A standard language (or standard variety , standard dialect , standardized dialect or simply standard ) is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification of its grammar , lexicon , writing system , or other features and that stands out among related varieties in a community as the one with the highest status or prestige . Often, it is the prestige language variety of a whole country.
139-510: In linguistics , the process of a variety becoming organized into a standard, for instance by being widely expounded in grammar books or other reference works, and also the process of making people's language usage conform to that standard, is called standardization . Typically, the varieties that undergo standardization are those associated with centres of commerce and government, used frequently by educated people and in news broadcasting , and taught widely in schools and to non-native learners of
278-580: A lingua franca may evolve by itself, the tendency to formally codify and normalize it is widespread in most parts of the world. Foreign language instruction is also considered a form of prescription, since it involves instructing learners how to speak, based on usage documentation laid down by others. Linguistic prescription may also be used to advance a social or political ideology. Throughout history, prescription has been created around high-class language, and therefore it degeneralizes lower-class language. This has led to many justifications of classism , as
417-510: A Bulgarian dialect. Chinese consists of hundreds of local varieties , many of which are not mutually intelligible, usually classified into seven to ten major groups, including Mandarin , Wu , Yue , Hakka and Min . Before the 20th century, most Chinese spoke only their local variety. For two millennia, formal writing had been done in Classical Chinese , a style modelled on the classics and far removed from any contemporary speech. As
556-423: A Norwegian pronunciation". Based upon the bourgeois speech of the capital Oslo (Christiania) and other major cities, several orthographic reforms, notably in 1907 and 1917, resulted in the official standard Riksmål , in 1929 renamed Bokmål ('book tongue'). The philologist Ivar Aasen (1813–1896) considered urban and upper-class Dano-Norwegian too similar to Danish, so he developed Landsmål ('country tongue'),
695-414: A branch of linguistics. Before the 20th century, linguists analysed language on a diachronic plane, which was historical in focus. This meant that they would compare linguistic features and try to analyse language from the point of view of how it had changed between then and later. However, with the rise of Saussurean linguistics in the 20th century, the focus shifted to a more synchronic approach, where
834-548: A certain degree of conceptual overlap as comprehensive descriptive accounts must take into account and record existing speaker preferences, and a prior understanding of how language is actually used is necessary for prescription to be effective. Since the mid-20th century some dictionaries and style guides , which are prescriptive works by nature, have increasingly integrated descriptive material and approaches. Examples of guides updated to add more descriptive material include Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961) and
973-405: A certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who is able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it
1112-410: A community (and thus may be defined in opposition to standard dialects) are called nonstandard or vernacular dialects. The standardization of a language is a continual process, because language is always changing and a language-in-use cannot be permanently standardized like the parts of a machine. Standardization may originate from a motivation to make the written form of a language more uniform, as
1251-560: A comparison of different time periods in the past and present) or in a synchronic manner (by observing developments between different variations that exist within the current linguistic stage of a language). At first, historical linguistics was the cornerstone of comparative linguistics , which involves a study of the relationship between different languages. At that time, scholars of historical linguistics were only concerned with creating different categories of language families , and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages by using both
1390-556: A distinction between "prescription" and "prescriptivism", defining the former as "a process of codification of a certain variety of language for some sort of official use", and the latter as "an unscientific tendency to mystify linguistic prescription". Linguistic prescription is a part of a language standardization process. The chief aim of linguistic prescription is to specify socially preferred language forms (either generally, as in Standard English , or in style and register ) in
1529-686: A few cases, an entire publishing sector complies with a publication that originated as a house style manual, such as The Chicago Manual of Style and New Hart's Rules in non-fiction book publishing in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively, and The Associated Press Stylebook in American news style . Others are by self-appointed advocates whose rules are propagated in the popular press, as in " proper Cantonese pronunciation ". The aforementioned Fowler, and Strunk & White, were among
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#17330935861271668-530: A foreign language . Although these have a more democratic base, they still exclude the vast majority of the English-speaking world: speakers of Scottish English , Hiberno-English , Appalachian English , Australian English , Indian English , Nigerian English or African-American English may feel the standard is arbitrarily selected or slanted against them. Therefore, prescription has political consequences; indeed, it can be—and has been—used consciously as
1807-506: A government or a neighbouring population might deny the cultural status of a standard language. In response to such political interference, linguists develop a standard variety from elements of the different dialects used by a society. For example, when Norway became independent from Denmark in 1814, the only written language was Danish. Different Norwegian dialects were spoken in rural districts and provincial cities, but people with higher education and upper-class urban people spoke "Danish with
1946-480: A grammar, syntax, and vocabulary different from the Classical Latin spoken and written by the statesman Cicero . In Brazil, actors and journalists usually adopt an unofficial, but de facto , spoken standard of Brazilian Portuguese , originally derived from the middle-class dialects of Rio de Janeiro and Brasília , but that now encompasses educated urban pronunciations from the different speech communities in
2085-434: A linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of written scripts (as signs and symbols) in language. The formal study of language also led to the growth of fields like psycholinguistics , which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics , which studies language processing in the brain; biolinguistics , which studies
2224-416: A particular feature or usage is "good" or "bad". This is analogous to practice in other sciences: a zoologist studies the animal kingdom without making subjective judgments on whether a particular species is "better" or "worse" than another. Prescription , on the other hand, is an attempt to promote particular linguistic usages over others, often favoring a particular dialect or " acrolect ". This may have
2363-494: A particular language), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics (including traditional descriptive linguistics)
