Orthography as Social Action: Scripts, Spelling, Identity and Power 9781614511038, 9781614511366

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Orthography as Social Action

Language and Social Processes 3

Editors

Richard J. Watts David Britain

De Gruyter Mouton

Orthography as Social Action Scripts, Spelling, Identity and Power

edited by

Alexandra Jaffe Jannis Androutsopoulos Mark Sebba Sally Johnson

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-1-61451-136-6 e-ISBN 978-1-61451-103-8 ISSN 2192-2128 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. ” 2012 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Boston/Berlin Typesetting: PTP-Berlin Protago TEX-Production GmbH, Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany. www.degruyter.com

Contents Chapter 1 Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power Mark Sebba Chapter 2 Orthography, publics and legitimation crisis: The 1996 reform of German Sally Johnson Chapter 3 Orthography and Orthodoxy in post-Soviet Russia Brian Bennett Chapter 4 Reclamation, revalorization and re-Tatarization via changing Tatar orthographies Suzanne Wertheim Chapter 5 Hindi is perfect, Urdu is messy: the discourse of delegitimation of Urdu in India Rizwan Ahmad Chapter 6 Spelling and identity in the Southern Netherlands (1750–1830) Rik Vosters, Gijsbert Rutten, Marijke van der Wal and Wim Vandenbussche

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Chapter 7 Orthography as literacy: how Manx was “reduced to writing” Mark Sebba

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Chapter 8 Orthography as practice: a Pennsylvania German case study Jennifer Schlegel

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Contents

Chapter 9 Transcription in practice: nonstandard orthography Alexandra Jaffe Chapter 10 Orthography and calligraphic ideology in an Iranian American heritage school Amir Sharifi Chapter 11 Floating ideologies: Metamorphoses of graphic “Germanness” J¨urgen Spitzm¨uller Chapter 12 Whos punctuating what? Sociolinguistic variation in instant messaging Lauren Squires Chapter 13 How to spell the vernacular: a multivariate study of Jamaican e-mails and blogs Lars Hinrichs Chapter 14 “Greeklish”: Transliteration practice and discourse in the context of computer-mediated digraphia Jannis Androutsopoulos Subject index

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359 393

Chapter 1 Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power Mark Sebba 1. Introduction Sociolinguistics and the sociology of language have for many decades now been exploring and explaining the relationship between language variation and society.This exploration has ranged over almost every conceivable aspect of language use and every conceivable level of structure. It has shown very clearly that wherever choices are possible, or are made possible, they have the potential to take on social meaning – and usually do so. Much of this work has taken spoken language as its focus, in keeping with a long-standing tradition in linguistics which privileges spoken language over written as an object of study, especially when it comes to the study of language in its social context. For such purposes, spoken language has been credited with the potential for spontaneity, authenticity and lack of self-monitoring which has made it appear more suitable as data for the study of social meaning. More recently, some linguists interested in the social aspects of language have taken written language as a focus of interest for example, by using written corpora as sources of data (Baker 2010), while practices of reading and writing have always been at the heart of the New Literacy Studies (Barton 2006). Yet the study of the nuts-and-bolts of writing – the scripts and orthographies which form the basic medium for written expression – has been largely neglected from a social point of view. Certainly plenty of attention has been given to writing systems and their units by phonologists and phoneticians over the years. In fact, for many linguists in the twentieth century, designing an orthography for previously unwritten languages, on a strictly phonemic basis, was their life’s mission. But for most of these linguists, developing a writing system was to be viewed mainly as a technical matter, a matter of assigning “one letter, and one letter only for each phoneme” in the words of Kenneth Pike (1938: 87). Social and cultural issues were not to be allowed too much influence. Valter Tauli (1968: 131), for example, proclaimed the superiority of the phonemic principle for designing new orthographies, declaring that if “social, political, psychological, typographical and economic condi-

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tions” happened to be in conflict with it, it was the duty of the linguist simply to insist that the orthography they were providing was better. This is not to suggest that linguists even then were totally unaware of the social issues surrounding scripts and orthographies. Burns (1953) wrote about the political and cultural aspects of choosing an orthography for Haitian Creole, and Paul Garvin, recounting his experiences when trying to produce a unified orthography for Ponapean, concluded that [t]he problem of devising an acceptable spelling system, which initially might have appeared purely, or at least primarily, a linguistic matter, upon closer inspection thus turned out to be a language and culture problem par excellence. (Garvin 1954: 129)

Some twenty years later, in 1977, Joshua Fishman edited what still stands as almost the only significant collection of work on the sociology of scripts and orthographies: Advances in the creation and revision of writing systems. This book included chapters covering a wide range of different languages and situations, among them two – the Turkic languages of Central Asia, and the Netherlands – which also feature in this volume, though in very different contexts. Despite the appearance of Fishman’s volume, which might have been taken as a call for more research on the sociolinguistics of scripts and orthographies, there were rather few studies published in this area during the next decade or so. Some of those which did appear are valuable as detailed case studies of specific debates over writing systems: for example Rothstein (1977) on the controversies over spelling reform in Polish, and Vikør (1988) on the intensely political debates over the orthography of Malay/Indonesian in the twentieth century. The 1990s, by contrast, were a period of rapid growth in scholarship on the sociolinguistics of scripts and orthographies. At the start of the decade, a number of researchers were developing the theme of a link between language ideology and choices in the writing system. Schieffelin and Doucet (1992, 1994) studied the longstanding controversy (already discussed by Burns four decades earlier) over the choice of orthographic representations for Haitian Creole. They concluded that the debate over orthography, which at the most basic level was about practical issues to do with ease of learning and printing, was at a deeper level about “how Haitians situate themselves through languages at the national and international levels” (Schieffelin and Doucet 1994: 188). Around the same time, Alexandra Jaffe was investigating the role of language ideologies and spelling in Corsican, a minoritized language under constant pressure from French (Jaffe 1996). The theme of ideology and orthography was taken up by many researchers in the following decade,

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with respect to different languages (and “candidate” languages): for example, Galician (Herrero Valeiro 1993), Jamaican Creole (Sebba 1998), Shinzwani (Ottenheimer 2001). The 1990s were a period of attempted spelling reforms for several European languages, with varying degrees of success, and this provided a fertile field for researchers taking a sociocultural view of the inevitable controversies: thus we have studies of the spelling reforms in German (Johnson 2002 and this volume), French (Catach 1991), Portuguese (Garcez 1995), Dutch (Jacobs 1997) and Czech (Bermel 2007). Questions of identity are in many cases linked inseparably to language ideology, and this too is a recurrent theme in studies published in this period and up to the present. National identity was certainly at issue in the case of Haitian Creole as well as other cases, like the construction of Faroese as a separate language from Danish (Lindqvist 2003); but other kinds of identity have been found to be constructed through scripts and orthographies as well, for example, subcultural identities (Androutsopoulos 2000), supratribal identities (Bird 2001) and online identities (Sebba 2007). Heffernan et al. (2010) deals with orthographic indices of national identity in a Canadian context, where both British and American spellings are known and can be used, while Georgiou (2010) studies competing discourses surrounding the spelling of place names in Cyprus. Language ideology and national identity are particularly clearly linked in situations where a former colony seeks to assert its independence from the former colonial power symbolically through its writing system. Several of the cases mentioned above – Malay/Indonesian, Haitian, Shinzwani, and Faroese – could reasonably be included in this category, and there have also been studies of “postcolonial” orthography development for Sranan (Sebba 2000) and Tagalog (Thomas 2007). Also under this heading, the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s led to a large-scale reexamination of language policies and actual, or attempted, script changes in a number of states, and many of these have been discussed in the literature from a sociocultural point of view, for example Mongolia (Grivelet 2001), Azerbaijan (Hatcher 2008), Turkmenistan (Clement 2008), Tatarstan (Sebba 2006 and Wertheim, this volume; see also Cashaback 2008).

2. The politics of variation One of the robust findings of sociolinguistics is that linguistic variables can have social meaning either above or below the level of awareness, leading to different types of language change within the classical variationist theory. In

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the case of scripts and orthographies, variation is nearly always too obvious, too much the result of a conscious choice, to be regarded as below the level of awareness1 What we do find is that meaningful choices can be made at many different levels (depending on the particular language concerned and the affordances of different writing systems). Just as in the case of linguistic variables in spoken language, users are sensitive to extremely small and nuanced differences between elements in a system, as well as to larger-scale variations. Furthermore, through a process of iconization – “a transformation of the sign relationship between linguistic features (or varieties) and the social images with which they are linked” (Irvine and Gal 2000: 37) – these differences may become iconic of the groups of users themselves or of particular social characteristics which are attributed to them. The most obvious level at which choices may be made is the choice of script itself, and two chapters in this volume provide clear illustrations of how social meanings attach to scripts. Rizwan Ahmad’s chapter shows how in nineteenth century India, Urdu, written in the Persian script, was iconized in the discourse of Hindu nationalists as “foreign” and “fraudulent” while Hindi, written in Devanagari script, was “indigenous” and “virtuous”. Suzanne Wertheim’s chapter shows how the Roman script used for writing Tatar can be “read as a metonymic representative of political and cultural orientation” symbolizing independence, westernization and pan-Turkic solidarity. The other scripts used for Tatar – the Cyrillic script currently in use, the Arabic script which was replaced in the 1920s and the ancient Runic script – also have, in the prevailing historical and social conditions in Tatarstan, particular social meanings. In practice, the choice of script is one that is usually made by tradition, by governments, or by the language users collectively (see Eira 1998 and Unseth 2005 for insights into script selection). Even where digraphia (the simultaneous use of two or more scripts) exists in theory, as in Tatarstan at the moment, the individual language user rarely has a free choice of which to use. Where true digraphia does exist, however, the choice of one or other by an individual is almost certain to have social meaning (see Grivelet 2001). Once the script to be used has been settled, there is scope for individual users and sub-groups of society to introduce socially meaningful variation 1. This is true mainly in terms of quality but less so of quantity; so, for example, nonstandard variants may be used in writing by an individual who is conscious of using them but is relatively unaware of the frequency with which s/he is doing so. A sociolinguist, however, might find frequency differences to be socially meaningful. I am grateful to Jannis Androutsopoulos for pointing this out.

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at the level of orthography. Orthographies are systems of correspondences between elements of the script and elements of the language: in the case of languages that have phonetically based scripts like alphabets, the orthography provides a set of conventional correspondences between characters and sounds. Deviating from these conventional relations has the potential for creating social meaning. However, this potential is subject to two types of constraint. The first of these relates to the extent to which particular types of text are required to conform to the set of norms established for a language, assuming that there is one. The second relates to an interaction between the constraint just mentioned and a set of linguistic factors, which limits the variation to what I call the zone of social meaning In Sebba (2007) I propose that different types of writing can be placed on a continuum in terms of the extent to which they are subject to regulation. Here “types of writing” does not refer just to genres, but also to the kind of institutional or non-institutional environment in which they are produced. Graffiti, for example, is at the least regulated end of the spectrum, produced using illegitimate media in illegitimate spaces. The orthography of graffiti is often highly deviant from the standard norm. At the other extreme, prose produced for publication by mainstream publishers is severely constrained. Even where the manuscript contains deviations from the orthographic norms, these are likely to be brought into line with the publisher’s standards before the text is exposed to the general public. Other types of writing fall between these extremes, and the details of this are not fixed for all time but vary historically as well as, of course, from language to language. For example, personal letters in English are not subject to central regulation, but in contemporary British practice, they tend to conform pretty much to the standard orthography. However, even though the norms of English spelling became highly standardized during the seventeenth century, spellings in private writing such as letters did not become standardized until a century or so later (Strang 1970: 107). A more contemporary example with which we are all familiar is the way in which the Internet and other digital technologies like SMS messaging have provided spaces where standard spelling norms are frequently disregarded, leading to an expansion of the “unregulated orthographic space” (Sebba 2007: 43–44). Although as just discussed, variation may be tolerated in various parts of the orthographic space, variation is also subject to linguistic limitations. Not everything is a potential variable; indeed, orthographies are to some extent designed so as to minimize the number of multiple correspondences which form the basis for variation, though the creativity of users can often find a way around this. For an example, consider the English word dog. The

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word spelt contains three letters that, in context, do not have readily available alternatives in English. If we want to write this word in a way which reflects its pronunciation, we are more or less stuck with the spelling: . However, it is still possible to introduce elements of variation; , for example, still conforms to the conventions of English (cf. surnames like Bragg, Rigg and Clegg) and exactly this variant has been used to add some distinctiveness by the rapper Snoop Dogg. Or I might draw on a widespread stereotype and try to inject a little humor by calling my German Shepherd a . The introduction of the umlaut on the is sufficiently striking to users of English that they will understand that it is there with a purpose – and they will also recognize that it is “foreign” and specifically, German. In this volume, J¨urgen Spitzm u¨ ller discusses such uses of the umlaut in depth, in a study of the creation of “graphic Germanness” by users of German as well as other languages. So even where the orthography does not make variation particularly easy, it is possible to create it. But sometimes the orthography itself creates the opportunities for variant representations: to illustrate this, take the word cat. For historical reasons, the Roman alphabet contains two letters which are associated with the sound /k/, namely and . By convention, only the first of these is used in the standard English spelling of the word: (whereas in Dutch, for example, it is only the second one: ). I can therefore introduce an element of variation by substituting the character which is licensed for this word, , by another with the same pronunciation, . The result is unmistakably to be pronounced /kat/ but is noticeably deviant from the norm. This unconventional spelling can thus be used to signal distinctiveness, for example in terms of the thing named (Kat could be used in a product name, for example – see Davies 1988) or in terms of the writer’s identity (of which more will be said below). For variant forms to attract social meaning, there must, of course, be the possibility of variation to begin with. In theory this could mean just that there are two (or more) competing forms, but in practice, one of the forms is nearly always a standard norm, and the alternative forms will be seen as deviating from it. Because the written form bears a literal as well as a social meaning, even a “deviant form” cannot deviate too much from the norm, as this would make excessive demands on the reader trying to identify it. and are easy enough to identify as variants of and ; and are somewhat harder but still identifiable. But at some point “variation” becomes “unintelligibility”: seems close to losing its ability to represent the word dog. The concept of the zone of social meaning refers to the fact that in order to be socially meaningful, an

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item must be different from some element of the repertoire in a specific way, but must also be sufficiently similar that it can be recognized as a variant of, or alternative to, that thing (see also Sebba 2007: 32–33). In fact, where potential for variation exists, it is usually exploited. What is remarkable is how script and orthographic variation is used to iconize difference at a wide range of linguistic levels and levels of social organization. At the level of scripts, as we saw in the case of Hindi and Urdu mentioned above, writing systems are used to construct national groups as different. But even where the same script is used, different conventions for mapping sounds to symbols can create different “looks” for different languages and thus function to keep them apart: thus Polish distinguished itself from its close relative and neighbor, Czech, by using digraphs (e.g. , ) where Czech had diacritics (, ) (Rothstein 1977: 225). The ∼ alternation offered by the Roman alphabet is remarkably productive across different contexts. It played a role in the debates about the orthography of Haitian Creole, providing icons for two opposing views of both the language itself, and the national identity. One faction favored using the orthographic conventions of French, for example or for /k/, for /w/; the opposing faction favored using conventions which were more widely used among the world’s languages, and (in the case of these examples) more consistent with the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet – but which also happened to be used by English, a language strongly associated with the United States and Protestantism. In the case of Spanish in contemporary Spain, using where the standard orthography requires (or in certain instances) indexes a subcultural identity: it has associations with a subculture of anarchists, war resisters, and anti-establishment groups, and is often seen in graffiti (sometimes alongside a “circled A” anarchist symbol). Although the letter “exists” in Spanish, in the sense that it is recognized as part of the Latin alphabet, it is rare, and almost never used in native Spanish words. This makes it a suitable candidate for an icon of “the other” for users of Spanish, enabling it to function as a marker of a Spanish-speaking, but resistant, minority (see figure 1). At the same time, and for the same reason, it can serve as an icon for “otherness” from Spanish for a neighboring language community, in the Basque country. Since almost all Basque speakers in the Basque part of Spain can speak Spanish, they are fully aware of the orthographic conventions of Spanish, including the conventions for representing the sound /k/. Basque orthography uses to represent the /k/ phoneme, making this a (highly) salient point of difference between the orthographies, since is virtually absent in Spanish. This point of difference between the two orthographies

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Figure 1. Nonstandard Spanish graffiti on the wall of a bank in Catalonia. Note for standard . Photograph by the author.

can be appropriated to iconize the two languages in a binary opposition. Jacqueline Urla shows how this enables Basques who are involved in radical youth culture to engage in a practice of “parodic spellings of Spanish words” (Urla 2003: 219), where Spanish words are made to “look like” Basque through the subversive use of where the conventional Spanish spelling would use or . More directly subversive to the authority of the Spanish state was the nineteenth century Philippine revolutionary movement known as KKK (Thomas 2007). In this case, an orthography for Tagalog (a major indigenous language of the Philippines) which used where Spanish used or , was taken up by supporters of Philippine independence from Spain, the colonial power. Megan Thomas puts it succinctly (2007: 939): “the letter ‘k’ in particular is a site of ideological, anti-colonial contestation in areas dominated by Latin-language states, institutions, or peoples.” In Belgium and the Netherlands, the same two letters have social meaning, but in different ways. In Dutch, words of French origin can be spelt either etymologically (e.g. using ) or according to what are perceived as more Germanic conventions (e.g. using ). In the nineteenth century the Dutch orthographer L.A. te Winkel declared that there was “something coarse” in such spellings as koncert or konsert instead of concert (cited by Geerts et al. 1977: 188): the more refined French spellings were to be preferred. Writing more than a century later, Pieter Seuren (1982: 77–78) pointed out that for contemporary people in the Netherlands, “the c symbolizes conser-

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vatism”: nowadays writers who want to be thought “modern” (though presumably not “coarse”) would use . This distinction was institutionalized by the official Dutch–Belgian wordlist approved by a committee in 1954, and which permitted both a “progressive” spelling (with ) and a “preferred” spelling (with ) until 1995. In the Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium, on the other hand, the ∼ alternation has a different meaning: while is associated with the Germanic world and with the Netherlands, is seen as “French” and hence to be avoided by Flemish Belgians seeking to establish an identity which is distinctively un-French (Geerts et al. 1977: 234). The “progressive” spelling has therefore been preferred by Belgian writers, even those who politically speaking, are far from “progressive” The Dutch–Belgian example shows how orthographic variation that is the same at the linguistic level can be interpreted differently in different social, cultural or historical contexts, even by speakers of the same language. The case of ∼ also shows that language users are sensitive to social meaning at the level of individual elements of their writing system, like letters or characters: but, in fact, they are sensitive to much smaller units. For ´ example, Celso Alvarez C´accamo and M´ario J. Herrero Valeiro (1996: 148– 149) show how the boundary between “Portuguese” and what is symbolically “Galician” (a language similar to, but arguably distinct from, Portuguese) may be marked by something as small as “the nasal tilde on a˜ , o˜ ”. In the “orthgraphic war” described by Herrero Valeiro (1993), even the presence or absence of the acute accent which distinguishes Portuguese (‘day’) from Spanish will be interpreted as a sign of a writer’s intention to write Galician as more like Portuguese or like Spanish.

3. Writing systems as practice If proof were needed, the foregoing should be sufficient to destroy the idea that writing systems and orthographies are socially neutral technologies. Attacking the idea that literacy is a neutral technology, the New Literacy Studies (Street 1983; Barton 2006; Gee 2008) has for several decades promoted a view of literacy as practice, socially, culturally and historically embedded. Following on in this tradition, we can argue that writing systems and orthographies can be seen as the embodiments of practice too: practices of choice, like the “deviant” spellings of subcultural graffiti, or the avoidance of “French” spellings of loan words by Belgians writing Dutch, as well as aesthetic and educational practices like the informal Chinese calligraphy master class, writing characters in water on a paving stone in a city park

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Figure 2. Informal calligraphy master class, Changsha, China, 2010. Photograph by the author.

(figure 2). Virtually every chapter in this book demonstrates some aspect of “script as practice”: for example, in the chapter by Amir Sharifi, we see how children are socialized into the practices of “elegant writing” in the PersoArabic script; Jannis Androutsopoulos discusses the shifting patterns of use and ideologies of script choice for “Greeklish,” the Romanized Greek used in computer-mediated discourse; both Suzanne Wertheim and Brian Bennett in their contributions describe the revival of historical scriptural practices and their recontextualization under a new political and social order. Alexandra Jaffe describes and problematizes the written practices of a very specific group of writers: linguists.

4. The papers in this volume The present volume brings together a wide range of recent work in the socially oriented study of scripts and orthographies.The chapters in this book explore, among other things, the sociolinguistic implications of orthographic and scriptural practices in a diverse range of communicative contexts, ranging from schoolrooms to internet discussion boards. Collectively they show how scriptural practices both index and constitute social hierarchies, identities and relationships and how in some cases, they become the focus for public debates around language ideologies.

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Just such a public debate is the focus of the first chapter, “Orthography, publics and legitimation crisis: The 1996 reform of German” by Sally Johnson. She examines the constitutional court ruling on the German orthographic reforms of the mid-1990s. The Court ruling of 1998 declared that individuals were free to continue writing as they pleased, while the reformers wanted the new orthographic guidelines to be used as a “blueprint” for usage within the wider speech community, thus preserving the unity of the written language. Underpinning the apparent tension between the court ruling and the reformers, she proposes, is a complex political debate about the relationship between state and speech community that displays the classic features of a Habermasian “legitimation crisis.” By attending to the way in which “publics” – particularly speech (or writing) communities – are invoked in such debates, she argues, much can be learned about the means by which the State attempts to resolve problems of legitimation in areas of language policy. Brian Bennett’s chapter “Orthography and orthodoxy in post-Soviet Russia” gives an overview of the relationship between religion and script in Russia following the end of the communist era. The old, pre- revolutionary Cyrillic orthography has become a focus for various religious factions ranging from New Age to ultra-Orthodox, which claim enhanced authenticity and purity through association with the traditional spelling, in contrast to the “corrupt” post-Bolshevik alphabet. Certain letters, dropped from the alphabet in the course of successive secularizations, have assumed the status of icons of a more glorious and more spiritual era in the discourse of some groups. Still in the former Soviet Union, Suzanne Wertheim in “Reclamation, revalorization and re-Tatarization via changing Tatar orthographies”, has a similar story of older scripts in the service of constructing new identities. Three of the scripts which have historically been used to write the Turkic language Tatar – the ancient runic script, the Perso-Arabic script which was used until the 1920s and the Roman script which was used for a decade after that – are all valorized in different contexts as part of the post-Soviet language ideology of “purification” of Tatar, i.e. the removal from the Tatar language of every trace of Russian influence. The Tatar Republic government has been locked in a dispute with the Russian Federation for a decade in its attempt to replace the Cyrillic script with the Roman for the writing of Tatar. Wertheim shows how the “multiple scripts and their symbolic linkages” are involved in “the construction of a communal identity for the post-Soviet Tatar nation [which] references both multiple times and multiple places” providing new insights into nation-building practices and ideologies.

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In “Scripting a new identity: The battle for Devanagari in nineteenth century India”, Rizwan Ahmad investigates the discursive construction of Hindu identity in the late nineteenth century in north India and shows that the construction of the Hindi language and script as “perfect” – indigenous, honest, and impartial – and the Urdu language and script as “defective” – foreign, fraudulent, and prejudiced – were part of the construction of Hindu identity. He also demonstrates that a major outcome of this debate was a reallocation of the indexical value of Urdu in that it began to index a Muslim identity, which it previously had not done. The orthographic creation of identities is also a main theme in “Spelling and identity in the Southern Netherlands (1750–1830)” by Rik Vosters, Gijsbert Rutten, Marijke van der Wal and Wim Vandenbussche. The authors show how “seemingly insignificant differences” in the written varieties of Dutch used in what are now the Netherlands and Belgium were used to portray “an unbridgeable linguistic gap” between the Northern and Southern part of the Dutch language area. They identify two language myths that were discursively constructed in the southern region, both of which held the northern norms to be superior. These provided a context in which spelling developed into an important identity marker and an index of political loyalty and religious allegiance. In “Orthography as Literacy: How Manx was reduced to writing”, Mark Sebba explores the relationship between orthography, literacy, and bilingualism within a sociocultural framework. Manx is a Celtic language, related to Scottish and Irish Gaelic but with a much shorter written tradition. Its orthography is very different from that of its near relatives and shares a number of conventions with English, a fact that has made Manx users and scholars uncomfortable. Yet the role of the Church of England in the development of the Manx orthography, and the nature of the religious literacy practices which were almost the only occasion for Manx to be used in writing, made it highly likely that Manx orthography would resemble that of English. In enabling Manx to be written down, the clergy were not aiming to strengthen the Manx language, but to facilitate the transition to English and the elimination of Catholicism. Thus the Manx orthography is one factor in the massive language shift which has led to the near-extinction of Manx. Jennifer Schlegel’s chapter, “Orthography as practice: a Pennsylvania German case study” shows how in situations of language shift and revitalization, different orthographies are subject to ideological contestation, and that they index different models of what it means to be a speaker, user or owner of the minority language. She demonstrates how, in an advanced stage of language shift, there are strong affective as well as status-based associ-

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ations with literacy that compete with the authority and authenticity of the remaining native speakers of the minority language. In “Transcription in practice: nonstandard orthography” Alexandra Jaffe discusses the orthographic practices of linguists themselves. Transcriptions of spoken data are a central element in many areas of linguistic research. Jaffe applies a political and ideological perspective to analyzing the use of nonstandard orthography in transcribing linguistic data. While linguistic researchers often portray their orthographic choices as neutral, transparent or trivial aspects of their transcription practices, nonstandard orthographies covertly attribute sociolinguistic stigma to those they represent. She explores in detail the sociolinguistic and pragmatic information value of nonstandard orthography in transcriptions, considering issues of predictability and consistency, and argues that linguists should be aware of the representational work done by nonstandard spellings and use them cautiously and sensitively in their transcripts. The next two chapters, by Amir Sharifi and J¨urgen Spitzm u¨ ller, both have a focus on forms and practices: aesthetic forms and practices of teaching and learning in the first chapter, the graphic forms of letters and the practices in which they are used in the second. In “Orthography and calligraphic ideology in an Iranian American heritage school,” Amir Sharifi discusses how the teaching of Persio-Arabic script in a heritage school in the United States recontextualizes the historical link between linguistic codes and their aesthetic forms, which are traceable to calligraphic apprenticeship traditions. Cultural attitudes can be seen in the types of words and language forms that teachers use to talk about the children’s work and their embodied reactions to the aesthetic structure of texts. These affective responses as an integral part of the ideological practice of the community functioned to socialize children in this heritage class into cultural understanding and appropriate attitudes towards writing as a performance. Children were learning not only how to write, but how to feel about the form of their handwriting, or khat; teachers’ discourse and pedagogy in the classroom responded to and constructed embodied exemplars or representations of the aesthetics of writing as a cultural norm and social performance. J¨urgen Spitzm u¨ ller’s chapter, “Floating ideologies: Metamorphoses of graphic ‘Germanness’” argues that writing is part of a complex practice of graphic acting, “where multiple graphic modes are intertwined with each other as well as with phonic and non-verbal modes of action.” In this chapter, he studies two graphic phenomena, umlaut characters and blackletter type, both of which are involved in the discursive construction of “Germanness” in some contexts. He shows that the ideological function of graphic elements is

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dynamic and subject to a multimodal context construction, which depends on the overall setting of contextualization cues, the context of use, the text genre and the verbal argumentation of the text, as well as – crucially – the semiotic knowledge of the discourse participants. Furthermore, graphic elements are used to communicate ideologies, which makes them available for “othering” purposes as well. Graphic variation, he concludes, is socially significant and graphic ideologies should be one focus of an enhanced sociolinguistics extended to encompass this graphic level. The last three chapters study variation in orthographic practice, drawing for the most part on standard sociolinguistic theories and methods. In “Whos punctuating what? Sociolinguistic variation in instant messaging” Lauren Squires explores variation in computer-mediated discourse, investigating the apostrophe mark (’) as a variable in English-language instant messaging. Findings from her corpus study show a significant difference in the use of apostrophes dependent on speaker sex, with females more likely to include apostrophes than males. This suggests that punctuation marks can exemplify socially salient variation manifested in written discourse, and hence that elements like apostrophes that are internal to the written modality (and not directly connected with the spoken mode) can be deployed with indexical and stylistic effects. She argues that such effects are produced in part through concordance with or opposition to standard usage as enforced by language ideologies of standard written English, which points to the complex set of contextual influences on linguistic practice in computer-mediated discourse. Lars Hinrichs, in “How to spell the vernacular: A multivariate study of Jamaican e-mails and blogs,” studies blog and email communication which uses both Jamaican Creole (the vernacular code spoken by most Jamaicans) and Standard English. The participants in the study included Jamaicans in Jamaica and those living abroad. He considers a number of proposals in the literature to account for the observed variation: a subversive identity view (nonstandard spellings index a non-mainstream identity), a language ideology view (nonstandard spellings are used to construct Jamaican Creole as a language separate from English), and a semantic disambiguation view (words with different meanings in the two languages are spelt differently). Using a quantitative, statistical methodology, Hinrichs shows how a range of different factors correlate with writers’ choices between standard and nonstandard spellings, and finds that writers in the diaspora use nonstandard spellings mostly to disambiguate between the codes in those cases where word forms are similar, but their meanings differ. “In other words,” he concludes, “the separation between Creole and English is a matter of principle in Jamaica, but a matter of pragmatism among Jamaicans abroad.”

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In the final chapter, “‘Greeklish’: Transliteration practice and discourse in the context of computer-mediated digraphia,” Jannis Androutsopoulos examines the practice of writing Greek using Roman script on the Internet, from a sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic perspective. The characteristics of Greek computer-mediated digraphia are sketched out, and issues of transliteration practice, metalinguistic discourse and the shifting patterns of use and evaluation of “Greeklish” are examined in more detail. He shows how despite the lack of a widely shared transliteration standard, Internet users create consistent transliteration styles by orienting to a “phonetic” or “orthographic” transliteration scheme, with local norms sometimes emerging among individuals who regularly interact with a user group. On contemporary web-based discussion boards, the use of Latin-alphabet Greek is variable and contested. Androutsopoulos shows that users of “Greeklish” can articulate their views on the practice, drawing on both an “autonomous” and an “ideological” view of orthography. Shifting practices and ideologies of script choice and Latinized spelling cannot be understood without taking the development and social spread of technology into account. * This volume comes at the end of two decades in which the understanding of scripts and orthographies has been enhanced by research from a sociocultural perspective on many languages and in varied settings. The contributions to this volume reflect this range: from national to subcultural, from Asia, North America and Europe, and from authors with a range of disciplinary backgrounds including anthropology, religious studies and linguistics. The present volume, together with the earlier works mentioned in this chapter and others not mentioned here, add up to a substantial body of work in this field. Yet there is more work to be done, and the papers in this volume point to other disciplines which could also contribute to research in this area: history, media studies, sociology. The socially oriented study of scripts and orthographies could benefit from the insights of these other disciplines, and they in turn could benefit from a social understanding of scripts. In this spirit of interdisciplinarity, and more conscious than ever before that issues of script and spelling are often just the outward faces of deep-seated questions of ideology and identity, let us take this fascinating field forward into the next two decades.

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References Álvarez-Cáccamo, Celso and M´ario J. Herrero Valeiro 1996 O continuum das normas escritas na Galiza: do espanhol ao portuguˆes. Ag´alia: revista da Associa¸com Galega da Lingua 46. 143– 156. Androutsopoulos, Jannis 2000 Non-standard spellings in media texts: The case of German fanzines. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(4). 514–533. Auer, Peter (ed.) 2007 Style and social identities: Alternative approaches to linguistic heterogeneity. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Augst, Gerhard (ed.) 1986 New trends in graphemics and orthography. Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Baker, Paul 2010 Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Barton, David 2006 Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Bermel, Neil 2007 Linguistic authority, language ideology, and metaphor: The Czech orthography wars. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bird, Steven 2001 Orthography and identity in Cameroon. Written Language and Literacy 4(2). 131–162. Burns, Donald 1953 Social and political implications in the choice of an orthography. Fundamental and Adult Education 5. 80–85. Cashaback, David 2008 Assessing asymmetrical federal design in the Russian federation: A case study of language policy in Tatarstan. Europe–Asia Studies 60. 249–275 Catach, Nina 1991 L’Orthographe en debat: dossiers pour un changement. Paris: Editions Nathan. Clement, Victoria 2008 Emblems of independence: script choice in post-Soviet Turkmenistan. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 192. 171–186.

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Davies, Eirlys E. 1987 Eyeplay: On some uses of nonstandard spelling. Language and Communication 7(1). 47–58. Eira, Christina 1998 Authority and discourse: Towards a model for orthography selection. Written Language and Literacy 1(2). 171–224. Ferguson, Charles 1959 Diglossia. Word 1. 325–340. Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.) 1977 Advances in the creation and revision of writing systems. The Hague: Mouton. Garcez, Pedro M. 1995 The debatable 1990 Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord. Language Problems and Language Planning 19. 151–178. Garvin, Paul L. 1954 Literacy as problem in language and culture. Georgetown University Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics 7. 117–129. Gee, James Paul 2008 Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. 3rd edition. London: Routledge. Geerts, G., J. Van Den Broeck and A. Verdoodt 1977 Successes and failures in Dutch spelling reform. In J. Fishman (ed.), Advances in the creation and revision of writing systems, 179–245. The Hague: Mouton. Georgiou, Vasiliki 2010 Competing discourses in the debate on place names in Cyprus: Issues of (symbolic) inclusion/exclusion in orthographic choices. Journal of Language and Politics 9(1). 140–164. Grivelet, St´ephane 2001 Digraphia in Mongolia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 150. 75–94. Hatcher, Lynley 2008 Script change in Azerbaijan: acts of identity. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 192. 105–116. Herrero Valeiro, M´ario A. 1993 Guerre des graphies et conflit glottopolitique: lignes de discours dans la sociolinguistique galicienne’, Plurilinguismes 6. 181–209. Irvine, Judith T. and Susan Gal 2000 Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language, 35–83. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press.

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Jacobs, Dirk 1997

Alliance and betrayal in the Dutch orthography debate. Language Problems and Language Planning 21(2). 103–118.

Jaffe, Alexandra 1996 The Second Annual Corsican Spelling Contest: Orthography and ideology. American Ethnologist 23(4). 816–835. Johnson, Sally 2002 On the origin of linguistic norms: Orthography, ideology and the first constitutional challenge to the 1996 reform of German. Language in Society 31. 549–576. Heffernan, Kevin, Alison J. Borden, Alexandra C. Erath and Julie-Lynn Yang 2010 Preserving Canada’s “honour”: Ideology and diachronic change in Canadian spelling variants. Written Language & Literacy 13(1). 1–23. Kroskrity, Paul (ed.) 2000 Regimes of language. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Lindqvist, Christer 2003 Sprachideologische Einfl¨usse auf die f¨ar¨oische Orthographie(forschung). NOWELE (North-Western European Language Evolution) 43. 77–144. Ottenheimer, Harriet J. 2001 Spelling Shinzwani: Dictionary construction and orthographic choice in the Comoro Islands. Written Language & Literacy 4(1). 15–29. Pike, Kenneth L. 1938 Practical suggestions toward a common orthography for Indian languages of Mexico for education of the natives within their own tongues. Investigaciones Lingu´ısticas 2. 422–427. Rothstein, Robert A. 1977 Spelling and society: the Polish orthographic controversy of the 1930s. In B.A. Stolz (ed.), Papers in Slavic Philology I, 225–236. Ann Arbor: Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan. Schieffelin, Bambi B. and Rachelle C. Doucet 1992 The “real” Haitian Creole: Metalinguistics and orthographic choice. Pragmatics 2(3). 427–443. Schieffelin, Bambi B. and Rachelle C. Doucet 1994 The “real” Haitian Creole: Ideology, metalingusitics and orthographic choice. American Ethnologist 21. 176–200.

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Sebba, Mark 2006 Sebba, Mark 2007

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Phonology meets ideology: The meaning of orthographic practices in British Creole. Language Problems and Language Planning 22(1). 19–47. Ideology and alphabets in the former USSR. Language Problems and Language Planning 30(2). 99–125. Identity and language construction in an online community: The case of ‘Ali G’. In Peter Auer (ed.), Style and social identities: Alternative approaches to linguistic heterogeneity, 361–392. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Orthography and ideology: Issues in Sranan spelling. Linguistics 38(5). 925–948. Seuren, Pieter A.M. 1982 De spellingproblematiek in Suriname: Een inleiding [‘The spelling problem in Sranan: An introduction’]. Oso 1(1). 71–79. Strang, Barbara M.H. 1970 A history of English. London: Methuen. Street, Brian V. 1984 Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Megan C. 2007 K is for de-kolonization: Anti-colonial nationalism and orthographic reform. Comparative Studies in Society and History 49. 938–967. Unseth, Peter 2005 Sociolinguistic parallels between choosing scripts and languages. Written Language & Literacy 8(1). 19–42. Vikør, Lars S. 1988 Perfecting spelling. Spelling discussions and reforms in Indonesia and Malaysia 1900–1972. Dordrecht: Foris. Wiggen, Geirr 1986 The role of the affective filter on the level of orthography. In Gerhard Augst (ed.), New trends in graphemics and orthography, 395–412. Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter.

Chapter 2 Orthography, publics, and legitimation crisis: The 1996 reform of German∗ Sally Johnson 1. Introduction – the constitutional challenge of 1998 The various forms of popular protest inspired by the 1996 reform of German orthography are by now well documented. These include, inter alia, the Frankfurt Declaration of October 1996, attempts by citizens’ initiatives to organize regional plebisicites against the reform, and the highly-publicized reversions to the old orthography by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Spiegel and various publications belonging to the Axel Springer Verlag in the summer/autumn of 20041 (for further discussion see Johnson 2005; Johnson and Stenschke 2005; Johnson 2007). That the state-sanctioned standardization of German spelling and punctuation should incite such a vociferous public response comes as no great surprise when seen in the context of the historical controversies that have surrounded this issue since at least the mid-19th century. Even after the publication of the first official guidelines in 1901/2, on-going efforts throughout the 20th century to instigate a process of re-standardization proved no less problematic (see K¨uppers 1984; Jansen-Tang 1988). By the 1990s, however, and in the context of renewed attempts at orthographic reform that would eventually culminate in the Wiener Absichtserkl¨arung of 1996, popular protest had taken a new turn. This time, the involvement of the state in cultural matters such as how the German language should be written was perceived by some to impinge upon citizens’ democratic rights as guaranteed ∗ This is a revised version of a paper entitled “‘Sonst kann jeder schreiben, wie er will. . . ’? Orthography, legitimation, and the construction of publics”, which appeared in Sally Johnson and Oliver Stenscke (2005). I am grateful to Oliver Stenschke, John Roberts, and Patrick Stevenson for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. For a comparative discussion of the German situation and recent language ideological debates over Swedish, see Milani and Johnson (2008). 1. All of these publications finally agreed to adopt the revised rules in 2006.

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in the Basic Law or Grundgesetz. This gave rise to a new style of political conflict whose resolution was then sought with recourse to the judiciary. The disputes that were litigated by the regional courts from 1996, and finally referred to the Federal Constitutional Court in May 1998, centered on a number of issues relating to the nature of the reform and its proposed method of implementation. Largely inspired by Wolfgang Kopke’s doctoral dissertation on orthography and constitutional law (Kopke 1995), the complainants’ demand for a fully-fledged law (as opposed to a decree issued by the Kultusminister of the 16 L¨ander) was based on the claim that the state is not permitted, without the approval of the democratic legislature, to intervene in matters of orthography in ways that go beyond the documentation of existing speech community usage (see also Gr¨oschner 1997; Gr¨oschner and Kopke 1997). More fundamental changes such as those purported to characterize the 1996 guidelines2 were deemed to impact upon the basic democratic freedoms of individuals in two main ways. First, given that children would be taught a version of German orthography different to that learned by their parents, the reform constituted an infringement of parents’ rights to educate their children as they saw fit (viz. Article 5 of the Basic Law). Second, it was proposed that the fundamental nature of the changes impinged upon the “linguistic integrity” of all language users who had already learned to read and write according to pre-1996 conventions. This was insofar as such individuals would be required to re-configure their so-called “mental lexicon” of orthographic forms, a process that allegedly violated their general right to human dignity (Menschenw¨urde) and freedom of personality (Freiheit der Person) (viz. Articles 1 and 2 of the Basic Law, respectively). For each of these reasons, the use of a decree was deemed inadequate, the infringement of fundamental rights necessitating a process of legitimation that was underpinned by parliamentary mandate (at either L¨ander or Federal level), itself the product of comprehensive political debate conducted through the requisite democratic channels. The Constitutional Court, as is well-known, rejected the case brought by the complainants (Bundesverfassungsgericht 1998). The judges acknowledged that the reform indeed raised important questions regarding the relative significance of parents’and pupils’rights vis a` vis those of the state. However, the reform’s impact was not deemed sufficiently fundamental (wesentlich), in either qualitative or quantitative terms, as to merit the involvement of the legislature. Whilst many parents were understandably keen to help their 2. For example, the shift from K¨anguruh to the previously non-existent K¨anguru (by analogy with Gnu) or Stengel to St¨angel (‘stem, stalk’).

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children learn to read and write, it was emphasized that the state’s own obligations with regard to educational matters ultimately outweighed the rights of parents. Besides, parents could not expect to keep pace with everything learned by their children at school, such that what was taught in the classroom was always characterized by the potential to influence the behavior and values of the wider speech (or writing) community in the longer term. As for individuals within that community more generally, the judges could not see how the revised orthography impacted upon basic rights in any fundamental way. This was not least since all language users outside of school and official authorities were free to continue writing as they pleased, even after 31 July 2005, when the seven-year interim period for the reform’s implementation came to an end.3 The same applied to industry and commerce whereby an adoption of the revised orthography would derive from an assessment of market conditions as opposed to any formal requirement on the part of the state. In a legal and linguistic assessment of the 1998 ruling, Julian Rivers and Christopher Young (2001) have noted how the decision of the Constitutional Court might well be seen as a sensible and pragmatic attempt to avoid an excessive juridification of matters orthographic, combined with a healthy degree of agnosticism regarding the vexed question as to who exactly controls the German language. However, the verdict remains unsatisfactory. Whereas the Court was clear in its ruling concerning the rights of parents and pupils vis a` vis schools in relation to Article 5, the issues raised by the complainants with respect to Articles 1 and 2 on the dignity and personality rights of individuals within the wider speech community received only cursory attention. Yet as Rivers and Young point out (2001: 177), once the Court admitted consequences of a sort for the rights of such individuals, the tradition of constitutional jurisprudence in the Federal Republic dictates that the judges should at least have addressed the issues thereby raised. As highlighted by Wolfgang Kopke (1995: 296–391), assessing the constitutional validity of any action of the part of the state typically involves a detailed consideration of two overarching questions. First, are the proposed measures of sufficient benefit to the community as a whole (Gemeinwohl) so as to outweigh any potential infringement of the rights of individuals within that community? Second, are the measures in question a) characterized by 3. This interim period was in fact extended to 1 August 2006 following the setting up of the Mannheim-based Rat f¨ur deutsche Rechtschreibung in 2004. This organization undertook a review of, and made some modifications to, the original reform proposals in the period 2004–2006, thereby helping to resolve some of the conflicts around particularly controversial items of spelling and punctuation. For details of the Rat and the modified regulations, see http://www.rechtschreibrat.com

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necessity (Erforderlichkeit), and b) subject to the most appropriate form of implementation (Geeignetheit)? In the specific context of the reform, this amounted to three basic questions: i) Was the reform strictly necessary? ii) Would German orthography be easier to learn as a result? and iii) Was the reform (together with its method of introduction) the most appropriate manner of achieving any such pedagogic benefits? Only once those issues were comprehensively addressed, would it have been possible to assess the overall “fitness for purpose” (Zweckm¨aßigkeit) of the reform, and then evaluate this against the potential “disproportionality” (Unverh¨altnism¨aßigkeit) of any impact on the dignity and personality rights of individuals within the wider community. However, the judges failed to address such questions in any great detail, merely claiming to be satisfied that the state had acted in the best interests of pupils and their education. As such, they avoided the key questions central to an adequate resolution of the dispute, concluding that constitutional means could not in any case be used to assess the necessity, content, purpose, and value of the reform since the Basic Law itself has nothing to say on orthography. The 1998 ruling did not, of course, mark the end of the dispute. Its constitutional validity continued to be tested, not least when the voters of Schleswig-Holstein chose to opt out of the new guidelines in their referendum of September 1998, and schools there briefly returned to the pre-1996 orthography (see Johnson 2005: 111–15). Moreover, several years on, the success and/or failure of the new guidelines continue to be debated (see Johnson and Stenschke 2005; Johnson 2007). In this chapter, however, I wish to explore what I see as a fundamental tension at the heart of these debates. For whilst the 1998 ruling secured the requisite judicial legitimation for the reform to go ahead as planned, the judges’ claim that individuals within the wider speech community were free to continue writing as they pleased in many ways contradicted the basic aim of the reform as outlined in Article III of the Wiener Absichtserkl¨arung of 1996. Specifying the role of the Mannheim-based Zwischenstaatiche Kommission f¨ur deutsche Rechtschreibung (convened in 1997)4 the Gemeinsame Erkl¨arung zur Neuregelung der deutschen Rechtschreibung states: Die Kommission wirkt auf die Wahrung einer einheitlichen Rechtschreibung im deutschen Sprachraum hin. Sie begleitet die Einf¨uhrung der Neuregelung und beobachtet die k¨unftige Sprachentwicklung. Soweit erforderlich erarbeitet sie Vorschl¨age zur Anpassung des Regelwerks. 4. This organization was replaced by the Rat f¨ur deutsche Rechtschreibung in 2004 (see note 4).

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[The [International] Commission [for German Orthography] will work with the aim of securing a unified orthography in the German-speaking areas. It will accompany the introduction of the new guidelines and monitor the future development of the language. Where necessary, it will formulate suggestions for the adaptation of the regulations.]

Moreover, as Klaus Heller (1998) points out in his widely distributed edition of the journal Sprachreport containing a digest of the 1996 guidelines: [Die neue Regelung] hat. . . Vorbildcharakter f¨ur alle anderen Bereiche, in denen die Sprachteilhaber an einer m¨oglichst allgemein g¨ultigen Rechtschreibung orientieren m¨ochten. Das gilt speziell f¨ur Druckereien, Verlage und Redaktionen, aber auch f¨ur Privatpersonen. [[The new orthography] is a model for all other fields in which language users wish to orientate themselves to an orthography that, as far as possible, is universally valid. This is especially true for printers, publishing houses and editorial boards, but also for private individuals.]

At this juncture, it is crucial to emphasize how the verdict of the Constitutional Court is certainly tenable insofar as the only individuals formally obliged to adhere to the new guidelines are indeed those in schools and official authorities. However, the relationship between orthographic practices in these institutions as opposed to the “wider speech community” – the question of the reform’s potential Außen- or Breitenwirkung – acquired particular relevance as the interim period came to an end in 2006. What, for example, is the nature of any de facto as opposed to de jure obligation for individuals within the wider community? And how does the judges’ insistence on freedom of individual choice actually square with the stated aim of the reformers to provide a model of orthography for the writing community as a whole? The exploration of such issues presupposes, however, a theoretical framework that can account not only for questions of standardization in strictly linguistic terms, but for the more general relationship between state and society, on the one hand, and the legitimation of political action, on the other. It is to such a framework that I now turn in the next section.

2. Languages and publics The past two decades have witnessed something of a paradigm shift in AngloAmerican sociolinguistics, which has been increasingly influenced by the kind of social constructionist approaches characteristic of other areas of the humanities and social sciences. Thus recent work, not least in the cognate

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field of linguistic anthropology, has been marked by a heightened reflexivity towards traditional objects of sociolinguistic study and the theoretical frameworks used to analyze them (Schieffelin et al. 1998; Kroskrity 2000; Gal and Woolard 2001). Rather than positing linguistic and social phenomena as more or less fixed entities whose structures and functions “await discovery,” this more critical approach has fuelled a greater concern with the processes by which such phenomena are themselves constructed in, and through, discourse. Against this backdrop, language ideological debates – such as those surrounding the recent reform of German orthography – emerge as key epistemological sites for an exploration of the ways in which particular language practices and values are subject to processes of legitimation that routinely prioritize the interests of some social groups over others (Blommaert 1999). In the area of language standardization, this anti-positivistic approach has similarly implied a critique of variationists’ attempts to describe, usually in quantitative terms, the structural-functional dimensions of standard/nonstandard language varieties. This has given way to an increasing emphasis on standard languages – and their in-built language standards – as ideological constructs that must, to some extent, be “talked” into being (see, e.g., Cameron 1995; Coupland 2007; Johnson and Ensslin 2007; LippiGreen 1997; Milroy and Milroy 1999). This discursive dimension to the standardization process acquires particular relevance vis a` vis the emergence of nation-states in the early modern period and/or in post-colonial contexts, where standard languages are typically accorded a central symbolic function in the “imagining” of national polities (see Anderson 1991). Here the linguistic shape of the standard must itself be rationalized through processes of selection, codification, and functional elaboration, whereby German was no exception. Indeed it was the strong sense of a common language, literature, and philosophical tradition that in many ways afforded the cultural precursors for political unification by Bismarck in 1871. The unificatory process was then accompanied by the on-going normification of many areas of social life such as currency, weights and measures, postal services, railways, education, and the legal system. However, it was the inherent indexicality of language that continued to afford a key symbolic resource. It was in this context that German was so systematically subjected in the late 19th century to state-sanctioned attempts to codify not only the norms of a standard pronunciation but, in particular, those of a unified orthography (see Sauer and Gl¨uck 1995; Stevenson 2002: 15–24). It is not only the shape of the language, however, that must be authoritatively represented and ultimately “entextualized” as part of the nation-state building process. Any attempt to specify the emergent standard in linguistic

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terms goes hand in hand with the definition of its intended community of users, the very processes of selection, codification and elaboration metaphorically encoding, and thereby legitimizing, the interests of dominant social groups. This is a theme taken up by Susan Gal and Kathryn Woolard in their 2001 volume Languages and publics: The making of authority. Here the editors and their contributors explore the dialectical relationship between the discursive construction of languages, on the one hand, and publics, on the other, whereby the use of “publics” – as opposed to the more traditional sociolinguistic concept of “speech communities” – is of central importance. This is insofar as the analytical focus here is rather less on the kind of identity work that typically ensues in face-to-face, spoken interaction within communities of so-called “co-present” language users (see Patrick 2001). Instead, drawing on Anderson’s notion of national polities as “imagined” entities, the emphasis broadens so as to encompass groupings of non-co-present social actors whose very invocation as communities, or publics, is central to the discursive process by which particular language practices may be valorized. In order to explore this relationship between languages and publics, Gal and Woolard ground their analyses in theoretical notions of public space, inspired primarily by the re-publication and translation into English in 1989 of J¨urgen Habermas’s 1962 text The structural transformation of the public sphere. In this work, Habermas traces the rise of the bourgeois public sphere in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, which he sees as a direct corollary of the decline of absolutist monarchies as the sole and embodied representatives of “the people.” During this period a new kind of public space emerged, bolstered by the increasing availability of newspapers and other printed matter, in which private individuals gathered together in coffee houses, salons, and voluntary organizations in order to discourse upon matters of common interest. This was a space shaped by the Kantian ideal of reasoned debate where access was afforded to participants, not on the grounds of privilege or status, but in accordance with a desire to partake in rational-critical discussion. It was a space, moreover, that was sharply demarcated from the depoliticized private sphere, one of the primary concerns of its participants being the defense of that private sphere from any encroachment on the part of the state (for discussion, see also Calhoun 1992; Crossley and Roberts 2004). The disintegration of the bourgeois public sphere, as hypothesized by Habermas, came about from the 19th century onwards for reasons that have their primary origins in the changing nature of capitalism (see also Calhoun 1992: 21–32). Structural transformations occurred as private organizations increasingly attempted to attain public power, whilst the state itself strove to

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regulate aspects of social life previously defined as belonging to the “apolitical” sphere of civil society. This led to a gradual blurring of the boundaries between state and society, on the one hand, public and private, on the other. Such developments were compounded, pace Habermas, by the rising influence of the mass media that furnished an increase in the quantity, but concomitant decline in the quality, of public debate. Against this backdrop, the public sphere as a site of rational-critical discussion declined in the latemodern period to be subsumed by its predominant function as a forum for the consumption of culture. Habermas’s thesis on the changing nature of the public sphere is by no means without its detractors (see, e.g., Landes 1988; Fraser 1992). Despite its inherent flaws, however, the impact of Structural transformation continues to reverberate in critical and cultural theory. For Gal and Woolard (2001: 1), its particular relevance to the study of language lies in its usefulness as a theoretical frame within which to explore the relationship between linguistic practice, on the one hand, and social structure, on the other. This, they see, as part of the broader project of understanding language ideologies, i.e., beliefs about language and/or discourse “articulated by users as a rationalisation or justification of perceived language structure and use” (Silverstein 1979: 193), beliefs that are, moreover, “constructed in the interest of a specific social or cultural group” (Kroskrity 2000: 8). In this context, Gal and Woolard (2001: 6–7) identify two common characteristics of publics as constructs underpinning the process whereby particular language practices and values may be authoritatively entextualized. First, publics may derive their authority from the sense of anonymity that they are able to invoke. In other words, publics are “everyone,” precisely because they are “no-one in particular.” This is particularly relevant to the area of language standardization as illustrated by Susan Gal (2001) and Joseph Errington (2001) in their discussions of Hungarian and Indonesian, respectively. For example, it is not uncommon for standard languages to derive their authority precisely from the fact that they are spoken by no group in particular and are therefore perceived as “belonging” to the community as a whole. Second, publics can be invoked as sites of authenticity (see also, Coupland 2003; Jaworski 2007). Here the notion of authenticity may well serve as a means of contesting anonymity, such that the authentic is deemed to be the more genuine embodiment of a community and its practices. That said, “glimpses” of authenticity are equally likely to function as a means of bolstering the construction of anonymity. For example, as Jane Hill (2001: 93–102) shows in her account of the use of “Mock Spanish” in US political discourse, it is the apparent authenticity of such phrases as hasta la vista, baby

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that serves to buttress the authority of the “voice from nowhere” characteristic of such discourse more generally.Alternatively, as Benjamin Lee (2001: 164– 81) highlights in his analysis of a range of documents including the American Declaration of Independence, this impersonal “voice from nowhere” might itself be posited as the more authentic, and hence legitimate, representative of “the people.” For Gal and Woolard, such notions as anonymity and authenticity are not only central to the semiotic processes by which languages and publics can be projected per se. They are also relevant to what is referred to as the “strategic recontextualization” of publics (2001: 8). In other words, the invocation of anonymity and/or authenticity can be drawn upon as a means of legitimating not only existing social and linguistic arrangements but, in particular, proposals for their revision. This is insofar as they can usefully contribute to the creation of “images of continuity (and discontinuity) with times, places, and people not present in the immediate interaction” (2001: 8). Returning to the case of the recent reform of German orthography, the relevance of Habermasian notions of public space is two-fold. First, the theory of publics advanced in Structural transformation is pertinent insofar as it prefigures Habermas’s later work of 1973, Legitimation crisis, of which the disputes over orthography are, I will propose, a typical manifestation. Second, I will show how, in an attempt to resolve the ensuing problem of legitimation surrounding the reform, the judges of the Constitutional Court invoked a particular kind of “public,” namely a speech (or writing) community determined by individual freedom of choice. As predicted by Gal and Woolard, the invocation of this “alternative” community was then shored up by a sense of both anonymity and authenticity. This, in turn, served to legitimate the kind of strategic recontextualization of the “writing public” or Schreibgemeinschaft that was necessarily implied by the 1996 reform and that is in fact a corollary of any attempt to re-standardize the spelling and punctuation of a language.

3. Legitimation crisis and orthographic reform The central thesis of Structural transformation is Habermas’s claim that late-modern cultures have been increasingly characterized by a blurring of the boundaries between public and private spheres. Whilst, as Nancy Fraser (1992: 132–136) points out, it remains at all times to be demonstrated to what extent such leaky boundaries might be a problem per se, one potential consequence of this development is pursued by Habermas

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in Legitimation crisis. Here Habermas (1976: 50–60) describes how advanced forms of capitalism became increasingly characterized by explicit interventions into the economy on the part of the state. Whilst such interventions were clearly undertaken with a view to furthering state interests, this led to a heightened politicization of the economy such that economic dilemmas previously resolved within the depoliticized sphere of civil society now tended to be focused onto the state itself. Against this backdrop, the state – which is typically obliged to rationalize its actions in terms of the general “good of the people” – finds itself in the impossible position of having to justify an economic system, i.e., capitalism, whose inherent contradictions and hence benefits to the populace as a whole are beyond the scope of rational explanation. Habermas (1976: 61–68) then shows how such a “deficit of rationality” may lead to a full-blown “crisis of legitimation.” Such crises occur, moreover, in the context of other structural changes which, as Craig Calhoun (1992: 30) describes, see the public sphere transformed into “an arena in which a wide range of social interests vie for state action.” It is the comprehensive articulation of such competing interests and their concomitant rationalities that then fuels a heightened sense of the public sphere as characterized by declining standards of “reasoned” debate. As Habermas (1976: 68–75) emphasises, however, it is not only economic issues that may be subject to crises of legitimation. Indeed, public demands for legitimation are just as likely to emerge in the cultural arena, whereby debates over education are a prime example. As education itself came under state control following the introduction (and hence funding) of universal schooling, (late-)modern states have been increasingly called upon to justify not only their educational policies in general terms, but in many cases the finer points of curricular content. Moreover, [w]hereas school administrations formerly merely had to codify a canon that had taken shape in an unplanned, nature-like manner, present curriculum planning is based on the premise that traditional patterns could as well be otherwise. Administrative planning produces a universal pressure for legitimation in a sphere that was once distinguished precisely for its power of self-legitimation (emphasis in original). (Habermas, 1976: 71–72)

This recognition that cultural phenomena previously regulated by tradition might in fact have been “otherwise” is especially pertinent to recent debates over German orthography. Of course, it is one of the most enduring myths of civil society that its own practices and values are somehow less susceptible to ideological interest than those of the state. However, it is certainly

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true that, for as long as questions of German orthography were subject to “self-regulation” within the speech community, the pressure for explicit legitimation was largely absent. This was certainly the case prior to the 19th century, where debates over the shape of the emergent standard were predominantly seen as outside of the realm of organized politics. From the mid-19th century, by contrast, German orthography became increasingly politicized as various L¨ander began to codify standards for use in their own schools (see Schlaefer 1980, 1981). This marked the beginning of a new era of statesanctioned regulation of orthography that was then consolidated at national (and international) level in the period following unification in 1871. The crucial point is that once the state had opted to formalize its involvement in matters orthographic, it would increasingly be called upon by language users to legitimize, and hence explicitly rationalize, its actions. And it is in this context that we see how, by the late 19th century, questions of orthography became subject to what we might now, with hindsight, see as the first fullblown “language ideological debates” in the public domain, articulated not least within the print media (for discussion, see Jansen-Tang 1988; Johnson 2007; K¨uppers 1984; Stenschke 2005; Zabel 1989, 1996, 1997). The problem here is that, just as a state might struggle to provide a credible account of the internal contradictions of a capitalist economy and its purported benefits in terms of the “common good,” so too will it encounter difficulties rationalizing its actions in relation to orthography. First, there is no inherent reason why the state should formalize its involvement in the codification of the orthographic standard – it has not done so in many other countries such as the UK, for example. However, once implicated, the state will inevitably be called upon to justify orthographic choices that necessarily privilege the practices and values of some socio-regional groups of language users over others. Historically, for example, it is no coincidence that the 1901/2 guidelines broadly coincided with the already codified norms of the two most powerful states at that time, Prussia and Bavaria (the latter in conjunction with Austria). More recently, by contrast, the 1996 reform was perceived by many of its opponents to be privileging the needs of younger and/or inexperienced writers, thereby undermining the cultural expertise of more accomplished writers and readers, not least those who partake in such activities in a professional capacity. The second problem of legitimation relates to the fact that any state policy geared towards language standardization necessarily involves the specification of rules – even where their prescription is couched in terms of description. In this sense, the very process of standardization, orthographic or otherwise, is rooted in what Rivers andYoung (2001: 178) refer to as a “pos-

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itivistic rule-optimism,” in other words, a belief that all language is ultimately rule-governed.Yet, as we have seen throughout the history of German orthography, even expert linguists will typically disagree on what those rules might be (see, e.g., Augst et al. 1997). And even when those rules are finally fixed, or entextualized, their application may still be subject to interpretation and/or dispute – hence the need for the Rat f¨ur deutsche Rechtschreibung to re-visit and ultimately modify some of the earlier proposals in the period 2004–2006. This is neither the time nor place to enter into a protracted debate about what is one of the most fundamental philosophical questions on the nature of language per se. But even if all linguists were to agree that language, including variation and change in its patterns of usage, could be satisfactorily rationalized in terms of a finite set of universal rules, the problem still remains that the formal process of standardization is itself contrary to linguistic reality. This is insofar as any official policy on standardization is necessarily underpinned by an attempt to render immutable a phenomenon that is, by its very nature, mutable such that, for Rosina Lippi-Green (1997: 40), the whole notion of a “standard language” is something of an oxymoron. Even allowing for the truism that written language lends itself more readily to standardization than its spoken counterpart, orthographic practices together with perceptions of “correctness” still remain subject to variation across time and space. Accordingly, any state that involves itself in the codification of, say, a standard orthography invariably places itself in the impossible position of having to explicitly rationalize a course of action that is ultimately rooted in a mis-recognition of the essence of any living language. In the context of German orthography, it is not difficult to see how the state struggled to deal with the consequences of such mis-recognition throughout the 20th century. This is insofar as the guidelines of 1901/2 failed from the outset to specify a mechanism for the on-going re-standardization of German orthography, the need for which would inevitably ensue. Indeed, as the norms of speech community usage evolved, the state evidently struggled to retain its control, more or less devolving the responsibilities it had assumed in the early part of the century “back” to the private sector, i.e., the Duden corporation, from 1955 onwards (see Augst and Strunk 1998). By the 1990s, however, when the official process of re-standardization was firmly underway and the state braced itself to assume control of orthography once more, it became increasingly clear that it was not just spelling and punctuation that had changed in the intervening century. Following the Second World War, the revised constitutional arrangement of the West German state (and, from 1990, that of the newly unified Germany) meant that the democratic rights of individual citizens were now much more firmly anchored in the

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constitution than one hundred years previously (see Kopke 1995; Gr¨oschner 1997; Gr¨oschner and Kopke 1997). As Fritz Ossenb¨uhl (1989) shows, such developments went hand in hand, moreover, with an increasing “juridification of social life” that in many ways threatened to stifle the potential for political action on the part of the state more generally. This occurs as citizens, citing their rights as guaranteed in the Basic Law, increasingly contest the authority of the executive (in this case, the Kultusminister) with recourse to the judiciary (in this case, the Federal Constitutional Court) in order to demand action on the part of the legislature (in this case, either the national or L¨ander parliaments). And it is against the historical backdrop of such sociopolitical tensions that the litigation process surrounding the 1996 reform has to be seen (see also Antos 1996: 238–249).

4. Orthography, legitimation, and the construction of publics In order to satisfactorily resolve the legitimation crisis surrounding the 1996 reform, the judges of the Constitutional Court needed to demonstrate that the benefits of the revised orthography to the community as a whole ultimately compensated for any perceived infringement of the democratic rights of individuals within that community. Of course, these are issues that could only be fully addressed in relation to the social, historical, and political contexts underpinning the involvement of the state in orthographic matters more generally. And here one might reasonably argue that the state-sanctioned instrumentalization of orthography as a symbolic resource for not only unifying, but also disciplining, language users (see Johnson 2005: 121–122) is no more justifiable in terms of its infringements of the rights of some individuals than, by analogy, an economy based on the principles of capitalism. However, the judges emphasized from the outset how constitutional means could not in any case be used to explore the necessity, content, value, and purpose of the 1996 reform. This was in tune, moreover, with the Court’s own remit that explicitly demands the de-politicization of those issues brought before it (see D¨urig 1998: xvi–xvii). Against this backdrop, the only grounds on which the reform’s validity could be assessed related to its method of implementation and, here, what was in need of rationalization was the extent to which individuals’ rights were breached in accordance with the “principle of fundamentality” or Wesentlichkeitsprinzip (see Ossenb¨uhl 1989; Menzel 1998a, 1998b). At this juncture the Court reiterated its definition of “fundamentality”: in order to be considered fundamental, it is not sufficient for an issue to be

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merely politically “controversial” and/or “relevant” to the wider community (Bundesverfassungsgericht 1998: 251). The disputed measure must fulfill the condition of Unverh¨altnism¨aßigkeit, in other words, impinge to a disproportionate extent upon the ability of citizens to enjoy their constitutional rights as laid down in the Basic Law. And, in this regard, the judges claimed to be satisfied that the reform did not require action on the part of the legislature. This was not only because the teaching of reading and writing is a basic educational activity, the responsibility for which falls within the remit of the executive of the 16 L¨ander (i.e., the Kultusminister). It was also because neither the quantitative nor qualitative impact of the reform on the rights of individual citizens outside of schools and state authorities was judged to be disproportionate and, hence, sufficiently fundamental. Whilst it is possible to agree with this judgment on an intuitive level, it is crucial to emphasize that even the question of “disproportionality” could not be satisfactorily addressed without a comprehensive examination of the reform’s overall necessity, content, value, and purpose. In this context, a key criterion would have been the pedagogic efficacy of the revised orthography. Thus, if it could be demonstrated that German orthography was now easier to learn as a result of the reform, then it could feasibly have been argued that any infringement of the rights of individual citizens outside of schools and state authorities was outweighed by the long-term benefit to the population as a whole. The problem here was that there was simply no baseline data available against which to evaluate the relative efficacy of those spellings that had been modified, nor indeed has the science of linguistics hitherto been able to provide an entirely satisfactory model for assessing such efficacy. This is explicitly conceded by the reformers Gerhard Augst and Burkhard Schaeder (1997: 6–7), who suggest that it is not always possible to know exactly which orthographic features render a given word (or text) easier to write or read. Nor is it possible, as noted by Klaus Heller (1999: 78), to estimate the extent to which a language user might draw upon such cognitive cues at any one time. Although, as highlighted by Steven Bird (2001: 151), it is not atypical for reforms of this kind to proceed without such empirical evidence, this was inevitably grist to the mill of the reform’s opponents. In this sense, the complainants were possibly justified in their disputation of the extent to which the reform had been both “necessary” and “subject to the most appropriate form of implementation” in accordance with the constitutional criteria as defined by Kopke (1995). Whilst the judges could uphold their claim to be satisfied that the state had acted in the best interests of school pupils – given that schools are specifically defined as under state jurisdiction by Article 7 of the Basic

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Law – the more problematical area concerns those language users outside of such jurisdiction. However, it was in the absence of both a willingness and/or ability to rationalize the necessity, content, value, and purpose of the reform that the judges were compelled to downplay the reform’s impact in this regard. This, they did, by highlighting how individuals within the wider speech (or writing) community would be free to continue writing as they pleased – even after the end of the seven-year interim period. In this way, a variety of general “public” was invoked that is itself beyond the realms of state jurisdiction. Moreover, as predicted by Gal and Woolard (2001), the strategic invocation of such a public was bolstered by its sense of anonymity insofar as, by consisting of “no one in particular,” the implication was that this grouping somehow included “everyone.” Such anonymity was then buttressed by the implied authenticity of its practices – here was a public whose own de-politicized orthographic practices would remain subject to “self-regulation” and hence immune to the more mechanical regulatory constraints imposed by the state. In this way, the potential for a continuity of orthographic practices was emphasized that cleverly bridged the apparent caesura of 2005/6. What is especially interesting in this context, however, is that the invocation of this de-politicized public, subject to the logic of its own inherent laws of spelling and punctuation, not only detracted from a broader inability to rationalize the reform. Crucially, it served to shore up the underlying aim of the reformers, whereby the 1996 guidelines should in fact function as a “blueprint” for wider speech community usage. This is insofar as the boundary between public and private spheres is considerably leakier than implied by the Court, not least since the practices of those individuals under state jurisdiction routinely straddle the public/private divide. Civil servants, for example, are not only servants of the state; they are also private beings who are simultaneously members of the “wider” speech community. The notion that those outside of state jurisdiction might therefore continue to “write as they please” implies an intriguing potential for orthographic schizophrenia on the part of such individuals. The same can be said of school pupils. As explicitly acknowledged by the Constitutional Court, the practices of such pupils will not necessarily remain subject to state jurisdiction in the longer term such that what is taught in schools is always characterized by the potential to percolate through to the wider speech community. Indeed, as highlighted by Horst Haider Munske (1997: 154), many individuals within that community, not least creative writers and their printers, publishers, and editorial boards, promptly found themselves in a position of considerable coercion vis a` vis the new orthographic guidelines. This is insofar as the default expectation

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for any writer or publisher who wishes to see their works licensed for use in the classroom is that such texts be produced in the new orthography (and it is only the more established authors and/or their publishers who have any real clout when attempting to resist this). Thus the judges’ claim that any decision to adopt the new orthography on the part of such individuals and groups is one that would merely derive from an assessment of “prevailing market conditions” might well be accurate in a technical-juridical sense. In practice, however, it side-steps the strategic recontextualization of publishing practice that was itself triggered by the reform and that was ultimately central to the reform’s “success.” Against this backdrop, it is difficult to refute the claim, frequently articulated by the reform’s opponents, that schools were being employed as a vehicle for recontextualizing the orthographic practices of the speech community as a whole. Thus it is precisely by penetrating the inherently leaky boundary between public and private contexts of usage that the reform will indeed be able to fulfill its longer-term aim to act as a blueprint for usage within that community. Of course, the possible benefits of the revised orthography can only be assessed in the fullness of time (although, as indicated, the empirical verification of such benefits will always be thwarted by the lack of baseline data). Yet it is intriguing to see how, in the interim, the judges’ invocation of the public/private boundary served as a useful tool with which to help legitimize a reform that, in both linguistic and legal terms, remains none the less subject to a Habermasian rationality deficit.

5. Conclusions It is important, by way of conclusion, to emphasize how I do not see the reformers behind the 1996 reform as puppets of the state somehow attempting to recontextualize the orthographic practices of the German writing public to their own e´ litist ends. As I have argued at length elsewhere (Johnson 2005: 150–172), the reformers were in many respects acting in a spirit of liberal anti-´elitism that genuinely sought to apply the science of linguistics in ways that would render the spelling and punctuation of German more systematic and, hence, easier to learn, not least, for younger and/or less experienced users of the written language. However, as I have also attempted to show both here and elsewhere (e.g., Milani and Johnson 2008), the protests triggered by those attempts also merit serious academic attention. This is not only insofar as it is important to gauge, from a sociolinguistic perspective, what was so inherently objectionable about the 1996 reform for its opponents. It

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is also because, by doing so, we see how the more recent debates cannot be extricated from their broader historical context whereby the standardization of German orthography is itself rooted in the state-sanctioned instrumentalization of orthography for unificatory and disciplinary purposes. And it is crucial to recognize how these broader symbolic functions of orthography were at no point under dispute such that, notwithstanding the reform, German spelling and punctuation still continue to function as a benchmark for social judgments vis a` vis both individuals and groups of language users, not least within educational contexts. Whilst the authority of the state in relation to German orthography was left firmly intact, however, we might see the language ideological debate that ensued here as a relatively predictable challenge to the legitimacy of that authority. It was in many ways “predictable” because, as Jan Blommaert (1999: 8) reminds us, in any situation where language is seized upon as a symbolic resource: “What counts for power also counts for its results: conflict, inequality, injustice, oppression, or delicate and fragile status-quo.” Thus the dispute over German orthography might well be viewed as a public re-articulation of the self-same socio-political conflicts that are semiotically inscribed in the practices and values pertaining to the orthographic standard more generally. And in this sense, we might see the crisis of legitimation surrounding the 1996 reform as an example of the state merely reaping the fruits of such conflicts, the seeds of which were sown when it first embarked on the formal codification of German orthography one hundred years earlier.

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Schieffelin, Bambi B., Kathryn A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.) 1998 Language ideologies: Practice and theory. NewYork: Oxford University Press. Schlaefer, Michael 1980 Grundz¨uge der deutschen Orthographiegeschichte vom Jahre 1800 bis zum Jahre 1870. Sprachwissenschaft 5. 276–319. Schlaefer, Michael 1981 Der Weg zur deutschen Einheitsorthographie vom Jahre 1870 bis zum Jahre 1901. Sprachwissenschaft 6. 391–438. Silverstein, Michael 1979 Language structure and linguistic ideology. In Paul R. Cline, William F. Hanks and Carol L. Hofbauer (eds.), The elements: A Parasession on linguistic units and levels, 193–248. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Stenschke, Oliver 2005 Rechtschreiben, Recht sprechen, recht haben – Der Diskurs u¨ ber die Rechtschreibreform. Eine linguistische Analyse des Streits in der Presse. T¨ubingen: Niemeyer. Stevenson, P. (ed.) 1995 The German language and the real world. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stevenson, P. (ed.) 2002 Language and German disunity: A sociolinguistic history of East and West in Germany, 1945–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiener Absichtserkl¨arung 1996 Gemeinsame Absichtserkl¨arung zur Neuregelung der deutschen Rechtschreibung, re-printed in G. Augst, K. Bl¨uml, D. Nerius and H. Sitta (eds.), Zur Neuregelung der deutschen Orthographie: Begr¨undung und Kritik, 69. T¨ubingen: Niemeyer. Zabel, Hermann 1989 Der gekippte Keiser. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Zabel, Hermann 1996 Keine W¨uteriche am Werk. Berichte und Dokumente zur Neuregelung der deutschen Rechtschreibung. Hagen: Rainer Padligur Verlage. Zabel, Hermann 1997 Widerworte. “Lieber Herr Grass, Ihre Aufregung ist unbegr¨undet.” Antworten an Gegner und Kritiker der Rechtschreibreform. Aachen: Shaker Verlag/AOL Verlag.

Chapter 3 Orthography and Orthodoxy in post-Soviet Russia Brian P. Bennett 1. Introduction There is a close connection between alphabetic orthography and religious orthodoxy. On a phenomenological level, the orthographic demand for right order seems akin to a kind of religious or ritual sensibility. Spelling systems require that a certain letter, and not any other letter, go in a certain place, and not any other place. This word-structuring imperative is like the worldstructuring mode of religion. Both nomic spelling and nomic religion (cf. Sharot 2001) affirm tradition and perpetuate the order of things. On a sociohistorical level, the connection has been expressly marked in Russia, where pravopisanie (‘orthography’) has long been intertwined with Pravoslavie (‘Orthodoxy’).1 This interrelationship, however, has been neither univocal nor unvarying. In their study of the sacred spaces of Jerusalem, Friedland and Hecht (2007: 20) warn against a static or monolithic view of sacrality (or sacredness). They propose instead, . . . a dynamic view of sacrality in which the meaning of that sacrality is always being interpreted, re-interpreted, challenged, assimilated, synthesized by. . . contemporary communities. Also, and we think, equally important is that the static view of sacrality conceals how social groups use the sacrality to define themselves and their politics. . . . This also means that there may be radically different understandings of sacrality in a single community.

From this perspective sacrality is not an inherent trait but the product of ongoing and uneven social construction, open to reversals and re-interpretations. Using Russia as a case study, I will suggest that the sacredness of orthography is subject to similar pressures and processes. The rapport between Cyrillic orthography and Christian Orthodoxy has fluctuated over the course of history. Originating as a missionary alphabet and long a symbol of the Orthodox faith, Russian Cyrillic has undergone two significant phases of secularization: the first associated with Peter the 1. I have adapted my own title from Harvey Goldblatt’s important study (1987).

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Great and the second with Lenin. The post-communist period has witnessed a rather astonishing “desecularization” (cf. Berger 1999), with both religion and the pre-revolutionary alphabet returning to the public arena. However, just as Russia’s trumpeted “religious revival” has been called into question (Agadjanian 2001: 352), it is not clear how long the piecemeal revival of the old orthography will last, or whether Cyrillic itself will withstand the ascendancy of the Latin script, whose global dominance endows it with its own kind of “sacred” or perhaps “semi-sacred” character (cf. Eira 1998: 180; Asker 2006). The demise of the USSR undermined the Soviet spelling system which had been codified in the 1956 Pravila russkoi orfografii i punktuatsii (“Rules for Russian Orthography and Punctuation”). A rigid orthographic “monotony” gave way to a free-wheeling “pluralism” (Grigor’eva 2004: 229). Two major trends have been apparent and together they comprise a sort of coincidentia oppositorum. First, there has been an influx of western, mostly English, loanwords, numbering in the thousands, for the new realia of post-communist life (Ustinova 2005: 241–249). Not surprisingly, these words often come packaged in the Latin alphabet (Bergmann 2004: 148). According to Dunn (1999: 12), in post-communist Russia “. . . the use of the Latin alphabet stresses the foreignness of the product in question and therefore its supposedly superior quality.” The proliferation of western-style marketing has led not only to various forms of digraphia, with advertisements combining transliterated Cyrillic and Latin scripts, but to interlingual hybrids like Starmрек (“Star Trek”) and Aвmozona (“Auto Zone”) (Grigor’eva 2004: 238–240). The second trend in the post-Soviet period has been the rehabilitation, as it were, of the so-called old orthography. Certain letters redolent of “throne and altar” (cf. Korey 1995: 2) and banished under the Bolsheviks have reappeared here and there in advertisements, newspapers, store signs, and elsewhere across the semiotic landscape. This renewed visibility has gone hand in hand with a revival of interest in the Russian Orthodox Church and late imperial culture more generally. Books of sepia-toned photographs evoke the lost world of “Holy Russia” (e.g., Shelaeva and Protsai 1993). There has been a great fascination with the fate ofTsar Nicholas II and his family (Slater 2007). The elements of religiosity, monarchism, and historical nostalgia converged in Pamiat’ (Memory), the most notorious extremist group of the lateSoviet and early post-Soviet years.2 Begun as a discussion club dedicated 2. Russian words are transliterated according to the Library of Congress system (without diacritics).

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to preserving Russia’s cultural heritage, Pamiat’ morphed into a group espousing an Orthodox-infused ultranationalist ideology. The first issue of the group’s eponymous newspaper, published in 1991, utilized the pre-revolutionary spelling system.3 According to Laqueur (1993: 218), “The outward form was extraordinary because this was the only journal in Russia using the old, pre-1917 orthography.” The paper included a manifesto, reprinted from an e´ migr´e church periodical, equating in a dogmatic way the old orthography with Russian Orthodoxy. The leader of Pamiat’ and editor of the paper, Dmitrii Vasil’ev, contributed another article, the first in a series of five in which he used the pre-revolutionary names of the letters as the starting point for fulminations about the supposed destruction of Russia. Regarding these pieces, Shefield (2001: 119) remarks: “The rhetoric is long-winded and declamatory, the language often obscure in its archaisms to the uninitiated modern reader.” This chapter uses the example of Pamiat’ to highlight the shifting, multifaceted relations between religion and orthography. I will focus less on practices than on discourses, which I take to be thematically interrelated concatenations of metaphors, statements, stories, etc.; which are produced from particular social/institutional locations; which together depict or construe an aspect of the world in a particular way; and which are dispersed across, and instantiated in, individual texts (Burr 2003: 64–66; cf. Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 35–37). In her influential article on the discourses of orthography, Eira notes that “[m]any orthographies and most scripts are endowed with sacred status” (1998: 178–179). The point is echoed by Sebba, who maintains that they “have functioned in different times and places as potent symbols of both nation and religion” (2007: 82). However, both Eira and Sebba rightly caution that it is difficult to isolate specifically religious discourses of orthography from, say, nationalist or historical ones. This caveat is particularly apt in the case at hand since, as Parland (2005: 81) points out, “Contrary to European nationalist thought, contemporary Russian nationalism is still strongly influenced by religion, i.e., by Orthodoxy.” In fact, support for the old orthography typically braids together not only religious and national discourses, but political and historical themes as well. Thus, the materials presented here support the general proposition that religion can be an important, perhaps inextricable, ingredient in the social meaning of orthography, but with two additional provisos. First, the relationship between religion and 3. I will distinguish the group from its eponymous newspaper by italicizing the latter.

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orthography may change over time, sometimes dramatically, so one must attend to the varying specificities of historical context. Second, the sanctity of orthography may be interpreted in different ways by different religionists, so one must pay attention to (paraphrasing William James) the varieties of religious discourse. In sum, the sacredness of orthography is not chiseled in stone but a “work in progress.” In the next section, I provide a sketch of the relationship between Russian orthography and Russian Orthodoxy leading up through the post-communist period. I then take a closer look at the history and ideology of Pamiat’, and try to parse in some detail its orthographic discourse. The group’s advocacy of the pre-1917 letters at a time of social upheaval reflects an “archaising purism” (Thomas 1991: 77). But the “turn to the past is always connected with the problems of the present” (Radtchenko 2006: 136). In the case of Pamiat’, the glorification of pre-revolutionary life was combined with a conspiracist discourse that portrays historical events, including perestroika, as battles in an ongoing war between “Holy Russia” and the protean forces of “Jewmasonry” (Zhidomasonstvo). After a quick look at some post-Pamiat’examples, I end by reiterating the convoluted relationship of orthography and religion.

