Orð og tunga - 01.06.2014, Qupperneq 60
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Orð og tungn
2 Conflicting concepts on the standardization
and the variation of modern standard lan-
guages
Traditionally, textbooks on the histories of ('big') modern standard
languages such as English or German present rather monolithic
standard varieties as results, closing stages, and sometimes even as
objectives of standardization processes. The most powerful linguis-
tic ideologies behind such conceptualisations of standard language
and standardization can be identified as 'homogeneism' and 'stand-
ard language ideology'. The "dogma of homogeneism" consists of
"a view of society in which differences are seen as dangerous and
centrifugal and in which the 'best' society is suggested to be one with-
out intergroup differences" (Blommaert & Verschueren 1998:194-5).
Although Blommaert & Verschueren have multilingual societies in
mind, the basic concept also applies to pluricentric and pluriareal
settings. Closely related to homogeneism is the 'standard language
ideology', i. e. "a bias toward an abstract, idealized homogeneous
language, which is imposed and maintained by dominant bloc insti-
tutions and which names as its model the written language" (Lippi-
Green 2012:67, mainly based on Milroy & Milroy 1985).
In the following, we will present two fairly new alternative con-
cepts (or ideologies) to these two ideologies. The first one, Tanguage
history from below', is an approach which in our view can be bene-
ficial for standardization studies of nll modern standard languages.
The pluriareal concept will be less helpful for small languages like
Icelandic, but, as we think, essential for the investigation of standard-
ization processes of big(ger) languages. Such alternative approaches
could, or rather should have consequences for the design of corpora,
as we will demonstrate in Chapter 3, where German will serve as a
case for illustration.
2.1 Standardization in a view 'from below'
In textbooks on language histories, standardization processes are of-
ten depicted in a teleological way, as long marches toward uniform
standard varieties. Moreover, for the modern period such standardi-
zation (hi)stories are mostly accounts of the development of printcd
language and thus of conceptually written texts which were written