The Words Of Nations: England, Scotland & Wales

Les mots de la nation. Angleterre, écosse, pays-de-galles

Abstract: Imagined communities, Benedict Anderson wrote forty years ago, reproduce through the words that their members use to refer to themselves collectively, which is a matter of banal nationalism, added Michael Billig in 1995. When asked to reflect unexpectedly and succinctly on their national historical experience, what words do the English, Scots, and Welsh bring into play to articulate their statements? Drawing on an international survey conducted in 2011, this article seeks to identify the repertoire of terms employed by the three nationalities to capture their historicity. Will we find what might be called “national verbs”?
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21663
Languages: French, English

Il est difficile de dire adieu aux mots qui nous ont constitués en tant que membre d’une communauté nationale, mots qui, lorsqu’on les emploie, nous ramènent chez nous, avec les nôtres, ensemble. Quels mots viennent à l’esprit des Anglais, des Écossais et des Gallois lorsqu’on leur demande de résumer succinctement l’histoire de leur pays d’hier à aujourd’hui ? Ces mots – c’est en tout cas notre point de vue – ne sont pas des termes anodins. Leur utilisation permet à « John Bull », à « Sister Peg » et « Deffroad Cyrmu » de se renationaliser en douceur tout en permettant à leur nation de se renforcer dans la subtilité de ses propositions verbales.

Des vocabulaires nationaux ?

Lorsqu’ils sont invités à ramasser en une ou deux phrases l’essentiel de l’expérience historique de leur nation, quels mots les nationaux utilisent-ils le plus souvent pour nourrir ou articuler leurs énoncés ? Se pourrait-il que les intéressés, pour parler de leur nation dans le temps, tirent (in)consciemment parti d’un vocabulaire national portant en lui les défis, enjeux, attributs, traits saillants et autres singularités de ce que Benedict Anderson appelait les « communautés imaginées de communication »[1] et que Michael Billig associait au « nationalisme banal »?[2]

Il n’est pas question d’exposer ici les découvertes que nous avons faites sur le sujet en comparant les lexiques de base des six communautés nationales – les États-Unis, la France, l’Angleterre, l’Écosse, le Pays-de-Galles, le Canada (anglais) et le Québec (français) – que nous avons étudiées dans le cadre d’un long travail.[3] Nous nous en tiendrons plutôt aux trois nations formant ensemble la Grande-Bretagne, ce qui est déjà considérable. Faute de place, nous nous contenterons par ailleurs de présenter les résultats les plus saillants de notre recherche en discutant très brièvement des aboutissants de nos trouvailles.

Contexte : une enquête

Nous sommes à l’automne 2011. Nous persuadons un sondeur d’ajouter une question aussi simple que difficile à l’enquête multi-client qui lui avait été commandée : « If you had to summarize the history of your country up until the present in a couple of phrases, what would you write? » Dans le cas de la Grande-Bretagne, 850 personnes relèvent le défi et produisent un énoncé admissible, parmi lesquels 643 ont l’Angleterre comme lieu principal de résidence, 81 l’Écosse et 126 une région incluant le Pays-de-Galles et le sud-ouest de l’île.

Le corpus britannique n’est pas parfait. Il découle d’un sondage effectué en ligne. Si les participants à l’enquête sont sélectionnés de manière aléatoire à partir de panels d’internautes satisfaisant ensemble au critère de l’échantillonnage proportionnel, le portait final des répondants ayant produit une phrase admissible présente néanmoins des distorsions.

Dans le cas de l’Écosse, par exemple, beaucoup plus d’hommes que de femmes figurent parmi les répondants ; les régions géographiques de l’Angleterre ne sont pas représentées à proportion de leur population respective dans le corpus final ; enfin, il est impossible d’identifier les seuls Gallois dans la vaste région libellée « Wales, West, Westward ». Cela dit, le nombre de participants à l’enquête, considérable, autorise les constats que nous avançons – assurément dans le cas de l’Angleterre, vraisemblablement dans le cas de l’Écosse et plausiblement et dans le cas du Pays-de-Galles.

De quelle manière le corpus nous intéresse-t-il dans le présent texte ? Il ne s’agit pas d’analyser les énoncés recueillis en vue de cerner le sentiment national des répondants (ce que ces derniers disent à propos de leur pays). Il ne s’agit pas non plus de pénétrer leur conscience historique (comment ils perçoivent l’expérience historique de leur pays).

Notre intention est purement lexicologique. Lorsqu’ils sont invités de manière impromptue et sans choix forcé à parler de l’histoire de leur pays, quels mots les résidants de ce pays utilisent-ils le plus fréquemment ? Ont-ils recours à un ensemble de mots-clés spécifiques à leur nation ou caractéristiques de cette nation ?

Le cas échéant, il faudrait postuler l’existence de vocabulaires nationaux, sorte de répertoire lexical auquel puiseraient, par intériorisation préalable découlant de leur socialisation au sein d’une nation donnée, les nationaux, qui en écrivant ou en parlant à propos de leur nation feraient état de leur condition nationalisée tout en se renationalisant par leur écriture et leur parlure ordinaires.

