Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe Book series: Standard Language Ideology in Contemporary Europe Editors: Nikolas Coupland and Tore Kristiansen –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1. Tore Kristiansen and Nikolas Coupland (Eds.): Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe. 2011. Tore Kristiansen and Nikolas Coupland (Eds.) Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe NOVUS PRESS OSLO – 2011 Printed with economic support from ..... © Novus AS 2011. Cover: Geir Røsset ISBN: 978-82-7099-659-9 Print: Interface Media as, Oslo. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Novus Press. Acknowledgements This first publication from the SLICE group (Standard Language Ideology in Contemporary Europe) and in its book series has only been possible as a result of much interest and support – which we wish to acknowledge here. The initiative towards the SLICE programme was taken at the LANCHART centre (dgcss.hum.ku.dk). The idea was discussed with members of LANCHART’s International Council at the centre’s annual meeting with the council in 2008, involving Peter Auer, Niko- las Coupland, Paul Kerswill, Dennis R Preston, Mats Thelander, and Helge Sandøy – as well as Peter Garrett as a specially invited ‘sparring partner’. Subsequently, a proposal for a series of Exploratory Workshops was worked out at LANCHART by Frans Gregersen, Tore Kris- tiansen, Shaun Nolan, and Jacob Thøgersen. This volume results from two Exploratory Workshops which were held in Copenhagen, Denmark in February and August of 2009. These workshops, which were the beginnings of SLICE, were financed by the Nordic Research Foundation for the Human and Social Sci- ences, NOS-HS. They took place at Schæffergården, with financial support also from the Foundation for Danish-Norwegian Cooperation. We thank both foundations for their support. The principal applicant for the Exploratory Workshops was Tore Kristiansen (Copenha- gen), and he thanks his co-applicants Kristján Árnason (Reykjavík), Frans Gregersen (Copen- hagen), Pirkko Nuolijärvi (Helsinki), Helge Sandøy (Bergen), Mats Thelander (Uppsala), and Jan-Ola Östman (Helsingfors). All participants were specially invited and made significant contributions to the work of the Exploratory Workshops. The participants – representing the following speech communi- ties (in alphabetic order) – were: Denmark: Frans Gregersen, Tore Kristiansen, Marie Maegaard, Janus Møller, Nicolai Pharao, Pia Quist, Jacob Thøgersen; Finnish-speaking Finland: Pirkko Nuolijärvi, Johanna Vaattovaara; France: Jean-Michel Eloy, Anita B. Han- sen, Shaun Nolan; Germany: Peter Auer, Philipp Stoeckle, Christoph Hare Svenstrup ; Ice- land: Kristján Árnason, Stephen Pax Leonard ; Irish-speaking Ireland: Tadhg Ó hlfearnáin, Noel Ó Murchadha ; The Netherlands: Stefan Grondelaers, Sander van der Harst, Roeland van Hout ; Norway: Ragnhild Anderson, Brit Mæhlum, Unn Røyneland, Helge Sandøy ; Swe- den: Mats Thelander, Lena Wenner; Swedish-speaking Finland: Marie Sund, Jan-Ola Östman; UK: Justine Coupland, Nikolas Coupland, Peter Garrett, Janus Mortensen, Elen Robert, Char- lotte Selleck; USA: Dennis R. Preston. Contents Introduction Nikolas Coupland and Tore Kristiansen SLICE: Critical perspectives on language (de)standardisation…………….......……………..11 Part 1 Community reports (alphabetically ordered by name of community/ language) Barbara Soukup and Sylvia Moosmüller Standard language in Austria………….....................................................................………...39 Frans Gregersen Language and ideology in Denmark………………………………...……………………......47 Peter Garrett, Charlotte Selleck and Nikolas Coupland English in England and Wales: Multiple ideologies…………….…………………………....55 Pirkko Nuolijärvi and Johanna Vaattovaara De-standardisation in progress in Finnish society?...................................................................67 Jan-Ola Östman and Leila Mattfolk Ideologies of standardisation: Finland Swedish and Swedish-language Finland………….....75 Philipp Stoeckle and Christoph Hare Svenstrup Language variation and (de-)standardisation processes in Germany………………………...83 Stephen Pax Leonard and Kristján Árnason Language ideology and standardisation in Iceland……………………………………….…..91 Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin and Noel Ó Murchadha The perception of Standard Irish as a prestige target variety………………………………....97 Loreta Vaicekauskienė Language ‘nationalisation’: One hundred years of Standard Lithuanian...............................105 Stefan Grondelaers and Roeland van Hout The standard language situation in The Netherlands……………………………..…………113 Helge Sandøy Language culture in Norway: A tradition of questioning standard language norms……..