Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology, and Metaphor

The Czech Orthography Wars
1. Auflage 2007
ISBN: 978-3-11-018826-4
Verlag: De Gruyter

Buch, Englisch, Band 17, 369 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 568 g

Reihe: Language, Power and Social Process [LPSP]

How does a country find itself 'at war' over spelling? This book focuses on a crucial juncture in the post-communist history of the Czech Republic, when an orthographic commission with a moderate reformist agenda found itself the focus of enormous public controversy. Delving back into history, Bermel explores the Czech nation's long tradition of intervention and its association with the purity of the language, and how in the twentieth century an ascendant linguistic school - Prague Functionalism - developed into a progressive but centralizing ideology whose power base was inextricably linked to the communist regime. Bermel looks closely at the reforms of the 1990s and the heated public reaction to them. On the part of language regulators, he examines the ideology that underlay the reforms and the tactics employed on all sides to gain linguistic authority, while in dissecting the public reaction, he looks both at conscious arguments marshaled in favor of and against reform and at the use, conscious and subconscious, of metaphors about language. Of interest to faculty and students working in the area of language, cultural studies, and history, especially that of transitional and post-communist states, this volume is also relevant for those with a more general interest in language planning and language reform. The book is awarded with the "The George Blazyca Prize in East European Studies 2008".

Zielgruppe

Students and Researchers in Language Planning, Slavonic Studies (Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies), European History (especially Central and Eastern Europe), History of Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Social Anthropology, and Post-Communist Studies

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bermel, Neil

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Schrift, Paläographie, Orthographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Sprachsoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien

Über Autor(innen)

Neil Bermel, University of Sheffield, UK.