Webography

1. LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION
HOW AND WHY
Admilson F. S. Silva
Luiz de Castro

2. STANDARDIZING?
 Is the process of development of a
standard for written and/or oral language
It occurs in a specific manner that
depends on the community and the
social, historical and geographic aspects
involved.
At a certain point usually there is a
prescriptive effort to develop a standard.

3. How do varieties become standard?
By a series of resources such as:
 A recognized dictionary (standardized spelling and vocabulary)
 A recognized grammar
 A standard pronunciation (educated speech)
 A linguistic institution defining usage norms, e.g. Académie française, or Real
Academia Española
 Constitutional (legal) status (frequently as an official language)
 Effective public use (court, legislature, schools)
 A literary canon
 Convenience speaking
 Popularity and acceptance in the community
 Population
Source: Wikipedia

4. Why establishing a standard?
 Desire for national (cultural, political, and
social) cohesion

5. Sociopolitical issues
 Nonstandard varieties may be associated to
low-prestige and/or unsophisticated and/or
poor people
(language vs. dialect)
 In this process, the variety of those who hold
the socioeconomic/political power usually
prevails as standard.

6. Example of spoken standard
 In Brazil, actors and journalists usually
adopt an unofficial, but de facto, spoken
standard Portuguese, originally derived
from the middle-class dialect of Rio de
Janeiro, but that now comprehends
educated urban pronunciations from the
different speech communities in the
southeast

7. Brazil (Articles)
(11/2006)
Portuguese Language Teaching Standardization and Legalization (in
Portuguese)
(12/2008)
The consequences of the standardization of Portuguese Language (in
Portuguese)
(viewed in 11/2012)
The issue of the National language (in Portuguese)
(03/2010)
The standardization of Portuguese language in Globo TV’s Jornal Nacional
(05/2009)
The Unification of Portuguese Language

8. Other countries (news and articles)
03/2011 - Angola
Angola advances towards the standardization of national languages (in Portuguese)
03/2011 - Angola
Seeking the standardization of languages (in Portuguese)
9/2009 - Moçambique
It is early for language standardization in Moçambique, says professor
06/2011 - Moçambique
The implementation of standard spelling in Moçambican languages is urgent
04/2012 – Cape Verde
Officialization and standardization of Cape Verdian language explained at Universidade de
Santiago (in Portuguese)
08/2004 - USA
Hispanic TV wants to standardize language (in Portuguese)

9. Reference Material
Wikipedia: Standard Language
Wikipedia: List of Language Regulators
Cape Verde (viewed in 11/2012)
Cape Verdian Language (standardization) (in Portuguese)
Canadá (08/1993)
The Mohawk Language Standardization
Project Conference report

10. Books
Language Standardization and Language Change
The dynamics of Cape Dutch
By Ana Deumert
Monash Universit
Language Standardization and Language Change describes the
formation of an early standard norm at the Cape around 1900. The
processes of variant reduction and sociolinguistic focusing which
accompanied the early standardization history of Afrikaans (or ‘Cape
Dutch’ as it was then called) are analysed within the broad
methodological framework of corpus linguistics and variation analysis.
Multivariate statistical techniques (cluster analysis, multidimensional
scaling and PCA) are used to model the emergence of linguistic
uniformity in the Cape Dutch speech community. The book also
examines language contact and creolization in the early
settlement, the role of Afrikaner nationalism in shaping language
attitudes and linguistic practices, and the influence of English. As a
case study in historical sociolinguistics the book calls into question the
traditional view of the emergence of an Afrikaans standard norm, and
advocates a strongly sociolinguistic, speaker-orientated approach to
language history in general, and standardization studies in particular.
http://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/impact.19/main

11. Books
Authority in Language
Investigating Standard English
James Milroy, Lesley Milroy
Authority in Language explores the perennially topical and
controversial notion of correct and incorrect language.James and
Lesley Milroy cover the long-running debate over the teaching of
Standard English in Britain and compare the language ideologies in
Britain and the USA, involving a discussion of the English-Only
movement and the Ebonics controversy. They consider the historical
process of standardisation and its social consequences, in particular
discrimination against low-status and ethnic minority groups on the
basis of their language traits.This Routledge Linguistics Classic is
here reissued with a new foreword and a new afterword in which the
authors broaden their earlier concept of language ideology.Authority in
Language is indispensable reading for educationalists, teachers and
linguists and a long-standing text for courses in sociolinguistics,
modern English grammar, history of English and language ideology.
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780203124666/

