Österreichisches Deutsch

Sprache der gegenwart

Herausgegeben von Rudolf Muhr

Band 14

PETER LANG
Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Wien
 Rudolf Muhr (ed.)

Non-Dominant
Varieties
of Pluricentric
Languages.
Getting
the Picture
In Memory of Michael Clyne

In Collaboration with Catrin Norrby,

Leo Kretzenbacher, Carla Amorós

PETER LANG
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
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ISSN 1618-5714
ISBN 978-3-631-62024-3 (Print)
ISBN 978-3-653-01621-5 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-01621-5

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 5

Table of contents

John HAJEK (Melbourne, Australia): Homage to Michael Clyne: linguist,

11
colleague and advocate.

I. Defining dominance and non-dominance in pluricentric languages

and exploring their effects on linguistic theory

1. Rudolf MUHR (Graz, Austria): Linguistic dominance and non-dominance in

23
pluricentric languages. A typology.
2. Catrin NORRBY (Stockholm, Sweden); Camilla WIDE (Turku, Finland);
Jan LINDSTRÖM (Helsinki, Finland); Jenny NILSSON (Gothenburg, 49
Sweden): Finland Swedish as a non-dominant variety of Swedish –
extending the scope to pragmatic and interactional aspects.
3. Carla AMORÓS / Carmen FERNÁNDEZ / Natividad HERNÁNDEZ /
Emilio PRIETO (Salamanca, Spain): Difficulties in defining the standard 63
Spanish lexicon.

II. Non-dominance of varieties and languages in historical periods and

in the context of special language

4. Nils LANGER (Bristol, UK): Finding non-dominant languages in the

nineteenth century – problems and potentials from historical 83
sociolinguistics.
5. Chiara MESSINA (Milano/Genoa, Italy): Researching a Language for
Special Purposes within a Non-Dominant Variety: Problematic Issues and 107
possible Ways Out. An Overview based on the Example of Austrian German.

III. Non-dominant varieties that successfully improved their status

6. Heinz L. KRETZENBACHER (Melbourne, Australia): The emancipation of

Strine: Australian English as an established post-colonial national standard 129
of English.
7. Johan DE CALUWE (Ghent, Belgium): Dutch as a bi-centric language: 143
a lexicographic (r)evolution.

IV. Non-dominant varieties of languages where the status of the

variety is unclear, evolving or changing

8. John HAJEK (Melbourne, Australia): (Non-)dominant varieties of 155

a (non-) pluricentric language? Italian in Italian and Switzerland.
9. Marilena KARYOLEMOU (Nicosia, Cyprus): Cypriot Greek as a non- 167
dominant variety of Greek
10. Jasmine DUM-TRAGUT (Salzburg, Austria): Amen teł hay kay. 20 years 187
later – Pluricentric Armenian and its changed dominance hierarchy.
11. Salvatore DEL GAUDIO (Kiev, Ukraine): The Russian Language in 207
Ukraine: some unsettled questions about its status as a ‘national’ variety.
12. Curt WOOLHISER (Waltham, USA): “Belarusian Russian”: Sociolinguistic 227
Status and Discursive Representations.
 6

13. Domergue SUMIEN (Aix-en-Provence, France): Occitan: harmonizing 263

non-dominant standards throughout four states.
14. Josep-Àngel MAS (València, Spain): Catalan as a pluricentric language: 283
the Valencian case.
15. Esther Nuñez Villanueva (Manchester, UK): The role of the media in
standardising a regional variety: the case of Canal Sur and Seville Spanish 301
in the pluricentric debate.

V. The effects of pluricentricity in the Portuguese speaking world

16. Maria Eugenia L. DUARTE (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil): When speech and
writing are too far apart. Non-dominant features of Brazilian Portuguese 315
becoming dominant.
17. Aline BAZENGA (Madeira, Portugal): Variation in subject-verb agreement 327
in an insular variety of European Portuguese.
18. Ana Raquel SIMÕES / Sara SOUSA (Aveiro, Portugal): Language 349
teachers' practices, representations and knowledge on intralinguistic
diversity: a case study in Portugal.

VI. Dominance and non-dominance in the Arabic-speaking world in

the context of diglossia and multilingualism

19. Dawn MARLEY (Guildford, UK): Competing varieties of French and Arabic 363
in Morocco.
20. Abderrazzaq MSELLEK (Fès, Morocco): Sociolinguistic Aspects of 381
Moroccan Arabic.
21. Munirah ALAJLAN (Kuwait City, Kuwait): Dominant and Non-Dominant 387
Varieties in the Gulf: Social Class or Region?
22. Zeinab Ibrahim (Qatar): Egyptian Revolution 2011 Slogans: Intuitive
Language Choices between Dominant and Non-Dominant Varieties of 401
Arabic.

VII. Dominance and non-dominance of pluricentric languages in

multilingual societies in Africa, India and Asia

23. Simone ASHBY (Lisbon, Portugal): Co-producers of this means of

expression’: Evidence from Mozambique in support of the study of 415
indigenizing languages.
24. Aditi GHOSH (Calcutta, India): Bhojpuri as a non-dominant variety of 435
Hindi.
25. Adrian TIEN (Singapore): Chinese Hokkien and its lexicon in Singapore: 453
evidence for an indigenised Singapore culture.
26. Jidda Hassan JUMMA’A (Maiduguri, Nigeria): Nigerian English:
Linguistic, sociolinguistic and conversational characteristics in the 473
framework of dominance/non-dominance.
27. Kelen Ernesta FONYUY (Bayreuth, Germany): Attitudes toward less 491
Dominant Accents of Cameroon English.
 7

In memory of
Michael G. Clyne
 9

Preface

This volume comprises 28 papers that were presented at the

“1st International Conference on Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric
Languages” which was organised by the “Working Group on Non-Dominant
Varieties of Pluricentric Languages” and held in Graz (Austria) from July 11-13,
2011. The conference was also held in memory of Michael Clyne - eminent
linguist, scholar, teacher, language enthusiast, advocate of multilingualism and
friend who died on October 29, 2010. The volume is a tribute to his important
contributions in many fields of linguistics, especially in sociolinguistics,
pragmatics, bilingualism and multilingualism and in the theory of pluricentric
languages. It was his seminal anthology on 19 pluricentric languages, published
in 1992, that introduced the distinction between dominant and non-dominant
varieties of pluricentric languages. John Hajek – his successor as director of the
“Research Unit for Multilingualism & Cross Cultural Communication (RUMACCC)
– contributed a moving homage to Michael Clyne to this volume which gives an
account of Michael’s outstanding achievements.
The conference in Graz was the first international event to document the
situation of non-dominant varieties world–wide in order to identify common or
diverging features. It allowed us to gain initial insights into the codification and
corpus and status planning of non-dominant varieties. At the same time, the
scope and quality of the papers presented at the conference encouraged us to
plan further conferences on the topic, starting with the second conference in
Salamanca in 2012. My associate editors and I would like to thank the scholars
taking part in the conference.
The papers of this volume fall into 7 thematic sections: (1) Defining
dominance and non-dominance in pluricentric languages and exploring their
effects on linguistic theory; (2) Non-dominance of varieties and languages in
historical periods and in the context of special language; (3) Non-dominant
varieties that successfully improved their status; (4) Non-dominant varieties of
languages where the status of the variety is unclear, evolving or changing; (5)
The effects of pluricentricity in the Portuguese-speaking world; (6) Dominance
and non-dominance in the Arabic-speaking world in the context of diglossia and
multilingualism; (7) Dominance and non-dominance of pluricentric languages in
multilingual societies in Africa, India and Asia.
 10

The papers treat a wide range of topics connected with the concept of
dominance and non-dominance in pluricentric languages and the implications
on their varieties and speakers. The volume deals with 18 languages and 31
different national and other varieties in 29 countries of the world: Egyptian
Arabic, Kuwaiti Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Eastern Armenian, Western Armenian,
Belgian Dutch, Australian English, Cameroon English, Catalan, Nigerian English,
Moroccan French, Frisian (Friisk), Austrian German, Low German (Plattdüütsch),
Cypriot Greek, Bhojpuri Hindi, Chinese Hokkien, Occitan in four countries, Italian
Italian, Swiss Italian, South Jutish (Sønderjysk), Brazilian Portuguese, Madeiran
Portuguese, Mozambique Portuguese, Belarusian Russian, Ukrainian Russian,
Canal Sur and Sevillian Spanish, Castilian Spanish, Valencian Catalan, Finnish
Swedish and Swedish Swedish.
As editor, it is my hope that the results presented here will find a large
number of readers and stimulate further research. This hope is shared by the co-
organisers of the conference who also assisted in editing this volume, as well as
the authors of this volume and the members of the “Working Group on Non-
Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages” who would like to invite other
scholars to take part in their work.
My sincere thanks go to Catrin Norrby (Stockholm, SE), Leo Kretzenbacher
(Melbourne, AU) and Carla Amorós Negre (Salamanca, ES) for their great help
and engagement in organizing the conference, in reviewing the draft papers and
generally for their support and encouragement. My thanks also go to Dawn
Marley (Guildford, UK) and Nils Langer (Bristol, UK) who acted as reviewers and
to Naomi Havencroft who helped with the proofreading.

Rudolf Muhr Graz, December 2011

In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the
Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 11-22.

John HAJEK
(University of Melbourne, Australia)
j.hajek@unimelb.edu.au

Homage to Michael Clyne:

linguist, colleague and advocate

Abstract

Michael Clyne played a fundamental role in the development of

pluricentricity as an important linguistic concept worthy of research by
scholars world-wide. He was also one of Australia's greatest linguists
with an international reputation in a wide range of areas beyond the
study of pluricentric languages, including sociolinguistics, bilingualism,
and intercultural communication. Here a snapshot is provided of the
great man's academic life and work, intended as a permanent, albeit
very partial, record.

1. Introduction
It was a great honour to be invited to give the keynote presentation at the
International Conference on Non-dominating Varieties of Pluricentric
Languages, a symposium held in Graz in 2011 in memory of Michael Clyne. For
the occasion I was asked to present on Michael's contribution to linguistics - in
both academic and non-academic contexts - from the perspective of someone
who had known Michael as colleague, research co-worker and mentor. No such
contribution in his memory could of course do justice to Michael and his
immense legacy. Michael dedicated his life to the pursuit of linguistic knowledge
in so many different areas, and to its application for the benefit of all, not only of
linguists. It goes without saying, that amongst his many achievements, Michael
had a critical role in the development of the concept of pluricentricity as an
important object of linguistic research. It is only fitting that he should be
honoured by an international conference on pluricentric languages.
 12

2. Early life and the academic arc of time

Michael George Clyne was born in Melbourne on 12 October 1939, where
he grew up in a bilingual (German and English) environment. Such an upbringing
- especially involving German - was unusual at the time, but he was proud of his
linguistic upbringing and was determined as an adult that others should also be
able to share the benefits of bilingualism (see below). He attended Christ Church
and Caulfield Grammar Schools, before entering the University of Melbourne in
1957. He was already known as a linguist at school, preparing hand-written
multilingual dictionaries and materials. It is no wonder then that he excelled in
the study of languages at university. He completed his BA (First Class Honours) in
four languages (German, Dutch with French and Icelandic) in 1960. He
subsequently completed his MA (First Class) with his thesis Personal pronouns
ending in *k in the Germanic languages written in German (Clyne 1962), a copy of
which remains available in the University of Melbourne's library.
He then moved to the newly established Monash University, in
Melbourne's suburban belt, to work as a tutor in German Studies, before
completing in 1965 his PhD there entitled The language assimilation of post-war
German-speaking migrants in Australia. It was this focus on sociolinguistics that
would continue so successfully to drive much of Michael's research in
subsequent decades. It was also the first completed PhD in humanities at that
university, a point of some pride for him. Michael moved quickly through the
academic ranks at Monash: from tutor in 1962-1963 to Associate Professor in
German Studies by 1972. In 1988 he changed departments to take up the Chair in
Linguistics at Monash, before returning to the University of Melbourne as full-
time Professorial Fellow in Linguistics in 2001. Although Michael never stopped
working, he formally retired in 2005 in his 65th year: he was adamant that older
academics should vacate their positions at official retirement age to give
opportunities to new generations of scholars.

3. The Nature of Michael's academic work

3.1 Teaching
Given his academic background, it is no surprise that Michael taught
German language and linguistics, Germanic linguistics and sociolinguistics, as
well as general linguistics over five decades. Even as Professorial Fellow in
Linguistics at Melbourne - normally a research-only role, he insisted on teaching
courses on sociolinguistics and bilingualism until retirement, so that he could
 13

continue to share his expertise and passion with students to inspire them to
continue research in both fields. Wherever he taught, students were inspired by
his remarkable enthusiasm and many became research students under his
supervision.

3.2 Administration
While Michael's university passions were undoubtedly his teaching and
research, he also held - with distinction - major administrative responsibilities
for many years - as head of section, department and research centres - the last
both at Melbourne and Monash. His administrative service also extended to a
long list of university committees. He was critical of managerial incursions into
administration - a trend which has now overwhelmed the university sector in
Australia. He held firm to the longstanding notion - one that started to fade in
practice in Australian universities in the late 1980s - that ultimate administrative
responsibility and decision-making lay with academics themselves rather than
with administrative staff. The role of the latter was instead to assist the free
work of academics, rather than to control it. Today's managerialist control of
Australian universities was a tremendous disappointment to Michael, especially
when he compared it to the academic focus that remained in German or Austrian
universities.

3.3 Research
While Michael's other university-related achievements are by no means to
be understated, there is no doubt as to his international reputation in linguistic
research. He had a wide range of research interests for which he was well known
and on which he published and supervised. These interests include:
a. Sociolinguistics
b. Language attitudes
c. Multilingualism and multiculturalism
d. Rhetorical style and structure
e. Bilingualism/trilingualism
f. German/English/Dutch/Germanic linguistics
g. Immigrant languages and linguistics
h. Intercultural and intracultural communication
i. Pragmatics
j. Language policy
k. Exclusionary language
 14

l. Religious language
m. Linguistic demography
n. Contact linguistics
o. Language education
p. Australian English
q. Second language acquisition

Michael was justifiably proud of his research and publication track record,
and lack of space prevents me from listing his contributions to each of the listed
topics above. Since his first publication in 1965, his name has appeared on more
than 300 articles and chapters, with some still in press or to appear, as this
volume is published. He published on his own but also very often as co-author
with many others - who are simply too many to name here. But even on this
point he was a leader in encouraging collaborative research projects and
authorship - well before others began to do the same in linguistics and other
fields in the humanities.
On Michael's return to the University of Melbourne in 2001, he was keen to
establish collaborative research links with colleagues such as myself, who shared
common research interests of a sociolinguistic kind. At my request he kindly
provided me with his then recent publication list (1996-2000) so that I could
obtain a clearer picture of his current interests. I was immediately struck by one
year (somewhat typical I have to say). In 1997 Michael had published 17 refereed
items - an extraordinary achievement for any academic - especially in an
Australian setting where the normal target, not necessarily met, is only two such
publications a year on average. His contributions in 1997 ranged from a general
presentation of multilingualism in a major international handbook (Clyne 1997a)
to census-based analysis of domestic multilingualism in Australia that he co-
wrote with long-time research co-worker Sandra Kipp (Clyne and Kipp 1997).
Over his lifetime Michael also authored, co-authored or edited thirty
books, many of huge field-defining importance, and across a wide range of
topics. It is less well-known he wrote textbooks, such as Efficient German, first
published in 1965, and kept in print for many years through three editions. More
recently, he co-authored Living Lingo (Clyne, Burridge and de Lapps 2009), a
sociolinguistically oriented textbook for Australian secondary students. But
Michael is of course best known internationally for his research monographs and
volumes. Transference and Triggering (Clyne 1967) had tremendous impact on
notions of code-switching and language contact. There is no doubt of the
 15

importance of his books Language and Society in the German-speaking Countries

(Clyne 1984) and The German Language in a Changing Europe (Clyne 1995) on the
sociolinguistics of the German-speaking world. Michael's edited volume
Pluricentric Languages (Clyne 1992) is an essential text cited in all pluricentric
research, while he was deftly able to combine the question of pluricentricity with
migration linguistics in Pluricentric Languages in an Immigrant Context: Spanish,
Arabic and Chinese (Clyne and Kipp 1999). Michael brought together intercultural
communication, sociolinguistics and contact linguistics in such volumes as Inter-
cultural Communication at Work (Clyne 1994), Dynamics of Language Contact (Clyne
2003) and most recently Tiles in a Multilingual Mosaic: Macedonian, Filipino and
Somali (Clyne and Kipp 2006) which highlighted Michael's ability to extend his
expertise to newer immigrant communities and their languages in Australia.
Michael's huge contribution to research is not only in printed form. He was
keen to share his expertise through research training, and over his career he
supervised a long list of graduate students to successful completion of theses,
many of whom are today academics and educators in Australia and overseas.
They include Anne Pauwels, Francesco Cavallaro, Lesley Farrell, Eve Fesl, Daphne
Huang, Howard Nicholas, Yvette Slaughter, Uldis Ozolins, Lin Zheng, Brigitte
Lambert, Doris Schüpbach, Jo-Ann Hughson, Anya Woods, Jim Hlavac, Marie-
Thérèse Jensen, Carla Finocchiaro, Meredith Bartlett, Sue Fernandez, Jimmy
Hoek, Fred Klarberg, Ingrid Seebus, Margaret Gearon, Andrea Truckenbrodt,
Roula Tsokalidou and Sandra Kipp. He was a remarkable supervisor and a
thoughtful and generous mentor, not only to his students but to many of his
junior colleagues, including myself.

4. Language in the community: service, activism and advocacy

Michael is of course not only to be recognized for his important academic
output and impact. He used his research expertise and personal experience to be
at all times a passionate advocate for multilingualism and multiculturalism,
language rights, as well as migrant/refugee rights in all contexts.
Service to the community and the profession were essential to Michael's
advocacy. He served for many years on school board committees (for German,
Dutch, English), ethnic community committees, the Migrant Education Action
Committee, the National Advisory Committee on Multicultural Education, German
radio program committees, professional associations as well as a raft of editorial
boards. Michael was also passionate about the teaching of languages other than
 16

English in Australian primary and secondary schools, so that all children could
benefit, including those from monolingual English-speaking families. He worked
on a wide range of committees and projects, in addition to public advocacy, to try
to achieve that goal. It is no surprise, then, that the Australian state considered to
be most successful on this front is his home state of Victoria - thanks to a great
degree to Michael's steadfast contribution in so many different ways.
Over decades he was also able to successfully combine academic research
with community activity by establishing research centres:
(a) Centre for Migrant Studies, part of the National Languages Institute
of Australia, which he opened at Monash University and led from
1974;
(b) Language and Society Centre (LASC) set up in 1990 and which
continues at Monash today;
(c) Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural
Communication (RUMACCC) in 2001 within the School of Languages
and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. RUMACCC is
discussed in further detail below.
While each of these centres always had a clear research focus, equally important
to Michael was their engagement with the community, as well as with public and
private organizations.
The extent of Michael's public and community advocacy is simply
extraordinary. He saw it as his task to ensure that language and other rights had
to be promoted and defended - both in academic and non-academic contexts. In
addition to serving on many committees, he authored and co-authored a long list
of reports, made hundreds of media appearances (press, and radio), and gave
similar numbers of public lectures and talks. In RUMACCC's 2005 annual report,
Michael listed 19 conference presentations and public lectures for that year
alone, with an extraordinary reach of locations and audiences, as seen in these
few examples:

(a) The value of bilingual education (Bayswater South Primary School)

(b) Helping 21st century Australians overcome the hurdle of
monolingualism (Geelong Grammar School)
(c) Hungarian in Australia (Comenius University, Bratislava).

In addition, Michael gave nine radio interviews in 2005 on such things as

the value of bilingualism, and the rise of Globlish around the world.
 17

Michael's tenacious advocacy skills are well known. He was always willing
to write letters, lobby ministers and administrators and help others in need in
Australia and overseas, seen in such things as his contribution to the fight
against Slovak government attempts to reduce the rights of Hungarian speakers
in Slovakia (Kontra, 2005).
A more recent local example that I know very well is Michael's important
role in changing the law in the Australian state of Victoria that technically
restricted education in languages other than English. Although the law had long
been forgotten, it was suddenly remembered in the mid-2000s by bureaucrats as
a way to thwart the opening of a private bilingual German-English primary
school in Melbourne. The school's error in their eyes was to divide its program
equally across the two languages, rather than give clear preference to English, as
required by that law. As a result of Michael's dogged lobbying, the law was
amended and the Deutsche Schule operates successfully in Melbourne in the way
that its organizing committee had always planned.
Michael's book Australia's Language Potential (Clyne 2005) is a permanent
record of how he was so able to combine his research expertise, personal
knowledge and public advocacy. Clearly written, and easily accessible to the
general public, he makes a cogent and compelling case about the importance of
multilingualism, the need to tap into Australia's existing linguistic resources and
for adequate languages education to combat what he termed so vividly as
Australia's 'monolingual mindset'.
If all this were not enough, Michael also expanded into newer media to
promote the benefits of having more than one language: he co-produced video
materials Growing up with more than one language to show others how easy it was to
raise children bilingually. These materials (Beligan, Clyne and Lotherington 1999),
now transferred to DVD, are still available.

5. Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural Commu-

nication (RUMACCC)
Michael always understood how the value of research, community
engagement and public advocacy should be properly housed and made visible.
After having established two research centres at Monash (see above), Michael
was able to formally launch in December 2001 the Research Unit for
Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural Communication (RUMACCC). I take the
privilege of presenting RUMACCC here since it was dear to his heart and I have
 18

been actively involved in it since its inception. On Michael's retirement he was

no longer able to maintain formal administrative roles, and I was fortunate
enough to be given responsibility for it.
RUMACCC's task, as its name suggests, is precisely to research and promote
multilingualism and cross-cultural communication in Australia and elsewhere.
Although a small operation, it collects and prepares annual reports on school
languages data (mainly for Victoria), and offers a range of community oriented
activities and materials):1

(1) brochures used around Australia explaining the benefits of

languages education, multilingualism and biliteracy
(2) the very successful Raising Children in more than one Language public
seminars Michael helped to establish more than twenty years ago
and which he contributed to, even in ill health, till 2010
(3) free downloadable readers for children for smaller and larger
languages, e.g. Norf'k, French, Mongolian, Lithuanian, Portuguese,
Slovene, and Spanish
(4) a special mother tongue-early literacy initiative preparing trilingual
readers and early grade readers for the many smaller languages of
East Timor.
With respect to research projects hosted by RUMACCC, these include:

(1) community languages in Australia in the 21st century

(2) Scandinavian languages in Australia
(3) language maintenance in Australia and East Timor
(4) language education and policy
(5) the Address Project.

The last item has always been known to its participants by that vague name, and
it is worth detailing here since it has meant so much to Michael and his
colleagues. Michael was the driving force behind it and one that simply could not
be resisted. Through sheer persistence and enthusiasm he brought together four
like-minded linguists (with some sociolinguistic interest and expertise): John
Hajek (Italian), Leo Kretzenbacher (German), Catrin Norrby (Swedish) and Jane
Warren (French). The four of us had always had good intentions but never

1
Also visible at its website: www.rumaccc.unimelb.edu.au
 19

enough time to meet. Michael was determined we should work together, across
these four languages, in order to: (1) develop for the first time research
collaboration and collegiality across the School of Languages and Linguistics in
which we were all housed; and (2) ensure there would be a ongoing
sociolinguistic legacy after his retirement. He also allowed us to pick a general
theme that we were all interested in (and three had previous expertise in): the
use of address pronouns in our four European languages. Critically, Michael then
made sure things happened. Soon there was success with a nationally funded
(Australian Research Council [ARC]) project involving French, German and
Swedish, while, for purely technical reasons, Italian became the focus of a
smaller parallel project. The project has also received other research funding
over time.
Our address research is interdisciplinary to a T (pun intended!), involving
pragmatics, language attitudes, cross-linguistic variation, social and linguistic
change. For the larger project a huge amount of data was collected in France,
Sweden, Finland, Germany (East and West), and Austria, and then transcribed
and analysed - with the help of research assistants in each of those countries and
in Australia. The project also had, and still has, a clear pluricentric focus –
particularly for Swedish and German. Results of the ARC-funded project were
distilled, with additional data obtained on address practice in English-speaking
countries, and written up in Michael's final book Language and Human Relations
(Clyne, Norrby and Warren 2009). It is a remarkably clear and easy-to-read
synthesis and account of address in Europe today and one which also develops
and incorporates a new multiparametric model and theory of address. The book
is undoubtedly the new benchmark for address research.
Meanwhile the productivity of the project has been tremendous, with a
long list of presentations, supervised theses, grants and publications (involving
one or more of Clyne, Hajek, Kretzenbacher, Norrby, Warren & others) on a
range of different languages across different continents. It is somewhat ironic
how much work on European address has been successfully conducted many
thousands of kilometres away in Australia - much of it with Michael's input.
Work continues on the project - it has become a lifetime commitment for the
remaining four project members - with presentations (including at this
conference) and publications continuing to flow.
 20

6. Official recognition of Michael's life's work

Michael's contribution to linguistics, education, knowledge in general and
to society was so important and effective, it is only fitting it be officially
acknowledged at the highest levels. Again, Michael’s is an outstanding track
record. Few linguists are made a Member of the Order of Australia - in Michael's
case it was "in recognition of service to education, particularly in the field of
linguistics". He was also simultaneously Fellow of the Australian Social Sciences
Academy and the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Foreign Member of
the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. Recognition in the German-speaking
world came with such things as the Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft
und Künste, 1. Klasse, the German Cross of Merit, the prestigious Humboldt
Research and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prizes, as well as an honorary doctorate
awarded by the University of Munich.2

7. A final few words

Michael's legacy – intellectual and personal - is vast and will continue to be
influential - for which we are all grateful. Even though his health began to fail
him and mobility became a serious issue for some time before his unexpected
passing on 29 October 2010, he continued to work on the things he loved:
linguistics in one form or another.
Those of us who knew him all have a unique story to tell about him. On his
retirement from the University of Melbourne in 2005, a formal farewell was
organized. The large-scale event was a great success - with hundreds of
participants from around Australia. The organizers also prepared a volume of
tributes (Grey, Hajek, and Kipp 2005)3 - where his students and colleagues -
national and international - wrote about Michael and their relationship and
experiences with him. The volume is a treasure trove of good will and
recognition of Michael's unique skills and ability.4
To this tribute I would like to add one brief anecdote - about my own first
contact with Michael in 1977 and the unexpected synchronicity associated with
it. I was a fifteen year-old on my way to meet my mother who worked for the
Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in Melbourne’s city centre. As I

2
My thanks go to Jane Warren who helped with the final editing of this chapter.
3
Also available online at www.rumaccc.unimelb.edu.au
4
See also Nettelbeck (2011) who also provides other important information about
Michael, including his much loved family.
 21

approached her building, I could see her walking towards me accompanied by a

small man in distinctive glasses, trench coat tied around the waist and carrying a
briefcase (a look he kept for decades). I still remember very clearly my mother
introducing him to me, adding the words 'one day you might be working with
him'. As a teenager I was very embarrassed by such a statement and considered it
to be somewhat fanciful to say the least. I met Michael again many years later in
1990, by which time I was an academic, and then met him intermittently until we
began working together at the University of Melbourne in 2001. He was a great
mentor and like many others, I am grateful for his kind support. Michael really
was an exceptional human being, and also an extremely modest one. He was
always ready to recognize the contributions and collaboration of others, and if I
may be allowed to use his often-used phrase, I would simply like to say to him:

Thank you very much!

8. References
Beligan, Anna, Michael Clyne and Heather Lotherington, (1999): Growing up with
English Plus. Melbourne: Language Australia.
Clyne, Michael (1962): Persönliche Fürwörter mit der Endung -k in den
germanischen Sprachen. University of Melbourne M.A. thesis.
Clyne, Michael (1965): Efficient German. Melbourne: Macmillan Press, 1st edition.
Clyne, Michael (1967): Transference and Triggering. Nijhoff, The Hague.
Clyne, Michael (1984): Language and Society in the German-speaking countries.
Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Clyne, Michael (1995): The German Language in a Changing Europe. Cambridge.
Cambridge University Press.
Clyne, Michael (ed.) (1992): Pluricentric Languages. Differing Norms in Different
Countries. Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter.
Clyne, Michael (1994): Intercultural Communication at Work. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Clyne, Michael (1997): Multilingualism. In F. Coulmas (ed): The Handbook of
Sociolinguistics. Oxford. Blackwell, 301-314.
Clyne, Michael (2003): Dynamics of Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Clyne, Michael (2005): Australia's Language Potential. Sydney. UNSW Press.
 22

Clyne, Michael and Sandra Kipp (1999): Pluricentric Languages in an Immigrant

Context: Spanish, Arabic and Chinese Berlin: Mouton.
Clyne, Michael, and Sandra Kipp (2006): Tiles in a Multilingual Mosaic:
Macedonian, Filipino and Somali. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Clyne, Michael, Catrin Norrby and Jane Warren (2009): Language and Human
Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clyne, Michael and Sandra Kipp (1997): Trends and chance in Home Language
Use and Shift in Australia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural
Development 18: 451-473.
Clyne, Michael, Kate Burridge and Debbie de Lapps (2009): Living Lingo.
Collingwood: VATE.
Grey, Felicity, John Hajek and Sandra Kipp (eds): For Michael Clyne, from some of
his friends and colleagues. Melbourne: RUMACCC.
Kóntra, Miklos (2005): Michael, the Activist. In F. Grey, J. Hajek and S. Kipp (eds):
For Michael Clyne, from some of his friends and colleagues. Melbourne:
RUMACCC, 66-68.
Nettelbeck, Colin (2011): Michael Clyne (1939-2010). In Elizabeth Webby (ed.), The
Australian Academy of the Humanities Proceedings 2010 vol. 35: 98-103.
Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 23-48.

Rudolf MUHR
(University of Graz, Austria)
rudolf.muhr@uni-graz.at

Linguistic dominance and non-dominance

in pluricentric languages: A typology

Abstract
The paper explores the concept of dominance and non-dominance in
pluricentric languages which is based on the power relation between va-
rieties of the same language. In a first step the linguistic concepts and
attitudes of monocentristic languages which are shared by many domi-
nant nations are characterized in detail. The one-nation-one-language
concept is the base of monocentric believes which leads to specific atti-
tudes about the status of other varieties and their speakers. The effects
of these attitudes on non-dominant varieties are investigated in detail
and an updated list of pluricentric languages is presented. It is shown
that both the language situation of different pluricentric languages and
their non-dominant varieties varies considerably. This leads to the find-
ing that non-dominant varieties can only be defined if the pluricentric-
ity of a language is acknowledged. A comprehensive list of features that
are shared by non-dominant varieties and a number of criteria that are
crucial for their status and maintenance is presented and a typology of
different non-dominant varieties presented. Possible strategies to solve
a situation marked by low status and linguistic uncertainty are also dis-
cussed in the concluding chapter.

1. Introduction
The sociolinguistic theory of pluricentric languages was first proposed by
Stewart (1968: 534) where the author introduced the terms “polycentric” and the
distinction between “endonormative” and “exonormative” standardization: 1
The standardization of a given language may be monocentric, consisting
at any given time of a single set of universally accepted norms, or it may

1
Elise Riesel, the eminent Austrian born Soviet linguist also pointed to the polycentric
situation of German and other languages like English already in her 1964 publication
“Der Stil der deutschen Alltagsrede” [The style of German everyday speech.]
 24

polycentric, where different sets of norms exist simultaneously. When a

language has come to be used in more than one country and has, in addi-
tion, developed multimodal standardization, the form of standardization
in any one country may be either endonormative, when it is based upon
models of usage native to that country, or exonormative, when it is based
upon foreign models of usage. [Italics in original]
Stewart also pointed out that the reasons for the development of “polycen-
tric” standardization may be related to political or religious identity or to geo-
graphical location or may be found in the incomplete replacement of an older
norm by a newer one.
Stewart’s theoretical approach did not have a lot of impact until the late
1970s when the concept was adopted by Heinz Kloss (1978: 66) and the discussion
about pluricentricity of English (World Englishes) became more important.2
Kloss used Stewart’s concept in the second enlarged and revised edition of his
seminal work on the development of Germanic languages3 and further differen-
tiated between bi-, pluri-, poly-, and multicentric languages.
According to him, a pluricentric language is a language with more than
one centre, a polycentric language with more than three. The differentiation
seemed quite small grained and was not adopted by other scholars. Kloss, how-
ever, introduced two key terms of sociolinguistics: Abstand and Ausbau of lan-
guages which can be transferred as “linguistic distance” and “functional develop-
ment”.
A national variety (NV) must have a substantial number of linguistic char-
acteristics (Abstand) in order to be perceived as a variety of its own. If then a
script is developed for a vernacular, and/or the linguistic characteristics of a NV
are codified and the functionality of the variety is expanded to all domains of
language use (Ausbau), the final result of such a process of Ausbau is a specific
language.

2. Where it really all began: Michael Clyne (1992): Pluricentric

Languages. Differing norms in different Nations.
It was due to Michael Clyne that the term pluricentric, instead of polycentric,
became a standard term of sociolinguistics. This change came about on his works
on the varieties of English (Australian English) and German, particularly on (Aus-

2
See Kachru (1982) who introduced the term “World Englishes”.
3
“Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen seit 1800 [The development of
newer Germanic cultural languages since 1800].
 25

trian) German which he was personally related to as his parents came from Aus-
tria. And as a native of Australia he participated in two non-dominant language
cultures of two important languages of the world: English and German. In 1984
he published his first book on the pluricentricity of German: “Language and Soci-
ety in the German speaking countries”4. It was his first major work on that topic
and it is his merit that the pluricentricity of German was discussed from then on
and today is recognized.
This was followed by the anthology “Pluricentric Languages. Differing
norms in different Nations”. It was published in 1992, comprising articles on 19
languages that were considered to be pluricentric or potentially pluricentric.
The book proved to be a milestone for sociolinguistic research not only because
of its richness of data and the large number of languages that were covered but
also because of Michel Clyne’s summary of the situation of pluricentric languages
worldwide. He introduced several ground-breaking ideas and new terms which
are still valid until today although some observations have become outdated
through political and social developments since the publication of the book.5 Ac-
cording to Clyne (1992: 455ff) the pluricentricity of languages concerns two prin-
cipal relations:
The question of “pluricentricity” concerns the relationship between
language and identity on the one hand, and language and power on the
other.
The relation between language and identity is of central importance when
it comes to consider the linguistic differences between NVs: Only a small number
of differences are needed to constitute a NV and to serve as a means of identity
building and thus may function to include members of the same nation and to
exclude others.
„Pluricentric Languages are both unifiers and dividers of peoples. They
unify people through the use of the language and separate them through
the development of national norms and indices and linguistic variables
the speakers identify.“6
NVs around the world differ considerably in the way they handle linguistic
distance to other varieties of the same language. The differences are found in the

4
The second edition was published in 1995 as „The German Language in a Changing
Europe”.
5
One of them is the pluricentric character of “Serb-Croatian” – a language that no
longer exists as it has split into Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian.
6
Clyne (1992: 1).
 26

way codification is achieved: Whether the linguistic features of the NV are codi-
fied or not and whether the codification is based on exogenous or endogenous
criteria. In some languages the linguistic differences are simply brushed aside,
especially when monocentric views prevail.
The relation between language and power is central for the status relation
that exists between national varieties. Clyne (1992: 454) states that this relation-
ship in most pluricentric languages is asymmetrical:
Almost invariably, pluricentricity is asymmetrical, i.e., the norms of one
national variety (or some national varieties) is (are) afforded a higher
status, internally and externally, than those of the others. … A “pecking
order” of national varieties may be determined by relative population
size of the nations, their political power, historical factors (“original
heartland” and dominant and co-dominant status of the language within
the nation (Kloss 1976), and whether the national variety is native or na-
tivized. So Canadian French, Belgian Dutch, and South African and Sin-
gapore English are all in an inferior position vis-a-vis French-French,
Dutch Dutch, and British or American English though not all in the same
way. […]
The asymmetrical status relation of NV constitutes the differentiation be-
tween “dominant” and “non-dominant”7 varieties. Michael Clyne introduced this
differentiation by using the terms “dominant” and “other” (nations) and by that
replacing the terms “central” and “peripheral”.

3. The monocentristic concept of dominant varieties

Michael Clyne did not give a definition of the non-dominant varieties but
named several criteria that differentiate dominant varieties from non-dominant
ones: (1) population size of the nations, (2) political power, (3) historical privi-
leges (“original heartland”), (4) dominant and co-dominant status of the lan-
guage within the nation – instead of having a lower status as a regional or minor-
ity language; (5) being a native variety and not a nativized one.
The linguistic concept of monocentristic languages which is often shared
by dominant varieties is strongly linked to the idea that their language is “pure”
and “exclusive” to one specific nation. It seems therefore reasonable to depict the
conceptual believes of monocentrism first as they were prevalent in many plu-

7
The terminology has been changed from “non-dominating” to “non-dominant” by the
editing team of this volume in order to have a clear antonymous terminological rela-
tion.
 27

ricentric languages for a long time and still are. The monocentristic concept of
languages can be summed up as follows:8
1. There is only one language with a certain name (French, German etc.) and
there is only one language norm for it. If there is another norm of this lan-
guage, it can’t be correct because that it would reduce the status of the vari-
ety.
2. A specific nation is represented by that language and the nation represents
that language as its most valuable asset and symbol. This nation pretends to
be in “possession” of this specific language.
3. Any person belonging to that nation is assumed to speak only one variety of
that language – the norm – which is the only correct one. This has to be done
in all communicative situations - private or official ones. The perfect mono-
lingual speaker is the idol that is aspired.
4. The „good and correct usage” of the language is only achieved by a (small)
minority. The correct norm is not available to everyone.
5. The majority of the speakers are not in command of this kind of language
which makes the norm the élite’s social dialect. Anyone wanting to belong to
the social élite has to adopt and to adapt to this norm and their social “habi-
tus”.9
6. The norm of the language is decided at the centre of the nation – in and
around the economic/demographic centre (capital city) and thus denying any
participation to the periphery of the language. This leads to the 2nd level of
pluricentricity which is present both in dominant and non-dominant varie-
ties.
7. The central objectives of monocentric language policies are to fight moves
which potentially endanger the unity of the language. Strategies to achieve
this are: The linguistic characteristics of non-dominant varieties are denied
the status of being an appropriate standard and/or not codified or selectively
codified. The elitist approach fights every move to narrow gap between the
official standard norm and the “actual” everyday norm. (This strategy is also
applied in the NDVs in order to avoid their linguistic self-determination and
self-definition).
8. A further central objective of monocentric language policies is to spread the
language to other countries and regions of the world in those cases where the

8
See Muhr (2005).
9
For the term see Bourdieu (1984): Distinction. A social Critique of the judgement of
taste.
 28

language is backed by a demographically and economically powerful nation.

This intensifies the dominant status even more as the norm of the dominant
variety is perceived as the default norm.
Many of these ideas and attitudes are shared by the dominant varieties to a
greater or lesser degree and can be summed up by the following terms: (1) cen-
tralist; (2) elitist; (3) monolingual (= mono-varietal); (4) mono-normative and (5)
derogatory towards non-core-norm speakers.
Language attitudes and language conduct like this is often found by speak-
ers from Albania, Egypt, France, Germany (particularly in the North), Greece,
Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia etc.
Michael Clyne (1992: 459) also listed 11 characteristics of the varieties of
the dominant nations (D-Nation) and 1 of ND-varieties that relate to attitudes
and believes shared by the members of different D-nations in respect to the ND-
nations and to differences in language behaviour. The following list has been
enlarged by Muhr/Delcourt (2000) (M/D), Muhr (2003) (M) and also presents the
features named by M. Clyne (1992) (MC):
A. General features of D-nations:
1. Have a large number of speakers (M/MC);
2. Are varieties of nations which is the country where the language origi-
nates (“historical heartland”) and therefore claims historical rights;
(M/MC)
3. Are native varieties and not nativized ones. (MC)
4. Have political, economic and linguistic power and therefore high status;
(M)
5. Have a big impact on the general norm of the language; (M/MC)
6. Practice thorough codification and have many codifying institutions;
(M/MC)
7. Are globally present in the electronic and print media available to a large
audience etc.; (M/MC)
8. Spread / export their norms and have many institutions for the dissemi-
nation of their norms. (M/MC)
B. Attitudes/ Believes of D-Nations.
9. The superiority of the D-variety: D-nations regard themselves as standard
and as the custodians of the norms and the norms of the others as „devi-
ant, non-standard and exotic, cute, charming, and somewhat archaic”;
(MC)
 29

10. Speakers of D-nations tend to confuse “regional variation” with “national

variation”. NDV are considered to be nothing more than a “regional” va-
riety and just a case linguistic of divergence. (MC)
11. D-nations ignore the identity function of national variety (and often find
it difficult to accept that the speakers of the ND-nations are members of
another nation); (MC)
12. Variation is thought to be only existent in the spoken norm; (MC)
13. Norms of the ND-nations are believed to be less rigid; (MC)
14. Knowledge of language: Speakers of DV usually are not familiar with the
ND varieties. (MC)
15. Language change in the DV are perceived as “natural” (and after some
time codified) whereas the developments of the “non-dominating varie-
ties” are more or less seen as secessionist and a danger to the unity of the
language. (M)
C. Language Resources and means of language export of D-nations:
16. D-Nations have better means of codification as the publishers of gram-
mar books and dictionaries are usually located in D-nations; (MC)
17. D-Nations have better means to export their language norms as they
dominate the language market. This in turn contributes to this high
10
status of the DV which is a source of income and prestige; (M/MC)

4. What is a pluricentric language?

Before thoroughly defining non-dominant varieties it seems necessary to

consider the criteria that are considered to be constitutive for pluricentric lan-
guages and to present a list of such languages.
It is by no means clear which languages are to be considered as pluricen-
tric as research from the past 20 years has shown that the language situation of
pluricentric languages differs considerably and a number of new pluricentric
languages have come into being. Pluricentric languages are characterized by the
following criteria:
1. Criteria 1: Occurrence: A certain language occurs in at least 2 nations that func-
tion as “interacting centres”.11

10
See the document published by the British Department for Industry, Innovations &
Skills in 2011: The income generated by language exports and language tuition of
British English in 2010 was £ 4.120 bn. / € 4.928 bn.
11
Clyne (1992:1).
 30

2. Criteria 2: Linguistic distance (Abstand): The variety must have enough linguis-
tic (and/or pragmatic) characteristics that distinguish it from others and by
that can serve as a symbol for expressing identity and social uniqueness.
3. Criteria 3: Status: The language must have an official status in at least 2 na-
tions either as (a) state-language or (e.g. German in Austria and Germany); (b)
co-state language (e.g. German, French and Italian in Switzerland) or at least
as (c) regional language (e.g. German in Italy: South Tyrol, Catalan in France:
Department Pyrénées-Orientales etc.). The language therefore must have offi-
cial recognition that exceeds the status of a minority language as it otherwise
cannot function as a norm setting centre.
4. Criteria 4: Acceptance of pluricentricity: The language community must accept
the status of its language as a pluricentric variety and consider it as part of its
social / national identity.
5. Criteria 5: Relevance for identity: The national norm has to be relevant to social
identity and must be (to some degree) aware to the language community and
lead “to at least some of its own (codified) norms.”12
According to these criteria the following languages are included in Clyne
(1992) and usually considered as “pluricentric” as they have at least two distinct
national varieties:13
Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi-Urdu,
Korean, Malay, Spanish, Portuguese, Tamil, Swedish.
However, if the above criteria are applied correctly, the list has to be
amended by several other languages14 which are:
Albanian, Greek, Guaraní, Hindi, Italian, Russian, Persian, and Rumanian-
Moldovan.
The list of added languages needs some explanation as to why these lan-
guages should be included:
Albanian is a pluricentric language by occurrence in Albania and in the Re-
public of Kosovo which has been declared as an independent state in 2008 and of-
ficially been recognized by a number of countries. It fulfils the formal prerequi-
sites of a pluricentric language.

12
Clyne (1992:1).
13
Clyne (1992).
14
See Muhr (2003) for a list of pluricentric languages in Europe.
 31

Greek is the official language in Greece and in Cyprus and has therefore to
be classified as pluricentric.
This is also the case with Italian which is a national / (co-)national lan-
guage in Italy and Switzerland. (See Hajek 2012, this volume).
Hindu must be considered as pluricentric in a double way: It is pluricentric
towards Urdu and at the same time a roof-variety for many different “mother
tongues” which are linguistically akin to formal Hindu but are at the same time
languages that are roofed under the term “Hindi”15.
Russian has become a pluricentric language by occurrence in different na-
tions after the split of the Soviet Union. It is an official language in Russia, Bela-
rus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and fulfils the formal re-
quirements of pluricentricity. Its status as a pluricentric language is not yet de-
termined (in the minds as most of the people) as speakers orientate themselves
at the central standard of Russia even though the varieties outside Russia may
differ substantially in linguistic terms.16
Persian (Farsi) is an official language in Iran, in Afghanistan (named Dari)
and in Tajikistan (named Tajik).
Guaraní is an official language in Paraguay and in the region of Corrientes,
Argentina.
Rumanian-Moldavian is a case of disputed pluricentricity where pan-
Romanian aspirations collide with attempts to uphold a national linguistic iden-
tity. The conflict was sparked off by the name of the language as “Moldavian”
which was disputed as not justified due to its linguistic closeness to Romanian.
Despite the publication of a (controversial) Moldovan-Rumanian diction-
ary17 the status of Moldavian / Rumanian as a pluricentric language remains un-
decided due to political squabbles both inside Moldavia and between Moldavia
and Romania. Irrespective of the naming and the undecided official status Ruma-
nian and Moldavian (with some reservations) can be considered as varieties of a
pluricentric language. Genealogically, they both belong to the same language
type, the speakers of both nations can communicate with each other and they
also share the same orthography.
This kind of pluricentricity is very similar like the one of Hindi-Urdu
where varieties of the same language (for political reasons) have been given a
15
See Gosh (2012) this volume and personal communication.
16
See Del Gaudio (2012) and Wollhiser (2012) this volume. I would also like to thank
my colleague Heinz Pfandl from the University of Graz for helpful information on the
pluricentricity of Russian.
17
See Stati (2003).
 32

different name. The split of Serbo-Croatian into three languages that are linguis-
tically close and comprehensible to each other can also be seen as a case in this
line.

5. Different language situations of pluricentric languages based on

their realisation of pluricentricity and on levels of development.

The examples of Moldavian-Rumanian, Russian, Hindi and other languages

show that their status as pluricentric languages is not always clear and that they
sometimes do not fulfil the criteria mentioned above. This has crucial effects
upon the definition of dominant and non-dominant varieties and how they can
be differentiated.
The following list presents stages of pluricentricity at different levels of
development:
1. Languages with varieties that have no territory of their own and no official recognition
in the respective countries where they are present. This is the case with West-
Armenian18 which is different from East-Armenian. The variety shows linguistic
distance and there is strong linguistic awareness as it is as the symbol of social
and ethnic identity.
The West-Armenian diaspora of Armenians is spread over many countries
where the language is neither officially recognized and its speakers are not
living in a fixed area of these countries. This is also typical for migrant lan-
guages. West-Armenian could therefore be considered as a case of migrant-
pluricentricity.
It is a matter of question whether such a type of pluricentricity should be in-
troduced at all as it blurs the concept of pluricentricity. The pluricentricity of
Armenian is on the other hand supported by the strong affiliation of Armeni-
ans to their language which has contributed to the maintenance of the lan-
guage over more than 100 years of diaspora. It is now threatened through the
lack of codification and formal tuition19. West-Armenian could therefore be
considered as a pluricentric variety due to long standing language maintenance and
because of its social-symbolic function.

18
See Dum-Tragut (2012) this volume and Cowe (1992).
19
Cowe (1992:337) states that Western Armenian has become a kind of patois for
many young Western-Armenians employed in limited social interaction relatives and
friends.
 33

2. Pluricentric languages with varieties waiting for recognition: This is the case with
Russian in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Ukraine where there are large lan-
guage communities (up to 40% of the population) and where Russian is not
even recognized as a minority language and does not have a formal status.
However, they fulfil the criteria of belonging to another nation and show lin-
guistic distance to a certain degree. As a consequence of its official non-
recognition there is no codification and no status planning and at least for the
moment there are no data available about their specific linguistic characteris-
tics. Varieties like these must therefore be considered as potentially pluricentric
but waiting for recognition.
3. Pluricentric languages with varieties that lack the appropriate formal status: Lan-
guages like this are pluricentric due to the demographic size of the varieties
outside the main centre of the language. The external varieties are formally
not fulfilling the criteria of a national variety due to the missing official status
as a state language or a regional language.
Such a language is Hungarian. It only has the status of a minority language in
Slovakia, Romania and Serbia even though there are large contingent areas
with many Hungarian native speakers in the three countries.20 This qualifies
Hungarian rather for the status of a regional language. Hungarian is therefore
considered as a pluricentric language by Hungarian linguists and actively
supported by state institutions through corpus planning and status plan-
ning.21 The varieties of this kind of language could be called as pluricentric but
lacking the appropriate status.
4. Languages where the status of pluricentricity is denied by the dominant variety. Lan-
guages like this have a high degree of centralisation and little or no awareness
of the pluricentricity and/or showing strong reluctance to acknowledge the
status are recognition of pluricentricity. Languages belonging to this category
are: Albanian, French, Greek22, Italian23; and Russian.24

20
According to Hungarian sources (Kenesei, 2006) there are about 1.5 Mio. Hungarian
speakers living in the northern region of Rumania and about 0.5 Mio. in southern
Slovakia.
21
Kenesei (2006).
22
See Karyolemou (2012) in this volume.
23
See Hajek (2012) in this volume.
24
German belonged to this type of language until the mid 1980ies. It is Michael Clyne’s
merit due to his publications in 1984 and 1995 that a broad discussion about the plu-
ricentricity of German was started.
 34

The list comprises languages where the pluricentricity is either new (Alba-
nian, Russian) or where there is a very dominant “mother”-variety that fa-
vours a very elitist concept of “language” (Albanian, Arabic, French, Greek,
Italian) and has a strong tendency to ignore the “other” varieties. This is for
example the case with Kosovarian Albanian, Swiss French, Swiss Italian and
Cyprus Greek etc.
5. Languages where the status of pluricentricity is acknowledged by the “mother”-
variety, where the linguistic characteristics are codified including the minor
varieties to some degree in dictionaries and reference books. Languages be-
longing to this type are: English (some), Dutch, German (some), Hindi-Urdu
(some), Spanish (some), Swedish (all), and Portuguese (recently). The degree
of acknowledgement and codification varies from language to language.
6. Languages where the pluricentricity is deliberately practised by model speakers of the
respective NV. Emphasis is put on using the specific linguistic features of the
national variety in pronunciation, lexicon and pragmatic features of commu-
nication etc. This is the case in many varieties of English, Dutch, German,
Spanish, Swedish, and Portuguese.
7. Languages where the NV is taught in schools: This is the case in all NVs, but varia-
tion existing between NVs of pluricentric languages is usually ignored, and
not made aware in most cases.
8. Languages where the linguistic characteristics of the NV are made aware of in schools:
At present there are no pluricentric languages to my knowledge where lin-
guistic characteristics of NVs are made aware of in school.
Conclusion:
The theory of pluricentric languages needs theoretical refinement and
more research to cover different situations of pluricentricity. The presented
stages of the development of pluricentricity show that the crucial criteria is
whether the pluricentric status and the national norm of a variety is acknowl-
edged and accepted by the language communities and serves as a means of identity
building. Subsequently, this leads to codification, promotion and dissemination of
national norms.
I would therefore like to distinguish between 7 stages in the development
of pluricentricity which can be both applied to pluricentric languages and their
single varieties:
 35

(1) formal (only criteria 1 – occurrence - is met);

(2) with sufficient linguistic distance (criteria 2 – Abstand);
(3) appropriate official status granted (criteria 3 – official status as regional
language or state language);
(4) accepted by the language community of the non-dominant variety in stage
(1) and of the dominant variety in stage (2) (criteria 4 – acceptance of the
language community granted);
(5) codification in progress or done and on that basis there is deliberate use of
the national norm by model speakers and state institutions (criteria 5 – rele-
vance for identity);
(6) taught in schools and made aware to the language community (criteria 5 –
relevance for identity and awareness about its function for identity avail-
able);
(7) promoted and disseminated (criteria 5 – relevance for identity);

Another important conclusion is that the concept of „dominant“ and „non-

dominant“ varieties is dependant on the acceptance of pluricentricity within a vari-
ety of a pluricentric language and on the will of the minor varieties to keep their
linguistic identity.

6. What is a non-dominant variety of a pluricentric language? –

A typology
As already mentioned earlier, the distinction between dominant and non-
dominant varieties
a. is based on the power-relation that exists between different nations
sharing the same language
b. and refers to primary and secondary norm-setting centers / norm-spreading
centers within a pluricentric language.
Central to the idea of the pluricentricity of languages is that the NVs have
their own norms. The effects of power and the capacity for norm-setting result in
different ways of standardisations of NVs. The effects can also be perceived in
substantial differences in language attitudes and language behaviour. They will
be discussed in chapter 6.1 and 6.2.
 36

6.1. The scope of standardisation of national varieties leading to

dominant and non-dominant centres of a language
National varieties of pluricentric languages can be distinguished by the
way they achieve the standardisation of their variety and the impact they have
on the norms of the language as a whole. Relevant criteria are:
1. The degree of centralization and the potential for domination a variety has:
The potential for domination is directly related to the degree of centraliza-
tion of a language which is also crucial for the overall acceptance of its pluricen-
tricity. The higher the degree of centralisation is, the lower the acceptance of na-
tional variation in other nations. This is directly related to the number of speak-
ers of the individual variety and the amount of effort a nation puts into the codi-
fication and spread of its variety. Centralization is therefore a capacity that is
specific to the powerful nations of a pluricentric language and an important fea-
ture of dominance.
A high degree of centralization results in a strong imbalance in the power
relation between the different NVs of a given language. NDVs are not able to ex-
ert any centralization of the language as they simply don’t have the economic
and political means for it.
Languages with a high degree of centralization are French, Russian, Ger-
man and Arabic. The NVs that exert dominance in these languages are French
French, Russian Russian, German German and Egyptian Arabic which are the
most powerful varieties. Languages with a relatively low degree of centralization
are English, Spanish and Portuguese. Dominance is exerted in these languages by
the major varieties like American English, British English, Australian English
etc.25, by Spanish Spanish, Mexican Spanish and by Brazilian Portuguese and Por-
tuguese Portuguese etc.
2. The acceptance of the pluricentricity and the way codification is achieved:
Only if the pluricentricity is accepted, codification takes place which in
turn constitutes reliable data about the linguistic form of a NV. Usually there is a
strong reluctance in the “mother”-varieties to accept the pluricentricity as the
countries of origin of a language often have difficulties in accepting the notion
that “their” language “belongs” to other nations as well. This is perceived as a
loss of power and identity. The “other” varieties usually are on the other hand
often uncertain about what to do about their own norms.

25
See Kretzenbacher (2012) in this volume.
 37

The way the proper norms are treated and taken for granted by these va-
rieties is strongly related to way the political independence has been achieved. If
there has been a war of independence like in Ireland there will be no doubt that
the proper norms are highly esteemed. The war on the Balkans led to the consti-
tution of two new languages – Bosnian and Croatian – for the same reason: to
show the separation from the nation that started the war.
In other cases like Quebec French, Austrian German, Belgian French etc.
who have a less conflict-laden history, the idea of strict codification is generally
rejected by the cultural élites which heavily profit from their knowledge of
transnational norms. A process of stringent codification will eventually lead to
the existence of new language which is seen as a restriction of the scope of com-
munication by the members of the cultural élites of the ND-varieties. The full
range of communication could however be increased if a multilingual approach
between the native ND-variety / language and the dominating variety would be
taken.
3. The impact the specific norms of a specific NV has on the language as a whole:
According to this criterion NVs can be categorized into full-centres and half-
centres and rudimentary centres.26 Full-centres are usually NVs with large numbers
of speakers and codifying institutions. They exert influence on the norm of the
language as a whole whereas half-centres usually do not codify their norms and
have little or no influence on the norms of the language as such. For instance ex-
amples for full-centres of German are Austrian German, German German, and
Swiss German, examples for half-centres are South Tyrol German and Belgium
German with some codification, and rudimentary centres are Liechtenstein Ger-
man and Luxemburg German with no codification. They all have only few speak-
ers and no or just marginal codification.
4. The amount of codification achieved:
NVs can be distinguished by the amount of codification their norms have
achieved. Whether there are any dictionaries at all, dictionaries on the vocabu-
lary and pronunciation, books of reference and grammar.
A first step in codification of NVs usually is the building of a general dic-
tionary of the vocabulary of the variety, usually followed by a pronunciation dic-
tionary. Some varieties like Swiss French, Swiss German, and Cyprus Greek don’t

26
Ammon (1995: 391ff)
 38

have a dictionary of their vocabulary. This makes them dependant on the exoge-
nous dictionaries of the dominant variety.
The codification of a NDV is complete when a grammar of the variety has
been issued. This presumes a decision on which spoken form of the variety is
considered to be acceptable to the whole nation and thus can serve as the fun-
dament of the grammar. There are considerable problems to overcome for that
in diglossic or pluriglossic societies (see Pt. 6). Generally speaking, non-dominant
varieties have only few dictionaries and reference books which are often thought
to be of lesser quality than their exogenous counterparts.27
5. The direction of the codification process and the use of endonormative or exonorma-
tive books of reference:
Powerful NVs with a lot of resources usually produce standard dictionaries
that are often used as books of reference in the whole language community. In
addition to that the codification achieved in powerful NVs often does not ac-
count for the norms of the smaller varieties or treat them only marginally.28
Contrary to the endormative approach of codification of the powerful NVs,
the powerless NVs often take a exonormative stance and orientate their codifica-
tion on the norms of the powerful nation(s) by adapting the spelling of native
words on the standard orthography (and thus distorting their linguistic form), by
downgrading the status of native words as “colloquial” or “dialectal” etc.
Examples for this are the codification practised in Quebec French, Austrian
German and in most varieties of Arabic. This results in a large distance between
the norms of written and spoken language and a gap in the norms of everyday
communication and formal (public) communication. A common reaction to this
situation is the development of an “intermediate norm” which is neither a local
dialect, nor a spoken form of the official standard variety.
6. The overall language situation: monoglossic, diglossic or pluriglossic language usage
within a nation and / or in within the variety of a pluricentric language:
NVs of pluricentric languages may be one of several other varieties or lan-
guages that are used in parallel in a nation. Examples for this are (as already
mentioned before) the language situation of Arabic where Modern Standard Ara-
bic and the national varieties of each nation are used in parallel alongside with

27
See Muhr (1983), Clyne (1988) for the discussion about the Austrian national diction-
ary (Österreichisches Wörterbuch) which in the past has been heavily criticised and
dismissed by some sections of the Austrian elite.
28
There are notable exceptions to that in English, Dutch and Swedish.
 39

other languages like French, Berber etc. Examples are also found in the multilin-
gual situation in Africa, India and Asia where varieties of pluricentric languages
become indigenized through their contact with native languages of the same na-
tion. Examples for that are Nigerian English29, Mozambique Portuguese30 and
Hokkien Chinese in Singapore31.

6.2. General features of non-dominant varieties / nations and common

language attitudes and language behaviour
Non-dominant varieties are marked by a number of common features in
respect to their language attitudes and language behaviour. The following list is
based on observations collected by Clyne (1992), Muhr / Delcourt (2000) and
Muhr (2003), (2005) and summarises them.
A. General features of non-dominant varieties / nations:
1. Have a small number of speakers (compared to the dominant nations);
2. Are varieties in nations other than the country of origin of the language
(“historical heartland”) and therefore cannot claim historical rights;
3. Are varieties that were set up during colonial expansion and / or the split
of nations of contiguous language areas;
4. Have little political, economic and linguistic power and therefore low
status;
5. Have to legitimize their norms and to cope with insinuatios that their
norm is “dialectal” or “provincial” and motivated by “nationalism”;
6. Have little or no impact on the general norm of the language;
7. Are minor full-centres, half-centres or rudimentary centres;
8. Have insufficient or no codification of their national norms and no codi-
fying institutions or such that are not sufficiently equipped;
9. They often show “linguistic schizophrenia”: The proper national norm is
heavily practiced but officially depreciated – the official norm is rarely
practiced but officially highly appreciated. This language behaviour re-
sults in uncertainty by the speakers of NDVs about their linguistic com-

29
See Jumma (2012) this volume.
30
See Ashby (2012) this volume.
31
See Tien (2012) this volume.
 40

petence and in shame and guilt of not being able to master the official
norm properly.32
10. Have a strong tendency to orientate their codification on exonormative
linguistic rules and by that to exclude many generic features of the
proper variety;
11. Have a tendency to devaluate the status of their proper norms by mark-
ing them as “colloquial”, “regional” or “dialectal”.
12. Are scarcely present in the global electronic and print media and not a-
vailable to a large audience and therefore not gaining status through
global presence as it is the case with the dominant varieties.
13. Do not spread / export their norms and have no institutions for spread-
ing the language.
14. Are usually not represented in international institutions (EU, UNO,
UNESCO) as official language;
B. Attitudes/ Believes of ND-varieties / nations:
B1. Uncertainty / uneasiness: Norm-Confusion – Lack of knowledge
15. There is strong uncertainty about the correctness of the proper
standard norm and in case of doubt give preference to the dominant
norm.
16. There is an extremely limited and very often undifferentiated
knowledge of the norms of the proper national variety that is mostly
restricted to shibboleths. This can be explained by the fact that they are
not made aware of in school.
17. There is considerable uncertainty in distinguishing “local” and
"national" standards and a tendency to ignore pan-regional similarities
of their proper variety and instead to accentuate the regional
differences.
18. There is general uncertainty when it comes to the question, what
standards are to be taught in schools or in what way one should treat
the norms of the dominant variety.

32
This situation has been wonderfully portrayed by the Austrian writer Franz Innerhofer
out of his own experience in “Die großen Wörter” [The big words] (1977).
 41

19. There is a tendency of self-devaluation of nd-native norms as “dialectal”

by their own speakers which contributes to the vicious circle of self-
devaluation.
B1. Missing language loyalty (esp. of the elites)
20. Reluctance of the elites of the NDVs to solidarise with the national
norms as they are often considered a symbol of low social status
(dialectally marked);
21. The cultural elites in the ND nations tend to succumb to norms from the
D nation(s). (Linguistic cringe: Clyne 1992);
22. Convergence is generally in the direction of D varieties when speakers
of different national varieties communicate. (Norm subservience).
23. This kind of behavior will be particularly strong in hierarchical societies
where social advancement is not primarily achieved by personal merit
but rather by obeying to set norms and expectations.
B1. Reluctance to do language planning, status planning and codification
24. There is usually reluctance to codify the native norms, this is due to the
anxiety of the cultural elites of creating a new language which would
sever the link to the DV and by that reduce their linguistic market
value.
25. The effect of codification is often minimized by codifying only those
features of the NDVs that are compliant to the existing norms of written
language.
26. The adaptation of native expressions to the phonological and
morphological norms of the written language and by that defacing its
intelligibility and blurring its origin.
27. There is a tendency to ignore linguistic innovations in the NDV as they
might lead to language separation.

7. The language situation of different non-dominant varieties -

Differences in status and development
This chapter will give a brief overview about the language situation of dif-
ferent NDVs and reflect upon the question how the differences in status can be
explained.
1. Swiss Italian: no codification, no prestige; no institutional representation;
 42

2. Cyprus Greek: No codification, low prestige, no institutional representation;

3. Swiss German: Little codification, diglossia, high prestige at home, none out-
side;
4. Austrian German: Increasing codification, some prestige at home, none outside;
institutional representation in Europe: formally yes, in practice: none; repre-
sentation: yes (EU-terminology and official acknowledgement by the institu-
tion of the EU);
5. Swiss French: Codification: yes, prestige at home, none outside;
6. Belgium French: Some codification – low prestige at home, unknown outside,
institutional representation: yes (EU-terminology);
7. Irish English: Codification: yes – high prestige in Ireland, little outside, institu-
tional representation: none;
8. Belgium German: Codification: none; representation: yes (EU-terminology);
9. Australian English: Codification yes, high prestige at home, institutional repre-
sentation: none;
10. Belgium Dutch: Codification in collaboration with the Dutch, High status at
home, institutional representation in Europe: yes (EU-terminology);
11. Finnish Swedish: Codification yes, high prestige at home, institutional repre-
sentation: none;
12. Canadian French: Intensive codification, high prestige at home, institutional
representation: none;
The list shows that there are substantial differences in status between dif-
ferent NDVs. Canadian French, Finish Swedish are examples of NDVs with high
status, a high amount of codification and general acceptance of the variety in
their nations. Other NDVs like Swiss Italian and Cyprus Greek are examples for
the opposite.

8. Basic criteria for language maintenance and status gain of ND-

varieties - A tentative classification
The following list of criteria tries to give an answer to the question that
arises from the different language situations of NDVs presented in chapter (8):
What are the reasons for the differences in status? The list presents the criteria
in descending order from most important to least important.
 43

1. Official acknowledgement as a co-state language or a regional language. The NDV

has the status as a co-state language with equal rights towards the other
state-language of the same nation. This results in (high) prestige and re-
sources for codification. Examples: Finnish Swedish, Belgium Dutch / German
/ French, South Tyrolean German, Canadian French, Catalan in Spain.
2. The NDV serves as a strong symbol of identity:
Examples: Dutch in respect to the French-speaking community, French in
Canada in respect to the English-speaking community and Swedish in Finland
in respect to the Finish-speaking community etc.
3. The NDV is also a symbol of the successful struggle for national / social independence:
This leads to the maintenance of the NDV or to the creation of new languages.
Examples: Irish English, Austrian German, Belgium Dutch, Canadian French,
Kosovarian Albanian, South African English vs. Afrikaans, Catalan in Spain,
Bosnian / Croatian vs. Serbian etc.
4. There is positive ethno-linguistic consciousness, language pride33 and language loy-
alty (especially by the elites). This leads to a strong attachment to the language
and to language maintenance.
Examples for this are: Western Armenian, Irish English, Canadian French etc.
5. The NDV practices corpus planning and status planning, codifies the native character-
istics, standardises them and makes them usable in written language: The existence
of electronic corpora leads to documentation and codification which are the
basic prerequisites to gain prestige.
Examples: NDVs that have (large) language corpora: Belgium Dutch, Austra-
lian English, New Zealand English; Canadian French, Belgium Dutch, Finnish
Swedish etc.
6. The dominant variety has accepted the existence of the NDVs and positively contrib-
utes to its codification:
Examples: Dutch (towards Belgium Dutch), English, Swedish.
Canadian French has no such support but it is an “old” NDV since the first set-
tlements in early 17th century and is geographically sufficiently distant to
keep its idiosyncrasies preserved and codifies them.

33
See Fishman (1996): In praise of the beloved mother tongue.
 44

7. The NDV is geographically distant and not in the neighbourhood: Geographic dis-
tance reduces the amount of language contact with the dominant / mother
variety and allows linguistic self-definition.
Examples: Australian English, New Zealand English etc.; Canadian French, Af-
rican, American Portuguese, South American Spanish etc.
Examples for the opposite are: Swiss Italian, Belgium French, Swiss German,
Austrian German34, Belarus Russian, Ukrainian Russian etc.
8. The NDV belongs to a language with a low degree of centralization: A low degree of
centralisation leads to a better acceptance of national variation and to its sub-
sequent codification over time.
Examples for languages with a low degree of centralization: English, Portu-
guese, Spanish etc. Examples for the opposite: French, Italian, Greek, German,
Russian etc.

9. Possible solutions for NDVs - What can be done?

Elsewhere (Muhr, 2005) I have suggested that there are 3-4 possible solu-
tions for NDVs to change their status which can be summed up as follows:
Strategy 1: Forget about your variety and join the big ones:
The motto of this option is: Just join the linguistic superpowers and forget
about self determination. Do not strive for having a specific norm of your own as
language in modern society is not a predominant feature of individual identity.
Foster multilingualism towards other languages instead. It makes the world an
easier and more communicative place to live in. And may be you will intend to
introduce language-planning measures (codification and measures to improve
language awareness). There is no need for that: Global TV-satellite networks will
achieve the levelling of your norms without extra effort – just make satellite TV
available to every household.
Strategy 2: Leave everything as it is:
Maybe you codify the variety without paying too much attention to your
own variety as the unity of the language and the participation in a large language
community is the dominating objective.

34
For the strong influence of German German on Austrian German due to satellite TV
and language contact via the electronic media see Muhr (2003) and the resulting lan-
guage shift see Muhr (2006).
 45

Strategy 3: Properly codify your variety according to the real use, irrespective whether
this changes the language or even creates a new language:
The central objective is to have an agreement between actual oral usage
and codified, resp. written language. This inevitably leads to a new language in
the long run which might cause strong social and political opposition but to lin-
guistic and cultural independence.

Strategy 4: Go for systematic bilingualism and teaching both norms (your own and the
former dominating one) in school:
Whether this option is feasible depends on different factors which are dif-
ficult to predict. In any case, a self-confident, egalitarian minded, culturally pro-
gressive political class seems to be an essential precondition in order to take the
necessary steps to achieve such a fundamental change in language policy.
The successful examples of Finish Swedish, Belgium Dutch, Australian Eng-
lish and Quebec French show that it takes about 40-50 years until language
awareness and efforts for identity building have reached a level that leads to suf-
ficient codification and the acceptance of the national norm by the general pub-
lic and the elites. Seen from that point of view, many non-dominant varieties still
have a long way to go.

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lingualism. In Rice (ed.) 1962, 15-25.
Stewart, William A. (1968): A sociolinguistic typology for describing national mul-
tilingualism. In: Fischman, Joshua A. (ed.) (1968): Readings in the sociology
of language. The Hague, Paris. Mouton. p. 531-546.
Tien, Adrian (2012): Chinese Hokkien and its lexicon in Singapore: evidence for
an indigenised Singapore culture, In: Muhr, Rudolf (ed.) (2012): Non-
dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages…. p.
Thibault, André (ed.) (2004): Dictionnaire suisse romand : particularités lexicales
du français contemporain. Geneve. Edition Zoé.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Prof. Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 49-62.

Catrin NORRBY Camilla WIDE

(Stockholm University, Sweden) catrin.norrby@nordiska.su.se
(camilla.wide@utu.fi) (University of Turku, Finland)

Jan LINDSTRÖM Jenny NILSSON

(University of Helsinki, Finland) (Institute for Language and
jan.k.lindstrom@helsinki.fi Folklore, Gothenburg, Sweden)
Jenny.Nilsson@sofi.se

Finland-Swedish as a non-dominant variety

of Swedish – extending the scope to pragmatic
and interactional aspects 1

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of Finland-Swedish as a non-dominant

variety of Swedish. The first part outlines the status and position of
Swedish in Finland and documents research on Finland-Swedish. We
present this body of work with reference to work on Finland-Swedish
status- and corpus planning. While there is an impressive body of work
on the phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic characteristics
of Finland-Swedish, much less attention has been paid to the pragmatic
and interactional aspects of Finland-Swedish vis-à-vis Sweden-Swedish.
With the exception of a few studies on politeness strategies, address and
greeting practices, no systematic investigation of communicative pat-
terns in the two Swedish varieties has been undertaken. The second part
presents our methodological framework for such an investigation, and
present preliminary results from a pilot study on openings in institu-
tional telephone conversations in the respective national variety. These
results suggest that there are systematic differences which warrant fur-
ther investigation.

1. Introduction – scope of the chapter

The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, we give an overview of the role of
Swedish in Finland and document the main tenets of previous research on
Finland-Swedish varieties. Second, we compare the two national varieties of

1
This research has been made possible through a research seeding grant in 2011 from
the Bank of Swedish Tercentiary Foundation (Riksbankens jubileumsfond), grant
number F10-1428:1.
 50

Swedish with regard to some pragmatic and interactional features. The chapter
opens with an overview of the historical background to the presence of Swedish
in Finland, the geographical and demographical distribution of Finland-Swedish,
and its status and position in Finland today. Next, we give an account of the lin-
guistic characteristics of Finland-Swedish in relation to the dominant variety,
Sweden-Swedish. Finally we present some preliminary findings on pragmatic and
interactional patterns in the two Swedish national varieties and our theoretical
underpinnings and methodological framework for our project Pragmatics, interac-
tion and communication in Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish.

2. Swedish-speaking Finns
Swedish is a language with an official status in two countries; it is the main
language (Sw. huvudspråk) in Sweden and one of two national languages (along-
side Finnish) in Finland. Sweden has a population of 8.9 million and all native
Swedes have Swedish as their first or second language (Winsa 2005). In compari-
son, the variety of Swedish used in Finland is clearly a non-dominant one, spoken
by 290,000 citizens as their first language, whereas the majority of the country’s
population of 5.2 million speaks Finnish.2 Swedish-speaking Finns (Sw. finlandss-
venskar) thus constitute a linguistic minority of 5.6% of the population in Finland.
However, it is a minority with a strong legal, economical and cultural position.
The linguistic rights concerning the national languages are guaranteed in
the constitution which originates from 1919. The Language Act specifies that
Finnish citizens are entitled to use either Finnish or Swedish in courts of law and
in dealings with other national authorities. In practice, the equal status of the
languages is largely dependent on the public sector and the Swedish-speaking
cultural and educational infrastructures that operate parallel to, but independ-
ently from, the corresponding Finnish infrastructures. In contrast to the situa-
tion in Switzerland, Belgium or Canada, the language policy of Finland is not
grounded on strong territorially secured language environments but on cultural
autonomy (see McRae 2007), except for the autonomous, unilingual Swedish-
speaking Åland islands with 27.173 inhabitants. Legal requirements concerning
language in mainland Finland are nonetheless based on local circumstances. Mu-
nicipalities are defined as monolingual either in Finnish or Swedish or as bilin-
gual with Finnish or Swedish as the majority language. In 2008, only three mu-

2
Both Finland and Sweden recognise historical and regional minority languages by law,
but for the purpose of this article this can be disregarded.
 51

nicipalities on the mainland were monolingual in Swedish and 43 were bilingual

(of which 22 had Swedish as the majority language), whereas 353 were monolin-
gual in Finnish. The bilingual municipalities are required to provide services
both in Finnish and Swedish (Latomaa and Nuolijärvi 2005, RG 2009).
Swedish-speaking Finns live in provinces along the southern, southwest-
ern and northwestern coast and, in addition, on a few Swedish language islands
in coastal and inland cities with traditions in industry and overseas trade. The
absolute number of Swedish-speaking Finns has been steady since the late 1800s
but their share of the whole population of Finland has decreased gradually, from
13% in the beginning of the 1900s. Reasons for the decrease are manifold, includ-
ing urbanization and emigration especially to Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s, but
it also seems that the application of the Finnish state’s language policy has not
been altogether successful from the minority’s perspective (McRae 2007, Tande-
felt and Finnäs 2007).
Until the 1900s, Swedish had a strong position in public administration and
Higher Education, which followed from the fact that Finnish provinces belonged
to the Swedish kingdom for some 600 years until 1809. Between 1809 and 1917,
Finland was an autonomous grand duchy of the Russian empire but preserved
the legislative and social system of the Swedish era and also the dominant status
of the Swedish language in the public sphere. The latter part of the 1800s was a
period of Finnish national awakening, which by and by led to the strengthening
of the position of Finnish as a written language and as the language of admini-
stration and education (see Saari, forthcoming). The same period also meant a
mobilization of the Swedish-speaking population. Institutions and organizations
were founded to preserve and promote the Swedish language and culture, inter
alia the Swedish People’s Party (1906) in politics and the unilingual Åbo Akademi
University (1918) in Higher Education.
Swedish-speaking Finns constitute a group whose core value in terms of
ideology and identity is the Swedish language. In cultural terms there is not such
a clear divide in relation to the speakers of Finnish, although Swedish-speaking
Finns are generally more oriented to media and traditions associated with Swe-
den. Nonetheless, Swedish-speaking Finns have developed a distinct language
identity against the dominant variety of Swedish, while the official language cul-
tivation helps maintain linguistic unity with Sweden-Swedish, especially in more
formal usage.
 52

3. The characteristics of Finland-Swedish

The Swedish spoken in Finland covers both a large number of geographical
defined dialects and the regional variety of the Swedish standard language gen-
erally referred to with the term Finland-Swedish (Sw. finlandssvenska). More than
half of the Swedish-speaking Finns are estimated to speak dialect as their mother
tongue. Especially in southern Finland, there is, however, a tendency towards
convergence between dialects and standard varieties (Ivars 1998). The standard
language goes back at least to the early 18th century and was formed in a process
where the language of the upper classes (in Turku) continually became more and
more adapted to written language and urban Swedish, especially the Stockholm
variety (Tandefelt and Finnäs 2007).
The main differences between Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish va-
rieties can be found on the level of pronunciation, vocabulary and idiomatic ex-
pressions. The degree of difference is greatest in informal spoken language and
smallest in formal written language. Finnish has influenced both dialects and
standard varieties to various degrees across individual speakers and regions
(Reuter 1992). In the late 19th century scholars started to take an interest in the
development and maintenance of standard Swedish in Finland (Ivars 2005,
Tandefelt and Finnäs 2007). Since then, the goal of language authorities in
Finland has been to keep the Swedish standard language, especially the written
language, but also the formal spoken language, as close to standard Swedish in
Sweden as possible. An important part of Finland-Swedish language cultivation
has been the campaign against Finlandisms, i.e. words that are used regularly in
Finland-Swedish but not in Sweden-Swedish (Reuter 1992, 2005).
The phonological, lexical and morphological characteristics of Finland-
Swedish varieties are well documented. Moreover, syntactic features have been
documented in a number of studies (for an overview, see e.g. Reuter 1997, Wide
and Lyngfelt 2009). Even though it is well-known that Finland-Swedish differs
from Sweden-Swedish on the pragmatic and interactional levels (cf. Reuter 1992),
no systematic comparative studies of communicative patterns in Finland-
Swedish and Sweden-Swedish have been carried out, with the exception of Saari
(1995) on politeness, address and greeting practices, and Fremer (1997, 1998),
Clyne, Norrby & Warren (2009), Clyne & Norrby (forthc.), and Norrby, Nilsson &
Nyblom (2007) on address. There is thus a clear gap in the research on Swedish as
a pluricentric language at this level of language. In the following section we will
present some systematic differences between Sweden-Swedish and Finland-
Swedish which warrant further investigation in the area.
 53

4. Pragmatic and interactional variation between Finland-Swedish

and Sweden-Swedish – some examples

Pragmatic routines, verbal actions (speech acts) and interactional patterns

have – generally speaking – attracted considerable research interest both in
Finland and Sweden during the past few decades. This is no doubt due to the
strong position of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics in both
countries. However, research which compares communicative aspects of the two
Swedish varieties is scant. Exceptions include Saari (1995), whose preliminary
observations regarding greeting formulas and address practices suggest that
Finland Swedes are more inclined to negative politeness strategies (more indi-
rectness and greater formality) than Swedes, who lean more towards positive po-
liteness (more indirectness and informal speech patterns), to use Brown and Lev-
inson’s terminology (1987).
Research on reported address practices and attitudes to address with 72 in-
formants from Gothenburg (Sweden) and Vaasa (Finland) respectively show dis-
tinct differences in address preferences between the two speech communities
(Clyne, Norrby & Warren 2009; Norrby 2006; Norrby, Nilsson & Nyblom 2007).
Similar to many languages, Swedish distinguishes between an informal and a
formal address pronoun in the singular, often referred to as T and V pronouns
(after Latin tu and vos; Brown & Gilman 1960). However, the Swedish T pronoun –
du – is used in many more contexts than for example its German or French coun-
terparts. Nevertheless, there are striking differences in the attitudes to the for-
mal V pronoun – ni – in the national varieties, as illustrated by the following quo-
tations where two young female informants recollect situations being addressed
by the V pronoun ni and how they reacted:

(1) Reactions by a woman, aged 27, Vaasa, Finland:

“Jag måste ju liksom säga att de gånger jag har blivit niad, särskilt av lite
såna yngre människor, ska vi säga i min egen ålder ungefär, så har jag
blivit glatt överraskad på något vis. Det känns som om man blir som
bemött väldigt så där hövligt och liksom man får kanske lite mer
värdighet på det sättet” (From Norrby, Nilsson & Nyblom 2007:19)
”I like sort of have to say that when I have been addressed with ni, espe-
cially by younger people, shall we say about my own age, I have been
happily surprised. It feels like you are treated very kind of politely and
like perhaps you get a bit more dignity in that way”
 54

(2) Reactions by a woman, aged 31, Gothenburg, Sweden:

“Ja, av äckliga unga manliga och kvinnliga expediter i tjusiga dyra
affärer. Jag blir kränkt, jag känner mig som att jag är tusen år gammal
eller som att dom tror att jag är dum i huvudet … inte trevligt, känns
oerhört fånigt och förlegat, det har ju varit en du-reform.”
(Norrby, Nilsson & Nyblom 2007:20)
“Yes, [being addressed with ni] by objectionable young male and female
shop assistants in fancy expensive stores. I get offended, I feel like I’m a
thousand years old or as if they think I’m an idiot… not nice, feels ex-
tremely silly and old-fashioned, there has been a du-reform“
These two young women display diametrically opposing views on being
addressed with ni, and while they stand out for their strong attitudes, they are
not exceptional, but confirm a general pattern in the data where the Sweden-
Swedish participants display much more negative views on V and also report us-
ing it in fewer contexts than their Finland-Swedish counterparts (Clyne, Norrby
& Warren 2009:132-139). In the questionnaire data there were no situations (out
of 38) where more than half of the Sweden-Swedish informants reported use of V
whereas there were six such V-situations in the Finland-Swedish data. These re-
sults are summarized in Table 1. (Figures in brackets indicate total number who
responded to the question.)

Addressing: Vaasa Gothenburg

1. A much older stranger, opp. sex 71% (72) 46% (72)
2. A much older stranger, same sex 69% (72) 36% (72)
3. A stranger in an email 70% (66) 43% (70)
4. A client in an email 61% (64) 30% (53)
5. A much older police officer, same sex 60% (72) 17% (72)
6. A much older police officer, opp. sex 58% (72) 15% (72)
Table 1: Situations for V address in Finland-Swedish (Vaasa)
and Sweden-Swedish (Gothenburg)

As is seen in the table, unfamiliarity with the addressee promotes use of V

in both varieties, but the tendency is more pronounced among the Finland-
Swedish informants. The results also suggest that the Finland Swedes are more
likely to choose V address with somebody much older, in the written medium
and, in particular, with a person of authority.
 55

Greetings have also been found to differ between the Swedish varieties.
For example, Saari (1995) reports that more formal greetings (god dag, lit. ‘good
day’) were used in Finland-Swedish service encounters compared to Sweden-
Swedish ones where informal hej (hi’) dominated. Similar differences in formality
also exist in written communication: in our Finland-Swedish data the most fre-
quently reported greeting in a letter to an unfamiliar recipient was Bästa (lit.
‘best’) + title + full name, whereas in the Sweden-Swedish data the most common
was Hej + first name (Norrby 2006; Clyne, Norrby & Warren 2009:144).
In a pilot study of conversational openings in institutional service encoun-
ters, based on three existing corpora,3 we found clear structural differences be-
tween the two national varieties. In example (3) from the Finnish corpus, GF an-
swers the phone at Luckan – a Finland-Swedish booking service for cultural
events and theatre performances in Swedish – and in the next turn the caller
identifies herself, followed by a greeting (the turn in question appears in bold):

(3) GF: Luckan Gun Finne
MB: de e Maria Blom här hej
GF: hej hej
MB: hur länge e Luckan öppen
GF: ti klockan aderton
GF: Luckan [The box office] Gun
Finne
MB: it is Maria Blom here hi
GF: hi hi
MB: how long is Luckan open
GF: until six o’clock

(From: A corpus of service encounters, University of Helsinki (1994))

In example (4), from a Swedish telephone conversation, the caller VV be-

gins with a greeting followed by the identification (see bolded utterance):

(4) BS: Be:rit Svantesson¿ BS: Be:rit Svantesson¿

VV: Mm: hej Viveka Valander VV: Mm hi Viveka Valander I am
heter ja, called
BS: Ja he:j¿ BS: Yes hi
VV: Du ja bor på Skattebo? pt= VV: Well I live at Skattebo
BS: =Mm:= BS: mm

(From: A. Lindström 1994)

3
The pilot study was based on a corpus of service encounters in Finland (Dept. of Fin-
nish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Languages, University of Helsinki, 1994), a
Swedish corpus of private telephone conversations (A. Lindström 1994) and a Swed-
ish corpus of telephone calls to Giftinformationscentralen (Poison Control Service)
(Landqvist 2001).
 56

The Finland-Swedish caller in example (3) identifies herself before produc-

ing a greeting whereas the Sweden-Swedish caller in (4) does the opposite. In ad-
dition, a generic locative adverb is produced in the Finland-Swedish presenta-
tion. Overall, the institutional openings we have analysed4 show the same struc-
tural differences between the varieties, illustrated schematically below in tables
2 and 3 (FN=first name, LN=Last name):

Particle: Greeting: Nexus: Name: Locative: Greeting:

– – – FN+LN här (here) hej (hi)
– – De e (it is) FN+LN här (here) hej (hi)
Jå (yes) – – FN+LN här (here) hej (hi)
Nå (well) de e (it is) FN+LN här (here) hej (hi)
Jo (yes) – de här e FN+LN – hej (hi)
(this is)

Table 2. Typical institutional openings in Finland-Swedish:

Particle: Greeting: Nexus: Name: Nexus: Greeting:

mm hej (hi) – FN+LN heter ja –
(I’m
called)
Ja hej (hi) jag heter FN+LN – –
((yes) (I’m called)
Ja (yes) hejsan mitt namn e FN+LN – –
(hi) (my name is)
– – – FN+LN heter ja –
(I’m
called)

Table 3. Typical institutional openings in Sweden-Swedish:

The structural differences can be summarised as follows:

a. In Finland-Swedish institutional telephone openings the greeting appears
turn-finally, and a locative adverb (här, ’here’) may follow after the name
field. The same format for opening routines also exists in Finnish telephone
conversations (c.f. Hakulinen 1993)

4
The pilot study is based on a limited number of examples: 21 in Finland-Swedish and
12 in Sweden-Swedish. In order to validate these tentative findings our next step is
to collect a much larger sample of institutional opening structures.
 57

b. In Sweden-Swedish institutional telephone openings there is no locative field

and there is a strong tendency for the greeting to precede the name (all but
one occurrences follow this pattern).
c. If the introduction is in the form of a clause, Finland-Swedish uses de e (‘it is’)
or de här e (‘this is’), Sweden-Swedish uses ja heter/heter jag (‘I’m called’) or
mitt namn e (‘my name is’).
d. A particle may open the turn in both varieties, but there is variation in the
types used. The particles jå5 (‘yes’) and nå (‘well’), typical of Finland-Swedish
discourse (see e.g. Green-Vänttinen 2001, Lehti-Eklund 1992), prevail in our
Finland-Swedish data while ja (‘yes’) is ubiquitous in the Sweden-Swedish
data set.
e. It is also worth noting that hej (‘hi’) is by far the most frequent greeting in
both data sets, and the more formal goddag (lit. ‘good day’) occurs very rarely,
also in the Finland-Swedish telephone openings. This suggests that Finland-
Swedish speech patterns have become less formal in the past decades, com-
pared to previous observations (c.f. Saari 1995).
In summary, the studies reported on here indicate that there is pragmatic
and interactional variation between the two national varieties, but some results
also suggest that the gap might be closing. For example, while more formal V ad-
dress is more common in Finland-Swedish, some informants in the address study
pointed out that Finland-Swedish address practices are becoming more informal,
with more prevalent use of T, at the same time as some Sweden-Swedish infor-
mants mentioned increased use of V in Swedish service encounters (Clyne,
Norrby and Warren 2009:110). In Saari’s comparative observations from the
1990s, Finland-Swedish was found to employ more indirect strategies and overall
more formal greetings such as god dag (‘good day’). However, her Finland-
Swedish data included mostly middle-aged and older participants. In the other
service encounter corpora discussed above we did not find such clear differences
in formality; the informal hej dominates in both varieties, and there are overall
very few instances of god dag.
The most striking difference is found in institutional conversational open-
ings: Finland-Swedish follows the pattern:
Identification (It is+Name)+Locative+Greeting whereas Sweden-Swedish typi-
cally has the greeting first: Greeting+Identification.
There also seems to be less syntactic variation in Finland-Swedish institu-

5
The vowel in jå is pronounced [o:]
 58

tional openings, compared to Sweden-Swedish (see tables 2 and 3): the generic
clausal opening de e dominates whereas Sweden-Swedish speakers vary between
ja heter ‘I am called’ and mitt namn e ‘my name is’.
The typical Finland-Swedish presentational pattern thus displays features
of language contact from Finnish and possibly a narrowing down of alternative
idiomatic Swedish patterns. In our project on Swedish as a pluricentric language
we aim to investigate these phenomena further. In section 5 we present the pro-
ject’s framework for the analysis of pragmatic and interactional variation.

5. Conclusion – a framework for the analysis of pragmatic and interac-

tional variation

Variational pragmatics (Schneider and Barron 2008a) is a recently estab-

lished approach to the study of pragmatics, which incorporates insights from so-
ciolinguistics, dialectology and ethnology. By drawing on results from cross-
cultural studies, Schneider and Barron take stock of the variation at the prag-
matic level of language (e.g. greetings, compliments, promises, thanking), and
propose a research agenda based on the variation between cultures or sub-
cultures. They put forward a number of parameters for future study, with regard
to sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic variation (e.g. greeting patterns), strate-
gies for expressing a certain action (e.g. a wish), variation in the types and/or
frequency of mitigating strategies, and pragmatic change in one lan-
guage/variety due to influence from another language/variety (Schneider and
Barron 2008b: 14-15). Our own research agenda concerns many of these parame-
ters, and variational pragmatics offers a promising theoretical framework for the
study of national and regional variation of a language.
Muhr (2008) makes a distinction between macropragmatics and micro-
pragmatics. The former concerns socio-historical developments within and be-
tween nations, languages and cultures – broadly speaking what constitutes the
general cultural norms of a society or country (Muhr 2008:212) – whereas the lat-
ter concerns language use and interaction in concrete situations in a speech
community. Our immediate research interest concerns the variation of micro-
pragmatic features in Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish, as borne out in
naturally occurring interactions, but in reality there is a dialectical relationship
between macro and micro levels, which needs to be taken into account: the
macropragmatic dimension will provide a basis for hypotheses about differing
language use in Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish, while knowledge of
 59

communicative patterns at the micro level may help explain sociopragmatic

variation across cultures.
Our micropragmatic investigation will take into account three dimensions
of language use: the formal level, the level of politeness and the interactional
level. The formal level concerns linguistic forms that are linked to specific prag-
matic tasks, such as response tokens, where variation between the two Swedish
national varieties has been found (Green-Vänttinen 2001:327). The politeness
level has to do with the management of interpersonal relationships, and what
constitutes polite behaviour in a society: for example differences in address prac-
tices have been found between the two Swedish varieties (see section 4 above).
Finally, the interactional level involves the organisation of the dialogical com-
munication between interlocutors, for example patterns for introduction of self
on the telephone, or for requesting something in a service encounter. Pragmatic
variation at the interactional level has rendered the least interest to date, but
our pilot study of telephone openings show clear differences between the na-
tional varieties of Swedish, and warrants further research at this level of lan-
guage use.
Methodologically, our project will introduce new perspectives on the study
of pragmatic variation. The majority of previous studies in pragmatics have been
grounded in speech act theory, and empirical data have predominantly been col-
lected through experimental methods, such as the DCT (discourse completion
task), (see e.g. the CCSARP project, Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989). How-
ever, our focus is on naturally occurring situations and interactions, and the in-
ductive research tradition of ethnography and conversation analysis will provide
a suitable analytical framework for our purposes. By documenting a wide range
of communicative situations and practices – through video recordings and tran-
scriptions – we will be able to locate recurring patterns in each variety and thus
build a comparative corpus of the pragmatic and interactional variation in
Finland-Swedish and Sweden-Swedish.
 60

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Carla Amorós Carmen Fernández

carlita@usal.es cjuncal@usal.es

Natividad Hernández Emilio Prieto

natih@usal.es eprieto@usal.es
(University of Salamanca, Spain)

Difficulties in defining
the standard Spanish lexicon 1

Abstract
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we lay the foundations of our
work in the notion of a standard form of the language that enables us to
link this concept to other phenomena such as linguistic norm, prestige
and linguistic change. Our proposal calls for a definition of the concept
which combines, among other parameters, the social context from
which it originates and spreads and the degree of formality of the con-
text where it takes place.
Second, we deal with the lexicon and the difficulties in establishing a
standard. Drawing on oral and written corpora from available lexicon
dictionaries and taking the two main norms of the peninsular Spanish as
a starting point, we investigate, on the one hand, the levels of formality
and the degree of occurrence of lexical items from colloquial levels. On
the other hand, we establish the exclusive lexicon attached to different
sociolects, from which it will be possible to establish patterns of behav-
ior and to characterize specifically the variety that serves as a prestige
model, which is the standard.

1. Introduction
At present, Spanish is a language in a privileged situation. It is the mother
tongue and official language of twenty-two nations and a neo-patrimonial lan-
guage in the United States, where the Hispanic community now numbers more
than 45 million (Domínguez 2008).

1
This paper was funded by the Research Project "El léxico fundamental del español".
Spanish Ministry of Science And Innovation, FFI2009-08292.
 64

Country Inhabitants Spanish-speaking in %

Mexico 101,879,170 98.2
Colombia 40,349,388 99
Spain 40,037,995 99.1
Argentina 37,384,816 99.7
Peru 27,483,864 85.1
Venezuela 23,916,810 96.9
Chile 15,328,467 90
Ecuador 13,183,978 93
Guatemala 12,974,361 64.7
Cuba 11,184,023 98
Dominican Re- 8,581,477 98
public
Bolivia 8,300,463 87.7
Honduras 6,406,052 98.2
El Salvador 6,237,662 100
Nicaragua 4,918,393 87.4
Costa Rica 3,773,000 97.5
Uruguay 3,360,105 98.4
Panama 2,845,647 77.4

Table 1. Spanish-speaking countries (López Morales 2010: 278-279)

where Spanish is the official language

Map 1. The Hispanohone-World

 65

Numbers now confirm that Spanish is firmly in place as the mother tongue
in the large majority of Hispanic territories (see Table 1), and is the second lan-
guage most spoken in the world after Chinese (Ethnologue 2009). Moreover,
Spanish is the second most-learned second language in the world, the highest
number of students of Spanish being found in the US and Brazil (Pascual et. al.,
1995) (see Map 1).
In the context of language policies and planning, the official bodies
charged with “unifying, polishing and securing the Spanish language”2 have em-
braced the diversity of varieties that have emerged on either side of the Atlantic.
In this vein, the Spanish Royal Academy of Language and the other 21 Academies
in Latin America and the Philippines have emphasized in their discourse their re-
jection of Eurocentrism and the unquestioned leadership that the Spanish Royal
Academy had maintained over centuries. Undoubtedly, the boundaries and
norms based on that original Castilian are too narrow to meet the demands of
globalization and the academies have become aware of the need to reconsider
the issue of normativity. Spanish is the vehicle of expression of different linguis-
tic and cultural identities and in this respect the acceptance of the phenomenon
of pluricentrism (Clyne 1992) is crucial in legitimizing the different emerging
standards.
Reference to Spanish as a pluricentric language is a constant in the official
policy of the 22 institutions comprising the Association of Academies of the
Spanish Language (ASALE), as well as in the Cervantes Institute, which depends
on the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was created in 1991 for “the pro-
motion, teaching and dissemination of Spanish and Latin-American language and
cultures”3. Nevertheless, it is still questionable whether in their day-to-day work
these bodies actually practice an effective pluricentrism by which all Spanish-
speaking countries are considered equally as both masters and servants of the
language (Del Valle 2007 ed; Morgenthaler García 2008; Zimmermann 2010).

1. Standard varieties of a pluricentric language: Spanish

Language standardization is a process of deliberate linguistic change typi-

cal of the cultural tradition of the West (Joseph 1987), motivated by socio-
political, economic and cultural conditioners. This makes its systematization ex-

2
This is the renovated academic motto, as it stands, for example, in the prologue of
Ortografía de la lengua española (RAE & ASALE 1999).
3
http://www.cervantes.es
 66

tremely difficult and explains why it is so hard to find a definition of standard

that will be universally valid and permit greater unanimity as regards the phe-
nomena that receive this name. Thus, when faced with describing standard Span-
ish, we run into the same problems that Speicher and Bielanski (2000: 152) spoke
of in the case of Standard English:

“While the term Standard English is bandied around with great regular-
ity, scholars rarely specify whether they are referring to the written or
spoken form. They also fail to both define and specify the lexical, phono-
logical and grammatical features that comprise it.”
Indeed, the outcome of a process of standardization assigns a privileged
place to a single variety of the dialectal complex, and for this reason the latest
poststructuralist (Ricento 2000) and postcolonial (Pennycook 2006) trends in the
study of language policies emphasize the imperative nature of the standard,
which by becoming the prestigious variety, leads to an undervaluing of the re-
maining varieties and their respective speakers.
It can thus be said that a whole ideology of language standardization has come
into being (Milroy & Milroy 1985). Likewise, most linguists point out the artifici-
ality of the standard, given that it is a non-native variety, fundamentally writ-
ten4, which requires explicit teaching (Gallardo 1978; Bartsch 1987; Pascual y
Prieto de los Mozos 1998; Moreno Cabrera 2008). It is disseminated by the mass
media, used in formal situations and, since it does not materialize exactly in the
language activity of any speaker, it should not be surprising that specialized lin-
guistics has referred to the standard as a mental construct (Borrego Nieto 2001),
from which more or less approximate realizations appear (Bartsch 1987, Joseph
1987) 5.
That having been said, together with the characterization of what we could
call the standard that is codified explicitly in grammars and dictionaries, i.e. the
prescriptive or absolute standard (Bartsch 1985; Joseph 1987), we can also speak of a
more relative standard, the result of the property of flexible stability already

4
The differentiation between standard and non-standard forms of a language often cor-
responds to the difference between the written and oral levels of a language. “The
distinction between [standard and non-standard English] became particularly prob-
lematic when it involved features that are thought to be used by all sectors of society,
and when the features had been attested in written English as well as in spoken Eng-
lish” (Milroy & Milroy 1985: 82).
5
According to Fromkin and Rodman (1993: 251), “SAE [Standard American English] is
an idealization. Nobody speaks this dialect and if somebody did, we wouldn´t know it
because SAE is not defined precisely”.
 67

granted to it by the Prague Linguistic Circle (Havránek 1936). This way, even
though the standard’s point of reference is based in a written medium it may still
admit a certain degree of variation and an intermediate variety could emerge be-
tween the codified standard and the vernaculars, an oral standard that is more or
less close to its written correlate (Gallardo 1978; Bartsch 1987; Joseph 1987; Cam-
eron 1995; Chesire 1999; Carter 1999).
Likewise, we believe it is necessary to introduce another nuance to the
term standard, that is, an empirical or implicit standard (Haas 1982; Bartsch 1987),
understood as the language model of reference that emerges within a commu-
nity, without its exemplary linguistic uses having to find approval in a dictionary
or grammar. Although the legitimation of certain languages uses and their adop-
tion very often takes place only after they have been codified, standardization
does not necessarily involve codification. “Isn’t this what happens, for example,
with the varieties that gradually become the standards […] of polycentric lan-
guages?” (Pascual y Prieto de los Mozos 1998: 88).
Codification undoubtedly fosters reflection and linguistic awareness on the
part of speakers and plays a part in making them feel like members of the same
community. In fact, in the gestation of most standard languages the explicit pre-
scription of certain rules was considered an essential step for subsequent tasks in
cultivating that variety, that is, for it to fulfil its role as a lingua franca and to
broaden its functional and discursive contexts (Haugen 1966).
However, glocalization (Robertson 1992) has brought about a greater de-
mand for legitimizing and preserving ethno-linguistic identities. In this context,
pluricentrism has also entailed a growing awareness of the existence of varieties
that, although not codified, can be considered standard in that they function as
language models of reference and correctness for their speakers within the stan-
dard-dialect continuum in a community (Villena Ponsoda 1999; Muhr 2005;
Zimmermann 2010)6.
This is what has happened with some varieties of World Englishes (Kachru
1982) and the so-called regional standards of American Spanish (Oesterreicher
2004). We emphasize the fact that these are cultured models of usage, typical of
educated urban-dwellers (Lope Blanch 1986), which are used in situations of for-
mality and communicative distance (Koch-Oesterreicher 1990). In any case, they

6
As Bierbach (2000) points out, language awareness, or Sprachbewuβtein, is one of
the essential parameters in the definition of language pluricentrism, since the consid-
eration of speakers’ linguistic attitudes is fundamental in the study of the emergence
and consolidation of language models.
 68

are varieties that are highly marked both diastratically and diaphasically
(Amorós Negre 2008).
As Oesterreicher underscores, these new standards are not simple diatopic
varieties of peninsular Spanish, but rather constitute an “authentic prescriptive
norm of their own” (Oesterreicher 2006: 3083).
Within the territory of Spain, Thompson (1992) referred to the existence of
two basic geolectal models of Spanish: northern-central or Castilian Spanish and
Southern or Atlantic Spanish, which we wished to represent in our empirical
study on the standard lexicon through data collected from the cities of Burgos
(Castile, central-northern Spain) and Huelva (Andalusia, southern Atlantic coast
of Spain), respectively. Until well into the 20th century, the linguistic norms of
Castilian Spanish were the only ones on which the Language Academies carried
out their work of establishing rules and normalization, which explains why for
most Spanish speakers it was an exo and mono-centric model.
Yet the majority of Spanish speakers live in the Americas, whose linguistic
varieties pertain to Atlantic Spanish and are therefore closer to the Andalusian
and Canarian model. Moreno Fernández (2010: 39-48) offers a tentative classifica-
tion of the different educated standards or regional models of Spanish, which
have different degrees of acceptance and consolidation7 (see table 2).

Andalusian Spanish Andean Spanish (Andean regions of

Venezuela, interior and western parts of
Canarian Spanish
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, most of Bolivia
Caribbean Spanish and the north of Chile)

Mexican (and Central American) Rio de la Plata and el Chaco Spanish

Spanish (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and south-
eastern Bolivia)
Chilean Spanish

Table 2. Regional emerging standards of Spanish

Most of these empirical standards have not undergone a sufficient degree

of linguistic elaboration or Ausbau, and therefore many of them lack an adequate
codification. This is the case with the Canarian standard (Morgenthaler García
2008), as opposed to Mexican Spanish, for example, which was explicitly codified
in works such as the Diccionario del Español de México (Dictionary of Mexican Spanish)
(Lara 2010).

7
Some of these standards can have supranational influence, as in the case of the An-
dean countries (Oesterreicher 2004).
 69

Given this situation, from the paradigm of linguistic pluricentrism, a plea

has been made for the acknowledgement and explicit codification of these model
endoglossic varieties, which Michael Clyne (1992: 1) considered a cornerstone in
the definition of pluricentrism. With respect to the case of Spanish, the change in
the orientation of the discourse of language planners is well known, particularly
that of the Spanish Royal Academy and the different members of the Association
of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE), which in all their declarations
emphasize the need to practice a pluricentric Spanish language policy. Literally,
“it is not possible to present the Spanish of one country or community as a pan-
Hispanic language model” (NGLE 2009: XLI-XLII).
Yet, as shown in several papers (Del Valle 2009; Méndez García de Paredes
2009), in many recent works carried out in these academies, the non-dominant
exemplary varieties of Spanish, that is, the ones that do not follow the north-
central peninsular model, are often denied the exemplarity that corresponds to a
standard language and are classified as national or regional8.
In this respect it should be highlighted that the recently published New
Spanish Grammar (Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española, RAE 2009) provides a
thorough and detailed description of the actual linguistic situation of Spanish in
all its varieties, never done before in a grammar. It recognizes that criteria of ac-
ceptability and correctness may not coincide in all the countries forming the
broad community of Spanish speakers and that all the different Spanish-speaking
regions have the same authority as shapers of language exemplariness. Never-
theless, sufficient formal and functional planning has not yet been undertaken to
enable this pluricentrism to be reflected in the codification (Amorós Negre 2010).
In fact, the aim of the Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española is not to describe the
different standards of Spanish, but rather a possible pan-Spanish or pan-Hispanic
norm, valid for the entire Spanish speaking community.
This idea from the Academies is closer to the field of neutral, general or in-
ternational Spanish (Lopez Morales 2006; Bravo García 2008) in the building of a
Spanish language that is common to all. However, it does not aspire to be exem-
plary like a standard variety, but rather to garner the empathy of a wider public
and to guarantee transnational intelligibility. The codification of a supranational
norm is not the same thing as a pluricentric codification, and as we explain below,

8
“A resulting effect of this lack of knowledge is what I call ‘linguistic schizophrenia’:
The proper national norm is heavily practiced but officially depreciated – the official
norm is rarely practiced but officially highly appreciated.” (Muhr 2005: 19)
 70

the standard lexicon does not coincide with the pan-Hispanic lexicon, because it is
never a neutral lexicon.
Almost certainly, the main problem in engaging with the description of
these different regional standards of Spanish, which often lack explicit codifica-
tion, is the scarcity of up-to-date material that would enable us to analyse both
the attitudes and the behaviour of speakers towards their own language norms
and models of correctness (Morgenthaler García 2008). This would allow us to
precisely delimit which phonic, morphological, syntactic and lexical traits form
part of the standard varieties of Spanish, a challenge which our contribution at-
tempts to address.

2. Towards a description of a standard Spanish lexicon

2.1. Available vocabulary vs. frequent vocabulary
The delimitation of a standard lexicon of a language, in this case, Spanish,
is determined by its partial confluence with another two types of lexicon: on the
one hand, frequent vocabulary, on the other, available vocabulary. Frequent vo-
cabulary comprises a class of terms such as articles, conjunctions, and connec-
tors in general, with little contribution from other morphological classes such as
nouns, verbs or adjectives (see, for example, Davis 2006).
Moreover, and as a result of this, frequent vocabulary is not stratified, that
is, it is not connected to specific sociolects. We recall this aspect because, as we
noted in the introduction, this study is based on a hypothesis that associates the
standard lexicon with the sociolects used by social elites. Because of these two
characteristics, the most frequent words do not serve as a basis for establishing
the standard lexicon.
We thus turn to the so-called available vocabulary or lexicon. This is the name
given to a set of lexical units that a speaker is capable of evoking when given a
certain topic of communication. The available vocabulary is a potential lexicon
that forms part of speakers’ active vocabulary and is actualized in a specific
communicative situation (see, for example, Hernández Muñoz 2006).
It is gathered by means of associative-type written tests in which infor-
mants are given a certain amount of time to write down all the words that occur
to them based on a verbal stimulus (a two minute time limit in our studies)9. The

9
For instance, if the centre of interest is partes del cuerpo (parts of the body), an in-
formant may write the following list of words: brazo, cabeza, codo, mano, pie, oreja,
labios, ojos, dedos (arm, head, elbow, hand, foot, ears, lips, eyes, fingers).
 71

stimuli used are what are called centres of interest, which would correspond, at
least one would hope, to the most important parcels of the speaker’s lexical uni-
verse. They are notional fields such as the parts of the body, the parts of a house, ani-
mals, school, etc., from which we can establish the dictionaries of available vo-
cabulary. These available lexicons have been applied in diverse areas including
the analysis of dialectalisms, and have implications in psycholinguistics, in the
creation of materials for second language teaching, and of course, in sociolin-
guistic research, with quantitative studies that have made it possible to detect
behaviour in different sociolects.
The first research studies were carried out with French (see, for example,
Mackey 1971) and later, English (Dimitrijevic 1971). For Spanish, research in this
area has taken the form of the ambitious Panhispanic Project (Proyecto Pan-
hispánico), which, led by Humberto López Morales, has brought together a large
number of research groups from all Spanish communities and a good part of
Latin America. It is therefore a project taking place throughout the Hispanic
world that is attempting to unify the methodology of all partial studies so that,
on the one hand, the results can be compared, and on the other, can be brought
together in one general available lexicon. To this end, surveys were carried out
among pre-university students of both sexes, with information regarding their
socio-economic level, the educational model they belong to (public or private),
their geographical origin and their socio-economic context (rural or urban).
In the case we are addressing here, the available lexicon is the ideal start-
ing point: on the one hand, it shows geolectal variation and provides us with ma-
terial on the results obtained in the different normative focal points of Spanish.
On the other, it shows social variation and has the advantage of presenting data
that can be stratified as a function of different variables; that is, based on the
available vocabulary we can establish the exclusive lexicons of certain sociolects
and the lexicon that is common to all of them.

