Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community
- Автор: Fians Guilherme
- Год: 2022
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community». Краткое содержание книги:
Aside from short-lived, highly international spaces such as Universal Congresses and a number of online chats, the regular use of Esperanto in France takes place mostly in local meetings, language classes and debates held in restaurants, rooms at maisons des associations and headquarters of Esperanto associations. Unsurprisingly, these occasions often see polit- ical debates about varied themes turning into linguistic discussions about Esperanto morphology, lexicon, syntax, accents and language ideolo- gies, with controversies and negotiations over vocabulary choice gaining prominence as topics frequently debated.
The creation of Esperanto preceded the invention of space shuttles, mobile phones and software. Likewise, when the first Esperanto book was launched, Sri Lanka was not called as such, anthropologists were not discussing avunculocal residence patterns and environmental justice was not yet a watchword in the West. After Zamenhof and the early Esperantists created vocabulary to designate things, abstractions, places and whatever else needed in Esperanto, a whole new world unfolded. With it, also a growing need to name things emerged, raising elemen- tary questions about the development of this constructed language: in everyday conversations, how can we refer to or describe matters we have no concepts for? If Zamenhof, the original linguistic authority, is dead, who is to determine, for instance, if drono is standard Esperanto, a neologism, part of a non-standard language variety or an error?
To address these points, this chapter uses the question 'how to say drone in Esperanto?' as a starting point to flesh out a series of approaches to language ideology, power relations, tensions and improvisations taking place when a constructed language becomes a living one through use. By twisting Marcus' methodological cue (1995), from following people, objects and stories to following the word—drone, in this case—I will take Esperanto as a standpoint from where to reflect on linguistic authority and ideology.
The chapter argues that, for not having native speakers and being based on deliberately loose linguistic authorities, Esperanto provides a productive space for us to trace the sources of authority at play. In handing the language as collective ownership to its speech community, Zamenhof gave up the existence of a centralised, unequivocal linguistic authority, thus placing inclusivity, equality and ease to learn at the heart of Esperantos language ideology. While Esperantists largely embrace this non-hierarchical approach under the guise of keeping the language welcoming, horizontal and relatively free from linguistic discrimination, communication also requires a certain level of stability and standardis- ation so that mutual understanding can be reached. Thus, in mapping out the interplay of the three competing principles at stake—which I call flexibility, internationality and primordiality—this chapter suggests that Zamenhof's strategy to distribute authority throughout the Esperanto speech community ended up turning language into a prime battle- field, where uttering words becomes inseparable from assuming political stances.
5.1 The Drowning Drone
To make sense of the language ideology and diverse principles at play, we first need to analyse some aspects of the origins of Esperanto. In 1887, as explained in Chapter 2, Zamenhof launched a booklet, orig- inally in Russian, nicknamed Unua Libro (First Book). This book was subsequently revised and published in a multilingual edition in Russian, French, English, German and Polish under the title Fundamento de Esperanto (Zamenhof 1905, hereafter Fundamento). It contained four parts: an introduction detailing the need for such a language, a grammar section with sixteen basic rules, a collection of exercises and a dictio- nary. Aside from this prototype of the language, Zamenhof also edited the Fundamenta Krestomatio de la Lingvo Esperanto (1903), a collection of short stories, poems, scientific articles and legends, aimed at building an initial corpus in the language and validating the rules he proposed. Similarly, he regularly wrote articles in the early Esperanto periodi- cals—among which, the texts later compiled under the title Lingvaj Respondoj (1910, Answers on Language Matters)—and gave speeches at the Universal Congresses taking place from 1905. On this note, several of his speeches were recorded and later deemed exemplary pronunciation samples.
However, after setting the grounds for his project, Zamenhof insisted on taking the back seat and leaving the development of the language in the hands of its emerging speech community. He was aware of the risks emerging from how Johann Martin Schleyer, another language creator, attempted to control the development of Volapuk. In the late 1880s, Schleyer was determined to retain his property rights over the language he created. Schleyer's interests then clashed with those of the Academy of Volapuk, which intended to make reforms to the language (Garvfa 2015). The perception that this clash was among the reasons for Volapuk's decline prompted Zamenhof to reject seeing constructed languages through the lens of copyright (Adelman 2014).[18]
In 1905, with the twofold purpose of protecting Esperanto and turning it from his intellectual property into a public good, Zamenhof drafted the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. Commonly referred to as Declaration of Boulogne, it was ratified during the first international Esperanto congress, at Boulogne-sur-Mer. In one of its much-quoted paragraphs, this declaration states that 'Because the author of the language Esperanto refused once and for all, right at the beginning, all personal rights and privileges in relation to that language, accordingly Esperanto is "nobody's property" [neniespropraĵo] either in material or in moral respects' (Zamenhof in Boulet 1905; English translation retrieved from Forster 1982: 90; Esperanto expression into brackets added).
While the Fundamento's grammar, exercises and dictionary laid the foundation for the language, the Fundamento introduction set the groundwork for the language ideology that would nurture Esperanto and justify its existence. Hence, we can argue that Esperantos language ideology, for being presented in the introduction before Esperantos grammar, preceded the language itself. As both the Fundamento's introduction and the Declaration of Boulogne convey Esperanto as a 'neutrally human language', 'for all peoples' and inherently 'international' (Zamenhof in Boulet 1905; English translation retrieved from Forster 1982: 89), these precursory works outline how Esperanto's language ideology rests upon a rhetoric that arises from the previously presented forms of cosmopolitanism and that posits Esperanto as a plural, inclusive and egalitarian language 'for all peoples'.
In this sense, voluntarily learning Esperanto also means assimilating the language's cosmopolitan orientation—which, at the linguistic level, is expressed in one's preference for vocabulary, expressions and pronun- ciation manners deemed inclusive and more egalitarian, expected to be understood by international audiences. If language ideologies are 'sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justifi- cation of perceived language structure and use' (Silverstein 1979: 193), then Esperanto's ideology of plurality, inclusivity and egalitarianism was created (by Zamenhof) and is learned (by the Esperantists that followed) prior to the creation and learning of the language structure itself. This results in language ideologies playing a significant role in the use and development of language structures and forms (Silverstein 1979, 1985).