. He also reveals to us some of the biophysiological research that has a bearing on the topic — some of it directly related to societal ethnicity and some of it only tangentially so. He suggests that basic theories of language behavior are impoverished due to their ignorance and antipathy with respect to ethnicity. He indicates how social theory itself has often ignored and not infrequently caricatured ethnicity. All in all, he takes a welcome step forward, for all of the language-in-society disciplines, by stressing the ethnic component in much social behavior in general, and in much language behavior in particular. Not the least of his contributions is the revelation of how much greater is that which we fail to know than that which we do know about the interacting transformations of society, of ethnicity, and of language itself. Thus, Dr. Jessel's volume may be a harbinger of inquiries, empirical and theoretical, yet to come in the sociology of language, to the end that ethnicity itself will be more fully understood and its relationship to language will be better appreciated. The link between ethnicity and language requires not merely sympathy but wisdom in order to be explicated, and not only wisdom but sympathy as well. Dr. Jessel brings much of both to his book and we must all thank him for "starting the ball rolling". May he whet the appetites of his readers so that they too can move the work forward and thereby attain the insights that this field so obviously has to offer for a more perfect understanding of contemporary man, contemporary society, contemporary social science, and the contemporary language sciences as well.

Foreword

10

Dr. Jessel's approach to the link between language and ethnicity is primarily qualitative and theoretical. Quantitive and empirical inquiry on this topic is still rare and must await further theoretical clarification before it can proceed with confidence. Dr. Jessel's tone is at times argumentative and frequently critical. He feels deeply about his topic and about the neglect, the abuse, and the misunderstanding to which it has been exposed in the past. Dispassionate exploration of alternative hypotheses and conceptualizations will ultimately help solve the issues in this field, indeed, will help us distinguish between researchable issues and non-researchable ones. Thus, Dr. Jessel's work must be seen as one of the early building blocks (not the first, of course, but still well within the pioneering era) out of which the total edifice of language and ethnicity study will be constructed. For that reason alone it is a pleasure to commend it to the attention of all who are genuinely concerned with the sociology of language. Joshua A. Fishman Institute for Advanced

Princeton, New Jersey

Study

Preface

In these essays, the intent is to probe into the underlying relationships of a language to the people that speaks it as its very own and into the underlying dynamics of ethnicity and of nationalism (its capitalist stage), both of which express these dynamics in their distinctive social behavior. I have attempted to show the virtual — though not, of course, the actual — existence of an ethnic process as the determining factor in all these interactions. Such a concept, to my knowledge, has never been presented before, nor has the name which I have attached to it. Even the attempted analysis is unusual, lending itself to elaboration in succeeding chapters. Whilst many had written on nationalism, almost invariably as an appendage of capitalism, and only a relative few on ethnic phenomena since the past 15 or 20 years, there had been a theoretical chaos in respect to the origins and evolutionary developments of the ethnic group with its associated diacritica and varied socio-economic and political problems. It had evidently occurred to no one to assume the existence also of a genetic motivating ethnic mechanism. It was, of course, a foolhardy postulate, to be applauded only when proved successful. Other factors too had contributed to my approach. Among them was the basic dimension of evolution which, it seemed to me, greatly clarified the effect of ethnic dynamics upon human society from the primitive family to the sovereign nation. I had also sought to indicate contrastively the validity of the ethnic basis of the society of man by paralleling it with the Marxist class history of society from the earliest food-gatherers to capitalism. One particularly important and provocative challenge was the internationalist or universalist aversion to the national question in spite of the extraordinary and unexpected appearance on the social scene of series upon series of national struggles. Marxist class ideology had from the outset proved incapable of recognizing in the national question the capitalist phase of a hoary ethnic antiquity. The persistence for more than a century of this aversion and its resultant offensive had struck me as a flagrant example of ideological bias that urgently required clarification.

12

Preface

Generations of scholars and intellectuals had been corrupted by this spurious philosophy. T h e conviction deepened that in the recent rash of studies on ethnic phenomena in the various disciplines, the theoretical pursuit of the flow of ethnic energy had been crucially impeded, and the concept of an ethnic process swept out of consciousness. It was like a scholarly arrest. Barth's positive evaluations of many ethnic situations under colonial or post-colonial conditions, which have greatly influenced anthropological research, had not lifted the veil of secrecy that had concealed the universalis! bias. But the fact that no advances have been made in causal theory, nor has there been an apparent appreciation of an ethnic dynamic, strongly suggests the continued presence of the ideological blindspot whether consciously or unconsciously. Moreover, wide reading on language and linguistics had prepared me for the discovery that here too the prejudicial approach could well be applicable. O f this I was convinced after I became better acquainted with specific writings of Sapir, Whorf, and Chomsky. With these authors too, the influence of the well-rooted prejudices lay in their ideological background. For a frank exposition of both basic and twisted anti-national attitudes in a concomitant vacuum of ethnic knowledge, I went to Erich Fromm, a noted psychoanalytical thinker. It soon became evident that this book had to be planned around two dichotomies: i) the all important link between the language and its speech community; 2) the contest between the ethnic struggle for national liberation and its ideological defamation by a Utopian internationalism or socalled universalism. Inevitably, questions of sources, origins, and foundations of the ethnic dynamics involved in the two dichotomies arose; and out of this welter of natural and social forces emerged the concept of an ethnic process. Its social ramifications, founded upon the vast differentiation of groups and languages, led to an evolutionary appreciation of their ethnic development as the basis of human society, and to a step-by-step elucidation of the concept of the ethnic process. For such a sequence, I am much indebted to ethnicist scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, and especially the sociology of language. It is my hope that this candid and presumptive study of the ethnic process — a notion unfamiliar to specialist and layman alike, and admittedly amateurish in its crude formulations — m a y encourage further theoretical research in the etiology and evolution of the relationships between a people and its language. Levic Jessel, M . D . August 1977

Rehovot, Israel

Introduction

So obvious is the close correspondence between a people and its language, that the significance of the relationship has been generally overlooked by those who might be expected to be most concerned, scholars in relevant disciplines. In fact, however, an idea ingrained in the popular mind is more likely to lend itself to scholarly contempt. A form of hypercriticism rejects the concept unless a direct, one-to-one or parallel correspondence can be clearly recognized between the language and the culture of the given people, a proposition that might encounter variable receptions. That there could be an intimate relationship between the people itself and its language — such a question is usually left in tenuous suspension if considered at all. Parallel to this curious situation is a related social phenomenon laden with the portent of 19th and 20th century thought, viz., the unmasked hatred of nationalism that has marked those who regarded themselves as cosmopolitans, internationalists, or universalists. The Marxist influence is paramount. Nowadays, this hatred is much more insidious since most intellectuals are impelled to bow to the insistent demand for national liberation. Acquiescence seems the most democratic thing to do. Strange to say, nationalism itself has simultaneously been held up to scorn by radicals and liberals alike as the arch-enemy of human progress, finding it basically responsible for spreading the seeds of fascism and totalitarianism. This inflexible and contradictory attitude, as widespread on the campus as it is discredited by the universality of the national struggle, has in large measure served to confuse and even demoralize modern social thought. Certainly, in the social disciplines, such an attitude toward an advancing nationalism on a world-wide canvas could not help but lead to growing scholarly frustration and puzzlement; and perhaps even a distaste for delving into the mysteries of an ethnicity long regarded as all but extinct, or of that long forgotten and rather obnoxious fact of universal ethnic and

14

Introduction

language differentiation. Such topics boded no good for their now preposterous anti-national philosophy. This behavior, more emotional than intellectual, and decidedly unscholarly, intensified all the more the preconceptions that had frowned upon the seemingly simplistic idea of a close correspondence between a people and its language. Ideological prejudices now threatened to become a corroding factor in scholarly quests. In the biased atmosphere of antinational thought, a fanatical opposition could substitute for understanding in the astoundingly blind incomprehension of the national idea. Indubitably, the age of struggle for national liberation has rendered it impermissible to ignore this unsavory ideological influence. In the history of modern "universalistic" thought, the crux of it is the intense conviction, virtually a religious faith, that nationalism is a regressive and dangerous emotion. Nationalism meant "strangling ourselves in our tribal separateness" as a more reluctant ethnic well-wisher has averred. It also meant an incestuous instinct destructive of man's moral fibre, as an avowed foe of nationalism had self-righteously elaborated. T o M a r x and his wide following, radical and liberal alike, it was the antithesis of the class struggle. Particularly Jewish radicals, notoriously afflicted generationally with a self-hatred bordering on the pathological, passionately endorse Palestinian terrorist demands for a 21st Arab state to the utter exclusion of a solitary Jewish state striving to overcome 2000 years of defenceless Dispersion. Nationalism, Marxists had fervently believed, would disappear with capitalism and be replaced by a new world society. According to Lenin, it would take the form of a "proletarian internationalism". Nationalism was doomed to extinction. Biased intellectuals were totally unaware of the possibility of a basic ethnic principle, one that could even be a component of the human endowment and thus transmitted genetically. They had lost sight of what was essentially an ethnic group: the speech community, the folk, the people extending from a hoary antiquity. They had lost sight of the underlying ethnicity. Concealed from them were the dynamics of an evolutionary social process. Marx and his disciples had transmuted the theory of the class struggle — Marx's most brilliant achievement — into an obscurantist blindspot. O f all evils to which man was addicted, so their psychological naivete would have it, nationalism was the most devastating and was to be eradicated forthwith. Its elimination would end wars and the dangers of fascism. Otherwise all was right with the world. Maxx had overlooked the elementary fact that a successful class conflict could be fought only in a climate of ethnic freedom, the conditions of

Introduction

15

production then alone soundly rooted in the soil of independence. This contradiction in Marxist Messianism was the basic stumbling block to social evolution. Omitted was an essential step in the development of human society. Messianic haste explains also the Utopian aversion to Freudianism since, unconsciously, it relegates man's brute instincts for ultimate solution in an ideal society. Psychological fundamentals thus eclipsed by ideological illusions, it was not surprising, if a trifle opportunistic, that, impaled on the horns of a socio-historical dilemma, nationalism alone was equated with social evils and thrown as a sop to the class war. A series of social phenomena beginning with the Enlightenment, transmitted by the French Revolution, and thenceforth diverted by Marxist teachings along Utopian universalistic lines, had led to a suppression of ethnic forces that finally erupted into nearly 200 years of struggle in the path of the industrial revolution. Sturdy, rustic, home-loving subject peoples, unsophisticated and prone to deferentially accept the simple poverty levels of barely tolerable existence, began to witness a depopulating countryside and growing tensions as industrial empires emerged at their expense. A new self-awareness thus fanned the far more militant flames of national liberation. Suppression of the national idea, however, also brought to light the ties between speech community and specific language, in the exposure eliciting the currents of the ethnic process and the evolutionary course of ethnic development. Looking below the capitalist superstructure — within which may be included the social expression of ethnicity we know as nationalism — to roots that lie deep in ethnic and linguistic processes could, perhaps, have helped to dispel the confusion of the intellectuals. Lacking insight into such considerations, it is little wonder they failed to discern the bare elements of a more realistic philosophy than anti-nationalism. With the prevalence of this antiquated approach (hence the low repute of studies in depth of the roots of ethnicity and nationalism) a knowledge of ethnicism was, to be sure, quite beyond their ken. Erich Fromm, for instance, brought his combined socio-psychoanalytical erudition, experience, and inflexibility to bear upon his already deeply entrenched anti-nationalism. T o the satisfaction of like-minded Utopian universalists, he "proved" the utterly reactionary and unredemptive character of nationalism. Yet, of ethnicism and its evolutionary connections with the development of mankind, not the faintest glimmer of discriminating assessment or insightful discernment had penetrated his mind. It was imbued with preconceptions of a classless society where national (i.e., ethnic) influences would be entirely obliterated. He had never dreamed

i6

Introduction

of a biological need for ethnic neighborhoods in such a world society — as man's social expression of an essential primordial group instinct. Edward Sapir, anthropologist and linguist, had critically absorbed the universalistic spirit of the age. Writing wisely and tolerantly, he strove forthrightly to diminish the anti-national extremism, pointing out at the same time the positive features inherent in nationalism as he saw it. In his knowledgeable exposition of the degree of correlation between a language and its speech community, however, he stressed the culture rather than the group. Essentially, for Sapir, there was little difference in the actual choice, but in view of the contentiousness of the ethnic group, there was probably ideological motivation behind the obliqueness. Culture had played a useful surrogate role in preference to an antipathetic ethnos. Furthermore, while not finding for direct correlation between language and culture, he omitted to expatiate on the reasons for this or its significance in terms of actual relationships between the language and the ethnic group. Clearly, psychological inhibitions were a potent factor despite his conscious efforts to be scrupulously fair in his judgments. From Sapir's example, as with Whorf, a student and co-worker of his, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the dogmatism and jesuistic behavior of Utopian internationalists toward ethnicism had somewhat impaired his scholarly attitude as a whole. Benjamin Lee Whorf, unlike Fromm, was not a social missionary but an innocent conformist to fashionable intellectual notions, the conscious anti-national element perhaps wholly sublimated. His linguistic "world view", derived from the specific language, out of a system of seemingly ethnic-less language differentiation that had fascinated Whorf so much, must have been held suspect by the sophisticated universalist more keenly aware of the hydra-headed spectre of nationalism. It could be a matter of some interest to determine a possible relationship between Whorf's "linguistic relativity" theory and a posthumous unpopularity that only in recent years, the coming of age of nationalism, is apparently beginning to wane. Certainly, it is only a step from his linguistic world view to an ethnic Weltanschauung; but, Whorf's universalistic indoctrination would indubitably have militated unconsciously against such a development. Noam Chomsky, on the other hand, represents the opposite pole: the brilliant scholar and theorist who is simultaneously a political extremist, a far leftist Jew oblivious of the national fate of his people. It would be hazardous to hold that Chomsky could successfully divorce his intense ideological background or his autochthonous, self-rejecting Jewish attitudes respectively from either scholarly or political objectivity, more especially, in the latter category, if it concerned Israel. Certainly, as regards linguistic theory, his abstract, all but metaphysical approach with its

Introduction

17

prior repudiation of ethnic and language differentiation, despite their more realistic basis, cast a veil over motivation. In intellectual conflict, Chomsky engages the entire scope of his personality. His quest for universal attributes of language, enabling construction of a universal grammar that children everywhere could comprehend, had determined his choice of method. Bent of mind and ideological conviction spurned ethnic and linguistic differentiation not only as unlikely sources of universals but also by reason of its national implications; hence, a virtually precipitate flight from surrounding realities into speculative concepts which, Chomsky hoped, would lead him to longed-for, innate universals. Like the earlier Marxists, he, the linguist, had little patience with circuitous, more evolutionary routes. He wanted the universal language now, the more quickly to achieve the universal society. It was strangely reminiscent of the Marxist steamroller crushing an awakening nationalism that delayed the Messianic day. After that historic failure, it is difficult to apprehend the wisdom of Chomsky's deliberate displacement of a still dynamic differentiation. From such ideological experience, even the unwary might gauge the dubious advantages of short cuts to Paradise. In a world of strife and struggles for national and social freedom, it is unreasonable to anticipate that Chomsky's Lamarckianism and cavalier disregard for accepted biological opinion will lead to the discovery of new, fundamental universals. Where they cannot be discovered on his chosen path, Chomsky proposes to create them as innate ideas, flouting biological knowledge as it is generally conceived today. That is at least a courageous and challenging concept. Throughout his entire past, even man's genuinely innate capacity for group existence had been forced to submit to changing environmental pressures, resulting in manifold divergences from the pristine groups to thousands of emergent groups, each in reciprocal association with the specific language of equally innate descent, and each acquiring historically distinctive ethnic features. Under similar conditions, it is therefore conceivable that other capacities of man's primordial endowment, hitherto unknown, may thus ultimately be revealed. But it is not a question of magic or metaphysics but of those mysterious pragmatic events inherent in the evolutionary process. In the universal society that all men look forward to — from the prophets of old to the prophets of today — the components of the human repertoire might more conceivably be recognizable. In that auspicious age all repressed ethnic groups will be ethnically free. Rejoicing in their ethnic neighborhoods, they will then also, in their growing cooperation, be shorn of their former socio-psychological burdens as well as of other

i8

Introduction

obstacles that formerly divided them, particularly their selfish powers and sovereignties. Man's innate forces would burst into bloom as they interact with this fertile environment. Not only would Chomsky's universal language flourish but the ethnic process too. The author postulates thè ethnic process as a dynamic current of primordial origin flowing from pristine group to modern society. As it courses through the argument, it will take on flesh and blood and reality while it is described, elaborated, and developed. Thus meandering, it is accompanied by increasing social maturity and acquires character and meaning. Traversing millennia in the hundreds and thousands, its acquisitions assume more and more recognizable territorial, social, psychological, behavioral, and linguistic forms. Certainly, its overwhelming significance has revolutionized contemporary society. It has above all apparently established the existence of some semblance of a genuine ethnic process constituting, as it would reasonably seem, the ethnic foundations of social man. As the relationship of language to group should demonstrate, it is doubtful if, without cultural, social, historical, economic, and other relevant influences of environment, ethnic foundations could have left their mark at all. The ethnic process, in fact, is the combined effect of the primordial ethnic stimulus and the corresponding ethnic setting in the changing environment. Thus assuming the validity of the ethnic process, realistically or not, in a chapter by chapter delineation of its structure and attributes, need not detract from whatever degree of truth might cling to it. What the actual nature of an ethnic process is, or ought to be, is of course not of practical importance. That, in the history of human society and as a concept of man in a state of social evolution, it functions continuously as a social mechanism, must, in the opinion of this author, be beyond all doubt. Like man himself with all his chromosomal components, the ethnic process is or must be a product of evolutionary development, equally capable of genetic transmission. As a concept, it concerns that component of the genetic legacy which accounts, in each individual of a specific community, for ethnic environmental manifestations — a component no less organic than the component capacities, for instance, that account for the group and its language. There is only one major distinction between one set of components, such as those of group and language, and that to which we attach the name of ethnic process. The former constitutes a relatively familiar phenomenon whereas the latter is totally unknown. That the ethnic process has not been observed before is not necessarily an indication of non-existence but of obscurity. The past two centuries had

Introduction

19

witnessed a succession of events tending to conceal changing conditions that ultimately exposed the operative effects of an ethnic process. The most precipitating event was the Marxist manipulation, in the interests of a proletarian revolution, of the ideological climate of Utopian universalism. Here was the opening of a "Pandora's box". It had been not only a succession of events but also a concatenation: urban industrialization, capitalist spread and development, and subsequent class conflict had evoked unease and unrest in the rural areas and small towns of the oppressed European ethnic communities. Increasingly, as their conditions of existence were impinged upon by class war and imperialist ambitions, ethnic awareness sharpened, taking the modern, much more aggressive form of struggle for national liberation. The East-European struggles for independence in 1848 had set these national forces in motion. Suppression of ethnic rights and liberties had revealed the hitherto unknown evidence of an ethnic process at work. How could it all have started? From the moment a capacity for acquisition of language and expansion of intellect differentiated man from his animal ancestor, man and language have been inseparable companions. During the millions of years of hominid efforts at speech, it is doubtful if even primitive forms were achieved. Not till " H o m o sapiens" appeared approximately a million years ago did primitive forms become more rapidly complex. As groups separated, each tended to fashion its already specifically adapted tongue out of the reciprocal experience, and each carved out its characteristic forms of group life. Thus evolved a people and its language. Peoples multiplied along with their corresponding languages and habitats as they established more sedentary modes of existence. Growth and development added anatomical, physiological, psychological, and social complexity. Societies changed. Out of complexity emerged diversity. The entire picture had demonstrated a continuity of human life as an evolutionary social process that began with the pristine relationship. Within the individual of the specific group, this social process is initiated embryonically as an ethnic stimulus when, probably by enzymatic action, the group-forming and language-acquisition capacities are adapted to combine with the appropriate environmental influences in order to ensure the ethnic organization of human society. In consequence of this ethnic symbiosis, mankind falls ineluctably into distinctive groups, each on its own territory, with its native language, and with a variety of historically acquired protective forms reflecting the life of that particular people — traditions, culture, customs, religion, mythology, and so forth. Basically, man has responded to these intrinsic urges of his nature with the homely affections that have generally bound men to the soil they

20

Introduction

tilled, and with emotions and loyalties they have felt for their villages, their rustic neighborhoods and even to their backward provinces. M a n has always loved his hearth and home. Such feelings are regarded as normal human experience. T h e y are, in fact, important human values. T h e struggles for national liberation that have shaped the destiny of the world show the tragic results of Utopian efforts to deflect man's evolutionary course: not only the enormous loss in human life, but the savage distortion of human values; above all, their replacement by the climate of "1984" and of " A Brave New World". In spite of an illusory internationalism — still potent though its adherents nod their heads in agieement with national liberation — vast researches on the problems of the emergent societies and minority groups engage the attention of scholars. But sometimes, it seems to occupy separate pigeon-holes of the mind, as though frustrated by conflicting preconceptions. It is common experience to find that a writer takes for granted his reader's aversion to nationalism as the epitome of social evil while devoting his special talents to national rehabilitation and reconstruction ini one form or another. Rarely does there seem to be an attempt to dig deeply into the origins of ethnicity, to retrace the mode of social development, or to probe the profound interactions that so obviously affect the relationships between a people and its language. T h e possibility of an etiological factor like the ethnic process with its biological and environmental ingredients, or any other theoretical interpretation of the provenance for that ethnicity out of which the phenomenal national struggle had erupted, quite evidently finds no entry into anybody's mind. T h e most evocative explanation for the national struggle still remains the now utterly inapplicable Marxist interpretation. Nationalism had not begun as a consequence of the rise of capitalism and would not vanish with the rise of communism; nationalism is simply the form that ethnicity takes under conditions of capitalism. It will assume corresponding forms of ethnicity under communism or any other form of society, including a world society where, presumably, it could be a world of ethnic neighborhoods. What has been said of the shallowness of Marxist thinking on the ethnic question applies with equal force to the liberal who, seemingly, finds no other significance to the newer "ethnics" than as a response to Freudian folklore. In short, to the roots of the ethnic question, the general attitude has been consistently evasive. Clearly essential to a good many intelligent readers is a basic knowledge of ethnicism as a philosophical or epistemological study that could spread enlightenment on the social importance of ethnic values, as well as on the ethnic character of human society. It is high time ideological prejudices

Introduction

21

lost their foothold in the academy and ceased to obscure knowledge of the validity of ethnicity. Surely today, instead, there is room for encouragement of research in ethnic and linguistic diversity. Largely, it is this situation which accounts for the serious gap in the teaching of ethnicism.

PART ONE

Reflections on questions of ethnicism

CHAPTER 1

Aspects of ethnicity

A. ETHNIC HUMANISM In a human society beset by the gravity of its domestic and international problems, it is relatively easy to lose sight of humanity itself. Two world wars had occurred, at least 20 million lives had been lost, bestial totalitarian states had appeared, and some had departed, leaving those that still remained as a threat of impending doom to democracy. A holocaust, to which the whole world had acquiesced, had wiped out one third of the Jewish population only because they were Jews; and all the earth is still beginning to recover from the Apocalyptic affliction that had befallen mankind. Beast in the guise of man had overrun the planet in the name of racial mysticism, in the lust for power, and in the fanatical belief in an ideological Moloch. Out of the ruins of humanity had emerged a wave of struggles for national liberation; and respected historians, philosophers, scientists, and other intellectuals had been appalled to learn that feelings of ethnic identity, that had always appeared so contemptible to them, should arouse so profound an echo in the heart of man. It was in the nature of a revelation. Impermeable minds fiercely resisted a concept and a reality that shattered their universalistic illusions. Yet peoples after peoples clambered awkwardly and painfully, and even disastrously, upon the stage of independe n c e — pitifully nurturing a "sovereignty" they had been taught to believe was to be the pinnacle of their national achievement. How could they be expected to know that national freedom and equality for every underprivileged people on earth were only the essential pre-conditions for the attainment of still another rung in the ladder of the social evolution of man? How could they know when even their ideological opponents and intellectual betters were so abysmally ignorant? In the struggle for social illumination, the human element had become submerged. It is unfortunately in the nature of most social revolutions that

2b

Reflections on questions of ethnicism

the light which people yearned for should be darkened by accompanying shadows. Even a free people had to have food, shelter, and security, and had yet to strive for social rights within the boundaries it had won. Above all, however, rode the passions and the irrationals. But an aggregate of world individuals did not constitute humanity. Humanity is neither abstract nor amorphous. It is also composed of groups and classes. Marx had reminded us about the classes, but all the Marxists and most deluded scholars they had influenced had been insensible to the existence of peoples. The whole man had to be free, not only economically but also psychologically and ethnically. Only the whole man could possess genuine mental health. The struggles for national liberation had therefore served to remove intellectual blinkers — wherever this was psychologically possible. Ideologies are often like strait-jackets that limit the field of vision. Academic disciplines, philosophical systems, historical schools, organized religions, and the like use thought, faith, and enquiry and resemble ideologies in the tendency to acquire a dogmatic approach fatal to an uninhibited, if you wish, childlike, mind. Prejudices, biases, and preconceptions of any kind are gross encumbrances for thinking individuals. While the average man is obviously unprepared for such measures of self-restraint, its import for scholar and intellectual is equally obvious and can scarcely be overemphasized. Political ideologies, however, are, of all categories of entrenched and captive thought, the least trustworthy and the most dangerous. One is tempted to ponder and examine more closely these frailties of the human mind in the light of the inestimable harm they have done to human development, as well as their responsibility for the present plight of human society. Certainly, the ethnic idea had long been the principal prey of the predatory intellectual, all the more so because it had been deformed and mutilated by scheming political adventurers, mentally crippled patriots, and unscrupulous anti-Semites of all descriptions. If, thanks to Borochov, it had indeed been shown that humanity comprises peoples as well as classes, it had repeatedly been demonstrated that, thanks to Marx, the national idea had been grossly defamed. From this it has not recovered even in this age of national liberation. Marx's political writings, as well as those of Engels, are replete with references hostile to the development of the small nations. T h e Master's teachings on the national question had corrupted the entire socialist and communist movements as well as most of the radical intelligentsia. Half-baked national philosophies followed, and half-hearted national solutions were proposed. While Lenin, for example, had liberated the subjected nationalities of Czarist Russia, he had, strange to say, overlooked the correct naming of the ethnic child he had brought into being, namely, proletarian nationalism. As

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the one who gave practical currency to the Utopian aspects of universalism, Marx remains, historically and symbolically, the archdefamer of nationalism. Therefore Lenin proclaimed a proletarian — inter-nationalism. Essentially, nationalism is an acutely developed ethnic sense. It appeared as an outgrowth of capitalism and of the consciousness of oppression on the part of minority peoples. Whatever invidious use was made of this normal ethnic sense by reactionary elements of society this sense ceased to be nationalism and became something else. It became chauvinism; it became a superpatriotism; it became totalitarianism — as in Italy, Germany, Russia, and China. Among leftists, radicals and many liberals, the common anti-national conception was that of a phenomenon ushered in by capitalism and bound to disappear in the communist society. It seems extraordinary that so simplistic a concept should have deluded generations of individuals and political parties that regarded themselves as progressive. There had seemed no room in their minds for the appreciation of a normal ethnic form of social existence since the beginning of man. Y e t it is precisely this false notion of an isolated national condition vanishing with capitalism that activated their hostility and imbued them with an impassioned utopianism, so imminent had a universal society loomed to Marx and his followers. Marx had also defamed the Jew, seeing in him not only the epitome of capitalism but also the infamy of degradation deserving only contempt. This was of course the utmost in remoteness from the German Rhinelander he proudly pictured himself to be. His own Jewish origin only emphasized the perversity of his anti-Semitism. Intensity of ideological conviction obliterated any question of tolerance for other ideas or social phenomena. In the case of Marx, the political conjuncture of his times constituted sufficient rationale for a ruthless condemnation of the small nations. As handmaidens of capitalism, they stood in the way of the advance of mankind. Marx brooked no opposition to his theories, decidedly not on the national question. Such motivations were responsible for the distortion in much of cultural, social, and political history that ensued. National delusions stunted the further development of an ethnic process of which Marx had not the faintest conception; they even invaded the hallowed precincts of the academies. As for the enormous harm it wreaked upon the fate of Jews, liberal, radical, and Soviet anti-Semitism still continues to tell the story. Marx's Utopian universalism was not unique, but the immense influence of his thought causes him to stand out, especially in relation to the national question, as an accident of history. More than any other factor, it tended to obscure the existence of an ethnic process manifested in the vast ramifica-

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tions of ethnicity which characterized mankind. Accidents of history, like mutations in biology, do not always fall on fertile ground; but when they do a logical sequence follows — a whole train of events. T h e national awakening in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century was violently opposed by both Marx and Engels, more particularly that of the Slavs and the Danes. But it arose again in a remarkable upsurge as result of national revolutionary dynamics released by the two world wars. Nevertheless, during that interval of a hundred years, a Utopian universalism had held sway over Western thought. From the effects of that extraordinary aberration the world of culture has not fully recovered. In large degree, that hundred year taboo on ethnic relationships has been lifted, and there is now a plethora of writing on the national question. Studies of ethnicity in depth, as a subject that has long lain shrouded in mystery, still await their authors, and this requires at least a simple awareness of the ethnic process. As a basic facet of humanist inspiration, indeed at the very root of human action, ethnicism can scarcely be overlooked. Wherever human life had sprung up a human society arose and flourished. That is natural biological behavior, originally set, no doubt, by a formerly animalistic mental pattern of adjustment to surrounding conditions. In the case of the human with the added features of language and culture, this behavior acquired the character now described as ethnic and went through the customary human development from family to nation. T o arrest this process at any stage of its ethnic growth was always tantamount to suppressing its natural expression. T h e rise of some form of civilization upon a foundation of intelligence, thought, language, invention, and social conscience — in the course of an existence that was either simple or complex •— introduced human factors that brought increasing knowledge to bear, rounding out and embellishing the ordinary exigencies of mere existence. Millions of years of evolving behavior carried in its wake all the psychological propensities for law and morals, and a growing sensitiveness for justice and freedom, for art, myth, and aesthetics — influencing trends and inclinations that variegated society in its ebb and flow. All these groups experienced, as conditions permitted, an essentially identical process of group development. It was a natural history as typical as that of any other species of life in the plant or animal world, subject only to the vicissitudes of environment, history, and accident. These alone were the sources of the specifics that divided them. Under the circumstances of relative isolation, it was inevitable that distinctive habits of thought, language, and behavior should arise. Wars, conquests, captivity, religions, trade, and cultural diffusion created interrelationships of all sorts both within and without the group. Notwith-

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standing the numerous changes and re-formations that constantly ensued in consequence of such events and phenomena, the ethnic speech community continued to remain the fundamental structure in human society. Within its boundaries, whether in close association with its neighbors or utterly isolated, a common humanity developed its manifold specificities. In this life-history of man, racial differentials such as color and anatomical features, whatever their origins, were entirely incidental to the course pursued by the ethnic process. These processes were problems of mankind as a whole, responsive to the vagaries and unsolved mysteries of the human psyche. They were matters of aggression and aggrandizement, of infamy and degradation, of prejudices, fears and beliefs, of economic and political advantage. None of these factors bears the slightest relationship to ethnicity — a formative criterion of man's group behavior only. In the study of mankind, ethnicism is thus, like universalism itself, no more and no less than an aspect of humanism. T o picture the whole man, he has to be seen as the product of a specific speech community, a people living generally under a relatively isolated set of existential conditions — shaped by its language, its culture, its traditions, its customs and behavior, and of course by its external influences. Rooted in his native soil, in his home, truly in Mother Earth itself — nurtured in fact in that yearning for the maternal womb Erich Fromm had deprecated with sterile argument — there is nothing but man's repressed unconscious and unrepressed animal instincts to deter groups of men in their natural ethnic settings from fulfilling both their needs and their visions of a universal society. The false prophets who had envisioned a Messianic era by uprooting man himself had wrongly interpreted the course and direction of human development, and had failed to discern the underlying ethnic process. To encompass all of humanity in the ideal society, the whole man is essential, not man denuded of his ethnic reality. The ethnic process seems to be an ineluctable fact of life, inseparable from both animal and man. The much vaunted rights of man embody the rights of a people to exist in freedom, since peoples have to be wholly free before they can attempt the task of establishing a free world. So rudimentary is such an observation that, for most people today, it is in the nature of a cliche. Not, unfortunately, for dogmatic academics and intellectuals, and not, in fact, for the powers of darkness. Under capitalist conditions, ethnic rights had had to be asserted by national struggles — challenging the biases and preconceptions of radical and liberal Utopians. In short, genuine humanism does not deny man his ethnic roots; instead,

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Reflections on questions of ethnicism

it ennobles them and reinforces them in the interests of all men. It rehabilitates them in order that a hundred flowers shall bloom in the interests of the human garden. Only free peoples — free inside as well as outside their boundaries — would cease to place too high an evaluation upon sovereignty, as they do presently, in an age when national liberation is the solitary visible goal. Indeed, man may have many philosophies, but if they seek truth, they have to reckon with the fact that man is socially an ethnic being first and foremost.

B. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC PROCESS

As with biological life, the earliest beginnings of an ethnic process are too elusive to be detected. When one begins to suspect an ethnic process in the making under our social microscope, one can never be completely certain till additional developments have rounded out our knowledge. The procedure is analogous to a doctor in the act of arriving at a diagnosis; in the meantime he makes do with a tentative diagnosis. Casually surveying the world at any moment, it is a difficulty one encounters everywhere. Faced with the Palestinians, it is Israel's major contemporary problem. Are they a separate people or simply an indistinguishable part of the Arab people as a whole with their more than twenty nation-states? Is Arab destiny identical merely because they appear to constitute one people, or will it vary with each nation-state? Merely because the major determining part of the populations is of British stock, does that justify declaring all English-speaking peoples one people, with a single destiny? Do the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Germans each comprise two separate peoples just because they have been arbitrarily divided; and, should these divisions persist for a very long time, will each group necessarily find different directions? Such problems are legion, but all they illustrate is the heightened complexity of the ethnic process at advancing stages of development. Questions like these are resolved today — as, in all probability, they had been resolved at any given stage in the past — by political or any other fateful contingencies, by self-imposed decisions, or by a combination of both. The simple fact is that the ethnic process, with an historical imperturbability that heals all wounds at the price of the poignancies and the miseries of the critical moment, continues to reassert itself at every level. If, for example, the Palestinians — unquestionably part of an historic Arab group with a hoary ethnic past (but not necessarily from Palestine) — demanded and won an autonomous Palestinian state, they would thereafter develop as a Palestinian Arab people, evolving along with the other Arab

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states towards its own specific destiny. Its ethnic behavior, like that, say, of an English-speaking people, would follow the course dictated by its characteristic life-history. Insofar as modern international communications permit, every distinctive ethnic group with its separate identity, culture and linguistic variation would find its specific expression. O n e recognizes at the outset that modern conditions of relative isolation are hardly comparable to those of earlier days. Like every process in nature, the ethnic process continues its inexorable advance, seeking the most favorable conditions, and always accommoderating itself to the historically changing venue. T h e striking difference with the past on the part of an ethnic process, insofar as it can be grossly recognized, lies exclusively in the present complexity. T h e ethnic process itself, whatever the drives or the external factors that influence it, remains unaltered. It is a law of nature, fixed and immutable. There seems to be a telescoping of social processes as result of the galloping pace of 20th century movement that scarcely allows new-born nations much time to stabilize their national sovereignty. No sooner would every contender for national freedom acquire its passionately desired goal than inherent dynamic forces would likely propel the present age of nationalism still closer towards Messianic times. Unevenly and always uphill, society will proceed — let the optimist hope — to still greener fields. Time is not of the essence in social evolution anymore than it is in biological, but we have to remind ourselves that technology has its special role to enact. One thing seems certain, whatever the rate and however zig-zag the course of social evolution, it would be an age of growing turmoil, and the movement, as Golo Mann put it, more like a cataract. T h e ethnic process is not just a matter of growth. Its implications for human society are far-reaching. In the chapters on Whorf and Chomsky, and elsewhere in this work, some clarification has been attempted. Roughly, two courses seem to present themselves, both converging on the concept of the ethnic process: one, an environmental development and the other, an innate characteristic of the human mind. Briefly now, the environment has yet to be dealt with at some length in relation to language and its differentiation. Like the animal herd of which it is an offspring, the human group in its smallest dimension, the family, emerged into nature as a community — the distinctiveness of man its chief feature, and his community a speech community. Thenceforth, geography, history, culture, and so forth conspired to create a relatively favorable setting in which, throughout its subsequent fate, it acquired the standard requisites of an ethnic aggregate. Such a situation describes the human group as necessarily buffeted about by the instabilities and hazards

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of the external world. In the course of such experience, the population of the world at sill times was marked by its fundamental ethnic composition. Man's hereditary equipment impels him in the same direction. Knowledge of animal instincts has thrown considerable light upon behavior in the animal world, and its corresponding relationship to human behavior. The innate tendency of some animals to group in selected areas and to defend those areas against intrusion has suggested such ingenious characterizations as the "territorial imperative" and "biological nation". The terms themselves simply represent instinctual behavior, but they do not indicate that all animals possess this instinct. The fact that we observe the same tendencies in man is another indication of his animal descent. Convergence of two such driving forces, the environmental and the innate, into a singular form of human group behavior imparts a sense of finality to the speech community throughout all its adaptations and transformations. Man being what he is and the social forces what they are, there seems little doubt about the organic character of ethnic behavior. However, the modern aspect of the ethnic process tends to become obscured by the play of psychological, economic and political forces. Nationalism in the grip of unbridled aggression, of man's lust for power, of a savage sadism, of an uninhibited selfishness and ambition, of irrational hatreds, and similar, hypertrophied anti-social traits — such a nationalism appearing at the pinnacle of capitalist penetration and entrenchment had fed the diabolical designs of an all-consuming totalitarianism. So, in the days before nationalism, before the advent of capitalism, other phenomena had played into the hands of tyranny and of other social scourges that had overrun the populations and the civilizations of the world. It had been an incredible error for men of good will to identify current evils only with the rising phenomenon of nationalism. It had been a case of mistaken identity of disastrous significance for human destiny. Caught in the spell of an illusory universalism that was radiant with hope for exploited man and seemingly so close at hand, Marx was blind to man's mischief-making powers and saw only what appeared to him as an outmoded form of human organization. To be sure, had Marx's teaching immediately won the day, he might — so, at least, it could be argued — have prevented the rise of totalitarianism. But such an argument would have been the most illusory of all illusions. How could Marx have succeeded with man still little more than beast in human form? Marx had overlooked both the psychological imperfections of man, particularly operative under the given political and economic conditions, as well as the organic character of the ethnic imperative. Konrad Lorenz, wise and knowledgeable authority on ethology, displays a similar failure to understand the elements of human behavior. In an

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interview with the New York Times, he remarked, apropos of national ideas: Transposed into our time, Kipling results in Hitler — j u s t as imperialist and just as racist. A great poet, Kipling is an example of how a system of behavioral norms that could serve as counsel for the young only 100 years ago would today lead to absolutely criminal nationalistic chauvinism (Lorenz 1970).

Lorenz was both right and wrong. T h e values inherent in ethnicity are implicit in the ethnic process. They are therefore relevant also during the period of capitalism when ethnicity is expressed as nationalism. Such values as love of one's family, one's home, one's people, and one's land, as well as the pride an individual generally takes in them, and the need to defend them, are basic human values. It is reprehensible to repudiate them. T h e y are indispensable as ordinary human decencies. But, as Fromm expresses it, such love cannot be exclusive of humanity. (See chapter on Fromm.) This, then, is genuine nationalism, and such a form of nationalism does not bear an idolatrous character. What Kipling has represented was chauvinism. Chauvinism, on the other hand, bears no relationship to genuine nationalism. It is ultra-patriotism, affecting a superiority over other peoples. It is always extravagant and dangerous. T o distinguish it from nationalism, it is never national but nationalistic — and Lorenz rightly employs this description. In the context, where he combines its use with chauvinism, it is tautological. But the whole phrase — "criminal nationalistic chauvinism" — definitely implies totalitarianism. Lorenz was wrong, however, in imputing totalitarianism to nationalism. Like Marx, he too had overlooked the fact that national ideas were not the real culprit, since national ideas merely express the ethnic process under conditions of capitalism or that advanced stage of capitalism known as imperialism. In the same interview, he had just chided both Marx and Marcuse for the "error of forgetting the instincts". Lorenz, who certainly ought to have known, had also just reminded his readers that " f o r M a r x the territorial instinct was only a cultural phenomenon". T h a t is quite true, for the territorial instinct is at the bottom of the national question. But Lorenz, like Marx, did not know that territory underlies society. How strange, then, that Lorenz should that moment have forgotten his own lesson. And how odd, that man's unsocial traits had merited scant consideration from him, or, at least, indicated equal etiological significance. If such could be the attitude of men of good will, albeit sometimes in incautious moments, how sad it can be for mankind when unscrupulous men attain positions of power. For, any social phenomenon however beneficial,

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on questions of ethnicism

and not national ideas alone, could be transmuted into a tool for evil when manipulated by the forces of darkness. Increasing awareness of the implications of nationalism under imperialistic conditions as result of the world's experience with national liberation is bound to lead to greater understanding of the idea of ethnicism. It is of basic importance the world should know that the "national i d e a " is only the modern expression of the "ethnic i d e a " — of ethnicism itself, and not as Lorenz had unwittingly misinterpreted it.

C. RACE AND ETHNICITY Like any other evolutionary or developmental process, the ethnic process advances in an irregular, zig-zag fashion. C a u g h t in its course at any stage in the history of a people, of any people, it would be unwise to assume that the ethnic group would continue to be a true biological offspring. T h e chance of its direct blood relationship to the pristine parent group is so remote as to be completely discounted. During the intervening period, an enormous mixing of populations had unfailingly occurred. Little wonder that science categorically rejects the notion of pure races existing nowadays (Shapiro 1963). As an aspect of group behavior, ethnicity cannot be reliably explained by history alone, since even the history of the most ancient of living peoples is only of comparatively recent vintage. A rational genealogical history of a people, however young, is probably pure fiction. N o people can produce scientific proof of its reputed ancestors. T h e singularity of a people is wholly dependent upon a generality of factors of which the most significant are: its actual history, its psychological traits, attitudes and behavior, its language or languages, culture and traditions, beliefs and mythologies, its customs and folklore, etc. T h a t much can still be true in the background of a people despite the paucity of evidence is of course frequently demonstrated by later archeological finds. In establishing ethnicity, however, a group's determination to follow an ethnic course for any reasons that satisfy them alone could, under the persistent spell of the initial will, lead ultimately to the appearance of an ethnic group. In the final analysis that is the sole essential. T h e ethnic process will in the natural course of events provide all the essential ingredients, and guide the fledgling people toward fruition. T o say this is by no means to diminish the stature of ethnicity, but to observe with fitting awe and wholesome respect from what simple beginnings rise the origins of complexity. T h e growth of ethnicity and of the idea of ethnicism in the civil rights struggle of the American Negro point to the unimportance of the racial

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factor. White prejudice against color points u p the prejudice and not the race. While racism is prevalent, the purity of the Negro race itself is non-existent. T h e y had been a mixed group long before they had been carried off as slaves from their African homelands. Constant miscegenation with the American white man rendered them even more racially impure. But they were still black! T h a t was unforgiveable. While the black " r a c i a l " issue in the United States is entirely false, nonetheless, Negroes are gradually being welded into an ethnic unit. This is basically because of color as well as the totality of historical, psychological, economic and cultural reasons that have ensued from their slave tradition. W h a t w e are witnessing today are the gross manifestations of an ethnic process in the course of its development. T h e white man's prejudice along with his unrestrained aggressiveness and the full play of his darker instincts had seized upon the black man's color and created a wasteland out of a common homeland. N o w , a newly forming people demands its rightful inheritance. A mixed black community that originally stemmed from varied ethnic and racial sources was in the process of becoming, after four hundred years of slavery and servitude, a new ethnic entity. It had lost its remote antiquity and was now in frantic search of a new mythology. Ancient tribal memories had virtually been forgotten. Like the Jewish people, this new ethnic group re-forming itself on the national landscape of the modern world had discovered, in its former slavery, its most cherished tradition. O n the other hand, black chauvinism, in contrast to black ethnicity, is no more justifiable than any other breed of chauvinism. T h e imposition of chauvinistic devices upon Jewish teachers, officials, and other professionals is no more acceptable than any other brand of anti-Semitism. Civil rights are the prerogative of every human being and not of Blacks alone. A m o n g some liberals as well as most leftists, there has been evoked an attitude that has denied to other ethnic groups, especially to Jews, rights and privileges that were being readily granted to Blacks as a result of over-compensation. Requiting Blacks at the brutal expense of Jews, themselves little more than a generation removed from oppression, had been a great blow to liberalism and a serious threat to human rights. By ignoring ethnic needs and values, M u r r a y Friedman has written ambivalently: We have ignored the tenacity of group and neighborhood ties. As a result, we have helped to consign the white ethnic to the eager arms of reactionaries who are only too willing to play on their fears (M. Friedman 1972).

As for the class issue among Blacks, that is another false issue. T h a t there is a class question among whites and Blacks generally is of course undeniable. T h a t the Blacks have suffered far more from economic discrimination is equally undeniable. T h e hysterical efforts invoked to correct

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this grave injustice serve, however, to accentuate the far more salient ethnic question which now feverishly seeks an American expression.

D. RISE OF THE " E T H N I C S " Whatever the future of American "ethnics", present group existence does not a priori preclude the shaping of the American nation into a homogeneous state, even if it should be a multi-ethnic state. It is not difficult to conceive such a government granting both the individual states, as well as autonomous ethnic groups, similar measures of representation apart from the popular, regional franchise. Whatever the ultimate outcome, no question of principle need arise. The political scramble that could ensue — the politicking, the graft and the ballyhoo — is, after all, a characteristic aspect of the American ethos. Democracy calls for the people's welfare as the major consideration. When ethnics feel impelled to seek spiritual comfort and social ease and freedom in cementing ethnic arrangements, it seems highly rational to recognize these feelings as normal, human, and legitimate. To arouse fears and bogies over previously unanticipated or personally displeasing political developments, because of former prejudices and preconceptions, could induce worse counter-reactions. According to the general consensus, the melting-pot experience has been weighed and found wanting. The ethnic phenomenon in the United States is just beginning to assume typical features, for, rising ethnic prominence had, till now, timorously remained in the background, fearful of being branded un-American. But all this has changed, precipitated largely by the black revolution. Jews particularly had sought to emulate the WASPs. The White AngloSaxon Protestant seemed to represent the genuine American. For all immigrants, the ideal seemed to be "Americanization" in the image of the WASP. Everyone strove for complete assimilation, which really meant acquiringl full proficiency in the English language and culture, and a share in the heritage of the Mayflower. That is what Jews too had done, and had repeated in every fosterland, passionately clinging for 2000 years to the illusory notion they had found a permanent haven at last. Inevitably, the consequence was the story of vanishing Jewish communities everywhere they settled. Nonetheless, their continued existence in some areas over long periods, mainly in the "shtetlach" of Eastern Europe, was almost wholly due to a dogged adherence to a unique religion or a profoundly cherished culture. Encountering emancipation, they had tended to grasp at the mirages of a new-found freedom. They scarcely noticed the spiritual barrier offered by a judicious integration, but jumped pell-mell

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into total assimilation, little realizing that, through no fault of their own, they had often failed to shake off their ethnic character. In fact, many deliberately adopted the exaggerated posture of assimilationism, a chauvinistic embrace of the foster nation, ecstatic in the illusion of liberation from atavistic ties; and many manifested such psychoneurotic, even psychopathic, forms of behavior as Jewish self-hatred. Like the German-Jewish community where this picture was common, a similar situation was assiduously cultivated in the United States by earlier Jewish immigrants of Spanish-Portuguese origin and by German-Jewish immigrants, now no longer recognizable as Jews. Their efforts were nullified by the vast succeeding immigration of mostly East-European Jews that swelled to the present population of over six million, by far the largest and wealthiest community in Jewish history. Like the other ethnics, Jews displayed their Americanism by thoroughly discarding their ethnic baggage. Few seemed capable of combining an adequate integration with a high evaluation of their ethnic achievements. Even Zionists had quailed before specious charges of dual loyalties. There seemed no end to the obligations of integration, till they were almost hopelessly overcome by the siren foster culture of the WASPs. Today, close to ninety per cent of Jewish children receive either a smattering of Jewish education or none at all; and still, there are insatiable assimilationists intolerant of the notion of any kind of Jewish survival in the United States: If we educate our children differently from the rest of the community . . . we create our own ghettoes . . . (Bettelheim 1963).

Ethnic survival among the Jews of the United States is becoming increasingly problematical, as, in fact, it is in all countries of the West. The mixed marriage rate, a highly significant factor in waning ethnicity, is advancing threateningly. On the other hand, the sentimental attractiveness of Israel, in varying forms of raising legendary financial aid, general political influence, the growing popularity of tourism, and the faltering but inevitable rise in ALIYA (emigration to Israel), is perhaps the most pronounced ingredient of the heightening ethnicity. Israel's appeal seems to depend chiefly on a dramatically sustained awareness of a common danger to all Jews if Israel's existence were at stake, an awareness for which the Arab world is largely responsible. Most Jews in the American Dispersion already are assimilated to a degree where they lack the far more positive qualities of a spiritually creative ethnic consciousness. The surrounding currents of assimilation have therefore till now enjoyed a naturally consistent domination, despite the occasional revivals of ethnicity under its dubious conditions. Adjusting to their special needs, most ethnic groups in America have encountered an analogous experience. Colored immigrants like the Puerto

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Ricans, the Chinese, and the Japanese, not to speak of the native Indians, have, in addition, the problem of color. In this respect, a measure of empathy joins their problem with that of the Blacks. The earlier tendency to ape the WASPs in the effort to become Americanized seems to have receded as result of the widespread ethnic revival, emboldened by black militancy and black claims to ethnic recognition, as well as by the general unrest due to a variety of causes. The old stress upon assimilation toward an American conformism is perceptibly being replaced, at least partially, by a new spurt of self-identity. At the fluid moment, no one can predict what the outcome of the ethnic challenge would be. It seems a foregone conclusion that second generation ethnics, if not third too — all passing as good Americans — are increasingly identifying with their respective ethnic groups. However, it seems also to be a foregone conclusion that most ethnics in an advanced state of assimilation will continue on in their course and merge beyond recognition into the "general" American population. Whether the renaissance of ethnic consciousness would increase inbreeding and intrinsic ethnicity, with the consequent development of two parallel streams of Americans, general and ethnic, it is still too early to say. The favorable climate for ethnic pluralism within the American society would tend, of course, to perpetuate a form of exclusivity. But there seems no more reason to object to this than there had been to the exclusiveness practised by the WASPs. Color will undoubtedly continue to constitute the most formidable bar to total American assimilation. In the United States, color has created an ethnic situation almost by definition. In the blissful days of the melting pot, this factor was brushed aside as something that would somehow take care of itself. That there is actually an ethnic challenge or a genuine ethnic awakening might perhaps be rather hyperbolical. It might be more correct to say we are dealing with a noticeable trend. True it is that the trend looms larger by virtue of the black revolution, and because of the universally accepted failure of the melting pot. Certainly, Jews have found it expedient to jump on the band-wagon, quick to the advantage of the legitimacy of ethnicity. They have long been aware of themselves as an ethnic group, without caring to make so devastating an admission in view of their always exposed position. Indeed, gentile recognition is perhaps the most pragmatic definition of what is a Jew. However, the self-imposed designation of a religious group had been eminently useful for the prestige it afforded as one of the three great religions in the United States. A multi-ethnic society indubitably offered Jews a greater latitude for the reinforcement of their cultural positions and as a bulwark against assimilation.

Aspects of ethnicity

39

Other ethnic groupings, like the Mexican Americans and the Puerto Ricans, are prominent at this time more for the socio-economic problems they present than for any ethnic aspirations they evince. Should general economic conditions in the United States normalize, their status could easily return to a resigned state of relative ethnic or cultural inactivity. Poverty supports a ghetto existence and perpetuation of an ethnic consciousness, whereas prosperity tends to enhance the influence of assimilation and the consequent loosening of ethnic ties. Already, however, the emphasis now cast upon ethnicity has created both a greater interest and a corresponding alarm. Those who once had passively adhered to a cultural non-conformity have become more ardent and are now demanding more substantial recognition of their ethnic needs. On the other hand, those who formerly had been quite indifferent to their ethnic bonds, especially those on the Left, are now predicting dire calamities for American society if ethnic trends persist, fearing above all an epidemic of ethnocentricity. Grudgingly acknowledging the melting-pot approach as somewhat less than successful, they rather unrealistically reject the reincarnation of the ethnics. A semantic aspect has appeared in the wake of the ethnic counter-development to the melting-pot. The terms "ethnics" and "ethnicity" have significantly altered their meanings in the context of the American situation. In relation to the national minorities of Europe and elsewhere, ethnicity had conveyed the quality of their peoplehood, of their distinctiveness as peoples, and of their determination to win cultural and political autonomy if not independence, a description hardly applicable to the American groups in anywhere near the same degree, if at all. Whilst "ethnics" as a noun was seldom if ever employed, the common usage was in the singular as an adjective, as it is universally used today. "Ethnicity" was considered by minorities as a natural feeling often leading to a struggle for independence, and by opponents as a backward and reactionary social manifestation. Marx and Engels took the latter position. Multinational states, like Czarist Russia and Austria-Hungary, regarded minorities as disruptive elements, and generally sought to suppress them, unwittingly following the course counselled by the founders of communism. In the United States, the restoration of the old European national minorities is most unlikely and, with few if any exceptions, is certainly all but unthought of at the present time. Ethnicity has reference almost exclusively to the characteristic cultural qualities of an ethnic group, without any political connotations. It makes no demands for autonomy, and independence is inconceivable, black extremists and certain isolated Amerindian communities practically alone employing such concepts. The term "ethnics" is essentially an Americanism. The apprehensions of writers

40

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on questions of ethnicism

such as Harold R . Isaacs and Robert Alter among others have little to support them but some ancient misconceptions about nationalism and a failure to grasp the role of Machiavellianism in human society.

E. L I B E R A L U N I V E R S A L I S M AND T H E E T H N I C S In the United States, the liberal split on the ethnic issue has boded no good. Largely contributory to this situation had been the inability of many liberals to appreciate that ethnicity was not a " p r o b l e m " in the first place. It did not have to be stamped out as a dread disease merely because they entertained certain inane notions about America's destiny. It was the natural reaction of a normal human being. Furthermore, ethnicity was not a state of mind, a problem to be solved by "integration". This was a euphemistic expression for adapting the immigrant to the unique American society. In reality, its intent was to transform him into a different kind of of human being: an American. W h a t is most certain is that the immigrant and his family were not expected to retain their ethnic distinctiveness. T o facilitate their adaptation, the illusion was deliberately fostered, that integration did not mean assimilation. T h e issue to be faced had been the possibility if not the fear of an alternative to a purely W A S P society. W h a t possible alternative could there have been? T h e social horizon those days was virginal and blameless. Nowadays, one can see alternatives galore. For one thing, its W A S P character will, alas, be less than pure. There is even a question whether America will in fact emerge into the 2 ist century as a homogeneous nation. Some might even envision America as a miniature world society founded mainly upon distinct but Americaorientated ethnic activities, although not minorities in the European multinational fashion. Actually, the American destiny could be much more heterogeneous: the huge, assimilating American mass would still wield an all-powerful influence, without any doubt as powerful as the ethnic communities flourishing with their autonomous cultures alongside it. Whatever the possibilities, it seems no longer pragmatic to reckon without important ethnic re-formations adapted to the American political landscape. T o many liberals, especially those still afflicted with a universalistic utopianism, such an outlook would be frightening. Notwithstanding the natural human rights of national liberation, to which the Utopian world now pays lip-service, it would still appear to them like turning the clock back. O l d preconceptions die hard. A n aroused ethnicity conjures up, among naive and biased idealists, spectres of a voracious nationalism and the modern Moloch of totalitarianism.

Aspects of ethnicity

41

But, could one suppose the contrary were true, that such concepts were in fact an outgrowth of unhindered predispositions for power and evil! Suppose — Good L o r d ! — t h a t the modern liberal and radical had been worshiping false gods! Vision corrected, nationalism could perhaps appear as the evolving social phenomenon and not as the undesirable human sentiment it could actually be, one among many others, exploited by the powers of darkness for their own designs. Even a rudimentary understanding of ethnicity could help allay unfounded misgivings, illumination producing, among some courageous individuals, the effects of a catalytic revelation. A t that moment of truth, nationalism is clearly seen as the normal, indeed inevitable, ethnic expression of a capitalist society, as natural as all human emotion and just as amenable to human discretion. Culturally autonomous ethnic units, for instance, could easily fit into the American electoral system, even though it might require a constitutional amendment to do so. T h a t would surely be a N e w World in the making. Not a conformist amalgam, but a variegated community on a vast canvas, could become a true prelude to a world society. Not to abolish earthy, naturally evolving, ethnic groups but to grant them a harmonious perpetuity that could launch a genuinely democratic state in a colorful America. In this regard, Israel is veritably a Chosen People. Confronted by the identical opportunity that may yet face the United States, Israel excels by virtue of the more than 100 " e t h n i c " groups now seeking such harmonious relationships. There is little doubt that an overall national interest will ultimately emerge and prevail out of the present absorption difficulties, transmuting Jews from all over the world into a unified nation. As result of the remarkable Zionist policy of the L a w of Return, based upon the traditional "Ingathering of the Exiles", the present leadership of the country, if blessed with vision and good judgment, can also guide this policy toward a unique preservation of a hundred Jewish ethnic cultures. This " e t h n i c " experiment would of course differ vitally from its possible parallel in the United States: the various " e t h n i c " groups would all be Jews. Good will and energetic efforts toward mutual understanding could readily effect a similar, truly ethnic, relationship among the American ethnics. Not, however, if America's fate falls into the hands of either the extreme R i g h t or the extreme Left. T o be sure, these are bona fide ethnics. But it is difficult to imagine w h y , as long as American democracy remains intact, the ethnic differential should, by itself, constitute a barrier to the further development of the American democracy. Just as in Israel, there seems no good reason w h y non-Jewish ethnics should experience more

42

Reflections on questions of ethnicism

difficulties than Jewish "ethnics" in harmonizing their cultural differences for the common good. In the purely ethnic factor itself, there is nothing of the ethnic nature whatever to militate against this. It has long been time, however, for genuine liberals of all descriptions to eliminate the possibilities for the rise and hegemony of unscrupulous and criminal elements in a technological society. M a n y liberals continue to be appalled by the horrendous idea of legitimating ethnic groups within an American democracy. T o hold so untenable a position at this late hour reflects acutely upon their moral and intellectual fibre. Fearing a worsening of the status quo, their proper approach lies in rendering democracy economically and psychologically invulnerable, not in suppressing the ethnic rights of man. In this behavior, most evident is their Utopian bias; only recently it had cowered before national upheavals that have changed the world. Every paltry social impediment seems to recall for them ghosts of a by-gone Messianism that had tried to transcend its ethnic roots. How long do liberals continue to act ineffectually? When will they cast aside their archaic baggage? In describing his objections to Murray Friedman's views of a resurgent ethnicity, Isaacs wrote: The difference reflected here is between those whose primary commitment is to their membership in their particular group, and those who see their group identity as a threshold from which to look for broader human identification and outcomes (Isaacs 1972b). Nationalism, Isaacs continued, had done far more harm than good. Here we have the typical universalistic argument, in face of the catastrophic potentials that lay both in imperialistic expansion as well as in the crippled human psyche. One could also think that the phenomenon of national liberation was utterly inconsequential. Undoubtedly, it has made no impact upon him. Isaacs dreaded other alternatives far more, among them "the choice of strangling ourselves in our tribal separateness". But, what could be so wrong with " o u r tribal separateness", however contemptuously the envenomed phrase is uttered, as long as this perfectly natural expression of human life is kept democratically within bounds as an essential development on the road to the good society? Are not families properly separated? Is not the Englishman's home his castle? Does a citizen no longer demand his privacy? And do we not press untiringly for civil rights any more? Similarly, the ethnic group possesses its rightful niche in human society. Isaacs also fears the new technology, so portentous of total human destruction. I am confident, however, that not even he would hold the ethnic process more responsible for our nuclear proclivities than the baser instincts man is at the mercy of. The basic injustice of Isaacs' argument is manifested in the challenge

Aspects of ethnicity

43

of commitments he poses to the ethnic citizen. The essence of civil liberties, as it seems a liberal should view them, is surely not to probe into man's soul, not to pry into the intricacies of loyalties, not to dissect his attitudes, and not to scrutinize his opinions, perhaps even with devious, truth-seeking devices. A man may have many commitments and many loyalties — they could even be conflicting ones — but it is his inalienable right to be as inconsistent as his nature dictates, and as wrong and as inglorious as his opponent could conceive. Affecting the relations to his country of choice, the sole desideratum should be an objective one: does his behavior place his country in jeopardy? In a democratic country the conscientious objector too has his rights and is subject to due processes of law. The ethnic citizen whose heart is elsewhere is equally within his rights to spurn the challenge Isaacs does not have the right to pose. That Isaacs chooses, from the threshold of his own group identity, to seek a broader human identification may, or may not, be the correct attitude. It would assuredly not be the sole correct attitude — for he could simultaneously have an equally intense commitment to his particular group. Either way, it could very well fail to coincide with the interests of his country. On the other hand, primary dedication to the interests of one group may be just as reprehensible in the non-ethnic American patriot as it could be in the ethnic American who is not a patriot. Patriotism is not to be condoned under all circumstances, nor non-patriotism to be condemned. Moreover, conflicts of interests can arise in every facet of human life, and they can be determined exclusively by the circumstances at the time. It seems clear, then, that there need be no essential difference between the inward and outward look of an ethnic, nor, for that matter, of a non-ethnic either. It is a question both of conflicting interests and of an individual's philosophy of life, if or when they present a problem to the state. Somehow, Friedman's rather hesitant ethnicity, but with its buoyant hopes and its obvious grounding in the ethnic process seems incomparably preferable to Isaacs' archaic notions and baseless fears of "tribal separateness", and of the presumed incompatibility between commitment to the group and to the broader human outlook. Isaacs' vision of a "broader human identification" is by no means limited exclusively to his genre of liberal ideology; it is widely prevalent among Zionists too, and will no doubt be found among other ethnics as well. In an age of struggles for national liberation, it is the height of the rational to assume that this humanistic outlook will become widespread, not in consequence of continued indoctrination with an outmoded, Utopian universalism, but rather

44

Reflections

on questions of

ethnicism

as a step by step social advance of peoples living under conditions that lead to the fullest freedom for thought and identity. Most Jews have learned, through a long historical experience, to grasp almost instinctively at the logic of their group existence, and to shrink from the fact of group extinction which constantly faces them under conditions of Dispersion. Under less intense existential conditions, other ethnic minorities in the United States also understand the relevance of group existence. Frantically striving to maintain a Jewish foothold in life, Jews, especially, recognize the advantages of ethnic respectability in a foreign land. They could live more freely and uninhibitedly as conscious Jews without the pressure to conform to the all-consuming, assimilating culture of the melting-pot variety. That non-Jewish ethnics continue to possess similar motivations is one fact that cannot easily be dismissed today. Jews reconciled to the historicity of Jewish existence in Dispersion on one hand, yet opposed to the behaviorism of Jewish ethnicity on the other, are in an impossible predicament vis-à-vis the problem of the American ethnic. Out and out assimilationist Jews do not encounter this contradiction; rejection of the advancement of ethnic notions, especially those affecting Jews, solves their problem instantly. It is doubtful if one can find a single Jewish assimilationist who also supports the ethnics in their fight for greater recognition, although this is common practice in international politics. While Isaacs admitted the failure of the melting-pot theory of assimilation, and reluctantly accepted history's vindication of ethnicism as a way of life, he remained wavering and unclear about its direction in American society. That, of course, is not to his discredit since, facing an always unpredictable future, ambivalences and ambiguities are bound to arise. But the feeling is inescapable that, consciously or not, he was seeking to bridge the enormous gulf between an apparently unwanted yet inevitable ethnicism and an obsolete universalism ungrounded in ethnic roots. Without minimizing the fears inherent in a changing society, it is nevertheless democratically absurd for liberals to oppose — in effect — the natural growth of ethnic groups after they had first been warmly welcomed. America's unique development is somehow a harbinger of the continuity of this uniqueness. The same democratic method impels, however, to guard against ethnic extremism and to ensure the rights of the individual. One would wish that the same cautions had been exercised in regard to other social evils. Countries of immigration like the United States are increasingly approaching a position where, with a liberalism keenly attuned towards the safeguarding of democratic rights, ethnic minorities could participate as such in the genuine building of a new humanity without, as Isaacs would

Aspects

of

ethnicity

45

h a v e said, f u r t h e r institutionalizing the ethnic plural system. T h e threat of totalitarianism a n d the n u c l e a r peril w o u l d still be h o v e r i n g o v e r us, a threat enemies of ethnicism w o u l d be quick to ascribe to the ethnic groups, a n d all m e n of g o o d will m i g h t still h a v e to fight these menaces. B u t this time a n ethnic stature w o u l d be a d d e d to the A m e r i c a n ethos. A s l o n g as the currents of assimilation roll o n o m n i p o t e n t l y , m i n o r i t y b e h a v i o r is, sui generis, p r e d o m i n a n t l y a t e n d e n c y to a d o p t the prevailing culture. Consciously or unconsciously, self-identity is sacrificed, w i t h resultant i m p a i r m e n t t o the psyche of the ethnic group. I t is obvious that peoples so surrendering their o w n ethnic identity to the r u l i n g one c a n n o t be free. Psychologically a n d spiritually they are enslaved; " s l a v e r y in f r e e d o m " , as A h a d H a ' a m once expressed it. A m i d s t the p r o f o u n d changes U n i t e d States society is presently u n d e r g o i n g the m e l t i n g p o t a n d the n e w pluralism are e n g a g e d in a tense struggle out of w h i c h a w o r k a b l e f o r m of coexistence must emerge. I n all these doings, triggered so largely b y the n e w black m i l i t a n c y , Isaacs recognizes the implications f o r a l l : It has forced all Americans to redefine who and what they are and what it does mean and can mean to be American . . . some moved through [varying] passages to their own versions of ethnic reassertion . . . [including] the numbers of young Jews turned off by anti-Semitic black and white radicalism to rediscover what there might be for them in their Jewishness. Thus too . . . Italianness . . . Polishness. . . . It is clear enough that a great reordering of identities is going on among all kinds of A m e r i c a n s . . . . It is surely a complicated and profound happening. But we still know very little about i t . . . we do not know how marginal these stirrings are or how deep they may go, how they turn up among the generations, how ethnic concerns survive in the old, how far and in what forms they touch the young (Isaacs 1972a). F o r Jews, one k e y to k n o w l e d g e is a n understanding of the d y n a m i c of Dispersion a n d its e f f e c t u p o n the Jewish mentality. I n Dispersion, the to a n d f r o m o v e m e n t f r o m Jewishness a n d b a c k is the epitome of the a n o m alous Jewish experience. T h o s e w h o return do so because of at least a g l i m m e r of realization of the typical Dispersion situation. A m o n g the vaster numbers that d o not return, most if not all are swept into the maelstrom of the d o m i n a n t e n v i r o n m e n t ; t h e y a r e lost to Jews w i t h o u t a n y a p p a r e n t gain to society as a w h o l e . Jews c a n generally p l a c e in p r o p e r historical perspective, a n d c a n o f t e n analyse w i t h u n c a n n y a c c u r a c y , the significance of a presenting situation. Isaacs, f o r the historic m o m e n t only, so it w o u l d a p p e a r , sees n o m o r e than the e f f e c t of the N e g r o stimulus, u p o n Jews as u p o n other ethnics. U n d e r standing Dispersion w o u l d obviate the need to w a i t e a c h time for practical lessons, f o r f u r t h e r instructions, so to s p e a k ; the p u r p o r t of a n e v e n t c a n generally b e predicted w i t h considerable confidence, a l t h o u g h the time element is usually less clear. T h e Jewish historical situation inevitably lent

46

Reflections on questions of ethnicism

itself to a repetition of anti-Semitic phenomena, their appearance all but inexorable long before the actual agents of change had made themselves manifest. All that were required were the provocative factors; the conjuncture would surely arrive like the handwriting on the wall. Tempered by human failings and mitigated by circumstantial uncertainties, forecasting Jewish history has long entered the realm of reasonable analysis. This is a uniquely Jewish phenomenon, of course. In the far more typical picture of non-Jewish ethnic groups, the general lesson that must be learned by the world at large is the all-inclusive one of ethnicity and its thrust upon so malleable a sector of humanity as the American society. Hence the crying need for a scholarly awareness of the idea of ethnicism itself. Like Theodor Herzl awakening to his Jewishness as result of the celebrated Dreyfus Case of France in 1894, modern American exponents of ethnic awakening were, as a rule, never profoundly conscious of the fundamental human value of the ethnic concept. It is as though it had arisen spontaneously out of the exigencies of the American scene. Suddenly, a timorous, sporadic, and groping ethnic phenomenon had blossomed out with a vigorous ethnicity. T h e real self has begun to appear as an ethnic self, with an ethnic sense of belonging. Magically, the old sense of inferiority to a dominant W A S P culture has begun to wane and die. Concrete representations of the importance of ethnicism ought not to have caught the intellectual and the scholar off-guard. T o be discovered unlearned in the deeper knowledge of man is a shocking reflection of current American practice. Among the sciences and philosophies of life and society, a great deal is to be gained from an awareness of ethnic being in transition, of ethnicity as an evolutionary condition of man. Existentialism for the individual alone is not enough, dependent as it might be upon the materialist basis of productive life. There has to be an existentialist understanding as well of the nature of a people as the ethnic building block of human society. Ethnicism, as a concept, could essentially be interpreted as ethnic existentialism, the real root of human existence as social man. American liberals, even those well disposed to ethnic revival, find it difficult to be complacent about American ethnic practice. T h e present trend suggests the emergence of a heterogeneous nation-state, and liberals view with some apprehension the rise of a possible hydra-headed reaction. Robert Alter is another writer who, like Isaacs, dreads this possibility. He sees it pictured in a book by Michael Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, and comments: Novak suggests that our various ethnic sub-cultures can offer the self precisely the " m o d e l s " that it needs — the images, gestures, rituals, memories, modalities of feeling through which a vigorous, confident selfhood can be realized (Alter

1972).