2.2. Methodology
In order to identify the part of the available vocabulary that could have the
characteristics of a Standard Spanish we selected two dictionaries of available
lexicon. The first of these presents the available lexicon of the province of
Huelva (Prado & Camacho 2005), located in south-western Spain and represent-
ing the southern standard of peninsular Spanish.
The second dictionary is a compilation of the available lexicon of the prov-
ince of Burgos (Fernández Juncal 2008), located in the central-northern part of
 72

Spain, and representative of the northern variety of Spanish. These two prov-
inces, besides representing the two most recognized and studied standards of
peninsular Spanish (Thompson 1992), also reflect two different cultural contexts
or realities entailing different climates, traditions and economic activity. Huelva
is linked to a dominant agricultural economic structure in Andalusia focused on
crops such as strawberries. And despite being considered the national past-time
and part of the cultural heritage of the whole of Spain, bull-fighting culture is
more influential in the south. Burgos, although part of the region of Castile &
Leon, traditionally noted for its cereal-growing, reflects the pattern of a popula-
tion concentrated in an urban nucleus in which the main economic activity is
tertiary. All of these socio-economic and cultural particularities of the two geo-
graphical contexts will be reflected one way or another in their corresponding
lexical corpora.
The methodology followed in our research was to compare these two sam-
ples of lexicon provided by the dictionaries. First, a system of filters was succes-
sively applied to them in order to strip the overall lexicon of the particularities
that, on the one hand, reflect the variational characteristics that depend on geo-
graphic region, and on the other, those that depend on the social characteristics
of the participants. This system of filters allowed us to divide the lexicon into
two groups of terms, on the one hand the vocabulary exclusive to each of the so-
cial or geolectal groups (words given only by members of one group), and, on the
other, the remaining avariational lexicon common to all the sociolects and geo-
lects involved, which, as we shall see, possesses its own characteristics.
The sample used for the Huelva dictionary comprised 220 pre-university
students in their last year of upper-secondary education (17-18 years of age). The
sample participants were classified according to two social variables: gender (89
males and 131 females) and socio-cultural level of their families (based on the pa-
rents’ level of education: 18 low level, 119 mid to low level, 55 mid to high level
and 28 high level). In the collection of the available lexicon of Burgos the sample
comprised 175 pre-university students, who, the same as in the Huelva sample,
were grouped according to gender (77 males and 98 females) and socio-cultural
level (in this case the parents’ level of education and occupation were both taken
into account; 15 high, 41 mid-high, 69 mid-low and 50 high).
After analysing the possibilities offered by the sixteen lexical categories
comprising the survey, known as centres of interest, we decided to focus our at-
tention on Occupations, whose content, besides being linguistic, has a marked
social significance: a person’s occupation is in itself the best social classifier; in
 73

fact, it is an essential parameter in assigning an individual to a group; therefore

we suspected that it was a semantic field that would raise the class sensibility of
the informants, in any case more than other notional fields such as Parts of the
body or Animals, categories which are more closed, more encyclopaedic, and
have less social content. The lexical data analysed in the end were the 618 differ-
ent words obtained in Huelva for the semantic category Occupations and the 608
different words obtained in Burgos for the same category. The average number
of responses per participant was 21.79 responses in Huelva and 23.73 responses
in Burgos.

2.3. Results
The statistical programmes used to obtain the total lists of available lexi-
con produced by the participants also allowed us to obtain lists of the most avail-
able words in each of the social groups participating in the survey. Following this
procedure, if the word lists of the different social groups established10 are com-
pared, then the exclusive lexicon of each of them can be determined, to then draw
both quantitative and qualitative conclusions.
Regarding the first aspect, it is noteworthy that although statistically the
number of words produced by the informants of the four socio-cultural levels is
similar, the group with the highest socio-cultural level produced fewer exclusive
words than the groups of lower socio-cultural levels: only 16.3% of the total in
Huelva and 20.9% in Burgos, as it is shown in table 3.

BURGOS HUELVA
Low M-Low M- High Low M-Low M- High
High High
Total words 281 359 344 191 184 449 326 244

Exclusive 62 109 111 40 32 162 65 40

Lexicon
Percentage 22,1% 30,4% 32,2% 20.9% 17,4% 36,1% 19,9% 16,3%
of exclusive
lexicon

Table 3. Exclusive lexicon of the different socioeconomic groups

These data can be interpreted in light of the patterns that the highest so-
cial strata follow in this type of linguistic activity: their behaviour seems to be
addressed to satisfying the expectations of the interviewers in the same way that

10
The survey considered four groups: upper, upper-middle, lower-middle and low.
 74

their language activity seems better to fulfil the demands that the academic mi-
lieu establishes (Labov 1972). Thus the responses of the upper classes are adapted
to the characteristics of the questionnaire, which was in written form, and there-
fore formal and in the form of lists of words. Their answers are less disperse, less
impressionistic and more adapted to the proposed stimulus and therefore more
common to the general available vocabulary, the one that could be expected for
each centre of interest.
We can thus define this situation in terms of language security (Labov
1983; Trudgill & Hernández Campoy 2007) or, in other words, the distance be-
tween what the speaker considers correct or prestigious and his or her own lan-
guage usage. Language security exists when what the speaker considers correct
coincides with his or her way of speaking, and we speak of language insecurity
when this correspondence is less or non-existent (Moreno Fernández 1998). In
this case we can deduce that the upper-class participants in the survey ap-
proached the requirements of the test spontaneously, whereas those in the lower
classes, faced with the same stimulus and requirements, are at some distance
from the expected and more common responses11.
Focusing on the qualitative aspect of the survey results, we also find a cer-
tain correlation between the different sociolects and the set of exclusive vocabu-
lary, which is manifested in two aspects: on the one hand, the selection of vo-
cabulary is marked by the way each group approaches the topic, and thus in the
upper classes there appear occupations linked directly to that class (embajador,
notario, catedrático– ‘ambassador’, ‘solicitor’, ‘professor’) and occupations that
form part of their milieu (señora de la limpieza, masajista, chef – ‘cleaning lady’,
‘masseur’, ‘chef’ ).
In contrast, the lower classes refer mainly to low-skilled jobs (cabrero, en-
vasador, sereno– ‘goat-herd’, ‘packer’, ‘night-watchman’) or low prestige occupa-
tions (mercenario, estríper – ‘mercenary’, ‘stripper’). Moreover, regarding the
formality of the entries, in the lower classes there is an outstanding presence of
elements marked either as colloquial (chacha, pinchadiscos, picoleto - ‘the help’,
‘deejay’, ‘cop’), geolectal (feralla, piñero – ‘scrap metal worker’, ‘pine cone collec-
tor’), imprecise (recogedor, elaborador – ‘collector’, ‘preparer’) , or innovative
with respect to the academic norm (pizzero, bombonero, gasolinero - ‘pizza-
maker’, ‘gas deliverer’, ‘petrol pumper’).

11
We found items such as aburridas ‘boring’, casa ‘house’, extra ‘bonus’ or future ‘fu-
ture’.
 75

So if we start with a situation in which the upper classes do not show dis-
tinctive specific traits that could help us to determine the standard lexicon, it
seems that the next step should be to observe the available vocabulary in the ab-
sence of elements that could be affected by social variation. We thus eliminated
from the available lexicon the elements of the exclusive lexicon of the four socio-
lects. In order to avoid any diastratic variation that could distort the results, we
also eliminated from our corpus the exclusive elements of the two groups differ-
entiated by the gender variable (see Table 4). The suppression of this vocabulary
that is typical of either men or women enabled us to eliminate elements refer-
ring to occupations whose presence could be determined by the fact that their
clients are male or female (such as barbero, gigoló -‘barber’, ‘gigolo’ for men and
puta, ginecólogo or puericultor - ‘whore’, ‘gynaecologist’ or ‘child-care expert’
for women).

BURGOS HUELVA
Men Women Men Women
Total words 403 436 430 482
Exclusive Lexicon 172 203 136 190

Percentage of exclusive lexicon 42,2% 46,5% 31,6% 39,4%

Table 4. Exclusive lexicon of the different gender groups

Filtering the available lexicon of the members associated with certain so-
ciolects enabled us to obtain a corpus devoid of social particularities, a synstratic
corpus. This procedure does away with one of the disadvantages usually attrib-
uted to availability studies: contamination of the results owing to the sociological
profile of the survey. Once the sociolectal elements were eliminated, the result-
ing lexicon, the one common to all the strata, was also expected to be the one
most available, and would have the highest ranking in spontaneous appearance.
However, there was not a complete equivalence between the synstratic lexicon
and the available lexicon, and thus almost a third of the former items ranked lo-
wer than they would have if there had been an exact correspondence between
them.
To refine the corpus even more, we would also have to exclude the ele-
ments subjected to the other types of variation present in the diasystem. As in
any synchronic study, there is no temporal variation but we must consider
whether we are confronting a corpus with diaphasic variability: the surveys on
lexical availability are in written form, and thus the data collection context is
 76

highly formal. Nonetheless, the guaranteed anonymity of the survey enabled

some vocabulary to be included that falls outside this stylistic frame, as we have
seen (e.g., puta– ‘whore’). In any case, we consider that it was a situation with
only one style, but with the licence provided by the procedure.
Finally, we must address the contribution of geolectal variation in the re-
sulting corpus. At the start we had already assessed the need to consider two
syntopies, which were expected to contribute the distinctive elements of the two
large sets of norms existing in Spanish. We then applied another filter to the syn-
stratic lexicon by suppressing the elements that differentiate between the two
geolects (see table 5).
The detection of these words alone is a task that would justify this filtering
since it enabled us, on the one hand, to isolate the lexical items that pertain to
each of the sociocultural contexts analysed, and thus observe that torero, jornalero
or recolector (‘bullfighter’, ‘day labourer’, ‘fruit picker’) are common words in
Huelva but not in Burgos, and that carnicero and charcutero (‘butcher’ and ‘pork
butcher’) are common in Burgos but not in Huelva, results which respond to the
patterns of cultural contexts described above.
On the other hand, we can now reliably consider that a diatopic trait of
Huelva is the use of comerciante as opposed to tendero (‘storekeeper’), which is
used commonly in both the provinces, and also the use of ATS (literally, ‘techni-
cal health assistant’, the official term) in addition to the more common enfer-
mera/o (‘nurse’), and that pescatero is as typical of Burgos as pescadero (both mean-
ing ‘fishmonger’).

BURGOS HUELVA

Total words 608 618

Exclusive Lexicon 83 89
Percentage of exclusive lexicon 13,65 14,40

Table 5. Exclusive lexicon of the different geographic groups

We mentioned earlier that applying this double filter provides valuable in-
formation about the items that become lost in the process in that they help us to
configure the distinctive lexicon of each of the affected variables, but even more
important for our objective was to analyse the result of the final filtering. We
thus have an avariational corpus that obviates what we might consider the con-
tamination of the diasystem, a set of 55 items that represent only 9% of each of
the lists of 618 and 608 words that we started out with (see table 6).
 77

We could not identify these 55 items with the available lexicon because 16
of them (29.1%, almost a third of the total) were not found among the 55 most
available lexical items in Burgos and 15 (27.3%) were not among the most avail-
able lexicon in Huelva.
Thus, the set obtained is a special lexical set: the words common to all the
social and geographical groups, an avariational and stable corpus that reflects
the Spanish shared by all its speakers. It could constitute the vocabulary taught
to learners of Spanish as a second language, but according to the theoretical de-
scription we made at the beginning of the study, it also differs from the standard
lexicon of Spanish. Given the scope of this presentation chapter we shall provide
an outline of the contents of this repertory through some of its traits: syntag-
matic compounds and foreign words practically disappear; it is a lexicon with
items well-established in the system, whether they are patrimonial terms (al-
bañil, juez – ‘brick-layer’, ‘judge’), or terms with classical origins (biólogo, far-
macéutico – ‘biologist’, ‘pharmacist’).

abogado solicitor actor actor actriz actress

ama de
albañil bricklayer housewife arquitecto architect
casa
road-
banquero banker barrendero basurero dustman
sweeper
camarero waiter cantante singer carpintero carpenter
dependient shop
conductor driver deportista athlete
e assistant
empresa- business- farmacéu-
enfermera nurse pharmacist
rio man tico
computer
geólogo geologist informático ingeniero engineer
techni-cian
mathemati-
limpiador cleaner maestro teacher matemático
cian
ministro minister músico musician obrero labourer
police
policía presidente president profesor professor
officer
secretario/ shop-
secretary tendero vendedor salesperson
secretaria keeper

Table 6a. An avariational pan-hispanic lexical corpus

 78

administrativo administrative assistant agricultor farmer

azafata stewardess bailarín dancer

biólogo biologist bombero fireman

cartero postal worker cocinero cook

director director electricista electrician

futbolista footballer ganadero cattle-raiser

jardinero gardener juez judge

mecánico mechanic medico doctor

panadero baker periodista journalist

psicólogo psychologist repartidor delivery man

veterinario veterinarian zapatero shoemaker

Table 6b. An avariational pan-hispanic lexical corpus

Also, as it may seem obvious, we find occupations that function as proto-

types, the same ones usually chosen for textbooks used in teaching a second lan-
guage (médico, abogado, carpintero, panadero, cocinero – ‘doctor’, ‘lawyer’, ‘carpen-
ter’, ‘baker’, ‘cook’); terms revealing society’s current values are also present
(presidente, ministro – ‘prime minister’, ‘minister’), as well as vital new words for
naming new realities (informático, repartidor; ‘computer expert’, ‘distributor’).
Semantically close words are observed to appear together (dependiente / tendero
/ vendedor – ‘shop assistant’ / ‘shopkeeper’ / ‘salesperson’) o barrendero / basurero
– ‘streetsweeper’ / ‘dustman’), and we should attempt to observe how this rela-
tionship develops in future, especially in a field like the occupations, in which we
hope to determine the derivation procedure most employed.

3. Summary
Delimiting the standard lexicon poses many difficulties, as mentioned pre-
cisely in the title of this contribution. The problems stem from the lack of dias-
tratically and disphasically marked lexical repertories, which led us to resort to
the closest option, that is, available lexicons, which include social variation. In
this sense, our analysis corroborates that the upper classes, with whom the stan-
dard variety is most associated, are precisely those that fit most closely the re-
quirements of the survey, and therefore are the ones providing the least amount
of differential information. The work of theoretical linguists has been compared
to that of a chemist in a laboratory using distilled water to work with, whereas
 79

sociolinguists go down to the river and take a sample of the cloudiest water they
can find filled with micro-organisms and impurities.
In this brief research study we subjected the river water to a purification
process, but the result does not coincide with what we have traditionally been
told is ‘distilled’. What we have found is another type of lexicon, which reflects
more clearly the moment at which the linguistic image of a community was pho-
tographed. Subjecting this lexicon to a filtering of the variational elements has
provided us with another type of information that could well be of use in deter-
mining what we might call the synsystemic or avariational lexicon, very much in
consonance with the search for a more neutral lexicon for general Spanish. Thus,
the results obtained point to an already noted trend towards a general or pan-
Hispanic Spanish. However, this general Spanish can never be presented as the
equivalent of standard Spanish, which, far from being a neutral variety, is used
by the educated classes in formal situations. Therefore, as we have seen, the gen-
eral Spanish lexicon obtained does not correspond to the standard Spanish lexi-
con. Apart from the fact that a pluricentric model would have to have more than
one standard variety with its own phonological, grammatical and lexical exem-
plarities, the different empirical standards would find it hard to agree on the
codification of a single koiné variety.

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Nils LANGER
(Universität Kiel, Germany and University of Bristol, UK)
nils.langer@bris.ac.uk

Finding non-dominant languages

in the nineteenth century – problems and potentials
from historical sociolinguistics 1

Abstract

This chapter sketches the sociolinguistics of non-dominant languages in

nineteenth-century northern Germany where 3 non-dominant and 2
dominant languages co-exist. Addressing the problem of finding robust
evidence for the existence, use, and status of non-dominant languages
from historical periods, this paper will offer evidence from a number of
text types to demonstrate how the historical sociolinguistic reality can
be reconstructed despite an impoverished data set.

1. Language contact and language conflict

The coexistence of dominant vs. non-dominant languages presupposes
particular types of language contact. It can be argued that any kind of language
contact will result in a hierarchical ordering of the linguistic varieties involved.
This does not necessarily lead to absolute preferences of one language over the
other - which would surely result in language loss - but with regard to particular
domains, one variety or language will be used more frequently or with more
prestige than the other. Such domain-specific distribution does not necessarily
lead to language conflict, however. During the Middle Ages, Latin was the un-
challenged language of education and the church in Central Europe and yet its

1
I am grateful to the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation (Bonn) and the British
Academy (London) for generously supporting this research project. Furthermore, my
thanks go to Silke Göttsch-Elten (Kiel), Bettina Dioum (LA Schleswig), Robert Lang-
hanke (Kiel), Michael Elmentaler (Kiel), Roz Thomson (Barnard Castle), and Elin Fred-
sted (Flensburg) for answering my questions and questioning my answers. Finally,
thanks to Patrick Beuge (Kiel) for being instrumental in creating and maintaining the
project website (http://www.spsh.uni-kiel.de/) where many of the unpublished
sources mentioned in this paper can be found.
 84

domains never challenged the existence or use of vernacular languages. The re-
gional vernaculars were accepted to be the languages of oral use, of trade, and
other domains and it would be difficult to speak of aggressively dominant versus
non-dominant varieties (in the Clynesian understanding, cf. Muhr 2005) in this
case. The case of the linguistic diversity of Schleswig-Holstein discussed in this
chapter offers a view on how the relative status of linguistic varieties can shift
when a particular lobby endorses it. In this region, nowadays located in the
northernmost part of Germany and the southernmost part of Denmark, we find
three historical languages, Low German (Plattdüütsch), South Jutish (Sønderjysk),
and Frisian (Friisk) indigenous to the area for centuries, and two standard lan-
guages, High German (Hochdeutsch) and Imperial Danish (Rigsdansk), serving as
the official, written, and national languages of the respective political states
Germany and Denmark. During the nineteenth century, the rise of nationalism as
a political idea for the foundation of states and the association of language with
an ethnic or folk identity (following arguments offered by Fichte and Herder) led
to the instrumentalisation of language as a tool to justify, legitimate, and ad-
vance calls for national separation and independence.
Until the nineteenth century, this linguistic diversity posed no problem in
the Kingdom of Denmark, to which the double Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein prac-
tically, if not technically, belonged.2 Danish - as an undistinguished collection of
Danish varieties - was the language of the country though the language of the
Court and Copenhagen upper classes was German until 1772. After this date3,
German was removed as the language of the educated elites of Denmark, though
it continued to be read and received in a variety of cultural domains (theatre,
music, philosophy; cf. Winge 2009). Where there was only language contact be-

2
The legal history is too complex for a footnote. In sum, the Duchy of Holstein be-
longed to the German Empire whereas the neighbouring Duchy of Schleswig be-
longed to the Kingdom of Denmark, though it was not a formal part of it. The King of
Denmark was the Duke of both the Duchies of Holstein and Schleswig, so in practice
all parts were ruled by the same person. The problem arose, however, with the calls
for emancipation and constitutions for all German states after the Napoleonic wars.
Because Holstein was part of the German Empire, its citizens, too, wanted a constitu-
tion but because Schleswig was not part of Germany, such a constitution could not
extend to its domain. However, because most Schleswig-Holsteiners agreed that the
two duchies formed an inseparable unity - since 1460 - a solution for only one duchy
was considered separatist and politically impossible.
3
The change was triggered by the Struensee affair which led to the execution of the
German-speaking royal physician and advisor to the - mentally unstable - king, Jo-
hann Friedrich Struensee (1738-1772) on charges of high treason and the subse-
quent backlash against all things German in Copenhagen.
 85

fore, language conflict emerged, which culminated in two wars (1848-51 and 1863-
4) and the loss of Schleswig-Holstein for Denmark:

Das Herzogtum Schleswig, das seit dem Mittelalter ein […] Sprachkon-
taktgebiet gewesen war, entwickelte sich im 19. Jh. deutlich zu einem
Gebiet des Sprachkonflikts, wo Sprache zunehmend [...] zum ideologi-
schen Instrument politischer Auseinandersetzungen gemacht wurde.
(Dyhr 1998: 101)
[Having been an area of language contact since the Middle Ages, during
the course of the 19th century the Duchy of Schleswig emerged as an
area of linguistic conflict, with language increasingly used as an ideo-
logical tool for political disputes.]

The language conflict Dyhr alludes to relates to the "national" languages,

Danish and German. It is symptomatic for the historical discourse on language
policy that the non-standard, non-dominant, or plain regional varieties, i.e.
NDVs, play no role but rather are ignored or stigmatised as not being full lan-
guages but only corrupt or incomplete varieties. The particular situation of the
Duchy of Schleswig / Slesvig, where the indigenous languages of Low German,
Frisian, and South Jutish4 coexisted in the same regions, villages, and even fami-
lies, was well-known to the authorities. In his 1812 report to Copenhagen, An-
dreas Bjørn Rothe, a civil servant of the German Chancery, the administrative
unit in charge of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, described the situation
here as:

Das Herzogtum Schleswig teilt sich mit Rücksicht auf die Sprache in
zwei Teile. Der erste Teil ist der, wo die dänische Sprache wirklich
Volkssprache ist, und Gottesdienst und Schulunterricht dänisch sind. […]
Der andere Teil ist der, wo die Volkssprache deutsch und auch Gottesdi-
enst und Schulunterricht deutsch sind. Dieser Teil, unter den zugleich
die Distrikte fallen, wo die Volkssprache weder richtiges Dänisch, noch
richtiges Deutsch, sondern eine aus beiden Sprachen, angereichert mit
Friesisch und Anglisch, zusammengesetzte und korrumpierte Sprache
ist, umfaßt.

[With regards to language, the Duchy of Schleswig is divided into two

parts. In the first part, Danish is truly the people’s language and that

4
Most linguists today consider these varieties to be languages in their own right, how-
ever many speakers of Low German and South Jutish view these varieties to be dia-
lects of German and Danish respectively.
 86

used in church services and schools. In the other part, German is the
language used by the people, in churches and schools. It is this region
which additionally encompasses districts where the common language is
neither correct Danish nor correct German, but a corrupt mixture of the
two, with additional Frisian and Anglian influences.]

There was thus a clear realisation even at the official level of administra-
tion that there was significant regional variety in the area. However, when it
comes to distinguishing between different parts of the region, the primary iden-
tifiers are the official language domains school and church. Rothe labels the 'cor-
rupted' version Sprache ("language") but presumably for want of a better term,
rather than because he would consider it to be of equal linguistic standing as
German and Danish. The principal language conflict. as pertaining to the discus-
sion by officials, authorities, and the bourgeoisie, was largely restricted to these
two national languages. Frisian was endured as a fact of life and not rendered in-
visible, but neither during the times of Danish government nor when Schleswig-
Holstein became a Prussian province did it ever play any role in official language
policy. Official language decrees, such as those by the Danish kings in 1810 and
1840, aimed in particular at the linguistically mixed areas in Central Schleswig,5
or by the Prussian authorities in 1873, the latter primarily targetting the Polish-
speaking minorities in the east but by implication also applying to the Danish
speakers in Schleswig, simply spoke of German (and, in the case of the former,
Danish), without mentioning non-standard or non-national languages, e.g.:

Paa disse Øer og I disse Amter [in North Slesvig], hvor det danske Sprog
er Almeenmands Sprog, er det Vor Allerhøiste Villie, at det tydske
Sprogs Brug vet Gudstjeneste, Skoleunderviisning og Rettergang skal
ophøre og det danske Sprogs Brug traede I sammes Sted. [King Frederik
VI, 1810]
[For these islands and disctricts where the Danish language is the com-
mon language, it is our supreme wish that the German language used in
church servives, schooling and legal issues cease to be used and be re-
placed by the Danish language.]
and
Die Deutsche Sprache ist die ausschließliche Geschäftssprache aller Be-
hörden, Beamten und politischen Körperschaften des Staates. Ein

5
Mittelschleswig, approximately the region on the current state border between Ger-
many and Denmark.
 87

schriftlicher Verkehr mit denselben ist nur in der deutschen Sprache

gestattet. [Prussian Language Policy 1873; cf. Leuschner 2000]
[German is the only language to be used with and by the authorities,
civil servants and political bodies of the state. Written communication
with these is only permitted in German.]

Danish language policies were first aimed at improving the status of Dan-
ish to the level of German by making it a language of schooling, administration,
and legal matters in areas where most people were native speakers of South Jut-
ish, a variety of Danish according to contemporary beliefs. Promoting Danish was
thus seen to be a democratising process, enabling the people to use their own
language in schools and church services. Contemporary sources, in particular
from the German-minded lobby, ridiculed these efforts and argued that standard
Danish was incomprehensible for people whose mother tongue was South Jutish.
Anecdotal sources from the 1840s report how a speech given by the leader
of the Danish party in the Schleswig Estates Assembly was incomprehensible to
his audience when addressing a crowd in Copenhagen in what he considered to
be good Danish. Similarly the language decree of Christian VIII (1840), respond-
ing to intense petitioning to improve the status of Danish in the Duchy of
Schleswig (cf. Rohwedder 1976), ordered that school instruction be in Danish
with up to an additional 4 hours per week taught in German where parents and
parishes demanded this, that church services be altered between German and
Danish, and that sacraments be given in the language decided by the parish. Im-
portantly, however, this only ever meant a choice between standard Danish and
standard German - the actual mother tongues of virtually all people in rural
communities at the time, Low German and South Jutish, never played a role in
language policy.

2. Methodological problems – making the best of bad data

So if the non-dominant languages of the area do not feature in official poli-
cies, printed texts, or other types of written sources, what do we actually know
about their form and usages? As with all types of historical linguistics, we are de-
pendent not only on what was written down but also on the small part of these
written documents which actually survived into the present day. Researchers of
non-dominant languages face the particular problem that these were often ex-
clusively spoken. In our example, South Jutish and Low German had ceased to be
written languages by the sixteenth century, with only very isolated and often so-
 88

ciolinguistically marked examples of writing in these languages after that. Given

their continued use as spoken languages today we can assume a continuity of ex-
istence but we need to turn to non-printed texts and indirect or conjectured
sources in order to piece together their form, usage and status in the nineteenth
century.
Language historiography has often focussed on standard languages, varie-
ties with a substantial body of texts and a long history of transmission. In recent
years, language historians have tried to redress this bias towards big, national,
and standard languages6 by redirecting their attention to non-standard, regional,
and minority languages. What scholars such as Clyne had argued for the present-
day, language historians such as Elspaß (2005, cf. also the collection of articles on
other Germanic languages in Elspaß et al. 2007) argued for historical sociolin-
guistics. Using a substantial corpus of letters by German immigrants to the USA
in the 1800s, Elspaß provided evidence for the wide range of grammatical con-
structions, morphological diversity and phonological variation used by nine-
teenth-century speakers of German; something unsurprising to any sociolinguist
or dialectologist but something that was hitherto largely unattested with real
historical data.
The search for evidence of how people - and one ought to bear in mind
that the vast majority of people in the nineteenth century did not speak the
standard language - actually spoke will need to be imaginative and accept certain
shortcuts in the light of the absence of any actual recordings. By casting our nets
wide in examining a range of text types, we ought to be able to piece together a
mosaic of how non-dominant languages were used in the nineteenth century.
This century, as hinted at above, is of particular interest to us as it marks the
time when language, nation, and identity were linked in a way unheard of before.
In Schleswig-Holstein in particular, national allegiance led to military warfare,
and nationality was largely defined on linguistic grounds.
The type of sources suitable for our consideration is principally unre-
stricted. Everything is interesting. It is certainly not necessary to exclude printed
sources, e.g. a great many things about language and identity can be learnt from
school textbooks (cf. Langer 2008) and, as Elspaß (2005) and Fairman (2007, for
English) show, the handwritten texts of writers with only a very basic education
still show evidence of schooling in written-language conventions. In the next sec-
tion I will provide examples from a range of sources to demonstrate how we can

6
On some of the reasons for this apparent bias, cf. Reichmann (2001, for German) and
Milroy (2005, for English).
 89

still gain valuable insights into the use and status of NDV in historical times de-
spite the fact that these languages were virtually only spoken languages.

3. Metalinguistic sources for a sociolinguistic history of Low German

3.1. School Textbooks
School textbooks as pertaining to the subject of language instruction fall
into two basic categories. Primers (Fibeln) instruct children in the basic skills of
reading and thus focus on the identification of letters, syllables and single words.
Rarely do they provide whole sentences. Textbooks (Lesebücher), on the other
hand, contain prose texts and poems and teach, apart from reading skills, cul-
tural and historical knowledge and are thus a tool to create a particular societal
identity in the pupil. The political sensitivity of school textbooks in nineteenth-
century Schleswig-Holstein is demonstrated by the loud call amongst German-
minded teachers for the removal of particular books after the Danish defeat of
1864; books which were considered too Danish nationalist:

Unter den deutschen Lesebüchern werden die von Grün [1854] und Lo-
renzen [1858] ebenfalls zu den Unmöglichkeiten gehören. Sie sind im ei-
derdänischen Sinne abgefaßt, dänisch gedacht und undeutsch geschrie-
ben. (Schleswig-Holsteinische Schulzeitung, 30.4.1864)7
[Of the German textbooks, those by Grün and Lorenzen must be consid-
ered quite impossible. They are of Danish nationalist intention, of Dan-
ish conception and are written in an un-German way.]

Most primers and textbooks from the nineteenth century ignore the fact
that they are teaching (standard) languages which are not the native languages
of their pupils. Dücker is one of the rare authors who mention Low German in
textbook, e.g. in the following footnote where he suggests a particular grammati-
cal exercise which taps into the children's knowledge of Low German:
Diese Uebung mag mit andern Sätzen, namentlich solchen, in welchen
die Kinder gern mir und mich, ihm und ihn verwechseln, weil die Mund-
art sie verführt, fortgesetzt werden. (Dücker 1872)
[This exercise can be supplemented with other examples, such as sen-
tences in which the children, as a result of their dialect, are inclined to
confuse words such as meDAT and meACC, himDAT and himACC.]

7
It is not clear what is meant by the last part. The textbooks by Grün (1854) and
Lorenzen (1858) are written in formal standard German and there is no evidence of
linguistic interference from Danish.
 90

Similarly, Dücker (1869: 8) actively uses the pupils' native language as a

point of departure for translation exercises into High German:

Übersetze die folgenden Sätze ins Hochdeutsche. (Zusätze sind er-

wünscht).
De App’ln.
De Sünn de schient. De App’ln wenkt. De Vader geiht. De Korf de hängt.
De Poort de knarrt. De Kinner folgt. Dat Hart dat jubelt. [...]
[Translate the following sentences into High German. Additions are wel-
come] (followed by Low German example sentences; NL)

However, Dücker proves a real exception in this regard and his decision,
and that of the very few other authors who chose to make use of the Low German
linguistic skills of their pupils, is widely criticised by their teacher peers. Gener-
ally, no mention is made of the existence of languages other than the dominant
ones. The non-dominant languages are simply invisible. That in practice, the sig-
nificant difference between the language used in schooling and the native lan-
guage of the children posed a real problem can be attested by data presented in
the next section.

3.2. School Inspection Reports

School and church inspections were conducted in all parishes every three
years (cf. Hansen 1991 and Langer 2011). Each was accompanied by a small body
of official paperwork which present an interesting and valuable set of data for
our purposes. Teachers and local vicars were asked to answer a number of ques-
tions on the general state of the parish, including comments on school and
church attendance, which they answered before the visit, and each round of in-
spections was summarised by the inspector and reported to the senior education
committee (Kuratorium). The reports also provide an account of the implementa-
tion of shifting language policies as regards the language of church services,
which in many areas was permitted or even prescribed to alternate between
German and Danish. Teachers were also asked to mention any obstructions or de-
ficiencies which hampered the successful delivery of their school education.
Mostly, they simply noted that they had no particular comments, but two types
of complaints can be found over and over again: firstly, the poor attendance of
pupils during the summer months was mentioned; class sizes were reduced from
50 or 60 to a mere handful because the children had to help on the farm, in par-
ticular by herding cattle or sheep. Secondly, teachers frequently comment on the
 91

difficult linguistic situation, in particular on the fact that the children do not un-
derstand the teacher because their mother tongue is Frisian, Danish or Low Ger-
man:8

… die ungünstigen Sprachverhältnisse in hiesiger Gegend bereiten dem

Lehrer beim Unterrichten viele Schwierigkeiten. Wenn das Kind die
Schule betritt, versteht es vielleicht mehrere Sprachen, nur kein Wort
deutsch. Da geht lange Zeit darüber hin, bevor das Kind einigermaßen
den Lehrer verstehen lernt. [Klanxbüll 1878]
[The unfavourable local linguistic conditions pose many difficulties for
the teacher when delivering lessons. When a child begins school he may
speak several languages [presumably Frisian, Low German, and South
Jutish; NL] but not a single word of German. A long time will pass before
the child even learn to understand the teacher more or less.]

Diese [= Umgangssprache] ist hier eine sehr gemischte, indem die

dänische und friesische Sprache in den verschiedenen Theilen des
Schuldistricts mit einander abwechseln. Infolge dessen verstehen die
Kinder, wenn sie mit dem vollendeten 6“ Lebensjahre in die Schule
kommen, kein deutsches Wort, und fast ein ganzes Jahr verfließt, bevor
dieselben mit Nutzen dem Unterrichte folgen können.“ [Neukirchen
1875]
[The [colloquial] language here is, as such, a very jumbled variety due to
the alternated use of Danish and Frisian in different parts of the school
district. As a result of this, the children do not understand a word of
German when beginning school at the age of 6, and almost a whole year
will elapse before they are able to reasonably follow the lessons.].

South of the German-Danish mixed areas, we find similar comments on the

effect native Low German had on the education of children taught exclusively in
High German. Apart from these self-reported observations of teachers and vicars,
the summative report of the superintendent or bishop conducting the inspection
can shed light on the observable practice. Their judgement often appears very
'honest' and we find damning judgements not just on, e.g., the poor singing abil-

8
The following examples all come from the church district (Propstei) of Tondern, in Mit-
telschleswig. I chose comparatively late examples (in 1867, Schleswig-Holstein be-
came part of Prussia) to demonstrate how little effect official language policy had on
actual language usage, and similar comments can be found in inspection reports
throughout the century. I am grateful to the Landesarchiv Schleswig for granting me
access to the original documents and to Bettina Dioum (LA Schleswig) for providing
particularly valuable support.
 92

ity of teachers, but also on their poor command of High German. This is rela-
tively rare in my corpus, however. Furthermore, it is striking that a number of
teachers' reports from Mittelschleswig are written exclusively in (standard) Dan-
ish, yet this is never commented on by the superintendent in his overall report
to the overarching committee. He seems to have simply accepted this, so there-
fore he was presumably fluent in Danish himself. The evidence from the school
inspection reports shows that the NDVs of South Jutish, Frisian and Low German
were well-noticed by the teachers, pastors, and inspectors, both as a fact of life
and as real obstruction to the learning of the children in school. However, in line
with the contemporary belief that only High German (and Standard Danish in the
northern area) could be an appropriate language for schooling, the problems
were simply noted and not acted upon.
The teachers' dilemma of teaching children in a language they did not un-
derstand is also the subject of the next section.

3.3. The Schleswig-Holsteinische Schulzeitung

The Schulzeitung was the weekly publication by the Schleswig-Holstein as-
sociation of school teachers working in elementary schools (Volksschulen) as op-
posed to Latin schools (Gelehrtenschulen). Every issue contained job advertise-
ments, reports from conferences and local associations, and one or two larger es-
says on particular topics related to pedagogy, laws and government decrees, or
teachers’ pension rights. The issue of the existing language diversity is also ad-
dressed in various issues of the journal. We occasionally find isolated, yet reveal-
ing comments on the language of instruction, such as the following:

In den Schulen blieb sie [= Low German] bis in die neuere Zeit hinein,
und viele meiner älteren Collegen werden, wie ich, in ihrer Jugend von
einem plattdeutschen Lehrer unterrichtet worden sein, wenn überhaupt
von einem Unterrichten dabei geredet werden kann. (No 4, 26.1.1865, p.
15)
[Until recently it [= Low German] prevailed in schools, and many of my
older colleagues were taught in their youth, as I was, by a Low German-
speaking teacher; if one can call it teaching at all.]

The most interesting and relevant contributions, however, pertain to the

question of whether Low German - the native language of the pupils - should be
permitted in any way in the school and in lessons.9 There is general agreement

9
My corpus of the Schulzeitung ranges from 1863 to 1875. The problem of Danish is
 93

amongst commentators, who argue very strongly that Low German is the indige-
nous language of Northern Germans and thus ought to be cherished as part of
their history and culture:

Die plattdeutsche Mundart ist die Umgangssprache des Norddeutschen.

Sie ist erwachsen auf dem Boden des Volksstammes, der die nord-
deutsche Tiefebene bewohnt und das Product einer Jahrhundertlangen
[sic!], an mannichfachen Kämpfen reichen Vergangenheit. […] So ist in
der plattdeutschen Sprache auch die Volksgeschichte des Nieder-
deutschen ausgeprägt. Eben deshalb ist sie mit dem Volke verschmolzen,
ganz zu seinem Bildungsstandpunkt passend, ganz seine Gemüthswelt
offenbarend, ganz sein geistiges Eigenthum geworden. (No 52,
26.12.1864, pp. 212ff.)
[The Low German dialect is the colloquial language of the Northern
Germans. It stems from the roots of the tribes who lived on the plains of
northern Germany and is the product of a century long, and frequently
embattled history... Thus the Low German language also serves as the
folk memory of the northern German history which defined it. For this
very reason it is engrained in the people, a pefect expression of to their
educational views, revelatory of their mentality and has become, com-
pletely, their intellectual possession.]
However, the teachers contributing to the discussions generally shied
away from suggesting that Low German had any place in actual school lessons as
a means of instruction:

Ich liebe die plattdeutsche Sprache, aber ich habe mich nie für den
Schulgebrauch derselben begeistern können. Sie gehört auf den Markt
des Lebens, in die Conversationszimmer zur gemüthlichen Unterhal-
tung, nicht in die Schule, nicht auf die Kanzel. (No 52, 26.12.1864, pp.
212ff.)
[I love the Low German language but have never been able to reconcile
myself to its use in the school environment. It belongs on the market- of
life, in the parlours for relaxed conversation, not in the school, not on
the pulpit.].

The discussion on the place of Low German in schools can be divided into
two parts, relating to the practical side of providing schooling in the actual na-

only discussed with regard to its rejection as belonging to the previous, nationalist
period of the enemy. Until 1864, the Schulzeitung was largely confined to the Ger-
man-only Duchy of Holstein, where Danish played no role as a language of pupils.
 94

tive language of the children on the one hand and to the more cultural-
educational side of recognising Low German and its literature as important cul-
tural treasures which the children ought to acknowledge and become aware of.
The latter point already hints at the increasing withdrawal of Low German from
everyday life as we witness it today. As regards the former point, advocates of
Low German never suggested that the language ought to replace High German;
but in order to ease the children's entry into schools, the teacher should make
use of the children's mother tongue. These contributions were often embedded
in more general discussions of modern pedagogical methods to reform elemen-
tary schooling (e.g. Pestalozzi). In particular, it was felt that schools needed to
use the pre-school education provided in the home and to build on rather than to
ignore or reject what children had learnt there:

So wie aber die Anknüpfung an das Leben und das im Kinde Lebendige
Hauptaufgabe der Schule bleibt, so muß sich die Schule zur Erreichung
ihres Zweckes auch der Mittel bedienen, mit denen die Entwicklung des
Kindes beginnt, die ihm heimlich und vertraut sind, und an sein Herz
sprechen: es muß mit einem Worte in der Schule die Sprache wiederfin-
den, mit welcher die Mutter zu ihm spricht, und in welcher es bisher die
Welt seiner Umgebung kennen und benennen gelernt hat. [No 13,
26.3.1868, p. 49]
[So while the main purpose of school is to prepare the child, and what
lies within him, for life, it must also facilitate this goal by embracing the
means in which the development of the child first begins; that which is
intimate and familiar to him, and which appeals to his heart: at school
he must be able to recall, with a single word, the language spoken at
home to him by his mother and by which he has, thus far, learnt to dis-
cover and describe the world and his surroundings.]
It is argued that it is much less important to worry about minor linguistic
problems which arise when using a Low German pronunciation as long as the
children grasp the concepts of what they are taught. In fact, teachers should use
the dialect themselves when addressing children in order to create a bond of
trust with the pupils:

Es ist anfangs sehr gleichgültig, ob das Kind Hus oder Haus, Stol oder
Stuhl sage; genug wenn es weiß, was mit den Benennungen bezeichnet
wird. So ist die Auffassung der Sache immer das Wesentliche und der
Hauptzweck des Schulunterrichtes; Dieses ist aber ein untergeordnetes
und gleichwohl genugsam erreichbares Ziel der Schule, das Kind in die
 95

Formen der hochdeutschen Sprache einzuführen, indem Belehrung und

Erkenntniß nicht nur nicht an dieses Mittel gebunden sind, sondern
häufig dadurch Abbruch leiden. Denn das Kind wird nur dann in der
Schule sich durch häusliche Anmuth und Freundlichkeit angesprochen
finden, wenn der Lehrer in der Mundart des Volkes zu ihm spricht. Das
Kind muß die Mitgabe des Elternhauses in der Schule erproben und
bewähren: daher soll der Verkehr wo möglich so leicht, einfach und ver-
traulich sein, wie daheim. (ibid., p. 49f.)
[It is initially fairly irrelevant if a child says Hus or Haus, Stol or Stuhl, as
long as he knows what is being referred to by these terms. As such, the
fundamental concept is always the essential and main purpose of school
teaching. However, a secondary and equally challenging objective is to
introduce the child to the registers of the High German language, the
form in which instruction and knowledge is not only entwined but fre-
quently also obstructed. A child will only feel that he is addressed at
school with home-like warmth and friendliness, if the teacher talks to
him in the common dialect. The child needs to take what he has learned
at home from his parents and test and prove it at school, and so, wher-
ever feasible, interaction should be as simple, easy and familiar as possi-
ble.]

Opponents to this view argue that it is the duty of the school to eradicate
the use of dialect as soon as possible and to train pupils in the language of Ger-
man high culture. It may be tempting and practical to ease pupils into the mono-
lingual nature of schools by permitting the use of Low German in the first few
days but step by step, it is argued, High German has to take over. Low German
may continue to be used in the home or with less 'cultured' topics, in other
words, these opponents of the use of Low German in schools do not argue for the
extinction of the language, much in contrast to views expressed half a century
earlier (e.g. Wienbarg 1834).
It is generally agreed by the opponents that Low German is linguistically
unsuitable for the expression of abstract and technical concepts and thus a con-
versation about scientific or academic subjects would simply not be possible. Low
German is not a language for science (Wissenschaft) and a book aimed at scholarly
instruction can hardly work if written in Low German:

Aber ein Buch, dessen Zweck Belehrung ist, würde sich schlecht
empfehlen, wenn es in plattdeutscher Sprache unsere Begriffs= und
Ideenwelt veredeln wollte. (No 52, 26.12.1864, pp. 212ff.)
 96

[But a book with a purpose to inform, would be very difficult to recom-

mend if it attempted to enrich our world of concepts and ideas via the
Low German language.]
Wissenschaft und hochdeutsche Sprache [gehen] Hand in Hand zur Er-
lösung der Nation, und somit wären wir auch zu dem Punkt gelangt, wo
die hochdeutsche Sprache ihr Recht hat und wo sie allein herrschen soll,
denn beide, sowohl die plattdeutsche, als die hochdeutsche Sprache ha-
ben ihre Berechtigung, aber jede auf ihrem Gebiet. (ibid.)
[Science and High German go hand in hand together in the advancement
of the nation. It is a result of this that we have arrived at a point where
the High German language, and it alone, commands authority; for while
they both have their place, the Low German language as much as High
German, each has its own domain.]

An exception to the exclusion of Low German from schooling pertains to

literary texts. During the nineteenth century, romantic notions of the interrela-
tionship between ethnicity, culture, origin and language abounded and as we saw
above, poets like Klaus Groth (1819-1889) successfully stimulated these senti-
ments into the production of original poetry and literature. The school teachers
contributing to the Schulzeitung were proud and patriotic Schleswig-Holsteiners
for whom the Low German language represented an important cultural asset.
Whilst efforts to introduce the language into schooling proper - as a response to
the fact that the children tended to be monolingual Low German speakers when
starting school - were rejected by teachers across the board, there was equal
agreement that reading and rehearsing good literature in Low German would be
quite beneficial.
The existence of the non-dominant language Low German was acknowl-
edged by educators and its value as the spoken and native language to the people
accepted, but there was no serious suggestion to elevate it to the same level as
the dominant, standard High German. Despite its status as the indigenous lan-
guage of Northern Germans and thus as a cultural treasure, it remained margin-
alised as a means for 'serious' discourse, thus mirroring the situation that we
find in Northern Germany today.

3.4. Memoirs

A fourth source to provide us with evidence of the form and usage of Low
German in the nineteenth century are life memoirs. Those of greatest interest to
a language history from below are typically written by retired school teachers,
 97

farmers but also - lower ranking - military officers. Occasionally these texts were
published in book form but there are also numerous unpublished examples, e.g.
when written with the intention to become a family heirloom.10 These data need
to be considered with the usual care when dealing with material that was filtered
by time - anecdotes were often only written down several decades after they had
taken place - and personal bias.
For us as linguists, two striking observations occur time and again in many
such memoirs: firstly, they are usually written in formal written standard Ger-
man, with no linguistic suggestion of the Northern provenance of the author. This
would suggest not just some careful editing before publication but also the
writer's high competence in the standard language; this at a time when we can
assume that all authors were (also) native speakers of Low German! Secondly, on
many occasions, direct speech from the lower classes is given in Low German,
suggesting not only that it was the normal language for farmers, workers, and
private but also that the readership of the life memoirs was sufficiently ac-
quainted with the language to understand the - often humorous quotations:

“[…] Endlich frei von Sand und Erde, schaut er sprachlos, unverwandt in
seinen Kochkessel! Auch ich blieb stumm ob der überstandenen Lebens-
gefahr! Endlich sagte er: ,Herr Leutnant, de Supp hätt gar niks afkre-
gen!’. An sich dachte diese Holstennatur nicht!” Memoiren, Offizier, 1848
["Freed from sand and earth at last, he stood spechless, staring aghast at
his cooking pot!" I too remained silent about the narrowly avoided risk
to our lives. Eventually he said [in Low German; NL]: "Lieutnant, the
soup was left unharmed!" To his own health, this typical Holsteiner paid
no attention at all.].
This example is particularly interesting as it shows that the private soldier
used Low German, i.e. the non-dominant language, to speak with his superior of-
ficer. This observation, i.e. that the NDV is used not just amongst the lower
classes but also when the higher classes speak with the lower classes, can be
made in numerous sources. However, this is not without exception. The following
quotation from a pamphlet relating the events of the Battle of Kolding (1849) to
contemporary readers, shows how Low German is (reported to have been) used
amongst lower-ranking peers but the language in which the story is told to the
more senior officer is High German:

10
I am grateful to the Department for European Anthropology at the University of Kiel
for granting me access to their substantial collection of unpublished nineteenth-
century life memoirs.
 98

"Hier ist seine Uhr", sagte der Musketier Gönne Christiansen, "die er mir
mit den Worten gab: "Ick bin gliek dod! Hier is mien Uhr! De Dänen
schöllt se nich hem!" als er an meiner Seite nicht weit von der Königsau
durch den Leib geschossen war und ich ihm auf sein Verlangen den
Säbel abgeschnallt hatte. (D 3.3 Broschüre: Episode aus der Schlacht bei Kold-
ing, p. 13)
["Here is his watch" said the Musketeer Gönne Christiansen, "which he
handed to me, saying, [in Low German, NL]: 'I will soon be dead. This is
my watch. The Danes must not have it!" after he had been shot right
through his body, next to me, not far from the river Königsau and after I
had taken his sabre off him on his request.]
These data give us some very good insights into the domain distribution of
dominant vs. non-dominant varieties in that they not only show us that contem-
poraries report that Low German is reserved for spoken discourse of the lower
classes but also that the High German-reading public is sufficiently fluent in the
language to follow longer quotations without gloss. However, one needs to bear
in mind that such memoirs do not tell the whole story. It is not clear, for exam-
ple, in which varieties the non-lower classes conversed with each other. One may
presume that Low German will have played a significant role here, too, but this is
not recorded in this type of data.
Memoirs are thus a useful source for historical sociolinguists and social
historians because they contain stories about everyday life in the past. As we saw
above, direct quotations can illustrate the usage and form of NDV but sometimes
we gain impressions of linguistic behaviour in other forms. On the one hand, we
can derive salient pronunciations from peculiar spellings, on the other hand, we
are - though rarely - directly told about language use. Both are illustrated in the
unpublished memoirs of the Anglian farmer Peter Hansen Breckenfeld (1805-
1881) as shown here. The memoirs are written in fairly formal and indisputable
High German, but on occasion, particular linguistic features which are not part of
High German can be observed which suggests that the writer does not normally
speak the language. Apart from a morphological uncertainty11 as to when to use
accusative or dative morphology - which is unsurprising since Low German, like
English, does not properly distinguish between the two in NPs -, we find phono-
logical interferences when he writes Zwierigkeiten (for Schwierigkeiten) or zwerlich

11
It can quite rightly be argued that there was no 'uncertainty' on behalf of the author
in his usage, since there is no evidence that he had any doubt about the forms he
used. I simply use this term here to avoid the even more problematic forms 'non-
standard' or 'incorrect' usage.
 99

(for schwerlich), so typical for a Danish-influenced Anglian Low German still at-
tested today. Overall, however, the vast majority of language use is a type of High
German which is high in register and not identifiable with regards to the re-
gional provienance of the author. Metalinguistically, Breckenfeld gives us an in-
sight into functional distributions of language use. Living in an area where Low
German and Sønderjysk are the spoken languages, he writes in High German
about his ventures to find a wife by making his intentions known in the area and
paying formal visits to farms with eligible daughters. When he meets Christina,
his later wife, he relates how her father introduced her, but she replied only re-
servedly ('wenig'):
sprach aber Plattdeutsch, welche mich freilich wunderte jedoch aber
besser gefiel, weil ich selbst besser Plattdeutsch als dänisch redete. Ich
kehrte darauf vom dänischen um, und sprach plattdeutsch. (Breck-
enfeld, p. 11)
[But spoke Low German, which admittedly amazed me but was a pleas-
ant surprise as I myself spoke Low German better than Danish. I
switched from speaking Danish to Low German then.]
Not only do we learn that she and he preferred Low German over Danish
but that it was Danish, not High German, which was the language of formal dis-
course at the time.
A final source providing significant insight into the historical sociolinguis-
tics of NDV in nineteenth-century Schleswig-Holstein are private letters.

3.5. Letters
As with previous text types, private letters provide both direct evidence of
linguistic variation in the form of actual language use and indirect, or metalin-
guistic, evidence in the form of comments about language use. We have plenty of
surviving letters from the nineteenth century, but only rarely are these from
lesser-schooled writers. In order to obtain data from 'below', i.e. from speakers
with only an elementary education, which, however, represent the vast majority
of the population, we need to look into particular niches. As mentioned above,
Elspaß (2005) analysed a corpus of emigrant letters, i.e. by people who were
forced to put pen to paper if they wanted to stay in touch with their families af-
ter they had migrated to America. Geographical distance is the primary reason
for writing private letters, and apart from emigration, the most important cause
for large-scale letter-writing by the lower classes is war. We witness two wars in
Schleswig-Holstein during the nineteenth century and through good fortune, the
 100

University Library in Kiel holds a small corpus of letters from these events, writ-
ten by privates and low-ranking officers to their loved ones back home.12
All letters13 are written in High German. This was only to be expected since
at that time, all schooling, all books, and all newspapers, in short, everything on
paper, was done in Standard German.14 The indigenous NDVs Frisian, Low Ger-
man and South Jutish were not used in writing, not even by writers of low educa-
tion and with little practice in writing. This observation is echoed in findings
about lower class writings in English, where writers can be conjectured to be na-
tive speakers of local dialects but where their writing nonetheless is not dialect
(Tony Fairman, Maidenhead, p.c.). The following excerpt demonstrates the high
competency in the standard language: even where certain phrasings suggest
conceptual orality, they are nonetheless standard High German, with several
high-register and morpho-syntactically complex formulations:

Wir haben das Beispiel gehabt, daß durch die gemeinschaftliche Be-
nutzung eines Handtuches, die abscheuliche, sehr bekannte Hautkrank-
heit fortgepflanzt worden ist. Was mein Quartier anbetrifft, so kann ich
nur, das, Euch geliebte Eltern, schon mitgetheilte, bejahen: ich habe
nicht Ursache zu klagen, mal aber noch Manches zu wünschen die Quar-
tiere sind, mit Ausnahme sehr weniger, unter Null. [D 1.4.3, 1849,
Schleswig)
[We have had a case where an abhorrent and very common skin disease
has been transmitted as a result of communal hand towel usage. As far
as my quarters are concerned I can only confirm this, as I have already
done to you dear parents: I’ve got nothing to complain about, just some-
times wishful for a bit better, as, with very few exceptions, the quarters
are sub zero standard.]
However, data from lesser-educated people still provide an exciting source
for historical sociolinguists since whilst their writings aim at Standard German
and achieve a remarkable degree of standard-likeness, they nonetheless contain
much linguistic interference from their native NDV. To illustrate this I give ex-
amples from two types of features:

12
These letters had been collected by state officials from 1910-1914 in order to protect
important pieces of military history (Rüdel 1981).
13
Facsimiles of these letters are available at www.spsh.uni-kiel.de/Textarchiv.
14
The same holds for the standard variety of Danish for the Danish-minded population.
 101

1. Phonological: absence of word-final /t/

Ich habe die Aussich, [StG:15 Aussicht] morgen auf Wache zu ziehen. [D
1.4.3., 1849, Schleswig]
was mir anbetrif [StG: anbetrifft] bin ich bisher auch noch gesund und mun-
ter. [D 1.5, 1850, Kentenmühle]
wenn es glück [glückt] , nemlich l wir sollen darum Losen. [D 1.7.3, 1848,
Heide]

2. Phonological: hypercorrect addition of <t>

ich weißt [StG: weiß] Dich jetz nichts wieder Gutes zu thun. [D 1.5, 1850,
Kentenmühle]

3. Morphological: non-standard case morphology

Schühmann, ist liegt auf den Rechten Flügen b hinter die Schanzen, ich ha-
be nicht mit ihn gesprochen. [D 1.1, 1849, Friederitz (Fridericia)]
Standard German: hinter denDAT PL Schanzen; ich habe mit ihmDAT gesprochen

Montag hatten wir ein kleines Feldmanöver bei daß schöne Wetter.
[D 1.7.4, 1848, Heide]
Standard German: bei demDAT schönen Wetter.
der eine Kerl schoß mir die Mütze von Kopf. [D 1.7.4, 1848, Heide]
Standard German: vomDAT Kopf.

These examples provide a fairly accurate representation of the language of

the letters. Whilst the orthography often does not correspond with the modern
standardised spelling,16 in particular with regards to capitalisation, the language
proper, i.e. phonology, morphology, and syntax provide only rare glimpses of
variation. Nonetheless, our knowledge of the linguistics of the indigenous NDV,
in this case, Low German, permits us to contribute these non-standard examples
to an interference from Low German. In addition to these interference 'errors'
we have a final set of evidence for the existence of NDV: metalinguistic commen-

15
StG = Standard German
16
It is worth noting that whilst German spelling was officially standardised as late as
1903, spelling in nineteenth-century printed texts contained only very little variation,
much less than in the letters presented here.
 102

tary and conscious direct usage. Occasionally, some of the letters show code-
switching into Low German:

vieleicht zum letzten mal: vereint mit Eltern, Brüdern, Verwandten ein
Freudenfest zu feiern; aber die freien Stunden, sind für uns verschwun-
den, die schöne Goldne Zeit; kömmt woll nicht wieder, als ick fröer inz
butthen den Köög, höden döö, u barfoot lopen döö u: ick un Moder bon-
pahln döhn, in den Hött, wat en leben u: den ick da boben op siten dö, u
meinen lustigen Rundgesang über meine Lippen hallen ließ, [D 1.7.5,
1849, Heide]
[[and] perhaps to come together for a final time, with parents, brothers,
relatives to celebrate a feast of joy; but those carefree hours are gone
now, the good old golden days will probably not return, when I was herding
the cows outside, running around barefeet, and mother and I would peel beans
in the cottage, what a life! And when I would sit up there, and let a song cross
my lips] [italics are Low German passages in the original; NL]

Ohne etwas zu ahnen, ging Ich den ersten Pfingstnachmittag nach Vet-
ter Kuckel, der mir gleich zum Kaffe einladete, so gut wie es ihm hatte,
denn ihr müßt nicht glauben, daß wir hier Milch oder Raum [!] bekom-
men, men dat it nun in Kriegs tiiden. --- aber schad doch nichts, er
schmeckt ganz gut; [D 1.7.10, 1849, Taarup]
[Without realising anything, that first Whitsun afternoon I went to
cousin Kuckels, who invited me in for coffee straightaway, or as well as
he was able to, as you have to realise that there was no milk or cream,
but such are times of war, but it does us no harm, it still tastes quite nice.
[italics are Low German passages in the original; NL]]

In both examples, the usage of Low German appears to express particular

functions. In the former, the writer reminisces about the good old times and then
switches to Low German, narrating his happy youth when he spent time with his
mother or running around barefoot in the fields. In the second example, the use
of Low German is restricted to half a line and is used to express a life maxim
about the difficult conditions endured in times of war.
What is striking is how the writer - the only one in the small corpus of let-
ters - uses Low German to add light-heartedness to his prose. This is similar to
the use of Low German writing today which continues to have connotations of
warmth, homeliness, and friendly jocularity.
 103

4. Summary
Studying NDVs in historical contexts always entails a genuine data prob-
lem. Not only do historical linguists face the general problem that only frag-
ments of the written body of texts survive across the ages (Labov's 'bad data'
problem), but scholars working on NDV have to cope with the fact that by virtue
of NDVs being NDVs, they were often not used in written communication. On the
few occasions when people did use NDVs to write things down, these were often
part of casual notes and informal messages, mostly by lesser-educated people; in
short, texts which were rarely considered worthy of preservation and collection
by archives. The case of NDV in nineteenth-century Schleswig-Holstein presents
us with such conditions. Even though the area contains as many as three NDVs,
the vast majority of texts that have come down to us are in the two DV, Standard
German and Standard Danish. Furthermore, most scholarly attention - and this
by historians, rather than linguists - has focused on language policy and politics
in regard to the German-Danish conflict, in which the choice of language in
church, school and administration played a major role (cf. Bracker 1972/3,
Rohwedder 1976). However, this choice was consistently restricted to either
Standard German or Standard Danish. The indigenous NDVs of the area never
played a serious role in this debate.
This chapter has attempted to locate sources which will enable us to gain a
window to the contemporary sociolinguistic situation in the nineteenth century
from below, i.e. as pertaining to the vast majority of speakers. Despite the over-
whelming - contemporary and historical - focus on the 'big' issue of the fight be-
tween (Imperial) Danish vs. (High) German, I argue that there is still sufficient
evidence to present a mosaic of data which demonstrate the different usage and
status of NDVs at the time. Focussing on Low German in particular for the pur-
pose of this article, both printed and handwritten sources from and about the
language of lesser-educated people show that Low German was not only seen as
the language of peasants and uncultured discourse, but that it also carried posi-
tive connotations of homeliness and cultural heritage.
These sentiments were not purely romantic, since until the late nineteenth
century, it continued to be the native language of the vast majority of the popu-
lation. School inspection reports show us that teachers struggled with the fact
that their pupils didn't speak the language of instruction when entering schools
and that it would take a long time for them to be able to follow lessons. Letters
from soldiers from the Dano-German war give us an insight into how compe-
tently adults from the lesser-educated classes wrote in High German - but also
 104

that their written language was not free of easily identifiable transfer errors,
suggesting very strongly that their spoken language had remained Low German.
Despite the thriving survival of the NDV, however, the discussions
amongst school teachers, i.e. transmitters of cultural and linguistic norms, as
printed in the Schulzeitung also show bluntly that there was no lobby to elevate
the native language of the people to the status of an accepted means of formal
discourse.
The perception of High German as the German language, which in the nine-
teenth century was seen to be a major unifying factor for the unification of the
German nation, was never challenged and ultimately encouraged the continued
suppression of Low German as a spoken and non-prestigious language.

5. References

Primary Sources

Breckenfeld, Peter Hansen (1835): Tagebücher. Typoscript at Seminar für Europä-

ische Volkskunde. University of Kiel.
Dücker, Johann Friedrich (61869): Aufgaben zu mündlichen und schriftlichen
Sprachübungen in niederdeutschen Volksschulen. Altona bei dem Verfas-
ser und in G. v. Maack’s Buchhandlung in Kiel.
Dücker, Johann Fr. (1872): Erstes Sprachbuch. Aufgaben zur Erzeugung und Ein-
prägung der leichteren Wortbilder und Sprachformen. Altona. Schlüter.
Grün, Peter C. (1854): Das Vaterland, ein Lesebuch für die oberen Classen der
Volksschule. Altona. Lehmkuhl.
Lorenzen, Christian (1858): Deutsches Lesebuch für die Volksschule und die Un-
terclassen der höheren Schulen des dänischen Staates. Mit Unterstützung
des hohen königlichen Minsteriums für das Herzogthum Schleswig he-
rausgegeben. Schleswig. C. Siemsen.

Corpora
Briefe und Tagebücher aus den Schleswigschen Kriegen, D 1-10 (1848-1851), Uni-
versitätsbibliothek Kiel.
Schleswig-Holsteinische Schulzeitung (SHSZ). 1863-1875, Landesbibliothek
Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel.
www.spsh.uni-kiel.de [Sprachkonflikte und Sprachpolitik in Schleswig-Holstein
(1800-1880)
 105

Secondary Sources

Bracker, Jochen (1972/3): Die dänische Sprachpolitik 1850-1864 und die Bevölke-
rung Mittelschleswigs. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-
Holsteinische Geschichte. vol. 97, 127–126; vol. 98, 87–214.
Dyhr, Mogens (1998): Der deutsch-dänische Sprachkonflikt in Schleswig im 19.
Jahrhundert. In: Cherubim, Dieter et al. (Hgg.) Sprache und bürgerliche Na-
tion. Berlin. de Gruyter, 101-121.
Elspaß, Stephan (2005): Sprachgeschichte von unten. Tübingen. Niemeyer.
Elspaß, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth & Wim Vandenbussche (eds).
(2007): Germanic Language Histories from Below (1700-2000). Berlin. de
Gruyter.
Fairman, Tony (2007): 'Lower-order' letters, schooling and the English Language,
1795 to 1834. In Elspaß et al. (eds.): Germanic Language Histories from Be-
low (1700-2000). Berlin. de Gruyter, 31-43.
Hansen, Nils (1991): Schleswig-holsteinische Visitationsberichte des 19. Jahrhun-
derts als volkskundliche Quellen. Kieler Blätter zur Volkskunde 23, 103–12.
Langer, Nils (2008): German language and German identity in America – Evidence
from school grammars 1860-1918. German Life and Letters 61, 497-513.
Langer, Nils (2011): Historical Sociolinguistics in Nineteenth-Century Schleswig-
Holstein. German Life and Letters 64,169-187.
Leuschner, Torsten (2000): “Die Sprache ist eben ein Grundrecht der Nation, das
sich nur bis zu einer gewissen Grenze gewaltsam verkümmern läßt.”
Deutsch-polnische Gegensätze in der Entstehungsgeschichte des preußi-
schen Geschäftssprachengesetzes von 1876. Germanistische Mitteilungen
52, 1-15.
Milroy, James (2005): Some effects of purist ideologies on historical descriptions
of English. In: Linguistic Purism in the Germanic Languages. ed. by N. Lan-
ger and W. V. Davies. Berlin. de Gruyter, 324-342.
Muhr, Rudolf (2005): Language attitudes and language conceptions in non-
dominating varieties of pluricentric languages. In: Standardvariationen
und Sprachideologien in verschiedenen Sprachkulturen der Welt, ed. by R.
Muhr. Vienna: Peter Lang, 11-20.
Reichmann, Oskar (2001): Nationale und europäische Sprachgeschichtsschrei-
bung. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanistenverbandes 48, 530-537.
 106

Rohwedder, Jürgen (1976): Sprache und Nationalität. Nordschleswig und die An-
fänge der dänischen Sprachpolitik in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhun-
derts. Glückstadt. AugustinRüdel, Holger (1981): Briefe und Tagebücher aus
den Kriegen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Notizen zu einer Sammlung aus der Uni-
versitätsbibliothek Kiel. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-
Holsteinische Geschichte 106, 295-298.
Wienbarg, Ludolf (1834): Soll die plattdeutsche Sprache gepflegt oder ausgerottet
werden? Hamburg. Hoffmann und Campe.
Winge, Vibeke (2009): 'Deutsch und Dänisch.' In: Deutsch und seine Nachbarn. ed.
by M. Elmentaler. Frankfurt. Peter Lang, 1-14.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 107-128.

Chiara MESSINA
(Università degli Studi di Milano/Genova, Italy)
chiara.messina@unige.it
messina.chiara@gmail.com

Researching a Language for Special Purposes

within a Non-Dominant Variety:
An Overview based on the Example of
Austrian German

Abstract
Up to now, talking about pluricentricity of the German language has
mostly implied talking about general language. However, investigations
into general language do not exhaust the wide field of research about
non-dominant varieties (NDV). Not only are LSP the tools used by ex-
perts in their everyday communication, but due to their denotative
function LSP also tell us a lot about the country or system they are used
in and the people who use them. As a consequence, LSP represent a very
promising research topic as far as NDV are concerned. This paper deals
with the Austrian Standard Variety of German and presents an introduc-
tory study of the Austrian Language of Economy. Our aim is to illustrate
the main issues that have to be considered when carrying out research
on LSP within a NDV and to propose adequate methods to deal with
these issues.

1. Introduction – The Austrian Standard Variety

When thinking about Austrian German, most German speakers think of a
few names of food specialities uttered with a nasal pronunciation. Of course, this
is a raw simplification. Talking about Austrian German implies talking about lin-
guistic features at all levels and about historic and sociolinguistic issues as well.
As a national variety, Austrian Standard German (ASG) varies “externally” in
comparison with the varieties spoken in the other centres of the German lan-
guage. Furthermore, ASG varies “internally”, comprising varieties ranging from
dialect to standard, that is, it has an internal stratification. The fact that some
Austrian variants are not used exclusively in Austria does not change the socio-
linguistic status of Austrian German as a national standard variety:
 108

“Where a low status has been afforded by Germans to the Austrian and
Swiss national varieties, this is not only an expression of cultural impe-
rialism or of historical factors. It is also the result of confusion between
linguistic and sociolinguistic considerations. National varieties are de-
termined on the basis of sociolinguistic/sociopolitical criteria. The fact
that features of South German regional varieties, Austrian and Swiss na-
tional varieties may overlap does not make Austrian and Swiss Standard
German dialects of a German Standard German. The important fact is
that Jänner (`January´, GSG Januar) and Feber (`February´, GSG Februar)
maybe regional and not completely Standard in South Germany but they
are Standard in Austria [...].” (Clyne 1992: 134-135, italics in original)
A linguistic description of the Austrian Standard Variety (ASV) is given in
Ammon (1995: 142-180); an overview can be found in Muhr (1995: 208-234) and
Wiesinger (2008: 10-17), it will suffice here to highlight that ASV is a national va-
riety of the German language characterized by the co-occurrence of both linguis-
tic specific and non-specific variants at phonological, morphosyntactic and lexi-
cal level and at the pragmatic level as well.
When talking about ASV, it is essential to highlight the contrasts underly-
ing what Clyne called the “Austrian cringe” (Clyne 1995: 31). Due to historic fac-
tors, language plays quite a controversial role in the national consciousness of
Austrian people:
“Die Identität der Österreicher ist daher überwiegend staatsnational,
jene der deutsche Staatsbürger hingegen überwiegend sprachnational
begründet und aus der Sprache abgeleitet. Dieser Umstand hat bei den
Österreichern zu einer Art “Aussparung“ des Aspekts „Sprache“ im
Identitätskonzept und zu Verwirrung und Unsicherheiten geführt, die
meistens darin gipfelt, dass man geneigt ist, das eigene Deutsch als un-
wichtig abzutun und sich stark an den Außennormen orientiert, ein Um-
stand, der schon seit mehreren Jahrhunderten besteht.” (Muhr 1996: 33).
[The identity of Austrians is founded mainly on the idea of the state na-
tion, the identity of Germans mainly on a nation based on ethnic princi-
ples. This fact has led the Austrians to “cut out” the aspect of “language”
in their concept of identity, to confusion and uncertainty. This usually
culminates in the fact that Austrians are inclined to dismiss their
German as unimportant and strongly orient themselves on external
linguistic standards, an attitude which has existed for several centuries.]
 109

This uncertainty results in a denigration of their own variety by Austrian

speakers and in a “pendulum swing between language planning for national
identity and an acceptance of standardized German norms” (Clyne 1992: 121).
While Muhr believes that language does not play a primary role in the
identity building of Austrian speakers, in the opinion of De Cillia, it has a very
important function instead:
“Eine hervorragende Rolle spielt schließlich die Sprache, die von vielen
DiskussionsteilnehmerInnen und Interviewten unaufgefordert und
spontan als wesentlicher Bestandteil ihrer Identität genannt wird. Die
gemeinsame Sprache ist sowohl ein wichtiges Element der inneröster-
reichischen Abgrenzung (gegenüber den alten und neuen sprachlichen
Minderheiten) als auch der Abgrenzung gegenüber Deutschland (als ös-
terreichisches Deutsch)”. (De Cillia 2000: 74)
["Language plays an important role, which many panelists and
interviewees unsolicited and spontaneously indicated as an essential
component of their identity. The common language is both an important
element of differentiation within Austria (opposite the old and new
linguistic minorities) and separation from Germany (as Austrian
German). "]

2. Non-Dominant Varieties and Languages for Special Purposes

Up to now, research and discourse about non-dominant varieties of the
German language has mostly focused on general language. Languages for special
purposes are still a quite unexplored research area. Nevertheless, given the
growing specialization of knowledge and the popularisation of specialized
knowledge in the contemporary world (see for example Roelcke 2005: 7), it is
doubtful whether it is really possible to draw a clear cut divide between general
language and LSP – and whether it really makes sense. It is precisely this shaded
nature that makes linguistic investigation of LSP difficult. Defining LSP as lan-
guage varieties – and specifically as functional-situational language varieties, see
Adamzik (1998: 182) – allows dealing with homogeneous entities at a theoretical
stage, but it does not eliminate complexity:
“Im Text – hier speziell: im Fachtext – als dem Ort und dem Medium von
Fachkommunikation verweben sich […] grundsätzlich gemeinsprachli-
che und fachsprachliche Phänomene einer Einzelsprache. Hier ist der
Ort der Ko-Existenz der Varietäten” (Kalverkämper 1998: 38).
 110

[“The text – in particular: the specialized text - is the place and the
medium of professional communication where common language and
special language phenomena of a single language are interwoven.”]
The co-existence of varieties implies complex and multifaceted linguistic
realizations featuring several dimensions: functional, sociolinguistic, pragmatic
and cultural facts, content and concept dimensions. When the investigation deals
with one of the NDV of a pluricentric language, the task is even more complex, as
at least two additional factors must be accounted for: diatopic facts and identity
issues. In the case of NDV, even the denotative function of LSP gives insights that
go beyond the bare reference. LSP are strictly connected to the social and institu-
tional structure of a country as a legal, economic, cultural and social unity and
reflect all these aspects in specialized discourse, hence giving clues about the ex-
tra-linguistic world. As “funktionale Soziolekte” [functional socialects] or “Sozial
gebundene Funktiolekte” [socially embedded functionlects] (Kalverkämper 1998:
34), they also embody the social aspects of specialized communication, thus con-
veying information about the sociolinguistic situation, the attitudes of their
speakers and the relationships to other varieties (for example, to LSP spoken in
the dominant centre of a pluricentric language):
“Die gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen, welche die Menschen untere-
inander gehen, bilden die entscheidende Grundlage für den speziellen
Raum der (fachlichen) Kommunikationsbeziehungen” (Baumann 1998:
110).
["The social relations that people enter into with each other form the
essential basis of the specific area of the (specialized) communication
relationships."]
Given the role LSP play in various respects, it is obvious that they exert an
influence on linguistic behaviour in non-dominant centres of a pluricentric lan-
guage. The primary task of an investigation about LSP within NDV is to is to con-
sciously account for sociolinguistic facts. Previous studies concerning LSP in the
German language sometimes lack the pluricentric approach or even the con-
sciousness that studies about the German variety may not apply to other centres
of the German language.
This lack of pluricentric-oriented studies concerning LSP is quite surpris-
ing given that the close relationship between specialized texts, extra-linguistic
reality and the development of pluricentric languages was first highlighted by
Heinz Kloss already in 1978:
 111

“Nicht jede Sprachform, die keine Abstandsprache ist, zugleich aber für
alle denkbaren Anwendungsbereiche selbst der Sachprosa verwendet
wird, ist eine (Nur-)Ausbausprache. Es kann sich vielmehr auch um eine
Spielart einer plurizentrischen Hochsprache handeln […]. Hochsprachen
sind besonders dort häufig plurizentrisch, d.h. weisen mehrere gleichbe-
rechtigte Spielarten auf, wo sie die Amts- und Verwaltungssprache meh-
rerer größerer unabhängiger Staaten ist […].(Kloss 1978: 66)
["Not every form of language, which is not an Abstandsprache, but also
used in all conceivable areas including non-fiction prose is a (mere) Aus-
bausprache. It can instead also be a variety of a pluricentric standard
language.”]
Researching LSP within a non-dominant variety helps to document the
overall situation of this variety, as well as its sociolinguistic situation, its prestige
and its power and influence relationships towards the dominant variety. Fur-
thermore, carrying out research about specific linguistic features of a non-
dominant variety means increasing knowledge about the variety itself, thus
strengthening the linguistic awareness of its speakers. Given the function of
identity building played by LSP1, they may also highlight some aspects of the re-
lationship between language and identity – which is definitively one of the core
issues of NDV research, and, as we outlined above, of Austrian German research.
Quite interestingly, very few linguists who deal with the German language
and studied the social and (inter-)cultural aspects of LSP have ever applied these
considerations to non-dominant centres and pluricentricity from a sociolinguis-

1
“Die letzte funktionale Eigenschaft von Fachsprachen, auf die hier hinzuweisen ist,
stellt die Identitätsstiftung dar […]. Fachsprachen [können] über die Personengrup-
pen bestimmt werden, die mit ihnen über bestimmte Kenntnisbereiche kommunizie-
ren. Diese Bestimmung erweist sich insofern als sinnvoll, als nicht allein eine Gruppe
den Gebrauch einer gemeinsamen Sprache oder Varietät begründen kann, sondern
ihrerseits anhand dieser wiederum sowohl von Außenstehenden als auch von Ange-
hörigen der Gruppe selbst zu identifizieren ist.” (Roelcke 2005: 30).
[The final functional property of specialized language to refer to here is is, to provide
identity [...]. Specialized languages [can] be determined by the groups of people who
communicate with them on certain areas of knowledge. Insofar as this provision
proves to be useful not only as a group can establish the use of a common language
or variety, but identify themselves on the basis of it in turn both by outsiders and by
members of the group itself."]
 112

tic perspective (among those who did: Becker/Hundt 1998: 124 ff.)2. This fact
seems to strengthen the hypothesis of unilingualism/linguistic and cultural
monocentrism of speakers of dominant varieties formulated by Lüdi (1992: 152
ff.) and Muhr (2005: 12 ff.). This consideration also reflects all features of NDV de-
scribed by M. Clyne (1995: 22), with special regard to the lower consideration and
prestige enjoyed by NDV – and the centre it is spoken in – and has consequences
in the description and codification of non-dominant varieties. From looking at
literature, one may have the impression that standard national varieties repre-
sent – up to now – a quite marginal topic for the so-called Fachsprachenforschung.
[research on languages for special purposes].
This leads to two considerations: firstly, it highlights the marked or the to-
tal lack of consideration for the existence of non-dominant centres of a pluricen-
tric language and actually of pluricentrism itself, as briefly mentioned above;
secondly, without considering non-dominant centres of a pluricentric language,
all considerations about the denotative function of LSP often remain at a barely
theoretical level. Indeed, as far as pluricentric languages are concerned, LSP of-
ten refers to country-specific situations which may differ from one centre to an-
other of the same pluricentric language. Does it make sense to compare “the”
English legal language and “the” German legal language, if English and German
are spoken in several countries, each having its own legal system?
In summary, researching LSP within a NDV means contributing to a more
complete description of the ND variety, pointing out differences in the extra-
linguistic systems of different centres of the same pluricentric languages
through language features, giving some hints about extra-linguistic factors influ-
encing variation in special knowledge fields; and identifying actual trends in the
variety as LSP are prone to neologisms and external pressures due to continuous
knowledge exchange, as well as to terminologization and de-terminologization
processes between LSP and common language.
The way the research on LSP in NDV is executed, of course, depends on the
goal of the investigation; still, we may highlight some general issues: first of all,
one of the major tasks is to account for all relevant sociolinguistic and LSP fac-

2
Hartmann (1980) talks about regional variation in spoken LSP, while Gläser (1987:
191-192) talks about Hochsprache, Umgangssprache and Dialekt, [Standard lan-
guage, colloquial and dialect] a model that is not suitable for analyses about pluricen-
tric languages. Despite their interesting nature, such regional- and dialect-based ap-
proaches to diatopic variation in LSP cannot be applied to national non-dominant va-
rieties as they lack the pluricentric concept.
 113

tors in a conscious and functional way. Secondly, variety-specific LSP features

need to be recognized among the other features of the research object. This may
be difficult as we know from M. Clyne that NDV have fewer resources in terms of
codification and a lower level of consciousness about their linguistic peculiari-
ties.
Last but not least, we need to keep in mind that the two objects – LSP and
NDV – exist separately, only artificially in our minds; in real language use they
overlap in the linguistic repertoire of the speakers. On the one hand, we need to
keep LSP and NDV separated for the analysis, but on the other hand we need a
means of putting them back together in order to give a complete sociolinguistic
picture of the variety we are researching.

3. Case study – The Austrian Language of Economy

The last paragraph attempted to outline the role played by LSP research
within the more general analysis of non-dominant varieties. In this paragraph we
will focus on the theoretical and methodological issues of LSP research within
NDV by illustrating a case study3.
As outlined in the first paragraph, the subject of the research was the Aus-
trian standard variety of the German language. Within this variety, we analysed
the lexis of the language of economy. The main issues of the research were the
identification of Austrian specific terms pertaining to the language of economy
(both codified and non-codified) and the sociolinguistic analysis of variation by
means of correlation between linguistic and extra-linguistic features. Our goals
were to identify the terminology and the factors driving diatopic variation in
LSP. The output was a list of about 440 Austriacisms functioning as terms with
their graphic variants, a glossary with terminological entries and quantitative
data with sociolinguistic interpretation.
On the basis of this work, in the following paragraphs we are going to
tackle some basic concepts of linguistics and terminology/terminography that
may be misleading – or may be applied in a misleading way – when researching
LSP within NDV, i.e., codification, terms and variants. They function well if ap-
plied to LSP or national varieties without further specification; however, they

3
The following paragraphs and examples are based on my PhD Thesis, entitled “Die
Fachsprache(n) der Wirtschaft in der österreichischen Standardvarietät des Deut-
schen. Eine korpusgestützte Untersuchung.” ["The specialized language(s) of
economy in the Austrian standard variety of German. A corpus-based study." (Geno-
a/Vienna 2010).]
 114

need to be revised in order to be applied to LSP within NDV in a functional and

effective way. As we studied the lexical level, all reflections, methods and pro-
posals we are going to illustrate only apply to lexis.

3.1. Codification
“Within Austria, the attitude to Austrian Standard German and codifica-
tion efforts as well as the decline in such efforts […] were influenced by a
pendulum swing in national consciousness and self-confidence. They
were also influenced by the social stratification of Austria, which is still
far more rigid than that of the Federal Republic of Germany, and has led
to a concern about the loss of the prescriptive function of the ÖWB and a
possible egalitarian hidden agenda. As Muhr (1987a) has demonstrated,
it is not quite certain what the Austrian Standard is. The inherent ‘cul-
tural cringe’ in much of the debate on the ÖWB is related to the inter-
mittent pan-German tradition in Austria which denies the existence of
the Austrian nation. The political complexity is expressed by Reiffen-
stein (1983: 19) who draws attention to two contradictory tendencies in
the ÖWB (1979) – a “reactionary”, anachronistic nationalist one and a
“progressive” social one. The two trends tended to merge in Austria dur-
ing the Kreisky era, with Nationalism increasingly defined as a positive
participatory allegiance to a newly developing democratic Austrian so-
ciety […]. The slowing-down in the codification and the ambivalence in
the status of Austrian Standard German reflected the political scene fol-
lowing the departure of Kreisky […].” (Clyne 1992: 136)

This quotation from Clyne explains the role of codification within the thick
net of interconnected factors influencing ASG. After almost 20 years, a lot of
things have changed and the Österreichisches Wörterbuch4 has undergone some
changes in its later editions. The very much criticized stars on those words that
are not used in Austria have been replaced by the indication “bes. D.” starting
from the 40th edition. Despite all criticisms, the Österreichisches Wörterbuch never-
theless represents (for better or for worse) the internal codification of the Aus-
trian Standard German. However, the ÖWB is a “mittlere Ausgabe” and has been
thought as a reference work for school and everyday life. It is not intended to de-

4
The Österreichisches Wörterbuch is the Austrian endonormative codex covering the
Austrian standard variety. Published for the first time in 1951 by commission of the
Ministry of Education, Art and Culture, it was thought as a reference work for correct
writing in all Austrian schools and offices. Its 35th edition has been strongly criticized
for a non-scientific choice of lemmas and for the marking of some words of the Ger-
man variety. Meanwhile, it has reached the 41st edition.
 115

scribe the Austrian German lexis in a complete way; therefore, it mostly contains
those lemmata that occur in everyday life. In its preface, the ÖWB claims it also
includes words from some specific LSP (economy, administration, sports, etc.);
however, this is only true of quite general, everyday words. For example, in the
ÖWB we can look up Exekutionsverfahren5 and vinkulieren6, but not Exzindierungs-
verfahren7 and Vinkulärgläubiger.8 We will not deal with codification with regard
to general language and completion issues, but, as far as languages for special
purposes are concerned, it is quite obvious that the ÖWB needs to be integrated
with external codification. With regard to the language of economy, law and ad-
ministration in Austria, the Wörterbuch der österreichischen Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und
Verwaltungsterminologie by Heidemarie Markhardt (2006) must be mentioned. This
work includes many Austrian terms, but also many proper names9 without dis-
tinguishing the status of these categories.
To have recourse to external codification to look for terms may not always
turn out to be a clever strategy. As we underlined above, languages for special
purposes maintain a close relationship with the extra-linguistic world due to
their denotative function. In some fields, such as administration, law and econ-
omy, the extra-linguistic reality may differ from country to country, which also
apply to nations speaking a pluricentric language. Thus, external codification
from another centre of the same pluricentric language may lack this reference to
reality. In other words, specialized codification in Austria needs to be integrated
with more extensive and specialized works. Furthermore, semantic variants can
be quite confusing if looked at in an external language codex. For example, in a
German dictionary Veranlagungszeitraum may be explained as period of taxation,
but in Austria it also means period of investment.
Lacking internal codification is one of the major problems we encountered
in our research. Indeed, the findings of our corpus analysis include many terms
having a high degree of specialization that are not included in the language co-

5
[enforcement proceedings]
6
[to restrict the transfer of shares etc.]
7
[enforcement of substantive rights or claims in execution-drawn objects]
8
[creditor of a exclusion of transferability of material rights]
9
For instance, “Auto-, Motor- und Radfahrerbund Österreichs (ARBÖ)” (Markhardt
2006: 34). Strictly speaking, those denominations are not variants, as they do not
refer to a linguistic variable, not terms, as they are not associated with a concept (as
abstraction of the common characteristics of more objects). Instead, they refer to
one specific object. The information conveyed about such denominations is very use-
ful nevertheless and may well be part of a Fachkodex (see later), granted that such
denomination are recognised as being proper names and nor variants, nor terms.
 116

dex. Apart from the difficulty of defining terms, this fact is connected with a
theoretical standstill: as we know from literature that codification is one of the
criteria to define a variety (and variants as well) as standard10, we may ask if
lacking codification means that these lexical items are not standard: “A standard
variety […] is a system of standard variants and standard constants” (Ammon
2004b: 274). However, some of the findings are not only obviously standard, but
they also represent model expressions in their field. Some of our examples come
from the text type of the balance sheet: in this case, the Austrian Commercial co-
dex (UGB) provides a structure which is legally binding for all balance sheets
produced in Austria. This structure is expressed by words: as a consequence, the
names of the single balance items and categories are legally binding as well, even
if – as stated by our analysis – they are not codified in the linguistic codex. It’s
clear that those texts are more than model texts in their domains and therefore
must be included in the codex.
Ammon (2003: 2) describes such phenomena as “standard by usage” (here,
the idea is of a bottom-up process), in the case of texts having normative power,
this concept may not apply (normative texts exerting an influence on language
are connected with the idea of a top-down process). The concept of function, also
formulated by Ammon, can be more useful in this respect; the “official function
on a national level” (Ammon 2004a: 187) seems to be particularly relevant. How-
ever, function is once again related to usage by model writers; usage by model
writers – according to Ammon – is connected with a lower degree of standardisa-
tion than the codification in linguistic reference works:
“Als Vorstufe von Standardisierung dient die Orientierung an Modell-
sprecher und -schreiber, deren Sprachgebrauch als vorbildlich gilt und
insofern eine rudimentäre Standardvarietät konstituiert. Nach dem Grad
der Kodifizierung lässt sich der Grad der Standardisierung einer Sprache
bzw. ihrer Standardvarietät messen: Der niedrigste Grad liegt vor bei
Existenz nur von Modellsprechern (ohne Verschriftlichung), ein höherer
bei Existenz auch von Modellschreibern und ein noch höherer bei vor-
handenem Sprachkodex […].” (Ammon 2004a: 183)
[As a precursor of standardization serves the orientation to model
speakers and writers, whose language is exemplary and as such consti-
tutes a rudimentary standard variety. The degree of standardization of a
language and its standard variety can be measured on the basis of the
10
“Volle Standardisierung ist kaum möglich ohne Kodifizierung” (Ammon 2004a: 183,
italics in original), see also Ammon (2005: 32). [Complete standardization is not pos-
sible without codification]
 117

degree of codification: The lowest level is represented in existence of

model speakers (without writing system), a higher level in existence by
model writers and an even higher one if a language codex exists [...]. "]
The traditional concept of language codification turns out to be insuffi-
cient for classifying a LSP as belonging to a standard variety. In order to involve
these model texts, we revised and developed further the concept of codification.
While literature only considers linguistic reference works, this model includes
the idea of subject codification, which we called Fachkodifizierung. Fachkodi-
fizierung is the codification of linguistic elements in specialized texts. Of course,
the main task of these texts is not a linguistic description; still, they have a refer-
ence function within the specialized knowledge field also as far as language is
concerned. As a consequence, such a codification also influences language use by
providing model expressions. For example, a law text is not a linguistic reference
work, but the terminology it contains must be used in all fields it regulates.
In this model, public and private institutions producing texts for the public
are considered model speakers/writers contributing to subject codification. This
way, subject codex includes non-fictional model texts which are binding in spe-
cialized knowledge areas. While the language codex describes the correct use of
the standard variety, the subject codex is a reference for language use in single
specialized knowledge fields. Of course, the Fachkodex is not meant to provide
guidelines for correcting general language behaviour; its function is to provide
lexical and stylistic reference for the knowledge domain it pertains to. Making
the concept of codex operational this way allows to overcome the theoretical ob-
stacles associated with the traditional idea of linguistic codification.

3.2. Terms and variants – two different perspectives?

Terms and variants “belong” to two different perspectives on language:
terms “belong” to terminology and LSP research, while variants “belong” to so-
ciolinguistics. However, these distinctions only exist at a theoretical level. In the
real world, language is a complex phenomenon where all these perspectives co-
exist and overlap. Nevertheless, such simplifications may be useful for analyses
that do not focus on the interaction of different perspectives. In the case of our
study, we are again faced with a standstill of a metalinguistic or terminological
nature: as we are analysing a LSP from the lexical perspective, it makes sense to
talk about terms. At the same time, it also seems logical to talk about variants, as
we are studying the Austrian national variety.
 118

The Vienna school of Terminology, i.e. the “classical” approach to termi-

nology, views terms as the representation of concepts, which may be linguistic
but also non-linguistic. This conception of terms also reflects in the ISO guide-
lines for terminology: “A term is a designation consisting of one or more words
representing a general concept in a special language. A simple term contains
only one root while a term containing two or more roots is called a complex
term” (ISO 704: 24).
Even in Rita Temmerman’s sociocognitive approach, terms are quite dis-
tant from the linguistic world. Language is a “means for categorisation” (Tem-
merman 2000: 61); even if she states that her “understanding approach […] im-
plies that the term is considered the starting point for discovering categorical at-
tribution” (Temmerman 2000: 38), this has to be understood in a cognitive per-
spective. While the Vienna school insists on the denominative function of terms,
Temmerman stresses their function of indexing, i.e., retrieving units of under-
standing. Once again, the cognitive (and conceptual, even if expressed with dif-
ferent words) dimension is kept quite separated from the varied linguistic real-
ity. Terms seems to be something fixed, referring to a specific concept or unit of
understanding, without any relation to their use in specific geographic areas.
More recent approaches to terminology deals with linguistic phenomena
such as variation and synonymy (see for example Freixa/Fernández/Cabré 2008:
738 ff.). However, the main focus of these works is placed on semantic issues or
on contrastive aspects and not on diatopic variation, especially in the German-
speaking milieu. The connection between the functional dimension of terms and
the diatopic dimension seems to be a quite unexplored path. Even the so-called
socioterminologie (see for example Gaudin 1993), which has been developed in
French-speaking circles starting from the 80s and which promote a descriptive
approach, does not find any implementation in the German-speaking terminol-
ogy research. Traditional terminography classifies denominative variants as re-
gional synonyms of the main term (which is normally the term of the dominant
variety), or denominative variants are simply given a label of geographical use
(see for example Arntz/Picht/Mayer 2004: 233). The first solution does not ac-
count in any way for national sociolinguistic facts, while the second needs to be
integrated with more information in order to be functional.
At the language system level, however, we should refer to variables and
variants. In sociolinguistics, variants are defined as the specific realizations of an
abstract value (the variable) within a system; national variants are national-
specific realizations (see for example Ammon 2005: 30 and Ammon 1995: 61).
 119

From this perspective, variants and terms seem to be two completely heteroge-
neous entities. Variants are alternative realizations of linguistic variables11,
terms are supposed to consist in a denomination with its concept side. Still, those
elements being defined as diatopic or national variants at a system (or langue)
level may function as terms at a parole-level, when speakers of a non-dominant
variety communicate about a specialized knowledge field. For example, Einmaler-
lagsprodukt [single deposit product] is an Austrian specific variant from the langue
perspective and, in real specialized language use, is a term with the following de-
finition: “im Rahmen einer oder in Verbindung mit einer Lebensversicherung
angebotenes Produkt, das die Auszahlung einer Einmalprämie nach dem Ver-
tragsabschluss vorsieht”12. In our research we encountered lexical items that are
specific for Austria only as far as they function as terms. For example, the term
Kapitalanteilschein [dividend coupon] is not an Austrian variant from a language
system perspective, as the constituents of this word are used in all centres of the
German language; still, as a term (defined as “Eigentumspapier, die auf Grund-
lage des § 174 AktG emittiert worden sind und das Recht auf Gewinn, Substan-
zzuwachs und Liquidationserlös verbriefen”13) it is specific to Austria and differs
from its German equivalent Aktienzertifikat [share certificate].
Thus, terms and variants simply reflect two different approaches and per-
spectives on language – two different labels that sometimes are attached to the
same referents. Considering terms and variants as different ways to describe
things makes it easier to deal with these concepts while researching a LSP within
a NDV: while variant indicates the status of a lexical element within the system,
term refers to its function in real specialized language use.

4. Research methodology
Researching the multifaceted subject outlined in the previous paragraphs
is a complex task that requires a method able to account for the various relevant
dimensions and their interaction as well. To comply with this task, we developed
a methodology including four stages: definition of the sampling frame (research
object), definition of the sociolinguistic frame (theoretical model), creation of a
purpose-specific corpus (comparable corpora) and analysis of this latter.

11
“Ogni valore che può assumere la variabile, cioè ognuna delle realizzazioni alternative
di quell’unità o entità del sistema, è una variabile (sociolinguistica)” (Berruto 1995:
33).
12
Definition based on http://www.vvo.at/glossar-3.html (16/01/2010).
13
Definition based on http://www.arv.at/anteile.html (14/01/2010).
 120

4.1. Definition of the sampling frame

Granted that defining the research object, population and sampling frame
is the first stage of every sociolinguistic analysis, when studying a LSP within a
NDV, some additional factors should be taken into account. In our case study, the
research object results from the co-existence and intersection of the Austrian
standard variety and the language of economy. These two language varieties ac-
tually grade into one another and overlap; they do not exist as separate units in
real language use but only as abstract units. The target population was defined as
written, specialized texts produced in Austria by economic actors between 2005
and 2009 and pertaining to the following domains of economy: manufacturing,
real estate, insurance, power generation, and other services. To represent this
population, we applied the method of stratified sampling. In our sampling frame,
strata are represented by text types. These text types were chosen according to
extra-linguistic factors and textual features identified as relevant for our re-
search object and goal; the text types are the following: general terms and condi-
tions of contract, invoices, business reports and official reports. The criteria for
stratified sampling will be illustrated more in detail in the following paragraphs.

4.2. Definition of the sociolinguistic frame

One of the prime aims of a sociolinguistic model in this kind of analysis is
to identify those factors defining and affecting the research, while providing a
sturdy theoretical frame.
While traditional sociolinguistic studies only consider extra-linguistic fac-
tors as elements correlating with variables and driving variation, a theoretical
model for describing a LSP should also encompass textual features accounting for
specific characteristics of LSP texts and text types. Indeed, in our research it
eventually turned out that text structure affects the distribution of variants. In
order to analyse the Austrian language of economy, our model combined the so-
cial and diatopic dimensions that characterize the Austrian standard variety with
the extra-linguistic and textual features that characterize the LSP of economy. In
this sense, the model used is not a pure sociolinguistic one, as it combines differ-
ent approaches and criteria: sociolinguistics (communication partners), text lin-
guistics (text function, text structure pattern), LSP research and terminology
(text distribution, area of usage, degree of specialization of the text).
As mentioned above, the selection of the text types, i.e. of the corpus
strata, was performed on the basis of these criteria, for mainly two reasons: the
 121

lack of consistent previous classifications of the text types of the language of

economy14 and – above all – the possibility to make the selected criteria opera-
tional by implementing them in the corpus strata. We implemented the sociolin-
guistic model in a matrix of characteristics that follows the idea of the so-called
Merkmalkombinatorik, which considers text types as combinations of a number of
characteristics; see Lux (1981: 36). The matrix shows all characteristics defining
the single text types and allows for contrastive analysis of these letters.

General terms
and conditions of Business reports Invoices Official reports
contract

EXTRA-LINGUISTIC FACTORS

N. of communi- n:n n:n n:1 n:n

cators

Specialization Communication Communication Communication Communication

degree of com- between experts between experts between experts between experts
municators of the same sec- of the same sec- of different sec- of the same sec-
tor, of different tor or of 33 dif- tors or between tor or of different
sectors or be- ferent sectors experts and non- sectors
tween experts experts
and non-experts

Text distribution national national* (Ger- national national* (Ger-

and reception man speaking man speaking
countries) countries)

Area of usage Private law Private law Private law public

Function Obligation Information Obligation Information

TEXTUAL FEATURES

Text structure Highly binding Highly binding Highly binding Moderately bind-
pattern ing

Text specializa- STTR = 39,63 STTR = 35,65 STTR= 32,91 STTR = 24,70
tion degree

As it can be seen in the matrix, text types differ from one other in only one
or at the most two characteristics. Significantly different distributions of vari-
ants in the text types can thus be ascribed to the distinctive characteristic(s).
This way, the matrix of characteristics not only reflects the scientific approach at
a theoretical level; during the interpretation of corpus findings it also functions

14
There are quite few classifications of the text types of the language of economy (see
for example Gläser 1990: 52 ff. and Bolten, quoted according to Cothran 2002: 39).
These classifications are based on criteria that are not relevant for our scope or do
not comply with our approach.
 122

as an empirical tool for contrastive analysis that allows to trace single variation
phenomena back to a specific text type feature.

4.3. Creation of a purpose-specific corpus

As none of the existing corpora met the requirements of our population, a
purpose-specific corpus was built from scratch containing about 2.5 million
words. More precisely, in order to extract Austrian specific variants, two compa-
rable corpora have been built, one for the German variety and one for the Aus-
trian variety having exactly the same structure.
Both corpora are bidimensional and stratified. On the vertical axle, the
strata of the corpus are represented in the above mentioned text types. The ver-
tical dimension of the corpus thus reflects the communicative situations in
which the texts are embedded with all their social and functional characteristics
as well as the other features contained in the matrix.
The horizontal axle of the corpus consists in the previously mentioned
economic sectors. These latter have been chosen according to their relevance in
the Austrian Gross Domestic product, in the opinion that sectors having greatest
importance in the economy also play a corresponding relevant role in affecting
specialized language. We chose to analyse several micro-domains of economy to
comply with our major research goal, which is to provide an introductory study
to the Austrian language of economy.
The horizontal dimension of the corpus represents the content side and is
associated with the extra-linguistic world to which the sampling frame relates. It
should be highlighted that content is not included in the matrix as a text-
inherent feature; on the contrary, it corresponds to the domains and functions as
extra-linguistic frame reflecting in the text topic and encompassing various lexi-
cal features.
By reflecting the structure of the matrix, the stratification of the corpus
makes the theoretical factors operational, that is, allows to use them actively
during corpus analysis: the choice of the sampling units accounts for the diatopic
dimension; the vertical axle (with its text type structure) accounts for the com-
municative situation with its social criteria, the horizontal axle (with its domain
structure) accounts for the content side thus relating to the extra-linguistic real-
ity.
 123

4.4. Corpus analysis

After a preparatory phase of comparison between the two comparable
corpora aimed at extracting Austrian specific linguistic variants from word lists,
the corpus analysis has been carried out basically in two stages: a qualitative
stage and a quantitative stage.
While during the preparatory phase we still talk about variants, the major
aim of the qualitative analysis was to understand whether the extracted variants
actually function as terms within the Austrian economy language. To comply
with this goal, a terminological work was necessary. A concept-oriented analysis
was hence performed. This investigation was aimed at verifying if lexical items
are denominations of concepts and at identifying the distinctive characteristics
of the concepts eventually underlying the terms. These characteristics allow at
the same time to identify and define the concept and to distinguish it from simi-
lar concepts. At a first stage, the terminological work was carried out inside the
variety, in order to distinguish terms from words and their conceptual content
from those of related terms pertaining to the same domain. For example, we
could state that Er- und Ablebensversicherung and Erlebensversicherung function as
terms in the insurance domain and that they represent two different concepts in
the Austrian insurance system. Secondly, the concept-oriented analysis was per-
formed in a contrastive way, to find possible equivalents in the German standard
variety. Going back to our example, we could identify two different German
equivalents15 for our terms, i. e. Kapitallebensversicherung for Er- und Ablebensversi-
cherung and Private Rentenversicherung for Erlebensversicherung.
The qualitative analysis elicited the concept fields of the investigated do-
mains, providing a good basis for further insights into single sub-domains or
more specific investigations. Also during the qualitative analysis, a classification
of the findings into variation categories was implemented. This classification was
intended to identify the role played by single factors in variation. For example,
we divided the lexical variants from semantic variants and collocations and the
denomination of specific referents from the Austrian specific terms.

15
It should be highlighted that – by calling the German denominations equivalents in-
stead of synonyms - we are using a terminological metaterminology. Of course, we
are not comparing two languages; still, the concept analysis has been performed with
an onomasiological approach in order to compare two different entities (in our case,
varieties). Thus, it makes sense to talk about equivalent characteristics and hence of
equivalent denominations.
 124

Thus, dividing variants this way, it is possible to analyse separately social

factors (carried by lexical variants) and denominative needs (carried by Austrian
specific terms and denominations of specific referents); it is also possible to ana-
lyse separately linguistic differences (expressed by lexical variants) and cultural
or branch-specific differences (expressed by Austrian specific terms and de-
nominations of specific referents). As each of these categories accounts for dif-
ferent factors from those included in the matrix (see also Messina 2011: 151-152),
modelling the following sociolinguistic, quantitative analysis according to these
categories allowed to trace variation back to single factors in quite a precise way.
This way, denominative dimension, function and social facts are kept separated
at an operational level, thus ensuring a more accurate analysis.
Quantitative analysis was performed in several sections, according to the
selected text types, to the above mentioned variation categories and to other pa-
rameters that were relevant for our research goal. Quantitative analysis repre-
sents the empirical implementation of the theoretical model. On the basis of
quantitative data, it allowed us to quite precisely correlate variation with the ex-
tra-linguistic factors or the textual features and hence to understand which of
the criteria affects (provokes or inhibit) diatopic variation. By structuring analy-
sis this way, we could answer our research questions and explain corpus findings
and variant distribution on the basis of our sociolinguistic model. The main out-
comes of our research are reported in the following paragraph.

5. Summary
Applying the methods illustrated in the previous paragraphs, we could in-
terpret the results from different perspectives, while maintaining an overview of
all factors and of their interaction. Indeed, we interpreted variation in the differ-
ent text types and variation categories ascribing the distribution of findings to
the distinctive feature of the text type under analysis in the matrix. For example,
our corpus lexical variants have a lower relative frequency in text types business
reports and official reports than in invoices and general terms and conditions of
contract. Business reports and official reports are read not only in Austria, but in
all German-speaking countries. This finding seems to imply that, in communica-
tion between experts, Austrian variants are avoided as far as possible. Text dis-
tribution and specialization degree of communicators hence affect variation.
Speakers do often disregard their own lexical features in favour of the German
ones. They are prone to align to the German variety due to external pressures
(economic relationships is just an example) and to a lower prestige of their own
 125

variety. Still, denominative needs bind speakers/writers to use Austrian specific

terms and denominations of specific referents, which express the peculiarities of
the Austrian system.
For example, we found out that social factors play a role in the realization
of lexical variants, as speakers avoid them when possible. In other words, de-
nominative needs neutralize social factors: if speakers play a role in the realiza-
tion of lexical variants, they have no choice when they must refer to specific ref-
erents and concepts. In this latter case, variation is not only linguistic, but it also
reflects extra-linguistic differences. Indeed, strictly speaking, Austrian specific
terms and denominations for specific referents are not variants; still, they ex-
press specific cultural and institutional aspects in the field of economy, thus con-
tributing to a complete description of the non-dominant variety and of its cen-
tre.
From a scientific point of view, the classification of variants into different
categories allowed to isolate real variation phenomena without statistical bias
while carrying out research on all kinds of variation. We could also state that the
Austrian standard variety lacks internal codification as far as the analysed LSP is
regarded, as most of our findings belong to the category fachkodifiziert. More in-
terestingly for the topics of this conference, by providing results for many of the
criteria of our sociolinguistic model, our research revealed that investigating a
LSP within a NDV allows getting deeper insights in the NDV, in the attitudes of
its speakers and in its relation with the dominant variety. For example, the
asymmetry ruling in general language between the German and the Austrian va-
riety also apply to LSP. This fact strengthens the idea of a lower prestige of the
Austrian varieties, but further linguistic investigations about LSP might reveal
different trends.
Our research proved the existence of an Austrian specific terminology in
the field of economy. Nevertheless, the other levels of linguistic analysis need to
be investigated. Further research concerning specialized communication within
the Austrian standard variety is needed to contribute to a more accurate descrip-
tion of this non-dominant variety. In particular, the creation of LSP corpora
would be desirable, as well as the development of methods for analysing linguis-
tic levels different than lexis (eg. pragmatics). A proper method for detecting
semantic variants needs to be developed as well. Also, it would be hopeful to ap-
ply the methodology proposed in this paper to other LSP, in order to verify its ef-
fectiveness. We ourselves wish our contribution to have a thought-provoking ef-
fect.
 126

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Heinz L. KRETZENBACHER
(The University of Melbourne, Australia)
heinz@unimelb.edu.au

The emancipation of Strine : 1

Australian English as an established post-colonial

national standard of English

Abstract

Among the diverse national varieties of Postcolonial English (Schneider

2007), Australian English is an interesting example of the potential a
non-dominant variety of English can have nationally and inter-
nationally. After only having achieved general acceptance and linguistic
attention as a national standard in the 1970s, Australian English is now
codified and well researched. On the one hand, its development has been
(and continues to be) influenced by two different dominant varieties of
English, British English as well as United States English, on the other
hand, Australian English has become a semi-dominant standard
regionally, influencing other South West Pacific Englishes, in particular
the Papua New Guinean and New Zealand standards. It is argued that in
many cases of pluricentric languages, dominance or non-dominance is
not a binary opposition but must be determined for each standard
variety within its individual framework of dominance.

Australian accents can be explained by the substitution

of the standard human thought organ, the brain,
with its Australian equivalent, the brine –
a small reservoir of salt water... fish optional.
Mattias “Miles” Allard, Facebook status update 22/03/11

1. Introduction: Antiseptic folk linguistics

When the broadsheet Sydney Morning Herald published a review of Hugh

Lunn’s book of Australian linguistic nostalgia Words Fail Me in November 2010, it
came under the slightly sensationalist title “American sitcom speak replaces
Aussie language” (AAP 2010). Among the 40 comments which the online edition

1
“Strine” is an informal term for Australian English.
 130

of the article triggered, there was some rather mature discussion of linguistic
change and development, but also, as was to be expected, comments bemoaning
the Americanisation of Australian English (AusE),2 such as the following:

It is awful to hear Australian children apeing their American

counterparts. Adults (who should know better) asking “how ya doin?”
and hearing kids say “I'm done” instead of “I've finished”. We have
adopted the worst of American culture including big cars and fast food -
both to our detriment. It's time to rescue our language. Next time I'm in
a classroom, the student who tells me they're “done” better look out,
because they will be - like a dinner. [lola - November 11, 2010, 11:46AM3]
or the list of Australian terms set against Americanisms with a little Aussie
expletive added for good measure:

Footpath not sidewalk Boot not trunk

Rubbish not trash Torch not flashlight
Shop not store Stone the crows.4

Other comments, on the other hand, maintain that Australianisms are alive
and kicking:

“He/she's got a face like a robber's dog”, “Wouldn't that make you spit
chips?” and “It's a dog's breakfast” - all expressions I took for granted
and all found amused and bemused responses from the Seppos when I
was touring around the lower 48. [Doug | Here and there - November 11,
2010, 8:47PM5]

Of course, every Australian understands that the “Seppos” are their friends
from the United States, via the surviving colonial heritage of rhyming slang:
septic tanks – Yanks.6 The same rhyming slang provided the material for my
coinage of “Antiseptic folk linguistics” for the sort of folk-linguistic Anti-
Americanism that is very popular in Australia.

2
Similar folk linguistic reactions to a supposed Americanisation of Australian English
are reported for example in Taylor (2001:324-327) and Burridge (2010:5-6).
3
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/american-sitcom-speak-replaces-
aussie-language-20101111-17obc.html?comments=40#comments [09/06/11]
4
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/american-sitcom-speak-replaces-aussie-
language-20101111-17obc.html?comments=40#comments [09/06/11]. BBB | Q - November
11, 2010, 3:36PM.
5
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/american-sitcom-speak-replaces-aussie-
language-20101111-17obc.html?comments=40#comments [09/06/11]
6
First documented in 1967, cf. Moore (2008:159).
 131

Linguistic Anti-Americanism is not to be condoned any more than any

other form of xenophobia, and apart from that, the idea that US influence on
AusE is something new that came up with the overwhelming amount of
American content in electronic mass media is entirely mistaken as will be shown
in section 3 below. However, the frequency of antiseptic folk linguistics in the
public discourse on language in Australia shows that there is a widespread
feeling of pride in and loyalty to a language that is perceived as something
uniquely Australian and worth protecting from a perceived linguistic US
imperialism. And although Australia is one of the few countries where
multiculturalism has not become a derogatory term in the public discourse yet,
the vast majority of Australians would still work under the silent assumption
that this multiculturalism is fundamentally monolingual, encoded in this
uniquely AusE. Rhyming Slang may belong to the fringes of Standard Australian
English (SAusE)7 today, but at least a passive knowledge of it is part of the
national standard.

