Standardization, Ideology and Linguistics

N. Armstrong, I. Mackenzie

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780230296756
• eBook ISBN: 9781137284396
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historical & Comparative Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The authors explore some of the ways in which standardization, ideology and linguistics are interrelated. Through a number of case studies they show how concepts such as grammaticality and structural change covertly rely on a false conceptualization of language, one that derives ultimately from standardization.

1
The nature of the standard

In this chapter we attempt to characterize the essential features of standard languages. In the interests of clear exposition we set out these features below in separate sections, although it will be seen that they overlap. These features of the standard refer to the following attributes: the standard as an ideology, which includes beliefs about its beauty, logical nature and efficiency; the socially dominant variety; the overlay acquired subsequent to the vernacular; the synecdochic variety; that which is regionless. We then look at some examples of folk-linguistic perceptions of the standard, before considering more closely the essential characteristics of ideologies as they concern us here.

1.1 The standard as an ideology

Milroy and Milroy (1999) suggest that a standard language is an abstraction, or more specifically, since all languages are abstractions, an ideology. The terms ‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ are of course used by specialists in an ostensibly value-neutral sense, even if this specialized use of these terms does not match with their everyday currency; but normative terms like ‘sub-standard’, among many others, are frequent among linguistically naive speakers who have absorbed the ‘ideology of the standard’ (Milroy and Milroy 1999), which sees the standard as the only language worthy of the name, and the associated non-standard varieties as imperfect approximations to it. One view current in sociolinguistics sees standardization as a form of cultural oppression, most obviously by the upper classes, and indeed it is hard from this viewpoint to see the social advantage accruing to most speakers through their acceptance of the ideology of the standard. The notion of this ideology also explains style variation, which is linguistic accommodation determined by social situation; very few speakers enjoy such linguistic security that they can neglect to adapt their speech to someone of different social status, and this is the root of stylistic or situational variation. L. Milroy (2003: 161) cites Silverstein’s (1979: 193) definition of language ideologies, which is as follows: they are ‘sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use’. The view we adopt in this book is that standardization is the expression of a broader ideology, to do with a hierarchical, as opposed to an egalitarian, view of how society should be ordered. From that perspective, the sets of beliefs alluded to in Silverstein’s definition of language ideologies can be understood as ‘second-order’ ideologies, such that, in a fairly obvious way, the standard borrows prestige from the power of its users. Less obviously perhaps, the perceived invariance of the standard derives too from the hierarchical viewpoint that opposes change.

It should be pointed out in this connection that the oppressive view of social and linguistic hegemony highlighted above neglects the importance of ‘culture’, in the sense of the individual’s subjective experience. It has been assumed until fairly recently that social class is generally the major element that determines social structure and that drives changes in it. The more recent development in cultural studies known as the ‘cultural turn’ lays stress on the difficulty of disentangling the various social and economic elements in any cultural phenomenon under examination – the phrase is calqued on the earlier ‘linguistic turn’ applied to positivist philosophy, and refers to a turn to, or emphasis on, the study of culture in disciplines that attempt to theorize social and cultural history. The cultural turn is in contrast to, say, a ‘vulgar’ Marxist approach (Eagleton 1991) that lays stress on the economic as underlying the social, and on an ‘objective’ view of any given situation as against the ‘false consciousness’ that may be held to afflict a social class. Clearly, however, economic, social and cultural elements and effects can scarcely be separated out in a hierarchical way, for instance in the rather crude Marxist ‘base–superstructure’ model according to which the cultural and social merely express the economic (we recognize that other Marxist approaches have greater subtlety). The ‘vulgar’ view cannot be supported in any strong sense, since the perspective of an individual or community on their socio-cultural experience forms an integral part of that experience, and cannot be overridden by any ‘objective’ viewpoint, as no cogent argument supports the theorist’s claim to that privilege. The point need not be laboured any further, beyond saying that the complex congeries of factors that determines a speaker’s response to the pressure of standardization is resistant to any straightforward analysis. Speakers’ responses are in any event not of a piece, either with each other or with their behaviour; it is well known that working-class speakers pay (or paid) lip service to the standard while using their vernacular in the local networks which are meaningful to them. We shall have occasion to consider this global–local opposition when we come to examine the role of ideology more closely, below.

