FRE 280 Dr. Ayoun
Fall 199
Religion, myth and linguistic culture. Schiffman, Chapter 3 (Please quote)
Introduction:
- religion and language come together in sacred texts
- hieratic languages = sacred languages used only for religious purposes
- language of the texts may also become sacred
1. What is meant by language?
a. rule-governed communicative system = code
- phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic rules used with the lexicon to form sentences which become texts
- no culture embedded in the code: languages per se are culture-free, do not reflect the speakers’ view of the world or philosophy of life
=> linguistic relativity: all languages are appropriate communicative systems
b. language as text or discourse
- written texts => literary texts which vary in quantity => assumption that they languages differ in quality. Ex.: French superiority because of social, political, literary prestige
c. cultural system
- texts € ideas, beliefs expressed in these texts: distinction often not made. Instead language = culture, and language = thought => Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic determinism (language is determined by thought)
Nested relationships:
- language as code is nested in language as text
- language as text is nested in linguistic culture without being identical to it.
The beliefs, myths and attitudes found in a text may be part of the culture, before the text is written. But language is also the primary vehicle of acculturation (a cultural construct).If language policy is not rooted in the linguistic culture, it will need fit the needs of the speakers.
d. its functions: symbolic, ritual, lingua franca, etc
2. Religious beliefs and linguistic culture
Most of the religions have some myth about the origin of language and the role played by their gods.
a. The Judaeo-Christian tradition
- In Genesis, the first book of the Christian Bible, God creates Adam and Adam names things. Later, God creates the tower of Babel to punish men for their arrogance, and sends them off in all directions. Despite this lack of need for communication since Eve wasn’t created yet, both Judaism and Christianity show some fundamentalism: God did not create language, but God’s Word must be obeyed, God’s Word is law.
- In the New Testament, in the book of John, we are told that God and the Word are inseparable and it is holy since it is controlled by God. It is this view of language that leads to fundamentalism: the Bible is God’s word (every word is true, cannot be changed, there are Christian languages and heathen languages, etc). But actually the English version of the Bible is a translation, the original text was in Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek, a human product => possible errors.
b. Linguistic purism
A lot of linguistic cultures aim at linguistic purism which often involves religious fundamentalism and linguistic authenticity. Attempt to expurge the language of any “inpurity”, syntactic, lexical, etc. Based on the following belief system:
- a state of purity language can return to or attain
- that there are people who can judge the purity of language
- linguistic purity will strengthen the linguistic culture
- a pure language = a pure religion
- purism may be associated with all kinds of religious, social, political and cultural phenomena
Loan translation of borrowed elements.
3. Religion, linguistic culture and language policy
What are the effects of religion on language policy?
a. Belgium was used as a buffer state between England and the rest of Europe, and to create Catholic provinces; a linguistic split between Flemish and French Walloons grew.
b. Britain: Welsh language and non-conformism resisted Anglicization and the influence of the Church of England.
c. Canada: French/English differences were made worse by the Roman Catholic/ Protestant split.
d. France and Suisse Romande
- Protestantism spread standard French in southern France and Switzerland
=> Occitan and patois declined
- Protestants huguenots introduced French into German-speaking Alsace
e. India: speakers think that Urdu, Hindi and Panjabi are different languages but linguists classify them as dialects. Differences are mostly religious but there are also different writing systems:
- Hindi uses the devanagari writing system and borrows from Sanskrit. Spoken by Hindus.
- Urdu is written is Perso-Arabic and borrowed its learned vocabulary from Persian and Arabic. Muslims speak it
- Panjabi is the constitutional language (more in text p. 65)
f. Korea: Christian missionaries were very successful because they used Korean
g. Pakistan: Islam was instrumental in establishing an Islamic Pakistan, but then the linguistic split between Bengali speakers (East) and Panjabi, Urdu speakers (West) resulted in the independence of Bangladesh
h. Poland: Roman Catholic Church saved its ethnicity and language (endangered by Protestant Germany, Austria and Orthodox Russia). It may even have helped to overthrow communism by supporting Solidarnosc.
i. Former USSR: linguistic nationalism based on religious differences (the Baltic states are Lutheran or Roman Catholic, Armenia is Catholic, Azerbajian is Muslim, Russia is Orthodox).
j. Sri Lanka: Tamils are Hindu (in conflict with), Sinhalese who are Buddhist.
k. Switzerland: Protestants and Catholics coexist in both German-speaking, French speaking and Italian-speaking cantons.
l. Former Yugoslavia: split between Orthodox Serbs (cyrillic alphabet) and Catholic Croates (roman alphabet). The so-called Serbian and Croatian languages are actually dialects with just lexical differences. Plus Bosnian dialects associated with Islam (lexical borrowings from Arabic or Turkish). Religious differences are actually not linguistic.
m. Arabic world: under myths
4. Myths about language
a. Victory of Afrikaans
Victory of the language (actually a variety of Dutch) over English was helped by myths about the language, its ontogeny (origin) and links to Afrikaner ethnicity. Linguistic apartheid: English and Afrikaan have separate linguistic cultures. English benefits from international power and upper classes. Afrikaners are mostly of European descent and manage to maintain their language.
b. Arabic
Myths are widespread and cover:
- superiority of Arabic
- classical-colloquial diglossia
- ranking of various dialects
- future of Arabic
Arabic is considered to be sacred “because of its miraculous power to communicate and to externalize thought”. Fixedness of meanings of words. “Sacred languages preserve the original power of language”.
c. Japanese
Japanese is a “national myth” and cult. Myth of Nihongo: uniqueness of Japanese language; cannot be properly learned by “foreigners”.
Words and thoughts have creative power and the world was actually created by language. The end of their language would mean the end of their culture and the destruction of the world.
e. Southeast Asia
(In Thailand and Myanmar), the Karen have a myth about Y’wa, the god who created nature. Y’wa gave a book to his children, to represent the gift of literacy, but they are careless with it and it’s eaten by animals. Y’wa promises that “foreign brothers” will later bring back the gift of literacy in a golden book, which explains why missionaries found the Karen such receptive people to convert
Conclusion
Language policies often try to tie religion and the culture together. They are usually complex, may be explicit or implicit.