2. Historical sketch of Russian orthography Religions change over the course of time, but they usually try to cover their tracks. Though some religionists equate the old orthography with Russian Orthodoxy, the historical record shows more of an oscillation than a simple, stable equation. The Cyrillic script itself – and so, orthography – has evolved: “Some letters have disappeared or been discarded, others have changed their form, still others have been invented” (Sullivan 1996/97: 8). Here is not the place for anything like a complete history of Russian writing and orthography (see Grigor’eva 2004; more concisely, Bergmann 2004). The purpose, rather, is to graph some key points of this up-and-down oscillation. When Kievan Rus’ (the pre-modern East Slavic polity and rootstock of present-day Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) accepted Orthodox Christianity in the tenth century, it did so in and through the Cyrillic script. Christianity was closely identified with the written language. Moreover, according to the mythos passed on to the Rus’and expressed in a constellation of hagiographic and liturgical texts, the script itself was divinely inspired and crafted by Saint Cyril. The Rus’ literati, however, appear to have been less interested in the mythical or mystical aspects of the script compared to their counterparts in Bulgaria, who favored acrostic prayers and other extravagant forms of religio-

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literary display. According to Franklin (2002: 199), theological reflection on Cyrillic letters “was less central to East Slav self-affirmation, and the response in Rus was uneven, rarely active, and generally somewhat muted.” Later, in Muscovy, the situation was rather different. Partly as a result of Bulgarian influence, the Russian Cyrillic script took on an increasingly hieratic status, culminating in the densely elaborate calligraphic style known as viaz’. Whether or not we concur with the maxim that “orthographical change occurs exclusively through planning” (Comrie, Stone and Polinsky 1996: 283), the most decisive transformations of Russian orthography have indeed come from in vitro interventions as opposed to in vivo developments (cf. Calvet 1998: xvi). The first occurred in 1708–1710 and is associated with the name of Peter the Great. Wanting a script that would be more akin to the Latin used in Western Europe, and that would facilitate the production of secular literature, Peter, in conjunction with Dutch printers, took an active hand in modifying the Russian Cyrillic script. He ordered that certain letters be removed and that other ones be written in a more Latinate manner. This was in vitro management at a very high level. The end result was the so-called grazhdanskii shrift (‘civil script’), which moved Russian writing further away from the ornate letterforms of the tserkovnyi shrift (‘church script’), which would henceforth be reserved for sacred literature composed in the Church Slavonic language. The civil script would become the basis for modern Russian Cyrillic. Tellingly, the first book printed in it was a geometry textbook (Kaldor 1969). The second major reform of Russian orthography occurred in conjunction with the Bolshevik Revolution. The details here have been treated elsewhere by experts (see Grigor’eva 2004: 70–115; Comrie, Stone and Polinsky 1996: 285–295). I can do no more than mention some of the pertinent facts. Despite Peter’s intervention, spelling had remained a rather chaotic affair through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with no official guidebook to provide direction. There were calls for change, especially in conjunction with the far-reaching social reforms of the early 1860s (Moser 1985), but the impetus for reform was piecemeal and uncoordinated. It was really only in the early twentieth century that orthographic change became a significant social movement, involving educational groups, pedagogical congresses, orthographic commissions, and the like (Grigor’eva 2004: 75). The prevailing discourse centered on the theme of simplification – the need to simplify the rules of spelling, especially by removing certain “superfluous” letters, in order to pave the way for mass literacy. Cleaning up the rules of spelling was linked not only to an enlightened pedagogy, but more broadly to democracy and modernity. The discourse likened the proposed streamlined alphabet to

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the typewriter and telegraph. Meanwhile, opponents of orthographic reform “countered with a patrimonial conception of language as an untouchable symbol of Russian culture” (Cadiot 2008: 164, cf. 138). Among other arguments, it was asserted that the orthographic reform further distanced Russian Cyrillic from its sacrosanct source: the Church Slavonic alphabet devised by Saint Cyril. These divergent viewpoints would ramify down through the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Orthographic commissions met in 1904 and again 1912, but the proposals were ultimately shelved and no real movement occurred. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, however, the Provisional government attempted an incremental implementation, focusing on schools. Then, shortly after they came to power, the Bolsheviks imposed the changes by decree in December 1917 (reiterated in a slightly modified version in October 1918). The new orthography was extended beyond schools to include government institutions and publishing firms (Comrie, Stone and Polinsky 1996: 290). Here the point of Oushakine (2000: 992–93), though not about orthography per se, is highly relevant: Among the questions that every new regime or movement tries to solve in the process of establishing itself is the question of self-expression, more precisely, the question of finding a distinct linguistic style and linguistic sensitivity, of finding – to borrow Orwell’s term – a “newspeak,” to be associated with. Social changes thus manifest themselves as discursive changes, as changes of and in language, linguistic structures and discursive practices.

Despite the fact that the reform was actually decades in the making and the result of deliberation by some of the leading Russian philologists of the day, the Soviets would take full credit for the transformation, claiming the simplification of the alphabet and the resulting spread of literacy as some of their greatest achievements (Grigor’eva 2004: 229). However that claim is assessed, the haste and manner with which they pushed through the reforms is a striking piece of evidence for the social significance of orthography. It is reported, for instance, that armed sailors went around the print shops of St. Petersburg confiscating and destroying the types and matrices for the eliminated letters (Comrie, Stone and Polinsky 1996: 295). Although the official Soviet decree stipulated a baker’s dozen of modifications ranging from the spelling of certain prefixes to case endings and personal pronouns (Grigor’eva 2004: 293), in terms of its reception history, the 1917–18 reform has become firmly identified with the loss of certain “superfluous” letters. The letters iat’ ( Ь), fita (Ѳ) and i desiaterichnoe (i), were done away with. The scope of the ubiquitous er (Ъ), the hard sign 

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that capped many words, was drastically reduced. The letter izhitsa ( ), though not actually mentioned in the Soviet decrees and by that time already marginal, was further eclipsed. Sebba remarks that, “The tendency for elements of orthography to become iconic, both for their users and for ‘outsiders,’ is remarkable” (2007: 161). For many both at home and in the diaspora, these letters would become miniature icons of “the Russia we lost” (to borrow the title of a notable postSoviet film). The letter iat’ in particular, whose appearance believers have likened to a cross atop a church dome, would come to iconify the ancien r´egime. If the Soviets wanted to take credit for the spelling reform, their opponents were happy to oblige. Despite all clarifications to the contrary, the “bolshevism” of the new orthography would became an id´ee fixe among the opposition (Grigor’eva 2004: 145). One early critic called the spelling reform an assassination. Others spoke of those who had been martyred for the lost alphabet, and likened the lost letters to holy relics trampled underfoot (Grigor’eva 2004: 145; Bergmann 2004: 156). Thus, right from the start, the Bolshevik secularization entailed a corresponding sacralization of the prerevolutionary alphabet on the part of some Orthodox religionists. While the new orthography became closely associated with the modernizing ideology and identity of “Red” Russia, the traditional spelling system became a symbol of “White” opposition (Cadiot 2008: 166). In e´ migr´e circles, especially where politics ran to the conservative, monarchist, and Orthodox end of the spectrum, adherence to the old orthography became something of an article of faith. Over time, however, even staunchly anti-communist journals eventually switched over to the new system (for a list, see Grigor’eva 2004: 140). One of the longest-lasting holdouts was Pravoslavnaia zhizn’ (‘Orthodox Life’), published by the Holy Trinity Seminary in New York state. This fact will have a bearing on the Russian extremist group Pamiat’. According to Moser (1985: 424), “there is a certain correlation between political instability and orthographic change over a large span of Russian history.” As we have seen, Peter the Great’s westernizing program and the Bolshevik Revolution both changed the face of the Cyrillic script. Russia experienced another period of momentous political instability with the collapse of the Soviet Union, “the greatest political earthquake of our time,” in Laqueur’s words (1993: viii). Not surprisingly, these events were attended by dramatic changes in Russian language and spelling. The monolithic Soviet system of orthography, which had brooked no dissent, gave way to variation, pluralism, and experimentation. Part of this innovation, as I have already suggested, was the return of selected elements of the old orthography.

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Elements of pre-1917 spelling began to be used in advertisements, newspaper headings, television shows, and the names of stores and organizations (Priadko 2001). The traditional names for the letters of the alphabet have also been employed: for example, Азъ (the old name for “A”) for a publishing firm. The letter er (sometimes spelled yer) in particular became a widely reiterated symbol in company titles and marketing campaigns in the early 1990s (Ageev 1995). Of course, the scale of all this must not be exaggerated. Grigor’eva (2004: 234) speaks of a “sprinkling” [vkrapleniiami] of old letters in contemporary texts. Much of it is superficial and restricted to company names, logos, and the like. Moreover, not all letters are treated equally: fita and izhitsa have rarely figured in signs or advertisements (Grigor’eva 2004: 234–235). Mistakes are often made in the handling of these letters: the letter iat’ is sometimes confused with er. But because they have the “look and feel” of an imagined yesteryear, their mere appearance accomplishes the intended communicative task – namely, to identify the product or organization with Russian history and tradition (Priadko 2001; Bergmann 2004: 157). After all, the use of “old-timey” lettering for commercial purposes is found elsewhere (Sebba 2007: 38), and grammatical propriety is not really expected in these situations. It is worth noting that the post-Soviet revival typically does not extend to other aspects of the pre-revolutionary system, such as the old genitive singular ending –аго (now –ого). Finally, it must be said that interest in the pre-revolutionary alphabet ran higher in the rumbustious 1990s, when questions of Russian history and identity were very much in flux, than the relatively more stable 2000s. In addition to such practices, the post-Soviet period has also seen an increase in discourse about the pre-revolutionary spelling system. The idea of turning back the orthographic clock has been championed in a range of publications, conferences, and events. For example: – In 1993 the journal Russkaia Rech’[Russian Speech] published a legendary article defending the old orthography penned in 1928 by D.S. Likhachev, one of Russia’s leading cultural figures. Though the piece was composed in a “half-joking/half-serious manner” (1993: 44), it led to Likhachev being arrested and sentenced to five years in the notorious Solovki labor camp. – In 1996 the Society for the Rebirth of the Spiritual Traditions of Rus’ organized a conference on “The Fate of Russian Orthography,” with the purpose of rallying support for the pre-revolutionary system (Lopatin 1997: 685–686). – In 1998 a celebration was held in honor of er, also known as the hard sign. According to the festival organizers, the letter embodied the Rus-

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sian virtues of stability and resilience in – a word, “hardness” – which, it was claimed, was exactly what the country needed during a time of crisis (Grigor’eva 2004: 237). Interestingly enough, the mainstream Russian Church, while embroiled in an acrimonious debate over the continued use of Church Slavonic in the liturgy (Bennett 2011), appears to have been largely indifferent to these developments, perhaps since it was long resigned to the use of the new orthography. Far greater interest in the topic was shown by marginal groups like Pamiat’.

3. Pamiat’ and the old orthography The turbulent 1990s saw the rise of various extremist groups in Russia, ranging in ideology from Red (communist) to Brown (fascist) to White (monarchist), with various shades and mixtures in between. Though dogged by an “aura of eccentricity and marginality” (Hughes 1992: 226), Pamiat’ (sometimes spelled Pamyat) is often rated as the most important nationalist group of the late-Soviet and early post-Soviet years. A poll taken in 1989 showed that about 80 percent of Muscovites had heard of Pamiat’, while only 58 percent knew of the Berlin Wall (Korey 1995: 137). Despite its thuggery and “beer-hall” politics, Pamiat’ had friends in high places (Laqueur 1993: 207). It was supported in certain prominent literary circles and had patrons in the apparat, who saw it as a useful counterweight to the impetus for liberalizing reform. In sum, Pamiat’ represented “the most visible front-runner of all patriotic forces at that time” (Reznik 1996: 108). According to Parland (2005: 82), the group’s ideology could be described as “radical ethnocentric traditionalism.” What does this mean? Speaking very generally, there are two major strands of Russian nationalism: statist versions, which glorify the Russian Empire and/or its Soviet continuation, sometimes extending to praise for authoritarian leaders like Stalin; and ethnocentric nationalist versions, which exalt the Russian ethnos and tend to view the Bolshevik Revolution as a grievous or diabolical betrayal of authentic Russian traditions (Parland 2005: 78; Hughes 1992: 215–216). As for traditionalism, it is marked by veneration of Orthodox Christianity, monarchism, and the vanished peasant folkways. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories loom large: The outstanding feature of all extreme traditionalists was their obviously Manichaeistic Weltanschauung: there is a life-and-death struggle going on in the world between good and evil, between God, with the Russian people

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Brian P. Bennett as the Chosen People, and Satan (The West, the Jews and the Masons). All of Russia’s disasters including the Bolshevik revolution were viewed has having been engineered by a global Zionist-Masonic conspiracy. This vision rejected completely all forms of modernisation. Instead, there was a yearning for the past, for the old Russia before 1917 (Parland 2005: 83).

Ethnocentric nationalism draws heavily on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious forgery which, of course, is itself a product of prerevolutionary Russia. From these broad parameters we can turn now to the specific situation of Pamiat’. The National-Patriot Front Pamiat’ – to use its full name – began in Moscow in the early 1980s as a kind of discussion group within the USSR Ministry of Aviation. Initially, it was interested in working for the preservation of Russia’s cultural monuments, a project that resonated with a large segment of the population. In a few short years, however, under the leadership of Vasil’ev, a former actor and photographer, the group shifted to an aggressive and sensationalistic ethnocentrism that blamed “Zionists” and “cosmopolitans” for the destruction of Russia’s rich national heritage (Hughes 1992: 214–215). The Protocols “became a veritable Bible within the movement” (Parland 2005: 78). In the late 1980s, Pamiat’ staged numerous marches and demonstrations in Moscow. The fact that Vasil’ev liked to surround himself with a kind of praetorian guard made up of black-uniformed youths sporting belts, insignia, and jackboots, added to the menacing impression (Korey 1995: 140–141; Laqueur 1993: 218). It was under Vasil’ev that Pamiat’ embraced both monarchism and Orthodoxy. The group . . . consistently campaigned for the restoration of the Orthodox Church’s role in Russian daily life, claiming that the spiritual decay of the nation can be solved only when the whole population “turns with an open heart to Orthodoxy.” The group has also demanded the restoration of church property, expropriated by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution (Hughes 1992: 217).

The call for a return of the old orthography was perfectly in line with Pamiat”s archaizing and ethnocentric traditionalism. At the same time, despite the group’s stated antipathy to Bolshevism, as we will see, its own rhetoric drew on and re-worked earlier Soviet attacks on “Cosmopolitanism” and “Zionism” (Korey 1995). In 1991 Pamiat’ published the first issue of its newspaper, also called Pamiat’.4 Its appearance made it stand out in the semiotic landscape.The front 4. According to Laqueur (1993: 218, n. 34) several samizdat versions of Pamiat’ were published earlier in 1990, at least one of which I have seen in the Hoover

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page has an unmistakable ecclesiastical appearance, with a heavy medieval typeface accompanied by illustrations of saints and churches. Two small slogans run along the top: “For Faith, Tsar, and Fatherland” and “Patriots of the World, Unite!” (a good example of the group’s ideological fusion). The front-page article is a catechetical explanation of Christmas. Inside are excerpts from the Tale of Bygone Years, a famous medieval chronicle that recounts the rise of Rus’ and its conversion to Orthodoxy, as well as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. There is also a cartoon of two individuals – apparently Jews – plotting to blow up a Kremlin-like building with church copulas in the background. Such Der St¨urmer-style cartoons would become a staple of later issues. Moreover – and here we reach the main point of all this – the paper was printed using the old orthography. The move was accompanied by a programmatic statement by a certain Archbishop Averkii. In an interesting case of discursive feedback, this text had originally been published in Orthodox Life, the e´ migr´e paper from America that long upheld the old orthography. Though a number of scholars have remarked on the appearance of this first issue of Pamiat’ (e.g., Laqueur, Shenfield, Grigor’eva), dicussion of Averkii’s text has been lacking. According to Averkii, only the old orthography can rightly be called Orthodox – not the corruption forcefully imposed by the Bolsheviks on an enslaved Russia. For believing Russians, orthography is closely tied to faith and church. But the Bolsheviks greeted the letters with such hatred that they destroyed them – letters that for a millennium had been associated with the legacy of Cyril and Methodius and part and parcel of the sacred liturgical language of Church Slavonic. The godless Bolsheviks introduced another system as part of their attempt to utterly demolish church and culture, to destroy the “old” and fabricate the “new” – and now we see the new world they created! This Soviet orthography is truly one of their “accomplishments.” Indeed, Averkii continues, the Slavs as a whole have long suffered at the hands of external enemies. Some, like the Czechs, Poles, and Croats, were even lured over to the Latin script. The so-called success of the new spelling has nothing to do with linguistics and everything to do with the fact that Russia was overtaken by the dregs of society serving the interests of foreigner masters. The religious and national ideals bequeathed to by Cyril and Methodius were alien to these atheists and internationalists. We, the Archives (Stanford University). Hughes (1992: 216) refers to an issue put out in 1989, which I have not seen. The front page of the text examined here states No. 1, January 1991.

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Orthodox Russian people, cannot help but value and esteem all that is true and holy – viz., the old orthography. The identification of orthography with religious orthodoxy could not be any clearer. In Averkii’s account, the old orthography was a sacred treasure, bequeathed by saints and hallowed by a thousand-year tradition. At the same time, the new orthography is cast in terms of porcha [corruption, spoilage] and iskazhenie [perversion], imposed by podonki [dregs, scum]. Averkii thus proposes a puristic dichotomy of sacred and profane, clean and dirty (cf. Thomas 1991: 29, 55). But this discourse is layered with another. The old orthography is described in words connoting temporal and societal connection: tesno sviazano [closely tied], ob”ediniaiushche zveno [a unifying chain], my pravoslavnye russkie liudi [we Orthodox Russian people], and so on. The Soviet spelling system, on the other hand, is portrayed as alien to native Russian traditions and described in words connoting intrusion and disruption. It represents the barbaric brainchild of inostrantsy [foreigners] and internatsionalisty [internationalists]. These are familiar code words from the discourse of Russian/Soviet conspiracism. The Jews are a “denationalized” people who seek to eviscerate the distinct religious traditions of different nations as they march toward a one-world government. For Averkii, the new orthography is part of a “divide and rule” campaign perpetrated by forces hell-bent against Russia. In the same paper, Vasil’ev, the leader of Pamiat’ and editor of the paper, provides his own orthographic disquisition. Russia, observes Gorham (2006: 18), has a “long tradition of linguist-politicians.” As we have seen, Peter the Great had a hand in creating the “civil script,” which is the basis for modern-day Russian Cyrillic. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin all wrote on language. Perhaps Vasil’ev, who had grandiose political ambitions (Lacquer 1993: 219), was deliberately styling himself along those lines. Again, this component of the early Pamiat’ papers has been neglected in the scholarly literature. The series is called Az” buki viedie glagol’ dobro. These are the prerevolutionary names of the first five letters of the Russian alphabet. Together they comprised the traditional abecedarian mnemonic, sometimes translated as “I know letters, the word [is] good.” The precise origin of the letternames is debated. They may derive from an acrostic prayer often attributed to St. Cyril himself (Cubberley 1988: 49). Over the centuries, the names were replicated in various abecedaria, becoming an essential ingredient in Russian gramota [reading and writing]. They also gave rise to a number of set phrases and expressions: For example, ‘ot aza do izhitsy’ (“from A to Z, from start to finish”). There is a well-known scene in Maxim Gorky’s memoir, My

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Childhood, when the young author is studying an azbuka or alphabet primer with his grandfather: — See this figure? This is Az. Say: Az! Buki! Vedi! What’s this?. . . — Buki. — Right! And this? — Vedi. — Wrong! That’s Az. Look here: Glagol’, dobro, est’, – what’s this? — Dobro. — Right! How’bout this? — Glagol’. — Right! He embraced my neck with his warm, sweaty arm, and kept pointing over my shoulder at the letters in the book before me. . . . (quoted in Palievsky n.d.: 11)

These traditional letter-names, which were so much a part of pre-revolutionary life, were abandoned at the time of the Bolshevik reform: Though not included in the Decree, the reform also abolished the names of the letters of the alphabet which had been in use since the Old Russian period; before the Revolution, letter names had been taught in everyday schools and Sunday schools (Comrie, Stone and Polinsky 1996: 291).

They were replaced with the simple phonetic nomenclature used to this day (a, be, ve, ge. . . ). Thus, it is noteworthy that Vasil’ev intentionally returns to them. Vasil’ev uses the alphabetic mnemonic as a structuring device for five articles serialized in the first five issues of Pamiat’. (These are now a bibliographic rarity but have been reprinted in Vasil’ev 2003.) Each letter serves as the starting point for a diatribe about the state of Russia and what Vasil’ev construes as its historic – indeed cosmic – struggle with the forces of evil. The mnemonic is not only a nod to Russia’s literary heritage, but connotes a sense of schooling, of discipline, of getting back to basics. Vasil’ev is offering a kind of primer for his fellow citizens disoriented by Russia’s parlous situation. In this connection it should be noted that the 1990s saw an increase in “abecedarian” discourse. A good example is Alexander Barkashov’s The ABC of a Russian Nationalist (1994). (Barkashov would leave Pamiat’ to found the neo-fascist Russian National Unity party.) More broadly, Condee and Padunov (1995: 136) observe a widespread “alphabetic methodology” found in the burgeoning but unfamiliar world of post-Soviet consumerism. They point to the name of firms (Al’fa Art, Shkola [School] Gallery, A + B Agency) as well as the “pedagogic undertone” of television programs about the stock market, handling money, and so on. Thus, Vasil’ev’s discourse was

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in sync with similar discourses circulating at that time. In what follows, I focus on the first and third of his articles. Vasil’ev begins his first article (1991: 3) by saying that our alphabet not only caries a phonetic load, but represents spiritual and ethical meaning. Language condenses the wisdom and experience of the people which is precisely why it is attacked by outside forces. This age, says Vasil’ev, is a “Time of Troubles” – a reference to the chaotic period in the early seventeenth century which is often considered the low-point in Russian national stability and sovereignty. Satanism and cosmopolitanism are agitating Russia under the names of “democracy,” “freedom,” “glasnost” [openness], and other “isms.” The letter Az”, writes Vasil’ev, is the beginning. It is like a child. A child is innocent and is unaware of evil. But he learns as he grows. Just as in child’s folktales, heroes battle serpents, so too a great battle is going on and heroes are needed. Just as words are formed from letters, so too must a mighty army be formed from heroes who will vanquish any enemy in the name of Russia. Az” has another meaning. Not only does it represent the beginning, but it has a numerical value. Before the introduction of Arabic numerals, letters did double-duty as numbers. Thus the first letter means 1, but with various markings around it, it can also mean 1000 or 10,000 or 100,000. Starting with Az” (“I”), a spiritual army (rat’) must be forged for the sake of Russia. The third article (1992: 3) in the series dilates on the old name of the letter В (viedie), which is taken to be related to the archaic verb ‘to know’(viedat’). According to Vasil’ev, the main thing is to know God’s commandments, to know of Divine Providence, and the moral-spiritual role of the human person in God’s plan. Some familiar themes are then sounded. The revolution of 1917 was a “monstrous tragedy” (chudovishchnoi tragediei) that entailed the “penetration” (proniknovenie) of the borders of the Russian Empire by the “foreign, criminal Marxist philosophy” predicated on a “cosmopolitan doctrine.” It is only today, through faith, says Vasil’ev, that we move ever closer to the real knowledge of things. The “monstrous political machine” of the Bolsheviks cast the people into ignorance. The monarchy did not keep secrets from the people. But “today’s politics is an all-encompassing secret from the people” – a secret which turns out to mean enslavement and genocide for the nation. To fully analyze the discourse of these “long-winded and declamatory” texts – their topoi, schematisms, etc. – would go beyond the scope of this chapter (cf. Reisigl and Wodak 2001). Nevertheless, a few observations are in order. We have noted how the traditionalist ideology of Pamiat’ valorized pre-revolutionary Russia, the world of “throne and altar.” Thus, on one level

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Vasil’ev’s texts articulate a discourse of “archaizing purism,” which may be glossed as “an attempt to resuscitate the linguistic material of a past golden age” (Thomas 1991: 77). Purism is about borders and Vasil’ev deliberately invokes the old letter names at time when, he says, Russia is being invaded yet again by “monstrous” foreign elements. As editor and author, he attempts to resuscitate the old orthography, including the traditional names for the letters of the alphabet. This archaizing discourse is reinforced by the layout and design of the Pamiat’ paper, with its ecclesiastical typefaces and reprinted articles. The paper as a whole has an antiquated appearance. This strand of discourse is woven with that of literacy/schooling.The very title of Vasil’ev’s articles evokes the history of Russian children memorizing their ABCs. The theme is reinforced by references to the heroes and villains of skazki (fairy tales) and byliny (epic tales), the traditional stuff of children’s literature. Russia is the na¨ıve child awakening to the danger that surrounds it. It needs to be schooled in the ways of the world. Vasil’ev seems to be suggesting that the pre-revolutionary letters function, as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz famously said of symbols, as models of and for Russian society. The letter Az” (A) is a model of reality insofar as it embodies the na¨ıve outlook of a child or the beginning of something. But it is also a model for reality insofar as it becomes a rallying cry for the individual to join an army in defense of the nation. (This could be compared to the Hard Sign festival, mentioned above, which touted the “hardness” of the letter er as an inspiration for Russians going through tough times.) But there is more. The archaizing and abecedarian discourses are crosshatched with that of conspiracism (on which, see Bennett 2007). This discourse pictures an ongoing cosmic struggle between Holy Russia and enemy “forces” – Jews and their henchmen (Masons, Bolsheviks, Americans) – played out in the historical arena. Vasil’ev channels this discourse when, for example, he chronicles past assaults (e.g., the Time of Troubles) and when he speaks of the Bolshevik Revolution and the orthographic reforms of 1917–18 as tragedies imposed on Russia by external forces. This discourse portrays specific historical events, especially catastrophic ones, as eruptions or intrusions emanating from a secret, all-encompassing agency. It requires an expert using a text like the Protocols to puzzle out the truth – to know (viedat’) in an almost divinatory way what is really going on behind the scenes. Perhaps these few comments are sufficient to demonstrate the density of Vasil’ev’s discourse, combining as it does the themes of purity, literacy, and conspiracy. Despite the outward embrace of the pre-revolutionary alphabet, the use of the old orthography was never consistent in the pages of Pamiat’ to begin with, and it would eventually be phased out over the next issues, probably

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due to the technical difficulties involved (Grigor’eva 2004: 233). The group itself would splinter and eventually fade from view (though there is still at least one group using the name). In the end, Pamiat’ was a transitional phenomenon, but no less important for that reason. Its existence paved the way for a multitude of subsequent extremist groups (Parland 2005: 78). As Laqueur (1993: 221) says, “Seen in historical perspective the role of Pamiat’ was that of a precursor; it was the first in a field that later on became crowded.” In their publications, the majority of these later groups would follow suit and employ an antiquated or ecclesiastical graphic design. In this regard, too, Pamiat’ was a sort of pioneer.

4. Continuing variations on a theme The core of Vasil’ev’s discourse – that the old spelling system was a sacred treasure and that changing it was a catastrophe foisted on Russia by its enemies – was, of course, something that predated Pamiat’. It was articulated early on by opponents of the Bolshevik reform and then nourished in e´ migr´e circles for decades afterward. It was crystallized in Averkii’s article, first published abroad and then reprinted in Pamiat’. And it lives on after the rise and fall of Pamiat’. A quick look at some recent publications demonstrates this continuity but also the subtle gradations to be found in this religiousorthographic discourse. A good example is an article called “The Tragedy of Russian Orthography” (2003), published on the website Pravoslavie.ru, which is associated with the fundamentalist Sretenskii Monastery whose politics may be said to fall somewhere between Pamiat’ and the Moscow Patriarchate (Verkhovsky 2004: 128–129). Author V. Neviarovich contends that the Provisional Government (which took over after the abdication of the last tsar) was Masonic in nature. While that “Blue branch” (a reference to the Masonic lodge structure) failed to impose orthographic reform, they passed the baton to the more aggressive “Red branch” (the Bolsheviks), which finished the dirty deed (griaznoe delo). Here the themes of tragedy, impurity, and conspiracy are reminiscent of the discourse found in Pamiat’. Another example comes from the flagship Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. Although the piece is primarily about the Church Slavonic script, there are some pertinent references to twentieth-century orthography. Author A. Novikova speaks of the “anti-Orthodox” orthographic reform of 1917– 18 (2003: 64). She refers to the loss of the “sacred letters” er, fita, etc. as well as the various ligatures used to abbreviate nomina sacra, which she

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describes as “orthographic haloes atop sacred words.” She contrasts this hallowed form of writing with the new, “corrupted” (isporchennoi) Soviet alphabet. It will be recalled that Averkii had called the new orthography a “corruption” (porcha). She also implies that the reforms of 1917–18 were somehow an anomaly in Russian history and alien to its age-old traditions. Yet Novikova’s piece, published in the official organ of the Russian Church, represents a more moderate institutionalist discourse (cf. Della Cava 1997) and thus refrains from the coded references to shadowy “forces” and Masonic symbols typical of fundamentalist or ultranationalist publications. A concern with the old orthography can also be found in popular New Age books purporting to explain the “secrets” or “mysteries” (tainy) of the Cyrillic alphabet. Though this discourse overlaps in part with the more familiar ecclesiastical varieties, it veers off into fringe interpretations of science and “lost civilizations.” For example, Miroshnichenko (2004: 54) explains that the Russian alphabet is not only the primordial alphabet, having spawned the world’s ancient writing systems (e.g., etRUScan), but a kind of cosmic DNA that encodes scientific-mathematical information about the universe. He repeats the idea that the post-Bolshevik alphabet is corrupted (iskoverkannyi). However, the focus is not on lamenting the lost letters or excoriating Jew-Masons, but answering the question: if the Russian alphabet is indeed a kind of cosmic Table of Elements (Miroshnichenko 2004: 68), how does one explain the fact the 1917–18 reform left gaps (dyrki) in the system (2004: 93)? This brief sampling of post-Pamiat’ texts is enough, perhaps, to suggest the diversity of religious discourse found in post-Soviet Russia. Different religious camps, from fundamentalist to NewAge, speak about the same topic – the old orthography – but do so in diverging ways. It must also be said that for many other religionists, the question of the pre-revolutionary spelling system is of minimal or no importance whatsoever. Thus, while it is important to recognize the role of religious discourse in valorizing orthography, it is equally important to acknowledge the complexity and variability of such discourse.

5. Conclusions Russia provides a notable case study in the relationship between orthography and religious orthodoxy. But even a brief investigation demonstrates that this relationship has varied over time and across social and religious groupings. Stigmatized in the Soviet Union but cultivated in the diaspora, selective elements of the old orthography were reclaimed in the early1990s. In particular, certain letters evocative of a prelapsarian Russia have been appropriated by

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different groups, including literary conservatives, religious extremists, and commercial advertisers. Pamiat’ was the first to grab the headlines (literally) by bringing back the pre-1917 letters. The gesture was congruent with the group’s bombastic traditionalism. A closer look at their newspaper reveals an opaque discourse involving purity, pedagogy, and secret plots. Although interest in the old orthography seems to have subsided since the hurly-burly 1990s, one still encounters expressions of nostalgia in religious publications, though even there one finds variation. According to one ecclesiastical defender of the old orthography, “The house of Slavonic writing was created by the Lord Himself” and ultimately cannot be ruined (Novikova 2003: 65). From a more earthbound perspective, Friedland and Hecht (2007: 34) remind us that sacred places are in fact “always being built and rebuilt; their sacredness is elaborated, changed, expanded, meanings overlaying other older or contemporary meanings.” Based on the Russian case, at least, the same can be said for orthography.

References Agadjanian, Alexander 2001 Public religion and the quest for rational ideology: Russia’s media discourse. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40(3). 351– 365. Ageev, Aleksandr 1995 Vostavshii Ъ [Resurrected er]. Znamie 4. 184–190. Asker, Barry 2006 Some reflections on English as a “semi-sacred” language. English Today 22. 29–35. Barkashov, A.P. 1994 Azbuka russkogo natsionalista [‘The ABC of a Russian nationalist’]. Moskva: Izd-vo “Slovo-1”. Bennett, Brian P. 2011 Religion and Language in Post-Soviet Russia. London/New York: Routledge. Bennett, Brian P. 2007 Hermetic histories: divine providence and conspiracy theory. Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 54(2). 174– 209. Berger, Peter L. (ed.) 1999 The desecularization of the world: Resurgent religion and world politics. Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center; Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.

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Bergmann, Anka 2004 Russland schreibt kyrillisch! Die Sprache 44(2). 148–172. Burr, Vivien 2003 Social Constructionism. 2d ed. London/New York: Routledge. Cadiot, Juliette 2008 Russia learns to write: Slavistics, politics, and the struggle to redefine empire in the early 20th century. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9(1). 135–167. Calvet, Louis-Jean 1998 Language wars and linguistic politics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Comrie, Bernard, Gerald Stone and Maria Polinsky 1996 The Russian language in the twentieth century. 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. Condee, Nancy and Vladimir Padunov 1995 The ABC of Russian Consumer Culture: Readings, Ratings, and Real Estate. In Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth–Century, Nancy Condee (ed.), 130–172. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; London: BFI Publishing. Cubberley, Paul 1988 On the origin and development of the Slavonic letter-names. Australian Slavonic and East European Studies 2(1). 29–54. Della Cava, Ralph 1997 Reviving Orthodoxy in Russia. An overview of the factions in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the spring of 1996. Cahiers du Monde russe 38(3). 387–414. Dunn, J.A. 1999a The transformation of Russian from a language of the Soviet type to a language of the western type. In J.A. Dunn (ed.), Language and society in post-Communist Europe, selected papers from the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995, 3–22. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press; NewYork: St. Martin’s Press. Dunn, J.A. (ed.) 1999b Language and society in post-Communist Europe, selected papers from the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press. Eira, Christina 1998 Authority and discourse: towards a model for orthography selection. Written Language and Literacy 1(2). 171–224.

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Franklin, Simon 2002 Writing, society and culture in early Rus, c. 950–1300. Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press. Friedland, Roger and Richard D. Hecht 2007 Sacred urbanism: Jerusalem’s sacrality, urban sociology, and the history of religions. Unpublished paper, Conference on “Jerusalem across the Disciplines,” Arizona State University,Tempe, February, 2007. Goldblatt, Harvey 1987 Orthography and orthodoxy: Constantine Kostenecki’s treatise on the letters (Skaz´anie iz’javlj´enno o p´ısmenex). Firenze: Le Lettere. Gorham, Michael S. 2006 Language culture and national identity in Post-Soviet Russia. In Ingunn Lunde and Tine Roesen (eds.), Landslide of the norm: Language culture in post-Soviet Russia, 18–30. Bergen: Dept. of Russian Studies, University of Bergen. Grigor’eva, T.M. 2004 Tri veka russkoi orfografii (XVIII–XX vv.) [Three Centuries of Russian Orthography (18th-20th centuries)]. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Elpis. Kaldor, Igor L. 1969 The genesis of the Russian grazhdanskii shrift or civil type, Part I. Journal of Typographic Research 3(4). 315–344. Korey, William 1995 Russian antisemitism, Pamiat’, and the demonology of Zionism. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers. Laqueur, Walter 1993 Black Hundred: The rise of the extreme right in Russia. New York: Harper Collins. Likhachev, D.S. 1993 Doklad o staroi orfografii [‘Article about the old orthography’]. Russkaia Rech’ 1. 43–51. Lopatin, V.V. 1997 Orfografiia: samorazvitie i uporiadochenie [‘Orthography: maturation and normalization’]. Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 67(8). 681–687. Lunde, Ingunn and Tine Roesen (eds.) 2006 Landslide of the norm: Language culture in post-Soviet Russia. Bergen: Dept. of Russian Studies, University of Bergen. Miroshnichenko, O.F. 2004 Tainy russkogo alfavita [‘Secrets of the Russian alphabet’]. Mosvka: n.p.

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Moser, Charles A. 1985 Teachers of Russian, the revolutionary wave of 1862, and orthographical reform. The Slavic and East European Journal 29(4). 422–436. Neviarovich, Vladimir 2003 Tragediia russkogo pravopisaniia [‘The tragedy of Russian orthography’]. www.pravoslavie.ru/jurnal/031010151818.htm [accessed 18.10.2008]. Novikova, A. 2003 Tserkovnoslavianskoi azbuki i o normakh sovremennogo tserkovnogo pravopisaniia [‘Of the Church Slavonic alphabet and the norms of contemporary church orthography’]. Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii 6. 58–65. Oushakine, Serguei 2000 Third Europe-Asia Lecture. In the state of post-Soviet aphasia: symbolic development in contemporary Russia. Europe-Asia Studies 52(6). 991–1016. Palievsky, Arseniy n.d. All Russia encyclopedia from A to Z: The alphabet. www.un.int/ russia/new/azbuka/a/Azbuka en.pdf [accessed 18.10.2008]. Priadko, I.P. 2001 Doreformennaia orfografiia i sovremennaia reklama [‘The prereform orthography and contemporary advertising’]. http://www.gramota.ru/biblio/magazines/gramota/28 57 accessed 20.03.2008]. Radtchenko, Daria 2006 Simulating the past: Reenactment and the quest for truth in Russia. Rethinking History 10(1). 127–148. Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak 2001 Discourse and discrimination: Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London/ New York: Routledge. Sebba, Mark 2007 Spelling and society: The culture and politics of orthography around the world. Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press. Sharot, Stephen 2001 A comparative sociology of world religions: Virtuosos, priests, and popular religion. New York: New York University Press. Shenfield, Stephen 2001 Russian fascism:Traditions, tendencies, movements. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

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Slater, Wendy 2007

The many deaths of Tsar Nicholas II: Relics, remains and the Romanovs. London/New York: Routledge. Shelaeva, E.P. and Liudmila Protsai 1993 Rus’ Pravoslavnaia [‘Orthodox Rus”]. Saint Petersburg: Liki Rossii; Moscow: Dzhulija. Sullivan, John 1996/97 The old believers and orthographic reform in the twentieth century. Slavonica 3(2). 7–26. Thomas, George 1991 Linguistic purism. London/New York: Longman. Ustinova, Irina P. 2005 English in Russia. World Englishes 24(2). 239–251. Vasil’iev, D.D. 2003 Azy bukv vedaia, glagol’ dobro. Moskva: Natsional’no-Patrioticheskii Front “Pamiat” ’.

Chapter 4 Reclamation, revalorization, and re-Tatarization via changing Tatar orthographies Suzanne Wertheim Alphabet changes are never purely linguistic in nature. This can be seen particularly clearly in the case of Tatar, a Turkic language spoken in the former Soviet Union, most notably in Tatarstan, an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation. Tatar has a rich history of culturally and politically oriented alphabet changes, one that began in the 10th century, intensified during the Soviet period, and has culminated in a post-Soviet battle for the right to control orthographic standards. For more than two decades, the Tatar intelligentsia and government of post-Soviet Tatarstan have been engaged in a sub-state nation building project that involves the reclamation, revalorization, and re-Tatarization of both the Tatar language and Tatarstan. Their attempts to reclaim Tatars’ pre-Soviet regional dominance have been articulated in multiple ways, many of which are attempts to control the form and use of the Tatar language. Orthographic reform has been one of the most conspicuous and politically topical movements in the general trend of postSoviet “de-Russification” of Tatar space, culture, and language (Wertheim 2003a); orthography, like language, both indexes and creates social structure (cf. Irvine 1989). Both orthographic changes and the symbolic modern use of historical alphabets reference post-Soviet Tatars’ alignment with multiple temporal and geographic identifications, all of which have a place in the construction of the post-Soviet Tatar nation. Orthographic battles are common in situations “where identity and nationhood are under negotiation”; this is because “orthographic systems cannot be conceptualized simply as reducing speech to writing, but rather . . . are symbols that carry historical, cultural, and politicized meanings” (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994: 65). Statements about language, along with linguistic reforms, serve as signifiers for social and political realities; they are metonymic (Gal 1989), and seemingly innocuous language reforms actually often serve as symbolic gestures with deeper, sometimes provocative, meanings. For example, as Collins (1999: 223) notes, the American Ebonics debate of 1996–1997 was “about a proposal to revalue the symbolic status of a nonstandard variety, and the fury of the response to that proposal must

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be seen as having roots in a broader reaction.” And indeed, Tatar post-Soviet orthographic reform, which is also a proposal to revalue the symbolic status of a minority language variety, has led to both dramatic public discourse and a series of legal twists and turns that have included federal-level political and legislative opposition coming from Moscow since the fall of 2001. Tatarstan is an autonomous republic in the Volga region of the Russian Federation. Approximately half of its four million residents are Tatar and half are Russian, and about half of the ethnic Tatars, that is, one million people, speak Tatar. Several million Tatars elsewhere in the former Soviet Union also speak Tatar – however, the focus here will be on the practices and policies of Tatars within the borders of Tatarstan, considered by many to be the Tatar homeland. The 1552 fall of the Kazan Khanate to invading Russian forces marks both the beginning of the Russian empire and the start of more than four centuries of linguistic, cultural, and political stress for Volga Tatars. Intensification of this stress during the Soviet period initiated a multi-generational language shift, and the population of Tatar speakers has been shrinking with every generation. The 1990 declaration of Tatarstan’s sovereignty led to increased republic-level political power for ethnic Tatars and a series of “promotive” laws and policies regarding the Tatar language. However, even with Tatar’s legislated expansion into functional domains beyond those of domestic and marketplace language use, the Russian language remains dominant in most public and institutional settings. This particularization of Tatar and normalization of Russian can be seen as part of the Soviet hegemonic process of Russification, and the attempts by post-Soviet Tatars to reclaim linguistic, cultural, and spatial ground that have been ceded to Russian can therefore be seen as counter-hegemonic.

1. Historical Tatar orthographies The end result of Tatarstani post-Soviet orthographic reform is a Latin-based alphabet, referred to in Tatar as Latinitsa (formed in analogy with Kirillitsa ‘Cyrillic’); this alphabet was ratified by the Tatarstani government in 1999, put into effect in 2001, and made illegal by Federal law in 2002. It is the fifth writing system in recorded Tatar history, and the fourth in less than a century. In pre-Islamic times, from approximately the 5th century C.E. onward, the Turkic peoples of the Volga region used a pan-Turkic runic alphabet; examples of the runes can be seen in figure 1, an excerpt from a Tatar-language article on orthography in which the body script is Kirillitsa (Kurbatov 2000).

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Figure 1. Example of pan-Turkic runes.

The 922 C.E. Islamic conversion of the Volga Bolgars, which brought increased religious, political, cultural, and economic ties with the greater Islamic world, led to the adoption of a modified Arabic script. For centuries, the predecessors of modern literary Tatar were written in a series of modified Arabic alphabets, and those Tatars who were educated enough to read and write generally had an Islamic religious education in Tatar m¨akt¨aps and m¨adr¨as¨as, and therefore also read and wrote Classical Arabic. Figures 2 and 3 show the front and back covers and first two pages of from a 1778 Russian-language primer on the Tatar alphabet, Azbuka Tatarskago Jazyka ‘The Alphabet of the Tatar Language,’ reprinted in 1996. Classical Arabic was a superstrate language in the Volga region for over a thousand years, and the influence of Arabic on the Tatar language was significant (Wertheim 2009): in addition to the orthography, by the early 20th century a significant portion of the lexicon of literary Tatar was of Arabic origin, and this lexical stratum caused the allophones k/q and g/γ , condi-

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Figure 2. Front and back covers of 1778 primer on the Tatar alphabet; the front cover is in Russian, and the back cover is in Tatar (Khalfin 1996).

Figure 3. The chart of Tatar consonants in the Arabic script, with initial, medial, and final variants (Khalfin 1996).

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tioned in Tatar by adjacency to front or back vowels, to become phonemic. Nineteenth-century Tatar culture was particularly notable for its moderate Islamic religious and educational reform movement known as Jadidism (jadid means ‘new’ in Arabic). The Tatar intelligentsia of the time were in contact with and influenced by scholars and philosophers in both Russia and the larger Turkic and Islamic worlds, including the Ottoman Empire, and Jadidism was an attempt to make Muslim Tatar practice both relevant to and congruent with a both a modernizing Islamic world and a Russia that was becoming increasingly Western (Graney 1999; Rorlich 1986). Due to the reforms of the jadids, Arabic and the Arabic orthography were associated not only with conservative social forces, but also with progressive, modernizing stances. In fact, Faik Tagirov, an influential Tatar graphic designer of the 1920s and a central figure in the self-consciously modern Constructivist artistic movement, used the traditional Kufic script of Arabic as a parallel to the Russian Cyrillic block letters used by his compatriots: the result, as can be seen in figure 4, is distinctly early Soviet. Here we see two book covers for Tatar novels published in the mid-1920s that use the black, white and red color scheme of Constructivism as well as the Constructivist style of photo-montage (in this reproduction, the red is realized as gray). These books were published in the final years that the Arabic script was used for the Tatar language. In 1926, the All-Union Turcological Congress in Baku resolved that theTurkic languages of the Soviet Union should be written in a Latin-based alphabet (Grenoble 2003), and in 1927 Tatar, along with Turkic languages elsewhere in the Soviet Union, was shifted to a modified Latin alphabet, considered at that time to be the “alphabet of revolution” (Kreindler 1995). Early Soviet nation building was focused on the creation of nations (Russian natsional’nosti and narodnosti), often by reorienting groups with affiliations outside of the Soviet Union back inward, and by dividing peoples who had felt themselves to be part of what were now considered to be supra-national communal identities, e.g., dividing the Tatars from the Turks of Central Asia as well as from the other Turkic peoples of the Volga region who had agitated for a Turkic-dominated Idel-Ural republic stretching from the Volga to the Urals. The language policies designed to accomplish this inward reorientation were manifold, and, as of the 1930s, increasingly based on Russification (cf. Grenoble 2003); alphabet changes were a key component of these early Soviet policies. The Arabic orthographies used by the Turkic nations of the Soviet Union unified them with Turkic peoples outside the Soviet Union; in addition, the Arabic script had religious associations, as Arabic is used for the Islamic

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Figure 4. Book covers designed by Faik Tagirov (Kliuchevskaya 2002).

liturgy and religious exegesis. For the Soviet policy makers, alphabet reform was clearly key to breaking these ethnic and religious ties. The Latin-based alphabet for Tatar in broad use from 1927 to 1938 was known as Yangalif, from yanga ‘new’ and a¨ lif, the first half of a¨ lifba ‘alphabet’. Figure 5 shows the Yangalif alphabet as codified in 1927.

Figure 5. The Yangalif alphabet (downloaded from www.omniglot.com).

Graphically sophisticated materials, many designed by Faik Tagirov, were used to promote the new Latin-based alphabet. Figure 6 shows a digraphic promotional poster by Tagirov from 1927 that asks Uk¨ı bel¨as¨angme? ‘Do you know how to read?’ in both the Arabic script about to be phased out (on the

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Figure 6. Left: Yangalif promotional poster from 1927. Right: Bezneng Älif ‘Our Alphabet’, a Yangalif primer.

right), and the new Latin alphabet that is being introduced (on the left); they share a bivalent question mark. Primers were produced to promote literacy in the Yangalif alphabet among children; figure 6 also shows the cover of a ¨ ‘Our alphabet.’ 1928 primer called Bezneng Alif A move away from the Leninist policy of “national in form, socialist in content” to a Stalin-era promotion of Russian and linguistic Russification led to a 1938 Union-wide shift from the short-lived Latin-based alphabets for national languages to Cyrillic-based alphabets (Henze 1977). The Cyrillic alphabet was designed for the Russian language and is best suited to phonemically represent standard Russian (for more on discourse on this, see Sebba 2006: 113–115). Tatar has nine phones that are not found in Russian, all of which are phonemic, and these phones can cause problems both for Russian speakers and for Tatars who have heavy Russian interference. In order to represent some (but not all) of these phones, there are six additional letters in the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet. Table 1 shows these Tatar-specific phones and their correspondences with Russian phones and Russian Cyrillic letters, used as substitutes when Tatar words and names are spoken in Russian. As shown in table 2, the six Tatar-specific Cyrillic letters appear to have been just tacked onto the end of the Cyrillic alphabet as used for Russian, with no sensitivity

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Table 1. Tatar-specific phones. Tatar-specific phone

Tatar Cyrillic letter

Usual Russian equivalent

Russian Cyrillic letter

[æ]

ә

[a]

a

[ø]

o

[o], [e]

y, e

[y]

y

[u]

y

[q]

к, къ

[k]

k

[γ ]

г, гъ

[g], Ø

r, Ø

[dZ]

ж¸

[Z], [z]

ж, з

[h]

h

[x]

x

[w]

в

[v]

b

[N]



[n]

h

Table 2. The Cyrillic alphabets for Russian and Tatar. Russian

Tatar

for their phonetic relationship with the phonemes represented by the other letters. For example, the three Tatar-specific letters for vowels are all front vowels that are generally considered to be half of a front/back pair. These pairings are quite salient as Tatar, like most Turkic languages, has front-back vowel harmony: the vowels in word roots are all either front or back, and all suffixes have allomorphs with front and back vowels – for example, the plural suffix has the back allomorph -lar ([lar]) and the front allomorph -l¨ar ([lær]).1 1. The other two allomorphs of the plural suffix are based on nasal assimilation.

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The alphabetical order ofYangalif was sensitive to these front/back pairs, with the unmarked vowel presented first and the marked vowel right after it, but in the Cyrillic Tatar alphabet, the front vowels (none of which are present in Russian) come after я, the letter that comes at the end of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and figures in Russian sayings as a marker of finality, like ‘omega’ or ‘z’ in English. The letters ‘ ж¸ ’ /dZ/ and ‘’ /N/ are also tacked onto the end of the alphabet despite their clear relationship with ‘ж’ /Z/ and ‘н’ /n/, found earlier in the alphabetic sequence. Alphabetical order for Tatar Cyrillic, therefore, is not as intuitive, principled, and orderly as it was for Yangalif, and some Tatar philologists create pedagogical and reference materials using the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet arranged in the alphabetical order of Yangalif. Tatar words written in Cyrillic using the Tatar-specific letters may look like “nonsense Russian” to people who know Russian but not Tatar2 (readers of Russian may want to refer back to figure 1 for examples). More problematic for people invested in promoting Tatar’s de-Russification and highlighting its distinctiveness from Russian is the orthographic representation of Russian loanwords in Tatar. Due to Soviet-era language engineering, half the Tatar lexicon is now comprised of Russian loanwords – a small percentage of these loanwords are early borrowings that were adapted to Tatar phonotactics, but the vast majority are late loanwords that retain their Russian phonotactics, and when these late loanwords are written in the Cyrillic alphabet, they look identical to Russian. In figure 7, we see the train station in Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital. This train station is one of the city’s major public buildings and the main point of entry for visitors, especially from Moscow, which is located less than 800 kilometers to the west. Due to mandated bilingual signage in Tatarstan, large letters on top of the building spell out ‘train station’ in both Tatar and Russian; however, the Tatar word for ‘train station’ is a Russian loanword, so that the nominally bilingual signage is realized as exactly the same word written in exactly the same letters – on the left of the building’s main entrance it reads вокзал (/vokzal/) and on the right side it also reads вокзал (/vokzal/). Even people who understand bilingual signage legislation and the orthographic and lexical history of the Tatar language find it difficult to see the Tatar in this train station signage, and the presence of the Tatar language here is surely lost on the majority of pedestrians passing through the space, entering and exiting this building that serves as both a central public space 2. This assessment is based on comments made to me over the course of my fieldwork.

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Figure 7. Nominally bilingual signage on Kazan’s train station.

within the city and as a portal for travelers from elsewhere in the Russian Federation. To the casual passerby, the train station is indexed in Russian only, part of a linguistic landscape that implies a (very real) asymmetry of Tatar-language representation elsewhere. It is this kind of encroachment and multiple erasure that helps motivate puristic attempts to emphasize distinctiveness and legitimacy such as the orthographic reform designed to alter the public face of Tatar.

2. The attempted move to Latinitsa Latinitsa, the new Latin-based Tatar alphabet, was ratified in September of 1999, and a ten-year transition period was meant to begin with street signs and school programs in the fall of 2001. The legal status of the transition to the new alphabet changed frequently during the first half of 2002, and during this time was discussed not only in Tatarstan’s press but also in the national

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media, based in Moscow, which is also home to the federal governing apparatus. On December 11, 2002, Vladimir Putin signed into law an amendment passed by the State Duma that prohibits the use of non-Cyrillic scripts by state languages in the Russian Federation – this amendment was provoked directly by the Tatar alphabet shift. On February 26, 2004, the Tatarstani State Council brought an appeal to the Russian Constitutional Court, which began hearing the case on October 5, 2004, and decided to deny the appeal on November 16, 2004. During the hearing, State Duma representative to the Constitutional Court Yelena Mizulina expressed strong criticism of the orthographic legislation as a “veiled refusal” to comply with the constitution, claiming without real explication that the shift to Latinitsa would “restrict the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens” and that “using the Latin script will alienate Russian citizens in Tatarstan from those in the whole federation.” In addition, Mikhail Mityukov, the Russian president’s representative to the court, claimed that “the use of the Latin script may result in ethnic and linguistic separation among the [Tatar] people” and “may create conditions for isolation of the Republic of Tatarstan within Russia” (RFE/RL October 12, 2004). Note that nearly all Tatars in Tatarstan are fluent and literate in Russian (and therefore literate in Cyrillic), making them able to communicate with Russian speakers elsewhere using both verbal and written channels. The ruling also affected other Russian minorities, such as Karelians, who write Karelian (a Finnic language variety spoken mostly in the Republic of Karelia) in a Latin-based alphabet; Karelians expressed solidarity with the Tatarstani reform and legal position.3 (See Sebba 2006 and Faller 2010 for more on the discourses of this debate and the republic and federal contexts.) Before the Tatar alphabet change was made illegal by federal legislation, the Tatarstani government put out a series of publications introducing the alphabet to both schoolchildren, for whom Tatar language study has been mandatory since 1994, and to the general public. Figure 8 shows the cover of a 2000 textbook for schoolchildren designed to teach literacy in the new alphabet (Wagizov and W¨alitova 2000) and the cover of an official publication introducing and justifying the new Tatar orthography and orthographic conventions (Tatarstan Respublikas¨ı Ministrlar Kabinet¨ı, 2000). Figure 9 shows the alphabet as presented in both publications. Official publications on and in Latinitsa have since ceased, and books, newspapers, magazines, television chirons and graphics, and public signage remain in Cyrillic. 3. For a detailed examination of early Soviet attempts to Russify Karelian at all levels of linguistic structure, including attempts to remove cases without parallels in Russian from the standardized form of literary Karelian, see Austin 1992.

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Figure 8. Left: Latin grafikas¨ı nigezend¨a a¨ lifba ‘The Latin-based alphabet’. Right: Tatar Teleneng Orfografi¨ase ‘The orthography of the Tatar language’.

The official justification for the new alphabet, as found in the Tatar version of the law ratifying it, was that it “more accurately represents the particular characteristics of the Tatar language,” and will allow “entry into the system of world communication” (Sh¨aymiyev 1999). The official publication put out by the Tatarstan Cabinet of Ministers also claims that “. . . over decades it has become clear that it [the Cyrillic alphabet] is unable to entirely and completely reflect the nature of the Tatar language. The greater public, scholars, writers, and educators have demonstrated the insufficiencies of the orthography of the Tatar Cyrillic-based alphabet” (Tatarstan Respublikas¨ı Ministrlar Kabinet¨ı 2000: 7). Although one of the stated aims of the alphabet change was to facilitate Tatar’s entry into “world communication,” in other words, the internet, it soon became clear to supporters of Latinitsa who were also internet users that this claim was not based on the realities of computer usage in the Russian Federation or in CIS countries where Tatar is spoken. The 1999 Latinitsa alphabet has eight letters not found in English, Spanish, French, or German, and five letters not found in Turkish. Therefore, new computer fonts would need to be devised for the new alphabet and disseminated widely, and these fonts would need to be easily accessed using standard keyboards, which

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Figure 9. The new Latinitsa Tatar alphabet, from Wagizov and Wälitova (2000).

generally have the Latin letters of the English alphabet or the Cyrillic letters of the Russian alphabet only. While a Latinitsa font was eventually developed, it was only after the script had been made illegal for state usage. At present this Latinitsa font, which reflects the officially ratified version of Latinitsa, is found on the internet mostly on larger websites that are central to Tatar cultural production, such as the online representations of newspapers and radio programs. On these websites the homepage is usually in Cyrillic and a reader will have to search for a button (usually small and marginally placed) that switches the display to a form of Latinitsa, often not the official version, and usually with a reduced amount of information available and titles and menus still displaying in Cyrillic only, as shown in figure 10. For years, de facto Tatar internet usage has been in the Latin letters available in standard ASCII text, even for Tatar speakers without competence in languages with a Latin-based orthography, and with a range of idiosyncratic solutions for transliterating Tatar-specific letters. Front vowels are represented in a variety of ways; for example, /æ/ is sometimes represented by ‘ae’, ‘A’, ‘a’’, and ‘a’, and most frequently with ‘e’, in which case /e/ and /æ/ are represented by the same letter. For example, the common postposition bel¨an ‘with’ may be found on websites and in e-mails as: ‘belaen,’ ‘belAn,’

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Figure 10. Part of a news page from August 2010, reached by selecting the LATiN tab at top. The menu, search button, and list of top 5 stories remain in Cyrillic.

‘bela’n,’ ‘belan,’ and ‘belen,’ which is the most frequent variant. Tatar internet users who are using the standard Russian Cyrillic alphabet make similar adaptations, but with consonantal ambiguities as well, e.g., ‘x’is used both for /x/ and /h/, ‘ж’ is used for both /Z/ and /dZ/, and ‘н’ is used for both /n/ and /N/. The Tatarstani government attempted to address the practical difficulties associated with using Latinitsa on the internet by introducing another Latinbased alphabet, this one designed to be compatible with standard keyboards and ASCII fonts. This script, officially called Inalif (from internet ‘internet’ and a¨ lifba ‘alphabet’, and officially subtitled “The alphabet of the Tatar language for use on the internet”), was introduced to the Tatar public in December 2003. The alphabet, along with justifications for its development, was presented on Tatarstan’s official web page, www.tatar.ru, a trilingual site (Tatar, Russian, and English) on which Tatar is written only in the Tatar Cyrillic font.4 The texts justifying Inalif note that neither the official Cyrillic or Latinitsa alphabets for Tatar are in wide usage online, which could be attributed to the “lack of diacritic symbols on a standard keyboard” (although nota bene that diacritics are in Latinitsa only; it is six actual letters from the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet that are missing from Russian Cyrillic keyboards). 4. The Tatar-language official website presentation of Inalif can be accessed at http://www.tatar.ru/?node id=2615. The Russian-language version, which is, interestingly, significantly longer, can be accessed at http://www.tatar.ru/ ?node id=2611. The English-language version, which was shortest of all and had no graphical representation of the alphabet, was available for several years, but was recently removed from the website.

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Figure 11. Official chart from www.tatar.ru showing correspondences between the 1999 Latin orthography (Column 1), Cyrillic (Column 2), and Inalif (Column 3).

The “resource group” appointed by officials attempted to come up with an alphabet that both used only standard keyboard characters and “adhered maximally” to the official Latinitsa alphabet ratified in 1999 – the result can be seen in figure 11. The graphical representation of Inalif shown in figure 11, published on multiple official websites, has several interesting features. Most entertaining is that it inadvertently demonstrates just how difficult it was at the time to access genuine Tatar Latinitsa fonts, as three of the letters shown in the first column, the Latinitsa column, are not in fact standard Latinitsa. Letter 5, the with a hook representing /tS/, letter 20, the with a tail representing /N/, and letter 29, the with an umlaut representing /y/ are all taken from a font that is not the standard Latinitsa font, as can be easily seen when compared to the official alphabet shown in figure 9 above. Another

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peculiar feature of the chart is that the heading for the Latinitsa column is written in Cyrillic rather than in Latinitsa, and that the alphbet is not called Latinitsa but rather Yangalif-2 (‘Яналиф-2’). In addition, the Tatar-specific velar nasal is represented not with theTatar Cyrillic < > but with the Russian Cyrillic alveolar nasal , the usual method for transliterating Tatar /N/ in Russian, but precisely the sort of Russian-oriented modification that the new alphabets were designed to avoid.5 By calling the alphabet Yangalif-2 in this chart, the authors appear to be alluding to historical precedent, and the fact that the Tatars once had a Latin-based alphabet, Yangalif, that was approved by the (ethnically Russian-dominated) Soviet government. The Inalif alphabet was widely disparaged by young Tatars on e-mail listserves and internet bulletin boards. The presentation and dissemination of Inalif appears to have had no effect on either personal or professional use of Latin-based alphabets for Tatar e-mails and websites: official sites are usually in Kirillitsa only (as mandated by law), and prominent news sites such as www.intertat.ru and www.azatliq.org, which used standard Turkish fonts for much of the 2000s, now have mixed scripts that use several conventions simultaneously, for example, non-standard for /ø/ and for /N/ but standard Latinitsa for /æ/.

3. Orthographic debates and nationalist semiotics Public debates on an alphabet shift as part of the post-Soviet transition began almost immediately after the declaration of sovereignty in 1990 and reached their peak in the late-mid-1990s. Generally, letters and articles in the Tatar-language press were in favor of orthographic reform. Reactions and editorials in the non-Tatar press, however, could be quite inflammatory; an early editorial, much quoted in the Western press digests of the time, stated, “Every second resident of Tatarstan is a Russian. And at the same time, two thirds of Russian Tatars live outside Tatarstan. In Moscow alone live 600,000. Did they think about these people . . . when preparing this ‘reform’? Interethnic conflicts often begin with language. And they end with a lot of blood. Are they really preparing this fate for us?” (Alimov and Iusin 1999).6 Note, 5. In other words, for readers unfamiliar with the alphabet name, the letters will appear to represent Yanalif rather than Yangalif. 6. Several Tatars of my acquaintance who were familiar with this editorial piece assessed it as insincere, and crafted or created by oppositional sources, who were believed to be not ethnically Tatar.

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once again, that essentially all Tatarphones in Tatarstan are also fluent and literate in Russian; however, bilingualism is asymmetrical, despite legislated Tatar-language study in schools, and the percent of ethnic Russian Tatarstan residents fluent in Tatar has risen only slightly from the late Soviet rate of one percent (Ravieau 1992). Discourse such as that found in this editorial does not make explicit the link between a change in one of the two alphabets used by bilingual Tatars and the (speculative) potentially devastating social effects upon monolingual Russians who barely interact with the Tatar language, and whose Cyrillic alphabet would remain entirely unchanged. Even so, among Tatars there was a general awareness of the symbolic nature and political sensitivity of the orthographic reform: a significant percentage of young people that I interviewed between 2000 and 2002 opted to skip all questions relating to the transition to the new alphabet (and these were usually the only questions that they skipped). As I have documented elsewhere, language “purity” is a major concern among the post-Soviet Tatar intelligentsia, where the implicit desired result of Tatar linguistic “purification” is the creation of a code that is maximally distinct from Russian. Some supporters of the transition to the new alphabet explicitly referred to language purity as part of their justifications: for example, one letter to the editor – given the title Latin a¨ lifbas¨ı telne cˇ istart¨ırm¨ı? ‘Will the Latin alphabet clean the language?’ – ends this way: “Unfortunately, over the years, the Russian alphabet as used has done great injury, without end, to the purity of the Tatar language. Because of the lack in this alphabet of four letters that are necessary to the Tatar language, our language continues to degenerate from year to year” (Galiyev 1998). Here we find the common language ideology that conflates sounds and letters, with the logical implication that to control the letters is to control the sounds. To be frank, it is not clear to which four letters Galiyev is referring: with the additional Tatar-specific six letters and the use of the hard sign (ъ) to denote post-velar consonants, there are not four Tatar phonemes lacking distinct orthographic representations. However, there are ways in which the Cyrillic alphabet is not particularly well suited for Tatar, and Kirillitsa has several problematic vocalic and consonant ambiguities. One is the use of to represent both /v/, found only in Russian borrowings, and /w/, found in Arabic borrowings, words of native stock, and early Russian borrowings – readers must be sensitive to an unfamiliar word’s provenance in order to understand how to correctly pronounce a . While it is only beginning readers or readers encountering new borrowings for the first time who have potential problems with the letter , the Cyrillic letters , , and can cause problems even for competent

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speakers. In Russian, the letters and represent /ja/ and /ju/, while can represent either [je] or [jo] (in primers, dictionaries and some texts, [jo] is represented by its “official” letter ). When used word-initially or post-vocalically, these letters represent a single phoneme, while after a consonant they represent both the palatalization of the consonant and the vowel. However, each of these three letters is used in Tatar Cyrillic word-initially and post-vocalically to represent vowels preceded by a glide, which in Tatar are phonetic sequences of two phonemes and not a single phoneme as in Russian. The new Tatar Cyrillic orthographic conventions could have followed those of Yangalif and represented sequences such as [ja] and [jæ] with two letters, a glide and a vowel, that is, for [ja] and for [jæ].7 Instead, the Russian Cyrillic functionality was carried over, and in Tatar the single letter is used for the sequence [ja], while represents [ju], and represents [je]. However, these letters actually do double duty, and represent both the front and back vowels in vowel pairs when preceded by a the glide, so that Cyrillic Tatar is used for both [ja] and [jæ], is used for both [je] and [j-i], and for both [ju] and [jy], and disambiguation for newly encountered words sometimes must be contextual. This use of a Cyrillic letter representing a single phoneme in Russian for a sequence of two Tatar phonemes, the second of which is variable, can cause confusion.This appears to be particularly true of the letter , which, again, is used to represent both Tatar [je] and [j-i], while in Russian it represents [je] (when used for the unrounded allophone) but never [j-i]. When typing in ASCII text on the internet, Tatars frequently transliterate the Tatar Cyrillic as , or , even when the letter is actually representing the back sequence [j-i]. For example, each year in late December and early January there are a flurry of “Happy New Year” e-mails and postings on websites; the Cyrillic Tatar for ‘Happy New Year’ is ‘я а ел белән’, phonetically [jaNa j-il bIlæn]. The most frequent transliteration is ‘yanga yel belen’, while the more “accurate” transliteration would be ‘yanga yil belen’(here is being used to represent [-i], while elsewhere in the same message it will be used to transliterate both [-i] and [i]). It appears that the mapping of the Russian Cyrillic letter into Tatar Cyrillic has led to a reinterpretation on some level of the Tatar phones represented by this letter.

7. The fact that sequences such as [ja] are not considered phonemic in Tatar can be seen in their lack of assignation of individual letters in Yangalif, a writing system developed in part by the All-Union Turcological Congress of 1926, which had the specific goal of accurate representation of the phonemes of Turkic languages.

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These inconsistencies and Russian-oriented misinterpretations of the spelling of certain words affect only a small percentage of the lexicon, although the cognitive effects of having merely phonetic sequences consistently represented as phonemic and front/back allophony rendered invisible when preceded by a glide (leading to confusion such as the / issue above) may be more significant and merits further study. In public debates on the (un)suitability of the Tatar-specific Cyrillic alphabet to “accurately represent the particular characteristics of the Tatar language” (again, the wording of the law ratifying Latinitsa), these real issues of orthographic interference are never addressed. Instead, discussions tend to be based on the conflation of sounds and letters and focus on Russian phonetic interference, phonetic interference that is unrelated to the Cyrillic-based issues discussed above, most saliently (for Tatars), the substitution of [x], found in both Tatar and Russian, for Tatar-specific [h]; the inability to pronounce Tatar-specific [γ ]; and the vocalic substitutions shown above in table 1.8 There is no question that the Cyrillic alphabet is better suited for writing Russian than Tatar, as one might expect, as it was designed to represent the phonemic systems of Slavic languages. However, it better represents Tatar phonemically than two of the previous writing systems, runes and the modified Arabic scripts, and genuine issues of orthographic ill-suitedness are not part of public discourse. Instead, these anti-Cyrillic complaints and the attempted move to a Latinbased alphabet can be seen as symbolic gestures that index anti-Russian and pro-Western stances. Although both supporters and opposition alike perceived the creation of the new Latinitsa alphabet as a statement of pan-Turkic solidarity, due in great part to the new alphabet’s resemblance to the standard Turkish alphabet, and as a move toward the West, based on its resemblance to the Latin-based alphabet of many European languages, it is important to note that the new alphabet is still Tatar-specific. Most notable are the letters chosen to represent Tatar’s front vowels. The high unrounded vowel pair is represented by an with a dot for the front version, and an without a dot for the back version; this is identical to Turkish orthography. However, while [u] and [y] are represented by and respectively (also identical to Turkish), the other front/back pairs are not distinguished by diacritics but rather with separate letters, letters originating in Yangalif and carried over into the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet. So instead of /, we find /, and instead of /, we 8. Examples of articles complaining about phonetic interference include Gall¨amov 1998, K¨arimi 1999, Mazhar 1996, anonymous 2000, and K¨arimullina 2001, the contents of which are summarized in Wertheim 2003b.

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find /. The chosen orthography can thus be read as a metonymic representative of political and cultural orientation: it states that while the Tatars are aligning themselves with Turkey and the West, they are still distinct from them; as a culture, as a political entity, as a nation. Yurchak (2000: 414), writing on the renaming of newly private businesses in 1990s Russia, notes that the process of renaming public space introduces a “particular new version of social reality” where the authors of the renaming “strive to impose themselves as the legitimate authors, owners, and masters of this reality.” In this way, the post-Soviet practice of renaming can be seen as parallel to the Tatar post-Soviet orthographic reform, where the new alphabet can be seen as not only reflecting a new social reality, where Tatars have more political control and greater sovereignty than in the Soviet era, but also as constructing that new social reality; it is a “linguistic innovation designed not only to reflect but also to initiate changes in the social world” (Yurchak 2000: 420). Some supporters of the orthographic reform were explicit in the preratification debate about its symbolic nature, and cultural and political components. Writing several years before the new alphabet was legally ratified, one author noted that “the majority ofTurkic-speaking peoples, takingTurkey as an example, long ago started moving to a Latin alphabet. This state has helped them move closer to the cultural richness of Europe, and to its political possibilities” (M¨ajitov 1996). Even more explicit are the statements in an article entitled M¨ost¨ak¨ıyl d¨au¨ l¨atk¨a u¨ z kh¨ar¨afl¨are ‘For an independent government, its own alphabet’; the author argues that the shift to a Latin alphabet will facilitate the schoolchildren’s study of the languages of Europe and America (thus implying that knowledge of these languages is desirable), and goes on to state, “[the] Latin [alphabet] will strengthen our government’s independence . . . For a sovereign government, a ‘sovereign’ alphabet too is necessary” (Mirs¨ayetov 1997). This article is shown in figure 12, where the symbolic nature of the author’s statements is further expressed in choice of orthography. The body of the article, containing the logical argument, is printed in standard, and thus easily readable, Cyrillic Tatar; the four-word headline, with its clear political statement, is written in a not-yet-standardized form of Latinitsa: the front [ø] of the first word is represented by rather than the to come in the standardized version; in addition, although perhaps difficult to see in this reproduction, in the original newspaper it is quite clear that the three umlauts in the article’s title have been drawn in by hand. Here the form of the statement is given priority over the content, as it seems plausible that those readers who have never studied a language with a Latin-based script may not take the time to puzzle out these words written in an unfamiliar alphabet, two of which are not even repeated in the text of the article.

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Figure 12. The article Möstäkïyl däülätkä üz khäräfläre ‘For an independent government, its own alphabet’ (Mirsäyetov 1997).

The Tatar post-Soviet orthographic reform, like the post-Soviet practice of renaming of businesses, uses two semiotic functions to produce “complex cultural meaning”: metaphor and metonymy (Yurchak 2000: 416). The new alphabet provides a metaphorical link to both Western languages and to Turkish by means of shared symbols (here, letters). This metaphorical link then becomes metonymic, and the new alphabet is thus “connected to a whole variety of ideas, identities, commodities and lifestyles” that are associated with the languages and societies with which it is metaphorically linked (ibid.: 416). These semiotic functions are used not only with the new Latin-based alphabet, but are also demonstrated by both the use of and interest in other alphabets historically used by Tatars (and their ancestors). The interest in and use of these various historical alphabets in present-day Tatarstan can be linked metaphorically and metonymically to an interest in the cultures, polities, and social realities associated with these alphabets. For example, research on and use of the runic alphabet is linked both with pan-Volga and pan-Turkic separatist sentiment and with theories of Tatar ethnogenesis that have either arisen or resurfaced in the post-Soviet era. There are at present three theories of Tatar ethnogenesis. The first is the “neo-Bulgarist” theory, where the Volga Tatars are posited to be the direct descendants of the Volga Bulgars. This was the official theory of ethnogenesis during the Soviet period, and some Tatars remain adherents of this theory to this day: it is posited that the neo-Bulgarist theory was used by the Soviet government to limit theoretical Tatar territorial claims to the area reigned over by Volga Bulgars in lieu of the significantly larger area conquered and ruled by Batu Khan (Graney 1999: 58). The second theory, which holds lim-

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ited sway, is that Tatars are the descendants of only the Kipchak-speaking Turks of the Volga Basin (the present-day Tatar language is a Kipchak language, while present-day Chuvash is believed to be the modern descendent of the language of the Volga Bulgars [Shnirelman 1996]). The third theory holds that Volga Tatars are a combination of Volga Bulgar Turks, Kipchak Turks, and Mongol Turks, and have ethnic, cultural, and religious continuity, albeit at different levels, with all three. These theories, found in tracts such as My – bolgary, a ne tatary ‘We are Bolgars, and not Tatars’ (Khalil 2000) and Tatar-T¨orki Etnogez¨ı ‘Tatar-Turkic Ethnogesis’ (Zakiyev 2000), written by a prominent Tatar linguist, are clearly attempts to use history to legitimate the Tatar presence in the Middle Volga region. Although these theories of ethnogenesis posit different origins for the Tatar people, what they have in common is both the distancing of the Tatars from straightforward identification with Mongolian invaders and attempts to show that Tatar habitation of the lands that are now part of the Russian Federation predates that of Russians. Runes, and fonts that resemble runic writing, are used to show the antiquity of the Tatar nation, and antiquity is seen as necessary to nationalist projects (Anderson 1987). The left image in figure 13 is a page of an article from the journal Miras (‘Heritage’) that is devoted to runic writing and the deciphering of ancient monuments in Tatarstan (Kurbatov 2000). The right image in figure 13, also taken from the journal Miras, shows the symbolic connection between runic writing and Tatar history: this is the title page that introduces the section of the journal devoted to Tatar history, and the rubric title, Борынгы бабаларыбыз тарихы Bor¨ıng¨ı babalar¨ıb¨ız tarikh¨ı ‘The history of our ancient grandfathers’, is written in a Cyrillic Tatar font that is designed to resemble runic writing. Even when runic writing is incomprehensible as orthography to presentday Tatar speakers, it is immediately recognizable to Tatars as a symbol of the Idel-Ural ‘Volga-Ural’ pan-Turkic separatist movement. For example, in the spring of 2001 one Tatar nationalist with whom I was acquainted, longassociated with the Idel-Ural movement, designed a fund-raising t-shirt to be sold to nationalistically oriented Tatar youth; the slogans on the shirt were written in both the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet and in the runic orthography, with an expectation that none of the t-shirt purchasers or wearers would be able to actually decipher the runes. Their presence, rather than the slogans they spelled out, indexed the Idel-Ural movement.9 9. I was only allowed a glimpse of this t-shirt as it was en route to the store where it was going to be reproduced, and was not allowed to purchase one, as it was “for Tatars, and Tatars only.”

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Figure 13. Left: excerpt from an article on runic writing (Kurbatov 2000). Right: Runestyle Tatar Cyrillic font (Miras 2000).

Arabic orthography, banned once the shift had been made to Yangalif (during which time Tatar books written in Arabic script would be confiscated and burned), is also used for its metaphorical and metonymic associations. Most Tatars are not literate in this script, sometimes known as iske tatar ‘old Tatar’; even so, in post-Soviet Tatarstan there have been two Tatar newspapers based in Kazan printed in Arabic script. The first, Iske Imlya ‘Old Orthography’, another name for the script, has a masthead partly written in Cyrillic that explains that it is a Gar¨ap grafikas¨ında tatar telend¨a gazeta ‘Tatar-language newspaper in an Arabic-based alphabet’, and the second, Iman ‘Belief’, is a religious newspaper that claims to have a circulation of 10,000.10 Figure 14 shows the top half of the front page of this newspaper, which is hand-calligraphed in its entirety (4 pages), while Iske Imlya is written in a computerized Arabic font with added Tatar-specific diacritics. 10. This number is extremely suspicious; Tatar Ile, by comparison, a reasonably popular paper and one that is published in an alphabet that is comprehensible to modern Tatars, only claims to have a circulation of 2000.

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Figure 14. The religious newspaper Iman ‘Belief’.

In work elsewhere, I have described young Tatar nationalists and cultural activists who choose the communication of ideological stance and affiliation over the communication of content, and speak Tatar even in situations where sociolinguistic conventions or a lack of Tatar competence on the part of their interlocutors would ordinarily require a switch to Russian. Like those young Tatars who perform Tatarness in part by refusing to speak Russian, the authors and publishers of these Arabic-script Tatar-language newspapers are also prioritizing the expression of stance over the more referential transmission of information. Although religious education and literacy in Arabic has been increasing in Tatarstan in the post-Soviet era, knowledge of the classical

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Arabic script does not automatically produce literacy in the iske tatar Arabic script, which has both Tatar-specific diacritics and orthographic ambiguities. I personally am acquainted with only one person who is capable of easily reading texts in this script, and she is a philologist who engages in historical research. The question then arises: who is the intended audience for these newspapers? The currently available readership is tiny, at best; this suggests that the very existence of a newspaper in Arabic script, published in distinction to the Cyrillic script that is nearly identical to that used for Russian, is more important than any of the information that is contained within the newspaper. It is an example of construction of “oppositional identity,” here linked to the opposition of feature clusters:Tatar-Muslim is contrasted with RussianChristian/atheist. Here, as with Tatar lexical reform (Wertheim 2003b), we see the selective targeting of linguistic purism, where non-native Russian is being rejected, but non-native Arabic influence embraced. This Arabic and Islamic influence is also embraced by the Tatar Social Club, a prominent Kazan-based club of young Tatar nationalists and Tatar cultural activists (cf. Wertheim 2003a) that periodically hosts talks by religious speakers as well as “Arabic friendship” evenings. The club’s interest in Middle Eastern countries and cultures is explicitly expressed in its name (“Tatar Social Club” is a pseudonym that I have chosen in order to protect the identity of club members), and the club logo is written in Arabic orthography. One club organizer in particular, who is also involved in the Kazan religious community, likes to make sure that this logo, printed on a piece of paper that is affixed to the wall during meetings, is visible in all group portraits taken at the club. Arabic orthography also plays a role in the reclamation and re-Tatarization of public space in Tatarstan. The de-Sovietization and re-nationalization of public spaces has been quite common throughout the former Soviet Union, especially during what Johnson and Forest (2002) deem the “critical juncture” for public monument and memorial sites, between 1991 and 1999, when cities such as Leningrad and Gorky returned to their pre-Soviet names, and many statues of Soviet-era leaders were removed or destroyed. Elsewhere in the Russian federation, most prominently in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, it was ethnic Russians engaging in the process of de-Sovietization and re-imagining the post-Soviet Russian state. In Tatarstan, however, the political elites during this critical juncture were ethnically Tatar, and the de-Sovietization of Tatarstan has meant a move towards making it a more Tatar state, even though due to Soviet-era border drawing and migration policies, ethnic Tatars make up only half the Republic’s population. Along with sovereignty came a new flag for the republic, a new state seal, and a new state anthem, all of which index Tatarness in some way – for example, using the

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color green, which directly indexes Islam and indirectly indexes Tatars. In addition, mandated bilingual signage means Tatar is now at least nominally present on every building fa¸cade (although recall from the example of the train station that this Tatar is sometimes rendered invisible through Russification of the alphabet and lexicon). The de-Sovietization and re-Tatarization of public space in Tatarstan has also included renaming streets, squares, and buildings for Tatar writers, artists, and political leaders and erecting public statues of prominent Tatar historical and cultural figures. The most prominent example of re-Tatarization of public space in Kazan has been the renaming of the main square in town after the prominent poet Gabdulla Tukay and the placement of a 10-foot tall clock in what is now the main meeting spot in Kazan – when people are arranging to meet up downtown, the usual suggestion is “Let’s meet at the clock.” The hours on the clock, shown in figure 15, are not marked with the usual Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3, etc. Instead, the hours are marked with the Tatar numbers from one to twelve (ber, ike, o¨ cˇ , etc.) spelled out in iske Tatar, the Arabic Tatar script, parallel to an English-language clock that marks the hours with the words one, two, three, etc.

Figure 15. Clock in Tukay Square.

This can once again be read as prioritizing indexicality over referential content, as 1) approximately 75 percent of the population of Kazan have littleto-no Tatar-language competence, and 2) only a handful of those people who are literate in Tatar are able to read Tatar in the Arabic script. However, due to people’s familiarity with clock faces and their ability to read the time on an analog timepiece using spatial relations alone and without reference to

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numbers (cf. the nearly marking-free faces of some high-design watches), no communicative efficacy in terms of time telling is actually sacrificed by spelling out the numbers in what is an essentially unreadable script. The iske Tatar numbers, along with the similarly unreadable brief poem welcoming visitors to the city that circles the clock’s face, mark the square, and by implication the city, as a Tatar space.11

Figure 16. 2001 street sign in downtown Kazan.

New signs for Kazan streets, which started appearing in the downtown historical and business districts in 2001 and stopped being produced once the alphabet was made illegal, are also emblematic of the post-Soviet re-Tatarization of this historically Turkic city. In figure 16, we see a street sign, photographed in 2001, that simultaneously demonstrates several aspects of Tatarization. Not far from streets still named after the prominent Soviet personages Karl Marx and Felix Dzerzhinsky (founder of the precursor to the KGB) sits a narrow street, lined with historic buildings, that is now named for the early 20th century Tatar poet Qawi N¨adˇzmi – a statue of N¨adˇzmi’s fellow poet, friend, and wartime martyr Musa Dˇzalil was erected several blocks away, just outside the entrance of Kazan’s Kremlin. The promotion of Tatar over Russian here is visible in several ways, most literally with the Tatar version of the street name positioned above the Russian version. In addition, the building number and street sign both are Islamic/Tatar green rather than Russian (Soviet) red, and the street name itself is now ethnically Tatar, with three Tatar phonemes that will be problematic for Russian speakers: /q/, /w/, and /æ/. Unlike the nearly invisible (Cyrillic, loanword) Tatar atop the train station, here the use of the new Latinitsa alphabet makes the Tatar, and Tatar-specific phonemes, quite visible. Three of these phonemes are represented ambiguously in the 11. Note that the spelled-out numbers on the clock will be incomprehensible to visiting Arabic speakers as well, as they are neither Arabic numerals, nor Arabic words.

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ˇ Figure 17. Cistoj (Чистой) bälzäm.

