Wendy Ayres-Bennett and John Bellamy: The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization

The breakthrough in looking at language standardization came with the recognition by linguists – notably in the pioneering paper by Einar Haugen (1966) – that standard languages are essentially ‘cultural artefacts’, which in Europe arose from the late seventeenth century on typically as the prestige written form of a cultural or social elite, driven by a variety of social and ideological assumptions, which Watts (2011) identified in particular as the myth of the immutable language and the myth of the ancient language. Behind these were in particular on the one hand the prestigious model of the classical languages, and on the other the biblical account of the confusion of tongues in Babel, since for centuries it was assumed that all languages had been created there and remained fundamentally the same. In pre-literate societies there could, of course, be no conception of language change, and even nowadays the ‘ideology of the standard language’ as outlined by Milroy and Milroy (2012) is still widely accepted – as evidenced by the widespread use of grammar checking programs in word-processors – since many people find it difficult to accept that the language of their community is permanently changing and assume that it is in some way ‘decaying’ or being corrupted by members of the community who are poorly educated or morally degenerate (cf. Aitchison 2013). The emergence of standard languages in Europe was also connected on the one hand to the growing importance of education and literacy in the vernacular languages, and on the other to the emergence of modern nations, whereby they gain importance as symbols of the unity of a state.

The introductory chapter summarizes the main topics and themes of the chapters in this volume and shows how the subject has developed since the 1960s. In particular, a number of new themes and links between various papers in the volume are pointed out here in a way which the individual authors had not been able to do, notably the way in which the study of standardization has moved on from an almost exclusive concern with languages of Europe and their relationship to nation-states and nationalism to intensive study of developments in regions where multilingualism is the norm or where particular languages have minority status. A controversial further issue common to several chapters which is picked up here is the extent to which the notion of standardization might be usefully applied to some varieties of spoken languages, since it has typically been assumed that standardization is predominantly a feature of writing.

The 29 chapters are divided into five thematic sections. The first, ‘Revisiting Models and Theories of Language Standardization’, contains six chapters broadly concerned with recent research developments. In the first, Wendy Ayres-Bennett traces those developments and discusses the most important contributions and the changes in how the processes of standardization are interpreted, with the interesting conclusion (p. 56) that it is ‘nevertheless remarkable how many of the key terms and distinctions set out in the classic texts of the 1950s and 1960s by Kloss, Stewart and Haugen have continued to be central to the theorizing of standardization’, and presents a helpful set of issues which need to be considered in relation to Haugen’s four stages of selection, codification, acceptance/implementation and elaboration. The second chapter, by Gijsbert Rutten and Rik Vosters, outlines the familiar processes of standardization involving the establishment of a relatively uniform prestige variety in the major European countries. They demonstrate convincingly, with examples mainly from Dutch, English and German, that this process was primarily a social phenomenon initiated by an educated social élite with the most important developments in the eighteenth century crucially involving the establishment of a link between this uniform variety and the nation. And as this variety was transmitted through the education system, attitudes towards it, i.e. the ‘ideology of standard’, became generally accepted, even if not all its features were universally adopted. This is shown clearly in the next chapter, by Stephan Elspaß, on standardization ‘from below’. In practice, many ‘non-standard’ features remained in use outside the educated élite and these can be found in documents of a hitherto neglected kind, such as private letters by ‘ordinary’ people, who possibly accepted the ‘ideology of standard’ in principle but did not master every detail, since their less formal spoken registers deviated from it. In recent years such data has been studied more seriously, and we see that such features may subsequently become accepted into the standard variety. The three following chapters deal with situations in multilingual regions which have previously been less intensively studied. Anvita Abbi deals with ‘contact-induced’ spoken varieties of Hindi which possess similar prestige to that associated with a standard language. However, as the editors point out in their introduction (pp. 10, 15), this opens up the fundamental question of the status of such a spoken variety, and we recall that Haugen (1966: 929) considered the written form as the ‘significant and probably crucial requirement for a standard language’. The variety described here could rather be a spoken koine such as has often been considered a type of pre-standardization; an issue which could usefully have been discussed in further detail here. Friederike Lüpke then deals with some African countries where multilingualism is the norm, highlighting the tension arising from the imposition of the European notion of discrete ethnolinguistic communities. In some instances, this motivated attempts to establish standardized varieties which did not correspond to the reality of societal multilingualism and could result in the eradication of linguistic diversity. To avoid this, she proposes bypassing the standard by developing literacy based on the speakers’ multilingual repertoires. Nevertheless, as she recognizes, the limited reach of such literacy is clear and will remain ‘in the shadow of the standard’ (p. 161). The final chapter, by Minglang Zhou, deals with China, where from the 1950s minority languages were standardized following the Soviet model. From the 1990s, however, the state was formally identified with a ‘national’ language (Putonghua), to be acquired and used by all Chinese citizens. However, the actual situation has altered as a result of globalization, since some regions where minority languages are spoken have become popular tourist destinations, with an increased visibility for the local language as an attractive authentic feature for visitors, and consequent development in the standardization and teaching of the minority language.

