Using folk songs as a source for dialect change? The pervasive effects of attitudes
Abstract
The present article argues that the social category of ‘standardisation’ has been instrumental in creating a Foucaultian discourse archive governing what may and what may not be stated on the subject of the history of English. It analyses the question of how language attitudes have been instrumental in creating the myths that have driven the discourse of Standard English since the 19th century, but it goes further than this by showing how language performance, in the form of folk songs in England, has also come under this same archive of standardisation. However, in both cases, i.e. language and language performance, it is argued that a below-the-surface alternative discourse has now gained enough force to seriously challenge the doctrine of standardisation and to necessitate the formation of new discursive contents for a social concept that is in serious danger of becoming hollow and outdated.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Imbodela zamakhumsha – Reflections on standardization and destandardization
- Lambs to the slaughter? Young francophones and the role of English in Quebec today
- Can parallelingualism save Norwegian from extinction?
- Using folk songs as a source for dialect change? The pervasive effects of attitudes
- Language contact and language conflict in autochthonous language minority settings in the EU: A preliminary round-up of guiding principles and research desiderata
- Is there a European language history?
- Language variation, language change and perceptual dialectology
- Will Dutch become Flemish? Autonomous developments in Belgian Dutch
- Chaos and standards: Orthography in the Southern Netherlands (1720–1830)
- Book reviews
- Publications received
- Contents Multilingua Volume 29 (2010)
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Imbodela zamakhumsha – Reflections on standardization and destandardization
- Lambs to the slaughter? Young francophones and the role of English in Quebec today
- Can parallelingualism save Norwegian from extinction?
- Using folk songs as a source for dialect change? The pervasive effects of attitudes
- Language contact and language conflict in autochthonous language minority settings in the EU: A preliminary round-up of guiding principles and research desiderata
- Is there a European language history?
- Language variation, language change and perceptual dialectology
- Will Dutch become Flemish? Autonomous developments in Belgian Dutch
- Chaos and standards: Orthography in the Southern Netherlands (1720–1830)
- Book reviews
- Publications received
- Contents Multilingua Volume 29 (2010)
