Language and Nationalism in the History of Modern Central Europe

1. Language and Nationalism in the History of Modern Central Europe Seminar, Ayoma Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan 14:00 – 18:00, July 10, 2011 Tomasz Kamusella University of St Andrews Scotland, UK

2. Methodology: How to Look to See More? (I) • Social sciences and the humanities as we know them, they emerged in the 19th c in thrall of the novel ideology of nationalism, and developed in the 20th c, aka, the age of nationalism • Straitjacket of received concepts: • - society = nation • - polity = nation-state (multiethnic, nation-less empires has become illegitimate) • - language = national standard language of a nation/state • - history = history of a nation/nation-state (anachronistically projected into the non-national past) • The nationally based construction of the social, cultural, political and economic world of today has become so ‘natural,’ that it appears to most transparent • National master narrative rules high & low

3. Methodology: How to Look to See More? (II) • What is missing from the picture? • - polities & human groups in their own right in the past, but today, deemed as ‘regional’ (Silesia, Carinthia, Bukovina, Banat) • - polities & human groups in their own right in the past, now seen as ‘supra-state’ (Holy Roman Empire, Austria- Hungary, Soviet Union) • Can world-wide trends be easily described in the terms of the mosaic of 200 national histories or sociologies? • Are national approaches in social sciences appropriate for the description and modeling of the European Union • Can the national be analyzed and described in the terms of the national > what about the cul-de-sac of tautology?

4. Methodology: How to Look to See More? (III) • Another predicament: disciplinary boundaries • Scholars fear to peer outside their disciplines not to be accused of amateurism and not to diminish their chances of employment • These disciplinary boundaries often constrain novel approaches and limit what may be researched; increasingly narrower tunnel vision of disciplines • As in a fable, for the want of the whole picture, one discipline describes a phenomenon as a snake, another as a tree trunk, and yet another as a water hose, though all are talking about the same: elephant • Pernicious legacy of Western dominance: sociology for the study of the ‘modern’ West; ‘oriental studies’ to probe into non-Western societies endowed with literacy; anthropology to scrutinize the illiterate ‘primitives’ • Marxism-leninism: different stages of historical-cum-economic development (modern-day version: not all societies ‘mature enough’ for democracy – justification for authoritarianism)

5. Methodology: How to Look to See More? (Tentative Answers) • Going against the grain of the national master narrative • - sub-state, regional, local studies, historiography, sociology • - supra-state, continental-wide studies, historiography, sociology • - global studies, ‘imperiology’ • Transcending disciplinary turfs • - interdisciplinary studies • - avoidance of preconceived & ideologically motivated assumptions • - Histoire croisée / gekreuzte Geschichte (multiperspective historiography) • - comparative, transnational, global studies (history, sociology, political science etc)

6. Transcending the National on My Own Palgrave 2009, 1168pp. 2nd (pbk) ed, May 2011 Purdue University Press 2007, 386pp

7. New ‘Transnational’ Projects • Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe • Trinity & Long Room Hub: 11 completed maps (2008-9), • Slavic Research Centre, Sapporo, Japan: Exhibition (2009) • Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe: The Concept & Its Perspective (2011) • EJ Hobsbawm: ‘It seems clear to me that your proposed Atlas will be of enormous interest and value.’ (2009) • New monograph The Triple Division of the Slavic Languages: A Linguistic Finding, a Product of Politics, or an Accident?(Fellowship, Slavic Research Center, Japan, Jun-Oct 2011), 2012-13 • New ed. work (2 vols) Borders of Identity and Language in Modern Central Europe: The Slavic World, 2011-12 • New ed. volume Thinking on Nationalism: Poland and Central Europe, 2012-13 • An Encyclopedia of the Social and Political History of Southern Africa’s Languages(Palgrave offered contract, Dec 2010), 2015-18

