Cover not available

Article published In: Language of Empire, Language of Power
Edited by Kees Versteegh
[Language Ecology 2:1/2] 2018
► pp. 1–17

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Language of empire, language of power

 | Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Published online: 9 November 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.18008.ver
Abstract
How do people in a position of power address those under their control? Do they impose their own language, possibly in a reduced version? Do they adopt a simple form of the language of the people they control? Do they employ a lingua franca that is commonly used in the region? Recent research usually focuses on the linguistic strategies the new speakers apply to the input. Much less information is available about the input itself. The contributions to the present issue deal with the linguistic strategies and policies used by those in power to facilitate communication with those under their control, as well as the modifications they apply to their speech. The contributions deal with the input in several work- or trade-related varieties, such as Français tirailleur, Garden Herero, Pidgin Madame, Butler English, Lingua da preto, Dienstmaleisch, Kyakhta Pidgin, and the role they played in colonial societies.
References (34)
References
Allmayer-Beck, Johann Christoph. 1981. Die Führung vielsprachiger Streitkräfte: Die k.u.k. Armee als Beispiel. In Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Heinz-Georg Lemm, eds. Heere International I1: 235–248. Herford: Mittler.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauer, Josef. 1898. Böhmische Militärsprache: Ein Handbuch für den Vorgesetzten im Verkehre mit den Untergebenen. Vienna: Seidel. (Repr. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Legacy Reprints, n.y.)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berger, Tilman. 2009. Tschechisch-deutsche Sprachbeziehungen zwischen intensivem Kontakt und puristischer Gegenwehr. In Christel Stolz, ed. Unsere sprachlichen Nachbarn in Europa: Die Kontaktbeziehungen zwischen Deutsch und seinen Grenznachbarn. Bochum: Brockmeyer. 133–156Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bizri, Fida. 2010. Pidgin Madame: Une grammaire de la servitude. Paris: Geuthner.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolton, Kingsley. 2003. Chinese Englishes: A Sociolinguistic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1983. Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital. In Reinhard Kreckel, ed. Soziale Ungleichheiten. Göttingen: Otto Schartz. 183–198.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowd, Gavin. 2016. From hatred to hybridization: The German language in occupied France, 1914–1918. In Julian Walker and Christoph Declercq, eds. Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 190–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clements, J. Clancy. 2009. The Linguistic Legacy of Spanish and Portuguese: Colonial Expansion and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Conrad, Geoffrey W. and Arthur A. Demarest. 1984. Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Csáky, Moritz. 2010. Das Gedächtnis der Städte: Kulturelle Verflechtungen – Wien und die urbanen Milieus in Zentraleuropa. Vienna: Böhlau. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deák, István. 1990. The ethnic question in the multinational Habsburg army, 1848–1918. In Nandor F. Dreisziger, ed. Ethnic Armies: Polyethnic Armed Forces from the Time of the Habsburgs to the Age of the Superpowers. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 21–49.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Declerq, Christophe and Julian Walker. 2016. Meetings between languages. In Julian Walker and Christophe Declerq, eds. Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 1–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deumert, Ana. 2009. Namibian Kiche Duits: The making (and decline) of a Neo-African language. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 211: 349–417. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eddington, Joseph. 2008. Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fielhauer, Helmut Paul. 1978. “Kinder-Wechsel” und “Böhmisch-Lernen”: Sitte, Wirtschaft und Kulturvermittlung im früheren niederösterreichisch-tschechoslowakischen Grenzbereich. Österreichische Zeitschrift zur Volkskunde 811: 115–148.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fogarty, Richard S. 2016. ‘We did not speak a common language’: African soldiers and communication in the French army, 1914–1918. In Julian Walker and Christoph Declercq, eds. Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 44–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glettler, Monika. 1985. Böhmisches Wien. Vienna/Munich: Herold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hamel, Rainer Enrique. 2005. Language empires, linguistic imperialism, and the future of global languages. [URL] [Enlarged version of: 2006. The development of language empires. In Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier and Peter Trudgill, eds. Sociolinguistics: International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, vol. III1. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2240–2258.]
Jahr, Ernst Håkon. 1996. On the pidgin status of Russenorsk. In Ernst Håkon Jahr and Ingvild Broch, eds. Language Contact in the Arctic: Northern Pidgins and Contact Languages. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 107–122. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kloferová, Stanislava. 2006. Das Wiener Tschechisch? In Helena Basler, Marie Brandeis, Jiří K. Kroupa and Jana Starek, eds. Die Wiener Tschechen 1945–2005: Zur Geschichte einer Volksgruppe. Vienna/ Prague: České kulturněhistorické centrum. 191–206.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lanly, André. 1970. Le français de l’Afrique du Nord: Étude linguistique. Paris: Bordas.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lorente, Beatriz P. 2017. Scripts of Servitude: Language, Labor Migration and Transnational Domestic Work. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Lohr Eugene. 1992. Politics, the Nationality Problem, and the Habsburg Army, 1848–1914. PhD dissertation. Louisiana State University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Newerkla, Stefan Michael. 2014. Specific language contact phenomena in the Habsburg empire and their possible utilization for teaching Czech as a foreign language in Austria. Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages. Special issue, Studies in Applied Linguistics/ Studie z aplikované lingvistiki, 18–38. Prague: Filozofická Fakulta UK v Praze.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ostler, Nicholas. 2005. Empires of the World: A Language History of the World. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon. 1996. The Sanskrit cosmopolis, 300–1300: Transculturation, vernacularization, and the question of ideology. In Jan E. M. Houben, ed. Ideology and Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 197–247.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scheer, Tamara. 2014. Die k.u.k. Regimentssprachen: Eine Institutionalisierung der Sprachenvielfalt in der Habsburgermonarchie (1867/8–1914). In Martina Niedhammer, Marek Nekula, et al., eds. Sprache, Gesellschaft und Nation in Ostmitteleuropa: Institutionalisierung und Alltagspraxis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. 75–92.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Habsburg languages at war: “The linguistic confusion at the Tower of Babel couldn’t have been much worse”. In Julian Walker and Christoph Declercq, eds. Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 62–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, James T. 1992. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seberová, Alžběta. 2013. Bohemismy v současné němčině. B.A. thesis. University of Olomouc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Toso, Fiorenzo. 2008. Le minoranze linguistiche in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Versteegh, Kees. 2015. An empire of learning: Arabic as a global language. In Christel Stolz, ed. Language Empires in Comparative Perspective. Berlin: de Gruyter. 41–53.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vitale, Anthony J. 1980. Kisetla: Linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of a Pidgin Swahili of Kenya. Anthropological Linguistics 221: 47–65.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolf, Michaela. 2012. Die vielsprachige Seele Kakaniens: Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918. Vienna: Böhlau. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Morar, Florin-Stefan
2023. First encounters. Translation and Interpreting Studies 18:1 ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue