Rebuilding Babel
Linguistic Jacobinism, facilitated individualism, and a quick retelling of the Gordian Knot
The Phrygians of Gordium had a prophecy. Centuries before, they anointed the first man to walk into town with a wagon and ox as the king. The wagon of that long-dead king sat in the city with its yoke tied in a way that no one had ever been able to untie. The ropes and threads of various pigments and materials weaved in and out of view, rising from the agglomeration only for a centimeter before diving back into a sea of twine. The oracle of the city claimed that whoever could unravel the knot would rule all of Asia. It was a cold September day when Alexander of Macedonia arrived at the gates of Gordium.
France, before the revolution of 1789, was purposefully detached from the people of the kingdom. For much of France’s history to this point, the educated elite spoke Latin or “proper” Parisian French, and the people spoke an unknowable variety of different dialects and languages. The policy was meant to keep the population disconnected from the loci of power and disparate from the other people in their material condition by having them not speaking the language of the governing or even the language of most of their fellow citizens. Right after the revolution, a problem occurred to many of the revolutionary leaders: how do we properly spread the ideas of revolution or even have a state united by the people with so many dialects and languages dividing the people? It became the central question of Linguistic Jacobinism, a movement to unite all those in the state under a single tongue in order to free them the restrictions of linguistic diversity.
Language is a highly sentimental and decorative hammer; in an overly broad way it has two functions: the first as a manifestation of a speaker’s culture and history, and the second as a tool of communication. A shared language gives a sense of community and connection with one’s history; it creates an in-group both culturally and materially. But when there exists an in-group, there also exists an out-group. It is at this point that language as a tool of communication plays a more critical role, as people of different languages — unlike those of say a different religious or ethnically based in-group — cannot materially communicate with those of the outgroup.
It is here where we must discuss the work of L. L. Zamenhof. Born in Białystok, a city home to speakers of Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and German among others that rest in the then Russian Empire, Zamenhof witnessed the constant fighting and mistrust between the various linguistic communities in the city. Zamenhof believed that if the communities were to share a language, then they would in fact be able to communicate with each other, breaking down linguistic walls that seemed to lead to so much conflict. He would go on to create Esperanto, a simplified language that mixed parts from various European languages in order to provide a universal second language that would bring the world together. Esperanto hasn’t brought the world together; its speakers are now a curiosity for internationalists. But in revolutionary France, the concept of unifying people through breaking linguist walls took an alternate route from Zamenhof concept of an optional second language. The new French state would see a unified people and it would be done through a forced first language.
What is the goal of progress? In the most general sense, scholars from Amartya Sen to Ayn Rand to Karl Marx have seen the development and progress of society as a vector for expanding the freedom of individuals inside of said society. This expansion of individual freedom still drives (or at least is claimed to drive) much of the governmental policy still seen today. However, the drive for progressive policy towards individual freedom can seem to run against previous notions of progressiveness by the modern conception of minority rights. France after the revolution saw that the minority identities and in particular languages as a way by which the old elite maintained power. So, they began to forcefully dismantle them. The idea was that people could really only interact with those of the same linguistic community as them was seen to have a limiting effect on individuals freedom to pursue the life they wanted to have, bringing the whole nation under one linguistic regime would in fact open up so many new paths and options for people. The walls of language would be knocked down.
But while languages may form material walls and divisions, those walls are what allowed for various cultures to exist. So, the dismantling of each language would also bring about the demise of the structures of culture to which they are inextricably tied. This process facilitated a new world of individualism; all possible because of national unity would be born from a wildfire that destroyed what had existed before it. While many speakers of these long-dead languages fought against the new assimilation the French government from then on would continue to push under the guise of expanding the individual’s freedom. The schools, the government, and most of the public sphere would only be in French, and soon it would be the forced language and culture of the people. Culture is not a person; all that mattered was expanding the individual’s freedom and to break them free from the obscuration of the old ways and tongues was the only path forward.
Now if the dream of the revolution’s policy towards language was to unleash the individual freedom of the individual, that dream encountered some significant obstacles as France entered the late 20th century. French was no longer the Lingua Franca; its long lost empire had made it, and now new pressures from the use of English forced the nation to face a difficult decision. Was linguistic Jacobinism limited to the state, an inherently nationalist idea that did not really care about maximizing individual freedom, or would it continue to dismantle the walls that language had constructed?
Moria Paz wrote in the Harvard International Law Journal that language policy is “a demand for a new distribution of power against a reality of scarce resources.” The idealism that defined linguistic Jacobinism in the revolution should be considered in this light if we are to be cynics. Reworking the state to solely function in Parisian French meant that those who already spoke Parisian French were to be the ones at the new center of power and any burden of building the budding nation would be placed on those who did not speak the new common tongue. In short it would be a power grab by a new elite class. But in the new globalized world the cynic could be dismissed if the idealism of breaking linguistic boundaries were to stay strong. However the cynic would not be dismissed.
Into the late 20th century the French government hunkered down on its policy towards language, passing strict policy like the Toubon Law in 1994 which mandated the use of French in all advertising and workplaces. The government rejected the growing call for minority language rights in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in the 1990s. France had decided French was too important to give up. The group’s right to French in this case seemed to supersede the idea of freedom for the individual to transcend his identity. A people clung to the linguistic walls that had been forced upon them centuries before.
Who gets to decide the framework of culture? The people in the revolution had decided that it would be Parisian French that would become the language of the nation. It was also conveniently the language they all already spoke. It was their culture, and thus placed the burden of the change on others, a forced joining of the club. And now very few lament the slow death of Berrichon or Gallo that this policy has caused and many of the descendants of those language’s speakers are now proud French speakers able to live and exist far from their line’s place of origin. But what have we lost? In the timeline where the revolution’s idea of truly breaking down linguistic walls was applied on a global scale and France imposed the same linguistic on itself again in favor of a more global language, say English or Zamenhof’s Esperanto, then in a few hundred years or so there feasibly could be no French speakers at all. But in that, what would be lost? Who is the author to insinuate this? Not even a French speaker, someone who would benefit if the world were to convert to all become English speakers, if the walls were to fall in his favor?
Who has the right to ethically decide the cultural framework? When we are born our parents and the culture they are a part of will assign us a framework in the ways of language, religion, and values, their patterns constantly replicating though the generations. But in the case of the revolution’s policy towards language, the children of France would be weaned off their familial teaching; children taught proper Parisian French over the language of their fathers; and patterns that had replicated for generations cut off, only to be replaced by something else. Traditions that had survived for generations behind the walls of language were ransacked for a new facilitated ‘individualism.’ In the end does a parent’s desire to live past themselves outweigh an individual’s freedom? And if the state has decided the family or community can no longer restrict the freedom of their next generation through language, why could the revolutionaries, why could the state, why can anyone?
Alexander of Macedonia appeared at the Gates of Gordium ready to seize the city by force. However he and his advisors were let in by the city leaders and led to the knot. Told he would have the city and a prophecy behind him if he were to untie it. Alexander looked upon the chaos of string drawn from all corners of the earth while advisors, perplexed, burst into argument on how to untie the mess. The problem of the knot seemed to overwhelm Alexander’s host of intellectuals as he still looked onto the beauty of the knot. The roar of wise men’s debate, however, was silenced when Alexander drew his sword and cut the knot in half, the strings frayed on the ground, as the soon-to-be world conqueror walked away.
