Julia Hübner: Norm und Variation. Paradigmenwechsel anhand frühneuzeitlicher Fremdsprachenlehrwerke. (Studia Linguistica Germanica 144)

Julia Hübner’s book, which is based on her dissertation, examines prevailing norms and the way they were approached in foreign language textbooks. Her study offers insights into the use of Early Modern High German from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century on the basis of grammar sections and model dialogues in these textbooks. Specifically, she examines variable patterns in two grammatical phenomena, the suffix -e of nouns in the dative singular and the periphrastic future tense with werden. The overarching goal of the analysis is ‘to make empirically based, generalisable statements about norms and variation within the language textbooks’ (p. 3).

The study of foreign language textbooks has great potential for historical linguistics. Unlike the leading grammars of the time, their primary aim is not to influence language standardisation, but rather to convey linguistic knowledge for use in everyday life, especially for ‘everyday communication’ (p. 33). This objective is reflected in the structure of the textbooks, as they typically contain both a grammar section as well as a dialogue section (p. 33). Nevertheless, the authors of the foreign language textbooks serve as ‘norm-setting authorities’ and linguistic role models, even if this was not their primary intention (p. 44). Notably, recent research on the language history of German has witnessed a shift from a dominant focus on the written language of the educated upper classes towards a focus on the everyday language use of the lower classes. However, as Hübner states, the aim of her study is not to engage, in a strict sense, in the investigation of “language history from below” (Elspaß 2005), but rather to adopt a new perspective, which she describes as “rundherum” (‘all-around’) or ‘multi-perspective’ (p. 26). The exact meaning of these terms remains a bit unclear, but might refer to the fact that the authors are inspired by the erudite grammarians while also representing the collective knowledge of the ‘common’ language users. The extent to which such an approach is applicable in this case, given that the textbook authors are exclusively male and more mobile than the average male population, albeit with different social backgrounds, remains debatable.

The book is divided into six chapters: (1) a short introduction including the research questions and aims of the study, (2) a theoretical overview of the terminology of ‘norm’ and ‘variation’, as well as (3) a presentation of the genre ‘foreign language textbooks’, its relevance for linguistic research and an overview of the corpus used for the study. After the main analysis, which ranges from (4) the extent of the textbook authors’ awareness of the existence of variants and their incorporation into the textbooks to (5) two case analyses of selected grammatical phenomena, the author (6) draws conclusions about the norms conveyed as concerns the phenomena investigated and discusses the suitability of foreign language textbooks as a source for historical linguistics.

Under the heading ‘norm and variation’, the second chapter (pp. 5–25) deals almost exclusively with the emergence of linguistic norms and their presence in the early modern period in Europe. Following the introduction of various concepts of norms in current research, norms are defined as ‘instructions for action’ (Gloy 2005: 394) and ‘normal forms of language production’ (Coseriu 1979: 55). Hübner distinguishes the term ‘norm’ from ‘standard’, as the latter has a teleological perspective on language and her study especially focusses on the textbook authors’ approach to non-standardised language (p. 24). It is further shown how the prevailing norms are drafted and legitimised and what claim to validity they have. The influence of norm-setting agents is also addressed. The ‘variation’, mentioned prominently in the title, is only dealt with in passing, and it is, with reference to Lenz and Plewnia (2010: 12), defined as the opposite of the ‘norms’ mentioned in this chapter. A more in-depth examination of the possibilities and dimensions of variation itself is not provided. Furthermore, terms such as ‘norm of acquisition’ (“Erwerbsnorm”) or ‘individual norms’ are not defined, despite being used later in the course of the analysis (pp. 44, 155).

In the third chapter (pp. 26–82), the author presents her source material, which consists of early modern foreign language textbooks that were collected and made available in the Berlin Database of Early Modern Foreign Language Textbooks (BDaFL) (Simon et al. 2021). Her analysis includes 56 foreign language textbooks, published between 1535 and 1717, with the target languages German, French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Latin and Czech, many of which cover two or more of those languages. Hübner takes a critical look at the advantages and disadvantages of using such texts for (linguistic) research. In doing so, she very briefly addresses the history of this genre and goes into more detail about its structure, intended audiences and underlying pedagogical objectives and methods. When working with historical language textbooks, the authenticity of the texts contained can pose a problem. This is because the method of ‘compiling’ was frequently used in the creation of some of the textbooks. The authors took certain passages or even entire dialogues from other textbooks without any referencing. The works labelled as ‘colloquia’ in particular are therefore said to lack authenticity in terms of their representation of actual contemporary language usage, particularly since the language they convey remains the same over a span of 100 years despite numerous reprints. They are included in the corpus only to a small extent as a ‘comparison group’ to other textbooks (pp. 60–61, 67). However, Hübner demonstrates that most of the other texts are fairly trustworthy in terms of the reliability of their metadata and asserts that most are authentic with regard to the grammar used, as the authors make grammatical adjustments in line with changing language use (e.g., regarding the increasing use of sentence-internal capitalisation or inflection of indefinite articles) while the wording of the dialogues remains the same (p. 62). She ends the chapter with a detailed description of the corpus she uses for her subsequent analyses and provides information about the composition of the foreign language textbooks, their possible intertextual references to each other, as well as the author’s place of residence while working of the respective book and the city it was printed and published. While this metadata is not included in the subsequent statistical analyses, the author’s native language and the ‘target language’ of the textbook are considered as pertinent variables. Despite previous reference to the importance of multilingual practices regarding the genre examined (p. 48), the authors are presented exclusively as monolingual and characterised by their native language only (p. 79), even if their biographical data indicate a high degree of mobility in early modern Europe.

