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 DOI 10.1515/ijsl-2012-0058    IJSL 2012; 218: 25 – 58

1 Dick Smakman
2
3
The definition of the standard language:
4 a survey in seven countries*
5
6
Abstract: The definition of the standard language seems more elusive than that of
7
the dialect. Dictionary definitions of “standard (language)” are limited while lin-
8
guists apply wildly different approaches when describing this language variety.
9
Lay views seem highly relevant in this definition, but these in particular have not
10
been researched enough. To find agreement on the lay definition of “standard”,
11
an international survey was performed in which 1,014 non-linguists from seven
12
countries (England, Flanders, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland
13
and the United States) were asked to define the standard language in their own
14
country.
15
The only quality that arose across participants from all countries was “lingua
16
francaness”. And while newsreaders were widely associated with standard
17
speech, this association has turned out not to be universal. The strong associa-
18
tion of standard languages with a specific city or region may also be less wide-
19
spread than is often assumed. The common association of standard languages
20
with non-regionality may only be true for old standard languages.
21
Two parallel standard languages appear: the socially distinctive one (the “ex-
22
clusive” standard language) and the socially cohesive one (the “inclusive” stan-
23
dard language). These two views of the standard language are argued to be com-
24
plementary rather than mutually exclusive.
25
26 Keywords: standard language; language ideology; language policy; lay percep-
27 tions; sociolinguistics
28
29
30 Dick Smakman: Leiden University. E-mail: [email protected]
31
32
33
34
35 * Many kind thanks go out to the people who have helped to make this international survey
36 possible by translating questionnaires and responses and by finding respondents: Fumio
Inoue, Koji Tamai (both from the University of Tokyo, Japan), Yasushi Kawasaki (University of
37
Kyoto, Japan), Junichi Yoshimura (University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan), Koenraad Kuiper
38 (University of Christchurch, New Zealand), Michał Kaczmarkowski (†), Grzegorz Krupa and Alina
39 Kwiatkowska (all from the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland), and Chunling Fan (University of
40 Leiden, Netherlands).

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 26    D. Smakman

1 Background 1
2
3
1.1 The nation-state and its language
4
5
The major sociocultural changes over the last few centuries have resulted in the
6
emergence of the modern-day nation-state. Anderson (1991) and Gellner (1983)
7
indicated that the standard language is a powerful force in the continuation of
8
this nation-state, as a shared language is important for the diffusion of a shared
9
ideology. Lippi-Green (1997: 68) said that a standard language ideology proposes
10
that the nation-state has a homogenous language. This homogeneity symbolizes
11
the unity and sociopolitical coherence within a speech community.
12
According to Foley (1997: 198), most people in the industrialized countries of
13
the west tend to take the concept of the nation-state and its associated standard
14
language for granted. A reason for this might be that the language itself and its
15
community of speakers are not well-defined and therefore not easy to pinpoint.
16
Anderson (1991: 224) calls the nation-state an “imagined community”, as, for ex-
17
ample, an individual Australian is unlikely to ever meet a large percentage of his
18
or her fellow countrymen, and the community is mainly based on political, eco-
19
nomic, and legal ties and various institutionalized rights and duties. Indeed, in
20
the wake of the rise of nation-states and the new social cohesion patterns they
21
entail, the standard language appeared and helped to unify speakers who would
22
normally not be part of the same community.
23
24
25
1.2 Standard language versus dialect 26
27
Sociolinguistically, dialects and standard languages are opposites. Each dialect 28
represents a relatively recognizable and tangible community of speakers. Dialects 29
are the languages symbolizing the old social attachment amongst those who are 30
next of kin, those who live in the same neighborhood or tribe, or those who share 31
a social or ethnic class. Because of the slow disappearance, through leveling and 32
other contact-related processes (viz. Mesthrie et al. 2010: 65; Britain 1997; Thoma- 33
son and Kaufman 1988) which many dialects are subject to, they are now consid- 34
ered emblems of the traditional low-level community spirit. This is one of the 35
reasons why they are considered worth describing, not only linguistically but 36
­sociolinguistically as well. 37
This serious linguistic and sociolinguistic interest is not bestowed on the 38
standard language and its speakers. Descriptions of the linguistic features of 39
standard languages are usually from existing prescriptive sources. A reason for 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 linguists overlooking the dynamics of variation and change within the standard
2 language may be that these languages are to some degree the product of language
3 construction (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 209), which makes them linguisti-
4 cally less interesting than dialects. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 329) even indi-
5 cated that standard languages tend to be linguistically simpler than non-standard
6 languages. In sociolinguistics, this language is usually presented as a mere refer-
7 ence point to indicate the opposite of dialects, not a community of speakers or a
8 living language.
9 The assumption underlying references to standard languages and dialects
10 seems to be that consensus exists on what “standard language” and “dialect”
11 mean. Dialects are relatively easily found, as they are restricted to a specific geo-
12 graphical area, and speakers within these areas often have reliable intuitions on
13 what constitutes a good speaker of the local dialect. The most conservative of all
14 dialect speakers, the so-called Non-mobile Older Rural Male (Chambers and
15 Trudgill 1980: 33), is often seen as speaking a pure form of the dialect. The stan-
16 dard language, on the other hand, is subject to a wide array of descriptions,
17 ­making this language more elusive. Niedzielski and Preston (2000: 18) and Lippi-
18 Green (1997: 44) all considered the “good language” to be “an abstraction” and
19 Lippi-Green (1997: 44) even referred to this language variety as a “myth”. The
20 standard language is not typical of a well-defined social or regional community,
21 which would enable us to find and describe speakers.
22
23
24 1.3 Determining “standardness” in language
25
26 Several approaches can be taken to define the standard language. A quick glance
27 at some English-language dictionaries instantly provides us with a set of defini-
28 tions of the adjective “standard”. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
29 (Hornby 2010) defines “standard” as “believed to be correct and used by most
30 people”, and the online dictionary Dictionary.com defines it as “something con-
31 sidered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison; an ap-
32 proved model”. MacMillan English Dictionary (Rundell and Fox 2002) defines
33 “standard” as “generally used or accepted as normal” and refers to “Standard
34 English” as the language that most people find acceptable. So, dictionaries often
35 refer to the benchmark status of the standard language, its accepted prestige, and
36 its commonality. These definitions all make sense but they suffer from a certain
37 degree of generalness, which makes it impossible to use them to determine who
38 speak the actual language referred to and what the nature of the language is like.
39 Linguists’ definitions are plentiful and varied and not always mutually
40 ­compatible. Jespersen (1925), for instance, advocated the traditional view that

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 28    D. Smakman

“standard” is related to “regionally neutral”. Stewart (1968: 533–539) took a dif- 1