2502-414: A political tool. A second issue with prescriptivism is that it tends to explicitly devalue non-standard dialects . It has been argued that prescription, apart from formulating standard language norms, often attempts to influence speakers to apply the proposed linguistic devices invariably, without considering the existence of different varieties and registers of language. While some linguists approve
2641-439: A practical measure, officials of the late imperial dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as Guānhuà (literally "speech of officials"). In the early 20th century, many Chinese intellectuals argued that the country needed a standardized language. By the 1920s, Literary Chinese had been replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese , which
2780-517: A prestige language or dialect over a less prestigious one, even if it is their native tongue. Government bureaucracy tends toward prescriptivism as a means of enforcing functional continuity. Such prescriptivism dates from ancient Egypt , where bureaucrats preserved the spelling of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt into the Ptolemaic period through the standard usage of Egyptian hieroglyphics . From
2919-488: A prestige variety.) A classic example from 18th-century England is Robert Lowth's tentative suggestion that preposition stranding in relative clauses sounds colloquial. This blossomed into a grammatical rule that a sentence should never end with a preposition. For these reasons, some writers argue that linguistic prescription is foolish or futile. Samuel Johnson commented on the tendency of some prescription to resist language change: When we see men grow old and die at
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#17330935861273058-418: A real entity, but does function as set of linguistic norms observed to varying degrees in the course of usus – of how people actually speak and write the language. In practice, the language varieties identified as standard are neither uniform nor fully stabilized, especially in their spoken forms. From that perspective, the linguist Suzanne Romaine says that standard languages can be conceptually compared to
3197-421: A repertoire of broadly recognizable conventions in spoken and written communications used in a society; the term implies neither a socially ideal idiom nor a culturally superior form of speech. These conventions develop from related dialects, usually by social action (ethnic and cultural unification) that elevate discourse patterns associated with perceived centres of culture, or more rarely, by deliberately defining
3336-419: A second-language speaker who is attempting to acquire the language. Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken data and signed data are more fundamental than written data . This is because Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile and valuable. For research that relies on corpus linguistics and computational linguistics , written language
3475-431: A standard language when a society establishes social stratification and a socio-economic hierarchy . The spoken and written language usages of the authorities (state, military, church) is preserved as the standard language. Departures from this standard language may jeopardize social success (see social class ). Sometimes, archaisms and honorific stylizations may be deliberately introduced or preserved to distinguish
3614-538: A standard variety can serve efforts to establish a shared culture among the social and economic groups who compose the new nation-state. Different national standards, derived from a continuum of dialects , might be treated as discrete languages (along with heteronomous vernacular dialects) even if there are mutually intelligible varieties among them, such as the North Germanic languages of Scandinavia (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish). Moreover, in political praxis, either
3753-419: A view towards uncovering the biological underpinnings of language. In Generative Grammar , these underpinning are understood as including innate domain-specific grammatical knowledge. Thus, one of the central concerns of the approach is to discover what aspects of linguistic knowledge are innate and which are not. Cognitive linguistics , in contrast, rejects the notion of innate grammar, and studies how
3892-417: A way that is easily taught and learned. Prescription may apply to most aspects of language, including spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Prescription is useful for facilitating inter-regional communication, allowing speakers of divergent dialects to understand a standardized idiom used in broadcasting , for example, more readily than each other's dialects. While such
4031-424: A word. Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and form. Any particular pairing of meaning and form is a Saussurean linguistic sign . For instance, the meaning "cat" is represented worldwide with a wide variety of different sound patterns (in oral languages), movements of the hands and face (in sign languages ), and written symbols (in written languages). Linguistic patterns have proven their importance for
4170-458: Is a researcher within the field, or to someone who uses the tools of the discipline to describe and analyse specific languages. An early formal study of language was in India with Pāṇini , the 6th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology . Pāṇini's systematic classification of the sounds of Sanskrit into consonants and vowels, and word classes, such as nouns and verbs,
4309-430: Is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential subsets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology (the organization of phonetic sound systems), morphology (the formation and composition of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences). Modern frameworks that deal with
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4448-572: Is actually used (while avoiding passing judgment). The basis of linguistic research is text ( corpus ) analysis and field study, both of which are descriptive activities. Description may also include researchers' observations of their own language usage. In the Eastern European linguistic tradition, the discipline dealing with standard language cultivation and prescription is known as "language culture" or "speech culture". Despite being apparent opposites, prescriptive and descriptive approaches have
4587-441: Is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing a general theoretical framework for describing it. Applied linguistics seeks to utilize the scientific findings of the study of language for practical purposes, such as developing methods of improving language education and literacy. Linguistic features may be studied through a variety of perspectives: synchronically (by describing
4726-440: Is conventional or "coded" in a given language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the structural and linguistic knowledge (grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors. Phonetics and phonology are branches of linguistics concerned with sounds (or
4865-548: Is derived from the Tuscan dialect , specifically from its Florentine variety —the Florentine influence upon early Italian literature established that dialect as base for the standard language of Italy. In particular, Italian became the language of culture for all the people of Italy, thanks to the prestige of the masterpieces of Florentine authors like Dante Alighieri , as well as to the political and cultural significance of Florence at
5004-469: Is generally hard to find for events long ago, due to the occurrence of chance word resemblances and variations between language groups. A limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed for the functional purpose of conducting research. It is also hard to date various proto-languages. Even though several methods are available, these languages can be dated only approximately. In modern historical linguistics, we examine how languages change over time, focusing on
