Multilingual Environments in the Great War

Julian Walker, Christophe Declercq

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350141360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historical & Comparative Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book explores the differing ways in which language has been used to try to make sense of the First World War. Offering further developments in an innovative approach to the study of the conflict, it develops a transnational viewpoint of the experience of war to reveal less expected areas of language use during the conflict. Taking the study of the First World War far beyond the Western Front, chapters examine experiences in many regions, including Africa, Armenia, post-war Australia, Russia and Estonia, and a variety of contexts, from prisoner-of-war and internment camps, to food queues and post-war barracks. Drawing upon a wide variety of languages, such as Esperanto, Flemish, Italian, Kiswahili, Portuguese, Romanian and Turkish, Multilingual Environments in the Great War brings together language experiences of conflict from both combatants and the home front, connecting language and literature with linguistic analysis of the immediacy of communication.

Part I

Multilingual environments

Introduction to Part I

Hillary Briffa

The very term ‘First World War’ highlights the expansive reach of the first total war waged between industrialized world powers whose empires spanned the globe. As the Allies postured offensively against the emerging peer competitors on the continent, a nationalist assassination in the Balkans led them, chain-ganged, into a conflict of unprecedented magnitude. The Central European Powers clashed with the entirety of the British Empire, India and the Dominions, the French Empire, Japan, the United States, and Russia in the early years of fire. Yet it was not just bullets and bayonets that crossed borders and occupied new spaces; soldiers and civilians carried their language and culture. Thus, the five chapters in this part explore the multilingual environments of the war, and the phonetic encounters that served purposes as wide ranging as riot suppression, or the trading of food stuffs with local chiefs.

As readers, we become foreign visitors ourselves, entering the German prisoner-of-war camps where one can almost hear the dialectal voices of the Italian prisoners in Bannò’s meticulous study of the Königlich-Preussische Phonographische Kommission, singing in front of the gramophone and drafting passages that the recording linguists translated into standard language. Phonography pioneer Doegen’s commission of German, Austrian and Swiss linguists, anthropologists and musicologists capitalized on the opportunity to study the exotic languages of their prisoners. The purpose of the commission was not limited to linguistic study, however; Bannò reveals how recordings were also leveraged for the war effort, in the teaching of foreign languages, and for propagandist ends, as Doegen strove to counteract allegations of prisoner maltreatment and to restore honour to Germany in the post-war period. As a rich educational repository, tourists to Berlin, far removed from the fronts, became aural explorers themselves as exhibitions of the sound collection fostered multilingual exchange. Thanks to Bannò’s discovery and revival, the songs of the prisoners will continue to echo.

Like the caged Italian songbirds of Bannò’s study, Javier Alcalde, too, takes us behind the bars that imprisoned conscientious objectors. Among this group, the auxiliary language of Esperanto was popular and Alcalde shines a light into these dark spaces of confinement, where the language flourished. An enterprising prisoner earned a salary by teaching the language to German officers. Esperanto magazines were published in prison camps. Even in captivity, there was creativity and cooperation. Tracing the roots of this internationalist language, the planned language of Esperanto was created by Zamenhof in 1887, intended to be used among people with different mother tongues. Two years prior to the conception of this international auxiliary language, the poet Walt Whitman penned (in Song of Myself) the famous verse, ‘I am large. I contain multitudes’. These poignant words seem apt to describe Esperanto as presented in Alcalde’s work. Its very nomenclature – meaning ‘one who hopes’ – demonstrates the expansive and profound purpose it was conceived to fulfil.

Rejecting presentism that relegates Esperanto to a marginal position, through Alcalde’s study we come into contact with the Esperanto-speaking railroad workers passing through villages; doctors treating patients; humanitarian workers tending to the wounded and distributing clothing, medicine, and food; Boy Scouts; international scientists and jurists; and even the religious and the spiritual, all pursuing a neutral language of communication. Beyond the pragmatic ends, we learn not only of the war being fought in the trenches, but of the ideological war that was waged on behalf of ideals and the spirit of internationalism. The pacific vocation of the Esperanto movement was antithetic to the Great War, and Alcalde portrays not only the functional utility of the language, but its inherently globalist spirit. Its performative utterances advanced a social movement.

In opposition to the confined spaces of prisons, Anne Samson recounts the language learning taking place on the open decks of HM Forces ships, bound for East Africa. Samson homes in on the study of Kiswahili, as prioritized by the Colonial Office. Her lively work depicts the efforts of individuals, such as Lieutenant John Bruce Cairnie, struggling to learn the language and resolve misunderstandings with servants on board, whilst sailing across the Indian Ocean. Just as Cairnie’s ship eventually reached port, so too does Samson transport the reader to East Africa – a theatre where the languages and dialects of some 177 ethnic or tribal groupings reveals the complex interplay between imperial and indigenous cultures and commands. She describes how local inhabitants proved invaluable to the war effort due to their knowledge of the terrain and language, understanding of the culture, and access to news. However, it was also important for those in leadership positions to learn the language: in practical terms, to deliver orders or interrogate potential prisoners; but so, too, for more intangible gains: building trust through mutual understanding.