ferent approach and gave four general characteristics of the standard language: 2
vitality, historicity, autonomy and standardization. Stewart thus used sociolin- 3
guistic, ­historical, and linguistic arguments in his approach. Haugen (1966) and 4
Van der Wal and Van Bree (2008) defined the standard language on the basis of 5
stages in its development: selection, codification, elaboration, and acceptance. 6
Finegan (2007: 14) took a different approach and said that the standard language 7
is used by people in public discourse, thus referring to sociolinguistic and com- 8
municative choices and to a set of speakers. Van der Wal and Van Bree (1992: 369) 9
also looked towards specific groups of speakers, namely academics and teachers, 10
to find people who help determine the norm. Crystal’s (1991: 286) Dictionary of 11
linguistics and phonetics used various approaches and referred to it as a “prestige 12
variety” that cuts across regional differences and provides a “unified means of 13
communication” and an “institutionalised norm”. Taking both a sociolinguistic 14
and a language-contact approach, Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 209) talked 15
about the “elevation to pre-eminence in official, learned circles of a particular 16
form of speech and writing out of dialects of a single language”. They considered 17
dialect mixture to be an important force behind the linguistic formation of the 18
standard language. 19
Typically, expert opinions contain professional assessments rather than rep- 20
resenting a general consensus in society. Sajavaara (1977: 18) even talked about 21
language descriptions that are “based on the scholar’s competence or normative 22
descriptions” in which variation is disregarded. A second potential weakness 23
is that in the sociolinguistic literature a western view of the standard language 24
phenomenon seems dominant. Most of the European standard languages arose 25
through evolution and dialect mixing, according to Thomason and Kaufman 26
(1988: 209–210), and this took place somewhere between 1200 and 1500, when 27
a  particular region became pre-eminent. This shared history of European lan- 28
guages may have created generalized views regarding the nature of standard lan- 29
guages outside the west which did not pass through these stages. 30
While expert definitions are plentiful, extensive research focusing on how 31
ordinary speakers define the standard language, and thus what the living lan- 32
guage norm is, is scarce. Examples of such descriptions can nevertheless be 33
found, e.g. Albanyan and Preston (1998), who had ordinary speakers determine 34
degrees of correctness of sentences, in order to answer the question what stan- 35
dard American English is according to actual speakers. Smakman (2006) tried to 36
find a consensus on the perceived standardness of pronunciation characteristics 37
of Dutch by describing newsreader speech which was selected by Dutch listeners. 38
Lay perceptions were also applied in a Japanese context by McKenzie (2010) and 39
in the United States by Benson (2003) and Evens (2010). Such efforts to incorpo- 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 rate lay perceptions and evaluations are rare nevertheless, possibly because they
2 are considered to fall into the arena of folk linguistics and according to Niedziel-
3 ski and Preston (2000: 1) are often interpreted as “innocent misunderstandings”.
4 They claimed that linguists have often taken an “ ‘us’ versus ‘them’ position”,
5 considering comments on language by non-professionals to be amusing (and an-
6 noying). De Vries et al. (1993: 129) said that linguists prefer not to answer ques-
7 tions regarding norms and prefer to deal with describing the language itself.
8 Some linguists have nevertheless explicitly hinted at the importance of lay
9 views in the definition of the standard language. Hartveldt (1978: 23), for instance,
10 claimed that the sociolect that is the standard variety is generally acknowledged
11 as correct, thus hinting at the need for ordinary speakers to embrace the lan-
12 guage before it can be considered standard. According to Daan (1969: 15–16, 1983:
13 478), the norm lies not in rules and prescription but primarily in the heads of
14 people.
15
16
17 1.4 International definitions of the standard language
18
19 The standard language in each country reaches its own, unique position. For in-
20 stance, while Standard Dutch as a tangible reality was already mentioned in the
21 18th Century literature (for instance by Nyloë [1703]), the Australian standard lan-
22 guage does not have such a recorded existence or history. In addition, the Nether-
23 lands are subject to a higher degree of local and regional language variation than
24 Australia. The origins of standard languages in various countries also vary and
25 they are not always regional or social. For instance, until the early 1800s Stan-
26 dard German was mainly a written form of communication, not derived from a
27 dialect from a certain region, while its pronunciation was also artificially derived
28 from German as spoken by stage actors (Deutsche Bühnenaussprache ‘German
29 stage pronunciation’, viz. Siebs [1969 (1922)]), while in England the standard lan-
30 guage naturally originated from the Home Counties region, the area that is his-
31 torically the economic and cultural center of the country.
32 The specific ethnic and political circumstances within countries also play a
33 part in the sociolinguistic positioning of the standard language. The urge to have
34 a well-defined standard language may be particularly strongly felt by inhabitants
35 in a country with a relatively unknown and “small” language (for instance Lux-
36 emburg) which is surrounded by larger, more international languages, while in
37 the United States the need to define Standard English is not motivated by such a
38 force. The national language plays a sensitive role to those from countries the
39 shape and size of which have changed due to wars and other circumstances. Ex-
40 amples are Poland, the Koreas and the Balkan countries. The tribal background

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 30    D. Smakman

of many speakers in the African countries makes it hard to construct or impose a 1

national standard language in these countries. The protection and furtherance of 2
the language and its standardization in those settings form a vital part of national 3
identity shaping, whereas people in a linguistically stable country such as Den- 4
mark have no such incentives to standardize. Attitudes towards the standard lan- 5
guage in a country where the national language has its origins elsewhere (Brazil 6
and New Zealand) are likely to be different to those in a country which has his- 7
torically developed its own language (e.g. France and Malaysia). Definitions of 8
the standard languages in the Arab world will be affected by the existence of a 9
cross-country written language (Standard Arabic; viz Bassiouney [2009]). Rus- 10
sia’s standardization helps to unite a large diversity of ethnicities in a vastly wide 11
area and thus has a lingua franca function. Finally, the existence of several 12
­national languages alongside each other in a complex linguistic landscape will 13
undoubtedly affect definitions of standardness in a country (e.g. in India, South 14
Africa and Belgium). 15
It should be clear that studying universals in the description of a standard 16
language is a difficult undertaking. Methodologically, the highly idiosyncratic 17
­nature of a people’s relationship with their standard language makes it impos­ 18
sible to select countries whose language situation is typical of a larger group of 19
countries. 20
21
22
1.5 Research questions and operationalization 23
24
While certain characteristics to describe the standard language seem to be used 25
across many countries, some of them are relevant and applicable in one country 26
but less meaningful in another. It is not known whether there are characteristics 27
that standard languages across the world share and which therefore do not de- 28
pend on the culture, the size, or the history of the country. Is there, at some gen- 29
eral level, a single international definition that could apply to all standard lan- 30
guages, and is there agreement on stereotypical speakers? 31
Any agreement on the definition of the standard language in various coun- 32
tries may denote more universal traits of this language. Two research questions 33
were defined to come to an internationally valid definition of such traits: 34
1. What are the intrinsic qualities of the standard language? 35
2. What are the characteristics of speakers of the standard language? 36
37
To answer these questions, ordinary speakers from linguistically, geographically, 38
or culturally different countries were asked to describe the standard language in 39
their country or speech community. 40

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 The definition of the standard language    31

1 2 Methodology
2
3
2.1 Countries
4
5
Because the standardness situation in each country in the world is so unique, it
6
was deemed impossible to select countries that would represent an area or a
7
group of countries, a continent, or, for instance, a language family. For that rea-
8
son, a convenience sample was selected, of culturally and geographically diverse
9
countries. An international survey1 was held involving speakers divided across
10
seven speech communities: England, Flanders, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zea-
11
land, Poland and the United States. Three varieties of English were selected to
12
show how various forms of the same language can reach different sociolinguistic
13
positions. The Netherlands and Flanders were chosen because they are neighbor-
14
ing countries that share a language. Japan and Poland were considered culturally
15
different and could therefore serve as good contrastive material to the other (west-
16
ern) countries.
17
18
19
20 2.2 Speakers
21
22 Table 1 contains an overview of the countries and the respondents, most of whom
23 were students at universities.
24
25
26 Country Approximate University Average Men Women Total
population of the age
27
(millions)2 respondents
28
29 England 52.23 Newcastle 23 108 92 200
Flanders 6.16 various 22 52 81 133
30
Japan 127.96 Tokyo/Kyoto 21 60 123 183
31 Netherlands 16.85 various 23 69 71 140
32 New Zealand 4.41 Christchurch 23 24 80 104
33 Poland 38.19 Lublin 22 59 82 141
34 United States 312.89 various 25 35 78 113
35
36 Table 1: Respondents in the international survey (N = 1014)
37
38
39 1 The data were collected between 1999 and 2009.
40 2 The sources of the population data are in the References, ordered alphabetically by country.

