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Linguistic purism (or linguistic
protectionism) is the definition of one language variety as purer than
other varieties, often in reference to a perceived decline from an
ideal past or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but
sometimes simply to an abstract ideal. The decline may take the
form of change of vocabulary, syncretism of grammatical
elements, or loanwords.
The unwanted similarity is often with a neighboring language whose
speakers are culturally or politically dominant. The abstract ideal
may invoke logic, clarity, or the grammar of "classic"
languages.
Linguistic purism is often presented as conservative, as a
"protection" of a language from the "aggression" of other languages
or of "conservation" of the national Volkgeist, but is often
innovative in defining a new standard.
Linguistic purism is sometimes part of governmental language policy
which is enforced in various ways.
It should not be confused with language
revival/revitalization.
Cognate
languages
In one common case, two closely-related languages or language
varieties are in competition, one weaker, the other stronger.
Speakers of the stronger language may characterize the weaker
language as a "dialect" of
the strong language, with the implication that it has no
independent existence. In response, defenders of the "weaker"
language go to great lengths to prove that their language is
equally autonomous.
In this context, Yiddish and Dutch have in the past sometimes been
considered dialects of German. In the case of Low German (spoken in
northern Germany) the debate
is still current. Since linguistic science offers no scholarly
definition of a dialect, and linguists regard the distinction with
scepticism (cf. A language is
a dialect with an army and navy), the argument is really about
subjective questions of identity politics, and at times it can be
conducted in a very emotional tone.
Writing
systems
Closely related languages often tend to mix. One way of
preventing this is using different writing systems or different spelling systems.
The extreme case was with Moldovan and Romanian
languages, which are virtually identical in all respects, except
that Moldovan used Cyrillic script (which is still in
use in Transnistria) and Romanian used Latin script.
Another 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 traditionally kept
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 Sanskritization and
Anglicization of Hindi and the Arabization and Persianization of Urdu.
Serbian
and Croatian languages also differ mainly
in using Cyrillic and Latin scripts, respectively.
Both of them exhibit high degree of mutual intelligibility as both
standard Serbian and Croatian are based on essentially the same
dialect (stylised form of Neoštokavian).
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 an
official language and a test in Swedish is required for all public
servants.
Forms of
purism
Based on
the approach
- 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.
- Elitist purism: Associated with the language spoken at the
court.
- Logical purism: For several centuries, English grammarians have
condemned double
negatives on the grounds that two negatives make a
positive.
- 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. Examples include High Norwegian and Anglish. 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, Germany and Greece are known for their preference
for coining words over borrowing English words.
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 the following:
- 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.
Based on the
goals
- Democratic purism: Aims at safeguarding the intelligibility of
(modern) concepts for a larger group of language users through
enforcing their expression by the means of common, every-day words
or expressions (for example, “to back up / backing” instead of
“sustain[ment]”)
- Unificatory purism: Aims at better uniting the overall user
group of a language by reducing certain regional or professional
linguistic peculiarities which could separate varying aspects of
life, or even obstruct interconnectivity, between individuals or
sub-groups of different regional provenience or professional
background.
- Defensive purism: Aims at defending a language from external
threats. Mostly, these are to be understood as influx of foreign
ideas which a given language group (or its political system)
disdains or has overthrown, or influx of foreign words or
expressions which tend to substitute innate vocabulary, thus
diminishing and/or endangering supra-regional or inter-generational
intelligibility within a language area or between its present
speakers and the literary remnants of their venerated ancestors, i.
e., some kind of “classical” heritage (as e. g. Shakespeare's usage
is already no more widely understood amongst many of today's
English speakers).
- Prestige purism: Aims at varying prestige functions.
- Delimiting purism: Aims at establishing some kind of separating
functions.
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 a certain openness to all sources of enrichment, at the
same time characterized by a lack among the language elite of
intellectual digestion of foreign influxes, or by a lack of such an
elite as a whole. 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 inclusive 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.
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 and snowboard >
snøbrett).
- Orthographic purism: directed against foreign orthographic
elements (such as in Norwegian: genre >
sjanger, in Spanish: football >
fútbol).
- 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 (such as bolchevismo in Spanish)
Other
forms
- Regressive purism. The eradication of very old loan-words. It
is one of the main features of ultrapurism.
- Ultrapurism: The extreme upper limit of purism. In this
pattern, everything expressed by human speech can become a target
for puristic intervention, even geographical names, proper names,
and names of physical elements, chemicals, etc. The only two
recorded examples of this are High Icelandic (Háfrónska), and the
usage of the German renaissance humanist Johann Georg
Turmair who even translated the name of the ancient
Roman general Fabius Cunctator into „Zauderer
Bohnenmaier“ (i. e. literally “Laggard Bean-Mayor”).
Linguistic purism by
language
See also
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.
- Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Hybridity versus
Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns. In
Journal of Language Contact, Varia 2 (2009), 40-67.
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