Orð og tunga - 01.06.2014, Page 62

50
Orð og tunga
'Every linguistic description (or explanation) has to fit into the de-
scription (or explanation) of the history of the phenomenon under
description (or explanation).'
(Ágel 2001:319, 2003:2)
2.2 Standardization of a modem pluriareal language: the
case of German
For 'big' languages such as English or German, an alternative view on
standardization would also account for the co-existence of different
standard language varieties (such as 'the Englishes') and for the idea
of an internal variability of these varieties.
A first step away from the notion of a ,uniform' standard language
was to conceptualize German as a pluricentric language. Up until the
1980s, many authors saw the standard variety in West Germany as the
only legitimate German standard language. According to the wide-
spread notion of pluricentricity, going back mainly to Clyne (1992),
(pluricentric) German consists of the three 'national varieties' in Ger-
many, Austria and Switzerland and other varieties of standard Ger-
man in smaller countries and regions (Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, East
Belgium and South Tyrol, cf. Ammon, Bickel, Ebner et al. 2004). This
concept, however, has been criticized for different reasons. Firstly, it
is an entirely political concept, based on the notion of Uberdachung of
the language area by a political state. As for the recent history of Ger-
man, this would have had the somewhat odd consequence that on 3
October 1990, the German language has lost an eptire national variety,
namely GDR German, literally overnight. Secondly, from a linguistic
perspective, one may ask whether 'national varieties of German' are
really varieties? One can argue that less than two per cent of varia-
tion in standard German lexis and pronunciation and even less varia-
tion in grammar does hardly make a 'variety'. A third problem from
the linguistic side can be raised in view of empirical evidence. While
some national variants do exist, in a lot of cases the diatopic extension
of Standard German variants is not limited to national borders. They
are not absolute variants, as terms such as 'Germanism', 'Helvetism'
or 'Austriazism' may suggest. Rather, in many cases they are relative
variants, i.e. they are employed in a part of the respective country or
by a part of the members of the speech community only. Moreover,
diatopic standard variants do cross borders, i.e. their distribution is