Voices of Modernity Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality Bauman

Voices of ModernityLanguage Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality

This 2003 book discusses how new ways of thinking about language have uncovered previously 'legitimated' linguistic and social inequalities.

Richard Bauman (Author), Charles L. Briggs (Author)

9780521810692, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 July 2003

376 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.67 kg

'Bauman and Briggs have written the most fundamental, significant work ever for linguistic anthropologists and probably for all anthropologists with the slightest concern with reflexivity and practice.' Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

Language and tradition have long been relegated to the sidelines as scholars have considered the role of politics, science, technology and economics in the making of the modern world. This reading of over two centuries of philosophy, political theory, anthropology, folklore and history argues that new ways of imagining language and representing supposedly premodern people - the poor, labourers, country folk, non-europeans and women - made political and scientific revolutions possible. The connections between language ideologies, privileged linguistic codes, and political concepts and practices shape the diverse ways we perceive ourselves and others. This 2003 book demonstrates that contemporary efforts to make schemes of social inequality based on race, gender, class and nationality seem compelling and legitimate, rely on deeply-rooted ideas about language and tradition. Showing how critics of modernity unwittingly reproduce these foundational fictions, it suggests strategies for challenging the undemocratic influence of these voices of modernity.

1. Introduction2. Making language safe for science and society: from Francis Bacon to John Lock3. Antiquaries and philologists: the construction of modernity and its others in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England4. The critical foundations of national epic: Hugh Blair, the Ossian controversy, and the rhetoric of authenticity5. Johann Gottfried Herder: language reform, das Volk, and the patriarchal state in eighteenth-century Germany6. The Brothers Grimm: scientizing, textual production in the service of romantic nationalism7. Henry Rowe school craft and the making of an American textual tradition8. The foundation of all future researches: Franz Boas, George Hunt, Native American texts and the construction of modernity9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], History of ideas [JFCX], Philosophy [HP], Literary theory [DSA], Linguistics [CF]