“…Chapter 8, this volume). While discussions about an official language academy date back to earlier centuries for a number of languages, with notable early examples being the Florentine Accademia della Crusca founded in 1583 (Tosi 2011) and the French Acade´mie Franc ¸aise officialized in 1635 (Estival & Pennycook 2011), the activities of many such bodies started to be most clearly linked to the nationalist enterprise of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An interesting case is the Spanish Real Academia Espan ˜ola (RAE).…”
Language standardization 'from above' occurs when language authorities seek to disseminate a standardized variety across a speech and writing community. In the history of many European languages, standardization 'from above' is closely tied to the rise of a standard language ideology in the eighteenth century. In this chapter, we take a sociohistorical perspective. We first define the rise of standardization from above, connecting it to changes in eighteenth-century metalinguistic discourse that reflect the changing sociopolitical and language-ideological context (Section 2.2.1). Adopting the Haugen framework, we argue that the crucial aspect of language standardization 'from above' is implementation (Section 2.2.2). In Section 2.3, we describe the sociolinguistic situation in Early and Late Modern times, which can be characterized as a state of diaglossia, with fairly local writing practices on one side of the sociolinguistic continuum, supralocal writing traditions on the other side and a wide spectrum of variation in-between. Standardization 'from above' can be seen as the top-down effort to reorganize this sociolinguistic condition in terms of standard and non-standard. Many different instruments to implement the standard variety can be found in historical settings, and in Section 2.4, we will describe some of the most well-known top-down initiatives, encompassing both private and official language planning activities such as usage guides, academies, professorships in 'national' languages, language laws and educational reforms. Finally, we discuss the issue of effectiveness, whereby we distinguish between discursive effects and linguistic effects (i.e. changing patterns of language use under the influence of standardization 'from above'; Section 2.5). In particular, we discuss a number of theoretical and methodological considerations relevant to analyses of the effectiveness of implementation.We use examples from the Dutch situation and also incorporate examples from other languages, including English, German, French and Spanish, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
“…Chapter 8, this volume). While discussions about an official language academy date back to earlier centuries for a number of languages, with notable early examples being the Florentine Accademia della Crusca founded in 1583 (Tosi 2011) and the French Acade´mie Franc ¸aise officialized in 1635 (Estival & Pennycook 2011), the activities of many such bodies started to be most clearly linked to the nationalist enterprise of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An interesting case is the Spanish Real Academia Espan ˜ola (RAE).…”
Language standardization 'from above' occurs when language authorities seek to disseminate a standardized variety across a speech and writing community. In the history of many European languages, standardization 'from above' is closely tied to the rise of a standard language ideology in the eighteenth century. In this chapter, we take a sociohistorical perspective. We first define the rise of standardization from above, connecting it to changes in eighteenth-century metalinguistic discourse that reflect the changing sociopolitical and language-ideological context (Section 2.2.1). Adopting the Haugen framework, we argue that the crucial aspect of language standardization 'from above' is implementation (Section 2.2.2). In Section 2.3, we describe the sociolinguistic situation in Early and Late Modern times, which can be characterized as a state of diaglossia, with fairly local writing practices on one side of the sociolinguistic continuum, supralocal writing traditions on the other side and a wide spectrum of variation in-between. Standardization 'from above' can be seen as the top-down effort to reorganize this sociolinguistic condition in terms of standard and non-standard. Many different instruments to implement the standard variety can be found in historical settings, and in Section 2.4, we will describe some of the most well-known top-down initiatives, encompassing both private and official language planning activities such as usage guides, academies, professorships in 'national' languages, language laws and educational reforms. Finally, we discuss the issue of effectiveness, whereby we distinguish between discursive effects and linguistic effects (i.e. changing patterns of language use under the influence of standardization 'from above'; Section 2.5). In particular, we discuss a number of theoretical and methodological considerations relevant to analyses of the effectiveness of implementation.We use examples from the Dutch situation and also incorporate examples from other languages, including English, German, French and Spanish, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
“…Antonio Gramsci once noted:Every time the question of the language surfaces, in one way or another, it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore: the formation and enlargement of the governing class, the need to establish more intimate and secure relationships between the governing groups and the national‐popular mass, in other words to reorganize the cultural hegemony.(Tosi :290)This article is concerned with the relation between nationalism and linguistic purism, in particular the manner in which a shared sense of national belonging is expressed and reproduced through the display of public attitudes towards foreignisms in a given society. Employing the case study of contemporary Japan, I will seek to uncover the process by which national language is conceptualized as a source of national identity while certain foreign loanwords are excluded from the perceptual framework of national language.…”
Linguistic purism is a term that refers to the urge to preserve a ‘desirable’ language form while eliminating ‘undesirable’ linguistic elements – a drive profoundly intertwined with nationalism. A particularly salient manifestation of this phenomenon is the controversy on the use of foreign loanwords. This article examines the contrasting expressions and metaphors used to describe the national language and foreignisms found in newspaper articles published in contemporary Japan and argues that the growing tendency to discuss national language in contrast to foreignisms can be understood as a particular manifestation of ongoing (re)negotiation of national identity. Criticisms and praises of the use of loanwords are found to be grounded upon a desire to establish specific understandings of Japaneseness in reference to the otherness felt within a society that is symbolized by loanwords, constructing an ‘internal Other’ to a Japanese ‘Self’, the identity of which is neither autonomous nor clearly delineated.
The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical reading. Special thanks to Gunvor Mejdell, for providing us with many valuable constructive remarks during the writing of this paper. 2 Cfr. also infra §1.2 for a short description of 'contemporary urban vernaculars'.
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