Languages came to be seen as the property of specific national communities

Evidence

The lexicographic revolution in Europe, however, created, and gradually spread, the conviction that languages (in Europe at least) were, so to speak, the personal property of quite specific groups – their daily speakers and readers – and moreover that these groups, imagined as communities, were entitled to their autonomous place in a fraternity of equals. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 345

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the core mechanism by which the lexicographic revolution made language a claim to national ownership.
• SEED: The idea that a language ‘belongs’ to its speakers, and how that entitlement grounds the whole modern national-imaginary.
• XREF: connects to: Linguistic distinctions were extended to claim ontological differences between peoples; Peoples without states fell back on language and ethnicity as national identity; National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry (+10 more)

Related

• Once languages lost divine status, their native speakers became their owners. (similarity 0.89)
• Linguistic distinctions were extended to claim ontological differences between peoples (similarity 0.88)
• Peoples without states fell back on language and ethnicity as national identity (similarity 0.83)
• Print-languages made mutually unintelligible dialects into unified national communities (similarity 0.83)
• Language changes through class culture acquisition and hegemonic national languages (similarity 0.82)
• Dictionaries made languages’ equality visible within their covers regardless of political reality. (similarity 0.81)
• National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry (similarity 0.80)
• Early American nationalisms did not depend on language difference (similarity 0.79)
• National consciousness formed through literary and philological revival in Eastern Europe (similarity 0.79)
• Bilingualism gave colonial intelligentsias access to modular models of nationalism (similarity 0.79)
• Nationalist revival frames the vernacular’s decline as a shameful gap to be redeemed (similarity 0.79)
• Later European nationalisms differed from American ones in print-language centrality and visible models. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Once languages lost divine status, their native speakers became their owners. #corroborates (0.92) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 290
• Popular nationalism reproduced exclusion by demanding linguistic uniformity #expands (0.78) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 386
• Language changes through class culture acquisition and hegemonic national languages #expands (0.75)