Literary Language and Language Loss

1
Literary Language and Language Loss

• Stanton Kidd
• Kellen Carpenter

2
Literary Language

• What is it?
• Written
• Standardized
• Formal
• Not just standardized, not just written
• Many languages dont have one.

3
How Are Literary Languages Born?

• Literature gets written in the vernacular.
• Development of language resources Dictionaries,
  grammars, academies.
• Language adopted for some official written use.
• The Bible gets translated into the vernacular.

4
Literary Languages, Nationalism, and Survival

• A positive connection
• A literary language works to the benefit of
  nationalism
• Medium for cultural materials
• Can delineate linguistic identity
• The first step towards a literary tradition
• Nationalism can contribute to a languages
  survival
• The necessity of understanding the literary
  language to access cultural materials
  incentivizes language survival.

5
Literary Languages and Identity Politics

• A literary language can be used to assert a
  collective identity, and equally important, an
  identity separate from others.
• Norwegian Bokmål and Nynorsk
• Kosovo Albanian Tosk and Ghegg

6
Literary Language and Literary Tradition

• A literary tradition typically emerges
  simultaneously with a literary language due to a
  pivotal work.
• However, an existing literary tradition may be
  co-opted to form the basis of a new literary
  language.
• Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (Shtokavian)
• Basque (Batua based on Gipuzkoan)

7
Literary Languages and Language Survival

• The case of the Soviet Union
• Mass language extermination for huge groups of
  languages without any literary languages.
• Better survival by languages with literary
  languages
• Armenian
• Georgian

8
Armenian and Georgian

• Old literary traditions and fully developed
  literary languages.
• Successfully resisted Soviet efforts
• Retained usual orthography
• No reduction in number of speakers
• Maintained as official languages
• Effects of resistance
• Both were largely immune to Russification efforts.

9
Literary Languages and Survival

• A literary language is an asset to a nation.
• Its ability to strengthen nationalism and
  collective identity seem to be an important
  factor in the success of lots of languages.

10
But What About Those That Are Not Helped?

• Some minority languages are endangered even with
  a literary standard
• Examples
• Asturian
• Scots
• Belarusian
• Occitan/Provençal

11
Scots

• Closely related to English
• First works published in 17th Century
• Act of Union 1707- What happens to Scots?
• English becomes language of prestige
• By late 18th Century, most middle class and upper
  class Scots use English exclusively

12
Scots (contd)

• Constant literary tradition (e.g. Robert Burns)
  but Scots language literature increasingly
  marginalized in favor of English
• Attempts at revivals in early 20th Century
  through today
• But there is no standard dialect used for these
  works
• No educational support
• Often treated as mere dialect of English

13
Asturian

• Kingdom of Asturias- 12th-14th Centuries
• Union with Aragon leads to it being eclipsed by
  Castilian
• Used by Court and Legal system
• Kept alive as literary language, barely
• Efforts at Revival in 19th century
• But this did little to reverse slide
• Why?

14
Asturian (contd)

• Asturias traditionally lags economically
• Asturian is very close to Castilian Spanish
• Asturias is not its own autonomous region
• Lack of structural or educational support
• 10-30 of the population has some knowledge, but
  mostly passive
• Probably no monolingual speakers

15
Belarusian

• White Russia- lesser identity to Great Russia
• No real tradition independent of Russia, but
  literary standard since Soviet Era
• With independence, new emphasis on language
• Newspapers and education
• Government dissuades use

16
Occitan/Provençal

• Among first vernacular literatures
• Decline in prestige 14th Century
• Following French Revolution, official language of
  France is French
• Official policy to dissuade use of patois
• Mistral wins Nobel Prize
• But this did little to staunch the decline

17
Occitan/Provençal (contd)

• Wide Variety in Dialects
• Attempts at creating standard often contentious
• Mistrals designation of Provençal has actually
  hurt efforts to standardize
• French education system has traditionally
  discouraged use of language
• Precipitous decline in number of speakers

18
Why Arent These Languages Thriving?

• Link between language survival and nationalism
• Language often needs strong economic base
• Sometimes direct pressure from majority group
  (e.g. France and Occitan)
• Indirect pressure from majority group
• No support from speakers themselves
• A literary tradition carries little weight
  without a standard, and vice versa

19
Conclusion

• A literary standard with a tradition is an
  important factor for the survival of a minority
  language, but not in and of itself

20
Bibliography

• Pipa, Arshi. The Politics of Language in
  Socialist Albania. New York Columbia University
  Press, 1989.
• Kola, Paulin. The Search for Greater Albania.
  London Hurst and Company, 2003.
• Siguan, Miguel. Multilingual Spain.
  Amsterdam/Lisse Swets Zeitlinger B.V. 1993
• Astur-Leonese. Wikipedia. 5 October, 2006.
  www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astur-Leonese_Language
• The Asturian Language. Orbis Latinus.
  www.orbilat.com/Languages/Asturian/Asturian.htm
• Asturian in Spain. Institut de Sociolingüística
  Catalana. 29-05-1998. http//www.uoc.es/euromosaic
  /web/document/asturia/an/i1/i1.html
• Asturian A Language in Spain. Ethnologue.
  2006. www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?codeas
  t

21
Bibliography (contd)

• Scots Language Wikipedia. 21 November, 2006
  www.wikipedia.org/wiki/scots_language
• Wir Ain Leid An Introduction to Modern Scots
  Scots-Online. Andy Eagle, 2001.
  www.scots-online.com/grammar/
• Occitan Language Wikipedia. 26 November, 2006.
• Abley, Mark. Spoken Here Travels Among
  Threatened Languages. Mariner Books. 2005.
• Abrahamian, Levon. Armenian Identity in a
  Changing World. Costa Mesa, CA Mazda Publishers,
  2005.
• Grenoble, Lenore. Language Policy in the Soviet
  Union. Dordrecht, The Netherlands Kluwer
  Academic Publishers, 2003.