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. These editions preserve the original texts of
these important books while presenting them in durable paperback
and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is
to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in
the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press
since its founding in 1905.
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