The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity [Reprint 2012 ed.] 9783110863888, 9783110106046

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The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity

Contributions to the Sociology of Language 37

Editor Joshua A . Fishman

MOUTON PUBLISHERS · BERLIN · NEW YORK · AMSTERDAM

The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity JOSHUA A. FISHMAN and Michael H. Gertner, Esther G. Lowy and William G. Milán assisted by Silvia Burunat, David E. Fishman, Ofelia García, Itzek Gottesman, Phyllis Koling, Rena Mayerfeld, Carole Riedler-Berger, and J. Mark Steele

MOUTON PUBLISHERS · BERLIN • NEW YORK • AMSTERDAM

ClP—Kur^titelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Fishman, Joshua Α.: The rise and fall of the ethnic revival: perspectives on language and ethnicity/Joshua A. Fishman and Michael H. Gertner . . . Assisted by Silvia Burunat ...—Berlin; New York; Amsterdam : Mouton, 1985. (Contributions to the sociology of language; 37) ISBN 3-11-010618-3 Paperback ISBN 3-11-010604-3 geb. NE: G T

l^ibrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Fishman, Joshua A. The rise and fall of the ethnic revival. ι. Language and culture—United States. I. Title. 84-20702 P35.5.U6F57 1984 306'. 4 ISBN 0-89925-048-3 ISBN 0-89925-049-1 (pbk.)

Printed on acid free paper © Copyright 198; by Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form—by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means—nor transmitted nor translated into a machine language without written permission from Mouton Publishers, Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin. Typesetting: Permanent Typesetting and Printing Co., Ltd., Hong Kong.—Printing: Druckerei Hildebrand, Berlin.—Binding: Dieter Mikolai Berlin. Printed in Germany

To Bruce Gaarder: public servant, friend, scholar and tireless advocate of the non-English languages of the United States, as an expression of gratitude, not only from us but from many, many more than he is aware of.

. . . [Τ] hey are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another, so that a man would more readily converse with his dog than with a foreigner. But the Imperial City has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace . . . but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed have provided this unity? —St. Augustine, The City of God (c. 413) All political societies are composed of other, smaller societies of different types, each of which has its interests and maxims The will of these particular societies always has two relations: for the members of the association, it is a general will; for the large society, it is a private will, which is very often found to be upright in the first respect and vicious in the latter. —Rousseau, Political Economy (1755) The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his fellow-creatures, and of acting in common with them. I am therefore led to conclude that the right of association is almost as inalienable as the right of personal liberty. No legislator can attack it without impairing the very foundations of society. Nevertheless, if the liberty of association is a fruitful source of advantages and prosperity to some nations, it may be perverted or carried to excess by others, and the element of Ufe may be changed into an element of destruction. —Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, chap. 12 (1835)

CONTENTS

Preface: Language and Culture, the Ethnic Revival and the Sociolinguistic Enterprise

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

I Historical, Cross-Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity ι. Language, Ethnicity and Racism 2. 'Am and Goy as Designations for Ethnicity in Selected Books of the Old Testament 3. Bilingualism and Biculturism as Individual and as Societal Phenomena 4. Language Maintenance and Ethnicity 5. "Nothing New Under the Sun": A Case Study of Alternatives in Language and Ethnocultural Identity

ι 3 15 39 57 77

II The "Ethnic Revival" and Language Maintenance in the American Context

105

6. Mother-Tongue Claiming in the United States Since i960: Trends and Correlates 7. Ethnicity in Action: The Community Resources of Ethnic Languages in the United States

107 195

8. Ethnic Activists View the Ethnic Revival and Its Language Consequence

283

III The Ethnic Mother-Tongue Press and Schools as Community Institutions

303

9. Language and Ethnicity in the Periodical Publications of Four American Ethnic Groups 10. The Hispanic Press in the United States: Content and Prospects 11. The Significance of the Ethnic-Community Mother-Tongue School

305 343 363

12. Ethnocultural Dimensions in the Acquisition and Retention of Biliteracy: A Comparative Ethnography of Tour New York City Schools IV Ethnolinguistic Pluralism in Herderian and Whorfian Perspective 13. Positive Pluralism: Some Overlooked Rationales and Forefathers

377 443 445

χ

Contents 14· The Whorfian Hypothesis: Varieties of Valuation, Confirmation and Disconfirmation 15. Whorfianism of the Third Kind: Ethnolinguistic Diversitj as a Worldwide Societal Asset

457 473

Epilogue: The Rise and Fall of the "Ethnic Revival" in the USA

489

Index

527

PREFACE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, THE ETHNIC REVIVAL AND THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE

It is our hope that this volume will inform the three major ways in which language is related to culture: language itself is a part of culture, every language provides an index of the culture with which it is most intimately associated, and every language becomes symbolic of the culture with which it is most intimately associated. Language and ethnicity relationships, the central concern dealt with in this volume, provide revealing insights into each of these three links between language and culture in general. Most human behaviors are language imbedded and, therefore, language is an inevitable part of culture. Ceremonies, rituals, songs, stories, spells, curses, prayers, laws (not to mention conversations, requests and instructions) are all speech acts or speech events that constitute the very warp and woof of ethnic life. But such complex ethnocultural arenas as socialization, education, barter and negotiation are also entirely awash in language. Language is, therefore, not only part of culture but a very major and crucial part as well. All those who seek to enter fully into a given ethnoculture and understand it must, accordingly, master its language, for only through that language can they possibly participate in and experience the culture. On the other hand, language shift, or loss of a culture's intimately associated language, is indicative of fargoing culture change, at the very least, and possibly, of cultural dislocation and destruction, even though a sense of ethnocultural identity may, nevertheless, remain, at a conscious or unconscious attitudinal level. The study of language and ethnicity can help us to know and follow these intricate processes of change and continuity. The role of language as an index of culture is a by-product (at a more abstract level) of its role as part of culture. Languages reveal the ways of thinking or of organizing experience that are common in the ethnocultures with which they are most intimately associated. Of course, languages provide lexical terms for the bulk of the artifacts, concerns, values and behaviors recognized by their associated ethnocultures. But, above and beyond such obvious indexing, lan-

xii

Preface

guages also reveal the native clusters or typologies into which the above referents are commonly categorized or grouped. The recognition of colors, illnesses, kinship relationships, foods, plants, body parts and animal species involves ethnoculture-bound typologies and the culturally recognized systematic qualities of these typologies are revealed by their associated ethnoculture-bound languages. This is not to say that speakers of particular languages are inescapably forced to recognize only the categories encoded in their mother tongues. Such restrictions can be counteracted, at least in part, via cross-cultural and cross-linguistic experience, including exposure to mathematical and scientific languages which provide categories different from those encountered in ethnocultures and their associated mother tongues. Minority languages and minority ethnocultures are particularly good vantage points for examining the consequences of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic experience. Since language is the most elaborate symbol system of humankind, it is no wonder, then, that particular languages become symbolic of the particular ethnocultures in which they are imbedded and which they index. This is not only a case of the part standingfor the whole (as when Yiddish, e.g., often stereotypically "stands f o r " or evokes Eastern European-derived ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture, when we hear it spoken or when we hear it mentioned), but also a case of the part becoming a rallying symbol for ( or against) the whole and, in some cases, becoming a cause (or a target) in and of itself. Language movements and language conflicts utilize languages as symbols in order to mobilize populations to defend (or to attack) and to foster (or to reject) the ethnocultures in which they are imbedded or which they index by dint of long and intimate association. The study of language and ethnicity brings us very directly to the heart of such sensitive and conflicted issues as inter-generational ethnic continuity and language maintenance in which the symbolic role of language is highlighted again and again.

ETHNIC REVIVALS AND THE ETHNIC REVIVAL This volume, we would hope, also contributes directly to an understanding of the widespread North American and Western European "ethnic revival" of the mid-6os to mid-7os. This was a period in which the Western capitalist uniformizing ethos was found wanting in many ways, by many groups, and in many places. The rejection of the war in Vietnam, the "do-it-yourself" movement, the civil rights struggle, the campus riots, the return to romantic simplicity and spontaneity of the flower children and the hippies, the widespread anti-big business, anti-atomic energy and anti-big labor sentiments, the pure air and pure water and environmental protection movements—all of these and their counterparts abroad were also anti-central movements and sentiments.

Preface

xiii

The "central idea" was profoundly disappointing in many ways and to many different segments of society due to its purported materialism, violence, intrusiveness, bureaucracy, demoralization, lack of warmth, etc. Its apparent lack of Gemeinschaft (whether in ethnic terms of bonds of purportedly spontaneous affection and intimacy for those w h o are considered to be of "one's own kind", or merely in more general, purely human, interactional terms) was deeply disturbing, particularly to the young. Thus, the "ethnic revival" coincided with a more general revaluation of the "central idea," a revaluation that contained philosophical and cultural dimensions, as well as economic ones, a revaluation that found the "central idea" seriously wanting insofar as a large variety of critics, both in the U.S.A. and abroad, were concerned. The "central idea" has recovered much ground in the world since the mid70s, but it is still not back to where it was soon after World War II. A s an idea that waxes and wanes, gratifies and disappoints, rewards and overpromises, it both fosters and undercuts ethnolinguistic diversity. The two (the central idea and ethnolinguistic diversity) exist together, they complement each other symbiotically, and the absence of stable, societal bilingualism, on the one hand, but the persistence of peripheralized ethnic mother tongues and individual bilingualism, on the other hand, are the sociolinguistic reflections of their syncretistic coexistence. In a country with as brief a history as the United States, with ethnic and religious diversity as part of its deepest mythology and its most basic reality, with constantly (and still) recurring waves of mass immigration, it is highly unlikely that the "central idea" can long reign supreme. However, the powerful uniformizing forces of its unrivaled econotechnical, urban processes also guarantee that self-isolating social compartmentalization will not prove possible for any but small and distinctly "off-beat", nonparticipationist minorities. Perhaps, then, this is the genius of America (and of much of post-modern life elsewhere as well), namely, that neither the "central idea" nor the "pluralistic" idea can carry the day by itself for long. Being spared, therefore, the excesses of either, the post-modern world must, of necessity, become more tolerant toward both, since they both not only have their assets but, taken together, bring along with them the assets of the creative tension between them as well. A s time goes by, more and more of the world will have to learn to live with both.

BRINGING LANGUAGE INTO SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY INTO LANGUAGE Finally, this volume represents another step toward a goal that the senior author and a small number of colleagues took upon themselves a little over twenty years ago, namely, to bring about a mutually rewarding interaction between

xiv

Preface

sociology and the language sciences. A study of language and ethnicity in general and of the ethnic revival in particular, may well constitute an especially promising vantage-point from which to pursue this goal, since ethnicity is a topic of established interest both to sociology and several of the language sciences. It is his particular hope that interest in language will grow among sociologists and he has tried to encourage this interest by presenting language in the very terms best known to sociologists: demographic, stratificational, institutional and interactional. Modern societies are far too complex to fathom via any one method or level of analysis, but language use, language attitudes and behaviors toward language are superbly sensitive and dovetailed vantagepoints from which this complexity can be significantly revealed and clarified. In connection with the second half of this task, i.e. in attempting to bring sociology to the language sciences, we have tried not only to embrace methodological diversification (to avoid the impression that there is only one desirable, all-purpose method or level) but also to avoid the faddish roadblocks that sociology has, at times, erected in connection with the study of ethnicity. The roadblock that views ethnicity as necessarily artificial or secondary to other factors, and the roadblock that views ethnicity as a phenomenon pertaining only to unabsorbed minorities have each been equally eschewed. On the other hand, we have tried to stress familiarity with sociological theory, for nothing serves the total sociolinguistic endeavor more poorly than when language specialists make up their own sociology as they go along, apparently oblivious of the fact that social theory is every bit as old and as intricate an area of intellectual endeavor as is language theory. Many readers of this book will doubtless realize that this is the senior author's second attempt, over the period of the past quarter century, to derive general sociolinguistic theory from a contrastive study of the non-English language resources of the United States. He is, therefore, fully cognizant of the fact that this attempt must bear comparison on two fronts: with his earlier Language Loyalty in the United States (1966) and with the best work by others in the interim on related topics. Since his earlier attempt was completed before the (re)birth of sociolinguistics in the early and mid-6os, he is all the more eager that the current volume reflect the impact of that thrilling intellectual ferment on our subsequent empirical and theoretical efforts.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (by the senior author)

Others must say to what extent our efforts to deal with language and ethnicity from the perspectives of language and culture, ethnic revivals, and sociologylanguage sciences interaction, have succeeded. I can only say that I have labored hard and conscientiously on this volume for some five years and that my efforts were assisted by a considerable number of very dedicated colleagues and supporting agencies or institutions. The former are listed on the title page and, again, in connection with the chapters with which they were most intimately associated. The latter, too, deserve to be fully enumerated and thanked, and I gratefully do so at this time: Office of Education International Studies Branch for supporting my initial efforts in 1977 to study once again the non-English language resources of the United States, after I had previously investigated this area in the early 1960s with that very same office's help and encouragement; National Institute of Education, for support in 1978 and 1979—81 for research on the ethnic community schools of the United States and on the biliteracy process in particular; National Science Foundation (Linguistics Program), for support in 1979-83 for research on the ethnic revival as a factor in language use, attitudes and behaviors toward language; National Endowment for the Humanities for enabling me to discuss my preliminary finding and theories during the entire summer of 1981 with 12 young humanists selected from college faculties throughout the United States; Yeshiva University for awarding me a sabbatical in 1982—83 so that I could devote my time exclusively to preparing this volume for publication without the interruptions that teaching and committee memberships entail; Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (Wassenaar) and Institute for Advanced Studies ( Jerusalem) for awarding me visiting fellow status during that year so that I could read and write with as little distraction and with qs much stimulation as possible. To all of them and to the project secretary and office manager, Mrs. Maxine Diamond-Kosofsky (who so competently steered me through and around year after year of daily problems), my sincere gratitude. Finally, I would like to thank my entire family, but particularly my wife, Gella, and my youngest son, Avrom, for uncomplainingly taking upon themselves the extra burdens which this work engendered and for providing me with the additional encouragement and affection that are inevitably required by any one involved in a work such as this. Social research is far more difficult than is generally imagined and without a safe and sure harbor in the midst of my family I doubt that I could have managed to complete this volume at all. September 1983

χ vi Acknowledgments Although this volume was conceived of as an integrated whole, most of its chapters benefited from early publication, in whole or in part, in various books, journals and collective volumes. The following publishers and journals are, therefore, gratefully thanked for their permission to reprint material which they originally published: Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, 1977 and 1978, Georgetown University Press. Identity: Personal and Socio-Cultural. Uppsala, Almqvist and Wiksell, 1983. Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 1981 International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1984. Bilingual Press, 1984 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1983. Multilingua, 1983. NABE Journal, 1979. Basic Wwiting, 1980. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1980 and 1984. Language in Society, 1982. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 1983.

I HISTORICAL, CROSS-CULTURAL AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND ETHNICITY

Chapter ι Language, Ethnicity and Racism JOSHUA A. FISHMAN

In Irish, not merely does our mind react to the same beauty, the same delicacy of inflection and suggestion that delighted our

fathers,

but

we

can

still

share

through it the desires and hopes, the failures and successes, the nobility and even, in healing manner, the human weakness of practically the whole of our recorded history (Brennan 1969: 7 1 ) .

hanguage and ethnicity: Overlooked variables in social theory and in social history.

Many

discussions of ethnicity begin with the struggle to define "it". While I am certainly interested in defining (or delimiting) ethnicity, I am even more interested in what the definitional struggle in this day and age reveals, namely, that the social sciences as a whole still lack an intellectual tradition in connection with this topic. Social scientists and social theorists have neither reconstructed nor developed with respect to ethnicity (nor, indeed, with respect to language and ethnicity) either a sociology of the phenomenon per se or a sociology of knowledge concerning it, much less a synchronic view of the link between the two, in any major part of the world of social life and social thought. Thus, here we are, in the late twentieth century, with God only knows how few or how many seconds remaining to the entire human tragi-comedy on this planet, still fumbling along in the domain of ethnicity, as if it had just recently appeared and as if three millenia of pan-Mediterranean and European thought and experience in connection with it (to take only that corner of mankind with which most of us are most familiar) could be overlooked. Obviously that is not our attitude toward other societal forms and processes such as the family, urbanization, religion, technology, etc. For all of these we manifestly delight in the intellectual traditions surrounding them. I must conclude that our intellectual discomfort and superficiality with respect to ethnicity and our selective ignorance in this connection are themselves ethnicity-related phenomena, at least in part, phenomena which merit consideration if we are ultimately to understand several of the dimensions of this topic that are still waiting to be revealed.