Aspects of ethnicity

47

But Novak is right: if the ethnic self is not retained and cultivated then it will die from attrition and the end result will be no different from total assimilation. In rebuttal, while exemplifying from the Jewish experience Novak's aphorism that "people uncertain of their own identity are not wholly f r e e " , Alter continues: The obverse of this aphorism would be equally true: "People preoccupied with their own identity are not wholly free ". [And Alter warns against]... the inherent danger in making ethnicity the absolute point of departure for all thinking about America.. .. The insistence on ethnicity tends to encourage certain unconstructive simplifications and misdirections of attention (1972). T h e obverse of Novak's aphorism is not equally true. Nonetheless, it is still true. But Alter forgets that a people is preoccupied with its ethnic self because it is not wholly free, because it is not ethnically free. Only a sovereign people is not preoccupied with its own identity, unless it seeks to further chauvinist interests. Once American ethnics acquire, as ethnic communities, a sense of full participation in American destiny indistinguishable from that of the parallel WASP-influenced current which is the major stream, there is every likelihood that any undesirable preoccupation would vanish. Surely, that is the whole point of modern "Americanization" which, unlike that of melting-pot days, is slowly becoming imbued with an appreciation of ethnic values it never possessed before. T o interpolate at this point demagogic concepts as the motivation for ethnic behavior is to exhibit, perhaps innocently, the Utopian, anti-national past of the oldfashioned liberal and radical. What Alter correctly fears is a "Balkanization" rather than a " n e w American diversity". Very properly, Alter warns against adopting, perhaps unconsciously, a racist or racialist attitude towards American society. There is indubitably that danger when the case for the ethnics is promulgated with chauvinist coloration. After all, a high valuation must be placed upon the Anglo-Saxon foundations. On the other hand, European ethnic trends that are already at least as absolute as those of the WASPs had been could scarcely be welcomed anymore and, judging from an often antiSemitic past, would scarcely be expected to enhance the American democratic tradition. Historically speaking, the attitude to Jews is generally a reliable criterion of progressive and civilized intent. Unctuous, hypocritical, eminently gentlemanly anti-Semites have still been anti-Semites. Especially with recent East-European ethnics, it is wise to look behind the mask. Their anti-Semitism in " t h e old country" had been both widespread and deadly. It is to be anticipated that they put on their best front when they adopted American citizenship. Of critical importance is their behavior or organized policy at some telling political conjuncture. Little wonder that, the real truth being so obscure, simple wisdom dictates a judicious scepticism of

48

Reflections on questions of ethnicism

some aspects of ethnic liberalism. Some ethnics may still have to prove themselves adaptable to the democratic process, and well rid of the slightest shred of anti-Semitism and other forms of social reaction. Having also in mind the unique American development of an integrated nation-state comprising a mixed ethnic immigration, it is even more legitimate for social critics to caution against excessive ethnic emphasis. The form integration should take is a question Americans have yet to solve. It is no longer acceptable to postulate a non-ethnic United States. It is impermissible in the light of the ethnic resurgence. It would therefore constitute a danger. It is usually overlooked that a trend far more powerful than ethnicity in the United States is the trend toward assimilation. The contemporary parallel self-assertion of the ethnic groups has only disapproved of the monopoly of the melting-pot culture, but not its continuing vogue. In view of the existing dichotomy, a proper approach to integration in such a multi-ethnic nation-state ought to lie in public acceptance of two parallel trends, with the avowed purpose of seeking an ideal, harmonious interrelationship. Should, then, ethnic trends continue, there could even be justification for ethnic disapproval of over-emphasizing the WASP tradition. At present, it constitutes the mainstream of American life; and the enormous addition to it of what Norman Podhoretz called "facsimile WASPs", in reality, assimilated ethnics, has transformed it into the largest "ethnic" group in the land, and in the process transfused it with "real" ethnic cultural components as well. With the exception of unalterable basic ingredients, the original WASP contribution has long been considerably diluted, and there seems to be an understandable, by no means objectionable, tendency to keep it so. Under the circumstances, the perturbation of some ethnic particularists such as Podhoretz about "the disposition to deny the very existence of a common culture in America" is rather exaggerated. All one may reasonably infer from some of the current ethnic attitudes is an aversion to ideas of WASP superiority, as well as an inescapable elation accompanying ethnic self-assertion. Such expressions too find their way into the common culture, shaped presumably by a mildly chauvinist slant in some instances. In the long run, it assumes the nature of not unexpected friction till differences mellow and achieve the modus vivendi of a social evolutionary course. Jews, as ethnics of infinite experience, have a more delicate problem to solve, since nowadays national Jewish interests supersede a simple ethnicity. By virtue of the vindication of Zionism, the lessons of Dispersion are much clearer today than ever before. Certainty of existence, as individuals as well as an ethnic entity, cannot, in fact, lie in Dispersion; it can

Aspects

of ethnicity

49

be f o u n d o n l y in Israel, the n e w l y w o n Jewish h o m e l a n d . I n Dispersion, Jews must of necessity determine the limits of their o w n integration, if t h e y can. U n f o r t u n a t e l y , those limits h a v e never been discovered so f a r in a n y foster land, e x c e p t p e r h a p s f o r a religious or secular elite. A relatively small if g r o w i n g n u m b e r w i l l e m b a r k o n A L I Y A f o r Israel, but, if Jewish history is a n all b u t infallible lesson, the great m a j o r i t y will inevitably s u c c u m b to assimilation. C o m m i t t e d Jews, usually Zionists, present a n

ambivalent

picture, integrating to a degree as A m e r i c a n s b u t p r i m a r i l y i d e n t i f y i n g with

Israel, some a c t u a l l y choosing A L I Y A .

Obscurantist

fanatically

f u n d a m e n t a l i s t Jews alone a r e confidently u n a m b i v a l e n t , r e j e c t i n g Israel a n d entirely content w i t h an A m e r i c a n f u t u r e . F i n a l l y , there is the generally u n a v o i d a b l e anti-Semitism w h i c h enhances ethnic awareness a n d intensifies Zionism, a situation a c u t e l y demonstrated at the present time b y t h e a m a z i n g struggle of the Soviet Jews f o r the right of e x o d u s to Israel. W h a t is t o d a y , especially in the U n i t e d States, d i p l o m a t i c a l l y described as " e t h n i c " , has a well-entrenched E u r o p e a n tradition of national autono m y f o r minority peoples. I n 1899, S h i m o n D u b n o w , the f a m o u s Jewish historian, h a d a l r e a d y postulated a limited f o r m of n a t i o n a l

rights

for

Jewish D i a s p o r a communities. N o t until 1924 did O t t o B a u e r publish his celebrated book o n national a u t o n o m y . T h e A u s t r o - H u n g a r i a n minorities, like all other E u r o p e a n minorities, d w e l t of course o n their o w n respective territories (Bauer 1924). T h e Jews w e r e a landless h e n c e scattered people, a n d D u b n o w took c o g n i z a n c e of this h i g h l y relevant situation, m a i n t a i n i n g t h a t : . . . the Diaspora must always strive to obtain a definite minimum of those national rights whose maximum, in my opinion, will eventually be reached only in the Palestinian Centre (1958). U n l i k e the Zionists, h o w e v e r , D u b n o w later confessed t h a t : We have no hope that such (an independent Jewish) state can be established in the Land of Israel (1958). T h e r e w a s o f t e n a close similarity of v i e w b e t w e e n t h a t of D u b n o w a n d that of his f r i e n d a n d adversary A h a d H a ' a m , the protagonist of w h a t has b e e n called " S p i r i t u a l Z i o n i s m " . M o r e o v e r , A h a d H a ' a m ' s o f t e n erroneously assumed u n d e r e v a l u a t i o n of Jewish national a u t o n o m y w e r e m o r e a p p a r e n t than real. B y stressing its impossibility, h e nonetheless a c c e p t e d it as a n essential policy in the d e v e l o p m e n t of the Jewish national i d e a : Dispersion must remain a permanent feature of our life which it is beyond our power to eliminate; and therefore . . . our national life in the Diaspora must be strengthened. But that o b j e c t . . . can be attained only by the creation of a fixed centre for our national life in the land of its birth (Ahad Ha'am 1946). U n d e r the assimilating influence of W e s t e r n d e m o c r a c y , the p r e v a i l i n g t e n d e n c y , a m o n g Zionists as a m o n g non-Zionists, w a s to minimize the expression of n a t i o n a l a u t o n o m y in a n y f o r m w h a t e v e r , in order not to incur

5°

Reflections on questions of ethnicism

charges of dual loyalties and separatism. Intractable anti-Zionist Bundists, Diaspora nationalists of a sort, adopted their host country as their homeland, and their descendants later disproportionately swelled the ranks of Jewish New Leftists. Whilst the present ethnic renaissance in the United State owes its vigor largely to the Negro initiative (its Jewish aspect as well, though basically it reflects the spiritual influence of a sovereign Jewish state), Jewish leftists of all descriptions have generally repudiated Jewish ethnicism. They find a ready weapon at hand in the tradition of American individualism. But the ethnic manifestations of today show every evidence of a resurgence in mild form reminiscent of earlier European and Jewish thought on the question of national minorities, on behalf of a peculiarly American type of national autonomy. On the other hand, the leftist, and indeed the liberal, has not changed his spots. His old, universalistic utopianism still asserts itself by its opposition to American ethnicism, under the pretext that the latter lends itself to political reaction.

F. THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNICISM In the widespread controversy on the American ethnic renaissance, it is astonishing how little attention has been paid to questions of causal and teleological yet practical relevance. Ethnicity is constantly depicted and analysed in terms of patterns and portents with hardly any reference to its natural history. Origins that could be both basic and humanist are never examined. The almost universal consensus relates ethnicity exclusively to nationalism (with the timorous exception of the American ethnic) as a reflection pure and simple of the era of a developing capitalism. So much so, that ideological attributes are imparted to it, in that ethnicity perforce assumes a character often falsely converting it into a debatable and even questionable issue. Man has had to struggle for the most elementary human rights. Every achievement has been won at the price of untold suffering. The fight for national liberation took more than a hundred years and is still not over. The separation of the state from the tyranny of religion has yet to be accomplished in many parts of the world, among them India, Israel and the vast realm of Islam. The freedoms of democracy have only just begun to take their first steps in the continuing contest with totalitarianism. Perhaps it is not altogether remarkable that the intellectual world has not bothered to probe the mysteries of ethnicity. The tendency for mankind to dwell in groups, a tendency we have as-

Aspects of ethnicity

5i

sumed to be derived from natural environments as well as from environmental changes, points to necessary conclusions man is far too busy with himself to draw. Its study, what we have called "ethnicism" to distinguish it from the group qualities and characteristics commonly known as "ethnicity", presents a challenge to Academe. Current fallacies relating to nationalism and to the Utopian illusions of modern universalism have sharpened this challenge. The reappearance of the "ethnics" on the American horizon renders this study all the more cogent. When mind and environment combine in some fashion to culminate in an ethnic process, ethnicism involves some mental adjustments that are as much philosophical as they are sociological, and as much psychological as social, pertaining as much to the nature of an abstract concept as to the realities of ethnicity itself. Ethnicism thus engages us in the whys and wherefores of ethnicity. As we have stated, we had assumed for ethnic groups the human need for languages, just as we had assumed for languages the need for groups of individuals to speak them. Ethnicism hence appears as a concept relating to a speech community or people. In the present-day context of a capitalist society such a group comes to be designated also as a nation. Unlike prevailing notions, the idea of ethnicism embraces the basic ethnic division of human society; to the contrary, the idea of nationalism seems to have sprung full grown, like biblical man, right out of the modern creative force of capitalism. What we have called the ethnic process is the dynamic undercurrent that, through individual and group, animates all ethnic colorations, activities and social transformations, and is of genetic origin. By varying means leading to relative isolation, environmental influences had divided mankind into distinct and separate groups. Without the ambience they afford it is unlikely language could have developed. And so the pristine group evolved from the smallest family to the most gigantic nation of today. Concomitantly, every individual within his speech community acquired, in the ineluctable nature of his development, inseparable, linguistic, cultural, psychological and emotional ties with his native origins, thereby wholly identifying with his now indelibly ethnic group. Language differentiation occurred in the course of direct correlation with the fate of the speech community. Not surprising that a language invariably reflected its specific speech community in every phase of growth and expansion. It literally belonged. T h e human mind too had struck profound and unique roots in the rise of man. For reasons evolution alone can explain it had acquired protohuman features that distinguished it from its animal ancestors. No longer was it entirely instinctual. A part of the rudimentary animal nervous

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system had, in the " o r d i n a r y " course of natural selection gained distinctive intellectual attributes of brain function which thenceforth characterized the human species. But man has retained many links with his animal past. T h e animal brain has remained an anatomic part of the human brain as the O l d Brain or Limbic System, lying directly under the enormously enlarged neo-cortex, its relations to this N e w Brain still not fully understood, probably because of its transitional undeveloped evolutionary role. This Limbic System could well be the seat of man's instinctual, emotional, visceral, reflex and other automatic reactions. M a c L e a n holds with Broca: Man's limbic system is much more highly structured than that of lower animals, but its basic organization, chemistry, etc., are very similar (MacLean 1967).

T h e significance of the fact that the O l d Brain thus never fully integrated into the N e w points to a patent source of mental conflict and aberration, emotional conflagrations, and indeed actual diseases of the Central Nervous System. It could be too that the presumptive innateness of group existence, like other genetic endowments, might also have its origins in the O l d Brain, thereby establishing a relationship to the territorial and other instincts discovered among many animals. A unique intelligence within the human group had intensified the need for language. M i n d and language had required the nurturing environment of the group in much the same w a y the ovum requires the haven of the womb. Such mutual interrelationships are biological laws. Even more than his animal ancestor, the proto-human needed his group by virtue of the growing urge for linguistic expression. T h e assumption of an innate need for group existence is no less pressing than to deduce language as an offshoot of mind. Ethological evidence tends to confirm this essential hypothesis. It is an assumption that necessarily leads to the remarkable conclusion that two separate developments, an innate one and an historico-environmental one, led to an identical result, namely, the merging into a single ethnic process. T h a t the ethnic process thus represents a universal rule of human society, like so many assumptions tending to shed light upon epistemological enquiries, will, we hope, be borne out as w e proceed with our discussion. O f great importance in the light of modern prejudices is the inescapable emphasis upon the inexorable continuity of the ethnic process till it attained its contemporary level in the modern nation. Inherent in it is the liberating dynamic of social growth and complexity, now pushed on by the class dynamic that moved human society forward from its most primitive hunting period to the feudal and thence to its capitalist stage. Further social advancement would depend upon man's acquisition of a painfully learned wisdom, ensuring a peaceful transition to the subordinat-

Aspects of ethnicity

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ing of sovereignty for the common good, and hence to a unified world society. T h a t need not be a Utopian vision as long as it constitutes the goal of advancing intermediary stages of the ethnic process. Whatever is human is a source of mischief and conflict and oppression, till man rises to higher ethical and psychological levels. Ethnicity is no more immune to social evils than the disparity between the poor and the rich. M a r x had committed an error of geometric proportions when he sought to abolish peoples and nations as a first step toward the abolition of capitalism. Ethnicity has shown itself to be no less organic to man than all his other eccentricities. Prerequisites for its understanding and control would therefore embody greater knowledge, wiser judgments, and a larger measure of self-discipline. O n e can only hope that man will grow more emotionally mature as he continues to grow intellectually. T h e cult of Utopian universalism had failed utterly to grasp the importance to man of his ethnic traits. In the Soviet Union it had become transmogrified into the invidious cult of Stalinism, to many still synonymous with the road to universalism. In both instances, liberal and leftist intellectuals had submitted to their lowest, animal instincts, docilely accepting the doctrine that justified any means, no matter how evil, for what they pretended to believe would be the common good. It is therefore refreshing to listen to the words of one wise man, K a r l Popper: What is required is that we work for a more sensible society in which our basic conflicts are resolved in an increasingly rational manner.

I said "more sensible". There are, in fact, no sensible societies, but there is always one which, being a little more sensible than the existing one, we should aspire to. That is a realistic demand and not one that is Utopian (1972). While man's behavior is almost entirely learned, a significant area is determined by basic instincts, human emotions, and repressed feelings. Even to achieve Popper's modest aim, man has to draw upon all his potentials. H e will thereby not only modify the effects of innate and acquired limitations but enhance his cultural and spiritual endowments as well. His evolutionary destiny leaves him no alternative to catastrophe but to keep groping his w a y out of an existential morass. T h e international society M a r x had envisioned, and the universal grammar Chomsky was seeking, were social and linguistic aspects of universal values all men seek. Befuddled ideologists had transmuted noble ideals into will-o'-the-wisps. A misguided Utopian universalism that had characterized liberal intellectuals and aberrant radicals alike had gravely retarded scholarship, disastrously suppressed the ethnic rights of man, and ushered in an era of totalitarianism. For the universal society, a clear opportunity for a realistic appraisal of the struggles for national freedom had lain immediately at hand. For the

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universal grammar, a realistic source of understanding might be sought in the enigma of ethnic and language differentiation which also lies immediately at hand. Both had been quite literally brushed aside. Further elucidation of an ethnic instinct or innate predisposition for group adaptation (and its influence upon language variation), as well as further elucidation of the ethnic process delineating the character of the historical forces structuring and re-structuring the ethnic group, offer at least rational approaches in a society striving to be sensible.

PART TWO

Utopian internationalism and the ethnic process

CHAPTER 2

Fromm: nationalism and internationalism

A. GENERAL A T T I T U D E S T O NATIONALISM To the pseudo-scientific universalistic hatred of nationalism, Fromm has added a psychoanalytic flavor of very dubious value. Fromm is presented here both as typical universalist with a deep aversion for nationalism, and as typical assimilationist Jew (the type afflicted with the traditional, Dispersion-inspired Jewish anti-Semitism known as self-hatred) with just as profound aversion for the national struggle of his own people for freedom, seldom losing an opportunity to attack Zionism and Israel. An impressive scholar in his special fields of psychoanalysis and sociology, there is much evidence of thought and penetration in his writings, contributing to his wide popularity as a humanist thinker. However, nationalism is one subject on which many minds have stumbled, largely, it would appear, because they have almost invariably approached it with preconceptions and biases. It is a common fault, especially with those who still preen themselves on their universalism, on their internationalist outlook, on their dedication to visionary rather than pragmatic aspects of society. Fromm belongs definitely in this category. It is therefore appropriate, at this point, to offer a few contrasting views: the obsolescent and the modern. I had called the once common, universalistic approach to nationalism faulty since, with few exceptions, it tends to exclude the historical and social legitimacy of nationalism, indeed, the whole concept of nation, from any positive role in the political and cultural development of society. For that matter, few proponents of nationalism have dealt with it more deeply than to grant it status as either "good" or " b a d " . Not even Borochov, who had analysed it with greater scientific acumen than anyone, had grasped the full significance of the ethnic basis of human society. A typical favorable view, for instance is that of Erwin D. Canham: Nothing has done the cause of world understanding more harm than the failure of some intellectuals to see the difference between true and noble nationalism

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Utopian internationalism and the ethnic process and false or dangerous chauvinism. There is a place and always will be, in our integrating world, for a true sense of nationhood.

What Canham calls "true and noble" has been variously described as " g o o d " , "genuine", "non-aggressive", "revolutionary", and so forth, as opposed to its opposites, " b a d " , "spurious", "reactionary", "backward", "regressive", "aggressive", and so on. But, to the typical universalist before World War II, there was no good nationalism. O n the other hand, just as incorrect in the light of the experience of the United Nations were the views proclaimed dogmatically by Edward Hallett Carr in a book he called The Future of Nations'. T h e existence of a more or less homogeneous racial or linguistic group bound together by a common tradition and the cultivation of a common culture must cease to provide a prima facie case for the setting up or maintenance of an independent political unit (1945a: 49).

T h e present membership of the U.N. approaches one hundred and forty plus, with every likelihood of many more newly independent states seeking admission. Still, the professional universalist is not to be discomfited by realities. Even ordinary people may share his hopes that mankind will yet achieve a new humanity. It will however probably come despite his efforts and not because of them. Even the more historically discriminating students of the subject, historians like W. Friedmann, Hans Kohn, and Carlton H. J. Hayes, pass from a vacillating acceptance of nationalism to an overwhelming but untenable condemnation. Friedmann, a staunch supporter of regional government, is nevertheless able to say : Nationalism is no more necessarily aggressive than democracy is necessarily pacific in character, or modern technique necessarily d e s t r u c t i v e . . . . As the majority of Christians have not lived up to the teachings of Jesus and the majority of capitalists have not lived u p to the principles of O w e n or Abbé, so the great majority of those who direct the fate of national states have failed to live up to the principles of Herder or Mazzini (1943: 46).

In " A New Look at Nationalism" (in Nationalism and International Progress, edited by Urban G. Whitaker), Hans Kohn wisely remarks that : Nationalism in itself is neither good nor bad. [He then goes on to say, perhaps in consequence of the totalitarian experience:] Nationalism today unleashes forces which deepen antagonisms and hallow them by appeals to an idealized and over-sentimentalized past. T h u s nationalism has tended to become what it originally had not been, a threat to individual liberty and to the universality of human culture (1970: 21-22).

But how sure is Kohn that nationalism alone, itself "neither good nor b a d " , contains the potential for the evils of nationalism? Perhaps, like many other psycho-social factors at hand, it is simply an instrument that can be manipulated by unscrupulous political forces. Perhaps it is an aspect of national consciousness no less significantly human than any other human emotion,

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59

w h e t h e r f o r g o o d o r f o r evil w o u l d d e p e n d u p o n t h e h u m a n c o n d i t i o n a t t h e time. I n f a c t , is n o t its a c t u a l rise d u r i n g t h e past o n e h u n d r e d a n d f i f t y y e a r s in o n e c o u n t r y o r a n o t h e r a n o r m a l response to specific e c o n o m i c , social a n d political c o n d i t i o n s ? T h a t , i n d e e d , w a s B e r B o r o c h o v ' s signal c o n t r i b u t i o n t o t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g of t h e n a t i o n a l question.

The

w o r k o f a g h e t t o J e w , it m i g h t b e t o o m u c h to e x p e c t t h a t , sixty-five y e a r s a f t e r t h e p u b l i c a t i o n in R u s s i a n of his The National Struggle,

Question

and the

Class

a n d t h i r t y - f i v e y e a r s a f t e r its first E n g l i s h a p p e a r a n c e , m o d e r n

historians s h o u l d a l r e a d y h a v e b e c o m e a c q u a i n t e d w i t h it. Professor H a y e s , h o w e v e r , s h o w e d c o n s i d e r a b l e insight b y distinguishi n g b e t w e e n n a t i o n a l i s m as a process a n d n a t i o n a l i s m as a belief.

Reluctant

to pass a m o r a l j u d g m e n t c o n c e r n i n g a n historic process as to w h e t h e r it is a curse o r a blessing, nevertheless h e v e n t u r e d to s a y : . . . nationalism as the b e l i e f . . . is evil, and should be cursed — and cured (1926: 245). C o n f r o n t e d b o t h b y t h e vast a r r a y of c o n f l i c t i n g scholarly e v i d e n c e a n d b y t h e e n o r m i t y of t h e psycho-socio-political p r o b l e m itself, K . H . Silvert is impelled to ask: Are we to assume that the drive towards national organization in the underdeveloped world is some kind of manifestation of original sin, uncontainable and inevitable, but undesirable? . . . It is quite another matter to say, however, that value judgments concerning nationalism should be based on very explicit criteria of "goodness" and "badness", most exacting considerations of time, place, and other special circumstances, and a very precise indication of the many dimensions of the subject. T o condemn nationalism as a whole in its contemporary manifestations is to render the developed nations impotent in their dealings with the emergent lands (1963: 12-13). W h a t t h e n is this e x t r a o r d i n a r y p h e n o m e n o n w e h a v e b e e n t a l k i n g a b o u t w i t h o u t d e f i n i n g , b u t c o n c e r n i n g w h i c h w e shall soon b e e x p e c t i n g e n l i g h t e n m e n t f r o m E r i c h F r o m m ? W h a t is its r e l a t i o n s h i p to m a n k i n d in its p r e s e n t stage of d e v e l o p m e n t ? A n d just w h a t does it s i g n i f y f o r the largest p a r t of h u m a n i t y still s t r u g g l i n g f o r a p l a c e in t h e sun ? T h i s is the p r o b l e m Silvert a n d his associates h a v e b e e n w r e s t l i n g w i t h too, a n d this is h o w h e clarifies t h e issue: A l l the cases discussed in the body of this book (Expectant Peoples) involve human cultures in one or another degree of emergence into full national existence. W e are observing what is indubitably a major event in the lives of people, a profound revolution involving not merely flags and constitutions but basic reorientations of attitudes, behavior, and ethical norms. T h e crossing of the frontier from tribal or feudal organization — and sometimes both together — into national polities signals a fundamental change in the human condition, a reordering of social classes and the addition of new meanings to class position, and new attitudes concerning one's place in the social world and one's possibilities therein as well as new hierarchies of values and loyalties. This Great Transformation is poignantly felt in its awesome magnitude by the people experiencing it; the observer can do no less than to create explanatory

6o

Utopian internationalism

and the ethnic process

concepts which will allow the capturing on paper of some of the sweeping excitement of this metamorphosis in the lives of societies and human beings (1963: 21). At least, it can be said of Silvert et al. that they have approached the subject of nationalism with an open mind and without warping preconceptions. They had recognized within contemporary society a " G r e a t Transformation" — but not questions of " w h e n c e " , or " w h y " , or " h o w " . Social revolutions are among the awkward facts of history, the culmination of the pressing need for economic and political change. Invariably, they have been the expressions of poverty, enslavement and general injustice — in short, the absence of freedom for the individual, for the class, for the minority. Class oppression obscured the existence of national oppression and consequently relegated the latter to a position of secondary importance. T h e blunt marching orders Friedrich Engels gave his followers tell the tale: T h e Italians, Poles and Hungarians must be told plainly that when modern questions are under discussion they must hold their tongues (Engels 1 9 3 6 : 2 4 1 ) .

The national liberation movements of the mid-nineteenth century were regarded at best as preludes to social revolution. T h e Russian Revolution of 1 9 1 7 restored their legitimacy. In the midst of the revolution, Lenin declared the liberation of all the subject nationalities of Russia and proceeded immediately to reclaim and re-establish their native tongues; even creating alphabets where none had existed before. Revolutionary China and liberated India encountered similar linguistic problems. One of the newer nations freed from colonial rule, Indonesia, bewilderingly aware of the hundreds of tongues spoken by its numerous primitive peoples also sought a solution, and found it in Malay. Without seriously disrupting internal relations, the Philippines too agreed upon Tagalog as the common language of that multilingual country. Israel's rebirth revealed a microcosm of the world's linguistic chaos and successfully established Hebrew as its "universal" tongue. Wishful thinking would have it that were all men to speak a universal language strife and bloodshed would vanish from the face of the earth as in the presumably idyllic days before the Tower of Babel. It is not clear, for instance, how a common language could bring about the Utopian "internationalism" that would obliterate national distinctions and establish the world government of a single international humanity. Even M a r x did not envision this, intent as he was upon the survival of a few large states, what might be called etatism, to which all other peoples would be subordinated, ultimately losing their separate national identities; a process now patently demonstrated in Soviet Russia. Even Lenin's national policies were at variance with those of his famous master, and with those of his far less engaging successors. By proclaiming the self-

Fromm: nationalism and

internationalism

61

determination of all the oppressed peoples in the U.S.S.R., he established a policy which ought to have put the last nail into the coffin of an " i n ternationalism" which was to have been founded upon the ruthless suppression of colonial peoples struggling for survival. Edward Hallett Carr, w h o talked in 1945 of the "demonstrable bankruptcy of nationalism" and, not foreseeing the United Nations Organization, declared that: " T h e equality of nations is not only unattainable, but is neither equitable nor desirable" (1945b: 43). H e was nevertheless dubious of the concept of a few big nations such as that held by M a r x . In his words: There would be little cause for congratulation in a division of the world into a small number of large, multi-national units exercising effective control over vast territories and practising in competition and conflict: with one another a new imperialism . . . (p. 53). . . . this idealistic view of a functional internationalism, based on the conception of international order as association not between nations as such but between people and groups of different nations, and realized through an indefinite number of organizations . .. would l>e Utopian if it failed to take account from the outset of the unsolved issue of power (p. 50). Garr's fears of an aggressive nationalism colored his eagerness to subordinate the role of the nation and hasten the approach of internationalism without recourse to what he regarded as an obsolete concept. Nevertheless, he admitted that: The challenge of nationalism does not exclude recognition of the place of nations in an international order; it clears the way for a better understanding of what that place i s . . . it embodies in itself, though overlaid with conventional trappings, such natural and universal elements as attachment to one's native land and speech and a sense of wider kinship than that of family. The modern nation is a historical group. It has its place and function in a wider society, and its claims cannot be denied or ignored. But they can. in no circumstances be absolute . . . (p. 39). W h a t C a r r envisions is an international society where the injustices and the inequalities of the individual are eliminated and the paramount sovereignty of the nation is curbed in the interests of the whole of society. H e makes this abundantly clear when he writes: The freedom and equality which the makers of the coming peace must seek to establish is not a freedom and equality of nations, but a freedom and equality which will express themselves in the daily lives of men (p. 43). Nevertheless, even so distinguished an historian and scholar as C a r r could err in his judgment on the historical merits of the national question. Writing a year before the establishment of the U N , Carr, like M a r x and numerous contemporary students of society, wrote off the concept of the nation as an already obsolete idea and fancied that the Millennium was just around the corner. Confidently he predicted: Few positive forecasts about the shape of the world after the war can be made with any confidence . .. But. . . We shall not again see a Europe of twenty and a world of more than sixty "independent sovereign states" . . . (p. 57).

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and the ethnic process

On the other hand, there is sound reasoning and good common sense when he says further on: But the complexity of human relations fortunately makes it natural and imperative for human beings to combine for various purposes in a variety of groups of varying sizes and comprehensiveness; and this leaves abundant scope for the development of that community of national thought and feeling, of political and cultural tradition, which is the constructive side of nationalism (P- 59)Yet Carr simply forgot to include, in his dismissal of the nation as still the basic factor for good or evil, its dynamic possibilities among the nations of Africa and even of Asia. He would have been shocked to learn that the U N , only thirty years later, acquired almost thrice as many members than he had thought possible. Even so, he still found it impossible to picture the form that the "internationalism" men had dreamed about would take. And he concludes: To achieve these results [the demands of social justice] through an executive world authority planning, directing and controlling from a single centre remains a dream for visionaries. The best hope of achieving them in the next period lies in a balanced structure of international or multi-national groupings both for maintenance of security and for the planned development of the economics of geographical areas and groups of nations. This seems the surest prospect of international advance open, at one of the crises of history, to a world bewildered by the turmoil of nationalism and war (p. 70). Thus, the "internationalism", which for a hundred years had hindered the attainment of freedom of "more than sixty" oppressed nations and peoples, and consequently hampered their native tongues and cultures! The "internationalists" in the field of language were, similarly, Utopian visionaries so blinded by their obsessions that they failed to recognize the concrete linguistic realities with which they were faced. Blinded by the illusion of an "internationalism" that foresaw imminent dissolution of most nations, they were content to ride roughshod over national sensibilities and over the linguistic and cultural struggles of many peoples. It is this climate of opinion which prompted Edward Sapir to talk of: . . . the prevalent fallacy that internationalism is in spirit opposed to the intensive development of autonomous culture (Sapir i960: 12). What has actually happened in face of this national re-awakening has been the revival of the under-privileged languages with their primitive cultures and, in many instances, non-existent alphabets, precisely as Lenin had done. T h e appearance on the world scene of so many new peoples and as many new idioms has greatly altered national and linguistic relationships, and consequently the political situation as well. What will all this do to the visions of a single international tongue? It will at least restore a measure of sanity so much needed for the understanding of the real significance of an international language.

Fromm: nationalism and internationalism

63

T o the vast majority of liberal thinkers, nationalism was simply a dark blot on the escutcheon of society. No one knew whence it came and what it signified, mesmerized as scholars and intellectuals virtually have been by the Messianic message of Marx. By contrast, even a mere glimpse of understanding amongst a daring few suggests that the ice of ignorance was slowly melting. Sociopsychic and sociological conclusions . . . must be that nationalities and nationalism persist, and not necessarily as anachronisms; that people do cherish their historical heritage; that in trying to preserve their identity and achieve or maintain their autonomy, they are struggling to avoid being lost or absorbed in the mass. Nor have these revivals been solely revivals of language and nationalistic political aspirations; they have frequently also been the key to the intellectual awakening of the common people of the ethnic groups. These intellectual awakenings have been fostered by increasing literacy and by a new awareness of the great writings in the past in the mother tongue and the great historical events depicted .. . (Hertzler 1965: 240). The foregoing views should now reasonably serve us as background for an examination of Erich Fromm's socio-analysis of nationalism, using as text mainly his book The Sane Society (1965; originally published in 1955).

B. INCESTUOUS NATIONALISM From the evidence of The Sane Society and many other of Fromm's books, there can be no doubt that Fromm recognizes in nationalism only an aggressive, undesirable social phenomenon manifested by totalitarianism in the forms of Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism. This is astonishing in a student of society as earnest and dedicated as he. It is scarcely credible that he should extract no lessons from a situation as revolutionary as the universal national struggle must have appeared even fifteen years ago when he wrote this book. The really astounding fact is that he does not even mention it. How could this redoubtable psychoanalytical researcher have overlooked a question which literally stares society in the face? We shall assume then that Fromm's social analysis stands four-square upon his views of totalitarianism. We are also obliged to assume that he has deliberately brushed aside consideration of a burning social question for reasons not at present available to his readers. Nor, from the printing history of the book, does there appear to have been any revision. Within this frame of reference, let us try to understand Fromm's viewpoint, dwelling exclusively upon the psychological approach and ignoring for the moment the sociological argument we had sketchily reviewed above. A basic assumption of Fromm's is that society lacks mental health, a lack from which all social evils flow. As man evolves and becomes less

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a n i m a l , less a p a r t of n a t u r e , h e tends t o b r e a k a w a y f r o m t h e ties of n a t u r e , f r o m t h e ties of m o t h e r l o v e , b l o o d a n d soil. B u t e v e n m a t u r e m a n n e v e r ceases t o l o n g f o r t h e security of M o t h e r E a r t h , b e i n g k i n t o t h e child's d e p e n d e n c e u p o n its m o t h e r . I n its e x t r e m e p a t h o l o g i c a l f o r m , it is m a n i f e s t e d in s c h i z o p h r e n i a , a n d it is also expressed in neuroses. H e feels a n d acts like t h e fetus in t h e w o m b . F r o m m ' s c o n c e p t s a r e F r e u d i a n . B u t h e d e v i a t e s f r o m F r e u d in divesting t h e a t t a c h m e n t to t h e m o t h e r o f its sexual m e a n i n g . H e e x p l a i n s it in this f a s h i o n : These pathological phenomena have their parallel in the evolution of the human race. T h e clearest expression of this lies in the fact of the universality of the incest tabu . . . T h e incest tabu is the necessary condition for all human d e v e l o p m e n t . . . he has to overcome the deep craving to remain tied to the mother. T h e incestuous desire has its strength not from sexual attraction to mother [italics mine] but from the deep-seated craving to . . . return to the . . . womb . . . (p. 44) F r o m m ' s m o d i f i c a t i o n of t h e m o t h e r f i x a t i o n c o n c e p t is i n g e n i o u s b u t u n c o n v i n c i n g . T h e p o w e r f u l incest d r i v e of F r e u d ' s is absent. D e p r i v e d of its s e x u a l significance, it is necessarily r o b b e d o f its incestuous m e a n i n g . W h y F r o m m s h o u l d nonetheless persist in u s i n g a F r e u d i a n w o r d w i t h so h e a v i l y l o a d e d a sexual c o n n o t a t i o n is a m y s t e r y . I n o t h e r respects, F r o m m ' s m o t h e r fixation c o n c e p t retains t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n F r e u d h a d e r e c t e d o n his t h e o r y , a n d o n the O e d i p u s C o m p l e x as a w h o l e . O n p. 4 5 F r o m m w r i t e s : T h e fixation to the mother was recognized by Freud as the crucial problem of human development both of the race and of the i n d i v i d u a l . . . derived from the little boy's sexual attraction to her. . . . In putting the emphasis on the sexual aspect of the incestuous desire, Freud evades the real problem; the depth and intensity of the irrational affection tie to the m o t h e r . . . . T h e problem of incest, however, is not restricted to fixation to the mother. T h e tie to her is only the most elementary form of all natural ties of blood which gives man a sense of rootedness and belonging... . T h e family and the clan and later on the state, nation or church assume the same function which the individual mother had originally for the child. H o w e v e r F r o m m m a y insist t h a t t h e d e r i v a t i v e ties f o l l o w f r o m his m o d i f i c a t i o n , t h e y a r e nevertheless still F r e u d ' s . T h e distinction is i m p o r t a n t b e c a u s e F r o m m soon d i f f e r e n t i a t e s b e t w e e n positive a n d n e g a t i v e aspects of b o t h t h e f a t h e r a n d t h e m o t h e r influences. D e s p i t e t h e f a c t t h a t t h e sense of rootedness a n d b e l o n g i n g n o w n o l o n g e r is said to b e o f s e x u a l o r i g i n , a n d t h e r e f o r e n o t a c t u a l l y incestuous, w e soon see it releg a t e d to t h e r e a l m of p a t h o l o g i c a l e m o t i o n s ; a n d s i m i l a r l y w i t h its l a t e r social d e v e l o p m e n t s . T h e s e " i n c e s t u o u s " ties to t h e m o t h e r , to b l o o d a n d soil a r e r e p r e s e n t e d b y F r o m m as v a n q u i s h e d in M e s s i a n i c time. T h e M e s s i a n i c v i c t o r y w i l l e m b r a c e all m a n k i n d a n d b r i n g a b o u t " t h e f u l l e s t a b l i s h m e n t of

the

spiritual r e a l i t y of m o r a l a n d i n t e l l e c t u a l c o n s c i e n c e " . T h i s g o a l w o u l d b e t h e e m b o d i m e n t of the positive

aspect of t h e p a t r i a r c h a l spirit, t h e r u l e of

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reason and conscience. But just why an actually non-incestuous attachment to mother, blood and soil, at worst, a relatively mild fixation, and its subsequent evolutionary forms are doomed to disappear in the universal society at the behest of intellect and superego is not clear. Nor is it clear why such ties constitute a negative, hence undesirable, matriarchal aspect. There is also, according to Fromm, a positive aspect to the matriarchal spirit. "All men are children of Mother Earth." Hence they possess the right, which a mother bestows upon all her children, of equal and unquestionable happiness. Out of the positive aspect of the matriarchal spirit will evolve the Brotherhood of Man. Such a concept will attest to the rise of new, human roots. As result of these new roots, concludes Fromm: . . . . the incestuous tie to the mother is eliminated. By the mastery over nature as it manifests itself in industrial production, man frees himself from his fixation to the bonds of blood and soil, he humanizes nature and naturalizes himself (p. 59).

With the new roots of the universal society the primeval incestuous tie is severed. M a n has risen far above his former animal self. But since, as we have already learned, Fromm had abrogated those incestuous ties, what need is there for man in his ennobled state to detach himself from formerly human longings of a socially and individually desirable character? While even these are times which, however benign, could under unfavorable conditions express themselves pathologically, they are simultaneously ties that could manifest themselves on the highest planes of human emotion. Fromm disagrees that these human longings are socially necessary. He had discovered in the views of Johann Jacob Bachofen, a precursor of Freud, just what he required in support of his universalist preconceptions: Bachofen's study of the matriarchal system had convinced Fromm that, in contrast to Freud's negative sexual interpretation of the mother fixation, there were really both positive and negative aspects to the mother figure. T h e positive aspect represents an affirmation of life, freedom, and equality; and ultimately would evolve into the Brotherhood of Man. T h e negative aspect, however, represents man's primitive affiliation to nature, to blood and soil; and it is from them that stems the anti-social phenomenon which Fromm knows as nationalism. M a n has to "overcome the deep craving to remain tied to the mother" before he can attain human perfection. It is his basic tie. It is the foundation of the natural ties of blood and soil. From all these ties springs his sense of rootedness and belonging. This is the emotion that must be uprooted and eliminated in order to reach the supra-human rung on the evolutionary ladder. Since this undesirable emotion is derived from a negative aspect of the mother figure, it is curious that Fromm should find it essential to abolish

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Freud's sexual interpretation, replacing it with his own more mildly negative form of mother fixation. It may perhaps have helped to popularize his views. But the most puzzling question remains: what constitutes that presumably base animal naturalism in the mother-love ingredient of attachment to family, soil and one's people to warrant its unworthiness for perpetuation in a higher form of human existence? Short of complete metamorphosis of man, as a concept of man's ultimate destiny, a sort of celestial or at least ethereal creature, it seems impossible by reasoning alone to explain Fromm's pressing need to root out every vestige of man's most precious human characteristics. The puzzle is easily resolved once Fromm's necessity to bolster his antinational bias is recognized. T h e usefulness of the Bachofen hypothesis becomes obvious. By simple division of mother love into a negative and a positive compartment, Fromm derives that intuitive spark of insight which guides him and like-minded people in determining what is a right course of action in the development of society and what is a wrong. Right is a desirable emotion emanating from a positive mother love, and leading through a confirmation of life, freedom and equality toward the Brotherhood of Man. Wrong is an undesirable emotion, emanating from a negative mother love, and leading through a feeling of relatedness to one's fellow man and through a natural human yearning for roots toward the perdition of nationalism. I find this dichotomy both arbitrary and perplexing. New human foundations for a universal society of peace and brotherhood is a very attractive idea familiar to most people through the teachings of the ancient prophets. New roots in the good society could well enable man to reach out for even higher goals, goals perhaps beyond the range of conceptualization today. Still, in aiming for universalism, one may legitimately wonder if it is essential that man sever his ties with an emotion as profoundly tender as mother love, or with any other human quality of equally beneficial and high emotional potential. Is nature not a part of the universe? An analysis of an earthly society such as ours scarcely encompasses wonderful universes that would render Earth entirely obsolete. For if so, there is of course no end to flight. There is infinity. If Fromm hopes for understanding in quest for eternity, he should still want to stay in sight of less gifted men. The Children of Israel who could embrace in their vision only the Golden Calf had not yet the faintest conception that Moses was bringing them tablets inscribed by God. Fromm is not impressed, however, with the fate of those who lag behind. More intent upon the vision than upon the base material from which it is to be moulded, he declares with a categorical finality that merits sounder reasoning:

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Any regression today from freedom into artificial rootedness in state or race is a sign of mental illness, since such regression does not correspond to the state of evolution already reached and results in unquestionably pathological phenomena (p. 71). Everything is either black or white. It therefore becomes a matter of great importance to determine what social phenomenon constitutes a regression, what would be racial, what national or nationalistic. Such a decision clearly cannot be left to one w h o speaks in such indeterminate terms. Fromm's blanket statement can be refuted by any African people demanding national liberation. Having known no freedom it cannot have regressed from freedom. Having known neither feudalism nor capitalism its roots and its ties are almost pristine in their primitivism and scarcely artificial. T o such a people, nationhood and statehood are symbols of civilized progress and mature human development — hardly short of heaven itself. Fromm overlooks a basic fact of human society. Mankind, hitherto invariably subdivided into families, clans, peoples, and nations, has consequently always existed in varying states of evolution. Thus, it is palpably absurd for anyone enjoying a high state of evolution in any country to pronounce as artificial rootedness, regression from freedom, or mental illness the status of any individual or group that has not yet attained that freedom, that high state of evolution. Fromm's euphoric air of perfectionism and evolutionary superiority can be compared to the "Great Russianism" Lenin used to denounce so vehemently when he sought the liberation of the oppressed Czarist nationalities from the dominance of the large Russian nationality. A t that time, be it recalled, Lenin had encountered Rosa Luxembourg's vigorous opposition to Polish independence, the latter preferring a multinational state even though dominated by its most powerful member. Fromm would doubtless have supported Luxembourg. T h e world is as civilized as its least cultured national group or nation state. Priority in evolutionary performance of a single individual or a single state grants it no privilege to exact an abrupt cessation of the evolutionary process among less fortunate individuals and states. Instead, it becomes the manifest responsibility of the culturally advanced, in all their manifold expressions, to raise standards everywhere, to ensure equality and freedom for all in the unceasing struggle to win even those lowly heights already attained by their "betters". T h e doors of an evolving humanity must be kept open for all mankind regardless of varying stages of development. It is disheartening, fifty to a hundred years after Marx's etatism and after "Great Russian" chauvinism, to find in Fromm's enlightened views anachronisms reminiscent of such archaic conceptions of society. Fromm's

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is objectively a nationalistic approach, since it favors cultural and political advancement only to those already advanced. In effect, he displays concern for the mental health only of the fully developed, mature personalities and states, and "devil take the hindmost!". Whereas, the attitude to underprivileged peoples on the part of the rest of the civilized world should follow the customary practice of all modern progressive communities, i.e., to elevate the cultural amenities of all its citizens. T h e Negro revolution in the United States conclusively proves how disastrous was the American laissez-faire philosophy to close one's eyes to the illiterate and impoverished black mass. T h e Black Revolution now demonstrates how precipitately and frantically universities and social instruments are striving to unbind a vengeful Prometheus, speeding up the liberation of pent-up Negro energies, and hastening the arrested evolutionary process of the American Negro. T h e vast gulf between the many realities and the unitary dream is as it should be. T h e visionary is the lighthouse of humanity but seldom does he keep his feet on the ground. Fromm the analyst and sociologist has, however, obligations to fulfil toward the real world. In a world of struggling peoples, a pragmatic philosophy takes precedence over an insubstantial vision. That cannot be easy for a thinker like Fromm with a distorted view of national realities. By robbing incest of its sexual content he has undoubtedly introduced an interesting modification of the Freudian concept of the mother fixation, but it has not contributed to an understanding of the national question. By retaining the incestuous element (but without the sexuality), solely upon the basis of a return to the womb, he has introduced only confusion. Socially desirable associations of mother love, among them the struggle for national liberation, can be expressed in his phrase: " M a n ' s longing for mother's love". But even when mother fixation is expressed in pathological terms it can be misleading: I t is the d e p t h and intensity of the irrational affective tie to the m o t h e r — the wish to return into her orbit, to remain a part of her, the f e a r of emerging f u l l y f r o m her (1965: 45-46).

It appears that the greater the degree of depth and intensity of the emotional mother impulse, the greater is the incestuous element. This interpretation of Fromm's meaning at least admits the possibility also of the innocent and socially desirable emotion, presumably even as far as a complete absence of incestuousness. O r is it always pathological, even in the positive aspect which points the way to the Brotherhood of M a n ? T h e arbitrary Bachofen hypothesis with its negative and positive aspects of an incestuous mother fixation is of little help in its practical application. In a footnote, Fromm tries to illustrate from real life the effectiveness of this hypothesis. Actually he demonstrates how topsy-turvy its behavior can be. T h e Marx-

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ists, according to Fromm, had seized upon the positive elements of equality and freedom in the matriarchal structure, whereas the Nazis "were attracted by the very irrationality of the negative elements of the bonds of blood and soil". But these examples seem to illustrate exactly nothing; they cancel each other out. The theoretical Marxist embrace of equality and freedom has resulted in the virtual abolition of equality and freedom both in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods of Soviet life. That is very obvious retrogression. On the other hand, the Nazi attraction for the irrationality of the bonds of blood and soil was followed by two positive events of great historical importance: 1) by a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the democratic forces combined with Hitler's latest victim, his erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union; 2) by a remarkable rise in the number of new nations liberated from colonialism and imperialism, precisely because of the irrational, deeply embedded notions of freedom and equality whose roots lay in blood and soil. These national struggles were thus a clear vindication of the positive character of these natural roots, pejoratively labeled negative by Fromm. He writes: He (man) can dispense with the natural roots only insofar as he finds new human roots (pp. 42-43).

Possibly, but I question strongly if man will jump out of his skin, if he will leave his natural roots behind him in the course of his evolution. The new roots can only be a modification of the old. What man essentially is, he will probably continue to be, unless he ultimately ceases to be man. One must assume an evolutionary, stage by stage transformation. Magical metamorphosis by mutation is not predictable. As long as he remains man it is unlikely that he will ever lose his essential biological character. If we take the given example of the Brotherhood of Man, which Fromm holds is derived from "Man's longing for mother's love", it appears farfetched to expect, and even wanton to desire, the elimination of rootedness in so beautiful a gift of nature. Similarly with the attainment of the stateless society, why should man, as long as he is still man, in that glorious day, want to surrender such socially cohesive and potentially uplifting concepts as family and homestead, any more than he would care to surrender such eminently satisfying physiological needs as those for food and libido? Fromm actually adumbrates this feeling when he asks: Is it surprising, then, to find a deep craving in man not to sever the natural ties, to fight against being torn away from nature, from mother, blood and soil

(P- 43)? I hold with Fromm that is it not at all surprising. I hold that when man climbs to great moral and spiritual heights, he will do so only in consequence of an inner drive emanating from the solid foundations of Mother and Earth.

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In this connection, Adam Falkenstein, an eminent Sumerologist once pointed out incidentally an item of unusual interest to psychoanalysts: the Sumerian word for freedom, "Amargi" (its first use in recorded history), literally means "return to the mother" (Kramer 1971). Freudians ought to take note of this perhaps not insignificant semantic relationship, especially vis-à-vis Bachofen.

G.

T H E R E V O L U T I O N OF NATIONALISM

I find the same tendency to make arbitrary assumptions when Fromm tries to evaluate totalitarianism. It is a manifestation of an incestuous fixation in its negative aspect, a regression in man's evolution. And he says: Man escaped into a new idolatry of blood and soil, of which nationalism and racism are the two most evident expressions.. . . Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity (pp. 59-60).

Let us make the charitable assumption that Fromm's error is merely a semantic one, that he employs incorrect usage. What he thunders against could far more correctly be labelled racism or chauvinism or even "patriotism". Nationalism correctly describes the nature of the numerous struggles for national liberation, of which, even in 1955, when The Sane Society first appeared, Fromm must have been acutely aware. They were not less progressive then even though, by silently ignoring them or perhaps impatiently deprecating them, they had fallen derogatively into the framework of his preconceived notions of nationalism. If one is to judge from the given examples of Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, one is hard put to find any justification for coupling nationalism and totalitarianism. National struggles are expressions of nationalism — what else! Despite the universalistic blindspot which overlooks them altogether, the child must nevertheless bear a name. Willy-nilly, Fromm must distinguish them from totalitarianism — the only form of nationalism he apparently recognizes. What is the significance of fighting for the freedom of one's own exploited people and one's own ravished land, if it is to be designated as " a n escape into a new idolatry of blood and soil"? By the simple expedient of evading the naming of the child, the throes of the national revolution, agonizing expression of mankind's current stage of evolution, are transformed by default into an atavistic regression, a surrender to man's evil animal potential. Fromm's tacit head-nodding is scarcely evidence of truth. It lacks the ring of logical reasoning. As a social phenomenon, the national revolution, the revolution of nationalism, possesses all the ear-marks of a positive response to the basic needs of the underprivileged folk-group. From this vantage, it becomes

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the exercise of a people's will to determine the course of its own freedom quest; a course which simultaneously bears the seed of freedom for mankind as a whole. Viewed objectively, without benefit of Fromm's tendentious analysis, every national struggle finds a niche in man's erratic evolution towards a more humane world. This universal liberating phenomenon which has consumed the energies of subjected peoples for more than a hundred years, more especially since the Second World War, can well be described by a term borrowed from Erich Fromm, as a Syndrome of Growth, embracing both biophylous and independence-seeking components in a mighty surge towards the humanization of man. Fromm's failure to touch on the Afro-Asian-Latin American upheaval of downtrodden peoples jibes poorly with his scornful denunciation of nationalism as solely the negative outgrowth of incestuous fixation. It underscores even more both their hard-won freedom and their confident expectation, now exceedingly pragmatic, that our own day will yet bear witness to the liberation of every people yearning for freedom. In one of his later books, The Heart of Man, Fromm made the profound observation that: It is unthinkable that mankind could ever return to the concepts which dominated civilized history until only a short time ago (1964: 91).

Scholarly integrity if nothing else calls for public recognition of an international phenomenon which with lightning rapidity is becoming civilized history. One may already look forward in the immediate future towards a world in which every formerly underprivileged people will have achieved nationhood, and in which there will become clearly visible on the horizon the presently faint outlines of a supranational world. As if mankind already finds itself in a stage of development far removed from nature, as though man already lives in a stateless or at least supranational society, Fromm rather unrealistically deplores the fact that: T h e average man today obtains his sense of identity from his belonging to a nation rather than from his being a "son of m a n " . His objectivity, that is, his reason, is warped by this fixation (p. 59).

Thanks to his own fixation upon the Messianic vision, Fromm fails to respond to the realities of the society around him. What he writes is only relatively true. Not only the average man finds his identity in national belonging. No man, however high his head in the clouds, not even Fromm himself, can escape a national identity. Whether actively or passively, willingly or unwillingly, protestingly or not, every man shares in the nation to which he formally belongs. T h e rebel who refuses to fight in Vietnam, the Negro militant whose grievances are glaring, dissenter and discontented alike — all are Americans who would not if they could exchange their American belonging for any other national identity, and who, if

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they did actually make the exchange, would immediately find themselves in the same predicament. The American communist so dedicated as to spy for Soviet Russia virtually espouses Russian identity instead of his American one. There is no escape from this situation, and a sensitive individual could be warped by it as by prison walls. But a fixation? Not necessarily. That is an individual response, as is the consequent warping. Fromm's own incapacity to grasp the rather elementary but very realistic concept is itself astonishing. Perhaps he is misled by the still widespread attitude of the "average m a n " of "my country right or wrong" against which Fromm may justly rail. Yet a man of Fromm's keen discernment ought to distinguish between a chauvinistic patriotism and a cherished love and warm concern for one's people and one's land. The fact (as we shall soon discover) that he is fully capable of making the distinction disqualifies him all the more from blanket judgments about the average man's national identity, and indeed about the very nature of nationalism itself. Are for instance colonial peoples not to struggle for national liberation for fear of intensifying the national identity of their members? In such a situation, nationalism becomes relevant to every member of the national community, not only to the average man. To be sure, Fromm has admitted that nationalism is originally a progressive movement. This admission calls for further elaboration, since there is inexcusable absence of clarity on the entire concept of national development and its theoretical basis. On the failure to differentiate between the national identity of struggling peoples and totalitarianism hinges the whole fallacy of his grotesque assumption that nationalism is just a regression, and consequently an impediment to the evolution of the universal society. If national identity is not nationalism, then precisely what is it? Fromm's lag is not accidental. When nationalism is seemingly always bad, every ounce of resourcefulness must be summoned to justify wishful thinking. No wonder the square pegs of theory will not fit snugly into the round holes of reality. By identifying genuine national feeling and revolutionary national purpose with totalitarianism, Fromm exposes himself objectively to the charge of condoning colonialism and imperialism, the roots of all national oppression. Fromm has written extensively. The Sane Society is perhaps his most important book on the socio-analysis of society, dealing at length with its most salient features. It is therefore surprising that not by a single word does he refer to the magnificent freedom urge which has tripled the membership of the United Nations since its establishment. It is by far the most significant social phenomenon to appear on the world scene since the end of World War II, but Fromm's otherwise profound study has completely omitted any mention of it. It is a striking omission. Fromm's modification of Freud's theory of the Oedipus Complex actually

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lends itself to a rational interpretation of the dichotomy of nationalism. Fromm's own slant is both gratuitous and unwarranted. If totalitarianism and any forms of racism and chauvinism are to represent the negative, regressive aspects of the mother figure and of its related ties of blood and soil, then nationalism in its revolutionary and genuinely progressive forms logically represents the positive aspects with their forward-looking Messianic destiny. Incestuousness seems to be inapplicable in his concept. The idea of return to the womb without sexuality automatically excludes any relationship to incest. The figurative return and penetration suggest, not incest, but love in its purest form, deep human affection, a maternal tenderness, repose, and infinite peace. Strange to say, the positive and the negative sides to mother fixation fail to reflect opposite trends in the social conflict. The proper antithesis to a negative nationalism is a positive nationalism. Fromm however poses against totalitarianism the Brotherhood of Man! Positive nationalism, in its only form as the struggle of the oppressed peoples to regain their independence, has by some sort of legerdemain been wished out of existence. How does Fromm manage to overlook this evolutionary process? That is a mystery. It alone, in its present stage of the national question, is the true and logical antithesis to totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is regression. Messianism is destiny. In what social expression then should lie the forward march, the progressive advance, the revolutionary dynamic? Obviously it lies in the quest for national freedom, in the universal movement for national liberation. The more democratic it is, the more it becomes the genuine expression of a people's longing for self-expression. Only then does it become an expression, as Fromm defined it, more correctly than he was aware of, of rootedness in the positive aspects of mother's love and in the equally positive aspects of blood and soil. Unfortunately, from the very outset, Fromm is inhibited by the preconceived ideas which blind him to realities. As a result, his perceptive powers are paralyzed; and he becomes incapable of recognizing the progressively evolving, intermediate, social currents flowing, some waveringly, some haphazardly, some with vigorous forthrightness, between the respective pulls of totalitarian regression and the glorious humanist goal of a universal society.

D. NATIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM Fromm's strange antitheses, an hiatus in his thought processes, an abrupt intellectual arrest in the course of an otherwise psychoanalytical and sociological investigation, finds an interesting parallel in Lenin's jump

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from bourgeois nationalism to proletarian internationalism. Like Fromm's, Lenin's jump too by-passed actual intermediate stages of social development. It was a stage he himself had brought about immediately following the October Revolution, when he officially proclaimed the liberation and establishment of all the persecuted Czarist nationalities. Like Marx, Lenin had been obsessed by the horrendous spectre of nationalism as the offspring of capitalism and the expression of a middle class revolution — a purely bourgeois phenomenon. Categorically, he declared (Lenin on the Jewish Question): Marxism is irreconcilable with nationalism, be it ever so " j u s t " , " c l e a n " , refined and civilized. Socialism puts forward internationalism to replace all forms of nationalism, the fusion of all nations into a highest unity (1934: 17).

The ideal society of the future was to become synonymous with one of its preliminary, albeit revolutionary, stages. The pragmatic solution of the day was to become identical with its future destiny. The semantic war had begun. What ought by all logic to have been a new age of nationalism for the Russian peoples — to be sure, proletarian nationalism — was to become by a perversion of logic the age of internationalism! All rights evidently pre-empted by bourgeois nationalism, Lenin's Marxist inhibitions had powerfully resisted the more logical inclination to describe his great achievement as proletarian nationalism. Alas, that would still have been nationalism and hence would have represented a betrayal of his Marxist ideals. It was a psychological hurdle which Lenin had found impossible to overcome. He was therefore impelled to resort to a preposterous semantic subterfuge, to picture an intermediate evolutionary phase of the new Soviet society in the hyperbolic guise of rhodomontade. Lenin had merely sought to transform a legitimate and beautiful child into a man like God. Fromm's subterfuge is much more heinous. By a virtual conspiracy of silence, he in effect denies the child's existence; then he substitutes for the legitimate child of revolutionary nationalism the illegitimate one of totalitarianism. Finally, he epitomizes a totally incomprehensible attitude by the grotesque assumption that, between the evil illegitimacy of totalitarianism and the grandeur of a Messianic age, there are no indications to show man is striving to improve his national image. If Lenin had glowing and justifiable hopes in the Russian Revolution as a result alone of the freeing of downtrodden Czarist peoples, Fromm's vision of man's Brotherhood appears to have no evolutionary foundation at all within the society in which he lives. Without granting legitimacy to the struggles of deprived peoples for a world of free nations, perhaps because of inexplicable biases, how could he hopefully anticipate that further social development, without which there could be no supranational society and ultimate Brotherhood? What rational grounds could he have for an

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optimistic future for mankind when, irrationally, he disassociates himself from its normative national evolution? While suppressing the legitimacy of the historic process of evolutionary nationalism all over the world, and simultaneously refraining from bestowing upon the child its rightful name, Fromm nevertheless is quite aware of its sentiments and personality traits. Nationalism, as he ought to call this progressive social force, to distinguish it from its socio-pathological manifestations easily recognizable in totalitarianism, racism and chauvinism, is: .. . the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare — never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship. Undoubtedly, lack of concern for one's own country is an expression of a lack of social responsibility and human solidarity . . . (Fromm 1965: 60-61). This is nationalism. If you like, it is genuine nationalism to differentiate it from the spurious varieties. It is to be sought out and cultivated in the revolutionary potential of nationalism. But first of all it has to be recognized by those more prone to the dream than to the reality.

E. NATIONALISM — GENUINE AND SPURIOUS To define genuine nationalism without knowing it is nationalism is a myopic failing of Fromm's. The irresponsible use of this word exclusively in a derogatory sense has been the whole point of this argument. Perhaps lexicography can yet be a good restorative of mental health. We have a like problem with semantics. The semantic problem is much more important than may appear on the surface. Linguistic precision could benefit from the correction of a semantic failing Fromm shares with many others, even with opponents of his views on nationalism. Bad linguistic currency has distorted the meaning of much writing on this subject. Just as Fromm can, without knowing it, correctly evaluate national feeling as a highly prized quality, so can he, almost in the same breath, talk of the "idolatrous character of national feeling", a pejorative qualification quite at variance with the definition. Semantic integrity dictates the use of another word than national when describing the unwholesome qualities of a regressive "nationalism". That word should be nationalistic. The two words national and nationalistic are not synonymous. Differentiation is imperative. Only "good" nationalism is national. Only " b a d " nationalism is nationalistic. There is an abundance of evidence of the misuse of these words. Fromm is careful in his use of nationalistic. He is not so careful with the use of national. In the following quotation, the correct word is

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nationalistic. In these passages from one of his later books (You Shall Be As Gods), Fromm properly uses this adjective in its strictly pejorative sense as of course he had intended to. His justification for applying it to the Jewish people rests, however, on dubious evidence. They are quoted here primarily to demonstrate the misuse of the word, nationalism, in the exclusively regressive sense Fromm invariably employs : At first glance, however, it may appear as though the Bible and later Jewish tradition are profoundly nationalistic in outlook, sharply separating the Hebrews from the rest of mankind, in essence and in destiny. Is not Israel " the chosen people" . . . ? Are there not many nationalistic and xenophobic passages in the Talmud? Have not the Jews . . . often been nationalistic, tending to feel superior to the Gentiles, and exhibiting a good deal of clannishness? No one can deny this, and there is no need to bring proof of it. If we examine this nationalistic attitude, we are tempted at first to pardon it by explaining it. Is it not natural [Fromm sums up after explaining] that they developed a hatred of their oppressors and a reactive nationalistic pride and clannishness to compensate for their chronic humiliation? Yet, all these circumstances only explain the existence of Jewish nationalism; they cannot condone it. However [he concludes] it is important to note that nationalistic attitudes, while one element in the biblical and later Jewish tradition, are balanced by the very opposite principle: that of universalism (1969: 66-67).