8. Central Europe: A What? • Before the mid-18th c, no Central, Eastern or Western Europe • Main line of division: the Alps, hence Northern & Southern Europe (cf the Great Northern War) • Late 18th c: Catherine II of Russia and the shift of the limit of Europe from the Don (ancient Tanais) to the Urals and the Caucasus • Russia became a European power per definitione, and its share of newly redefined Europe seen as ‘Eastern Europe’ • Hence, other European great powers (France, Britain, Spain) seemed to be gathered in ‘Western Europe’ • In the middle, the zone of ‘Kleinstaaterei’ (small polities) associated with the Holy Roman Empire (incl its two former polities: Switzerland and the Low Countries), the Apennine Peninsula and the Balkan possessions of the Ottoman Empire • Western Europe and Russia saw this ‘middle zone’ to be in the need of reform, or in other words ‘for grabs,’ and the partitions of Poland-Lithuania proved the point

9. ‘(Re)forming’ Central Europe (I) • The fiasco of the Napoleonic project of the military-style unification of Europe under French dominance • Russia became a genuine European power, after its troops, as part of the anti-Napoleonic coalition were billeted in Paris • Austria, Prussia and the German Confederation: a Mittleuropa in sight • Irritations: the tradition of the historic Kingdom of Hungary, the lingering memory of Poland-Lithuania, and the retreat of the Ottomans from the Balkans followed by the rise of a new wave of Kleinstaaterei (Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania) • The ensuing rivalry between Vienna & St Petersburg over the Balkans (Russia’s ‘Greater Bulgaria’ & Austria’s Bosnia) • An inconsistency: somehow Scandinavia (Denmark & Sweden-Norway) remained outside the bounds of Central Europe, perhaps ‘too peripheral,’ ‘too northern’ to be part of a continental center?

10. ‘(Re)forming’ Central Europe (II) • Until the late 18th c Latin was the common language of administration, politics & intellectual discourse in Central Europe, between the West with the dominance of vernacular literacies, the rising Russia where Church Slavonic continued and the Ottoman Empire in the south, where the triglossia of Arabic, Osmanlica & Persian was unified by the use of the same Arabic script for all the three languages • In Prussia German replaced Latin quite decisively by the mid-18th c, and in the Habsburg lands in the Holy Roman Empire at the turn of the 19th c • Irritations: Latin remained in its former role across historical Hungary, Polish dominated across western Russia (ie, in the territories seized from Poland-Lithuania), Slavic vernaculars were slow to disentangle themselves from the cultural-cum-political-cum religious unifying hold of Church Slavonic in the Balkans • Novel development: French as a new Latin for the elites

11. Scripts in Central Europe • Scripts connected to religious / confessional languages (Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin) in which a ‘holy book’ or its ‘sanctioned-sanctified’ translation is employed in liturgy and/or worship • Vernaculars, or other languages, as written by people professing a given religion, tended to be written in the script of this religion (Bulgarian and Russian in Cyrillic, Czech and German in the Latin alphabet, Osmanlica and Bosnian in the Arabic script, Yiddish and Ladino in Hebrew letters) • Nationalisms hardly changed this pattern (rare exception, the Latin script instead of Cyrillic for Romanian) • After WW II, the reduction of CE scripts to three (Cyrillic, Latin & Greek); tightly overlapping with state borders, except in Yugoslavia

13. Toward Mitteleuropa • In the second half of 19th c, CE shared by multiethnic empires (Austria-Hungary, Germany, the Ottomans and Russia) • Irritations: German Empire founded in 1871 as an ethnolinguistic nation-state, proliferation of nation-states in the Balkans, increasingly replacing religion with language as their legitimizing basis • Great War (WW I), Mitteleuropa as the sphere of economic and political dominance of the Central Powers (F Naumann) • Neutral Switzerland & Holland, and enemy Italy & Belgium not included in CE; and neither neutral Denmark & Sweden-Norway • Land Ober Ost (western Russia), or today’s Baltic republics, Belarus, and later southwestern Russia (today’s central & eastern Ukraine) under German & A-H occupation, hence, parts of Mitteleuropa • Finland (1917): Between Scandinavia, Russia & Central Europe