4

I Historical, Cross-Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives

This is not the place to undertake so grand an expedition, nor have I the ability to take you everywhere that this topic (the sociology of language and ethnicity and the sociology of knowledge with respect to it) must lead us. Suffice it to say that we must try to carry both the reconstruction and the analysis of social history and social theory from classical Hebrew and Greek times through to the 20th century, up to and including the 'rebirth of ethnicity' in many Western locales during the past decade. In the process we must attend to the Roman Empire, both in the West and in the East; to the early Church and the Church Fathers; to Islam as a Euro-Mediterranean presence, to medieval and renaissance life and thought throughout Europe; to the reformation and counterreformation; to the commercial and industrial revolutions viewed both as social change/continuity and as stimulants to social thought and social theory; and finally, to the rise of modern intellectual schools and social movements. In this last we must particularly examine the capitalist-Marxist clash, and the MarxistHerderian-Weberian differences in sociological and anthropological thought and in political and economic action, both in the ominous 19th and in the cataclysmic 20th centuries. At this time I can only try to select a few themes here and there that may provide some clues to language and ethnicity viewed in such a perspective. What is ethnicity ? Since one of my objectives (in what might very well be a lifetime task in and of itself) is to disclose what social theorists have said about ethnicity, including how they have defined it, my initial definitional passions can be satisfied at a general orientional level which gives me as much latitude as possible to attend to all forms and definitions of ethnicity (see Isajiw 1974, for detailed attention to the definitional issue). What I am interested in is both the sense and the expression of "collective, intergenerational cultural continuity," i.e. the sensing and expressing of links to "one's own kind (one's own people)," to collectivities that not only purportedly have historical depth but, more crucially, share putative ancestral origins and, therefore, the gifts and responsibilities, rights and obligations deriving therefrom. Thus, what I am interested in may or may not be identical with all of society and culture, depending on the extent to which ethnicity does pervade and dictate all social sensings, doings and knowings, or alternatively (and as is increasingly the case as society modernizes) only some of these, particularly those that relate to the questions: who are we? from where do we come? what is special about us?. I assume (together with Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1982) that these questions can be answered differendy at different times by the same respondents (and, all the more so, by different respondents). It is in this context that I also want to monitor whatever link there may be to language as an aspect of presumed ethnic authenticity. The theme offundamental 'essence'. Both ancient Israel and ancient Greece conceived of the world as made up of a finite number of ethnicities with characteris-

/. Language, Yìthnìcity and Racism 5 tic and fundamental biological 'essences' and, therefore, histories or missions of their own. This theme, with its undercurrent of bodily continuity and triumph over death, has its counterpart in modern Herderian and nationalist thought and has been continually present in the pan-Mediterranean and European world, as well as in much of the African, Asian, and Native American worlds. This essence is transcendental and ultimately of superhuman origin, and language is naturally a co-occurring part of the essential blood, bones, or tears. Thus, the view that the deity (or deities) necessarily speak(s) to each ethnicity in its own language and could not conceivably do otherwise, is also a recurring view (albeit one that is not always accepted and, therefore, one that is also contradicted). It is a view related to a cosmology in which language-and-ethnicity collectivities are seen as the basic building blocks of all human society. In more modern thought, the superhuman origin of this co-occurrence and its dependence on biological essences are questioned. However, many theoreticians and philosophers still hold that ethnicity and ethnogenesis (i.e., the coming into being of ethnicities and of language-and-ethnicity linkages) is a natural and necessary fact of human social life (for a recent Soviet view along these very lines, see Bromley 1974). Eastern European and Eastern Mediterranean thought is particularly noteworthy along these latter lines (Jakobson 1945) and it is here in the Euro-Mediterranean complex that we find today most generally and insistently the view that language authenticity is a natural and necessary part of a mystically inescapable physical/cultural collective continuity. The theme of metamorphosis. Seemingly at odds with the above view, but at times syncretistically subscribed to in addition to it, is the view that ethnicities can be transcended and that new or 'higher' levels of ethnic integration can be arrived at, including the level of terminal de-ethnicization, i.e., of no ethnicity at all. The argument between those who view ethnicity as fixed and god-given and those who view it as endlessly mutable begins with Plato and Aristotle, the former proposing that a group of de-ethnicized Guardians of the City be created so that uncorrupted and uncorruptable, altruistic and evenhanded management of the polity could be attained. There would be no husband-wife relationships among them since all women would belong to all men and vice versa. Similarly their offspring would have no fathers and no mothers since all male adults would be fathers to all children, all female adults would be their mothers, all children would belong equally to all adults and vice versa. Only a group such as this—a group whose members had no differentiating intergenerational biological continuities—could devote itself to the public weal, since, having neither property nor family, it could view the general need without bias, without favoritism, without greed, without conflict of interest, all of which Plato considered necessary accompaniments of ethnicity. Aristotle hotly contested this view and stressed that whatever the dangers of ethnicity might be, those who do not initially love and feel uniquely bound to specific "others"

6

I Historical, Cross-Cultural

and Theoretical

Perspectives

could not then love mankind nor fía ve the benefit of generalized "others,' firmly in mind. A child who belongs equally to one and all belongs to no one. The challenge of ethnicity , as Aristotle saw it, was one of augmenting familial love, expanding the natural links to one's own "kind,', so that these links also include others who are more distantly related, rather than doing away with the initial links and bonds as such. This theme too is developed consistently—the expansion and transmutation of language and ethnicity to a higher, more inclusive level of both being repeatedly expressed by early Christian thought e.g., St. Augustine, Roman thought, medieval thought (including much of moral philosophy) and by capitalist statism. Going even further, de-ethnicization and linguistic fusion are expressed as ultimate, millenial goals by some modern Christian social theorists, by classical Marxists as well as classical capitalists, and as inevitable if regrettable outcomes of modern industrial society by Weber and the entire "grand tradition" of modern social theory from Saint-Simon to Parsons. Ethnicity as disruptive, irrational, and peripheral. The darker side of ethnicity is commented on by almost all ancient and medieval thinkers, but usually as only one side of the coin, i.e., as only half of the entire phenomenon which has both positive and negative features. However, the more completely negative view begins with Plato, as already mentioned, in relation to matters of state. In this connection it receives its quintessential formulation by Lord Acton, John Stuart Mill, and other establishment-oriented defenders of Western capitalist democracy. For them, state-forming ethnicity was nothing but the disrupter of civility, a base passion, a nightmare, a wild evil that still lurked in the backward parts of Europe but that had, thank God, already been tamed and superseded in Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland, and in the other early and enlightened beneficiaries of political consolidation and econotechnical growth. This view coincided with a developmental theory defining 'legitimate' language-and-ethnicity, namely, that the link between them and the currency that they both enjoyed in the West were by-products of political and economic stability. That is, they were the legitimate creations of centuries of continuous governmental, commercial, military, and religious stability. This view, that the benign, wise and stable state creates its corresponding and legitimate nationality, was long the dominant view in the West. The thought that the nationality might undertake to create a state for itself was anathema, viewed as unnatural, unjust, unwise, and simply a wild and wanton disruption of peace and civility. The thought of a Breton or Rumanian ethnicity was as roundly abhorred by 'proper' society then as the thought of a Québécois ethnicity is in some circles today. Indeed, the evil, instinctual penchant of "illegitimate" language-and-ethnicity movements to undertake disruptive state-formation was thought to be the basic negative dynamic of minority ethnicity, and so it is for some to this very day.

ι. l^anguage, Ethnicity and Racism

η

Thus, the confusion of ethnicity with politically troublesome collectivities, with rambunctious minorities, with 'difficult' peripheral and vestigial populations, began long ago. However, classical Marxism was not very different from capitalist establishment statism in this respect. Mill had held that the language and ethnicity movements, particularly in their nationality-into-state phase, were despicable 'irrationalities' that had to be contained at all costs, evils to be compromised with only grudgingly if the established political order was to be maintained (note, for example, the compromise escape clause of 'once defeated but historical nations' as an interstitial category between Mill's and Acton's two major categories: 'goodies': 'peoples with histories', and 'baddies': 'peoples without histories'). Initially, Marx and Engels were equally vituperative with respect to nation-into-state language and ethnicity movements (and, ultimately, made equally grudging and opportunistic exceptions in connection with them), due to their obviously disruptive impact on the class struggle and on proletarian unity. However, if language-and-ethnicity movements for Mill were merely vile passions, they were for Marx and many of his followers also vile figments, lies, and chimeras, objectively no more than mere by-products of more basic economic causes, phantoms manipulated by leading capitalist circles in order to fragment and weaken the international proletariat. Needless to say, both Mill and Marx have their followers today, who ascribe to language and ethnicity linkages all manner of evil and evil alone, including genocide. Furthermore, this purportedly objectivist view is still very much alive among those social scientists who deny any subjective validity or functional need for ethnicity, and who see it only as an essentially manipulated (and therefore, basically inauthentic), manufactured by-product of elitist efforts to gain mass support for political and economic goals (Gellner 1964). They basically sympathize with Engels' lament of a century ago (1866): There is no country in E u r o p e where there are not different nationalities under the same government. T h e Highland Gaels and the Welsh are undoubtedly of different nationalities to what the English are, although nobody will g i v e to these remnants of people long gone by the title of nations, any more than to the Celtic inhabitants of Brittany in F r a n c e . . . . T h e European importance, the vitality of a people, is as nothing in the eyes of the principle of nationalities; before it the Roumans [sic] of Wallachia, w h o never had a history, nor the energy required to have one, are of equal importance to the Italians w h o have a history of 2,000 years, and an unimpaired national vitality; the Welsh and M a n x m e n , if they desired it, w o u l d have an equal right to independent political existence, absurd though it be, with the English! T h e whole thing is absurdity. T h e principle of nationalities, indeed, could be invented in Eastern E u r o p e alone, where the tide o f Asiatic invasion, for a thousand years, recurred again and again, and left on the shore those heaps of intermingled ruins of nations which even n o w the ethnologist can scarcely disentangle, and where the T u r k , the Finnic M a g y a r ,

8

1 Historical, Cross-Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives the Rouman, the J e w and about a dozen Slavonic tribes live intermixed in interminable confusion.

To this very day ethnicity strikes many Westerners as being peculiarly related to 'all those crazy little people and languages out there', to the unwashed (and unwanted) of the world, to phenomena that are really not fully civilized and that are more trouble than they are worth. Ethnicity as creative and healing. Autochthonous ethnicity theories commonly refer to the responsibilities incumbent upon the carriers of the intergenerational essence, i.e., to the duties that those of 'one's own kind' have, duties to be and to do in particularly authentic ways; and of course, these theories also refer to the individual and collective rewards of such faithfulness. However, various more generalized ethnicity theories have taken this kind of thinking a step higher. Classical Hebrew thought contains a recurring emphasis on the perfectability of ethnicity, i.e., an emphasis on its highest realization via sanctification. It was not only Jewish ethnicity which could be so elevated and attuned with the Creator's designs and expectations (Fishman, Mayefeld and Fishman, Ch. 2, This Vol.), although Hebrew thought is, understandably, repeatedly more concerned with the theoretical perfectability of Hebrew ethnicity (just as it is with the actual shortcomings of Hebrew ethnicity). Hebrew thought is an early source for the recurring message that sanctified ethnicity is ennobling, strengthening, healing, satisfying. Its thought proclaims the message of the joy, the wholeness, the holiness of embodying and expressing language-and-ethnicity in accord with the commandments of the Master of the Universe: 'for they are our life and the length of our days.' Whosoever lives in the midst of his own kind, speaking his own language and enacting his own most divinely regulated traditions in accord with these imperatives, has all that one could hope for out of life (Also see Fishman, This Volume, Chapters 2, 13 and 15). The joys of one's own language and ethnicity are subsequently expressed over and over again, from every corner of Europe and in every period. In modern times this feeling has been raised to a general principle, a general esthetic, a celebration of ethnic and linguistic diversity perse, as part of the very multisplendored glory of God, a value, beauty, and source of creative inspiration and inspiring creativity—indeed, as the basic human good. It is claimed that it is ethnic and linguistic diversity that makes life worth living. It is creativity and beauty based upon ethnic and linguistic diversity that make man human. Absence of this diversity would lead to the dehumanization, mechanization, and utter impoverishment of man. The weakening of this diversity is a cause for alarm, a tendency to be resisted and combatted. In Herder and in Mazzini, in the Slavophiles and in Kallen—indeed, in much of modern anthropology and anthropological linguistics—the theme of ethnic diversity and the

ι. Language, Ethnicity and Racism

9

sheer beauty of cultural pluralism provide an unending rhapsody. This view both tantalizingly merges with and also separates from general democratic principles, with the rights of man, and the inalienable privilege to be one's self, not only to befree but to befree to be bound together with 'one's own kind (Talmon 196 5 ). On the one hand, democracy also subsumes an alternative right, namely, to be free from ethnicity, i.e., the right and opportunity to be a citizen of the world rather than a member of one or another traditioned ethnic collectivity. On the other hand, democracy guarantees the right to retain one's ethnicity, to safeguard collective ethnic continuity, to enable one's children to join the ranks of 'one's own kind,' to develop creatively, and to reach their full potential without becoming ethnically inauthentic, colorless, lifeless, worse than lifeless: nothingness. Dimensions of language-and-ethnicity. The foregoing themes provide us with many insights into language and ethnicity, and into how language and ethnicity have been viewed in a particularly influential part of the world as well. The themes themselves are not independent of each other. Many of them relate to a putative ethnic essence that is intergenerationally continuous among " one's own kind" and is absorbed via the mother's milk. Thus, there is commonly a "being" component to ethnicity, a bodily mystery, a triumph over death in the past as well as a promise of immortality in the future, as the putative essence is handed on generation after generation. There are a few escape hatches in, and a few escape hatches out, and a terrifying state of liminality in between, but the physical continuity of a corpus mysticum continues. And language is part of that corpus. It issues authentically from the body, it is produced by the body, it has body itself (and, therefore, does not permit much basic modification). Just as commonly, language is part of the authentic 'doing' constellation and the authentic "knowing" constellation that are recurringly assumed to be dimensions of ethnicity. Ethnic doing and knowing are more mutable and, therefore, in danger of inauthenticity. Ethnic doing is a responsibility that can be shirked. Ethnic knowing is a gift that can be withheld. The basic desideratum, ethnic being, is necessary but not sufficient. There is everything to be gained and everything to be lost, and language is recurringly part and parcel of this web (Fishman 1977). In premobilization ethnicity it is naturally, unconsciously so (Fishman 1965), whereas in mobilized ethnicity it is a rallying call, both metaphorically and explicitly (Fishman 1972). Autochthonous theories gravitate toward the metaphorical and metaphysical views of the language and ethnicity link. External objectivists reduce the mystery to the needs of the military and the economy, with the school system merely exploiting language and ethnicity in preparing recruits for both. Autochthonists see language and ethnicity as initial essences, or causes. External objectivists see them as manipulable by-products. However, both

io

I Historical, Cross-Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives

agree that they are generally there together,. Hovering over them both is the problem of how to interpret the "we-they" differences that are, unconsciously or consciously, part of the experience of ethnicity, which brings me to racism. Ethnicity and racism. Racism is one of many words that have been so broadened in modem, popular usage as to have lost their utility. Democracy and socialism are two other such terms, but whereas the latter have become all-purpose terms of approbation (viz., people's democracy, guided democracy, National Socialism, etc.), the former has become an all-purpose put-down. I would like to rescue racism from that dubious distinction, to limit its semantic range, in order more clearly to distinguish between ethnicity and racism as social phenomena and as social theories, and thereby, to focus pejorative usage more tellingly. Relative to ethnicity, racism is not only more focused on the " b e i n g " component (therefore having even fewer escape hatches from it than does ethnicity), but it also involves an evaluative ranking with respect to the discontinuity between ethnic collectivities. Ethnicity is an enactment (often unconscious) and a celebration of authenticity. Racism inevitably involves more heightened consciousness than does ethnicity, not only because it is an " i s m " , but because its focus is not merely on authenticity and the celebration of difference or collective individuality, but on the evaluation of difference in terms of inherent better or worse, higher or lower, entirely acceptable and utterly objectionable. Ethnicity is less grandiose than racism. It has no built-in power dimension while racism, being essentially hierarchical, must have the concept of dominance in its cosmology and requires the constructs of superior races, dominant stocks, master peoples. By their words and deeds, ethnicity and racism are importantly different. Herder, though anti-French to the hilt (like many German intellectuals struggling against French cultural hegemony within the disunited German princedoms at the beginning of the 19th century), is rarely, if ever, racist. He proclaims: No individual, no country, no people, no history of a people, no state is like any other. Therefore, the true, the beautiful and the good are not the same for them. Everything is suffocated if one's own way is not sought and if another nation is blindly taken as a model (Herder, Sammtliche Werke, v. 4, p. 472). Is not this still a dominant ethic and motivating dynamic in cultural anthropology to this very day? Herderian views must be understood as a plea and a rhapsody for an ethnically pluralistic world in which each ethnicity can tend its own vineyard as a right, a trust, and a point of departure for new beauty and creativity yet undreamed of. Such pluralism is, however, strange to racism, since the dynamics of racism represent a call and rationale for domination rather

