Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:26:23.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Language Standardization in a View ‘from Below’

from Part I - Revisiting Models and Theories of Language Standardization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2021

By
Stephan Elspaß
Edited by
Wendy Ayres-Bennett  and
John Bellamy
Wendy Ayres-Bennett
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
John Bellamy
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Most accounts of histories of linguistic standardization have in common a focus on printed, formal or literary texts from writing elites. In recent historical sociolinguistic research, the question has arisen as to which texts ‘from below’ (i.e. informal and mostly handwritten texts, particularly from the lower ranks of society) contributed to the standardization processes of modern languages. Such texts have been handed down in Western languages since the beginning of the standardization era, but have been largely neglected or even ignored in conventional language historiographies. This chapter will set out with a critical review of traditional histories and current models of language standardization, in particular the four-step model by Haugen, which will be contrasted with an alternative model based on the ‘language history from below’ approach. It will then reflect on methodological aspects. One central question is that of adequate corpora (i.e. which texts and which text editions by which authors were and could be selected for the description of standardization processes). The last part of the chapter will present findings of case studies in recent research in (historical) sociolinguistics on standardization in a view ‘from below’.

Keywords

language history from belowprivate lettersstandardizationalternative language histories
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization , pp. 93 - 114
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adelung, J. C. (1781). Deutsche Sprachlehre: Zum Gebrauche der Schulen in den Ko¨nigl. Preuß. Landen. Berlin: Voß.Google Scholar
Auer, A. (2019). Die Stadtsprache Yorks im späten Mittelalter: ein Baustein zu einer alternativen Standardisierungsgeschichte des Englischen. In Pickl, S. & Elspaß, S., eds., Historische Soziolinguistik der Stadtsprachen: Kontakt – Variation – Wandel. Heidelberg: Winter, pp. 81–95.Google Scholar
Auer, P. (2006). Review of Deumert & Vandenbussche 2003. Zeitschrift fu¨r Dialektologie und Linguistik, 72(3), 338–9.Google Scholar
Auer, P. & Spiekermann, H. (2011). Demotisation of the standard variety or destandardisation? In Kristiansen, T. & Coupland, N., eds., Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe. Oslo: Novus, pp. 161–76.Google Scholar
Ayres-Bennett, W. (1996). A History of the French Language through Texts. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ayres-Bennett, W. (2014). From l’usage to le bon usage and back: norms and usage in seventeenth-century France. In Rutten, G., Vosters, R. & Vandenbussche, W., eds., Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900: A Sociolinguistic and Comparative Perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 173–200.Google Scholar
Bergs, A. (2005). Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics: Studies in Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421–1503). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
CLUL, ed. (2014). P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na época Moderna. Retrieved 19 February 2019 from http://ps.clul.ul.ptGoogle Scholar
Conde-Silvestre, J. C. (2016), A ‘third-wave’ historical sociolinguistic approach to late Middle English correspondence: evidence from the Stonor Letters. In Russi, C., ed., Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter, pp. 46–66.Google Scholar
Culpeper, J. & Kytö, M. (2010). Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, W. V. & Langer, N. (2006). The Making of Bad Language. Lay Linguistic Stigmatisations in German: Past and Present. Frankfurt am Main, etc.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Deumert, A. & Vandenbussche, W., eds. (2003). Germanic Standardizations: Past to Present. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durrell, M. (2000). Standard language and the creation of national myths in nineteenth-century Germany. In Barkhoff, J., Carr, G. & Paulin, R., eds., Das schwierige neunzehnte Jahrhundert: Germanistische Tagung zum 65. Geburtstag von Eda Sagarra im August 1998. Mit einem Vorwort von Wolfgang Fru¨hwald. Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 15–26.Google Scholar
Durrell, M., Bennett, P., Scheible, S. & Whitt, R. J. (2012). The GerManC Corpus. Manchester: University of Manchester. Retrieved 19 February 2020 from www1.ids-mannheim.de/fileadmin/lexik/uwv/dateien/GerManC_Documentation.pdfGoogle Scholar