2. The emancipation of Strine: “from colonial cringe to epicentre”8

Today, SAusE is accepted in Australia - and to a large extent also outside of

the country - as an equal partner among World Englishes, albeit not a player in
the major league of American and British Englishes. It is very well researched
and codified. The linguistic research literature on AusE fills whole libraries – a
few of the more important book publications of the last decade are Blair/Collins
2001, Butler 2001, Leitner 2004, Fritz 2007, Moore 2008, Peters/Collins/Smith
2009 and Moore 2010.
It is well codified in its lexico-grammatical aspects by the two most
important dictionaries of AusE: the Macquarie Dictionary, first published in 1981
(Macquarie 1981), whose 5th edition was published in 2009 (Butler 2009), was
designed as “a dictionary suitable for widespread Australian use, with a
comprehensive word list in which all the pronunciations, all the spellings and all
the definitions of meaning would be taken from the use of English in Australia,
and in which AusE itself became the basis of comparison with other national
varieties of English” (Delbridge 2001: 306).9 In contrast, the Australian National

7
Leitner (2004) uses “mainstream Australian English” (mAusE) instead.
8
Leitner (2004:90).
9
The Macquarie dictionary family also encompasses specialised dictionaries such as
Butler 1990, CCH Macquarie 1996, Delbridge 1984, Macquarie 1986, Penguin
Macquarie 1989 and Torre 1990.
 132

Dictionary, first published in 1988 by Oxford University Press (Ramson 1988)10 and
since 2008 available in a free online edition,11 is not only “a dictionary of origins,
recording the first known use of individual Australianisms, it also identifies the
origin of many Australian institutions, practices, beliefs and national attitudes”
(Delbridge 2001: 304). Also in 1988, Oxford University Press published the
Australian Oxford Dictionary in direct competition to the Macquarie Dictionary
(Australian Oxford 1988). It was completely revised in 1999 (Moore 1999) and the
second edition of the revised version (Moore 2004) came out five years later.
Apart from its codification in the Macquarie Dictionary and the Australian
Oxford Dictionary, pronunciation of SAusE is also constantly checked and updated
by the “Standing Committee on Spoken English” (SCOSE) of the national public
broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). SCOSE was established in
195212 on the basis of earlier committees existing since 1944.13 Australian Style. A
National Bulletin on Issues in Australian Style and English in Australia, edited by the
Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University Sydney – where the Macquarie
Dictionary was also compiled – has a regular column “SCOSE Notes”, where
discussions at SCOSE are summarised.14 AusE style is codified in The Cambridge
guide to Australian English usage, 2nd ed. 2007 (Peters 2007), first published in
1994 as The Cambridge Australian English style guide (Peters 1994).
The status of detailed codification of SAusE, however, is a rather recent
phenomenon only taking off in the 1980s, and it is the consequence of a positive
attitude change towards AusE that was started by linguists in the 1940s but did
not really reach the general population until the colonial inferiority complex
that is known as “cultural cringe” was replaced by a genuine Australian cultural
identity (rather than a second hand British colonial one) developed in the 1970s.
It started with an academic re-evaluation of the most obvious
characteristic of AusE, the accent. As a matter of fact, it was more of a re-re-
evaluation. As Bruce Moore (2008: 76) states:

For the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century (and, in [one] case [...],
as late as 1886) there is general agreement that Australian English is a
‘pure’ form of English because it does not contain dialectal elements. […]

10
For an account by the compiler about the history of this undertaking see Ramson
2002.
11
http://203.166.81.53/and/ [09/06/11]
12
http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/iabc/stories/s1355586.htm [09/06/11]
13
http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/iabc/stories/s635159.htm [09/06/11]
14
See http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/news/australian_style/v17_no1/scose_notes.htm
[09/06/11]
 133

There are two isolated negative comments about the articulation of

diphthongs in the school inspectors’ reports, but the report card on the
quality of Australian vowels and diphthongs in the first two thirds of the
nineteenth century is overwhelmingly positive.
However, towards the end of the 19th century, the motherland of the
British Empire developed a new upper crust standard of pronunciation, the
Received Pronunciation (RP). Every pronunciation different from RP, whether
British dialects or colonial Englishes, was increasingly seen not only as a
deviation from, but as a corruption of RP.
In the 1940s, the Australian linguist Alexander Mitchell was among the
first to promote AusE as a national variety in its own right. He lobbied the ABC to
adapt Australian pronunciation and in a series of articles in the listeners’ journal
ABC Weekly in 1942, he postulated:

‘The Australian pronunciation of English takes its place among the

national forms of English as any other. It has its own history and is not a
corrupt derivative of anything. Development does not of necessity imply
degeneration.’ Mitchell’s views were not widely accepted. In response,
the Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Mr Justice Lowe, asserted
that ‘a vowel sound should be single and pure, and in the broad
Australian speech it is not’. The Headmaster of the Church of England
Grammar School claims that ‘the average speech of the country is
beyond any reasonable limit’. (Moore 2008: 135)
In 1946, Mitchell published The pronunciation of English in Australia. In a
description particularly of the vowels that still was strongly indebted to the
British standard,15 Mitchell distinguished “Educated Australian” (very similar to
RP) from “Broad Australian” (Mitchell 1946: 11-18) and claimed that Broad
Australian was spoken by 70% of the Australian population.
Still, mainstream Australia would continue to identify strongly with the
“mother country” culturally:

[I]n 1947, a Gallup Poll reported that 65 per cent of Australians preferred
to have British rather than Australian nationality. In 1949, Labor Prime
Minister Chifley, in the Nationality and Citizenship Act, created the term
‘Australian citizen’ (prior to this Australians were merely British
subjects), and created an Australian passport to replace the British
passport that Australians until then had carried on overseas travel. In

15
Cox/Palethorpe (2007:345).
 134

1949, incoming Liberal Prime Minister Menzies revoked the Australian

passport, and until 1973 Australians continued to carry a passport
labelled ‘British passport’. (Moore 2008: 132)

Most ABC listeners did not want to hear a too obviously Australian accent
on the wireless: In 1951, an article in the journal The Listener In states that “the
speech of far too many Australians is slovenly and ugly”, and a reader’s letter
complains: “Australians stand alone in the distortion of the King’s English.”16 In
order to make an impression at the top end of town in Australia, you had to have
the right accent, i.e. speak with RP. When the new director of the National
Gallery of Victoria, Eric Westbrook arrived in Melbourne in 1956, what caused
friction with the Board of Trustees of the gallery was certainly not his British RP:
“I was an oddity in a way. I had the right accent and the right background, but I
had the wrong attitudes.”17
It was only by the 1970s that the public image of SAusE had really changed,
endorsed by a newly found national Australian identity.18 Until that decade,
there still was “a pronounced preference for an outside standard” (Leitner 2004:
103), i.e. RP, but an increase in SAusE on the radio and on TV, more and more
public speakers such as politicians who – whether out of national pride or
because they couldn’t help it, for example if they had not enjoyed an upper crust
education at a private school – used SAusE pronunciation. And – always a good
idea if you want to make something popular in Australia – someone had made
enormous fun of Broad AusE in 1965. It was the artist Alastair Ardoch Morrison
who published a little book under the pseudonym of Afferbeck Lauder and
illustrated it under the pseudonym of Al Terego (Lauder 1965). Let stalk Strine: a
lexicon of modern Strine usage had gone through 16 impressions and sold over
140,000 copies by 1979. It has never been out of print since, was published in a
number of editions, and its latest edition, combined with other texts by
Afferbeck Lauder, was published by Text Publishing in Melbourne in 2009 and
reached its second edition the very next year. This enormously popular little

16
Moore (2008:135).
17
Childs, Kevin: “Westbrook reveals a gallery of memories”, The Age, 17 October 1987
p. 3, quoted from Murray (2011:91).
18
In this, I agree with Delbridge (2001), Leitner (2004:94-95; 103-105) and Moore
(2008:158), rather than with Schneider (2007:122-123), who claims that it was the
fall of Singapore in 1942 that emancipated Australian attitudes from a dependency on
the UK. However, as Moore (2008:156) correctly observes: “While Britain’s military
abandonment of Singapore at a time of the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia
did not markedly loosen the ties, the economic abandonment of Australia that
Britain’s commitment to the EEC represented certainly did the trick.”
 135

book contributed greatly to the new and proud attitude towards AusE. With the
acceptance of a national standard of AusE, the continuum of AusE accents – and
with it the respective sociolinguistic continuum – started to lose its extreme
edges: Since the 1990s, most ABC newsreaders don’t use the Australianised
version of RP, “Cultivated Australian”, any more, the register that the incoming
ABC managing director Brian Johns referred to in 1995 when he said “We don’t
want an outdated accent” (Bradley/Bradley 2001: 274-275).
In 1946, Mitchell had claimed that 70% of the population spoke “Broad
Australian” as opposed to “Educated Australian”. In 1965, Mitchell and Delbridge
had refined the scale19 and found that roughly half of the population now spoke
“General Australian”, in between “Broad Australian” which was spoken by a
third, and “Cultivated Australian” which was spoken by 11%. When Barbara
Horvath studied the speech of young people in Sydney in the late 1970s and early
1980s, she found that “General Australian” was now spoken by more than 80% of
her informants, with “Broad” only spoken by 13% and “Cultivated” by 6%:

Mitchell 1946:

pronunciation Broad Australian Educated Australian

% of population 70% 30%

Mitchell / Delbridge 1965:

pronunciation Broad Australian General Australian Educated Australian

% of population 34% 55% 11%

Horvath 1985:

pronunciation Broad Australian General Australian Educated Australian

% of population 13% 81% 6%

19
This scale from Broad Australian to General and Educated Australian, originally based
on segmental phonetics and phonology, has since been used for other levels of
linguistic description of Australian English, from prosodic phenomena such as the
High Rising Intonation (HRI) to morphological features such as typical Australasian
hypocoristics (cf. Bardsley/Simpson 2009) and vocabulary.
 136

This “clear move away from both Broad and Cultivated” (Horvath 1985: 91)
towards the central part of the continuum has continued since.20 SAusE has
arrived at the status of what Leitner (2004: 338) calls “an epicentre in the Asia-
Pacific region”.

3. The place of Australian English in the dominance / dependency

framework of World Englishes

The mutual influences between Australian English and its most important
contact languages and varieties from the beginning of European settlement in
1788 to the end of the 20th century have been quite well researched, including
detailed studies on the influence non-English speaking migrants have had on
ather smaller groups such as Yiddish speakers (cf. Bick 2001). If one tried to
roughly sketch the mutual influences, one would probably come up with something
like this:

Graphics (1): Mutual historical influences of Australian English

and its contact languages / varieties

20
Cf. Fricker (2004:193) and Cox/Palethorpe (2007:341).
 137

In our context, the most important points are:

1. There is remarkable little influence, both in vocabulary and in pronunciation
and morpho-syntax, by regional varieties of the English spoken on the British
Isles. Given the high percentages of Irish among the convicts transported to
Australia and among the settlers migrating there, it seems surprising that
Irish English has left so few traces in the developing AusE, less than Scottish
English, for example (cf. Leitner 2004: 215-218; Moore 2008: 89-100).
2. Also very small is the influence of both indigenous Australian languages and
migrant languages other than English (cf. Leitner 2004: 151-191).
3. Although contact between Australians and Americans was largely what
Leitner (2004: 194) calls “econo-cultural”, with very little American migration
to Australia,21 AmE has had a strong influence on AusE from the start in the
18th century, when American merchant, whaler and sealer ships were a
constant presence in the Southwest Pacific, to Webster’s dictionary which
had an early representation in Australia (cf. Leitner 2004: 93), to the American
gold diggers in mid 19th century and to the American allies in WW II and
partners in the ANZUS pact afterwards (cf. Peters 2001; Taylor 2001: 322 and
324-327; Leitner 2004: 192-214).22
4. There has been sizable migration between Australia and New Zealand from
the 19th century on, and a lot of mutual influence of the national varieties of
English, with AusE as the giving rather than the receiving partner in the
majority of cases (cf. Taylor 2001: 322-323 and 330-331; Leitner 2004: 218-219;
Gordon et al. 2004: 72-75 and 224-230). The proudly distinct Kiwi accent that
New Zealanders demonstrate is a rather recent development (cf. Schneider
2007: 132; Gordon 2009: 27-28).
With a picture like that of historic – and in many cases continuing –
mutual influences between AusE and other national varieties of English, one
cannot expect the question of dominance and non-dominance to have too
straightforward or even simple an answer. The dominance situation of AusE, the
epicentre of English in the Southwest Pacific, must be considered on a case-by

21
Except for the gold rush in the 1850s which came just as the Californian goldfields
started to become exhausted and attracted a number of American “Fourty-niners”.
Most of them did not settle permanently in Australia, though.
22
Contrary to popular belief, the –or spelling variant of the BrE –our ending that can be
found in some Australian newspapers well into the 21st century is not due to
American influence (cf. Leitner 2004:206-208).
 138

case basis with other relevant national varieties: As is the case with other former
dominions of the British Empire such as South Africa, India or Singapore, BrE is
still a dominant national variety for SAusE, albeit with waning influence in
competition with AmE. The latter, as we have seen, has much more tradition as a
dominant variety for AusE than for the national standards of English in the other
countries mentioned.
At the same time, SAusE has been a co-dominant variety, together with BrE
and AmE, for NZE for a long time, and the same goes for PNG English, although
this influence only really started in WW I (cf. Oladejo 1996). Together with NZE,
AusE forms a regional standard (cf. Peters 2009: 396-397), co-dominant, together
with BrE and AmE, for South Pacific Englishes and indigenized Englishes along
the so-called “creole continuum” (cf. Siegel 1997; Tryon 2001; Burridge/Kort-
mann 2004; Zimmermann 2010).
There is another development that is set to strengthen SAusE as a regional
co-dominant variety of English: Over the last 20 years or so, education has
become Australia’s largest service export industry and the second largest export
industry after minerals export. In 2010, export income from education services
was AUS$ 18.3 billion (Australian Education International 2011a), i.e. € 13.4
billion or US$ 19.3. Of the almost 470,000 international students in Australia in
2010, the largest groups are from Asian countries, specifically, in descending
order, from China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia
and Nepal (Australian Education International 2011 b). By educating the future
elites of Asian countries in the medium of SAusE, this variety is slowly gaining
co-dominance in Asian Englishes (cf. Leitner 2004: 341-343). So not only is there
“no sign that Australian English is being weakened by either Global English or
the Internet” (Moore 2008: 201), but rather SAusE has emerged as a co-dominant
national variety in the Asia-Pacific region.
English is a truly pluricentric language with national standard varieties
across the globe. As a result of post-colonial re-evaluations of national standards
of English in their own right, dominance or non-dominance of a particular
national variety of English is not a clear-cut binary opposition. Rather, World
Englishes constitute a network of mutual dominance/non-dominance relation-
ships in which a particular national standard variety such as SAusE can be non-
dominant in relation to one or more other varieties and at the same time
dominant in relation to different varieties. It is to be assumed that such networks
of dominance/non-dominance relationships do not only exist in post-colonial
pluricentric languages with a world wide geographic distribution, but in a similar
 139

way in almost all pluricentric languages with the exception of pluricentric

languages restricted to two national varieties.

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Lunn, Hugh (2010): Words fail me: a journey through Australia's lost language.
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Penguin Macquarie (1989) = The Penguin Macquarie dictionary of Australian

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“Who’s centric now?” The present state of post-colonial Englishes. Ed. by
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In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant varieties of pluricentric languages. Getting the picture.
In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 143-154.

Johan DE CALUWE
(Ghent University, Belgium)
Johan.DeCaluwe@UGent.be

Dutch as a bicentric language:

a lexicographic (r)evolution

Abstract

This paper examines the lexicographical consequences of Dutch

language policy. Dutch is the/an official language in both the
Netherlands and Belgium respectively. Dutch Dutch has been perceived
as the dominant variety for at least two centuries. Lexicographic
practice has always reflected the non-dominant character of the Dutch
spoken in Belgium: lexical items that are typical for Belgian Dutch
were/are labelled as such, whereas typically Dutch Dutch items were not
labelled at all. The last decades of the 20th century however have
witnessed a (r)evolution in official language policy. Dutch is now
considered to be a pluricentric language (Clyne 1992), and dictionaries
have started labelling typically Dutch Dutch lexical items. We give an
impression of the lexicographical challenges involved. In addition we
examine the attitudes of both the Flemish and the Dutch to this new
lexicographic policy. It is clear from this case study that language policy
cannot do without proper acquisition planning: winning the minds of
people for a new language policy and its lexicographic consequences.

1. Introduction
Dutch is the official language of the 16 million inhabitants of the
Netherlands and of the 6 million people living in Flanders, the northern part of
Belgium. Though both regions share the same language, there are considerable
differences in their socio-political history.
The Netherlands have gained political independence as early as the 17th
century, and concomitantly there has been a “normal” development towards
standardization in written and spoken Dutch1.

1
See Geerts (1992) for an early discussion of aspects of pluricentricity for Dutch,
 144

Dutch speaking Flanders on the other hand, has always been part of larger
political entities in which French was predominant for government and
administration. Consequently a “natural” process of standardization of Dutch in
Flanders was blocked. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that
the developing cultural and economic elite in Flanders started a campaign
demanding equal rights for the language of the Flemish people from the
Francophone Belgian establishment. It was that same elite that explicitly
preferred association with the standard variety of Dutch in the larger country,
the Netherlands (De Caluwe 2005, 2006; Vogl & Hüning 2010). And ever since,
Dutch Dutch has always been perceived as the dominant variety and Belgian Dutch
as the non-dominant variety2.

2. Dutch Lexicography
Lexicographic practice has always reflected the non-dominant character of
the Dutch spoken in Belgium. Until recently for example, the editors of the Van
Dale Dutch dictionaries  the most prominent and most widely used dictionaries
both in the Netherlands and Belgium  explicitly stated that Dutch was by default
Dutch from the Netherlands (Den Boon & Geeraerts 2005: xiii). Consequently, words,
meanings, expressions, etc. that are typical for Belgian Dutch are labelled as
such, but typically Dutch Dutch items are not labelled at all.
The last decades of the 20th century however have witnessed a
(r)evolution in official language policy. Inspired by (socio)linguistic theory on
language variation and pluricentricity, the Nederlandse Taalunie (lit. 'Dutch
Language Union' – an official binational Belgian-Dutch institution for language
policy) started promoting a model of Dutch with two national varieties3.

Willemyns (2003) for extensive coverage of the history of standardization of Dutch in

both the Netherlands and Flanders. Grondelaers & Van Hout (2011) provide a detailed
discussion of the present-day language situation.
2
See Haeseryn (1996) for a well documented discussion of the types of differences in
grammar, pronunciation and lexicon between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch.
3
http://taalunieversum.org/taalunie/variatie_in_het_nederlands_eenheid_in
_verscheidenheid: [15.09.2011]
“Het perspectief dat uitgaat van variabiliteit als een natuurlijk fenomeen, zal veeleer
leiden tot een niet-restrictief beleid waarin bijv. op het terrein van de verschillen
tussen Nederland en België gestreefd wordt naar een principiële erkenning van het
bestaansrecht van nationaal gebonden lexicale, fonologische en grammaticale
kenmerken (varianten dus) en een gelijkwaardige behandeling van die varianten
onder meer in de praktijk van de taalbeschrijving in woordenboeken,
uitspraakwoordenboeken en grammatica’s”.
 145

Dutch lexicography was not eager to adopt this new ideology4 and it was
not until 2009 that the Prisma dictionary of Dutch was the first to introduce labels
for the lexical items typical of Dutch in the Netherlands5 (Martin & Smedts 2009;
Martin 2010a/b). Van Dale has announced that the next edition of its best selling
Dutch dictionary will adopt the bicentric perspective in its labelling practice too
(Hendrickx 2009, 2010).
In the rest of this paper we will focus on two aspects of this new labelling
policy in dictionaries:

(1) What are the lexicographic challenges coming with the practical
implementation of this new pluricentric language policy?
(2) How do the Flemish and Dutch people react to this new policy?

3. Challenges for a pluricentric lexicographic practice

3.1. Number of lexical items involved
At the Institute for Dutch Lexicology in Leiden (the Netherlands) a team of
lexicographers is working on the completely new electronic dictionary of Dutch,
the Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek – ANW6 (General Dutch Dictionary). Of
the first 3000 dictionary entries which they have pre-published on line, 9 % have
a label for national variation, either for the word as a whole, or for one of the
meanings, or for a particular expression (Colman 2009).
The Prisma dictionary, the latest edition of which appeared in 2009, was
the first to implement a bicentric policy. 7354 items (words, meanings, etc.) have
been labelled as either Belgian Dutch or Dutch Dutch (Martin 2010a). That is
approximately 10.5 % of the ± 70.000 entries in the dictionary. Most of these
documented differences are not that salient. Of course there are a number of
well-known lexical differences between Flanders and the Netherlands – croque-

[The conception of variability as a natural phenomenon will rather lead to a non-

restrictive policy, for example, concerning the differences between the Netherlands
and Belgium. We aim at (1) a principal recognition that national lexical, phonological
and grammatical variants have the right to exist; (2) an equal treatment of these
variants in the language descriptions in dictionaries, pronunciation dictionaries and
grammars – my translation/paraphrase, JDC].
4
Among others, Martin (2001; 2007a/b) pioneered the lexicographic treatment of
national variation in Dutch.
5
They use NN [Nederlands Nederlands] for Dutch from the Netherlands, and BN
[Belgisch Nederlands] for the Dutch as it is used in Belgium.
6
http://www.inl.nl/nl/woordenboeken/algemeen-nederlands-woordenboek [date last
accessed?]
 146

monsieur (BN) versus tosti (NN) for ‘toasted sandwich’ for example – but most of
the differences relate to details in the use of prepositions, in the valency of
particular verbs and in the use of this or that expression.
The Van Dale dictionary is the most widely used Dutch dictionary. Its latest
edition (Den Boon & Geeraerts 2005) contains over 280.000 lexical entries,
thousands of collocations and expressions, and a few million different meanings.
If only between 9 % (ANW) and 10.5 % (Prisma) of the entries will show national
variation, between 25.000 and 28.000 entries in Van Dale will have to be labelled
either NN or BN. To document any national variation in this huge amount of
lexical data is an immense task. Therefore we expect that in the next edition of
Van Dale only part of this variation will be documented.

3.2. Type of language involved

Since publishers of large dictionaries like Van Dale cannot afford to

document all national variation in a single movement, they will concentrate on
that part of the lexicon which is thought to be most susceptible to national
variation (Hendrickx 2009). In Dutch – and probably in many other pluricentric
languages too – it particularly involves those words and expressions which are
typical of the informal spoken language. Formal written language tends to be
more homogeneous with respect to national variation, whereas variants in the
informal spoken lexicon get easily associated with social/regional/national
aspects of identity, thus acting as a counterforce to unifying tendencies.
A problem is that, on average, it is exactly this informal spoken language
which is less well represented in corpora, which makes it even more difficult to
accurately describe national variation. For example, the Algemeen Nederlands
Woordenboek, the new electronic dictionary under construction in Leiden, is
based on a written corpus of Dutch of about a 100 million words. In contrast, the
largest corpus of spoken Dutch now available, is the Corpus Gesproken
Nederlands (CGN - ‘Corpus of Spoken Dutch’), which “only” counts about 10
million words7.

3.3. Data on attitudes

Given the number of lexical items to be screened for potential national
variation, and given the limited resources of publishers – particularly for a
relatively small market like the one for Dutch – corpus data on national variation

7
http://lands.let.kun.nl/cgn [12.10.2011]
 147

will usually not be complemented with data from research on attitudes. This type
of information however, is indispensable to determine the status of particular
words or expressions. The Flemish – like many other non-dominant language
communities – suffer from what Muhr (2005: 18) has called linguistic
schizophrenia: whereas corpus data will prove that particular typically Belgian
Dutch items are widely used even by the higher educated, even in the more
formal situations or texts, people will not easily accept that these items be called
standard Dutch in Belgium. People will often comment on the objective corpus
data with a typical reaction to reduce the weight of these findings: “Oh yes, it is
often used in Belgian Dutch, but we know it is not good standard Dutch”.
A result of this typical ND attitude is that Flemish language advisors and
language supervisors will admit that they are stricter than could be motivated by
the information in the dictionary. Ruud Hendrickx for example, the language
supervisor of the Vlaamse Radio & Televisie (VRT - the Flemish national
broadcasting service), will not by default accept lexical items labelled as standard
Dutch in Belgium (by the dictionaries) in the newscasts, because he
knows/expects many Flemish to prefer the Dutch Dutch equivalents in these
contexts of use8. So making the correct lexical choices is not easy in language
communities where language attitudes do not always match the corpus based
lexicographical data ...

3.4. Lexicographic reticence vis-à-vis ND-variants

There is a significant difference in the number of items with a BN or NN
label respectively in the Prisma dictionary (Martin 2010b: 33):

NN [dominant]: 4246 items

BN [non-dominant]: 3108 items

One possible explanation is that editors may be more reticent to consider

typically Belgian variants as standard variants, even if BN just means ‘standard
Dutch in Belgium’ and not ‘standard Dutch’. The editors of the Prisma dictionary
admit that over 600 Belgian Dutch items were left out of the dictionary because
they were considered to be substandard Dutch (cf. what we said earlier in § 3.3
about the reluctance of Flemish people to accept particular variants as standard
variants). This editorial policy may well be typical for the lexicographical

8
http://taalschrift.org/discussie/001516.html [12.1.2011]
 148

description of non-dominant variants (cf. Muhr 2005: 16), for also the ANW – in
its first 3000 entries on-line – has many more items with the label “NN, informal”
than with the label “BN, informal”. An informal word from a ND variety is easily
qualified as substandard while the same type of words from the D variety does
get an entry in the dictionary, albeit with the label “informal”.

3.5. Traces of a monocentric history

Because the standard language in Flanders – the ND-community – has been
oriented towards the dominant standard variety in the Netherlands for over a
century, corpus data will reveal that many variants from Netherlandic Dutch
have penetrated Dutch in Belgium (Debrabandere 2010). The higher educated in
Flanders will use these Dutch Dutch forms, often in addition to the original
Belgian Dutch variants. Therefore, original Dutch Dutch variants will often be
labelled as “typically Dutch Dutch” and not as “exclusively Dutch Dutch”.
The reverse is not true, of course. Original Belgian Dutch variants will
hardly ever penetrate the dominant variety, i.e. Dutch Dutch.
This asymmetry is well illustrated by the meta-data from the Prisma
dictionary. The label “mainly BN/NN” is used for lexical items that are not
exclusively used in either Belgium or the Netherlands. The results (Martin 2010b:
34):

 mainly Dutch Dutch: 679 items, used particularly in the Netherlands,

but also in Belgium
 mainly Belgian Dutch: 36 items, used particularly in Belgium, but also
in the Netherlands

4. Reactions of the Dutch and the Flemish to the new pluricentric

policy in dictionaries
As we mentioned earlier, official language policy for Dutch has changed in
the last decades of the 20th century. Dutch is now considered to be a pluricentric
language with at least two linguistic centres – Flanders and the Netherlands –
and even three, if Dutch speaking Suriname is taken into account (Hendrickx
2010). If we focus on Flemish and Dutch Dutch, this bicentricity still has an
asymmetric character. Both linguistic centres don’t have equal weight. The
Netherlands have two and a half times more speakers of Dutch than Flanders has,
and in NT2-courses – courses of Dutch as a second/foreign language – in
 149

hundreds of institutions all over the world,9 the Dutch Dutch variety is the
dominant variety with teachers, in course books, pronunciation exercises etc.
Until recently neither the Flemish nor the Dutch actually realized that
offical language policy had changed. But as soon as the lexicographic
consequences of the new pluricentric policy became clear, it generated vivid
discussions both in Flanders and the Netherlands (Schyns & Noble 2008). People
had always been used to an asymmetric labelling policy, whereby only Belgian
Dutch variants were labelled. Now there first appeared articles (e.g. De Caluwe
2008, 2009) and statements on internet fora10, holding out the prospect of
labelling the typically Dutch Dutch items, and only a few years later, the Prisma
dictionary was the first to boast full implementation of bicentricity by using BN
and NN labels with equal status.
How did people, both in Belgium and the Netherlands, react to this
lexicographic (r)evolution?

4.1. A logic step

Judging from the reactions of people in the papers, on internet-fora and in
the audience when we give lectures on the subject, there surely are people, both
in Flanders and the Netherlands, who support this new lexicographic policy and
consider it to be a natural consequence of the transformation of Dutch into a
bicentric language.
However, many people from the Netherlands, even Dutch linguists, seem
to be quite surprised to hear that their Dutch is no longer the one and only
proper Dutch by default, and that it is now to be considered as just one variety of
Dutch.

4.2. “Make your own dictionary”

A part of the Dutch population don’t like the idea of a bicentric dictionary
at all. They consider themselves to be the legitimate “owners” of the Dutch
language, because they constitute the majority of the speakers of Dutch (16 vs. 6
million), and have provided the historical standard for Dutch during the last four
centuries. In addition, Dutch dictionaries are considered to be the dictionaries of
the Dutch people, because all Dutch dictionaries today are published in the
Netherlands by Dutch publishers. Their conclusion: if some people want to see

9
Cf. http://www.ivnnl.com/ [date last accessed?] for a list of the institutions involved.
10
http://taalschrift.org/discussie/001516.html [15.10.2011]
 150

the one and only Dutch (of the Dutch people) labelled as Dutch Dutch, let them
make their own dictionary.

4.3. A persistent misunderstanding

Apart from the considerations and arguments mentioned under 4.2, the
rejection of the NN label is often also inspired by a misunderstanding concerning
the status of that label. People wrongly think that the NN label is used as a stigma
for items that should not be used in standard Dutch any more. This
misconception is based on their experience with the label BN for variants from
the (non-dominant) Belgian Dutch, which has for decades been used with the
implication “to avoid if you want to speak or write a standard Dutch that is
generally accepted, i.e. the dominant variety of Dutch”.

4.4. “The first step to a split of the language”

Some of the Flemish welcome this revolution in labelling practice as a first
step towards an autonomous Flemish language. The more national labels they
find in the dictionary, the more they are confirmed in their view that Dutch
Dutch and Belgian Dutch are and have been growing apart for a long time, so that
even a bicentric model will not do in the long run. They hope for a future in
which there is monocentric Flemish in Flanders and monocentric Dutch in the
Netherlands. Others heavily object to this possibility and fear that Flemish will
end up like Afrikaans: a language historically related to Dutch, but no longer part
of the Dutch speaking community.

4.5. Inflation of linguistic capital

A number of Flemish reactions demonstrate what could be called fear of
inflation of their linguistic capital (Bourdieu 1991). They have been working hard to
replace the typically Belgian Dutch variants in their language by the Dutch Dutch
(i.e. the dominant) variants, thereby increasing their linguistic capital. If the
Dutch Dutch (formerly dominant) variants are simply reduced to the status of a
national variant, equal in status to the Belgian Dutch variants, this implies a
serious devaluation of their proficiency in the (formerly) dominant variety.

5. Acquistion planning

It is sufficiently clear from the reactions both in Belgium and the

Netherlands that transforming monocentric dictionaries into bicentric ones is
not met with unequivocal acceptance, neither in the (formerly) dominant
 151

community, nor in the (formerly) dominated community. Much of the opposition

on both sides is based on a misunderstanding of the motives behind a bicentric
language policy, a misunderstanding of the status of national labels in
dictionaries, and more in general a misunderstanding of the nature of
standardized languages. Contrary to what many people think, standardization
does not mean ‘lack of variaton’, be it stylistic, geographical or whatever.
Perhaps language policy institutions like the Nederlandse Taalunie
underestimate the efforts to be done on the level of so-called acquisition planning:
efforts to spread information on the (change in) status of language varieties to
the people directly involved11. It does not suffice for the Nederlandse Taalunie to
proclaim on its official website that Dutch is now considered to be a bicentric
language. When the balance of power between dominant and dominated
varieties is changing, and when this calls for adjustments in the status and
corpus planning (e.g. a new labelling practice in dictionaries), we must not forget
to inform the people directly involved through the educational system,
interviews in the media, etc. This change in language policy should be well
argumented, taking into account the very specific socio-cultural history of the
regions or countries involved. This calls for a separate acquisition policy for the
(formerly) dominant community and for the (formerly) dominated community,
i.e. the Dutch in the Netherlands, and the Flemish in Belgium.

6. Summary
With hindsight the (new) conception of Dutch as a bicentric language can
best be described as a top-down (r)evolution. (Socio)linguistic theory on
pluricentricity has first inspired official Dutch language policy, is now gradually
gaining ground in lexicographic practice, but it will take many more years for
this new ideology to be adopted by the majority of the speakers of Dutch,
particularly in the Netherlands.
A pluricentric language policy constitutes a real challenge to lexicographic
practice. It envolves the labelling of (tens of) thousands of lexical items – words,
expressions, meanings – particularly from the traditionally less well documented
spoken varieties. Ideally, corpus results should be complemented with data on
attitudes of the communities involved. Both speakers of the (formerly) ND
variety and lexicographers tend to disqualify many items as substandard while

11
See Huss & Lindgren (2011) for a perspective on the issue in terms of language
emancipation.
 152

equivalent items from the (formerly) D variety are much more easily conceived
as standard variants, be it informal standard variants.
The speech communities involved, both the (formerly) dominant and
dominated ones, need time to get used to a new lexicographic policy and the
language policy that is behind it. Different forms of active acquisition planning
are necessary to inform people on the motivation for a bi- or pluricentric policy,
on the nature of labels in dictionaries, and on the inherent variability of
language, which is an aspect to exploit rather than to deplore.

7. References

Bourdieu, P. (1991): Language and symbolic power. Cambridge. Polity Press.

Clyne, Michael (ed.) (1992): Pluricentric languages: differing norms in different
nations. Berlin/New York. Mouton/de Gruyter.
Debrabandere, Peter (2010): Prisma Handwoordenboek Nederlands. Neerlandia /
Nederlands van nu 2, 44-45.
Colman, Lut (2009): De verscheidenheid in de eenheid: het Belgische en
Nederlandse Nederlands in het Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek
(ANW). In: Fons Verborum. Feestbundel Fons Moerdijk. Ed. by E. Beijk, L.
Colman et al. Leiden. INL, A'dam. Gopher,.131-141.
De Caluwe, Johan (2005). Conflicting language conceptions within the Dutch
speaking part of Belgium. In: Standardvariationen und Sprachideologien in
verschiedenen Sprachkulturen der Welt / Standard variations and
language ideologies in different language cultures around the world. Ed. by
R. Muhr. Frankfurt/M. Peter Lang Verlag, 53-58.
De Caluwe, Johan (2006). Continuity and innovation in the perception of
language as a symbol of social emancipation. In: Innovation and continuity
in language and communication of different language cultures /
Innovation und Kontinuität in Sprache und Kommunikation verschiedener
Sprachkulturen. Ed. by R. Muhr. Frankfurt am Main. Peter Lang, 27-38.
De Caluwe, Johan (2008): Nederlands Nederlands is een variëteit van het
Nederlands. Vaktaal 4, 6-9.
De Caluwe, Johan (2009). Belgisch Nederlands, Nederlands Nederlands, Algemeen
Nederlands. Over Taal 48 (4), 90-92.
Den Boon, Ton / Geeraerts, Dirk (2005): Van Dale Groot Woordenboek van de
Nederlandse Taal, 14e uitgave. Utrecht/Antwerpen. Van Dale Lexicografie.
 153

Geerts, Guido (1992): Is Dutch a pluricentric language? In: Pluricentric languages.

differing norms in different nations. Ed. by M. Clyne. Berlin/New York.
Mouton/de Gruyter, 71-92.
Grondelaers, Stefan / Van Hout, Roeland (2011): The Standard Language situation
in the Low Countries: top-down and bottom-up variations on a diaglossic
theme. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 23.3, 199-243.
Haeseryn, Walter (1996). Grammaticale verschillen tussen het Nederlands in
België en het Nederlands in Nederland: een poging tot inventarisatie. In:
Taalvariaties. Toonzettingen en modulaties op een thema. Ed. by R. Van
Hout and J. Kruijsen. Dordrecht. Foris Publications, 109-126.
Hendrickx, Ruud (2009): Een Vlaamsere Van Dale. Over Taal 48, 101-103.
Hendrickx, Ruud (2010): Een Van Dale voor Nederlanders, Belgen en Surinamers.
Neerlandia / Nederlands van nu 3, 35-37.
Huss, Leena / Lindgren, Anna-Riitta (2011): Introduction: defining language
emancipation. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 209, 1-15.
Martin, Willy (2001): Natiolectismen in het Nederlands en hun lexicografische
beschrijving. Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis 79, 709-
736.
Martin, Willy (2007a): Planning bilingual dictionaries: the Dutch approach.
Special issue of the International Journal of Lexicography 20, 3.
Martin, Willy (2007b): Het Belgisch-Nederlands anders bekeken: het
Referentiebestand Belgisch-Nederlands (RBBN). In: Leven met woorden.
Afscheidsbundel voor Professor Piet van Sterkenburg. Ed. by F. Moerdijk et
al. Leiden. Brill, 179-192.
Martin, Willy (2010a): Belgisch-Nederlands en Nederlands-Nederlands. Bien
étonnés de se trouver ensemble.In: Liever meer of juist minder? Over
normen en variatie in taal. Ed. by E. Hendrickx et al. Gent. Academia Press.
111-130.
Martin, Willy (2010b): Komt wie er het noorden bij verliest, in de bonen terecht?
(en omgekeerd). Over het gebruik van de labels Belgisch-Nederlands en
Nederlands-Nederlands in verklarende woordenboeken Nederlands.
Neerlandia / Nederlands van nu 3, 32-35.
Martin, Willy / Smedts, Willy (2009): Prisma Handwoordenboek Nederlands, met
onderscheid tussen Nederlands-Nederlands en Belgisch-Nederlands. Derde,
herziene druk. Houten. Het Spectrum.
 154

Muhr, Rudolf (2005): Language attitudes and language conceptions in non-

dominating varieties of pluricentric languages. In: Standardvariationen
und Sprachideologien in verschiedenen Sprachkulturen der Welt /
Standard variations and language ideologies in different language cultures
around the world. Ed. by R. Muhr. Wien u.a.. Peter Lang Verlag, 11-20.
Schyns, Désirée / Noble, Philippe (2008): Neerlandofonie. Ons Erfdeel 51, 9-107.
Vogl, Ulrike / Hüning, Matthias (2010): One Nation, One Language? The Case of
Belgium. Dutch crossing 34-3, 228-247.
Willemyns, Roland (2003): Dutch. In: Germanic standardizations: Past to present.
Ed. by A. Deumert & W. Vandenbussche. Amsterdam. John Benjamins, 93-
125.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the
Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 155-166.

John HAJEK
(University of Melbourne, Australia)
j.hajek@unimelb.edu.au

(Non-) dominant varieties of a

(non-)pluricentric language?
Italian in Italian and Switzerland

Abstract

This chapter is an initial foray into the question of Italian as a possible

pluricentric language. In contrast to other large languages of Western
Europe, Italian is strikingly absent from the existing literature on
pluricentricity - presumably because Italian is overwhelmingly spoken
only in one country: Italy. However, in this preliminary study Italian is
seen to show some signs of pluricentricity - best described as diffuse or
weak, both within and beyond Italy's national borders.

1. Introduction
In any discussion of pluricentric languages in Europe (e.g. Clyne, 1992 and
Pöll, 2005), Italian is notably absent. Yet like other major European languages,
recognised by all as pluricentric, it is spoken as a primary language in more than
one country. It also has protected regional status in others.
In what is only an initial foray into the question of Italian as a possible
pluricentric language, a comparison is first made between Italian's official status
with that of English, French and German in Europe, before our attention is
turned to the specific (non-)pluricentric/(non-)dominating characteristics of
Italian. Even a brief analysis shows that Italian is unusual amongst these four
major European languages in a number of respects.
Within Italy, three competing centres of national norm-setting influence
(Milan, Florence, Rome) can be identified in a complex linguistic setting. Outside
Italy, there are signs of an alternative linguistic variety (or perhaps better:
varieties) with its own norms developing in Switzerland. Swiss Italian is in a
clearly non-dominant relationship with Italian in Italy, but also with other
official languages in Switzerland. Consideration is given to the implications of
 156

this unusual multilateral relationship, as well as the highly specific

fragmentation of Italian within Switzerland in order to investigate some of the
non-dominant and characteristic features of Swiss Italian today.

2. Italian and the other major languages of Western Europe:

pluricentric or not
Of the four most widely spoken languages in Western Europe (English,
French, German, and Italian), each has official status - de jure or de facto - in
more than one European country – as shown in Table 1. While all four languages
have a large majority of speakers within the national borders of one country
only, in the case of all but Italian, they also have millions of first language
speakers in settled areas in neighbouring nations.
In the case of Italian, more than 99.5% are resident within Italy only.
Vatican City (900 residents) and San Marino (30,000 residents) are small enclaves
located within Italy itself, and are linguistically subsumed to it. Italian is also
recognized legally as one of four official languages in Switzerland (alongside
French, German and Romantsch).

Language Countries where the language has number of countries with

official status - de facto or de jure such status
German Germany, Austria, Switzerland, 5
Luxembourg, Belgium
French France, Belgium, Switzerland, 5
Luxembourg, Monaco
Italian Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, 4
Vatican City
English Britain, Ireland, Malta, Channel 6
Islands, Isle of Man, Gibraltar

Table 1: Official status for the largest languages of Western Europe

But of its 7.8 million residents, only about 500,000 (6.5%) identify as first
language Italian speakers (see also below). Moreover, while Austria and
Switzerland for German and Belgium and Switzerland for French are historically
well-known and prestigious linguistic entities, with millions of speakers for each
language, the historical presence of Italian-speakers in Switzerland since 1400s
is often overlooked - even by Italian-speakers in Italy.
While the French and German spoken in Switzerland, as well as their
speakers, are often the butt of stereotyped jokes in France and Germany
respectively, the same cannot be said for Swiss Italians and their Italian in the
 157

minds of those living in Italy. The focus in Italy has instead always been on
variation and difference in Italian and its speakers within Italy itself (see below)

3. Italian in Italy
Much has been written on the extremely complicated linguistic situation
in Italy - often with a focus on the intricate relationship between a highly
normative Standard Italian, if it exists in reality (Lepschy and Lepschy 1988:62),
and regional variants of Italian that are more typical (see, e.g. Berruto 1987, Tosi
2001).
The basis of Standard Italian is literary Italian - itself a form of 14th
century Tuscan, as used by the likes of such literary greats as Dante, Petrarch
and Boccaccio - but which has not evolved in the same manner or degree to the
Tuscan of today. This standard/literary variety was very little spoken for
centuries, and at the time of unification in 1861 some estimates suggest that
only 2.5% of the population of Italy was fluent in Italian (Tosi 2001:5). For the
other 97.5% Italian was a foreign language, if they knew it at all.
Dialect was the first language of practically everyone (and often the only
language) and this remained the case well into the 20th century - despite
strident efforts by national authorities to impose Italian through schooling and
officialdom from 1861.
In 1951 65% of Italians still used dialect in all circumstances (Beccaria
2011). The final tipping point finally occurred in the 1950s and 1960s with the
economic boom that transformed Italy and brought with it enormous social
change, including the rise of mass media in Italian, large-scale internal
population movement, and the elimination of mass illiteracy, all coupled wit
increasingly negative attitudes towards dialect - unfairly associated with rural
poverty and backwardness.
Today about one third of Italy's population still speaks dialect (often
alongside Italian) at home, although the proportions vary dramatically from
region to region. The influence of local and regional dialect remains strong
nevertheless even amongst those who claim only to speak Italian today -
especially in pronunciation but also often in lexis and even grammatical
structures.
For many speakers it is better to speak of a complex continuum between
dialect and some form of Standard Italian (see Tosi 2001 for example and
discussion). For others who might claim to speak only standard Italian, there is
 158

significant variation nevertheless - typically regional all the same.1 Such

variation is easily explained as (1) convergence of speakers from different parts
of Italy towards some kind of standard that is in fact not fully shared - given
regional influence that speakers may not even be aware of; (2) the historical lack
of a unifying political and linguistic centre that could impose a single norm
across Italy.
Indeed, as a result of (1) and (2), Italian is remarkable amongst the large
languages of Western Europe for the extent of acceptable variation, even in the
most formal written registers, e.g. numerous competing verbal and lexical forms
(see for instance Tosi 2001 and Di Mauro 2007). A lexical survey across Italy
conducted in the early 1950s found only one word in the list of more than 300
items that was unique to the whole nation: espresso. All other items in the list
had at least one or many more alternative lexical forms (11% had two forms, 88%
had more than two. Tosi 2001:45).
Sixty years on, the word for “stapler” is a case in point, amongst many
such cases well known to this author through direct personal experience:
filatrice, bucatrice, pinzatrice, cucitrice, graffettatrice, spillatrice, aggraffiatrice and
cambrettatrice (amongst others) are each used by highly educated Italian
speakers, most of whom do not speak dialect, in interactions with this author.
None of the speakers considers the form they use to be a regionalism and while
on prodding they may be aware of alternative forms, they will accept some
immediately but often disagree as to the meaning of others, e.g. bucatrice (lit.
machine to make holes) is for most a hole-punch. The situation is less dramatic
for staples: only four terms punto, spillo, graffetta and cambretta are used by the
same speakers. Of course none of this variation is made evident to foreign
learners of Italian in their learning materials.
Within Italy three centres of normativizing influence at a national scale on
Italian today are usually identified:
(1) Milan, the economic capital of Italy, located in the heart of the wealthy
industrialized North. It is the centre of a massive urban conglomeration and the
home of the powerful private media industry;
(2) Florence, as the traditional source of the Tuscan that came to be
Italian, as well as Italy's historical cultural centre from Renaissance times. It is

1
One such speaker, with an evident regional accent, reported to me that he preferred
to say he spoke 'literary Italian' rather than 'Standard Italian.
 159

smaller than either Milan or Rome, but its linguistic influence at least on the rest
of Tuscany seems to be increasing;
(3) Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire, seat of the Roman Catholic
Church and since the 19th century the political capital of a unified Italy. It is also
a very large city and the home of national ministries, international bodies, the
Vatican, and state-owned media companies, such as RAI.
Which centre dominates is a difficult question and is more subtle than
might be expected, since they vie and contribute in different ways that are not
immediately obvious. The role of each must be acknowledged, since none is
clearly dominant in this role across the board.
Milan has for most observers the upper hand today - Galli de' Paratesi
(1985), for instance, reported a significant increase over time in the prestige of
Milanese forms amongst younger speakers throughout Italy. But Romans and
Florentines, very proud of their own cities, do not accept this view. And speakers
from each of the three cities would have very different views about what is
acceptable Italian or not.
New terms for instance tend to come from Rome and in particular from
Milan - given the influence of electronic media - especially on youth culture.
It is generally accepted that the influence of Florence (and Tuscan in
general) has declined - at least in the minds of most non-Tuscans. Some notable
features of modern Tuscan, e.g. the pervasive gorgia toscana ([la hoha hola] „Coca
Cola“ are absent in varieties of Italian spoken outside Tuscany, e.g. [la koka
kola].
Lexical variation is also marked, but is often included nevertheless in
dictionaries where its Tuscan use may or may not be indicated, e.g. garbare „to
like, please“ is felt by many Italians to be distinctly Tuscan, but is not indicated
as such in dictionaries for native speakers or for foreign learners. But its largely
Tuscan nature is confirmed by the fact that it is certainly not taught to
foreigners alongside much more common piacere. On other occasions words may
be erroneously ascribed exclusively to Tuscany, as in the popularly stereotyped
example of babbo „dad“. But this word is also used with the same meaning in the
Northern region of Emilia-Romagna.
Yet the prestige of Florentine Tuscan persists in a not necessarily
consistent manner. While Tuscan lexical and grammatical forms are often
considered to be very literary and formal, or very regional (even at the same
time!), the preferred non-regional standard model pronunciation - as seen in the
many books for native speakers to improve their Italian accent - is remarkably
 160

like educated upper middle-class Florentine - with the exception of the gorgia
toscana and with occasional acknowledgment made to different norms in Rome,
e.g. both the presumed Florentine and Roman distribution of open and closed
mid vowels in specific lexical items is acceptable. The Milanese accent is not
used as a reference model.

4. Italian in Switzerland
Italian is, alongside French, German and Romantsch, one of the four
official languages of Switzerland. While the overwhelming majority of Swiss
residents are self-identified first-language speakers of German (63.7%), a
substantial proportion is French-speaking (20.4%), much smaller proportions
identify as Italian- (6.5%) and Romantsch-speaking (0.5%).

Year German French Italian Romansh other

2000 63.7 20.4 6.5 0.5 9.0
1990 63.6 19.2 7.6 0.6 8.9
1980 65.0 18.4 9.8 0.8 6.0
1970 64.9 18.1 11.9 0.8 4.3
1960 69.4 18.9 9.5 0.9 1.4
1950 72.1 20.3 5.9 1.0 0

Table 2: Percentage of self--identified first language

in Switzerland over 6 national censuses (1950-2000)

As Table 2 indicates, the proportion of Italian speakers in Switzerland

peaked at 11.9% in 1970 and has continued to decline since then. This fall reflects
for the most part the return to Italy of large numbers of Italian citizens who
entered Switzerland for work but who were eventually forced to leave in times
of economic difficulty in Switzerland in the 1970s.
Italian speakers in Switzerland do not form a single cohesive community -
whether historically, socially or geographically - a fact that is too easily
overlooked in any discussion of Italian in Switzerland. As a result, the status of
Italian in Switzerland is reduced through such fragmentation. It is possible to
identify a number of Italian-speaking communities in the country in the
following manner:
(1) Immigrants from Italy and their children - often from Southern Italy and
employed as manual labour in factories and elsewhere. These are most often
 161

resident in large German- and French-speaking cities, e.g. Zurich and

Geneva;
(2) The majority of first language (L1) Italian-speaking Swiss citizens are
concentrated in the only canton whose official language is exclusively
Italian, i.e. Ticino, which sits along the border with Italy close to Milan.
With only 325,000 residents (83.5% Italian L1), this is nevertheless strongest
and most stable core of Italian language in Switzerland: Italian dominates in
schools, media and officialdom. The traditional local dialect is a variety of
Lombard - as spoken across the border in Italy in Lombardy but its use is in
significant decline in favour of Italian. Many Ticinese also reside in dispersed
fashion in French- and German-speaking Switzerland;
(3) Italian is also co-official in the Grisons, alongside German and Romantsch. In
this canton a number of small Italian-speaking communities (9,000 speakers
in total) are located in physically separated.
As a result they do not form a cohesive entity within that Canton. Knowledge
and use of Swiss German (and German) is very high throughout this canton.
Use of Lombard dialect amongst Italian-speakers is also much greater here
than in Ticino;
(4) Federal Italian - the variety of Italian used by bureaucrats located mainly in
Berne, the federal capital for national affairs and communication. The
officials involved are typically L1 Italian speakers but also include L1 German
and French speakers who operate in a legally mandated multilingual
environment.
The term „Federal Italian“ may not be entirely accurate since this variety
also interacts and intersects with the bureaucratic Italian used in cantonal
and municipal officialdom - especially in writing - in Ticino and the Grisons.
Of these four identified groupings, only (2) and (4) have any potentially
norm-setting influence on Italian in Switzerland. Indeed little appears to be
known about norm setting and variation in (3) - not surprising given its very
small and fragmented nature. The influence of Federal Italian is seen most
obviously in the preparation and frequent translation of legal and official
documents from French and German.
The need to share legal and bureaucratic concepts exclusive to or typical
only of Swiss society has led to frequent calquing, lexical translation, as well as
some morphosyntactic effects - as can only be expected (see Pandolfi and Casoni
2009 for examples).
 162

Similar effects - especially lexical - are found in spoken and written non-
bureaucratic varieties of Swiss Italian given the need to express cultural, social
and political practices and objects restricted to Switzerland, e.g. autopostale
„regional bus run by the Postal Service“, natel „mobile phone“ (< Swiss brand
name). In other cases, calquing on French and German is also common, e.g. nota
„school mark“ (cf. French note) for voto in Italy, azione „shop discount/sale“
(Swiss French action, German Aktion), infetto (< German Infekt) instead of infezione
„infection“. Local Ticinese dialect may also have an effect, e.g. affrancare „to
ensure“ (< Ticinese francà) alongside assicurare in Italy. With respect to spoken
varieties in Ticino and Grisons, they also show the effects of local Lombard
dialect substratum on pronunciation, and morphosyntax (see Moretti 2004 for
examples) that can also be considered typical of Lombard dialects across the
border in Italy.

5. Swiss Italian as a non-dominant variety of a pluricentric

language at last. Language description, planning and norm-
setting
There is no doubt of Swiss Italian's low profile in Italy, even among
linguists. Most texts on Italian sociolinguistics make little or no mention of
Switzerland or the complex situation Italian finds itself in in that country (see,
e.g. Tosi 2001, Lepschy and Lespchy 1988).2 It is only over the last ten years -
indeed much more recently - that a sense of Swiss Italian as a separate (clearly
non-dominant) national variety of Italian, has begun to develop - thanks largely
to local Swiss experts, such as Pandolfi (2010a/b), and Pandolfi and Casoni (2009)
who have now begun to use the term „pluricentric“ when discussing Italian in
Switzerland and Italy. That there has been little recognition of Swiss Italian as
an autonomous national variety of Italian is not surprising. Small speaker
numbers and a low profile even within Switzerland, where German and French
dominate, as well as dispersal among different types of Italian groupings (as
noted above) do not help. Moreover, until the 1950s and 1960s Swiss Italians in
Ticino and the Grisons were overwhelmingly L1 dialect-speakers who learnt
Italian in school but used it little.
The spread of Italian, and the decline in dialect in Ticino in particular
coincided with great anxiety amongst many Ticinese about what appeared to be

2
Gaetano Berruto, one of Italy's foremost sociolinguists, is an exception who has
written extensively on Italian in Switzerland, e.g. Berruto (1991) - as a result of
working at the University of Zurich for many years. He is now back in Turin.
 163

a gathering wave of German-speaking in-migration from northern cantons that

threatened to swamp the Italianness of the Ticino. The inflow finally peaked in
the early 1980s and Italian-speaking Ticino has demonstrated itself also to be
able to manage linguistically these German-speaking newcomers. But during
this time Ticino stuck close, or at least attempted to, language norms in Italy. In
1991 the Osservatorio linguistico della Svizzera Italiana (OLSI, Italian Swiss Linguistic
Observatory) was established with Swiss federal and cantonal support to
monitor and conduct research in as well as to promote Swiss Italian. More
recent large-scale quantitative lexical research conducted by OLSI-supported
linguists, e.g. Pandolfi (2010a/b) has been very useful by establishing that the
Italian used in Switzerland tends to be more formal and literary than in Italy
itself - a reflection of the fact that until relatively recently Italian was learnt by
most Swiss Italians as a second language in the school setting. There is no doubt
that most effort at identifying the specific characteristics of Swiss Italian has
always focussed on lexical differences and innovations, e.g. Lurati (1989), with
local Swiss efforts finally leading to the publication of an entire dictionary of
presumed Swiss Italianisms, Lo svizzionario (Savoia and Vitale 2002). Yet
recognition of this difference in Italy has been barely noticeable: Zingarelli
(2009), one of the most important dictionaries produced in Italian has now also
begun - ever so slightly - to acknowledge amongst its more than 130,000 entries
35 specifically Swiss Italian terms.
With respect to actual language planning and norm-setting for Swiss
Italian, particular attention has to be paid to the nature of Switzerland's
confederal political structure. It is strongly decentralized - with significant
autonomy at cantonal and municipal level. This system allows for considerable
local decision-making with regard to language planning and use, but also runs
the risk of creating excessive diffusion in practice such that no authority may
explicitly wish to do so. In practice, federal and cantonal norm-setting is often
an incidental and marginal consequence of policy-making in other areas, such as
the requirement to avoid gender bias in language (see, e.g. Cleis 2000, Elmiger
2009).

6. Conclusion: Italian is a weakly pluricentric language

Muhr (2012) (this volume) identifies Italian as a pluricentric language
(dominating Italy and non-dominant Switzerland) requiring investigation. And
he is undoubtedly right.
 164

Whilst it is clear that the specific sociolinguistic characteristics of Italian

have not allowed it to be easily and commonly identified as pluricentric like
German, French or English, Italian shows signs of diffuse or weak pluricentricity
all the same - within Italy and in Switzerland. Unlike English or French where a
clear primary centre of influence can be identified in Britain (London) and
France (Paris) respectively, three centres in Italy (Florence, Milan and Rome) can
be identified which compete and interact in a complex manner that is not easy
to describe or evaluate. With regard to Italian in Switzerland, the only viable
national alternative to Italian in Italy, it too finds itself in a complex situation. As
already noted, it can be divided amongst different types, although the only
large, stable and geographically consistent component is found in Ticino - which
includes only some 60% of the L1 Italian speakers in Switzerland. That said,
Italian in Ticino is supported by the official status afforded to Italian, and its use
by national and cantonal authorities. Swiss Italian, or better Ticinese Italian, is
now coming increasingly out of the shadows, and the notion of it being a
pluricentric variety of Italian has now begun to be used in Switzerland itself.
While much useful research on Swiss Italian has already been conducted, e.g.
Moretti (2004), and Pandolfi (2010a/b), much remains to be done - especially in
areas that do not involve lexicon, such as pragmatics. That these require
detailed investigation is tantalisingly confirmed by recent work by Norrby and
Hajek (2011): they found the Swedish company IKEA uses different address
norms in Swiss Italian, when compared to those it uses in Italian in Italy. IKEA’s
Swiss Italian pragmatics align instead with the more formal patterns associated
with Swiss French and German.
The greatest challenge for Swiss Italian - as is typical with non-dominant
varieties of pluricentric languages - is of course how to be recognized by Italian
speakers (as well as lexicographers and grammarians) in Italy as an autonomous
and identifiable national variety with its own scope for norm-setting. It clearly
has a long way to go yet.

7. References
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Maeder, S. Marzo, G. Mavolo, I. Melis, F. Musarra, B. Van de Bossche (eds)
(2007): Identità e diversità nella lingua e nella letteratura italiana, Atti del
XVIII Congresso dell’AISLLI, Lovanio 2003, Franco Cesati Editore, Firenze.
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Beccaria, Gian Luigi (2011): Fatta l’Italia trovato l’italiano. La Stampa online.
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accessed 20 October 2011.
Berruto, Gaetano (1987): Sociolinguistica dell'italiano contemporaneo. Rome: La
Nuova Italia Scientifica.
Berruto, Gaetano (1991): Fremdarbeiteritalienisch: fenomeni di pidginizzazione
dell'italiano della Svizzera tedesca. Rivista di linguistica 3, 333-367.
Centro di formazione e sviluppo (2004): Techniche per la redazione di atti
ufficiali.
Cleis, Franca (2000): Anche la mia capa è stata apprendista. La sessuazione del
discorso: lingua italiana e canton Ticino. Bulletin suisse de linguistique
appliquée 72:81-106.
Clyne, Michael (ed.) (1992): Pluricentric Languages. Different Norms in Different
Countries. Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter.
Clyne, Michael and Sandra Kipp (1999): Pluricentric Languages in an Immigrant
Context: Spanish, Arabic and Chinese Berlin: Mouton
Di Mauro, Tullio (2007): L'italiano come caso di lingua internamente plurilingue.
In M.Bastiansen, M. Caniato, W. Geerts, G.P. Giudicetti, S. Gola, I. Lanslots,
C. Maeder, S. Marzo, G. Mavolo, I. Melis, F. Musarra, B. Van de Bossche
(eds) Identità e diversità nella lingua e nella letteratura italiana, Atti del
XVIII Congresso dell’AISLLI, Lovanio 2003, Franco Cesati Editore, Firenze
2007, I, pp.27-41.
Elmiger, Daniel (2009): Féminisation de par la loi: la nouvelle <<Loi sur les
languages>> suisse et la formulation non-sexiste. LEGES 2009/1, 57-70.
Lepschy, Ana Laura and Giulio Lepschy (1988): The Italian language today.
London: Routledge, 2nd edition.
Lurati, Ottavio (1989) Tra neologua di calco e identità progettuale: le sfide agli
Svizzeri italiani d'oggi. In Antonio Stauble 9ed) Lingua e letteratura
italiana in Svizzera. Bellinzona: Edizioni Casagrande, pp.161-184.
Moretti, Bruno (2004) La terza lingua. Aspetti dell'italiano in Svizzera agli inizi
del terzo millennio. Locarno: Armando Dadò.
Moretti, Bruno (2005): Tendenze attuali del plurilinguismo elvetico. Paper given
at L’italiano per il plurilinguismo in Svizzera e in Europa Colloquium,
Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, 3 June, 2005
Muhr, Rudolf (2005): Language Attitudes and language conceptions in
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Sprachkulturen der Welt. / Standard Variations and Language Ideologies

in different Language Cultures around the World. Vienna: Peter Lang, p.
11-20.
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Hajek (eds) Uniformity and diversity in Language policy, Global
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In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the
Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 167-186.

Marilena KARYOLEMOU
(University of Cyprus, Cyprus)
makar@ucy.ac.cy

Cypriot Greek as a non dominant variety of Greek

Abstract

In this paper, I present the current sociolinguistic situation of the

Cypriot Greek variety spoken in Cyprus. I briefly describe the position of
Cypriot Greek within the Hellenic speaking world; I subsequently
present recent developments in the area of language policy and
planning as regards Cypriot Greek; I finally discuss its status as a non-
dominant variety of Greek. As a corollary, I also briefly comment on the
status of Greek as a pluricentric language.

1. Introduction
This paper is about the Greek variety spoken on the island of Cyprus.
Cypriot Greek is considered as a member of the group of north-eastern dialects of
Greek. Several other classifications have also been proposed for Cypriot Greek:
according to Contossopoulos (1980a), for instance, if we consider the Greek state
as the core area of the Hellenic speaking world,
Cypriot Greek could be regarded as a geographically peripheral variety,
together with Apulian and Calabrese Greek or the Greek varieties of the Black
Sea; it can also be classified as a dialect of “inda” (“inda” being the word for
“what” (instead of “ti” in standard Greek and in other northern Greek dialects), a
classification inspired by the traditional distinction for French between “langue
d’oc” and “langue d’oil” (Contossopoulos 1980b).
This paper examines the current situation of the Cypriot Greek dialect in
the light of the distinction between de jure and de facto status, and according to
the division between rural and urban uses of the dialect.

2. Literature survey
In the recent literature on local varieties of Greek, many researchers admit
that, as a result of globalisation and widening of communication, spatial
 168

variation in the Hellenic speaking world has been severely reduced since the
beginning of the 20th century.
However, they also point to the fact that, at the opposite of what happens
with other local/dialect varieties of Greek, Cypriot Greek remains a dynamic and
still widely used variety not only within Cyprus itself, but also in several
immigrant communities (see for instance Tamis 1989, Gardner Chloros 1992,
Finnis et al. 2005, Gardner Chloros et al. 2005).
Extensive contact between standard Greek and Cypriot Greek has let to
such phenomena as levelling and loss of localised features, in other words the
dialect has been de-dialectalised. Although it is felt as a loss, de-dialectalisation
has also a “positive” effect on both language practices and language attitudes. On
the one hand, it now allows for less local or urban features to emerge both in the
speech of Cypriot speakers and in written texts (Karyolemou & Papageorgiou
forthcoming), even when the situation and (formal) setting require the use of
standard Modern Greek (Sivas 2004).
This latter development concerns not only the writings of specific
categories of people (such as pupils, students, etc.) certain genres like
advertisements (Pavlou 1996), or electronic mediated written communication
(Themistocleous 2007a, 2007b) etc., but also administrative and official
documents or texts. On the other hand, negative evaluation of the Cypriot
variety gave way, over the years, to a more nuanced evaluation, especially within
the younger generation of speakers (Karyolemou 2006). This change in attitude is
also confirmed by recent developments in language policy and planning
(Karyolemou 2001, Georgiou 2009, 2010).
However, although the de facto status of the Greek Cypriot variety in actual
speech is extremely high, standardization efforts have failed to bring about any
notable changes: the variety still lacks basic linguistic resources; efforts to adapt
the Greek alphabet to the phonetic/phonological specificities of Greek Cypriot
remain without official response; an investigation on the future of the dialect by
the Parliamentary Committee on Education proved without effect.
The question that arises then is if, in the light of its current sociolinguistic
situation, Greek Cypriot could be considered as a non dominant variety of Greek.

3. Greek as a unitary language

That Greek is a unitary language is not only a popular belief among
speakers of Greek, it is also supported by a great many scholars and intellectuals.
The socio-historical conditions of the evolution of the Greek language as well as a
 169

philological tradition that tended to emphasize the similarities between the

Ancient and the Modern language contributed to a sense of continuity that not
only obscured the reality about the origin of Standard Modern Greek but also
belittled the mechanisms of its evolution. The importance of processes such as
simplification, morphological reduction and change through contact were
systematically downplayed. At the same time, internal borrowing that brought
back into the modern language many elements of ancient Greek reinforced the
false impression that these elements had survived through the centuries. This
strongly ideologised vision of the history of the Greek language not only
predominated the major part of the 19th century but has also been valid for part
of the 20th century (Christidis 2007, Mackridge 2009).
The ideological foundation of such a stance goes back many centuries but
its modern expression emerges in the first quarter of the 19th century within the
context of the new independent Greek state (1830). It specifically relates to the
need to connect the Modern to the Ancient Greek society, both as a means to
forge the identity of the new state and in order to capitalise the greatness of the
ancient Greek civilization.
Although Ancient Greek was not part of the linguistic repertoire of the
people living in the area that was to become the free state of Greece, it was
considered as a possible option in the search for an official language, and very
much so since it was still a running candidate until late in the 19th century.
According to Anna Fragoudaki (1997), the need to connect to the greatness of the
Ancient Greek language and civilisation –that goes hand in hand with the
tendency to disregard or downgrade the importance and beauty of the modern
version of the language– is a securitising strategy for a society that assumes its
actual position in the modern world with difficulty.

4. The Hellenic speaking world

Greek has been an important language throughout antiquity. It has spread
eastwards with Alexander the Great’s conquests; it became a well-established
administrative language in the kingdoms of the epigones created after the death
of Alexander; it was also an important language of civilisation in the Roman
Empire.
It then became the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire during
the 4th century A.D., later to become the Byzantine Empire; it continued to be
used up until the 16th century as the language of diplomacy even by Ottoman
Turks. By the end of the Ottoman rule there still existed many Greek speaking
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communities all over the Balkans, in the southern areas of the Black Sea –the
Pontus area–, in Asia Minor, especially in Constantinople and Smyrna, in
Alexandria and Antioch, and even outside the Ottoman Empire. There were also
communities in parts of Tsarist Russia, especially in the commercial centres of
Odessa and Taganrog, in the Danube principalities, in parts of Southern Italy, in
Sardinia, within the great Habsburg Empire, especially in Vienna and Trieste, and
in many other areas of east southern Europe.1
Some of these Hellenic speaking communities were subsequently
integrated into the Greek state as it gradually expanded to include the region of
Epirus, Macedonia and Trace and several island complexes or single islands, e.g.
the Heptanese, the Dodecanese and Crete. However, even after the establishment
and normalisation of national borders in the Balkans in the first half of the 20th
century, several Hellenic speaking communities remained outside the limits of
the Greek state. Despite its position as a dominant language and its use within
the influential Orthodox Church, the expansion of the Greek language was halted
in the Balkans because of the creation of the Balkan states where religious and
linguistic irredentism went hand in hand.
One of the most important linguistic changes in 20th century Greece is
incontestably linked to the political events of the early 1920’s, namely Greece’s
defeat during the expedition in Asia Minor that ended with the Asia Minor
catastrophe (1919-1922) and the exchange of populations between Greece and
Turkey (Treaty of Lausanne 1923). The exchange forced back into Greece
thousands of Greeks who used to live in urban centres of Asia Minor and on the
southern coastline of the Black sea. These populations, relocated for the most
part in areas of Northern Greece, brought back into the linguistic landscape of
mainland Greece several Greek varieties that had little to do with Modern Greek
(especially Pontiac Greek but also urban varieties of Asia Minor Greek). With the
raise of nationalism in Syria and Egypt in the first half of the 20th century, the
once flourishing Hellenic communities of Antioch, Alexandria and Cairo declined
irreversibly. At the same time, Greek immigrant communities in several
European countries, the U.S.A and Australia, contributed to the export of the
Greek language, often in a local or regional form spoken by the Greek immigrant
populations, giving it the status of a diaspora language with a relatively high
degree of retention in the generations of Cypriots born in the diaspora (Clyne,
1982, Clyne et al., 1997, Tamis et al., 1993).

1 For a thorough description of the situation of these Greek communities in the late
17th and early 18th centuries, cf. Mackridge 2009, chapter 2, p. 32-47.
 171

The second half of the 20th century, was marked by the rediscovery of “old”
Hellenic speaking communities, i.e. communities established in parts of Tsarist
Russia but also in several Balkan states, “forgotten” or “invisible” since the
establishment of the Soviet Union. These communities took advantage of the
collapsing of the Soviet Union and the opening of frontiers in several Eastern and
Balkan countries, ex. Bulgaria, Albania etc., to ask for their repatriation. The
movement of return was not without problems, since many Greek people
questioned the veracity of the claimed Greek ancestry for many among the
newcomers, especially those originating from Balkan states like Albania and
Bulgaria.
Immigrants who claim Greek ancestry are in fact treated differently from
immigrants who are nationals of third countries: they are given the status of
“omoethneis” (“who are of the same ethnos” that is who have Greek national
consciousness) and are considered to be Greek citizens with equal rights and
same obligations. The number of Albanian immigrants claiming Greek ancestry
today exceeds by far any other immigrant community. According to estimations,
there were 459.390 Albanians of Greek origin living in Greece in 2008
(Triandafyllidou, 2008), a number which represents alone 60% of the immigrant
force of Greece (Maroukis, 2005). Among recent immigrants also admitted in the
category of “omoethneis”, we can also count non Greek speaking Pontic Greeks,
often also called “Rossopontioi” (Russian Pontic), a name that bears witness of
their historic displacement from Pontus to Tsarist Russia in the aftermath of the
Young Turk Revolution (1920) and from there to several Soviet Republics, e.g.
Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Abkhazia, etc. The glasnost policy and the dissolution
of the Soviet Union in the late 80’s and early 90’s, resulted in a massive migration
of Russian Pontic people towards Greece, the great majority of whom spoke
Russian as their mother tongue. Some, especially those who came from Georgia,
also had Turkish as their mother tongue.
The import of (partially) Greek-speaking populations resulted in the
reduction of the geographical distribution of Greek varieties outside of Greece.
Within Greece itself, the language had also experienced a severe decrease in
geographical variation due to the highly urbanised character of the Greek state:
two thirds of the population concentrate in the two main urban centres of
Athens and Thessaloniki. Here, the speakers of rural varieties or dialects very
quickly accommodate to standard Modern Greek.
The effects of globalisation and the widening of communication during the
last few decades of the 20th century accentuate the loss of geographical varieties
 172

and regional variation. The diffusion of standard Greek, in its capacity as the
national language, at the detriment of all other local or regional varieties is today
a fait accompli (Contossopoulos, 1980).

5. Greek as a monocentric language

A certain number of factors pertaining to the socio-historical context of
the evolution of the Greek language can help us understand why, as Mackridge
(2009: 6) puts it: “One of the most pervasive language ideologies in Greece is the
belief that Greek is a single language from antiquity to the present”. The first
ideology has to do with the fact that Greek has been around for more than thirty-
five centuries, that is more than any other European language.
Notwithstanding its long history, it is today proven that there is no direct
relation between Ancient and Modern Greek and that the origins of modern
varieties of Greek should be sought in Medieval Greek during the “obscure
centuries” (9th-11th centuries), much later. However, speakers of Modern Greek
do get a sense of “continuity” because of the lack of estrangement when they are
faced with ancient texts. Although they may not be able to fully understand the
meaning of an ancient text, especially if it is in archaic Greek, they do recognise
the image of the language, since Greek makes use of the same alphabetic system
as 3.500 years ago. Despite many changes the language underwent in the
meanwhile, speakers can recognise forms, words, or expressions that still exist
albeit with a different meaning or function. In reality, many such words or
expressions have not been retained throughout this long period of time but were
reintroduced by a process of internal borrowing that brought back into the
modern language an important number of obsolete ancient elements.
One might also come very easily to the idea of Greek as a unitary language,
if one compares it to other European languages like Latin or ancient Slavonic:
though the latter are currently considered dead languages, they have split into
several varieties which subsequently became autonomous languages. Greek, on
the other hand, remained unchallenged in its position as a single language
(Bubenik, 1989). This idea is strongly dependent upon ideological reasons, which
state that if language is or remains one and the same, then the community of
speakers is or remains the same, in other words if the national language is one
and the same then the Ethnos is one and the same. This ideology has both a
diachronic and a synchronic dimension.
Diachronically it takes the form of a refusal to consider any points of
rupture with the illustrious linguistic past of Ancient Greece: let’s not forget that
 173

an important part of the elite in the modern state of Greece would still consider
Ancient Attic as the natural “official language” of the independent state at the
end of the 19th century, notwithstanding the fact that it was long since a dead
language. Even in the long language controversy that opposed the proponents of
the popular demotic language to the proponents of purified katharevousa, for the
major part of the 19th and 20th centuries, both camps used the same argument of
continuity to support the variety they were arguing for: purists maintained that
continuity was established through the revival of unchanged ancient Greek
features, whereas the latter insisted that demotic was the natural outcome of the
historic evolution of Ancient Greek, therefore continuity was established
through natural evolution and change.
Synchronically, it is manifested as a denial to accept any form of language
other than standard Greek as a valid or autonomous form of expression. In other
words, it is extremely difficult to accept the idea that Greek might have evolved
differently elsewhere and might have produced other varieties of Greek which
could have gained the status of autonomous varieties like standard Modern
Greek, on grounds of their being non mutually intelligible or because the
sociolinguistic context bares them legitimacy.
In the first category, we could classify the near obsolete Tsakonian variety,
a relic variety of ancient Doric spoken by some 1200 persons in the region of
Laconia (ancient Sparta) and presently used in a cluster of villages around the
mount Parnos (Peloponnese). It is not directly related to Modern Greek or
varieties diverging from standard Greek due to their long-lasting isolation and
contact with non Indo-European languages, like for instance Pontiac. The
tendency is, on the contrary, to consider every local variety as a dialect of
Modern Greek, despite the fact that such a position is not supported by linguistic
evidence.

6. The position of Cypriot Greek within the Hellenic speaking world

Cypriot Greek is the only Greek variant spoken in an area outside Greece,
which forms a politically independent state: the Republic of Cyprus. It has
evolved in a parallel, though different way from standard Greek, since the island
was detached from the Byzantine Empire at the end of the 12th century to
become a Medieval Latin Kingdom. Although it continued to be connected to the
Byzantine Empire, it escaped the pressures exerted by mainstream Byzantine
Greek and more importantly were exposed to such languages as Provencal,
Italian or Catalan and was influenced by them. From the 13th up to the 16th
 174

century, it was used as a written and literary language in the Cypriot Medieval
Chronicles, in the legislation of the Lusignan kings of Cyprus known as the Assizes
du Royaume de Chypre and in literary and poetic works (Karyolemou, 2005).
An independent Republic since 1960, Cyprus provides a legitimising space
to the dialect, a space with its own political and legislative systems and its own
economy, where the use of the dialect is expected and not at all considered
abnormal or out of norm. Although it is heteronomous and officially subsumed
under standard Greek (Greek is the official language of the Cyprus Republic),
Cypriot Greek, in its capacity as the vernacular variety, is present not only in
everyday or familiar interaction but, since some decades, also in semi-formal and
formal encounters. It bears also the status of a lingua franca for Cypriot
communities of non-Greek origin (Cypriot Maronite Arabs, Cypriot Armenians
and many Turkish Cypriots).
The socio-political context, comparable to that of other small European
states, like Malta or Luxembourg, could have provided the necessary impetus for
Cypriot to develop into a common national language. However, at the opposite of
developments that took place in Malta and Luxembourg, the dominant political
ideology insisted instead on the need to consolidate the bounds of the Greek
community of Cyprus with the rest of the Hellenic world in order to preserve the
unity of the Hellenic ethnos. It thus became impossible for non Greek Cypriots to
identify with a local variety that defined a strong ethnic identification towards
an exogenous community.
This development was denying at the same time to the Cypriot variety any
status other than that of a dialect. Nevertheless, and despite this strong ethnic
identification, in the last quarter of the 20th century the Cypriot variety has
reinforced its place as a vernacular language by progressively assimilating
indigenous minority communities. Armenian and Sanna (commonly called
Cypriot Arabic) are today recognized as indigenous minority languages and are
protected under the Charter for Regional & Minority Languages of the Council of
Europe. Cypriot, nonetheless, has become the native language of the quasi
totality of the Maronite Arab community (~4.800 members) and of an important
number of Cypriot Armenians (~1.000 members) (Karyolemou, 2009). For the
former, the degree of assimilation to the Cypriot variety is a development of the
last three decades and the result of their displacement after the Turkish invasion
(1974), which brought them in contact with the mainstream Hellenic speaking
community.
 175

Cypriot has also remained extremely dynamic outside Cyprus: many

immigrant Cypriot communities have maintained the use of the Cypriot variety
in their host countries, the most notorious examples being the communities of
United Kingdom and Australia. According to Anastasios Tamis (1989), in
Australia, intergenerational transmission was still so strong at the end of the 20th
century that the variety could be considered an ethnolect. The retention of the
Cypriot dialect helped also to keep alive the bonds with Cyprus, making it
possible for many among the second or third generation of Cypriot immigrants
to return to the island.

7. Results of language contact (1): De-dialectalisation as loss

Since the end of the 16th century, however, the use of Cypriot Greek as a
literary and administrative language has been reduced and from the 19th century
onwards, it ceased to be used as a written language altogether. The status of
Cypriot Greek as a geographic variety of Greek, i.e. a dialect, was confirmed with
the advent of the Modern Greek state and the establishment of Katharevousa as
official language of the new state. The retreat of Katharevousa and its final
demise in the last quarter of the 21st century in favour of Dhemotiki, now known
as common Neohellenic language, placed Cypriot Greek – as the low variety used
in a restricted number of familiar domains of use– in a diglossic relation to the
latter – as a high variety used in prestigious domains of private or public
dominance (cf. Ferguson, 1959).
Hence, the coexistence of the Cypriot dialect with an exogenous standard
(either Katharevousa or Dhemotiki) has been a constant characteristic of the 20th
century. However, the relation of Cypriot Greek to common Neohellenic has
been quite different from its relation to Katharevousa since it could be
considered as a dialect of the former but not of the latter: in other words, Cypriot
Greek is heteronomous as regards common Neohellenic but autonomous as
regards Katharevousa. Therefore, whereas it has been in a diglossic relation to
both for most of the 20th century, it has been much more influenced by the
former (common Neohellenic) than by the latter (Katharevousa).
The long-lasting contact of Cypriot Greek and common Neohellenic has
resulted in such phenomena as accommodation, levelling, structural
reorganisation, reduction and internal borrowing. The obvious result of these
processes has been the loss of localised or traditional features of Cypriot Greek, a
process we usually refer to as de-dialectalisation. Despite the fact that these
 176

features are very often looked down on, many people on the island perceive their
loss as an insight of the imminent loss of the dialect altogether.
Although the dialect is still widely used even in urban centres, the new
urban ways of speech are not recognized as part of the “real dialect” and often,
at times, charged as pretentious and unnatural. Especially older dialect speakers
blame young Cypriots to be unable to correctly and fluently speak the dialect.
Such an opinion is founded mainly on the fact that young speakers cannot
properly identify and/or use an important part of the dialect vocabulary
anymore, something that is also confirmed by younger speakers themselves who
declare that they are unable to understand many words which are commonly
used by their elders or, even when they do understand them, they are unable to
actively use them in conversation. Morphological reorganisation and
phonological restructuring of the dialect are less commonly used as providing
evidence of dialect loss, because they are not easily identified as such by
speakers.
De-dialectalisation is thus considered as the antechamber of dialect death.
Many speakers, especially of a certain age, are not able to grasp these
phenomena, as a result of dialect change rather than dialect loss. Even
researchers have been, until recently, unable to describe structural changes due
to intralanguage contact. They tend, for instance to identify the emergence of
new dialect structures and/or features as the product of dialect loss or the result
of some kind of defective use of the dialect and fail to recognize them as
instances of structural reorganisation. Such instances are, among others,
intermediate structures combining the past perfect with past tense adverbs,
regularised forms of highly irregular verbs (Karyolemou 2008), etc.

8. Results of language contact (2): De-dialectalisation as a positive

effect

The urban character of certain of the above mentioned features which are
associated with an urban lifestyle and a more extrovert way of living, dissociates
them from such characteristics as low educational level, rudeness, backwardness,
conservatism, and all those characteristics which are usually associated with the
use of non dominant, peripheral or local varieties.
The profile of the average dialect speaker has also changed over the years:
it has shifted away from the traditional NORM-type individual towards a more
educated, urban-born, medium class speaker. These developments make urban
 177

features less stigmatized and more acceptable, a fact which breaks down the
diglossic pattern described above: the “dialect” (urban dialect features) now
emerges in prestigious domains of communication, from where it used to be
excluded.
The process of de-dialectalisation has, hence, also a positive effect, since
the presence of the dialect in such contexts is increasingly seen as an acceptable
sociolinguistic practice.
Whereas localized features can easily be used to predict the geographical
area one comes from, urban features are delocalized and speakers who use them
cannot be situated as coming from within a specific geographical area: they could
be used by anyone and anywhere, irrespective of their actual origin, class or
education. In other words, they become common or standard. Hence, de-
dialectalisation allows for the emergence of these less localised features both in
the speech of Cypriot speakers and in the written texts. This is not only the case
in relaxed or familiar conversation, for instance, when talking to friends or
family or in e-mails, blogs and chat rooms (Themistokleous 2007a, 2007b), but
even when the situation and (formal) setting require the use of common
Neohellenic (Sivas 2004, Karyolemou & Papageorgiou forthcoming).
We should, in this respect acknowledge that researchers like Pavlou (2003)
had already underpinned the presence of the dialect instead of common
Neohellenic in semi-formal or formal encounters, albeit only for culturally
specific purposes, e.g. advertisements concerning traditional products or
targeting a specific public (elderly Cypriots).
The emergence of urban features in formal situations and in writing was
also confirmed by observations made by researchers since the late 90’s. Anna
Panayiotou (1999: 286) was underlining a few years back:

“It is obvious that a Cypriot speech reflecting local use in under

formation, Cypriot Greek which at the same time transforms Cypriot
speaker’s language feeling in such a way that he/she gradually gets
familiar with and adheres to this speech which gets recycled in this way
within the Greek Cypriot society”.
The trend has been accentuated in more recent years. Sivas (2004), for
instance, shows that irrespective of their educational background, professional
attainment, social class or formality of situation, Cypriot speakers never
completely accommodate to common Neohellenic, nor do they make an
exclusive use of the dialect; in all the cases she investigated, speakers move along
an intermediate range of uses drawing on linguistic resources from both the
 178

dialect and common Neohellenic, within a range of acceptable variation for each
instance of communication.
Themistocleous (forthcoming, 2007a, 2007b) and Sophocleous &
Themistocleous (forthcoming) have shown how online computer mediated
communication favours the use of culturally specific literacy practices, namely
the use of dialect features along features of common Neohellenic, in order to
convey specific meanings. In another investigation by Karyolemou &
Papageorgiou (forthcoming), who examined the noting process during the
publication of the Minutes of the Parliamentary debates, that is the process by
which the oral performances of representatives at the Cypriot Parliament are
corrected towards common Neohellenic in view of their publication in the
Proceedings, some unexpected results were also found. In spite of the fact that,
generally speaking, dialect features are considered mainly oral and are
systematically accommodated to common Neohellenic in writing, an important
number of dialect features survived through the correction process and
appeared unchanged in the final written text.
After the analysis of the data, the researchers came to the conclusion that
these features did not escape the attention of language correctors and editors,
who, on the contrary, were fully aware of their dialect status but still made the
decision to keep them in their original, dialect form, in the written version of the
debates, because they were estimated acceptable in that specific context. It is not
surprising at all that all the “surviving features” were features of urban Cypriot.
These results challenge our understanding of the relation between
common Neohellenic and the Cypriot dialect conceived as a formal vs a familiar
medium of conversation or as a written vs an oral code. They also invalidate the
“unbalanced linguistic competence” claim which has been often used to explain
why speakers use the dialect in formal settings. According to this claim, in formal
or semi-formal encounters, Cypriot speakers fall back to the dialect because they
have an insufficient knowledge of common Neohellenic.
In view of the above, we could say that the major conclusion of research as
regards the status and use of Cypriot Greek is that since the end of the 20th
century, Cypriot Greek is making its way through in various areas of formal or
semi-formal communication, both as an oral and as a written medium. This
observation is valid not only for specific groups of speakers (pupils, students,
etc.) or certain genres like advertisements (Pavlou, 1996), electronic mediated
written communication (Themistocleous 2007a, 2007b, Sophocleous &
 179

Themistocleous forthcoming) etc., but also for administrative and official

documents or texts (Karyolemou & Papageorgiou forthcoming).

9. Using and promoting the dialect

Using dialectal features in an otherwise urban context is not at all a rare
phenomenon. It is very often the case when dialect speakers move into urban
centres, where they accommodate to the new linguistic environment. Some of
the original features are then maintained, but acquire a different value.
I have argued elsewhere (Karyolemou, 2006) that there are three main
requirements in order for a dialect feature to be considered of “common use”:
systematicity, focussing and unlocalizability, in the sense that some dialect features
are chosen out of an array of equivalent features, used systematically by an
important number of speakers and are not linked to a specific geographical area
within the community.
When dialect features are widely used, they also become more acceptable.
This is because they are less localized and therefore closer to the valued standard
forms, yet still marked as dialectal, thus preserving the loyalty towards the
group. A study by Karyolemou & Pavlou (2000) has confirmed that when people
are asked what the Cypriot variety is, how they can describe it and what features
they consider as “proper Cypriot”, they tend to let aside or exclude any traditional
or localized features of Cypriot Greek (which belong to core, traditional or
“village” Cypriot). Instead, they single out as genuinely Cypriot features that
belong to urban Cypriot and have been delocalized. For them, proper Cypriot is
urban Cypriot and not the traditional dialect.
However, using the dialect and admitting that it is a more or less
acceptable norm for formal and semi-formal communication. This enhances its
de facto status, that is the place it has among the members of the community as a
means of communication, but does not improve its de jure status, that is its
official recognition by legislative means either as an official or administrative
language or as a language of instruction, areas where Cypriot Greek remains still
invisible.
From this point of view, it would be very interesting to investigate which
factors determine that in some cases dialectal vernacular varieties get official
recognition, like for instance in the case of Luxembourgish or Maltese, but in
other cases, as in the case of Cypriot Greek, Belgian French or Flemish, Austrian
German, de jure recognition and promotion remain quite low.
 180

In certain areas more than in others, dialect uses occur systematically, yet
they are not recognised; very often, they are even denied. In primary and
secondary education, for instance, where the language of instruction is standard
Modern Greek, teachers systematically deny using the dialect in the classroom,
whereas they actually do use it much more than their pupils. Corrective practices
towards the pupils are also frequently encountered, although less in recent
years. In other words, teachers correct pupils for talking the way they
themselves talk.
Current practices in the management of language varieties in the
educational domain, i.e. bidialectal approaches, have little if any effect on public
education policies, despite the reiterated reports by specialists on the positive
effects that such approaches can have both for language learning results and for
pupils’ personal development and fulfilment (Ioannidou, 2002; Yakoumetti, 2003,
2006, 2007).
The fact that urban features are judged more acceptable and are allowed to
emerge in formal settings or in writing, in its turn reinforces the positive
evaluation of urban Cypriot, especially as far as the younger generation is
concerned, thus leading to an overall more nuanced evaluation of Cypriot
performances.
Loyalty to Cypriot Greek, though not immediately visible, emerges
occasionally, as for instance in the early 90s when contrasted views about the
written form of place names to be adopted were expressed. Cypriot speakers
reacted negatively to a reform that aimed at replacing Cypriot name places by
their standardised forms, sticking to the non-standardized written and oral
versions. The negative reactions to the proposed reform led to the failure of the
policy upheld by the authoritative Cyprus Permanent Committee for the
standardization of place names (Karyolemou 2001, Papapavlou 2003, Georgiou
2009, 2010).
Cypriot Greeks have been in close contact with Greece because of the
cultural and linguistic affinities between the two countries. For many decades,
Cypriots left the island for Greece in order to study or work. The economic
upheavals of the last few years have somehow inverted this trend and brought
into the island, whose economy is more robust, a large number of Greek
immigrants in search of opportunities for work.
This development brought standard Greek speakers into contact with
Cypriot Greek in a geographical area where its use is legitimized. This legitimized
use of Cypriot Greek has somehow affected the way the dialect is perceived by
 181

standard speakers. There have been numerous reports on cases of non-

accommodation in interaction between Cypriot and standard Modern Greek
speakers. Not only do Cypriot speakers not accommodate to standard Greek in
the presence of standard Greek speakers while in Cyprus but, very often,
standard Greek speakers, especially those who live permanently on the island,
revert themselves to an emblematic use of Cypriot Greek, something that was
unlikely to happen some years ago.

10. Cypriot Greek as a non dominant variety of Greek

The de facto status of Greek Cypriot is high, yet there have been no notable
changes as far as its de jure status is concerned. The dialect remains still invisible
to the legislator. From the point of view of corpus planning, the variety still lacks
basic linguistic resources, i.e. dictionaries, grammars, especially grammars and
dictionaries that would consider the dialect as a structural system on its own and
not as a set of specificities which diverge from the standard variety.
One of the most recent efforts to adopt such a holistic approach in the area
of lexicon is the electronic dictionary of the Cypriot dialect Syntyʃes, which has
been recently completed.2 Syntyʃes is the product of a four years research at the
University of Cyprus, which aims at presenting the lexical stock of the Cypriot
dialect today.
At the opposite of other (conventional) lexical resources for Cypriot Greek,
which either adopt a historic dimension or incorporate only dialect specific
lexemes,3 Syntyʃes adopts a synchronic and holistic approach of the dialect, by
compiling not only lexemes which are specific to the dialect but also those which
are common both to Cypriot and to standard Modern Greek.
The question of how to write the dialect has been tackled at times by
people who had to deal with the editing of literary texts –medieval chronicles,

2
Syntyʃes is hosted at the site of the Library of the University of Cyprus at
http://lexcy.library.ucy.ac.cy/Sintixies.aspx.b vv
3
For a complete list of the existing dictionaries for Cypriot Greek, see M. Katsoyannou.
2010. “Dictionaries of Cypriot Greek: History and typology” [in Greek], in: A. Voskos,
Goutsos, D. & A. Mozer (eds) The Greek language in Cyprus from antiquity to today.
Athens: University of Athens. 174-191; for a comparative presentation of the
dictionaries for Cypriot Greek and Greco (South Italy), see M. Katsoyannou. 2008.
“Dialect dictionaries of Modern Greek”, in: A. Mozer et al. (eds) For the sake of
language [in Greek]. Athens: Ellinika grammata. 649-663. For an electronic list [in
Greek] of the existing dictionaries of Cypriot Greek, one can consult the following
address
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&ch9rome=true&srcid=0B3bMXdG
5ObrQNTRlY2NjODQtNTIxZS00OWUzLWI0ZjQtM2Q4MjZjZTNkNzU2&hl=en_US.
 182

contemporary poetry, etc.4 – but there has been no consensus among them.
Some of them prefer to stick to the Greek alphabet, while others introduce
diacritics in order to account for specific dialect sounds. More recently, there
have been several efforts by specialists to adapt the Greek alphabet to the
phonetic/phonological characteristics of Cypriot Greek (e.g. Koutsougera &
Georgiou, forthcoming), yet they have had no effect on official usage or common
practices: speakers prefer the traditional though inadequate writing
conventions. In any case, there has been no questioning whatsoever of the
prevailing orthographic conventions, which keep the dialect close to the
standard.
In the area of education, the benefits of bi-dialectal approaches and the
ways it could enhance pupils’ personal development and educational
achievement, still remain an academic debate with no effect on language-in-
education policies. In the educational reform which is currently under way,
there are some signs of improvement as regards the place of the dialect in the
curriculum, where it is used as a point of reference in order to improve the
teaching of standard Modern Greek. Yet, its validity as a medium for school
communication or instruction has not at all been discussed yet. The main
reasons behind these difficulties are of an ideological nature and have to do with
the politically fragile situation of the Greek Cypriot community in Cyprus. In the
context of the political instability and insecurity created by the persistent
division of the island, it becomes all the more important to insist on the links
with the mainland Greek community and avoid any kind of (among other things
linguistic) irredentism.
In view of the above, we can agree with Rudolf Muhr’s (2005) position that,
in the case of Cypriot and standard Modern Greek, we are in the presence of an
asymmetrical pluricentricity. Asymmetrical pluricentricity is characterised by
the non-dominant variety being perceived as a deviant rather than different
variety – a heteronymous variety subsumed under a standard variety–
irrespective of its being widely used at the national level.
Furthermore, the current situation as far as the efforts to standardize or
promote the dialect falls under number 1 of Rudolf Muhr’s list of options for
NDVs: “Leave everything as it is - maybe codify the variety but don’t make too

4
See for instance the round table discussion during the 4th International Conference of
Neograeca Medii Aevi, “Editing methods: Problems and solutions” (P. Agapitos &
Michalis Pieris 2002).
 183

much fuss about your own variety as the unity of the language and the
participation in a large language is the dominating objective”.

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Jasmine DUM-TRAGUT
(Universität Salzburg, Austria)
jasmine.dum-tragut@sbg.ac.at

Amen teł hay kay. 20 years later –

Pluricentric Armenian and its
changed dominance hierarchy.

There are many languages that are pluricentric,

not all in the same way.
M. Clyne (2004:296)

Abstract
This paper investigates the linguistic consequences of socio-political and
demographic changes of the last 20 years regarding the dominance hier-
archy between the two literary varieties of Armenian, Eastern and West-
ern. P. Cowe's contribution in 1992 was the first attempt of defining Ar-
menian as pluricentric language. Armenian was classified, “not having a
claim to a particular territory it was usually used solely or predomi-
nantly in emigrant contexts and/or where the division between Eastern
and Western Europe is responsible for pluricentricity.“1
It was also claimed that Armenian represented an exception to the
model of pluricentric languages, not having official functions or official
status in the countries where its varieties were spoken and for not shar-
ing common functions and thus not being considered as "equal".2 These
statements were outpaced by major demographical, social and cultural
changes affecting the linguistic distribution, vitality, language ideology
and the status of Armenian. The paper also corroborates the gradually
growing and still developing asymmetry between its dominant and non-
dominant varieties.

1. Introduction - What kind of language is Armenian?

Armenian is a pluricentric language, having two distinct literary and stan-
dard varieties, of which Eastern Armenian is the functionally more vital variety

1
Clyne (1992:3)
2
Muhr (2003:191)
 188

in sociolinguistic terms, being the official state language of the Republic of Ar-
menia and of Mountainous Karabakh and representing also the dominant vari-
ety. Western Armenian is officially an endangered language,3 a language with re-
duced functionality and even endangered by its dominant sister in the new Ar-
menian Diaspora, but it is also the recognized language of the older, traditional
Armenian minority all over the world. Western Armenian is clearly the non-
dominant variety.
Western Armenian, being mainly centred in Istanbul, is however not con-
sidered a Diaspora language by its speakers, but the language of an ethnic group
which has lived across the territory of modern Turkey for centuries and even
millennia, culturally and socially centred however in Istanbul.
Armenian is labelled a traditional Diaspora language, in view of the fact
that each Diaspora community represents a specific social and cultural stratifica-
tion caused by the different social, cultural and linguistic features of the diverse
historical layers of the Diaspora community, which is additionally influenced by
the host country's majority language, culture and social attitudes. And nowa-
days, in contrast to earlier publications on pluricentric Armenian, both Arme-
nian varieties are spread in the Diaspora and co-exist in one state, region or
place.
What distinguishes the Armenian language from other pluricentric lan-
guages is the fact that although its speakers usually represent one of a country's
minorities, they are, however, frequently officially recognized as an ethnic or
linguistic community, but in most cases as members of a recognized religious
community. As such, they enjoy other rights than recognized minorities or eth-
nic groups. Apart from the right to public religious practices, these are the rights
to use the language of their religion in liturgy, to establish private schools in
which Armenian functions as part of the curriculum or even as language of in-
struction and very often also public religious instruction in the ethnic (religious)
language. One has to keep in mind that, apart from the two competing standard
varieties, there is also Liturgical or Church Armenian – Classical Armenian, still
used in liturgy. Thus, while Armenian spoken outside of the Republic of Armenia
and the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh does perhaps not have a status of an
official language of a state, it is often the ethnic medium of communication of a
recognized minority group.

3
UNESCO 2009, endangered language in Turkey and Middle East. UNESCO Atlas of
Languages in danger. http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/index.php
[Sept. 15th, 2011]
 189

Armenian appears to have been a controversial example of a pluricentric

language because of this reported lack of "official" status in its centres. "Both lit-
erary forms of the language are employed by one people, yet neither is the estab-
lished norm of a sovereign country."4 This statement does not reflect the socio-
linguistic reality anymore; as mentioned above, Eastern Armenian is state lan-
guage in the republics of Armenia and Mountainous Karabakh. Western Arme-
nian is at least officially recognized as a minority language following the Euro-
pean Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: as a non-territorial minority
language in Cyprus (ratified August 26th, 2002), in Poland (ratified February 12th,
2009) and also in Romania (ratified October 24th, 2009). In the last 20 years, fol-
lowing political and socio-demographic changes, Armenian varieties have been
continuously shifting their territorial positions and consequently their main set-
tlement areas and cultural-linguistic centres.

2. Armenian in sociolinguistic terms

One should be aware of the historical and in particular political develop-
ment of the speech communities in the traditional Armenian settlement territo-
ries and in the worldwide Diaspora, before defining Armenian in sociolinguistic
terms or entering the discussion on the dominance hierarchy.

2.1. Historical sketch of the development of Modern Armenian

Varieties of a language, in general, are most likely to develop in situations
of physical and/or social separation among groups of speakers, and in case of
longer geographical and social separation, existing dialectal differences may be
even trigger a split into different languages, or in the case of Armenian, into two
modern literary varieties.
Linguistic data from text material provide information about the early ex-
istence of Armenian dialects already during the 5th century, when Armenian was
first codified and written as Classical Armenian. The existence and development
of Armenian dialects was even mentioned in some of the "grammatical" works
and commentaries written in the late medieval period.5 These already existing
linguistic differences were additionally intensified by socio-historic mechanisms,

4
Cowe (1992:325)
5
E.g. Armenian dialect forms/lexemes are mentioned in the Armenian translation of
Dionysius Thrax from the 5th c., in "Meknut'iwn K'erakanin" (Commentary on Gram-
mar) of Step'an Siwnec'i (8th c.), "Meknut'iwn K'erakani" (Commentary on Grammar)
by Vardan Arewelc'i. (13th c.) etc.
 190

i.e. geographical and political separation caused by historic-political changes in

the Armenian territories, by socio-cultural stratification and the continuous lan-
guage and culture contact Armenian speakers were exposed to.
The division into a major Eastern and a Western dialectal group also repre-
sents more or less the geographical and cultural-linguistic separation of Arme-
nia: starting already from the Roman/Persian separation of the Armenian terri-
tories into West (Rome) and East (Persia) in 385/87 A.D., and some other follow-
ing territorial zoning, but particularly with the formation of feudal Armenian
kingdoms (and cultural and linguistic centres) from the 9th to 12th century, the
disastrous invasion of the Seljuk Turks in the second half of the 11th century (ini-
tiating mass migration resulting in the Armenian Diaspora), and of course the
most influential period of the Ottoman Empire on Western Armenian and the
Russian Empire on Eastern Armenian territories.
During these periods the status of Armenian varieties has been undergoing
continuous change. Particularly between the 9th century (the end of the Arabic
Empire) and the very zenith of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century,6 Arme-
nian was spoken in its dialectal forms in the various centres of the Armenian ter-
ritories and written in a range of distinct varieties, usually labelled "Middle Ar-
menian".7 The already existing linguistic separation proceeded during the Otto-
man Empire, particularly in the 18th and early 19th centuries, when three main
centres of Armenian culture and language emerged in Constantinople, Tiflis and
Moscow. It was in these centres that the Armenian language was codified into
two divergent literary standards.

2.2. The two Armenian literary standards

The vernacular of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire was de-
scribed already in the first half of the 18th century in Mxit'ar Sebastac'i's8 seminal
"Grammar of Modern Armenian", published in Constantinople. This Modern Ar-
menian was conventionalized to a "pre-standard Western Armenian" by another

6
Usually the peak of the Ottoman Empire is attributed to the reign of Sultan Suleiman
the Magnificent (1520-1566).
7
Only during the period of the Cilician Armenian dynasties (1080-1375), culminating in
the establishment of the Cilician kingdom in about 1199, a kind of conventionalized
"Middle Armenian" literary standard, called "Cilician Armenian" was used. See: Karst,
J. (1901): Historische Grammatik des Kilikisch-Armenischen. Tübner, Strassburg.
8
Mxit'ar of Sebaste was the founder of the Armenian-Catholic congregation called
"Mekhitarists" in 1701.
 191

Mekhitarist father in Venice in 1866.9 Efforts to create and standardize the East-
ern Armenian vernacular, however, took place only in the mid 19th century, out-
side of Armenia.10
After their recapture from Persia in 1827, the khanates of Erivan and
Nakhichevan (about half of the Eastern Armenian territory) were united into the
Armenian Province under Tsarist government. The Łazaryan Institute in Moscow
(founded in 1815) and the Nersesyan School in Tiflis (founded in 1824) became
the centres of the standardization of Eastern Armenian. The dialect of the central
Ararat plain, the city dialect of Aštarak,11 was chosen as the basis for Eastern
Armenian literary language. The first book was written in 1840 by Xač'atur
Abovyan12 –immediately forbidden and only published posthumously in Tiflis in
1858.13
Again it was in Tiflis that the first texts written in Modern Eastern Arme-
nian appeared in the weekly periodical "Ararat" in 1850. The first grammar of
Modern Eastern Armenian was published in 1870 by St. Palasanean14 in Tiflis and
remained the undisputed norm until M. Abełyan's pioneering writings from
1906-1912.15 Modern Eastern Armenian was again codified by various Armenian
grammarians between the 193s and the 1960s.

9
Aytěnean, A. 1987 (reprint of 1866): K'nnakan k'erakanut'yun ašxarhabar kam ardi
hayeren lezvi. Erewan: Erewani hamalsarani hratarakč'ut'yun. (Critical grammar of
Ašxarhabar or Modern Armenian)
10
The first description of the so-called civic language being spoken in the central Ararat
plain in the 18th century was produced by the German orientalist, J.J. Schroeder in
1711. The real development into a new Modern Eastern Armenian standard, however,
took only place a century later. See Jahukyan, G.B. (1969): Hayoc' lezvi zargac'umĕ
ew karuc'vack'ĕ. Erewan. (The development and structure of the Armenian language).
11
The leading role of the dialect of Aštarak (a dialect of the central Ararat plain) is
commonly explained by the fact that the founder of the Nersesyan-Institute in Tiflis,
Nersēs Aštarakec'i, the influential and disputatious Armenian archbishop of Tiflis,
came from the small town of Aštarak.
12
The historical novel Verk' Hayastani "Wounds of Armenia" was the first Armenian
secular novel written in the new Eastern Armenian variety. Before writing the novel,
Abovyan also tried to write a comparative grammar of Classical Armenian and the
newly codified Modern Eastern Armenian in 1839-1840.
13
This first MEA standard being developed by the scholars of the Nersesyan School,
however, was not officially accepted, even prosecuted by public authorities of Tsarist
Armenia. Even schoolbooks in this newly created normative Eastern Armenian were
forbidden.
14
Palasanean, St. (1870). Ĕndhanur tesut'yun arewelahay nor gravor lezvi hayoc'.
(General theory of the new literary Eastern Armenian language), Tiflis. Palasanean,
St. (1874): K'erakanut'yun mayreni lezvi. Tiflis. . (Grammar of the mother tongue)
15
Among these writings of M. Abełyan: Abełyan, M. 1965. Hayoc' lezvi tesut'yun. Ere-
wan: Haykakan SSH GA hratarakč'ut'yun. (Theory of Armenian Language). Abełyan,
 192

2.3. Becoming a pluricentric language: The formation period

Pluricentric languages evolve by the parallel development

of more than one standard variety for the same language.
(Ammon 2005:1537)

During their formation period in the 18th and 19th centuries, Western and
Eastern Armenian used to have active centres in which the newly codified varie-
ties were gradually gaining in importance in official use in newspapers, printed
novels and as language of instruction in Armenian schools, despite the absence
of a separate Armenian state.
At this period, Armenian was strictly complying with the common defini-
tion of a pluricentric language: two main centres forming the socio-cultural and
language-contact induced basis for the more or less parallel development of two
different standard varieties of the same language: Western Armenian in Constan-
tinople, the centre of Western Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, and
Eastern Armenian in Tiflis, the centre of Eastern Armenians living in the Tsarist
Empire.
And it was from these centres that the standard varieties and their litera-
tures spread into other settlements of Armenians, also into the Diaspora. Thus,
before World War I, a number of 1,996 Armenian schools was reported in the Ot-
toman Empire, 1,251 schools in the territory of Western Armenia, being a part of
the Ottoman Empire.16 In the Eastern Armenian area, there were several church
schools in Russian Armenia, particularly in Astrakhan, Nor Nakhichevan, Mos-
cow and Tiflis; by the end of 1836 there were already 21 Armenian Church
schools. In 1850, the first elementary schools with instruction in Armenian were

M. 1974. Ašxarhabari šarahyusut'yun. Erker, Z. 291-572. Erewan: Haykakan SSH GA

Hratarakč'ut'yun. (Syntax of Modern Language)
16
Viscount (1916:661). Please note that according to the last Ottoman census of 1914,
there were 628,928 Armenians in the Six Vilayets of Eastern Anatolia (=Western Ar-
menia, Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, Mamuet, Diyarbekir, Sivas) and a total of 1,219,323 Ar-
menians in the whole Empire; as opposed to the official number of the Armenian pa-
triarchate in 1914/15, counting 1,018,000 Armenians just in the vilayets(see Vis-
count, B.J. 1916:661). One also has to note that some of the schools mentioned are
in the nowadays territory of the Republic of Syria (e.g. Aleppo). The Armenian
school(s) in Palestine were founded in the early 1850s (St. Mesrop's boys school in
Jerusalem), 1862 (St. Gayane's girls school in Jerusalem) and in 1929 (the co-
educational public school named after St. T'argmanč'ac existing until today). In the
19th c., there also used to be elementary schools for the Armenians in Bethlehem and
Jaffa. Similar arrangements existed for the education of Armenian children in Damas-
cus (school founded in1849) and Beirut (school founded in 1859) and Latakia. Cf.
Sanjian (1965:82)
 193

opened in Transcaucasian Armenia; by 1885 there were about 270 of such

schools.17 Anti-Armenian and russification tendencies in the last decades of the
19th century, however, stopped the "enlightenment" of Armenians.18

2.4. Becoming a Diaspora Language: The Period after World War I.

Each centre of the pluricentric language forms the socio-political basis

of one of its standard varieties; any pluricentric language has by definition, exactly
as many centres as it has standard varieties.
(Ammon 2005:1536).

Following the Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire at the end of

the 19th century and particularly in 1915, not only had the bigger part of the
Western Armenian population been annihilated, but also survivors of the massa-
cres spread in a resulting migration and refugee wave to all corners of the world,
forming a new Armenian Diaspora, building new centres mainly in the Middle
East, in Central Europe and the United States. These Armenians and the following
generations of Diaspora Armenians have also maintained Western Armenian,
particularly the Western Armenian standard and common vernacular in their
new cultural/linguistic centres.