ι. Language, Ethnicity and Racism

11

than for coexistence. While ethnicity can proclaim live and let live, racism can proclaim only bondage or death to the inferior. Of course, every ethnicity runs the risk of developing an ethnocentrism, i.e., the view that one's own way of life is superior to all others. It may even be true that some degree of ethnocentrism is to be found in all societies and cultures (Bidney 1968), including the culture of secular science itself, to the degree that they are all-encompassing in defining experience and perspective. The antidote to ethnocentrism (including acquired anti-ethnic ethnocentrism, which may be just as supercilious and uncritically biased as is ethnic conditioning) is thus comparative cross-ethnic knowledge and experience, transcending the limits of one's own usual exposure to life and values (a theme which has long appeared in the literature on ethnicity). Characteristic of postmodern ethnicity is the stance of simultaneously transcending ethnicity as a complete, self-contained system, but of retaining it as a selectively preferred, evolving, participatory system. This leads to a kind of self-correction from within and from without, which extreme nationalism and racism do not permit. The modern heroes of racism are Gobineau in France (see, for example, Biddess 1966, 1970a and 1970b), Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1899) in England, and a chorus of German philosophers, scientists, and politicians (see, for example, Barzun 1937, Gasman 1971, Mosse 1966, Weinreich 1964). From their works it becomes clear that the language link to racism is as invidious as racism per se. Hermann Gauch, a Nazi 'scientist', was able to claim: The Nordic race alone can emit sounds of untroubled clearness, whereas among nonNordics the pronunciation is . . . like noises made by animals, such as barking, sniffing, snoring, squeaking That birds can learn to talk better than other animals is explained by the fact that their mouths are Nordic in structure (quoted in Mosse 1966, p. 225). Here we have the ultimate route of racist thought: the demotion of the 'others' to a subhuman level. They are animals, vermin, and are to be subjected to whatever final solution is most effective and efficient. Concluding sentiments. These remarks must not be taken simply as a defense of ethnicity. Ethnicity has been recognized since ancient times as capable of excess, corruption, and irrationality, this capacity being one of the basic themes accompanying its peregrination across the centuries. The very term ethnicity, derived from the Greek ethnos (used consistently in the Septuagint to render the Hebrew goy, the more negative term for nationality, as distinct from 'am, the more positive term), has a decided negative connotation in earliest English usage (see O E D : ethnic 1470, ethnist 15 50 and 1563, ethnici^e 1663, ethnicity 1772, ethni^e 1847). These connotations—heathenness, superstition, bizarreness—

12

I Historical, Cross-Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives

have not fully vanished even from modern popular usage, e.g., ethnic dress, ethnic hairdos, ethnic soul. Thus, we need not fear that the excesses of ethnicity will be overlooked. Racism itself is one of the excesses into which ethnicity can develop, although racism has often developed on pan-ethnic and perhaps even on nonethnic foundations as well. 2 However, the distinction between ethnicity and racism is well worth maintaining, particularly for those in the language-related disciplines and professions. It clarifies our goals, our problems, and our challenges as we engage in bilingual education, in language planning, in language maintenance efforts, and in a host of sociolinguistic and anthropological enterprises. The distinctions between religion and bigotry, sexuality and sexism, socialism and communism, democracy and anarchy, are all worth maintaining. N o less worthwhile is the distinction between ethnicity and racism. Unfortunately, we know more about racism than about ethnicity, and more about the conflictual aspects of ethnicity than about its integrative functions. This is a pity, particularly for American intellectuals, since we too (regardless of our pretense to the contrary) live in a world in which the ethnic factor in art, music, literature, fashions, diets, childrearing, education, and politics is still strong, and needs to be understood and even appreciated. N o t to know more about ethnicity, about the ethnic repertoires of modern life, the endless mutability of ethnicity since the days of ancient Israel, the variety of prior thought concerning ethnicity (e.g. the various and changing views as to its power or centrality as a factor in societal functioning and social behavior) is also to limit our understanding of society and of the role of language in society. Language and ethnicity have been viewed as naturally linked in almost every age of premodern pan-Mediterranean and European thought. When ethnicity disappeared from modern social theory in the 19th century, language, too, disappeared therefrom. We may n o w be at the point of reappearance of both in modern social theory and we must prepare ourselves, accordingly, to benefit from and to contribute to the sensitivities and perspectives that a knowledge of language and ethnicity can provide, without overdoing them. Only in this way can the "ethnic revival" in the United States be fully understood.

NOTES ι.

For an account of racism's more complete domination of modern culture, see Banton's paper in Zubaida (1970). For a preliminary differentiation between ethnicity and racism, see the penultimate section of this paper.

2.

The terminology of ethnicity often included the word race (e.g., ra%a,) in the sense of ethnicity as employed in this paper. This is but one of the semantic alternatives that a sociology and sociology of knowledge pertaining to ethnicity must be aware of and must try to illuminate.

ι. Language, Ethnicity and Racism 13

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barzun, Jacques. Race: A Study in Superstition. N e w York, Harper, 1937. Biddess, Michael D. Gobineau and the origin of European racism. Race: Journal of the Institute of Race Relations. 1966, 7, 225-270. Biddess, Michael D., ed. Gobineau: Selected Political Writings. London, Cape, 1970a. Biddess, Michael D . Father of Racist Ideologi/: The Social and Political Thought of Count Gobineau. London, Weindenfeld and Nicholson, 1970b. Bidney, David. Cultural relativism. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 1968,3,543-547. Brennan, Rev. Martin. Language, personality and the nation, in Cuiv, Brian Ó., ed. A View of the Irish Language. Dublin, Stationery Office, 1969. Bromley, Y u V . Soviet ethnology and anthropology, in his Studies in Anthropology I. The Hague, Mouton, 1974. Chamberlain, Houston S. The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. N e w York, Fertig, 1899. Engels, Friedrich. What have the working class to do with Poland? Commonwealth. 1866, March 24, March 31 and May ;. Fishman, David E., Rena Mayerfeld, and Joshua A. Fishman. n.d. 'Am andgoy as designations for ethnicity in selected books of the Old Testament. This Volume, Chapter 2. Fishman, Joshua A . Varieties of ethnicity and varieties of language consciousness. In: Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, if6j. Edited by Charles W. Kreidler. 1965, 69-79. Language and Nationalism. Rowley, Newbury House, 1972. Ethnicity and language, in Giles, Howard, ed. Language and Ethnicity in Intergroup Relations. N e w York, Academic Press, 1977, 15-52. Gasman, Daniel. The scientific origins of National Socialism, in his Social Darwinism in Ernest Haeckel and the German Monist League. London, Macdonald, 1971. Gellner, Ernst. Thought and Change. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964. Herder, Johann G . Sammtliche Werke. 33 vols. Β. Suphan, E. Redlich et al.,eds. Berlin, 1877-1913. Isajiw, Wsevolod W. Definitions of ethnicity. Ethnicity, ι , 1 1 1 - 1 2 4 , 1974. Jakobson, Roman. The beginnings of national self-determination in Europe. Review of Politics. 1945, 2, 29-42. Reprinted in Fishman, J.A., ed. Readings in the Sociologi of Language. The Hague, Mouton, 1968. LePage, R.B. and Andrée Tabouret-Keller. Models and stereotypes of ethnicity and language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 1982, 3, 161-192. MacRae, Donald. Race and sociology in history and in theory, in Mason, P., ed. Man, Race and Darwin. London, Oxford University Press, i960, 76-86. Mosse, G . L . Ναζί Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich. London, W.H. Allen, 1966. Rjasanoff, N. Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels über die Polenfrage. Archiv für die Geschichte des Socialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung (Leipzig). 1916, 6, 175-221. Talmon, Jacob L. The Unique and the Universa!. London, Secker and Warburg, 196;. Weinreich, Max. Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's Crimes Against the Jewish People. N e w York, Yiddish Scientific Institute-YIVO, 1946. Zubaida, S., ed. Race and Racism. London, Tavistock, 1970.

Chapter 2 'Am and Goy as Designations for Ethnicity in Selected Books of the Old Testament DAVID E. FISHMAN, RENA MAYERFELD, JOSHUA A. FISHMAN.

'AM, GOY AND ETHNICITY The unabridged Oxford English Dictionary presents the student of ethnicity with a puzzle, rather than with an answer to a riddle, when it associates the term "ethnicity" (and such obsolete variants as "ethnish" and "ethnicize") with the Old Testament Hebrew goy and when its oldest (16th-century) English citations associate all of these terms with what are now distinctly unlikely meanings such as "pagan, neither Jewish nor Christian, heathen." These intimations of backwardness, grossness, incivility and general unsavoriness are certainly not at the heart of this term's current semantic field (although they linger only slightly below the surface in such references as "ethnic hairdo" and "ethnic politics," both of which presumably are less civilized than ordinary hairdos or politics). Currently, in scholarly references to "ethnic studies" and "ethno-sciences" the designation ethnic refers to the cultural specificity that defines or self-defines a people or nationality. Other languages handle this area of discourse ever so much better than does English—with its ambiguous and wavering distinctions between nationality and nation, on the one hand, and nationality and citizenship, on the other hand. However, even modern English places "ethnicity" within the semantic field of "peopleness" rather than "heathendom." Thus, two interrelated issues arise to be clarified: (a) how does "ethnicity" come to refer to peopleness, to begin with, and (b) how does "ethnicity" come to refer to "heathendom" within the general orbit of "peopleness" ? A third, more marginal issue is how "ethnicity" comes to lose the latter pejorative connotations and to gravitate toward more neutral ones, in modern sociological and popular usage in English.

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BIBLICAL SEMANTICS: PROBLEMS AND UNCERTAINTIES Following the lead of the OED, we will turn to the Hebrew Bible in order to begin our exploration. Here we immediately discover two widely used terms for ethnocultural aggregates: 'am and goy. In the Septuagint (the Alexandrian Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible by Hellenistic Jews, between 250 B.C.E. and 100 B.C.E.), ethnos is the Greek term used to translate goy, and laos is the Greek term employed to render 'am. Since "ethnicity" is a derivative of only one of these two terms (terms which together represent an ethnotypology or, at the very least, part of an ethnotypology), we must seek to understand them both ('am and goy)—and particularly to fathom the semantic differences between t h e m — i f we are to appreciate either choice of ethnos for goy or the subsequent negative semantic field of its earliest recorded English derivatives. The student of Old Testament semantics (as well as of any other records o f ancient literate civilizations) is faced with two major problems: on the one hand, the limited (i.e., historically selected) data available, and, on the other, its vastness and variety. Indeed, the study of Biblical semantics often appears to attempt the impossible: to arrive at the "true" (underlying, basic) meanings of words from their relatively few but yet often ambiguous or idiosyncratic occurrences. Such a study is inevitably based on partial and incidental data. "Clearly our knowledge can never be complete, because we are dependent on the size of the corpus and on the number of times a certain word occurs (which may be very few): moreover, if we are lucky, the context will tell us a lot about the way it is used, but it may also tell us next to nothing." (Rabin 1970, p.25). T o make matters even more difficult, we are faced with a historical problem. The texts of the Hebrew Bible and the oral traditions behind them scan a period of at least a thousand years, including the works of authors and redactors of various geographic locations, social milieus and political and religious philosophies. Words are not passive artifacts. They carry different meanings and connotations by and to individuals in different times, places and classes. It is therefore nearly impossible to speak of "the Biblical concept" of Χ , Y or Z , and a comparison of meanings at different times or in different contexts may well be a more realistic and accurate (but, obviously, more difficult) goal. Finally, it must be admitted at the outset that our efforts reveal a quite traditional "Jewish" oudook on the nature of the language of the Bible, i.e., that each word has a significance, a meaning of its own. N o two words can be exact synonyms. They must differ in meaning, connotation, stylistic level, etc. It is our view that each word "gets its meaning by being in opposition to other words of the language and especially to other words used in talking about the same sphere of things or concepts" (Rabin 1970, p. 25). Goy gets its meaning, in part, in

2. 'Am and Goy as Old Testament Designation for Ethnicity

17

opposition to 'am and, therefore, we cannot really appreciate the earliest semantic levels of English "ethnicity" and of Greek "ethnos" as the translation of goy without also investigating the meaning of non- goy, i.e., of 'am.

'AM IN THE PENTATEUCH: NARROWING THE FIELD N o t all the cases of the singular 'am in the Pentateuch, the first five (and presumably oldest) books of the Old Testament, are related to our concern with 'am as a designation for (a certain kind of) ethnicity. The following are examples of usages that we have excluded from our analyses: ι. 'Am and (Ha-'am) as a Collective Noun: The Hebrew 'am served two purposes, as does the English word people, first to indicate an ethnic or national body and secondly as a collective noun: one person—many people. Examples of the second usage may be found 1 in Genesis 50: 20, Leviticus 16: 33 and Exodus 21: 8. In the new Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation of the Torab, 'am in the latter verse is translated as outsiders. Indeed, this is the case with the frequent term Ha-am, which often does not refer to a nationality, but, rather, to any group of many people. 2. 'Am as an Army·. Several verses refer to kings, along with their respective 'am, launching attacks (against the Israelites). The intent of soldiers is undeniable. Examples of this usage may be found in Exodus 14: 6 and Deuteronomy 20: 1. JPS wisely translates 'am in the former case as his men and 'am in the latter as forces greater thanyours. 3. Pharoah's People: Similarly, several verses speak of Pharoah's people, referring to those close to h i m — t h e servants, advisors and officials of his court. Examples of this usage may be seen in Genesis 41: 40, Exodus 1: 22 and Exodus 9: 27. 4. ' A m = Family: Many scholars have claimed this to have been the initial meaning of 'am, peoplejnation being a subsequent broadening of this sense. Others (Speiser i960; Rost 1934) have pushed the derivation of 'am back to the Arabic for paternal uncle. Several verses clearly indicate family and not nationality contexts, e.g., Genesis 34: 16, Deuteronomy 9: 2 and Leviticus 21: I . 5. Plurals (amim) will always be excluded because when they refer to ethnicity, they must, by necessity, refer to non-Jewish aggregates. Sundry other excluded usages are those contained in traditional phrases and formulas (e.g., references to dying as in Genesis 17: 14 and Leviticus 17: 10 or to collective stubbornness as in Exodus 33:5) with clearly established idiosyncratic meanings in the original Hebrew. However, 'am and goy in "poetic"

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Table ι. 'AM (in the sense of Ethnicity/Nationality) in reference to Jews and Gentiles in the Pentateuch Jews ι. 2. 3. 4. 5.

(

Gentiles

Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy

23 (19) I I '8 (6)

3 3

Total

43 (25)

7

0

I 0 0

) indicates the occurrence of 'am in possessive form ('ami, etc.); the number within the

parentheses is included in the figure to its left.

passages will be retained (primarily because it is not always clear just when their usage is that of contrastive metaphor, i.e., usage contrary to the usual or contrastive to immediately preceding phraseology). From all of the foregoing, it is clear that 'am has a variety of other significances beyond ethnicity; indeed, a clear majority of its instances in the Pentateuch are outside of the ethnic fold proper (but related to it via notions of family, group of people, army, etc.). Nevertheless, we still remain with a core of substantial size (n = 50) in the Pentateuch in which it is exactly the ethnocultural aggregate (nationality, ethnicity, peoplehood) that is explicitly indicated. Let us examine this usage at this point.