5143-734: Is imposed by regulation in some places. The French Academy in Paris is the national body in France whose recommendations about the French language are often followed in the French-speaking world (francophonie) , though not legally enforceable. In Germany and the Netherlands , recent spelling and punctuation reforms, such as the German orthographic reform of 1996 , were devised by teams of linguists commissioned by
5282-404: Is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation. With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds remain too volatile and subtle for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash
5421-447: Is often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of spoken language are difficult to create and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written. In addition, linguists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-mediated communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry. The study of writing systems themselves, graphemics, is, in any case, considered
5560-634: Is propagated by people with an opposing ideology. Later, during the second half of the 20th century, efforts driven by various advocacy groups had considerable influence on language use under the broad banner of " political correctness ", to promote special rules for anti-sexist , anti-racist , or generically anti- discriminatory language (e.g. " people-first language " as advocated by disability rights organizations). Prescription presupposes authorities whose judgments may come to be followed by many other speakers and writers. For English, these authorities tend to be books. H. W. Fowler 's Modern English Usage
5699-452: Is selected based on specific contexts but also, at a micro level, shapes language as text (spoken or written) down to the phonological and lexico-grammatical levels. Grammar and discourse are linked as parts of a system. A particular discourse becomes a language variety when it is used in this way for a particular purpose, and is referred to as a register . There may be certain lexical additions (new words) that are brought into play because of
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5838-530: Is that prescription has a tendency to favor the language of one particular area or social class over others, and thus militates against linguistic diversity. Frequently, a standard dialect is associated with the upper class , for example the United Kingdom 's Received Pronunciation (RP). RP has now lost much of its status as the Anglophone standard, and other standards are now alternative systems for English as
5977-441: Is that prescriptive rules quickly become entrenched and it is difficult to change them when the language changes. Thus, there is a tendency for prescription to lag behind the vernacular language . In 1834, an anonymous writer advised against the split infinitive , reasoning that the construction was not a frequent feature of English as he knew it. Today the construction is in everyday use and generally considered standard usage, yet
6116-741: Is the case of Standard English . Typically, standardization processes include efforts to stabilize the spelling of the prestige dialect, to codify usages and particular ( denotative ) meanings through formal grammars and dictionaries , and to encourage public acceptance of the codifications as intrinsically correct. In that vein, a pluricentric language has interacting standard varieties. Examples are English , French , Portuguese , German , Korean , Serbo-Croatian , Spanish , Swedish , Armenian and Mandarin Chinese . Monocentric languages, such as Russian and Japanese , have one standardized idiom. The term standard language occasionally refers also to
6255-428: Is the study of how language changes over history, particularly with regard to a specific language or a group of languages. Western trends in historical linguistics date back to roughly the late 18th century, when the discipline grew out of philology , the study of ancient texts and oral traditions. Historical linguistics emerged as one of the first few sub-disciplines in the field, and was most widely practised during
6394-512: Is the system of Japanese honorific speech . Most, if not all, widely spoken languages demonstrate some degree of social codification in how they conform to prescriptive rules. Linguistic prestige is a central research topic within sociolinguistics . Notions of linguistic prestige apply to different dialects of the same language and also to separate, distinct languages in multilingual regions. Prestige level disparity often leads to diglossia : speakers in certain social contexts consciously choose
6533-563: The Académie Française and the Royal Spanish Academy , which respectively produce Le bon français and El buen español . A standard variety can be conceptualized in two ways: (i) as the sociolect of a given socio-economic stratum or (ii) as the normative codification of a dialect , an idealized abstraction. Hence, the full standardization of a language is impractical, because a standardized dialect cannot fully function as
6672-895: The American Medical Association , the Modern Language Association , and the Modern Humanities Research Association ; there are many others. Scientific Style and Format , by the Council of Science Editors, seeks to normalize style in scientific journal publishing, based where possible on standards issued by bodies like the International Standards Organization . None of these works have any sort of legal or regulatory authority (though some governments produce their own house style books for internal use). They still have authority in
6811-720: The Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. Judaism used the Hebrew alphabet , and Islam the Arabic script . Hinduism used the Devanagari script . In certain traditions, strict adherence to prescribed spellings and pronunciations was and remains of great spiritual importance. Islamic naming conventions and greetings are notable examples of the linguistic prescription being a prerequisite to spiritual righteousness. Another commonly cited example of prescriptive language usage closely associated with social propriety
6950-629: The Hindustani language have legal status in India: Standard Hindi (one of 23 co-official national languages) and Urdu ( Pakistan 's official tongue); as a result, Hindustani is often called "Hindi-Urdu". An Caighdeán Oifigiúil ('The Official Standard'), often shortened to An Caighdeán , is the official standard of the Irish language . It was first published by the translators in Dáil Éireann in
7089-532: The Roman Republic (509 BC – 27 BC) and the Roman Empire (27 BC – AD 1453) was Classical Latin , the literary dialect spoken by upper classes of Roman society, whilst Vulgar Latin was the sociolect (colloquial language) spoken by the educated and uneducated peoples of the middle and the lower social classes of Roman society. The Latin language that Roman armies introduced to Gaul , Hispania , and Dacia had
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#17330935861277228-503: The Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī . Today, modern-day theories on grammar employ many of the principles that were laid down then. Before the 20th century, the term philology , first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the study of language, which was then predominantly historical in focus. Since Ferdinand de Saussure 's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis , however, this focus has shifted and
