Description
Book SynopsisIn an age of rising nationalism and expanding colonialism, the science of language has been intimately bound up with questions of immediate political concern. Taken together, the essays in this volume suggest that the emergence of language as an autonomous object of discourse was closely connected with the consolidation of new and sometimes competing forms of political community in the period following the French Revolution and the global spread of European power. This is the common thread running through the seven individual studies gathered here. By deliberately juxtaposing the European, academic configuration of modern linguistic research with the more practical, extra-European activities of missionaries, colonial officials, or East Asian literati, the authors explore the tensions between forms of linguistic knowledge generated in different geopolitical contexts, and suggest ways of thinking about the role of social science in the process of globalization.
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Ignoring Saussure Chapter 2 "Our History, Our Heritage": Language and Nationhood in Late Enlightenment Prussia Chapter 3 Return to Enlightenment: Franz Bopp's Reformation of Comparative Grammar Chapter 4 Dialects of Modernization in France and Italy, 1865-1900 Chapter 5 Reading Backwards: Language Politics and Cultural Identity in Nineteenth Century Scandinavia Chapter 6 Lost in Translation: Carl Buttner's Contribution to the Development of African Language Studies in Germany Chapter 7 Language Work and Colonial Politics in Eastern Africa: The Making of Standard Swahili and "School Kikuyu" Chapter 8 Cultural Identity, Education, and Language Politics in China and Japan, 1870-1920