Analyse des corpus

Il n’est pas simple de procéder à l’identification des mots-clés de la nation. On ne peut tout simplement dresser la liste des formes lexicales constituant les différents corpus nationaux (7 487 formes lexicales dans le cas de l’Angleterre, 961 dans le cas de l’Écosse et 1 655 dans le cas du Pays-de-Galles), puis sur cette base confectionner un tableau général et comparatif des mots possédant le plus d’occurrences dans chacun des espaces nationaux considérés. L’imagination lexicale des répondants est grande. Pour exprimer la même idée, ils recourent à des termes différents, mais germains. Voilà pourquoi, après avoir nettoyé les corpus de certains mots-vides, il faut se livrer à une procédure d’agrégation des termes restants sous des vocables génériques judicieusement choisis.

Cette procédure permet en effet de révéler la pleine importance de certains mots, qui autrement disparaîtraient dans la profusion lexicale des corpus. Faute de pouvoir décrire en détail notre méthode, le lecteur devra nous faire confiance. Bornons-nous à dire que l’opération d’agglomération lexicale, imparfaite dans sa rigueur, est laborieuse et délicate autant que fastidieuse et interminable.

Résultats

Comme l’indique le tableau 1, le résultat vaut toutefois la peine exigée. Analysons-le brièvement.

 England  Scotland  Wales
6431 8111 12611
Great 18,42 Battle 21,0 Dominant 20,6
Interesting 17,2 Declining 16,0 Great 16,72
Declining 14,7 Great 14,82 Interesting 15,1
World 13,0 Strong 14,8 Downhill 15,1
Influential 11,9 England 13,6 Strong 10,3
War 10,7 Oppressed 12,3 Pride 10,3
Strong 10,5 Proud 12,3 World 8,7
Empire 10,1 Inventive 9,9 Heritage 8,7
Fighting 9,6 Independence 9,9 Britain 7,9
Multicultural 8,5 Bloody 7,4 Integration 7,9
Conquering 7,3 Interesting 7,4 Dominated 7,1
Power 7,3 Influential 6,2 Fight 7,1
Monarchy 7,1 Diverse 6,2 Invasion 6,3
Inventive 5,3 Identity 6,3
Proud 5,3 Royal 6,3

1. Nombre d’énoncés dans le corpus.
2. N’inclut pas l’adjectif Great dans la dénomination Great Britain.

Tableau 1: Proportion des énoncés comportant au moins une occurrence du mot-clé et comptant pour 5 % et plus des énoncés formant un corpus national (données en pourcentage)

D’entrée de jeu, précisons que les mots associés à chaque nation sont ceux qui figurent au moins une fois dans 5 % ou plus des énoncés produits par les répondants résidant dans chacune des nations considérées. Le seuil de 5 % peut sembler bas. Il s’agit d’un plancher haut. Très peu de formes lexicales uniques sont en effet utilisées par plus de 5 % des sondés. Certes, en réunissant les termes apparentés sous un seul générique, la proportion s’élève, mais pas de manière significative.

Nulle surprise ici. On ne peut attendre, de la part de tous les membres d’une communauté nationale, qu’ils en saisissent l’expérience historique par l’usage du même répertoire succinct de mots. Les gens ne sont ni des robots programmés ni des dévots conditionnés. Il s’agit d’êtres intelligents qui, pour exprimer leur pensée, ont devant eux un nombre limité, mais considérable, de possibilités verbales. Que 5 % des répondants, en contexte d’autonomie réflexive et libres de tout choix forcé, utilisent un terme donné est déjà marquant. Que 20 % emploient ce même mot est saisissant. Que 30 % le fassent – c’est le cas des Canadiens et des Québécois avec certains termes – est simplement renversant.

Des « constell(N)ations» de mots

Une fois cela dit, on constate, au-delà de certaines parentés évidentes entre les vocables se rattachant aux trois constituantes britanniques,[4] quelques différences notables dans les termes utilisés par les nationaux, termes que l’on ne doit pas concevoir comme les particules isolées d’une liste désorganisée de vocables, mais comme les éléments interconnectés d’une configuration articulée de syntagmes, sorte de nuages ou de constellations de mots, si l’on veut.

Par exemple, le verbe anglais est typique d’une nation dominante dans l’histoire.[5] Il est imprégné de termes pompeux (great, strong, power, world, influential, war, Empire, fighting), voire triomphaliste (conquering), qui font référence au passé glorieux du pays, toutefois considéré honteux par plusieurs répondants (voir figure 1). Il est par ailleurs nationalo-centré, c’est-à-dire qu’il ignore les autres pays ou nations, y compris celles qui sont constitutives de la Grande-Bretagne (ou du Royaume-Uni), soit parce que les Anglais confondent facilement leur nation avec l’ensemble britannique, ce qui est connu,[6] soit parce qu’ils n’ont pas le réflexe d’incorporer l’Écosse et le Pays-de-Galles à leur historicité, à moins qu’ils le fassent implicitement, ce que les mauvaises langues pourraient assimiler à une forme d’effacement de l’Autre dans le creuset « brianglais ».

