-I came to work such as Herder’s from a specific position: that of extensive exposure to and immersion in Flemish nationalism in Belgium. You may wish to add this “filter” to your language-of-reading point: there is a monolingual bias (in almost ALL interpretations of non-anglo theory, I feel) that characterizes US-UK-Aussie uptakes, yes. But there is also a monolingual bias that stems from living in an environment marked by a relaxed and non-problematizing sociolinguistic life. Experiences of nationalism do color one’s readings about it. I never had such a life in which language was unproblematic, on the contrary: language-infused nationalism spoiled my life and continues to do so (we’re presently governed by a coalition dominated by an extremist nationalist Flemish party). My inevitable engagement with this reality of ethnolinguistic nationalism also explains my interest in language policy & planning in areas such as Africa, and my concern with purity/impurity and so forth.

-This Flemish nationalism is inspired exactly by the more specific and detailed position you describe for Herder in your text. The rejection of “external” dominance (“Francophone oppression” in the Flemish-nationalist discourse), the premium of one “authentic” mother tongue upon which any other form of multilingualism should be grafted in order to arrive at “good” multilingualism, and so forth. Even more, this vision has been adopted, in an only slightly modified set of assumptions, as the EU language policy. There is the uniqueness of nativeness (expressed now, politically, in relatively huge amounts of EU-cash being invested in “national heritage”) which makes that only one language (the mother tongue) can be the “full” and “real” language that bestows “an” identity, which then of course turns L2, L3, Ln into “instrumental” or “recreational” languages (see the 2+1 EU framework).

-In that sense, I have the feeling that in your text, you overdraw the position of those you criticize. For instance, you appear to associate a “monoglot” ideology (in Silverstein’s terms) with a “monolingual” one, which is not what it’s supposed to be. The monoglot ideology, as I see it, is precisely the one sketched above: an assumption that members of a “language community” typically (and “normally”) have one REAL language, the language that ensures the transmission of heritage-and-identity as members of that language community. The “standard” of that language (the mother tongue) is not just a linguistic standard but also a cultural and a political one. To which any other language can be added, as long as it doesn’t bring the one real language out of balance by, e.g., code mixing and other forms of “impurity”, “bastardization” and so forth (the colonial literature of African languages is replete with such statements, I have written about it).

-So the points about Herder being multilingual himself and advocating other-language learning don’t really address the monoglot ideology, I think, other than anachronistically. There are very few sociolinguists, even those advocating strong prescriptive normativity in “standard” language usage, as you know, who would claim that learning other languages would be undesirable, so that’s a straw man argument I think. Do note, at this point, that Bauman & Briggs (as I read them) were trying to provide a historical lineage for the monoglot ideal (as sketched above). So they adstrue an argument by cut-and-paste, in which Locke, the folklorists and Herder appear as “sources” of something that, effectively, emerged only by the end of the 19th century, and did so in several different forms. I’m not entirely happy with that book, because historically (i.e. from the perspective of a historian-as-discipline) it suggests a genealogy which is hard to sustain without looking at big world-systemic developments; but that’s another debate.

-The thing is: seen from my perspective, you inflate the interpretation of “Herderianism” you intend to attack, and end up with a reading that I find entirely applicable to e.g. Flemish nationalism and EU language policy.

-But this brings me to a more general issue, that of anachronism and interpretation. Herder can hardly be accused of having been the theorist-architect of nationalism, because he predates nationalism, much like Adam Smith predated classical liberalism, Hayek predated neoliberalism, Marx predated the October Revolution and Stalinism, and Foucault predated the NSA reading our emails. One can’t blame the fathers for the sins of their sons, and even less for having failed to predict these sins (or, conversely, for having predicted them, like Marx responding to an early dogmatist such as Lafargue that Marx was not a Marxist). And people such as the ones mentioned here – Herder included – lived a much more fertile life by means of often distorted and twisted second-hand interpretations and uptakes, than as authors to be read first-hand (see, e.g. the utter confusion now in “Foucault studies” because of the fact that the entire series of Lectures at the Collège de France is now almost published, prompting and urging profound revisions of interpretations dominant since the 1970s, especially in the anglo world.) One could easily add, to this list of “apocryphic” authors, Whorf, Chomsky, Bourdieu, Machiavelli, Nietszche, Wittgenstein, Gramsci, Popper, Althusser, Habermas, etc. Nobody reads their work, everyone reads about it and trusts those whom they read to have read the primary sources (often quod non).

-In that sense, I do like your text, as it urges people to return to the (usually much more fertile and inspiring) primary sources and adjust their intellectual scope and depth by doing so. The “philological” argument, however, is not a key element here in my view. People don’t get inspired by philological or etymological precision, they get inspired by the images, metaphors. So latitude in uptake is not just widespread, it is normal I guess. One takes from work whatever can be applied as a template (or as part of it) for one’s own present concerns. In that sense, I can spot at least three different “stages” of Marxism in my own work, for instance, in which the shifts from stage to stage were prompted by new readings and new concerns prompting a re-reading and reappraisal of old stuff. The “baggage” of erudition I have is, in my own life, a highly mobile and unstable thing.

-In conclusion: if one sees authors as sources of inspiration rather than as authors of closed texts (to be quoted rather than interpreted), the issue of “doing justice” to someone’s work takes a particular shape, with boundaries more flexible and more opportunity to do “bricolage” on the basis of fundamental images and metaphors, or of a striking, concise or appealing vocabulary. Sources, however (and here I couldn’t agree more) must still be read, because (to take the example of Foucault now) it’s in their work that the potential power of such influences is shown – how they weave together parts of an argument, how they take key terms through different kinds of material, how they change their meaning and so forth. It is the absence of reading – a facile attitude of “handbook reading”, these days, which you identify well in your piece, I think – that I find highly problematic. It’s such refusal to read, that has led, for instance (a hobby horse of mine enters the room) people to speak of the “Sapir-Whorf” HYPOTHESIS for something that has been proven a zillion times, while they speak of Einstein’s “relativity THEORY”, for which empirical proof was offered just four weeks ago, a century after its publication.

Anyway, your text set me thinking, which is great – so thanks, and give us more of that :-))

Yours, Jan

B & B have a note about their use of original and translations; all standard practice. I have no problem with that. What I’m trying to get at is the uncritical uptake of their interpretation …

Thanks, Alex! Agreed about not going off on tangents! And I’m certainly not suggesting everyone should start reading Herder now; all I’m saying is the obvious: that you shouldn’t reference anything you haven’t actually read. No point drawing attention to every problem you notice in published work, either: you’ve got to have your own priorities 🙂

Occasionally, I find even scholars quoting in English from English sources mis-represent the original authors. It can be hard to sufficiently explain that in a publication or thesis chapter without going off on a tangent, despite there being academic value in setting the record straight.