'AM AS A PEOPLE IN THE PENTATEUCH Having sufficiently defined and delineated the field, we can now turn to 50 instances of singular 'am2 as a term indicating nationality, ethnicity, peoplehood (Table 1). Three predominant categories of usage stand out—stressing relationship with deity, religious observance and communal closeness, respectively. ι. As an 'am, Israel is portrayed as possessing a very unique relationship with God. G o d resides and walks with Israel, distinguishing it from other people (Exodus 33: 16). Israel and G o d possess a special /oye-relationship, based on common (historical) experiences, mutual commitments (Deuteronomy 4: 3 3). Indeed, God's revelation of himself, the closest association possible with the deity, is an experience of the Israelite 'am (Exodus 6: 7, Leviticus 26: 12, Deuteronomy 29: 1 3 , Deuteronomy 27: 9). G o d ' s connection with the

2. 'Am and Goy as Old Testament Designation for Ethnicity

19

Israelites causes Him to refer to them as My people and the Biblical narrative to call them His people (Exodus 3: 7, Exodus 32: 14, Deuteronomy 26: 15). 2. Formalized religious worship and observance of sacred rituals is essential to the function of an 'am as a national body. The phrases 'am seguía (peculiar—i.e., special—people) and seguía mikol ha-'amim (a peculiar treasure above all nations) constantly appear to emphasize the importance of keeping all God's commandments (Deuteronomy 26: 18, Exodus 19: 5). The Israelites are an 'am kadosh (holy or separate people) by virtue of refraining from foreign cui tic practices and avoiding idolotry (Deuteronomy 14: 2, Deuteronomy 14: 21, Deuteronomy 7: 6; similarly, Deuteronomy 26: 19 and 28: 9). The greatness or wisdom of the Israelite people is to be found in its unique lifestyle, in its religious and moral precepts (Deuteronomy 4: 6; see below for the special usage goy gadol in the latter part of this citation). 3. Last but not least, 'am is used to stress the communal brotherhood of all Israel, their closeness, similar to that of a family. The emphasis on the emotional bonds and kin-like closeness found in this usage of 'am (Exodus 2 3 : 1 1 , Deuteronomy 7: 7) stems from its primary family-based meaning mentioned earlier and from the Old Testament conception that all peoples initially began with a founding forefather and his family.

GOY AND GOY GADOL IN THE PENTATEUCH: NARROWING THE FIELD The primary distinction necessary before t r e a t i n g ^ qua nation is that between goy and the common phrase goy gadol. Most frequently, becoming agoy gadol is an integral part of the many promises given to the Patriarchs concerning their future destiny. It signifies multitude, many-ness, " a great population," "a great number of people." Normally this is an insurance of children and a large number of descendants.' Presumably the term 'am could not be applied in such cases because of its initial meaning or connotation, " paternal uncle." H o w could Abraham be promised to become an 'am when in this primary sense he already was one, Lot being his nephew? The promise of being a goy gadol meant, in the first place, survival in the future. In the desert (the locale of much of Genesis), population and survival are connected, since no man (not even a small group) can live alone, selfsufficiently, in such an environment. The greatest promise G o d gave Abraham, left only with his wife, was that in the land of Canaan he would acquire servants, co-workers and descendants (Genesis 12: 2). A t the climax of her despair, G o d promises Hagar that this is not the end. Her son will have descendants (Genesis 21: 18). Three verses later Ishmael marries, thereby beginning the promised

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I Historical, Cross-Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives

Table 2. GO Y (in the sense of Ethnicity/Nationality) in reference to Jews and Gentiles in the Pentateuch Jews ι. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Total

!

,

Gentiles

2 O 0 I

I 2 0

4

9

5

expansion of his fold. In time of famine, G o d tells Jacob to go down to Egypt, thus insuring the future of his family (Genesis 46: 3). This, indeed, was the case. The Jews left Canaan as a small group and multiplied greatly in Egypt. On the other hand, Deuteronomy 6-8 emphasizes that Israel is more than just a large conglomeration of people. It is rather an 'am, with a unique order of law, with very special religious experiences. In view of this very special (and often contrastive or exception-implying) usage of goj gado I to indicate manyness, size of population, rather than nationality or ethnicity, we will exclude it from further consideration here, just as we have previously argued for the exclusion of exceptional meanings of 'am.

GOY AS A PEOPLE IN THE PENTATEUCH Generally translated in English as "nation," the 13 instances of goy in the Pentateuch (Table 2) stress the tangible or organisational or concrete aspects of a people: land, government, statehood. ι. When referring to the promised conquest of the land of Canaan, the Pentateuch combines the aspects of driving out, "cutting down" and defeating the goyim, on the one hand, and gaining control of their land, cities and dwelling places, on the other hand (Exodus 34: 24, Deuteronomy 19: 1, Deuteronomy 1 1 : 23, Deuteronomy 12: 29). In exile, Israel finds itself among goyim (Leviticus 26: 33, Deuteronomy 30: 1). Having left Egypt, the Israelites passed through goyim (Deuteronomy 29: 16). Goj and land are intimately connected as seen in the common phrase gojei ha-arets (Genesis 26: 4, 22: 18). Eitan (1924) has suggested that in its oldest Biblical usage the term goy meant "field, forest" and Barr (1968) has accepted this opinion. However, goy is clearly not only a geographic but also a political entity. Several verses bring goy and king in parallelism (Genesis 17: 6, Genesis

2. 'Am and Goy as Old Testament Designation for Ethnicity

21

3 5: 11). Only once are Israelites referred to as a goy kadosh (holy goy) and not as 'am kadosh, and this is also in conjunction with the term "kingdom." (Note, however, that it is to be a "kingdom of priests": Exodus 19: 6; that is, it is to become not the usual type of goy at all—a goy merely of land, of kings, of statehood.) In Jacob's blessing of Joseph's children, Ephraim and Menashe, Menashe is promised W-ness, peoplehood (perhaps, in this context, a collective singular for "family") while Ephraim will be the source ofgoyim ("a multitude": Genesis 48: 19). This prophecy was indeed confirmed when "the kingdom of Ephraim" separated itself from Judah, founding its own nonDavidic lineage of monarchs. Finally, the geographic and monarchial connotations oí goy are found together in Deuteronomy 17: 14. 2. The foregoing also adds to our understanding of several verses employing goy and le-om as synonymous parallels (Isaiah 34: 1). Driver (1956: 158, note 12) and Gray (1957: 197) have both supported the hypothesis that besides its poetic usage as "people," le-om at one time possessed a second meaning (or possibly a homonym) "ruler" or "prince." 3. Goy generally emphasizes political, economic or geographic concerns and behaviors (as opposed to religious ones) (Exodus 9: 24). The few references to "gods of the.goyim" (Deuteronomy 12: 30) do not contradict this generalization. Goy still retains its usual stress on land or locality even in this phrase, since many pagan deities were believed to "reside" in certain cities or places. Economic relationships are also entered into with goyim, such as loans and sales (Deuteronomy 1 5 : 6 and 28: 12). Goyim observe the Exodus from Egypt only because it is of geo-political importance (Leviticus 26: 45). G o d will punish Israel by enabling a goy to overtake the land of Israel and rule it (Deuteronomy 28: 49—50). Alternatively, God can place Israel to rule over thç.goyim. Indeed, one aspect of the miracle of the exodus was the creation of a new state by God's transplanting a population from one location to another (Deuteronomy 4: 34). However, the deeper meaning of the exodus lies elsewhere. The Israelites left as a people called forth and protected by G o d (Number 22: 5). In the desert, they acquired a separate religious communal identity {'am kadosh, 'am seguía, 'am hashem). Only then do they receive their own territory, achieving also the secondary status of goy but, hopefully, with sanctified moral ('^w-like) precepts as their guide.

THE FUNCTIONAL THEORY—JEWS AND GENTILES The contextualization principles and semantic fields developed above concerning Pentateuchal 'am and goy may be considered a functional theory of their usage, i.e., goy and 'am signify different characteristics, activities and organiz-

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Table 3. 'AM and goy for Jews and Gentiles in the Pentateuch

'Am Goy χ 2 = i6.6i (p.oi = 6.64; p.001 = 10.83)*

Jews

Gentiles

45 4

7 9

* χ 2 is not really appropriate in this case, since we are dealing with an entire universe rather than with a sample, but it is s h o w n here for comparative purposes relative to Tables 6 and

ational bases of ethnic aggregates. 'Am and goy are different terms which may be applied either to the same "people" in different contexts or to separate prototyes of 'am-ness and^iy-ness. A number of earlier scholars have offered more restricted, contextual theories of Biblical 'am and goy usage, claiming that the two possess essentially identical meanings and are used on different occasions. "Linguistic usage confined the application of the singular 'am with rare exceptions . . . to the people of Israel, while the s i n g u l a r ^ was prevailingly, though not exclusively, applied to other nations" (Hastings 1980). T h o u g h this opinion has been criticized as actually stemming from the later post-Biblical meaning of goy (e.g., see the discussion of goy in the Entsiklopediye Hamikrait 1965), the evidence, on the whole (see Tables 1—3, below), does seem to verify this distinction. Rather, this "rule" and the exceptions to it (only 11 in the entire Pentateuch) should be understood within the realm of the full functional theory developed above, and the often overlooked «7/ra-ethnic use of each term (Table 3) should be scrutinized carefully for its own systematic semantic characteristics.

THE "EXCEPTIONS PROVE THE RULE": BOTH 'AM AND GOY ARE USED ON INTRA-ETHNIC AS WELL AS ON INTER-ETHNIC BASES Jews Called Goy Genesis 3;: 11 As was noted above, the political aspect of goy is manifest in its frequent parallelism with " k i n g s . " Jacob is promised a sovereign territory (note the following verse), a state. This verse may also be interpreted, possibly, as a reference to the later kingdom of Israel (after the division of the land of Israel into two separate kingdoms, Judah and Israel). It should be noted that in

2. 'Am and Goy as Old Testament Designation for Ethnicity

23

Jacob's relating this promise, to Joseph (Genesis 48:4), he omits the "kingly" aspect and consequently returns to the phrase kahal 'amim. Exodus 19: 6 This is again the same phenomenon, goy being used due to the "political" context (if only as a metaphor). Exodus 3 3 : 1 3 This verse, employing both terms together, is the only one in the Pentateuch to refer to the wandering Israelites as a goy. This apparent inconsistency with the delineation of goy as related to land, statehood and economy can be resolved by the following remarks: a. The intention of the verse is to emphasize the specialness of the Israelite nation by distinguishing between an emotion-packed term for "people" and an objective, dispassionate one. This dichotomy is inherent in the terms 'am and goy. the former relates to emotional, family-like and supernatural religious bonds; the latter portrays an objective, "rationally organized," material, physical society, united by spacial proximity and government. Speiser (i960, pp. 1 5 8 - 1 5 9 ) offers a similar understanding of this verse, noting that rarely, if ever, does goy appear with a possessive suffix. This strengthens the opinion thitgoy is an impersonal and objective term. Since this verse can be interpreted as posing a difficulty in understanding, employing a term in a rare usage, a textual emendation may be in order. As noted before, the Israelites in the desert are referred to as a goy gadol in Deuteronomy 4: 6. There may be room to propose that this verse (Exodus 33: 13) should also correctly be read with the term gadol inserted after goy. Indeed, the context demands such an emendation since several verses earlier (Exodus 32: 10), God offers to destroy the Israelites and to multiply Moses and his seed greatly. Moses' ultimate reply is that this great population is God's people. The peerless n t h century commentator Rashi offers a similar interpretation, calling for an emendation. Deuteronomy 4: 34 For an analysis of this verse, see the discussion above in connection with transplanting a population from one location to another. Gentiles Called 'Am Genesis 11:6 'Am in this context is used to stress closeness and family-like unity. Exodus 33: 16 As noted earlier, Israel is distinguished from other ethnic communities primarily by the presence of God among them. This verse seems to include a

24

1 Historical, Cross-Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives scribal error and should read mikol ba-'amim (from all the peoples/nations) rather than mikol ha-'am, (from all the people) since it compares Israel with other peoples. Mikol ha-am appears only once in the Pentateuch, referring to the collective Israelites (Exodus 18: 21). Mikol ha-amim is found in Deuteronomy 7: 7, 7: 14, 10: 15, 30: 3 and Exodus 19: 5, when comparing Israel to all the nations. Numbers 21: 29 Just as Israel is called 'am hashem (the people of G o d ) , so the Moabites are an 'am in the context of their family relationship with their own god. We will find Moab singled out also in the moralistic books (see section 24.0, below). Deuteronomy 4:33 The body which experiences revleation is an 'am, whether that aggregate be the children of Israel or any other nation. Deuteronomy 28: 32 This verse should be understood as referring to the God-given punishment of estrangement from the Jewish covenant via marriage with non-Israelite women. One should also note the word G o d in the concluding phrase of this citation (although it is not translated as such in the K i n g James version). Numbers 24: 14 and Deuteronomy 28: 33 Both of these verses are somewhat difficult to explain according to our functional theory. However, they both deal with sanctified prophecy and, therefore, with the possible (and exceptional) 'aw-ness of what would normally be a goy. In the second verse, 'am can also be understood as a collective noun, not as a national body. As noted before, inflected forms always involve 'am. The uninflected noun in the first pertains to the Israelites.

THE RULE IN THE PENTATEUCH Besides the previously advanced and widely accepted rule that 'am is applied more often to the Jews than to Gentiles and that^oy is applied more prevalently to Gentiles than to Jews, this being an intergroup principle, a second and more subtle intragroup principle is also manifest. When speaking of the Jews, the Pentateuch stresses their 'am aspect more than their goy aspect, while stressing the¿ A = Β + A

In Resolution 1 the intrusive language is lost. 1 In Resolution 2 the indigenous language is lost. In Resolution 3 both languages are maintained. Obviously, these are three very different resolutions and the social circumstances leading to them are likely to be very different as well. Nevertheless, if possible, we must

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find a single conceptual framework within which to pursue our inquiry so as to make comparisons between one setting and another (or between one resolution and another) possible. Our goal in this connection is to come to some conclusion as to when (i.e., the circumstances under which) each resolution obtains and what the involvement of ethnicity might be in each of them.

RESOLUTION i: T H E INTRUSIVE L A N G U A G E IS LOST The first observation to offer in connection with Resolution ι is that it is only one of three possible patterns, rather than the only one. Although this is the pattern that corresponds to the predominant American immigrant experience, it is not a universal, not a moral imperative, and not even the only resolution vis-à-vis that (or other immigrant) experience per se. Nevertheless, it is a common resolution and one which enables us to investigate several factors that have been hypothesized or confirmed with respect to language shift. (a) Ilegal requirements re A or prohibitions re Β A recurring obstacle faced by intrusive languages are prohibitions vis-à-vis their use in public/official/written functions or alternatively, requirements that previously established languages be so used. What is crucial in this connection is not so muchprimum mobile alone (the fact that social systems that are established first acquire an inertia and an establishment that continues their predominance vis-à-vis later arrivals on the social scene) but the role of laws ( = formal and authoritative sanctions and prohibitions) in maintaining primum mobile. There are certainly many polities at present in which there are language laws that declare specific languages to be 'official", "national" or permissible/optional for specific functions. What is, therefore, most interesting insofar as U.S.A. sociolinguistic reality is concerned, is the paucity of language legislation and legalistic formulations vis-à-vis language (Fishman 1979). Indeed, the U.S.A. is in the company of a relatively few countries in the world that have no de jure national or official language (Faleh 1972, Touret 1972). That the foregoing is so is not for want of trying (viz. the Hayakawa Amendment, proposed in 1982, to make English the official language of federal government services). At the very beginning of the 19th century the patriotlexicographer Noah Webster inquired of Chief Justice John Marshall whether there could be either a law or a constitutional amendment declaring "The American language" to be our sole national and official language. It was the Chief Justice's opinion then—and our highest courts have consistently agreed with him ever since—that any such legal provisions on behalf of English would be counter to the freedom of speech and freedom of religion provisions of the American constitution. Accordingly, local legislation requiring English or

A = A sequence were actually originally examples of the opposite kind. Australia and New Zealand, although more recently (post World War II) hospitable to non-English-speaking immigrants, also originally represent instances of the second resolution B—»A = B, because there too there were indigenous populations prior to the arrival of the Anglo-Europeans (Benton 1978). Indeed, the major instances of language shift in world history are probably of this second kind, including in its ranks the Romanization of most of Gaul and Iberia, the Arabization of most of the Middle East and North Africa, the Sanscritization of most of the Indian peninsula, the Swahilization of large parts of East Africa, the Sinoization (particularly in script) of much of East Asia, and, currently, the relentless and continued Russification of the Soviet Union (Lewis 1972, Kreindler 1982, Silver 1974). In many respects the underlying dynamics in Resolution 2 are similar to those reviewed in conjunction with Resolution 1, above, but this time the shoe is on the other foot. Intrusive Β is by far the stronger of the two ethnolinguistic entities and it, therefore, ultimately swamps out the indigenous language and ethnicity constellation. It is the intruders who establish the predominant system of legal sanctions. It is the intruders whose econo-technical, educational and cultural superiority (and, at times, whose sheer numbers) results in a reward system that fosters social dependency relationships on "aboriginess" and "autochthons" who want to get ahead. It is the original population that forms a transmission system for the relinguification and re-ethnification of its own outlying and, therefore, late-urbanizing and modernizing brethren.

