The Concept and Role of Language in the Formation of National Intelligentsia in Slavic Societies in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Abstract

This paper is premised on the observation that the processes leading to the emergence of the Slavic national systems and their subsequent institutionalization fit rather weI! into general models in which the sociocultural system is viewed from an evolutionary perspec­ tive. According to Max Weber, an initial interplay of the material interest and charismatic inspirations of the few becomes the 'life-style' of a distinct status group, and in tum eventually becomes the dominant orientation, the 'common value system' of a whole nation or civilization. I It is easy to think of the ethnic intelligentsia in Slavic societies, at the time of their National Revivals, in a charismatic role, transferring their values to the masses and thus pervading them with a common national consciousness. While the linguistic and social gulf between the masses and the status-competing non-Slavic groups explains the failure of the latter to impose its system, the linguistic and social bond between the masses and their own intellectual elites, who were engaged in the building of a new vernacular educational system (wherever such a bond existed 2), explains and justifies the success and ultimate victory of this value system in Slavic societies. Hence the role of language in the formation of national intelligentsia in Slavic societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The conceptual frame of our discussion is sociocultural and linguistic, more precisely sociolinguistic, i.e., stipulated in terms of an interdependence and interaction between language and society. The time axis of our discussion is represented by the historical movement of the Slavic National revival, somewhat arbitrarily dated between the mid­ eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and intellectually representing a Slavic Enlight­ enment and Romanticism where these literary and philosophical movements took root in Slavic society. The model to be presented, a single model from a universe of differentiating variables of the role of language, is that of the evolution of national intelligentsia in Slavic societies. What we propose to show is that from the nexus of sociolinguistic functions of literary languages, i.e., modem standard languages, at least one, the prestige junction, should be added to the parameter of factors predicating the historical role of Slavic intelligentsia during their National Revivals. 2. Attitudes to Slavic Languages 2.0. The intellectual climate in Slavic societies at the beginning of their National Revivals, and the attitudes among their elites toward their native languages, may perhaps be best understood against a typology of general conceptions of the time about Slavic languages, their written traditions and their prospects for the future. There are three types of mental image of this kind which influenced the development of the Slavic written traditions during this period: 3