14. From Mitteleuropa to Central Europe • WW I & the aftermath: reorganization of Mitteleuropa in line with the ethnolinguistic model of nationalism yields CE • CE, due to the vagaries of WW I moved east in relation to how it had been envisaged before 1914 • Empires replaced by ethnolinguistic nation-states, from Finland and the Baltic to the Aegean and Asia Minor • Kleinstaaterei redivivus? • In the east the seemingly novel polity of the SU (though internally following the ethnonational principle) • In the west, the adequately ‘large’ nation-states of Italy & Germany • Berlin & Moscow weary of the CE Kleinstaaterei that used to belong to them • Scandinavia (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) as if out of the quarrel (but Finland in, craved for by the SU)

15. Eastern Europe & Reimagining CE • WW II: Hitler & Stalin divided CE / Kleinstaaterei, end of CE • Holocaust of Jews & Roma – the demographic ‘glue’ of CE evaporated • Cold War & the Iron Curtain: reinforcement of the division of Europe, only Western & Eastern Europe, no place for CE • Paradoxes: neutral Austria & Finland, alongside non-Soviet communist Yugoslavia – a shadow of CE • Respublica Literaria Europa Centralis: émigré Soviet bloc authors & scholars writing CE back into the intellectual map of Europe ( Bibó, Brodski, Kundera, Miłosz, Venclova) • East CE & West CE, reluctance of the latter leg (not in the Soviet bloc) to be part of a postulated CE • 1970s: détente & the taste of the West in the Soviet bloc • 1980s: Solidarity, glasnost, perestroika, collapse; CE a new idea: ‘we are not Eastern Europe’ • 1990s: ‘Going back to the West’

16. Is There Still a CE? • 1992: CEFTA (Czechoslovakia / CZ & SK, H, PL) + SLO (1996) + RO (1997) + BG (1999) + CRO (2003) • 2004: ‘Big bang’ enlargement of the EU > CZ, H, PL, SK, SLO left CEFTA • 2007: small enlargement of the EU > BG & RO left CEFTA • Only CRO left in CEFTA, but in 2006 joined by Macedonia, and in 2007 by Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro & Serbia • Joining EU = leaving CEFTA, all CEFTA members aspire to join the EU • Acceding the EU = Returning to the West (ie Western Europe) • Where does it leave CE? Is it still an attractive analytical, cultural, social and political concept?

17. Scholars on CE • Narrow concepts: • - CE = Danubian basin (Hungarians & Austrians) • - CE = A, H, PL, CZ, SLO (& D ?) (Mitteleuropa) • Question: Were are the Balkans?, in Europe? Is it part of CE? (Todorova Imagining the Balkans?) • Question: Scandinavia is part of Europe, but is it part of CE?, is Finland part of Eastern Europe, if not, of CE? • Broad concepts: • - In-Between Europe: from Scandinavia to Greece & Turkey, from eastern Germany, Austria & Italy to the Baltic Republics, Belarus, Moldavia, Ukraine and the Black Sea • - Magocsi Historical Atlas of CE, geographical equidistant midsection of Europe (but why Scandinavia, EST & LAT left out?) • In the end, CE is an arbitrary concept when applied by researcher; a state of mind indeed, as all human concepts are • Cf before 1772 there was no Galicia, it disappeared in 1918/39, but still haunts people’s memories and history textbooks

18. What / When Is Nation? • No agreement how to define the term ‘nation’ • I don’t attempt it either • It seems nation can be anything, as long as other entities already recognized as nations (at best, those equipped with their polities, or nation-states) recognize the new applicant • At the level of the actual practice of being a nation, it is the highest rank of distinction a human group can gain; by (national) definition there are no cohesive human groups of a higher rank more legitimate than nations (19th-21st cc) • As such nation is the only kind of human groups that is considered eligible for its own state; by definition no other human groups possess this right • Nations can be demographically tiny (the Tuvaluans – 11,000), or immense (the Chinese – 1.4 bn) • Thus, ‘nation’ seems to be an ascriptive label, the application of which is controlled relationally