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Nevertheless, given all of the above similarities between Resolution ι and Resolution 2, there is still at least one major difference between them (and several minor ones as well). Language shift of any kind (in the context of either resolution) is an indicator of dislocation. It implies the breakdown of a previously established societal allocation of functions; the alteration of previously recognized rolerelationships, situations and domains, so that these no longer imply or call for the language with which they were previously associated. Such dislocation is to be expected among intruders, be they immigrants or occupants. After all, they have left their old homes, their familiar places, and, often, their cultural selfsufficiency. As a result, one is not surprised to observe their subsequent alienation. Their old pattern does not quite work any longer but, at least initially, no new integration has become sufficiently established to provide the certainty, the bases of clear understandings, identities and expectations, formerly provided by the old. A n immigrant father's authority at home is questioned, directly or indirectly, by a young whippersnapper who speaks A better than he does, who quotes Α-ideology better than he does, and who even earns more than he does. The intricate web of family statuses and values is questioned, is found wanting, is increasingly inoperative. All this we expect among immigrants and other intruders and, indeed, all this underlies the B—• A = A picture delineated earlier. What then must we concude if we find this same picture among indigenous populations, populations who have not left their old homes, nor their familiar places, nor the territorial bases of their cultural integrity and continuity? What we must conclude from Β—>A = Β is extremely great dislocation·, the· dislocation of conquest, of genocide, of massive population resettlement such that locals are swamped out, engulfed, deracinated and decimated by intruders, be they conquerors or settlers. The Anglo-American uprooting and destruction of Native Americans and the Russo-Soviet decimation of White Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Poles and many, many of the smaller Central and Far Eastern Asian peoples is sugar coated as "frontier democracy" and "the greatest good to the greatest number" on the one hand and as "creation of the new Soviet people", on the other hand, but it is, in both cases, the excruciatingly painful and disruptive dislocation and annihilation of local peoples. Other Β—>A = Β contexts may lie further back in history but they were doubtlessly equally ruthless, regardless of the religious, ideological or philosophical rationales that accompanied and "legitimized" them. The metric of terror is inverse to time and distance. Wherever neither three generations of time nor the shelter of distance is/was available to temper and mute the dislocative ("internal colonization") process (Hechter 1971, 1974) instances of Β —• A = Β are likely to be especially sad examples of man's inhumanity to man. And yet the roots revive at times, even after the tree has been burnt seemingly

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beyond recognition or recovery (Eastman 1979). There are limits to the power of Β to either annihilate or incorporate A and the usual history of establishment vacillation between the one and the other is peculiarly likely finally produce the very proto-elites who come to be the initiators and leaders of rebirth and revival language-and-ethnicity movements. Just as such proto-elites were once (and, in some cases still are) legion among disappointed Anglicized Irishmen, Francofied Provençale, Hispanicized Catalans, Danicized Norwegians, Germanized Czechs, Hungarianized Slovaks, Serbianized Croatians and assimilated Jews throughout the West, so their ranks are currently swelling among Chícanos, Puerto Ricans and native Americans in the U.S.A., among Ukrainian and other non-Russian-nationality spokesmen among Soviet resistors, and among Africans and Asians of a large number of local ethnic origins. The phenomenal increase in languages of education and government since the end of World War II is a result of such recoveries from external and internal colonization. The end of this process is not yet in sight. Significantly, such revival and rebirth movements, in attempting to overcome and undo the punitive dislocations to which their constituencies were exposed, turn to ethnicity and to the presumed language-and-ethnicity link, rather than to either social-class ideologies or religious philosophies alone for this purpose. In so doing, they seem to tap a well of emotion, or commitment, of longing, related to the "dynamo of history" (that both Herder and Whorf recognized), hibernating in their ancestral language and identity. The more dislocated a segment of mankind becomes, the greater seems to be its penchant for putative roots, for its origins, for "authenticity." The scholar's determination that these identities are composed of great slices of fabrication and imagination are beside the point, in the same way that all rational empiricism is beside the point when emotional needs are uppermost. It is the needfor a sense of historically deep, glorious and intact authenticity that so typifies the disappointed ethnic proto-elites and their followers, rather than for any need that the authenticity responses that they employ be rationally verifiable and validated. The recurring role of language in such movements is eloquent testimony to the ability of this sublime symbol system to symbolize the fondest and most fervent dreams, hopes and wishes of which mankind is capable.

RESOLUTION 3: BOTH THE INTRUSIVE AND THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE ARE RETAINED AND INDIGENIZED Given our earlier analysis of diglossia (Chapter 3 in This Volume, Fishman 1980), there is no need, at this point, to review in detail the societal and the political

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arrangements that undergird a resolution of this third kind. Still uncovered, however, by our previous treatments, are some of the internal differences within this particular resolution and the strains to which it is exposed. The territorial counterpart to Β —> A = A + Β is A/B, i.e., A and Β are utilized in separate sections or functions of a common polity. The seeming stablility of this arrangement (in the Swiss case, e.g., regardless of demographic realities such as the resettlement of many, many thousands of Italian speakers in the German and French cantons) nevertheless does not itself completely halt the social processes of language shift (McRae 1964 and 1983). The regions are not economically equal and, therefore, the richer one(s) beckon to the inhabitants of the poorer one(s) and the latter, as migrants to greener pastures, become examples of resolution 1, Β —• A = A. In addition, even though they remain in their own valleys, the numerically and economically weak Romansch become examples of resolution 2 vis-à-vis their vastly more numerous and prosperous German speaking neighbors (Billigmeier 1979). Thus, not even the territorial principle is immune to change and to strain and to the irredentist cry of troubled truebelievers that they be enabled to return to their mother tongue and motherland of old (McRae 1975). The stresses and strains of shift can be all the more obvious when it is social rather than territorial\political diglossia that obtains. Basically two different subpatterns can constitute the societal counterpart to resolution three. Although both are equally instances of Β —• A = A + Β, one realizes the A Β right-hand side of the equation as — , and the other, as —. In the first instance the intrusive language remains as the common vernacular whereas the indigenous language is retained for Η functions alone. This is, in part, the anomolous position of Irish today, particularly outside of the Gaeltacht (Western coastal) region, such that Irish has been "kicked upstairs", so to speak, and is used only for various ceremonial purposes, whereas instrusive English (Hiberno-English to be sure) has become the vernacular of Irishmen and Irishness.2 A similar situation pertained with respect to Judeo-Aramaic ( = Aramic or Targumic) in ancient days when it increasingly displaced Hebrew as the Jewish vernacular until the latter was retained only in hallowed functions (Weinreich 1979). Judeo-Aramaic itself was subsequently displaced as a vernacular by other Jewish languages and was vestigially retained as a co-hallowed variety, alongside and intermixed with Hebrew, as the co-language of two millenia of sacred and hallowed Loshn Koydesh texts. Far more common is the second sub-pattern of resolution 3, namely, that in which the intrusive language Β is retained for Η functions, displacing the indigenous or otherwise prior H, whereas indigenous A is maintained in its prior venacular functions. This pattern is illustrated by the various central administrative languages of empire in classical Eastern Mediterranean antiquity

¿f. language Maintenance and Ethnicity 69 (Lewis 1976). They replaced each other rather completely as administrative Hs (Sumerian, Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, etc.), leaving the local vernaculars relatively untouched (except in the cases of more powerfully impacted populations and places, where these Hs ultimately became vernacularized or fused with local vernaculars). These classical situations are rather similar to current H uses of English, French and other languages inherited from periods of colonization (e.g. Chinese in Tibet and Russian in Outer Mongolia). Their H statuses are obvious in presumably post-colonial areas that are still highly dependent on their former colonizers for economic, political and educational guidance and assistance (Fishman, Cooper & Conrad 1977). The strain in both of the above-mentioned sub-patterns of societal diglossia is the strain toward equalization or symmetry. Movements arise for the revernacularization of asymmetric Hs i.e., of Hs that were once also Ls but that lost all vernacular functions. Of these movements the vernacularization of Hebrew has succeeded (and, as a result, has endangered the longevity of all other Jewish vernaculars (Fishman 1978) whereas those on behalf of Irish, Sanskrit, Classical and Classized Greek, Latin and Classical Arabic have not. Similarly, movements arise for the elevation of asymmetric Ls (i.e., of Ls that were once also Hs but that lost all Η-culture functions). The movements on behalf of Catalán, Galician and Occitan today and on behalf of Flemish prior to World War II were of this type. Even where Ls never had H varieties and H functions of their own (e.g., in the case of Pilipino or, generally speaking, Yiddish) there is a strain to develop and to devise such, almost as a moral imperative and as a strain toward closure, toward completion, toward local selfdignity and self-respect, particularly if there is a proto-elite whose power position would benefit from such elevation. Thus, these latter strains are easily ethnically encumbered and expressed and they contribute to movements of ethnic cultural autonomy and political self-determination.

ETHNICITY AS STABILIZER, DESTABILIZER AND RESTABILIZER In each of the resolutions that we have reviewed above, we have encountered ethnicity (in the form of ethnic revivals, returns to ethnic roots, ethnic memories and loyalties) as a potential source of destabilization. Although it is true that ethnicity can be appealed to and can function in this fashion (Fishman 1972), it is, however, by no means true that déstabilisation of past patterns (be these of societal allocations of language functions or of any other culture patterns) is any more part and parcel of the basic phenomenon of ethnicity than is the opposite tendency: the stabilisation of societal patterns. Indeed, each and every one of the above resolutions can (and, if undisturbed, ultimately does)

ηο

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Perspectives

develop its own sense of ethnic normalcy, naturalness and legitimacy, i.e., it is subject to being stabilized in terms of ethnic authenticity rather than merely to being destabilized on such grounds. It is all the more crucial, therefore, that we have a clear understanding of ethnicity perse and of its seemingly inevitable link to language in general and to language maintenance in particular. Generically, "ethnicity" pertains to "peopleness", i.e., to actions, values, views or attributions pertaining to belonging to a people. As with many other social behaviors, actors and attributors may not agree with respect to "peopleness" behaviors and attributions. We (outsiders) may call people "communists" who do not think they (insiders) are communists or even know what communism is. Similarly, outsiders may call others (insiders) Irish, or Puerto Ricans or Ruthenians who do not themselves call themselves such and who do not even think they are such. Whenever "outsiders" (particularly a class of outsiders known as social scientists) and "insiders" do not agree on social designations, that itself is worthy of study, but it does not invalidate the outsider's designation any more than when certain outsiders designate "phonemes" or refer to "prose" in other people's speech, even though the others have never been aware of either phonemes or prose. Certainly, a societal phenomenon and awareness of that phenomenon are not one and the same thing. Thus, ethnicity (like most other societally patterned phenomena) can exist either with awareness or without awareness on the part of members of social aggregates. Note, however, that ethnicity with awareness is likely to be something quite a bit different from ethnicity without it (just as prose differs when speakers are aware of it and when they are not). Ethnicity is "peopleness". i.e., belonging or pertaining to a phenomenologically complete, separate, historically deep cultural collectivity, a collectivity polarized on perceived authenticity.· This "belonging" is experienced and interpreted physically (biologically), behaviorally (culturally) and phenomenologically (intuitively). Where it is experienced or attributed on only one or another of these three dimensions it might easily be reduced to other constructs, but characterized as it is on all three it is a very mystic, moving and powerful link with the past and an energizer with respect to the present and future. It is fraught with moral imperatives, with obligations to "one's own kind", and with wisdoms, rewards and proprieties that are both tangible and intangible. Above all, in its quiescent state, it is part of the warp-and-woof of daily life, part of all the customs, traditions, ceremonies and interpretations related to the collectivity that is defined by them, distinguished by them and responsible for them. As such, it is language-related to a very high and natural degree, both overtly (imbedded as it is in verbal culture and implying as it does structurally dependent intuitions) and covertly (the supreme symbol system quintessentially symbolizes its users and distinguishes between them and others). Indeed this is so to such a degree that language and ethnic authenticity may come to be viewed

Language Maintenance and Ethnicity

ηι

as highly interdependent. Thus it is that ethnicity is focused on authenticity (continuity of being, of doing and of knowing) while it is as modifiable (both in content and in saliency) and as manipulable (that is: consciously used as a basis of mobilization) as are other bases of human aggregation (economic, religious, ideological, political) focused on other assumptions and other dimensions. Ethnicity then, in its unconscious, everyday routines of "we-ness", phenomenologically normalizes and indigenizes any particular socialinguistic allocation of functions. Spanish is thereby rendered authentic in Latin America, and Arabic in the Near East and North Africa, and Yiddish among Ashkenazim. Although in each case these language initially came "from the outside" they have been adapted and internalized, at least by most (if not by all) speech networks in the ethnicity collectivities to which they pertain, and are viewed now as indigenous, authentic, genuinely their own, part of their daily ethnic identity. Thus it is that unconscious, unthinking, unmobilized ethnicity comes to be a great stabilizer of each and any resolution of the Β —> A intrusion. But the very unconsciousness of the unmobilized ethnicity of ordinary social life also makes it a potential and a flexible source of untapped energy for elites who are concerned with changing the status quo to a presumable status quo ante.

NATIONALISM ( = CONSCIOUS, MOBILIZED ETHNICITY) AND ITS OPPONENTS The quiet cocoon of routine ethnicity (that protects and provides an implicit eternity of past authenticity to each of the resolutions we have reviewed) can be energized, organized and manipulated by proto-elites to counteract or to foster any particular language-and-ethnicity link and any particular B - > A resolution that ordinary folk have taken for granted. Thus, guided, exploited, mobilized (and, therefore, conscious) ethnicity has, particularly in modern times, been one of the great destabilizers of the status quos so precious to all establishments, including the pet non-ethnic, supra-ethnic or anti-ethnic establishment that are preferred by advocates of other-than-ethnic bases of human aggregation. Given the repeated though unconscious link of language to unconscious ethnicity, its link to conscious, activated ethnicity ( = nationalism) has been equally recurring and ever so much more dynamic. Conscious ethnicity movements are more than likely to become or incorporate conscious language movements as well. Together they seek to foster specific Β —» A resolutions and to undo others. Language loyalty movements are, therefore, normally part of larger movements to activate and use unconscious language-and-ethnicity linkages in order to attain or reallocate econotechnical, political and cultural/educational power. Such movements are normally part of much larger, more encompassing social change movements. They stress ethnic identity consciousness (and even ethnic

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identity change) in order to attain the ends defined by their proto-elites and, understandably, they have been much attacked and maligned by the counterelites or proto-elites that are threatened by them. Capitalist theoreticians have attacked language loyalty movements as barbarous and uncivilized for breaking up capitalist empires (e.g., the former Anglo-empire in Quebec that was headed in the direction of Β —» A = B, and the former Dutch empire in Friesland that was headed in a similar direction), and for delivering whole sections of them into the clutches (and coffers) of counter-establishments. Communist theoreticians have attacked language loyalty movements as false and fractionating for breaking up a larger proletariat (that might be led by a single supra-ethnic establishment) into smaller proletarian establishments each with its own leadership (Engels 1886). Capitalist elites have rejected minority language loyalty movements (such as those in regions of Spain or France or Great Britain) as communist conspiracies. Entrenched Communist elites have rejected minority language loyalty movements (such as those in Croatia and the Ukraine) as capitalist conspiracies. "Neutralist" sociologists have attacked language loyalty movements as chauvinistic ativisms (Patterson 1977), as backward-looking incivility, as romanticist Gemeinschaft longings in an age of Gesellschaft efficiency and market-place ethos. N o one, it seems, likes language loyalty movements, unless they or their favorite causes can profit or gain from them. And yet such movements abound and their end is not in sight! Language loyalty movements are most commonly associated with attempts to foster and focus modernization via channeling and exploiting authenticity longings. Beginning with the various disappointments of failed or flawed Β —» A resolutions, these movements utilize language as a medium for reaching the largest possible target population and as a symbol of the purported "authenticity," "unity" and "mission" of that population. Thus, it is through language loyalty movements that ethnicity becomes a conscious, organized, and dynamic factor in language shift, since every language maintenance movement, from the point of view of what is the "marked" language at any particular time and in any particular place (e.g., on behalf of French in Quebec in 1970), is also a factor in language shift from the point of view of the "unmarked language" (e.g., with respect to English in Quebec as of 1970). Clearly, language loyalty movements are consciously mobilized and manipulated attempts to utilize ethnicity bonds and ethnicity affect and action potential for the purposes of establishing or disestablishing a particular societal allocation of language functions. Whereas everyday, unconscious ethnicity is quietly involved in the myriad of daily actions that go into language maintenance and language shift, heightened and politicized ethnicity movements, including language loyalty movements as part and parcel of the entire nationalism thrust, are involved in conscious and often rowdy publicity-seeking actions on behalf of language maintenance or language shift. Such movements typically seek to alter the laws, to prohibit the social

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dependency relationships, and to dislocate populations from those traditional socialization and related practices that resulted in or fostered undesirable Β —• A resolutions, regardless of whether those were consciously or unconsciously implemented.

