LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND EUROPEAN IDENTITY

Identity

• a highly used term today• In fact it is an old term and its importance can

be seen in our everyday life• Who are we?• History:– can give an answer as it is a source of learning,

and sense giving images– Can help us understand who we are because we

ourselves are the result of the past

• Each of us has a multiple identity which manifests itself in accordance with the social role we are playing against a certain background:

• -If we are at the border of a country: Romanians, have a certain citizenship and belong to an ethnic group

• -We can be Transylvanians in Bucharest• -Gender identity

National Identity

• During the last 2 centuries most people use to define themselves in accordance with their identity

• Exceptions: the Inuits, the inhabitants of the Amazonian jungle and the North-American natives

• At the beginning of the 19th century - What are you? The answer would be: German, English, French

• This way of identifying oneself has appeared at the end of the 18th century after the War of Independence in North America and after the French Revolution

• Antiquity and Middle Ages: people used to identify themselves with a certain community that had a common language and culture, but they didn't consider it to be of the greatest importance

• Who are you?– A Frenchman: I am count X, the nephew of Y merchant,

a peasant on the land of…Ioan Aurel Pop, Natiunea romana medievala. Solidaritati

etnice romanesti in secolele XII-XVI, speaks about a medieval text: a Frenchman’s answer: “First I am Christian, then I am from Burgundy and only thirdly I am French”

Conclusion: belonging to a certain community or social category, was more important than language or nationality

• 19th century – the situation has completely changed: nation is a new form of solidarity which asks its members to be totally loyal even asking for the supreme sacrifice

• Nothing else was important: social class, province, religion

• Those who didn’t accept these were considered traitors

• Benedict Anderson: considers nation to be an imagined political community: its members do not know each other personally, maybe they haven’t seen each other, don’t have many things in common but they are strongly linked by a powerful feeling of solidarity

• Lucian Boia: nation has one compulsory condition: the wish to exist, the language, territory, history of those belonging to a nation does not matter

• In Europe we are used to connect the national identity with the language

• There different situations:• America – the most powerful nation in the

world – they speak English• Creole speaking tribes in South America have

established around 20 nations on the continent while they were speaking both Spanish and Portuguese

• The Irish people fought for their independence against the English – same language

• Switzerland - there are Germans, French, Italian they have established one nation: Swiss

• Belgium: French and Flemish• Austria: a separate nation in spite of the

common language and territory with Germany• Moldova republic

Conclusion

• National identity is quite a recent creation, a social construction based on: language, culture, territory, religion, state-policy tradition

• The above mentioned components are the result of the historical past, but they have been rearranged by the subjective will of those who established the modern nations

Transnational identities

• The last decades have witnessed the emergence of a new form of social solidarity

• Regional identities: in Cluj there are posters : “I am proud to be Transylvanian” - not Romanian – same situation as in Catalonia, Quebec, Northern Italy – politicians take advantage of this situation by organizing their programmes on promoting regional identities (taxes)

• Globalization is a process that affects even more the national identity:

• Mass culture is globalized – Hollywood (Bollywood), MTV, blue jeans, Coca Cola

• Financial Institutions – World Bank• Transnational companies• Internet • National sovereignty and interests cannot cope with

them• A new identity formula: citizen of the world

Gender identity• It has a cultural and social connotation and not a sexual one From a cultural or social point of view it is important the way one

expresses his or her masculinity or femininity: long or short hair, trousers or skirt, you read Cosmopolitan or For Him MagazineIt is a cultural construction: in the modern epoch women have been considered fragile and needed protection, their role was to take care of the family, the house and not get involved in public affaires

The man was destined to lead, he had to be energetic, courageous, rational, merciless on the battlefield

These characteristics were in fact created following the social competition, the fight for resources, prestige and power

• Who are we?• We are Romanians or Hungarians – a recent

construction• We are citizens of the world – we don’t know whether

it is desirable or not• We are Europeans – European identity is at its

beginning• We are men and women with a certain cultural

gender• Humanity is the essence of our identity

• The creation of each national identity was many times nothing but an excuse for bloody confrontations

• The construction of territories decided by conquests and alliances does not represent the birth of a nation

• The real birth is the moment when a small group of individuals declares its existence and tries to prove it

• The nation is conceived as a large community connected through links which express neither submission to the same sovereign, nor belonging to the same religion and social class

• What makes a nation alive is “a rich memory heritage” (Renan) – it is the result of a long past full of endeavors, sacrifices and self-denial

• The cult of the ancestors is legitimate, they made us what we are today they left us a symbolic and material inheritance

• Belonging to a nation is to be one of the heirs of this common patrimony, to know it and to honour it

• This is a slogan that has been constantly repeated by the founders of the nations all over Europe

• In order to become a nation there was a need for the past to have an inventory according to certain symbolic elements

