„Kalbos kultūros“ principai ir ideologija

Mr. KNIŪKŠTA. Principles and ideology of language culture 17 PRANAS KNIŪKŠTA THE CULTURE OF LANGUAGE PRINCIPLES AND IDOLOGY We celebrated a beautiful anniversary of Language Culture, 2011 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication. On such occasions it is customary to review the anniversary period, discuss the work done, reflect on their significance and meaning. There will be no such reviews here, they were written to mark smaller Language Culture jubilees. Let us at least briefly recall the most important points there. OVERVIEW OF REVIEWS The first ten books of Language Culture were discussed in the tenth notebook published in 1966, where Kazis Ulvydas’ article “Ten “Language Culture” notebooks” (KK 10, 3–8) was published. The circumstances, reasons and purpose of the publication are recalled – to improve and enrich the mother tongue. Areas of language that are and should be studied by Language Culture are discussed. In short, it provides an overview of the work done and a programme of future activities. The implementation of this programme can be seen from the celebration of the Language Culture Anniversary in 1986. In fact, two anniversaries were celebrated at that time – the 25th anniversary of the publication’s appearance and the fiftieth notebook was printed. The 51st issue of Language Culture is dedicated to this. Like the tenth notebook, it begins with K. Ulvydas’s article “Fifty ‘Language Culture’ notebooks” (KK 51, 3–6), which recalls the first steps of Language Culture, names the editors and the most active authors, but does not examine the content of the previous notebooks. Most of it is about the future. It is emphasized that language culture must show “what is most relevant, necessary, interesting and at the same time accessible to the reader” (p. 5). Other articles in this booklet review the publication’s journey. About the program and its implementation is written in Vito Labutis’s article “Language culture program and working bars” (KK 51, 7–11). Similar and Prano Kniūkštas publi- 18 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 84 section “On the principles, methodology and impact of the proposals of “Language culture” (CC 51, 12–37). Here, in addition to the amendments and proposals themselves, their repercussions and results are also discussed. Kazimieras Gaivenis („Term management and standardization issues in „Language Culture“, KK 51, 38–43) and Vitalija Maciejauskienė („Language Culture“ about our dictionary, KK 51, 43–47) review individual areas. On the occasion of the anniversary, a meeting was held (May 15, 1986), the thoughts expressed there are set out in the 52nd notebook: mainly it is about the future plans and tasks of the publication, about language culture work in general. It is desirable to take more care of the school language, to develop the business and academic language, and most importantly – it is proposed to expand relations with society and not to distance itself from its needs. The 75th volume of the publication contains an overview of 25 volumes (51–75) published between 1986 and 2002. During this period, the Language Culture lost its strategist and editor-in-chief K. Ulvydas, and there were a number of other changes in the editorial board, but the goals and tasks of the work remained the same. The theme and the scope of the issues discussed have changed a little. In 1994, when the terminologists separated from the Language Culture, there were no articles in this field, but there were topics about the status of the state language and its implementation, and about the activities of the Lithuanian Language Commission. There was a significant increase in the number of articles on the language of clerical and state documents. The entire path of Language Culture from the first to the 80th notebook is reviewed in the 81st issue, in the article of Rasuolė Vladarskienė “Tradition and innovation in Language Culture” (KK 81, 9–19). The overview begins with the usual things – the purpose and tasks of the publication. Since the most important task was to provide language recommendations to the public, in the first decades the publication was dominated by short articles on specific proposals. But gradually the publication turned towards the theory of language culture, more attention was paid to general issues of language use, and in recent years the relationship between language and society has been examined sociolinguistically. As the nature of the publication has changed, so has the target audience for which Language Culture is intended – initially the target audience was the general public, now Language Culture is primarily intended for researchers and university lecturers whose activities are related to language science. Abstracts in English are provided with the articles, there are articles written in English and Russian. Three years passed between the 80th and 50th editions of the notebook, and three more were published (81-83). There is another innovation, but it does not change the overall image of the publication. Mr. KNIŪKŠTA. 19 Since I have been watching Language Culture closely for many years and I myself had to contribute to its publication, I would like to offer a few of my memories and reflections about it. HISTORY AND IDOLOGY The idea of a publication dedicated to language culture began to be thought about well before 1961, and not only by linguists. However, the term language culture was not widely used at that time, and it referred to a language publication for the public. The idea of such a publication was raised in 1958 by Valdas Petrauskas, scientific secretary of the Editorial Board of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. He prepared and submitted to the President of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Juozas Matulis, a letter entitled “Information on the publication of a bulletin on language issues” (KK 52, 5). It states that “the publication of a periodical or initially non-periodical publication – advisor on contemporary Lithuanian literary language issues is already a fully mature (even more) matter”. It could have been published by a language society, but there was no such society at the time, so "this task now falls to the Lithuanian Language and Literature Institute". The idea, of course, had to be supported first by the Academy of Sciences management, and the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature was entrusted with its implementation, and here such work was not done without