The analysis of ‘norm and variation’ in the language textbooks consists of two parts. First (pp. 83–127), Hübner examines ‘variation and language awareness’ by identifying explicit references to different variants of lexical and grammatical phenomena. She then illustrates the occurrence of meta-linguistic statements by the authors addressing the presence of diatopic, diachronic, diastratic and diaphasic variation. To this end, Hübner introduces the ‘V-index’ measure (pp. 87–88), which is intended to indicate the average number of any variants per page of the dialogue section.^[1] This analysis revealed that textbook authors were certainly aware of linguistic variation, but the variants they refer to are predominately lexical and represent translation alternatives (pp. 94–95). Furthermore, Hübner found a significant increase in the number of variants mentioned across time. In the prefaces to the books, metalinguistic statements on variation, expressing a preference for commonly used and ‘modern’ variants, were occasionally found, especially among French-speaking authors. Hübner identified a greater tolerance for different variants in the foreign language textbooks than in contemporary grammars, likely because the variants were less frequently stigmatised. This tolerance is reflected in the use of formulae such as ‘The forms x and y exist’, which are only at times supplemented by usage-related additions such as ‘x is more common’ (p. 126).

In Chapter 5 (pp. 128–199), the author conducts an in-depth ‘phenomenon-based analysis of norm and usage’. She focuses on two grammatical phenomena and examines their occurrence and variability to illustrate a change and ‘paradigm shift’. Both phenomena are analysed regarding their ‘use’ (according to their occurrence in the dialogue section) and the prevailing ‘norms’ associated with the variables (by comparing scholarly grammars with the grammar sections of the textbooks). She later illustrates the accompanying assumption that more variation is allowed in the dialogues than in the sections about grammar (p. 194).

First, she examines the inflection suffix -e, an ending that was added to masculine and neuter nouns in German to mark the use of the dative case in singular. This ending was apocopated from Middle High German until the seventeenth century and only came back into use through the influence of grammarians (p. 132). The analysis was restricted to the first 50 masculine or neuter nouns in the dative case per dialogue section. The results show that the suffix tends to be used with frequent nouns, especially in the neuter, and that the (consistently low) rate of use increases slightly over time. In addition, authors with German as their first language were more likely to use the -e suffix, while it was used less frequently in textbooks with German as the target language. Compared to the foreign language textbooks, contemporary grammars show less variation, in that nearly all of them mention only one of the variants (p. 166).

The second phenomenon analysed is the periphrastic formation of the future tense with the auxiliar verb werden (‘become’) and the infinitive^[2] that can be traced back to the thirteenth century before spreading in the following centuries (Harm 2001: 289); in contrast to modal verbs used since the Middle High German period for this purpose. Again, the first 50 instances of future tense in the dialogue section were included in the analysis, followed by a comparison with the norms conveyed in the respective grammar sections. The results show that the change in future tense formation from modal verbs to the periphrastic werden is not consistent and that the ‘old’ form has persisted longer than often assumed (p. 192). The use of the forms seems to depend strongly on the grammatical person as Hübner shows that modal verbs occur more frequently in the first-person singular and plural future tense. In contrast, scholarly grammars tend to make a functional distinction in this respect by differentiating between the respective variants in terms of their (un)certainty regarding the fulfilment of future events (p. 189).

In the section ‘theoretical and methodological conclusions’ (pp. 200–215) Hübner relates her results to the existing research and emphasises their added value for research on grammatical change and historical sociolinguistics. She also addresses the limitations of her analyses. Based on her findings, she attempts to classify the foreign language textbooks into types, on the one hand with regard to the general handling of variation (differences versus agreement between the grammar and dialogue sections) (p. 201), and on the other with respect to the observed tolerance for variation concerning the two grammatical phenomena (variation-avoiding versus variation-friendly) (pp. 208–209).

The use of the terms ‘prescriptive’ and ‘descriptive’ may lead to confusion, especially in the final section – these are first introduced as categories to describe the intention of the textbook authors, only to state in the following chapter that it is not expedient to assume such a dichotomous distinction when considering the language textbooks. Just a few lines below this, the terms are nonetheless used to describe the difference between the grammar sections and the dialogue sections (p. 203).

The edition itself may present difficulties for some readers. For example, many excerpts from the French-language source material are not translated or are not paraphrased sufficiently. This impedes the understanding of longer passages in French as well as some essential metalinguistic statements from the textbook authors for any reader who does not understand French (e.g., pp. 44, 59, 122, 143–144). In addition, references to chapters within the text are occasionally difficult to follow, for instance, when Subchapter 3.2.1.1 refers to ‘the following chapter (3.2)’ (p. 52).

Despite these issues, Hübner’s study represents a valuable contribution to historical linguistics, especially as concerns the potential of foreign language textbooks as a source for historical (socio-)linguistic analyses. Ambitious endeavours of this kind shed further light on language variation in German, and provide new insights into the communication of linguistic norms as well as into language standardisation. Although the author had to make compromises in her analysis since the textbooks examined are not yet available in machine-readable form and therefore cannot be linguistically annotated or automatically searched, the results of her quantitative and qualitative analyses offer useful insights into the communication of linguistic norms in foreign language textbooks, which are probably closer to the everyday language use than other contemporary prescriptive materials. Overall, the study and the multilingual source material are of particular interest not only to historical sociolinguists in the narrower sense, but also to researchers studying language use as well as the emergence of linguistic norms and standardisation across early modern Europe.