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 32    D. Smakman

2.3 Procedure 1
2
A questionnaire was made in Dutch (for Flanders and the Netherlands), English 3
(for England, New Zealand, and the United States), Japanese (for Japan) and 4
­Polish (for Poland). Respondents were asked, first of all, to give a general descrip- 5
tion of the standard language in their country. After that, they were given various 6
multiple-choice questions on who they considered to typically speak the stan- 7
dard language. 8
Naturally, the questions and the response categories needed to be modified 9
to fit the local situation; for instance, the question on the geographical origin of 10
the standard language (England, Japan, and the Netherlands have large urban 11
areas that are associated with the standard language). The professions offered as 12
response categories also needed to be adapted (New Zealand, the United States 13
and Poland have no king, queen or emperor). Moreover, choices needed to be 14
made on the local names of the standard languages (Japan, the Netherlands and 15
Poland have more than one name to denote the standard language). All of these 16
differences caused some minor variation in the number of available response 17
­categories. 18
The questionnaires were answered through email or through a paper survey. 19
The most popular response in each country is underlined in the tables below. 20
Respondents gave one answer in the multiple-choice questions and were in most 21
cases in addition given the opportunity to provide their own answer (if the pre- 22
ferred category was not present) through an “Another, namely . . .” category. 23
24
25
2.4 The countries3 26
27
The seven countries and their language situation are briefly introduced here. De- 28
fining moments in the history of the society and the language in question are the 29
main focus. 30
The English language is part of the West-Germanic language family and stems 31
from a variety of Old English dialects. The first major foreign influence on the 32
language was due to the 8th and 9th Century Viking invasions, which led to Old 33
Norwegian influence. In the 11th Century, the Norman conquest induced heavy 34
35
36
3 The information on the countries is considered general knowledge and is taken from the
37
following sources: Crystal (1997, 1991), De Vries et al. (1993), Foley (1997), Haeseryn et al.
38
(1997), Jenkins (2003), McCrum et al. (1986), Nomoto (1975), Rosewarne (1994), Szweryn
(1999), Van de Velde (1994, 1996) and Van der Wal (1992, 2008). In addition, Wikipedia entries 39
for the countries under investigation were consulted. 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 borrowings from Norman French. Today, the variety of English as spoken in the
2 south east of the country is associated most strongly with Standard English. A
3 modern type of standardized English, whose pronunciation is “neither Cockney
4 nor RP, but in the middle between these two” (Rosewarne 1994: 15), is often re-
5 ferred to as “Estuary English”. This type of English is southern in nature and it is
6 relatively controversial, but nevertheless it seems to be on the rise as the new
7 standard language in England. In broadcasting, however, the more traditional
8 Received Pronunciation is usually adhered to, albeit not with the archaic and af-
9 fected pronunciation that Received Pronunciation is sometimes associated with.
10 Flanders is not a country as such, for it is a linguistically delimited area with-
11 in the western European kingdom of Belgium. The border between the Romance
12 and Germanic language families cuts (horizontally) across Belgium and divides
13 the country linguistically into two areas with a similar size. Flanders lies north
14 of  this dividing line and borders (to the north) on the Netherlands. There are
15 close links between the Dutch language as it is spoken in the Netherlands and
16 Flanders. Dutch is spoken in both countries but in Belgium this language shares
17 the status of national language with French and officially also with German. By
18 the mid 16th Century, the dialects of Brussels and Antwerp had started to emerge
19 as a standard language for the whole Dutch-speaking area (today’s Flanders and
20 the Netherlands). This standardization process was halted by a revolt against
21 Habsburg rule in the 17th Century, which resulted in a split of the area between
22 what are today called the Netherlands and Flanders. From the split until the mid
23 19th Century, the Flemish people were cut off from the standardization process
24 taking place in the Netherlands, and after Flanders gained more independence
25 the Flemish for a long time used the standard language from the Netherlands as
26 their model (De Vries et al. 1993: 129). The two areas nowadays share a common
27 grammar, yet differences between the two standard pronunciation models are
28 considerable (viz. Van de Velde 1994). These differences rarely lead to confusion.
29 Dialects and regiolects are the main means of daily communication in Flanders,
30 and Standard Dutch is the language spoken in formal contexts, like education
31 and on national television.
32 The island of Japan has experienced relatively few foreign attacks in its life-
33 time. The small states within the country had gradually unified by as early as the
34 4th Century. With the introduction of the writing system from China, the Japanese
35 people began to extensively record their language in poetry and prose. As far back
36 as in the Old Japanese period (whose beginning is uncertain but which ended in
37 the 8th Century) regional variants of Japanese existed. In the 19th Century, Japan
38 changed into a constitutional monarchy. The unification of the language was
39 an  issue of serious concern. The Meiji government established Hyōjungo (lit.
40 ‘standard language’) – also called kyōtsūgo (lit. ‘common language’) – on the

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 34    D. Smakman

foundation of the Tokyo uptown variety and diffused it with force. This govern- 1
ment tried to reform dialects and even installed a Dialect Eradication Movement. 2
The pressure to standardize regional and dialect variation peaked in the 1940s to 3
1960s. Regional variation has not been completely replaced and has proven per- 4
sistent. The Tokyo dialect has in the meantime found its own direction and dia- 5
lects have mixed and this has enhanced standardization (Nomoto 1975: 33). How- 6
ever, contact-induced variants have arisen as well. The Japanese language is 7
nowadays highly standardised, and according to Nomoto (1975: 33) it is in its final 8
stage of standardization. 9
The Netherlands lie north of Flanders, in western Europe. The main language 10
in the Netherlands is Dutch. This language has gradually developed from Low 11
Germanic dialects spoken in the area since the 8th Century. In the 15th Century, 12
standardization started to take place, as the various parts of the country unified. 13
After the revolt against Habsburg domination, the provinces we now know as 14
the Netherlands became independent. The dialects of the western cities, like The 15
Hague and Amsterdam, were the source of the standard language. The 17th Cen- 16
tury brought the Dutch Golden Age of international trading successes, which 17
­coincided with a major cultural and scientific flourishing of the country, with 18
­Amsterdam as a major influential (including linguistic) force. There is a Dutch 19
Language Union (Nederlandse Taal Unie), which organization is concerned with 20
the state of the Dutch language in the area at large, i.e. Flanders and the Nether- 21
lands, and there is a Dutch grammar, called Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst, 22
meaning ‘General Dutch grammar’ (Haeseryn et al. 1997), which covers the lan- 23
guage in the whole area. Also, there is a large Dutch-language dictionary, called 24
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (lit. ‘Dictionary of the Dutch language’). 25
The language of the media is said to be influential in the establishment of lan- 26
guage norms. 27
Eastern Polynesians in the central Pacific reached New Zealand more than 28
a thousand years ago. In 1769–1770, James Cook circumnavigated the two major 29
islands on which English became the language to be spoken by the settlers. As 30
early as the early 1900s, visitors to the country were making comments on the 31
emergence of a New Zealand accent. The New Zealand variety has a recognizable 32
ring to it, although it is often confused with Australian English. It contains indig- 33
enous words to denote Maori culture and customs (New Zealand’s 2006 National 34
Census reported that 14.6% of New Zealanders were of Maori descent). New Zea- 35
land English is remarkably homogeneous compared to “old” western European 36
languages. Crystal (1997: 37) named three factors that have shaped the distinctive 37
New Zealand English variety. First of all, there is the close connection that many 38
New Zealanders have with Britain. Secondly, due to the similarity of New Zealand 39
English to Australian English, the attention of New Zealanders is drawn to differ- 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 ences between these two varieties. Finally, there has been a concern to take into
2 account the rights and needs of the Maori people, resulting in an increasing use
3 of Maori words in New Zealand English.
4 Polish is an old Slavonic language. Szweryn (1999: 230) indicated that the
5 pride that the Polish take in their language stems from the fact that for long
6 ­periods of time the Polish language was the only means to maintain a national
7 identity. From World War II until the late 1980s, the Polish language was used by
8 the communist regime as a tool in aid of the totalitarian range of thought. The
9 geographical distribution of the Polish dialects was greatly affected by the border
10 changes and population transfers that followed World War II. The Polish lan-
11 guage became far more homogeneous due to the 20th century mass migration of
12 Poles from the eastern to the western part of the country and due to the acquisi-
13 tion of former German territory after World War II. The differences between these
14 dialects are said to be smaller than those in, for instance, England, and therefore
15 speakers of Polish experience relatively little difficulty in mutual understanding.
16 Today, the language of the media is associated with standard Polish.
17 Until its discovery by Europeans in the late 15th Century, tribes of nomadic
18 hunters populated parts of the area that is today the United States. The first per-
19 manent English settlement dates from 1607. Soon, other settlements arose, each
20 with inhabitants with different linguistic backgrounds. The two main settlements,
21 in Virginia and Plymouth, were populated by Englishmen from the West Country
22 and the eastern counties of England. The New England settlers moved west, while
23 the southerners moved south and south-west. By the late 17th Century, the Eng-
24 lish had gradually gained control of most of the area and the English language
25 flourished. The 17th and 19th Century brought new waves of immigrants, with
26 many linguistic backgrounds (mostly European and English), leading to a blur-
27 ring of the sharp divisions between regional dialects, but the main divisions of
28 North, Midland and South can today still be found in the United States according
29 to Crystal (1997: 29). Today, it is often suggested that the Midwest of the United
30 States, where the major television corporations are, constitutes neutral English,
31 or “Network English”, but this area too has its own regional accent.
32
33
34
35
3 Characteristics of the standard language
36
37 3.1 Overview
38
39 The respondents wrote down their definition of the standard language in their
40 own country. There was some ambiguity in the responses due to the wide variety

