scholarly journals How to Deal with Non-Dominant Languages – Metalinguistic Discourses on Low German in the Nineteenth Century

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nils Langer ◽  
Robert Langhanke

This paper discusses nineteenth-century metalinguistic discussions of Low German, an authochthonous of Northern Germany, which, having lost its status as a written language suitable for formal discourse during the Early Modern period, has since been reduced to the spoken domain. During the nineteenth century the language was on the verge of enjoying a revival, with original poetry being published and extensive discussions as to whether Low German ought to play a role in formal education. As this article shows, this discussion was intense and controversial. Comparing the views of Klaus Groth, the leading proponent of Low German in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the internal debates amongst school teachers - hitherto never discussed by the scholarly literature – this article demonstrates the intellectual and ideological split felt by these educational practioners in their views of Low German: on the one hand, they recognise the cultural value of Low German as the historical language of the North and the native language of the pupils they teach, on the other hand they agree with each other that the language of education and science, as well as national unity, can only be High German. We hope to show with our discussion not only how very similar modern thinking on the use of Low German is to these historical discussions but also how the status and perception of many regional and minority languages across the world has been subject to the same or very similar thoughts and pressures.

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Christopher Houtkamp ◽  
László Marácz

In this paper a normative position will be defended. We will argue that minimal territorial minority language rights formulated in terms of the personality principle referring to traditional minority languages granted in the framework of the European Union (EU) are a benchmark for non-territorial linguistic rights. Although territorial minority languages should be granted collective rights this is in large parts of Europe not the case. Especially in the Central and Eastern European Member States language rights granted to territorial languages are assigned on the basis of personal language rights. Our argumentation will be elaborated on the basis of a comparative approach discussing the status of a traditional territorial language in Romania, more in particular Hungarian spoken in the Szeklerland area with the one of migrant languages in the Netherlands, more in particular Turkish. In accordance with the language hierarchy implying that territorial languages have a higher status than non-territorial languages both in the EUs and Member States’ language regimes nonterritorial linguistic rights will be realized as personal rights in the first place. Hence, the use of non-territorial minority languages is conditioned much as the use of territorial minority languages in the national Member States. So, the best possible scenario for mobile minority languages is to be recognized as a personal right and receive full support from the states where they are spoken. It is true that learning the host language would make inclusion of migrant language speakers into the host society smoother and securing a better position on the labour market. This should however be done without striving for full assimilation of the speakers of migrant languages for this would violate the linguistic rights of migrants to speak and cultivate one’s own heritage language, violate the EUs linguistic diversity policy, and is against the advantages provided by linguistic capital in the sense of BOURDIEU (1991).


Author(s):  
William B. Meyer

One of the earliest historians of the Civil War saw it as a fundamental clash between the peoples of different latitudes. Climate had made the antebellum North and South distinct societies and natural enemies, John W. Draper argued, the one democratic and individualist, the other aristocratic and oligarchical. If such were the case, the future of the reunited states was hardly a bright one. But Draper saw no natural barriers to national unity that wise policy could not surmount. The restlessness and transience of American life that many deplored instead merited, in his view, every assistance possible. In particular, he wrote, Americans needed to be encouraged to move as freely across climatic zones as they already did within them. The tendency of North and South to congeal into hostile types of civilization could be frustrated, but only by an incessant mingling of people. Sectional discord was inevitable only if the natural law that "emigrants move on parallels of latitude" were left free to take its course. These patterns of emigration were left free, for the most part, but without the renewed strife that Draper feared. After the war as before it, few settlers relocating to new homes moved far to the north or south of their points of origin. As late as 1895, Henry Gannett, chief geographer to the U.S. Census, could still describe internal migration as "mainly conducted westward along parallels of latitude." More often as time went on, it was supposed that race and not merely habit underlay the pattern, that climatic preferences were innate, different stocks of people staying in the latitudes of their forbears by the compulsion of biology. Thus, it was supposed, Anglo-Saxons preferred cooler lands than Americans of Mediterranean ancestry, while those of African descent preferred warmer climates than either. Over time, though, latitude loosened its grip and exceptions to the rule multiplied. As the share of the population in farming declined, so did the strongest reason for migrants to stay within familiar climates. Even by the time Gannett wrote, the tendency that he described, though still apparent, was weaker than it had been at mid-century. It weakened because a preference for familiar climates was not a fixed human trait but one shaped by experience and wants, and capable of changing as these variables changed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Holmes