Dürscheid, C., Elspaß, S. & Ziegler, A. (2018). Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen. [A Grammar of Variation in Standard German]. An open access online reference work compiled by a team under the leadership of Christa Dürscheid, Stephan Elspaß & Arne Ziegler. Retrieved 19 February 2020 from http://mediawiki.ids-mannheim.de/VarGraGoogle Scholar
Edlund, A.-C., Ashplant, T. G. & Cuismin, A., eds. (2016). Reading and Writing from Below: Exploring the Margins of Modernity. Umeå: Umeå University and Royal Skyttean Society.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S. (2005). Sprachgeschichte von unten: Untersuchungen zum geschriebenen Alltagsdeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S. (2007). A twofold view ‘from below’: new perspectives on language histories and language historiographies. In Elspaß, S., Langer, N., Scharloth, J. & Vandenbussche, W., eds., Germanic Language Histories ‘from Below’ (1700–2000). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, pp. 3–9.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S. (2012). The use of private letters and diaries in sociolinguistic investigation. In Hernández-Campoy, J. M. & Conde-Silvestre, J. C., eds., The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 156–69.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S. (2015a). Private letters as a source for an alternative history of Late Modern German. In Auer, A., Schreier, D. & Watts, R. J., eds., Letter Writing and Language Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 35–52.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S. (2015b). 下からの言語史 －19世紀ドイツの「庶民」のことばを中心にして / Shitakara no gengoshi. 19seiki doitsu no shomin no kotoba wo chushin nishite [Language history from below – illustrated by the language of ‘ordinary people’ in nineteenth-century Germany, transl. into Japanese by Sato, M. ]. In Takada, H., Shibuya, K. & Iyeiri, Y., eds., 歴史社会言語学入門 / Rekishi Shakaigengogaku Nyumon [Introduction to Historical Sociolinguistics]. Tokyo: Taishukan Publishing, pp. 55–69.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S. (2020). Alternative sources of data for standardisation histories. Language Policy, 19(2), 281–99.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S. & Möller, R. (2003–). Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache. Retrieved 19 February 2020 from www.atlas-alltagssprache.deGoogle Scholar
Elspaß, S. & Niehaus, K. (2014). The standardization of a modern pluriareal language: concepts and corpus designs for German and beyond. Orð og tunga, 16, 47–67.Google Scholar
Elspaß, S., Langer, N., Scharloth, J. & Vandenbussche, W., eds. (2007). Germanic Language Histories ‘from Below’ (1700–2000). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Fairman, T. (2007). ‘Lower-order’ letters, schooling and the English language, 1795–1834. In Elspaß, S., Langer, N., Scharloth, J. & Vandenbussche, W., eds., Germanic Language Histories ‘from Below’ (1700–2000). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, pp. 31–43.Google Scholar
Fairman, T. (2012). Letters in mechanically-schooled language: theories and ideologies. In Dossena, M. & Del Lungo Camiciotti, G., eds., Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 205–28.Google Scholar
Fairman, T. (2015). Language in print and handwriting. In Auer, A., Schreier, D. & Watts, R. J., eds., Letter Writing and Language Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 53–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graser, H. & Tlusty, B. A. (2009). Layers of literacy: non-professional versus professional writing in a sixteenth-century case of fraud. In Barnes, R. B. & Plummer, M. E., eds., Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany: Essays in Honor of H. C. Erik Midelfort. Farnham/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 31–47.Google Scholar
Graser, H. & Tlusty, B. A. (2012). Sixteenth century street songs and language history ‘from below’. In Langer, N., Davies, S. & Vandenbussche, W., eds., Language and History, Linguistics and Historiography: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Frankfurt am Main, etc.: Lang, pp. 362–88.Google Scholar
Haugen, E. (1966). Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist, 68(4), 922–35.Google Scholar
Haugen, E. (1983). The implementation of corpus planning: theory and practice. In Cobarrubias, J. & Fishman, J. A., eds., Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 269–89.Google Scholar
Haugen, E. (1994). Standardization. In Asher, R. E., ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon, pp. 4340–2.Google Scholar
Havinga, A. & Langer, N., eds. (2015). Invisible Languages in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford, etc.: Lang.Google Scholar
