Multilingual Subjects: On Standard English, Its Speakers, and Others in the Long Eighteenth Century PDF
Preview Multilingual Subjects: On Standard English, Its Speakers, and Others in the Long Eighteenth Century
Multilingual Subjects This page intentionally left blank MULTILINGUAL SUBJECTS (cid:18) On Standard English, Its Speakers, and Others in the Long Eighteenth Century Daniel DeWispelare university of pennsylvania press philadelphia Copyright(cid:2)2017UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsused forpurposesofrevieworscholarlycitation,noneofthis bookmaybereproducedinanyformbyanymeanswithout writtenpermissionfromthepublisher. Publishedby UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica onacid-freepaper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Names:DeWispelare,Daniel,author. Title:Multilingualsubjects:onstandardEnglish,itsspeakers,andothersinthelongeighteenth century/DanielDeWispelare. Description:1stedition.(cid:2)Philadelphia:UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress,[2017](cid:2)Includes bibliographicalreferencesandindex. Identifiers:LCCN2016050486(cid:2)ISBN978–0-8122–4909–5(hardcover:alk.paper) Subjects:LCSH:Englishlanguage—Politicalaspects—English-speakingcountries—History— 18thcentury.(cid:2)Englishlanguage—Politicalaspects—GreatBritain—History—18thcentury.(cid:2) Multilingualism—English-speakingcountries—History—18thcentury.(cid:2)Englishlanguage— Socialaspects—English-speakingcountries—History—18thcentury.(cid:2)Sociolinguistics— English-speakingcountries—History—18thcentury.(cid:2)Englishlanguage—English-speaking countries—Standardization—History—18thcentury.(cid:2)Englishlanguage—English-speaking countries—Variation—History—18thcentury.(cid:2)Languagepolicy—English-speaking countries—History—18thcentury.(cid:2)Languageandlanguages—Philosophy—History—18th century.(cid:2)Translatingandinterpreting—English-speakingcountries—History—18thcentury. Classification:LCCP119.3.D4872017(cid:2)DDC306.442/21—dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2016050486 Tomyfather DanielDeWispelare March29,1949–September25,2010 IfIknownotthemeaningofthevoice,Ishall beuntohimthatspeakethabarbarian;andhe thatspeakethshallbeabarbariantome. —1Corinthians14:11,KingJamesVersion Opacitiesmustbepreserved;anappetite foropportuneobscurityintranslationmust becreated;andfalselyconvenientvehicular sabirsmustberelentlesslyrefuted. —E´douardGlissant,PoeticsofRelation contents (cid:2) Introduction.MultiplicityandRelation: TowardanAnglophoneEighteenthCentury 1 multilingual lives: Peros,Jack,Neptune,andCupid 25 Chapter1.TheMultilingualismoftheOther: Politics,Counterpolitics,Anglophony,andBeyond 33 multilingual lives: ReverendLyons 61 Chapter2.DeCopia:Language,Politics,andAesthetics 67 multilingual lives: DorothyPentreathandWilliamBodener 99 Chapter3.DeLibertate: AnglophonyandtheIdeaof“Free”Translation 107 multilingual lives: JosephEmin 135 Chapter4.LiteracyFictions:MakingLinguisticDifferenceLegible 143 multilingual lives: AnteraDuke 179 Chapter5.The“AlienWealth”of“LuckyContaminations”: Freedom,Labor,andTranslation 187 multilingual lives: Sequoyah 215 viii Contents Conclusion.AnglophoneFutures: GlobalizationandDivination,LanguageandtheHumanities 223 AppendixA.Selected“Dialect”Prose 235 AppendixB.Selected“Dialect”Poetry 247 Notes 259 WorksCited 317 Index 329 Acknowledgments 335 introduction (cid:2) Multiplicity and Relation Toward an Anglophone Eighteenth Century Johnson, Scott, and the Highlanders Bysubsequentopportunitiesofobservation,Ifoundthatmyhost’sdiction hadnothingpeculiar.ThoseHighlandersthatcanspeakEnglish,commonly speakitwell,withfewofthewords,andlittleofthetonebywhicha Scotchmanisdistinguished.Theirlanguageseemstohavebeenlearnedinthe armyorthenavy,orbysomecommunicationwiththosewhocouldgivethem goodexamplesofaccentandpronunciation.BytheirLowlandneighbours theywouldnotwillinglybetaught;fortheyhavelongconsideredthemasa meananddegeneraterace.Theseprejudicesarewearingfastaway,butso muchofthemstillremains,thatwhenIaskedaverylearnedministerinthe islands,whichtheyconsideredastheirmostsavageclans:“Those,saidhe,that livenexttheLowlands.”1 This passage from Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) registers a charge surrounding the two dimensions of eighteenth-century linguistic multiplicity that this book explores at length: (1)heteroglossicdiversityamongdisparateversionsoftheEnglishlanguage and (2) polyglossic interaction between these varied forms of English and other languages encountered on the global stage of travel, commerce, and empire.2 In this passage, as elsewhere, Johnson tarries in the multiplicities of orality, allowing his reflections to generate descriptive detail about the relationships among various groups within Britain. Each group is marked with a particular linguistic character relative to the others. To every group 2 Introduction itsshibboleths.Thisisoneofthemainpremisesofeighteenth-centurywrit- ingaboutlanguage. Bystartingwith thisbriefexampleofmetalinguisticwriting—bywhich I mean descriptive writing that takes language itself as its topic—I want to suggest that Johnson’s passage deconstructs the coherence of the term “English”sothoroughlythattheterm’sanalyticalvalueisthrownintosus- picion.Inother words,byyokingtogetherseveralformsoflivelylinguistic multiplicityunderthelimitingterm“English,”Johnson’sdeductionsabout these linguistic practices reveal their own contingency. In fact, the passage permitsareadingthatacknowledgestheinsufficiencyofthistermfornam- ingthemanyinterpenetratinglanguageformsthatpeoplepastandpresent have employed for speaking, writing, and creating literature. By capturing linguistic alterity in many forms, Johnson relativizes his own subject posi- tion. Against the precession of these other anglophone tongues, Johnson’s Englishisjustoneformamongmany.3 That literature is, among other things, a name for the aesthetic experi- ence that arises from an encounter with languages and voices as they are renderedinprintisabequestofthegloballongeighteenthcentury.4Itwas during this period that anglophone writers learned to evaluate themselves and others by parsing the linguistic multiplicities around them. It is my contention in Multilingual Subjects that scholars of cultural and literary history need to do more with the linguistic multiplicity of the past as it is encodedintheliteraryandnonliteraryalike.Weneedtobeabletoseenot only that the term “English” language is insufficient, as in the epigraph above, but also that the insufficiency of this term is a lived condition that generatesdescriptivetextureandnarrativemomentuminJohnson’swriting as well as that of his contemporaries.5 We need to understand linguistic multiplicitybetter;weneedtonameitscontoursmoreaccurately;weneed toexploreitsfissuresindetail;weneedtoexploreitsroleinnarrativemore accurately;and,generally,we need tothinkmorecreativelyabouthowthe always-existing multiplicity of language is a dimension of identity that influences literary representation and reception. There are also obvious political opportunities in a better understanding of how linguistic multi- plicityis characterizedin(and characterizes)theperiod. Those questionsI broachalongsidetheaestheticincomingchapters. Four discrete types of linguistic identities—and, for Johnson, cultural identities—areinvokedinthisfour-sentencepassage.Threedifferentvarie- tiesof“English”areclearlyidentifiable.Onenon-Englishlanguageappears
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