Full Description
This volume presents fourteen case studies of standardization processes in eleven different Germanic languages. Together, the contributions confront problematic issues in standardization which will be of interest to sociolinguists, as well as to historical linguists from all language disciplines. The papers cover a historical range from the Middle Ages to the present and a geographical range from South Africa to Iceland, but all fall into one of the following categories: 1) shaping and diffusing a standard language; 2) the relationship between standard and identity; 3) non-standardization, de-standardization and re-standardization.
Contents
1. Introduction (by McLelland, Nicola); 2. I. DIFFUSING AND SHAPING THE STANDARD; 3. Standardization and social networks: The emergence and diffusion of standard Afrikaans (by Deumert, Ana); 4. Dutch orthography in lower, middle and upper class documents in 19th-century Flanders (by Vandenbussche, Wim); 5. Standard German in the 19th century?: (Counter-) evidence from the private correspondence of 'ordinary people' (by Elspass, Stephan); 6. On the importance of foreign language grammars for a history of standard German (by Langer, Nils); 7. Norms and standards in 16th-century Swedish orthography (by Zheltukhin, Alexander Y.); 8. II. STANDARD AND IDENTITY; 9. Emerging mother-tongue awareness: The special case of Dutch and German in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period (by Grauwe, Luc De); 10. Two hundred years of language planning in Belgium (by de Groof, Jetje); 11. Political inflections: Grammar and the Icelandic surname debate (by Willson, Kendra); 12. Standardization, language change, resistance and the question of linguistic threat: 18th-century English and present-day German (by Hohenhaus, Peter); 13. III. NON-STANDARDIZATION, DE-STANDARDIZATION AND RE-STANDARDIZATION; 14. The standardization of Luxembourgish (by Newton, Gerald); 15. Language planning in Norway: A bold experiment with unexpected results (by Sandved, Arthur O.); 16. 'Democratic' and 'elitist' trends and a Frisian standard (by Feitsma, Anthonia); 17. Yiddish: No state, no status - no standard? (by Kleine, Ane); 18. Standardization processes and the mid-Atlantic English paradigm (by Modiano, Marko); 19. Index
