Contradictions of standard language in Europe: Implications for the study of practices and publics

Minority language standardisation and the role of users

“…As an object of study, language was resituated in a social and cultural context. Within LPP the focus has been extended to issues of power and identity and discussions of whether Minority language standardisation 267 standardisation transfers nation-state ideologies to minority languages (Kaplan and Baldauf 1997;Gal 2006) as well as questions of authority and authenticity in language planning processes (Eira and Stebbins 2008). Most importantly for this article, the critical turn coincided with and was spurred by technological advances.…”

“…The standardised minority language might not be accepted by the minority language users themselves, resulting in a situation where the standard might not be regarded as authentic (Gal 2006;Romaine 2007;Lane 2011). In minority language contexts, the standard may be perceived as the target variety of those who learn the language through education or passive bilinguals who start using the minority language; hence, the varieties spoken by such new speakers may come to be seen as less authentic by traditional speakers and sometimes even by the new speakers themselves (O'Rourke and Pujolar 2013).…”

“…A potential inherent problem with standardisation is whether the language users themselves will accept and identify with the standard chosen. When standardising minority languages one risks establishing a standard that the users do not identify with, and thus, standardisation which was supposed to empower minority language speakers may create a new form of stigma for those who feel that they cannot live up to the new codified standard (Gal 2006;Lane 2011). …”

“…STS has investigated standardisation of technologies (Bowker and Star 2000) and the reflexive relationship between standards and users (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003). Insights from these investigations are applied to the case of standardisation of Kven, a minority language spoken in Northern Norway, with a particular emphasis on how users of the standard are inscribed and configured (Woolgar 1991), the exclusionary effects of standards (Star 1991;Gal 2006;Lane 2011) and the positions of non-users (Wyatt 2003). …”

Handbook of Narrative Analysis

“…The figures therefore emerge and converge from lived personal experiences and from participants' access to more broadly circulating contrasting cultural images of France and Portugal. These images can be understood as cultural chronotopes, the recurrent social visions interlinking space, time, and person that participants presuppose and establish in written and oral discourse Dick 2010;Gal 2006;Koven 2013b;Koven and Marques 2014;Perrino, this volume, chapter 7). As such, they add a spatiotemporal dimension to any notion of personhood.…”