The schematic and static view of the standard, which for clear exposition ignores the fact of standardization as a process, reifies and opposes the standard language (or languages) and non-standard varieties. The process of cognition that interprets the abstract as real seems to be common: social class, for example, is a conceptual organization of the reality of inequality (Cannadine 1998: 188), but like many concepts it undergoes widespread objectification, ‘moulding our perceptions of the unequal social world’. It is certainly true that all attempts to define the essential characteristics of the standard are opposed by the facts. We shall later consider Dennett’s ‘intentional stance’, which takes the argument a stage further. Lodge (2004: 207) lists the ‘set of beliefs’ current in France about the standard language as comprising three: the ideal state of the language is one of uniformity; the most valid form of the language is to be found in writing; the standard is inherently better than the adjacent non-standard varieties (more elegant, clearer, etc.). French is standardized to an exceptionally high degree, in the related senses of its relative lack of variation, and in the internalization by its speakers of an unusually normative reflex of the ideology of the standard, so that the French situation illustrates the standardizing principle in a particularly vivid form. We now discuss in turn these characteristics.

The etymology of standard seems to be ultimately from Frankish *standhard ‘steadfast’ or ‘unwavering’, but in practice standard languages, like their associated non-standard dialects, are neither fixed nor monolithic. If we define standardization as the suppression of difference, we can see the process at work most obviously in its application to products like electrical components, in the sense of the reduction of variation to the limits of the practical. The everyday use of the word reflects this: when one talks of a ‘standard’ plug, the sense conveys universal application. The manufacturing goal is realistic, but the analogy with language breaks down instantly because non-standard linguistic variants can re-emerge endowed with different social capital, and the standard language can ‘legitimize’ elements formerly perceived as non-standard. When we come to consider language change, we shall see that much recent change is opposed to the standard, which is a moving target as well as an elusive one. An equally valid conceptualization of standard languages as being subject to continuing, multi-dimensional pressures, as well as exerting them, can be achieved by thinking in terms of Bourdieu’s (1982) neo-Marxist perspective, from which the concept of la langue légitime or autorisée expresses quite cogently the legitimate and dynamically legitimating properties of standard language varieties. These properties are capable of inciting their speakers to engage in a continual process of assimilating arbitrary linguistic forms, in the interests of conferring on these forms a legitimacy that assures the capacity to maintain social distinctions. As J. Milroy remarks (2001: 532), the idea of the standard as invariant cannot in any case be equated with its prestige: ‘it is not sensible to apply the notion of prestige to sets of electric plugs, for example, although they are plainly standardized, and many things that are unstandardized, like hand-made suits, may actually be the ones that acquire prestige.’ The latter attribute stems from the prestige enjoyed by those who speak or write the standard. Divergence from the standard as manifested in spelling and pronunciation is in any case practised in what might be called the ‘hyper-standard’, as we shall see in the following chapter. A further sense of ‘standard’, as Milroy points out, is related to a level of achievement, as in examination standards and similar phrases. The sense here is therefore of a normative goal to be aimed at. But it is plain from the informal remarks of some normativists that certain standard features are regarded as shibboleths, and that these promote the gate-keeping function of the legitimate variety. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a shibboleth as a ‘test word or principle or behaviour or opinion, the use of or inability to use which reveals one’s party, nationality, etc.’ Among well-known shibboleths in lexis are lavatory and napkin as against toilet and serviette. Kingsley Amis (1991: 245), novelist and self-appointed normativist, remarked in the course of a criticism of the use of relevant as synonymous with meaningful or interesting, that the usage is ‘very unpopular […] in some quarters. I’m all for it; it’s a useful or even infallible sign that the writer is a victim of appalling herd-instinct […]’. Even allowing for Amis’s jocular intention, the quotation hints at the double-edged attitude that deplores innovation while welcoming it in the measure that it upholds the gate-keeping function just alluded to.

Along with and against the capacity of the standard to absorb and legitimize change goes an attitude among its speakers that sees language change as unwelcome, a view that is commonly shared by laypersons, as is shown by Amis’s remark. The opposition in this regard between emotion and reason is deep-rooted. A lexical change currently in progress in English is the pluralization of behaviour. Even a professional linguist who is aware that Shakespeare used behaviours, and that processes of this type are perfectly possible and indeed common across languages, may feel distaste at the innovation. This perspective is understandable if we accept that many people dislike change and tend also to adhere to a ‘golden-age’ mentality, especially perhaps as they grow older. However, an oblique reflection of this attitude, cleansed of its judgmental character, may unwittingly enter the discourse of linguistic analysis. In the extract below, for example, Kroch (2001: 699) refers to syntactic change in terms which, while not intended in a negative sense, nevertheless presuppose a dichotomy between an assumed default state of quiescence and the interruption thereof:

Language change is by definition a failure in the transmission across time of linguistic features. Such failures, in principle, could occur within groups of adult native speakers of language, who for some reason substitute one feature for another in their usage, as happens when new words are coined and substituted for old ones; but in the case of syntactic and other grammatical features, such innovation by monolingual adults is largely unattested. Instead, failures of transmission seem to occur in the course of language acquisition; that is, they are failures of learning.

