ABSTRACT
Since the concept of identity as a topic worthy of scholarly enquiry can be traced back to nineteenth-century nationalism, it seems appropriate to take as a point of departure the key role played by language in articulating the idea of the modern nation. By the end of the nineteenth century, the German scholar J. G. von Herder already postulated that language should be understood not “as the medium through which speakers communicate” but rather as “the essence of a nationality.”1 Critical studies of the emergence of European nationalism, beginning with Benedict Anderson’s ground-breaking Imagined Communities, restate from a critical vantage point the active role of language in constructing national identities. In the framework of Anderson’s definition of nation as an imagined political community, language is the primary means that communities use for self-definition.2
