Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts

Asian Perspectives

Nicola McLelland, Hui Zhao, Nicola McLelland, Hui Zhao, Dr. Nicola McLelland

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781800411555
• eBook ISBN: 9781800411579
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This important contribution to the sociolinguistics of Asian languages breaks new ground in the study of language standards and standardization in two key ways: in its focus on Asia, with particular attention paid to China and its neighbours, and in the attention paid to multilingual contexts. The chapters address various kinds of (sometimes hidden) multilingualism and examine the interactions between multilingualism and language standardization, offering a corrective to earlier work on standardization, which has tended to assume a monolingual nation state and monolingual individuals. Taken together, the chapters in this book thus add to our understanding of the ways in which multilingualism is implicated in language standardization, as well as the impact of language standards on multilingualism. The introduction, Chapter 6 and Chapter 8 are free to download as open access publications under a CC BY NC licence. You can access them here:
Introduction: https://zenodo.org/record/5749388#.YaiwuNDP3cs
Chapter 6: https://zenodo.org/record/5749522#.Yaiw-9DP3cs
Chapter 8: https://zenodo.org/record/5749586#.Yai0RNDP3cs

Part 1

Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts

1Language Codification: Coloniality, Society and History

S. Imtiaz Hasnain

Introduction

‘The number of indigenous languages in the German colonies is immense. They are not known in their entirety yet, although missionaries, civil servants and scholars diligently contribute to their investigation’.1 This observation not only allows us to understand the relation of language and colonialism but also informs us how, despite the involvement of missionaries and several other professional groups in the exploration of the languages in the dominion or colony (what Stolz & Warnke, 2015, referred to as Schutzgebiete ‘protectorates’), the ‘knowledge about the linguistic diversity of Germany’s colonial empire’ (Stolz & Warnke, 2015: 4) still remained incomplete. Similarly, the new European masters of South Asia failed to comprehend the linguistic and cultural diversity of their newly colonized South Asian subjects. South Asian multilingual society bewildered their imagination.2 The complexities of language represented ‘a land of Babel brought to perpetual chaos by the sheer perversity of its natives’ (Washbrook, 1991: 187). It required a taming of the wilderness, which was effectively realized through the drive towards classification. Since the indigenous conceptual framework surrounding language was far removed from that of the 19th-century Europeans, colonization of language occupied the centre stage.

This chapter traces the role of language – especially language codification and classification – in the process of the colonization of India. In the first section, ‘Coloniality and Language’, I briefly show the interconnections between language and the process of colonialism. Language was used as a tool of empire-building by the colonizers, who perpetuated hierarchies and classifications using linguistic schematization. The second section, ‘British Colonial engagement, Scientific Philology and the Classification of Indian languages’, provides a historical perspective on the British colonial presence in India, highlighting the conditions under which the colonial engagement with Indian languages began and their insistence on the use of philology, providing the method for establishing the doctrine of monotheism and homogenizing the natives’3 sociocultural and linguistic diversity in line with a particular ideology of what a language should be like. Plurality and multiplicity, whether of language or of cultural traditions, seemed chaotic and irrational to the colonizers. Thus, they not only lacked Asian sensibility to language, but at times were also insensitive to the nuances of India’s diversity. The final section looks into the linguistic conundrum and the lack of sensitivity of the colonials in their understanding of the newly colonized society and situates language standardization in history. The Conclusion section focuses on the problematics and consequences of the classification and translation of indigenous knowledge systems into English, in ways that removed the finer distinctions and subtle nuances of the native tongue altogether. A larger aim of this exercise was, I argue, to appropriate the multiplicit...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Note on the Use of Original Scripts in this Volume
• Introduction: Language Standardization and Language Variation in Multilingual Contexts – Asian Perspectives
• Part 1: Histories of Standardization in Multilingual Contexts
• Part 2: Standardization and Variation in Multilingual China: Implications for Education, Testing, Policy and Practice
• Part 3: Standardization and Minoritized Languages in Multilingual Contexts
• Part 4: Negotiating Standards and Variation: Case Studies From Japanese
• Index