The Ideology of Language Purism in Online Interaction of Arabic Speakers

Recently, the critical relationship between ideology and discourse becomes one of the main issues discussed in a wide range of disciplines. Language ideology is described as a dynamic and inconsistent process that must be studied in its given context. This paper aimed to explore the sociolinguistic aspects of language ideology embedded in online interaction of Arabic speakers. The ideology of language purism was the focus of this study. Critical Discourse Analysis was employed as a theoretical framework to analyze the data. The study showed the dynamic nature of discourse and asserted interdiscursive indexing of linguistic purism ideology among Arabic speakers on Twitter. Three key ideological dimensions namely nationalism, modernity and humanity have been recognized from the data corpus. The data asserted considerable influence of people’s cultural ideologies related to Islamic and Arabic identities on their language use and attitude. Modernity was also indicated to be one of the central factors influencing speakers’ perception about their languages and language use. English was described as a global language to be used to fulfill various integrative, communicative, and affective functions in modern life. Speakers’ comments about normality and personality in language use asserted the role those ideological perceptions play in their attitudes towards language purism. The intertextual analysis of the discourse revealed several linguistic features of texts under study including reporting speech, voicing, and shifting. These features served various pragmatic and social functions in this context.

Sprachwechsel in der neuesten litauischen Migrations- und Mobilitätsliteratur

Language Change in the Most Recent Lithuanian Literature of Migration and Mobility. When discussing literary multilingualism within the Lithuanian literary scene, researchers usually refer to different groups of authors. Some were born and socialised abroad immediately after the Second World War, some left Lithuania after 1990, but producing their texts in different linguistic contexts all of them write consistently in one language, English or Lithuanian. In the most recent Lithuanian migration and mobility literature, however, one can observe examples of intra-textual bilingualism or multilingualism, which illustrate the integration problems of Lithuanian (labour) migrants into foreign societies on the one hand and the development of multiple global identities on the other. The paper examines these spreading tendencies focusing on the exemplary novel Stasys Šaltoka (2017) by Gabija Grušaitė and discussing the structure and functions of the intra-textual code-switching. The creative use of language directed against conventional linguistic purism shows that the young generation of Lithuanian authors tends to break language and cultural borders. The authors Unė Kaunaitė, Gabija Grušaitė and others show that the playful use of multilingualism can be subversive, ironic, but at the same time can highlight the problems of language dominance and thus political, social and cultural exclusion, express group mentality, identity changes, etc. The way that Lithuanian literature deals with multilingualism, expressed explicitly or implicitly, reveals the extent to which certain literary texts can be described as transcultural, in line with the current tone of European and global migration and mobility literature.

Karl Tekusch (1890–1977), his concept of Sprachechtheit, and the purism movement in Austria

Summary The discovery of Karl Tekusch as a key player and significant link in the history of Austrian and German linguistic purism is the subject of this article. Tekusch was the last chairman of the Vienna Branch of the Deutscher Sprachverein (DSV), from the Austrian Anschluss until its dissolution, and he was also the first chairman of its post-WWII successor, the Viennese Verein Muttersprache, which is still active today. The existence of the hitherto lesser-known Germanischer Sprachverein, founded and chaired by Tekusch for 15 years, proves that the alleged ’gap’ in organised Austrian linguistic purism does in fact not exist, and that Austrian linguistic purism must indeed be regarded as a continuous phenomenon. Strongly influenced by the völkisch movement and later the national socialists, Tekusch had developed and continuously worked on his concept of Sprachechtheit, ‘linguistic authenticity’. The concept was very influential on purist organisations in Austria and Germany until at least the late 1970s. Moreover, Sprachechtheit was discussed beyond the realm of linguistics purism, by academics in German Philology, Sociology, Social Psychology, and German Folklore Studies / European Ethnology.