• Continuity regarding the ancestors• Heroes that embody national virtues• One common language• Cultural monuments• Folklore• Memorable places, typical landscape• Specific mentality• Official signs: hymn, flag• Special food• emblematic animal

• Identity “check-list” allows assembling different parts in order to assert a nation

• Nation- -is the result of an invention and it cannot exist without adhesion

• The national feeling can burst when it has been assimilated and before being assimilated it has to be well learned

• It was not associated with a certain form of government• The French Revolution gave the nation its full sovereignty

and made the Republic its political expression

• The emerging nations usually had a state existence against a monarchic background: there was a historical compromise by means of which a king or an emperor was crowned

• he was to appear from that moment on as the representative of the nation

• His duty: to dedicate himself to his nation and prove his belonging to the national community

• This symbolism can be seen in the ceremonies that place the monarch central

• The emergence of the nations is determined by the modernity of the economy and society

• What is a nation?– Nation is a political category that can bear the

changes brought about by the economic and social changes. It remains constant, it becomes a landmark which underlines the idea of continuity

• Accomplishments of the idea/notion of nation:

• The cult of tradition and the honouring of patrimony allowed the western societies to make radical changes without disintegrating

• Thus the nation can express the very existence of a common interest and is superior to solidarities that have at the basis other identities such as those generated by sex, religion, social status or generations

• At the same time, the groups, parties or unions founded on different criteria are declared illegitimate and condemned as antinational

• Usually, political and ideological structures establish complex relationships between national identity and other identity categories

• The existence of common heritage is not normally contested, it is a compulsory myth, it is the elements of the heritage that are put under discussion according to the political options

• Old bones belonging to heroes can enter the pantheon of a nation when there is a change in the parliamentary majority while other ancestors disappear as well

• Today there are more and more questions regarding the idea of national identity and its preservation. An explanation could be the new economic structures which require new, larger forms of organization than the nation-state

Nation, Language and Identity

• Many of today’s European languages didn’t have their own existence before the 19th century

• In time they have been awarded a history lost in time, in spite of the fact that their birth certificate is quite recent

• Enlightenment Europe displays a complex linguistic background: the rural population, mostly illiterate speaks in dialects

• There are also languages used at the court, for writing literature and for philosophical discussions, languages used in administration, education, religion

• In the Protestant German states, German is used in religion and primary school while Latin is used in secondary school, and French is used at the court and in culture

• In 1784 Joseph II announced that German was to become the language used in administration in the Hapsburg Empire and he faced a strong opposition

• 1790 he had to revoke the decree and Latin was introduced instead, the same language which was used in Hungary and Croatia in administration and spoken by the Hungarian nobles and Croatian bourgeoisie

• Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities. Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism) - the dissemination of a standard language through printing lead to the emergence of the national feeling

• Protestantism and capitalism led to the emergence of new readers (bourgeoisie, women) that meant a new market

• There was built a common glossary and a range of expressions independent from the Latin one

• The individuals realize that there is a great number of people with whom they share the same language

• It gives the opportunity to consider the language as very old – a fundamental idea in the birth of a nation

European identity

• Identity– is not static but dynamic – no form of identity is

ever complete or totally static– Is a symbolic structure

• with time dimensions: past present and future• Provides competences to individuals: assures continuity

and consistency

-There is only one identity that is individual but it can be co-determined by the forms of associations of the individual

Balibar, E. Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities. (1991:94)

• “All identity is individual, but there is no individual identity that is not historical or, in other words, constructed within a field of social values, norms of behaviour and collective symbols. The real question is how the dominant reference points of individual identity change over time and with the changing institutional environment”.

• When speaking about national identities, they are often qualified as “imagined”– It should not be interpreted as not real – any

association is charged with plans as is the case of Europe

– Thus the interpretations and plans are both imagined and real

• The concept of identity refers to:• 1. processes of self identification• 2. processes of categorization• The individual as a social actor can redefine himself,

but this identification will always take place within categorizations imposed by various more or less powerful actors

• One of these categorizations, which is extremely to avoid, and which is one of the most important forms of associations is the national identity

• Nationalism :• - a prime mover of the fate in Europe in the last 150

years• - one of the central questions in the construction of

new Europe: how national identities can be partially overcome?

• There are many stages of construction of the European nation-states – completed in the 19th c

• Following this, there is a narrative presented which makes the entities appear as having a “natural” history of their own which is projected in the future

• The nation-state produces a new form of community with a collective identity

• The outcome will be we - the people with characteristics going back to the past and having a common future

• These characteristics are symbolic and are sustained by daily practices: national journals, weather reports

• In the nation-states:• Political hegemony assures that the internal

conflicts between antagonistic social groups and classes can be handled

• Have become the political form associated with capitalism

• BUT• The constitution of a national community will not

suppress all the differences between individuals and social groups, but it will succeed if these differences are subordinated to the new community