7367-432: The agent or patient . Functional linguistics , or functional grammar, is a branch of structural linguistics. In the humanistic reference, the terms structuralism and functionalism are related to their meaning in other human sciences . The difference between formal and functional structuralism lies in the way that the two approaches explain why languages have the properties they have. Functional explanation entails
7506-626: The comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction . Internal reconstruction is the method by which an element that contains a certain meaning is re-used in different contexts or environments where there is a variation in either sound or analogy. The reason for this had been to describe well-known Indo-European languages , many of which had detailed documentation and long written histories. Scholars of historical linguistics also studied Uralic languages , another European language family for which very little written material existed back then. After that, there also followed significant work on
7645-441: The imagined communities of nation and nationalism , as described by the political scientist Benedict Anderson , which indicates that linguistic standardization is the result of a society's history and sociology, and thus is not a universal phenomenon; of the approximately 7,000 contemporary spoken languages, most do not have a codified standard dialect. Politically, in the formation of a nation-state, identifying and cultivating
7784-412: The knowledge engineering field especially with the ever-increasing amount of available data. Linguists focusing on structure attempt to understand the rules regarding language use that native speakers know (not always consciously). All linguistic structures can be broken down into component parts that are combined according to (sub)conscious rules, over multiple levels of analysis. For instance, consider
7923-504: The mind of the individual or the speech community. Construction grammar is a framework which applies the meme concept to the study of syntax. The generative versus evolutionary approach are sometimes called formalism and functionalism , respectively. This reference is however different from the use of the terms in human sciences . Modern linguistics is primarily descriptive . Linguists describe and explain features of language without making subjective judgments on whether
8062-442: The same dialect basis ( Štokavian ). These variants do differ slightly, as is the case with other pluricentric languages, but not to a degree that would justify considering them as different languages . The differences between the variants do not hinder mutual intelligibility and do not undermine the integrity of the system as a whole. Compared to the differences between the variants of English, German, French, Spanish, or Portuguese,
8201-614: The south of England .", but it may also be spoken with other accents, and in other countries still other accents are used ( Australian , Canadian , American , Scottish , etc.) The standard form of Modern Greek is based on the Southern dialects ; these dialects are spoken mainly in the Peloponnese , the Ionian Islands , Attica , Crete and the Cyclades . Two standardized registers of
8340-455: The "medical discourse", and so on. The lexicon is a catalogue of words and terms that are stored in a speaker's mind. The lexicon consists of words and bound morphemes , which are parts of words that can not stand alone, like affixes . In some analyses, compound words and certain classes of idiomatic expressions and other collocations are also considered to be part of the lexicon. Dictionaries represent attempts at listing, in alphabetical order,
8479-410: The "n" sound in "tenth" is made differently from the "n" sound in "ten" spoken alone. Although most speakers of English are consciously aware of the rules governing internal structure of the word pieces of "tenth", they are less often aware of the rule governing its sound structure. Linguists focused on structure find and analyze rules such as these, which govern how native speakers use language. Grammar
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#17330935861278618-543: The 18th century, the first use of the comparative method by William Jones sparked the rise of comparative linguistics . Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm , who wrote Deutsche Grammatik . It was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other language groups of Europe. The study of language was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt , of whom Bloomfield asserts: This study received its foundation at
8757-553: The 1950s. As of September 2013, the first major revision of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil is available, both online and in print. Among the changes to be found in the revised version are, for example, various attempts to bring the recommendations of the Caighdeán closer to the spoken dialect of Gaeltacht speakers, including allowing further use of the nominative case where the genitive would historically have been found. Standard Italian
8896-563: The East, but the grammarians of the classical languages did not use the same methods or reach the same conclusions as their contemporaries in the Indic world. Early interest in language in the West was a part of philosophy, not of grammatical description. The first insights into semantic theory were made by Plato in his Cratylus dialogue , where he argues that words denote concepts that are eternal and exist in
9035-729: The Human Race ). Linguistic prescription Linguistic prescription is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language , including rules of spelling , pronunciation , vocabulary , morphology , syntax , and semantics . Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard language , teach what a particular society or sector of a society perceives as a correct or proper form, or advise on effective and stylistically apt communication. If usage preferences are conservative, prescription might appear resistant to language change ; if radical, it may produce neologisms . Such prescription may be motivated by attempts to improve
9174-500: The ability of the language to make subtle distinctions are easier to defend. Judgments based on the subjective associations of a word are more problematic. Finally, there is the problem of inappropriate dogmatism. Although competent authorities tend to make careful statements, popular pronouncements on language are apt to condemn. Thus, wise prescriptive advice identifying a form as colloquial or non-standard and suggesting that it be used with caution in some contexts may – when taken up in
9313-668: The aim of establishing a linguistic standard , which can aid communication over large geographical areas. It may also, however, be an attempt by speakers of one language or dialect to exert influence over speakers of other languages or dialects (see Linguistic imperialism ). An extreme version of prescriptivism can be found among censors , who attempt to eradicate words and structures that they consider to be destructive to society. Prescription, however, may be practised appropriately in language instruction , like in ELT , where certain fundamental grammatical rules and lexical items need to be introduced to
9452-523: The belief that non-codified forms of language are innately inferior, creating social stigma and discrimination toward their speakers. In contrast, modern linguists would generally hold that all forms of language, including both vernacular dialects and different realizations of a standardized variety, are scientifically equal as instruments of communication, even if deemed socially inappropriate for certain situational contexts. Resulting in standard language ideology , normative practices might also give rise to
