Mayssa Chehata, Blog #3: Language, Nations, and all the Rest

The development of language is crucial in the formation of nations. We've discussed how a nation is created, where it exists (in my opinion, in the mind), and how it is manifested in everyday life and society. Crucial to this notion of an “imagined community” Anderson writes about are the things that connect a person to hundreds, thousands, or even millions or billions of other people, even though they often times will never see, meet or know those individuals. Language is one of those crucial connectors.

Below is an excerpt from a paper I wrote on Anderson’s Imagined Communities discussing the role and importance of language:

With print came a movement away from Latin and towards vernacular languages. These “languages-of-state” developed as demand for print increased rapidly among non-Latin speaking classes. Philosopher Ernest Blotch noted that in medieval Western Europe, “‘Latin was not the only language in which teaching was done, it was the only language taught’” (18). After print-capitalism’s rise in the sixteenth century, a rapid increase in vernacular literature was evident. Of 88 books printed in Paris before 1501, 80 were in Latin. Following this, however, the vast majority of print was in French. As Anderson puts it, “Latin’s hegemony was doomed” (18). And with Latin’s damnation came a new connecting force of the imagined community: vernacular language. As print developed in the vernacular as opposed to Latin, this connection with other members of one’s nation became more psychologically real, for just by reading in the vernacular one could imagine countless others doing the same. When Latin was the institutionalized language throughout Europe, it was easy to disregard fellow readers as distant. Only with the development of languages-of-state do we see people becoming aware of their fellow nationals. As Anderson puts it, “the fall of Latin exemplifies a larger process in which the sacred communities integrated by old sacred languages were gradually fragmented, pluralized, and territorialized” (19).

Looking more closely at the underlined segments, I think this brings up a very important point about the movement away from Latin as the scholarly language and towards vernacular languages. I have asked in previous posts if it would be possible to feel connected to the nation of “humanity,” and see one another as all alike and connected.  Thinking back to the days when the majority of books were printed in Latin and nearly all scholarship and teaching was of the Latin language, I wonder if there was this broader sense of connection/community to all the people who were learning, teaching, and reading in Latin. Or was it the case that “it was easy to disregard fellow readers as distant”? Possibly the latter, because although the printing and education was in Latin, vernacular language still existed, it was just less of a connecting force until print capitalism took hold.

However I don’t know if this is the entire story. I think about societies and communities in which print is not a big part of the culture and the way information I disseminated. In some cultures and in some nations, oral tradition is still strong and in some cases more important and more pervasive than a print tradition. An example would be the Maasai, or the Maa, language of the Maasai people of South Kenya and North Tanzania, which although it is a written language and there is a Maasai dictionary, it is not commonly written. In schools, generally Swahili and/or English are taught, however the Maasai certainly identify themselves as a nation separate from that of Kenya or Tanzania.

This can also be thought about in the context of Triumph of the Will. There seems to be some sort of national mentality that is being built, in conjunction and in exploitation of the idea of German nationalism, but something that is slightly different; almost a Nazi nation. So while these people are all connected by the German language, and we can think about the role print capitalism played in perpetuating that vernacular language, there are other important elements connecting all of these people. From the scenes we watched, a love and admiration for Adolf Hitler certainly seems to be at play. Also possibly a common sense of racism and intolerance could have contributed to the creation of this sort of a demented imagined nation within the German nation-state.

These examples make me wonder about the role other important connectors play in the imagination of a nation. Is any single one more important than the other, or do they all work in conjunction with the rest to form the “perfect psychological storm” that creates that bonding and connectivity necessary for a nation?