International Relations as Inter-Lingual Relations: Conceptual Entanglements between Political Traditions

To the extent that polities interact across the boundaries of territorially defined vernacular languages, international relations are also inter-lingual relations. Given that relations and practices are given meaning in language, it follows that for inter-lingual relations to function smoothly, it has to be possible to give at least a minimum of shared meaning to mutual relations. Otherwise, the divergence of meaning and thus also of expectations will limit the quality of those relations. This may be one reason why some of the most powerful political blocs in the international system are centred around specific languages. Linguistic communities often also constitute political communities, for reasons that may have to do with mutual intelligibility (it is not given that the United States and Britain would be best friends, nor that the former French colonies would like to be part of the Francophonie). Where relations take place across linguistic boundaries, the languages used by both parties need to have concepts that can translate meaning from one to the other. That is to say, there needs to be a minimum of shared meaning. Following the onset of internationalisation in the 19th century and globalisation in the 20th, linguistic divides seem to have gradually narrowed, semantically if not grammatically, and especially in terms of political vocabularies. What happened? This article proposes a theory of ‘conceptual entanglement’ as an approach to study how compatibility of meaning comes about and is maintained between linguistic communities and hence also polities. This is elaborated by the case of how the concept of ‘civilisation’ became embedded in the Ottoman language.