Language Standardization

Abstract

The term standardization is generally used within linguistics to refer to the process of bringing about a standard language. This process brings to a language a uniformity and consistent norm and form of writing and speaking, and the promotion of uniformity and consistency usually entails the reduction or elimination of variation. On a social level, the standard language is usually identified as the variety with highest prestige. Outside the linguistic community, the standard language—particularly the written mode—is usually considered an integral part of national (or supraregional) identity, being seen as the most widely used variety of the language, the official variety of the language, the national language, or even just as the language of that nation. The standard language is also seen as the most correct variety, what is called the “standard-bearing” component of standardization, which is its example-function that also paves the way to language purism. Linguists, however, usually see the standard variety of a particular language as one among many dialects of that language, and they often find it difficult to define what the standard is, partly because it is generally held that “standard language” is an ideology rather than a concrete reality. The sources cited in this article are both ones that discuss language standardization fairly straightforwardly as a process as well as those that discuss the concepts of standardization and the standard language ideology. In addition, it contains references for sources that discuss standard languages and language standards. Many of these sources often also deal, either directly or indirectly, with linguistic prescriptivism (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics article Linguistic Prescriptivism). It has been argued that language standardization as it is has come to be defined is a particularly Western phenomenon. Most of the readily available literature about standardization has been published in English, and most of this literature deals with European languages, and particularly with the English language. Consequently, despite efforts to avoid it, and partly because of the European concept of standard languages associated with nation-building, this article has an inevitable Eurocentric bias.