Table Of ContentIMAGES OF LANGUAGE
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E. F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series III - STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE SCIENCES
Advisory Editorial Board
Sylvain Auroux (Paris); Ranko Bugarski (Belgrade)
Lia Formigari (Rome); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Hans-Josef Niederehe (Trier); Emilio Ridruejo (Valladolid)
Rosane Rocher (Philadelphia); Vivian Salmon (London)
Kees Versteegh (Nijmegen)
Volume 89
William Jervis Jones
Images of Language
Six essays on German attitudes to European languages from 1500 to 1800
IMAGES OF
LANGUAGE
SIX ESSAYS ON GERMAN ATTITUDES TO
EUROPEAN LANGUAGES FROM 1500 TO 1800
WILLIAM JERVIS JONES
Royal Holloway, University of London
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
William Jervis Jones. Images of language : six essays on German attitudes to European
languages from 1500 to 1800.
p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of
linguistic science. Series III, Studies in the history of the
language sciences, 0304-0720 : ISSN v. 89)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language awareness-Germany, 2. Europe-Languages. I. Jones,
William Jervis, 1941- . II. Series.
P120.L34I46 1999 98-55454
409'.43-dc21 CIP
ISBN 90 272 4577 0 (Eur.) / 1 55619 633 4 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
© Copyright 1999 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
1. "König Deutsch zu Abrahams Zeiten": Perceptions of the place of
German in the family of languages from Aventinus to Zedier 1
2. "Mit rainem teutschen lispeln": Attitudes to language among
earlier German purists 25
3. "Die Söhne wolten nicht der eignen Mutter schonen": Lexis and
metaphor in the formation of German puristic discourse 59
4. "Mit den Feinden Teutsch reden": Abraham Kolbinger of Augsburg
and the purity of German military language 85
5. "Französisch kauder-walsch macht unsre sprache falsch":
Diagnoses of Gallomania 111
6. "Spuma linguarum": On the status of English in
German-speaking countries before 1700 171
Conclusion 215
References 217
Index of personal names 261
Index of subjects 272
Index of words 289
INTRODUCTION
To explore views of language during the early modern period is to encoun
ter principles and beliefs powerfully motivated and pervasively influential. We
face the challenge of radically differing linguistic and non-linguistic premises
and perceptions, which are ideally to be approached without facile value judge
ment or simplistic teleology. We may feel gratified with anticipations of more
recent insights, and there are the tantalising near-misses; but in essence our
quest lies elsewhere, in observing the reception of traditional tenets, the re-
functionalising of older models, the interplay of religion, philosophy and
linguistic observation. Not least, there is the indirect evidence which linguistic
ideas give us, of underlying fears and aspirations, of social tension and up
heaval, as older paradigms of thought and action slowly give way to new.
Broad chapters in the historiography of linguistics lie virtually unwritten,
and many others await the fuller treatment which they deserve. For the Ger
man linguist, rich source material is to hand from the sixteenth century on
wards, affording scope for the treatment of selected figures, for longitudinal
studies of specific themes and arguments, and for placing German contribu
tions within their European matrix. For a sense of what is possible in these
directions, one can turn, for instance, to Monika Rössing-Hager's examination
of four exemplary figures (1985), Sonia Brough's monograph (1985) on the
concept of Gothic in linguistics, art and architecture, Andreas Gardt's encyclo
paedic survey of language reflection in the Baroque and the Enlightenment
(1994), and Werner Hüllen's comparative work on yardsticks of language
evaluation in English and German (1996). Some matters of principle in the
history of linguistic ideas have been concisely reviewed by Herbert Brekle
(1986); fuller explorations of methodology are offered by Konrad Koerner
(1989, 1995); and the forthcoming handbook Geschichte der Sprachwissen
schaften: History of the language sciences: Histoire des sciences du langage:
Ein internationales Handbuch zur Entwicklung der Sprachforschung von den
Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (edited by Sylvain Auroux, Konrad Koerner,
Hans-Josef Niederehe and Kees Versteegh) is likely to prove definitive in its
world-wide scope and detail.
For most of our period, with shining exceptions, German was doubly the
underdog. It lacked the traditional (if not unquestioned) status of Hebrew,
Greek and Latin; and it was functionally the inferior of French, Italian and
Spanish, certainly in the perception of most contemporaries, and arguably also
if we choose to apply what might nowadays be regarded as standard criteria
viii IMAGES OF LANGUAGE
for judging language status: selection, codification, elaboration and accep
tance. Small wonder, therefore, if compensation was sometimes sought
through extravagant and ill-founded assertion, crude stereotyping and irrational
argumentation, alongside more measured and reasoned approaches. But Ger
man had particular strengths to offer the international community of linguists:
its rich internal variation, its distinctive and lexically productive structures, its
genetic distance from Latin-Romance, and its geographical adjacency to more
than twelve languages, all gave it the potential to supply exciting new dimen
sions to the European debate, which could not have come from Latin, French,
Italian, Spanish and English alone. "Giebt also die Untersuchung der Teut-
schen Sprach nicht nur ein Licht vor uns, sondern auch vor gantz Europa,
welches unserer Sprache zu nicht geringem Lob gereichet", wrote Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz in his Unvorgreifliche Gedanken (p.279), in words which
were to achieve their fullest import during the nineteenth century, when
Germanic philologists were, indeed, to illuminate linguistic thought across
Europe and well beyond. Perhaps the severest test of German linguistic
achievement during the earlier period would be to enquire to what extent the
intrinsic advantages were at that stage successfully exploited by German
linguists, and fruitfully received by the European community at large.
