"New World Babel" is an innovative cultural and intellectual
history of the languages spoken by the native peoples of North
America from the earliest era of European conquest through the
beginning of the nineteenth century. By focusing on different
aspects of the Euro-American response to indigenous speech, Edward
Gray illuminates the ways in which Europeans' changing
understanding of "language" shaped their relations with Native
Americans. The work also brings to light something no other
historian has treated in any sustained fashion: early America was a
place of enormous linguistic diversity, with acute social and
cultural problems associated with multilingualism.
Beginning with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
using rarely seen first-hand accounts of colonial missionaries and
administrators, the author shows that European explorers and
colonists generally regarded American-Indian languages, like all
languages, as a divine endowment that bore only a superficial
relationship to the distinct cultures of speakers. By relating
these accounts to thinkers like Locke, Adam Smith, Jefferson, and
others who sought to incorporate their findings into a broader
picture of human development, he demonstrates how, during the
eighteenth century, this perception gave way to the notion that
language was a human innovation, and, as such, reflected the
apparent social and intellectual differences of the world's
peoples.
The book is divided into six chronological chapters, each
focusing on different aspects of the Euro-American response to
indigenous languages. "New World Babel" will fascinate historians,
anthropologists, and linguists--anyone interested in the history of
literacy, print culture, and early ethnological thought.
Originally published in 1999.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
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increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
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