Europe Speaks

Abstract

During the post-1989 period, various forms of nationalism came back to haunt Eastern and Central Europe. Why are they so virulent and so dangerous in modern times? Since the modernization of the nineteenth century, language has not only been a normal means of communication and a substantial part of human identity but also plays an increasingly important political role: public opinion, media and politics all depend on a common language, which tends to become the language of the state. The process of linguistic homogenization by the state, which had already been completed in Western Europe, failed in this context. Europe will therefore have to come to terms with its linguistic diversity in the future. Is this nothing more than a hindrance?

Notes

1. Niklas Luhmann, Das Recht der Gesellschaft [Law as a Social System] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997) 55.

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (London: Routledge, 1994) §5.6.

3. The root nemý, dumb, is common to all Slavonic languages, together with the noun derivation nemec, the foreigner, as opposed to the self-description of the “Slavs” (from slovo, the word) as those “in command of the word.” Later, the word acquired the specific meaning of “the German,” which was also borrowed from the Hungarian (Németh). Václav Machek, Etymologický slovník jazyka ceského (Prague: Academia, 1971) 395. The Greek (onomatopoeic) word barbaros (i.e., the chatterer, mutterer) has a similar semantic origin.

4. It is noteworthy that it was Central Europeans who first recognized this inclusive and divisive meaning of language for modern societies – for example Ludwig Wittgenstein or Ernest Gellner. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).

5. Cf., for example, Arnold Gehlen, Man, his Nature and Place in the World (New York: Columbia UP, 1988) Part II.

6. Cf., for example, José Ortega y Gasset, Europäische Kultur und europäische Völker [European Culture and European Nations] (Stuttgart: DVA, 1954).

7. See, for example, André Holenstein, Die Huldigung der Untertanen: Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung 800–1800 [The Homage of the Subjects: Legal Culture and Power Structure 800–1800] (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1991).

8. Dante was the first to recognize the political meaning of the standard national language, which he clearly expressed in De vulgari eloquentia (1302). Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia [Concerning Poetry in the Native Tongue] (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1890).

9. We fall victim to this delusion all the more easily because we pay no attention to language under normal circumstances: most communication is concerned with the content or meaning, while language itself is completely “transparent,” i.e., invisible. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Mensch und Sprache [Man and Language] in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2: Hermeneutik und Methode (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986) 147–54.

10. The French National Assembly formally proscribed the use of all local dialects, designated by the highly pejorative term “patois.”

11. Cf. Miroslav Hroch, Na prahu národní existence [On the Threshold of National Existence] (Prague: Mlada Fronta, 1996); idem, In the National Interest: Demands and Goals of European National Movements of the Nineteenth Century: A Comparative Perspective (Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2000); idem, Comparative Studies in Modern European History: Nation, Nationalism, Social Change (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 2007); idem, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (New York: Columbia UP, 2000).

12. Cf. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

13. The fear of all transverse loyalties is especially noticeable in the early democratic constitutions, including the French Constitutions. The Constitution of 1791 not only dissolves the guilds and fraternities but also all pledges. According to the 1795 Constitution, one would forfeit one's citizenship by, for example, joining a religious fraternity or following residence abroad for seven years. The Norwegian Constitution of 1814 excludes both monks and Jews as suspect of other loyalties.

14. Cf. Ernest Gellner, Nationalismus und Moderne [Nationalism and Modernity] (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1991). In this way, modern political society to a certain extent returns to the conditions of the ancient polis, but with the difference that television is not an agora and permits only one-way communication.

15. It is noteworthy that, with the single exception of the “internationalist” Communist Party, which was not able to attract a great number of votes from the German population in Bohemia, all the other parties touted for votes in parallel Czech and German organizations – in reality each of these was directed at a different (communicative) society. Each parliamentary election therefore became a “daily plebiscite” about national adherence, as Ernest Renan had already aptly described the nation in 1875. Ernest Renan, Qu’est qu’une Nation? [What is a Nation?] (Toronto: Tapir, 1996).

16. See the very interesting study by Urs Altermatt, “Language and Nation: Is Switzerland a Model for Europe?” in Nation and National Ideology (Bucharest: New Europe College, 2002) 323–51. Altermatt dispels, amongst other conceptions, the tempting illusion that others could imitate the “Swiss model” in other places, as leading Czechoslovak politicians believed in the inter-war period.

17. There are other, non-linguistic factors that hold together this excellent political uniqueness. (Cf. the above-cited study by Urs Altermatt.) Otherwise, public opinion in all three (linguistic) zones is almost completely separate, as shown, for example, by the results of various referendums at federal level.

18. The somewhat strange behaviour of some countries (including the Czech Republic) during the negotiations concerning the European Constitution can be best explained, in my view, by the (mostly unspoken) fear of assimilation and the loss of this communicative independence. Therefore, the scarcely rational insistence on “national commissioners” for each Member State, the adherence to the principle of consensus and the right of veto. The Slovakian prime minister at that time, Carnogursky, expressed it well in 1991: Slovakia would like to have “its own star” on the European flag.

19. See Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture – A Theory of Western Civilization (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's, 2002).

20. For this reason, the first British governor of India, William Jones, the founder of modern Indology, had to be dismissed, because he paid too much attention to his scientific interests. Cf. Ivo Budil, Od prvotního jazyka k rase (Prague: Academia, 2003).

21. “La paix se produit comme cette aptitude a la parole” (peace emerges as this ability and readiness to speak). Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini: essai sur l’exteriorité [Totality and Infinity: Experiment in Exteriority] (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980) XI. This idea is similar to that quoted above from Luhmann, according to which, outside of the communicative society only “Events of another kind” can be recorded.

22. In general, see Robert Wright, The Moral Animal (New York: Vintage, 1995).

23. Cf. Robert Dunbar (ed.), The Evolution of Culture: An Interdisciplinary View (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999). From a cultural-anthropological viewpoint, see Michael Carrithers, Why Humans Have Cultures: Explaining Anthropology and Social Diversity (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1992).

24. This serves to remind us of the ancient word synoikia, meaning co-existence, used by Thucydides (The Peloponnesian War II.15) to explain the beginning of the polis. Their “federal” Constitution with several fylai (Aristotle, Politics 1319b) later gave rise to the first multilingual societies in the major cities, though only a fairly low level of integration existed.

25. Kant paid no attention to linguistic diversity, even in his anthropology, and one can assume that he saw it as a top-down process, as was later attempted by Napoleon. In contrast to Napoleon, we now know that stable political structures can only emerge in bottom-up fashion, i.e., through negotiation and communication.

26. In this respect, Europe has set itself a more difficult objective than that of the United States two hundred years ago with its “melting-pot” concept of linguistic unification and the exclusion of the native population. It is now precisely these two factors that practically prevent the United States from expanding any further. The integration of America desired by some people must start again on another level, starting from the beginning.