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Eurocentric Views of Universal Languages from 1605 to 1828

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

David Mikosz
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Extract

This paper will examine how a group of theorists in the European tradition of language study was influenced by non-European and intra-European comparisons of language. These theorists were primarily based in Great Britain, although North American perspectives will also be considered. I shall trace this tradition of understanding from Francis Bacon to the American lexicographer Noah Webster. This way of considering language was initially a tool in the attempt to create a universal language that would enable Europeans to discuss and explain the new worlds then being explored. The context of Europe, however, proved significant in changing this outward looking view, resulting in an attempt to vernacularize the concept of a universal language and to make the English language an international language of discovery.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , July 1998 , pp. 103 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1998

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References

Notes

1 See for example Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London 1992) 71Google Scholar.

2 Bacon, Francis, Advancement of Learning (edited by Johnston, Arthur; Oxford 1988) 26Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 122.

4 See for example Vickers, Brian, ‘The Royal Society and English Prose Style: A Reassessment’ in: Idem, Rhetoric and the Pursuit of Truth: Language Change in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Los Angeles 1985)Google Scholar.

5 Bacon, , Advancement, 131Google Scholar.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., 132.

8 A good consideration of universal languages in a broader context can be found in James Knowlson, Universal Language Schemes in France and England (Toronto 1975)Google Scholar.

9 Cohen, Murray, Sensible Words: Linguistic Practice in England, 1640-1785 (Baltimore 1977)Google Scholar.

10 This may help clarify Francis Bacon's influence on later thinkers and helps reconcile the difference between Lia Formigari's statement that ‘we can trace virtually every issue that the philosophy of language was to debate in the course of the century to Bacon's works’ (in Formigari, Lia, Language and Experience in Seventeenth Century British Philosophy (Amsterdam 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar) with Hans Aarsleff's position that ‘The Baconianism of the new science is not argued by Wilkins in his influential books, which cite Bacon only rarely and merely in ceremonial and general fashion’ (in Aarsleff, Hans, From Locke to Saussere (London 1982) 12)Google Scholar. Several other scholars discuss a ‘crisis of Baconianism’ while also failing to consider Bacon's Advancement as different from his Novum Organum, see for example, Markley, Robert, Fallen Languages Crises of Representation in Newtonian England, 1660-1740 (New York 1993) 10 and 116Google Scholar, and Shapiro, Barbara, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth Century England (New Jersey 1983) 10–16Google Scholar.

11 For a consideration of Wilkins, see Subbiondo, Joseph ed.,John Wilkins and 17th Century British Linguistics (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Wilkins, John, Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger (London 1641) 110Google Scholar.

13 Bacon, , Advancement, 34Google Scholar.

14 Debus, Allen G. ed., Science and Education in the Seventeenth Century: The Webster – Ward Debate (London 1970) 110Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 44-49, 62.

16 Ibid., 199.

17 Feingold, Mordechai, ‘The Occult Tradition in the English Universities of the Renaissance; a Reassessment’ in: Vickers, Brian ed., Occult and Scientific Mentalities (Cambridge 1984) 73–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Debus, , Science and Education, 199Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 215.

20 Chillingworth, William, The Religion of the Protestants: A SafeWay to Salvation (Oxford 1638)Google Scholar.

21 John Locke himself vacillated between whether Chillingworth or Locke were the best ‘to reason’ with, see Rogers, G.A.J., ‘Locke and the Latitude-men: Ignorance as a Ground of Toleration’ in: Kroll, Richard, Ashcraft, Richard and Zagorin, Perez eds, Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England 1640-1700 (Cambridge 1992) 241–251Google Scholar.

22 Wilkins, John, An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (London 1668) 450Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 451.

24 Ibid., a2a.

25 See for example Brian Vickers' article in Vickers, Rhetoric and the Pursuit of Truth mentioned above for a good summary of the debate. See also the introduction to Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 16-19.

26 Sprat, Thomas, ‘History of the Royal Society’ in: Cope, Jackson and Jones, Harold Whitmore eds, History of the Royal Society (St Louis 1958) 113Google Scholar.

27 Still the best consideration of Tillotson's impact on preaching styles is found in Mitchell, W. Fraser, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrews to Tillotson (London 1932)Google Scholar.

28 Sprat, , ‘istory’, 5Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., 7.

30 Ibid., 128-129.

31 Ibid., 86.

32 Ibid., 81.

33 Aarsleff, , From Locke to Saussure, 233Google Scholar.

34 Sprat, Thomas, Observations on Monsieur de Sorbier's Voyage into England (London 1665) 65–72Google Scholar.

35 Sprat, , Observations, 243Google Scholar. Interestingly, this usage is earlier than W.S. Howell's reporting, see Howell, W.S., Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton 1971) 528Google Scholar.

36 Sprat, , Observations, 267-268, 289–290Google Scholar.

37 Chambers, Ephraim, Cyclopaedia: Or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London 1738)Google Scholar.

38 Harris, James, Hermes: Or a Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Universal Grammar (London 1786) 407Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., 408.

40 Lowth, Robert, A Short Introduction to English Grammar (London 1762) xiiGoogle Scholar.

41 Priestley, Joseph, A Course of Lectures on the Theory of Language and Universal Grammar (Warrington 1762) 7–8Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., 36.

43 Smith, Olivia, The Politics of Language, 1791-1819 (Oxford 1986) 109–116Google Scholar.

44 Tooke, John Home, Epea Pteroenta or the Diversions of Purley 1 (London 1786) 36Google Scholar.

45 Ibid., 41.

46 Ibid., 103-104.

47 Ibid., 13. However, he did use the Latin translation of Bacon's Advancement.

48 Lavoisier, Antoine, Elements of Chemistry in a New Systematic Order, Containing All the Modern Discoveries (New York 1965) xivGoogle Scholar.

49 Ibid., xv.

50 Ibid., xxx.

51 Webster, Noah, Dissertations on the English Language (Menston 1967) 178–179Google Scholar.

52 Webster, Noah, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York 1828) prefaceGoogle Scholar.

53 Webster, Noah, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (Hartford 1806) xx-xxiGoogle Scholar.

54 Limon, John, The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science (Cambridge 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Webster, American Dictionary, preface.

56 Ibid., preface.