Читать книгу The Alphabet of Discord - Giustina Selvelli - Страница 8

Since this book focuses on issues of ideology and writing systems in the context of national identity construction, I intend to treat a number of different and heterogeneous textualities as objects of analysis. Although most of the examples I refer to are texts published by scholars and intellectuals who exercised some authority in the cultural discourse of their time, excerpts from literary works, as well as more widely disseminated media in the form of journalistic articles, are also considered. In addition, important official legal documents, state decrees, constitutional laws, and, albeit in a minimal way, the public space of “inscription,” in the form of the “linguistic landscape” of official public signage, are taken into account.

My assumption is that the circulation of discourses relating to writing systems takes place at three quite distinct levels of operativity. The first is embodied by the primary source, that is, the official and bureaucratic structure that produces laws and public declarations on matters of writing, and is therefore the most original level and the one closest to the source of ideology, that is, power. At the second level, that of cultural dissemination, to which most of this book is devoted, we find the texts and monuments produced by exponents of the cultural intelligentsia and by public and cultural institutions: academies of science and language, eminent writers and artists, and to some extent the media. It is extremely useful to examine the role of these actors in proposing a particular image of the nation that is consistent (or not) with that of the official rhetoric. Finally, the third level coincides with the socio-anthropological dimension, which refers to the attitudes cultivated by the wider public towards the national discourse, implying a possibility of re-appropriation that is to some extent subjective.

In this book there are only very brief references to the properly subjective aspect of the question, while much more space is devoted to examining the role of popular culture in propagating certain identity messages associated with the alphabet, that is, the question of the transformation of discourse from official to popular. This component of the analysis is considered fundamental in demonstrating how the so-called “operative level” (Malešević 2002: 74-75) of ideology is propagated through a much more effective and direct discourse and language than the primary, official one. Therefore, the level of ordinary and (seemingly) spontaneous practice, a context that might seem detached from the first two, actually represents the most obvious and evident reflection of the penetration of official discourse into the daily life of large segments of the population (Malešević 2013: 120-154).

The main inspiration for the development of this research was provided by the illuminating insights offered by the field of the anthropology of writing as practiced by its most eminent representative, Giorgio Raimondo Cardona (1943-1988).2 This branch of anthropology is the one that has so far paid more attention than any other to the symbolic, cultural and ideological aspect of writing systems (especially in: Cardona 1982, 1986, 2009 [1981], 2009a). It assumes that writing systems represent much more than a simple representation of sounds, bearing a fundamental symbolic dimension that is often underestimated, and which enables them to “emancipate themselves” from their linguistic context.3

Writing is understood as both a cultural and a social practice: written texts are central to culture conceived in the broad sense, which in turn is closely linked to society (Cardona 2009a: 64ff). The alphabet also proves to be a privileged site of symbolic production, becoming an effective means of reminding people who they are at the national collective level: in the Bulgarian and Croatian cases, as we shall see, this is fully expressed and linked to modern ideologies of state legitimacy. In the dissemination of identitarian rhetoric, the symbolic aspect of the alphabet plays an important role, stimulating national consciousness and internal cohesion through the use of elements such as writing, which is conceived as an “identity and symbolic marker” (cf. Malešević 2004: 26). Intellectuals, legitimized by the political sphere (cf. Smith 2009: 84-86), can indeed make certain textualities and messages decisive in propagating certain forms of ideologies: in the cases analyzed in this book, they correspond to “script ideologies.”

To understand how writing and written texts are produced and used by different actors in different contexts, we need to examine the values, beliefs and behaviors associated with different forms of writing (Barton & Papen 2010: 9).4 For this reason, an important focus is placed on those who hold power over writing culture and on the ways in which they engage in broader identity practices by perpetuating specific national ideological discourses and visions about the nature of writing in a certain alphabet. Writing is linked to the ethnic question in a variety of ways and represents a space through which particular symbols are spread. Often, the “autochthonous” writing system represents one of these symbols and hence becomes doubly crucial in the so-called process of the “symbolic cultivation” of identity (Smith 2009: 48-49). The written word also determines the awareness of past times and is thus seen as equivalent to history, to the collective memory of society (cf. Assman 2011).

Writing has been skillfully selected and brought into the collective consciousness through a narrative in which the motifs of historical memory are often transformed into ideological elements aimed at legitimizing the existence of a specific national identity as well as a kind of “political imagination” (see again Assman 2011: 111 ff.). Memory itself is exercised on a collective level through a process of symbolic cultivation; in the cases we will analyze, this corresponds to a “rhetoric of the alphabet” that feeds the collective consciousness and promotes the internal cohesion of the national community. In fact, the Bulgarians, but often also the Croats, claim to have become historically a nation only after the creation or adoption of their alphabet. The national historiographies of the countries of the region have thus contributed to revive a particular version of their history, focusing on very ancient times and making them the metaphor of a kind of exemplary “golden age” to be invoked in the era of national “rebirth” (Mishkova 2015: 271).

When dealing with issues related to writing systems, it is not possible to disentangle the latter from their most natural context, that of the language they convey. However, as has been pointed out (Sebba 2009: 35), sociolinguistics has not paid special attention to writing systems so far,5 even though “writing systems have obvious connections with subjects of great sociolinguistic interest, like identity and ethnicity” (ibid.). As far as the sociolinguistic aspect of alphabets in the Balkans is concerned, scholars such as Ranko Bugarski (1997) and Robert D. Greenberg (2004) are important exceptions; they have shown the importance of issues of language and the alphabet in collective representations in the years before the collapse of Yugoslavia, during the conflict, and, later, in the process of the affirmation of the new nation-states that emerged from the war.