Russian version of the name – if presented with only the Cyrillic Russian spelling, a Tatar speaker unfamiliar with this particular poet might pronounce his name [kavi nadZmi], but the Latinitsa Tatar text makes it clear that it is actually pronounced [qawi nædZmi]. Arabic script as a symbol of Tatarness is found not only in the linguistic marketplace, but also the actual marketplace. Figure 17 shows the label from a bottle of b¨alz¨am, a type of liqueur, manufactured by the (Russian-named) ˇ ˇ Cistopol’skij Likero-Vodoˇcnyj Zavod; the brand name of the liqueur, Cistoj ‘pure,’ is written in a Cyrillic font that is designed to look like Arabic. The word cˇ istoj is Russian, but the label is clearly signifying that the brand is owned by ethnic Tatars, and thus a brand to be purchased by those people who prefer to buy Tatar products – like the street sign above, the placement of the Tatar product description b¨alz¨am above the brand name and the Russian description below also signifies Tatar ownership.12 The bottle was presented to me by a friend who is a culturally active Tatar philologist, and was part of a parcel of symbolically Tatar food products given to me at the train station when I was departing from a fieldwork visit: other items included cˇ a¨ k-ˇca¨ k, known as the “Tatar national dessert,” and two kinds of tea packaged by a company called Teastan, a play on words that invokes both ‘tea’ (which is not tea but cˇ a¨ j in Tatar and cˇ aj in Russian) and ‘Tatarstan.’ My friend was well aware of the symbolic nature of the gifts 12. Language placement in business signage usually signifies ownership as well, with Tatar store-owners placing Tatar above or to the left of Russian, and Russian store owners placing Russian above or to the left of Tatar. (For an analysis of ‘geosemiotics,’ language in the material world, see Scollon and Scollon 2003.)

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and even apologized that one of the teas was more Bashkir-style than Tatarstyle. Many politically and culturally involved Tatars are aware of the ethnic provenance of the food products that they buy: one young nationalist, when giving me a tour of the supermarket by my new apartment, pointed out which ice cream brands were Tatar, and thus the ones that I should purchase; another brought me bottled water with a Tatar brand name to replace my bottle of Raifskij Istoˇcnik ‘The Source of Raifa,’ water that is associated with a local monastery and considered holy by Christians. “Tatars don’t drink that brand of water,” he told me, “you shouldn’t buy it.” By using a brand name in Russian with an Arabic-style script to signify that it is in fact a Tatar brand,13 the producers of the liqueur are aiming for a potential customer base that includes both Russians and Tatars, particularly Tatars who actively choose to purchase Tatar brands over competing Russian brands.14 The final example of the symbolic use of Arabic orthography to be presented here can be seen in figure 18, and is a piece of artwork drawn and lettered by N¨ajip N¨akkaˇs,15 a Tatar artist fluent in Tatar, Russian, and Arabic who has been instrumental in the return of Arabic calligraphy as an art form in post-Soviet Kazan – he was also the calligrapher for the edition of the newspaper Iman ‘Belief’ seen in figure 14. The original16 was displayed in a one-man show in the spring of 2001 in a gallery housed in a government building downtown; several government functionaries spoke at the show’s opening, including the Mufti of Tatarstan, and all but one of the ceremonial speeches were in Tatar. The works in the show included a variety of tugra, a calligraphic art form where the graphic is composed of the Arabic letters of a person’s name, sˇamail, which are decorative religious plaques used as both art and anti evil-eye protection (even by not-particularly-religious Tatars), and illustrated poems. The illustrated poem shown in figure 18 is Gabdulla Tukay’s I Tugan Tel – this is the Tukay for whom the downtown Kazan square with the Arabic-script clock has been renamed. This poem in song form is considered the unofficial Tatar anthem, and one that is omnipresent in the public Tatar discourse of purity that is the most prominent post-Soviet Tatar language ideology: not only is it the title of a monthly supplement in the newspaper M¨ad¨ani Jomga that is devoted to issues of language, but quotes 13. These semiotics may not be perceptible to Russian consumers. 14. B¨alz¨am is considered medicinal, and is not an alcohol product that is comparable with, say, beer or vodka. 15. The work that was scanned for figure 18 is a reproduction presented to me by the artist. 16. A nom de plume – n¨akkaˇs is an Arabic borrowing that means ‘artist’and ‘engraver.’

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Figure 18. Gabdulla Tukay’s poem I Tugan Tel, calligraphed and illustrated by Näjip Näkkaš.

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from the poem (particularly the first stanza) are used as headlines for articles on linguistic purism, and can be found in the texts of the articles as well – quoting the poem automatically illustrates the author’s respectful and positive attitude toward the Tatar language. In present-day Tatarstan, it is the ultimate symbol of the emotional and cultural value of Tatar as a mother tongue, and as such bears quoting in its entirety:17 I Tugan Tel I tugan tel, i matur tel, atk¨ ¨ am-¨ank¨amneng tele! D¨on”yada k¨up n¨ars¨a beldem sin tugan tel ark¨ıl¨ı. Ing elek bu tel bel¨an a¨ nk¨am biˇsekt¨a k¨oyl¨ag¨an, Annar¨ı t¨onn¨ar buy¨ı abl¨ ¨ am khik¨ayat s¨oyl¨ag¨an. I tugan tel, h¨arwak¨ıtta yard¨ameng bel¨an sineng, Keˇcken¨ad¨an anglaˇs¨ılgan sˇ atl¨ıg¨ım, kayg¨ım minem. I tugan tel! Sind¨a bulgan ing elek k¨ılgan dogam: Yarl¨ıkag¨ıl, dip, uzem ¨ h¨am a¨ tk¨am-¨ank¨amne, khodam. O Native Language O native language, o beautiful language, language of my dear father and mother! I learned much in the world through you, my native language. In the very beginning, with this language my dear mother sang lullabies, Later, in the evenings, my grandmother would tell fairy tales. O native language, your help is always with me, Since my youth I have known that you are my joy and my sorrow. O native language! It is in you that I made my first prayer: Forgive, I said, me and my dear father and mother, my lord.

The text of the poem in figure 18 is in the iske Tatar script, which is the orthography used by Tukay (1886–1913) at the turn of the last century, and is presented in its entirety as a central part of the graphical representation – the artist’s specialty is Arabic calligraphy. However, N¨akkaˇs seems to anticipate that the vast majority of his audience will not recognize the text of the poem, although they will possibly recognize the portrait of Tukay that sits above the text. The border of the poem, in lieu of a more traditional abstract or botanical graphical border, is devoted to excerpts from the poem in the Tatar Cyrillic script: the entire first stanza, the entire third stanza, and the first line of the last stanza. The text is so well known that it can be assumed that most of the audience can fill in the elided lines themselves. 17. The translation, which is mine, emphasizes lexical accuracy over poetics.

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In this work of art, N¨akkaˇs is using his Arabic calligraphic skills in an explicitly Tatar-specific way that is meant to be comprehensible to a general audience: his calligraphy is most often put to use in post-Soviet Tatarstan for classical Arabic words and religious texts, or for little-known art forms – the sˇ a¨ mail’s are religious, the tugra is an art form rarely encountered in Tatarstan, with its history and meaning usually explained in articles about N¨akkaˇs and his work (e.g., Kayumov 1998), and most of his other work is related to religious calendars and books. Here, however, theArabic calligraphy not only provides a fresh look at a poem that is ubiquitous to the point of triteness, but it also alludes to the pre-Revolutionary context of this poem, the era when this script was used; in particular, the 19th and early 20th centuries, generally considered to be the golden era of Tatar literary and cultural production. Words glorifying the Tatar language are raised to the level of art through the Arabic calligraphy, which also metaphorically links Arabic influence and the glory days of Tatar culture, before the Soviet-era Russification process began in earnest.

4. Conclusions Tatar orthographic changes and the use of historical orthographies in modern contexts are part of the complex process of imagining and building the postSoviet Tatar nation, a nation that is still struggling with Russian linguistic, cultural, and political domination. Language ideologies are understood to mediate social and linguistic structures (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994), and the Tatar orthographic changes of the last thousand years not only reflect changed social realities but also represent attempts to alter social structures. For most of the 20th century, these orthographic changes were outside of the control of the Tatar political and intellectual elite, who had been regionally dominant until the Soviet era. Consider literate Tatars born in 1910, who learned to read Tatar in Arabic script in primary school, had to learn the new Yangalif alphabet in their mid-teens, when the public circulation of Arabicscript books and newspapers ceased entirely, and then had to switch to yet another alphabet in their mid-twenties, an alphabet almost identical to that of Russian, the language of the central government that was deciding upon and enforcing the changes, a government regarded by many Tatars to this day as colonizers. This swift series of changes was surely another demonstration to early Soviet Tatars of how little control they had over their language and literacy. In addition, along with the move to Cyrillic came the Stalinist purging of the Tatar intelligentsia, the closing of many Tatar-language

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schools, newspapers, and publishing houses, and the accelerated retreat of the Tatar language from public functional domains. The move to the Cyrillic Tatar alphabet and orthographic conventions meant, to some extent, Tatar’s visual retreat as well, and, combined with the Russification of the lexicon, a significant decrease in visual and lexical linguistic distinctiveness. The Russian loanwords in the Tatar lexicon that are written in Cyrillic can make public Tatar barely visible or seem barely distinctive. Cyrillic orthographic conventions that transpose Russian letters such as and wholesale into Tatar can render Tatar-specific phones, such as front vowels, and Tatar-specific phonology, such as vowel harmony, ambiguous or invisible. These orthographic asymmetries represent a social reality in which Russian linguistic concerns are, to this day, privileged over Tatar ones. The post-Soviet context of the counter-hegemonic Tatar discourse of purity that is the most prominent local language ideology is one of increased Tatar political power and autonomy that is nonetheless situated in a centralized and (ethnically and linguistically) Russian-dominated Federation. Linguistic purism can be interpreted as an attempt to both revalorize and regain control of the Tatar language, which is seen as a part of a feature cluster that defines the boundaries of the Tatar people and as a metonymic representative of the Tatar nation. Purification is not only a response to the “impure” Tatar (grammatically incorrect, misspelled, mistranslated Tatar that may also have phonetic interference) that is omnipresent in urban Tatarstan; it is also working towards the establishment of a realm or style that is purely Tatar and thus a counterpart to the “pure” Russian realms that are guaranteed by the existence of Russian monolinguals in Tatarstan and elsewhere in the Russian Federation. In discourses on alphabets and nations, the Tatar language serves as a symbolic reified object that can be manipulated and, to a certain extent, controlled through orthography. Ideologies that conflate letters and sounds suggest that the “degeneration” of Tatar caused by phonetic interference from Russian can be combated through a change in graphic representation, particularly by using letters and symbols associated with languages such as English and Turkish, both high-prestige sources of linguistic and economic legitimacy. The modern use of historical alphabets, along with Cyrillic fonts that are designed to resemble these alphabets, allude to other types of legitimacy: runes and runic-style fonts for the antiquity, authenticity, and historical geographic presence of the Tatar people, and Arabic and Arabic-style fonts for past and present links to the broader Islamic world and a pre-Soviet era of Tatar prestige, pre-eminence, and respected cultural production. In addition, the new Latin-based orthography, both in official form, which has almost entirely disappeared, and in modified internet versions, indexes cul-

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tural, political, and economic alignment with bothTurkey and the West.These multiple scripts and their symbolic linkages suggest a type of translocality in nation-building practices and ideologies that is currently not accounted for in theories of nationalism: the construction of a communal identity for the postSoviet Tatar nation references both multiples times and multiple places. The attempted post-Soviet legitimation of a distinctly non-Russian orthography is one way to index the legitimacy of post-Soviet Tatar publics,18 and it is also a way reclaim both the value and functionality of the long-suppressed Tatar language. By examining the complex uses of orthographic indexicality and orthographic reform, we can better understand the multiple positionings and stances of Tatars engaged in the delicate process of sub-state nation-building in the precarious setting of the post-Soviet Russian Federation.

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Wagizov, S.G. and R.G. W¨alitova 2000 Latin grafikas¨ı nigezend¨a a¨ lifba [‘The Latin-based alphabet’]. Kazan: M¨agarif N¨ashriyat¨ı. Wertheim, Suzanne 2003a Linguistic purism, language shift and contact-induced change in Tatar. Ph.D. diss., Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley. Wertheim, Suzanne 2003b Language ideologies and the “purification” of post-Soviet Tatar. Ab Imperio 1. 347–369. Wertheim, Suzanne 2009 Tatar. In K. Versteegh (ed.), The encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics, Volume 4, 450–451. Amsterdam: Brill Academic Publishers. Woolard, Kathryn and Bambi Schieffelin 1994 Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23. 55–82. Yurchak, Alexei 2000 Privatize your name: Symbolic work in a post-Soviet linguistic market. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3). 406–434. Zakiyev, Mirfatikh Zakievich 2000 Tatar-T¨orki Etnogenezi [‘Tatar-Turkic Ethnogensis’]. Kazan.

Chapter 5 Hindi is perfect, Urdu is messy: The discourse of delegitimation of Urdu in India∗ Rizwan Ahmad 1. Introduction In this chapter, I study the linguistic construction of Hindu identity in the late 19th century in North India. I investigate the metalinguistic discourse on Hindi and Urdu that Hindu nationalists constructed to deligitimate Urdu as the official language of the courts of law and establish Hindi in its place. Blommaert (1999) calls such debates “language ideological debates,” where the structure and use of language constitute the central axis of discussion and dispute. As language ideological debates are produced and reproduced against the backdrop of sociopolitical conditions that involve struggles for power and social identities, I argue that the representation of Hindi as perfect and Urdu as defective entailed a process of sociolinguistic differentiation, which contributed to the construction of Hindu identity. The construction of Hindi and Devanagari as impeccable linguistic systems began in the second half of the 19th century and continued into the 20th century. The main venue for the production and dissemination of such an immaculate conception of Hindi was the Hindi movement, which was launched to install Hindi as the official language of courts of law by dislodging Urdu (King 1994). The movement started in response to Act 29 of 1837 by which the British colonial government replaced Persian with Urdu/Hindustani as the official language of the courts of law in the North West Provinces and parts of the Central Provinces of India.1 Persian had been the official language of India for more than six centuries, since the establishment of the Muslim Slave dynasty in the early 13th century. ∗ This is a revised version of the article “Scripting a new identity: the battle for Devanagari in 19th century India” published in 2008 in Journal of Pragmatics 40. 1163–1183. 1. The British used the term ‘Hindustani’ to refer to the Urdu language. Earlier names of Urdu also include Hindi, Hindavi, Rekhta, etc. See Faruqi (2001) for an account of the various names of Urdu at different points in time.

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The declaration of Urdu as the official language in 1837 sparked off a series of petitions and memoranda from Hindus to the British government, demanding the installation of Hindi written in the Devanagari script, displacing Urdu, written in the Persian script, as the language of law courts. The main argument was that the Persian script (and by implication the Urdu language) was defective in that anything written in it was susceptible to multiple readings, thus encouraging fraud and forgery. Hindu nationalists argued that the Devanagari script, by contrast, was perfect in all respects; it was a script, they asserted, that lent a word written in it to one and only one reading, thus avoiding any possible fraud. I refer to this socio-culturally informed conception of Hindi and Urdu by Hindu nationalists as Hindi language ideology. Although various aspects of the Urdu language and its speakers were targeted in the debate, in this chapter I focus only on the issue of script, because it was socially and politically very salient and a focal point of both public and intellectual debates of the 19th century. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 gives background information on Hindi and Urdu and their scripts. In section 3, I discuss the existing studies, the theoretical framework of this paper, and the empirical data. Section 4 provides the sociopolitical context of the Hindi language ideology. Section 5 presents an analysis of the data. Section 6 starts with a discussion on the outcome of the debate in terms of the reallocation of the indexical value of Urdu and Hindi and ends with a summary and conclusion.

2. Background on Hindi and Urdu Hindi is mainly spoken in India and is the official language of the country.2 Urdu is spoken both in India and Pakistan. Both Hindi and Urdu belong to the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. Linguists believe that Hindi and Urdu along with other new Indo-Aryan languages such as Bengali, Marathi, and Punjabi emerged from the middle Indo-Aryan phase by

2. According to the 2001 census of India, the numbers of speakers of Hindi and Urdu are 422,048,642 and 51,536,111 respectively, which is about 41 percent and 5 percent of the total population. It is important to note, however, that in the Indian census, Hindi is used as a cover term for several language varieties (Mallikarjun 2001). The figure for the Hindi speakers would drop significantly if the numbers of speakers of other language varieties were deducted from the total.

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about 1000 AD.3 Khari Boli, a dialect spoken in and around Delhi constitutes the dialectal base of both Hindi and Urdu and provides their common grammatical structure. Hindi and Urdu, however, orient to different sources for the coinage of technical words – Hindi draws exclusively upon Sanskrit, whereas Urdu depends on Persian andArabic in addition to English and native sources. Urdu has borrowed the phonemes /f/, /z/, /Z/, /x/, /Â/, and /q/ from Arabic and Persian.4 It has also borrowed several morphological affixes such as /-m´nd/, ‘having a quality,’ as in /hUn´rm´nd/ ‘possessing skill,’ and /ba-/ ‘with’ as in /bab´rk´t/ ‘with blessings,’ ‘blessed.’5 Urdu has also borrowed a large number of lexical items from Arabic and Persian, and therefore even in spoken registers, while many words and sentences could be similar in Urdu and Hindi, many are different (Russell 1996).6 Hindi is written in the Devanagari script – the script used to write Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hindus. In addition to Hindi, Devanagari is used to write other modern Indic languages such as Nepali, Marathi, and Bhojpuri. Devanagari is an example of an abugida writing system – a type of writing system which consists of symbols for both consonants and vowels.7 But unlike an alphabet system, for example English, where all vowels are marked, abugida does not represent one particular vowel – the most common vowel. In Sanskrit that vowel is schwa. So, in Hindi-Devanagari also, schwa is not written except word-initially. In all other places consonant graphemes are assumed to have an inherent schwa in them.8 Urdu employs a modified version of the Persian script, which itself is an adapted form of the Arabic script. The modifications involved creating graphemes for the native Indic phonemes such as voiceless aspirated and breathy stops, e.g., /ph /, /th /, /kh /, /bh /, /dh /, /gh /, etc. An important characteristic of the Persian script, and in fact the original Arabic script and all its derivatives, is that short vowels are often not written, although diacritics for 3. See Masica (1991) for the origin and development of modern Indo-Aryan languages. 4. The phoneme /Z/ however occurs only in a few literary words. 5. Symbols between slashes indicate phonemes or morphemes; symbols between < > indicate graphemes or letters. 6. Russell (1996) argues against the deep-seated view among sociolinguists in India that Urdu and Hindi are dialects of the same language written in different scripts. See also Ahmad (1997) for an empirical study of mutual intelligibility of Urdu and Hindi. 7. Amharic and other Ethiopic languages also use the abugida writing system. 8. See Robert D. King (2001) for a discussion of Devanagari and the issue of digraphia between Hindi and Urdu.

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them do exist. In Urdu these diacritics are called zabar, zer, and pesh, which represent schwa /´/, high front lax vowel /ı/, and high back lax vowel /U/ respectively. Although the optional nature of short vowels makes writing in Urdu fast, it does create the potential for some ambiguity. For example, the Urdu word < > consists only of the consonant graphemes

and ; the short vowel has not been marked, which means that it can be pronounced with a zabar, a schwa, as in [p´l], ‘moment,’ like the English word ‘dull,’ or with a zer, a high front vowel, as in / /, ‘to labor,’ as in the English word ‘hill,’ or with a pesh, high back vowel, as in the English word ‘pull.’ Another characteristic of the Persian script is that many graphemes have the same basic shape differentiated either by the number of dots or their position above or below a grapheme. For example, the graphemes < >, , and < >

share the same basic shape but are differentiated by the number of dots. The grapheme has one dot, whereas

has three dots underneath it. Although in print, these graphemes are not confusing, in non-careful handwriting, dots may not always be placed in the right place, which may create some confusion. This chapter will not go into the technical advantages or disadvantages of the Devanagari and the Urdu scripts, because no script is perfect in terms of representing speech in writing. Furthermore, a discussion of script in an essentialized fashion is not very helpful, because it is not difficult to find defects in any script. In India itself, protagonists of the Dalit movement, led by lower caste Hindus, in their diatribe against Brahmins and the Sanskrit language, point out a large number of defects in the Devanagari script (Ahmad and Samant 2006). So what this chapter shows instead is how certain features of the Urdu script were exploited by Hindu nationalists for the purpose of creating linguistic and social distinctions, which went into the construction of Hindu identity. In other words, I show the ways in which Hindu nationalists essentialized the Urdu script by focusing on the technical features of the script in a contextual vacuum and completely ignored how it actually works in real life. It is, however, worth mentioning that the potential ambiguity of the Urdu script discussed above could happen only if words occur in isolation – stripped of all linguistic and discourse contexts. Furthermore, Urdu speakers and writers mark short vowels in places where contexts are not easily available or the omission is likely to lead to confusion. For example, if the word, < > were to occur in an elementary schoolbook, the appropriate vowel would be supplied; if the intended meaning was ‘bridge’ a pesh, a diacritic for the high back vowel would be placed above the consonant grapheme

< >.

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3. Theoretical framework There are two bodies of research on Hindi and Urdu that are relevant for this study – studies by historians and political scientists, and those by sociolinguists. The first body of research examines the role of Hindi and Urdu in the construction of Hindu and Muslim nationalisms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g., Dasgupta 1970; Brass 1974; Robinson 1974; Van der Veer 1994; Dalmia 1997; Zavos 2000). In these studies, language is treated as a symbol of political allegiance. As these studies focus on the macrosocial structures such as nationalism, language in these studies is considered to be an auxiliary factor in the rise of religion-based nationalisms. The second body of research consists of studies carried out by sociolinguists (e.g., King 1994; Hasnain and Rajyashree 2004; Agnihotri 2007). Sociolinguistic studies on Urdu and Hindi are theoretically positioned within the sociology of language approach. Although these studies help understand the symbolic role of language in the expression of macrosocial identities such as nationalism, they say little about how people employ language and discourse as a resource to construct and display social identities. The formation and expression of ethnic or religious identity are not confined to macrosocial categories such as nationalism; ethnicity is a social resource that people use at other more concrete levels of social organization. Fenton (1999: 13) argues that “[w]e can observe ethnicity in macro-social formations, in the intermediate meso-structures of social institutions, and in the face-to-face exchanges of micro-social life.” In fact, sociolinguists argue that there is a dialectical relationship between the micro and the macro; the macrosocial structures are constituted through practices at microsocial levels. And social and linguistic practices at the microlevel are informed and influenced by macrosocial forces. Recent approaches to language and identity view discourse as acts through which people make sense of the world around them; speakers are seen as active agents who participate in the construction of social realities. This approach, known in the literature as social constructionism, has assumed a central position in recent work in sociolinguistics. Discourse in this perspective is treated as a form of social practice, which constitutes social realities including social relations (e.g., Fairclough 1992; van Dijk 1997; Bucholtz and Hall 2005). This study is theoretically anchored in a language ideology framework. Language debates are rich sites for the study of the role of language in the construction of social identities, because they often constitute an explicit articulation of language, its structure, its use, and more importantly, its so-

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cial and cultural values. They are also rooted in the broader sociopolitical conditions and are often constructed by people in response to certain sociolinguistic situations. Moreover, the formulation and articulation of language ideologies can also be seen as a form of practice that shapes and is shaped by broader developments in society. Blommaert (1999: 7) argues that “[p]ower (including the (re)production of ideology) must be identified as a form of practice, historically contingent and socially embedded.” A language ideology framework therefore is able to demonstrate how larger sociopolitical structures are enacted through (meta)linguistic discourse.

3.1.

Language ideology

Language ideology refers to common-sense ideas that speakers have about the structure and use of their language. Silverstein defines it as “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use” (1979: 193). Language ideology is seen as a nexus between linguistic forms and social structure. Woolard and Schieffelin (1994: 55–56) emphasize this relationship by noting that “ideologies of language are significant for social as well as linguistic analyses because they are not only about language. Rather, such ideologies envision and enact links of language to group and personal identity, to aesthetics, to morality, and to epistemology.” Several studies (e.g., Silverstein 1985; Kulick 1998; Kroskrity 2000; Irvine and Gal 2000) show that language ideology is a useful framework for understanding language change, language differentiation, and language maintenance and shift. I draw upon Irvine and Gal (2000) as a theoretical model for this study. Their model focuses on the process of linguistic differentiation and shows how people’s ideologies affect the perception and interpretation of linguistic differences, which are used to construct, enact, and imagine social identities. According to Irvine and Gal’s model, language ideology works through three semiotic processes of iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure. These processes provide participants and observers with a framework for understanding and interpreting linguistic differences. Irvine and Gal define iconization as “a transformation of the sign relationship between linguistic features (or varieties) and the social images with which they are linked” (2000: 37). They define fractal recursivity as “the projection of an opposition, salient at some level of relationship, onto some other level. For example, intra-group oppositions might be projected outward onto intergroup rela-

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tions, or vice versa” (2000: 38). Erasure is defined as “the process by which ideology, in simplifying the sociolinguistic field, renders some persons or activities (or sociolinguistic phenomena) invisible” (2000: 38). I return to these semiotic processes in greater detail in section 5 and provide some examples of them.

3.2.

Data

This study is based on an analysis of two memoranda submitted to the British – one by Babu Shiva Prasad (1823–1895) (also known as Raja Shiva Prasad), an inspector in the Education Department, in1868, under the title “Court Characters in the Upper Provinces of India” (henceforth CCUP). The second memorandum was submitted in 1897 by a group of prominent Hindus under the title “Court Characters and Primary Education in the N-W Provinces & Oudh” (henceforth CCPE). As is clear from their titles, both documents focus on the issue of script. The CCUP was written by one individual. It is fairly brief, seven pages in all. The CCPE, however, is the result of a collaborative project. It is a fairly large document consisting of 165 pages, which includes a 100-page appendix and rich footnotes. The appendix reproduces some of the old arguments that were presented in support of Hindi. For example, it refers to and quotes from Shiva Prasad’s 1868 memorandum. It also reproduces relevant parts of testimonials of people such as Harishchandra before the Education Commission of 1882. Both memoranda were published in English. Copies of these documents were obtained from the British Library and the US Library of Congress. In addition to these primary documents, I also examine some articles and reports published in the local language newspapers of the North West Provinces. Although the original newspapers have not survived, reports on them prepared by civil servants for private circulation among administrative officials are available in the National Archives of India. They were published under the title “Selections from the Vernacular News Papers” (henceforth SVNP). These reports were prepared for all the provinces of India; for this research, I study those of the NWP, Oudh, and the Central Provinces, where the battle for Devanagari was being fought. The SVNP contains reports on social and political issues that appeared in local newspapers, which the civil servants thought were crucial for the government.9 The document is very well organized; it gives a list of the newspapers that the officer studied in preparing 9. I believe the officers themselves translated the reports from vernacular newspapers into English.

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the report. The list often contains the name of the publisher, the language of the newspaper, the place of publication, etc. It also mentions the dates of their publication and the dates when the newspapers were received. These reports are quite extensive in their coverage of social, political, economic, and cultural issues. Often they are classified in terms of subject matters such as education, law and order, politics, and foreign policy. The CCPE does not attribute authorship, but historians believe that it was compiled and published under the supervision of Madan Mohan Malviya (1861–1946), a prominent Hindu nationalist and a lawyer by profession (Dalmia 1997: 176). The main argument of the document is that the replacement of Persian with Urdu in 1837, as the language of courts of law, by the British was a grave mistake, because the language of the people of India had been Hindi since the Muslim invasion.10 In addition to claiming the historical superiority of Hindi, the authors of CCPE also argued that Urdu written in the Persian script is not comprehensible to people, because of the excessive use of Persian loanwords and due to inherent defects in the Persian script. They believed that if Urdu was replaced with Hindi in the Devanagari script, people would be able to understand court documents better. They further argued that the most important reason for the introduction of Devanagari is that it would lead to improvement in literacy and primary education and overall progress of the people in North India.

4. Sociopolitical contexts of Hindi language ideology The second half of the 19th century was a volatile period in modern Indian history. It marks the beginning of a struggle for social and political assertions of the Indian people against the colonial state, and also of various castes and religious groups against one another. An understanding of these developments is crucial to the grasp of the production of the Hindi language ideology. The main sociopolitical development which embeds the Hindi language ideology and in which it is also simultaneously embedded is the beginning of the assertion of a unified Hindu community. Hinduism in the pre-modern period was not a monolithic religion, but an aggregate of several religious beliefs and sects. A monolithic Hindu identity began to develop in the later part of the 19th century (see, e.g., Jones 1976; Pandey 1990; Chatterjee 1993; Van der Veer 1994; Dalmia 1997; Zavos 2000; Bhatt 2001; Orsini 2002). This section briefly outlines the processes 10. The first Muslim invasion of the Indian subcontinent took place in 712 A.D.

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that contributed to the consolidation of Hindu identity, which was articulated through particular conceptions of Hindi and Urdu in the language ideological debate under discussion here. The following section draws heavily on Zavos (2000). Although several factors contributed to the unification of Hinduism, Zavos argues that the presence of a colonial state and its use of the discourse of “organization” as a cultural force was the most important factor. Through the discourse of organization, Zavos argues, the colonial state presented itself as an embodiment of modernity, and Indian society one of chaos and disorganization (2000: 14). The colonial state used this as a rationale for the necessity of continuing their rule. In response to this challenge, he reasons, the Indian people began to create social structures and institutions that exhibited organization. The beginning of the unification of Hinduism, according to Zavos, was part of the broader phenomenon and can be seen as an attempt to counter the colonial state’s hegemonic discourse of organization. According to Zavos, attempts to unify Hinduism in the 19th century can be grouped under two main ideological themes – reformism and orthodoxy. Reformists were primarily working in response to the internal problems of Hindu society, for example, the caste system, which posed a challenge to the unification of Hinduism. Reformists argued that the caste system could be reformed by reinterpreting Hindu religious texts. In line with this, Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, advocated a merit-based castesystem, in place of the traditional caste system that was based on birth. Zavos calls this approach a vertical restructuring of Hinduism.11 An example of this approach was also seen in efforts to “win back” low caste Hindus who were “lost” to Christianity because of the efforts of missionaries. The orthodox position, by contrast, was informed by the belief that all castes have an important role to play in the Hindu society and therefore deserve respect.12 Proponents of the orthodox position did not see any need for internal reform in Hinduism. They instead focused on the external, horizontal unification of Hinduism. Both approaches went on independently of each other for some time until the reformists realized that it was impossible to reform the caste system to unify Hinduism. The focus then shifted to the horizontal unification of Hinduism. The cow protection movement, which raged through North India in the late 19th century, manifests attempts at the horizontal unification of Hindus. 11. The Shuddhi or “purification” movement led by Arya Samajists aimed at bringing Christian and Muslim converts back to Hinduism. 12. Sanatan Dharma Sabhas represent a horizontal organization of Hinduism.

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Hindus began to see cow slaughter by Muslims as an act of aggression on the identity of Hinduism. They launched a series of attacks on Muslims in North India to prevent them from slaughtering cows on the occasion of the religious festival of qurbani in which cows, sheep, goats, etc. are sacrificed as a religious obligation.13 The cow thus emerged as an important symbol of the unification of Hinduism. Zavos argues that the movement provided a strong means for the horizontal unification of Hinduism (2000: 82). A more significant shift from the vertical to horizontal unification of Hinduism was seen in the following years. There was an attempt to create a political constituency of Hinduism to represent Hindu interests. Political unification was seen to override social divisions of castes among Hindus. These attempts at constructing a unified Hindu identity provide the backdrop against which the Hindi language ideology can be properly understood. In other words, the metalinguistic debates on Hindi and Urdu were discursive acts toward constituting a distinct Hindu identity.

5. Analysis In this section, I show the actual workings of the semiotic processes of iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure through an analysis of the Hindi language ideology. The section is divided into subsections on the basis of various themes that form parts of the larger Hindi language ideology. In the debate, these themes were not always clearly isolated from one another. They often overlap; for example the discourse of fthe oreignness of Urdu often intersects with that of morality. The division therefore does not imply any analytical separateness between them.

5.1.

Foreign vs. indigenous

In the debate over script, the Urdu script, and by implication the Urdu language, is presented as foreign, having links in Semitic languages and cultures. The fact that Urdu is Indo-Aryan in its origin and that it occupies indigenous sociolinguistic space is completely denied. This is important because although there were some uncertainties among linguists about the origin of Brahui, a language spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and its relationship 13. See Pandey (1990) for a detailed description of attacks on Muslim villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He points out that other pre-existing factors also fed into the cow protection movement.

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with other languages, the origin of Urdu and Hindi and its mutual relationship were not in dispute. In the debate, Hindi, in contrast to Urdu, is valorized as the speech par excellence of the native Aryans and thus the only legitimate symbol of Hindu nationality. Shiva Prasad reacting to the British policy of making Urdu the official language, remarks: I cannot see the wisdom of the policy which thrusts a Semitic element into the bosoms of Hindus and alienates them from their Aryan speech; not only speech, but all that is Aryan, because through speech ideas are formed, and through ideas the manners and customs. To read Persian is to become Persianized, all ideas become corrupt and our nationality is lost. Cursed be the day which saw the Muhammadans [Muslims] cross the Indus; all the evils which we find amongst us, we are indebted for to our “beloved brethren” the Muhammadans. (1868: 5, emphasis mine)

Shiva Prasad’s comments on the colonial language policy are loaded with specific understandings of the relationship between language and social identities. For him, the use of the Urdu language/script not only has social and moral consequences, but it can also impact people’s thought processes. On the social level, he argues, the use of Urdu encroaches upon the Aryan identity of Hindus; according to him, one cannot remain a true Aryan and at the same time use the Urdu language and script. This is an echo of the eighteenth century European ideology in which language and race were argued to be coterminous.14 But how does he apply the notion of foreignness to Urdu, given the undisputed linguistic fact that Urdu, like Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language? In other words, how does the use of Urdu “thrust a Semitic element into the bosoms of the Hindus”? Shiva Prasad provides an interesting, though convoluted, explanation. He argues that Urdu written in the Persian script is “semi-Persian,” because of Persian loanwords, and that “the Persian of our day is half-Arabic,” because of Arabic loanwords, so Urdu is Semitic in its essence (CCPE 1897, Appendix: 73). Notice how Shiva Prasad selectively chooses to define Urdu in terms of its borrowed vocabulary, which is quite small compared to the native Indic vocabulary, rather than the linguistic structure that Urdu shares with Hindi, which linguists believe to be the defining feature of a language. In terms of Irvine and Gal’s model this is an example of erasure; the shared linguistic history of Urdu and Hindi is being negated in order to construct Urdu as foreign. The use of Urdu, Shiva Prasad further argues, will lead to some moral degeneration in that people’s manners and customs will fall apart. 14. See Irvine and Gal (2000) for a discussion of how this ideology influenced the colonial project of linguistic mapping in West Africa.

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For him, Hindi iconically stands for civility and moral uprightness, whereas the Urdu language and script will destroy Hindus’ manners, customs, and tradition. The moral dimension of the ideological debate is discussed further in section 5.2 below. The process of “foreignization” of Urdu was a pervasive theme of the 19th century Hindi language ideology. Lexicographers, who are particularly interested in tracing the genealogy of words, could not be expected to sit on the fence. In fact, I argue that they shaped (and were also shaped by) ideologies of ordinary users of language, who became conscious of which words were “native” and which were not through their work. Mathura Prasada Misra, a 19th century lexicographer, in preface to his dictionary published in 1865 says: Like a child in the hour of need, it (the Hindi) must naturally resort to its parent – the Sanskrit – for help. By Sanskrit it must be fed and nourished. It needs no foreign aid.Yet we sometimes see foreign aid forced upon it. Arabic, Persian, and Urdu words and phrases are arrayed by its side in battalions to support . . . But its officious and unwelcome supporters forget that a nation which relies on mercenaries only walks on a quicksand, or leans on a broken staff. (CCPE 1897, Appendix: 39, emphasis original)

In his statement, Misra regards Sanskrit as the parent of Hindi, but not of Urdu. Very much like Shiva Prasad he treats Urdu words, along with Persian and Arabic words as “mercenaries,” “foreigners,” and “invaders.” This is a process of “othering” of the Urdu language and its speakers. In the last line above, Misra also makes it clear that Urdu cannot be a legitimate symbol of the Indian nation because “foreigners” cannot be accorded this privileged status. Implicit in the whole argument about the foreignness of Urdu is also the issue of authenticity; Hindi, by being indigenous to the people of India, has the authenticity required to be a valid symbol of the Indian nation. Urdu, by contrast, because of its “foreignness,” lacks the legitimacy to be so. The narrative of “foreignness” also finds its expression in literature produced in the late 19th century. King (1989, 1992) examines the representation of Hindi and Urdu in an allegorical play written by Pandit Gauri Datta in the latter half of the 19th century in which Persian, the language of Iran, is presented as the mother of Urdu. The construction of the Urdu script and language as “foreign” is interesting, because the Persian script from which it is adapted had been in India for about seven centuries. The Persian language and script arrived in India at the beginning of the 11th century when Mahmud of Ghazna (971–1030) founded the first Muslim empire in the Northwest of India. The decline of his rule was followed by the establishment of another Muslim dynasty known as the

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Delhi Sultanate (1192–1526), which ruled India until the arrival of yet another Muslim empire, the Mughals (1526–1857). They governed India until the arrival of the British, whose rule ended with the independence of India in 1947. Persian remained the official language during the entire Muslim rule. Rahman (2002: 124) notes, “[i]ndeed according to the details furnished by Abdul Ghani, Persian literature was well-established under the Ghaznavids, the Khiljis, and the Tughlaqs before Babur entered India in 1526.” Besides being the language of administration, Persian was also the language of literature, sciences, and arts. William Jones, who wrote in the 18th century, thought that the Persian language was “rich, melodious and elegant” and thus needed to be studied (Cohn 1985: 285). The presence of Persian in India implies the use of the Persian script, which later became the foundation for the creation of the Urdu script. So the Persian script, in some form, had been in use in India for several centuries before it began to be attacked for its defects during the 19th century language ideological debates. I therefore argue that the attack on the linguistic effectiveness of the Urdu script during the 19th century did not emanate from purely orthographic concerns; it actually manifests and at the same time constitutes a broader social struggle for the assertion of Hindu identity. In terms of Irvine and Gal’s theoretical model, the process of foreignization of Urdu is an example of iconization and erasure, whereby linguistic forms such as script and words are linked with social categories of foreignness. It is through the process of the iconization of Urdu with foreignness that Urdu is deligitimated and Hindi is legitimized as a language that deserves to be an official language of India.

5.2.

Fraudulent vs. honest

The process of iconization was not confined to treating the Urdu script and words as foreign; it also involved personifying the Urdu script as deceitful and treacherous. In the debate, the discourse of “forgery” was supported by two main types of argument; one of them was purely orthographic in nature. The focus of this line of argument was to show that the Urdu script lacked a perfect relationship between graphemes and phonemes. Hindus further argued that vowels in Urdu are not always marked, which lend Urdu words to multiple readings, which ultimately leads to immense confusion. The second line of argument was centered on the horrible social consequences that arose out of the alleged shortcomings in the script, in particular how the drawbacks

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impeded legal processes and often resulted in miscarriage of justice. I discuss the second argument separately in section 5.3 below. It was argued that the fraudulent character of the script and language stemmed from their orthographic shortcomings. Attempts were made to calculate mathematically the number of possible readings that a word or syllable written in the Urdu script could have. This “promiscuous” nature of the script was then held responsible for causing fraud and forgery. Raja Harishchandra, an important leader of the Hindi movement, observed: . . . make a mark like and suppose it to be the name of some village. If we take the first letter to be (b) it can be pronounced in eleven different ways; babar, bapar, batar, (with ) and battar (with ) basar, banar, bahr, bayar, ber, bair, bir; again, if we take the first letter to be (p), (s), (t), (t), (n), (h), or (y) it can be pronounced in 77 more different ways. If we change the vowel points of the first eight words given above, we will have 64 more words . . . Again if we will take the first letter to be (z) or (r) we get 304 more words . . . . If we change the last letter of the same word into (b) we can have a thousand new different pronunciations. May God save us from such letters!!! What wonders cannot be performed through their medium? Black can be changed into white and white into black. (CCPE 1897, Appendix: 98, emphasis mine)

Here, Harishchandra tries to discredit and delegitimate the Urdu script on the grounds that the one-syllable word has the possibility of being read in a thousand different ways. Of course, this is false; in fact, it cannot be true of any script in the world. Even in other writing systems where not all vowels are marked, for example Arabic, there are principles that determine what constitutes a possible or an impossible word. Moreover, there are other linguistic and extra-linguistic contextual clues that help in the correct identification of a written word. We know that no text is produced or consumed in a social or linguistic void. Readers do not understand a text by apprehending meanings of individual words, but rather by establishing a relationship between words in a text on the one hand and their relationship to our world knowledge on the other. Smith, who is a scholar of reading, remarks: All learning and comprehension is interpretation, understanding an event from its context (or putting the event into a context). All reading of print is interpretation, making sense of print.You don’t worry about specific letters or even words when you read, any more than you care particularly about headlights and tires, when you identify a car. The best strategy for determining the identity of meaning of an unfamiliar word is to work out what it is from context. (2004: 3; emphasis mine)

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Harishchandra then projects this alleged defect of the Urdu language and script onto Muslims. According to him, the script was like a weapon that Muslims used to plunder India. He argues that “[b]y the introduction of the Nagari character they would lose entirely the opportunity of plundering the world by reading one word for another and misconstruing the real sense of the contents” (in Sengupta 1994: 86). His argument shows that script and literacy practices are not merely a technological issue of representing spoken languages on paper; they are a socially situated phenomenon, loaded with issues of power and social identities.15 Using a metaphorical expression of “changing black into white and white into black,” Harishchandra further argues that the Urdu script is totally unreliable and untrustworthy. His appeal to God to save people from the Urdu script implies that the script poses some kind of a social or moral danger from which society needs to be rescued. In contrast to Harishchandra’s figurative characterization of the inherently mendacious nature of the Urdu script, many others were more straightforward and blunt in their disparagement of the Urdu script. The CCPE, in a discussion of the pros and cons of the Urdu and Hindi scripts, comments as follows: “What is written in Urdu is not read. There are many chances of fraud and forgery being committed in Urdu writing on account of various defects found in it; while it is not the case with Hindi Bhasha [language]” (1897: 95, emphasis mine). This line of argument denigrating the Urdu script was not new; it had already been presented about three decades earlier by Shiva Prasad. In his 1868 memorandum, Shiva Prasad characterizes the Urdu script in these terms: “Conceive the same letter or the little stroke ( ) to be read as ba bi bu pa pi pu ta ti tu Ta Ti Tu sa si su na ni nu ya yi and yu” (1868: 4). Shiva Prasad argues here that the symbol ( ), a common orthographic form used to represent some phonemes of Urdu, with additional diacritics, is capable of generating a multiplicity of readings. This unconstrained capacity of the script, he argues, renders it vulnerable to instances of fraud and forgery. Here, Shiva Prasad appears to be a forerunner in the construction of the fraud narrative, which was later quoted and re-quoted as a means of authenticating the discourse of the “defectiveness” of Urdu. Harishchandra and others who followed him seem to be building on this discourse and at the same time improvising upon it. It was not only the official memoranda that were engaged in the campaign belittling the Urdu script; the issue was a matter of intense debate among the ordinary people of North India, too. Therefore, the projection of the Urdu script as evil and liable to fraud and forgery is also commonly found in 15. See Street (1995) for an ideological model of literacy.

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newspaper reports of the time. In a report published in the newspaper Jagat Samachar of April 19, 1869, the writer responding favorably to a government plan to replace the Urdu script with Devanagari points out the “evils” inherent in the Urdu script. He argues as follows: All know the defects of the Oordoo[Urdu], and the advantages of the Nagree [Devanagari] character: how great is the evil, when it is considered that only the servants of the Court understand the papers of the Court, and even they are sometimes confused, owing to words being written one way, and read in another . . . But apart from this, each one writes in his own way, and how varied is the style of writing; while there is such mystery in the formation of the letters, that after they are written, the meaning of the words they form can be changed. (SVNP 1869: 199, emphasis mine)

This example, like the previous ones, starts with the technical defects of Urdu and concludes by describing the fraud and forgery that may result from them. However, there is another point worth noting about the ideology expressed here. The writer argues that the script is confusing not only to ordinary people, but even the trained specialists at the court are not sure about words written in it. Reading this, one gets an impression that the Urdu script is humanly impossible to learn, let alone perfect. I will return to this point in more detail in section 5.4 below. Secondly, the writer also claims that there is hardly anything in common between the writings of two individuals because “each one writes in his own way.” Moreover, the script is somehow so “mysterious,” the claim goes, that no one could figure out how the letters are formed. An inevitable consequence of this, the writer claims, is that the meaning of words is susceptible to manipulations, resulting ultimately in fraud and forgery.

5.3.

Biased vs. impartial

Another element of ideology found in the data related to the fraud and forgery discourse discussed above is that the Urdu script is a source and cause of injustice. One of the few arguments advanced in support of the Urdu script was that it could be written faster than Devanagari. The CCPE, accepting this as a positive feature of the Urdu script, however, asserts that the time saved in writing in the Urdu script is often offset by the time squandered in deciphering the correct reading. Moreover, in dealing with public matters, the larger issue of justice and impartiality should supersede any other considerations including the speed of writing:

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Any little saving of time that may possibly be effected in recording proceedings in shikasta16 [Urdu script], is more than counterbalanced by the time and labour lost later on in reading it, and the doubts and disputes that arise every now and again regarding the correctness of a reading. On the other hand, any little loss of time that may occur in writing the proceedings in Nagri, would be amply compensated by the ease and absolute freedom from doubt with which the Nagri record can be read ever afterwards. (1897: 21, emphasis mine)

The CCPE argues that the Nagari script, on the other hand, is absolutely easy to read and free from any possible misreading. The CCPE goes on to describe the ultimate benefit that the introduction of Devanagari will achieve: “Besides, the saving of public time is after all an end subordinate to the claims of justice and public convenience” (1897: 21, emphasis mine). By this argument, Urdu is declared to be an unsuitable script for a fair and just transaction of official business; the implication is that the only script that fulfills the goals of fairness and impartiality is Devanagari. Earlier examples of the evil consequences of the Urdu script came from the intellectual debate on its technical inefficiency. An article written in the newspaper Bharat Bandhu, published on June 15, 1883 provides a concrete example of how the Urdu script can cause injustice and bring misery to people. The writer shows that the Urdu script is responsible for inflicting financial loss on people. He refers to the execution of a court order in which justice was denied to the plaintiff because of the ambiguity caused by the Urdu script. The case involved the impounding of a farmer’s crop. But by mistake his neighbor’s crops were also impounded by the local administration. The aggrieved neighbor went to the court asking for the restoration of his crop, but the Urdu script came in the way of justice. The paper reports what happened: One of the neighbours submitted a petition to the court praying for the restoration of his pachis man pukhta gandum, i.e. 25 maunds of wheat by the standard weight. His claim was supported by evidence of his witnesses. When the judge sat to write his judgment, he read pachis man pukhta gandum as pachis man bejhar gandum i.e. 25 maunds of mixed corn and wheat and asked the petitioner’s pleader what it was. The pleader also misread it like the judge. The court rejected the petition on the ground that the petitioner referred to mixed corn and wheat in the petition, while his witnesses made no mention of mixed corn. The poor man had thus to suffer great loss. . . If the Hindi character were substituted in place of the Urdu character, no such misunderstanding 16. Shikasta is one of the hands in which Urdu used to be written. Other popular styles are Naskh, Nastaliq, etc.

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would ever arise and the people would be protected from loss. (SVNP 1883: 521, emphasis mine)

In the above example, the aggrieved person suffered financial loss because of the technical inferiority of the Urdu script, which could not make a distinction between whether the claim was about pure wheat or mixed corn and wheat. Notice that like Harishchandra’s argument above the Urdu script is portrayed as a source of danger and a social evil from which people need to be saved. The introduction of the Hindi character, the Devanagari script, in place of Urdu, it is argued, will automatically ensure fairness and justice to people. Here it is also important to note the process of metonymy through which the deceptive quality is transferred from the unscrupulous writers and readers to the script itself. The same newspaper, commenting on the report that the Government had issued a circular to district officers making a proposal regarding the Nagari script, noted: “The substitution of Hindi in place of Urdu as the court language would be a real boon to the country and protect the people from these inconveniences and frauds to which they are at present exposed” (SVNP 1883: 536, emphasis mine). The introduction of Devanagari, the newspaper claims, is a blessing for the people, because they will be saved from injustices caused by the Urdu script. The belief that the Urdu script was an impediment to the process of dispensing justice was a recurring theme in the metalinguistic discourse of the time. The CCPE presents numerous cases of legal disputes arising mainly out of the allegedly mistaken readings of names, places, etc. I mention only a few below to illustrate the point. The CCPE cites a memorial submitted by Dev Nagree Pracharni Sabha, The Society for the Promotion of Devanagari (Meerut) to the Education Commission17 in which the petitioners provided a number of arguments in favor of introducing Devanagari, including court cases where Urdu was either the reason for the miscarriage of justice or an impediment, at least, to a fair judicial transaction. The memorialists mention a report published in Vidya Parkashak, a monthly journal published from Lahore in which a judge could not decide whether the petitioner had purchased salt or bond, because the Urdu script could not distinguish between the two: When a man submitted a petition to the Sub-Judge’s Court at Amritsar, in ) which it was written that according to the account books ( 17. The Education Commission, also known after its chairperson W.W. Hunter, as the Hunter Commission was set up in 1882 to enquire into the status of primary education in India. It submitted its report in 1884; it did not make any recommendations on the issue of script.

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) was purchased. The Serishtadar read this phrase that according a bond ( ). The to the books salt was purchased ( petitioner exclaimed that bond and not salt was purchased by him. The Serishtadar appears to injure his case. The Subordinate Judge asked the Serishtadar ) and salt ( ) were and are written and about this who replied that bond ( read in Urdu in the same way. (CCPE 1897, Appendix: 95, emphasis mine)

The above examples not only show the process of iconization whereby the Urdu script is iconized as a symbol of dishonesty; they also illustrate how this ideology reduces the complexity of the whole judicial process to the single issue of script. It completely erases from discussion other social and political factors that contribute to or impede the dispensation of justice. Even the linguistic and discourse contexts in which words occur are totally ignored. Homographs and homophones do not lend themselves to multiple meanings, if presented in an appropriate sociolinguistic context. It is hard to believe that the words for ‘salt’ and ‘bond’ could not be distinguished in the legal document, even if one assumes that they were written in the same way, which they usually are not. In terms of Irvine and Gal’s theoretical model, this is an example par excellence of erasure. The iconization of Urdu as fraudulent and Hindi as virtuous also reverberated in some Hindi plays written in the 19th century. King (1989, 1992) discusses Pandit Gauri Datta’s play Devanagari aur Urdu ka svang arthat Devanagari aur Urdu ka ek natak (‘A play of Hindi and Urdu’) published in the 1880s, and Munshi Sohan Prasad’s play Hindi aur Urdu ki Larai (‘The fight of Hindi and Urdu’) in terms of their representation of Urdu as vice and Hindi as virtue. These plays are allegorical in nature and have Urdu and Hindi represented by Begum Urdu and Queen Devanagari. Queen Devanagari’s pleader argues: . . . [Queen Devanagari] teaches righteousness and removes falsehood, and that under her rule people could become merry, become wealthy, carry on their business, and learn wisdom. Bribery . . . would weep at the very sound of her name, and fabrication and fraud would disappear should she rule again. (King 1989: 180, emphasis mine)

Urdu, on the other hand, was represented as the following: This is my work—passion I’ll teach, Tasks of your household we’ll leave in the breach. We’ll be lovers and rakes, living for pleasure, Consorting with prostitutes, squandering our treasure . . . Lie to your betters and flatter each other Write down one thing and read out another. (King 1989: 181, emphasis mine)

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The narrative of Urdu as the language that encourages fraud resonates perfectly with Harishchandra’s statement on the fraudulent character of Urdu we have seen earlier. Here, there are additional layers of iconization, however. The Urdu language and script are held responsible for inculcating passion, as opposed to sublime love that Hindi/Devanagari represents. Urdu is also seen as responsible for destroying domestic life and as belonging to a dissolute section of society – prostitutes.

5.4.

Difficult vs. easy

Another element of ideology that recurs in these documents is the claim about the rapidity with which Hindi can be acquired by people interested in learning it. By contrast, the claim goes that even years of training are not sufficient to acquire the ability to read and write Urdu. As regards legibility, even the muharrirs,18 who are trained from their childhood to read and write the Shikasta [the Urdu script] as the means of earning their living, and who can, generally speaking, read it better than any other class of persons, are not rarely seen fumbling in courts over some word or phrase in almost every paper that they read. (CCPE 1897: 16)

The Urdu script is so difficult to learn, the CCPE argues, that it is not only the lower-level clerks at courts but also the higher-level judges and magistrates who have difficulty reading this script. The CCPE goes on to say, “It may well be doubted, if half the numbers of Native Judges and Magistrates of all grades, and legal practitioners, Mahomedan as well as Hindu, who belong to the courts of these provinces, can by themselves read the court papers with unfaultering ease and correctness” (CCPE 1897: 16, emphasis original). It appears from the statement that there is hardly anyone who can master the Urdu script and read it correctly. The ideology of the acquisitional ease of Hindi/Devanagari and the insurmountable difficulties in learning the Urdu language/script is also a major feature of the 19th century public discourse. The Muir Gazette of May 7, 1869 published an article in favor of adopting the Devanagari script. The writer, while echoing the same ideology, takes the discourse of the facility of Devanagari to an incredibly high level. To him, it takes only a few days to perfect the Devanagari script, whereas even years of work may not guarantee successful learning of the Urdu script. He notes, “there is no character 18. Muharrirs during the Mughal and early British rule functioned like scribes or clerk.

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so easy as Nagree, and a few days’ tuition will make one perfect in it; not so with Oordoo and Persian, which cannot be learned under many years” (SVNP 1869: 226, emphasis mine). The following statement quoted earlier in a different context, also provides an example of the respective difficulty and ease of Urdu and Hindi scripts. Writing in the newspaper Jagat Samachar of April 19, 1869, a writer argues: All know the defects of the Oordoo[Urdu], and the advantages of the Nagree character: how great is the evil, when it is considered that only the servants of the Court understand the papers of the Court, and even they are sometimes confused, owing to words being written one way, and read in another . . . Even gentlemen who have done the work of these Courts for twelve years or more are unable to read the Court papers. (SVNP 1869: 199, emphasis mine)

In this statement too, the writer argues that Urdu is not only difficult for ordinary people to learn, but even officers with years of experience in court cannot read Urdu documents properly.

5.5.

Messy vs. perfect

Reinforcing the ideology of the acquisitional ease of Hindi was the ideology of technical superiority of the Hindi script and inferiority of the Urdu script. The ideology holds that Devanagari is a completely phonological alphabet; each grapheme represents one and only one phoneme, and one phoneme is represented by one and only one grapheme. The relationship between graphemes and sounds that they represent is perfect. In fact, it is so perfect that one can read words even without knowing their meanings. The Urdu script by contrast is argued to lack this feature. The CCPE quotes an article published in the daily newspaper The Pioneer on July 10, 1873: . . . the Nagri alphabet is slowly written; but when once written it is as clear as print, and so definite that a sentence expressed in it can be read with faultless pronunciation by a person who has not the remotest idea of its meaning. Thus so far as alphabets are concerned, the question lies between immediate convenience on the one hand and, and permanence, and accuracy on the other. (Appendix: 43, emphasis mine)

The belief in the technical superiority of Devanagari as a piece of language ideology is also commonly found among ordinary people of North India. It is evidenced in articles, rejoinders, etc. published in local language newspapers. In an article published in the newspaper Chashm-i-Ilahi on February 16, 1871, the author presents arguments in support of the unsuitability of

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the Urdu script and concludes by saying, “The writer is further of opinion, and says it is generally admitted, that the Nagri character is more correctly written, more correctly pronounced, and more easily acquired – indeed in all respects superior to Persian” (SVNP 1871: 74–75, emphasis mine). Here the two ideologies of technological superiority and acquisitional rapidity have merged into one. The issue of script was considered important not only for the narrow confines of the law courts; it was argued to be vitally significant for the larger cause of education – in particular primary education. The issue of primary education and its relationship with script therefore is explored in the following section.

5.6.

Inhibiter vs. facilitator (of education)

In addition to constructing the Urdu script as technically inefficient and socially undesirable, the CCPE also claims that the use of Urdu was largely responsible for the poor quality of primary education in the NW Provinces and Oudh. It notes the following: “There are other considerations, however, which demand the restoration of the people’s tongue and character to their proper position. . . And those are the important interests of primary education and the general progress of the mass of the people inhabiting these provinces” (CCPE 1897: 22). Here, the CCPE argues that the success of primary education is contingent upon script. The authors of the CCPE provide a number of statistical tables in support of their claim. They give figures comparing the performance of students in primary schools from other states in India to show the success of primary education (or lack of it) in different states. They show that the number of students in primary school is extremely low in the NW Provinces and Oudh as compared to other states. According to them, the reason for this is given as follows: The comparative statement clearly shows the primary education has had a most healthy expansion in the Provinces of Bombay, Bengal and Madras. And in all those Provinces the vernaculars of the people are in use in courts. The Provinces where the progress of primary education has been poorest and most discouraging are the N-W.P. and Oudh and the Punjab. And these are the only Provinces in India where the vernaculars of the people are not recognised as the languages of the courts and public offices, and vernacular education is at a woful [sic] discount! (CCPE 1897: 35)

Although the argument above is couched in terms of language, the issue was primarily that of script, because the main demand of the memorandum

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was the introduction of the Devanagari script. The analysis reduces the reasons for the poor results of primary education to one single issue – that of script. Other social, political, economic, and pedagogical factors that impact primary education are totally erased from the analysis. Babu Shiva Prasad, Education Inspector, who has been quoted above, treads the same line of argument: Primary schools did not flourish much in the Punjab because Muhammadans there had Persian characters and Persian books introduced in them. The secret of the success of Bengal lies in that nutshell. There they have the same national characters for the courts, the mansions, the firms, the farms, the shops, the cities, and the villages. Use Hindi characters in the courts of North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and I am ready to undertake again, even in this my old age, the duties of an Inspector till I beat Bengal in the number of boys under instruction or else lose my pension. (CCPE 1897: 41, emphasis original)

This statement, like the previous one purporting to explain the backwardness of primary education, reveals the hegemony of the Hindi language ideology; through the process of erasure of other relevant factors, the ideology places the blame for the miserable failure of primary education entirely on the Urdu script. The simplification and reduction of such a complex phenomenon as primary education to the singular issue of script is an example of erasure. The strategy of erasure is adopted as a technique to dismiss other relevant factors from the analysis so that script emerges as the reason for the lack of success in primary education in the province.

6. Indexical meanings of Urdu and Hindi An important outcome of the language debate discussed above was that Urdu and Hindi began to index Muslim and Hindu identities respectively. Prior to the debate, neither the Urdu language nor the script was exclusively associated with any religious groups. Alam (1998) notes that during Akbar’s rule (1542–1605) the proclamation declaring Persian as the language of administration was issued by Todar Mal, a Hindu revenue minister. Todar Mal was not the only Hindu in the Mughal administration; in fact, as Alam points out, “a substantial part of the administration was carried out by the indigenous Hindu communities . . . They learnt Persian and joined these Iranians as clerks, scribes and secretaries (muharrir and munshis). Their achievement in the [Persian] language was soon to be extraordinary” (Alam 1998: 326). Alam further notes that the departments of accountancy, revenue, and draftsmanship were dominated largely by Hindus. In fact many Hindus

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such as Chandrabhan, Khwaja Tej Bhan, Sujan Rai, Anand Ram Mukhlis, and Bindraban Khushgo wrote books in Persian, which were included in the curriculum used by teachers at madrasas, traditional Islamic schools, where Muslim pupils received education. Hindus also contributed to other fields of knowledge. Alam notes: Certain fields hitherto unexplored or neglected found skilled investigators, chiefly Hindus. On the philological sciences the Hindus produced excellent works in the eighteenth century. Mir’at¯ ul Istilah¯ ofA¯nand Ram, ¯ Baha¯r-i‘Ajam of Tek¯ Chand ‘Bahar’ and Mustalahat¯-us-Shu’ar¯a of Siyalkoti Ma1‘Wa¯rasta’ are among the most exhaustive lexicons compiled in India. (1998: 328)

After the glory of Persian began to fade and Urdu grew in strength and prestige, Hindus and Muslims alike used it for literary purposes. It is impossible to list the names of all Hindu poets, writers, critics, and journalists who wrote in Urdu, because they are so many of them. It will suffice here to mention a Hindu writer, Ratneshwar Prasad Salik’s view on the Urdu language and its indexical meaning, “we have both together created a new language – the Urdu language – which was neither our language nor theirs. Urdu is the strongest foundation and the biggest symbol of the national unity. May this language live, so we both live!” (in Palvi 1982: 6; emphasis mine).19 His statement clearly demonstrates that neither the Urdu language nor the script was indexical of Muslim identity prior to the 19th century language ideological debates. Dalmia (1997: 159) asserts the absence of any indexical links between Urdu, Hindi and Muslim and Hindu identities in 19th century India. She remarks that “Urdu and Hindavi [Hindi] had little to do with the religion of the people who used it, or with script alone. If there was a divide, it was the urban-rural divide . . . ” Many writings provide further evidence. Joseph Garcin de Tassy, a 19th century French Indologist, in response to the demand for the recognition of Hindi as the language of law courts, says, “. . . Urdu is the language of cities. Hindi is used only in rural areas, and even in Hindi a lot of words of Arabic and Persian have become common. Ordinary people in cities speak Urdu, and Urdu is used in government offices” (de Tassy 1964: 27, emphasis mine). Similarly Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, a prominent Muslim leader of the time in his testimony to the Education Commission, argued in favor of retaining Urdu as the language of courts on the ground that it was the language of urban and educated people (Rai 2000). In fact Harishchandra 19. See Srivastav (1969), Dard (1972, 1974), and Palvi (1982) for a detailed discussion of Hindu writers of the Urdu language

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and Shiva Prasad whose ideologies I analyzed above, themselves knew Urdu and wrote extensively in it.20 The above discussion clearly demonstrates that, in the 19th century, the existing opposition of rurality and urbanity was recursively employed at the level of religion so that Hindi became indexical of Hindus and Urdu that of Muslims. This illustrates the semiotic process of fractal recursivity. However, the sociolinguistic fact that both Muslims and Hindus used Urdu or Hindi depending on their urban or rural affiliation does not square with Harishchandra’s ideology that Urdu is the language of only Muslims and not of Hindus. He therefore had to explain it away by arguing, “[i]t [Urdu] is the language of dancing girls and prostitutes. The depraved sons of wealthy Hindus and youths of substance [sic] and loose character, when in the society of harlots, concubines, and pimps speak Urdu . . . ” (Rai 2000: 42, emphasis mine). Here, Harishchandra dismisses the Hindu speakers of Urdu as simply “depraved sons of wealthy Hindus.” He does not stop at that; he in fact claims that even the depraved sons of Hindus speak Urdu only when “in the society of harlots, concubines, and pimps.” His claim is that real Hindus – Hindus of high moral character – do not speak Urdu, or they speak it in some debauched corner of society. This process of eliminating sociolinguistic facts that do not agree with the ideology is an example of the semiotic process of erasure. Shiva Prasad, in a similar vein, succinctly claims that “[t]hose who did not aspire or seek to gain the favor of the Muhammadans by becoming, if not altogether, half Muhammadanized, still valued Hindi works, left by Tulsidas, Surdas, Kabir . . . ” (CCPE 1897: 72, emphasis mine). Here again the goal is to explain away a painful sociolinguistic reality, quite derogatorily, by stating that only those Hindus, who in their lust for power had become half-Muslims, spoke Urdu. By implication, real Hindus of respectable moral character did not use Urdu. In sum, the above discussion shows that Hindi and Urdu were not indexical of Hindu and Muslim identities before the 19th century. They were indexical of the level of education or social class. Educated Hindus and Muslims both used Urdu; uneducated people regardless of their religious identity used regional dialects. The Hindi movement employed this existing opposition recursively at the level of religion, so that Hindi and Urdu began to index Hindu and Muslim identities, respectively.21 20. Sengupta (1994) shows the conflict in Harishchandra’s political ideology against Urdu and his personal love for it. 21. The indexicality of Hindi has become increasingly complex, particularly after the independence of India. Hindi has been adopted as a national official language by the Government of India. Hindi therefore also indexes a national identity.

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6.1.

Summary and conclusion

In this chapter, I have shown that language ideological debates provide useful data for the study of the discursive construction of social identities. Using a language ideology framework, I have argued that the processes of denigrating the Urdu language and script and valorizing the Hindi language and script were discursive acts aimed at the construction of Hindu identity. Although a significant portion of the debate appears to focus on orthographic aspects of Urdu and Hindi, I have shown that the debate was actually an attempt to envision and create a new sociolinguistic order in which Hindi and Urdu and their speakers would have radically different social and cultural values. I have demonstrated that the Hindi language ideology was realized through the semiotic processes of iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure. Language ideological debates are important for their social consequences, too. Blommaert (1999) discusses two types of language ideological debates – formative and inconsequential. The former bring about changes in the sociolinguistic space of the people involved in the debate. The latter simply fail, in that they do not alter the sociolinguistic situation, nor do they rework the power structure in the society. The Hindi language ideology falls into the first category. The immediate consequence of the debate was that the colonial government brought about an act in 1900, three years after the publication of the CCPE, which allowed the use of Devanagari in courts of law. The long-term outcome of the debate was that Urdu increasingly began to be seen as a language of Muslims. Consequently, Hindus began to gradually distance themselves from Urdu. Many Hindus writing in Urdu shifted to Hindi. Premchand (1880–1936), a prolific writer of the early 20th century, crossed over from the Urdu sociolinguistic space into Hindi during his lifetime. He, in fact, rewrote some of his earlier Urdu works in the Hindi language. The repositioning of the indexical value of Urdu also had an impact on the maintenance of Urdu among Hindus. Many Hindus who did excellent work in Urdu as poets, writers, critics, journalists, and playwrights in the first half of the 20th century found it socially inappropriate to transfer the Urdu language and script to their children. There are several living examples of Hindu authors of Urdu, born during the early 20th century, whose children do not know the language or the script. This further helped in strengthening the ideology that Urdu is the language of Muslims. Furthermore, the polarization of the sociolinguistic field became so intense in later years that the possession of the Urdu script became an act of declaring one’s religious identity. In separate fieldwork research that I

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conducted in 2006, a 75-year-old Hindu while narrating stories of the massacre of Muslims and Hindus that took place during the partition of India in 1947, told me that a Hindu resident of Old Delhi was killed by another fellow Hindu, because he was mistaken for being a Muslim. The reason for the confusion of the religious identity was that the victim was holding an Urdu language newspaper in his hands. The murderer, apparently taking cues from the distinct look of the Urdu script, concluded that the victim must be a Muslim. This incident demonstrates that languages and scripts not only index social identities in a metaphorical sense, but they may do so literally.

References Agnihotri, Rama K. 2007 Identity and multilinguality: the case of India. In Amy B.M. Tsui and James W. Tollefson (eds.), Language policy, culture, and identity in Asian contexts, 185–204. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ahmad, Rizwan 1997 News bulletins in Hindi and Urdu: a study in mutual comprehensibility. Master’s thesis, Department of Linguistic. University of Delhi. Ahmad, Rizwan and Sai Samant 2006 Ideology of change and change of ideology: shifting conceptions of Hindi. Paper presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 16, University of Limerick, Ireland, July 6–8. Alam, Muzaffar 1998 The pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal politics. ModernAsian Studies 32. 317–349. Blommaert, Jan 1999a The debate is open. In Jan Blommaert (ed.), Language ideological debates, 1–38. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Blommaert, Jan (ed.) 1999b Language ideological debates. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Brass, Paul 1974 Language, religion and politics in North India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall 2005 Identity and Interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7. 585–614.

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Census of India http://www.censusindia.gov.in/CensusData2001/ CensusDataOnline/Language/Statement1.htm (accessed 12 March 2010). Chatterjee, Partha 1993 The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Clyne, Paul R., William F. Hanks and Carol Hofbauer (eds.) 1979 The elements:A parasession of linguistic units and levels. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Cohn, Bernard S. 1985 The command of language and the language of command. In Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies IV, 276–329. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Court character and primary education in the N-W provinces & Oudh 1897 The Indian Press, Allahabad. Dalmia, Vasudha 1997 The nationalization of Hindu traditions: Bharatendu Harishchandra and nineteenth-century Banaras. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Dard, Jagdish Mehta 1972 Urdu ke Hindu sho’ara [‘Hindu Poets of Urdu’], vol. 1. New Delhi: Haqeeqat Bayani Weekly. Dard, Jagdish Mehta 1974 Urdu ke Hindu sho’ara [‘Hindu Poets of Urdu’], vol. 2. New Delhi: Haqeeqat Bayani Publishers. Dasgupta, Jyotindra 1970 Language conflict and national development: Group politics and national language policy in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fairclough, Norman 1992 Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Faruqi, Shamsurrahman 2001 Early Urdu literary culture and history. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fenton, Steve 1999 Ethnicity, racism, class, and culture. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Freitag Sandria B. (ed.) 1989 Culture and power in Banaras: Community, performance, and environment, 1800–1890. Berkeley: University of California Press. Guha, Ranajit (ed.) 1985 Subaltern Studies IV. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Hasnain, Imtiaz and K.S. Rajyashree 2004 Hindustani as an anxiety between Hindi-Urdu commitment. In Rajendra Singh (ed.), The yearbook of South Asian languages and linguistics, 247–265. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Irvine, Judith T. and Susan Gal 2000 Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language, 35–83. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Jones, Kenneth W. 1976 Arya Dharm: Hindu consciousness in 19th-century Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jones Kenneth W. (ed.) 1992 Religious controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Asian languages. Albany: State University of New York Press. King, Christopher R. 1989 Forging a new linguistic identity: the Hindi Movement in Banaras, 1868–1914. In Sandria B. Freitag (ed.), Culture and power in Banaras: Community, performance, and environment, 1800–1890, 179–202. Berkeley: University of California Press. King, Christopher R. 1992 Images of virtue and vice: the Hindi-Urdu controversy in two nineteenth-century Hindi plays. In Kenneth W. Jones (ed.), Religious controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Asian languages, 123–148. Albany: State University of New York Press. King, Christopher R. 1994 One language, two scripts: The Hindi movement in nineteenth century North India. Bombay: Oxford University Press. King, Robert D. 2001 The poisonous potency of script: Hindi and Urdu. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 150. 43–59. Kroskrity, Paul V. 2000a Language ideologies in the expression and representation of Arizona Tewa ethnic identity. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of Language, 329–359. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Kroskrity, Paul (ed.) 2000b Regimes of language. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Kulick, Don 1998 Anger, gender, language shift and the politics of revelation in a Papua New Guinean village. In Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory, 87–102. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Languages of India according to the 1991 census, vol. 1. Language in India. http://www.languageinindia.com/ nov2001 /1991Languages.html (accessed 10 July 2005).

Masica, Collin P. 1991 The Indo-Aryan languages. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mertz, Elizabeth and Richard J. Parmentier (eds.) 1985 Semiotic mediation. Orlando: Academic Press. Orsini, Francesca 2002 The Hindi public sphere. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Palvi, Ataullah 1982 Urdu ke Hindu masnavi nigar [‘Hindu writers of Urdu Masnavi’]. Gaya: Sa’dullah Palvi. Pandey, Gyanendra 1990 The construction of communalism in colonial North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Prasad, Babu Shiva 1868 Memorandum: Court characters in the upper provinces of India. Benares: Medical Hall Press. Rahman, Tariq 2002 Language, ideology and power: Language learning among the muslims of Pakistan and North India. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Rai, Alok 2000 Hindi nationalism. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Robinson, Francis 1974 Separatism among Indian muslims: The politics of the United Provinces’ muslims, 1860–1923. London: Cambridge University Press. Russell, Ralph 1996 Some notes on Hindi and Urdu. The Annual of Urdu Studies 11. 203–208. Schieffelin, Bambi B., Kathryn A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.) 1998 Language ideologies: Practice and theory. NewYork: Oxford University Press. Selections from the vernacular news papers in the NWP, Oudh and Central Provinces, 1869, 1871, 1883. Sengupta, Sagaree 1994 Krsna, the cruel beloved: Hariscandra and Urdu. The Annual of Urdu Studies 9. 82–102.

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Silverstein, Michael 1979 Language structure and linguistic ideology. In Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks and Carol Hofbauer (eds.), The elements: A parasession of linguistic units and levels, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Silverstein, Michael 1985 Language and the culture of gender: at the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology. In Elizabeth Mertz and Richard J. Parmentier (eds.), Semiotic mediation, 219–259. Orlando: Academic Press. Singh, Rajendra (ed.) 2004 The yearbook of South Asian languages and linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Smith, Frank 2004 Understanding reading. New Jersey: L. Erlbaum Associates. de Tassy, Garcin 1964 Maqalat-e-Garcin de Tassy [‘Essays of Garcin de Tassy’]. Trans. byYusuf Hussain Khan. Karachi, Pakistan:AnjumanTaraqqi Urdu. de Tassy, Garcin 1969 Urdu sha’iri ke irtiqa men Hindu sho’ara ka hissa [‘The contribution of Hindu poets to the development of Urdu poetry’]. Allahabad: Asrar Karimi Press. Tsui, Amy B.M. and James W. Tollefson (eds.) 2007 Language policy, culture, and identity in Asian contexts. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Van der Veer, Peter 1994 Religious nationalism: Hindus and muslims in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. van Dijk, Teun 1997a Introduction. In Teun van Dijk (ed.), The study of discourse: Discourse as structure and process, 1–34. California, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. van Dijk, Teun (ed.) 1997b The study of discourse: Discourse as structure and process. California, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Woolard, Kathryn and Bambi Schieffelin 1994 Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23. 55–82. Zavos, John 2000 The emergence of Hindu nationalism in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6 Spelling and identity in the Southern Netherlands (1750–1830) Rik Vosters, Gijsbert Rutten, Marijke van der Wal, and Wim Vandenbussche 1. Introduction At the reunification of the Low Countries in 1815, after more than two centuries of political separation, Northern and Southern varieties of Dutch once again came into renewed and intensified contact. The language area had been split since the Northern revolt against the Spanish regime at the end of the sixteenth century, after which the North entered its Golden Age as the independent Republic of the Seven United Provinces, while the Flemish South remained under foreign control, as part of the Spanish, Austrian, and French empires. The brief reunion under the crown of William I of Orange, commonly known as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–1830), gave rise to a number of remarkable language guidebooks aimed at native speakers of “Flemish” Southern Dutch, setting out to teach them “Hollandic” Northern Dutch.1 Given such publications, we might be tempted to look back upon Northern Hollandic and Southern Flemish as two distinct and mutually incomprehensible languages in 1815. However, while there must certainly have been communicative difficulties among users of different spoken varieties, the actual linguistic differences in written and printed texts are minimal. The main points of divergence between North and South in the early nineteenth century are minor orthographical issues, devoid of oral connotations. This chapter will examine these orthographical issues, situate them within the sociolinguistic landscape of early-nineteenth-century Flanders, and show how apparently insignificant differences were often portrayed as represent-

1. The most well-known example is Cannaert (1823). Moke (1823) also explicitly advertises itself as a Hollandic grammar to be used by Flemings. De Simpel (s.a. [1827]) is a detailed comparison of Northern and Southern language use, in defense of the former. Some Northern textbooks were adapted linguistically for Southern audiences (e.g., Delin and van de Gaer 1820).

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ing an unbridgeable linguistic gap between the Northern and Southern Low Countries.

2. Spelling, identity, and ideology Recent years have seen a growing body of literature dealing with sociolinguistic, discursive and ideological aspects of orthography.2 The focus of many studies has been on present-day issues of orthographic choice, with research traditions in the critical analysis of transcription practices, and the development of writing systems for previously unwritten languages in different parts of the world (cf. Jaffe 2000: 500). The aim of the present chapter is to broaden and diversify this body of research by focusing on a case study in historical sociolinguistics, testing how the basic assumption of spelling as a socially conditioned phenomenon can be applied to the situation of Dutch in Flanders in the early nineteenth century. Our approach in the present contribution will be fundamentally sociohistorical and sociocultural, not regarding orthography as value-neutral technology, but rather emphasizing issues of identity and iconicity3 (cf. Sebba 2007). We departed from an initial focus on orthographical standardization and variant reduction in Southern Dutch between 1750 and 1830 – however, along the lines of Milroy and Milroy (1985) and Milroy (2007), we will also attempt to foreground the workings of competing language ideologies with regard to linguistic standards. Our view of language ideology corresponds to that of Irvine (1989: 255), who defined it as “the cultural (or subcultural) system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests.” As was also pointed out by Woolard and Schieffelin (1994: 58), this outlook stresses ideology “as rooted in or responsive to the experience of a particular social position, . . . and it signals a commitment to . . . ask how essential meanings about language are socially produced as effective and powerful.” We will therefore be concerned not only with the way in which a dominant language ideology can “exert an influence on language attitudes and the way in which language structure and language use are thought of in the community” (Watts 2000: 33), but attempt 2. For instance, a 2000 special issue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics (4:4) about non-standard orthographic representations of non-standard language varieties. Pointers to more recent work can be found in the introduction to this issue (Jaffe 2000), as well as in Sebba’s (2007) monograph on spelling and society. 3. See section 5.2 below for a definition of this term.

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to describe sociolinguistic representations operating in various discursive zones, including actual linguistic practices, as sites which allow language users to negotiate social identities.4

3. An emerging Southern identity The second half of the eighteenth century sees a remarkable increase in the production of orthography guidebooks, grammars, and schoolbooks from the Southern Netherlands.5 Although these works have often been viewed as dispersed and not representing a uniform normative tradition, we have argued elsewhere that this is not the case (Rutten and Vosters 2010; Rutten and Vosters 2011; Vosters, Rutten and Vandenbussche forthcoming). Most of these works are concerned with similar topics, such as purism and the battle against loan words, but many are also oriented toward the field of education, and consequently deal with basic writing and spelling instruction. Nearly all of these authors seem to be aware of trends in the Northern normative tradition at the time, and based on a limited number of orthographical issues, they often construct a framework of Northern usage as divergent from Southern practices. While some authors, like van Boterdael (1785) and the anonymous scribe of the Snoeijmes manuscript,6 in theory confess to the “superior” Northern way of spelling, they follow the older Flemish spelling conventions throughout their own work – for instance, using ae rather than aa forms to represent long /a:/ vowels in closed syllables. Others, such as 4. Cf. Narvaja de Arnoux and del Valle (2010: 3): “Por tanto, para el estudio del desarrollo y funcionamiento de los reg´ımenes de normatividad es imprescindible identificar como objeto de an´alisis las representaciones socioling¨u´ısticas, es decir, aquellas que, por un lado, se refieren a objetos ling¨u´ısticos . . . y que, por otro, implican evaluaciones sociales de esos objetos y de los sujetos con los que son asociados. . . . Son m´ultiples, en efecto, no solo las formas que adoptan sino tambi´en las zonas discursivas donde se manifiestan las representaciones socioling¨u´ısticas: en los textos que regulan pol´ıtica y jur´ıdicamente el uso del lenguaje . . . , en los que definen los objetos ling¨u´ısticos (gram´aticas, diccionarios, libros de estilo) y en los que los tematizan (art´ıculos de opini´on sobre, por ejemplo, el uso correcto), . . . y en la propia praxis ling¨u´ıstica, entendida como acci´on en la que los interlocutores negocian sus identidades sociales.” 5. Verpoorten (1752), P.B. (1757), [Snoeijmes] (s.a. [1750s–1760s]), des Roches (s.a. [1761]), van Belleghem and Waterschoot (s.a. [1773]) Janssens (1775), St´even (1784), [Dendermonde] (1785), van Boterdael (1785), and Ballieu (1792). 6. Cf. Vosters and Rutten (forthcoming).

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P.B. (1757: 11), reject “Hollandic” prescriptions more radically, and clearly locate Northern aa spellings “outside of our language.”7 The differences mentioned are of minimal linguistic importance, and in addition to the ae/aa issue, other points of discussion included the orthographical representation of diphthongs (ey versus ei, uy versus ui), undotted y versus dotted ij, and the -n versus -ø spelling of the nominative singular masculine form of definite and indefinite articles (den and eenen as opposed to de and een), pronouns (onzen or onze), and adjectives (goeden or goede).8 It is important to note, however, that this discursive North–South opposition presupposed orthographical uniformity in Northern normative works on the presented issues9 – in reality, however, several influential authors such as Moonen (1706), Verwer (1707), ten Kate (1723) and van der Palm (1769) actually prescribed ae rather than aa,10 and also nominative n-articles have been attested in the Northern part of the language area during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Geerts 1966; Maljaars 1979; Rutten 2010). What we observe in eighteenth-century Flanders is a schematization of the discussion, where juxtaposed Northern and Southern spellings become increasingly symbolic markers for respectively Northern and Southern language identities. The widespread Flemish insistence on assumedly typical Southern spellings must be seen in the light of a larger but gradual articulation of “linguistic Southernness” during the second half of the eighteenth century, consolidating spellings such as ae, ey, y, and den as clear and fixed Southern choices (Rutten 2011). Various aspects of these regional identities based on orthographical choice will become even 7. The original reads: “Nota. de Hollanders gebruyken in sommige woˆorden, als daer, waer, naer, enz. in plaets van de e, noch eene a, en schryven aldus daar, waar, naar, enz. maer dat is buyten onze tael.” All translations are our own. 8. As the -forms are traditionally reserved for the accusitive case, this phenomenon was often called accusativism. In spoken dialectal variation, this can be seen as an issue of morphophonology rather than orthography, as nominative -forms appear in many Southern Dutch dialects in prevocalic positions or before , , , , , or (Goossens 2008: 137–147). However, all of the aforementioned eighteenth-century Flemish publications prescribe den-forms across the board, regardless of the actual presence of an /n/ in pronunciation (cf. Couvreur 1940). In this way, the issue is perceived as being detached from the actual morphophonological variation in the spoken vernacular, and enters the orthographical arena, where the debate becomes schematized around stereotypical Southern -spellings as opposed to Northern ø-forms. 9. We will further address this “myth of Northern uniformity” in section 7, as it plays an important role during the orthographical debates after 1815 as well. 10. Cf. van de Bilt (2009: 193).

