What are we doing here? Essays

Abstract

reasoning, an undertaking ultimately doomed to fail (33, 179–193). The remaining sections deal with questions concerning hybrid languages versus hyperlanguages, the linguistics of the vanquished and reverse orientalism, the many levels of communication arising from the written versus spoken word across languages, ‘Les deux scènes du langage ou la langue sous la langue,’ modern glossolalia, modern drama and the liturgy of the spoken word as well as music (the symbolic imaginary of counterpoint examined by Laurence Wuidar and the neo-baroque ‘stylus phantasticus’ examined by Brenno Boccadoro, both musicologists, 573–648). These essays do offer significant snapshots of the manifold facets of the shifting perceptions over time of language, its origins and its universality, thus functioning as a cultural history of language perception and the ‘linguistic imagination’ [imaginaire linguistique] in the western world) with a strong focus on the history of linguistics. Overall, the volume introduces its readers to the topic principally from a European (and especially French) perspective, although it does also shed some light on the Americas (in an interesting and eminently readable section entitled ‘Éthnographies linguistiques ou la pentecôte aux Amériques’ [Linguistic Ethnographies or Pentecost in the Americas], 265–315). Missing from the volume is a discussion of current paradigms and recent treatment of multilingualism and related phenomena in Anglo-American research. This would have served as a useful comparison that would have helped contextualize this otherwise impressive array of scholarship. The sparsely illustrated volume is carefully edited (although the quality of image reproduction could be better), with an index of names and a list of illustrations (807–835), but lacks a list of contributors, a cumulative bibliography as well as abstracts of the contributions. The fact that there are no English-language summaries is perfectly consistent, one has to concede, with the volume’s well-informed and thoroughly documented critical stance towards the idea of a single lingua franca. While this will limit significantly the audience of the work, Langues imaginaires et imaginaire de la langue nevertheless recommends itself to all those interested in the manifold ways of rethinking the philosophy and theology of (literary) language; it is also suitable for those readers whose interest lies in the manifold linguistic, literary, and philosophical inheritance of More’s Utopia and beyond.