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 36    D. Smakman

Characteristic EN FL JP NL NZ PL US 1

lingua franca 24.0 25.0 35.1 20.6 33.7 38.1 22.1 2

correct 32.0 11.0 14.9 38.2 – 55.8 20.0 3
media language 10.5 14.0 47.0 10.3 1.1 6.2 3.2 4
opposite of dialect 20.0 18.0 0.6 19.1 2.2 27.4 5.3 5
non-regional 44.5 27.0 5.4 39.7 5.6 8.0 17.9
6
formal 7.5 18.0 19.6 5.1 1.1 – 6.3
7
qualitative features 9.5 7.0 – 4.4 5.6 17.7 11.6
rare/non-existent 5.0 21.0 – 2.9 6.7 0.9 3.2 8
accepted – 11.0 – 8.8 3.4 1.8 2.1 9
external language – 19.0 – – 14.6 – 2.1 10
informal 20.5 – – – 27.0 – 6.3 11
different – – – – 15.7 – 2.1
12
capital 24.0 – 18.5 – – – –
social class 32.0 – – 14.0 – – 3.2 13
various 10.5 18.0 6.5 30.9 21.3 46.0 52.6 14
15
* The abbreviation for each country is as follows: EN = England; FL = Flanders, JP = Japan,
NL = Netherlands, NZ = New Zealand, PL = Poland, US = United States. The number of 16
respondents who answered this question: EN = 200; FL = 100; JP = 168; NL = 136; NZ = 89; 17
PL = 113; US = 95. 18
19
Table 2: Characteristics used to answer the question: “Define the standard language” (multiple 20
responses)* 21
22
of uses and interpretations by laymen of terminology relating to language; for 23
instance, the terms “dialect”, “accent” and “pronunciation” (viz. Niedzielski and 24
Preston 2000: 3–7). A categorization such as the one listed in Table 2 is therefore 25
inevitably affected by interpretations of responses by the researcher. Elaborate 26
discussions on the interpretation of the responses with local informants and re- 27
searchers at local universities in each of the countries helped to objectify the 28
­categorization. 29
Table 2 contains an overview of the characteristics put forward (left-hand 30
­column) and the percentages of respondents within each country that used the 31
characteristics in question. In the table are characteristics that were put forward 32
by at least 10% of the respondents in at least one of the countries. The “various” 33
category contains responses that could not be categorized. The highest-scoring 34
characteristic within each country is underlined. Not all respondents actually 35
gave an answer, and the percentages are calculated over the total number of re- 36
spondents that actually answered the question. The number of characteristics per 37
respondent ranged from zero to six. 38
The characteristics mentioned by the respondents are explained below and 39
they are compared with the literature. 40

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   37
The definition of the standard language 

1 3.2 Lingua franca
2
3 The term “lingua franca” originated in the Mediterranean region in the Middle
4 Ages among crusaders and traders of different language backgrounds but today
5 describes a language serving as a regular means of communication between dif-
6 ferent linguistic groups in a multilingual speech community (Richards et al. 1992:
7 214; Holmes 1997: 86). The lingua franca function of the standard language in the
8 current research does not refer to communication at a basic level but to a kind of
9 leveling tendency, namely avoiding communicative obstacles that are due to re-
10 gional and other variation. Two sample responses to illustrate the lingua franca
11 characteristic are: “The language we all understand, have in common” and “For
12 communication with anyone”. The lingua franca argument was the only charac-
13 teristic that was popular in all seven countries and it was chosen by more than
14 one-fifth of the respondents in each country.
15
16
17 3.3 Correct
18
19 The percentage of respondents that referred to the correctness characteristic
20 ranged from 0% (New Zealand) to 55.8% (Poland). Examples of references to this
21 characteristic were: “The correct language” and “The language described in dic-
22 tionaries, grammars and spelling reference books”. Hartveldt (1978: 23) indeed
23 claimed that the sociolect that is the standard variety is generally acknowledged
24 as correct. Milroy (2001: 235) spoke of ordinary speakers’ awareness of a “canoni-
25 cal” form of language.
26 In the responses referring to correctness, references to codification were
27 often made, i.e. to linguistic reference books. Van der Wal and Van Bree (1992:
28 222) nevertheless indicated that it is difficult to determine what the effects of
29 such  prescriptivism are. Hall (1950: 12) emphasized that linguistic prescriptive
30 books have no legal authority, although they are often viewed as such. According
31 to Niedzielski and Preston (2000: 18), appeals to the dictionary and grammar
32 books are not really appeals to trusted authorities on usage; they are, so they
33 claimed, appeals to wise men and experts who understand how the language
34 operates.
35
36
37 3.4 Media language
38
39 According to a number of respondents, the standard language is “The language
40 of  the media” or “The language that is spoken on radio and television”. The

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 38    D. Smakman

J­ apanese respondents in particular put forward the media as a source of language 1

norms (47.0%). Inoue (1991: 51) described the standard language in Japan simply 2
as the media language, and Neustupny (1978) also talked about the powerful in- 3
fluence of television in the standardization of Japanese. In the other countries, 4
this characteristic does not seem to count quite as strongly as in Japan. By not 5
mentioning this argument often, the New Zealanders (1.1%) and Americans (3.2%) 6
in particular indicated that they did not primarily derive language norms from the 7
media. 8
The idea that media speech is close to a (national) linguistic norm is sup- 9
ported by remarks hereon in the literature (for instance, Hughes and Trudgill 10
1979; Bell 1984; Bell 1991: 1, 3, 7; Van de Velde 1994: 27). According to Bell (1991: 1, 11
3), the media (both written and broadcast) are important providers of language in 12
society and generate much of the language that is heard in everyday life. Bell 13
(1984) emphasized that a shift towards national norms is most likely to be opera- 14
tive in programs aimed at a national audience. 15
16
17
3.5 Opposite of dialect 18
19
A number of participants defined the standard language as being “The language 20
that is the opposite of dialects” or “The language that contains no dialectal fea- 21
tures”. This contrastive approach is traditionally also used by linguists, amongst 22
others Goossens (1974: 12), who described dialects as the total number of expres- 23
sions of a local group in a language community, which can be described by means 24
of a maximum number of rules from the standard-language system. In this ap- 25
proach, the standard language is assumed to be known. Heeringa (2004) and 26
Heeringa et al. (2009) applied this distance approach by calculating linguistic 27
distances on a standard/non-standard continuum (in the Netherlands and 28
­Norway). 29
It is obvious from the results that a country needs to have dialects in order for 30
this contrastive argument to be used. Nonetheless, the Japanese hardly applied 31
this argument (0.6%), despite the existence of dialects in Japan. 32
33
34
3.6 Non-regional 35
36
Examples of answers referring to non-regionalness are: “The language that is not 37
typical of a certain area” and “It does not reveal the speaker’s regional origin”. 38
Some indicated that the standard language is “above dialects” and this is also 39
interpreted here as a reference to non-regionalness. Jespersen (1925) is the most 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 well-known advocate of the view that “standard” is related to “regionally neu-

2 tral”. This argument was also used by, for instance, Van de Velde (1996: 28) and
3 Palmen (2002: 123). According to Kloeke (1954: 817), however, Jespersen’s non-
4 regionalness argument is not in accordance with reality.
5 Smakman (2006: 126) found a significant negative correlation between “re-
6 gional” and “standard” when he asked listeners to evaluate recordings of Dutch
7 speech. In the Dutch literature on standardness, the “non-regional” argument is
8 highly dominant, and Table 2 shows that amongst Dutch speakers this argument
9 prevails. For the English (44.5%), Flemish (27.0%) and Dutch (39.7%) respondents
10 this was the main characteristic of the standard language. Jespersen’s (1925) non-
11 regionality stance may therefore apply most strongly to western European com-
12 munities like Flanders, the Netherlands and, for instance, Denmark, and possibly
13 those with no strict language policy.
14
15
16
3.7 Formal
17
18
A number of respondents indicated that to them the standard language was for-
19
mal in nature. Examples of answers are: “Formal, official-sounding language”
20
and “The language of writing”. There is a relatively strong emphasis by the Japa-
21
nese respondents (19.6%) on the formal nature of Standard Japanese. Standard
22
Japanese is heavily influenced by formal literary Japanese. This may explain this
23
result. Smakman (2006: 126) did not find a significant correlation between for-
24
malness and standardness for the standard language (pronunciation) in the
25
Netherlands. For the Flemish respondents, “formal” was also an important char-
26
acteristic (18.0%).
27
28
29
30 3.8 Qualitative features
31
32 For some respondents, referring to specific linguistic features was a way to come
33 to a definition of the standard language. Example answers were: “Soft ‘g’ should
34 be accepted” (for Dutch in the Netherlands), “Not twangy” (for English in the
35 United States) and “It is not a melodious language” (for Polish). These respon-
36 dents either put forward required characteristics of the standard language or
37 characteristics that are not tolerated in this language variety. Most of these quali-
38 tative characteristics were related to pronunciation, but references to the struc-
39 ture of the language in question were also common: “It does not have those il-
40 logical double negations” (for Dutch in the Netherlands).

