Studying oriental languages. Science and politics

Designating and naming languages, calling them "living orientals", "of recognized utility for politics and commerce", making them objects of teaching, "composing their grammar": these are seemingly simple gestures, heavy nonetheless with implicits and consequences.

Selecting, and therefore privileging, from the social and political complexity of the terrain this or that aspect of "the" language, this or that register, variety, genre, analyzing them according to a particular theoretical grid, within the framework of the conceptions of an era: these are more clearly committed operations, involving biases, positionings, both scholarly and political, in an often intertwined, if not inseparable, way.

A first line of work will focus on the specific contribution of Oriental Languages teachers to the science of language, as it became autonomous during the XIX^e century. It will examine the theoretical models mobilized or elaborated, their relationship to the scientific paradigms of their time - in particular historical-comparative linguistics, structural linguistics, phonetics and dialectology and, more marginally, sociolinguistics - as well as the insertion of the Rue de Lille teachers into French and European scholarly networks. Particular attention will be paid to links with knowledge of the language produced in the societies studied (so-called "vernacular"), especially in the global context of high imperialism (high imperialism), but also to possible tensions, at the very heart of the teaching, between a scholarly approach, based on philology and the history of languages, and a training project with a practical purpose, oriented towards commerce or diplomacy. The question of the relationship between linguistic theories and anthropological (including racialist) conceptions may also be addressed.

A second axis will be devoted to the relationship between languages and politics. It will analyze how the national, imperial or post-imperial dimensions of languages have been integrated into linguistic teachings and theories - processes of lexicographic and above all grammatical standardization, grapheme recommendations, elaboration or promotion of national languages, recognition or marginalization of dialectal variation, uses of the often polemical notion of "diglossia". Emblematic figures and cases - such as modern Greek, Turkish, Hindustani or modern Hebrew, for example - could shed light on the links between linguistic knowledge, national construction and identity issues, while posing more broadly and from a translinguistic perspective the question of the place of the Parisian Orientalist establishment in a globalized imaginary and practice of linguistic "reformism".

The two axes are linked. By crossing intellectual history, the history of linguistic knowledge, the history of human and social sciences, institutional and didactic history, and finally the history of linguistic and alphabetical policies, this study day intends to contribute to a better understanding of the specificities of the "Oriental Languages" school, its scientific contributions and ambivalences, while contributing to a history of the transnational circulation of linguistic and xenological knowledge.

Program

Morning

9am-9.15am - Introduction: Emmanuel Lozerand (Inalco/Ifrae) and Emmanuel Szurek (Ehess / Cetobac)

9.15-10am - Gabriel Bergounioux (Orléans/LLL) 
Situation of comparative grammar and oriental languages in higher education in 19th-century France

10am-10.45 - Anaïd Donabedian (Inalco/Sedyl) 
Armenian at Inalco, from the outposts of linguistics to erudite and committed Armenology

11am-11.45am - Julien Sibileau (Inalco/Cermom) 
What has literal Arabic and dialectal Arabic taught to O languages since 1795? Some theoretical and political landmarks.

11.45-12.30 - Maria-Rosaria Gianninoto (Université de Montpellier Paul Valéry/ReSo) 
"Motives other than erudition": The teaching of "vulgar Chinese" between pragmatic objectives and the circulation of linguistic knowledge

Afternoon

14am-14.45 - Sophie Vassilaki (Inalco/Sedyl) 
“Languages as they are spoken, just as they are spoken, languages that flourish on the lips of the people”: Jean Psichari and Modern Greek in the Department of Modern Oriental Languages (1904–1928)

14.45-15.30 - Emmanuel Szurek (Ehess/Cetobac) 
The Orientalist and the Revolutionary: Jean Deny, Observer and Participant in the Reform of the Turkish Language

15.45-16.30 - Annie Montaut (Inalco/Sedyl) 
Hindustani, Hindi, Urdu. Inclusion and Exclusion in South Asian and French Policies

16.30-17.30 - Round table (moderated by Emmanuel Lozerand) 
With Gabriel Bergounioux, Anaïd Donabedian, Maria-Rosaria Gianninoto, Annie Montaut, Julien Sibileau, Emmanuel Szurek, Sophie Vassilaki.