This study asserts that conscious development of new ways of thinking about language had a crucial role in modern
history, particularly the discovery of how differences between languages legitimated social inequalities. It claims
that savages and ancients were judged alike because they used language similarly, in contrast to modern Europeans
who used disciplined language in scientific, philosophical and legal projects.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Making language safe for science and society: from Francis Bacon to John Lock
3. Antiquaries and philologists: the construction of modernity and its others in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
England
4. The critical foundations of national epic: Hugh Blair, the Ossian controversy, and the rhetoric of authenticity
5. Johann Gottfried Herder: language reform, das Volk, and the patriarchal state in eighteenth-century Germany
6. The Brothers Grimm: scientizing, textual production in the service of romantic nationalism
7. Henry Rowe school craft and the making of an American textual tradition
8. The foundation of all future researches: Franz Boas, George Hunt, Native American texts and the construction
of modernity