9591-404: The biology and evolution of language; and language acquisition , which investigates how children and adults acquire the knowledge of one or more languages. The fundamental principle of humanistic linguistics, especially rational and logical grammar , is that language is an invention created by people. A semiotic tradition of linguistic research considers language a sign system which arises from
9730-509: The capital of Minas Gerais , Belo Horizonte , is the accent from Brazilian Portuguese that is the nearest to sotaque neutro . European and African dialects have differing realizations of /ʁ/ than Brazilian dialects, with the former using [ʁ] and [r] and the latter using [x] , [h] , or [χ] . Four standard variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian are spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia , Montenegro , and Serbia . They all have
9869-402: The classroom – become converted into a ruling that the dispreferred form is automatically unacceptable in all circumstances, a view academic linguists reject. (Linguists may accept that a construction is ungrammatical or incorrect in relation to a certain lect if it does not conform to its inherent rules, but they would not consider it absolutely wrong simply because it diverges from the norms of
10008-484: The concept where a certain language variety is promoted as linguistically superior to others, thus recognizing the standard language ideology as a constitutive element of prescriptivism or even identifying prescriptivism with this system of views. Others, however, use this term in relation to any attempts to recommend or mandate a particular way of language usage (in a specific context or register ), without, however, implying that these practices must involve propagating
10147-490: The consistency of language to make it more "logical"; to improve the rhetorical effectiveness of speakers; to align with the prescriber's aesthetics or personal preference; to impose linguistic purity on a language by removing foreign influences; or to avoid causing offense (i.e. for etiquette or political correctness ). Prescriptive approaches to language are often contrasted with the descriptive approach of academic linguistics , which observes and records how language
10286-480: The consistent transcription of culturally important transactions (laws, scriptures, contracts, poetry, etc.) allow a large number of discussants to understand written conversations easily, and across multiple generations. Early historical trends in literacy and alphabetization were closely tied to the influence of various religious institutions. Western Christianity propagated the Latin alphabet . Eastern Orthodoxy spread
10425-480: The conviction that explicit formal instruction is an essential prerequisite for acquiring proper command of one's native language, thus creating a massive feeling of linguistic insecurity . Propagating such language attitudes is characteristic of the prescriptivists in Eastern Europe , where normativist ideas of correctness can be found even among professional linguists. Another serious issue with prescription
10564-546: The corpora of other languages, such as the Austronesian languages and the Native American language families . In historical work, the uniformitarian principle is generally the underlying working hypothesis, occasionally also clearly expressed. The principle was expressed early by William Dwight Whitney , who considered it imperative, a "must", of historical linguistics to "look to find the same principle operative also in
10703-462: The development of modern standard varieties of languages, and over the development of a language from its standardized form to its varieties. For instance, some scholars also tried to establish super-families , linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other language families to Nostratic . While these attempts are still not widely accepted as credible methods, they provide necessary information to establish relatedness in language change. This
10842-503: The distinctions between the variants of Serbo-Croatian are less significant.Nonetheless, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro have all named the language differently in their constitutions. In Somalia , Northern Somali (or North-Central Somali) forms the basis for Standard Somali , particularly the Mudug dialect of the northern Darod clan. Northern Central Somali has frequently been used by famous Somali poets as well as
10981-419: The earliest attempts at prescription in classical times grammarians have based their norms on observed prestige use of language. Modern prescriptivist textbooks draw heavily on descriptive linguistic analysis. The prescription may privilege some existing forms over others for the sake of maximizing clarity and precision in language use. Others are subjective judgments of what constitutes good taste. Some reflect
11120-523: The east, their Standard Macedonian was based upon vernaculars from the west of the republic, which were the dialects most linguistically different from standard Bulgarian , the previous linguistic norm used in that region of the Balkan peninsula . Although Macedonian functions as the standard language of the Republic of North Macedonia , nonetheless, for political and cultural reasons, Bulgarians treat Macedonian as
11259-425: The entirety of a language that includes a standardized form as one of its varieties. In Europe, a standardized written language is sometimes identified with the German word Schriftsprache (written language). The term literary language is occasionally used as a synonym for standard language , a naming convention still prevalent in the linguistic traditions of eastern Europe. In contemporary linguistic usage,
11398-426: The equivalent aspects of sign languages). Phonetics is largely concerned with the physical aspects of sounds such as their articulation , acoustics, production, and perception. Phonology is concerned with the linguistic abstractions and categorizations of sounds, and it tells us what sounds are in a language, how they do and can combine into words, and explains why certain phonetic features are important to identifying
11537-430: The expertise of the community of people within a certain domain of specialization. Thus, registers and discourses distinguish themselves not only through specialized vocabulary but also, in some cases, through distinct stylistic choices. People in the medical fraternity, for example, may use some medical terminology in their communication that is specialized to the field of medicine. This is often referred to as being part of
11676-491: The facet of language, or very compact works insistent upon only a few matters of particular importance to the publisher. Some aim to be comprehensive only for a specific field, deferring to more general-audience guides on matters that are not particular to the discipline in question. There are different types of style guides, by purpose and audience. Because the genres of writing and the audiences of each manual are different, style manuals often conflict with each other, even within
11815-450: The field of philology , of which some branches are more qualitative and holistic in approach. Today, philology and linguistics are variably described as related fields, subdisciplines, or separate fields of language study but, by and large, linguistics can be seen as an umbrella term. Linguistics is also related to the philosophy of language , stylistics , rhetoric , semiotics , lexicography , and translation . Historical linguistics
11954-621: The hands of the Prussian statesman and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), especially in the first volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts ( On the Variety of the Structure of Human Language and its Influence upon the Mental Development of