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more salient in the early nineteenth century, particularly during the period of the reunification of the Low Countries.

4. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands The sociolinguistic landscape of Flanders underwent fairly radical change during the period of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. First of all, the role of Dutch vis-`a-vis French was strengthened, as the government implemented a far-reaching Dutchification policy for administration and judiciary: from 1823 onward, Dutch became the exclusive official language of Flemish public life.11 This not only stirred up ample language sociological controversy, especially among the francophone elite of the larger cities, but it also raised essential questions about the forms of Dutch to be used. The Northern provinces had an official norm for orthography and grammar: the works of Siegenbeek (1804) and Weiland (1805) had been sanctioned by the government for use in education and administration since the Batavian Republic (1795–1801). But the Southern provinces did not have any such official guidelines, and high government officials deemed it unnecessary to intervene in actual linguistic practices.12 This situation gave rise to extensive norm discussions among Dutchspeaking intellectuals, grammarians, and educators in Flanders. Theoretically, two extreme positions can be discerned. On the one hand, there was the so-called integrationist position to learn and take over Northern linguistic practices, without regard for Southern language conventions. This strategy was often related to the possible dominance of French in the Southern Netherlands, the idea being that a united Dutch language would serve as a better barrier against French than an emerging separate Flemish language could. Indeed, the linguistic distance between Northern Hollandic and the Southern language varieties was an oft-heard argument among the francophone opposition (Barafin 1815; Plasschaert 1817; Defrenne 1829). On the other hand, however, the particularist position took pride in the distinctiveness of 11. See de Jonghe (1967), van Goethem (1990), de Vroede (2002), and Vanhecke (2007) for more background on the policy and its implementation in Flanders. Cf. also Janssens and Steyaert (2008) for Wallonia. 12. For instance, A.R. Falck, Minister of Eduction, who wrote to his colleague van Maanen in 1822: “Overigens zoude ik van oordeel zijn dat vooralsnog geene verordeningen van gouvernementswege moeten plaats hebben ter verandering of wijziging, op hoog gezag, van het Vlaamsche taalgebruik” (Colenbrander 1915: VIII-2, 584–85).

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Flemish Dutch, presenting it as a separate language and rejecting the norms of Siegenbeek (1804) and Weiland (1805), as they were not based on the language of the South.13 Obviously, the distinction between both viewpoints is not always clear, and in reality, nearly all authors took up a more moderate position somewhere in between both ends of the continuum (Vosters 2009). What is clear, however, is that orthography played a crucial part in these broader debates about North-South integration, as we will see in more detail in the next sections. Agreeing with Schieffelin and Doucet (1998: 286) that “[l]anguage ideology often determines which linguistic features get selected for cultural attention and for social marking . . . [i]n countries where nationness . . . is being negotiated,” the following section sets out to explore different social, political, and religious aspects of orthographical choice during the period of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

5. Spelling in context In section 3, we discussed how a limited number of orthographical features developed into emerging markers of linguistic Southernness during the second half of the eighteenth century. After 1815, these features became even more salient, as the opposition between Northern and Southern Dutch became a central issue in language debates at the time. Minimal differences such as ae, ey, y, and den – as opposed to aa, ei, ij, and de according to the Siegenbeek (1804) norm – acquired pragmatic salience in the Southern provinces (Errington 1985; cf. also Hickey 2000). They do not represent direct pronunciation differences, but rather served as tools for indexing different social identities.

5.1.

Linguistic and extralinguistic difference

As emphasized by Jaffe (2000: 502–503), “[o]rthography selects, displays, and naturalizes linguistic difference, which is in turn used to legitimize and naturalize cultural and political boundaries . . . , [particularly] in cases where the autonomy and status of the language in question is contested.” In this way, toward the end of the 1820s, when the general protest against the government’s economic and religious policies vis-`a-vis the South grew, 13. Behaegel (s.a. [1825]: 16). However, cf. also Willems (1824: 2–3). The work of both authors is discussed in more detail in sections 5 and 6 below.

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particularist authors deliberately used Southern spellings to signal their detachment from the North. The case of the West-Flemish grammarian Pieter Behaegel is interesting in this respect. When he published the first volume of his Nederduytsche Spraekkunst in 1817, he still opted for ae-spellings, which were perceived as distinctly Southern. However, in the second and third edition of his grammar, published in episodes from 1820 onward, he made the switch to Siegenbeek’s (1804) aa, henceforth entitling his work Nederduytsche Spraakkunst, as a sign of his willingness to achieve a common orthography for North and South, for which both parties would need to make sacrifices (Behaegel s.a. [ca. 1829]: xxi). As this was no longer an option after Belgian independence, his work published after 1830 sees this change undone again, as can be seen from the title of his Verhandeling over de Vlaemsche Spelkunst (Behaegel 1837). A second remarkable example is the newspaper De Antwerpenaar (cf. Prims s.a.: 69–71). In 1827, an Antwerp-based bookseller asked permission to start a periodical with the said title, explicitly stating that it would use the Northern spelling, so as to signal its loyalty to the government. The plan was not a great success, and came to a swift end due to lack of funds. Less than a year later, however, the anti-Hollandic priest J.B. Buelens took over the idea, but turned the newspaper into a fierce oppositional weekly. The name continued to refer to the Flemish city and province where it was published and distributed, yet the spelling was changed into Den Antwerpenaer. The deliberate switch from aa to ae and de to den clearly signals the dissentient intentions of the editor. Yet not only particularists used spelling to signal political distance or closeness. Southerners aiming to please the government were more than eager to show their willingness to adopt the official Northern spelling norms, even if that orthography was not mandatory in the Flemish provinces. Literary and linguistic societies bloomed, especially among civil servants and people from the judiciary, and participants were stimulated to use and promote the Dutch language by reading and writing poetry, or by attending and giving regular lectures about linguistic topics. Not only did these selfproclaimed linguists strictly adhere to the norms of Siegenbeek (1804) and Weiland (1805), but they also did not hesitate to report extensively to the government in The Hague about their ardent zeal for the mother tongue. A well-known figure in these circles was the public prosecutor H.J. Schuermans. After he gave a public lecture about the linguistic superiority of the Northern orthography in 1822, he sent a transcript of the text to the Minister of Justice, and only shortly after, received a significant promotion to the post

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of deputy attorney general in Brussels.14 Also, just like the short-lived De Antwerpenaar in 1827, different newspapers explicitly opted for the Siegenbeek (1804) orthography in order to emphasize their political loyalty to the government.15

5.2.

Iconization and religious opposition

According to Irvine and Gal (2000: 37), iconization is a language-ideological process which “involves the transformation of the sign relationship between linguistic features (or varieties) and the social images with which they are linked. Linguistic features that index social groups or activities appear to be iconic representations of them, as if a linguistic feature somehow depicted or displayed a social group’s inherent nature or essence.”16 We have already seen how political positions could be indexed by spelling choices, but the iconic role of orthography was most apparent in the religious opposition of Catholic Southerners against the Protestant North. This had not played any significant role before the reunification of the Netherlands in 1815,17 but gained ever more importance toward the end of the 1820s, and became a central issue in the spelling debates during the early years of the Belgian state. A common argument centered around the supposedly typical Hollandic penchant for change, which had caused them to forsake the Catholic faith of their forefathers, and which had likewise caused them to abandon the purity of the original Dutch language. As Behaegel (s.a. [ca. 1829]: xvi) stated: “It must be that the radical shift in religion and thought, and the great appetite for change, which had captivated the Dutchmen since long, . . . eventually caused a great overhaul of the language among them.”18 Language change is thus related to a change in religion, and both are condemned. Catholic 14. The text of his lecture was sent to C. van Maanen in May 1822, and Schuermans was promoted in September 1822 (van Hille 1981: 245). For the transcript, see Colenbrander (1915: VIII-2, 576–580). 15. For instance, the Ghent-based Staat- en Letterkundig Dagblad of Johan Hendrik Lebrocquy, which appeared from 01.03.1820 until 29.08.1820. 16. Cf. Sebba’s (2007: 161) notion of iconicity, and Irvine’s (1989) indexicality. 17. Cf. for instance Tyd-Verdryf (1805–1806), a linguistic periodical by the WestFlemish particularist Vaelande, pseudonym of F.D. van Daele. 18. In the original: “Doch het kan niet anders zyn, of de omwenteling van godsdienst en gedachten, en de gro´ote zucht naar verandering, waar van de Hollanders re´eds lang zwanger gingen, . . . moesten eyndelyk by hun eene gro´ote vervorming der taale te weeg brengen.”

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Southerners rallied around Flemish spellings as symbols for their culture of old and considered Northern orthographical practices to be inherently reflective of the protestant heresy. One telling example concerns the spelling of /got/ ‘God,’ which was written as God according to Siegenbeek (1804), but still appeared as the more archaic Godt in the South. Petrus van Genabeth (1831: 72–73) recalls the story of a Northern teacher who encountered fierce resistance among Southern colleagues against spelling God without a final . It was argued, in fact, that this Hollandic God spelling, rather than Flemish Godt, allowed for a regular plural suffix to be added (Goden, as opposed to *Godten), while the one God was, of course, singular by nature.19 On these grounds, this ‘orthographical heresy’ of the North was rejected, until the ingenious teacher managed to convince his audience that a three-letter God should be accepted out of respect for the Holy Trinity. This incident might sound trivial or unbelievable to a modern observer, but other, less anecdotal instances confirm such delicate interweaving of spelling and religion. A good example can also be found in the Nieuwe Vlaemsche spraekkonst of the Southern Roman Catholic priest and grammarian F.L.N. Henckel (1815). When addressing the issue of the article den versus de for the nominative singular masculine case (cf. section 3 above), he expresses his rejection of the Northern ø-forms using the example of de Paus ‘the Pope’. As ø-forms in the South only appeared in the feminine of the nominative singular, Heckel (1815: 135) argued that the Northern spelling de Paus, instead of Southern den Paus, was blasphemous, as it “would attribute an unnatural gender to the Holy Father, causing disciples to stray.”20

6. The myth of Southern language decay Up until now, we have focused on social aspects of orthography during the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, looking at examples where spelling choices were used to mediate different political and religious identities. In 19. Similar discussions about the spelling of /got/ can already by found in Moonen (1706) and in Huydecoper (1730). In fact, the “no-plural” argument was originally put forward by Pieter Boddaert (1694–1760), while other justifications for Godt spellings also point at the symbolical value of a tetragrammaton (cf. deus, Gott, dieu, . . . ). See de Bonth (1998: 147–148). 20. In Dutch: “Niet de Paus, gelijk de Hollanders willen in den noemer van ’t enkelvoud; want volgens onze grondregels . . . zou men den Paus een oneigen geslacht toeschrijven, en den leerling leeren doolen.”

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the next part of this contribution (sections 6 and 7), we will shift our focus to the metalinguistic representation of orthographical differences in North and South, along with the actual differences in practice. We will discuss two “language myths”21 about early-nineteenth-century Dutch, showing how they operate in metalinguistic publications of the time (sections 6.1 and 7.1) and testing their validity in two exploratory corpus studies (sections 6.2 and 7.2).

6.1.

Discourses of linguistic inferiority

The first language myth concerns the idea of language decay in the Southern Netherlands. The lack of authoritative linguistic norms was often emphasized, which would have resulted in complete chaos in actual writing practices, thus rendering Southern Dutch unfit for use in official or formal situations. This caused a lot of anxiety when the government of William I decided to Dutchify Flemish public life – in the words of de Coninck van Outryve, the later Minister of Domestic Affairs: Flemish [Dutch] is only known in those provinces to such an extent that it can be used at home, for the day-to-day worries of life. . . . I hold the belief that the Dutch language should first and foremost be taught in these provinces, because that language is not known there; at least not in such a way, that it could be used by enlightened men for important discussions. (Colenbrander 1915: VIII-2, 422)22

Of course, lamentations about the state of the mother tongue were not new,23 nor were they typical for the Southern Low Countries, but they gained particular intensity after 1815, and responded specifically to the double opposition between Dutch and French, and between Northern and Southern varieties of Dutch, which characterized the linguistic situation in Flanders. The lin21. Cf. van der Horst (2004) for the specific myth of Southern linguistic decay. See also Watts (2000) for a more general approach to language myths in previous centuries. 22. In the 1817 original: “Men verstaat in die provinci¨en het Vlaamsch voor zooverre die taal in de huishoudelijke, in de gewone behoeften des levens te pas komt. . . . Ik ben van oordeel, dat men in de allereerste plaats in deze provinci¨en de Nederduitsche taal moet doen leeren, omdat men die taal daar niet kent, ten minste z´o´o niet kent, dat van dezelve door verlichte mannen in eenige belangrijke beraadslagingen gebruik kan worden gemaakt.” 23. Cf. for instance P.B. (1757: 3): “Try to read a hundred different . . . books, and you will find a hundred different spellings”. In Dutch: “[W]ant le´est honderd verscheyde schriften, zelfs boeken, gy zult honderd verscheyde spellingen vinden.”

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guistic downfall of Flemish Dutch was usually framed historically as a result of the political separation of the Low Countries at the end of the sixteenth century,24 and was always seen in relation to the dominance of French in the higher layers of Flemish society under Spanish, Austrian and French rule. In this way, the Flemish lawyer J.B. Cannaert (1823: 40–41) complained that most Southerners had never really learned the basic rules and principles of their mother tongue for lack of practice, as many had simply abandoned the language completely. Similarly, de Foere (1815: 44–45) and many others regretted “the detrimental influence of France” during the previous decades.25 Orthography played a central role in this image of Southern linguistic decay, and apart from complaints about French loan words, this decay was usually equated with orthographical chaos. Complaints centered on the absence of a fixed orthographical norm and the lack of consistency in actual writing. J.F. Willems (1824: 33–34) summarized the opinion of many, by stating that “it is said that . . . there is little to no uniformity and consistency in the writings of Flemings of our age.”26 He himself agreed that the situation was indeed chaotic, and also added that “the Flemish spelling has not been fixed to the level of a general Flemish standard by anyone up to the present” (Willems 1824: 34).27 Very similar viewpoints can be found in the aforementioned 1822 public lecture of Henri Schuermans.28 Not surprisingly, such arguments often appeared in integrationist discourses, serving clear rhetorical purposes: “By emphasizing that the South had no tradition of its own, no basis, no language culture, nothing, [integrationists] strength24. Cf. Gubin (1982: 331): “La coupure politique entraˆıne une e´ volution linguistique s´epar´ee au Nord et au Sud.Au Sud, les dialectes flamands subissent une d´ecadence de plus en plus marqu´ee, tandis qu’au Nord s’instaure une langue commune cultiv´ee. [L]’usage du latin comme langue savante et la mode croissante du fran¸cais limit`erent tr`es fortement le d´eveloppement d’un flamand commun cultiv´e.” This image pervades a large part of the historiographical literature of the twentieth century, and many similar accounts can be found. 25. In Dutch: “den hoogschaedelyken invloed van Frankryk.” 26. “Er bestaen, zegt men, geene Vlaemsche Spel- of Spraekkunsten van doorgaende gezag, en in de schriften der Vlamingen van onzen leeftyd kan men geene, athans zeer weinige, overeenkomst en stelselmatigheid aentreffen.” 27. “[D]e Vlaemsche spelling [is], tot heden toe, nog door niemand op vaste gronden van algemeenen Vlaemschen aerd gebracht”. 28. “[In onze zuidelijke provinci¨en] bevinden wij ons in de grootste verwarring en onzekerheid omtrent de zoogenaamde Vlaamsche spelling, daar wij geene gezaghebbende noch algemeen gevolgde spelling en spraakkunst in de zuidelijke provinci¨en voorhanden hebben” (Colenbrander 1915: VIII-2, 578).

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ened their argument in favor of a closer connection to Northern Dutch” (van der Horst 2004: 73).29 However, even authors who were much less in favor of the South surrendering to the Northern norms of Siegenbeek (1804) sketched a similar situation, using the supposed orthographical disorder as a justification for their own particularist linguistic endeavors. It is ironic to read Behaegel’s (1817: 250) complaint that “[t]here are, in our regions, almost as many ways of spelling, as there are people who worked on improving the spelling,”30 while he himself did not hesitate to publish three enormous volumes about orthography in slightly over ten years. Overall, these lamentations about the poor state of language and orthography in the Southern Low Countries all share a similar negative view on linguistic variation. Milroy (2007: 138–139) relates this to the standard language ideology: There is usually also a tradition of popular complaint about language, bewailing the low quality of general usage and claiming that the language is degenerating. This too contributes to keeping the standard ideology prominent in the public mind. In standard language cultures, the alternative to all this is too terrible to contemplate: it is believed that if these efforts at maintenance are neglected, the language will be subject to corruption and decay, and will ultimately disintegrate.

As became clear from the metalinguistic comments discussed earlier, this standard ideology was also prominent in early-nineteenth-century Flanders. After French lost its dominance in the written domain, the native Southern variety of Dutch was not considered to be a valid alternative for formal and written communication. Assumed variability in orthographical practices was seen as a major linguistic shortcoming, which caused a significant number of Southern intellectuals to turn their gaze toward Northern writing practices.

6.2.

Southern spelling in practice

In spite of the warnings of important figures such as de Coninck van Outryve (see section 6.1 above), William I carried through his plans to Dutchify public life in the Flemish provinces. In fact, recent research has shown that the 29. “Door te onderstrepen dat het zuiden zelf geheel geen traditie had, geen basis, geen taalcultuur, niks, versterkten zij hun argument pro aansluiting bij het noordelijke Nederlands.” 30. In the original: “Men ziet in onze landstre´eken bynae zoo veel wyzen van spellen; als er verscheydene perso´onen zyn, die zich op het verbeteren der spelling toegelegd hebben.”

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actual transition from French to Dutch in 1823 took place rather smoothly, in both local administrations (Vanhecke 2007) and the judiciary (van Goethem 1990). This already casts doubts on the purported language problems. We set out to investigate to what extent the myth of Flemish linguistic decay could be observed in actual language use. More specifically, we returned to four of the spelling issues discussed earlier, and investigated their occurrence in a corpus of handwritten documents from the period: 1. the orthographical representation of /Ei/ (< Gmc. *¯ı) as an undotted y or a dotted ij; 2. the second element in diphthongs /Ei/ (< Gmc. *ai) and /œy/ , either as -y, -ij or -i; 3. the orthographic representation of long vowels /a:/ and /y:/ in closed syllables, either by adding an -e (V+e) or by doubling the original vowel (V+V ); 4. the occurrence or absence of a final -(e)n in the masculine nominative singular of the definite and indefinite article (i.e., accusativism).

As we outlined in the previous sections, the last of the given variants (i.e., dotted ij, diphthongs in -i, V+V long vowels, and ø-articles) were considered to be distinctly Northern at the time – these are also the variants prescribed by Siegenbeek (1804). The corpus consisted of a collection of original manuscripts from the administrative and judicial domain, originally compiled by Rotthier (2007), and transcribed and annotated as part of ongoing research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Vosters and Vandenbussche 2009). The sample used contained a total of 90,960 tokens,31 with texts from cities, towns, and villages from each of the five Flemish provinces. Text types include police reports, witness and suspect interrogations, and high court indictments, along with a smaller portion of letters and witness declarations. The corpus thus contains formal and less formal work of (semi)professional scribes, ranging from very local reports drawn up by village constables or rangers, to the routine work of trained clerks at a supraregional level. Text samples were taken for 1823, at the very start of the Dutchification policy, and for 1829, just before the end of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Table 1 shows the results of our corpus study. We can see that, in the cases of the diphthongs, the long vowels, and accusativism, the variants 31. Proper names, place names, uncertain transcriptions, and stretches of text in a different language were excluded from the present analyses. Also note that for the -n/ø-articles variable (“accusativism”), a smaller subset of the corpus was used, containing 61,912 tokens. See Rutten and Vosters (2011).

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Table 1. Distribution of orthographical variants in a corpus of early-nineteenthcentury Southern manuscripts.

Dotting of /Ei/ y ij

-y

Diphthongs -ij -i

Total 4882

2007

591

150

2310

1823 75%

25%

29%

7%

63%

1829 66%

34%

5%

2%

94%

Long vowels

Accusativism

V+e

V+V

-n

-ø

Total

925

3618

29

139

1823

32%

68%

25%

75%

1829

5%

95%

10%

90%

perceived as Northern are dominant across the board, even as early as 1823, which in many localities was the first time in decades that these sorts of document were being produced in Dutch. Only for the first variable does the Southern form have a clear majority. In addition, the change from 1823 to 1829 is remarkable – the already dominant diphthongs in , V+V long vowels, and ø-articles appear considerably more often and make up between 90 percent and 95 percent of all variants in 1829. The increase of versus is less dramatic, which might be due to the minimal difference between both variants – in handwriting, both letters are formed in the same way, with only the dots making the difference. In any case, within a mere six years, there is a strong convergence toward forms that correspond to the official Northern norm of Siegenbeek (1804). In many cases, documents from both years were written by the same scribes, replacing forms perceived as typically Southern by forms perceived as typically Northern. This, of course, implies knowledge on the part of the scribes of different orthographical systems and their practical value, along with the ability to employ them in actual writing. These observations lead us to conclude that, at least for the judicial and administrative domain, there are no signs of orthographical chaos for either of the investigated periods. Instead, we can see how one system of orthographical choices is steadily and fairly evenly replacing another.

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7. The myth of Northern uniformity 7.1.

Discourses of linguistic superiority

A fixed point of reference for the myth of Southern decay discussed above is the premise of linguistic uniformity in the Northern Netherlands. As a result of the government-sanctioned norm for spelling (Siegenbeek 1804), most Southern commentators assumed this one norm to be directly reflected in actual spelling practices as well. In 1822, for instance, the aforementioned Schuermans spoke about the “spelling and grammar of Siegenbeek and Weiland universally followed in the Northern provinces” (Colenbrander 1915: VIII-2, 578).32 This myth of Northern uniformity is usually framed in history as well. The seventeenth century is highlighted as the Dutch Golden Age, when a preliminary written standard was created in and around the prosperous province of Holland (cf. van der Wal 1995; van der Sijs 2004; van der Wal and van Bree 2008). The achieved uniformity from the eighteenth century onward is then contrasted with the linguistic downfall of Flanders. Cannaert (1823: 42–43), for instance, writes that “in the Northern provinces of our fatherland, our mother tongue has been cultivated since long, and with the greatest success . . . But in the Flemish provinces, the national language has never been pursued, where it is only recently being awoken from its deep slumber.”33 This image has firmly established itself in the later historiography as well: “By the end of the 17th century in the North, the colorful diversity in writing slowly yielded to a uniform written language, based on the good usage of the classic authors” (Wils 1956: 527–528).34 Only recently has this traditional standard language view of the Northern Dutch linguistic history started to be questioned (van der Wal 2006, 2007; Rutten 2008). In the above depictions of language use in the North, clear processes of erasure can be detected, “in which ideology, in simplifying the sociolinguistic field, renders some persons or activities (or sociolinguistic phenomena) 32. “[D]e in de noordelijke provinci¨en algemeen gevolgde spelling en spraakkunst van Siegenbeek en Weiland.” 33. “[I]n de noordelyke gewesten van ons vaderland, alwaer de moedertael, sints lange, met het beste gevolg, is beoefend geworden; . . . maer in beyde Vlaenderen, alwaer de landtael nooyt is aengetrokken geworden, alwaer dezelve maer eerst uyt haren diepen slaep . . . getrokken wordt, . . . .” 34. “Bij het einde van de 17e eeuw was in het noorden de kleurrijke verscheidenheid in de geschriften langzaam geweken voor het overwicht van een eenvormige schrijftaal, die gegrond was op het achtbaar gebruik van klassieke schrijvers.” These and similar claims are reiterated in Wils (2001).

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invisible. Facts that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme either go unnoticed or get explained away” (Irvine and Gal 2000: 38). In this case, language and particularly spelling variation in the North, both in normative works and in actual writing practices, is simply ignored in order to magnify the contrast with the South. In this way, the standard language ideology dominant in the South reveals itself as an ideology of Northern linguistic superiority, most visibly among Southern integrationists.

7.2.

Northern spelling in practice

To test the uniformity of spelling in actual Northern language use, we used a corpus of 100 personal letters (ca. 53,000 tokens) from the 1780s. While no digital manuscript corpora exist for the Northern provinces during the period of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, this collection does date back to the late eighteenth century, and allows us to test the degree to which spelling practices had actually converged and standardized by that time, decades after the supposed uniformity in writing would have been established according to the language myth under discussion. Our sources are part of the “Letters as Loot” corpus,35 and are to a large extent written by scribes from the lower and middle classes. The letters originate from the (north)west of the language area (Zeeland, Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland). Table 2 shows the distribution of the same four orthographical features that we investigated for the South (section 6.2). The variation concerning undotted and dotted is remarkable, as the dotted was considered to be a typically Northern feature in the Southern perception. Nonetheless, both variants occurred to similar degrees in North and South. The same holds true for accusativism: supposedly typical Southern forms as den and eenen also account for about a third of all Northern tokens. Long vowel spellings with an added are much less common, in spite of their occurrence in several important eighteenth century normative works (cf. section 3). Possibly most remarkable are the results for the orthographical representation of the diphthongs /Ei/ and /œy/ – and spellings, which are a distinctive feature of the later Siegenbeek (1804) system, account for a mere 15 percent of all cases. 35. This corpus is being compiled as part of the Letters as Loot project at Leiden University, sponsored by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and carried out by Judith Nobels, Tanja Simons, and Gijsbert Rutten, under the supervision of Marijke van der Wal. See www.brievenalsbuit.nl.

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Table 2. Distribution of orthographical variants in a corpus of late-eighteenthcentury Northern manuscripts. Dotting of /Ei/ y ij

-y

Diphthongs -ij

-i

Total

1694

2901

317

511

141

%

37%

63%

33%

53%

15%

Long vowels

Accusativism

V+e

V+V

-n

-ø

Total

253

3152

34

67

%

7%

93%

34%

66%

These results, compared with the findings of the Flemish corpus study, clearly show that any schematization of the discussion, with one prototypical Northern form as opposed to one prototypical Southern form, is not based on the orthographical reality observed in our corpora. We found significant spelling variation in both parts of the language area, albeit at different time periods, for all of the features investigated. While larger-scale studies of more comparable corpora are called for, it seems that the Southern perception of Northern orthographical uniformity was for a large part based on the Siegenbeek (1804) norm, but that, around the end of the eighteenth century, this uniformity was neither as solid nor as widespread as metalinguistic comments might lead us to believe. Although it can certainly be assumed that comparable samples from the early-nineteenth-century North would show a somewhat more uniform orthographical picture, suitable linguistic corpora to verify this hypothesis are currently lacking. In any case, the myth of Northern uniformity posits a long tradition of homogenous linguistic practices dating back to the seventeenth-century Golden Age. This image can be rejected on the basis of our findings for the eighteenth century.

8. Conclusion This chapter has focused on social aspects of orthographic choice in lateeighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century Flanders, trying to demonstrate how spelling variation was used to construct an image of linguistic disparity between the Northern and Southern part of the Dutch language area. We examined actual spelling practices in the Northern and Southern

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Netherlands and observed significant amounts of variation in both areas for the same variables. Discursively, however, we distinguished the construction of two language myths in Southern metalinguistic publications, positing linguistic decay and chaos in the South, as opposed to assumed invariability and long-established uniformity in the Northern territories. This gave rise to a dichotomized and schematized representation of sociolinguistic space, in which orthographical features became shibboleth markers of Southern and Northern language use. In this context, spelling also developed into an important identity marker at large, and we examined how orthographical features were used to signal political loyalty or index religious opposition. The language myths discussed not only impacted actual language use, as we observed a remarkable increase in our Southern corpus of spelling features which were perceived to be typically Northern, but they also played an important role in the discursive construction of Northern linguistic superiority – a discourse which would continue to characterize the integrationist position in the Southern norm discussions during the rest of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.

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der Wal and A.A.P. Francken (eds.), Standaardtalen in beweging, 27–48. M¨unster: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU/Nodus. Rutten, Gijsbert and Rik Vosters 2011 As many norms as there were scribes? Language history, norms and usage in the Southern Netherlands in the nineteenth century. In Language and History, Linguistics and Historiography, Nils Langer, Steffan Davies, and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), 229–54. Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang. Schieffelin, Bambi B. and Rachelle Charlier Doucet 1998 The “real” Haitian creole. Ideology, metalinguistics and orthographic choice. In Language ideologies. Practice and theory, Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.), 285–316. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sebba, Mark 2007 Spelling and society. The culture and politics of orthography around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siegenbeek, Matthijs 1804 Verhandeling over de Nederduitsche spelling, ter bevordering van eenparigheid in dezelve. Amsterdam: Allart. van der Sijs, Nicoline 2004 Taal als mensenwerk. Het ontstaan van het ABN. Den Haag: Sdu. de Simpel, David s.a. [1827] Taalkundige tweespraak. Yperen: F.-L. Smaelen. [Snoeijmes] Anon s.a. [1750s– Snoeijmes der Vlaemsche Tale. Manuscript. 1760s] St´even, Andries 1784 Nieuwen N´ederlandschen Voorschrift-boek. Yper: Moerman. Vaelande [van Daele, F.D.] 1805–1806 Tyd-Verdryf. Ondersoek op de N´eder-duytsche spraek-konst. [Ieper]: [de Varver]. Vanhecke, Eline 2007 Stedelijke kanselarijtaal in Vlaanderen in de negentiende eeuw. Ph.D. diss., Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Verpoorten, Jan Domien 1752 Woorden-schat oft letter-konst. Antwerpen: A.J. du Caju. [Verwer, Adriaen] 1707 Linguae Belgicae idea grammatica, poetica, rhetorica. Amsterdam: Halma. Vosters, Rik 2009 Integrationisten en particularisten? Taalstrijd in Vlaanderen tijdens het Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (1815–1830). Handelin-

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gen van de Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taalen Letterkunde en Geschiedenis LXII: 41–58. Vosters, Rik and Gijsbert Rutten fc. Snoeijmes der Vlaemsche Tale. New light on eighteenth-century Dutch in Flanders. In Gijsbert Rutten and Pierre Swiggers (eds.), The Dutch language (1500–1800): New perspectives, Leuven: Peeters. Vosters, Rik, Gijsbert Rutten and Wim Vandenbussche fc. The sociolinguistics of spelling. A corpus-based case study of orthographical variation in nineteenth-century Dutch in Flanders. In Ans van Kemenade and Nynke de Haas (eds.), Historical linguistics 2009. Selected papers from the 19th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Vosters, Rik and Wim Vandenbussche 2009 Nieuw onderzoek naar taalbeleid en taalvariatie in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden ten tijde van Willem I. In Ad Backus, Merel Keijzer, Ineke Vedder and Bert Weltens (eds.), Artikelen van de Zesde An´ela-conferentie, 389–395. Delft: Eburon. de Vroede, Maurits 2002 Taalpolitiek en lager onderwijs in het koninkrijk der Nederlanden, jaren 1820. Het beleid ten aanzien van de taalgrensgemeenten en het Franstalige landsgedeelte. Belgisch Tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis XXXII(1/2). 5–21. van der Wal, Marijke 1995 De moedertaal centraal. Standaardisatie-aspecten in de Nederlanden omstreeks 1650. Den Haag: Sdu. van der Wal, Marijke 2006 Onvoltooid verleden tijd.Witte vlekken in de taalgeschiedenis.Amsterdam: KNAW. van der Wal, Marijke 2007 Eighteenth-century linguistic variation from the perspective of a Dutch diary and a collection of private letters. In Stephan Elspaß, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic language histories from below (1700–2000), 83–96. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. van der Wal, Marijke J. and A.A.P. Francken (eds.), 2010 Standaardtalen in beweging. M¨unster: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU/Nodus. van der Wal, Marijke and Cor van Bree 2008 Geschiedenis van het Nederlands. Houten: Spectrum.

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Mythical strands in the ideology of prescriptivism. In Laura Wright (ed.), The development of Standard English, 1300–1800, 29–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weiland, Petrus 1805 Nederduitsche Spraakkunst. Amsterdam: Allart. Willems, Jan Frans 1824 Over de Hollandsche en Vlaemsche schryfwyzen van het Nederduitsch. Antwerpen: Wed. J.S. Schoesetters. Wils, Lode 1956 Vlaams en Hollands in het Verenigd Koninkrijk. Dietsche Warande en Belfort 527–536. Wils, Lode 2001 Waarom Vlaanderen Nederlands spreekt. 3rd edition. Leuven: Davidsfonds. Woolard, Kathryn A. and Bambi B. Schieffelin 1994 Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23. 55–82. Wright, Laura (ed.) 2000 The development of Standard English, 1300–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 7 Orthography as literacy: How Manx was “reduced to writing”∗ Mark Sebba 1. Introduction In this chapter I shall discuss the relationship between orthography, literacy, and bilingualism, exploring the role of orthography in the process of language shift. I shall use one language as a case study to argue that orthography is closely bound up with literacy and that orthography, too, needs to be understood in terms of a sociocultural model, similar to Street’s ideological model of literacy (Street 1984). The language to be discussed here is Manx, also known as Manx Gaelic (Gaelg Vanninagh), spoken on the Isle of Man, a semi-independent island in the Irish Sea approximately equidistant from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The current population of the island is approximately 70,000, of whom slightly less than half were born on the island. Manx is a Celtic language “very closely related to the now extinct Gaelic dialects of neighbouring Ulster and Galloway” (Thomson and Pilgrim n.d.: 1) and only very distantly related to English. Manx was once the vernacular and native language of the great majority of the Manx population, but as the island became increasingly anglicized in the last few centuries, it suffered a drastic decline in speakers and an almost complete language shift towards English. It was regarded as effectively extinct as a spoken language with the death of its last “native speaker” in 1974; however, it continued to be spoken by small numbers of people who learnt it as a second language from native speakers and is now the focus of a small but committed revivalist movement which has been able to establish Manx schooling for those who want it up to age 11. It has some ∗ An earlier version of this paper appeared in Endangered languages and literacy: Proceedings of the Fourth Foundation of Endangered Languages Conference, ed. by Nicholas Ostler and Blair Rudes (2001). I am grateful to the editors for their permission to reproduce this material. I am also grateful to Robert Thomson for his comments and advice at an earlier stage. Any errors are, of course, entirely my own.

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support from the Manx government and retains a ceremonial role in Manx life. The written tradition of Manx is much shorter than that of its closest relatives, Irish and Scots Gaelic, but still dates back to the early 17th century if not before. The body of scholarship on the Manx language is, as might be expected, relatively small. One fact which is widely noted, both by scholars ´ hIfearn´ain 2007), is that the Manx orthography is very and lay people (see O different from that of the other forms of Gaelic, which have a much longer written history. Why should this be so? In this chapter, I shall argue that Manx orthography, like all orthographies, is the product of an intersection of social as well as linguistic factors. I shall focus on three of these here: bilingualism, literacy practices, and language ideology. Together these factors account for Manx orthography being the way it is, and being different from the orthographies of two closely similar languages whose written forms also resemble each other.

2. Orthography as bilingualism Standardization of a vernacular, according to Joseph (1987), invariably involves modeling the new standard language on an already existing standard. Normally the language that provides this model is the language which already fulfills the functions of a “high” language (Ferguson 1959) in the community. Standardization is thus usually a process which involves a bilingual elite, who are able to transfer the conventions of the old standard to the new one. Although writing a language and standardizing its spelling are by no means one and the same thing, Joseph’s point could equally well be made with respect to the development of an orthography for a previously unwritten language: with very few exceptions, it is a process involving a bilingual scribal or educated class, who transfer or adapt the conventions of their language of primary literacy to the other language.1 1. One set of exceptions, of course, are those languages which have their orthography devised by linguists using a “scientifically” designed writing system which is not actually that of their own native language. Nevertheless, it is still usually the case that the system which they devise for the newly-written language has a great deal in common with the native language of the linguists. Hence languages “given” an orthography by North American and European linguists usually use an alphabetic system based on the Roman Alphabet, while languages whose written forms have been developed by linguists from the former Soviet Union typically

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This can be seen to have happened more than once in the history of English orthography. The Roman alphabet, originally designed for Latin and providing a reasonably close match between characters and phonemes, was first adapted to representing Anglo-Saxon, a language only distantly related to Latin. Later, Anglo-Norman began to be written in England before continental French orthography was stabilized, by scribes familiar with the West Saxon (English) scribal orthographic tradition (Scragg 1974). Both French and Old English conventions survived in Anglo-Norman, and were reintroduced to Chancery English, the variety used in administration, when English again took over the “high” language functions in England. Modern Standard English thus contains a mixture of conventions of which the most pervasive one, arguably, derives from Latin – the use of the Roman alphabet itself. One might well argue that half a millenium or so of independent scribal or print tradition would be enough to allow a language to call its orthography its own rather than an adaptation of a foreign system. In that case, some of the languages of Europe and Asia could be said to have their “own” systems of orthography, while many others have orthographies that are modeled on those of other languages with longer literate traditions.2 If development of an orthography involves a transfer of conventions from another, culturally or politically dominant language, orthographic decisions necessarily involve an element of politics. Far from being a neutral process, the introduction of orthography – involving as it does an educated elite and the choice of a model – always seems to be socially, culturally, and ideologically charged. There are often several different standard orthographies available as models: the new orthography may draw on just one of these, or on more than one, and it may be designed to enhance the difference, rather than the similarity, between itself and one or more of the potential models. In the case of Manx, the choice of orthography can be seen to be closely bound up with bilingualism on the one hand, and with the practices connected have alphabetic systems based on Cyrillic. See Winner (1952) for one account of the latter. 2. For example, both Bahasa Indonesia and Sranan Tongo, spoken in colonies of the Netherlands, faithfully reproduced at one time some of the historical idiosyncrasies of Dutch spelling, for example using for /u/ and for / i /; elsewhere French, Portuguese and Spanish conventions have been evident in the orthographies of vernacular languages in French, Portuguese and Spanish colonies at various times. Other, less obvious, examples are provided by languages which have developed under the cultural and/or political domination of neighboring states, for example, the old Estonian orthographic tradition, based on German (Kurman 1968).

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with literacy on the other – all in a context where quasi-colonial domination by England, English, and the Church of England was pervasive. In the remainder of this chapter, I will examine this in more detail.

3. The Manx Orthography The earliest Manx writings other than place names date back only as far as the early 17th century, and all the early literature is religious in nature. Bishop John Phillips, who was probably a native of North Wales, is credited with devising the orthography for the earliest known texts, which, however, were not printed. His orthography shows the influence of both contemporary Welsh and English (Thomson 1969: 181). A second Manx orthographic tradition began to develop a century later. Thomas Wilson (Bishop 1698–1755) had religious texts translated into Manx using a partly standardized system of spelling which was distinct from that of Phillips. According to Thomson (1969: 184), “in this work the spelling of the Manx text, though not fully developed into the near uniformity of the second half of the century, is already clearly the same system as that in use later.” The modern Manx orthography, based on that of Wilson, shows many identifiably English conventions, for example for /u:/, for /i:/ and for /ai/, making it easy for readers of English to pronounce Manx words like Doolish [du:lıS] (Douglas, the capital), skeet [ski:t] (‘news’) and mie [mai] (‘good’). Irish and Scottish Gaelic have a variety of di- and trigraphs for writing these vowel sounds, for example /i:/ may be written in Irish as , , , , , or in combination with other vowels, depending on context. The fact that Irish and Scottish make use of vowel di- and trigraphs along with accents to indicate length, while Manx uses vowel doubling for long vowels, and the fact that Manx uses , , and which are used in English but not in either of the others, is enough to ensure that written Manx looks very different from both Scots and Irish, even to a non-reader of these languages. Though the Philips and Wilson orthographies for Manx differed from each other, it is clear that both were strongly influenced by the conventions of English of the time. From this we can begin to see the importance of the role of bilinguals in determining the form of the orthography. In fact, the first Manx literature was the work of bilingual “orthography mediators” – first or even second language speakers of Manx, who were also readers and writers of English. In Thomson’s words (1969: 193):

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Nothing of all this translation work could be carried out by monoglot Manxmen . . . the clergy who undertook this work were locally educated, it is true, but through English and in the classics, only informally and occasionally through or in Manx, and for some of them, depending on their upbringing, it must have been a second rather than a first language in terms of status if not always in terms of order of acquisition.

4. Orthography as literacy practice In what Street calls the ideological model of literacy (1984: 8), it is assumed, inter alia, that the meaning of literacy within a culture depends on the social institutions within which it is embedded and that the processes whereby reading and writing are learnt are what construct their meaning for particular practitioners. Furthermore, according to Scribner and Cole (1981: 236), literacy is “a set of socially organized practices which make use of a symbol system and a technology for producing and disseminating it. Literacy is not simply knowing how to read and write a particular script but applying this knowledge for specific purposes in specific contexts of use.” To understand why the orthography of Manx resembles that of English rather than Scottish or Irish Gaelic, we need to look to the history of practices involving reading and writing using the Manx language. Irish and Scottish Gaelic were written languages for a millenium or so before Manx; Manx did not share in the monastic and scholarly practices of its written relatives at that time. The learned men who mediated the development of the Manx orthography were, in the first instance, Welsh, and later, English, at least by education. By the 18th century, when Manx started to develop a written tradition, English, not Manx, was the medium and the goal of education.3 According to Thomson (1969: 180), “all attempts at elementary education took it for granted that a knowledge of English reading and writing was the goal to be aimed at.”

3. According to Stowell and O’Breasl´ain (1996: 8–9), Hildesley in the 1750s found only three parishes where Manx was used as a medium of instruction. His response was “to make available teaching material in Manx and to limit the use of English,” and to encourage teachers who could teach in Manx. For a time, Manx became established as the teaching medium in nearly all parishes, only to go into a decline again soon after Hildesley’s death in 1772.

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A letter from the Manx Bishop Hildesley to the Archbishop of York in 1762 is informative about the state of literacy and language learning in the island (Butler 1799: 422): The Manks people . . . would be, I am confident, extremely fond of perusing the scriptures, if they had them, and were taught to read them, in their own tongue, as they are the English Bibles; which latter, numbers can do very roundly, whilst they scarce understand the meaning of a single sentence; nay, I might say, I believe, of some, a single word!

Bishop Hildesley here seems to describe a lay population of whom many are able to “read” English to a rudimentary extent, by sounding out the words using the conventional sound to letter correspondences which they had learnt through schooling. Yet their knowledge of English was minimal, as they were still overwhelmingly dominant in Manx. Hildesley’s letter could be taken as asserting the need for religious texts in Manx, but he also appears to be suggesting that the most practical orthography for Manx reading matter would be an orthography based on English, since that was the only language of which the literate Manx people had any experience. Butler reports that from 1769, after the appearance of the Bible in Manx due largely to Hildesley’s efforts, it became possible for “masters of families, and others, who are well disposed, [to] read to the ignorant and illiterate the Sacred Oracles in their own language” (Butler 1799: 227). This is only a few years after Hildesley’s letter cited above, but there is no mention of people needing lessons to learn to read Manx. Rather, those who were already literate – who had learnt English at school – seem to have been able to read the new Manx scriptures just as they formerly “very roundly” read (but without understanding) the English Bibles. Thus, learning to read English had prepared them for reading Manx. The majority of people writing Manx at this time were the clergy themselves, preparing religious material to be read in church or at home. As they were also users of English first and foremost (though they may have known Latin or Greek as well), it served their purposes to use English conventions as a notation for writing down Manx. At the same time, this practice served the interests of the readership, who if they were already literate, had acquired that literacy through the medium of English. Thus we can see how the literate practices surrounding Manx and English in the Isle of Man at the time, and the language repertoires of the bilingual mediators who developed the orthography of written Manx, made it almost inevitable that Manx orthography would draw on the conventions of English for its sound-to-letter correspondences.

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5. Ideology, orthography, and language shift It is clear from the history of Manx that, for several centuries, it fought a losing battle against the encroachment of English. The eventual result was complete language shift – from being almost entirely monolingual in Manx, the population of the island became almost exclusively monolingual in English. In this section, I want to examine the role of orthography in this language shift. In the 18th century, as Thomson has stated, the goal of elementary education in Man was a knowledge of English reading and writing (Thomson 1969: 180). Implicit in this is a view that English was the superior language, which would confer on its speakers opportunities for advancement which would remain closed to monolingual Manx speakers. In the 20th century, the creation of orthographies for previously unwritten languages has often been seen as a kind of gift to their speakers, bringing in its wake empowerment of the indigenous population and other benefits of literacy, spiritual and material. However, given the fate of a language like Manx – virtual extinction – it is reasonable to examine critically the beliefs and motives of those who introduced writing to the language. In the case of Manx, we have an explicitly ideological statement from John Kelly, a Manxman who as a young man was involved in Bible translation work in the service of Bishop Hildesley, and who had a key role in the production of the Manx Bible. Kelly went on to produce a grammar and two dictionaries of Manx (Thomson 1969: 186). It is instructive to quote from the introduction to his Triglott dictionary (English/Scottish/Irish/Manx Gaelic), dated 1805.4 At the outset, he puts forward “unity of language” as a virtue: To cultivate a language and to improve a people are similar offices. [. . . ] Wilson and Hildesley [’s] motives were religious and moral; but the present state of the empire holds out to government and individuals another motive at this time not less imperious, that unity of language is the surest cement of civil as well as of religious establishments. [It] has long been the policy of France to render her language universal, and she has acquired more influence by its becoming the court language of Europe than even by her arms in the field. . .

Next, he laments the loss of an opportunity in Ireland: Had books been printed in [Irish] Gaelic, and Gaelic schools established in those parts of Ireland where Gaelic is the vulgar tongue, the people would have acquired learning by using the English alphabet, - they would have read 4. Kelly’s text should be read in its historical context, that of the Napoleonic Wars.

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English before they could read Irish, by reading Irish through an English medium. . .

Thus according to Kelly, the publication of Gaelic books in Ireland could have promoted a knowledge of English, because of the shared alphabet and overlapping orthographic conventions. The desirable consequences of this, for Kelly, would have been the removal of “deplorable ignorance, poverty and bigotry”. The source of this wretchedness, it is implied, was the Catholic church. To Kelly’s mind, literacy in the native language was a major force for the conversion of the population to Protestantism and for promoting national unity, by way of providing an easy transition to literacy in English: By the publication of Gaelic books, and more particularly by the clergy being obliged to understand, and to use the Gaelic tongue, the Roman Catholic faith was entirely superseded in Man. Of thirty thousand inhabitants, there is not to be found one native who is a Roman Catholic, nor a single dissenter from the Established Church of England. The same wisdom exercised by the rulers of the Church of Scotland, has produced similar effects in the [Scottish] Highlands. By their clergy being obliged to use the Gaelic language in the Highland parishes, the national and political prejudices, which formerly existed so strongly there, are entirely removed, and the knowledge of the English language, in consequence of the publication of the Gaelic Scriptures and Gaelic books, is everywhere gaining ground. And when there shall be one national language, then only will the union of the empire be completely established.

Here we start to see an imperial and religious project which has language shift as an intermediate goal, and in which orthography plays a small but perhaps pivotal part.5 Literacy in Gaelic, Kelly implies, can provide the crucial transitional step to literacy in English; and once literacy in English has been attained, there is no need for any other kind. The consequence, according to Kelly, is necessarily the loss of Gaelic: “it is true that in process 5. For a remarkably similar case concerning the “alphabetization” of Turkic languages in the Soviet Union by means of the Cyrillic alphabet, see Winner (1952). According to Pravda at the time, “the transition to the Russian script will contribute to an even greater unification of the peoples of the USSR, to an even greater strengthening of the friendship of the peoples of the USSR.” Likewise, in Mexico, where there was disagreement between “indigenist” linguists and missionaries, “each group tried to convince the Mexicans that its own alphabet style would accomplish more effectively the Mexican goal of unifying the Nation-State, one by the use of the national language orthography [i.e. Spanish], the other by employing the same phonetic symbols for all indigenous languages” (Barros 1995: 282).

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of time this cultivation of the Gaelic language will destroy the language itself, as a living language; but it will have produced the knowledge of a better, and will descend to posterity by means of the press in a more perfect state” [i.e. as a “dead” language like Latin]. Of course, the fact that Kelly believed that the spread of publications in Manx would be the mechanism of language shift to English does not mean that it actually happened thus. Nevertheless, if his desired outcome was the replacement of Manx by English he could not have been disappointed by the state of affairs today. Likewise, the fact that he placed great importance on becoming literate “by using the English alphabet” does not prove that language shift would have been prevented or delayed if Manx literacy had been spread using some other kind of orthography. What is interesting, however, is that Kelly himself saw it as an important factor. Nor would his ideas be dismissed out of hand today. A contemporary linguist, Coulmas has written (1989: 233): Given that [transitional literacy facilitating later literacy in a language of wider communication] is a major objective of designing an orthography for a hitherto unwritten language, it is highly desirable that the new orthography differ as little as possible from that language of wider communication which is of greatest functional value for the speech community in question.

A pessimistic view of vernacular literacy, namely that it is the direct route to language shift and the consequent loss of traditional culture, has been taken by Peter M¨uhlh¨ausler. In a chapter entitled “‘Reducing’6 Pacific languages to writings” he concludes that “if the aim is that of preserving cultures, then the entire enterprise of literacy will have to be rethought . . . Literacy has in the past promoted numerous invisible-hand processes of culture and language change. . . Vernacular literacy involves much more than merely devising the optimal orthography for a given language as many linguists would have us believe” (M¨uhlh¨ausler 1990: 205). Drawing a parallel between the cases studied by M¨uhlh¨ausler – mainly among indigenous island peoples of the Pacific – and this other small island in the Irish Sea, we may infer that Manx literacy may in fact have hastened the demise of Manx as a spoken language and that the English-influenced Manx orthography, though not actually devised with the goal of language shift in mind, played its part in this. 6. The use of quotation marks around “reducing” is ironic, implying that little will remain of some of these languages beyond a few written texts. cf. Kelly’s claim that Manx would “descend to posterity by means of the press in a more perfect state”.

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6. Manx orthography and autonomy One of the most persistent criticisms of Manx orthography is that it does not resemble the orthographies of its closest relatives, Scots and Irish Gaelic. Fargher, for example, writes in the preface to his dictionary (1979: vi): “My own view, also shared by many respected and authoritative speakers of the language, is that this system is a historical abomination, separating, as it does, Mann from the rest of Gaeldom, and thus destroying the linguistic unity of the Gaels without replacing it with anything better in the way of a truly phonetic orthography.” The view that Manx orthography is “an abomination” appears to have been shared by O’Rahilly, who states (1976: 120–121) that “Phillips and his successors, indeed, removed the reproach that it was an unwritten language; but in so doing they encumbered it with an orthography which was hardly more fitted to represent its sounds than the orthography of Early Modern Irish would have been.”7 While, clearly, Manx might have benefited from an orthography which was tailored to indicate the phonemic contrasts relevant in a Gaelic language, it is not obvious that a Manx orthography based on that of other Gaelic languages would in the long run have served it better. Kloss (1967) introduced the concepts of Ausbau (‘development’) and Abstand (‘distance’) for discussing the relationship between similar languages and language varieties as they develop (or fail to develop) into standard literary languages. Abstand refers to linguistic distance from other, similar languages. Languages which differ in terms of Ausbau include “dialects whose speakers would certainly be reported by linguists as constituting a single linguistic community if they were at a preliterate stage,” but which nevertheless follow different paths of elaboration to become two or more separate literary standards. In this way they become recognised as “different languages.” Kloss gives Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic among his examples of this (1967: 29). Where there is insufficient distance between related varieties to establish the claims of one variety to be autonomous from another, adopting divergent 7. Cf. Thomson (1969: 180) on this point: “We may doubt whether in any case it would have been a great advantage to Manxmen to have a traditional Gaelic orthography for their language, for the more perfectly the system was adjusted to the facts of Manx pronunciation the less help it would be to Manxmen in reading Scottish or Irish Gaelic because of the numerous sound-changes that have overtaken Manx, and that reading would in any case have been complicated by the impoverishment of vocabulary already referred to.”

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orthographies can provide a useful way of creating a sense of difference, even to the point of mutual unintelligibility.8 Orthographic debates in various different languages9 can partly be seen as a struggle over symbolic Abstand which will support linguistic autonomy and Ausbau in the first instance, possibly later being used to bolster claims of national identity and independence. Conversely, minimizing orthographic distance can help to create “language unity” and foster cultural detente, as in the case of Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia10 (Vikør 1988). At the cost of making it appear superficially more like English, Manx’s very un-Gaelic orthography helps to keep it visually distinct from the other Gaelic languages which, though under threat, are in a relatively enviable position compared with Manx. Similarities between the languages are minimized by the great differences in orthography. With Manx precariously poised between revival and extinction, its orthography gives it a distinctiveness from the other Gaelics. Had Manx shared its orthography with Scots or Irish Gaelic, it may well have come under pressure from these near relations, losing its claim to linguistic independence in spite of its substantial differences from both.11 The “linguistic unity” which Fargher mentions does not nec8. The different spelling conventions which distinguish American from British Standard English could be seen as a very mild example of this, and the different scripts used by Serbian and Croatian, or Hindi and Urdu, as extreme examples. 9. For example, in Haitian Creole (Schieffelin and Doucet 1994), where opposing factions favor (French-like) or (autonomous) for /k/; in Galician (Herrero Valeiro 1993; Alvarez-Caccamo and Herrero Valeiro 1996), where the issue is similarity to or difference from the conventions of Spanish and Portuguese; in Afrikaans, which has systematically replaced Dutch etymological spellings like with phonemic spellings (), at the same time drawing attention to differences, rather than similarities, which exist between the two languages. 10. After several attempts to agree a common orthography for Malay and Indonesian, the respective governments finally reached an agreement in 1972. The Galician orthographic “wars” (see references in the preceding footnote) provide a different kind of example, where differing sets of orthographic practices reflect the writers’ attitudes towards the degree of “integration” Galician should have with Spanish on the one hand, or Portuguese on the other. ´ hIfearn´ain (2007, 2010) disagrees with this view, arguing that it is based on a 11. O misunderstanding of the nature of the Gaelic orthographic system and the relationship between Irish and Scottish Gaelic, which do not share a common standard language in spite of using the same orthographic system. Simply writing Manx in Gaelic orthography would not turn it into a form of Irish or of Scottish Gaelic. I do not contest this, but merely argue that visual appearance is one of several

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essarily hold equal benefits for all parties; compare the case of English and Scots, which were once the courtly and administrative languages of their respective countries. One is now a global language, the other is regarded as a “dialect” of the former with little recognition outside its home territory.

7. Conclusions Orthographies, including that of Manx, are shaped by social and cultural factors in the context where the orthography develops: in particular, the nature of bilingualism among the literate part of the population; literacy practices within the community as a whole; and ideological beliefs concerning languages and their speakers, both inside and outside the community. All this takes place within a historical and political context in which, almost always, power is unequally distributed, and the orthography will inevitably be shaped in some way by the most powerful party. In looking in more detail at the orthography of Manx, we have been able to see the involvement and interplay of all these factors in its development. Within a political and social framework in which the Church of England was the sole provider of schooling, the development of orthography for Manx was under the control of the Church and served the purposes of the clergy, who believed in the superiority of English. Monolingual schooling in English prepared speakers of Manx to read Manx for religious purposes, but only if it was written using conventions recognizably like those of English. It seems likely that different factors are more or less important in different cases and at different stages; therefore the outcome, i.e., the nature of the orthography, cannot be predicted in advance in a deterministic way. What we can say, however, is that in this case, social factors made it likely that the writing system of Manx would resemble that of English. This fact may have helped pave the way for the loss of Manx as a spoken language. At the same time, paradoxically, the very distinctiveness of Manx orthography is a mark of independence from its Gaelic neighbors.

factors which can be used to establish “difference” between related languages or varieties. The extent to which these languages or varieties construct themselves as “different” or “the same” in terms of a range of linguistic categories, is, ulti´ hIfearn´ain mately, a matter of language ideology – a point very well made by O himself.

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References Alvarez-Caccamo, Celso and M´ario J. Herrero Valeiro 1996 O continuum das normas escritas na Galiza: do espanhol ao portuguˆes. Ag´alia: Revista da Associa¸com Galega da Lingua 48. 143– 156. Barros, Candida Drumond Mendes 1995 The misssionary presence in literacy campaigns in the indigenous languages of Latin America. International Journal of Educational Development 15(3). 277–287. Butler, Weeden 1799 Memoirs of Mark Hildesley, D.D. Lord Bishop of Sodor and Mann, and Master of Sherburn Hospital; under whose auspices the Holy Scriptures were translated into the Manks Language. London: J. Nichols. Coulmas, Florian 1989 The writing systems of the world. Oxford: Blackwell. ´ hIfearn´ain (eds.) Eloy, Jean-Michel and Tadhg O 2007 Langues proches – Langues collaterals. Paris: Harmattan. Fargher, Douglas Crebbin 1979 Fargher’s English-Manx dictionary, edited by Brian Stowell and Ian Faulds. Douglas: Shearwater Press. Ferguson, Charles A. 1959 Diglossia. Word 15. 325–340. Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.) 1977 Advances in the creation and revision of writing systems. The Hague: Mouton. Garvin, Paul L. 1954 Literacy as problem in language and culture. Georgetown University Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics 7. 117–129. Geerts, G., J. Van Den Broeck and A. Verdoodt 1977 Successes and failures in Dutch spelling reform. In Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Advances in the creation and revision of writing systems, 179–245. The Hague: Mouton. Herrero Valeiro, M´ario A. 1993 Guerre des graphies et conflit glottopolitique: lignes de discours dans la sociolinguistique galicienne. Plurilinguismes 6. 181–209. Joseph, John Earl 1987 Eloquence and power: The rise of language standards and standard languages. London: Frances Pinter. Joseph, John E. and Talbot J. Taylor (eds.) 1990 Ideologies of language. London: Routledge.

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Kelly, John 1866

Kloss, Heinz 1967

Fockleyr Manninagh as Baarlagh Liorish Juan y Kelly. Currit magh fo chiarail I. Gill. [‘An English and Manx dictionary prepared from Dr. Kelly’s triglot dictionary, with alterations and additions from the dictionaries of A. Cregeen and J.I. Mosley, by W. Gill and J.T. Clarke.’] Douglas: The Manx Society. “Abstand” languages and “Ausbau” languages. Anthropological Linguistics 9. 29–41.

Kurman, George 1968 The development of written Estonian. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press/Mouton. Lepsius, Richard 1981 Standard alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters. Second, revised edition (London, 1863) edited with an introduction by J. Alan Kemp. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. M¨uhlh¨ausler, Peter 1990 “Reducing” Pacific languages to writings. In John E. Joseph and Talbot J. Taylor (eds.), Ideologies of language, 189–205. London: Routledge. ´ hIfearn´ain, Tadhg O 2007 Manx orthography and language ideology in the Gaelic contin´ hIfearn´ain (eds.), Langues uum. In Jean-Michel Eloy and Tadhg O proches – Langues collaterals, 159–170. Paris: Harmattan. ´ hIfearn´ain, Tadhg O 2010 Review of Sebba. 2007. Spelling and society: the culture and politics of orthography around the world. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 31(2). 217–218. O’Rahilly, Thomas Francis 1976 Irish dialects past and present, with chapters on Scottish and Manx. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Pike, Kenneth 1938 Practical suggestions toward a common orthography for Indian languages of Mexico for education of the natives within their own tongues. Investigaciones Lingu´ısticas 2. 422–427. Schieffelin, Bambi B. and Rachelle C. Doucet 1994 The “real” Haitian Creole: ideology, metalingusitics and orthographic choice. American Ethnologist 21. 176–200. Scribner, Sylvia and Michael Cole 1981 The psychology of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Phonology meets ideology: The meaning of orthographic practices in British Creole. Language Problems and Language Planning 22(1). 19–47. Stowell, Brian and Diarmuid O’Breasl´ain 1996 A short history of the Manx language. B´eal Feirste: An Cloch´an. Street, Brian 1984 Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swadesh, Morris 1940a El alfabeto y la labor de alfabetizaci´on. In Primer Congreso Indigenista Interamericano, 271–274. Cyclostyled: M´exico. Swadesh, Morris 1940b Metodos de la alfabetizaci´on en lenguas nat´ıvas. In Primer Congreso Indigenista Interamericano, 275–280. Cyclostyled: M´exico. Swadesh, Morris 1940c El congreso linguistico y la educaci´on rural. In Primer Congreso indigenista Interamericano, 287–289. Cyclostyled: M´exico. Thomson, Robert L. 1969 The study of Manx Gaelic. Sir John Rhys memorial lecture, 1969. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 55. London: Oxford University Press. Thomson, Robert L. and Adrian J. Pilgrim n.d. Outline of the Manx language and literature. Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh (The Manx Gaelic Society). Vikør, Lars S. 1988 Perfecting spelling. Spelling discussions and reforms in Indonesia and Malaysia 1900 - 1972. Dordrecht: Foris. Winner, Thomas G. 1952 Problems of alphabetic reform among the turkic peoples of Soviet Central Asia, 1920–41. Slavonic and East European Review 31. 133–147.

Chapter 8 Orthography in practice: A Pennsylvania German case study Jennifer Schlegel “Am I using the same darn wrong word again?” Laura was frustrated. She verbally expressed her confusion over whether to follow the orthographic conventions proposed by her teacher or those found in her dictionary. As an adult learner of Pennsylvania German, Laura desired to learn the language of her grandparents as she remembered it: spoken. The superintendent of the dialect class wanted the students to learn the language so that it might be preserved: written. Tensions developed over the emphasis on oral/remembered Pennsylvania German and written/text-based Pennsylvania German. The tensions were amplified by orthographic variations present in dictionaries, handouts, and in-class instruction. Students favored the orthographic conventions that assisted their oral production and comprehension of the language. Three of the four teachers in this study expressly preferred standardized orthography, though demonstrated weakness in their own orthographic proficiencies. A fourth teacher, who had developed his own Pennsylvania German orthography prior to the publication of the dictionaries used in the dialect classes, encouraged the students to use whatever forms helped them to learn to speak and understand the spoken language. These tensions have more than pedagogical implications; they reflect different Pennsylvania German language ideologies and conceptualizations of Pennsylvania German identity in which students can situate themselves in the genealogy of obsolescence, represented by oral/remembered Pennsylvania German, or the genealogy of preservation, represented by written/standardized Pennsylvania German. Varying language ideologies materialize in the multiple stances taken toward orthography making orthography a linguistic resource for the examination of peoples’ own understandings about language and its relation to political, cultural, ethnic or national identity (Sebba 2007; Schieffelin and Doucet 1994; Jaffe 1996, 1999; Hornberger and King 1998).1

1. Research that generated data for this chapter was made possible by a UCLA Department of Anthropology Dissertation Fellowship Grant.

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This chapter begins with a brief history of Pennsylvania German spoken by nonsectarians and the shift to monolingual Standard American English, followed by a discussion of literacy and orthographic traditions within the Pennsylvania German cultural community. Finally, I examine the confluence of the historical changes in language use, ideologies and activities as realized in the orthographic practices of students and teachers in dialect classrooms.

1. Nonsectarian Pennsylvania German and language shift After nearly 300 years of diglossia within the nonsectarian Pennsylvania German speech community, Pennsylvania German is currently undergoing rapid obsolescence, being replaced by monolingual Standard American English. The nonsectarian speech community consists predominantly of descendants of Reformed and Lutheran immigrants who arrived in southeastern Pennsylvania from the Palatinate region of present-day Germany during the period of 1693–1800. The nonsectarians actively participated in colonial life and did not segregate themselves as did many sectarian Mennonite and Amish Pennsylvania Germans. Whereas Amish and Mennonite populations are growing and Pennsylvania German remains a first language for many, Pennsylvania German is no longer acquired as a first or second language in the homes of nonsectarian Pennsylvania Germans. During the 20th century, Pennsylvania German underwent language shift similar to other immigrant languages. Within three generations, the language is nearly obsolete. Changes in language practices, attitudes, and ideologies co-occurred with a shift away from family farming as the primary mode of production for which Pennsylvania German was the primary language. The change in the local economy to more manufacturing and service-based jobs in English dominant workplaces along with increased exogamy decreased the contexts available for Pennsylvania German language use. This shift away from Pennsylvania German-dominant contexts was compounded by anti-German sentiment expressed within and external to the speech community during the two World Wars. The cumulative impact of these changes influenced community members’ own conceptualizations of the language so that Pennsylvania German was considered to be a detriment for a child in terms of her education, future economic opportunities, and national identity. Following World War I, parents chose to restrict their use of Pennsylvania German around their children, leading to a generation of semi-speakers (Dorian 1977) and overhearers (Schlegel 2004), who could understand the language but who were prohibited or discouraged from speaking it due to

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anti-German sentiment. World War II only intensified these attitudes and practices, and there are few members of the community born after 1950 with more than passive comprehension abilities in the language. The shift from Pennsylvania German to English in the home increased the presence of “Dutchified English,” which was heavily stigmatized. The derogatory use of “Dutch” and “Dutchman” increased following the war years and is overwhelmingly cited by Pennsylvania Germans as a reason for ruptures in intergenerational transmission of Pennsylvania German. As one Pennsylvania German dialect teacher recounted, many parents did not want their children to sound Dutch or have a “dumm Deutschbraud” accent and insisted that their children learn “proper” unaccented English. In many cases, these parents were motivated by their experiences, where they were shamed or even physically punished for speaking Pennsylvania German at school. Today, the future of the Pennsylvania German language in nonsectarian Pennsylvania German communities and households is bleak. The dialect school superintendent estimated that within twenty-five years all the native speakers would be deceased. Despite public and local negative attitudes toward the spoken language, the overhearers, as children, developed an understanding of the affective value of the dialect as a reflection of family and cultural heritage (cf. Jaffe 1999: 89). Today, the dialect has been “symbolically elevated to a diacritica of ethnicity” (Kroskrity 1993: 191) which has led to the language maintenance and revitalization efforts described below. In addition to being influenced by dominant language ideologies (cf. Lippi-Green 1997) regarding the value of Pennsylvania German, language choices in the Pennsylvania German community were also influenced by internal, culturally specific moral ideologies about what it means to be a good parent or a good child. A “good” Pennsylvania German parent promotes her children’s achievement by removing perceived barriers. A “good” Pennsylvania German child obeys the parents’ wishes and honors the family. These ideologies complicate contemporary discourses about the reasons for language shift. Adult children and native speakers bemoan the loss of the language and recognize the family as the locus of linguistic and cultural transmission. Adult children argue that their parents did not teach the dialect to them (placing blame on parents for language loss) and native speakers claim their children did not want to learn it (placing blame on children for language loss). These two perspectives, at first glance contrary to the corresponding ideologies and moral arguments, are reflective of the present-day concern regarding the endangerment of the language. Should the native speakers, in the face of impending obsolescence, offer that “we did not teach it to the

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children,” they would be placing the responsibility and the blame for the loss on themselves, in effect admitting to having been “bad” parents. Should the adult children in the present day claim “we did not learn it from our parents,” they would be shouldering the responsibility for the loss and admitting to having been “bad” children. Rather than blaming each other for the loss, the parents and children articulate positions that reflect a particular historical moment when the cessation of Pennsylvania German language socialization was assumed to be the morally right thing to do. Individual resistance to these prevailing ideologies was present throughout the 20th century and a growing communal resistance has emerged in more recent decades. There are those few native speakers who never accepted Pennsylvania German as a detriment and continued to speak it and teach it to their children. Some of these native speakers are also Pennsylvania German literate and within this group there are those who volunteer to do what members of their generation are perceived not to have done: teach the language to their children’s generation in dialect classes. These children have aged; child overhearers, now adults, can resist and reject their role as obedient children who did not use the language as children and can engage as obedient children who honor their parents by learning the language of their family and heritage. These are the participants in dialect learning classrooms – those who represent an emergent collective resistance to the obsolescence-friendly ideologies of the past.

2. Pennsylvania German orthography and literacy: Moving toward standardization 2.1.

Pennsylvania German orthography

Although language revitalization endeavors have supported a concerted effort to encourage standardization of the written language, orthographic variation is present throughout the history of the Pennsylvania German literacy movement and language revitalization attempts. There are two primary orientations to orthographic representations of the language, one that is Germanbased and one that is English-based. As with other languages, orthographic standardization in Pennsylvania German literature, research, maintenance, and preservation efforts is problematic, as “orthographies are never simply transparent vehicles for getting a language down on paper; they are selective representations of linguistic

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form in a language that always (implicitly or explicitly) invoke a comparative framework” (Jaffe 1999: 216). There has been widespread adoption of the orthography in the Buffington and Barba grammar, published in 1954 and revised in 1965 (Buffington and Barba 1965). The Buffington and Barba orthography is a modification of German orthography, though it was not intended to presuppose knowledge of Standard German by its users (Stine 1996; Haag 1988). Although presently there is general consensus regarding the use of the Buffington-Barba orthographic system in publications, such as those published by the Pennsylvania German Society, the historical dissonance of conflicting representations of the language remains. There are those who favor a stronger German-based orthography. One teacher of the Pennsylvania German language argued for “German-type orthography” because, he states, Pennsylvania German “is indeed a German dialect” (Druckenbrod 1997: 17). Another argues that an orthography based on the German phonetic system would help in the preservation of the dialect because students who learn German in high school would be better able to learn Pennsylvania German. This, he argues, would be better than what he identifies as “dumb English phonetic spelling” that he has to read, re-read, and then read aloud in order to understand. This individual’s exasperation is reflected in scholarly literature, too. Haag (1988) examines the frustrations over orthography by authors and editors of Pennsylvania German literature. Many educated Pennsylvania German activists push for a German-based orthography, as the dialect is German-based. As many Pennsylvania German speakers have limited, if any, German language skills, there are those who advocate for an English-based orthography. This perspective is best exemplified by one of the Pennsylvania German dialect teachers in the current study. Although dialect class teachers use the same texts, this particular teacher encouraged the students to use their knowledge of English spelling as pronunciation guides for learning to speak Pennsylvania German. English-based orthography appears at festivals, as well, with vendors relying on English to advertise their goods and food. At one recent festival, a sign promoting pork barbeque sandwiches read: Sigh Flaysch, which is commonly represented in Pennsylvania German as Seifleesch (‘pork’). The only apparent nod to Pennsylvania German is the for representing the word final palato-alveolar fricative. Orthographic exasperation is recognizable on public occasions, too. This is exemplified by one attendee of a Pennsylvania German Fersommling (‘gathering’) who was chided by his wife for not singing Pennsylvania German songs, though he had a songbook in his hands. His annoyance was evident when he said, “I don’t know why they give me the goddamn songbook. I

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can’t read the goddamn words!” This man’s frustration as a reader is echoed by one academic’s challenge as a writer who opted to use a German-based orthography for his scholarly publications and an English-based orthography for his newspaper column. As examples of the orthographic variations that students encounter in class and in the wider Pennsylvania German cultural community, the following are three versions of the song “Nellie,” a Pennsylvania German version of the 1905 song “Wait till the Sun Shines Nellie” by Harry von Tilzer and Andrew B. Sterling. The first version was translated and transcribed by Mr. Henry Geist, a dialect teacher, using his own orthography. The second version was published by in 1987 by the board of the Baerricks Kounty Fersommling for their Sing Schticker. In the forward to the songbook, the editor writes, “When it became necessary to reprint, it was decided to revise the spelling of the dialect words, using as an authority, Processor C. Richard Beam’s Pennsylvania German Dictionary (1982).” The third version comes from the 1998 program booklet for the Mt. Zion Fersammling. Version 1: (Geist) Wart biss die sunn shinned Nellie, Uun die wolka sinn ferbei. Noe binn ich oh so hollich, Du bischt mei. Nix kon mie leeb ferennerera, Nix kon seeser sei. Wart biss die sunn shinned Nellie, Ich binn dei. Version 2: (Sing Schticker) Waard bis die Sunn scheint, Nellie, Un die Wolke sin ferbei, Noh bin ich O so hallichDu bischt mei. Nix kann mei Lieb ferennre, Nix kann siesser sei; Waard bis die Sunn scheint, Nellie, Ich bin dei. Version 3: Mt. Zion Wart bis die Suun shined, Nellie Un die Wolka sin ferbei No bin ich Oh so harlich Du bischt mei.

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Nix kon mei Lieb for-ennera Nix kon siesser sei; Wart biss die sunn shined, Nellie Ich bin dei

Mr. Geist’s version does not include the capitalization of nouns other than proper nouns. The other two versions use the German-derived practice of capitalizing all nouns (though I believe the lack of capitalization of sunn in the third line of the second stanza of the Mt. Zion version is a misprint). Mr. Geist employs English-based orthography to aid pronunciation (leeb for ‘dear’). The second version, based on Beam’s orthography, standardized through the publication and distribution of his dictionary, uses orthography that incorporates German language conventions (Lieb for ‘dear’). The third version appears to use English (shined) and German (Lieb) derived orthography. The orthographic variations found at festivals and Fersommlinge are the reality faced by older, fluent bilinguals and the adult students learning the language in the classroom.

2.2.

Pennsylvania German literacy

The organizers of the Grundsau Lodge dialect classes featured in this chapter and other Pennsylvania German maintenance efforts hold the position that literacy skills are paramount for the survival of this obsolescing language because the written modality remains even after native speakers have died. Pennsylvania German literacy provides historical continuity for the cultural community, and contemporary efforts at increasing literacy are part of this development. Although the Pennsylvania German dialect is primarily an oral one, a persistent percentage of the population was literate from at least the time when written Pennsylvania German began to be published and accessible, especially after the widely popular publication of Henry Harbaugh’s Harfe in 1870 and Abraham Reeser Horne’s instructive Pennsylvania German Manual in 1875 (Donner 1999). Horne wrote his manual in order to help Pennsylvania Germans learn High German and English via the dialect and used his own phonetic system to represent the dialect (Donner 1999: 7). It was not until the 1954 publication and 1965 revision of the Buffington and Barba grammar (Buffington and Barba 1965) that orthographic standardization began to take hold. There are still a number of publications produced in the dialect, including newsletters, newspaper columns and bilingual collections.

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The influence of the Pennsylvania German literacy tradition on the participants in the dialect classes is not readily apparent. None of the students in this study expressed knowledge or interest in Pennsylvania German literacy or literature. Nonsectarian Pennsylvania Germans, as willing participants within the dominant white European culture and for whom the introduction of literacy is endogenous, are not in competition with alternative frameworks but restrained by their acceptance of the standard language ideology that favors English at the expense of other languages (Lippi-Green 1997). A particular manifestation of this ideology lies in Pennsylvania Germans’ language attitudes as identified by Lois Huffines (1980). Huffines isolated three “perceptions”: that language should be useful for something; that language should promote learning; and that language should be correct and accent free (Huffines 1980: 51–2). Another manifestation of the standard language ideology is the focus on text-based standardization. Among language activists like the teachers described here, writing of Pennsylvania German has, at times, pitted insider against insider in a struggle over forms of representation. As we will see, present-day dialect teachers question and challenge the authority of dictionary authors. The availability of standardized forms does not imply the presence of a singular perspective on what constitutes correct linguistic forms. It is also the case that the teachers of Pennsylvania German have acquired their literacy in that language in different ways and may have learned different orthographic representations that are not shared with the other teachers or with the texts. As we have noted, Mr. Geist is self-taught and has created his own orthography for writing the dialect and has strategies for teaching Pennsylvania German reading and writing that differ from those of the other two teachers. The course director, Mr. Yoder, emphasizes literacy skills and standardized orthography, culminating in the writing and reading aloud of the aforementioned letters to Unkel Henry. Literacy is used by Mr. Yoder to promote literacy. The assigned teacher, Mr. Geist, emphasizes oral skills and uses written Pennsylvania German as a way to help the students “sound Dutch.” Students are being taught by Mr. Geist to write in a way to help them speak; literacy is used by Mr. Geist to promote orality.

3. Pennsylvania German dialect class As Pennsylvania German is no longer part of language socialization in the homes, the options for learning the dialect have changed. Today, commu-

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nity colleges, state universities, and independent organizations offer dialect classes. Some are extremely basic, teaching familiar expressions. Some are more advanced, including one that is a literature class for intermediate students and elder fluent speakers. Kutztown University offers two semesters of Pennsylvania German language and a minor in Pennsylvania German studies. One independent organization that offers dialect classes is the Grossdaddi Grundsau (‘grandfather groundhog’) Lodge.The first Grundsau Lodge was established in 1933 as an attempt to preserve and celebrate Pennsylvania German language and culture. At the time of the research there were seventeen active chapters of these all-male clubs. The Grundsau Lodges are responsible for developing, promoting and instituting a standardized dialect class with the purpose of creating a pool of speakers who follow similar language standards. Grundsau Lodge dialect classes are held every Fall at a handful of locations. The classes meet for two hours once a week for a fifteen-week period and are taught by fluent speakers of Pennsylvania German. Each class location has a primary teacher and “guest teachers” who may lead portions of class from time to time. There are no official teaching qualifications for the volunteer teachers. The pertinent and practical qualifications include competency in the language and an interest in teaching the language and other cultural knowledge. The expressed aim of the classes is to introduce the students to the dialect as a spoken and written language. I enrolled in two different dialect classes, one sponsored by the Grossdaddi Grundsau lodge and the other run by an independent Pennsylvania German instructor. The data to follow are drawn from the Grundsau lodge class though the analysis is informed by both. There were three men and thirteen women in the class, including me. The youngest student was an eleven year-old girl (a great-niece of the teacher), and the oldest was a sixty-four year-old female. Eleven of the students were born between 1947 and 1957, years when parents were transitioning to using English as the home language. Indicative of the close association of language and family, fourteen of the students were related to another student in the class, either by blood or marriage. Two sisters in the class, for example, self-identified as Scotch-IrishAmericans and enrolled in the class because of a fondness for the dialect acquired over the years through business dealings with dialect speakers and through conversations with Pennsylvania German in-laws. Another woman said her exposure to the dialect began when she married her husband (who was also enrolled in the class). In response to a questionnaire, the reasons that students gave for taking the class were fairly consistent. Only two of the respondents failed to mention

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family, history, or language loss as a reason for taking the class. For most of these students, learning the dialect was valued primarily for its symbolic relationship to family and heritage and specifically, to use with members of their generation or older. For the most part, there is limited to no expressed future orientation for language transmission. Because of this orientation to oral communication with elders, some of the students complained about the emphasis on written Pennsylvania German in the dialect classes. The writing component was especially frustrating for Deborah, a forty-nine year-old overhearer who voiced her struggle with reading and writing the dialect on a nearly weekly basis. During the fifth week of class she said, “I want to speak it and I want to understand it. I don’t want to write it. I just want to speak it and understand it. I have nobody to write it to.” Deborah’s frustration with the written mode was evident eight weeks later: “I can understand it. You can say anything. But I can’t read it. It doesn’t look like- . . . It’s not spelled right.” Here, Deborah identifies the “incorrect” orthography as a source of trouble. Deborah’s concerns about reading, writing, and spelling bring into relief the nexus of language ideologies and orthographic practices that is negotiated in dialect class and examined below. The orthographic strategies that students encounter in the classroom vary with the different teachers. Students confront mixed signals and alternative symbols provided by the three teachers, two of whom have stated preferences for standardized orthographic conventions and a third with an expressed preference for orthographic variation. At times the teachers seem to contradict their own positions on orthography, depending upon the age and oral ability of the writer. Deborah’s teacher, the main teacher for this dialect class, was Henry Geist, a seventy-five year-old man who had been teaching dialect class for eight years. He2 was a native speaker of Pennsylvania German who, in his own words, had “twelve years of schooling.” Although Mr. Geist spoke of his insecurity about his teaching ability, he expressed confidence in his Pennsylvania German knowledge. He articulated a deep appreciation of the dialect and at times reflected on the way things used to be. He taught himself to be Pennsylvania German literate and created his own English-based phonetic system in order to write Pennsylvania German stories, poems and lyrics (see “Nellie” above).

2. All names of dialect class participants are pseudonyms, with the exception of my own.

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There were many aspects of the class that can be attributed to the character and personality of Mr. Geist. Despite any idiosyncrasies of his and this particular group of students, there was a degree of standardization shared among all the Grundsau Lodge sponsored dialect classes. Teachers shared lesson plans, format, and activities. To ensure that the dialect classes were sufficiently similar, the superintendent of the dialect school, Mr. Yoder, visited the classes. Mr. Yoder attended and assisted with four of Mr. Geist’s classes. Mr. Hofmaier, another teacher, assisted Mr. Geist on two occasions. All three men gave their “dialect testimonies” – telling how they learned the dialect. All three men were on the Pennsylvania German event circuit, offering entertainment in the dialect. The men differed, however, in their approach to dialect teaching and learning. Mr. Hofmaier and Mr. Yoder used literacy tools to teach literacy. Mr. Geist used literacy tools to promote orality. The variation in the orthographic conventions used as literacy tools to promote literacy and orality were a source of tension among the teachers and students. From the students’ perspective, the focus on learning a standardized orthography distracted students’ time and attention away from their expressed goal of learning to speak Pennsylvania German. The students who expressed a desire to speak the dialect with same-age and older family and friends favored Mr. Geist’s approach.

3.1.

Literacy and the dialect class

One of the goals of the Grundsau Lodge-sponsored dialect class as stated by the course superintendent is to preserve the Pennsylvania German dialect for the future. A means to achieving this goal is to teach reading and writing, i.e., literacy. Literacy, however, is much more complicated than learning how to manipulate written representations of a language. The preservation of the dialect via literacy is also about the preservation of cultural identity. Having access to the tools of achieving literacy and preserving cultural identity means having power to determine how to represent the dialect, the people, a single person, via literacy. In this instance “power has ‘microscopic’ dimensions, small, intimate, everyday dimensions, and these are constitutive as well as regulative; they are the stuff out of which senses of identity, senses of self as a private individual as well as a social entity in a given time and place, are composed and recomposed” (Collins and Blot 2003: 5). The microscopic dimensions of power are evident in the minutia of classroom literacy practices. Students who were denied full access to the dialect by their parents and other members of that generation are indeed composing and recomposing

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senses of self as individuals and members of a cultural entity by attending these classes in order to learn the dialect. They explicitly state that they hope to reconnect with a familial and cultural past by learning the language of their family and cultural heritage. The students are situating themselves into these histories as persons with fuller, enriched senses of belonging by sharing the language of their ancestors. Literacy is the primary means of achieving this.

