Apples and oranges, I know.

The standardization of dialect seems a very modern thing. As you said, the ideas of nationalism and common language seem to come hand-in-hand.

I wonder whether this relates to what Chris said above about Newspeak: language opens to change as your sense of nation changes. A homegrown power comes about through a change in identity, which may come from or with a change in language. I’ve argued that the effect of politics to language may be negligible, but can politics and language be effected by some other factor (such as nationalism)? Can coincident change in both be separated from change in one caused by change in the other?

What of the Akkadians and their inability to overwhelm Aramaic? Was their failure a misunderstanding of the relationship between language and political power, or was it indicative of some failure of nationhood, of common identity? What would this mean for Canada, which is split into French and English on a national level, and whose urban centres include sizable populations of people that do not identify very strongly with Canada and that speak languages other than English and French?

I think I can come up with another example how political power changed language. This happened when national states were born in Europe. Before that there was nobody who would care about how people would write or speak. That means there was not really any homogeneous German language available these days, for example. People would speak their own local dialects and write the same way they speak (if they could write). This changed when more and more power went into the hands of the evolving administrations of these modern national states. the ruling elite thought it was necessary to impose some general rules about how people should write their language. This also applies for grammar since this alters from dialect to dialect. I think it is mainly due to the fact that new administration offices were communicating in written form. A unified way how to communicate, i.e. defining a homogeneous oral and written language, would be a benefit. I think this is because otherwise they would find words of colleges speaking a different dialect at least weird. If not they would just not understand and all kinds of misunderstandings would arise–deadly for an efficient administration. It was a political decision of the 19. century to impose and encourage one single homogeneous language on the country. This applies at least for France and Germany. In a way this might also serve as an example how a language is transformed that is already spoken. This is because we are looking at dialects here or at least, if you will, languages that are pretty near to each other.

There is other countries like Austria-Hungary where this was very difficult to achieve. Probably because too many languages too different from each other and spoken by too many different strong ethnic groups hating each other prevented this to happen, i.e. we are not talking about dialects here. So this might serve as counter example that political power would not be able to change language. Incidentally, here we are talking about this complete overhaul which could not succeed. The Russians tried the same thing. But we still got lots of different languages at the Caucasian Mountains and in the Baltic States. Not sure about Belarus, though.

To get to the point: What I want to say is that if you want to change language you will need a long time. And the time might be a function of the amount of difference from status quo to what is meant to be achieved. The amount of difference between the involved individuals might render the change impossible. Language changes gradually. Dialects are still around! And switching to Aramaic is something that probably took ages(?). Politics is something that works in short term. And politics can change rapidly compared to the speed language changes. (I am not so convinced that complete turn-a-rounds always succeed, though! We will see what can be changed…) So to change language you would have to leave an political agenda in place for a very long time. Therefore there is lots of occasion to change an agenda. For example something that would lead to horrors like in Orwell’s 1984. The agenda of making everyone speak German got obsolete when the Habsburg monarchy got destroyed in a war. And Russian is not really popular anymore among lots of constituents of the former Sowjetunion.

Still I think we are right if we assume politics will leave its tracks in certain terms. Thus changing tiny bits of language but not necessarily according to the wants of politicians. (Does it count as changing language if the term “weapons of mass destruction” is associated with “lie” instead of just “deadly menace”?) I think language is a construct that is too large, i.e. used and influenced by too many people, that it could be altered totally in a plot by some individuals. At least not if there is a cause that convinces the mass of people to make them change their behavior. And people are reluctant to do so because they are incredibly lazy (me included). I am not sure what this cause is. One might speculate. Maybe it is a great deal of power that makes force people change their way, maybe reason, persuasion, or necessities, or even the assumed superiority of another culture? I think there are examples for each of these in history. In the above example of national states in need of a homogeneous language for their administrations the cause might have been necessity and reason. Politics might be involved in changing language here and there and might also be interested to do this. But it needs the support of the speakers of the language to be changed and this doesn’t come for free.

I hope this pseudo-scientific wish-wash makes a little sense. I might let me be convinced from something else if not. Sorry that this got so long.

We will talk about this business of language and power in person at some point. It will be long and dreary for others involved and I’ll begin babbling about systems of signification and the African American tradition of Signifyin’ in music and the word vs the world and who knows what else and it will briefly make me feel like my degree was about something.