Dictionaries, Identity, and Language Reform in the Turkic Muslim World
Location
Janet Ayers Academic Center, Room 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
26-9-2024 3:30 PM
Description
Today’s languages have evolved gradually and spontaneously over many eons. Yet sometimes cultural and political elites have used the levers of schooling and publishing to deliberately change their language, particularly in its written form. English speakers may be aware of how the spelling reformer and lexicographer Noah Webster helped shape American English and distinguish it from British English (that’s why we write “center” not “centre” and “color” not “colour”) This talk will look at the much more radical language reforms perpetrated in parts of the Muslim world in the early twentieth century, specifically in Turkey and the traditionally Muslim parts of the Soviet Union. As these regions tried to establish their own modern national identities, languages underwent complete shifts in the alphabets they used (Arabic script to Latin alphabet, and sometimes onward to Cyrillic), as well as wholesale rewriting of dictionaries to drop “foreign” and “backward” words and introduce a more “authentic” and “modern” national vocabulary. It emerges that language is not just a neutral vehicle through which ideas are expressed. Languages can themselves be socially and politically constructed and manipulated in order to convey a social or political message.
Recommended Citation
Schafer, Daniel, "Dictionaries, Identity, and Language Reform in the Turkic Muslim World" (2024). Humanities Symposium. 10.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2024/2024/10
Dictionaries, Identity, and Language Reform in the Turkic Muslim World
Janet Ayers Academic Center, Room 4094
Today’s languages have evolved gradually and spontaneously over many eons. Yet sometimes cultural and political elites have used the levers of schooling and publishing to deliberately change their language, particularly in its written form. English speakers may be aware of how the spelling reformer and lexicographer Noah Webster helped shape American English and distinguish it from British English (that’s why we write “center” not “centre” and “color” not “colour”) This talk will look at the much more radical language reforms perpetrated in parts of the Muslim world in the early twentieth century, specifically in Turkey and the traditionally Muslim parts of the Soviet Union. As these regions tried to establish their own modern national identities, languages underwent complete shifts in the alphabets they used (Arabic script to Latin alphabet, and sometimes onward to Cyrillic), as well as wholesale rewriting of dictionaries to drop “foreign” and “backward” words and introduce a more “authentic” and “modern” national vocabulary. It emerges that language is not just a neutral vehicle through which ideas are expressed. Languages can themselves be socially and politically constructed and manipulated in order to convey a social or political message.
Comments
Well Core Category: Intellectual Wellness