This article examines Presbyterian interpretations in Scotland and Ireland of the Scottish Reformations of 1560 and 1638–43. It begins with a discussion of the work of two important Presbyterian historians of the early nineteenth century, the Scotsman, Thomas McCrie, and the Irishman, James Seaton Reid. In their various publications, both laid the template for the nineteenth-century Presbyterian understanding of the Scottish Reformations by emphasizing the historical links between the Scottish and Irish churches in the early-modern period and their common theology and commitment to civil and religious liberty against the ecclesiastical and political tyranny of the Stuarts. The article also examines the commemorations of the National Covenant in 1838, the Solemn League and Covenant in 1843, and the Scottish Reformation in 1860. By doing so, it uncovers important religious and ideological linkages across the North Channel, including Presbyterian evangelicalism, missionary activity, church–state relationships, religious reform and revival, and anti-Catholicism.


2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larbi Sadiki

Commitment to unity can hinder democracy, rendering the search for pluralism into an exercise in political singularity. I contest the thesis within the theory of democratic transition that national cohesion and ethnic homogeneity are essential preconditions for democracy. Tunisia is an ethnically homogeneous society, but seems to be unable to seize on the opportunity to transcend the threshold of democracy. The Tunisian example suggests that democracy (that is, an ethos of toleration of difference), should be rethought as one essential precondition for cohesion within democratising polities. The analysis unpacks how ‘fragmented’ politics works in the North African country. Politics becomes ‘fragmented’ when ‘loyalty’ to the state's discourse of ‘citizenship’ and ‘identity’, becomes the one distinguishing feature by which political community is defined and membership within it is determined. National unity is another word for political uniformity. Thus understood the state's imperative of unity and uniformity contradicts political pluralism and demotes rather than promotes democratic development.


This volume collects eight essays that all attempt to answer two key concerns: did markets for seafarers exist in the age of sail; and, if so, were these markets efficient? The question was initially approach by Charles Kindleberger, who claims a market is efficient if it permits free access for employer and employee, is supply and demand match balance so that wages increase, and that labour must command the same price across the market. The first four focus on the broadly defined early-modern period, and all agree on the existence of the markets but are divided over whether or not they are efficient. The second section asks the same questions of the nineteenth century, and receives similar answers. All of the essays take issue with the definition and application of the term ‘efficiency’ when approaching their conclusions. Each author is considered an expert within their field, and all base their research on the North Atlantic.


Author(s):  
Lincoln Taiz ◽  
Lee Taiz

Sex in animals has been known for at least ten thousand years, and this knowledge was exploited during animal domestication in the Neolithic period. In contrast, sex in plants wasn’t discovered until the late seventeenth century. Even after its discovery, the sexual “theory” continued to be hotly debated for another 150 years, pitting the “sexualists” against the “asexualists.” Why was the idea of sex in plants so contentious for so long? In answer, Flora Unveiled offers a deep history of perceptions concerning plant gender and sexuality, from the Paleolithic to the nineteenth century. Evidence suggests that an obstacle far beyond the mere facts of pollination mechanisms stymied the discovery of two sexes in plants, and then delayed its acceptance. This was a “plants-as-female” paradigm. Flora Unveiled explores the sources of this gender bias, beginning with women’s roles as gatherers, plant-textile makers, crop domesticators, and early horticulturists. In myths and religions of the Bronze and Iron Ages, goddesses were strongly identified with flowers, trees and agricultural abundance. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this tradition was assimilated to Christianity in the person of Mary. The one-sex model of plants continued into the Early Modern Period, and staged resurgences during the eighteenth century Enlightenment and in the Romantic movement. Not until the nineteenth century, when Wilhelm Hofmeister demonstrated the universality of sex in the plant kingdom, was the controversy over plant sex finally resolved. Flora Unveiled chronicles how persistently cultural biases can impede discovery and delay the acceptance of scientific advances.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mark Spaulding

As one of the world's busiest rivers the Rhine carries about 300 million tons of freight annually, upriver and down, between Switzerland and the Dutch ports on the North Sea. Heavy shipping traffic on the Rhine, including ocean vessels reaching Mannheim and barges reaching Basel, has been an integral part of the Rhine valley landscape for the past 150 years. But a bounty of commercial shipping on the Rhine has not always been part of the river's history. Despite the Rhineland's growing population and increasingly productive economy at the end of the early modern period, long-distance shipping activity along the river gradually declined during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. River commerce revived and expanded only in the early nineteenth century, stimulated in part by new developments in transportation technology, business organization, industrial development, and an unprecedented civil engineering assault on the river's natural contours. These material components of the nineteenth century transportation revolution as it unfolded along the Rhine are generally well known.