director Kostas Korsakas. Before starting work, two things had to be decided: to foresee and approve the title of the publication and to appoint its editors and editor. The native language could not be then, because it was the name of the "bourgeois period", all the more so that since 1958 such a publication was revived in the United States of America. Selected title Language culture. The Department of Contemporary Lithuanian Literary Language (the sections were called sectors) was entrusted with the preparation of the publication, and its head was K. Ulvydas. So the preparation and editing of Language Culture was taken into his own hands by K. Ulvydas. But K. Korsakas did not turn away from the publication, he took care of it, demanded that the linguists of all the departments write articles for him, even the individual plans of the employees were enrolled in the item "Article for Language Culture". He was interested in printed texts. Before the booklet was approved by the Institute’s Scientific Council, it had to be submitted to the Director. He reviewed the most relevant articles, made comments, and asked for some corrections. He was particularly careful not to make ideological and political mistakes. 20 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 84 The editors of language culture themselves had to know what could and could not be written. It was not allowed to write Easter and Christmas in capital letters. You could not say that any language errors were due to the negative influence of the Russian language, you had to say – due to the influence of other languages. Language culture did not publish mere propaganda articles, but the ideological stamps of the time were found in publications dealing with language issues. For example, the publication is introduced with a preface printed in the first notebook, which begins: “Under the Soviet regime, science, technology and culture in our region are moving forward extremely quickly.” (K. 1, 3). Soviet order here is a butaphoric word, they do not say anything, they only artificially stick the “Soviet” label to simple things – science, technology and culture can advance without the conditions of the Soviet order. There were also economic stamps in the articles of K. Ulvydas. He supported and reinforced his ideas of language protection and education, and tried to present them as a state matter and make them more effective. On the other hand, they can also be understood as a kind of tribute to the economic cycle or a lightning bolt of possible thunderstorms from the government. Giedrius Tamaševičius* has cited one conjuncturel example of K. Ulvydas in his article on metaphors for the defence of language. The following sentence is quoted from the article On the concept of language culture, published in the 9th volume of Language Culture: “In fighting for a high level of language culture, we are fighting for a powerful means of cultural education, for an effective tool of communism creation, and at the same time for the national culture itself, because language is an important component of national culture.” (K. 9, 7-8). It is not difficult to understand that the phrase “for an effective tool for the creation of communism” is an artificial addition to the sentence, even grammatically related not to the whole sentence, but only to its second part, and is like a supplement to it. As an artificial insertion, we can easily omit this “tool for the creation of communism”, and neither the course of thought nor the syntax of the sentence is affected. It should be viewed as a cyclical spike. G. Tamaševičius “does not want to understand” this and derives from one sentence with this connotation the “essential formula of the common Lithuanian language ideology of the time” allegedly formulated by K. Ulvydas: the struggle for language culture = the struggle for the tool of creating communism = the struggle for national culture. Two things need to be clarified here. First, it is not appropriate to write that the formula was “formulated” by K. Ulvydas. It was developed and formulated by G. Tamaševičius. Secondly, the formula presented is not derived as it would come out of the sentence – * Tamaševičius G. Metaphors by which we are alive. – The New Fireplace-Echoes, 2011, 5, p. 309. Mr. KNIŪKŠTA. Principles of language culture and ideology 21 lost an important second part of it – the struggle for a means of cultural education. For the creator of the formula, the struggle for communism was more important than a means of cultural education. It is completely incorrect that the crooked formula derived from one sentence is applied to the entire work of K. Ulvydas on language education in the Soviet period, even to the entire ideology of common language in the Soviet period, and thus it is imposed on Language Culture as well. The real ideology and principles of Language Culture have been discussed in many of its articles, but they need to be briefly recalled once again to the postmodernists who are creating new theories. PRINCIPLES AND PROVISIONS The program article “Tasks of language culture education” published in the first notebook, K. Ulvydas begins with the fact that “language is a huge wealth of the nation, which has been accumulated by dozens of previous generations. It is our sacred duty to preserve this wealth, to increase it and to pass it on to future generations” (CCC 1:5). Thus, the first principle of the ideology of language culture is that language and nation are inextricably linked. Their relationships of mutual dependence are twofold, mutual, they are described more clearly and specifically in another programmatic article of K. Ulvydas “The Social Essence of Language” (KK 27, 3-5). Language is important to the nation because it “mobilizes and unites the nation that uses it” and because it “consolidates the cultural achievements of the nation” (p. 5). In turn, the nation is responsible for the language, “speaks as a cultural creature, demanding special care, special attention from every user” (p. 4). In the article “On the concept of language culture” (KK 9, 3–8), which caught the attention of G. Tamaševičius, two degrees or stages of such attention are indicated: one is a conscious, creative approach to the very essence of language, to its development processes, the second is active intervention in language development, efforts to improve, enrich the means of linguistic expression. This is the second principled provision of the Language Culture and of the general language ideology in general. It is equally important how the Language Culture has implemented it. From the very beginning, one of the most important tasks of Language Culture was to provide consultations to the public. In the first notebooks, there were short advice on how to speak and write and how not to speak and write. At the same time, we tried to briefly justify the advice, convince the readers, develop their conscious attitude to language. 