Text 19

Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities. Verso 1983, pages 80, 81.

Print technology has played a major role in the development of a country's cultural identity because it fixes public memory of past events in a way that makes them understandable and hence memorable. These events can then be used by future generations to understand other events in that country's history.

Hobsbawm observes that 'The French Revolution was not made or led by a formed party or movement in the modern sense, nor by men attempting to carry out a systematic programme. It hardly even threw up "leaders" of the kind to which twentieth century revolutions have accustomed us, until the post-revolutionary figure of Napoleon.' But once it had occurred, it entered the accumulating memory of print. The overwhelming and bewildering concatenation of events experienced by its makers and its victims became a 'thing' - and with its own name: The French Revolution. Like a vast shapeless rock worn to a rounded boulder by countless drops of water, the experience was shaped by millions of printed words into a 'concept' on the printed page, and, in due course, into a model. Why 'it' broke out, what 'it' aimed for, why 'it' succeeded or failed, became subjects for endless polemics on the part of friends and foes: but of its 'it-ness', as it were, no one ever after had much doubt.

• This author suggests that the concept of the French Revolution has been created through printed language. How far do you think this idea consistent with what is said in Text 6 about the conceptual power of metaphor?

Text 20

R.B. Le Page and Andree Tabouret-Keller: Acts of Identity. Cambridge University Press 1985, pages 13, 14.

Every act of language, be it written or spoken, is a statement about the position of its author within the social structure in a given culture. Through code-switchings and language crossings of all kinds, speakers signal who they are and how they want to be viewed at the moment of utterance.

Whatever views we may hold about the nature of linguistic systems and the 'rules' they embody, about 'correctness' in pronunciation, in grammar, in the meanings of words and so on - and most educated people do have views, sometimes very strong views, on these subjects - in our actual behavior we are liable to be somewhat unpredictable.... The behavior of the old lady telling the story in Belize provides us with a case in point. She began by using her most standard English; that was because she was talking directly to two visitors whom she knew were not Creole, and whom she assumed to be English. She started telling the story in what was more or less Creole English, and at a particular point where she related some crucial dialogue she switched into Spanish, finally reverting to Creole to finish the story off. Some of the characters of her story - for example, the carpenter, who evidently is a somewhat superior tradesman - speak in more standard English than others... Here we introduce, then, the concept which is the theme of this book, that of linguistic behavior as a series of acts of identity in which people reveal both their personal identity and their search for social roles.

• In your opinion, why do educated people have such strong views about grammatical correctness if they themselves often speak 'incorrectly'?

• The authors here distinguish between personal identity and social roles. What do you think is the difference between them?