RESOLUTIONS AND COUNTERRESOLUTIONS: AN ENDLESS PROGRESSION We live in a world of tensions and countertensions, of movements and countermovements, of revolutions and counterrevolutions. Accordingly many modernlanguage loyalty movements are attempts to effect counterresolutions to the Β —• A resolutions that preceded them. However, even when they succeed as such, they too may no more be final resolutions than were the ones that they came to overturn. Successful counterestablishments become establishments in their own right and subsequent counterestablishments may ultimately arise to contest or reform them. After some two centuries of such language-related resolutions and counterresolutions, in pursuit of solutions to the dilemmas of modernization, two seemingly contradictory trends seem to have been strengthened: (a) More languages than ever before have been recognized for governmental and governmentally protected functions, their number having risen from 30 to approximately 200 in the present century alone (Deutsch 1942, Fishman 1976). (b) A single lingua franca—English—has spread further than ever before for supra-local econotechnical, political, diplomatic, educational and touristic purposes (Fishman, Cooper and Conrad 1977). The above two processes seem to be sufficiently counterbalanced—sociofunctionally and in terms of the power and stability of the rewards associated with each of them—that the likelihood of either one swamping the other in the near future seems rather negligible on any but a very local scale or brief period. Furthermore, neither process seems yet to have run its course so as to reach its outer limits. While (or, perhaps, also because) additions to the ranks of "standard," "national" and "officiai" languages can still be expected, particularly in the Third World, international reliance on English is also increasing, with Mainland China, the Arab world and even the U.S.S.R. constantly increasing their utilization of this "latter-day Aramaic." Finally, these two processes are guided by equally modernized and language conscious elites and, therefore, neither is likely to be found ideologically wanting in terms of long term or short term rationales. As a result of the "stand o f f " illustrated by the two above-mentioned international processes, a bilingual compromise may come to be resorted to

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m o r e a n d m o r e f r e q u e n t l y , at least o u t s i d e o f the E n g l i s h m o t h e r - t o n g u e w o r l d . S u c h a c o m p r o m i s e w i l l n o t o n l y r e c o g n i z e E n g l i s h a n d local s t a n d a r d lang u a g e s as b e i n g in c o m p l e m e n t a r y d i s t r i b u t i o n , b u t it w i l l a l s o set t h e s t a g e f o r t h e r e c o g n i t i o n o f e v e n m o r e h i t h e r t o - u n r e c o g n i z e d l a n g u a g e s , t h e latter t w o seeking a complementary distribution of functions between themselves and l o c a l l y s u p e r - p o s e d l a n g u a g e s . A l l o f these p r o c e s s e s , in t u r n , u n d e r l i e the truly a m a z i n g i n t e r n a t i o n a l g r o w t h in e n r i c h m e n t b i l i n g u a l e d u c a t i o n since the e n d o f W o r l d W a r I I . W h i l e Β —> A t e n s i o n s c o n t i n u e t h r o u g h o u t t h e w o r l d , m o r e a n d m o r e a u t h o r i t i e s are e x p e r i m e n t i n g w i t h l a n g u a g e p l a n n i n g — o f

which

b i l i n g u a l e d u c a t i o n is o n e e x a m p l e — i n o r d e r t o find a w a y o u t o f the endless c h a i n o f r e s o l u t i o n s a n d c o u n t e r r e s o l u t i o n s that has t y p i f i e d

sociolinguistic

policy heretofore. Instead of c o o p t i n g proto-elites by translinguifying

and

t r a n s e t h n i f y i n g t h e m , t h e y are n o w m o r e a n d m o r e f r e q u e n t l y g i v e n a w e l l c o n t r o l l e d a n d d e l i m i t e d " s h a r e o f t h e a c t i o n " a m o n g their " o w n k i n d " w h i l e at the s a m e t i m e , t h e y o b t a i n a c c e s s t o the l a n g u a g e o f w i d e r c o m m u n i c a t i o n a n d s o m e o f its r e s u l t as w e l l . VCill it w o r k ? O n l y t i m e w i l l tell.

NOTES ι.

I do not intend to pause here to examine the methodological and conceptual issues of when a language is " l o s t " , i.e., of how we can recognise that language shift has occurred with respect to particular societal functions and with respect to mother-tongue functions in particular. There is a justifiably extensive technical literature on this topic, much of which has been reviewed most recently in Fishman 1977. A somewhat related literature is that dealing with language spread. Language spread does not necessarily imply language shift, since languages can spread into new (culturally unprecedented) functions and, thereby, not engender language shift with respect to previously existing functions of the speech community. The literature on language spread has been reviewed by Cooper 1982. The present paper may be considered as picking up the language spread trail at a more advanced point than that which is of concern to Cooper, i.e., at the point when language spread has impinged upon previously existing language functions and, therefore, when it has changed from being merely language spread to being language shift as well. For the very final stages of language shift see Dorian (1977) and Dressier (1977) on language death.

2.

Actually the complete formula for most parts of Ireland would probably require Β —• A = A + Β — g — since English is encountered both in H and in L pursuits. A t any rate, Irish is now generally devoid of vernacular functions (particularly outside of the Gaeltachf) and is in danger of being "respected to death" in its honorific H functions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Benton, Richard A . Problems and prospects for indigenous languages and bilingual education in N e w Zealand and Oceania, in B . Spolsky and R . L . Cooper (eds.). Case Studies in Bilingual Education. Rowley, Newbury House, 1978, 126—166.

4- Language Maintenance and Ethnicity η 5 Billigmeier, R.H. Crisis in Swiss Pluralism. The Hague, Mouton, 1979. Colloque/Colloquium. Linguistic Minorities and Interventions: Towards a Typology, Quebec, Laval University Press, 1978. Cooper, R.L. A framework for the study of language spread, in his (ed.), Language Spread: Studies in Diffusion and Social Change. Bloomington and Washington, D.C., Indiana University Press and Center for Applied Linguistics, 1982, 5 - 3 6 . Deutsch, Karl. The trend of European nationalism—the language aspect. American Political Science Review, 1942, 3 6 , 5 3 3 - 5 4 1 ; also in J . A . Fishman ed. Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague, Mouton, 1968, 598-606. Eastman, Carol M. Language reintroduction: activity and outcome language planning. General Linguistics, 1979, 19, 99— i l i . Engels, F. What have the working classes to do with Poland? Commonwealth, 1866, March 24, March 31, May 5. Falch, J. Contributions à l'étude du statut des langues en Europe. Quebec, Laval Univ. Press 1972. Fishman, J . A . et al. Language Loyalty in the United States. The Hague, Mouton, 1966. Fishman, J . A . Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative Essays. Rowley, Newbury House, 1972. Fishman, J . A . Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective. Rowley, Newbury House, 1976. Fishman, J . A . The spread of English as a new perspecitve for the study of language maintenance and language shift, inhis(etal.) The Spread of English, Rowley, Newbury House, 1 9 7 7 , 1 0 8 - 1 3 6 . Fishman, J . A . The sociolinguistic "normalization" of the Jewish people, in E . Polome (ed.), Archibald Hill Festschrift IV. The Hague, Mouton, 1978, 2 2 3 - 2 3 1 . Fishman, J . A . Bilingualism and biculturism as individual and as societal phenomena, journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1980, 1, 3 - 1 5 . Revised as Chapter 3, This Volume. Fishman, J. Α., R.L. Cooper and A. W. Conrad et al. The Spread of English. Rowley, Newbury House, 1977· Heath, Shirley B. A national language academy? Debate in the new nation. International Journal of the Sociolog/ of Language, 1977, 1 1 , 9 - 4 4 . Hudson-Edwards, A . and G.D. Bills. Intergenerational language shift in an Albuquerque barrio, in Jon Amastae and Lucía Elias Olivares (eds.), Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic Aspects. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, 135—153. Kreindler, Isabelle. The Changing Status of Russian in the Soviet Union. International Journal of the Sociologi of Language. 1982, no. 33 (entire issue). Lewis, E . G . Multilingualism in the Soviet Union. The Hague, Mouton, 1972. Lewis, E . G . Bilingualism and bilingual education: The ancient world to the Renaissance, in J . A . Fishman, Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective. Rowley, Newbury House, 1976, 150—200. Lieberson, and T . J . Curry. Language shift in the United States: some demographic clues. International Migration Review, 1971, j, 1 2 5 - 1 3 7 . López, David E. Chicano language loyalty in an urban setting. Sociology and Social Research. 1976, 62, 167-175. López, David E. The Maintenance of Spanish over Three Generations in the United States. Los Alamitos. National Center for Bilingual Research, 1982. Mallea, J.R, (ed.) Quebec's Language Policies: Background and Response. Quebec, Laval Univ. Press, 1977· McRae, K . D . The principle of territoriality and the principle of personality in multilingual states. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 1 9 7 5 , 4 , 3 3 - 5 4 . McRae, K.D. Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Switzerland. Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983. Nahirny, V . and J . A . Fishman. American immigrant groups: ethnic identification and the problem of generations. (British) Sociological Review, 1965, 13, 3 1 1 - 3 2 6 .

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Nahirny, V. and J.A. Fishman. Ukrainian language maintenance efforts in the United States, in J . A . Fishman et al. Language Loyalty in the United States. The Hague, Mouton, 1966, 318-357. Patterson, Orlando. Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse. New York, Stein and Day, 1977. Savara, J . G . and Vigneault, R. (eds.) Multilingual Political Systems: Problems and Solutions. Quebec, Laval Univ. Press, 197;. Silver, B. The impact of urbanization and geographical dispersion on the linguistic Russification of Soviet nationalities. Demography 1974, 1 1 , 89-103. Skrabanek, R.L. Language maintenance among Mexican-Americans. International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 1970, i t , 272—282. Tabouret-Keller, Andrée (ed.). Regional Languages in France. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 1981, no. 29 (entire issue). Touret, B. L'Aménagement constitutionnel des Etats de peuplement composite. Quebec, Laval Univ. Press, 1972. Veltman, Calvin. Language Shift in the United States. Berlin, Mouton, 1983. Weinreich, M. History of the Yiddish Language. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979 ( = vols. 1 and 2 of the original four-volume Yiddish edition, 1973; translated into English by S. Noble and J.A. Fishman.)

Chapter 5 "Nothing New Under the Sun": A Case Study of Alternatives in Language and Ethnocultural Identity JOSHUA A. FISHMAN

Today, in almost all of the Western world (and in the ethnopolitically consolidated and econotechnically modernized world more generally), nothing seems more "natural" than the current linkage between a particular ethnocultural identity and its associated language. For Frenchmen, that language is French and for Spaniards it is Spanish. What could be more "natural"? However, by their very nature, cultures are primarily conventional rather than truly natural arrangements and, therefore, even these links, apparently natural though they seem, need to be examined more carefully, perhaps even more naively, and such fundamental questions as "Was it always so?" and "Why, when or how did it become so?" need to be raised. Such questions commonly reveal that what is considered "natural" today was not always considered to be so, not only because of lack of awareness (even today there may be Frenchmen who are not conscious of French as a reflection of, a symbol of and a contributor to their identity), but because even those few who were originally aware of the functions of language in the above ways were themselves of different minds and purposes. That such alternative programs (and, therefore, alternative language-andethnicity linkages) exist is frequently recognized among specialists who have studied pre-modern ethnocultural configurations. "Who are the Lue?" Mooreman asks (1965) and provides a host of different views both by outsiders (neighbors of those whom some call Lue) and by insiders (those who sometimes call themselves Lue), in which the ethnocultural designation, the language designation and the link between the two all show variation. Similar cases are more difficult to find in contemporary Europe, but they are not completely unknown even there, particularly among some of its eastern and southern Slavic groups (see, e.g., Mogocsi 1978 on the Subcarpathian Rus). In less-

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developed and/or less-consolidated settings (and the U.S.A. may well be one of the latter), instances such as these are much more common. All such cases, wherever they occur, lead us to be more sensitive to the possibility of earlier, less consolidated periods (or regions) in the development of ethnolinguistic identity even among those populations for whom current linkages have lasted for centuries, and, even more decidedly, to sensitize us to changes in ethnicity and in language and ethnicity linkages that are ongoing today (see, e.g., LePage and Tabouret-Keller 1982). Still rarer, however, is a case such as the one to be examined here, in which ethnocultural identity per se is well established, both by internal and by external definitions, but its "natural" vernacular language counterpart is still symbolically unfinali^ed and, therefore, subject to widely differing programmatic formulations. The case itself pertains to early 19th-century Eastern European Jewish society, but its problems are generalizable to the late modernization of other societies with intact sacro-classical traditions. In such societies (other major examples of which are the Greek case in Europe, the Islamic Arabic case in the Near East and North Africa, the Tamil case in South Asia and the Mandarin Chinese case in East Asia), diglossia 1 between what are consensually viewed as "separate languages" has persisted long after its disappearance in Western Europe. In Western Europe, the typical diglossie pattern H/L began to be resolved in favor of the vernaculars even before the Reformation ended in the full triumph of the latter as symbols of national identity. This process began first in the Atlantic seacoast countries with massification of participation in commerce, industry and armed service. In Central and Eastern Europe, however, the domination of former or current sacroclassical languages for serious writing continued much longer so that German, Russian and finally Italian achieved full general recognition as vernaculars symbolic of national identity and worthy of governmental, literary and educated usage only by the 18th century. Thereafter in Europe, the pattern L H / L L (instead of former H/L) in which varieties of the former L are used for both formal/written and informal/spoken functions was denied only to minorities that lacked state apparatuses under their own control, a denial which implicitly recognized the dynamic as well as the symbolic nature of the language and ethnicity link (Fishman 1972). For Jews and Greeks, however, no such resolution was possible for yet other reasons. Sacroclassical languages continued to reign supreme for them, both functionally and symbolically, and their vernaculars remained in the shadows on both accounts.

THE TRADITIONAL JEWISH VERNACULAR ROLES H/L is not an adequate formulaic representation of the role of Jewish vernaculars in traditional Jewish society. Jewish vernaculars (Yavanic in Greece,

/. Alternatives in l^anguage and Ethnocultural Identity

79

Judezmo in Spain and then in the Balkans, Chuadit in Provense, 2 Tsarfatic in France, Italkic in Italy, Yiddish in Germany and then in Eastern Europe, Yahudic in most Moslem lands) always had more than spoken vernacular functions. Indeed, they were regularly used for such sanctity-proximate functions as the oral, written (later printed) translation of prayers, oral (later printed) translation of Bible and of Talmud 3 and as the discourse language for the study of Talmud (Fishman 1981a). Note, however, that although these vernaculars were admitted into the pale of sanctity, they never functioned independently or exclusively in that pale. They were always merely co-present in the realm of sanctity as assisting, attending, serving vehicles rather than as primary or exclusive ones. Thus, even though the true societal allocation of languages to social functions in traditional Jewish communities was a complex one, 4 the vernacular alone was never in full sway in any H function. At the point at which our case begins, toward the end of the 18th century, several earlier attempts at promoting Yiddish, the then 900-year-old Central and Eastern European Jewish vernacular, to serious H functions had already failed. 5 However, the spread of modern ideas and processes into Eastern Europe guaranteed that additional attempts would be made, resisted and defended. Not since the times of Aramaic had a Jewish vernacular been a major bone of interrabbinic Jewish contention. 6 With the coming of modernization in Eastern Europe, a century and a half of "vernacular debate" was launched in which the modernizers themselves were far from united as to the solutions that they advocated. Not only were various vernaculars advocated ( Jewish as well as non-Jewish) but even Loshn-koydesh—the holy tongue itself—was advocated for modern purposes, oral as well as written.