19. What / When is a Language? • They say people speak something reified as languages • In the pre-literate era, people usually spoke to communicate, nowadays, people first have to speak a language before communication can take place; another feature of modernity? • No linguistic definition of ‘a language’ • Bloomfield 1926: languages mutually unintelligible, on the contrary dialects mutually intelligible • a student of Weinreich’s (1945): ‘a language is a dialect with an army & navy’ • Dialects of Chinese mutually unintelligible, but dialects; Moldovan & Romanian mutually intelligible, but languages • Extralinguistic factors (politics) determine what is / isn’t a language • Like ‘nation,’ ‘a language’ is an ascriptive label, applied and controlled relationally

20. Nationalism: 1st Globalwide Infrustructural Ideology of Statehood Legitimization (I) • Before 1914, the world divided among empires; nation-states in the Americas & the Balkans • After WW I, CE divided into nation-states • After WW II, decolonization, colonies into nation-states • 1991: breakup of the non-national SU into nation-states • Nation-state – the sole model of legitimate statehood accepted today all over the world, including in theocratic Iran (umma is mentioned in an abstract manner, in practice the Iranian nation is the entity for which the gov’t works & from which derives its legitimity) • All the world divided into nation-states, ie, polities proclaiming themselves as nation-states, and recognized as such by other nation-states

21. Nationalism: 1st Globalwide Infrustructural Ideology of Statehood Legitimization (I) • H Kohn. 1962. The Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History. • The model of nation-state (or the ideology of nationalism) originated in the West, from where it spread all over the globe in the 19th and 20th cc • Today the nation-state is the ‘universal & standard unit’ of statehood, the infrustructural basis for constructing the basic political framework of the globe & international relations • E Gellner. 1983. Nations & Nationalism: Nationalism is the political principle of tight spatial and ideological overlapping of nation & its nation-state (or ‘cultural’ & ‘political’ units) • Polities, people do differ in ideology, but de facto all espouse (tacitly or overtly) nationalism as the first-ever universal infrustructural ideology of the world

22. Nationalisms Classified • Basic, ‘heuristic,’ ideal models of nationalism: • - civic n > a state’s population, as citizenry, made into a nation • - ethnic n > a population defined by a set of selected cultural factors defined as a nation, then a territory populated by the nation’s members made into a nation- state • In reality, varying degrees of ethnic & civic nationalisms present in each extant nationalism • By definition nationalisms of stateless nations / national movements must be ethnic • Paradox: citizenship (as the basis of civic nationalism) is a cultural construct, too, hence logically, civic nationalism is a subset of ethnic nationalism, should we stick to the definitions given here

23. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (I) • Civic nationalisms easily adopt the borders of existing, non-national, polities; disruptions in everyday life and international repercussions may be minimal • The logic of ethnic nationalisms requires destruction of the ‘unjust’ and ‘incorrect’ pre-national borders, to replace them with postulated national ones; disruptions in everyday life and international repercussions considerable, and often wide-ranging and long-lasting • Ethnolinguistic nationalism is a ‘subspecies’ of ethnic nationalism. From an immense repertory of cultural features, language is selected as the sole one to build a nation on it • The idea of ethnolinguistic nationalism appeared with German nationalism, which itself was a reaction to French (ideologically, civic) nationalism, whose Europe-wide thrust destroyed the oldest and largest European polity – the Holy Roman Empire, previously a home to the majority of German-speakers

24. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (II) • Definition of the German nation > E M Anrndt. 1809. ‘Was ist Deutschland?’: ‘Germany is there where the German language clings’ • Def of ethnolinguistic nationalism > language = nation = nation-state • Subsiding of German nationalism until 1848-49 • In reaction to German nationalism’s claims to entire Mitteleuropa, the emergence of other ethnolinguistic nationalisms • 2nd half of the 19th c, the growth of ethnolinguistic nat’l movements in CE • First successes of ethnolinguistic nat’lism: Italy (1861) & German Empire (1871) founded as ethnolinguistic nation-states • Ergo, progressing deligitimization of Austria-Hungary as a non-national, multiethnic polity

25. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (III) • The question of Balkan nation-states: founded on the ethno-religious or ethno-religious-linguistic basis; but under the impression of the economic and political success of Italy & Germany, made into ethnolinguistic nation-states (emulation) • Germany’s national ‘know-how’ imported with various German-speaking rulers from the territory of the former Holy Roman Empire • Albania (1913) founded already as an ethnolinguistic nation-state, ie, for people speaking Albanian, despite their religious differences (Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics) • This ‘monarchical know-how’ also helpful when Noraway founded as an ethnolgsc nation-state after the dissolution of its union with Sweden (1905) • WW I & Germany’s Land Ober Ost > the first-ever use of the following languages in administration and education: Belarusian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian & Yiddish; stoking up new ethnolinguistic nat’lisms to prevent the return of this area to Russia

26. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (IV): The Aftermath of the Great War • Destruction of non-national Austria-Hungary with the complicity of the West (Wilsonian principle of ‘national self-determination’) • The founding of the following ethnolinguistic nation-states: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Kdm of Serbs Croats & Slovenes, Turkey • Short-lived independence of further ethnolgsc nation-states: Belarus, Ukraine, Idel-Ural (Volga-Ural), Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia • 1922: non-national Soviet Union, but internally divided into ethnolgsc republics • The system of the League of Nations mandates partly imparts the ideals of ethnolgsc nationalism to the Middle East (cf Balfour declaration & the idea of Jewish state)

27. Some Theory (I): Hroch • Miroslav Hroch. 1985. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe • Phase model of the emergence of ethnolinguistic nations • - Phase A : antiquarian/folklore interest in an ethnic group (usually by non-coethnics) • - Phase B: some members of the ethnic group read books on their group and start a nat’l movement • - Phase C: massification of the movement, most prospective members of the postulated nation espouse it • - (Phase D: the nation obtains ‘its’ nation-state) • - (Phase E: waning & the disappearance of the nation & its nation-state) • NB: Heuristic model: some phases may take place in a different temporal order

28. Some Theory (II): Haugen • Einar Haugen . 1966. ‘Dialect, Language, Nation.’ American Anthropologist • Selection of norm (choosing dialect[s] for making a language through collecting & publishing folk songs, legends etc) • Codification of norm (making the language tangible through grammars, dictionaries, translations of the Bible, literature) • Elaboration of function (endeavoring to use this language in each & every sphere of a community’s life) • Acceptance by the community (the entire community – read ‘nation’ – is supposed to accept it as its sole & only ‘national’ language of intracommunal communication • NB: Heuristic model: some phases may take place in a different temporal order

29. Some Theory (III): A Synthesis • Ethnolinguistic national movements / nations may be usefully analyzed through the lens of the combined models of Hroch & Haugen (cf T Kamusella. 2001. ‘Langauge as an Instrument of Nationalism in Central Europe.’ Nations and Nationalism) • - (1) Phase A ≈ Selection of Norm • - (2) Phase B ≈ Codification of Norm • - (3) Phase C ≈ Elaboration of Function • - (4) Phase D ≈ Acceptance by the Community • NB: Heuristic model: some phases may take place in a different temporal order

30. Some Theory (IV): A Slovak Example • Phase A: turn of the 19th c; Selection of Norm: 1790s-1850s • Phase B: 1840s-1863 & 1875-1919; Codification of Norm: 1820s (aborted), 1840s-1870s + 1930s + 1960s • Phase C: 1863-1875 + 1919-1930s; Elaboration of Function: 1919-1939 + 1945-1993 • Phase D: 1939-1945 + 1993-today; Acceptance by the Community: 1939-1945 + 1993-today

31. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (IV): The Ideological Hold of Language • Czechoslovakia proclaimed as the state of the nation of Czechoslovaks with their national Czechoslovak language; neither Czechoslovaks or such a language was actualized • Similarly, Serbocroatoslovenian proclaimed as the national language of the Kdm of Serbs Croats & Slovenes (since 1929, Yugoslavia), in official publications Croats & Serbs made into ‘Serbo-Croats’ to correspond to the actual use of Serbo-Croatian as Yugoslavia’s official language • Turkey: the replacement of the Ottomans’ Osmanlica with a Turkish language made on the spur of moment; 1928: the ‘backward’ Arabic script replaced with the ‘modern & progressive’ Latin one (cf Japan’s Romaji & China’s Pinyin) • The SU: Radical language destruction & construction, influenced Turkey & East Asia

32. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (V): Soviet Language Destruction & Construction • Ban on established languages connected to religion, also serving as lgs of wider communication: Arabic, Grabar (Old Artmenian), Hebrew, Tibetan • Ban on languages of wider communication, allowing for contact with countries outside the SU: Chaghatay, Osmanlica, Persian • Territorial limits on the use of established regional languages of wider communication: German, Polish, Tatar • Ethnographic trips & statistical tweaking to establish the number of ethnic/national groups in order to know how many new languages should be established through dictionaries, grammars, book publishing and use at schools • Gradually, Russian made into the language of ‘interethnic communication’ in the SU, predicted to become the Soviet/communist language of all the Soviet people/nation

33. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (VI): Soviet Scripts Games (1) • Turn of the 20th c : Western stereotype > • - alphabetic script (Latin) = development & progress; • - consonantries (Arabic) = backwardness & stagnation; • - syllabaries (Devanagari) = even more backward • - morphemic scripts (Chinese) = bottom of the heap • The SU: Latinization (1923) – ‘instrument of Leninism’ (except Armenian, Belarusian, Georgian, Russian, Yiddish) • Advantages: no access to books in earlier scripts, books in the Latin scripts controlled by the Soviet gov’t • Disadvantages: easier access to books published in Europe; after Turkey switched to the Latin script in 1928, easier contact between Turkic Soviet Central Asia and Caucasus • Ergo, no Latiniziation for Belarusian, Russian or Ukrainian, though proposed

34. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (VII): Soviet Scripts Games (2) • The aforementioned disadvantages of the Latin script convinced the Kremlin to wrap up the Latinization campaign • Between the mid-1930s & the late 1940s all the Latin script-based languages Cyrillified • The process accelerated due to the revival of Russian nationalism (for war mobilization) during WW II • Cyrillic-script uniformity on the entire territory of the SU, with the exception of the Baltic republics, Armenia & Georgia • The Soviet western frontier sharply coincided with the equally sharp Cyrillic-Latin scriptural border • After the breakup of the SU, Cyrillic is the sole legal script (Duma 2002) for the languages indigenous on the territory of the Russian Federation

35. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (VIII): CE Between the Two World Wars • After WW I the principle of national self-determination denied to Hungary, and Germany, Austria & the contiguous German-speaking areas in CE • New nation-states, as founded after 1918, turned out to be miniature ‘Austria-Hungarys’ with millions of speakers of other languages (minorities) living in them • The creation of ethnolinguistic minorities (assumed to be members of other nations) made them into a pawn of international and domestic politics • ‘True’ German nation-state: the Anschluss of Austria, the seizure of the ‘Sudetenland’ (1938) • ‘True Hungary:’ seizure of formerly Hungarian territories from (Czechoslovakia): Slovakia & Subcarpathian Ruthenia, Romania (1938-1940)

36. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (IX): WW II & the Imperial Urge • The division of Central Europe between Germany and the SU (the origin of the postwar division of the continent into Western & Eastern Europe) • The German-Soviet coaxing of Germans from the Soviet share of CE to ‘come back’ to Germany or Germany’s new Mitteleuropa • Deportations / extermination of Polish-speakers from the Soviet share of CE • Germany’s non-ethnolinguistically justified (ie ‘racial’) extermination of German- & Germanic (Yiddish)-speaking Jews • Expulsions of non-Germans from Greater Germany • Mutual Croato-Serbian ethnic cleansing in occupied Yugoslavia • Mutual Polish-Ukrainian ethnic cleansing

37. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism (X): The Aftermath & CE de-Central-Europeanized • Expulsions of Germans from CE to Germany/Austria • Expulsions of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia • Expulsions of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians from Poland • Expulsions of Poles from the SU • Deportations of Estonians, Latvians & Lithuanians within the SU • Between 1938-48 c 10 m people killed, 40 m people expelled or deported (permanently or temporarily) • Result: an unusual CE of ethnolinguistically homogenous populations (nations) inhabiting ‘their’ respective nation-states • Communism ‘froze’ population movements; but in the enlarged EU people move & multilingualism/multiethnicity springs back to life • Was the mindboggling human cost worth paying for this bubble of short-lived ethnolinguistic homogeneity?

