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Language and the Social 1 | P a g e London School of Economic and Political Sciences LANGUAGE AND THE SOCIAL: INVESTIGATIONS TOWARD A NEW SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE GWYNETH MAE HAWKINS A thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology, London School of Economic and Political Sciences for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy, London, 2013 2 | P a g e Declaration: I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of the London School of Economic and Political Sciences is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe of the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 86,112 words. 3 | P a g e ABSTRACT This thesis investigates sociological understandings of language in texts deeply resonant for sociology today. It offers a comparative and analytical investigation of social-language projects written before the discipline was established. Sociologists have struggled to establish a field investigating arguably the most social arena of social life, namely, language as witnessed by insubstantial attempts to sociologically study language and unfulfilled promises in social theories of language or sociologies of communication, culture, media, etc. Chapter 1 critically reviews social scientific research approaches to language. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examine carefully selected sites in European thought where language and social life interpenetrate too much to be disentangled, wherein there are ‘folk sociologies of language’. Chapter 2 looks at attempts to rectify a deep confusion pulling society apart and corroding language. Three social-language projects compose language: a gesture language (Bulwer), a philosophical language (Wilkins) and combination of both (Dalgarno). Chapter 3 looks at two critical dictionaries intended to fix language to help the realisation of the ideal society (Johnson’s Dictionary and Diderot’s Encyclopedié). Chapter 4 explores projects that capture historically changing nationhood: the OED and the work of the Grimm Brothers. These social-language projects are attempts to change something in the social, on a continuum of less to more radical interventions. These social-language projects are significant, but have been ignored by sociologists. As ‘language’ projects, they are assumed irrelevant in relation to power, knowledge, or nascent nationalism. As ‘social’ projects, they have been considered tangential to an increasingly narrow and technical linguistics. By mining this rich seam of sources, this work draws attention to elements central to sociology (about the nature and roles of collectives and individuals, about agency, structure, the subject, institutions) in light of key questions about language (its aspects, form, roles in relation to knowledge, law, politics). This is a first step towards analysing language events from a sociological perspective. The intended contribution of this research to current sociology is three-fold. Firstly, it outlines a distinctive approach by using sources from outside the discipline in order to get at problems at its core. Secondly, it shows how language is empirically current in ways that are central to the discipline (e.g. the ‘endangered languages movement’). Finally, it shows that without the distance gained by stepping outside we cannot see that the way we think about language and the social are mutually constitutive, indeed each shapes and conditions the other. In sum, language is much too sociologically important to be left to linguists. 4 | P a g e TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 7 Language events……………………………...……….……………………………………........7 Language events and sociology……………………………………………………………...…15 Social-language projects…………………………………….…………………………………16 Substance and structure of main chapters……………………………………………………...17 CHAPTER ONE: TODAY’S SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF LANGUAGE 19 1.1 Language reflects society………………...…………………………………………… 21 1.2 Language expresses social life………………………………..………………………...30 1.3 Language is fundamental to society…………………..……………………………..…41 1.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….…48 CHAPTER TWO: COMPOSING LANGUAGE AS AN END TO CIVIL WAR 51 2.1 Philosophy and gesture…………………………………………………….………….52 2.1.1 Marginal readings...……………………………………………………………….........54 2.2 Confusion…….....………………………………………………......................................58 2.2.1 First Confusion: The loss of Adam’s language………………………………………....59 2.2.2 Second Confusion: Loss of a single language after Babel………………………….