In any case, an isolationist view of German reflections on language during
this period would be pointless. Investigation shows that German linguists were
consciously working within a network of older and newer European influ
ences, just as their vernacular was itself caught up in such a web. Their ideas
on language in part resemble, in part contrast with, those current elsewhere.
Of the three main strands of linguistic thought identified by Gardt (mysticism,
universalism, and the ontological-patriotic approach), our emphasis will be on
the last, which is probably the most widely and strongly represented of the
three in Germany during the period under survey.
The present work is offered as a thematically related collection of essays;
it does not seek to present a comprehensive, chronologically exhaustive study
of language attitudes for the period concerned. Two broad issues provide its
focus: German speakers are seen in the act of discovering and comprehending
the nature of adjacent languages, and in the more difficult process of shaping
and demarcating the identity of their native language. Our attention is thus
directed towards their perceptions of these other languages and of German
itself, and towards the linguistic and ideological framework within which such
perceptions may be set. The time frame has been interpreted loosely, and
varies from essay to essay. Most of the material and discussion ranges
INTRODUCTION ix
selectively across the period 1500-1800, in particular the seventeenth century,
but some attention is also given to ideas and utterances from later centuries.
The theme of our first essay comprises the historical-genetic position and
changing affiliations which were assigned to German within the circle of
Classical and modern European languages during the sixteenth, seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. Essays 2, 3 and 4 explore the diversity of
approach and method in earlier German foreign-word purism, which arose
partly as a means of defining a national language and as a reaction to the
powerful external influences, in particular from Latin, French and Italian, to
which German was being subjected. Whilst the second essay attempts to
illustrate and characterise earlier phases of German puristic thought and com
mentary, the third focuses on the puristic use of lexis and metaphor with par
ticular reference to gender-specific imagery, and the fourth traces, as an acid
test, some notable reactions to the intrusive foreign word in German military
usage. Essays 5 and 6 consider attitudes to the French language among Ger
man speakers, and some early German perceptions of that marginal and in the
popular view excessively contaminated language, English. The work closes
with some general conclusions and suggestions for further research.
Collectively, these essays draw on some 300 primary sources, ranging
from the scholarly to the popular. These have been selected as a representative
cross-section of material, rather than functioning as an exhaustive corpus, or
as a chosen gallery of 'great thinkers' or committed linguists. Largely, these
are texts devoted to theoretical or practical aspects of language, but included
also are stray comments on language which appear in works on history, relig
ion, social and cultural satire, poetics and many other subjects. As freely as
possible, the texts themselves have been cited, but where appropriate I have
attempted also to convey the sense by paraphrase or interpretation.
Of the six essays, the first is a revised version of an article of similar title
which I contributed to 'Das unsichtbare Band der Sprache': Studies in German
language and linguistic history in memory of Leslie Seiffert, edited by John L.
Flood, Paul Salmon, Olive Sayce, and Christopher Wells (= Stuttgarter Ar
beiten zur Germanistik, 280) (Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, Akademi
scher Verlag, 1993), pp. 189-213. The second and third essays had as their
stimulus the Keith Spalding Lecture which I was invited to give in 1996 at the
Institute of Germanic Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of Lon
don; the text of the lecture itself can be found in London German Studies,
volume 6, edited by Edward M. Batley (pp.33-70). The sixth essay is an
extended version of my contribution to Intercultural Encounters — Studies in
English literatures: Essays presented to Rüdiger Ahrens on the occasion of his
X IMAGES OF LANGUAGE
sixtieth birthday, edited by Heinz Antor and Kevin L. Cope (Heidelberg: Uni
versitätsverlag C. Winter, 1999). I am grateful to the editors and publishers
named for their kind permission to print revised versions of the relevant items.
It remains for me to thank in particular Professor John L. Flood (London),
Professor Konrad Koerner (Ottawa), and Mr Christopher J. Wells (Oxford)
for their many helpful comments on my typescript, MsA nke de Looper (Am
sterdam) for her practical guidance and support in the publication of this
volume, Dr Felicity J. Rash (London) for a number of detailed references, and
all my colleagues in the Department of German at Royal Holloway University
of London for their willingness to relieve me from teaching and administrative
duties, for generous amounts of research leave.
As in the past, I am indebted far beyond words to my wife Val for her
patience, understanding and support.
London, November 1998 W. J. J.
