One such attempt (see Bell, 1976, pp.
147–57) has listed seven criteria that may be
useful in discussing different kinds of languages. According to Bell, these criteria
(standardization, vitality, historicity, autonomy, reduction, mixture, and de facto
norms) may be used to distinguish certain languages from others. They also make
it possible to speak of some languages as being more ‘developed’ in certain ways
than others, thus addressing a key issue in the language–dialect distinction, since
speakers usually feel that languages are generally ‘better’ than dialects in some
sense.
Standardization refers to the process by which a language has been codified in
some way. That process usually involves the development of such things as
grammars, spelling books, and dictionaries, and possibly a literature. We can often
associate specific items or events with standardization, e.g., Wycliffe’s and
Luther’s translations of the Bible into English and German, respectively, Caxton’s
establishment of printing in England, and Dr Johnson’s dictionary of English
published in 1755. Standardization also requires that a measure of agreement be
achieved about what is in the language and what is not. Once we have such a
codification of the language we tend to see it as almost inevitable, the result of
some process come to fruition, one that has also reached a fixed end point.
Change, therefore, should be resisted since it can only undo what has been done so
laboriously. Milroy (2001, p. 537) characterizes the resulting ideology as follows:
‘The canonical form of the language is a precious inheritance that has been built
up over the generations, not by the millions of native speakers, but by a select few
who have lavished loving care upon it, polishing, refining, and enriching it until it
has become a fine instrument of expression (often these are thought to be literary
figures, such as Shakespeare). This is a view held by people in many walks of life,
including plumbers, politicians and professors of literature. It is believed that if the
canonical variety is not universally supported and protected, the language will
inevitably decline and decay.’
Once a language is standardized it becomes possible to teach it in a deliberate
manner. It takes on ideological dimensions – social, cultural, and sometimes
political – beyond the purely linguistic ones. In Fairclough’s words (2001, p. 47) it
becomes ‘part of a much wider process of economic, political and cultural
unification . . . of great . . . importance in the establishment of nationhood, and the
nationstate is the favoured form of capitalism.’ According to these criteria, both
English and French are quite obviously standardized, Italian somewhat less so, and
the variety known as African American Vernacular English (see chapter 14) not at
all.
Haugen (1966a) has indicated certain steps that must be followed if one variety of
a language is to become the standard for that language. In addition to what he calls
the ‘formal’ matters of codification and elaboration, the former referring to the
development of such things as grammars and dictionaries and the latter referring to
the use of the standard in such areas as literature, the courts, edu cation,
administration, and commerce, Haugen says there are important matters to do with
‘function.’ For example, a norm must be selected and accepted because neither
codification nor elaboration is likely to proceed very far if the community cannot
agree on some kind of model to act as a norm. That norm is also likely to be – or
to become – an idealized norm, one that users of the language are asked to aspire
to rather than one that actually accords with their observed behavior.
Selection of the norm may prove difficult because choosing one vernacular as a
norm means favoring those who speak that variety. It also diminishes all the other
varieties and possible competing norms, and those who use those varieties. The
chosen norm inevitably becomes associated with power and the rejected
alternatives with lack of power. Not surprisingly, it usually happens that a variety
associated with an elite is chosen. Attitudes are allimportant, however. A group
that feels intense solidarity may be willing to overcome great linguistic differences
in establishing a norm, whereas one that does not have this feeling may be unable
to overcome relatively small differences and be unable to agree on a single variety
and norm. Serbs and Croats were never able to agree on a norm, particularly as
other differences reinforced linguistic ones. In contrast, we can see how Indonesia
and Malaysia are looking for ways to reduce the differences between their
languages, with their common Islamic bond a strong incentive.
The standardization process itself performs a variety of functions (Mathiot and
Garvin, 1975). It unifies individuals and groups within a larger community while
at the same time separating the community that results from other com munities.
Therefore, it can be employed to reflect and symbolize some kind of identity:
regional, social, ethnic, or religious. A standardized variety can also be used to
give prestige to speakers, marking off those who employ it from those who do not,
i.e., those who continue to speak a nonstandard variety. It can therefore serve as a
kind of goal for those who have somewhat different norms; Standard English and
Standard French are such goals for many whose norms are dialects of these
languages. However, as we will see (particularly in chapters 6– 8), these goals are
not always pursued and may even be resisted.
