Linguistic Purism, Protectionism, and Nationalism in the Germanic Languages Today

Abstract

This paper re-examines the notions of "linguistic purism" and "linguistic nationalism" with respect to public discourses of language cultivation in recent years in a number of Germanic-speaking countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and, briefly, Norway). In particular, the paper considers domain protection and attitudes to spelling variability and spelling reform. While in Germany linguistic nationalism and linguistic purism meet in speaker attitudes towards loanwords and spelling reform, in other Germanic-speaking countries linguistic nationalism may also take different forms, and linguistic purism may have other targets and motivations.