Introduction

The term primordialism has been used in a number of ways by social scientists and others dealing with the phenomenon of `primary sentiments' or notions present (at least to some observers) in some societies, that are perceived by culture-bearers and analysts alike as being essential to their self-definition. Without these primordial (`first-order' or original or fundamental elements), a list of which usually mentions language, religion, blood-lines (caste, race, descent etc,), territory, and perhaps some others, the group in question could not imagine themselves to exist.

The concept of primordialism, whether or not language is involved in its perception, is not without its detractors, and we shall have to deal with the assault on the notion, particularly as an analytical construct, below. What we are interested more in here is the notion of primordialism as self-defined (Fishman (1997:xviii) refers to this as the `inside' view of the language and ethnicity connection.) by culture-bearers, or in the case of a language, by the speakers of the languages themselves. Thus, whether or not we accept primordialism as analytically necessary, useful, or helpful, there is in some cultures an observable phenomenon that seems to be a kind of meta-characteristic of the group: they see their language (or their religion, or their genetic relatedness) as essential or as the very essence of their selfhood or ethnicity (whatever this means, however defined), [See Smolicz's notion (Smolicz 1979) of ``core values" here.] without which the group would, in their own estimation, cease to have meaning, or even cease to exist. To preserve this meaning, or this existence, the group (or its members) then resort to actions that are deemed `primitive, dangerous, politically fissiparous' by analysts and opponents, but in the eyes of the group's members, are necessary and natural. The fear that lurks in the minds of most analysts, and some political leaders, is the "havoc wreaked ... by those ...states that did passionately seek to become primordial rather than civil political communities ..." (Geertz 260), the best (or worst) example in our time being Nazi Germany.It may be necessary in some cases,of course, to see some primordial attachments, at least those that are overtly declared as the basic ones, e.g. National Socialism's Blut und Boden (`blood and soil/territory') as metaphors for something else--the Nazis defined `German soil' as in fact that soil where German was spoken, but did not declare the German mother-tongue to be itself primordial, since there were some German speakers who were excluded because of Blut (the Jews); this also made certain other considerations of Boden problematical, e.g. German-speaking Switzerland and the pockets of territory occupied by ethnic Germans in eastern Europe, such as the German-speaking communities along the Volga.

Therefore, we do not need to accept or reject primordialism as an analytic device in order to be able to study its characteristics or manifestations in a given group or language community, just as we do not need to accept common and popular notions about race in order to study the phenomenon of racism. In the case of race, of course, anthropologists have long since abandoned the idea that there are a fixed number of races, or of a set basic defining, essential racial characteristics, but racism as a kind of belief system continues to be manifested in the world's cultures, whether or not there is any kind of `scientific' basis to the notion. Similarly, linguists etc. do not need to validate the idea that a given language, say Japanese, has essential characteristics that are qualitatively different from other languages; we can study the belief systems and attitudes that seem to be observable in Japanese linguistic culture (cf. Miller 1982) as a phenomenon totally independent of the structure and form of the Japanese language. But for the Japanese, the structure and form of their language is intertwined with their belief systems about their language, which seem to the Japanese, (as Miller reports it at least), to be uniquely essential to their `culture' and without which Japanese culture would cease to exist.

For the purposes of this paper/volume, of course, the aspect of primordialism that we are interested in is the emotional or sentimental aspect--the sentiments that are evoked when language is perceived to be threatened, or the sentiments displayed in certain circumstances such as public oratory, the public (or even private) reading of poetry, the public (or private) incantation of sacred texts, the performance of song, or the kinds of sentiments that move people to attempt to purify their language of `foreign' elements and restore it to a state of former or imagined grace.

It is common nowadays to refer to such ideas or belief systems as ideologies and to condemn them as being always related to systems of hegemony, perpetuation of inequality, imperialism, colonialism, patriarchalism, or whatever. I resist the temptation to use the term `ideology', since I find it fraught with many methodological inexactitudes, the least of which is the lack of rigor in its application. I prefer instead to think of these belief systems, ideas, etc. about language to be part of which I call linguistic cultureBy linguistic culture I mean the sum totality of ideas, values, beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, myths, religious strictures, and all the other cultural `baggage' that speakers bring to their dealings with language from their culture. Linguistic culture also is concerned with the transmission and codification of language and has bearing also on the culture's notions of the value of literacy and the sanctity of texts. It also includes, of course, the language itself. (Schiffman 1996). Already twenty-five years ago Geertz pointed out that

[i]t is one of the minor ironies of modern intellectual history that the term ``ideology" has itself become thoroughly ideologized. A concept that once meant but a collection of political proposals, perhaps somewhat intellectualistic and impractical but at any rate idealistic [...] has now become, to quote Webster's ``the integrated assertions, theories, and aims constituting a poltico-social program, often with an implication of factitious propagandizing" .... Even in works that, in the name of science, profess to be using a neutral sense of the term, the effect of its employment tends nonetheless to be distinctly polemical ....

Geertz goes on to point out that some would list ``the main characteristics of ideology as bias, oversimplification, emotive language, and adaption to public prejudice." (Geertz 1973:193).Geertz repeats the old saw that `I have a belief system, you have prejudices, and he has an ideology.'

We lack, in other words, a way to deal with these phenomena that does not get into either a denial of their existence, or a need to utterly condemn them, lest anyone in our audience think that we give them some sort of credence, or that they are in any way credible.

In this paper I will attempt to avoid condemnatory prose in favor of what some would call a misguided and hopelessly futile `objectivity' in the study of linguistic primordialism. And because the notion of `ideology' is itself hopelessly contaminated, both from the left and the right, I shall abjure it in favor of simply attempting to examine belief systems concerning language as an observable phenonenon of some linguistic cultures, and try to delineate any common features and origins that I can discern, especially regarding their emotive and sentimental imagery.