It still may not be at all easy for us to define Standard English because of a failure
to agree about the norm or norms that should apply. For example, Trudgill (1995,
pp. 5–6) defines Standard English as follows (note his use of ‘usually’ and
‘normally’ in this definition):
Standard English is that variety of English which is usually used in print, and which is
normally taught in schools and to nonnative speakers learning the lan guage. It is also
the variety which is normally spoken by educated people and used in news broadcasts
and other similar situations. The difference between standard and nonstandard, it should
be noted, has nothing in principle to do with differ ences between formal and colloquial
language, or with concepts such as ‘bad language.’ Standard English has colloquial as
well as formal variants, and Standard English speakers swear as much as others.
Historically, the standard variety of English is based on the dialect of English that
developed after the Norman Conquest resulted in the permanent removal of the
Court from Winchester to London. This dialect became the one preferred by the
educated, and it was developed and promoted as a model, or norm, for wider and
wider segments of society. It was also the norm that was carried overseas, but not
one unaffected by such export. Today, Standard English is codified to the extent
that the grammar and vocabulary of English are much the same everywhere in the
world: variation among local standards is really quite minor, being differences of
‘flavor’ rather than of ‘substance,’ so that the Singapore, South African, and Irish
varieties are really very little different from one another so far as grammar and
vocabulary are concerned. Indeed, Standard English is so powerful that it exerts a
tremendous pressure on all local varieties, to the extent that many of the long
established dialects of England and the Lowlands English of Scotland have lost
much of their vigor. There is considerable pressure on them to converge toward
the standard. This latter situation is not unique to English: it is also true in other
countries in which processes of standardization are under way. It does, however,
sometimes create problems for speakers who try to strike some kind of
compromise between local norms and national, even supranational, ones.
Governments sometimes very deliberately involve themselves in the standard
ization process by establishing official bodies of one kind or another to regulate
language matters or to encourage changes felt to be desirable. One of the most
famous examples of an official body established to promote the language of a
country was Richelieu’s establishment of the Académie Française in 1635.
Founded at a time when a variety of languages existed in France, when literacy
was confined to a very few, and when there was little national consciousness, the
Académie Française faced an unenviable task: the codification of French spelling,
vocabulary, and grammar. Its goal was to fashion and reinforce French nationality,
a most important task considering that, even two centuries later in the early
nineteenth century, the French of Paris was virtually unknown in many parts of the
country, particularly in the south. Similar attempts to found academies in England
and the United States for the same purpose met with no success, individual
dictionary makers and grammarwriters having performed much the same
function for English. Since both French and English are today highly standardized,
one might question whether such academies serve a useful purpose, yet it is
difficult to imagine France without the Académie Française: it undoubtedly has
had a con siderable influence on the French people and perhaps on their language.
Standardization is sometimes deliberately undertaken quite rapidly for polit ical
reasons. In the nineteenth century Finns developed their spoken language to make
it serve a complete set of functions. They needed a standardized language to assert
their independence from both Swedes and Russians. They succeeded in their task
so that now the Finnish language has become a strong force in the nation’s
political life and a strong marker of Finnish identity among Germanic tongues on
the one side and Slavic tongues on the other. In the twentieth cen tury the Turks
under Atatürk were likewise successful in their attempt to both standardize and
‘modernize’ Turkish. Today, we can see similar attempts at rapid standardization
in countries such as India (Hindi), Israel (Hebrew), Papua New Guinea (Tok
Pisin), Indonesia (Bahasa Indonesia), and Tanzania (Swahili). In each case a
language or a variety of a language had to be selected, developed in its resources
and functions, and finally accepted by the larger society. As we have seen,
standardization is an ideological matter. Williams (1992, p. 146) calls it ‘a
sociopolitical process involving the legitimisation and institutionalisation of a
language variety as a feature of sanctioning of that variety as socially preferable.’
It creates a preferred variety of a language, which then becomes the winner in a
struggle for dominance. The dispreferred varieties are losers.
The standardization process occasionally results in some languages actually
achieving more than one standardized variety. Norwegian is a good example with
its two standards, Nynorsk and Bokmål. In this case there is a special problem,
that of trying to unify the two varieties in a way that pleases everyone. Some kind
of unification or amalgamation is now official government policy (see pp. 373–4).