From these passages it is quite clear Fromm has not revised his views on nationalism. It is of course important to weigh carefully a highly relevant consideration : Fromm is a Jew. Consequently, it would be psychologically conceivable for Fromm to have radically altered his opinions vis-à-vis the rest of the world yet to remain adamantly opposed to Jewish nationalism. It is an aspect of a peculiarly perverted mentality widely known as Jewish self-hatred. Many, if not most, people today have accepted the legitimacy and the positive character of the national question, among them many Jews too. So why not Fromm? Unfortunately, a rapid survey of his books affords no clue to such a radical change. I am therefore obliged to assume, as I stated earlier, that Fromm still remains an opponent of nationalism. His rejection of Jewish nationalism, past and presumably present too, would therefore be consistent. Speaking of the Jews, Fromm attributes what he calls their nationalistic attitude to defensive struggles against oppression. Hence, after giving a brief but moving account of historical Jewish vicissitudes, he exclaims : " Is it not natural" that they should develop hatred, a nationalistic reaction and clannishness? I would think so too, except that I would call the resultant reaction nationalism in its positive sense. Every national struggle has been a reaction to some form of social oppression, pragmatically vindicated today by the liberation of one people after another, including the Jews. But the fact that such a national response was natural for the Jews of the past

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and for every oppressed people since does not satisfy Fromm. That all oppressed peoples of the earth have responded humanly neither condones Jewish nationalism nor, by extension, any other genuine nationalism. They are, Fromm appears to imply, negative aspects of the mother fixation, regressive tendencies towards blood and soil, hence not to be differentiated from totalitarianism, from racism or chauvinism. Nationalism is thus not to be condoned in whatever guise it may come. Tenaciously — and arbitrarily — Fromm derives only the Brotherhood concept of the Messianic age from the positive matriarchal structure he had borrowed from Bachofen. But why only Utopia? Why not also a progressive, normative process of social development? That, dear reader, still remains a mystery. It is, however, a mystery which identifies him with a good many intellectuals schooled in the Socialist, Anarchist, Marxist, and Liberal tradition, albeit with a rather peculiar psychoanalytical twist. One explanation could therefore be the self-inhibiting, all-powerful grip of preconceived universalistic ideas. Or are we to believe that these, otherwise rational, thinkers possess an exceptionally high development of social conscience, one with a Christ-like tolerance of injustice as it meekly turns the other cheek to oppression? We have already drawn attention to Fromm's apposition of Jewish "regressive nationalistic" attitudes with the prophetic destiny of universalism. At this juncture we must seek a more concrete balance of opposites. I am not optimistic about Fromm's capacity for an inner reversal of his outmoded mental stance in order to balance these supposedly regressive nationalist attitudes with progressive national ones from Jewish real life. Do such in fact exist? Well, let us see. At least two, a general one and a specific one, are likely to arouse intellectual curiosity and even wide intellectual acceptance. First, is the unusually elevated ethical and intellectual standard of culture and scholarship, of a quality that has uninterruptedly contributed great benefits to the world. This is especially remarkable for a small scattered ethnic group living under universally unfavorable conditions of Dispersion. Second, is the extraordinary, historically determined, will and effort which led through the rise of Zionism to the restoration of the modern state of Israel. Admittedly, this was a belated and much hindered effort which permitted the salvaging of only two million Jews, having arrived on the political scene too late to rescue six million more. It would be interesting to learn why Fromm did not go to these very real, very progressive, and very humane national attitudes for a proper, realistic balancing of the Jewish account. It seems to me that, according to a rational humanist approach, these should constitute a genuine antithesis to "regressive" Jewish acts of despair and hatred and "nationalistic" attitudes which Fromm as the stern and exacting Super-ego refuses to

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condone. Radical humanism, as Fromm calls his mode of thinking, has to be rational too. His reluctance to condone in the Jewish people their grave "nationalist i c " sins lacks the magnanimity one should expect of a scholar who considers himself eminently qualified to pass judgment. Fromm's attitude reminds me more of Jonah than of Moses. What was really unforgiveable about the Jewish "nationalistic" attitude, about the concept of the "chosen people", about the feeling of superiority (examples Fromm gives), all of which, he self-righteously proclaims, need no further proof? W h y does Fromm demand more of his own people than he demands of any other, if Jews are in fact not a "chosen people"? Has he yet questioned whether all other nations should be forgiven for their iniquities? Jewish self-criticism sometimes can amaze one with its perhaps unconscious self-immolating passions. Apparently, not even his undoubted psychoanalytical acumen can protect Fromm against the pitfalls of his own prejudices, in this instance, the blindspot which obliterates from view positive, compensatory Jewish attitudes. In his role of the Jewish conscience or of the world Superego, one may justly question the infallibility of his judgment. W h y should not the ancient Hebrews have felt that they towered high above the child-sacrificing worshippers of Moloch? For an advocate of universalism to describe this feeling as nationalistic is sheer calumny. W h y should not modern Jews, survivors of a modern Moloch, despise the 20th century civilization of the gas-chambers, the concentration camps, and the totalitarian states? Fromm's ungracious refusal to condone this superior attitude is clear distortion of values if not actual perversion. In such feelings of superiority, they are the genuine heirs of the Messianic tradition. Contemptuous of every regression to barbarism, the enlightened modern Jew, unlike the assimilationist type that yearns for a Gentile identity, is now prone to be inspired by the Prophetic ideals of the reborn Jewish state. If we may judge from the proclamations of its spokesmen in the Zionist State, the ancient Jewish traditions, manifested predominantly in the modern secular form, will continue to impart new substance and meaning to the concept of the "chosen people". T h e assimilationist version of implied superiority upheld by Fromm and almost universally approved by a Christian world had, nevertheless, always been a malicious slander invariably seeking the undoing of the Jew. T h e restored Jewish State at long last possessed the opportunity to expose this slander. Its nationalism would have to accommodate itself to its large Arab minority, if only to win a favorable world opinion, and thus willy-nilly demonstrate its un-nationalistic character. T h e positive national approach would be inexorably expressed by a persistent bent both for unity with its Arab neighbors as

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well as for higher social and international standards. These typical national attitudes have long been evident despite the fact that Israel has been a beleaguered state for more than a quarter century of its existence. In a Dispersion inevitably dominated by both assimilation and antiSemitism, the concept of the "chosen people" has been historically impossible of fulfilment in the normally accepted sense of national policy. As individuals, however, Jews had exhibited their ethnic "chosenness" by their unparalleled contributions to world culture. Literally beaming with his "anti-Judaism", Fromm must surely have felt he was putting this really exceptional contribution in an unfavorable light when he wrote in one of his latest books: . . . after two thousand years the universalism and humanism of the prophets blossomed in the figures of thousands of Jewish philosophers, socialists, internationalists, many of whom had no personal connections with Judaism [Italics mine] (1969: 69).

Like the term " Jewishness" with which it is usually synonymous, Judaism is often used in a secular as well as religious sense. Since to Fromm a Jewish people, Jews as an ethnic group, is anathema, he prefers to label Jews as a religious group; ergo, non-religious Jews are not really Jews! The fact that, of the "Jewish" philosophers, etc., "many had no personal connections with Judaism", seems, in his eyes, to have done something to their Jewishness so that they ceased to be Jews. They were, of course, all still Jews. The Jewish religion regards even apostates as Jews. T h a t " m a n y " dearly wanted not to be Jews is a very sad Jewish story. They were assimilationists, a goodly number of them filled with Jewish self-hatred, like Fromm himself. Nonetheless, as Jews historically, their personal waywardness could scarcely detract one iota from the Jewish contribution. Their behavior was Jewish behavior, even to fulfilling, as the Jews they were, the "chosenness" so characteristic of Jewish tradition. On the other hand, " m a n y " did relate their destinies to the Jewish ethnos and thus led to the establishment of Israel. What special prophetic guidance Fromm seems to deduce from the rather sad fact that many Jewish men of genius had identified their destinies with other peoples, spurning their own people solely because it was an oppressed minority, that is another of Fromm's mysteries. By doing so, they had certainly not prevented the rise of either Nazism or Stalinism; and it would not be difficult to argue that they had contributed to the rise of both. Most certainly they had not hastened the coming of the Brotherhood of Man. One indubitable "achievement" was the bitter opposition to early Zionism in the name of universalism, the flaunting of a vindictive Jewish self-hatred, and the consequently fatal delay in the establishment of Israel, as a result of which six million perished because they were Jews. By vanishing as

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Jews, this Jewish element that appears in every generation of Dispersion had left forever the continuing course of Jewish history in perhaps its most creative period, if, at the same time, its most critical. Thus, the privilege of following the prophetic tradition becomes once more the task of a living people, not of a sickly residue that had deliberately severed its connections. It is a fair and reasonable judgment that, as long as Jews in Dispersion constitute effective minorities, they will be Zionist minorities, sharing in Israel's progressive nationalism and in Israel's pragmatic march towards a universalist society.

F. DREAM AND REALITY The dream alone is an hallucination, a mirage in a human desert. T o be real requires the groundwork of national liberation, a dynamic upward movement of all oppressed peoples. When Fromm finally pulls his head out of the desert sands of a mystic concept of the future, then only will he be capable of realizing that nationalism is essentially a positive phenomenon. It is the reflection of the ethnic process under capitalist conditions. Today, almost everybody knows it is a stage of social development that cannot as a rule be by-passed. It had been folly for Marx to believe and behave as though the universal society were imminent. In his wake followed a century of illusion, while underneath the surface the ethnic pot was boiling over. It had been folly for Lenin to have liberated the oppressed peoples of Czarist Russia and not to have been aware of the legitimacy of ethnicity. Not all the disillusioned scholars and intellectuals of the generation that followed World War I I had disavowed the utopianism of their teachers. The Chomskys and the Fromms were still intent on passing bad sociopolitical currency as though it were genuine, notwithstanding the fact that ethnicity seems to be seeping through everywhere, from the underprivileged peoples of the world to the "ethnics" of the United States. Past illusions distort one's perspective of the future. Deluded "progressives" have only to discard these archaic notions to clear away the intellectual debris that has tragically hindered cultivation of the love and reason for which Fromm so eloquently pleads. Stalinist and post-Stalinist cant and slant have imposed upon Marxism and Socialism the sinister stranglehold of a perverted humanism (see The Sane Society, pp. 2 1 6 218). Liberal-Leftist and New Leftist support of the nationalistic manifestations of the great Communist powers, like the invasions of Tibet, of Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, only repeated past illusions. The dread of satellite Communist states of losing their independence merely echoes the

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universalistic humbug. The simple fact is that every variety of Communist state has almost consistently associated actively with the backward feudal leaderships of the 20 Arab states or more, in their hysterical and vindictive fury against Israel's mere existence, thus vividly displaying how far removed are "enlightened" minds, and those they influence, from love and reason.

CHAPTER 3

Sapir: a people and its language

A. RELATIONSHIPS W h a t ground is there for assuming the virtual existence of an organic socio-ethnic relationship between a language and its speech community, what Sapir generally called nationality or what is commonly called a people? Perhaps most scholars in the various disciplines of social science would treat this topic with disdain and declare authoritatively that this assumption has no validity. T h e y would probably vehemently deny the charge of ideological bias in their attitude, a Utopian legacy from the Enlightenment and from the influence of K a r l Marx. Y e t modern intellectuals have sanctimoniously managed to pay lip-service to the hundred and fifty years of struggle for national liberation and, with rare exceptions, simultaneously suppress the study of ethnicity and its development. Sapir had easily persuaded himself of an unconscious transfer of phonetic habits (i960: 3) but was hesitant about the nature of the correspondence between language and group. He did not deny, however, the obvious intimacy of the contact between them. He even affirmed: The important thing to hold on to is that a particular language tends to become the fitting expression of a self-conscious nationality (i960: 39). T h e significance of this tendency? A n unconscious evolution beginning with the pristine family of man. Growing sophistication and increasing identification tied language and group with a thousand threads. C a n one wonder, then, at the ethnicity of the "self-conscious nationality"? Not that they are ties of blood and flesh. Notwithstanding popular mythologies, few if any serious-minded scholars believe in " r a c i a l " or ethnic purity. T h e fact is that the "descendants" of an ethnic group speaking the traditional even ancient language could almost invariably be of an entirely different stock from their ethnic "ancestors". There need not, for example, be a single drop of Jewish blood in a single contemporary Jew to warrant his

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fullest claims to Jewish identity. The Jews of today are, nonetheless, the true ethnic descendants of their Jewish "forefathers" three or four thousand years ago. Their language, their religion, indeed their entire culture are wholly theirs in the fullest meaning of the word. The same can be said of every people, nationality or nation. " N o t one of the great languages of modern man", writes Sapir, "follows racial lines." Nevertheless, there are numerous forms of interaction between a language and its people, by means of the language and its speakers, between language and the society they jointly create, and between their respective behaviors. And Sapir continues: "French, for example, is spoken by a highly mixed p o p u l a t i o n . . . " And one could add: all in France and all are French (p. 40)! The ethnicity this indicates is a basic, intrinsic value of great cultural importance to a language that is historically attached to a specific group. It is " . . . felt", as Sapir puts it, "to represent a distinct people . . . " (p. 44).

B. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE Actually, Sapir had relatively little to say on the ethnic group and its relationship to language, but what he did say was often highly cogent. He was, however, much more concerned with culture and with questions of correlation between culture and language: The tendency to see linguistic categories as directly expressive of covert cultural outlines .. . should be resisted as in no way warranted by the actual facts. There is no general correlation between cultural type and linguistic structure ( i 9 6 0 : 34).

Correspondence between language and culture? Yes. But, direct or parallel correspondence between them? No. It is well known, Sapir maintains, that culture diffuses more rapidly compared to the slow pace of language. Linguistic structure such as Russian and German gender, on the other hand, does not "seem to have any relevance for the understanding of the social organization or religion or folklore of the associated peoples". T h e problem is, however, a little more complex than Sapir's simplification. Since the disappearance of mechanistic attitudes, we are now aware that linguistic structure is not the whole of language; and gender, even the Russian and German examples used by Sapir, is not the whole of linguistic structure. Sapir, too, believed that, logical or not, language nevertheless possesses a logic of its own. A great relevance may indeed exist between language structure and the intrinsic culture inherent in social organization, religion, and folklore; many others in fact. But that relevance is not necessarily expressed by a direct or parallel correspondence. By enlarging his list with history, tradition, custom, song and the "national civilization"

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as a whole, Sapir could quite effectively have been able to demonstrate that all these cultural forms generally bore no resemblance to borrowed culture. These aspects of intrinsic culture had become institutionalized in the course of time, and thus ingrained, indigenous, and native. Under such developmental circumstances, there is much room for thought concerning the influence of the deeper structures of language upon this intrinsic culture. T h e innermost life of the ethnic, speech community with all the intricacies of the numerous interrelationships is thus ideally reflected by the language, which virtually becomes the image of the entire people. More wisely, Sapir might have exemplified his point on the rapid diffusion of culture with borrowed forms of culture. He would not likely have encountered the complexities he met with in the indigenous culture. His analysis of culture in general was his major interest, however, and by far the more successful. Among his many brilliant formulations, he aptly summarizes what he describes as "genuine" culture to distinguish it from "spurious": We may accept culture as signifying the characteristic mold of a national civilization... [From] a traditional type of individual refinement we will borrow the notion of ideal form.... In other words, a genuine culture is perfectly conceivable in any type or stage of civilization, in the mold of any national genius... ideally speaking, a culture in which nothing is spiritually meaningless (i960: 89-90). Attention is especially drawn to his unique grasp of the inherent significance of national content. Sapir generally spoke of nationalism in terms of culture. T o be sure, his real interest appeared to be in culture; but often a definitely positive note on the values of nationalism could be detected. O n the other hand, to speak of nationalism seemed to make him uncomfortable. He blandly points this out himself: The whole terrain through which we are now struggling is a hotbed of subjectivism, a splendid field for the airing of national deceits (i960: 86). Whether Sapir initiated or not the practice of the surrogate use of culture, of language, society and behavior instead of the national or ethnic basis of human society is probably a matter of no importance. T h e fact is however that it is still a common conceit on the part of social scientists whose attitude to ethnic and national problems was rarely straightforward but usually one of great delicacy. Nevertheless, in spite of his obvious preference for culture over "nationality", it is evident that Sapir did strive to be fair in his judgment of nationalism. It was, alas, also evident that he had not the faintest conception of an ongoing ethnic process. T h a t alone could have established in his mind the fact that nationalism was not a sudden romantic apparition but a fundamental development in the progress of human society. Difficulties arise, however, when attempting to elaborate on languagenationality relationships. However valuable Sapir's analysis of culture, to

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follow a matter of correlation between a language and the society it reflects so faithfully is best uncomplicated by the haze arising from the veil of culture. G. CORRELATION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND GROUP Other than communicational, the major function of language is to reflect the social and behavioral conditions of its group, its life and experience, its manner of thinking and its world view, both of the group as a whole and, specifically, its intrinsic institutions. This is the totally representative image of a people we find reflected in language Sapir defines in terms of national civilization or national genius. He would have been even more correct had he referred to a more basic terminology such as ethnic. So intimate must the correlation be between the language and its whole socio-historical fabric throughout its ethnic development it may be likened to what might also be called a correlation among members of a family, especially that between parents and children. It is precisely the ethnicity expressed in the interrelationships between the language and its speakers from the earliest primordial days that has given rise to the concept of an ethnic process, unceasingly flowing all through the evolution of human society. The designation of "national" simply pertains to the current form of ethnic development evoked by the capitalist system of economy and resulting in the struggle for national liberation. Few would consider it possible to transfuse into a non-native tongue, with its distinctive patterns and features, the mental attitudes, the cultural background and folkways of another people and yet retain intact its cultural and ethnic (national) character. (Borrowed culture, we had discovered, is altogether irrelevant to the influences of the intrinsic culture; French culture, we may recall, remains French despite universal influence.) A language has to be adapted to its speakers over a long period of partnership together. In this manner, language and group had emerged aeons before history. Stage by stage in typical evolutionary fashion instruments of speech were being molded into their distinctive ethnic forms, drawing unfailing sustenance from this experience as it kept reflecting growth, mood, manner, and mind of the ethnic community of the day. Hence, it must now be clear, whatever the nature of the correspondence between a language and its people, a correlation of some kind or another is a foregone conclusion. In due course, no doubt, the industrious and avidly curious researcher will enlighten us further. Either such languagegroup relationships are regular and normal facts of life with their specificities, their cumulative historical and traditional values, their intrinsic institutional culture forms, with their complete "national civilization", or no

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human life is conceivable. Otherwise, in fact, why should unique phonemic patinas arise? Why different grammatical structures? Why, indeed, the ethnolinguistic differentiation at all? Had the question of rapidity of diffusion been confined exclusively to borrowed cultural influences he would have spared himself a needless argument, except to evoke the distinctiveness of intrinsic culture. Rapidity of diffusion bore no relationship to indigenous institutions. Why Sapir should have regarded them as incompatible with an understanding of the language-culture rapidity ratio is more a semantic problem than a genuine one, and unnecessary at that. To his contemporary adversaries, Sapir might well have retorted: rapidity of cultural diffusion has no bearing upon the national civilization. Intrinsic culture accommodates itself in the course of daily existence to the plodding gait of language. Direct correspondence is not an essential relationship between language and culture, nor in human development generally. Analogies abound. National existence is an anomaly in a world heading for internationalism. Science and civilization have far out-distanced classical culture and especially religion. On the other hand, there is still an enormous gap between the moral and ethical teachings of the Prophets and the frightening portent of the thermonuclear bomb. Yet who would venture to say today that the concept of internationalism could be intelligible without correlating its study to the concept of the nation? Of what essential importance to humanity would be a history of science and civilization without regard to the history of human culture? Are the ideals of love, truth, peace and justice to be relegated to an ivory tower because science and civilization have drifted so far away from the interests of man? In Sapir's sense, there is undoubtedly a lack of correspondence between these contrasting concepts; it is not an actual lack however, not even a relative one; it is a lack only of direct correspondence. There is no " parallelism" as a direct relationship; neither life nor society travels in parallel lines with each other. But innumerable threads tie them all together. Thirty years after Sapir, the question of correspondence between a people and its language is put more cautiously by J . H. Greenberg: T h e r e is no necessary correlation between race and language, since a people can adopt the language of a different race or, on the other hand, retain their language in spite of thoroughgoing physical modification by another race. In Africa, as elsewhere, there is only an imperfect correlation between racial and linguistic classification.... It seems probable that Afroasia languages were originally spoken by Caucasians and in some instances taken over by Negroes. . . . . T h e large Bantu movement which eventually covered the southern third of Africa must have begun in relatively recent times, not much more than 2000 years ago (Greenberg 1 9 7 1 : 135).

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T h e emphasis is the present author's. Connecting threads between a people and its language can be totally or partially severed by any dislocating catastrophe. Immigrant ethnic groups are generally obliged in the process of adjustment to adopt the new foster language; traditional ties are thus broken. In fact, many circumstances in history have caused peoples and individuals to change their languages, even peoples and languages to become extinct. Only under such or similar conditions of stress can one speak of " n o necessary" or "imperfect" correlation. Otherwise, a correlation between a people and its language is an essential relationship from the outset; and it must continue to be so with increasing intensity throughout the entire course of their joint, uninterrupted development. But no people nor its language can have any assurance of everlasting existence. However, as long as mutual relationship is an indisputable fact of life, the ethnic bonds between the language and the speech community are organic in nature, not a transitory imperfect or unnecessary feature of the joint, all but immutable existence. It is a genuine correlation even though it may not necessarily be a direct, parallel, or one-to-one correspondence. Under any conditions of ethnic development, one could safely assume that two thousand years was adequate time for the mutual integration of the Bantu language with the history, religion, folklore, tradition, culture and so forth, of its speakers. Once a language becomes genuinely native, its first language, it must have long established a network of intangible ties with its speech community. It would have attained a degree of correlation unsurpassed, say, by few if any European languages of today. It would, of course, have undergone constant change so that rarely would the modern speakers comprehend the ancient tongue. But, it would be the same language despite all the evidence of growth and dialect formation. Paramount are not the external influences, although they are unquestionably important, but the intimate, day-to-day interrelationship of the native speaker and the native tongue. T h e "imperfect" correlation that Greenberg talks of can signify only a people that has not yet had sufficient time to cement all the essential bonds of union and mutual correspondence. Once this is effected, a correlation must exist as an organic relationship. Any other relationship, presumably perfected, would be grotesque indeed. In search of the absolute, the Mechanist's failure to find a direct correlation between language and culture is equally unwarranted. Simply, that their relationship cannot logically call for direct and parallel correspondence. It is sufficient that each category pursues its own course of development in accordance with its own rules, yet nevertheless each is bound to the other by a thousand bridges. If the Mechanist could only lift his eyes from his meticulous labors, he would then readily see that each

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language is set within a naturally determined framework of a people and its culture, designed f r o m the very earliest times to exercise a reciprocal but not necessarily parallel influence upon each other. It is not the catching u p that is of fundamental importance, and not the perfect matching, but the c o m m o n and inseparable course of development. Sapir must have h a d an inkling of this w h e n he wrote : The cultural significance of linguistic form . . . lies on a much more submerged level than the overt one of definite cultural pattern (i960: 35). T h e r e is a keen discernment of the simple truth in this thought. T h e perceptive glimpse into evolutionary ethnic forms of development is vaguely detectable. T h i s will be evident from one passage worth quoting at length : Yet here, as so often, the precise knowledge of the scientist lags somewhat behind the more naive but much more powerful insights of nonprofessional experience and impression. T o deny to the genius of a people an ultimate psychological significance and to refer it to the specific historical development of that people is not, after all is said and done, to analyze it out of existence. It remains true that large groups of people everywhere tend to think and to act in accordance with established and all but instinctive forms, which are in large measure peculiar to it. The question as to whether these forms, that in their interrelations constitute the genius of a people, are primarily explainable in terms of native temperament, of historical development, or of both is of interest to the psychologist, but need not cause us much concern. The relevance of this question is not always apparent. It is enough to know that in actual fact nationalities, using the word without political implication, have come to bear the impress in thought and action of a certain mold and that this mold is more clearly discernible in certain elements of civilization than in others. The specific culture of a nationality is that group of elements in its civilization which most emphatically exhibits the mold. In practice it is sometimes convenient to identify the national culture with its genius (i960: 85). T h e surprising anthropological failure to comprehend the significance in the growth of an ethnic complex does not diminish b y a hairsbreadth the historically evolved ties of a language and a people at every stage of its development. Nothwithstanding the fact that there is no direct correspondence, each is a historical and psychological reflection of the other. Language is the expression of the attitude of a certain speech community towards its culture Language mirrors the psyche, and it the culture, of a language community (Whatmough 1957). Astonished that there could be a n y question of this relationship, A n d r é G i d e asks : But how is it possible to imagine a word that is not expression for somebody, or a literature that does not express a people (1959)? Elsewhere W h a t m o u g h remarks, " L i f e fashions l a n g u a g e " . It is equally true that language fashions life. T h e i r reciprocal influence is guided by a departmentalized society into nations and states. As native tongues, the scope of English does not extend beyond the boundaries of English-speaking countries. Similarly with other languages. T h i s situation is not a matter

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of course but a matter of history and evolution. It is a fact of life. It has nothing to do with " p u r e " races, certainly not with " p u r e " nations, nor with the "superiority" of one language over another. These are meaningless and fatuous concepts without scientific justification. Nation and language are simply concrete realities which today's world has been obliged to reckon with. The disastrous consequences of an aggressive nationalism, not so long ago the " o n l y " kind of nationalism, are equally pertinent facts. The Germans, as the Nazis claimed, belong to the superior Nordic race. A cancerous nationalism is inherent in totalitarian states. The Soviet Union's subtle Russification policy is also a flagrant example of a spurious, because aggressive, nationalism. That there can also be a linguistic chauvinism can be seen from a remark of Jespersen's on the inflated German ego which Roback aptly quotes in his scholarly book, Destiny and Motivation in Language. " G r i m m says that the sound shift (in the German language) is a consequence of the progressive tendency and desire of liberty found in the G e r m a n s " (1957)! A n d Roback comments: It is characteristic of the German philologists . . . that almost every deviation in course on the past of German civilization was interpreted as sprung from some special virtue (1957).

It is weird, fantastic, chauvinistic speculations of this kind which have served to discredit genuinely liberative nationalism. By failing to distinguish between spurious and genuine national sentiments and actions, structural linguists like the old German philologists fell into the same impasse as the earlier Marxists and internationalists, to whom all forms of national regeneration were reactionary currents unless they fulfilled the objectives of Communism. Even the latter-day Leninist policies of the victorious Bolshevik Party granting liberation to every oppressed Russian nationality was a purely expediential maneuver, policies which, after the halcyon days, followed a course of consistent decline. Paralleling the national struggle is the continuing struggle of linguists against the modern Mechanist, this time in the field of Yiddish dialectology. Essential to research dialectal variants over a geographical expanse, it has been found that the Mechanist's resistance has by no means been universally overcome. Hence Herzog, one of the moderns himself, was obliged once again to take on the authoritarian edict. Other considerations have, on the whole, been excluded from the mainstream of American structuralism . . . all relegated to the scrap heap of " continuous phenomena presumed to be beyond the reach of the linguistic discipline. T h e view is best expressed by J o o s . . . . " " (Linguistics) does n o t . . . make any compromise with continuity . . . all continuity . . . are shoved outside of linguistics." [And Herzog continues, citing U . Weinreich] S o long as the principle expounded by Joos remains basic to linguistics it can hardly be expected that

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"structuralists (will find) a reasoned place for (dialectology) in their theory of language." It remains, then, [Herzog concludes] for the dialectologist to demonstrate that even those of his data which apparently inapplicable to structuralist ends are also useful for illuminating aspects of language without which no unified theory of language can be complete ( 1 9 6 5 : 4).

Of course, Yiddish dialectology is just one facet, although a highly important one, of Yiddish linguistics. While it reflects a significant part of the dynamic of Jewish life, the full scope of Jewish existence representing every phase of Jewish expression during the entire period of rise and decline of Yiddish can be elucidated only by correlating the fortunes of the people with corresponding changes in this language of the people wherever its wanderings led it. A panorama that would be considered broad for any people would itself be a vast arena for Jewish linguistics, not to speak of Yiddish alone. The totality of Jewish linguistics would include all the languages, native and borrowed, that the Jewish group has ever spoken as its mother-tongue. It is virtually a planetary perspective for the investigating of linguistic phenomena among Jews, as these phenomena have interrelated with their cultural and ethnic correspondences, analogues or even parallels for thousands of years, one half of this enormous sweep of history spent in Dispersion while the number of languages embraced in its kaleidoscopic career is legion. Little wonder, then, that Jewish linguistics has had to contend for scientific recognition simultaneously, and on much the same retrogressive plane of enlightenment, with the struggle for Jewish identity and survival.

D. T H A T

PECULIAR

FEELING

Whereas mechanistic attitudes can be regarded as normal if devious manifestations of human mentality and especially of academic behavior, Sapir's wavering mind was more an attempt to assert his intellectual integrity in the determined effort to throw off the yoke of ideological prejudices with their false conceptions of universalism or internationalism. He denounced the "military ruthlessness" of those who sought "the deliberate attempt to impose a culture directly and speedily... an affront to the human spirit". He then continues: Does this mean that w e must turn our back on all internationalistic tendencies and vegetate forever in our nationalisms? Here we are confronted by the prevalent fallacy that internationalism is in spirit opposed to the intensive development of autonomous cultures. T h e fallacy proceeds from a failure to realize that internationalism, nationalism, and localism are forms that can be given various contents. W e cannot intelligently discuss internationalism before w e know what it is that we are to be internationalistic about. Unfortunately we are so obsessed by the idea of subordinating all forms of human association to

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the state and of regarding the range of all types of activity as coterminous with political boundaries, that it is difficult for us to reconcile the idea of a local or restrictedly national autonomy of culture with a purely political (state) sovereignty and with an economic-political internationalism. We had briefly digressed in order to stress how deeply Sapir's ambivalence on nationalism affects his attitude to the language-culture relationship. As the intrinsic culture of a people is reflected in the language, so linguistic features are highly relevant to that culture. Sapir's hesitancy to affirm the correlation between the two may in all probability be largely attributed to to his uncertainties concerning nationalism. His cautious tone and seeming unwillingness to declare the outright correspondence between language and community is nonetheless historically regrettable. This topic has continued to be unwelcome in some academic circles, and it continues to be a source of wonder why. We shall discover the same hiatus in the thinking of Whorf and Chomsky. It is not merely a shortcoming in their scholarly approaches. It seems, unfortunately, the familiar adherence to ideological doctrine. Though Sapir failed, or for some reason refrained, from giving this concept his blessing, the reciprocal relationship between a language and the people that speaks it is not to be easily dismissed. From the viewpoint of the differentiation of languages and peoples, he would write with that common sense approach that came so naturally to him: " I t is probably incorrect to maintain that language differences are responsible for national antagonisms". They were more likely due, he held, " t o the exaggerated development of the ideal of the sovereign nation, and with the resulting eagerness to discover linguistic symbols for it". But Sapir goes on to say: " It would seem to be much more reasonable to suppose that a political or national unit, once definitely formed, uses a prevailing language as a symbol of its identity, whence gradually emerges the peculiar modern feeling that every language should properly be the expression of a distinctive nationality" (p. 41). Perhaps there may be such a "peculiarly modern feeling". But more important by far, it would seem, is the ethnic groundwork for both language and nationality that had been laid by the development of both. That peculiar feeling, Sapir surprisingly had not known, was not modern at all; it was as old as man himself, primordial in origin, perhaps an endowment from our animal instincts, from our own sense of group living in association with the language into which its speakers grew up. That peculiar feeling of Sapir's was undoubtedly the ethnic process. The "Third World" of underdeveloped nations had arisen by colonial fiat; nations were created arbitrarily and then provided, with "prevailing" languages. By means of "natural birth", however, nations also arise otherwise. Differentiation did not provide priority of birth to languages, to be

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followed by nationalities. The earliest human groups with their languages emerged jointly and simultaneously into an evolutionary venture, beset by all the common vicissitudes, as human society advanced, group and associated language, from stage to stage, correspondingly intensifying the ethnic character of each tribe, each people, each nationality. Thus they attained maturity.

E. UTOPIA AND THE PREVALENCE OF PREJUDICE Sapir's gropings for clarity on nationalism in relation to culture notwithstanding, a deeper knowledge of the ethnic processes eluded him. With his death in 1939 at the early age of 55, the ambivalence of this noted scholar on fundamental ethnic principles and their relations to language, culture, and society had become more deeply rooted in his disciples and successors. The underlying ethnicity out of which nationalism would ultimately arise and thrive was all but a closed book to most of them. In fact, the development of human society in accordance with general laws of evolution was scarcely a factor of any consequence to the typical researcher in the social sciences. The very question of differentiation itself was far too overwhelming to be accepted as a realistic value. Whorfs fascination with it and Chomsky's disdain are outstanding exceptions in view of their respective approaches. Sapir's disinterest, moreover, or unawareness of the distinction between a borrowed and an intrinsic culture inhibited an understanding of the correspondence between a given people and its language. Sapir " f e l t " that there were unaccountable folk ties but never felt the urge to probe more deeply. Most exceptionally, nevertheless, despite the scientific code, he hearkened deferentially sometimes to the popular mood; tribute indeed to a sensitive and noble mind who had himself absorbed some of this folk wisdom. On the modern campus, little of this aspect of Sapir's legacy has been reflected. From this school, little if anything had emanated to overcome Sapir's shortcomings or to eradicate ideology and bias from the precincts of learning. Hopefully, however, his great integrity, as well as his profound glimpses here and there into truths still concealed by a mist of prejudice, will impel admiring modern scholars to emulate his independent outlook, and to remove the accumulated rubbish that has obfuscated many minds. Typical of such rubbish and common to many individuals and influential groups in our day who regard themselves as liberal-minded and radical intellectuals is a letter that appeared very recently in a leading American "high-brow" journal published under Jewish auspices. The letter-writer,

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reacting to an article, was greatly irked by continued Jewish survival efforts. H e writes: "Corporate Judaism" is a euphemism for nationalism and for " Z i o n i s m " . . . . Yet today's "Spaceship Earth" has no room for nationalistic patriotism of so prejudicial and deep a nature.... Nationalism has been responsible for two world w a r s . . . and continues to be an explosive force capable of generating tragedy and suffering for the entire human r a c e , . . . I cannot accept blind patriotism, whether American, German, Israeli, Arab, Russian, Chinese, etc. . . . It is time, for mankind's sake, that the humanist tradition... triumphed over prejudice and egoistic satisfaction . . . (Heckman 1974). These idealistic, highly motivated but myopic and crassly ignorant Utopians accomplish nothing but foment more prejudice. Rarely are such sentiments by non-Jews accompanied by an immediate readiness to sacrifice their own people as an object lesson for all mankind. A m o n g Jews, it is habitual with the self-hating Jew, a characteristic product of a perverted form of Dispersion mentality. A m o n g Jews, it is mainly they w h o savagely oppose the Jewish struggle for national freedom, preferring national extinction, and consistently support the A r a b aim for the destruction of Israel. Somehow they identify their attitude with humanism and internationalism. Not surprisingly, as w e have already observed, there are also scientific adaptations in respective fields of interest. Unlike the former Marxist universalist to w h o m the Messianic world society appeared imminent, the modern liberal-leftist cannot be animated by a non-national vision of such a world society. M a n y oppressed and underprivileged peoples since that time have fought for and finally w o n their national freedom. By the primary attainment of national rights does mankind now approach the Elysian Fields. But humanist and internationalist letter-writers are not yet apprised. T h e i r sole resort is preferably for a world of superpowers in which totalitarianist ferocity m a y yet prevail unless their sovereignties can be curbed. It is an unhappy world situation where so many intellectuals are capable because of sheer ignorance, myopia, and ideological prejudice to misjudge so seriously the role of nationalism, and to be actually blind to the normal evolutionary growth of ethnic forces in the development of human society. T h e world will never lose its ethnic neighborhoods even when the Messianic day is here. W h a t the poor letter-writer has been tilting with should not have been nationalism but chauvinism and other spectral social and psychological evils that lead to totalitarianism. Sometimes, one m a y be permitted to wonder how wholesome actually are the motives of these shrill propounders of " h u m a n i s m " or "internationalism". T h e fact that these questionable idealists abound, and influence others, as the idealistic Nazis once did, that fact should concern the scholar as much as any thinking person. It is not always a simple matter to

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ascertain how genuinely valid one's own opinions are when language can be grossly perverted. The integrity of the scholar in an ideological world should leave only the naive to consider himself scandalized by rational, common sense challenges. Sapir, renowned scholar that he was, did not cling to the ivory tower. He fought prejudice and false ideology wherever he recognized them, swayed though he often was himself by the then prevailing Utopian internationalism.

CHAPTER 4

Whorf: the differentiation of language

A. INTRODUCTION During the 1930's and early 1940's, while investigating the Indian tribes of the southwestern part of the United States, Benjamin Lee Whorf was struck by the differences in language structure and mental outlook between them and the West European languages. Long attracted by the multiplicity of languages, as well as by language specificity, he delved into the mysteries of their diversities. Keen study and observation led him to an awareness of the deeper structures of language and to the discovery of specific mental outlooks corresponding to each language. Thus he developed his concepts of "linguistic relativity" and of "world view". Whorf's achievement represents an insightful if inhibited step in a longneglected direction, towards the ethnic basis of differentiation. Strange to say, he had stopped short of its logical sequence. Evidently, language had seemed to be a natural starting point but no more. Considering the ideological and intellectual climate of the times, his findings could even have been suspect; it could be thought that he was leaning too far in the path of ethnicity, an approach that could smack of a reactionary nationalism! Looked at objectively, the hiatus in Whorf's thinking is apparent, since every language is the peculiar speaking behavior of a speech community. Whorf's "world view" was actually the outlook of an ethnic community. A man of his times, it had probably not occurred to him that ethnological and linguistic observations need to be directly correlated with ethnic considerations. He had but to advance one step more to recognize in the very specific speech community and its language an ethnically developed human society, and the foundation of the immense variety of languages and their respective speech communities that had intrigued him so profoundly. The world view of the native speaker, then, could have been interpreted basically as the typical mental attitude of a specific people, a be-

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havior embodying an historically evolved cultural background within a relatively segregated and historically developed segment of the world. That step Whorf did not take. Although the innate faculty for language is universally human, every language tells a special story: the origin, experience, use, and development of each one invariably fall within an ethnic framework. In some measure, then, and in some manner, language changes are the consequences of ethnic pressures; in turn, these changes affect the cognitive system and create a characteristically ethnic world view. Such ideas, if they occurred to Whorf, certainly failed to impress him; instead, probably rendering his views of dubious value to like-minded students of language. In this respect, they were subject to current prejudices. Inherent in questions of a relationship between a people and its language, there undoubtedly exists among starry-eyed universalists the tacit undercurrent of feeling that ethnic distinctions in language, like the national question in society at large, are beyond the scope of scholarly enquiry. B. UNIVERSALISTIC PRECONCEPTIONS In linguistic science, language differentiation has been held in sad repute and virtually taboo, hence casually relegated to a minor role in the linguistic hierarchy of research. The obvious relationship to ethnicity might have influenced this otherwise inexplicable attitude. To be obliged to cope with ethnic aspects of language diversity could have been too horrendous a prospect for scholars intoxicated by a blind, and already discredited, universalism. Their philosophy had lost whatever validity it might have had in the twentieth century when it collapsed as a result of the phenomenal struggles for national liberation that swept the world after World War II. Nonetheless, paying only lip-service to so vast a freedom movement, utopianism continued to motivate their scientific approach, even to corrupt it by hypocritical evasions and by sins of omissions, conscious or unconscious. It is a trite thought that man had evolved and acquired intelligence, language, and intellectual achievement by virtue of his group existence. Living in relative isolation, life in the group accounts for the entire subsequent development of mankind, families, tribes, peoples, nations. Like all other intrinsic human mental faculties, language and thought found their natural, indeed, their sole, expression within the ethnic borders of a speech community. T o ignore the consequences of such development upon the human mind, as much of modern psychology and linguistics has done for fifty years, has had a pernicious effect upon Western culture; no less per-

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nicious, perhaps, than that of the long triumphant, modern Messianic philosophy itself. Psychology may have reached its nadir with the behaviorist denial of mind. Linguistic science donned its universalistic blinders and deprived itself of a rational basis by the simple exclusion of its ethnic foundations. T h e natural history of group existence had no place in the study of language; the phenomenon of nationalism, its modern expression, was tantamount to original sin. Reason and unreason are probably destined forever to remain in eternal conflict. T h e genetic evolution of Homo sapiens had equipped all men with an innate capacity for language as an extension of the cognitive process — but inescapably within an ethnic setting. O n the other hand, the humanist desire to transcend physical ethnic barriers is without any doubt equally characteristic of the human species. T h e Prophetic tradition is a glorious illustration. M a n is, unfortunately, also endowed with frailties; selfdelusion especially is capable of transforming his noblest visions into Quixotic deeds. Such a concept is the attainment of universal brotherhood without prior evolutionary development of society. T o have rejected decent national levels for all oppressed peoples because Marx was in a hurry had been a grave historical error. It took two world wars and the frightful Nazi night, followed by the liberation of one underprivileged people after another, to arouse scholars and intellectuals generally out of their universalistic torpor. Yet, not in Whorf's time and not thirty years later, has the acceptance of the principle of national freedom, as the natural forerunner of the Society of Man, been other than somewhat shamefacedly, and by no means wholeheartedly, ratified by many thinking but recalcitrant individuals. Few care to oppose this human right anymore, except intractable anti-ethnics incapable of accepting an evolutionary ethnic development of human society. From the beginnings of Emancipation to the leading philosophies of Modernism, man's innate universals will have had to pass through fires of ethnic development stage by stage till all peoples had been freed, their identities re-established, and national barriers ultimately abolished, before Mankind could assert those inner drives that genuinely lead to the Brotherhood of Man. T h e ethnic process itself would most probably still endure long into Messianic times, to cease only should man himself cease to be confined to ethnic neighborhoods in a world of peace. C. THE LANGUAGE BASIS What bearing does the ethnic experience expressed individually and collectively have upon language, as well as upon the cognitive process? T o this question, almost the entire linguistic academy, certainly in recent de-

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cades, has reacted with a stony silence. We shall begin with Whorf: Study [of languages] shows that the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language — shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family. . . and every language is a vast patternsystem, different from others, in which are culturally ordained [italics mine] the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyses nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness (1956: 252). Suggested in this paragraph are a few of Whorf's ideas. Included is the primogeniture that seems to have been accorded to language; the profound and significant pattern system with its structural, inter-verbal depth and concept of " r a p p o r t " , that perhaps influenced Chomsky's later development of the deeper levels of language structure, but emphasizing the latter's universal rather than differentiating aspects; a suggestion of his unpopular "world v i e w " ; and a tribute to language multiplicity. T h e ease with which Whorf assumes language or culture as underpinning for linguistic study demonstrates the universalist's inbred aversion for ethnicity. T h e phrase culturally ordained is a curious euphemism suggesting awareness of a more fundamental but evidently unmentionable situation. " C u l t u r e " is used symbolically to dispel indications of heretical reference to underlying ethnic influence, and hence may safely be employed without elemental twinge of conscience in place of a thus illusory ethnicity. Like " l a n g u a g e " itself, it comes to possess autonomous existence, no longer requiring a supporting structure. In this way, culture alone authoritatively validates the content and meaning of language, obliterating forevermore the primary causal significance of the ethnic process. Here is a picture that can be generously described as a poetic hyperhole. Language primacy is thus taken for granted, but it is directly referred to as well. In the essay entitled " T h e Relations of Habitual Thought and Behavior to L a n g u a g e " (later published posthumously in book form with other collected articles), Whorf accepts, conditional upon certain aspects of language structure, that language " i s often prior to certain lines of thinking and forms of behavior". He leads off this article with a citation from Edward Sapir, in which the latter points out: "The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group" (quoting Sapir i960). This too is poetic hyperbole. By the "real world" is meant the world of mind. With master as with disciple, there is no recognition whatever of the real "real world", the economic-cultural world within a specific ethnic framework, out of which the native language had emerged, and into which every child must be immersed for its linguistic baptism. Like culture, the

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specific language too does not arise " e x nihilo", a spontaneous, virgin birth in every ethnic speech community. It is an intellectual absurdity to conduct exhaustive studies of the Hopi, Navaho, Ute, and other Amerindian tribes and their languages, and, in the end, to draw linguistic or cultural conclusions founded upon the preposterous pretence of the non-existence of these peoples. It is, however, a behavior that is fully consistent with the follies of modern universalism. Brilliant hypotheses thus resolve themselves into brilliant illusions. Nonetheless, on his own ground, Whorf gives a graphic comparative picture between two widely different linguistic and cultural worlds: the traditional Western world of ideas and that of the Hopi. Here belong materialism, psychophysical parallelism, physics... dualistic views of the universe . . . everything that is hard, practical, commonsense.. . . Newtonian space, time, and matter are no intuitions. They are receipts from culture and language. That is where Newton got t h e m . . . . [On the other hand], our objectified view of time is, however, favourable to historicity and to everything connected with the keeping of records, while the Hopi view is unfavorable thereto. The latter is too subtle, complex, and ever-developing, applying no ready-made answer to the question of when " o n e " event ends and "another" begins.... Less incentive to study the p a s t . . . not to record [the present] but to treat it as preparing (pp. 152-53).

Unquestionably, these are vastly different cultures and mentalities, and as disparate as their languages. But there is, of course, no intention, in the natural course of the investigation, of looking into the ethnic roots for a possible explication of this remarkable diversity. Was this perhaps an understandable myopia, as when scientists sometimes fail to see problems that directly confront them? Whorf's broad outlook was certainly inconsistent with the Mechanist's inflexible attention to the grindstone. No rational explanation offers itself other than the distorting effects of his own unconscious universalistic bent. Language and culture, with the emphasis upon language, became surrogates for the real world. The role of language is now further elucidated. When Semitic, Chinese, Tibetan or African languages are contrasted with our own, the divergence in analysis of the world becomes more apparent; and, when we bring in the native languages of the Americas, where speech communities for many millenniums have gone their way independently of each other and of the Old World, the fact that languages dissect nature in many different ways becomes patent. The relativity of all conceptual systems, ours included, and their dependence upon language stands revealed. . . .To exclude the evidence which their languages (the American Indians') offer as to what the human mind can do is like expecting botanists to study nothing but food plants and hot house roses and then tell us what the plant world is like (pp. 214-15).

The emphasis is the present author's. The analogy that Whorf employs here resembles closely the situation he himself produces when he excludes

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all reference to the ethnic process. People are characteristically blind to their own foibles or to their own sins of omission. A t every step we encounter this curious lapse of Whorf's. T h e classification of mankind into ethnic societies was not his bailiwick. It is to his credit, at all events, that in contrast to most linguists, he had not shied away from the fact of linguistic differentiation itself. Evading the question of causality, he had devoted himself instead to the " p r i m a c y " of language. And, in at least one passage, he states this idea bluntly and explicitly. The statement that "thinking" is a matter of language is an incorrect generalization of the more nearly correct idea that "thinking is a matter of different tongues" are the real phenomena . . . (p. 239). With language as the starting point, everything rests on the linguistic basis. Within the esoteric, inter-verbal structure of language lie the deeper levels of meaning and " r a p p o r t " that Whorf will shortly stress. Mind is to be comprehended through the same, intricate language formations. T h e entire cultural heritage of the speech community activates the native language, and evokes a cognitive "world v i e w " peculiar to it. This too we shall soon learn about. With language as the starting point, who could have thought that the vicissitudes and events of a people's growth from family to nationhood had literally poured into, and profoundly affected, the specific nature, quality, and content of the cultural, linguistic, and cognitive processes of the individual and the collective? Who could have suspected that centuries and eons of such development had brought about peculiarities of language, behavior, and mentality identical with no other speech community? T h a t the entire complex, surrounding and molding the speech community, was the result of a long, relatively isolated, historical experience? Surely not Whorf. For him, the different tongues were the real phenomena. According to Whorf, meaning too is derived from a source in language. It dwells, not essentially in the isolated words or morphemes, but in the linkages that exist between them. Apparently, these are neural processes, but of a "non-motor type, silent, invisible, and individually unobservable". It is this intrastructural " r a p p o r t " which imparts real meaning and constitutes the " r e a l essence of thought in so f a r as it is linguistic". In a footnote, Whorf continues as though in reply to the unspoken question: The pronounced materialist may still be granted leave to regard this matrix of relations as consisting of paths and chains of brain cells or what not which link and relate themselves by physicochemical processes, but no clue to the nature of the rapport, the structure of the matrix relations, can be obtained in this way, any more than the social organization of a tribe could be worked out from the blood groups of its individuals. It can only be determined by a penetrating study of the language spoken by the individual whose thinking process we are concerned with, and it will be found to be fundamentally different for individuals whose languages are of fundamentally different types (p. 57).

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We see then that the structure of the particular language determines the nature of the meaningful linkages. When linkages and non-motor processes are activated, consciously or unconsciously, they form linguistic patterns of thought which are different for the individuals of different languages. These relations are of the essence in the analysis, but why this is so, and how these meaningful structures are recognized within language itself, Whorf does not say. He explains further: [Linguistic facts] are determined not merely by language, but by languages. If the thinkers who are being studied speak our own language (let us say English), then the necessary penetrating study of the English language which is required can be made only by an investigator who has studied and is able to contrast widely differing types of language from English, for only in this w a y can there be brought into the forefront of consciousness an awareness of the existence of mere bare relations that do not correspond to any verbalized concepts but nevertheless govern absolutely the linkages of morphemes and shape the channels of thinking (p. 67).

The question forces itself upon our attention: whence the source of this meaningful and dynamic essence that differentiates one language from another? It seems fanciful that language structure itself should possess this creative faculty, under the inspiration perhaps of an unfathered culture. Even more curious is that every language is said to have it. Twenty or thirty years later, that "universal" seemingly became Chomsky's dedicated objective. Even so, why should mind, as an innate feature, possess the original of the language facsimile? Why, if not in some as yet unexplainable fashion, ultimately from the environment with which it had been intimately associated from primordial beginnings? That it should be an outgrowth of the innate property of mind, as result of which language as a whole developed, can hardly be considered irrational after Mendel. What is perturbing is the studious absence of the ethnic environmental influence. The stress upon the fundamental nature of linguistic diversity by Whorf is equally perturbing because it is so obviously false. Not even "interverbally" is the ethnic process to be so much as understood. It seems that with none of these questions does Whorf appear to have been concerned. D. T H E T H I N K I N G

MECHANISM

Whorf's inclinations to dwell on language sometimes overshadow the functions of the mind. The evolution of the cognitive system was the critical point of departure from which animal and man went their separate ways. From the primordial cell to modem man, a constant play of forces has interacted between the inherent attributes and the external influences. Thus, cognition expanded into intelligence and language, correlating with the

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uniquely different ethnic compartment of human society into which the individual is born. This view was more concisely put, but without the ethnic reference, to be sure, by L. S. Vigotsky, a young, Russian-born psycholinguist (1896-1934). The interdependence of thinking and speech is not the original basis, condition or starting point for the development that follows, but itself comes into existence in the process of the historical development of human consciousness (Vigotsky 1961). It is a common sense approach. In the course of man's unfolding of his evolutionary potential, the intrinsic development takes place only in association with the parallel social experience of the individual within his ethnic speech community. T h a t experience becomes a significant if not a basic factor in the development, once we assume the validity of evolution. T h e speech community comes to know only its own folk-tongue as, at first unconsciously and later educatedly, it manifests its distinctive, unique, and inalienable personality. Its behavior, like its language and thought patterns, itself acquires a more or less typical form that reflects its surroundings, and is determined by the same dynamic development. Everything conspires to nurture an individual peculiarly adapted to his special stock and social matrix. Perceptible or imperceptible differences distinguish one community from another; distances enhance them, the differences receding with increasing contiguity. Symbolically, the Norwegian carpenter could be said to hit the nail on the head in a manner uncharacteristic of his fellow carpenter in Afghanistan, if perhaps not obvious to the naked eye nor mathematically measurable. However subtle, such differences still have to be taken for granted, indeed, on a relatively more marked scale than one would naturally take for granted between individuals of the same country, and even more so in the same village. Differences are often erroneously regarded as synonymous with divisiveness. Neither linguistic nor ethnic diversity is in itself divisive. T h e cognitive difference between one people and another is also not necessarily divisive, no more than cognitive differences between individuals. Mutual understanding depends upon many factors. Like language and ethnicity, the cognitive difference can be entirely objective, often readily perceptible, and always a highly relevant fact of life. In fact, cognitive differences between peoples could, again like language and ethnicity, be equally relevant in the Messianic days of a world society. Quarrels and conflicts of all sorts generally arise, between individuals or between national communities, largely because of misunderstandings, distinctive outlooks, or sheer aggressiveness. Divisiveness that thus ensues has an extraneous quality or situation that can indeed be sharpened by differences peculiarly ethnic, even linguistic, cognitive, behavioristic, but bears no other relationship to it.

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Language structure and mind could became serious barriers as result of the degree and extent of cultural, geographical or ethnic divergence. They could point up possibilities of divisiveness, but the solution does not lie in the abolition of either of these rather essential factors. The answer lies in more effective means of social cooperation. There did not have to develop a spurious European nationalism that divided Germany from the civilized world. This is no argument against nationalism but against a spurious, aggressive, anti-social "nationalism". Indeed totalitarianism is not nationalism; it is the seizure of political power by forces of unutterable evil. It is the same confused mind we still encounter that cannot distinguish between chauvinism and liberal, progressive nationalism. Today, we know, it is superpower agreement that is essential, not the elimination of national distinctions. Frightening and frightful misunderstandings could arise among them too. In their own interests, European nations will be obliged also to become a superpower. And who is to eliminate the superpower? It could spell world extinction if they fail to reach agreement. Undoubtedly, nations and supernations will have to relinquish some of their sovereignty if mankind is to continue to exist. Separatist or aggressive aspects are inherent in the animal inheritance of man, and requisite for their control or modification is the maximum social ingenuity and wisdom that man, as he learns to be, can exercise in collective understanding. Conscious thinking of such vital magnitude, with such enormous implications for the welfare, indeed for the further existence of humanity, may rather optimistically be regarded as a remarkable stage in the development of mind. The proto-human's spark of intelligence, along with the birth of a proto-language, spelt the beginnings of the conscious mind and marked the first milestone on the road to early man. Prehistory and history are nothing else but social manifestations of its growth, an amazing human amplification of the primitive mind and its extraordinary potentials that man had inherited. Perhaps human intelligence will continue to push farther into the unforeseeable future the biological blind alley that is threatening mankind today. Conscious thought is largely influenced by the specific language, a silent verbal activity without the employment of the concurrently developed organs of speech. Still, it is only the surface aspect of cognition. Whorf clarifies his position on this aspect, and adds in a footnote: . . . the linguistic aspect of thinking is not a biologically organized process, a "speech" or "language", but a cultural organization, i.e., a language.... [And he continues] Some linguists may also hold the idea that thinking is entirely linguistic (p. 66). Obviously, Whorf did not hold that thinking is entirely linguistic. Only

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the deeper levels of thought, the unconscious mental processes, are biological. T h e reason is, of course, clear: cognition, a function of the central nervous system, is anatomically or physiologically located in or in relation to the speech centre, and regulated by chemical, electrical, or other physiological forces concerned with cognitive functioning. T h e unconscious mind, since it is of primitive origin, is universal in man, and thus can have no ties to the specific language. T h e conscious mind is w h a t Whorf calls the linguistic aspect, the highly specialized and distinctively human development. It alone is receptive to the influences of the specific language, culture, and environment; and, as was his wont, Whorf refrained from specifying the particularistic quality of all these factors. T h e r e is, however, exceptional critical acumen and profound insight in the concept of a higher intellectual capacity as a provenance of the basic unconscious mind, an undoubted awareness of mind's inherited potential. If language patterns establish ties with the thinking mind of consciousness, profundities in the secret recesses of structure identify with a " h i g h e r " mind. This fascinating speculation is thus expatiated: Significant behavior [is] ruled by a specific system or organization . .. characteristic of each language . . . It is as if the personal mind which selects words but is largely oblivious to pattern, were in the grip of a higher, far more intellectual mind which has very little notion of houses and beds and soup bottles but can systematize and mathematize on a scale that no mathematician . . . ever remotely approached. .. . Human beings are all alike in this respect.... The higher mind or "unconscious" of a Papuan can mathematize quite as well as that of Einstein, and conversely, scientist and yokel. . . use their personal consciousness in the same dim-witted way . . . (p. 257). T h e question of "significant behavior" is problematic. Is it to be considered a product of language and culture, or is it only influenced by them? T h e distinction can be important. T h e ethnic framework which Whorf ignores can well be a factor too, and that includes far more than language and culture. Be that as it may, Whorf has opened a new avenue of thought, in respect of mind, and proceeds to describe the " h i g h e r " mind further. Sentences not words are the essence of speech, just as equations and functions, and not bare numbers, are the real meat of mathematics. . . . The higher mind deals in symbols . . . like blank checks, to be filled in as required.... The human consciousness has been doing the same sort of thing for eons. For the same reason, the ancient Mayas or the ancient Hindus, in their staggering cycles upon cycles of astronomical numbers, were simply being human (pp. 258-59)It is a human potential infinitely greater than man has hitherto attempted to utilize, the key to which educationists and psychologists have as yet failed to discover. I n human society, it is manifested by the aptitude of widely differing ethnic groups for some aspects or others of this unfathomable storehouse of human genius. As Whorf depicts it graphically:

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It is a lesson in (human) brotherhood. It causes us to transcend the boundaries of local cultures, nationalities... races.... The crudest savage may unconsciously manipulate with effortless ease a linguistic system so intricate, manifoldly systematized and intellectually difficult that it requires the lifetime study of our greatest scholars to describe its workings.... The higher ego has been given to a l l . . . in a time far anterior to the oldest ruin . . . (p. 264) . And Whorf continues: The moment we begin scientific unbiased research into language, we find in people and cultures with the most unprepossessing exteriors, beautiful, effective, and scientific devices of expression unknown to Western Indo-European tongues or mentalities.... It may be that these primitive folk are equipped with a language which, if they are not to become philosophers or mathematicians, could make them our foremost thinkers upon Time.... We are not habituated to making . . . [their] unconscious discriminations [of meaning] and other automatic distinctions with effortless ease in daily life (p. 266). T h e sad feature about Whorf s insights is the linguistic restrictions he ultimately imposes upon them, invariably begging the question of the ethnic source of his inspirations. T o start from the beginning, linguistic content embodies the whole experience of the speech community. Linguistic structure too reflects this experience and transmits it to the linguistic facets of mind. Mind, in turn, makes its appropriate conscious and unconscious adjustments to the external environment in the form of language and behavior. T h e determining factor, however, acting through the medium of language and its culture, comes predominantly from the relatively restricted environment of an historically adapted ethnic society.

E. L I N G U I S T I C R E L A T I V I T Y AND WORLD VIEW Nowhere does Whorf come so close to an ethnic formulation as in his principle of linguistic relativity. Excited by the phenomenon of differentiation of language, it was all but inevitable he should arrive at a comparative analysis of two civilizations, the Western one into which he was born and the Amerindian tribes he was so avidly investigating. Sapir's teachings were indubitably a considerable influence. Upon the basis of the exceptional language structure he had found, rather than the ethnological picture, he vividly sketched in the powerful and startling contrasts between the varied kinds of mentalities. Unconcerned with the reasons for linguistic diversity, what moved him was the specificity of every language. In consequence, the "observers", invariably, the aggregate of individuals comprising (as Whorf would always fail to discover) an historically established ethnic speech community dwelling within an exclusively inhabited territory, acquired a corresponding world view. "Observers" were, of course, a euphemism for the ethnic population.

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From this fact (of specificity) proceeds the "linguistic relativity principle" which means . . . that users of remarkably different grammars .. . are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world.... The world view of modern science arises by higher specialization of the basic grammar of the Western Indo-European languages.... It appeared in this group of languages because of a train of historical events .. .in a quarter of the world where these languages were dominant [Italics mine] (p. 214). It is difficult to avoid boring, repetitive comment on W h o r f s unfailing omissions — or is it evasiveness? — of the underlying ethnicity and on the surrogate task he has imposed upon language. But there is a natural curiosity to be informed about the "users" and the "observers". How did the "group of languages" become so markedly differentiated — one would wish to know? And, how significant, for each respective language or group of languages, were the characteristics of the tribes that spoke them and must have developed historically in some form of relationship with them? T h e "train of historical circumstances" is especially titillating since it bespeaks particularistic vicissitudes that may not have happened to any other group of languages equally dominant in another "quarter of the world". It might even have determined the specificity Whorf had marveled at. Naming names and describing fundamentals, when readers might infer from them a basic ethnic process, was not a customary practice of Whorf's. One has but to envision the profound social changes that followed in the wake of "the train of historical events" to recognize the certainty of the corresponding changes in the mentalities so affected. In the Whorfian sense, "world v i e w " is a purely cognitive event, legitimate enough as far as it goes, but as an intrinsic modality that reflects the linguistic structure alone. The name is a misnomer. Not even the speech community receives honorable mention. The world that is thus viewed is not the external world but the world of mind, and it finds both its culmination and the specificity of its expression in the manner that it functions and in the peculiar mode and quality of its thinking. It is man's thought world, a microcosm of the outside world. As we have come to expect, the term is a euphemism. Purposefully or not, it tends to conceal the specific ethnic process that is the dynamic, allencompassing force in the environment operating upon both mind and language. Whorf therefore does not tell us that the mind thus shaped under particularistic historical conditions looks outside as well as in. It is not merely a cognitive event. It is a cognitive event within an ethnic setting. It is stimulated by direct experience with the specifically ethnic surroundings; and the latter, in turn, become the focus of the mind's attention. In reality, then, the world view is the sum-total of the characteristic mental attitudes that prevail within a specific, ethnic speech community.

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Educated in a tradition that spurned " o b s o l e t e " concepts redolent of nationalism, it was probably unconscious behavior on Whorf's part to omit even bare mention of an ethnic background to language and cognition. H o i j e r traces W h o r f ' s " w o r l d v i e w " through E d w a r d Sapir to Franz Boas. T o complete a significant passage from Sapir, part of w h i c h w e h a v e already cited above: Language is a guide to "social reality". . . . Human beings are very much at the mercy of the particular language.... It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language.... The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. The understanding of a simple poem, for instance, involved . . . a full comprehension of the whole life of the community.... Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much more of the social patterns called words than we might suppose... . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (Sapir i960: 68-69). As w e can see, Sapir like Whorf employed every possible synonym for ethnicity: social reality, community, the particular language, the real world, and even " t h e social pattern called w o r d s " . T h u s , endlessly, Sapir m u c h like Whorf and almost everybody else attempted to conceal, b y means of such synonyms or euphemisms, the taboo on ethnicity, or on ethnicism, its philosophical counterpart. R a r e l y , and most likely reluctantly, would the w o r d ethnic be used as a self-explanatory and basic terminology for all students of culture, language, and society. It becomes increasingly obvious that resorting to all these circumlocutory modes of expression, in order to describe the essentially ethnic, is in very large measure identical w i t h w h a t W h o r f , Hoijer, and all other subsequent investigators circumspectly designated as " w o r l d v i e w " . Alas, even " w o r l d v i e w " is suspect in some quarters, and rightly so, since it clearly stems from w h a t is in nearly every respect ethnic. In most cases, however, this concept is below the surface of consciousness; for w h o would deliberately seek so horrendous a formulation? But H o i j e r goes on to show that: The notion of language as a "guide to social reality" is not entirely original with Sapir. Somewhat similar ideas, but far less adequately stated, may be found in Boas' writings as early as 1911 . . . (Hoijer 1963). H o i j e r cites Boas as follows: Language seems to be one of the most instructive fields of inquiry in an investigation of the formation of the fundamental ethnic ideas (Boas 1963). Evidently, preconceptions of the universalistic variety did not weigh as heavily upon Boas in the period before the two world wars. What strikes

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one sharply about Boas' statement is that, with few exceptions, it would be unthinkable today for any linguistic scientist to talk of an investigation of the formation of the "fundamental ethnic ideas". Perhaps Sapir expressed himself far more adequately. But Boas alone seems to have possessed the intellectual integrity to call things by their proper names. A pity, though, that he himself failed to investigate the ethnic roots of modem society. Whorf has simply robbed Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (as it is sometimes referred to) of decent parental legitimacy, by leaving its components suspended without environmental roots. Yet, despite its bastard birth, valuable evidence for the validity of the long-shunned ethnic concept lies imbedded within it. Quite unmistakably, once the ethnic roots are revealed, Whorf's researches and conclusions readily fit in to their proper attachments. They impart essential knowledge for understanding the ethnic process, filling in gaps in the transmission of experience to the conscious mind through language, and in the formative factors of the individual's mental outlook. Some of his more significant passages are worth citing at some length. In his chapter, "Science and Linguistics", he writes: One significant contribution to science from the linguistic point of view may be the greater development of our sense of perspective. We shall no longer be able to see a few recent dialects of the Indo-European family, and the rationalizing techniques elaborated from their patterns, as the apex of the revolution of the human mind, nor their present wide spread as due to any survival from fitness or anything but a few events of history — events that could be called fortunate only from the parochial point of view of the favored parties. They, and our own thought processes with them, can no longer be envisioned as spanning the gamut of reason and knowledge but only as one constellation in a galactic expanse. A fair realization of the incredible degree of diversity of linguistic system that ranges over the globe leaves one with an inescapable feeling that the human spirit is inconceivably old; that the few thousand years of history covered by our written records are no more than the thickness of a pencil-mark on the scale that measures our past experience on this planet; that the events of these recent millenniums spell nothing in any evolutionary wise, that the race has taken no sudden spurt, achieved no commanding synthesis during recent millenniums, but has only played a little with a few of the linguistic formulations and views of nature bequeathed from an inexpressibly longer past. Yet neither this feeling nor the sense of precarious dependence of all we know upon linguistic tools which themselves are largely unknown need be discouraging to science but should rather foster that humility which accompanies the true scientific spirit, and thus forbids that arrogance of the mind which hinders real scientific curiosity and detachment (pp. 218-19). " O n e constellation in a galactic expanse!" This is the way Whorf writes of the Indo-European family of languages. So, he could also have described the nations or groups of nations constituting the speech communities of these languages, had Whorf not been inhibited from openly recognizing them. T h e tremendous diversity of languages with their great antiquity

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h a d p r o f o u n d l y impressed h i m , as he c o u l d also h a v e been of the corresponding ethnic diversity. T h e " r a c e " h a d " o n l y p l a y e d a little w i t h a f e w of the linguistic formulations a n d views of n a t u r e " . W h a t ! N o t w i t h the totality of m a n in his n a t u r a l ethnic situations, w h e n c e all the lang u a g e s a n d their respective v i e w s of n a t u r e ? W h a t a p i t y ! W h a t a p i t y ! T o see o n l y a m e r e f r a g m e n t of the w h o l e a v a i l a b l e picture. I n a n article entitled: " T h e P u n c t u a l a n d S e g m e n t a t i v e Aspects of V e r b s in H o p i " , W h o r f e x p a n d s o n the c o n c e p t of the w o r l d v i e w . Language produces an organization of experience. We are inclined to think of language simply as a technique of expression, and not to realize that language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world order, a certain segmentation of the world that is easily expressible by the type of symbolic means that language e m p l o y s . . . . The Hopi actually have a language better equipped to deal with . . . . vibratile phenomena than is our latest scientific terminology. According to the conceptions of modern physics, the contrast of particle and field of vibrations is more fundamental in the world of nature than such contrasts as space and time, or past and present and future which are the sort of contrasts that our own language imposes upon us. T h e Hopi aspect-contrast, being obligatory upon their verb forms, practically forces the Hopi to notice and observe vibratory phenomena, and furthermore encourages them to find names for and to classify such phenomena. As a matter of fact, the language is extraordinarily rigid in terms of vibratory phenomena and for the punctual events to which they are related (p. 56). T h u s , the w o r l d of the H o p i . It contrasts sharply w i t h that of the West. A m o n g related languages, a n d , no d o u b t , a m o n g related peoples too, the distinctions w o u l d p r o b a b l y tend to f a d e a w a y w i t h p r o x i m i t y . T h e p h e n o m e n o n of differentiation, of course, remains intact, a l t h o u g h proxim i t y a n d relationship blur it a c c o r d i n g l y . T o W h o r f , it represented a n ethnological observation manifested b y the vast cultural a n d g e o g r a p h i c a l distance. T h e relationship to linguistics is explained in the c h a p t e r o n " T h i n k i n g in Primitive C o m m u n i t i e s " . Language thus should be able to analyze some, if probably not all, of the differences, real or assumed, between the mentality of so-called primitive peoples and modern civilized man. Whether the primitives constitute a unit class of mentality over against modem man . . . or whether the civilized modern (apart from general culture — as with primitive man) is the unit class of mentality because of the great structural similarity of all the modem civilized Western languages, while over against it are many diverse types of mentality reflecting a rich diversity of speech cultures: This is only one of the great psychological world-questions — that fall into the domain of linguistics.... We are accustomed to think of such a mentality as less of a thinking mentality, as less rational than ours. Yet many American Indian and African languages abound in finely wrought, beautifully logical discriminations about causation, action, result, dynamic or energy quality, directness of experience, etc., all matters of the function of thinking, indeed the quintessence of the rational. In this respect, they far outdistance the European languages (pp. 79-80).

