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The Linguistic Intimacy of Five Continents

This chapter elaborates work by Edward Said on comparative linguistics in embedding a history of linguistic study in histories of colonialism and capitalism. We look at three late nineteenth and early twentieth century challenges to comparative linguistics: evolutionary linguistics, which elaborated and sharpened ideas of racialized difference on the grounds of biology; the study of pidgins and creoles which challenges notions of “hybridity” and thus certain ideas of racial distinction; and Boasian approaches focusing on culture, which only critiques certain aspects of racialization. We also consider the ways colonial ideologies of race played out in the pragmatics of imperial rule, in the arena of language and industrial and residential schooling. These schools, which targeted Indigenous and Black bodies, were implemented at the same time that Boas was elaborating the field of anthropology; that they were not subject to critique shows the limits of the Boasian focus on culture as a means of resisting racism.