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 40    D. Smakman

According to Niedzielski and Preston (2000: 18), “the folk” believe that a lan- 1
guage is “good” because it is, amongst other things, logical and clear. To prove 2
their point, specific examples of good and bad constructions are often given by 3
speakers, so the authors indicate. Our results demonstrate this too. Milroy (2001: 4
23) referred to such arguments as “posthoc rationalizations”. 5
6
7
8
3.9 Rare/non-existent
9
10
Of the Flemish responses, 21.0% referred to Flemish Standard Dutch being
11
rare or even non-existent (e.g. “There’s no such language”). This is not
12
surprising, as many Flemish speakers do not speak Standard Dutch on a
13
daily basis but use it mainly in formal settings. Some New Zealanders (6.7%)
14
also put forward this feature (e.g. “It doesn’t seem to exist on any large
15
scale”).  This  is a feature, then, that may be traced back directly to a coun-
16
try’s  ­specific history. The histories of New Zealand and Flanders reveal that
17
these  two countries have had relatively little time to develop a standard lan-
18
guage,  and most of the standardization actually took place well after World
19
War II.
20
21
22
3.10 Accepted 23
24
The argument that a standard language needs to be accepted for it to be stan- 25
dard  is mildly popular in some of the countries (Flanders and the Nether- 26
lands;  11.0% and 8.8% of the respondents, respectively). To a degree this is a 27
­circular argument, it seems. Examples of responses in which this argument 28
is  used are: “The language we embrace as the standard” and “The agreed- 29
on  ­standard”. Kloeke (1951: 12) felt that the inevitable response to the ques- 30
tion where authority can be found is that it is there where people generally feel 31
it  is. The assumption underlying this argument is that there is consensus on 32
this  source. According to Knops (1989: 179), the standard pronunciation is the 33
set  of pronunciation features (including considerable variation) that is recog- 34
nized and accepted as standard by the population. Labov (1966) showed that 35
in (stable) societies the standard-­language system is embraced more or less by 36
all  social groups. Lambert et al. (1960), finally, looked at reactions towards 37
French  and English in Montreal and found some support for the importance 38
of  ­acceptance by many different speakers in the establishment of a language 39
norm. 40

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   41
The definition of the standard language 

1 3.11 External language
2
3 The Flemish (19.0%), New Zealanders (14.6%) and Americans (2.1%) referred to
4 an external language. The Flemish respondents contrasted their own variety of
5 Dutch with Dutch as it is spoken in the Netherlands. Some of the New Zealanders
6 and Americans referred to British English as a historical model. An example
7 of such a response is: “Standard New Zealand English is really Standard British
8 English”.
9 Flemish respondents were generally critical towards the northern Dutch
10 ­linguistic influence and towards the attitude of Dutchmen towards Flemish
11 Dutch, while the New Zealanders often proudly referred to their British roots.
12 The  Americans seemed to feel this authoritative power of British English to a
13 smaller degree. In the United States of America, English was also imported, and
14 British English for a long time also remained “the old standard”. British English
15 still enjoys special favor in the eyes of many Americans, according to Langacker
16 (1973: 55). Such a special favor may remain for some time. Still, British English
17 does not seem a living language model to speakers in New Zealand and the United
18 States.
19 Looking at the answers by New Zealanders, one suspects that “Standard New
20 Zealand English” was by them equated with “yet another international variety of
21 English” as opposed to “the standard variety of New Zealand English”.
22
23
24 3.12 Informal
25
26 All three groups of speakers of English considered their variety of English to be
27 “lazy” or “slack” and often also “slangy”. In fact, while this characteristic was
28 only mildly popular amongst the American respondents (6.3%) it was used often
29 by the Englishmen (20.5%) and New Zealanders (27.0%).
30
31
32 3.13 Different
33
34 The third most popular characteristic used by New Zealanders was that New
35 ­Zealand English is “different” (15.7%). The New Zealand respondents were re­
36 ferring to New Zealand English being, as one respondent pointed out, “like
37 no other type of English” and having its own distinctive qualities. This respon-
38 dent said that it should – despite its small size and tender age – “not be con-
39 fused with other types of English”. This characteristic can be explained through
40 the similarity of New Zealand English and Australian English. The respondents

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 42    D. Smakman

were possibly emphasizing the differences between these two varieties, which is 1
in line with comments by Crystal (1997: 57). The beauty of New Zealand English 2
was also emphasized in this respect: e.g. “Beautiful, unlike most other types of 3
English.” 4
5
6
7
3.14 Capital
8
9
Quite a few of the Japanese responses (18.5%) and English (24.0%) indicated that
10
the standard language is the language of the capital. According to Inoue (1991),
11
the speech of Tokyo is mistakenly understood to be near the standard language.
12
He claimed that it is a language myth that is widespread amongst Tokyoites.
13
­Inoue (1991: 52) believed his research had shown that the daily speech of Tokyo-
14
ites does not coincide with Standard Japanese, and he expressly distinguished
15
between Tokyo speech and Standard Japanese. A similar thing is happening in
16
the south of England, where a less formal form of English (“Estuary English”) may
17
be developing as the new standard or an informal standard alongside the old
18
standard (viz. Rosewarne 1994).
19
Reasons can be invented to support the suggestion that Tokyo speech is likely
20
to influence other varieties of Japanese and is involved in the standardization pro-
21
cess; Tokyo is the largest city of Japan, it is the Japanese capital, it is the most
22
important trade centre, and it has the most prominent university. Tokyo is one of
23
the cultural hubs of the country. This city covers a large area with various urban
24
centers. Tokyo people and their Tokyo accent can be seen and heard on Japanese
25
television on a daily basis. These things are true for London as well, which ex-
26
plains the English results. However, it is more or less also true for Warsaw (the
27
Polish capital) and Polish, but the Polish respondents did not name the capital in
28
this sense if not explicitly asked for it. The language policy within a country may
29
account for such differences.
30
31
32
3.15 Social class 33
34
No fewer than 32.0% of the English respondents referred to a correlation between 35
social class and the use of the standard language. In most cases, these were ex- 36
plicit references to the allegedly aristocratic nature of Standard English in Eng- 37
land: “Spoken by the royal family”, “Public school English”, “Upper class Eng- 38
lish”. In the Netherlands, a considerable percentage of respondents also referred 39
to this characteristic (14.0%). 40

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 The definition of the standard language   43

1 4 Characteristics of speakers
2
3
4.1 Introduction
4
5
Another approach to defining the standard language is to describe characteristics
6
of its speakers: the place where they live, the profession of famous speakers who
7
speak it, and the sex of speakers. The respondents in our international survey
8
were asked several of such questions.
9
10
11 4.2 Residence of speakers
12
13 Van Haeringen (1924: 66) linked the degree of unification of a country to the ac-
14 ceptance of a cultural center. The stronger this acceptance is, so he said, the more
15 readily people will pick up on features regional. A standard language indeed
16 ­often has a regional origin. This regional origin developed through a combination
17 of political, cultural, historical, and other circumstances. An example is the capi-
18 tal as well as the counties around the capital (the so-called Home Counties) in
19 England. A standard language, however, does not neces­sarily have a strongly de-
20 fined regional origin. In Germany, no such specific origin exists.
21 Presented in Table 3 are the responses to the question on the regional origin
22 of speakers of the standard language. The respondents were presented with re-
23 sponse categories that were adapted to the local situation. They could also opt to
24 note down a place of their own choosing. The responses that obtained less than
25 ten percent in a particular country constitute the “various” category.
26 In five of the seven communities, a specific city was mentioned often. Close to
27 half of the New Zealand respondents (47.1%) opted for “everywhere the same”,
28 thus indicating that according to them Standard New Zealand English is spoken
29 in no specific place in particular. The next most popular response of the New
30
31 Place Percentage of respondents
32
EN FL JP NL NZ PL US
33
city 30.5 – 42.1 19.3 4.8 19.9 –
34
area 50.5 39.8 39.9 37.9 12.5 23.4 74.3
35
various 8.0 21.8 5.5 18.6 22.1 25.5 –
36 everywhere the same 8.0 24.8 8.7 13.6 47.1 16.3 15.0
37 no opinion/no answer 3.0 13.5 3.8 10.7 13.5 14.9 10.6
38
39 Table 3: Responses to the question: “Where is the standard language spoken in particular?”
40 (one response per respondent)

