Greetings Economists, This comment goes to the core of what is to be resolved in terms of language related conflicts on a large and small scale. On Jun 10, 2006, at 7:39 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
Ever since the late 19th century, Kabyles have been renowned for their military valor. But despite Berber fighters' disproportionate sacrifices in the revolution against French rule, the National Liberation Front (FLN)-the leading party in the national struggle against French authority-defined Algeria as a homogenous, Arab-Muslim state upon winning independence in 1962. It made standard Arabic mandatory in education, even though the language is spoken by few Algerians, most of whom use a North African dialect. The FLN also broke up Berber cultural meetings and frowned upon the use of the Berber tongue Tamazight as a threat to national unity.
Doyle; The Algerians are following the French example as opposed to Canada, Belgium, Switzerland Eurocentric examples, or India, China and other lesser developed counties. The French had roughly 17 languages in French territory at the Revolution and quickly installed a 'French' only central feature of the state. Language went along with the prevailing French emphasis on Enlightenment prescriptions about rational information. Simply said text cannot but crudely name or reproduce emotion nor provide an accurate representation of emotion structure. Hence, while Europeans commonly know several languages, the problem of marginal languages provides a means to organize revolts (via emotional solidarity) that dominant languages engender due to unequal distribution of resources. A universal language representative of the French ideal seems really based upon an illusion about speech. Rather than see speech as a labor, Enlightenment speech is an object to be shared. A common language provides the basis for the illusions and the tools of communication via print, but don't challenge the presumption that words are the central problem of communications. Someone translating (say to the deaf) recognizes the labor involved in doing speech work. The objects of speech are only approximately the same between languages groups. They really represent brain work as people think. Human brains are not context less. The brain is intimate to the arms, hands, feet, face and so on in terms of the work process. Hence the universality is labor not object or words. This then is the challenge to Socialists to develop as computing technology advances. It is well known the voice technology is not up to the task of speech acts in most contexts (barring restricted office dictation). Yet this is the central task of Socialism to recognize the common work process of brainwork. thanks, Doyle Saylor