There is no implication here that language change is in any way dysfunctional – the term ‘failure’ is not to be understood in a moral or similar sense. On the other hand, the tacit assumption is that change is the marked state and thus something that needs to be accounted for – in this case by postulating imperfect acquisition during infancy (see 4.2). At various points in this book we will have cause to observe that many of the apparently neutral tenets of modern linguistics owe more to the ideology of standardization than linguists would typically be prepared to admit.

It is obvious enough from a functional linguistic point of view – that is, one that lays stress on efficiency of communication and tends to discuss linguistic phenomena in terms of a tension between the desire for economy on the one hand and for clarity and expressiveness on the other – that language variation and change are undesirable, if only because, at an intermediate stage, the two processes introduce competition between two or more exponents, and hence ‘noise’ or ‘junk’ into the system. The functional view is one that surfaces in one form or another in much, and arguably most, linguistic discussion. Even Labov, in an extended discussion (2001: 3–6) of the negative consequences of language change, remarks (p. 3) that: ‘the continued renewal and far-ranging character of linguistic change is not consistent with our fundamental conception of language as an instrument of social communication.’ The key phrase here is ‘social communication’, and by it Labov appears to mean something like clear and harmonious communication, since his account of language change as dysfunction stresses outcomes such as the difficulty of learning foreign languages (in a wider perspective that includes change across language families as well as within languages); conflict between generations, in the form of irritation experienced by (especially) older members of a speech community at incoming forms, and in derision directed by younger speakers against older features; and difficulties over spelling, caused by sound changes that have left behind them opaque forms like English bight, drought, draught, etc.; this is of course true across languages generally. More serious is the case of language varieties where mutual intelligibility is compromised by variation and change: as Milroy (1992: 34) states: ‘there is no doubt that [communicative] breakdowns arising from the different [grammatical] structures of divergent dialects are quite common’. Regarding the widespread negative perception of language change, Labov remarks (2001: 6): ‘some older citizens welcome the new music and dances, the new electronic devices and computers. But no one has ever been heard to say: “It’s wonderful the way young people talk today. It’s so much better than the way we talked when I was a kid”.’

The second element of the standard language in Lodge’s classification, that sees the most valid form of the language in writing, reflects perhaps a perception that planned language is preferable to unplanned, accompanied of course by a failure to recognize that the one cannot fairly be compared to the other. The result is a tendency to judge speech by the criteria applicable to writing. The following extract from a French ‘complaint letter’ is not untypical:

Je viens d’écouter avec exaspération ce matin une émission […] ponctuée de plusieurs ‘hein’ par minute, de répétitions, ‘le-le-le’, ‘c’est-c’est-c’est’ ou ‘ces-ces-ces’ […]¹

The fact that written language can be planned and polished means that an author is able to achieve effects that are harder to bring off in speech, and that a reader can appreciate these at leisure. It is also of course possible to fix writing to some extent. So much is obvious, but the third of the elements identified by Lodge, the inherent beauty, logicality, etc., of the standard, is based on a surprisingly elementary misconception that is allied to the mismatch between speech and writing. The view that the standard is inherently better than associated non-standard dialects finds expression in various overlapping ways: the standard can be thought as more beautiful; as more suitable for literary expression; as better adapted to conveying abstraction; or, in a functional view, as a useful lingua franca.

The view of the pronunciation of the standard as more beautiful than non-standard varieties of the same language was stated in striking form by Wyld, as follows (1936):

If it were possible to compare systematically every vowel sound in Received Standard [i.e., RP] with the corresponding sound in a number of provincial and other dialects, […] I believe no unbiased listener would hesitate in preferring Received Standard as the most pleasing and sonorous form, and the best suited to be the medium of poetry and oratory.

It is an axiom of perceptual dialectology, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Nature of the Standard
• 2 Grammaticality
• 3 Prestige Speech Patterns
• 4 Language Change
• 5 Social Levelling, or Anti-Standardization
• 6 Away from the Anglo-Saxon Model: the Case of French
• References
• Index