Final remarks: From diaglossia to diglossia

In post-Medieval western Europe, geographical, social and register variations per-sist in the written language as shown by research on Dutch, German and English.

Similar arguments have been put forward in studies of Danish, French, Finnish, Irish, Lithuanian, Scottish, etc. (see, among others, Meurman-Solin 2000; Martineau 2007; Nordlund 2007; Sandersen 2007; McCafferty & Amador Moreno 2012; Klippi 2013; Tamošiūnaitė 2013). The standardisation model proposed in Nevalainen &

Tieken-Boon van Ostade (2006) states that standardisation is preceded by supralo-calisation. It should be stressed that a plurality of supralocalising forms is not just an apt description of the Middle English, Middle Dutch, Middle High German etc.

periods. The multiple and flexible normative points of orientation characteristic of supralocalisation extend well into the modern period, and help explain patterns of variation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and building on Elspaß (2005), Fairman (2007a, 2007b), McColl Millar (2012), Auer (2014) and others, also in the nineteenth century. In sum, the variation found in historical sources cannot always be explained away by referring to the gradual implementation of the standard language.

Firstly, there were regional writing practices, some of which were opposite to what is usually considered standard. This means that also for post-Medieval times, we have to reckon with various instances of supralocalisation, and that the prototypically Medieval phenomenon of regional variation in the written languages existed well into modern times. As a consequence, it is unclear to what extent the supposed standard of the time was regarded as such by language users in the past.

Secondly, prescriptivists did not always agree on the preferred prescriptions and proscriptions. Moreover, normative publications were not always targeted towards the general public. The social reach of language norms was often fairly limited up until the second half of the eighteenth century, and it has been argued that the

sociolinguistic space was more complex than simply one-way traffic from prescrip-tion to usage. In fact, the effects of prescriptivism are still quite uncertain, and there is not much evidence of clearly defined influence across the board (Rutten, Vosters

& Vandenbussche 2014).

This means that it is uncertain to what extent the criteria for standard lan-guages as developed in Auer (2005, 2011) are applicable to the history of European languages. Instead, diaglossia as developed in Auer (2005, 2011) is a very useful concept to describe the varietal spectrum available to language users at a given place and time, and should be applied to language history as much as to present-day situations. Related concepts from the historical sociolinguistic research tradition are supralocalisation and intended supralocal variety, where the first refers to the course of individual variants, while the second addresses the functional aims of language users. What is crucial on the observational level is that history provides us with numerous documents set in a language that is neither dialectal nor stand-ard, a language that could therefore be characterised as intermediate, signaling a diaglossic repertoire.

Diaglossia is the keyword when describing not just sociolinguistic situations in Europe in the present, but also when looking back on the twentieth, nineteenth, eighteenth, and earlier centuries. In fact, Nevalainen (2012) argues that the rise of an English standard-like spelling between 1400 and 1600 began with various supralocal varieties, a situation that she describes as diaglossic, which only later gave way to diglossia in the sense of a single endoglossic spelling standard roofing the spoken dialects. This means that diaglossia should be extended even further back in time. If these historical periods were indeed diaglossic, the question of the interaction between supralocalised forms and/or varieties and general standard languages becomes all the more pressing. Has diaglossia ever given way to a situa-tion with a well-defined and codified standard language? The posisitua-tion taken here is that the actual sociolinguistic situation of diaglossia was provided with an extra layer, viz. the ideological layer of diglossia.

To appreciate this, it is important to acknowledge that diaglossia and supra-localisation on the one hand, and standardisation on the other, are concepts of a very different kind. Supralocalisation refers to the use of specific variants outside their region of origin. Diaglossia refers to community repertoires with variants or bundles of variants that are neither strictly dialectal nor standard. As such, supralo-calisation and diaglossia are generalisations over empirical and quantifiable results.

Standardisation, on the contrary, is an ideology, and a standard language is “an idea in the mind rather than a reality” (Milroy & Milroy 2012: 19). While the Milroys argued for this ideological view of standardisation in the context of the present-day spoken language, where “a good deal of variety is tolerated in practice” (2012: 18),

the evidence presented here suggests that the written language of the past was also not so “fixed and invariant” that it can “properly be called the standard language”

(2012: 18). This means that diaglossia may be the best description of the linguistic situation in post-Medieval times, which has given way to an ideal of standardisa-tion without, however, losing its empirical applicability. When exactly the ideal of a uniform standard language used and understood by all members of a specific community came about is an empirical question. I argue that the second half of the eighteenth century was a crucial phase. It is in this period that Dutch developed into a symbolic marker of the newly formed Dutch nation state.

As a consequence, the typological and historical development from diglossia to diaglossia (Auer 2005, 2011) should be turned upside down (Nevalainen 2012).

Diaglossia is the historical state of the written language, which became ideolog-ically accompanied and/or replaced by diglossia, more specifideolog-ically, by the ideal of a uniform standard language that reduces all other variants and varieties to non-standardness. Watts (2011: 232), analysing the British situation in the eight-eenth century, observes a similar “bipartite division of language in Britain” into polite or legitimate language on the one hand, and vulgar language on the other. It is this split of the varietal spectrum into standard and non-standard that constitutes the major metalinguistic change of the eighteenth century, resulting in the Dutch national language policy in the first decade of the nineteenth century.