2021 ◽  
Vol V (4) ◽  
pp. 116-137
Author(s):  
Igor Dmitriev

Scientists and philosophers of the 17th century, with all the novelty of their ideas, at the same time were in no hurry to reject the concept of a miracle, although many of them, such as I. Newton, rejected the understanding of a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, its “ordinary course”. On the whole, with regard to the Christian concept of the miracle in the natural philosophy of the early modern period, a very uncertain situation developed. On the one hand, in the era of the Scientific Revolution, there was a clear tendency to explain extraordinary phenomena by the action of natural causes, which in theology found its meaningful expression in the Protestant concept of the cessation of miracles (cessatio miraculorum) in post-apostolic times, and in philosophy (more precisely, in the philosophico-theological literature), especially in the teachings of B. Pascal, R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, D. Hume and other authors, in an effort to build a rational theology in which the status of a miracle turned out to be very uncertain. On the other hand, the difficulties that arose in science after I. Newton's discovery of the law of universal gravitation and associated with the problem of actio in distans, forced researchers to resort to theological concepts and images in natural-philosophical reasoning, in particular, to refer to the concept of a miracle. The latter circumstance required the development of a new understanding of miracles, namely the concept of “coincidence miracles”, which made it possible to preserve the apologetic functions of miracles and at the same time to neutralize the philosophical and theological criticism of the concept of miracle by B. Spinoza and D. Hume. My aim in this article is to demonstrate that the relationship between theological and scientific (more precisely, natural-philosophical) problems is by no means reduced to the use of theological concepts in the process of the formation of classical science in the mode of general reasoning by analogy or as general ideological statements. Theological concepts turned out to be included in the natural-philosophical discourse on a par with purely physical arguments, and, on the contrary, theological thought had to somehow react to natural-philosophical discoveries, which ultimately led to a mutual adjustment of both natural-philosophical and theological concepts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-259
Author(s):  
György Kövér

This study analyses the historiographical application of two concepts (colony, and empire), the contemporary interpretations of which fundamentally determined judgements about the status of Hungary within the Habsburg Monarchy. Despite the fact that the concept of ‘colony’ as used in the eighteenth century was widely known, the category of the ‘semi-colony’ eventually proved to be unable to describe the conditions of the Austrian–Hungarian world in the second half of the nineteenth century. The term ‘Hungarian Empire’ clearly arose from the language of the nineteenth century. Various meanings of this were formulated: as a term for the one-time territory of Hungarian Kingdom (the Holy Crown of St. Stephen, meaning Hungary proper, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia) on the one hand; and another one that included expansion beyond the Carpathian basin (mainly toward southeastern Europe). A third meaning also existed: a Hungarian-centered version that included all Habsburg provinces, which from time to time was hard to distinguish from the first and second meanings mentioned above. Reviewing the asymmetrical but parallel developments of the concepts of ‘colony’ and ‘empire,’ we must establish that in the long term the case for the usage of both terms has been undermined. Even more does this opinion seem to be valid in the case of derivative, retrospectively constructed concepts (such as semi-colony, and sub-empire) that are not rooted in the dictionary of the historical sources and conceptual history of political ideas.


2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. MOORE

Attention is drawn to the one side remaining of a nineteenth-century correspondence addressed to Alexander Somerville that is housed in the archives of the Scottish Association for Marine Science at Oban, concerning conchological matters. Previously unstudied letters from James Thomas Marshall shed new light on the practicalities of offshore dredging by nineteenth-century naturalists in the Clyde Sea Area; on personalities within conchology; on the controversies that raged among the conchological community about the production of an agreed list of British molluscan species and on the tensions between conchology and malacology. In particular, the criticism of Canon A. E. Norman's ideas regarding taxonomic revision of J. G. Jeffreys's British conchology, as expressed by Marshall, are highlighted.


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