Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000)

Produktbeschreibung

Focusing on the sociolinguistic history of Germanic languages, the current volume challenges the traditional teleological approach of language historiography. The 30 contributions present alternative histories of ten ¿big¿ as well as ¿small¿ Germanic languages and varieties in the last 300 years. Topics covered in this book include language variation and change and the politics of language contact and choice, seen against the background of standardization processes of written and oral text genres and from the viewpoint of larger sections of the population. 

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction Stephan Elspaß: A twofold view 'from below': New perspectives on
language histories and historical grammar; I. Language variation in letters,
diaries and other text sources from below Marina Dossena: "As this leaves me at
present" - Formulaic usage, politeness and social proximity in
nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants' letters; Tony Fairman: 'Lower-order'
letters, schooling and the English language, 1795 to 1834; Nicola McLelland:
"Doch mein Mann möchte doch mal wissen ..." A discourse analysis of 19th-century
emigrant men and women's private correspondence; Gertrud Reershemius: Remnants
of Western Yiddish in East Frisia; Marijke van der Wal: Eighteenth-century
linguistic variation from the perspective of a Dutch diary and a collection of
private letters; II. From past to present: Change from above - change from below
Joan C. Beal/Karen P. Corrigan: 'Time and Tyne': a corpus-based study of
variation and change in relativization strategies in Tyneside English; David
Denison: Syntactic surprises in some English letters: the underlying progress of
the language; Richard Dury: YOU and THOU in Early Modern English:
cross-linguistic perspectives; Kirstin Killie: On the history of verbal present
participle converbs in English and Norwegian and the concept of 'change from
below'; Alexandra Lenz: The grammaticalization of geben 'to give' in German and
Luxembourgish; Koen Plevoets/Dirk Speelman/Dirk Geeraerts: A corpus-based study
of colloquial 'Flemish'; Reinhild Vandekerckhove: 'Tussentaal' as a source of
change from below in Belgian Dutch. A case study of substandardization processes
in the chat language of Flemish teenagers; III. Language norms and
standardization in a view from below Christa de Kleine: Surinamese Dutch: The
Development of a Unique Germanic Language Variety; Ana Deumert: "Zoo schrijve ek
lievers my sort Afrikaans". Speaker agency, identity and resistance in the
history of Afrikaans; Martin Durrell: "Deutsch ist eine würde-lose Sprache". On
the history of a failed prescription; Roswitha Fischer: To boldly split the
infinitive - or not? Prescriptive traditions and current English usage; Amanda
Pounder: Norm consciousness and corpus constitution in the study of Earlier
Modern Germanic languages; Anja Voeste: Variability and professionalism as
prerequisites of standardization; Evelyn Ziegler: Putting standard German to the
test: Some notes on the linguistic competence of grammar-school students and
teachers in the nineteenth century; IV. Language choice and language planning
Steffen Arzberger: The choice between the German or French language for the
German nobility of the late 18th Century; Jeroen Darquennes: Flirting at the
fringe - The status of the German varieties as perceived by language activists
in Belgium's Areler Land; Kristine Horner: Language and Luxembourgish national
identity: ideologies of hybridity and purity in the past and present; Ernst
Håkon Jahr: The planning of modern Norwegian as a sociolinguistic experiment -
'from below'; Péter Maitz: The death of Standard German in 19th century
Budapest. A case study on the role of linguistic ideologies in language shift;
Agnete Nesse: 1750-1850: The disappearance of German from Bergen, Norway;
Stefaniya Ptashnyk: Societal multilingualism and language conflicts in Galicia
in the 19th century; Eline Vanhecke/Jetje De Groof: New data on language policy
and language choice in 19th-century Flemish city administrations; V. Reflections
on alternative language histories Angelika Linke: Communicative genres as
categories of a cultural history of communication; Richard J. Watts:
Deconstructing episodes in the 'history of English' 

Kritik

"Insgesamt handelt es sich um ein sehr detailreiches Buch, das dem an variationslinguistischen Fragestellungen interessierten Leser Einblicke in die historische Soziolinguistik und historische Pragmatik bietet und zahlreiche Forschungsperspektiven aufzeigt."Verena Teschke in: Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 2/2009 "There is much to admire about this book. The breadth of languages discussed is impressive, as is the use of sources of data that have been neglected in more traditional approaches to historical linguistics."Marc Pierce in: Linguist List 19.2184
"Insgesamt handelt es sich um ein sehr detailreiches Buch, das dem an variationslinguistischen Fragestellungen interessierten Leser Einblicke in die historische Soziolinguistik und historische Pragmatik bietet und zahlreiche Forschungsperspektiven aufzeigt."
Verena Teschke in: Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 2/2009

"There is much to admire about this book. The breadth of languages discussed is impressive, as is the use of sources of data that have been neglected in more traditional approaches to historical linguistics."
Marc Pierce in: Linguist List 19.2184 

Autoreninfo

Stephan Elspaß, University of Augsburg, Germany; Nils Langer, University of Bristol, UK; Joachim Scharloth, University of Zurich, Switzerland; Wim Vandenbussche , Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.