THE HASKOLE COMES TO EASTERN EUROPE Like modernization more generally, vernacular awareness came to Jewish Eastern Europe from Germany in particular and from "Western Europe" more generally. Modernization as a diffuse whole was the goal of a movement known as haskole ("enlightenment"). Since it was an intellectual current more than a political one, it was variously interpreted and had no real organizational apparatus. Its ideological/philosophical counterpart had already strongly impacted German Jewry by the time it began to influence Jewish intellectuals in the eastern Austro-Hungarian Empire (particularly in Galicia 7 ) and in the western Czarist Empire. Its spokesman and fountainhead in Germany had been Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1780), and many of its earliest protoganists in Eastern Europe had been his students during their younger years. However much they may have differed amongst themselves, they all tended to share three views: (a) modern knowledge and modern behavior was bringing about major

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Perspectives

changes in the co-territorial societies that surrounded Jewish Eastern Europe, (b) as a result, it was urgent for Jewish society also to change in many ways, both internally as well as vis-à-vis the co-territorial societies, and (c) it was the responsibility of Jewish intellectuals to formulate, interpret and guide this change process for the maximum benefit of the Jewish people as a whole. These three views were so broad and nebulous that they did not differentiate between the parent haskole in Germany and its child, the haskole in Eastern Europe. In reality, however, both with respect to their programs and their consequences, the two haskoles differed markedly. Whereas the former aimed at sociocultural and political integration of Jews (redefined only as a religious group: "Germans of Moses's persuasion") into "society at large" and, therefore, rejected the notion of separate Jewish kehilas (community councils) or a separate Jewish vernacular (given that a separate Catholic vernacular or a Protestant vernacular would have seemed equally superfluous), the latter generally viewed Jews as a separate ethnocultural entity in need of political rights, on the one hand, and of economic, educational and cultural modernization, on the other hand. However, the latter goals were not unambiguous via-à-vis the need for separate governing community councils or for a separate vernacular (or, even if there ιvere to be such, maintenance of their unique functions) and, accordingly, these and other related issues remained "on the agenda" and the Eastern haskole debated them bitterly and at seemingly interminable length. Insofar as the "language issue" was concerned, three major views arose: (i) that Yiddish could serve as the medium of early modernization but that it might very well be replaced later by Polish or another co-territorial vernacular, (ii) that Hebrew itself should optimally serve as the vehicle of modernization but that German might initially need to be used since it was the only "enlightened" language to which Jews had ready access and (iii) that Yiddish alone was capable of integrating modernity and tradition in such a way that the new would fit harmoniously with the old. These three views received their earliest extensive formulation in Galicia in the first quarter of the 19th century by three bearers of enlightenment ( = maskilim), M. Mendl Lefin-Satanover, Tuvye Feder and Yankev Shmuel Bik. The clash between these three left echoes which reverberated clearly in the vernacular/cultural programs of Zionism, Bundism and Folkism, more-focused social, cultural and political movements that came into being before the century ended or soon thereafter.

MENAKHEM MENDL LEFIN 8 -SATANOVER (1749-1826)9 Lefin-Satanover was rightly called "the father of the Galician haskole" since he encouraged many other Jewish intellectuals ("proto-elites," I have called

/. Alternatives in Language and Ethnocultural Identity 81 them elsewhere, 1972) to cultivate and to spread enlightenment among Eastern European Jews. Although he was an ordained rabbi and an acknowledged Talmudic master, he also studied mathematics and natural sciences, both in German and in French, and visited Berlin often so that he could converse with Mendelssohn (who considered Lefin-Satanover his most important "Polish" pupil) and with maskilim from the east as well as from the west. He was among the very first Galician Jewish intellectuals to express the view that it was not only permissible but incumbent upon Jews to study modern subjects if they were not only to become citizens of their respective countries but defenders and adapters of Jewish society in modern contexts. Indeed, Lefin-Satanover formulated a rather complete program for the intellectual and cultural improvement of Jewry. He submitted this plan—written in impeccable French— to the Polish Sejm. A further indication of Lefin-Satanover's own substantial interaction with non-Jewish society is certainly the fact that it was his friend and patron, Count Adam Czprtoryski (whose wife and children he tutored in various subjects and who had granted him a life-long stipend so that he could devote himself to scholarship and enlightenment)—a member of the Polish royal family—who had asked him to prepare such a plan for the Sejm's Committee on the Jewish Question. Lefin-Satanover's plan (1791/1792) called for the establishment of Polish public schools for Jewish youngsters. After their traditional "coming of age" (as 13 year-olds), Jewish boys were to be required to attend these schools so that they could take courses in mathematics, natural sciences, modern agricultural methods, Polish history and customs as well as "rational Jewish subjects" (Maimonides, e.g.), all to be taught in Polish. The avowed purpose of these schools was to prepare graduates who would become modern communal leaders and leaders in the struggle against khasidism.10 Although Lefin-Satanover's plan did not elicit any great support in the Sejm—Poland itself underwent its second partition in 1793 and its third in 1795 and the Polish nobility that served in the Sejm was presumably preoccupied with more pressing matters—his plan is adequately indicative of his goal: to combat mysticism, to foster rationalism and to bring Jews into touch with the modern world in general and with its Jewish counterpart in particular. Lefin-Satanover was not overly disturbed by the failure of his sweeping plan to elicit support. He embarked on less ambitious and more piecemeal "educational efforts." He translated into exceptionally clear and simple Hebrew the French volume by S.A. Tissot, Avis au peuple sur sa santé (1761), calling it Refues ho-om (Cures of the People)}1 His did the same for parts of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac (Kheshbn hanefesh, 1809). In both cases, he attracted a larger than usual readership for secular writings in Hebrew, not only because of interest in the material per se, but because he insisted on simple Hebrew, without flourishes, without biblical metaphors, endless asides, literary allusions, puns or any of the other stilted conventions that had long dominated

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Hebrew writing, whether secular or religious. He obviously wanted his books to be read by ordinary f o l k . 1 2 Nevertheless, no matter how hard LefinSatanover tried to write in a "simple, understandable and interesting" w a y — in order to meet his self-imposed obligation (as a maskil) to spread modern learning among the people, he finally realized that there was no way in which this goal could be attained as long as Hebrew was his vehicle of communication. Only through Yiddish, his mother tongue and that of all his readers, could he really reach everyone (men and women, old and young, rich and poor). Finally, he decided to do exactly t h a t — t o publish a serious book in Yiddish—regardless of the break with convention that such a step represented.

LEFIN-SATANOVER'S BIBLE TRANSLATIONS INTO YIDDISH The idea to render selected parts of the Old Testament in Yiddish had come to Lefin-Satanover much earlier, during his visits to the famous German-Jewish philosopher and modernizer, Moses Mendelssohn, in Berlin, in the late 1770s and early 1780s. Mendelssohn himself had translated the Pentateuch and provided his own commentaries thereto (in 1783), both in High German, "in order that everyone might be able to understand it easily and quickly." Up until then, only Yiddish translations were available. These were entirely unacceptable to Mendelssohn for three reasons: (i) they were in Yiddish, (ii) they were in archaic Yiddish and (iii) they were inaccurate. For Mendelssohn, Yiddish was not only a hideous corruption of German (a view that he adopted from gentile contemporaries such as Goethe [Low 1979] and that he helped spread among Jews and gentiles alike), but an utterly objectionable barrier between German Jews and "other Germans," generally (Mendelssohn 1782). The fact that some of the contemporary Yiddish translations were poorly done (certainly so by Mendelssohn's sophisticated and critical standards) and that they were in an archaic caique variety that was almost as distant from the everyday Yiddish that German Jews spoke as it was from the standard German that Mendelssohn wished them to speak, only made his translation (published in Hebrew characters since the majority of Jews w h o could understand German could not read the adapted Latin characters [these being termed galkhes, i.e. "tontured script"]), all the more acceptable to those w h o did not share his reformist philosophy. However, if it was possible to translate the Bible into German so that German Jews could understand it easily and quickly, that was distinctly not a viable solution for the Galician and other Eastern European Jews whom Lefin-Satanover sought to reach. O v e r the centuries of residence in Slavic environments, their Yiddish had lost many of its earlier German features until it was, by Lefin-Satanover's time, far less mutually intercom-

/. Alternatives in Language and Ethnocultural Identity 83 prehensible with standard German than was the far more German Yiddish of Mendelssohn's "public." Clearly, it was only via Yiddish that Lefin-Satanover could reach his widest public, whether for the purpose of making the Bible understandable to everyone or for the purposes of spreading knowledge, rationality and enlightenment more generally. Lefin-Satanover was always the rationalist in his approach to Yiddish. He referred to it as a vital instrument if he were to "bring culture and enlightenment to the Jewish population of Poland" (in a letter to his subsequently famous student Yoysef Perl, 1808). As it happened, Lefin-Satanover's translations were clear breaks with long established tradition—not so much quantitatively (there had been many and much more extensive translations before his) as qualitatively and visually. He concentrated on five books of philosophy (Proverbs, Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations), since he believed them to be particularly likely to move readers to think for themselves, to reflect and to ponder on their own. However, only one of these five saw the light of day during his lifetime (Proverbs, 1813, published in Tarnapol), and it created such a storm that he abandoned his plans to publish any of the others. What exactly was it that was so revolutionary about them?

THE REVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF LEFINSATANOVER'S TRANSLATIONS Lefin's translations departed from the norm of Yiddish-in-print 1 3 in three dramatically striking ways, all of which have to be considered programmatic rather than merely idiosyncratic or accidental. T o begin with, his translation was printed in square Hebrew letters (oysiyes merebues) i.e., in a typeface that had until then almost always been reserved for printing sanctified texts such as the prayer book, the Old Testament or Talmud. Although there had already been some minor precedent for setting aside the centuries-old distinctive typeface for Yiddish (vaybertaytsh, it was called, i.e., the typeface used in Yiddish translations or popularizations ostensibly for w o m e n 1 4 ) , the typeface that Lefin chose was definitely a break with a deeply ingrained and culturally consensual visual norm. T o set aside that norm was to call attention to an implicit new status for Yiddish, an implicit independence of Yiddish from subservience to Loshn-koydesh; it was a rejection of the cultural assumption that only Loshn-koydesh could utilize oysiyes merebues. It was a visual declaration of equality or even of accentuation. Such a declaration had been made a century or more earlier by another rebel and had ended rather sadly in full capitulation (Stein 1970). 1 5 After Lefin, however, the ice was broken and Yiddish-in-print never again returned to its previous "segregated" typeface. However, Lefin's translation of Proverbs caused a storm at the textual level

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which greatly surpassed (and outlasted) any hackles that it raised at the visual level. Basically, this was due to the fact that Lefin also rejected the centuries-old linguistic-stylistic-substantive tradition with respect to Yiddish translations of hallowed texts. In accord with that tradition, Yiddish-in-print followed conventions established in Germany literally centuries earlier. As a result, it was twice removed from the spoken vernacular of Eastern Europe. All written (printed) language follows a convention of its own and is by no means a faithful reflection of the language as popularly spoken. However, in the Yiddish case, perhaps because its serious written/printed functions were always rather tenuous and restricted, this distance was further magnified by the preservation of an archaic written norm/ Furthermore, in accordance with that norm, the Yiddish employed was not only heavily impacted by German, both lexically and grammatically, but Hebraisms that were completely assimilated into Yiddish were never employed in translation of words of Loshn koydesh origin. This convention, of course, further accentuated (artificially so) the Germanic nature of the translation and further distanced it from spoken Yiddish. Finally, at a more purely stylistic level, Yiddish translations of holy or sanctified writ were more than translations; they were also abbreviated commentaries. Since it was assumed that those who needed the translations were incapable of following the many learned rabbinic commentaries that had been written in Loshn-koydesh about every nuance of the original texts, the Yiddish translations constantly departed from the texts themselves in order to provide snatches of those commentaries. As a result, those Yiddish readers who really could not follow the Loshn-koydesh original at all could, at times, be quite unsure as to what in the translation was text and what was commentary, since the latter was often unidentified as such while being interwoven with the former. In one fell (but very deft, very sophisticated, very delicately orchestrated) literary swoop, Lefin abandoned all three of the above conventions. 16 His translation of Proverbs approximated popularly spoken Yiddish to such an extent that even today, 170 years later, it strikes the reader as somewhat overly "familiar," "informal" or folksy," much more so, e.g., than does the superb modern Yiddish translation of the complete Old Testament by Yehoyesh (completed some 120 years after Lefin's work). However, not only did Lefin utilize slavisms and contractions galore (indeed, he may have purposely overused them), all of them implying popular speech and all of them reinforcing the distance that modern Eastern European Yiddish had traveled over centuries from its Germanic origins, but he did not hesitate to translate Loshn-koydesh terms in the originals with their corresponding Loshn-koydesh equivalents in Yiddish as long as the latter were fully indigenized and widely employed. This, too, or course, accentuated the autonomy of Yiddish from its German (and nonJewish) origins and stressed its distinctly Jewish nature. 1 7 Finally, Lefin's translation was precisely that and no more. There were no

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commentaries, no asides to help the reader, no paraphrasing of diverse rabbinic insights over the centuries. There was only the translated text, beautifully, movingly, sensitively rendered. Whoever wanted more than that would have to study further, just as did those w h o had access to the original. Like any really competent translation, therefore, Lefin's work led the really serious reader back to the original rather than replacing it, it encouraged further independent study rather than implying that the reader could g o no further. Although Lefin's motives are still subject to interpretation (some Yiddish scholars still refuse to attribute to him a truly positive attitude toward Yiddish), 1 8 his conscientious approach to the task he had undertaken is beyond doubt. In one of his letters, he put it this way: " . . . to exert myself to approximate it [the Yiddish of his translation] to our language and to distance it from German . . . exactly as it is spoken nowadays among us . . . the language of our eastern Podolye."

19

It seems to me that such conscientiousness, such awareness of Ausbau,20 such sensitivity to the flavor of slavisms and hebraisms, implies not only stylistic artistry but the furthering of a program of action in which Yiddish would exercise new symbolic functions. In his translations, Lefin was carrying forward his original plan submitted to the tottering Polish Sejm in 1791-92: a plan to fashion Jews into a more modern people, a people fully in touch with its own tradition but yet capable of adapting it, adding to it selectively by controlled contact with surrounding cultures, evaluating it (thinking it through) by means of more massive participation in these processes rather than merely by means of blind reliance on rabbinic authorities, on the one hand, or on foreign m o d e l s — even highly regarded German m o d e l s — o n the other hand. Indeed, not only would we miss the significance of Lefin were we to interpret his translation as a mere stylistic achievement today, but we would be unable to explain the controversy that immediately arose in connection with it then, when it appeared. It was viewed programmatically both by those w h o reviled it as well as by those w h o defended it. T o do any less today would be tantamount to seeing things less clearly today, with the passage of time, than they were seen by the maskilim of that very day and age.

