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

• Published in: Language policy Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 301 - 317
• Main Author: del Valle, José
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01-05-2020; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Applied Linguistics; Cartography; Democracy; Diachronic Linguistics; Dialects; Haugen, Einar; Language Attitudes; Language Education; Language Planning; Language policy; Language standardization; Linguistic Theory; Linguistics; Modernity; Nation states; Nationalism; Original Paper; Political Influences; Political Science; Politics; Social Sciences; Sociolinguistics; Standard Spoken Usage; Standardization; Nationalism; Liberal democracy; Politics of language; Standardization; Normativity
• ISSN: 1568-4555; 1573-1863
• DOI: 10.1007/s10993-019-09529-w

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.