The Multiple Carriers of Language: Political Organization and Embodied Competences in the Esperanto Global Field

• In Event: 352 - Theory Section Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Epistemology and Discourse

Abstract

This paper offers an extension of the sociological conceptualization of language. Recently, sociologists have treated language as a cultural object, i.e. as discourse. While recognizing the importance of discourse, this research highlights two additional necessary language carriers. First, a successful language also needs political organization involved in the "production" side of language maintaining the internal workings of a language field and expanding, securing, and policing the external boundaries of the language field. The global standing of a language thus reflects its political organization. Second, a living language depends on embodied language competences among a community of language practitioners. Being a social competence manifested in practical use, language competence is unequally distributed among those who value a given language. As a result, differential language competences play a stratifying role for the field defined by the language. The argument is grounded on a case study of the international language Esperanto. For the Esperanto language, organizational support is provided by the Esperanto movement. The movement works on reproducing the language through language instruction, through development of materials in and about the language, and through promotion and legitimation of the Esperanto language internationally. The Esperanto field is stratified between high-status "Esperantists" (those in possession of Esperanto language skills regardless of how much they value the language) and low-status "eternal beginners" (those in possession of limited Esperanto language skills). Low-status participants exist despite movement efforts to provide opportunities for learning the language and despite Esperanto being much easier to learn than other languages.

Author

• Ana Velitchkova, Centre For Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies