Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

22 Language Planning and Education
empirically verifiable reality in that while some speakers may approximate to the
standard they never ‘exactly conform to the idealisation’ (Milroy, J. 1999: 18), an
observation that has led several scholars (e.g. Milroy and Milroy 1998, Joseph 2004)
to refer to the standard language as an ‘idea in the mind’, a sort of platonic form.
Standardisation is also an ideological process in a number of respects. First of all,
the standard is commonly based on the variety (or variants) spoken by the most
powerful sector of society, whose norms are subsequently held up for less privileged
social groups to emulate. This, it is sometimes argued, consolidates and helps
legitimate the economic and social dominance of elites. Acceptance and acquisition
of the standard becomes necessary for socio-economic mobility. Second, standardisation
gives rise to what Milroy and Milroy (1998) refer to as a ‘standard language
ideology’, a constellation of beliefs propagated by the media, government agencies or
influential opinion formers, and widely accepted by the public, whose principal
constituents may be summarised as follows:
1. Identification of the standard language (e.g. standard English) with the whole
language (see Milroy, J. 1999: 18)
2. Belief in the superiority of the standard language over other varieties or dialects
3. Development of the notions of correct and incorrect language, and the idea
that there is only ‘one correct form of the spoken language’ (Milroy, L. 1999:
174), part of the population coming to stigmatise their own speech as
‘incorrect’ or ‘ungrammatical’. Language change also comes to be associated
with decay or corruption
4. Identification of the standard language with the national language, a symbol of
national identity and source, potentially, of national pride.
Turning now to the role of LP in standardisation, we immediately encounter
a complicating factor, inimical to generalisation, which is the considerable variation
in the routes taken toward the building of a standard language. In some cases, for
example, standardisation is a protracted process, in others relatively swift; in some
a standard is imposed from above, in others it emerges gradually from below in a
more organic process; in some standardisation commences before the era of high
nationalism, in others it coincides with or post-dates that era; in some standardisation
produces a single accepted standard, in others the outcome is two or more
competing standards; and so on. It may be more appropriate, therefore, to proceed
with some illustrative and contrasting examples.
A convenient example of standardisation as a long-term process, and one, moreover,
where formal, state-directed LP is not especially evident, would be English. In
this case, the standardising process is generally thought to have commenced in the
Renaissance period with Caxton’s introduction of printing to England in 1476 and
his adoption of the prestitious south-east Midlands variety, centred on London, as
the basis of the print language. The position and prestige of this variety was steadily
entrenched by its use in administration and literary production (e.g. in the works of
Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare). In due course it received the attention of the
eighteenth-century prescriptivists, all of whom were desirous of linguistic order and