3.2.

Orthography and the dialect class

Literacy instruction in all Pennsylvania German dialect schools is emphasized, but in different ways and to different degrees. Literacy efforts in the dialect class, such as dialect writing assignments, provide opportunities to examine orthographic practices. In the Grundsau Lodge schools, there are two requirements that need to be met in order to receive a dialect school diploma. The first is attending half of the classes and the second is writing and reading aloud a letter to “Unkel Henry.” This assignment was announced by Mr. Yoder, the dialect school superintendent. Students groaned when Mr. Yoder described the letter writing process. Mr. Yoder then recounted an interaction he had with an eighty-nine year-old woman who had heard about the dialect class and the writing requirement. This woman’s first language was Pennsylvania German, and she began to acquire English in kindergarten. She asked the superintendent how to write the language, and he said, “Write it like it sounds. Phonetically.” He continued recalling this interaction, “I can’t give her a dictionary and say now this is the only way you can do it. She knew. She could talk it as well as I could.” The woman wrote two letters, one in English and one in Pennsylvania German. The superintendent recalled, “One is in the dialect, which I recognized. I picked that out and I started to read it. I had no problem. Sure she didn’t spell. She didn’t capitalize the nouns. But I knew exactly what she was saying.” Mr. Yoder imposes orthographic standards for dialect students while allowing orthographic creativity and variation for native speakers. I suggest that this demarcation of orthographic rules is representative of Mr. Yoder’s recognition of the generational boundaries between the last native speakers (and a corresponding value of oral skills) and the new era of classroom learners (and a corresponding value of literacy skills). Later in the same class Mr. Yoder provided an example of a word that students will see written “like it sounds.” The standardized orthography for cardinal number one is eens. Mr. Yoder warns, however, “you’re going to see that a-i-n-s. The Dutchman who never went to school he’ll write a-i-n-s. Ains.

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That’s phonetics. A-i-n-s.” Indeed, the summer following the dialect class I documented ains as written on a chalkboard in a one-room schoolhouse display at the Kutztown Pennsylvania German Folk Festival. In short, what these examples show is that orthographic variation present in documents produced by native and fluent speakers of Pennsylvania German speakers is often deemed permissible by Pennsylvania German teachers while orthographic standardization is preferred and required in documents produced by adult language learners in dialect class. However, students in dialect class see themselves as part of the genealogy of the “unschooled” and oral Pennsylvania Germans. Students are not interested in corporate preservation and literacy as much as they are motivated by a desire to communicate orally with family members of their same or older generation. In the classroom, literacy acquisition includes practices with text. There are various forms of text presented to students as literacy learning tools. Handouts of vocabulary lists, pictures, poems, and stories are used for group recitation and individual instruction outside of class. There is a performative aspect to these handouts as they are used for group recitation to increase oral competence, i.e., “sounding Dutch.” Sometimes the handouts are used for individual recitation; each student takes a turn pronouncing a word, a line of poetry, a sentence, etc. Teachers correct mispronunciations and students recite the text in question until it is pronounced correctly. Reading aloud the written text for oral competence is one of the practices of language learning exercised in class. Singing is another text-based practice performed in class. Songs are taught/learned via reading song sheets (handouts without musical notation), listening to melodies played on the guitar, singing, and identifying pictographs. One song, Schnitzelbunk, is sung using a chart with graphics – pictures designed to represent the accompanying words. The song and the chart are commonly found at Pennsylvania German events such as Fersommlinge (‘gatherings’) or fairs or other events where singing in the dialect occurs. The acquisition of musical literacy, albeit minimal, may foster participation in Pennsylvania German sing-alongs and engender a sense of membership, a sense of self and personhood that literacy, as power, can afford.

4. Dictionaries, legitimacy and authority in dialect class Student learning of the dialect is impacted by the structure and organization of the class and is complicated by the different sources of authority available to them and their access to them. The conventional classroom orientation

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with the teacher in the front of the classroom facing rows of student desks is a source of familiarity for teachers and students. This arrangement, plus the teacher’s role of authority and power that is substantiated by the organization of the space and the allotment of time and turn allocations given to the teachers, accentuate the teachers’ positions as the ones with knowledge. The students and teachers share this understanding of the classroom but also share an understanding of each other as members of the same cultural or ethnic community, either through birth or marriage. Because of this, there is an added dimension of respect given to the teachers as elders in the cultural community – the teachers are representatives of the generation of the students’ parents and grandparents.

4.1.

Dictionary use: Students’ and teachers’ orientations to the dictionary

The teachers’ relationships with dictionaries is complex. On the one hand, native dialect speakers and teachers represent a category of person that lexicographers and orthographers elicit for their linguistic knowledge. In fact, one of the Grundsau Lodge teachers is acknowledged by a dictionary author for his contributions to the dictionary. On the other hand, despite their extensive lexical and semantic knowledge, these teachers are less assured of their spelling skills and tend to defer to the dictionary for “correct” orthography. The students use the dictionaries primarily to find the Pennsylvania German equivalent of an English word, or an English translation of a Pennsylvania German word; the spelling is secondary. Since students rarely generate Pennsylvania German words, they seldom use the dictionary like their teachers do, for a spelling check. For classroom language learners with limited access to native, fluent, and semi-speaking Pennsylvania German speakers, the dictionary is the most accessible resource for language learning. There were three dictionaries available at the time for students to purchase, the “pink” (Beam 1991), the “blue” (Stine 1990), and the “red” (Stine 1996) dictionaries. I refer to the dictionaries by the color of their covers, as this was the most consistent form of reference used by students in the dialect class. The “pink” dictionary is an English to “Pennsylvania Dutch” dictionary, prepared by the Director of the Center for Pennsylvania German Studies at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. The “blue” dictionary is a Pennsylvania German to English text by a professor at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. The “red” dictionary is a compilation of the “pink” and “blue” dictionaries and has

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both Pennsylvania German to English and English to Pennsylvania German. Stine (1990) acknowledges that his dictionary (the “blue” one) was virtually a reversal of Beam’s dictionary (the “pink” one). Both men acknowledge the Grundsau Lodge dialect classes as the source of increased interest in the dialect that influenced their decision to compile and publish their dictionaries. In the Grundsau Lodge-sponsored dialect class, the “pink” English to Pennsylvania German dictionary (Beam 1991) was the only required text. With limited native knowledge of the dialect, students use the dictionary as an authoritative text, justifying their Pennsylvania German spellings and word selections. For the primary teacher and the two supplemental teachers, the dictionaries are both a) static texts that marginalize lifelong contextualized knowledge and b) works in progress, as the teachers challenge the dictionary and consult with the dictionary authors to suggest changes for future editions. The teachers respond to discrepancies in vocabulary that exist between life experiences and dictionary text by referring first to their life experiences. The only time teachers defer to the dictionaries is when their experiences yield no words and their own orthographic knowledge is uncertain. Life experiences are the first source of reference for teachers; the dictionary is second. For the most part, students lack the social and cultural contextual dimension of language learning that is a fundamental and irrevocable asset for the teachers. When the students do draw upon life experiences as a language learning resource, these experiences are supplemental to the dictionary. The students defer to the dictionary, unless they have a life experience with a word upon which to draw. The dictionary is the first source of reference for students and life experiences are second. As a consequence, teachers are in a position to challenge both the dictionary and the students’ life experiences. In class, the teachers’ questioning of the authority of the dictionary adds to the linguistic insecurity faced by the students as it undermines their only portable and permanent source of information. For example, during the seventh week of class Mr. Hofmaier complained that ‘hair’/haar is listed in the dictionary as a neuter noun with the neuter article er. Mr. Hofmaier thinks the article should be die and says, “I’ve been fighting this all the years I’ve been teaching.” Students in this dialect class are told by the superintendent and teachers that being able to read Pennsylvania German is essential for their acquisition of oral competence. Their presumption, however, is that orthographic standardization is not a priority. All three teachers agree that in order to speak the dialect and understand it, students need to write the dialect and read it. Two of the teachers, Mr.Yoder and Mr. Hofmaier, insist this be accomplished by using a standard orthography. Students resist the teachers’ focus on lit-

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eracy and orthographic standardization, and the resistance is articulated in terms of a functional intergenerational issue. With the perceived direction of language use with older generations, the students see little use for literacy and orthography as many members of the older generations lack Pennsylvania German literacy skills. The perceived direction of language maintenance proponents such as these teachers is toward younger generations who, the teachers profess, will have to acquire Pennsylvania German literacy skills if they are to acquire Pennsylvania German as the native speakers die. Mr. Yoder is the superintendent of the entire program and represents the language maintenance perspective. Mr. Geist, however, is sympathetic to the students’ desires. Whereas the teachers are in the position to contest the authority of the dictionary, students, having been socialized in their own educational backgrounds to the legitimacy of the written word, rely on the dictionary texts as a source of evidence for truth and authority (cf. Schieffelin 1996). Students give different versions of “it’s in the book” as the ultimate authoritative statement and evidence for correct spelling and word usage. The following excerpt from classroom interaction illustrates the competing models of authority employed by students and teachers: (1) Frant/Fedderscht Keri and Marie are at the front of the class. Marie has written the following sentence in Pennsylvania German on the chalkboard The newspaper is delivered to our front door every morning at six-thirty. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Mr. Yoder: Keri:

Marie: Keri:

Mr. Yoder:

Frant What is what is that word frant. Well:? [That’s what’s her:e. [((looking at her paper she holds, thrusting it forward)) That’s what’s in the (.) dictionary for front. That’s what’s [h(h)e(h)re huh huh. [((points to her paper)) (3.8) fedderscht [(3.0) [((Keri moves to chalkboard with chalk in hand)) fedderscht Dier [(1.6) [((Keri erases frant)) would be front door.

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Mr. Yoder questions Keri and Marie’s selection of frant for English ‘front’ and they justify their selection with “that’s what’s here” and “that’s what’s in the dictionary.” Keri points to the evidence on her paper, the written word she accessed from the dictionary. Marie simply states with declarative intonation that the word they chose is in the dictionary. The teacher trumps the dictionary, and Mr. Yoder tells the students, without responding to their evidence, that fedderscht Dier would be front door, thus asserting his “native speaker” competence as the final authority. A source of consternation for the students is their absence of access to native speakers and native speaker knowledge outside of the dialect class. These students represent a generation for which the texts acquire authority that speakers of this oral language used to have in the transition to literacy. Pennsylvania German dictionaries are acquiring cultural capital as sources of legitimate forms of the language as there are fewer and fewer speakers available as cultural resources. The teachers are unfamiliar with learning the dialect with the assistance of the dictionaries and the students are unfamiliar with learning the dialect with the assistance of daily conversations with speakers. The students’ and teachers’ orientations to the dictionaries in the dialect classroom are examined below.

4.2.

Orthographic standards debated: Dictionary use in action

Standardization is a process that takes place both in the writing of texts and in textual practices that follow their publication. In this section, I examine this ongoing process of standardardization as it takes place through dictionary practices in the classroom. Teachers used the dictionaries as sources for a standardized orthography under several circumstances. An obvious reference to the dictionary occurred when a teacher did not know how to spell a word. Teachers also referred to the dictionaries when they were unfamiliar with a word and therefore had no knowledge of this spelling other than from native “intuition” or previous experience creating their own orthographies. The following is an example of Mr. Geist, looking up the spelling of a word he knows. In this lesson from the ninth week of class, each student was asked to make a list in Pennsylvania German of his or her favorite foods, which the student then recited in class. The other students in the class were supposed to translate each student’s Pennsylvania German food lists into English. Anna is reading her list, which includes Karabse Kuche (‘pumpkin cake’). Mr. Geist, after some student silence, proffers his translation.

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Letters with dashes between them indicate that a speaker is spelling a word aloud: (2) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Pumpkin cake Mr. Geist: Anna: class: Mr. Geist: Anna: Mr. Geist Anna:

Pumpkin is a Karabse don’t ask me how to spell it I’d have to look it up. U:::h I looked it up. (laughter) C-A-R or K-A-R They have K-A-R-A-B-S-E K-A-R And then Kuche. {cake}

After Mr. Geist confesses not knowing how to spell Karabse in line 2 without referring to the dictionary, Anna reports in line 3 that she had looked it up in the dictionary. I interpret the collective laughter of the students in line 4 as acknowledgement of the contrasting ways the teachers and students use the dictionary that was well acknowledged by the ninth week of class. Whereas Mr. Geist refers to the dictionary for spelling, the students refer to the dictionary for source words, meanings and spellings. In line 5 there is an interactional shift as Mr. Geist offers Anna two spelling alternatives for Karabse in line 5. Anna, with the dictionary, is now the literal owner of the knowledge. The dictionary has an answer that the teacher does not. Anna offers the dictionary spelling in line 6. Anna’s ownership of the knowledge is mitigated as she uses the third person plural to index the authors of the dictionary: They have K-A-R-A-B-S-E. In this sense, it is not Anna, but the anonymous dictionary authors who are providing the correct answer. Anna’s introduction of the author(s) via the use of the ubiquitous “they” (line 6) into the interaction may possibly serve to maintain a level of respect for Mr. Geist as teacher, and for Mr. Geist as elder. With the information provided by Anna, Mr. Geist in line 7 provides what is now established as the “correct” version of the two spelling options he originally offered in line 5. The Karabse example is indicative of the process of orthographic standardization and its link to literacy practices. The pronunciation of Karabse remains the same whether it is spelled with the letter or the letter . In Pennsylvania German, however, work-initial [k] is always represented with the letter ; in the Buffington-Barba system, there are no Pennsylvania German words that begin with the letter . Mr. Geist is aware of this. But this example does foreground how distinct the different modalities

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are to a native speaker. The practice of “doing” a standardized orthography is a relatively new and ongoing process. In the next example, Mr. Hofmaier has written an English sentence on the board for the students to translate into Pennsylvania German. The sentence is “The girl has red hair:” (3)

Maedel

Mr. Hofmaier has written “The girl has red hair” on the board for the students to translate into Pennsylvania German. In the following excerpt, Mr. Hofmaier asks the students to provide the Pennsylvania German word for “girl.” 1 2

Mr. Hof: some:

3 4 5 6 7

Mr. Hof:

Wh- What’s the word for girl Maedel {girl} Okay? and I’m not sure how your book spells it It’s it’s spelled two ways With A-E or two Es I think the new book has two Es in it Okay.

The students who suggest Maedel in line 2 are offering the word available to them in the pink (English to Pennsylvania German) dictionary. The blue dictionary (Pennsylvania German to English), which is not a required text but is used by some of the students in the class, has both Meedel (‘girl, girlfriend’) and Maedel (‘old maid’) as entries. In line 6, Mr. Hofmaier indicates that the “new book” (red dictionary) uses Meedel as an option. In fact, the red dictionary offers two choices for girl, Maedsche and Meedel. Mr. Hofmaier reveals that he is aware of multiple spellings and ultimately selects Maedel as the “correct version” he writes on the board. In this case the teacher acknowledges multiple spelling possibilities depending upon the dictionary being used. In this example Mr. Hofmaier is stressing the importance of the correct written form, and thus he emphasizes the literacy aspect of this exercise as the pronunciation of the word remains unchanged whether it is Maedel or Meedel. The differing approaches to literacy practiced by Mr. Geist and Mr. Hofmaier are evident in examples (2) and (3) above. In both examples, the pronunciation of the word would not change given the different spelling options. The standardized form of Karabse is admittedly unknown to Mr. Geist and the options he provides for possible spellings are based on his own local knowledge (as someone who has created and used his own orthography) and not his working knowledge of the dictionary. A student reproduces the dic-

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tionary spelling and Mr. Geist accepts it. Mr. Hofmaier expresses uncertainty regarding which spelling is available to the students in the required text and reproduces options that are in multiple dictionaries, favoring the option in the older dictionary over the option provided in the more recently published dictionary. There were additional discrepancies between teacher spellings and the dictionary spellings. There are two types of examples of this. The first type includes those words that a teacher intentionally spells using an alternate form. Mr. Geist does this to help students in their production of correct Pennsylvania German pronunciation; spelling is used as a phonetic aid. The second type of discrepancy includes those words for which a teacher uses an alternate spelling that, unknown to the teacher, contradicts the dictionary spelling. Mr. Geist offered alternative spellings to help students “sound Dutch,” placing emphasis on the oral modality at the expense of teaching a standardized orthography. He consistently represented work-initial [ts] with the letters rather than the letter , as written in the dictionary and preferred by Mr. Yoder and Mr. Hofmaier. For example, in the case for the word zu (English ‘to’), Mr. Geist writes tzu. He changes orthography in other cases, too. In the following example, Mr. Geist intentionally uses fuhn as an alternative spelling for what he knows is the preferred dictionary form, fun: (4) fun/fuhn 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Mr. Geist: class:

In subtraction you take the lower number first Drei un zwanzich (twenty-three) ((writes F-U-H-N on the board)) fun (from) Now if you look in your dictionary you will find F-U-N I like to put that H in there to make maybe different from it just have the F-U-N you think fun No problem. I like to put the H in for it for fuhn {from} from drei un zwanzich (twenty-three)

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In this example Mr. Geist makes explicit his own English-based orthographic conventions and the presumption that students employ their English language phonetic skills in reading aloud Pennsylvania German. Mr. Geist has years of experience writing Pennsylvania German using his own phonetic system that predates the dictionaries used in the class. In lines 6–10, Mr. Geist explains why he opts to spell fun adding an H for fuhn – to distinguish the pronunciation of Pennsylvania German fun from English ‘fun.’ By adding the letter H, he reveals his preference for learning the correct pronunciation over orthography. Oral competency is important to Mr. Geist and he stresses that over the written modality throughout the course. In addition to the explicit change of spelling of fuhn for fun, Mr. Geist consistently added the letter in front of words that begin, in the written form, with the letter . In the example above, he writes tzwanzich for zwanzich. He does this to remind the students that the letter is pronounced [ts]. Again, Mr. Geist emphasizes the oral over the written in order to help students achieve oral proficiency to, at the very least, sound Pennsylvania German. When students spelled [tsu] as tzu instead of zu when the other teachers were present, they were corrected although Mr. Hofmaier told them, “If Mr. Geist wants you to do it that way, fine. You have the [t] pronunciation. But eventually learn to do it. You’ll see more of the written dialect orthographically correct than phonetically written.” Mr. Hofmaier articulates a position that recognizes various approaches to inscription, with Mr. Geist’s being “phonetically” based, linking it to orality, and his own approach being “orthographically” based, linking it to literacy. Mr. Yoder also offered alternative spellings. For example, during the eighth week of class, Mr. Yoder says mit is spelled with two . Two of the dictionaries have entries for mit spelled with one : (5) mit/mitt/with Mr. Yoder is reading aloud a sentence written on the blackboard by a student. 1 2 3

Mr. Yoder;

Ich gleich Maed mit {I like an old maid with} M-I-T-T It should be two Ts.

The student makes the correction and adds the letter to the word. The entries for mit in the red (Stine 1996) and pink (Beam 1991) dictionaries have one . The pronunciation of the word remains unaffected. Mr. Yoder, like Mr. Hofmaier above, emphasizes orthographic representation over orality.

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Mr. Yoder’s native knowledge is not questioned by the students even though every student is using a dictionary with a different spelling than the one he provides. The students recognize the primacy of the teacher’s knowledge. To summarize, each of the three teachers use spellings that are not found in the dictionary. As shown in the example for Karabse, there are occasions when the teacher, in this case Mr. Geist is unfamiliar with a word and thus uncertain of its spelling and must defer to the dictionary. On other occasions, there are contradictions between teacher and text spellings because a teacher purposefully offers an alternative as a pedagogical strategy for the acquisition of correct pronunciation. Mr. Geist employs this strategy consistently using the letters tz instead of the letter for [ts]. Then there are less frequent occasions when teachers, as in the case with Mr. Yoder and mit, correct a student’s use of a dictionary-preferred form. The students, on many occasions, do not question the teacher when he provides an alternative version to that in the dictionary. This is a subtle undermining of the authority of the dictionary, giving a sense of moral authority to the teachers as native speakers. The teachers trump the text. At the same time, the teachers do not share ideologies regarding the significance of imposing a standardized orthography. Mr. Geist employs spellings that he believes will help the students learn how to “sound Dutch.” Mr. Hofmaier and Mr. Yoder emphasize the standardized orthographies found in the dictionaries in order to help the students acquire literacy.

5. Conclusions Pennsylvania German dialect classes are an attempt at maintenance of a language that has undergone dramatic shifts in practices, attitudes, and ideologies during the twentieth century. Two world wars with Germany as the enemy compounded the already heavy economic, religious, and educational strain on the health of Pennsylvania German. A developing attitude was the negative association of Pennsylvania German with an agrarian cultural identity. The most obvious marker of this negative identity was presumed to be the dialect. The shift in attitude precipitated the shift to English. Pennsylvania German English replaced Pennsylvania German in many contexts, and fluent speakers, in an effort to do what was best for their children, began socializing their children as native English speakers, and restricting the contexts of use of Pennsylvania German that the children might overhear. An ideology of Pennsylvania German language as a detriment emerged from the steadfast cultural understanding of what it means to be a “good” parent: a “good” par-

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ent removes obstacles from their children’s perceived pathways to happiness and success. This ideology guided parents’ use of the language in the presence of children. Parents (and their children) report that they routinely used Pennsylvania German to keep secrets from children, to gossip, and to swear, with the presumption that children would not understand what the parents were saying. As overhearers to these exchanges, children did acquire some knowledge of Pennsylvania German form and use. Some of the overhearers became recipient bilinguals with Pennsylvania German comprehension skills. Overhearers also recognized the contexts in which it was appropriate to use Pennsylvania German. These children were, to an extent, socialized through the Pennsylvania German language, though they were not socialized to use the language as speakers. As overhearers the children developed a positive association of the language with adult family and friends. Their experience as overhearers has led to the revisioning of the language not as a detriment, as their parents perceived it, but as an artifact of their familial and cultural heritage. This revisioning, a language ideology of the overhearer generation, is also embedded within the larger cultural ideology of being a good “child.” They are working within the same guiding moral ideology of family as their parents. The children are directly linking their language to their ethnicity in a positive, self-generating, mutually constitutive way: the language begets the identity and the identity begets the language. This is an example of the “being” aspect of language that links the traditional language with a personal responsibility for perpetuating the link between language and identity (Fishman 2001: 5). In an attempt to honor and respect their parents, there are those in the overhearer generation who act on this ideology and attempt to learn the dialect in dialect classes. The students in the dialect classes explicitly link the Pennsylvania German language to family and cultural heritage. As overhearers, their experiences are with Pennsylvania German as an oral language. Although there is a Pennsylvania German literary tradition, there are many Pennsylvania Germans who are unable to read the dialect. None of the overhearers I consulted during my research claimed proficiency in Pennsylvania German literacy. This stance reflects their understanding of Pennsylvania German to be primarily an oral language; a language they over heard and not over read. 3 This 3. Beyond written Pennsylvania German found in newspapers, books and pamphlets, there is the potential to read folk art as inscription that might be indicative of a type of Pennsylvania German literacy proficiency (cf. Collins and Blot 2003:160). None of my consultants offered folk art symbols as Pennsylvania German literacy, and, to the best of my knowledge, they understood literacy to be represented by the written word.

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emphasis on the oral nature of the language and the link to their participant status as overhearers is significant because it partially explains the reluctance of some overhearers to spend time reading and writing the dialect. For their expressed purposes of using the spoken language at family gatherings and addressing older relatives, the written word was not, in their view, necessary. For the purposes of language maintenance, however, literacy becomes a tool for preserving the language when there are so few fluent speakers. The shift to the emphasis on the written word has its difficulties, however, as there are multiple perspectives on the standardization of the orthography and widespread variation in orthography in the Pennsylvania German cultural community. Even after the publication of dictionaries used in dialect classes as authoritative sources of standardization, there are orthographic and content-based disagreements between teachers and the dictionaries. At times the teachers contest spellings in the dictionary and at times they contest dictionary content. Students also struggle in their attempts to use the dictionary as a reference, faced with representations in text that conflict with teacher representations in class. The dictionaries are devoid of contextualized knowledge of variations and use and are a limiting factor in the students’ attempts to acquire locally preferred spellings and terms. These struggles are part of students’ attempts to situate their conceptualizations of themselves as Pennsylvania Germans and (potential) speakers of Pennsylvania German within a particular familial and shared cultural community. Students in the Grundsau Lodge dialect class do not always agree with the teachers on the significance of written Pennsylvania German in the class, and the teachers themselves take up a variety of positions. Should words be spelled to aid pronunciation? Should words be spelled to aid orthographic standardization and the promotion of literacy? These questions are addressed in the moment-by-moment interactions among teachers and students, are consequential for more than Pennsylvania German language acquisition, and get to the core of the different stances taken by participants in the Pennsylvania German language maintenance movement. Those who support literacy and orthographic standardization as the key to Pennsylvania German language maintenance envision future generations being able to learn the language; they situate themselves in a genealogy of preservation. Most of the students in these dialect classes, however, have a much smaller orientation towards literacy and orthographic standardization. They are interested in learning the language of their family and heritage; language is an artifact of that family and heritage. They envision themselves as adults who did not learn the language in their youth and as children who are paying respect to their parents and grandparents by learning the language later in life. As

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such, they crave the linguistic tools to increase their oral competency, but identify time and attention devoted to orthographic standardization as obstacles to increasing their oral proficiency. In fulfilling an obligation to older generations, these students do not re-imagine themselves as parents with an obligation to teach the language to younger generations. The very language ideology that influences the decision to take the class and learn the language ultimately situates the students in a cultural genealogy of obsolescence.

References Beam, C. Richard 1991 Revised Pennsylvania German dictionary: English to Pennsylvania Dutch. Lancaster, PA: Brookshire Publications, Inc. Buffington, Albert F. and Preston Barba 1965 A Pennsylvania German grammar. Revised edition. Allentown, PA: Schlecter’s. Collins, James and Richard K. Blot 2003 Literacy and literacies: Texts, power and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Donner, William W. 1999 Abraham Reeser Horne: To the manor born. Der Reggeboge 33(1/2). 3–17. Dorian, Nancy 1977 The problem of the semi-speaker in language death. Linguistics 191. 23–32. Druckenbrod, Richard 1997 Mir Lanne Deitsch: A Guide for Learning the Skills of Reading Writing and Speaking Pennsylvania German. Allentown, PA: Richard Druckenbrod. Fishman, Joshua A. 2001a Why is it so hard to save a threatened language? In Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Can threatened languages be saved?, 1–22. Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.) 2001b Can threatened languages be saved? Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. Haag, Earl 1988 A Pennsylvania German anthology. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press. Hornberger, Nancy H. and Kendall A. King 1998 Authenticity and unification in Quechua language planning. Language, Culture, and Curriculum 11(3). 390–410.

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Huffines, Marion Lois 1980 Pennsylvania German: Maintenance and shift. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 25. 43–57. Jaffe, Alexandra 1996 The second annual Corsican spelling contest: Orthography and ideology. American Ethnologist 23(4). 816–835. Jaffe, Alexandra 1999 Ideologies in action: Language politics on Corsica. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kroskrity Paul V. (ed.) 1993 Language, History and Identity: Ethnolinguistic Studies of the Arizona Tewa. Tulson: University of Arizona Press. Kroskrity Paul V. (ed.) 2000 Regimes of language: Ideologies, politics and identities. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Lippi-Green, Rosina 1997 English with an accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge. Schieffelin, Bambi B. 1996 Creating evidence: Making sense of written words in Bosavi. In Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and grammar, 435–465. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, Bambi B. and Rachelle C. Doucet 1994 The “real” Haitian creole: Ideology, metalinguistics, and orthographic choice. American Ethnologist 21. 176–200. Schlegel, Jennifer 2004 Pennsylvania German overhearers: Living with language maintenance and language loss. Ph. D. diss., Department ofAnthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. Sebba, Mark 2007 Spelling and society: The culture and politics of orthography around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stine, Eugene S. 1990 Pennsylvania German to English dictionary. Lehighton, PA: Eugene S. Stine. Stine, Eugene S. 1996 Pennsylvania German dictionary. Birdsboro, PA: Pennsylvania German Society. Yoder, Don 1992 The reformed church and Pennsylvania German identity. Der Reggeboge 26(2). 1–16.

Chapter 9 Transcription in practice: Nonstandard1 orthography Alexandra Jaffe 1. Introduction Transcriptions of spoken data are a central element of much applied linguistic research, serving both as the basis for large-scale corpora used by multiple analysts, and as one of the primary ways in which spoken data is presented in scholarly work. In these uses, the transcript itself is often treated as a transparent record, to which other analytical tools are applied. In fact, as a now well-established literature shows, the act of transcribing is a process of “entextualization” (Bauman and Briggs 1990; Urban 1996) which is by nature selective, interpretive, and shaped by the interests and focuses of the transcriber. In this respect, transcriptions are never neutral records of linguistic behavior, but rather are forms of representation that attribute social and interactional roles, identities, and statuses to the speakers represented (Bucholtz 2000; Ochs 1979). This chapter applies a political and ideological perspective to the analysis of a specific aspect of transcriptional practice that is seldom given much attention: the use of nonstandard orthography. A review of the literature on the uses and meanings of nonstandard orthographies in literary and popular texts as well as in academic transcripts helps to explain their appeal as ways to graphically express elements of the unique “voice” of speakers that can be lost in transcription. Thus applied linguists and sociolinguists may “respell” words in order to capture some of the immediacy and “authenticity” of the primary speech events they work with. Orthography may also be used in transcripts to characterize features of speakers or of language varieties, including grammatical patterns, phonological or register-based pronunciation variants, as well as performance features like speed, stress, or volume. At the same time, this literature illustrates the way that stigma associated with

1. Originally published under the same title in Journal of Applied Linguistics 2008, vol. 3/2: 163–183.

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“misspelling” in written language is indexically linked with the speakers represented. This framework serves as a point of departure for the assessment of the implications for applied linguistic work of using respellings as tools to represent speakers and speech varieties, raising the question of when, how and for what purposes we might want to use nonstandard orthographies in our transcripts. Focusing on the issue of the information value of nonstandard orthography, I emphasize the importance of distinguishing between different categories of respellings. I then explore the complex task of assessing the information value of particular respellings as it relates to the predictability of the relationship between writing and speech, making the point that assessing predictability requires a pragmatic and sociolinguistic analysis of both data and audience. This is followed by a discussion of the implications of consistency in the use of respellings for the representations of the status and legitimacy of speakers and the nature and boundaries of language varieties. Taking the position that writing puts linguistic form (and all that it symbolizes socially) on dramatic display and subjects it to intertextual interpretations, I then consider the way that nonstandard spellings contribute to an overall visual gestalt of transcripts, how they shape the way the reader interacts with that text, and how they indirectly legitimate our own professional identities as applied linguists and sociolinguists. A final section reflects on the implications for professional practice with respect to the use of traditional transcripts as well as in the context of broadening use of new technologies that do not separate transcripts from the original speech data.

2. Categories of respellings Nonstandard orthographies found in transcripts and other literature take a number of different forms. In the literature on nonstandard orthography, Preston (1982, 1985) identifies three categories of linguists’ “respellings” of words in their transcripts: eye dialect, allegro forms, and dialect respellings. Androutsopoulos (2000) adds prosodic spellings, homophone spellings, and interlingual spellings.2 The following table gives a brief definition and illustration of each category:

2. Included here for information purposes but not addressed specifically in the analysis that follows.

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Table 1. Nonstandard spelling types. EYE DIALECT: nonstandard spellings that do not represent any linguistic variation: they are alternate spellings of standard pronunciations sez (says) wuz (was) cuz (’cause) ev’ry (every) pix (pics) uh (a) uv (of) rong (wrong) hadda (had a) enuff (enough) ALLEGRO FORMS: nonstandard spellings that represent features of “casual” or informal speech.3 gonna (going to) kinda (kind of) snice (it’s nice) sup (what’s up) t’her (to her) w’dju (would you) innerested (interested) haftuh (have to) nex’ (next) en, ’n (and) jus’ (just) fer (for) tuh, t’ (to) ol’ (old) DIALECT RESPELLINGS: non-standard spellings that reflect some phonological features of a speech variety wint (went) git (get) Hahvuhd (Harvard) dis (this) oll (all) clawss (class) Ah (I) railly (really) bae (be) l’il (little) ol’ (old) mornin’ (morning) thang (thing) hunnert (hundred) bayud (bad) PROSODIC SPELLINGS: representations of prosodic patterns, for example indicating stress with capitals (“rePEAT?”) or vowel lengthening with multiple vowels (“baaad”) HOMOPHONE SPELLINGS: graphic alterations not related to pronunciations. lexical substitutions: for example “U” (you) or “sk8er” (skater) graphemic substitutions: for example for as in “boyz” INTERLINGUAL SPELLINGS: phonetic spellings of loanwords according to native orthographic rules. “¨aktschn” in German for “action” borrowed from English

3. This category is not categorically distinct from dialect respellings, as the discussion of predictability indicates.

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For our purposes, it is important to note the extent to which the three main categories of respellings discussed in the following analysis (eye dialect, allegro, and dialectal) reflect (or attempt to represent) features of spoken language, and to consider what kinds of codes they index. As table 1 indicates, eye dialect does not provide any information about pronunciation or delivery.4 Thus eye dialect is a purely graphemic marker of difference; as such it has sociolinguistic meaning but not linguistic content. Allegro forms (and prosodic spellings) attempt to capture the sound of rapid, casual or informal pronunciations and elements of stylistic choice in delivery. These respellings can index style, or register, or genre. Only one category – dialect respellings – attempts to capture phonological variation associated with a regional or social dialect. Table 2. Information value of categories of respellings (following Preston 1985). Nonstandard Carry phonological Example respellings information Eye dialect Allegro forms Dialectal

NO YES, but not dialectal YES

wuz for was gonna for going to git for get

3. Research on the production and interpretation of nonstandard orthographies In this section, I review some of the outcomes of research on the production and interpretation of nonstandard orthographies. One of the first distinctions that has to be made has to do with who is doing the respelling: whether it is self-representation by an in-group (Androutsopoulos 2000) or otherrepresentation of an out-group (Jaffe 2000). Androutsopoulos’s study of respellings in German fanzines illustrates the indexical function of nonstandard orthography to express in-group identity: fanzine writers used a whole range of nonstandard spellings to evoke participation in a subcultural identity that they shared with their self-selected readership. This is also the case in research by Miller (ms.) and Kataoka (1997), studying the manipulation 4. Nor do homophone respellings; interlingual spellings, while somewhat more complex, do not provide information about the pronunciation of the word in the language of origin.

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of orthographies and writing systems in informal literacy practices among young Japanese girls and by Olivo, who analyzed nonstandard spellings in rap lyrics (2001). The positive meanings of nonstandard spellings in all of these cases depend on one or more of the following critical factors: a) the author’s personal identification (and display of that identification) with the language variety represented; b) the author’s control over the textual resources (and ability to demonstrate that control); and c) control over the contexts of circulation such that authors and readers can be assumed to share membership and/or attitudes towards the form and content of the message. These conditions contrast sharply with most transcripts used for academic purposes, in which the author (scholar) is seldom depicted in his/her transcripts. Particularly when those transcripts depict nonstandard language varieties, it is also rare for the author to exhibit a personal identification with the language variety being represented (with a few exceptions, including Geneva Smitherman’s 1977 work). Most obviously and critically, we can see that the subjects of academic transcripts are not authors, and control neither the resources of textual production nor the circulation of those texts. Androutsopoulos’s 2000 study also shows us the extent to which people are aware of the positive and negative representational uses of nonstandard orthographies. He found that while fanzine writers used a variety of types of respellings as a positive marker of in-group membership, when they used dialect respellings, it was almost invariably for other-representation, and involved the projection of negative cultural identities/lack of subcultural knowledge onto speakers outside the group. This suggests that people make selective use of orthographic difference, and are aware of, and constantly negotiate the implications of the negative connotations associated with them for their own acts of writing. In fact, we could argue that these negative connotations are forms of indirect indexicality (Hill 1995; 2005). Readers acquire knowledge of these indexical links between nonstandard orthographies and stigma through intertextual series of usage (Hill 2005: 115). The notion of indirect indexicality means that the very force of nonstandard orthographies to symbolize in-group identity is predicated on their generally negative valence. That is, it is the in-group’s ability to defy, inverse or rework conventional forms of stigma that makes these practices forms of cultural intimacy and solidarity.

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3.1. The projection of stigma: everyday media examples The chain of intertextual links making these indexical connections is not difficult to find in the literature, and all studies of other-representation using nonstandard orthographies, beginning with Preston’s groundbreaking critique of respellings in folkloric texts (1982) underscore their potential to project stigma. This is illustrated in a recent example of a 2003 newspaper headline reported in Minnick (2004) involving dialect respelling. The headline read: “Folks ‘Git Mad’ Over Hillbillies.” The subject of the piece was Georgia Senator Zell Miller’s speech denouncing a major television station’s plan to launch a new reality show based on the Beverly Hillbillies. The Beverly Hillbillies was a television sitcom from the 1970s in which rural, poor, uneducated Southern hillbillies strike it rich with an oil well on their land, and move to Beverly Hills. Miller argued that the show was exploitative and reinforced class and regional prejudices. It is fairly clear from the context and content of his remarks that Senator Miller was speaking as a Southerner in his speech: this is part of his self-representation. However, the representation of his southernness in the headline represents a layer of journalistic interpretation. Here, punctuation and lexical choices combine with nonstandard orthography to project a stigmatized voice on the speaker. First, the Senator is alluded to by the term “folks.” Not only is this term indexically linked with rural speech, but as a plural, deemphasizes the Senator’s individual voice and emphasizes his membership in a collectivity. Secondly, there is the respelling of “git.” In this context, it is plausible to interpret “git” as representing a Southern, possibly rural pronunciation;5 the crucial point is that we can be sure that the spelling represents the pronunciation as marked and thus nonstandard. The quotation marks around “git mad” constitute a sort of pseudo reported speech, clearly identifying the phrase as not being the voice of the journalist. Because he is not named as an individual, we cannot say that Senator Miller is literally depicted as saying “git mad.” However, he is indexically linked by the respelling to a stigmatized identity, which has the rhetorical effect of undermining the legitimacy of his argument, and/or his legitimacy as a speaker. Another newspaper headline including nonstandard spellings embodies a more complex and ambiguous set of stances, because the pseudo reported speech is explicitly fictional and does not index any real speech event by a Southern-speaking person. This headline read: “Y’all makin’ mah ea-uhs huht” and was followed by the subtitle: “For all the authentic rusticity of 5. Although this is not the only part of the country in which /e/-raising takes place.

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Cold Mountain and Big Fish, why can’t we get a decent southern accent?” (Pramaggiore 2003). In this text, the author introduces the fictitious voice of the offended Southern speaker to frame her critique of what she considers hokey, “one-size-fits-all” Southern accents in two recent films. This constitutes a plausible alignment of perspective with this imagined speaker, who is attributed (along with the author) evaluative authority with respect to media accent portrayals, and who is constructed as having an “authentic” Southern voice lacking in the movies. However, the author simultaneously distances herself from any personal identification with Southern speech. For example, her account of her sensitivity to issues of accent invokes the “broken English” of her Italian grandparents and the fact that she “learned to talk in Kentucky.” This locates “speaking badly” in her developmental and family past, a theme which is exploited for humorous effect in the comment that “[m]y accent sent my New York-born and bred parents across the river to Ohio the first chance they got.” The author’s use of dialect respellings in the body of the text is also telling, particularly because its function contrasts with the use of linguistic terminology to describe patterns of pronunciation. Thus, she adopts linguistics discourse (and attributes it to scholars and students she consulted for the article) like “o-fronting,” but uses dialect respellings for purely rhetorical effect: the piece closes with the sentence: “Until then, expect to be disappointed by versions of the South on screen that you can’t recognize, right down to the words coming ay-yut of the characters’ mouths.” This contrast makes it clear that the respellings are not so much about representing the voices of others as they are about creating an authorial voice that is both humorous and authoritative (when it comes to accent). It is equally clear that this primary function depends on those respellings being indirect indices of stigmatized identities. That is, the rhetorical conceit of introducing them in the headline and in the text depends crucially on the reader understanding that this is not a plausible or habitual voice for the author to occupy, and that her partial acts of alignment are motivated solely by the specific topic of this article.

3.2.

From the press to academic transcripts

These examples from the press are relevant to our discussion of academic transcripts for several reasons. First, like Androutsopoulos’s work, they provide evidence that everyday forms of literacy make use of (and socialize readers to) indexical relationships between nonstandard orthographic forms and stigmatized social identities and statuses. It is thus reasonable to assume, as will be discussed below, that these associations are activated by the “look”

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of nonstandard texts. At the same time, we find that the rhetorical conventions and framing of these texts tend to background, or efface the presence of the nonstandard orthographies, because they are subordinated to some other discursive purpose. This is also the case in academic transcripts. In this light, we can draw the parallel between the readers of the newspieces and the academic readers of an applied linguistics transcript embedded in an analysis of doctor–patient interactions, school discourse, or workplace interactions. Attending to the explicit discourse/analysis, these readers are susceptible to be influenced in the way they interpret the identities and statuses of the speakers in the transcripts by orthographic practices they do not attend to as elements of the analysis. Finally, we also see that the act of using nonstandard orthographies to represent others is inherently an act of representational control and authority, which both distances the author from the speech represented and thus – even if unintentionally – confers a textually subordinate position on the subjects of the respellings. Academic transcripts in and of themselves have the same effect; nonstandard orthographies in them tend to magnify it.

3.3.

Reader uptake and interpretation of nonstandard orthographies

The kind of analysis I have pursued above, however, focuses exclusively on the text as artifact, assuming readers’ uptake of writers’ rhetorical strategies. Three pieces of research have empirically tested whether readers interpret nonstandard orthographic representations as indices of stigma. Most recently, Nguyen (2003) had novice transcribers in Michigan listen to two speakers with accents that were different from their own: one that was stigmatized (Appalachian English) and one that was not (British English). They were given instructions to transcribe them in such a way that anyone reading their transcriptions would “get the same impression of the speaker that the participants got listening to the samples.” They were also told that dictionary spellings were not required, and that they could represent speakers in any way they wanted. Nguyen found that the percentage of respellings in these novice transcripts was significantly higher for Appalachian vs. British English, and participants consistently rated Appalachian speakers lower on indices of status than British English speakers. Nguyen’s work corroborates Preston’s 1985 findings. In his study, participants read transcripts in which some speakers were represented with nonstandard spellings and others were not. The study participants then answered survey questions in which they described and

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evaluated those speakers. Preston’s respondents attributed lower social status, intelligence and education to the people represented with nonstandard spellings. Jaffe and Walton (2000) explored how varying the amount and nature of respellings affected reader evaluations of the person represented. They transcribed two speech excerpts (from a single speaker of Southern English) three ways: one in standard spelling, one with “light” respellings (that included allegro, eye dialect, and dialect forms) and one with a “heavy” respelling that approximated a phonetic transcription. Study participants were asked to read transcripts in these different orthographic guises out loud, and were recorded doing so. They were also asked to describe and evaluate the speaker represented. The results showed a positive correlation between respellings and the attribution of sociolinguistic stigma, and that the “heavier” the respelling, the greater the stigma ascribed to the speaker. In short, all three of these studies confirm that readers regularly conflate writing and speech and associate stigmatized social and linguistic identities with people who are represented by nonstandard spellings. They also show, in general, that linguistic stigma is indexed by both eye-dialect and allegro forms, not just by dialect respellings that identify phonological features of a nonstandard variety clearly associated with a stigmatized group. Probably the clearest example of this can be seen in how people performed the first line of one of the lightly respelled texts in Jaffe and Walton. The line was written: “When I wuz a kid, I thought hist’ry wuz one o’ the dummess subjecks. . . ” Arguably, the respellings in this line provide no clue to the regional origin of the speaker: this text could plausibly represent my own variety of educated American speech. However, by the time they got to the word “kid,” many of our readers shifted into a Southern pronunciation with a raised and lengthened vowel with an offglide: [kiyud]. This is because our readers – like all readers of all texts – did not read the text in a vacuum, but in a particular social and geographical context; in this case, Mississippi. This meant that orthographic difference was immediately equated with sociolinguistic stigma that was immediately equated with Southern (or less frequently, African American) speech. I would argue that in a different context of reading, readers might connect the stigma of nonstandard spelling to something other than Southern speech, but that the association of orthographic difference with some kind of low status or competence would remain constant.

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4. Implications for applied linguistic practice 4.1.

Predictability and information value

So what do the results of this kind of research suggest to us about if and when we might want to use respellings in transcriptions? Both Preston (1982) and Macaulay (1991) have offered some specific guidelines that focus on the information value of respellings, which they phrase in terms of predictability. Preston puts in the form of a rule: If the phonetic shape of a form is predictable by a phonological rule, DO NOT RESPELL. Following this rule, we should not respell the word “butter” as “budder” since voicing of /t/ intervocalically, following a stressed syllable, is predictable for American English. Similarly, we should not respell “ten” as “tin” in the speech of American Southerners, for whom there is a predictable lack of opposition between /i/ and /E/ before a nasal. Preston tells us that we can respell “peed” as “pee” in the following example: “I pee in the yard yesterday” because the deletion of “d” is not predictable by phonological context; “d” is a morpheme. Thus “pee” represents a (nonstandard) speaker rule of deletion of past tense morpheme. Macaulay writes that it is “unnecessary to indicate phonetic features which are predictable from general rules of the orthography,” (1991: 287) and evokes such phonological features as consonant cluster simplification, vowel reduction, assimilation. Preston also addresses morphological predictability, which he expresses as the following rule: “If a morphological rule overlaps with a phonological rule in its effects, respell the item only if the morphological rule is (a) categorical or (b) so powerful that it overcomes restrictions and preferences of the phonological rule.” Applying this rule, we can respell “Mary’s Honda” as “Mary Honda” if there is a variable (rather than a categorical) deletion rule for the possessive morpheme in the language variety we are transcribing. We could also respell “Mary’s Celica” as “Mary Celica” if, in the speaker’s variety of English, there is no possessive marker for nouns at all. Preston tells us that we should typically not respell “Mary’s Celica” as “Mary Celica” because final /s/ and /z/ are regularly deleted before /s/ or /z/ in most varieties of English. Both Macaulay and Preston posit a reader who is familiar both with the features of different kinds of English and with the failures of standard English orthography to capture those differences. Overall, both Preston and Macaulay insist that respellings be motivated by a rigorous attention to providing linguistic information value. With respect to the different categories of respellings, it is clear that eye-dialect has no “information value” to offset its strong potential to cue sociolinguistic

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stigma. This is Preston’s basic point against using it in academic transcripts, and I would agree. The issue of predictability is also an important one, because it underscores the role of the reader and her knowledge, expectations, and framework of interpretation. It also indirectly invokes the status of the language variety represented as a system, to which we will return below in the discussion of consistency. However, once we bring the reader into the picture and consider all the possible kinds of talk that we as linguists can transcribe, the notions of information value and predictability become more complicated and ambiguous than Preston’s examples suggest. First of all, applying his rules can be problematic with reference to varieties that have not been documented well enough for us know, for example, whether a phonological or morphological rule prompts deletion or assimilation. Limited data also make it difficult to know whether the usage gathered from a particular set of speakers in a researcher’s database are typical or wider patterns of use. Secondly, these examples raise the question, “predictable by whom, and with reference to what varieties?” For example, Preston comments that he would not want his own raising and fronting of /E/ before nasals to be represented in writing, because in his variety of English, it is a rule. That is, a reader who is given information about where Preston comes from, and is familiar with his accent would be able to “hear” or infer this phonological process from a standard orthographic transcript of his speech. But one could say the same thing about the morphological rules regarding possessive deletion in African American Vernacular English that Preston is willing to see reflected in spelling. That is, an informed and dialectally knowledgeable reader would know that a written possessive “s” would not actually be pronounced. So in this case, what Preston ends up endorsing is the representation of patterned deviation from a standard variety. As he points out elsewhere, it is exactly this that carries stigma. Looked at this way, his /E/ fronting and raising is no different – it is a patterned difference in pronunciation from “standard” American English and, I might add, other varieties of Southern English. In other words, predictability – and information value – have to be defined with reference both to the rules of the variety being represented, and to how those rules compare and contrast with other varieties that are salient to the analytical or descriptive task. And when the salient contrast is with some notion of standard language, the representation of difference always “costs” with reference to the representation of legitimacy. Identifying what is predictable and unpredictable – and thus when to respell – can also be complicated by the characteristics of particular recordings or corpora. For example, what do we do with interactions between people

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who speak different varieties of a language? What is unpredictable – and thus potentially respellable – for one speaker may not be for another. Do we commit to documenting all possible instances of unpredictability? Do we include variations in “standard” language pronunciations – such that we would always indicate through respelling whether people pronounced the first “I” of “ideology” as [ay] or [I]? Finally, the criterion of “predictability” presumes a particular kind of relationship between individual speakers and named language varieties. That is, it takes for granted that people are predictable users of fixed language varieties. In fact, as much applied and sociolinguistic work emphasizes, a dynamic view of the speaker in social contexts views her as making various kinds of social and stylistic uses of linguistic elements in their repertoires. Analysts taking this perspective are interested in documenting situations in which speakers depart from their usual patterns of pronunciation for various stylistic or interactional purposes. To give a personal example, I am an American English speaker, but have English cousins. On occasion, one of them will imitate certain aspects of American speech in interaction with me, saying, for example, something like “pass the budder.” This stylization or bit of “crossing” could be of analytical interest, because it might be a bid for relationship alignment or realignment; it could also be a resource for setting the tone or key of the interaction. Thus my cousin’s pronunciation of “butter” as “budder” might merit being respelled in a transcript of her speech. At that point, if I also uttered this word (or another word with a medial /t/ pronounced with a flap) in the same transcript, a transcriber following the principle of predictability would not respell this word in my speech. This would result in a transcript with a hybrid set of conventions, differentiated by speakers. Another scenario that might justify some sort of orthographic modification would be hypercorrection – or superstandard speech, where people depart from normal “casual” readings or pronunciations for emphasis or as a form of stance-taking. We might want, for example, to show in a transcript that a person said “I want to” or “We are going to” and not “I wanna” or “We’re gonna.” If we take these two kinds of cases together, we can see that the wider principle guiding the choice to respell is sociolinguistic or pragmatic significance rather than phonological predictability and linguistic information value alone. Furthermore, I am arguing that the sociolinguistic or pragmatic significance of a pronunciation feature requires us to go beyond looking at dialects or speech varieties as bounded codes. To decide that a particular pronunciation feature is sociolinguistically or pragmatically significant, we would have to either:

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1. see evidence within a stretch of discourse that participants are orienting to that feature in some way and/or 2. have a knowledge of speakers’ repertoires and histories of linguistic practice that allows us to identify this particular linguistic feature as exceptional rather than normal. The former involves detailed attention to discursive and metadiscursive processes within the transcript. The latter requires ethnographic study that takes us well beyond the boundaries of the transcript and the single speech event it represents. This further underscores the point that transcription decisions, including orthographic ones are analytic ones, and thus should be the object of the same rigorous criteria of evaluation we apply to our scholarly work.

4.2.

Consistency

Another issue that has been raised with respect to nonstandard spellings is consistency. Overwhelmingly, analyses of representations of social and regional dialects in literature, folklore, and linguistics show that authors respell very inconsistently. Just to give one example, Macaulay (1991) finds the following spelling variants in the same transcript: for EVERY: ev’ry, everything; for JUST: jus’, just ; for TO: Tuh, ta, t’, to, du, tu, t(h)hoo; for YOU: yer, y’, you, yih, ya, y’u (see also Jefferson 1996; Bucholtz 2000; and Preston 1983). The issue of consistency raises some crucial questions about the purposes and value of transcripts that deserve our attention. One view, which I will call the corpus perspective, considers that every transcript contributes to a wider linguistic knowledge base and should ideally be accessible to scholars other than the original transcriber for other kinds of analysis. In the corpus view, when transcripts indicate pronunciation features, they could/should become a resource for sociolinguistic or dialectological research. In other words, respellings act as surrogates for a full or partial IPA transcriptions that would be either too burdensome on the transcriber, too inaccessible to the reader, or too visually distracting. Another view of transcription, which we might label an ideological perspective, views it as a selective, theoretically, and ideologically motivated representation of the primary data of people talking. From this perspective, transcripts created for one purpose would, first of all, be unlikely to suit the needs of scholars wishing to do a reanalysis from a different perspective. Secondly and perhaps more significantly, people taking this perspective would be cautious about treating the transcript, rather than the speech itself, as primary data. This view would tend to look at the significance

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of respellings with respect to their representational consequences in a given transcript. What I will claim here is that consistency in respellings is crucial within either one of these frameworks, albeit for different reasons. To return to the inconsistent spellings documented by Macaulay above, if we look to this transcript for accurate phonological data, we face a fundamental question about whether or not we can view any spelling contrasts in it as accurate indicators of phonological ones. We might be tempted to do so for the word “just,” but the variability in the transcription of “to” and “you” makes it difficult, if not impossible, to say whether these spellings indicate anything of phonological interest. In fact, it is entirely possible that all of these variants are simply multiple ways of indicating the predictable reduction of vowels in unstressed syllables. It might be, therefore, that the only interesting cases for “to” and “you” are instances in which they have been transcribed in a standard orthography and are in a plausibly stressed position (that is, that have a marked, almost “superstandard” status): this would something we could not predict from our knowledge of English. However, it is difficult not to view the inconsistency in transcriptions as evidence of inconsistency in the transcriber’s attention to phonological detail. This is the crux of the problem if one takes the corpus perspective on transcripts. That is, respellings do not indicate the same level of commitment to phonetic data as the phonetic transcriptions for which they are a substitute. It is not impossible for orthography to be used with the same consistency and rigor as the IPA, but it is by no means clear that it ever is. Consistency is also salient with reference to the more ideological/representational perspective on transcripts. There is a rich illustration of this in Ron Macaulay, where he includes an extended citation of the Glasgow poet Tom Leonard: Yi write doon a wurd, nyi sayti yirsell, that’s no thi way a say it. Nif yi tryti write it doon thi way yi say it, yi end up wit hi page covered in letters stuck thigither, nwee dots above hof thi letters, in fact yi end up wi wanna they thingz yi needti huv took a course in phonetics ti be able ti read. But that’s no thi way a think, as if ad took a course in phonetics. A doan’t mean that emdy that’s done phonetics canny think right – it’s no a questiona right or wrong. But ifyi write down “doon” wan minute, nwrite doon “down” thi nixt, people say yir beein inconsistent. But ifyi sayti sumdy, “Whaira yi afti?” nthey say, “Whut?” nyou say “Where are you off to?” they don’t say, “That’s no whutyi said thi furst time.” They’ll probably say sumhm like, “Doon thi road!” anif you say, “What?” they usually say “Down the road!” the second time – though no always. Course, they never really say, “Doon thi road” or

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“Down the road!” at all. Least, they never say it the way it’s spelt. Coz it izny spelt, when they say it, is it? (in Macaulay 1991: 280, emphasis mine)

What Leonard shows us is that the inscription of voice invokes a whole set of evaluative criteria that are qualitatively different – and less forgiving with respect to all aspects of form – from what happens in spoken interaction, where form can be, but isn’t necessarily foregrounded. Writing puts form on display, and once that happens, speakers are evaluated with reference to standard language norms and ideologies. We have probably all experienced this when we show people any transcripts of their speech, and they look at it, aghast: “Do I really sound like that?” Well no, because, following Leonard, it wasn’t written when they said it, but once it is written, they do in fact look like that. This brings us to another dimension of consistency, and that has to do with how it influences the reader’s interpretation of the identity and status of the voices that are depicted. That is, when linguists create a transcript, it is both a record of speech and a text that has independent meaning potentials. If a transcription consistently draws attention to particular features of a speaker’s or speakers’pronunciation or delivery through the use of respellings, it makes an implicit claim that those features are essential elements of the style and sound of those represented. In some cases, this is a claim to represent a unique feature of an individual’s speech style – something known only (in the recorded original) to the transcriber. The consistent visual marking of a selective set of features of speech in transcripts is often accompanied by an inconsistent pattern of their representation (as in the transcript described by Macaulay). This combination has negative repercussions for the representation of the status of the speakers. This is in part because readers conflate writing and speech, as Walton and I found out when we showed our heavily respelled texts to our research participants (Jaffe and Walton 2000). Many of them told us that the people depicted in these transcripts were uneducated “because of their spelling mistakes,” despite the fact that we had been careful to tell them that these were transcripts, not texts written by the speakers. Even taking into account the possibility that some of our participants did not take this information in, and did not understand what a transcription was, it is clear from the multiple strands of research I have cited above that readers project the stigma of respellings onto those who are represented. Inconsistent respellings, I would argue, multiply that potential for stigma, because the default assumption will be that these inconsistencies belong to the speaker represented rather than to the transcriber. That is, inconsistency in spelling will be taken as a sign of

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lack of control over a medium of expression. This is significant if we consider all of the cases of creative self-representation discussed above, because it is the textual display of control that allows the writer to show that nonstandard spellings are positive assertions of individual style (and potentially, group membership). In addition to making claims about individuals and their styles, drawing consistent attention to a particular set of features in a transcript can be read as an implicit claim about a collectivity and its language variety. That is, readers interpret any nonstandard use of spellings in transcripts as motivated by linguistic/sociolinguistic information value. When the transcripts involve named (and often stereotypically “known”) codes, spelling deviations will be understood as claims about what differentiates that code from other languages or varieties. In this respect, transcriptions in and of themselves have the potential to reify the existence or boundaries of particular codes. That is, our transcripts themselves can “make” Southern – or other – speech. This should give us pause, for while we cannot possibly view our work as a neutral record of linguistic phenomena, we should be committed to overt, rather than covert introductions of our own interpretations, frameworks and potential biases.

5. Visual gestalts of texts, authority, authenticity and voice(s) Ultimately, considerations of predictability and consistency invite us to consider transcriptions as texts with lives of their own that will be interpreted by readers in light of their experiences with other texts (intertextuality). It is important, in this regard, to consider something highlighted in Leonard’s text: the sense in which nonstandard spellings contribute to a visual gestalt of a text that is created by multiple elements, including size, font, color, layout etc. Linguists can and do exploit the broader semiotic significance of respellings or nonstandard uses of letters and symbols to do representational work that is not simply about providing specific linguistic information. Chafe, for example, points out that linguists can make use of the habits that people have acquired in reading to do representational work about things that are not usually indicated by spelling. These would include using capitals for loudness, or doubling and capitalizing letters in such a way that the word no longer looks “spelled.” For example, when an H (symbolizing gutturalization) is added to the beginning of a word (as in “Hhoney”), the reader is alerted that

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this spelling carries additional linguistic information value (Chafe 2005). Respellings are among the resources linguists can use to create more or less “denaturalized” texts (Bucholtz 2000); that is, to draw more or less of their readers’attention to the linguistic, technical, and academic dimensions of the transcripts. This choice to situate a transcript along the “natural” vs. “technical” continuum is not an easy one, because of the necessarily partial and selective nature of any transcript. That is, choices that give readers access to certain dimensions of the “voice” of the recorded speakers block other forms of access to that voice. For example, transcripts which detail a large number of delivery/performance features (breath intake, intonation patterns, voice quality, etc.) carry a great deal of information that has the potential to allow readers to “hear” things that are left out of more “naturalized” transcripts. However, because few readers are able to scan such transcripts rapidly, the laborious process of reading and decoding can be an obstacle to readers “hearing” a coherent stretch of speech from the transcript. This was one of the experiences Walton and I noted with the people we asked to read heavily respelled texts: the burden of the act of decoding led to dysfluent delivery. They never broke through to anything that resembled ordinary speech. What all of this suggests is that part of the representational impact of a given transcription relates to the amount and kind of work readers need to put in to processing the text. Considering the reader means considering what kinds of sociolinguistic knowledge that reader brings to the interpretation of the transcript. Macaulay comments that the representation of patterned variation of accent/dialect through nonstandard spellings is “unlikely to be successful if the reader is unfamiliar with the dialect” (Macaulay 1991: 281). This is partially because of the necessary selectivity of all transcripts – even heavily respelled texts like Tom Leonard’s don’t respell everything. So if success is defined as the reader getting an accurate picture of a particular speech variety, a respelled text will not get the dialect novice there (to prove this, I would challenge any readers not familiar with Glasgow speech to read Leonard’s text out loud for evaluation by a Glasgow speaker). Conversely, if the reader is not a dialect novice, he or she will not need many respellings to cue up an accurate reading. For example, Walton and I found that Mississippi readers were able to “hear” and perform a Mississippian voice from a transcript that had no nonstandard spellings, because the syntax and subject indexed a kind of person known to them. The visual field created by transcripts with nonstandard orthographic elements also carries meanings that are related to the general nature/status of the data and the researcher, a point introduced above. For example, allegro respellings index “informality” and “spontaneity” of speech; dialect

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respellings locate the speaker as an “authentic” speaker of a distinct code. To return to an earlier point, we might thus consider these spellings as one of the many forms of covert acts of interpretation that are embedded in academic writing. Furthermore, in the context of applied and sociolinguistic disciplines which place a premium on “natural,” “spontaneous,” and “authentic”6 speech data (Bucholtz 2003; Coupland 2003; Eckert 2003), nonstandard elements in transcripts also authenticate the character of the linguist’s corpus and by extension, their professional legitimacy. Leonard’s piece also invites us to complicate the issue of self-representation by considering key questions of audience, authorship, and the social circulation of texts. The choice to represent oneself in a nonstandard (and/or inconsistent) orthographic voice is a complex one. When authors are relatively sure of the shared, in-group identity of their readers, deviations from standard spellings can be positive indices of membership. But things get much more complicated if and when such nonstandard texts circulate outside the group and are read by outside readers who “count” in some way (see Jordan 1985). And it is clear that dilemmas of orthographic representation are far more acute for speakers and writers of languages and language varieties that are not standard or not fully standardized. For these speakers – and for linguists who represent them – the work of individuation which is central to the expression of identity requires the encoding of linguistic difference which is always problematic at the level of authority and legitimacy.

6. Multimedia and transcripts The analysis of the visual field of transcripts is already a multimodal approach, since it addresses semiotic properties of transcripts that go beyond the purely textual. But it is also important to reflect on how the textual and visual properties of transcripts operate in the new, multimedia frameworks in which many linguists now present their work. When transcripts are presented simultaneously with audio or video files in corpora or in academic writing, the written text loses its status as the primary data. The reader becomes an audience for text, sound, and sometimes image. This alters the role of the transcript from being the sole representation of (absent) speech and interaction to being a written guide for the interpretation and understanding of visual and audio data. Coupling transcripts with audio/visual files thus has 6. Here, it is important to understand that these characteristics are in themselves sociolinguistic constructs (see Bucholtz 2003 and Coupland 2003).

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the potential to mitigate the extent to which the transcript influences audience interpretations to the extent that the audience can make its own, independent evaluations of the primary data. The extent to which this mitigation takes place obviously depends on the way in which those audiences interact with and weigh multiple sources of data and interpretation in multimedia texts. Thus the question of the relative impact of nonstandard orthographies in stand-alone transcripts vs. multimedia presentations is an empirical one that merits future research.

7. Conclusions and recommendations for practice Because they deviate from a norm, nonstandard spellings have great communicative potential. They operate both at the visual/graphic level and are indexically associated with sociolinguistic difference. As applied linguists who work with spoken corpora, we want our readers to share something about our primary experiences of listening to those data: nonstandard spellings are one of many tools in our repertoire. It may be, however, that we should be realistic about our ability, as transcribers, to make readers see what we hear. They will not do this; they will see what we write and interpret it within ideological and political frameworks that surround literacy enterprises in society. Respellings are immensely expressive, and in some contexts of self expression, have the potential to be subversive in that they can expose and call into question the dominant language ideologies and the social hierarchies in which they are embedded. But this subversive potential is always held in check by the very power of those ideologies, and respellings of others are always problematic with respect to the legitimacy and authority of those they represent. Because of the inherent representational risks of nonstandard orthographies, applied linguists should take steps to make sure that any respellings they use are: 1. motivated by clearly articulated descriptive and analytical goals; 2. limited to representations of elements that are salient for a particular analysis; 3. used with the same consistency and rigor as phonetic transcriptions; and 4. explicitly identified to the reader as filling specific purposes, above. These steps are particularly important when we are addressing nonacademic audiences (or academic audiences in neighboring disciplines) because those audiences’ everyday habits of reading may lead them to “read” stigma in

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analyses that we intend to have the opposite effect. But they are equally important within an applied linguistic discourse community. All of these strategies serve to denaturalize nonstandard orthographies in academic transcripts, to draw the reader’s attention to them as academic tools, and thereby, to undercut the covert activation of social and linguistic indexicalities described above. In short, they bring transcription practices to the surface in their true guise as ideologically and analytically motivated forms of representation.

References Androutsopoulos, Jannis 2000 Non-standard spellings in media texts: The case of German Fanzines. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(4). 514–533. Bauman, Richard and Charles Briggs 1990 Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19. 59–88. Bucholtz, Mary 2000 The politics of transcription. Journal of Pragmatics 32. 1439– 1465. Bucholtz, Mary 2003 Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3). 398–416. Chafe, Wallace 2005 Adequacy, user-friendliness, and practicality in transcribing. Paper presented at the Conference “Transcribing Now: Means and Meanings in the Transcription of Spoken Interaction.” University of California, Santa Barbara, May 15, 2005. Coupland, Nikolas 2003 Sociolinguistic authenticities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3). 417–431. Eckert, Penelope 2003 Elephants in the room. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3). 392–397. Hill, Jane 1995 Junk Spanish, covert racism and the leaky boundary between public and private spheres. Pragmatics 5. 197–212. Hill, Jane 2005 Intertextuality as source and evidence for indirect indexical meanings. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1). 113–124. Jaffe, Alexandra 2000 Introduction: Nonstandard orthography and nonstandard speech. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(4). 497–513.

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Jaffe, Alexandra and Shana Walton 2000 The voices people read: Orthography and the representation of nonstandard speech. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(4). 561–587. Jefferson, Gail 1996 A case of transcriptional stereotyping. Journal of Pragmatics 26. 159–170. Jordan, June 1985a Nobody mean more to me than you and the future life of Willie Jordan. In J. Jordan, On call: Political essays, 123–139. Boston: South End Press. Jordan, J. (ed.) 1985b On call: Political essays. Boston: South End Press. Kataoka, Kuniyoshi 1997 Affect and letter writing: Unconventional conventions in casual writing by young Japanese women. Language in Society 26. 103– 136. Ochs, Elinor 1979 Transcription as theory. In E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin (eds.), Developmental pragmatics, 43–52. New York: Academic Press. Ochs, E. and B. Schieffelin (eds.) 1979 Developmental pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. Olivo, Warren 2001 Phat lines: Spelling conventions in rap music. Written Language and Literacy 4(1). 67–85. Macaulay, Ronald 1991 “Coz it izny spelt when they say it”: Displaying dialect in writing. American Speech 6(3). 280–291. Minnick, Lisa 2004 Performing southernness. Paper presented at Conference on Language Variety in the South III, 15–17 April 2004, Tuscaloosa AL. Nguyen, Jennifer 2003 Transcription as methodology: Using transcription tasks to assess language attitudes. Paper presented at NWAV 32, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Pramaggiorre, M. 2003 “Y’all makin’ mah ea-uhs huht: For all the authentic rusticity of Cold Mountain and Big Fish, why can’t we get a decent southern accent?” Independent Weekly, December 13. Preston, Dennis 1982 Ritin’ fowklower daun ’rong: Folklorists’ failures in phonology. Journal of American Folklore 95. 304–316.

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Preston, Dennis 1985 The L’ilAbner syndrome: Written representations of speech. American Speech 60(4). 328–336. Silverstein, M. and G. Urban (eds.) 1996 Natural histories of discourse. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Smitherman, Geneva 1977 Talkin’ and testifyin: The language of Black America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Urban, Greg 1996 Entextualization, replication, and power. In M. Silverstein and G. Urban (eds.), Natural histories of discourse, 21–44. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Chapter 10 Orthography and calligraphic ideology in an Iranian-American heritage school Amir Sharifi Introduction This chapter is an ethnographic account of the literacy socialization of Iranian-American children into the embodied practices of Persio-Arabic orthography in a heritage school called Dabestan e Iran in Los Angeles. This analysis will focus on how literacy practices inform and reproduce khoshnevisi, or “elegant writing” as a sociocultural representation of the community. While the Persian term khoshnevisi (‘elegant+writing’) denotes fine writing, it involves more than producing accurate spelling and attractive writing based on the orthographic codes, rooted in and derived from Islamic calligraphy. Khoshnevsi is intrinsically and intimately linked with sociocultural meanings: it is both a framework and a medium for socialization to ideologies of language and identities. This chapter explores how embodied aesthetic skills involved in the act of writing are cultivated in young Iranian American children, how khoshnevisi textual practices and traditions embody Iranian culture and inform literacy practices in Iranian communities across time and space, and the implications of these practices for models of personhood in the Iranian diasporic community of Los Angeles

1. Literacy, khoshnevisi, and orthography Attention to the aesthetics of orthography is justified by the fact that khoshnevisi continues to figure prominently in Iranian contemporary life, creating, recreating, and unifying aesthetic national sentiments, associated with Iranian linguistic and cultural identity. Khoshnevisi can be considered an indigenous Persian language ideology, distinct from khatati1 (the profession 1. I will be making a distinction between the terms khattati translated meaning ‘elegant+writing’ as they as ‘calligraphy’ and khoshnivisi are not semantically interchangeable. As I will explain later, the two terms are

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of calligraphy); it is a complex and central concept in defining the aesthetics and ethics of writing and sociocultural identity. Essentially, the form of handwriting is the standard by which one’s place and community is defined. As a highly valued cultural system, khoshnevisi is the most ubiquitous form of traditional and yet contemporary art and the locus for sociocultural meanings and membership. As noted by Sparchman, “Persian has always been the medium of a fierce iconoclasm, which is why writing in the language is a fully developed art” (2002: 6). Calligraphic images decorate Iranian homes and public places. Because the script was associated with the Koran, the written word as a whole has come to be imbued with awe and magical and institutional power. Those with an “attractive hand” are admired and those with an “ungainly hand” are admonished and shamed. It is through learning the aesthetic codes of the script that children are socialized to cultural membership; the act of writing is a significant form of cultural participation. Khoshnevisi is an authoritative orthographic and scriptural code that continues to exert ideological influence on modern literacy practices. Its apprenticeship and symbolic value informs and influences Persian modern literacy in the heritage language school that is the site for the research reported in this chapter.

2. The ethnography of literacy and khoshnevisi While there is an important tradition of ethnographic research on literacy, the study of writing as structural design has received very little attention, due perhaps to a bias associated with Western alphabetic systems and their phonetic focus. Writing structures in languages such as Chinese and Persian, however, are more than linear alphabetic structures and are shaped rather distinct although they may appear similar to art historians and even be used interchangeably in scholarly debates. Khoshnevisi, etymologically Persian in origin, embraces different manifestations of the aesthetics of writing and reveals social dispositions or a way of cultivated life defined and refined by masters of classical calligraphy in which the perfection and refinement of aesthetic sentiments and fulfillment of an ethical existence is the ultimate purpose of one’s life; the term khatati, on the other hand, is associated with a specialized field or profession within a particular group or guild. If khatati is done in the name of economic needs, khoshnevisi assumes an appreciation of aesthetic experience, sublime moral values, higher social and cultural status, and a poetic spirit. It is this ideological meaning of the term that has been extended to modern literacy.

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according to “structural dynamics . . . [and] artistic management” (Willets, cited in Krauss 1991: 19). The high status of writing-as-art exists in many communities in Asia including China, Japan, and Iran. In these societies, writing is appreciated not just for its verbal or referential content but for its aesthetic and visual qualities, and becoming literate involves the process of acquiring the skill to write elegantly according to classical calligraphic textual traditions. Interestingly enough, only recently in the West, in the context of multimodal literacy (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996), are the conventional notions of literacy being reconceptualized and reconsidered as a result of the ubiquity of new visual technologies of writing. The aesthetics and visual aspects of writing are also linked to the social and political, as sociolinguistic studies of orthography have shown. As Woolard writes, “orthographic systems cannot be conceptualized as simply reducing speech to writing but rather are symbols that themselves carry historical, cultural, and political meanings” (1998: 23). They “involve and establish social relations and value systems in shaping cultural identities” (Sebba 2007: 160). Both the sound and “look” of a language can index the ways in which the group defines and represents itself (Schieffelin and Doucet 1986: 285). In particular, “orthographies symbolize, naturalize, and legitimize differences and/or similarities of a cultural or political origin” (Jaffe 1999: 216). My work on khoshnevisi in an Iranian heritage language school in Los Angeles follows an activity-based literacy and language socialization approach that is grounded in sociocultural frameworks for the study of literacy (Scribner and Cole 1981; Heath 1982; Barton 1994; Street 1984; Aminy 2004; Jaffe 2003). Among the few specific studies of Persian literacy practices, one of the key insights of Street’s study of textual practices in a traditional Islamic school (1984) is that literacy draws on the interwoven web of scripts and intertextualties with multiple functions, a phenomenon that was also revealed in the heritage school I observed in Los Angeles. I suggest that khoshnevisi informs modern literacy practices as an enduring cultural tradition with a keen interest in the written word “in art and as an art.” The very history of the written word in Islam “has made the public text a well-practiced art” (Bierman 1986: 283); in this public text, orthography and calligraphy converge. Calligraphy both sanctifies and codifies orthographic and stylistic conventions to carry the pious message of Islam and its related sociocultural meanings. I will argue that khoshnevisi’s cultural model and its apprenticeship system derived from Islamic calligraphy and its historical

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development,2 particularly in Iran, is integral to the ideology and discourse of modern literacy. I address literacy socialization as a situated activity within which to understand the cultural significance and persistence of khoshnevisi.The analysis below pays close attention to how teachers, in semiotic interaction with cultural artifacts, construct, cultivate, and convey both the aesthetics and ethics of orthographic knowledge. This knowledge is conveyed to the children both explicitly through the teaching of alphabetic structures and implicitly through teaching the shared sociocultural values of the community. Here, the practice of mashq (‘modeling’ or ‘copying’) is the key site for forming and making visible and tangible the textual-visual traditions of the community: mashq is both a culturally specific way of utilizing the written word as a social practice and a recurrent practice of orthographic structuration that has cognitively shaped the cultural perception of alphabetic symbols, the script, and their underlying relations and meanings. The apprenticeship of khoshnevisi is based on imitation and faithful reduplication of model texts through mashq e nazari ‘visual practice’ and mashq e qalami ‘penned practice.’The authority of the writer is established by the degree to which the copied text represents or reproduces the original text. Mashq, therefore, both as a literacy practice and literacy event, provides the context for language socialization in which teachers’ talk around texts cultivates cultural dispositions as well as linguistic and ethnic identity. It is through these texts, both written and spoken, that the children learn how to make sense of authorship and their membership in the community, and express and echo their feelings in relation to their own handwriting and that of their peers. 2. All sources agree that Ibn Muqlah (272/886–328/940) was the first calligrapher who codified the aesthetics of the writing system. He was an Iranian vizier of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. He is known to be the key figure for the aesthetic development by introducing measurements for line and letter proportions. His life, however, is enshrouded in mystery as he lived during politically tense times. Khatibi and Sijelmassi (1976: 134) offer a moving account of Ibn Muqlah’s tragic fate “Buried thrice, the body of Ibn Muqlah is a specter of disfigurement. What can be said of the fate of this calligrapher, whose severed hand still affects and influences the world of Moslem art? . . . a very tense political life.” Still some attribute his tragic end to his invention of a cursive hand, a secular script called naskh, which challenged the ideological hegemony of the kufic script. This interpretation is based on a semantic argument. naskh in addition to ‘copying’ means ‘abrogation.’ Therefore, Ibn Muqlah who “abrogated” the dominant script, paid dearly with his life.

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In this chapter, I will show that sociocultural frame of khoshnevisi and its ideology inform orthographic conventions in its historic context, as an embodied practice, which, in turn, will enhance our understanding of the relation between culturally embedded artifacts and sociocultural dispositions. By viewing writing as an embodied situated practice we can gain an insight into orthographies that have shaped writing practices and how khoshnevisi’s apprenticeship system represents and reproduces the history of its technical and ideological developments

3. Literacy work in Los Angeles/background This work is part of a two-year ethnographic study that I conducted from 2003–2005. The teaching of Persian in the school dates back to the arrival of Iranians en masse in early 1980s. A sizable population of Iranians lives in Southern California concentrated in different areas of Los Angeles. My study is limited to one school in West Los Angeles. At the time of the study, the Center had 35–40 students, ranging in age from 7 to 12, but my focal group consisted of ten first and second-grade English-dominant children, most of whom also spoke Farsi. The children I observed were the first generation of Iranian American families to experience literacy classes in a heritage school. In the words of one of the teachers the objective of the school is “to preserve the children’s linguistic and cultural identity” in a bilingual setting where English is playing a more dominant role in the children’s lived experiences. The children in the school that I observed receive two hours of Persian and one hour of religious instruction per week. As a part of their instructional strategy, teachers aggressively advocated speaking Persian all the time Pedagogically teachers engaged in a variety of tasks and activities involving speaking, reading, and writing. The teachers had collectively created a workbook which was used along with a textbook that had been developed in Iran. The workbook was handwritten by a calligrapher. Mashq, or the act of copying, took up the greatest part of classroom activities and served as one of the key factors in the organization of social, cultural, and emotional life in the literacy socialization processes. During the writing, the teachers closely watched the students’ work, erasing and correcting every spelling error while commenting on the quality of the handwriting. Ungainly handwriting or letters had to be rewritten and attractive ones were praised publicly and displayed on the classroom bulletin board as exemplars.

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As the micro-interactional examples will reveal, mashq as a literacy performance preserves and transmits the traditional form of writing, the authority and authenticity of the written word, and a highly developed set of graphic aesthetics. Acquiring cultural competence in this field offered one symbolic and cultural capital as the form of one’s handwriting embodies and enacts one’s social standing. It is through the process of mashq that both technical competency and character traits are acquired. Explicit knowledge about the orthography and its sociocultural meanings was organized through linguistic forms such as teachers’ directives and prompts. Initially the teachers introduced the visually intricate architecture of lines and letter-like configurations to introduce the morphology of the orthography and its underlying aesthetics. During a second phase, the structures of the individual graphemes called mufradat – ‫– ﻤﻔﺮ ﺪ ﺍﺖ‬ and tarkib – ‫ﻜﯿﺐ‬ – ‘combined characters’ were introduced, followed by guided practice into making sense of and copying longer pieces of discourse.

4. Calligraphic spaces The walls of the classrooms and other social spaces in the school were adorned with calligraphic works. These cultural materials served both to (re)create a body of social knowledge on the aesthetic canons of writing and a repertoire of aesthetic standards and styles; they also offered what may be perceived as the outcome of knowledge and the ways in which the practice of writing has come to shape societal taste, attitudes, and collective response as a whole. While these works may be read aloud or silently, by adults, young children were not expected “to read” these texts. Rather, their ubiquity naturalized writing and reminded the children of the high place of practice in their culture and were the frames within which teachers built action as an embodied practice (Goodwin 2003: 28) in an “ecology of sign systems.” The following interaction between Mrs. Parvand and Milan, a ten-yearold student in the second grade of the school, illustrates the role of mashq, its cultural significance and the socializing role of calligraphically designed social spaces This example shows the vital role of the calligraphic works as “models of and models for” children’s mashq. Here the focal activity was the act of copying a passage:

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T:

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milan {zet xahEsh mikon{m khailiqœSœng benvis tSum mixam bezanameS be unja mesel karhai e xatati. “Milan I beg you to write it very elegantly because I want to put it up like all those calligraphic works.” (0.4) mixam bEh in xanom ruz yEk SœnbEh bEgœm SagErd xoSxati darœm. “I want to tell the Sunday lady [teacher] that I have a student with elegant handwriting.” xaili ghaSœng bEnvis “Write it very elegantly.” mEsl unŒ “like that?” ((pointing to an exemplar on the bulletin board)) ArEh “Yes.” Az un mixamxoSxœtar benevisi, “I want you to write it more elegantly than that one.” AbErui ma ra nabari, “Don’t make us lose face!” (0.3) Ok? mixœm xœ ra bezarm unja ke hasudiS beSEh “I want to put your handwriting up there so that she gets jealous.” zud bAS “Hurry up!” kEh bebinan xœt tu tSEh qœdar qaSœngEh “so that they see how pretty your hand writing is!” ((working on the assigned task)) ((Mrs. Pedrum checking Milan’s work a few minutes later)) ta inja biStar na, “Do not come beyond here,” rast boro inja “Go down straight,” œsmEt hœm ra qaSœng benvis “also write your name beautifully,” [haaah] yEk xœtat e dah salEh ((with a laughing voice )) “a ten year old calligrapher!” to nabEghEh farsi hasti “You are the genius of Farsi.”

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The segment begins with the teacher imploring the child to write his mashq in elegant handwriting (line 1) so that she can put it up on display like any worthy calligraphic text seen on the classroom walls. She stresses the social significance of the act of writing by predicting and invoking the judgment of a colleague to ensure the child’s compliance, competitiveness, and group solidarity (line 3). As evident in this excerpt, the aesthetics of one’s handwriting reflects both on one’s social identity and the interests of the whole group as it shapes one’s image and self worth in society because the form of handwriting (khat) incarnates collective cultural knowledge and the authority the community values as indexed in the emphasis expressed by the teacher through the intensifier /xaili/ ‘very’ and the adverb /qaS{ng/ ‘elegantly’ in line 4. The cultural notion of /aboru/ or ‘saving face’, the fulfilment of which would confer on the author social status and respect; however, this requires submission to the practice of mashq. This is how the cultural artifacts in the calligraphic spaces become the matrix for the emergence and convergence of sociocultural meanings and structures. After the completion of the task, the teacher makes some corrections (lines 15 and 16) and then praises the child for his genuine achievement in his creation of an artifact to be signed and displayed. The teacher’s praise highlights an exceptional skill or cultural capital, in response to which the child relishes by proclaiming himself to be “a ten year old calligrapher” (line 21) and figure 1. After the ‫ﻁ ﺩﻩ‬ child’s remark, the teacher calls Milan, the “genius of the Persian language” (line 22), thus stressing the intrinsic connection between handwriting, language and identity. Milan responds with high positive affect, throwing up his hands in delight to brandish his skill; his voice resonating as he laughs and proudly calls himself a calligrapher (lines 18–21).

