Voices of Modernity Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality [Paperback]

This 2003 book discusses how new ways of thinking about language have uncovered previously 'legitimated' linguistic and social inequalities.Argues that conscious development of new ways of thinking about language had a crucial role in modern history, particularly the discovery of how apparently objective differences between languages legitimated social inequalities. The authors' view is that savages and ancients were judged together because they used language similarly (irrational, poetic), in contrast to modern Europeans, who required disciplined language for use in scientific, philosophical and legal projects.Argues that conscious development of new ways of thinking about language had a crucial role in modern history, particularly the discovery of how apparently objective differences between languages legitimated social inequalities. The authors' view is that savages and ancients were judged together because they used language similarly (irrational, poetic), in contrast to modern Europeans, who required disciplined language for use in scientific, philosophical and legal projects.This study asserts that conscious development of new ways of thinking about language had a crucial role in modern history, particularly the discovery of how differences between languages legitimated social inequalities. It claims that savages and ancients were judged alike because they used language similarly, in contrast to modern Europeans who used disciplined language in scientific, philosophical and legal projects.1. Introduction; 2. Making language safe for science and society: from Francis Bacon to John Lock; 3. Antiquaries and philologists: the construction of modernity and its others in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England; 4. The critical foundations of national epic: Hugh Blair, the Ossian controversy, and the rhetoric of authenticity; 5. Johann Gottfried Herder: language reform, das Volk, and the patriarchal state in eighteenth-century Germany; 6. The Brothers Grimm: scl³6