22 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 84 However, the language culture was not satisfied with specific instruction. As we have already seen, more general issues of language standardization and management were also explained: the relationship between language and society, the understanding of language culture, the goals and bars of this work. The broader internal phenomena of the language itself are also discussed, but they are not examined in a dry linguistic way, but are linked to the use of the language, conclusions are drawn about their practical use. This is also evident from the titles of the articles, such as: “Reconstruction of dialectal genders of pronouns into literary language” (B. Savukynas, KK 1, 26); “Development and standardization of syntactic structure” (V. Ambrazas, KK 51, 66). Language science is linked to the needs of usage, moving towards applied linguistics. The connections between linguistics and usage were discussed extensively at the jubilee conference in 1986 and in the 52nd volume of the journal Language Culture. There, the needs of society are put first. In language culture, it is suggested to adapt the articles published to them – if the publication wants to have an impact on the part of society that uses our common language, the articles presented in it must not be pieces of academic works (KK 52, 24). Three years later, in the consultation on the coordination of work and publication, described in the 59th volume of Language Culture, it was proposed to strengthen the theoretical direction of Language Culture. It was said that when the Mother Language was published, Language Culture would have to be “a collection of articles on codification and standardization issues” (KK 59, 20), elsewhere formulated (p. 16) – “a theoretical and codification publication”. In other words, in Language Culture, the theoretical issues of language standardization, codification and usage were to be examined and the necessary conclusions for language practice drawn from them. This was the case in the seventh and eighth editions. DESCRIPTIONS AND EXPECTATIONS In the last notebooks of the eighteenth century began to appear articles on general language use and non-language education. For example, in the 78th booklet there is an article about the latest psycholinguistic studies of children’s language, which reviews literature in this field from other countries, studies from other countries and only inserts some Lithuanian examples somewhere else. There is only half a sentence about the possibility of using the data of such studies for language education, but there is no mention of Lithuanian at all. Mr. KNIŪKŠTA. 23 There are similar articles in the 79th notebook: one describes “peculiarities of children’s language” in an abstract way, without any connection with language education, the other examines not the facts of language, but the social phenomenon of multilingualism from a “psycholinguistic point of view” – it talks about people who use Lithuanian, Russian and Polish languages. Seven other articles describe problems of other languages (Latvian, Estonian, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian) and six of them are written in non-Lithuanian. They do not contribute to the development of Lithuanian language. On the contrary, someone who reads that in Italy they do not care about their mother tongue may think of doing the same in Lithuania. Such ideology is already spreading in Lithuania, and it is trying to penetrate into Language Culture. We see such manifestations in the 82nd notebook of Language Culture. The most striking example of this is that, under the guise of postmodernism in linguistics and analogy with other languages, the right is recognized “to violate the official requirements of pure and correct language and to change the concept of language acceptable in public usage” (CC 82, 122). Indirectly, such sentiments are spread by the descriptions of sociolinguistic studies, which do not examine language phenomena or the language of individual social strata, but subjective attitudes and attitudes, not always positive, to general language. From linguistics and language research to the sociology of language. It describes not only the Lithuanian attitude to language and not only the attitude to Lithuanian language. A separate article explains how Lithuanian Russians and Russian speakers understand their mother tongue. What can such research bring to our language development? And it is quite difficult to understand why the readers of Language Culture need information about Russian curses in a Latvian textbook. It would be both unpleasant and wrong to end our anniversary reflections with such a gloomy tone. Most of the language culture publications are interesting, relevant and meaningful. It is symbolic that the anniversary issue (83) is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Jan Jablonski. He is often mentioned for his principles of language preservation, which are also followed by Language Culture. President Antanas Smetona is quoted as saying that J. Jablonskis “was concerned about everything that touched the fate of Lithuanians, most of all, of course, their language and writings” (p. 19). It is recalled that J. Jablonski’s statements are “always based on facts” (p. 54), and that he provided language norms “based on the living language of people” (p. 44). Juozas Balčikonis’s words about another of J. Jablonski’s characteristics are recalled – the desire that his “attainment of scientific results be appropriated by the general public” (p. 19). 24 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 84 The latter feature is particularly important for Language Culture, because it has always been concerned and must be concerned that the statements and proposals it publishes are accepted. And in order to be accepted and “appropriated”, they must be needed and understood by society. This does not require great sociologies or wanderings in other languages, but it requires more understanding that the mother tongue is a cultural asset of the nation. And more collaborators with such understanding! Received 29/11/2011