Figure 1. A ten-year-old a calligrapher.

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5. The metamorphosed body The pedagogy of the body was one of the processes and resources through which teachers, in interaction with cultural materials, constructed and communicated scriptural knowledge and its normative practices. Literacy events were characterized by the importance of body discourse, in constructing, situating, and enacting knowledge in the body as a semiotic field, and using such knowledge to train and discipline the children in terms of attitudes, responsibilities, and alignments invoked in relation to the aesthetic demands of the model texts by which they were required to perform. In this sense, as de Certeau (1984: 138) has put it, literacy practices reflect how the community “makes the body tell the code.” Although figural presentation was and still is frowned upon in Islam in what Symes has called an “aesthetic ascetism” (2000: 107), my survey of the classical literature on the relation of body and writing revealed a rich embodied aesthetic culture and vocabulary. I found a rich array of iconic bodies and visual imagery in the practice of mashq in poetry and folk ideology. Whereas in the Islamic community studied by Moore (2004: 423), reciting the same texts in the same way was a mark of membership in the community, in Farsi classes it was the act of careful and creative copying or representing a model text in one’s handwriting. The very act of copying the same text as a physically embodied action retraces the movements and gestures of the earlier writer and thus retraces the body in its performativity (Hatcher 2000: 122). The body alphabet arising from “the alphabet’s function of representation” (Crain 2000: 89) was one of the main resources that teachers’ discourse drew on in the socialization process. Apart from physical reactions to the form of handwriting, teachers socialized the children to embodied aesthetic attitude through verbal and visual imagery. Teachers often likened the bodies of the children to the bodies of the letters or used children’s actions to describe the letters of the alphabet. In addition, children’s bodies in time and space, like the texts they produced, were subject to regulated postures, position, orientation, and alignment. Children’s handwriting was considered a reflection of their personalities, and the children’s handwriting was subject to constant surveillance by the teacher. As observed by Foucault (1979: 152), “Good handwriting presupposes gymnastics – a whole routine whose rigorous code invests the body in its entirety . . . ” Disciplining the body was then a crucial part of socialization to the mastery of the technical aspects of the script.

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6. Text and body In essence, the history of Persio-Arabic orthography and its physiognomy across time and space is also the history of bodily and textual traces of those whose hands have worked, reworked, reformed, and reshaped alphabetic structures as a distinct script with conventional and aesthetic orthographic codes and variants. These, in turn, embody different stylistic expressions with different sensory gestures and sentiments. The present structure of the orthography shows attributes and traces of preceding and succeeding cultures as it has been molded and remodeled in different cultures and scripts, a historical process in which Iranian innovations3 have played a significant role both in the development of new scripts for Arabic based writing systems and the revival of the Persian language itself. Schimmel (1984) and Mandel Khan (2001) provide a detailed account of these embodied depictions. Alphabetic instruction in dabestan e iran drew on visual images such as animal and floral designs as decorative units of texts mostly found in the cultural artifacts on the walls of the classroom and texts of the community. More often than not, the shapes of the letters next to images in the children’s textbooks were also used to give voice and order to the names of animals, birds, and objects to help children internalize the aesthetic of writing. The embodied ideology of khoshnevisi, to the extent that it affects and shapes modern literacy, carries profound symbolic meanings and social utility in its moral education about personhood. It has symbolic, cultural, political and economic value. For secular individuals and intellectuals it connotes cultural sophistication and membership in high culture; those with the actual and potential aesthetics of the handwriting would be objects of great national veneration in a cherished tradition that has left its hallmark on most Iranian arts. For the present government in Iran, it is used to legitimate and strengthen its ideological ties with Islam; for diasporic communities of Iranians, it is used to maintain their connection with Iran and its cultural heritage. In the classroom, this connection between script and self was reflected in teachers’ beliefs that handwriting was the medium through which the personality of the children revealed itself. Labels which were given by the teachers in the process of children’s participation in mashq defined the children’s place in the community. Children who developed penmanship, were 3. I should warn even the most culturally sensitive reader against the risk of caricature or even distortions in the representations of these images in English, as any transla-tions, no matter how accurate, cannot capture the linguistic and literary complexi-ties of the metaphor, mostly derived from classical poetry and folk ideology, used in teachers’ discourse.

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viewed as basavad ‘learned,’ bahush ‘intelligent,’ ahqEl ‘wise,’ and zEr{ng ‘clever.’ It offered children participation in understanding the community’s sociocultual practices as they learned how to construct their own cultural identities in Iranian American diasporic communities. As Hamlish has remarked on calligraphy in China, “[b]odily experiences, and more generally ‘the body,’ constitute a central metaphor in calligraphy” (1995: 118). In observing the teachers, I was struck by the wide array of metaphors used. As Mitchell has noted, verbal images as “texts and speech acts are, after all, not simply affairs of “consciousness,” but are public expressions we create” (1986: 20). Teachers used verbal images of body language to represent and animate the aesthetic knowledge of the script and its norms in affecting and organizing literacy events.

7. Body metaphors The body metaphors teachers used were many and varied, reflecting “images ‘as’ and ‘in’ language” (Mitchell 1980). These metaphors4 as symbolic and linguistic structures, drew on the relation between physical and conceptual images. Early on, the children learned that the letters of the alphabet have < > [sar] ‘heads,’ [dom] < > ‘tails,’ and < > [tSESm] ‘eyes.’ One of the teachers, Ms. Parvand, often likened the image of the letter alif to the “upright stature” [q{d o balah] < > of the children, particu‘the larly boys; the letter /jim s/ < > ‘ending’ was compared to [zolf] tresses’ of girls; the letter /mim/ < > resembled a mouth or [dahAn kutSulu] < > a ‘pretty closed mouth.’ Small < > /be/ was likened to a child > whose hand should be held by an adult, implying the [kutSulu] < connector [ ] that attaches to < > as in < > /nun/ < > [n] resembled and represented < > ‘thighs.’ /he/ > [h] < >referred to [dow tSESm] > ‘two eyes.’ < One interesting discursive phenomenon was the way in which the physical imagery of one grapheme was used to signify its likeness to and differentiation from other graphemes. The letter /beh/ < > ‘b,’ for example, as a horizontal letter was used to represent other similar letters such as < > ‘p,’ 4. I should warn even the most culturally sensitive reader against the risk of caricature or even distortions in the representations of these images in English, as any translations, no matter how accurate, cannot capture the linguistic and literary complexities of the metaphor, mostly derived from classical poetry and folk ideology, used in teachers’ discourse.

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< > ‘s,’ < > ‘t.’ The very shape of < > gives it the quality of a conduit to contain and convey all knowledge of the world as it initiates the first word in the Islamic evocation bismi allahi al-rahmani-al-rahym: “In the name of God, the most merciful.” Metaphors, as noted by Duranti, “. . . seen as transmitted through linguistic forms” (1997: 38), are powerful socializing agents because of their ability to “induce similarities” between cultural materials and the human body (Lakoff and Johnson, cited in Duranti 1997: 64). However, the role of metaphors in teachers’ classroom discourse in the context of literacy events was not simply to linguistically embellish their speech or to establish semantic or structural parallels, but to reveal the ways in which cultural structures are to be understood, felt, and reproduced in and through the child. As Crain has aptly put it, “[i]f the alphabet is the medium through which the child newly becomes acculturated, the child is similarly the medium through which the alphabet permeates the culture: this partnering in turn, claims transparency for the symbolic form of the child and implies an organism for the alphabet” (2000: 40). The following examples illustrate the ways in which teachers’ discourse drew on body imagery and analogy to construct the technical knowledge of the script and to socialize the children to textual and aesthetic features of alphabetic structures, as the site of a “. . . complex semiotic object constituted through the mutual conjunction of multiple meaning producing systems” (Goodwin 2000: 37). In this example, Mrs. Parvand is modeling the drawing of the letter [d] < >. (2)

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bebin saed jun, “look, my dear, Saeed” bEh dœstEh mœn nega kon, “Look at my hand” ((begins to draw the letter)) deh\ mEslE balEh parœndas, “We draw /deh/ like this” ((nods as he watches intently)) vasœt e xœt miat -injuri nesfiS balaixœtnesfIS pa in xœt, “Between the line, half of it goes above and the other half below.” mibiniŒ “Do you see?” bale “Yes” qaSœng mesl bal hai e yek parœndEh kutSulu “Like the wings of a small bird.”

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injuri, “like this,”

In this example, the teacher restresses the ritual of mæshq e nazarigr visual practice (lines 1–2). She initiates the segment by gazing at the representational form as the child watches as the “audience.” As a part of the modeling, she frames and underlines the importance of the visual focus and dynamic accuracy and then as the child watches, she demonstrates (lines 3, 4, 6 and 10) the sketching out of the individual letter, and its position (line 7) vis-`a-vis the base lines (line 6). She then projects the task of copying to be completed by the child as she compares the visually appealing features of the letter to the wings of a small bird. (line 9).The use of the diminutive suffix lu on the noun [kutSk], and the lip rounding of the back vowel [u] and its elongation convey an informal register, particularly one addressed to small children, thus highlighting the visually desirable features of the letter as demonstrated by the teacher’s model in figure 2. Figure 3 provides a glimpse into how a calligrapher has executed the same aesthetic dimension in creating an image of birds in flight:

Figure 2. The letter < > [d] like the wing of a bird.

Figure 3. Birdlike letters in nastaliq script.

In the excerpt below, Soroush has finished his mashq and is showing it to Ms. Parvand: (3)

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((walking to the teacher with a note book in hand)) xanEm pedrum in xubEhŒ “Mrs. Parvand, is this ok?” ((addressing other children)) (( 0.7)) ((viewing Soroush’s work))

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xubEh vali in alifEh ya lamEhŒ “It is good, but is this /alif/ or /lam/?” allfEt dArEh azES mirEh, “Why is /alif/ so enervated?” ((smiles)) bayad rast basSEsl qœdEh xodEt, “It must be upright like your own height.” xamidEh nist, “It is not bent.” injuri, “like this.”

Here the letter [ ] alif produced by the child is juxtaposed with the posture of the body (line 9). In doing so, the teacher uses the body of the child as another visible structure imagined in the form of the letter in question, thus moving to a different graphic field. The beauty of the letter’s form, defined by its straightness (line 9) and tallness (line 10), is likened to the child’s posture. Crain (2000: 9), in analyzing the use of the human form in literacy in the United States, has remarked: “. . . it is always the human form that must conform to the size and shape of the letters, not the other way around.” In the following excerpt, the dot on < > [x] is compared with the mole on the child’s cheek: (4)

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aramis jun in nogtEh kojastŒ “Dear Aramis, where is this dot?” inja bayad baSEh, “It should be here,” xana mirEh rui kalEma, “legibly it goes over the word,”g mEslEh xalEh xoSkEl ru gunEŒa-t “like the pretty mole on your cheek.”

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((Reviewing Shiva’s mashq, practice)) barikEla, doxtarœm “Good for you! my daughter,” dorost nEvESti, “You have written it correctly” vali jimEt [j] < > ESkal dareh, “But your ‘jim’ has a problem”

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tahES bayad kESidEh baSEh “Its ending must be elongated,” nEmi Skaneh, “It is not broken,” bebin, to injaSow SEkasti, “Look here you have broken this part.” mEsl zulf xodEt tSin darEh, ((traces the curve of the letter with her pencil)) “Like your own tresses it is wavy.” ((demonstrates drawing the letter))

This segment vividly reveals how orthographic requirements determine the shape of texts, and the extent to which literacy and poetic devices determine the theme and structures for the cultural patterning of the orthography. In drawing the letter [j] /jim/ as shown in figure 4, the child has broken the link between the initial stroke and the crescent-like ending. As it is clear from the transcription, the teacher’s assessment addresses the beauty of the shape of the letter as indicated in lines, 7, 9, and 10 rather than the linguistic accuracy of the form (line 3). In essence, the ending of the letter has no linguistic significance. The use of the metaphor [zolf] “tresses” in line 10 animates the form of the letter, comparing it with the girl’s hair.

Figure 4. Elegant ending of /j/.

In the following exchange, Mandana had just finished a dictation. Mrs. Tamarvand is reviewing her work: (6)

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mAndana jun mœn heyrœt miknAm, “Dear Mandan, I am shocked!” in tSia nEvEStiŒ “What is this that you have written?” az kaleh yek hayula hœm bozorgtarEh. “It is bigger than a monster’s head.”

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Figure 5. Too big a head!

Here, the teacher, in reviewing or retracing the child’s dictation, is struck by the oversized form of the handwriting. This observation is experienced bodily and made transparent linguistically in the metaphor of a “monster’s head,” which highlights the aesthetic violation and serves as a shorthand for the negative assessment of the child’s text. As shown in figure 5 the teacher’s visible expression of shock is reinforced by her use of a hand gesture displayed in the form of an open palm with the fingers all apart, pointing in all directions and implicitly dramatizing and characterizing the oversized sprawling quality of the child’s text as being grotesque, ugly, and gruesome. As can be observed from these examples, the aesthetic features of the orthographic conventions were located in embodied actions and verbal imagery of the teachers, promoting discipline and instilling moral values of mashq. Children’s bodies in time and space, like the texts they produced, were subject to regulated postures, position, orientation, and alignment as their handwriting was considered a reflection of their personalities and the children’s handwriting was subject to constant surveillance by the teacher.

8. Teaching the aesthetics of sentiments In this section, I will discuss the affective response of the community to the form of writing (or text). These affective responses were triggered by, and based on, the aesthetic canons encoded in cultural artifacts and literate practices of the community. Teachers both overtly and publicly discussed their reactions and the ways in which the children should react towards their own handwriting and that of their peers. In so doing, the teachers defined the

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contextual relation of the children’s text to the model texts, cultural materials, and to the social relations within their community. This is the way teachers and members of the community at large, socialized children into “ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Ochs and Schieffelin 1986: 2), thereby forming culturally specific intersubjectivities, perceptions, and dispositions. The type of language and embodied responses of the community revealed the shared ideological implications of khoshnevisi. Therefore, a passionate concern for elegant writing in my community was an important part of cultural understanding; an integral part of the ideological practice of the community (Lutz 1988: 4). In other words, these intense feelings about writing and orthography are part of cultural perception and processes (Vygotsky 1997) that recur as an everyday practice during the mashq “practice” or “performance” stage of learning. Performance was one of the most significant sites in the participants’ interactions with texts. Teachers expressed their sentiments through verbal and non-verbal responses during or after mashq. Despite the fact that children were of different ages, levels, and in different settings, the ways in which teachers reacted were similar in their recognition of “agreeable” forms of handwriting to ratify their membership in the community or in their criticism of a child for the “ungainly” quality of their hand. Below, I describe teachers’ typical embodied reactions to the children’s mashq and the ways in which they used affect to both express and mobilize culturally appropriate aesthetic appreciation in relation to handwriting. As we will see, there was a heightened state of consciousness about the form of writing. Teachers’ cultural attitudes were reflected in various aspects of their discourse such as positive or negative assessment realized through verbal, non-verbal, and written resources. For example, responses could be in the form of sudden expressions of pleasure – an explosion of joy – when the work was well done, or expression of despair, disappointment and anger in the face of poor performance. For some of the children, writing was an agonizing experience as they became subjected to unabashed shame. Grading, which was on a scale ranging from the highest 20 to 10 as the lowest, was used mostly when the student’s writing received a good grade. In most cases, a good grade was ensured as the student and the teacher collaboratively rewrote and recopied a text as many times as it took. Grading, however, was not used as a punishment, even at the last resort. Teachers’ incentives for good grades ranged from writing encouraging comments on the quality of the child’s work to treating the children to their favorite meals or snacks. Acting passionately was an instructional practice that instrumentalized, enacted, and indexed aesthetic response through spontaneous physical reactions Never-

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theless, teachers often used affective and anticipatory language in pointing to and highlighting the expected outcome and the ritual practices and the performativity of mashq. In examining what they did and said, as we will see, the teachers invoked and modulated cultural emotions, drawing on a range of values such as “shame”, “honor”, “pride”, and “patriotism.” Before any writing activity the teachers made it clear to the children through a directive that that they wanted them to [qESœng benvisid] ‘write elegantly.’ During the activity of writing, teachers would watch over and interrupt individual, or groups of children to model, to prompt copying and to encourage or exhort them to pay closer attention to the appearance of their writing. The first excerpt shows the interaction of a teacher and one of the children, Milan who was 10 years old at the time: (7) Ms. Parvaneh is viewing Milan’s daftar e mashq ‘practice notebook’.

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((her face showing a sense of wonder and admiration)) Good for you! Good for you one hundred times! ((tapping Iman on the shoulder)) (.03) tSEra migi na/ xœtEt be in xoSkeliŒ “Why do you say your handwriting is not beautiful?” ((child looking up and gazing at the teacher)) ((glancing at the notebook)) (.04) hœz kœrdam “I enjoyed it immensely!”

Here the teacher rejoices at the sight of Milad’s handwriting. In addition to the non-verbal response the use of the term hæz in line 9 marks the exchange as a cultural attitude. While the term hæz, according to the Dehkhoda encyclopedia, denotes “enjoying, sharing, becoming fortunate . . . , etc”; in actual everyday use, it connotes a wide array of meanings ranging from simply pleasure to sensual enjoyment or even a sense of spiritual bliss or entrancement. The enjoyment that the teacher experiences at the sight of the graceful hand is a cultural feeling and thinking, hence impossible to translate into English. In essence, [hæz] is the feeling of contentment and bliss after one experiences an intense visual delight that one savors and contemplates. It is primarily an expression of embodied aesthetics with physical, psychological, and emotional overtones. This is the kind of feeling (or culturally distinctive reaction) that according to Heath (1977: 9) is a form of cultural enjoyment and identity. This sense of cultural enjoyment is also clearly enacted in the following excerpt.

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In the next example, Aramis, Arya, and Shayan (all first grade children) had just finished working on a copying task. Arya informs Ms. Parvand that they are done. Mrs. Parvand comes to check their work: (8)

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xanom pedram, tamum kardim, “Mrs. Parvand, we are done.” ((looking down on Aramis’s work while standing)) ba÷ bah÷ " inha tSEq hœzdar xœtESun gœSœngEh “Oh! My! How elegant their handwriting is!” ((looks up)) ((with an expression of wonder and admiration, turns to the analyst)) Adam hœz mibarEh, “What a great delight it is!” Adam az negakœrdœn Sun sir nEmiSEh “One never gets tired of looking it.” afarin batSEha “Good for you children!” barik alA< “Good for you!” ((looking with a sense of contentment))

Here the teacher by displaying powerful feelings, is socializing the children into how to feel and to express their feelings in response to handwriting (figure 6). This is realized linguistically (in line 2) through exclamatory remarks as ba÷ bah÷’ ‘How lovely!’ an evocative expression used in praising, particularly a performance. The exclamatory tone of the utterance through the use of the demonstrative inha ‘these’ calls attention to the children followed by the intensifier tSeqadar< ‘how’ and the semantically positive emotion words qaS{ng ‘pretty.’This is all heightened by the vibrant and resonating voice of

Figure 6. Expressing joy at a child’s handwriting.

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the teacher and her rising intonation. Her ecstatic expression is accompanied with the key cultural term, hæz in line 4. The visual appeal of the handwriting is expressed and reinforced through her sustained gaze and the observation that the beauty of the handwriting is a perpetual source of pleasure (line 6). Her invitation to others, including the analyst (line 4), to see the handwriting stresses the social nature of mashq as a legitimate activity by sanctioning the children’s behavior and showering them with praise (lines 4–8). The use of the cultural term hæz stimulates similar expressions and the development of emotions in the children: it establishes an aesthetic and interpersonal relation between the viewer and the writer, a relation in which a text is viewed for what it looks like rather than what it says. In essence, hæz is used as a metalinguistic aesthetic judgment for textual connotation rather than for literal meaning. That is why the teacher, upon seeing the children’s mashq, offered a global and collective evaluation of the handwritings of three children at the same time. Her wide smile throughout the reaction was the delightful reward she offered to the children who were intently gazing at her reaction. What we see in these two exchanges are both linguistically and bodily visible cultural sentiments that reveal the teacher’s stance and her display of alignment in recognition of the children’s conformity to the aesthetic codes of writing. As Ochs has noted, “[n]ovices become acquainted with activities not only from their own and others’ attempts to define what transpires in an activity but also from how those participating in the activity respond to them” (2002: 107). The following interaction occurred after Shayan, handed his mashq to the teacher to be graded: (9)

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((gazing at the text for a few seconds)) b{SEha “Children,” ((She holds up the note book facing the children)) nega konin h{z mikoninŒ “Look! Do you enjoy it?” ((holds Shay’s handwriting in open view)) ((thrilled and elated looks on)) ((all the children raise their heads and look at Shay’s mashq)) ((reorients himself towards his classmate, anticipating their reaction)) d{st x{t e Shayan ra bibinid. “Look at Shayan’s handwriting.” xaili alieh xaili alieh pesarEh xub “Very excellent, it is very excellent, good boy.” ((Smiling broadly, raises his arms in ecstasy))

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Figure 7. Child expressing joy at recognition.

Here the segment begins by the teacher drawing other children’s attention to Shayan’s khat (or handwriting). The child’s mashq is held in open view and described as xaili aliEh xaili aliEh, ‘very excellent,’ ‘a performance of excellence’ (line 8) and a source of enjoyment and entrancement (line 3). The teacher’s announcement is made by “the mingling of the senses of sight and hearing through the medium of affection-based authority [which] establishes a mode of textuality that fosters an intense auditory and an intense visual experience” (Crain 2000: 125). The teacher’s discourse, in stressing the cultural meaning of khat, makes it an index of a moral code of behavior and an expression of the child’s personal virtue and goodness (line 8). As is evident from the frame, the other children become intensely involved in observing Shayan’s work. The author in turn cheers at such recognition in a very enthusiastic moment captured in figure 7. In the following example, Mrs. Parvand was watching Aramis, as she was practicing copying letter-like signs. (10)

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(with an expression of revulsion on her face)) na na zESt Sod, “It got ugly,” miduni tSera zESt SodŒ “You know why it got ugly,” ((smiling and looking on)) in ha bayad yEk œndazEh baSœnd, “These should be of equal size,”

Here in this interaction with the child’s text, the model and the teacher, the teacher’s body as shown in figure 8, is reacting to the child’s text. In so doing,

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Figure 8. Negative feelings in response to a child’s handwriting.

a wave of revulsion sweeps over the teacher’s face as she overtly marks the text as [zESt] ‘ugly’ thus reinforcing her overt physical displeasure at the ungainly sight of the child’s handwriting. Teachers often defined their relationship to the children in terms of their handwriting. In this way they made the children responsible for their reactions as teachers. Children thus learned to link their handwriting with the teacher’s feelings. In the following segment, Mrs. Afsariabi used Aryn’s mashq to draw attention to her own state and mood. Aryan, a shy and somewhat aloof child throughout the study, had a difficult time with writing fine letters, although he told me that “writing was hard but a serious thing,” and he never neglected to do his homework or class work. His work was marked with misshaped and unevenly sized letters, and spacing problems. Consequently, he was often criticized by the teacher and often received the teacher’s grievances and rebukes. He tried very hard to improve his handwriting, but was often stressed and anxious, and at times, almost in tears. In the following example, he had just finished copying a text: (11) Aryan has just finished copying a text. The teacher is checking his work. 01 02

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((As she turns the pages, she picks the notebook up)) m{n faq{d agar in aryan jun mœn, “Only if my dear Aryan,” ((holding up Aryan’s notebook and gazing at him)) In maSqhaSo yEk zarEh kutSulu tar minEvESt, “If he wrote his mashq a little smaller,” ((puts down the notebook in front of Aryan)) (.07) inq{dar xoShal miSod{m ke ÷{d va hEsAb nAdarEh, “I would be happy immeasurably.”

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Here the force and effect of the child’s text is tied in with notions of forging a social and interpersonal relationship as Mrs. Afsariabi associates her emotional state, expressed in a wishful tone, with Aryan’s handwriting. The teacher, through a guilt-laden expression of affection for Aryan (line 2), holds the child’s over-sized letters responsible for her unhappiness. Syntactically, by using a hypothetical statement expressed in the if -clause (line 2), she presents her vision of expected ideal handwriting as reflected in small fine letters (line 2). In the following excerpt, Mrs. Afrasiabi invokes the handwriting of another child, Mehrzad, to express her non-alignment with Aryan: (12)

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xatEtIS xaili xoSkElEh “His hand is very beautiful.” ((Expression of contentment and wonder)) ((Mehrdad lifts his pencil and gazes at the teacher with a smile as Aryan stares at the teacher)) ((.06)) merci pEsar{m, “Thank you my son.” xaili xaili qaS{ngEh< “It is very, very beautiful!”

In this segment once the teacher sees Mehrzad’s mashq as shown in figure 9, she thanks him profusely (line 4) for his elegant hand.

Figure 9. Interpersonal relationships and writing.

The assessment is conveyed both through focused expression of pleasure displayed on the teacher’s face and reflected in her stylish signature at the end of the child’s writing. This is also evidenced in her giving him a grade of 20 out of 20 and double A+ as an ultimate grade reserved for a perfor-

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mance of excellence. However, such a response in expressing and cultivating aesthetic appreciation also seeks to order, regulate, and shape other participants’ behavior in the classroom’s discursive space. The teacher, through her gaze, warm facial expression, and linguistic forms, such as indirect address by using the third person singular (line 1), builds momentum and draws the attention of other participants, particularly, Aryan to watch and listen to her assessment. Her use of the affectionate term pεsaræm my son in addressing Mehrzad followed by the intensifier xaili xaili ‘very, very’ (line 5) heightens emotional engagement with reference to his text as the test of aesthetic competency. In another classroom interaction, in addressing Aryan, the same teacher said “you who are so knowledgeable a boy, how good would it be if your handwriting looked good,” indicating to the child that to be called literate is to have a good handwriting and vice versa. The type of discourse used here shows the importance that the community attaches to the form of writing as reflected in the saying , al x{t nEsf alElm, meaning that “half of knowledge lies in the form of the handwriting.” As Ms. Tamarvand said: “I am here to encourage the children’s bodies and minds, to teach them knowledge and the laws of the heart. I always acknowledge a child’s beautiful handwriting. We must acknowledge the fine feelings of the writer.” This expression of attitudes, whether in the form of the jubilant celebration of a child’s handwriting sanctioned by the teacher both verbally and in writing, or the anger of a teacher at the sight of a child’s ungainly hand, marked and indexed the ritual of mashq as an embodied practice and performance. In the examples analyzed, we can observe the teachers’tendency to imbue the children’s writing with aesthetic sentiments as the children retraced and reenacted texts. The calligraphic ideology of the orthography allowed the teachers to establish rapport with some students and distance themselves from others; they also used children’s writing to build and reinforce social and cultural bonds and membership. Similarly children’s handwriting became a medium through which their characters were held to be revealed and defined, and their dispositions cultivated. It is clear from these examples that mashq cannot be simply explained as an act of mechanical copying or imitation. As Harrison has remarked, “[t]he origin of art is not mimesis, but mimesis springs up out of art, out of emotional expression, constantly and closely neighboring it” (1991: 47). Art and ritual are at the outset alike in this, in that they do not seek to copy a fact, but to reproduce, or to re-enact an emotion. What these examples reveal are the cultural attitudes of the community towards the form of writing as reflected in the

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orthography. The aesthetic competencies and ethical values associated with the practice that young Iranian American children learn are grounded in a historical continuity that defines and underlies Persian identity and sensibility.

9. Conclusions In describing literacy socialization practices in dabestan e Iran, I have argued that teachers use body imagery metaphors as resources to orient, enact, and construct aesthetic knowledge of orthographic conventions and the script. In interaction with cultural materials, teachers constructed and communicated scriptural knowledge and its normative practices to the children I observed. Literacy events were characterized by the importance of body discourse, in both constructing and enacting embodied knowledge of texts, and using such a knowledge to discipline the children in terms of attitudes, responsibilities, and alignments invoked in relation to the aesthetic demands of the model texts. The act of writing was found to be the practice of training and shaping the body to sociocultural norms through institutional practices. Mashq emerges as the locus of ideologized social norms or cultural structures and practices that motivate and shape the social organization of writing and recurrent literacy events. It was also the apprenticeship system by which the authorial body was (re)enacted, (re)inscribed, and disciplined. I also sought to illustrate that the pedagogy of khat ‘writing’ and body were intertwined as evidenced in the teachers’ cultural reactions and sentiments, the repertoires of verbal imagery, and in their actual use of embodied visual representations. In sum, aesthetics and ethics came together in the practice of mashq. Copying as a mode of performance and a model of competence was considered an embodied practice. Guided copying through tracing with hand and eyes highlighted the embodied nature of writing. The knowledge was also acquired diachronically through exposure to the embedded calligraphy and its cultural manifestations in the social and instructional spaces. Writing activities were also sites for language socialization and reproduction of both formal and informal language in the form of culturally specific terms, prompts, directives, language of affect, and figurative language in teachers’ interactive discourse. Language was also encoded and implicated in the cultural artifacts, calligraphic works, and proverbs placed on the classroom walls. Copying these types of texts not only provided rich contexts for reading and speaking, and more writing, but also helped the writer memorize and internalize these texts, written in different scripts with different functions,

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ranging from the Koranic verses in Arabic to didactic proverbs and poems in Persian. The ultimate purpose was not just to recreate an isolated exemplar as a model of competence, but also to invoke and reenact a cultural and linguistic tradition. While not every child developed the apt habits of mashq or performance, all developed an understanding of the cultural importance and the authority of the practice as a visually communicative act or performance in writing, which “consists in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of communicative competence” Bauman (1995: 293). As these observations reveal, khoshnevisi continues to influence literacy practices. This influence is not limited to education, but includes different aspects of life including artistic expression, politics, religion, and culture as a whole. The public display of calligraphic works, its spread into cyberspace, the expansion of professional khoshnevisi associations throughout Iran, bespeak of khoshnevisi’s continuing and adaptive influence to receive, inscribe, revive, reproduce, and transmit language ideologies and orthographic forms. What links the orthographic traditions of modern literacy with classic calligraphic past and present is not strict adherence to or conformity with the technical aesthetics of the art; as Hirschkind citing Asad (1999: 189–90; 1993: 210–11) has noted in his illuminating work on listening practices to tape recorded sermons among contemporary Muslims in Egypt, “but the fact that in its contemporary organization, assessment, and performance, the practice relies on authoritative discourses and historical exemplars embedded in that tradition.” Although only a few young children may aspire to become khoshnevis or “calligraphers,” the specific cultural activity of the arduous and disciplined mashq preserves, revives, and transmits the importance of competence in developing an attractive hand, which, in turn, is associated with moral action and national sensibilities.

References Aminy, Marina 2004

Barton, David 1994

Constructing the Moral Identity: Literacy Practices and Language Socialization in a Muslim Community. Dissertation. University of California. Berkeley. Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford

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The art of the public text: Medieval Islamic rule. In Irving Lavin (ed,), World art themes of unity in diversity, vol. 2, 283–299. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. De Certeau, Michael 1984 The practice of everyday life (trans. by S. Rendall). Berkeley: University of California Press. Coupland, Justine and Richard Gwyn (eds.) 2003 Discourses of the body. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Crain, Patricia 2000 The story of A. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Creese, Angela and Peter Martin (eds.) 2003 Multilingual classroom ecologies: interrelationships, interaction, and ideologies. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Duranti, Alessandro 1997 Linguistic anthropology. Cambridger: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, Michael 1979 Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (trans. by A. Sheridan). Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. Goodwin, Charles 2000 Action and embodiment within situation human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32. 1489–1522. Goodwin, Charles 2003 The semiotic body in its environment. In Justine Coupland and Richard Gwyn (eds.), Discourses of the body, 19–42. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hamlish, Tamila 1995 Scripted Performances: The Aesthetics of Language and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy. Dissertation. The University of Chicago. Harrison, Jane Ellen 2007 [1913] Ancient art and ritual. Charleston, South Carolina: Forgotten Books [Reprint.]. Hatcher, Caroline 2000 Practices of the heart: the art of being a good listener. In C. O’Farrel, D. Meadmore, E. McWilliam and C. Symes (eds.),Taught bodies, 91–104. New York: Peter Lang. Heath, Shirely 1982 What no bedtime story means. Narrative skills at home and school. Language and Society 11(2). 49–76. Heath, Stephen 1977 Translator’s note. In R. Barthes, Image, music, text. New York: Hill and Wang.

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Hirschkind, Charles 2006 Passional preaching, aural sensibility, and the Islamcic revival in Cairo. In Michael Lambek (ed.), A Reader in the anthropology of religion, 536–554. Oxford: Blackwell. Lambek, Michael (ed.) 2006 A Reader in the anthropology of religion. Oxford: Blackwell. Lutz, Catherine 1988 Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atol and their challenge to Western theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Jaffe, Alexandra 1999 Ideologies in action: Language politics on Corsica. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Jaffe, Alexandra 2003 Talk around: Literacy practices, cultural identity, and authority in a Corsican bilingual classroom. In Angela Creese and Peter Martin (eds.), Multilingual classroom ecologies: interrelationships, interaction, and ideologies, 42–58. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Khatibi, Abdelkebir and Mohammad Sijelmassi 1994 The splendor of Islamic calligraphy (trans. by J. Hughes). London: Thames and Hudson. Kramsch, C. (ed.) 2002 Language acquisition and language socialization. NewYork: Continuum Press. Kraus, Richard 1991 Brushes with power: Modern politics and Chinese art of calligraphy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kress Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen 1996 Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Lavin, Irving (ed.) 1986 World art themes of unity in diversity, vol. 2. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Mandel Khan, Gabriel 2001 Arabic scripts: Styles, variants, and calligraphic adaptations. New York: Abbeville Press. Mitchell, W.J. Thomas 1986 Iconlogy: image, text, ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, W.J. Thomas 1980 The language of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Moore, Leslie C. 2004 Learning Languages by Heart: Second Language Socialization in a Fulbe Community (Maoua, Cameroon). Dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles. Ochs, Elenoir 2002 Becoming a speaker of culture. In C. Kramsch (ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization, 99–120. New York: Continuum Press. Ochs, Elenor and Bambi Schieffelin 1989 Language has a heart: The pragmatics of affect. Text 9(1). 7–25. O’Farrel, C., D. Meadmore, E. McWilliam and C. Symes (eds.) 2000 Taught bodies. New York: Peter Lang. Sebba, Mark 2007 Spelling and society: The culture and politics of orthography around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sapir, Edward 1949 Selected writings in language, culture, and personality. Reprint, 2nd ed. with new foreword by David G. Mandelbaum and epilogue by Dell Hymes. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Schieffelin B.B. and E. Ochs (eds) 1986 Language socialization across cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, B.B. and R.C. Doucet 1998 The “real” Haitian Creole: Ideology, metalinguistics and orthographic choice. In B.B. Schieffelin, K.A. Woolard and P.V. Kroskrity (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory, 285– 316. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schieffelin, B.B., K.A. Woolard and P.V. Kroskrity (eds.) 1998 Language ideologies: Practice and theory. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schimmel, Annmarie 1984 Calligraphy and Islamic Culture. New York: New York University Press. Sparchman, Paul 2002 Language and culture in Persian. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publisher. Scribner, S. and M. Cole 1981 The psychology of literacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Street, Brian 1984 Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Vygotsky Lev S. 1997 Educational psychology. [Original edition 1921–1923]. Boca Raton, Fla.: St. Lucie Press. Woolard, Kathryn Ann 1998 An introduction: Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In B. Schieffelin, K.A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.), Language Ideologies: Practice andTheory, 3–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 11 Floating ideologies: Metamorphoses of graphic “Germanness” J¨urgen Spitzm¨uller 1. Introduction After decades of almost exclusive focusing on spoken language, a growing interest in written communication and scriptal variation can be noticed in sociolinguistics recently (cf. Jaffe 2000; Johnson 2005; Androutsopoulos 2007; Sebba 2007; this volume). This interest, however, is still in many ways limited. It is limited quantitatively, in that only a few scholars systematically explore the sociolinguistic relevance of scriptal variation at all (cf. Sebba 2009 for a recent overview), and it is limited qualitatively insofar as the existing studies focus only on a small range of scriptal variation, particularly on orthography and spelling. Other aspects of scriptality (such as typography) are virtually unexplored sociolinguistically. A “sociolinguistics of writing” (Androutsopoulos 2007: 86) thus still has a long way to go even to find out how large the field it attempts to explore actually is. The existing research on writing and its use (cf. G¨unther and Ludwig 1994 for an overview) might support such an exploration in general, but as far as the social implications of writing are concerned, sociolinguistics cannot draw much on that research either, since it does not attach much importance to variation and social significance (again, cf. Sebba 2009). Even if visual and material aspects of scriptality have become a topic of research in recent years (cf., e.g., Scollon and Scollon 2003; Androutsopoulos 2004; St¨ockl 2005; van Leeuwen 2005, 2006; see Spitzm¨uller 2006 for an overview), sociolinguistic aspects are by and large neglected. This also holds true for the so-called social semiotic approaches to text and typography (St¨ockl 2005; Scollon and Scollon 2003; van Leeuwen 2005, 2006), as they usually do not go beyond attempts to categorize visual graphic means. At least as far as scriptality is concerned, they still very much highlight the semiotic, while hiding the social part of their research manifesto. The present chapter sets out to explore one of the many plots in this huge unexplored sociolinguistic field of scriptality: the phenomenon of graphic ideologies. That is, it focuses on sets of beliefs attributed to and expressed by means of graphic phenomena.

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The chapter thus extends the sociolinguistic topic of language ideologies to the graphic modes of communication and, in doing so, argues that graphic variation is to be considered as a socially relevant communicative practice. The phenomenon in question is exemplified by analyses of graphic ideologies of “Germanness,” i.e., graphic practices that are (assumed to be) used in order to express aspects of “being German” or, for that matter, of perceived “German” identity. A special focus is laid on the question of how such perceptions are negotiated in discourse and attributed to the graphic elements. The organization of the chapter is as follows: first, the concept of graphic ideologies is introduced and defined (section 2). In this context, the chapter discusses how meaning is attributed to graphic elements. Then the chapter turns to the example case and describes, by focusing on selected graphic means, how “Germanness” is attributed to and expressed by graphic phenomena (section 3). The observation includes historical developments as well as recent examples. Thus, the chapter aims to show how graphic ideologies are both discursively rooted and floating, i.e., that they are both part of a collective knowledge and permanent subject to negotiation.

2. Graphic ideologies: Widening the scope 2.1.

Graphic ideologies as a sociolinguistic topic

Language ideologies and their metapragmatic manifestation in discourse have gained much interest in recent sociolinguistics (cf., e.g., Blommaert 1999b; Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity 1998; Johnson and Ensslin 2007). In contrast, research on ideologies of script is still in its infancy. In language ideology research, script is usually not recognized as a matter in its own right, and if it is, the subject is usually limited to orthography and spelling (again cf. Jaffe 2000; Johnson 2005; Sebba 2007). However, interactants not only display values and beliefs towards and by means of languages and varieties, but also towards and by means of the use of graphic elements. Alongside language ideologies, sociolinguistics thus also needs to consider what I shall call graphic ideologies here. It is assumed that graphic ideologies affect the social value of communicative practices as much as language ideologies do. It is further assumed that there are analogous forms of values and beliefs attributed to and expressed by means of other modes of communication (such as gesture, proxemics, mediality). The consideration of graphic ideologies proposed here is thus just one step towards a general widening of the scope of sociolinguistics towards ideologies of communication.

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Drawing on Michael Silverstein’s (1979: 193) classic definition, graphic ideologies can provisionally be defined as any sets of beliefs about graphic communicative means articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived orders and communicative use of graphic elements.1 “Graphic communicative means” thereby subsume all sorts of communicative means that use the visual channel and that are used in texts (this, in turn, excludes nonverbal visual phenomena such as gesture). The range includes images, phenomena of scriptality, and parascriptality – such as spelling, typography (type faces, layout, emphasizing, etc.), graphemic features (e.g., diacritics, special characters) and the choice of writing systems – as well as generic graphic phenomena such as the use of color (cf. Twyman 1982 for a useful categorization). National ideologies, for instance, are graphically represented by such diverse phenomena as symbols (e.g., flags or the Chinese dragon), colors (such as green for Ireland, orange for the Netherlands; cf. Demarmels 2009: 238–251 for further examples), images both showing historically rooted settings (e.g., streams of refugees or central figures) or fixed scenes (e.g., the German 1848 revolutionaries holding the black-red-golden flag; cf. Johnson 2007), writing systems (such as katakana for Japanese), graphematic peculiarities (e.g., the Scandinavian , the German ), specifics concerning the way of writing (e.g., direction, calligraphy), specific typefaces (e.g., uncial for Ireland), and probably also layout and material issues (writing material, positioning, etc.). These graphic representations are both intertwined with each other and with verbal representations. Graphic representations within texts interrelate with the text content, with stereotypical argumentation, key words, metaphors, intertextual relations, etc. In actu, several non-verbal modes add to that. In the scenario of a demonstration, for instance, both the verbal and the graphic elements of banners, T-shirts, flyers, etc. interact with the overall performance, with spoken utterances, the non-verbal behavior, the look, and the overall habitus of the demonstrators, with culturally rooted genres of demonstrating, etc. In short, ideology communication is, as a rule, multimodal communication. All modes constitute the ideological message. Therefore, as many of these phenomena as possible are to be considered in a joint analysis. On the other hand, however, graphic elements cannot be analyzed or categorized as independent from their multimodal embedding, either. No graphic element represents a given meaning or, for that matter, a given ideology per 1. Silverstein’s (1979: 193) original definition reads: “linguistic ideologies . . . are any sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use.”

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se. Graphic elements usually serve as contextualization cues (Auer and di Luzio 1992). They are involved in the process of context construction, but their interpretation is itself dependent on the context that is set up by means of all communicative modes (see section 2.2). Therefore, it does not make sense to set up a context-abstract “grammar” of visual elements or to look for distinctive semantic characteristics of specific graphic features (as Crystal 1998 and van Leeuwen 2006: 147–150 do). Due to the dynamic nature of graphic elements, such attempts are bound to fail. Potential fields of investigation are the socio-semiotic values attributed to given graphic elements, the actual use of such elements, conventions, policies, and prescriptions of graphic usage, graphic stereotypes, metadiscursive negotiations of graphic practices as well as identity work, and “othering” by means of visual communication. Thanks to language ideology research, both the theories and the methods that are needed to proceed are already at hand. If and how these methods can be adapted to graphic phenomena, however, is subject to further discussion. In the present chapter, a societal treatment approach (cf. Garrett 2005: 1251–1252) to communicative ideologies is chosen, i.e., the analysis seeks to reveal how ideology is constructed metapragmatically in discourse. This discourse-analytical method follows the attempt by communicative ideology research (as proposed by Silverstein) to concentrate on articulated values and beliefs (as opposed to the attempts of sociolinguistic attitude research to reveal covert values and beliefs or some “hidden” intention of the interactants; cf. Garrett 2005). In this way, the research avoids many traps it might fall into if it tried to link communicative practices with something “un-communicated” or even “un-communicatable.”

2.2.

Floating semiosis: The dynamics of graphic elements

Since graphic elements interrelate with other modes of communication as well as with the situational context of use, their semantics is highly dynamic. It is, however, by no means incidental. It can be assumed that both the use and the interpretation of graphic elements are bound to graphic knowledge (cf. Antos and Spitzm u¨ ller 2007), which is itself a specific form of semiotic knowledge as modeled by Rudi Keller (1998), or, put sociolinguistically, a form of communicative competence (sensu Hymes 1974). Keller (1998: 90) argues that “[c]ommunication . . . is an act that consists of giving the other hints that put into motion by that person a process of interpretation, the aim of which is discovering the desired goal of the at-

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tempted influence, that is, understanding the speaker’s act.” In order to enable communication, two prerequisites are thus required. First and foremost, the addressees need to recognize the signs used as distinct entities. Thus, signs have to be perceptible, or, for that matter, “whoever believes these things are signs must also believe them to be perceptible” (Keller 1998: 93; my emphases). Then the perceptible entities must be recognized as something that is, in the addressee’s view, intentionally used by the producer in order to give the addressee interpretative hints. Thus, signs must be interpretable (cf. Keller 1998: 92–93). Interpretability means that the addressee is able to guess (or in fact assumes s/he is able to guess) in which way the sender intends to influence her or him by using a specific sign. In order to do so, s/he needs to know how a specific sign is used in general or how it might be used in the given situation. S/he needs to know the rules of use of the given signs, which are, according to Keller (1998: 52), equal to their “meaning.” Meaning is thus negotiated interactively within the process of communication, whereby any participant draws on her/his semiotic knowledge, i.e., her/his knowledge of usage rules of certain signs. Within this negotiation process, not only might the “correct” interpretation become subject to discussion, but also the interpretability itself (cf. Keller 1998: 93), and even the perceptibility might be a matter of dispute. In short, signs are not just “there,” they “emerge in the process of our attempts to reach communicative goals” (Keller 1998: vii). In other words, the semiotics of graphic elements is floating. Consequently, the question of whether something is perceived as a sign and, if so, how this something is interpreted, depends on the semiotic knowledge of the addressees as well as on the semiotic knowledge that the producer is supposed to share with the addressees, in the latter’s opinion. In light of this, the question of whether graphic elements “have” some meaning or not, is put wrongly. The more sensible question is the following: under what circumstances is a given meaning ascribed to graphic elements by the participants of a given discourse, i.e., under what circumstances (1) are graphic elements perceived as distinctive elements by specific addressees, and (2) do individuals or a group of addressees assume that whoever produced the text used these graphic elements deliberately in order to give the addressees interpretative hints? From this perspective, the observation that specific graphic elements are significant to some people while they are “meaningless” to others is no longer surprising. While the notion of semiotic knowledge proves to be crucial for the understanding of the dynamics of graphic elements in communication, one weak point in Keller’s theory is his strong focus on deliberation and intentionality, even though intentionality includes assumed intentionality. What

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is missing in the concept, particularly if indexical meaning is considered, is the idea of what one might call the knowledge of context. Context thereby refers to the production context and particularly to the phenomena that are not (assumed to be) “intentionally” chosen by the producer, but that are nevertheless interpreted by the recipient as indices of certain historical, social, or cultural backgrounds of the text and its author. It also includes what Blommaert (2005: 56–66) calls “forgotten contexts,” the context of “data history,” “text trajectories,” and not least “resources as context” (Blommaert 2005: 58–62). The latter becomes important if recipients assume that they can trace back the graphic appearance of a text to a specific set of resources that was available to the author or, more negatively, to a specific set of resources to which the author was limited, and if they further assume this specific set of resources to be typical of a particular situational, historical, cultural, or social setting or to be symptomatic of specific competences or abilities of the text producer. It is evident that the assumptions about this sort of context frame the recipients’ interpretation and the evaluation of both author and text. In summary, graphic elements are regarded as dynamic, but discursively rooted phenomena that acquire semiotic relevance in the context of a given, discursively rooted graphic knowledge by means of (meta)pragmatic action. The analysis focuses on how the knowledge of a given community of actors is discursively constructed – it does not seek to reveal “hidden” intentionality, but uttered semiotic ascriptions. In the following section, this will be exemplified by means of graphic ideologies of “Germanness,” in which specific graphic elements will be selected. A historical overview of the development of these graphic ideologies and a corpus analysis will shed light on the discursive roots and the scope of the ideological meaning. Then a complementary micro-analysis of a discussion on Wikipedia will demonstrate that the idea of graphic-ideological negotiation can be taken quite literally: it will show how interactants engage in a tug-of-war concerning ideological meaning.

3. Graphic “Germanness”: Exemplary analyses 3.1. Analytical scope Many different graphic elements are used to visualize “Germanness,” i.e., positive and negative auto- and hetero-stereotypes about what is supposed to be “German.” Of course, these elements vary both in quality and quantity, depending on the respective discourse actors, the values they try to express,

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and their graphic knowledge. In this context, it is important to bear in mind that so-called “national identities” are always promoted by specific groups, and that they are bound to group identities. However, some graphic elements keep recurring in different contexts. In what follows, the analysis concentrates on two such types of phenomena, viz.: ¨ , , ¨ , 1. graphemes peculiar to German writing (, , ¨ , ) and 2. blackletter type.2 These two categories are interrelated in many ways. They are often combined in texts, in which they contextualize each other. On the other hand, however, they are also subject to different conditions of use. Basically, this can be traced back to their perceptibility and their interpretability in different communicative settings. What is crucial here is what Karl B¨uhler ([1934] 1990: 50) called the principle of abstractive relevance. According to this principle, the more strongly a given form is ascribed to a certain semiotic function, the more its use for other semiotic functions is limited. The graphematic elements may serve to demonstrate this. Since the umlauts and the -character are usually distinctive orthographic elements (i.e., graphemes) in German texts, it is difficult to use them in order to signify other things, e.g., sociosemiotic values. These characters have been “absorbed” by their graphematic function and are thus, semiotically speaking, no longer perceptible (and thus not interpretable) on other semiotic levels. This is completely different in the context of other graphematic systems that do not ascribe these characters to graphematic function. In English texts, for instance, where these characters are not bound to the graphematic system and where they are thus highly perceptible, they usually serve as signs of foreignness, or, more specifically, as signs of “Germanness,” and whatever ideology is bound to this. Consider the use of umlauts in the context of advertising (foreign branding) and popular culture (e.g., H¨aagen Dasz, Mot¨orhead). Such “foreign” characters are typical means of what can be called graphic crossing, i.e., the juxtaposition of different graphic means, at least one of which is perceived as being “foreign” (cf. Spitzm¨uller 2007a). The same holds true for blackletter typefaces. However, whether graphic elements are perceived as being “foreign” or not, again depends on the graphic knowledge of the actors. If, for example, 2. The term blackletter or broken type (gebrochene Schrift in German) denotes a class of families of types or typefaces that are characterized by broken lining. The class consists of subclasses such as Fraktur/Gotisch (Gothic), Schwabacher, Textura, Rotunda, and others, each of which shows particular formal features (cf. Bain, Shaw and Bertheau 1998).

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their use is traced back to some specific contextual setting (e.g., the historical production context or genre conventions, cf. newspaper headlines or beer labels), other potential significations are put last by the recipients. Hence, the actual interpretation is often subject to discussion. Furthermore, ascriptions may generally flow. Again, the “German” graphemes demonstrate this. In the context of the spelling reform, the letter was widely attributed to sociosemiotic values. Since one of the most visible changes in German orthography was the replacement of by after short vocals (cf. daß → dass [conj. ‘that’]3 ), the character was discursively loaded with ideological values within the debate. Conspiracy theorists characterized the reform itself as “secret affair ‘ß’” (R¨ohrig 2004) and the letter was discursively transformed into a sign of “Germanness.” The “most German of all letters” (der deutscheste aller Buchstaben), as the newspaper Die Zeit put it (Stock 1998), was attributed the role of the most prominent “victim” of the reform, which was widely perceived as a threat not only to spelling, but to “the” German language and as such to “the” German identity in general (cf. Johnson 2005). Since then, the “(dis-)missed character” (M¨uller 2008) has not only been deliberately used by opponents of the reform as a symbol for “correct” or “proper” German, but the recipients who perceive this usage have also been invited to join the club of “proper Germans” – the circle of “those who know.” Referring to Irvine and Gal (2000: 37), this can be regarded as a process of iconization: the graphic feature turned into an “iconic representation” of a specific social group.4 Something similar happened to blackletter typefaces, though within a much longer process. The following section elaborates on this.

3.2.

Blackletter as a “German type”

Blackletter was bound to (particularly political) ideology right from the beginning of printing. In many European countries, these typefaces were 3. Strictly speaking, this was the result of the attempt to make the rules more coherent. While and were used rather arbitrarily before the reform, the reformers tried to bind the use of the corresponding graph/digraph to the syllable weight. 4. Irvine and Gal introduce the concept of iconization as one of three semiotic processes (iconization, fractal recursivity, erasure) “by which people construct ideological representations of linguistic differences” (Irvine and Gal 2000: 37). Iconization is defined as “a transformation of the sign relationship between linguistic features (or varieties) and the social image with which they are linked” (Irvine and Gal 2000: 37).

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dropped more or less completely (except for historicizing contexts) in favor of roman typefaces during the phase of incunable printing (Italy, France, Spain) in the middle of the sixteenth century (England) or during the eighteenth century (the Netherlands, Sweden). In Germany, however – as well as in some other countries such as Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Bohemia, and Slovenia – blackletter was preferred for vernacular texts until the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, while foreign (particularly Latin) texts were, as a rule, typeset with roman typefaces.5 This bi-scriptal practice was even common within texts. Loanwords and even loan morphemes were typeset in roman, while everything that was considered “proper German” was typeset in blackletter. In this context, blackletter came to be known as German type (“Deutsche Schrift”; cf. Newton 2003), an attribution that is currently recurrent. The juxtaposition of blackletter and roman also became part of purist practice (cf. von Polenz 1994: 61), which aimed at separating “proper German” from “foreign languages.” However, there is more to it. Especially in the context of Protestantism, blackletter and roman were assigned to political ideologies. It is well known that Luther and the Protestants deliberately chose German for many of their writings not only to “reach” the public, but also as a distinct sociosemiotic means (as opposed to the clerical Latin; cf. von Polenz 2000: 229–251). It is much less known, however, that they used blackletter (as opposed to, notabene, roman) in the same vein. As Flood (1996) points out, a deontic typographic system was used in the Luther Bible throughout the editions from 1541 through 1546. In the preface of the 1545 edition, the editor Georg R¨orer noted: ZVm dritten sind die zweierley Buchstaben / der ABC vnd der ABC gestalt / gesetzt / dem vnerfaren Leser vnterscheid anzuzeigen / Das wo dieser ABC stehen / die Schrifft rede von gnade / trost etc. Die andern ABC von zorn / straffe etc. (Biblia Germanica [1545] 1967: fol. CCCCVIIr ; Fraktur in orig., emphases: roman upshape) [Third, we use two sorts of letters, the form of ABC [blackletter] and ABC [roman], in order to signal the inexperienced reader the following difference: where this ABC [blackletter] is used, the Scriptures are talking of mercy, comfort etc., whereas the otherABC [roman] refers to wrath, punishment, etc.]

Even though this system was allegedly evaluated by Luther as utter nonsense (“lauter Narrenwerck”) (cf. Flood 1996: 185) and was dropped in later editions (probably since it was theologically too simplistic), the practice 5. Interestingly, there is also a vital blackletter tradition in Mexico, which probably influenced US-American tattooing (cf. Paoli 2006).

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showed up in other Protestant texts as well, particularly in pamphlets such as Luther’s seminal Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft (1545). On the front page of this text, the initial letters of the words Rom (‘Rome’) and Teuffel (‘devil’) were set in roman type. A mixture of Latin versus German and blackletter versus roman can be found in a woodcut by Lukas Cranach (1545), where “the Pope speaks Latin, printed in roman, the response is a mixture of Latin and Italian, printed in italic, and Luther’s German verses are set in a self-assertive gothic” (Flood 1996: 188; also cf. Spitzm u¨ ller 2009 for details). With regard to this, Flood concludes that [t]he availability of the scriptures in the vernacular was a central plank of Protestantism, and gothic types were the physical face of the vernacular in Germany, a typographical manifesto, as it were. (Flood 1996: 187)

Since the German bourgeoisie had its roots in Protestantism, it can be assumed that the Protestants’ practice directly influenced the graphic ideology of the bourgeoisie. In any case, both purism (cf. Spitzm u¨ ller 2007b) and the ideological use of typefaces became a central aspect both in the communicative practice and in the metadiscourse of the German literal elite. The latter resulted in the so-called Fraktur-Antiqua-debate (cf. Killius 1999; Newton 2003), which was about the question of whether blackletter or roman is the more appropriate type for German texts. This highly political debate reached its peak during the nineteenth century, and it even dominated proceedings in parliament. The vehemence of the debate, the rise of which in the nineteenth century as the century of German state constitution and nationalism was no coincidence, illustrates how much the “script question” was about ideology. However, the debate was also a symptom of an incipient change. Indeed, printers were slowly starting to switch to roman typefaces for German texts during the nineteenth century, a process that accelerated as of the beginning of the twentieth century. The final cut, however, was performed by a political verdict, which was ironically issued by the National Socialists, who had heavily used blackletter typefaces themselves before (cf. Willberg 1998; Schwemer-Scheddin 1998). The so-called Frakturverbot (Fraktur ban), a “F¨uhrer’s edict” published in January 1941, disallowed the use of blackletter typefaces in official texts and in doing so catalyzed the ongoing switch to roman type in Germany, which was completed soon thereafter. Argumentatively, the Nazis performed an ideological pirouette: by labeling blackletter as Schwabacher Judenlettern (‘Schwabacher Jewish letters’), the Nazis tried to stigmatize the typeface as being “un-German” or even (within their ideology) “anti-German.” This strategy had already been chosen some weeks before in another “F¨uhrer’s edict” that had banned “Jewish practice” lin-

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guistic purism (published on 19/11/1940; cf. Spitzm u¨ ller 2007b: 267). Both edicts can be regarded as parts of a general attempt by the National Socialists to emancipate from the traditional nationalist groups whose support was no longer needed and to establish a more “international” image instead.

3.3.

Blackletter and/as nationalism

In modern Germany, the use of blackletter is – with the exceptions discussed in the next section – limited to a small range of genres, viz. advertising and economic texts that are bound to “tradition” or “good plain” (German) food, newspaper headings, as well as historicizing texts (cf. Schwemer-Scheddin 1998: 57; Schopp 2002: 111–113). Figure 1 displays some typical examples:

(a) Newspaper front page

(b) “Good plain” (German) food and beer

(c) Historicizing text

Figure 1. Genre-typical use of blackletter typefaces.

In all cases (with the exception of newspaper headings, where the use of blackletter follows a transcultural convention), however, blackletter type still serves to contextualize “Germanness” in one way or another (and the respective graphic knowledge goes beyond the German-speaking world, as figure 1b demonstrates). Apart from this limited range of genres, blackletter typefaces are widely stigmatized as letters of the past and symbols of those who live in the past. Particularly (and despite the fact that the Nazis issued the Fraktur ban), blackletter is largely associated with National Socialism and reactionary politics

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if it is used outside the aforementioned traditionalizing context (cf. Willberg 1998: 49; Schwemer-Scheddin 1998: 57). Hence, it is not surprising that blackletter was avoided in political propaganda after 1945 (and even more so after 1969, in the wake of the critical re-evaluation of the younger German past), a process that has been observed in diverse German-speaking countries (cf. Demarmels 2009 for Switzerland, esp. pp. 249–251). However, blackletter type did not vanish completely from the political arena. If the context of nationalism and “Germanness” in a nationalist sense is desired as a frame of reference, the type is frequently used as a contextualization cue. On the one hand, the neo-nationalist scene used blackletter typefaces (next to particular symbols, colors, etc.) in order to signal their ideology right from the beginning. In this sense, blackletter is used systematically on flyers, T-shirts, banners, book covers, and CD covers as well as on the Internet (cf. Meier-Schuegraf 2005), and it has developed into a transnational sign of this community (cf. figure 2):6

(a) Trade in Nazi devotional objects

(b) Neo-nationalist CD cover

(c) Neonazi demonstration

(d) Lighter “Nationalist”

Figure 2. Blackletter as an identity signal (1): neo-nationalist use. 6. However, the neo-nationalist scene does not use blackletter only to indicate their ideology. A likewise common, but more subtle choice is the chisel font Reporter that has been designed by Carl Winkow in 1938.

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Furthermore, blackletter is also used by other conservative groups that try to maintain or restore some kind of German “national” identity. Unsurprisingly, this often also entails linguistic purism (cf. figure 3):

(a) Deutschtum.net: linguistic purism meets blackletter

(b) Sprachkampf.de.vu

(c) Bismarckbund.de: “conservative, critical, constructive” Figure 3. Blackletter as an identity signal (2): constructing “German national identity”.

On the other hand, blackletter is also utilized by the anti-fascist movement and by critics of neo-nationalism as a means to articulate their displeasure with neo-nationalist tendencies in general or in order to stigmatize certain parties or organizations as being nationalistic or reactionary (cf. figure 4):

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(a) “Zero tolerance for Nazis. Xenophobia must stop!” (b) “Educational material: [background colour brown in original] Recognize rightwing extremism!”

(c) “Fashion we never want to see again!”

(d) “Go voting! Others do as well.”

Figure 4. Blackletter as a stigma: dissociating/critical use.

In both cases, the use of the typefaces can be considered as routine and common practice. In other words, the users presuppose that the anticipated addressees share their graphic knowledge and that they understand their semiotic hints. In some cases, the message even relies on this knowledge (cf. fig. 4d). In this light and given the justified sensitivity of the German public to neo-nationalism, it is not surprising that blackletter is widely perceived as being “reactionary” and “nationalist” in itself, at least if it is used in a political sense, and that typesetters regard the type as a “taboo subject” (SchwemerScheddin 1998: 57) or lament that “[t]heir function as a vehicle of traditional writing . . . has been spoiled permanently by the Nazis” (Willberg 1998: 49).

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Evidence for such ascriptions can be found in media texts dealing with blackletter type.7 Even if some texts argue in favor of reconsidering blackletter as being part of German culture, the vast majority relate blackletter type to nationalism and particularly to neo-nationalism. Some typical examples are the following (my translations): We can assume that the cleansing action to which France has devoted itself [i.e., legal linguistic purism] will find much sympathy in our country – on the side of the rather old-fashioned, nationally motivated purists, who wrack their brain by means of Fraktur type whether [the Anglicism] Hostess should be rather Germanized as Geleiterin, Begleiterin, Fremdendienerin, Gasthilfe, Gastpflegerin, Gastbetreuerin or Gastpflege. (Zimmer 1976) . . . the titles . . . look sensational and cheap. For instance Hans Modrow’s “Ich wollte ein anderes Deutschland” or Marion Gr¨afin D¨onhoff’s “Zivilisiert den Kapitalismus” . . . Both titles are typeset in Fraktur, as if they were thrillers from the Nazi era. (Esch 2002) The other two newspapers are called “Der Insel Bote” or “Der Fahnentr¨ager aus Pommern”, the latter equipped with the subtitle “circular letter for national socialists” and the addition “proud, German, and free.” Typeset in Fraktur, of course. (Wirth 2002) The sign “Air Snack” [English in orig.] is typeset in Fraktur. Nevertheless, no Nazis are in sight. (Scheffler 2004)

3.4. A pop-cultural revival? As of the 1970s, however, blackletter type has explored new areas of use, namely popular culture and subculture. Most prominently, the type was adapted by the hard rock and heavy metal scene (cf. Androutsopoulos 2001: 21; 2004). Given the fact that this genre, the bands’ habitus and the song texts are very much connected with Gothic mythology, militarism, nationalism, and Teutonism, and also taking into consideration that many artists preferred provocative performances that focused on violence, machismo and militarism, this choice cannot be regarded as independent from the aforementioned associations. Although the use of the type also served to establish a mythological/medieval context, it can be assumed that the associations with “Germanness” and nationalism were invoked deliberately. 7. For the analysis, the German DeReKo II corpus was consulted (sub-corpus Woffentlich ¨ [all public texts of written language, mostly consisting of German newspaper texts, ca. 2.3 million word forms], cf. http://.ids-mannheim.de).

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The use of other graphic elements supports this interpretation.Apart from Gothic and militarist symbols, the most striking phenomenon in this context is the so-called heavy metal umlaut or r¨ock d¨ot, i.e., the use of tremata in hard rock and heavy metal bands’names (cf. Spitzm u¨ ller 2007a; Wikipedia 2008). This phenomenon made its appearance at the beginning 1970s, when bands ¨ such as Blue Oyster Cult (in 1972) and Mot¨orhead (in 1975) introduced this graphematic variation to the scene. It is characteristic of this phenomenon that it does not serve graphematic purposes, apparently; spelling variations of the respective band names with and without the tremata are common on the Internet, even on the official band pages. Neither do the tremata refer to a phonological difference. Band names such as Mot¨orhead and M¨otley Cr¨ue are commonly pronounced as if the tremata were not there ([ 'm´ót´hed], [ 'ma…tli Ækru…]), at least by speakers who do not have umlaut graphemes in their writing system.8 According to Gidley (2000), the musicians of the Californian band M¨otley Cr¨ue were rather irritated to be welcomed by a German audience shouting [ 'm{tli Ækry…´]. Likewise, Mot¨orhead’s front man Lemmy Kilmister insists that the trema was only put on the “to look mean” and that it does not have an impact on the pronunciation of the band’s name (cf. Wave Magazine 2002). Thus, the heavy metal umlaut is not functionally equivalent to the diaeresis that was common in traditional English spelling to mark the syllabic separation of consequent vowels (e.g. co¨operation). Contrary to that, the heavy metal umlaut is a sign of “foreignness” and thus serves different purposes. Concerning the origin of the metal umlaut, many rumors and few facts are available. It is well known that the umlaut was already common in English advertising as of the early 1960s. The ice cream brand H¨aagen Dasz, created 1961 in NewYork City, is usually listed as the earliest example for this kind of foreign branding (the umlaut in the brand’s name, however, was supposed to give the ice cream a Scandinavian flair; cf. Campbell 2003). As far as the use of the umlaut within popular culture is concerned, various people claim that they had the original idea. The most appealing anecdote is ascribed to rock critic Richard Meltzer, who allegedly claims to have suggested the umlauts ¨ to Blue Oyster Cult’s manager, retrospectively arguing that “Metal had a Wagnerian aspect anyway” (cf. Gidley 2000; Wikipedia 2008). Regardless of whether this is true or not, the umlaut that is “generally associated with German” according to the Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style 8. Cf. for instance the IPA notation of the respective band names on the Wikipedia, the explanations in the Metal Umlaut article (Wikipedia 2008) as well as the audio version of that article.

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(Garner 2000: 100) certainly fits the aforementioned frame. At all events, the idea was adapted by many other bands. It kept reappearing within band names (e.g., M¨otley Cr¨ue, L¨aa¨ z Rockit, Zn¨oWhite, Beow¨ulf, Destr¨oyer 666, Bl¨oo¨ dhag, Infern¨al M¨ajesty, Infern¨o, Ter¨asbetoni, Hell D¨ormer, Pig Ir¨on), on album titles (Cult¨osaurus Erectus, The Rev¨olution by Night, March o¨ r Die) and marked dedicated record labels (such as Leath¨ur Records).

Figure 5. Heavy metal typography.

Apparently, the umlaut turned from a symbol of “Germanness” and “foreignness” into an icon of the metal scene itself – a genre cue (Androutsopoulos 2001: 20) – in the wake of this process. Symptoms of this transformation were the increasing use of other “foreign,” “weird,” or even non-existing letters and diacritics (e.g., Underøath, DÅÅTH ), the shift of the tremata to other letters ¨ TU ¨ S), ¨ and the incipient parodistic (cf. Queensr¨yche, K¨ıll Cheerlead¨er, G¨ RO use of the tremata. The latter manifests itself in self-referential band naming ¨ such as Umlaut (a Finnish punk band) or Spı¨nal Tap (a heavy metal mockup project), parodistic album names such as N¨o Sleep ’til Viehaukti¨onshalle ¨ ¨ Oldenb¨ urg by the German punk band Die Arzte (who changed the graphematically required umlaut in their band name to a three-dotted in 2003),

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and recently in the naming of a character in the video game Guitar Hero II, ¨ viz. Lars Umlaut. Further examples include titles of books that deal with heavy metal, such as Fargo Rock City. A Heavy Metal odyssey in rural N¨orth Dak¨ota (Klosterman 2003) and the following “news” from the US-American satirical newspaper The Onion (cf. Wikipedia 2008 for further examples): ¨ United St¨ates Toughens Image With Umlauts?APRIL 30, 1997 In a move designed to make the United States seem more “bad-assed and scary in a quasi-heavy-metal manner,” Congress officially changed the na¨ ¨ tion’s name to the United St¨ates of America . . . . “Much like M¨otley Cr¨ue and ¨ Mot¨orhead, the United St¨ates is not to be messed with,” said Sen. James In¨ hofe (R-OK). An upcoming redesign of the American flag will feature the new name in burnished silver wrought in a jagged, gothic font and bolted to a black background. A new national anthem is also in the works by composer Glenn Danzig, tentatively titled “Howl Of The She-Demon.” (The Onion 1997)

Blackletter typefaces were most likely subject to a similar process. From a symbol of scene-specific values connected with stereotypes of “Germanness,” they obviously turned into an index of the heavy metal genre or scene itself. In connection with this process, the typefaces have undergone a semiotic re-evaluation that have gone beyond the scene proper. As indices of values and attitudes that were promoted by the heavy metal scene (“toughness,” “determination,” “intransigenc,” etc.) and due to the popularity of the genre during the 1980s and 1990s, blackletter type became appealing for other groups as well if they wanted to connect to these values or to the popularity of the rock music genre. It was probably for such reasons that blackletter type was also adapted by the hip hop scene, particularly by the “gangsta rap” genre (cf. Androutsopoulos 2004), although this use is also much influenced by gang tattooing, which is itself partly influenced by the rock music genre, but probably also by other sources (this history still needs to be written). At this stage, at any rate, the semiotic flow seems to have lost its connection to the construction of “Germanness.” This is perhaps not the case with hip hop, but certainly in the subsequent stage of the flow, when the enormous popularity of hip hop culture in the target group of young people inspired the fashion and advertising industry to use blackletter on clothes and advertisements, explicit ideological references to “Germanness” can be excluded. Rather than that, the industry apparently drew on positive self-ascribed values of the hip hop scene, such as “coolness,” “street credibility,” and “authenticity.” These values were also expressed by means of other modes such as images and language (cf. the image and the slogan I am what I am in figure 6). Apparently, blackletter has undergone

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a process of re-semiotization, in the sense of a positive re-evaluation of its ideological meaning:

Figure 6. Blackletter typefaces in current advertisement.

How was all of this perceived in Germany? Did the metamorphosis of blackletter in the context of popular culture change its ideological meaning? Did the semiotic flow change the semiotic knowledge? According to some recent typographic publications, this is undoubtedly the case. The graphic designer Judith Schalansky, for instance, announces her book Fraktur mon Amour that sets out to “celebrate the renaissance of Fraktur” (Schalansky 2006: 15) as follows: Nike writes in Fraktur. Reebok too. Fraktur decorates shirts, posters, scene flyers and naked skin. And that, although – or because? – generations have insisted that they can’t read it. Blackletter typefaces seem to have finally shed the “Nazi” image which was mistakenly attributed to them for decades. (Schalansky 2006: back cover text)

Several sites and articles on the Internet support this hypothesis (cf. for instance Fontblog 2006; van Aaken 2006; Schr¨oder 2007; for an English example cf., e.g., Typophile 2006a, 2006b; also cf. Schwemer-Scheddin 1998: 66–67). However, it is striking that all these texts were written by dedicated typesetters or “typophiles.” In most cases, the texts are weblogs where typophiles discuss the alleged blackletter revival controversially. A recurrent strategy on these sites is the hint on the “Nazi misunderstanding.” The participants point out that “the people” (i.e., “them”) falsely believe that blackletter is contaminated nationalistically and that it was the favorite type of the National Socialists, whereas “we designers” (as van Aaken 2006 put

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it) know better. In this context, the “Fraktur ban” is regularly quoted, and the participants point out with relish that neo-national groups do not even use the “correct” typefaces from the 1930s, but gothic, medieval or non-German (e.g., Old English) blackletter typefaces. A large section of the participants opt for a “re-usurpation” of blackletter types in order to de-stigmatize it, whereas the more sceptical participants usually only point out either that they consider blackletter to be old-fashioned in general or that they do not like the modern re-designs. In texts by other authors, no evidence for a de-politicization of blackletter was found. On the contrary, even the few existing references to the use of blackletter in rap music are explicitly political. While the general use of blackletter in hip hop culture is not commented on, some authors refer to an incident in 2005, when a CD by Berlin rapper Fler was marketed by means of explicit verbal and symbolic allusions to Nazism and anti-Semitism. This provoked a medial outcry, in the context of which the use of blackletter was also discussed. The newspaper taz criticized the musician to “flirt with Fraktur” (Reisin 2005), and several newspapers and commentators followed this interpretation. Obviously, the ideological frame is still widely effective even in the context of rap music, provided that other contextualization cues with a similar ideological impact co-occur. How do we arrive at this discrepancy between the typophile and the nontypophile discourse? Evidently, what we observe here is ongoing identity work. The typophiles pit their graphic knowledge against the “false” knowledge of “the others,” claim authority in the field, and thereby constitute a network of “experts.” In this context, blackletter type (and typography in general) and the knowledge about these issues serve as a landmark of the group’s identity. The following section provides further evidence for this. It turns to an exemplary microanalysis of a metapragmatic negotiation of the ideological meaning of blackletter and umlauts in pop culture, which demonstrates, how heated the issue of graphic ideology obviously is.

3.5.

“Germanness” vs. “Nordic Mythology”: Ideological struggles on wikipedia.org

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is an interesting source for communicative ideology research, since it allows one to trace back editorial definitions of perceived realities and the associated metapragmatic debates quite closely. Due to its popularity and its authoritative status, the editorial practices can

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be considered “struggle[s] over . . . definitions of social realities,” that is to say, ideological debates in Blommaert’s (1999a: 11) sense. With regard to the subject of this chapter, the aforementioned Wikipedia article on the (Heavy) Metal Umlaut (Wikipedia 2008) is worth closer inspection. The article in its current form is the result of enormous activity. Between its first publication on April 15, 2003 and the most recent version considered dating from December 29, 2008, the article saw 1394 edits by 863 different authors (including automatic bot edits and vandalism). The activity until January 22, 2005, was captured on a screencast by the blogger Jon Udell (2005), who wanted to demonstrate “how pages evolve at Wikipedia”. Udell’s video, which is a fascinating piece of documentation in itself, demonstrates how the article grows rapidly from one sentence initially to a complex article consisting of several sections, many references, images and hyperlinks, and how the community deals with this development. A particularly interesting process focused on by Udell is the ongoing negotiation of the relation between the metal umlaut and the issue of “Germanness.” During the first revisions, the article only consisted of a few references to heavy metal band names and umlaut parodies. Then, on March 24, 2004, an anonymous contributor added the following paragraph: The idea of this, often in concert with using Blackletter types (or more often Pseudo-Blackletter), is probably to give the band name a German look and thus indirectly to suggest Hitler or the Nazis, a pretty dark theme and as such well-fitting to heavy metal. (rev. 2800299)9

As a consequence, both the concept of “Germanness” and references to blackletter are introduced to the article. Unsurprisingly, this strong connection of both heavy metal and Germany to National Socialism soon evoked what Udell calls the “collective editorial sensibility of the wiki authors.” Only 18 hours later on the very day, another contributor changed the passage as follows: The idea of this, some believe, is to give the band name a “Nazi” German look, often in concert with using Blackletter types (or more often PseudoBlackletter). The Nazi/Hitler theme is glorified by some heavy metal groups. (rev. 2811047; my emphases)

This change, complemented by the comment “rewr. ‘Nazi’ allusion (not all German is nazi!)” in the change log, relativizes the connection, but does not 9. To access the quoted revisions of the article on wikipedia.org, append the revision number to the following URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?=title= Metal umlaut&oldid=[rev. number].

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refuse the reference itself. This version survives several further edits and persists until April 2, 2004, when yet another contributor removes both the reference to Nazism and to “Germanness.” Instead, the revision introduces the notion of a “Gothic feel”: The use of umlauts is often in concert with using Blackletter types (or more often Pseudo-Blackletter) in band logos, to give it a more Gothic feel. (rev. 3078839; my emphasis)

In the change log, the author elaborates as follows: . . . removed paragraph on bands “glorifying” Nazi/Hitler iconography; if there are bands that actually use umlauts AND Blackletter for the Nazi association, please name them.

These three edits are the start of a discursive tug-of-war in which the supporters of the hypothesis that metal umlaut and blackletter do have a connection to “Germanness” struggle with the supporters of the “mythological” theme for the “correct” ideological meaning of the graphic elements. In what follows, the most relevant editorial changes and comments are listed (in chronological order). Non-anonymous contributors are marked by bracketed capital letters, so multiple edits by specific editors can be identified. Crucial changes are emphasized: (1) Umlauts are often used in concert with a Blackletter or pseudo-Blackletter typeface in the band logo to give it a more Wagnerian feel. ([A], rev. 4317590, June 27, 2004) (2) Umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface are a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a tough Germanic feel. ([B], rev. 435486, June 29, 2004) (3) Umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface are a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a Germanic “toughness.” ([C], rev. 10085591, February 7, 2005) (Change log: “‘tough Germanic feel’ is too jarringly subjective”) (4) Umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface are a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a Germanic or Nordic “toughness”. It is a form of marketing that invokes stereotypes of boldness and strength commonly attributed to peoples such as the Vikings. ([D], rev. 11910153, April 3, 2005) (Change log: “Added references to Nodic [sic!] people, particularly the Vikings”) (5) Umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface are a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a Germanic or Nordic quality. ([D], rev. 18095317, July 3, 2005, 23:01)

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(6) . . . to give a band’s logo a Germanic or Nordic quality. Hence, in this context the umlaut acts as an intensifier for the marketability of the band” ([D], rev. 18095545, July 3, 2005, 23:06) [sentence about marketability removed again by contributor [E], rev. 1921157, July 20, 2005] (7) . . . such as the Vikings; author Reebee Garofalo has attributed its use to a desire for a “gothic horror” feel ([F], rev. 23131916, September 13, 2005) (8) The use of umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface is a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a Teutonic quality. ([D], rev. 33784201, January 4, 2006) (Change log: “Nordic” is a bit too specific. . . perhaps Germanic + Scandinavian? compromize and use term “Teutonic” instead”) (9) Among English speakers, the use of umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface is a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a Teutonic quality. ([G], rev. 255973722, December 5, 2008) (Change log: “[f]or someone who grew up in eg de, ch, or at [Germany, Switzerland or Austria; J.S.], the connotative effect = effect for someone who grew up in eg us or uk”) (10) [Addition:] Metal enjoys popularity throughout the world, including in countries where umlauts or other diacritics are regular features of the prevailing language’s orthography. Therefore, the foreign branding effect of the metal umlaut is dependent on the beholder’s background. For English or Spanish speakers, it may convey the originally intended feel, whereas German speakers understand the intended effect but can see it through a different lens. ([G], rev. 256147003, December 6, 2008)

The quoted edits and comments show how the concepts of “Germanness” and Gothic/Nordic Mythology are constantly pitted against each other. In order to enforce their respective interpretation, the editors try with different rhetorical strategies: the emphasis of specific (“German” or “Nordic”) qualities (such as “toughness,” “boldness”), reference to specific pop-cultural intentions (such as the non-political “marketability” attempt), implicit links (such as the rather subtle reference to “Wagnerianism” or the “horror feel”), and references to authorities. In effect, the article (provisionally) ends up in a sort of compromise, where both the reference to Nordic or Gothic mythology and the reference to a general concept of “Germanness” have succeeded, but where any political traces have been finally removed. Instead of (even provocative) references to nationalism and Nazism, less delicate characteristics such as boldness and strength were highlighted. Obviously, the dominant portion of the contributors does not want to be connected with such ideologies.

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However, the discussion still indicates that the community seems to be aware of the fact that such connections might be established in the context that is generated by means of the graphic elements in question. In connection with this, it is striking that the community seems to avoid links to or discussions of explicit references of heavy metal musicians to Nazism or nationalism. Such references, however, are not uncommon. Well-known examples are a statement of Nikki Sixx (of M¨otley Cr¨ue) articulating his fascination in “Nazi mentality” (cf. Browne 1991), provocative posing of Mot¨orhead’s front man Lemmy Kilmister in SS uniform (cf. Michaels 2008), or the enduring discussion about whether the characters in the band names KISS and Slayer refer to the Sig runes (cf. Oertel 1990: 236–237). Given the contributors’ obsessiveness about details in other respects, it is rather unlikely that such references simply escaped the community’s attention. Nevertheless, the general activity on the article, especially the attempt by many editors to provide the weirdest examples, also indicates that many participants first and foremost enjoyed crossing the border of English graphematics. It is obvious that this is something people have fun with, and it is likely that the graphic elements here indeed rather evokes the genre context than “Germanic” associations. An interesting question is put forward by contributor [G] in quotes (9) and (10): do the perceptions and the interpretations of the graphic elements differ between interactants from the German-speaking world and those from other linguistic communities? Obviously, it is impossible to answer this question from the English Wikipedia sources, since we cannot determine where the editors come from. What we can do, though, is to include localized versions of the encyclopaedia to the analysis, the contribution to which requires at least some familiarity with the respective language. However, the localized versions of the article evoked considerably fewer controversies. In the German version, the definition in question was more or less translated from the current English version at that time and was retained to the present, except for minor style changes. The editorial activity is significantly lower, and the article was even considered for deletion eventually.10 There is only one case where a political reference to nationalism was introduced and then removed ten hours later on the same day (cf. http://de.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=Metal-Umlaut&oldid=32456771.

10. Cf. http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metal-Umlaut&oldid=21847725 (September 24, 2006). The proposal to delete the article was rejected at rev. 22115114 (October 1, 2006).

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The other existing localizations (Spanish, French, Italian, Magyar, Polish, Finnish, and Swedish) are very short and show low editorial traffic as well. All of them, though, include the reference to a “Germanic,” “Nordic,” “Teutonic,” or “Wagnerian” connotation. The low activity might be connected with a general preference for the English Wikipedia, at least as far as “global” topics are concerned. This needs closer inspection, though.

