Reflections on linguistic pluricentricity

Author(s):  
Peter Auer

Abstract This article argues that the notion of pluricentricity fails to capture the multitude of sociolinguistic contexts in which a language may have two or more standards, which is due to the fact that it was invented with a particular context in mind (that of emerging nation-states). The notion also suffers from a reliance on an undefined and unclear (perhaps metaphorical) notion of a centre (and a periphery). A more neutral term such as multi-standard language therefore appears more useful. It is also argued that pluriareality is not a notion that can fruitfully replace pluricentricity, as the two presuppose different approaches to standardisation: one usage-based, the other normative. This is demonstrated with reference to the on-going discussion of the Austrian variety of German.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irmtraud Kaiser ◽  
Andrea Ender

Abstract This paper explores intra-individual variation as a manifestation of language-internal multilingualism in the Central-Bavarian Austrian context. Based on speech data from children and adults in different contexts, we discuss different methods of measuring and analyzing inter-situational variation along the dialect and standard language spectrum. By contrasting measures of dialectality, on the one hand, and proportions of turns in dialect, standard language or intermediate/mixed forms on the other, we gain complementary insights not only into the individual dialect-standard repertoires but also into the consequences of different methodological choices. The results indicate that intra-individual variation is ubiquitous in adults and children and that individual repertoires need to be taken into account from the beginning of the language acquisition process. We suggest that while intra-individual variation can be attested through the use of various methods, the revealed level of granularity and the conclusions that can be drawn as to the individual repertoires on the dialect-standard spectrum largely depend on the measures used and their inherent assumptions and intrinsically necessary categorizations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 161-182
Author(s):  
Pallavi Raghavan

In this chapter, I chart out how partition shifted the terms of trade between two points now divided by the boundary line. While, on the one hand, both governments made lofty declarations of carrying out trade with one another as independent nation states—taxable, and liable to regulations by both states—on the other, they were also forced to come to a series of arrangements to accommodate commercial transactions to continue in the way that they had always existed before the making of the boundary. In many instances, in fact, it was actually impossible to physically stop the process of commercial transactions between both sides of the border, and the boundary line. Therefore, the question this chapter is concerned with is the extent to which both governments’ positions were amenable to the necessities of contingency, demand, and genuine emergency, in the face of a great deal of rhetoric about how the Indian and Pakistani economies had to be bolstered on their own merits.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-464
Author(s):  
Sovinda Po ◽  
Christopher B. Primiano

In this article, drawing from both interviews and secondary sources, we examine why Cambodia welcomes the rise of China when other states appear to be less enthusiastic. Despite the alarm in the region at China’s assertiveness, Cambodia, unlike some other nation states, has chosen to bandwagon with China. While some states in the region are pursuing a mixed strategy of economic engagement with China on the one hand and security alignment with the United States on the other (i.e. hedging), which allows such states to be on good terms with both the United States and China, Cambodia has embraced China almost exclusively. Situating the issue within the IR literature of bandwagoning, balancing, and hedging, this article presents four variables explaining the motivations behind Cambodia’s bandwagoning policy towards China. Towards the end, we offer some suggestions for Cambodia to move forward.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-167
Author(s):  
Jeremy F. Walton ◽  
Piro Rexhepi

Over recent decades, Islamic institutions and Muslim communities in the successor nation-states of former Yugoslavia have taken shape against a variegated political and historical topography. In this article, we examine the discourses and politics surrounding Islamic institutions in four post-Yugoslav nation-states: Kosovo, Macedonia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Our analysis moves in two directions. On the one hand, we illuminate the historical legacies and institutional ties that unite Muslims across these four contexts. As we argue, this institutional history continues to mandate a singular, hegemonic model of Sunni-Hanafi Islam that pre-emptively delegitimizes Muslim communities outside of its orbit. On the other hand, we also attend to the contrasting national politics of Islam in each of our four contexts, ranging from Islamophobic anxiety and suspicion to multiculturalism, from a minority politics of differentiation to hegemonic images of ethno-national religiosity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 270-280
Author(s):  
David E. S. Beek