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A tantalizing question indeed. And well deserving the attention of the social disciplines. It may be that scholarship and scientism have become too specialized, and hence lost the capacity for judging what, both rationally and spiritually, could be the most desirable form of civilization for a bewildered humanity. It may be they are dominated by biases and preconceptions. Fundamental questions had failed to occur not only to Whorf. T h e y had failed to occur to his critics too, as well as to other students of linguistics: to psychologists, anthropologists and intellectuals generally. That itself is a curious phenomenon. Of profound interest to them ought to have been the relationship the Hopi people bore, the mentality the Hopis shared, with one another, indeed, the totality of the ethnic Hopi background. T h e same could be said for those groups related to the Hopis, as well as for the Western peoples and their respective languages and mentalities. It seems anomalous that so few specialists in fields of human society had as much as stumbled upon the significance of so dynamic a feature of the human group as ethnicity. This anomaly, incidentally, is equally true of the modern phenomenon of nationalism. Of the thousands of books on nationalism, few if any treat this theme other than as a manifestation of Western development toward which emergent peoples are striving. Typically, K . H. Silvert, whose approach is a highly positive one but, for the sake of objectivity, strictly avoids specific positioning, writes in one of the best books on the subject: T h u s our first task was that of stripping bare the concept of nation, treating it as an artifact of social organization with a given relationship to industrial development and modernism (1963).

In Professor Silvert's book as in others, one may search in vain for a passage even superficially suggesting a process of ethnic development of which nationalism is just the culminating, contemporary, modernist stage. This fundamental aspect is almost totally absent. Developing peoples are taken for granted, and the entire emphasis is placed upon nationalism in all its aspects — except its roots in the primeval, and even animal, past. Even from a broad, ethnological standpoint, Whorf had elucidated specific intellectual and spiritual talents among the so-called primitives. This alone evokes the striking challenge that Western civilization had been weighed and found wanting. Both civilizations, however, have clearly demonstrated, overtly and covertly, a persistent ethnic process at work. We may at least nod with Whorf, as he whimsically comments: " B u t lo, the poor Indian organizes his thinking quite differently" (p. 83). There is one more aspect of "world v i e w " that, in Whorfian mode, generates from the structure of the given language, viz. how does it jibe

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with reality? Whorf seems to leave himself open to various interpretations. Generally, behavior seems to be the only reality. Because of the apparent non-existence of the concept of a people, it derives from the single-track communication of language and thought. There opens up a limited prospect which leads to the Whorfian world view. It is a limited reality, more a way of thinking, corresponding to a way of speaking. T h e prospect does not, however, unfold into the broad expanse of a people with an historically developed, culturally evolved set of conditions of existence. Whorf contends it is primarily formed by the native language; but it appears obvious that the world of reality is much more than the world of language and linguistic tradition. There is also the territorial environment, and the whole societal, cultural, and traditional experience of living within relatively isolated immemorial conditions of one sort or another. All are stimuli to thought, whether peripherally, perceptually, or linguistically. It if a mutually responsive relationship. Without thought and intelligence, the most significant features of this mutual relationship, there would be no culture and no civilization, if invariably within an ethnic framework; it would be an ape world! T h e world of ethnos is the only causal reality. A special awareness is spawned by the linguistic relativity principle that Whorf may not have envisaged. This is an awareness of man's virtual "enslavement" to one's own mode of speech and thought. Such an awareness provides insight into an immeasurably wider range of language, thought, and reality that one can scarcely conceive of today. It is an awareness which can, under suitable conditions of development, transcend the limitations of an individual's environs by lifting him and his group out of his evolutionary rut. In fact, it could be the genuine outcome of the "world view" Whorf had hypothesized. Along this linguistic path which Whorf, as universalist, might have dreamed of, awaits the Golden Grail of the New Society. In it, neither native tongue nor native mentality might loom as important as the universal good. But this linguistic path would still be a mere surrogate for the genuinely determining factor on the long haul to the Messianic day. Unfortunately, the ethnic process Whorf knew not of — for, in reaching for the linguistic star of a cognitive world view, he had long left solid ground.

F. THE DILEMMA OF DIFFERENTATION We have repeatedly remarked on Whorf's unceasing wonder over the phenomenon of differentiation. Its self-evidence establishes it as a fact of life, and no rational person could be expected to deny it. But, since human

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nature is incalculable, distortions of reality tend to become acceptable. Odd as it may seem, differentiation of language has actually proved to be a serious stumbling block to eminent linguistic scholars, even an obstacle to linguistic research. Facts so obstreperous and obnoxious had to be brushed aside for the sake of linguistic "progress". We shall have occasion in the following chapter to enlarge on Noam Chomsky's difficulties with the infinite variety of language, in his efforts to construct a theory for a universal grammar. Here, another example is mentioned which, at the same time, provides a typical illustration of the quality of criticism levelled against Whorf. One is astonished at the inability of many linguists to reconcile the coexistence of universality and ethnic multiplicity in human society. They will not see, for instance, that the universality of the cognitive process, a legacy from the primordial inheritance, does not dispel the differentiating process (in which no one appears concerned). Having blindly and stubbornly turned their backs on ethnic diversity for more than a century and a half, and then begrudgingly been obliged to accept the phenomenal national resurgence, it is small wonder that many linguists are inclined to ignore the equally repugnant linguistic divergence. For such self-deluded scholars, the dilemma is a real one, and it dogs their steps incessantly. There is a pronounced element of the proverbial red herring about some of the arguments raised in repudiation of Whorf. E. H. Lenneberg, one of the few to have displayed an awareness of him, albeit a negative one, managed, while denigrating the influence of language upon cognition, to show his hand in the matter of language differences. The incongruences between languages become marked only in certain types of grammatical classifications.... But... on this level... cognitive processes seem least affected. There is no evidence that gender in German, or the declinational system of Russian, or the non-classification systems in the Bantu languages affect thought differentially (Lenneberg 1971). With literally one word, Lenneberg has practically eliminated the phenomenon of language diversity, and solved his dilemma at one fell stroke! By substituting the outrageous euphemism of "incongruences" for a forthright word, he has made all natural languages comprehensible (so to speak) to all mankind, as well as created an extraordinary amenability (so to speak) for mutual understanding, except for so trifling a difficulty as "certain types of grammatical classifications". Man has, from the beginning of human time, been separated only by such minor barriers as "incongruences". What students of society and linguistic scientists have long shoved under the carpet, has proved to be really a most distressing apparition. It is not surprising that Chomsky succumbed to the temptation to devise a universal theory based upon the virtual abandonment of the concept of linguistic differentiation. Nor is it less reassuring to learn that the cognitive

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processes are scarcely affected by language, especially where the grammatical incongruences show. His efforts notwithstanding, Lenneberg has failed to dispose of the multiplicity of language, which continues to present a threat to his researches. His major complex, however, one he has long suppressed, is the ethnic process. That is his profoundest dilemma that will not fade away with semantic substitutions. It appears that language diversity will continue indefinitely to remain a horrendous specter hovering over the field of linguistic study till scholars approach their subject with fewer illusions and a greater sense of reality.

G. W O R L D V I E W A N D E T H N I C

VIEW

Unlike Whorf's "world view", the outside-looking viewpoint, that reflects the encompassing ethnic character, generates a prevailing frame of mind as well as singular, even unique, forms of behavior. It is not limited to a linguistic-cognitive arrangement that is, in reality, one facet of the whole ethnic complex. A people applies its cognitive system and employs its native tongue in ways exemplifying the interests of the group, for, neither language nor cognition are dead-end facilities of purely " l o c a l " importance. They are a people's instruments ostensibly operating, wisely or unwisely, for the common good. A remarkable illustration of this paramount ethnic influence is the Arab mind in relation to the Israel-Arab encounter. It is also, however, a perverse representation of the common good. The three humiliating collapses sustained by the Arab nations, beginning with the Jewish War of Independence in M a y 1948, continuing with the Sinai Campaign of 195657, and culminating with the Six Day War of June 1967, shattered Arab morale to a degree they had never experienced before.* Into Arab speech and writing poured shrieking, uninhibited crescendos of emotions of hatred and revenge. Lifted out of its earlier, virtually absolute isolation by the acuity of the international situation created by all this tension, the Arab mind became exposed to the full glare of world publicity. The impotence of their fury and frustration robbed them of moral restraint of a quality and depth that permitted them to organize anti-Israel sky-jacking and to indulge in anti-Israel massacres; international crimes of ominous portent. Although modified by European influence, modern Arab literature and writing continued to mirror the ancient pattern of thought, language, and behavior. In them ran the specific culture and attitudes of an ancient * Greatly restored by Egypt's initial (if transitory) gains as result of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, plus peace-making gains.

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oriental people. In the common attitudes towards the Israeli victor, the old-fashioned Arabism still held sway — the archaic aspects of thought and verbal behavior, the high-pitched intensity of emotional reactions, and the characteristic circumlocutory use of the Arab language. So much so, that journalism and literature, political statements and speeches were almost exclusively devoted to Israel's eradication. An element of concealment would sometimes creep in when, in order in some measure to avoid offending world taste and opinion, the shrill tone had to be somewhat curbed to disguise the profound anti-Israel enmity. Curious linguistic and semantic consequences ensued. Yehoshaphat Harkabi, a distinguished Israeli scholar, made a special study of them in order to arrive at a rational understanding of the Arab mind. In a book, published in English in 1971, Arab Attitudes to Israel, Harkabi showed the amazing Arab facility for synonymic representation, with the intent to portray in veiled fashion the pathological Arab obsession with Israel's annihilation. All the terms employed were thoroughly understandable to Arab readers and listeners, although reduced in intensity or by context for the sake of Western palatability. Harkabi lists or describes more than sixty such expressions, each indicating to the Arab the cherished conviction of the pending liquidation of the Jewish State and the massacring of every Jew. All these formulae were conveyed to the Arab mind by speech and script, and manifested by an appropriate behavior in terms of threats of war, terrorism, and political Machiavellianism. It was the kind of thinking, of use of language, and behavior that was all too evidently typical of the Arab character. Following a frightful massacre on M a y 30, 1972, at the Israel international airport in Lod, where twenty-seven people died and over eighty were wounded, perpetrated by three Japanese terrorists serving the P.F.L.P. (Peoples' Federation for the Liberation of Palestine) and universally condemned, practically the entire Arab press and the leading political figures in almost all the Arab countries openly rejoiced. T h e y had quite literally found it impossible to conceal their true feelings. Apparently, neither the Arab language nor the Arab mind possesses the words or the feelings that represent remorse. In the light of such events, Jewish feelings of apprehension of a second Holocaust had been fully justified. In such attitudes, all the Arab nations had acted as one ethnic group, all prompted by an identical stimulus, the presence in their midst of a Jewish State. Whorf might have credited the structure of Arabic for the formulation of numberless synonyms designating Jewish destruction; and that it was this peculiarity of language leading to vengeful, anti-Israel behavior that gave them their uniquely irrational anti-Jewish attitudes. W h o r f s great

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error, however, lay in his inability to recognize the linguistic and cognitive behavior as basically ethnic. In the sequences of devastating defeats at the hands of the Israelis lay ample explication for the social and individual stresses and burning hatreds that unquestionably perpetuated these attitudes. They were bound to cause structural and semantic changes, as well as critically affect the cognitive processes. People are bound to react to momentous historical events, as Whorf himself had emphasized. Without the underlying ethnic process, there could be neither a "train of historical events", nor mind, nor language. Arab behavior, in the conflict with Israel, is a typical example of ethnic experience, and its formative effect upon a people's mind and language. In this perspective, Whorf appears in the role of forerunner in the field of linguistics, his "world view", a linguistic and cognitive step toward the unfolding of the ethnic mentality.

H. THE ETHNIC PROCESS One of the most curious twists of the human mind has been the grotesque belief in the immediacy and reality of an undifferentiated humanity, precipitated mainly by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that so many radicals and intellectuals have displayed and acted upon in the course of the past century and a half. It was a sequel to the thinking of the Enlightenment. Since the days of Marx, these true believers managed to parallel their advanced contributions to thought and science with an incredible blindness to the actual direction of social evolution, with the resultant deleterious effect upon the freedom of oppressed peoples. Marx, that proud Rheinlander, both etatist and universalist in a hurry, never ceased to vilify other, small East-European underprivileged peoples, in the impassioned hope of hastening the advent of the imminent international society- It is one of those extraordinary instances of wishful thinking to which the human mind is so naively susceptible. Only because it has so often proved fateful in modern history, has it had to be taken seriously at all; visionaries of this sort abound among men. Perhaps the natural impatience of decent men to overcome the evils of society with all possible haste can alone excuse their fanatical behavior. No less a term can describe the philosophy of a universalism that has shown a frightening unconcern with the roots of national life. Irrational fears, engendered by baseless miscomprehensions of the role of ethnicity in the society of tomorrow, had totally obscured their concepts of ethnic reality. The successive national revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries,

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which had swept away the countless ages of oppression that had submerged the underlying process of the growth of peoples, also overwhelmingly repudiated the false universalism that kept rabidly extinguishing the sparks of liberation rising out of the debris. Unwittingly, Whorf's ethnolinguistic researches and unorthodox hypotheses had further helped to retrieve the proscribed problem of ethnicity from the intellectual taboo. While not a conscious objective, yet masked behind all his writings was the total ethnic environment, fully visible for all who cared to see. T h a t the human group is ethnic in origin and development, as an obvious consequence of genetic selection and group experience, hardly requiries further attestation other than the still lacking evolutionary evidence. Anthropologists have been hard put to deny a fact so elemental. When missing links, for the time being, remain shrouded in mystery, one adopts a rational approach unprejudiced by preconceptions, myopias and plain blinkers. Momentous findings, however, of exciting and fascinating importance, are being continuously made in questions of instinct, learning and natural processes. T h e ethnic process falls into this category of selfevident phenomena that must await their classification. It is enough today that it can no longer be dismissed in favor of pretentious, futuristic Utopias. Discoveries in the realms of neurophysiology, ethology, and molecular biology may have thrown much light upon such obscurities, and given fillip after fillip to rationality and common sense. The territorial principle, for instance, is now widely accepted as an instinctive form of animal behavior. With the predominant tendency to accept the animal world as ancestral to our own, the underpinnings and indeed the foundations are clearly established for the understanding of the territorial concentration of human groups as an innate human need. Whatever the neurological basis of instinct may be, its essential nature seems fairly obvious. The territory, as the historically adapted ethnic setting, forms the underlying structure which the conditions of human life require. " M o t h e r E a r t h " is no mere, romantic and poetic expression. T h e ethnic process may thus be considered an organic constituent of man's endowment, undergoing, from the very earliest times, social and psychological changes predisposing toward the formation of specific units of man we now know as peoples, nationalities, or nations. The exploitation of man by man, with the resultant emergence of successive stages of class divisions till the overthrow of the feudal system and its ultimate replacement by the capitalist mode of overlordship, had opened wide the deep wounds caused by man's aggressive instincts. Marx, witnessing the rise of nations in the wake of capitalist accumulation of wealth, had seen in a victorious proletariat the elimination of human exploitation and the coming Messianic Deliverance. What he had signally failed to observe

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was the natural inclination of man, both anthropologically and psychologically, to dwell in relatively isolated and historically developed speech communities, which began with the family and elaborated their structure in accordance with the prevailing economic mode of existence. A n ethnic crisis would ensue when the group mode would conflict with the mode of production, thus, the French Revolution and the rise of capitalism ushered in the national struggle, as result of which conflict a new manner of living for the speech community would take place; peoples, in this way, became transformed into nation-states. In the long and distant perspective, these speech communities had thus evolved from the earliest pristine families to the nations of today. M a r x , the philosopher, political scientist, student of economics and ardent polemicist, had not recognized the dichotomy of peoples and classes, of conditions of production and relations of production. In contrast, Ber Borochov, who appeared on the political scene twenty years after Marx's death, was a young revolutionary Zionist and Yiddish philologist. Himself a conscious member of an oppressed national group, he possessed a keen grasp of national problems. Utterly without Marx's propensities for personal animosities and Jewish self-hatred, Borochov brilliantly supplemented the Marxist thesis with a scholarly exposition of the natural division of mankind into peoples and nations and their territories as the fundamental "workplaces" and "strategic bases" for the ensuing class struggles (1935). Man's aggressive history had been fallaciously attributed exclusively to the class divisions of human society in an era that had little knowledge of his hitherto impenetrable unconscious, the innate instincts that drive him, and the motivations that go to form his character and determine his actions and reactions; and even less of the modern sciences pertaining to human behavior. Whilst opinions still differ on the significance of aggression, the overwhelming weight of evidence, though recognizing the immensely important role of learning, control, childhood affection, and detrimental environmental situations, emphasizes its innate origin. A Freudian personality supplements the class basis of evil. T h e evils that often arise in the wake of nationalism had been no justification for stigmatizing and suppressing the national concept, and still less for an irrational flight to a roseate universalism. If by nothing else, such impractical ideas have been nullified by the national upheavals of our time. T h e only evidence for their preachments seemed to lie solely in pious hopes and wishful thinking. O n the other hand, the ethnic basis of national life seems irrefutable. It is the rock bottom of human existence. National revolutions can now be readily perceived as the end-results, up to the present time, of an ongoing, dynamic, ethnic process.

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Even the ethnic problem in the larger centres of the United States, once the famous land of the melting pot, and elsewhere, is an offshoot, a comparatively lesser one, of the national liberation movement. Jewish ethnicity in all these countries is merely one manifestation of the world-wide Jewish phenomenon of Dispersion; and this accounts for the universal character of the struggle for Jewish national freedom, with Israel as its focus. In the United States, however, ethnicity in general has shown a rather remarkable enhancement against the all-powerful currents of assimilation, in an area where one should have least expected it. Among peoples who had come from a motherland, traditionally had a motherland, and had never experienced Dispersion as Jews had, the transition to a new American motherland had hitherto been effected relatively with the greatest ease — or so it had appeared. The intensity of ethnic sentiment, almost a rebirth, is therefore a surprising development deserving of the most painstaking study. The American "melting pot" trend, which appeared at one time to represent the dominant current of life in the United States, seems now to be jeopardized as never before. This is preponderantly due to the catalytic effects of the black revolution. The formerly cultural, now frankly ethnic, pluralism, adumbrated in present-day trends as the future picture of American life, is arousing as much contention as its predecessor. There is a new apprehension in the air, the fear that, triggered by the black resurgence, the United States may become an ethnic battleground. Just as the melting pot had once ushered in a fascinating democratic prospect, indeed a preview, of an American version of a new world society, so the concept of cultural pluralism had apparently strengthened a dormant desire for an American people distinguished prominently if not mainly because of its cultural diversity. And just as, with the melting pot, fears ultimately generated of a deadening conformity and the appearance of a hodge-podge, characterless nation, at best, a questionable society in the making, so, today, we witness a complete reversal of this process, thanks to the black stimulus. The fears now are of nationalistic clashes such as could threaten to rupture the very foundations of a once promising, even enthralling, American experiment. Is there really a threat either way? Must the presently ethnic current, now seemingly dominant, assume such dangerous proportions? Cannot both trends operate concurrently and in perfect harmony? Demagoguery alone could lead to a course of social madness, and this had played a role also in the good old days of the "melting pot". Such writers as Harold R. Isaacs do not enjoy the prospect of a multiethnic future for the United States. Adopting the typically cynical universalistic tone, he talks of " a new formula for keeping ethnic groups from tearing each other limb from limb as they have done from time immem-

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orial"; or, that "lunging back into the tribal caves is one way to find, maybe, the emotional security that seems to have disappeared everywhere else". Yet, Isaacs is troubled and, like Balaam of old who came to curse and stayed to bless, has many misgivings about his ungenerous attitude towards ethnic considerations. It is clear enough that a great reordering of identities is [Isaacs' emphasis] going on among all kinds of Americans.... It is surely a complicated and profound happening. [Then, clothing himself in much doubting and hedging, he continues:] Now, being of Irish or Polish or Italian or whatever origin plainly has great meaning in a person's life. It shapes and will continue to shape much of the style of his being, the way he lives, the way he brings up his children. We all know or should know by now how much of a myth the "melting pot" turned out to be [my emphasis]. But we should also be aware of how much did m e l t . . . . Whether here or elsewhere, every person needs to have or recover or acquire a self-respecting acceptance of his own origins (Isaacs 1972a).

Of course, in what images America wants to fashion itself does have to be ironed out, and it may be a long time before the problem finds its solution in this American time of troubles. It also needs to be pointed out as we conclude that hostility to the ethnic concept is the reason why so many distortions and misapprehensions have accrued to it. It therefore becomes a matter of some importance to stress some of the often alleged attributes that are not at all inherent in the ethnic process. Ethnicity (it seems so elementary to emphasize it) does not have the remotest relationship to such exaggerated and hypertrophied emotions as ultra-patriotism, chauvinism, and attitudes of superiority, aggression, and barbarism that have so often run riot in societies of man, and have culminated in the modern instances of totalitarianism. These are some of the emotions and aspects of behavior that have often fed the false compensatory notions of well-meaning but ineffectual intellectuals as well, especially those engrossed in the dream of liberating mankind from its social evils. They are malformations of social behavior. Ethnicity is not basically an emotion. It is a manifold expression of social behavior, symbolic in form, reflecting the dynamics of the ethnic process. Natural conditions of the environment — traditional, historical, cultural, geographical — had guided, nurtured, shaped, and cemented this inherent need till it assumed the forms of the ethnic panorama of yesterday and today; and will no doubt form the basis for the shaping of tomorrow. It seems beyond any doubt whatever, that the ethnic process will continue on into an unforeseeable future as long as human life exists; or unless the human being evolves into another unique form of existence. A new social wisdom, stimulated perhaps by the terrors of our nuclear knowledge,

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will, let us hope, create an increasingly congenial world, in which the ethnic delineations of mankind will coincide with a more enlightened humanity.

I. C O N C L U S I O N Whorf's influence was mainly contemporary American. It has remained feeble and sporadic. John B. Carroll, the editor of his posthumous works, observes in his introduction: Extremely little research of an appropriate character has thus far been conducted on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis . .. (Carroll 1956). T h e few critics that have taken cognizance of his views have been generally hostile, but there have been supporters too. His theories have made little dint upon modern linguistic thought; they have certainly not taken root. It is difficult to repress the feeling that old biases still endure, and however intellectually conforming Whorf had been, his ideas might still be suspect. Denigratory linguistic criticism is as a rule unconvincing; one need not be surprised if the Critic was apt to see a lurking ghost of nationalism behind every "world v i e w " . T h e phantasmagoria thus created had virtually banned from the campus an objective scientific exploration of the relationship between a people and its language. T o be sure, students of language such as Cassirer, Jespersen, Bonfante, Whatmough, Roback and others had helped change an unfriendly climate, with the subsequent impact of a less intolerant scholarship. Fishman's ethnic studies more so. These non-scholarly considerations apart, Whorf's " W o r l d v i e w " can be seen as either a reasoned and penetrating study of a linguistic will-o'-thewisp or the distorted effects of an illusory utopianism. His achievement was to enucleate language from its ethnic environs and impute to it an independent function and purpose. Deriving its origin basically as an evolutionary off-shoot of mind, and its grammatical structure from the whole cultural experience of an ethnic speech community, it could not logically assume such an importance as that of independence. T h e fact is that, inadvertently, Whorf had effected a linguistic breach in the fetishistic character of modern intellectualism. Oppressed peoples had carved their w a y to freedom. T h e ethnic-national basis of human society had been restored in our day as a natural expression of human life. It was a monumental social milestone, and it had shattered the hegemony of a scholasticism long corrupting humanist thought with its utopianism. It was a misguided view that had undermined linguistic science no less than other disciplines. For Whorf, whatever his ideological drive, it still required great courage

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to enter an untrodden path; neither Boas nor Sapir, eminent pioneers of linguistic thought, had ventured to do more than timorously touch the fringes of ethnolinguistic research. Premature death may well have denied him the opportunity to observe the volcanic eruption of national struggles which followed the Second World War, and simply cut short a burgeoning insight into the workings of the ethnic process. But, that Whorf's nearethnic horizon could have awakened slumbering anti-national fears to the possible perils of a scientifically endorsed ethnicism — that need not be surprising. Nonetheless, though Whorf's hypotheses are far from invulnerable, they may continue to defy the efforts of modern critics who might seek to ignore them, reject them outright, or even laugh them out of court. Their suspicions, if they ever attained consciousness, were undoubtedly groundless. One could never glean from his writings that the Hopis, for instance, possessed an ethnic background, nor that their language and "world v i e w " bore a relationship to the historical experience of the Hopi people. T h e path he took, however, was linguistically significant, in that it cast a beacon light upon the fundamental ethnic process. Whatever course an evaluation of Whorf and his work may take in the future, a hopefully broader scholarly perspective should encourage interest in him, and perhaps discover a fruitful source for continued linguistic enquiry. Since Whorf, what had troubled Hoijer and other linguists had been the nature of the thought world, the world view, for this implied, according to them, a relationship between language and culture. T h e y were puzzled how to account for the fact that: Peoples very similar in the rest of their culture speak languages that are wholly unrelated, and . . . closely related languages are frequently spoken by peoples very different in the rest of their cultures (Hoijer 1963: 101).

With culture presumably the basic entity, the nature of the thought world inevitably remained in doubt, because the relationship between culture and language was in doubt. T h e y had unfortunately come to believe their own euphemisms. Hence, Hoijer's puzzlement, which could never occur in the specific, indissoluble relationship between the speech community and its language. Culture, on the other hand, diffusing readily, could but rarely if ever affect the people-language relationship. In the case of the Jews, for example, not even the foreign cultural influences bearing so heavily upon them during nearly 2000 years of Dispersion could dissolve the ties which bound the Jewish language (s) and Jewish cultural specifics to the Jewish people itself. Similarly with Hoijer's "enigma", he was simply blundering in the confusion created by the fictitious semantic play-acting concealing, no doubt unconsciously, the

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operative ethnic fundamental. It is the latter, of course, that activates the intrinsic culture primarily. Assuming, then, that the thought world or world view represented in reality the ethnic aspect of the speech community, the national view-point, so to speak, its essential nationalism, its ethnic will to live, and so forth, Hoijer would not have been confused by so unrelated a question as that of language culture. Had he, instead, recognized the legitimacy of a language relationship to a people, an ethnic relationship, and external cultural relationships as extraneous, neither he nor his fellow discussants would have wasted their time in futile debate. Language is the medium of culture, both intrinsic and extraneous. It is the intrinsic culture that binds a language to its people, and that also shows in the ethnicity of the American ethnics. Extraneous culture is largely ephemeral. Hence, the fallacy of substituting culture for an ethnically determined speech community (see chapter on Sapir). Even more important, however, are the corresponding fallacies corrupting the genuine mutual relationships that exist between language, mind, and the historically developed people that gave them birth. Primacy lies with the ethnic process. Ethnic taboos lead to curious evasions and word-play, but occasional "heresies" are encountered. A stimulating discussant at the Conference on Whorf in Chicago in 1953 conducted by Harry Hoijer (the proceedings of which were published and edited by Hoijer in a book called Language in Culture) was Charles F. Hockett, a staunch advocate of ethnography. Stressing language, Hockett declared: Of all the sister-fields. .. close compacted within ethnography, linguistics has without doubt obtained, to date, the clearest methods and the most reliable results. Those who are aware of this fact are by and large hesitant to state it openly, for obvious reasons of professional politeness.... Language is complex enough, but its complexity is as nothing in comparison with that of the whole fabric of a community of which language is but one p a r t . . . (1963). Hockett's "heresies" are too disarming to wish to upbraid him too for his own "professional politeness" in failing to give due recognition to ethnicity in general and the ethnic process in particular. T h e fact remains however that Hockett must have implied by the word, "community", the whole ethnic fabric of the speech community. T h e concept of ethnicity had rarely been so boldly expressed then or since — albeit masked by reasons of "professional politeness". (See also Chapter 9 E.)

CHAPTER 5

Chomsky: the quest for universais

A. UNIVERSALISTIC MOTIVATIONS AND SELF-HATRED In the history of human thought, the eminence on the linguistic horizon of scholars like B. L. Whorf and Noam Chomsky has once again brought to the fore, in a relatively new scientific discipline, the bedevilment with the modern dichotomy of universalism and particularism. This is especially relevant to Chomsky, and it is the point of departure to the discussion in this chapter. That the evolution of language has been the most significant, the most typically human, aspect of the evolution of mind, comes very close to Chomsky's belief that structure of mind determines structure of language. Chomsky arrived at this conclusion from his discovery that certain qualities of language are common to all languages. He is the modern mentalist opponent of Bloomfield. He is also the exact opposite of Whorf, especially in his attitude to the differentiation of language and to the cognitivelinguistic relationship. When Chomsky formulated his hypotheses for a universal grammar based upon language uniformities, he also restored to mind the rightful properties and priorities demolished by the mechanists and the behaviorists. He had thereby reintroduced the legitimacy of innate influences and their effect upon language. Unfortunately, he had also stretched the use of the word "innate" till it lost its original meaning. He had made his point, however, and thus at least partly corrected the balance between heredity and environment. One aspect alone was strictly avoided both by Chomsky and his adversaries, the objective realities of language and ethnic differences. They simply ignored the tacitly accepted and rather pertinent fact that life and culture within an ethnic community are reflected in its language. In his book, Language and Mind, Chomsky completely disregards the very existence of ethnicity and language multiplicity. Himself seemingly unaware of these implications in his remarks, he writes:

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[New perspectives and developments] free the scientific imagination from certain shackles that had become so familiar a part of our intellectual environment as to be almost beyond awareness (1968: 1). His contributions to linguistic theory, in the shadow of his political activism and universalistic " W e l t a n s c h a u u n g " , strongly suggest that his own scientific imagination is also shackled by preconceptions and mental inhibitions which, in his instance, are scarcely unconscious. For this astute spokesman of the far left and outspoken critic of American imperialism, "national conflicts" (Chomsky's term for national struggles) evoked the immediate simplistic remedy of social conflict (revolution). There is much ambiguity about his attitude toward the avalanche of struggles for national liberation that literally bankrupted the visionary ideologies of modern universalism. T h e universalistic notion that ethnic or national heterogeneity would disappear in a socialist society had never had any evidence to support it. H a d then Chomsky all along opposed these poignant quests for freedom? Linguistically, nothing had changed. T h e overemphasis upon the universality of certain language properties had tendentiously overshadowed the enormous language differences. M o r e striking, however, was the surprising evasion of the specific language-speech community situation with its ethnic basis and significant influence upon language structure and mind. Confronted by the phenomenal sweep of the national question, universalists have as a rule tacitly accepted the national state as a pragmatic concession, but without conviction. In rejecting only Jewish national liberation, not surprisingly, universalistic adoption of the A r a b cause was generally led by Jews like Chomsky. Historically, Jews are prone to perversions of their Dispersion mentality. Dispersion has accentuated to an extreme degree the universalistic predilections of such Jews, perhaps an atavism of the Prophetic inheritance. T h e modern Utopian version had, however, been twisted out of character by their crippling of the Jewish contribution. This otherwise inexplicable behavior is the end-result of a frequently pernicious self-hatred and consequent passion to obliterate Jewish existence. T h e y are the conscious catalysts of the normal process of assimilation, themselves merging wherever possible with the dominant population of their foster-country in avid desire for a gentile identity. It is a two-thousand-year-old affliction that has proved portentous in Jewish history. This extraordinary chapter in human relations is practically an unknown book to the world at large (Jessel 1972). This is a singularly cognate feature of Chomsky's intellectual and psychological background. It should come as no surprise that such Jews have demonstratively and relentlessly supported the vindictive appetites of close to twenty Arab states for the annihilation of Israel.

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Lifelong Utopian indoctrination, imbued also with self-hatred toward Jewish national renaissance, is further evidence of the antipathy to ethnic factors in his world view. He was thus admirably equipped for launching into a universalistic linguistic project. It is small wonder that, by his negativism towards language differentiation with its implied ethnic origins, he was preposessed in favor of language uniformities as the basis for his universal grammar. Scarcely scholarly qualifications, equally important has been to point out, however inadequately, Chomsky's ideological and psychological Inhibitions insofar as they tended to minimize the importance of specific language differences. There seems little reason to doubt that such biases and preconceptions must have in no inconsiderable measure motivated his grammatical hypotheses. By and large, the post-Wo rid War I I universalist has, somehow, managed to accommodate his philosophy with the monumental struggles for national freedom. The Utopian Ghomskys want their unbaked pie right now. They are the virtuosos of human brotherhood, not awakened out of vacuous dreams, puritanically recoiling from man's "lapse into barbarism". Some of them, after all, are ethnic, and all are idealistic, descendants of the ancient Prophets. But they had consistently overlooked a significant difference: The ancestral protagonists of the oneness of humanity had possessed a keen, realistic sensibility for the fundamental, ethnic mosaic of human society. B. SIGNIFICANCE OF DIFFERENTIATION The human need for group life had led inevitably to the ethnic environment. A people's mentality, more correctly, the mentalities of representative individuals within their own ethnically developed speech community, is at all times a resultant of all the forces working upon it. The fact of a people dwelling for an effective period of time within a relatively separate set of existential conditions has been of critical and indeed creative importance from its very beginnings. It is in such a setting that cognition and language evolved, thus alone accounting for both ethnic and language diversity. Today, in the form of a socio-political world phenomenon of national liberation, this question had burst, by means of violent births, upon a world badly misled by its intellectual elite. The same failure in scholarly awareness, so disastrously exemplified by the national question, is also to be observed in linguistics. There is an unspoken intimation of something akin to indecency and treading upon forbidden ground about probing into the question of language differences. There is an air of querulous timidity, if not downright rejection, about a

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confrontation with the ethnic process. A veritable horror of such an event seems to pervade the academic atmosphere. O n e will search in vain in book after book on general linguistics or psycholinguistics to discover more than a reference to what is evidently a highly unpleasant visitation upon earth. Sociologists and anthropologists alone have managed to bestow a veiled and superficial ethnological interest in an extraordinary reality so manifestly significant in the development of man's mind, language and society, the taboo on roots and processes of differentiation appears to be effective in this discipline too. H o w environment influences mind is still in the early stages of experimentation. O n the other hand, the presumptive innateness of an ethnic process will have to survive a long speculative evaluation before it attains this level of awareness. As yet, however, both are equally dependent upon a common sense understanding and interpretation. W e have therefore assumed both the obvious character of the environmental influences as well as the validity of the ethnic process. With language differentiation so inescapably and overpoweringly intruding upon linguistic study, it becomes increasingly incredible that students should neglect so eminently relevant a phenomenon. T h e following passage, for instance, describes a language situation which linguists should find challenging: W e find some areas in which a great variety of languages appear to have been spoken within a very small area over a long time; these are often bordered by other areas in which one language has spread at the expense of others (Haugen

1969). A fascinating panorama of human vicissitudes unfolds itself. If w e take the latter picture first, the spread of one language, it is simple to see that this lends itself to such rational explanations as conquest, cultural influences, favorable geographical conditions, trade, and so forth. T h e agent for such living experience is the group, family, tribe, people. T h e vicissitudes inexorably would find their expression through the respective languages. M u c h more intriguing, however, is the great variability of language within a very small area. (See also Fishman 1971: 259-60.) T h e restricted character of the speech community is generally attributable to social and geographical conditions like hostile neighbors, impassable rivers, impenetrable jungles, deserts, marshlands, mountain ranges and so on. Multiplicity of tongues is more difficult to explain. T h e picture clarifies when we reduce our problem to the simple experiences of prehistoric families, gens or tribes, each speaking dialectal variations of the same language. Even a relative measure of separation would then, in the course of time, bring about a distinctiveness of language as well. T h e plot thickens, as, for example, in the Caucasus, where, it is said, languages are unrelated and mutually incomprehensible. In such instances

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too, rational solutions abound: the appearance within the restricted area in the remote past of foreign invaders who settled down among the natives, nomadic families permitted to settle in the neighborhood, captives or slaves that had won their freedom and retained their linguistic identity, and other groups of analogous categories. From there on, every familial group took a natural, ethnic course in the closest historical correlation with its dialect or language and in mutual cross-pollination, but in diverging distinctiveness from its neighbors, primarily linguistic but also cultural. Logically, one should think that such common linguistic situations, languages that have survived long periods of separate development, absorbed enormous wealth of a people's historical experience, and undergone thereby correspondingly portentous structural innovation and change, should arouse a vast curiosity and challenge the keenest minds in cognate disciplines to probe deeply into such a treasure-house of linguistics. The riches each language has incorporated into its structure, and the peculiarities that go with specificity, can scarcely be fully appreciated, so these scholars should surely discover, without an understanding of the ethnic situation too. Vast numbers of years before these events, the speech organs of the hominid had approached a measure of refinement compatible with the requirements of an expanding intellect. At every stage of human development thereafter, the accumulated socio-psychological experience of the individual and his group would tend to crystallize into their typical channels of belief, myth, folk-lore, custom, group relationship, and other ethnic attributes. Out of an acquired territorial background and cultural nutriment, came to be fashioned each native tongue. Instincts, feelings, and emotions came to be expressed in large degree also by means of language. Life in its exogenous form surfaced in the native idiom for both the individual and the group as a whole. Intrinsically too, one must assume, it would leave its indelible impress upon the language's deeper structures. A basic sense of well-being, both personal and ethnic, could be satisfied only through the medium of this incomparable instrument which, unconsciously, had in those formative days grown up literally with its speakers. Without a doubt, lacking language, a human society could scarcely have arisen—nor, lacking society, could a human language. Growing environmental complexity was somehow being reflected in the interaction of mind, language, and community, all sharing an identity of interests. In this inimitable arrangement, the innate processes of mind kept performing and perfecting their pre-equipped functions. How could it all have happened ? It would seem, the first protohuman had, by some sudden critical divergence, a chromosomal change undoubtedly, parted forever from the higher primates whose characteristics he had inherited, and thus

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was launched upon a new evolutionary path, equipped with the potentials of intellect and language. Such logical assumptions, based upon present knowledge, are necessarily self-limited and of general application: one cannot map out the precise course and objective of a presumptive innate process. The genius of language, innate and therefore universal in man, cannot, however, reasonably be extended to include the peculiarities of languages yet to arise under invariably specific historical circumstances. That function is obviously an ethnic prerogative. The potential capacity for language, and this cannot be overstressed, had always operated within the historically restricted territory of the speech community, subject therefore to its specific ethnic influences. It could hardly have been otherwise. It has been the story of the human group from its genesis to the national state. Small wonder Heilbroner can say in our time: . . . . nationalism — surely the single most powerful molding influence on social behavior in our time (1969). Superimposed upon the basic innate language potential, particularistic features appeared in every language that arose in the course of the spread of ethnic populations, rendering their speakers relatively distinctive in mentality and behavior as well as linguistically incomprehensible to others. Ethnic divergence had historically accentuated language divergence too. This could hardly be otherwise. Clearly, language differences and not similarities are the natural results of social evolution, Chomsky's accentuation of similarities notwithstanding. Bloomfield, however, places the emphasis where it properly belongs: It is estimated that, under old conditions, a new political boundary led in less than fifty years to some linguistic difference (1933). And Haugen adds: This process of gradual and unconscious differentiation of language over a period of time is one of the most characteristic features of language. . . (1969). Most modern linguists, like their mechanist and behaviorist predecessors, have confined their scrutinies to strictly limited fields, wholly disregarding the larger perspective of the speech community. It is an inordinately narrow view, distorted all the more by prejudicial preconceptions. The twentieth century has made it abundantly clear that the ethnic speech communities constitute the building blocks of the future foreseeable society. Language, invariably identifying with the struggle for national freedom, points to the interdependence of a language and its people, and hence to inevitable changes in language structure, in concepts and adaptations of mind, and in behavioral attitudes. An incredible amount of linguistic material lies hidden in these historical situations. When it is recalled that until the 16th century most major European languages occupied only a secondary position within their countries, since

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Latin was the universal language of learning, it will be easily grasped how the struggle for recognition of the native language had given an extraordinary fillip, perhaps an essential stimulus, to the national struggles of a later period. The growing standardization, preceded and influenced by great works of literature even during the epoch of Latin hegemony and mounting prestigiously thereafter, was further evidence of a natural ethnolinguistic trend. The particularist approach to the question of language differentiation nevertheless does not dismiss the importance of the linguistic universals. The opposite is true, as a proponent of the positive view of differentiation asserts: T h e question of universals has an important bearing on how people learn languages and transmit their cultural tradition and on how bilinguals behave in situations of language contact ( H a m p 1969).

The crux of the stress is on evaluation of the neglected differentiation, as well as on the overemphasis of the importance of similarities in language. Of critical significance is precisely the tendentious disinterest in investigating the effect upon language of the differentiating forces. It parallels the once popular trend among intellectuals virulently to denounce rising national sentiment as a threat to the coming Messianic age. This antinational philosophy is by no means moribund; though generally dormant, it had experienced an unhealthy revival in New Leftist circles, especially vis-a-vis Israel's fight for survival, Bangladesh, Biafra, and others. Among linguistic scholars, language diversity is recognized, of course, by everyone, if almost always with a symbolic shrug of the shoulders. T o be sure, the basic ethnic diversity is still invisible. It seems to be widely appreciated, however, that languages differ because the people that speak them seem to differ: heaven knows why! The very simplicity of the explanation could trigger a psychic shock to linguists who should lose their blinkers. The relationship plainly suggests a symbiotic evolution and is obvious to the naked eye. Its non-study is evidence enough of a grotesque self-deception.

G. O N

GENETICS

Chomsky's dilemma of escaping from the problem of language differences (alias for ethnic differences, be it remembered), had initially launched him upon his linguistic quest, with the consequent rise of a school of thought known as preformationism — at time of writing, the leading one. In face of the magnitude of diversity, it seemed a hopelessly inconsistent task to seek in it major universal principles acceptable to speakers of most languages, apart from his ideological repugnance to such a course.

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An intense pursuit of the widely accepted genetic basis of language seemed the only alternative. While maintaining a firm belief in a physiological explanation for mental phenomena, Cartesian influences had long predisposed him to such an approach. In fact, at least three influences had determined his decision to devise genetically a universal grammar: We have already disposed far too briefly of his long ingrained universalistic drive. Of primary importance was his philosophical training which had left him with a pronounced interest in Descartes' thinking on innate ideas. But, backed into a corner by the environmental data he had rejected, the most pressing challenge came from the very inadequacy of known similarities among languages, of which alone he had to construct a relatively solid foundation for his schema. Thus armed, he proceeded to include within mind and language the additional innate quality of a common knowledge of basic grammar for children speaking a vast variety of languages. There can be no question of the importance of what Chomsky calls "similarities". But the term is misleading. Language is man. Ignoring the real world of differences, similarities become basic equipment, not entities. Classifying them as formal and substantive universals, among the formals are of course: the general distribution among mankind of the language acquisition itself, not to speak of the entire mechanism of mind; the relatively constant length of time this process takes; and a stage by stage maturation process of learning which seems abundantly confirmed. Very promising are the deeper structures of which more later. Hence, one author concludes: The existence of these and similar universals of language acquisition are cited as conclusive evidence of an important hereditary component in language (Houston 1971).

One must concede what has always been evident or self-evident, and few will doubt that much more may yet be discovered. But, strengthening the case for universals, i.e. innate origin, need convince only those, such as behaviorists, who reject innate ideas. It still does not get to the root of the problem: the environmental influences that, from the first days of man, had led to diversity and helped to shape the organization of language. Confronting Chomsky was the language-specific picture, the peculiar affinity of every language for its ethnic speech community. Both the formal and certainly the substantive universals he and his co-workers have so painstakingly been collecting and discovering fail to account for the specificity which has made every language unique. That specificity is likely to endure for a very long time. No universal can abolish it. There does not seem to be much doubt that Homo sapiens was originally en-

Chomsky: the quest for universals dowed with a language capacity limited to acquisition and development. Heaven knows what evolution has yet in store for us. Constructing language is the function of the ethnic group, in correlation with the ability to adapt to different situations that the mind possesses precisely like any other part of the human body. As a primordial characteristic, the power of adaptation is as much a factor in cerebral activity as, for instance, the reparative powers of the body are a factor in the healing of a wound. Thus, the mind's power of adaptation as an innate quality combines its human properties of language, speech, and intellect with the unique situation of the ethnic group. O u t of such a biological and historical concatenation of circumstances emerges and develops every language. T h e material for this felicitous union is derived from the invariantly exceptional experience of each ethnic speech community. It becomes almost superfluous, at this juncture, to discuss what Chomsky describes as "substantive universals". There is a questionable ambiguity about his reference to them. In phonology, for example, language possesses a pool of distinctive features, phonemes, from which all languages draw. It is widely agreed that it is fixed at a maximum of seventy and a minimum of twenty, a fact that clearly points to their innate character. There is, however, a unique aspect about this innate basis of phonology that Chomsky dismisses as "idiosyncratic" and not pertinent to his "subject matter": in their selections from the common pool no two languages are alike. T h e universality of the pool had evidently blinded him to the particularity of the selection. Chomsky's silence on the likelihood of the ethnic provenance of phonemic selection is most unscholarly. A lukewarm and unconvincing defence is offered in an excellent monograph on Chomsky. N o particular language will necessarily manifest all the elements recognized

as "universal" in the general theory (Lyons 1970: 100). T h a t is poor consolation for a theorist who, if he could, would surely prefer to demonstrate that selection of phonemes too is an innate property of mind. Particularity of the selection is significant. It may throw great light on the ethnic influence of the speech community environment. It could indicate an important environmental factor in the development of the ethnic process. No one knows how the original phonemic selection came about. It is conceivable, however, that modern theories of phonology and learning are of themselves alone of value — but only in a given situation. One could begin with Thorndike's "babble-luck" theory of random sounds luckily reinforced by the already established phonological system (1943).

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Most popular is Roman Jakobson's theory of the infant's random collection of sounds which quickly conforms to the systematized selection of the infant's language group. The child possesses the capacity to learn only the prevailing phonemic selection, gradually abandoning the random babbling (1966). This is a universal situation affecting children of every ethnic group. The ethnic factor is the dominant one. It is impossible, for example, for youngsters dwelling in England to acquire the phonemic pattern of any other language but English. Lyons is on somewhat safer ground when he explains: H e attaches far more importance to the fact (and let us grant provisionally that it is a fact) that different languages make use of the same formal operations in the construction of grammatical sentences. A n d it is upon this kind of similarity between languages . . . that he rests his case for a rationalist philosophy of language (1970: 103). A n d L y o n s concludes: . . . . recent work in the syntactic analysis of a number of languages tends to lend support to the view that the similarities are deeper and the differences more superficial ( 1 9 7 0 : 103).

Overemphasis of the innateness of similarities is a distressing feature of the position taken by Chomsky and his supporters. It is like embarking with Columbus on an expedition to India and discovering America instead. Our linguistic adventurers have embarked on an even more dubious mission: to seek for innate faculties of mind that have no existence whatsoever, and on the road, they keep discovering other only relatively important, innate similarities. Without blinkers, in all likelihood, they might have discovered the correct route, which lies via the highly pertinent reality of diversity to the genuine objective, the process of ethnic differentiation. Intrigued by the child's ability to use creatively the grammatical rules of its native tongue, despite its limited and often distorted environment, Chomsky must have it that it is born with this faculty. But the hiatus in his thinking is unbridgeable. He has only to ask himself two or three simple questions. If children possess a faculty so remarkable, why do they have to acquire different grammars and different vocabularies? Why can't they all speak the identical language? Why do not all, in every country, employ exactly the same phonemes, construct identical types of sentences, and possess the same lexicon and the same type of mentality? What on earth inhibits them from correcting the linguistic chaos in which mankind finds itself? Chomsky's failure to answer such "simple" questions could lead one to believe once more in the biblical tale of a time when all men spoke one tongue, but, because of their sinful vanity, collapsed with their Tower of Babel into linguistic confusion.

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Clearly, Chomsky is indifferent to such questions. He is committed a priori to the search for universals. In ardent pursuit of his Golden Grail, he will not be deflected by the differentiating current of language. Instead, newly discovered universals begin to assume the character of revelatory and esoteric test-tube experiments rather than an aspect of the mind's primordial endowment. Lyons unravels the mystery in a footnote: Chomsky's assumption that certain formal principles of grammar are innate is intended to account for two problems simultaneously: (I) the universality of the principles... and (II) the child's success in constructing the grammar of his language on the basis of the utterances he hears around him. It is the second of these questions that Chomsky regards as the more important ("the language is 're-invented' each time it is learned, and the problem... is h o w . . . ? " ) (1970: 112). Man's ability to learn is, we have agreed, presumptively innate. Language genius equips the child with a capacity ("formal principles") for learning any grammar. Its mind adapts to surrounding sounds. The mind functions through the power of adaptation. Of course, by having abolished environment, the rules of the game preclude Chomsky's conscious use of this power in lieu of failure to extend the functions of its language capacity, since adaptation works only in association with environment. Thus shorn of recourse to the differentiating influence, he is literally forced to find, fashion, or magically conjure up an innate linguistic process of the mind universally bestowing upon the child an inborn knowledge of its own language. At this point, Chomsky's universalistic judgment had quite evidently failed him too. If his mission was to endow mind with new, innate, knowledge-bearing ideas, there loomed a far nobler objective than a propensity for continued differentiation of language. Now that spectacular discoveries of innate ideas were to become the order of the day, why not implant in the little children of the world the inborn knowledge of a universal language? Since, however, it could well be an innate universal, a primordial endowment, why should evolution have concealed it by a differentiating process? This aspect might merit a pause for reflection. But, Chomsky had learned to be more pragmatic than that. The recent elaboration of the deeper structures of language had inspired him with even greater faith in the innate powers of mind.

D. THE CHOMSKY POSITION The taboo of diversity and of the never mentioned ethnic process all but absolute, Chomsky's natural predilection for the uniformities had full sway. Nothing could distract him from this course, and confidence suffused

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him. H e was assured of the dominance of the universals in language, and his grammatical quest rested upon establishing it as the prerogative of mind. As though mind and language alone represent the basis of culture, h e describes: . . . the distinctively human ability to express new thoughts and to understand entirely new expressions of thought within the framework of an "instituted language", a language that is a cultural product subject to laws and principles partially unique to it and partially reflections of general properties of mind. This is, of course, not a true picture of the actual situation. It is a description of the ethnic framework, of the often immeasurable antiquity of a prehistoric h u m a n group that evolved in relative isolation and emerged in some form of ethnic setting. All the rest are the important surrogates that form the mainstay of Chomsky's implacable attitude. His mental outlook is geared against ethnicity in all its manifestations; and in constructing his universal grammar, no one would suspect that the genuine framework is ethnic and not linguistic. Numerous references confirm that this mode of writing is not a matter of literary style. Like all the quotations cited here, the following passage also comes from Chomsky's Language and Mind, which concisely and adequately sums u p his views. H e writes of his intention to: . . . abstract for separate and independent study a cognitive system . . . that interacts with many other factors to determine the kind of behavior that we observe . . . to study the system of linguistic competence that underlies behavior. W h a t are these factors with which the cognitive system interacts? We already know they will rarely if ever include by name the linguistic and ethnic differentiating processes which so profoundly affect mind, language, and behavior. As usual the surrogates operate. T h e appearance of studied design seems curious and even suspect. T o acknowledge the importance of diversity might conceivably reduce the significant of the universals. It could even remind Chomsky of the anemic fate of a once lofty social philosophy once national freedom demanded its priorities. O n the other hand, if innate powers of mind could alone determine the linguistic and cognitive processes, it is diversity that then becomes the illusory, virtually non-existent problem. Universalism thus recoups its sociopolitical losses by a pyrrhic linguistic victory. Without figurative adornment, Chomsky's superficial characterization of the cognitive-linguistic world as a complete entity by-passes, deliberately or not, the profound ramifications of the ethnic process. T h e denigration was too consciously intense to represent a mental conflict. T o be sure, ethnic realities, by the penetrating influences of their very roots and earthiness, kept forcing themselves upon his attention. However, the abstract solution appealed to him primarily in its own idealistic image.

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His own principles were at stake, and much could still be discovered without resort to diversity. Hence, a "distinctively h u m a n ability" was to be the determinant for the universal society, not principles of ethnic origin. T h e mind was to be made to perform tasks it was never intended to perform. Considering the repudiation of the contrasting realities, were we to witness a feat of scientific legerdemain ? It seems to me that the most hopeful approach today is to describe the phenomena of language and of mental activity as accurately as possible, to try to develop an abstract theoretical apparatus that will as far as possible account for these phenomena and reveal the principles of their organization and functioning, without attempting, for the present, to relate postulated mental structures and processes to any physiological mechanisms or to interpret mental function in terms of "physical causes". We can only leave open for the future the question of how these abstract structures and processes are realized or accounted for in some concrete terms, conceivably in terms that are not within the range of physical processes as presently understood — a conclusion that, if correct, should surprise no one. There can be no quarrel with this approach, cited at length since it coincides with that to the analogous concept of the ethnic process. An enormous difference lies between the two, however, in the postulated character of the former, as compared with the realities of the latter. Precisely because he had dismissed the diversities out of hand, to study mind in the abstract " a s accurately as possible", in order to discover a working hypothesis of language and cognition, is a travesty of scholarship. T o expect accuracy in a needlessly created void is unreasonable. Perhaps replying to similar criticism, h e curtly "clarifies" his approach a bit further: In e a c h . . . grammar there are particular idiosyncratic elements, selection of which determines one specific language; and there are general universal elements, conditions on the form and organization of any human language, that form the subject matter for the study of "universal grammar". Concerned exclusively with universals, building all his hopes on them, because they represent the foundations of every language, all others are disparagingly dismissed as idiosyncratic, and subject to selection. Taking the standard definition of "idiosyncrasy" as "constitutional peculiarity", it applies equally to the total phonemic quantity picture as well as to the specific selection; to the lexicon of a specific language as well as to the language capacity of the h u m a n mind. Specific or general, all are idiosyncratic. T h e implied derogation of the specific elements is unmistakable but barbed and injudicious just the same. More intriguing is the nature of selection. Chomsky appears to dispose of it as pertaining to the undesirable "idiosyncratics" as though it were a mechanism of the ethnic process. If so, to discover how selection works should make for exciting research.

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I t would appear as though C h o m s k y was endeavoring to dispose of evolution too. Disposing of idiosyncrasies in typical circumlocutory fashion, ethnicity concealed by a euphemism, he strives to leave the impression of superficiality about such elements. T h e decks are all but cleared for action. Just one dubious point remains. C h o m s k y dissociates himself from the widely accepted v i e w of language as evolving out of animal forms of communication. H e advances the notion of a specifically h u m a n evolution that could not possibly have occurred without tracing two distinctly separate lines of evolution directly from two primordial cells. In the light of scientific convictions that man and ape possess an ape-like ancestor (with the ape's evolution, especially speech, lagging behind in its vocal cord structure and perhaps in the ability to discriminate in complex sounds), Chomsky's notion is manifestly unacceptable. R e l y i n g upon his own sources of information, he proceeds to say: As far as we know, possession of human language is associated with a specific type of mental organization, not simply a higher degree of intelligence. There seems to be no substance to the view that human language is simply a more complex instance of something to be found elsewhere in the animal world. This poses a problem for the biologist, since, if true, it is an example of true "emergence"—-the appearance of a qualitatively different phenomenon at a specific stage of complexity of organization.... And it seems to me that today there is no better or more promising way to explore the essential and distinctive properties of human intelligence than through the detailed investigation of the structure of this unique human possession. T h i s is an extraordinary interdisciplinary interference. H e cannot w a i t for biologists to solve biological problems. H e has discovered, in a " t r u e 'emergence' ", a philosophical approach that boldly challenges the biologist with an epoch-making theory based on a miraculous and utterly unfounded " i f " . Indeed, he is in a genuine hurry since he is escaping from m a n y realities: from his basic bankrupted social universalism, from the national freedom struggle of his own people, and from the dilemmas of differentiation of the ethnic environment. A t the behest alone of N o a m Chomsky, but without the support of the dumfounded biologist, both mind and language have been severed from animal ancestry. M i n d too is n o w unique. H e has banished biology, just as he had banished the ethnic process. T h e y no longer clutter the field of linguistic research. A n d now, the undisputed master, he pontificates further: . . . the theories of philosophical grammar, and the more recent elaboration of these theories, make the assumption that languages will differ very little, despite considerable diversity in superficial realization, when we discover their deeper structures and unearth their fundamental mechanisms and principles.... William von Humboldt . . . is now best remembered for his ideas concerning the variety of languages and the association of diverse language structures with

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divergent "world-views". Nevertheless, [he] held firmly that underlying any human language, we will find a system that is universal, that simply expresses man's unique intellectual attributes. The assumption that "languages will differ very little when we discover their deeper structures . . . " is unquestionably an appealing one. It parallels the more famous Utopian universalist assumption that broke its back on the national question. Many now realize it was not universalism that failed but the fanatical dogmatism that could not recognize the essential justice of national freedom as a prerequisite to universalism. Precisely the same realization will some day hold true for language unity. The manifold expressions of language and of ethnic groups are no bar to a universal society; they can coexist, and undoubtedly will, in perfect harmony. Similarly, deeper structures may merely show the universal basis of primitive language and thus complement the ethnic factor.

E. ON EVOLUTION Nor need Chomsky have dispensed with the biologist. He could still have made ample use of the latter's professional media, nature's mutational adaptations. A "qualitatively different" mutation, perhaps a cataclysmically stimulated mutation of the category that has been persistently advanced by Immanuel Velikovsky (1955), could indeed have produced that "specific type of mental organization" envisioned by Chomsky. Nonetheless, the proto-human individual that had experienced so "revolutionary" a mutation was still inevitably following the Darwinian line of unitary descent. The animal ancestry of man remains intact, recognizable in the recapitulative history of human embryonic development, more especially in the Old (Limbic) Brain. It is not easy to understand how, without a preparatory animal phase of evolution, the human brain could have evolved in its present form at all, nor, in fact, language without prior organizational and even behavioral development. Even apes possess vocal cords though they cannot speak. It is hard to believe that any mutation operates in a vacuum, that is to say, by means of spontaneous creation of new genes. Chomsky's views on the evolution of human language seem inconsistent with evolutionary opinions generally upheld by the most authoritative spokesmen. There is clear reluctance on his part to impute animal origin to language, a proneness to attribute this faculty to a Homo sapiens that is apparently also not derived from an animal past. A fogginess of expression is evident, and it could be either by carelessness or oversight. If we are to talk of a "qualitatively different" mutation, the creation of new

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genes would be indeed a revolutionary departure from the customary understanding of mutations. Such qualitative changes can therefore occur only in existing genes. On the other hand, if the presence of the language capacity calls for a revolutionary development that is totally divorced from animal origins on the part of our human forerunners, neither then ought the revolutionary genius of tool-making be traceable to a proto-human stage dangerously close to the unmistakable animal. Unfortunately for this line of reasoning, archeological findings show a growing number of intermediary levels (Hawkes 1963). Intellectual development, affecting tool-making and language alike, is further suggested by the embryonic evolution of the human brain. Notwithstanding Chomsky's importunate demands for more precise proofs that he specifically makes on Karl Popper, the arguments for rational assumptions of the animal origins of language rest on increasingly firmer ground from day to day. The failure to discover the "missing link", which alone perturbs the metaphysical theoretician of a universal grammar, may betray his eminently scientific impatience, paralleling the anti-Darwinism in an obscurantist defence of Deism a century or so ago, as well as the more recent Scopes trial. Chomsky cannot abolish biological evolution by fiat despite its many unknowns. No expression of the modern attitude to evolution can improve on the following passage from Jacquetta Hawkes's book on Pre-history: Whatever view one takes of the means and meaning of evolution, it must now be impossible to doubt that it took place. It is still possible to doubt the orthodox view that the sole agency of change and development in life was natural selection working together with sudden spurts, or mutations in the organisms; it is possible to believe that these factors only affected the fringes of some process too tremendous for us, its mere products, to comprehend. It may be, too, that the nature of the "time" in which the process took place is something equally beyond our full comprehension. But the fact that the human stock grew from a creature that walked upright and was ancestral to ourselves and the great apes cannot be denied.... From there it is no more than a mental stone's throw back by way of the amphibians and fishes to life itself generating between Sun and Earth. What it will prove most important to remember is that our species did not only inherit from the past its bodily equipment, dominated by its subtly elaborated brain, but also highly charged emotional centres and all the strange ancient furniture of the unconscious mind . . . (including) the social heritage of family affection and group loyalty. Today some of us believe (while others do not — JH) that among the most elusive and yet the most precious heirlooms of all were shadowy, deep-seated memories of the experience of the evolving animal line during the vast stretches of its history, memories which enrich and unite modem men by throwing up from the unconscious the images and ideas that inspire our arts and help to make them universally evocative (1963: 46-47). In accordance with the main scientific opinion, Jacquetta Hawkes main-

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tains that functional advance precedes the multiplication of brain cells, and the latter to further functional advance: " I t is the brain power that is lacking." There is always the possibility of initial mutational stimulation, to be followed by corresponding advance in function and intelligence. Evolution of a species might even reach a dead end when its line remains unaffected for lack of genetic change. Extinction of one species is unlikely to be followed by a new species, indeed, since the end of the Ice Age, evolution of a new species is practically unheard of. After de Vries' discovery of mutations, it was clear that they appear within a species and do not lead to a new one. A rapid series of them in the genes for brain growth and intelligence might perhaps thus explain the " j u m p " between animal and man. Our views of natural selection have also changed since Darwin. No longer is it uniformly regarded as the chief underpinning of evolution. Velikovsky goes as far back as V . L. Kellogg to substantiate this change. The fair truth is that the Darwinian selection theories with regard to their claimed capacity to be an independently sufficient mechanical explanation of descent, stand today seriously discredited in the biological world. On the other hand, it is also fair truth to say that no replacing hypothesis or theory of species forming has been offered by the opponents of selection which has met with general or even considerable acceptance by naturalists. Mutations seem too few and far between . . . (Kellogg 1907). Generally speaking, that is more or less the situation today. It could be, perhaps, the body's power of adaptation that is the operating factor. Unless adaptation fits a new line of development that new line will be incapable of survival. Adaptation, however, is only one facet of natural selection. Survival of the fittest is evidently a sine qua non. Although a basic arm of natural selection, it still does not reveal the real secret of evolution. As commonly employed today, the concept of natural selection of Darwinian fame is represented chiefly in the form of survival of the fittest, along with the body's power of adaptation. Thus, the unfit ultimately become extinct. Or a new line is taken. What has captured the imagination of some modern students of biology is the Garstand hypothesis of half a century ago, the so-called " f e t a l " view. According to this hypothesis, evolution continues on by retreating from the adult stage of development in order to make fresh start from the embryonic form. Thus evolution advances in zig-zag fashion, perhaps in consequence of an initial stimulation (Garstand 1922). Nevertheless, it must still be conceded that no hypothesis, however ingenious, is likely to dispel Chomsky's metaphysical doubts any more than Darwin had been able to satisfy his clerical opposition. Chomsky is adamant in demanding scientific proof that is not yet forthcoming while he, himself, self-righteously indulges in specious theorizing.

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Although the genesis of spoken language is shrouded in obscurity, still it is part and parcel of evolution and its laws. If man is of animal origin so is his language capacity. Homo sapiens had escaped from the blind alley of the apes and the earliest pithecanthropes by acquiring the capacity for language and the invention of tools, as result, in all probability, of his greater capacity for social grouping as well. Such indications of growing intelligence help explain his branching out onto a higher hominoid plane. Neanderthal man may have been one of many varieties of early man to have been left behind in the struggle for survival of the fittest. Man's blunders on the way to speech vanished with his hominid predecessors. Linguistic ineptitude alone could account for their extinction. So must man and his language have emerged after eons of a succession of dead-ends and extinction of many species, leaving him the contemporary of all other species of animal life that managed to survive. Even if the theory of the origin of speech from gestures is not accepted, the sequence of development from free babbling through holophrases to increasingly exact word sounds must be somewhere near the truth (Hawkes 1963: 171). We are closer to home in the study of child speech but still not certain of our steps. Retracing man's language development to the animal phase is beset with vaster obstacles. As with the child, however, absence of precise knowledge fails to conceal the presence of the evolutionary factor carried by the gene. Succeeding animal forms had paved the path of evolution, and are writ large in the human embryo. It is not unreasonable to conjecture that their modes of communication must have followed a corresponding path, as witnessed in the human infant. In Hawkes's words: Just as the foetus recapitulates some of the steps of our bodily evolution so each baby generation repeats the steps by which its remote ancestors gradually won the power of speech in a hitherto wordless planet (p. 172). Notwithstanding the evolutionary road early language may well have taken, Chomsky's aversions to a logical approach are obvious: on one hand, to studies of language and ethnic differentiation; on the other hand, to the concept of the animal origin of human speech. He has taken full advantage of the still elusive link between animal and human modes of communication while his own scientific posture is open to question, and his challenge to the evolution of speech is less than persuasive. No one has ever objected to intensive investigations of the deeper structures, mechanisms, and principles involved in language. T o object would be irrational. It is just as irrational to impose a taboo upon the ethnic process, or upon biology; indeed, upon any study that threatens to interfere with Chomsky's "squatters' rights". As to the "deep structures" of language, which may be compared with Whorf's "interverbal" features and "rapport", they tend to revive the

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hope of many that greater potentials might yet be discovered in man s primordial endowment; like the mind itself, they too seem to offer a reasonable portal of entry in quest of this objective. Interverbal and deep structures are in all probability identical. These differing thought processes lead, however, in two separate but by no means conflicting directions. Whorf's concept of widely different languages and cultures that are reflected in correspondingly different world views is a rational interpretation of a factual situation. Quite inadvertently, it would appear (for he was in all likelihood motivated by the current universalistic ideology), it bears a striking resemblance to the concept of an ethnic setting. Chomsky, on the other hand, has indeed brought to light an ancient universal that inspires him to hope it could prove to be a foundation for his universal grammar. More realistically, however, the deep structures suggest the ur-language(s) of early man or his prototypes in the simplest stages of evolution. One might think, from a research standpoint, that would seem to indicate a more productive direction to follow. The term, "deep structures", casts attention upon the enormous superstructure that constitutes the "surface" aspect of every language spoken today, and accounts for the extraordinary diversity. Along which direction, then, should one logically look for the natural, evolutionary linguistic development, the surface aspects or the deep structures? Like archeology, the deep structures can scarcely be regarded as guides to modern linguistic know-how, as retaining secrets for the reconstruction of a new universal language that will come naturally to every child. Of paramount importance, nevertheless, would be a deeper knowledge of the origins of language. At the very least, Chomsky's renewed emphasis upon the deep structures should sharpen the impetus for profounder study into the roots of modern tongues, those now lost in a dim antiquity and seemingly irretrievable. Thus, Chomsky's quest for universals is actually not in vain, although the deep structures were really an incidental discovery. He had set out for India and reached America instead. But the resulting experience does suggest a more thriving scholarly temperament when ideology is not permitted to impede linguistic research. It is substantially clear, in Chomsky's case, that ideological bias was to a considerable extent responsible for bypassing so eminently salient a problem as the universal differentiation of languages, peoples and territories with their equally universal ethnic overtones. It ought to be clear that whatever knowledge is acquired through an accumulation of universals cannot, though it might supplement, displace that gained from the evolutionary aspects of ethnic development, a

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development that has inevitably been fundamental to human society from the beginnings and throughout the vast period of man's social growth that has followed. Whatever epistemological progress serving the universalist "cause" in language is derived from a study of the deep structures would be still better served in any event by integration with knowledge stemming from other sources, even from the evolution of social and linguistic differentiation. Nor is the evaluation of an ethnic approach to language, mind, and behavior less valid than an abstract study of cognition and language. Wishful thinking is no substitute for secure foundations. Chomsky's attitudes are at fault. In the quest for a theory of language, it is impossible to ignore such challenging questions as the rise of speech communities, the diversity of mankind both genetically and environmentally, or the origins of ethnicity.