12093-433: The history of a language. The discipline that deals specifically with the sound changes occurring within morphemes is morphophonology . Semantics and pragmatics are branches of linguistics concerned with meaning. These subfields have traditionally been divided according to aspects of meaning: "semantics" refers to grammatical and lexical meanings, while "pragmatics" is concerned with meaning in context. Within linguistics,
12232-414: The human mind creates linguistic constructions from event schemas , and the impact of cognitive constraints and biases on human language. In cognitive linguistics, language is approached via the senses . A closely related approach is evolutionary linguistics which includes the study of linguistic units as cultural replicators . It is possible to study how language replicates and adapts to
12371-461: The idea that language is a tool for communication, or that communication is the primary function of language. Linguistic forms are consequently explained by an appeal to their functional value, or usefulness. Other structuralist approaches take the perspective that form follows from the inner mechanisms of the bilateral and multilayered language system. Approaches such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar study linguistic cognition with
12510-498: The interaction of meaning and form. The organization of linguistic levels is considered computational. Linguistics is essentially seen as relating to social and cultural studies because different languages are shaped in social interaction by the speech community . Frameworks representing the humanistic view of language include structural linguistics , among others. Structural analysis means dissecting each linguistic level: phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse, to
12649-414: The language. Within a language community, standardization usually begins with a particular variety being selected (often towards a goal of further linguistic uniformity), accepted by influential people, socially and culturally spread, established in opposition to competitor varieties, maintained, increasingly used in diverse contexts, and assigned a high social status as a result of the variety being linked to
12788-412: The late 19th century. Despite a shift in focus in the 20th century towards formalism and generative grammar , which studies the universal properties of language, historical research today still remains a significant field of linguistic inquiry. Subfields of the discipline include language change and grammaticalization . Historical linguistics studies language change either diachronically (through
12927-429: The lexicon of a given language; usually, however, bound morphemes are not included. Lexicography , closely linked with the domain of semantics, is the science of mapping the words into an encyclopedia or a dictionary. The creation and addition of new words (into the lexicon) is called coining or neologization , and the new words are called neologisms . It is often believed that a speaker's capacity for language lies in
13066-557: The linguistic authority, as in the case of specialist terminology ; moreover, the standardization of spoken forms is oriented towards the codified standard. Historically, a standard language arises in two ways: (i) in the case of Standard English , linguistic standardization occurs informally and piecemeal, without formal government intervention; (ii) in the cases of the French and Spanish languages, linguistic standardization occurs formally, directed by prescriptive language institutions, such as
13205-410: The linguistic norm of the upper class , composed of the peerage and the gentry . Socially, the accent of the spoken version of the standard language then indicated that the speaker was a man or a woman possessed of a good education, and thus of high social prestige . In England and Wales, Standard English is usually associated with Received Pronunciation , "the standard accent of English as spoken in
13344-474: The lower-class can easily be portrayed to be incoherent and improper if they do not speak the standard language. This also corresponds to the use of prescription for racism , as dialects spoken by what is seen as the superior race are usually standardized in countries with prominent racism. A good example of this is the demeaning of AAVE in the United States , as the idea that the "lower race" speaks improperly
13483-457: The most successful people. As a sociological effect of these processes, most users of a standard dialect—and many users of other dialects of the same language—come to believe that the standard is inherently superior to, or consider it the linguistic baseline against which to judge, the other dialects. However, such beliefs are firmly rooted in social perceptions rather than any objective evaluation. Any varieties that do not carry high social status in
13622-426: The nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning. There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals. Morphology is the study of words , including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes , which are
13761-422: The norms of standard language with selected linguistic features drawn from the existing dialects, as in the case of Modern Hebrew . Either course of events typically results in a relatively fixed orthography codified in grammars and normative dictionaries , in which users can also sometimes find illustrative examples drawn from literary, legal, or religious texts. Whether grammars and dictionaries are created by
13900-442: The official languages of Singapore (as Huáyǔ "Chinese language"). Standard Chinese now dominates public life, and is much more widely studied than any other variety of Chinese . In the United Kingdom, the standard language is British English , which is based upon the language of the medieval court of Chancery of England and Wales. In the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Standard English became established as
14039-460: The old prohibition can still be heard. A further problem is a challenge of specifying understandable criteria. Although prescribing authorizations may have clear ideas about why they make a particular choice, and their choices are seldom entirely arbitrary, there exists no linguistically sustainable metric for ascertaining which forms of language should be considered standard or otherwise preferable. Judgments that seek to resolve ambiguity or increase
14178-421: The other hand, focuses on an analysis that is based on the paradigms or concepts that are embedded in a given text. In this case, words of the same type or class may be replaced in the text with each other to achieve the same conceptual understanding. The earliest activities in the description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini who wrote a formal description of
14317-583: The political elite, and thus has the most prestige among other Somali dialects. The Unicode Common Locale Data Repository uses 001 as the region subtag for a standardized form such as ar-001 for Modern Standard Arabic . Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language . The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages ), phonology (the abstract sound system of
14456-456: The practical role of language standardization in modern nation states, certain models of prescriptive codification have been criticized for going far beyond mere norm-setting, i.e. by promoting the sanctioned language variety as the only legitimate means of communication and presenting it as the only valid baseline of correctness, while stigmatizing non-standard usages as " mistakes ". Such practices have been said to contribute to perpetuating
14595-402: The prestige form of the language from contemporary colloquial language . Likewise, the style of language used in ritual also differs from everyday speech. Special ceremonial languages known only to a select few spiritual leaders are found throughout the world; Liturgical Latin has served a similar function for centuries. When a culture develops a writing system, orthographic rules for