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 44    D. Smakman

Country Residence of speakers 1

Place Type Percentage 2

3
the south area 40.0
EN 4
London city (capital) 22.0
5
Flemish Brabant area (province) 28.6
FL 6
East Flanders area (province) 11.3
7
Tokyo city (capital) 42.1 8
JP Kanto area (around the capital) 39.9
9
Randstad area (with many large cities) 20.0 10
NL Haarlem city 19.3 11
North Island area (island) 12.5 12
NZ Christchurch city  4.8 13
Warsaw city (capital) 19.9 14
PL Małopolska area 12.1 15
Midwest area (region) 62.8 16
US North East area (region) 10.6 17
18
Table 4: The most popular residences of standard language speakers 19
20
21
Zealanders was “no opinion/no answer” (13.5%), which could easily be inter­ 22
preted as meaning more or less the same as “everywhere the same”, i.e. no spe- 23
cific area. When choosing the “everywhere the same” response, the English were 24
likely to be referring to a prestigious standard language that surpasses dialects, 25
whereas the New Zealanders might have been communicating that generally peo- 26
ple in New Zealand tend to speak the standard language. 27
Table 4 contains the actual places referred to most often by the respondents 28
(see the “specific city’ and “specific area” rows in Table 3). 29
The south of England (40.0%) most probably refers to the south-east of this 30
country in particular. London (22.0%) was mentioned (besides some other cities). 31
This city is at the heart of this area. Historically, London and the south-east of 32
England have indeed been associated with the standard language. This result re- 33
sembles those of the Netherlands and Japan, where a major city and the sur- 34
rounding region were also named. 35
Antwerp and Leuven are culturally and economically dominant cities in the 36
province of Flemish Brabant. This may explain the popularity of this province 37
(28.6% of the Flemish respondents chose this answer). The next most popular 38
response for Flanders was East Flanders (11.3%), which province borders on 39
Flemish Brabant. 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 Of the Japanese respondents, 42.1% selected the capital, Tokyo. The domi-
2 nance of Tokyo city in this respect can be explained through the once aggressive
3 language policy of the Japanese government through which the Tokyo dialect was
4 with some force spread across the country, at the expense of dialects. The second
5 most popular response (39.9%) was the Kanto area, which is the area around the
6 capital.
7 Of the Dutch respondents, 19.3% referred to the city of Haarlem. The Rands-
8 tad area (20.0%) is where the economic and political centers of the Netherlands
9 lie, as they have for centuries. Haarlem is in this area. It is probable that Haarlem
10 was put forward as the place where the standard language is spoken not because
11 respondents personally experienced this to be the case but, rather, were reacting
12 on the basis of hearsay, as this is a common language myth in the Netherlands
13 (Smakman 2003: 121–122). Interestingly, Heeringa (2004: 274) did find that local
14 Haarlem speech is closest to Standard Dutch of all non-standard speech varieties
15 in the Dutch-language area.
16 Of the New Zealand respondents, 12.5% selected North Island. This island is
17 more urbanized than the other of the two islands (i.e. South Island). On the North
18 Island are the two largest cities, namely Auckland and the capital Wellington. The
19 light tendency to refer to the more urbanized of the two islands may point to the
20 slow development of a geographical locus in New Zealand and the association of
21 cities with the standard language. The second-most popular place referred to was
22 Christchurch (4.8%), where most respondents were from (South Island).
23 In Poland, the capital city of Warsaw was a popular response (19.9%) and to
24 a lesser extent the Małopolska (‘Little Poland’) response (12.1%) as well (a region
25 in southern Poland, around the city of Krakow), which suggests a relationship
26 between the capital (or old university city) and the standard language.
27 The United States results reflect a common association of the Midwest (62.8%
28 of the respondent referred to this region) of the United States with General Amer-
29 ican, or “Network English”. References to the North East (10.6%) reveal some
30 awareness of the historical importance of that area, and perhaps the fact that the
31 political centre of the United States is in that area.
32
33
34 4.3 Profession of speakers
35
36 The respondents were asked which profession they associate most with the stan-
37 dard language. The response categories that were selected by more than ten per-
38 cent of the respondents in at least one of the countries can be seen in Table 5. The
39 “various” category contains all the other professions that were put forward. Re-
40 spondents were also allowed to write down a profession that was not in the list.

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 46    D. Smakman

Profession Percentage of respondents 1

EN FL JP NL NZ PL US 2
3
newsreaders 15.0 57.1 86.9 45.7 11.5 19.9 20.4
4
language experts 10.0 10.5 5.5 12.1 10.6 9.9 1.8
teachers 7.5 6.8 1.1 2.9 6.7 26.2 35.4 5
educated people 5.5 12.0 – 16.4 1.0 2.1 1.8 6
president/prime minister 14.0 – – – – – 11.5 7
queen 19.0 – – – – – – 8
all equal 7.5 1.5 3.3 5.0 36.5 – 6.2
9
various 19.0 9.0 2.2 15.0 12.5 38.3 16.8
no opinion/no answer 2.5 3.0 1.1 2.9 21.2 3.5 6.2 10
11
12
Table 5: Responses to the question: “People with which profession speak the standard
language in particular?” (one response per respondent) 13
14
15
Newsreaders were mentioned far most often. Radio and television an­nouncers
16
strive for a maximally clear and precise diction, as free as possible from regional-
17
isms in pronunciation, particularly those carrying a social stigma, said Lipski
18
(1985: 221). Indeed, newsreader on national television should be able to speak a
19
neutral language, so as to reach listeners from various regions of the country and
20
all layers of society.
21
The Dutch and Flemish preferences for the “newsreaders” category are rela-
22
tively strong (45.7% and 57.1%, respectively). The supremacy of newsreaders in
23
Japan (86.9%) is striking, especially compared to New Zealand (11.5%). The New
24
Zealand respondents thus seemed undecided and opted mostly for the “all equal”
25
category (36.5%). The Polish respondents associated the standard language rela-
26
tively strongly with education, so it seems. More than a quarter of this group
27
­opted for teachers (26.2%). Political leaders were only selected in the United
28
States (11.5%) and England (14.0%).
29
30
4.4 Famous speakers 31
32
The respondents were asked to name an exemplary famous individual who 33
speaks the standard language. The results are in Tables 6 and 7, which contain 34
the reasons for the fame of each celebrity speaker (Table 6) and the names of the 35
two most popular speakers in each country (Table 7). The ‘various’ category in 36
Table 6 contains professions that were mentioned only a few times and could not 37
be categorized. 38
There are similarities between the results on stereotypical model profes- 39
sions ­(Table 5) and the professions of actual speakers (Table 6). Newsreaders in 40

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 The definition of the standard language    47

1 Response category Percentage of respondents

2 EN FL JP NL NZ PL US
3
TV newsreader 10.0 56.4 31.7 29.3 3.8 7.8 16.8
4
TV presenter 10.0 17.3 2.7 16.4 7.7 52.5 1.8
5 actor 2.0 0.8 2.7 1.4 7.7 2.1 –
6 PM/President 16.5 – – – – – 22.1
7 queen/emperor 22.0 – 1.6 1.4 – – –
8 own teacher – – – – – 15.6 –
political activist – – – – – – 9.7
9
various 19.5 2.3 7.7 4.3 10.6 6.4 33.6
10 no opinion/no answer 20.0 23.3 53.6 47.1 70.2 15.6 15.9
11
12
Table 6: Responses to the question: “Give the name of an exemplary famous speaker of the
13 standard language”
14
15
16 Country Famous speaker
17 Name Profession Sex Percentage
18
Queen Elisabeth monarch female 22.0
19 EN
Tony Blair Prime Minister male 16.5
20
Martine Tanghe newsreader female 33.8
21 FL
Bavo Claes newsreader male 13.5
22
23 Hiroshi Kume newsreader male 5.5
JP Shiro Suzuki newsreader male 5.5
24
25 Sacha de Boer newsreader female 15.7
NL Harmen Siezen newsreader male 6.4
26
27 Judy Bailey newsreader female 2.9
28 Jenny Shipley politician female
NZ Temuera Morrison actor male 1.9
29
Sam Neill actor male
30
31 Jan Miodek “television linguist” male 39.0
PL “my teacher” teacher female/male 15.6
32
33 Martin Luther King political activist male 9.7
US Bill Clinton president male 7.1
34
35
36 Table 7: The most popular famous speakers of the standard language
37
38
39
40

