One Standard German Axiom

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The One Standard German Axiom is a concept by Austrian-Canadian UBC linguist Stefan Dollinger in his 2019 monograph The Pluricentricity Debate: On Austrian German and Other Germanic Standard Varieties,[1] used to describe what he believes is scepticism in German dialectology and linguistics towards the idea of multiple standard varieties.

Similar “One Standard Axioms” have later been postulated for Catalan[2] and Croatian.[3]

Background and Development[edit]

The concept of “pluricentric language” has been used in sociolinguistics and sociology of language since the 1960s. Multiple standard varieties are commonplace in English, Portuguese and Dutch today (e.g. American English, Brazilian Portuguese or Belgian Dutch), among many others, including German.

While the application of the pluricentric model for German has been undisputed at least since the work by Michael Clyne 1992,[4] recent research in German variational sociolinguistics[5][6][7] have refined the concept of “pluricentricity” (originally referring only to the national centers Austrian German, Swiss German, etc.) and contrasted it to “pluri-areality“ (with potential centers inside or over national boundaries).[4]

Figure 1: Visualization of the modelling of German based on the One Standard German Axiom (following Dollinger, Pluricentricity Debate, Figure 4.2)

Dollinger wants to “debunk”[8] the concept of pluri-areality and argues that by downgrading or even negating the relevance of national standard varieties of German, especially Standard Austrian German, the implied underlying modelling of the German language today has not changed to the time around 1850,[9] before the unification of Germany without Austria, as visualized in Figure 1.

According to Dollinger, “pluri-areality” counters "pluri-centricity" as a term and the pluri-areal approach does not meet scientific requirements. Dollinger equals “pluri-areal German” with “monocentric German” and argues for the recognition of independent standard languages, each based on the dialects of the three national territories Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, according to Figure 2.[10]

In his monograph from 2019, Dollinger coins the term “One German Axiom” or ”One Standard German Axiom" to describe the approach of (what he believes to be) pluricentric sceptics.[11] But his idea is older: already in 2016 he criticized the pluri-areal approach as “One Standard German Hypothesis“ in a conference paper.[12] In German, Dollinger writes about the “Axiom des Einheitsdeutschen”[13] though the English name is more common).

Figure 2: Pluricentric German, with three standard varieties (following Dollinger, Pluricentricity Debate, Figure 4.1)

Scholarly Reception[edit]

In German linguistics the uptake has been expressly critical. One peer-reviewer for Oxford University Press, assessed Dollinger's original manuscript as “not publishable“ because it represents the perspective “of an Austrian more concerned about his linguistic identity, than as an academic soberly gauging the debate“.[14]

Several prominent representatives of German linguistics and dialectology described the existence of a One Standard German Axiom as a “construct”.[15] Nils Langer, specialist of Frisian and minority sociolinguistics raises doubts about the coherence of Dollingre's argumentation because he finds several simplifications and conceptual misunderstandings of basic concepts as well as out-of-the-air allegations.[4]

Not all Germanists respond negatively, however. Julia Ruck sees a lot of merit in the concept of a One Standard German Axiom.[16]

Public reception[edit]