F. INNATE IDEAS We come now to Chomsky's boldest postulate, the possibility of expanding the scope of mind by constructing, out of sensory data, new innate structures. In Chomsky's own words: Insofar as we have tentative first approximation to a generative grammar for some language, we can for the first time formulate in a useful way the problem of the origin of knowledge. In other words, we can ask the question, what initial structure must be attributed to the mind that enables it to construct such a grammar from the data of sense? . . . Some of the empirical conditions that must be met by any such assumption about innate structure are moderately clear. Thus, it appears to be a species-specific capacity that is essentially independent of intelligence.... Biology and the ethnic environment abolished, the mind was to be empowered with new innate ideas possessing the faculty of supplementing the universals of language, as he required them, for his grammar. Evidently, a mechanism of mind would be responsible for this new innate faculty, and the material for this conversion was to come from sense data. Undeniably, it is a brilliant hypothesis. Owing to certain stumbling blocks it had been inconceivable to anyone before. Given the absence, for one reason or another, of any other source more rational or realistic, an hypothesis such as Chomsky's is a key that opens up a wondrous perspective. Its very genius almost justifies the arrogance of the initial approach. The legitimacy of the hypothesis in its own right is unquestioned, and the subsequent follow-up is vindicated by the breathtaking character of its ingenious simplicity. Moreover, the irrationality of this fantastic project presents no obstacle

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by virtue of the suspension, for the time being, of any deference to physiological explication. Chomsky had already warned of the absence of basic physical and physiological knowledge for most mental activity. O n mind research we are still at the speculative and empirical stage. There was thus no need for him to experience qualms of scholarly conscience in this respect, and he could pursue his idealistic investigations to his heart's content. T h e scholarly habit, however, that inner drive toward logical thinking and to convince by logical argument, may prove to be his fatal weakness. In fact, it could, for this reason, even jeopardise his grammar. It is in this sphere, all things considered, that he leaves himself most vulnerable. It is important, first of all, to amplify the matter of the " d a t a of sense". Their implications could be significant if not portentous. This sensory material is derived from experience in the external world and enters the mind through diverse channels. What is of special interest is the experience whose provenance is the external environment. It can, in fact, come from no other source. En passant, mention should be made of a variety of data other than sense, about which we know nothing and can only conjecture, but of which one ought to be cognizant. Such are the data from the germ-cell which, it is subsumed, has been furnishing the mind all along, supplying the intrinsic material for all its internal mechanisms and faculties and principles of development. No doubt, it is upon the presumptive existence of such innate endowment that educators eternally hope for expansion of, and strive to stimulate, all the potentials of the human mind. It is upon this as yet unproved basis that intelligent people rest their convictions that mankind has not fully exhausted the possibilities of the human mind. It is a constructive and even stirring hope that advancement of knowledge of the human learning process will further elucidate and utilize the inner resources that man hopefully possesses. From this digression, we return to the sense data furnished by experience in the outside world. Whilst Chomsky had, for all practical purposes, eschewed these surroundings, nonetheless, he has never ceased to assume they were constantly there. Whether it was for physical reassurance like feeling for your chair, or whether he had an unconscious need to bolster his hypothesis is perhaps irrelevant. They were fortunately there, and there the individual gains his experience. All data that reach the mind consist of impressions, perceptual, linguistic, and directly sensory, drawn from experience within an extraordinarily variegated ethnic society. If much of these data was ultimately to be converted into new "innate ideas", how was the master mind to exercise its discriminatory powers over data whose ethnicity it is not aware of? (For, as far as Chomsky permits us to know, there is no

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ethnic society in the external environment; and even the environment is only assumed from the context.) How, indeed, can one discuss experience at all without knowledge of the nature of the external world? If experience comes from psychological stimuli emanating from an external source, then the immediate external source, at least in childhood, is the ethnic environment. T h e human mind, we needs must be oft reminded, has always operated within the group. Without the ethnic process, it seems impossible for the genetic potential of language to have gotten off the ground. Therefore mind cannot be expected at any time to function independently of the group. By eliminating the group from his hypothesis, Chomsky thereby threatens to abort the innate ideas he intends the mind to construct. One would think that his wilful methodology has proved to be rather contradictory. Mind and ethnicity (the hackneyed dichotomy of heredity and environment) possess their respective functions and are not necessarily in conflict. But, impelled by his own preconceptions, Chomsky endeavors to attribute to mind qualities just as likely to come from the ethnic society in which the individual moves. For either source, the utilized experience is identical. But the universals discoverable in the deeper structures of language are presumed to reflect the dictates of mind alone. That is an unwarranted conclusion in light of the mind's dependence upon experience. Under the circumstances, and regardless of intrinsic findings, one expects too much of language and mind to establish themselves as entities independent of the ethnic environment. Group awareness has been an inalienable constituent of mind since life began, and upon a trait so fundamental, Chomsky's whimsical crotchets can therefore make no dint at all. One can sympathize only with an understandable passion for latitude, which can and ought to be tolerantly indulged. Chomsky is fortunately undeterred by conflict with reality and well protected by blinkers against the disconcerting glare of realism. Thus, he returns unfailingly to his grindstone. Whatever defects he presently discovers in a universal grammar lie: . . . in the failure to recognize the abstract nature of linguistic structure and to impose sufficiently strong and restrictive conditions on the form of any human language. And a characteristic feature of current work in linguistics is its concern for linguistic universals. .. . While this is a justifiable tribute which Chomsky pays to his own emphasis upon the abstract, which has won many supporters, the current concern in linguistic universals does not meet with general acceptance. The reason for this is not because of the exclusion of group relationship to language and cognition, and of the whole question of diversity. This is a domain, perhaps no less foreign to Chomsky's opponents than it is to Chomsky himself. Their quarrel is with his concept of the innate structure of mind. No one, however, would object to the statement that;

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There is nothing incomprehensible in the view that stimulation provides the occasion for the mind to apply certain innate interpretive principles, certain concepts that proceed from "the power of understanding" itself, from the faculty of thinking, rather than from external objects directly. T h e ability to apply certain innate interpretive principles is the natural prerogative of mind, a faculty inherited like all other traits of mind. But an entirely different view is imparted when, to illustrate his meaning, he cites the following quotation from Descartes: "When we see a triangle figure depicted on paper, this figure cannot show us how a real triangle ought to be conceived in the way geometricians consider it, because the true triangle is contained in this figure, just as the statue of Mercury is contained in a rough block of wood. But because we already possess within us the idea of a true triangle, and it can be more easily conceived by our mind than the more complex figure of the triangle drawn on paper, we, therefore, when we see the composite figure apprehend not itself, but rather the authentic triangle." Is Descartes' meaning clear? T h e idea of the triangle had, of course, been originally introduced by means of sense experience into our mind, and after passing through the cognitive mechanism, the idea is conceived as a concept. It becomes, if you like, a " p u r i f i e d " idea. It is, of course, not an innate idea. Every external impression is thus subjected to the mind's discriminatory powers, to emerge as a concept. T h a t is one of the natural capacities of mind, a capacity inherited and perhaps perfected eons ago. T h e capacity is innate, but not the " p u r i f i e d " sense impression, the concept. But, to the astonishment of many, Chomsky says of this view—not so! In this sense, the idea of a triangle is innate. Surely the notion is comprehensible. One could not disagree with him more. Y e t Chomsky is right. He understood Descartes correctly. Of course, Descartes did not mean what we have arbitrarily attributed to him. T h a t is the effect of 20th century conditioning in evolution. When Descartes wrote: " W e already possess within us the idea of a true triangle", that was his precise meaning. He believed literally it was an innate idea. Just as literally, Chomsky shared this simple assumption. Once again, one could not disagree with him more. Chomsky's reclamation of a 17th century concept scarcely satisfies most 20th century minds. T o the modern mind, the concept of the innate idea of a triangle or anything else, a wheel, a fire, an aeroplane, or a grammar, is not only incomprehensible; it is prima facie absurd. For anyone intellectually aware of the fundamental significance of evolution, even the transformation of sensory experience into innate ideas —cultural Lamarckianism as a biological influence—requires evidence presently unavailable. Hence the constant need for re-assertion of the evolutionary aspect, especially in relation to experience.

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From this viewpoint, the irrational introduction into the mind of spuriously spontaneous ideas, which are arbitrarily designated as innate, has not even the faintest semblance of an evolutionary event. Had Chomsky declared a moratorium on scientific thought ? Innate ideas must be genetic ideas, inherited from the past and transmissible to subsequent generations by means of the germ-cell. Descartes' and Chomsky's "innate idea" is nothing more than a concept acquired through the process of learning. Announcing with considerable acerbity a similar disagreement with an essay written by Nelson Goodman, a contemporary American philosopher, Chomsky observes: Thus, he appears to be willing, in this article, to accept the view that in some sense the mature mind contains ideas; it is obviously not "incomprehensible". . . . Some of these ideas are "implanted in the mind as original equipment", to use his phraseology. Perhaps Goodman's infelicitous phraseology might lend itself to misinterpretation, and Chomsky has taken due advantage. Another interpretation is possible. Ideas "implanted" in the mind from the environment by means of sense impressions cannot become "original equipment". Original equipment is inherited. Ideas that come from experience through sensory channels leading to the mind are still "foreigners". T h e y are not " n a t i v e " to mind. T o become "native", "original equipment", and thus genuinely innate, requires a long evolutionary process through generations of identical experience, and always within the mechanisms of mind. T h e idea that comes from the experience of the group undoubtedly passes rigid, intrinsic mental "inspection", but it remains an idea born of experience. Only in an indefinite, generational future, could it evolve into an innate idea, provided the vagaries of natural selection enabled that conclusion to come to pass. T h a t could be the ultimate fate of any useful idea "implanted" in the mind from the outside. Man's evolution, starting with the first hominoid, is likely infinitesimal compared with his animal forerunners. His genetic inheritance thus has an immense animal development behind it. T h e specifically human factors too, reason and language, have their origins in this development. Hence, the brief exposure to historical experience has probably no material relationship as yet to the evolutionary scale of time, and can scarcely have added to his original endowment. How then could a mere life-time or less contribute to that heritage ? While known mutational effects of enormously high temperatures, excessive radiation, and tremendous chemical activity might interrupt the slower course of natural selection, it is inconceivable they would cross man's path except over vast eons of evolutionary time. David Ausubel quotes David and Synder (1951):

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Thus, despite the vast changes that have occurred in man's behavior and cultural level since the emergence of Homo sapiens a quarter to half a million years ago, "it is hardly probable either on theoretic grounds or on the basis of inferences from human history and archeology that the biologic basis of abilities or behavioral potentialities has appreciably changed during this period" (Ausubel 1971). O f course, the genetic equipment man has acquired from his animal ancestors is itself remarkable, and his intellectual achievements may therefore be entirely attributed to the continuous expansion of the original capacity. Man's intellectual powers, however, cannot be expected to perform tasks for which they had never been equipped in the first place. Hence, Chomsky will continue to remain incomprehensible as long as he fails to go to the germ-cell alone for innate ideas. Instead, enmeshed in his fallacies, he becomes more deeply involved, this time with John Locke, whose position on Descartes he attacks. He quotes from A. C. Fraser in the latter's edition of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1894, in order to support his argument with Goodman. Descartes's position is one "Which Locke's argument always failed to reach. . . . Locke assails [the hypothesis of innate ideas]... in its crudest form, in which it is countenanced by an eminent advocate." Goodman is free to use the term "innate idea" in conformity with Locke's misrepresentation of the doctrine if he wishes, but not to charge "sophistry" as he does, when others examine and develop rationalist doctrine in the form in which it was actually presented ( — note, p. 86). Chomsky is manifestly weak. He does not seek support for his own definition of "innate ideas" from modern authoritative biological sources: such evidence he has already barred. Descartes' philosophical views serve him better; the true triangle is an innate idea. For the same reason, he prefers to accept the opinion that Locke's view of Descartes is a "misrepresentation". Finally, both his conscience and his preconceptions are put at ease by Fraser's rather bombastic pronouncements. W h y this abject dependence upon Descartes and his advocates? A distorted doctrine of innateness is at stake, upon which Chomsky relies for the acceptance of his universal grammar. Evidently, at all costs, all critics must be stunned into silence. In the revived doctrine of "innate idea" as an incomprehensible, inexplicable, indeed miraculous, intervention into the workings of the mind, one is confronted with obscurantist dogma regardless of the eminence of its advocates. In this way, every idea may become "innate". All lexicological distinctions are removed and meaning is distorted beyond recognition. If eminent advocates had for some reason employed the term "innate" erroneously, its dubious meaning would long ago have been clarified. But they were true believers and Locke had challenged their

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belief. Today, they include Chomsky and his followers who, in their turn, have encountered a universal challenge. It appears that not Locke had misrepresented but their modern successors with Chomsky at their head. Granting the experiential derivation of most ideas if not all, there can be no rational explanation of innate ideas as other than as genetic values or as essential instruments arising out of other components of germ plasm. Thus we account for Homo sapiens. But, even with Chomsky's non-biological approach such a conclusion should properly be unacceptable to him. Disregarding a possible questioning of man's animal origin, this view still obliges him to invoke anachronistic inheritance factors inconsistent with man's mental development, and therefore inconsistent with improvisation of new "innate ideas", at Chomsky's will. Apparently, he had given no thought to a new genetics he had inadvertently created: a genetic history of ideas. Within the germ cell, it is generally accepted, reside both genes and plasma. Genes embody all the characteristic features of the individual of the species. The plasma and its contents probably transmit to future generations all the evolved memories, principles, mechanisms, faculties, and enabling essentials of the living organism among them such intrinsic forces as growth, nutrition, adaptation and so forth, that are activated by catalytic agents like enzymes, hormones, etc. That these operative instrumentalities are distinct from their specific physical and mental end-products should go without saying. Genes and germ plasma do not carry ideas or any other end-products and functional sequences of development, just as they do not carry limbs and brains. They are the source material for every trait and every organ. The material inherent in them is solely the exquisitely pre-determined blue-prints and specifications that provide the life forces for every ultimate form of development, a process we have been calling evolution. Ideas are functional results like walking or like language and speech. They could not be innate for they could appear only in consequence of interactions between an equipped brain and the external environment, precisely as do language and speech. In order to achieve these effects, a mechanism for understanding and thinking had to evolve within the brain out of the germinal endowment, a mechanism we know as mind and whose extraordinary, specifically human, genius we call cognition. Chomsky offers no explication for identifying the innate material of the germ cell, constituting the entire provenance of the human species, with a sequence of organic-environmental interaction, the idea. Innate ideas are events unaccountable by logical and rational thought. Only ideas exist, ineluctably contemporaneous or historical, the fruit of experience and learning alone. Just like Chomsky's virginal ideas mysteriously implanted

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into the mind, they possess no ancestral heritage retraceable through the germ cell to ancient origins. Contrary to Chomsky's apparent view, it would contravene natural law for the innate interpretative principles he invokes to transmute any ideas into innate ones. That is the function of equally inherent powers of adaptation that enable the mind to interact with external influences. The interpretive principle is probably an area of percipience, understanding and judgment, hence more properly equipped to adapt every type of external data into ideas, by means of thought and language. But, as contemporaneous stimuli from the outside world, they would lack the essential survival quality for genetic transmission, and hence be not likely to be selected during the course of the evolutionary process. How else could they ultimately be included in the genetic history of the individual? Unfortunately, Chomsky is impaled upon the horns of his dilemma. The abstract speculation he had unwisely adopted as his method of approach for the discovery of universals had led him up a blind alley. It had been a calculated attempt to evade language as a starting point, naturally also evading thereby the fundamental ethnic differentiation. However reluctantly, he will be impelled to follow his blind alley back to linguistic reality. But, reality is what Chomsky has consistently refused to face. As generally understood, true innate ideas would have an infinitely longer and more adventurous lineage than the ideas of experience, since they would evolve through untold generations of natural selection. This common understanding is utterly at variance with Chomsky's postulate of the all but spontaneous, virgin birth of contemporary concepts in the individual's mind. Only two or three pages before, he had referred to the mind's application of "certain innate interpretive principles". Such a discriminating function of mind is an eminently reasonable concept. But who could suspect they were to be applied for the feat of prestidigitation into "innate ideas"? Sad to say, Chomsky's "interpretive principles" interpret fallaciously; nor could they possess a discriminating function if they could not distinguish sense data from evolutionary data. Chomsky's contemporary ideas, though he may inauthentically call them "innate", are still manufactured on the spot. His devices notwithstanding, they remain absurd fancies, under the guise of a somewhat bewildering pseudo-scientific flourish. T o reiterate: an idea, concept, principle, mechanism that is innate must possess the capacity for genetic transmission through the germ-cell. No perceptual, linguistic or any sense data can become organic, innate constituents of the germ-cell, without evolutionary adaptation over a long, generational time. They may be compared with food that enters the

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digestive tract. What the body requires, it will absorb, to be adapted then and there by the body's physiological mechanisms for the body's uses. Ultimately, after passing through the generational sieve, the body or its innate mechanisms may appear in the germ cell with new innate attributes that may not be recognizable as such unless grosser manifestations or changes of an appreciable character appear, usually useful or adaptable to the body's needs. T h e absorbed food has served the body's functions alone; never can it be transformed into an innate, transmissible value. Descartes' triangular figure cannot become an organic constituent of the germ-cell, until it has proved, after a long period of natural selection, its acceptability for the human organism. When that time comes, every infant from that stock will be born with a knowledge of a triangle without learning about it; it could even draw one upon request perhaps from the day he is born, provided, of course, he had simultaneously acquired the knowledge of drawing and of responding to a request. It would then be as innate to him as suckling at the breast. Till that time comes, the "innateness" of the triangle dies with the body. Compounding confusion, Chomsky now proceeds to conjure up an "innate representation" of his universal grammar. He hazards a "reasonable guess" that the construction of such a grammar would be an important contribution to human psychology. He even hopes that the innateness of mind will provide the solution to the unmentionable problem of language diversity (ethnic diversity, of course, still more unmentionable). Suppose that we assign to the mind, as an innate property, the general theory of language that we have called "universal grammar"? [Or, as he puts it elsewhere:] The schema of universal grammar must, I believe, [be assigned to] the mind as an innate character. H e asks himself the question: are the properties of the "language f a c u l t y " common to all languages? There seems to be a tendency to departmentalize the mind so that it is to be capable of responding also to the dynamics of the specific language. If we correctly interpret Chomsky, we are impelled to infer a sort of sub-faculty of mind for every language, a most ingenious idea which, unfortunately, he does not spell out. He admits, however, no one can be sure either way. He therefore imposes at least two tasks upon the psycholinguist: [to] discover the innate schema t h a t . . . defines the "essence" of human language . . . [to make] a detailed study of the actual character of stimulation and the organism-environment interaction that sets the innate cognition mechanisms into operation. Chomsky puts forth a formidable list of such objectives, depending on the progress of learning theory. Most intelligent people, we have repeatedly said, are inclined to believe in the untapped powers of the human mind (quite apart from Chomsky's supplementations), as well as in its genetic

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endowment with a capacity for infinite unfolding of the human intellect. There is, to be sure, theoretically, always the possibility of a biological blind alley evolution, much as has been commonly encountered among animals. Chomsky's postulate of "innate ideas" would, of course, obviate that possibility. On the other hand, however, while a psycholinguist's concern with mind is understandable, one is non-plussed by two strange aspects. First, the unexpected mention of an "organism-environment interaction"; second, the element of incongruity attached to such an interaction in relation to the priority and obvious dominance of Chomsky's innate determinism. Much to the point is the relative meaninglessness of a sudden reference to environmental influence in the total absence of corresponding environmental research. When psychologists choose, instead, to tread where biologists and neurologists " f e a r " to go, grasping at visionary goals out of prejudice against the real, one may well wonder why they strangely retreat in dread or horror from data at hand in the kaleidoscopic panorama of language and speech community. As an apparent afterthought, it is preposterous to inaugurate what could almost be the grotesque theory of a multilinguistically adapted mind, on the inauthentic assumption, of course, that it is innate. Operating within an undescribed group, presumably the new "innate" ideas would constitute a specific department, or sub-faculty of mind, responsible for language and behavior. If this were indeed the mind that Chomsky projects, it should eliminate the need for any other explanation of differentiation. In fact, as Chomsky waxes enthusiastical on the mind's potential: The empirical study of linguistic universals had led to the formulation of highly restrictive and, I believe, quite plausible hypotheses concerning the possible variety of human languages...

Except for his blindness to the ineptitude of his argument in favor of "innate ideas", it must be granted that Chomsky has sought throughout to maintain a position of plausibility. In his view, plausibility is ample justification for his hypotheses. In their respective disciplines, many scholars have taken issue with the reliability of his stance. Notably, on the question of variety of languages, interpretations of mind bordering perilously on the metaphysical are, because of their alleged plausibility, greatly preferred by Chomsky to investigating the (unrecognized) ethnic process and its resultant diversities of languages and peoples. The motivation for this preference ostensibly still remains a mystery for most people. One is troubled by the unclarity Chomsky has introduced in the distinction between his concept of "innate ideas" and the generally accepted concept of the innate mind. An incautious reader of Language and Mind could be unaware that the mind contemplating the tasks and objectives

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Chomsky has set for it is no longer the traditional mind that stems indubitably and in its entirety from the germ-cell. It is a " b e t t e r " - e q u i p p e d mind, bristling w i t h " i n n a t e i d e a s " of experiential origin that have been thoroughly integrated into the native, inborn mechanism. It has a new capacity n o w for widely expanded functions. A b o v e all, it is to be far more discriminating about language than it had ever been before. It w o u l d display a talent not only for far more linguistic universals than heretofore, but presumably for linguistic differences too. Its genuine universality would thus be demonstrated in both a positive and a negative sense. A mind apparently so multilinguistically organized should be capable of establishing ever higher levels of universality of language and society, dispensing, no doubt, w i t h the need to dwell on particularistic, presumably divisive, aspects of environment such as languages and peoples.

G. MIND AND ETHNICITY B y means of his bold hypothesis, C h o m s k y hoped at long last to obliterate an obnoxious universalistic nightmare in the linguistic field, an exhaustive study of the ethnic process in relation to language and mind. Answers to linguistic and cognitive questions were now to come f r o m mind alone. A more realistic, and hopefully more rational, understanding of differentiation has been proposed in the foregoing pages. T h i s will now be reviewed. O n e could not do better than begin with C h o m s k y in a more rational frame of mind. It seems that most complex organisms have highly specific forms of sensory and perceptual organization that are associated with the Umwelt and the manner of life of the organism. There is little reason to doubt that what is true of lower organisms is true of humans as well. Particularly in the case of languages, it is natural to expect a close relation between innate properties of the mind and features of linguistic structure; for language, after all, has no existence apart from its mental representation. Whatever properties it has must be those that are given to it by the innate mental processes of the organism that has invented it and that invents it anew with each generation, along with whatever properties are associated with the conditions of its use. O n the whole, this is a plausible statement. But one finds here views that conflict with w h a t he had written a f e w pages back. O n page 136, w e had cited. " T h e r e seems to be no substance to the view that h u m a n language is simply a more complex instance of something to be found elsewhere in the animal w o r l d . " T h a t seems to clash w i t h the classical position of the second sentence in the above citation along with its supporting argument; Chomsky has obviously resurrected it. W h i c h is his true position is difficult to say. A s for the ethnic environment, it is only ambiguously intimated, in

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accordance with his studied and customary practice. Thus, it is never clearly delineated and never permitted to detract from the mind's primary significance. In this manner, a dutiful obeisance is paid to the environmental existence, but without official recognition. Naturally, there is never a hint of the ineluctable ethnicity of this environment. At the persistence of this attitude, one can but continue to shrug one's shoulders. The genuinely innate organization of mind is inherited through the germcell, and is consequently a universal feature of mankind. It is the unconscious mind, more complex by far than its animal analogue. On the other hand, ideas or concepts derived from specific language or sensory or perceptual experience are not innate, are not genetically transmitted, and therefore are not universal features. They reflect specific environmental aspects alone. They constitute the conscious mind, which operates by means of the immediate speech community and acquires, by virtue of the specificity of its total environmental influence, its unique "Whorfian" world view if not more. It is the conscious mind, perhaps more than the deeper levels of mind, that, steeped in the specific interests of its language and its people and utterly without innate qualities, interacts with all surface facets of the ethnic process. It is this function of awareness that is repeated consistently, as a veritable fact of life, throughout the length and breadth of a differentiated world. It began with the first human interaction between the individual and his differentiating group. Ethology seems to offer convincing evidence of animal precedence for such interaction, with the difference, of course, that the animal operates basically with its instincts. While the innate propensity for group existence is as essential as any other component of the genetic endowment, it suffices also to assume the dominance of the environment. It is a simple reaction to Chomsky's startling assumption that man's genetically inherited mind renews itself from the conceptual material it had just adapted from the specific ethnocultural outside world. Alas, pure Lamarckianism, as unsubstantiated as ever. Thus the innate, that is to say, inherited, mind possesses only the adaptive capacity but not the capacity to renew itself from its recent acquisitions. It is unrealistic to attribute to a child's mind from the day he is born knowledge that is properly the fruit of the familial and ethnic environmental experience. The inborn power of mind to integrate this experience into its mental organization, as an innate capacity for learning, is all one can reasonably expect. It is here that Chomsky has compounded confusion. Self-renewal is not a function of mind, except in the sense of cell-division by which every cell in the body keeps duplicating itself. Self-renewal in Chomsky's sense is

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contrary to the natural processes. N e w innate ideas " f o r export o n l y " , that is, by genetic transmission, are not created by the mind. T h e mind does not engage in manufacture. W e do not need to be fully cognizant of the workings of evolution to realize that its presumed mode of natural selection — survival of the fittest, sex, gene interaction, mutants, etc. — offers to rational intelligence the only acceptable means of affecting the germ cell, the true origin of innate ideas. Moreover, even if one were to assume that the mind does possess the Chomskyan-inspired capacity to replenish itself f r o m the environment, it w o u l d still be fallacious to hold, as C h o m s k y appears to, that it all but determines environment in general, more especially its specific ethnic character and specific language. Where, after all, does environment come f r o m ? H o w did it become differentiated? Since mind determined language, did it have to create so m a n y ? Without any desire to become involved in philosophical sophistries, it is valid to assume general acquiescence in its reality. It is not, after all, a conceptual fantasy. It is the world around us. Such simple questions demand, but not exclusively, environmental answers. C h o m s k y affects not to see this real world. H e has spurned reality for an abstract world. H e sees language, however, which, as he untiringly reiterates, "provides a remarkably favorable perspective for the study of h u m a n mental processes". I t is remarkable, too, that a linguistic scientist finds it possible to construct an hypothesis of language that excludes at least two significant linguistic considerations: i) environmental factors in language diversity and their effect upon the human m i n d ; 2) the fact that he was obliged to base his cognitive studies upon specific languages solely because a natural universal language, m u c h more appropriate for his universal grammar, does not exist; and since specific languages alone exist in nature, common sense called for primary, at least, concurrent, investigation of the natural cause. B y his own criteria, the requirement, for instance, of a suitable perspective, his hypothesis is found wanting. Jubilation over the " l a n g u a g e " perspective lacks credibility, since b y " l a n g u a g e " is meant just linguistic structure — the language pure and simple. Surely there is more to language than that. C h o m s k y quite obviously sees a language perspective " i n vitro" and not " i n v i v o " . A true perspective would show language in its inescapable yet always changing ethnic setting. H o w extraordinary that a sin of omission of such import should h a v e escaped the attention of m a n y scholars! T o have banished, therefore, f r o m serious consideration the existence of an ethnic process (it is, at least a "reasonable guess"), or whatever one calls the etiological differentiating factor, is intellectually reprehensible. Neither spurious, " i n n a t e " properties of mind nor the f e w genuine uni-

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formities of language structure or behavior make the whole world kin. Man's dependence upon group life for his existence all through the eons does not make mankind less universal. Understanding must come through the medium of diversity. T h e universalism the ancient Prophets taught accepted diversity as the foundation of human society. Modern Utopian universalism has been an illusion from its beginnings to its bankruptcy. There is no essential contradiction between universalism and particularism : they are mutually complementary. There was never the need to adopt the ostrich pose of negating the ethnic character of human society; the struggles for national freedom have repudiated this forlorn philosophy, although, in the degenerate climate of this century, unscrupulous elements and deteriorated values often mask behind so basic a human want. H u m a n brotherhood without ethnicity is inconceivable as long as the concept of " h o m e " prevails in the society of man. Divergence does not necessarily lead to contradictions, and there is even less reason for conflict. Misunderstandings and aggressive instincts could also creep into an earthly Paradise, as long as it were peopled with a humanity unlearned in ways of overcoming them. Universalistic biases have proved themselves to be no less baneful to human society than an unrestrained or spurious ethnic particularism. What had shown themselves to be illusory vis-à-vis his philosophical and social credos, Chomsky had, rather unwisely, sought to reincarnate in his cognitive and linguistic hypotheses. Primitive instincts motivate scholars not less than ordinary mortals; Chomksy's own compulsions of primordial provenance, somewhat irrationally re-directed from social to scholarly areas, could not help but pervert the premises on which he had erected his hypothesis for a universal grammar. Frustrated by the phenomenon of diversity, he had manifested Quixotic tendencies, tilting with imaginary windmills of ethnolinguistic bogies much like his pro-Arab, anti-Israel knight-errantry ; indeed, failing to recognize, in national freedom, an essential stage of social evolution.

H. BEGINNINGS OF THE ETHNIC PROCESS Committed to seek ideological fulfillment in universalistic terms and not in ethnic realities he passionately shunned, tinkering with the truly innate mind had opened u p for Chomsky a fantastic perspective: the enormously increased potential of a mind henceforth possessed of a marvelously discriminating linguistic faculty. Self-renewed by "innate ideas" derived from the specific stimulations of the diversified human environment, such a mind was ostensibly to be capable of specific interaction with every

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human language. A mind so gifted, thus reinforced with "innate ideas" made to order, was in fact to be the real determinant of language divergence, since it was now presumably adapted for multilingual function. Environment all but vanishes, banished by the human mind! Man's mind is now the veritably exclusive source of the evolution of human society. It is within its power to fashion a human society as it willed. The now truly universal mind of man reflects the universality of language itself. Ethnic differentiation is the illusion! So, one could picture Chomsky basking in the glorious sunshine of an "innately" supplemented mind of vast dimensions, liberating himself at last from the highly objectionable, particularistic notion of a people and its language to which he had been so long enslaved. But, what if — God forbid! — ethnicity too is innate in mind? A human predisposition for group existence is not easily excluded, in view of the "territorial imperative" widely present among animals. That this predisposition is inherent in the human genetic store of intrinsic capacities should be no less acceptable than other capacities. Human experience confirms it. Group development as speech communities is universal. Inevitability of territorial allotment is equally universal. Thus evolved relatively isolated sets of conditions of existence. They constituted the skeletal substratum upon which was fashioned a culturo-historical network characteristic of each community. Out of such conditions arose families, tribes, peoples, developmental units that took shape and maintained their distinctiveness impelled, we have to assume, primordially by an innate impulse transformed into an ethnic process. Could the ethnic process then actually be the resultant effect, one or two stages removed, of specific genes or other genetic material in the germplasm, "ancient furniture of the unconscious mind", as Jacquetta Hawkes has so colorfully pictured them ? It is an intriguing thought. It could be asked, why one or two stages removed? On the other hand, it could be asked: how is it possible to conceive as even remotely innate a property within the germ-plasm capable of foreseeing the form of human society ? T o take the second question first, the difficulty seems obvious and is readily admitted. It is well known that man is incapable of predicting the future, and certainly not of prescribing for it. How then can one conceive of such a gift as the property of an innate capacity? There is really no dilemma. Man himself is a product of evolution. How did evolution know 2 million years ago that man would evolve? The answer is, it didn't; nor does the ethnic process, an outgrowth of evolution. These are mysteries of nature which science comprehends increasingly from day to day.

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As to the first question, human scepticism is a powerful motivation for seeking more understandable sources of the ethnic process. Such an explanation might be found in two enabling principles or capacities that are more or less acceptable components of the germ-cell and also relevant to the question of an ethnic process: the capacity for language acquisition and the capacity for group existence. They represent pure principle, the essence of a mechanism that unfolds in embryo and becomes operative in the external environment. It is of prime significance that neither of these two capacities can become operative independently of each other. Young humans in isolation do not acquire language or use speech; the group is essential. Simple grouping is animal; to be human, the group must communicate through language and speech. It is a symbiotic relationship only man possesses. It is the same symbiosis of a language and a people that accompanies the evolving social situation encompassed in the ethnic network described above, the group's set of conditions of existence. Deferring then to a scepticism which frowns upon the concept of an innate impulse directly bearing ethnic overtones, so typically environmental to the human mind, a particularly adroit modification can be introduced through the medium of the symbiotically related capacities. This approach, of course, immediately raises the rather indifferent possibility of an innate ethnic process only once or twice removed. But whether the innateness of the ethnic process is even slightly impaired is doubtful since much could depend on precisely where the symbiotic union is effected. If the two relevant capacities combine as a chromosomal interaction, and thus recorded genetically in the instructions inherited from both parents, the identity of the original innate impulse as an ethnic impulse, while still within the inherited repertoire, is clearly established in relation to its lineal legitimacy. On the other hand, its actual validity as a genuinely ethnic process, not merely the simple adaptation for skeletal group existence, becomes increasingly confirmed during pre-natal and post-natal development. Pre-natally, the ethnic process along with all genes and capacities carve out their respective pathways in the growing brain by appropriate biochemical, electrical, and other interactions. Simultaneously, all undergo adaptive changes fitting them for their forthcoming respective environmental roles. It may well be that the complex of ethnic impulse and the related capacities form the ethnic process. Continued development of the infant within a limited but ever widening environment immediately liberates the functions of the ethnic potential inherent in the symbiotic capacities. Inevitably, however, the expanding infant environment is limited by the culturally and historically evolved ethnic setting. The ethnic process had found its fruition. The ancient

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dichotomy of heredity and environment had conspired together to bring about a fateful harmony. Without a propensity for foreseeing the future development of a human society or of human society along ethnic lines, evolution had nevertheless made these eventualities possible. T h e y were events that were not predetermined nor pre-ordained but inspired wholly by chance or by pressing moments of need and adaptative change. Impulses of truth and other human values of profound significance, after having initially emerged as intangible expressions of evolution, may well have carried the kernel of both moral and physical characteristics of man. Humanism at conception; humanity at birth, pre-programed along ethnic lines to ensure human survival. A t what could be regarded as synaptic junctions of the innate capacities of language acquisition and group existence with the incipient ethnic environment, the ethnic process may be said to begin its first critical interactions with the social situation. It is a "reasonable guess" as Chomsky would say. Thus, the ethnic process sets in motion directive currents that specifically convey an ethnic character to a circumscribed social situation. Within the limited environment, intelligence of the individual advances, language intensifies, the group expands; and a corresponding integration of territorial, cultural, and other life-supporting events ensues. Basic environmental conditioning and ethnic dynamics interact with one another. An elemental social situation and an elemental social group are thus transformed into an unequivocal ethnic situation and unequivocal ethnic society, utterly unconscious over immensely long beginnings of the significance of such changes. In such an evolutionary environment, the ethnic process alone is the initial stimulus, the activating agent, the dynamic current. As a living force, it had gained access to the external world bearing a specific, functional capacity. Resembling a perpetual stream of electrical energy, it forever infuses the evolving social situation at every critical stage of development in human society. Moreover, as a lineal heir to the genetic endowment, it becomes thereby a universal property indistinguishable from the universals of language Chomsky has so assiduously been assembling for his universal grammar. Unhappily, sad prospects might unfold for Chomsky with the discovery that the mind upon which he has bestowed dubious " i n n a t e " properties of direct experiential origin is perhaps more realistically equipped with an ethnic process that appears to stem from primordial sources. T o reassess once more this highly speculative event: in the early prenatal, symbiotic relationship of the unquestionably innate language and group capacities so obviously destined for ethnic environmental develop-

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ments, there is strong presumptive evidence of evolutionary pressure in that direction, mainly the advent of man and the growth of human society. This evolutionary pressure is manifested by a dynamic force that probably exerts a catalyzing influence upon the already pre-ethnic capacities. T h e dynamic force w e have named, the ethnic process, and its ethnicizing effect upon the society of man, w e have described above. Whether the ethnic process is a primary constituent of the genetic repertoire or appears as the instrument of the symbiosis cannot be known. But that it is innate, however it is manifested, is a reasonable assumption. Chomsky's discomfiture, however, would be compounded by yet another dilemma: dedicated by his universalistic approach to the derogation of diversifying environmental phenomena, he would find himself at odds with his own commitment to genuinely innate qualities of mind that might well include his "bête n o i r " of the ethnic differentiating process. It is an appalling thought. W e turn now again to the group, so intimately associated with the ethnic process, especially by virtue of the symbiotic relationship of its innate combined prototype, and also with its own age-old tendency of group isolation. In its skeletal form it is only primitively viable. It acts as a catalyst of language and speech. It acquires territory in common for its members, nomadic at first and eventually permanent, which ultimately assumes the character of " h o m e " . Its members possess interests in common. M u t u a l customs arise. T h e r e gradually develop a religion, a tradition, a mythology, a history, and relations with neighboring groups, peaceful or warlike. By virtue of its relative isolation and its inevitable mode of development it acquires a distinctive character. N o longer is it the socially non-metabolic skeleton. A t some time in the course of its development, it becomes vaguely conscious of what are in effect ethnic changes, the amorphous phase recedes, and the embryological stage approaches its end. A relatively isolated set of conditions of existence, thus traditionally developed, has appeared in which every speech community invariably finds itself. T h e total effect of the people-forming process of the environment together with the concept of the ethnic process constitutes a formidable and rather inflexible constant that could prove difficult for a Utopian universalist to transcend. As for the quest for linguistic universals, in itself it is doubtlessly a typically human endeavor, no less legitimate than any other scientific effort to discover parallels with diversity. Hence one need not wonder when one anthropologist ponders : H o w do we account for the simultaneous sense we have of the unique and the universal in our fellow men? (Cassagrande 1968).

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Nevertheless, by attempting to process environmental influences through the mechanism of mind, so that they are to emerge as hereditary determinants, that is to say, new genes, Chomsky has opened up a veritable Pandora's box to his own undoing. In Chomsky's theorizing, we clearly witness a questionable and arbitrary thought process that had ineluctably led from fanatically ideological preconceptions to a distorted view of modern ethnic development, as it has likewise done in language theory. We see this attitude of mind dogmatically expressed by Chomsky's all but exclusive linkage of universals with the deep structures of language. Universals reflect a primeval tongue in which man's hominid ancestors might at some stage have communicated. The deep structures may thus either have initiated or contributed to the early evolution of man and his language. T h a t they could now serve as basis for reconstruction of a universal modern lingua franca so remote from that " u r " day is no more conceivable than reconstruction from an infant's prattle. Assuming that the correctly arranged deep structures, embracing those from a wide variety of known languages, could be converted into a substantial infra-structure, the outcome could only be yet another Esperanto. Of greater value, it seems rational to believe, are the evolving differentials — the accretions and changes that keep constantly occurring, along with the causes and influences responsible for them. Some could well have been intended to enhance the basic changes that had originally distinguished hominid from animal. Others, perhaps most of them, had led to the growing differentiation. But, whatever the principles of constructing a common language (there can be no valid objection to such attempts per se), can there be a realistic possibility that its grammar can displace the existing mother-tongues? Only with the most favorable publicity could it ever attain the status of a second or third language, a status, under such conditions, attainable even for Esperanto. Chomsky's abstract metaphysical construct comprising newly created "innate ideas" for the traditional mind can be acceptable only to the credulous. T o propose seriously in support of his universal grammar a neo-Lamarckianism that has consistently lacked essential biological evidence in an affront to rational opinion. Not even such positive achievements as the admirable elucidation of the basic language values inherent in the deeper structures can condone for the absurd efforts to evade realities that are involved in Chomsky's theoretical approach. Such an approach is counterproductive since it tends to retard, indeed to vitiate, the underlying dynamics of social evolution. Precisely the same approach had been adopted by the social Utopians

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when, in their heyday, they had attempted to suppress the development of the struggle for national freedom, the modern expression of ethnicity. Achievement though it is, nevertheless, acknowledgments are overdue to the pioneer efforts of B. L. Whorf. It was largely because his profound insights into the deep or — what seem much alike — interverbal structures appeared to lead (without his awareness) in an ethnic direction, that Whorf has been generally overlooked by linguistic science. The differentials too that have just been mentioned require more than a passing reference. We recognize them as the surface features of language. For every language, they indicate the distinctive paths of differentiation each has followed. Characteristically, every language has corresponded to the respective evolutionary influences of culture, history, tradition, and other relevant aspects of their particular environment. Surface features thus reflect critical steps in growth and advancement of human mind and intelligence. Rather than pursuing will-o'-the-wisps, how much more constructive, had Chomsky devoted greater efforts to archeological significance of deeper structures as well as to the sociolinguistic significance of the surface features of language! The unitary origin of language that we have assumed, granting certain common attributes to all languages, just as we grant them to all men, imparts a degree of credence to the notion of language universalism as the feature which presumably predominates amongst all the languages of man. Hence the concept of a universal grammar as the linguistic counterpart of a universal society. There is, however, an implausible disingenuousness about the meretricious character of digging for, and embellishing, linguistic universals. Evolution had from time immemorial discovered another direction of which Chomsky seemed to be blissfully unaware, namely, an ethnic process of differentiation with its equally diverse linguistic derivative. Only in a democratically constituted human society can linguistic multiplicity resolve into fewer and fewer widely accepted languages as they become socially desirable to more and more ethnic speech communities. It is sheer utopianism arbitrarily to jump stages of evolutionary development, whether in the unfolding of many languages and ethnic groups or in their gradual coalescence. In either direction, the process of attaining man's spiritual and civilizational achievements cannot be hastened even by revolution. The effects of such, man-made, catastrophic stimulation could easily lead to the end of mankind. To be deprecated is not the quest itself for linguistic universals but its misleading motivation, its philosophical bias, its irrationally speculative theorizing and, above all, the unscholarly dismissal of objective evidence

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already at hand. In consequence of this extraordinary attitude, the historical effect upon sociolinguistic science has been the all but total suppression of diversity in academic circles — both of an evaluation of the multiplicity of language and of its relationship to man's ethnic organization as well. It is fitting as I reach the end of this paper to remark: criticism of the master, no matter how apparently deserving, ought, especially from a layman, to be unfailingly accompanied by that deference and humility becoming to a scholar of great distinction. This recognition the present writer willingly pays in the full knowledge of his far greater liability to error. Such respects are due all the more in view of the master's own gallant acknowledgment of the amateur's role which concludes this essay: Without wishing to exalt the cult of gentlemanly amateurism, one must nevertheless recognize that the classical issues have a liveliness and significance that may be lacking in an area of investigation that is determined by the applicability of certain tools and methods, rather than by problems that are of intrinsic interest in themselves (Chomsky 1968: 18).

PART THREE

The ethnic process and the sociology of language

CHAPTER 6

Ethnic and social groups

A. I M P E D I M E N T A Of an ethnic process it could be said that if it does not exist it ought to be created, so desirable can it prove for the study of the social sciences. It could possess implications f a r beyond its mere existence. At the beginnings of such an enquiry, the problem is of inducing the scholarly fraternity toward greater receptiveness. T h a t is not an uncommon situation amongst scientific disciplines. We learn of it too from one man's quandary: Whereas "Sociolinguistics" may be satisfied with either reforming (Labov) or with revolutionizing (Hymes) linguistics, the sociology of language is after quite different goals. It seeks to understand society and societal processes, and to reveal such processes and behavior as inextricably intertwined. Because that has been my goal, I am all the more sensitive to the distance that still separates me from it and the sociological comradeship that I require if it is ever to be reached (Fishman 1972b: 359). Presumably, receptiveness is not enough. Comradeship among colleagues is also essential in order to inaugurate a fruitful scientific climate less laden with human failings. T o launch an upstart concept like the ethnic process might prove no less difficult with the sociology of language than the latter with sociolinguistics and even more so with sociology itself. Either an ethnic process is to underlie all societal and language interactions or it is to possess no values of any significance. If it is to be observed "through a glass, d a r k l y " , that is, through its surrogates, language and society, represented as primal causes, then there is clearly no need for another basic theory. Y e t the quest appears to continue for such a unifying causality on the part of ErvinTripp, Grimshaw, Hymes, Fishman, and no doubt many others. Quite evidently, there has been no unanimity on causality. It is obvious that the day of the ethnic process has yet to dawn. H a d the ethnic process become apparent and that day heralded approximately two centuries ago, the corruption of modern thought with a

The ethnic process and the sociology of language Utopian universalism and the catastrophic events of history that followed might have been averted. Ideologically, Marx and his followers had thus contributed to the subsequent chain of national struggles which they and most social Utopians thereafter had renounced without understanding. Unaware of the ethnic process, they had failed to evaluate the fundamental division of the world's population into peoples, and, upon this foundation alone, into classes. How naively they had believed the classless society was just around the corner! It had been equally naive to hope the exposure of these true believers by the collapse of this pernicious social philosophy in the rise of nationalism and the rise of national liberation movements had been its final retribution. Pragmatic events take their time. Every field of investigation is obliged to discover its own proper methodology. Within the sociology of language, the liberation of the ethnic process from the woolly theories that had concealed it should illuminate societal and language interactions now encumbered by impedimenta that long had cluttered the approaches and perspectives of the researchers and blurred the significance of their data. B. ETHNICITY Among those segments of the sociology of language in which the ethnic process is especially and more directly relevant, and where it may be more readily discernible, are ethnicity, language maintenance and language shift, language loyalties, multi-lingualism, nationalism, national and language problems in underprivileged countries, and related questions. But it must ineluctably be discovered as an active or passive constituent in every facet of societal and language interrelationships and in every interaction that occurs within the framework of a specific speech community, all this by virtue of its essential ethnic character. In the normal span of events, the ethnic background is simply understood, protruding its actual influence or participation only to the degree of deviation from normality of the framework. Assuming a simple sovereign people as representing such a norm, for instance, the utterly objective nature of sociolinguistic research becomes in theory mathematically perfect: not a trace of nationalism ought to be perceptible and scarcely even of ethnicity, no more than the individual is ordinarily aware of his heart movements or breath sounds. There have been many noted scholars in this field, a relative newcomer among the social sciences. Particularly the question of ethnicity ought seemingly to have afforded direct access to the ethnic process, and the fact that it had eluded them is surprising. Fishman, probing deeply, regards ethnicity as an "unconscious primordial factor" and appears quite at

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home amidst webs of countless ties and bridges. These are evidently the subterranean paths that keep circulating the ethnic process in some arcane fashion into the very context of the societal and language problems of the speech community, thus continuously correlating a people and its tongue. O n e can readily envision such ultramicroscopic interactions animated by that primordial circulatory system, or is it a primordial nervous system? Perhaps it is not one nor the other, but an ethnic principle equivalent to any other inherited operative mechanism with which the body is genetically endowed. W h a t it is does not matter as much as that it is; and it is because it has to be. It is in ethnicity and in nationalism and wherever it is overtly or covertly expressed. With admirable insight into ethnicity and with the untarnished personal experience of one who has lived it, Fishman explains: Primordial ethnicity is a construct that pertains to an all-encompassing web. This web comes apart and becomes segmentized, bit by bit, during successive periods of socio-cultural-change. Its segments become separately transformed, symbolically elaborated and integrated via organizations, ideologies, and political institutions. Nationalism — including language loyalty — is made up of the stuff of primordial ethnicity; indeed, it is transformed ethnicity with all of the accoutrements for functioning at a larger scale of political, social and intellectual activity. However, below the level of conscious symbolic behavior, bits and pieces of primordial ethnicity may still show through. Birthdays in France . . . wedding ceremonies in G e r m a n y . . . funerals of common folk in Q u e b e c . . . . Even in the United States... ethnicity is the substratum that continues to mark the food preferences, the family occasion, the pastimes, the residential patterns. . . . T h e y provide . . . hundreds of millions of other so-called "enlightened" people throughout the world with much of the color, the distinctiveness, the comfort, the folksiness... below the level of . . "culture" (1972b: 182-83) Ethnicity of primordial origin, as described in this vivid passage, comes very close to the concept of an ethnic process, and nationalism, Fishman goes on to say, " i s made u p of the very stuff of primordial ethnicity". A n ethnic process, however, is never pinpointed. T h e challenge of the presence of an ethnic process holds promise of opening new channels within the sociology of language. Broadening and deepening vistas of knowledge may yet enable us to trace these unconscious currents which have continuously flowed from the earliest beginnings back and forth between group and language and between their manifold derivatives. Perhaps, the "all-encompassing w e b " of numberless bridges and crisscrossing pathways of the ethnic process links and correlates a people and its language in much the same w a y that the process of intelligence and learning, on another level, brings other capacities of mind to bear upon the advancement of human knowledge. T h e fact that both types of developmental processes could, nonetheless, still be unknown primordial components, and both evolving genetically, remains one of life's major

The ethnic process and the sociology of language mysteries. Of the ethnic process, at least, it may safely be said that it possesses an environmental etiological factor as well. Re-awareness of ethnicity came in the wake of nationalism, perhaps prompted primarily by the black American revolt. It did not have much vogue a generation ago, and in the flourishing days of the melting pot, ethnic characteristics were hardly encouraged. Even today, at least until a decade or so ago, one might look in vain into an index to discover a single reference to ethnicity, not even in indices of endless books on nationalism. A spurt of sorts followed the recent rise of the ethnics in the United States and of numerous post-colonial situations elsewhere. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that a total absence is the rule for any mention of an "ethnic process", or indeed of the related term "ethnicism" which we have used to embrace the entire study and philosophy of ethnicity and the ethnic process, and which has an altogether non-ethnic connotation in some dictionaries. T h e time certainly seems ripe for profound probing into the origins and root sources not merely of ethnicity but of the ethnic process itself. C. ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS T h e fact of ethnicity appears to be increasingly accepted in the United States, if still reluctantly in some intellectual quarters. O n the one hand, the latter awkwardly retain their fallacious Utopian notions of ethnic phenomena including nationalism, while on the other, shamefacedly acknowledging the justice of those demands for national liberation they had formerly rejected. In academic circles, relatively few have yet taken the trouble to analyse ethnic sources. Natural rights of ethnicity seem to have been vindicated, and there is, apparently, no longer the need to justify it. After all, no one had granted precedence to Anglo-Saxon immigrants and to the Mayflower tradition. Ethnicity is clearly the response to the evolutionary development of a people as a formerly immigrant group, and to the dynamics of its ethnic process. But, on the national liberating plane, manifested in nationalism and in the right to national independence under the presently prevailing idea of sovereignty, the ethnic process shows through to a far greater degree than the entrenched sentiment and folk qualities of ethnicity. It is thus in the nature of the ethnic process to adapt its course in accordance with the natural history of a people's development, or of any part of it. So it has behaved from the first use of its genetic endowment, meandering in the manner of a stream as it follows the guide-lines of given environmental circumstances at every stage of a people's history. More exceptional than most peoples, such was also the behavior of the

Ethnic and social groups ethnic process of the Jews. Upon them, history had conferred a territorial gap lasting nearly 2000 years* and known as the Dispersion, out of which two remarkable situations had emerged; first, a universal ethnic immigrant minority; and second, since 1948, a new national state, bridging that memorable gap, accompanied by the Zionist philosophy of national existence in its ancient Homeland. Similarly, with all underprivileged peoples, their ethnic processes corresponding to the natural history of the specific minority and its language. It is probably equally true that it is entirely owing to the ethnic process that a language from its origins maintains the most intimate ties with its speech community. Hence the response of the ethnic process to the challenge of the historical situation. In the United States under a democratic form of cultural pluralism, "ethnic" groups would be sharing, more or less unconsciously, a common American culture. Conceivably, the end result of an ethnic minority under such circumstances could be a mutual harmony of interests with the "nonethnic" population, ethnic particularism and an American "universalism" side by side. Whether it would so evolve, or whether the two trends would ultimately merge, the future alone can tell. It is for the individual of either background to choose his own version of the "American" way of life. A more rational "American D r e a m " could not more fittingly replace the shattered melting pot. Irrespective of the nature of ethnic change, ethnic group formation is inherent in man in consequence of his animal inheritance, the effects of evolution, and adaptation to the environment. As an ethnic process, it functions in accordance with the nature of its endowment as any other human endowment does. What bestows the ethnic character upon the social group is its distinctive composition and behavior, its singular historical development and specific folk attitudes. Innately equipped with a natural tendency to dwell as a group with its own language and cultural tradition, settled on its own homeland, multiple interactions occur within this framework as result of this intimate interrelationship. A parallel activity occurs outside by virtue of the need to adjust to external factors affecting the group: the physical and culturopolitical environment, war, trade, and other inevitable contacts. Under such circumstances, every ethnic group, underprivileged or independent, is subject to numerous stresses in the struggle for existence. The natural history of every evolving social group is therefore the cumulative experience of the interactions between its ethnic attributes and the changing stresses of the environment. Techno-environmental factors, no less than culturo-environmental, are * Actually, Jewish diasporas had sprung up long before with the Assyrian and B a b y l o n i a n conquests.

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capable of molding ethnic development, and must consequently also account in a corresponding degree for the primordial, or the very earliest, formative stages of the ethnic framework along with the changing boundaries of the territorial base. This is categorically true of all ethnic groups, ancient or modern, independent or oppressed, in mono-ethnic or multiethnic political organizations, large or small. In any ethnic group, no developmental stage can be characteristic of all ethnic groups, for necessarily growth is invariably dependent upon the local socio-economic and political situation. Environmental influences differ widely. No correct theoretical conclusions can therefore be drawn from ethnic appearances anywhere or at any time. Ethnicist thinking since Fredric Barth has greatly elucidated questions of "ethnogenesis" (as used today, this terminology is misleading, underscoring as it does almost exclusively contemporary socioeconomic and political problems), ethnic boundaries, the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations, the organization of ethnic groups, resources and the competition and the conflicts arising therefrom, the varying degrees of ethnicity, and sundry material aspects of newly developing ethnic societies. T o Marxist students of society, it must appear strange that these ethnicist attitudes blandly ignore—while offering no explanation for the omission-—the antiethnic and anti-national ideology that so long has corrupted modern thought, and seem to have replaced it. The stresses evoked from all the ensuing interactions emerging from these ethnic phenomena have contributed significantly to their awakening and reinforcement. Nevertheless, the modern researcher continues to keep his nose glued to the grindstone of the local scene like his mechanist predecessors. But, while scrutinizing ethnic behavior and practice, the essence escapes him. Scant attention is paid to the ethnic idea itself, to an awareness of sources and their modes of action, in fact, to the concept of a biological factor stimulating and interacting with cultural and economicopolitical ethnic phenomena. There is not a glimmer of appreciation for the possible existence of an ethnic process around which all the machinery of ethnic birth, survival, revival, and persistence revolves. One is led to believe that the origins and dynamics of an ethnic principle or mechanism had emanated since the beginnings of man from environmental factors alone. Such dedication suggests the subtle influence of ideological persuasion. Little wonder that after more than a hundred years of intellectually pervasive Marxist thought, indeed totally deluded through the effect of the mass hypnosis imposed by a false universalism, many scholars have become impervious to the concept, however abstract, of a wholly rational genetic impulse that could be part and parcel of man's normal heritage.

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Ethnic groups in flux offer in themselves alone no criteria for theoretical speculation on true ethnogenesis — on the ethnic process itself. Six years after Barth, social scientists vainly rehearse old truths and make no fundamental theoretical advances on the basis of the new ones. For instance: . . . ethnic populations may be quite heterogeneous in characteristics that do not derive from their ethnic statuses, and these variable characteristics may be as significant for the corporate organization of these populations as ethnicity itself (Despres 1975: 203). While this is likely true, it is nonetheless still a question of variable ethnic development — and of a particular stage — but with little or no bearing on the ethnic dynamic. Ethnogenesis, [it is apparent to Despres,] involves processes by which populations become more or less culturally differentiated as a consequence of their economic and social adaptation to different techno-environments. It is apparent also that such processes engage varying degrees of competition in different types of resource domains (p. 196). It is clear that even at this late date, anthropologists and social scientists generally with their widening knowledge of ethnic phenomena in their present countless manifestations are inhibited from extending their ethnic horizons beyond socio-economic and political borders. One is sometimes tempted to suspect a remote and still unobliterated pigeon-hole of the mind for obsolete philosophical ideas they might once have professed, in order to devote themselves conscientiously to their present ethnic tasks. It is undoubtedly disquieting that, throughout the entire course of modern ethnic research, scholarly integrity had not demanded public repudiation of so devastating an ideology. If the social sciences today are no closer to a genuine understanding of ethnic and hence national identity, as well as of the organic nature of this human phenomenon, it is apparent that the present intellectual generation is still somewhat benumbed by the fading effects of the vanishing hypnosis. Even such archaic behavior should be considered incongruous by virtue of the now almost universal acceptance of the struggles for national liberation. Nonetheless, it is equally apparent that modern scientists, whatever the degree of their inhibitions, have acknowledged by the dedication to their scholarly investigations what only yesterday had been contemptuously condemned: the legitimacy of ethnic phenomena. That, too, is a gratifying achievement. T h e ethnic findings of Fredric Barth and his colleagues are, no doubt, a distinct advance over those of their forerunners; they continue to represent current thought, especially among anthropologists. Yet, much of what Despres today writes of the early anthropologists can also apply to the Barthian school. Moreover, a great deal of the current research on ethnic and racial phenomena continues to be informed by assumptions that seem somewhat beyond the

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acceptable limits of naivete. Related to all this is the fact that even the more contemporary theoretical orientations of anthropologists remain too diffuse and ambiguous to be productive of systematic comparative research (p. 2). While such a sad and, perhaps, overly modest summation may reflect the general feeling of theoretical inadequacy, Despres' own conclusion is that: . . . the conceptual framework that emerges [from the contributions to the book that Despres edits] suggests that these [ethnic] phenomena might best be understood from the point of view of stratification theory or perhaps more general theories of power (p. 204). Unfortunately, that too is a conclusion that can scarcely lead to a meeting of minds on the genetic contribution. Even stress effects on ethnic sentiment seem remote from the genetic factor. We come now to an altogether contrastive situation. A sceptic might question whether all apparently static or evolving social groups are in reality ethnic groups in one or another phase of ethnic development. Is it, in fact, possible for non-ethnic social groups to evolve within a human world population seemingly erected wholly upon ethnic foundations?

D. G U M P E R Z : T H E SOCIAL GROUP There is considerable ambiguity about social groups that appear to lack qualities of ethnicity. Such distinguished social scientists as John J . Gumperz and Dell H . Hymes maintain, that: Language is basically a social institution.... Classification by language therefore need not be correlated with groupings of mankind on other bases (Gumperz and Hymes 1972). T h a t clearly rules out the exclusivity of the ethnic process as the primary factor in the social evolution of mankind. Thus, ceaselessly, they stress: . . . the importance of social factors in language change, thus disproving earlier ideas of biological or geographical determination. [In fact], the same language may have quite different functions in different social groups . . . (1972). In a recent compilation of Gumperz' essays, his introducer puts it this w a y : He is less interested in language per se than in language as it is used by people belonging to different social groups through particular networks of relationships, and above all with how these relationships are reflected in verbal behavior (Dil 1971). Gumperz' approach is of special interest in view of his evaluation of the role of the social group. A similar trend is the vogue among most sociolinguists, except that the emphasis is transferred to language, behavior, or culture. Whichever it is, for our purpose in relation to the ethnic process it is unimportant. What is important is the oaer-emphasis. With Gumperz, the over-emphasis is in respect to the presumably primary role of the social situation. His experience with languages in the rural areas of South and

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S o u t h East A s i a leaves the inescapable impression of their b e l o n g i n g to social a n d n o t to ethnic groups. I n a book of essays edited b y G u m p e r z a n d D e l l H y m e s , they s u m m a r i z e the overall situation. Linguists have tended to see social factors as secondary. . . . Labov shows social factors to be primary.. . . Thus, whereas some sociolinguistic research requires linguists to add to the scope of their interests, commonly, it might be felt, to " g o beyond language", Labov shows one must go outside language, to the social matrix of speech . . . (Gumperz and Hymes 1972). E v i d e n t l y , this represents the horizon f o r G u m p e r z a n d H y m e s t o w a r d w h i c h they strive to erect their linguistic a p p r o a c h . T h e i r basic philosophy, h o w e v e r , revolves a r o u n d the social factors. I n his latest books, G u m p e r z scarcely touches o n the ethnic influence. I n practically e v e r y instance, the referential role is ascribed to the social aspect. S o m u c h so, even f r a n k l y ethnically labeled groups are pictured as m e r e l y social units. T h a t the l a n g u a g e of an a v o w e d l y ethnic g r o u p m i g h t w i e l d a n ethnic influence c a n n o t easily be gleaned w h e n o v e r s h a d o w e d b y the p r i m a r y i m p o r t a n c e G u m p e r z places u p o n the social matrix. T o seek p r i m a c y f o r the social m a t r i x w i t h i n a well-defined ethnic f r a m e w o r k c o u l d be s o m e w h a t pretentious in v i e w of the obvious causal relationship of the latter. Perhaps, a m o n g the dialectal communities w h i c h , a c c o r d i n g to G u m p e r z , are undistinguished b y ethnic symbolism, such a role m i g h t be considered reasonable. E v e n so, it could, just as rationally, be regarded as t h o u g h it w e r e secondary to a p r o b a b l y lost a n d as y e t unrecovered ethnic

c h a r a c t e r of the total situation. Existing dialects did not

d r o p f r o m the s k y ; w h a t e v e r their f u t u r e , resurrections of their past, w h e r e v e r possible, c o u l d w e l l suggest some glimmerings of ethnic forebears. W i t h o u t the g e n u i n e l y basic f a c t o r of a n ethnic process that such g l i m m e r ings w o u l d represent, there could be neither social g r o u p , n o r l a n g u a g e , nor social matrix. T o m o r r o w , o n the other h a n d , the dialect, like so m a n y others, c o u l d b e c o m e extinct a n d the w h o l e entity swept into a neighbori n g g r o u p f o r m a t i o n , in all likelihood ethnic. I n the h i e r a r c h y c o n c e r n e d w i t h the evolution of h u m a n society, the social situation together w i t h l a n g u a g e , b e h a v i o r a n d culture

occupy

salient areas. T h e y d o so, h o w e v e r , b y resting u p o n the solid ethnicterritorial bases u l t i m a t e l y d e t e r m i n i n g t h e specific ethnic n a t u r e of the group. W h a t e v e r the area c o n t e n d i n g f o r p r i m a c y , this f u n d a m e n t a l f a c t is implicit in e v e r y interaction. Its present noteworthiness is distinguished b y its degree of isolation w i t h i n the sociolinguistic scene. T y p i c a l l y , w i t h G u m p e r z , it is o f t e n difficult t o recognize w h e r e social m a t r i x ends a n d ethnic b a c k g r o u n d begins. G u m p e r z says, f o r e x a m p l e : Our experiments, and the analysis presented in this paper, demonstrate the importance of social or non-referential meaning for the study of language in society. Mere naturalistic observation of speech behavior is not enough. In

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order to interpret what he hears, the investigator must have some background knowledge of the local culture of the processes which generate social meaning. Without this it is impossible to generalize about the social implication of dialect differences (1971).

Gumperz adds that the processes studied here are specific to particular small communities; but what he says is nonetheless widely applicable. One could in fact with equal appropriateness include the ethnic background as well in many instances, perhaps benefiting the investigation significantly. It is even conceivable that the ethnic factor could prove decisive. It might therefore be wise to establish beforehand the limits — i f any — of the social factor. Intellectually speaking, in fact, lack of adequate explication tends to impair the full use, in the first place, of the English language. Small wonder that, carried away by the intensity of his faith in the primacy of the social factor over language, he affirms that language needs no other correlation than with the social group. It is curious, if the unadorned, skeletal social group is so utterly satisfying, that 200 years of ethnic or national struggle had to supervene. It is curious that an intensification of ethnic groups in the United States sadly shattered for Utopian minds an absolutely idyllic melting pot. A problem of such proportions must surely require a broader canvas for proper study, as well as a profounder analysis of its international implications. Not so long ago, Sapir had drawn attention to what he had called a subform of language—a variety of argots and jargons spoken by occupational, trade and professional groups, underworld gangs and analogous agglomerations of individuals found among most peoples and nations. Is it, then, conceivable that Gumperz has extended this aspect of human society, peculiarly segregated, relatively small, social utilitarian organizations, to include also isolated villages in India and South Asia, apparently ethnically unattached? Can it be that on the basis of such language subforms, he has ventured to hypothesize on the primacy of the social factor? By seemingly ignoring the ethnic world in his cogitations, Gumperz must feel that the immensity of the social matrix throughout the world transcends ethnic boundaries, and is an entity in itself capable of embracing all manner of social groups—from occupational groups and isolated villages to peoples and nations. If that is indeed so, Gumperz has assumed a heavy theoretical burden. Gumperz faces a dilemma of his own creation. Since their earliest prototypes, man and his language have historically associated in intricate and characteristally ethnic relationships, and continued their evolutionary social course in increasingly complex ethnic formations. Whether the basis upon which enmeshed interactions are enacted is purely and simply social,

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or whether it is innately ethnic in all its capacities, that remains for Gumperz to disentangle. He had made it amply clear that the social interpretation alone replaces the need for any other. T h a t interpretation meets with increasing challenge. Present ethnic organization cannot easily be brushed aside, notwithstanding the undeniable importance of the social matrix within every known national grouping in human society. T h e importance, however, assumes a secondary status, along with language, behavior and culture, within the ethnic framework. Study of the resulting interactions, taking the ethnic factor as the dominant one, should introduce the necessary clarification and hopefully remove Gumperz' dilemma. Though stressing the basic importance of the social factor in language change, Gumperz by no means disqualifies other factors; they merely play a secondary role. But, in the effort to elaborate a theory that seeks to establish a social basis for language and verbal behavior, certain features elude him. Why is it, for example, [he asks] that in some societies such as those of South, and South East Asia, major distinctions of language maintain themselves in spite of centuries of contact... (1971)? Certain distinctions of language such as phonemic selectivity, specific grammatical constructions and lexicological differences, strongly lend themselves to an ethnic interpretation. Surprisingly, Gumperz had apparently not even attempted to plumb their ethnic depths, out of recognition, at least, of the realities and the significance of national struggle. In itself, that is a curious problem, too, meriting investigation and, in relation to which, the question of ideological bias is constantly injected. Gumperz' experience with the Asian villages would seem to offer a somewhat limited foundation upon which to erect any hypothesis, least of all the basic character of the social matrix. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to suppose there may be a potential, if dormant, ethnic essence inherent in these rural communities, as well as hitherto undiscovered relationships with surrounding peoples. Such possibilities tend to place too great a strain upon the theoretical value of the social matrix alone as the primary and basic component of human society. There are also other secondary aspirants just as clamorous as Gumperz' social factor: language, behavior, and culture. Finally, the prevailing ethnic basis of world society, not to speak of 200 years of national struggle, seems to offer a much sounder theoretical foundation. Why, in face of the totality and complexity of the situation, Gumperz should be non-plussed by the inability of the social factor alone to explain the persistence of major distinctions of language despite centuries of contact, that is one of the most distressful features of Gumperz' stance. One inevitable conclusion that must be drawn from this analysis is the

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necessity for the sociology of language to expand its horizons in order to embrace the possibilities of the ethnic process. Nor does anybody deny that the secondary factors, including, of course, the social matrix, perform highly important but surrogate functions in human society. In his encyclopedic little volume on language and nationalism, Joshua A. Fishman quotes a cogent example illustrating the effect of socio-economic and political changes upon the ethnocultural course of the ethnic process—as they have done since primordial time. He cites one line from Gadjil who writes on Asian and African nationalisms: " I t is not possible to accept the West completely". [Fishman draws from this single line a graphic lesson:] Thus, nationalist movement after nationalist movement in Asia that has started out as primarily anti-Western in nature has been forced by the course of events to pursue Westernization, in a way [that no European countries had to turn to one another] (1972a: 147). These national movements, their rise goaded by Western colonialism, remained the determining factors in their lives. T r y as they would with the Gandhi knitting machine to hold back the socio-economic encroachments of the West, they could not help but adapt Western civilization to their respective, characteristically national purpose. As a matter of fact, not only these national movements but the Soviet Union and China have also pursued the identical policy for the protection of their own particular nationalisms. In short, we need in conclusion to sum up the ethnic theoretical picture in order to grasp more clearly the untenable nature of Gumperz' postulates. While the genetic endowment of man accounts for his group predilections, it would be an absurdity to think of group development in skeletal terms, as a skeleton devoid of flesh, bone, blood, and nerve, without a biochemistry, and indeed without a metabolism. Biologically, a skeleton does not and cannot function alone. It could merely exist, like lifeless rock; a fossil existence. T h e ethnic process, like any biological capacity, functions not only within the corporeal whole but is also embodied in social terms. Man's primordial equipment, it is postulated, carries a stimulus with an ethnically adapted tendency which brings about a symbiosis of the group-forming and language-acquisition capacities. Further interactions result in an imperative need to appropriate and defend the group's territorial base. The whole fits in with an evolutionary dialectic for ensuring an ethnic form of social organization. This set of embryonic interactions constitutes the ethnic process and is thus responsible for the mechanics of the social metabolism as well. This demonstrates ethnic survival as clear evolutionary "intent", pre-programmed primordially.

