Language planning and its discontents: lines of flight in Haugen’s view of the politics of standardization

Authors

José del Valle, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

In this article, I claim that, while placing his theory of language, language planning, and standardization within a conceptual and historical framework inspired by Modernity, the emergence of the nation-state and liberal democracy, Haugen carefully mapped sociolinguistic phenomena onto their political treatment. And it was this careful and honest cartography—unafraid of generating internal tensions—that revealed aspects of language planning practice and scholarship in need of a critical treatment. Ultimately, Haugen embraced an understanding of linguistics that revolves around normativity and accepts language’s fundamentally political nature.

Comments

This article was originally published in Language Policy, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-019-09529-w