Eul Essay 1

EUL 101: SOCIETIES OF EUROPE

ESSAY I

THE CONCEPTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY THROUGH LANGUAGE: THE FRENCH AND THE UK CONTEXT

To date you have engaged with several factors which contribute to the creation of stability of societies and cultures.

Focus on one factor and apply it to two European societies covered in the unit up to now. Analyse in detail how this factor shapes the cultures under consideration, examining parallels and differences in its influence on the two societies.

The evolution of mankind from the primitive societies of Ancient Egypt to the modern industrialised societies of Europe and America has been underlined by the fundamental idea of communication. In a world that is rapidly expanding due to globalisation, the importance of language has been re-introduced in political discourses in order to invoke sentiments of cultural heritage and identity. The following essay argues that the linguistic discourse is highly dependent on the state’s acceptance of diversity within its community. Both France and the UK have overtime succeeded in adopting a centralised monolingual policy. France, on the one hand, has predominantly used this monolingual approach to construct a national identity, in turn suppressing some of its regional dialects. Contrastingly, while the UK has preferred the monolingual approach, it has been more receptive of reviving its regional languages. Evidently, the multi-faceted nature of ‘language’ acts as both a facilitator and a barrier for people to participate in social life within their local community and with the world at large.

The French preoccupation with language is evident in its use and application across the globe. Schwartz contextualises this fixation with the language by arguing that it has ‘an innate clarity and rationality that made learning it an ideal unto itself’ (Schwartz 2011: 37). By noting that the Russian aristocrats learned French from a governess and Russian from the servants, Schwartz notes that a sense of...