These three qualifications suggest that in the case of languages, path dependence intersects with social movements. Social movement literature and scholarship is important for understanding the fate of artificial languages because, ultimately, it is not purely technologies or formal qualities that com- pete, but the social movements that embrace those languages.
A common ground between path dependence and social movements lit- erature are the topics of leadership and strategy.10 Artificial language users may agree or disagree on this or that word or grammatical rule, and they also might have different understandings about the nature of the language, as a pure instrument of communication or as a tool that might serve other pur- poses or identities. How they resolve these potential disagreements depends a great deal on leadership and the decision-making process, which may or may not facilitate agreement, evolution, and growth.
An important characteristic of the language movements covered in this book is the crucial role of their inventors. Whereas in other social movements it is possible to separate leadership and issues, grievances and demands, in the Volapuk, Esperanto, and Ido movements the language and the organiza- tional template imprinted by their leaders were two sides of the same coin. In this sense, artificial language movements resemble social movements of a messianic character, where the message converges with the strategy to pop- ularize the chosen language. It is for this reason, and also because research on path-dependent processes focus on the early stage of the process, that I concentrate on the organizational templates and strategies that leaders im- printed on their movements.
Leaders mobilize and inspire followers, set up an agenda for action, frame a discourse that helps them identify the challenges and legitimize their ac- tions vis-a-vis the external world, collect resources, outline an organizational strategy, and decide on decision-making processes. To understand the organ- izational and decision-making repertoires that artificial language inventors imprinted on their language movements, I explore the social and political con- texts that shaped their thinking.11 As we will see, their conceptions of how language works and the organizational strategies they advanced largely de- termined their followers' responses, and, ultimately, the fate of their languages. But before turning to Johann Martin Schleyer, the first mover and the inven- tor of Volapuk, it is important to understand how Europeans ceased to think of languages as artifacts, or as mere instruments of communication, in order to transform them into markers of identity.
CHAPTER1
The Emergence of Linguistic Conscience
Social scientists use the term "critical junctures" to describe those historical periods when the power of standing institutions weakens and societies are forced to choose among new institutional trajectories.1 In the recent history of the European linguistic regime it is possible to identify two such critical junctures. The first took place in the late seventeenth century, when Latin was abandoned as the lingua franca and replaced by a competing, unstable array of vernacular languages. The second was in the late nineteenth century, when English, French, and German competed to become the first global language. Meanwhile, the rediscovery and reinvention of an array of new languages stirred by the nationalist elan of the time produced a new Babelization of Eu rope.2
Interest in and research on artificial languages was particularly intense at these two critical junctures, when the need for an international lingua franca was so evident. This interest did not emerge in an intellectual vacuum. It co- evolved with ideas about how languages work, how they relate to the people who speak them, and how states should think about or handle their popula- tions' linguistic repertoires.
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The decline of Latin in the first critical juncture is easy enough to track. In 1687, Newton published his Principia Mathematica in Latin. Some years later he sent his Opticks to press in English. He followed the example of Gal- ileo, who decided to publish his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in Italian, when he had previously written his Siderius nuncius (The sidereal messenger) in Latin. Descartes wrote his Rules for the Direction of the Mind in Latin, only to later publish his Discourse on the Method in French.
Beyond philosophical and scientific circles, Latin eroded in other spheres of life. Inspired by the emergence of the modern state, a new literary genre emerged, devoted to the questioning of Latin, particularly in Protestant coun- tries, and the exaltation of the national languages.
This literary genre initiated a new epoch of linguistic conscience. Lan- guage had scarcely been a political issue in antiquity and the Middle Ages.3 France, striving to become a world power, most colorfully illustrates this lin- guistic conscience. In 1549, Joachim Du Bellay published his La defense et illustration de la langue frangaise, in which he claimed that the language of the French royal court could more than satisfactorily compare not only with Greek and Latin, but also with Tuscan. Rabelais, Montaigne, and others also paid homage to the mother language, but those with closer court contacts, or looking for social recognition, did so most energetically. This was true with Fran^ois Malherbe, or Le Labourer, who, in his Avantages de la langue fran- gaise (1667), claimed:
Our language is so beautiful when one knows how to use it! If you are careful with it, Sir, it derives more from the spirit and depends less
on the organs of the body than any other language One must not
speak from the throat or open the mouth too wide or strike with the tongue between the teeth or make signs and gestures as it seems to me most Foreigners do when they speak the language of their countries. . . . Beyond that, the various terminations of our words give our language an amenity, a variety, and a grace that other languages lack, and that is what makes [French] Poetry so beautiful, for its lines, sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine, create through their mingling and commerce a harmony that exists nowhere
else And if you consider the way in which we construct words, you
will find that they stand in relation to one another in the order that nature lays down.4
And for just one example of the salesmanship of an Englishman promot- ing his language, William Bullokar insisted that "in all Europe, I dare well say, (for true orthography) no nation hath so plaine a way, to write their speech truly." This is a curious assessment, to say the least, for a language whose na- tive speakers find spelling so challenging they would later make spelling bees part of their popular culture. But in this international contest for the pre- eminence of one's own vernacular, the limits were never very clear. The Por- tuguese Joao de Barros, for example, claimed that "the Spaniards weep, the Italians howl and the French sing," indicating than only the Portuguese talk. To which French Jesuit Dominique Bouhours replied, "The Chinese, and al- most all the peoples of Asia, sing; the Germans rattle; the Spaniards declaim; the Italians sigh; the English whistle. To be exact, only the French speak."5
Linguistic pride heralded the ethno-linguistic nationalism of the nine- teenth century and had a political rationale. Modern states needed to stan- dardize, codify, and purify whatever language variation had been chosen to become the official language, and, to this end, they founded language acad- emies. The first language academy, that for Italian, was established in 1582 in Florence, followed by academies for French (1635), Spanish (1713), Danish (1742), Portuguese (1779), Russian (1783), and Swedish (1786). In any case, by the end of the seventeenth century, the erosion of Latin seemed irrevers- ible. Around 1650, 67 percent of the books for sale at the Frankfurt Book Fair were published in Latin; in 1700, only 38 percent were.6