2.5. The emergence of the asymmetrical hierarchy: The Soviet and the
early post-Soviet Period
During the Soviet time, Eastern Armenian obtained new functions: being
one of the official languages of the Armenian Soviet Republic, it gained in impor-
tance in various domains of everyday life but also in administration. The lan-
guage policy of local leaders was directed at a strengthening of Armenian as the
main means of communication in the Soviet Republic of Armenia, but also as the
"real" official language of all Armenians in the world. Despite the fact that East-

17
Suny (1997:129-130)
18
After 1836, Armenians greatly profited from the fact that the Catholicosate retained
the authority to open schools. After the assassination of the reform-minded Tsar
Alexander II in 1881, the attitude of the Russian authorities towards the national mi-
norities of the empire changed dramatically. The last decades of the 19 th century also
saw a rise in Russian chauvinism; as a consequence Plehve and Golitsyn (the com-
manders-in-chief in the Caucasus at that time) began closing 300 Armenian schools in
Eastern Armenia in 1885 (Suny 1997:131). The tradition of having Armenian schools
in the Persian Empire dates mainly back to the eminent Armenian colony of Nor Julfa
(Isfahan) in the 17th century: Armenian schools have been established both by the
Armenian Church and by foreign Christian missions (e.g. Lazarists founded two Arme-
nian schools in 1840, one in Isfahan, one in Tabriz).
 194

ern Armenian had secured its position as a quasi-official language of Soviet Ar-
menia, in many relevant domains it was clearly ousted by Russian, particularly in
the very sensitive domains of education, science, military and administration.
Russian had become the second language in the Republic of Armenia. Until the
end of the 1980s, most ethnic Armenians were more or less bilingual.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new political independence
of Armenia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Eastern Armenian was brought to
the fore by the new Armenian leaders and Armenian nationalists. It was impor-
tant to encourage and strengthen the re-awakened Armenian-ness by means of
language policy and language reforms that led to the monopoly position of the
Armenian language in the Republic of Armenia.

2.6. Diaspora in transition - the development of relocated pluricentric

varieties: the actual situation.
The changes in the Republic of Armenia have caused both a centralization
of linguistic issues and a relocation of cultural and linguistic centres. estimated
750,000 to 1,300,000 persons have left Armenia permanently only between 1988
and 2005. Until now, two out of three people leaving the country are involved in
labour migration, and there is still a strong tendency for young people to leave
Armenia. Thus in the recent 20 years, a new Diaspora wave coming from the Re-
public of Armenia has totally changed the linguistic appearance of the traditional
Armenian Diaspora – and thus of the pluricentric language Armenian.
In the main countries of the new Armenian Diaspora, i.e. Russian Federa-
tion, United States, Ukraine, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Greece etc., the number of
Armenians has tremendously increased; e.g. Moscow is nowadays the biggest Di-
aspora, with about 1,000,000 Armenians In 1988, there were 530,000 Armenians in
the Russian Federation, by 2003, their number was estimated at 2,000,000.19
These Armenians introduced Eastern Armenian to the traditional Diaspora
and thus initiated not only a new linguistic quarrel over the two Armenian stan-
dard varieties and over their linguistic, and particularly their orthographic pecu-
liarities, but also triggered an increasing convergence and mutual intelligibility
of the varieties which formerly had been so distinct geographically, socially and.

19
http://www.armeniadiasproa.com/population.html [Sept. 15th, 2011]
 195

3. The dominance hierarchy

The usual asymmetric relation of pluricentric languages can also be stated
for Armenian. What are the main factors contributing to the asymmetry of the
two literary varieties in the framework of definition of non-dominant varieties?
A non-dominant variety is usually defined as
a. not being the variety of the country of origin,
b. not being the variety of countries with most speakers and most economic
power,
c. not being the primarily norm-setting centre but probably orientated on
norms of the dominant variety.20
Western Armenian cannot be considered the variety of the country of ori-
gin, since not only was it developed and codified outside of the traditional Arme-
nian settlement area,21 but also only in the 18th century.
The number of speakers of the varieties is certainly not the crucial factor
for the dominance. As a matter of fact it is rather difficult to determine how
many Armenians do actually speak Eastern or Western Armenian. Recent official
numbers range from 6.37 million22 to 11 million Armenians worldwide.23 The lat-
ter probably rather reflects the number of ethnic Armenians worldwide than the
number of native speakers of Armenian. The only more or less reliable informa-
tion can be gained from the official census data of the Republic of Armenia (2001)
and of Mountainous Karabakh (2005).24 Both varieties are strictly codified, both
are used in written and spoken form (of course, to different extents and with dif-
fering competences in the Diaspora), both varieties are written with the same

20
See Muhr (2012) in this volume.
21
The Armenian highland, comprising the geographical territory of today’s Republic of
Armenia, but also Eastern Anatolia, parts of Northwestern Iran, of Southern Georgia
and of Western Azerbaijan, is traditionally considered the original and main Armenian
settlement area.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/35301/Armenian-Highland (August 30th,
2011 )
22
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=hye (Sept. 15th, 2011) ; 6.7
Million given by http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/35305/Armenian-
language (September 30th, 2011)
23
The official homepage of the "Armenian Diaspora" gives an estimated population of "a
little bit more than 10 Mio Armenians worldwide".
http://www.armeniadiasproa.com/population.html (Sept. 15th 2011)
24
2011 Census of the Republic of Armenia: 97.9% of a de jure population of 3,213,011
are ethnic Armenians; 2005 Census of the Republic of Karabakh: 99.7% of a de jure
population of 137,737 are ethnic Armenians.
 196

Armenian letters, though with a quite different orthography, which will be

shortly discussed below.
From a linguistic point of view, there are further characteristics contribut-
ing to the classification of Western Armenian as non-dominant variety of Arme-
nian:
d. sociolinguistic functionality/vitality
e. linguistic awareness of specific characteristics of the non-dominant
variety
f. mutual intelligibility
g. linguistic identity based on varieties
h. linguistic loyalty and status
i. linguistic development: convergence or divergence?
j. language policy of speakers of "dominant varieties"

Ad (d): Sociolinguistic vitality

One of the main linguistic differences between the two literary varieties
can be observed in their respective linguistic vitalities, i.e. in the functionality of
the language varieties for their speakers. In 2009, UNESCO25 added Western Ar-
menian to the world's Atlas of Languages in Danger, particularly in Turkey and
the Middle East.
A language is considered as being endangered mainly by the fact that it is
not transmitted as first language to the next generation anymore, and that it is
gradually losing many of its social functions. Being a prototypical minority lan-
guage, Western Armenian is often functionally restricted to a basilectal function
as language of the social microcosmos, the family and the home. Only in bigger,
well organized Diaspora communities, Armenian is also a means of in-group
communication in the social macrocosmos of friends, club and church organiza-
tions, and only in these communities Western Armenian is also taught in kinder-
gartens and schools. However, in none of the Diaspora countries, Western Arme-
nian functions as an official or public language, though in a few huge and active
Armenian colonies, both in the traditional and the new Diaspora, Armenian is
also used as a street language, a language of the barrio, of the quarter, of the
work domain.26 By contrast, Eastern Armenian, being the official state language

25
UNESCO Atlas of Languages in danger. http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-
atlas/index.php (Sept. 15th, 2011)
26
E.g. in the traditional Diaspora, the Armenian quarters of Jerusalem (Armenian quar-
ter, Old City of Jerusalem), of Beirut in Lebanon ("Burj Hamoud"), of Aleppo ("Ho-
 197

of the Republic of Armenia and of Mountainous Karabakh has all possible social
functions (and thus also registers).
Ad (e): Linguistic awareness of specific characteristics of the non-domi-
nant variety
The sociopolitical changes and the ongoing technological globalization of
the last two decades have also led to an increased interaction between the speak-
ers of the dominant and non-dominant varieties and have thus also contributed
to a growing linguistic awareness about the specific features of Western Arme-
nian, both in its in-group and in the Eastern Armenian out-group.
This linguistic awareness is in general perceivable in a growing linguistic
knowledge and feeling for language of the native speakers, but is also addition-
ally illustrated by some refined school measures. Both in the Armenian Diaspora,
where available, and in Armenia and Mountainous Karabakh, school curricula at
least allow for acquainting pupils with Armenian literature written in the
"other" Armenian variety. E.g. in nowadays Armenia, the Armenian language and
literature curriculum of public schools provides for the reading of poems and
novels written in Western Armenian – but of no modern newspaper published in
the Western Armenian speaking world.27 There exists, however, neither a con-
crete or systematic introduction into the linguistic features of the Western Ar-
menian variety nor any kind of interaction in Western Armenian. The curricu-
lum aims only for a passive understanding and not for any active competence at
all.
Ad (f) Mutual intelligibility
“There is no real barrier between the varieties.
There is no: I cannot understand. There is only: I do not want to understand”.28

How do the obviously different linguistic features correlate with the mu-
tual comprehension of the both literary varieties?

gedun") and of Damascus ("Hayy al-Arman") in Syria etc., or even in some villages
predominantly inhabited by Armenians, such as Anjar in Lebanon. In the new Dias-
pora Armenian quarters have been formed e.g. in Los Angeles, East Hollywood ("Little
Armenia").
27
This observation is based on personal experience as a long term researcher on Arme-
nian language and literature. The author regularly visits the classes of Armenian Lan-
guage and Literature in public Armenian schools, both in cities and in villages in Ar-
menia. This is part of a long-term research project progress (The importance of Ar-
menian language teaching for Armenian ethnicity).
28
Statement by an informant from Eastern Armenia.
 198

There are various factors determining difficulties:

 objective factors like linguistic distance/differences,
 subjective factors like familiarity with the other variety as well as lan-
guage attitudes.
The objective factors like the linguistic distance are expressed in the dif-
fering phonological, morphological, syntactical and lexical features of the re-
spective literary varieties. In addition to these, there are further features of a re-
spective vernacular and the majority language of the host country shaping the
variety. In many instances, the mutual intelligibility of Western and Eastern Ar-
menian is "disturbed" by the influence of a third, a foreign element, rather than
by the differing Armenian features themselves. E.g. many Western Armenians
not being very familiar with Eastern Armenian rather use a third language, such
as English or French, to communicate with local Armenians in order to avoid lin-
guistic and cultural misunderstandings.
The mutual intelligibility is also asymmetric: it is easier for speakers of
Eastern Armenian to understand Western Armenian than the other way round.
This is a phenomenon that does not really relate to the "universals of pluricen-
tric languages", as given by Clyne (2004: 297), but may rather relate to education
and as said above, to the strong influence of Russian on Eastern Armenian. Atti-
tudes are certainly a crucial factor for mutual comprehension. Attitudes based on
the "correctness" or the "purity" of one variety or on a closer tie to the holy lan-
guage of the church, to Classical Armenian, cannot be explained linguistically,
but perhaps historically, and are most probably based on differing socio-cultural
approaches to Armenian identity. Whereas even in Soviet Armenia and now in
the Republic of Armenia29 Armenian identity/ethnicity is neither really endan-
gered nor has it to be protected from an "alien" majority, Armenian identity in
the Diaspora was often faced with a struggle for ethnic survival, for language and
culture maintenance.
In several research projects,30 we found that the traditional Diaspora Ar-
menians, being mostly the descendants of the survivors of the massacres in the

29
Both during the Soviet period and also in the years of the new Republic of Armenia,
the population of Armenia was/is ethnically almost completely homogenous, with an
average of more than 90% ethnic Armenians in the population between 1922 and
2011.
http://en:wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_in_Armenia and
http://docs.armstat.am/census7eng.phb. (Sept. 15, 2011)
30
This is one of the principal outcomes of my long-term research projects investigating
the linguistic behaviour in Armenian speech communities, in Armenia, in Europe and
 199

Ottoman Empire, definitely have a different image of their own Armenian iden-
tity and the factors building up their Armenian-ness.
Language certainly represents one of the ethnicity markers that is evalu-
ated differently by Republic Armenians and Western Armenians, particularly
since in many traditional centres of Western Armenian the language is consid-
ered as being endangered or even moribund. For many Diaspora Armenians, the
Armenian language is not only associated with markers of identity, such as relig-
ion, kinship, territoriality but particularly after the codification of Western Ar-
menian, the language may have even served as substitute for those markers.
In the historical period during the Ottoman Empire, it was both the Arme-
nian religion as well as the Western Armenian variety that were assigned crucial
ideological roles as the markers of ethnic identity par excellence. It is probably
rather the socio-cultural (even political) differences between Eastern and West-
ern Armenians that affect the intelligibility: obviously the issue is to what extent
speakers WANT to understand other speakers and not to what extent they are
ABLE to understand.

Ad (g): Language and Identity

Based on the sociolinguistic and ethnolinguistic approach that language
may serve as one of the major constructive elements of ethnic boundaries and
ethnic identity, one could also conclude that non-dominant varieties of a plu-
ricentric language may also be used to mark one's identity or affinity to a certain
group in the same way dialects or sociolects are. The use of a certain variety is
also a kind of "boundary marking" between groups by using different varieties of
the same language. This is often seen as orientation in a local cultural environ-
ment and of its categorization of outsiders. These elements of awareness have
contributed to the evolution of group cohesion and to the construction of in-
group solidarity.31
Thus, in communication between Eastern and Western Armenian speakers,
linguistic features often deliberately serve as identity and even boundary mark-
ers, not only to show but also to emphasize cultural and social distance.
Can specific linguistic features of Western Armenian be used as indicators
of an individual's identity? No doubt, in Armenian, as in many other languages,

in the Middle East. The most actual project is conducted in cooperation with the Ar-
menian Academy of Sciences, the Israeli Academy of Sciences, the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, Prof. em. M. Stone, and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. It fo-
cuses on the Armenian varieties in the Old City of Jerusalem.
31
Haarmann (1999:60)
 200

there is the well-known phenomenon of shibboleth, e.g. just by pronouncing the

own name or family name, a native speaker of Eastern or Western Armenian can
easily be recognized. This is, by the way, even more observable in the way Arme-
nians use to romanize their names. Examples:

1. The name of the present Armenian president, Serž Sargsyan:

written in Eastern Armenian: ê»ñÅ ê³ñ·ëÛ³Ý
written in Western Armenian: ê»ñÅ ê³ñ·ë»³Ý
In international media spelled either as
Serzh Sargsyan (EA) or Serge Sarkissian (WA).

2. The name of the Catholicos of all Armenians (the patriarch of the Arme-
nian Church) Garegin II. Nersisyan:
written in Eastern Armenian: ¶³ñ»·ÇÝ ´ Ü»ñëÇëÛ³Ý
written in Western Armenian: ¶³ñ»·ÇÝ ´ Ü»ñëÇ뻳Ý
In international media spelled either as
Garegin II. Nersisyan (EA) or Karekin II. Nersissian (WA).

3. The name Geworg Grigoryan

written in Eastern Armenian: ¶¨áñ· ¶ñÇ·áñÛ³Ý
preferably romanized into Gevorg Grigoryan
written in Western Armenian: ¶»õáñ· ¶ñÇ·áñ»³Ý,
preferably romanized into Kevork Krikorian

Ad (h): Language loyalty / attitudes

Loyalty and attitudes highly interrelate with the social and local setting of
a linguistic situation and of course with the conversation partners. In general,
the speakers of the respective variety appear loyal towards their own native va-
riety and towards the specific features of their variety.
This loyalty, however, interacts with the linguistic competences of the in-
dividual and with the subjective knowledge of the features of the "others". Ob-
servations of interactions between Eastern Armenians and Western Armenians
showed that in many cases of "mixed" conversations, the conversational part-
ners tend to adjust their language to the person they talk to, but only if they
have the linguistic competence to do so. There are however also some features
that are considered as prototypical for the "other" variety, being used for jokes
and mocking. From observing "mixed" conversations and the respective behav-
iour of the interlocutors, attitudes toward the others are rather grounded in the
 201

fact, not which variety an Armenian speaks, but how they speak it, i.e. one’s Ar-
menian-ness is evaluated by one's competence in Armenian. Attitudes seem to
play a major role for the individual's loyalty towards his own language, but they
are also important for predicting intelligibility relations.

Ad (i): Language ideology

During the Soviet time, as mentioned above, Eastern Armenian obtained
new functions. The position of Modern Eastern Armenian as the official language
of the Armenian Soviet Republic was also emphasized in regard to the still very
prestigious Western Armenian in the non-communist, capitalist Western World.
A language which in the opinion of local Armenian linguists was regarded as be-
ing moribund in the Diaspora. More than that, Armenian linguists corroborated
the public opinion on Western Armenian by attributing the status of the purer,
well-formed and even superior Armenian to Eastern Armenian, and even mock-
ing some of the striking linguistic features of the other literary standard:

“Ideological considerations led the Eastern Variant of Armenian to being

considered as Armenian par excellence and the very existence of a
Western Armenian literary language was denied.“ (Weitenberg
2006:1900).
The assumption that Eastern Armenian was the linguistically more correct
and purer form of Armenian may have also added to the efforts of the Soviet or-
thography reform and of all planned linguistic reforms to further separate the
two varieties. The reform of Armenian spelling was indented to make Armenian
orthography easier (though it cannot not be called a simplification), to avoid
etymological writing and above all to raise the overall population's literacy in
the new Soviet Union.
This Soviet orthography is not accepted for Western Armenian and also
not for the Eastern Armenian standard variant as spoken in Iran. The latter is
still spelled according to the so-called classical orthography, following the spell-
ing rules of Classical Armenian.32 The change in the orthography was decided
upon by political leaders in order to demarcate their country and their language
politically from their neighbours. Examples:

32
For more details see Khacherian, L. G. (1999). History of Armenian Orthography (V -
XX cc.). Los Angeles: Yerevan publishers.
 202

1a. Eastern Armenian

´³éÁ ÑÝãÛáõÝÝ»ñÇ ³ÛÝåÇëÇ Ï³å³ÏóáõÃÛáõ Ý¿ áñÁ ÇÙ³ëï áõÝÇ.33
Bar  - ĕ hnč'yun-ner-i aynpisi kapakc'ut'yun ē, or-ĕ imast un-i.
Word.NOM-def sound-PL-DAT such combination.NOM is REL.NOM-def meaning.NOM
have-PRES.3.SG
"The word is such a combination of sounds that has meaning." (EA)
1b. Western Armenian
´³é ÏÁ Ïáã»Ýù ÑÝãÇõÝÝ»ñáõ ³ÛÝ ËáõÙµÁ, áñ ÇÙ³ëï áõÝÇ.34
Bar  kĕ koč'-enk' hnč'iwn-ner-u ayn xumb-ĕ, or imast un-i.
Word.NOM part call-PRES.1.PL. sound-PL-DAT that group.NOM-def REL.NOM mean-
ing.NOM have- PRES.3.SG.
"A group of sounds that has meaning we call a word."
2a. Eastern Armenian
ÜáõÛÝ Ï³Ù Ùáï ÇÙ³ëï áõÝ»óáÕ µ³é»ñÁ ÏáãíáõÙ »Ý ÑáÙ³ÝÇß
µ³é»ñ£35
Nuyn kam mo t imast unec'-oł bar  - er-ĕ koč'-v-um en homaniš
bar  - er-ĕ.
Same CONJ close meaning.NOM have-PTCP.SUBJ. word-PL-def call-pass-PTCP.PRES. they
are synonymous word-PL-def
"The words having the same or a similar meaning are called synonymous
words."
2b. Western Armenian
Øûï³íáñ³å¿ë ÝáÛÝ ÇÙ³ëïÁ áõÝ»óáÕ µ³é»ñÁ ÏÁ Ïáã»Ýù
ÑáÙ³ÝÇߣ36
Mōtavorapēs noyn imast-ĕ unec-'oł bar-  e r-ĕ kĕ koč'-enk'
homaniš.
Almost same meaning.NOM-def have-PTCP.SUBJ. word-PL-def part call-
PRES.1.PL synonym
"Words having almost the same meaning we call synonym."

The question arises whether the ideology has changed because of an in-
creasing familiarity with the other variety or because of the fact that more and
more "Diaspora" Armenians speaking Western Armenian visit Armenia or main-
tain some enterprises or economic contacts with the homeland. The geographi-

33
Avagyan, M.: Patkerazard K'erakanut'yun, Erewan: Tirus. 2004:14
34
Ełiayean A.: Ciacan, E. Tetrak, 3.tari. Beirut: Hamazgayin havē sēt'an tparan, 2000:4.
35
Avagyan (2004:20)
36
Ełiayean (2004:4)
 203

cal and thus maybe also the linguistic distance has in fact decreased, but by con-
trast certain attempts to understand and overcome differences have increased.
The general impression, however, still prevails that the attitude towards Western
Armenian of Armenians living in Armenia has not distinctively changed to the
better.
Ad (j): Explicit language policy of the Republic of Armenia
With the independence of Armenia and the mass exodus of Armenians to
all corners of the world, Eastern Armenian has entered the traditional diaspora
communities and is gradually ousting and endangering Western Armenian. As
the official language of the homeland of all Armenians it has to be regarded as
the right and fully-functional Armenian.
Official Armenian language policy and ideology seem to support this kind
of "linguistic fratricide". In its Law on Language (2003) the Armenian political
elite and government take a firm stand regarding the state's role in language
maintenance and somewhat "downgrade" the other variety, mainly by a state-
controlled convergence of the orthographies. The law not only states that the RA

"shall promote preservation and dissemination of the Armenian lan-

guage among Armenians residing outside its borders" (Art. 1)
but that it
"shall also promote unification of orthography of the Armenian lan-
guage" (Art. 1).37
Armenian language policy actively interferes in the linguistic and social
settings of Armenian communities outside of Armenia. The new intermingling of
Western and Eastern Armenian evokes most divergent reactions among the local
population in Armenia and among Armenians in the traditional Diaspora to
counter an "overdose" of the "other Armenian variety": almost everything on a
scale of total ignorance, deliberate refusal, tolerance, acceptance and linguistic
reunification.

4. Summary and conclusion

Western Armenian represents the non-dominant variety of pluricentric
Armenian. On the one hand, the individual, geographical and linguistic distances
are gradually decreasing, and the linguistic and cultural familiarity with the re-

37
Language Law of Republic of Armenia (2004:1)
 204

spective other variety is increasing. Nevertheless, it seems that new boundaries

are drawn between speakers of Eastern and of Western Armenian, perhaps based
on the fear of losing one's cultural-linguistic peculiarities or one's authentic eth-
nicity in a modern world growing closer together in the context of globalization?
Can the convergence of the two literary standards be somehow planned by some
enthusiastic authorities?
Is it not rather inevitably resulting from simple communicative and social
requirements, growing familiarity and mixed marriages in the new Diaspora and
in the open and free Armenia? Or will it in fact be deliberately anticipated by the
attitudes of native speakers?
Is there not the wilful commitment of loyalty towards the non-dominant
variety? And is the openly expressed wish that future Armenian generations
should understand and be somewhat competent in both varieties not a strange
contradiction to the attitude of insisting on and identifying oneself with one’s
own "native or home" variety only?
Or can the actual situation only be understood as a moment in the dia-
chronic history of Armenian? The actual status of the Armenian varieties and
thus also of the pluricentricity of Armenian is perhaps just an indicator of a de-
velopmental phase - perhaps toward the (re-)emergence of a new pluricentric
Armenian without a hierarchy of variety dominance?

5. References
Abrahamyan, S.A. Sevak, G.G. (1973): Hayoc' lezvi zargac'umĕ sovetakan šrǰanum.
Erewan. Haykakan SSH gitut'yunneri akademiayi hratarakč'utyun. (The
development of the Armenian language during the Soviet Period).
Ammon, Ulrich (2005): Pluricentric and divided languages. In: Sociolinguistics:
An international handbook of the science of language and society. Ammon,
Ulrich. Dittmar, Norbert. Mattheier, Klaus J. (eds.), Vol.2. Berlin. de Gruy-
ter, 1536-1542.
Avagyan, M. (2004): Patkerazard K’erakanut’yun. Erewan: Tirus. (Illustrated gram-
mar)
Clyne, Michael (2004): Pluricentric languages. In: Sociolinguistics: An internatio-
nal handbook of the science of language and society. Ammon, Ulrich. Ditt-
mar, Norbert. Mattheier, Klaus J. (eds.), Vol. 1. Berlin. de Gruyter, 296-300.
Clyne, Michael (ed.) (1992): Pluricentric languages: differing norms in different
nations. Berlin/New York. Mouton de Gruyter.
 205

Cowe, P. S. (1992): Amēn teł hay kay: Armenian as a pluricentric language. In:
Pluricentric Languages: differing norms in different nations. Clyne, Micha-
el (ed.). Berlin/ New York. Mouton de Gruyter, 325-345.
Ełiayean, A. (2000): Ciacan, E. Tetrak. Beirut: Hamazgayin havē sēt’an tparan.
(Rainbow. Exercise book No. 5)
Haarmann, H. (1999): History. In: Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity.
Fishman, Joshua (ed.) New York. Oxford University Press, 60-76.
Hewsen, Robert (2001): Armenia. A historical atlas. Chicago: University of Chica-
go Press.
Jahukyan, G.B. (1969): Hayoc' lezvi zargac'umĕ ew karuc'vack'ĕ. Erewan: EPU. (The
development and structure of the Armenian language).
Khacherian, L. G. (1999). History of Armenian orthography (V - XX cc.). Los Ange-
les: Yerevan publishers.
Łazaryan, Serob (2006): Hayoc' lezwi hamarot patmut'yun. Erewan. Erewani hamalsa-
rani hratarakč'ut'yun . (Concise history of the Armenian language)
Lezvi masin Hayastani Hanrapetut'yan ōrenk'ĕ. (2004, 15rd), Erewan: HH
karavarut'yun paštonakan hratarakut'yun. (Law on Language, 15th ed.,
2004)
Muhr, Rudolf (2003): Die plurizentrischen Sprachen Europas – ein Überblick. In:
Gugenberger, E. Blumberg, M. (eds.): Vielsprachiges Europa. Zur Situation
der regionalen Sprachen von der Iberischen Halbinsel bis zum Kaukasus.
Frankfurt. Lang Verlag, 191-233.
Muhr, Rudolf (2005): Language Attitudes and language conceptions non-
dominating varieties of pluricentric languages. In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.)
(2005): Standardvariationen und Sprachideologien in verschiedenen
Sprachkulturen der Welt. / Standard Variations and Language Ideologies
in different Language Cultures around the World. Wien u.a., Peter Lang
Verlag. p. 11-20. Also available at: Electronic Journal TRANS 15.:
http://www.inst.at/trans/15Nr/06_1/muhr15.htm. [Sept. 15th, 2011]
Sanjian, A. K. (1965): The Armenian communities in Syria under Ottoman domi-
nion. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. Press
Suny, Ronald Grigor (1997): Eastern Armenians under Tsarist rule. In: The Arme-
nian people from ancient to modern Times. Vol. II. Hovannisian, Richard
(ed.). New York. St. Martins Press, 109-134.
Viscount, B.J. (1916): The treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
1915-1916.[place of publication?]. London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. Annex C.
 206

Weitenberg, Jos (2006): Armenia. In: Sociolinguistics: An international handbook

of the science of language and society. Ammon, Ulrich. Dittmar, Norbert.
Mattheier, Klaus J. (eds.), Vol.3., Berlin. de Gruyter, 2nd ed., 1900-1902.
Zakaryan, H. (1996): The Language Law of the Republic of Armenia and problems
of All-Armenian language policy. In: Sakayan, D. (ed). Proceedings of the 5th
International Conference on Armenian Linguistics. Delmar, New York. Ca-
ravan Books, 355-360.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the
Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 207-226.

Salvatore DEL GAUDIO

(Kyiv National University T. Shevchenko, Ukraine)
sadega@hotmail.com

The Russian Language in Ukraine: some unsettled

questions about its status as a ‘national’ variety

Abstract

In the last few years there has been an increasing interest in the role the
Russian language still plays in the successor states of the former Soviet
Union. The Russian spoken in these countries displays peculiar
characteristic features that lead some linguists to speak about ‘national’
varieties.
In this contribution, after a presentation of the Ukrainian language
situation, we will describe some of the linguistic features that mark the
variety of Russian spoken in Ukraine. Subsequently we will examine
some topical questions related to the status and the spheres of usage of
the Russian language in Ukraine. Finally, we will discuss the critical
issue of a Ukrainian ‘national’ variety of Russian.

1. Introduction
The use and variation of Russian in the various Soviet Republics had
already been the object of linguistic investigation in Soviet times. The purpose of
these studies was mainly normative in its character.1 A renewed attention to
variation in Russian, and to a series of related topics, e.g. the social role and
status of Russian in the post-Soviet states, can be observed in recent Russian
Studies2.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the temporary
weakening of the international prestige of the Russian Federation led to the
assumption that Russian was to be gradually replaced by national languages.

1
See: Kul’tura russkoj reči na Ukraine 1976; Puti povyšenija kul’tury russkoj reči na
Ukraine 1986.
2
See: Section XVIII. Sociolinguistics. Russkij jazyk: istoričeskie sud’by i
sovremennost’. Trudy i materialy. Moskva, 2010.
 208

Nevertheless the dormant international prestige of Russian was revitalized for a

series of interrelated reasons:
1. Russian was and remains one of the official and working languages of the UN
and other international organizations such as UNESCO, Council of Europe
etc.;
2. It was the language of cultural (literary) and scientific-technological progress
throughout the former Soviet Republics;
3. Scientific, technical, military and working personnel had been trained in this
language;
4. The economic resources and financial potential of Russia.
For these reasons it transpired that a radical re-arrangement of the
language and competence skills in the former Soviet Republics was not only
difficult to achieve but also economically and cultural-politically not convenient
(Achmetšin 2010: 635-636). The process of cultural-scientific and technological
adaptation to the West had been smoother for countries such as the Baltic
States3, where the titular ethnic groups were prevalent or more compact, and
where European integration facilitated the cultural-linguistic orientation
towards western European cultural systems. However, a similar cultural-
linguistic rearrangement was not so easy for other Ex-Soviet Republics. In fact, in
many CIS countries4, an inversion in the cultural-political course and the
complete shift to another language of international communication like English,
for example, would have implied radical changes not only politically but also at
the economic and cultural-scientific levels.
Therefore the renewed international and economic prestige of the Russian
Federation of the past decade has reinforced the significance of Russian as a
language of “international” communication, at least, in part of Euro-Asia (Veli,
2010: 642). These circumstances, along with the socio-cultural and ideological
fragmentation which ensued in the successor states, have shifted scholars’
attention to the use and functioning of Russian, and to a series of related aspects,
e.g. the status of the Russian language, variation in Russian, and the question of
‘national’ varieties of Russian.

3
An up-to-date account of the language policy in the Baltic States can be consulted in
Ozolins (2011: … )
4
CIS stands for Commonwealth of Independent States, that is to say successor states
of the former Soviet Union (Cf. Russian СНГ = Содружество Независимых
Государств).
 209

Russian can be considered a non-dominant variety (Clyne, 1992: 455; Muhr

2005) in many of the successor states of the Soviet Union such as Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan etc. In Ukraine, Russian can also be seen as a non-
dominant variety but with peculiar restrictions that will be discussed in the
following sections. In Ukraine, in fact, the titular language coincides with the
titular nation, and it is therefore Ukrainian5. However each of the former
Republics, and Ukraine is no exception, presents a specific language situation
that needs to be separately analysed in its social-political and language historical
context in order to achieve an objective evaluation of the contemporary
language situation and interpret the role of Russian as a non-dominant variety.

2. Ukraine: Language Situation and the Status of Russian

The contemporary language (and ethnic) situation of Ukraine partially
reflects the historical-political subdivisions of the country under different
powers until the unification of the western regions with the rest of USSR in the
years 1939-40. A radical change took place, at least formally, when Ukrainian was
proclaimed the only state language (1989) shortly before the independence of the
Country (1991). In the early 1990s, despite several efforts made by the ruling
class and academic institutions to promote the use and diffusion of the Ukrainian
language in all spheres of social life, Russian still kept some of its functional and
communicative domains, mainly in the east and the south of the country, and in
the major industrial cities of central-eastern Ukraine (Britsyn, 1997: 1928).
The last census of December 2001 demonstrated that Ukraine hosts the
largest Russian minority of all former Soviet states: more than 17% of the
population, about 8.5 million inhabitants classified themselves as ethnically
Russian (Besters-Dilger 2009: 7). Apart from the ethnic Russians, there exists a
large group of non-Russians who claim Russian to be their mother tongue. These
Russian-speaking people are made up predominantly from Ukrainians (14.8%, i.e.
about 5.5 million people) but also from other ethnic minorities6.

5
Ukrainian (ukrajins’ka literaturna mova) has been the state language of the
Independent Republic of Ukraine since 1991. It belongs to the group of East Slavic
languages along with Russian and Belarusian (some scholars even classify the Rusin
as the fourth east Slavic language). In terms of the number of native speakers
(approximately 38 million), Ukrainian is the second largest Slavic language after
Russian. Nevertheless the praxis shows different results since not all Ukrainians who
claim to be native speakers of Ukrainian use this language in all social domains.
Therefore it is safer to assume that Ukrainian, in reality, is the third most spoken
Slavic language after Russian and Polish. Also see: Schweier (1998: 94-109).
6
According to the last Soviet census of 1989 supplemented by some data of 2001, the
ethnic minorities of Ukraine are in decreasing order: Jewish, Belarusian, Moldavian,
 210

A characteristic feature of the contemporary language situation in Ukraine

is the co-existence on its territory of a few minority languages and two main
languages, Ukrainian and Russian respectively, along with various forms of
Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism and language mix (cf. Suržyk) characterized by
diglossic or, even triglossic traits.
The Russian and Ukrainian bilingualism is the result of historical-cultural
and literary developments of the languages in use in the Ukrainian territories in
the 18th century. For this reason, the widespread use of Russian in Ukrainian
today is to be regarded not only as the consequence of a cynical imposition of the
Russian language ex-abrupto by the tsarist authority, later reinforced by the
Soviet ideology and language policy, but also as the results of various
circumstances. The passage from the former (older) varieties of literary
Ukrainian7 to modern literary Russian was more gradual than generally assumed
by some language historians and Ukrainian sociolinguists (Danylenko, 2008: 82;
Del Gaudio 2010c: 8-9). Russian began to replace the literary and stylistic
functions of one of the literary varieties, known in Ukrainian studies as slovjano-
rus’ka(ja) mova or slavjano-russkij jazyk in the second half of the 18th century.
The language policy that imposed Russian as the sole state and
administrative language of the Russian Empire is to be assigned to the second
half of the 18th century; the Russification of Ukraine increased in the course of
the 19th century. A Russification policy was also pursued during the Soviet
period, particularly during Stalin’s era (1933–1953); nonetheless the Russian

Bulgarian, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian, Tatars and Crimean Tatars. These

nationalities range between 500.000 and 100.000 individuals. Less numerous ethnic
groups are Greeks, Armenians, Gipsy, Azerbaijanis, Georgians etc. See: Besters-
Dilger (2002:51).
7
The language situation of the Ukrainian Lands, before the increasing diffusion of
Russian towards the mid 18th century, and the rise of the new Ukrainian literary
language (partially based on its south-eastern vernacular) at the end of the 18 th
century (1798), was rather complex. It was characterized by the coexistence of two
basic literary varieties: the Old Ukrainian literary language, also known as
staroukrajins’ka(ja) mova and the Church Slavonic of Ukrainian redaction, the so
called slovjano-rus’ka(ja) mova or jazyk; this linguistic map would become even more
complex if one considers the vernaculars typical of the various dialectal areas.
The Church Slavonic used for literary purposes was designated by different terms,
e.g. slavenorosskij jazyk etc. This was a specific kind of literary language based on
Church Slavonic but enriched with grammatical and lexical elements of other bookish
varieties with the “ideal” aim to be understood by all the East Slavs, particularly in
Russia. The structural and lexical similarity between the slavjano-russkij jazyk and
the emerging literary Russian (Lomonosov’s Grammar 1755) created the conditions
for changing from the older Ukrainian literary varieties to Russian. The spread of
Russian as one of the literary languages of Ukraine was later accelerated by other
extra-linguistic factors, for example the language policy of the 19 th century. In the
19th century it was absolutely normal for many Ukrainian writers to use both Russian
and Ukrainian in their literary production. See: Del Gaudio (2009: 227-246).
 211

language was never given the status of official state language. This function was
guaranteed by its status of “language of inter-ethnic communication” (jazyk
mežnacional’nogo obščenija). Russian was in a privileged position in the USSR and
was the state official language in all but name, since all languages were held to be
equal.
In sociolinguistic terms, the territory of Ukraine is far from being
homogeneous. One can roughly divide Ukraine into two parts: the central-
western regions where there is a clear predominance of Ukrainian, and the
south-eastern regions in which Russian prevails over Ukrainian.
The recent INTAS survey (Masenko, 2009: 108-109) revealed the following
distribution:
 Ukrainian is the mother tongue for 91.6 per cent of the informants in
the West of the country;
 80.8 per cent in the Centre;
 67.5 per cent in the North;
 25.8 in the East, and 29.5 in the South.

A mirrored picture of the regional distribution of those respondents who

have Russian as mother tongue shows the following data:
 2.6 per cent of the informants in the West declare Russian as native
language;
 7.0 per cent in the centre;
 19.9 per cent in the North; 58.5 per cent in the East and 56.7 per cent in
the South of Ukraine.
Bilingual Ukrainian-Russian language identification revealed 2.4 per cent
of the informants in the West, 12.3 per cent in the Centre, 11.7 per cent in the
North, 15.0 per cent in the South of the country.
The large-scale survey of the INTAS project (Besters-Dilger 2009: 389) on
the contemporary language situation also revealed that:
 55 per cent of the citizens of Ukraine called Ukrainian their mother
tongue;
 32 per cent of the informants called Russian their native language;
 11.1 per cent of the informants defined Ukrainian and Russian as their
mother tongue to an equal extent;
 1.4 per cent of the Ukrainian population claims to have a different
native language (see diagram 1).
 212

Diagramm 1

The survey has also confirmed the asymmetrical character of the bilingual
situation in Ukraine. Apart from the regional differentiation in the prevalence of
one or the other language, the question on “the use of the language in different
spheres of the respondents’ social life” revealed that in some aspects Russian is
more widely used than Ukrainian (Masenko, 2009: 109).

Diagramm 2

The question (82) about ‘the language of everyday communication’

produced the following results, shown in diagram (2):
 213

 25.2 % of the informants communicate ‘only in Russian’;

 15.1 % communicates in ‘Russian in most cases’;
 20.4 % uses ‘Ukrainian and Russian’ to the equal extent;
 12.9 % adopt ‘Ukrainian in most cases’;
 22.4 % uses ‘Ukrainian only’;
 3.1 % communicates in Suržyk;
 0.9 % uses other languages.
Besides the fact that sociolinguistic surveys might give different results
and that figures will never be able to represent a totally reliable picture of a
population’s language habits since other factors (psychological, pragmatic
circumstances, political views, lack of language consciousness of the spoken
variety etc.) might affect the informants’ response, the statistical data expressed
above confirm that Russian is still widely spoken not only in specific historical-
geographic areas of Ukraine but also cross-regionally. Its functional use depends
on the social sphere of communication and on the pragmatic situational
contexts.
As far as language selection in Ukraine is concerned, one can say that
Ukrainian bilingualism has already been associated in the literature with
diglossic traits (Britsyn, 1997: 1928). If Russian, until the late 1980s, used to cover
the role of the high variety, and Ukrainian the low variety, today, thanks to the
linguistic rearrangements of Ukrainian society and the new distribution of
language domains, one could advance the hypothesis of triglossic traits. The latter
characterizes part of the Ukrainian sociolinguistic situation, specific to the
capital Kyiv and some of the major towns of central-eastern and northern
Ukraine. However, at present, the roles are inverted; the function of extremely
formal language, referred to here as very high variety, is mainly assigned to
Ukrainian. Russian, on the other hand, covers ordinary communication needs at
a semi-formal level, and we shall call it “high variety”. Suržyk (according to a
widely accepted definition a ‘mixed language’ based on Ukrainian), on the other
hand, is confined to very informal communicative circumstances, having the role
of the low variety, used for example at home, with friends, at open air markets etc.
(Del Gaudio, 2010a: 258-264).
To the already complex language situation described above, one can add
the issue about the existence of a Ukrainian variety of Russian (cf. Section 3)
characterized by specific markers and the co-existence of various degrees or, in
our terminology, ‘levels’ of interference (transference of linguistic features from
Russian into Ukrainian and from Ukrainian into Russian). These forms of more
 214

or less socially marked Russian or Ukrainian speech (e.g. accent, frequent use of
vocabulary and constructions taken from one of the two dominant languages
etc.), are not to be confused with Suržyk since oral language on the whole
remains Russian or Ukrainian (Del Gaudio 2010: 258-264).
Finally, the language situation of the ‘Autonomous Peninsula of Crimea’
has often not been duly considered by large-scale sociolinguistic surveys. It is
nevertheless known that in Crimea the Russian language prevails in all social and
public domains and still functions as the language of ‘intra-national’
communication8 .

3. Variation in Ukrainian Russian

The problem of variation in Russian and the question of Russian varieties
were the object of an intense debate at the Sociolinguistic section of the Moscow
conference on the Russian language (Moscow 20th – 23rd March, 2010). Most of the
papers presented9 were in fact devoted to a discussion of the role Russian still has
in the CIS States and its relation to the local languages.
Rudjakov can be considered as one of the first scholars of independent
Ukraine who drew attention to the question of the Russian national varieties in
the post-Soviet regions, devoting particular attention to the Russian variety
spoken in Ukraine or Ukrainian Russian10.
Rudjakov (2007: 7-9; 2009: 7-10; 2010: 8-20) expressed, in a series of
linguistic debates, the necessity of recognizing the existence of a Russian variety
of Ukraine within the framework of geo-national varieties. His underlying thesis
rests on three concepts:
(a) Firstly, Geo-Russian Studies (cf. Russian георусистика), a term which reflects
the peculiarities of the interaction between Russian and other languages. In
Rudjakov’s words: “…георусистика – это русистика, осознавшая, что ее
объектом является не русский язык, а глобальное русскоязычное
пространство” [By Geo-Russian is meant Russian Studies that consciously

8
Cf. Bieder (1999).
9
Del Gaudio (2010:649), Dorofeev (2010-651-652), Krasovskaja (2010:660),
Stebunova (2010:674-675) and Rudjakov (2010:672) reported on the Russian of
Ukraine. See: Section XVIII. Sociolinguistics. Russkij jazyk: istoričeskie sud’by i
sovremennost’. Trudy i materialy. Moskva, 2010.
10
Since a univocal terminology designating the Russian variety spoken in Ukraine does
not exist yet in Russian and Ukrainian studies, the terms Ukrainian variety of Russian,
Russian of Ukraine or Ukrainian Russian might be used as synonyms. Moreover the
exact level of variation has not been established yet.
 215

recognize that its research object is not the Russian language but the global
Russian speaking space];
(b) Secondly, Russophony a conceptual term strictly connected with that of Geo-
Russian Studies (cf. Russian русофония); this term (evidently borrowed
from French linguistics and based on Francophonie) indicates the national
varieties of Russian; and
(c) thirdly a tripartite functional subdivision in the use of Russian: centre,
nucleus and periphery.
The centre is the basic variety of the Russian language, that is to say
standard Russian of Russia or ‘Russian-Russian’. The nucleus is represented by any
native speaker of Russian, including the speakers of those countries in which
Russian covers all the basic social spheres, even if it is not the native language of
all the population who speaks it, e.g. Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan etc. The
periphery is made up of all those speakers who have various degrees of command
of the Russian language, regardless of the country they live in.
Even though Rudjakov’s approach to the question of Ukrainian Russian
was more directed towards introducing some theoretical aspects, its merit
consists of having shifted linguists’ attention, at least in Ukraine and some of the
former Soviet Republics, to the topical issue of ‘national’ varieties, thus creating
a basis for further investigations. The problem of variation within Russian in fact
has been often denied by scholars who adopt a normative approach in language
matters.
It is interesting to note how some of the issues presented above have
parallels in the theoretical framework proposed by Muhr and discussed at the
‘Symposium on non-dominant varieties of pluricentric languages’ (Graz, July
2011). The concept of language centre seems roughly to correspond to the idea of
the ‘dominant variety’, in our case, the Russian of Russia.
The concepts of Russophony and nucleus do not have direct equivalents in
the theory of ‘dominant and other or ‘non-dominant varieties’; yet these
definitions contain some features of a non-dominant variety, plus the idea of
‘national’ varieties of Russian with reference to those countries in which Russian
covers vast social and functional spheres.
According to the framework suggested by Muhr (2011), Ukrainian Russian
can be characterized by the following features:
 216

a. Ukraine is not the country of origin of the language (with the exception of
those Ukrainian territories which historically were colonized by Russians, e.g.
some parts of eastern and southern Ukraine and obviously Crimea);
b. Russian is not the native variety of most speakers;
c. it does not represent a primary norm-setting centre;
d. Ukrainian Russian is mainly spoken and lacks conscious codification;
e. an estimation of the number of speakers of Ukrainian Russian is however
difficult to ascertain because of the lack of data and sociolinguistic large-scale
surveys on this topic11.
However, studies on ‘deviation’ (e.g. differences) from the Russian norm do
not represent a completely new research field. Variation from the Russian norm,
with particular attention to language ‘differentiation’ in Ukraine (and other
Republics), had already been the object of linguistic research. The discipline that
studied ‘variation’ during the Soviet period was defined kul’tura russkoj reči
(studies on speech habits)12.
This discipline had a normative aim and was an instrument of language
policy to improve and centralize the speech habits of those speakers whose
Russian deviated from the recommended standard Russian (i.e. the norm). This
discipline endeavoured to discourage those scholars who tried to claim the
existence of ‘national’ varieties of Russian. The interesting paradox is that the
kul’tura russkoj reči which officially denied the existence of Russian varieties13,
implicitly admitted variation from the centralized norm14.

11
The majority of Ukrainian sociolinguists, especially after independence, are inclined to
investigate Ukrainian in relation to Russian and not vice versa for understandable
reasons.
12
Исходным методологическим принципом борьбы за высокую культуру русской
речи на Украине, как и в других союзных республиках, является ориентация на
единые, строго кодифицированные нормы русского литературного языка, на
единые законы его развития. [The starting methodological principle for the struggle
in the achievement of a high cultural level of the Russian language in Ukraine, just as
in other soviet Republics, is the orientation on uniform, strictly codified, norms of the
Russian standard (literary) language and on unified rules of its development].
(Kul’tura russkoj reči na Ukraine 1976:15).
13
Вызывает возражение (…) распространенная точка зрения, согласно которой
безоговорочно оправдываются национальные варианты русского литературного
языка. Нормы правильной русской речи должны быть едиными для всех, кто
пользуется русским языком. [It causes objection the commonly held point of view
that justifies the National varieties of Russian. The norms of correct Russian have to
be the same for everyone who uses Russian]. (Kul’tura russkoj reči na Ukraine
1976:16).
14
Официальное признание существования национальных, как впрочем, и
территориальных, вариантов русского литературного языка означало бы
сознательное расшатывание его нормы и языковой системы в целом, которые, как
известно, воспринимаются большинством ученых как нерасчленимое единство.
 217

Variation from standard Russian was interpreted as the result of the

interaction between a national language (in our case Ukrainian) and Russian.
Furthermore, Soviet linguists recognized that the Russian spoken in the former
Republics was characterized by distinctive grammatical, lexical and phonetic
features15. As pointed out earlier in this section, behind the evident denial and
negative critique against the existence of Russian varieties, labelled in Soviet
terminology as “non scientific”, the linguistic idiosyncrasies of these varieties
underwent a systematic analysis well before the recent debates on the Russian
‘national’ varieties.

3.1 Distinctive Features of Ukrainian Russian

In this section we shall only present some distinctive features of the
Russian spoken in Ukraine. A detailed analysis on the exact extent of variation
within the Russian spoken in Ukraine deserves a separate study that goes beyond
the scope of this paper. An attempt at describing the most typical features of
Ukrainian Russian has been carried out elsewhere (Del Gaudio 2011: 28-36).
The most evident level of variation concerns the suprasegmental features e.g.
prosody, stress patterns, intonation, the realization of specific phonological
features etc. Ukrainian Russian is for example characterized by a restricted use
of the so called ‘reduction’ that is peculiar to standard Russian. In the vocal
system of Ukrainian Russian one may note the slightly different phonetic
realization of the following vowels: [a], [o], [e]. In standard Ukrainian in fact [a]
tends to occupy a more backward position than the Russian equivalent, which is
reflected also in Ukrainian Russian. The qualitative differences between
Ukrainian and Russian [o] are very subtle and therefore they are less evident
than the realization of [a] in Ukrainian Russian. The Ukrainian [e] is definitely

[The official recognition of the existence of national and territorial varieties of Russian
would imply the conscious loosening of its norms and, in general terms, of its
language system as such, which are considered by the majority of scholars as an
indivisible unity]. (ibid.).
Variation from standard Russian can be also conditioned by dialectal substrata. This
was particularly valid for the older generations.
15
Эта ситуация на территории национальных республик создается прежде всего
воздействием родного языка на русскую речь их населения. В результате
взаимодействия национального и русских языков русская речь жителей
национальных республик отличается известными особенностями, наиболее
выразительно проявляющимися в области произношения, синтаксиса и т.д. [This
situation, in the national Republics, is created by the influence of the native language
on the Russian speech of the population. The consequence of the interaction between
Russian and the national language is that the Russian speech of the populations of the
national republics is characterized by specific features, particularly evident in
pronunciation, syntax etc.] (ibid.).
 218

more open than the corresponding Russian vowel. This Ukrainian distinctive
feature may also appear in Ukrainian Russian16.
The differences are less evident in the consonantal system of Ukrainian-
Russian. This can be explained by the fact that consonants basically do not affect
the rhythmic-metrical structure of words and their prosody. However, the
fricative velar [ɣ], graphically < г > – a distinctive feature of the Ukrainian
consonant system absent in standard Russian – characterizes the Ukrainian
Russian. (It is interesting to note that both consonants are graphically identical.
In the Cyrillic alphabet both Russian and Ukrainian use the grapheme < г >.
Russian, however, instead of a fricative realization has a plosive voiced velar [g].
The fricative realization of the Russian velar is emblematic in the Russian spoken
by the majority of Ukrainians).
A second, likewise clear level of variation, concerns the vocabulary. If
there are lexemes indicating specific Ukrainian ethno-cultural concepts (realia)
still used in present day Ukrainian-Russian, e.g. xata (typical Ukrainian little
cottage), xlopec’ (youngster, fellow, lad), bur(j)ak (beet, beetroot), baštan (melon
plantation), kavun (watermelon)17, the verb guljat’sja instead of igrat’ (to play) etc.,
there are other Ukrainian words which have become obsolete although they
have found large use in literary works (probably with the purpose of creating
stylistic effects) by Ukrainian authors who wrote in Russian, e.g. Gogol’.
To this traditional lexical layer one can add an entire series of lexemes and
phraseology that have entered the Russian speech of Ukraine in the years
following its Independence, and that, in time, might become integrating part of
the vocabulary of Ukrainian Russian Such words clearly designate contemporary
Ukrainian realia, for example: majdan (square), often used instead of Russian
ploščad’ (cf. Ukr. plošča); oranževye (participants in the so called ‘orange
revolution’); avtoban that basically replaces its synonym avtostrada (motorway)
more widespread in Russia; verchovnaja rada (Parliament) cf. Russian duma etc.
Syntactic constructions based on Ukrainian patters represent a hidden
category that along with the prosodic traits are often not recognized by the
average speakers of Ukrainian Russian e.g. ja soskučilsja za vamy (“I missed you”.
Verb + preposition za that governs the instrumental case) instead of ja soskučilsja
po vam (Verb + preposition po that governs the dative case); bespokoitsja za kogo,
čto (“to worry about”. Verb + preposition za that in this case governs the

16
See: Kul’tura russkoj reči na Ukraine (1976:36-51).
17
The last three lexemes have correspondences in Russian non-standard varieties and
southern contiguous dialects.
 219

accusative case) instead of bespokoitsja o kom, čem (Verb + preposition o that

governs the prepositive case) etc. (Del Gaudio 2011: 33-36).
Besides the typical linguistic features associated with Ukrainian Russian,
one can mention various degrees of interference (transference of linguistic
features) from Ukrainian into Russian speech. This can be considered a result of
the Ukrainization process, particularly affecting the governmental, bureaucratic-
legal and social spheres.

3.2 Conversational and pragmatic features of the Ukrainian language

situation
The diglossic situation18, previously discussed, in which Ukrainian (at least
in the Centre and the North of the country) covers the role of the very high
variety, affects the Russian speech of an ever-increasing number of Russian
speakers. Among the factors influencing the Russian spoken in Ukraine one
needs to mention those of psycholinguistic and situational-pragmatic nature.
The average Ukrainian interlocutor, regardless of the language spoken,
displays at least a good passive knowledge of the other language. This mutual
intelligibility, (peculiar of Ukraine), potentially enables any Ukrainian speaker to
avoid the mental process of translation of concepts that are specific to Ukraine
into Russian since they can be immediately associated with the socio-pragmatic
context. Sometimes the occurrence of Ukrainianisms in the Russian speech is an
expedient to enhance particular lexical elements of an utterance. In other cases,
however, the random occurrence of Ukrainian words in Russian (not necessarily
Ukrainian Russian), also consequence of communicative strategies, should not be
confused with Suržyk or, in Flier’s (2000: 115-116) terminology, Russian based
Suržyk.
Trub’s recent paper (2011: 81-82), for example, on “Types of speech
deviations in the idiolect of Ukrainian-Russian bilinguals” describes a similar
situation in which a Russian speaker tends to re-use in his Russian speech some
of the lexical units used by the Ukrainian-speaking journalist. In our opinion, the
Russian speaker re-accommodates some Ukrainian lexical units with the
probable intention of enhancing aspects of the conversation (topicality). For
these reasons we prefer to avoid the abused term Suržyk or Russian Ukrainian

18
The diglossic situation exclusively regards the relation between Ukrainian and
Russian. If we were to consider also Suržyk, which is gradually taking over the
function of territorial dialects, then we would speak of triglossic traits.
 220

Suržyk, recently re-suggested by Trub (2011: 80), defining similar cases, just as
‘levels of interference’. Our point is based on the following arguments:
(a) speakers who use Ukrainian words and expressions in their Russian speech
still remain within the boundary of the Russian language, as also stated by
Trub (ibid.);
(b) the term Suržyk as a synonym for any forms of language mixture,
independently from the languages involved, should be rejected by
sociolinguists since it is a rather vague and generic concept that may
mislead scholars not dealing with Ukrainian Studies;
(c) Suržyk has already been fixed in the authoritative Encyclopaedia of the
Ukrainian Language (2007: 652) as a term mainly designating forms of
Ukrainian-Russian mixture, in which Ukrainian is the language affected.
Furthermore the INTAS survey confirmed that the majority of Ukrainian
informants refer to Suržyk to indicate a “mixture of Ukrainian and
Russian”.

4. Ukrainian Russian: unresolved questions

The degree of variation within Russian and the question of ‘national’

varieties are two crucial issues in contemporary Russian studies.
Although today there is a large consensus among scholars on the
sociolinguistic and dialectological postulate that a language, in our case Russian,
is subject to territorial, social and individual variation, a number of scholars still
denies, often for ideological reasons, this fundamental sociolinguistic principle as
‘inadmissible’ (cf. Russian nedopustimyj). Such a monolithic conception of
standard Russian (or Russian-Russian) is the heritage of the rigid Soviet idea of
language norm previously discussed. Most of the recent debates on the ‘status of
contemporary Russian’ in the former Republics and, obviously, Ukraine, have
confirmed such a static position19.
A completely different approach to the question of variation in Russian is
taken by Rudjakov (mentioned above) and his ‘Crimean School of Functional
linguistics’. Rudjakov’s circle not only recognizes a priori the existence of
different Russian varieties that they define as Ukrainian Russian, Belarusian
Russian etc., but they try to assess clear-cut parameters for the identification of a
national Russian variety of Ukraine (Rudjakov 2010: 13). The critical issue on the

19
See: Section XVIII. Sociolinguistics. Moscow, 2010, pp.634-684.
 221

existence or not of a national variety of Ukrainian Russian was also treated in the
miscellaneous volume “Georusistika, pervoe približenie” (2010). One of the main
arguments in favour of the national variety of Ukrainian Russian developed by
Rudjakov relies on Michalčenko’s statement (2010: 21) that “national language
varieties appear as a consequence of territorial isolation of native speakers and
develop in various territorial-state formations” in their attempt to adapt to
different functional conditions under the influence of specific extra-linguistic
factors, for example, the development of different English varieties in the English
speaking countries.
One of the main objections to this apparently easy solution has to do with
the peculiar language situation of Ukraine in which the only official or state
language (according to Ukrainian terminology) is Ukrainian and not Russian.
This difference is of paramount importance since it leads us to consider
Ukrainian Russian as a peculiar kind of non-dominant variety or, more exactly,
an ‘atypical’ non-dominant variety, in contrast to other language situations in
which Russian can be regarded as a ‘typical’ non-dominant variety, e.g. Belarus’,
where Russian – as one of the two official languages (the other being Belarusian,
the language of the titular nation) – still covers vast, if not all, bureaucratic
domains. Therefore we suggest reviewing the concept of non-dominant varieties
of pluricentric languages to include peculiar situations such as that of Ukraine.
As we saw in the preceding sections, Russian is spoken by the majority of
the population only in specific regions of the south and east of Ukraine and, even
in these areas, Russian does not always cover the function of the highest variety,
this being reserved for Ukrainian. In other words, Russian is no longer the
language of the administration and international communication. It has a
restricted use in governmental radio and TV programmes and it is taught in a
more limited number of schools. Moreover scientific texts tend to be published
in Ukrainian. Even taking into account the fact that the sociolinguistic situation
of Crimea differs from the rest of Ukraine, for in this autonomous peninsula,
Russian still keeps most of its ‘former’ privileges and formal spheres, we still find
it excessive to speak of a ‘national’ variety.
Our argument is based on the fact that Russian does not fulfil all social
functions throughout the country as a national language ought to do, as is the
case, for example, of Irish English or Austrian German.
Secondly, a language assumes the status of a national variety when most of
the speakers of this variety, if not all, consciously and ideologically recognize its
existence, as in the case, for example, of American English, Australian English
 222

etc. The only existing ideology, at least at the present stage, is supported by a
small minority of scholars who pursue the intention of creating a new linguistic
identity suitable for Russian-speaking Ukrainians who deliberately choose not to
share specific Ukrainian cultural values and, at the same time, want to be part of
a new nation, enhancing the linguistic-cultural distance from Russia.
The attempt to construct a theory of a national variety on the basis of
some peculiar features, for example the Ukrainian fricative realization of the
Russian voiced velar / ɣ /; or the Ukrainian usage of the preposition <v> instead
of standard Russian <na> when referring to Ukraine, in expressions like v Ukraine
(in Ukraine), still appear premature. Moreover the ‘characteristic’ features of
Ukrainian-Russian do not occur equally in all Russian speakers of Ukraine. In
fact,
(a) not all Russian speakers of Ukraine are conscious of using a different variety
diverging from standard Russian or Russian-Russian; and
(b) not all Russian speakers of Ukraine adopt an “ethno-specific” variety
(Ukrainian Russian) that differs from Russian Russian. The choice of those
speakers who stick to Russian-Russian is motivated either by ideological
reasons or because they just want to identify themselves with this variety.
(c) Most speakers might unconsciously perceive the divergence between the
variety they use and Russian-Russian, although the majority of them do not
adopt a stance of language loyalty to their variety.
(d) Finally, Ukrainian Russian has (at least at the moment) no official
codification. There exist of course linguistic descriptions of grammatical,
phonetic and lexical aspects in Soviet prescriptive studies on ‘language
culture’. Concrete examples of this variety may be occasionally detected in
the press and mass-media. Nevertheless the recorded language material of
this variety is still fragmentary and is definitely not the result of conscious
elaboration.
For the above mentioned reasons, at present, we prefer to speak, in more
general terms, of a Ukrainian variety of Russian or, more exactly, of levels of
variation within the Russian of Ukraine, thus avoiding the adjective ‘national’.
This approach is motivated especially if one observes the entire sociolinguistic
panorama of Russian-speaking Ukrainians (Del Gaudio 2010b: 73).
Notwithstanding our position we do not deny the plausibility of a future
acknowledgment of Ukrainian-Russian as a separate ‘national’ variety. One can
therefore agree with Dorofeev (2010: 652) that the process of formation of a
 223

potential ‘national’ Ukrainian Russian could possibly take place in the future
since we are witnessing a process of disintegration of established cultures, as a
consequence of the globalization process. Its realization will depend on
unforeseen socio-political and cultural-linguistic factors.

5. Summary
The question of Russian as a non-dominant variety in post-Soviet
countries, and the role Russian still has in Ukraine, is dealt with in the
introduction.
A historical and sociolinguistic account of the Ukrainian language situation
is presented in the first section. This section demonstrated that Russian, in the
majority of the traditional Ukrainian territories, does not cover all the formal
spheres it used to during the Soviet period. Today Russian, in specific language
contexts, occupies an intermediate role between Ukrainian and other forms of
language mixture, e.g. Suržyk.
Some of the distinctive features typical of Ukrainian Russian (a mainly
spoken variety) were successively highlighted. We also tried to draw a
theoretical line between a presumed Russian variety of Ukraine and other forms
that can be attributed to simple interference from Ukrainian, and that do not
occur consistently among the Russian speakers.
In the final section we treated the critical issues concerning Ukrainian
Russian as a non-dominant variety. The conclusions demonstrated that at
present it is reasonable to speak, in general terms, of a Ukrainian variety of
Russian or, even better, of levels of variation within the Russian of Ukraine, thus
avoiding the term ‘national’.
It was also argued that the theoretical framework of non-dominant
varieties of pluricentric languages should be reviewed to be adapted to peculiar
language situations such as the Ukrainian case. Here, in fact, a pluricentric
language like Russian displays evident formal restrictions, especially if compared
with other language contexts in which Russian keeps most of its former official
domains, and therefore it is more appropriate to speak of a national non-
dominant variety. More to the point, field research aiming at increasing the
limited language material already available is essential in order to obtain a
clearer idea about the real extent of this variety and to separate its distinctive
features from the various levels of interference exerted by Ukrainian on Russian.
The acquired language data should successively be compared with the results of
 224

Soviet studies on language ‘deviation’ from the established norm, thus supplying
more reliable criteria for linguistic conclusions.

6. References

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postsovetskom prostranstve. In: Russkij jazyk: istoričeskie sud’by i
sovremennost’. Trudy i materialy. Moskva, 2010, 635-636.
Besters-Dilger, Juliane (2002): Les différenciations régionales de l’espace
linguistique en Ukraine. Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, 2002, vol.
33, n.1, 49-76.
Besters-Dilger, Juliane (ed.) (2009): Language Policy and Language Situation in
Ukraine. Analysis and Recommendations. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin etc.
Bieder, Norbert (1999): Die sprach- und ethnopolitische Situation auf der
Halbinsel Krim im Rahmen des russisch-ukrainisch-krimtatarischen
Sprachkontaktes. Wien, 1999, unveröffentlichte Diplomarbeit.
Britsyn, Viktor M. (1997): Ukraine. Sprachkontakte in den westlichen GUS-
Staaten und im Baltikum. In: Goebl, H. et alii (eds.): Kontaktlinguistik.
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Clyne, Michael (ed.) (1992): Pluricentric Languages. Different Norms in Different
Countries. Berlin/New York. Mouton/de Gruyter.
Danylenko, Andriy (2008): The Formation of New Standard Ukrainian. From the
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the 18th c. Die Welt der Slaven, 2008, 53, 82-115.
Del Gaudio, Salvatore (2009): Rol’ slavenorosskogo jazyka v istorii razvitija
ukrainskogo i russkogo jazykov. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 2009,
Band 64, 1-20.
Del Gaudio, Salvatore (2010a): On the Nature of Suržyk: a Double Perspective.
Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 75. München – Berlin – Wien,
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Del Gaudio, Salvatore (2010b): Ob ukrainskom variante russkogo jazyka: spornye
voprosy. In: Rudjakov A.N. (ed.). Georusistika, pervoe približenie,
Simferopol’, 2010, 69-74.
Del Gaudio Salvatore (2010c): The Role of Historical South-East Dialects in the
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Formation of the Ukrainian Literary Language (1798-1830s). Wiener

Slavistisches Jahrbuch, 2010, Band 56, 7-37.
Del Gaudio Salvatore (2011) O variativnosti russkogo jazyka na Ukraine. Izvestija
RAN, Serija literatury i jazyka, 2011, 2, 28-36.
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Russkij jazyk: istoričeskie sud’by i sovremennost’. Trudy i materialy.
Moskva, 2010, 651-652.
Flier, Michael. (2000): Suržyk: The Rules of Engagement. Harvard Ukrainian
Studies, 2000, 22, 113-136.
Kul’tura russkoj reči na Ukraine (1976) G. P. Ižakevič (ed.). Kiev.
Masenko Larysa (2009): Language Situation in Ukraine: Sociolinguistic Analysis.
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Ukraine. Analysis and Recommendations. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin etc.,
2009, 101-137.
Michalčenko, V. (2010): Nacional’nyj variant jazyka kak rezultat’ ego adaptacii k
etnolingvističeskim uslovjam. In: Rudjakov A.N. (ed.). Georusistika, pervoe
približenie, Simferopol’, 2010, 21-28.
Muhr, Rudolf (2005): Language Attitudes and language conceptions in non-
dominant varieties of pluricentric languages. In: Standardvariationen und
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Variations and Language Ideologies in different Language Cultures around
the World. Hg. von R. Muhr, Wien u.a. 2005, 11-20.
Norrby & Hajek (eds) 2011: Uniformity and Diversity in Language Policy. Global
Persepctives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
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(eds.). Uniformity and Diversity in Language Policy. Global Persepctives.
Clevedon, 2011.
Britsyn, V.M. (ed.) (1986): Puti povyšenija kul’tury russkoj reči na Ukraine. Kiev.
Rudjakov Aleksandr N. (2007): Rusofonia i rusistika v XXI veke. In: Rudjakov A.N.
(ed.) Kul’tura narodov Pričernomor’ja, Simferopol’, 2007, N.110, vol.1, 7-9.
Rudjakov Aleksandr N. (2009): Georusistika i nacional’nye varianty russkogo
jazyka. In: Rudjakov A.N. (ed.) Kul’tura narodov Pričernomor’ja,
Simferopol’, 2009, N.168, vol. 1, 7-10.
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Russkij jazyk: istoričeskie sud’by i sovremennost’. Trudy i materialy (2010): M.

Remnjova, A. Polikarpov (eds.) Moskva, 2010.
Schweier, Ulrich (1998): Das Ukrainische. In: Einführung in die slavischen
Sprachen. Hg. von P. Rehder, Darmstadt 1998, 94-109.
Trub Volodymyr (2011): Typy movlennjevych vidchylen’ jak osoblyvosti idiolektu
ukrajins’kogo-rosijs’kych bilingviv. In: Language and Society (Мова і
суспільство), 2011, N. 2, 78-85.
Ukrajins’ka mova. Encyklopedija. (2007). O.O. Taranenko (ed.). Kyiv.
Veli K. N. (2010): Vopros mežnacional’nogo ili mežgosudarstvennogo obščego
jazyka v Evrope In: Russkij jazyk: istoričeskie sud’by i sovremennost’.
Trudy i materialy. Moskva, 2010, 642.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 227-262.

Curt WOOLHISER
(Brandeis University, Waltham, USA)
cwoolhis@brandeis.edu

“Belarusian Russian”:
Sociolinguistic Status and Discursive Representations

Abstract
In this paper I examine the socio-demographic and linguistic character-
istics of nativized varieties of Russian in contemporary Belarus, as well
as their social evaluation as reflected in various forms of metalinguistic
discourse. While Russian is the dominant language in most spheres of
both formal and informal communication, there are signs that the form
of Russian spoken in Belarus, primarily under the influence of the Bela-
rusian linguistic substratum, is diverging from the norms of the domi-
nant Russian standard of the Russian Federation. At the same time, due
to such factors as the influence of the standard language ideology that
posits an invariant, unified norm for standard Russian, the absence of
any national institutions responsible for codification of “Belarusian Rus-
sian,” the continued influence of electronic and print media from Russia,
as well as the existence of a distinct standard Belarusian language as a
linguistic index of national uniqueness, the recognition of “Belarusian
Russian” as a legitimate national variety of Russian, rather than simply a
regional deviation from the norm, remains in question.

1. Introduction
Belarus is unique among the Soviet successor states with respect to the
status and functions of the “titular” or national language and Russian, the former
official language of the Soviet quasi-federation. While all other post-Soviet states
have since 1991 sought, with varying degrees of success, to expand the use of in-
digenous national languages, Belarus is the only one where the dominant posi-
tion of Russian in virtually all social domains has been maintained and indeed
even enhanced since the collapse of the Soviet Union.1 The existence of a major-

1
The language situation in Ukraine is only partially comparable with that of Belarus,
since although Russian is dominant primarily in the east and south of the country,
Ukrainian dominates in the west and Russian-Ukrainian bilingualism is increasingly
the norm in the capital Kyiv and central parts of the country. Moreover, as the sole
 228

ity Russophone country outside the borders of the Russian state is a fundamen-
tally new phenomenon in the history of the Russian language, making Belarus a
particularly interesting case for the comparative study of linguistic pluricentric-
ity in modern Europe.
From the standpoint of linguistic geography, the dialects of Belarusian
represent the west central portion of an East Slavic dialectal continuum that ex-
tends from western Ukraine to the northeast of European Russia. Like any dialec-
tal continuum, there are certain transitional areas where the linguistic affiliation
of local vernaculars is more a question of political considerations and the natio-
nal identity of local inhabitants than linguistic structure per se.2 Superimposed
upon this continuum are the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian standard langua-
ges, of which Russian has the longest uninterrupted history of development and
greatest geographical and functional distribution.3 In terms of linguistic dis-
tance, standard Belarusian and standard Russian are comparable to such closely-
related but distinct languages as Norwegian and Danish, Low German and High
German, Scots and English, and Walloon and French.4
While an earlier form of Belarusian was employed from the 14th to the 17th
century as the language of state administration and legal documentation in the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the core territories of which included what is today
Lithuania and all of modern Belarus, as well as some neighboring parts of
Ukraine, Poland, Russia and Latvia), over the course of the 17th century it was
gradually eclipsed by Polish, primarily as a result of linguistic assimilation of lo-
cal elites.5
Following the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth among
Prussia, Austria and Russia in the late 18th century, the Belarusian territories, al-
though under Russian rule, continued to be dominated by Polish language and

official national language, Ukrainian continues to play a major role in government and
education.
2
Thus, the East Slavic dialect continuum presents certain parallels with the Continental
West Germanic continuum linking varieties of High German, Low German, Dutch and
Frisian, as well as the Continental North Germanic dialect continuum linking varieties
of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
3
The modern Russian standard language emerged in the late 18th-early 19th centuries,
while modern Belarusian and Ukrainian achieved the status of codified standard lan-
guages only in the 20th century.
4
Although the structural and genetic proximity of Belarusian to Russian is significantly
greater than of Belarusian to Polish, centuries of close contact between the latter two
led to a considerable degree of lexical convergence, resulting in a higher level of mu-
tual intelligibility between Belarusian and Polish than between Russian and Polish.
5
The status of Old Belarusian in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania can be compared with
that of Scots in the Kingdom of Scotland before the 17th century or Middle Low Ger-
man in the cities of the Hanseatic League.
 229

culture well into the 19th century. It was only in the second half of the 19th cen-
tury, particularly after the 1863-64 Uprising in Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and
northern Ukraine, that the Tsarist regime actively pursued a policy of linguistic
and cultural russification of the western borderlands of the Russian Empire, as a
result of which the cities became centers for the spread of the Russian language.6
In the 19th century, as the European philological revolution spread to the Russian
Empire, Russian linguists generally adopted the view that Belarusian was merely
a dialect of the Russian language, and the Belarusians, despite a number of eth-
nographic peculiarities, merely a branch of the Russian people with common
ethnic origins in the medieval state of Kievan Rus’. However, notwithstanding
the efforts of the Tsarist regime to russify the population of what is today Belarus
in culture and language, the majority of the peasantry at the beginning of the
20th century did not self-identify as (Great) Russian, although a sense of Belaru-
sian national identity, as opposed to allegiance to the local community and tradi-
tional religious identity, remained relatively undeveloped.
The period from 1905 to the First World War and Russian Revolution saw a
significant upsurge in Belarusian nationalist activity, culminating in the declara-
tion of the independent Belarusian National Republic in 1918 and the creation of
the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1919 (from 1922 one of the constituent
national republics of the USSR).
While Soviet Belarus had some of the attributes of national sovereignty,
the newly-codified standard Belarusian language faced significant obstacles to its
functional expansion, perhaps with the exception of the period from 1924 to the
early 1930s when the Soviet Belarusian government actively promoted the use of
the language in government, education, the media and other spheres of public
life (although documentary evidence suggests that actual practice was often at
variance with official policy).
The spread of Russian in the BSSR intensified following the devastation
and population losses of WWII, and in particular as urbanization accelerated
from the 1950s to 1980s. Rather than “Belarusianizing” the cities, Belarusian-
speaking rural migrants as a rule assimilated linguistically to the closely-related
Russian language, while preserving certain Belarusian features in their speech.
6
In the early 20th century under Tsarist Russian rule, while Russian had a virtual mo-
nopoly in official usage, Yiddish, Belarusian and Polish were also widely spoken in Bel-
arusian cities and towns. Yiddish continued to be spoken by a sizable percentage of
Belarusian Jews (who in some cities such as Minsk made up over half the population)
until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, but as a result of the Holocaust (in which
some 90% of Belarusian Jews perished) and subsequent linguistic assimilation of the
survivors, the language became nearly extinct on Belarusian soil after WWII.
 230

As a result, by the late 1980s the majority of the population of Belarus spoke Rus-
sian, or mixed Belarusian-Russian, rather than the traditional Belarusian rural
dialects or the codified standard form of Belarusian.
In 1990 Belarus became one of the last Soviet republics to pass language
legislation, elevating Belarusian to the status of sole official state language of the
republic with Russian remaining in the capacity of the “language of inter-ethnic
communication.” Unlike the language laws enacted in a number of other Soviet
republics, however, the Belarusian language law was largely a symbolic measure
and had little impact on language use in the public sphere.
It was only after Belarus gained full independence in 1991 following the
abortive coup in Moscow that the Belarusian authorities began to take steps to
expand the use of Belarusian in various domains, including education, the media
and government. The policy of official “Belarusianization,” pursued by an uneasy
alliance of nationalists and state bureaucrats, ran up against numerous obstacles,
including a shortage of teaching staff and materials in the schools, the absence of
a standardized technical and scientific terminology, obstructionism on the part
of many government officials, and perhaps most importantly, the indifference or
in some cases, even hostility of a significant segment of the public.
The election of populist politician Aleksandr Lukashenko to the newly-
created presidency in the summer of 1994 marked a watershed in language pol-
icy in independent Belarus. Although the fight against corruption and economic
issues had dominated Lukashenko’s campaign rhetoric, after his election he be-
gan to address the increasingly contentious language issue as well, proposing the
re-introduction of Russian as a second state language.
In 1995 Lukashenko sponsored a referendum on granting Russian co-
official status, to which 83% of those who voted (some 54% of all eligible voters)
gave their support. However, as Belarusian language advocates had warned, the
introduction of official “bilingualism,” rather than ensuring equal use of the two
languages, was interpreted in most government institutions as a signal to roll
back the modest “Belarusianization” of the preceding few years, allowing, in ef-
fect, a return to the Russian-dominant language regime in the Belarusian Soviet
Socialist Republic of the late Soviet period.
While the idea of restoring the USSR had a significant following in Belarus
in the mid-1990s, and while a sizable percentage of the population still favor
closer relations with Russia than with the EU, more recent public opinion polls
show a steadily declining level of support among Belarusian citizens for a Bela-
rus-Russia union state, which falls to just around 10-12% when unification is ex-
 231

plicitly defined as Belarus joining the Russian Federation and abandoning its own
national institutions (IISEPS 2008). At the same time, there is little evidence to
suggest that the growing commitment of Belarusian citizens to their country’s
independence since the collapse of the USSR has necessarily made them more in-
clined to reject the use of the Russian language in favor of Belarusian, which is
still widely regarded as the country’s sole “national” language.
In light of these circumstances, it would seem that at the level of linguistic
practice the conditions in Belarus are highly conducive to a “post-imperial” so-
ciolinguistic scenario, where the language of the former imperial center retains a
significant, if not dominant position in its erstwhile territories, but ceases in
many cases to function as a marker of political allegiance to the empire and/or
identification with its dominant ethnolinguistic group (Mečkovskaja 2005). How-
ever, given the dominance of the ideological trope “one nation – one state – one
language” in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet region, as well as a strong nor-
mative bias against recognition of distinct national varieties of Russian beyond
Russia’s borders, the status of Russian as a national language of the Belarusians
remains highly contested.

2. Language Demographics, Language Use and Language Policy in

Contemporary Belarus
2.1. The Contemporary Language Situation: Census and Survey Data
Russian cannot, either legally or functionally, be regarded as a minority
language in contemporary Belarus, despite the fact that self-declared Belarusians
constitute a solid majority of the country’s population. According to the 1999
census, citizens identifying themselves as Belarusians made up 81.2% of the total
population, Russians – 11.4%, Poles – 3.9%, and Ukrainians – 2.4% (National Sta-
tistical Committee 1999). The 2009 census showed further gains for the “titular”
nation as opposed to other groups, with self-declared Belarusians accounting for
83.7%, as compared with Russians – 8.3%, Poles – 3.1% and Ukrainians –1.7% (Na-
tional Statistical Committee 2009). If “Belarusian” is understood exclusively as an
ethnic, rather than civic identity, this would make Belarus one of the most “eth-
nically” homogeneous countries in the post-Soviet region, similar to neighboring
Lithuania, where according to government estimates from 2010 self-declared
ethnic Lithuanians comprise 83% of the population.
While according to the 1999 census, 85.6% of all ethnic Belarusians in Bela-
rus (and 73.6% of the total population) indicated Belarusian as their “native lan-
 232

guage” (Russian rodnoj jazyk, Belarusian rodnaja mova), when asked which lan-
guage they spoke at home, only 41.3% of ethnic Belarusians (and 36.7% of the to-
tal population) claimed to speak Belarusian, while 58.6% of ethnic Belarusians
(and 62.8% of the total population) claimed to speak Russian. It is generally as-
sumed that the much higher than expected figure for Belarusian from the 1999
census reflects more of a pro-Belarusian attitude than actual linguistic behavior;
most likely, a sizable part of this group speak either rural dialects and/or mixed
Belarusian-Russian varieties (trasjanka) with fewer than 10% speaking more or
less standard Belarusian. At the same time, out of the nearly 63% who claimed to
speak Russian, it appears likely that a significant part of this group, particularly
in smaller cities and towns and rural areas, likewise speak mixed Belarusian-
Russian varieties.
The results of the 2009 Belarus census provide further evidence of a con-
tinued trend of language shift to Russian, and indeed it appears that the census
questions were designed in such a way as to provide further support for further
scaling back the use of the Belarusian language in the public sphere. In contrast
to the 1999 census and earlier Soviet censuses, “native language” was this time
explicitly defined on the questionnaire as “the language learned first in early
childhood.” Given this more restrictive definition of the term “native language,”
it is not surprising that only 53% of the total population (and 60% of self-declared
Belarusians) indicated Belarusian as their “native language,” while 41.5% of the
population indicated Russian in this capacity. As far as the language used in the
home is concerned, in 2009 only 23% (out of a total population of 9.5 million)
claimed to speak Belarusian, with 70% claiming to speak Russian (National Statis-
tical Committee 2009).
As regards the language data from the 1999 and 2009 Belarus censuses, one
highly problematic feature is that the answers for “native language” and “lan-
guage of the home” are treated as single response instead of multiple response
items. Even if, in theory, respondents could indicate more than one language, it
appears that only single-answer responses were reflected in the survey results.
Given the limitations of census data and the results of government-
sponsored surveys as a measure of actual language competence and use, it is
worthwhile also to consider data from recent surveys conducted in Belarus by
independent polling agencies and researchers. In a nationwide survey of over
1,000 adults carried out in August and September of 2009 by the survey agency
NovAK, with support from the Belarusian Institute of Strategic Studies, respon-
dents were asked about their language proficiency and use. The vast majority of
 233

respondents (nearly 75%) reported that they use Russian constantly, while only
5.8% said the same of Belarusian, and 23% claimed to never use Belarusian at all
(Budz’ma 2009). Among the majority of respondents who claimed to use Russian
constantly, there is a sizable segment that still claim to use Belarusian “often”
(13.9%), “sometimes” (26.3%) or at least “rarely” (31%). In other words, the sur-
vey results appear to indicate that a majority of Belarusian citizens claim to use
Belarusian at least some of the time. But what exactly does sporadic use mean? In
theory, this could refer to situational code-switching from Russian into Belaru-
sian, the occasional, pragmatically-motivated use of Belarusianisms in colloquial
Russian speech, or even pragmatically unmotivated code-mixing, that is, trasjan-
ka. Unfortunately, these survey data provide little information as to what “use”
of Belarusian involves in the respondents’ actual linguistic practice.
A recent study by a group of German researchers (Kittel et al. 2010) sheds
further light on the use of “mixed” language in contemporary Belarus, an issue
that has been largely ignored in the national censuses and surveys such as the
2009 NovAk/BISS study. In 2008 these researchers surveyed a random sample of
1,400 Belarusian citizens in seven locations (200 in each), including Minsk and six
medium-sized and smaller towns, about their language use; survey respondents
were divided into three age cohorts representing roughly three generations in
order to examine sociolinguistic dynamics over the last half century in apparent
time. Since the focus of the study was the language use of self-declared Belaru-
sians rather than all citizens regardless of ethnicity, those claiming Russian or
other non-Belarusian ethnicity were excluded from the sample, resulting in a to-
tal of 1,230 respondents.
In contrast to the binary choice between Russian and Belarusian offered in
the national censuses, Kittel et al. allowed respondents to indicate “mixed lan-
guage” not only in characterizing their language use, but also with regard to “na-
tive language” (unlike in the 2009 census, “native language” was not explicitly
defined as the language of primary socialization). As seen in Table 1 below, when
given this option in the questionnaire, a sizable percentage of all three age co-
horts indicated precisely the “mixed language” as their native tongue. While
“mixed language” shows a slight increase from the oldest to the youngest re-
spondents (with a striking increase in the middle generation, reflecting perhaps
the effects of the “Belarusianization” campaign of the early 1990s), there is also a
clear trend toward increasing identification with Russian as a mother tongue.
 234

Age group 1 Age group 2 Age group 3

(50+) % (children) % (grandchildren) %
Standard Belarusian 1.1 0.6 0.0
Belarusian with some
4.9 5.4 2.5
Russian words
Standard Russian 7.2 19 13.7
Russian with some
31.3 41.2 50.2
Belarusian words
Belarusian-Russian or
Russian-Belarusian 55.5 42.8 33.4
mixture

Table 1: Self-reported language of ordinary usage

(Source: Kittel et al. 2010: 63)

Another important innovation in Kittel et al.’s study is the researchers’ at-

tempt to provide a more nuanced range of designations for the language varie-
ties respondents normally use in everyday communication. Thus, in addition to
“standard Russian” (russkij literaturnyj jazyk), “standard Belarusian” and “mixed
language”, participants in the survey were given the options of “standard Russ-
ian with Belarusian words” and “standard Belarusian with Russian words.” Of
course, self-report data are notoriously inaccurate when it comes to measures of
frequency of use of non-standard varieties, inasmuch as people have a natural
tendency to over-report their use of high prestige standard varieties and under-
report the use of low-prestige varieties.
As seen in Table 1 above, while virtually no respondents claimed to use
“pure” standard Belarusian in everyday communication, at the same time only a
minority claimed to use “pure” standard Russian, while over 80% of the respon-
dents in all three age cohorts claimed to use some type of mixture, whether Rus-
sian with Belarusian words or the other “mixed” options listed.
It should be noted, however, that respondents for this study included resi-
dents of only one large city, the capital Minsk (pop. 1.8 million); the other cities
and towns ranged in size from 51,000 (Slonim, in western Belarus) to under
10,000 (Khotimsk/Khotsimsk, in the Mogilev/Mahilëu region of eastern Belarus).
It seems likely that the percentage of younger respondents claiming to normally
use “mixed language” would be somewhat lower if the sample had included the
other larger Belarusian urban centers.
 235

2.2. Language Policy in Contemporary Belarus: State Priorities, Policies

and Practices
In 1998 the 1990 Law on Languages in the BSSR was finally amended to re-
flect the new legal status of Russian as the second state language; however, the
amendments were worded in such a way as to render the use of Belarusian
largely optional. Rather than stipulating equal legal status of the two languages,
the amended 1998 law simply requires the use of “Belarusian and (or) Russian,”
the disjunctive conjunction in effect permitting exclusive use of Russian in most
contexts.
The Constitution of the Republic of Belarus still guarantees the right of all
citizens to use their native language, freely choose the language of communica-
tion (albeit in which domains remains unspecified) and the language of instruc-
tion in public education (Article 50). Article 4 of the Language Law, moreover, re-
quires all government officials and employees at the national, regional and local
level to be proficient in both Belarusian and Russian “to the extent necessary for
performing their duties” (Konstitucija 2004).
In the sphere of public education, the Law on Education (Article 5) states
that “Belarusian and (or) Russian” are the main languages of instruction in
schools and universities, and that the state guarantees the choice of language of
instruction and “creates the conditions necessary for exercising this right.” Whi-
le the addition of the conjunction “or” essentially allows for the dominance of
Russian in the educational process, Article 24 states that the teaching of the Bela-
rusian language as a subject is obligatory in all educational institutions regard-
less of their area of specialization.
As in the late Soviet period, since the mid-1990s the Belarusian language in
official usage has tended to serve a largely ornamental function, as reflected in
the presence of Belarusian-language signage alongside Russian in government
agencies, the use of bilingual Belarusian-Russian letterhead on official docu-
ments (with texts predominantly in Russian), and the appearance of occasional
Belarusian-language posters and slogans on national holidays (Brown 2007). Most
laws are published only in Russian; in fact, by the late 1990s, only 9 out of 450
laws passed were published in Belarusian. Not only President Lukashenko him-
self, but also most other government officials (with occasional exceptions on the
part of the ministers of Education and Culture), speak almost exclusively in Russ-
ian in their public appearances. In 2007 it was reported that in the National As-
sembly, the country’s Parliament, only one deputy out of 210, the head of the
 236

Commission on Education, Culture and Science, Uladzimir Ždanovič, gave his

speeches in Belarusian rather than Russian.
The precipitous decline in exclusively Belarusian-medium education that
began after the 1995 referendum continued largely unabated in the first decade
of the 21st century. By the 2008/2009 academic year, only 18% of all students
were in exclusively Belarusian-medium schools or groups; as of 2009, in urban
areas, only 1.9% of all first graders were enrolled in exclusively Belarusian-
medium schools.
The Russian language also has a dominant position in the print media in
Belarus. According to data from the Belarusian Association of Journalists, as of
January 2009, 43% of all periodicals were published exclusively in Russian, 27%
were published “in Russian and other languages” according to their official re-
gistration, 5% were published exclusively in Belarusian, and 22.9% “in Belarusian
and other languages.” Russian is similarly dominant in book publishing. In 2007,
for example, books in Belarusian, representing 430 separate titles, accounted for
only 7% of the total number of books published in the country (Belaruskaja Asa-
cyjacyja Žurnalistaŭ 2009: 7). These figures of course do not include the large
percentage of print media and other publications originating in the Russian Fe-
deration.
Like the print media, radio and television in Belarus are dominated by the
Russian language. It is estimated that only about 5% of all radio and television
programming by officially registered media outlets is in Belarusian. On the nati-
onal television channels, no more than 15% of airtime is devoted to Belarusian-
language programming, with a heavy emphasis on historical, literary and
ethnographic subject matter; most news and analytical programming dealing
with political, economic and social issues is in Russian (Belaruskaja Asacyjacyja
Žurnalistaŭ 2009: 7). Belarusians also have easy access to electronic media outlets
from the Russian Federation, including the major Russian national channels and
their internet sites.

3. “Belarusian Russian” vs. “Russian Russian”: Linguistic Features

and Socio-Stylistic Variation
The socio-demographic characteristics of the Russian-speaking population
of Belarus, as well as the current Belarusian government’s language policy priori-
ties and practices, clearly show that the Russian language still enjoys functional
dominance twenty years after the country gained its independence. Surprisingly,
however, there has been little systematic empirical research since that time on
 237

what sort of Russian is spoken in Belarus, and whether it is possible to speak of

the emergence of a Belarusian national variant of Russian. Certainly, in terms of
codification, there has been little evidence of a conscious policy of accentuating
linguistic divergence vis-à-vis ‘Russian Russian,’ and in this sense, the Russian
language in Belarus may still be considered largely exonormative, to use the
term proposed by Ammon (1989).
As noted by Norman (2010), there is still no national organization or body
specifically involved in language codification for Russian in Belarus, despite the
language’s dominant status in most domains. In contrast, the Belarusian Acade-
my of Sciences (Institute of the Belarusian Language) and the Ministry of Educa-
tion, as well as state-owned publishing houses play an active role in corpus plan-
ning for Belarusian, and some aspects of corpus planning are even regulated by
legislation on the press (requiring publications to use the “generally accepted”
norms of the language in question). Other language legislation in regard to Bela-
rusian, for example the 2008 law “On the Rules of Belarusian Orthography and
Punctuation,” goes so far as to mandate the use of the revised standard Belarusi-
an orthography, holding out the possibility of legal sanctions against publishers
and media outlets that fail to adhere to the new rules.7
To a large degree, this situation simply represents a continuation of lan-
guage corpus planning policies of the Soviet era: corpus planning for Russian was
the sole prerogative of All-Union institutions based in Moscow, while the na-
tional academies of the non-Russian Union Republics were responsible for codifi-
cation of the national languages of the non-Russian periphery (despite periodic
interference from Moscow or its local representatives when language planners
were perceived to be promoting divergent over convergent tendencies in the na-
tional languages).
At present, virtually all corpus planning activities for standard Russian are
coordinated by institutions based in Moscow: the Russian Language Institute of
the Russian Academy of Sciences (which could be regarded as an analogue to the
Académie française in terms of its perceived role as the ultimate arbiter of cor-
rect usage), the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the Presidential Ad-
ministration’s and Russian Government’s Council on the Russian Language (1997-
2005), and the Federal Agency on the Press and Mass Communications (creator of

7
Critics of the new legislation on the standard Belarusian orthography argue that it was
designed essentially to outlaw oppositional publications that made use of the pre-
1933 Belarusian standard (known as Taraškevica), which is more divergent from Rus-
sian in a number of respects.
 238

the popular on-line Russian language reference site gramota.ru). In the post-
Soviet context, with the emergence of non-state mass media and publishers, in-
ternet-based media, as well as the relative weakening of censorship and editorial
control over content, the ability of language planners in Moscow to regulate all
aspects of standard Russian usage, even within the Russian Federation, has been
significantly weakened. In recognition of these new realities, corpus planners at
the Russian Language Institute and their colleagues in the Russian Ministry of
Education and Science have shown a willingness to tolerate a limited degree of
“democratization” of the standard Russian norm, recently admitting a number of
common variants that were previously regarded as errors as acceptable alterna-
tive forms.
Nonetheless, there does not as yet appear to be any official recognition by
language planners of national variants of Russian outside the Russian Federation.
For example, there have recently been disagreements between Belarusian gov-
ernment representatives and the Russian Language Institute in Moscow concern-
ing the use of the form Belarus’ (the country’s name in Belarusian) as opposed to
the older Russian form Belorussija as the name of the country in Russian-
language texts. The former insisted that the form Belarus’ should be obligatory
for all Russian speakers, while the latter maintains that Belarus’ is only required
in citing the official name of the country, Respublika Belarus’ (The Republic of Bel-
arus).
Some degree of lexical divergence between “Belarusian Russian” and “Rus-
sian Russian” can also be observed with respect to the names of government in-
stitutions and professional titles. For example, in March of 2011, the official
name of the police in Russia was changed from milicija ‘militia’ (a Soviet-era in-
novation) to policija, while in Belarus, the Soviet-era terms, milicija, has been re-
tained. It seems likely that divergence in legal, administrative and political ter-
minology, owing to the different institutional arrangements in the two countries
(despite their common roots in the Soviet system) will only increase over time.
Impressionistically, it could perhaps be said that the “Belarusian Russian”
lexicon is somewhat more conservative than contemporary “Russian Russian,”
where recent borrowings from English in the spheres of politics, business and
entertainment are relatively more widespread. However, even within the Rus-
sian Federation there is variation in the use of new anglicisms between large,
cosmopolitan urban centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg and smaller cities
and towns, the latter often lagging significantly in this respect.
 239

In terms of everyday language usage, however, the differences between

Belarusian Russian and Russian Russian are even more noticeable. Indeed, since
the beginning of the 1980s, that is, almost a decade before the break-up of the
Soviet Union, a number of scholars have drawn attention to distinctive characte-
ristics of Russian speech in Belarus, although usually identifying them simply as
violations of the metropolitan norm by Belarusian-Russian “bilinguals.” The fea-
tures listed in below have been identified as characteristic, to a greater or lesser
degree, of “Belarusian Russian” in spoken and written usage, and could, in cer-
tain situations, be seen as important resources for “performing” Belarusianness
in a Russian-speaking context:

4. Features of “Belarusian Russian” (Norman 2010, Mečkovskaja 2005, Bu-

lyko and Krysin 1999, Moščenskaja 1992, Mixnevič 1985)
(A) spoken:
1. Sporadic phonological interference from Belarusian: fricative [γ] instead of
standard Russian velar stop /g/;
2. Dispalatalization or semipalatalization of /r’/ (e.g. [slavar] ‘dictionary’ for SR
[slavar’]);
3. Dispalatalization of [č’], [šč] or [š:] in place of SR [š’:];
4. Dispalatalization of labials /m’/ /p’/ in final position (e.g. [s’em]‘seven’ for SR
[s’em’];
5. Approximant [w] for underlying /v/, /v’/ in closed syllables (e.g. [krow]
‘blood’ instead of SR [krof’]);
6. Tendency for unstressed /a/, /o/ to merge as [a] in second pre-tonic and
post-tonic position, as opposed to centralization of underlying /o/, /a/ to [ə]
in SR (e.g. [s maladažonam’i] ‘with the newlyweds’ vs. SR [s mələdažonəm’ı]);
7. Non-reduction of unstressed /a/ after palatalized consonants (e.g. [jazyk]
‘language’ vs. standard Russian [jızyk]);
8. Palatalized alveo-dental affricates instead of palatalized dental stops
(cekanne/dzekanne), e.g. [dz”ec”i] ‘children’ (cf. standard Russian [d’et’i]);
9. Sporadic morphological and morphosyntactic influence from Belarusian: my
sobirali maliny ‘we gathered raspberries’ (acc. plural) (cf. standard Russian my
sobirali malinu, acc. singular), sobaka s”el (masc.) ‘the dog ate’ (cf. standard
Russian sobaka s”ela (fem.), krovavyj (masc.) mozol’ ‘blood blister’ (cf. standard
Russian krovavaja (fem.) mozol’).
 240

10. Infrequent use of truncated forms of personal names and patronymics: Pavel
Pavlovič instead of colloquial “Russian Russian” Pal Palyč;
11. Infrequent use of zero-suffix vocative form, Zina! Vanja! mama! instead of Zin!
Van’! mam! in colloquial Russian Russian:
12. Slow rising sentence intonation instead of sharp rise on stressed syllable of
focus word followed by low pitch in subsequent syllables in polar (yes-no)
questions as in standard ‘Russian Russian’;
13. Use of Belarusianisms in colloquial educated speech for expressive effect
where Russian Russian uses elements of urban substandard: bul’ba (cf. stan-
dard Russian kartofel’, kartoška) ‘potatoes’; druhim razam (cf. SR v drugoj raz)
‘another time’; amal’ što (cf. SR počti) ‘almost’; jašče kryxu (cf. SR eščë nemnogo)
‘a bit more’; A kab na cjabe (cf. SR A nu tebja) ‘darn you’; jak toj kazaŭ (cf. SR kak
govoritsja) ‘as they say’ etc.

B) spoken and written:

1. Belarus instead of “Russian Russian” Belorussija
2. šil’da ‘sign’ for SR vyveska, tablička
3. šufljadka ‘drawer’ for SR (vydvižnoj) jaščik
4. terms for flora and fauna: busel ‘stork’ (SR aist)
5. terms for Belarusian folk traditions and celebrations: dožinki ‘harvest celebra-
tion’ (< Bel. dažynki), Dzjady ‘All Souls Day/day of remembrance of the dead’
6. More frequent use of feminine forms of names of professions, titles in refer-
ring to women: zaslužennaja učitel’nica (fem.) ‘distinguished teacher’ instead of
zaslužennyj učitel’ (masc.) in reference to a woman, prepodavatel’nica (fem.) ‘in-
structor’, čempionka (dem.) ‘champion’ instead of prepodavatel’ (masc.), čempion
(masc.)
7. Use of lexical Belarusianisms in the mass media for expressive purposes:
bul’ba (cf. SR kartoška) ‘potatoes’, vjoska ‘village,’ čarka i škvarka ‘a glass (of
vodka) and cracklings (to chase it with)’ etc.

C) Common lexical Belarusianisms in colloquial Belarusian Russian

The majority of these features can be attributed to the influence of the
Belarusian linguistic substratum, and show some variation with respect to their
social markedness (typically, the greater the number of features of “Belarusian
Russian” in a person’s speech, the lower his or her general level of education).
 241

Moreover, the majority of these features are not officially recognized in Russian
dictionaries or other reference works published in Belarus, and, not surprisingly,
are entirely absent from dictionaries published in the Russian Federation.

Belarusian Russian Russian Russian English

veras (60%) veresk ‘heather’
divan (57%) kovër ‘carpet’
miska (78%) tarelka ‘plate’
bogatyr’ (92%) bogač ‘rich man’
ëlkoe (53%) progorkloe ‘rancid’
myt’ polotenca (74%) stirat’ polotenca ‘to wash towels’
Table 2: Common lexical Belarusianisms in colloquial Belarusian Russian
(Source: Bulyko and Krysin 1999, according to a survey from the late 1980s)

It is fairly symptomatic that in a recent on-line guide for editors of Rus-

sian-language newspapers and literary works (Kuklin 2009), a Belarusian author
includes “Belarusianisms” (including many of those listed above) in the category
of “mistakes,” “incorrect usage” and common spelling errors.
Thus, in many respects, “Belarusian Russian” would appear to fit Muhr’s
(2005) profile of non-dominant varieties of pluricentric languages, where cul-
tural elites generally do not identify with the national variety and language
planners within the country typically are hesitant to codify national variants
that diverge from the dominant standard.
At the same time, however, the existence of a separate Belarusian standard
language, however marginal its role in contemporary Belarusian society may be,
introduces a number of complications not found in the case of non-dominant va-
rieties such as Austrian and Swiss German and Belgian French and Dutch. In the
Belarusian case, the cultural elite has, in fact, divided linguistic loyalties – some
being oriented toward “Russian Russian,” while others support the use of stan-
dard Belarusian (indeed, a disproportionate number of professional writers in
Belarus write in Belarusian rather than Russian).
In a sense, the sociolinguistic situation in Belarus is reminiscent of what is
known in creole studies as a “post-creole continuum,” the socio-stylistic contin-
uum of varieties that emerges when a creole (or basilect) comes into close and
sustained contact with its primary lexifier language (or acrolect) (DeCamp 1971).
Individuals of different social and educational backgrounds will control different,
albeit partially overlapping segments of the continuum, with higher status
 242

speakers showing speech that is closer to the acrolectal variety. Much of the
population will tend to use in everyday communication a range of intermediate
varieties, or mesolects, with individuals combining in various proportions
basilectal and acrolectal features depending on their social and educational
background and the speech situation. The resulting socio-stylistic continuum is
in many respects analogous to the monolingual style-shifting observed in varia-
tionist studies of complex urban speech communities.
The post-creole continuum model was first applied to the Belarusian situa-
tion by a Russian researcher, Korjakov (2002). As shown in Table 3 below, Korja-
kov rightly indicates the variability of the continuum itself, depending on the si-
ze of the community. What makes the Belarusian case particularly interesting,
however, is that in addition to the standard Russian acrolect, there is also a stan-
dard Belarusian language that functions for some speakers as an alternative ac-
rolectal target in certain communicative situations. As regards acrolectal varie-
ties, however, Korjakov fails to note the presence of standard Belarusian as an al-
ternative target in smaller cities, towns and villages, where some members of the
local intelligentsia use standard Belarusian (or approximated variants thereof)
alongside local variants of standard Russian in certain formal contexts.

Large Smaller Towns Villages

Cities Cities
Acrolect R, SB R R R; T
Mesolect R R/T R;T T
Basilect R/T T T/BD BD

Table 3. The Belarusian Linguistic Continuum According to Korjakov (2002: 124)

R - Russian; T - trasjanka; BD - Belarusian dialects; SB - standard Belarusian

Bearing in mind the specific genetic relationship between Russian and Bel-
arusian (the result of divergent development within a fairly uniform group of
eastern Late Common Slavic dialects, rather than the interaction between a
dominant lexifier language and its related creole), as well as the availability of a
standard Belarusian language that has important functions as a marker of Bela-
rusian national identity, the linguistic continuum in Belarus could also be com-
pared in some respects to the sociolinguistic situation in the Lowlands of Scot-
land. At the basilectal end of the Scottish continuum in rural areas are conserva-
tive regional Scots dialects (representing a divergent development of northern
Northumbrian Anglic/Old English), which with varying degrees of lexical elabo-
 243

ration have also served as the basis for written Scots used in some literary works
and even (albeit more rarely) in journalistic and scholarly prose. In the larger cit-
ies and towns, mixed Scots-English varieties such as Glaswegian (the “Glasgow
patter”) and the Edinburgh working-class dialect, rather than traditional rural
Scots dialects, function as the basilect. At the acrolectal end of the continuum is
standard Scottish English (essentially standard British English with a Scottish ac-
cent and some local lexical features distinguishing it from the English of Eng-
land) (Douglas 2006).
McClure’s (1995) designation of Scots as an ‘ambivalent national tongue’ is
equally apropos in the case of Belarusian. While the Scots language for many
Scots, like Belarusian for Belarusians, appears to play an important symbolic role
as a marker of national identity, there has been observed among both Scots and
Belarusians a marked linguistic inferiority complex vis-à-vis the dominant re-
lated languages, English and Russian. In the case of both Scots and Belarusian,
the “languagehood” of the traditional vernacular continues to be contested in
certain quarters, Scots often being considered merely a highly divergent group
of dialects of English, while Belarusian, although it has gained a much greater
degree of recognition as an independent language since the 1920s, is of course
still viewed by many Russian speakers as “just a dialect” of Russian or a corrup-
tion thereof. Over the last twenty years, in both Scotland and Belarus language
attitudes have been gradually changing, although efforts to promote the use of
both Scots and Belarusian more widely in the public sphere have still often met
with widespread public ambivalence.
As with any sociolinguistic comparisons, however, such analogies do have
their limitations. The key difference is that in the Belarusian case, a codified
standard was developed and introduced into public usage in at least some do-
mains (1920s-1930s) before linguistic convergence toward Russian had taken on a
mass character, while in the case of Lowland Scots, efforts to develop a single
codified written standard have been largely unsuccessful, even as the process of
convergence of Scots dialects toward Scottish standard English (as well as urban
substandard varieties of southern British English) continues apace. While among
Belarusian language advocates there remain some disagreements concerning or-
thography, grammar and lexicon (with some intellectuals favoring a standard
based on Branislaŭ Taraškevič’s original 1918 codification and others preferring
the more “Russified” post-1933 norm), the existence of a relatively stable codi-
fied form of the language that is employed in at least some prestigious social do-
mains has proved to be a powerful means of asserting the independent “lan-
 244

guagehood” of Belarusian. In contrast, the absence of a single codified form of

Scots, despite its occasional use in writing, has no doubt contributed to the wide-
spread view among Scots speakers that their native vernacular, however differ-
ent it may be from standard English in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexi-
con, is simply “dialect,” “slang” or “bad English.” Thus, as sociolinguists have of-
ten observed, it is to a large extent recisely the existence of a codified standard,
particularly in the case of closely-related language varieties, that facilitates the
discursive creation of a “language” with a distinct name, identity and bounda-
ries.
At the same time, Belarusian Russian speakers, unlike speakers of standard
Scottish English, currently lack the symbolic resource of a locally prestigious
“national” accent, inasmuch as regionally unmarked standard Russian pronun-
ciation (based on the post-WWII Moscow-Leningrad pronunciation norm) retains
its normative status in the predominantly Russian-language educational system
and in the electronic media.
Belarusian-accented standard Russian (not to mention the mixed, mesolec-
tal Belarusian-Russian varieties referred to as trasjanka) is still regarded by many
educated city dwellers as merely a sign of a low level of education and/or rural
origins, rather than as a socially neutral marker of “Belarusianness.” The fact
that an indigenized, Belarusian “national” variety of standard Russian has not
received a level of official recognition similar to that enjoyed in Scotland by Scot-
tish Standard English thus means that standard Belarusian remains - for the time
being - the most prestigious linguistic expression of “Belarusianness” for most
educated Belarusians, even if they rarely use it in everyday life.

4. Metalinguistic Discourse, Language Ideologies and Attitudes

toward “Belarusian Russian”
4.1. Language Ideologies in Belarus
Language regimes, including those governing the use of national varieties
of pluricentric language communities, are based not only on formal government
regulations and informal practices or conventions, but rely crucially for their re-
production and legitimization on culture-specific cognitive models and socially
situated ideological constructs that are embedded in metalinguistic discourse. As
noted by Jaworski, Coupland and Galasinski (2004), the sociolinguistic signifi-
cance of metalinguistic discourse lies in the fact that
 245

“metalinguistic representations may enter public consciousness and

come to constitute structured understandings, perhaps even ‘common
sense’ understandings – of how language works, what it is usually like,
what certain ways of speaking connote and imply, what they ought to be
like. That is, metalanguage can operate at an ideological level, and influ-
ence people’s actions and priorities in a wide range of ways…” (Jaworski
et al. 2004: 3).
Metalinguistic discourse in post-Soviet Belarus is formed by a series of in-
terconnected ideological frameworks associated with the concepts of “national
language,” “native language,” and “standard/literary language”, which are employed
in different ways and with different ideological agendas both by supporters of
the existing language regime and those who seek to challenge it. In the following
discussion, I will examine these ideological frameworks more closely on the basis
of published statements of political figures, journalists, activists and scholars, as
well as examples of ordinary citizens’ metalinguistic discourse from a variety of
internet-based sources, including discussion groups and responses to on-line
news reports.

