Details

Advisor(s)

Lederman, Rena S. [Browse]

Department

Princeton University. Department of Anthropology [Browse]

Certificate

Princeton University. Program in Linguistics [Browse]

Class year

2017

Summary note

This thesis establishes a linguistic anthropological framework for understanding the Esperanto language and community. Invented in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, Esperanto has had a consistent community of users across the world ever since. Through an analysis of linguistic anthropological literature and of narratives of the Esperanto movement's history, I argue that Esperanto is not a neutral lingua franca but a specifically ideologically and culturally positioned language. This is not to say that Esperantists are themselves a unified group. In the face of the rise of English, dismissal by international and diplomatic bodies, and political persecution, Esperantists' rationalizations for continuing to use the language, which I call Esperantisms, have formed a varied and shifting landscape. My third chapter points to one case study in this contention between Esperantisms, the use of gender-biased language, to assess how pragmatism and idealism compete with one another as Esperantists continue to make collective decisions about the future of their language and movement. In some ways, Esperanto functions as an ethnic or minority language, making pragmatic language preservationist strategies understandable; in others, Esperanto is a transnational and politically idealistic language, one in which a radical push for gender-neutral linguistic constructions would also seem logical.

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