Standard language, and Standardization

1. Standard Language, and
Standardization
.

2. What is a language?
Language, a system of conventional spoken,
manual (signed), or written symbols by
means of which human beings, as members
of a social group and participants in its
culture, express themselves.

3. Standard Language
• Standard language is an official form of
language.
• This kind of form of languages are always
artificially modified at least to some degree.
• Standard language is the way to use language
in official and formal situation as in
newspapers and public speeches.

4. The core idea of standard language is
to codify a public, particularly written
language so that it is accessible to
every speaker of the language to be
used in education, media and science.

5. • It depends on the culture whether the
standard language is seen as an ideal form of
overall speaking or just as a means of public
communication.
• In countries where standard language is a
mixture, this may not happen as easily. For
example, in Finland no-one thinks that people
should speak standard Finnish; it is just a way
to use language publicly, especially in writing.

6. Example:
• Standard Finnish is a good example of an
artificially constructed standard language. It is
not based on anyone’s home dialect, but is
based on a mixture of dialects fulfilled with
man-made rules. Nobody speaks standard
Finnish normally, and it is meant to be just a
means of public (written) communication.

7. Why is standard language important?
• Standard language is important because it
represents a distinction within a language that
can indicate social class and upbringing.

8. Standardization

9. The process of making something conform
to a standard.

10. Standardization
• Process by which convention forms of
language are established or maintained.
• May occur through natural development
of a language in a speech community.
• May occur as an effort by members of a
community to impose one dialect or
variety as a standard.

11. .
• Standardization is concerned with linguistic
forms (corpus planning, i.e. selection and
codification) as well as the social and
communicative functions of language (status
planning, i.e. implementation and elaboration).
• In addition, standard languages are also
discursive projects, and standardization
processes are typically accompanied by the
development of specific discourse practices.

12. • These discourses emphasize the
desirability of uniformity
and correctness in language use, the
primacy of writing and the very idea
of a national language as the only
legitimate language of the speech
community..."

13. .
• Standardisation is generally thought of as a
process that involves four stages. We need not
think of them as being chronological. Indeed,
the process of standardisation is an on-
going one, and a whole range of forces are at
work.