4.2. The National Language Ideology

At the most fundamental level, ideological contestation in metalinguistic
discourse in Belarus revolves around what can be called the “national language
ideology.” In Europe, and indeed in many parts of the world, the linguistic ide-
ologies of 19th century European nationalism have had a major impact not only
on how modern nationalist movements look at language, but how the public (and
even many in the scholarly community) conceive of language issues as well. On
the basis of content analysis of the western European press, the Dutch sociolin-
guists Blommaert and Verschueren (1992) note the extent to which the popular
media in Europe have internalized the ideological framework of ethnolinguistic
nationalism, particularly in the coverage of issues relating to stateless peoples or
newly-independent states. In accordance with this ideological framework:
“[d]escent, history, culture, religion, and language are treated as a fea-
ture cluster. Their identificational function implies separability, a natu-
ral discontinuity in the real world. These discontinuities are ‘nations’ or
‘peoples,’ i.e. natural groups...If feathers are predictive of beaks, eggs,
and an ability to fly, so is a specific language predictive of a distinct his-
tory and culture... Thus, the absence of the feature ‘distinct language’
tends to cast doubts on the legitimacy of claims to nationhood.” (Blom-
maert and Verschueren 1992: 359)
 246

From its beginnings in the late 19th century, the modern Belarusian na-
tional movement assigned a preeminent position to language as a key element in
defining the nation, and the “language as national identity” motif has remained
central to the discourses of Belarusian nationalism throughout this century, de-
spite unmistakable signs of progressing language shift toward Russian, particu-
larly over the last five decades. The Herderian view of language as the quintes-
sential expression of national uniqueness was even enshrined in the 1990 Belaru-
sian Language Law, which declared:
“Language is not only a means of communication, but also the soul of a
nation, the foundation and most important part of its culture. The na-
tion lives as long as its language does...” (Ab movax u Belaruskaj SSR
1990).
In Belarus, the national language ideology is associated primarily with the
Belarusophone, pro-EU nation-building project. The language, and more specifi-
cally its standard variety, is assigned in this conception a paramount role in
promoting Belarusian national consciousness and securing Belarusian political
and cultural independence. Its proponents argue that the Belarusian language is
the unique expression of Belarusian national identity and links its speakers to
their European heritage; therefore, they claim, Belarusian should be the sole sta-
te language in an independent Belarus.
A fairly typical (if rather extreme) example of Belarusophone European or
“nativist” discourse characteristic of opposition activists and intellectuals can be
seen in the following example:
(1) The Russian- and pidgin-speaking creoles with passports of citizens
of the Republic of Belarus inevitably form the basic resource for the re-
production of the political regime created by Lukashenka. Thanks to
their cultural inferiority and the psychological instability that results
from this, they are especially susceptible to ideological indoctrination
and other politically motivated forms of manipulation. (Valerka Bul-
hakaŭ, Vybary prezidenta kreolaŭ, Arche/Skaryna (4), 2001)
Non-Belarusian-speaking Belarusians (in fact, the majority of the popula-
tion) are represented in these discourses as incomplete beings, morally and intel-
lectually stunted. While such views are certainly not shared by all Belarusian
language advocates, in particular members of the younger generation, they do
express a certain frustration on the part of the Belarusophone intelligentsia at its
inability to reach broad segments of Belarusian society on the language issue.
Such views still appear to strike a chord with some segments of Belarusian soci-
 247

ety as shown in examples (2) and (3) below, taken from a pro-Belarusian lan-
guage website, quoting the Belarusian-language responses of a fifth-grade stu-
dent and a music teacher to the question “What does the Belarusian language
mean to you?”
(2) The native language for me is like the symbol, the crest, the adorn-
ment and crown of our Motherland and nation. It is something that
every Belarusian should know. And you musn’t reject it, because what’s
bad about it?! Our ancestors spoke it and we should do the same, be-
cause [if not], what kind of Belarusians are we? The native language
gives me joy, confidence in life, and in general, it makes us Belarusians,
because if you don’t speak it, you aren’t a real Belarusian. (Sjarhej, fifth-
grade pupil; (http://mova.na.by/artykuly/biel_mova1.html)
(3) Only with the native language did I truly feel myself to be a Belaru-
sian. For that reason I don’t believe you can be a patriot and at the same
time not know your own language. This assumption is completely re-
futed by my own personal experience. Only the native language gives an
authentic, profound sense of your Motherland, because it is the quintes-
sence, a concentrate of the entire Belarusian spirit, the mentality of this
nation, a distinct, uniquely Belarusian worldview. The Belarusian lan-
guage is the foundation, the core of all levels of our culture, folk and
professional art, literature and history. It awakens in you an interest in
everything that is your own, because you realize that this all of this is
something kindred, a part of yourself. Svjatlana, music teacher;
(http://mova.na.by/artykuly/biel_mova1.html)
Here, too, we see the influence of the Belarusophone European project’s
version of the national language ideology, according to which only by knowing,
respecting and speaking the Belarusian language can one be considered a true
member of the nation. In these statements, we also see the common discursive
conflation of the notions of “national language” (the language associated with a
specific nation) and “native language” (Russian rodnoj jazyk, Belarusian rodnaja
mova), which as pointed out earlier is an important legacy of Soviet-era nation-
alities policy. However, not only Belarusophones, but many Russophone Belaru-
sians also subscribe to similar views, as reflected in the passages in the following
example discussing the article: http://3dway.org/publications/mova-ili-yazyk-
stsyag-albo-flag-svoe-ili-chuzhoe)
[In Russian] I can imagine how Russian politicians are going to howl
when things really start to change in our country. But there’s one thing I
can say – it’s correct. There isn’t a single country without a community
 248

of people who consider themselves a nation. There can’t be a nation

without history, language and culture. Unfortunately, I realized this too
late. It would be rather difficult to switch over to Belarusian, but it’s so
pleasant to hear and read the language, and it’s so sad that you can’t ex-
press yourself in what is in theory your native language. We Belarusians
lack a national idea, no matter how trite it sounds, but we really need
something that could unite the majority of the indigenous population
and the intelligentsia.
Only by inculcating in children a love and respect for the language, only
by raising them on folktales and legends of Belarus can we revive our
language and culture and finally become a nation. I’m not at all against
Russian, I’m a native speaker of Russian myself, but I don’t like the situa-
tion Belarusian is in. Why is it that in the Netherlands, where almost
everyone knows English, and sometimes German as well, the Dutch lan-
guage hasn’t been driven into a ghetto? You can have several languages
in a country, that’s normal, but the national language should dominate
and that is the task of the government. All the more so in our case, after
so many years of forced Russification.

4.3. The Standard Language Ideology and the Status of “Belarusian

Russian”
In addition to the national language ideology, metalinguistic discourse in
contemporary Belarus, as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, is strongly in-
fluenced by a specific conception of the unique nature and moral authority of the
standard language, something that Lippi-Green (1994: 166) terms the “standard
language ideology.” She defines it as:
“[A] bias toward an abstracted, idealized, homogeneous spoken language
which is imposed from above, and which takes as its model the written
language. The most salient feature is the goal of suppression of variation
of all kinds.”
Rather than justifying the existence of a codified standard variety in
purely functional terms, that is, the need to minimize variation in order to facili-
tate efficient communication between interlocutors with minimal shared back-
ground knowledge, ideologies of the standard language generally operate in
more heavily value-laden terms. Speaking the codified standard variety, includ-
ing its supposedly invariant standard pronunciation, is represented in the dis-
courses associated with the standard language ideology as not merely an effi-
cient way to communicate with members of a diverse speech community, but as
the only “correct” way to speak “the language,” as a moral imperative and sine
 249

qua non for all who aspire to join the ranks of the “educated” and “cultured,”
and in certain speech communities, virtually as a precondition for individuals to
be regarded as fully-fledged members of the nation.
In the Soviet era, despite the officially acknowledged multi-national char-
acter of the USSR, discussions of the role of the Russian language in Soviet soci-
ety in the popular press and in scholarly discourse often did not distinguish be-
tween the role of Russian as the national language of the Russians and as the so-
called “language of inter-nationality communication,” the lingua franca of the
multilingual Soviet federation.
As the use of Russian became increasingly widespread in the non-Russian
areas in the 1960s, some Soviet linguists began to cautiously admit the possibility
of structural variation in standard Russian, particularly with respect to pronun-
ciation, both within and particularly outside the Russian Federative Socialist Re-
public. However, the prevailing opinion in the educational system, as well as
among much of the educated Russian-speaking Soviet public, was that there was
only one correct way of speaking Russian, as reflected in the speech of educated
Muscovites and Leningraders and the orthoepic norms propagated by the Mos-
cow-based national media.
In late Soviet-era discussions of language policy and Russian-language
education, a recurring leitmotif was the assertion of the need for maintaining the
unity of standard Russian norms of pronunciation and usage as the language be-
came more widely spoken by non-Russian citizens of the Soviet Union. Indeed,
discussions of “national language-Russian bilingualism” in the non-Russian re-
publics frequently contained calls for greater vigilance in promoting Russian
“language culture” (kul’tura jazyka) and calls for Russian-language educators to
“struggle against the emergence of local variants” of Russian in the non-Russian
areas (Dešeriev and Protčenko 1972: 10). Given the widespread use of Russian in
the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in the late Soviet period, it is perhaps not
surprising that Belarusian linguists, A. Giruckij and A. Mixnevič (1984) first pro-
posed the term “natiolect” (naciolekt) for the variants of Russian spoken in non-
Russian regions of the USSR; however, like other Soviet linguists of the time, they
characterized the existence of nativized varieties of Russian as an unfortunate
consequence of “unbalanced bilingualism” and spoke of the need for improved
Russian language instruction and other measures to promote convergence with
the national standard in both spoken and written usage.
A crucial issue for understanding their sociolinguistic significance is how
citizens of Belarus themselves evaluate their own speech and that of their fellow
 250

citizens, that is, how these objective linguistic facts are perceived and repre-
sented in metalinguistic discourse, and how these discourses serve to perpetuate
or challenge the existing language regime. Some Belarusians, regardless of their
position concerning language policy priorities, find the existence of a distinct na-
tional form of Russian in Belarus to be a perfectly normal phenomenon, with
many parallels throughout Europe and the world. In scholarly discourse, for ex-
ample, we encounter statements such as that of the prominent linguist Nina
Mečkovskaja (Belarusian State University, Minsk):
“It is important, however, that in the areas where they occur (Lithuania
and Belarus), the features of Russian speech that we have indicated here
are not perceived as “mistakes” in violation of the norms of the Russian
language or as “unrefined speech,” etc. On the contrary, they are char-
acteristic of the speech of educated people who have an excellent com-
mand of the norms of the Russian language and thus are part of norma-
tive spoken Russian usage in these countries. While the differences be-
tween national variants of Russian from the “source” Russian language
in Russia, these innovations indicate the presence of divergent tenden-
cies. In the future the divergence will not be intensive, as a result of the
dominance in Belarus and Ukraine of media from the Russian Federa-
tion, but divergence will take place.” (Mečkovskaja 2004: 62)
Another Belarusian linguist, Tat’jana Ramza, writing recently in Bela-
ruskaja dumka, a leading official political and social scientific journal sponsored
by the Presidential Administration, notes not only the ubiquity and stability of
“Belarusian Russian,” but also its role in asserting a Belarusian cultural identity:
“What is remarkable in Belarus, in my opinion, is the fact that despite
the dominance of the Russian language in all domains, the Russian
speech of Belarusians has stable, nearly ineradicable Belarusian-
language features. Perhaps this is in fact “an expression of a specific cul-
tural identity” of Belarusians…” (Ramza 2010: 116)
In his public pronouncements on the language issue, President Lukashenko
frequently asserts that the Russian language is no less “native” for Belarusians
than Belarusian. For him, the Russian language in Belarus represents an impor-
tant element of continuity with the Soviet past, a legacy that he deems worth
preserving. Moreover, he claims that Belarusians, together with the Russians and
other Soviet peoples, played a creative role in shaping the modern Russian lan-
guage, imparting to it part of their own “soul” (an interesting echo of the na-
tional language ideology’s trope of language as the soul of a nation), and that
 251

therefore if they reject Russian, Belarusians would in essence be rejecting part of

themselves, as we see in the following quotes:
“In fact every person here gets two native languages, and this circum-
stance makes us a unique country. Why on earth do we have to artifi-
cially suppress one language just in order to win the approval of yet an-
other Pazniak? [former leader of the nationalist Belarusian National
Front]. I believe that one can be an outstanding Belarusian and a 100%
patriot but at the same time care about the Russian language.” (A. Luka-
shenko, Sovetskaja Belorussija, Feb. 8, 1997)
“I always said that the Russian language is not foreign to us. Over the
course of many long years we, together with the fraternal Russian na-
tion and other nations [of the USSR] formed this language. We contrib-
uted a part of our soul to it.” (A. Lukashenkо, Sovetskaja Belorussija, Feb.
12, 2001).
In addition to members of the scholarly community and the country’s
leadership, the question of the existence of a distinctive Belarusian national vari-
ety of Russian has also elicited commentary by journalists and the general public.
In the fall of 2009 the decision of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science
to approve dictionaries that included a number of forms that had previously
been considered substandard, for example the neuter rather than masculine
gender in the noun kofe ‘coffee’, stress on the second syllable of the word jogurt,
‘yoghurt’, etc., provoked a lively discussion on the internet among educated Rus-
sian speakers both in Russia and abroad about the nature of the Russian literary
norm, and in the opinion of many, its erosion in the post-Soviet era. Interest-
ingly, in Belarus, this news story also generated debate as to whether the Russian
language is the sole “property” of the Russians and whether the norms of Rus-
sian language usage in the Russian Federation should automatically apply be-
yond Russia’s borders. For example, in the Russian-language tabloid Komso-
mol’skaia Pravda v Belarusi (one of the most popular periodicals in Belarus) the
author of an article about the dictionary controversy in Russia notes that not all
of the rules of “Russian Russian” apply in Belarus:
Belarus always had its own Russian language. The Constitution, of
course, says that we have two state languages: Russian and Belarusian.
But guests who come from Moscow are dumbstruck when they hear in
entirely Russian-speaking company the strange word “šufljadka” [Bela-
rusian for ‘desk drawer’]. But we understand! So what if we speak Rus-
sian, all the same we’re not going to say “vydvižnoj jaščik stola” [standard
Russian for desk drawer]!
 252

And the majority of families they still haven’t acquired “polovniki” [stan-
dard Russian for ladle], instead they have good old “čerpaki” [< Belaru-
sian čarpak ‘ladle’, cf. standard Russian čerpak ‘scoop’]. (Sluckaja 2009)
The discursive construction of a distinct national variety of Russian in Bel-
arus can also be seen in the comments of one Belarusian participant in an inter-
net discussion forum responding to a question from a Russian participant con-
cerning the correctness of the form Belarus’ as opposed to Belorussija in example
(13) below. This young woman expresses sincere surprise that any Russian
speaker would use a form other than Belarus’ in reference to her country, and
notes that in Belarus in the fall of 2009 there was no talk of dictionaries that
would permit neuter agreement with the noun kofe. Particularly noteworthy is
the writer’s effort to legitimize the existence of differences between “Belarusian
Russian” and “Russian Russian” by drawing an analogy to English, with its dis-
tinct national standard varieties in England and the US.
I suppose that in Russia a somewhat different system of rules is in effect,
although we have bilingualism and the majority of Belarusians use Rus-
sian ))). Take, for example, variation in the gender of the word for coffee
[kofe]…as far as I understand, it’s only in Russia that as of September 1 of
this year, what was previously a mistake has become the norm, and
“kofe” now can be used in the masculine and (oh horror and outrage) in
the neuter gender…). In our country there was no talk of this at all…But I
digress…In our country there aren’t any linguistic discussions concern-
ing the forms Belarus’/Belorussija…Actually, this is the first time I’ve
heard even of the possibility that at present “Belorussija” can be one of
the variants or the only correct form…Basically, as I understand it, the
Russian language in Russia and in Belarus is the same as English in Eng-
land and the USA, that is, far from identical phenomena…
(response to Russian participant’s question regarding correctness of the
form Беларусь: 2009-12-08.)8
In practice, however, the potential for “Belarusian Russian” to develop as a
fully-fledged national variant of Russian is constrained by objective and, perhaps
even more importantly, subjective (ideological) factors. Objectively, as Mečk-
ovskaja (2004) rightly notes, the continued influence of the Russian Federation’s
mass media, publishing industry and popular culture in Belarus serves to some
extent to weaken the centrifugal tendencies unleashed within the language after
the break-up of the USSR.

8
http://www.diary.ru/~paradise1/ p87982583.htm
 253

Perhaps even more importantly, however, is the fact that the Soviet-era
practice of defining the Russian language solely in terms of its codified, pre-
sumably homogeneous standard variety continues to serve, in the discourses of
both the proponents of Russian and Belarusian, to delegitimize local varieties of
Russian. While we have noted that some members of the linguistic profession in
Belarus adopt a neutral or even positive stance in regard to the process of “indi-
genization” of Russian in Belarus, other equally influential voices warn of the po-
tential consequences of relaxing centralized norms and allowing the emergence
of distinct “national” varieties of Russian.
Thus, for example, Prof. Boris Norman of Belarusian State University, in a
recent interview on the Belarusian Internet news portal TUT.by (the most popu-
lar Russian-language internet news site in Belarus), while noting that the distinct
features of Belarusian Russian give it a certain “national” color, there is a “dan-
ger” that standard Russian could become fragmented in much the same way as
English if efforts are not taken to preserve its unity9:
Interviewer: What do you think about the modern language that Belaru-
sians use? I purposely don’t say what that language is, since it’s not Rus-
sian and it’s not Belarusian, but rather a sort of mixture.
BN: The people around us speak very differently. I have been living in
Belarus more than 40 years, and before that I lived in another republic of
the former Soviet Union. I try to keep my speech quite pure, when nec-
essary I also speak Belarusian. But in our country there are very few
people who clearly differentiate between these two languages. Even if a
person speaks Russian well, in his speech sooner or later Belarusian
words like ‘bul’ba’ [potatoes], ‘hrošy’ [money], ‘žonka’ [wife], ‘šyl’da’
[sign] [cf. standard Russian “kartoška”, “den’gi”, “žena”, “vyveska”] will
slip out…
There’s nothing wrong with that. It gives Russian speech a certain na-
tional and cultural color and stylistic nuance. But the language may dis-
integrate and turn into separate varieties. For example, English in those
countries where it is used (the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa) is
turning into separate so-called natiolects – national varieties of English.
This involves differences in vocabulary, grammar, and sometimes in
pronunciation and phonetics.
At present one can’t speak of Russian in this way, since we are trying to
preserve its unity.

9
Interview with Boris Norman, October 15, 2010: http://news.tut.by/200065.html)
 254

While the supporters of de facto Russian monolingualism in Belarus some-

times decry the effects of Belarusian-Russian bilingualism on Russian “language
culture,” Belarusian language advocates also employ the standard language ide-
ology’s equation of a putatively invariant standard language with “the language”
itself, maintaining that in fact, very few Belarusians, regardless of what they
themselves might believe, can be regarded as authentic Russian speakers at all.
Instead, they argue, many of those who claim to speak Russian in fact speak an
impoverished, “unnatural” hybrid, trasjanka, which is in their view neither Rus-
sian nor Belarusian.

4.4. Trasjanka: Sociolinguistic Reality and Ideological Construct

Another axiom of the national language ideology is the notion that the ar-
chetypal member of the nation is monolingual in the national language. Bilin-
gualism should not, in this view, exist at a societal level; if it does, it should
mainly serve the purpose of communication with the outside world, rather than
being characteristic of communicative repertoires within the borders of the
country. If language is viewed as a primary marker of national identity, then the
presence of bilingual populations within the country's borders represents a seri-
ous threat to the integrity of the nation.
In pro-Belarusian discourse, a common theme is the notion that the Soviet
policy of teaching Russian as a first, rather than a second language in Belarusian
schools, coupled with the dominance of Russian in virtually all spheres of public
life, had led to a situation where many people knew neither Belarusian nor Rus-
sian well, but spoke a mixed Belarusian-Russian language, trasjanka. As noted by
Cyxun (2000) and Ramza (2010), mixed Belarusian-Russian speech varieties,
which had of course existed for generations, first acquired the pejorative desig-
nation trasjanka in the late 1980s in the discourses of the national revival move-
ment under the aegis of the Belarusian National Front. Like its counterpart suržyk
in Ukraine, trasjanka as a discursive object serves primarily not merely to de-
scribe, but to stigmatize and reprove. Moreover, in the discursive practice both
of proponents of Russian linguistic dominance and of Belarusian language advo-
cates, the notion of trasjanka grew highly elastic, being applied not only to any
forms of speech that deviated in some way from standard Russian or codified li-
terary Belarusian, but in some cases even to the “Russified” post-1933 Belarusian
standard language that was used in the official Belarusian media.
Structurally, mixed Belarusian-Russian speech most commonly represents
a compromise between Belarusian (usually dialectal varieties) and Russian, with
 255

primarily Belarusian phonology and phonetics, mainly (standard or colloquial)

Russian lexicon, and inflectional morphemes and syntactic constructions derived
from both languages. It’s rather high degree of internal variation is due to the
fact that speakers of “mixed language” occupy the mesolectal range of the Bela-
rusian (dialect)-standard Russian socio-stylistic continuum, and will often vary
the relative admixture depending on the speech situation, topic and other prag-
matic factors.
The following text below is a phonetic transcription of a recording of natu-
rally-occurring speech, with its equivalents in standard Belarusian and standard
Russian, provides an example of the sort of language most Belarusians would
identify today as trasjanka, even though the inflectional morphology and vocal-
ism are closer to the Russian end of the continuum. The informant is Malaja Ber-
astavica (Hrodna region, Belarus): m., age 26, school gym teacher, recorded by
Natallia Vojšal, January 1997 (Russian-influenced lexical, morphological and
phonological variants shown in boldface):
l’ubl’u na pryrodu xadz”ic”/u l’es/u γoradz”e nadə kuda-tə jexəc”/štop
papas”c” na pryrodu/a tut iz domə vyšəl/dz”es”ac” m’inut i ty ŭže s
xlopcəm’i na z”il’onəj γork’i//tam možnə kas”c”or pəpal’ic”/i salə paža-
ryc”/ i bul’bu nap’ačy
Standard Belarusian: l’ubl’u na pryrodu xadz”ic” /u l’es/u γoradz”e tre-
ba kudys”c”i jexac”/kap patrapic” na pryrodu/a tut z domu
vyjšaŭ/dz”es”ac” xv’il’in i ty ŭžo s xlopcam’i na z”al’onaj γorcy//tam
možna voγn’išča papal’ic”/i sala pasmažyc”/ i bul’bu nap’ačy
Standard Russian: l’ubl’u nə pr’irodu xad’it’ /v l’es/v gorəd’ı nadə kuda-
tə jexət’/štoby papas’t’ nə pr’irodu /a z’d’es’ iz domə vyšəl/d’es’at’
m’inut i ty uže s r’ıb’atəm’ı nə z’ıl’onəj gork’ı//tam možnə kas’t’or
ražžeč’/i salə pažar’it’/ i kartošku zap’eč’.
[I love going to the outdoors, to the forest. In the city, you have to go
somewhere in order to get to the outdoors. Here [in the village] you go
out of the house, [walk] ten minutes and you’re already with your bud-
dies on a green hillside. There you can light a bonfire and roast some
lard and bake potatoes.]
While widespread among the rural and part of the working-class urban
population of Belarus, such “mixed speech” has become a target of stigmatiza-
tion both by educated Russian speakers and by speakers of standard Belarusian.
For educated monolingual Russophones, trasjanka is a mark of peasant origins,
limited intelligence and a general lack of culture. Likewise, for members of the
 256

Belarusophone opposition, trasjanka has become associated with a whole host of

negative traits, including not only limited intelligence, but also opportunism, ag-
gressiveness, and slavish deference to authority, among others. Lukashenko’s
Russian speech, characterized by a heavy Belarusian accent and occasional (gen-
erally pragmatically motivated) code-switches into Belarusian, has also been
mocked by the opposition, both Russian-speaking and Belarusian-speaking, as
trasjanka, and as a consequence any type of mixed language, or even merely a
strong Belarusian accent in otherwise more or less standard Russian, tends to be
iconically associated in the minds of many educated Belarusians with the Luka-
shenko regime and its supporters.
The statements in examples (17) and (18) below can be regarded as fairly
typical responses to trasjanka among members of the nationalist intelligentsia.
In such discourses, trasjanka is portrayed not only as a threat to the integrity of
the Belarusian language, but a threat to the very survival of the nation.
Probably there’s no point in explaining why in the colloquial speech of
some Belarusian citizens one encounters words that resemble Russian.
Naturally, this “dialect” becomes an object of ridicule and gives rise to
feelings of shame and offense for the “mother tongue”.
For example, the “so very russified” instead of “govorju” [standard Rus-
sian – ‘I speak’] say “havaru” [Belarusian]. And so on. Even statesmen
aren’t embarrassed to express themselves that way. The casuistry will
continue until the Belarusian language will be on the periphery, that is,
it will remain as ‘trasjanka’. [Boldface: code-switches into Belarusian]
(Vladimir Žigulev, Narodnaja Volja “Trasjanka na Vitebskix avtobusax”
25.01.2008 №11)
(18) I don’t know any country where the overwhelming majority speak
“trasjanka.” When a nation is driven into “trasjanka” it’s even more
horrible than when they are sent to the gas chamber. Because a gas
chamber is instant death, while “trasjanka” is death that is passed on
from one generation to another. (Andrej Čerkizov, Imja, July 2, 1998)
Over the last decade trasjanka has become a fixture in Belarusian alterna-
tive popular culture (both Russophone and Belarusophone), serving primarily for
humorous effect, in particular in satirical portrayals of regime spokesmen or
supporters, and even as an ideologically more neutral form of language play.
Trasjanka is, for example, a key element of the linguistic personas of the comic
characters Sasha and Sirozha, created by the artist Aleksej Xackevič and rock
musician Sergej Mixalok for the First Music Channel (the Belarusian equivalent
 257

of MTV) in 2002. However, by 2003 the duo was taken off the air in Belarus, it is
assumed because the authorities believed that Xackevič and Mixalok were mock-
ing President Lukashenko’s speech patterns and rambling rhetorical style.
The ideological connotations of trasjanka among oppositional circles are
also reflected in satirical songs featuring the characters “Saŭka” and “Hryška”
created by the well-known Belarusian-language rock singer and poet Ljavon
Vol’ski. Volski’s Saŭka and Hryška are childhood friends who have found them-
selves on opposite sides of the political barricades: Saŭka is an ardent supporter
of Lukashenko, and one recent song, serves as chairman of the local electoral
commission in the December 2010 presidential elections, while Hryška, an oppo-
sition activist, serves as an election observer.10

Saŭka (‘tras- Standard Belaru- Standard Russian English

janka’): sian
babuška xac”ela babul’a xac”ela babuškə xat’elə The grannie
wanted
prosta nam prosta nam prostə nam Simply to help us
pamoč dapamaxčy pamoč’
praγalasavala praγalasavala prəgələsavalə She voted
za syna i za doč za syna i za dačku, za synə i za doč’ For her son and
daughter
a jašče za muža a jašče za muža a jiš’:o za mužə And also for her
husband
što γot nazat uγas što γot nazat zγas što got nazat Who expired a year
ugas ago
praŭda, pačamu- praŭda, čamus”c”i pravdə, pəč’imu- It’s true, for some
ta tə reason
on f s”p’iskax jon u s”pisax jos”c” on f sp’iskəx He’s in our lists.
jes”c” u nas u nas jes’t’ u nas

Table 4: Transkaja and Belarusian as symbols of opposing political positions

In the excerpt Saŭka sings in stylized trasjanka, while Hryška, who accuses
the authorities of vote-rigging, sings in standard Belarusian (lexical Russianisms
in Saŭka’s verses are indicated in boldface, with their standard Belarusian and
Russian counterparts, also in phonetic transcription, to the right).

10
Ljavon Vol’ski: Saŭka dy Hryška: naziral’nik i staršynja. 15.12. 2010
(http://www.svaboda.org/content/article/2249584.html)
 258

The stigmatization and ideologization of mixed forms of speech, serving to

police the boundaries between standard Russian and standard Belarusian, has
been a key feature of metalinguistic discourse in Belarus over the last two dec-
ades. As noted by Ramza (2010: 114), while Belarusian language advocates be-
lieved that the stigmatization of all forms of language mixture as trasjanka would
help promote the cause of Belarusian language revival and preserve the purity of
standard Belarusian, “the effect was rather the opposite: Belarusians en masse
rejected not Russian, but the Belarusian language. In response to the question
“Why don’t you speak Belarusian?” one of the most popular answers is “I don’t
want to speak trasjanka.” Trasjanka as a discursive construct is thus a key means
of maintaining the existing language regime in Belarus, where Russian and Bela-
rusian are regarded by many members of the educated elite as mutually exclu-
sive codes. This impedes the institutionalization of a nativized form of standard
Russian (along the lines, say, of Scottish standard English in the case of Scotland),
while the possibility of educated Russian speakers shifting to Belarusian is con-
strained by linguistic insecurity associated with the stigma of speaking trasjanka.

5. Summary
An objective analysis of the language situation in Belarus leads one to con-
clude that Russian is not merely a second state language, but has clearly become
the functionally primary language for most Belarusians, with standard Belaru-
sian playing clearly marginal role. At the same time, there are significant ideolo-
gical constraints on Belarusians’ subjective identification with the Russian lan-
guage as opposed to Belarusian. While much of the population of Belarus could
be said to constitute part of a larger multi-national Russian speech community,
at the same time, within the country’s borders we can speak of the existence of a
distinct Russo-Belarusian national speech community, in which both Russian
(and its nativized varieties) as well as standard Belarusian, and even the mixed
varieties known as trasjanka all have their own, albeit unequal, roles in the local
linguistic market.
Yet there are powerful external pressures for making Belarus fit the expec-
ted pattern the nationalizing state.After all, no political entity on the European
continent that has dindependences in ce the early 20th century has attempted to
build a nation without promoting the use of a distinct national language. While
perhaps the EU could easily accept Belarus as an independent, but largely Rus-
sian-speaking country, the Belarusian language, at least as a symbol, if not as a
fully-developed medium of everyday communication, serves an important ideo-
 259

logical function in Belarus by allowing the country to conform, at least to some

extent. the dominant nation-state paradigm of “one language – one nation – one
state” and to counter the claims of Russian irredentists, both in Russia and in
Belarus itself. The supportes of Russia view the dominance of the Russian lan-
guage in Belarus as proof that it is an integral and inalienable part of the Russian
world and thus rightfully belongs exclusively within the Russian political, cul-
tural and economic spheres of influence.
At the same time, as long as the Belarusian standard language is regarded
by a majority of Belarusians as the primary linguistic marker of Belarusian na-
tional distinctiveness, even if its use in everyday communication remains lim-
ited, it is unlikely that there will be sufficient commitment to the codification of
an endonormative Belarusian national variety of Russian. Moreover, the size, ge-
ographical proximity and economic power of the Russian Federation and its do-
minant role in the Russian-language media market, along with persisting notions
of the Russian language’s fundamental normative unity, will undoubtedly also
serve to slow the development of officially recognized national varieties of Russ-
ian in Belarus and other parts of the post-Soviet region.

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Domergue SUMIEN
Aix-en-Provence, Occitania (France)
d.sumien@yahoo.com

Occitan:
Harmonizing non-dominant standards
throughout four states

Abstract

Occitan is split into four states: France (“Midi”), Italy (Occitan Valleys), Spain
(Aran Valley) and Monaco. Due to pressures from French, Spanish, and
Italian, language attrition has been strong. Recent advances in status
planning have compensated little: Occitan has been official in Spain since
1990 and protected in Italy since 1999. Corpus planning has made Occitan
quite a modern language in the expression of contemporaneous life.
However, Standard Occitan is not complete yet. The current issue is: how to
connect local Occitan varieties of Spain and Italy with the ongoing
standardization in France? Authorities of Aran Valley have been considering
this question since 2009. There seems to be a need to build a harmonized,
pluricentric Standard Occitan, including the pre-existing regional koines and
the recently promoted varieties of Spain and Italy.

1. Introduction
Occitan, also called Lenga d’Òc1 or Provençal2 (native names: occitan, lenga
d’òc, provençal/provençau) is a Romance language located in the heart of the
Romance language countries. The territory where Occitan is spoken is called
Occitania (in Occitan: Occitània) and currently spreads over four states. This
implies four differing configurations of the language conflict and differing

1
In English use, since we deal with exotic, non-adapted forms, the autochthonous
name Lenga d’Òc should be preferred to the French name *Langue d’Oc (see Kyrgyz
vs. Kirghiz, Duala vs. Douala, Siswati vs. Swazi).
2
The name Provençal may refer to Occitan as a whole or, more often, to a southeast
dialect of Occitan spoken in Provence. By the way, Francoprovençal is a misleading
name that refers to an entirely different language, independent from
Provençal/Occitan.
 264

dynamics for standardization. A growing need for harmonization has been

expressed in recent years. Political divisions are as follows:

1. The most important part of Occitania is mainly found in the south of France.
It is called Greater Occitania (Occitània Granda) or more popularly the Miègjorn
[Midi]3, “the South”. The recognition of minority languages in France is still
an ideological deadlock,4 contrasting sharply with the easier acceptance of
language diversity in most European democracies. Occitan may be taught
optionally in certain schools in France, with many difficulties, and holds a
marginal place in some regional media. Since the beginning of the 20th
century, French has become the overwhelmingly dominant language, not
only because French is prestigious, but also, and especially, because of an
aggressive policy that punished the use of Occitan in schools from the 1880s
to the 1950s. Occitan remains in use in some families and networks of
activists, but is hardly heard in public.
2. The Occitan Valleys (Valadas Occitanas) belong to Italy and encompass fourteen
valleys in the southern Alps.5 Occitan, albeit not an official language, has

3
Terms and proper names concerning Occitania are presented as follows. When there
is a true anglicized form: English form (Occitan form). When there is no explicit,
English form: Occitan form [French, Italian or Spanish form]. This display should help
readers interested in further search.
4
Boyer (2000)
5
Not to be confused with the Aosta Valley, located further north and outside Occitania.
 265

been listed as a protected language since 1999 thanks to Law no. 482, Norms in
Matter of Protection of Historical Language Minorities. As such, Occitan enjoys
some public support from many quiet communities6 and from the region of
Piedmont. Occitan was occasionally used during the 2006 Winter Olympic
Games in Turin, since most venues lay in the Occitan Valleys. Standard
Italian has become the dominant language and, besides, Piedmontese7 has
also spread to the low valleys. However, a large part of the population still
speaks or understands Occitan.
3. Aran Valley or simply Aran (Val d’Aran, Aran), in the Pyrenees, isf to Spain and
to the autonomous community of Catalonia. Since 1990, Occitan has been a
co-official language in the valley, in addition to Spanish and Catalan, thanks
to a local, semi-autonomous status Catalonia afforded Aran (Aran Valley
Special Regime). Since then, additional Catalan measures have strengthened
the official use of Occitan (Language Policy Law in 1998, renewed Statute of
Autonomy of Catalonia in 2006; Law of Occitan, Aranese in Aran in 2010). The law
of 2010 made Occitan an official language not only in Aran but throughout
the autonomous community of Catalonia.8 In 2008, the common languages of
Aranese people were Spanish (38%), followed by Occitan (23.4%) and Catalan
(16%).9
4. The city of Mónegue [Monaco]10 forms an independent state within Occitania.
It has two traditional languages, Occitan and Ligurian,11 the latter forming a
linguistic enclave in Occitania.12 The dominant and only official language has
been French since the 1850s.13 Since 1976, the Ligurian local variety, called
Munegascu [Monégasque],14 has been taught in all primary schools.
Nevertheless, neither Ligurian nor Occitan are official. The state supports

6
Including the remote Occitan-speaking enclave of La Gàrdia [Guardia Piemontese], in
Calabria.
7
Piedmontese belongs to the so called North(ern) Italian or Padanian, whose exact
classification remains unclear (part of Italian or distinct Romance language).
8
In 2011, however, the Spanish Government and the Constitutional Court of Spain
rejected some aspects of the Law of Occitan. The contested part is the “preferred”
use of Occitan in Aran, in relation to Spanish.
9
Generalitat de Catalunya (2010:24)
10
In Occitan Mónegue, in Ligurian Múnegu.
11
Ligurian, like Piedmontese, belongs to North Italian.
12
Nearby communities - including Menton - speak Occitan. For the coexistence of
Ligurian and Occitan in Mónegue, see Tourtoulon (1890:164-165) and Arveiller
(1964:§1).
13
Arveiller (1967:§144)
14
In Ligurian munegascu, in Occitan monegasc. In fact, it would be accurate to
distinguish between Monegasc Ligurian and Monegasc Occitan (Sumien 2009a:29).
 266

descriptive research concerning Ligurian and Occitan but does not support
any decisive status planning in their favor.
There are six main Occitan varieties (dialects) which have always been
mutually intelligible, as reported by historical witnesses.15
1. Gascon in the southwest, around Bordèu [Bordeaux], Baiona [Bayonne]
and Pau. It includes two subdialects which play a role in standardization:
Bearnese (bearnés) in Bearn, around Pau, and Aranese (aranés) in Aran
Valley.16
2. Lemosin in the northwest, around Lemòtges [Limoges].
3. Auvernhat in the center-north, around Clarmont-Ferrand [Clermont-
Ferrand].
4. Vivaro-Alpine (vivaroalpenc/vivaroaupenc) in the northeast, around
Valença [Valence] and Gap. The subvariety of the Occitan Valleys, in
Italy, is called Cisalpine (cisalpenc)17 or East Alpine (alpenc oriental).18
5. Provençal (in local Occitan: provençau) in the southeast, around Nimes
[Nîmes], Avinhon [Avignon], Ais de Provença [Aix-en-Provence],
Marselha [Marseille] and Tolon [Toulon]. It includes the Niçard
subdialect, spoken around Niça [Nice], which plays a distinct role in
standardization.
6. Lengadocian19 in a central area, around Tolosa [Toulouse] and
Montpelhièr [Montpellier].
Occitan’s closest relative is Catalan (and not French, contrary to what is
often believed).20 Together, Occitan and Catalan form a common diasystem or a
common Abstand language.21 Catalan slowly began to evolve as an independent,
Ausbau language in the late 13th century but both languages have always kept
strong ties: they still enjoy a certain level of mutual intelligibility.
15
Ronjat (1930-1941:§1), Merle (1977:passim)
16
Gascon has original features and some authors suggest that it could be a separate
language. But this is at odds with compelling facts: (a) nearly all local, cultural
movements view Gascon as Occitan; (b) nearly all specialists view it as Occitan
(Kremnitz 2002:110); (c) language laws for Aran recognize it as Occitan.
17
Lafont (1972)
18
Comission Internacionala. (2008).
19
I prefer Occitan dialect names or, when they exist, anglicized names (Bearnese,
Aranese, Vivaro-Alpine). The following French names are not suitable for English use:
*béarnais, *limousin, *auvergnat, *vivaro-alpin, *niçois, *languedocien.
20
The legend that presents Lenga d’Òc and Langue d’Oïl as parts of a greater “French”
superlanguage has no scientific basis. It is an ideological concept of French
nationalism from the 19th century; see Sumien (2006:122-123).
21
For the concepts of Abstand language and Ausbau language, and their application to
Occitan and Catalan, see Kloss (1978:23-30).
 267

The use of Occitan has dwindled dramatically since the early 20th century.
Various surveys indicate that the 15 or 16 million inhabitants of Occitania, about
3 million can speak Occitan and, among them, maybe 0.5 million speak it daily.22
Occitan has tended to acquire a slightly better image during the last decades23
thanks to the impact of many cultural initiatives but diglossic prejudices remain
strong.
Lenga d’Òc fist emerged in the 7th or the 8th century. From the 10th to the
th
15 centuries, it used to have important functions, be extremely prestigious and
was even a support for poetry and administration in foreign countries. From the
15th century onwards, it suffered an increasing diglossia, mostly because of
political reasons that favored the prestige of French and, peripherally, Italian
and Spanish.
This implied Frenchified forms in spoken and written Occitan.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of the population continued to speak Occitan in
daily life until the early 20th century. Occitan literature has been uninterrupted
for more than one thousand years. Its best known authors are the trobadors
[troubadours] (12th-13th centuries), Nobel Prize winner Frederic Mistral [Frédéric
Mistral] (1830-1914) and more recent writers such as Robèrt Lafont [Robert
Lafont] (1923-2009). The later was also a prominent sociolinguist, a polymath and
an intellectual leader of Occitanism (the movement that supports Occitan).
In spite of the decline, there is a constant, renewed network of speakers.
They include active creators in nearly all current genres of music and literature.
The main problem is their lack of a global strategy, due partly to a diglossic,
untold self-censorship and a naive vision of the language conflict.24 They obtain
insufficient results on Fishman’s scale concerning the reversing of language shift
(RLS).25 They rely excessively on goals like teaching the language or obtaining its
official recognition. According to Fishman, such goals can be achieved efficiently
only after having previously consolidated a strategy based on family transmission
and neighborhoods (or networks) of speakers.

7. The first wave: emerging koines (1850s-1990s)

A first wave of corpus planning began in the 1850s and stopped more or

22
Carrera (2011:25-31), Martel (2007)
23
Média Pluriel Méditerranée (1998)
24
Sumien (2007a). For a general discussion on language conflict, see Boyer (1991 &
1996).
25
Fishman (1991), Roux-Chateaureynaud (2009)
 268

less in the 1990s. It consisted in loosely building converging regional koines and
in finding ideal spellings. During the 19th century, Occitania, like other European
countries, was involved in the Romantic trend of reviving minority languages.
The Felibritge, a cultural movement for the promotion of Occitan, appeared
in 1854 and launched the first successful attempt to codify the language. It
adopted a Frenchified spelling that was designed by writer Josèp Romanilha
[Joseph Roumanille] as early as 1852. It was connected with an emerging, literary
koine, based on the Provençal dialect, since the Felibritge originated from
Provence. Spoken prescriptions included Frenchified forms and restored forms.
In the Felibritge, writer Frederic Mistral rapidly gained a wide literary success
and produced a monumental dictionary,26 in such a way that Romanilha’s
spelling was called the Mistralian writing system (grafia mistralenca).27 In its
prescriptive dimension, we will call it the Mistralian spelling (ortografia mistralenca)
and, if we include spoken prescriptions, the Mistralian norm (nòrma mistralenca).
This system spread to all dialects in the late 19th century.
Simultaneously, during the 19th century, a minority trend preferred to use
the more genuine classical writing system (grafia classica) that had characterized
Medieval Occitan, that was not Frenchified and that, in addition, was close to
Catalan. For example, let us take the following sentence: “The strength of will is
the best solution to win”. It is pronounced in Provençal: [la ˈfɔʀsɔ de la vuluⁿˈta
ˈez la meˈjurɔ sulyˈsjuⁿ peʀ gaˈɲa]. It is written in classical spelling: La fòrça de la
volontat es la melhora solucion per ganhar. In Mistralian spelling: La forço de la
voulounta es la meiouro soulucion pèr gagna.
Supporters of the classical system became more active in the late 19th and
the early 20th centuries, backed by the success of the Catalan revival. In 1935,
grammarian Loís Alibèrt [Louis Alibert] wrote an Occitan grammar book based on
Lengadocian (Gramatica occitana segon los parlars lengadocians), in the classical
system, with a precise codification. This was the foundation of the current,
classical norm (nòrma classica). It consists in a more stable orthography which
seeks dia-sistematicity (converging spellings for differing, dialectal
pronunciations). Oral prescriptions avoid more Gallicisms and precisely restore
the Occitan way of shaping learned words from Latin and Greek. Alibèrt’s system
was progressively adapted to other dialects, especially in the 1950s-1960s, and

26
Mistral (1879-1886)
27
Correspondences between the current classical norm and the <Mistralian norm>:
Felibritge <Felibrige>, Josèp Romanilha <Jóusè Roumaniho>, Frederic Mistral
<Frederi Mistral>, grafia mistralenca <grafìo mistralenco>.
 269

gained success among young authors. It received the support of the Occitan
Studies Institute (Institut d’Estudis Occitans, IEO), founded in 1945.
Since the 1960s, the classical norm has been used in a majority of cases. In
Provence, however, the Mistralian norm remains in use in addition to the
classical one. This competition has caused some harsh and intricate disputes
among certain activists.28 A few, extra, competing norms have even appeared
since the early 1970s but they are now limited to only a small audience.29 The
classical norm, itself, has suffered several individual attempts to reform. We may
analyze all these conflicts and reforms as an illusionary quest for the perfect
spelling and as an unconscious denial of the real issue: how can we strengthen
the social use of the language and, thus, how can we guarantee a stable standard
for such a goal? This kind of problem peaked from the mid 1970s to the early
1990s and caused a general crisis of Occitanism (ongoing decline of the language,
loss of social perspectives, crisis of the 1968 generation that dominated
Occitanism). To a certain extent, this crisis ended in the early 1990s thanks to
new opportunities (better statuses in Spain and in Italy, new generations of
activists, new trends in creation and teaching, incipient professionalism).30 This
first wave of corpus planning was excessively focused on graphization and not
enough on proper standardization. This was at odds with the universal trends in
corpus planning: normally, graphization should be nothing but a technical stage
in order to consolidate a standard language and enable it to increase functions.31
This insistence on graphization did not help a standard to emerge but, at
least, regional koines were made possible thanks to cultural creativeness.
 Based on the Provençal variety, a koine appeared thanks to Mistral and the
Felibritge. Since the second half of the 20th century, it has been developed and
enhanced by writers of the classical norm, including Robèrt Lafont.
 The Niçard sub-variety of Provençal has been the center of a distinct koine
from the late 19th century onwards. Its promoters do not want to depend on

28
Some “Mistralians”, since the 1970s, have pretended that “Provençal” (which they
confuse with the Mistralian norm) would not pertain to “Occitan” (which they confuse
with the classical norm). This opinion is contrary to the unitary vision of Frederic
Mistral himself. It is rejected by all serious specialists and by the regional council of
Provence; see Conseil régional… (2003).
29
For instance: (a) the Escòla dau Pò norm, used partially in the Occitan Valleys; (b)
the Bonaudian norm, designed by Piare Bonaud [Pierre Bonnaud] for Auvernhat and
associated with language secessionism. Both systems coexist with the classical norm.
30
Sumien (2006:33-34)
31
Haugen (1983)
 270

the general, Provençal koine because of the strong identity of the former
County of Niça (from 1388 to 1860, it depended on Savoy-Sardinia).
 The Gascon variety has become, mostly through its Bearnese variety, the object
of active literature since the late 19th century, thanks to writers first using the
Mistralian system and later, the classical.
 In the late 19th century, authors using the Lemosin variety progressively
developed a regional koine and in the 20th century increasingly adopted the
classical system.
 The Lengadocian variety has developed into a regional koine more or less in
the same conditions as Lemosin. Alibèrt’s grammar has reinforced this koine.
The remaining dialects, Auvernhat and Vivaro-Alpine, have also
participated in the literary revival but their writers have not converged in any
koine. It has to be noted that, in all dialects, certain authors still reject the koines
and prefer to cultivate some extremely local subdialects. The lack of perspectives
in large-scale communication explains this parochial vision of the language.

8. The second wave: toward a Standard Occitan (since the 1970s)

A second wave of corpus planning started in the early 1970s and consists
in consciously conceiving a Standard Occitan. It has produced some consistent
theories, has influenced the revived use of the language in part but has not
finished yet. This lengthy process is due to the aforementioned crisis of
Occitanism (mid 1970s-early 1990s), the general lack of perspectives and the
general indifference of political authorities. Moreover, it has to be said that
certain Occitan language planners are not that interested in international
research on sociolinguistics. This can be linked with the unfavorable terrain for
sociolinguistics and for Occitan studies in Occitan universities (where
departments devoted to French often monopolize the meager financial
resources) (Sumien, 2007a). Despite such a difficult situation, Standard Occitan
has still developed as follows:
Linguist Pèire Bèc [Pierre Bec] exposed in 1972 (Bèc, 1972) the first,
outspoken proposal for a Standard Occitan, which he prefers to call Referential
Occitan (occitan referencial) . 32 It has to be based essentially on Lengadocian
because this dialect is an intermediary between the others. Bèc justifies his
choice by subtly explaining how the Occitan diasystem works. This proposal (Bèc,

32
Several authors distinguish a referencial variety (a proposal for a standard) and a
standard variety (an effective standard that really fulfills the highest communication
functions). See Teulat (1975).
 271

1973) is clearly compatible with the cultivation of regional koines. Bèc himself is
not only a linguist but a reputable writer in Gascon. Several authors have backed
Bèc’s proposal since the 1970s. Sociolinguist and writer Robèrt Lafont (1972:67-
71; 1984) simultaneously promoted the Lengadocian-based standard and a
standardizing version of the Provençal koine. He clearly expressed the need for
regional standards connected with the general standard. In 1975, linguist Gerard
Gonfroy published a Lemosin dictionary (Gonfroy, 1975) that outspokenly
connected the Lemosin koine with the general standard.
Since the 1970s, linguists Rogièr Teulat [Roger Teulat] and Jacme Taupiac
[Jacques Taupiac] have made interesting proposals in order to develop the
Lengadocian-based, general standard. Besides their positive work, they have also
launched massive reform attempts that were not always necessary.33 Taupiac has
actively promoted the term Standard Occitan (occitan estandard).
During the late 1980s and the 1990s, in an attempt to find solutions to the
never-ending reforms, linguist Patric Sauzet [Patrick Sauzet] published several
papers and booklets (Sauzet 1985, 1990) in order to further consolidate the
general standard and the classical norm. In the early 1990s, he launched the term
Wide Occitan (occitan larg) as a more acceptable synonym for Standard Occitan. He
clearly stated that the Lengadocian-based, general standard is compatible with
regional adaptations, called regional standards (estandards regionals).
In 1996-1997, language planners from different trends accepted to work
together and founded the Occitan Language Council (Conselh de la Lenga Occitana,
CLO). They resolved annoying discrepancies and restored the main, initial
choices of Alibèrt, accepting only slight reform proposals.34 Unfortunately, the
CLO has been harmed by hostile behaviors since 2002.35 The CLO has been a
milestone and, in general accordance with its views, several works have been
published, since the mid-1990s, in order to support standardization:
1. A comprehensive guide of the verbal system in the general standard.36
2. Two grammars close to a foreseeable, Gascon regional standard.37
3. A dictionary and a grammar close to a foreseeable, Provençal, regional

33
Sumien (2006:69-73)
34
Sumien (2007b)
35
Intricate negotiations have occurred since 2002 concerning the institutional evolution
(or death?) of the CLO. They have taken place, since 2009, in the Prefigurative
Association for the Regulating Organism of Lenga d’Òc (APORLÒC).
36
Sauzet & Ubaud (1995)
37
Bianchi & Viaut (1995), Romieu & Bianchi (2005)
 272

standard (though they do not express this goal).38 The dictionary in question
is worthy of mention for its superior quality in lexicography.
4. A PhD thesis where I sum up the previous advances and propose a
comprehensive scheme for a pluricentric Standard Occitan.39
In the latter work, I suggest comprehending the following issue. When we
take into account the views of cultural activists, the six main dialects would tend
to produce, quite surprisingly, seven regional standards (since Niçard would be
distinct from general Provençal). However, there is a gap between those views
and the real advance of the work:
1. Only four regional koines are advanced enough to be quickly converted into
standards: Provençal, Gascon, Lemosin and Lengadocian.
2. One regional koine is mid-advanced and might end in a standard: Niçard.
3. Two varieties are still far from working as koines and standards: Auvernhat
and Vivaro-Alpine. Their users do not consider the possibility of adopting the
already existing koines based on other varieties.
Seven regional standards: This seems to be an excessive number for a
language like Occitan, which it is not widespread and lacks sufficient resources to
succeed in restoring each dialect (on the contrary, the nondominant standards of
German, Spanish or English are based on solid practices and larger populations).
Only a few minority languages, like Sami or Berber, consider assuming as many
regional standards as seven but they have to deal with a much greater dialectal
diversity. Therefore, a realistic solution for Occitan could be the following:
a) The unavoidable, seven varieties have to be recognized in Standard
Occitan-or Wide Occitan-because otherwise cultural activists would not accept it.
In other words, Standard Occitan has to include the general modality (based on
Lengadocian) and regional modalities (Gascon, Lemosin, Auvernhat, Vivaro-
Alpine, Niçard and Provençal).
b) In compensation, the seven modalities need simple harmonization rules,
thanks to a simplified system of correspondences, based on diasystematicity. It
should help speakers to switch easily from one modality to another.

38
Lèbre & al. (2004), Martin & Molin (1998)
39
Sumien (2006)
 273

9. Possible, new substandards (since the 1990s)?

Since the 1990s, a possible third wave of corpus planning may have
started, though in a very indirect and undeclared manner. It is linked to the
promotion of Occitan in Aran and the Occitan Valleys, two “peripheries” that
have become “central” from the point of view of status planning.
(1) Aranese - In Aran Valley (Catalonia, Spain), Aranese has taken advantage
of its increasing, official use. Locally, it is labeled Aranese or Occitan and, more
rarely, Gascon. During the 1980s, Aranese authors abandoned their previous ways
of writing (that was a variable mix of classical, Mistralian, Spanish and Catalan
habits). A quite consistent use of the classical spelling was adapted to Aranese in
a 1982 document (later renewed in 1999 with an explicit reference to the CLO).40
Aranese spelling is now fairly efficient, even if some details could be treated
more diasystematically.41

40
Comission entar… (1982), Aran-Conselh Generau (1999)
41
Especially: intervocalic v (better than u), -as ending (better than -es), -òu ending
 274

Beyond graphization, prescriptions for spoken Occitan have consisted in

the use of local Aranese. The already existing Gascon koine, based on Bearnese,
has never found any use in Aran. This is due to three factors: (a) the exceptional
status planning in Aran, contrasting sharply with the institutional backwardness
in France, including Bearn; (b) the enhancement of modern communications
toward Spain and Catalonia, somewhat isolating Aran from the rest of Occitania;
(c) a parochial vision among certain activists on both Bearnese and Aranese sides.
This relative isolation has led the Aranese to tolerate too many borrowings
from Spanish and Catalan, especially in daily life neologisms. Their use of learned
words from Latin and Greek follows more or less the prescriptions of Alibèrt and
the CLO, but with involuntary mistakes.
Thanks to its promotion, Aranese has worked for twenty years as an
emerging, codified variety of Occitan. It has become an interesting means for
many people to discover the entire Occitan language. Above all, it is the only
Occitan variety that enjoys a daily, official use. In theory, this could lead Aranese
to become a new regional standard. However, this has not occurred yet because
the morphology and the lexicon (and even some spelling details) are not stable
enough. Unnecessary calques of Catalan or Spanish remain too frequent.42
Additionally, Aran Valley has a reduced, demographic basis of 10 000 inhabitants
that prevent Aranese from becoming a working standard in the rest of Occitania.
In 2008, Catalan authorities created a commission of language advisors by
calling on specialists from all regions of Occitania, called the Group of Occitan
Linguistics (Grop de Lingüistica Occitana, GLO). This initiative has produced several
publications in two varieties labelled Aranese Occitan (occitan aranés) and General
Occitan (occitan general, i.e. Lengadocian-based). Interestingly, this reveals new
representations. Aranese and Catalan authorities, as they develop the official use
of Occitan, need to better connect Aranese with the ongoing standardization of
the whole language.
(2) Cisalpine - The Occitan Valleys (Italy) are a territory where Cisalpine or
East Alpine, a hetereogeneous subdialect of Vivaro-Alpine, is spoken.43 The
promotion of Occitan, with the unassertive help of Law no. 482, can be noticed in
emblematic Occitan names on trademarks and public inscriptions, in teaching

(better than -ò). See Carrera (2007:37-38).

42
Carrera (2010)
43
Some localities in the deep southeast, on the Italian-French border, are the territory
of an interesting, peripheral variety called Roiasc and including Brigasc. It is a
transitional dialect between Occitan and Ligurian. For its sociolinguistic inclusion in
Occitan, see Sumien (2009a:27-28 / 38-39).
 275

initiatives for voluntary learners and in a dynamic creation in music and

literature. There is no official, mandatory use of the language, contrary to what
happens in Aran. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is no available, local
standard. We have seen above that Vivaro-Alpine in general, on both the French
and Italian sides, has not evolved yet to a koine or a standard. However, several
attempts are worthy of mention: In 1996, writer Pèire Eiriçon, from the French
side, designed an embryonic regional standard in his novel Los Romieus delà l’Aiga;
in 2006, I have proposed guidelines for a Vivaro-Alpine modality of Standard
Occitan.44
The Occitan Valleys seem to advance toward codification at their own
pace. The classical writing system was in use in the Middle Ages, especially in the
local Valdesian church, during the 15th century. But diglossia limited the
opportunities of a written or learned use of Occitan from the 16th century on. The
literary revival was slow and developed mostly in the second half of the 20th
century. There were many local, original intents of graphization until the 1980s.
However, since the 1990s, only two norms have been selected by activists: the
classical norm, which enjoys a growing acceptance, and the Escòla dau Pò norm.
This is due to the new trends of Occitanism since the 1990s, to the intense work
of association Chambra d’Òc and to the admitted need for easier, written
communications with the rest of Occitania. Regular cultural contacts even exist,
now, between the Occitan Valleys and Aran Valley (and Catalonia).
This new situation has led activists and some local authorities (including
the region of Piedmont) to create an International Commission for the Linguistic
Normalization of Alpine Occitan (Comission Internacionala per la Normalizacion
Linguística de l’Occitan Alpin). This working group produced a useful spelling guide
in 2008,45 but it was strictly limited to spelling issues. It contains a majority of
very good proposals but also, a few infringements of the already existing classical
spelling.46 The guide does not deal with the codification of spoken forms,
especially of learned words originating from Latin and Greek. It does also not tell
people how to select words and constructs. Many words, therefore, are displayed
together with local variants and include Italianized forms of Frenchified
variants.47

44
Sumien (2006)
45
Comission Internacionala… (2008)
46
Examples of infrigements: verb endings -an and -on are merged into -on, the verb
ending -io is changed into *-iu, the personal pronoun ieu “me” is changed into *iu.
47
The presence of Frenchified variants, in this territory under Italian administration, is
due to the former French domination in certain valleys.
 276

The project of a Vivaro-Alpine standard seems not feasible or has to be

postponed. I assume that this is only provisional. The Occitan Valleys seem to be
more or less at the same stage as Aran during the 1980s: “classicist” graphization
as the only goal. In the near future, if Cisalpine people or Italian authorities
enhance the status of Occitan, a practical need for standardization might emerge
quite fast.

10. Scenarios for the foreseeable future

Forthcoming evolutions could occur somewhere between a worst-case
scenario and a hopeful scenario. A mix of events from both scenarios is likely.
(1) Worst-case scenario - Occitan may disappear in France and Mónegue
because of the unequal struggle against French and the fierce, French language
ideology (called unilinguism by Boyer).48 Occitan could remain as a weird object of
cultivation for a reduced, learned elite, as it is the case nowadays for Latin or
Esperanto. Therefore, standardization could become useless or ultra-theoretical,
as no actual communication in Occitan would be required.
In Italy, Occitan could survive thanks to the dynamism of local cultural
activists and with the little help provided by Law no. 482. A local standard may
even emerge, perhaps too late, but it would be strictly limited to the Occitan
Valleys and disconnected from the rest of the language even from the rest of
Vivaro-Alpine. Thus, Cisalpine Occitan could follow nothing but Italian patterns.
In Spain, Aranese Occitan could survive thanks to its official status, but it
would not overcome the dominance of Catalan and Spanish. Aranese could
receive further corpus planning and unexpectedly become the only working
standard variety of Occitan. Nevertheless, it would be more and more
disconnected from the rest of the language. It would strictly follow Catalan and
Spanish patterns. Greater Occitania would disappear and become an ocean of
language death, a totally French-speaking “Midi”. However, some tenuous
cultural exchanges might continue to exist between Aran and the Occitan
Valleys, but nobody would consider harmonizing the corpuses of Aranese and
Cisalpine.
(2) Hopeful scenario - Occitan might resist language shift in France and
Mónegue if Occitanists work hard to apply Fishman’s strategy that consists in
reversing language shift (RLS; passing first by the intergenerational transmission
of the language and by neighborhoods or networks of complete speakers). In

48
Boyer (2000)
 277

time, this could help to improve social functions of the language and, after heroic
struggles, a legal protection or even an officialization. At each stage of this
hopeful scenario, people would express a growing need for Standard Occitan-
with regional, pluricentric modalities-in order to fulfill the new functions.
In Italy, thanks to language activists, Occitan might go beyond its current
legal protection and obtain the status of an official language, as it is the case in
Aran - or as it is the case, somewhere else in Italy, for German and Ladin (South
Tirol). This better status would speed up the demand for standardization. In the
best case, clear-sighted corpus planners would undertake connecting Cisalpine
with the rest of Vivaro-Alpine and with the rest of Occitan. They could construct
a solid, Vivaro-Alpine, regional standard, available for the Italian and the French
sides of the Vivaro-Alpine lands.
In Spain, the status of Occitan might progress further thanks to the will of
Aranese people and Aranese authorities, with the help of Catalonia. Corpus
planning would confirm the recent concern for a better connection between
Aranese and Standard Occitan. The Gascon modality of Standard Occitan could be
involved.49 In a wider perspective, Standard Occitan and Standard Catalan could
even try to evolve closer. The global result would end in a pluricentric, Standard
Occitan, working like a coherent machine. The central piece of the machine,
General Standard Occitan (based on Lengadocian), would be a default modality
when no particular, regional flavor is needed. Regional modalities (Gascon
Standard Occitan, Lemosin S.O., Auvernhat S.O., Vivaro-Alpine S.O., Provençal
S.O., Niçard S.O.) would be used in regional contexts, all being interconnected
with General Standard Occitan. Aranese and, if required, Cisalpine could form
codified varieties whose elaboration would follow the unitary solutions of
Standard Occitan-especially in style and neology-instead of calquing Spanish,
Catalan and Italian patterns.

11. What could Standard Occitan look like?

In evolutionary phonetics, quite regular correspondences already exist
between the dialects. They have to become more systematic and the different
regional modalities of Standard Occitan easier to handle. E.g. the key l~u in
ostal~ostau “house”, the key f~h in fèsta~hèsta “party”, the key ca~cha in
cantar~chantar “to sing”. In phonetics (orthoepy and reading rules),
correspondences between dialects are quite regular and can become systematic

49
Sumien (2009b)
 278

in Standard Occitan. E.g. maquina [maˈkinɔ ~ maˈkina ~ maˈkjinɔ] “machine”. See

in English offer [ˈɔːfəɹ, ˈɑːfəɹ] (American) ~ [ˈɒfə] (British). The classical spelling is
quite unified since Alibèrts’s grammar of 1935. Little has to be done in order to
obtain an even more diasystematic orthography. E.g. the current hesitation
between quauquarren (Gascon use) and quauqua ren (Provençal use) “something”
could move easily toward quauquarren. See in English the ongoing spread of the
spellings program and disk versus programme and disc.
In syntax and morphosyntax, convergence is already very strong between
the dialects. In Standard Occitan, the main goal is to combine all regional
modalities, all syntactical constructs whenever possible. E.g. the gerund patterns
en parlant, parlant, en parlar, en tot parlar “talking”.
In lexicon, interdialectal convergence is already strong concerning
frequent words. The issue is now to combine all regional modalities, all words of
traditional use. E.g. quicòm/quauquarren “something”, demorar/restar “to stay”,
jorn/dia “day”, auton/tardor/agòr “autumn”. See English autumn/fall, truck/lorry,
store/shop. Only a few words that fulfill intense grammatical functions could not
be combined everywhere, since they would too radically change the general
aspect of certain regional modalities. E.g. plan~ben “well” (in this sense, plan
cannot be accepted in eastern modalities like Provençal).
In functional morphology, where the dialects are already quite
convergent, correspondences have to become more simple and more systematic
at the standard level. E.g. pensi~pense~penso “I think”. See Standard Catalan
penso~pense~pens~pensi “I think”. See also English fit-fit-fit (American) ~ fit-fitted-
fitted (British).

12. Conclusion
The near future is hard to predict because of two simultaneous,
contradicting trends. On the one hand, Occitan continues to lose primary
speakers and is heard less and less, in such a way that pluricentric
standardization might look like a futile project, before the language dies. On the
other hand, over the two last decades, Occitan has made significant progress in
status and corpus planning that nobody would have dreamed of before. So new,
unexpected victories are not impossible in the near future and standardization
might find an increasing utility. In the hopeful scenario, trends toward a better
harmonization, in corpus planning, could lead to a harmonized, pluricentric
Standard Occitan, available for everybody, for all new functions and easy to
handle from one region to another.
 279

Subordinated languages and established languages seem to have differing

issues concerning pluricentricity. Status may influence the type of boundary
between differing standards.
 In subordinated languages like Occitan, Catalan, Berber or Sami, regional
standards seem to be based on regions or dialects. No strong power
guarantees a uniform standard within one state (e.g. the regional standards of
Occitan within France, the regional standards of Catalan within Spain).
 In established languages, non-dominant standards seem to be based rather on
state boundaries, for instance in German (Austrian German vs. German
German) or in Spanish (Bolivian Spanish vs. Spanish Spanish).
 There seems to be two levels of problems concerning dominant versus non-
dominant varieties: one level between two distinct languages in conflict,
another level within a same language.
 In a subordinated language, the question of a possible “domination” between
regional standards is not the main issue. Domination has to be considered,
first, in the perspective of the language conflict, between the subordinated
language as a whole (including all its possible regional standards or all its
dialects) and the dominant language as a whole. French as a whole dominates
Occitan (no matter if it is Auvernhat Occitan or General Occitan).
 In an established language, problems of domination are quite different.
Belgian Dutch has to struggle for more recognition but its existence is not
threatened by the Dutch of the Netherlands.
 Codification initiatives may have differing constraints in relation to the
status.
 In some subordinated languages, some sectors seem to look for common
codification bodies in order to compensate the lack of social pressure and the
risk of dislocation. E.g. the Occitan Language Council (CLO) for Occitan as a
whole, the Catalan Studies Institute (IEC) for Catalan as a whole.50
 In established languages, conversely, codification bodies tend to be multiplied
in relation to different states. They may be loosely co-ordinated (Association
of Spanish Language Academies, ASALE), independent or even non-existent

50
In Catalan, the IEC was founded in 1907 and works for the entire language. The
separate Valencian Academy of the Language (AVL), created later in 1998, has not
been accepted by a percentage of Catalan activists.
 280

(as in English). To compensate, convergence is guaranteed by strong social

pressures and by the need for cohesiveness in large-scale communication.

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Josep-Àngel MAS
(Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
jamas@upv.es

Catalan as a pluricentric language:

the Valencian case

Abstract

The recognition of Catalan pluricentricity is far from reaching a consen-

sus. This lack of general acceptance of pluricentricity happens in spite of
the existence of an own codifying institution for the Valencian variety,
the most visible amongst the non-dominant varieties of Catalan. It also
occurs despite the historical use of the Valencian variants in cultural
fields, the secular tradition of naming valencià the Catalan language, or
the demographic length of the Valencian Community within the Catalan
linguistic community. Furthermore, the entity and the name of the lan-
guage are the subjects of a social polemic still not solved because it has
been never tackled directly. Obviously, this controversy makes the
agreement difficult. The most polarized forms of this conflict take
Valencian either as a separate language or as a dialect of Catalan without
more rights than other dialects inside Catalonia. This ideological polari-
zation has led to four alternative models for the Valencian formal lan-
guage, in a scale from the more Valencian variants to the less: secession-
ist, particularistic, convergent and uniformist.

1. Introduction – Demography and territory of the Catalan language

Catalan could be described as the least minor of the European minority
languages. Its status as the official language of Andorra and co-official in three of
Spain’s autonomous communities, the spread, its uninterrupted literary tradition
from the Middle Ages onwards, and the degree of linguistic codification and
standardization it has attained do not correspond to the general notion of a mi-
nority language. For reasons of space, in this paper I will provide an overview of
its characteristics before looking into the standardisation of the Valencian vari-
ety and the status of Valencian as a non-dominant variety of the Catalan lan-
guage, which is trying to find its autonomous place in a world of linguistic diver-
sity.
 284

Let us start by defining geographically and demographically the territories

in which Catalan is spoken.

The Catalan language in Europe

(Source: Website of the Institut Ramon Llull1)

Territory Inhabitants Extension (km2)

Catalan speaking territories 13,707,381 58,571
Greece 11,113,000 131,957
Portugal 10,605,000 91,831
Belgium 10,571,000 30,528
Czech Republic 10,226,000 78,866
Hungary 10,064,000 93,033
Sweden 9,082,000 449,964
Denmark 5,435,000 43,080
Slovakia 5,391,000 49,035
Croatia 4,450,000 56,538
Irish Republic 4,250,000 70,285

Table 1: Inhabitants and extension of the Catalan language speaking territories

in comparison to other mid-sized states in the European Union.2

1
http://www.llull.cat, [July 2011]
2
Source: De Melchor & Branchadell (2002) and website of the Grup Enciclopèdia
Catalana: http://www.enciclopedia.cat/ [July 2011.
 285

It can be seen that the Catalan speaking territories cover a greater area and
have a higher population than some other states that form a part of the EU. In
fact, it can be said that the Catalan linguistic dominion is of average proportions
on a European scale, since it is more or less midway between the smallest states
(Latvia, Albania, Slovenia, Luxembourg, etc.) and the largest (Germany, Great
Britain, France, Italy and the rest of Spain). That is: its dimensions are similar to
the group of states with between 10 and 20 million inhabitants, as shown in Table
1.
However, Catalan is not the only language used in the regions where it is
spoken, and I do not refer here to immigrants, but to the historically integrated
native population.3 It is thus essential to put into perspective the demography of
these territories by means of the socio-linguistic surveys on competence in and
use of the language. In this type of situation, the coefficient of competence is used to
tag the number of competent speakers of a language. It is obtained by applying
the mean of the linguistic competences (listening, speaking, reading and writing)
on a scale of 1 to 10, and appears to be an attempt to replace the concept of
speaker, which is regarded as being somewhat ambiguous in language contact
situations.4
Table 2 gives the relevant figures on competent Catalan speakers. These
data are the result of multiplying the number of inhabitants by the coefficient of
competence from each of the territories in which Catalan is the dominant lan-
guage. The table includes figures relating to the demographic and geographic ex-
tension of these territories and gives an overall view while showing the relative
importance of Valencian.
Firstly, it can be seen that the number of competent Catalan speakers is simi-
lar to that of various official European languages and is even higher in some
cases. The data provide support for the replacement of the term minority language
for medium size language, as various Catalan authors and organisations are already
doing, in view of the average extension of the linguistic dominion cited above.

3
This historical perspective, according to which the imposition of Spanish, French or
Italian by the state on different territories is underlined, has been widely studied
from the paradigm of linguistic conflict. This theoretical framework also proposes get-
ting rid of the term minority language and replacing it with belittled language, which
is a clearer indication of the pressure that has been put, and is still put, on some
languages by other dominant languages in a state in which it shares the territory
(Aracil, Ninyoles, Conill).
4
The coefficient of competence has been used to make a panoramic view of the ex-
tension and vitality of the Catalan language at:
http://www.demolinguistica.cat/arxiu/demoling/eng/index.php [July 2011].
 286

This has given rise to a number of campaigns for Catalan to be recognized as the
official language (Mas 2010a, Pons & Sorolla 2008, Strubell 2008), although the re-
sults have not been as good as expected.

Territory Extension Inhabitants Coefficient Competent

(km2) (2009) of Compe- Speakers
tence
Catalonia 32,106 7,475,420 0.83 6,204,598
Valencian Community 13,023 4,525,000 0.55 2,488,750
(Catalan-speaking area)
Balearic Islands 5,014 1,095,426 0.73 799,660
Eastern Strip of Aragon 4,036.7 46,694 0.72 33,619
(2004)
Rosellón (France) 3,700.7 441,387 0.36 158,899
Andorra 468 84,082 0.81 68,106
L’Alguer (Italy) 224 39,372 0.59 23,229
(2001)
TOTAL 58,571 13,707,381 9,776,864

Table 2: Competent speakers in the different Catalan language territories, with special
reference to Valencian. Source: compiled by the author on data from Barómetre de la
comunicació i la cultura –IEC (2011) and Servici d’Investigació i Estudis Sociolingüístics
(2010).

Secondly, as the table also shows, the variety of the language spoken in the
Valencian Community is the second most important, after Catalonia itself. In ad-
dition, in spite of its considerable extension, the Valencian variety of Catalan co-
incides almost exactly with the borders of the territory in which it is spoken.
This is not the case with in the other large territories, which present internal
variations apparent to the speakers themselves.
For example, Catalonia can be divided into the eastern and western halves
or dialectal blocks. The western shares certain phonetic characteristics with
Valencian that are different to those used in the eastern block (the atonic vowels
are not neutralised, for example).
Moreover, it has to be pointed out that the Valencian community does
have an exclusively Spanish-speaking area, corresponding more or less with the
western half of the territory, whose population has not been included in the pre-
ceding tables. The coastal area, in which Valencian is spoken, is historically the
most densely populated. Needless to say, this tendency has increased with the
growth of tourism in recent decades.
 287

2. Historical view of the Catalan and Valencian linguistic models

This paper analyses present-day proposals for Valencian as a prestige lan-
guage, and therefore essentially presents a synchronic perspective. However, a
brief historical review, almost schematic for reasons of space, of the most impor-
tant movements and authors in favour of linguistic standardisation seems to be
useful. There are many publications both printed and on the Internet from which
interested readers can obtain further information on the history of the Catalan
language, such as, for example Ferrando & Nicolás (2005), or
http://www.llull.cat/_eng/_cultura/cultura_catalana_europa.shtml?seccio=cult
ura&subseccio=europa, which provides this information on a variety of lan-
guages.

2.1. The Middle Ages and Humanism

The period extending from the beginnings of the 13th to the middle of the
th
15 century could be called The Golden Age of the Catalan language and litera-
ture. As is often the case, this coincided with a period of commercial and territo-
rial expansion. The Kingdom of Valencia reached a dominant position in this ex-
pansion during the 15th century, due mainly to the importance of the port of Va-
lencia. It is therefore not surprising that the leading authors of the time were
Valencian: Ausiàs March (1397-1459), whose poetical works would soon spread to
other European countries, or Joanot Martorell (circa 1413-1468), author of Tirant
lo Blanc, considered the first modern novel in European literature.
There were of course other important writers in this period: Francesc
Eiximenis, Anselm Turmeda, Bernat Metge and especially Ramon Llull. The latter
was from Majorca and is often cited as the first medieval author (1232-1315) to
use a Romance language in his scientific and literary writings. The diverse terri-
torial origins of these authors could be seen as early examples of pluricentricism,
as they indicate the geographical diversity of literary activity, as well as certain
diversity in the linguistic model used. This is especially apparent in the case of
Valencian writers, who seemingly wanted to emphasise their origins – due to the
importance of Valencia in the European context – by using their own unique lin-
guistic variations.5

5
It should also be remembered that in the early historical stages diachronic variation
was not very noticeable, for example in the controversy over the authorship of the
anonymous chivalric novel Curial e Güelfa written in the mid 15th century. Although
the most plausible hypothesis is that the author was from Valencia (Colón 1987, Fer-
 288

There are also evidences that point to the existence of linguistic conver-
gence. The most important of these was doubtless the influence of the Cancelleria
Reial, which was a type of administrative unit of the Kingdom of Aragon. Its con-
sistent linguistic usage served as a model for all the other administrations in the
linguistic territory until the first of the prohibitions. This model, which was both
consistent and compositional (it incorporated variants of the main varieties) was
similar to what we know as a koiné language.

2.2. Literary Decadence

The almost three centuries that separated the Middle Ages from the Ro-
mantic Period are traditionally labelled as the Age of Literary Decadence. There are
several reasons that may account for this label. Firstly, the influence and prestige
of Spanish language during its Golden Fifteenth Century, backed by state coercion
after the Catalan Revolt of 1640-1659, coercion that became especially intense af-
ter the War of the Spanish Succession (1704-1714), meant that the use of Catalan
went into decline in literature and political administration channels. Secondly,
the repeated prohibitions on the use of Catalan in favour of Spanish, especially in
the liturgy and education, continued well into the 19th century and were strictly
enforced during the Franco dictatorship.
However, it must be stressed that the use of Catalan by the general popula-
tion was in no way reduced during this long time period. At the most, we could
point to a certain change in the language spoken by the upper classes, due to the
official favourable support for Spanish, which was prejudicial to other languages,
and the more or less bilingual situation which this created. Without any doubt,
the fact that very few children received an education at the time implied that the
Spanish language was never widely used by a population that almost without ex-
ception went on speaking exclusively in Catalan.

2.3. The Renaixença

Romanticism caused changes in the accepted cultural standards of many
European countries, including a revaluation of the Middle Ages, after Humanism
and the Renaissance condemned it as a dark period with little of literary or artis-
tic value. In the case of Catalan, as we have seen, this entailed the recuperation of
a time of linguistic and literary splendour, and, partly as a result of Romantic

rando 2007). The very fact that the geographical origin was not evident clearly
shows the small degree of variation in the literary language of the period.
 289

ideals, the 19th century became the century of nationalism. The immediate con-
sequence of this was the birth of a flourishing era of literary activity, known as La
Renaixença, which produced writers like Jacint Verdaguer, Àngel Guimerà, Narcís
Oller and, in Valencia, Teodor Llorente.
Moreover, the impact and consequences of La Renaixença were different in
the various Catalan speaking territories. In Catalonia, it produced political na-
tionalism, while in other territories it was never more than a cultural movement,
archaic up to a point. At the most, it called for linguistic freedom and urged the
bourgeoisie to change the inter-generational linguistic change that had been
brought about.
The language began to be used in newspapers such as La Renaixença, La Veu
de Catalunya and magazines like L’Avenç and in Valencia El Mole. This of course
caused the first controversies in society concerning the linguistic model that
should be followed. In Valencia, two positions existed: one was favourable to
closer relations with Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, following in the line of
the medieval tradition, and the second supported a bilingual system that ac-
cepted the adoption of Spanish expressions and which even attempted to write
Valencian with Spanish-type spelling. The former of these, with strong elitist
connotations, stemmed from the field of poetry, whilst the latter was more popu-
lar among the common people and was supported by the satirical press.

2.4. The first thirty years of the 20th century

In politics, pro-Catalan policies began to achieve important electoral re-
sults at the beginning of the 20th century. Catalan nationalists controlled many
town councils and created the Mancomunitat de Catalunya, which founded the In-
stitut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) in 1907 and its Secció Filològica in 1911. This institu-
tion based its proposals, with the appropriate nuances, on the work of Pompeu
Fabra, who was the main person responsible for codifying the Catalan. Between
1913 and 1930, the dictionary, orthography and grammatical rules of the Catalan
language were published, so as to be adopted in all the linguistic territories.
Most authors accepted these rules, which had been described by Pompeu
Fabra as a “patriotic duty”, but it was not without controversy that caused a cer-
tain degree of reticence. In Valencia, the highest consensus came in the signing
of the Normes de Castelló in 1932 by the leading writers of that time. The Normes
were an adaptation, especially as regards morphology, spelling, and to a lesser
extent, grammar rules of Fabra and the IEC. This is what has been described by
Ammon (2005) as “low intensity pluricentrism”.
 290

The different degrees of political support for the language meant that in
Catalonia one could speak of a certain language planning activity, since in 1932
Catalonia declared its autonomy, Catalan was made the official language and was
once again taught in the schools. In the Balearic Islands and Valencia these first
steps in linguistic policy did not take place, since the corresponding statutes
never got past the project stage due to the outbreak of the Civil War.

2.5. The dictatorship

As is well known, Franco’s dictatorship took away most of the individual
and collective rights that had been achieved during the Republic and no excep-
tion was made of the right to support nationalism and to choose the spoken lan-
guage; only Spanish could be used for official business. The large numbers of
immigrants from other regions of Spain into the Catalan speaking territories, es-
pecially after the beginning of the sixties, caused demographic changes, contrib-
uted to the change of language and meant that for the first time Spanish was
spoken by members of the working class as well as by the higher social strata.
In the sixties, the Franco regime slightly relaxed its restrictions and
showed a certain tolerance for books published in Catalan, including the sale of
the work of authors that had been published in exile. This allowed the emer-
gence of a core list of authors, known to some extent in university and resistance
circles, such as Josep Carner, Carles Riba, Salvador Espriu, and in Valencia the
poetry of Vicent A. Estellés and essays of Joan Fuster. As regards the linguistic
model used in literature (Catalan was still prohibited in official uses and the me-
dia), there was a tendency towards a uniform culture, with few concessions made
to variation. This was, of course, logical; if no communication could be made with
the general public there was no need to adapt to its language. It could also be
said that the image of unity and continuation of the literary tradition was impor-
tant at a time of cultural resistance and it was thought that a uniform linguistic
model would emphasise this unity.

2.6. The Transition

After the dictator’s death in 1975 the process of political change to a de-
mocracy began. Naturally, after 36 years of repression, a huge number of claims
were aired and included linguistic and cultural freedom (the right to be used in
public affairs and the official recognition of Catalan, Galician and Basque). Cata-
lonia was the first territory to make Catalan its official language jointly with
Spanish in its Statute of Autonomy in 1979, followed by the Comunitat Valenciana
 291

(1982) and the Balearic Islands (1983). This progression is a good indication of the
impulse for linguistic freedom in each of the territories. It was soon converted
into a process of legal standardisation carried out with political and linguistic
planning of differing vigour in each territory. It is not necessary to underline
here the similarity with the situation existing immediately before the Civil War.
Valencia lived through a period of ideological polarization between the
supporters of linguistic convergence and linguistic divergence from Catalonia’s
linguistic model, which by now had been firmly established in different social ar-
eas. The polarization was due to the clash of the different ideological stances:
linguistic convergence was logically supported by the defenders of a Valencian
social identity with certain elements in common with the Catalonian identity
(Catalanism), which was politically inclined to the left. Divergence was defended
by the so-called blaverisme, which combined Spanish regionalism with a clear
leaning to the right (Baldaquí, 2005). The latter group demanded the maximum
divergence; Valencian as a language distinct from Catalan.
As usual, extreme positions were in the minority, but they obliged the
other groups to continually take a stance on questions such as the linguistic
model or even the correct name for the language. These questions, which en-
tered the symbolic dimension of the language, were treated in a similar way to
other symbolic questions such as the name of the territory and its flag. Without
any doubt they have made it difficult to standardize or normalize the Valencian
language. The complexity of this question gave rise to profound sociolinguistic
analyses that played a part in other situations of linguistic conflict, such as those
of Aracil (1982) and Ninyoles (1969).
The name of the language has been variously described as Catalan, Valen-
cian, Valencian language/Valencian tongue, among others. Firstly, it should be em-
phasized that these denominations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If the
same person uses Catalan and Valencian, the double choice implies recognition
that Valencian is a variety of Catalan, while using the traditional denomination
given to the language in this territory. The combination of Valencian and Valen-
cian language, especially the exclusive use of the latter, usually signifies the ideo-
logical option for the linguistic independence of Valencian from Catalan. The ex-
clusive use of the term Valencian allows one to move within an ambiguous space
as regards the linguistic identity of this variety, an ambiguity that has been used
 292

in one sense and the opposite even in a number of judicial processes6.This ambi-
guity has undoubtedly made the term Valencian the predominant one, which
gives some idea of the nature of this debate, still the subject of discussion by the
people of Valencia.

3. Current proposals of Valencian standard –description, usages and

ideological connotations
The polarisation of positions with regard to the language has given rise to
different proposals for the uses and variants of standard Valencian since the
Transition. In other papers (Mas 2008, Mas 2010b) I proposed a classification of
four models of formal language, with varying contents of dialectal variants. This
taxonomy is largely based on the studies of Pradilla (2004) and Ferrando (2006)
and an analysis of the variants used by the principal Valencian political parties,
as we shall see later. The literal translation of the names of these models is: seces-
sionist, particularistic, convergent and uniformist. This nomenclature represents the
graduation from the maximum content of strictly Valencian variants to the
minimum, with the corresponding and symmetrical presence of variants from
the other varieties.
The first point that needs to be made is that these are not official linguistic
standards, as in the case of Nynorsk and Bokmål in Norwegian, but rather models
of use, or linguistic patterns, with certain unimportant differences. I am inclined
to call them models, since there are certain social groups, especially those most
involved in ideological debates that choose one variant or another to emphasise
their political position. These are the ideological connotations that make models
of what would otherwise be simply stylistic variations between particular uses of
Valencian and other more general uses of Catalan, with the exception of the seces-
sionist model favoured by the blaverisme.
In fact, the secessionist model is distinguished from the others in that it is
the only one that remains completely outside codification of the IEC and of the

6
In 2005 the Observatori de la Llengua Catalana issued a report on the legal validity
of the term Catalan as applied to the language of Valencia (Esteve, Esteve y Teodoro
2005). To date, a series of favourable sentences have been issued on the use of the
term, as against the restrictive argument that claims Valencian to be the only possi-
ble name, since it is included in the Statute of Autonomy. This argument, having
been repeatedly rejected by the courts of justice, as has just been indicated, was the
trump card used in the appeals made (and lost) by the Partido Popular in Valencia
against the Statutes of the Valencian Universities, which use the term Catalan as a
synonym of Valencian to refer to the language of Valencia.
 293

Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL). It makes a proposal not only for a

standard but for a codification, with the explicit objective of making it as differ-
ent as possible from the codification of Catalan, since they consider it to be a dif-
ferent language. In addition to lexical and morphological peculiarities of Valen-
cian, it systematically opts for different orthographic solutions, such as the use of
the digraph ch or the letter y. Paradoxically, this attitude implies constant refer-
ence to Catalan orthography but in the form of a “counter-reference code”
(Pradilla 2008: 42). The uniformist model, in spite of being the furthest removed
from the secessionist, coincides with it in presenting some stereotypical variants
that by themselves serve to identify it. For example, forms such as the subjunc-
tive in –i¸ feminine possessives with –v instead of with –u- (meva instead of meua),
or words such as noi, tarda, etc., not used in the other Valencian models but used
in standard Catalan.
On the other hand, the particularistic and convergent models are defined
by a combination of variants that separate them from the two described above.
For example, the particularistic shares with the secessionist the systematic
choice of the Valencian (or western block) variant whenever possible; neverthe-
less, the particularistic does only when the variant is recognized by the general
standardisation, such as este instead of aquest and inchoatives in –ix (produïx). This
is combined with the acceptance of the IEC orthographic system. The convergent
model tends to prefer the forms that are common with other varieties of Catalan,
together with those pertaining to Valencian and endorsed by written secular
tradition (inchoatives in –eix and aquest beside meua, siga).
What distinguishes the particularistic model from the convergent is the
contrast between certain equivalent variants together with the absence of the
strong stereotypes of the extreme models from which they differ (the secession-
ist and the uniformist, respectively). From a linguistic point of view, they are the
most closely related models and it would be quite difficult to distinguish one
from another in a short passage of text. This facilitates permanent and occa-
sional interchanges of forms and ways of speaking, with the relatively frequent
use of the particularistic for the spoken language and the convergent for the
written. However, this use has been made difficult since the Transition by the
ideological confrontation of the different Valencian social groups. Table 3 shows
the social use of the different models and their correspondence to the names of
the language. In this context, the existence of the different ideological positions
described above should not be lost from view.
 294

Name of Use by institutions Social uses Linguistic mo-

language del(s)
Valencià / Valencian universities, In- Trade unions, associa- Convergent
Català, stitut d’Estudis Catalans, tions for the defence Particularistic
Llengua ca- socialist and nationalist of the language
talana political parties. (especially Acció Cul-
tural del País Valencià)
Valencià Estatut d’Autonomia de la Associations for the Particularistic
Comunitat Valenciana defence of the langu- Convergent
(1982), Acadèmia Valen- age (Tirant lo Blanc...)
ciana de la Llengua, pri-
mary and secondary edu-
cation.
Llengua va- Conservative and regiona- Cultural associations Particularistic
lenciana/ list political parties, Esta- for the defence of the Secessionist
Valencià / tut d’Autonomia de la language (Real Aca-
Idioma va- Comunitat Valenciana demia de Cultura Va-
lencià (2006) lenciana, Lo Rat Pe-
nat)

Table 3: Social uses of the Valencian linguistic models and language names.

Doubtlessly, it can be said that the secessionist and uniformist models have
a merely testimonial presence in the Valencian educational and cultural circles.
In fact, I was not able to find a single example of the latter in any ideological
group. It is used by very few university lecturers – it was at its most popular in
university and cultural circles in the seventies. The use of this model is in perfect
agreement with the theory of pluricentrism: The connotation of cultural elitism
in the small group that follow Catalan linguistic usage in their writings is evident
(Clyne 1992: 369, Muhr 2008: 211). We shall later see other ideological connota-
tions of this and the other models.
The secessionist model also lives a difficult period, in parallel with the
electoral decline of its political supporters, although it does maintain bastions of
folklore and cultural associations, such as the Real Academia de Cultura Valenciana
(RACV) and lo Rat Penat. It also suffers a serious internal dissension: the hard-
liners, represented by the Coalición Valenciana party, do not accept the latest re-
form and consider it too close to the AVL and even to the IEC. The secessionist
model had its heyday when it was used in the Diari de les Corts Valencianes and
even in some sections of the Diari Oficial de la Generalitat Valenciana, in the 1995-
1999 legislature, when UV took over certain areas in the PP government, which
had a simple majority.
 295

The convergent model could also be said to be experiencing a certain de-

cline, although to a far lesser extent than the secessionists and uniformists. From
being the absolutely dominant model in the seventies and eighties it has gradu-
ally lost ground, especially in the last decade, to the particularistic pattern. This
one advanced mightily with the opening of Radiotelevisió Valenciana (1989) in
which Valencian language is mostly, but not exclusively, spoken. The following
breakthrough probably came when the PP won control of the Generalitat in 1995
and, without doubt, the founding of the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL) in
2002. This institution has not approved the particularistic model as the only valid
one but it has adopted it for all its publications, like all the institutions and or-
ganisations that depend on the Valencian government.
The influence of the Canal 9 TV station, or of its news service, has meant
that the few radio and TV stations that broadcast in Valencian have mostly opted
for the particularistic model. It thus seems that an expansion can be expected
due to imitation of this model, although the convergent continues to enjoy un-
challenged control of the cultural area (universities and book publishers) and
most of the press. Particularism would also seem to be making progress in educa-
tion, especially in the initial stages. The evolution of most of Valencian writers
towards a livelier and less bookish linguistic model is another factor that helps
this model to expand and promotes the particular variants without opposing the
unity of the language.

4. The pluricentrism of the codifying institutions – the official linguis-

tic models
As we have seen, there are two officially competent codifying institutes for
Valencian: the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
The IEC was founded in 1907 and its Secció Filològica, which was involved with
codifying from the beginning, in 1911. The law that created the AVL was passed
in 1998, but the decree which regulates its functions did not appear until 2002.
The difference in the time they have been in existence is significant and affects
the consideration they are given by the public. For example, much of the criti-
cism levelled at the AVL could be summed up by the argument, “There is no need
for it, we already have the IEC”.
It is true that the successive editions of the IEC’s standard dictionary have
gradually accepted local variants of non-dominant Catalan varieties, especially
from Valencian (Casanova 2002). Moreover, the number of Valencian experts in
the institution is on the increase – at present 10 out of 37, two of which are also
 296

members of the AVL. This means that the IEC can describe its model as “composi-
tional and polymorphic” (IEC 1999).
As for the AVL, only the (political) difficulties involved in naming its 21
members can explain the four-year gap between its founding and the decree by
which it is regulated. Furthermore, the long time it took did not avoid that even
today some of its members cannot claim to be acknowledged experts in the
Valencian-Catalan linguistic field. Indeed, the argument of institutional prestige
has only been used in favour of the recognition of a single codifying authority,
the IEC. However, the criteria used by the IEC to designate priorities in its stan-
dardisation work have also been criticized (Colón, 2009) – and many of these
criticisms have in fact been accepted and applied by the IEC.
The need for the AVL is therefore expressed in ideological terms: its de-
fenders usually cite the rights of the population of Valencia, as a distinct people
(or nation, or region…), to decide about the language they speak. This is probably
the most common argument in favour of the AVL, and it can be found, for in-
stance, in the law by which it was founded (Generalitat Valenciana 1998).
On the other hand, the strongest opposition to pluricentrism has also ideo-
logical roots. In a lecture given by the President of the Secció Filològica of the IEC,
Joan Martí (Martí 2007), an appeal was repeatedly made for the unity of Catalan
speakers, whose language Catalan was described as the national language. The pa-
per that contained several quotations from Pompeu Fabra, explicitly recognized
the ideological nature of the linguistic standardization model and called for uni-
formity as against diversity, for the sake of the (national?) unity of Catalan
speakers. From this viewpoint, the mere existence of more than one standardis-
ing institution is seen as dangerous, or as the seed of desegregation of the lan-
guage (and of the people who speak it).
For those who take this position, it is useless to have the AVL as the official
Valencian institution, that has explicitly proclaimed the unity of Valencian with
other dialects of Catalan (AVL 2005), explicitly acknowledged in the Diari Oficial de
la Generalitat Valenciana for the first time in history. It is due to the two opposing
conceptions of the linguistic community that shares the same language. This
shows that the concepts of nation, region and even language form part of an ideo-
logical debate that has never been officially opened – by the largest political par-
ties – and never been concluded by society.
It should also be pointed out that more and more voices are calling for the
coordination of the standardising institutions, the IEC and the AVL (for instance,
Argenter 2009 or Mas 2008). Their arguments are based on the de facto existence
 297

of official pluricentrism and on the first editions of the AVL, such as the Dictamen
about the unity of language (2005) and the Gramàtica normativa valenciana (2006),
by which the only linguistic model to be proscribed is the secessionist. In fact, we
could say that both the IEC and the AVL legitimize the three other models, al-
though the Catalonian institute is in favour of convergence and the AVL supports
the particularistic model. Mixed uses of these two models and changes between
them, as we have seen above, could contribute to an understanding between AVL
and IEC. At the same time, of course, it is necessary on the part of each institu-
tion not to enhance support to its model to the detriment of others.

5. Conclusions
Valencian is the native linguistic variety of approximately 2.5m speakers,
about a third of the total number of those who speak the Catalan language.
Throughout history there have been both convergent and divergent forces in fa-
vour of or against the linguistic planning carried out in Catalonia, the dominant
territory, due to both its larger population, as the birthplace of the language, and
especially for its clearly superior impulse towards linguistic standardisation.
The different conceptions of nation, language and linguistic community are of
vital importance in a situation of complicated relationships with related linguis-
tic varieties. The different ideological positions held by groups with different
ways of understanding the Valencian social identity range from total identifica-
tion with Catalonia to an absolute break in the relationship with Catalonia.
These, in turn, imply different degrees of dilution of the Spanish national iden-
tity. The ideological complexity involved in these concepts and the lack of con-
sensus on the shared social identity have given rise to a bitter controversy over
the use of one or the other of the linguistic variants, with non-linguistic values
connotations. The various names given to the language and the latent conflict
about its entity are at the basis of this controversy.
The academic world has not been left out of this ideological debate and, in
fact, has to be considered as one of the sides in the conflict as regards the discur-
sive and social analysis (Mas, 2008). As mentioned above, there is no consensus
but ideological confrontation on the term used to designate the community of
Valencia, which hinders the appearance of objectivity needed by academic lan-
guage. It should also be remembered that a considerable part of the terminology
and theory of international linguistics rest on a concept that views monolingual-
ism as the normal situation, even though this is by no means the case on a global
 298

scale, as Ellis (2006) clearly shows. In this situation, where the academic dis-
course is taking one way and many of social and political discourses an opposite
direction, has caused certain complications for the acceptance of the scientific
proposals put forward to solve the conflict.
But, in my opinion, the main obstacle to the advance of the social use of
Valencian has been the ambiguity shown by the political parties that have been
in power in this region. The consequences of the lack of direction in both the
corpus and the status planning of the language are clearly negative and lead to
consider that this lack is not accidental: the weakness of the standardization of
Valencian seems the result of a language policy for maintaining the status quo of
Spanish, and not the result of the successive self-governments lack of profi-
ciency. Thereby, Pradilla (2008) described the policy of the socialist government
(1982-95) as language infra-planning, while the one implemented by the conserva-
tive government, which is still in power, could be described as language counter-
planning.
The most important and obvious consequence of this situation is the de-
crease of Valencian speakers over the last decade. On the other hand, Casesnoves
proves an “emerging attitudinal consensus” (2010: 495) about Valencian lan-
guage and especially about other varieties of Catalan; that is, the most distant
and opposite attitudes tend to disappear. Doubtlessly, this fact could favour the
indispensable understanding between institutions in a mid term. Of course, it
would be necessary that elites and language academics do not stay behind the
society in the evolution of language attitudes.

6. References

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per a la defensa de la denominació i l’entitat del valencià, València, AVL.
Ammon, Ulrich (2005): «Pluricentric and Divided Languages» in U. Ammon, N.
Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier, P. Trudgill (eds.): Sociolinguistics: An International
Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, 2nd ed., Vol. 2, Berlin-
New York, Mouton de Gruyter.
Aracil, Lluís (1982): Papers de sociolingüística, Barcelona, La Magrana.
Argenter, Josep (2009): «Per una norma en la diversitat o per una diversitat de
normes?» in Kabatek, J. and Claus D. Pusch (ed.) (2009): Variació, po-
liglòssia i estàndard. Processos de convergència i divergència lingüístiques
en català, occità i basc, Aachen, Shaker Verlag.
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Baldaquí, Josep Maria (2005): «A contribution to the study of valencian linguistic

secessionism. Relations between the perception of the supradialectal unity
of the catalan language and other sociolinguistic variables», Catalan Re-
view, vol. 19, Issue 1-2, p. 47-58.
Barómetre de la Comunicació i la Cultura – Institut d’Estudis Catalans (2011): Co-
neixements i usos del català a Catalunya el 2010: dades del Baròmetre de la
Comunicació i la Cultura, IEC, Barcelona [available in Internet at 18 of May
2011: http://www.fundacc.org/docroot/fundacc/pdf/dieta_llengua.pdf ].
Casanova, Emili (2002): «El lèxic valencià en el DIEC (1995)», Estudis del valencià
d’ara, Denes, València.
Casesnoves, Raquel (2010): «Changing linguistic attitudes in Valencia: The effects
of language planning measures», Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14/4, p. 477-
500.
Clyne, Michael (1992): Pluricentric Languages. Differing Norms in Different Nati-
ons, Berlin/New York, M. de Gruyter.
Colón, Germà (2009): «Català: del general al particular» in Kabatek, J. and Claus D.
Pusch (ed.) (2009): Variació, poliglòssia i estàndard. Processos de conver-
gència i divergència lingüístiques en català, occità i basc, Aachen, Shaker
Verlag.
De Melchor, Vicent & Albert Branchadell (2002): El catalán. Una lengua de Europa
para compartir, Bellaterra, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Ellis, Elizabeth (2006): «Monolingualism: The unmarked case», Estudios de Socio-
lingüística, Vol 7: 2, p. 173-196.
Ferrando, Antoni (2006): «L’ideal idiomàtic de Sanchis Guarner» in Santi Cortés
and Vicent Josep Escartí (eds.): Manuel Sanchis Guarner. Un humanista va-
lencià del segle XX, València, AVL .
Ferrando, Antoni & Nicolás, Miquel (2005): Història de la llengua catalana, Barce-
lona, Pòrtic-Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Generalitat Valenciana (1998): Llei 7/1998 de creació de l’Acadèmia Valenciana
de la llengua, València, Generalitat Valenciana.
Martí, Joan (2007): «L’Institut d’Estudis Catalans com a acadèmia de la llengua.
Unitat i variació lingüística: una qüestió ideològica», lecture gived by Joan
Martí Castell, at that time president of the Secció Filològica of the IEC, at
the University of Lleida [http://bestbuydoc.com/ca/doc-file/385/l-
institut-d-estudis-catalans-com-a-acadèmia-de-la-llengua.html, July 2011].
Mas, Josep-Àngel (2010a): «Els noms de la llengua i els models lingüístics del cata-
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là a Europa. De la traducció de la Constitució europea (2004) a les eleccions

de 2009», Revista de Llengua i Dret, 54, p. 79-100
[http://www10.gencat.net/eapc_rld/revistes/Revista_de_llengua_i_dret/E
ls_noms_de_la_llengua_i_els_models_linguistics_del_catala_a_Europa._De
_la_traduccio_de_la_Constitucio_europea__2004__a_les_eleccions_del_200
9/ca, permanent link].
Mas, Josep-Àngel (2010b): «Les connotacions ideològiques dels models lingüístics
valencians: situació actual i condicionants històrics», Caplletra. Revista in-
ternacional de Filologia, 48, p. 47-70.
Mas, Josep-Àngel (2008): El morfema ideològic. Una anàlisi crítica dels models de
llengua valencians, Benicarló, Onada edicions.
Muhr, Rudolf (2008): «The pragmatics of a pluricentric language: A comparison
between Austrian German and German German» in Schneider, Klaus and
Baron, Ann (ed.): Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in
Pluricentric Languages, Amsterdam, The Netherlands/Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania: John Benjamins.
Ninyoles, Rafael (1969): Conflicte linguistic valencià, València, Eliseu Climent.
Pons, Eva & Natxo Sorolla (coord.) (2008): Informe sobre la situació de la llengua
catalana (2005-2007), Barcelona, Observatori de la llengua catalana
Pradilla, Miquel Àngel (2008): La tribu valenciana, Benicarló, Onada.
Pradilla, Miquel Àngel (2004): El laberint valencià, Benicarló, Onada.
Servici d’Investigació i Estudis Sociolingüístics (2010): Knowledge and Social Use
of Valencian Language, València, Generalitat Valenciana [
http://www.edu.gva.es/polin/docs/sies_docs/encuesta2010/index.html,
in May 2011].
Strubell, M. (2008): «La pressió social i el català a Europa», Revista de Llengua i
Dret, núm. 50, p. 203-232.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the
Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 301-314.

Esther Nuñez Villanueva

The University of Manchester / U.N.E.D. (UK)
esthernuvi@yahoo.es

The role of the media in standardising a regional

variety: the case of Canal Sur and Sevillian Spanish in
the pluricentric debate

Abstract

Thompson (1992) has identified two linguistic centres in mainland

Spain: Madrid and Seville. It is claimed that Sevillian Spanish constitutes
a “spoken norm” which irradiates to other areas in the south of Spain.
We investigate whether we can find any evidence to further support
Thompson’s hypothesis. Since Sevillian Spanish is a spoken variety of
Spanish, we have looked at its presence in the regional spoken media.
We consider that the media can function as a standardising agency,
promoting or rejecting certain language uses and helping to raise the
status of non-dominant varieties. What language uses are promoted in
Andalusia’s own regional TV channel, Canal Sur?
To be able to report more precise data, the behaviour of two specific
phonemes have been monitored. We have found a great discrepancy
between the written style guide of Canal Sur and the actual output of
broadcasters.

1. Introduction
Thompson (1992), in the chapter devoted to Spanish in Clyne’s seminal
volume, reaches the conclusion that, linguistically speaking, Spain is a bi-centric
nation. This author believes that there are two spoken norms in Peninsular Spain1
and two centres for these norms: Madrid, which irradiates the Castilian model to
the centre, the north and the bilingual communities2 of Spain; and Seville, which

1
We will not be discussing the situation of Spanish in other countries or in the Canary
Islands. See Thompson (1992) and Morgenthaler García, Laura (2008) for further
discussion regarding the issue of pluricentricity in other Spanish-speaking regions and
countries.
2
See Blas Arroyo (2005) for a further discussion on the interactions between Spanish
 302

disseminates the Sevillian model to the south of Spain, that is to the region of
Andalusia (see Figure 1). (See Alvar, 1996).
In Figure 1, we have used red arrows to highlight the direction in which
each of the spoken norms identified by Thompson would spread:

Figure 1. Directions of the spoken norms

In the XVI century, Seville became the door to America, a fact which
brought a spectacular increase in the wealth and power of the city. Seville is still
the largest and wealthiest city in the south of Spain, and it is a strong cultural
centre. Furthermore, following the decentralisation process that Spain under-
went in the late 1970s, Andalusia became one of the Comunidades Autónomas
(Autonomous Regions), having been granted the power to govern itself to a cer-
tain extent. Seville was the obvious choice as the seat of government of the new
regional political institutions, such as the regional government and parliament.
All the above facts support the idea that Seville could function as a norm-setting
centre of a non-dominant variety that could be called “Andalusian” or “Andalu-
sian Spanish”.
However, the situation is more complex than Thompson’s analysis reveals.
On the one hand, although speakers from Andalusia consider themselves speak-

and other languages in Spanish bilingual communities.

 303

ers of one single variety that differs from the Madrid model, there is actually
more than one spoken variety in Andalusia.
Dialectologists have divided Andalusia into two broad areas, whose varie-
ties present contrasting features in many cases. In the literature they are com-
monly identified as Western Andalusian Spanish (WAS) and Eastern Andalusian
Spanish (EAS). Sevillian Spanish is an example of WAS. In fact, several authors
have talked about Andalusia’s single “phonetic identity” (Narbona et. al 1998;
Carbonero 1985; Díaz Salgado 2002) to describe this discrepancy between speak-
ers’ awareness and linguistic data3.
On the other hand, we are dealing with a spoken variety of Spanish. To
claim that Sevillian Spanish constitutes a spoken norm, we need to first clarify
what is understood by spoken norm. Linguistic research on this area has dealt
mainly with written norms and standardisation processes affecting written out-
puts due to the fact that standardisation is more easily accomplished in written
varieties rather than spoken varieties (see Milroy and Milroy 1985).
How can we define spoken norms? How can we understand standardisa-
tion processes with regard to spoken varieties of dominant languages? On the
one hand, a norm can be understood as a prestigious variety which is adopted in
speech by model speakers, presumably with no specific intervention other than
sociological pressures (empirical, informal norm; see Amorós 2008). We could for
example think of educated speakers who adopt certain phonetic features to ob-
scure their geographical origin, e.g. educated speakers of Northern England who
adopt patterns of pronunciation corresponding to Southern varieties of British
English. On the other hand, a norm can be the product of a process of codifica-
tion, that is, the process of selecting some features as appropriate and consider
others inappropriate to use, for example, in education or in the spoken media
(prescriptive, subjective norm; see the definition of norm in Crystal 2008).
Let’s consider the first definition above. Western Andalusian Spanish, in-
cluding Sevillian Spanish, does enjoy more prestige than Eastern Andalusian
Spanish (see Narbona et. al. 1998). Furthermore, some authors have reported a
certain levelling process in progress in Andalusia, especially in the speech of the
capital cities (Narbona, et al. 1998 and Pozo 2000). However, there is not enough

3
As another example of the “phonetic identity“ of Andalusia, it is interesting to note
that the Regional Andalusian Government launched two campaigns aimed at
eliminating negative attitudes towards Andalusian spoken varieties. The first one,
“Habla bien, habla andaluz” (Speak well, speak Andalusian) was broadcast in the 80s
while “Habla andaluz siempre” (Speak always Andalusian) was viewed in 2002. In
both instances, the term “Andaluz”, that is, “Andalusian“, was used.
 304

data to claim that this levelling process is moving towards the Sevillian model,
instead of the Madrid model or another one. More dialectological studies need to
be carried out in this area.
Although it is common to find negative attitudes towards Eastern Andalu-
sian Spanish within and out of Andalusia4, dialectal features are found across the
whole society. The famous philologist Alvar even noted with a hint of surprise
that university lecturers from the Eastern areas of Andalusia are “good subjects
for a dialectological study” (Alvar 1996, p. 237). It seems that this spoken variety
enjoys some sort of covert prestige.
Let’s consider the second definition of spoken norm. A norm can be the re-
sult of direct intervention or planning whereby specific language uses are se-
lected and promoted ahead of other uses. With regards to written norms, the role
of the press has been highlighted by authors such as Blas Arroyo (2005), as the
following quote illustrates:

El proceso de implantación de una variedad estándar tiene su

instrumento más adecuado en el sistema educativo, auxiliado en la era
moderna por la prensa y otros medios de comunicación de masas (p.
507).
[The process of implementing a norm can find as its most adequate tool
the education system, helped in this day and age by the press and other
mass media.]
In the case of a spoken variety, the spoken media (television and radio)
could function as an adequate, and even more powerful, tool than Blas Arroyo’s
written press when implementing a norm. The role of the TV in introducing and
rejecting new language uses is uncontroversial.
If we consider the spoken media as a “tool to implement a norm”, we could
consider the specific recommendations that broadcasters are asked to follow as a
way to codify a norm, in this case a spoken norm. After all, style guides aimed at
broadcasters do select some language uses ahead of others, which is the descrip-
tion of a codification process.
Is the Sevillian model specially promoted in the spoken media? Are Anda-
lusian broadcasters instructed to adapt Sevillian speech patterns? If the answer
to these questions is positive, then we can conclude that Sevillian Spanish func-

4
Narbona et al. (1998, p. 24) provide several examples of situations where Eastern
Andalusian speakers have shown their discomfort with the way they speak. This has
also been noted while recording speakers from Málaga.
 305

tions as a spoken norm that is been irradiated to speakers of other Andalusian

varieties. We understand that if Sevillian speech patterns are specifically pro-
moted in the media, we would have more data to conclude that Seville does in-
deed function as a linguistic centre, providing “a national variety with at least
some of its own (codified) norms” as described by Clyne (1992).

2. Outline
Canal Sur, a TV channel broadcasting only for Andalusia and managed by
the regional government, was the obvious choice to further assess the presence
of the Sevillian model in the media.
It is obvious that this TV channel was launched under a specific political
background. In section 3, we will outline the language policies and ideologies
promoted by the regional political authorities. The ideas of language differentia-
tion and linguistic identity were put forward to claim autonomy for Andalusia as
a region and those ideologies permeated the language practices of Canal Sur.
In section 4, we will pay particular attention to the languages practices in
the media. Firstly, we will analyse Canal Sur’s style guide, which constitutes a set
of guidelines for broadcasters to follow. What is the language policy that is pro-
moted in this document? Can we find any pre-eminence of the Sevillian speech
patterns?
In section 5, we will report briefly on the findings of an analysis of the ac-
tual output of broadcasters. The aim is to assess the extent to which the guide-
lines detailed in the style guide are followed and whether the language uses in
the media could constitute a spoken norm that could influence viewers of Canal
Sur.

3. Language policy in Andalusia

The “phonetic identity” of Andalusia is probably a product of the strong
regional identity of Andalusia, which also explains why Andalusia was the first
region after the Nacionalidades Históricas to become an Autonomous Region.
Starting in the late 1970s, Spain underwent a process of decentralisation,
by which different regions were granted a certain degree of autonomy to govern
themselves. The Spanish Constitution established two ways of accessing the
status of autonomous. There was a fast-track process for regions where nationalis-
tic and separatist feelings were widely held and where a language other than
Spanish was spoken. Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque country automatically
 306

qualified for the fast-track process and were grouped under the term Nacionali-
dades Históricas (Historical Nationalities) and their languages qualified as lenguas
propias (own languages).
At first, it seemed that Andalusia was to follow the second slower process
to access its autonomy. This enraged many sectors of Andalusian society. Par-
ticularly certain political forces and the written press rallied to declare that
Andalusia would not accept being treated differently. A discourse of self-
affirmation and cultural distinctiveness permeated the written media and politi-
cal speeches, along with the passionate claim of unfair treatment and discrimina-
tion. Andalusia became nationalistic for the first time in history.5
Linguistic differentiation, that is, Andalusia’s phonetic identity, was also
used as a symbol of Andalusia’s distinctive identity, in a parallel fashion to the
way that the Nacionalidades Históricas claimed their separate identity by making a
reference to their different language (Méndez 2009).
When Andalusia eventually became an Autonomous Region at around the
same time as the Nacionalidades Históricas, the above discourses were officially
sanctioned in the Estatuto de Autonomía, a law similar to a regional constitution.
The following passage of the Estatuto is important for its symbolic value6. There
are not probably many non-dominant spoken varieties that have been specifi-
cally sanctioned by a legal document.

[Uno de los objetivos de la Comunidad Autónoma es] La defensa,

promoción, estudio y prestigio de la modalidad lingüística andaluza en
todas sus variedades (p. 4).
[One of the objectives of the Autonomous Region is] the defence,
promotion, study and prestige of the Andalusian Language Modality in
all its varieties.]
The term Modalidad lingüística andaluza (Andalusian language modality)
seems to have been coined by the writers of the Estatuto to overcome such diffi-
culties as the discrepancy between speakers’ awareness and linguistic data men-
tioned in the Introduction. Article 123 of the Estatuto mentions explicitly the role
of the media in promoting certain language uses:
Los medios audiovisuales públicos promoverán el reconocimiento y uso
de la modalidad lingüística andaluza, en sus diferentes hablas (Article
123).

5
For a more elaborate account of this particular time, see Méndez (2009).
6
The text of the Estatuto is available on the website www.juntadeandalucia.es.
 307

[The public media will promote the acknowledgement and the use of the
Andalusian Language Modality, in its different spoken forms.]
To date, the public media in Andalusia is confined to the public company
Radio Televisión de Andalucía (RTVA), which runs radio stations and Canal Sur Tele-
visión, the public television channel. RTVA is managed by Junta de Andalucía, the
Andalusian Regional Government, and it started broadcasting by radio in 1988
and by television on 28 February 19897. It is clear that the above political atmos-
phere was going to have an influence on Canal Sur's language practices.

4. Language practices in the media: Canal Sur’s style guide

Canal Sur’s style guide8 was first published in March 2004 and is only ap-
plied to television, not radio. It is exclusively guided for newsreaders.
The general language policy of Canal Sur is that broadcasters are free to
decide which variety they want to use when broadcasting. However, if they were
to speak with an Andalusian accent, they are required to use a “cultivated” and
“formal“ Andalusian. Besides, they consider that using such a language variety
would extend and improve the concept of “standard Spanish“:

Aquellos rasgos del andaluz que utilicen en sus locuciones deben ser los
que consideren de más alto nivel [...] deben emplear un andaluz culto y
formal que abarque, amplíe y perfeccione el concepto de español
estándar (p. 219).
[Those Andalusian features that they were to adopt in their broadcasts
should be those of the highest level [...] they should employ a cultivated
and formal Andalusian that could be considered to improve and perfect
the concept of standard Spanish.]
To complement the above statement of intentions, Canal Sur’ style guide is
also committed to raise the prestige of the Andalusian varieties. Since Canal Sur
only broadcasts for Andalusia, we could conclude that their aim is to raise the
prestige of the Andalusian varieties within its speech community:

Todos aquellos profesionales que se decidan a utilizar las hablas

andaluzas en su labor ante el micrófono deben contribuir a que el
andaluz no sea identificado únicamente con lo popular y lo coloquial, y
mucho menos con lo vulgar. (p. 219)

7
Data collected from the website of RTVA.
8
Canal Sur’s style guide can be accessed in the website www.canalsur.es.
 308

[All those professional broadcasters that decide to use the Andalusian

Spanish varieties in their work in front of the microphone should ensure
that the Andalusian varieties are not solely identified with popular and
colloquial [speech], even less so with vulgar [speech].
Interestingly, the style guide includes specific recommendations for the
broadcasters, which could give us some insight into what constitutes the “culti-
vated Andalusian“ referred to in the above quotes. Does Canal Sur consider Sevil-
lian Spanish as the “cultivated Andalusian”?
We have selected two phonetic patterns that can be used as terms of com-
parison and analysis. We will only be paying particular attention to the pronun-
ciation of the phonemes /s/ and /Ɵ/ in the Andalusian Spanish varieties for the
purposes of this paper. The phonemes /s/ and /Ɵ/ constitute very useful terms
of comparison, due to the following phenomena:
(1) The deletion or aspiration of /-s/ word-finally. It is found in the two
linguistic varieties of Andalusia; it is therefore a feature of both Sevillian Spanish
and Eastern Andalusian Spanish. Example: “Lunes” -> [lúneʰ] / [lúne].
The analysis of this feature will shed light on whether such a widely dis-
tributed feature is deemed an acceptable pattern of speech to be used in the me-
dia in contrast with the Castilian pronunciation of /-s/ as /-s/ (e.g. “Lunes” ->
[lúnes].) In the specific guidelines included in the style guide, the aspiration of /-
s/ is accepted. However, there is no mention of the deletion of /-s/. Narbona et.
al (1998) report that the deletion of /-s/ is a prestigious feature found in the
whole of Andalusia.
(2) The neutralisation of /s/ and /Ɵ/. This process has yielded two differ-
ent outputs in the two broad linguistic varieties in Andalusia. In Sevillian Span-
ish, the neutralisation of /s/ and /Ɵ/ has resulted in both phonemes merging on
/s/ word-medially and word-initially. This phenomenon is known as seseo.
Example: “zapato” -> [sapáto].
Meanwhile, in Eastern Andalusian Spanish, the neutralisation of /s/ and
/Ɵ/ has resulted on both phonemes merging in /Ɵ/ word-medially and word-
initially. This phenomenon is known as ceceo. Example: “casa” -> [káƟa]. The
analysis of this feature will shed a light on whether seseo, a feature of Sevillian
Spanish, is deemed acceptable for use in the media in contrast with ceceo. Seseo is
indeed regarded as acceptable for broadcasting. The style guides says that:
 309

[...] seseo es mayoritario en el mundo hispano y su uso también es propio del

español estándar (p. 222).
[[...] seseo is widespread in the Spanish-speaking world and its use is charac-
teristic of standard Spanish.]
Ceceo, on the other hand, is explicitly rejected in the style guide and is
overtly stigmatised within and out of Andalusia (See footnote 4, Narbona et. al.
1998 and Salvador 1980). According to Canal Sur’s style guide:
A pesar de que muchos andaluces utilizan el ceceo en su vida cotidiana, son
también muchos los que abandonan esta práctica en registros más formales.
Esto provoca que el ceceo no se considere propio del español estándar (p.
225).
[Although many Andalusians use ceceo in their everyday life, there are also
many who abandoned this feature in more formal registers. This has the ef-
fect that ceceo is not considered characteristic of standard Spanish.]
The spoken norm codified in the guidelines does correspond to a certain
extent to Sevillian Spanish. Features of Sevillian Spanish are acceptable, prestig-
ious and adequate to be present on TV, e.g. seseo is preferred to ceceo.
We find that there is a great discrepancy between the general policy of Ca-
nal Sur in trying to raise the prestige of the Andalusian linguistic varieties and
the specific guidelines for broadcasters. Eastern Andalusian Spanish is not con-
sidered acceptable for TV, “although many Andalusians use it [ceceo] in their eve-
ryday life”. This is a contradiction with regards to the aim of raising the prestige
of the Andalusian varieties and perpetuates long-held prejudices against certain
ways of pronouncing Spanish. This conservative approach is surprising because
we are dealing with Canal Sur, a TV channel only broadcasting for Andalusia.
Moreover, when considering such a widely distributed feature as the dele-
tion of /-s/, the style guide is also conservative and opts to accept only the fea-
ture that is less deviant from the Madrid model. A weak articulation of /-s/, that
is the aspiration of /-s/, is preferred to deletion of /-s/.
Sevillian features are therefore promoted in Canal Sur’s style guide. How-
ever, do we find those features in actual broadcasts? Do the specific guidelines
detailed above translate into the way that broadcasters speak – and therefore the
language usage that the viewers receive?
 310

5. Language practices in the media: an analysis of broadcasters’ output

The linguistic output of nine newsreaders was analysed. A quick look at
Table 1 tells us that 5 out of 9 newsreaders do not display a full pronunciation of
/-s/, but a weak or aspirated pronunciation. That is, more than 50% of newsread-
ers follow the written guidelines with regards to the pronunciation of /-s/. Con-
cerning the use of this feature, the presence of a non-dominant variety´s form is
amply recorded in formal TV programmes such as news bulletins.

Weak pronunciation of
Aspiration of /-s/ Full pronunciation of /-s/
/-s/

3 out of 9 newsreaders al- 4 out of 9 newsreaders do 2 out of 9 newsreaders al-

ternate between the aspira- not aspirate the /-s/ ternate between a weak
tion of /-s/ and the full pro- pronunciation of /-s/ and
nunciation. the full pronunciation.

Table 1: Pronunciation of /-s/

However, if we look at features that are specific to one particular Andalu-

sian variety, such as the neutralisation of /s/ and /Ɵ/, we find no examples in
the spoken output of newsreaders. There were no examples of seseo or ceceo.
There is a discrepancy between Canal Sur's written guidelines and the ac-
tual linguistic output in their news bulletins. In fact, Díaz Salgado (2002) reports
that 58% of broadcasters from Seville working in Canal Sur have felt forced to
change their Andalusian accent for a more Castilian accent. Unfortunately, he
does not indicate where those pressures come from (e.g. the management, the
audience, peer pressure, etc.), but it seems that these pressures could precisely
explain the weak presence of Andalusian features in the newsreaders' outputs.
The written guidelines and the codification process reflected in Canal Sur's
style guide do not seem to have had a strong influence on the broadcasters'
speech. The spoken norm does not work as such, since it seems to exist only on
paper.
However, it is interesting to note that Díaz Salgado (2002) found that many
broadcasters reported using the aspiration of /-s/ in front of the microphone,
but as much as 32% of broadcasters acknowledged that they changed their eve-
ryday speech at work and did not use seseo in front of the microphone9. Ceceo was
completely rejected by broadcasters, both in their everyday and professional life.

9
45% of broadcasters from Seville admit to using seseo in their everyday speech, of
which 32% abandon that use when in front of the microphone while 13% maintain it.
Díaz Salgado reports that the figure of 45% seems inaccurate, due to the strong
presence of the dialectal pressures. It seems that speakers are once again unaware
 311

6. Conclusions
Canal Sur is being conservative in the language use that it promotes. Al-
though Canal Sur’s written linguistic policy promotes the Sevillian model, it is in-
teresting to note the weak presence of this variety in its own news bulletins. This
language practice does not contribute to raise the prestige of these varieties.
Moreover, the rejection of certain phonetic features in its style guide could
only reinforce the idea that, within non-dominant (as well as in dominant varie-
ties) there are always certain patterns of pronunciation that lack overt prestige
and are considered inadequate in a certain speech community. These long-held
prejudices are perpetuated in the regional media, which is far from complying
with its general policy of raising the prestige of Andalusian varieties within its
own speech community.
Thompson’s statement that Spain is a bicentric nation seems now not to be
so crystal clear. Seville may be a linguistic centre and its speech patterns seem to
enjoy certain prestige, as the written guidelines of Canal Sur prove. However, it
is a weak linguistic centre. It is not effectively codified and there does not seem
to be much indication that Sevillian Spanish constitutes a spoken norm that
could rival the Madrid model.
However, a feature that is widely used in the whole of Andalusia does have
a strong presence in the output of newsreaders, such as the aspiration of /-s/. It
could be that the fact that this feature is not identified with one single variety is
playing a role. More research would be needed to establish this fact. It could be
that the levelling process reported by Narbona et. al. (1998) and Pozo (2000) is
not moving towards the speech of Seville, but towards a kind of spoken koiné in
which shared features are regarded as more adequate or formal by speakers.
The covert prestige of Eastern Andalusian Spanish, along with the rivalry be-
tween Seville and other big cities such as Málaga and Córdoba, could also con-
tribute to explaining the fact. A media which speaks with an identifiable Sevillian
accent would be unacceptable for more than half of the target audience of Canal
Sur, probably even more unacceptable than a media which speaks with a Castil-
ian accent. The solution may lie in rejecting Canal Sur's style guide and accepting
features that are common to all Andalusian varieties, a result supported by the
data provided in Díaz Salgado (2002).
To conclude, we would like to point out that we were very surprised to find
constant references to the “mundo hispano” (Spanish–speaking world) and to

of their own linguistic practices.

 312

America in Canal Sur’s style guide. Is the Sevillian speech that is promoted be-
cause of Seville’s pre-eminence as the capital of Andalusia? Or is it instead due to
the fact that Sevillian Spanish shares many features with Latin American Span-
ish? Well, it seems that the shared features are the only ones acceptable to use in
the media, maybe due to the panhispanic language policy´s orientation (see Del
Valle 2009) :

[...] Esta práctica, muy extendida en todos los registros de Andalucía

Oriental, no se da sin embargo, en otros lugares del mundo hispano. Por
esta razón, no es aconsejable utilizar una abertura vocálica muy amplia
[...] (p. 226).
[This feature, widely distributed in all registers in Eastern Andalusia, is
not found however in other places of the Spanish-speaking world. For
this reason, it is not advisable to use a very wide vowel opening […]].
Regarding the quote above, it is surprising if we consider that Canal Sur is
only watched in Andalusia and reinforces the idea that Seville is a weak linguistic
centre, while Latin American Spanish is a stronger norm that could rival the Ma-
drid model. More research would be needed to establish the influence of the
Latin American spoken norm in Andalusia.

7. Summary
Spanish has been defined as a pluricentric language and Thompson (1992)
has identified two linguistic centres in mainland Spain: Madrid and Seville. Ac-
cording to Thompson, the latter irradiates the Sevillian model to the south of
Spain.
We have found that Thompson’s statement that Spain is a bicentric nation
needs to be reconsidered. Seville may be a linguistic centre and its speech pat-
terns seem to enjoy certain prestige, but it is a weak linguistic centre and its own
norms are far from being codified
Indeed, if we look at the language practices in the media, we could find a
great discrepancy between general language policies and written guidelines, and
actual broadcasters’ outputs. The Sevillian model is promoted and regarded as
adequate for the media in the regional TV channel’s style guide, but it is not pre-
sent in news bulletins, which are the most formal type of TV programme. There-
fore, we cannot conclude that Sevillian Spanish constitutes a spoken norm.
We consider that the language practices in the media do not contribute to
a great extent to raise the prestige of Andalusian Spanish varieties, which are
 313

non-dominant varieties of Peninsular Spanish. Long-held prejudices and nega-

tive attitudes are still easily found in the regional media’s practices.

8. References

Alvar, Manuel (1961): Hacia los conceptos de lengua, dialecto y hablas. Nueva
Revista de Filología Hispánica, 15, 54-59.
Alvar, Manuel (1996): Manual de dialectología hispánica: El español de España.
Barcelona. Ariel.
Amorós Negre, Carla (2008): Norma y estandarización. Salamanca: Luso-
Española.
Blas Arroyo, José Luis (2005): Sociolingüística del español: Desarrollos y
perspectivas en el estudio de la lengua española en contexto social. Madrid.
Cátedra.
Cano Aguilar, Rafael et al. (2009): La identidad lingüística de Andalucía. Sevilla.
Fundación Pública Andaluza Centro de Estudios Andaluces.
Carbonero, Pedro (1985): Norma estándar y actitud sociolingüística. In:
Sociolingüística Andaluza 1. Pedro Carbonero (ed.). Sevilla. P.U.S., 141-150.
Clyne, Michael (ed.) (1992): Pluricentric Languages. Different Norms in Different
Countries. Berlin/New York. Mouton/de Gruyter.
Crystal, David (2008): A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Oxford. Blackwell
Publishing.
Del Valle, José (2009): Total Spanish: The Politics of a Pan-Hispanic Grammar.
Publications of the Modern Language Association, 124/3, 880- 886.
Díaz Salgado, Luis Carlos (2002): Creencias y actitudes sobre usos fónicos
“innovadores” del andaluz en los periodistas sevillanos de Canal Sur
Televisión. Revista electrónica de estudios filológicos [online], 3.
Méndez García de Paredes, Elena (2009): La proyección social de la identidad
lingüística de Andalucía. In: La identidad lingüística de Andalucía. Rafael
Cano Aguilar et. al. Sevilla. Fundación Pública Andaluza Centro de Estudios
Andaluces.
Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy (1985): Authority in language. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Morgenthaler García, Laura (2008): Identidad y pluricentrismo lingüístico.
hablantes canarios frente a la estandarización. Madrid/ Frankfurt am
Main: Iberoamericana Vervuert
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Narbona, Antonio / Cano Rafael / Morillo Ramón (1998): El español hablado en

Andalucía. Barcelona. Ariel.
Nuevo Estatuto de Autonomía de Andalucía (2007): Available from:
http://www.juntadeandalucia.es.
Pozo Aguilar, Antonio del (2000): El habla de Málaga. 2nd edition. Málaga.
Miramar.
Salvador, F (1980): Niveles sociolinguisticos de seseo, ceceo y distincion en la
ciudad de Granada. Español Actual, 37-38, pp. 25-32.
Thompson, Robert W (1992): Spanish as a pluricentric language. In: Pluricentric
Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Michael Clyne (ed.).
Berlin/ New York. Mouton de Gruyter.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 315-326.

Maria Eugenia L. DUARTE

(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
(eugenia@brazilmail.com)

When speech and writing are too far apart!

Non-dominant features of Brazilian Portuguese
becoming dominant

Abstract

This paper discusses some consequences of the adoption of European

Portuguese (EP) syntax as a model of grammar in Brazil at the turn of
the 19th century, when 400 years had elapsed since the discovery of Bra-
zil. In fact, at the turn of the 19th century, EP was more distant from the
language of the 16th century than Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which still
kept some conservative syntactic features. Additionally, throughout the
20th century, BP underwent deep changes in its pronominal system,
which triggered relevant consequences in its syntax. Since such changes
have not been incorporated by grammars, teachers and students have to
deal with a number of rules that are not present in the input to which
children are exposed during the acquisition process. The result is a third
grammar: a combination of features of L1 (the acquired language) and L2
(the target language). This paper will show some grammatical features
of speech which are shared by Brazilians regardless of school atten-
dance, and how the prescribed forms, absent from speech, are recovered
in writing. It will also be shown that less salient innovative features
from speech are adopted in written modality more salient features, i. e.
features more noticed and criticized by grammarians, on the other hand,
are avoided, giving rise to this third grammar. I will conclude the paper
illustrating the only feature that sets Brazilians apart: the variable use of
nominal and verbal agreement morphology to express number, which is
subject to a sort of linguistic prejudice reinforced by newspaper col-
umns, in spite of the government efforts to convince those who write
school books to make people aware of and respect variation.
 316

1. A brief introduction
The natural gap between speech and writing can be understood if one
takes into account not only the fact that languages are always changing but also
the obvious conservative character of written language, which prevents the im-
mediate implementation in writing of most changes in speech. The situation be-
comes more delicate in cases of languages which result from the process of colo-
nization and keep very close bonds with the colonizers. That is the case of the
adoption of norms which regulate written language. Normative descriptions of-
fered by Brazilian traditional grammars and still present in the school system
have been based on in the 19th century European Portuguese (EP), a variety
which followed a different course during the 400 years that had elapsed between
the discovery of Brazil, in 1500, and its independence, in 1898.
At the turn of the 19th century, EP was more distant from the language of
the 16th century than Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which still exhibited some con-
servative syntactic features of the language of the discoverers. The attitude of an
intellectual elite then was the first effort to increase this gap, which would be
even deeper because, along the 20th century. BP underwent deep changes in its
pronominal system, which triggered remarkable consequences in its syntax.
Since such changes have not been incorporated by grammars, teachers and stu-
dents have to deal with a number of rules that are not present in the input that
children are exposed to during the acquisition process. As a result of such a dis-
tance (or contradiction) between what the student knows and the rules he is pre-
sented to, written language produced today is a combination of features of L1
(the grammar children acquire) and L2 (the target grammar, inspired by EP),
which results in a third grammar, (Kato 2005). Even though several studies based
on contemporary texts describe this new syntax of writing, grammarians refuse
to revise the descriptions (or prescriptions) which they offer.
In the next section of this paper, I will illustrate these three grammar
types, focusing on two phenomena shared by Brazilians regardless of social class,
level of formal education or origin: the reduction in the set of pronominal com-
plement clitics, their placement in the sentence (pre-verbal or post-verbal) and
the strategies to replace them in speech. It will be then shown that, because of
school pressure, some almost extinguished elements in speech are partially re-
covered in writing, but, in spite of such pressures, less salient innovative features
(meaning, less noticed as non-normative, even by those who establish the rules)
are implemented in writing; more salient features, repeatedly criticized by
teachers are avoided, giving rise to this third grammar Kato (2005) refers to. Sec-
 317

tion 3 will present the only feature that sets Brazilians apart and generates a
strong form of linguistic prejudice: the absence or the variable use of nominal
and verbal agreement inflections. Finally, in section 4, I will make some brief
concluding remarks.

2. The complement pronominal clitics in Brazilian Portuguese

Before we analyze how Brazilians found a way to escape from the claws of
the language guardians´ censorship, it must be mentioned that the set of pro-
nominal clitics has suffered an expressive reduction in Brazil). The chart below
compares the set of clitics effectively used in spontaneous speech and the one
which comes from EP and is present in written BP:
Personal Pronominal clitics Pronominal clitics
pronouns in speech in writing
Nom. Acc./ Dat. Im- Acc./ Dat. Impers.
Reflex. pers. Reflex.
1PS eu me me me me
1PP nós nos nos nos nos
a gente -
2PS tu te te te te
você o, a/se lhe
2PP vós vos vos vos vos
vocês os, as lhe
3PS ele, ela o, a/ lhe se o, a/ lhe se
se se
3PP eles, elas os,as/ lhes os,as/ lhes
se se

Table 1: Nominative (subject) Tonic Pronouns and Clitic Complements

in Brazilian Portuguese
The comparison makes it clear that only the 1PS (first person singular) re-
mains unaffected. As for the first person plural, BP is abandoning in speech the
pronoun “nós” (we), which is being replaced by the former nominal expression a
gente (already fully grammaticalized as a pronoun). The Second person singular,
with nominative pronouns “tu” (you) and “você” (you) combine with clitic “te”
and other stressed pronominal oblique forms, which are not in the chart. “Você”
comes from an address nominal expression and is also fully grammaticalized as a
pronoun in BP (see Lopes 2005). Owing to its nominal origin, “você” combines
with the third person verb and pronominal forms. The third person clitics are
the ones used in EP. The same happens with second person plural, “vocês”, as
 318

shown in the chart. The third person has been specially affected by the changes at-
tested in Brazilian Portuguese: accusative, dative and impersonal clitics are absent
in spontaneous speech.

2.1. The placement of complement pronominal clitics in Brazilian Por-

tuguese
From a historical perspective, European Portuguese has become an “en-
clitic language”, i. e., a system which prefers pronominal clitics after the verb,
certainly as a consequence of a phonological process leading to the weakening of
non-stressed vowels, such as the ones found in the clitics. The possibility of oc-
currence of proclisis, from the 17th Century on, began to obey to very strict con-
straints, consisting of the presence of an operator, usually referred to as “an at-
tractor”, such as negation, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns, aspec-
tual adverbs, subordinate conjunctions and focalized elements. Brazilian Portu-
guese, on the contrary, did not undergo the mentioned phonological process and
continued to accept proclisis without restriction. In fact it can be attested by the
licensing of complement clitics in the first position as in (1a), whereas EP will use
only enclisis, as in (1b):

1a. Me dá um cigarro. (Brazilian Portuguese)

me-CL-1ps give-2ps a cigarette
1b. Dá-me um cigarro. (European Portuguese
give-me-CL-1ps a cigarette
Give me a cigarette
Brazilian grammarians, in spite of BP clear preference for proclisis decided
that enclisis should be the only correct position for clitics, except when licensed
by the mentioned operators, which in fact worked in EP but not in BP. Moreover,
proclisis in non-authorized contexts, particularly in the first position, as in (1a),
was justified by Brazilians’ temper: while Portuguese were “authoritarian”, “de-
manding”, Brazilians were “docile”, “tractable” (Melo, 1972). Therefore, a sen-
tence like (1a) would sound like a request, whereas a sentence like (1b) would
sound like a command. Throughout the 20th century, an intended scientific dis-
course was developed to convince students that proclisis in unauthorized con-
texts was only allowed in colloquial speech, but was forbidden in careful speech
and good writing. A grammatical feature was transformed in a matter of “ade-
quacy”. Even today, so many decades after the establishment of linguistics as a
 319

science, the same normative discourse and condescendence remains1 (If com-
plement clitics do not appear more often in first position in BP it is not due to a
restriction to proclisis but because BP prefers overt pronominal subjects (Duarte
2000; 2004). Therefore, the proclitic complement will appear in second position.
In the declarative sentences below (2-3), BP will prefer (b), with an expressed
subject, to (a), with a null subject:

2a. Me chocou profundamente. 3a. Te vi no cinema ontem.

me-CL-1ps shocked-3ps deeply
(It) shocked me deeply.
2b. Aquilo me chocou profundamente.
that me-CL-1ps shocked-3ps
deeply
It/that shocked me deeply.
you-CL-2ps saw-1ps in-the movies yester-
day
(I) saw you in the movies yester-
day.
3b. Eu te vi no cinema ontem
I you-CL-2ps saw-1ps in-the mov-
ies yesterday
I saw you in the movies yesterday.

2.2. The replacement of lost complement clitics in Brazilian Portu-

guese
Replacing the accusative clitic “o”, and its inflections for gender “a” and
number (“os”, “as”), BP, irrespective of social class and level of education, prefers
a null object. So, instead of (4a), which illustrates the use of an accusative clitic,
PB exhibits a null object structure:
4a. E o João? Eu não o tenho visto ultimamente. (EP)
And the João? I not him-CL-3ps have seen lately
(I) saw you in the movies yesterday.
4b. E o João? Eu não tenho visto [Ø] ultimamente. (BP)
And the João? I not have seen [Ø] lately
How about John? I have not seen him lately.’
Another strategy, far less frequent than the null object to represent ana-
phoric direct objects, is the use of the nominative third person pronouns,
“ele(s)”, “ela(s)”, not only to replace a direct object (5a), but also the subject of
infinitival complements of causative verbs (5b). This is another evidence that the
set of nominative pronouns perform the accusative functions, since they can as-
sign case to subjects of infinitives instead of accusative clitics:

1
See Pagotto (1998) for a comple account of the codification of Brazilian written norm.
 320

5a. E o João? Eu não tenho visto ele ultimamente. (BP)

And the João? I not have seen he-NOM lately
How about John? I have not seen him lately.
5b. Eu deixei ele ir ao médico sozinho.
I let-1ps he go to-the doctor alone
I let him go to the doctor by himself.
The dative clitic “lhe” (“lhes”) has disappeared from speech to refer to the
third person; it has been replaced by an SP “to him/to her”. So, instead of (6a),
any Brazilian will use the PP “to him”, “to her”, “to them”, as in (6b):

6a. Eu lhe dei um present. (EP)

I him-CL-3ps gave a presente
How about John? I have not seen him lately.
6b. Eu dei um presente pra ele. (BP)
I gave a present to him.
I gave him a present / I gave a present to him.
The impersonal clitic “se” (one) is also absent in speech. Several studies
show that its presence ranges from 8% in the speech of older university gradu-
ates to 3% among those with no formal education or few years of school atten-
dance:

7. Não se usa mais chapéu (EP)

Not se-CL-Imp wear-3ps more hat
One no longer wears hats.
This means that the use of the clitic “se” is almost extinct from speech. It
has been replaced by the second person nominative pronoun “você” (you), which
seems to be the preferred form in English,(8a). It can also be substituted by the
pronominalized nominal expression “a gente” (meaning literally the people,
which has replaced first person plural “nós” (we), either for definite (you and I) or
indefinite reference), as in (8b):

8a. Quando você viaja, você passa a ser turista. Então você passa a fazer coisas
que você nunca faria no Brasil
when you travel you become a tourist. Then you begin to do things that
you never would-do in-the Brazil.
 321

When you travel you become a tourist. Then you start ‘doing things that you'd
never do in Brazil’
8b. A gente tem que seguir o que a gente sabe e da forma que a gente foi criado
the people have-3ps to follow what the people know-3ps and in-the way
that the people be-3ps raised
We have to follow what we know, and in the way we have been raised.
Another strategy to express arbitrary reference is related to the complete
absence of a clitic or a nominative pronoun, with a third person singular verb
form, if the sentence expresses “aspect” (duration) or modality (either prohibi-
tion, obligation or necessity), as in (9a, b), respectively:

9a. Não usa mais chapéu2

not wear-3ps more hat
One no longer wears hat. One does not wear hats anymore.
9b. Não pode entrar de sapato; tem de ficar de meia.
not can-3ps enter of shoe; have-3ps to stay of sock
One cannot enter with shoes; one has to wear only socks.

2.3. The partial recovery of lost clitics in writing and the implementa-
tion of some features from speech
Considering that the target grammar prescribes enclisis and the use of the
whole set of pronominal clitics (except for “vos”, associated with second person
plural nominative pronoun “vós”, completely extinct in speech and writing), the
written language presents very interesting results. It must be said that schooling is
successful in the following aspects: (a) clitics are avoided in sentence-initial posi-
tion in writing, but proclisis is the preferred order as long as there is an element
occupying first position (not only the operators that function as a constraint in
EP): a subject, an adjunct, a topicalized constituent. It can be anything to avoid
the only surviving prohibition – a clitic in the beginning of a sentence, as shown
in (2b) and (3b), the normal usage in speech. More informal genders, however,
begin to use the Brazilian clitic position especially with clitics belonging to L1
grammar (see chart 1).

2
According to Galves (1987), it is exactly the increasing use of overt referential sub-
jects that allows the arbitrary interpretation to an empty subject with a third person
singular verb form. See also Duarte (2000) and Cavalcante (2007) for empirical
analyses of such structures.
 322

Regarding the use of the accusative and impersonal clitics, some interest-
ing effects can be observed: both are recovered in writing, and in the enclitic po-
sition, as in (10a, b):
10a. Eu vou levá-lo ao médico.
I go take-him-CL-3ps to-the doctor
I’m going to take him to the doctor.
10b. Pode-se dizer que a situação é complicada.
Can-se-CL-Imp say that the situation is delicate
One can say that the situation is delicate.
Another evidence that both – the lost clitics and the enclitic position – co-
me together is the significant occurrence of hypercorrection: even in the presen-
ce of an EP “attractor”, the clitic “se” and sometimes the third person “lhe” tend
to appear in enclitic position, as in (11):

11a. Para mim eles dizem que aqui respira-se democracia.

For me they say that here breath-3ps se-CL-Imp democracy
In my opinion they mean that here one breathes democracy.
11b. ACM repetiu o mesmo crime que custou-lhe o mandato.
ACM repeated the same crime which cost-3ps him-CL the mandate
ACM repeated the same crime that cost him his mandate.
Concerning the use of null-objects, they are easily implemented in writing
because they are not noticed; the impersonal nominative pronouns “você” and
“a gente” (you and the people), however, are avoided in more formal texts, be-
cause they are more easily noticed and condemned in classrooms . In order to
solve the problem, students have resorted to the first person plural pronoun
“nós” (we), . In spite of being very rare in speech (either for definite or indefinite
reference) “nós” seems to be easier to use and sounds less formal than imperso-
nal clitic “se”. The grammar of writing shows, therefore, features of speech,
prescribed structures recovered and features that are neither in L1 nor in L2 (the
result of the distance between use and an idealized set of rules), as stated by Kato
(2005).

3. The variable use of nominal and verbal agreement marks

As we mention in the introduction, it must be mentioned that the only
morphosyntactic feature that sets Brazilians apart and is subject to linguistic
prejudice is the variable use of nominal and verbal agreement inflections in BP.
 323

Among the pioneers in the study of constraints on such variable use of agree-
ment marks in BP areNaro (1981), Naro and Scherre (2003), Scherre (1988) and
Scherre and Naro (1991), among many others), whose research has been carried
out in several parts of the country by other scholars. Even though the percentage
of use of these agreement marks may vary largely along several continua, such as
years of formal education, lower/higher social classes, urban/non-urban areas,
contact with media, etc., the regular effect of the structural constraints is re-
markable. The examples in (12) illustrate the variation. (12a) is a sentence from a
corpus of non-standard BP and (12b) its standard counterpart, with verbal and
nominal agreement marks:

12a. Vocês fica com esses garoto novinho. (non-standard BP)

You-2PP stay-2PS with these boy-SG youngSG
12b. Vocês ficam com esses garotos novinhos. (standard BP)
You-2PP stay-2PP with these boys-PL young-PL
You keep these young boys

13a. Eles nem se lembram do que prometeu. (non-standard BP)

They not remember-3PP of what (they) promised-3PS
They don’t even remember what they promised.
13b. Aí eles vai ligar e vão consertar o carro.
Then they is-3PS going to-call and are-3PP going to-fix the car.
Then they are going to call and are going to fix the car’
13c. Bem, eles jogam pedra, quebra telha.
Well, they throw-3PP stone, break-3PS tile
Well, they throw stones, break tiles.
According to Naro and Scherre´s findings, less phonetically salient forms,
like the ones in (12a), (13a,c), are more easily lost than more salient, irregular
verb forms, like (14a,b), where we have irregular verbs, like to be and to go:

14a. Vocês são do Brasil? (You) São brasileiros?

You-2PP are-3PP from-the Brazil? (You) Are-2PP Brazilians?
Are you from Brazil? Are (you) Brazilians?
14b. Vocês estão muito bem. Vocês vão ser então feliz.3
You-2PP are-2PP very well. You are-2PP going to-be then happy-SG
You are very well. You are going to be happy.
3
Notice, however, that the same auxiliary of the periphrastic future “to go” exhibits
variation in (13b)
 324

It is impossible not to relate such a process to the change undergone by

Old French. While in French the change was completed even though writing pre-
serves the lost marks, in BP exhibits variation in presence/absence of marks,
which is socially and regionally stratified. Even though every Brazilian misses
occasionally an agreement mark, most of them are not aware of it. And those
with higher level of education criticize the ones who miss plural marks more fre-
quently. The only context in which missing agreement is no longer noticed is VS
BP keeps VS (in variation with SV) in non-accusative constructions. Nevertheless
since the internal argument is no longer interpreted as a subject, the lack of ver-
bal agreement marks in structures like (15) is very frequent, both in speech and
writing:

15a. Ocorreu vários acidentes.

Occurred-3PS several acccidents.
Several accidents have occurred/happened.
15b. Foi oferecido muitas flores
Was offered-MASC-SG many flowers-FEM-PL
Many flowers have been offered.
More skilled speakers and writers would use the marks shown in (16):
16a. Ocorreram vários acidentes.
Occurred-3PP several acccidents
Several accidents have occurred/happened.
16b. Foram oferecidas muitas flores
Were offered-FEM-PL many flowers-FEM-PL
Many flowers have been offered.

4. A final remark
As a final remark, we can affirm that, despite grammarians´ prescriptions,
innovative variants are slowly being implemented in writing, mainly because
they are so common and no longer perceived as deviant. It occurs when a new
variant is robust enough in the system and new generations of writers begin to
expand their use. It is also true that many forms re-enter the system of writing,
but they exhibit new features. Such a picture claims for a new description of the
grammar of writing and consequent changes in teaching, which could help to
bridge the gap between speech and writing.
The only exception concerns the missing agreement marks: what we see
today is an increasing prejudice manifested in a number of newspaper columns
 325

and school books, which refuse to accept the reality of a largely implemented
process of variation in the use of agreement marks all over the country. Any at-
tempt to make people aware of non-standard uses is roughly rejected. And school
has not been successful in showing students that variation is natural to all lan-
guages and language varieties.

5. References

Cavalcante, Sílvia (2007): O sujeito nulo de referência indeterminada na fala culta

carioca. Revista Diadorim, 2, 63-81. Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras
Vernáculas, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Cyrino, Sônia / Duarte M. Eugênia / Kato Mary A. (2000): Visible subjects and in-
visible clitics in Brazilian Portuguese. In: Brazilian Portuguese and the Null
Subject Parameter. Org. by M. A. Kato and E. V. Negrão. Frankfurt/Madrid.
Vervuert/Iberoamericana. 55-104.
Duarte, M. Eugênia L. (2000): The loss of the „Avoid Pronoun“ Principle in Brazili-
an Portuguese. In: Brazilian Portuguese and the Null Subject Parameter.
Org. by M. A. Kato and E. V. Negrão. Frankfurt/Madrid. Ver-
vuert/Iberoamericana. 17-36.
Duarte, M. Eugênia L. (2004): On the ‘embedding’ of a syntactic change. In: Langu-
age Variation in Europe: Papers from ICLaVE2. Ed. by B-L Gunnarsson et al.
Uppsala, Sweden: Universitetstryckeriet. 145-155.
Galves, Charlotte. (1987): A sintaxe do português brasileiro. Ensaios de Linguísti-
ca, 13, 31-50. Federal University of Minas Gerais.
Kato, Mary A. (2005): A gramática do letrado: questões para a teoria gramatical.
In: Ciências da Linguagem: trinta anos de investigação e ensino. Org. by M.
A. Marques, E. Koller, J. Teixeira and S.A. Lemos. Braga: CEHUM, Universi-
dade do Minho, Portugal. 131-145.
Lopes, Célia (2003): A inserção de “a gente” no quadro pronominal do português.
Frankfurt/Madri. Vervuert/Iberoamericana, 18.
Melo, Gladstone C. De (1972): Alencar e a „Língua Brasileira“. Rio de Janeiro. Con-
selho Federal de Cultura, 3a. Ed.
Naro, Anthony (1981): The social and structural dimensions of a syntactic
change. Language 57, 63-98.
Naro, Antony and Scherre, M. Marta. (2003): Estabilidade e mudança linguística
em tempo real: a concordância de número. In: Mudança Linguística em
 326

Tempo Real. Org. by M. C. de Paiva and M. E. Duarte. Rio de Janeiro. Contra-

capa/FAPERJ. 47-62.
Pagotto, Emílio. Norma e Condescendência: ciência e pureza. (1998): Línguas e In-
strumentos Linguísticos, 2, 49-68. Campinas. Editora Pontes.
Pagotto, Emílio and Duarte, M. Eugênia L. (2005): Gênero e norma: avós e netos,
classes e clíticos no final do século XIX. In: A norma brasileira em
construção: fatos lingüísticos em cartas pessoais do século 19. Org. by C.
Lopes. Rio de Janeiro/ Pós-Graduação em Letras Vernáculas. In-Fólio/ FA-
PERJ. 67-81
Scherre, M. Marta (1988): Reanálise da concordância nominal em português. PHD
Dissertation, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Scherre, M. Marta and Naro, Anthony (1991): Marking in discourse: “birds of a
feather”. Language Variation and Change, 3 (1), 23-32.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 327-348.

Aline BAZENGA
(Universidade da Madeira, Portugal)
aline@uma.pt

Variation in subject-verb agreement in an

insular variety of European Portuguese

Abstract
This paper examines the subject-verb agreement variation in one of the
varieties of European Portuguese, taking into account previous propos-
als/accounts for other varieties of Portuguese, in order to gain a better
understanding of the factors influencing grammatical patterns in varie-
ties of Portuguese. The present study focuses on the verbal agreement in
the third person plural (or 3PL), using data from a corpus of sociolin-
guistics interviews recorded in 2010 with 21 residents of Funchal, the
capital of Madeira Island, Portugal. These results provide more data for
the discussions about the variable subject-verb agreement in the varie-
ties of Portuguese (African, Brazilian and European Portuguese varieties)
and contribute to sketch a continuum of such varieties in the Lusophone
space.

1. Introduction
This paper is structured as follows. First, a brief overview of the historical
development of Portuguese in Madeira will be given, and the sociolinguistic con-
ditions that led to the emergence of the insular dialect characterizing the pre-
sent linguistic situation in Madeira will be presented. Then, a overview of previ-
ous variationist researches on subject-verb agreement in 3PL in different varie-
ties of Portuguese and the most frequent patterns of subject-verb agreement in
EP will be given. After that, a description of the data and methodology applied in
the study is given and the most significant quantitative results will be presented.
The results will be analyzed by comparing them to the results obtained from a
similar study focusing on other varieties of EP and BP.
Portuguese is a pluricentric language (Clyne, 1992, Baxter, 1992), spoken in
several countries. The two main standards are the European Portuguese (hence-
forth EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). EP is used as the norm of reference for
 328

African and Asian Lusophone spaces, in recent postcolonial countries such as

Angola, the Cape Verde Islands, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique,
and São Tomé and Príncipe Islands, all multilingual, and in which the Portuguese
is the official language. There are, in addition to the standard EP, which is based
on two varieties (Coimbra and Lisbon, the capital), a number of regional varieties
of spoken Portuguese, within and outside of continental Portugal. Regional varie-
ties of EP share many features, in terms of vocabulary and grammatical forms,
with the standard EP. However, they differ in pronunciation, and they also dis-
play some grammatical forms and some lexical items which are specific to the
region where they are spoken. Cintra (1971) and Segura & Saramago (2001) have
proposed a classification, based on phonetics features, and they consider three
main regional dialects: Northern dialects, Central Southern varieties located on
mainland Portugal, and Insular varieties (Azores and Madeira).
In Brazil, the standard BP for written language coexists with a range of
vernacular BP spoken varieties, indigenous languages of Amerindian communi-
ties, and other European and Asian spoken languages by small communities of
descendants of European and Japanese immigrants.
EP and BP varieties are distinguished both at the phonological level in
their vowels and consonant systems. At the morphosyntactic level, among the
various differences, it may be referring to the use of ter (‘to have’) with the
meaning of ‘there to be’ in existential constructions in BP, instead of haver in EP
(as in ‘there are two books’: Tem dois livros na mesa, in BP and Há dois livros na mesa,
in EP). The rules for pronominal clitics placement of object pronouns also differ
in both varieties. In BP we observe a tendency to preverbal object clitic place-
ment (or proclitic position) in the contexts in which enclitic pronouns (or post-
verbal placement) occur in EP (as, in ‘Ana saw me’: A Ana me viu (BP) and A Ana
viu-me (EP)).
A lot of research has been done for BP varieties in the variationist sociolin-
guistic framework since the early 80’s (Paiva & Scherre, 1999), on several linguis-
tic variable phenomena; among them, the subject-verb number agreement has
the status of a variable rule. Most of EP varieties research has been conducted in
the dialectology field, corpora based on rural and illiterate speakers, focusing on
the non-standard grammar of regional vernacular, and as affirmed by Naro &
Scherre (2000: 241) “much work remains to be done in order to determine the
geographical and structural dimensions of variable concord agreement in pre-
sent day-Portugal”.
 329

Variable subject-verb agreement variable has not received much atten-

tion, in terms of sociolinguistic research, until the project of Study of Concordance
Patterns in African, Brazilian and European Varieties of Portuguese. Our study, inte-
grated in this project aims to provide a preliminary variationist investigation in a
EP variety, by examining the factors conditioning the use of the non-standard
variant, corresponding to a (non)-agreement strategy, and to enrich the patterns
of variants sketched until now.
The variable under study concerns the alternation between explicit third
person plural verbal forms (3PL) as the required verbal forms in the case of sub-
ject-verb agreement in 3PL and the verbal forms devoid of plural marking, the
non-standard 3SG verb forms in use. The results of the quantitative analysis are
compared with some similar studies for EP and BP. The main research questions
addressed in this study are:
(1) Do the uses of this variable in Madeirian spoken variety of EP contrib-
ute for a better knowledge of the spoken variation in EP area?
(2) When comparing with some varieties of BP, does the result allow draw-
ing a sociolinguistic continuum between both main varieties of Portuguese,
against the general belief that BP and EP are radically divergent1?

2. The linguistic situation of Madeira Island

Madeira was discovered in 1419 by Portuguese sailors in the service of
Prince Henry the Navigator. The first settlers arrived in the early fifteenth cen-
tury (1420 or 1425). According to Albuquerque & Vieira (1987) they came from
North and South of Portugal, and the variety of spoken Portuguese on the island
exhibits features from both peninsular EP dialects (Northern dialects, Central
Southern dialects).
The Madeirian society can be seen as the result of migratory processes.
Since the early stages of its history, Madeira has been a center of the continuous
flow of migrations resulting in different situations of language contact. The im-
migration flows has been regulated by economic cycles: foreign European resi-
dents, (the trade of sugar, and the presence of Genovese, Flemish and French
traders, in early sixteenth century, and British2, since the early seventeenth cen-

1
For further description of the competing point of views concerning the relationships
between EP and BP vernaculars, and historical data of non-agreeing verb forms in EP,
see Naro & Scherre (2000).
2
The British colony in Madeira, which developed as early as the fifteenth century and
increased significantly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as being the most
prominent group of people of Madeira. The Elucidário Madeirense, published in 1921,
 330

tury as merchants of wine, followed by Germans and Syrians, as promoters of the

embroidery trade), and the presence of slaves from the Canary Islands and Gulf
of Guinea, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tourism activity
started the late seventeenth century, bringing foreign temporary residents to
the island, and has grown ever since. In the twentieth century, we observe some
return movement of Portuguese from the ex-colonies in Africa (in 1975), and
recently, Portuguese emigrants from Venezuela and South Africa, on one hand,
and the arrival of immigrant workers from Eastern Europe, Brazil, and PALOP
(Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa)3, on other hand.
At the same time, a high level of social mobility is one of the main
characteristics of the Madeira island society. Overseas emigration started early
on, first in the direction of the new spaces discovered, in a colonization context
(Brazil and United States) and in the twentieth century to different European
countries, as well as South Africa and Venezuela. The effects of the language(s)
contact situation on this space have not been yet investigated.
Among pan-regional varieties, those belonging to the Insular dialects, such
as the spoken Portuguese in the Azores and Madeira, are less understandable for
Portuguese speakers of other varieties of EP, as revealed by Cabeleira (2006) in
her study of the evaluation of Attitudes and prejudices against the language dialect
varieties.
The dialect of Madeira is characterized by some notable phonetic features
(Andrade, 1993; Segura, 2003):
 Diphtongation of stressed high vowels pronounced /i/ and / u , /i/ 
[j] ou [j], as navio [nv’ju] , [nv’ju] and /u/  [w], as lua [l’w], /
 palatalization of /l/ before [i] or [j] (aquilo: [k’ iu])
 deletion of unstressed vowel /i/, and in context of consonantal sandhi;
 assimilation of the final fricative –s [i] [i], [j], when followed by a
voiceless or voiced fricative at the initial position of the second word
(as vacas : [j v’ak] ).
Some non-standard syntactic properties have been revealed by recent
studies on dialectology field, as the work done by Carrilho (2010), based on COR-
DIAL-SIN (Syntax-oriented Corpus of Portuguese Dialects4). In this study, non-

cited the Portuguese historian Dr. Azevedo who wrote in 1873: “Madeira is largely an-
glicized in race, costume, ownership of land, as well as in its trade and money; Eng-
lish (after Portuguese) is the language spoken most frequently [and] it is only na-
tional pride which contrives to keep us Portuguese”.
3
African countries with Portuguese as official language.
4
See http://www.clul.ul.pt/en/research-teams/212-cordial-sin-syntax-oriented-corpus-
of-portuguese-dialects.
 331

standard constructions are in areal distribution, and they mainly occur in a re-
stricted part of EP area. Is the case of existential impersonal constructions with ter
(to have), only attested in Madeira dialect, aspectual constructions involving the ger-
und form of a main verb (found also in Azores and Central Southern dialects of
EP), and constructions as Pre-nominal possessives without article (in Madeira but
also attested in Azores but with less frequency). It may be noticed too that these
constructions are all attested in standard BP. Martins (2003, 2009) referred to the
frequency of pronominal a gente se as a subject doubling construction and the
grammar of clitics with characterized by a non-standard selection of pronominal
forms (subject pronoun ele, ‘he’ employed as object pronoun) non-standard ob-
ject pronouns placement, sharing some properties with BP variety. Related to
these grammatical features, Martins (2003) pointed to the possibility of a lack of
the properties of the Null-Subject Parameter, making this variety closer to the BP.
The linguistic situation of Madeira could be described as a regional spoken
Portuguese, in which the ‘geographical isolation’ factor may be seen as a type of
language island (Kiehl, 2010: 334), defined, in general terms,
“as a form of spatial isolation from the linguistic motherland which
entails a discontinuous language space [and] “the socio-psychological
disposition of language island communities or, in other words, their
collective ‘awareness of being different.” (Mattheier, 1996:815).”

3. Previous research in Subject-Verb agreement variation in EP

The general assumption concerning subject-verb agreement in EP is that it
is not to be considered as a variable rule as in BP varieties.
Typologically speaking, EP is characterized by a rich inflectional system of
the verb in its standard variety. Verbs display agreement features in all para-
digms, and the subject-verb agreement is realized by a co-variation in a number
feature of the verb which correspond to the main strategy, fixed as a standard
rule. The standard view on subject-verb agreement in EP is that verbs normally
agree in person and number with their respective subjects. According to this
rule, a singular subject requires a singular verb, and a plural subject requires a
plural verb form (Pattern 1), as in given example (1), taken from Peres & Móia
(1996: 451), below:
 332

PATTERN 1: Grammatical or morphologically based agreement

1a. Vieram-nos[3PL] à memória as declarações prestadas [PL]

came [3PL] – to us to the memory the [PL] declarations made [PL]
‘we remembered the declarations that were made’
1b. *Veio-nos[3SG] à memória as declarações prestadas [PL]
came [3SG] – to us to the memory the [PL] declarations made [PL]
we remembered the declarations that were made
In (1a) both subject and verb are plural, while in (1b) the subject is plural
but the verb is not marked for plural and has singular form. However, the verbal
system is not 100% regular and the ambiguity regarding first person and third
person of the singular (i.e. 1SG = 3SG) is also present in 7/10 paradigms of regular
verbs and 8/10 paradigms of irregular verbs and makes it possible to have an im-
plicit subject-verb agreement, without explicit marks of plural in verb form
(Mota & Vieira, 2008). Furthermore, in some linguistic contexts, speakers find it
impossible to follow the high regulated pattern and they ignore the obligatory
grammatical agreement of the standard. Beside the default pattern we have the
following patterns, corresponding to highly frequent failures of grammatical
based agreement in spoken EP for all social classes:

PATTERN 2: Attraction or positionally based agreement, in the presence of complex

subjects, where the agreement is correlated with a part of the coordinated sub-
ject in post-verbal position, the initial element neighbor of the verb, as in exam-
ples (2), retrieved from Peres & Móia (1995: 449-450):

2a. Impressionam-me [3PL] o entusiasmo e dedicação destes jovens [Subj.PL]

impress [3PL] me the enthusiam and dedication of-these young kids
we remembered the declarations that were made
2b. Impressiona-me [3SG] o entusiasmo[SNSG]e dedicação destes jovens [Subj.PL]
impresses [3SG] me the enthusiam and dedication of-these young kids
I’m impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication of these young kids’

PATTERN 3: Default singulars based agreement (Chambers, 2004, 2009) is related to

types of verbs and constructions, as with be, in present tense, and unaccusative
verbs. Such constructions are exceptional in that the controller of agreement is
not the element in subject position but the post-verbal noun phrase, as in exam-
ples (3) and (4) respectively, from Mota & Vieira (2008: 870):
 333

3a. a minha principal preocupação são [3PL] os incêndios [Subj.PL]

my main worry are [3PL] the fires
3b. a minha principal preocupação é [3SG] os incêndios [Subj.PL]
my main worry is [3SG] the fires
my main worry are the fires’
4a. hoje, começaram [3PL] as aulas [Subj. PL]
today began [3PL] the classes
4b. hoje, começou [3SG] as aulas [Subj.PL]
today began [3SG] the classes
today classes began’

PATTERN 4: Semantically or notional based agreement is found with subjects real-

ized by collective names or quantifiers, as in examples (5) given by Peres & Móia
(1995: 449-450):

5a. Vinte estudantes foram a exame. A maioria [SubjSG] passou[3SG]

twenty students did [3PL] the exam. The majority passed[3SG]
5b. Vinte estudantes foram a exame. A maioria [SubjSG] passaram[3PL].
twenty students did[3PL] the exam. The majority passed[3PL]
Twenty students did the exam. Most of them passed’
Even if they are considered as errors, regarding the norm, the anti-
grammatical agreement patterns listed above, present different degrees of ac-
ceptability. Among them, the ‘default singulars’ patterns are very frequently
used by highly educated speakers.
Although, the study of EP variants of the subject-verb agreement based on
regional speaking corpora seem to indicate high frequency of the default pattern,
even in non-standard varieties (Mota & Vieira, 2008). Research based on written
corpora conducted by Peres & Móia (1996) points to the occurrence of variation
in some contexts, as the labeled pattern ‘default singulars’ and ‘positional’. Costa
(2001) and Costa & Figueiredo (2006) limit the field of variation to the contexts in
which the subject is in post-verbal position and only in informal speaking
situations. Based on dialectal corpora of Portuguese, Carrilho (2003), Varejão
(2006) and Naro &Scherre (2007) not only confirm the relevance of the effect of
the position of the subject in the lack of marking of plural number on the verb;
they also refer to the type of verb and the distance of the subject constituent
from the verb as the linguistic context favorers the uses of the absence of
agreement.
 334

The major linguistic factors affecting the subject-verb agreement variation

mentioned in variationist research developed for BP varieties, as influential work
of Scherre & Naro (1997) and Naro & Scherre (1993, 2007, among others publica-
tions) are listed below:
(1) Phonological and morphological constraints, labelled as phonetic saliency
hierarchy factor, which means that verbs with less salient differences between
singular and plural are correlated with non-agreement uses, and verbs with high
phonetic salience are correlated with standard agreement. The less salient verb
forms are zero forms, corresponding to the 3SG, resulting in the lack of 3PL mor-
pheme.
(2) Syntactic constraints such as: subject position (pre-verbal and post-
verbal position), the distance of the subject from the verb, the type of verb and
verbal constructions.
We also have to consider the attested uses of non-standard variants of 3PL
ending-verb forms in several paradigms of peninsular dialects of EP, referred in
empirical studies based on rural vernacular EP (Cardoso, Carrilho & Pereira,
2009) or for a sociolinguistic purpose (Mota & Vieira, 2008).

3. Subject-verb agreement in 3PL in spoken Portuguese in Funchal

3.1. Data and Methodology
The data analyzed (1217 tokens) was drawn from a sample of the Corpus-
Funchal. The interviews were conducted by letting the speaker talk about some
topics of their life and were asked follow-up questions. The goal was therefore to
attempt to reduce the Observer’Paradox (Labov, 19725) as much as possible. Each
interview was 30 – 45 minutes long. The 16 informants are all residents of the
city of Funchal and were born on Madeira Island. Hence the variety of EP investi-
gated is the regional spoken Portuguese.
The quantitative analysis uses the variable rule approach, by using the
GOLDVARB 2001 application (Robinson et al, 2001), which calculates probabilities
for the application of a given variable rule. We have selected nine factors groups,
including social (such as sex, age, and level of education of the informants) and
linguistic factors referred (listed above). The phonetic salience of the verb form (cor-
responding to the contrast of 3SG/3PL verb forms) follow the saliency hierarchy in
two levels, as outlined in Naro (1981: 74) and inflected verb form of 3PL factor has
5
This concept is defined by Labov (1972: 209) as “the aim of linguistic research in the
community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systemati-
cally observed; yet we can only obtain these data by systematic observation”.
 335

been introduced to account the variability of 3PL verb forms. The whole factors
selected for this study are summarized in Table 1:

Linguistic and social variables / factors

Social factors Linguistic factors
1. Sex 4. Subject-verb order
Male  SV
Female  VS
2. Age 5. Tense of the verb form
A (18-35)  Present Tense
B (36-55)  Past Perfect Tense
C (56-75)  Future Tense
3. Class /Education 6. Type of the Verb
1. Primary School Ser: to be
2. High School Ter: to have
3. Graduate Inaccusative verbs
(existir: to exist – etc.)
Others
7. Phonetic saliency hierarchy of the verb
form
Level 1 (come- comem : eats - eat)
Level 2 (faz – fazem : makes – make)
8. Semantics of the lexical subject
[+ hum]
[-hum]
9. inflected verb form of 3PL
Standard
Non-standard

TABLE 1. Factor groups for GOLDVARB 2001 analysis

3.2 Results
Our general results show that standard subject-verb agreement is missing
in 16% of all cases. 84% of the required inflections of 3PL verb form correspond-
ing to the pattern of grammatical agreement are realised. If the use of non-
standard variant 3PL (3%) is also taken into account, the uses of the standard
agreement decreases to 81%. The three strategies and the number of evidences
found for each are listed below:
1. 3PL standard variants (= agreement): 975/1217
(6) as pessoas [SubjPL] tentam [3PL] educar os seus filhos. (HC2-503)
the people [SubjPL] try [3PL] to educate the their children
People try to educate children.
 336

2. 3PL non-standard variants (= agreement): 41/1217

(7) quando os meus pais [SubjPL] moravo [3PL] na casa. (MB1-2)
when the my parents [SubjPL] lived [3PL] in the house
when my parents lived at home’
3. 3SG non-standard variants (= non-agreement): 191/1217
(8) estes quadros [SubjPL] representa [3SG] a vida antiga (HC1-175)
these paintings [SubjPL] represents [3 SG] the life ancient
these paintings represent life in the past’
Results for the general distribution and the relative weight of each factor
influencing the uses of the standard 3PL of agreement verbal forms are pre-
sented in Table 2.

Standard 3PL Rel.

Tokens
(= agreement) Weight

Social class/ Level

of Education
 1. low 295 (76%) 0,637 387
 3. high 433 (87%) 0,438 493
Phonetic saliency
hierarchy
 Level 1 717 (83%) 0,576 856
 Level 2 309 (85%) 0,327 361
Subject verb order
 SV 547 (86%) 0,426 636
 VS 49 (40%) 0,823 122
Animacy of S
 [+ hum] 275 (81%) 0,504 337
 [- hum] 145 (61%) 0,713 237
Verb-type
 Inaccusative 52 (70%) 0,654 74
 Ser – ‘to be’ 191(70%) 0,605 272
 Ter – ‘to have’ 89 (89%) 0,725 115

TABLE 2: Overall results: percentage of agreement marks and

factor weights for each variable

Table 2 reports the rate of the relative weight of each factor (second col-
umn). As we can see, the Goldvarb calculated four statistically relevant variables
(with relative weights that value more than 0,5%). Three of them are linguistic
variables, ordered as follows: the post-position of the subject with a relative
weight of 0,82; [-human] subjects with 0.71 of rel. weight, and the low salience of
 337

singular/plural opposition in the verb form, with 0,63 of relative weight. Only
one social factor shows a significant independent effect on variation, namely the
level of formal education of the speaker. The variable “low education” has been
rated 0.63 of relative weight.
The second set of results corresponds to the cross-factorial analysis, by
combining two variables, selected from the four retained as relevant by the Gold-
varb program.
Table 3 contains the results of the cross-tabulation analysis using the first
and the second linguistic variables, in terms of rel.weight, respectively the VS or-
der and the animacy of the subject.

Standard Non-standard
3PL variant 3SG variant
Tokens
(= agreement) (= non-agreement)
Animacy & VS
 [-hum] 24 (31%) 53 (69%) 77
 [+hum] 19 (51%) 18 (49%) 37

TABLE 3.Effect of Animacy of the subject and VS context

in the use of agreement marks

The results in Table 3 show the relevance of the interaction of VS order

and [-human] referents in favouring non-agreement in the sample analysed
(69%). However, even with [+human] referents one can see a regular distribution,
which highlights the importance of the subject order for the phenomenon under
analysis.
The next correlation concerns the post-position subject (VS order) and the
level of education of the speakers, which appears as the only social factor de-
tected by the first step of quantitative analysis. Results for this correlation are
presented in Table 4.

Standard Non-standard
3PL variant 3SG variant Tokens
(= agreement) (=non-agreement)
Social class & VS
1 Low 7 (15%) 41 (85%) 48
3 Upper 17 (37%) 29 (63%) 46

TABLE 4.Social Class factor and presence or absence

of standard verbal in VS context

These results suggest that the non-standard use of the 3SG verbal form
greatly increase with the lower level of education of the speakers and shows a
close interrelation of the educational level and a specific linguistic context, as VS
 338

order. The most impressive rates concern the speakers with less education (level
1), with 85% of non-standard 3SG forms. Examples in (9) illustrate the use of non-
standard 3SG variants for the three levels of education considered, with post-
verbal positioned subject in non-accusative constructions:

9a. [Level 1/Primary School]

aconteceu [3SG] casos engraçados [SubjPL] (MC1-247)
happened[3SG] cases funny
funny cases happened
9b. [Level 2/High School]
quando chegava [3SG] os meus primos [SubjPL] (MB1-13)
when arrived [3SG] the my cousins
when my cousins arrived
9c. [Level 3 / Graduate]
existe [3SG] determinadas pessoas [SubjPL] (MA3-807)
exists[3SG] certain people
certain people exist

The final results listed concern the non-standard agreement marks 3PL.
These variants have been attested in other regional spoken varieties of EP, as re-
ferred before. In our sample, we found two types: the -U ending-verb form and –
EM ending-verb form, as presented in attested examples (10) and (11), respec-
tively, followed by the standard 3PL verb forms:

10. U ([u] /[u]) ending-verb form (6 tokens)

a. quando os meus pais [SubjPL] moravo [3PL] ( moravam Stand.3PL) na casa (MB1-2
when my parents lived at home’
b. eles [SubjPL] vinho [3PL] ( vinham Stand.3PL) brincar (MB1-19)
they came to play’
11. EM ([]) ending-verb form (31tokens)
a. não preparem [3PL] ( preparam Stand.3PL) os comeres [SubjPL] é só cozer (MC2-641)
não preparem [3PL] ( preparam Stand.3PL) os comeres [SubjPL] é só cozer (MC2-641)
b. que eles [SubjPL] gostem [3PL] ( gostam Stand.3PL) muito de beber (MC2- 681)
they like to drink a lot

These variants of 3PL represent 3% of the data, as summarized in Table 5.

 339

Informants
Non-standard variants
MB1 HA1 MC1 MC2 Tokens
EM ending-verbs
Present Tense 6 1 1 1 18
35
Imperfect Past Tense - - - - 8
U ending-verbs
Imperfect Past Tense 6 - - - - 6
Total 41

TABLE 5.Non-standard variants: -EM and –O ending-verbs of 3PL

Table 5 shows a relative dissemination of non-standard variants of 3PL (=

3SG) over the urban community of speakers. Our sample contains 41 occurrences
corresponding to five informants out of sixteen, in all intervals of age considered
(A- 18-35 years, B- 35-56, and C- more than 56 years old), with a low level of edu-
cation (3 informants) and with a level of education corresponding to high school
level (2 informants).

3.3 Discussion
The inventory of all non-standard variants, including 3SG default forms
characterized by the lack of final nasal segment as plural morpheme, may be
analyzed by given the provisional description, listed below:
1. 3SG [-nasal] variant: a phonological variant. According to Mateus & Andrade
(2000: 130) account for EP, “nasalization is analyzed as the spreading of the
feature [nasal] of a floating autosegment that anchors to a syllable constitu-
ent”, and this property may result in a non phonetic realization of the verb
form.
2. 3PL as -U: a conservative variant, corresponding to a historical nasal vowel
(Past Perfect < lat. U), before the diphtongation, occurred in EP in the 16th
century (Mota & Vieira, 2008: 110);
3. 3PL as –EM: as conjugation regularization variant of 3PL paradigms of the Pre-
sent and Imperfect Past Tense. In this case, the resulting variant could be ex-
plained as a case of transferring the standard syncretism of 1SG = 3SG to non-
standard 3SG = 3PL, corresponding to a conjugation regularization process
(Chambers, 2009), or levelling irregularities of the verb paradigms.
The analysis of the two non-standard variants of 3PL (- U and –EM ending
verbal forms), when compared with vernacular variants attested on other dia-
 340

lects of peninsular EP, show the same tendency. Table 6 contains the data for the
three regional varieties.
Corpus – PE1 Corpus BBAA Corpus –Funchal
(Rodrigues & Mota, (Rodrigues & Mota, (Bazenga, 2010)
2008) 2008) Insular EP
Northern EP dialects Central Southern EP dialect
dialects
Standard 3PL
Non-standard 3PL variants / Tokens
variants
[ã]
Present tense [] / 4 [ã] / 27
(1st conj.) [u] / 1 [] / 1
[] / 1
[ã]
Present tense [] / 12
(2nd, 3rd conj.) []~ / 3
[ã]
Past Imperfect [] / 4
Tense [ã] / 8
[u] / 1
(1st, 2nd, 3rd
conj.) [] / 1
[ã]
Past Perfect [] / 45
Tense [] / 35
[] / 5
(1st, 2nd, 3rd
[u] / 2 [ã] / 12 []~[u] / 6
conj.)
[] / 33

TABLE 6.Regional diffusion of non-standard variants of 3PL in EP

Both non-standard variants of 3PL found in our sample are also present in
other dialects. However, their distribution and frequency are different. The
variant –EM [ã] which is attested (38 tokens in our sample) in two paradigms
(Present Tense and Past Imperfect Tense), only occurs in the Past Perfect Tense,
in Southern Central Dialects area (Corpus BBAA).
Historically, the presence of these conservative variants of 3PL on Funchal
may be considered as ‘immigrated forms’, transferred there by the first settlers
of Madeira in the 15th and 16th centuries, who came from North and South of
mainland Portugal.
The results presented in the last section appear more significant, in the
context of the linguistic variation in EP dialects, if we compare them with similar
studies, based on EP data, ranged by social class, as shown in Tables 7 and 8,
lower level of education and high level of education, corresponding to graduate
speakers.
 341

Cordial-Sin- Corpus PF- CLUL7 Corpus –

CLUL6 (Rubio & Funchal
(Varejão, Gonçalves, (Bazenga,
2006) 2010) 2010)
Agreement
91% 93% 76%
(= standard 3PL)
Non-agreement
9% 7% 24%
(= non-standard 3SG)

TABLE 7: Subject-verb agreement in 3PL on EP corpus based studies:

Low level of Education

Corpus- Lisboa8 Corpus - CLUL Corpus – Funchal

(Monguilhott, (Rubio & Gonçalves, (Bazenga,
2010) 2010) 2010)
Agreement
91,95% 95% 87%
(= standard 3PL)
Non-agreement
8,05% 5% 13%
non-standard 3SG

TABLE 8: Subject-verb agreement in 3PL on EP corpus based studies:

High level of Education

Observing the cross-compared data, it appears that the Funchal results are
prominent for both cases (speakers with higher level of formal education and
lower levels of formal education). The spoken Portuguese of Funchal, regardless
the speakers’ level of education, shows higher frequency of non-agreement
marks, suggesting some specificity in the context of the EP variety. This is even
more significant, when considering some degree of asymmetry of the
educational level of speakers under the three studies rated on Table 7. In our
study, we are dealing with urban speakers with primary school education, which
is not the case for the two other studies, based on rural speakers of Portuguese,
being almost illiterate.
Considering the overall results of the variable agreement in 3PL in the
Funchal variety, the 81% obtained for standard variant demonstrates that this
variety is farther away from previous EP data (92% for Lisboa and Oeiras varieties
(Monguilhott, 2010: 3) and 91% for popular varieties (Varejão, 2006: 135), and
shows a relative proximity with some varieties of BP, as for example, the
Florianópolis variety, in the south of Brazil, with 80,6% for the same variant, i.e
an explicit mark of standard 3PL in the verb form, as reported by Monguilhot
(2010: 3).

6
Syntax-oriented Corpus of Portuguese Dialects, available in CLUL.
7
Spoken corpus Português Fundamental, available in CLUL.
8
Spoken PE corpus, collected and recordered in the region of Lisbon by the author.
 342

Our results suggest the possibility of drawing a continuum line between

the two main varieties of the Portuguese language, in which Funchal dialect ap-
pears in a more central position, i.e. a certain distance from both mainland Por-
tugal and Brazil, but sharing some features with both main varieties and linking
them. This sketched view is consistent to the view of Naro & Scherre (2000).
According to Berruto (2010: 235-6) “the arrangement of varieties in the
language space constituting a language takes a form of continua. The concept of
continuum implies an ordered set of elements arranged in such a way that be-
tween two adjacent entities of the set (in this case, language varieties) there are
no sharp boundaries, but rather a gradual, fuzzy differentiation, each variety
sharing some sociolinguistically marked features with adjacent varieties. The
very notion of a continuum in variational linguistics arose in geolinguistics,
where the dialectal landscape is often viewed as a dialect continuum”.9
Following the research strategies adopted in English varieties and princi-
ples underlining the hypothesis of vernacular universals (Chambers, 2004, 2009),
the Linguistic Continuum from Vernacular to the Standard (Chambers, 2009), and the
Angloversals (Szmrecsanyi & Kortmann, 2009), we should consider a new ar-
rangement of the variants of subject-verb agreement in 3PL for Portuguese lan-
guage.
Chambers defines vernacular universals as “a small number of phonological
and grammatical processes [which] recur in vernaculars wherever they are spo-
ken” (2004: 128), they occur not only in working-class and rural language but in
all sorts of vernaculars, including child language, pidgins, creoles and interlan-
guage varieties (Chambers 2004: 128). These specific tendencies occur not only in
vernacular of English but in vernacular of all languages. The term angloversals
(but also, francoversals, etc.) should be understood as the features that tend to re-
cur in vernacular varieties of a specific language (Szmrecsanyi & Kortmann,
2009). Considering subject-verb agreement variation in Portuguese language
context, it seems that some variants, as non-standard 3SG[-nasal] verbal forms,
corresponding to the Singular Default strategy for unaccusative verbs in VS order,
is becoming a dominating variant and could be a good candidate to a portoversal.
In contrast to the Chamber’s hypothesis, Trudgill (2009a, 2009b) claimed, in

9
The geographical dimension is only one of the dimensions in the architecture of a lan-
guage. In order to capture the complex nature of the latter, it is usefull to consider
polarized continua such as those suggested by creolistics (Rickford, 1987): in fact,
each dimension of variation in a language space takes the form of a sum of inter-
crossing continua, one non polarized (the diatopic variation) and two polarized (the
diastratic and diaphasic variation).
 343

order to explain, in sociolinguistic terms, the developments that occur in low

contact languages and dialects, and the fact that many linguistic changes involve
both processes of contact-induced change and universal tendencies of various
kinds, the low-contact/ high-contact parameter. This parameter also accounts
the linguistic variation phenomena in varieties of a language, extended to the
opposition between L2/L1 varieties. According to this view, the variable agree-
ment continua in Portuguese should consider different degrees of contact-
induced change, in which Madeira Insular variety of EP could appear as low-
contact dialect compared with some varieties of BP, characterized by a high-
contact.

4. Summary and concluding remarks on future research

Subject-verb number agreement in Portuguese has long been investigated

since the early 80’s in the variationist sociolinguistic framework, mainly focused
on Brazilian Portuguese producing new insights of linguistic and social factors
which constrain this variable rule (Naro, 1981, Scherre & Naro1997) and a better
understanding of the sociolinguistics polarized situation of standard and non-
standard varieties (Lucchesi, 2006). In European Portuguese, there is a general
assumption that the subject-verb agreement rules are almost categorical in all
social and regional varieties (Costa, 2001; Costa & Figueiredo, 2006) and their
variability has been considered exclusive of Brazilian Portuguese. Despite the
fact that most of work on sociolinguistic field remains to be done, recent
variationist comparative studies of Varejão (2006), Monguilhott (2010) and Rubio
& Gonçalves (2010), all focused on both varieties of Portuguese, have confirmed
this asymmetry and confirmed the relatively insignificant rate of non-agreement
uses in European Portuguese.
Countering this trend, our variationist study, based on spoken data
collected in Funchal, as part of the research project Study of Concordance Patterns
in African, Brazilian and European Varieties of Portuguese10, shows the variability of
the rules governing the subject-verb agreement in third person of plural in this
urban variety of an Insular European Portuguese dialect. The rate of non-
agreeing verb form obtained reduces the distance between both varieties of
Portuguese, and allows us to consider the linking of them, to provide a continuum
flow of the variable under study.

10
See: http://www.clul.ul.pt/en/research-teams/215-study-of-concordance-patterns-in-
african-brazilian-and-european-varieties-of-portuguese
 344

For the spoken EP in Funchal, our research confirms the variability of sub-
ject-verb agreement in 3PL, the three patterns (1 to 3), and their variants (stan-
dard grammatical 3PL variant, non-standard and phonological 3SG [-nasal] variant,
and conservative or historical non-standard 3PL variants). It also shows a higher
percentage of non-standard 3SG variants when compared with EP data but, at the
same time, relatively closed to some BP data. This percentage is increased under
certain morpho-syntactic conditions, when the subject is post-posed to the verb,
semantically characterized by a non-human feature and selected by unaccusative
verbs.
Overall, the present study provides evidence for the fact that the linguistic
variation in the subject-verb agreement in 3PL is caused by several factors. When
compared with other varieties of EP and BP, our results claim in favor of a contin-
uum between both varieties and against the polarity between them, which is the
additional issue of further research question proposed.
Therefore, besides varieties distance, we think that it may be possible to
draw alignments of variants, each variable and variants being analyzed by three
vectors: the continuum of sociolinguistic variation based on the social status of
the speakers, a continuum geographical dimension of linguistic variation, and
the continuum of the degree of language contact.
Future research should focus on the integration of available data available
on Portuguese varieties in a typology of non-standard spoken variants, in a mul-
tidimensional and dynamic sociolinguistic way to explain linguistic variation and
change, either in direction as Trudgill’s program describes above, and following
Chambers perspective, by tracing the continuum line from vernacular variants to
standard variant across varieties of Portuguese language.
The research should include the portoversals as specific grammatical fea-
tures of Portuguese language. At the same time, it seems to be necessary to in-
clude, in the case of subject-verb agreement continuum, other linguistic phenom-
ena correlated, at the syntactic level (such as the Null Subject Parameter) and
phono-morphological inflection verbal paradigms levels.
 345

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Ana Raquel SIMÕES

(University of Aveiro, Portugal)
anaraquel@ua.pt

Sara SOUSA
(University of Aveiro, Portugal)
smms77@hotmail.com

Language teachers' practices, representations and

knowlegde on intra-linguistic diversity:
A case study in Portugal

Abstract

Considering the importance of language teachers as far as intra-

linguistic diversity and language varieties are concerned, we developed
a research project with Portuguese language (PL) teachers on that same
topic. We inquired 7 Portuguese language teachers of a school by means
of a semi-structured interview, in order to: characterize their linguistic
profile; identify representations concerning languages and varieties of
Portuguese languages, as well as of the norm; identify their knowledge
about languages and PL in particular and collect data concerning their
practices on intra-linguistic diversity. The interviews were subjected to
a content analysis, where 3 main categories were created (knowledge,
representations and practices concerning PL intra-linguistic diversity).
The obtained results clearly demonstrate there are some challenges for
teachers and for the school in general concerning the attitudes towards
the varieties and the norm, not only inside the classrooms in the work
developed with students, but also amongst colleagues and with re-
searchers in terms of the dissemination and sharing of what is being
done in the different domains.

1. Introduction
Considering the importance of understanding the knowledge, representa-
tions and practices of language teachers, in what intra-linguistic diversity and
language varieties are concerned, we have developed an investigation project
 350

with Portuguese language teachers from a school within the district of Aveiro,
Portugal.
In fact, several studies have shown that the way the individual perceives
the language influences the way he interacts with it and the way the individual
relates with the Other. Assuming that…"actually, language lives through diver-
sity" (Ferreira, 1996:480, our translation), we believe it is important to develop
studies about the value and the recognition of the diversity and unity that char-
acterize languages. Previous studies have shown, for instance, that the "idea that
there is a better “Portuguese Language” than other, is still present in many indi-
viduals that find themselves in the right to expose to ridicule speakers of differ-
ent varieties, variants and registers of their own language" (Simões, 2002:89). Be-
lieving that school in general, and language teachers in particular, play a funda-
mental role in the (re)building of representations and in the spreading of knowl-
edge about the intra-linguistic diversity of a language, we have decided to choose
a group of teachers as the target group of this investigation project. We aimed at
knowing the knowledge, representations and the practices of a group of teachers
from a specific school. In order to achieve that, we held semi-structured inter-
views with a group of teachers from one school.

1. Intra-linguistic diversity of the Portuguese language

The Portuguese language is, together with languages such as Spanish, Cata-
lan, Provencal, French, Romanian, Italian, Sardinian and Rhaeto-Romanic, a
Romanic or neo-Latin language. This means that Latin, which belongs to one of
the branches of Indo-European, Italic, is the mother language of all these lan-
guages, from which they derive. This derivation has processed over several cen-
turies and the language has suffered a great evolution. Galician-Portuguese, born
in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, has spread all over the country and has
slowly transformed itself in the Portuguese language, which is renewed in a con-
stant dynamics.
According to Mira Mateus (1994: 21), "currently, Portuguese is the national
language of Portugal and Brazil, and is considered an official language in Angola,
Mozambique, Cape-Verde, Guinea and São Tomé and Principe" (our translation).
Since August 2001, the Portuguese language is also the official language of Timor
Lorosae. These eight countries have adopted them as an official language and ha-
ve become part of the Community of Portuguese language Countries (CPLP). Be-
sides these countries, Portuguese is also the official language in the city of Macao
and is spoken by residual groups in Goa.
 351

Therefore, Lusofonia must be seen as a rich diversity of cultural spaces,

each with its own identity, yet sharing the same language. As the Portuguese
language is spoken in such a wide and discontinued area, it presents some vari-
ants (European, Brazilian, African, Asian and Oceanic Portuguese) and some va-
rieties (variations that occur within the same variant) that diverge more or less
slightly in terms of accent, vocabulary and grammar.
According to Cunha & Cintra (1991), the existent variation in language can
occur as: (i) difference in geographical space (diatopic variation); difference
within social layers (diastratic variation); and differences between speech mo-
dalities (diaphasic variation).

2. Representations on diversity
In the present text we assume the perspective that, in a lingustic approach,
all the existing variants in the Portuguese language are valid, as "there are no
better dialects or better or worse varieties. All varieties are structured and ade-
quate to the linguistic needs of their spreakers, despite the fact that only one of
them is considered standard and validated as the norm" (Dias, 2007: 6, our trans-
lation).
However, several studies conclude that the individuals have representa-
tions, attitudes and/or prejudices against language variation (Muhr, 2005; Simões
& Araújo e Sá, 2002; Schmidt & Araújo e Sá, 2006). As Mota (2001: 33) points out:

"If from a strictly linguistic and functional point of view, there are no
better or worse varieties or dialects (…) the truth is that the prejudice of
society in general against non-pattern linguistic varieties is evident."
(Our translation).
Such representations can, however, lead to more extreme positions -
where leads to the creation of linguistic and/or even social stereotypes (cf.
Moutinho, 2001).
"The effect of this attitude is that expressions of NDV [non-dominant
varieties] are avoided or lowered in status as the cultural elites are not
loyal to them" (Muhr, 2005: 15),
Authors such as Candelier & Hermann-Brennecke (1993), Castellotti, Coste
& Moore (2001), de Pietro & Müller (1997), Pinto (2005), Simões (2006), Dias (2007)
consider that representations play a crucial role in the way the individual relates
to languages, influencing not only their linguistic projects, the way they learn a
language, but also their openness to others.
 352

When it comes to the studies on intra-linguistic diversity, they have

started to develop from the 60’s on, under the perspective of socio and psycho-
sociolinguistics, which made path do Didactics.
The studies conclude individuals begin to develop representations from a
very early age, influenced by the social context they are integrated in. The de-
velopment of a study where we can perceive the representations teachers have
of the Portuguese language may help teachers acquire a greater awareness of the
intra-linguistic relationships, that is, it may help them understand there are
strategies they can use when contacting the Other-student (in the most varied
ways) which value diversity.
It is also essential to help teachers know the Portuguese language in all of
its diversity, allowing them a greater (self) knowledge as speakers and communi-
cators and helping them achieve a greater value and respect for intra-linguistic
diversity as, according to Dias (2007: 36), linguistic

"diversity is […] a precious humanity inheritance; the disappearance of

any language represents the impoverishment of the knowledge reser-
voir and the loss of intra and intercultural communication tools. The
same is true for intra-linguistic varieties." (our translation).
As the socio-cultural context we live in shapes our vision of the world and
the Other, it is up to school and its actors to play a crucial role in representa-
tions’(re)built and there is evidence that school often privileges standard lan-
guage (Simões, 2006; Simões & Ramos, 2003) forgetting "that linguistic diversity
embodies a cultural diversity we should praise and learn to respect" (Dias, 2007:
36, our translation).
If teachers are able to identify and value the different varieties, they will
become aware that the standard-variety is just one amongst a wider universe of
all varieties and they will improve their knowledge of their own language, by
means of comparison of different dialects and ways of speech.
We agree with Mota (2001: 28) when he argues that "the existence of vari-
ants within a certain linguistic system and of national varieties of the same start-
ing language can and must be seen as an asset, at all levels, which justifies pro-
moting diversity and fighting linguistic standardization through the imposition
of a common pattern and the stigmatization of non-standard varieties" (our
translation). Recognizing diversity within a language does not imply devaluing
the standard form: it is no more than an indicator of the ability to recognize and
value that diversity, which is intimately connected to the people’s identity, in
 353

general, and each speakers’ identity, in particular, for the existence of that lin-
guistic variation is not only due to historic factors but also due to geographical,
cultural and social aspects.
The Portuguese language plays a crucial role in the building of the individ-
ual’s personality who has Portuguese as a mother language, in the sense that
"each language is seen by the community that speaks it as a cultural product that
is at the basis of their identity, of their sense of belonging – respecting a lan-
guage is respecting the cultural group that speaks it" (Feytor Pinto, 1998: 9). Ac-
cording to Delors, "knowing other cultures makes us, therefore, aware of our
own cultures’ uniqueness, but also aware of the existence of a humanity’s com-
mon inheritance" (2000: 42, our translation). Thus, rising awareness for the Por-
tuguese Language’s intra-linguistic diversity is fundamental as a demarcation of
language Didactics as a vehicle of the teaching-learning process.

3. Study description
The main objective of this investigation project is to identify the represen-
tations, the knowledge and the practices on intra-linguistic diversity of middle
school and secondary school teachers of the Portuguese Language.
In the area of Language Didactics, the diagnosis of representations towards
intra-linguistic varieties can be very important in terms of educational interven-
tion, allowing the raising of awareness towards diversity and openness to the
Other. The teacher must assume himself as the first bearer of reflection respon-
sibilities on this matter because "if the teacher keeps ethnocentric attitudes
based on stereotypes and prejudices, it is only natural that he will convey them,
even unconsciously, to his students" (Simões, 2006: 385). We have therefore de-
fined as the objective of the present study:
1. to identify the cognitive aspects of the Portuguese language teachers of
one portuguese middle school and secondary school in the district of
Aveiro, on the languages of the world, and on the Portuguese language
in particular
2. to identify and describe Portuguese language teachers’ representations
on intra-linguistic diversity
3. to identify and describe Portuguese language teachers’representations
on their pedagogical practices.
As this investigation is integrated in a qualitative research paradigm, as-
suming itself as a case-study, data were collected through a semi-structured in-
 354

terview made with seven Portuguese language teachers from Secondary School
Dr. João Carlos Celestino Gomes, in Ílhavo. The script of the interview was vali-
dated by investigators from the area of studies of Language Didactics, and also by
the President of the Association of Portuguese language Teachers. The interview
was audio-recorded and, later, fully transcribed so that it was possible to perform
a content analysis, which, according to Bardin (1977), is a set of communication
analysis techniques, which is organized in three stages: pre-analysis, the explora-
tion of the material and the treatment of the results, the inference, and the in-
terpretation.
First we have tried to characterize our audience in terms of general data
such as age, training, number of years of teaching practice and other functions
they may have performed during that period and also to characterize these indi-
viduals linguistically, in order to find out their professional profile and their lin-
guistic profile in their mother tongue and second languages. Secondly, we have
tried to identify the interviewees’ representations on languages, namely by ana-
lyzing:
1. their representations about the possibility of language disappearance;
2. the importance given to the learning of foreign languages;
3. the reasons to attribute prestige to different languages.
We have also tried to identify the knowledge these teachers have about the
languages of the world and the Portuguese language in particular, by also placing
questions that allowed us to identify their representations on the Portuguese
language and its diversity.
Lastly we have tried to identify our interviewees’ teaching practices in
what intra-linguistic diversity of the Portuguese language is concerned.

4. Data analysis
In terms of our interviewees’ characterization, they are all of the female
gender, and their ages vary from 48 to 54 years, having the Portuguese language
as their mother tongue. They all have more than 24 years of practice as teachers
and their initial training is in the area of languages, most of them in Portuguese
and French, and only one of them has her initial training in Portuguese, Latin
and Greek. Only two of the interviewees have done post graduate studies and
they have all performed other functions at school, as class coordinators and as
language and curricular department coordinators. The majority are from the re-
 355

gion of Aveiro, as only two of the interviewed teachers come from other parts of
the country, namely Oporto and Trás-os-Montes.

4.1. Knowledge about languages

When questioned about the place the Portuguese language occupies in the
world, the interviewees revealed a positive image of their mother tongue, as they
have considered it to be well positioned or that it has an important place, for the
fact that it is spoken in several countries of the world, mentioning that “it is a
widely spoken language even because we [Portuguese people] are spread all over
the world” (I1). They view the Portuguese language as a “Language with an im-
portant place” (I7), assuming it may be either among the second or third (I3), or
fourth/fifth most spoken languages in the world (I2 and I4). Besides the number
of speakers, it is revealed that the teachers associate the Portuguese language to
a language with an evolution history strongly related to the period of Portuguese
sea expansion, during the Age of Discovery, considering it to be an important
language because “we have also spread around the world”…”And I think our lan-
guage is still there even if it isn’t, it doesn’t have such an important role as it
used to have.” (I6) When it comes to the distinction between language and dia-
lect, the teachers pointed out aspects related to geographical variations, that is,
they refer that a dialect “is confined to a region” (I3), “is typical of a region, of a
place, of a group of people” (I4), “whereas a language is of the whole country”
(I1). Therefore, some of the interviewees mention the number of speakers: “a
dialect is usually spoken by a much smaller group of speakers” (I7), besides men-
tioning aspects related to the cultural sharing that a language implies, different
from a dialect: “A language also has to do with cultural, civilization aspects
common to a certain group larger than the speakers” (I3). One of the teachers
still refers to the difficulty in understanding some dialects: ”[the speakers] use
those terms that we sometimes don’t even understand” (E1).
We can therefore conclude that the teachers are in line with the definition
of dialect as “a system of signs apart from a common language (…), normally,
with a geographical delimitation.” (Alvar in Cunha & Cintra, 1991: 4).
We also questioned our teachers about the countries where Portuguese
was spoken as an official language. As we can see in table 1, only one of the
teachers mentions all the countries where Portuguese is the official language
(E3), although we must mention that I7 only forgets to mention Portugal, coun-
try we are sure the teacher knows is one of the list. Interviewee 2 does not men-
tion Guinea, whereas two of the interviewees only mention 4 countries (I1 and
 356

I4), including Portugal in the four countries stated. The fact that one of the
teachers only mentions Brazil as a country with Portuguese as an official lan-
guage, is also relevant. Among the failures, we realize the biggest ones appear
when it comes to African countries, as some of them are only mentioned three
times (Guinea, São Tomé and Principe), four times (Cape Verde) and 5 times (An-
gola). Timor is also mentioned by four of the respondents. Notice that Brazil is
the only country mentioned by all the teachers and that Macao is also mentioned
as an area where the Portuguese language is an official language (despite being a
city and not a country).

Table 1: Countries mentioned by interviewees as having Portuguese

as an official language

4.2. Representations on languages

In terms of the representations on languages the interviewees were asked
which language they would choose if they were born again. They all chose the
Portuguese language, justifying their choice with affective aspects towards lan-
guages: “I like our language very much” (I3), “I like my language” (I2, I4; and I6)
and also justified with aspects related to the beauty of the language : “a language
with many sounds, very melodious”(I7); “Portuguese is a very beautiful lan-
guage” (I6). They also mention aspects related to identity: “because I like being
Portuguese” (I5), related to the “idea of patriotism” (I1) and also with aspects re-
lated to the competences the language gives them: “because I think that the Por-
 357

tuguese language enables me to…” (I2). One of the interviewees justifies her
choice with the representation she has of her mother language as a teaching-
learning object, saying it “is a difficult language for foreigners” (I7), and there-
fore an asset, making it less difficult to acquire linguistic competence during
growth and socialization in the early years of learning. When it comes to the
teachers’ representations on the Portuguese language and their varieties, they
were asked if there were any varieties they preferred the most or the least. As
shown in table 2, only two of the teachers say they have no preferences, men-
tioning their value as a unity factor in diversity: “I respect each one of them and I
think they are very interesting because they characterize the region and I think
we should never lose them” (I3) and “I like all of them”; “I think they are charac-
teristic of the several regions”; “I find them interesting” (I4). One of the inter-
viewees states her preferred dialect is the one from the region where she lives
(I7) or where she was born (I6), whereas two others mention the northern areas
of Portugal, either the region of Oporto (I5) or Trás-os-Montes (I2). One of the
teachers still mentions the area of Algarve, in the south of the country. Different
justifications arise, remarking identity pride issues, revealing a clear positive
self-representation about the way they speak, mentioning more affective aspects
(“I find it funny”, I2) or aspects related to the language standard-variety: “It is
associated with the idea of standard” (I7).
When it comes to the least preferred variety, the one from Oporto is once
again mentioned by two teachers (I1 and I6), as well as a variety from an area of
the interior part of the country (Sever do Vouga-I2). Their justifications mention
aspects related to their representation of language as an aesthetic object, which
is “strange” or “aggressive” (I6). Notice that I1 even states that the Oporto vari-
ety irritates her and that she considers the people that talk it “undereducated”,
revealing a negative representation on its speakers.
In order to perceive these teachers’ practices inside the classroom, we also
questioned them about whether they had ever reflected on the issues of intra-
linguistic diversity with their students. Three of them answer positively (I2, I3,
I5), two negatively (I6 and I7), whereas the others say they haven’t done that but
then mention it in their justification (I3, I4). We must highlight not only the re-
duced number of teachers that work the issue of intra-linguistic diversity in the
classroom but also the interpretations they make of it, even if unconsciously.
One of the teachers reveals an attitude of valorization of diversity and val-
ues the students’ development of a positive attitude towards the language plu-
ricentrism (“When they laugh because it is from Oporto I immediately teach
 358

them a moral lesson”-I5). Another teacher, in a totally opposite approach, shares

with the students the negative representations she has about one of the varie-
ties: “I don’t like the Oporto [variety], I sometimes talk about it with them inside
the classroom” (I1). The first teacher still refers that she develops in her students
some awareness about the European and the Brazilian variants, because when
the students write they “often use the Brazilian variant” (I5) and she corrects
them, so that they will adopt the European Portuguese variant.
One of the other interviewees that admits she doesn’t work these issues
with her students, mentions that a student of hers is from Oporto and that the
other students make fun of her because “they are a little bit mean and when they
hear something a bit different they always react kind of badly” (I6). In this per-
spective, another teacher mentions that “it is not up to me to mould the way an-
other person pronounces the words”, so she does not develop with her students
any form of work about intra-linguistic differentiation.

Most Preferred Justification Least Justification

preferred

I1 - - Oporto “it irritates me a little

bit”; “I associate the
North a little with
ahm…it’s not that the
people are bad, but they
are a little
undereducated.”
I2 Algarve and “I find it funny” The way “I find it strange”;
Northern people talk in
Sever do
Vouga
I3 “I respect each one of them and I think they are very interesting because they
characterize the region and I think we should never loose them”
I4 “I like all of them”; “I think they are characteristic of the several regions”; “I find
them interesting”
I5 Oporto “because it is -
mine”
I6 Trás-os-Montes - Oporto “aggressive accent”
I7 The one from the “It is associated - -
área of Aveiro, with the idea of
where I live standard”

Table 2: Most and least preferred language variety

The teacher states she does not talk to her students about these issues, re-
marks, however, the fact that she “mentions the several ways of word pronuncia-
 359

tion” in the different varieties, without knowing whether this phonetic and pho-
nological comparative work is being done correctly: “[I do it] without actually
correcting, I don’t know if I do it correctly or wrongly” (I4).
One of the teachers also refers to the fact that she has already worked with
her students about the Mirandese Language, the second official language in Por-
tugal.
When questioned if they valued the standard language in her lessons and
how they did that, only one of the teachers answers negatively, saying: “I always
show the students there are different ways of saying the same thing (…) if they
know how to say it in more than one way, the richer they are, the more they
know”(I2). Some of the other interviewees are less receptive to these matters,
even stating “we have to insist on using standard language” (I5) or “it is the
standard language that rules” (I3) and also “they must be aware that there is a
standard language, that there are aspects that must be respected, either in terms
of accent or in terms of writing” (I6).
One of the teachers only mentions the diversity aspect in terms of phono-
logical differentiation, referring to accent, although she admits not knowing “if it
wouldn’t be better for them to keep their own accents” (I4).
Two of the teachers have different interpretations of the same question as-
suming we are talking about different language registers and levels. “I distin-
guish oral and written language” (I1), whereas another says, although she shows
respect, she does not correct her students if they pronounce the words differ-
ently: “I do not correct the student if he pronounces the word like they do in
Oporto or if he does it in a more unusual way” (I7).

5. Summary
Globally, when it comes to the teachers’ knowledge about the countries
where the Portuguese language is the official language, only one of the teachers
identified all the countries, whereas four of the seven interviewees only indi-
cated half or less of these countries. We can also say that the interviewed teach-
ers revealed a positive image of the Portuguese Language, as a language with a
worldwide prestige, as well as an affective and identity object, which is coherent
with other known studies in terms of the representations on mother language
(cf. Simões, 2006; Andrade, Araújo e Sá & Moreira, 2007).
When analyzing their representations on the Portuguese language varie-
ties, we realize only two of the teachers have no preference for any of them.
 360

Some statements reveal a certain degree of prejudice against a specific dialect or

its speakers, sometimes showing extreme positions.
In terms of these teachers’ practices on intra-linguistic diversity only two
admit they do some kind of work with their students, although the National Cur-
riculum stated as an objective to "recognize the belonging to a national and
transnational community of speakers of the Portuguese language and to respect
the different linguistic varieties of Portuguese and the languages spoken by lin-
guistic minorities within the national territory" (Ministry of Education, 2001: 31,
our translation).
Valuing the standard variety of the language is persistent in our study, like
is also concluded in others (cf. Muhr, 2005). The use of the norms will somehow
be necessary as a linguistic reference and as a factor of social and cultural identi-
fication. However, we agree with Mateus (2002), when she says that the "identity
we seek (…) integrates the enriching and creative variation, our own participa-
tion in the act of communication, what we carry of our own to the language that
we speak (…) That is the richness of linguistic variation and that is the point
where the memories of the history and the present experiences meet." As we
have seen on our data analysis sometimes school can be, itself, a space where the
representations on languages and their varieties/variants are (re)built, as it be-
comes clear in the speech about representations and practices of a group of Por-
tuguese language teachers that have Portuguese as their mother language.
Taking these results into account, we therefore believe it is crucial that all
speakers of a certain language have knowledge not only about THEIR language,
but that they value the diversity it embodies. School plays an important role in
this process, given "the importance of leading students, throughout their school-
ing years, to know their mother language better and all the beauty it embodies"
(Simões & Araújo e Sá, 2002:89).

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de 2002. http://www.iltec.pt/pdf/wpapers/2002-mhmateus-variacao.pdf.
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diversidade linguística e cultural da Europa. Ed. Colibri. Lx, 28.
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Letras.
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portugueses. Dissertação de mestrado. Aveiro. Universidade de Aveiro.
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textos de educação e formação linguística. Cadernos do Lale, Série Re-
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e Tecnologia na Formação de Formadores, 9-22.
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no final da escolaridade obrigatória. Tese de doutoramento. Aveiro. Uni-
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aspectos da gestão da competência plurilingue em alunos do 9º ano de es-
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de existência e modos de desenvolvimento. Coimbra: Faculdade de Letras
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verso da língua portuguesa: reflexões em torno de um trabalho formativo
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In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 363-380.

Dawn MARLEY
(University of Surrey, UK)
d.marley@surrey.ac.uk

Competing varieties of
French and Arabic in Morocco

Abstract

Morocco’s official language is ‘Arabic’ and language policy over the half
century since Independence has sought to promote this language, which
is actually Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Despite this, the languages
most widely used in Morocco remain Moroccan Dialectal Arabic and
French. Amazigh, or Berber languages, are also widely spoken in certain
regions, and for several years have enjoyed official recognition. The
language contact situation in Morocco is usually seen as a classic case of
diglossia, or even triglossia, involving the dominant variety, MSA, and
the non-dominant variety, Moroccan Dialectal Arabic, with French seen
as a second ‘H’ language. This paper presents an overview of the current
changing relationships between Moroccan Dialectal Arabic, MSA and
French. It first looks briefly at language policy and language attitudes in
Morocco, focusing on changes over the last decade. It then considers a
number of areas within contemporary Moroccan society where the lan-
guages are in contact, and explores the changing attitudes towards
them.

1. Introduction
Morocco has a long and complex history of language contact, involving
two pluricentric languages, Arabic and French. Neither of these languages is,
strictly speaking, indigenous to the country, the one having been introduced by
the Arab invasion of the 7th century, the other by the French Protectorate of the
early 20th century. The indigenous languages, traditionally known as ‘Berber’, but
more usually referred to as Tamazight or Amazigh today, have continued to co-
exist alongside these powerful dominating languages, whilst another pluricentric
language, Spanish, played an important role in regions under Spanish influence.
In recent years the role of Spanish has declined considerably, although it still
maintains a significant presence in parts of northern Morocco (see Sayahi, 2004,
 364

2005). Nevertheless, at a national level, Spanish is no longer a major player, and

will not be referred to in this study. Amazigh, on the other hand, has gained in
status over the last decade, despite the fact that numbers of speakers dwindled
throughout the 20th century. Amazigh will, therefore, be referred to, as it now
plays an important role in the ongoing language contact situation. However, the
focus of this study is the evolving relationship between the different varieties of
Arabic and French. Over the centuries following the Arab invasion, a diglossic
situation evolved, in which ‘classical’ or standard Arabic was the language of
government, education and religion, whilst Dialectal Arabic developed to become
a vernacular across much of the country. At the same time, Dialectal Arabic-
Amazigh bilingualism was widespread, and in more remote areas varieties of
Amazigh continued to be the sole language. In the course of the twentieth cen-
tury, however, bilingualism became the norm, due to improved education and
communications. Under the French Protectorate (1912-1956) a triglossic situa-
tion developed, as French became the language of prestige in domains such as
administration, education, economy and business. French, like Classical Arabic,
was only available to the educated elite, whilst the majority of the population
was illiterate, and spoke a variety of Dialectal Arabic or Amazigh. In the half cen-
tury since the Protectorate ended, this situation has changed dramatically, as the
rest of this chapter will show.

2. Language policy since 1956

As in many postcolonial countries, the government of the newly independ-
ent Morocco saw language policy as a means of emphasising independence, and
implemented a policy of Arabization, designed to replace French with Arabic as
the language of government, education and public life in general. At one level,
this was the obvious route to follow, given the fact that Classical Arabic had been
the language of government for centuries prior to the French Protectorate. As
the Moroccan historian Cheddadi (2003: 93-94) points out, the need to assert a
clear national identity meant that Arabic had to be the national language, but for
this language to play its role efficiently, it needed to be properly debated and jus-
tified. Since this never happened, various problems, both ideological and practi-
cal, have either been ignored or treated in a superficial way. The expected disap-
pearance of French from all domains of public life did not occur rapidly, and the
policy of Arabization progressed in fits and starts throughout the latter half of
the twentieth century (see, for example, Boukous, 1999).
 365

Although most Moroccans would agree with Cheddadi (2003: 93) that, as it
happened, the choice of Arabic as the national language was the best, they have
been reluctant to embrace full-scale Arabization, and French has continued to
play an important role in numerous domains. There are a number of reasons for
this, three of which were evident from the outset. The first problem is that the
Arabic of Arabization, often called ‘Classical Arabic’, or MSA (Modern Standard
Arabic) is not the mother tongue of any Moroccan, even among the ruling class.
Secondly, there was no ‘communication problem’, as in some postcolonial coun-
tries, since the majority of the population speaks Dialectal Arabic. Thirdly, there
was little motivation to stop using French, which was perceived as a more mod-
ern language, giving access to the outside world, and to a range of material, no-
tably in the fields of science and technology, and leisure (films, books, newspa-
pers). Closely related to this third point is the fact that modern media and com-
munications have, over the past twenty years in particular, increased the incen-
tive to use French, and offered greater opportunities to use and practise the lan-
guage (see Aitsiselmi and Marley, 2008: 196-200).

2.1. Changes in Language Policy since 2000

By the turn of the century, it was clear that Arabization had not been fully
successful, and the language issue was recognised as one of the key issues to be
addressed by a committee set up to look into reforming the Education system.
The Charter for the Reform of the Education System, published in 2000, seemed
to signal a change in the direction of language teaching. It introduced a ‘clear,
coherent and constant’ language policy for education (COSEF, 2000: 50). This pol-
icy reinforced the role of Arabic as the national language, made it possible to use
Amazigh as a language of instruction; recommended teaching science and tech-
nology in ‘the most appropriate language’ (generally perceived to be French); fi-
nally, it reintroduced the first foreign language (i.e. French) at an early stage –
second year of primary school. Although many interpreted this as an indication
that French was being acknowledged as a valuable language of instruction, this is
by no means explicit in the text. It is noticeable, though, that the word ‘Arabiza-
tion’ is not used either; although the Charter reiterates the role of ‘Arabic’ as na-
tional language, there is no mention of ‘Arabization’. The careful wording seems
to suggest that the Commission recognised that a more pragmatic approach was
necessary, and that neither all-out Arabization nor ‘Francisation’ were practical
(see Berdouzi, 2000: 20-22). This pragmatism can also be seen in the most recent
document that refers to language policy, the new Constitution voted in July 2011.
 366

This Constitution was ‘drawn up by Moroccans, for all Moroccans, following a

democratic, inclusive and transparent approach’1, following the ‘Arab Spring’
uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries in early 2011. It contains 180
articles, compared to 108 in the previous constitution, and article 5 is concerned
with language, suggesting that it is an issue of some importance. The full text can
be found on the government website, in official French translation, which ap-
peared two days after the Arabic version. The full text of the constitution is not
available in English, but the English analysis on the government website makes
the following comments on the language issue:
Concerning the fundamental constituents of the diversified, open Mo-
roccan identity, the new draft Constitution confirms the status of Mo-
rocco as a sovereign Moslem State, committed to the ideals of openness,
moderation, tolerance and dialogue to foster mutual understanding
among all civilizations. It stressed that the Nation’s unity is based on the
fully endorsed diversity of its constituents: Arabic, Amazigh, Hassani,
Sub-Saharan, African, Andalusian, Jewish and Mediterranean compo-
nents. It also ensures that the linguistic pact is grounded in pluralism
and open attitude. In this respect, the official status of the Arabic lan-
guage has been enhanced, and the Amazigh language has been granted
an official status with a gradual integration process (schools and main
public sectors). The draft constitution adopted an active, harmonious
linguistic and cultural policy geared towards the protection and promo-
tion of national and official languages, and encouraging the learning of
foreign languages which foster openness and permit access to the
knowledge-based society.2
On the whole, it appears that there is little change since 2000; the key
points relating to language in the new Constitution can be summarised as fol-
lows. Arabic remains the official language, whilst Amazigh is also an official lan-
guage. These are two separate points, worded in such as way that the two lan-
guages clearly do not enjoy equal status.
The protection of Hassani and other regional languages is also added, but
whilst Hassani, a form of Arabic used by a relatively small number of Moroccans
in a limited area of the country, is named, the most widespread national vernacu-
lar, Moroccan Dialectal Arabic, is not specifically mentioned or offered protec-
tion. As in 2000, reference is made to the adoption of a coherent linguistic and

1
http://www.al-bab.com/maroc/gov/con96.htm
2
http://www.maroc.ma/PortailInst/An/evenements/New+draft+
Constitution+a+democratic+landmark+in+Morocco.htm
 367

cultural policy, with a greater focus this time on protecting and promoting ‘na-
tional and official languages’. As in 2000, foreign language learning is to be en-
couraged, this time specifically as a means of accessing the knowledge-based so-
ciety, but there is still no reference to specific foreign languages. Finally, a na-
tional council for the promotion of languages and Moroccan culture is to be cre-
ated. Thus the new Constitution indicates that the government is aware of the
complexity of the sociolinguistic situation in Morocco, and of the need to balance
the protection of indigenous, non-dominant varieties and the appropriating of
exogenous, dominant varieties. However, the wording gives no official recogni-
tion to the most widespread vernacular, nor to the most widely used ‘foreign’
language.

2.2. Changing language contact situation since Independence

Since 1956 the language contact situation has undergone radical and wide-
spread change, which is only partially reflected in the government’s position.
This section will briefly outline these changes, and the following sections will
look in more detail at the current situation.
Firstly, the rapid growth in education, particularly in towns, has led to a
dramatic increase in the number of Moroccans who are literate, both in MSA and
in French. At the time of Independence, only the elite were literate in either lan-
guage, and at that time were more likely to be literate in French. Although the
role of French in the education system has decreased since the Arabization of the
state sector in the late 1980s, there are still many more French speakers now
than in 1956, as well as many more Moroccans who are competent users of the
national language. Neither French nor MSA is used as a mother tongue in Mo-
rocco, but both languages are widely known and used, particularly in written
form. A second consequence of the growth in education, and particularly of the
Arabization of the state sector, is that MSA is more widely known and used, in-
cluding in domains where Dialectal Arabic is traditionally used. MSA has also be-
come more attractive in recent years due to its presence in the media: television,
films and music from across the Arab world are now readily available, via satel-
lite and the internet. Conversely, Moroccan Dialectal Arabic has been moving
into domains previously exclusive to MSA, notably the written form. In recent
years there have been a number of attempts to invest Moroccan Dialect with
greater prestige, by using it in written form. Such developments could affect the
diglossic relationship between MSA and Dialectal Arabic.
 368

As the following sections will demonstrate, the role of both languages is

currently undergoing significant change, as a result of various factors, most no-
tably mass education and improvements in communications and mass media.
Other issues, such as the pursuit of ‘authenticity’ and the role of tradition and re-
ligion in a modern postcolonial society have also impacted on language use and
attitudes.

3. Current role and status of French

As we have already noted, French has no official status, and is not named
in recent policy statements. Nevertheless, the government website carries this
statement about French today:
In 1912, under the protectorate, French was proclaimed as the official
language of the colonial institutions. Today, the French language re-
mains very wide-spread in Morocco, mainly in the administration and
education sectors. It is also the language which politicians use abroad,
except in the Arab countries where exchanges are made in classical Ara-
bic. The public schools include French courses in their program. Recrea-
tional services and activities (cinemas,…) or cultural (museums,…) are
offered both in classical Arabic and French. Likewise, television and ra-
dio news are presented in both languages.3
The government thus acknowledges that, despite its lack of official status,
it does play a significant role in many areas of life in Morocco. The country is in
fact an important player in the French-speaking world: Morocco is a member of
the OIF (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie), and according to the OIF
(2007), about 13.5% of the population are fluent French-speakers (“Franco-
phones”), whilst 19.5% are “partial Francophones”. French in Morocco is not a
dominant variety, since it is not a national or official language. However, stan-
dard French, the variety associated with economic and cultural power, is widely
spoken amongst the educated elite, and literacy in French is highly valued by
most Moroccans (see Benzakour, Gaadi and Queffélec, 2000: 79). There is also a
less prestigious variety of French, essentially Moroccan, which is used among a
larger sector of the population (Benzakour, 2007: 52). It is the standard variety of
French that will be considered in this chapter, since this is the variety that most
Moroccans aspire to use. The ability to speak and write standard French is asso-
ciated with upward social mobility and success in all spheres of life, and it has

3
http://www.maroc.ma/PortailInst/An/MenuGauche/Society+and+Culture/
Languages/Languages+in+Morocco.htm
 369

become increasingly attractive in recent years, as a result of a range of factors,

notably the growth in tourism and emigration, and the growing impact of the
internet and globalisation. The following sections will explore the role of French
in some key sectors of modern Moroccan society.

