ABSTRACT
A common language is a means of communication and is appealed to in nationalist arguments because communication is necessary for a common life. The English language of the seventeenth century conveys the humane values of pre-industrial social relationships, or does so at least insofar as it resists the Miltonic Latinizations which cannot provide a vehicle for such relationships. Freedom is something that everyone should want, so it may seem paradoxical to represent it as the special goal of the English. Where values are universal in this way the cultural nationalist must claim that his nation has a special relationship to them, of origination, guardianship, or interpretation. A wide range of arguments for a right to statehood employ the fact of common culture as a major premise. History is employed to embalm the nation against disintegration and oblivion. In de Valera's 'dream' speech, three thousand years of it is deemed adequate proof against the ravages of modernity in Ireland.
