Linguistics in a colonial world: a story of language, meaning and power

摘要

From its philological precursors to its modern articulations, the field of linguistics has been deeply implicated in the colonial project of conquest and control. Early grammars and dictionaries of many languages are a product of the colonial legacy. The body of scholarship on the languages of Africa, Asia and South America that emerged under the ambit of colonial rule betrayed several conditions of its production. These included the specific interests that inspired its authorship, the life it received from specific institutional contexts and ideological leanings, and the epistemological authority it came to assume in colonial inscriptions of difference.