Variation Versus Standardisation. the Case of Norwegian Bokmal: Some
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Eskil Hanssen Variation versus standardisation The case ofNorwegian bokmàl: some sociolinguistic trends Abstract The articIc deals with the devclopment of the Norwegian standard bokmäl and the language situation in Norway at present. Bokmäl came to light during the laller half of the 19th century, through refonns of the prevailing wrillen Danish, at the same time as the other Norwegian standard, the dialcct-based nynorsk. The prin ciplcs and ideologies of the bokmäl refonns arc discussed. The second part of the article deals with the interaction between wriUen and spoken varieties, and their status in society. Examples of prescnt-day linguistic changes and the sociolinguistic forces behind them are discussed. Historical background of bokTrnU Norway has been characterised as a "laboratory" for language planning (Vik~r 1988:7), and this metaphor may seem appropriate for more than one reason. The history of language standardisation is much shorter than in most other European countrics, only about 150 years old. On the other hand, language planning in the modem sen sc of the word (Fishman 1974:79, Haugen 1979:111) has been very actively pursued, and has concerned both wriUen and spoken language. The language planning activities in the 19th century were conducted along two main lines, resulLing in two wrillen standards, presently called bokmal and nynorsk.! It is not possiblc to go into detail about the historical background within the limited scope of this article. (An extensive overview is given by Haugen 1966, sec also Venäs 1990.) Instead I shall discuss the case of bokmal, sketching its origin, development, and present status. This I shall do by way of an account of some strategies, ideologies, and auempts in the planning of bokmäl, their success and failure, and I shalltry to relate them to the present language silUation. My main concern will bc how refonns of the wrillen language have been set in 351 relation to the spoken language, and - vice versa - to wh at extent the written standard of bokmäl exerts influence upon the spoken language. The reason why Norwegian language planning and standardisation started relatively late is an obvious political one. During a 400 years long union with Denrnark, Danish was superimposed as written language in Norway. The mediae val language tradition declined gradually during the 15th century, and in the following centuries written Norwegian was used practically only in popular po etry, ballads and so on. By the time of the Reformation Danish had gained a strong foothold in Norway; from that time on it was in practice the only official language in Norway. The fate of the Norwegian language in the late middle ages and early modem time is in many ways similar to that of Frisian, as described among others by Vries (1990). The language situation in the following centuries is a typical example of linguistic dominanee, in the form of imposition, with strong source language agentivity (van Coetsem 1988, 1990), in the sense that Danish was imposed upon and exerted its influence upon Norwegian. This was the overall picture until far into the 19th century, although some pioneers advo cated a change in the state of affairs as early as the 1830s. The Nordic languages are not only closely rclated, they also have historical developments which are quite similar in many ways and to some extent inter twined. On the Other hand it is striking how different their social history is, particularly their history of (modem) standardisation. In contrast to Norwegian, two of the other Nordic languages, Swedish and Danish, were established in an early modem form in the early 16th century, in connection with the Reformation. The New Testament and the whole Bible were translated in Sweden in 1526 and 1541, and in Denrnark in 1555. These were important events in the process of standardisation. In Norway there were no similar efforts, and no attempts at re establishing a wrinen standard were made during the Reformation. Authors in the 16th century and later wrote in Danish, with only a few Norwegian word forms slipping into their texts. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries both Danish and Swedish were firmly established as national languages. They were furthermore cultivated and im proved, and theoretical dissertations on language problcms were published. In Sweden Samuel Columbus' En Svensk Orde-skötsel (1678) and the Danish Peder Syv's Den danske Sprogkunst (1685) among others propagate the high qualities of the vemacular, and arc parallel to works on language cultivation which were published in other countries, e.g. the Netherlands (van der Wal 1990). The estab lishment ofthe Swedish Academy in 1786 was a landmark; one of the aims ofthe academy was to promote the "purity, strength and dignity" of the Swedish lan- 352 Eskil Hanssen guage. In Norway the study of language was mainly restricted to