Alternative sources of data for alternative histories of standardisation

Stephan Elspaß

doi:10.1007/s10993-019-09528-x

Abstract

What almost all accounts of standardisation histories have in common is a focus on printed, formal or literary texts from writing elites. While Haugen identified the written form of a language as “a significant and probably crucial requirement for a standard language” (Haugen in Am Anthropol 68:922–935, 1966a; Haugen, in: Bright (ed) Sociolinguistics, The Hague: Mouton, 1966b: 929; cf. also Haugen, in: Asher (ed) The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, Pergamon, Oxford, 1994: 4340), and while print certainly constitutes an important instrument for the dissemination of codified norms, it remains to be established what role hand-written texts played in standardisation processes. In nineteenth-century Europe, mass-literacy, which is generally seen as a precondition of standardisation processes, was only possible because large parts (or even the majority) of the population learnt to write (and read) hand-written texts. In the vast volume of private texts that were produced during the various wars and emigration waves of the nineteenth century, not only codified norms, but also (regional) norms of usage were widely transmitted. Private letters and diaries, in particular, have proved to be a valuable text source for the investigation of such norms and their diffusion (cf. Elspaß, in: Hernández-Campoy, Conde-Silvestre (eds) The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2012). With examples from a corpus of German emigrant letters, the present contribution will try to demonstrate that grammatical norms of usage which were literally not visible in printed texts at the time, but which are now considered standard, formed part of the standardisation process of German.

Highlights

IntroductionAlternative histories of standardization focus on a particular aspect of Haugen’s 1983 model of the “Implementation of Corpus Planning” (Voeste; Hickey; Ayres-Bennett; Rutten et al.) and one contribution addresses ideological aspects of standardisation (del Valle), the present paper seeks to assess the role of data that have not been considered in previous models of standardisation
Introduction and overviewWhile four of the contributions to this special issue of Language Policy on Revisiting Haugen
Starting from a discussion of Haugen’s model(s) (“‘Implementation’ and ‘acceptance’: factors causing confusion about Haugen’s model” section) and a reflection on predominant concepts in traditional standardisation histories, including the standard language ideology (“Common concepts of standardisation histories” section), it will put forward arguments for a consideration of alternative data in such histories (“The need for alternative data in histories of standardisation” section) and identify sources of such data (“Alternative sources of data for histories of standardisation from the perspective of a ‘language history from below’” section)

Summary

Introduction

Alternative histories of standardization focus on a particular aspect of Haugen’s 1983 model of the “Implementation of Corpus Planning” (Voeste; Hickey; Ayres-Bennett; Rutten et al.) and one contribution addresses ideological aspects of standardisation (del Valle), the present paper seeks to assess the role of data that have not been considered in previous models of standardisation. Starting from a discussion of Haugen’s model(s) (“‘Implementation’ and ‘acceptance’: factors causing confusion about Haugen’s model” section) and a reflection on predominant concepts in traditional standardisation histories, including the standard language ideology (“Common concepts of standardisation histories” section), it will put forward arguments for a consideration of alternative data in such histories (“The need for alternative data in histories of standardisation” section) and identify sources of such data (“Alternative sources of data for histories of standardisation from the perspective of a ‘language history from below’” section). The paper will conclude by indicating some key factors which could (or should) “be incorporated into an updated version of a general theory of standardization” (cf. Rutten and Vosters 2017)

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Conclusion