Linguistic purism
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Linguistic purism (or linguistic protectionism) is the opposition to any changes of a given language, or the desire to undo some changes the language has undergone in the past. The policy is introduced to protect a given language from the expansion of a "stronger" language (usually a language with a much greater number of speakers), or against mixing (or deliberate compatibility) with a different dialect or a closely related language.
Possible forms of linguistic purism are (from milder to harsher):
- maintaining a standard language and providing neologisms to replace loanwords
- providing subsidies for learning the "weaker" language and for publishing and broadcasting in it
- making the "weaker" language an obligatory school subject
- requiring that all state employees have a degree of proficiency in the "weaker" language
- requiring that all education is in the "weaker" language
- forbidding the use of the "stronger" language in some or all spheres
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[edit] Cognate languages
A common case is when the "weaker" and the "stronger" languages are very closely related. It is usual for the speakers of the "stronger" language to suggest that the "weaker" language is "just a dialect". In their turn, the speakers of the "weaker" language vigorously deny such claims, and go to great lengths to prove that their language is quite separate.
Yiddish has been subject to allegation that it is just a dialect of German; in fact, although; a native German speaker can understand a lot of Yiddish if spoken slowly, the same is true for the Dutch language.
[edit] Writing systems
Closely related languages often tend to mix up. To prevent this, people impose different writing systems on them, or, if the same script is used, they use different spelling.
The extreme case was with Moldovan and Romanian languages, which are virtually identical in all respects, except that Moldovan used Cyrillic script, and Romanian used Latin script.
Other example is Yiddish, which is very close to German, but uses the Hebrew alphabet instead of the Latin alphabet, and so keeps its separateness. This results in the situation where, for example, an Israeli could read out loud a Yiddish text to a German (who could not read Hebrew), who could understand it, while the Israeli could not.
The next example is Hindi and Urdu, which are kept traditionally separated by using Devanagari and Arabic script, respectively. This is a well-known example often cited in linguistic texts; however, in recent decades, it has been observed that the languages are tending to drift much further apart, due to the corresponding Sanskritisation and Arabisation of the two languages.
Serbian and Croatian languages also differ mainly in using Cyrillic and Latin scripts, respectively (and formerly they were considered to be just variants of one language, Serbo-Croatian). After the breakup of former Yugoslavia, a third "language" was created mainly for political reasons, the Bosniak language, which uses Latin script but does not differ from the standard štokavian basis of Serbian/Croatian. The last step in the split of the former "Serbo-Croatian" language is taking place nowadays, as its fourth "copy" is being created, the "Montenegrin language". The "Montenegrin language" for now exists only in name but is likely to be politically instituted by the pro-independentist authorities in Montenegro in near future (whose citizens voted for independence on May 21, 2006).
[edit] Unrelated or distantly related languages
Often one language has a higher social status, or has an established tradition from the time it had a higher social status. However, it may be a minority language and actively threatened by the majority language. An example is Swedish in Finland: the educated upper class was Swedish-speaking prior to the 20th century, and the rules and regulations protecting the Swedish language remain in force. Although the Swedish-speakers represent a 5% minority in a country where 93% speak Finnish, Swedish is a national language and a test in Swedish is required for all public servants.
[edit] Forms of purism
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[edit] Based on the approach
- Archaizing purism: This occurs when a speech community tries to resuscitate the language of a golden age of literature. Examples: Arabic, Tanittamil Iyakkam, Icelandic, Katharevousa Greek, Sanskrit. See also Language revival.
- Ethnographic purism: This form is based on an idealization of the countryside, folk stories and dialects. Examples: Nynorsk (New Norwegian), some versions of Demotic Greek.
- Élitist purism: Associated with the language spoken at the court.
- Reformist purism: The main feature here is to break the bonds with the past. An example of this is the removal of Persian and Arabic words during Turkish language reform under Atatürk in order to break with the Persian- and Arabic- influenced Ottoman Turkish language. Other examples are the purist efforts in languages like Hausa, Swahili[citation needed] and Hindi to break with the colonial past. In addition, language policies may seek to decrease similarities between mutually intelligible languages for ethno-political reasons, as has been the case with Serbo-Croatian (Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian), Dano-Norwegian, Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu) and Malay/Indonesian.