Hennig, M., ed. (2016). Das Wo¨rterbuch der sprachlichen Zweifelsfa¨lle: Richtiges und gutes Deutsch, 8th, completely rev. edn. Berlin: Duden.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, T. (2004). A new history from below. History Workshop Journal, 57(1), 294–8.Google Scholar
Huber, M. (2007). The Old Bailey Proceedings, 1674–1834: evaluating and annotating a corpus of 18th- and 19th-century spoken English. In Meurman-Solin, A. & Nurmi, A., eds., Annotating Variation and Change. Retrieved 19 February 2020 from www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/01/huberGoogle Scholar
Imo, W. (2008). Wenn mündliche Syntax zum schriftlichen Standard wird: Konsequenzen für den Normbegriff im Deutschunterricht. In Denkler, M., Günthner, S., Imo, W., Macha, J., Meer, D., Stoltenburg, B. & Topalović, E., eds., Frischwa¨rts und unkaputtbar: Sprachverfall oder Sprachwandel im Deutschen. Münster: Aschendorff, pp. 153–79.Google Scholar
Joseph, J. E. (1987). Eloquence and Power: The Rise of Language Standards and Standard Languages. London: Frances Pinter.Google Scholar
Knooihuizen, R. (2011). Demografisk press og språkskifte på Shetland. In Akselberg, G., & Bugge, E., eds., Vestnordisk spra˚kkontakt gjennom 1200 a˚r. Tórshavn: Fróðskapur (Faroe University Press), pp. 219–38.Google Scholar
Koch, P. & Oesterreicher, W. (2012). Language of immediacy – language of distance: orality and literacy from the perspective of language theory and linguistic history. In Lange, C., Weber, B. & Wolf, G., eds., Communicative Spaces: Variation, Contact, and Change. Papers in Honour of Ursula Schaefer. Frankfurt am Main, etc.: Lang, pp. 441–73.Google Scholar
Koch, P. & Oesterreicher, W. (1985). Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz: Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 36, 15–43.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1994). Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. I: Internal Factors. Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lacassain-Lagoin, C. (2018). On the margins of perception – TO-clauses: a standard construction of perception verbs? E-rea. Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone, 15(2). Retrieved 19 February 2020 from https://journals.openedition.org/erea/6283Google Scholar
Langer, N. (2001). Linguistic Purism in Action: How Auxiliary tun Was Stigmatized in Early New High German. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langer, N. (2003). Low German. In Deumert, A. & Vandenbussche, W., eds., Germanic Standardizations: Past to Present. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 281–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, M. (2012). The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe, c. 1860–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Macha, J., Topalović, E., Hille, I., Nolting, U. & Wilke, A. (2005). Deutsche Kanzleisprache in Hexenverho¨rprotokollen der Fru¨hen Neuzeit. Vol I: Auswahledition. Vol II: Kommentierte Bibliographie zur regionalen Hexenforschung. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Marquilhas, R. (2012). A historical digital archive of Portuguese letters. In Dossena, M. & Del Lungo Camiciotti, G., eds., Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 31–43.Google Scholar
Martineau, F. (2004). Corpus du franc¸ais familier ancien, Université d’Ottawa. Retrieved 19 February 2020 from http://polyphonies.uottawa.ca/corpus/i-corpus-de-francais-familier-ancienGoogle Scholar
Martineau, F. (2007). Variation in Canadian French usage from the 18th to the 19th century. Multilingua, 26, 203–27.Google Scholar
Martineau, F. & Tailleur, S. (2014). From local to supra-local: hybridity in French written documents from the nineteenth century. In Rutten, G., Vosters, R. & Vandenbussche, W., eds., Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900: A Sociolinguistic and Comparative Perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 223–47.Google Scholar
Messerli, A. (2000). Das Lesen von Gedrucktem und das Lesen von Handschriften – zwei verschiedene Kulturtechniken? In Messerli, A. & Chartier, R., eds., Lesen und Schreiben in Europa 1500–1900: Vergleichende Perspektiven. Basel: Schwabe, pp. 235–46.Google Scholar
Milroy, J. (1992). Linguistic Variation and Change: On the Historical Sociolinguistics of English. Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Milroy, J. & Milroy, J. (1991). Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation, 2nd edn. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, T. (2003). English. In Deumert, A.. & Vandenbussche, W, eds., Germanic Standardizations: Past to Present. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 127–56.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, T. (2014). Norms and usage in seventeenth-century English. In Rutten, G., Vosters, R. & Vandenbussche, W., eds., Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900: A Sociolinguistic and Comparative Perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 103–28.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, T. & Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (2003). Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, T. & Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (2012). Historical sociolinguistics: origins, motivations, and paradigms. In Hernández-Campoy, J. M. & Conde-Silvestre, J. C., eds., The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 22–40.Google Scholar