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 48    D. Smakman

particular surface as model speakers. The percentage of Flemish, Dutch and Japa- 1
nese references to television newsreaders is strikingly high. It is not a general rule 2
though, judging by the New Zealand, Poland and England results. The New Zea- 3
landers seemed altogether undecided. 4
There are large differences among the countries in the agreement on, or exis- 5
tence of, linguistic role models. The differences between the Polish and New Zea- 6
land results illustrate this: of the Polish respondents, 84.4% (n = 119) actually 7
named a speaker, while 29.8% (n = 31) of the New Zealanders did so. 8
The English often (22.0%) referred to the queen. It seems that the name “The 9
Queen’s English” may have provoked this answer. It is also in line with the Eng- 10
lish association of the standard language with social class. More than one in five 11
Americans (22.1%) referred to a (usually recent) president. In Table 7 are the two 12
most popular celebrities put forward in each country. 13
In several of the countries, a highly popular role model emerged. Flanders 14
and the Netherlands looked towards a specific television-news anchor person. 15
Jan Miodek is a famous Polish Linguistics professor presenting a language pro- 16
gram on Polish television (cf. Smakman 1999). The other Polish role model was 17
not a specific person; 15.6% of the Polish respondents put forward their own 18
teacher as their “famous” model speaker. They simply gave the name of their 19
­university lecturer or a teacher at their secondary school, thus revealing the 20
­perceived importance of schools in the establishment of norms. The Japanese 21
­respondents seemed to agree on the profession of role models (television news- 22
reader) but not on one role model in particular. 23
There are considerable differences between countries. Judy Bailey (New 24
­Zealand) was mentioned by only three respondents. In Poland, on the other 25
hand,  55 of the 119 Polish respondents who named a name selected the same 26
speaker. The Dutch, Flemish, and Polish results illustrate the unpredictable rise 27
of famous linguistic role models. In Poland in particular, it seems a coincidence 28
that there should be a famous professor presenting a television program on 29
­correct Polish. The Japanese and New Zealand results may be indicative of a situ- 30
ation in which a famous – and charismatic, perhaps – speaker happens to be 31
nonexistent. 32
It may be that famous linguistic role models can have any profession, but or- 33
dinary listeners need to be exposed to these speakers a great deal for these celeb- 34
rities to become role models. Television is the most obvious medium to realize 35
this exposure, and so is school and the home. Strikingly, parents – which are 36
important language models – were not mentioned by more than a handful of 37
speakers across all countries. So, the default speakers of the standard language 38
may be famous newsreaders, except when individual speakers appear regularly 39
in the lives of respondents and take over this position. 40

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 The definition of the standard language   49

1 Response Percentage of respondents

2 category EN FL JP NL NZ PL US
3
men/women 78.5 74.4 73.2 77.1 74.0 74.5 70.8
4
women 15.5 17.3 17.5 12.1 6.7 3.5 12.4
5 men 1.0 3.0 5.5 2.9 8.7 15.6 7.1
6 no opinion 5.0 5.3 3.8 7.9 10.6 6.4 9.7
7
8 Table 8: Responses to the question “Do men or women in particular speak the standard
9 language?” (one response per respondent)
10
11
4.5 Sex of speakers
12
13
Women are traditionally considered to approximate the standard language more
14
than men but the empirical evidence to support this is not conclusive (Milroy
15
1980; Watt and Milroy 1999: 43). The respondents were asked, finally, whether
16
women or men in particular speak the standard language. The results are in
17
Table 8.
18
In each country, about two thirds to three quarters of the respondents con­
19
sidered both sexes to be similarly likely to speak the standard language (ranging
20
from 70.8% to 78.5%). In most cases, when a choice was made between the sexes,
21
women were chosen, but this was not a general rule across countries (15.6% of the
22
Polish respondents considered men more likely speakers of the standard lan-
23
guage than women).
24
Table 7 shows no sex-bias regarding linguistic role models. The main Flemish
25
and Dutch role model was female, the main Polish role model was male, the Eng-
26
lishmen referred to a woman, and the respondents from the other countries
27
named various male and female celebrities. It is obvious that despite some sex
28
preferences there is no indication that either of the sexes is more likely than the
29
other to become a role model. It depends on the rise of individuals.
30
31
32
33
5 Conclusion
34
35 5.1 Two types of standard languages
36
37 The characteristics of the standard language (Table 2) can be divided into charac-
38 teristics that refer to a rather exclusive standard language and those that refer
39 to the standard language being the language of a large group of people. Hagen
40 and Vallen (1974) hinted at this dichotomy by saying that some place emphasis on

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 50    D. Smakman

Category of characteristics EN FL JP NL NZ PL US 1

lingua franca 2
media language 3
inclusive 22.9 26.5 55.6 22.5 47.2 22.8 21.3
accepted 4
informal 5
correct 6
opposite of dialect 7
non-regional
exclusive 58.8 50.3 27.4 61.4 11.4 45.6 35.3 8
formal
9
rare/non-existent
social class 10
11
other 18.3 23.3 16.9 18.2 41.5 31.6 43.3
12
* The number of characteristics put forward per country: EN = 480; FL = 189; JP = 248; NL = 245; 13
NZ = 123; PL = 228; US = 150.
14
15
Table 9: The relative use of the “exclusive” and “inclusive” approach to the standard language* 16
17
homogeneity, are strict, and accept no variation, whereas others consider hetero- 18
geneity to be a natural phenomenon and embrace variation. 19
The view in which the standard language is the language of the majority 20
of people can be called the “inclusive” approach (and is represented by, for in- 21
stance, the “lingua franca” and “accepted” characteristics), whereas the view in 22
which the language is for the selected few can be called the “exclusive” approach 23
(for instance, the “correct” and “formal” characteristics). This subdivision of 24
characteristics is in Table 9, which is derived from Table 2. The percentages are 25
calculated over the total number of characteristics within each country. 26
In all countries, references to both the inclusive and the exclusive nature of 27
the standard language were popular. Of all the characteristics put forward across 28
countries (N = 1663), 29.7% was of the inclusive type, while 45.6% was of the ex- 29
clusive type. 30
In the inclusive view, the standard language is the language that many peo- 31
ple are able to speak, and that most can and will achieve as either a first or second 32
language. It may in some cases be the language that people use to refer to the 33
national language of a country, or the language linguists and sociologists refer to 34
as the language of the nation-state. It is the type of variety that avoids certain 35
marked articulatory, lexical and grammatical structures. It is spoken in situations 36
where people with various backgrounds come together and need to communicate 37
effectively and impartially (shops, schools, the professional world and so on). 38
This inclusive language contains regional traces but no dialect features, espe- 39
cially not those that impair comprehension. 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 The non-standard language in this view is the language that consistently