The second section, ‘Legitimacy, Authority and the Written Form’, consists of seven chapters dealing with language authorities and their role in the maintenance of linguistic norms. In the first chapter, Douglas A. Kibbee points out that such authorities are faced with a persistent conflict between the ‘ideology of standard’ and the reality of constant variation and change. He deals in perceptive detail on the one hand with the case of France, which is notorious for continuous attempts to insist on the existence of a uniform invariant language, and on the other with the United States, which lacks centralized authorities. What emerges is the surprising similarity of attitudes to language in both countries and the attempted institutional control of these, since these are rooted in social conditions and the assumptions of the linguistic community. In the following chapter, on state-appointed institutions in the Spanish-speaking world, Douglas Paffey shows surprisingly similar conditions there. Whilst the Real Academia Española appears to be adapting to the challenges from modern technologies and social change and to be receptive of linguistic variation, Paffrey considers this (p. 258) to be ‘rather superficial’ whilst ‘existing discourses and practices of authority and legitimacy carry on with little real change’. Despite the degree of variation across the Hispanic world, the Academia continues to insist on the existence of a single Spanish language, whilst trying to play down its assumption of pre-eminence in stipulating its forms. Of Haugen’s stages, codification is often considered of primary importance in establishing a standard language, and the following chapter, by Nicola McLelland, considers the role of reference works such as grammars and dictionaries in this process. In an interesting and perceptive account, she shows that their importance lies more in bolstering the ideology of standard rather than in their individual prescriptions. And, indeed, the history of many standard languages is full of ultimately unsuccessful prescriptions, such as the stigmatization of the so-called split infinitive in English, where usage ‘from below’ has effectively won out. In this context it is invaluable, in the following chapter, by Ian Brookes, Mary O’Neill and Merryn Davies-Deacon, to have a contribution from members of the editorial team of a commercial dictionary publisher (Collins). Although they do not see their role in terms of prescriptive codification, they are ‘forced to make decisions about how far a dictionary entry acknowledges variation and how far it masks variations by offering a standardized form’ (p. 294). The problems of space in printed volumes can be partly overcome by modern technologies, but it would seem clear that the presence of particular forms in an authoritative source could lead users convinced by the ‘ideology of standard’ to accept them as ‘correct’. It is sometimes assumed, with Paffrey in this volume (p. 237), that a ‘standard variety begins as one of many spoken dialects’ whose written form is then ‘promoted from dialect to language’. However, this is not true of some major European languages, such as German and Italian, and Nicoletta Maraschio and Tina Mattarese show in their chapter on ‘The Role of Literature in Language Standardization’ how standard Italian developed entirely in writing in a politically divided speech area. A prestige variety emerged in writing in the late Middle Ages and has since been maintained and modified, typically with the ‘best authors’ serving as models. One notable consequence of this development has been the level of variation generally accepted within the standard variety. In the following chapter, focussing on Breton and Irish, Michael Hornsby and Noel Ó Murchada discuss problems arising in the standardization of minority languages. With these the lack of a standard variety has played a part in the discrimination of such languages as ‘inferior’, but tensions can arise between native speakers and ‘New Speakers’, who have learnt a newly standardized form of the minority language in education which the native speakers may see as inauthentic. However, the future of such languages, when both ‘New Speakers’ and traditional speakers are bilingual in the minority language and the majority language of the state, may depend on a resolution of this tension. The final chapter, by Bettina Migge, addresses similar issues in relation to attempts to standardize a creole of French Guyana with the aim of establishing a codification which can be used in the acquisition of literacy. However, as with the proposals in Friederike Lüpke’s chapter, coping with the level of variation involves attempting to afford equal status to all variants, and the limited reach of such literacy is clear. As she admits (p. 387) this could run the risk of ‘potentially making the language look unsystematic, thus feeding negative stereotypes about it’.

