This description reminds us the state of things depicted with irony by Umberto
Eco in Il pendolo de Foucault (1988). Without a clear connection with the past,
our ...
ARGUMENTS AGAINST LATIN Amadeu Viana Universitat de Lleida [This paper was read at the International Conference "Nations and Languages, and the construction of Europe", Leuven, november, 1994; a slightly different version appeared in Sintagma, 4, 1992, Universitat de Lleida (Spain)] Particular histories of languages need a comparative approach. Comparisons may bring to light general tendencies and coincidences in time. In this respect, the role of Latin is crucial, as is usually stated, due to its character as the first European interlingua. But problems arise when we make a closer examination because there is no history of Latin in the modern period, not even a specific dictionary. Although the main interest has traditionally been in medieval and ancient periods, the production of Latin continued (albeit irregularly) into the eighteenth century. One of the intriguing questions at this point is to find a coherent explanation for its decline. The answer hangs partially on our own expectancies and attitudes. What is all this saying to us? Which is our definition of language building? Can we start with a definition that includes the great breakdown of Latin during the eighteenth century? To what extent are we members of the same linguistic comunities that gave up Latin two centuries ago? Lluís V. Aracil has noted in several papers (1980, 1988) our implication in the building of sociolinguistic labels and he has referred particularly to our arguments against Latin. He remarks that the relegation of the learned language implies a break in our own tradition. The simple fact is that we are unable to read and understand information from the past. One consequence of this is the emergence of a whole and compact vision of the present, which also implicates the future. And one subsequent paradox is that all those ancient messages were destined to us, as far as we know. This description reminds us the state of things depicted with irony by Umberto Eco in Il pendolo de Foucault (1988). Without a clear connection with the past, our sense of culture would resemble an obscure conspiracy. But a culture cannot be the plot of secrets that link up and spread here and there in Il pendolo, a kind of gratuitous erudition to illustrate the initiates. Our intuition tells us that there is something wrong, even something perverse, in taking this perspective. There was, of course, an important inflexion in the eighteenth century. We can start by recalling that learned languages are used as elaborated codes, in the sense of Bernstein. An elaborated code is a framework for expressing general concerns and values. It is also the way of transmitting specific knowledge from one generation to another. A clash of generations can be viewed as the collapse of one particular elaborated code. Then a whole range of interesting related topics cease to be interesting. The eighteenth century undergoes this collapse with the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes. Charles Perrault's Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes en ce qui concerne les Arts et les Sciences (1693) represents the formal opposition to the old code. The discredit mainly affected
what was to be learned in the future, i.e. the contents of cultural transmission. We can still quote the words of George Gusdorf (1973): Si les Modernes trouvèrent un champion en la personne de Fontenelle, qui venait de s'imposer par ses Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686), chef-d'oeuvre de vulgarisation scientifique, le camp des Anciens s'honorait d'autorités aussi respectables que Boileau, Racine et La Bruyère. Charles Perrault aussi avait beau jeu d'insister sur "les progrès que les hommes ont fait dans la connaissance des choses naturelles"; il soulignait "combien cette connaissance s'est augmenté depuis le commencement de notre siècle, et principalement depuis l'établissement des Académies de France et d'Anglaterre, où par le secours des télescopes et des microscopes on a découvert une espèce d'immensité dans les grands corps et dans les petits, qui donne une étendue presque infinie à la science qui les a pour objet" (Gusdorf 206). Nearly everything written in Latin during the eighteenth century was on learned topics. The course of scientific events played its role in the defeat of the common language. The paradox is that science and theory were Latin's last domains of use. The importance of the Encyclopédie for the progress of natural sciences has been shown elsewhere (for instance, in Hazard, 1946). Therefore, the reversal of values between humanist and technical knowledge which is achieved after the Enlightenment may well be a determining factor in explaining the claims of vernaculars. Latin was classified from the very beginning on the humanist side, which was going to lend its good name to technical improvements and natural sciences. The Querelle cast serious doubts on the topics and values of cultural transmission. Beside its importance for the start of new forms of knowledge, the Querelle was the framework within which the contents associated with Latin were discussed and relegated. Latin as an elaborated code had lost its main argument there: the relevance of discourse. Despite the verbal debate and the pompous declarations, the world of references remained classical for at least some decades. Again, the excellent report by George Gusdorf (1973), clearly shows how the displacement of Latin was accompanied by a large-scale contact with classical letters: L'Antiquité demeure l'âge d'ôr des formes de la sensibilité et de l'expression. Poe et Voltaire, Montesquieu comme Klopstock ou Lessing, et le Goethe émerveillé du voyage en Italie, les meilleurs d'entre les meilleurs, sont les élèves respectueux des maîtres anciens. Les architectes, les peintres, les sculpteurs qui modèlent le décor de la vie sont tributaires de cette perfection des formes que ne cessent de conjuguer à nouveau, avec ravissement, les architectures palladienes d'Anglaterre, les tableuaux d'Horace Vernet, les gravures de Piranèse. (...) L'Antiquité impose ses modèles en matière d'ameublement et habillement, elle tend à remodeler plus puissamment que jamais le décor intérieur et extérieur de la vie. Le classicisme est celle métalangue des sentiments, des idées et des valeurs, qui parvinet à bloquer l'horizon de la pensée (Gusdorf 209-210). During the Modern Age, the Latin-speaking community is mostly related to the spread of writing and education. As these aims were achieved, written Latin fell more and more into disuse. The more literacy increases, the less the paradigm that made it possible was understood and used. The great sixteenth century debate on the Questione della lingua has no parallel in the eighteenth century: there was no argument about the loss of universality, apart from the few remarks of D'Alambert's Discours Préliminaire in the
Encyclopédie. A better balanced notion of linguistic equality was still to come. For a long time, written texts were the only source of sociolinguistic legitimation. Aracil (1988) reports evidence from a Spanish nineteenth century writer, recalling that many of the so-called living European languages had no stock of written texts some centuries ago. The measure of social acceptance was closely linked to written texts. The logical counterpart was the implementation of national education. A general basic program had appeared in the previous century, prepared in Latin by Amos Comenius. Its discussion was mainly in vernacular and related to national aims. Vernaculars were becoming necessary and useful, as Latin and Greek were for scholarship. The supposed divorce between the need for spreading the national language and the obsolescence of the langues de savants is again the key. Vertical circulation took over the horizontal pattern. The Spanish case has been analysed by Lázaro (1949). The Asturian writer, Gaspar de Jovellanos, wrote several reports on education such as the Memoria sobre la educación pública (1802) and the Bases para la formulación de un plan general de instrucción pública (1811) where the notion of dead language appears in a new sense, linked to erudition. The minimal hypothesis is that this new meaning is a functional outcome of the vertical requirements. The living languages were those that took part in public instruction. A clear consequence of this state of things, including its inner contradictions, was the inclusion of Latin in basic education programmes. Thus, its incorporation in the schools as a reminiscence came to be parallel to its preclusion from Academies and Universities, as two different sides of the same process. The study of argumentation can help us to discover the ties and the intricacies of our discourse routines. Our sociolinguistic notions and practices are set in a framework that is taken for granted without further examination. The analysis of arguments may revise the routines and dissipate the obstacles that current thinking puts in our way, throwing new light on old questions. It is possible to learn something about argumentation looking at the case of European Latin in some detail. The points of the discourse were clearly set at the eighteenth century. There was a real controversy, with broad implications. Many things passed to the foreground, while others simply left implied. It looked like the end of a public discussion, at the same time as some European vernaculars had just acceded to formal uses. We feel better, however, when argumentation is not necessary. When the situation is transparent and we know what to do and how to decide, we do not appeal to the force of arguments. And the reverse is true: the worst arguments call on justifications and defences. They beg for the retrieval and are grounded in signs of nostalgia. There was a meaningful