THE LANGUAGE OF EXCLUSION
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
Paulina Anai Flores Ramírez
B.A. in International Relations
Cerro de Acambay #115 Colinas del Cimatario, 76090; Querétaro, México
ABSTRACT
Language as a structure is usually considered to be a standard and almost innocent means of communication among human beings. Societies learn it and use it as it is given, without questioning the ambiguity and contingency of the meanings carried by language. However, works in the fields of linguistics, semiology, and, most importantly today, critical discourse analysis, have allowed us to observe that “meanings are not found, but made” (Bordwell 1989). Drawing upon the works of Barthes and Laclau and Muffe, this article examines how dictionaries institutionalize not merely meaning, but racial, sexual and other binaries. In this way, given their incontestable nature, I claim that they can contribute to the justification of different types of exclusion. The word “trapacero” as one of the meanings for “gypsy”, used in the 23rd print edition of the Diccionario de la Lengua Española and edited by the Real Academia Española (RAE), is an example of that. By first giving an introduction about the origin of gypsies and the history of the RAE, this articlefocuses on the aforementioned word and studies the construction of language using semiology and the creation of exclusionary policies in politics making use of the theory of discourse.
KEY WORDS
Exclusion, gypsies, institutionalization, language, semiology
The language of exclusion
The present essay uses ‘gypsy’ and its plural not in a discriminatory manner, as it is understood in English. Rather, it is used as a translation of the word colloquially used in Spanish (gitana/o).
In April 2015, the Real Academia Española (RAE), which is the institution in charge of regularizing Spanish with the promulgation of certain linguistic rules, included in the 23rd print edition of its Diccionario de la Lengua Española the term “trapacero[1]” (swindler in English) as a synonym for “gypsy[2]”. After this, the Consejo Estatal del Pueblo Gitano (CEPG), various city halls from Spain and other organizations demanded the Spanish institution the removal of the cited word, given the fact that its association with gypsies gives a stigmatized character to the social and cultural group. Six months later, the RAE responded by including in its online dictionary a note that designated “trapacero” as an “offensive and discriminatory” use for gypsies, but refused to change the printed edition (El Mundo 2015).
Using the previous case as a starting point, the present essay will study how the institutionalization of a language of exclusion provokes the construction of certain groups as vulnerable and, consequently, their marginalization as such. For that purpose, the first part is going to describe the origins of gypsies. The second part shall briefly explore the history of the RAE in order to contextualize the reader about the most relevant aspects to understand the functioning of the institution. The third section will analyze language itself to unravel the ways in which it is constituted and used. A fourth part will draw on the previous ones to establish how the aforementioned can lead to the creation of exclusive policies. Lastly, some final thoughts are given as a conclusion.
Gypsies, who are they?
Foremost, it is essential to begin with a brief review of the origins of the main group the present essay is going to refer to: the gipsies. While some authors draw back to the Bible to describe some of the history this multiethnic group has (Clébert 1985: 51), others prefer to establish from the beginning that there is still not enough information to assert a specific country of origin to the group (Pabanó 2007: 9). In this sense, rather than grant a particular origin to gypsies, a broader background will be constructed by drawing upon different thesis that try to explain the provenance of the group.
Firstly, there are a couple of religious legends about gypsies that, in their aim to explain their origin, contribute to its stigmatization. For instance, the claim stating that gypsies are part of the “cursed offspring of Cain”[3] (Clébert 1985: 51), an interpretation derived from the book of Genesis in the Bible, is only useful to adversely designate the group as “people not wanted” due to “their link” to Cain. In addition, and considering that ‘cain’ means blacksmith in Semitic languages (Clébert 1985: 52), there are other authors that explain “the wandering way of living of gypsies”[4] (Pabanó2007: 9) by believing they come from the Jews that “killed” Christ (Pabanó2007: 9), as they were the blacksmiths that forged the cloves used to crucify Christ (Clébert1985: 52-54).
Secondly, there is an extended hypothesis that finds in Egypt the country of origin of gypsies for various reasons that, nevertheless, still lack strong foundations. Some scholars build this argument on a link that specifies “the words gitano, egipciano, gipsies, egiptener, egiptiens, egiptens, pharaok-nepek, faroner and others, are variants, the first ones from the term Egypt, and the last two from the kings pharaohs; and this makes them fix their origin in the famous region that the Nile bathes”[5] (Pabanó 2007: 11). Furthermore, based on the fact that gypsies were called Egyptians for centuries, others argue that they arrived to Europe after leaving Egypt. However, information indicating that, “long before their official arrival to Europe in the XIV century, all the vagrant jesters and acrobats were given this name” (Clébert 1985: 54) takes away credibility to this argument.