38. Normative Isomorphism of Language, State & Nation-State (I) • How to operationalize the concept of ethnolinguistic nationalism for research? • Which nationalisms / nation-states can be usefully labeled as ‘ethnolinguistic’ and which ones should be left alone • If ethnolinguistic nationalism is a tight spatial and ideological overlapping of language, nation and state; the basic principles of this overlapping could be derived from the agreed upon examples of nations & states deemed as ‘ethnolinguistic’ • A set of such principles would allow for the operationalization of the idea of ethnolinguistic nationalism for the sake of research

39. Normative Isomorphism of Language, State & Nation-State (II) • NECESSARY PRINCIPLES • 1: The speakers of a language constitute a nation (ergo, the language is a national one) • 2: The territory inhabited by this language’s speakers should be made into the nation’s nation-state • 3: The nation’s national language cannot be shared with any other nation or polity • 4: No autonomous regions with official languages other than the national one can exist in the nation’s nation-state • 5: By the same token, no autonomous regions with the nation’s language can exist in other polities • Three more – ideal (not necessary, though desired) – principles • (A) No speakers of other than the national one should live in the nation-state • (B) No speakers of the national language should live outside their nation-state • (C) speakers of the national language shouldn’t know any other language

44. Multilingual Central Europe of Today • Despite the frequently state-enforced policy of monolingualism in the state’s national language • And disregard for languages ideologically not connected to any extant nation-states • A high degree of (however quickly waning) multilingualism and linguistic variety still survives in Central Europe • Should we treasure or abhor this variety?

47. A Global Look at the Isomorphism • Polities outside CE fulfilling this isomorphism: Iceland (Icelandic) in Western Europe, and in Asia: Bhutan (Dzongkha), Cambodia (Khmer), Indonesia (Indonesian), Japan (Japanese), Laos (Lao), Thailand (Thai), Turkmenistan (Turkmen), Vietnam (Vietnamese) • Out of the total of the 20 ethnolinguistic nation-states meeting the isomorphism, 12 are located in CE, 7 in Asia and 1 in Western Europe • But many more people live in the ‘isomorphic’ polities in East & Southeast Asia than in CE

48. The Isomorphic Polities Compared • Southeast Asia appears similar to CE in its ethnolgsc legitimization of statehood • Out of the 12 isomorphic nation-states in CE, 7 employ Slavic languages (BG, CZ, MC, MK, PL, SL & SK) • Is it a ‘Slavic’ predilection in CE? • Out of the 20 isomorphic states only 3 appear to have achieved the ideal of actual ethnolinguistic homogeneity: Iceland, Japan & Poland • Iceland & Japan, as island polities, are geographically isolated, which helps • The homogeneity in Japan was achieved after the loss of its empire in 1945 • The homogeneity in Poland was imposed from outside with massive expulsions, extermination & border changes

49. Questions to the Listeners • Is Japan similar to CE in its use of language for defining the nation and for statehood legitimization? • Is it the result of borrowing ideas from Prussia/Germany? • Is the popularity of the normative isomorphism in SE Asia a legacy of French & Dutch colonialism? • Can Hroch’s model be fruitfully used to explain the formation of the Japanese nation? • Can Haugen’s model be fruitfully used to explain the construction of the Japanese language? • Can both the models be usefully combined to shed light on the rise of the normative isomorphism in Japan?

50. What is Dialect Continuum ? • Before the invention of writing and the codification of languages, language changes gradually from village to village, from region to region • Thus creating chains of gradually changing (but still mutually comprehensible) dialects, from which dialect continua are built • Speakers from different dialect continua do not understand each other • (This barrier of incomprehensibility may be bridged by multilingualism)