episode at the end of the nineteenth century that illustrates the defensive position well. According to Couturat & Leau (1903), there was a timid attempt to retrieve classical Latin in the broader context of implementing an international auxiliary language. In their own words: La plus intéressante de ces tentatives est celle de M. George Henderson, l'auteur de la Lingua et de l'Anglo-Franca, qui, avec un désintéressement et un détachement assez rares, subordonnant ses projets personnels au succès de l'idée, entreprit de convertir ses contemporains à la cause du latin. Il lança en 1890 un journal intitulé: Phoenix seu Nuntius latinus internationalis, linguae latinae ad usus hodiernos ahibendae sicut documentum editus, dans lequel il proposait la fondation d'une "Societas linguam
universalem, scientiarum ac negotiarum ancillam, fundantium internationalis", et où il publia impartialement les opinions de ses correspondants, les critiques comme les aprobations. Il reçut les adhésions et les encouragements d'un petit nombre de savants distingués d'Angleterre, de France, d'Amérique, d'Allemagne, etc. (Couturat 517). The attempt produced some samples of a new variety, suitable for the change of century and the renewal of vocabulary: Un autre journal latin est la Vox Urbis, publiée à Rome depuis 1898 par le chevalier Aristide Leonori. C'ést une revue littéraire et artistique illustrée, rédigée dans le latin le plus classique; on y publie des poésies latines, notamment le Carmen saeculare du pape Léon XIII. La partie la plus intéressante, à notre point de vue, est ce qu'on peut appeler les Faits divers: "Bellum Transvaalianum, Boerorum proelia; Sinensis signata pax, " etc. On y trouve une description de la Grande Roue de Chicago; on y parle d'electrica lux, de ferrea via; un cuirassé s'y appelle loricata navis, une locomotive currus vaporiveha, une bicyclette birota velocissima, un roman (Quo vadis?) une fabula Milesia, un aérostat aereothrenum, et un mandat-poste: diribitoria chartula (qui l'eût deviné?) (Couturat 521). On its behalf, the defenders of Latin use classical reasoning hanging on history. Couturat & Leau, in the due critique of the proposal, made use of a collection of arguments against the learned language, which even now constitute one of the most complete lists on the topic, and one which will sound very familiar to us. The irony of it is that Couturat & Leau argue against the purpose of recovering the classical language in the very context of the search for an international auxiliary variety. The contradictions and the troubles attached to the search for an international language are also part of the topic and would deserve a more delicate analysis. Here we have some of the propositions which make up the Couturat & Leau refusal: 1) Malheureusement presque tous les faits allégués appartiennent au passé; 2) Les savants sont de moins en moins obligés de savoir le latin, à mesure qu'on s'eloigne du temps où le latin était l'unique langue scientifique; 3) Combien d'années d'études faudrait-il pour pouvoir écrire et parler, nous ne disons pas comme César, mais correctement? (...) c'est une langue beaucoup trop difficile et trop longue à apprendre; 4) Ce qui constitue proprement une langue, ce n'est pas son vocabulaire, mais sa grammaire. (...) La grammaire est tout: c'est elle qui fait le caractère d'une langue, c'est elle qui en fait la difficulté; 5) Mentionnons une dernière difficulté, celle de la pronunciation du latin, qui diffère beaucoup d'un pays à l'autre; 6) D'autres vont plus loin: ils admettent la liberté du solécisme, du barbarisme et du néologisme (...). On obtiendrait ainsi une série de "dégradations" du latin, à l'usage des diverses classes de personnes qui ont besoin d'une L.I. (...) C'est serait non seulement l'anarchie, mais la cacophonie parfaite (Couturat, passim). At the beginning of our century, current common sense could more or less accept and aprove of this curious collection of arguments. The list included many different aspects, and its coherence prevailed. But giving a name was better than arguing. The fact of giving a name closes a whole process and assures understanding. Things become more transparent if they are summed up in some words. The key phrase that summarizes the arguments is probably "dead language". The notion of dead language enjoys today a very broad consensus. Nobody seems to doubt which languages it applies to and its
