Subaltern

“ We then proceeded to inquire into the manner in which the same processes operate to divide any given form of speech, with the lapse of time, into varying forms, or to convert a language into dialects. We passed in review the causes which favour the development of dialectic differences, as well as those which limit and oppose such development, and even tend to bring uniformity out of diversity. They are, we found, of two general kinds: the one, proceeding from individuals, and founded on the diversities of individual character and circumstance, tend to indefinite separation and discordance ”

“ They are thinking of, planning for and executing plans which subordinate the race—the human entity—to a subdivision, the mark and sign of which is the lowest and most universal possession of male nature—the mere procreative instinct and possibility. And this has grown to be the habit of thought until in science, in philosophy, in religion, in law, in politics—one and all—we must translate all language into other terms than those used. For the word "universal" we must read "male;" for the "people," the "nation," we must read "men." ”

“ But the embarrassing question immediately arises, If all the individual variations within a dialect are being constantly leveled out to the dialectic norm, if there is no appreciable tendency for the individual’s peculiarities to initiate a dialectic schism, why should we have dialectic variations at all? Ought not the norm, wherever and whenever threatened, automatically to reassert itself? Ought not the individual variations of each locality, even in the absence of intercourse between them, to cancel out to the same accepted speech average? ”

“ I attack your race. That takes your mind off yourself by making it turn towards your race, and making you individually hate me.' 'That is not an ordinary theory.' 'Ordinary theories are, sir, never sound.' 'Mr Nevill,' said Miss Gordon, 'you are a great traveller.' 'Yes, I have been about a bit; but I'm not old, and I intend doing better before I die.' 'Are you a good linguist?' 'No. Don't speak a word of any language but English.' 'There is a general theory that linguists have prominent eyes. ”

“ It is an anomaly to apply the works of German writers on the voice to the study of the English language, or to that of any other than the German language; or to apply books written from an English standpoint to the study of any language except the English—the movements of the tongue, and, in sympathy therewith, of countless other muscles, being different for every language. ”

“ As is well shewn in the text, the peculiarity, which really distinguishes adjectives from other general names, is that they mark cross divisions. All nature having first been marked out into classes by means of nouns substantive, we might go on by the same means subdividing each class. We might call the large individuals of a class by one noun substantive and the small ones by another, and these substantives would serve all purposes of predication; but to do this we should need just twice as many additional nouns substantive as there are classes of objects. ”

“ We are taught that whereas in English the genitive is marked by a final s, or by the preposition of, it is in Greek expressed by a final ος, in Latin by is. But what this ος and is represent, why they should have the power of changing a nominative into a genitive, a subject into a predicate, remains a riddle. It is self-evident that each language, in order to be a language, must be able to distinguish the subject from the object, the nominative from the accusative. ”

“ And then we have the converse fact that "inferiors invariably use the third person plural in addressing their superiors:" a form which, while dignifying the superior by pluralization, increases the distance of the inferior by its relative indirectness; and a form which, beginning as a propitiation of those in power, has, like the rest, spread till it has become a general propitiation. ”

“ There are, in the language itself, decisive reasons for preferring one pronunciation to another; and men of science should be acquainted with these reasons. But if there were none, and everything rested on practice, we should [Pg 205] never change a general practice without substantial reasons. No change should be introduced which is not an obvious improvement. ”

“ What may now sound to us like a perverted sense is often historically correct, for whereas learned influences, the introduction of foreign words—which makes for further specialization and differentiation of meaning—and the general march of civilization affecting manners, customs, and habits of thought, all tend to divert the normal course of language, the dialects have meanwhile kept the noiseless tenor of their way unmolested. ”

“ Such are most adjectives in like or ly (warlike, manly, etc.) ; and, on the other hand, substantives are again and again used so as to denote one quality and only one. The transition from the denotation of a simple quality to that of a group of qualities is effected by the use in a special sense of a substantival adjective; as, ‘the blacks,’ for ‘the negroes’ = ‘a radical,’ ‘a conservative.’ When once such usage has been started, there is no necessity for the train of thought, which led the first employer to specialise the word, to be present in the consciousness of other speakers. ”

“ We are right to seek for the definitions of things, but when we have them to hand in the words; why should we go farther? If the word 'forma' is Latin, we should seek for the Latin meaning and not the French, which, however, often uses 'deforme' or 'difforme' instead of 'laid', ugly, without people's noticing that its opposite should be a word which implies the existence of form; and this can only be beauty. We should note that 'informe' in French as well as in Latin means shapeless, a body without any definite appearance. ”

“ We have long had 'assimilation' in our dictionaries; 'dissimilation' has as yet scarcely found its way into them, but it speedily will. [It has already appeared in our books on language. [Footnote: See Skeat's Etym. Dict. (s. v. truffle) . Pott (Etym. Forsch. vol. ii. p. 65) introduced the word 'dissimilation' into German.] ] Advances in philology have rendered it a matter of necessity that we should possess a term to designate a certain process which words unconsciously undergo, and no other would designate it at all so well. ”

“ We saw, when discussing Relative Terms, that the connotation of one term often implies that of another; sometimes reciprocally, like 'master' and 'slave'; or by inclusion, like species and genus; or by exclusion, like contraries and contradictories. When terms so related appear as subject and predicate of the same proposition, the result is often tautology—e.g., The master has authority over his slave; A horse is an animal; Red is not blue; British is not foreign. Whoever knows the meaning of 'master,' 'horse,' 'red,' 'British,' learns nothing from these propositions. ”