…...66 2.3 Analytical tool: nature……………………………………………………………....…69 2.3.1 Bacon’s statement of the fundamental problem…………………………………….…70 2.3.2 Bacon and the language project designers on nature……………………………..…….71 2.4 Method……………………………………...…………………….……………...……75 2.5 Truth……………………………………………………………………………….…81 2.6 Conclusion …………………….……………………………………………………...83 CHAPTER THREE: FIXING SOCIETY WITH DICTIONARIES 86 3.1 Two new dictionaries …...………………………………...………………………...…89 3.1.1 Darlings of their times…..………………………………………………………….…91 3.2 Critical aims………………………...………………………………………………....99. 3.2.1 Encyclopédie: ‘To change the common way of thinking…’………………...…………....101 3.2.2 Dictionary: ‘The Golden Age’……...…………………………...…………………...….104 3.3 Analytical bases ….…………………………………………………………………..105 3.3.1 Man…………………………………………………………………………………..106 3.3.2 Time……………….……………………………………………………………....…108 3.4 Method……………..……………………………………………………………...…110 3.4.1 Radicals and inversions……………………...………………………………………..110 3.4.2 Inclusion and exclusion……………………………………....…………………....….113 3.5 Authority..............................................…………………………..........................................116 3.5.1 Crafts, censors and cross-references….….…………………………………………...116 3.5.2 The fourth edition, spillage………...…...…………………………………………......121 3.6 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...…123 5 | P a g e CHAPTER FOUR: RECORDING A PEOPLE 125 4.1 Peoples’ projects: Grimm brothers and the OED…...………………………………..125 4.1.1 Princesses and the queen….……………………...…………………………………..128 4.2 Disappearing, campaigning ..………………………………………………………....130 4.2.1 Saving the Volk………………...……………...…………………………………...…131 4.2.2 To witness English………...………...………………………………………………..134 4.3 Analytical frameworks …………………………………………….................................136 4.3.1 Poesie, time and form………....……………………………………………………….136 4.3.2 Language as growth…………....…….…………………………………………...…...140 4.4 Method…………………………………………………...…………………………..142 4.4.1 Natural history of Das Volk......................................................................................................142 4.4.2 Gathering past use………..……………..………..………………………………..…147 4.5 Social life and law………………...………………………………………………..…148 4.6 Conclusion……………………………………………….................................................151 CONCLUSION 152 Future directions…..……………………..………………………………………………...…152 The Endangered Languages Movement project…………………………………………...…152 Folk sociologies of language and social-language projects………………………………….....155 REFERENCES CITED 158 RESOURCES SPECIFIC TO THE ENDANGERED LANGUAGE MOVEMENT 169 6 | P a g e In the lives of individuals and of societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs. Ferdinand de Saussure (1910 [2000]: 22) People are fond of saying that nothing else but language interests us today, and that it has become the universal object. Make no mistake: this supremacy is the temporary supremacy of a migrating tribe. It’s true that we are interested in language; yet it’s not that we come to possess it at last but that, on the contrary, it eludes us more than it has ever eluded us. Its boundaries are collapsing, and its calm universe is starting to melt; and if we are submerged, this is not so much by its timeless rigor as by the present motion of its wave. Michel Foucault (1967 [1998]: 289) 7 | P a g e INTRODUCTION In 1875, the ‘leading chiefs of the Blackfoot, Blood, Peigan, and Sarcee tribes gathered at Blackfoot Crossing and…prepared a memorial to Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Morris’ requesting that the Dominion Government meet with them as soon as possible, for the purpose of stopping the ‘invasion of their territory until they are able to make their treaty’ with the Queen (Dempsey, 1987: online, last accessed 30 Dec., 2012). The chiefs made a number of attempts to get the attention of the Dominion Commissioners, including sending religious men and attempting to send messages via other third parties (some of whom were unable to cross the prairies since the main game, buffalo, was now too scarce as a result of the fur trade). Dempsey recounts the overtures made by the First Nations to have a treaty meeting. …Rev. John McDougall appealed to Lieutenant-Governor Morris for action by stating: “...I cannot too strongly recommend that the Dominion Government should send a Commissioner or Commissioners to negotiate or treat with the various Blackfoot Tribes at as early a date as possible.” He also noted that whites from all parts are flocking into the country which they have called theirs. Their late mortal enemies the Crees
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