Similar problems recur through almost all the chapters in the following section: ‘Norms, Literacy and Education’. Lynn Drapeau outlines attempts to develop a standard for Innu, an indigenous language of Canada. The standard developed for education failed to reflect much variation and was not accepted by all native speakers, many of whom regarded the acquisition of literacy in the dominant language as the desirable goal. Her conclusion (cf. p. 415), already hinted at in the chapters by Lüpke and Migge, is that attempts at standardization of vernacular indigenous languages and developing literacy skills in them may not be a solution to language loss, and we see again that ‘acceptance’ of a standard is a crucial issue. This arises again in the next chapter, by Tony Trinick and Stephen May, on the development of an appropriate variety for teaching mathematics in te reo Māori in New Zealand. However, the crucial problem here is the controversial replacement of anglicized terminology by newly created terms from native resources, i.e. a form of language planning to achieve standardization. This has met with some success, although it would have been helpful here to know the extent to which education in the indigenous language has succeeded in halting or reversing language shift, since there has been significant government support in New Zealand for the indigenous language. The problem of developing an accepted written standard in a minority language in the face of variation is addressed by Alexandra Jaffe with reference to Corsican. Here, a solution has been reached by establishing a ‘polynomic’ standard, whereby words may be pronounced differently according to the speaker’s own variety, or speakers use their own variants which then are in practice understood by speakers who may use other variants. In this way no hierarchy of social prestige is established, and the written form is still seen as possessing authenticity. And this solution, which has contributed to the revitalization of the minority language, has been actively supported by the relevant authorities. In the following chapter Robert Train and Claire Kramsch discuss standard languages in the context of bilingual education, notably in California, where 22% of the population has Spanish as a first language and bilingual education has been a contentious issue for decades, with discrimination against speakers of languages other than English. The authors argue that the acquisition of standardized language varieties may not be wholly adequate, and the ideal goal may be a multilingual education with competence in a spectrum of varieties since, as they say (p. 471), ‘the normativity of standard languages is not magically unifying nor empowering for all’. The final chapter of this section, by Antony John Kunnan and Nick Saville, effectively picks up this point in discussing the setting of standards for language learning. They discuss the problems of the variety to be taught and used in multilingual societies, and how competence can be fairly assessed. This is an issue fraught with problems in, for example, the context of migration, and their perceptive observation is sadly correct that it is difficult to set standards for assessment if the accountability measure becomes more important than the curriculum and results in determining what actually gets taught.

The fourth section is entitled ‘Beyond the National. Borders and Boundaries’, and the first chapter, by Raymond Hickey, provides a succinct account of the significant differences between varieties of English and Spanish outside Europe. In respect of Spanish, this complements the chapter by Douglas Paffrey in providing the background to the relative uniformity of standard written Spanish in Iberia and Latin America. In the anglophone world, on the other hand, there has never been a state-sanctioned authority like the Real Academia Española, and the standards in the different anglophone countries are distinct in many ways from standard British English. The second chapter, by Serhii Vakulenko, considers ‘Standardization across State Boundaries’, with particular reference to Ukrainian and it is thus, sadly, of immense contemporary interest. The history outlined here provides a fascinating challenge to all attempts to generalize about linguistic standardization. The present standard emerged initially as ‘a polydialectal vernacular-based language with fitful development and a movable centre’ (pp. 551–552), with centres in pre-1918 Austrian Galicia and Tsarist Russia – although in the latter Ukrainian was long forbidden and its status as a distinct language frequently denied. After 1945 a common standard was ‘spread by force of government coercion’ (p. 569) – in effect a planned state standard which is by no means uniform and still undergoing changes in practice. In the next chapter, Patrick Heinrich shows how some East Asian languages were motivated to change (‘modernize’) as a result of contact with European civilization and developed means to express ideas which were new for those civilizations. This process began in Japan, motivated by the perceived danger of colonization, and it was achieved by exploiting the flexibility of Chinese characters, which had long been used to write these languages. Many Japanese coinages were then adopted elsewhere where the Chinese characters were used, notably in China itself, as well as in Vietnam and Korea before the replacement of Chinese characters there by other scripts. Josep Maria Nadal and Francesc Feliu deal in the following chapter with the fascinating but difficult problems involved in the standardization of Catalan, the beginnings of which only date back in practice to the early twentieth century. As in the case of Ukrainian, developments in Catalan are complex, since the selection of ‘standard’ forms is made difficult by the existence of often traditional variants in different provinces, and a significant degree of variation has to be tolerated. In addition, as in Ukraine, the language has long been disregarded or even proscribed, being effectively in competition with the dominant state language and with most speakers being bilingual in Catalan and Castillian Spanish. Similar problems of selection are treated by Sergio Romero, who discusses the complex situation in the Mayan languages of Guatemala and the different paths to standardization which have emerged there, depending on attitudes towards different varieties and interethnic relationships in relatively small multilingual communities. In one case, despite a degree of mutual intelligibility, there was resistance to a standardization due to perceptions of distinct ethnic identity – a situation not unknown elsewhere, including certain parts of Europe. In another area pan-dialectal standardization proved acceptable despite a marked degree of diversity, whilst in another a standard was adopted which, as in the Corsican example, allowed significant variation between three local forms. Yaron Matras’s chapter concerns the Romani language, with speakers distributed across many European countries. The local spoken varieties are generally mutually intelligible and speakers have always considered it a single language, but there has been little tradition of writing and no proposals for standardized forms have been widely accepted. Nevertheless, with the advent of social media Roma speakers have been using the language in pluralized forms with individual variations. As Matras says, the use of Romani is a type of standardization without regulation which is ‘primarily about valorization of ethnic and cultural identity’ (p. 660). But, in practice, it was precisely this sentiment which motivated the standardization of major European languages from the eighteenth century.

