Maintaining common values can be quite a challenge when dealing with societies that are often multicultural by nature, however, their absence can result in a fragmented society that lacks a general identity. Whether these values are our religion, gastronomy, language, music and arts or even our social etiquette, all of these add together to create a national cultural identity, but the question is: which one is the most important?
Firstly, it is important to consider the close relationship that a language has to the culture of the country that it is spoken in. It can be said that the two are intertwined and so it is practically impossible to separate them and define them without, in some way, referencing the other.
Ultimately, it is through a language that we are able to learn about any specific culture as it can act as a symbol of different aspects of the culture that the language belongs to. For instance, the importance of Catholicism throughout Spain’s history is reflected in certain areas of Spanish grammar. Any discussion surrounding death will take the impermanent form of ‘to be’ and references to marriage will take the permanent form which is in accordance with Catholic beliefs. In this sense, maintaining Spanish as a common language reflects the common history and values that they have shared over the centuries, therefore unifying their national culture. Consequently, a common language acts as the one of the easiest and most logical ways of presenting and communicating this common history, values, and customs that are shared by a whole nation.
As a result, a common language is the most important factor in unifying any national culture as a language is a way of tying together everything that makes up a national culture, simply providing a way to communicate and understand it.
Such argument can also be taken further by viewing language as the basis of everything while a national culture is the message that we send through our common languages. Therefore, national culture can be seen as the information that is passed on as we come into contact with and learn more about our surroundings.
This information is an add-on to the basis that every human starts with, which in human terms would be equivalent to genetics (e.g., being born Spanish). A common language then comes into play when we have to transfer this information (the national culture) and build upon this basis we are born with. Consequently, a common language acts as a mode of communication for all of the similarities that those who belong to any given society share, which, in turn, creates a national culture. This means that without the existence of a common language, it would be virtually mpossible for a unified national culture to exist as its existence is dependent on that of a common language. As a result, it can only make sense that a common language is the most important factor in unifying any national culture.
To take this argument further, it can be used to devalue some of the arguments put forward that say other factors, such as religion, are more important in unifying any national culture than a common language.
As it is ultimately a common language that unifies national culture, not vice versa, it is a common language that makes national culture a reality as we are born with the ability to learn a language through exposure, but our culture is reliant on our knowledge and use of the language we learn. Therefore, religion cannot be a more important factor in uniting any national culture as religion is part of culture. As a result, a common language is crucial in communicating and understanding religion as well as its teachings and practices.
A religion is made up of vernacular language and so, ultimately, the concept of religion would not have been able to form if it were not for the basis of all human communication – a common language that all members of the religious community would be able to understand. This shows that other aspects of a national culture all rely on a common language to exist and evolve, consequently meaning that a common language has to be the most important factor in unifying any national culture.
On the other hand, it could also be said that a common religion does the same effect as a language in unifying a national culture. French sociologist Emile Durkheim was one of the very first scholars to highlight the importance that religion can have on society, citing that religion has the power to define the identity of a culture in a way that strengthens it.
For Durkheim, the requirements needed for a society to accurately express its identity was through knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions, which, for him, religion covers. Consequently, by nature, religion creates a community of people that are united through their similar ways of life and the beliefs they share and provides a structure for the people who are a part of it. For this reason, those who belong to religious communities often have a strong link to ethnic identities.
We can see this through how religion united the Irish who claimed their independence from Great Britain to maintain their Catholic identity. In this case, it could be said that religious identity overrode any common language that was shared and so religion was the most important factor in unifying Irish national culture and their ethnic identity.
It could also be argued, however, that the importance of maintaining a common language has only come about over the last century or at least has only increased during this time. Instead of creating a unified national culture for patriotic reasons, the concept of creating a common language has political roots.
Ultimately, it was the shift to a more democratic world that has made the need for a common language ever more important than it has been in the past. In this sense, sharing a common language makes bureaucracy easier and allows for the population to understand and take part in the running of the country. For example, this was the case in Hungary where the language of administration remained Latin up until the 1840s before it switched to Hungarian.
While Latin was a common language amongst the Hungarian elites and nobility and allowed for easier communication with nobles in other countries, the poorer divisions of Hungarian society who were much less likely to be educated in the Latin language would be unable to understand. Consequently, it could be said that the switch to Hungarian allowed for the creation of a national culture that included the whole of the Hungarian society, not the select few who were able to speak a language that was not common to the whole country.
In this sense, it is clear to see how a common language can unite its people under a national culture as it unites the whole country, however, at least in this case, a common language did not create unity for patriotic reasons, but rather for political reasons and so another factor, such as religion or the history of the country, may be more important in unifying any national culture for such reasons.
Similarly, the logistics and the need to maintain a common language in societies that are very often multicultural and so are automatically multilingual, must be questioned.
In today’s world, it is completely normal for countries to be multilingual, and it is extremely uncommon to find a country that has speakers of just one common language that unites everyone. Even though we may naturally connect a nationality to a language, for instance, Italian people speaking Italian, this has not always been the case and does not have to necessarily be so.
For example, when Italy first became a state, only every two in three Italians out of a hundred would speak Italian at home (Hobsbawm, 1996). Consequently, a multilingual society is part of many countries’ national culture. By maintaining values such as the importance of multilingualism in society and other cultural values such as the importance of religion and other customs, we can let these values define our national culture rather than having our national culture defined by our ethnicity or nationality. In this case, if maintaining a common language to unify a national culture were to be a reality, then this common language would become an automatic part of our nationality when we are born. However, it is clear from the example with Italy that this was not the case in the past and it wasn’t the most important factor in unifying its national culture. In countries where this has been achieved, however, it is often achieved through force. We can see this through Iceland’s policy of Icelandization which forces every immigrant to have an Icelandic name (Hobsbawm, 1996). Although one could say that it binds the Icelandic culture together and preserves it from foreign influence, the fact that it is achieved through ‘force’ may raise questions over its authenticity as the most important factor in unifying its national culture. Consequently, maintaining a common language in a country is not natural in a modern society that is very often multilingual and, even if it is achieved the reasons behind it are not those that contribute to the sense of pride that should come with a strong and unified national culture.
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