meaning seems fixed. It establishes an easy link with the past and with "presociolinguistic speculation", as we may call it. This is at least what school programmes tell us about the term. But we have to recall here that the spread of education may be responsible for some fixations of meaning. Accordingly, let is take a glance at education and what has been said about the topic. First of all, the fourth point (4) of Couturat & Leau stands out fiercely. Grammar is everything. Grammar has obviously been the first and the only chapter of the programme, as far as modern teaching of Latin is concerned. August Comte (1882) dedicated some strong adjectives to grammarians that taught grammar isolated from contexts. The time for free speculation with grammar was still to come, but the question is that teaching a language without contexts of use renders it useless. We could call grammaticalization the process by which the whole paradigm of references of a language is reduced to grammar procedures. The practices of modern philology have reinforced this approach. The emphasis that Couturat & Leau put on these aspects, bringing out the difficulties in grammar and obviating the growth of vocabulary, responds to the same trend. In the heart of this context, Charles Bally (1935) tried to bring out some of the arguments that supported the grammatical view. Bally seemed to accept the actual state of things and wondered about the purpose of teaching classical languages: Pourquoi l'étude du latin est-elle utile? Est-ce parce qu'il est l'écho de l'histoire d'une grande nation? (...) Ou bien serait-ce, comme on le répète sans cesse, parce que le latin est le porte-voix de la pensée grecque? Mais nous savons quelle déformation le génie hellénique a subie en passant à travers des cerveaux romains (...). D'où vient alors que le commerce des lettres classiques affranchit l'esprit en lui donnant ce quelque chose de souple et de délié qu'on nomme esprit de finesse (...)? Il n'y a là rien de bien mystérieux; le latin, pour des raisons très simples, nous oblige à penser "autrement". Il est construit sur un autre plan que nos langues modernes; grâce aux flexions, les mots conservent leur individualité au sein de la phrase; la construction libre fait de la phrase même un organisme original (...). C'est pour toutes ces raisons que le latin est un merveilleux instrument d'assouplissement; il familiarise l'esprit avec l'imprévu, lui donne le sentiment de l'accidentel, du contingent (...) (Bally 144-145). We find here a curious justification for the grammatical approach. If grammar skills can aid thinking, we don't have to worry about sociolinguistic context. Bally's argument about close connections between grammar and thinking was welcomed. Its merit was to have put those intuitions in the foreground. Latin was worth learning because of its intrinsic interest. Likewise, it was better to learn classical Latin, instead of other varieties. In classical Latin you will found a great deal of purity and style. As before, you don't have to look at sociolinguistic requirements. The bias towards classical Latin is still alive in our school programmes. About the same years, Antoine Meillet supported a more complex opinion. In Les langues dans l'Europe nouvelle (1928) he devoted a chapter to Les langues savantes, including the possibility of their relegation. Perhaps we should now reread his sociolinguistic survey, and try to appraise it from our context. As a matter of fact, the final shift from Latin to vernaculars was not perceived as a breakdown of a variety of wider communication because of the early promotion of the main European vernaculars.
This process was followed by the relegation of other less favoured varieties, but Meillet was unyielding with the minority question: Dans une région où coexistent un parler local et une langue commune de civilisation, les habitants qui, soit par leur situation sociale, soit pas leur degré avancé de culture, soit par les relations qu'ils possèdent au dehors, sont tenus de connaître la langue commune sont ceux qui ont un prestige. (...) Et, en vertu de la tendance qui pousse les hommes à se rapprocher des classes supérieures et à les imiter, tout le monde tient à connaitre cette langue comune. (...) Le parler local ne sert plus qu'aux relations de famille, aux rapports privés. Il s'emplit d'éléments étrangers; il se vide de son originalité. (...) Le parler local est inutile le jour oû toute la population, connaissant la langue commune, est bilingue. Les jeunes n'éprouvent plus alors le besoin de connaître le parler local; s'ils l'on entendu dans leur enfance, ils l'oublient à l'âge mûr (Meillet 147). Instead, Meillet was fully aware that national languages carried out a solid cultural purpose that spread throughout the main European countries. He undertook a public defence of national languages. One of the reasons was that he relied on their historical resources. Latin had a role to play in this act. Meillet was not thinking of the romance area. In his survey, he pointed out that Latin usage had been the pattern through which the different European languages had shaped their vocabulary and categories. He stressed active and creative aspects: Il y a entre les langues du groupe roman et celles du groupe germanique un parallélisme dû à ce que ces langues se sont développées dans des conditions pareilles, sous les mêmes influences, à ce qu'elles ont sans cesse agi les unes sur les autres, à ce que ceux qui les parlents ont constamment communiqué les uns avec les