12. Standard English and the Politics of Language
By Professor Tony Crowley
The 'Standard English' question has featured in linguistic, educational
and cultural debates for decades. At critical points in British history the
language became a symbol and focus, with particular varieties of the
language acquiring ideological importance. In this careful and
balanced account, Tony Crowley draws on theoretical insights from
Bakhtin, Foucault and Volosinov in a study of representations of the
English language from the eighteenth century onwards, on the
development of different concepts of the 'Standard Language' and the
value attached within the wider society to varieties of spoken and
written English. Placing the 'Standard English' question within its
historical perspective he explores the educational consequences of
these debates, bringing the reader up to date in this second edition
with an analysis of the effect on English language teaching of
Conservative educational policies of the 1980s and 90s and the
implications of the National Curriculum. Students and researchers of
English language, cultural theory, and language education will find this
treatment comprehensive, carefully researched and lively reading.
The first edition of this book appeared outside North America with the
title The Discourse of Politics.
http://www.ebooks.com/257978/standard-english-and-the-politics-of-
language/crowley-professor-tony/

13. Books
Nation, State, and Economy
Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Time
By: Ludwig Von Mises, Bettina Bien Greaves (Editor), Leland B. Yeager
(Translated by)
Introduction; NATION AND STATE -- Nation and Nationality; The
Nation as a Speech Community; Dialect and Standard Language;
National Changes; The Nationality Principle in Politics; Liberal or
Pacifistic Nationalism; Militant or Imperialistic Nationalism; The
Nationality Question in Territories with Mixed Populations; The
Migration Problem and Nationalism; The Roots of Imperialism;
Pacifism; On the History of German Democracy. WAR AND THE
ECONOMY -- The Economic Position of the Central; Powers in the
War; War Socialism; Autarky and Stockpiling; The Economy's War
Costs and the Inflation; Covering the State's War Costs; War
Socialism and True Socialism. SOCIALISM AND IMPERIALISM --
Socialism and Its Opponents; Socialism and Utopia; Centralist and
Syndicalist Socialism; Socialist Imperialism. Concluding
Observations; Index.
http://www.booktopia.com.au/nation-state-and-economy-ludwig-von-
mises/prod9780865976412.html
http://library.mises.org/books/Ludwig%20von%20Mises/Nation,%20State,%20and
%20Economy.pdf

14. Scientific Papers
A conceptual framework for the study of language
standardization
Paul L. Garvin
Standard Languages Taxonomies and histories
Ana Deumert and Wim Vandenbussche
Monash University, Australia
Vrije Universiteit Brussel/ FWO-Vlaanderen, Belgium

15. Scientific paper
(1980)
Linguistic and cultural standardization caused by mass communication
means (especially TV) (in Portuguese)
By Maria Tereza Camargo Biderman
ABSTRACT: In contemporary Brazil, the mass communication media, in particular
television, are performing a very important role in the process of cultural
integration and homogenization of language. As this is a country with enormous
territorial dimensions and a considerable number of illiterate people (25% of the
total population), the television performs a fundamental integrating
function, especially as a result of the large technological advances of this vehicle
and the wide audience is has throughout the country, even among indigenous
people. Television such as the other vehicles are democratizing
knowledge, information and entertainment. Among printed media, comics have
the largest public. They spread the cult colloquial register, with slight permissions
to "mistakes" that are typical to oral code. The mass media, particularly the
printed one, may collaborate towards a health uniformization of Portuguese
language in Brazil.

16. Scientific paper
(2001)
Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization
By James Milroy
ABSTRACT: This paper explores the effects of the standard language ideology on
attitudes to language of nonlinguists and of language specialists, and considers
how far linguists themselves have been affected by - and have contributed to -
this ideology. The primary definition of standardization is taken to be the
imposition of uniformity upon a class of objects. Attitudes to language within
standard language cultures are then reviewed and contrasted with
unstandardized situations, in which the boundaries of languages are
indeterminate. It is therefore suggested that determinate languages, such as
English, may be defined more by ideologies than by their internal structures.
Some effects of standardization on the work of linguists are then reviewed. This is
followed by a discussion of the importance of the process of legitimization in
contributing to the standard language culture, and of the contribution of language
specialists themselves to this process. Finally, certain matters arising are
reviewed.

17. Scientific paper
(2010)
Standardization and contextualization: A study of language and
leadership across 17 countries
By Lena Zander, Audra Mockaitis, Anne-Wil Harzing, & Country collaborators
Abstract. With multinational corporations increasingly adopting English
as a corporate language, the issue of language management and the
pros and cons of language standardization have been widely debated in
the literature. Our 17-country study considers whether the use of English
as a common corporate language may cause difficulties, by empirically
examining whether managerial reactions to specific leadership scenario-
based situations change as a consequence of the language they use.
Our results show that the choice of language (native or English) does not
matter much for the studied leadership scenarios. Instead, leadership
decisions and reactions depend more on cultural and situational context.

18. Video
FIM
Words of the World – Standard Language (University of Nottingham)
Linguist Nicola McLelland discusses standard languages,
with particular interest in German and English.

19. Thank you!