Linguistic Purism In Action

The auxiliary do (tun) is one of the most-discussed constructions in West Germanic. In German, there is a striking opposition between modern standard German, where the construction is virtually ungrammatical and considered to be "sub-standard" by most speakers, whilst, as this book shows, the construction is attested in all modern dialects as well as historic stages since 1350. In answering why auxiliary tun is ungrammatical in modern standard German, it is shown that the stigmatization of tun was caused by prescriptive grammarians in the 16th-18th century. Furthermore it is shown that the stigmatization of tun as "bad" German occurred in clearly discernible stages, from bad poetry (1550-1680), to bad written German (1680-1740) and finally to "bad" German in general (after 1740), thus providing evidence that the history of the standardization of German needs to take into account direct metalinguistic comments from prescriptive grammarians. The effectiveness of linguistic purism is also shown by evidence from two other constructions, namely polynegation and double perfect.

The auxiliary do (tun) is one of the most-discussed constructions in West Germanic. In German, there is a striking opposition between modern standard German, where the construction is virtually ungrammatical and considered to be "sub-standard" by most speakers, whilst, as this book shows, the construction is attested in all modern dialects as well as historic stages since 1350. In answering why auxiliary tun is ungrammatical in modern standard German, it is shown that the stigmatization of tun was caused by prescriptive grammarians in the 16th-18th century. Furthermore it is shown that the stigmatization of tun as "bad" German occurred in clearly discernible stages, from bad poetry (1550-1680), to bad written German (1680-1740) and finally to "bad" German in general (after 1740), thus providing evidence that the history of the standardization of German needs to take into account direct metalinguistic comments from prescriptive grammarians. The effectiveness of linguistic purism is also shown by evidence from two other constructions, namely polynegation and double perfect.

This book represents the first in-depth, comparative investigation of linguistic purism in modern French. It investigates the relative prevalence of purist ideology in France and Quebec. Both experience influence from English and have similar language legislation, but they differ in their social, political and economic history. Three different levels of society are examined (official, group and individual), allowing a comparison of the ‘voice from above’ and the ‘voice from below’. This is a key element in recent discussions of language planning but is rarely provided in studies of French. The study is also the first to apply to empirical data Thomas’s widely cited theoretical framework for describing linguistic purism (1991), and has evaluated and refined this, enhancing the theoretical underpinnings of the field. The book will be of interest not only to French scholars and sociolinguists, but also to scholars of language planning, language policy and language ideologies in all languages.

Purism is an aspect of linguistic study which appeals not only to the scholar but also to the layperson. Somehow, ordinary speakers with many different mother tongues and with no formal training in linguistics share certain beliefs about what language is, how it develops or should develop, whether it has good or bad qualities, etc. The topic of linguistic purism in its many realisations is the subject of this volume of 19 articles selected from the contributions presented at a conference at the University of Bristol in 2003. In particular, the articles deal with the relationship of purism to historical prescriptivism, e.g. the influence of grammarians in the 17th and 18th centuries, to nationhood, e.g. the instrumentalising of purism in the standardisation of Afrikaans or Luxembourgish, to modern society, e.g. the existence of puristic tendencies in computer chatrooms, to folk linguistics, e.g. lay perceptions of different varieties of English, and to academic linguistics, e.g. the presence of puristic notions in the historiography of German or English.

Studies in Language and Linguistics is an occasional series incorporating major new work in small areas of linguistics.

In Corsica, spelling contests, road signs, bilingual education bills and Corsican language newscasts leave language planners and ordinary speakers deeply divided over how to define what "counts" as Corsican and how it is connected with cultural identity. In Ideologies in Action Alexandra Jaffe explores the complex interrelationship between linguistic ideologies and practices on the French island of Corsica. This detailed exploration of the ideological and political underpinnings of three decades of language planning raises fundamental questions about what it means to "save" a minority language, and the way in which specific cultural, political and ideological contexts shape the "successes" and "failures" of linguistic engineering efforts. Jaffe's ethnography focuses both on the way dominant language ideologies are inscribed in the everyday experience of ordinary people, as well as how they shape the evolving strategies of language planners trying to revitalize the Corsican language. While Jaffe's analysis demonstrates the pervasive influence of dominant language ideologies on minority language speakers and language planners, she also draws on case studies from everyday discourse, educational practice and public and mediatized debates over language issues to develop an ethnographically-grounded perspective on levels of resistance. In the final part of the book she explores the emergence (and the limits) of "radical" genres of resistance found in forms of Corsican language activism and in examples of codeswitching and language mixing in bilingual radio practice. This book contributes to a growing literature on language ideology, and will be of interest to anthropologists, political scientists and linguists interested in the practical and theoretical dimensions of language contact, minority language literacy, bilingual education, and language shift.

Written by an international team of leading scholars, this groundbreaking reference work explores the nature of language change and diffusion, and paves the way for future research in this rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field. Features 35 newly-written essays from internationally acclaimed experts that reflect the growth and vitality of the burgeoning area of historical sociolinguistics Examines how sociolinguistic theoretical models, methods, findings, and expertise can be used to reconstruct a language's past in order to explain linguistic changes and developments Bridges the gap between the past and the present in linguistic studies Structured thematically into sections exploring: origins and theoretical assumptions; methods for the sociolinguistic study of the history of languages; linguistic and extra-linguistic variables; historical dialectology, language contact and diffusion; and attitudes to language