Thirdly, beginning in the XVIII century, authors began to lay out the Gypsy origin in India due to an article published by Sekely de Doba in the Gazette of Vienna in 1763 (Clébert 1985: 63). In his story, de Doba, who was a captain, narrates similarities between the language the people from India spoke and the “bohemians”[6] back in Hungary (Clébert1985: 63-64). Later on, this discovery was used by scholars to establish the provenance of gypsies in similitudes that began with language but extended to habits as well, resulting their findings in the following selection of the diverse communities that inhabited India (Clébert1985: 63-64):
“[…] Thus, we find, besides the asura, the luri and the ghâsiya, the handi jogi, beggars, charlatans and snake enchanters; the kami, blacksmiths in Nepal; the kasar (or kaseras), smelters of copper and boilermakers from the north of India; the korava, from the country Tamil, that read the fortune and are charlatans and… thiefs; the lohar, blacksmith from the north; the nat, nomads, singers, dancers and acrobats (and according to what Hutton adds, criminal by profession); the tathera, boilermakers, and the kanjar, breed of gypsies» that manufactures mats in the center and north of the country, and the dom, to finish […]”[7] (Clébert 1985: 64).
In reality, the truth is that there’s no consensus regarding the origin of gypsies but, wether one or the other hypothesis is accepted, the discrimination to which gipsies have been subjected can be noticed since long time ago, when prejudices and stereotypes about their “bad habits” prevailed in the construction of their identity.
Getting to know the institution: RAE
The RAE was created in Madrid in 1713 by Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco -8th marquis of Villena- inspired by the Academia Francesa -its French homologous-, with the objective of “preserving -through its activities, works and publications- the correct use and unity of a language in permanent evolution and expansion[8]” (RAE 2016) in a recently appeased context -the War of the Spanish Succession had just ended (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2016). In addition, the birth of the mentioned cultural institution took place in a moment where Spain was in constant competition with France, a country that had already created a linguistic academy that pressured in Spain for the creation of a similar institution -the Académie Française was founded in 1635 (Académie Française 2016).
But Spain’s rivalry with France had more implications in the linguistic arena than just reproducing a Spanish version of the French academy. As it can be noted in the primary objective of the RAE, the ‘preserving element’ was an important goal the Spanish wanted to accomplish in relation to the French. Back then, the normalization of the use of Gallicisms and loanwords was a reality that the Spanish saw as a very dangerous threat to their language and pushed them to create an institution that would guarantee the preservation of what they considered to be the “essence” of the language (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2016). For instance, this can be seen in the discourse the institution has preached since its beginning, which stresses as an objective the “fixing of the words and terms of the Castilian language to ensure its utmost propriety, elegance and purity” (Spain is Culture 2016).
Following this line, it is important to underline how the RAE is founded in an essentialist view of the language, a fact that needs to be understood in relation to the context and history of Spain: the Spanish conquering voyages in America and the Philippines had started almost 200 years before (Gascoigne 2001). The conquest Spain wanted to achieved was not only in terms of territory, but also in terms of culture -measuring power by influence-, being this the reason why the imposition -among other things- of religion and language to the natives of the territories they conquered was a primordial policy (Gascoigne2001).
At the present time, many years after the context where coercive colonizing actions were seen as normal, a new perspective to study these actions can be used -one which takes into account all the cultural elements that were suppressed for the triumph of the European Western Catholic culture-. For example, in the case of what is now Mexico and Peru, the creation of the RAE is conceived as an institutionalized manner of eliminating all those indigenous words that, with the colonization of those territories, were being incorporated to Spanish. In other words, the RAE served as a way of eliminating all those “strange and foreign” words that the Spanish didn’t see as “pure” and didn’t want to include in a language they thought to be the owners of.
However, although this perspective is more accepted nowadays than back then, currently there’s still a reluctance from this type of institutions to take in some letters and words, something that is translated into authoritarian decisions that are taken at the core of the RAE -in Madrid-, regardless of the opposition that is located on the other side of the ocean. This was the case in 2010 when the RAE eliminated two letters from the Spanish alphabet -“ch” and “ll”- (Malkin2010). At that time, the decision raised several questions in respect of the way those kinds of changes in the language were taken. From “can this be dictated from a conference room abroad?” (Malkin2010) and “in my mind, it’s a relic of the 18th century, we have to wait for Spain to say how we speak” (Malkin2010) to “would the United States accept dictates from England over the use of English?” (Malkin 2010), several academics all over the world expressed their concern with how, unlike the Oxford English Dictionary that “stresses common usage rather than imposing it from above”, the RAE establishes rules that, simply, are seen as must followed (Malkin 2010).
Clearly, even though the RAE insists in highlighting that their work “is assisted by the 21 Spanish Language Academies in Latin America and the Philippines” (Spain is Culture2016) and that it “guards the Spanish language in its continuous adaptation to the necessities of the speakers[9]”, it is evident that decisions are still taken in a vertical order situated in Madrid and integrated by an overwhelming majority of Spanish academics -as established in article VIII of their Statute (Estatutos y Reglamento de la Real Academia Española 2014)-, a fact that only exacerbates the idea that decisions are taken in an old fashion and colonialist manner.
The language of exclusion
Now that the context of the academy in charge of institutionalizing a specific type of language was established, it is time to analyze language itself and its link with the creation of certain exclusive policies.
To begin with, one way of understanding language is according to Roland Barthes and his elements of semiology -a study that will allow the understanding of the creation of meanings that pertains this essay-.
