hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2018-03-03

■ #3232. 理想化された抽象的な変種としての標準○○語 [standardisation][linguistic_ideology][sociolinguistics]

　標準英語の歴史に焦点を当てた論文集の巻頭で，Milroy (11) が非常にうまい言い方で標準○○語というものの抽象性について述べている．

It has been observed (Coulmas 1992: 175) that 'traditionally most languages have been studied and described as if they were standard languages'. This is largely true of historical descriptions of English, and I am concerned in this paper with the effects of the ideology of standardisation (Milroy and Milroy 1991: 22--3) on scholars who have worked on the history of English. It seems to me that these effects have been so powerful in the past that the picture of language history that has been handed down to us is a partly false picture --- one in which the history of the language as a whole is very largely the story of the development of modern Standard English and not of its manifold varieties. This tendency has been so strong that traditional histories of English can themselves be seen as constituting part of the standard ideology --- that part of the ideology that confers legitimacy and historical depth on a language, or --- more precisely --- on what is held at some particular time to be the most important variety of a language.
   In the present account, the standard language will not be treated as a definable variety of a language on a par with other varieties. The standard is not seen as part of the speech community in precisely the same sense that vernaculars can be said to exist in communities. Following Haugen (1966), standardisation is viewed as a process that is in some sense always in progress.

　標準○○語とは静的な存在物ではなく，動的で流体のようなものである．標準化という動的な過程を，静的なものへとマッピングした架空の抽象的な言語変種に近いということだ．もちろん，標準○○語に限らず，あらゆる言語変種がフィクションであるとはいえる（cf. 「#1373. variety とは何か」 ([2013-01-29-1])，「#415. All linguistic varieties are fictions」 ([2010-06-16-1])，「#2116. 「英語」の虚構性と曖昧性」 ([2015-02-11-1])，「#2265. 言語変種とは言語変化の経路をも決定しうるフィクションである」 ([2015-07-10-1])）．しかし，標準○○語は，標準を神聖視するイデオロギーに支えられて，重層的なフィクション――フィクションのフィクション――になりやすい代物であるのかもしれない．「#1396. "Standard English" とは何か」 ([2013-02-21-1]) という問題に迫るにも，幾重もの表皮をはぎ取らなければならないのだろう．

　・ Milroy, Jim. "Historical Description and the Ideology of the Standard Language." The Development of Standard English, 1300--1800. Ed. Laura Wright. Cambridge: CUP, 2000. 11--28.
　・ Coulmas, F. Language and Economy. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
　・ Milroy, Lesley and James Milroy. Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.
　・ Haugen, Einar. "Dialect, Language, Nation." American Anthropologist. 68 (1966): 922--35.

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