Elites, centers and “forces collectives”

Abstract

Abstract The concept of standard language has become highly controversial after the rise of the postmodernist paradigm. This article traces the roots of the concept in the studies of a group of European linguists who inquired into the spread of “common languages” and related it to the processes of modernization and the role of social elites and urban centers during the 1920s. It then reviews the central role it played in the studies on nationalism and nation-building after 1945 and discusses how the focus on structural, macro-historical processes as determinants of the emergence of standard languages came to be abandoned in classical and postmodernist approaches to language standardization. Finally, it suggests that Antonio Gramsci’s insights on the “language question” in Italy should be read on the background of the early research on common languages and suggests that a reconsideration of macro-historical approaches could contribute to the understanding of the spread of Global English.