14734-478: The principles of grammar include structural and functional linguistics , and generative linguistics . Sub-fields that focus on a grammatical study of language include the following: Discourse is language as social practice (Baynham, 1995) and is a multilayered concept. As a social practice, discourse embodies different ideologies through written and spoken texts. Discourse analysis can examine or expose these ideologies. Discourse not only influences genre, which
14873-401: The promotion of one class or region within a language community over another, which can become politically controversial. Prescription can also reflect ethical considerations, as in prohibiting swear words . Words referring to elements of sexuality or toilet hygiene may be regarded as obscene. Blasphemies against religion may be forbidden. In the 21st century, political correctness objects to
15012-405: The quality of advice given in many usage guides, including highly regarded books like Strunk and White's The Elements of Style . In particular, linguists point out that popular books on English usage written by journalists or novelists (e.g. Simon Heffer 's Strictly English: The Correct Way to Write ... and Why It Matters ) often make basic errors in linguistic analysis. A frequent criticism
15151-416: The quantity of words stored in the lexicon. However, this is often considered a myth by linguists. The capacity for the use of language is considered by many linguists to lie primarily in the domain of grammar, and to be linked with competence , rather than with the growth of vocabulary. Even a very small lexicon is theoretically capable of producing an infinite number of sentences. Stylistics also involves
15290-424: The relationships between dialects within a specific period. This includes studying morphological, syntactical, and phonetic shifts. Connections between dialects in the past and present are also explored. Syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences . Central concerns of syntax include word order , grammatical relations , constituency , agreement ,
15429-467: The respective governments and then implemented by statutes, some met with widespread dissent. Examples of national prescriptive bodies and initiatives are: Other kinds of authorities exist in specific settings, most commonly in the form of style guidebooks (also called style guides, manuals of style, style books, or style sheets). Style guides vary in form, and may be alphabetical usage dictionaries, comprehensive manuals divided into numerous subsection by
15568-557: The same vernacular of English. Many publishers have established an internal house style specifying preferred spellings and grammatical forms, such as serial commas , how to write acronyms , and various awkward expressions to avoid. Most of these are internal documentation for the publisher's staff, though various newspapers, universities, and other organizations have made theirs available for public inspection, and sometimes even sell them as books, e.g. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and The Economist Style Guide . In
15707-401: The scientific study of language, though linguistic science is sometimes used. Linguistics is a multi-disciplinary field of research that combines tools from natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences , and the humanities. Many linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize the field as being primarily scientific. The term linguist applies to someone who studies language or
15846-432: The self-appointed, as are some modern authors of style works, like Bryan A. Garner and his Modern English Usage (formerly Modern American Usage ). Various style guides are used for academic papers and professional journals and have become de facto standards in particular fields, though the bulk of their material pertains to formatting of source citations (in mutually conflicting ways). Some examples are those issued by
15985-512: The sense that a student may be marked down for failure to follow a specified style manual; a professional publisher may enforce compliance; a publication may require its employees to use house style as a matter of on-the-job competence. A well-respected style guide, and usually one intended for a general audience, may also have the kind of authority that a dictionary does consult as a reference work to satisfy personal curiosity or settle an argument. Historically, linguistic prescriptivism originates in
16124-744: The smallest units in a language with some independent meaning . Morphemes include roots that can exist as words by themselves, but also categories such as affixes that can only appear as part of a larger word. For example, in English the root catch and the suffix -ing are both morphemes; catch may appear as its own word, or it may be combined with -ing to form the new word catching . Morphology also analyzes how words behave as parts of speech , and how they may be inflected to express grammatical categories including number , tense , and aspect . Concepts such as productivity are concerned with how speakers create words in specific contexts, which evolves over
16263-404: The smallest units. These are collected into inventories (e.g. phoneme, morpheme, lexical classes, phrase types) to study their interconnectedness within a hierarchy of structures and layers. Functional analysis adds to structural analysis the assignment of semantic and other functional roles that each unit may have. For example, a noun phrase may function as the subject or object of the sentence; or
16402-549: The southeast. This artificial accent is called sotaque neutro . In that standard, ⟨s⟩ represents the phoneme /s/ when it appears at the end of a syllable (whereas in Rio de Janeiro this represents /ʃ/ ) and the rhotic consonant spelled ⟨r⟩ is pronounced [h] in the same situation (whereas in São Paulo this is usually an alveolar flap or trill ). The sociolect of prestige of mineiro spoken in
16541-561: The standard based upon the dialects of western Norway. In 1885 the Storting (parliament) declared both forms official and equal. In 1929 it was officially renamed Nynorsk (New Norwegian). Likewise, in Yugoslavia (1945–1992), when the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1963–1991) developed their national language from the dialect continuum demarcated by Serbia to the north and Bulgaria to
16680-406: The standard language ideology. According to another understanding, the prescriptive attitude is an approach to norm-formulating and codification that involves imposing arbitrary rulings upon a speech community , as opposed to more liberal approaches that draw heavily from descriptive surveys; in a wider sense, however, the latter also constitute a form of prescriptivism. Mate Kapović makes
16819-413: The standard usually functions as a normalizing reference for speech and writing. In educational contexts, it usually informs the version of the language taught to non-native learners. In those ways, the standard variety acquires social prestige and greater functional importance than nonstandard dialects , which depend upon or are heteronomous with respect to the standard idiom. Standard usage serves as
16958-433: The state or by private citizens (e.g. Webster's Dictionary ), some users regard such linguistic codifications as authoritative for correcting the spoken and written forms of the language. Effects of such codifications include slowing the pace of diachronic change in the standardized variety and affording a basis for further linguistic development ( Ausbau ). In the practices of broadcasting and of official communications,
