This document discusses the relationship between language and cultural identity. It notes that in the new world, boundaries like nationality are less stable due to increased mobility. This is reflected in the language of groups like Puerto Ricans, whose language and identity can be seen through the lens of translation and mobility between places. It also discusses how fields like cultural studies have traditionally overlooked language as part of culture, and how understanding language is key to understanding identity and cultures, especially in an increasingly globalized world with rising virtual communities.

1. Cultural studies, the study of cultures
and the question of language:
facing/excluding the new millennium
Baetens & Lambert

2. Sommers (1996) and the case of Pureto Rico
It is the case of an entire population that stays on the
move, or potentially so, so much that Luis Rafael
Sánchez makes a hysterical joke about Puerto Rican
national identity being grounded in the guagua aérea
(air bus) shuttling across the Atlantic puddle.
The language reflects its mobility.
In New World, where commercial, cultural and political
border crossings define so many lives, boundary words
like here and there, mine and yours, “are hardly stable
signposts”.

3. In case of Purto Ricans, their identity can be read in their
language, and their language is a continuous mixture, it
can be defined in terms of mobility – or translation, which
is supposed to be the same thing: the “endless translations
of Puerto Ricans from one place and language to the
other”

4. Field work. Sites in literary and cultural
studies (Garber, Franklin & Walkowitz 1996)
Focusing on the role of the nation-state in culture, tends
to overlook language in the establishment of cultures and
identities
The contributors have anthropological background
In certain cases language becomes the heart of the
matter
Field work deals with language in an erratic way, often
ignoring it as part of culture, just mentioning it, or
suggesting that culture and language are just the same
thing

5. Field work. Sites in literary and cultural
studies
Europeans tend to have a stereotyped view on the position
and status of languages in the United States
the whole set of linguistic rules, hierarchies and
distinctions underlying social relations is presented as
academic and inefficient.
It is well known that quite a few languages express
politeness and social distinction by means of their pronoun
structures

6. Disciplines
The heavy stress on language as an aspect of cultural
identity is of course not new at all.
Most programmes for cultural studies are ill at ease with
the question of language since from the beginning their
institutional background has isolated them from linguistics
and/or the study of language
It is often explicitly literary environment where cultural
studies has originated, the question of language was not
the real issue.
For literary scholars, identity is generally supported by the
idea of nation.

7. Modern historiography insists, quite rightly, on the
central role played by language in the
establishment of the nation-state
social psychology and in communication
studies, where cultural awareness has become
quite central, the language component is often
hardly taken into consideration
Communication Studies/ economics: often
overlooking language and the verbal component as a
rather peripheral difficulty, which is at its best good for the
more ‘literary’ (in fact ‘cultural’) activities in society.

8. Linguistics: the most devoted discipline to language but
not culture and identity
Sociolinguistic, discourse analysis and pragmatics
have broken down the spell
The most embarrassing phenomenon may be that the
many links between culture and language may be
approached in any area of the humanities (including law,
economics, experimental psychology) but that there is
no institutionalized nor even widely accepted space for it
The question of linguistic and cultural identity is very
fashionable nowadays, maybe more in our newspapers
than in research, but it certainly remains a no-man’s land
in the humanities.

9. On the field: observing culture in
everyday life
Most international politicians, diplomats or business
people have to solve their problems in a very different
way, i.e. on a moment-to-moment and practical basis.
While generally recognizing that cultural differences and
barriers are widespread and hinder communication
considerably, they are divided as far as language problems
go: top managers make use of the new lingua franca from
morning to evening, often in a quite satisfactory way since
they do not feel the need to change their habits.

10. On the field: observing culture in
everyday life
Successful multinationals demonstrate by their very
existence that the relevance of language as a
component of cultural identity is limited at least in their
case.
So-called monolingual countries simply and officially ignore
the possibility that their visitors, or even citizens, may have
any language problems, whereas so-called bilingual or
multilingual societies do the opposite, but usually in a
limited way

11. On the field: observing culture in
everyday life
Successful multinationals demonstrate by their very
existence that the relevance of language as a
component of cultural identity is limited at least in their
case.
Whatever the underlying theories may be, societies have
been obliged to adapt their language policy and hence
their language training to new goals

12. New and old worlds, or the language of
translation
Borders are supposed to refer to territories, and territory
refers to the nation.
From the moment borders become mobile and from the
moment languages are mixed, the homogeneity of identity
is under threat, and language becomes translation.
Language is thus supposed to be homogeneous. Strangely
enough, this is supposed to be a feature of the ‘New
World’
The norm for identity, however, remains territory, and
‘translation’ appears to be a bizarre language since it is
all the time on the move between two places.

13. New and old worlds, or the language of
translation
Such a mobility is obviously due to the development of
technology and the bridge building impact of air travel.
It is not uncommon among translation scholars to stick to
the idea that languages are to be located in a spatial
framework, more common even than to maintain them
within nations, as ‘national languages’.
In most translation theories and research, the concept of
‘translation’ has kept its primary meaning as ‘transfer’
from one place to the other. But it is possible, of course, to
read ‘transfer’ as a metaphor that does not exclude the
heterogeneity of space and territory as well as its non-
coincidence with nations.

14. American and other puzzles: language
and identity in the new millennium
Even-Zohar attempted to distinguish some of the basic rules of
‘culture repertoire’
He did not really look for linguistic parameters, nor even for
communicational parameters.
The more we study the composition and the ‘repertoire’ of
communities who meet and interact by e-mail or via Internet,
the more we are aware of the historical and cultural
antecedents of our contemporary “communication societies”
In previous ages, no more than in the new millennium, citizens
of a given society can hardly select their neighbours (they may
be allowed to select their most intimate partners, but not
necessarily their mayor, their policemen or their priests)

15. American and other puzzles: language
and identity in the new millennium
In virtual societies they can drop any new community from
the moment they don’t like it any more: they can take part
in the active construction of communities that may develop
mainly, if not only, on the basis of shared communication
Among the principles that allow for a better distinction between
virtual and traditional identities, the principle of communication
becomes quite central.
An interesting distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘virtual’
communities is that the language options are now much
more open in the new worlds.

16. American and other puzzles: language
and identity in the new millennium
The dominant role of verbal, especially written
communication is weakened by new competitors, such as
visual communication.
The very development of virtual worlds out of the traditional
ones is already an indication that this shift is forever and that
old things will never come back again in their original
environment.

17. Updating cultural studies, or
universities
one of the embarrassing conclusions is that universities
are in trouble when trying to discover the right key for
dealing with societies and cultures.
They do not even deal with traditional societies, they
rather tend to deal with traditional societies on the basis
of traditional and imaginary models which reflect certain
layers only of society.
It is more relevant to promote research on culture in
contact with other competences, i.e. in an open,
interdisciplinary way, than to quarrel about the exact
definition of ‘cultural studies’.

18. Thanks
For Your Patience