“ The comparative philologist and the educated linguist do not deny, but recognize, the fact that evolution and devolution are both continually going on in every language, causing more or less marked changes which become appreciable at the end of a sufficiently long period of time; neither would they deny that, when the transformation due to these causes has become sufficiently great through dialectic segregations, the resultant language—which is at first only a dialect—may, in time, become a distinct language. ”

“ In truth, if this theory is unable to explain the facts it recognizes, much less can it account for those it ignores.
To interpret correctly the phenomena we are considering, we must ask ourselves how personal pronouns have arisen in other languages. Did the primitive Occidental man produce them outright from the moment that he discovered himself? Far from it. There are abundant reasons for believing that every personal pronoun is a degenerate or, if you prefer, a developed noun. ”

“ It is during times when the higher classes are either crushed in religious and social struggles, or [pg 069] mix again with the lower classes to repel foreign invasion; when literary occupations are discouraged, palaces burnt, monasteries pillaged, and seats of learning destroyed,—it is then that the popular, or, as they are called, the vulgar dialects, which had formed a kind of undercurrent, rise beneath the crystal surface of the literary language, and sweep away, like the waters in spring, the cumbrous formations of a by-gone age. ”

“ Yet, though such be its palpable origin, it is, after all, a compound of a somewhat different character from the other. The subordinate element full, owing to its use in a similar way in a great number of other compounds, such as careful, truthful, plentiful, dutiful, and the frequent and familiar occurrence of the words it forms, has, to our apprehension, in some measure lost the consciousness of its independent character, and sunk to the condition of a mere suffix, forming adjectives from nouns, like the suffix ous in such words as perilous, riotous, plenteous, duteous. ”

“ Now, the view taught at the present time seems to me to want greatness; and the dialect in which alone it can be intelligibly uttered is not the dialect of my soul. It is a sort of postponement of life; nothing quite is, but something different is to be; we are to keep our eyes upon the indirect from the cradle to the grave. ”

“ In a language which provides for the distinctions of person by particles prefixed or suffixed to the verb, it will scarcely be expected, that separate and independent relative pronouns should exist, or if such are to be found, their use, as separate parts of speech, must, it will have been anticipated, be quite limited—limited to simple interrogatory forms of expression, and not applicable to the indicative, or declaratory. ”

“ Here the soldiers were joined by a few seamen and marines, under the command of a naval officer; and the whole having made good their landing under cover of darkness, advanced briskly to the assault. The enemy were taken by surprise; only a few shots were fired on either side; and in the space of five minutes, the small fort, mounting four guns, with an officer and thirty men, the whole of the garrison, fell without bloodshed into the hands of the assailants.
So trifling, indeed, was the resistance offered by the French garrison, that it disturbed not the slumbers of the troops in camp. ”

“ The "respectable" classes are apt to rob language of its savor, clipping and trimming it like the trees in a Dutch garden. You must go to the common, unrespectable classes for racy vigor of tongue. They avoid circumlocutions, eschew diffuseness, go straight to the point, and prefer concrete to abstract expressions. ”

“ The modern tendency to drop the subjunctive is unfortunate, for the distinction between the subjunctive and the indicative is too useful to be abandoned. [83] A knowledge of the difference between these modes in English is especially important in view of the difficulty which pupils complain of in mastering the uses of the Latin subjunctive or the Greek subjunctive and optative. [84] For these reasons more space is given to the subjunctive in this book than would be called for by a mere discussion of modern English usage. ”

“ I highly disapprove of the absurd practice, so common with young men of the present day, of expressing their ideas in that low and incomprehensible dialect, termed 'slang,' which, in my opinion, has neither wit nor refinement to redeem its vulgarity, and which effectually prevents their acquiring that easy yet dignified mode of expression which should characterise the conversation of the true gentleman. ”

“ In such a sentence as “That fierce lion who came here is dead,” the class of “lion,” which we may call the animal class, would be referred to by concording prefixes no less than six times,—with the demonstrative (“that”) , the qualifying adjective, the noun itself, the relative pronoun, the subjective prefix to the verb of the relative clause, and the subjective prefix to the verb of the main clause (“is dead”) . ”

“ The Old school labour under a misconception that no spoken dialect should be considered as a standard, unless it be uniform throughout the whole of the country in which the language is spoken. Even in countries like England where ideal conditions conducive to uniformity prevail, polite speech presents marked variations. ”

“ This irreducibility, upon which the polygenistic philologists rely, recalls the argument, which is based upon physical characters, and consists in contrasting the Negro with the White. This argument long possessed a certain appearance of strength, which it has lost as more numerous intervening links were discovered between these two extremes. It seems to me that the general progress of philology is tending to the same result. All linguists now place side by side languages which would have been considered irreducible at the beginning of the century. ”

“ Isolated individuals may be found who speak a compromise between two dialects of a language, and if their number and importance increases they may even end by creating a new dialectic norm of their own, a dialect in which the extreme peculiarities of the parent dialects are ironed out. ”

“ Now dialects arise not because of the mere fact of individual variation but because two or more groups of individuals have become sufficiently disconnected to drift apart, or independently, instead of together. ”