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Throughout the evolution of the group and throughout the course of the ethnic process, it is in accordance with such mechanics that the expanding group acquires an adaptive framework of protective features distinctive of that group alone and hence differentiating it from all others. This characteristic setting designates the group as ethnic. On one hand, it starts out with the triad of group, language, and territory. On the other, there is the constantly changing society and social behavior: culture, religion, custom, history, socioeconomic and political factors as well as external relations, indeed the entire mentality of the ethnic group. (See also pp. 193-194.) The ethnic process may thus be compared to an anatomical system where the simple group principle is the bare skeleton, and the ethnic group is the corporeal whole inclusive of integument, physiology and biochemistry. In the relationships between the ethnic group and its individual members, countless interactions take place mentally, linguistically, and societally; hence the researcher may penetrate into intrinsic, all but unfathomable, microsociolinguistic pathways. It is herein that lies the entire subterranean ethnic activity, concentrated in what Fishman describes as an "all-encompassing web". This physiological and biochemical activity also constitutes the social metabolism, of the ethnic group. If we are to assume that, under evolutionary conditions, such might indeed resemble the operating behavior of an ethnic complex, with the resultant effect of an ethnic society, then a non-ethnic group in an ethnic world must be regarded as an anomaly. It can be conceived of only as a transitory social phenomenon: Either it had once belonged to an ethnic system and had been "squeezed out" for reasons presently unknown, or, it would ultimately find itself as an integral part of an ethnic system in the future. The concept of adventitious or aberrant social groups, semi-autonomous or adrift amidst or within ethnic societies, rooted neither in a past nor in a future, serving purely egotistic (even criminal), political or non-political purposes—such a concept is of a surrealistic social foundation for human society. It is anarchic and contrary to the positive human urge for social organization. Where groups such as these exist, they must inevitably undergo an anomalous state of unconscious agitation, a sort of "Brownian movement", that is by-passed by history. They are hardly fitting material for theories or hypotheses. Innate interaction with the environment, it should be added, is a normal phenomenon frequently observed by ethologists, psychologists, and other researchers both in animals and in man. Language and speech exemplify this common observation admirably, since they are par excellence speciesspecific manifestations of a genetic capacity in the human with functions

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related to many areas of brain tissue. It should be pointed out, however, that the interaction is often dependent, as are language and speech, upon the process of maturation in the child, or, in other instances, upon factors such as puberty and hormonal physiology, and many others; hence, the ethnic process and its relationship to the ethnic organization of man. In this respect, I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt remarks: Identification with the group norm usually occurs in the sensitive period of puberty, when the youth is in search of values. It is at this age when one becomes a German, a Frenchman, a Russian or an American. The maturing individual usually sticks to the corresponding group values once he has decided on them. The phenomenon is a prerequisite for the continuity of different cultures, the colourful variation of mankind (1973). Whether the extraordinary adaptations of a blind evolution had their own mysterious reasons for preferring the "colourful variation of mankind" to the ethnic organization of man, a world of ethnic neighborhoods blooming with the thousand flowers Mao Tse-tung had once predicted should prove a fitting compromise. (See also pp. 193—194.)

E. T H E S O C I O L O G Y O F L A N G U A G E Sociologists of language need to analyze the deeper interactions that tie peoples and nations to their respective languages, and also the surface interactions manifest in ethnicity and nationalism. In both these indications of ethnic recovery, ethnic self-identity is either partially or totally restored for all peoples living under conditions of ethnic deprivation. The sociology of language, it appears, is thus increasingly confronted with tasks of immense basic importance to society at large, including the further expansion of the ethnic idea in modern social thought. Such possible developments point to gradual social transformation toward an ever closer approximation in the direction of a world society. But they are social changes that cannot be hastened, or retarded, except through violence. Whatever forms the future may bring forth, a sociology of language is bound to continue its new-found function of enlarging the perspective of ethnic purpose and living. Somehow, somewhere, at some junctions or synapses amongst relationships and structures of society and language, indeed within realms of mind too, that indefinable web of intertwining threads of communication intensifies bonds of unification between all the components of the given ethnic unit. The ethnic process continues to activate every trait, attitude or aspect of behavior. It integrates the language into every fibre and into the very marrow of that society. Since long past remembered time, the ethnic process has kept on weld-

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ing individuals of a specific speech community into a more or less homogeneous ethnic conglomerate. Ideological obstruction removed, the ethnic pattern emerges as the sole, logical and sociolinguistic basis for scientific research that ought to be universally acceptable for all practical purposes. Differentiated or no, it is there. If one of the consequences of this unexpected situation is to arouse a latent curiosity about the ethnic sources of differentiation, both territorially and linguistically, that, it may be hoped, should prove the death knell to Utopian thought. T h e effect of the concept of the ethnic process in sociolinguistic research may be immediately observed particularly in comparative analyses of corresponding data emerging from the ethnic patterns of language and societal investigation. Much depends, however, upon the degree of emancipation from the self-hypnosis with surrogates, and increasing awareness of the primacy of ethnic origins. Rarely could the challenge of a new outlook upon the grindstone under one's nose hold so much promise of electrifying results as in respect to the clarifying, if not creative, possibilities inherent in the concept of the ethnic process. It is not improbable that the unifying role of the ethnic process as we have portrayed it will not only bring order and sequence into a disordered world but also to the quantities of data so laboriously assembled. Much of this data could be more meaningful, and much of it more coordinatable. Clearly, the sociology of language seems to be the ideal medium wherein challenging social and linguistic situations can be resolved by pragmatic means or through theoretical forays.

CHAPTER 7

Theories of causality

A. ERVIN-TRIPP: DIVERSITY AND FUNDAMENTALS Questions of causality and primacy have aroused considerable contention among students of linguistics in the social sciences. In the sociology of language, few see the basic determinant beyond language and society. Data may lead to a dead end, impasses are reached, links are vainly sought with related fields—in short, there is an imperative need for theoretical guidelines. Basic concepts are lacking as researchers predictably reach out for them in their own home grounds. It was, no doubt, courageous, after Chomsky, to insist that: The fundamental fact about language is the obvious diversity. [Then, to persist that:] Language diversity apparently is related to social interaction. [And finally to conclude that:] Linguistic interaction is deeply imbedded in nearly all our social processes (Ervin-Tripp 1971). Obviously, diversity is " t h e fundamental f a c t " not only about language but also about our social processes. Differentiation thus affects the given language and the related total environment. Here is the specific setting for the speakers, for the social interactions, and for the speech community. What Susan Ervin-Tripp seems to have unwittingly discovered is an "obvious" yet extraordinary phenomenon about which social scientists seldom show professional interest. T h a t itself is phenomenal. Why the absence of curiosity about differentiation? Simply the taboo imposed by a two-hundred-year-old Utopian scholasticism. The secret of diversity is the ethnic process. The social impulse, the motivating force, the basic determinant of societal and language interactions, the primary source of man's division into societies with their respective surrogates, that genetic endowment is the ethnic process. B. GRIMSHAW: THE PRIMORDIAL ETHNIC PRINCIPLE Like all creatures of habit, not all sociolinguists had managed to overcome the hurdle of diversity, and hence had not yet passed their Rubicon.

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It was hard to get away from the limits of their surrogate horizon. Rather diffidently, for instance, Allen D. Grimshaw had wrestled with his problem of primacy. There seem to be four principal perspectives on the causal relationship between social structure and language: i — that which sees social structure as determinant . . . 2 — that which sees language as fundamental... 3 — that which sees... both . . . as . . . co-determining and 4 — that which sees both as determined by a third factor... Weltanschauung, the human condition, the organization of the human mind (. . . congenial with interpretation of Chomsky) or the intrinsic demands of an ordered universe . . . (Hymes)... (Grimshaw 1971: 95-6)Clearly, there could also be an ethnic differentiating process underlying language and societal structures and relationships — that was outside his horizon. It could not be otherwise, since his field of vision evidently excluded the simple fact of language diversity. Consequently, he saw neither a territorially differentiating, historico-environmental process, nor a mental group-predisposing process operating as part of "human nature", and certainly not a convergence of both tendencies ; such a convergence could then be identified as a primordial component of the mind and recognizable societally as an ethnic process. Like R i p van Winkle, Grimshaw, along with most of his contemporaries, had slumbered through an age. An era of struggles for national freedom has broken down Utopian taboos. T h e " e t h n i c " and his ethnicity have brought increasingly familiar topics, little known before, into the sociology of language. Already perceptible to a mind keyed to change, there must be a sense of divergence from the former practice of adhering exclusively to language and society as basic dimensions, oblivious of genuine fundamentals. On the level of causality, provided there is due cognizance of the ethnic sources, there is indubitably a fitting secondary role for surrogates as well. That should at least pay tribute to the realities of language in social change. However, to overlook today the theoretical aspects of an ethnic process is a serious challenge to scholarly awareness. Observed from this viewpoint, it seems to be sheer futility to argue the respective virtues, for example, of two different degrees of "mutual-imbeddedness" vis-à-vis the " p r i m a c y " of surrogates. Of the four suggested "principal perspectives", not even the last one which includes the mind entertains the faintest notion of a primordial principle, capacity or faculty of mind or brain, or reposing simply as a genetic factor of the germ cell. Such a primordial principle could indeed be the ethnic process, the more so if pursued through the challenging mystery of diversity and not through the surrogates. A sociolinguistic investigation of the ramifications of the ethnic process at this time looms more appropriately as a primary task.

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C. CORRELATION Nonetheless, keeping pace with Grimshaw, some comment is evoked by another view of his. He touches upon the complex subject of correlation between a group of language users and the social structure the group establishes at each stage of its development — put simplistically, between a people and its language. Correlation between speech (as contrasted to language) and the characteristics of its users are easy to determine. Correlations between language structure and social structure are more subtle but can also be identified. As in all correlational analysis, however, the difficult problems begin when attempts are made to isolate the direction of cause and effect (1971: 97). It ought by now to be clearly understood that language and society may not be discussed in a vacuum. The ethnic framework is inevitable and cannot be dismissed from consciousness. This unique arrangement grew from the earliest origins. Willy-nilly, it had to be a continuing and evolving correlation and mutual participation. How was that correlation accomplished throughout the eons of the past, till, in fact, the present moment? The question here, be it noted, is how? Grimshaw's problems are of direction and of cause and effect, of where and of which ? What forces had impelled the development and the multitude of interactions that had taken place throughout the interweaving relationships? Webs had sprung up to cement them. By what interweaving threads and what connecting bridges? Carrying what message? Whence? And proceeding where? The stress and experience of life and history, of language and societal structure, under succeeding conditions of existence, constantly replenished by the circulating "bloodstream" of the specific, group-forming ethnic process, strove incessantly to integrate the individual with his language and his culture. There could be no questioning an "all-encompassing web" in which this great mutual exchange was taking place. Wherever it was located, this primordial meeting place of the individual, in mind, brain, or germ cell — there could also be no question of direction: from the germ cell to some mechanism of brain, thence to emerge as an influence upon the "collective mind" of that conglomerate of more or less organized individuals we know as the specific group, the ethnic society, the speech community — or if you will, the people, the n a t i o n . . . . Throughout, an ethnic influence prevails. Only the effects of correlation have been hitherto recognizable, in the gods we have been worshipping as the genuine deity; above all, in the all but fixed and immutable correlations between a people and its language. The cause we seek is of course the ethnic process, the influences of which we derive from the distinctive nature of all data obtained from interactions taking place within an ethnically determined speech community. Obvi-

Theories of causality ously, comparable data will more likely fit identical ethnic groups than others. But it is especially valuable to learn how such data come to fit one ethnic group and not another. That purpose, it would seem, more properly indicates the significance of correlations between a group of speakers and their society on the one hand and the language they speak on the other. Even thus motivated, however, an investigator with a positive outlook upon ethnic values would probably still be encountering some degree of ideological prejudice. In short, acceptance of an ethnic process eliminates further need to explain cause and effect. The rest, Grimshaw assures us, is relatively easy. Perhaps difficulties could begin by attempting to show how, within an ethnic society, interactions take place. But in this respect, methodologies of micro-sociolinguistics can pave the way. D. SUPPRESSION OF THE ETHNIC FACTOR Sociolinguistic theoretical problems are largely the consequence of assuming the primacy of the surrogates in one form or another. But the modern scholar must never overlook the always present ethnic framework and the all-pervasive ethnic factor, particularly when the ethnic unit exists under underprivileged conditions. That influence is paramount, if not always obvious. Degree of subjection, autonomy, or independence will, in the main, determine the behavior of the individual or the community. Territory, society, language, history, religion, culture, tradition, folkways and mythology, customs and national character, dress and demeanor, its very ethnicity—such background factors of a people, constituting its specific framework, affect mind and environment bearing within it the guiding primordial directives of the ethnic process. It is the persistent tendency to overlook this evolutionary development which necessitates a re-evaluation of the question of causality. A conscious or unconscious suppression of the ethnic factor had become an all but universal rule. It had become a vogue even among scholars, and while today generally an unconscious influence, the stigma of unscholarly motivation is not removed. Such a situation literally demands a mental interpretive readjustment to effect a proper understanding. With his typical surrogate orientation in the struggle to establish a primal origin without knowledge of an ethnic process, Grimshaw, for instance, remarks: There are instances in which language behavior reflects social structure. . . . There are other instances in which it may be said that social structure determines speech and/or language behavior (1971: 98). In our present "rational" society, where social structure and language are the Alpha and Omega, these statements of Grimshaw's could lend themselves to misunderstanding. It is regarded as rational despite what many

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call irrationals, such as the brinkmanship of nuclear politics and the Utopian universalisrn that was ideologically responsible for the enormously significant era of national struggles. Awkward interpretations could therefore be applied to Grimshaw's exaggerated importance of his surrogate gods. They could mean, unless one happened to be more sensible than one's neighbors, that language behavior in (let us say) England reflects social structures in (say) Argentina, and that social structure in (say) the United States determines speech and / or language in (say) Germany. Why not? Grimshaw had not indicated in any manner just where the interactions had taken place or that any specific ethnic influence was involved. (To be sure, in these independent and sovereign countries, where no impingement upon their essential ethnic being was anticipated, ethnicity rarely looms large unless an aggressive nationalism arises.) Fortunately, we live in an irrational society and such awkward ideas fail to occur. Deep in our unconscious lies the smug awareness that this social structure and that language behavior do not interact in a vacuum and interactions take place within the identical ethnic group whose character and existence we have been virtually taught to ignore. Nevertheless, the incongruences are still there since the ethnic factor is not taken for granted. By what reasoning should one glean that Grimshaw had been discussing a single homogeneous group, ethnic to boot? The ethnic factor should be either implicit or consistently visible. In this way, the widespread tendency to surrogate language and social structure, thus pre-empting primacy of origin, and at present unwarrantedly a practice innocently or perhaps even still tendentiously concealing the ethnic foundation of both could thus be abandoned for all time as the artifice it had always been. Otherwise, it is evident, if we are to judge from what is intended to be an objective attitude on the part of a good many sociolinguists (but signally fails), that dedication to a detailed analysis of all possible data in, let us say, communication, invariably tends to obliterate consideration of possible relationships to the ethnic source. Reference has just been made to the ethnic background of a speech community; to these could be added economic, political, and other external influences as well. Any one or more of all these factors and influences, but specifically those native to the speech community concerned, could be brought to bear upon the web of interactions that constantly operate in the ceaseless interrelationships between language and its society. Citing the outline of a sociolinguistic theory advanced by Dell Hymes whose aim, Grimshaw writes, is: . . . to describe the communicative competence that enables a member of the community to know when to speak and when to remain silent, which code to use, when, where and to whom, etc. [Grimshaw continues:] The concepts, with which such a theory must deal are those of speech community, speech situation,

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speech act, speech event, fluent speaker, native speaker, factors (or components) of speech events, functions of speech, rules of speaking, types of speech event and act (1971: 135). A sociolinguistic theory today that excludes the ethnic factor is hardly conceivable. T h a t is precisely what Grimshaw does, apparently implicating Hymes in this attitude, judging by his citation of the aims of the latter's theory. There is no special virtue in selecting communicative competence as basis for a sociolinguistic theory rather than, say, language maintenance or the problem of ethnicity itself. Special interest is probably the determinant of choice. Unfortunately, the idea of "neutralism" could be advanced also by virtue of the encouragement till recent years of a climate of disdain for matters of ethnic interest. Indeed, nothing could be more neutral than the level of communicative competence described above. T h e same can be said for the elaborate list of concepts that Grimshaw has added and which is probably also derived from Hymes' theoretical arsenal. Regrettably, except for the speech community, whose ethnic character we may not learn and whose ethnicity is never discussed, the specific framework and the specific ethnic current that essentially transfuses it are both unmentioned and literally unknown. Were it held defensively that ethnic questions are contentious or provocative, the reply would undoubtedly come that, after the renaissance of ethnicism, it is rather the attitude of "neutralism" that becomes contentious and provocative. If one could suppose the possibility of discovering one or perhaps more ethnic speech communities, i.e. peoples, nations, and so forth, that are utterly unaware of impending threats to national existence or to their specific modes of national behavior, and thus in almost perfect ethnic equilibrium, it is still theoretically impossible to exclude their presence or even their likelihood. In such event, the disturbed current of primordial ethnic influence should, theoretically speaking, affect all interactions within the given speech community, even those relating to communicative competence. In a nuclear world, few nations if any can attain such a measure of tranquillity. As we have already noted, ethnic manifestations, while invariably present for those who seek them, become increasingly salient under disadvantageous conditions of the group. Nationalism and national struggles ensue. Under these circumstances, and varying with the severity, the ethnic influences become increasingly paramount, affecting internal interactions profoundly, including those of communicative competence and other research subjects that could be regarded as relatively neutral. T h e moral of the tale, it seems, requires ordinary scholarly obligations to give due heed to the ethnic factor whenever sociolinguistic theory is contemplated.

The ethnic process and the sociology of language But it is now no longer a matter of merely abstract thinking. From ethnicity and language maintenance to the national development of underprivileged peoples, the path of the ethnic process has led to a clearer understanding of the singular relationship between a people and its native tongue. Many such questions of pressing societal import have been brought to the attention of social scientists that merit equal theoretical consideration with the concepts of Grimshaw and Hymes. A sociolinguistic theory cannot be limited in scope but must be all-embracing. Above all, no sociolinguistic theory can overlook the ethnic process and its vast derivative play upon the life of a people, as well as the equally vast subterranean exchange of social and language interactions. One can, in fact, already be overwhelmed by the enormous quantity of accumulating data assembled by this relatively new discipline. Leading exponents of the sociology of language have been expressing the need for a theory as a unifying factor to give purposeful direction and basic guidance in a necessarily variegated system of research. Aimless fact-finding has evidently proved unproductive. Unrelated data where interrelationship appears eminently desirable can be confusing. Where convergence of data could coincide with a theoretical perspective of one sort or another, a more rational situation can emerge. In this respect at least, Chomsky was justified in his disparagement of accumulating data that could prove unutilizable. In his case, however, an ideological background introduced more mundane motivations than scholarly ones in rejecting the data of language (read: ethnic) differentiation for his theory of grammar.

E. LABOV: COMING T O GRIPS Confronted by a situation where every student of the social sciences pursues his objective exclusively as long as he can ferret out facts, William Labov finds that: . . . a broader field of view seems to be required to come to a decisive solution . . . as before we will find some linguists who spend all their time analysing their intuitions about language.... We need a new way of doing linguistics. . . . By enlarging our view of language, we encounter the possibility of being right (1971: 213). Labov's "broader field of v i e w " does not either entirely or fundamentally eliminate the apparent aimlessness and almost automatic character of the fact-finding; nor the need for a theoretical unifying factor. T h e field can be broadened, and indeed, illuminated, significantly by utilizing the perspective created by the ethnic process. Social structure and behavior as well as language structure and behavior stem from it, differentiated according to the evolving realities of man and his society from similar

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complexes, each activated by its own specific primordial equipment and total historical environment. Once these ethnic influences are recognized, data accumulated at any stage by whatever methodology are bound to fall naturally within their purview. Every collectivity, so peculiarly characteristic, carries in every aspect of its being the imprint of its genetic stamp and personality. A comparative linguistics or, for that matter, a comparative sociology of language, against the background of the ethnic process in its setting, should, at identical stages, discover differences between identical levels precisely because of the differences in the ethnic development. It was natural, lacking a knowledge of the ethnic process, that all disciplines concerned with language should have been, as Labov puts it: . . . suffering from difficulties in coming to grips with the fundamental data of language (1971: 212). Presented so simplistically, apparent limitations of the ethnic process too could seem more formidable than they appear. But theories and hypotheses are not static formulations; like everything else, they are subject to modification as the result of experience. On the other hand, it is quite within the realm of probabilities, the ethnic world view embodied in the ethnic process may have inherent perspectives beyond our present conceptions. Defending his "preliminary operations upon the initial data", Labov remarks: . . . considerations of simplicity will always find a place; in suggesting the correct line of attack, it is always possible to prove whether the simple hypothesis constructed is the correct one. [Continuing in a footnote, Labov invokes Watson's discovery of the structure of DNA as] one of the most striking cases of the role of simplicity in scientific research... simplicity merely suggested the best approach (p. 165). While the present author does not here predict a similarly august role for a modest if basic ethnic process, its usefulness seems to have much evidence to support it. He may, in fact, be justified in his convictions concerning: . . . abstract relations of linguistic elements that are deeply embedded in the data (p. 213). However, those convictions do not enable him to draw decisive conclusions and to solve his problems. He talks of the "framework provided", but we do not know what that framework is. He could, perhaps more daringly, assume an ethnic framework and make properly prepared comparative investigations with other ethnic frameworks. With new prospects unfolding, perplexities could unravel and many difficulties vanish. Incidentally, the deeper structures and relations in language may possess a far deeper meaning than is generally imagined. It is reasonable to infer from the widespread interest in them, to start only from Whorf and Chomsky, that the ethnic processes of different speech communities have

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respectively affected these deeper interactions of both language and society. T h e emphasis upon intuitive judgments which led Chomsky to his generative grammar, writes L a b o v : . . . focuses our attention on important relations between sentences and the deeper structures which underlie them (p. 162). This enhances still further our interest in the effect of the ethnic process upon these factors. Further light is thrown when, in connection with his excellent analysis of certain aspects of Chomsky's theoretical approach, Labov sums up his own findings on problems in the study of everyday language: Among the motivations discussed for the restriction of linguistic data to intuitions were difficulties in working with every-day speech. Fortunately for our studies, many of these problems turned out to be illusory, or greatly exaggerated (p. 165). Labov's relief may or may not be justifiable. There is, however, unwitting corroboration of the views we have advanced in explication of Chomsky's rejection of language differentiation as basis for his theory, preferring abstract speculation: the value of abstract thinking per se was not in question. T h e inference, of course, was to the underlying ethnic differentiation. Ideologically, that was anathema. Labov's challenging opinion indicating that Chomsky's difficulties in part at least could be illusory are also powerful underpinnings to the equally challenging ideological charge. On the contrary, " t h e more that is known about a language the more we can find out about i t " , Labov declares emphatically, quoting a second Cumulative Paradox. Claiming that his "theory is undetermined by the d a t a " Chomsky, predisposed though he is to abstract thinking, nonetheless sought consciously or unconsciously to escape primarily the dilemma of ethnic differentiation. Labov, on the other hand, while recognizing Chomsky's valuable contributions to language theory by means of the more limited abstract method, substantiated his preference for: . . . the opposite view. Through the direct study of language in its social context, the amount of available data expands enormously, and offers us ways and means for deciding which of the many possible analyses is right (p. 165). Perhaps that is as good a view as any when there appears to be no other alternative. But it does require prodigious effort, much of it probably wasted. Unfortunately, Labov too, evidently with no ideological need to escape the ethnic concept, has not yet acquired the free and natural habit of deeply probing the overt and easily accessible theme of language differentiation. While the need for sociolinguistic theory does not appear pressing to Labov at this juncture, knowledge of the ethnic process during a climate of ethnic and national upsurge and study may well change this less than dynamic attitude.

Theories of causality F. G E N E T I C S AND E T H N I C PROCESS T h e futility, in sociolinguistic research, of seeking for causality among surrogates could lead only to the ethnic process. What else could be the real source of all societal and linguistic interactions? Its usefulness could scarcely be rejected, alone among other components of our animal inheritance, merely because, in our present stage of knowledge, it is not revealed in the anatomy, physiology, or chemistry. What matters are its consequences. T h e first task of early man, W. G. Sumner had shown nearly eighty years ago, was to begin with act and effort, and to respond to need. Since those primeval days, as results of need and experience, our animal heritage, and the enormity of the total environment, language and group had emerged as man's major evidence why we live the way we do. T h a t these characteristics determined for all time thereafter man's differentiation into societies strongly suggests the inclusion, within man's primordial endowment, of an ethnic process. T h e ethnic process should therefore be real enough to be accepted as such; otherwise, the mind of man must fashion its own facsimile. In that event, it becomes the theoretical key to further evolutionary development. Its behavior will then be in accordance with the Watson-Crick hypothesis of the mode of genetic inheritance. If only to illustrate the workings of biological nature, it is given here in the simple description of Theodosius Dobzhansky, among the best-known modern geneticists. The Watson-Crick hypothesis, now regarded as amply confirmed by facts, is that heredity is coded in the chain-like molecules of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Different genes are comparable to words or paragraphs on a printed page — they are different sequences or combinations of four nucleotides, the four "genetic letters". The genetic messages coded in the DNA of the chromosome genes are "transcribed" into a still different code in ribonucleic acids (RNA), and into sequences of amino acids which form parts of protein molecules. Some proteins act as enzymes (Dobzhansky 1967: 18). In fact, one must tie up loose evolutionary ends for fear the impression is left of mysterious vitalistic forces operating without benefit of mechanical agents whenever gaps in scientific knowledge occur, as they inevitably do. (Chomsky had done precisely this in drawing " i n n a t e " ideas from experience. See earlier chapter on Chomsky). Since Darwin, primordial equipment is old hat though many how's and why's remain unanswered, motion, growth and food intake, adaptation, regeneration, ontogenetic recapitulation, as well as extraordinary capacities for the acquisition of language, of learning, of brain development, and indeed the entire process of evolution and natural selection. Proper functioning is often adequate proof of existence. Group-forming characteristics in correlation

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with language thus suggest an ethnic process too, acting out its societal role in some as yet unexplainable biochemical fashion. In his ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, man has behaved by the actual formation of human societies which appear to respond to evolutionary forces. Whether something akin to an ethnic (societo-linguistic) process, or any other innate capacities, can be enucleated anatomically, physiologically or biochemically — can any other innate capacity of man? — or reduced even further physically, only the future can tell. Today, the fact of the concept alone could stimulate theoretical progress. Knowledge of the construction of genes through the arrangements of their special proteins, as well as their mode of transmitting genetic information and direction all through the generations is a colossal achievement. Just as physical traits or features of personality in their numerous complexities are the products of such genetic material, whether contained within a single gene or distributed widely, so one may picture the capacities, principles, mechanisms, faculties of mind and such-like imageries of function as of a similar nature. All ultimately reflect biochemical or biophysical activity. Thus, all the potentials of the embryo, protein elements that operate according to combined biological and chemicophysical laws, come from the parent germ cell and are transmitted to the following generation. While the genius of Descartes had leaped far ahead of his time, what seemed impossible yesterday may still be impossible. Descartes could not have known of the gene and consequently could not have known of biological laws, neither of evolution nor of genetics. His famous triangle that every child would know at birth, so illogical to John Locke yet so eminently comprehensible to Noam Chomsky (see special chapter on Chomsky), seemed not to fit neatly into his mathematical scheme of things. It had first to pass through the sieve of biological law. T o Chomsky this had apparently represented no difficulty since, abstractly speaking, he could draw upon outside experience and thus implant an "innate idea" of a triangle into the child's mind, evidently not into its germ cell. Clearly, the limits of pure mechanical laws had been over-reached. Irrational behavior could not bring the Millennium. Two parallel systems of scientific thought appeared to have converged, destroying a natural harmony. On the one hand, man's primordial capacities were expanding human horizons and developing as biological organs; like the artificial pacemaker of the heart, it is not always possible or even essential to isolate the actual source or mainspring of such a capacity as long as proper functioning is observed, understood, and maintained. The same criterion applies to the

Theories of causality ethnic process too. When the real ethnic process has been isolated, its theoretical prototype may already have accomplished its sociolinguistic purpose; it will then remain for the genuine ethnic process to confirm it retroactively. Prevailing scientific confidence assures us that specific causative factors are ultimately isolated, or, failing that, duplicated artificially, when a theoretical or practical need for them arises. Of basic importance, however, is the fact that, while all biological features are reducible to chemical and physical factors, all organic function operates by biological law (Dobzhansky 1967:21). On the other hand, in the inorganic world of the cosmos, only chemical and physical laws obtain. Marveling at the discoveries surrounding the breaking of the genetic code and the unraveling of the gene's own biological mechanisms, Dobzhansky proposes two scientific approaches because they "ask different questions": 1. the Cartesian reductionist approach that reduces everything to the mechanistic sciences; 2. the Biological approach, that is to say, the old Darwinian evolution, including also, however, the mutational influences and other modifications of natural selection. The Watson-Crick discovery had shown that biological methods were no less scientific than the purely mechanistic, for they too lent themselves to a reductionist approach in the final analysis, specific protein arrangements equating with chemical constituents and mathematical calculation. One scientific system was simply complementary to the other. If then the organic, from its genetic traits to the human capacity for the differentiation of society, can so easily revert to the inorganic world of chemistry, a natural view of the ethnic process further reinforces its role in the human armamentarium. We can become reconciled to the idea that human capacities and unique faculties, among them, to be sure, the ethnic process too, can through their genetic physiology be reinterpreted as proteins and amino acids, and thus ultimately become a mathematical symbol. But whether another revolutionary biological discovery can bring relief to Chomsky's precarious neo-Lamarckianism on behalf of Descartes' triangle, that can only be a question for the future, however titillating a mystery it continues to be for the present, and however regrettable that newborn children will not know their triangles. Heed must be paid to Dobzhansky's warning that: There is no such thing as a gene for self-awareness, or for consciousness, or for ego, or for mind. These basic human capacities derive from the whole of the human genetic endowment, not from some kind of special genes (1967: 72-3). This must surely be true of all the basic human capacities, including the capacities for the acquisition of language and ethnic group development. By the holistic approach of Dobzhansky and perhaps most biologists

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today, heed must also be paid to the limited usefulness of Cartesian reductionism. Its authority ceases with the need to explain the living organism, its origin and evolution. Here, biological laws operate alone, remembering that human understanding never exceeds existing limits of scientific knowledge. Only old-fashioned materialists who overlooked the D N A code can retain static philosophies that accept the nothingness of man and his efforts. To them, man is a mere collocation of atomic particles. Watson and Crick have demonstrated otherwise: specific molecular arrangements of these particles and the proteins they constitute transform them into, life, and the special values characteristic of human life. At no time, moreover, is there the need for a biologist to resort to vitalistic concepts, unless he is ideologically predisposed. It is a matter of record how persistently and unswervingly the life sciences proceed from analysis to analysis of former biological mysteries till they are capable of synthesizing their components or duplicating their functions. The gods of the gaps then move on to other obscurities of life —• conjured up by vitalist apologists. Thus, too, the fate in store for a biological analysis of consciousness and mind, as well as other capacities emanating from the germ cell, such as those for language and for learning. Similarly with the ethnic process. All await the continuing advance in biological knowledge. No elemental human capacity is invalidated merely because mechanism or locale, components or internal arrangements, elude the researcher. Like the "deep structures" of language, there could well be their equivalents in the brain, the germ cell, the heart or other vital areas of the human body awaiting ultimate scientific exploration. The electronic microscope, biochemical investigations, remarkable laser, electrical and other research instruments have yet to penetrate every nook and cranny amongst the hidden recesses of life. It is far from unlikely that not only the basic genetic capacities but human values too, organic substance par excellence and subject therefore only to biological law, should in part arise from the primordial source (see p. 158). Part, perhaps the major part, may be expected to have arisen from the social environmental influence. Indeed, now that we are reminded of this influence, which we have continually expressed all through this book, it is extremely doubtful if any of the genetic capacities could at any time effectively operate without the favorable conjuncture of the associated social environment. The social nature of human existence has been taken for granted in this sub-section. In the combined genetic and environmental interactions lies the dynamic of the ethnic process as well.

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Wherever the emphasis may be laid, genetic or environmental, mainly depends on the nature of the subject as well as upon the researcher's outlook. Although, for instance, Jean Piaget, the noted psychologist, calls his system genetic epistemology, he tends in practice to put more stress upon the cognitive developmental approach. A f t e r all, the genetic human heritage pre-determines specific patterns and functions, but provides no accompanying guarantees of successful achievement. T h a t is the task of the body's adaptive mechanism as it copes with the forces of evolution. Modification is always the order of the day in consequence of external circumstances. T h e n again, Chomsky is inclined to see the genetic factor interacting minimally with the environment. In human values, as in language, he should not be expected to hesitate in ascribing the basic influence to the genetic provenance, where Piaget would be more likely to highlight the environment. T o be sure, ideological blindspots can often obscure the importance of one etiological factor or another. In this book, we have time and again interpolated the mischievous effects of Utopian universalism; but in reality, such social cross-currents are legion. However, the sheer helplessness of science to bridge the gaps in our knowledge at any given moment is perhaps chiefly responsible for theoretical differences in the evaluation of genetical and environmental influences. Although these gaps inevitably succumb to man's insatiable curiosity, it is a comforting challenge that ever newer mysteries continue interminably to reveal themselves, and intellectual man continues to revel in their perplexities. In this connection, from the very nature of the ethnic process, as w e return to our major theme, it is clearly evident that no genetically specified information device can function only as an intrinsic event. Like language with its mental pathways to and from the thought processes and the speech organs, the ethnic process functions in association with the related group. A m o n g man's innate adaptations for interacting with his environment there is for example, a prediction apparatus, comparable to the one in animals, that anticipates coming events or the outcome of the activity of any clearly defined functional system. As P. K . Anokin describes it, prediction is: . . . the creation of the conditions for a reaction which will not be needed until the future; [it] is a universal phenomenon of living nature provided only that the space-time continuum have rhythmic repetitions. . . Max Planck rightly observed that the space-time continuum of matter in motion is "the absolute law of the universe". But that law existed long before the appearance of life on earth. Living beings, whether they liked it or not,

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had to "insert" themselves in that fundamental law; only on that condition was their survival assured. This means that the "insertion" of living beings and their reflection of the space-time continuum constitute the indispensable prerequisite for prediction. From this was formulated our principle of anticipatory reflection, reflection by the brain of the actual sequence of events in the external world. It is precisely this property which is the primordial characteristic of protoplasmic processes already operating in the lower animals. For these, the life change, for example, of seasonal phenomena . .. has been a constant condition for millions of years. .. . All that is necessary is an initial impetus (1973). In the timeless rendition of man's territorial behavior, the human prediction apparatus may be said to affect also the functioning of the ethnic process. There is, in the first place, the uniformity and the historically "cut and dried" mode of transforming the simple group into an ethnic organization, the ethnic forms and framework that unfailingly evolve and which ultimately characterize the group as an ethnic group. But the early adaptation for the future ethnic role had already been applied embryonically by the initial symbiosis of the two related capacities, group forming and language acquisition, with the aid of the ethnic stimulus. Most significant, however, is man's adaptation for interacting with the corresponding group alone, i.e., the specific group. This depends primarily upon the basic language-group relationship within the territorial setting, relatively isolated as it is from other, similar ethnic-territorial settings. It depends, too, upon the individual: as part of a whole, he constitutes the group and interacts as a group; in his capacity as individual, he is innately impelled and communally guided to direct all environmental influences within his sphere, from the cultural to the experiential, in the fundamental effort of human group survival — invariably in a characteristic cultural coloration. The individual is thus an organic constituent of an ethnic group. Hence this is a human prediction apparatus in action — actually an outgrowth of clear evolutionary "intent". Its purpose is to ensure, by making provision beforehand through the medium of the ethnic process, the survival of the specific ethnic group. Evolution thus operates through the interactions of the ethnic force upon both innate and environmental developments in order to ensure that the social nature of man should expand exclusively within an ethnic pattern. The biological faculty Anokin dwells upon in his way might be more widely applicable than either he or Joshua A. Fishman ever contemplated. As we have attempted to show all through this study, biological disciplines add essential correctives to theoretical dilemmas in fields that seemed utterly remote. The ethnic approach, based in part upon this biological underpinning,

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forms both stimulus and framework, as we have consistently pointed out, for the societally and language-patterned behavior. There, too, we learn from Fishman, one is compelled to ponder prediction powers: With respect to societally patterned language behavior, there is doubtlessly variability that can be well-nigh perfectly accounted for by a very few wellselected intra-code positional factors... (Fishman 1971: 225). And Fishman goes on to say, speaking specifically to linguists and social scientists: . . . the entire world of socially patterned variability in language behavior still remains to be explored . . . (1971: 225). But here, however, could also be a fruitful field under the ethnic aegis for biological exploration in the effort to discover in man's prediction apparatus some mechanism capable of unraveling confusing situations rising out of extreme societal variability of behavior. One difficulty, of course, is that both the ethnic process and biological methods would at first appear strange bedfellows to the denizens of language and human society. Fortunately, Fishman cautiously opens the door more widely. The problem needs to be approached from every useful angle: The more variable behavior is. .. the less predictable the behavior is. . .. Ultimately, all disciplines of human behavior — including linguistics and sociology— strive to locate and to interrelate the most parsimonious set of explanatory-predictive variables in order to maximally account for the variability to which their attention is directed (Fishman 1971: 225). While not ordinarily included among the disciplines of human behavior, nonetheless biological interpretations of such sociolinguistic problems could, within the ineluctably circumscribed historico-traditional ethnic boundaries, conceivably open up new perspectives by introducing further discoverable profundities of the human prediction-apparatus through presently unfamiliar approaches. Explications invulnerable to the methodologies of the behavioral disciplines could perhaps more readily be induced to divulge their mysteries before a combined assault in conjunction with applicable ethnobiological viewpoints. It is by no means certain that biological prediction possesses the key to societal behavioral problems. Already, Anokin invokes Max Planck's dictum on the space-time formula. The strongly suggestive ethnic applicability indicates the probability of a diversity of biological laws of predictability, particularly effective in the process of adaptation. Societal behavior seems to belong in this category, extreme variability being remarkably analagous to an ameboid form of human behavior acting out the evolution of human society and perhaps man himself. Social biology thus finds a natural outlet for investigation of a possibly inherent mechanism in the variables of behavior, through researches made jointly with disciplines of social science including, of course, the sociology of language.

The ethnic process and the sociology of language What is strikingly obvious is the direct influence, upon behavior variables within the respective ethnic environments, of the ethnic factor itself. Such comparative data, so readily obtained, could in themselves be very revealing. And yet, so powerful are the myopic inhibitions involved, the all-important ethnic factor fails to be recognized for the profundity of its effects, their role invariably usurped by a surrogate (Fishman 1971: 341). As for the myopia, not even the Whorfian world view, so distortedly attributed to language alone, can explain that.

G. BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY Social monstrosities ostensibly creep in when attempts are made to analyze social situations by the theoretical exclusion of either the genetic or the environmental contribution. Apart from extreme behaviorists, a measure of responsibility for such partial parentage lies with sociolinguists like Gumperz and Hymes who plead the cause of the relatively isolated, nondescript and seemingly orphaned group as the basic and genuinely characteristic group of society. Similarly, with neo-Cartesian psycholinguists such as Chomsky whose excessive and unbalanced leanings towards the innate and the "innate" leave relatively little to the influence of the environment. Just how the pre-ethnic capacities function is, like the entire genetic endowment, still an unknown mechanism. As we have pointed out, this epistemological gap is by no means a bar to mutual understanding and usefulness. We think and speak without knowledge of the primary phenomena involved. Although the functioning of the cardiac pacemaker can be duplicated artificially, its intrinsic mystery remains unsolved. T h e brilliant insights of Freudian analysis have touched only the fringes of the unconscious brain, but they have failed to elucidate any aspects of its metabolism. T h e y have long been superseded by molecular- and neurobiological disciplines that are effecting notable advances in brain research. There is general awareness now of discoveries in the field of developmental biology of a phenomenon known as the recognition property, found in most cells but especially the neuron. It has been observed, for instance, that mixed cells from the retina of the eye of the amphibian, developing experimentally in tissue culture, manage to relocate their true fellows from their respective tissues. Though at first none too specific, this phenomenon has furnished an important clue leading upward on the rungs of the experimental ladder (Rose 1971: 171-172). Steven Rose, a young English neurobiologist, affirms that even more discriminating experiments may soon be forthcoming on the scale of

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protein molecules of antibodies and antigens essential to the body's immune responses which: . . . recognize one another in the same way as an enzyme recognizes the substance on which it acts chemically. [Apparently contrary to what would ordinarily complicate the situation here immensely, Rose continues:] it is not necessary to have a specific gene for every single possible antibody that the organism can make. Instead there is a genetic potential which enables a very large number of rather random protein molecules to be made, each of which has the capacity for recognition of a particular antigen molecule, but the specific protein sequence of each of which is environmentally determined rather than specified genetically (1973: 315). As for the method of invoking the genetic potential rather than the specific but troublesome genetic specification, undoubtedly a specialist will appear who will possess the specific know-how for this environmental modification. Nevertheless, though in principle acceptable, the static molecular biological model described above by Dr. Rose has proved to be unfeasible. It has therefore also been replaced by alternative, enormously more economical models for the achievement of recognition properties, based upon chemical gradients of a particular substance. Neurobiological and developmental biological contributions have thus been supplementing the molecular biologist in an epoch-making forward stride. Similarly, the human capacities await their turn. For language and ethnicity too, a new experimental era appears to loom. It may no longer be hyperbolical that psychoneurological findings of the later sixties, themselves of pronounced ethnolinguistic interest, should continue their revelations. Psychoneurological investigations in recent years have increasingly tended to vindicate this ethnolinguistic, in some respects, dialectological, approach. T h e once scorned claim of an affinity between a people and its language now finds confirmation in the work of A. R . Luria, W. Grey Walter, H . Magoun, W. Penfield, and others. Social and historical influences, it is universally recognized, are the factors responsible for those differences in mental outlook that have led to the creation of specific phonemic patterns for each speech community, phonemic systems that are now being widely synthesized in brain research. A graphic description of such synthesis is given by Professor A. R . Luria, head of the Department of Neurophysiology and Neuropsychology of the University of Moscow, and member of the Editorial Board of both Neuropsychologia (Oxford) and Cortex (Milan). The temporal lobe of the left hemisphere of the brain (in right-handed people) is part of the important system that controls the elaboration of the acoustic input of speech processes.... This part of the cortex has fibres which connect it with the areas that take part in the control of speech articulations.... All

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this forms the important mechanism enabling us to analyse and synthesize speech sounds: that is to say, to single out the features that are characteristic of the sounds and then to synthesize them into the basic sound units (phonemes) of which speech is constructed. These characteristic features, which are the basis of the phonemic system of the language, vary in different languages. For examples, a person who speaks German can easily distinguish the difference in length of the vowel sound which changes the word Stadt into Staat. .. but he is quite unable to distinguish the character of softness, which in Russian changes the word pyl (fire) into the word pyl' (dust).... While the reason for such phonemic distinctions of words are social and historical in nature and connected with the way in which the language has developed (a point that has been investigated by several linguists) there can be no doubt that this synthesis of the phonemic units of speech sounds is in all cases accomplished with the participation of the secondary parts of the cortex of the left hemisphere. If a lesion of these parts of the cortex occurs, the patient is unable to distinguish between closely similar phonemes, and finds as much difficulty in decoding the sounds in his own language as a normal person does in decoding those of a language with a phonemic system unfamiliar to him (1968). Similarly, neuropsychological research into such psychophysiological processes as speech, as well as perception and voluntary action, has also thrown light upon the structural basis of the psychology of writing. T h e reason for this is, here too of course, the dominance of the phonemic factor. Luria continues: Before writing a word which he has heard or thought of, one has first to break down the stream of sound into its basic parts and to isolate those phonemes which are to be recorded: these are the ones which will be indicated by separate letters.... It will therefore come as no surprise that lesions in these parts of the brain which inevitably result in incapacity to identify speech sounds result in inability to write words or letters.... This is the case with Europeans . . . and Africans.... It is not true of Chinese, however, since Chinese characters are ideograms; they represent concepts and not the sounds of speech so that the mechanism of writing does not include the acoustic analysis of words and thus does not involve the temporal, auditory parts of the cortex (1968). Thus, the very absence of the phonemic factor in the case of Chinese, and its replacement by ideograms, again brings into focus a distinction that owes its origin to social and historical reasons, reasons of historical development. I f , then, brain structure is itself exposed to or in some manner receptive to certain cultural influences, such as phonemic distinctions, or even the absence of phonemic distinctions, arising out of historical and social developments, it need indeed come as no surprise that the mood and character of a people, its national mythology and cultural notions, biases, and predilections can even be suggested by the "tendentiousness" of dominant electrical brain rhythms among its members, especially what

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is called the " a l p h a " mechanism. This presumably goes beyond mere individual differences in ways of thinking and psychological inclinations and cleavages, even beyond irrational ruptures of communication such as those which cause wars. It would appear, according to W. Grey Walter, that differences in an individual's alpha mechanism can account for individual antagonisms and affinities. The misunderstanding is at the highest yet most subde level. The two antagonists think they are speaking the same language but are not. Their mental accents, so to say, separate them as surely as verbal accents in a class-conscious society (Walter 1968). But the alpha mechanism seems to have deeper implications. Researchers renowned in the fields of neurophysiology, electronics and cybernetics are beginning to point to ethnic differences apparently dependent upon the respective relationships of people and nations to the alpha type prevalent among them. A n outstanding exponent of this aspect of neurological research is W. Grey Walter, Director of the Physiology Department of the Burden Neurological Institute, Bristol, England and Professor at the University of Aix-Marseille, France; a member of the U N E S C O Study Group for the Establishment of the International Brain Research Organization; co-founder and Honorary President of the International Federation of Societies for Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology (1947), etc. Wittily embellishing his obviously serious thinking in this area of investigation, Professor Walter goes on to say: It may even be that serious crises between nations... have arisen because the negotiators have different types of imagery and can only talk at cross purposes. Some current conflicts that threaten to tear our world asunder may be no more serious in origin than an argument about whether the cube was "really" red or blue. Perhaps a diplomat should have his alpha-type endorsed on his passport . . . [If, as has been suggested, the alpha-type of rhythm is actually genetically determined, Prof. Walter continues] some degree of affinity or antagonism may well be felt between people of similar or dissimilar alpha types and imagery. If this leads to sexual selection even to a small degree, it could account for the survival of different types in the proportions observed in our population. There is some evidence that the proportions are not the same in all ethnic groups but the surveys have not been directed to this problem.... In some African cultures visual imagery seems much less important and auditory imagery much more important than in European and North American ones. The correlation of cultural genetic and cerebral factors with ethnic origins will be an important... task for the future if we are ever to understand one another as well as ourselves (1968). A correlation of cultural genetic and cerebral factors with ethnic origins! Professor Walter's bold conception of a virtually biological relationship to ethnic origins holds out promise of scientific respectability, adding a highly piquant note to the socio-historical association of a people and its

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language. Ethnolinguistics awaits further evidence of alpha mechanisms that could link language and people in biological unity. A prospect so enthralling could have revolutionary implications. Nor, in the present emphasis upon this fascinating neurophysiological research, is there place for extravagant interpretations of present-day linguistic mysteries. They become relatively less exotic as these mysteries unfold. Neither neurophysiological nor biological investigations are mere props for bolstering scientific acceptance. Notwithstanding Walter's youthful exuberance, the initial promise of the E E G waves, especially the alpha mechanism, has not kept up with the expectations, least of all for the ethnic process. The absence of solid substantiation for the actual existence of a capacity for ethnic dynamics merely indicates, however, that the quest will be an elusive one. It is more than likely that the experimental fate of the ethnic process would be closely identified with that of the entire innate human potential of the capacities, particularly the capacities for group forming and language acquisition. Even so, the structural and neurophysiological knowledge available on the species-specific characteristics of language and speech, as well as their interactions with such properties of brain tissue as mind, thought, intellect, consciousness, memory, etc., already throw much light upon the essential framework they constitute for the ethnic process. It is therefore reasonable to hope that in man's unswerving pursuit of his irrepressible curiosity lies the unfolding of a good many such mysteries pertaining to human life and destiny. Outstanding teamwork has increasingly expanded the perspective of neurobiological advance as it opens up a new field also for sociological and linguistic enquiry. This has led not only to growing interpretation in terms of the functioning of the life-serving capacities but has tended to discover greater channels of utilization in the social life of the community. Thus, enormous strides in the life-sciences on one hand, a more probing specialization within the social sciences on the other. Interactions between the innate ethnic factor and the socio-historical aspects of the environment in this way come to evoke the liberative tendencies of mankind. The hitherto unknown ethnic process is thereby manifested societally by such phenomena as ethnicity, nationalism and national struggle. One may hazard a guess that the ethnic process, whose precise location (like its actual existence) is unknown, unless it continues to operate from the fertilized egg-cell, the original portal of entry, is most likely reflected in brain tissue function. That is also the venue of the genetic potential of perhaps all other capacities, faculties, or basic developmental principles. Should this postulate prove correct, the inherent relationships between

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the ethnic process and brain function as a whole would undoubtedly be of considerable significance. Neurobiologists widely hold that the human brain is not completely specified by the genetic instructions carried in the inherited DNA code. That leaves large areas of cortical tissue still "uncommitted", hence subject to the influences of social experience. In the long range of evolutionary time, it may be presumed, such effects or some of them could ultimately become components of man's genetic equipment, the wider potential in genius and personality attainment creating greater scope for natural selection in a generationally more receptive environment. With the telescoping rate of moral, psychological, and epistemological development of society, both immediate and evolutionary prospects of a high order may thus reveal themselves with a rapidity even more incredible than the 20th century has already witnessed. The struggles for national liberation, turbulent, incoherent and disastrous though they have often been, are nevertheless among the first faltering steps towards a genuine society of man. They are only beginnings, foundation stones for the new world. On the basis of such social change, of peoples acquiring the bare essentials of ethnic liberation, a genuinely free society has yet to be erected. Continuing social change has to seek, still gropingly and far from unerringly, a humanity without crime, without poverty, without ignorance, and without disease. Simultaneously, however, a more socially conscious people must strive to eradicate forever, social exploitation, psychological distortions, and the lust for power. Social good and scientific curiosity point relentlessly to the widest application and fullest utilization of the moral, mental, and material potentials of every human being. In conclusion, we return to Dobzhansky's views on Cartesian reductionism with which we must now come to terms (see pp. 189-201). Voices being heard in the physics of today suggest a retreat from that reductionism by reason of its incompatibility with the quality of life. It is, of course, not a retreat but a progressive and innovative step forward. One such plastic approach is presented by Ilya Prigogine, distinguished thermodynamicist. A brief summation of his views, culled from an interview held during a symposium at his school in Brussels, follows: Let us say, straight away, that we don't believe it will be possible to weld or integrate the two disciplines (biology and physics)... that physicists do biology.... The outlook is not such that biology will become physics.. .. As far as molecular biology is concerned . . .[the] significance of what we are

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trying to do now is that it is based on the idea that the old concepts of thermodynamic order are — if not an error — at least profoundly inadequate.. . . The question of where life stands in relation to the laws of physics no longer confronts us with the dilemma expressed (by the concepts of equilibrium thermodynamics).... Using the theory of dissipative (thermodynamics) structures, we think that we are able to assess the same problem with somewhat more refinement. Here we see that historical time [a social science concept] appears in certain physical systems. [Beyond chance, says Prigogine, there is the improvement brought about by necessity, and] beyond instability corresponding to the discontinuity between . . . the thermodynamic equilibruim and that of phenomena distant from equilibrium.... Throughout this discontinuity there are t h u s . . . two states of matter which are qualitatively different.. . [Hence] we are helping to broaden or generalize physics to the point that biology will find its natural place there.... It is impossible at the present time, however, to predict what kind of new, truly biological research could permit the application to biology of general thermodynamics (Prigogine 1973). Prigogine's analysis of a new interdisciplinary relationship between biology and physics seems commendably reasonable. But surely, when science with its X-rays, radio-activity, spectroscopy, and chromatography — along with many other instruments of physics now employed in biology — is making great forward strides, there is no need to quail, as Prigogine does, at the end of the symposium: But let us have no illusions. If today we look into the situations where the analogy with the life sciences is the most striking — even if we discovered within biological systems some operations distant from the state of equilibrium — our research would still leave us quite unable to grasp the extreme complexity of the simplest of organisms (1973). Dobzhansky's position shows promise of fulfilment by physics itself. Advances in both sciences will probably bring them closer together. Future prospects for solving life's mysteries should then be infinite. T h e holism of Dobzhansky's approach suggests three aspects of existence that incorporate the essence of human life: a) the basic characteristics of all organic (animal) existence—growth, mobility, reproduction, metabolism, adaptation, etc.; b) such species-specific features of man as speech, language, intellect, and c) above all, the highly spiritual motivations of man that are embraced by terms like humanism, what men live by, the perpetual quest for love, truth, justice, freedom, equality, beauty, and other qualities that distinguish mankind from brute. O n the other hand, Watson's and Crick's great discovery of the D N A code and critical amino acid factors point to the reductionist fate of the basic ingredients of life which find their ultimate end in the gaseous and dusty elements of space and matter. Y e t there is no inherent contradiction in the physical and biological approaches. Apart from elemental cataclysms beyond human control,

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nuclear destruction and the relatively " m i n o r " episodes that have thus far preceded it can truly represent Cartesian reductionism in organic life, since these levels of human degradation could alone provide the necessary man-made conditions. However, a parallelistic imperative ensures that, in the final analysis, man's supreme values, embodied in the lowliest physical ingredients of the body tissues and their functioning, can be preserved in the vital and momentous struggle to attain the peaks of evolutionary achievement. Among these achievements, the solution of one "mystery" would be an enormous breakthrough, the specifications or interactions of those brain tissues whose functions we presently designate as mind and intellect.

CHAPTER 8

Special facets of the ethnic process

A. S Y M B O L I S M W e had turned f r o m discussions on a level of speech acts and events, of interactions in social and language structure and behavior, and then the effects of biology and other basic sciences from all of w h i c h w e had sought to elucidate relationships to the ethnic process. W e have entered other levels of sociolinguistic interest involving data less classically linguistic and more sociological in character. Broadly speaking this n e w area embraces " a people and its l a n g u a g e " . I t should lead us to questions of ethnic and national concern, such as ethnicity, nationalism, language loyalties, language maintenance and language shift, national liberation and national development, and others of a related nature. These are subjects formerly looked upon with great disfavor under the once pervasive influence of a Utopian universalistic philosophy. O f basic importance in this analysis are incomplete or underprivileged conditions of ethnic existence such as minority or underdeveloped national situations, as well as the accompanying unsatisfactory language status. O n this ethnic level, the objectives to be attained should be identical with those sought on the earlier level. Attention is here directed to an intermediate field of ethnolinguistic interest that stresses some special aspects of ethnic importance. W e shall deal first with the symbolic value of language varieties for their speakers. A comprehensive passage from a recent book of essays by Joshua A . Fishman deserves quoting at length. All in all, the sociology of language seeks to discover not only the societal rules or norms that explain and constrain language behavior and the behamor toward language in speech communities but it also seeks to determine the symbolic value of language varieties for their speakers. That language varieties come to have symbolic or symptomatic value, in and of themselves, is an inevitable consequence of their functional differentiation. If certain varieties are indicative of certain interests, or certain backgrounds, of certain origins, then they come to represent the ties and aspirations, the limitations with which these

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interests, backgrounds, and origins, in turn, are associated. Language varieties rise and fall in symbolic value as the status of their most characteristic or marked functions rises and falls. Varieties come to represent intimacy and equality if they are most typically learned and employed in interactions that stress such bonds between interlocutors. Other varieties come to represent educated status or national identification as a result of the attainments associated with their use and their users and as a result of their realization in situations and relationships that pertain to formal or to particular ideologies. However, these functions are capable of change (and of being consciously changed), just as the linguistic features of the varieties themselves may change (and may be consciously changed), and just as the demographic distribution of users of a variety within a particular speech community may change. [In short] T h e sociology of language is the study of the characteristics of language varieties, the characteristics of their functions, and the characteristics of their speakers as these three constantly interact, change, and change one another, both within and between speech communities (1971: 221-22).

Fishman's stress is upon the symbolic value of language per se as upon its study in relation to language varieties and their speakers. Since Humboldt and Cassirer the symbolic value of language is scarcely questioned. Its importance here lies among immigrant or other ethnic minorities, or in areas of a widely scattered people (as with the Jews of Eastern Europe before World War II); the many language varieties that appear offer great scope for distinguishing the particular symbolic significance for the speakers. What lends special point to such a study as Fishman's is not, however, merely the fact of language variety, and not merely the fact of symbolism in these special areas, but that in the symbolism is expressed the ceaseless flow of the ethnic process. Like a running stream, languages of ethnic groups whose free development is impaired or hindered in their varied forms and changing phases, keep flowing on, despite all obstacles, as long as a single speaker is left. In every stage of existence, they reflect the emotions and attitudes of their respective speakers to pressing problems and interests. A human being cannot be silenced any more than a river can cease to flow. Thought and feeling escape in speech and writing. Ethnicity emerges out of all crevices of human relationships in conditions of ethnic stress however mild. In its normal functioning, the ethnic process traverses its regular channels of mind and nervous system, as well as through language and behavior, in order to perpetuate the ethnic identity of the individual and his speech community, and to react in turn to the ethnic stress of the specific group and its members. In fact, language varieties and their respective speakers within their speech communities equate with the natural ethnic responses of underprivileged peoples.

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O n the other hand, symbolic values represent the ethnic character of language and speaker behavior under adverse conditions of group living. In the absence of a definite goal, the tendency to rest on one's oars when arriving at a stopping station in one's researches reinforces the blindspot blurring that goal. Important as symbolism is in both the representation of speakers and language of a speech community, it remains relatively passive the more stable the community finds itself ethnically, socially, and culturally. Symbolic significance is enhanced, however, in direct proportion to growing instability; movement stimulates the flow of ethnic energy. Nowhere is this response more obvious than among communities politically or culturally disfranchised and thus ethnically impinged upon. Sociolinguistic research obligates the elucidation of the effects of such change upon the symbolism itself. Under the impact of such altered circumstances, the symbolic representation keeps correspondingly apace with this evolution. Response of speakers and language likewise mutually reflect analogous interactions. In short, symbolism is no less affected by the dynamics of the ethnic process than are the interactions of speaker-language interrelationships. Examination of symbolism thus fails in its objectives no less than do societal or language surrogates when research horizons are arbitrarily delimited in scope and aspiration. It should be clear then that interests, backgrounds and origins, if they are truly to be reflected in symbolic value, must reflect fundamentally the ethnic dynamic that initially determines them. O n no account can they remain buried within the fictitious " p r i m a c y " of one surrogate or another. Lacking in Fishman's approach is adequate ethnic emphasis.

B. BEHAVIORAL STIMULI AND ETHNIC DYNAMICS It is in situations outlined above that the constant interactions and changes amongst languages and speakers, which Fishman depicts, inevitably take place. Neither ethnicity nor any other expressions of these situations, and certainly not the data derived from research, represent the basic explanations for these phenomena. T h e ethnic process, as the primordial and initial stimulus to all these interactions and changes, accompanied as the specific speech community is invariably by an evolving culturo-historical and environmental framework, is the sole and fundamental source. Ethnicity and nationalism in all their constructive manifestations, relations, or developments, may come to represent ties

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and aspirations. However, interests, backgrounds and origins point ultimately only to the ethnic process. T h e mere ascertaining of facts is, of course, not e n o u g h ; it is w h a t they come to portend as an ethnic group, with roots in the nature of their being, that is important. Further elucidation of this difference will follow in the course of our discussion. Fishman's fallacy, in common with practically all workers in both sociological and linguistic approaches, is precisely the dwelling on the unfinished here and now, embodied in the absence of profound philosophical and theoretical enquiry. Adverse conditions as an ethnic group explain much of the emphasis we have been giving to the ethnic factor. It looms large in v i e w of its frequently submerged status. It is rather hackneyed to say today that, the more remote a speech community or its homeland from external threats the less sensibility of ethnic or national peril. Awareness of ethnicity, recognition of one's ethnic self, is as indigenous to m a n as language. Concealment or denial of ethnic, and, likewise, national, rights obviously indicates an anti-ethnic predisposition. W h e r e loyalty to the state precludes ethnic sentiment, that too can be a warning signal of coming reaction. Fishman has expressed himself in a similar vein. But there seems to be something of the finality of a goal in the perfectionism that is apparently sought in secondary objectives of language relationships, as though precisely there lay the primary direction of sociolinguistic research. We very much need a more refined understanding of the circumstances under which behaviors toward language and behaviors toward the group are related toward each other in particular w a y s . . . . The fact remains that the relationship between language-saliency and group-saliency is almost as speculative today as it was at that time [pre-World War I I views in Germany] 1972b: 91). As will be illustrated later, need for refined understanding of circumstances is purely relative, and not always essential. N o r is the speculative character of almost any topic necessarily pejorative. Theories are erected upon a speculative basis. W h a t has been responsible for absence of clarity in this instance is not any special, inherent difficulty but the taboo that has obscured it. A s a matter of fact, the quest for meaning in an ethnic process of necessity began speculatively, seeming to have found increasing justification as it was elucidated. O u t of this speculation had grown the revelation that neither ethnicity nor nationalism, i.e. national consciousness, had suddenly sprung into being, the latter especially as a sort of capitalist handmaiden alone, but rather was the evolutionary culmination of deeper forces. Such a culmination is implied in all expressions and outcomes of ethnicity as folkways, tradition, religion, language loyalties, language maintenance, and all other demonstrations of group identity arising out

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of national liberation and national development. Greater refinement of understanding thus comes with profounder social knowledge derived from the primeval ethnic impulse toward territorial and language differentiation and organization. Originating, then, from so highly speculative an hypothesis, ramifications of the ethnic process reach to the micro-sociolinguistic opportunities of the sociology of language for exploring the relationships between language-saliency and group-saliency, as well as the peculiar circumstances of the relationship between the respective behaviors toward the language and toward the group. T h e dynamics of the ethnic process pervade the dynamics of the interactions, but, analogous in some respect to a damaged blood-circulating mechanism, does not project its presence unless a group's ethnicity is impaired. T o be sure, the momentum that followed the protohuman's first group surge was propelled, within his language and essential physiology, in consequence of the body's autonomous facilities, and as an adaptation to a favorable environmental situation. Nevertheless, one may properly infer that the primal spurt imparts the germinal quality which subsequently activates not only the speaker but the linguistic and related autonomy. T h e continuing relationship is not one-way; the subterranean web of back and forth cross-currents that interact constitutes those spontaneous, selfperpetuating communications that foreover tie the individual to his specific speech community. A curiosity concerning the actual circumstances of the hitherto arcane area of mutual relationships of the behaviors toward language and group is germane both societally and micro-sociolinguistically. By lying, particularly, at the heart of the "all-encompassing w e b " , it serves to bind, in the language of this book, " a people and its language". Precisely that is the significance of the rather facile dictum that a language reflects its speech community. Amateur and specialist alike can be held as if spellbound by these tenacious strands.

C. ALIYA: AN ADAPTATION T O THE ETHNIC PROCESS T h e ethnicity one encounters among "ethnics" of immigrant countries, does not, relatively speaking, strike deep roots. Individuals often return to the "old country". Generally, after a generation or more, they finally succumb to the blandishments of a host country, except for the elite that seeks to perpetuate its ethnicity. The "ethnic" is the minority group that strives to coexist with the majority population perhaps for an indefinite period; the majority population, the "typical Americans", are themselves

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of immigrant stock. With a little more intensivity, the same situation applies, with outstanding differences, to Jews as well. The phenomenon of ALIYA, a form of nationalism among Jews that results in mass emigration to Israel strikes incomparably deeper roots. Symbolically, it represents a historic return of Jews from a world-wide bi-millennial Dispersion to an ancient Homeland from which practically none had individually come. It is an unprecedented situation both in Jewish as in world history. It was understandable for Jews to leave their foster lands, now that a Homeland was at long last available, if antiSemitism played a determining role. But it was not wholly true of Soviet Russia where the almost total assimilation of the nearly three million Jews had almost eclipsed the relatively minor irritations of the existing and still ominous official anti-Semitism. There, the extraordinary eruption of an impassioned Zionism among these Jews, and the amazing achievement of a large mass migration to Israel, was a virtual modern miracle. The continuance of this mass migration will clearly rest as before upon political expedience. In the West, the situation has been different. In countries like Argentina where anti-Semitism is rife but presently sporadic, it is an important factor. The ethnicizing and nationalizing influences emanating largely from Israel made deep dents into the Jewish psyche, and resulted in a proportionately larger ALIYA than has been the case with the Jews of the U.S. In the United States, anti-Semitism is presently a negligible condition of Jewish existence. ALIYA is still actually a minor event in both countries, but more so in the U.S.; and indubitably, security and absorptive conditions in Israel have also been potent deterrents to immigration, so that both anti-Semitism and assimilation do not tell the whole story. While Jewish historical experience validates the fatal consequences of both these accompaniments of Dispersion, the question which concerns us here is not which of them plays the more decisive role in ALIYA. Basically, ALIYA reveals the vitality of the human endowment also in respect to the ethnic process; direction of Jewish ethnic destiny is the natural effect of historical forces. What would not be understandable—except as the outcome of an ethnic process ... is why Jews should leave a foster land in which they have for several generations enjoyed the fullest rights of citizenship and become practically indistinguishable from everybody else. ALIYA is qualitatively different from the country-wide mobility that follows unsatisfactory local conditions, and affects Jews no less than other Americans. Expressed here is a national will to live in their Homeland, which is generated by innate psychodynamic forces. What is significant is that it exists. It can, of course, be crushed. A people may become extinct. Disregarding the present trickle

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of ALIYA, which tomorrow could become a generational stream, the enormously preponderant majority of American Jews have all the earmarks of a vanishing community. As long as Jewish counter-influences consist, by and large, of a feeble ethnicity, this tragic Jewish situation foreshadows the even greater tranquillity of inevitable extinction. But why disregard ALIYA; why ignore an ethnic process? A salient feature of evolution, as in life as a whole, is the urge toward self-identification and not the way that leads to self-liquidation. If this is a valid attitude, the ethnic process, like any other inborn equipment of man, is of paramount importance. T h e deep-rooted sense is proof enough of its existence, if proof, indeed, is essential. In fact, the very exceptionality of the course taken by the "saving remnant" vis-à-vis the rest of the population singles out the imperative character of the ethnic unconscious. There is much to learn from the experience of ALIYA, from its early developing phases in America or elsewhere, till these newcomers are "ingathered" in Israel. Primarily native-born Americans, let us say, of second and third generations: what had alienated them from fellow Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, most emphatically from the alienated American ? What could account for the final rejection of American surroundings? A continuing, though as yet far from thriving phenomenon, most of the prospective emigrants have long forgotten the native Jewish tongues. English is the mother-tongue of all of them and, immersed in American culture, few of them are acquainted with their own. Nevertheless, they are overwhelmingly oriented from the very commencement of their Odyssey to effect a language change, from English to Hebrew, to cease to be Americans and to remain Jews. It is a revolutionary experience that finds them in Israel in a bilingual situation they had never enjoyed before. Little wonder that only the direst circumstances or the most idealistic efforts, individual or community, are capable of removing the mental, economic, and other types of conditioning barriers to the self-emancipation of a Jew addicted to Dispersion, and liberating his ethnic consciousness. In Dispersion, that is the Jewish struggle for national liberation, the equivalent of the more than a century-old struggle of nationally deprived peoples we have all been witness to.

D. MALADIES OF DISPERSION One cannot leave the subject of ALIYA without referring to two of the major blights of Dispersion, both ordinarily invisible and morally secondary relative to the physical destruction and mass murder of a holocaust. Nonetheless, they both lead in the direction of Jewish extinction. In the

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quest for national survival, the ultimate and most irrevocable distinction between the American Jew and the Israeli lies entirely in the utterly disintegrating effects of the prevailing mores upon the Jew qua Jew. The fact that normal, sociocultural assimilating currents of a country should, owing to their natural dominance, bring about the ethnic erosion of a minority is not generally categorized as undemocratic, uncultured, or immoral behavior. For Jews, struggling for survival even in the Homeland, the meaning of assimilation in one foster land after another can be only extinction or near-extinction in those Diasporas; and consequently a serious threat to the Homeland itself. Whose is the correct evaluation? Is one to ignore the intrinsic ethnic pressures of a century or two, as salient today as ever, that led dispossessed peoples to their independence? Is the individual unconscious to continue to harbor ethnic repressions as a matter of supreme unimportance, an atavism a free world would scarcely relish ? Or are the tensions surrounding the ethnic process at last to be released socially, psychologically, and philosophically—tensions that society in its ignorance had imposed upon an unrecognized primordial impulse? A new look upon human society seems to be imminent, and it will probably revolve about the concept of the ethnic process. ALIYA further discloses in high relief the havoc and the devastation of another malady of Dispersion: assimilationism. It is an old skeleton rattling in the Jewish closet. It is uniquely Jewish by virtue of the age-long Dispersion and the potential peril that has accompanied a ubiquitous and defenceless existence. It is essentially a form of Jewish alienation that especially affects the intellectual element, weakening still more the already feeble position of the Jewish community in relation to survival. For many psychological and opportunistic reasons, but chiefly the alienation that eventually expresses itself in an overpowering wish to acquire a Gentile identity, growing severance of all Jewish ties ensues. Assimilationism attains its peak when it turns an irrational hatred upon its Jewish origins, as it frequently does. It is a culminating Jewish selfhatred that often knows no restraint, either in its judgments or in its actions, to the detriment of its own people, and now to the very survival of Israel. Of all peoples, Jews only have exemplified such a degree of intensity in their self-hatred, and there can be little doubt of the psychic-warping responsibility of the protracted national Dispersion. The intensity alone of fantastic efforts to eradicate the basic impulse of an ethnic self — acquisition of a Gentile identity — is clear evidence of this strikingly abnormal behavior. The mental trauma in the lives of these individuals and their families throughout the centuries, and the moral enormity — if not much

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more — of the effect of their hostile attitudes to their fellow Jews is cumulatively and historically appalling. With hindsights of history and newer insights into the development of human society, it is easier to recognize the futilities of alienation or of self-mutilating change as a means of changing human nature or even the course of social evolution. Among the factors accounting for ALIYA and thus helping reveal the mechanics of the ethnic process, there is reason to wonder whether human behavior representing degradations of Dispersion can prove sufficiently revolting, to people who do not share this alienation, to stimulate their ethnic dynamics even more. Thus, even flight from a people's origins, the widespread self-abnegation, and the frantic quest for a new identity, all these devices of desperation demonstrate not the absence of an ethnic process but an exceedingly virile one.

E. AND THE LION SHALL LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB Among the most misused words in any language are nation and nationalism. They are misused alike by Utopian universalists who first gave them currency; by rabid chauvinists like the Nazis who placed their stamp upon them; by totalitarian national states like China and the Soviet Union that, with Marxist platitudes, denounced the concepts of nation and nationalism while favoring certain nations out of reasons of expedience; and, by the average guileless idealist who had long been taught by "universalist" and "communist" alike that all social evils stemmed from these reactionary concepts. Especially among historians, political scientists, sociologists, as well as intellectuals as a whole, these concepts were endlessly debated. Whether Utopians admit it or not, two centuries of national struggle finally turned the tide despite the prevalence of popular delusions. Tripling membership of the UN, however limited its usefulness, at least indicates where realities are. The propaganda victory, on the other hand, seems to have remained with the Utopians: while popular sympathy often goes to disadvantaged peoples seeking national liberation, wishful thinking of the Messianic day would have it ushered in "on a silver platter" quite prepared to forgo the prior national liberation. It is an illogical attitude which gives rise to unscrupulous argumentation or to the idealistic flair for uncomplicated dedication. The celebrated folk-singer, Joan Baez, evangelistic protester against social and political wrongs amply illustrates a world-wide fashion. Inter-

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spersed between her songs there runs a constant comment mingled with catch phrases such as: I ' m not anti-anything. I ' m just pro-people. W h e n bombs fly, I ' m against violence on both sides. I don't think babies should be killed anymore. I ' m against flags and nations. W h e n we have no more nations, then we will have no more armies (Baez 1974).

No weighty political decisions are made, nor scientific conclusions confirmed, in the concert halls of the nations. But catch phrases linger on; sentiment is created. Generally, audiences good-naturedly tolerate these abuses; and, indeed, there can be no serious objection. Everybody accepts stereotyped ideals. Here they are offered only as paradigms to show ideological attitudes are included also, like the catch-phrase about nations which most people swallow holus-bolus as they are innocently presented by ostensible non-politicals. Hitler employed similar methods to mold public opinion. Joan Baez might be right or wrong. There are less sinister ways of stirring the emotions of the people. She could be more specific, perhaps encourage public debate. Are nations to fold up, since she believes their existence is a threat to peace? Shall the UN simply abolish itself? Or does Joan Baez propose that all decent, liberal minded persons should strive to prevent underprivileged nations from seeking national independence? Perhaps she was a trifle premature. Why not win public opinion over to the idea of liberating every oppressed nation? Immediately after she had gained this point, she could appeal to her audiences to demand that the great powers, followed by lesser powers, and lastly by the tiny nations and the weak, should in one fell swoop surrender their sovereignties. It is highly questionable if thereafter nations could wage war anymore. When exploited peoples have been freed and selfish political forces restrained, the conscience of the world will indeed have been awakened. Not nations breed war but the evil forces behind them; and not the absurd idea that doing away with nations will automatically do away with war, but the rigid control with the intent of eliminating these irrational forces of man. To make such assumptions about nations is to be glib and naive. Marx and his followers who were chiefly responsible for these unfounded concepts were also etatists: from their sweeping judgment they excepted a few of the largest nations. So much for the anti-nation position! Who could breed war better than the superpowers? These true believers were convinced, nonetheless, that a world without nations was imminent. For the sake of the super-nation, economic causes of social evils proved

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secondary to the psychological, and even Marxists rejected furiously the Freudian " i d " . A t all events, the national struggle, after two world wars and the Thousand Year Reich, had turned out to be a categorical negation of the Utopian universalists. But, during that momentous interval, they had, in the grand manner and with astonishing irresponsibility, installed chauvinism and Nazism as the presumably characteristic features of a nation and of nationalism. These philosophers in a hurry for the Millennium had left nothing to the evolutionary development of human society. Despite their imperious judgment, colonial peoples kept demanding their freedom now. Condemned by the fiat of men, the nation obviously had not completed its social function; an organic instrument of human society could not so peremptorily be abolished. Fiercely opposing the struggle of the Slav peoples for their independence, Engels used to say, in Mehring's paraphrase : The historic right of the great cultural peoples to pursue their revolutionary development was more important than the struggle of these small, crippled and impotent nations and groups for independence, even if here and there some delicate national bud should be broken off at the stem. As a result of the greater struggle these little nations and groups would be privileged to take part in a progress of historical development which would remain completely foreign to them if they were left to themselves (Engels 1936). As a matter of fact, social evil is an economic and psychological problem transcending the fact of national existence. Men will employ all means at their disposal for exercising their egotistic aims, but in a democratic society the simple solution is the demand for integrity in every walk of life. T h e impracticality of converting overnight a world of nations into a world of "non-nations" had never penetrated idealistic and intellectualistic minds fascinated by the force of a great humanistic idea. Acquiring it from the ancient Hebrew Prophets, they had imparted to it its dogmatic Marxist deformity, which blinded them to the realities of the national situation. T h e Prophetic dream can come true when all nations are free and social wrongs are attacked at their roots. T h a t would provide an opportunity for idealistic causes to demand the abolition of sovereignty. T h e momentum of the French, American and Russian revolutions along with the enormous influence of Marxist thought had stampeded humanity along channels of socio-economic change. Profound changes affecting the human body and psyche had begun to appear only during the last two decades or so. As result of the slow progress of social evolution, human society has paid dearly for its Utopian escapade with nearly two centuries of national struggles and incessant war. M a n is only now entering a remarkable stage of unparalleled scientific advance. Not only the medical ills of man but his social pathology as well are awaiting hopeful prospects

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of eradication. If science continues to telescope its achievements, we might even look forward to improvements in the human psyche too. In a world no longer enslaved by sovereignties, its free peoples would no longer be burdened by their most serious handicap. Society would then tend to become transformed into a world of national neighborhoods, ethnic groups and languages existing under world law without irksome restraint. In such a world, men would continue to express their inherent personalities by living in ethnic groups. Ethnic neighborhoods would fulfill the functions imposed upon them by the primordial endowment of the ethnic process. They could not do otherwise, anymore than the human endowment of a capacity for language could be expressed in anything but language and speech. Like the capacity for language, the capacity for ethnic development is a genetic capacity. Not so long ago, structural linguists would unquestionably have regarded such considerations as utterly extraneous to the scholarly problem immediately at hand. One unfortunate consequence of ideological interference with scholarship, however, is the all but inevitable tendentiousness that is injected. T h a t happens invariably on questions of ethnicity and its affiliated developments, including nationalism. None are more catalytic than the consequences of external restraint upon the dynamics of the ethnic process. An idle flow of ethnicity then becomes a vibrant expression of healthy national consciousness ending in the national struggle for liberation. O r it could become a dangerous torrent of nationalistic chauvinism that can end in totalitarianism. Here we also see the significance of the passage on behavior we earlier cited from Fishman; what seem to warrant special attention are the sociolinguistic sequels of oppression. What could be the nature of the interactions that follow the varying effects of oppressive legislation, hostile social relationships or any handicaps either upon the ethnic minority directly or upon its native language? Conditions of oppression, of course, could vary from the mild to the extreme. Interactional responses would accordingly differ. The subsequent criss-crossing network of communicating bridges between speakers and language that unfolds should constitute an enthralling world of microsociolinguistic interactions with wide repercussions in the social environment.

CHAPTER 9

Obscuring of the ethnic process

A. SCRATCHING A L I T T L E DEEPER Modern anti-ethnics, ensconced in an anachronistic cosmopolitanism, can be easily deluded by the powerful absorptive forces of the mainstream of American society. The once prevalent conceptions of uniformity are best carefully weighed before banishing the dynamic ethnic factor of today. However strong these assimilating currents, they cannot obliterate societal and linguistic situations of some ethnic groups capable of determining social action on their own. Fishman holds: American uniformation, whether in speech or in diet, is at times a surface phenomenon. It is an added variety to the repertoires that are still there and that are still substantial if we will but scratch a little deeper (1971: 286). It is when we scratch a little deeper that we discover, with the increasing challenges of all varieties of ethnic expression, how substantial they really are. It is the deeper scratching that reveals the ethnic process. It is precisely as result of his extensive researches in the areas of social and language manifestations among ethnic groups that Fishman deplores the lack of theoretical direction. As he explains: Just as an understanding of social-behavior-through-language must depend upon a general theory of society, so the understanding of language maintenance or language shift must depend on a theory of socio-culture contact and sociocultural change (p. 310). One scratches for gold only where gold is known to be or expected to be found. Language maintenance and language shift are indeed in that general direction where gold is to be found. Having performed outstanding work in the special fields of ethnicity, nationalism and related subjects, it was to be expected that in these arenas of sociolinguistic research one ought to scratch a little deeper for the theory he sought. Such surrogate values as society, behavior, language, culture — vital media to be sure — were, nevertheless, surface phenomena, all reflecting the underlying ethnic pressures.

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By virtue of an unfortunate and misdirected ideological emphasis, often an unconscious influence, most scholars in the various disciplines concerned with language had totally ignored the ethnic basis of language and of the society specifically associated with it. Behavior, language and culture had been studied, experimented with, analyzed and hypothesized—entirely out of context with the ethnic process they all reflected. Their real values were infinitely overstressed, accorded a status of source and origin for all things men cherished and which they could not have possessed in themselves, and all but elevated, each in turn, to the Olympus of the social sciences. B. A COGNITIVE ARREST With his wide knowledge of the field, it is no accident that Fishman should be close to the ethnic sources. It is therefore of interest to follow some of the steps in his thinking on these questions. . . . since we are concerned with the possibility of stability or change in language behavior on the one hand, we must be equally concerned with all the forces contributing to stability or to change in societal behavior more generally, on the other. Thus the selection of psychological, social, and cultural variables for the study of language maintenance and language shift may well be guided not only by impressions of what seem to be the most relevant processes in a particular contact situation but also by more general theories of personal, social and cultural change (1971: 310, 312). Fishman's logic is faultless but the full truth eludes him. It is essentially pointless. It is not that the relevances are questionable. It is the relative superficiality of the entire conception. It is the failure to expand his vision in accordance with the broader horizons his world view commands. It is, above all, the meagreness of theoretical challenge and complacent contentment with "more general theories" on a surrogate level against a rich sociolinguistic background deserving the profounder and more fundamental theoretical equipment of the ethnic process. It almost seems incomprehensible that students could study, research, and write on ethnicity, language maintenance and such questions, on nationalism and the language and social problems of newly liberated nations, and yet not assume the ineluctable source of it all in an ethnic process. Vast ethnic changes had occurred and were in motion. The theoretical impulse had shown itself unrewarding on the personal, social, cultural, language, and psychological levels. Perhaps the time had come to dig a little deeper. That alone was needed to discover the ethnic process. But Fishman was not yet ready. Nonetheless, though trained in the spirit of his day, he continued with his thought, but in his own vein and evidently with a new look upon things.

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T h i s is not to imply that all forces leading to change in other-than-language behaviors necessarily also lead to language shift. Indeed, whether or not this is the case (or, put more precisely, a determination of the circumstances under which language and non-language change concurrently, consecutively or independently) constitutes one of the major intellectual challenges currently facing this field of enquiry (p. 312).

In relation to the field of ethnic investigation, Fishman undoubtedly has his own conceptualization of the proper approach that might be no less productive, though unfortunately constrained within the inevitably narrower limits of surrogate levels. T h e degree of unclarity about these passages lies probably in the complexity of Fishman's thinking, but it fades as he goes on to explain his meaning. If this challenge is to be met, it will be necessary for the study of language maintenance and language shift to be conducted within the context of studies of intergroup contacts that attend to important other-than-language processes as well: urbanization (ruralization), industrialization (or its abandonment), nationalism (or de-ethnization), nativism (or cosmopolitanization), religious revitalization (or secularization), etc (p. 312).

It becomes clear that Fishman has more than one string to his bow. T h e " s t u d y " , he informs us, must be broadened to include "intergroup contacts" as well, limiting his examples to five plus their opposites. Of these five, nationalism (and universalism) — Fishman calls the latter cosmopolitanization but the difference is incidental — relate directly to our discussion. T h e remainder constitute the reason for an entirely new study, intergroup contacts, which could bear little if any direct relationship to the problems of a people and its language. There is, of course, no quarrel with his methodology. It is, however, a rather roundabout way to the ethnic process. Fishman's pre-eminence in the study of language maintenance and language shift warrants a respectful hearing, more particularly when these subjects are, for no given reason, removed from the field of direct ethnic survey into which they naturally fall. O n the other hand they may not actually be removed but simply accorded the advantages of another approach. Thus Fishman may well feel justified in setting up intergroup contacts: " i t will be necessary . . . " ! T h e fact, however, that these intergroup contacts, too, remain on the same inadequate surrogate plane limits them to identical scope and value, and to a repetition of the old theoretical frustrations discussed at length above. Responses to major intellectual challenges, as we had repeatedly attempted to show, could not come from that direction. However necessary Fishman's new departure, it rendered a complex situation only more complex. Had he then reached an impasse, marking time at a compromise solution ? O r had his cognitive complexities collapsed

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for sheer lack of a basic theoretical approach? M a j o r intellectual challenges evoke rather the fundamental response of the ethnic process than responses of lesser levels. T h e concept of the ethnic process alone seems capable of bolstering the theoretical requirement that could account not only for the secondary problems of the surrogates but especially for the primary questions of ethnic and language differentiation. But, in the end, Fishman himself dismisses the challenges he projects with the admission that: Our current state of generalizeable knowledge in the area of language maintenance and language shift is insufficient for the positing of relationships of cross-cultural or diachronic validity (p. 312). Fishman's profound intellectual involvement in these intricate and often insoluble problems of language maintenance and language shift commands much admiration in a multi-authored volume of essays of such high quality on the sociology of language. There is no doubt whatever that theoretical speculation will abound before these dilemmas and frustrations are overcome. Theoretical speculations on the ethnic process are no exception. It is not suggested here that it is any more than a hypothetical attempt to establish w h a t ought in reality to exist. It is, nonetheless characteristically fundamental in its breadth and appeal, and could perhaps be of considerable advantage in test and experiment. For the researcher, however, many situations could indeed arise within the ethnic framework that require guidance outside its competence. O n e can therefore readily concur with Fishman when he writes of the many ambivalent factors involved: A typology of contact situations (as well as a theory of socio-cultural change) may be required before greater regularity among such factors can be recognized (P- 312).

G. A M B I V A L E N C E OR DIVERGENCE? Behind all our efforts to establish significant differences between societal, behavioral, cultural, language relationships on the one hand and the underlying ethnic process on the other, we are actually discussing an attitude of mind. It is the blind disregard of the ongoing process itself that has led to the strangely exaggerated notion of presumably sovereign surrogate So much so, that theoretical speculation as to which of them plays the primary role has come to occupy an important place in the sociology of language — thus absurdly reversing the development and functional arrangement, virtually standing sociology on its head. T h e r e is, after all, something to be said for origins and foundations, a certain usefulness about beginnings and underpinnings of which not all social scientists seem to be

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aware. If the ethnic process is indeed the primordial source, as, in fact, it has to be if it is to be theoretically useful, it has resulted in the rather noteworthy phenomenon of differentiation, both territorial and linguistic. Academic study of this phenomenon is apparently in disfavor. Sociolinguistic behavior seems to confirm this. Do the social sciences take no position on the stark fact of differentiation? The notion that a single biological source can affect developments of structure and relationships of the "sovereign" surrogates within each ethnic group need not be unreasonable. Abstract though it be, what could be more rational than a unitary, basic, determinative concept of an ethnic process emanating from the genetic endowment and interacting with environmental forces? It would be functionally characteristic of man. Hence, when Fishman, deeply conscious of the importance of ethnic backgrounds, hesitates to direct his theoretical quest at fundamental interpretations, and to encompass broader visions than pedestrian, "localistic", perhaps transient ambivalences, it is surprisingly myopic. What is so remarkable about the ambivalences he has encountered in the area of language maintenance and language shift that these and similar topics of wide interest but relatively minor rank should engage his entire attention ? Exceptional situations that refuse to fit into current concepts require either further observation of the knotty ambivalences, theoretical expansion, or both. One criterion lies in their relative importance to the entire study. Culling widely from a congeries of such social dilemmas, Fishman despondently confesses to dissatisfactions with the results. Local peculiarities often insist upon remaining insoluble. Human circumstances and the multitudinous circumlocutions of the human mind are such that, separately or together, they are fully capable of circumventing the most elaborate theories man can construct. Like a struggle between computers only far more complex, conditions of human existence provide countless circumstances that enable human communities to determine many specific aspects of their own lives. There are intrinsic rules for living that direct men practically anywhere to group together and to speak in a common tongue, to love their homes, their way of life, and whatever conditions seem to favor an enduring future of a similar nature. What is surprising when peoples, like individuals, under exceptional circumstances, sway hither and thither from the commonly followed course? It could be a question of indefinable peculiarities of human behavior, or of incalculable factors beyond the control of the group as a whole; and whether of a permanent or transient character, an etiological breakdown at any given moment might not be practical or possible or even important. Not every interpretation of exceptional or ambivalent events or pheno-

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mena is necessarily correct. Persistent analysis could uncover former errors or oversights. The problem could be analogous to the eternal conflict between the rationalist and the metaphysicist, the scientific approach and that of the religious minded. Neither ambivalence nor out and out exception must necessarily be taken at its face value. The scientifically established rule may thereafter indeed be taken for granted despite appearances; elements that resist understanding will, in all likelihood, submit ultimately to still deeper probing. There will always be those that will challenge the Himalayas, or lesser heights, simply because they are "there". In short, one could in most cases justly assume a reasonable, underlying explanation that would not conflict with current concepts. Among the examples that perplexed Fishman was the "Yiddishist" movement in Eastern Europe prior to and subsequent to World War I. On the authority of Max Weinreich, Fishman declares that it "concentrated on a language program rather than on political organization". As it is put by Fishman this statement is actually ambiguous: the Yiddishist movement was purely cultural and did not have to concentrate on political organization. There existed Jewish political organizations, including Bund and Poale Zion, and both were passionate supporters of Yiddish—as Borochov, the latter's founder and leader, even before he became competent in it. Why, then, should Fishman have considered this, now nonexistent, situation ambivalent ? On the contrary, one supremely fascinating feature of the Jewish national question has been its richness in languages, both native and borrowed. Another question that puzzles Fishman is the cavalier attitude of a number of newly liberated African and Asian countries toward their native tongues or lingua francas. Here, too, situations are hardly as dubious as Fishman would have us believe. Aptly, he writes, that these peoples are more concerned with nationhood than with peoplehood. But why had he overlooked the plethora of tribal tongues? At this great hour in their history, unification was the preponderant need. Almost in the same breath, he, himself, referred to the overriding colonial influence to bring this political need about. Surely that accounts for the initial behavior. Tribal unification would in all probability effect its own language adjustment, the native tongue perhaps becoming a second language. What serious obstacles could such situations present? On the pre-World War I I race and language identification based upon the notorious Nazi ideology, Fishman is unhappy with the explanation that "we can recognize today" it was "too colored by their current political considerations". And he continues (as we repeat): However, the fact remains that the relationship between language-saliency and group-saliency is almost as speculative today as it was at that time.. . .

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T h e fact remains that Nazi racial theories are just as fraudulent today as formerly. T o equate ethnicity with blood relationship is still a gross absurdity from the scientific viewpoint, running counter to the exigencies and vicissitudes of every human group throughout the course of human existence, not excepting even Germans. On this point, in any event, both the ethnic foundations and the experiential basis of language-people relationships leave little room for speculation, once the presumptive concept is established. T h e fact remains that the supposed speculative character of the very concept of an organic evolution of peoples (consigning the nation and the national idea exclusively to the growth of capitalism, a social version of the immaculate conception) stemmed originally from the Utopian imagination that refused to concede the ethnic roots of human society. That doubts could still linger in Fishman's mind on a possible justification for these Utopian notions, might reasonably be attributed to the equally lingering influences of their carry-over in the wake of a protracted obsolescence. That there is great disparity often of relationships between language maintenance on one hand and group maintenance on the other, only indicates the difficulties that may be involved in arriving at an exact understanding even of known circumstances in the course of an evolutionary situation. Given political actualities, ideological conflict, and other likely determining factors, disparities become, in reality, uncertainties. They could be regarded as transitional steps of a particular ethnic process, that could lead either to futility and extinction or to its objective as a living speech community. Such so-called ambivalences could tend to vanish as a situation clarifies. Historical events impose their specific influences. Emphasizing their role might introduce ambiguities whereas the larger view ignores ephemeral difficulties. That they should present a major intellectual challenge may later seem like a grotesque hyperbole. Time takes its toll of them. What Fishman describes as "debunking" of seemingly unreliable situations is unproductive. Instead, a wider initial scope of his theoretical vision could "stretch" to embrace them, however ambivalent. What is genuinely perturbing is the absence of this larger view. D. SURROGATES AND THE " B O S S " More than a pleasantry is entailed when Fishman dismisses the question of causality among etiological factors of secondary rank. The original cause of any societal behavior may well be of some interest but it is a historical interest rather than a dynamic one with respect to life as it continues round about us. If we can put aside the issue of "what first caused

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what" we are left with the fascinating process of ongoing and intertwined conversation and interaction. In these processes language and societal behavior are equal partners rather than one or the other of them being "boss" and "giving orders" to the other (1971: 353). Clearly disenchanted with the local gods, Fishman prefers to continue with the more fascinating ongoing process of daily life and interaction; the question is thus relegated to historical rather than dynamic interest. Unfortunately, Fishman, resembling his colleagues in this respect, knows no greater gods. Hence, unlike the relationship between The One God and the Israelites, he remains bereft of a Word of God like that which interpenetrated the innermost being of that God-impregnated people, and directly influenced its entire way of life. Himself perched almost on the brink of the concept of an ethnic process, it could be a relatively simple matter to become aware of it, were it not for the prevalent inhibitions. An attempt to follow its influence, like the steps of a learning process, as far as the enmeshing " w e b " (thence " u p w a r d " into the societal stream of ethnicity) — truly a formidable interdisciplinary problem — would be in the nature of a breakthrough. In putting aside the issue of "what first caused what", Fishman has overlooked the sociolinguistic quandary: the perpetual production of unresolved data, and therefore the urgent need for a theoretical way out of the maze. The frantic search for a primary source had all the appearances of the grotesque by virtue of the arbitrary, self-imposed surrogate limitations they had set themselves. Why they had found no relevance to their theoretical quest in enlarging their horizons with the immensely provocative facts of ethnic and language diversity remains a mystery. Why had they looked for the "boss" in absurd places ? Ethnic validity is not seriously questioned today as a fact of life. The sociological and language relationships to this fact could well be a matter of considerable moment. There is thus an obvious incongruity to Fishman's solicitation to put aside the issue of "what first caused what". The question of causality is a fundamental one. With the ethnic process as the primary source of societal and language differentiation — as well as an exceedingly important "boss" in the subsequent interactions — it can be neither grotesque nor incongruous. The natural setting is the thing. One way to overcome the impasse is to face the issue of ethnic and language differentiation, and the ineluctability of a primary ethnic process, that scholars have generally evaded. The tendentious notion of diversity as synonymous with divisiveness, in the philosophy of an allconsuming, cosmopolitanistic world society, had deluded them. Any

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malevolent factor of whatever source, economic, social, political, or psychological, enhancing human aggressiveness, could divide the world. In any event, human development had, somehow, attained its present, differentiated form. It was a fact of life. Diversity could be beautiful! All its parts, however, had to be free and equal. Sovereignty, not differentiation, was the really superfluous element. As the genetic endowment, the ethnic process adjusts itself to the necessity of diversification in consequence of the continuing experimental intervention. Interpretations of societal and language interactions, without an awareness of the ethnic process, lack a sense of reality. They miss the primary directive entirely, and thus are as illusory as Fishman's "boss". Here is the blindspot. This is why the sociologist of language has been oblivious of an ethnic process, as it flows generationally on out of the germinal storehouse, obeying implicitly its innate impulse to maintain, within the natural setting, its peculiar character, its peculiar tongue, its peculiar image. This determinism, in primordial association with the human historico-environmental experience, is ultimately manifested in the social symbolism of ethnicity and national consciousness. Is it surprising, then, that throughout the natural reaches of the ethnic process, societal and language interactions could be reflected in data that tell this story? While the ancient tale may not always account for the whole story — in these interactions there are, after all, other factors too — it is, nonetheless, a tale that has too often been ignored in modern days. T h e impact of this mounting, historic reversal of ethnic fortune ought, therefore, one should think, to affect also the scholarly community. A biased overemphasis upon surrogate values as well as false notions of their "primacy" had thoroughly obscured genetic-environmental origins, the ethnic process that in primeval days had arisen therefrom, the territorial and language differentiating derivatives that subsequently developed, and the genuine realities that should constitute the foundation of sociolinguistic theoretical speculation. T o remove such obscurities and thus expand horizons is clearly a task of considerable importance. E. A SOCIOLINGUISTIC DILEMMA Despite the phenomenal modern trend toward political, socio-economic and cultural regeneration of underprivileged peoples and underdeveloped national states, utopian-universalistic thought still strives, if only semantically, to banish the ethnic element from the social sciences. Sociolinguistics, though a young discipline, also suffers from this strange inconsistency between life and scholarship.

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Whorf's lingering influence too, perhaps clandestinely suspect in his day but never actually ethnic in original intent, nor emerging intact from the linguistic-cognitive scrutiny of today, is partly responsible for a state of unrest in theoretical sociolinguistics. His linguistic relativity view of cognitive constraint by means of language structure, and the assumed primacy of the latter by its modern adherents, has been increasingly opposed by a language reflection view of social organization. According to Fishman, sociolinguists tend to favor this opposing position: . . . in the interests and in the convictions of social scientists. It is quite clear why so much interest has been aroused by the question of language as restraint and language as reflection of socio-cultural organizations. Both of these views are unidirectional. One posits that language structure and language usage are fundamental and " g i v e n " and that all behavior is influenced thereby. T h e other claims that social organization and behavior are prior and language merely reflects these. A position on one side or another of this argument must be taken by those who are interested in changing or influencing the " r e a l w o r l d " of behavior ( 1 9 7 1 : 340).

Aspects of this debate were discussed at some length above and ultimately dismissed with Fishman's characterization of the bi-partisan contenders as each in quest of a useless "boss". A fuller elaboration of the problem is to be found in the chapter on Whorf. At issue in the above-mentioned debate were especially the provocative yet naive sociolinguistic positions that either language or society was "fundamental" or " g i v e n " and even "primary". Actually suggested had been " f o u r principal perspectives on the causal relationship between language and social structure" (Grimshaw 1971:125). Besides the one determining the other, there was a third in which both were equally codetermining. Finally, came the fourth perspective which consisted of an unknown, extraneous third factor which determined the other two. Under circumstances so antagonistic for the most part to ethnic influences, it is not surprising that it should not occur to the proposer of the unknown third factor (the fourth perspective) determining the other two that it should be anything resembling an ethnic process. It seemed more appropriate for these modern scholars to think of "Weltanschauung, the human condition, the organization of the human mind (a position... congenial with interpretations of Chomsky) or the intrinsic demands of an ordered universe (.. . adapted from Hymes . . . ) " (Grimshaw 1971 :g6). The radically "new"—ethnic—mode of thinking presented here seems never to have occurred either to Whorf or to his modern critics although it has been represented with great distinction for years by other sociolinguistic scholars. All these idol-worshippers had been serving false gods. Theirs was a religion of excessive zeal and hyperbole, of mistaking foreground for back-

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ground, of transposing superstructure into foundation, and converting secondaries into causal factors. Above all, they had ignored a rational understanding of the evolutionary development of human society, apparently assuming it had sprung up spontaneously just the other day. In the course of such misplaced commitment they had acquired highly distorted visions of reality. Blinded by this surrealistic world view, and bolstered by perhaps unconscious biases and preconceptions, they had entirely overlooked genuinely fundamental and causal relationships resulting in an ethnic differentiation of human society; a sense of language-distinctive groupness derived from an innate, genetic endowment guided by historicotraditional and environmental influences. In such a situation, neither social organization nor language structure could ever be a given, fundamental or primary source. T h a t role had been primordially preempted by the ethnic process. T h e y could constitute reality only by virtue of surrogate rights essentially subsidiary to the ethnic framework and to an ethnic background that encompasses characteristic ethnic qualities and ethnic group behavior. T h a t is why a typical Spaniard in Spain could hardly behave like a core Frenchman in France, a core German in Germany like an American, and so forth. Neither social organization nor language structure alone could satisfy such basic requirements. Nor could both together, hitherto an unattainable feat, as would appear from Grimshaw's perplexities, without involvement of the ethnic factor as the primary driving force. Whorf had conferred almost God-like attributes, such as grammatical, phonetic and phonemic particularities, when he caused these behaviors of language to constrain innate cognitive functioning. In a passage cited by Fishman, he maintains that Whorf overstated his case: " . . . the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas, but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade. Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar and differs from slightly to greatly, between grammars" (Fishman 1971: 341). Had he either failed to recognize, or had he been blinded to the fact of, ethnic causalities for these particularities, in that they were the effects of the innate, ethnic sense of language-distinction groupness, as well as of historic chains of events (whose ethnicity for the most part Whorf had evidently not perceived), and of social experience? Explaining the case of the socio-cultural sociolinguists, Fishman puts an entirely different question. After expatiating on the many striking structural differences that distinguish one language from another, yet each remaining a perfect instrument, he proceeds:

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That the societies using these very different languages differ one from the other in many ways is obvious to all. Is it not possible, therefore, that these sociocultural differences — including ways of reasoning, perceiving, learning, distinguishing, remembering, etc. —• are directly relatable to the structural differences between the languages themselves? The Whorfian hypothesis claims that this is indeed the case (p. 341). Since, like Whorf, most (but not all) sociolinguists are oblivious of the causal ethnic possibilities behind structural language differences, many were at first quite naturally impressed with Whorf's claims. Fishman reminds us, however, that over many years of intensive research: Although many have tried to do so no one has successfully predicted and demonstrated a cognitive difference between two populations on the basis of the grammatical or other structural differences between their languages alone (P- 34')Fishman's arguments pro and con for either contestants, Whorf as opposed by the socio-cultural sociolinguists, are far from convincing. In the first place, he allows: Nevertheless, there are at least two large areas in which a limited degree of linguistic relativity may be said to obtain: (a) the structuring of verbal interaction and (b) the structuring of lexical components... (p. 342). On the other hand, he is inclined to rest his case for the socio-cultural side more or less philosophically on the fact that: Several of the basic principles of sociolinguistic theory may help explain why this is so, although the psychological maxim that most men think about what they are talking about (i.e., that language structure is always being struggled with via cognitive processes) should also be kept in mind (p. 342). Not iron-clad reasoning by any means. However, for our purpose there is actually no further need to pursue this side of the debate for additional support. Nonetheless, there is admittedly considerable credibility in the socio-cultural argument: . . . sociolinguistics is less likely to think of entire languages or entire societies as categorizable or typable in an overall way. The very concepts of linguistic repertoire, role repertoire, repertoire range and repertoire compartmentalization argue against any such neat classification once functional realities are brought into consideration.... Mother-tongue speakers of language X may be other-tongue speakers of language Y. These two languages may co-exist in a stable diglossic pattern throughout the speech community and yet be as structurally different as any two languages chosen at random (p. 342). They do indeed; and similarly with "whole-society" typologies. But, notwithstanding, all this favorable evidence still does not prove the contention of language reflection of social organization and behavior, nor for that matter of priority either. At best, both sides to the Whorf-socio-cultural dispute essentially balance each other out. How, under such circumstances, it is possible to take one side or the

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other must remain a dilemma to interested participants till the role of the presently "unknown" ethnic process is freely and widely admitted to intensive research in sociolinguistics. For this reason, it is not altogether correct to conclude as Fishman does: Thus, both unidirectional views are outgrowths of an artificial search for independent variables and original causes. The original cause of any societal behavior may well be of some interest but it is a historical interest rather than a dynamic one with respect to life as it continues round about us. If we can put aside the issue of "what first caused what" we are left with the fascinating process of ongoing and intertwined conversation and interaction. In these processes language and social behavior are equal partners rather than one or the other of them being "boss" and "giving orders" to the other (p. 353). The "original cause of any societal behavior", like the original cause of language behavior, is not merely a "historical interest rather than a dynamic one". The original cause of both is identical — the ethnic process: it is those genetic, group-forming and language-acquisition endowments whose dynamic ramifications embrace not only historical and environmental associations but also such significant derivatives as societal and language structures with their respective behaviors and interrelationships. The whole culture that arises from all these factors is ethnic in its background values and contained within an ethnic framework. Hence, one may speak with relative precision of ethnic or national characteristics that, more or less accurately (considering not infrequent multilingual situations), differentiate between their languages as well. Thus, we can not put aside the issue of "what first caused what" when primacy must be conceded to the ethnic process. What ought to be eliminated from the scholarly cloister, however, is the rather naive and absurd wrangling between equal surrogate partners drawing their basic, ethnic sustenance from primordial sources. Were Grimshaw specifically to include the ethnic process as his 4th perspective — man's genetic endowment that so obviously determines the course of human society—this unscholarly conduct would likely vanish before this partnership of major surrogates. The fascinating process Fishman looks forward to would then continue under proper auspices.

PART FOUR

Evolution and the ethnic process

CHAPTER 10

Nationalism and the ethnic process

A. GROUNDWORK AND GESTATION In developing the concept of the ethnic process, I have dwelt primarily on the evolutionary significance, the primordial endowment, and the animal inheritance of man. In spite of the absence of essential scientific evidence both the facts of evolution and our animal heritage are largely assumed nevertheless to be true. The ethnic process should therefore also be regarded as though it were an established fact. Among the instincts included in this legacy from our animal ancestors, we shall be as we have been preoccupied especially with the sense of groupness. Whatever they are, these instincts, senses, predispositions, innate faculties or principles, biological mechanisms, hormones, chemistry, electrical events or whatever else, we shall discuss them freely as before, and necessarily on the basic presumption of their actual existence. In recent years, numerous fascinating scientific discoveries are bewilderingly broadening our knowledge in many fields, reinforcing some earlier theories and demolishing others. Psychoneurological investigations, for instance, have increasingly tended toward an ethnolinguistic approach. The claims of an affinity between a people and its language, not so long ago almost universally scorned, now begin to find apparent confirmation in the researches of outstanding scholars such as A. R. Luria, W. Grey Walter, W. Penfield, and others. Differences in mental outlook seem to lead toward the creation of group-specific phonemic patterns. Biases and moods and similar personality manifestations interrelate with a certain "tendentiousness" of dominant electric brain rhythms, especially what is known as the " a l p h a " rhythms, that can account not only for individual antagonisms and affinities but begin to point to ethnic differences. A correlation is even suggested of culturo-genetic and cerebral factors with ethnic origins. These unlooked for and hence unexpected findings are startling, if at present unrelated to the isolated question of an ethnic process.

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Equally suggestive are some of the findings in ethology where animal behavior points to instinctual origins. While not universally present among animals they strongly parallel the behavior of man. Particularly, this relates to groupness, territorial defence and questions of aggression. The observations of Lorenz, Tinbergen, and other ethologists, along with the massive authoritative evidence accumulated from ethological and anthropological literature, demonstrate the intimate relationship of such animal instincts to human behavior. This, in turn, equates with sociohistorical and psychological developments of peoples. Territory-nation-language seem to constitute an indissoluble triad in the evolution of mankind. From the beginnings of animal life to the social postures of man, territorial intrusions have over the eons elicited responses from defending groups that have supported the initial and continuing stimulus of the ethnic process. They tended to mold the characteristics of the particular group, shaping its language at the same time, to enhance its cooperative energies, and to create distinctive folk collectives. Geography and history combine with innate forces. In language, the extraordinary differentiating characteristics instantly elicit questions of how and why. The specific peculiarity of the grammar, the structure, phonetics, phonemes, even the lexicography: how did it all rise? From the indefatigable Roback alone (see Destination and Motivation 1957) whose observations are inexhaustible, as well as numerous grammar books, countless examples of language behavior may be culled. All these peculiarities and observations relate to the dynamics of an ethnocultural complex of immense ramifications. Unique and specific for each speech community, they comprise the hallmarks of ethnolinguistic differentiation. All points to the ethnic process as the fundamental motivating force. Underlying all this, the biological evolutionary process, still basically Darwinian despite its many unsolved lacunae like the mutational interventions and still mysterious paths of natural selection, still remains invulnerable to vast scientific effort to breach its mysteries. Evolution is not only biological but embraces the whole gamut of physical, geographical and environmental changes that surround developing human life. Under the pressures of the conditions of human existence and under the impulsions of an inherited mentality, a psychological background, of which man is only now becoming step by step more aware, man has stumbled along subject to further changes in economic and political conditions as well. Inevitably, what subsequently followed had been initiated by events that had transpired before. The earliest social unit of man, as family or clan, had with growing consciousness discovered itself since the reckoning of time in possession of a

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territorial homesite. Like their animal precursor, they would be forced to defend their homes against various forms of aggression from other groups of animals or of man. Territory implied sheer existence, and that was defended even unto death. Under such brutal conditions, huge numbers succumbed to conquest and slavery, to famine, and to other catastrophes of nature and of man. Though miscegenating with conquerors or carried off to slavery, the idea of returning home to familiar or ancestral territory seemed as natural as the homing instincts of birds. T h e "native", at his first opportunity, sought to return to kith and kin. Invariably, the return was to the identical bit of land he, his family or his forefathers had formerly occupied, nor forgetting the association with the local or tribal dialect. In such or analogous fashion, the concept of territory evolved through many stages of development from simplicity to complexity, always in possession of an ethnic group speaking, as a rule, the tongue with which it had as long as it could remember by means of art and myth been associated, and thus evolving the usual characteristics of an ethnic society. It was the evolutionary ethnic path of every social group that did not become extinct under the impact of countless exigencies. Or, if they succeeded in surviving, had managed to do so by virtue of manifold expedients that had preserved salient unifying elements, among them the historical territory, the language and the whole cultural background. It could well have been the same spot of earth it had occupied in pristine days, perhaps identical in size or perhaps enlarged through defensive victories or through pure and simple aggrandizement, accompanied, to be sure, by the annihilation of its former inhabitants. Modern times bear witness to a similar process of territorial expansion as, e.g., the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans, the Americans, including Latin Americans. Against the latter, Indian claimants still maintain their ethnic rights. Nor ought one to forget the twenty or more Arab nations that, from the original homeland in the Arabian peninsula, are now occupying most of the Fertile Crescent and the entire North African coastline on the Mediterranean Sea. Clearly the Earth does not remain a vacuum. B. THE SMALL NATIONS T h e intellectual cosmopolitans of great nations have always treated condescendingly, if not with scorn or contempt, the simpler habits, customs and emotions of the rural community. T h e closer to the soil, the more such people resembled pristine folk: the village life; the home; the security it envisioned in the consciousness of children returning from foreign servitude; the peace of the eternal womb. Whatever the implications of these

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roots for the common man, between cosmopolite and rustic the chasm seemed unbridgeable. T o those affected by this worldly intellectualism, only rarely must it occur how faithfully it reflects the ruler and his henchmen in the nevertiring endeavors to retain the privileged positions of the status quo. From the feudal experience we know with what aloof and cynical attitude king and barons trampled underfoot the native language and the homely sentiments of socially, politically, and economically underprivileged peasantry and laborers, even artisans and townsmen. After the industrial revolution, it was the rebellious minorities that grasped the genuine significance of their essential humanity, ethnic groups that, to begin with, scarcely recognized the ethnic nature of their heritage and existence (like Moliere's character who was amazed and delighted to discover he had been speaking prose all his life). They rallied as collective units, unconsciously drawing upon the innate sense of groupness in their unknown primordial endowment. Marx's etatism, which represented for him the quickest route to a world society, played into the hands of the ruling groups of his day. Instead of wielding the weapon of the proletariat against them, as principle demanded, he turned his mighty pen against the Slavs he loathed, against the small nations who appeared to obstruct a direct passage to the Messianic age he so passionately desired. Utopian intellectuals, fed by a militant communism, followed in his wake. All were children of the cosmopolitan liberalism and scholarship of the Enlightenment and the intellectual heirs of the French Revolution. Bourgeois in their mode of living, they were natural allies of the bourgeoisie though idealistically and ideologically dedicated to a proletariat and a mentality they could never understand. Even today, a similar combination of wealth and culture has supported the Communist movement and the leadership of the Soviet Union long after Stalin's charismatic madness. What this has meant in practice has been both an intellectual betrayal of the small nations as well as what that betrayal has implied in the masking and mystification of the ethnic roots of mankind. In short, the arrogance, wealth, and power of the ruling classes would find a ready ally in the grandiloquency of the intellectual elite and its camp-followers. Inevitably, it became an alliance against the simplicity and homeliness of rustic unrefinements and inelegance that pervaded the village atmosphere and its proverbially backward society. Thus, historically, it has become an alliance also against the traditional political enemy, the small nations. From their failure to identify with the unrecognized course of ethnic evolution, this scholarly aristocracy has never fully recovered. When they

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eventually rose to the top of revolutionary leadership, the Cheka had found them an inexhaustible supply of victims; alas, working class movements, themselves blind to their ethnic needs, had not actually trusted them. Needless to say, the fact that so many were Jews contributed to their fate, since the anti-Semitism of Russian jailers was in no respect less sadistic than that of their Nazi counterparts. Today, it is historic irony that such communist intellectuals, scientists and scholars, often with international reputations, lead Russian dissidents. Jews among them are at the helm of the open and fearless Zionist struggle for the right of emigration to Israel. For the past century and more, however, they had been the Utopian universalists, internationalists, and cosmopolitans who had fought the small nations battling for their freedoms no less pitilessly than their exploiting colonial masters. During the 19391941 Stalin-Hitler pact of notorious memory, they had even pontificated on the "advanced" civilization of the Thousand-Year-Reich out of hypocritical and preposterously bourgeois ivory towers. The advent of a new era for formerly disadvantaged peoples — a new Age of Nationalism — had caused Utopia to lose face. Fossilizing remains now more discreetly reject the ethnic concepts they used to deride. In the long convulsive dying process, their nuisance value may still be considerable. They assume organizations with different shapes and forms: pretentious, neutralist, innocent, new left, far left, deluded liberals of endless varieties. Consciously or unconsciously, most of them fit into their respective parts under the hardened and skilful guidance of communist parties. In the United States, a revived ethnic awareness has stimulated a nostalgic interest in the cherished melting pot — along with some unpleasant overtones that hark back to the cosmopolitan rejection of the social roots of man. Forgetful of the world-wide recognition of an ethnic stage in human society, erstwhile Utopians helplessly proclaim the perils of growth and development. In their Utopian arrogance, they had obsessively mistaken the psychoanalytical significance of the ancestral cave and the embryonic womb. (See chapter on Fromm.) They suffer from a traditional blindspot which overlooks two fundamental aspects of social evolution. A. A biological need for group existence in its only conceivable form as an ethnic process. B. The underlying priority of given conditions of human existence which alone enable man to erect his society, primarily the territorial basis. Social evolution is no more to be confused with the early stages of development in man's capacity for ethnic influence than are the Song of Songs and Dostoievsky to be identified with the early steps in the acquisition of language.

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Developmental steps are not throwbacks; they are stages in an evolutionary process. On the other hand, recurrences of Utopian attitudes are unquestionably atavisms of an earlier historical period. In the manifestation of such aberrations, leftists and liberals are politically and culturally the most mischievous. Fate, however, had determined that Arab petro-dollars — ably assisted by the scholarly Idi Amin — should deluge with oil the respectable, if somewhat distorted, ideologies of the civilized society. Under their influence the U N can thus blast Zionism and Jewish nationalism with racialism. The hegemony of anti-Zionism now rests more soundly on the indisputable logic of the progressive ArabThird World-Soviet bloc. Under such remarkably altered circumstances even Jewish self-hatred seems to have lost its footing. Confirmation came from Bruno Kreisky, a popular Jewish Chancellor of Austria who in an impassioned defence of a former Nazi officer of the SS had declared that (essentially) no Jewish people exists, only a Jewish religion. He had merely been parroting the teachings of Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer, Stalin, and others. This has been the classic contention of the self-repudiating Jew. (See chapter 2 on Fromm, p. 79.) With one fell stroke, Kreisky had thus solved the whole problem of Zionism and racism — both for his kind of Jew as well as for that dedicated democratic block so profoundly stirred at the U N by precisely this question at precisely that moment. In an increasingly secular world, how many Jews after all would adhere to their religion? Thus, with an easier conscience, anti-Zionist Jews too could identify with Idi Amin, the great Arab libertarians, and the chameleonlike Gromyko now fully recovered from that hapless moment in 1947 at the U N when he had proclaimed the nobility of the Zionist struggle for Jewish national liberation. With an easier conscience, anti-Zionist Jews could now freely agitate against Israel, and safely fulfil their traditional quest for a Gentile haven of refuge. Nevertheless, despite the nationalistic, chauvinistic and genuinely racist attitudes of the newly born Arab powers, with the enormous retinue of oiltainted, U N camp-followers in their wake, new realities more fundamental than mere Arab resentment of Israel's "intrusion" into the Middle East were firmly if imperceptibly changing the ethnic relations of human society. Although oil, an accident of nature, had inflated the most aggressive instincts of the Arab people and thus perverted normal national needs, its significance was obviously ephemeral. Helplessly and naively, newly developing nations elsewhere were struggling under appalling difficulties to find their political and economic bearings. Their nationalism had smashed the oppressive rule of colonialism and thus vindicated the dynamic drive of the ethnic process. Only dimly was it aware of the sources of its own motivation; but it was close enough to

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the village tradition and to the inspiration of myth and folklore to be vaguely conscious of ancient roots in the idyllic ethnic society of long ago. This heroic past fortified the fledgling nation with essential nutrient values of high cultural and spiritual importance as it strove to integrate itself into a world of free peoples, unaffected as a rule by the now uprooted cosmopolitanism of the dominant societies around them, their former oppressors. Out of such natural and literal love for their own way of life, their own land and their own home had ultimately emerged their national independence as sovereign states. Even inexperienced nations eventually become sophisticated. But the chasm must remain unbridged when a worldly-wise though now effete intellectualism continues to regard awakening peoples as regressive. Despite a recalcitrant lip-service to national independence, bending the knee especially to Arab aggressions and stupidities, the die-hard universalist still deprecated that "return to the womb" which obstructed his visionary scheme. Scholarship too collapses when intellectual integrity is undermined by vacuous dreams that collide with ethnic reality. The small nations have a stake in the growth and development of the emerging peoples, although not all of them are aware of it. Having achieved a tradition of independence, intellectual competence and sophistication, they have nevertheless been reduced to a cringing dependence by the dominance and the competitive struggles of the superpowers. They represent, however, a strategic group that could well become the vanguard of all quasi-independent peoples. Presently, in their own frantic quest for economic and political security, they differ little if at all from newer ethnic groups struggling for survival. Retaining as a rule, far more than the great powers, the robust innocence of rusticity and the profound ties to their ethnic sources, they remain far less contaminated by the psychology of world strife and thus are more adapted to lead mankind away from the abyss. More than any other group of nations, seemingly without even a glimmer of insight into its possibilities, they could constitute a wholesome and perhaps effective Fourth World. Within a consolidation of widely scattered small nations, small primarily in influence but also in size and population, would necessarily lie a dynamic trend of ethnic organization unfettered by oppressive tendencies and with unfathomable possibilities for cooperative growth in unity. Consolidation alone by virtue of the primary weakness could well be a psychological first step in a joint defence against the arbitrary use of power. Small nation consolidation did not have to appear on the horoscope of the ethnic process at its primordial inception in order that it find itself on the ethnic path today. We have consistently maintained that the human

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individual is genetically equipped with a dynamic group sense socially expressed in the ethnically organized group. It stands in relative isolation from its fellow, in correlation with its language or languages, within a distinctive ethnic framework, bearing a unique culture-tradition-ethnic character, and Jinked to similarly specific societies. The whole constitutes mankind. All other interrelationships of man are necessarily inherent components of the respective ethnic group; all social interactions are therefore specifically ethnic before they can emerge on to the broader international canvas. Essential in this conception is the continuous flow of the ethnic process. Through the ethnic flow of the small nations, that is society's most likely evolutionary path, not through Marx's etatism. Even so, wherever monopolies or other economico-psychological evils intervene, the ethnic process is distorted by a perversion of the social evolution. That has been the Arab fate. The ethnic process flows freely only under free democratic conditions. Within the zig-zag of social evolution the ethnic process discovers its proper path. Ultimately, it rediscovers its relationship to the channels along which it had been coursing in the past, resembling a river seeking the sea, and in the process carving out its own, democratic river-bed to a free society of ethnic neighborhoods. That the small nations genuinely follow the ethnic path cannot, of course, be predicted with such artless simplicity. The enormous complexity of the modem scene compared with the pastoral perspective of yesterday bespeaks an intrinsic and growing sophistication in the political and psychological education of the small nations. But that the destiny of the small nations lies along the path of the ethnic process, the small nation old and new, clearly complies with biological concepts of natural selection as well. Determining factors along this ethnic path are, just as clearly, such threatening holocausts as those of oil imperialism, totalitarianism, and nuclear warfare.

C. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM

Henceforth, Joshua A. Fishman's felicitous book, Language and Nationalism, permits the continuation of this discussion by means of a combination of our theoretical studies with the application of precise historical example. Fishman's book offers inimitable possibilities for such a happy synthesis. T o begin with, Fishman suggests the primordial origin of national groups and holds that: Nationalism, at least for hitherto traditional or transitional populations, represents an expansion of affiliative beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors so as to include

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far more distant (indeed, purely figurative) kin, far more distant authorities, and far more inclusive commitments than those that are immediately available or directly impinge on their daily experience (1972a). Among the factors that tend to bring about an inclination toward unity with other groups where, in earlier times, the tendency had been to cling more closely toward one's own group, is the realization that finally dawns upon that group of the need for a broader outlook. Fishman, in order to illustrate this new development, cites from Wm. H. Friedland (1968): "While a traditional response would define all outside groups as threatening, a protonationalist response differentiates the external social force and distinct social units act together . . . against a mutual external threat" (1972a). T h e experience of the French Revolution had been to unite by force all the regional French sovereignties in order to establish a great French nation. T h a t had not generally been the rule in the past. T h e Babylonian Empire, e.g., had pursued a tolerant and even liberal policy toward its conquered peoples. In modern times too, Lenin's first act upon seizing power was to declare the liberation of the Czar's captive nationalities. Recognition of broader union as a slow-moving but more certain evolutionary process reflects more accurately the way human society advances. Even the trials and uncertainties of the European Economic Market seem to indicate that the zig-zag process of attaining unity is, like the snail-like biological process, also the evolutionary method of human society. As most modern students of nationalism keep demonstrating, people as a rule (more especially when they are political scientists) rarely analyze current phenomena more deeply than within a modern context. T o overlook a profound ethnic development coterminous with man is a universal tendency. What is required is a more imaginative survey of contemporary phenomena through an awareness of the profoundly indigenous sources of social being. From this view point, even an "expansion of affiliative beliefs, (etc.)" becomes a scarcely less superficial approach, and relationship to roots all but invisible. Fishman's conceptions of ethnicity are unquestionably a notable advance. Marxist concepts of nationalism that were adopted by the Utopian universalistic intelligentsia at large granted no lineage to it but springing spontaneously from the erupting capitalism. Anything related to ethnicity was brushed aside as so much myth and trivia. T h e realities of capitalist sources are universally accepted and Fishman quotes from both Carr and Hayes in support (see Note 16, p. 91, Part 1). Carr gives further endorsement by remarking in a later footnote: In Central and Eastern Europe the word "nation" and its equivalents meant, a racial or linguistic group and had no political significance before the 19th century (Carr 1945b). In short, both the romantic Napoleonic aspect of the "glorious deeds of

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the ancestors" to arouse nationalistic fervor and the Marxist-internationalistic efforts to suppress the nationalism that followed the industrial revolution, both are aspects of a modern phenomenon that attained a sort of meteoric career, with little if any knowledge of any prior existence. O n the other hand, here is presented the notion, strange though it might appear to many scholars, that the proper study of nationalism must represent it primarily and basically as the culminating contemporary development of a continuing ethnic process. His erudition in itself impressive, Fishman has come closer than most investigators of nationalism in comprehending a concept of its relationship in the social evolutionary process. His perceptive analysis of ethnicity alone traces it to primordial sources. Of great significance has been his exceptional appreciation of the feelings and emotions underlying nationalism particularly among the underdeveloped Afro-Asian nations. Among his widely recognized distinctions is his far-sighted vision of language maintenance and language planning that aroused great public interest. In all this there lies a profound understanding of some basic process at work which, in all probability, lacks only official christening and baptismal rites to be designated as an ethnic process or its equivalent. Both scientific merit and humanist idealism are involved when scholars of this calibre are dedicated to the resurrection of a study long distorted beyond recognition by ideological bias. It is surely no accident that the popular delusion of an exclusively capitalist provenance of nationalism stems from ideologically misled intellectual fountains of knowledge. It is a delusion that is still not entirely eradicated. O n the other hand, a powerful counter-trend ineluctably emerges to resist the dominant pressures. It arises from profound psychological needs of disfranchised peoples. Resistance movements, as well as milder ethnic manifestations, respond to such innate requirements rather than to the superficial slogans of the moment. These have been the deep and inexpressibly intense ethnic and national forces of the past 150 years or more which both the great powers and the Utopian philosophies have found invincible. Out of such subterranean forces issued liberating minds like Herder, Mazzini, Gandhi, and Borochov that provided inspiration for resistance movements and whose teachings undermined ruling doctrines that had sought to suppress the underprivileged peoples of the world. Far more attention has been paid to nationalism, newcomer among ethnic phenomena, than to ethnicity, a much more modest manifestation. It is therefore not surprising that Fishman's perspective! too should be blunted by this overwhelming confrontation. Little wonder that his intense interest in ethnicity should come to dwell more upon its overt features and

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less upon the basic, underlying, continuing flow of the ethnic dynamic itself. The question has become one of re-orientation. A change in direction is essential. What vitally requires probing in depth is precisely the ethnic process itself. In a day when all good men and true had believed nationalism had vanished, or was about to vanish, from human society, the ethnic process blossomed forth within a plethora of new national entities throughout the world. Could this, then, be the "true emergence" Chomsky had been seeking? Obviously, not a national emergence! A rational approach demands that nationalism be considered merely the peak of a literally quiet, humane, indeed humanist, process immanent in man from primordial provenance. Flowing physiologically on, like man's other genetic juices with their extraordinary faculties, capacities, principles or mechanisms of one kind or another, the ethnic process constitutes one of the remarkable endowments every individual has inherited. Men's hopes have risen enormously since the components and hereditary arrangements of DNA have been discovered. Interdisciplinary investigations continue. I t is a field in which social scientists too can find their respective roles. From such concepts, however, there seems as yet to be a considerable distance if one is to judge from the following stance that Fishman takes. Taking his cue from Minogue that the peasantry is " t h e source of national creativity", Fishman continues in his amazingly compact little volume, certainly an authoritative book on the subject, and written with a lucidity that appears to be the hallmark of most of his works: . . . it is the past, in all its authenticity and glory that constitutes the main storehouse from which nationalism derives its dynamism for changing the present and creating the future (1972a).

Of course, that is true, but only as a broad generalization from which the interested reader may draw upon the experience of previous civilizations. But where could one find in it some reference to the immediate or, at least, direct predecessor of nationalism? Of nationalism's relationship even to ethnicity, on which Fishman can discourse authoritatively, there is no suggestion in this generalization. Of its ultimate derivation from the ethnic process, there is to be sure not a word. Minogue is clearly closer to the sources without, presumably, understanding the whys and wherefores of the peasant's homely parables, his song and custom, mores and myth, or, apparently, without having any conception of deeper digging necessary for searching out the paths to the primordial; and thus, perhaps, discovering some of the universals that united man before subsequent divergence differentiated him. A similar distance separates the concept of the evolutionary development of the ramifications of the ethnic process (via the peasant or lower

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classes as a whole, as perhaps a favorable vehicle for the transmission of this ethnic dynamic) from Bromage's view, that Fishman cites, that nationalism strives " 'to render the present a rational continuation of the past' ". Folklore and mythology, while seemingly in closer apposition with the roots of social life than modern urban society could possibly be, are nevertheless still far from being identifiable with the dynamics of an ethnic process. W e are, no doubt, suggesting here what is, fundamentally, an unconscious process that is organic to every individual. O n e may venture to assume, for all practical purposes, that perhaps only with the most affinitive individuals amongst oppressed groups does some degree of awareness of innate qualities transpire, thus attaining a measure of cognition in this respect alone. It may be that the level of ethnic consciousness of a social group as a whole bespeaks the level of mental receptivity reached by its most sensitive and most responsive elements. Folklore is simply an overt expression of such deeper processes, just as both are reflected in the native speech of an ethnic community. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, reflection of the deeper structures of mind that folklore m a y be reflects also the chauvinistic and the nationalistic attitudes and forms of behavior so often brought into play when the dark forces of power and lust and gain are set loose. This, of course, is the price society pays for its relatively low Marxist and Freudian achievement levels in the correction of social and psychological evils within the realms of the economy and of the collective mentality. Knowledge too lags behind its human possibilities. T h e specific application, e.g., of evolutionary thought in the social sciences exemplifies what can be a productive engagement of modern knowledge in every discipline. For instance, Fishman introduces Note 13 in Part I of his book in the following fashion: While popular evolutionary thought may underlie or strengthen some of the search for ancient origins that typifies modern nationalism . . . (1972a).

N o criticism is intended of this passage since there is nothing wrong with it; nor is there anything irrelevant about it. T h e eclectic nature of reference makes all knowledge all-inclusive. M u c h depends, however, upon the sources of references, antiquity, profundity, genealogical or other chains of relationships and affiliated events. In the sphere of nationalism, writers have largely drawn their inferences from such phenomena as the Enlightenment, the Napoleonic influence, the industrial revolution, and the rise of the capitalist economy, all representative of what, historically, m a y be included in the modern era. V e r y properly, Fishman breaks out of this modern framework of reference. What's wrong with evolution, he virtually demands, as a source of modern phenomena? W h a t of a primordial origin, the group sense, questions of identity and mutual belonging? It is clearly conceivable that, in a succession of evolutionary steps from the family to

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the nation, an ethnic process, or something remarkably resembling it, must be the fountainhead, active principle or genetic capacity that initiates the dynamics of the ethnic flow. Evolution alone confirms the fact that only upon such secure ethnic foundations could human society have been erected. Brushing aside obscuring ideologies, it should become instantly clear why, in consequence of certain basic existential conditions, secondary Marxist "relations of production" — the basis of class relations and a terminology well known to economists — could have come into being at all. It is these primary existential conditions that constitute the fundamental arrangement of human society, formed by the triad of territory-people-language out of which arises the entire superstructure, the whole animated by the dynamics of the ethnic process. In the light of such elementary revelations, what is most astonishing is the prevailing ignorance concerning genuinely underlying living conditions that, in 1905, Borochov had described as the "conditions of production". Failure to conceive of an ethnic dynamic with its evolutionary associations is the principal weakness of theses presented in books on nationalism and ethnicity. Theoretical research in the social sciences is virtually at a standstill through sheer inability to break through the mechanical limits of their researches and to raise their visionary sights. Evidently, Barth's insights had yielded no access to sources of ethnic phenomena nor cast light upon the limitations of environmental research.

D. ETHNIC CONTENT AND SIGNIFICANCE The breath of biological life, the throbbing of the heart beat, the consciousness of living and all the other essential but invisible functions of life, all require a corporeal existence for their fulfillment. A precisely analogous arrangement is seen in the relationship of the ethnic process to the human organization of society. Otherwise, there would be no more than lifeless matter. The territorial structure represents flesh and bone to the dynamic spark that animates the ethnic process. Among the components of this living social spark are the roots of the varied manifestations of ethnicity and nationalism, the manifold evidences of man's deep-seated need of home, and of his collective existence as an ethnic group. The spiritual wealth of the community is cooperatively assembled as culture and tradition and the whole reflected in the generally single companion language. Thus constituted, a living community literally breathes basic human sentiments, ties of kinship or belonging and dedication to Home and Land that extend beyond the personal relationship to

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embrace the intimacies of the commonalty as a whole. Such emotions, ordinarily subdued, are exceptionally visible during times of stress when the entire collectivity clings together for mutual protection. Fishman elaborates eloquently on these raw materials of the ethnic process: History and ethnography are the reservoirs of symbols and myths, heroes and missions which nationalist elites first mine and then refine in their quest for ethnically unifying and energizing themes. Every group has "some heroic forefather .. ." great poets .. . moving poetry .. . aspirations .. . echoes and memories. .. . These are the building blocks of unity and authenticity that nationalist elites discover, augment and combine (1972a). With an ingenious knack for discerning the back roads and little-known pathways of the common folk in history, Fishman has amassed from numerous sources a systematic accumulation of heroica that virtually fills in the substantive body surrounding the ethnic process. So much love and passion has been put into an intense affirmation of the ethnic struggle for things that mattered so much that the researcher tends to overlook the very breath of life itself. Few patients meditate philosophically on the essence of life when a kidney, the heart or the brain might be at stake. The more objective observer, engaged merely upon pressing problems of nationalism, fascinated perhaps by stirring ethnic moments of the past, or even diverted by the less critical factors involved in ethnicity might, understandably, be inclined to pay less attention to sources of nationalism, to theoretical underpinnings of ethnic research, and certainly to assumptions as visionary as the ethnic process itself. Nonetheless, despite the fact that flesh and bone components of the structure of ethnicity and nationalism are the things men cherish and live by, they are of importance primarily in relation to the motivating primordial undercurrent of the ethnic process. We speak here of matters that stem from the profoundest and most elemental of natural human endowments. In no way, can they be compared with the superstructural products of biological development. Actually, the realms of myth and lore, of memories poetic and heroic, of the heartwarming intimacies of the old homestead are on a higher, more spiritual plane. Concern for such matters fell even upon the humblest who instinctively felt the need to defend, and become inspired by, what seemed so vital to them, their ethnic rights, their bit of land, their independence. The artfulness and wiliness, the deceit and the cunning whereby the leadership of the struggle would often slip out of their hands by reason of personal or class ambition on the part of the elite pertain, to be sure, to the category of social and psychological evil. Of interest, in this respect, is Trevor-Roper's opinion, which Fishman quotes, that: " . . . all great nationalist leaders have been only half-national themselves . . . " (1972a). The fact that such leadership was often held suspect and came more and

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more under the shrewd control of their "masses" was quite evidently a universal phenomenon, especially noteworthy in early communist struggles. Fishman likewise mentions: . . . the real pressures for mass participation in organized ameliorative efforts along ethnically advantageous lines (1972a). We are not to suppose, however, that this breath of ethnic life, inherent in man's genetic endowment, is really a matter of nostalgia, as Fishman's reference to Minogue's characterization of Rousseau's view might lead one to believe. Nor, we might add, is a psychoanalytical yearning for the security of the maternal womb, or the solicitude of a mother love that unselfishly displaces all worldly cares. These are gross misinterpretations, both of the beautiful human quality of love as well as of the equally important and fundamental human desire for freedom and independence. The "old homestead" concept, the tremendously moving emotion of " h o m e " , is of an inordinately higher human value by virtue of its collective, group, character. One is touched by the depth of human tenderness in Michael Collin's simple but endearing statement that Fishman has so selectively included, quoting from Minogue: "Just the sort of donkey and just the sort of cart that they have at home..." (1972a). Such piffle and trivia, to which one hardly expects the metropolitan and surely not the cosmopolitan individual to react with corresponding sentimental understanding, points in reality to the lifeblood of the essentially human. It is a fact of some significance that the closer one reaches to the roots of human life — shall we say, rather, to their closest approximation? — the more homely these often absurdly simplistic aspects appear, and envelop one with an intensity of experience that renders it so memorable. T o feel that one is part of an autochthonous group is a momentous emotion for many persons and is probably kin to if not prototype of the ego itself. It resembles a kind of spontaneous, unembellished sense of unity with which both ethnic group and human society as a whole might seek to identify as they instinctively feel the approach of a critical conjuncture. Such thoughts are well summed up by Fishman when he writes: . . . nationalist leaders revived and treated affiliative symbols, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors which could, in time, lead toward the objective integration that "had always existed". Just as folklore itself is merely an accumulation in the public domain of items that had their definite individual innovators, so the creation of nationalist unity and authenticity represent an elitist acceleration and organization of the normal and constant interaction between "gehobenes Primitivgut" and "gesunkenes Kulturgut" (1972a). T o be animated first and last by the ethnic breath of life and yet be agitated, consciously, even entirely motivated, by salient expressions of modernity (what Fishman calls a "built-in dialect within nationalism") is, theoretically, an anomalous situation. It is the tail wagging the dog. No

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one would be so simple as to imagine it could be otherwise in a pragmatic and mundane society. Despite the growing recognition of the enormous power of nationalism, it becomes increasingly in need of authenticating its power " b y straining toward purer, more genuine expressions of the heritage of yesterday and of long a g o " (Fishman 1972a: 20). But Fishman proceeds to show how this need presents a serious dilemma to protagonists of nationalism: The more stress on real authenticity, therefore, the more danger of regionalism and ultimate secessionism. The more stress on unification/uniformation, the less genuine authentication (1972a). Such is the penalty for sophistication as society advances farther from primeval origins. Such conflicts or dilemmas could be inevitable consequences of maturation, as when Scotland, for example should want to secede from the United Kingdom. Unhappily, far too often, it is the resultant situation when the break-up of colonial empires divides tribes and their languages or brings about amalgamations between stronger and weaker peoples to the disadvantage of the latter politically, economically or linguistically. T h e circumstances thus created call for the exercise of wisdom and of deep insights into mentalities often vastly different from those of the West.