Firstly, it is important to highlight the discrepancies between ‘the signifier’, ‘the signified’ and ‘the sign’. The first oneis a ‘thing’, “something that stands for something else” (Howells & Negreiros 2012: 113)-that is to say, it lacks meaning as it is the ‘thing’ itself-. In addition, it is important to determine that “the substance of the signifier is always material” (Barthes1977: 47), and in the case of semiology, it includes all the signs born from it -from verbal and iconic to graphical and gestural- (Barthes1977: 47). An example of a ‘signifier’ is a bottle of shampoo of Palmolive. The second one does not refer to ‘the thing’, but to a “mental representation” (Barthes1977: 42) of ‘the thing’ with several degrees of ‘reality’ -it is by no means a rational and view of ‘reality’ as ‘reality’ is a very subjective conceptualization- (Barthes1977: 42). For example, following the previous case, ‘the signified’ of the shampoo will be “the idea of the thing it stands for” (Howells & Negreiros2012: 113); e.g. (1) it strengthens the hair, (2) it makes the hair silkier, (3) avoids hair loss.
Finally, the third concept entails a process that “binds the signifier and the signified, an act whose product is the sign” (Barthes1977: 48). In this case, ‘the sign’ is the bottle of shampoo of Palmolive that we see and the idea we have of it -that it’s better for our hair-. Furthermore, derived from the above, a ‘value’ is created -based on its context-. In this sense, it shall be mentioned that “value bears a close relation to the notion of the language (as opposed to speech); its effect is to depsychologize linguistics and to bring it closer to economics” (Barthes 1977:54). Therefore, ‘value’ implies a structure in which, if one axis is changed, immediately the other one shifts as well. So, along with the sign of the bottle of shampoo of Palmolive, we have another sign, let’s say a specific type of woman that is used for the advertising of the shampoo in Mexico. For this case, ‘the signifier’ is a white woman; while ‘the signified’ is (1) status and (2) beauty. Then, the bottle of shampoo of Palmolive and the white woman are two different signs that are used together to create values for each other, which implies that signs are dependent variables in reality: if, following the stereotypes of beauty in Mexico, the white woman advertising the shampoo is changed to a black one, then the value of both signs would change to lower and not high class.
The following formula expresses the relation between sign, signifier and signified:
SIGN = signifier + signified
Secondly, and directly linked to the aforementioned, the concept of the ‘myth’ becomes very relevant, as it is a way in which the ‘signifier’ becomes something else -entailing a deeper analysis-. Basically, “according to Barthes, [a ‘myth’] is ‘a sum of signs’” (Howells & Negreiros 2012: 119), where “semiotics enters the ‘second order’” (Howells & Negreiros 2012: 119). In the case of the example that has been used, the bottle of shampoo of Palmolive and the white woman -among other signs- create the construction of a myth: modernity.
Now, translating the previous analysis of language into the case that appertains this essay, the study of the association of “trapacero” and gypsy with a discriminative connotation would be represented as follows:
Table 1. The semiotics of “trapacero” and gypsy.
MYTH = sign 1[10]+ sign 2[11]
social crisis, social inequality,
refugee crisis, foreign invasion
Source: Author.
The problem relies in the configuration in which myths are constructed, completely ignoring the lack of meaning that ‘the signifiers’ inherently have. In other words, the existence of myths disregards the fact that ‘the signifier’ is not objective, rather, it is a subjective ‘thing’ -ergo, it has various meanings and none of them are, in reality, true-. Then, in this case, the RAE -by simply constructing a relation between “trapacero” and gypsy- is creating a myth that configures a gypsy as a dangerous individual: “1. adj. that employs traps, 2. adj. that with craftiness, falsehoods and lies attempts to delude someone in some matter[12]” (RAE 2016). Furthermore, myths contribute to the creation of stereotypes that adjudge certain stigmata to objects. For instance, the myth of gypsies being related to thieves is used as a base for the creation of the stereotype that all gypsies are invaders, criminals and enemies; therefore, they can’t be trusted and must be excluded from development (understood according to Western principles), given the fact that their inclusion will threaten the life stability of the “European educated” people. In this part, it must be underlined how myths and stereotypes are managed in a manner in which there is a normalization of its use: discriminating is no longer bad because “reality” is understood in a unique way -instead of thinking of a ‘sign’ with a variety of ‘signifieds’, a ‘sign’ is understood with a sole (and discriminative) ‘signified’-.
The politics of exclusion
Regarding politics and language, the aforesaid about myths is used as the base -kind of a justification- for the creation of specific policies that, taking into account those myths, attempt to: (1) construct some groups as vulnerable and (2) marginalize them.
About the former, “we live in a society where a kind of Hegelian speculative identity of opposites exists. Certain features, attitudes, and norms of life are no longer perceived as ideologically marked. They appear to be neutral, non-ideological, natural, commonsensical” (Žižek 2008: 36). In other words, some myths are not seen as ideological -not neutral- but as non-ideological -ergo, as natural and objective meanings-. Therein, the construction of some groups as vulnerable is made by granting them myths -called characteristics- no longer seen as myths arising from an ideology, but as natural facts (Žižek2008: 36).