1. Language & Identity in Multilingual Environments
Representations & Self-Representations
Laura A. Janda

2. Overview National identity linked to language What is a language?
History of nationalism
What is a language?
Why is it a core factor of identity?
How many languages & countries are there?
Matrix vs. embedded languages
Colonialism & post-colonialism
Group vs. individual interests

3. Nation, Nationality, and Nationalism
Are innovative, recent concepts, artifacts created in late 18th century in W. Europe (Anderson 1991)
Prior to the advent of nationality, and in the absence of technologies such as print, railroads, automobiles, how were human societies organized?

4. Local communities
Dynastic realms
Religious communities

5. Local Community Religious Community Dynastic Realm
Defined by place – people who are close enough for face-to-face contact
Can be multilingual
Religious Community
Defined by faith, but could potentially reach all mankind
Often used a sacred language, “superior” to vernaculars
Dynastic Realm
Defined by loyalty to royal leader
Eventually took on nationalist features in W. Europe

6. Nationalism – A product of W. European Romanticism
Three German philosophers:
Johann Gottfried Herder
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Johann Gottlieb Fichte

7. Nationalism – A product of W. European Romanticism
Three German philosophers:
Johann Gottfried Herder
“Has a nation anything more precious than the language of its fathers?”

8. Nationalism – A product of W. European Romanticism
Three German philosophers:
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Language is the “spiritual exhalation” of the nation

9. Nationalism – A product of West European Romanticism
Three German philosophers:
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
“Men are formed by language far more than language is formed by men”
German nation and language are superior

10. A modern definition of nation (Anderson 1991)
An imagined political community that is both limited and sovereign
Imagined because members cannot all know each other
Limited because no nation encompasses all of mankind, nor even aspires to
Sovereign because nations came into being during Enlightenment and strive for freedom
Community because a nation is conceived of as a horizontal comradeship of equals

11. What do the people of a nation share?
A name
A language
A territory
Myths & memories
A culture
An economy
Rights and duties
An “ideal” nation-state assumes
ONE nation = ONE state
Q: Which are necessary? Which are un/chosen? Which are objective/discrete?

12. Language (Andersen 1991)
A language is a powerful means to root a nation to a past because a language looms up from the past without any birthdate of its own, and suggests a community between a contemporary society and its dead ancestors
Poetry, songs, national anthems create a simultaneous community of selfless voices

13. Why is language a key factor in identity? (Janda forthc)
Vehicle for culture (both “C” and “c”)
Vehicle of transmission for “wordless” media (dance, cuisine, handicrafts)
If language is lost, access to culture is also lost
Cultural concepts are embedded in language
Language and culture co-evolve, are continuously tailored to each other

14. What is a language? A dialect?
Mutual comprehensibility?
This works for some situations, but are there counterexamples?
It doesn’t work for :
German (incomprehensible dialects)
Norwegian,Swedish,Danish (comprehensible)
Slavic (both situations)
Chinese
Q: What’s going on?
A: IMAGINATION
See Ethnologue's criteria

15. Problem with the “ideal” nation-state
Q: How many countries are there in the world?
A: 192.
Q: How many languages are there in the world?
A: At least 6912.

16. Why are languages important? (Harrison 2006, Janda forthc)
They contain information about culture and human interaction
They contain information about sustainable use of niche environments
They contain information about the human brain
Languages are repositories of human knowledge
Most languages of the world belong to indigenous nations
Most of human knowledge is in the hands/mouths of indigenous peoples

17. Matrix and Embedded Languages
Matrix – a language that is connected to political structures, that serves purposes of national or regional communication
Embedded – a language that is used within a single ethnic group, that is under pressure from a matrix language
Nearly all indigenous languages are embedded languages

18. Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
Colonialism has
Created “new” boundaries and identities that persist in post-colonial era
Treated indigenous peoples and their languages in different ways
Sometimes shifted the identity of languages as matrix vs. embedded

19. Group vs. Individual Interests for Indigenous Languages
Group Interests
Preserve indigenous language
Have monolingual speakers, transmission to young generation
Have education in native language
Individual Interests
Social and economic upward mobility
Fluency in (one or more) matrix language

20. Bibliography
Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities. London/New York: Verso.
Edwards, John Language, Society and Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harrison, K. David When Languages Die: The extinction of the world's languages and the erosion of human knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Janda, Laura A. Forthcoming. "From Cognitive Linguistics to Cultural Linguistics", to appear in Slovo a smysl/Word and Sense.