TUVYE FEDER AND THE ATTACK UPON LEFIN'S TRANSLATION N o t only was Lefin's translation brutally critized qua translation but its clearlysensed promotion of Yiddish was rejected precisely on those grounds. The selfproclaimed "leader of the opposition" faction of maskilim was T u v y e Gutman Feder ( 1760-1817), a well-known grammarian, Old Testament scholar and, like most maskilim of that time, a dedicated follower of Mendelssohn. Although

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similar in background to Lefin, in many ways (Feder, too, was a Galitsianer, i.e., born and educated in Galitsiye, and was widely read in Western languages, particularly German), Feder was far less fortunate with respect to earning the wherewithal to feed, clothe and house his family and himself. Disinclined, as were also most maskilim, to earn his livelihood by means of serving as a rabbi of a particular community, and unable to receive support, as did Lefin, from any major benefactor so that he might be able to spend his life in quiet and productive scholarship, Feder and his family were constantly on the move in search of funds. Not only did he frequently have to stoop to such timeconsuming but traditionally low-paying pursuits as scribe, reader (of the weekly lection), cantor and preacher, but he was forced, on occasion, to write flattering doggerel about wealthy Jewish as well as non-Jewish "personages" in the hope of some monetary reward. Accordingly, he acclaimed Czar Alexander I for his victory over Napoleon in a lengthy poem, Hatslokhes aleksander ( = The Triumph of Alexander), and was constantly on the look out for an opportunity to come to greater attention in some potentially rewarding connection. Although Lefin's translation of Proverbs provided him with a seemingly perfect chance to do just that, it also enabled him to express views that both he and other maskilim believed deeply and had subscribed to previously, albeit in lessfocused fashion. Indeed, Lefin's translation seems to have struck Feder as virtually a personal afront. Not only was he irked by its apparent advocacy of "common/vulgar Yiddish," but he was exasperated that a fellow maskil could so falsely interpret and so foully mishandle the mission of the haskole and the goals of its great leader, Moses Mendelssohn. In order to publicize his defense of the true haskole, as he interpreted it, Feder authored a lengthy and bitter attack on Lefin and on his work. Since he lacked the funds necessary to publish his work, he circulated it in manuscript form among other maskilim, in order both to publicize it as well as to raise the funds that would enable him to have it printed. The literary form of his attack, entitled Kol mekhatsetsim : sikbe beoylem haneshomes (Voice of the Archers: A Discussion in the World of the Spirits), was that of a heavenly trial in which maskilim of various earlier periods gathered to indict Lefin. They charged—in Feder's characteristically intemperate prose—that Lefin's translation was full of filth and that it literally stank to high heaven. "Whoever sees it runs away. It should be hacked to pieces. It should be burned in fire. Its name should never be recalled. The foul scroll, which the prematurely senile Lefin has penned . . . seeks only to find grace in the eyes of concubines and maidens/old maids and even they flee from it saying: 'Are there not enough madmen without him?' " The maskil Isaac Eichel, who had translated Proverbs into High German only some few decades before, charged Lefin with committing treason against Mendelssohn. "He spits in the face of refined speakers; only the language of the coarse find grace in his eyes." This "vulgar

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language" is variously referred to as a mixture of all tongues, a gibberish, a monstrosity. No wonder, then, that the heavenly court finally rules that Lefin's work must be burned and its ashes discarded in a cesspool! Feder's hyperbole both confuses and lays bare quite a variety of purported shortcomings insofar as Lefin's translation is concerned. One of the themes that almost all of Lefin's heavenly prosecutors stress is the purportedly unaesthetic nature of Yiddish relative to either Loshn-koydesh, on the one hand, or High German, on the other. This view went considerably beyond Mendelssohn's own dictum as to the so-called dwarfed and disfigured nature of Yiddish (interestingly enough, Mendelssohn himself was a hunchback) and referred to Lefin's well-known rejection of the florid phraseology and the high-flown rhetoric that typified the Hebrew style of most other maskilim. Lefin had ridiculed that very style (known as melitse) as "impenetrable without prior oral explanation by the author." He had consistently sought to avoid the melitse style from his very earliest writings in Hebrew and had only embarked on his Yiddish translations when he was clearly convinced that even a simple and direct Hebrew was a barrier to comprehension that most Jews could not cross. Thus, Lefin was a twofold enemy, since he was an opponent to elegant, sophisticated usage even when he wrote Loshn koydesh. Feder's stress on elegance (in Loshnkoydesh if possible, but in High German at the very least) was not merely an aesthetic whim. It reflected the conviction that only those who controlled and practiced the florid and platitudinous melitse style were worthy of intellectual leadership among Jews. It was not only Loshn-koydesh, therefore, that had to remain the symbolic language of Jewish modernization (yes, Feder, too, was a champion of modernization; all of his grammatical and biblical analyses clearly identifying him as breaking with rabbinic scholarship and its traditional legalistic focus), but it had to be that variety of Loshn-koydesh that was furthest from what the ordinary Jew could possibly fathom. Lefin, on the other hand, had not only opted for as much transparency and nonelitism as possible in his Loshnkoydesh but had taken the next step, to ultimate transparency and non-elitism in print, namely, to contemporary spoken Yiddish per se. From Feder's point of view, Lefin and he stood polls apart even were they both to write in Loshnkoydesh; given, however, that Lefin had chosen to bring enlightenment in Yiddish, "a language of darkness," he was clearly a renegade beyond the pale. In Feder's view, modernization would transform Jewish life without reaching the stage that Lefin had striven for from the outset: the stage in which each Jew had access to basic Jewish and modern sources and was capable of thinking these through himself without recourse to khasidic or other mystic obfuscation. Accordingly, Feder firmly believed that traditional Jewish diglossia required hardly any adjustment at all for the purposes of modernization. Loshn-koydesh would remain in its H position but would be used for both traditional and modern purposes. If its symbolic status as representing, embodying the foster-

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ing the highest Jewish intellectual order required any supplementation at all, then obviously this should come only from High German, the unchallenged language of modernization par excellence in all of Eastern and Central Europe. For Feder, Yiddish played no role at all in the symbolic order of Jewry. For Lefin Yiddish at least had an effective mission to perform, a utilitarian service to discharge. If Lefin came to Yiddish without any illusions as to its beauty, its dignity, or its traditional validity as a Jewish medium, nevertheless, as a pragmatist he wanted it to be used effectively, movingly, tellingly, as the major carrier (at least initially ) of Jewish modernisation.

YANKEV SHMUEL BIK (1772-1831) AND THE DEFENSE OF YIDDISH Both Lefin and Feder had their followers and the dispute between them quickly engulfed the still rather small world of Eastern European maskilim, even though Feder's manuscript was no more than just that and literally had to be passed around from hand to hand. However, it was quite clear that Lefin was by far the more highly regarded and better connected of the two, if only because of his longer and more distinguished record of intellectual contributions to haskole, the many students whom he had added to the ranks of the maskilim and his many wealthy patrons, Jewish as well as Polish (the latter making him a figure to be respected if not admired). As a result, many arose to defend him more out of rejection of Feder's untempered and irresponsible diatribe than out of any basic agreement with Lefin's program or the implicit role of Yiddish therein. However, his main defender, Yankev Shmuel Bik, a former student and longtime admirer of Lefin's, not only agreed with what Lefin had done but outdid him, particularly in his advocacy of Yiddish as a symbol of the very best in the Eastern European tradition. Bik, too, like most other maskilim of the time and, most particularly, like Lefin, translated a considerable number of works from German, French and even English into Loshn-koydesh. Like Lefin, he was also greatly preoccupied with the need for "productivization" of the small town Jewish poor. Being independently wealthy (even more so than Lefin), he devoted a good bit of his time and money to encouraging Jews to enter agriculture and the artisan trades. He also supported many scholars and writers (as well as "would be" scholars and writers)—including Lefin himself during certain years—thereby enabling them to devote themselves uninterruptedly to their studies and writings and enabling him to become more fully aware of the gaps and contradictions in their thinking. This thorough familiarity ultimately contributed to his unique view among maskilim that haskole lacked involvement, lacked follow-through, indeed that it was "cerebral" to such a degree that it lacked warmth, feeling and "love for Jews as concrete people" as contrasted with "concern for Jews as an abstract problem." This stress on concrete and all-

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embracing love for Jews led Bik ultimately to demand greater toleration and even admiration for khasidism. It was to kbasidism that he bade the haskole look if it were ever to learn to do more than educate, criticize or scold Jews. A khasidic rabbi cared for his flock, helped them in time of need, comforted them in time of sorrow. Bik saw no need to surrender these admirable traditional virtues in the process of modernization; least of all did he want to displace Jewish Gemeinschaft by a maskilic Gesellschaft (Tonnies 1957 [1887]). In 1815, some two years after Feder's manuscript had initially become known, Bik's reply, in the form of a lengthy letter, made the same rounds, from hand to hand, among Eastern European maskilim. Bik's defense of Yiddish constitutes the very heart and core of his letter, clearly indicating once again that much, much more than personal animosities and stylistic preferences lay at the very foundation of the disagreement between Lefin and Feder. Indeed, Bik's defense of Yiddish became the classic defense of that language, repeated by all its ideological champions (as distinct from its various pragmatic implementers) ever since. Bik's letter made the following three major points: ι . Yiddish has been the language of Jewish traditional life for centuries. Bik lists the names of the greatest and most revered sages of Central and Eastern European Jewry during the past many centuries and reminds Feder (and all opponents of Yiddish) that they all spoke Yiddish, taught their students in Yiddish and discussed and defended their Talmudic interpretations with other scholars in Yiddish. This being the case, Bik argues, it is incumbent upon Feder (and others) to respect this vernacular and even to honor it. 2 1 Furthermore, Bik adds, other Old Testament translations in Yiddish have existed in appreciable numbers before, going back to the Mirkeves hamishne of 1534 and the ever popular, revised and reprinted Pentateuch for women, Tsene-urene (1628). These were all righdy admired and highly valued for spreading familiarity with the Old Testament among ordinary, less educated men and women. There is no reason, Bik concludes, for Lefin's translation to be viewed any differently. Here, of course, Bik sidesteps the issue of modernization and the possible role of Yiddish as symbolic of Jewish mastery of modern subjects, modern roles and modern responsibilities. Modern challenges and modern solutions are questionable verities. Bik, therefore, related Yiddish to the unquestioned great names and books of the past. In this way, he assures its positive historicity against Feder's charges of corruption and bastardization. 2. Other modernising nationalities do not hesitate to utilise their vernaculars to improve the lot of the everyday man. By arguing via analogy with the peoples of Central and Western Europe—and thereby avoiding comparisons with many Eastern European nationalities whose vernaculars were still generally unrecognized for serious purposes, symbolic or pragmatic—Bik turns the tables on Feder. To deny Jews the use of Yiddish in the course of their modernization is to deny them a major avenue to knowledge which all modern nationalities of Europe were clearly delighted to have. Via their vernaculars even peasants have become

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126

II The Ethnic Revival and Language Maintenance in the USA

E

-2

6. Mother-Tongue Claiming Since i960: Trends and Correlates 127 reported European variety plus, fortunately, Chinese and Japanese) in conjunction with their respective second generations and regions of residence. For these 12 languages the lion's share of their original immigrant speakers came from one relatively linguistically homogeneous country (or two in the case of German). As a result, it is possible to compare the country of origin figures for second generation individuals whose parents hailed from these countries with the mother-tongue claiming figures for second-generation claimants of these languages (Appendix i). 9 The overall (i.e., nationwide) second-generation "maintenance quotients" for these 12 languages vary from a low of roughly 40% for Danish (to which Haugen pointed as long ago as 1953 as the leastmaintained Scandinavian language) to a high of roughly 80% for Greek. The median maintenance quotient for the second generation of these 12 mother tongues is roughly 60%, an overestimate certainly but an imaginable and, therefore a bearable one. However, it is the interregional differences shown in Appendix 2 that interest us, rather more than the interlanguage differences discussed above. In nearly every instance the second generation has a higher maintenance quotient in that region of the country in which its parents initially settled than in any of the latter, secondary settlement areas to which it may have moved. Thus, for Norwegian, the second-generation maintenance quotient is clearly highest in the North Central region (as it is for Swedish, Danish, Polish, Hungarian and Lithuanian), for Italian in the Northeast, and for Chinese and Japanese and German in the West. Except in the case of German, the primary settlement areas continued to be of prime importance in 1970—as was initially concluded in the early 1960's (Hofman 1966)—primarily because these still have the neighborhood concentrations that early settlement permits and the institutional resources that the immigrant generation required, founded, supported and endowed. Secondary settlement areas are relatively dislocative in both of these crucial respects. 10

REVIEW OF 1970 MOTHER-TONGUE CLAIMING DATA Our examination of 1970 mother-tongue claiming has resulted in findings which appear to be, on the whole, eminently reasonable in terms of interlanguage comparisons and intervariable relationships. Non-English mothertongue claiming in 1970 was a massive affair (involving some 17% of the total population). Its "big six" were the same non-English languages that had held this distinction during the entire century (although the role of Spanish had become clearly predominant). Many Asian and African languages were reported for the first time in detail. Among the largely European languages for

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II The Ethnic Revival and Language Maintenance in the USA

which the Bureau of the Census had traditionally reported throughout this century, non-English mother-tongue claiming had ceased to be associated with foreign birth and had become overwhelmingly an attribute of the second generation (native-born of foreign or mixed parentage). There is evidence that not only did this generation experience considerable losses insofar as intergenerational continuity of non-English mother-tongue claiming is concerned but that these losses became even greater between the second and the third generations. The native-born-of-native-born "generation" is usually not only smaller than it would naturally be but also older than it would be if it, in turn, consisted not only of the third generation but of subsequent generations as well. Claimants of non-English mother tongues are highly urbanized (even more so than the country at large) and particularly so among the foreign-born. Those metropolitan areas that were not too large/diversified were particularly conducive to non-English mother-tongue claiming among the native-born generations pertaining to the "big six." Among a dozen languages, most of whose initial immigrant speakers arrived from linguistically relatively homogeneous countries, second-generation maintenance quotients were higher in the traditional primary settlement regions than in any others. All in all, the reasonableness and the internal consistency of the above findings tend to confirm the utility of utilizing 1970 mother-tongue claiming data in order to illuminate some of the social and psychological factors pertaining to such claiming in the United States. We will, therefore, now proceed to add a historical dimension to our discussion and, in particular, to explore 1960-1970 differences and the rebirth of ethnicity (the "ethnicity boom") in conjunction with such data.

COMPARISONS WITH 1970: BEFORE AND AFTER There is no point denying that "something" of very major proportions occurred in connection with non-English mother-tongue claiming in the United States between i960 and 1970. While it is true that the wording of the mothertongue question changed from one census to the other, it is the burden of our argument that the changes in rate of non-English mother-tongue claiming cannot be explained on that basis alone. A change in the wording cannot explain the willingness of respondents to claim a non-English mother tongue at all, nor can it explain the various demographic correlates (individual and institutional) as well as the between-language differences that characterized the change in non-English mother-tongue claiming from i960 to 1970. The change in rate of non-English mother-tongue claiming must be explained rather than explained away. Minority ethnolinguistic phenomena in the modern, Western world have all too frequently been explained away, wished away, rather than explained

6. Mother-Tongue Claiming Since i960: Trends and Correlates

129

conceptually and empirically as an aspect of demographic, sociocultural and psychoreligious reality, a forming and reforming, grouping and regrouping capacity and inclination in the human condition.

CHANGE IN TOTAL NUMBER OF MOTHER-TONGUE CLAIMANTS, 1960-1970 Non-English mother-tongue claiming increased dramatically in the United States in 1970 and did so whether or not Spanish is included in our computations (Table 7). This change constituted a reversal of the downward trend with respect to such claiming that had set in after 1940. From 1940 to 1960 the total American population increased by roughly } 6 % . At the same time total nonEnglish mother-tongue claiming decreased by roughly 1 2 % . If the major increase in Spanish mother-tongue claiming during that decade (79%) is set aside then the overall decrease in non-English mother-tongue claiming within a single decade was roughly 2 0 % — a very major decrease indeed. N o wonder then that it seemed to many observers as if the integrative dream of one re-ethnicized, fully anglified American nation, "Anglo-Americans all," without "hyphens" and "foreignisms," was well on its way toward realization. Practically every traditionally tabulated non-English mother tongue experienced a decline during this decade and the few exceptions either pertained to relatively small groups (Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian and Greek) going through atypical immigration cycles and bound to "settle down" soon, or to Spanish, a problem that needed "special handling" (e.g., economic development of Puerto Rico/ Mexico and "destabilization" of Castro), but exceptions that proved the rule rather than invalidated it. The 1960-1970 reversal of the above trend constitutes a veritable shocker, not only to cocktail-hour wisdom but to the professional expertise of American sociology. Almost all non-English mother tongues reveal not only unexpected claiming increases but sizeable increases at that. Indeed, during a decade in which the total American population had increased by only some 1 3 % , the increase in non-English mother-tongue claiming was roughly 7 1 % (or, if Spanish is discounted as clearly "something else", by over 5 5 % ) ! 1 1 Whereas the growth-rate of the English mother-tongue claiming population was only 8% in an entire decade, that of the non-English mother-tongue population was roughly that per annum! What had happened? What would happen? Let us tackle these questions one at a time, keeping in mind that our answers might well have implications not only for an understanding of minority language and ethnicity in America but for a broader understanding of minority language and ethnicity in modern societies more generally.

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