J.G. Herder, the Origin of Language, and the Possibility of Transcultural Narratives

Herder's ideas on cultural plurality in language offer an explanation for how narrative might bridge cultural boundaries. In his Essay on the Origin of Language, Herder focuses on language as the specifically human trait that distinguishes humanity from all other species on the one hand and the creator of human differences and diversity of cultures on the other hand. The crucial issue for Herder's aesthetics of language is the reception process whereby a particular experience acquires linguistic form. This process functions in the origin of language and in the translation from one language to another in a similar way. In both cases, the particular environmental forces that are significant in the mind of the receiver become crucial for the shaping of the final linguistic or narrative construct being received. If this is true, then cases of transcultural narrative are not examples of the creation of a ‘common’ narrative. Rather, narrative ‘proliferates’ across cultures by multiplying itself in a process that is determined by a certain confluence of interests in two or more cultures but not a reproduction of identical narrative forms, even in the case of direct translation.