Ghosts of the past: the uncanny presence of Nazi sources in post-war sociolinguistics

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the at-first-sight puzzling presence of Nazi linguistics as sources in two post-war sociolinguistic works, authored by Joshua Fishman and Uriel Weinreich respectively. It offers an account of who these Nazi linguists were and the basic ideological positions they represented. The argument is made that the presence of these sources reflects a wider problem in post-war sociolinguistics, namely a lack of awareness of the nature of interwar language politics. The question of Umvolkung (‘assimilation’, ‘transethnization’, ‘ethnoconversion’) in interwar Europe concerned state boundaries and the status of ethnolinguistic minorities. In the post-war United States, assimilation was understood in the context of indigenous and migrant languages and cultures, within a language ecology dominated by English. Post-War US identity politics concerned social and institutional space, rather than the ownership and occupation of territory. The same concept may be potentially toxic in one sociopolitical context and progressive in another.

KEYWORDS:

• Joshua Fishman
• Uriel Weinreich
• history of sociolinguistics
• Nazi linguistics
• ethnopolitics in interwar Europe
• identity politics in the United States

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Round Table on ‘Disturbing Sociolinguistics’, held at the University of Hong Kong, 8–9 March 2018. I am most grateful to the organisers, Adam Jaworski and Allan Bell. My thanks go to David Karlander for many helpful discussions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The earliest recorded use of the term ‘sociolinguistics’ (actually ‘Socio-Linguistics’) is in Hodson (1939) (see Hymes 1979). Thomas Callan Hodson (1871–1953) was professor of anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

² Among the supporting faculty members was Heinz Kloss. Fishman mentions the following attendees: Charles Ferguson, Einar Haugen, Dell Hymes, William Bright, John Gumperz, Stanley Lieberson, William Labov. For a full list, see ‘1964 Linguistic Institute, Final Report’, available at: fedora.dlib.indiana.edu.

³ One might argue that the field of sociolinguistics has now, in part, entered a postmodern phase.

⁴ See Peter Yongqi Gu, A bibliography on Language Planning and Language Policy in China, available at: www.sas.upenn.edu.

⁵ See the chronology prepared by Gerd Simon and his collaborators, https://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de//gerd.simon/ChrKuhn.pdf.

⁶ For a detailed chronology of Kloss’ career prepared by Gerd Simon and collaborators, see https://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de//gerd.simon/ChrKloss.pdf.

⁷ This is not included in a list of Haugen’s publications (Firchow, Firchow et al. 1972).

⁸ This version was published as Weinreich (2013), see Muntendam (2013).

⁹ One can also find this ‘battlefield’ metaphor deployed elsewhere in writings on bilingualism (‘The brain as the battlefield of languages’, Laponce 1987: 5–23). Laponce’s intellectual formation dates to this period (see Laponce 1960).

¹⁰ Robert Beck was an assistant at the Institute for Psychology in Berlin (Geuter 2008: 81) and a member of the SS (Ash 1998: 340). Weinreich cites his book Schwebendes Volkstum im Güntert (1938), though it is indicated that he had not been able to consult a copy.

¹¹ I have not been able to find any further information about Melching, beyond the reference in Weinreich (Melching 1938).

¹² The text is available at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp.

¹³ One traditional way for talking about nationalism to distinguish between its ethnic (or organic) and civic varieties (Smith 1991; Becker 2004).

¹⁴ See Document 3859-PS, setting out plans for the restructuring of the population of Bohemia and Moravia, dated 31 August 1940 ([International Military Tribunal] 1949: 252–271).

¹⁵ The closest to an exception is Saussure’s systems-theoretical notion of langue – but linguistics was only able to function by ignoring the implications of this. Saussure also insists that Brussels is Germanic ‘because this city is situated in the Flemish part of Belgium’ (Saussure [1916] 1972: 269; Joseph 2012: 570).

¹⁶ For a detailed assessment of Schmidt-Rohr, see Knobloch (2005).

¹⁷ Within sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, these questions of location are now being addressed within the framework of Southern Theory (Pennycook & Makoni 2019).

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Christopher Hutton

Christopher Hutton is chair professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. He holds a BA in Modern Languages (1980) and a DPhil in General Linguistics from the University of Oxford (1988), an MA in Linguistics from Columbia University (1985), and an LLB from Manchester Metropolitan University (2008). His research concerns the history of linguistics, in particular the relationship between linguistics and race theory. In the past decade he has been working on the politics of language and interpretation in the context of the law. His publications include Linguistics and the Third Reich (Routledge, 1999), Race and the Third Reich (Polity Press, 2005), Word Meaning and Legal Interpretation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Integrationism and the Self (Routledge, 2019).