Taal en Tongval - Volume 68, Issue 2, 2016

This introductory paper provides an outline of the recent research on processes of destandardization and demotization in national standard languages across Europe, with a focus on the standard language dynamics in the Dutch language area. On the basis of a state-of-the-art-description, a number of remaining theoretical and methodological issues are identified, which the papers included in this thematic issue address from multiple perspectives.

This paper discusses in which ways language (de)standardization is an integral aspect of the socio-historical changes which move the Danish speech community (as an exemplary case of European communities with a long history of political independence) from Modernity to Late Modernity. The discussion is based on results from empirical studies of the strength of the Standard Language in terms of facts concerning both usage (SL) and ideology (SLI). The leitmotif of the discussion consists in assessing whether the linguistic facts and the ideological facts indicate that the ‘SL/SLI complex’ is being weakened or strengthened. This is assessed in the societal domains of education and broadcast news presentation, and in terms of general adherence in the population. A basic assumption of the approach is that the idea of ‘best language’ is a main factor in language standardization. In that respect the findings indicate that only subconsciously offered evaluations are relevant to elucidating the current status of the ‘best language’ idea. The implication is that there is one strictly shared norm which operates with two ‘best languages’ depending on evaluative perspective: the ‘superior’ conservative accent is best for the school context, the ‘dynamic’ modern accent is best for the media context. Considering the consistency of this subconsciously exhibited norm, together with the observed changes in use, we can only conclude that the ‘best language’ idea and the Danish SL/SLI complex appear stronger than ever before. The general lesson to consider concerns the role of the media, and of data elicitation under different conditions of (sub)conscious awareness, as well as the need for investigations of both aspects of the SLI/SL complex.

The growing variability in Europe’s standard languages has spawned widely shared accounts of destandardization, as well as premonitions of the death of the very idea of a standard language. In this paper, we propose an alternative to these views by demonstrating that the ‘classical’ standardness criteria (uniformity, prestige, codification) have become too narrow to define standard varieties in our Late Modern era of democratization and digitalization. Rather than rejecting these criteria as invalid, however, we revise them in function of contemporary standard language dynamics. Building on corpus data and (especially) experimental perception data, we will show (1) that the overt prestige which is typical of standard languages has extended to include other types of superiority (such as media cool or dynamism), (2) that the uniformity believed to manifest itself in the absence of variation can also surface as ‘perceptual harmony’ (an intuitive agreement on how much socially meaningful variation is admissible in specific contexts), and (3) that codification as the referee of right and wrong in standard languages is being complemented with public media licensing. The three extensions are grounded in a conception of standard languages as vital (not virtual), and multi-indexical (not just neutral or traditionally prestigious) varieties. Applied to the standard language situation in the Low Countries, they reveal that more varieties than VRT-Dutch and Neutral Netherlandic Standard Dutch can claim standard status.

Current third-wave or Speaker Design approaches to sociolinguistic variation hold that speakers may use variation strategically to create certain communicative effects (such as the projection of interactional personas and alignments). This paper explores the implications that such approaches have for empirical research methodology. For this, the discussion draws on a case study of language shifting from standard Austrian German into Austrian non-standard/dialect on a TV discussion show, in order to expound the following issues: (1) how to identify strategic uses of language variation and shifting; (2) how to generate empirical evidence for the fact that such strategic language use is interpreted accordingly by listeners. It is suggested that media data are particularly useful in this enterprise, and that close attention must be paid to listeners’ perceptions of (non-)standard language and the associated social meanings in order to explain what speakers ‘do’ when they perform strategic shifts e.g. from standard to non-standard language in local interaction.

For a couple of decades now, in Flanders, the functional elaboration of what is generally called tussentaal, i.e. mesolectal language use situated in between (‘tussen’) acrolectal Standard Dutch and basilectal Flemish dialects, has caused increasing concern about the position of Standard Dutch relative to other recognized ways of speaking. This has provoked intense debate about the proper characterization of this evolution. In this paper I focus on the daily language practices and overt attitudes of six girls at a Flemish secondary school to illustrate that it is relatively easy to find evidence that suggests the mentioned evolution is properly characterized as a type of destandardization. Yet by zooming in on the covert attitudes of the girls, which are influenced by the Standard Language Ideology (SLI), I will argue that a close ethnographic study of daily language use is able to go beyond the surface appearances of larger-scale ideologies and can demonstrate the continuing influence of standardization. Sociolinguistic ethnography may therefore have a vital role to play in the ongoing debate about language variation in Flanders.

Flemish Signers and Standard Flemish Sign Language: embraced or dismissed?

This paper focuses on the reported attitudes of Flemish Sign Language (or VGT) signers with respect to Standard(ised) VGT and (varieties of) VGT in the media. Information extracted from interviews with and stimulus fragments shown to ten deaf VGT signers shows that they no longer consider standardization of VGT negatively. However, they do not value standard versus non-standard varieties in terms of status versus solidarity traits (Giles & Coupland, 1991), but rather in terms of intelligibility versus identity. With respect to VGT on national television the quality of signing is considered more important than the variety used. Nevertheless, they do realize that the use of VGT in the media can have a significant impact on normativity and standardization of the language.