“Going standard” on a blank page

Abstract

This chapter investigates non-standard languages, i.e., those which are dialectal, non-standardised – or standardised to a very limited extent, represented by the local linguistic varieties that populate the Italian Western Alps. Despite the fact that these have almost exclusively existed as spoken languages throughout their history, our particular aim is to discuss methods and problems raised by the investigation of written corpora of these varieties from a corpus linguistics perspective. This is especially challenging because corpus linguistics usually employs methods and standards elaborated for standard(ised) written varieties. Focusing the Occitan and Francoprovençal varieties, it is shown that the different historical backgrounds of the two languages also have an impact on their speakers’ attitude towards standardisation and on how texts are produced and accordingly made accessible for corpus linguistics methods.