Samson skilfully charts the day-to-day interactions in the camps. One labourer and herdsman of cattle describes how segregation was the norm in his experience, with only the leaders having contact with white soldiers; conversely, the ‘whites’ would be exclusively privy to information, may have had access to newspapers and were certainly delivering the orders. In so doing, Samson exposes the vertical and horizontal relationships prevailing during this period. As much as there are lessons to be learned regarding the practicality and functionality of language, and the complex sociopolitical dynamics playing out in the different regions, the chapters are also enriched by their immortalization of the journeys and lived experiences of a host of vivid characters. In addition to Cairnie, Samson notably introduces us to Van Deventer – an Afrikaans/Dutch-speaking South African who refused to speak English, following a particularly grim encounter with the British (to be discovered in her chapter). Gwendal Piégais, meanwhile, introduces us to the composer Paul Le Flem, whose ability to speak Russian elevated him from his initial war duties as a stretcher bearer to the interpreter of a special Russian regiment of the French army. His effort to improve the quality of life of former Russian soldiers working in France – including diet, living conditions and wages – demonstrates the centrality of interpreters’ contributions, beyond translation. Just as linguistic skills enabled Paul Le Flem to climb the ranks, Piégais reveals how language skills enabled army recruits to become upwardly mobile in the stratified French society.

Piégais’ chapter on French strategy provides, furthermore, for deeper understanding of the relati onship between France and Central and Eastern Europe during the war. In particular, the analysis of the Corps Expéditionnaire Russe en France – the Russian Expeditionary force in France and Macedonia – imparts the struggles of the French and British army in their attempt to manage a multinational coalition, communicate with Ottoman prisoners and sustain peaceful relations with the occupied population in Northern Greece. With 40,000 Russian soldiers in the French army in 1916, Piégais pinpoints the challenges of interpreting and translating the Russian language during the war, emphasizing the difficulties and shortages in recruiting men with Russian linguistic skills. He is unequivocal about the importance of interpreters in this period, given that ‘Languages were the bridge through which the allies could implement cooperation in the field, or even in unexpected theatres’.

Through Piégais’ work, we therefore discover the multifaceted role of these linguists. Interpreters were interrogators, intelligence gatherers and inspectors of the behaviour in camps. They translated orders, documents and handbooks in a bid to homogenize the military practices of the multinational coalition. When Russian participation in the war ended with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, the French had to contend with the 65,000 Russian POWs, freed from German camps and awaiting repatriation. Interpreters managed both the post and the prisoners; as tensions rose, Piégais reveals the essential dual role they played in both gauging troop morale in the field and preventing prisoner rioting in the camps.

Interpreter accounts therefore guided both the understanding of foreign language during this time and the expanding of our repository of historical knowledge through their study today. Indeed, Samson explains that ‘Interpreters play an important role in our accessing accounts in languages not our own’. At the same time, Julian Walker introduces another medium intended to facilitate access to foreign languages during the war: phrasebooks published in France, Britain, Germany and the United States. Walker highlights the distinct purposes of these texts. Ranging from teaching books to travellers’ phrasebooks, civilian engagement aids to military manuals, these served purposes as disparate as travellers’ aides or interrogation scripts. The content spans the mundane (ordering tea), the militarized (asking after the passage of enemy troops or interrogating prisoners) and the outright mystifying (passionate encounters in Egyptian phrasebooks). Moreover, German copies in Allied hands were ridiculed for propagandist ends, fodder for caricaturized portrayals of the enemy.

The phrasebooks were not simply educational, however. The works had a prescriptive element, seeking to determine the course of action for various projected scenarios. Whether engaging with suspected spies, becoming separated from comrades, being fired upon or even seeking to deceive the enemy with false orders in their own language, the phrasebooks serve as a reflection of the types of situations soldiers were expected to encounter. The analysis of the phrasebooks is not limited to those involved in combat, however. Turning to civilians, away from the home front, and the displaced victims of the war, the study yields insight into the experience of locals seeking to accommodate Belgian refugees. Walker sensitively juxtaposes the proffered advice on food and household management (implicit of domestic coexistence) with the reality of the growing antipathy towards these arrivals and the anxiety they endured. Whilst phrasebooks were intended as tools for illumination, they were not always successful. Indeed, the comprehensive study scrutinizes the challenges of these attempts at linguistic exchange. Miscommunications in exchanging slang, faulty translations and the reinforcing of colonial and gender power dynamics in Egyptian-British relations all reveal the shortcomings of this very human process.

The stories within these chapters reveal the essentiality of language as ‘the ultimate transmission belt’ (to borrow P...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Preface
• List of abbreviations and acronyms
• Part I Multilingual environments
• Part II Language and identity
• Part III Non-combatants
• Part IV Post-war
• Index
• Copyright