Countries with two or more competing languages that cannot possibly be unified
may tear themselves apart, as we saw in Yugoslavia, or periodically seem to come
very close to doing that, as with Belgium and Canada (see chapter 15).
Standardization is also an ongoing matter, for only ‘dead’ languages like Latin and
Classical Greek are standardized for all time. Living languages change and the
standardization process is necessarily an ongoing one. It is also one that may be
described as more advanced in languages like French or German and less
advanced in languages like Bahasa Indonesia and Swahili.
Hindi is still in the process of being standardized in India. That process is hindered
by widespread regional resistance to Hindi out of the fear that regional languages
may be submerged or, if not submerged, quite diminished. So far as
standardization is concerned, there are problems with accepting local varieties, and
with developing and teaching the existing standard as though it were a classical
language like Sanskrit and downplaying it as a living language. Hindi is still often
taught much like Latin in schools in the West; it is in many places an underused
second language at best; children are not encouraged ‘to play in Hindi,’ and
teachers rarely employ Hindi as a language of instruction. Likewise, the kinds of
literature available in Hindi are still very limited, there being short ages of
everyday reading materials that might appeal to the young, e.g., comic books,
mystery stories, and collections of folk tales. Consequently, the process of the
standardization of a ‘living’ Hindi is proving to be a slow one.
The standardization process is also obviously one that attempts either to reduce or
to eliminate diversity and variety. However, there may well be a sense in which
such diversity and variety are ‘natural’ to all languages, assuring them of their
vitality and enabling them to change (see chapter 8). To that extent, standard
ization imposes a strain on languages or, if not on the languages themselves, on
those who take on the task of standardization. That may be one of the reasons why
various national academies have had so many difficulties in their work: they are
essentially in a nowin situation, always trying to ‘fix’ the consequences of
changes that they cannot prevent, and continually being compelled to issue new
pronouncements on linguistic matters. Unfortunately, those who think you can
standardize and ‘fix’ a language for all time are often quite influential. They often
find ready access to the media, there to bewail the fact that English, for example,
is becoming ‘degenerate’ and ‘corrupt,’ and to advise us to return to what they
regard as a more perfect past. They may also resist what they con sider to be
‘dangerous’ innovations, e.g., the translation of a sacred book into a modern idiom
or the issue of a new dictionary. Since the existence of internal variation is one
aspect of language and the fact that all languages keep changing is another, we
cannot be too sympathetic to such views.
Vitality, the second of Bell’s seven criteria, refers to the existence of a living
community of speakers. This criterion can be used to distinguish languages that
are ‘alive’ from those that are ‘dead.’ Two Celtic languages of the United King
dom are now dead: Manx, the old language of the Isle of Man, and Cornish. Manx
died out after World War II, and Cornish disappeared at the end of the eighteenth
century, one date often cited being 1777, when the last known speaker, Dorothy
Pentreath of Mousehole, died. Many of the aboriginal languages of the Americas
are also dead. Latin is dead in this sense too for no one speaks it as a native
language; it exists only in a written form frozen in time, pronounced rather than
spoken, and studied rather than used.
Once a language dies it is gone for all time and not even the socalled revival of
Hebrew contradicts that assertion. Hebrew always existed in a spoken form as a
liturgical language, as did Latin for centuries. Modern Hebrew is an out growth of
this liturgical variety. It is after all ‘Modern’ Hebrew and the necessary
secularization of a liturgical language to make it serve the purposes of modern life
has not been an easy and uncontroversial matter. Many languages, while not dead
yet, nevertheless are palpably dying: the number of people who speak them
diminishes drastically each year and the process seems irreversible, so that the best
one can say of their vitality is that it is flagging. For example, the French dialects
spoken in the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, and Sark are rapidly on their
way to extinction. Each year that passes brings a decrease in the number of
languages spoken in the world (see pp. 378–9).
We should note that a language can remain a considerable force even after it is
dead, that is, even after it is no longer spoken as anyone’s first language and exists
almost exclusively in one or more written forms, knowledge of which is acquired
only through formal education. Classical Greek and Latin still have considerable
prestige in the Western world, and speakers of many modern lan guages continue
to draw on them in a variety of ways. Sanskrit is important in the same way to
speakers of Hindi; Classical Arabic provides a unifying force and set of resources
in the Islamic world; and Classical Chinese has consider ably influenced not only
modern Chinese but also Japanese and Korean. Such influences cannot be ignored,
because the speakers of languages subject to such influences are generally quite
aware of what is happening: we can even say that such influence is part of their
knowledge of the language. We can also periodically observe deliberate attempts
to throw off an influence perceived to be alien: for example, Atatürk’s largely
successful attempt to reduce the Arabic influence on Turkish, and periodic
attempts to ‘purify’ languages such as French and German of borrowings from
English. While in the case of Hebrew, a language used only in a very restricted
way for religious observances was successfully expanded for everyday use, we
should note that a similar attempt to revitalize Gaelic in Ireland has been almost a
complete failure.
Historicity refers to the fact that a particular group of people finds a sense of
identity through using a particular language: it belongs to them. Social, political,
religious, or ethnic ties may also be important for the group, but the bond provided
by a common language may prove to be the strongest tie of all. In the nineteenth
century a German nation was unified around the German language just as in the
previous century Russians had unified around a revitalized Russian language.
Historicity can be longstanding: speakers of the different varieties of colloquial
Arabic make much of a common linguistic ancestry, as obviously do speakers of
Chinese. It can also, as with Hebrew, be appealed to as a unifying force among a
threatened people.
Autonomy is an interesting concept because it is really one of feeling. A language
must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages. However, this is
a very subjective criterion. Ukrainians say their language is quite different from
Russian and deplored its Russification when they were part of the Soviet Union.
Some speakers of African American Vernacular English (see chapter 14) maintain
that their language is not a variety of English but is a separate language in its own
right and refer to it as Ebonics. In contrast, speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin
deny that they speak different languages: they maintain that Cantonese and
Mandarin are not autonomous languages but are just two dialects of Chinese. As
we will see (chapter 3), creole and pidgin languages cause us not a few problems
when we try to apply this criterion: how autonomous are such languages?
Reduction refers to the fact that a particular variety may be regarded as a sub
variety rather than as an independent entity. Speakers of Cockney will almost
certainly say that they speak a variety of English, admit that they are not
representative speakers of English, and recognize the existence of other varieties
with equivalent subordinate status. Sometimes the reduction is in the kinds of
opportunities afforded to users of the variety. For example, there may be a reduc
tion of resources; that is, the variety may lack a writing system. Or there may be
considerable restrictions in use; e.g., pidgin languages are very much reduced in
the functions they serve in society in contrast to standardized languages.
Mixture refers to feelings speakers have about the ‘purity’ of the variety they
speak. This criterion appears to be more important to speakers of some languages
than of others, e.g., more important to speakers of French and German than to
speakers of English. However, it partly explains why speakers of pidgins and
creoles have difficulty in classifying what they speak as full languages: these
varieties are, in certain respects, quite obviously ‘mixed,’ and the people who
speak them often feel that the varieties are neither one thing nor another, but rather
are debased, deficient, degenerate, or marginal varieties of some other standard
language.
Finally, having de facto norms refers to the feeling that many speakers have that
there are both ‘good’ speakers and ‘poor’ speakers and that the good speakers
represent the norms of proper usage. Sometimes this means focusing on one
particular subvariety as representing the ‘best’ usage, e.g., Parisian French or the
Florentine variety of Italian. Standards must not only be established (by the first
criterion above), they must also be observed. When all the speakers of a language
feel that it is badly spoken or badly written almost everywhere, that language may
have considerable difficulty in surviving; in fact, such a feeling is often associated
with a language that is dying. Concern with the norms of linguistic behavior,
‘linguistic purism’ (see Thomas, 1991), may become very important among
specific segments of society. For example, so far as English is concerned, there is
a very profitable industry devoted to telling people how they should behave
linguistically, what it is ‘correct’ to say, what to avoid saying, and so on (see
Baron, 1982, Cameron, 1995, and Wardhaugh, 1999). As we will see (chapters 7–
8), people’s feelings about norms have important consequences for an
understanding of both variation and change in language.
If we apply the above criteria to the different varieties of speech we observe in the
world, we will see that not every variety we may want to call a language has the
same status as every other variety. English is a language, but so are Dogrib,
Haitian Creole, Ukrainian, Latin, Tok Pisin, and Chinese. Each satisfies a differ
ent subset of criteria from our list. Although there are important differences
among them, we would be loath to deny that any one of them is a language. They
are all equals as languages, but that does not necessarily mean that all languages
are equal! The first is a linguistic judgment, the second a social one.
As we have just seen, trying to decide whether something is or is not a language or
in what ways languages are alike and different can be quite troublesome.
However, we usually experience fewer problems of the same kind with regard to
dialects. There is usually little controversy over the fact that they are either
regional or social varieties of something that is widely acknowledged to be a
language. That is true even of the relationship of Cantonese and Mandarin to
Chinese if the latter is given a ‘generous’ interpretation as a language.
Some people are also aware that the standard variety of any language is actually
only the preferred dialect of that language: Parisian French, Florentine Italian, or
the Zanzibar variety of Swahili in Tanzania. It is the variety that has been chosen
for some reason, perhaps political, social, religious, or economic, or some
combination of reasons, to serve as either the model or norm for other varieties. It
is the empowered variety. As a result, the standard is often not called a dialect at
all, but is regarded as the language itself. It takes on an ideological dimension and
becomes the ‘right’ and ‘proper’ language of the group of people, the very
expression of their being. One consequence is that all other varieties become
related to that standard and are regarded as dialects of that standard with none of
the power of that standard. Of course, this process usually involves a complete
1
restructuring of the historical facts. If language X differentiates in three areas to
become dialects XA, XB, and XC, and then XA is elevated to become a later
2 1
standard X , then XB, and XC are really historical variants of X , not subvarieties
2
of X . What happens in practice is that XB and XC undergo pressure to change
2 2
toward X , and X , the preferred variety or standard, exerts its influence over the
other varieties.
We see a good instance of this process in Modern English. The new standard is
based on the dialect of the area surrounding London, which was just one of several
dialects of Old English, and not the most important for both the western and
northern dialects were once at least equally as important. However, in the modern
period, having provided the base for Standard English, this dialect exerts a strong
influence over all the other dialects of England so that it is not just first among
equals but rather represents the modern language itself to the extent that the
varieties spoken in the west and north are generally regarded as its local variants.
Historically, these varieties arise from different sources, but now they are viewed
only in relation to the standardized variety.
A final comment seems called for with regard to the terms language and dialect. A
dialect is a subordinate variety of a language, so that we can say that Texas
English and Swiss German are, respectively, dialects of English and German. The
language name (i.e., English or German) is the superordinate term. We can also
say of some languages that they contain more than one dialect; e.g., English,
French, and Italian are spoken in various dialects. If a language is spoken by so
few people, or so uniformly, that it has only one variety, we might be tempted to
say that language and dialect become synonymous in such a case. However,
another view is that it is inappropriate to use dialect in such a situation because the
requirement of subordination is not met. Consequently, to say that we have dialect
A of language X must imply also the existence of dialect B of language X, but to
say we have language Y is to make no claim about the number of dialect varieties
in which it exists: it may exist in only a single variety, or it may have two (or
more) subordinate dialects: dialects A, B, and so on.
Finally, two other terms are important in connection with some of the issues
discussed above: vernacular and koiné. Petyt (1980, p. 25) defines the former as
‘the speech of a particular country or region,’ or, more technically, ‘a form of
speech transmitted from parent to child as a primary medium of commun ication.’
If that form of speech is Standard English, then Standard English is the vernacular
for that particular child; if it is a regional dialect, then that dia lect is the child’s
vernacular. A koiné is ‘a form of speech shared by people of different vernaculars
– though for some of them the koiné itself may be their vernacular.’ A koiné is a
common language, but not necessarily a standard one. Petyt’s examples of koinés
are Hindi for many people in India and Vulgar Latin (vulgar: ‘colloquial’ or
‘spoken’) in the Roman Empire. The original koiné was, of course, the Greek
koiné of the Ancient World, a unified version of the Greek dialects, which after
Alexander’s conquests (circa 330 bce) became the lingua franca of the Western
world, a position it held until it was eventually super seded, not without a
struggle, by Vulgar Latin.