Continuity and hybridity in language revival: The case of Manx

This article presents a typology of phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical features illustrative of factors conditioning the usage of speakers and writers of Revived Manx, including substratal influence from English; language ideologies prevalent within the revival movement, especially forms of linguistic purism; and language-specific features of Manx and its orthography. Evidence is taken primarily from a corpus of Revived Manx speech and writing. The observed features of Revived Manx are situated within Zuckermann's (2009, 2020) framework of ‘hybridization’ and ‘revival linguistics’, which takes Israeli Hebrew as the prototypical model of revernacularization of a non-L1 language. However, Manx arguably provides a more typical example of what to expect when a revived minority language remains predominantly an L2 for an indefinite period, with each new cohort of speakers able to reshape the target variety in the absence of a firmly established L1 norm. (Manx, Celtic, language revival, language ideology, language shift, language contact)*

Enduring and Contemporary Code-Switching Practices in Northern Australia

In Maningrida, northern Australia, code-switching is a commonplace phenomenon within a complex of both longstanding and more recent language practices characterised by high levels of linguistic diversity and multilingualism. Code-switching is observable between local Indigenous languages and is now also widespread between local languages and English and/or Kriol. In this paper, I consider whether general predictions about the nature and functioning of code-switching account for practices in the Maningrida context. I consider: (i) what patterns characterise longstanding code-switching practices between different Australian languages in the region, as opposed to code-switching between an Australian language and Kriol or English? (ii) how do the distinctions observable align with general predictions and constraints from dominant theoretical frameworks? Need we look beyond these factors to explain the patterns? Results indicate that general predictions, including the effects of typological congruence, account for many observable tendencies in the data. However, other factors, such as constraints exerted by local ideologies of multilingualism and linguistic purism, as well as shifting socio-interactional goals, may help account for certain distinct patterns in the Maningrida data.

Piissimus and pientissimus: two nonexistent superlatives of pius?

The combined analysis of epigraphic, literary and grammatical sources allows light to be shed on linguistic problems concerning the two superlatives of pius, piissimus and pientissimus, which have been mostly overlooked by scholars to date. Regarding the first superlative, Cicero says that it does not exist in Latin (CIC. Phil. 13.43.9), whereas the second form is exclusively attested in epigraphy, with no occurrences in ancient literary or scholarly texts. Moreover, the morphology of pientissimus cannot be explained according to Classical Latin rules, since the only verb which is semantically related to pius, piare, belongs to the first conjugation (it also does not fit semantically). In the present paper, we will try to demonstrate that piissimus was generally avoided in the literature of the Classical age based on linguistic purism, though it was probably used in colloquial Latin, and definitely normalized as a standard form in the Post-Classical age, as can be seen in both the literary and epigraphic instances of this word. In the case of pientissimus, this may have initially spread in the epigraphic domain, and subsequently entered so-called Vulgar Latin.

A semiotic approach to language ideologies: Modelling the changing Icelandic languagescape

Attempts have been made to examine how speakers frame linguistic varieties by employing social semiotic models. Using ethnographic data collected over many years, this article applies such a model to Iceland, once described as the ‘e-coli of linguistics’ – its size, historical isolation and relative linguistic homogeneity create conditions akin to a sociolinguistic laboratory. This semiotic model of language ideologies problematizes the prevailing discourse of linguistic purism at a time of sociolinguistic upheaval. The analysis shows how an essentializing scheme at the heart of Icelandic language policy ensured that linguistic “anomalies” such as “dative disease” and “genitive phobia” indexed essential differences. “Impure” language was indicative of un-Icelandicness. Once monolingual (indeed monodialectal), the Icelandic speech community is increasingly characterized by innovative linguistic transgressions which thus far have not been instrumentalized by language policy makers. It is shown how a semiotic model can help us analyse the function of language ideologies more generally.

The decolonizer iconoclast

Linguistic purism and other radically essentializing concepts of language—such as “mother tongue” or “ethnic language”—form part of the colonial matrix of power. The monolingual speaker emerges as some kind of hegemonic figure in these narratives, while the multilingual speaker is positioned as deficient. These two poles are part of the many binary constructions that characterize coloniality, as well as recent sociolinguistic approaches which, implicitly, position multilingualism as ‘decolonization-in-action’. Based on a sociolinguistic study of speakers in Mali, this chapter explores their desire for monolingualism, as well as the persistence of multilingualism in participants’ biographies in Bamako, Mali.