3.1. Linguistic landscape

This term refers to the ‘language of public road signs, advertising bill-
boards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on
government buildings’ (Landry and Bourhis, 1997: 25). Since this includes signage
in airports, ports and train stations, it tends to be the first indication for foreign
visitors of language use in a given country. Although one might assume in mod-
ern times that such places will have signage in an international language (i.e.
English), one might expect that any other language in use, and certainly the lan-
guage varieties encountered outside airports and other transport hubs, would be
the official or national varieties. A visitor to Morocco could therefore reasonably
assume that the country is officially bilingual, since Arabic-French bilingual
signage is the norm almost everywhere. The concept of ‘linguistic landscape’ can
be expanded to include all ‘texts’ situated in public spaces, which can include,
among other elements, ‘verbal texts, images, objects’ (Shohamy and Waksman,
2009: 314). In this perspective, a range of other ‘texts’ reveal the same pattern of
Arabic-French bilingualism, suggesting the importance of standard French in na-
tional life: official documents such as bills for utilities and taxes, doctors’ pre-
scriptions and most medicines, application forms for bank accounts, postage
stamps, coins and bank notes. Studies undertaken in non-touristic areas in Mo-
rocco over the last couple of years indicate that the prevalence of French cannot
be attributed to the importance of the tourist industry. These studies were con-
ducted by the author in Temara, a suburban town in the Rabat–Salé urban area
(Marley, 2011), and in the provincial town of Settat (Marley, 2009), as well as in
Rabat, the capital. This section will summarise the general tendencies indicated
by these studies, which corroborate the observations of Leclerc,4 that Arabic-
French signage is the norm in the country.
From the moment of entry into the country, at the Mohammed V airport
in Casablanca, or on alighting from a train at Rabat central station, signage is ei-
ther Arabic-French, or in some cases French only. Announcements at the train
station are routinely in MSA then in standard French. Once outside, the same

4
http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/afrique/maroc.htm
 370

pattern is repeated. Perhaps the most significant point to note is that all ‘top-
down’ i.e. government or other official, signs appear to be bilingual, at national
and local level. Examples include ministry buildings, town halls and other official
buildings; all types of road sign (directions, warnings, parking meters, notices of
building works etc). In many cases the signs may be old, dating to the early days
after independence, when many educated people were more competent in
French than in MSA. However, bilingual signage is the norm in the newest devel-
opments: for example, in a residential area in Temara, where building work is
still ongoing, new street names are all bilingual, with the Arabic name placed
above the French, but the French nonetheless highly visible. It is not only official
signage, but also commercial and private signs (‘bottom-up’) which follow this
pattern. Shop signs are generally bilingual, although Arabic only and French only
signs can be found. One supermarket, Label’ Vie, has no Arabic signage - pre-
sumably since the play on words would not work (Label’ vie = ‘la belle vie’ = ‘the
good life’). Some smaller shops have only French signage, but most have Arabic
and French, often set out in such a way that it is hard to tell which should be
given precedence. Examples were also found of a range of other commercial en-
terprises, such as cafés and restaurants, builders and decorators, lawyers, doctors
and dentists, pharmacies, private schools, gyms and martial arts studios, which
use Arabic-French signage to advertise their existence. These surveys indicate
clearly that the French language is still highly visible in the everyday environ-
ment in Morocco. Further evidence of this might be found in a brief survey of the
use of French in the media.

3.2. Media
In a sense, the media can be viewed as another aspect of the linguistic
landscape, particularly in its print form, where it is very much an instance of
texts in a public space. Audiovisual media can also be considered part of this
landscape in the expanded version of the concept discussed by Shohamy and
Waksman (2009).
This section will not attempt to discuss the whole range of media, but will
focus on two sectors: the specialised press, and television. A brief survey of these
sectors provides evidence that French, whilst not the dominant language used in
the Moroccan media, certainly has an important role to play. he Moroccan press
has a very limited readership, but enjoys greater freedom than most Arab coun-
tries, according to the Arab Press Network5 This freedom dates to the 1990s, the

5
http://www.arabpressnetwork.org/newspaysv2.php?id=117
 371

closing years of the reign of Hassan II, when more liberal legislation allowed a
large number of new publications to appear. This period of liberalisation coin-
cided with the growth in the reading public, as greater numbers of young people
than ever before were completing secondary education.
By 1990, these young people were emerging from an Arabized education
system, but French continued to be an important element, and young people as-
piring to a professional career, or a career in business, were then, and continue
to be, competent in French. Thus, although the dominant language of the press is
Arabic, many of the newer publications are in French.
According to government figures from 2006, there are 448 titles in Arabic,
and 164 in French, but it does not specify relative circulation (figures for some
publications can be found on the Audit Bureau of Circulation, L'OJD Maroc, but not
all publications are listed). Two sectors in particular emerged at that time and
have grown steadily ever since; the glossy feminine press, and ‘newsmagazines’.
These are both sectors that were well developed in France, and the French ver-
sions were (and still are) readily available in most Moroccan towns. However, the
launching of several new titles over the last fifteen years suggests that the mar-
ket for such home-grown products in French is still buoyant. Moreover, several
more specialised areas also now boast Moroccan publications in French, notably
leisure activities, culture, economy and IT. These tend to be high quality publica-
tions aimed at a relatively wealthy readership, and include such titles as Maisons
du Maroc – a Moroccan Homes and Gardens, suggesting that French continues to be
associated with social and professional success. (For further discussion of Moroc-
can women’s magazines, see Marley 2010.)
Whereas the press has a limited impact on a society with a relatively high
rate of illiteracy, television reaches all sectors of society. Since the mid 1990s, no
Moroccan household is complete without a satellite dish, and over the last dec-
ade Moroccan state television has also been transformed, from one channel,
TVM, to a company, SNRT, with a whole range of digital channels. This section
will give a simple overview of the extent to which French is used in Moroccan
television channels. The primary language of broadcasting on all Moroccan
channels is Arabic, mostly MSA, but also Moroccan Dialect, particularly in home-
grown dramas.
The former state channel, now known as ‘al Aoula’ (the first), has daily
news broadcasts in Arabic, French, Spanish and Tamazight, and few official pro-
grammes in French. On 2M, the second national channel, the majority of broad-
casting is in Arabic, but ‘international’ (American) films are usually dubbed in
 372

French, and programmes dealing with ‘modern’ subjects such as IT or the econ-
omy, are often entirely, or primarily, in French. It could also be noted that on all
Moroccan channels, although French is not the primary language in game shows
and talent shows, it is frequently used, and code-switching between French and
Arabic is also widespread.
Medi1sat, a commercial channel which claims to be ‘the news channel of
the Maghreb (North Africa)’, broadcasts continuous news in both Arabic and
French. Whilst the SNRT channels and 2M aim to broadcast primarily in Arabic,
Medi1sat is committed to bilingualism, reflecting its roots as a joint venture be-
tween Morocco and France. In the digital age, most Moroccans also have access
to vast numbers of satellite channels, and therefore other languages. Whilst
channels from other Arab countries, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are proba-
bly the most popular, French and Francophone channels are also accessible, in-
cluding TV5, and France 24, which broadcasts in French and Arabic. This brief
overview suggests that French does not feature very heavily in Moroccan televi-
sion, but it is by no means absent.
To conclude this section on the media, it is worth noting that the fastest
growing means of communication in recent years is clearly the internet. Accord-
ing to Morocco’s national telecommunications agency, numbers of Internet sub-
scribers are growing at the rate of around 50% per year: between March 2010 and
March 2011 numbers increased by 59.54%. According to Internetworldstats.com,
in December 2010, Morocco had 13,213,000 Internet users - 41.3% of the popula-
tion (compared to only 6.6 million, or 19.5% of the population, in March 2009).
The country also had 3,203,440 Facebook users in March 2011.
All of this does not necessarily have any linguistic implications, but since
the majority of young people are competent in both French and MSA, it is likely
that they will be accessing French language websites as much as Arabic language
sites, and interacting with French speakers as well as with Arabic speakers on so-
cial networking sites and forums. It is also worth noting that ‘public cyberspaces’
such as official government websites and the sites for all the Moroccan television
channels and other sectors of the media, all exist in both Arabic and French, in
the same way as the physical signage in the ‘real’ landscape.

3.3. Education
As indicated in section 2, a policy of Arabization has been successfully im-
plemented in the State education system, but French is still taught, particularly
at higher levels, and is widely used in higher education. Since the completion of
 373

the Arabization process in the late 1980s, however, increasing numbers of Mo-
roccan families prefer to send their children to private, bilingual schools. In the
state sector, French is officially taught as a subject, for practical purposes. It is
not used as a language of instruction, nor is it taught as a language of culture. At
tertiary level, however, only arts and humanities subjects have been successfully
Arabized. This means that students who have been through this system may find
it difficult to adapt to higher education, where French is often the medium of in-
struction, particularly in science and technology. The simple fact that ever in-
creasing numbers have access to education means that larger numbers of Moroc-
cans than ever before have at least a rudimentary knowledge of French. How-
ever, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the system, and many see the lack
of adequate French teaching as a major problem.
In the private sector, however, from nursery school onwards, French is al-
most always a language of instruction. The demand for private, bilingual educa-
tion is constantly growing, primarily due to general disillusionment with the
state system, and because of the continued need for a higher level of French in
order to access higher education, and to achieve social and professional success.
It is not only primary and secondary schools which are flourishing; at tertiary
level there are numerous Schools of Business, Management, IT, tourism and
other more or less professionally oriented institutions, which operate almost en-
tirely in French. There are also more French schools in Morocco than in any
other country. In 2010 there were 28 100 pupils enrolled in French schools, 60%
of whom were Moroccan.6 Morocco is at present the only Arab country where
pupils at the secondary schools can take the Option Internationale du Baccalauréat,
a fact which is attracting increasing numbers of students.

3.4. General attitudes towards French – and France

This overview suggests that the policy of Arabization does not seem to
have removed French in Morocco. Although the language has no official status, it
is widely seen and heard in everyday life and has far more speakers than at the
end of the colonial era. The continued use of French in Higher Education and in
professional life has resulted in a flourishing private sector, where the acquisi-
tion of good standard French is seen as the key benefit. French is often unoffi-
cially acknowledged as the second national language, and the routine use of
French alongside Arabic in so many domains, including official government

6
http://www.ambafrance-ma.org/efmaroc/lycee/index.php
 374

documents, implies that this tacit acknowledgement exists at every level of soci-
ety.
General attitudes towards French have perhaps undergone a change in re-
cent years, as the colonial era fades into history. Sociolinguistic studies in the
1980s and 1990s sometimes revealed a residual resentment of French as the lan-
guage of colonisation (for example, Elbiad, 1991; Mouhssine, 1995), but more re-
cent studies suggest that for the overwhelmingly young population of Morocco,
the Protectorate is ancient history, and French is not the language of oppression,
but may hold the key to freedom, either as a means of obtaining social and pro-
fessional success or emigrating to France or another French-speaking country
with a higher standard of living. This leads to a final important factor which af-
fects attitudes towards French: the Moroccan community in France. In common
with many postcolonial nations, Morocco has a large immigrant community in
the country of the former colonial power. There are also large Moroccan com-
munities in Francophone Belgium, as well as the Netherlands, Spain and other
European countries. The Moroccan government encourages these Moroccans
and their European-born offspring to maintain links with ‘home’, and even has a
ministry for them, the Ministère chargé de la Communauté Marocaine à
l'Etranger (Ministry for the Moroccan Community Abroad). This ministry runs a
national publicity campaign to welcome them back to Morocco every summer,
runs summer schools to teach their children Arabic language and Moroccan cul-
ture, and generally courts this community.
The proximity of Morocco to Western Europe means that many Moroccans
living there can visit Morocco every year, with the result that many families
have regular contact with their French-speaking relatives. With the rapid growth
in internet communications, this contact is even easier, and can be maintained
all year. Although this may enable European-born Moroccans to practise and im-
prove their Arabic, it also offers opportunities for Moroccans who cannot leave
the country to practise and improve their French through contact with French-
dominant bilinguals. The fact that ‘MRE’ (Marocains resident à l’étranger – Mo-
roccans living abroad) continue to see themselves, and to be seen, as Moroccan
despite being French speakers, undoubtedly contributes to the sense that French
is a useful, if not essential, language for Moroccans to know. As I have suggested
elsewhere (Marley, 2008), Moroccans in France have a strong sense of ethnocul-
tural identity, but on the whole are becoming ‘Maghrebians via French’. The con-
tinued and reinforced links between Morocco and France seem to lead to positive
attitudes towards French within Morocco.
 375

4. The changing role of Arabic

This section will look briefly at some of the changes affecting Arabic in
modern Morocco. As noted above, language policy since 1956 has promoted ‘Ara-
bic’ as the official language. Although it is not specified in the Constitution, the
variety of Arabic is MSA, not Moroccan Dialect. It is clear from the previous sec-
tion that French continues to play an important role in Morocco, despite half a
century of Arabization, but this does not mean that Arabization has been a fail-
ure, or that its role has not changed over that half century. The most obvious re-
sult of the policy is that the mass of the population is now literate in MSA, in
stark contrast to the early days of independence, when the elite were more com-
petent in French than MSA, and the majority of the population was illiterate.
Dramatically improved rates of literacy, and even more dramatic technological
advances have combined to make MSA much more or a rival to French than it
was in 1956. Not only are most younger Moroccans educated in MSA, they have
also experienced far more exposure to cultural products from around the Arab
world, thanks to satellite television, recorded music and the internet.
Whereas ‘Arabic’ in the 1960s was synonymous with ‘tradition’ and ‘folk-
lore’, and perceived as inadequate for dealing with the modern world, young
people today are more likely to see MSA as sophisticated and attractive. They
have grown up watching and listening to the television, films and music of Egypt
and the Middle East: Egyptian films, Lebanese-dubbed soap operas, Middle East-
ern music videos and other cultural products are now readily and constantly
available via satellite channels and the internet. These cultural products are
widely appreciated in Morocco, and accessible to an educated young population,
who may aspire to speak like their Middle Eastern role models. Thus a shift to-
wards MSA as a language of popular culture and everyday communication looks
far more realistic than it might have done even 20 years ago. Access to the inter-
net has also exposed Moroccans to a greater variety of ideas about Arab and Mus-
lim identity, particularly in the wake of international events over the past 20
years. Young people can read and listen to information and opinions circulating
on the internet, and these too may impact on the way young people think and
speak. MSA is the language that enables communication between Arabic speakers
around the world, and a desire to identify closely with the Arab and Muslim
world could lead to increased use of this language.
Arabization has also impacted on language use in another way, leading to
the development of so-called ‘intermediate’ Arabic. This new variety is in be-
tween the dominant variety, MSA, which never sounds ‘natural’ to Moroccan
 376

speakers, and Moroccan Dialect, which sounds natural, but ‘vulgar’ in more for-
mal situations. The development of this variety has been reported since the
1990s, in Tunisia and Algeria, as well as Morocco. Sayah (1997: 40), referring to
the Tunisian context, defines it as polite spoken Arabic, and claims that it is used
in the media, notably by politicians, who wish to make themselves widely under-
stood, without sounding ‘vulgar’. Boukous (1995: 56), referring to Morocco, noted
that ‘arabe médian’ was a hybrid variety, using standard lexis and dialectal mor-
phology and phonology. He suggested it was mainly used by educated speakers
in formal situations of oral communication. Given that MSA is widely known and
used in written form, and is perceived as a superior variety, it is natural that
educated speakers should wish to use it in oral communication, yet are forced to
use some elements of the dialectal variety, in order to sound more natural, and
to be sure of being understood by less well educated people. At present such a
variety is not recognised, but with time, a convergence of dominant and non-
dominant varieties could reasonably occur, leading to a new variety, which
would be dominant at national level.
Another change which is going in quite the opposite direction is the use of
Moroccan Dialect in written form. Traditionally a purely oral variety, it is gener-
ally seen by Moroccans as not appropriate for written functions. There is a wide-
spread opinion that only MSA, the dominant variety of Arabic, should be written,
thus maintaining the diglossic relationship between the two varieties. However,
attempts have been made to use the dialectal variety, for example in a news-
magazine, Nichane (‘Direct’ in Moroccan Arabic). This publication, launched in
2006, was the sister paper of the outspoken French language newsmagazine,
Telquel (‘As it is’), but it went out of circulation in 2010. A written form of this va-
riety has also been used, however, in advertising, as reported in a Telquel article
(Akalay, 2010). Since Moroccan Dialectal Arabic is the variety that best expresses
national identity, the possibility of standardising a written form, and using it as a
national language instead of MSA would have certain advantages. It could facili-
tate literacy and improve communications at national level, and would perhaps
remove the need for either MSA or French within the country. However, al-
though Moroccans may feel attached to their national variety, they are very con-
scious of the advantage of being competent in a pluricentric language, such as
MSA, which enables communication with the Arab world, and French, which en-
ables access to the wider world.
 377

5. The impact of English

Finally, in this consideration of the relationship between French and Ara-
bic in Morocco, it should be noted that the situation is further complicated by
the growing presence of English. Up until the late 1980s, although English was
taught in schools, the language had little impact outside of education, as French
was firmly established as the European language that offered access to the mod-
ern world. By the mid-1990s, however, some researchers were already suggesting
that English was gaining in influence in the country. In 1995, for example, Mo-
roccan sociolinguist Boukous wrote that English, although an ‘outsider’ in Mo-
rocco, was likely to become a rival to French, due to its dominance in the inter-
national scene. At that stage there was little empirical evidence of this competi-
tion, but he foresaw a threat to the role of French in Morocco (Boukous, 1995: 77-
83). Five years later, Benzakour and her colleagues noted that French in Morocco
was threatened by what they described as the wave of ‘anglomania’ taking hold
in the country (Benzakour et al, 2000: 79-80). As the language of globalisation and
‘international’ popular culture, English is bound to impact on language use. At
present French is still seen by many Moroccans as more useful and important to
them than English (Marley, 2009), since the language continues to be prevalent
in so many fields, as seen above. However, English is growing in popularity, and
is increasingly important in many professions and in the private sector. More-
over, the rapid growth of the internet has increased exposure to English, particu-
larly for young people, and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that anglicisms
are widely used, as they are in many countries, including France. As in so many
countries, use of English in Morocco could be seen as an index of modernity
rather than a means of communication (cf. Lanza and Woldemariam, 2009: 201 in
Ethiopia), but this could change. Policy makers have been careful not to name
the ‘most appropriate’ language for teaching science and technology, or for ac-
cessing the knowledge-based society. At present French appears to be that lan-
guage, but it is entirely possible that it will be replaced by English in the near fu-
ture.

6. Summary
This chapter has considered the changing roles of different languages in
contact in Morocco, focusing on French, a pluricentric language with a non-
dominant role in the country, and Arabic, a pluricentric language with both
dominant and non-dominant varieties.
 378

In exploring the role and status of French in Morocco, this chapter sug-
gests that there is a mismatch between overt language policy, which gives the
French language no status, and does not even name it in policy documents, and
actual language practice, since French clearly has an important and high profile
role in many areas of public life. ‘Arabic’, as the official language, is given a
dominant role in many domains, and is increasingly used, as the population is
ever better educated, and links with the rest of the Arab world become more
valuable in various ways. Moroccan Dialectal Arabic, the non-dominant variety,
continues to be the most widely spoken variety, and attempts have been made to
invest it with greater prestige, through writing. However, attitudes towards both
varieties of Arabic are such that there is little likelihood of MSA being replaced
by Moroccan Dialect in any official function. Finally, it was noted that French,
despite its relatively powerful position, could suffer in the face of the interna-
tional dominating language, English, which is rapidly becoming a significant
force in the country.

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çais
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Full text of new constitution, in official French translation
http://www.maroc.ma/NR/rdonlyres/EE8E1B01-9C86-449B-A9C2-
A98CC88D7238/8650/bo5952F.pdf
Analysis of new Constitution, in English, Moroccan government site
http://www.maroc.ma/PortailInst/An/evenements/New+draft+Constituti
on+a+democratic+landmark+in+Morocco.htm
Languages of Morocco, government site
http://www.maroc.ma/PortailInst/An/MenuGauche/Society+and+Culture
/Languages/Languages+in+Morocco.htm
Médias et communications. Le secteur de la presse écrite
http://www.maroc.ma/PortailInst/Fr/MenuGauche/Société+et+culture/M
édias+et+communication/Le+secteur+de+la+presse+écrite.htm
Arab Press Network
http://www.arabpressnetwork.org/newspaysv2.php?id=117
L'OJD Maroc (Organisme de justification de la diffusion)
http://www.ojd.ma/site/ma/
Tableau de bord Marché Internet au Maroc. Tableau de Bord Trimestriel* Mars
2011
http://www.anrt.net.ma/fr/admin/download/upload/file_fr2164.pdf
Internet World Stats – Usage and Population Statistics – Africa
http://www.Internetworldstats.com/africa.htm#ma
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the
Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 381-386.

Abderrazzaq MSELLEK
(University of Fès, Morocco)
amsellek@gmail.com

Sociolinguistic Aspects of Moroccan Arabic

Abstract

The language situation in Morocco is marked by the parallel use of

several varieties of Arabic. Apart from standard Arabic as the official
language, Moroccan Arabic and other local varieties are also used. In my
paper I will show the main sociolinguistic aspects that govern the use of
Moroccan Arabic and Standard Arabic in Morocco. The focus will be on
the communicative functions and linguistic features of Moroccan
Arabic.

1. Introduction
The linguistic situation in Morocco is often described as complex. Four
languages are used, namely, Standard Arabic (SA), Moroccan Arabic (MA), Berber,
and French. But other foreign languages such as English, Spanish and German
have increasingly grown popular in education, business and tourism sectors.
This complexity can be interpreted as linguistic diversity or simply as
multilingualism that is a major characteristic of Moroccan society. Concerning
the communicative function of each language, Ennaji (2005) made the following
observation:

“These Languages (SA, MA, and Berber) do not fulfil all the linguistic
functions, since each one covers only a limited number of domains. For
instance, MA and Berber cover the domains of home and street, while SA
is used in education, public administration, and the media. French is
utilized to complement the picture, as it has functions and domains
which overlap with those of SA, in addition to covering the private
sector, science, and technology.”
 382

1. Status of Moroccan Arabic

Contrary to standard Arabic - the official language of Morocco since
independence - and Berber, which have recently gained official language status
under the newly voted Constitution, Moroccan Arabic is considered as a non-
official language. Moreover, MA is a language for everyday conversations and is
neither codified nor standardized, unlike SA which is codified, standardized and
used in written form. Additionally, MA
“is not a homogeneous language in form, as various Moroccan Arabic
dialects are spoken in various geographical areas of Morocco.” (Sadiqi,
2003).

2. Communicative functions of Moroccan Arabic

Moroccan Arabic is usually used to address basic communicative needs and
to assist Moroccans with their day-to-day activities: buying a product, making a
booking, changing money at the bank, etc. This means that MA is primarily used
for personal, everyday communication while standard Arabic is used for formal
and official situations.
Regional varieties of Moroccan Arab are spoken in urban, rural and
mountainous areas. They are local and too limited in reach unlike Moroccan
Arabic which is regional and considered as the lingua franca. It follows that
Moroccan Arabic is not only used for everyday purposes but carries a multitude
of content in other domains such as literature, business, religion and sport.
Diagram (1) below illustrates the areas of usage of MA. It highlights two elements
in particular:
1. Moroccan Arabic is not only used in everyday life but in almost all
communicative areas. We may therefore speak of Moroccan everyday
language, Moroccan religious language, Moroccan literary language, etc as
forms of usage of Moroccan Arabic.
2. Because Moroccan Arabic is a spoken, non-official language, it is used in
written form using Arabic script only to convey specific types of content
including literary material, satirical media coverage in addition, obviously, to
meeting day-to-day needs.
383
 384

3. Sociolinguistic and Linguistic Characteristics of Moroccan

Arabic
The most important sociolinguistic characteristics of Moroccan Arabic are
the following:
1. MA is a low-prestige variety of Arabic
2. It is a non-elite language
3. It is Morocco’s predominant spoken language
4. It is used in informal communication settings
5. It is associated with day-to-day practice
6. It is non-institutionalized, not standardized and not codified.
There are significant linguistic differences between Moroccan Arabic and
Standard Arabic.
According to Ennaji’s study (2005), MA features a regular phonology, a
simple morphology, an abundant lexicon, and a great variety of styles of speech.

Phonology
The sound system of MA differs from that of SA in that MA has five short
vowels and three long ones, while SA has only three short vowels and three long
ones. The influence of foreign languages, especially French, on MA is visible here.
The two vowels /e/ and /o/ are borrowed from French. Unlike SA, MA has the
consonants /p, v, g/ which shows once more the result of language contact
between MA and French. Otherwise, SA and MA have generally the same
inventory of phonemes and distinctive features (cf. Ennaji, 2005).

Morphology
MA lacks the dual and the feminine dual as well as the plural forms found
in SA. MA is less complex in inflection than SA.

Syntax
SA has basically a Verb-Subject-Object order. MA has a dominant Subject-
Verb-Object order. Word order in MA is not as restricted as in SA.

Lexicon
MA is strongly influenced by the SA lexicon. On the other hand a lot of
words in MA clearly show the influence of Berber. For example, a number of MA
 385

nouns take the Berber feminine discontinuous affix t…t or ta….t as in taxaddart or
tabaqqalt. These terms express a state, an action or an occupation. MA uses also
many words borrowed from Berber (see Sadiqi 2003).

4. Future Prospects of Moroccan Arabic

Is MA ”an emerging language”? Can it one day attain standard-language
status so that we then speak of a Standard Moroccan Arabic? Or will MA never be
able to assert itself against the dominant Standard Arabic?
I think, there are two reasons for answering these questions in the
negative:
1. The diglossic situation in Morocco entails the existence of a high and a low
variety of Arabic, SA and MA, respectively. It is difficult to imagine how and
why the low variety should be standardized and codified. Arguably, SA and
MA are structurally different but equal in communicative value.
2. Standard Arabic, is always associated with Islam and its Holy Book:

“It is revered by the rich, the poor, the educated and the illiterate alike
as the linguistic jewel of Islamic cultural heritage. It is regarded as the
inimitable apogee of perfection, unsurpassable in beauty, an ethereal
ideal of eloquence, perfect symmetry, and succinctness.” (Holes 2004:5)
Ennaji argues that Moroccans consider in fact SA as a prestigious language
and the only form worth learning in schools, and MA a corrupt and vulgar
dialect. The strong relationship that binds Moroccans and SA suggests that MA
stands no chance of being codified and standardized – at least for the moment.
MA will remain the predominant spoken language and will continue to be mostly
used in informal settings and everyday life.

5. References
Boukous, Ahmed (1995): Société, langues et cultures au Maroc. Enjeux symboliques.
Rabat: Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines.
Elbiad, Mohamed (1991): The Role of some Population Sectors in the Progress of
Arabization in Morocco, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 87,
27-44.
Ennaji, Moha (2005): Multilingualism, Cultural Identity, and Education in
Morocco. New York. Springer.
 386

Holes, Clive (2004): Modern Arabic. Structures, Functions, and Varieties.

Washington. Georgetown University Press.
Sadiqi, Fatima (2003): Women, Gender and Language in Morocco. Leiden/Boston.
Brill
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 387-400.

Munirah ALAJLAN
Kuwait University, Kuwait
(munirah.alajlan@hotmail.com)

Dominant and Non-Dominant Varieties

in the Gulf: Social Class or Region?

Abstract
This paper will give an overview of the Arabic language, specifically the
variety used in the Gulf region and the different varieties within each
dialect, in terms of social class and other variables, such as gender, edu-
cational background and ethnic origin which can have an impact on the
use of language. Within the Gulf region, the dialects of Arabic spoken are
called Gulf Arabic and each country has its own variety. Which variety
dominates the Gulf? And which one is the high variety? Is Arabic consid-
ered to be a pluricentric language? There is no one variety that is ac-
cepted by all Gulf speakers as a prestigious standard.

1. Introduction
Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between society and the
way language is used. Many speech communities have two (or more) varieties of
language. One is referred to as the High variety (H), and the other as the Low va-
riety (L). This situation is commonly known as diglossia. Ferguson (1959) illus-
trated the criteria of diglossia by demonstrating four contexts which he regarded
as most significant examples of diglossia: Swiss German, Modern Greek, Arabic
and Haitian Creole. In these contexts, both the high variety and the low variety
co-occur. He defined diglossia as
a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the pri-
mary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional
standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammati-
cally more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and re-
spected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in an-
other speech community, which is learned largely by formal education
and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used
by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation (cited in
Wardhaugh, 2005: 336).
 388

The high variety is normally the formal or prestigious variety, whereas the
low variety is used in informal social settings (Yule, 1996). Referring to the high
and low varieties, Labov (1966) and Trudgill (1972) illustrated two terms, prestige
and stigma. Prestige is used by social groups with high social status, and major
institutions of society such as law, education, and the press. On the other hand,
the non-standard form, which is also called the vernacular, is often stigmatized.
In any diglossic setting, there might be sharp differences between the two varie-
ties; each has different rules, vocabulary, phonology and different set of syntax
(cited in Meyerhoff, 2006).

2. Overview of Arabic Language

The Arabic language has survived for more than fourteen centuries. One
important factor that helped the language to exist is the restriction of borrowing
and updating dictionaries. The process of entering new lexemes into the Arabic
dictionary is very strict, and serious efforts are to be taken by specialized au-
thorities. It is the main language of the Arab world as well as being considered as
the religious and the divine language by all Muslims. As mentioned earlier, Fer-
guson (1959) has defined Arabic as the best example of diglossia. However, no
vernacular of Arabic has reached the prestigious status of the high variety Mod-
ern Standard Arabic (MSA). Abdul-Jawad (1992) states that “Arabic is the first
language in Arab countries which form[s] a contiguous area and share[s] the
same historical heritage, religion, cultural patterns, and national aspirations”.
Also, Arabic has only one formal variety, unlike English (British English and
American English). Within the Arab world, there are three geographic regions,
starting with North Africa including Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, secondly the
region of Levant which includes Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon and thirdly
the Gulf States including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and
Oman.
In spite of MSA being the most prestigious and high variety, it is not spo-
ken by all Arabic speakers in everyday conversation. It would in fact sound
rather stilted if it were to be used in communication. Nevertheless, there is a
higher variety used at a local level that is MSA which is acquired in school only.
Here it is taught as a main subject, and is the language of instruction. Also it is
used in the press and in TV news.
Jones (2004: 135) claimed that "regional dialects are usually social dialects
too". However, Holmes (1992) stated that regional dialects involve vocabulary,
pronunciation, and sentence syntax; these features differ from one region to an-
 389

other. Thus, speakers from social groups speak different social dialects in using
different lexis, grammar and pronunciation. However, Badawi (1973) identified
various varieties of Arabic within the Arabic language as a whole:
1. Classical Arabic which was spoken in the Arabic Peninsula from the fifth cen-
tury to the fifteenth century, and was spoken by Arabs before the emergence
of Islam. It was the official language then, and there was no diglossia in acient
times; people communicated in classical Arabic everywhere: in both courts
and marketplaces.
2. MSA which is akin to Classical Arabic; it has also been called Quranic Arabic
(Haggan, 2007). This variety of Arabic is taught to Arab students in schools,
used in the media and law. MSA (or Fuss-ha Arabic) was maintained and de-
veloped after Islam was born as a result of the influence exercised by the
Qur'an over the emerging Muslim community.
3. Colloquial Arabic1 (or Arabic vernacular): every Arabic-speaking country has
its own variety with different grammar and lexis. This variety is spoken by
Arabs in social communications, but is only used in written form for some in-
formal articles, cartoons and movie scripts.
Younes (1995) claimed that Arabs from different parts of the Arab World
speak different Arabic dialects. While they may, or may not understand each
other2, the Arab writers who use the colloquial variety in their scripts and shows
are in fact running the risk of limiting their audience. However, the MSA is the
same everywhere and understood by all Arabs all over the Arabian World.

3. Overview of Arabic in the Gulf region

The Gulf countries mentioned earlier share similar features such as tradi-
tion, songs and proverbs; they even undergo the same economic and political
circumstances as they have a high level of oil and rely heavily on foreign labour;
mostly from Egypt, the Levant, India, and the Philippines. The states in this re-
gion have formed the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The strategic situation of the Gulf made it a potential target for colonisa-
tion, particularly because it is traditionally focused on maritime industries par-
ticularly the export of pearls. However, the discovery of oil in the 20th century
transformed all aspects of Gulf society. The national language of all the Gulf

1
Colloquial Arabic is being called “aammi” in the Arabic-speaking World.
2
Almost all Arabian speakers can understand the Egyptian and Syrian Arabic due to
their wide use in media.
 390

States is MSA. However, each Gulf country has its own variety of Gulf Arabic;
Saudi Arabic, Omani Arabic, Bahraini Arabic, Qatari Arabic, and Emirate Arabic.
This variety (or dialect) is considered to be the low vernacular, which differs
from the high variety (MSA). In general, the term dialect refers to the syntax and
lexis; dialect also indicates which region a speaker comes from. Each variety has
different words and terms from the other country. An example would be the
word mil3aqa [spoon] in the MSA. In Kuwait, it is pronounced as gafša; in Iraq it is
pronounced as xašoga, and in Saudi Arabia, it is pronounced as milʕaga (Al-Ayoub,
1997).
Most Middle Eastern societies are divided into two main areas, urban and
rural. Speakers from each part of society speak the same variety of Arabic, how-
ever, they differ in some vocabulary and in their pronunciation (accent). Speak-
ers coming from rural areas are therefore just as easily distinguished by their ac-
cent as speakers from an urban area. Generally, it is pronunciation that indicates
geographical region of origin, not just the country, but a very specific area
within the country. For example; some people might claim that an accent is sim-
ply being from Kuwait, Oman or Egypt; however, the accent in Kuwait shows
whether the speaker is particularly from Ajams (originally from Iran) families in
Kuwait, Blosh families originally from Oman or Sae'ed from Egypt for instance.

4. Tribes and Social Class in the Gulf Region – The Development

of Social Structure in Kuwait
In the eighteenth century, an Arabian tribe called Bani Utbah migrated to
Kuwait due to the drought in the region where they came from (Aniza). They be-
came the ruling family in Kuwait and established the country. Other tribes and
families started arriving in Kuwait and other Gulf areas from neighbouring coun-
tries such as Iraq and Iran. Old Kuwaitis worked as fishermen, shipbuilders, and
pearl divers. Shehab (1964: 461) stated that
"the rigorous physical environment rendered the individual tough,
imaginative, enterprising and excellent in team-work [and…] distin-
guished the Kuwaitis as the Gulf's most successful businessmen, sailors
and sea-farers".
At that time, Kuwaiti society was comprised of three social levels: the rul-
ing family, an oligarchy of merchants, and a working class, mainly, working as
pearl divers, and ship builders. The merchant families, however, were and still
are considered to be "the most powerful and dynamic social force". Shehab also
claimed that;
 391

"the merchants' enterprising spirit […] provided the ruling family with
their meagre income in the shape of customs duties and provided em-
ployment for the rest of the community"
The country was divided into three main areas; Sharg [east side], Jibla
[west side], and Bedouin [rural areas]. The groups that belong to each area differ
from each other in the way Kuwaiti dialect was spoken3.
After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, Kuwaiti society expanded rapidly.
This growth therefore caused a broadening in the social faction as Kuwaitis
started leaving sea work and searching for more valuable jobs in the oil industry
(Al-Fahad, 2004), thus, moving to inner cities rather than the shores and deserts.
In addition, the number of educated people started to rise, causing the social
stratum to change, and produce a middle class which appeared in the Kuwaiti so-
cial scene. In addition, family name and wealth influenced social divisions.
Hence, the new social class has five levels of social stratification based on
wealth and income. At the peak of the social hierarchy, is the ruling family. Then
there are merchant families earning high revenues followed by Bedouin from ru-
ral areas also known as Arabian Desert nomads, who settled in Kuwait with the
advent of the oil industry. Next comes the Arabs from neighbouring countries,
and at the bottom of this hierarchy are foreigners who are considered being be-
low the working class level. The majority of foreigners working in Kuwait are
from India and the Philippines. This is a discriminated group of people who are
not allowed to own property in the country. Al-Thakeb (1985: 586) stressed:
"Since Kuwait is a small country, it is difficult to talk about rural-urban
differences in family patterns, but socioeconomic and educational dif-
ferences are important".
The five divisions of the social strata in Kuwaiti society are explained be-
low in Table 1:

3
Both groups of Sharg and Jibla practiced the sea crafts, whereas, Bedouin practiced
desert crafts such as milking goats, sewing, and spinning Sado (a heavy fabric used
in manufacturing pillows, and tents in rural areas). However, the different varieties
spoken by these groups of people will be illustrated in the following sections.
 392

Ruling family4
Kuwaiti Merchants and a. upper class [businessmen, traders, merchants]
professionals
b. middle class [doctors, engineers, professors]
c. lower class [company employees, secretaries,
tellers]
Kuwaiti Middle Class a. upper class [businessmen, traders, merchants]
b. middle class [doctors, engineers, professors]
c. lower class [companies employees, secretar-
ies, tellers]
Arab workers (from [tellers, companies employees,
Gulf countries and secretaries, teachers]
Middle East)
Foreigner workers [servants, cab and bus drivers]

Table 1: The social strata of Kuwait society

The level of education used to be seen as another main social factor that af-
fects the social class, yet, at the present time, individual's family name and high
income and wealth are more significant than the level of education. Moreover,
family name is just as significant to wealth and income. This issue is very sensi-
tive in measuring the social status of an individual in the Kuwaiti society, as "this
represents the person's 'connectedness' (wasta) and [is] significant in the social
hierarchy (Shah, Shah and Radovanovic, 1999: 60).
The variety used by the ruling class is similar to the one used by the middle
class in urban areas in the Gulf region. Similar to the situation in Kuwait, in Bah-
rain, Holes (1986) refers to the variety used by the Sunni Arab ruling family as
'the local norm'. Class is a complex term which can be employed in various ways.
In the Kuwaiti society, social classes are more or less distinct in the language
used by its members. In general, the higher a person is on the social scale, the
more his/her speech will reflect prestige norms. The impact of social class on
language in Kuwaiti society is not very clear as the country is very small, al-
though the existence of many varieties of both the modern and the Bedouin va-
rieties is evient. The fact, that an individual is from a rural area or belongs to a
Bedouin background, does not necessary mean that this person belongs to the
lower or higher class of society. Hence, the obvious differences in language use
will be those that exist between the groups and tribes in Kuwaiti society.

4
There might be some families among the ruling family who are not as rich as the
merchants in the upper middle class.
 393

5. Linguistic characteristics of the Kuwaiti variety of Arabic

The following phonemes are the Kuwaiti Arabic phonetic symbols and the
equivalent for them in the Kuwaiti Arabic alphabet that will be used in illustrat-
ing the examples of the various varieties of Kuwaiti Arabic:

[b] voiced bilabial plosive ‫ب‬ [s] voiceless alveolar fricative ‫س‬
[d] voiced alveolar plosive ‫د‬ [z] voiced alveolar fricative ‫ز‬
[t] voiceless alveolar plosive ‫ت‬ [ş] voiceless emphatic alveolar ‫ص‬
fricative
[đ] voiced dental plosive ‫ض‬ [š] voiceless palatal fricative ‫ش‬
[ŧ] voiced emphatic dental stop ‫ط‬ [x] voiceless uvular fricative ‫خ‬
[k] voiceless velar stop ‫ك‬ [ɣ] voiced velar fricative ‫غ‬
[g] voiced velar stop ‫گ‬ [h] voiceless glottal fricative ‫ـﮫ‬
5 voiceless glottal stop voiced pharyngeal fricative
[ʔ] ‫ء‬ [ʕ] ‫ع‬
6 voiceless uvular stop voiceless pharyngeal fricati-
[q] ‫ق‬ [ž]
ve
‫ح‬
[j] voiced post-alveolar affricate ‫ج‬ [r] trill alveolar ‫ر‬
[è] voiceless palatal affricate ‫چ‬ [l] lateral alveolar ‫ل‬
[f] voiceless labio-dental fricative ‫ف‬ [m] bilabial nasal stop ‫م‬
[ð] voiced inter-dental fricative ‫ذ‬ [n] alveolar nasal stop ‫ن‬
[è] voiceless inter-dental fricative ‫ث‬ [w] bilabial rounded semi vowel ‫و‬
[₫] voiceless emphatic inter- ‫ظ‬ [y] palatal glide ‫ي‬
dental fricative

Table 2: The consonants of the Kuwait variety of Arabic

The Kuwaiti variety of Arabic was the first to gain popularity within the
Gulf region and Jordan because of Kuwaiti soap operas. Yet, nowadays, all Gulf
varieties are accepted by many Middle Eastern speakers due to the fact that all
Gulf countries produce soap operas that are broadcast across the region. Al-

5
Heard as the Cockney pronunciation of 'butter' ('buʔer') or 'water' ('waʔer') where the
/t/ is dropped and replaced by a catch in the voice. In both MSA and Gulf Arabic, a
word can begin or end with this sound.
6
This sound is a uvular stop. It rarely occurs in the Bedouin variety of Kuwait, Bahrain,
Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and UAE. On the other hand, it is quite usual among Omanis
who are living in the Capital Salala.
 394

Fahad (2004: 31) stated that "most of the lexemes of the Kuwaiti dialect are from
purely Arabic origin." This is due to the fact that most tribes who lived in Kuwait
were Arabian tribes such as Bani Tamim and Beker Bin Wael. They not only in-
fluenced the Kuwaiti dialect in terms of the lexis, but also in terms of the pho-
netic features. One example is the word naʕt [to describe], this is both used in the
Kuwaiti variety, and in MSA too. As illustrated earlier, Kuwait was divided into
three areas; Sharg, Jibla and rural areas. The variety used by the Sharg people
7
and the Jibla people are considered to be the Najdi modern or Hadhari dialect ,
yet they differ from each other with some lexemes and phonemes. The examples
below show the differences in lexis for both groups (Al-Fahad, 2004, Al-Ayoub,
1997).

Jibla Sharg MSA English

mali mgaga mali xilg lastu fy almazaj not in the mood

š-ћ-ag'a laiš lemaða why
seenima sin-ma dar il aflam cinema
w-ledna waladna ibnuna our son
šikar šakir sok'ar sugar

Table 3: Differences in the lexicon of the Jibla and Sharg variety of

Kuwait Arabic

Besides these modern varieties, there are several other dialects which de-
pend on their origins and where the region speakers come from. For example,
groups coming from Zubair, an area situated in south-west Basra in Iraq, use the
Zubair variety. The Zubair variety, as stated by Ingham (1997) "showed a consid-
erable similarity to the speech of Kuwait" (p. 42) more than the Iraqi variety as
there are final consonant clusters in a pause position.

Zubairi Najdi Iraqi MSA English

gelt gelt gelit qolt I said

šift šift šifit raʔayt I saw
riћt riћt reћit ðahabt I went
l-waiš laiš le-aš lemaða why
ðiba giŧa/kiba ðibih irmi throw
(imperative)

Table 4: Differences in the lexicon of the Zubairi, Najdi and Iraqi varieties of Kuwait

7
Najd is an area in Saudi Arabia
 395

Other groups which came from Iran, particularly from regions like Boshe-
her, Dasht and Bahman. They speak the ʕmmii variety which differs from those
previously mentioned both in terms of phonemes and vocabulary: (Dashti, 2004).

ʕemmii Najdi MSA English

xanoom mara imraʔa woman
ʔaɣa ray'al rajul man
xoo le-anna le-anna so
maa ʔana ʔana I
yid'am jid'am ʔamam in front

Table 5: Differences in the lexicon of the ʕemmii and Najdi varieties

of Kuwait Arabic

The Persian lexemes are more likely to be used by older generations of

ʕemmii Kuwaitis than by the younger generations. Nevertheless, changes in pho-
nemes /j/ to /y/ are more common among the younger ʕemmii generation (Dashti,
2004). Thus, modern Kuwaiti varieties are Sharg, Jibla (originally Najdi varieties
from Saudi), Zubairi (Zubair from Iraq), and ʕemmii/Persian (from Iran). All
these varieties are different from the Bedouin ones which are spoken by people
from rural areas. However, even the Bedouin dialects consist of other varieties
depending on the group and tribes that speakers belong to, such as Shummar,
Oniza, Dosiri, Ajmans and Rashayda (these are Kuwaiti Bedouin families' names
known in Kuwait).

Kuwaiti Iraqi MSA English

čilma/kilma čili-ma kalima word
čan čan kan (past tense) then/after
čfeef kafeef kafeef blind
čbeer kbe-ar kabeer big
čam kam kam how much
čalb čalib kalb dog
yfič yifik yafuk he opens
čatif kitif katif shoulder
smiča/simač simča/simčat samaka/samak fish/ (plural)

Table 6: A common phonetic feature of Kuwaiti varieties: the sound /č/ instead of /k/
 396

Table 6 shows a common phonetic feature that exists in all modern Kuwaiti
varieties: the change of the sound /k/ into /č/. It is a feature that differentiates
the Kuwaiti varieties form other regional varieties of Arabic and from MSA.
These phonetic features exist also in some other gulf varieties such as Oman and
Qatar. Besides, some of the Iraqi dialects like Basra also have this feature.
Another phonetic feature is the change of the sound /q/ in MSA into /g/
and /j/ in colloquial Kuwaiti. In the modern Kuwaiti variety, the sound /q/
changes into /j/ for some words, whereas in some of the Bedouin varieties, the
sound /q/ is changed into /g/. Johnstone (1963) claimed that Dafir, Rashayda,
Awazim, Ajman, Mutair, and Duwasir apply these sound changes too. Some areas
in the Arabian Peninsula have this affrication of the /g/>/j/ sound. Examples for
this change in Kuwaiti dialects are illustrated below:

Kuwaiti Bedouin MSA English

ћalj ћalg ћalq mouth

ŧireej ŧireeg ŧireeq road

ruyog ruyog ryoq breakfast

Table 7: A common phonetic feature of colloquial Kuwaiti Arabic:

the sound /g/ instead of /q/

Johnstone (1963) stated that "in the Central Nejdi dialects, there is or may
be affrication of the ‫ ك‬and ‫ ق‬to č and g˘ respectively in contiguity with the front
8
vowels" (p. 210) .
Another common example of variation of Kuwaiti variety is the sound /j/
which is pronounced as /y/ which is illustrated in table 8. For example: the word
ʔamam [in front] is considered to be MSA. Bedouin speakers from rural areas
would pronounce it as gid'am. Speakers from urban areas pronounce it as jid'am.
Moreover, speakers from Persian backgrounds living in Kuwait pronounce
it as yid'am in the ʕmmii variety. Nevertheless, this change in the /j/ sound does
not occur only in Kuwait, but is also found in other regions in the Arabian penin-
sula.
Johnstone (1965: 238) illustrated more examples where the sound /j/
changes into /y/, shown in table 8:

8
The Arabic symbols are ‫( ق‬gaf) for the sounds g/q, and the ‫( ك‬kaf) is the /k/ sound.
 397

Modern hadhari Bedouin Ku- MSA English

Kuwaiti waiti
yeeb jeeb aћðir bring (imperative)
yeat/yeet jeet atayt I came
yarad/jarad jarad jarad locusts
yahel jahel ŧifil child
masyid/masjid masjid masjid mosque
rayal/reyayel raj'al/raj'aj'eel rajul/rijal man/men
yamʕa jamʕa jamʕa gathering
ʕayal ʕajal leðalika so
diyay dijaj dajaj chicken
ʕaray ʕaraj ʔʕraj limp

Table 8: A common phonetic feature of colloquial Kuwaiti Arabic:

the sound /g/ instead of /q/

Thus, this phonetic feature occurs only in the modernized Kuwaiti dialect,
and not in the speech of the Bedouin tribes namely the Rashayda, 'Awazim, Mu-
tair and 'Ajman, which settled in modern Kuwait a long time ago.
Amongst Bedouin dialects, the Dosiri dialect is believed by the Bedouin
themselves to be a prestigious dialect. This variety is akin to Ajmi, which claims
to have "high social prestige" (Johnstone, 1961, p. 249). The speakers of this dia-
lect avoid Kuwaiti vulgarisms such as aku/maku [there is/ there isn’t], ћag [for],
mayy [water], mal [belongs to]. However, they claim that they have their own
tribal vocabulary exclusive to them and not employed by other Kuwaiti tribes.
Johnstone (1961: 250) however put this in perspective by noting:

"Although this dialect is quite different from Kuwaiti, Kuwaiti words and
forms were used […] when speaking with non-tribal Arabs or as a lingua
franca."
Another feature of the Ajmi dialect, as verified by some Ajmans Kuwaiti
speakers, females add /s/ sound at the end of the words. For instance: reћts il
koleya [I went to the college] whereas it is pronounced as reћt in the other mod-
ern and Bedouin varieties.
Another known characteristic of the Bedouin varieties is the sound change
from /k/ to /ts/. This is also found in some Bedouin varieties in Kuwait and some
Saudi varieties as well called Al-Gaşeem. Ingham (1997: 91) stated that "the sound
shifts k  ts or tš [is…] exhibited in the Central and Northern Najdi dialects" (p.
 398

91). Ingham (1997) noted that this shift is mainly used by female speakers, more
than male speakers. If male speakers shift the sound /k/ to /ts/, the addressee is
therefore a female hearer. Examples are illustrated in the Bedouin, modern Ku-
waiti, and MSA:

Modern
Bedouin MSA English
Kuwaiti

tseef keef/šlon kayf how

ћal-its ћal-ič ћal-ik your
tsitab ketab ketab book
tseði čiði hakaða like this
9
tsalam kalam kalam talks

Table 9: A common phonetic feature of Kuwaiti Bedouin varieties:

the sound change of /k/ to /ts/

Thus, from the previous examples in the different varieties, it is clear that
the sound /k/ in MSA is sometimes changed into /č/ in modern Kuwaiti, whereas
it shifts to /ts/ in the Bedouin dialect.

6. The influence of age and gender

It is widely believed that women in general use more standard forms than
men do, whereas men prefer to use vernacular forms Holmes (1992:170). The rea-
sons behind women's use of the more prestigious form, as shown by Holmes
(1992), refer to women's role in society and their status as a subordinate group
and the function of speech in expressing masculinity. Women tend to be more
aware of the way they speech which indicates their social class background and
their social status in society. The standard speech forms are associated with high
social status. This is likely to be true in situations where women do not have paid
employment as "they cannot use their occupations as a basis for signalling social
status." (Holmes, 1992: 171). Another reason behind women's use of more formal
forms of speech is the fact that society expects better behaviour from women.
Little boys, for example, are more likely to be allowed to make mistakes whereas
little girls are corrected instantly (at least in Arab societies). Kuwaiti women code
switch and use foreign expressions to show that they are highly educated, open
minded or just for showing off. Al-Shatti (2008) illustrated that many French ex-

9
Talks: discussions
 399

pressions are used by women in the Kuwaiti variety, especially in the domains of
fashion and cosmetics. However, this use of these expressions does not indicate
the membership to a higher social class in Kuwaiti society.
Age is another variable of social class. As in many regions, in the Gulf,
younger generations use more slang and taboo expressions. Creating new words
such as gaz [cruising around] and yeđabeŧ [to flirt] is common among younger
generations. Where other expressions were taken from English language and
have been Arabized, such as ysayev [to save], ykansel [to cancel], yčayek [to check]
and ybatwin [to go between things].

7. Conclusion
As shown in the previous chapters, there exists a multitude of varieties auf
Arabic in Kuwait and in the Gulf area. They are designed by factors such as level
of education, occupation, residential area, income level, tribal affiliation and ori-
gin, age and gender, ethnic background and power. They all influence the way
people speak.
Therefore, apart from MSA there is actually no other dominant variety
within the Gulf, all other varieties are used equally side by side. But only the high
variety is used in education, the press and taught in school. Within the low varie-
ties however, each is distinguished by its region only.

8. References

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ricentric languages.
Al-Ayoub, A. (1997): Lexemes of city people. Kuwait: Kuwait Center for Studies
and research. ( ،‫ﻣﻦ ﻛﻠﻤﺎت أھﻞ اﻟﺪﯾﺮة‬1997‫ اﻟﻜﻮﯾﺖ‬:‫ ﻣﺮﻛﺰ اﻟﺒﺤﻮث واﻟﺪراﺳﺎت اﻟﻜﻮﯾﺘﯿﺔ‬،).
Al-Duwella, N. (2008): Session from the National Assembly in Kuwait. Available
online on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDp-sQM8Aj8 [Accessed 15th
May 2008].
Al-Fahad, G. (2004): Traditional Kuwaiti expressions. Kuwait: Kuwait Center for
Studies and research. ( ،‫ﺗﻌﺒﯿﺮات ﺷﻌﺒﯿﺔ ﻛﻮﯾﺘﯿﺔ‬2004‫ ﻣﺮﻛﺰ اﻟﺒﺤﻮث واﻟﺪراﺳﺎت اﻟﻜﻮﯾﺘﯿﺔ‬،:
‫)اﻟﻜﻮﯾﺖ‬.
Al-Rshaid, K. (2010): The Encyclopaedia of Kuwaiti Dialect.
Al-Shatti, M. (2008): French expressions in the Kuwaiti dialect. Al-Qabas. N:
12486. ( ،‫ﺗﻌﺎﺑﯿﺮ ﻓﺮﻧﺴﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺔ اﻟﻜﻮﯾﺘﯿﺔ‬2008 ‫ اﻟﻌﺪد‬،‫ ﺟﺮﯾﺪة اﻟﻘﺒﺲ‬،12486).
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Al-Thakeb, F. (1985): The Arab family and modernity: evidence from Kuwait. Cur-
rent Anthropology. 26/5: 575-580.
Badawi, S. M. (1973): Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt. Cairo: Dar Al-
Ma'aref. ( ،‫ﻣﺴﺘﻮﯾﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ اﻟﻤﻌﺎﺻﺮة ﻓﻲ ﻣﺼﺮ‬1973‫ دار اﻟﻤﻌﺎرف‬:‫ اﻟﻘﺎھﺮة‬،).
Coupland, N. Sarangi S. and Candlin, C. N. (2001): Social linguistics and social the-
ory. Essex: Personal Education Limited.
Dashti, A. (2004): Language maintenance or shift? An ethnographic investigation
of the use of Farsi among Kuwaiti Ajmans: a case study. Arab Journal for
the Humanities. 22/87: 249-237.
Haggan, M. (2007): Text messaging in Kuwait: is the medium the message?. Multi-
lingua. 26: 427-449.
Holmes, J. (1992): An introduction to sociolinguistics. London: Longman.
Ingham, B. (1997): Arabian diversions: studies on the dialects of Arabia. Berk-
shire: Garnet Publishing Limited.
Johnstone, T. M. (1961): Some characteristics of the Dosiri dialect of Arabic as
spoken in Kuwait. Bulletin of the school of oriental and African studies.
24/2: 249-297.
Johnstone, T. M. (1963): The affrication of "Kaf" and "Gaf" in the Arabic dialects
of the Arabic Peninsula. Journal of Semitic studies. 8/2: 210-226.
Johnstone, T. M. (1965): The sound change j > y in the Arabic dialects of peninsu-
lar Arabia. Bulletin of the school of oriental and African studies. 28/2: 233-
241.
McGinnis, T. C. and Ayres, J. U. (1976): Open family living. London: Routledge.
Meyerhoff, M. (2006): Introducing sociolinguistics. London: Routledge.
Wardhaugh, R. (2005): An introduction to Sociolinguistics. England: Blackwell
publishing.
Jones, J. (2004): Language and class. In Thomas, L. Wareing, S. Singh, I., Peccei, J.
S., Thornborrow, J. & Jones, J. (2004): Language, Society and Power: An In-
troduction. London: Routledge (2nd edition): 133-155.
Shehab, F. (1964): Kuwait: a super-affluent society. Foreign affairs. 42/3: 461-474.
Shah, N. M. Shah, M. A. and Radovanovic, Z. (1999): Social class and morbidity dif-
ferences among Kuwaiti children. Journal of health and population in de-
veloping countries. 2/1: 58-69.
Younes, M. A. (1995): Elementary Arabic: an integrated approach. New Haven: Ya-
le University Press.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the
Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 401-414.

Zeinab IBRAHIM
(Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar)
Zeinab@qatar.cmu.edu

Egyptian Revolution 2011 Slogans:

Intuitive Language Choices between Dominant and
Non-Dominant Varieties of Arabic

Abstract

It seems that when people are revolting, their language inhibitions

disappear and they use all varieties of the language intuitively reflecting
the real linguistic situation in the country. This has been the case of the
January 2011 Egyptian revolution in which Egyptians used dominant and
non-dominant varieties along with other languages such as English,
hieroglyphics and Chinese for different reasons. Furthermore, these
slogans reflect to a good extent the linguist repertoire of Egyptian
society.

1. Introduction:
This paper references some of the slogans which Egyptians wrote in the
January 2011 revolution in the Arabic language. The research adopts Ferguson’s
(1959 & 1991) definition of diglossia in which he states that two forms of the
same language exist side by side, each fulfilling a number of functions. The H
(high/Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)) variety is maintained for all formal
functions while the L (low/dialect) variety is maintained for daily functions, with
some overlap in the linguistic continuum. This type of diglossia is referred to as
“Classical Diglossia”. The paper excludes Fishman’s and Fasold’s (1984) “Broad
Diglossia” in which bilingualism or multilingualism are involved in the diglossic
situation. The reasons for adopting Ferguson’s definition become evident
through the examples provided in the paper.
The paper examines a number of slogans that were written by Egyptians to
express many of their thoughts, beliefs and feelings on boards they held during
the revolution. Since the number of slogans found were endless, a selection of a
number of slogans was chosen to present the different cases in which the high
and low varieties were written in addition to other examples of code switching
 402

(or mixing), English and other languages, thus, reflecting different linguistic
relationships in the Egyptian society linguistic repertoire. Examples of MSA
slogans are introduced, followed by dialectal ones (in this case the regional
variety is Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA)), followed by neutral slogans which
can be in either MSA or ECA, then English slogans and other languages. Only one
of two examples of each variety is included. Since those who wrote these slogans
are not linguists, the results indicate that Egyptians intuitively made the
appropriate choices alongside the sociolinguistics functions of the language
varieties used in Egypt and in other Arab countries.

1. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) Slogans:

In this section I want to show that the Arabic language is a unifying factor
among Arab countries and how MSA is seen as the language indicating power.
According to the Arab League website there are 22 Arab countries. The definition
of Arab countries is that their official language is Arabic, referring here to
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). In each of these Arab states there are other
varieties and sometimes other languages spoken along with the official language.
In other words, there is MSA, regional and social dialects.
1. Poster (1) / Slogan (1):
There is a main slogan in MSA which started in Tunisia and travelled to
Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and Lebanon which is:

‫اﻟﺸﻌﺐ ﯾﺮﯾﺪ اﺳﻘﺎط اﻟﻨﻈﺎم‬

Transliteration: /ʔʃʃaʕab yuriid taɣiir ʔannizaam/
Translation: The people want to overthrow the regime

Poster (1): Egypt

 403

There are four main points concerning slogan No. 1:

1. The most important point about this slogan is that it is a nominal sentence. In
Arabic there are two types of sentences: Those that start with a verb (verbal)
and those that start with a noun (nominal). In all Arabic grammar books the
main function of a nominal sentence is to inform while that of a verbal
sentence is to narrate. This reflects the native speakers’ intuitive choices in
such a linguistic situation as they chose to use the informative sentence to
present their requests.
2. Using the formal variety is a way of indicating power which the people felt
they had at the time.
3. In 2010, I published an article indicating that opposition newspapers in Egypt
tended to use ECA (which official newspapers did not) indicating that the
opposition viewed that MSA as the variety of the government and of power,
since it is the official language, and they wanted to relate more to the people.
4. Finally, using the same slogan in several Arab countries is a strong indication
that MSA is a uniting factor among Arab countries as it is a shared variety.
2. Poster (2) / Slogan (2):
Slogan No. 2 comes from Yemen. Poster (2) shows the same slogan in
English translation.

Poster (2): Yemen

In the following section three different slogans are presented in which

linguistically the intuitive choice of the Egyptians for MSA was in line with the
set norms. The first one, slogan No. (3), is about martyrs, the second one is
translated from Chinese and the third one represents (or ‘is a mock-up’ of) an
 404

official document. There are two translations provided for the slogans, one is
literal and the other non literal (it adapts to the English language).
3. Poster (3) / Slogan (3-5):

Poster (3): Egypt

Poster (3) shows a number of people who died during the revolution. The
text on the poster consists is about a number of people (martyrs) of the
revolution. It consists of three parts:

(3) ‫طﻌﻨﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻗﻠﺐ ﻣﺼﺮ‬

Transliteration: ʈaʕna fi qalb miʂr/
Translation: A stab in the heart of Egypt

(4) ‫ﺑﺪﻣﺎﺋﮭﻢ ﺳﻄﺮوا اﻟﺘﺎرﯾﺦ‬

Transliteration: /bidimaʔihim saʈaruu ʔattariix/
Literal translation: With their blood, they wrote history
Translation: They wrote history with their blood

(5) 2011 ‫ ﯾﻨﺎﯾﺮ‬25 ‫ﺷﮭﺪاء ﺛﻮرة اﻟﻐﻀﺐ‬

/ ʃuhadaaʔ θawrat ʔal-ɣaɖab/
Martyrs of the revolution of anger 25th January 2011
 405

4. Poster (3) / Slogan (6): Slogan No. 4 is a translation of a Chinese proverb

which says in Arabic:

Poster (4)

‫أﻧﺼﺎف اﻟﺜﻮرات أﻛﻔﺎن اﻟﺸﻌﻮب‬

Transliteration: / ʔanʂaaf aθθawaraat ʔakfan liʃʃuʕuub/
Literal translation Halves of revolutions are shrouds for the people
Translation: Incomplete revolutions are coffins for the people

5. Poster (4) Slogan (7):

Poster (5)

‫أﻧﺼﺎف اﻟﺜﻮرات أﻛﻔﺎن‬

Transliteration: / ʔism aʈʈaalib : muɧammad ɧusnii mubaarak/-
Translation: Student’s name: Mohammed Hosni Mubarak:
Written in red: ‫ اﻟﺸﻌﻮب‬/ raasib/ which means “failed”
 406

This slogan represents / purports to be an official school leaver’s

certificate which students receive from the ministry of Education. It indicates all
the subjects they have been examined in and their final grades.
In slogans three to five, the people used the formal variety, which is MSA
due to the seriousness and formality of the topic which was the martyrs in the
first one, the translation from a foreign language and an official certificate. All
these slogans adapted to the usual linguistic requirements of formal language
situations and variety selection in a diglossic language.

2. Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) Slogans

The following section deals with posters and slogans that are written in the
Egyptian regional (dialectal) variety. Two posters are shown which both express
emotional statements that are typically expressed in the L-variety which is ECA.
6. Poster (6) / Slogan (8-11):

Poster (6)

(1) Text in the centre of the poster (twice)

"leave” /ʔir ɧal / ‫اﻣﺸﻲ" إرﺣﻞ‬, /ʔimʃii/
(2) Text in the corner of the poster (twice)
‫ﺑﺤﺒﻚ ﯾﺎﻣﺼﺮ‬ / baɧekib ya maʂr/
Translation: I love you Egypt
(3) Text in the middle of the poster in big letters:
‫ اﺣﻨﺎ اﻷﺣﺮار‬/ ʔeɧana il-aɧraar/
Translation: We are the free people
 407

7. Poster (7) / Slogan (12):

Poster (7)

(12) ‫ اوﻋﻰ ﺗﻘﻮﻟﻲ اروح ﺑﯿﺘﻨﺎ‬، ‫دم اﻟﺸﮭﺪاء ﻓﻲ رﻗﺒﺘﻨﺎ‬

Transliteration: /dam iʃʃuhada fi raʔbitna, ʔiwʕa tiʔulii ʔarawaɧ betna/
Translation: The blood of the martyrs is in our necks; never tell me to go home

Slogan No. 12 is about martyrs. It is interesting because of two major

points. First, it rhymes and rhyming is a very important feature in Arabic
literature and prose and even sometimes in ordinary speech. Second, it also
includes some figurative language.1 If one says in Arabic “in my neck”, this means,
“it is my responsibility to make sure that your people who killed you will be
punished.” The main difference between slogan Nr. (3) and (12) is that slogan (3)
is a formal reporting on the general situation which lead to the death of the
martyrs whereas slogan (12) is reflecting the feelings about their fate.
Both slogans in ECA (5) and (12) are typical instances of a diglossic
language where feelings are mainly expressed through the L-language which in
this case is ECA.

1
See Ihbrahim / Kennedy (1996) fort he use of fugurative speech in Arabic and its
functions.
 408

3. Code Mixing in Arabic between MSA and ECA

The following section deals with code mixing or switching and this paper
uses both terms to mean the same. Adams (2003: 23) defines inter-sentential
switches as those occurring within clause or sentence boundaries and defines
intra-sentential switches as those occurring within the boundaries of the
sentence or clause.
8. Poster (8) / Slogan (13):

Poster (8)

(13) ‫اﻟﺸﮭﯿﺪ ﯾﻨﺎدي ﻣﺒﺎرك ﺑﺮه ﺑﻼدي‬

Transliteration: /ʔiʃʃahiid yinadii mubaarak barra bilaadii/
Translation: The martyr calls, Mubarak out of my country

Slogan (13) on poster (8) is an example of intra-sentential switch as the

whole slogan is in MSA while only one word is in ECA. The word ‫ ﺑﺮه‬barra/, ’out’,
is an ECA word. The MSA word for ‘out’ is, /xaarij/. If the MSA word had been
used, the rhyme would have been lost. Moreover, if the MSA verb /yunaadii/, ‘is
calling’, was written /biynaadii/, (where the prefix /bi/ the present tense marker
in the dialect was added) the whole slogan would have been in ECA. The only
possible reason for using a dialectal word within this slogan can be attributed to
the importance of rhyming. Ibrahim (1996) proved that rhyming is an extremely
important feature in Arabic, even in speech.
 409

4. Is It MSA or ECA?
As mentioned earlier, this paper adopts Ferguson’s definition of “Classical
Diglossia”, where the two varieties are derived from the same language.
Slogan no. 9 is a good example of this stand. The slogan can be read in
either the formal (MSA) or informal (ECA) variety depending on how it is
pronounced. The only word that would have indicated in which variety it is
intended is the number 30.

9. Poster (9) / Slogan (14):

Poster (9)

(14) ‫ ﺳﻨﺔ طﻮارئ‬30 ‫أﻧﺎ ﻋﻤﺮي‬

Transliteration: /ʔana ʕumrii 30 sana ʈawaariʔ/
Translation: My life span is 30 years of emergency law.

The slogan actually means that this person is 30 years old, and since his
birth, Egypt has been under emergency law. The number 30 in MSA is
pronounced as /θalaaθuun/, while in ECA it is pronounced /talaatiin/ in ECA
where the sound /θ/ is changed to /t/. This is a typical feature of diglossia in
Arabic, where some sounds are pronounced differently. Depending on this
pronunciation the slogan becomes MSA or ECA. The same would apply as well to
slogan No. 12.
 410

(15) ‫دم اﻟﺸﮭﺪاء ﻓﻲ رﻗﺒﺘﻨﺎ‬

Transliteration: /dam iʃʃuhada fi raʔbitna,
Translation: The blood of the martyrs is in our necks

The first half of this slogan could have been MSA, but can become ECA if
one word is pronounced differently which is ‘martyrs’, /ʃuhadaa’/ in MSA and
pronounced /ʃuhada/ in ECA. The drop of the final glottal stop is a common
feature of ECA along with the shortening of the long vowel, which is present in
the ECA pronunciation of the word.

5. English Slogans
Since people during the revolution were aware that the whole world was
watching, English slogans occurred as well. This section provides examples of the
different levels of proficiency of the English language Egyptians command. In the
first slogan it is perfect English, while the second one indicates a lower level of
English language proficiency.

10. Poster (9) / Slogan (15):

Poster (10)
 411

11. Poster (11) / Slogan (16):

Slogan (16) says: Mom said to me: “Come free … Or BE SHAHEED”.
This sentence is a literal translation from Arabic as it would have been
written in English: “Mom told me” instead of “Mom said to me” and also “Come
free” would have been “return free”. The Arabic word “SHAHEED” which means
‘martyr’ is written in English letters.

Poster (11)

6. Other Languages
The slogans included in this section present other aspects in the Egyptian
culture slogan no. It reflects the sense of humour Egyptians are well known for.
12. Poster (12) / Slogan (17):

Poster (12)
 412

The upper part of the poster is written in Chinese. Then the writer used
both MSA and ECA. The second part is written in MAS

(17) ‫ﻧﺤﻦ ﻻ ﻧﺮﯾﺪك‬

Transliteration: /naɧnu laa nuriidak/
Translation: We do not want you

The lower part of the poster is in ECA:

(18) ‫أﻧﺎ ﻛﺎﺗﺒﮭﺎ ﺑﺎﻟﺼﯿﻨﻲ أﺻﻠﮫ ﻣﺎﺑﯿﻔﮭﻤﺶ ﻋﺮﺑﻲ‬

Transliteration: / ʔana kaatibha biʂʂinii ʔaʂluh mabyifhamʃ ʕarabii/
Translation: I wrote it in Chinese because he [Mubarak] does
not understand Arabic.

13. Poster (13) / Slogan (19):

Poster (13)

(19) ‫ﺑﺎﻟﮭﯿﺮوﻏﻠﯿﻔﻲ ﯾﻤﻜﻦ ﺗﻔﮭﻢ ﯾﺎﻓﺮﻋﻮن‬

Transliteration: /bilhiruɣlifii yimkin tefham ya firʕuun/
Translation: We wrote it in Hieroglyphics, Maybe you
could understand Pharaoh.
 413

In Egyptian culture, when something is very difficult to understand, people

usually say: “Is it in Chinese?” referring to the difficulty of the Chinese language.
Slogan 19 und (17) (on poster 11) uses the reference to the same cultural
background. Moreover, the word ‘Pharaoh’ is used in Egypt to refer to a ‘tyrant.’

7. Summary

The slogans presented in this paper show a number of linguistic and

cultural aspects of the Arabic and Egyptian linguistic repertoire:
1. The people used MSA (the dominant variety) as they felt they gained power
and were speaking equally with the ruling system.
2. Egyptian native speakers intuitively were able to use the appropriate
language varieties in the different contexts, in which only MSA (dominant)
were used, or ECA (non dominant) or a mixture. These slogans are a reflection
of the real linguistic situation in Egypt covering some aspects but not all.
3. Modern Standard Arabic is a unifying linguistic factor of the Arab countries as
the same slogan was used in more than six countries.
4. English, as a world language or lingua franca, was presented as well to reach
out the world.
5. Within the slogans, several cultural aspects were presented such as the
figurative use of “in my neck”, “pharaoh” and Hieroglyphics.
6. Rhyming as an important aspect in Arabic whether in prose or slogans or
even speech were present.
7. This paper explored the linguistic interplay between languages and varieties
in the Egyptian revolution slogans, thus explaining some linguistic features in
the linguistic choice by native speakers of a diglossic language.

8. References
Adams, J. N. (2003): Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Fasold, Ralph (1984): The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Ferguson, Charles (1996): Epilogue: Diglossia Revisited. In Understanding Arabic,
edited by Alaa Elgibali, 49-67. Cairo: The American University in Cairo
Press.
 414

Ferguson, Charles (1959): Diglossia, Word 15 (1959): 325-340.

Ibrahim, Zeinab (2010): Cases of Written Code-switching in Opposition Egyptian
newspapers. In: Bassiouney, Reem (ed.): Arabic of the Media. Leiden: Brill,
April, 2010 (23-45).
Ibrahim, Zeinab and Deborah Kennedy (1996): Figurative Language in the Speech
Patterns of Egyptians and Americans. in Understanding Arabic. Editor: Alaa
Elgibali. Cairo: AUC Press, 1996 (181-209).
http://www.arableagueonline.org/wps/portal/las_ar/home_page/!ut/p/c5/04_
SB8K8
xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gXy8CgMJMgYwODEH8zA08jD5cgP0M_YwsvY6
B8JB55QwK6gxOL9MNBduI3AyRvgAM4Guj7eeTnpuoX5EZUeOo6KgIA1RJ3B
A!!/dl3/d3/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh.
In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 415-434.

Simone ASHBY
(Instituto de Linguística Teórica e Computacional, Portugal)
simone@iltec.pt

‘Co-producers of this means of expression’:

Evidence from Mozambique in support of the
study of indigenizing languages 1

Abstract
Unlike other variationist studies and explorations of contact-induced
language change, the study of indigenizing language varieties lacks suf-
ficient attention, often relegated to second language acquisition studies,
with a focus on variant forms as a typology of errors to be corrected, or
wholly disregarded as undesirable byproducts of colonialism. As a result,
studies of indigenizing language varieties continue to make due with
borrowed nomenclatures and practices, while detailed descriptions of
these varieties are often missing or incomplete, and opportunities for
documenting synchronic change and the monitoring of long-term con-
tact situations are being irrevocably lost. The present article aims to ad-
dress this shortcoming and build a case in support of the study of indi-
genizing language varieties by describing the language situation in Mo-
zambique, and discussing some preliminary findings concerning the
phonetic features of three Mozambican Portuguese (MP) varieties. Evi-
dence will be presented that shows native and near-native MP speakers
as “co-producers” of the Portuguese language (Couto 1986).

1. Introduction
Variationist studies and explorations of contact-induced language change
are among some of the more important linguistic sub-disciplines to emerge out
of the second half of the 20th century. Such studies provide important insights for
the study of a wide range of linguistic phenomena, and offer powerful testament
to the fact that languages and language varieties are in a constant state of flux.
Investigations of pidgin and creole languages have also attracted a lot of interest,

1
An extended version of this research is forthcoming in the journal Africana Linguistica.
 416

offering considerable contributions to theories of language transmission and

change. Yet, the study of indigenizing language varieties – e.g. the Portuguese
widespread in the major cities of Angola, Guinea Bissau, and Mozambique, or the
English commonly spoken in countries such as Kenya, South Africa, and Zim-
babwe – remains underdiscovered, either relegated to the domain of second lan-
guage acquisition, focusing on variant forms as a typology of errors to be cor-
rected, or wholly disregarded as accords the current fashion for devaluing the
cultural biproducts of colonialism. As a result, several studies on indigenizing
language varieties continue to make due with borrowed nomenclatures and
practices from the above mentioned sub-disciplines. Meanwhile, detailed de-
scriptions of these varieties are often missing or incomplete, and opportunities
for documenting synchronic change and the monitoring of long-term contact
situations are being irrevocably lost.
A case in point comes from Mozambique, where 10.7% of Mozambicans
consider Portuguese to be their native language. As observed in Gonçalves (2010:
14), this figure points to an inappropriate use of terms such as the widely prevail-
ing 'non-native variety'. With respect to the study of contact effects from local
Bantu languages, it also questions the use of terms such as 'substratum' and 'su-
perstratum' (Ashby et al. 2010: 18) without offering a redefinition of these terms
as the language of one's parents and the superimposed L1. Even the term 'lan-
guage shift', which Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 39) define as occurring when
“a group of speakers shifting to a new language fails to learn that language per-
fectly" (my emphasis) appears in need of a less pejorative premise. Moreover,
while there are studies that focus on MP lexical, morphological and syntactic fea-
tures, extremely little work has been done to describe the phonetic and phono-
logical features of MP varieties, and to present them in terms of a cohesive set of
linguistic parameters.
The present article aims to address this research shortcoming and to build
a case in support of the study of indigenizing language varieties by looking at the
processes that account for differences between spoken varieties of MP and Euro-
pean standard Portuguese (EP), and which involve the interference of local Bantu
phonological features, constraints and phenomena. The spoken Portuguese of
five informants from different urban centers in Mozambique was examined
through auditory perception and instrumental analysis. Informants represent a
variety of linguistic backgrounds and bilingual or multilingual capabilities. Three
of the five informants reported Portuguese as their first language, despite being
raised by parents with a Bantu language as their mother tongue, while the re-
 417

maining two informants reported learning Portuguese as young children. In

terms of substrate languages, informants reported a native or near-native under-
standing of one or more of the following Bantu languages: Chope and GiTonga, of
the Inhambane Group; Makhuwa, of the Makhuwa Group; Nyungwe, of the
Senga-Sena Group; and Changana and Tshwa, of the Tswa-Ronga Group. Fluency
in English was further reported by two of the informants.
From the informant population of this study alone, one begins to appre-
hend the degree of multilingualism that characterizes Mozambique’s diverse
language topography. Indeed, Mozambique is a country where multiple lan-
guages are in contact with one another, and where social context and factors
such as age, gender, education and occupation govern the manner and extent to
which they are used (Firmino, 1995, 2000, 2002; Gonçalves, 1996, 2010; Stroud &
Gonçalves, 1997; Stroud, 2007). Like other former Portuguese colonies in Africa –
such as Angola and Guinea-Bissau – it is also a country where indigenized varie-
ties of the vehicular Portuguese language are emerging among growing L1 and L2
speaker populations. By examining the effects of local Bantu substrate languages
on a selection of MP topolectal varieties by both L1 and L2 speakers, this study
aims to contribute to the understanding of phonetic variation in MP, and to
document current findings for the long-term monitoring of language contact ef-
fects in Mozambique. As such, this study is concerned with describing the lin-
guistic outcomes of a prolonged contact between superstrate and substrate lan-
guages, as viewed from a socio-historical perspective. It is hoped that the present
paper may, like others before it (e.g. Duarte et al., 1999; Firmino, 2002; Gonçalves
2010; Machungo, 2000), serve in raising the profile of MP, and indigenizing lan-
guage varieties in general, as important for the advancement of linguistic knowl-
edge, and as varieties worthy of study in their own right.
The processes submitted for analysis in this article were observed in vary-
ing combinations for the different informants studied. Many have a foundation
in the literature on Bantu phonetics and phonology, including the monothongi-
zation of diphthongs, vowel and consonant sequence simplification, glide epen-
thesis, syncope, apocope, apheresis, voicing dissimilation, the realization of
word-final aspirated devoiced consonants, ‘whistled’ fricatives, continuantiza-
tion, and homorganic nasal epenthesis. Collectively, these processes may be in-
terpreted, along with existing lexical, morphological, and syntactic studies, as
helping to define the current language situation in Mozambique. Processes such
as homorganic nasal epenthesis – which has been the subject of considerable re-
search on Bantu linguistics, but which has not received attention in studies of MP
 418

– also highlight the interplay between transfer from the substrate, superstratal
influence, and universal preference laws in governing how segments are realized
in the context of Portuguese nasal vowels.

2. Socio-historical background
Mozambique extends along the Indian Ocean, from its northern border
with Tanzania to the country’s southwest reaches, bordering Swaziland and
South Africa. The interior is made up of horizontally striated river valley settle-
ments that extend from the much larger urban areas that dot the coast. At the
time of writing, the population of Mozambique was estimated at over 22 million,
with 37% of the population residing in cities (CIA Factbook). The capital city of
Maputo is located in the country’s southernmost tip, an area that is integrally
connected with South Africa in terms of a shared economic structure and com-
munications network (Newitt, 2002: 186).
In the dawn of Mozambique’s independence from Portugal, the Education
Minister at the time, Graça Machel, defended the government’s selection of Por-
tuguese as the official language of Mozambique in an address to the 1st National
Seminar on the ‘Teaching of Portuguese’ in 1979: “The need to fight the oppres-
sor called for an intransigent struggle against tribalism and regionalism. It was
this necessity for unity that dictated to us that the only common language – the
language which had been used to oppress – should assume a new dimension”
(Lopes 1999: 104).
Since then, Mozambique has undergone a steady language shift by decree.
To this day, Portuguese remains the official language of Mozambique, where it is
spoken as a lingua franca by 50.37% of the population, more than one-fifth of
which regard Portuguese as their native language. Portuguese is used in all offi-
cial administrative, governmental, and judicial communications. It is the lan-
guage of instruction in Mozambican schools and the Eduardo Mondlane universi-
ties, and it is used by the vast majority of Mozambican media outlets. While the
Bantu stratum constitutes the majority languages of Mozambique and, according
to the most recent census in 2007, the native tongues of close to 90% of the popu-
lation, Portuguese is viewed as “the language of science, knowledge, and power”,
and that which holds the most promise for obtaining employment and enhancing
one’s upward social mobility (Da Conceição, 1999: 15).
The disproportionately elevated status of Portuguese has its roots in the
colonial period, when a policy of assimilation and controlled access to the Portu-
guese language offered opportunities for a more respected position in society for
 419

oneself and one’s children (Gonçalves 2010: 33; Stroud 2007: 509). Access to Por-
tuguese was also sanctioned by the Catholic church, which, to a limited extent,
led to an early instantiation of indigenized popular varieties (Stroud 2007: 509-
510). Then, as now, Portuguese was largely restricted to the major urban areas,
and particularly the capital Maputo, while rural Mozambicans had very little or
no contact with the Portuguese language, and relied on local Bantu languages for
communication outside the family.
According to the 2007 census, an estimated 24 Bantu languages are spoken
in Mozambique. The dominant languages and corresponding percentages of na-
tive speakers are: Makhuwa (26.3%), Changana (11.4%), Lomwe (7.9%), Sena (7%),
and Chuabo (6.3%). These and the less dominant languages of Mozambique con-
stitute four zones and eight major language groupings, as delineated by Guthrie
(1967-1971): Zone G-G40–Swahili; Zone P-P20–Yao, along with P23–Makonde, and
P30–Makhuwa (plus P32–Lomwe, P34–Chwabo); Zone N-N30–Nyanja, along with
N40–Senga-Sena; and Zone S-S10– Shona, along with S50–Tswa-Ronga, and S60–
Copi (Lopes 1999: 87; Maho 2003).
Nevertheless, Mozambique remains caught in a pre-independence cycle,
whereby Portuguese is evaluated as suiting more formal types of communication
between educated urbanites, while local Bantu languages generally connote a
less sophisticated, more rural medium of communication. In urban centers, some
bilingual parents are opting to raise their children solely in Portuguese, perhaps
with the hope of propelling them towards a brighter future, and thereby usher-
ing in a new generation of L1 speakers. With a greater preponderance of young
people speaking Portuguese, and males in particular, who also tend to be fluent
in a greater number of languages, “urbanity and mobility translate into a gen-
dered and age differentiated access to linguistic resources, introducing social
stratifications around multilingualism [not found] in the rural areas” (Stroud
2007: 521).
In terms of MP language models, lawmakers and educators determined
soon after independence that the teaching of Portuguese in schools should aim
towards EP. However, in subsequent years, “practice showed that such an idealis-
tic goal was not achievable, and even no longer desired because it lacked the
marks of an emerging national identity” (Lopes, 1999: 123). Since then, Mozam-
bique has exercised what Lopes (1999: 123) describes as a “laissez-faire policy”
concerning the normativization and standardization of Portuguese. Authors such
as Da Conceição (1999), Gonçalves (2010; 1996), Lopes (1979; 1999), and Stroud
(2007) observe a general cognizance among Mozambicans that there is a ‘correct’
 420

form of spoken and written Portuguese. Many Mozambicans continue to look to

EP as the standard model and target variety, while others, like the community of
Polana Cimento in Maputo, demonstrate a high regard for their own variety of
Portuguese (Stroud 2007: 522). External influence comes not only by way of Lis-
bon, but also via the metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the form of
soap operas and other Brazilian programs that have become popular among Mo-
zambicans with access to television or the internet.
Meanwhile, the status of Portuguese in Mozambique has increasingly come
to be regarded as a language under threat due to the strengthening of economic
ties with South Africa and Mozambique’s other Anglophone neighbours, its re-
cent entry into the British Commonwealth, and economic and linguistic inter-
vention from France (Da Conceição, 1999: 22). Given that Mozambique is one of
the poorest countries in the world, and yet one that is fast adapting to the chang-
ing dynamics of the global political economy, the increasing role of languages
such as English threaten to unseat Portuguese as the most viable and widely
taught language in Mozambique.

3. Diglossia and substratum interference

So far, I have tried to establish the major historical, political, economic,
and social circumstances that explain the current dominant position enjoyed by
Portuguese in Mozambique, along with the curtailed role of a multiplicity of in-
digenous Bantu languages. The diglossic juxtaposition that defines this nation
linguistically entails a further set of inter-system dynamics, which have implica-
tions for the lexicons, morphologies, grammars, and phonologies of the different
languages in contact. In the nomenclature on diglossia, traditionally limited to
the description of dialects of the same language, the superimposed ‘prestige’ va-
riety is referred to as ‘High’ (H), and the ‘non-prestige’ varieties, whose use is re-
stricted to informal exchanges, and which are excluded from the medium of in-
struction in schools, are labelled as ‘Low’ (L) (Ferguson 1959). Fishman (1967)
later modified these constructs to include multilinguistic situations. In both
types of contact situations, varieties or languages marked as H have been ob-
served to exert more influence on those identified as L than the reverse situa-
tion. This dynamic, referred to by Thomason & Kaufman (1988) as borrowing, is
documented in a variety of descriptions of Bantu languages, such as Chan-
gana/Tsonga (Gonçalves & Sitoe 1999; Sitoe 1991) and Nyungwe (Rego 2000).
Conversely, the substratum interference exerted by local Bantu languages on MP
has been the subject of a relatively large number of variationist and Second Lan-
 421

guage Acquisition studies devoted primarily to describing the lexical, morpho-

logical, syntactic and semantic features of MP (e.g. 2002; Gonçalves & Chimbu-
tane, 2004; Gonçalves & Sitoe, 1999; Lopes, 1979).
Substratum interference in MP at the phonological and phonetic levels, on
the other hand, remains relatively undocumented, with the exception of some
brief remarks concerning oral production ‘errors’ and the more obvious features
of MP spoken varieties. This seems a rather glaring omission in light of the fact
that language contact situations, such as that in Mozambique, are known to have
demonstrable phonological effects on the recipient language, in addition to the
more well studied dynamic of large-scale lexical borrowing that is common
among substrate languages (Sankoff, 2002: 643). The lack of sufficient phonologi-
cal and phonetic documentation also diminishes the potential for more robust
diachronic and synchronic accounts of the development, indigenization, varia-
tion, and change of MP in years to come.

4. Data collection and analysis

The informants selected for this study were recorded in Lisbon, Portugal,
the basic details of which are provided in Table 1.

Table 1. Informant details

Two are female and three are male, all of Mozambican nationality, and
ranging in age from 19 to 42. As stated in section 1, the two informants from
Maputo (009 and 013) and the informant from Nampula (010) consider Portu-
 422

guese to be their mother tongue, whereas the informants from Inhambane (017)
and Tete (020) reported learning Portuguese as young children. At the time of re-
cording, informants 010 and 017 had been residing in Lisbon for a respective to-
tal of five and eight years. The remaining informants 009, 013, and 020 had ar-
rived in Portugal within a period of one week and one year. Given these circum-
stances, and the fact that the data elicitations were conducted by researchers
from Lisbon, dialectal accommodation, or “adjustments in pronunciation and
other aspects of linguistic behaviour in terms of a drive to approximate one’s
language to that of one’s interlocutor” (Trudgill, 1983: 143), should be considered
a potential factor affecting the dialect of origin of some of the more long-term
Lisbon residents. However, as the following analysis demonstrates, data for in-
formant 010, and to a lesser extent informant 017, still show a rather dramatic
influence by the substrate and identification with the dialect of origin.
Materials for the elicitation of read speech are based on those established
in Rodrigues (2003), with the inclusion of a small set of additional words and
phrases deemed necessary for capturing other relevant contexts. Audio re-
cordings and stimulus prompts were controlled by an investigator, who re-
mained seated in the same room as the informant, albeit in the periphery and
not directly in front of the informant. For the read speech elicitation task, infor-
mants were asked to read the individual phrases and sentences projected in front
of them on PowerPoint slides. Once this task was completed, the elicitation of
spontaneous speech data was conducted in the form of an oral questionnaire for
obtaining general speaker information and attitudinal data. Recordings were
performed using a Marantz digital voice recorder, with a microphone positioned
on the table in front of the informant. Corpus-based accent models were devel-
oped through the assessment of segmental data by trained phoneticians, who
used Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2010) to identify and label target segments,
based on a combination of auditory judgment and waveform and spectrogram
analysis.

5. Analysis
The main objective of this article is to provide qualitative descriptions of
Bantu substratum interference in MP at the segmental level, and to open the way
for future studies aimed at describing indigenizing Luso-African speech varieties.
We acknowledge that quantitative studies involving informant populations that
have remained in their birthplaces are needed to develop an understanding of
how topolectal spoken varieties differ. However, such aims are beyond the scope
 423

and pragmatic constraints of the current study. Rather, in describing the follow-
ing phenomena, we will attempt to link our observations with material from the
literature on Bantu language phonologies, and where possible, contemplate the
motivation for certain processes in terms of governing principles – i.e. substratal
interference, superstratal influence, and universal preference laws.
The MP examples presented in the following subsections are drawn from
the read speech portion of the corpus. Where unclear from the orthography, the
neighboring context is also transcribed. The symbols ‘.’ and ‘#’ respectively de-
note syllable and word boundaries. Readers should note that the following ex-
amples (1) through (10) include the relevant informant ID for a given pronuncia-
tion pattern, and are not necessarily meant to describe the speech patterns of all
of the informants and varieties considered for this study.

5.1. Monothongization of diphthongs

(1) EP MP Informant
a. S[ɐjʃ]al “Seixal” (toponym) s[eʃ]al 010, 0172
b. Ald[ɐj]a Galega “Aldeia Galega” Ald[e]a Galega 020
(toponym)
c. ont[ɐ̃j] “ontem” ‘yesterday’ ont[e] 009, 010, 017, 020
d. b[ɐ̃j]-me-quer “bem-me-quer” b[e]-me-quer 009, 0103
‘forget-me-not’
e. gara[ʒɐ̃jʃ] “garagens” ‘garages’ gara[ʒẽʃ] 0104, 017, 020
f. materi[ajʃ] “materiais” ‘materials’ materi[aʃ] 010
g. [oj]tocentos “oitocentos” ‘eight [o]tocentos 017, 020
hundred’
h. ap[oj]o “apoio” ‘support’ ap[o.j]o 017
i. investigaç[õjʃ] “investigações” investigaç[onʃ] 010
‘investigations’
j. az[ujʃ] “azuis” ‘blue’ (pl.) az[u.iʃ] 009
k. núc[lju]s “núcleos” ‘nucleus’ núc[ilu]s 020

The examples in (1) present a sample of words that feature diphthongs in

2
For Informant 017, this syllable is realized with a highly intensity fricative [s] and
empty nucleus.
3
This vowel is realized as [ɛ] by Informant 010.
4
The final consonant /s/ is also elided by this informant.
 424

EP, and their monothongization by Informants 009, 010, 017, 020, and to a lesser
extent 013 (Maputo).
One of the more noticeable characteristics of the MP varieties, compared
with EP, is the expression of full vowels in the context of the stressed phoneme
/e/. These and other vowels are further realized as non-nasal in a variety of con-
texts . In terms of the diphthongs evident in EP, one observes the simplification
of these vowel shapes in numerous word positions, and in multiple rising and fal-
ling formations. Of particular note is the resyllabification that occurs respec-
tively in (1h) and (1j) for Informants 017 (Inhambane) and 009 (Maputo), and the
restructuring of segments in (1k) by Informant 020 (Tete). In general, all of the
examples in (1) appear to reflect a certain degree of faithfulness to local Bantu
vowel inventories and phonotactics. Given that these alternate relatively freely
with diphthongs in similar contexts, we, of course, also see the influence of the
superstrate, or ‘source’ variety – both of which might suggest the occasional
mitigation of universal preference laws for articulatory ease. Indeed, the monot-
hongization of /ej/ also occurs in some Brazilian Portuguese varieties.

5.2. Vowel sequence simplification and glide epenthesis

Vowel sequence simplification is illustrated in (2) for a selection of hiatus
contexts both within and across word boundaries for informants 009, 010, 013,
017, and 020. In many of the examples, one observes a tendency characteristic of
all the MP varieties examined in this study to elide unstressed word-final vowels
and syllables (see also section 5.3), and preserve the stressed vowel.

(2) EP MP Informant
a. m[ɐj.u] “meio” ‘means’ m[ej*] 013, 020
b. contrib[u.i] “contribui” ‘contributes’ contrib[u*] 0105
c. fal[u#a]lto “falo alto” ‘I speak loudly’ fal[*#a]lto 010, 020
d. J[u.ɐ̃w] “João” ‘John’ J[ãw] 009, 013, 017, 0206
e. fal[u#oʒ]e “falo hoje” ‘I speak today’ fal[*#oʒ]e 010, 020

The examples in (3) show examples of glide epenthesis observed for infor-
mants 009, 010, 013, and 017, whereas very little gliding overall was observed for

5
The final vowel in this case of Informant 010 is followed by the low intensity sibilant
[ʃ].
6
For Informant 020, the name “João” is realized with a denasalized vowel sequence
and final nasal consonant, i.e. J[awn].
 425

Informant 020 (Tete). Again, the phenomenon of glide epenthesis is resonant of

some Mozambican Bantu language phonologies, e.g. Makhuwa, and the often
rigid constraints governing vowel co-occurrence. Glide epenthesis also occurs in
the Shona variety of Zimbabwean English (Kadenge 2009: 161-163), as well as in
some Brazilian Portuguese varieties.

(3) EP MP Informant
a. r[i.a] “ria” ‘lagoon’ r[i.ja] 009, 017
b. pass[ja]mos “passeamos” ‘we walked’ pass[i.ja]mos 009
c. ró[zju] “róseo” ‘rosy’ ró[zi.ju] 009, 010, 017
d. pass[ɐj.u] “passeio” ‘footpath’ pass[ej.jo/u] 009, 013, 017
e. m[ɐj.ɔ]r “maior” ‘bigger’ m[aj.jɔ/o]r 010
f. Corr[oj.uʃ] “Corroios” (toponym) Corr[oj.juʃ] 009, 017

5.3. Syncope, apocope, and apheresis

Examples of syncope, apocope, and apheresis for Informants 009, 010, 013,
017, and 020 are provided in (4). Again, we see the elision of word-final vowels
and syllables, along with the loss of unstressed word-initial and word-medial syl-
lables, and the frequent resyllabification and occasional reordering of segments.
Echoes of substrate constraints appear evident in the elision of word-final vow-
els, resulting in words that end with a resyllabified consonant coda, e.g. in (4f)
and (4h). Separately, in (4c), we see evidence that syncope of the penultimate
pre-tonic syllable takes place after the evaluation of the preceding sibilant /s/ as
a non-candidate for palatalization. And in (4h), we see what is essentially the
same phenomenon, i.e. precedence of the palatalization constraint with a subse-
quent shuffling of syllable boundaries. The example in (4e), on the other hand,
which was produced at the end of an intonational phrase, features the realization
of a non-palatal coda [s], perhaps suggesting substrate interference of the nasal +
consonant variety.
A very similar dynamic is characteristic of the non-standard EP, whereby
unstressed vowels – and particularly those which are realized as reduced
vowels – frequently undergo a variable form of elision. Thus, it is difficult to
tease apart the different principles behind the phenomena of syncope, apocope,
and apheresis for speakers of MP. Clearly, the superstrate constraint governing
the respective non-palatalization or palatalization of sibilants in onset and coda
position has been faithfully adhered to in (4c) and (4h), despite the reorganiza-
tion of syllables. It is also evident that the universal preference constraint for ar-
 426

ticulatory ease is in effect. However, given the degree of weakening phenomena

observed for MP, and the fact that many of these words and phrases were pro-
duced in isolation, it appears that this type of constraint may be slightly less uni-
versal than is generally supposed and derive some of its motivation from the
substrate. Alternatively, the wide-scale nature of the weakening observed could
be the result of an overgeneralization of non-standard EP tendencies.

(4) EP MP Informant
a. [lukɐlizɐ’sɐ̃w] “localização” ‘location’ [lokɐ*zә’sɐ̃w ] 010
b. [pɾɨ’gaɾ#ʀɨliʒi’ɐ̃w] “pregar religião” ‘preach [pɾe’gar#*lɨʒi’õ] 0097
religion’
c. [munisi’paɫ] “municipal” ‘municipal’ [munis*’paɫ] 010
d. [fɾigu’ɾifiku]“frigorífico”‘refrigerator’ [fɾigo’ɾi*fu] 020
e. [‘ɐ̃tɨʃ] “antes” ‘before’ [‘an*s] 010
f. [ɔr’lɐ̃du] “Orlando” ‘Orlando’ [ɔr’land*] 017
g. [fu’ʒimuʃ] “fugimos”‘we flee’ [fu’ʒim*] 020
h. [u#vɨʃ’tidu] “o vestido” ‘the dress’ [uv#*’ʃid*] 013

5.4. Consonant sequence simplification

As illustrated in (5), consonant sequence simplification occurs among all of
the informants, and in the utterances of informants 017 (Inhambane) and 020
(Tete), in particular. One observes epenthesis in (5a), (5b), and (5c), consonant as-
similation in (5c), a reordering of the segments in (9h), and elision within the
clusters [ps], [ʃt], [ʒv], [ʃf], [fɾ], and [ɾb] in (5c), (5d), (5f), (5g), and (5h). The elision
in (5g) is unique among the other cases in that it occurs in the stressed syllable,
indicating what appears to be a relatively strong degree of influence by the sub-
strate. Informants displayed variable tendencies in the simplification of syllables
containing liquids and faithfulness to the substratal constraint for open syllables,
e.g. the realization of “hemoglobina” ‘hemoglobin’ as hemo[gәl]bina, and “in-
tervém” ‘intervenes’ as in[tɾә]vém by informant 013 (Maputo). Informant 020, on
the other hand, showed some occasional restructuring of sequences involving
nasal consonants, e.g. in the realization of “hifen” ‘hyphen’ as hi[fne], and re-
vealed a more frequent form of substrate interference overall in the realization

7
While Informant 009 produces a trilled [r] in word-final position, the authors obser-
ve a tendency by some MP speakers to drop the final /r/, as is common in varieties
of Brazilian Portuguese.
 427

of open syllable formations. The example “hifen” further shows the interpreta-
tion by Informant 020 of the word ending -en as a sequence of two phonemes, i.e.
/en/, indicating perhaps that phonological nasal vowels do not exist in this vari-
ety of MP.8

(5) EP MP Informant
a. E[dg]ar “Edgar” ‘Edgar’ E[dɨ/eg]ar 017, 020
b. o[mn]isciente “omnisciente” ‘omniscient’ o[mәn]isciente 010, 013, 017
c. eru[ps]ão “erupção” ‘eruption’ eru[pis]ão9 009, 010, 020
d. inve[ʃti]gações “investigações” inve[ʃ*i]gações 013
‘investigations’
e. mai[ʒ#v]ale “mais vale” ‘is better’ mai[*#v]ale 020
f. tr[ɐ̃ʃf]ormação “transformação” tr[a*f]ormação 020
‘transformation’
g. [fɾ]escas “frescas” ‘fresh’ (pl.) [f*]escas 020
h. pertu[ɾb]ação “perturbação” ‘disturbance’ pertu[*b]ação 10
010 017, 020

5.5. Voicing dissimilation and juxtaposition

The examples in (6) illustrate long-distance voicing dissimilation and voic-
ing juxtaposition for informant 010 (Nampula). Readers should note that this
phenomenon was exclusively observed in the speech of informant 010, who
comes from a Makhuwa background, and does describe the other varieties and
informants considered for this study. Interestingly, both long-distance voicing
dissimilation and voicing juxtaposition surface with surprising regularity in the
utterances of Informant 010, offsetting the fact that this speaker has maintained
a relatively long-term residence in Lisbon. Realizations such as obce[gat*] “obce-
cado” summon memory of the Makhuwa constraint restricting the number of as-
pirated stops in stems to just one instance, despite the fact that in this case it is
applied across an inflected word. We also see clear evidence of Dahl’s law11 in

8
Evidence of this sort is further exemplified in the surfacing of non-homorganic nasal
segments, e.g. onte[m] “ontem” ‘yesterday’ (observed across informants), and re-
gíme[n] “regímen” ‘regimen’ (observed for Informant 013).
9
The word “erupção” is realized by Informants 009 and 020 respectively as
eru[*s]ão and eru[ts]ão.
10
The word “perturbação” is realized as per[tɾu]bação for Informant 010.
11
Dahl’s Law concerns the process by which long-distance voicing dissimilation occurs
in some Bantu languages. For a more complete description, see Nurse & Philippson
(2003).
 428

(6a), and a tendency to realize voiced stops as voiceless in (6d), (6e), and (6h). Ex-
amples (6f) and (6g) show a more elaborated version of Dahl’s law, as extended to
Portuguese, in the juxtaposition of voiced and voiceless consonants. Here, we see
evidence of strong substratal interference restricting the domain of voiced stops
in non-contiguous, multi-stop sequences to non-final syllables – likely stemming
from a constraint for the restriction of aspirated stops to word-final position.

(6) EP MP Informant
a. com[p]uto “computo” ‘computation’ com[b]uto 010
b. on[t]em “ontem” ‘yesterday’ on[d]em 010
c. obce[k]ado “obcecado” ‘obsessed’ obce[gatʰ*] 010
d. arren[d]a “arrenda” ‘leases, rents’ arren[tʰ]a 010
e. á[g]ua “água” ‘water” á[kʰ]ua 010
f. [p]ren[d]as “prendas” ‘gifts’ [b]ren[tʰ]as 010
g. Ou[t]u[b]ro “Outubro” ‘October’ Ou[d]u[pʰ]ro 010
h. [gw]ar[d]a-sol “guarda-sol” ‘parasol’ [kw]ar[tʰ]a-sol 010

5.6. Aspirated devoiced consonants

Leading from the analysis in the previous subsection, one observes fre-
quent consonant devoicing (both partial and full) and elongated periods of aspi-
ration in word-final position by Informants 009, 010, 013, 017, and 020.

(7) EP12 MP Informant

a. be[bo] “bebo” ‘I drink’ be[pʰ] 010
b. ver[dɨ] “verde” ‘green’ ver[tʰ] 009, 010, 020
c. rebuça[du] “rebuçado” ‘sweet’ rebuça[tʰ] 009, 010, 01313, 020
d. Gale[gɐ] “Galega” (toponym) Gale[kʰ] 010
e. objecti[vu] “objectivo” ‘objective’ objecti[fʰ] 009, 010, 013, 017,
02014
f. quin[zɨ] “quinze” ‘fifteen’ quin[sʰ] 009, 013, 017
In all of the examples presented in (7), aspiration replaces the final vowel –
which we find in respective standard and non-standard EP varieties as reduced

12
Recall that in EP, the voiced stops /b, d, g/ may also be realized as [β, ð, ɣ] in inter-
vocalic contexts.
13
For informant 013, this sound is unaspirated.
14 For informant 020, this sound is partially devoiced.
 429

or elided. Aspiration occurs in the high vowel context described in Hyman (2003:
53) for Makhuwa and Doko, as well as in non-high contexts, and alternates
somewhat freely with maintenance of the following word-final vowel. Thus,
again, we see the interference of the substrate, which is more faithfully adhered
to by some speakers, e.g. informants 010 (Nampula) and 020 (Tete).

5.7. Whistled fricatives

Another phenomenon observed across informants involves the realization
of elongated, high aco energy fricatives that commonly result in a whistled ar-
ticulation. Note that in the examples in (8), whistled fricatives are denoted with
the superscript extension ‘wh’. Like Shosted’s (2006) findings for Tshwa, the whis-
tled fricatives in MP are produced allophonically, and vary significantly from
their non-whistled counterparts in terms of their spectral features.

(8) EP MP Informant
a. [s]implório “simplório” ‘simpleton’ [swh]implório 009, 010, 020
b. bá[ʃ]cula “báscula” ‘weighing scale’ bá[ʃwh]cula 009, 010, 013
c. guardas civi[ʃ] “guardas civis” ‘civil guardas civi[ʃwh] 010, 01715, 020
guard’
d. parabén[ʃ] “parabéns” ‘congratulations’ parabén[ʃwh] 010, 017

5.8. Continuantization
As in (6), the examples in (9) pertain almost exclusively to informant 010
(Nampula). Here, we focus attention on this speaker’s realization of the stops
/t, d/ as +continuant, i.e. [θ, ð], before +high and -high vowels, in both intervo-
calic environments and at the start of an intonational phrase, i.e. in (9a) and (9b).
Example (9f) shows concurrent voicing dissimilation, whereby /d/ was realized
as the voiceless labiodental fricative [θ], much like the phenomena described in
section 5.5. This example is also reflective of the assimilation of multiple voice-
less coronal stops as all dental or all alveolar, as described in Kisseberth (2003:
550). As witnessed in this and other examples, a more EP-like variety of con-
tinuantization of the voiced stops /b, d, g/ as [β, ð, ɣ] can be observed for infor-
mants 009 and 017 (Inhambane).

15
For informant 017, the whistled production concerns the first word in the phrase,
i.e. guarda[ʃwh] “guardas”.
 430

The varieties of continuantization observed for informant 010 are very

consistent, and can quite easily be identified as resulting from interference by
the substrate, which, in this case, is the particular variety (or varieties) of Mak-
huwa spoken by this informant’s parents. It is more difficult to tease apart the
occasional continuantization observed for informant 017, which is strictly lim-
ited to the [β, ð, ɣ] variety characteristic of EP. The fact that this speaker pro-
duces both stops and fricatives in intervocalic contexts could derive from the
substrate or the superstrate, also perhaps reflecting the intervention, at times, of
a more universal principle governing articulatory ease.

(9) EP MP Informant
a. [t]ira [t]eimas “tira teimas” ‘dictionary’ [θ]ira [θ]eimas 010
(colloq.)
b. [t]emos ... “Temos ...” ‘We have ...’ [θ]emos 010
c. [d]á-me “dá-me” ‘give me’ [ð]á-me 010
d. espiga[d/ð]íssima “espigadíssima” ‘most espiga[ð]íssima 010
spindly’
e. Trinda[d/ð]e “Trindade” (toponym) Trinda[ð]e 017
f. be[b/β]i[d/ð]as “bebidas” ‘beverages’ be[β]i[θ]as 010

5.9. Homorganic nasal epenthesis

Homorganic nasal epenthesis occurs across informants in “EP contexts”
involving a nasal vowel followed by a consonant, as illustrated in (10). For the
majority of informants and utterances where this phenomenon is realized, the
conditioning environment is further restricted to the EP context of nasal vowel +
stop, but Cf. (10e). The homorganic nasal context is particularly relevant to the
Bantu language family, both in the context of prenasalized consonants and
across morpheme boundaries. The surfacing of nasal tails has also been described
for varieties of Brazilian Portuguese (e.g. Lovatto et al. 2007). With respect to in-
fluencing factors, we see a significant degree of interference by the substrate for
all MP varieties concerned, wherein the following consonant, and perhaps also
Portuguese orthography, determines the articulatory specification of the nasal
phoneme which precedes it. If the somewhat controversial theory of phonologi-
cal nasal vowels holds, here is one of the better examples showing the indigeni-
zation of MP in terms of a separate phonological construct that interprets such
segments as a sequence of two phonemes instead of one. Of course, homorganic
nasals also provide an optimal means of bridging the preceding vowel with the
 431

following consonant, thus reinforcing the regularity with which this process is
applied both within and across informants. Thus, again we see the coalescence of
substrate, superstrate, and universal preference laws in the phonetic transform.

(10) EP MP Informant
a. s[ĩ]plório “simplório” ‘simpleton’ s[í/im]plório 009, 010, 020
b. [í]tervém “intevém” ‘intervenes’ [ín/in]tervém 009, 010, 013, 017,
020
c. eng[ẽ]drou “engendrou” ‘dreamed eng[ẽn/en]drou 009, 010, 013, 017,
up’ 020
d. [ɐ̃]gústia “angústia” ‘anguish’ [ãŋ/aŋ]gústia 009, 010, 013, 017,
020
e. seixal[ẽ]se “seixalense” ‘of Seixal’ seixal[ẽn/en]se 013, 020

6. Conclusion
The different MP varieties studied exhibited varying forms and degrees of
Bantu substratum interference, including: the monothongization of diphthongs,
vowel and consonant sequence simplification, glide epenthesis, syncope,
apocope, apheresis, the voicing dissimilation and juxtaposition of consonants,
aspirated devoiced consonants in word-final position, whistled fricatives, con-
tinuantization, and homorganic nasal epenthesis. Individually and overall, these
descriptions offer testimony of the phenomena that characterize different spo-
ken varieties of MP, and contribute toward a more balanced understanding of the
linguistic variation that sets MP apart from other varieties of Portuguese. It is
further hoped that these data will serve as a window in time for subsequent syn-
chronic and diachronic studies aimed at describing the development, indigeniza-
tion, variation, and change of MP in years to come.
It was shown that the above processes occur in the utterances of both L1
and L2 Portuguese speakers. Phenomena such as the voicing dissimilation and
juxtaposition of consonants, aspirated devoiced consonants in word-final posi-
tion, and continuantization were indeed more consistent and pervasive in the
speech of certain L1 informants. Faithful adherence by the L1 informant 010
(Nampula) was demonstrated for some of the more well documented features of
Makhuwa. These include: a rigid restriction on the number of aspirated stops al-
lowed in a stem (or word, in this case), Dahl’s law dissimilation dynamics and ex-
tended versions thereof for restricting aspirated stops to word-final position, and
the assimilation of multiple voiceless coronal stops as all dental or all alveolar.
 432

Such evidence is particularly interesting in light of the limited faculty reported

by informant 010 for speaking Makhuwa (the native language of his parents), and
the fact that this speaker has spent the past five years living in Lisbon. One pos-
sible explanation may have to do with the status of Makhuwa as Mozambique’s
most widely spoken indigenous language. Perhaps coming from a language
community of eight million speakers leads to a more ‘validated’ and codified
form of substratum interference. Of course, the fact that informant 010 is a na-
tive speaker of Portuguese calls into question the appropriateness of terms like
‘substrate’, thus signalling the need for an updated nomenclature and set of prac-
tices concerning the study of indigenizing language varieties.
Finally, because interference by the superstrate and substrate is no more
static than the language varieties they influence, we devoted additional attention
to the contemplation of how these two systems interact, both with one another
and with universal preference laws for conditioning the phonetic transform in
indigenizing languages. For the majority of processes described above, variable
forms of interaction were observed for each of these constraint bundles in guiding
how a sound is realized. Thus, much like the findings in Alber & Plag (1999) for
creole development, it would appear that all three play a fundamental and occa-
sionally overlapping role in shaping the indigenized language.

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In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic-
ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 435-452.

Aditi GHOSH
(Calcutta University, India)
aditi.gh@caluniv.ac.in

Bhojpuri as a non-dominant variety

of Hindi

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the concept of pluricentricity and to see

whether Hindi, a language with diverse and multiple mother tongues,
can considered a pluricentric language. It specially looks into the case of
Bhojpuri, which is one of the varieties classified under Hindi with a great
number of speakers and which is spoken over a great stretch of land and
analyses the language as a non-dominant variety of Hindi. Finally, it
surveys a section of the migrated Bhojpuri community residing in Kol-
kata and observes their patterns of languages usage and attitude, in an
attempt to find out the relative position of the mother tongue in rela-
tion to other dominant languages in the city.

1. Introduction
The concept of pluricentric language provides a very useful and appropri-
ate tool to analyse language varieties. Unlike the traditional standard vs. dialects
framework, which dwells on deviation from the norm, it based on the question of
separate norms. Besides, it can preserve the all-important question of hierarchy
of language varieties, without carrying the issues of “correctness” or “purity” of
the high prestige variety. Evidently, the concept has wide applicability in differ-
ent language situations around the world.
In this paper, I will try to explore the relevance of pluricentricity with ref-
erence to Hindi. Hindi, one of the official languages of India, is also the largest
language of the country. This language is also marked by the number of diverse
mother tongues. Some of the mother tongues are linguistically distinct enough
to question whether they can be grouped together under one and the same lan-
guage. This paper would like to take up the case of Bhojpuri, a very widely spo-
ken mother tongue under Hindi, and see whether the Hindi-Bhojpuri situation
 436

can be analysed in terms of pluricentricity. Finally, I will draw upon a short sur-
vey of the Bhojpuri population of Kolkata and see how and to what extent the
three dominant languages, i.e., Bengali, Hindi and English, affect their language
attitude.

2. Hindi as a pluricentric language

2.1. Hindi: language or languages?
Dua’s article in Clyne’s seminal 1992 volume, which argues the case of
Hindi-Urdu’s pluricentric status expanding for nine centuries, also brings forth
one most striking feature of the language. Even during the formative period,
what is known as Hindi-Urdu, was really a conglomeration of a large number of
diverse language varieties.

„The early form of Hindi-Urdu had a wide dialect base which, though
derived basically from the Western Apabhramsa, included Braj-Bhasha,
Harayani or Bangru, „vernacular Hindustani“ and even sometimes Pan-
jabi and Rajasthani, besides the Perso-Arabic element as a result of in-
teraction between the Muslim and Hindu cultures. It is therefore not
surprising that the origin of Urdu has been traced to Braj-Bhasha, Hara-
yani or even Panjabi ...by 1800 it could be clearly stated that its basic
source was Khari Boli. „ (Dua, 1992: 381-382)
Multiple senses of the term ‘Hindi’, well noted by scholars (cf. Chand, cited
in Rai, 2001: 13; Sapiro, 2003: 231), make the situation even more complicated.
One can identify at least three common denotations.
1. It may be used to denote the language variety called Khari Boli, which is the
so-called standard variety.
2. It may designate the entire group of languages (or very diverse language va-
rieties) all taken together, commonly classified as dialects of Hindi.
3. It can also stand for an alternative term for each of these varieties. (For ex-
ample, Magahi speakers may state that they are native speakers of Hindi or
Magahi, though they may be aware that their speech is very different from
Khari Boli)
The status of Hindi as a cover term – a kind of dachsprache –with a number
of near dialectised languages (Kloss, 1993/1967), has been noted by scholars like
Paul Friedrich (1962: 550) who commented:
 437

„“Hindi“ ... includes a plethora of ...dialects, mostly spoken by illiterate

peasants and often having less affinity with one another than
neighbouring dialects of other languages.“
The literary pieces considered as Hindi also come from diverse linguistic
sources. Das Gupta (1970: 50) cites nine such sources listed under ‘Hindi’.
1. Modern literary Hindi dating back to the middle of nineteenth cen-
tury.
2. Literature of Braj-Bhasha and Bundeli
3. The Awadhi speech with the related Bagheli and Chattisgarhi dialects
4. A variety of Rajasthani dialects
5. Lyrics and Ballads in Pahari speeches
6. Bihari speeches; Bhojpuri, Magadhi and Maithili
7. Sometimes a mixture of Punjabi and western Hindi literature of devo-
tional Hindi
8. Urdu literature
9. Contemporary Hindi scholars claim that Dakni of south India com-
posed in various western Hindi dialects as Hindi literature.
The wide array of languages clustered under the ‘Hindi’ rubric has caused
Suniti Kumar Chatterji to make the following comment in “Languages and Litera-
tures in Modern India” (1963: 111)
„If in Europe we could conceive Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan ceasing
to produce literature… and speakers of all these accepting French as
their main literary language, studying only French at school and reading
and writing only French, and if on that basis we were to lump together
the earlier (and even modern) literatures in all these languages and dia-
lects as ‘French’ literature, then we would be in an analogous situation
for ‘Hindi’.“
With this background we may look at the language varieties (referred to as
mother tongues in the census) classified under Hindi in the census.
The Indian census recognises 122 independent languages with at least
10,000 speakers each. 22 of these languages are listed under the 8th schedule of
the Indian constitution and accorded special status under constitutional provi-
sions. Hindi is the largest among these languages with 422,048,642 speakers (2001
data). Each of these languages has some ‘mother tongues’ classified under it.
Gujarati, for example, has more than three mother tongues (Gujarati, Gu-
jrao, Saurashtra and “others”), Bengali has more than four, Oriya more than five
 438

and Punjabi and Kannada have more than three each. Mother tongues classified
under Hindi with their respective speaker strengths are as follows:

1. Awadhi 2,529,308 26. Kurmali Thar 425,920

2. Bagheli/Baghel Khan 2,865,011 27. Labani 22,162
3. Bagri Rajasthani 1,434,123 28. Lamani/ Lambadi 2,707,562
4. Banjari 1,259,821 29. Laria 67,697
5. Bhadrawahi 66,918 30. Lodhi 139,321
6. Bharmauri/ Gaddi 66,246 31. Magadhi/ Magahi 13,978,565
7. Bhojpuri 33,099,497 32. Malvi 5,565,167
8. Brajbhasha 574,245 33. Mandeali 611,930
9. Bundeli/ Bundelkhan 3,072,147 34. . Marwari 7,936,183
10. Chambeali 126,589 35. Mewari 5,091,697
11. Chhattisgarhi 13,260,186 36. Mewati 645,291
12. Churahi 61,199 37. Nagpuria 1,242,586
13. Dhundhari 1,871,130 38. Nimadi 2,148,146
14. Garhwali 2,267,314 39. Pahari 2,832,825
15. Gojri 762,332 40. Panch Pargania 193,769
16. Harauti 2,462,867 41. Pangwali 16,285
17. Haryanvi 7,997,192 42. Pawari/ Powari 425,745
18. Hindi 257,919,635 43. Rajasthani 18,355,613
19. Jaunsari 114,733 44. Sadan/ Sadri 2,044,776
20. Kangri 1,122,843 45. Sirmauri 31,144
21. Khairari 11,937 46. Sondwari 59,221
22. Khari Boli 47,730 47. Sugali 160,736
23. Khortha/ Khotta 4,725,927 48. Surgujia 1,458,533
24. Kulvi 170,770 49. Surjapuri 1,217,019
25. Kumauni 2,003,783 50. Others 14,777,266

Table 1: Mother tongues classified under Hindi

with their respective speaker strengths

Hindi evidently surpasses all other languages by the sheer numeric

strength of mother tongues. Besides, there are a few notable factors in this list.
First, a total of 257,919,635 people (approximately 61% of the total population
classified under Hindi) have indicated their mother tongue as ‘Hindi’, whereas a
mere 47,730 have indicated Khari Boli - the standard variety (Khari Boli literally
means ‘standing speech’ as opposed to Pari Boli ‘fallen speech’).
 439

This invariably means that those who have indicated their mother tongue
as Hindi are speakers of either Khari Boli or one of the other varieties, making it
difficult to find the exact number of speakers of Khari Boli or other varieties.
Secondly, if we see the percentage of speakers of the main mother tongue variety
with respect to the total number of speakers of the language, and compare it
with other languages under the 8th schedule, Hindi is marked by a low percent-
age. For example, in case of Gujarati, approximately 99% have returned the main
variety ‘Gujarati’ as their mother tongue. The percentage is more or less the
same for most languages, whereas in the case of Hindi it is only 61%.
Thirdly, one can see a somewhat arbitrary selection from almost all sub-
branches of Indo Aryan languages in the list. For example, following Chatterji’s
(1970: 6) classifiction of the development of the Aryan speech in India, Garhwali,
Sirmauri, Kulvi, Kumauni etc. are Pahari speeches of the North Himalayan
branch.
While these are varieties of Hindi, its sister language Nepali of the very
same branch is listed as a separate language under the 8th schedule. Marwari,
Mewati etc. are from the Praticya or Southwest branch and are mother tongues
of Hindi, but Gujarati from the same branch is a separate language. Bundeli,
Kanauji, BrajBhasha, Bangaru, Khari Boli are from the Madhyadeshiya or Midland
Branch. Awadhi, Bagheli, Chattisgarhi are from the westernmost sub-branch of
the Eastern or Prachya branch of Indo Aryan. Magahi and Bhojpuri are from the
Western branch of the Maghadhi sub-branch.
Other languages from the Eastern branch of the Magadhi branch – Assa-
mese, Oriya and Bengali – are well-established separate languages. Maithili,
which is from the Western branch of the Magadhi branch itself and which is very
closely related to Bhojpuri and Magahi (Grierson (1903) considered these three to
be dialects of the same language, which he called ‚Bihari’) is a separate language
listed in the 8th schedule by an act passed in 2003, before which it was listed as a
mother tongue under Hindi.
The situation perhaps reinforces the fact that language is a primarily a po-
litical-cultural concept and not a linguistic one. Khari Boli is linguistically quite
different from Awadhi or Bhojpuri, but they are variants of the same langauge,
while Urdu, which has little linguistic differences from Khari Boli apart from a
section of vocabulary and script (though Urdu is written in Devanagari script as
well1, cf. Ahmed 2011 ) are two separate, independent languages.

1
Devanagari is traditionally used to write Hindi, whereas for Urdu it is Arabic script.
 440

2.2. Hindi and nation-building

The composite nature of Hindi was further reinforced by the role in ‚nation
building’ assigned to it by a section of nationalist leaders who envisioned a
strong, united ‚new India’, modelled after apparent monoculturalism of the some
of the Western nations. Ambedkar, the father of Indian constitution, writes in his
„Thoughts on Linguistic State“ (1955):
„"One State, one language" is a universal feature of almost every State.
Examine the constitution of Germany, examine the constitution of
France, examine the constitution of Italy, examine the constitution of
England, and examine the constitution of the U.S.A. "One State, one lan-
guage" is the rule. Wherever there has been a departure from this rule
there has been a danger to the State. The illustrations of the mixed
States are to be found in the old Austrian Empire and the old Turkish
Empire. They were blown up because they were multi-lingual States
with all that a multi-lingual State means. India cannot escape this fate if
it continues to be a congery of mixed States. “
Gandhi on several occasions championed the cause of Hindi as a represen-
tative language for India as we can see from the comments below (cited in King,
1997).
„A universal language for India should be Hindi.“ (Swaraj, 1909)
He was also expecting that Hindi (or Hindustani as he preferred to call it) is
going to be a bridge between Hindus and Muslims because Hindustani should be
a language which is -
„A resultant of Hindi and Urdu, neither highly Sanskritised nor highly
Persianised or Arabianised.“ (Young India, 1925).
The first and foremost concern here was to try to achieve a national unity.
(Cf., Dasgupta & Sardeshai (2010) ““Hindustani” as a unifying designation for the
language … was supposed to help articulate the agenda for a speech community
merging the two codifications [Hindi and Urdu]”). And monoligualism was ac-
cepted as an obvious prerequisite for unity. Bengali social and religious reformer
Keshav Chadra Sen’s anxiety expressed in 1874 cited in Chatterji (1960: 155) is
also a case in point:
„What is the way, if there is no unity in India because here is no single
language? The way is – just to employ one language throughout the
whole of India. Now among all the languages, which are current in India,
the Hindi language is current in almost everywhere. If this Hindi lan-
 441

guage can be made the sole language of India, then it could be quickly
and easily accomplished. ... May be the English will be afraid, thinking
that there will be no disunity … they will be of one heart in relation to
each other.“
The impractical quest for a monolinguistic, monocultural India ranged
from naive to dangerous, as reflected in the following 1948 comment by congress
leader Purushottam Das Tandon, (cited in Ahmad, 2011).
„They (the Muslims) should accept Indian culture. Urdu symbolizes a
foreign culture. Hindi alone can be the unifying factor for all diverse
forces in the country.“

2.3. Hindi and pluricentricity

Therefore, Hindi certainly has a unique status as a language, but the ques-
tion remains, whether and on what count Hindi can be a pluricentric language.
Dua’s article in Clyne’s edited volume (1992) does mention the diverse mother
tongues known as and classified under „Hindi“, however the article mostly looks
into the case of standard Hindi and Urdu as pluricentric standard varieties.
Whether some of the mother tongues more linguistically distant from standard
Hindi or Kari Boli can be considered as pluricentric varieties remains to be seen.
Kloss’s classification, referring to the one by William A Stewart, defines
what he calls ‚polycentric standard language’ as two variants of the same stan-
dard, based on the same dialect or a near-identical dialect (1967: 160). He also
lists circumstances that engender polycentric standards, viz., where a language is
dominant in two geographically separate countries, where speech communities
are in their early stages of modernisation or where political circumstances have
brought separate developments for two variants of one single language.
Kloss, however, does mention that such language relationships are not
static but dynamic (1993: 162). As an example he mentions the case of Riksmål
and Landsmål of Norway which turned into polycentric standard languages from
being two different languages. Kloss also uses the example of the relationship be-
tween Hindi and Rajastani, Awadhi and Brajbhasha as near dialectised languages.
He comments:
„(Hindi)...has relegated a number of formerly independent kin tongues
to the status of dialects, whether we follow Gumperz in speaking of Braj
Bhasha and Avadhi or adopt Grierson’s concept of Bihari and Rajasthani“
(1967: 166)
 442

Moving away from purely language relationship based definitions, Clyne

notes, in his epilogue to the 1992 volume, among the „basic issues“ (1992: 455) in
the concept of pluricentricity, that of identity and power.
„The question of “pluricentricity“ concerns the relationship between
language and identity on the one hand and language and power on the
other“
He also lists a number of different situations where pluricentricity can de-
velop. Apart from its development in two or more geo-political spaces, it can also
be developed due to the presence of different nationalities in the same state, in
contiguous or almost contiguous regions, in distant spaces due to imperialism or
migration (1992: 2-3). Regarding the question of the Hindi-Urdu situation, Clyne
comments that this situation, along with the Macedonian, the Indonesian-Malay
situations, demands a consideration of the limits of pluricentricity as these are
ausbausprachen.
With this foundation, we can return to our question of the nature of Hindi
as a pluricentric language. For the current paper, I shall look into the case of
Bhojpuri, the second largest mother tongue under Hindi (‚Hindi’, which, as dis-
cussed earlier, may actually be a number of different mother tongues instead of
one, being the largest mother tongue in the group), as a non-dominant variety. It
is difficult to apply Kloss’s (1967) formulation of polycentric standard language
(of two standard varieties arising out of the same or nearly same dialect) for the
Khari Boli-Bhojpuri situation.
Bhojpuri and Khari Boli have a reasonably long history of independent de-
velopment and they came together after they were fully developed. Unlike the
classic cases of pluricentric languages like German (development of different
standards in different geo-political spaces) or different varieties of English (dis-
persal due to imperialism or immigration), the development of Bhojpuri-Khari
Boli’s as varieties is not caused by a ‚split’, but rather it is a question of a
‚merger’.
However, Kloss’s elaboration of the dynamic nature of language relation-
ship, where separate languages can become polycentric standards, is of relevance
here. Also of relevance is the question of power and identity, brought into the
discussion of pluricentric languages by Clyne. On these two counts, the Khari
Boli-Bhojpuri situation can very well be analysed from the perspective of plu-
ricentricity, where Bhojpuri, lacking the status of a language, appears as the non-
dominant variety. A greater discussion on Bhojpuri – its historical, geographical
as well as socio-cultural position—is required here.
 443

3. Bhojpuri as a non-dominant variety of Hindi

3.1. History of the Bhojpuri language
Bhojpuri, figures as one of the numerous varieties listed under Hindi. His-
torically, it is seen as one of the westernmost speeches of the Eastern Magadhan
group of Aryan languages of India. Grierson (1883-87, 1903) has given the name
‘Bihari’ to this Magadhan group of speeches, of which, according to him, Bho-
jpuri, Magahi and Maithili are three dialects. His classification is given below.

A. Outer Sub-Branch AI North Western Group

 Lahanda or Western Panjabi
 Sindhi
AII Southern group
 Marathi
AIII Eastern Group
 Oriya
 Bihari
 Bengali
 Assamesse
B. Median Sub- Branch IV Median Group
 Eastern Hindi
Inner Sub-Branch V Central Group
 Western Hindi
 Panjabi
 Gujrati
 Bhili
 Khandeshi
 Rajasthani
VI Pahari Group
 Eastern Pahari or Naipali
 Central Pahari
 Western Pahari

Table 2: classification of Ayran languages in India

Grierson divided the Indo-Aryan speeches of India into three main catego-
ries – the outer sub-branch, the median sub-branch and the inner sub-branch.
Within these three sub-branches, Bhojpuri belongs to the Eastern group of the
Outer sub-branch, along with Oriya, Bengali and Assamese. Khari Boli or Stan-
dard Hindi is part of Western Hindi which belongs to the Median sub-branch.
Other dialects under this sub-group are Braj, Hariyanvi, Bundeli etc. Eastern
 444

Hindi, which comes from Ardh Magadhi, contains Awadhi, Bagheli and Chattis-
garhi.
Chatterji (1970/1926) essentially follows Greirson’s classification. Tiwari
(2001/1960) argues that, though Grierson’s view may be accepted philologically,
there are a few distinctive grammatical qualities (e.g. use of “ach” for substantive
verb in Maithili but not in the other two) and these combined with feelings of
Brahmans who have been the natural leaders, that demand separate language
status for the three languages, viz., Maithili, Bhojpuri and Magahi. Maithili has a
recognised literature, the other two do not – except for folk songs and poems,
there is no common Bihari form for basic Bihari, though there is perfect mutual
intelligibility among all three. Earlier Beams (1872: 96) had classified Bhojpuri as
an Eastern variety of Hindi — a position contradicted by both Grierson and Chat-
terji. There is an alternative classification, argued by the likes of Dass (1976),
Cardona (1974) and Jeffers (1976), which suggests that Bihari be classified as a
distinct group from both Bengali and Hindi.

3.2. Geographical spread of Bhojpuri

In India, the spread of Bhojpuri is found in the States of Uttar Pradesh, Bi-
har and Jharkhand. In Uttar Pradesh, it is predominant in the Gorakhpur, Basti,
Deoria, Azamgarh, Ghazipur, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Ballia districts, in Bihar, in
Champaran, Saran, Shahabad districts and in Jharkhand in Palamau and Ranchi
districts. Bhojpuris have a tradition of migrating and settling in various other
parts of India and abroad. Ethnologue rightly includes Assam, West Bengal and
Delhi among the areas where Bhojpuri is spoken, as there is a strong presence of
long-term and short-term Bhojpuri settlers in these places. Besides Bhojpuri is
also spoken in Mauritius, Nepal, Trinidad, Guyana, Surinam, Fiji and South Africa,
which ‘in a way accord Bhojpuri the status of an international language’ (Verma,
2003: 566). It may also be noted that a considerable amount of research has been
done on these varieties of Bhojpuri (cf. Baker 1986, Bhatia 1982, Gambhir 1981,
Mesthrie 1993, Mohan and Zador 1978, Mohan 1990 etc.).

3.3. Dialects of Bhojpuri

There are four principal dialectal divisions in Bhojpuri: Northern standard
Bhojpuri, spoken in the north of the river Ghagra in Gorakhpuri, Sarawaria and
Basti, this again is divided in two main sub-dialects, Gorakhpuriya in the east and
Sarwaria in the west.
 445

The Southern standard Bhojpuri (Kharwari) is the standard Bhojpuri cen-

tered around the town of Bhojpur, in the north-west of the Shahabad district.
Nagpuriya is spoken to the south of the river Son, Western standard Bhojpuri is
spoken in the area lying to the west of Southern standard Bhojpuri (Purbi,
Benarsi). Bhojpuri Tharu is the language of the Indo-Nepalese border. The Eth-
nologue page (Lewis: 2009) interestingly comments that there may be more than
one language.
So, Bhojpuri, a variety which has the status of a dialect, is not only spoken
by a large number of people over a great stretch of land, it has its own standards
and dialectal divisions which are distinct enough to question whether they
should be classified under one language or not.

3.4. Bhojpuri as a culture language

Unlike its genealogical sister Maithili, Bhojpuri does not have a long estab-
lished literary tradition. Some of Kabir’s creations are recognized as western
Bhojpuri, or more specifically Benarasi. Publication in Bhojpuri is done mostly in
Devanagari. There was a script called ‚kaithi’ which was originally used for the
language, but now it has very restricted use, generally Devanagari script is used
for writing.
Bhojpuri, however, has a very strong tradition in folk literature. Kajari
songs, Bidesiya dramas and poems are well known representatives of this tradi-
tion. Besides Bhojpuri cinema, stage play and popular music is part of a flourish-
ing entertainment industry. In education, Bhojpuri is not used formally, as it is
not recognised as a language. However, classroom instruction is often carried out
informally in Bhojpuri, in the areas where it is the main language (or language
variety) of communication.
Therefore, Bhojpuri, though not a full-fledged language, not only has its
own history and linguistic tradition, but is spoken by a great number of people in
a vast area, has a number of dialects and its own cultural tradition.

4. Bhojpuri in Kolkata
4.1. Kolkata as a multilingual space
Like most modern cities of India, Kolkata is a great multilingual and di-
verse space. It has been a multilingual city for at least two hundred years (c.f.
Clark, 1956), if not more. According to a statement made at the assembly in Au-
gust 2003 by the state government, Bengalis (the largest speech community) con-
 446

stitute 37% of the city’s population (as per report published in the daily newspa-
per The Statesman, 5/03/2005, page – 9). The census figure for 1991, however,
states 64% of the city dwellers are Bengali speakers. In any case, it indicates pres-
ence of a large number of migrated communities. Among these communities,
Hindi constitutes the largest portion (21% according to the 1991 census). It may
also be safely assumed that a considerable portion among these are also Bhojpuri
speakers. Migration of Bhojpuri speakers to Kolkata is attested historically as
mentioned in Tiwari (1960/2001):
„In Calcutta for instance, which can be described as a centre of Bhojpuri
life and Bhojpuri culture, as there are hundreds and hundreds of Bho-
jpuri speakers in the city, and more in the suburbs and along the Bhagi-
rathi valley jute mill areas, … we have regular sight of Bhojpuri people
amusing themselves with folk-songs folk tales and informal talks and
speeches“

4.2. Analysis of a section of Bhojpuri residents in Kolkata

With this background, I would like to analyse the responses of a cross sec-
tion of Bhojpuri residents in Kolkata. The data for this study were collected from
respondents, who have taken part in the ongoing project on ‘A Sociolinguistic
Survey of ‘Non-Bengalis’ in Kolkata’2. These speakers have been residing in Kol-
kata for a minimum of ten years. As with any immigrant community in a major
city, they encounter a number of dominant languages in their daily lives. In this
case there are three major dominant languages: Bengali – the most widely spo-
ken ‘native’ language of Kolkata –, Hindi – the official language of the nation and
the language of which Bhojpuri is considered to be a dialect – and English, the
other official language which, though spoken by almost no one as a native lan-
guage, is an undeniably high prestige language. Evidently, the given situation is
not very conducive to the ‘linguistic self-confidence’ (Muhr 2005: 14) of the
mother tongue community in question. On the contrary, the result of the survey
shows that this situation has adversely affected the attitude of the community
towards their mother tongue.
Among the 289 respondents that we have interviewed so far, only 5 re-
sponded to the question ‘what is your mother tongue?’ with ‘Bhojpuri’. On look-
ing into other interviews, it was found that 18 more respondents, who have said
that their mother tongue is Hindi, have either answered the question ‘ what is

2
A UGC sponsored major research project under the UPE scheme carried out at the
Linguistics Department, Calcutta University.
 447

your father’s/mother’s mother tongue?’ as ‘Bhojpuri’ or in ‘languages known’

section they have reported ‘Hindi’ and ‘Bhojpuri’ as two separate languages
known to them.
Analysing their report of language usage in various domains, it was seen
that the use of Bhojpuri was restricted to the home domain only. In other do-
mains the two major languages used are Hindi (the standard variety or Khari
Boli) and Bengali; Hindi is used in 60% of the cases and Bengali in 27.5%. In the
home domain Hindi and Bhojpuri is used in an almost equal number of cases.
(Bhojpuri in 46% and Hindi in 43%).
In the interviews, all the respondents demonstrated a high regard for
Hindi. Most of them are under the impression that it is the ‘national language’ of
India. (It may be noted here that Hindi is accorded the place of one of the two ‘of-
ficial languages’ of India by the ‘official languages act’ passed in 1963 and revised
in 1967. The other official language is English. However, Hindi, or any other lan-
guage for that matter, is not recognised as a national language).

1. It (Hindi) is the national language so obviously everyone can use it .

2. (Ritu3, f, 18)
3. Hindi is of course our national language... recognised language… so important
(Sumita, f, 20)
4. (Hindi is)…very important, because it is our national language (Rani, f, 20)
5. English is also held in very high regard, but there is a visible alienation or lack
of identification, as we can see in the next two comments.
6. Its ok, but I don’t prefer English, because it’s not a language of our country
(Ravi, m, 25)
7. It’s a professional language, it is important for jobs, it’s good to learn but we
must put Hindi or other state languages before English. (Sandhya, f, 36)
8. Bengali does seem to enjoy a positive evaluation, though respondents are
considers it limited power.
9. Bengali is only there in Kolkata, you go outside, there is no value, but our Eng-
lish, Hindi or Bhojpuri everybody will understand, Bengali is not there outside
Bengal (Bhushan, m, 20)
10. They (the Bengali community) have more education, women work, very inde-
pendent, that’s why I like them, it is important to learn if you are in Kolkata,
outside Bengali is not used (Rup, f, 22)

3
Respondents are identified by pseudonyms.
 448

Two respondents, Samjeev (m, 25) and Shiven (m, 37), who have done re-
search on Hindi language and are aware of its status as a composite language,
also reflect a great sense of identification with Hindi and an eagerness for its
promotion. Sanjeev in extract 8, for example, having established Hindi’s status as
a collection of „bolis“ or speeches, regrets that Maithili is now a separate speech,
since it reduced the total number of Hindi speakers. Shiven strongly advocates
the promotion of Hindi and denounces the importance given to the other official
language – English.

8.… Hindi is such a language that its not a language at all by itself, it’s a
collection of eighteen bolis ... Suppose the Maitilis … they are mainly
Hindi speakers, but … so many numbers have gone down from Hindi, …
this is an unfortunate thing. (Sanjeev, m, 25)
5. One speciality of Hindi is that it’s a conglomeration of many languages
… we have unnecessarily put English in the middle…Hindi should have
been made the official language … only teach mother tongue and Hindi
in schools, end of discussion…due to big ambition we have made many
historical blunders ... it’s (English) a compulsion which we are bearing
and we will be bearing. That’s it. It’s a Frankenstein we have given birth
and we will have to bear. (Shiven, m, 37)

11. Summary
In conclusion, it can be said that, the standard Hindi- Bhojpuri situation
cannot be considered as an example of classic pluricentric standards, where two
variants of the same language grow apart and are used in two separate geopoliti-
cal spaces. However, it demands farther probing as it presents itself with a num-
ber of unique linguistic complexities.
Firstly, Bhojpuri and the standard Hindi (or Khari Boli) is officially consid-
ered variants of the same language in spite of their history of independent de-
velopment.
Secondly, Even though Khari Boli is the standard variety, a considerably
lower number of populations, compared to Bhojpuri, declare it as their mother
tongue in the Indian census. Besides, it is almost impossible to get an accurate
account of the number of speakers of any of these varieties, since the same
speaker may declare ‘Hindi’ as their mother tongue in once situation and as or
‘Bhojpuri’(or one of the other mother tongues) in another. Khubchandani, noting
this habitual transience of linguistic affiliation, lists (1985: 204) five different het-
erogeneous groups that claim Hindi as their mother tongue. Bhojpuri, which
 449

lacks the status of a language here, does have its own independent history of de-
velopment, its own standards and varieties.
Therefore, it is best to consider the Bhojpuri- Standard Hindi situation as a
case of languages that developed separately but came together in a later period
of their development to be considered pluricentric varieties of the same lan-
guage.
Among the section of Bhojpuri residents of Kolkata, thought there is some
amount of bond with the mother tongue, they are more strongly attached to the
standard Hindi and accept it enthusiastically as their ‘own’. AS far as the other
two dominant languages are concerned, though English is taken as a powerful
language, there is an well-established distance from this language.
Bengali is not considered all that powerful, though the attitude towards it
is generally positive. There is great respect and prestige attached to the so-called
standard and an endorsement towards promotion, status elevation and spread of
the same. There is no desire for a status improvement of their mother tongue. In
fact, one may safely conclude that this community may reject any attempt of
status planning. It must also be mentioned here that the results are not repre-
sentative of the entire Bhojpuri population of India.
Whether Bhojpuri usage is on the wane in general or if there is language
shift in progress can only be determined after a careful analysis of the situation
in the vast areas where it is spoken as ‘native’ language. However, for the popula-
tion studied here, Standard Hindi enjoys an almost complete linguistic allegiance
as a dominant variety and has an all-pervasive presence in the linguistic psyche
of the community.

12. References
Ahmed, Rizwan (2011): Urdu in Devanagari: Shifting orthographic practices and
Muslim identity in Delhi. Language in Society. 40, 259-284.
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Adrian TIEN
(National University of Singapore, Singapore)
chsta@nus.edu.sg

Chinese Hokkien and its lexicon in Singapore:

evidence for an indigenised Singapore culture

Abstract

More surveys of languages of Singapore have concentrated on Chinese

Mandarin - one of the official languages – than any other Chinese “dia-
lects” that are also spoken by at least some of the Singaporeans, notably
Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese. In focusing on Singapore Chinese Hok-
kien, this chapter shows that (1) this dialect is, essentially, a pluricentric
language, and its Singaporean version reflects a local or indigenised va-
riety of Hokkien which exhibits differences with varieties of Hokkien
spoken elsewhere, e.g. Taiwan; (2) at least for now, the status of Hokkien
has remained more or less secure and has, in fact, continued to play a
prominent role in Singapore language and culture, despite it being non-
official and non-dominant; and (3) in fact, Hokkien has assumed an in-
fluential role in other languages spoken in Singapore, official or not, e.g.
Singapore English (“Singlish”) and Singapore Mandarin etc. A case study
presented here based on the semantic analysis of a Singapore Chinese
Hokkien lexicon demonstrates the uniqueness of this lexicon in usage
and in culture.

1. Background
Singapore is a country that sits at the crossroads between the many lands,
languages and cultures: geographically, it assumes a key position in Southeast
Asia, with its neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia in close proximity; historically,
it was – and still is - an important point for trade and transportation between the
West and the East; and, being a multi-ethnic, multilingual nation, Singapore has
thrived in its considerable linguistic and cultural diversity. Given this situation, it
is reasonable to expect that any socio-linguistic or socio-cultural account of Sin-
gapore should be considered in the overall scheme of things, as it were.
 454

It often seems inevitably logical that many scholarly studies on Singapore

should have centred on the ethnically Chinese population and Chinese Mandarin
(see, for example, Zhang 1994, Ng 1997, Mark 1998, Li 1999, Cheng 2000, Ng 2000,
Chua 2003, Zhao and Liu 2010 etc.1) since, after all, Chinese Mandarin is one of
the official languages in Singapore - alongside English, Malay, and Tamil. It is the
second most widely spoken language by Singaporeans after English and it is, by
all means, the most frequently spoken mother tongue (with around 36% of Sin-
gaporeans speaking it at home).2 These percentages go hand-in-hand with the
fact that the ethnic Chinese make up the largest proportion of the Singapore
population (around 74%).3 Even though Mandarin is but one of the many dialects
originating from China, the fact that it serves as the standard Chinese language
and that it is an official language means that it easily can be referred to as just
“Chinese”, rather than “Chinese Mandarin”, in Singapore (as contrasted with all
other Chinese dialects which are called just that: “Chinese dialects”).4 Personal
experience from living in Singapore reveals that there is often code-switching at
least for the ethnically Chinese Singaporeans who are bilingual in both English
and Mandarin; in addition there is a tendency to mix primarily English utter-
ances with Mandarin words and sentences etc., not only in informal contexts
(e.g. language use at home) but often also formal ones (e.g. certain conversations
at work etc.).

2. Chinese Hokkien in Singapore as a non-dominant language

Rather than Chinese Mandarin, this chapter, however, looks at Chinese
Hokkien as it is spoken in Singapore (SCH hereafter) in its sociolinguistic and so-
ciocultural context. The very idea of focusing on this language calls for some ex-
planation. It is clear that SCH has not captured the same level of scholarly atten-
tion as Mandarin (with the few exceptions being, for example, Chia 1999 and Xu
2007 etc., who examined aspects of SCH). After all, SCH is a non-dominant lan-

1
Many studies of Chinese Mandarin in Singapore are in the form of unpublished theses.
2
Percentage figures are based on data from Census of Population 2010 by the Singa-
pore Department of Statistics.
3
By “Singaporeans” and the “Singaporean population” in this paragraph, I refer only to
those who are citizens or permanent residents. The percentage figures would go up
sharply had we included non-citizens and non-permanent residents as they make up
a huge proportion of the people who live in Singapore – some 24%, in fact, according
to Census of Population 2010.
4
There are five major dialects in China: Mandarin, Hokkien, Yue (Cantonese), Wu (in-
cluding Shanghainese), and Hakka. In addition, there are five other Chinese dialects
generally recognised as Xiang, Gan, Pinghua, Hui and Jin.
 455

guage with no official status (as compared with Mandarin which is a dominant
and official language in Singapore, as described in the previous section), not as
many Singaporeans speak it as they do Mandarin and, the fact that SCH is not
taught in schools does not help with spreading this language. Moreover, SCH has
little codification (though classical and literary Hokkien was extensively repre-
sented by a written form, in a way no less complex than that for Mandarin) and,
with what limited codification there is for SCH, it is often not consistent e.g. the
word for ‘rice’ may be spelt as either bee or mee. TV shows and other forms of
multimedia originally in Hokkien tend to be voice-dubbed into a Mandarin ver-
sion and, generally speaking, there is indication that the use of SCH in most, if
not all, linguistic contexts (e.g. Hokkien spoken at home) is apparently on a
steady decrease from year to year, as figures from the Census by the Singapore
Department of Statistics seem to suggest.
Despite all these observations, SCH remains the most prominent Chinese
dialect after Mandarin at least in the sense that it is represented by the largest
group of speakers of a Chinese dialect (Mandarin aside, for reasons outlined ear-
lier) and it is still culturally the most influential dialect (in many ways no less
than and, in some contexts more so than, Mandarin). SCH was once the main lin-
gua franca among the ethnic Chinese settlers in Singapore and, to this day, the
spelling of the names of many Chinese Singaporeans is based on their original
Hokkien pronunciation. The same goes for the names of many famous Singapor-
ean Chinese delicacies, which are spelt and pronounced in SCH (e.g. fried mee
‘fried noodles’, fried bee hoon ‘fried rice noodles’; etc.). These facts echo the an-
cestral and cultural past of many ethnically Chinese Singaporeans whose ances-
tors originally emigrated from the Chinese province Hokkien (or Fujian, as it is
also known), and indeed, Hokkien being a coastal province in South China with
its relatively easy access to the sea, had turned out to be an important place of
origin of many Chinese emigrants across the seas, not only those who settled in
Singapore but also notably in Taiwan.
The prominence and influence of SCH in Singapore are, in fact, evident
across the different ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Recently, I came across an
example of the SCH word geyboh/kaypoh (lit. ‘chicken granny’) which refers to
someone who is nosy, busybody or a stickybeak, uttered by a Malay Singaporean.
The example was don’t be so geyboh lah! (don’t be such a busybody/stickybeak!).
This person had wanted to warn someone against the hazard of being too inquisi-
tive and to remind her of the wisdom of minding her own business. To add to this
– and to fine-tune what I had reported earlier, based on personal experience liv-
 456

ing in Singapore - actually code-switching takes place in everyday communica-

tion at least among those Singaporeans who are bilingual (or multilingual) and
who speak English and either Mandarin or Hokkien (or all three languages). Even
without code-switching, there is a stable selection of SCH loanwords and loan
phrases (including “phrasal” words) etc. that are commonly found in primarily
English or Mandarin utterances, in both informal contexts and (to a lesser ex-
tent) formal ones. The various linguistic influences of SCH over Mandarin have
been observed by, for instance, Ng (1996), Cheong (2009), Bradley (1992)5 etc.
and, in fact, it can be attested from everyday examples such as uses of the word
geyboh/kaypoh that SCH has also had a significant impact on other languages spo-
ken in Singapore, no less Singapore Malay as the ethnically non-Chinese Singa-
poreans have also picked up certain features of SCH, notably lexical features).
SCH is, therefore, an important language to examine even if it is non-dominant
in the Singaporean context.

3. Chinese Hokkien as a pluricentric language

One of the reasons why SCH is considered a non-dominant variety is due to
the fact that, in Singapore as it is in other predominantly, ethnically Chinese
countries such as China and Taiwan, Hokkien is traditionally regarded as one of
the Chinese dialects (see footnote 3). But the controversial issue of whether Chi-
nese dialects are really dialects rather than separate languages has continued to
persist in Chinese linguistics (e.g. Ramsey 1987: 16-18; Norman 1988: 187-188;
Bradley 1992: 305 etc.). Anyone familiar with this controversy knows that, lin-
guistically speaking, Chinese dialects at least in their spoken form are as mutu-
ally unintelligible as different languages;6 that the reason why Mandarin had
been chosen over other Chinese dialects as the dominant, official Chinese lan-
guage in China was a political one, based on the dialect’s past history i.e. it was a
somewhat arbitrary decision; and that, culturally speaking, each Chinese dialect
reflects the cultural attitudes, values etc. of the (often regional or localised)
group of people that speak it in a way no less proud than those who have come to
embrace Mandarin as the overarching, dominant Chinese language and culture

5
Bradley (1992) referred to Hokkien as Min, which is another valid name for the lan-
guage.
6
To put it differently, Chinese dialects are “dialects” in name but are regarded more as
“languages” in substance, given the remarkable linguistic differences that exist be-
tween them. However, since Chinese dialects are still typologically and culturally
“Chinese”, sinologists have generally continued to refer to them as “dialects”, as a
matter of convention.
 457

(noting that a given group of people may well speak both a Chinese dialect and
Chinese Mandarin i.e. they would see themselves as upholding or practising two
different but related, cultures).
It is crucial to take into account that a Chinese dialect such as Hokkien
really behaves, functions and operates in ways not at all dissimilar with any in-
dependent language, including the fact that, like any language, Hokkien is sub-
ject to local variations. Roughly speaking, there are four major Hokkien varieties
worldwide (in a way, “subdialects” of Hokkien): SCH; Hokkien still spoken in the
Chinese Fujian province (Fujian Hokkien); Hokkien in Taiwan (Taiwan Hokkien);
and, Hokkien in Chinese communities overseas e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia, The Phil-
ippines, Hokkien-speaking communities in the United States etc. (loosely, over-
seas Hokkien).
Taiwan is probably the most linguistically and culturally active base of
Hokkien anywhere where this language has thrived and flourished through its
continuous and extensive use by the people of Taiwan, the majority of whom
speak Hokkien either as a first or second language (in addition to Mandarin). A
great many Taiwanese have ancestors who originally immigrated from the Chi-
nese Fujian province. Even though Taiwan Hokkien, too, has the status of a non-
official, non-dominant Chinese dialect, support for its use in most linguistic and
cultural contexts is strong, with efforts at codifying this language by academics
e.g. compilation of Hokkien lexicographical inventories and dictionaries; the de-
velopment of a consistent, spelling system for Hokkien, etc.
Taiwan Hokkien is being taught at schools (with accompanying textbook
materials) and it is an area of study at some universities. Traditional Hokkien op-
era (as contrasted with, say, Peking opera) and Hokkien puppet theatre staged on
temporary outdoor stages (set in front of temples etc.) and shown on TV in re-
cent years have been a favourite for many Taiwanese generations, just as TV
dramas and shows in Hokkien (with Mandarin subtitles) are hugely popular and
successful, not only in Taiwan but also overseas in places like Singapore, Malay-
sia and even the ancestral Fujian province where Hokkien is spoken. There are
TV and radio channels that broadcast only in Hokkien, including their more
“formal” programmes such as news reports etc.
Code-switching between Mandarin and Hokkien is widely accepted and
practised in Taiwan by people from all walks of life and, for example, it is to a
politician’s advantage if s/he is able to speak Hokkien in addition to Mandarin.
Linguistic influences over Hokkien spoken in Taiwan seem to be largely from
Japanese, not only from the days when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial con-
 458

trol but also from contemporary Japanese popular culture which has been ex-
ported to Taiwan. However, it is interesting to note that the one single most im-
portant area of influence from Japanese is lexical i.e. loanwords from Japanese
(some with revised meanings that only exist in Taiwan Hokkien and not in the
original, source language Japanese). It is equally puzzling that, compared with
Japanese, Mandarin or other Chinese dialects have not had as much influence
over Taiwan Hokkien (albeit that other Chinese dialects, too, exist on the island
and are spoken by some of the Taiwanese population).
Fujian Hokkien represents a classic case of the dialect continuum and, as
Ramsey (1987: 108) described:

“The Min [i.e. Fujian] dialects are the most heterogeneous in China.
Though they all share certain broad classificatory features [,] they are
also, at the same time, highly differentiated.”
The interesting point here is that there are many almost mutually unintel-
ligible, regional varieties of Hokkien in the Fujian province, with the varieties
based in the regions around Amoy (or Xiamen, as it is also known, in Mandarin)
being probably most understood and best researched.7 What is more remarkable
is the fact that there are linguistic differences even among community groups
within a given regional variety of Hokkien, with differences between some
groups being small and subtle whilst other differences between other groups be-
ing significant and next to unintelligible.
This makes things exceedingly difficult - if not downright impossible – as
one tries to make generalisations about Fujian Hokkien as a single dia-
lect/language and challenges the very idea of examining Fujian Hokkien as such
as one unified dialect/language. For the sake of comparison with other-world
Hokkien varieties, it is safe to state that Fujian Hokkien in the regions around
Amoy most resemble those of the overseas varieties, with the main differences
being (to a greater or lesser extent) lexical and phonological. From a sociological
perspective, Fujian Hokkien tends to appear in something of a diglossic situation
along with Mandarin when it is spoken in the larger cities and towns, whereas
the inclination in smaller towns and villages is for Fujian Hokkien to be spoken as
the monolingual language of communication.

7
The argument here is similar with that discussed earlier at footnote 6 and, just as
Chinese dialects are typologically “Chinese” and hence conventionally referred to as
“dialects” rather than independent “languages”, varieties of Hokkien are typologically
“Hokkien” and hence referred to as “varieties” rather than distinct “languages”.
 459

There is one common sociolinguistic denominator which seems applicable

to all overseas Hokkien - and, in this regard, SCH as well – which is that an over-
seas variety invariably gets influenced by the language/s of the host country, to a
greater or lesser extent (though, interestingly, the influences appear fundamen-
tally lexical and/or, to a less extent, phonological). Thus, Hokkien in Malaysia
displays at least certain lexical and some phonological influences from its con-
tact with Malay (something with is particularly noticeable in strong Hokkien-
speaking hubs such as Penang) and, similarly, Hokkien in Indonesia contains cer-
tain lexical and phonological features from the Indonesian language/s. (Curi-
ously in these cases, even though the dominant linguistic varieties - the national
languages Bahasa Malay in Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia - essen-
tially belong to the same Malay language, their respective influences over Hok-
kien in these two countries have not yielded in identical Hokkien varieties i.e.
there are certain linguistic differences between Hokkien in Malaysia and Hokkien
in Indonesia.) Conversely, Hokkien in Indonesia has had a profound influence
over not only Bahasa Indonesia but also its former colonial language, Dutch -
something which can still be felt in The Netherlands, for instance, as one comes
across street stalls selling lumpia, which is the Dutch approximation for the fa-
mous Hokkien snack pohpiah ‘spring rolls’. Apparently, the lumpia/pohpiah hap-
pened to be one of the many Hokkien dishes that the Dutch people loved – and
still do – which came from the ethnically Chinese, Hokkien-speaking population
of its former colony in Southeast Asia. On the whole, it may be reported that
overseas Hokkien is used primarily in a diglossic or even poly/multiglossic situa-
tion where Hokkien tends to be spoken in informal contexts (with friends and
family etc.) and where the dominant language of the country in question is used
in other contexts (formal contexts; communication with other ethnic groups
etc.).
In more ways than one, SCH shares many linguistic and cultural similari-
ties with Malaysia Hokkien since, after all, Singapore was once part of Malaysia
and the two countries share a similar colonial past; in addition, the Chinese an-
cestors of those who speak Hokkien in both countries now would have originated
from the same Chinese province, Fujian. Moreover, SCH and Malaysia Hokkien
have both had significant influences over Mandarin which is spoken in both their
respective countries and, particularly in relation to Singapore, Bradley (1992:
313-321) had briefly documented the more remarkable aspects of the linguistic
impact of SCH over Singapore Mandarin, including lexical, phonological, mor-
phosyntactic and communicative influences. On the flipside of the coin, it is fas-
 460

cinating to note that Hokkien in Singapore and Malaysia has also been affected,
linguistically, by Mandarin, other Chinese dialects and Malay. For instance, the
sentence, ngwa lai zao xing [I be going leave first] ‘I should get going first (before
someone else, or before something else happens)’ is acceptable in SCH and Ma-
laysia Hokkien, but it sounds strange in, say, Taiwan Hokkien (in which variety
the correct version should read, ngwa xing lai zao [I first be going leave]). The key
difference is where the adverbial modifier xing ‘first’ is placed and, we can tell
that the SCH or Malaysia Hokkien sentence has been influenced by Cantonese –
one of the other Chinese dialects spoken in Singapore and Malaysia – because
xing comes at the end of the sentence after the main verb zao, as in Cantonese,
rather than before the main verb. In addition, an example of a phonological fea-
ture of SCH and Malaysian Hokkien is the pronunciation of the sentence-final,
perfective marker as liao, which exhibits an obvious past influence from literary
(and somewhat archaïque) Mandarin. A comparable perfective marker in most
other varieties of Hokkien (e.g. Taiwan Hokkien) is a, not liao.8 Last but not least,
there is a selection of Malay loanwords which have crept into the Hokkien lexi-
con of Singapore and Malaysia and which have, in reality, become stable and
permanent members of the SCH and Malaysia Hokkien vocabulary. An example
(among many others) is the word sotong which is originally Malay for ‘squid’ but
which has come to refer to someone who is dumb or retarded in SCH and Malay-
sia Hokkien.
What makes SCH different from Malaysia Hokkien is its (socio)linguistic
uniqueness.9 There appears to be a stable and permanent list of SCH words that
most ethnically Chinese Singaporeans know and use, whether or not they are de-
scendents of Hokkien-speaking immigrants from Fujian province. Furthermore,
many of these SCH words in the list are familiar to many ethnically non-Chinese
Singaporeans as well. The lexical list is not officially, academically or systemati-
cally documented or codified anywhere – except for the following: (1) the Coxford

8
In fact, liao instead of the more contemporary Mandarin perfective marker le is also
often heard in Singapore Mandarin and Malaysia Mandarin. The use of liao is, there-
fore, a distinguishing feature of Singapore and Malaysian varieties of Mandarin as
well.
9
Whilst Malaysia Hokkien is not the main concern of this chapter, according to my per-
sonal experience, at least in the Penang area Malaysia Hokkien seems to reveal
something of an “older” version of Hokkien which had been spoken a few generations
earlier. This would appear to be an important contributing factor towards the unique-
ness of Malaysia Hokkien (or at least certain areas in Malaysia where this variety is
spoken).
 461

Singlish Dictionary online (CSD hereafter).10 and (2) a Dictionary of Singlish and Sin-
gapore English online (DSSE hereafter)11. While the focus of neither the CSD nor
the DSSE is on SCH as such – in fact, these websites record words in the local
(non-standard) variety of English in Singapore (“Singlish”, hereafter) – as it turns
out, a significant number of words in both websites incorporate loanwords or
calques from Hokkien and are members of the SCH lexicon. Whilst these lexical
collections are far from being complete or at all scholarly, they do provide an in-
teresting starting point for a comparatively little-studied domain that is SCH.
Above all, it is compelling to think that, as Singlish constitute part of (most) Sin-
gaporeans’ linguistic awareness regardless of their ethnic group, these SCH-
based words form part of that shared awareness.12
Indeed, it is primarily the lexicon in SCH (including phrasal words or
“phrasemes”, as well as certain pragmatic features etc.) which makes it a distin-
guishable Hokkien variety. Whilst part of the SCH lexicon overlaps with the lexi-
cons of other Hokkien varieties (e.g. Taiwan etc.), there is a host of words that
only appear in SCH e.g. chia tsua (lit. ‘to eat a snake’) ‘to skip school or work’. In
addition, there is a host of other SCH words that do not have the same meaning
as their formal counterparts in other Hokkien varieties. For example, si beh (lit.
‘die willing; will do something/be like something even if it means to die’) in SCH
is used as an intensifying adjective modifier which means something like ‘some-
thing or someone is in a certain way and not even death would change that’ in
SCH, but in Taiwan Hokkien, si beh is an intensifying adverb referring to an un-
compromisable action of a person (slightly similar in meaning with the expres-
sion die hard in English). In later discussions in this chapter, some space will be
devoted to the latter case, i.e. the semantic aspect of this selected SCH lexicon.
Sociolinguistically speaking, the different roles that the different lan-
guages play in Singapore seem to have been clearly set out in language and edu-
cation policies etc., the diglossic (and, for some people, poly/multiglossic) situa-
tion appears generally well-defined, with English being the first language and
used/usable in most (mainly formal) contexts. Each of the other official lan-
guages (Chinese Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) is considered a mother tongue and
is taught in schools and/or used at home etc., generally speaking, whilst a non-
official language (a Chinese dialect such as SCH, Singlish or any other unofficial

10
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/lexec.php?op=LexPKL&lexicon=lexicon,
11
http://www.singlishdictionary.com/
12
Though whether or not a Singaporean chooses to access any of these words or even
to use Singlish at all is, in reality, a different matter and an entirely personal choice.
 462

language) may be used at home or in informal contexts (among friends etc.).

Nevertheless, the fact that there is often extensive code-switching between lan-
guages, dominant or non-dominant, means that it can still be difficult to clearly
determine and delineate certain supposedly diglossic (or poly/multiglossic)
situations.

4. Chinese Hokkien in Singapore and the subculture it reflects

Even without going into the intricacies of linguistic relativity and the well-
known theories such as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, there is generally a consen-
sus that an (inter)relationship exists between language and culture, with culture
being reflected by its corresponding language. For instance, in putting forward
the argument that meanings of words in a language encapsulate and reflect the
unique worldview of that culture, Wierzbicka (1992: 20) wrote that:

“…if every language provides its own set of lexicalised concepts, every
language suggests its own categorisation and its own interpretation of
the world – consequently, every language is indeed a different ‘guide to
reality’…”
In subscribing to this argument, I presume that this argument typically
applies to dominant languages and the cultures they represent. But what about
non-dominant varieties of languages? Do they also reflect cultures and, if so, how
does it work?
It seems to me useful to adopt the term “subculture” here. According to
the Oxford English Dictionary online, a subculture is defined as:
“a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or inter-
ests at variance with those of the larger culture… ”
This definition works well from the perspective of each and every one of
the ethnically Chinese communities and the Chinese languages/dialects that
they respectively speak around the world. In the Chinese community that is
China, for instance, it has been well-recognised and accepted that the Chinese
people themselves have come to embrace a common “larger culture”, supported
by its long-established writing system, a shared history and (in recent centuries)
an official national language that is Mandarin, knowing at the same time that,
under the umbrella of this larger, so-called “Chinese” language and culture,
there are considerably different linguistic (dialectal) and cultural (regional)
groups that coexist (cf. e.g. Ramsey 1987: 15-18 etc.). These linguistic and cultural
groups do not only distinguish themselves from each other but also, they are “at
 463

variance” with the dominant “Chinese” language and culture, one way or the
other, to a larger or lesser extent. To the Chinese people, however, national unity
does not get compromised because of this linguistic and cultural situation, di-
verse and complex as the situation is. The example of China demonstrates that it
is perfectly feasible for the dominant language to reflect the “larger culture”
whilst, at the same time, that the non-dominant language/dialect reflects the
smaller “subculture”, so to speak, with no conflicting disharmony between the
dominant and non-dominant languages or between the culture and its subcul-
ture.
SCH reflects its own, uniquely indigenised, culture, and this culture can be
considered a subculture in a number of ways. If it can be described that there is a
larger, Chinese culture in Singapore, represented by the ethnic Chinese and the
shared Chinese language which they all speak (which is Mandarin, as discussed
earlier in this chapter; see Cheng 2000 and Zhang 1994 etc.), then SCH and the
subculture it reflects may be regarded as one of the many subcultures that coex-
ist under this larger culture, alongside Singapore Cantonese subculture, Singa-
pore Teochew subculture, Singapore Hakka subculture, and other Chinese sub-
cultures in Singapore as may be represented by other Chinese dialectal groups.
Looking at it from another perspective, if we can assume that a larger Hokkien
culture exists for all Hokkien-speaking populations around the world, then SCH
subculture can be seen as one of the Hokkien subcultures under this larger cul-
ture alongside Taiwan Hokkien subculture, overseas Hokkien subculture (includ-
ing Malaysia and Indonesia Hokkien subcultures), and Chinese (provincial) Hok-
kien subculture (in the sense that there are dialectal and cultural variations even
within the Hokkien-speaking regions of the Chinese Fujian province).
A few crucial provisos are in order here. Firstly, just as subcultures can ex-
ist under a given culture so, too, can smaller subcultures exist under a given sub-
culture. This would, of course, mean that we could have a situation where a given
culture, its subcultures and its even smaller subcultures all coexist in a tiered,
top-down fashion, but there would be nothing improbable about the situation. In
the case of Singapore, for example, one could see there being an overarching
Singapore culture, under whose umbrella comprises a number of languages and
the cultures that they each represent: Singapore Chinese subculture, Singapore
Indian subculture, Singapore Malay subculture and, Singapore Anglo subculture.
Further down the hierarchical tree, as it were, there are many smaller subcul-
tures that come under the existence of Singapore Chinese subculture, specifi-
cally: SCH subculture, Singapore Cantonese subculture, Singapore Teochew sub-
 464

culture, Singapore Hakka subculture, and other Singapore Chinese subcultures

(as represented by other Chinese dialects).
Secondly, a subculture can assume double or even multiple identities i.e. a
subculture can exist as a smaller culture of one culture and, at the same time,
come under the umbrella of another culture. Using the example of Singapore, the
SCH subculture as outlined a few paragraphs ago is both a subculture under the
Chinese culture in Singapore and a subculture under the larger Hokkien culture
(which exists for all Hokkien-speaking populations worldwide). But there is no
problem with this kind of situation, for it just implies that SCH is at the same
time a local variety in Singapore that reflects the uniquely indigenised Hokkien
culture in Singapore, as it is a variety of the general Hokkien language that re-
flects the Hokkien culture in this part of the world.
Thirdly, there can be many linguistic and cultural overlaps between cul-
tures and between subcultures, in the same way that linguistic, dialectal and cul-
tural boundaries are often not clearly definable. In previous discussions, it was
argued that there are similarities between SCH, Taiwan Hokkien and Malaysia
Hokkien. One could also reasonably deduce from this that SCH subculture, Tai-
wan Hokkien subculture and Malaysia Hokkien subculture that these varieties of
Hokkien reflect all have cultural similarities and commonplaces. The truth is that
anyone familiar with these Hokkien varieties and their subcultures would agree
with this.
Fourthly, subcultures coexist under a larger culture, which do not all have
to have the same extent of cultural prominence. SCH and its subculture have as-
sumed a prominent and influential place in Singapore because, among the rea-
sons discussed earlier, this dialect happens to have the representation of the
most number of speakers of any Chinese dialect compared with those of any
other dialect (except Mandarin) – something which is connected with the fact
that the predecessors of many ethnic Chinese Singaporeans came from Fujian
province in China. But knowing this does not make other Chinese dialects and
the subcultures that they stand for any less important than SCH in Singapore,
linguistically or culturally speaking.
Fifthly and finally, subcultures and their dominant culture do not have to
be mutually exclusive but should, in fact, be seen as mutually complementary.
SCH subculture and its larger, Singapore Chinese culture very much constitute
part of the coherent picture of a local language and culture that characterises at
least a significant proportion of the ethnic Chinese population in Singapore.
 465

Why is the issue of subculture so important to the current discussion? In

the case of SCH, at least, it appears that a strong identification with the subcul-
ture it embodies by a great many ethnic Chinese Singaporeans is probably the
one single most important factor and reason why this language/dialect remains
relatively widely-spoken and well-preserved. An excellent example is local stage
shows such as the getai (lit. ‘song theatre’), which is traditionally staged during
the seventh lunar month. Popular selections of songs for both the performers
and the audiences alike tend to be in SCH. Another example is the hugely suc-
cessful cultural and entertainment business of Taiwanese TV dramas and shows,
popular songs etc. witnessed in Singapore. Entertainment media in Taiwan Hok-
kien have generally tended to go down well in Singapore at least by its SCH-
speaking population. The reason is because SCH and Taiwan Hokkien reflect
closely related Hokkien subcultures (despite their other differences).13 In fact, it
is fascinating that Taiwanese TV dramas in particular have remained phenome-
nally popular in Singapore even though their original Taiwan Hokkien voices
have been dubbed over with Mandarin in broadcast. These kinds of examples are
testament to the powerful impact that a subculture can have in terms of keeping
alive a non-dominant variety and the culture it encapsulates.

5. Lexico-semantic analysis and the role it plays in analysing

(sub)culture

There is currently a discernible shortfall in research on SCH and the sub-

culture it represents, particularly the scholarly documentation of the SCH lexi-
con as well as semantic analyses of at least parts of this lexicon (with the only
exceptions being the lexico-semantic studies of Tien 2009 and Tien forthcoming).
A detailed, academic account of the SCH lexicon is called for since, after all, it is
an aspect of the linguistic features of SCH which makes it a unique lan-
guage/dialect, as pointed out in earlier discussions of this chapter. And if it can
be generalised that meanings encapsulated by words are language-specific, cul-
tural concepts, embedded in the culture itself, then a close scrutiny of such
meanings in the way of semantic analyses should give us a better glimpse of at
least an aspect of the culture in question. Following this premise, it makes sense
for semantic analyses, too, to be conducted on the meanings of the SCH lexicon
in the hope that the subculture which SCH reflects might be better understood.

13
See Chua (2000) for related discussions.
 466

The question, however, is what linguistic tool such semantic analyses might be
carried out with.
The analytical method adopted in this chapter is a radically semantic ap-
proach known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM hereafter) e.g. God-
dard 2010, Goddard & Wierzbicka 2002; Wierzbicka 1996 etc. There is currently a
set of 64 or so semantically irreducible “primes” in the NSM which allow us to
breakdown the meanings of culturally complex words into configurations of se-
mantic primes, thus making it possible to elucidate these words. The inventory
of NSM primes as it stands now is as follows (after Goddard 2010):
Substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE (PERSON), SOMETHING (THING), PEO-
PLE, BODY
Determiners: THIS, THE SAME, OTHER
Quantifiers: SOME, ONE, TWO, MANY (MUCH), LITTLE (FEW), ALL
Mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
Location, existence, SBE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, HAVE, BE (SOME-
possession, specifi- ONE/SOMETHING)
cation:
Speech: SAY, WORD, TRUE
Actions, events, DO, HAPPEN, MOVE
movements:
Life and death: LIVE, DIE
Attributes: GOOD, BAD, BIG, SMALL
Time: WHEN, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME,
NOW, MOMENT
Space: WHERE (PLACE), UNDER, ABOVE, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, IN-
SIDE, HERE, TOUCH (CONTACT)
Partonomy, taxo- PART (OF), KIND (OF)
nomy:
Similarity: LIKE (HOW, AS)
Logical concepts: NOT, CAN, VERY, MAYBE, IF, BECAUSE
As it is simply beyond the scope and ability of this study to document each
and every one of the SCH words and their meanings, I have chosen to focus on
the example of si beh, first mentioned in section 3, as a specific case study.
 467

6. Semantic analysis of si beh in Singapore Chinese Hokkien: a case

study
Si beh (also spelt as si peh, see peh or see bay) is an exemplary case of a
unique SCH word because there is no exact lexical and/or semantic equivalent of
it in either Mandarin or other varieties of Hokkien (except possibly Malaysia
Hokkien). In SCH and, as an intensifying adjective modifier, si beh typically refers
to the uncompromising extremity of a situation or condition e.g. a student com-
plaining about the contents of a course being si beh cheem ‘exceedingly deep and
hard to understand).14 A semantic analysis of si beh in SCH (si beh1) using the NSM
has generated, tentatively, the following explication:15
Si beh1 =
1. someone (X) thinks that something is like this, not like another way
2. this person (X) thinks that what s/he (X) thinks is true
3. thinking about this any other way would be like thinking about dying/death
4. thinking about this being untrue would be like thinking about dying/death
5. no-one wants to die
6. it is very bad to be thinking about death
7. this person (X) says something about death, because s/he (X) doesn’t want
anyone (Y) to think about this thing like any other way
8. this person (X) says something about death, because this person doesn’t want
anyone to think about what s/he (X) says as being untrue
Components 1, 2, 7 and 8 all elucidate the idea that something referred to
as si beh1 is just the way it is – typically the (undesirable) quality of something or
even someone, or the austere or uncompromising condition of an event or situa-
tion – from the speaker’s perspective (person X). The orientation towards the no-
tion of dying or death (following the NSM prime, DIE) marks the extremity or se-
verity of a certain quality or condition.
In contrast, for instance in Taiwan Hokkien, si beh (si beh2) is used instead
as an intensifying adverb which refers to an uncompromisable, even incompre-
hensible, action of a person (in this sense, si beh2 may be slightly similar in mean-
ing with someone described as a die hard in English). The action of an unruly
child who just would not stop fidgeting may be described as si beh jiam ‘to refuse
to stop fidgeting even if s/he were to die’ (jiam is a Hokkien word for ‘to fidget’).

14
Cheem is another SCH word meaning ‘too profound and hard to understand’.
15
The first letter of the first word at the beginning of each sentence has been deliber-
ately left as a small letter as this is the standard NSM practice in semantic analyses.
 468

If we compare the earlier NSM analysis for si beh1 in SCH with one below for si
beh2 in Taiwan Hokkien, the semantic differences are at once remarkably clear:
Si beh2 =
1. this person thinks that s/he has to do something this way (X), not any other
way (Y)
2. other people think that doing something this way (X) would be like thinking
about dying/death
3. no-one wants to die
4. it is very bad to be thinking about death
5. this person does not think in the same way as other people
6. when this person thinks that s/he has to do something this way (X), s/he does
not think that maybe s/he can die because of this
A striking aspect of the meaning of si beh2 is that the person’s action makes
him/her seem stubbornly foolhardy and ignorance of the potential consequences
(component 1). Other people may be at a loss as to what someone might be think-
ing, due to his/her reckless action (component 5). People’s objection against this
kind of action is so intense (component 6) and the level of undesirability of this
kind of action is so pronounced (component 2), analogy with dying/death is used
in order to capture and to accentuate what to them seem like extremely unten-
able action or behaviour (components 2, 3, 4 and 6).
So what semantic and cultural observation can one make here? Despite the
overall differences between si beh1 and si beh2, what both cultural “vignettes” –
the semantic analyses – indicate is that the idea of dying or death is a useful
analogy to use in both Hokkien subcultures in highlighting the extremity of
something or someone’s action. Furthermore, these analyses implicitly hint at a
general disapproval in both Hokkien subcultures of anything which seems exces-
sive or extreme. This finding fits in well with the traditional philosophy of the
larger, “Chinese” culture:16 it echoes the ancient philosophical doctrine of the
“golden mean” (zhong yong zhi dao), roughly meaning that all things should be
taken in moderation and anything too conspicuously over the top is not praise-
worthy.
One point to note is that si beh1 and si beh2 are not necessarily mutually ex-
clusive. While it is correct to say that the uses and meaning of si beh1 is odd and
unacceptable in, say, Taiwan Hokkien, occasionally si beh2 may be found used in

16
By this I mean (in this particular instance) the larger culture shared by all ethnically
Chinese in the world who speak a Chinese language, be it dominant or not, dialect or
not.
 469

SCH. But then there is nothing surprising about this since, after all, both are va-
rieties of Hokkien.

7. Summary
SCH is as valid as any language as an area of research, for it is a prominent
variety spoken in Singapore – even if it is a non-official, non-dominant language.
The study of Hokkien, in fact, has become a burgeoning field of academic enquiry
especially in Taiwan where the majority of the population speak its own variety
of Hokkien as a non-dominant language, with efforts at codifying and document-
ing it.
As a pluricentric language, Hokkien varieties have assumed different lin-
guistic and sociolinguistic characteristics depending on where a given Hokkien
variety is in existence and in use. Sociolinguistically speaking, SCH appears in a
diglossic, even poly/multiglossic, situation, with not only Mandarin and other
Chinese dialects but also other languages that are spoken in Singapore, in par-
ticular English. However, given extensive code-switching between languages and
dialects, the boundaries between different languages/dialects in use are not al-
ways easily drawn. Irrespective of what might be said about this sociolinguistic
situation, it is undeniable that SCH is also an active language in code-switching.
Linguistically speaking, the one outstanding feature which sets SCH apart from
other Hokkien varieties is its lexicon (though SCH has other features characteris-
tic to this variety, such as morphosyntactical and phonological features). It is
compelling that SCH lexicon has influenced the lexicons of other languages and
Chinese dialects in Singapore, just as it is equally fascinating that reverse lexical
influence from other languages and dialects over SCH has also been evident
(though to a lesser extent). Presumably, this is the result of close contact be-
tween languages and Chinese dialects on this small island nation.
It is fair to say that there remains a cultural affinity with the subculture
that is encapsulated and represented by SCH, and this may well be the main rea-
son for the successful maintenance of SCH itself (even if no deliberate effort to
maintain or preserve SCH has been in place). Even though the general attitude
towards SCH and its subculture varies from individual to individual, the fact that
SCH continues to be in use at least in many local, traditional and cultural prac-
tices (e.g. the getai, as mentioned earlier) is a positive indication that this lan-
guage and culture still enjoys sufficient “popularity” by many Singaporeans. Fi-
nally, the fact that cultural exports from Taiwan have done phenomenally well in
Singapore in the form of its entertainment media in Taiwan Hokkien, confirms
 470

the point that there is widespread acceptance for not only the SCH subculture
but its “sister” Hokkien subcultures.
Our study of a selected SCH word in the way of NSM analyses offers a case
in point as to how the meaning of the SCH lexicon can be so dissimilar with that
of another Hokkien variety, despite there being certain semantic and cultural
overlaps. An even closer scrutiny of the meanings uncovers, interestingly, a cul-
tural consistency with the larger, “Chinese” culture, including certain traditional
ethnophilosophies and ideas. This suggests that, as previously explained in sec-
tion 4, a subculture and its dominant culture do not have to be mutually exclu-
sive but should actually be mutually complementary. Putting this from the Sin-
gapore perspective, this implies that SCH lexicon reflects a subculture that is
rooted in the larger, Chinese culture yet at the same time, uniquely and indige-
nously Singaporean.
In conclusion, I would urge more future research be conducted in SCH and
its subculture, given the obvious insufficiency in this area of academic enquiry,
particularly with respect to its lexicon and the semantics encapsulated in the
lexicon.

8. References

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ages. Different Norms in Different Countries, edited by Michael Clyne, Ber-
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Cheng, Tee Thong(2000): Speak mandarin campaign and the cultural identity of
Singaporean Chinese (Jiang hua yu yun dong yu xin jia po hua ren de wen
hua ren tong). Department of Chinese Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social
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partment of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University.
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pore Hokkien. Unpublished dissertation, Department of English Language
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Chua, Beng Huat (2000): Taiwan's present/Singapore's past mediated by Hokkien

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Chua, Chee Lay (2003): The emergence of Singapore Mandarin: a case study of
language contact. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-
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A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English online
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2011.
Goddard, Cliff (2010): NSM Semantics in brief
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Goddard, Cliff / Wierzbicka, Anna (eds) (2002): Meaning and Universal Grammar:
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 472

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ce he she qun yu yan: Xin jia po fu jian she qun she hui yu yan xue yan jiu).
Zhong Hua Books, Bejing, China.
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discourse analysis (Cong tu shi li lun kan xin jia po hua ren de zheng ti si
wei fang shi), unpublished Honours dissertation, Department of Chinese
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Jidda Hassan JUMMA’A

(University Maiduguri, Nigeria)
jidda2004@yahoo.com

Nigerian English: Linguistic, Sociolinguistic and Con-

versational Characteristics in the Framework of
dominance and non-dominance

Abstract

In multilingual nations, languages are classified into majority or minor-

ity languages based on their area of coverage. The assumption is that,
the language of the majority is likely to impose its linguistic norms on
the language of the minority, which by virtue of its status remains at the
receiving end. In a code-switching data-based study involving the Eng-
lish language (de facto official language in Nigeria) which is widely spo-
ken across the country and Nigerian Arabic (Shuwa), a minority lan-
guage with a highly restricted area of coverage which both interacted at
the phonological level showed the reverse of this assumption. The study
revealed code-switching English elements in the speech of Nigerian Ara-
bic (Shuwa) speakers (segmental or supra-segmental). The English seg-
mental features are copied from English into the code switching struc-
ture while others are either used and maintained as different or pro-
duced as hybrid forms. At the supra-segmental level the study shows a
move towards maintaining English norms sometimes and violating it at
others.

1. Introduction
Multilingual or bilingual communities process their innate properties (lan-
guage) through different sociolinguistic means to achieve certain desired com-
munication goals (Hudson 1996). It is because of these desired objectives that
contact between them follows different patterns that could be defined by the
language, person or group of persons, and setting or situation. Language there-
fore, may be based on status classified into minority, majority or that of immi-
grants which will be socially challenged to fit into the different languages used,
the result of which may have far-reaching implications for all the interacting
 474

languages. The speakers, who were the ultimate users of these languages, may in
the process become bilingual or multilingual depending on their mobility or sta-
bility in the society, a situation which will, in the long-run, lead to language
maintenance and language shift.
It has been observed that while majority languages tend to impose their
linguistic norms on minority languages at higher linguistic levels, minority lan-
guages do the same at lower levels. That is to say lexical items borrowed from
majority languages will, in most cases, maintain their morphological and syntac-
tic categories. The minority language which is the recipient will however re-
shape the phonological structure of the borrowed lexical item. This re-shaping is
not something negligible may in the long term affect the so-called majority lan-
guage.
This study will look at this phenomenon from the view point of code
switching where Nigerian Arabic (Shuwa) a minority language, interacts with
English, the de-facto official language (with its different forms), in all spheres of
human endeavor, coupled with its prestigious outlook as the language of the
enlightened elite. The study will look at the borrowed lexical items from English
into Nigerian Arabic (Shuwa) to see how they were phonologically handled by
the speakers of this language and what happened to them considering the inter-
action between segmental and supra-segmental features analysis.
Studying language in society will require the understanding of who speaks
what, when, where and how. These questions require also the understanding of
the language or variety, person identity, social relation in the society and the
formal structure of the language or variety he/she uses. In answering these ques-
tions the issue of variety appears to be the most fundamental in analytic terms,
this emanates from the differences existing between langue and parole in com-
petence and performance and between diachronic and synchronic language
study (Bell, 1976: 20-1, Chambers, 1995: 25 and Wardhaugh, 2007: 7).
In a bilingual or multilingual set up, the maintenance of the group L1 may
lead to the disappearance of L2, that is to say, non-maintenance of L1 may lead to
the shift of L2. The consequences of bilingualism can be observed through the
feature of code-switching, borrowing and inference; it is often the practice of bi-
lingual or multilingual communities across the world.
However, Nigeria as a multilingual society with English as the official lan-
guage of the State is often challenged with the problems of language choice
where different ethnic group languages need to interact with English, along with
each other, to achieve certain communicational goals. Interaction between
 475

members of different linguistic groups who have attained different educational

levels may sometimes resort to code-switching in order to attain certain desired
communicational goals (Akindele and Adegbite, 1999: 34).

2. The Linguistic compositions of Nigeria

The total numbers of languages spoken in Nigerian are 521; this is up till
now not very well clear as whether the reference made is to language or dialects.
However four out of these languages three indigenous and exogenous were rec-
ognized national languages of different status which include: English, Hausa, Igbo
and Yoruba. While 6 are recognized regional languages which include: Efik, Edo,
Idoma, Fulani, Ijawu and Kanuri . Others with different population figures are
considered minorities and this include:Bura, Marghi, Waha and Shuwa in Borno
State of Nigeria, though they are all not represented in the map but only Kanuri
is represented on the map below:

Graphics (1): Languages of Nigeria

 476

3. Code-switching
Code-switching is defined as the juxtaposition within the same speech or
exchange of passages of speech, belonging to two different grammatical systems
or subsystems. It also means a switch between two different linguistic systems,
varieties or style. A switch between the Standard variety and its dialect is usually
described as code-switching, code fluctuation, or style shifting (Anna, 1995: 48-9).
In an effort to give a classificatory schema to the inserted elements, schol-
ars like Haugen (1950), Poplack et. al. (1988) and Myers Scotton (1993) among
others have used the terms borrowing, nonce borrowing and code-switching.
Code-switched or borrowed elements can sometimes be free from the linguistic
bondages of their recipient languages. It was because of this that scholars like
Thomason (2001) questioned the assumption of a generalised pattern of borrow-
ing to certain linguistic features owing to the several counter examples found by
researchers. The presence of recipient language morphology and phonetic forms
are the most frequently invoked indices of integration. When a donor language
item does not display these indices, failure of integration is often assumed and
the item is considered a code-switch, albeit one which often appears to consti-
tute an exception to borrowing and or code-switching constraints (Poplack and
Meecham 1998: 127-38).

4. Nigerian English an overview

In discussing variations in Nigerian English, Adegbite and Akindele (1999)
have identified certain phonological items that tend to show variation in the
speech of Nigerian speakers of English, these comprise sounds, stress syllables
and intonation. For example there is distinction between short and long vowels
/o:/ →[o] and /i:/→[i]. Vowels are also reduced from their usual qualities espe-
cially in the case of the following vowels set /e/→[ei], /o/→[u] and /ə/→[æ],
/u/→[u:]. Consonants are on the other hand realized differently as in the follow-
ing where voiceless inter-dental fricative /θ/ is changed to [s] or [t], while the
voiced inter-dental fricative /δ/ appears as [d] or [z]. The voiced bilabial fricative
and the voiceless stop /v/and /p/ respectively are realized as [f], the alveo-
palatal fricative /ʃ / as [s].
Syllable structure change is a case where words with consonant clusters
such as (CCVC) or (CCCV) are re-syllabified by breaking the consonant cluster
into smaller unit. Examples are words such as “bread”, /brɛd/ > [bured] “security”
/skuriti/ > [sikuriti] and “school” /skul/ > [suku:l].
 477

Stress in Nigerian English appears to be influenced by the tone syllable in

many Nigerian languages and for that reason many English words may be as-
signed stress incorrectly, irrespective of their class or category.
The following English words may be stressed differently: “madam”
[ma´dam], “recognize” [rekog´niz], “import” [im´port] and “record” [re´kord]. For
intonation however since most Nigerian languages are syllable-timed instead of
stress–timed, rhyming characteristics of syllable time became the identifying
feature of Nigerian English.
The concept of Nigerian English in Jowit (1991) terms is popular Nigerian
English. The author identified different regional blocks with a particular form of
Nigerian English. There is Yoruba English together with some Nupoid and Edoid
groups, Igbo English and Hausa English etc.
Each larger language group has its particular form of English. Such that,
one form of English is popular in one region of the country and others in other
regions. This is a stringent feature of Nigerian English which means the existence
of many varieties of English in Nigeria. To discuss varieties of English in Nigeria
there is the need to know how it operates with regard to consonants and vowels.
Jowitt (1991) established the existing variation between short and long
vowels where Igbo and Yoruba shorten long vowels and Hausa use both short
and long ones as in the following vowel examples [i:]and [i], [e:] and [e]. The car-
dinal vowels [e] and [ε] are phonemes in Hausa English, free variants in Yoruba
English and Allophones in Igbo.
However, English vowels that are not found in Nigerian mother tongues
vocalic systems are realized in several forms, these are vowels such as /æ/, /ʌ/,
/ɑ/, /o:/, /ʊ/ and /ǝ/. For the diphthongs however the general observation is
that the second element of the vowel is made longer while the first element is
shorter in contradiction to the Received Pronunciation (RP) of English which
lengthens the first element and shortens the second. This implies that vowels in
the popular Nigerian English identified by Jowitt are copied if they are similar to
the speakers’ vocalic system; the dissimilar ones realization is scarcely different
from the RP as in the case of shortening or lengthening.
With regard to English consonant realization in popular Nigerian English,
consonants can be classified into three categories:
1. Consonants which do not exist in all mother tongue speakers’ sound systems
yet they pose difficulty in pronunciation to some Nigerian English speakers
and no difficulty to others. For Example the voiceless bilabial stop /p/ and
voiced fricative /v/ do not exist in the sound systems of the major Nigerian
 478

Languages, yet they are pronounced perfectly by Igbo and Yoruba speakers
and imperfectly by Hausa speakers.
2. Consonants which exist in some languages and do not exist in others like /ʃ/,
/l/, /r/ and /t/. For example /ʃ/ is difficult to pronounce for some Yoruba
speakers but easy for others, /l/ and /r/ are easy to pronounce but for Tiv
speakers they are realized as free variants. The /t/ sound on the other hand
is not difficult to pronounce by all speakers but in certain linguistic envi-
ronments it will appear voiced by Igbo speakers.
3. Consonants which do not exist in Nigerian mother tongue speakers but
which are realized in different forms. Examples of which are /ɵ/and /ð/
which were variably realized by mother tongue speakers like [ɵ], [t], [s] for
the inter-dental voiceless fricative /ɵ/ and [ð], [d], [z] or [t] for the voiced
fricative /ð/.
The above discussion gives a general overview of the English in Nigeria,
however a detailed data based analysis of individual Nigerian languages may
bring out some of the yet undiscovered issues of variation in Nigerian English. In
this study we are exploring another case of variation of English in Nigeria as it
relates to the use of English by Shuwa Arabs in Maiduguri, using as our base the
popular approach of Code-switching conversations.

5. The Shuwa Arab community in Maiduguri

Historically, Nigerian Arabs (Shuwa) are nomads who were socio-culturally
described as Baggara (Braukamper 1990 and 1993). Population sources vary in
their estimates about the Nigerian Arab (Shuwa) population. Barth (1865) gave an
estimated figure of 200.000-250.000, while the 1963 census of Nigeria, showed a
figure of 155.514. The question as to how reliable these figures are remain unac-
counted for, since some Nigerian Arabs live in the remote areas of the state
where there are first of all few access roads , and secondly their movement is not
restricted by international boundaries (Owens 1998). The population figure for
Maiduguri was presented in an urban planning survey estimate, conducted in
1973 and 1976, (Max Lock group) where Shuwa Arabs were found to be the third
largest group after Kanuri and Hausa with a percentage of 10%.
 479

6. Data Analysis of Code switching elements

5.1. The Corpus
The linguistic corpus used in this research was collected in Maiduguri
through interviews and group discussion of native Shuwa Arabic speakers whom
all have a certain level of education. We had eight hours recording of interviews
and group discussions involving at least three persons per tape or session. The
total eight hours of three persons per hour per session comprised 24 partici-
pants. Their age range ranged between 20 and 40 comprising 20 males and 4 fe-
males. We therefore scheduled interviews differently for each group i.e.
males/females of the same age are interviewed together, to allow each enough
time and space to contribute to data. The data recorded was transcribed with
narrow phonetic transcriptions where segmental and supra-segmental sounds
are represented in the transcription of the text. The transcribed data was put
into a computer word program that was later put into access, coded and classi-
fied according to the requirement of the researcher who used a classificatory
schema in order to identify the inserted element used in a given language. The
classified text is made up of switching in five languages i.e. Shuwa, Hausa,
Kanuri, English and Standard Arabic. The relevant portion in the text to the re-
searcher is the occurrence of a lexical item from English into any one of the four
languages (Shuwa, Hausa, Standard Arabic and Kanuri) at the intra-sentential
code switching. The items in boldface are English insertions while the ones be-
side them comprise Shuwa, Hausa and Standard Arabic used in the above con-
stituents for the final analysis. The items number in the code switching text
comprises 2239 lexical items, inserted into different language matrices. Our lin-
guistic analyses to these items take cognisance of the phonological structure of
these inserted lexical items:
(3) ween dugut lamba seven΄teen
where now number seventeen
Where is that number seventeen
(4) paasenali ban san sauaran ba
not know others not
I personally knew this and not any other-
(5) aka΄demik muʃkila “
academic” problem

At the phonological level of analysis, we used English segment that show

internal variation in language contact situation. In English the variable segments
 480

are the bilabial stops, nasals, inter-dental fricative, alveolar stop, palatal fricative
and velar nasal as well as vowels.

5.2. Classification of the switched materials

The inserted lexical items total, from all the languages involved in the
code-switching discourse text are 2,239. Out of these items, 1,527 (68.2%) are em-
bedded English lexical items used in a matrix language or in an embed-
ded/matrix language island.
Matrix language Embedded language Frequency
Shuwa Arabic English 1057
Hausa English 463
Standard Arabic English 6
Kanuri English 1
Table (1): embedded items in a matrix language

5.3. Phonological analysis of the sound segments

In studying the phonology of code switching data involving a number of
discourse languages, we consider it pertinent to look at the behaviour of the in-
serted lexical items segment, where we considered consonants and vowels of
English.

5.3.1. English Segments

In the English segmental analysis, we looked initially at consonants where
the data show internal variation between and within consonants. The variations
in consonants are restricted to some group of stops, nasals, fricatives and affri-
cates. To make this statement more clear, we provided a chart in which the
group of consonants showing variations is indicated:

bilabial Labio- Inter- Alveolar palatal velar

dental dental
Stop P, b d
Nasal m n ŋ
Frica- fv θδ Sz
tives
Glide
Liquid
Affri- j
cates

Table (2) English consonants showing variation in CS

 481

The data shows only examples with complex variation i.e. sound having
more than one allophonic representation in the code-switching conversation.
The examples will be shown as code-switching realized form to the left and Stan-
dard English form to the right.

CS SE CS SE

Fricatives Stops

approve [apruuf] [aprƲ:v] voucher [bawča] [vautʃа]

Government [gafmen] [gʌvəmənt] cup [koob] [kΛp]

south [saawus] [səƲθ ] pailot [faailot] [pailət]

north [noot]/[nooz] [no:θ] problem [froblum] [prɒbləm]

northern [noozan] [no:δan] passenger [faasinja] [pæsinʤa]

southern [sawzan] [səƲδən]

genderm [zandaaram] [žɒnda:m]

Individual [indivijuwal] [indivižuƏl]

provincial [prooviǮnali] [proviǮənali].

Table (2): English consonants showing variation in CS

To explain this variation of English sound in Shuwa Arab conversation we

have provided two tables to show the statistic of such sounds in single word in-
sertion and longer or compound stretches in the text.

English sounds and variants’ Frequency in the CS

sound Θ Fre- δ Fre- f Fre- v Fre- p Fre-
quency quency quency quency quency
θ 2 δ 1 v 1 b 4 f 7
t 6 z 4 f 3
S 2 d 1 ø 4 b 2
z 1 t 1
ø 1

Table (3.a): Frequency of English sound Variants’

in single word insertions in CS
 482

English sounds and variants’ frequency in the CS

sound Θ Fre- δ Fre- f Fre- v Fre- p Fre-

quency quency quency quency quency
Variants θ 4 δ 3 v 5 f 4 f 1
t 3 z 4 ø 1 b 1
S 4 d 2
ø 1

Table (3.b): Frequency of English sounds Variants’

in compound or clause insertions in CS

5.3.2. English vowels use in CS

The general overview of vowels in the CS data both long and short, show
inconsistency in realization, these inconsistencies relate to the speakers who
tend to collapse several normative vowel forms in one form of realizations in the
text as in the table below. It shows that a CS single realized form has several
forms on the opposite side, except the long high front vowel that has same form
in both CS and in normative English.

CS corpus Normative CS corpus reali- Normative

realization equivalent zation equivalent
a, ǝ æ, a aa ai, æ, ʌ, ɜ:
e a, e ee ei, e
u u, u:, uw uu u:, Ʋ:
o O, ʌ oo ɑ, o:, ǝu, ʌ, ǝ
i i:, i, a ii i:
Table (4): English vowels realization in CS corpus
and their normative equivalents

7. Lexico-semantic analysis and the role it plays in analysing

(sub)culture
6.1. Suprasgmental analyses
In the previous section, we analyzed sound segments of English as they
were realized in the speech of native Shuwa Arabs. The variation between sound
segments realized by native Shuwa speakers who inserted lexical items from
English was highlighted. In this section we will analyze supra-segmental sounds
in English. English is a stress language, and stress is a syllable-based phenome-
non, where a given stress is assigned to a given syllable lexically. It is for pur-
 483

poses of clarity that we classified switched items into their different set of sylla-
bles, where di- and polysyllabic words were analyzed each in turn. However,
monosyllabic items were not considered here for analysis due to their single syl-
lable nature, which shows no variation in both native and non-native forms of
articulation. The items comprised 309 types, i.e. items that occurred only once in
the text of both di- and polysyllabic words from English. The English types stand
at 223. The items realized with more than one token from English stand at 974
tokens.

6.2. English disyllabic word stress

The inserted lexical elements of disyllabic nature used in the code-
switching text, stands at 197 types. Out of these 197 types, 87 of them are single
word occurrences. The remaining 110 are types that occur with 392 tokens that
range between 2-10 tokens per type. The variable types of disyllabic word tend to
shift stress across word tokens or forms as in the examples below:

CS SE
[΄kaaset] [kə΄set] cassette
[kaa΄set] Campaign
[kaam΄peen] [kæm΄pein ]
[΄kaampen]

6.3. English polysyllabic words stress

The inserted English polysyllabic items in the code switching text stand at
217 total types. Out of the total types 131 occur as single words, while 86 types
occur in 606 tokens that range between 2-10 tokens per type. The variable stress
forms refer to the items reported in the text with more than one token or forms
of stress e.g.:

CS SE

[iko΄nomik] [΄iknomik] economic

[i΄konomik] [ekƏ΄nɑmiks] economic

[΄noomaadik] / [noo΄maadik] [΄nƏumædik] nomadic

[΄rikodin] / [rə΄kodin] [ri΄ko:diŋ] recording

[΄moobaayil] / [mo΄baayil] [΄mƏʊbƏl] mobile

[komi΄ti] [΄kʌmiti] committee

 484

6.4. Compound word stress

(1) (2) (3)

form three [fomθ΄ri] first half [΄feeshaf] academic [aka΄demik-

problem p΄roblam]

handball [ham΄bol] birthday [΄baaθdee] nomadic [noo΄maadi

school k-sk΄uul]

form one [fom΄waan] form master [΄fommasta] red card [΄red΄kaad]

The above two types of compound in set (1), (2) and (3) appeared to be the
CS use and is considered as a one word compound, where the stress falls on one
of the two elements, either the first or second elements of the compound. For
example the items [ham΄bol] and [΄baaθdee] are stressed the same as the norma-
tive English, though this is something hard to establish going by the claim of in-
herent variability in compounds.
However if we consider the other compounds with stress on both ele-
ments, it will appear from a glance that they were representing two words ex-
pressing a concept in its structure. The compound set (1), (2) and (3) shown in
this data therefore does not show a common stress pattern in English CS com-
pound.
This is because it is not certain from the use of compounds whether a non-
native speaker is conscious of the fact that he is using an English compound in
exactly the same way a native speaker does. Again within native and the non-
native English speakers, the variation in stress assignment, is not due to the indi-
vidual use of the word. Rather inherent variability in the compound words plays
a pivotal role as discussed earlier above.

8. Conclusion
On the phonology of English sounds used in CS, it was found that stops,
nasals, fricatives and affricates co-vary with their Nigerian Arabic counterpart.
The variation in the spoken English of Shuwa Arabs imply that Nigerian Arabic
sounds which are inexistent in English sound systems are replaced with the ones
sharing common features in the two interacting languages.
English vowels in CS are distinct from consonants due to their complex re-
alization to both native and non-native speakers.
What is common to the English vowels realization is that: the high front
vowel both short and long realization by Shuwa speakers conform to the norma-
 485

tive English use, while mid back long or short rounded or un-rounded are real-
ized un rounded. Diphthongs are irrespective of their defining parameters are
realized long.
What is striking about the native Shuwa Arabs same realization of the Eng-
lish three basic vowels, is that the high front and the mid back are nearly similar
to the basic Arabic vowels [i], [u] or [o] described above. Diphthongs are tenser
and longer than their short counterparts, and were thus found used long in the
code-switching text. This finding complements in part Jowitt (1991:72-81) on
English vowels realizations in the speech of popular Nigerian English identified
to Nigerian speakers of English who tend to identify English vowels with those of
mother tongue. Similarly Owens (2000: 287) found that English system of short
vowels and diphthongs are adapted to Nigerian Arabic five vowels system with
contrastive length.
At the supra-segmental level analysis of the inserted lexical items, it was
found that both disyllabic and polysyllabic English words are variably assigned
stress with some tokens used conforming and others not conforming to the Eng-
lish norm. These were attributed to an idiosyncrasy or a locally influenced Eng-
lish norm. This influence may have come to the native Nigerian Arabic speakers
via other Nigerian language speakers with whom they have closer linguistic con-
tact/cultural ties.
These results as it were, suggest that the stress of inserted lexical English
items can not be used quantitatively to establish linguistic integration pattern in
code switching. The status of English lexical items’ different stress forms, can be
explained by the conformity to the English normative stress whether or not
segment ally modified, while the same items whose stress did not conform to the
English normative stress be their segments modified or unmodified are simple
variants attributable to some sociological factors such as idiosyncrasy or lack of
competence in the language by the speaker, something we did not investigate,
due to the items limited number in the text. One example particularly interesting
in explaining stress variation is the occurrence of the word “committee” with sev-
eral tokens stressed all on the last syllable in defiance to the normative stress on
the first syllable.
The stress in the English lexical insertion types in CS remains either Eng-
lish normative or social variants, even though they were used in a different lan-
guage matrix. It is therefore possible to assume that, stress may or may not be a
reliable index in determining a pattern in lexical form variation in code switch-
ing. This finding complements in part Owens (2000:288-9) study on loan words
 486

that as far as his data goes, English and French stress are carried intact into Nige-
rian Arabic. The variable stress realized items in CS data as different from Owens,
may suggest an innovation or a pattern only used in code switching conversa-
tions
This finding also confirms what Muhr (2005) described as the elite of an
NDV strong tendency to adapt to the norms of the DV and avoid their own norms
as they are either dialectally and socio-lectally marked or considered to be a po-
tential obstacle for an envisaged career in the dominating nations.

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Kelen Ernesta FONYUY

(Universität Bayreuth, Germany)
efkelen@yahoo.com

Attitudes toward less Dominant Accents

of Cameroon English

Abstract
Within a multilingual and multi-ethnic setting variation in Cameroon
English (CamE) pronunciation is undeniable. The variation fluctuates be-
tween ethnic accents of CamE, mainstream CamE, and CamE with a for-
eign tinge, specifically British English Received Pronunciation (RP) or
General American English (GenAm). One intriguing aspect observed in
this variation is Cameroonians’ attitudes toward these varieties. The aim
of this paper therefore is to describe the differing attitudes which Cam-
eroonians exhibit toward the less dominant varieties of CamE pronun-
ciation, henceforth, CamE ethnolects and CamE with RP nuances (Cam-
BrE). Using existing empirical data (Fonyuy 2003, Fonyuy forthcoming,
Ngefac, 2010, etc.), it could be postulated that social attitudes such as
foreign and ethnic profiling are directly linked to phonetic features. This
correlation of accents to stereotypes is so strong that when they dissoci-
ate then something is unusual, yet there is always a disconnection, but
[… the discontinuities that do occur, however often reflect geographical
and social boundaries…” (Romaine 2000: 2). While attitudes conflict the
less dominant accents on their part are systematically establishing pho-
nologies of their own, a linguistic phenomenon which cannot be discon-
nected from the contemporary diversified linguistic ecology.

1. Introduction
In 2005, the National Population Census of Cameroon estimated 19,406,100
million people for the year 2010. Cameroon has 279 indigenous languages and
over 200 ethnic groups (see SIL 2003); two exogenous languages: English and
French; Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE); and Camfranglais. Against such a multi-
lingual and multi-ethnic linguistic landscape, bi/multi (lingualism) is inevitable
for most Cameroonians and the interference effect inescapable. These subse-
quently lead to variation in CamE pronunciation and the ethnic allegiances and
 492

varying attitudinal dispositions toward these accents remain entrenched. Atti-

tudes towards accents of English go beyond Cameroon. For instance, “Anna,
David and Glenys, from Treorchy, are proud of their south Wales valleys' accents
but feel the media looks down on people who speak that way”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/wil/.
Attitudes toward less dominant varieties may be directed to the Black
Country variety in the UK, or in the US the 'hill-billy' accent of southern states,
but Cameroon it is the ethnolects and CamE with native English influence. Simo
Bobda (1993:442) for example, observes that “It seems unrealistic to aim at a sin-
gle model of English pronunciation in Cameroon. The background, the alle-
giances, the taste, the attitudes of the various speakers do not lend themselves to
such a reconciliation.” In Fonyuy (2003) empirical evidence proves that less eth-
nic English (EnE) features occur along the lectal continuum, and in the speak-
ers’attempts to diverge from an EnE accent or converge to a native English ac-
cent, some speakers end up in hypercorrect pronunciation. Ngefac (2010) de-
scribes the continuum in CamE pronunciation, investigates attitudes toward the
different varieties that make up the continuum, and labels EnE features as “tribal
uneducated features” (ibid: 5). Using the bi-polar adjective scale, 67% of the in-
formants think “basilectal tribal English pronunciation should be seriously dis-
couraged” (ibid: 6).
What is of interest here is that both findings highlight the fact that atti-
tudes toward CamE ethnolects are predominantly negative. French speaking
Cameroonians on their part learn English as a second official language. Therefore
they formerly learn English and use it in very formal contexts. This has caused
them to have some inbuilt superiority about their variety of English, and an infe-
rior one about that of the English speaking Cameroonians (see Anchimbe 2007).
Table (1) highlights the variation or heterogeneity in CamE pronunciation:
It is interesting to realise that EnE features, and those of RP approximated
do not only become linguistic indicators that locate a speakers’ regionality, or
socio-educational background but they also form linguistic cues that trigger
negative, positive, or neutral reactions in listeners and speakers of CamE eth-
nolects and CamE with an RP tinge.
This has resulted to the quite often insinuatingly derogatory social labels
such as “Banso tongue” or “Bans[u]” 1, “rappeur”2, “I was”3, “CNN”4, “BBC” used

1
Bans[u] = a deliberate distortion of [o] to [u] in Bans[o] in order to reiterate the
[u]full English accent of the Banso or Nso ethnic group.
2
Rappeur = from French indicating the rapid, r-coloured American English accent.
 493

to describe these prevalently less dominant accents of CamE. For more on eth-
nolects and non dominating varieties see Clyne (2000), (Eckert 2008), Fonyuy
forthcoming, , Muhr (2005), Preston and Niedzielski (2010), Quist (2008), etc.
Convenient data tools and methodology are used to elicit the attitudinal reac-
tions of Cameroonians to the less dominant accents of CamE

Variants5
word phoneme RP CamE BanE WimE KomE BaE BkE

meat /i:/ m[i:]t m[i]t m[ɛ]t m[i]t m[i]t m[i]t m[i]t

letter /ɛ/ l[ɛ]tter l[ɛ]tter l[e]tter l[ɛ]tter l[ɛ]tter l[ɛ]tter l[ɛ]tter

pro- pro- pro- pro- pro- pro- pro-

/ɪ / pro-m[ɪ]se
mise m[i]se m[i]se m[ɛ]se m[i]se m[i]se m[i]se

broke /əʊ/ br[əʊ]ke br[o]ke br[u]ke br[u]ke br[u]ke br[o]ke br[o]ke

mister /ɪ / m[ɪ]ster m[i]ster m[ε]ster m[i]ster m[i]ster m[ɨ]ster m[i]ster

judge /dʒ/ [dʒ]udge [dʒ]udge [dʒ]udge [dʒ]udge [dʒ]udge [dʒ]udge [ʧ]udge

Table 1: Ethnolinguistic heterogeneity in CamE pronunciation

2. Sources of data and methodology

The data are a part of an ongoing project on CamE ethnolects. In 2010 a
questionnaire to elicit attitudes toward accents was administered to a cross-
section of secondary-high school and tertiary education users of English in Ca-
meroon. The questionnaire comprised structured questions with unstructured
portions, and a read text. The structured questions focused on the researcher’s
perspective and the unstructured parts gave informants the latitude to express
their own established attitudes and reveal some more not familiar to the resear-
cher. The read text tests pronunciation markers, which influence the sociolingu-
istic appraisal of varieties of accents in the Cameroonian community. For instan-
ce,

3
I was = a reminder that the supposed speaker of CamE with a foreign accent had
once been abroad.
4
CNN and BBC = labels describing educated speakers of CamE with a tone of GenAm
or RP.
5
BanE = Banso English, WimE = Wimbum English, KomE = Kom English, BaE= Bafut
English, BkE = Bakossi English.
 494

Question 11 is set to test Cameroonians’ predisposition to correlate

linguistic patterns to stereotypes
Question 12 is structured to elicit standardness, acceptability, and
functionality
Alternative answers to the questions include paired opposite attributes
which reflect some established superiorities or inferiorities, how positively or
auspiciously an accent is viewed, and the impressions on a social group that uses
a particular variety. The descriptive statistics method is used to support claims
by the numbers as shown in the following section on data analysis.

3. Analysis of data
1. Q6: 50% of the informants evaluate themselves as speakers of CamE, 42.5% of
BrE, 5% of GenAm, 2.5% of CamBrE , but none acknowledges s/he speaks EnE.
2. In Q8, which tests the standardness of ethnolects 58.75% uses negative attrib-
utes such as “non-standard”, “dull”, “ugly” to manifest an overt negative atti-
tude towards ethnic accents of CamE and to define their low prestige status.
3. Q 10: On the evaluation of EnE speakers there is a significant 48.75% overt
positive attitude seen in the choice of positive attributes such as “proud”, “at-
tached to…”, “pleasant” to describe EnE speakers. This is opposed to the
46.25% that uses negative attributes, and a 5% score for those who reserve
their opinion. The high rating of EnE speakers shows some covert acceptance
of a variety whose status is considered low but which attracts some degree of
loyalty from some of its speakers and listeners.
4. Q 11: On correlating accent to ethnicity, 88.75% of the listeners could not
draw the appropriate mental map correlating an ethnic accent to a particular
ethnicity. On the other hand 70% are accurate in correlating pronunciation
variables to regionlity — the Nsoˈ ethnic group.
5. Q 12: On determining the fluency and comprehensibility level of the First
Reader a majority of respondents, 72.50% use attributes such as “standard”,
“understandable”, “educated”, “smart”, while 20% use more neutral attrib-
utes such as slow, serious, formal, etc.
 495

4. Findings
With empirical evidence from the data analysed, the bigger picture of
Cameroonians’ attitudes toward ethnic accents is that an ethnic accent of English
is overtly considered non-prestigious, non-standard, and accepted mostly for its
comic quality — “funny”. If no one accepts that s/he speaks EnE and the rest
evaluate themselves as speakers of CamE or BrE it reveals the cognitive, and be-
havioural dispositions which Cameroonians manifest toward accents of English.
If EnE is recoiled from, it means “accent is the other” and Cameroonians are con-
scious of the stigma that surrounds EnE. This could explain why reactions to-
wards EnE are significantly negative. Cameroonians distance themselves from a
particular accent, because they are aware it has no overt prestige attached to it.
However, they covertly sympathise with EnE by overtly accepting its speakers
through significant overt positive attributes.
It is therefore interesting to realise that attitudes towards these accents
are not regarded as attitudes towards its speakers thereby disputing what Ryan
et al (1982:2) observe that “Attitudes toward particular varieties are then taken
to be attitudes toward speakers of those varieties.” The group of positive evalua-
tors includes EnE speakers who articulate EnE to promote ethnic identity, or
those who approximate a near-native English accent to project their socio-
educational status. Therefore, ethnic or near-native English varieties do elicit
positive ratings along some dimensions such as ethnic loyalty or social class
identity.
The read text for listening with obvious vowel cues or stimuli, which trig-
ger listeners’ perceptions and interpretations are an indication that social atti-
tudes such as ethnic profiling are directly linked to phonetic features. These
vowel cues become markers, which are relatively high in speakers’ as well as lis-
teners’ consciousness because they (markers) are either stigmatised or accorded
prestige. This high level of awareness on markers causes speakers to socially or
stylistically modify their pronunciation, while others unavoidably retain the ac-
cent they may want to deviate from.
The positive assessment of the First Reader in Q12 reveals some of the
double standards attitude which Cameroonians show toward CamE with a foreign
tinge – subtly scorned but secretly admired. This also signals that Cameroonians’
attitudes toward CamE with a foreign accent is evolving from that of mockery
and accusations of affectation toward overt acceptance. One can now start talk-
ing of a CamBrE. This means Cameroon English with British English RP pronun-
ciation influence.
 496

Sometimes, due to overgeneralisation, listeners’ perception may not just

be a phonetic / phonological mismatch, or what Hume and Jonson (2001:6ff) de-
scribe as “[… a failure to perceptually compensate for articulatory effects…” but
also of listeners interpreting a pre-conceived abstraction, the stereotype, leading
to judgmental evaluations on accents. Social attitudes toward accents therefore
do not reflect linguistic quality per se but are manifestations of a social practice
which reflects an awareness of the status attached to a variety by the Cameroo-
nian community.

5. Conclusion
Cameroonians show conflicting and double standards attitudes toward less
dominant accents of CamE. For instance, while CamE ethnolects are predomi-
nantly stigmatised and evaluated as funny and lacking in prestige, some speakers
of these ethnolects articulate them in order to project ethnic pride and identity.
While CamBrE does not escape scorn and its speakers accused of swimming
against the stream, there is some covert prestige attached to it, as victims of
CamBrE become models of the standard of English which some Cameroonians as-
pire to attain. From the analysis and findings therefore, it can be construed that
it is a social attitude that attributes prestige on certain accents and stigma on
others.
If one considers that attitude which in Ryan et al (1998:7) is defined as “[…
any affective, cognitive or behavioural index of evaluative reactions toward dif-
ferent language varieties or their speakers”; that these varieties (phonetic vari-
ants) can be physically measured and are realised by physiologically fit speakers;
that there is bidirectionality in language interference; and that these less domi-
nant accents are intelligible to Cameroonians then it can be concluded that what
is superior / inferior, standard / non-standard, posh /slipshod, etc., is more in
the minds and attitudes of Cameroonians and not in the concrete linguistic vari-
ants per se.
Attitudes may continue to conflict but the less dominant varieties on their
part are systematically establishing phonologies of their own, a linguistic phe-
nomenon which cannot be disconnected from the contemporary linguistic land-
scape.
 497

Appendix
Questionnaire
6. What kind of English do you speak?
Cameroon English □ British English □ American English □ Ethnic
English
□ Other ----------------------------------
8. What do you think about the English you have chosen as your answer to the
previous Question?
beautiful □ ugly □ interesting □ boring □
standard □ non-standard □ Other ---------------------
10. How do you think ethnic English speakers feel about their ethnic English
pronunciation?
proud □ ashamed □ attached to it □ detached from it □
It is interesting □ It is boring □ It is pleasant □
It is unpleasant □ Other ---------------------

11. Where do you think the first reader comes from?

Banso □ Kom □ Bafut □ Nkambe □

Metah □ Kenyang □ Bakossi □ Bakweri □ Bayangi □
Other ----------------------------
12. How do you judge the first reading?
standard □ non-standard □ serious □ funny □ understandable □
not understandable □ smart □ sluggish □ formal □ informal □
Other ------------------------------

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 498

Fonyuy, E. Kelen. (2003): The Evolution of some Vowel Pronunciation

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/wil/ (Accessed on: 29.04.11)
 Österreichisches Deutsch – Sprache der Gegenwart

Herausgegeben von Rudolf Muhr

Band 1 Rudolf Muhr / Bernhard Kettemann (Hrsg.): Eurospeak. Der Einfluss des Englischen auf
europäische Sprachen zur Jahrtausendwende. 2., korrigierte Auflage. 2004.
Band 2 Eva Gugenberger / Mechthild Blumberg (Hrsg.): Vielsprachiges Europa. Zur Situation der
regionalen Sprachen von der Iberischen Halbinsel bis zum Kaukasus. 2003.
Band 3 Heidemarie Markhardt: Das Österreichische Deutsch im Rahmen der EU. 2005.
Band 4 Rudolf Muhr (Hrsg./ed.): Standardvariationen und Sprachideologien in verschiedenen
Sprachkulturen der Welt. Standard Variations and Language Ideologies in Different Lan-
guage Cultures around the World. 2005.
Band 5 Rudolf Muhr / Erwin Schranz / Dietmar Ulreich (Hrsg.): Sprachen und Sprachkontakte im
pannonischen Raum. Das Burgenland und Westungarn als mehrsprachiges Sprachgebiet.
2005.
Band 6 Falco Pfalzgraf: Neopurismus in Deutschland nach der Wende. 2006.
Band 7 Heidemarie Markhardt: Wörterbuch der österreichischen Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und Verwal-
tungsterminologie. 2., durchgesehene Auflage. 2010.
Band 8 Jutta Ransmayr: Der Status des Österreichischen Deutsch an nichtdeutschsprachigen
Universitäten. Eine empirische Untersuchung. 2006.
Band 9 Rudolf Muhr (Hrsg./ed.): Innovation und Kontinuität in Sprache und Kommunikation ver-
schiedener Sprachkulturen. Innovation and Continuity in Language and Communication of
Different Language Cultures. 2006.
Band 10 Rudolf Muhr / Manfred B. Sellner (Hrsg.): Zehn Jahre Forschung zum Österreichischen
Deutsch: 1995–2005. Eine Bilanz. 2006.
Band 11 Sonja Sagmeister-Brandner: Breaking News: So kommen englische Wörter ins Radio und
Fernsehen. Eine empirische Studie österreichischer Nachrichten zwischen 1967 und 2004.
2008.
Band 12 Falco Pfalzgraf: Englischer Sprachkontakt in den Varietäten des Deutschen. English in
Contact with Varieties of German. 2009.
Band 13 Rudolf Muhr / Gudrun Biffl (Hrsg.): Sprache – Bildung – Bildungsstandards – Migration.
Chancen und Risiken der Neuorientierung des österreichischen Bildungssystems. 2010.
Band 14 Rudolf Muhr (ed.): Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages. Getting the Picture.
In Memory of Michael Clyne. In Collaboration with Catrin Norrby, Leo Kretzenbacher, Carla
Amorós. 2012.

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