2 shows features that are understandable to only a subset of speakers. The inclu-
3 sive approach seems present in descriptions of Received Pronunciation by Collins
4 et al. (2001: 3): “one accent of English which is heard all over Britain”, “no longer
5 closely associated with any specific region” and “acceptable to English speakers
6 anywhere in Britain – indeed all over the English-speaking world”. These authors
7 emphasize a lack of exclusivity. This view is also illustrated by comments by Falk
8 (1978: 289) and Niedzielski and Preston (2000: 41) on the situation in the United
9 States of America. Every region, so these authors claim, supports its own stan-
10 dard variety, and what is considered Standard English in New York City would not
11 be considered standard in Fort Worth, Texas.
12 Pronunciation may be the main source of variation within the inclusive stan-
13 dard language. Strevens (1985) indicated that “standard” can only refer to gram-
14 mar and vocabulary and not to pronunciation, and Jenkins (2003: 31) made a
15 similar comment.
16 The exclusive view distinguishes standard-language speakers from others. It
17 is the language of the happy few. It is the highly homogenous language in which
18 variation is limited and deviations highly conspicuous. This homogeneity serves
19 a symbolic purpose, not a communicative one. The majority of speakers in the
20 speech community speak the non-standard language in this view, i.e. the hetero-
21 geneous language. The exclusive standard language may act as a kind of linguis-
22 tic guard within a community, to suppress change and quick adoptions to fash-
23 ions. This view is the one that has found its way into schoolbooks and language
24 handbooks, and it represents the language learned by non-native learners. Kloeke
25 (1951: 27–28, 35) believed that the standard language (in the Netherlands) is only
26 spoken by three percent of the Dutch population. Foley (1997: 400) also felt that
27 the standard language largely reflects the speech of a nation’s elite.
28 It seems that while the inclusive view is internationally existent, the exclusiv-
29 ist standard language has as a prerequisite that it has had some centuries to ma-
30 ture. In New Zealand society there has been relatively little tradition with respect
31 to a national standard language. As a possible consequence, the exclusivist as-
32 pect of the standard language was strikingly less present in New Zealand than in
33 the other societies under investigation. New Zealand respondents often referred
34 to British English, which is apparently their alternative to an exclusive standard
35 language. This suggests that there is a need amongst speakers for such a model
36 language.
37 The inclusive standard language is widely embraced and seems to represent
38 a practical view which is applicable in day-to-day communication. The exclusive
39 view is mostly a convenient theoretical reference point (serving as a model for
40 enthusiastic puritans, amongst others). Smakman (2006: 157–160) asked Dutch

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 52    D. Smakman

respondents whether they themselves spoke the standard language, and 82.1% of 1
the respondents indicated that they did – at least sometimes – speak Standard 2
Dutch. This is in accordance with the inclusive view. In the same survey, respon- 3
dents were asked to estimate the number of Dutch speakers in the Netherlands. 4
The two most popular answers to this question reflected the two views: many 5
people speak it, or less than 5% of the population do. These two approaches are 6
not mutually exclusive, apparently, as many of our respondents used both within 7
the same answer to the question what the characteristics are of the standard lan- 8
guage, for example: “The language from the Home Counties, which hides our 9
­regional origins, and which we use to communicate clearly and objectively and 10
educatedly with people from all layers of society”. 11
The inclusive standard language is sociologically standard in the sense that 12
many people speak it, but it is far from homogenous and thus not standard from 13
a structural linguistic point of view. And while the exclusive standard language is 14
highly homogenous and thus linguistically standard, it is not standard in the 15
sense of widely adopted. These two views can nevertheless be reconciled by re- 16
garding the exclusive standard language as the prototypical standard language, 17
which is part of the wide range of varieties in the inclusive realm of varieties, i.e. 18
varieties that are convenient tools of communication with anyone in the speech 19
community or country. 20
21
22
5.2 Three other qualities 23
24
In many of the answers and through many of the insightful comments that re- 25
spondents spontaneously wrote down, three persistent qualities of the standard 26
language emerge, namely unnaturalness, blandness, and beauty. 27
First of all, the standard language seems to be subject to a certain degree of 28
unnaturalness. For instance, in the answer (by a Japanese respondent) “A stilted 29
and bookish language” a certain degree of unnaturalness seemed to be hinted at. 30
The idea of an extra effort being necessary to produce standard speech and of this 31
speech somehow being fundamentally different to non-standard speech is direct- 32
ly or indirectly referred to in a great deal of literature, and Smakman (2006: 126) 33
found a significant positive correlation between “standard” and “polished” when 34
he had respondents evaluate Dutch speech. Furthermore, references can be found 35
to Standard Dutch as the language of “self-constraint and self-disguise” (Van 36
Haeringen 1924: 74), the language of “people who make an effort” (Nyloë 1703: 1) 37
and which is part of “a reformation of the mind” (Nyloë 1703: 10). This results in a 38
language that is “different compared to nature” (Kloeke 1951: 48) or even a “chem- 39
ical formula” (Kloeke 1954: 812). The fact that many speakers of the standard lan- 40

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The definition of the standard language 

1 guage (including newsreaders) are not native speakers of this language variety
2 may be a reason for the perceived unnaturalness as well.
3 De Vries et al. (1993: 129) considered the standard language to be a “product
4 of culture”. They said that the fact that the spoken standard language is often
5 derived from the written standard language is an important cause for a certain
6 degree of unnaturalness of the spoken standard language, as the daily language
7 is constantly adjusted through norms regarding the written language. Martinet
8 (1954: 2), in line with this, talked about “the nigh exclusive preoccupation of long
9 generations of scholars with written standard languages”. According to Foley
10 (1997: 400), standard forms of English were carefully crafted and certainly did not
11 arise spontaneously. A good example of this conscious meddling with the shape
12 of the standard language is Norway, where two standard languages exist side by
13 side (viz. Trudgill 1983: 161–168), but where efforts are made to bring them closer
14 together (Foley 1997: 406), which demonstrates that linguistic forces are some-
15 times secondary in the linguistic development of the standard language. Accord-
16 ing to Foley (1997: 400), “the forces which produce and mold standard national
17 languages are many and various”. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 209) distin-
18 guished between “evolutionary (natural)” and “revolutionary (artificial)” pro-
19 cesses that languages go through, and the latter, so they indicated, was typical of
20 the standard language. They (1988: 210) said that standard languages, though
21 internally relatively homogenous, abound with irregular sound correspondence
22 when compared with cognate languages.
23 Another feature that is implicit in many of the responses, is emotional gener-
24 alness or blandness. Many respondents gave answers which suggested that they
25 felt the standard language was somehow a detached language (e.g. a Polish re-
26 spondent wrote: “This language is special in the sense that it is not typical of any
27 area or speaker, it is everyone’s language and no one’s”, and a Flemish respon-
28 dent wrote: “The standard language is a boring consensus”). This is in accor-
29 dance with De Vries (1980: 227), who talked about a language that is “colourless”
30 and “dead”.
31 A final characteristic of the standard language that may well be universal is
32 its perceived beauty. Respondents from all countries took the opportunity to ex-
33 press their love of this language variety and emphasized its aesthetic qualities;
34 e.g. “It is soothing to the ear, unlike accents” (an English respondent). Focusing
35 on pronunciation, Smakman (2006: 160) found a significant positive correlation
36 between “standard” and “beautiful”. De Vries (1987: 127) felt that there are indeed
37 reasons to assume that there is a positive attitude towards the fixed language
38 norm. Our results corroborate findings hereon in research on English (Giles 1971;
39 Trudgill and Giles 1978), in which beauty was an important feature of the stan-
40 dard language. This is in accordance with the Imposed Norm Hypothesis, which

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 54    D. Smakman

suggests that prestige varieties gain “consensual validity” as the most beautiful 1
form of language because of cultural norms (Giles et al. 1974: 405; Giles et al. 2
1975). Foley (1997: 308) even observed that speakers will denigrate their own vari- 3
eties as part of the acceptance of the standard language. 4
5
6
5.3 The definition of the standard language 7
8
With the information so far, the definition of the standard language could be that 9
this language is the neutral communication tool within a country or speech com- 10
munity. So, the standard language is the language that connects people within a 11
country, amongst others linguistically. It is liked although it may suffer from a 12
degree of unnaturalness and colorlessness. Generally, other characteristics can 13
be explained by local conditions and local history. Television presenters, and 14
newsreaders in particular, are associated with the standard language. However, 15
alternative role models may present themselves and might come from unexpected 16
places. 17
Regular exposure of listeners to speakers seems a requirement for these 18
speakers to be associated with the standard language. One may hypothesize that 19
speakers that the respondents actually spoke to on a daily basis (like teachers, 20
which constituted popular role models in Poland and the United States) were 21
­instrumental in developing norms regarding the inclusive standard language, 22
while national newsreaders could mostly be associated with the exclusive stan- 23
dard language. 24
25

6 Discussion 26
27
28
So, does the linguistic product of the nation-state actually exist? Milroy and Mil-
29
roy (1985: 22–23) called the standard language “an idea in the mind rather than a
30
reality – a set of abstract norms”. Milroy (2001) also seemed to consider the ideo-
31
logical nature of the standard language to be more dominant than the linguistic.
32
It is not unlikely that a detailed description of any standard language yields a
33
system that no individual speaker actually applies, especially when it comes to
34
pronunciation, and especially when it comes to the exclusive standard language.
35
36
References 37
38
Albanyan, Ahmed & Dennis Preston. 1998. What is Standard American English? Studia Anglica 39
Posnaniensia 34. 29–46. 40

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