The fifth and final section deals with ‘Standardization in Late Modernity. Beyond Traditional Standardization’. The first chapter, by Tore Kristiansen, is entitled ‘Destandardization’ and discusses the possibility of moves away from standard language ideology which may be linked to recent sociological changes. In Denmark, for example, he shows that some prestige variants are being replaced by forms which had typically been associated with lower-class speech. However, one may doubt whether it is appropriate in such cases to consider this as ‘destandardization’, since a standard language, especially in speech, can comprise a range of registers, as the editors point out in their introduction (p. 6). With the development of oral and ‘new’ media, such variation has become much more apparent than at a time when communication was limited to the written medium. The following chapter, by John Bellamy, addresses precisely this point, when he mentions ‘the growing abundance of publicly available written language that has not been subjected to editorial scrutiny’ (p. 693). He deals with this issue with reference to Luxembourg, where Luxembourgish, the first language of the autochthonous population, has until recently lacked established standard norms in writing. However, the need has been increasingly felt for reliable information on ‘correct’ practice for their first language, which has significance in relation to national identity, demonstrating in this way an acceptance in practice of ‘standard language ideology’. The norms are now being provided by state and private institutions through online and digital media – very much in contrast to cases elsewhere, where such media have been seen to provide opportunities for individual variation from prescribed norms. The following excellent chapter by Catherine Miller and Jacopo Falchetta looks at the development of unofficial spoken standards in the Arabic-speaking countries – a situation rather similar to that discussed in Anvita Abbi’s chapter with reference to Hindi, where the formal standard variety is not used in everyday speech. They distinguish ‘unofficial spoken standards’ and ‘new urban vernaculars’ which have arisen in various forms in the different countries, the former coming from vertical levelling between the standard and the vernacular and the latter the result of horizontal levelling between the local dialects. But the cultural prestige of the standard written language makes it unlikely that these various vernaculars might be widely used in writing in future. In the next chapter Noel Ó Murchada picks up some issues partly addressed in his jointly authored earlier chapter, pointing out that norms can help minority languages gain status and help maintenance, revitalization and revival. Irish has an established official written standard, but there is significant variation in the areas where it is still spoken natively, and speakers there may feel that theirs is the ‘authentic’ language and may not be tolerant of the usage of those who have acquired it in school. And the extent to which establishing norms has improved the situation of the language is uncertain, since in 2013 only 6% of the population of the Republic of Ireland use it daily (Darmody and Daly 2015: 66). In the final chapter Ronice Müller de Quadros and Christian Rathmann discuss standardization in relation to sign language. Here the fundamental question is who might initiate standardization, as it may be undertaken by people who are able to hear, with inadequate input from deaf users who see it as part of their identity and who may resist some proposals. As they say (p. 782), ‘[s]tandardization as a language plan to safeguard sign language will be important if it is done with and within deaf communities […]. If this does not happen, standardization can become a threat to deaf communities and their languages’. In this way we see that the development of standardized sign language has much in common with the standardization of natural language in that it depends ultimately on acceptance by the community.

This volume offers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of language standardization, and it is extremely successful in the dual aim stated by the editors in their introduction (p. 1) of presenting, ‘both a state of the art of current work on standardization and cutting-edge research on the subject’. The overall quality of the contributions is impressively high, which is unfortunately not always the case in such collected volumes, and each chapter is written by an acknowledged expert in the specific field, in most cases with a long record of relevant publications. The overall presentation is excellent, and each chapter is accompanied by a most useful comprehensive bibliography (a major plus with regard to downloading!). The volume is to be recommended very highly to all colleagues with an interest in sociolinguistics, as well as to postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students looking for an introduction to general and specific issues relating to language standardization.