4. Conclusions In this chapter, I have analyzed how graphic phenomena are connected with ideologies and how they are used in order to communicate ideologies. By means of graphematic phenomena (tremata, ) as well as of a typographic phenomenon (blackletter) and with regard to the discursive construction of “Germanness,” several characteristics of multimodal ideology construction were observed. To begin with, the analysis substantiated the supposition that graphic elements are involved in ideology communication. Umlauts and blackletter are routinely and commonly used in specific texts with a comparable ideological function, and they are often interpreted as indices or icons of specific ideologies. Thus, graphic elements are an integral part of scriptal ideology communication, and they need to be taken into account for sociolinguistic analyses. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the ideological function of graphic elements is dynamic and subject to a multimodal context construction. Depending on the overall setting of contextualization cues, on the context of use, on the text genre, and on the verbal argumentation of the text, specific graphic elements might well evoke very different as well as overlapping associations such as Nazism, Gothic or medieval mythology, and “toughness” in the case of heavy metal typography. Most importantly, such associations depend on the recipients’ semiotic knowledge, as the diverging interpretations of the use of umlauts and blackletter type in popular culture illustrated. Therefore, graphic elements cannot be attributed to peculiar functions beyond their actual use and without taking the discourse participants and their specific graphic knowledge into consideration. Moreover, the analysis substantiated that graphic elements are not only involved in the framing of texts, but that they are also used by social networks in order to indicate their ideology (consider such different examples as the neo-nationalist scene, conservative groups, heavy metal addicts, and gangsta rap musicians). Since this is so, they can also be and are in fact used

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for “othering” purposes, as the anti-fascist examples as well as the heavy metal parodies demonstrated. Graphic variation, in other words, is socially significant. As both the example of the typophile discourse and the analysis of the revision history of the Metal Umlaut article revealed, even graphic knowledge itself can become the focus of metapragmatic action (cf. for further examples from typophile discourse Danet 2001: 289–344). The latter case demonstrated how diverging graphic forms of knowledge may clash within the process of negotiating an authoritative definition and interpretation of graphic practices. Here, the semiotic flow can be witnessed in actu. Furthermore, but more specifically in the former case of the typophile discourse, we can observe how group members constitute their ideology by means of their graphic knowledge, which is then pitted as “the right knowledge” against “the false assumptions” of “the others” – a process that has often been described with regard to identity work by means of language ideologies (cf. Johnson 2005 for the German spelling reform debate; Spitzm¨uller 2007b for linguistic purism). The parallels are striking. However, contrary to language ideologies, graphic ideologies are yet to be explored. This particularly holds true if the idea of multimodality is taken seriously. Even if it had to be selective, the analysis has at least attempted to show that a joint analysis of different graphic features (such as graphematic and typographic elements) is the way to go, since the interrelation of different modes is a crucial part of the semiosis. The present chapter has attempted to underline that going that way and widening the scope towards graphics is a worthy goal for a linguistics that is interested in how ideology shapes communication.11

Appendix: List of figures 1a 1b 1c 2a

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 October 2007, front page. Restaurant sign, Detroit, Michigan. Der Spiegel 4 (22 January 2001), front cover (title story ‘300 years of Prussia’– a discordant heritage). Trade in nationalist devotional objects. URL: http://www.germaniainternational. com/third.html .

11. I am indebted to Nadio Giger for proofreading and commenting the manuscript, and to Jannis Androutsopoulos for helpful comments on a first version. All remaining errors are obviously my own.

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3a 3b 3c 4a

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CD cover of the neo-nationalist rock band Nordlicht. URL: http://www.rocknord24. com/shopneu/catalog/images/Nordlicht -Soehne der Germanen-.jpg . Neonazi demonstration against the exhibition Verbrechen der Wehrmacht (‘Crimes of the Wehrmacht’), Hamburg, March 2004. URL: http://www.hamburg.de/archiv/232230/wehrmachtsaustellung-demohamburg-270304-artikel.html . Lighter “nationalist” from a nationalist Internet shop. URL: http://www.weltnetzladen.com/4c1f8d953a11dc001/ cd0a2396930a9b301/index.php . Internet site www.deutschtum.net. URL: http://www.deutschtum.net . “Anglicisms are flooding our country. Let’s go into action against them!” URL: http://sprachkampf.de.vu . Internet site of the Bismarckbund e.V. URL: http://www.bismarckbund.de . “Zero tolerance for Nazis. Xenophobia must stop!”: Banner of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Schorndorf, Germany, Oct 2008. URL: http://www.spd-schorndorf.de/index.php?nr=12286 . “Educational material: Recognize right-wing extremism!” (Borchert et al. 2002, front cover). Flyer announcing a “night against forgetting” on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the National Socialist pogrom against Jews in November 1938, Jewish Center Zurich, October 2008. Austrian advertisement that calls for voting, Der Standard (9 June 1994), quoted from Schopp (2002: 113). Heavy metal typography:?(1) Internet site http://www.joinlemmysarmy.com/ 1280x800/index.html ; (2) Mot¨orhead:The Best of (Roadrunner Records, 1993), LP cover; (3) Spinal Tap logo; (4) GROTUS: Mother of Pearl (Smelly Records, 1991), single cover; (5) Chuck Klosterman: Fargo Rock City. A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural N¨orth Dak¨ota, New York: Scribner (new ed., 2 September 2002), front cover; (6) Seb Hunter: Hell bent for Leather. Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict. New York: Fourth Estate 2004, front ¨ cover; (7) character “Lars Umlaut” from the computer game Guitar Hero, action figure: McFarlane toys, 2008. Rbk advertisement (campaign “I am what I am”, as of February 2005); URL: http://www.rbk.com/de/news/I+AM+WHAT+I+AM.htm .

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Chapter 12 Whos punctuating what? Sociolinguistic variation in instant messaging∗ Lauren Squires 1. Introduction This chapter explores sociolinguistic variation in computer-mediated communication (CMC), investigating the apostrophe mark (') as a sociolinguistic variable in English-language instant messaging (IM). IM is a form of synchronous internet-based CMC that consists of users sending and receiving messages through dialogue boxes that appear on a computer screen. The most common use of IM programs is for text-based, one-to-one conversation.1 IM has been popular for many years among young cohorts such as teenagers, and both the popular press and academic literature often represent the use of IM as an “adolescent” phenomenon (see Tagliamonte and Denis 2008: 4). But IM usage is also prevalent among adults, even in workplace environments (Lenhart, Rainie and Lewis 2001; Lenhart, Madden and Hitlin 2005; Shiu and Lenhart 2004; Harmon 2003; Quan-Haase, Cothrel and Wellman 2005). IM provides an important site in which to examine the sociolinguistics of orthographic practice, especially among forms of electronic media, as communication undertaken through it represents highly interactive, conversational discourse. This study contributes a quantitative sociolinguistic approach to the study of orthography and CMC by examining a single orthographic variable and its macro-social stratification among IM users. I present the results from a ∗ This chapter has benefited enormously from comments from audiences at the Association for Internet Researchers’ 6th annual meeting and the University of Michigan’s Sociodiscourse group, as well as comments by and conversation with Naomi Baron, Eve Danziger, Robin Queen, Joshua Raclaw, and Sai Samant. Thanks to Jannis Androutsopoulos for the encouragement and extremely useful suggestions. 1. Other configurations are possible, including a three- or more-way conversation between multiple users, and non-text features such as voice chat and picture/file sharing are now a basic component of freely available IM clients. See Baron (2004) for a more in-depth explanation of the mechanics of one-to-one text-based IM.

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study of the use of the apostrophe mark in English-language IM conversations, finding that for the variable ('), the null variant ( ) is more likely to be used by male IM users, while the expressed variant (') is more likely to be used by female IM users. In considering the distribution of these variants a matter of sociolinguistic variation, my analysis presumes that in dominantly text-based communicative environments, what constitutes “sociolinguistic” practice necessarily includes orthographic practice, for orthography is one of many language-related resources employed by CMC users.

2. Background The study of sociolinguistic variation examines the social patterns by which language users differ in their production and perception of linguistic forms. This research paradigm has focused most sharply on phonetic/phonological variation, where two or more formal realizations of a phoneme are considered semantically equivalent, endowing formal properties of language (such as a vowel sound) with the potential to signal social information (such as a socioeconomic status level) about speakers. While a small body of research has also examined variation at syntactic or pragmatic levels of discourse (cf. Cheshire 2005), little work from this type of variationist perspective has been performed on written language of any sort. More recent approaches to language variation are less centrally interested in variation as a precursor to language change (cf. Labov 2001) and more concerned with how linguistic variation is related to language ideologies and serves as a resource for identity work, where the “social meaning” of sociolinguistic variation is both constructed and deployed in social interaction (cf. the contributions to Eckert and Rickford 2001; Moore 2004; Mendoza-Denton 2008; Zhang 2008; Moore and Podesva 2009). Along these lines, quantitative patterns of variation can underlie our understandings of the social elements of text-based communication – even if language change is not among our primary goals. Thus, the present study investigates variation in IM by looking at the distribution of orthographic variants as associated with the social property of speaker gender,2 which has been one of the 2. Although I use the term “gender” to refer to binary categories, I recognize the failure of this approach to fully engage in complex questions of gender identity (see, e.g., the contributions to Hall and Bucholtz 1995). I mean to discuss orthographic features as potentially gendered (or gendering) linguistic practices (as are all linguistic practices).

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most widely investigated social properties mapping to linguistic variation in paradigms focused both on language change (cf. Schilling-Estes 2002; Labov 2001), and on identity and social meaning (cf. Bucholtz 1999; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1995). To situate the present study, I briefly review the main findings of research with regard to language variation and gender, and I then discuss relevant literature that addresses variation in written language and CMC in particular.

2.1.

Gender and linguistic variation

From the earliest stages of research on variation, gender has been examined as a source of sociolinguistic differentiation between speakers. Studies have consistently found that men are more likely to use nonstandard variants of linguistic variables, whereas women are more likely to use standard forms. For example, Trudgill’s (1974) study of (ng) variation in Norwich, England, and Labov’s (1972) study of (r) variation in New York City, found that men used a higher proportion of nonstandard variants. This finding has been replicated across speech communities in more recent years (for summaries, see Romaine 2003; Schilling-Estes 2002). On the other hand, research has also shown that in processes of emergent language change, women are more likely to adopt both linguistic innovations imposed from “above” (prestige forms consciously introduced) and those emerging from “below” (vernacular innovations) (Labov 2001: 293). Several explanations have been advanced for these consistent patterns. One is that women reject nonstandard variants in favor of forms for which they will be positively assessed, seizing on language as a means to power and recognition (cf. Romaine 2003; Cheshire 2002; Eckert 1989). The notions of “overt” and “covert” prestige have been used to explain the gravitation of men to nonstandard forms and women to standard ones: while women tend to seek valuation from the mainstream, men use more locally-valued forms that garner status among their social networks (Trudgill 1998). Others have explained gendered variation phenomena through a perception of “masculinity” attached to nonstandard speech features, particularly among the working class; and of “femininity” attached to standard, or “proper,” features (Labov 1966; Trudgill 1995; Edwards 1979; Romaine 2003; Kiesling 1998). The idea of “standardness” is a common explanatory factor in both variationist and non-variationist sociolinguistic research, whether dealing with gender or other social categories. Most variationists investigate variability between what are characterized – by the analyst and/or speech community un-

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der study – as “standard” variants and “nonstandard” variants (Eckert 1998; Schilling-Estes 2002). Standard forms are those that enjoy mainstream prestige within a speech community, and deviations from standard forms are socially proscribed or stigmatized. For more recent approaches to language and gender that employ notions of identity, style, and “social meaning,” speakers’ linguistic positionings are also said to be constrained by standard language practices, and the use of language to construct identities often can be seen as conformity or resistance to macro-level standard practice. For instance, Bucholtz (1999, 2001) discusses how a community of “nerd girls” in a California high school utilizes “superstandard” phonological and syntactic forms and values using lexical items associated with more formal registers. The girls avoid colloquial phonological forms (such as consonant cluster reduction), vowel patterns associated with “cool” California youth (fronting /uw/ or /ow/), and nonstandard syntactic forms. Through these practices the girls engender themselves as oriented towards school and academic success – towards the mainstream in terms of economic status, though away from the mainstream in terms of youth culture and gendered expectations in the high school. Similar discussion for a different community of practice, and where gender and class are tightly interwoven, can be found in Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s (1995) discussion of Eckert’s “jocks” and “burnouts” study. In this study, local Midwestern vowel patterns were associated with “toughness” or “coolness” – identity features performed by boys and girls in different ways in the different social groups, constructed via variable use of local linguistic features. Thus, even for approaches to language and gender that focus not just on large-scale quantitative counts of linguistic variation, but rather on more nuanced understandings of how language is used to construct gendered identities, the concept of standard language is central (see also Mendoza-Denton 2008: 286). However, despite its wide applicability, what counts as “standard language,” and the presence of a concept of “standard language” at all, is not universal, but rather is related to local language ideologies (cf. Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity 1998). What speakers believe about language, how it is formed and changes, and how it is distributed across social types, forms the foundation for linguistic variation to be tied to identity categories such as gender. Not all cultures have social markings that are so easily categorized as “standard” and “nonstandard” attached to linguistic variants; furthermore, not all variants pattern the same way with regard to social categories across sub-cultures, and not all linguistic variants are socially marked in the first place (Milroy 2000; Milroy 2001; Silverstein 1996; Lippi-Green 1997). Yet wherever language ideologies enforce a notion of “standard,” language prac-

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tices reflect (and construct) individuals’ positioning vis a vis sociocultural categories. Most of the studies discussed above are (as is the present study) situated in a North American or British English-speaking context; these contexts have long-established traditions of standard language ideologies and prescriptivist public discourse (see Milroy and Milroy 1999; Lippi-Green 1997; Bailey 1991). Inasmuch as gender differences are expressed through variable use of standard and nonstandard forms, then, such differences relate to local language ideologies. Written language provides an especially rich setting in which to examine adherence to “standard” language, since the existence in some cultures of a standard language ideology is attributed, in part, to the longstanding presence of a print culture. Setting conventions for written language is one means of achieving standardization (or quasi-standardization) of spoken language (cf. Haugen 1966). While ideas about what counts as “correct” in spoken English are influenced by what is considered correct in written English, spoken English in practice rarely conforms to the standards of writing – and when it does, it is usually highly marked (Bucholtz 2001). On the other hand, English orthography, despite its high degree of standardization and commonplace assumptions that it is not subject to variability (Sebba 2007: 32), can be usefully examined for users’ accordance to standard form, and ways in which deviation from standard form might be linked to social categories.

2.2.

Gender and variation in writing and CMC

Despite this close connection between writing, print, and standardization (or perhaps because of it), scholars have not explored much in the way of orthographic linguistic variation in CMC. This is perhaps partly because of the empirical and methodological question of just what, exactly, should be variable in CMC (cf. Androutsopoulos 2006: 424–426). That is, what aspects of orthographic practice demonstrate patterned variation that is (or is becoming) socially meaningful? The emergence and rising popularity of the predominantly text-based medium of CMC presents an opportunity to take seriously the study of variable features that apply to written language. Orthography is about representational form just as phonology is, and as Sebba (2007: 34–41) outlines, there are many ways of varying orthography. Several studies have shown quantifiable gender-based differences in writing styles, but the variables under examination have almost always been at the lexical level and above, and not matters of what we might strictly speaking consider orthographic. For instance, in a corpus-based register study of

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written personal letters, Biber (1988) found that women’s letters were more emphatic than men’s, and while women’s letters were more “involved” or “interactive,” men’s letters were more “informational”; this finding was confirmed by Palander-Collin (1999). Koppel, Argamon and Shimoni (2002) found that automatic text categorization techniques could determine an author’s gender in a majority of cases based on lexical and syntactic factors.3 These studies dealt more with content than with form. More specifically in the realm of CMC environments, until recently most research pertaining to sociolinguistics in English-language CMC settings has focused on features such as emoticons, abbreviations and acronyms, and punctuation broadly defined but not quantitatively examined (Witmer and Katzman 1997; Walther and D’Addario 2001; Randall 2002; Baron 2004; H˚ard af Segerstad 2002;Yates 1996; Collot and Belmore 1996). However, two studies have examined the patterning of orthographic variables on Internet Relay Chat (IRC).4 Raclaw (2006) demonstrated that ellipses [(. . . )], which functioned as a discourse marker in his data, were used variably by core and peripheral members of a community of practice. Paolillo (2001) used a social network model to study linguistic variation in an ethnically-based chat channel. He found that the orthographic substitutions for you and for are tended not to be used by core members of the network; instead, these forms were concentrated within members on the periphery. He suggests that these forms may be considered “standard” within the wider IRC community, but “nonstandard” within the particular channel under study (Paolillo 2001: 204–206). This is similar to the concept of “covert prestige,” in that what are considered nonstandard in the mainstream are considered standard in the particular community under study. Both Raclaw’s and Paolillo’s findings suggest that the present study’s concern with strictly orthographic variation along social dimensions is justified. While not examined under the rubric of orthographic variation, gender has also been a large component of CMC research, both in quantitative and qualitative approaches. Many studies have shown that gender differences are upheld in CMC through various discursive resources, such that online spaces tend to conform to offline patterns of gender differentiation (see Herring 2003; Panyametheekul and Herring 2003; Herring 2004; Boneva, Kraut and Frohlich 2001; Baron 2004; Sund´en 2002). In a delineation of spe3. In fact, their algorithm has been popularly applied to create Gender Genie, a Webbased program that guesses the author’s gender for the text of any input Website (http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php). 4. Internet Relay Chat is a form of synchronous, multi-user online chat.

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cific CMC features by gender, Baron (2004) found differences in men’s and women’s use of contractions (women use fewer) and emoticons (women use more). Herring (2003, 2004) and Witmer and Katzman (1997) have found that women are more likely than men to represent emotion through graphical means in CMC. Although Herring and Paolillo (2006) found that in weblogs, blog author gender did not predict usage of gender-preferential stylistic features, Argamon et al. (2007) identified several stylistic factors, in the form of keywords and function words, that predicted author gender of weblogs. However, these differences were mitigated when the differences in weblog content were accounted for, lending support to Herring and Paolillo’s (2006) finding that blog content was more predictive of linguistic features than author gender. This does not necessarily mean that gender is not indexed by linguistic features in blog texts, but it suggests that “genre” may serve as an intermediate indexical link, such that particular features have generic connotations, and certain genres have gendered connotations. Such is the type of indirect indexicality discussed by Ochs (1992), where linguistic features acquire gendered indexicalities through linking to other actions, stances, roles, or qualities that are gendered. In other words, Herring and Paolillo’s and Argamon et al.’s findings suggest that perhaps gender is indirectly indexed by the features under consideration, even if it is not a primary factor explaining the variation (see also Kiesling 1998). Also relevant to this study’s quantitative methodology, though without focusing on gender, Tagliamonte and Denis (2008) analyzed an impressively large corpus of Canadian teenagers’ IM data for distribution of multiple linguistic features, and compared some relative frequencies to spoken data from the same subjects. On the strictly orthographic level, they examined the variable (you) with variants you and u, and the variable (I) with variants I and i, finding that within IM, the standard variant you was more frequent than u, though the nonstandard variant i was more frequent than I. For both variables, however, individual speakers’ usage tended to be categorical or near-categorical, representing their individual “stylistic choice” (2008: 12). Although gender differences were not a focus of their research and they do not specify which individuals were female or male, they note that in divergent cases “females had higher frequencies of standard variants” (Tagliamonte and Denis 2008: 30, note 26). Tagliamonte and Denis also compared the occurrence of features like personal pronouns, “IM forms” such as lol and haha, intensifiers, and quotatives between subjects’ IM data and speech data, finding that IM in some cases used more “speech-like” variants while in other cases used used more “writing-like” variants.

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In giving a quantitative picture of linguistic usage in IM, and in particular showing some differences in usage by age group and individual speaker, Tagliamonte and Denis (2008) represents a trend toward investigating CMC via quantitative methodology. Yet their overarching research question is how IM data compare to spoken data, rather than how IM is internally variable or heterogeneous. They conclude their study by summarizing as follows: The consensus in the literature is that IM is a hybrid. The findings we have presented here permit us to document just what kind of species it is. For every linguistic variable, IM demonstrates a unique fusion of variants. Simultaneously, it makes use of formal variants such as shall and must; informal variants such as will and have to; and highly colloquial variants like gonna and gotta. It also contains heightened use of new innovations such as intensifier so, providing evidence to confirm that IM is a medium on the forefront of change. (Tagliamonte and Denis 2008: 25)

The first part of this statement – that the literature agrees that IM is a “hybrid” – echoes the authors’ other statement that [CMC] is still little studied; there are few corpus based studies and only rare comparisons with other forms of communication (e.g., speech, writing), so it has yet to be definitely characterized. IM, one of the most popular forms of CMC, is even less known. Moreover, the question of precisely where to place it on a spectrum between written and spoken language remains open. (Tagliamonte and Denis 2008: 8–9)

These comments reflect a to-date preoccupation by CMC analysts with attempting to “define” CMC in relation to speaking and writing, a goal that presupposes a strong distinction between speaking and writing. This concern goes far back in the relatively short history of CMC research (e.g., Collot and Belmore 1996) and has recently been critiqued by scholars seeking more contemporary sociolinguistic approaches to CMC practice (Androutsopoulos 2006; Georgakapolou 2006; Squires 2010). Yet questions such as, “Is IM more like speech or more like writing?” focus the attention on oversimplified inter-medium comparisons, rather than understanding intra-medium linguistic patterns. At a time when text-based CMC is well established and exists in multiple forms, experienced through multiple technologies (computers, mobile phones, personal data assistants, electronic books, etc.), two tenets are given. First, there will be differences between any one form of CMC and other forms of CMC, as well as other forms of communication, which are constrained but not determined by their technical affordances (Hutchby 2001). Second, each form of CMC will have internal heterogeneity as well as consistency, just

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as every other form of language or communication has. With these tenets in mind, the question of CMC as compared to speaking or writing collapses in the face of heterogeneity within “writing,” “speaking,” and “CMC” across modes and media. This clears the way to investigating the consistency and heterogeneity of written practice, including those within CMC, and understanding how such patterns constitute social practice. To this end, the present study treats an orthographic variable as a sociolinguistic variable and examines gender-based patterns in its usage in instant messaging.

3. Methods and data 3.1.

Defining the variable

To examine sociolinguistic variation in IM, I chose the apostrophe mark as an orthographic variable that has particularly definable standard uses in written English, and analyzed its usage for patterns along the social dimension of gender, which has been shown to have strong linkages to linguistic variation, both in terms of production and perception. Unlike punctuation marks whose licensed usage is less strict (such as commas (,) or exclamation marks (!)), the apostrophe is one member of the set of orthographic resources for English whose standards are fairly clear. Apostrophes serve two chief grammatical functions that are taken into consideration in the present study. In contractions, an apostrophe replaces letters that have been omitted (i.e., don’t, where -n’t is equivalent to not); in this function apostrophes serve as a kind of orthographic placeholder, standing in for graphemes that would ordinarily be present. In possessive nouns, apostrophes precede the grapheme representing the plural morpheme -s (i.e., Mary’s) or follow -s in the case of plural nouns which end in -s (i.e., dogs’) (see, e.g., Hacker 2003: 69–71).5 Although there is often variation between the use of the plural morpheme following singular nouns ending in -s, so that either Squires’ or Squires’s is typically acceptable; either choice still contains an apostrophe. In addition to its relatively clear-cut usage, the apostrophe occurs at the word-level (rather than the clause- or sentence-level) and so is easily quantified. It is also a feature for which it seems reasonable to expect systematic variation, in that its conventional use is within what Sebba (2007: 32) calls 5. An exception is the class of third-person possessive pronouns its, hers, ours, yours, and theirs which contains no apostrophe and which I did not include in this analysis.

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the “zone of social meaning.” That is, although its standard usage is highly codified, its omission is not disastrous to comprehension; a contraction that omits the apostrophe is typically nonetheless interpreted as a contraction and recognizable as the form it is intended to be. For illustration, the interchange in (1) demonstrates two different subjects, a female (F) and a male (M), with different tendencies for apostrophe usage, indicated in bold (throughout this chapter, some material has been removed to preserve anonymity, and all proper names have been changed). (1)

3.2.

F: F: M: F: F: M: M: F: M:

yup, but i’m coming back sat night when are you leaving tues, im giving chuck a ride up to [removed] that’s nice of u where in [removed] are you from [removed] rick and i live about 2 min from each other that’s awesome, so u guys can hang out during breaks yep, its funny, cuz we didnt even go to the same high school

Data

The data for this investigation comprise instant messaging conversations held over the downloadable instant messaging client AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), which runs as a freestanding program.6 IM is a synchronous form of CMC typically used in one-to-one format (one sender to one receiver). Though it is distinguished from many other forms of CMC by its potential for extremely rapid conversational exchange, it is not always used in this way – users often multi-task while IMing, or let conversations continue for long periods of time with sporadic interruptions (Baron 2008). Thus, while public discourse has focused on the desire for rapid communication as a central contributor to what is often framed as “declining” linguistic standards online (see Squires 2010 for discussion), it is not clear that this explanation holds when speed is not always a motivator for using IM. Stylistically, at the time of data collection, AIM users had multiple resources for altering the appearance of their text, including graphical smileys, fonts, font colors and sizes, and “buddy icons” displaying a user image. A small corpus of instant messaging conversations was collected from undergraduate students (a population which typically ranges between the 6. http://www.aim.com

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ages of around 18 and 23) at a large, public American university in the fall of 2004. The corpus includes 16 instant messaging conversations between 26 total subjects, including 13 females and 13 males. The corpus contains approximately 9,636 words and 1,558 total turns,7 with an average of 97 turns and 602 words per conversation. Each turn contained an average of 6.18 words. I recruited participants for the study personally around campus, and these subjects were considered “primary subjects.” Primary subjects in turn had conversational interlocutors who were considered “secondary subjects.”8 Primary subjects were asked to save and submit two IM conversations to the study, one from an interlocutor of the same gender and one from an interlocutor of the opposite gender. Out of the 24 primary subjects I initially recruited, only 10 are included (several withdrew from the study or were unresponsive after initial contact). Additionally, several primary subjects were only able to contribute one conversation instead of two; for three male and three female subjects the corpus contains two conversations each, while the remaining 20 subjects have one conversation each in the corpus. The final makeup of subjects is shown in table 1, where each subject is a different person; the number of conversations by each combination of subjects’ sex is shown in table 2: Table 1. Subjects in corpus. Subject type Female Primary Secondary Total

Male

Total

5 8

5 8

10 16

13

13

26

Table 2. Conversations in corpus. Dyad composition Conversations included Female–Female Female–Male Male–Male Total

4 8 4 16

7. A “turn” consists of a single transmission by a speaker of typed text; IM conversations consist of turns back and forth between speakers. See Baron (2004) for further discussion of this terminology. 8. Although I did not explicitly ask whether participants were native English speakers, it is my impression both from personally speaking to the primary subjects, and from reading their conversations, that all subjects had native fluency.

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Primary subjects emailed me their conversations after saving them with the AIM program, and consent was collected from secondary subjects via email, in accordance with an IRB-approved procedure. All screen names and personally identifying information were removed from the conversations, and I assigned each subject an identifying subject code.

3.3.

Coding and analysis procedures

To investigate variable use of the apostrophe, each contraction and each possessive noun in the corpus was coded as an opportunity for apostrophe use. Each time a contraction (a single word formed by omitting part of another word) was used, I coded the apostrophe realization using a 1 for (') and a 0 for ( ), and the lexical item that was contracted (i.e., not in don’t or dont). For a possessive noun, I simply coded the token as (') or ( ). For consistency, in the final data set I only included contractions that involved a shortening of an auxiliary verb (e.g., we’ll), the negative particle not (e.g., don’t), the pronoun us (e.g., let’s), and copular be (e.g., you’re). There were three cases of apostrophe use that were non-conventional enough that I chose not to include them in the data analysis: n’est, ma’am, and g’night; I also omitted one instance of tis (< ’tis < it is) for this same non-conventional reason. This method yielded 398 tokens, an average contribution of 15.3 tokens per subject, with contributions ranging from 3 tokens to 40. The total number of tokens and realization of contractions and possessive nouns can be found in the table 3 below. The data yielded only a handful of possessive nouns, thus my discussion of findings refer to the dataset as a whole, without distinguishing between tokens with different grammatical functions. However, this distinction is maintained with the factor of lexical type, which I discuss below: Table 3. Tokens in corpus. Token Type

(')

()

Total

% (')

Contractions

215

168

383

56

11

4

15

73

226

172

398

57

Possessive nouns Total

My overall research question was simple and reflects the findings of previous studies as discussed above: Does the likelihood of using (') correlate with

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subject gender, interlocutor gender, or lexical type? Statistical tests were conducted with the program R,9 and several models are discussed in section 4 in order to facilitate better understanding of the patterns in the data. First, I submitted the data to stepwise logistic regression with apostrophe use as the dependent variable and three independent variables, described in table 4: Table 4. Independent variables. Variable

Levels

Description

Subject gender

male female

The gender of the subject who contributed the token

Interlocutor gender

male female

The gender of the person the subject was talking to in the conversation that produced the token

Lexical type

am are is not will would possessive other

The lexical item contracted; separate factor levels for each lexical item with 10 or more occurrences and other tokens collapsed into “other”

Second, I ran a generalized mixed-effects model that included individual subject as a random variable. Third, I used analysis of variance to investigate the rate of apostrophe use by subjects on whole.

4. Results 4.1.

Distribution of variants

Frequency counts of apostrophe realization by combination of subject gender and interlocutor gender are listed below in table 5, and table 6 lists frequency of realization by lexical type. 9. R is an open-source and free statistical computing and graphics programing environment (http://www.r-project.org).

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Table 5. Distribution of variants and percentage of (') by subject sex and interlocutor sex. Tokens

%

Subject gender

Interlocutor gender

(')

()

Female

Female

87

Male Male

Female Male

Total

Total

(')

9

96

91

94

24

118

80

5

97

102

5

40

42

82

49

226

172

398

57

Table 6. Distribution of variants and percentage of (') by lexical type. Counts Lexical type other

(')

% ()

Total

(')

9

4

13

69

am

48

28

76

63

are

15

8

23

65

is

56

50

106

53

not

51

68

119

43

will

26

10

36

72

would

10

0

10

100

possessive

11

4

15

73

226

172

398

57

Total

Most notable in table 5 is the difference in the use of apostrophes by subjects’ gender. While the overall rate of apostrophe usage is 56.78 percent (N = 398), male subjects altogether use apostrophes 24.46 percent of the time (N = 184) whereas female subjects use apostrophes 84.58 percent of the time (N = 214). This is graphically represented below in figure 1. The difference in usage based on the gender of interlocutor is not great, though it is interestingly in the opposite pattern: tokens for male interlocutors contain apostrophes 67 percent of the time (N=200), and tokens for female interlocutors contain apostrophes 46.46 percent of the time (N = 198). Figure 2 shows this difference:

Whos punctuating what? Sociolinguistic variation in instant messaging

Figure 1. Overall (') use by subject gender.

303

Figure 2. Overall (') use by interlocutor gender.

Additionally, there appears to be an interaction between subject gender and interlocutor gender. Male subjects in conversation with female interlocutors use apostrophes far less often (4.9 percent, N = 102) than males in conversation with male interlocutors (49.4 percent, N = 83). For female subjects there is a slight difference in usage between female and female interlocutors, where they also use more apostrophes with females, but it is not as remarkable as the patterns for male subjects. Figures 3 and 4 below illustrate these differences.

Figure 3. (') use by interlocutor gender, male subjects.

Figure 4. (') use by interlocutor gender, female subjects.

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As shown in figure 5, while there are also differences in apostrophe realization by lexical type, they in general appear to be slight. One exception is that contractions containing would (N = 10) are categorically realized with the apostrophe across all subjects.

Figure 5. Percentage of (') by lexical type.

Finally, individual subjects show great variation in their use of the apostrophe (as well as in how many tokens they contributed to the total number). Proportions for all 26 subjects (arranged from lowest to highest) are shown below in figure 6.

Figure 6. Individual subjects’ percentage ('), shaded by gender.

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This graph shows a clear pattern: subjects with a high rate of apostrophe use tend to be female, while subjects with a low rate of apostrophe use tend to be male. In fact, six male subjects used no apostrophes at all, whereas six female subjects used apostrophes in every token. Only four male subjects used apostrophes 50 percent of the time or higher, while only one female subject used apostrophes 50 percent of the time or lower. Many subjects (12) show categorical use or non-use of the apostrophe mark, and those that do not are mostly concentrated within the upper or lower 25 percent range; only five subjects fall between 25 percent and 75 percent usage. Thus, subjects tend to be consistent in either using the apostrophe or not (as was also found for the orthographic variable (u) in Tagliamonte and Denis 2008).

4.2.

Statistical models of apostrophe variation

In order to determine whether the independent variables were significant, I ran a stepwise logistic regression procedure that selects factors for model development. In this case, it determines which combination of factors makes the best predictions of the likelihood of apostrophes being used.10 Logistic regression is a generalized linear regression model which takes data with a binary outcome variable (in this case, apostrophe or no apostrophe) and associated predictor variables as input and fits model parameters using a maximum likelihood estimation. When submitted to stepwise logistic regression including each independent variable and all possible interaction effects, the selected model includes all three main effects (subject gender, interlocutor gender, lexical type), plus the interaction effects of subject gender with interlocutor gender, and interlocutor gender with lexical item. The Analysis of Deviance table for this model is in table 7 below (deviance corresponds to the G 2 statistic; see Johnson 2008: 162–163 for further detail). All effects are statistically reliable at the p < .05 level.

10. Most variationist research uses the Varbrul (or GoldVarb) program (Cedergren and Sankoff 1974) to perform similar analyses under the “variable rule” approach, which assigns factor weights to predictor variables. In keeping with current trends, I use statistical functions in R, which are more flexible (permitting for the direct investigation of interaction effects, for instance) and less specific to linguistic data (see Johnson 2008; Baayen 2008; Johnson 2009). Varbrul uses a form of stepwise logistic regression; for a discussion of the comparison between Varbrul and R, see Johnson 2008:174–180.

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This model shows that overall, each factor is predictive of apostrophe use, and together they produce a good model of the variation in usage. In particular, figures 1–5 show reliable patterns. To be more specific about which factor level contrasts predict apostrophe usage in which direction, table 8 gives the parameter coefficient estimates for each individual factor level for this model, along with their z statistic and probability values (reliable effects at the < .05 level are in bold type). Coded in the model are certain “baseline” levels for each factor to which the coefficient estimates are interpreted as relative: female for subject gender and interlocutor gender, and other for lexical type. A negative estimate indicates that that factor level predicts a smaller probability of apostrophe usage than would be found for the baseline level, while positive estimates correspond to a higher probability of usage. Table 7. Logistic regression model selected through stepwise logistic regression procedure. Factor Df Deviance Resid. Df Resid. Dev P(>|Chi) NULL subjectgender lexicaltype interlocutorgender subjectgender: interlocutorgender lexicaltype: interlocutorgender

1 7 1 1

155.671 42.593 8.939 38.724

397 396 389 388 387

7

18.075

380

544.40 388.73 346.13 337.19 298.47

0.000 0.000 0.003 0.000

280.39

0.012

The clearest effects are that apostrophes are less likely to be used when the subject is male (relative to being female) and for several of the lexical types. They also show that when the effect of subject gender already explains a large proportion of the variance, a male interlocutor is also likely to result in fewer apostrophes. That is, while overall apostrophes are more frequent in conversations with a male interlocutor than a female, this is because female subjects are overall much more likely to use apostrophes; thus the difference shown in figure 2 is mainly due to female subjects’ high rates of apostrophe usage, regardless of interlocutor gender. The interaction effect between subject and interlocutor gender also helps to interpret this: male subjects are always less likely than females to use apostrophes, but they are more likely to use apostrophes in conversation with other males than in conversation with females, whereas females are more likely to use apostrophes in conversation

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Table 8. Parameter estimates for logistic regression model. Factor Level Estimate

z value

p value

(Intercept) subjectgender-male lexicaltype-am lexicaltype-are lexicaltype-is lexicaltype-not lexicaltype-possessive lexicaltype-will lexicaltype-would interlocutorgender-male subjectgender-male: interlocutorgender-male interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-am interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-are interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-is interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-not interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-possessive interlocutorgender-male:lexicaltype-will interlocutorgender-male:lexicaltype-would

3.836 –7.080 –2.593 –2.566 –1.995 –2.661 –2.926 –0.994 0.011 –2.795 4.607 2.819 3.032 1.765 2.059 3.314 1.664 0.001

0.000 0.000 0.010 0.010 0.046 0.008 0.003 0.320 0.991 0.005 0.000 0.005 0.002 0.078 0.040 0.001 0.096 0.999

6.370 –6.357 –4.589 –5.032 –3.192 –4.519 –6.374 –1.720 15.519 –5.234 4.485 5.640 7.262 3.257 3.955 8.204 3.355 1.875

with other females than in conversation with other males (as seen in figures 3 and 4). The interaction effect of interlocutor gender and lexical type is intriguing, but the individual factor levels each contain so few tokens that I am hesitant to attribute much interpretation. The positive coefficients indicate that the probability of using apostrophes is increased by the combinations in question. The effect in general is thus characterized by the increased probability of apostrophes being realized in certain words when the interlocutor is male rather than female. Two cases of this are particularly interesting: are and am. Figure 7 shows the probability of apostrophes being used when these words are contracted, and shows that the probability of using an apostrophe in these words is greater in conversations with males than in conversations with females. Although sample sizes here are small (for am, N = 76; for are, N = 23), there is a demonstrable pattern of more apostrophes used in conversations with males for these particular words, controlling for speaker gender. The

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Figure 7. Interaction effect of interlocutor gender and lexical type, proportion of tokens realized as (') and ( ).

statistical analysis above did not include individual subjects’ variation as a factor in accounting for ('), but instead the model predicted apostrophe realization with a combination of subject gender, interlocutor gender, and lexical type. However, the subjects in this study were randomly chosen and individually varied widely in their use of apostrophes (and number of tokens produced), as seen in figure 6. We can take into account the fact that the effect of these particular subjects on the data is non-replicable (whereas presumably the sex- and lexicalbased findings are) by using a mixed-effects model that considers the impact of subject as a random effect. In other words, 26 different subjects (even from the same subject population of college students) might yield very different results and might discount the validity of the findings of significant gender or lexical type effects.11 11. This is a different approach from that of, say, Mendoza-Denton (2008: 252–257), who treats individuation as a fixed effect, because the individuals in her study are of particular interest for their social group membership and were not randomly selected. For more information on mixed-effects models with subjects as random factors, see Baayen (2008).

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I ran a generalized mixed-effects model using the same five predictors as above (three main effects and two interactions), and added a random factor for subjects, using the lmer function from the lme4 package in R (http://r-forge. r-project.org/projects/lme4/). With this model including subjects as random effect, a more limited set of factor level contrasts emerges as significant (the baseline levels are the same: female and other). The coefficients, z values, and probability values are in Table 9; reliable contrasts are again in bold type Table 9. Parameter estimates for mixed-effects model. Parameter

Estimate

z value

p value

Intercept subjectgender-male lexicaltype-am lexicaltype-are lexicaltype-is lexicaltype-not lexicaltype-possessive lexicaltype-will lexicaltype-would interlocutorgender-male subjectgender-male: interlocutorgender-male interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-am interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-are interlocutorgender-male:lexicaltype-is interlocutorgender-male:lexicaltype-not interlocutorgender-male: lexicaltype-possessive interlocutorgender-male:lexicaltype-will interlocutorgender-male:lexicaltype-would

7.944 –7.565 –5.305 –6.217 –3.898 –4.228 –10.200 –1.757 15.519 –3.678 .628

2.692 –3.778 –1.912 –1.905 –1.439 –1.571 –2.766 –.616 .003 –1.109 .307

0.007 0.000 .056 .057 .15 .116 .006 .538 .998 .267 .759

6.564

2.037

.042

9.137

2.036

.042

3.678 3.566 13.052

1.170 1.138 3.113

.242 .255 .002

4.581 1.874

1.351 0.000

.177 1.0

Now that the contributions and frequencies of individual subjects’ apostrophe usage are added to the model – though importantly, as a random effect rather than a fixed one – it seems that subject variance was driving many of the factor levels’ significance. The main effect of the interlocutor gender being male, the interaction of male subject gender and male interlocutor

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gender, and most levels of lexical type and its interactions, no longer contrast reliably with the baseline levels in terms of predicting apostrophe use. However, the main effect of subject gender remains highly significant. This tests the picture in figure 6, which demonstrates that individual subjects tend to have either very high or very low apostrophe usage, and this is associated with gender: males tend to have low usage and females tend to have high usage. To test this tendency directly, I compared the overall proportion of apostrophe use for each subject as a function of subject gender. For this analysis, subjects’ individual proportions of use were calculated and submitted to a one-way analysis of variance with gender as an independent factor. Gender was significant (F(1,24) = 21.529, p = 0). This test does not take into account the differing number of tokens contributed by each subject, as the mixedeffects model does, but the test of subject proportions does lend additional support to the notion that on the whole, the individual rates of use for female subjects are higher than for males.12

5. Discussion To summarize the main findings of the statistical analyses: in all models, subject gender is a highly significant predictor of apostrophe use. Without considering the variation between individual subjects, significant contrasts also exist between levels of interlocutor gender, lexical type, the interlocutor gender by subject gender interaction, and the interlocutor gender by lexical type interaction. In a model where individual subject is accounted for as a random variable, however, several of these factor levels appear insignificant, including the main effect of interlocutor gender. Subject gender was found to be significant in all tests. Finding a gender-based difference in apostrophe use is hardly surprising, given the consistent finding in the sociolinguistic literature of differences aligning with speakers’genders. In this regard, the results of this study merely show that apostrophes – and other orthographic variables – can be rightfully explored for variation according to social categories, and hence orthographic variation is a rich potential site of sociolinguistic meaning. But there are some implications that bear further exploration here: the precise type of differences 12. It is also worthwhile to note that the difference in the number of contributed tokens between male and female subjects is non-significant (F(1,24) = .3259, p = .573).

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found with regard to gender, the apparent conditioning of apostrophe use by lexical type, and the impact of subject variation on the results as a whole. First, the finding that males are less likely to use apostrophes than females seems to accord with other findings that women are more likely to adhere to “standard” language forms, while men are more likely to use nonstandard or stigmatized variants. If we consider that using the apostrophe in contractions and possessive nouns is “standard,” because it is required by the standardized conventions of English orthography, then this study neatly replicates the gender-based findings on variation in spoken language, but with an altogether different sort of variable. Females in this study are upholding standard orthographic usage in IM, while males on whole do not conform to these conventions. Second, the possibility of an interaction effect of subject and interlocutor gender is intriguing. I included interlocutor gender as a predictor variable in order to explore the possibility that some kind of accommodation process (cf. Coupland and Giles 1988) might affect the usage of apostrophes. In these data, males show a decreased likelihood of using apostrophes when talking to females than when talking to males. That is, although males overall are less likely to use apostrophes, males talking to females are even less likely to use apostrophes. This was somewhat surprising, since if males were accommodating, we might expect it to be in the different direction – that more apostrophes would be used in conversation with females. This might be a sign of either divergence on the part of males between interlocutors of the opposite gender, or convergence between same-gender interlocutors. Because there were only six subjects for whom the corpus contains both a same-sex and mixed-sex interaction, I am wary of claiming that there are within-subject differences when talking to interlocutors of a different sex. Nonetheless, that this overall pattern was identified does suggest future research on the issue of accommodation and style-shifting in orthographic usage. With a larger corpus where more interlocutors per subject were included, some amount of style-shifting on behalf of speakers would likely be found based on gender or other social factors. Also, all conversations in my corpus are between peers; differences might be found between interlocutors with social differences otherwise (such as age or status levels, for instance IMing with a parent, boss, or supervisee). While I do not have ethnographic data that could provide a richer understanding of the gender constructions of the participants whose conversations are included here, I would suggest that these patterns point to the apostrophe as an orthographic feature with a social index that is either directly or indirectly gender-related. These two phenomena – males using fewer apos-

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trophes overall and males using more apostrophes with other males – might illustrate different types of marking for the variable for different groups: perhaps ( ) is prestigious for males, whereas (') is prestigious for females, and both groups are using the “prestige” variants. In either case, where does such prestige come from, and why does it align with these particular social factors? One possibility is that omitting the apostrophe derives meaning precisely from its opposition to standard practice. Interpreted this way, the data suggest that there is something “feminine” about conforming to standard written expectations in this medium, and/or something “masculine” about not conforming. This could be a direct linkage, or there could be another gender-marked social category or property (such as “nerd,” or “literary,” or “formal”) mediating the indexicality between gender and standard usage (as in Ochs 1992).13 Lack of apostrophes could be considered a sign of “toughness,” for example, as is the use of other nonstandard variants in speech (Kiesling 1998). Another possibility is that the lack of apostrophes itself forms a kind of “standard” in IM, much as Paolillo (2001) found that the forms r and u (are and you) acquired mainstream prestige internal to IRC, through a process of inversion of standards. That is, what is considered “standard” in IM may not be exactly the same as what is considered “standard” in other forms of written language (or speech); just because something is stigmatized in formal writing does not mean it will be stigmatized in informal writing. If this were the case, however, the findings would align males with standard usage and females with nonstandard usage (or, perhaps, superstandard usage, after Bucholtz 2001, which can itself be considered a type of nonstandard usage). This would be at odds with most other findings about gender and linguistic variation. Because the overall rate of either apostrophe use or nonuse is not overwhelming (about 57 percent apostrophe use, just slightly over half of the total), it seems more likely that these males and females are simply choosing different sociolinguistic styles in IM. In other words, we cannot say that either apostrophe use or non-use is the clear “standard” in IM, but we do have evidence that its usage is associated with social categories, in this case gender. Third, the significance of lexical type as a predictor of apostrophe use suggests that there are certain words that, independent of subject gender, are more likely to decrease the probability of apostrophe use than others. It is notable that these words (am, are, is, not) and their contracted forms 13. I am grateful to Robin Queen for this insight.

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are all extremely common, which may relate to their interpretability with or without ('). Because we are talking about orthographic variation, it is useful to explore what the impact of omitting the apostrophe is on comprehension of the surrounding graphemes. It must be assumed that users operate under the impression that omitting apostrophes with these words does not impede comprehension of the words in question; for example that im is just as interpretable as i’m, youre is just as interpretable as you’re, didnt is just as interpretable as didn’t, and so forth. Although its effect was not significant, the categorical use of apostrophes in the word would may be enlightening here: adding just a -d, with no graphic mark to signal that the grapheme represents the word would, might create confusion: youd, wed, hed. While the results of these manpulations are not necessarily strings of graphemes easily confusable with another common word in English, there might be something about visual parsing that drives the more frequent rate of apostrophe usage in words using -’d. Regardless of the underlying cause, the effect points out the importance, when considering orthographic variation, of considering surrounding orthographic context of a variable as well as the overall “look” of a realization. We should not rule out purely aesthetic reasons as motive for using the apostrophe either, particularly in a realm where visual cues are usually the sole cues for self-presentation available to speakers. Finally, while the contrast between male and female subjects’ apostrophe usage was significant across all statistical models, most other factor level contrasts were not. This lends support to the general finding of a difference in apostrophe use by gender, but it diminishes the analysis of variation based on interlocutor gender or lexical type. Some might think this result is undesirable, since we now have a more simplistic explanation for variation. However, this is actually an illuminating result, for it implies that there is considerable between-subject variation in apostrophe usage (as shown in figure 6). More than contextual factors (such as lexical type or interlocutor), individual style is an important component in variation which may reflect, interact with, or be completely independent of broader demographic trends. These results show that males are more likely to have a style that does not utilize apostrophes and females are more likely to have a style that does use apostrophes, but overall that individual style is itself a powerful motivator of usage. For instance, in the short conversational excerpt below in (2), two males both use apostrophes, whereas in (3), neither one does, and in (4), one male uses them for most tokens while the other only uses an apostrophe in a possessive form:

314 (2)

Lauren Squires M1: M2: M1: M2: M2:

(3)

(4)

she’d hate it doubly much b/c of her skewed allegiances but how much of a fan is she really? doesn’t sound like much of a fan at all . . . which is why I’m even bothering to pursue obviously true yankees aren’t good people

M3:

they arent even getting money out of us true i think the idea is to try and populate the craooy games so the student section isnt empty yeah

M5: M6: M5: M6: M5: M6: M5:

im not sure at all yet I’ll let you know when i find out ok cool whats douglas’ screenname we should all go to bars thursday talk about this shit I’ll introduce you to my friend paul who’s goin

M3: M4: M4:

With a broader sample, and with populations that are different from that of college students, individual styles will likely show different patterns of variation, and even the gender-based patterns found here might not be replicated, though patterns along other macro-level social categories might be. Looking at the above excerpts also makes clear that there are many other sociolinguistic practices that would be relevant in gaining a fuller picture of the social distribution of apostrophes; we could look at how it clusters with features such as capitalization (which, across my corpus, very few speakers ever use), spelling, and other punctuation marks to gain a richer picture of sociolinguistic styles in IM. This discussion reiterates, as more contemporary approaches to sociolinguistic variation and style have insisted (e.g., Eckert 2000; Mendoza-Denton 2008; Moore 2004; Podesva 2007), that variation may cleanly map onto analysts’ pre-defined social categories such as gender, class, age, etc., but it is more often the case that variation is a product of (and only rightly interpreted in the context of) complex intersections of individual and social identities. I have measured orthographic variation along the lines of a visible, easy-to-count category (gender), not exploring the multiple other categories possible besides “male” and “female,” and the individualized styles apparent here (which themselves for the most part are stratified by gender) underscore

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the limitations of this approach. From these data it appears that apostrophes, and other standardized orthographic features, may have a social meaning that is related to gendered practice, but the full nexus of social meanings that the apostrophe might carry in different settings, for different speakers – and the context of social meanings of other features that support this meaning for apostrophes – has not been explored. Future study should look more deeply within social relations to identify meaningful social categories and the orthographic variables that construct and index them. Finally, these findings are interpretable as variation situated within a culture where language ideologies dictate a focus on “standard” language. The United States is what Milroy (2001) calls a “standard language culture,” where members have strong ideas about language that are based on notions of correctness and linguistic uniformity that are above all normative, and that in practice tend to be class- and/or race-based (Lippi-Green 1997; Cameron 1995; Milroy and Milroy 1999). Orthographic practice in the US occurs within a broad cultural context of normative ideas about language use, and such normativity has expressed itself in recent years through a public fear of the technological ruination of language (Thurlow 2006; Squires 2010). Public discourse about CMC tends to represent it as deviant from standard English, and the worst culprits are said to be teenagers, who supposedly corrupt written English with their computer-based nonstandard shortcuts, substitutions, and graphical insertions. The present study refutes a basic premise of this trope: that all users, and especially all young users, fail to conform to orthographic standards. These data show that at least some young people use apostrophes at least some of the time, and many of them use apostrophes most (if not all) of the time. What is really interesting given this context, then, is that some people are using standard features and some people are not; the question is how speakers socially differentiate themselves through these practices. I suggest that, given the continued prevalence of language ideologies that value certain standards of written practice, the variation between ( ) and (') is meaningful precisely because of its adherence to or deviance from orthographic convention. The fact that subjects vary widely in their use of apostrophes but are, for the most part, internally consistent in their individual styles shows that this is one way that personal identity can be indexed in text. The fact that this study has found it to be correlated with gender of speaker corroborates that social categories are often constituted by, as well as reflective of, patterns in linguistic variation (among other stylistic resources).

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6. Conclusions The main goal of this chapter was to demonstrate quantitative analysis of an orthographic variable as part of sociolinguistic practice in CMC. I have shown that while apostrophe marks are orthography-internal (that is, without direct analogue in spoken language), their usage varies in similar ways to spoken variables. The major limitation of this study is its limited scope in terms of social categorization and the very small data set (though even with few tokens, clear patterns emerged). In some ways, the fact that these data come from instant messaging is merely incidental, as one might expect that such variation could be found across written modalities. Yet language that is written exists at once within the same sphere of language ideologies that govern its spoken form, and with a related but distinct history of ideological forces bearing on its use. In other words, although it is true that in some ways IM is just another space for writing, it is also true that the proliferation of CMC has led to many more people writing more often and in more different registers than our current models of written language as merely a derivative of speech allow us to consider. When IM users sit down to “talk” at the computer keyboard, they are clearly writing, but their orthographic practices have to be considered along with other available stylistic resources given the medium – graphics, fonts, colors, background, temporal space. The meaningfulness of orthographic variation in online practice will likely not always be found in the concept of “standard” language, particularly since so much of online orthographic practice exists alongside these other stylistic practices that would be hard, at present, to categorize as “standard” or not. But for languages with relatively stable orthographies such as English, slight deviations from standard usage are noticeable by most literate speakers (particularly status-sensitive college students), hence they are capable of garnering judgment by others and being put to social use. The variation in (') demonstrated here is interesting because it can so clearly be viewed as meaningful through its conformity or opposition to “standard” uses of language, and through how ideas about who is likely to use “standard” language are connected to ideas about gender. Undoubtedly, future research will shed light on other axes of social differentiation through orthographic variation.

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Chapter 13 How to spell the vernacular: A multivariate study of Jamaican e-mails and blogs∗ Lars Hinrichs 1. Introduction The rise of the internet has brought about new written text types marked by higher frequencies of informal language features than those that were common in pre-electronic writing. Among these informal features are the intratextual mixing of languages and codes, and an “orthographic regime” (Sebba 2007: 41–44) in which spellings that deviate from the norms of the standard are common.1 One phenomenon that is typical of these new genres of computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the use of a vernacular code alongside a historically and sociolinguistically related standard language in meaningful contrast with each other, a written counterpart to what is usually referred to as conversational codeswitching (Hinrichs 2006; papers in Danet and Herring 2007). In such CMC, orthography poses a set of specific problems to users: the vernacular is usually not standardized (though spellings for frequent items are loosely conventionalized, cf. Hinrichs 2004; Deuber and Hinrichs 2007), and does not have an official orthographic system. This leaves writers with the choice between either employing the orthography of

∗ Many thanks to Jessica White-Susta´ıta, who collected the blog data analyzed in this study. I am also extremely grateful to the following, who have helped with and commented on parts of this paper: Katrin Erk, Karsten Hinrichs, Josh Iorio, Silvia Kouwenberg, Stefan Th. Gries, Sebastian Pado, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. All remaining errors are my own. 1. Sebba (2007: 47) positions written CMC at an intermediate level on a continuum of “orthographic regimes” according to their degree of regulatedness. At the one extreme are those texts that adhere strictly to the orthographic rules of the standard language at all times, such as published texts, and business memos and letters. At the other end is writing that uses nonstandard orthography frequently and systematically enough to warrant the label of pertaining to an “oppositional” institutional order, as in graffiti and some SMS texts.

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the standard variety that is most closely related to the vernacular, or departing from the standard in one of a number of possible ways.2 The relatively new field of the sociolinguistics of spelling has pointed out that in vernacular writing, both the choice of a spelling variant that is supplied by the standard variety and the choice of a spelling that departs from an existing standard version in some way constitute “social action” (Sebba 2007: chapter 2), i.e., they transport social meaning by either complying with or breaking existing norms. In variationist sociolinguistics, the dominant approach toward describing linguistic variation has been the statistical correlation between use of the two variants of binary variables and social or linguistic predictors. But while sociolinguistics has started to occupy itself with the study of social meanings of orthography, no study has yet applied variationist methodology in a principled way, i.e., modeled standardness of spelling as a linguistic variable. That is what the present study offers. In this chapter I analyze blog and email communication written by Jamaicans that employs the vernacular code spoken by most Jamaicans, Jamaican Creole (JamC), along with a local variety of standard English (StE). The literature supplies various lines of possible interpretations for the social meanings and reasons underlying spelling choices. For example, the subversive identity view would suggest that nonstandard spellings are employed by writers as a metapragmatic expression of a non-mainstream identity. This view models an indexical relationship between orthographic forms that fail to comply with a standard and an aspect of an individual’s – the writer’s or another person’s – disposition that is non-mainstream in some way. Examples of this interpretation in the literature include Androutsopoulos’s study of German “fanzines” of the punk rock scene, which its members consider to be “the most oppositional subculture” of all (Androutsopoulos 2000: 528). Nonstandard spellings are here employed in a general gesture against everything regular and established in society. This interpretation has also been proposed for nonstandard spelling in Jamaican texts; e.g., Morris (1997) points out that dub poetry by Jamaican writers often employs consciously nonstandard spellings to underline, on the graphemic level, a subversive attitude that is verbalized in the text itself. For example, Mutabaruka’s poem “Blakk wi blakk” expresses, in Patois, an anti-

2. Of course, this choice only exists for those vernacular words that have an etymological cognate in the related standard variety, which may not always be the case.

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mainstream attitude and self-definition resting on the non-mainstream racial identity of African-descended persons: blakk wi blakk wi nah tun back blakk wi blakk wi on de attack3

we are black we are not turning back we are black we are on the attack

As the corpus examples throughout this paper will show, there is little use of nonstandard orthography in the data that could, in a qualitative analysis, be reasonably explained as “anti-formal.” Another view considers language ideology to be central in the selection of spelling variants. For example, Sebba has written about nonstandard spellings in British Creole as the expression of a language ideology that attempts to write JamC as an autonomous language, separate from English, and to make this separation visible (1998, 2000). Finally, work on written JamC and Nigerian Pidgin English has assumed what can be called the semantic disambiguation position. This work has shown that nonstandard spellings are used most frequently in contexts where there is possible interference between the English and the Creole meaning of a word (Hinrichs 2004; Deuber and Hinrichs 2007). In this chapter I present a quantitative, statistical study of nonstandard spellings in Jamaican online writing. I argue, with Herring and Paolillo, that “quantification provides the strongest basis for generalization across large data samples” (2006: 444). By applying a multivariate model, I will show how a range of different factors correlate with writers’ choices between standard and nonstandard spellings. The extent to which each factor can be shown to influence this variation provides excellent ground on which to build a more comprehensive interpretation of nonstandard spellings in the material. In order to construct a multivariate model that best explains a case of linguistic variation, one typically begins by considering as many factors as can be assumed to have an influence on the variation, and which can be operationalized quantitatively. As is customary in variationist sociolinguistics, I will consider both “internal,” i.e., linguistic, and extralinguistic factors. The external factors I will consider are gender and the writer’s location of residence. Among the internal ones are the grammatical function or lexical meaning of the token and the linguistic environment (Creole versus English). The research question for this study is the following: How do the conditioning dynamics underlying spelling choices differ between Jamaican CMC 3. “Blakk wi Blakk” is the title of a 1991 album by Mutabaruka; the lyrics are published on the artist’s website at .

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writers at home and those in the diaspora? The conclusion will explore the link between possible differences in language ideology and the observed statistical pattern. Methodologically, this chapter is a pilot study in two ways. First, it treats the choice between standard and nonstandard spellings as a binary linguistic variable. Second, it introduces multivariate statistics, such as is current in variationist sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics, to the study of orthography as social action.

1.1.

Background: Jamaican Creole in computer-mediated communication

The island in the eastern Caribbean is known for being home to two very different varieties of English: Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole. These two are distinct from one another both formally and functionally. English in Jamaica is mutually intelligible with international varieties of StE. It was introduced through British colonial rule, which ended in 1962, and both American and British standard norms remain strong external influences. Recent research has shown an increasing endonormativization of Jamaican English (Shields-Brodber 1997; Sand 1999; Mair 2002; Devonish and Harry 2004; Irvine 2004; Irvine 2008). Jamaican Creole, on the other hand – or Patois, as the vernacular is most frequently called by native speakers – is the outcome of contact between the languages of West African slaves and English-speaking European colonizers in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.4 To this day it is stigmatized in official settings in Jamaica, but carries considerable covert prestige as an informal resource in linguistic identity work (Rickford and Traugott 1985), and as such it is used in most informal conversational contexts, as well as popular music and comedy. Jamaican Creole has no official status in the Jamaican legal and political system (Brown-Blake 2008), and there is no agreed-upon orthographic system that is recognized by the state. The use of Jamaican Creole in writing has greatly expanded in recent years as a consequence of its spread to the new text types of the internet (Hinrichs 2006). In the absence of a readily available orthographic standard, a number of distinguishable practices have emerged in addressing the task of spelling Patois (M¨uhleisen 2002; Hinrichs 2004). They include a specialist orthography used by linguists, based on phonemic principles (introduced in 4. An overview of the genesis of JamC is provided, for example, in Cassidy (1971).

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Cassidy 1971; Cassidy and Le Page 1980), and the strongly English-oriented spelling of popular dialect writers like Jamaican national icon Louise Bennett.5 The vast majority of non-professional users of written Jamaican Creole, however, rely on a strategy of writing that consists of borrowed standard English spellings in some cases, intentional deviations from an available English model in others, and creative (sometimes spontaneous) spellings of creole words for which neither an English model nor any other convention is available. Written Creole used to be mostly restricted to experimental uses in newspaper columns or literary writing – temporary, punctual, infrequent uses by individual writers. With the emergence of CMC, a domain became available in which writing the vernacular code of Jamaica was acceptable. Writers typically use both English and Creole in their writing, alternating between the two in meaningful strategies of codeswitching (Hinrichs 2006), though the quantitatively dominant language is still clearly English. In addition, in CMC genres the conventionalized orthographic “regime” (Sebba 2003) is permissive enough to allow forms that are clearly related to, but intentionally different from, standard English spellings in a substantial number of cases, as illustrated in (1): (1)

See, I was right, it raining right now and you waan hear the thunder that going on wid it too. tired of the damn rain man. But, I stayin home tomoro so watch me and the rain if it think I playing wid it! (b71, blog post, female writer)

This extract shows a number of nonstandard features on the level of orthography, but also of morphosyntax. The forms “it raining,” “the thunder that going on,” “I stayin home,” and “I playing” are instances of copula absence. In addition, “it think” shows a present tense verb that is unmarked for the third person singular. These reductive traces of creole influence on English are not sufficient evidence on which to classify the whole passage as Creole. Native speakers would likely consider the variety used in (1) to be “informal English” (Allsopp 1996: lvi), or “relaxed” English (Hinrichs 2006: 36). 5. The orthography of Louise Bennett’s humorous poetry in Patois (one well-known collection is Bennett 1966) is notable for its attempt to stay as close to the orthography of standard English as possible – much closer than present-day CMC writers find necessary, as this paper shows. This may well be a strategy intended to accommodate non-Jamaican readers, for whom a more English-like orthography might facilitate comprehension of Patois, as well as a reflection of the strong rule of standard English in any text that is written to be published in an Englishrelated variety. Most younger writers working in the tradition shaped by Bennett follow her in this regard, e.g., poets like Owen “Blakka” Ellis, or Joan Andrea Hutchinson.

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1.2. The data The data used in this study are a collection of written Jamaican CMC. They cover three genres: personal e-mail, blog posts, and blog comments. The e-mail data were collected during fieldwork in Mona, Jamaica in 2002 and 2003 and have functioned as the primary corpus for a study of the meanings and functions of codeswitching between Creole and English (Hinrichs 2006). Because I was personally acquainted with the contributors of data samples, I was able to collect and verify demographic details about them. I also included samples written to them by other writers; these writers’ consent was obtained via email. Information such as age, sex, place of birth, and history of residence, was supplied by the primary contributor of the sample and in some cases verified with the writers via email or telephone. The blog posts and comments were collected online between November 2007 and May 2008. The writers were not known personally to me or to Jessica White-Susta´ıta, who collaborated on the construction of the corpus. The sites were selected from the Blogspot and Wordpress hosting websites. The main criteria for final inclusion in our corpus were that the blog had to have been written by an author who openly self-identified as Jamaican either in their personal profile or in their postings, and that they used Jamaican language forms at least once in a majority of their posts. Once suitable blogs were identified, blogger friends of the authors could be identified (for example, from their comments on the blog posts) who in some cases also met the criteria for inclusion. As a function of the search strings and selection criteria adopted, all blogs were of the “personal journal” genre in the three-way classification of blogs based on content that Herring and colleagues propose (Herring, Scheidt et al. 2004).6 This was welcome, as personal journal blogs, more than the other blog genres, stylistically approximate the intimacy and informality of writing that is found in emails. Demographic information was collected exclusively from among the publicly available information on the blog sites. The following items were collected for each blog post: 1) nickname (i.e., user ID as blogger), 2) gender, 3) country of birth or primary socialization, 4) country of residence, 5) country of writing. For many posts and writers, more specific information was also available, e.g., highest level of education achieved, profession, 6. Based on a random sample of 357 blogs, the authors propose that the main blog genres based on content are “personal journals, filters, and k(nowledge)-logs, the first of which is most common” (summarized in Herring and Paolillo 2006: 443).

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age, race, and more specific designators of the places of birth, socialization, residence, and writing. Where available, these were recorded as well. However, these items were available less frequently than those enumerated under 1)–5) and consequently were not included as factors in the statistical analysis.

Figure 1. Sample size in number of words by genre. The heavy horizontal line in each box indicates the mean length. Vertical lines indicate the overall sample spread; open circles are outliers.

After an initial plan to use only the e-mail corpus as data for this study, blog data were added because of their availability in the public domain online – i.e., the relative ease of data collection as opposed to e-mail – and because blogs and e-mail are rather similar within the spectrum of CMC text types. Both are “asynchronous” text types, and thus they are essentially monologic. Writers do not typically receive instant feedback from their interlocutors, and time constraints on the writing process are relatively low. Altogether, this means that the writing processes for blogs and e-mails are subject to similar degrees of cognitive monitoring. There are also differences between the genres, most importantly, the social situation in which they function. Typically, “personal journal” blogs are written with a clear idea of the possible audience in mind, but because they are publicly available on http protocol, there is always the possibility of readers who are unknown to the author. Thus, the genre is less private than e-mail, in which writers generally have a very clear idea of the prospective

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readership – usually, only one person.7 I chose the advantage of having a larger dataset at the minor expense of a more varied dataset. Use of Creole in the e-mail corpus changes dramatically in both quantity and quality when writers travel (Hinrichs 2006: 46–47).8 In order to be able to focus on place of residence/writing as a clear, two-level factor, I decided to ignore those samples that were written during temporary travel. Table 1. Corpus structure. Genre Samples

Word count

e-mails blog posts blog comments

37 83 101

7,235 (15.9%) 33,502 (73.5%) 4,813 (10.6%)

TOTAL

221

45,550 (100%)

Of the three genres in the dataset, blog posts were not only by far the most yielding in total word count (table 1), but also showed the greatest overall sample length, even compared with the e-mails (figure 1).

1.3.

Defining the variable

Sebba formulates the analytical problem of nonstandard spellings as follows: The study of non-standard spelling derives much of its interest from the fact that spelling generally is so highly standardised and rigorously regulated. The symbolic value of deviations thus becomes much greater than it would be if the practice of spelling were not so normative. (Sebba 2003: 151, emphasis in original)

A fundamentally binary nature of social meaning underlying orthographic variation emerges, which makes it seem promising to choose “standardness of spelling” as a sociolinguistic variable, with the values “standard” and “nonstandard,” as I will in this study. Typically, only one standard form exists for each word, while several nonstandard spellings are usually possible. The added metapragmatic meaning of nonstandard spellings arises primar7. It is in keeping with Bell’s “audience design” model that differences in social setting and privateness would systematically affect aspects of linguistic variation (Iorio 2009). 8. These are trips that do not involve a change of primary residence, where a return date is planned throughout the entire trip.

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ily from the departure from the standard, and secondarily from the specific nonstandard variant that is chosen. Throughout its history, Jamaican Creole has co-existed in a linguistic ecology shared with English, its historical lexifier, i.e., a large part of the lexicon of JamC is derived from English.9 There are four types of relationship between Creole lexemes and their closest English correlate (Hinrichs 2004: 102; Sebba 2007: 122–123): (A) Creole words that have an English cognate and do not differ significantly from it in either form or meaning, e.g. say (as full verb), you, tough; (B) Creole words that have an English cognate, but acquired a different phonological form in Creole, e.g. yai ‘eye’, kyaan ‘can’t’, likl ‘little’; (C) Creole words that derive from an English source but have acquired a distinct meaning or grammatical function, e.g. yaad ‘home’, neva ‘did not’, mi ‘I’; (D) Creole words that are not historically derived from English and only have an English translation, e.g. unu ‘you (pl.)’, pikni ‘child, children’, maaga ‘lean, scraggy, skinny’.

For this exploratory study, I focused on lexemes of type C and their spellings because they most readily reflect the peculiarity of the language contact situation of Jamaican CMC: there is partial functional overlap between their English and Creole uses, as well as a set of functions that is exclusive to Creole. In order to raise a large enough number of tokens that would make a multivariate analysis a promising enterprise, I decided to use several type-C items of high frequency: the pronouns me, you, and them and, in order to include a word that was not purely grammatical in function, but still fairly frequent, never. In their function as items, I will refer to them in a more Creole-like spelling, YU, MI, DEM, and NEVA. English and Creole share the English meanings of these four words; in addition, all of them have meanings in Creole that do not occur in English. These meanings are listed in table 2. Examples (2a–d) show examples from the corpus of each item in the shared function(s), and (3a–d) show them in exclusively Creole functions. (The examples include both standard and nonstandard spellings of the items under analysis.) 9. To give an estimate, the percentage of English words in the JamC lexicon would likely be around 90 percent in a dictionary count, or around 97 percent in spoken material (Ian Hancock, personal communication).

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Table 2. Lexical items used in the analysis, and their functions in English and Creole. Item

Functions in both Creole and English

Creole-only functions

YU

possessive pronoun

MI DEM

subject, object pronoun object pronoun object pronoun

NEVA

adverb

(2)

a.

b. c. d. (3)

a.

b.

c.

subject and possessive pronoun subject and possessive pronoun; noun plural marker; demonstrative pronoun negative anterior aspect marker

YU as subject pronoun: But this man has broken all boundaries. Dont be surprised if yuh hear riot break out in Jamaica! YU as object pronoun: Mi nuh miss chat to yuh! [I don’t miss chatting with you.] MI as object pronoun: It has been an opportunity for me to make myself visible on weekends. DEM as object pronoun: Some of my fish were belly up this week and i need to replace dem. NEVA as adverb: The car is a beauty. . . sorry, wrong words. . . coobies are never beauties! YU as possessive pronoun: I agree that you fi tek you pickney dem wid you. [I agree that you should take your children with you]. MI as subject pronoun: It ruff mi tell you. [It’s rough, I’m telling you.] MI as possessive pronoun: [. . . ] if yuh get mi drift. DEM as subject pronoun: Well, dem finally open the comment box. [Well, they finally opened the comment box.] DEM as possessive pronoun: Why people dont go to dem yard and lef free seats in di movies eh? [Why don’t people go home and leave some free seats at the movies?] DEM as noun pluralizer: The human body is like a cyar to rahtid. . . when it start get older some o de part dem need fe change. [The human body is unfortunately like a car. . . when it starts to get older, some of the parts need to be replaced.] DEM as demonstrative pronoun: He really does have some hot girls on his Myspace page. . . check out dem ones yah! [check out these (ones) here!]

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NEVA as negative anterior aspect marker: You people never know about this exam until this morning, nuh true? [You people didn’t know about this exam until this morning, isn’t that true?]

For these four items, the analysis considered “standardness of spelling” as a binary variable, taking into account the variants listed in table 3. The table shows all the variants of these items of which I am aware and which I thought theoretically possible. “Standardness of spelling” for these items satisfies the three criteria that Labov lays out for a linguistic variable that make it useful for variationist sociolinguistic study (1972: 7–10). The variable chosen here is frequent. It is also structural in the sense that it is not lexical, and that it is part of a system of meaningful contrast, even though orthography is not studied in traditional research on speech communities. The intrinsic linguistic interest of the present study, however, lies more in an exploration of the connection between orthography and social factors than in language change, the interest that underlies much Labovian work on variation. Third, our variable did show stratification along social factors, though this admittedly did not emerge in preliminary analysis for the present study; rather, it is among the aims of this paper to find out if social factors condition variable choice along with linguistic factors. Table 3. Orthographic variants included in the analysis. Standard Nonstandard Item variant N variants N YU

427

MI

311

DEM NEVA



TOTAL

90 43



871 (58.4%)

Total

245

672 (45.1%)

245

556 (37.3%)

116 14

206 (13.8%) 57 (3.82%)

620 (41.6%)

1,491 (100%)

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1.4. The coding The data were marked up in a combination of automatic and manual coding. At the data collection stage, each sample was stored with a header containing a unique sample identifier, a code identifying the writer, and the writing location. Tags were inserted in the data that marked codeswitches between English and Creole ( at the beginning of a Patois insertion and at the end). Codeswitches were marked at the clause level.10 In identifying codeswitches, the criteria laid out in Hinrichs (2006: chapter 2) were followed. In essence, a passage was only considered codeswitched if there was overt Creole marking of a grammatical kind, i.e., through the use of Creole syntactic features or morphosyntax.11 Simple indicators of Creole influence on English in the area of marker deletion (e.g., copula deletion, or omission of verbal or plural sendings) were not sufficient as markers of a Creole passage; these deletions are acceptable in informal Jamaican English. However, if such deletions coincided with lexical Creolisms, coders had to make a decision on the code choice in a particular clause on their own judgment.12 To illustrate, (3) shows an example of an email message together with its header and with Patois insertions marked with tags. It also shows that subject lines of emails, as well as the headlines of blog posts, were included in the samples as a first line, but only in their first occurrence (i.e., not in later occurrences in cases when an email or post responded to an earlier message and quoted old material by other writers).

10. Because in written language, the level of phonology is not available as an indicator of code choice, it did not seem reasonable to mark codeswitches at a more detailed level than clauses. Cf. also Devonish (1998) who states that “codeswitching [in spoken Jamaican language] happens at the clause level.” 11. For example, a clause that contained JamC particles such as fi as infinitive marker or meaning ‘for’, or a as a focalizer or aspect marker, or Creole pronouns, was counted as Creole. 12. Crucially, orthography was not used as an indicator of code choice. Thus, frequent nonstandard spellings such as for the, or the spellings considered as part of the linguistic variable for this study, listed in table 3, were never used as indicators of code choice.

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sample = m24; writer = 019; location = JA time table well gal me sarry fi tel u seh u carna dark. . . [well girl I am sorry to tell you that your corner is dark, i.e. you are out of luck] oh i am sorry i should have said: hello [name], it is very unfortunate that i have yo te you that your exam is on april 29 at 4–6 pm so you will not be able to catch the four thirty flight

The raw text files containing the e-mails, blog posts, and blog comments were then scanned for all occurrences of any of the orthographic variants of the four lexical items, standard or nonstandard, that are listed in table 3. This was done using a Python script (van Rossum 1997), which output each token to the screen with fifteen words of context, and prompted a human coder to input a letter symbol denoting the token’s function/meaning; this function tag was then written alongside the token in the data file. In the next step, a second Python script retrieved each function-coded token in the samples and produced a text file of the dataset in tabular form on which statistical analysis was later performed. Figure 2 shows the first few entries in this table. This combination of manual and automatic coding procedures served to maximize the amount of data that could be considered for this study, while ensuring that human input could be added where it was needed.13 The assignation of the syntactic function or lexical meaning of the token could not be automated because automatic parsers that can dynamically analyze two different grammatical systems, as would be necessary in codeswitching data, are not yet available. For a nonstandardized language like JamC, not even monolingual data can be automatically parsed very easily.14 One methodological goal of this paper is thus to explore ways of making better use of the enormous potential benefits of CMC data, which Georgakopoulou characterizes as follows: With an unprecedented access to large sets of data that are already digitised, the CMC scholar surely has to be the envy of the interactional analyst who faces the daunting task of transcribing the 90 plus hours that they have already spent an inordinate amount of time collecting. (2006: 550) 13. I performed the manual part of the annotation myself, so that intercoder agreement did not have to be measured. 14. For written material in JamC that employs a regulated orthography, such as the system devised by Cassidy and Le Page for their Dictionary of Jamaican English (Cassidy and Le Page 1980) and promoted by creole language-rights proponents for general adoption by the Jamaican state (Devonish 1986; Brown-Blake 2008), the development of an automatic syntactic parser is a theoretical possibility.

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Figure 2. Screenshot of the data table (each line represents one token).

Some previous research in sociolinguistic studies of CMC has made promising advances in capitalizing on the strength of CMC data to which Georgakopoulou refers, for example by building and analyzing extremely large digitized corpora.15 By using semi-automated methods of data coding and analysis, this wealth of available material can be translated into datasets that are large enough to allow sophisticated variationist analytic methodology, while also providing coding with the level of detail that is known from, and required by, sociolinguistic work.

2. Predictors In this section, I will discuss each of the factors that entered the multivariate analysis, and state how they impact on standardness of spelling in the data.

2.1.

Linguistic effects

2.1.1. Syntactic function/lexical meaning The semantic disambiguation effect that was argued for in previous publications (Hinrichs 2004; Deuber and Hinrichs 2007) predicts that nonstandard spellings are preferred for those tokens that carry a meaning or function that is only possible in Creole. Because of the present social status of JamC as the stigmatized vernacular code that carries high covert and low overt prestige, 15. For example, Siebenhaar (2006) is based on a corpus of 15.86 million words of chat communication in Swiss German dialects.

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I will refer to these meanings as “nonstandard functions.” For the analysis, a binary factor with values for standard and nonstandard function was coded. Example (4) shows this effect at work among the three boldfaced MItokens: the first two instances of MI, which occur inside a Patois stretch embedded in an otherwise English text, are nonstandard uses, the first in subject pronoun and the second in possessive pronoun function. These tokens occur in the most frequent nonstandard spelling, . The third token, however, occurs in the standard English function and is spelled in standard orthography: (4)

Why yu feel seh mi waan yu fill up mi mailbox wid dem f#@*$ ugly baby pics. [What makes you think that I want you to fill my mailbox with those ugly baby pictures.] In your dreams you were cuter than me. . . Your life is way too exciting for me. . . and I’m being sarcastic. (m18, email, female writer)

Table 4 shows that the disambiguation effect is a powerful determinant of spelling choice, with the vast majority of standard function tokens showing standard spelling (72.5 percent). The opposite trend is even stronger: for tokens in nonstandard function, writers chose nonstandard spellings in 83.5 percent of all cases. Table 4. The disambiguation effect in the data: spelling choice by function ( p ≤ 10−16 ). Std function Nst function Std spelling Nst spelling TOTAL

809 (72.5%) 307 (27.5%)

62 (16.5%) 313 (83.5%)

1,116 (100%)

375 (100%)

Thus, the disambiguation effect is strongly reflected in the distribution shown in table 4, but far from categorical, as example (4) illustrates: an occurrence of YU, the second word of the extract, occurs there in standard function, as subject pronoun, but is spelled as the nonstandard . Given that disambiguation is an obviously useful application of nonstandard spellings that serves a core interest of writers, communicative clarity, the true explanandum is why only a majority, but not all, tokens are explained by this effect. The remaining factors may help to explain those cases that are not covered by the disambiguation effect.

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2.1.2. Genre It is well known that CMC language varies with the particular subgenre in which it occurs (Herring 2001: 614–617; Crystal 2006). A variable such as nonstandard spelling choice is particularly likely to be affected by genre because it is by definition distributed along criteria of standard- and nonstandardness. Figure 3 in an association plot that blog comments are the most strongly favoring genre for nonstandard spellings, and blog posts the least:

Figure 3. Spelling choice by genre (p < .0001). Boxes above the line indicate observed values that are higher than those that are statistically expected, and vice versa.

The strong favoring effect of the blog comment genre must be judged cautiously, as genre co-varies with other independent factors: for example, blog comments contain a higher proportion of Creole language material — and Creole language material favors nonstandard spellings (for qualitative evidence, see the nonstandard spelling ofYU in (4) above). As table 5 shows, the mean creole proportion in blog comments, measured in number of words, is almost twice as high as in emails, and almost 2.5 times as high as in blog posts: Table 5. Mean creole proportion of samples by genre, measured in number of words. blog comments blog posts emails

Mean Creole proportion

std. dev.

.455 .185 .241

.31 .26 .26

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2.1.3. Language choice Example (4) illustrates that language choice may influence spelling choice: regardless of whether a token’s function is standard or nonstandard, writers may prefer nonstandard spellings while they are writing a Creole stretch embedded in English material. The automatic analysis of the data produced these measures related to the language environment of each token based on the hand-coded codeswitches in the data. – PassageLength: for tokens that stand within a Patois insertion, this scalar factor states the length of the passage. Thus, tokens within English passages are marked as zero, whereas numbers greater than zero indicate the length of Patois passages in number of words. – InPatois: This factor was added as a binary derivation from PassageLength. It assigns one of two values to each token depending on whether it occurs in an English passage (for PassageLength values of 0) or a Patois passage (for PassageLength > 0). – CreolePr: Another scalar factor was introduced that stated the proportion of Creole material, as the sum of all creole passage lengths in a sample, out of the sample’s total length, measured in number of words. The first two of these factors confirm the assumption that a Creole environment per se significantly favors the choice of nonstandard spellings, and an English environment favors standard spellings. For standard spellings, the mean PassageLength is .15, whereas for nonstandard spellings it is .41. A clearer expression of this interdependency is the cross-tabulation of the factors InPatois and NstSpell in table 6: Table 6. Spelling choice by language environment (p ≤ .0001). In Creole passage In English passage Std spelling Nst spelling

152 (22.3%) 529 (77.7%)

719 (88.8%) 91 (11.2%)

TOTAL

681 (100%)

810 (100%)

The third potential predictor, CreolePr, was introduced in order to test for the possibility that samples which use high proportions of Patois also have an effect favoring the choice of nonstandard spellings. Of course, we have already seen that the Creole language environment of tokens favors nonstandard spellings. Therefore, we are practically certain to find a correlation between the factor CreolePr and standardness of spelling – as indeed we do

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(Pearson r = .43). However, to find out whether the favoring effect of a high Creole proportion is actually independently significant, the effect will have to be entered in the multivariate model (see below).

2.2.

