Other definitions of standardization.

It may be useful to review some other attempts to define language standardization; as I have tried to indicate, much of the debate on this issue has to do more with English or other western languages and may not be germane for Tamil or Arabic.

1.

Pakir 1994: Discusses what she calls ``unplanned language planning", or ``invisible" language policies.

2.

Kachru (1985): Proposes four types of codification:

(a)

Authoritative or mandated (by academies etc.)

(b)

Sociological or attitudinal codification: social and attitudinal preference for certain varieties, accents.

(c)

Educational codification: dictionaries, media, teacher training, standardization of textbooks, school grammars, etc.

(d)

Psychological codification: constraints on, e.g. Sanskrit.

3.

Milroy and Milroy (1985): ``In the strictest sense, no spoken language can ever be fully standardized." Writing and spelling are easily standardized; spoken standardization is an ``ideology", an idea, not a reality. If languages were not standardized, they would break up into regional spoken dialects and end in mutual unintelligibility.

4.

Haugen (1972): proposes that linguistic cultures are `intolerant' of optional variability in language. There must be selection, diffusion, maintenance, elaboration of function.

5.

Joseph: 1987: Joseph's work is mainly useful for showing how one highly standardized language, French, managed to rise from the position of an L variety to that of an H variety, and to displace Latin, the previous H variety. In doing so, it had to prove that French had classical features as valid as those of Latin and Greek, and once French had done this, other European languages were able to follow suit and expel Latin from H-status, e.g. in University education.