Laura Romig, Brown University Class of 2025, Language Ambassador
What is the societal role of a language? And to meet that role, what is it necessary for a language to do? When does this role become political? These are all questions that can help us understand language standardization, which is the process by which the conventionally used or official standards of a language are established. This process could be relatively natural, self-negotiated within a speaking community over the course of decades or centuries; it could also be imposed by a majority group of speakers of one dialogue, or by a government entity.
Historically, language standardization is often associated with the implicit creation of a language hierarchy, in which one set of pronunciation, transcription, and vocabulary is considered preferable to all other variants. These other versions are then considered subordinate, often designated as dialects rather than languages (although the distinction between these two terms for linguists is less absolute and more relative).
Among the various examples of language standardization in modern history, we can observe very different reasons for and implementations of language standardization. The goals of facilitating greater communication and imposing linguistic homogeneity, respectively, arise both separately and together in this history. Depending on the language someone speaks, the history of standardization may be more or less prominent in the public's perception of history.
Many English speakers, for example, probably know that Old and Middle English bear little resemblance to the Standard English they speak today, but not exactly how the language was standardized. The manifestations of that standardization today are often most visible in secondary education: rigorous spelling tests, or correction of speech considered 'dialectical', such as African American English. However, it's even difficult to say that one standardized form of English exists, when there are versions of English spoken all across the world with slightly different vocabulary, pronunciation, and sometimes syntax.
Modern Standard Arabic, for another example, is the language often used for reading, writing, formal speech, and communicating between individuals who speak very different colloquial versions of Arabic. But it's not anyone's native language; it's a standardized tool used for the purposes described, derived from the language used in the Quran.
Language standardization is also inextricably tied to the social context in which a language or group of languages are spoken. The standardization process of the Afrikaans language, for example, is woven into the history of colonialism and apartheid, and its use today is still entwined with that history. You can read more about the language change and standardization of Afrikaans here.
On the other hand, the Simplified Chinese script, which is widely used in mainland China today, was created by direct government planning and development during the tenure of Mao Zedong. Beyond distinguishing between dialects and the official language, the goal of this standardization was also to increase literacy by simplifying the traditional Chinese characters. Such an overt political process remains part of national memory, and in fact can become an even more political matter in the dichotomy between the simplified characters used in the mainland, and the traditional writing system preserved in Taiwan.
Language standardization has a diverse set of implementations, outcomes, and contexts throughout global history. But it remains tied to notions of nationalism and language hierarchy. Almost every language has a history of standardization, whether it's well known by the public or not - so if you speak a language and don't yet know about its history, it's worth doing some research to find out.
For more stories of language standardization and change, see this article about the Mayan Q'eqchi' language, this article about language standardization and shifts in Candian higher education, and this article about globalizing a standard Spanish.