Dollinger's works, especially the popular-scientific[17] book from 2021, have garnered interest in several Austrian media. In Wiener Zeitung the journalist Robert Sedlaczek summarized the book in his column and compared to his own popular book on Austrian German from 2004. Sedlaczek emphasizes Dollinger's strong view that nationalist German scholars in the field – in contrast to Austrians or Swiss – would question the concept of German pluricentricity in their research because of their „different socialization and academic training“.[18] As a reaction on Sedlaczek, the linguist Peter Wiesinger wrote a guest commentary in the same newspaper and argued that language nationalism doesn't evolve from scientific theory.[19]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019-01-01). "[Chapters 1 & 9 + frontmatter + backmatter] The Pluricentricity Debate: On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties [published 23 May 2019]". Routledge FOCUS Short Monographs: 14, 39–40.
  2. ^ Costa-Carreras, Joan. 2021. Compositionality, Pluricentricity, and Pluri-Areality in the Catalan Standardisation. In History of Catalonia and Its Implications for Contemporary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict, edited by Antonio Cortijo Ocaña and Vicent Martines, pp. 182-197. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-6614-5.ch13.
  3. ^ Ivaškovic, Igor (2024). "Examining political influence on language: Contradictory linguistic lexical purging in the Croatian context". Journal of Language and Politics. doi:10.1075/jlp.23079.iva.
  4. ^ a b c Langer, Nils (2022). "Review of The Pluricentricity Debate". Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur Germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft. 13 (1–2): 2–9. doi:10.1515/zrs-2020-2060. S2CID 234011977.
  5. ^ Elspass, Stephan; Niehaus, Konstantin (2014). "The standardization of a modern pluriareal language: concepts and corpus designs for German and beyond". Ord & Tunga [Word and language]. p. 50. Firstly, it [pluricentricty of German, multiple German standard varieties] is an entirely political concept, based on the notion of Überdachung of the language area by a political state. As for the recent history of German, this would have had the somewhat odd consequence that on 3 October 1990, the German language has lost an entire national variety, namely GDR German, literally overnight.
  6. ^ Scheuringer, Hermann (1996). "Das Deutsche als pluriareale Sprache: Ein Beitrag gegen staatlich begrenzte Horizonte in der Diskussion um die deutsche Sprache in Österreich". Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German. 29 (2). Immer mehr hat es sich in den letzten Jahren gezeigt, daß der Terminus plurizentrisch den arealen Mustern des deutschen Sprachgebietes nicht gerecht werden kann.
  7. ^ Koppensteiner, Wolfgang; Lenz, Alexandra N. (2020). "Tracing a standard language in Austria using methodological micro variations of verbal and matched guise technique". Linguistik Online. Vol. 102. p. 74. doi:10.13092/lo.102.6816. S2CID 229123301. Considering the findings and our interpretations thereof, the results contribute to the discussion of Herrgen's (2015) thesis of 'two alternative standards of orality' as follows: there seem to be fundamental evaluative frictions and incongruities regarding conceptualizations and parameters of "standard in Austria" in the minds of speakers and listeners.
  8. ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019). "Debunking "pluri-areality"". Journal of Linguistic Geography. 7 (2): 109. doi:10.1017/jlg.2019.9.
  9. ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2023). "Prescriptivism and national identity: sociohistorical constructionism, disciplinary blindspots, and Standard Austrian German". The Routledge Handbook Linguistic Prescriptivism. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 136 [ms. 17]. there should be no room for pan-German (großdeutsch) perspectives in the name of linguistic science, which would mean breaking with a long-standing, field-defining practice
  10. ^ Pohl, Heinz-Dieter (2018). "Exkurs: Gelehrtenstreit um mehrgestaltige Sprachen". Sprachspiegel (in German). 5: 143. Retrieved 2024-05-07.
  11. ^ De Cillia, Rudolf; Ransmayr, Jutta (2019). Österreichisches Deutsch macht Schule: Bildung und Deutschunterricht im Spannungsfeld von sprachlicher Variation und Norm (in German). Vienna: Böhlau. p. 40. Letzlich liege dem [anti-plurizentrischen] Ansatz "the One German Axiom or the One Standard German Axiom" zugrunde
  12. ^ De Cillia, Rudolf; Ransmayr, Jutta (2019). Österreichisches Deutsch macht Schule: Bildung und Deutschunterricht im Spannungsfeld von sprachlicher Variation und Norm (in German). Vienna: Böhlau. pp. 40, 242.
  13. ^ Stefan Dollinger (2021), Österreichisches Deutsch in der Deutsch in Österreich? Identitäten im 21. Jahrhundert (3., durchges. und korrigierte ed.), Wien: new academic press, p. 173, Die zweite Lehre aus der kanadischen Situation ist, das "Axiom des Einheitsdeutschen", das den Arbeiten der Kritiker zugrunde liegt, abzulehnen.
  14. ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2019). The Pluricentricity Debate. OUP. p. x.
  15. ^ Lenz, Alexandra N. (2021). "Stellungnahme".
  16. ^ Ruck, Julia (2021). "Rezension von The Pluricentricity Debate". ÖDaF-Mitteilungen: Fachzeitschrift für Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache. Band 37: 150–153.
  17. ^ Sedlaczek, Robert (2021). "Österreichisches Deutsch unter Druck". Wiener Zeitung. Archived from the original on 2023-06-09. Retrieved 2024-05-06. nicht im Wissenschaftsjargon verfasst, sondern locker geschrieben, um ein großes Publikum zu erreichen
  18. ^ Sedlaczek, Robert (2021). "Österreichisches Deutsch unter Druck". Wiener Zeitung. Archived from the original on 2023-06-09. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  19. ^ Wiesinger, Peter (2021-05-05). "Das Volk bestimmt die Sprache: Das österreichische Deutsch ist kein unveränderlicher hieratischer Block". Wiener Zeitung. Retrieved 2024-05-04.
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