Bermel Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology, and Metaphor

The Czech Orthography Wars
1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-3-11-019766-2
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 17, 381 Seiten, Gewicht: 10 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 (

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bermel, Neil

Fachgebiete

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

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Frontmatter;1
2;Contents;7
3;Chapter 1 Orthographic reform and language planning;13
4;Chapter 2 Standard Czech in its social and linguistic setting;46
5;Chapter 3 Spelling reform in Czech, 1400–1900;94
6;Chapter 4 Spelling reform in Czech, 1900–1980;119
7;Chapter 5 Czech orthographic reform, 1980–1994;163
8;Chapter 6 The actors in spelling reform: Issues and debates;190
9;Chapter 7 Debating linguistics, authority, and legitimacy;226
10;Chapter 8 Metaphors and the conceptualization of language;274
11;Chapter 9 Conclusions;304
12;Backmatter;313

Über Autor(innen)

Neil Bermel, University of Sheffield, UK.