autres (Meillet 309). Besides these well-founded arguments, he could not avoid a strong statement about the future at the end of Les langues savantes, after a brief review of some learned varieties like Armenian, Sanskrit or Persian. His opinion about the facts he knew blocked his appraisal of changes in other directions: Mais le latin ne sert plus, ne servira plus de langue commune. Il y a eu en Europe, ou du moins en Europe occidentale, une langue de civilisation commune; il n'y en a plus. Et l'Europe actuelle appartient aux langues nationales (Meillet 188). The main problem with this argument is that fixing the present in this way means closing accessibility to the past. Meillet mishandled these possibilities. His position represents a fair compromise between the cultural and political requirements of his time. Like everybody, he admitted some facts but he failed to realize others. As for us, the question is in which aspects the Europe of the twenties described by Meillet matches our perception of present-day Europe. The answer depends on a clear positioning about the main sociolinguistic patterns. From the beginning of the eighteenth century the defenders of Latin have probably been its worst allies. The arguments on its defence have produced a counter-argumentation so coherent and unbending as that of Couturat & Leau. This has been the main trend until now. In contrast, perhaps we sould be more at ease if we take into account a recent approach coming from the philosophy of science. Cosmopolis (1990), Stephen Toulmin's inquiry into the historical sources of European thought, starts from a sharp
criticism of the status of formal sciences in modern society and intellectual life in general: In the search for a "rational" method which took a central place in 17th-century science and philosophy, Descartes' agenda was only one variant. This decontextualized ideal was a central demand of rational thought and action among "modern" thinkers until well into the 20th century. In due course, further variants joined it: the economist's equation of "rationality" with efficiency, for example, and Max Weber's view of the "rationalization" of social institutions. These further twists, however, were still directed at issues that could be judged by rational, objective and preferably quantitative measures, and they too left little room for cultural or personal idiosincrasies (Toulmin 200). Toulmin's approach, coherent with his philosophical programme, is rich in reflections about the need of a context: One aim of 17th-century philosophers was to frame all their questions in terms that rendered them independent of context; while our own procedure will be the opposite --to recontextualize the questions these philosophers took most pride in decontextualizing. The view that modern science relied from the very start on rational arguments, divorced from all questions of metaphysics or theology, again assumed that the tests of "rationality" carry over from one context or situation to another, just as they stand (...) (Toulmin 21). Even if he doesn't mention it, the social expectations of "modern" science were a crucial factor in the relegation of Latin. But the main novelty of Toulmin's survey on history is his appraisal of European Humanism: From Erasmus to Montaigne, the writings of the Renaissance humanists displayed an urbane open-mindedness and skeptical tolerance that were novel features of this new lay culture. Their ways of thinking were no subject to the demands of pastoral or ecclesiastical duty (...). In spirit, their critique was not hostile to the practice of religion, just so long as this was informed by a proper feeling for the limits to the practical and intellectual powers of human beings. (...) The theological modesty of the humanists owed much, of course, to the recovery of classical learning and literature. (...) Renaissance scholars were quite as concerned with circumstantial questions of practice in medicine, law, or morals, as with any timeless, universal matters of philosophical theory. In their eyes, the rhetorical analysis of arguments, which focused on the presentations of cases and the character of audiences, was as worthwhile --indeed, as philosphical-- as the formal analysis of their inner logic: Rhetoric and Logic were, to them, complementary disciplines (Toulmin 25-27). Starting at another end, Cosmopolis represents a fresh inspiration, with philosophy entering into the argument. Stephen Toulmin probably gets its right when he points out another trend of intellectual behaviour. Language building should be a particular case of community building. We cannot think of community building processes without taking into account the building of common references. Relations between countries may also be of the Gemeinshaft-type. Then, a different kind of shared communication is needed and this also includes a revision of our implicit arguments against the past.
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