Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the standardisation of a societies language
The standardisation of a language refers to the diachronic maintenance and conformity of a societies’ language. Language has great variation and is permeated by many attitudes and values. Milroy (1992) said that “at any time we care to look at a language…it is variable and in a state of change.” The implication is therefore that a language can never be completely stable and that languages can only ever be standardised to a certain extent. In attempting to standardise a language a conscious effort would have to be made to maintain it. With major language societies such as English and French, there is a wider diversity within their languages due to the regional variation and nomadic tendencies and so in an effort to impress the super-ordinate form, they would need an effective system that would be strong enough to impress conformity on societies. Government intervention would be crucial to change, to set an overt legislation and to impose a codified linguistic norm into the elite social groups using education and definitive and certain types of literacy. Changes in media delivery would also be essential to consolidating the language usage. With such a great effort to standardise language it is clear to see that if a language were standardized, it would be the language with the power, the language with the most speakers and it would have the greatest domination. This would hopefully draw communities together. But what are the issues, the advantages and the disadvantages in a standardisation of a society’s language?
Everybody has their own identity. Le page and Tabouret-Keller (1985) said that “individuals themselves create their own patterns of linguistic actions in a way so as to either reflect the behaviour of the groups with which they want to be associated or such as to contrast with the behaviour of those groups from which they wish to be disassociated.” Our...