E. UTOPIAN INAUTHENTICITY IN THE AGE OF NATIONALISM T h e national turn of events in the dynamics of the ethnic process cannot be by-passed with impunity. Hindsight ought to show the most sceptical it is an inescapable step in society's evolution. Nevertheless, the anti-national internationalist is still opposing ethnic revival with archaic argument as he simultaneously cheers every new addition to the Soviet-Arab-Third World camp at the United Nations. Only yesterday, simple rustic and unsophisticated peoples had been among the oppressed of the earth. Awakening, they had struggled for their ethnic rights and regained their national freedom. After the Third Reich, totalitarian forces were still capable of misleading the newly developing peoples; dangling democratic sovereignties purely as a ruse, they discovered new ways of perpetuating old powers. Old threats now loom again. After centuries of ethnic liberation struggles, the national new-comers once more face the possibility of losing their liberties. A whole world is menaced by sheer naked power. It might well be that, paradoxically, only these small powerless peoples, driven to despair by a seemingly hopeless world situation, could unite and challenge the totalitarian regimes. By a new spiritual awakening to the gravity of their needs, the still, small voice could prevail against oil and nuclear war.

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Apart from these contending forces, there are well-meaning people who delude themselves with concepts of a supra-ethnic age. Perhaps they hope thereby to divert the evolution of social life from ethnic organizational forms, secretly believing social evils are inherent in them. T h e y are evidently unaware that primarily, social evils emanate from economic and psychological roots. Nor have they learned that ethnic roots lie in the primordial endowments of man and cannot be eradicated. A supra-ethnic age is one where ethnic groups and individuals have succumbed to assimilation in a country of mixed immigration. It can have no other meaning. T h e use of such terminology is entirely illusory. In countries of fixed or traditional ethnic populations, a supra-ethnic age is an impossible concept. Nor could a people that had fought and won a struggle for national liberation be converted into a supra-ethnic society. Such concepts are irreconcilable, as though belonging to different societal species. Implied in this semantic misconstruction is an altogether different concept, ethnic latency. It was a behavioral attitude widely current among the British peoples during the 18th century and reflected a varying degree of sublimation of national passions among the English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh. In fact, it represents a common attitude among any independent people whose national pride or sense of security is not consciously impinged upon, and reflects the ethnic process in its most natural, unstimulated, virgin state. There is not the faintest indication of transcendence over self into a non-existent, metaphysical supra-ethnic state. Indeed, one cannot conceive of a substitute for a primordial ethnic flow. Hence, when the ethnic process is not in a state of latency but highly activized as it is today, a supra-ethnic concept can only be an illusory escape-mechanism. There is thus one reality, an ethnic one; and its present name is nationalism—or, as in South America, post-colonial Africa, and the awakening outskirts of Asia, formative ethnic groups struggling for the rising marketplace, resources old and new, and changing boundary lines. A t this juncture in history when small and new-born nations are in both grave and grotesque dilemmas, pragmatically and philosophically as well, not only totalitarian powers gloat but also the fossilized anti-national ideologue. Hypocritically cheering when exploited peoples were winning their national struggles, they privately scoffed, especially at the American ethnics that desired nothing more than to express their ethnic selves. Playing with the fire of a totalitarian Moloch, they exult over a fate that would consume them too. A dangerous and intellectually influential breed, Fishman rebuffs their malicious and cynical taunts. This inclination to deride ethnocultural nationalism has, by and large, been continued in the West for over a century, with little scholarly and less general

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recognition that such derision itself reflects a stage in the evolution of ethnocultural and politico-operational integration. While others were just beginning to dig into and reconstruct their ethnic pasts, Western intellectuals were already beginning to extol nonethnic and superethnic rationality. Instead of still seeking unsullied rural models of broader unity and authenticity they could already extol the classically evolved, regionally neutralized and centrally reinforced or validated nature of their institutions, processes, and symbols (1972a). It is curious and not altogether rational behavior that this intellectual element persists in brandishing its irrational anti-nationalism. More curious is their equally persistent identification, in large measure, with the communist world, an alliance that had cost their forerunners dearly. A good many of their preceptors had been among the world's leading intellects. It had been a shocking and unnerving experience for the world to discover, long after the fact, that many of them, including its most celebrated writers, had sacrificed their integrity in vain, crassly misleading vast readerships with false reports and analyses in the interests of the Soviet Union. Some returned to the West degraded and deceived; many other deceptions were a well-kept secret for a long time. One need mention but a few of them, no longer living, to grasp the enormity of their great betrayal of human interests: The Red Dean; André Gide; Bertrand Russell ; George Bernard Shaw ; the Webbs. Their own books are now the chief witnesses against them. Not to mention the political victims in the concentration camps and Lubliankas, the dead and the undeniably murdered. . . . It would be taking too much for granted to hope that the present ilk are of a nobler quality. It would not be an exaggeration to declare that a spurious internationalism prowls amongst us once again. Those who today espouse the Soviet ideology or other Marxist ideologies acclaimed Arafat's representaton at the U N Assembly of a 21st Arab nation committed to the annihilation of the solitary and tiny Jewish State, even when a Palestinian Jordan already exists. If not for Arafat, Gellner might have difficulty proving that nations are "invented". The arbitrarily established Afro-Asian nations erstwhile liberated from colonial rule provide no evidence for so glib an assertion. The underlying circumstances, after all, had been of oppressed peoples demanding their national freedom. That their lands had been parcelled out by former masters or inhabited by a complexity of tribes, each with its own language and culture, could scarcely imply invention, merely that the difficulties of adjustment had been enhanced. Political, economic, and social pressures, too, necessarily contributed to the molding of separate nations, much like that of the baby's head during the birth process. Gellner's aphorism: "[Nationalism] invents nations where they do not exist" (p. 104, note 47), is therefore, like so many aphorisms, noteworthy for its hyperbolic character. It brings to light a precisely contrary pheno-

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menon: As Fishman's book illustrates, social groups in various approximating ethnocultural situations are often induced to integrate with one another as a result of outside pressures. It is, no doubt, theoretically possible in an Aldous Huxley world to create, as Ilya Ehrenbourg had once asserted in one of his anti-Zionist declarations, a nation of redheads. With man as endowed as he is with an innate group predisposition, and under suitable conditions of development, an ethnic process could be set in motion at any time. Nature, however, does not invent: it evolves under natural circumstances. Rather cynically, Gellner had also remarked: " . . .men have 'nationality' as they have a nose and two eyes and this is a central part of their being" (Fishman 1972a). Inadvertently, Gellner may have been the first man to have virtually discovered the ethnic process. Nationality, w e have tried to show, is an extension through social evolution of merely one aspect of the same genetic endowment responsible for the biological development of man himself. It, therefore, required only a little more evolutionary insight for Gellner to perceive that the ethnic process, in its present phase, is as equally qualified as an anatomical attribute to be an outgrowth of the h u m a n endowment.

F. T O W A R D A W O R L D OF E T H N I C NEIGHBORHOODS Potentially dynamic, the ethnic process of any social group may lie " f a l l o w " , awaiting its "fertilization" like the ovum, arrested by unfavorable sociopolitical conditions, prepared to be stimulated by whatever situations or external factors possess the capacity for activating it. In an age of nationalism such as ours, however, contemporary experience is equally lavish with illustrations: with nationalism as one's guide to the present efflorescence of the ethnic process, an ideology of nationalism has evolved universally, prompted by the conditions of an oppressed or in any other wise underprivileged existence. In a genuinely free world, nationalism should be a matter of history as the ethnic process continues its dynamic path toward a society of ethnic neighborhoods. T h e life history of the ethnic process covers the whole course of human life from its animal origins to the present moment. Advancing from one social stage to the next, its ineluctable unfoldment necessarily followed the economic and social practices of a given community in accordance with its traditional behavior, always subject to external human influences. T h e recognizable social stages themselves were thus the ethnic consequences of mutual interactions between the ethnic process and the events around it.

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Such a development enables the observer to detect and to judge the influences brought to bear upon the ethnic process and its operational effects as it responds to the provocational aspects of the social scene. Increasing knowledge and greater awareness of self, trademarks of our modern day, accentuated an ancient and historic life situation that gradually culminated in ethnic understanding, national struggle, or inter-ethnic conflict (Barth 1969; Schermerhorn 1970, Van den Berghe 1970; Despres 1975); or could, if not for Utopian inhibitions. The ethnic process could thus be described as a state of growing consciousness of self in relation to the group. Emotions reflect inner mental turmoil generated also by the interactions between the ethnic process and external societal events. Environmental change provides the essential stimulus: the overwhelming influence of a dominant culture; oppression in variegated expression; exploitation of class conflict at the expense of a subjugated national interest; friction and disunity among underprivileged peoples, often engendered and maintained maliciously and artificially; and others. The inner awareness may become acute as the dynamics of the ethnic process becomes thus potentiated. Specifics are of course introduced by means of the language of the group and its culture, as well as by the total historical and traditional background, that is to say, by its ethnocultural qualities. While the preparatory development of the ethnic consciousness, which may well have taken a considerable span of time, is of basic importance, Fishman points out that as result of innumerable instances of antipathy between natives and "foreigners", or other forms of antagonism: ... some of these irritations came to be cumulatively interpreted by members of those groups whose self-interests and self-concepts had come to be organized at least in part, in mutually contrastive terms (1972a). Ultimately, with the convergence of the liberal thinking of the Enlightenment in quick succession with the developments of the industrial revolution and then the utopian-universalist concepts of Marxist philosophy, ethnic consciousness in its national complexion attained: . . . a currently acceptable formulation concerning indigenous populations that have undergone long-term and pervasive nationalist ideologization (1972a). Stress is thus placed not upon the salient reality of nationalism, merely the contemporary turbulance of an underlying dynamic, but upon the dynamic ethnic process itself. It seems clear that the ethnic process has come into its own. Its simple, group-forming proclivities embracing group, language, and territorial home have evolved into a complex dynamic of ethnic (read—national) consciousness, in consequence of which the modern nation has emerged. But the ethnic process, as a human capacity of primordial status and

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fundamental equivalence with all other innate endowments which enrich man's personality, is likewise inexhaustible. In all likelihood, it will become, along with the others, man's everlasting companion. But, beyond the reasonable prospect of attaining a world of ethnic neighborhoods devoid of local sovereignties, the distant future is unforeseeable. As a way station of social evolution, nationalism must continue to manifest the ethnic lineaments its origin dictates, rid, however, of its capitalistic accretions. Its distinctiveness must lie in its ethnic determinative character and in the specific, immediate purposiveness of its group propensities. Included among them are the basic attractions of the home, the group intimacies that tend to perpetuate profound human affections, and the cooperative effectiveness of companionship, comradeliness and mutual responsibility. T h e Israeli kibbutz is the ideal prototype. These bestow the widest possible significance upon the concept of love, nurturing the simple, heart-warming ways of life; and they restore validity to a nostalgic yearning for that haven of security that supersophisticated psychoanalysts have so delighted in exemplifying by the maternal womb, and have so derided. In short, in order to achieve its true expression and thus elicit what is finest in man, nationalism tends in the interests of the individual to seek the parochial and the particularistic, the peasant as well as the proletarian, thus to enhance that goodness, richness, and beauty that could be the actual inheritance of the individual. By stressing from the outset a child's appreciation of such attributes — and creating the proper teaching environment — society might eliminate economic and psychological evils holding sway today. Unlimited growth combined with power and extension of authority are not features which are in any respect typical of ethnic performance. T h e y are rather the chaotic and unrestrained disorderliness of a civilization that still lacks the genuine democracy of self-knowledge and self-discipline. T h e ethnic process is not the prerogative of any single social group, but of all social groups, although not necessarily arriving at a mature stage of ethnic awareness at the same time. T h e latter half of the 20th century is unique for the rapidity with which the ethnic consciousness of nationalism has spread — perhaps as a sequel to the inherent blindness of a capitalist economy and to the aggressive policies of an expanding communist society. Beginning with the theoretical rumblings of the Enlightenment, nationalism took 200 years to reach maturity, its liberating task by no means completed. If mankind is fortunate, it should be possible in the not too distant future to see some prospects of the idyllic ethnic neighborhoods in a relatively peaceful world. T h e major threat to a continuing ethnic process, in reality, to the existence of humanity, lies in the yawning chasm between

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the totalitarian powers and the forces fighting for democracy. T h e ethnic advance alone m a y tip the balance for a living democratic world. I n the unification of the small nations for the common good m a y lie the only hope. A far more momentous force spiritually than physically, their still, small voice can constitute an immensely powerful social instrument for halting the declivitous course of the nuclear-wielding powers.

G. MILLENNIUM M e n have always dreamed of a universal society. M y o p i c misconceptions, however, had caused the collapse of the Marxist vision. Like a Greek tragedy but on a vast impersonal scale they led ineluctably to the totalitarianism of the gas chambers, the concentration camps, and the modern nightmare society of the nuclear bomb. O u t of the dark night, M a r x had left one vital heritage: the validity of the class struggle as the only w e a p o n that could narrow the social g a p to its barest minimum. Unexpectedly interrupting the Marxist dream, oppressed peoples rose everywhere and demanded national liberation — a struggle that shows no signs of abating after 150 years. Neither M a r x nor his followers h a d foreseen this eventuality. T h e i r Utopian philosophies debunked, m a n y liberal scholars still cannot reconcile themselves to an unmistakable reality, and hence to the validity of ethnicism. Still under the Marxist hypnosis and grossly misinterpreting the Freudian thesis, ethnic concepts are abhorrent to them, a backsliding into the primeval cave, a m a j o r obstruction on the road to the millennium. T h i s attitude reveals a true mental block akin to religious fanaticism. N o less than the misguided visionaries, ethnic thinkers too dream of the perfect society, upon the territorial foundation of an ethnic mosaic. T h e primary stress is upon an underlying ethnic process, the dynamic primordial stimulus of a social evolution of mankind. A s it dialectically pursues its goal, its end-result would probably be a world society of ethnic neighborhoods, hopefully divested of their sovereignties. Ethnicity had been consistently misrepresented by the false prophets of a twisted Marxism, w h o thus stifled the early advances of an ethnic philosophy. It had been presented exclusively as ultra-patriotism, as chauvinism, as totalitarianism, particularly in its modern aspect of nationalism. T h e y had equated national liberation with social aberration. Freed o m for underprivileged peoples could wait till the exploiting classes were overthrown. Proletarian revolutions everywhere would erase national borders and all peoples would intermingle. For such grave miscalculations, these scholars have m u c h to answer.

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They had signally failed to grasp that precisely the opposite was true: only when all peoples are genuinely free could class conflicts close the social gap. Ethnic freedoms presented no obstruction to the evolution of human society. To be sure, even a world of free nations has its limitations. That is already on the brink of accomplishment. The ethnic vision is only too keenly aware of man's regressive tendencies and the anti-social behavior they elicit. Can small, weak, impoverished nations overcome a superpower world with its impending nuclear threat? The apparent absurdity of the challenge is deceptive. The spiritual march of powerless peoples could well prove to be a realistic and effective force in solving modern perplexities. Small nations must be endowed with moral courage. Power in the hands of the defenceless? Even today, nuclear powers bow before this concept. No! Not ethnicity nor nationalism is the crucial problem. It is man himself. In every form of human society, there has been a failure of erosion of man's anti-social propensities, at the very least, an utter imperceptibility of change despite the totality of social and educational effort. Cupidity, lust for power, and ideological sadism have led easily to disaster. No society, certainly no free people, ought to tolerate under any pretext the perpetuation of poverty, ignorance, and material enrichment at the expense of others. Those are the conditions that breed psychological evils. Not the national question; and not the ethnic process, one of man's dynamic impulses. It may now be clear that a greater familiarity with ethnicism, embracing the entire philosophy of ethnicity in all its ramifications, is the sole corrective for misrepresentations that have stultified two centuries of social thought. With man's moral aptitudes virtually unchanged, even a world of ethnic neighborhoods would not usher in the Millennium. Millennium entails a psychological and economic transformation of man and his society. It can be achieved only by the sublimation, or a substantial alteration, of his animal passions, with corresponding advances in his environment. Only such a radical change would set him free — free to make the fullest use of his natural endowments as well as all the potentials of his brain. The most that could be said for ethnic neighborhoods in a free world is that they would provide the most favorable milieu man could ever have for auto-emancipation from his intrinsic encumbrances. One may even readily envisage group interchanges between ethnic neighborhoods purely for experimental encounters with unfamiliar cultures. Were they to become popular forms of finding out how other peoples live, they would tend to blur even more the vague visibility of their by

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then innocuous borders. Human nature as habituating as it is, it is nevertheless dubious if a dissolution of existing ethnic groups could ever take place. Moreover, there could be no conceivable ideological stress anymore to necessitate further pruning of sovereign-less neighborhoods utterly bereft of the means or the desire for aggressive expression. Milliennium would thus come to represent less an advanced state of society than an advancing stage in the evolution of man. An essential primary step, however, is for scholars to rid themselves of antiquated notions on questions of ethnicity, and to probe, far more deeply than we have ventured here, into the nature of the ethnic process.

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Kellogg, V. L. (1907), Darwinism Today. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press. (Cited from pp. 250-251 in: Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval, New York, Doubleday & Co.) Kohn, Hans (1970), "A new look at nationalism", in: Nationalism and International Progress, ed. by Urban G. Whitaker. San Francisco. Kramer, Samuel Noah (1971), The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Labov, William (1971), "The study of language in its social context", in: Advances in the Sociology of Language, Vol. I, ed. by Joshua A. Fishman. The Hague, Mouton. Lenin, Nikolai (1934), On The Jewish Question. New York, International Publishers. Lenneberg, E. H. (1971), In Semantics—Readings. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Lorenz, Konrad C. (1970), "Interview", New York Times Magazine, J u l Y 5Luria, A. R. (1968), "The complex mechanisms of psychological processes", in: Impact of Science on Sociology, Vol. X V I I I , No. 3. UNESCO (France). Lyons, John (1970), "Chomsky", in: Modern Masters (paperback), ed. by Frank Kermode. London, Fon tana/Collins. MacLean, Paul (1967), "Personal Communication", in: Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine. London, Hutchinson. Popper, Sir Karl (1972), "Interview", Encounter, May. Prigogine, Ilya (1973), "Can thermodynamics explain biological order?" in: Impact of Science on Society, Vol. X X I I I , No. 3. UNESCO (France). Roback, A. A. (1957), Destination and Motivation. Cambridge, Mass., Sci-Art Publishers. Rose, Steven (1973), The Conscious Brain. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Sapir, Edward (i960), Cviture, Language and Personality, ed. by David G. Mandelbaum. Paperback, selected essays. Berkeley, University of California Press. Schermerhorn, Richard A. (1970), Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research. New York, Random House. Shapiro, Harry L. (1963), The Jewish People. UNESCO. Silvert, K. H. (1963), Expectant Peoples: Nationalism and Development. New York, Random House. Thorndike, E. L. (1943), Man and His Works. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. Van den Berghe, Pierre L. (1970), Race and Ethnicity. New York, Basic Books.

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Velikovsky, Immanuel (1955), Chapter xv, "Cataclysmic evolution", in: Earth in Upheaval. New York, Doubleday. (Especially pp. 248259)Vigotsky, L. S. (1961), Chapter vii, "Language and thought", in: Psycholinguistics. New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Walter, W. Grey (1968), "The social organ", in: Impact of Science on Society, Vol. X V I I I , No. 3. UNESCO (France). Whatmough, Joshua (1957), Language: A Modern Synthesis. New York, A Mentor Book, The New American Library. Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1956), Language, Thought and Reality, ed. by John B. Carroll. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press. (All quotations are taken from this book.)

Index

Adaptation as human endowment, 131 as evolutionary device, 193, 194, 195 in natural selection, 131, 139, 195, 208

Aggression, 103, 116, 117, 119, 155,

223, 254 AHAD HA'AM, 45, 49 Aliya, 9, 37, 49, 2 0 8 - 2 1 2 ALTER, R . , 40, 46, 255

America alienation vs Aliya, 210 blacks, 3 4 - 3 6

ethnics, 36, 38, 41, 42, 44, 50, 51, 80, 169, 208

ethnic values, 47, 118 ethnicity, q.v. liberals and radicals, 41, 42 melting pot, 36, 38, 48, 169 national perspective, 40, 41, 42, 118, 119 version of world society, 41 "wasps", 36, 37, 38, 46 Animal, 32, 54, 103, 116, 149, 189,

BAUER, B., 29, 255 BAUER, O., 236

Behavior biological, 28 ethnic, 3 language, 85, 193, 195, 196, 206, 207, 208, 2 1 6 , 2 2 5 - 2 2 8

over-emphasis, 217

societal, 1 1 9 , 195, 196, 2 1 6 , 2 2 5 - 2 2 8

surrogate, 216, 217, 226 territorial, 194 toward groups, 207, 208 toward languages, 207, 208 who is "Boss"?, 228

BETTELHEIM, B., 37, 255

Bias (inclusive of ideological bias emanating from mainly Marxist universalistic or other Utopian influences; racism, prejudices, inhibitions, aversions and other ideological biases of questionable integrity as, e.g., Jewish self-hatred), 4, 11, 1 2 , 14, 16, 20, 26, 29, 30, 3 5 , 8 9 93. ! ° 7 . NO, 120, 1 2 3 , 170, 1 7 5 ,

179, 226, 231, 240; see also Antinationalism, Anti-Semitism, Spurious nationalism, Universalism, spurious internationalism

231 ANOKIN, P . K . , 1 9 3 , 1 9 5 , 255

Anti-nationalism, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 27. 5 7 . 58, 59. 6 1 , 66, 70, 1 0 3 , 129, 170, 1 7 1 , 206, 207, 248

Anti-Semitism, 27, 35, 46, 48, 49, 79, 209

Biology, 7, 136, 1 0 9 - 1 9 2 , 195 e n v i r o n m e n t a l interactions, 1 0 9 - 1 9 2

genetic capacities, 19 genetic endowments, 19 human values, 192

Arabs, 79, ii3ff. Assimilation, 11, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 45, 49. 57. 1 '8; see also Jews Assimilationism, 37, 44, 57, 58, 78, 79

r e d u c t i o n i s m , 1 9 0 - 1 9 2 , 201

BACHOFEN, J . J., 65, 66, 70, 77 BAEZ, JOAN, 2 1 2 , 2 1 3 , 255 BARTH, F., 12, 170, 1 7 1 , 243, 250, 255

see also Dobzhansky, evolution; Ethnic process; Ethnic process, "purposeful" evolution; Ethnic

AUSUBEL, D., 146, 1 4 7 , 255

laws, 5 2 , 1 9 0 - 1 9 2

natural selection, 238

vitalism, 189, 192

* D R I / I I = Diagramatic Representation I / I I .

Index

262 process, theoretical Evolution of man

approach;

BLOOMFIELD, L . , 1 2 3 , 1 2 8 , 2 5 5 BOAS, FRANZ, 1 0 7 , 108, 1 2 1 , 2 5 5 BOROCHOV, B E R , 2 5 5

conditions of production vs relations of production, 243 ethnic basis, 57 national liberation struggles, q.v. National Question and the Class Struggle, The, 59 society (group, people, etc.) and class, 26, 116, 117 spurious internationalism, see Universalism, spurious internationalism spurious nationalism, q.v. territory, q.v. underprivileged peoples, 240 workplace and strategic base, 117 Yiddish, 221 Brain, 52, 120, 137, 182, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 253 Brotherhood of man, 70, 73, 74, 77 Bund, Bundists, 50, 221 CANHAM, E . C . , 5 7 , 2 5 5

Capacities endowment, 19, 190, 192, 200, 210, . 2I5 differentiation of society, 191 group forming, 14, 19, 157, D R I language acquisition, 14, 19, 96, 156-157, D R I interactions with environment, 157— 158 innate, 156, 158, 159; see also Chomsky primordialism, 191 symbiosis, 19, 157 see also Innateness Capitalism, 15, 19, 27, 32, 38, 50, 74, 80, 85, 222, 239, 251 CARR, E . H . , 6 1 , 6 2 , 239, 2 5 5 CARROLL, J . B . , 120, 2 5 5 CASAGRANDE, J . P . , 1 5 9 , 2 5 5

Causality contenders, 173, 181, 182 diversity, 180, 181 ethnic endowment, 180 ethnic process, 180, 181, 183 primacy, 100, 180, 183, 223, 224, 226 primordialism, 181 surrogates, 84, 165, 180, 181, 183, 184, 189, 226, 228 theoretical aspect, 174, 181

CASSIRER, E . , 120, 205

Chauvinism, 33, 35, 37, 47, 48, 57, 67, 7°J 72, 73» 75» 89, 103, 119, 212, 215, 236, 252 CHOMSKY, N . ,

16,

1 7 , 5 3 , 80, 9 1 ,

92,

101, 129, 186, 187, 188, 191, 193, 196, 198, 256 abolishing biology, 136, 137, 143 abolishing environment, 133 an evolutionary failure, 133 attitude to Israel, 124, 142 attitude to Jewish national liberation, 124, 142 attitude to national liberation, 124, 142 background, 123, 124, 125, 142 cognition, 102, 112 deep structures-primordial, 141, 160 deep structures-significance, 95, 123, 160 deep structures vs language univers a l , 141, 160 deep structures vs Whorf, 123, 140, 141 Descartes, 130, 145, 147, 150 differentiation — linguistics, 112, 125 as illusion, 156 ignoring, 134 obliteration, 152 effect of Dispersion, 124, 142 evasion of reality, 17, 124, 133 genetic history of ideas, 148 genetics, 130 ideological bias, 16, 124, 128, 141, 161; see also Bias indoctrination, 124, 125 inhibitions, 80, 125, 129, 142 innate vs " i n n a t e " , 17, 123, 124, 133» 142. I 44 _ I 5 2 > i 5 4 " I 5 6 , 158, 160 interpretive principles, 149 Lamarckanianism, 136, 145, 146, 153» 160, 191 language evolution, 127-128, 136— 137, 139» 140 language and mind, 123, 124, 151 language universals, 130-135, 141, 143, 152» 155» 158-161 mind, 148-156 mind-ethnicity, I52ff. mind-evolution, 136 mind-primacy, 101 mind-sensory data, 142, 143, 146 motivations-Jewish self-hatred, 16, 124

263

Index motivations-universalistic bias, 16, 124, 141 over-emphasis of universals, 128, 132 particularism, 123, 128, 129, 131, 155 phonemics, 131, 132, 135 political activism, 124 plausibility and guess, 151, 154, 158 rejection of animal origin, 17, 136, 137, 138, 140, 148, 152 semantics, 134, 136; see also Semantics surrogates, q.v. triangle, 145, 147, 150 "true emergence", 136, 241 universal grammar, 54, 130, 150, f54. >55». 160, 161 universals, inadequacy, 130, 131 universals-over-emphasis, 128, 132 utopianism, 25, i23ff., 136, 142, 161 vs ethnic differentiation, 11, 112, 125; see also Ethnic process, dynamics vs Locke, 147, 148; "Weltanshauung", 124, 142 see also Differentiation; Israel; Spurious nationalism; Universalism, spurious internationalism Chosen people, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 Christianity, 78 Class struggle, 14, 52, 116, 117, 166, 250 Communism, 20, 80, 81, 89, 235 COLLINS, MICHAEL, 2 4 5

Conditions of existence, 156, 157, 159 Conditions of production, 117, 243 Cosmopolitans, 13, 218, 223, 233, 237, 245; see also Universalism Correlations analogies, 85, 86, 88 Greenberg, J. H., 86, 87 interactions, 182, 183 parallelism, 85-88 people and language, 85-88 Sapir, E., 85, 86, 91 CRICK, F., 189, 190, 1 9 1 , 192, 201

Culture civilization, 84-88, 194 diffusion, 16, 85-87 extrinsic, 16, 83-85, 121, 122 intrinsic, 82-87, 91, 92, 122 language, 82-88, 127; see also Ethnic process

parallelism, 85-88 pluralism, 38, 169 primacy, 83; see also Primacy Sapir, E., q.v. Surrogate, 16, 84, 217; see also Surrogates DESCARTES, RENÉ, 130, 145, 147,

190,

191,

192,

201;

150,

see

also

CHOMSKY DESPRES, L . A . , 1 7 1 , 1 7 2 , 250, 255 D E V R I E S , HUGO, 1 3 9

Diaspora, 50, 169 Differentiation bias (rejection, evasion, indifference), 12, 126, 129, 188, 220 development, 154 dilemma, 111, 112 diversity is beautiful, 224 environment, 126, 130; see also Environment ethnic process, 18, 126, 129, 179, 219; see also Ethnic process, environmental ethnolinguistic, 14, 54, 91, 92, 112, 128, 210 ethnology, 109 evolution, 19 group reactions, 19, 51 language, 10, 51, 128, 179, 180, 220, 223 primordiality, 181 repression of curiosity, 180 semantics, 112 societal interactions, 179, 180, 189, 191 socio-historical process, 19, 180, 181 sources, 101 surrogates, 181 "tendentiousness", 223 territory, 180, 181, 220, 223 D I L , A. C., 256 Dispersion, 36-39, 44, 45, 49, 57, 68, 77-8°. 93, n o , 118, 124, 209, 210, 211, 247-248 DOBZHANSKY, T I L , 189, 1 9 1 , 1 9 2 ,

201-

203, 256 biology, q.v. biological reductionism, 191, 192 Cartesian reductionism, 191, 192 D N A , 187, 189, 201, 241, D R I evolution, q.v. Watson-Crick Hypothesis, 189, 192 see also Evolution DUBNOW, S., 49, 2 5 6

Index

264 EHRENBOURG, I L Y A , 2 4 9 ,

256

Embryonic development, 9, 137, 138, 140, 157, 176, 194, D R I ; see also Evolution; Evolution of man Environment, 51, 119, 126-127, 152fr., W - ^ S , 160, 168, 176-177, 189, 250 ethnic framework, see Ethnic framework ethnic process, 59, 168-170, 178, 180, 250 ethnic setting, 17, 31; see also Ethnic setting ethnic societies, 51 ethnic triad, 51, i n , 176, 182 Groups, see Ethnic groups mind, 51, 52 neo-natal interactions, 158-159, 250 socio-historical adaptations, 105, D R II; see also Ethnic process, dynamics stress, 168 E N G E L S , F . , 26, 60, 1 1 5 , 2 1 4 , ERVIN-TRIPP, S. M . ,

256

165, 180,

256

Etatism, 60, 61, 115, 238 Ethnic ancestors, 82 Ethnic antiquity, 12 Ethnic awakening, 38, 46, 63 Ethnic awareness, 28, 49, 170, 235 Ethnic background, n o , 121, 166, 172, 183-184 Ethnic basis, n , 95 Ethnic beginnings, 19, 156-159, 176, 177 Ethnic behavior, 28, 31, 32, 115 Ethnic being, 30, 46 Ethnic challenge, 38 Ethnic change, 159, 169 Ethnic character, 37, 92, 113, 154, 155, 169, 173, 183, 184, 185, 238, 251 Ethnic concept, 18 Ethnic consciousness, 38-39, 251 Ethnic content, 250, 251 Ethnic course, 18, 31, 34 Ethnic crisis, 17 Ethnic current, 118 Ethnic destiny, 209 Ethnic development, 15, 87, 97, 117, 172, 197 Ethnic differentiation, 13, 125-129, 149, 191; see also Differentiation, Environment,

WHORF

Ethnic diversity, see Differentiation Ethnic dynamics, 11, 171, 200, 212,

243, 246, 250; see also Ethnic process, dynamics Ethnic emphasis, 206 Ethnic endowment, 96, 116 Ethnic energy, 12 Ethnic environment, 116, 143; see also Environment Ethnic equilibrium, 185 Ethnic erosion, 211 Ethnic existentialism, 46 Ethnic experience, 115, 143 Ethnic experiment, 41 Ethnic framework, see Ethnic process, ethnic framework Ethnic groundwork, 91 Ethnic groups, 34, 36, 37, 38-45, 51, 79. 82. 104, 116, 132, 169-171, 173. 183. i8 4> !94> 207, 215, 233, 234, 237, 238, 243, 245, 247, 253; see also Groups Ethnic horizon(s), 7 Ethnic humanism, 25, 29 Ethnic idea(s), 26, 34, 170 Ethnic identity, 25, 45, 171 Ethnic imperative, 32 Ethnic impulse, see Ethnic stimulus Ethnic influence, 185, 187 Ethnic latency, 247 Ethnic manifestations, 185 Ethnic mechanism(s), n , 18, 167, 170 Ethnic metabolism, 176, 177 Ethnic mosaic, 252 Ethnic vs national, 85 Ethnic neighborhoods, 8, 16, 93, 97, 178, 215, 238, 249, 251-253 Ethnic origins, 135, D R I Ethnic path, 237, 238 Ethnic phenomena (on), 11, 46, 171, 172, 243 Ethnic pluralism, 38, 118, 169 Ethnic primacy, 122, 223 Ethnic primordial principles, 15, 92, 117, 167, 170 Ethnic process, 18, 19, 30, 31, 46, 80, 85. 9'> 92, 98, 99, 101, 106, 108, n o , 115—117, 119, 121, 122, 126, 134, 136, 144, 151, 155-162, 1 6 5 171, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183, 186-194, 200, 201, 205-207, 210, 212, 215-220, 222-226, 231, 235238, 240, 241, 243, 244, 249-251, 253J

254

Ethnic process, dynamics evolution, 18, 156-159, 170; see also Evolution of man

Index genetics, 155-162, 1 6 5 - 1 7 1 , 176, 196, D R I; see also Genetics language-group beginnings, 156-157, laws of nature, 31, D R I presumptive evidence, 11, 18, 52, 126-127, 133, 136-138, 142-143, !5!> ! 5 3 . 159. 214, 219, 222, 231 socio-culturo-historical course, 19, 3°> 3 1 . 34. I5&-I57» 168-169, 1 7 6 177,182,224 stimulus, evolutionary adaptation, 19, 156-158, D R I Ethnic process, environment boundary disputes, 170 colonialism, 32 ethnic composition of society, see Evolution of man ethnic composition, 169 ethnogenesis, 18, 169, 171 industrial exploitation, 31 interethnic dynamics, 31, 168-169 neonatal interactions, 31, 168, 169, DR I resources competition, 31, 171 socio-culturo-historical framework, 19. 30~3i> l ö ß - W . 168, 176-177, 182, 224, D R I I stresses of the existential struggle, 168-169 territory, its fundamental character, see Territory Ethnic process, ethnic framework primordial character, 18, 19, 96, 104, h i , 134, 175, 177, 182, 185 social evolution, 18, 25, 30-31, 115, 127, 156-159. !6°. 161, 170, 214, 224, 226 socio-culturo-historical course, 19, 30, 31, 96, 156-157, 168, 176-177. 182, 182-183, 224, 235, 238 specific group, 19, 96, 98 territorial setting, 19, 96, 193, D R II; see also Ethnic setting, Territory Ethnic process, hypothetic genetics embryonic symbiosis, 157-159, 176, 196 evolutionary stimulus, 18, 156-157, 196 neonatal interactions with specific group, 31, 157, 168-169, D R I post-symbiotic stimulus becomes the ethnic process, 156, 157, D R I

265 Ethnic process, obscuring factors assimilation, 36-39, 44-45, 49, 57, 247 assimilationism, 37, 44, 78, 211 primacy, 122, 165, 169, 173, 175, 179, 183-184, 206, 223, 224, 228 self-hatred, 37, 57, 76, 79, 93, 117, 211 semantics (euphemisms, ideological aversions, evasions and other substitutes), 39, 70, 74-76, 105, 106, 112, 115, 121, 136, 224 surrogates, 84, 111, 175-176, 179, 223, 224 Ethnic process, oppressive factors anti-nationalism, 57, 61, 66, 70, 103, 129, 170, 171, 206, 207; see also Spurious nationalism anti-Semitism, 46, 49, 79, 209 ideological bias, see Bias racism, 29, 34-35, 67, 70 spurious universalism, 73-75, 77, 79, 89, 9 1 ) 96> I l 6 > ' 5 5 . 160, 165, 170, 204, 214, 237, 246, 248; see also Anti-nationalism; Universalism, spurious totalitarianism, 13, 35, 44, 50, 63, 7°. 72, 93. 103 utopianism, 20, 26-28, 32, 40, 43, 50, 53, 60, 92, 93, 94, 107 Ethnic process, " p u r p o s e f u l " evolution blind " i n t e n t " — man, 18, 176, 194 blind " i n t e n t " , natural selection — ethnic groups, 194 ethnic organization, 78, 79, 156, 176, 182, D R I I ; see also Evolution, Evolution of man ethnic neighborhoods, 16, 93, 97, 178, 215, 238, 249, 251-153, D R I I millennium — higher levels of humanity, 204, 252-254 Ethnic process, stimulating factors abnormalities of dispersion, see Dispersion anti-nationalism, see Anti-nationalism, Spurious nationalism anti-Semitism, 46, 49, 79, 209 ideological bias, see Bias oppression, national and colonial, 27, 59,70.77.8o,ii5,ii7 struggles for national liberation, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 70, 73, 85, 93, 96, TOI, 1 1 7 - 1 1 8 , 134, 155, 161, 165, 168, 171, 174-175, 200-201,

266

Index

208, 210, 2 1 2 , 2 1 4 - 2 1 5 , 240, 243, 246-247, 251-252 underprivileged peoples, suppression, 15, 19, 60,6 1 , 1 1 5 - 1 1 6 , 1 8 1 - 1 8 5 , 206-207, 2 1 5 Ethnic process, theoretical approach a people and its language, 14, 1 9 , 20, 8 1 - 8 2 , 8 5 - 8 7 , 9 1 , 121—122, 128, 152, 157, 161, 167, 169, 182, 186, 204, 208, 218, 222, 2 3 1 ethnicity, "the peculiar feeling", go; see aso Ethnicity ethnicism, q.v. ideological (Marxist) bias, see Bias oppressed, underprivileged peoples, 15. 19, 27. 59. 61, 70, 77, 8 0 , 9 7 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 7 ,120, 206-207, 215, 246, 249. 252 presumptive evidence, 11, 1 8 , 5 2 , 126-127, 133, 136-138, 142-143, 151, 153. i56-!57. i59> 2 1 9 , 2 2 2 , 2 3 1 ; see also CHOMSKY primacy in research, 9 8 , 1 0 0 - 1 0 1 , 169, 173. r 7 5 . 179. !8O, 1 8 3 - 1 8 4 , 206, 2 2 3 - 2 2 4 , 2 2 8 ; see also CHOMSKY, F I S H M A N , GRIMSHAW, G U M P E R Z , SAPIR, W H O R F

struggles for national 15, 20, 26, 29, 30, 7 1 . 82, 85, 93, 96, 134, 155, 161, 165, 175, 181, 200-201, 2 1 4 - 2 1 5 , 240, 243, 252

liberation, 12, 34, 60, 67, 7 0 , 117, 118, 124, 168, 1 7 1 , 1 7 4 208, 210, 2 1 2 , 246-247, 2 5 1 -

surrogates, hindrances to theoretical clarity, 8 4 , 111, 1 6 5 , i75" I 76, i 7 9 > 180, 183, 184, 196, 216, 223, 2 2 4 the theoretical postulate, 18 Ethnic questions, 2 0 Ethnic reality (ies), 2 9 , 1 3 4 Ethnic relationships, 9 2 Ethnic renaissance, 5 0 Ethnic research, 171 Ethnic rights, 2 9 Ethnic roots, 2 0 , 2 9 , 4 4 , 9 9 , 1 0 8 , 1 1 5 , 222, 234, 238, 247 Ethnic self, 4 6 Ethnic self-identity, 4 5 Ethnic setting a people and its language, q.v. a socio-culturo-historical framework, see Ethnic framework ethnic setting, 1 0 6 , 1 1 6 , 1 2 5 , 1 2 8 , 141,154, 177, 187, 1 9 4 , 2 2 3 2 2 4 , D R II

neo-natal interactions with specific group, D R I I territorial foundations, 116, 1 5 6 ; see also Territory Ethnic source, 1 0 5 , 1 8 4 , 2 3 7 Ethnic speech community, 2 9 , 9 6 , 1 0 2 , 105-106, 1 1 7 ,121-122, 125, 128, 1 3 1 , 156, 159, 166, 179, 182, 186, 208 Ethnic stage, 2 3 5 Ethnic stimulus, 9 , 1 5 6 - 1 6 8 Ethnic struggle(s), 12, 1 9 , 2 5 , 2 6 , 2 8 , 2 9 Ethnic survival, 3 7 , 1 7 0 , 1 9 4 Ethnic taboo, 2 8 , 9 6 , 1 0 7 , 1 1 6 , 1 2 2 , 126, 133, 180, 207 Ethnic triad, 111, 1 7 6 , 2 3 2 , 2 4 3 Ethnic unconscious, 2 1 0 , 2 1 1 Ethnic validity, 18, 2 2 3 Ethnic values, 4 7 Ethnic vision, 2 5 3 Ethnic world view, 9 6 Ethnicism, 1 5 , 2 0 , 4 4 - 4 6 , 5 0 - 5 1 , 1 0 7 , 1 2 1 , 1 2 8 - 1 2 9 , 168, 2 5 2 - 2 5 3 Ethnicity, 2 5 , 2 9 , 33-34, 38-39, 4°~44> 46, 5 0 - 5 5 3 , 82, 85, 92,96, 9 7 - 9 8 , 101, 1 1 5 - 1 1 6 , 1 1 8 - 1 1 9 , 136, I52ff., 166-168, 1 7 1 , 180, 195, 206-208, 210, 215, 234, 239, 243, 252, 254 Ethnics, 3 6 - 5 1 , 8 0 , 1 6 9 , 2 0 8 Ethnocentricity, 3 9 Ethnogenesis, 11, 1 2 , 1 5 , 1 8 - 1 9 , 2 9 - 3 1 , 52, 1 7 0 - 1 7 1 Ethnolinguistics, 8 1 , 8 6 , 8 8 , 9 5 , 9 7 - 9 8 , 105, 109, n o , 1 1 2 , 1 2 0 - 1 2 1 , 1 2 5 127, 173, 179, 200, 220, 222, 2 3 1 232 Ethnology, 9 5 , 1 0 5 , J 0 9 , n o , 1 2 6 Ethology, 5 2 Euphemisms, see Semantics Evils, see Social evils Evolution, 1 7 , 2 0 , 5 1 , 7 3 , 9 7 , 1 0 2 , 1 3 7 140, 149, 1 5 4 ,1 5 6 - 1 6 0 , 1 8 2 - 1 8 3 , 2 0 1 - 2 0 3 , 210, 226, 232, 239, 243, 249. 2 5 3 Evolution of man, 1 9 , 5 1 , 5 3 , 6 7 , 8 0 , 82, 84, 93, 97, 1 1 7 , 1 2 7 - 1 2 8 , 1 3 6 1 3 8 , 146, 156-159, I 77, 182, 1 8 9 190 Evolution of society, 8 2 , 9 2 , 9 3 , 1 2 7 , 1 5 6 ; see also Evolution, Evolution of man, Social evolution F I S H M A N , JOSHUA A .

"Boss" us "What first called what? ", 222-224, 226

Index causality amongst idolaters, 182, 223 challenge vs theory, 120, 165-167, 194_I95> 207, 215-228, 238-242, 244-247, 249, 256 ethnic process as primary source, 181, 182, 223, 226 ethnicity vs evolutionary dynamics, 208, 217 suppression of differentiation and the ethnic factor, 180, 183, 185, 207209, 211, 217, 220, 223-224, 228 surrogates and the Rip Van Winkle phenomenon, 181, 216-217, 218 FRIEDLAND, W M . H . , 239 FRIEDMAN, M . , 1 5 , 4 2 , 4 3 , 2 5 6 FRIEDMAN, W . , 5 8 , 2 5 6 FROMM, ERICH

anti-nationalism, 57, 59, 66-67, 7°. 76-78 Bachofen, 64-65, 66ff., 68, 70, 77 brotherhood of man, 66, 68, 73-74, 77. 79. 97 Freudian analysis, 64ff., 70 Great Russian chauvinism, 67 incest without sex, 64-65 incestuous nationalism, 63ff., 70-71 mother fixation, 29, 65-66, 68, 70, 72. 73 national liberation ignored, 5, 67, 69, 70-71 national semantics, 70, 74-76 nationalism vs internationalism, 15, 29, 57. 59. 63-64, 70-78, 97, 256 opposition to national struggles, 68, 70-71, 73-8O opposition to the Jewish national struggle, 76, 77, 78 positive vs negative roots, 64-65, 66ff., 70 regression, 67, 70, 72, 73, 77-78 tendentiousness, 71 " T h e Sane Society", 63, 70, 80 universalistic bias, 57, 63-64, 67, 70 "Fundamental ethnic ideas", Boas, 107-108 GANDHI, M . , 240 GARSTAND, W . , 2 5 6 GELLNER, ERNEST, 248, 249

Genetics animal endowment, 52, 148 capacities, group-forming, q.v. capacities, language acquisition, q.v.

267 Dobzhansky, q.v. ethnic process, D R I ethnic stimulus, 19, 156-158, D R I genes, 148, 156, 158, 190, 197 genetic development, 169, 176, 190 genetic equipment, 145 germ cell, 143, 146-151, 156, 182, 190 innateness vs "innate ideas", see CHOMSKY

neo-natal interactions, 158-159, 250, D R II reduction and life, 190-182 symbiosis, 157-159, 176 Watson-Crick hypothesis, 108, 120, 227 see also Adaptation, Evolution Genuine nationalism, see Nationalism, genuine GIDE, ANDRÉ, 88, 2 5 6 GREENBERG, J . H . , 8 6 - 8 7 , 2 5 6 GRIMSHAW, A . D . , 1 6 5 , 1 8 0 - 1 8 6 , 2 5 6 GROMYKO, A . , 2 3 6

Groups Group existence, 17, 44-52, 96-97, i54-159 Group extinction, 44 Group identity, 43 ethnic evolution of society, 176177 metabolic systems, 176-177 natural history, 28, 50 neo-natal interactions with specific group, 156-159, D R I I primordial acquisition of ethnic setting primordial language-group differentiation, 51-52, 177, D R II skeletal groups, 176-177 social groups, 172-177 social vs ethnic groups, 172-177; see also Ethnic groups territorial and socio-culturo-historical development, 19, 30-31, 156157,168-169,176-177.182. II see also Evolution, Evolution of man GUMPERZ, J . J . , 1 7 2 - 1 7 5 , 1 9 6 , 2 5 7 HAMP, E . P., 129, 257 HARKABI, Y . , 4 4 , 2 5 7 HAUGEN, E . , 1 2 8 , 2 5 7 H A W K E S , JACQUETTA, 1 3 8 , 140, 2 5 7 HAYES, C . H . , 58, 59, 257 HECKMAN, R . , 9 3 , 2 5 7 HEILBRONER, R . L . , 128, 2 5 7

268

Index

HERDER, J . G .

VON, 240

Heredity (inheritance), 146-148, 157 HERTZLER, J . O . , 6 3 , HERZOG, M A R V I N I . , HOCKETT, G . F . , 1 2 2 , HOIJER, H . , 1 0 7 , 1 2 1 ,

153,

257 88-90, 257 257 122, 257

LABOV, WM., 175, 1 8 6 - 1 8 8 , 258

Home, 65, 66, 155, 159, 232-233, 243, 245. 250 HOUSTON, S . H . , 1 3 1 , 2 5 7

Humanism, 29, 43, 50, 57, 65-67, 73, 77> 80, 93, 97, 158, 201, 202, 214, 241 Humanity 26, 29, 44, 58-60, 65-67, 103, 115, 120, 125, 158, 201, 251 HUMBOLDT, W M . , VON, 205 HYMES, DELL H . , 165, 172, 173,

186,

196, 257 Innate ideas, 130 Innateness, 52, 54, 97, 126, 132, 147, 150, 190 Integration vs assimilation, 40, 49 Interactions, 166, 167, 169, 170, 176, 177, 180, 182-183 Internationalism, see Universalism ISAACS, H. R., 40, 42-45, 1 1 8 - 1 1 9 , 257 Israel, 37, 49, 57, 77, 79-80, 113ÌT., 118, 209, 235-236 JAKOBSON, R . , 1 3 2 , 2 5 7 JESSEL, L . , 124, 257

Jewish self-hatred, 14, 37, 57, 76-79. 123-125 Jews anti-Semitism, 27, 35, 46, 48, 51 assimilation, 36-37, 49, 209 assimilationism, 44, 57, 78, 79, 211 chosen people, 76-80 diaspora, 50, 169 dispersion, 44-45, 49, 57. 77. 79. 121, 168 existence, 89, 90 extinction, 93 integration, 36 leftist attitudes, 50, 53, 80, 93, 236 linguistics, 88, 89, 90 nationalism, 76-80 survival, 36, 37, 44, 57, 93, 211 U N attitudes, 236, 248 KELLOGG, V . L . , 139, 257

Kibbutz, 251 KOHN, H . , 58, 2 5 8

KRAMER, S . N . , 70, 2 5 7 KAUTSKY, K . , 236 K R E I S K Y , BRUNO, 2 3 6

Language a people and its language, n , 12, 13, 14, 19, 82, 83, 91, 121, 122, 128, 152, 161 behavior, 83, 85, 91 common languages, 60, 62 correlation, 84-89, 91 culture, 83, 85-86, 91, i i 2 , 121, 122 differentiation, 19, 95ff., 126, 128129, 141, 179, D R I I ethnicity, 82-83 euphemisms, 98, 105, 106, 107 evolution, 19, 84, 123, 127, 128, D R II gait, 85 group, 51, 82, 83, 85 innateness, 97 interactions, 84 intrinsic culture, 82, 83, 85 liberation, 128-129 nationalism, 62, 128 native, 85-88, 100, 1 1 0 - 1 1 1 , 233 on mind and language, see CHOMSKY, WHORF

origins, 19, 139, 140, 141 parallelism, 84-88 patterns of thought and language, 97-98 phonemes, 86, 131, 132, 135, 1 9 7 198, 231 potentials, 128, 143 primacy, 97-98, 100, 173 proto-language, 103 race, 29, 34-35, 67, 70, 72-73, 82, 83, 89, 236 social matrix, 173 society, 85, 91 sociology of language, 165-167 speakers, 83, 85, 91 specificity of group to language, 19, 85. 105 structure, 95, 127 structure- deep, 95, 123, 127, 133, 137, 141-142, 143, 161 structure- interverbal, 100, 101 surrogates, 84, 106, 111, 216-217 symbiosis, presumptive, 19 theories of causality, 179; see also Ethnic process, theoretical approach

269

Index

universal grammar, 13, 22, 130, 150, 154-155 universals (similarities) 128-130, 133 universals vs differentiation, 129, 141 see also Causality, C H O M S K Y , F I S H MAN, S A P I R , W H O R F

Lenin bourgeois, nationalism, 74, 75 Great Russian chauvinism, 67 internationalism, 74, 75, 89 national liberation, 25-26, 60, 62, 74, 80, 89, 238 national semantics, 74, 75 proletarian internationalism, 26, 75 Rosa Luxembourgh, 67 " T h e Jewish Question", 74 LENNEBERG, E . H . , 1 1 2 , 1 1 3 ,

258

Liberals, 40-44, 46, 50, 53, 80, 93, 236 Liberation, national, 19, 25-26, 60, 73, 76, 80, 85, 93, 1 2 1 , 125, 134 Linguistics, 81, 88, 95, 97-98, 105, 109, n o , 112, 120-121, 125-128, 141, 173, 79, 220 LOCKE, JOHN, 1 4 7 , 1 4 8 , 1 9 0 LORENZ, K . , 3 2 , 2 3 2 , 2 5 8 L U R I A , A . R . , 197-198, 258 LYONS, J . , 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 , 258

Millennium, 61, 252, 253, 254 Mind adaptations, 1 3 1 , 133, 149 conscious mind, 153 Descartes, 130 evolution, 5 1 - 5 2 , 1 0 1 , 103, 123, 148, 153-154 experience, 142, 143, 144 h i g h e r m i n d , see WHORF implanted ideas, see C H O M S K Y "innate ideas", see C H O M S K Y

innate structure, see Brain innateness, q.v. interpretive principles, 145, 149 "Language and M i n d " , 123, 134, see also

CHOMSKY

"Language, Thought and Reality", 2 5 9 , see also

WHORF

mind and language, see

CHOMSKY,

WHORF

physiology, see Brain potentials, 1 5 1 , 155 prerogative, 145 sensory data, 1 4 2 - 1 4 3 structure, innate, 144 unconscious mind, 1 1 7 , 153 MINOGUE, K E N N E T H R . , 2 4 1 ,

245

Minorities, 39, 40, 44-45, 49-50, 60, 80

MACLEAN, P., 52, 258 MAO TSE-TUNG, 178 MARX, KARL (Marxism), 1 1 , 13, 14,

MOLIÈRE, B . P., 2 3 4

"Motivation" and destiny, 89, 232

15,

17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 30, 32, 39, 53, 60, 67, 69, 80, 82, 89, 93, 97, 1 1 5 1 1 7 , 165, 170, 2 1 2 - 2 1 4 , 234, 240, 242, 248, 250, 252 anti-Semitism, 27 class vs nation, 27 conditions of production, 1 1 7 , 243 defamation of nationalism, 26, 27 Engels, F., 26, 39 etatism, 60, 234, 238 ideological obscuring of an ethnic process, 27, 32 influence, vast generational, 27 messianism, 15, 32, 73, 74, 77, 78 relations of production, 1 1 7 , 243 universalism, see Marx, utopianism, Universalism, spurious utopianism, 15, 26-27, 32, 42, 64-65, 70, 73-74 vs national liberation struggles, 2 5 26, 80

MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE,

240

Messianism, 15, 29, 3 1 , 42, 64-65, 70, 73-78, 93, 96^97, 1 1 5 - 1 1 6 , 129

Nation(s) — (groups, tribes, peoples, nationalities), 61, 63, 67, 70, 73, 74, 80, 82, 84-86, 88-89, 91-92, 1 1 5 - 1 1 7 , 1 4 1 , 165, 182-183, 2 1 2 214, 222, 233, 239; see also Evolution of man National idea, 14, 34, 49, 222 National liberation struggles, 12, 15, 20, 26, 29, 30, 34, 60, 67, 70-71, 82, 85, 93, 96, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 124, 134, 155, 1 6 1 , 165, 168, 1 7 1 , 1 7 4 - 1 7 5 , 1 8 1 , 200-201, 208, 210, 212, 2 1 4 215, 240, 243, 246-247, 2 5 1 - 2 5 2 National (ethnic) oppression, 14, 17, 19, 25, 27, 59-6O, 70, 7 7 , 80, 97, 1 1 5 -

1 1 6 , 120, 246, 249 National question, 1 1 , 76, 124,

125,

253

"National question and the class struggle", 59

Nationalism, genuine, 75, 91, n o , 1 1 7 , 120, 122, 128, 166, 167, 168, 169, 206, 215, 235-236, 238-242, 244245, 247

270

Index

Nationalism, spurious, 57-61, 62, 63, 66, 70, 72-77, 84, 91, 92-93, 95, 97, 100, 103, 107, 206-207, 212, 213, 246, 248, 251-253; see also FROMM

Natural selection, 52, 139, 150, 154, 238 Nazism, 63, 70, 79, 93, 103, 212, 221 NOVAK, M . ,

46

Pandora's box, 19, 160 Particularism, 123, 129, 131, 155, 169, 251 PENFIELD, W . , 1 9 7 ,

231

People and its language, A, 14, 19, 82, 85-87» 9 i , 121-122, 128, 152, 157, 161, 167, 169, 182, 186, 204, 208, 218, 222, 132; see also Groups, Nations, Underprivileged peoples PLAGET, J., 1 9 6 PLANCK, M A X ,

189

Pluralism, 46, 169 PODHORETZ, N . ,

248

POPPER, K A R L , 5 3 , 1 3 8 , 2 5 8

Prediction, 193 Primacy, 98, 100-101, 122, 165, r 73; ! 75> 179» 180, 183-184, 223-224, 228 Primordialism, 70, 58, 166-167, 179, 182, 189-190, 206, 211, 224, 226, 228, 231, 240-241, 247

169, 206, 176, 219, 224,

Race (racism), 29, 34, 35, 67, 70, 7273, 82, 89, 236 Radical(s), 41, 53, 77 Reductionism and life, 190-192, 201203 ROBACK, A . A . , 8 9 ,

258

196-197, 258 Russification, 89 R O S E , STEVEN,

people and its language bias, 82, 90; see also Bias correlation, 85-88 cultural diffusion, 16, 82-83, 85 culture, borrowed, 85 culture, genuine and spurious, 84 culture, intrinsic, 82-88 ethnic process, 84 euphemisms, 85; see also Semantics indigenous organization, 82-87 inhibitions, 92 integrity, 92

SAPIR, EDWARD, A

internationalism, 62, 89, 90 national genius, 85 nationalism, 62, 90 nationality, 82-86 parallelism, 85-88 "peculiar modern feeling", 90, 9i purity, ethnic or racial, 82, 83 surrogates, 84; see also Surrogates utopianism, 52 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, 108, 120 SCHERMERHORN, R . A . , 2 5 0 , 2 5 8

Semantics, 39, 70, 74-76, 85, 105, 106, i i 2 , 115, 121, 136, 224 SHAPIRO, H . L . , 3 4 , 2 5 7 SILVERT, K . N . , 5 9 , 6 0 , n o ,

258

Small nations, 233-238, 246-247, 252253 Social evils, 44, 53, 58, 93, 115, 117, 119 psychological-, 93, 117, 213, 223, 238, 242, 247, 251 socio-economic-political-, 32, 93, 103, 117, 213-214, 223, 238, 247 vs ethnicity and nationalism, 32, 41, 74, 75, 117, 119 Social evolution, 18, 25, 31, 115, 127, 160, 211, 235, 238, D R I I Society, 189, 191, 215, 228, 238, 243, 245, 247, 251, 252-254 Sociolinguistics, 165-166, 173, 179, 181, 184-186, 188-189, 191, 204205, 207-208, 215, 217, 223 Sociology of language, 165-167, 175, 178-180, 186-187, 195, 205, 208 Sovereignty, 30, 53, 93, 103, 214-215, 224, 251-252, 254 Speech community, see Ethnic speech community Spurious nationalism, see Nationalism, spurious Stalinism, 53, 69, 79, 236 SUMNER, W . G . ,

189

Supra-ethnic, 247 Supra-national, 71, 74 Surrealism, 177, 226 Surrogates, 84, i n , 165, 180, 183, 184, 196, 216, 219, 220, 223; see also Causality, Ethnic process (obscuring factors and theoretical hindrances) FISHMAN, GRIMSHAW, GUMPERZ; Primacy Survival, 61 Symbiosis, 157, 158, 159, 176 Symbolism, 91, 173, 204, 224

Index Taboo, see Ethnic taboo Theory(ies), 12, 183, 186-191, 196, 207, 216-217, 219-220, 224, 238, 243 Territory(ies), 111, 116-117, I 2 8, 156, 173. j 76, 179) 182-183, 220, 232, 233, 235

271 193, 223141, 194,

THORNDIKE, E . L . , 1 3 2

Totalitarianism, 13, 33, 44, 50, 63, 70, 72, 93. 103. " 9 , 238, 246, 252 TREVOR-ROPER, H . R . , 2 4 4

Triangle, 145, 150, 191 Tribalism, 42, 59 Underprivileged peoples, 25, 68, 71, 117, 169, 183, 205, 213, 224, 249, 252; see also Ethnic process (oppressive factors), National (ethnic) oppression Universalism (used here more or less synonymously with cosmopolitanism, utopianism and internationalism) genuine universalism or genuine internationalism, 155, 214, 237 spurious universalism or spurious internationalism, cosmopolitanism, utopianism, 20, 26-27, 28, 32, 40, 43» 50» 53» 60, 77, 82, 89, 91-94, 96, 107, 115-117, 120, 125, 155, 160, 165, 166-167, 170, 179, 204, 212, 214, 222, 226, 234, 235, 236, 237» 239» 246, 248, 250, 252 see also FROMM

U S S R , 49, 53, 60, 69, 79 Utopianism, 20, 26-28, 32, 40, 43, 50, 53, 60, 92, 93, 94, 107, see also Universalism, spurious Values, 19-20, 59, 78, 158, 202-203, 245 V A N DEN BERGHE, P . L . , 2 5 0 , 2 5 8 VELIKOVSKY, I., 137, 258 VLGOTSKY, L . S . , 102, 2 5 8 W A L T E R , W . G . , 1 9 7 , 1 9 9 , 200, 2 5 9 W A T S O N , JAMES D . , 1 8 7 , 202

Watson-Crick hypothesis, 189 WEINREICH, M A X , 2 2 1

WHATMOUGH, J . , 88, 2 5 9 WHORF, BENJAMIN L E E , 9 1 - 9 2 ,

95-122,

140-141, 161, 187, 224-228 achievement, 120 bias, 16, 95 conscious mind, 103-104 differentiation, 16, 95, 99-101, 112 dilemma, 111, 112 ethnic suspicions, 95 ethnicity, 95, 98, 106-107, 1 1 0 euphemisms, 98, 105, 106-107, 115, 121 evasiveness, 106 hiatus in Whorfian thought, 95 higher mind, 104-105 inhibitions, 16, 95, 105, 108 internal linkages, 100 interverbal structures, 98-100 language and world view, 16, 95, 99, 106 language as surrogate, 84, 98, 99, 106 language structure and mental outlook, 95, 98, 100, 106 language structure and reality, 110, in language relativity principle, 16, 95, 106, 109, h i "Language, Thought and Reality", 259 languages without peoples, 98-99, 100-101 patterns of thought and language, 97-98 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, 108, 120, 227 specificity of language, 106 world view, 95, 106, 120-122 world view vs ethnic view, 95-96, 113 see also Differentiation Womb, 29, 64, 70, 73 World society, 60, 64-65, 74-75, 80, 97» " I . 252 Yiddish, 88-90, 117, 221 Zionism, 37, 41, 43, 49, 50, 57, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 93, 117, 209, 235, 236, 249

Contributions to the sociology of language

Edited, by Joshua A. Fishman

1. Advances in the Sociology of Language Volume I : Basic Concepts, Theories and Problems: Alternative Approaches Ed. by J. A . Fishman 1976,418 pages, 2nd ed. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7732-1 2. Advances in the Sociology of Language Volume I I : Selected Studies and Applications Ed. by J. A. Fishman 1972, 534 pages. Paperbound ISBN: 90-279-2302-7 3. Multilingualism in the Soviet Union Aspects of Language Policy and its Implementation by E. Glyn Lewis 1972, x x + 3 3 2 pages. Paperbound 90-279-2352-3

ISBN:

4. Perspectives on Black English Ed. by J. L . Dillard 1975, 392 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7811-5 5. Advances in Language Planning Ed. by J. A. Fishman 1974, 590 pages. Paperbound ISBN: 90-279-2618-2

Contributions to the sociology of language

274

6. The Revival of a Classical Tongue Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language by Jack Fellman 1973, 152 pages. Paperbound ISBN: 90-279-2495-3 7. The Political Sociology of the English Language A n African Perspective (Who are the Afro-Saxons?) by Ali A. Mazrui 1975, 232 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7821-2 8. Advances in the Creation and Revision of Writing Systems Ed. by J. A. Fishman 1977, xxviii+492 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7552-3 9. Advances in the Study of Societal Multilingualism Ed. by J. A. Fishman 1977, approx. 850 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7742-9 1 o. Language and Politics Ed. by William M . O'Barr and Jean F. O'Barr 1976, x v i + 5 0 6 pages. Clothbound 90-279-7761-5

ISBN:

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Standardization

Contributions to the sociology of language 14. Language Planning for Modernization The Case of Indonesian and Malaysian by S. Takdir Alisjahbana 1976, 132 pages. Paperbound isbn: 90-279-7712-7 15. Issues in Sociolinguistics Ed. by Oscar Uribe-Villegas 266 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7722-4 16. Soviet Contributions to the Sociology of Language Ed. by Philip A. Luelsdorff 1977, 196 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7613-9 17. Acceptability in Language Ed. by Sydney Greenbaum 1977, x + 2 1 4 pages. Clothbound isbn: 90-279-7623-6 18. Towards a Social Grammar of Language by Matthew C. Grayshon 1977, 142 pages. Paperbound ISBN: 90-279-7633-3 19. Colonialism and Language Thought in Viet Nam by John De Francis 1977, xvi + 294 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7643-0 21. Language Planning Processes Ed. by Joan Rubin, Björn H. Jernudd, Jyotirindra Das Gupta Joshua A. Fishman and Charles A. Ferguson 1977, viii + 288 pages. Clothbound ISBN: 90-279-7714-3

Other volumes are in preparation M O U T O N P U B L I S H E R S • T H E H A G U E • P A R I S • NEW Y O R K

275

Diagrammatic Representation I: The Ethnic Process GENETIC ENDOWMENT TRANSMITTED BY BOTH PARENTS (along with the ethnic process)

I

FERTILIZED EGG CELL Nucleus

Cytoplasm