Dialect
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2 The Controversy |
"Dialect" or "Language"
A dialect is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. The number of speakers, and the area itself, can be of arbitrary size. It follows that a dialect for a larger area can contain plenty of (sub-) dialects, which in turn can contain dialects of yet smaller areas, et cetera.The concept dialect is distinguished from sociolect, which is a variety of a language spoken by a certain social stratum, from standard language, which is standardized for public performance (e.g. written standard), and from jargon and slang which are characterized by differences in vocabulary (or lexicon according to linguist jargon).
Varieties, such as dialects, idiolects and sociolects, can by distinguished not only by their vocabulary, but also by differences in grammar, phonology and prosody.
There is no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of paradigms exist, which render sometimes contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference.
Language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages
- solely because they are not (or not recognized as) literary languages,
- because the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own,
- or because their language lacks prestige.
In groups where prestige standards play less important roles, "dialect" may simply be used to refer to subtle regional variations in linguistic practices that are considered mutually intelligible, playing an important role to place strangers, carrying the message of wherefrom a stranger originates (which quarter or district in a town, which village in a rural setting, or which province of a country); thus there are many apparent "dialects" of Navajo and Apache, for example, geographically widespread North American indigenous languages, by which the linguist simply means that there are many subtle variations among speakers who largely understand each other and recognize that they are each speaking "the same way" in a general sense.
Modern day linguistics knows that the status of language is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects. An opposite example is the case of the Chinese language whose variations are often considered dialects and not languages despite their mutual unintelligibility because they share a common literary standard and common body of literature.
The Controversy
The terms "dialect" and "language" mean different things to different people, even linguists. Although no criteria for distinguishing them is universally accepted, a number of paradigms exist, which yield sometimes contradictory and controversial results.Political Factors
Max Weinreich has provided this definition: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". However, this also leads to inconsistencies and controversies, as political frontiers do not neatly follow lines of linguistic usage or comprehensibility. Depending on political realities and ideologies, the classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent. English and Serbo-Croatian illustrate the point. English and Serbo-Croatian each have two major variants (British and American English, and Serbian and Croatian respectively), along with numerous lesser varieties. For political reasons, analyzing these varieties as "languages" or "dialects" yields inconsistent results: British and American English, spoken by close political and military allies, are almost universally regarded as dialects of a single language, while the speech varieties of Serbia and Croatia, bitter enemies, are now being treated by many linguists from the former Yugoslavia as distinct languages, despite differing from each other no more than do British and American English.Parallel examples abound. Macedonian, although mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and often considered to be a Bulgarian dialect, is touted by Macedonian nationalists as a language in its own right. Taiwanese nationalists make similar claims for the Taiwanese language, rather than a Mandarin dialect. In Lebanon, the right-wing Guardians of the Cedars, a fiercely nationalistic (mainly Christian) political party which opposes the country's ties to the Arab world, is agitating for "Lebanese to be recognized as a distinct language from Arabic and not merely a dialect, and has even advocated replacing the Arabic alphabet with a revival of the ancient Phoenician alphabet.
There have been cases of a variety of speech being deliberately altered to serve political purposes. In the nineteenth century, for example, Norwegian nationalists created Nynorsk from a number of selected dialects spoken in the west of the country, which had been less influenced than eastern dialects by Danish and Swedish during centuries of Danish and Swedish rule. Another example is Moldovan. No such language existed before 1945, and many non-Moldovan linguists remain sceptical about its classification. After the Soviet Union annexed the Romanian province of Bessarabia and renamed it Moldavia, Romanian a Romance language, was transposed into the Cyrillic alphabet and numerous Slavic words were imported into the language, in an attempt to weaken any sense of shared national identity with Romania. After Moldavia won its independence in 1991 (and changed its name to Moldova, it reverted to a modified Latin alphabet - as a rejection of the perceived political connotations of the Cyrillic alphabet.
