to a process of continuous variation is to speak the language of A Thousand
Plateaus: we detect an echo of the concepts of ‘minor language’ and ‘ becoming-
minoritarian of the major or standard language’). This language has the great
advantage of enabling us to formulate the first two moments of the dialectical
process clearly. On the one hand, there is only continuous variation, a
multiplicity of dialects, of the languages of small communities, united in
common practices, like Tran Duc Thao’s hunters. But, on the other hand, there
is a hierarchy, which is a political hierarchy, between these dialects and
registers, at whose summit is enthroned ‘standard English’ – this political
fiction, this imagined linguistic community which serve as a national language,
this sedimented aggregate of past and present political struggles, always
subject – which is what makes it living – to a process of subversion and
becoming-minoritarian by dominated dialects.
The national language is, therefore, in a dialectical relationship with the
constitution of nation-states. But, being dialectical, this relationship works in
both directions. The language is national because it is elevated to such a status
in the context of the political struggles leading to the creation of a nation-
state. But it intervenes in these struggles and thus contributes to the emergence
of what causes it to emerge, for these political struggles often take the form
of linguistic struggles. The role of the Tuscan written by Dante in the creation
not only of Italian as a national language, but also of the unified Italian state,
is well known. The same could be said of the English of Shakespeare (as long
as we add to it that of the King James Bible): this English, which even British
Anglophones find it increasingly difficult to understand today, plays an
essential role not only in the transformation of ‘Shakespeare’ into a national
myth, but in the constitution of the United Kingdom (as its name suggests)
into a nation-state. We appreciate the significance of the old witticism: a
language is a dialect equipped with an army. A nation is an army united by
a language.
I am going to illustrate this situation by taking two examples. The first has
been the object of famous studies and analyses: the constitution of French as
a national language, and its triumph over dialects, in the era of the Revolution.
Historians possess an extremely valuable document, the Grégoire report, the
first survey of the extension of French within what it is henceforth called the
national territory. We have two analyses of this report – by Renée Balibar and
Dominique Laporte and by Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia and Jacques
Propositions (II) • 187