…119 Mats Thelander Standardisation and standard language in Sweden…………………………………..……...127 Elen Robert Standardness and the Welsh language…………………….………………………..……….135 Part 2 Theoretical contributions (alphabetically ordered by name of author) Jannis Androutsopoulos Language change and digital media: A review of conceptions and evidence…….….……..145 Peter Auer and Helmut Spiekermann Demotisation of the standard variety or destandardisation? The changing status of German in late modernity (with special reference to south-western Germany)…………….161 Allan Bell Leaving Home: De-europeanisation in a post-colonial variety of broadcast news language…………………………………………………………...………..177 Stefan Grondelaers, Roeland van Hout and Dirk Speelman A perceptual typology of standard language situations in the Low Countries……………...199 Jane Stuart-Smith The view from the couch changing perspectives on the role of television in changing language ideologies and use………………………………………………………223 Introduction SLICE: Critical perspectives on language (de)standardisation Nikolas Coupland and Tore Kristiansen Cardiff University, Wales, UK and Copenhagen University, Denmark BACKGROUND This book is the first publication from the international group of researchers involved in de- veloping the SLICE programme, SLICE being originally coined as an acronym for Standard Language Ideology in Contemporary Europe. This title hints at the interests and objectives of the SLICE research group, but of course it doesn’t define them. The programme is still evolv- ing and the present book is designed to be part of the formative discussion through which em- pirical and theoretical priorities will be established and carried forward. The fundamental aim has been to establish a European network of like-minded (or perhaps constructively antago- nistic) researchers, with the prospect of developing one or more innovative, comparative European projects on standard languages, linguistic standardisation and linguistic destan- dardisation. Many key dimensions of SLICE remain to be determined, and we will introduce some of them in detail in this Introduction. But a first-level examination of the SLICE acronym sug- gests the following. Standard language is itself a slippery concept, and it is in need of further critical consideration. It is self-evident that many of Europe’s languages can legitimately be called standard languages. But SLICE is interested in the criteria according to which the des- ignation ‘standard’ can be applied, no doubt differently in different environments, and in whether the concept has different connotations and implications in different European coun- tries and communities (‘communities’, because the programme will focus on several smaller regions as well as on nation-states). SLICE is interested in ideologies of language as much as in the forms and functions of languages themselves, and in exploring how ideology can be made visible by different research methods. This implies a commitment to researching the attitudes and value-structures that underpin attributions of ‘standard’, potential subjective complexities and shifts in these subjectivities. We expect language ideologies to differ across research sites, and in many cases also within them. Researching language ideologies should give us access to the social and cultural dynamics that position European languages as social- cultural symbols and resources in their different settings. SLICE is concerned with contempo- rary Europe, but this does not imply a neglect of history. On the contrary, we are interested in – and mainly motivated to analyse and understand – the ways in which contemporary socio- linguistic arrangements across Europe have recently evolved and are currently evolving. While most European languages have long histories of standardisation, SLICE focuses on what is changing now, in the context of late modernity. To that extent the SLICE acronym might alternatively be interpreted as …in a Changing Europe, with an emphasis on change specifically in the era of globalisation. SLICE’s networking ambitions are already being fulfilled. In February and August 2009 about thirty scholars from diverse European contexts gathered in Copenhagen for two ex- ploratory workshops on ‘The nature and role of language standardisation and standard lan- guages in late modernity’. The following countries/ communities were represented at the workshops: Denmark, Finland (Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking), France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland (Irish-speaking), the Lowlands (Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch), Norway, Sweden, UK (English-speaking and Welsh-speaking). The preponderance