Language as a Means of Social Confrontation and the Soldiers' Linguistic Strategies : Austro-Hungarian Army, 1914-1918
Abstract
Austria-Hungary was a distinctly multilingual empire - soldiers of more than thirteen languages fought in its army. They were in everyday contact with fellow soldiers speaking different languages, and fought alongside and against speakers of other languages, on a territory inhabited by speakers of yet other languages. Many misapprehensions and conflicts, both interpersonal and intergroup, resulted from the exceptional plurality of languages and communicational regimes on the Austro-Hungarian war fronts, while new linguistic strategies emerged to overcome them. Language-related experiences, especially of not being able to understand each other, affected and shaped the soldiers' overall war experience. Furthermore, language became one the most immediate symbolic markers of affiliation during the Age of Nationalism. Speakers of different languages were often perceived as the anthropological "other", which could indeed be of grave consequence in the highly nationalised war setting.
To understand the ways the soldiers used language to make sense of the war, as well as their social position within the army, language must no longer be seen as a mere vehicle of communication, let alone an unambiguous expression of one's nationality. By looking through the lenses of sociology of language, sociolinguistics and historical & cultural anthropology, this paper recognises the multilingualism of the Austro-Hungarian army, its language policies and wartime communication strategies as inherently stratifying practices, and as a means of social confrontation, either subversive or affirmative of power relations, structures and ideologies. The refusal of Czech, Hungarian or other non-German-speaking soldiers to use German outside of daily duty is a prime example of this. Apart from the collective language strategies, the common soldiers' individual, intrinsic experiences of aforementioned linguistic situation will be analysed, as well as their own everyday language strategies and conceptualisations. The egodocuments of soldiers coming primarily from the Czech and Slovene-speaking lands will serve as the main sources.