Abstract Faulkner’s The Reivers exemplifies the Quixotic Picaresque-a conflation of the narrative modes exhibited in Lazarillo de Tormes and Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. This essay explores the correlation between Spain’s transition from feudalism to a modern mercantile society and the United States’ transition from an agrarian society based on slavery to a modern industrial nation within the cultural contexts of these novels. In each of these works, a series of trickster figures undertake performative acts of deception, particularly the masking tradition of Carnival, in order to endure the hardships of modernity. However, whereas most tricksters tend to be solely focused on pragmatic individual objectives, quixotic pícaros maintain a sense of idealism that leads them to consider the Other and thus act in the name of communal prosperity. These selfless tricksters meta-theatrically parody the generic social conventions in which they reside in order to subvert the hegemony that seeks to oppress and marginalise them and fellow members of their communities. In performing an array of identities and social roles, these quixotic pícaros contribute to the opacity of modern multicultural nation-states, and thus, disrupt all social hierarchies leading to the regeneration of the public body, mobility, and a more utopian world.


2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Fehringer

In standard German, the non-occurrence of -s plurals as the first element of a lexical compound (e.g., *Auto-s-berg ‘heap of cars') vs. the regular occurrence of the other plural suffixes (e.g., Kind-er-club ‘children's club', Frau-en-fete 'women's party') has often been quoted as evidence for a dual mechanism model of morphology, which sees irregular forms as stored in the mental lexicon while regular forms are generated by rule (see Marcus et al. 1995). However, in colloquial northern German, where the s-plural is more widely used than in the standard language, it is possible to form productive compounds containing this suffix (e.g., Mädel-s-treff ‘girls’ meeting'). This paper investigates to what extent -s plurals are acceptable within compounds in colloquial northern German, whether they are subject to any linguistic constraints (for example, morphological or phonological), and what implications they might have for current morphological theory.*


1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-250
Author(s):  
Werner Abraham

ABSTRACTThis essay addresses in general lines the issue of variance within some languages and how such variances are linked systematically, i.e., on the basis of some general abstract theoretical pattern, with the standard language. Several such variances are illustrated ranging from regiolects to sociolects of German, and it is shown what the abstract pattern is that serves as the base of description of the standard as well as the sociolectal and regiolectal variances. The main body of the text is dedicated to a specific criterion of variation, namely the deictic features in the grammars of COME and GO in German, English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. To the extent that the five languages deviate considerably from one another in choosing one against the other of the two verbs of motion, an inventory of sociopragmatic conditions has been uncovered which plays the guiding role in selecting deictic alternatives and which can be considered to be of universal status. The bottom line is that there are conditions, beyond those of semantic and grammatical selection, i.e., sociopragmatic ones which systematically determine choices from some well-conditioned lexical paradigms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Robert Möller ◽  
Stephan Elspaß

<p>Although dialect use has declined massively over the past 100 years in large parts of the German-speaking countries, there is still a considerable areal diversity overall. Even the written standard language is characterised by diatopic heterogeneity on various levels – pronunciation, lexis, grammar, pragmatics. This is even more true for spoken everyday language, which, depending on the country and area, may be more dialectal, regiolectal, or near-standard in the German-speaking countries. This paper focuses on lexical variation and presents data from the <em>Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache </em>(AdA) from online surveys conducted over the last 17 years; some of these data is compared with older data from the <em>Wortatlas der deutschen Umgangssprachen</em> (WDU) collected in the 1970s. The approx. 600 maps of the AdA produced so far document, on the one hand, a surprisingly clear preservation of older regional contrasts in the distribution of diatopic variants, as already known from earlier dialect atlases. On the other hand, the AdA maps show a multitude of newer cases of regional diversity, which were hardly or not at all known before and which are thus not listed in codices or studies on the lexis of contemporary German. The paper shows that even variants for modern concepts are often not uniform across regions but can have distinct regional emphases. Finally, the question of dominant areal structures in present-day lexical variation of German will be addressed.</p>