Social effects

While the linguistic effects presented in 2.1 are necessary for a complete account of the variation in the data, our ultimate goal is to understand the social meanings of spelling choices for the items YU, MI, DEM, and NEVA. Therefore, I will now introduce two social effects to the analysis that will help with this project: “Jamaica” versus “the diaspora” as the geographical location of writers, and writer gender. 2.2.1. Location of residence and writing: the Jamaican diaspora Jamaica has had a history of steady emigration beginning in the mid-twentieth century. Due to its historic ties to Britain – Jamaica was under British colonial rule from 1655 to 1962 – the largest community of Jamaican expatriates today is in the United Kingdom; other major centers of the Jamaican diaspora are in North American cities such as Miami, New York, Toronto, and Los Angeles. CMC is of central importance to Jamaicans in the diaspora as a discourse space in which cultural identity is created and negotiated. At first glance, the set of language resources that are available to Jamaicans living abroad in anglophone countries is similar to those living in Jamaica: Patois is available along with local and Jamaican varieties of standard English. But there are important areas of difference in sociolinguistic conditions that distinguish the form and functions of Patois at home and abroad:16 i) Acquisition patterns: the considerable covert prestige of Patois in Jamaica is solidly grounded in its status as the native language of the great majority of persons born in Jamaica, with standard English acquisition typically beginning when children enter the school system. Children born in the diaspora, on the other hand, usually grow up speaking standard English and acquire Patois in a process of “second-dialect acquisition” later in childhood or in adolescence17 (Sebba 1993). This secondary 16. This comparison of sociolingusitic settings is based on Hinrichs (2006: 145). 17. While the Jamaican diaspora in Britain has been explored sociolinguistically by various authors – e.g., Hewitt (1986), Sutcliffe (1982), Sebba (1993), Dray (2002), Rampton (1995), Patrick (2004) – there are as yet no linguistic publications on

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acquisition process is aided by the presence of Patois inside families, where the immigrating older generations still have native competence. Third-generation members of the diaspora seldom develop grammatical competence in Creole, and restrict their usage to a limited number of lexical items.18 ii) Primary discourse functions: while public opinion in Jamaica recognizes Patois as a marker of national pride and identity – if not traditionally as a “good” language that should be trusted with all the official functions that English performs – this is only part of the picture in the diaspora. Approximately 92 percent of Jamaicans are African-descended (Statistical Institute of Jamaica 2009), which means that in the urban centers of the diaspora, they are part of a racial minority. For Creole in Britain, it has been claimed that it is used in discourse as a marker of ethnic identity (Sebba 1993; Mair 2003; Patrick 2004). In North America, the linguistic code that is most typically considered to have the potential of marking Black identity is African American Vernacular English (AAVE), so Patois there is not the only linguistic resource that can fill this function. In fact, Patois is in competition with AAVE for this function even among Jamaican members of the African-descended minority. However, it is true for all urban centers of the diaspora that the notion of being Jamaican is, for most individuals, tantamount to being part of a minority. iii) Frequency of use: in Jamaica, practically every informal conversation uses at least some Patois, in fact the majority of conversations are mostly held in Patois. Linguists have often noted that the primary code in all but the most official settings is best described as neither English nor Creole, but as codeswitching between the two (Myers-Scotton’s markedness model of codeswitching in society describes situations like this as displaying “codeswitching as the unmarked choice,” 1993). In the diaspora, however, speaking Patois is a clearly marked choice, and it happens much less frequently. The unmarked code of spoken interaction is English. In the present analysis I explore the question of how the dimension “homeland vs. diaspora” affects the written language of Jamaicans – specifically, their the North American diaspora. Aside from the writings of those just named I base my statements on my own observations during fieldwork among Jamaicans in Toronto, November 2006 to July 2007, conducted for my ongoing research on the sociolinguistic status and functions of Creole in Toronto. 18. I made this observation during fieldwork in Toronto. Susan Dray observed the same development previously in her fieldwork among Caribbeans in Manchester, England (Dray and Sebba fc.).

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orientation toward standard English and nonstandard spellings in CMC. With regard to this factor, then, the following specific research questions arise: – Are there any differences between quantitative usage patterns in the homeland and the diaspora that suggest different levels of competence in the two groups? – Assuming that the identity functions of Patois in the diaspora are actually focused primarily around marking a non-mainstream ethnic identity, is this reflected in the quantitative usage patterns of nonstandard spellings? For example, do writers draw on a possible indexical relationship between nonstandard spellings and non-mainstream identity in a systematic way? – Do the data confirm that Patois is more marked in the diaspora than in Jamaica, and does nonstandard orthography play a role in this? 2.2.2. Gender Over years of extensive research into the role of gender in language variation, especially in the past two decades, important generalizations have been made concerning differences in variation in and between the language of men and women. Standard–nonstandard alternation in speech and in orthography have not yet been explored. Two frequent observations from the study of language and gender (Labov 1990; Cheshire 2002) that form the backdrop of this analysis are: i) It has been asserted many times in studies of speech that men use more nonstandard language than women for morphosyntactic variables, and for phonological variables unless there are sound changes in progress.19 ii) It has also been shown, as an exception to the principle of men using more nonstandard language forms than women, that women use more of those nonstandard forms that are involved in phonological changes in progress. A legitimate abstraction from these principles is that women make more use of the social prestige adhering to linguistic forms than men. In other words, women make more use of the symbolic capital of linguistic forms (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1999).

19. Numerous studies have addressed gender and the use of “emotives” in CMC (Iorio 2009; this class includes emoticons, creative punctuation, expressives like “ahhhh”). They are used more by women than by men (Wolf 2000; Herring 2001; Baron 2004; Huffaker and Calvert 2005). However, the variation studied here clearly does not relate to emotives, being instead more similar to a classic case of variation between a standard and a nonstandard linguistic form.

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The question at hand is how orthographic variables compare to these observations about morphosyntactic and phonological ones. All in all, the dataset contains samples written by 20 male and 26 female writers. One observation that emerges from tables 7 and 8 is that although the corpus includes fewer male than female writers, these males contributed much more than half (61.7 percent) of the text volume – but that is at least partly explained by the fact that more male than female samples were included (54.3 percent). A little more puzzling at first is that the total number of variable tokens contributed by males is much lower than those from females (723 out of 1,491, or 48.5percent, cf. table 8). This reflects a general trend in spoken and written language use that the selection of variable items in this study was likely to highlight: women use more pronouns than men (e.g., Pennebaker et al. 2003). Since three of the four items used in this study are pronouns, the distribution shown in table 8 was likely to occur. Tables 7 and 8 show the limits of univariate analyses. In comparing and interpreting the information in those tables, it can become difficult to adjust for known skews and biases. A multivariate analytical procedure in which interferences between factors are controlled for is needed to determine the real effect of all the individual factors on one another, and on our specified outcome, standardness of spelling.

Table 7. Amount of sampled material by writer gender, and mean Creole proportion. word count Creole proportion Informants Samples total Creole mean std. dev. Male

20 (43.5%)

120 (54.3%)

28,116 (61.7%)

3,211 (53.7%)

.32

.33

Female

26 (56.5%)

101 (45.7%)

17,434 (38.3%)

2,764 (46.3%)

.52

.30

TOTAL

46 (100%)

221 (100%)

45,550 (100%)

5,975 (100%)

.32

.29

Table 8. Spelling choices by writer gender ( p ≤ .0001). Tokens (std spelling) Tokens (nst spelling)

Total

Male Female

459 (63.5%) 412 (53.6%)

264 (36.5%) 356 (46.4%)

723 (100%) 768 (100%)

TOTAL

871 (58.4%)

620 (41.6%)

1,491 (100%)

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3. The multivariate model Up to now, I have described the binary linguistic variable for this analysis as standardness of spelling, and discussed the influences of various factors on writers’ choices between its two variants separately. In order to build a complete model that formulates the relative importance of the factors presented above, I apply a mixed effects regression model (Baayen 2008; Baayen, Davidson et al. 2008; Jaeger 2008). This type of model, which is coming to be used more frequently in quantitative linguistics, combines the strengths of binary logistic regression (see Pampel 2000 for an introduction) with some additional advantages. For example, it does not assume data to be normally distributed, which linguistic data frequently are not (Johnson 2009). To conduct the statistical analysis, I used the freely available statistical software package R (R Development Core Team 2010).20

Figure 4. Spelling choice by gender and function (left panel; p ≤ .0001), spelling choice by gender and language environment (right panel; p ≤ .0001). Mosaic plot with fields sized proportionally by their values relative to others in panel.

The dependent variable for this model is “standardness of spelling” for all tokens of YU, MI, DEM, and NEVA. The independent variables in this model are: – non-standardness of function, with “yes” and “no” as variants, i.e., “yes” means a nonstandard, or exclusively Creole, function (“NstFct”); 20. The graphs and diagrams shown in this paper were also made in R.

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– language environment, with “yes” indicating that the token stands in Creole insertion, and ‘no’ signaling English environment (“InPatois”); – proportion of creole language material in sample, based on the number of Creole words divided by the total number of words in the sample, i.e., a scalar vector with values from 0 to 1 (“CreolePr”); – the geographic location of the writer, or diasporicity, i.e., the location of residence and of writing (samples by writers who were traveling were excluded from analysis), with value “yes” indicating that the writer lives abroad,21 and “no” standing for Jamaica (“Dia”); – gender of writer, with values “male” and “female” (“Gender”). Based on the research questions regarding the social factors, we expect there to be an interaction between the factors “Dia” and “Gender” and linguistic factors. In particular, we want the model to test whether either of the genders, or either of the geographical groups, has a stronger tendency than the other group to select nonstandard spellings in certain linguistic environments. The following four interactions were therefore included: – InPatois: Dia: this interaction tests whether writers in the diaspora are more or less likely (or neither) than writers in Jamaica to select nonstandard spellings inside of Patois passages. – InPatois: Gender: tests whether male writers are more or less likely (or neither) than females to select nonstandard spellings inside Patois passages. – NstFct: Dia: tests if writers in the diaspora are more or less likely (or neither) than writers in Jamaica to select nonstandard spellings if the token function is nonstandard, i.e., only possible in Creole. – NstFct: Gender: tests if male writers are more or less likely (or neither) than female writers to choose nonstandard spellings if the token function is nonstandard. The following random effects were included to remove bias: – Item: the item to which the variant token belongs. In order to enhance the predictive ability of the model and control for any bias that might lie in the four items, this variable was included as a predictor, with values “YU,” “MI,” “DEM,” and “NEVA”; – WriterID: this variable was included to remove bias that might have lain in individual writer’s stylistic preferences. – Genre: because the three genres represented in the corpus (email, blog post, and blog comment) seem to show usage of nonstandard spellings to different degrees, “Genre” was included as a factor to control for bias. 21. With very few exceptions, all diasporic writers in the sample live in Canada.

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However, no theoretical assumption as to a systematic covariation between the dependent variable and this factor underlies the analysis; therefore, “genre” was included as a random factor, and not as a main effect, in the multivariate model. Table 9. Multivariate model: significance of fixed effects and interaction terms. Predictor p-value (Intercept) CreolePr NstFct Dia Gender InPatois NstFct : Dia NstFct : Gender Gender : InPatois Dia : InPatois

5.64e−06 0.00477 7.08e−11 0.51455 0.34850 < 2e−16 0.03759 0.09332 0.97235 0.02613

The mixed-effects model that was fitted based on these factors and interactions obtains an excellent goodness-of-fit measure (Somers Dxy = .96).22 The respective significances of the individual factors in the model are shown in table 9. In essence, this measure states a factor’s predictive power. Customarily, values under 0.05 are regarded as statistically significant. Most of the terms included in the model are significant by that standard with the exception of “Dia,” “Gender,” and two interactions, those between “Gender: InPatois,” and “NstFct: Gender.” The interaction term “NstFct: Gender,” while it does not meet the standard significance level of 0.05, still has a probability of less than 10 percent to be based on chance. As statistical significance measures go, the ultimate decision to believe in the truth of statistical results lies with the analyst. As Baayen points out (2008: chapter 4), part of the decision should be based on what the object of the analysis is. If one were driving a bus filled with school children and approaching a bridge which had a known probability of ∼10 percent of collapsing, it would arguably be a bad decision to drive the bus across that bridge. In the case of a statistical factor whose predictions 22. Somers D xy is a rank correlation value that states how well the model predicts the variance in the actual data. The value lies “between 0 (randomness) and 1 (perfect prediction)” (Baayen 2008: 204).

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turn out to have a likelihood of around 10 percent (in the present case, 9.332 percent) of being based on a distributional pattern in the data that emerged by chance – rather than the actual effect of the factor on the outcome – and whose predictions are based on a carefully collected and analyzed corpus, there is somewhat less of a risk involved in lending credence to its predictions. I therefore include the interaction term “NstFct: Gender” in the following discussion.

Figure 5. Odds ratios for all predictors with p ≤ 0.1 (cp. table 9).

Having established which of the model’s terms make statistically significant predictions, we need to ask what they actually predict. The most informative measure to use here are odds ratios. They express the direction in which the independent variable affects the selection process of the dependent variable, as well as the likelihood of the predictor’s effect taking hold. Odds ratios for the mixed model are shown in figure 5. For odds ratios, values above 1 indicate that the effect favors a specified outcome – in the present case, “choice of a nonstandard spelling,” as opposed to the opposite, “choice of a standard spelling” – and values below 1 express that the effect disfavors the specified outcome. A value of 1 would indicate that the factor’s influence on the outcome is as strong as that of chance. The value of the odds ratio expresses the likelihood that the factor’s prediction will be accurate. For example, the odds ratio for “NstFct(y)” is 12.66. This means that if a token’s function is nonstandard, this will make the choice of a nonstandard spelling

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(i.e., the specified outcome) 12.66 times as likely as chance – in other words, it is 1.266 percent the likelihood of chance. By comparison, the odds ratio for the interaction term “NstFct(y): Gender(m)” is 0.43, indicating that in the event of a token’s function being nonstandard and the writer being male, the likelihood of the choice of a nonstandard spelling is only 43 percent that of chance – that is, this interaction disfavors nonstandard spellings

4. Discussion of results and conclusions The “Gender” effect turns out to be an insignificant predictor by itself, but in interaction with “NstFct” it predicts that males are less likely to choose nonstandard spellings than females (at p ≤ 0.1). While this interaction effect has not yet reached the commonly accepted, critical significance level of .05, it is still about 90 percent likely to make a prediction that will be borne out in further datasets that are collected under similar conditions (in other words, the prediction it makes is about 10 percent likely to be based on variation that was created by chance, rather than the actual work of the effect). It is therefore worth our attention. This interaction predicts that for any token that is used in a Creoleonly (“nonstandard”) function, males are significantly less likely to choose nonstandard spelling than females. That is, independent of the amount of vernacular material – and samples written by men actually have a higher mean creole proportion than those by women in the dataset, though this difference is not significant – men are less likely to use spelling choices to create a visible distinction between English and Creole-only uses of items. We can say that – give or take the factor’s p value – male writers in the sample, when compared to women, are less keyed to either the different uses of Creole terms, or less aware of the disambiguating potential of spelling choices, or less prepared to use the latter to communicate the former. Thus, what this study reveals with regard to a gender difference in spelling is an observation that dovetails with the results of many sociolinguistic studies that have considered the gender factor: males show a lesser degree of awareness, or at least strategic use, of the pragmatic and social meanings of linguistic form (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1999), in this case, of the meanings of the standard–nonstandard spelling contrast and the way that it can be meaningfully employed to graphemically distinguish between codes. Like “Gender,” the social factor “Dia” is not significant on its own. This means that place of residence is not a factor that significantly favors or disfavors the use of nonstandard spellings per se. However, it participates in

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two interaction terms that are significant at p ≤ 0.05: with “NstFct” and with “InPatois.” These interactions reveal different attitudes towards the two codes in the repertoire of Jamaican writers according to their place of residence. Diasporic writers, as these interaction terms reveal, are much more likely than writers living in the homeland to choose nonstandard spellings for tokens that have a Creole-only function. This means that they are more eager than Jamaicans residing at home to graphemically distinguish the two codes JamE and JamC in those instances where the shared word stock of the codes has different functions. On the other hand, diasporic writers are less likely to spell tokens in a nonstandard way only because they stand within a Creole passage. That is to say, if a token has a function that is possible in standard English, diasporic writers will prefer to stick to its standard English spelling, no matter whether they are currently writing a passage that is overall Creole or not. This suggests the following difference in attitudes toward JamE and JamC between writers living in the diaspora and those living in Jamaica: writers in the diaspora are less concerned with making the two codes look different overall. They use nonstandard spellings mostly to disambiguate between the codes in those cases where word forms are similar, but their meanings differ. In other words, the separation between Creole and English is a matter of principle in Jamaica, but a matter of pragmatism among Jamaicans abroad. That statement admittedly involves some simplification of a reality that is arguably more complex, but it points out the tendency that the data suggest (and with statistical significance). Such a difference in attitudes between the two groups of writers appears especially plausible when we take into account the vastly different public discourses on language in Jamaica and compare it to a place like Canada. Jamaica has a history of strong publicly voiced opinions on the Creole since well before independence. Traditional views have seen the Creole as imperfect/bad/broken English, casting British English as the ideal model that any speaker should aspire to. More recently, modern views have challenged this image of Creole, as JamC has been embraced as a symbol of postindependence national identity and appropriated as the base of the in-group language of Rastafarianism (Shields-Brodber 1997; Pollard 2000), and as academics and intellectuals have taken on the cause of language rights in society for monolingual Creole speakers (Devonish 1986; Bryan 2004). Public debates on the role of JamC in society are still ongoing. There is agreement between proponents and adversaries of the creole in Jamaica that JamC is very different in status and structure from English. In a setting like Canada, of course, such debates are not held generally; if they occur, they are restricted

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to groups of Jamaican immigrants, a small minority in Canadian society. Debates on language attitudes thus do not have as much relevance in daily life as they do in Jamaica itself. To say that Jamaicans in the diaspora do not place as much ideological weight on the difference between Creole and English does not imply that creole language attitudes among members of this group are either more positive or more negative than back in Jamaica. There is no evidence either in the data or elsewhere that would suggest as much. To the extent that the multivariate model has shown the differences between writing in Jamaica and in the diaspora to be statistically significant, we can rely on these differences being non-random, i.e., due to a true difference in these two populations. This is true even if we cannot with complete certainty say whether some of the “diasporic” Jamaican writers have only very recently moved abroad, and may therefore be mostly attached to the social views of Creole and English that are dominant at home in Jamaica. But without straining the empirical evidence too much, it can be said that Jamaicans in the diaspora are less concerned with the issue of constructing symbolic distance between Creole and English, and that they reserve the contextualizing potential of nonstandard spellings for those cases where meaning differences are involved. This exploratory investigation of standardness of spelling as a binary sociolinguistic variable has shown that binary logistic mixed effects regression is a tool that can help us make meaningful statements about spelling variation in social context. Further research will need to investigate more closely the similarities and differences between orthographic variables and the phonological/morphosyntactic variables that have traditionally been investigated in such studies. Furthermore, the two factors considered in this study that related to the distinction of codes – “NstFct” and “InPatois” – were shown to have overwhelming statistical weight. This suggests that studies of monodialectal corpora using a similar method may be helpful in modeling the correlation between social factors and spelling choice in even greater relief.

References Allsopp, Richard 1996 Dictionary of Caribbean English usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Androutsopoulos, Jannis 2000 Non-standard spellings in media texts: The case of German fanzines. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(4). 514–533.

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Androutsopoulos, Jannis and Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.) 2003 Discourse constructions of youth identities.Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Baayen, R. Harald 2008 Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics ssing R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baayen, R. Harald, Douglas J. Davidson and Douglas M. Bates 2008 Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4). 390–412. Baron, Naomi 2004 See you online: Gender issues in college student use of instant messaging. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 23(4). 397–423. Bennett, Louise 1966 Jamaica Labrish: Jamaica dialect poems. Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster. Brown-Blake, Celia 2008 The right to linguistic non-discrimination and Creole language situations. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23(1). 32–74. Bryan, Beverley 2004 Jamaican Creole: In the process of becoming. Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(4). 641–659. Cassidy, Frederic G. 1971 Jamaica talk: Three hundred years of the English language in Jamaica. London: Macmillan. Cassidy, Frederic G. and Robert B. Le Page 1980 Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chambers, Jack K. 2004 Dynamic typology and vernacular universals. In Bernd Kortmann (ed.), Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a crosslinguistic perspective, 128–145. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Chambers, Jack K., Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.) 2002 The handbook of language variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell. Cheshire, Jenny 2002 Sex and gender in variationist research. In Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 423–443. Oxford: Blackwell. Christie, Pauline (ed.) 1998 Studies in Caribbean language. St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: University of the West Indies Press.

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Language and the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Danet, Brenda and Susan C. Herring (eds.) 2007 The multilingual internet: Language, culture, and communication online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deuber, Dagmar and Lars Hinrichs 2007 Dynamics of orthographic standardization in Jamaican Creole and Nigerian Pidgin. World Englishes 26(1). 22–47. Devonish, Hubert 1986 Language and liberation: Creole language politics in the Caribbean. London: Karia. Devonish, Hubert 1998 On the existence of autonomous language varieties in “Creole continuum situations”. In Pauline Christie (ed.), Studies in Caribbean language, 1–12. St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: University of the West Indies Press. Devonish, Hubert and Otelemate G. Harry 2004 Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English: phonology. In Edgar W. Schneider and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English: A multimedia reference tool, 450–480. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter. Dray, Susan 2003 Sociolinguistic struggles in outdoor texts in a Creole-speaking community: The significance of “embedding”. In Srikant Sarangi and Theo van Leeuwen (eds.), Applied linguistics and communities of practice, 39–59. London: Continuum. Dray, Susan and Mark Sebba 2011 “Creole” and youth language in a British inner-city community. In Lars Hinrichs and Joseph T. Farquharson (eds.), Variation in the Caribbean: From Creole continua to individual agency, 231–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet 1999 New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society 28(2). 185–201. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra 2006 Postscript: Computer-mediated communication in sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(4). 548–557. Greenbaum, Sidney (ed.) 1985 The English language today. Oxford: Pergamon.

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Herring, Susan C. 2001 Computer-mediated discourse. In Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis, 612–634. Oxford: Blackwell. Herring, Susan C., Lois Ann Scheidt, Inna Kouper and Elijah Wright 2006 Longitudinal content analysis of weblogs: 2003–2004. In Mark Tremayne (ed.), Blogging, citizenship and the future of media, 3– 20. London: Routledge. Hewitt, Roger 1986 White talk black talk: Inter-racial friendship and communication amongst adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hinrichs, Lars 2004 Emerging orthographic conventions in written Creole: Computer mediated communication in Jamaica. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 29(1). 81–109. Hinrichs, Lars 2006 Codeswitching on the web: English and Jamaican Creole in e-mail communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hinrichs, Lars and Joseph T. Farquharson (eds.) 2011 Variation in the Caribbean: From Creole continua to individual agency. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Huffaker, David A. and Sandra L. Calvert 2005 Gender, identity, and language use in teenage blogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10 (2): article 1. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker.html Iorio, Joshua 2009 Effects of audience on orthographic variation. Illinois Language and Linguistics Society 1: Language Online. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Irvine, Alison 2004 A good command of the English language: Phonological variation in the Jamaican acrolect. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 19(1). 41–76. Irvine, Alison 2008 Contrast and convergence in Standard Jamaican English: The phonological architecture of the standard in an ideologically bidialectal community. World Englishes 27(1). 9–25. Jaeger, T. Florian 2008 Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4). 434–446.

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Johnson, Daniel E. 2009 Getting off the GoldVarb standard: introducing Rbrul for mixedeffects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1). 359–383. Karim, Karim H. 2003 The media of diaspora. London: Routledge. Kelly, Jennifer 2004 Borrowed identities. New York: Lang. Kortmann, Bernd (ed.) 2004 Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a crosslinguistic perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Labov, William 1972 The social motivation of a sound change. In Sociolinguistic Patterns, 1–42. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, William 1990 The intersection of sex and social class in the course of language change. Language Variation and Change 2. 205–254. Mair, Christian 2002 Creolisms in an emerging standard. English World-Wide 23(1). 31–58. Mair, Christian 2003 Language, code, and symbol: The changing roles of Jamaican Creole in diaspora communities. AAA. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28(2). 231–248. Martin-Jones, Marilyn and Kathryn Jones (eds.) 2000 Multilingual literacies: Reading and writing different worlds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Morris, Mervyn 1997 A note on “dub poetry”. Wasafiri 26(3). 66–69. M¨uhleisen, Susanne 2002 Creole discourse. Exploring prestige formation and change across Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles.Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1993 Social motivations for codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Clarendon. Pampel, Fred C. 2000 Logistic regression: A primer. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Patrick, Peter L. 2004 British Creole: phonology. In Edgar W. Schneider and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English: A multimedia reference tool, 231–243. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Pennebaker, James W., Matthias R. Mehl and Kate G. Niederhoffer 2003 Psychological aspects of natural language use: Our words, our selves. Annual Review of Psychology 54(1). 547–577. Pollard, Velma 2000 Dread talk: The language of rastafari. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. R Development Core Team 2010 R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Rampton, Ben 1995 Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman. Rickford, John R. and Elizabeth C. Traugott 1985 Symbol of powerlessness and degeneracy, or symbol of solidarity and truth? Paradoxical attitudes toward pidgins and creoles. In Sidney Greenbaum (ed.), The English language today, 252–261. Oxford: Pergamon. van Rossum, Guido 1997 Scripting the web with Python. World Wide Web Journal 2(2). 97– 120. Sand, Andrea 1999 Linguistic variation in Jamaica: A corpus-based study of radio and newspaper usage. T¨ubingen: Narr. Sarangi, Srikant and Theo van Leeuwen (eds.) 2003 Applied linguistics and communities of practice. London: Continuum. Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds.) 2001 The handbook of discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Schneider, Edgar W. (ed.) 1997 Englishes around the World (2): Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Australasia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schneider, Edgar W. and Bernd Kortmann (eds.) 2004 A handbook of varieties of English: A multimedia reference tool. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter. Sebba, Mark 1993 London Jamaican: Language systems in interaction. London: Longman. Sebba, Mark 1998 Phonology meets ideology: The meaning of orthographic practices in British Creole. Language Problems and Language Planning 22(1). 19–47.

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Sebba, Mark 2007 Spelling and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shields-Brodber, Kathryn 1997 Requiem for English in an ‘English-speaking’ community: The case of Jamaica. In Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Englishes around the World (2): Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Australasia, 57–69. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Siebenhaar, Beat 2006 Code choice and code-switching in Swiss-German Internet Relay Chat rooms. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(4). 481–506. Statistical Institute of Jamaica 2009 Population census 2001. Kingston, Jamaica: The Statistical Institute of Jamaica. Sutcliffe, David 1982 Black London English. Oxford: Blackwell. Tremayne, Mark (ed.) 2006 Blogging, citizenship and the future of media. London: Routledge. Wolf, Alecia 2000 Emotional expression online: Gender differences in emoticon use. CyberPsychology and Behavior 3(5). 827–833.

Chapter 14 “Greeklish”: Transliteration practice and discourse in the context of computer-mediated digraphia∗ Jannis Androutsopoulos 1. Introduction1 “Greeklish” or Latin-alphabet Greek – that is, the representation of the Greek language with the Latin script – has been a feature of the Greek-speaking internet from the start. “Greeklish” became widely known in the 1990s, was read as a “danger” to the Greek language at the turn of the century, but is still widely used today, in transnational communication as well as within Greece, even though technological developments have largely abolished the conditions that necessitated its spread. Example (1), which offers our first sample of “Greeklish” spelling, resonates with the findings on “ASCII-ized Arabic”2 in an important respect: script choice in computer-mediated discourse may be turned from a technical constraint into a symbol of the medium in which it occurs. (1)

Oi perissoteroi xrhstes sthn ellada exoun pleon th dynatothta na grafoun me ellhnikous xarakthres, kanonika. Omws, elaxistoi einai ekeinoi pou exontas th dynatothta afth thn aksiopoioun, kai oi perissoteroi akolouthoun thn palia methodo grafhs, xwris na yparxei kapoios profanhs logos. (. . . ) H dikh mou ekdoxh einai pws to e-mail antimetwpizetai apo tous perissoterous ws ksexwristo meso epikoinwnias, me

∗ This chapter was first published in Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Michael Silk (eds.) (2009) Standard languages and language standards: Greek, past and present, Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Reprinted with kind permission by the publishers and editors. 1. The terms “Latin/Latinization” are preferred to “Roman/Romanization” (cf. Coulmas 2003: 32 and Coulmas 1996), because they are used in Greek linguistics and Greek public discourse (cf. Moschonas 2004). “Greeklish” and Latinalphabet Greek are used interchangeably in this chapter, the former in inverted commas to signal its non-technical origin. 2. Cf. Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003).

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dika tou symvola kai kwdikous, kai enas ap’ aftous einai h xrhsimopoihsh twn latinikwn xarakthrwn. (Personal communication, 1998) “Most users in Greece have now the option of writing normally, with Greek characters. But only few are taking advantage of this option, and most are following the old writing method without an obvious reason. (. . . ) My own view is that e-mail is viewed by most users as a distinctive mode of communication with its own symbols and codes, one of these being the use of Latin characters.” This chapter approaches Latin-alphabet Greek (henceforth also LAG) from a sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic perspective. It offers an overview of its development and contemporary use, and examines its linguistic hallmark, namely spelling variation, and the way this is constructed in the discourse of internet users and the wider Greek speech community. Moreover, it aims at drawing wider implications for the sociolinguistics of orthography in the age of computer-mediated communication. For the purposes of my argument, I shall draw on the distinction between “autonomous” and “ideological” approaches to orthography, on the sociolinguistic notions of digraphia and focusing, and on the distinction between transliteration as an abstract system and as individual practice. In the first place, the notion of digraphia3 will provide a conceptual frame for this chapter. In particular, the term “computer-mediated digraphia” is coined for the simultaneous use of both the native Greek and the Latin script in computer-mediated interaction. The characteristics of Greek computermediated digraphia include: a lack of stability and societal agreement on the use of LAG; its persistence in transnational communication; the lack of a widely known transliteration standard, which results in a wide range of variability in transliteration practice; the emergence of metalinguistic discourses among internet users as well as in nationwide media; and the importance of technological developments for the shifting patterns of LAG use and evaluation. Within this frame, transliteration practices and discourses on “Greeklish” will be examined in terms of “ideological” and “autonomous” approaches to orthography.4 Briefly, an autonomous approach views orthography as a “neutral” technology for the representation of spoken language. In contrast, an ideological approach views orthography as a set of social practices in specific social and cultural contexts. From this perspective, 3. Cf. Coulmas (2003), Grivelet (2001a). 4. Cf. Street (1984), Sebba (1998, 2000, 2003, in press).

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[0]rthography can be seen as the site of potentially intense struggles over identity and power, in which issues like the purpose of literacy and the status of languages are central, and orthographic characters . . . may be imbued with a symbolic meaning that makes their phonemic symbolism and learnability of secondary importance.5

Rather than being a mere matter of technological necessity, as an autonomous approach would assume, “Greeklish” is a rich site of aesthetic and ideological conflict. This holds true for both its relationship to the Greek script and the relationship between different versions of Greek-to-Latin transliteration. An ideological approach to orthography allows us to understand how writers’ spelling choices and metalinguistic assumptions are shaped by the symbolic and aesthetic meanings they attach to alternative schemes of transliteration.6 On the other hand, the distinction between ideological and autonomous approaches to orthography will be used as an analytical tool in order to reveal that the opinions and arguments expressed for and against “Greeklish” are sometimes “autonomous” and sometimes “ideological” in nature. The variability of “Greeklish” spelling is due to the fact that Greekto-Latin transliteration is not acknowledged within the Greek educational system. With transliteration standards hardly known outside expert circles, Greek internet users have developed a range of informal transliteration schemes, appropriating the Latin script in innovative ways. The distinction between transliteration as an abstract system and individual style, along with the notion of focusing,7 will be used to examine how individual regularity and “local” norms emerge in a normative vacuum, in which choices of Latinized spelling are neither prescribed nor sanctioned. I shall reconstruct two main transliteration schemes, “phonetic” and “orthographic,” and argue that they are relevant orientation points for both transliteration practice and discourse. Moreover, I shall draw on the notion of “focusing” to examine how the range of transliteration alternatives is reduced as individual spelling styles converge towards “local,” group-related norms.

2. “Greeklish,” past and present Popular terms such as Fragolevantinika and Fragochiotika allude to the use of LAG in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably by Greek 5. Cf. Sebba (1998: 20). 6. Cf. Sebba (1998: 36, 40). 7. Cf. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985), Sebba (2003, in press).

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traders from the island of Chios and by (ethnically non-Greek) Levantine traders in Smyrna, Asia Minor. Sporadic evidence suggests that the Latin script had already been used in the Early Modern era, notably for folk poetry or catechism, in Greek areas under Venetian rule, or with some other Catholic presence.8 These early, albeit poorly documented instances of script change clearly differ from contemporary “Greeklish” in terms of their political context, and their social spread and communicative purposes; however, they display a typical feature of digraphia, in that they emerge in a situation of interethnic and intercultural contact.9 The intercultural and transnational dimension of script choice is also manifest in proposals for Greek orthographic reform in the mid-war era of the twentieth century. Its advocates argued for the simplification of the historical orthography of Greek as a measure against “the plague of illiteracy,” and proposed the adoption of the Latin script in order to avoid confusion between different spellings of the same word in the historical and the proposed phonetic orthography.10 Script change was also seen as a source of potential economic benefits (especially in the context of typewriting, printing, and publishing) and as a symbolic alignment with the “civilized nations” of the West. The reformist voices of this time explicitly challenged the implicit assumption that script change would amount to a loss of national identity, pointing to the precedent of the Turkish script reform. Thus, although the main reformist arguments were “autonomous” in nature, their proponents clearly recognized that the ideological dimension of Greek orthography, in the shape of its national symbolic value, would be their main obstacle. Significantly, Latinization and phonetic spelling were implicitly equated in this reformist discourse; what is referred to below as “visual transliteration” was presumably inconceivable at this time. Latin-alphabet Greek remained a minor issue in the first post-war decades, with its appearance restricted to telegrams to or from abroad, cash register receipts, and, allegedly, early broadcasts by EMY, the national weather report service.11 It resurfaced with the emergence of the internet in 8. Cf. the articles in Filintas (1980) and Zachos-Papazachariou (1999). Wikipedia (2006) points out a wider tendency for “script to follow creed” in the Balkans, which also encompasses the use of the Greek script for the Turkish language: Clogg (1999). 9. Cf. Coulmas (1996: 130) 10. See documentation in the volume Fwnhtik† Graf† (‘Phonetic writing’), which comprises essays by linguists and intellectuals published between 1929 and 1931 in the journals NËa Est–a and Prwtopor–a (Filindas et al. 1980). 11. Cf. Zavras (n.d.), Wikipedia (2006).

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the late 1960s. The early internet operated on the seven-bit ASCII character encoding set (first published in 1967), which provided for the encoding of 128 characters based on the English alphabet, and therefore excluded the representation of languages with non-Latin script.12 “Greeklish” was “reinvented” in these early internet days, perhaps among Greek-speaking students and researchers at Universities in the USA. To judge from sporadic references in mailing lists and on websites, it was apparently already in use in “Arpanet,” the computer network that preceded the internet; the “visual” transliteration scheme with its peculiar letter-to-number correspondences seems to have been an innovation of that time. Latinization was presumably the only option available to the few Greekspeaking internet users, in Greece or abroad, throughout the 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the gradual development of the unicode character-encoding standard has made the representation of symbols from a wide variety of writing systems possible on computer screens, and during the 1990s, as a result, the use of Greek script on the internet became an increasing technical possibility. However, its actual availability to individual users was still limited by their access to hard- and software facilities. This gap between technical possibility and individual availability led to the persistence of LAG as the lowest common denominator throughout the 1990s. In an e-mail survey I conducted in 1999,13 sixty-nine percent of residents in Greece and eighty percent of residents abroad reported using LAG in more than half their e-mails. Data from that period suggest that LAG was used for a variety of public purposes in Greece, such as commercial newsletters and even Dean’s announcements: (2)

H Sygklhtos sthn ar. [000/000] synedriash ths, apofasise na sas parakalesei na enhmerwsete ta melh DEP tou Tmhmatos sas oti, basei ths isxyousas nomo8esias, den einai nomimh h ana8esh autodynamou didaktikou ergou se metaptyxiakous foithtes ‘h ypokatastash tous apo tous en logw foithtes sta didaktika tous ka8hkonta. (University circular mail, 1998) “In its nr. [000/000] meeting, the Senate decided to ask you to inform members of staff in your department that on the basis of current legislation, the assignment of independent teaching to postgraduate students or the substitution of staff by such students for teaching duties is not allowed.”

12. Information on computer-related terms such as Unicode, ASCII and Arpanet is provided by the respective Wikipedia entries, see keywords Romanization; ISO 8859–7; Transliteration of Greek on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. 13. See Androutsopoulos (2000).

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While such usage is probably extinct by now, “Greeklish” is still technically necessary in a number of settings abroad, such as university or internet caf´e computers where Greek fonts are unavailable. In contexts of transnational communication, such as mailing lists with worldwide-dispersed members, “Greeklish” has ensured, and still does ensure, that even the few users without access to the Greek script will be able to participate. In sum, even though an increasing number of Greek internet users had access to the Greek script by the late 1990s, LAG was so firmly established among early adopters of computer-mediated communication that it was referred to as the ‘old writing method’ (see example [1]). One might suspect that it was in this transitional period, in which both scripts were available to an increasing number of users, that symbolic values of LAG such as the “code of the internet” or the “code of the e-mail” (see example [1]) were established. With the spread of computer-mediated communication (CMC) across Greek society, it was only a matter of time before “Greeklish” emerged as a matter of public discourse. In 1996, acro, a typography magazine from Thessalonica, published on its back cover this question: etsi tha grafetai i glossa mas apo do ke bros? (“Is this how our language will be written from now on?”). This anticipated a wider debate in the years to come, a debate based on the synecdochic relationship of language use in CMC to “our language” as a whole. Although press reports of “Greeklish” have been attested since 1995, they remained sporadic until the issue in January 2001 of an open letter by the Athens Academy, which warned against a possible substitution of the Greek by the Latin alphabet as a consequence of LAG use on the internet; an excerpt is given in example (3). Clearly based on an ideological approach to orthography, in which the Greek script is viewed as a paramount national symbol, the Academy open letter proclaimed a “phobia of Latinization.”14 It positioned “Greeklish” as the descendant of earlier uses under foreign rule, and constructed it, notably through religious allusion and metaphor, as a foreign threat to national identity: (3) Jewro‘me anÏsia allà kai anÏhth kàje prospàjeia na

antikatastaj† h ellhnik† graf† sto l–kno thc. [. . . ] 'Opwc kai ep– Enet∏n, Ïtan auto– sta mËrh pou kuriarqo‘san prospàjhsan na antikatast†soun sta ellhnikà ke–mena touc ellhniko‘c qarakt†rec, Ëtsi kai t∏ra ja antistajo‘me, kal∏ntac Ïlouc touc sunËllhnec na antidràsoun gia thn prÏrriza exafànish twn an–erwn aut∏n sqed–wn. (Open letter by the Athens Academy, 2001) 14. Cf. Moschonas (2004).

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“We consider unholy, but also senseless, any attempt to replace the Greek script in its own birth-place. . . Just as during Venetian rule, when the rulers attempted to replace the Greek alphabet in Greek texts, we will resist now too, calling on all fellow Greeks to respond and ensure that these unholy plans are destroyed, root and branch.” The Academy statement sparked a lively public debate, which displayed all the signs of a “moral panic,” with a rapid build-up of public concern and a minor issue identified as a threat to a community’s values.15 Aspects of this debate are critically examined by Koutsogiannis and Mitsikopoulou who identify three main trends in a corpus of fifty-six newspaper articles.16 The “retrospective trend,” developed in more than half of their corpus, aligns itself with the phobia of Latinization that the Academy open letter evoked. Equating LAG with a supposed national threat, it draws on metaphors of military attack on the Greek language, and metaphors of resistance to that attack. The “prospective trend” challenges this line of thought and adopts a positive stance towards technology, by, for instance, discussing the software problems that led to the use of Greeklish. It also includes traces of a sociolinguistic discourse, by identifying Greeklish as a “new jargon” or “language variety.” The ‘resistive trend’ combines the technology-friendly discourse of the prospective trend with a linguistic critique of globalization, thereby foregrounding the promotion of linguistic diversity in the information age. Koutsogiannis and Mitsikopoulou suggest that these trends are reminiscent of past debates on the Greek “language issue”: the retrospective trend is reminiscent of ideas once used in support of katharevousa, whereas the prospective and resistive trends echo ideas used in support of demotic.17 Even though “Greeklish” is not an issue of great concern in the Greek media at present, its use still persists, despite official protestations to the contrary.

3. Computer-mediated digraphia Digraphia is defined as the use of two different scripts for the representation of the same language.18 Although the term is reminiscent of diglos15. Moschonas (2004). 16. Cf. Koutsogiannis and Mitsikopoulou (2003). 17. Koutsogiannis and Mitsikopoulou (2003). 18. Cf. Grivelet (2001b), Coulmas (1996: 129–130; 2003, 231–234), Unseth (2005: 36–37).

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sia,19 theoretical attempts to deduce features of digraphia from diglossia are fraught with difficulties. For instance, while the scripts involved in a digraphic situation will usually display a functional distribution to different societal domains, they are not necessarily stratified in terms of prestige in a collectively accepted way. It is therefore more useful to treat diglossia and digraphia as conceptually unrelated, and to elaborate the notion of digraphia based on inductive examinations of particular digraphic situations.20 Specialist discussions of digraphia do not focus on CMC, but refer to it as a side issue (notably in the case of Chinese).21 Nevertheless, the notion is used in passing by Tseliga with respect to “Greeklish” and discussed in more detail by Palfreyman and al Khalil with respect to “ASCII-ized Arabic.”22 Building on these observations, I propose that “Greeklish” be examined as an instance of computer-mediated digraphia, broadly defined as the simultaneous use of native and Latin script for the same language in computer-mediated communication. As the preceding discussion has shown, Greek has witnessed instances of digraphia in the past. As is the case for other languages with a non-Latin script, certain uses of digraphia have been institutionalized by the Modern Greek state for purposes of international communication (with road signs and passports the most obvious examples). However, what is peculiar to computer-mediated digraphia is the active use of Latin-alphabet Greek by considerable portions of the population in conjunction with an even wider passive awareness. Internet penetration in Greece reached one million users in 2000, and in 2005 an estimated 3,800,000 users (33.7 per cent of the population).23 We may therefore assume that the majority of the younger population are actively or passively familiar with “Greeklish,” not least because of its continuous presence on web discussion boards. Media reports, meanwhile, have spread this awareness to many non-internet users. Within CMC, Greek/Latin digraphia is generally restricted to contexts of computer-mediated interaction.24 These might be further specified in terms of residency and communication technologies. Latin-alphabet Greek 19. See Romaine (1995: ch. 2) for a comprehensive discussion of diglossia and Li (2000) for a collection of influential early papers 20. Cf. Grivelet (2001b), Coulmas (1996, 2003). 21. Cf. papers in Grivelet (2001a). 22. Cf. Tseliga (forthcoming), Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003). 23. Cf. http://www.internetworldstats.com/eu/gr.htm, accessed on 22 February 2007. 24. LAG is generally not used for edited content (weblogs, websites), except as an emblem of IRC culture (e.g., on irczone.gr).

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is widely used in transnational exchanges, both within the Greek diaspora and between Greece and abroad. For instance, it is the default choice in a number of diaspora mailing lists, newsgroups, and discussion boards that I am personally aware of, be it due to technical constraints or to other reasons such as convenience, convention, audience considerations, or literacy competence.25 Within Greece, LAG is used by default, owing to technical constraints, in internet Relay Chat (a separate environment that preceded the web), and within Instant Messenger systems.26 However, it is optional in web-based chat environments and on discussion boards. In sum, although LAG has a functional specialization with respect to the native Greek script in that it affects only one particular area of written language (CMC: or, more specifically, computer-mediated interaction as opposed to edited website content), there is a lack of domain exclusivity, as native and Latin script are both used in the same environments. However, the domain specialization of LAG does not rule out its occasional appearance in off-line public discourse directed at a Greek audience. This resonates with findings by Palfreyman and al Khalil who note the occasional use of “ASCII-ized Arabic” in private off-line literacy practices.27 I suggest that such “domain transgression” may be understood as metaphorical “scriptswitching,” in which LAG evokes symbolic values of CMC, such as future orientation, technological competence, and an international outlook, outside its “proper” domain. Two examples from the turn of the century will illustrate this point. The first is the headline of a bank advert in the form of an e-mail address: [email protected] (that is, “[email protected],” geniki being the bank’s name). Script choice is embedded here in genre choice: the advertisement headline appropriates the e-mail format, which inevitably comes in Latin-alphabet Greek. Both genre and script transfer the connotations of technological competence and future orientation to the advertised bank. The second example comes from a restaurant review in a lifestyle magazine. It includes a script-switch not only for the English word Wallpaper, but for parts of the Greek text as well (italicized in the translation): Oi Ajhna–oi Ëginan pol–tec tou Cosmou. Trone sto Kreas, pou touc jum–zei thn (an)aisjhtik† tou Wallpaper (“Athenians 25. These issues must be examined separately for each environment. For instance, technical constraints still hold true for a transnational mailing list for Greek draft evaders; but in discussion boards for second-generation Greeks in Germany (see Androutsopoulos, forthcoming) LAG is the default choice, even though it is technically possible to use the Greek script. 26. Cf. Wikipedia (2006). 27. Cf. Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003).

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have become citizens of the World. They dine at Kreas, which reminds them of the (non) aesthetics of Wallpaper”). The switch is locally motivated by the restaurant’s own choice of the Latin script for a common Greek word (Kreas, ‘meat’) and contextualizes, perhaps not without a certain irony, the restaurant’s supposed cosmopolitan character. In both examples, the cultural semantics of script choice is strengthened by lexical choice (“future,” “citizens of the world”). These examples suggest that the awareness of LAG in Greek society is so widespread that media discourse may occasionally exploit its symbolic potential for various purposes. Interestingly, both examples draw not on the “orthographic” transliteration that is the true innovation of the Greek-speaking web, but on a more traditional “phonetic” representation. It is transliteration schemes we now turn to.

4. Spelling variation in Latin-alphabet Greek: schemes, styles, norms, and attitudes Spelling variation is the most noticeable linguistic feature of Latin-alphabet Greek.28 This is independently confirmed by Palfreyman and al Khalil who point out that “‘ASCI-ized’ ‘orthographies’ do not typically have the consistency characteristic of other orthographic systems.”29 Against the backdrop of the preceding discussion, we might say that “Greeklish” is lacking in consistency, because it is neither acquired through the normative mechanisms of the educational system nor controlled by norm-enforcing authorities. Greekto-Latin transliteration standards do exist, of course, notably the ISO/ELOT standard, as well as a variety of philological transliteration schemes.30 However, none of them is taught in primary or secondary education.

4.1.

Data

We turn now to vernacular responses to the transliteration problem.31 The findings reported below are based on research that was carried out from 1997–2000, involving three sources of data. First, a small, non-systematic 28. Cf. Androutsopoulos (1998). 29. Cf. Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003: 12). 30. See table 1 as well as Coulmas (1996; 2003) and Zikmund (1996). 31. This section draws on findings previously published in Greek (Androutsopoulos 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001) and published for the first time in English here.

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sample of e-mails from various sources was examined in order to assess the range of transliteration variation and to reconstruct transliteration schemes. Secondly, a case study of personal e-mails by six individuals examined the relationship between transliteration schemes, transliteration styles, and socioprofessional milieus. Thirdly, an e-mail questionnaire was sent in early 1999 to various mailing lists and individual users. The questionnaire was returned by seventy-six participants (thirty-one female, forty-five male), who were almost equally divided between residents of Greece (51 percent) and abroad (49 percent). In terms of age, 30 percent of the respondents were under 24, 42 percent between 25 and 34, and 28 percent were over 35. In terms of occupation, the sample included university students, language professionals such as translators and journalists, linguists and other university staff, IT professionals, and members of other occupations. Most respondents were members of four mailing lists: thirteen belonged to GreekWeb, twelve to EEXI (“Hellenic Association of Internet Users”; N = 12), fourteen to Hellas, and sixteen to a mailing list for Greek students at King’s College London. Members of GreekWeb and EEXI were mostly residents of Greece, whereas Hellas attracted a diasporic audience. To these were added five staff members of the English Department at the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, and a miscellaneous remainder group of sixteen individual respondents. The first part of the questionnaire included questions on the use and evaluation of LAG. In the second part, respondents were presented with two Latin-alphabet variants of a Greek sentence and asked to estimate which one they would expect to receive from different sorts of interlocutors. The third part consisted of a transliteration task, in which respondents were asked to translate into Greek four English sentences which were constructed in such a way that their expected Greek versions included letters that in practice engender several alternative Latin spellings.32 Premised on the assumption that users would follow the transliteration style they used in everyday practice, this task elicited a controlled, self-initiated sample of “Greeklish” spelling that can be analyzed in a language variation framework. More specifically, Greek graphemes that receive two or more alternative Latin realizations are 32. The sentences, with their expected Greek equivalents, are: (1) “I love my wife Eleni like my own life” (“Agap∏ th guna–ka mou thn ElËnh san thn –dia mou th zw†”), (2) “I will go there next week” (“Ja pàw eke– thn epÏmenh ebdomàda”), (3) “Yesterday I woke up very early” (“Qjec x‘pnhsa pol‘ nwr–c”), (4) “Sorry, I forgot his address” (“Sngn∏mmh, xËqasa th die‘juns† tou”). In the Greek versions, omega occurs e.g., in the words agap∏, Ïpwc, zw†, pàw, nwr–c, sugn∏mmh; eta and upsilon occur in e.g. x‘pnhsa, die‘junsh; theta in ja, die‘junsh, qjec; and so on.

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considered to be linguistic variables; for instance, the Greek grapheme omega may be represented by any of the Latin graphemes , , or .33 These alternatives are not divided into standard and vernacular variants, as would be the case in traditional variationist sociolinguistics, but grouped together in the transliteration schemes presented below. This procedure allows us to examine the relationship between transliteration schemes and individual transliteration styles, as well as the relationship of these styles to users’ demographic characteristics and their responses concerning language attitudes in the questionnaire.

4.2. Transliteration schemes At first glance, Latin-alphabet Greek is extremely heterogeneous. While thirteen graphemes of the Greek script are always transliterated with a single Latin grapheme in my data, the remaining graphemes (including digraphs and diphthongs) receive two, three or even more Latin equivalents.34 Some of these correspond to official or academic transliteration standards; others are missing from these standards, yet they are widespread in vernacular practice; still others are rare or idiosyncratic. The heterogeneity of transliteration practice becomes obvious with particular words that are “difficult” by the standards of Greek orthography. For example, the transliteration task elicited twenty-three different Latin-alphabet versions of the word die‘junsh (‘address’), which differed in the representation of the Greek graphemes , , , and . Only three of these were employed by seven or more users (diefthinsi, diey8ynsh, dieuthinsi), while thirteen versions appeared only once each, including forms such as dieu0unsh, dieu8uvsn, dievthinsi and dief8hnsh. The case of die‘junsh is indicative of the popular belief that Latinalphabet Greek has “no rules” and that people transliterate “as they please.” However, my findings suggest that notwithstanding any individual inconsistencies, users tend towards either a “phonetic” or an “orthographic” transliteration scheme, which can be reconstructed on the basis of inductive generalization and by taking into account users’ metalinguistic awareness. Table 1 33. By convention, orthographic representations are enclosed in angle brackets < >; phonemic representations are enclosed in slashes / /. Greek graphemes are also represented by their Latin names. 34. These are three vowels ; eight consonants, ; six digraphs ; and the diphthongs . The invariant graphemes are .

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Table 1. Transliteration schemes, illustrated by a grapheme selection. “Greeklish” transliteration Greek grapheme

Phonemic value

ISO/ELOT standard

phonetic

orthographic keyboard based

visual

h

/i/

i

i

h

n

u

/i/

y

i

y

u

ei, oi

/i/

ei, oi

i

ei, oi

ei, oi

w

/o/

o

o

v

w

ou

/u/

ou

u

oy

ou

b

/v/

v

v

b

b

j

/th/

th

th

u

8, 0, 9

x

/ks/

x

x

j

3

q

/x/

ch

ch, h

x

x

displays the schemes, illustrated by a selection of Greek graphemes, and adds the ISO/ELOT standard for reference.35 Examples (4–6) provide a typical instantiation of each scheme:36 (4)

Phonetic Transliteration Ta siberasmata tou vivliou dialioun tin paramorfomeni ikona pou epikrati simera se merida akadimaikon i opii sindeoun tin epifilaktiki stasi ton Arheon Ellinon apenanti sto erota me tous sihronous provlimatismous mas shetika me to sex, ton erota ke tin ikogenia (newsletter, 1998).

(5)

Keyboard-Based Transliteration Oi Kybernografoi, poy dianyoyn ton deytero kyklo ekdoshs toys, einaipleon h apolyth phgh lifestyle plhroforishs sto Internet (. . . ) to periodiko einai diathesimo dwrean, ejyphretwntas to diafhmistiko apolyto, afoy ta eksoda toy kalyptwntai plhrws apo tis diafhmiseis toy (newsletter, 1997).

35. ISO 8859-7 / ELOT-928: cf. Wikipedia (2006). 36. Translations are omitted, since the propositional content of the examples is not relevant to the discussion.

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(6) Visual Transliteration Pote dev eipa sigoura dev 8a 3ava-agapisw pote mou egw de distasa apo tnv arxn v’ arxisw Kai va pou bgeika aln8ivos kai n tuxn ntav mazi mou nr8es kai eida eutuxos v’ allazei n zwn mou (mailing list post, 1998). Phonetic transliteration is based on correspondences between Greek phonemes and Latin graphemes. It therefore includes elements of transcription,37 and inevitably results in a simplification of the historical Greek orthography. A consistent phonetic transliteration will use Latin for all six Greek graphemes representing the /i/ sound, ; it will also employ Latin for both omicron and omega, and for the digraph . By contrast, the premise of orthographic transliteration is the preservation of Greek orthography. The correspondence between the two scripts is achieved in two different ways, represented here as sub-cases of the orthographic scheme.38 In the keyboard-based scheme, users type on their keyboard as though typing in Greek script; as a result, eta becomes , xi becomes and omega becomes . The visual scheme aims at simulating the shape of Greek letters with Latin characters as closely as possible. Widespread solutions include for and the use of similar-looking numerals for letters without a visually similar Latin grapheme, e.g., for theta and for xi. These numerals are “graphemicized”: they are treated as distinctive units of visual transliteration. Less common visual variants in my data include for

pi, for nu and

for rho (see also example [6]). Thus a comprehensive visual transliteration eventually amounts to a radical restructuring of the inherited graph-to-graph correspondences between the Greek and the Latin script. While the phonetic scheme is closer to conventional transliteration standards and offers readability to non-native or even non-speakers of Greek, it still involves a new orthography that must be learned separately. By contrast, 37. I maintain a distinction between transcription as a scientific procedure for the written representation of spoken discourse and transliteration as the conversion of graphemes from one script to another: cf. Coulmas (2003: 31). 38. Other researchers favor a tripartite classification, e.g., sound-, glyph- and keyboard-based (Zavras n.d.) or positional, visual, and phonetic transliteration (Dimoliatis 2000). I treat keyboard-based and visual transliteration as sub-cases of the orthographic scheme because they both aim at retaining the Greek orthography, and because the realization of a purely visual scheme seems quite rare in practice; a keyboard-based style with some additional visual equivalents is much more common.

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both sub-cases of orthographic transliteration radically diverge from conventional transliteration standards. They are entirely dependent on the native script for decoding and are therefore unreadable without prior knowledge of Greek orthography or keyboard layout: compare phonetic zoi, keyboardbased zvh, and visual zwh or zwn, for the word zw† /zo’i/ ‘life’. Keyboardbased transliteration is the most convenient from a user’s perspective, but occasionally results in word-forms that are neither phonetically accurate nor visually similar: thus xanjÏc (‘blond’) is rendered as . Visual transliteration offers a maximum of iconicity, though at the expense of convenient key correspondences. And while the keyboard-based scheme provides a fixed set of graphemic correspondences, the visual scheme promotes individual linguistic creativity and allows for a large number of variants, as engaged users seek ever better visual equivalents. For instance, in early 2006 I came across a hitherto unnoticed variant for upper-case pi

, formed from a double Latin : thus for Parjen∏n ‘Parthenon’. If we arrange these schemes across a “globalness/localness” continuum,39 phonetic transliteration is clearly the “globally oriented” solution, while visual transliteration has the most distinctive “local feel.”

4.3.

From schemes to styles

In the absence of institutional acquisition and control of transliteration norms, the relationship between schemes and individual practice is not clear-cut, because transliteration schemes are orientation models that allow for internal variation. For example, under a phonetic orientation, individual variation may occur through the use of certain homophone digraphs which encode grammatical distinctions.40 Visually oriented users, again, differ in terms of how radically they restructure the traditional script correspondences: the spellings , and , for instance, are all based on the same visual logic. Other users operate on a keyboard-based scheme, thereby adding variation between a few visual equivalents. Even so, transliteration schemes remain determinative for individual practice. The evidence for this is both “etic” (available through a linguistic reconstruction of users’ preferences) and “emic” (available through the users’ own awareness). Emic evidence is provided by questionnaire comments such as examples (7–10). The authors of examples (7) and (8) point out that they try to imitate 39. Cf. Koutsogiannis and Mitsikopoulou (2003). 40. For instance, as plural masculine determiner or noun marker, or as third-person, present-indicative marker.

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the historic orthography of Greek or to follow an “orthographic” and not an “auditory” representation. By contrast, the authors of examples (9) and (10) declare they are following “the sound” and not “the look.” Example (10) reveals an awareness of Greek-to-Latin grapheme correspondences in the phonetic scheme, and points out the fact that transliteration schemes are acquired informally:41 (7) Akolou8w to “susthma” pou blepete th stigmh auth, prospa8wntas na mimh8w oso ginetai kalutera thn ellhnikh istorikh or8ografia!

(8)

(9)

“I follow the ‘system’ you are looking at right now, trying to imitate historic Hellenic orthography as well as possible!” prospa8o na akoloy8o thn kata to dynato pisth or8ografikh kai oxi akoystikh apodosh. “I try to follow the orthographic and not the auditory rendering as faithfully as possible.” Vasika grafo simfona me to pos akougonte ta ellinika stin aggliki. Den kitao toso to na miazoun i lexis stis 2 glosses optikos.

“I basically write according to how Greek sounds in English. I am not so much concerned about the words being visually similar in the two languages.” (10) Xmmm nai, xrhsimopoio kapoio sistima alla epeidi to ematha. . . grafontas, mou einai diskolo na to perigrapso me rules. Pantos: – to psi einai ’ps’ kai to theta ’th’ (k.o.k.) – akolouthoume tous ixous (fthoggous?) – DEN akolouthoume to "pos fainetai" opos aftoi pou grafoun to theta me ’8’ kai to omega me ’w’ – h orthgrafia aplopoieitai. . . ligo (isa isa gia na diabazetai pio efkola to keimeno. . . px ta omega sinithos ginontai omikron) “Hm, yes, I do use a system, but because I learnt it. . . by writing, it is difficult for me to describe it with rules. At any rate: – Psi is ‘ps’ and theta is ‘th’ (etc.) – We follow the sounds (phthongs?) – We do NOT follow ‘what it looks like’ like those who write theta as ‘8’ and omega as ‘w’ 41. Example (9) indicates another source of transliteration variance not discussed in this paper, i.e., a user’s second language. For example, for the Greek voiced dental fricative (delta) is used only by speakers whose second language is English.

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– Orthography is simplified. . . a bit (just to make the text easier to read. . . e.g. omega is usually turned into omicron)” Further evidence for the practical relevance of transliteration schemes is provided by frequency analyses based on the questionnaire’s transliteration task. In a completely random situation, every single spelling alternative for a given Greek grapheme would have the same chance of appearing. Table 2 suggests that this is not the case.The numerous Latin variants are not equally important in actual usage: eta and omega have two main variants each, which make up more than eighty-five percent of the respective total, while other variants such as visual for eta and keyboard-based for omega are quite rare, as is inconsistent transliteration of a grapheme by the same user (see variants separated by a slash in table 2). Theta has one main variant, , followed by the numeral and then other numerals with smaller frequency. Upsilon has three main competing variants and a number of less frequent alternatives. Table 2. Latin variants for four Greek graphemes (based on transliteration task). H %

W

%

J

%

Y

%

i

45.7

o

48.6

th

62.9

Y

35.7

h 41.4

w

47.1

8

22.9

I

24.3

n

v

1.4

0

5.7

U

22.9

o/w

1.4

Q,q

2.9

i/y

10

o/v

.4

other*

5.6

u/y

5.7

i/u/y

1.4

4.3

i/h 8.6

* Four variants with a frequency of 1.4 % each, partly distinguishing between upper and lower case: , , ,

Moreover, spellings from the same scheme systematically occur together in practice. Table 3 displays the frequency of such co-occurrence between the Latin variants of a Greek grapheme. The cross-tabulation of variants for omega and eta suggests that most users who prefer a phonetic transliteration of eta also do so for omega, and vice versa. More than 84 percent of occurs together with ; a similar frequency holds good for and ; but combinations of and occur much less often. In practice, then, people write Agapo tin Eleni (phonetic) or Agapw thn Elenh (orthographic) but hardly Agapw tin Eleni. The cross-tabulation of omega and theta yields

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a similar picture. Most people who choose for theta also use for omega. Those who choose the numeral for theta tend to combine it with for omega, and all other numerals for theta are combined only with in the data: Table 3. Combinatory occurrence of variants (based on transliteration task)*. Ω*Η

Ω

o w

Ω*Θ

N % N %

H i 27 84.4 5 15.6

h 2 6.9 24 82.8

Ω

o w

N % N %

Θ th 31 70.5 12 27.3

8 2 12.5 13 81.3

0

q

9

−

−

−

4 2 100 100

1 100

* Excluding : and : as well as intrapersonal variation.

The transliteration of Greek graphemes such as omega, eta, and xi, emerges from this analysis as a key diagnostic feature for a user’s preferred transliteration scheme: a preference for for will probably coincide with , and for xi will probably occur together with other visual variants. But graphemes such as and are less useful “predictors,” because their most frequent Latin variants occur in both predominantly phonetic and predominantly visual transliteration styles.

4.4.

From styles to local norms

The discussion so far suggests that individual transliteration styles display scheme-based consistency without categorically excluding scheme mixing and idiosyncrasy. However, this tells us little about inter-user similarities; individual regularity does not by itself amount to societal homogeneity. In fact, one could argue that such homogeneity is by definition impossible in the absence of institutionally transmitted and controlled orthographic norms. However, such a view cannot explain, for example, the spread and popularity of visual transliteration, which must be seen as part of an implicit norm when used in institutional e-mails such as example (2). The emergence of vernacular transliteration norms is illuminated by the sociolinguistic notion of focusing, originally developed by Le Page and specifically applied to orthography by Sebba.42 Focusing refers to the pro42. Cf. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985), Sebba (2003; in press).

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cess by which a community of speakers “orient” towards a linguistic norm. Focusing is the effect of individual “acts of identity”: speakers adopt a certain way of using language to the extent that they identify with a group, a leader, or a point of view. The social prerequisites for focusing include regular interaction with the members of the target group and support from educational institutions and the mass media. Its linguistic outcome is a reduction of variability: the range of linguistic variation that is used and tolerated by the speakers is reduced. Importantly, focusing does not imply standardization; in other words, the norm acknowledged by a community is not necessarily a standard language variety nor, in our case, a standard orthography. Focused non-standard norms are quite possible in theory and in practice.43 Applying the notion of focusing to “Greeklish” suggests that transliteration norms will emerge not at the level of the Greek internet-user population as a whole, but in particular social networks. My findings suggest that such “local” transliteration focusing may develop in both socio-professional groups and “online communities” – meaning by that phrase networks of computer-mediated communication that are formed around a common interest or cause. A small sample of personal e-mails was used to examine the transliteration styles of members of two distinct professional groups, linguists, and media professionals.44 The data consists of e-mails by three female linguists and three male media professionals. Despite the obvious limitations of this sample in terms of size and intervening social variables, the findings (see table 4) are instructive with respect to the relationship between transliteration schemes and individual practice: Table 4. Individual transliteration styles in two groups of users. female linguists male media professionals A B C A B C

w h ei u g q

o i i i gh / y kh / h

o i ei i g ch

o i i i gh ch / x

w h, i ei y g x

o h, i i y, i g x

w, o i ei y g x

Reading example:All three linguists transliterate the grapheme as . Media professional A transliterates as , B as , and C uses both and . 43. Cf. Sebba (2003). 44. Cf. Androutsopoulos (1998).

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Although no two users spell identically, each group displays an orientation towards a particular scheme and a family resemblance between its members’ usage. The linguists clearly follow a phonetic scheme. In vowels, they all (with one exception) simplify Greek graphemes for the /i/ sound to and use for omega. In consonants, two out of three choose different Latin equivalents for Greek and in order to represent allophones (separated by slash in table 4).45 Media professionals follow an orthographic scheme, although there is more inconsistency in their spelling. They all choose the same variants for chi and gamma , and two out of the three use visual equivalents for vowels. The second example is taken from the transliteration task. Table 5 charts the individual choices of fifty-seven users for five graphemes. The columns on the left show phonetically oriented transliterations, those on the right visually oriented transliterations. The label at the beginning of each row identifies the relevant user group. On the left, there is a quite consistent occurrence of variants for omega, eta, and theta, with some variation for xi and chi. The right side displays an equally consistent occurrence of variants for omega, eta, and chi, with some variation for the other two graphemes. More than half of these users prefer a numeral for theta and somewhat less than half for xi as well. Three users towards the bottom of the right side (04.HE to 66.RE) use the “radical” visual variant for eta. The last few rows on both sides, separated from the main block by dotted lines, might be classified as “exceptions,” in the shape of combinations of phonetic and orthographic variants. At the bottom left, three users add a to their otherwise phonetic style, and one user (28.EX) combines and with visual variants. At the bottom right are placed two visual transliterators who select an for eta, and one keyboard-style transliterator. However, these cases are few, compared to the users who follow a scheme more consistently:

45. For example, linguist A transliterates as for the glide (e.g. in Yanni) and as for the voiced velar fricative (e.g., aghia, ligha). For , linguist C uses for its allophonic realization as a voiceless palatal fricative [¸c] (e.g., echo, mechri), and for the voiceless velar fricative [x] before front vowel (e.g., xereto).

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Table 5. Transliteration styles of 57 users (based on transliteration task). User W

H

J

X

X

User

W

H

J

X

X

61.RE o 06.HE o 49.KC o 50.KC o 56.AU o 59.AU o 75.RE o 76.RE o 46.KC o 47.KC o 53.KC o 57.AU o 15.GW o 22.GW o 25.GW o 35.EX o 48.KC o 63.RE o 64.RE o 65.RE o 68.RE o 24.GW o 38.EX o 72.RE o — — 41.KC w 42.KC w 58.AU w — — 28.EX o

i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i/h i/h i/h — i i i — i/h

th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th — th th th — 8

x x x x x x x x ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks ks — ks ks ks — 3

ch h h h h h h h h h h h x x x x x x x x x x x x — x x x — x

51.KC 31.EX 20.GW 26.GW 34.EX 55.KC 70.RE 18.GW 13.HE 21.GW 43.KC 45.KC 52.KC 07.HE 12.HE 02.HE 03.HE 05.HE 40.KC 62.RE 09.HE 14.HE 10.HE 04.HE 69.RE 66.RE — 74.RE 01.HE — 37.EX

w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w — w w — v

h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h n n n — i i — h

th th th th th th th th 8 8 8 8 8 q q 8 8 8 8 8 0 0 9 0 0 8 — 8 8 — u

x x ks ks ks ks ks kc ks ks ks ks ks ks ks 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 — 3 x — j

x ch x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x — x x — x

Keys to user groups: AU = Staff members of English Department of AUTH; EX = EEXI (Greek Internet Users Association) mailing list; GW= GreekWeb mailing list; HE = Hellas mailing list; KC = Greek students at King’s College London mailing list; RE = other responses.

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On this basis, we may now examine whether members of the same user group transliterate in a similar way. In fact, this is not the case for members of GreekWeb, EEXI, and the King’s College mailing list. However, three out of four English Department staff members are situated on the lefthand side, and most members of the Hellas mailing list display impressively similar transliteration styles: eleven out of twelve Hellas members charted here have a clear visual orientation (the exception is located at the bottom right). Overall, 70 percent of Hellas members transliterate theta with a numeral, the mean value of this choice in the sample being just 30 percent; 92 percent transliterate omega with (sample mean value: 47 percent), and 75 percent select for eta (sample mean value: 41 percent). Seven Hellas members use a characteristic grapheme combination, which turns out to be a sort of “trademark” for this group: for omega, for eta, a numeral for theta, for xi, and for chi. Questionnaire comments suggest that participants are quite aware of this consistency. It is only Hellas members who, when asked whether they follow a particular “transliteration system,” pointed to group norms, as in examples (11) and (12): (11) PROSPA8W NA XRHSIPOIW TOYS XARAKTHRES POY XRHSIMOPOIOYN H PLEIOPSHFIATWNAN8RWPWN POY GRAFOYN S’ AYTH TH LISTA (03.HE) “I try to use the characters used by the majority of people who contribute to this list.” (12) ena mallon koino systhma opws exei diamorfw0ei sthn Hellas, me kana-dyo prwsopikes diafores (14.HE) “a rather common system as shaped at Hellas, with a couple of personal peculiarities.” These findings lend support to the hypothesis that transliteration norms of limited range may emerge as individuals who regularly interact within a professional or a “virtual” community, and who wish to identify with that community, adjust their spelling to the community’s prevailing style. Among professional groups that regularly use e-mail, adopting a particular transliteration style may become part of the group’s professional habitus or, notably in the linguists’ case, may reflect such a habitus. The case of Hellas suggests that focusing may occur even in the absence of off-line interaction. The identification of users with this long-standing on-line community leads to a convergence of their spelling styles, which is analytically evident by their clustering. The fact that individual transliteration styles are not completely

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identical is no contradiction. As normative sanctions are suspended, users create idiosyncratic variants without giving up their common orientation.

4.5. Attitudes, aesthetics, and activism The awareness of focusing by the members of an online community is just one aspect of internet users’ practice-based knowledge about Latin-alphabet Greek. This knowledge, which may also include the distinction of different transliteration schemes as well as the historical predecessors of “Greeklish,” is evident in the metalinguistic discourse that unfolds in private and public settings of computer-mediated interaction. This discourse presumably existed long before “Greeklish” became a media issue in the late 1990s and, not surprisingly, differs from the mass media agenda on the subject in important respects. Fragments of this practice-based knowledge and discourse were elicited in individual correspondence with experienced internet users as well as through the questionnaire, which included seven attitudinal statements on “Greeklish” with a binary “yes/no” response option. The findings suggest a predominantly pragmatic stance on the part of the users, and contradict the assumptions behind the “moral panic” of that time.46 In particular, 82 percent of users agree with the statement that “Greeklish” is “just an instrument”; 67 percent consider it a “necessary evil”; 53 percent agree it is “ugly, not elegant”; but only 24 percent view “Greeklish” as a “problem” or “threat” to the Greek language. Moreover, 28 percent of respondents believe “Greeklish” is “difficult to read,” and 46 percent consider it “difficult to write.” Both the reported reading and writing difficulties and the perception of “Greeklish” as a “problem or threat” rise with age, the latter ranging from only 14 percent among those less than 24 year-olds to 30 percent for the 35–44, and 50 percent for the 45–54 age group. Responses also vary by gender, with 40 percent of female users responding that “Greeklish” is “ugly,” as opposed to 60 percent of male users, and 17 percent of female users endorsing the “threat” statement, as opposed to 28 percent of male respondents. Questionnaire data and subsequent correspondence with selected respondents suggest that the preference for a particular transliteration scheme affects users’ aesthetic evaluations as well as their occasional linguistic activism. Thus some visual transliterators called phonetic Greeklish “anglicized” (angloprepi) or “misspelt” (anorthografa) – a critique that reveals how lay notions of orthography go beyond script choice. Some phonetic 46. This is discussed in detail in Androutsopoulos (2000).

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transliterators accused the visual transliterators of a “vain attempt” to replicate Greek orthography, while one of them called visual Greeklish “monstrous” (teratomorfa). Lay orthographic activism by phonetic transliterators tends to follow an “autonomous” approach to Latinized spelling, while that of visual transliterators favors an “ideological” approach. For instance, some visual transliterators clearly attached an aesthetic value to attempts to maximize the visual similarity of “Greeklish” to its Greek model. One user provided me with an example of what he judged to be a “beautiful” (omorfi) transliteration (example [13]). Another user provided a complete transliteration scheme created by a friend of his (example [14]), which he called To pio prosegmevo kai omorfo optiko protupo pou exw dei (‘the most careful and beautiful visual standard I have ever seen’). Both examples include a number of rare visual variants, including for lower case pi

, the numeral for capital pi

, Latin

for rho and for lower case nu. The inherent dilemma of such visual schemes is overtly expressed in the commentary: as their potential users would have to learn a number of unusual grapheme matches, the cost of their “beauty” is a loss of processing ease. (13) As npoc8ecw ki’ egw oti ta teleutaia duo xpovia nou ekava Xpictougevva cthv Qeccalovikh ta mova naidia nou hp8av va mas nouv ta kallavta htav npocfugonoula, kopitcia cuvh8ws, ano thv Gewpgia; h mhtepa mou, gevvhmevh h idia kovta cta Bopeioavatolika napalia ths Mauphs Qalaccas, ecneuce va “enalh8eucei” thv katagwgh tous . . . kai egw thv dikia ths :-) “Let me add that, the last two years, I spent Christmas in Thessaloniki; the only kids who came to sing me the Christmas songs were refugees, mostly girls, from Georgia; my mother, who was born near the NorthEastern coast of the Black sea, was quick to “verify” their origin. . . and I verified hers :-)” (14) ABGDEZH0IKLMN3O5PSTYFX4Wabgdezh8iklmvjonpctufxyws Prosnlwsn stnv optikn omoiotnta, ola ta kefalaia diaforetika apo ta mikra, diakrisn sigma (“c”) kai sigma telikou (“s”)! Duskolo omws va to ma8ei kai va to suvn8isei kaveis, gi’ auto, av kai to ektimw, exw suvn8isei se eva pio “sumbatiko” optiko sustnma. “Focus on visual similarity; all capitals are different from small letters, distinction between sigma (‘c’) and final sigma (‘s’)! It is, however, difficult to learn and get used to; therefore, although I appreciate it, I have got used to a more ‘conventional’ visual system.”

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By contrast, phonetic transliterators who actively engaged in the “Greeklish” discourse at the time of my survey resisted the “chaos” and “confusion” of visual transliteration and proposed ways to improve the efficiency of LAG as a communication system. A case in point is Spyros M. who circulated his views though mailing lists and personal e-mails. To the teratomorfa greeklish he opposed his own logiki kai sugkrotimeni proseggisi pou sevetai tis rizes tis glossas mas (“logical and organized approach that respects the roots of our language”), in the form of a transliteration scheme he called “Inter-Greek,” which was basically a slightly modified version of the ISO/ELOT standard. A second case of “autonomous” orthographic activism is an academic (though not a linguist) who used a university Computer Centre newsletter to propagate his views.47 He criticized the “deformation” of Greek by visual transliteration, which he considered to be a practice “without principles,” riddled with the “inherited tyranny of the image of the letter.” To this he opposed a phonemically based transliteration scheme. While neither of these proposals has had any wider impact, the fact remains that attitudes towards “Greeklish” at the turn of the century were structured along a distinction that passed completely unnoticed in the “moral panic” of that time.

5. “Greeklish” revisited: digraphic literacy and discourse on contemporary web discussion boards In the public debate that followed the Academy of Athens statement in 2001, the then Minister of Education, P. Efthymiou, was quoted as saying that “Greeklish” was now a thing of the past, because Greek internet users were able to use the characters of the Greek language.48 The Minister’s statement reflects an “autonomous” view of orthography, one based on the tacit assumption that the mere existence of a technological solution must by itself lead to the disappearance of script variation. Yet more than five years later, literacy practices in Greek cyberspace do not quite confirm that prediction. A cursory examination of about fifteen Greek web discussion forums in the spring of 2006 lends up-to-date support for the persistence of computer-mediated digraphia. In a nutshell, LAG is present on discussion forums with constituencies as diverse as military personnel, online gamers, e-chat culture, guitar players,

47. Cf. Dimoliatis (2000). 48. Cf. Maronitis (2001).

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hip-hoppers, and the leftist scene.49 Its typical pattern of occurrence is in mixed-script discussion threads, in which some entries come in Greek script and others in Latin. Latin-alphabet posts generally seem less frequent than Greek-alphabet, though this varies by forum. Many users do not use LAG at all, some use it consistently, and others alternate between scripts across posts. Script-switching within a post is quite rare. Notable examples include quotations of media content in the Greek script, the user’s commentary being in “Greeklish,” and metalinguistic discussions of script choice. Moreover, the script choice of the initial post of a thread does not seem to determine the script choice of subsequent posts, nor is script choice used as a contextualization device in the manner of code-switching (for instance, script-switching as a resource for underscoring disagreement to previous posts); an exception to this is once again debates on script choice. Whether these usage patterns are different today from those at the turn of the century is impossible to determine without detailed diachronic comparisons that go beyond the scope of this paper and are, moreover, difficult to carry out, given that most contemporary Greek web discussion forums did not even exist at the turn of the century, and a large proportion of their members, now in their late teens and early twenties, were not yet online. What does seem to have changed, however, is overt evaluations of and policies directed against LAG. Wikipedia suggests that in 2004 “a hostile movement against Greeklish” was formed on some Greek discussion boards, and a web search for the phrase Ïqi Greeklish (parakal∏) “no Greeklish (please)” indicates that the “movement” has spread to other forums since then.50 To be sure, the Greek web landscape is in a state of flux in terms of script policy and choice. While an explicit ban on “Greeklish” accompanies its thorough absence on some boards, its declared prohibition does not restrict its use on others; on still other boards, LAG produces no overt commentary. But my overall impression is that LAG is increasingly stigmatized among internet users themselves, an impression supported by the observation that using 49. Instances of “Greeklish” were attested on 14 April 2006 on the following discussion boards, randomly selected from the in.gr directory and/or the Greek Google: e-steki.com; remalia.com; forums.gr; greekarmy.net; apn.gr; kithara.gr; irczone.gr; hiphop.gr; athens.indymedia.org. No “Greeklish” was found on gameplanet.gr, or e-magazino.gr. 50. Cf. Wikipedia (2006). A Google search for the phrase OQI Greeklish parakal∏ yielded 111 entries from eight different boards, including awmn.net and adsl.gr, both mentioned in the Wikipedia article, as well as e-pcmag.gr and gameplanet.gr. A search for OQI Greeklish yielded a larger number of entries, including the discussion thread that is examined in this section.

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LAG “for business purposes of business communication is considered as a lack of ability or respect, by some.”51 To illustrate these points, a lengthy thread from a musicians’ discussion board (http://forum.kithara.gr) will be examined in more detail. Entitled Ellhnikà kai Ïqi greeklish! (“Greek not greeklish!”), it extends over more than two years (January 2004 to May 2006) and comprises more than forty printed pages. These figures are telling with respect to the relevance of the topic, which is also underscored by the fact that the discussion thread is linked on the forum’s front page. Contributions to this thread offer ample evidence that “Greeklish” never ceased being in use, or being an issue;52 they illustrate a wide range of arguments against and for “Greeklish”; they reveal that its symbolic value as “code of the internet” is still endorsed by some users who resist attempts to ban Latin-alphabet posts. Here, I shall limit the discussion to views for and against “Greeklish,” and use the distinction between “autonomous” and “ideological” approaches to orthography to sub-classify these views. Some arguments on both sides are instrumental (processing- or technology-related), others are aesthetically driven or identity-related. The most common instrumental objection to “Greeklish” is readability: people complain it is hard to read, while some even claim they do not read Latin-alphabet posts at all. Others point out that Latinization impedes keyword search and that there is no necessity for “Greeklish” whatsoever, since the board is completely localized. The technology-related counter-argument for Greeklish – technical necessity – comes only from users who log in from abroad, and is overtly respected as such. A more commonly shared view, which is less an explicit argument for “Greeklish” than a guess on the part of its opponents, is that “Greeklish” is easier to type. This view, which is yet another parallel to “ASCII-ized” Arabic, challenges my survey findings from the turn of the century, but confirms Tseliga’s finding that “Greeklish is considered more convenient, faster, easier and less demanding than Greek.”53 The counter-argument to this, repeatedly put forward by users who claim to have used “Greeklish” in the past, is that Greek orthography skills can be improved by continuous practice. 51. Wikipedia (2006). 52. For instance, some participants frame their contribution with comments such as: To klassiko problhma olwn twn Forum (“the classic problem on all forums”), Palio to jema alla panta epikairo. Kai pantwc gia thn wra aluto (“Old topic but always timely, and still unsolved”), or Se ola ta forum, to idio zhthma (“Same old issue on all forums”). 53. Cf. Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003: 23), Tseliga (forthcoming: 17).

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At the “ideological” end of the debate, arguments against Greeklish resonate with public discourse at the turn of the century. Some foreground aesthetic concerns, for instance by considering LAG mia morf† kakopo–hshc thc gl∏ssac (“a form of mistreatment of the language”). Others endorse an essential, timeless relationship between language and script: h

ellhnik† gl∏ssa ftiàqthke me ellhnikÏ alfàbhto kai autÏ prËpei na qrhsimopoio‘me (“the Greek language came into being with the Greek alphabet and this is the one we should be using”). Still others appeal to national pride: L–gh uperhfàneia gia thn gl∏ssa mac!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (“Some pride in our language!!!!!!!!!!!!!”). Even though these statements are not unanimously shared, it seems that the “nationalization” of script choice in public discourse has had an impact on the language ideology of younger, more recent CMC users. Ideological arguments for “Greeklish,” clearly in the minority in this thread, emphasize its medium-related symbolic value. In example (15), the writer points out that his preference for “Greeklish” is not instrumentally motivated (by speed of typing) but originates in his long internet experience. In a subsequent post, the same writer claims that using “Greeklish” is enas tropos ekdhlwshs ths diaforetikothtas ths proswpikothtas tou ka8enos (“a way of expressing individuality”), a claim that is strongly rejected by others. In example (16), the board’s administrator draws on script-switching as a resource to challenge this view: (15) den to kanw apo antidrash, apo synh8eia, h taxythta . . . alla epeidh mou fainetai pio computer-related. osoi asxolountai arketa xronia me tous H/Y 8a katalaboun ti ennow . . . gia na synopsisw, gia mena internet ⇒ Greeklish “I am not doing it as a reaction, because I am used to it or for its speed . . . but because it seems more computer-related. Those who have been using computers for several years will understand what I mean . . . To summarize, to me internet ⇒ Greeklish” (16) To oti ta greeklish den e–nai pia l‘sh anàgkhc allà ‡qoun g–nei trÏpoc Ëkfrashc, den to fantazÏmoun. . . |30r0 & g0 |\|@ E|