Niehaus, K. & Elspaß, S. (2018). ‘From above’, ‘from below’ and regionally balanced: towards a new corpus of nineteenth-century German. In Whitt, R. J., ed., Diachronic Corpora, Genre, and Language Change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 17–40.Google Scholar
Nobels, J. (2013). (Extra)Ordinary Letters: A View from Below on Seventeenth-Century Dutch. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Pillière, L. & Lewis, D. (2018). Revisiting standardisation and variation. E-rea. Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone, 15(2). Retrieved 19 February 2020 from https://journals.openedition.org/erea/6391Google Scholar
Pöll, B. (2020). Orthography and orthoepy. In Lebsanft, F. & Tacke, F., eds., Manual of Standardization in the Romance Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 399–416.Google Scholar
Poplack, S., Jarmasz, L.-G., Dion, N. & Rosen, N. (2015). Searching for standard French: the construction and mining of the Recueil historique des grammaires du franc¸ais. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 1(1), 13–55.Google Scholar
Puttaert, J, Van de Voorde, I., & Vosters, R. (2019). Forgotten voices from below: historical sociolinguistic research in Flanders. In Pickl, S. & Elspaß, S., eds., Historische Soziolinguistik der Stadtsprachen. Heidelberg: Winter, pp. 191–212.Google Scholar
Rutten, G. & van der Wal, M. J. (2013). Change, contact and conventions in the history of Dutch. Taal en Tongval, 65(1), 97–123.Google Scholar
Rutten, G. & van der Wal, M. J. (2014). Letters as Loot: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Rutten, G. & Vosters, R. & Vandenbussche, W., eds. (2014). Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900: A Sociolinguistic and Comparative Perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sato, M. (2015). ‘Wegen dem Clavier’: die Beethovens und der Rektionswandel der Präpositionen wegen, statt und wa¨hrend im Zeitraum von 1520–1870. Muttersprache. Vierteljahrsschrift fu¨r deutsche Sprache, 125, 23–56.Google Scholar
Schiegg, M. (2017–). CoPaDocs – Corpus of Patient Documents. Retrieved 19 February 2020 from http://copadocs.deGoogle Scholar
Schneider, E. W. (2002). Investigating variation and change in written documents. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P. & Schilling-Estes, N., eds., The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 67–96.Google Scholar
Schneider, J. G., Butterworth, J. & Hahn, N. (2018). Gesprochener Standard in syntaktischer Perspektive: Theoretische Grundlagen – Empirie – didaktische Konsequenzen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Schulte, M. (2008). Om å skrive språkhistorie ‘nedenfra’: tanker om en ny norsk språkhistorie for tiden 700–1050. Maal og Minne, 100(2), 167–88.Google Scholar
Sević, R. B. (1999). Early collections of private documents: the missing link in the diachronic corpora. In Beedham, C., ed., Langue and Parole in Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective: Selected Proceedings of the XXXIst Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, St Andrews 1998, Amsterdam, etc.: Pergamon, pp. 337–47.Google Scholar
Siegenbeek, M. (1804). Verhandeling over de Nederduitsche spelling. Amsterdam: Allart.Google Scholar
Takada, H. (1998). Grammatik und Sprachwirklichkeit von 1640–1700: Zur Rolle deutscher Grammatiker im schriftsprachlichen Ausgleichsprozeß. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Van Pottelberge, J. (2004). Der am-Progressiv: Struktur und parallele Entwicklungen in den kontinentalgermanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
van der Wal, M. (2006). Onvoltooid verleden tijd: witte vlekken in de taalgeschiedenis. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.Google Scholar
Watts, R. (2011). Language Myths and the History of English. Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Watts, R. (2012). Language myths. In Hernández-Campoy, J. M. & Conde-Silvestre, J. C., eds., The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 585–606.Google Scholar
Watts, R. & Trudgill, P., eds. (2002). Alternative Histories of English. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weinreich, U., Labov, W. & Herzog, M. I. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Lehmann, W. P. & Malkiel, Y., eds., Directions for Historical Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 97–195.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×