2015 ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Marjan Markovik`

Macedonian Language from the Perspective of its Balkan Environment (Language Tendencies)In the past fifteen years, Macedonian standard language and its dialects have been subject to various changes effected for the purpose of establishing clearer and simpler communication. At dialectal level, Macedonian speeches are dissolving and fewer differences can be noticed between city and rural speeches. On the other hand, Macedonian contemporary language is subject to various changes and accelerated development both due to the dissolving of dialects and to the need of adaptation of the influences of foreign languages. Therefore, in this text, I shall attempt to portray two linguistic phenomena, that have not been researched much until now, but that have recently become more intense and which, in a way, show the tendencies in both dialects and contemporary Macedonian language. The first phenomenon that I shall portray is the increasingly present use of double prepositions in Ohrid speech, a phenomenon that has not yet been researched or initiated in the Balkan linguistic environment. The other phenomenon concerns contemporary language and portrays how language deals (in relation to the accommodation by type and tense) with the verbs of foreign origin. Język macedoński w bałkańskim kontekście językowym (tendencje językowe)W ostatnim piętnastoleciu zarówno macedoński standard, jak i dialekty podlegają zmianom, których kierunek wyznacza jasność i jednoznaczność procesu komunikacji. Na poziomie dialektów, język macedoński dzieli się i traci różnicę między miejskim i wiejskim wariantem. Z drugiej strony język macedoński podlega przemianom związanym z przyspieszonym rozwojem i dialektalną dyferencjacją z powodu konieczności adaptacji obcych wpływów. Z tego powodu w moim artykule staram się zaprezentować dwie tendencje językowe, mało dotąd zbadane, które są coraz bardziej widoczne zarówno na poziomie dialektów, jak i na poziomie współczesnego macedońskiego standardu. Pierwsza z nich, słabo zbadana i będąca wynikiem bałkańskiego kontekstu językowego, jest związana z coraz częstszym podwajaniem przyimków w ochrydzkiej odmianie języka macedońskiego. Druga widoczna jest jako tendencja, która unaocznia akomodacyjne procesy (obejmujące system czasów i rodzajów) we współczesnym macedońskim standardzie w odniesieniu do czasowników obcego pochodzenia.Mакедонскиот јазик во балканското јазично опкружување(јазичните тенденции)Во последниве петнаесетина години, македонскиот стандарден и дијалектен јазик е подложен на низа промени во правец на појасна и поеднозначна комуникација. На дијалектно ниво, македонските говори се раслојуваат и се губат разликите меѓу градските и селските говори. Од друга страна пак, македонскиот современ јазик е подложен на низа промени и забрзан развој и поради раслојување на дијалектите и поради потребата за адаптација на туѓојазичните влијанија Затоа, во овој текст се обидувам да покажам две јазични појави, досега малку проучувани, кои во последниот период земаат сè поголем замав, и на одреден начин ги покажуваат тенденциите и во дијалектниот и во современиот македонски јазик. Првата појава која ја претставувам се однесува на сè позачестеното удвојување на предлозите во охридскиот говор, појава досега непроучувана и поттикната од балканското јазично опкружување. Другата појава се однесува на современиот македонски јазик и покажува како јазикот се справува (во однос на видската и временската акомодација) со глаголите од туѓо потекло.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariëtta van der Tol

Abstract This article discusses a reorientation of supersessionist postures in German and Dutch Protestant reflection on emerging nation states in the nineteenth-century. Historically, Christian thought often othered “the Jew” as the “nascent Christian.” Since the seventeenth-century, Protestant theologians also entertained the possibility of theological othering on the basis of the legalism of the Mosaic covenant, of which ancient biblical Israel and its cultural liturgies were regarded as a token. In the context of the modern nation, German and Dutch Protestant thought entertained this typological othering of biblical nationhood to construct the modern Jew as “Gentile” to the modern nation. As “Gentile,” “the Jew” remains the embodiment of the ultimate other, yet as “nascent Christian,” modern Jews begin to face an unrelenting demand to assimilate. This conundrum contributed to a fundamental tension in the imaginary of the nation, namely between patterns of othering and structures of belonging, echoing far beyond antisemitism, and especially in patterns of othering that are inherent to racism and Islamophobia.


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