UCLA

This study explores the emergence of the standard language known today as Western Armenian. In particular, it examines the intellectual labor that led to the acceptance of this language as the dominant written medium among Ottoman Armenians by 1915. Drawing on insights from the fields of historical sociolinguistics, global intellectual history and nationalism studies as well as untapped Armenian-language primary sources, I uncover the fundamental role that beliefs about purity played in the formation of the standard language. While this focus on purity remained a constant among the intelligentsia throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I show how ideas about what was considered “pure” were shaped and reshaped by various actors and interactions with ideas that originated far beyond the Ottoman Empire. This interaction came in the form of four global intellectual movements—humanism, cultural nationalism, comparative philology and folkloristics—which created new and conflicting attitudes about how Armenian ought to be used. I argue that the impact of these global movements on the language was all the more enduring, because they coincided with a decades-long process of vernacularization and standardization. In this way, my project firmly situates Ottoman Armenians within the global circulation of ideas and shows how these movements each left a distinct imprint on the standard language. I also highlight how these movements fundamentally shaped norms about “proper” Western Armenian usage that continue to predominate in post-Ottoman Armenian diaspora communities around the world today. This study turns away from conventional philological treatments of Armenian language history and focuses instead on the social aspects of language use. In this way, it takes a socio-historical approach to the study of language, examines the people and ideologies that shaped its use and advocates for the broader application of historical sociolinguistic methods to the study of Armenian and other languages in the Ottoman Empire. Written for four distinct readerships, this study addresses topics of relevance to (1) historical sociolinguists interested in macro-sociolinguistic processes, such as purism and vernacularization; (2) social and intellectual historians of the Ottoman Empire, particularly those interested in the reception of global movements within the Empire; (3) researchers in Armenian studies; and (4) speakers and learners of Western Armenian outside academia who seek to better understand the history of the language.