Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-Tongue Fascism, Race and the Science of Language

ISBN-13: 9780415189545 / Angielski / Twarda / 1998 / 432 str.

Chris Hutton

Opis

In this work, the author seeks to demonstrate that an important component of European fascist thought was derived from linguistics, not least the notion of an Aryan people with an original language and homeland. In Nazi Germany, linguistic fascism took the form of a cult of the mother-tongue, expressed in a horror of linguistic assimilation and a xenophobic assertion of German language rights. Jews were considered to lack a healthy relationship to the German language and therefore to threaten the bond between the Germans and their language. This account of the academic politics of the Nazi era analyzes the work of selected linguists, including Jost Trier and Leo Weisgerber. It situates Nazi linguistics within the policies of Hitler's state and within the history of modern linguistics. Drawing upon a wide range of unpublished and published sources, he attacks long-standing myths about the role of linguistics within the Nazi state and about the relationship of linguistics to race theory.

Recenzje

'...an extremely interesting book.' - Winifred V. Davies, German Politics Vol. 9, No.3 Dec 2000

Spis treści

Introduction; Chapter 1 Whose History?; Chapter 2 The Defence of Cultural Diversity; Chapter 3 Academic Politics; Chapter 4 Etymology as Collective Therapy; Chapter 5 The Strange Case of Sonderführer Weisgerber; Chapter 6 ‘A Complicated Young Man with a Complicated Fate, in a Complicated Time’; Chapter 7 Yiddish Linguistics and National Socialism; Chapter 8 Vitalist Linguistics; Chapter 9 Linguistics, Race and the Horror of Assimilation;

O autorze

Christopher M. Hutton currently teaches linguistics in the Department of English at the University of Hong Kong. He previously taught Yiddish Studies at the University of Texas, USA and at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, UK.