Parochialism and intercourse: Metaphors for mobility

• Autores: John Edwards
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 15, Nº. 2-3, 1994, págs. 171-178
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Many years ago Saussure, in the ‘Cours Générale’, wrote of the co‐occurrence of the opposing forces of parochialism (l'esprit de clocher) and wider communications (for which he used the English word ‘intercourse'; the editors of Saussure's work retained ’cette pittoresque expression de l'auteur'). Specifically, he said that:

    ‘In every human collectivity two forces are always working simultaneously and in opposing directions … Provincialism keeps a restricted linguistic community faithful to its own traditions … But intercourse, the opposing force, limits their effect. Whereas provincialism makes men sedentary, intercourse obliges them to move about.’ While Saussure's terms were not original to him, and while his remarks were directed to the spread of linguistic ‘waves’ and the course of dialect variation, his ideas here have a broader sociolinguistic thrust. The tension he described—also captured by others, using dichotomies like ‘roots and options’ or ‘tribalism and globalism’ or even ‘Gemeinsch‐aft and Gesellschaft'—has obvious applicability in historical and contemporary struggles between ‘small’ languages and those of ‘wider communication’. These struggles illuminate broader matters of identities in contact (and sometimes conflict) and this, in turn, brings us to a consideration of the benefits and disadvantages of mobility—actual physical mobility, but also psychological and linguistic mobility.

    Some of the common results of the tension, the struggle, are communicative language shift, defence of the more threatened variety, ‘localisation’ of the stronger language (as in the development of indigenised Englishes) and, of course, bilingualism. These do not exist in watertight, mutually exclusive compartments; for example, it is easy to think of situations in which defense, localisation and bilingualism coexist— although this is not always a harmonious or comfortable menage. And, to move ‘up’ again from purely linguistic matters to the larger identity concerns of which they are an aspect, we see that Saussure alerts us to the ongoing conflict between individual and group rights and interests.

    My overriding concern here is to contribute to the formation of a framework within which we might better understand minority‐language matters. More specifically, my contention is that such a structure might unify disparate case‐studies which, while almost always of intrinsic interest, too often remain isolated and whose generalisable features are too infrequently recognised or properly mined.