JSA5147H
The purpose of this course is to examine the relationship between ideologies and practices of language and nation, from the period of the rise of the nation-State in the 19th century to current social changes related to the globalized new economy which challenge prevailing ideas about language and nation. We will focus in particular on language as a technique of regimentation, which helps produce and police populations; and as a terrain of struggle over access to and legitimation of relations of authority, power and inequality. We will examine European nationalism and its ties to colonialism, industrial capitalism, liberal democracy and modernity. We will then move to reactions to it in the form of linguistic minority movements, international auxiliary languages, fascism (in particular Nazism), and Communism. We will then touch briefly on the post WWII period, and focus the rest of the course on contemporary conditions of late capitalism, since the late 1980s, with a focus on the commodification of language and identity in the current economy; language and globalization; and current debates on the ecology of language and language endangerment. Throughout we will also examine the role of linguists, anthropologists and other producers of discourse about language, nation and State in the construction of theories of nation, ethnicity, race and citizenship.