Minae Mizumura - The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Such an answer isn’t entirely false. After all, an answer so vague can be interpreted in any number of ways. Yet it is built on one mistaken premise — a mistaken premise by no means unique to the historically naïve Japanese but prevalent today: that written language is a mere representation of spoken language . Such a premise not only misconstrues the essential nature of written language but also ignores human history. For during most of the six thousand — odd years since the human race discovered writing, people usually have not read and written the language they spoke. More often they read and wrote an “external language”—that is, the language of an older and greater neighboring civilization that exerted its influence in the region. Several such languages have thrived in various parts of the globe at various times in human history. These are what I call universal languages .

Beginning with this chapter, I will develop my argument around three main concepts: universal language, local language , and national language .The last concept, national language, needs some clarification. Though the term is not much used in English, it is a helpful one found in many languages, and the concept has been important in Japan since the Meiji Restoration. A national language is basically the same as the official language of a nation, but the expression underscores the emotional connection people have with their language as the language of their homeland. National language may hence be defined as the language that the citizens of a nation-state consider to be their own language.

Naturally, this definition is fraught with problems. First of all, the borders of a national language do not always correspond with the geographical borders of a nation-state. In many cases, the same national language is used in different regions of the world; in other cases, a single nation can have several “national languages,” since there are states with multiple official languages. In yet other instances, some nations have officially mandated a national language that is not used much in real life. I will not delve into these specifics. The history of human language is terribly messy and confusing. These three concepts — universal language, local language, national language — are merely tools for thinking as clearly as possible about the broad history of human language.

Two other expressions that have already come up in this book may need some clarification as well. First, the notion of a “bilingual.” The word, as generally used, has a strong connotation of someone with an ability to speak two languages. Here, since my discussion centers solely on the written language, “bilingual” is used to designate those people who can read and write a language other than their own, with a stronger emphasis on their ability to read. The second is the notion of the “non-West.” While it is a notion that is critical in understanding modernity, much ambiguity plagues the binary between West and non-West. Anglophone countries such as Australia and New Zealand can be categorized as belonging to the West, as well as countries like Hungary and Finland, both European nations using non-European languages. But what about a country like Israel, a Westernized nation using non-European languages and inhabited by many Semites? Or Mexico, which uses Spanish while the majority of its population is of mixed race? Again, I will not dwell on these subtle points and will simply emphasize that the notion of the non-West is here used as a cultural and linguistic concept and not a geographic or an ethnic one.

Let us begin by trying to better understand what a universal language is, for that will necessarily lead to a better understanding of both local and national languages. A brilliant and fascinating book — one that has had great influence worldwide over the past thirty years — gives us a perfect platform to think about the concept. It’s not that the book offers any insight into the nature of universal language itself. On the contrary, the book has surprisingly little to say about it. Yet the very absence of a true appreciation of universal language paradoxically reveals its primary function.

The book is Benedict Anderson’s now-classic Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . 1An analysis of the formation of modern nation-states, it is particularly well known among students of literature for the beginning section, in which Anderson discusses what turns out to be an inevitable relationship among national language, national literature, and nationalism. The book was published in 1983, and revised editions came out in 1991 and again in 2006. My own book would certainly not have been possible without Anderson’s work.

I will confine my discussion basically to the introduction and first three chapters of Imagined Communities , as I want to focus on Anderson’s understanding of the formation of national languages, not nation-states or nationalism, while fully recognizing that by so doing I am deviating from the main thesis of his book. Such a reading necessarily results in repeating the same “error” that many others seem to have committed and that Anderson laments in his preface to the second edition: it ignores one of the book’s critical points, expounded in chapter 4, which argues that nationalism had its origins in the New World. Yet to examine his erudite work in its entirety is beyond the scope of my book — not to mention my ability.

The essential thesis of the beginning section of Imagined Communities may be summarized as follows: a nation-state is not a natural entity. Today, much of humanity — except for those living in countries that have come into being only recently — tends to take the existence of nation-states for granted. Yet, Anderson argues, nation-states are merely “cultural artifacts” of modernity, created through intertwining forces of history. Once invented, however, they invoke deep attachments that often defy logic.

Let me start by applying this thesis to national language: a national language is not a natural entity. Aside from scholars of language, literature, or history, much of humanity is under the illusion that the language they now use is something their people have always used since ancient times. But just as with nation-states, national languages are nothing but “cultural artifacts” of modernity, created through intertwining historical forces. And yet once such languages come into existence, the historical process of their formation is forgotten, and people come to believe that their language is an expression of their deepest national — and ethnic — character. National languages give birth to national literatures; national literatures, in turn, help to build and solidify nation-states — the “imagined communities” for which millions of people in the past, present, and future sacrifice their lives.

What seems to me to be most innovative about Anderson’s understanding of the formation of national language — though apparently not everyone agrees — is his incorporation of the notion of “print capitalism” into his historical analysis. The invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in mid-fifteenth-century Europe made it possible to print mechanically what had previously been copied by hand; the enormous impact the invention had on the history of written language is now well established. Yet according to Anderson, this invention alone would not have led to a profound transformation in society unless printed books could be distributed as market commodities. (In fact, the printing press itself had been invented in China and Korea well before Gutenberg’s time.) The printing press proved transformational precisely because, in Europe, capitalism had by then developed to a point where books could circulate as market commodities. As books became commodities, they necessarily followed the market mechanism of supply and demand, eventually leading to the publication of books in what Anderson calls the “vernaculars,” which, in turn, led eventually to the formation of national languages.