Tony Crowley's disgusting Wars of Words

I happened to cast a glance at the book "Wars of Words: The Politics of Language in Ireland 1537–2004" (Oxford University Press 2005) by Tony Crowley.

The first section of the book is titled "Introduction: Language Acquisition" which begins with someone's vague statement about the notion of language purity having something to do with racial stereotypes. This begs two questions:

1. What has language purity got to do with language acquisition?

2. What has language purity got to do with the topic of the book?

I mean, this book isn't about the Académie Française. It's about the policies of the English invaders in Ireland which (as not even the most shameless history falsifier can deny) resulted in the Irish language going almost extinct.

It would seem that with the above-mentioned citation, the author strives to set the emotional tone for the following discussion. Before he has presented even one fact, even one thought of his own, he suggests to the readers' subconcious the idea that opposition to the destruction of the Irish language can be viewed as a pursuit to keep the Irish "race" clean of anyone and anything that is not "pure" enough – in contrast to the noble willingness of the open-minded English to lovingly welcome all human beings in the world as their servants.

Indeed, before the end of the very first page, Mr. Crowley exposes himself as a pathological ethnic nihilist who can't even begin to understand the role of the language and its unique importance for human beings:

"For example, in what was for a long time a standard account of the issue, ‘The Spoken Languages of Medieval Ireland’, Ireland’s leading early twentieth-century historian declared baldly that ‘the native cause had always been identical in the minds of the Gaelic race with the Irish language’ (Curtis 1919: 252). There is in fact little if any evidence for this linkage between language and ‘the native cause’; the claim is quite anachronistic, although the political implications of such a relationship for understanding national identity at the time the claim was made (pre-independence) were clear. Pride in a language, and by corollary defensiveness about a language, occur usually in contexts of cultural and political threat and danger, [---]"

Reading such haughty imperialist nonsense, one feels like asking if the writer is even sane. "There is little evidence" that being able to talk to someone creates in a human being the feeling he has more in common with that person than with someone he can't talk to? And note how Mr. Crowley drops emotionally loaded phrases such as "pride in a language", "defensiveness", "threat and danger" into the text, thereby subtly (because he isn't man enough to say straight what he thinks) implanting in the reader's mind the ideas that 1) when people want to preserve their native language rather than switch to English, it is because they irrationally believe that their native language is somehow better, and 2) those who oppose the British Empire's policy of linguistic genocide in Ireland are cowards.

Note also, how Mr. Crowley quoted the book from the early 20th century word by word without considering it necessary to inform his readers that in that time the term "ethnicity" was relatively unknown and it was common to use the word "race" in its stead. I have little doubt that Mr. Crowley relishes the joy of subtly leading his readers to thinking that the people who condemn the linguistic genocide in English-ruled Ireland are to be set equal to those who hate people because of their different skin color – while he has chosen his wording in such a way that he'll be able to swear in the name of all gods that he had never anything like that in mind.

And, as I'd like to remind you once more – this is the very first page of the book's actual text. (I mean, after the impressum and the copyright notice and the acknowledgements and such.)

Of course, we can be sure Mr. Crowley is not insane, just English. A native speaker of the world language, he just can't understand why are all those aborigines so stubbornly clinging to their native languages and won't realize how easier life would be if everyone in the world just learned Tony Crowley's native language.

I saw no point in continuing to read this condescending "study" which, apart from being written in a vague language with very little informational content, apparently attempts to analyze the reasons for the poor misguided Irish people's defensiveness caused by the imagined threat from the English, the fear of which the master race hasn't unfortunately been able to cure in spite of centuries of benevolent efforts.