- Playful purism: This form existed early in the 20th century and is aimed at making a mockery of purism or merely for the sake of amusement or literary aesthetism.
- Xenophobic or patriotic purism: involves the elimination or exclusion of foreign elements. An extreme case is High Norwegian, but it is common worldwide. Many English writers of the 19th and 20th centuries extolled the virtues of 'strong' Anglo-Saxon words such as 'foreword', which was coined to replace the 'weak' Romance word 'preface'. France is known for its preference for coining words to borrowing English words. German and Greek often prefer to coin calques to avoid using foreign words, although Germany was unable to prevent a major influx of informal English vocabulary in recent years.
This classification of puristic orientations made by George Thomas represents ideal-forms. In practice, though, these orientations are often combined. We may also add other approaches, such as:
- Democratic oriented purism: This is aimed at replacing linguistic items associated with an elite norm with linguistic items regarded as more representative of the language society as a whole.
- Anti-purism: A puristic reaction to a manifestation of purism, directed at the removal of neologisms originating from a puristic intervention.
[edit] Based on the goals
- Unificatory purism: Tries to satisfy the solidarity criterion of standard languages.
- Prestige purism: Tries to satisfy the prestige function.
- Defensive purism: Tries to deal with the concerns about the threat a language faces.
- Delimiting purism: Tries to satisfy the separating function
[edit] Based on the intensity
- Marginal purism: In this pattern purism never becomes at any stage a value-feature of the speech community. On the contrary, there is openness to all sources of enrichment. Examples: English, Russian, Polish, Japanese.
- Moderate, discontinuous purism: In this pattern, a moderate attitude is discernible over a long period of time. Examples: Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian.
- Trimming purism. A reactive correction to a potentially dangerous trend in the development of a standard language. Examples: Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Slovak.
- Evolutionary purism: In this pattern purism is seen early in the development of a written language. There are no radical changes or orientation. During the standardisation process, the purism gains momentum after which it slows down. Examples: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Hebrew, Croatian and Slovene.
- Oscillatory purism: Involves repeated swings between intense purism and a more tolerant attitude. Examples: German, Czech and Yiddish.
- Stable, consistent purism: In this pattern no interruption or fluctuation in intensity is seen. Purism is a constant value-feature of the speech community. Examples: Arabic, Tamil and Icelandic.
- Revolutionary purism: An abrupt and violent change from the previously mentioned patterns to another. Examples: Turkish.
[edit] Based on linguistic level
- Lexical purism: directed at the lexicon, first of all against direct lexical loans, often combined with the development of loan translations (such as in Norwegian hand out > støtteark, snowboard > snøbrett).
- Orthographic purism: directed against foreign orthographic elements (such as in Norwegian: genre > sjanger, in Czech: obauwat > obouvat).
- Morphological purism: directed against foreign inflection and declension (such as the resistance to plural -s in noun endings in Scandinavian languages).
- Syntactic purism: directed at syntactic features from other languages (such as the stylistic resistance in Nynorsk against some passive constructions and some constructions with the genitive).
- Phonetic purism: directed at foreign phonemes and phonematical combinations.
[edit] Other forms
- Regressive purism. The eradication of very old loan-words. It is one of the main features of ultrapurism.
- Ultrapurism: The mathematical upper limit of purism. In this pattern everything that can be expressed by human speech is a target for puristic intervention, even geographical names, names of organic chemicals and proper names. The only existing example of this is High Icelandic (Háfrónska).
[edit] Bibliography
- George Thomas, Linguistic Purism (Studies in Language and Linguistics), Longman, 1991, ISBN 0-582-03742-5.
- Endre Brunstad, Standard language and linguistic purism. In Sociolinguistica 17/2003, 52–70.
- Nancy Dorian, Purism vs. Compromise in Language Revitalization and Language Revival. In Language in Society 23, 479-494.