17097-488: The structure of a language at a specific point in time) or diachronically (through the historical development of a language over a period of time), in monolinguals or in multilinguals , among children or among adults, in terms of how it is being learnt or how it was acquired, as abstract objects or as cognitive structures, through written texts or through oral elicitation, and finally through mechanical data collection or through practical fieldwork. Linguistics emerged from
17236-445: The structure of the word "tenth" on two different levels of analysis. On the level of internal word structure (known as morphology), the word "tenth" is made up of one linguistic form indicating a number and another form indicating ordinality. The rule governing the combination of these forms ensures that the ordinality marker "th" follows the number "ten." On the level of sound structure (known as phonology), structural analysis shows that
17375-471: The study of language in canonical works of literature, popular fiction, news, advertisements, and other forms of communication in popular culture as well. It is usually seen as a variation in communication that changes from speaker to speaker and community to community. In short, Stylistics is the interpretation of text. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida , for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that written language be studied as
17514-531: The study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. It involves the study and interpretation of texts for aspects of their linguistic and tonal style. Stylistic analysis entails the analysis of description of particular dialects and registers used by speech communities. Stylistic features include rhetoric , diction, stress, satire, irony , dialogue, and other forms of phonetic variations. Stylistic analysis can also include
17653-436: The study was geared towards analysis and comparison between different language variations, which existed at the same given point of time. At another level, the syntagmatic plane of linguistic analysis entails the comparison between the way words are sequenced, within the syntax of a sentence. For example, the article "the" is followed by a noun, because of the syntagmatic relation between the words. The paradigmatic plane, on
17792-586: The subfield of formal semantics studies the denotations of sentences and how they are composed from the meanings of their constituent expressions. Formal semantics draws heavily on philosophy of language and uses formal tools from logic and computer science . On the other hand, cognitive semantics explains linguistic meaning via aspects of general cognition, drawing on ideas from cognitive science such as prototype theory . Pragmatics focuses on phenomena such as speech acts , implicature , and talk in interaction . Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that
17931-419: The term philology is now generally used for the "study of a language's grammar, history, and literary tradition", especially in the United States (where philology has never been very popularly considered as the "science of language"). Although the term linguist in the sense of "a student of language" dates from 1641, the term linguistics is first attested in 1847. It is now the usual term in English for
18070-430: The terms standard dialect and standard variety are neutral synonyms for the term standard language , usages which indicate that the standard language is one of many dialects and varieties of a language, rather than the totality of the language, whilst minimizing the negative implication of social subordination that the standard is the only form worthy of the label "language". The term standard language identifies
18209-561: The third edition Garner's Modern English Usage (2009) in English, or the Nouveau Petit Robert (1993) in French. A partially descriptive approach can be especially useful when approaching topics of ongoing conflict between authorities, or in different dialects , disciplines, styles , or registers . Other guides, such as The Chicago Manual of Style , are designed to impose a single style and thus remain primarily prescriptive (as of 2017 ). Some authors define "prescriptivism" as
18348-523: The time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. It would later become the official language of all the Italian states , and after the Italian unification it became the national language of the Kingdom of Italy . Modern Standard Italian 's lexicon has been deeply influenced by almost all regional languages of Italy . The standard language in
18487-462: The use of words perceived as offensive. Some elements of prescription in English are sometimes thought to have been based on the norms of Latin grammar . Robert Lowth is frequently cited as having done so, but he specifically objected to "forcing the English under the rules of a foreign Language". Prescriptivism is often subject to criticism. Many linguists, such as Geoffrey Pullum and other posters to Language Log , are highly skeptical of
18626-420: The very outset of that [language] history." The above approach of comparativism in linguistics is now, however, only a small part of the much broader discipline called historical linguistics. The comparative study of specific Indo-European languages is considered a highly specialized field today, while comparative research is carried out over the subsequent internal developments in a language: in particular, over
18765-551: The word in its original meaning as " téchnē grammatikḗ " ( Τέχνη Γραμματική ), the "art of writing", which is also the title of one of the most important works of the Alexandrine school by Dionysius Thrax . Throughout the Middle Ages , the study of language was subsumed under the topic of philology, the study of ancient languages and texts, practised by such educators as Roger Ascham , Wolfgang Ratke , and John Amos Comenius . In
18904-582: The world of ideas. This work is the first to use the word etymology to describe the history of a word's meaning. Around 280 BC, one of Alexander the Great 's successors founded a university (see Musaeum ) in Alexandria , where a school of philologists studied the ancient texts in Greek, and taught Greek to speakers of other languages. While this school was the first to use the word "grammar" in its modern sense, Plato had used
19043-578: Was based on Mandarin dialects. In the 1930s, Standard Chinese was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect , but with vocabulary also drawn from other Mandarin varieties and its syntax based on the written vernacular. It is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (where it is called Pǔtōnghuà "common speech"), the de facto official language of the Republic of China governing Taiwan (as Guóyǔ "national language") and one of
19182-507: Was the first known instance of its kind. In the Middle East, Sibawayh , a Persian, made a detailed description of Arabic in AD 760 in his monumental work, Al-kitab fii an-naħw ( الكتاب في النحو , The Book on Grammar ), the first known author to distinguish between sounds and phonemes (sounds as units of a linguistic system) . Western interest in the study of languages began somewhat later than in
19321-589: Was widely taken as an authority for British English for much of the 20th century; Strunk and White 's The Elements of Style has done similarly for American English . The Duden grammar (first edition 1880) has a similar status for German. Although lexicographers often see their work as purely descriptive, dictionaries are widely regarded as prescriptive authorities. Books such as Lynne Truss 's Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003), which argues for stricter adherence to prescriptive punctuation rules, also seek to exert an influence. Linguistic prescription
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