collecting lexical material from various dialects. Language planning in Norway could only begin after the Danish political hegemony had come to an end. which happcned in the political turbulence after the Napoleonic wars. One outcome was that the union bctween Denmark and Norway was dissolved in 1814. Norway consequently emerged as a State-Nation (Fishman 1972:26). Not long afterwards voices echoing the German philosophi cal discussion on the problems of Sprache-Nation were heard. The new political state of affairs offered a scenario of more options as to the written language situation: 1) gradually to change the prevailing Danish language 2) to create a written language on the basis of popular dialects (Jahr 1989:9). There was actually a third possibility: simply to continue using written Danish. This third altemative was possible thanks to the fact that the two languages are so c10sely related. (Written Danish is easily understandable to Norwegians.) Those who advocated this third view held that nothing at all should be done to the Norwegian language situation. Points 1 and 2 have a common denominator. the aim to abolish the Danish language hegemony in Norway. All three strategies were adopted. partly in paral lel. An extensive account of the subsequent history of language planning is given by Haugen (1966). It was the chief poet of the Romantic pcriod. Henrik Wergc1and (1808-1845). who first formulated the program for (gradual) reforms. while the school-teacher Knud Knudsen (1812-1895) worked out the actual plans. (lncidentally this work was carried out at the same time as the the linguist Ivar Aasen (1813-1896) codified the dialect-based land~mal norm.) Later on Moltke Moe. who was pro fessor of folklore. became the leading propagandist for official recognition of the reform program. Many of the leading wrilers of the lime. especially Henrik Ibsen. were pioneers when il came 10 bringing the reformed versions of Dano-Norwe gian into use. The firsl reform of Norwegian-Danish look pI ace in 1862. and had a ralher Iimited scope. One poinl was to change (nationalise) lhe spelling of certain loan words like Kritik. FUosofi (formerly Critique. PhUosopme elc.). Another point was 10 alter the rendering of long vawcls. from double la single spelling (Miil > MU"mile"). To scholars who were interesled in language planning it was evident lhal more exlensive reforms were necessary. The more fundamental slrategies implied expanding the vocabulary. by way of permitting the use of specifically Norwegian words. (They were olherwise considered provincialisms and banned.) Also a more fundamental spelling reform was necessary. and so was a grammali- Variation versus standardisation 353 cal re-modeling. The spoken basis for the reforms was the speech variety used mainly by the urban elite and most of the bourgeoisie as weIl. Various names have been used for this speech form, the most commonly used and most appropri ate being dannet dagligtale ("educated everyday speech"). This speech variety was developed on the basis of written Danish. The written language served as a raw material that was transformed by Norwegian grapho-phonological rules (Seip 1916); the key-word is spelling pronunciation. Spoken Danish seems to have had little effect. This process has been characterised as creolisation by Haugen (1982: 16), who classifics the result as a "tertiary" dialect. A by-product of the imposition of Danish was sociolinguistic stratification in several cities, e.g. in Oslo where there is a traditional, low-status dialect and a distinctly different educated speech variety. A common, generally accepted, spoken standard has, however, not been developed in Norway. But standard Eastern Norwegian (SEN) is extensively used in the capital and neighbouring areas and strongly aspires to become an even more widespread standard. Again a case of source language agentivity. (See references to van Coetsem above.) The revised form of Dano-Norwegian was developed gradually, and eventu ally codified in 1907. It was implemented very quickly, it was soon universally accepted and taken into use (newspapers, public administration etc.). In retrospect one may wonder why it took so long to complete the revision of DN. The first discussions started in the 1830s, and the actual program or model for the linguistic changes, was formulated in the 1850s. So why then did it take more than half a century? Why did not the leading groups in society, and other users of Danish come to this conclusion at a much earlier stage, that it was necessary to reform or restructure the written language on the basis of spoken Norwegian? During the first stage in the devclopment of the Norwegian bokmiil little reference was made to the popular dialects, especially the working-class dialects in the cities. Throughout the 19th century there was a growing interest in dialects, and an increasingly positive attitude towards dialects in general, especially among linguists and politicians who were engaged in language planning.