Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power Review

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Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power ReviewJoseph Errington's LINGUISTICS IN A COLONIAL WORLD is an exploration of how early Western linguists' work on languages around the world was bound up in the colonial enterprise. On one hand, linguists' reports were inevitably coloured to a degree by colonial prejudices or outright colonial agendas. On the other hand, their scientific goals sometimes existed in tension with colonial aims. The book comprises six chapters and a "postcolonial postscript", each of which examine a different facet of linguistics in such a sociopolitical context.
I'll give two examples of these aims and tensions. One is that the Protestant missionaries' work in Africa and Indonesia was meant to produce translation of Scripture and make good Christians of the nations. However, these missionary linguists were caught in a bind. In order to gain a true command of the language and create a fine translation of the Bible, they would have to spend a long time among the people and their native traditions, potentially comprising their own Christianity. The alternative would be simply to observe from a distance and maintain one's own European identity. A great many people chose the latter, and the resulting language documentation and Bible translation then reflected a risibly distorted version of actual local speech.
Another example is that colonial language policy backfired on itself. The colonial enterprise required a large corps of civil servants who could efficiently communicate both with their European superiors and the people of their district. Therefore, the colonial enterprise demanded the creation of a standard form of what was seen as the most suitable local language, in the process often eradicating a colourful diversity of local dialects. But in creating a standard language that a wide swath of the local population could communicate in, the Europeans were facilitating native resistance. Errington's fascinating case study is Zimbabwe. Before 1890, no one had ever heard of a "Shona language" but rather there was only a chain of dialects, mutually intelligible at the ends. A standard language was created by focusing on a handful of dialects, and the result was called Shona by the European powers even if the local people didn't recognize such a name. By the 1950s, however, native opposition to colonialism was organizing itself under the banner of the "Shona ethnicity".
I enjoyed much of Errington's book, but as a linguist myself and not an anthropologist like the author, I found it rather longwinded. Certainly not all of the author's citations are meant to establish contemporary postcolonial street cred, but I suspect a great deal of them are. This entire work could have been reduced to under a hundred pages without such a torrent of references and much saying the same thing over and over again. Still, any linguist should find it thought-provoking. Our forebears were not working in a vacuum.Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power Overview

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