Au final, le mot-clé du lexique anglais est celui de Grandeur, en référence principalement au passé éclatant du pays, objet de remords pour les uns et source de nostalgie pour les autres. En Angleterre, la fortune perdue de Britannia n’est pas sans susciter le chagrin de plusieurs. Oscar Wilde n’avait peut-être pas raison de dire, si tant est qu’il l’ait dit, que les Anglais étaient incapables de se souvenir. Encore faut-il distinguer entre ce dont ils se souviennent et ce qu’ils oublient…

Le répertoire des mots-clés écossais est structuré autour des thèmes de l’oppression (oppressed) et de la résistance (battle), d’un côté, et de ceux de la réalisation et de l’accomplissement (great, inventive, influential), de l’autre (voir figure 2).

Oppression et résistance au sens où l’Écosse, de tout temps, a été subjuguée par son voisin du sud, l’Angleterre, qui l’a affaiblie, réprimée, intimidée, diminuée, dupée et divisée, et contre l’asservissement duquel elle s’est battue sans retenue en vue de conquérir sa liberté et son indépendance politique, qui reste latente.

Réalisation et accomplissement au sens où une petite nation, depuis sa position périphérique et son statut de nation appauvrie, voire misérable, a su, au dire des Écossais (et d’Arthur Herman, pourtant citoyen américain[7]), se hisser au rang de « conceptrice du monde moderne ».

Parler l’Écossais, c’est non seulement s’exprimer en anglais avec un accent particulier et une prononciation spécifique. C’est maîtriser un vocabulaire inscrivant le locuteur dans une communauté conversationnelle structurée autour de mots-mémoire et de mots-réquisitoire faisant du combat et de la résistance – jamais la conquête ou la défaite, comme au Québec français – un leitmotiv collectif. Bloody battles, tel est le mot capital du verbe écossais lorsque les héritiers de William Wallace – ou de Robert Burns – réfléchissent à leur expérience historique.

Le lexique gallois est celui d’une nation qui se présente comme dominée (dominated, invasion) et dont les membres expriment ouvertement l’oppression et la subjugation subies par leurs ancêtres aux mains d’une nation voisine, l’Angleterre, qui pour certains continue son œuvre d’asservissement sournois (voir figure 3). Paradoxalement, les Gallois s’identifient aussi fortement et positivement au Royaume-Uni (dominant, integration, world, Britain, inventive), pays souverain dont ils forment une composante avec les Anglais, les Écossais et les Irlandais du Nord.

Au Pays de Galles, le terme heritage apparaît central à l’espace communicationnel de la nation lorsque le passé est objet de discussion. C’est comme membres d’une nation culturelle que les Gallois aiment se représenter dans le temps. La désactivation politique de la galléité, identité désormais culturalisée surtout (culture, identity), explique peut-être l’emploi aussi fréquent du mot interesting dans l’énonciation galloise, le terme exprimant la reconnaissance fataliste d’un passé magnifique, mais en voie de se perdre dans la nuit des temps et n’existant dorénavant qu’à travers un légendaire mémorialisé et mythistorisé, c’est-à-dire patrimonialisé, fondateur d’une espèce de patriotisme culturel (patriotic) dont se réclament indéniablement les Gallois pour se dire historiquement.

Les mots des communautés imaginées

Le format de l’article nous empêche d’être disert sur ce que nous nous permettons d’appeler les verbes nationaux, ici saisis dans le cas de l’Angleterre, de l’Écosse et du Pays-de-Galles.

Il ressort de notre propos rapide une idée amplement démontrée dans notre long travail : les communautés imaginées se reproduisent dans l’apparente trivialité des mots adoptés par leurs ressortissants pour dire et écrire ces communautés, ce qui permet aux nations de se reproduire lexicalement aussi. Au-delà de nos individualités singulières, nous nous nationalisons à travers notre parlure et notre écriture communes, devenant du coup des porteurs d’imaginaire nationalitaire, parfois nationaliste, pour le meilleur ou pour le pire.

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Lectures supplémentaires

  • Gani, Raphaël. “Comment résumeriez-vous l’histoire de votre pays? Enquête auprès de Canadiens, d’Américains, de Britanniques et de Français.” Unpublished master’s thesis, Université Laval, Quebec City 2014.
  • Létourneau, Jocelyn. Je me souviens ? Le passé du Québec dans la conscience de sa jeunesse. Montréal, Fides 2014.
  • Lévesque, Stephane, and Croteau, Jean-Philippe. Beyond History for Historical Consciousness: Students, Narrative, and Memory. Toronto, University of Toronto Press 2020.

Ressources sur le web

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[1] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, Londres, Verso, 1983.
[2] Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism, Londres, Sage, 1995.
[3] Jocelyn Létourneau, avec Raphaël Gani, Les mots de la nation. Au cœur du lexique de base des communautés imaginées. Comparaison États-Unis, France, Angleterre, Écosse, Pays-de-Galles, Canada et Québec au début des années 2010. Manuscrit.
[4] À vrai dire, ces parentés touchent toutes les nations considérées dans notre recherche, y compris la France, les États-Unis, le Canada (anglais) et le Québec (français). Il semble que les nationaux, qui ne se font pas prier pour exprimer leur sentiment national, sorte de patriotisme plus ou moins affirmé, aiment bien se mettre en scène dans le théâtre du temps en insistant sur leur endurance, constance, consistance, résistance ou résilience collective, ce que traduisent bien les mots strong, great et proud. À noter que les mêmes nationaux, tout en trouvant intéressante leur histoire nationale (interesting), sont prompts aussi à en relever les misères (declining, downhill).
[5] Il va de soi que l’interprétation que nous proposons des termes et la signification que nous leur attribuons est implicitement fondée sur notre connaissance détaillée et notre analyse étroite des corpus. Faute de place, nous ne pouvons cependant illustrer notre dire comme il l’aurait mérité.
[6] Alisa Henderson et Richard Wyn Jones, Englishness. The Political Force Transforming Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021.
[7] Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World. The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It, New York, Crown, 2001.

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Crédits illustration

Carte du Royaume-Uni. © mapswire.com (CC-BY 4.0, 2022)

Citation recommandée

Létourneau, Jocelyn and Raphaël Gani: Les Mots de la Nation. Angleterre, Écosse, Pays-de-Galles. In: Public History Weekly 11 (2023) 5, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21663.

Responsabilité éditoriale

Caitriona Ní Cassaithe / Arthur Chapman

It is difficult to say goodbye to the words that have constituted us as members of a national community, words that make us “feel at home with a significant other” when talking. What words come to the English, the Scots, and the Welsh when they are asked to summarize the history of their country up until the present in a couple of phrases? These words – this is our view – are not trivial terms. Using them allows “John Bull”, “Sister Peg” and “Deffroad Cyrmu” to gently renationalize themselves while allowing their nation to strengthen itself in the subtlety of its verbal propositions.

 

National Vocabularies?

When asked to capture the essence of their nation’s historical experience in one or two sentences, what words do nationals most often use to inform or articulate their statements? Could it be that, in talking about their nation over time, they are (un)consciously drawing on a national vocabulary that carries with it the challenges, issues, attributes, salient features, and other idiosyncrasies of what Benedict Anderson called imagined communities[1] and Michael Billig associated with banal nationalism?[2]

It is not our intention here to set out the discoveries we have made on the subject by comparing the basic lexicons of the six national communities – the United States, France, England, Scotland, Wales, English Canada, and French Quebec – which we have studied in a lengthy work.[3] We shall confine ourselves instead to the three nations that together form Great Britain, which is already considerable. For lack of space, we shall present the most striking results of our research and discuss very briefly the outcomes of our findings.

Background: A Survey

In the fall of 2011, we persuaded a pollster to add a simple but difficult question to the omnibus survey he had been commissioned to conduct by several clients: “If you had to summarize the history of your country up until the present in a couple of sentences, what would you write?” In the case of Great Britain, 850 people took up the challenge and produced a qualifying statement, of which 643 had England as their main place of residence, 81 had Scotland, and 126 had a region including Wales and the southwest of the island.

The British corpus is not perfect. It is the result of an online survey. While survey participants are randomly selected from panels of Internet users who together meet the proportional sampling criterion, the final portrait of respondents who produced an eligible sentence nevertheless presents some distortions.

In the case of Scotland, for example, many more men than women are among the respondents; the geographical regions of England are not represented in proportion to their respective population in the final corpus; and it is impossible to identify only the Welsh in the vast region labelled “Wales, West, Westward”. That said, the considerable number of participants in the survey supports our findings – confidently in the case of England, likely in the case of Scotland, and plausibly in the case of Wales.

In what way is this corpus of interest to us in this text? It is not a question of analyzing the statements collected in order to identify the respondents’ national feeling (what they say about their country). Nor is it about tapping their historical consciousness (how they perceive the historical experience of their country). Our intention is purely lexicological. When asked without forced choice about the history of their country, what words do the residents of that country use most frequently? Do they use a set of key words specific to or characteristic of their nation?

If so, it would be relevant to postulate the existence of national verbs, a kind of a lexical repertoire from which nationals would draw, through prior internalization resulting from their socialization within a given nation, and which, by writing or speaking about their nation, would illustrate their nationalized condition while, in a kind of self-reinforcing loop, renationalizing themselves through their ordinary writing and speaking.

Analyzing the Corpora

It is not easy to identify the key words of the nation. One cannot simply list the lexical forms constituting the different national corpora (7,487 lexical forms in the case of England, 961 in the case of Scotland and 1,655 in the case of Wales), and then on this basis make a general and comparative table of the words with the most occurrences in each of the nations considered. The lexical imagination of the respondents is vast. To express the same idea, they use different, but related terms. This is why, after having cleaned up the corpus of stopwords and certain empty words, we must carry-out an aggregation procedure of the remaining terms under judiciously chosen generic terms.

This procedure reveals the full importance of certain words, which would have otherwise disappeared in the lexical profusion of the corpora. Since we cannot describe our method in the present article, the reader will have to trust us. Let us limit ourselves to saying that the operation of lexical agglomeration, rigorous but imperfect, is laborious and delicate as much as tedious and interminable.

The Results

Table 1 shows the results of our work. Let us analyze it briefly.

 England  Scotland  Wales
6431 811 1261
Great 18,42 Battle 21,0 Dominant 20,6
Interesting 17,2 Declining 16,0 Great 16,72
Declining 14,7 Great 14,82 Interesting 15,1
World 13,0 Strong 14,8 Downhill 15,1
Influential 11,9 England 13,6 Strong 10,3
War 10,7 Oppressed 12,3 Pride 10,3
Strong 10,5 Proud 12,3 World 8,7
Empire 10,1 Inventive 9,9 Heritage 8,7
Fighting 9,6 Independence 9,9 Britain 7,9
Multicultural 8,5 Bloody 7,4 Integration 7,9
Conquering 7,3 Interesting 7,4 Dominated 7,1
Power 7,3 Influential 6,2 Fight 7,1
Monarchy 7,1 Diverse 6,2 Invasion 6,3
Inventive 5,3 Identity 6,3
Proud 5,3 Royal 6,3

1. Number of statements in the corpus.
2. Does not include the adjective Great in the name Great Britain.

Table 1: Proportion of statements with at least one occurrence of the keyword and accounting for 5% or more of the statements forming a national corpus (data in percent)

At the outset, it should be noted that the words associated with each nation are those that appear at least once in 5% or more of the statements produced by respondents residing in each of the nations considered. The 5% threshold may seem low. But in fact, it is a high floor. Very few unique lexical forms are used by more than 5% of the respondents. Of course, when related terms are combined under a single generic banner, the proportion rises, but not significantly.

No surprise here. We cannot expect all members of a national community to grasp the historical experience in using the same succinct repertoire of words. People are neither programmed robots nor conditioned devotees. They are intelligent beings who have limited but considerable number of verbal possibilities to express their thoughts. That 5% of the respondents, in a context of self-reflection and free of any forced choice, use a given term is already significant. That 20% use the same word is striking. That 30% do so – this is the case for English Canadians and French Quebecers with certain terms – is simply astounding.

A Constellation of Words

Once this has been said, we note, in addition to certain similarities existing between the words that can be attached to the three British constituents,[4] some notable differences in the terms used by the nationals – terms that should not be conceived as isolated particles of a disorganized list of vocals, but as interconnected elements on an articulated configuration of syntagms, a sort of constellation of words, if you like.

For example, the English verb is typical of a historically dominant nation.[5] It is imbued with pompous terms (great, strong, power, world, influential, war, Empire, fighting), even triumphalist (conquering), alluding to the country’s glorious past, but nevertheless, as we find, considered shameful by many respondents (see Fig. 1). It is also national-centric, i.e. it ignores other countries or nations, including those that make up Great Britain (or the United Kingdom), either because the English easily confuse their nation with the British whole, which is well known,[6] or because they do not have the reflex to incorporate Scotland and Wales into their historicity, unless they do so implicitly, which people with spiteful tongues could assimilate to a form of erasure of the Other in the Br(engl)ish melting pot.

In the end, the key word in the English lexicon is Greatness, referring mainly to the country’s glittering past, an object of remorse for some and a source of nostalgia for others. In England, the lost fortune of Britannia is not without sorrow for many. Oscar Wilde may not have been right in saying – if he said it at all – that the English are incapable of remembering. Of course, you have to distinguish between what they remember and what they forget…

The repertoire of Scottish keywords is structured around the themes of oppressed and battle on the one hand, and great, inventive, and influential on the other (see Fig. 2).

Oppression and resistance in the sense that Scotland has always been subjugated by its southern neighbor, England, which has weakened, repressed, intimidated, diminished, and divided it, and against whose subjugation it has fought unabashedly to gain its freedom and political independence, which remains latent.

Achievement and accomplishment in the sense that a small nation, from its peripheral position and its status as an impoverished, even miserable nation, was able, in the words of the Scots (and of Arthur Herman, albeit an American citizen[7]), to rise to the rank of “inventor of the modern world”.

To speak Scottish is not only to express oneself in English with a particular accent and a specific pronunciation. It is to master a vocabulary that inscribes the speaker in a conversational community structured around memory-words and “revolt-words” that make combat and resistance – never conquest or defeat, as in French Quebec – a collective leitmotif.  Bloody battles, such is the capital word of the Scottish verb when the heirs of William Wallace, or of Robert Burns, reflect on their historical experience.

The Welsh lexicon is that of a nation that presents itself as dominated (dominated, invasion) and whose members openly express the oppression and subjugation suffered by their ancestors at the hands of a neighboring nation, England, which for some continues its work of underhanded subjugation (see Fig. 3). Paradoxically, the Welsh also identify strongly and positively with the United Kingdom (dominant, integration, world, Britain, inventive), a sovereign country of which they form a component with the English, the Scots, and the Northern Irish.

In Wales, the term heritage appears central to the communicative space of the nation when the past is discussed. It is as members of a cultural nation that the Welsh like to represent themselves in time. The political deactivation of Welshness, an identity that is now mainly culturalized (culture, identity), perhaps explains the frequent use of the word interesting in Welsh speech, the term expressing the fatalistic recognition of a magnificent past, but one that is in the process of being lost in the mists of time and that now exists only through a memorialized and mythistorized legend, that is to say, a heritage, the founder of a kind of cultural patriotism (patriotic) that the Welsh undeniably claim to carry within, when speaking of themselves historically.

Words Form Imagined Communities

The format of the article prevents us from being prolix about what we take the liberty of calling national verbs, captured here in the case of England, Scotland, and Wales.

What emerges from our brief remarks is an idea that has been amply demonstrated in our long work: imagined communities reproduce themselves in the apparent triviality of the words adopted by their citizens when they say and write those communities, which allows nations to reproduce themselves lexically too. Beyond our singular individualities, we nationalize ourselves through our common speech and writing, thus becoming bearers of a nationalistic, sometimes crudely nationalist, imaginary, for better or for worse.

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Further Reading

  • Gani, Raphaël. “Comment résumeriez-vous l’histoire de votre pays? Enquête auprès de Canadiens, d’Américains, de Britanniques et de Français.” Unpublished master’s thesis, Université Laval, Quebec City 2014.
  • Létourneau, Jocelyn. Je me souviens ? Le passé du Québec dans la conscience de sa jeunesse. Montréal, Fides 2014.
  • Lévesque, Stephane, and Croteau, Jean-Philippe. Beyond History for Historical Consciousness: Students, Narrative, and Memory. Toronto, University of Toronto Press 2020.

Web Resources

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[1] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso, 1983.
[2] Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism, London, Sage, 1995.
[3] Jocelyn Létourneau, with Raphaël Gani, The Words of Nations. At the heart of the basic lexicon of imagined communities. Comparing the United States, France, England, Scotland, Wales, English Canada, and French Quebec in the early 2010s. To be published.
[4] In fact, these kinships affect all the nations considered in our research, including France, the United States, English Canada, and French Quebec. It seems that the nationals, who are not shy about expressing their national feeling, a kind of patriotism more or less asserted, like to put themselves on stage in the theater of time by insisting on their endurance, constancy, consistency, resistance, or collective resilience, which is well expressed by the words strong, great, and proud. It should be noted that the same nationals, while finding their national history interesting, are also quick to point out its miseries (declining, downhill).
[5] It goes without saying that the interpretation we propose of the terms and the meaning we attribute to them is implicitly based on our detailed knowledge and close analysis of the corpus. However, due to lack of space, we cannot illustrate our statement as it would have deserved.
[6] Alisa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, Englishness. The Political Force Transforming Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021.
[7] Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World. The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It, New York, Crown, 2001.

_____________________

Image Credits

Map of the United Kingdom. © mapswire.com (CC-BY 4.0, 2022)

Recommended Citation

Létourneau, Jocelyn and Raphaël Gani: The Words Of Nations: England, Scotland & Wales. In: Public History Weekly 11 (2023) 5, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21663.

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Categories: 11 (2023) 5
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21663

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  1. To all readers we recommend the automatic DeepL-Translator for 22 languages. Just copy and paste.

    OPEN PEER REVIEW

    Appoggiandosi su un’indagine comparativa di oltre dieci anni fa, l’articolo si addentra, con un approccio lessicologico, in una dimensione essenziale dello studio della rappresentazione della nazione: il suo radicamento nell’ “habitus” linguistico-cognitivo dei cittadini.  Gli autori dello studio originale, condotto tra Europa e Nord-America, avevano invitato la popolazione-target a riassumere la storia della propria comunità di riferimento in due proposizioni. L’autore ha estratto un segmento di questo corpus, formato dalle tre “nazioni” che compongono la Gran Bretagna, per estrarne e confrontare il “lessico nazionale” prevalente in ciascun caso, e l’autoritratto collettivo che ne scaturisce: concetti e aggettivi che gli interrogati (un campione non del tutto rappresentativo, ammette l’autore, né sul piano della distribuzione geografica, né della sua composizione socioculturale) articolano spontaneamente, mentre rievocano la traiettoria storica di Galles, Inghilterra o Scozia.

    A prescindere dal limite evocato, e dalla problematicità – metodologica, ed epistemologica – della costruzione induttiva di un ritratto della “memoria collettiva” di una comunità nazionale (vivere in un territorio, per esempio, significa sempre “appartenervi” in senso affettivo?), la procedura impiegata prefigura un modo rigoroso, non biased di accostarsi al problema. Per lo psicanalista, come per lo storico della cultura, lo studio delle libere associazioni è una porta d’accesso obiettiva al pensiero che riunisce gli individui. Quelle parole definiscono il piano di evidenza da cui non è facile astrarsi, nonché un catalizzatore di sentimenti, di armi di conflitto. Il flagging di un’appartenenza che il linguaggio consente (ed impone) a ciascuno di ricostruire, forse suo malgrado (Billig 1995).

    Gli spunti interessanti dell’articolo sono numerosi e variegati. L’analisi investe la relazione che il senso comune stabilisce con le frontiere, ma anche con la storia ; cerca di cogliere il lessico della nazione nella durata, e nel substrato mitico che vi si sedimenta (Smith 1999). La metodologia proposta si presta ad essere estesa a problematiche più vaste, e consentire di accedere ai nuclei mitologici ed alle strutture portanti della coscienza storica di grandi popolazioni. Anche se l’autore non sembra interessato a utilizzare i suoi risultati in questa prospettiva, la stessa espressione “repertorio nazionale”, utilizzata nel testo, ci guida con la mente al registro di una memoria “potenziale” (latente o virtuale) che – per Maurice Halbwachs (Halbwachs 1925) – definiva i limiti entro i quali il ricordo individuale è destinato a muoversi.

    Il confronto tra i giacimenti di parole convenzionali ed ovvie può metterci sulle tracce di queste riserve sociali di memoria oggettivata, a condizione, ovviamente, che la verifica si eserciti su corpus empirici certificati ed ampi – e che il ricercatore riesca a tenere a bada la polisemia dei singoli lemmi.  Lo studio della frequenza delle “parole” ha il suo posto come corredo di esercizi che interrogano non solo l’immaginario della nazione, ma della storia e dei valori collettivi tout court, invitando a renderne visibile quelle implicazioni che la doxa tende a nascondere.  Proprio attorno a formule stereotipate e alle reazioni che scatenano, si sono giocati i conflitti centripeti causati dal national revival degli anni 90 si sono giocati: la legittimità del concetto di peuple corse (in Francia), la qualifica di riunificazione o di annessione delle regioni del nord (la Padania, altro termine polarizzante) per caratterizzare il “Risorgimento” italiano, di idioma o dialecto nel caso delle parlate delle comunità autonome spagnole. A questo proposito, l’indagine Youth and History realizzata nella seconda parte degli anni ’90 (Angvik & von Borries, 1997) e che sta oggi riprendendo forma come progetto di ricerca – offrirà presto una corposa riserva di dati empirici, utili per indagare non solo le differenze tra popolazioni nazionali, ma l’evoluzione diacronica delle rappresentazioni dell’appartenenza nazionale e del sentimento civico.

    L’archeologia lessicale è un campo fecondo: la lettura del saggio mi ha condotto con la memoria al seminario di sociologia urbana dal titolo “Le parole della città” (Les mots de la ville), nel cui ambito preparai il mio phD. Con una differenza di rilievo, però, rispetto alla metodologia suggerita dall’autore, dove lo spessore ideologico, la stratificazione storica e l’uso dei termini non sembra trovare posto. Le sue “parole-chiave” non sono espressamente preselezionate sulla base di un’ipotesi di ricerca (anche se la stessa espressione “parole-chiave” potrebbe far pensare a questa operazione), ma della loro frequenza, e del mero fatto di essere utilizzati in relazione all’evocazione della storia comune.  La procedura utilizzata per identificare determinate parole-chiave e procedere al conteggio non viene descritta in modo estensivo; nell’impossibilità di accedere ai dati bruti, si può presupporre che la presenza tra le variabili di termini assai generici (“cultura”, “battaglia”, “potere”) – parole cui tutte le comunità nazionali attingono – abbia aperto una serie di dilemmi quanto alle modalità con cui le occorrenze lessicali sono aggregate, alla lettura del loro “framing” e alla legittimità di un’interpretazione qualitativa – che attribuisca al tic linguistico o semantico una valenza dimostrativa.

    Svolgere la metodologia utilizzata, “scoprire le carte” del ricercatore rappresenta, in casi come questi, una necessità imperativa.  Nel caso contrario, alcuni passaggi induttivi possono insinuarsi nell’analisi in modo surrettizio, e restare invisibili al lettore. Nella fattispecie, l’autore spiega di aver affiancato esplicitamente al calcolo della frequenza di un termine la sua posizione in una “costellazione” significativa.  L’analisi sembra poi partire dal contesto verosimile in cui questi nuclei di significato sono utilizzati (assegnando di fatto allo status di “dominanti” e di “dominati” un valore preordinato, il destino di una comunità). Alla frequenza della parola viene in fine assegnato un senso soggettivo (di denuncia, di critica di un’occupazione straniera, o al contrario di rassegnazione) che non però inerente al vocabolo (nelle sue varie declinazioni) e determina la comprensione della diversa distribuzione della frequenza dei lemmi. Il fatto di utilizzare (in un dato contesto) i termini “gloria”, “conquista” e “impero” viene a configurare un atteggiamento mentale reso coerente a posteriori: nella forma di una deformazione quasi patologica, di cui lo psicanalista della coscienza nazionale diventa l’interprete.

    La deformazione in agguato, in realtà, è anche quella insita nell’ “effetto di verità” che Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1973) rimproverava agli autori di statistiche e sondaggi d’opinione. Lungi da me, però, negare a questa impresa il suo valore: l’oggetto problematico su cui è applicato l’esercizio – l’intrinseca diversità dei “lessici del patriottismo”, e degli immaginari che vi si tessono attorno – possiede un potenziale euristico innegabile. Si tratta, in chiave internazionale, di nazioni atipiche sulla scena della cittadinanza.  In particolare l’inchiesta offre un modo per comprendere che tutte le nazioni generano il “loro” linguaggio interfacciandosi con l’alterità, nel confronto e nello scontro col vicino. Il caso della Gran Bretagna si caratterizza per una sovrapposizione tra diverse appartenenze culturali e politiche, riunite in una forma di Stato che riconosce alle sue sotto-entità una legittimità giuridica. Visto dall’estero, questo pluralismo identitario resta nell’ombra, confuso dietro l’uso improprio che noi europei continentali facciamo spesso del lessico della cittadinanza e della nazionalità delle isole britanniche. Eppure (l’inchiesta sembra attestarlo) le forme mentali in cui queste appartenenze si esprime non sono né ovvie, né simmetriche, né prive di implicazioni affettive e rivendicative.

    Il passato “parla” anche con la ripetizione di una parola, o la sua rimozione. L’osservatore non britannico sarà sorpreso di constatare che la dissonanza concettuale tra i popoli, rispetto alla percezione del proprio posto nella storia, permanga tanto tenace in un contesto insulare legato da una storia unitaria, e da una sinergia culturale e politica così profonde.

    _____

    ANGVIK, M., VON BORRIES, B. (eds.) 1997. Youth and History: A Comparative European Survey on Historical Consciousness and Political Attitudes among Adolescents . Hamburg: Körber-Stiftung.
    BILLIG, M.  1995. Banal nationalism.  London, SAGE.
    BOURDIEU Pierre, 1973 “L’opinion publique n’existe pas”. Les Temps modernes, 318, 1973.
    HALBWACHS, M. 1994 [1925]. Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel.
    SMITH, A. D. 1999. Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  2. To all readers we recommend the automatic DeepL-Translator for 22 languages. Just copy and paste.

    What do people really mean?

    There are clearly fascinating differences emerging here in the words used by people from Wales, Scotland and England, and the authors are clearly correct when they say that 20% (or even 5%) or respondents using the same word shows a startling degree of commonality.

    The authors write of ‘national verbs’ but I wonder if there is interesting comparison to be done about the frequency of verbs, adjectives and nouns. I am struck, in particular, by Scotland which has ‘Battle’ as its most popular choice of word and ‘England’ high up. This use of nouns seems to point to a shared national story focused on events, rather than a national narrative focused on change and development. That is to say, I wonder whether ‘battle’ is here part of a foundation story of Scotland, which we don’t see in the other countries. Similarly, other adjectives – ‘interesting’, for instance – conceal as much as they reveal.

    I appreciate the corpus linguistics approach, the brevity of the article and the explicit statement by the authors that they were not aiming to gather detailed narratives of historical consciousness through this research, but I can’t help but be fascinated by the question of how these words are used in context. The paper gives real insights and I agree that the commonality does give us quantitative insight into shared national verbs, but I really want to know what people meant when they used words like ‘interesting’ and proud.

    Thank you to the authors for important insights which I will use in my own research.

    _______________________

    NB – Figure One. The superscript (footnote) 1 next to all the figures is too large and makes the numbers look 10 times larger than they are. It took me a few tries to make sense of this.

  3. To all readers we recommend the automatic DeepL-Translator for 22 languages. Just copy and paste.

    A fascinating exploration into shared past

    A fascinating article that explores how national communities/ groups portray themselves in relation to national pasts. Studies of ethno-symbolism and nationalism have underscored the significance of memories, symbols, and myths in the construction of understanding the communal past. The use of ‘national verbs’ is a remarkable example of how individuals position themselves within social categories/ groups that they belong to promoted positive distinctiveness from those we consider not part of ‘us’. These ‘national verbs’ that represents the historical past gives meaning to group identities providing a sharedness between the individual and group but also a sense of continuity by rooting it in a stable and essential identity passed on over time and space. This sense of collective continuity is an example of the social representations of history showcasing individuals as group members with a sense of positive social esteem and in-group attachment. The use of ‘national’ verbs is also an example of narrativisim where a version of continuity is achieved through interlinking historical events to create a consistent narrative of a group’s history. However, it is dependent on the valence of the past and if the historical past is portrayed as negative then this potentially threatens the group’s identity, though there are some negative adjectives that appear, for example, ‘oppressed, bloody, invasion, dominated.’ However, in the case of Scotland and Wales, the negativity does not seem to threaten their sense of identity.

    Collective remembering also links to the use of national verbs in the form of narrative with general meaning and ideas applied such as victimhood, Golden Age’ promoting these feelings of national belonging, for example, ‘great, pride, strong, dominant, power.’ There are some interesting, shared commonalities, for example Wales and Scotland distance themselves from the Empire in comparison to England who celebrates and portrays pride using adjectives such as ‘power, strong, influential, world.’ There are clear similarities between Scotland and Wales in their portrayal and representation of their pasts, using language such as ‘oppressed’ ‘dominated’, ‘invasion’ whereas England seems very Anglo-centric in outlook making no reference to internal polycentric narratives. However, fascinating that the Welsh associated with Britain whereas Scotland does not. This highlights the complex relationship between England and Wales dating back to the battle of Bosworth and the crowning of Henry Tudor which showcases a sense of dual identity of British and Welsh which dates to prior to the Roman occupation.

    This article provides a fascinating exploration into shared past experiences and emphasis on values and symbols that bind the group together, in this case national verbs. An interesting approach of showcasing social representation of the collaborative ways in which history is remembered or forgotten. A stimulating example of social action in talking about history, an action performed in discourse to achieve something, such as convincing the other or creating a sense of shared reality, the national verbs are interesting examples of collective remembering of a shared national history.

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