KONCEPCJE NORMY JĘZYKOWEJ I KODYFIKACJI W DRUGIEJ POŁOWIE XX I NA POCZĄTKU XXI WIEKU
Concepts of the language standard and codification in the second half of the 20th century and in the early 21st century

Summary/Abstract: The author summarises the concepts of the standard and its codification which had a significant influence on the understanding of language culture at the turn of the 21st century. She finds the holistic theory of language standard and culture formulated by Halina Kurkowska in 1971, which defines the standard as a part of a language, as a component of its internal organisation rather than as an external socially imposed linguistic behaviour, the most important for the present days. The standard is shaped by the usage and it is linguists’ duty to determine and describe its content and to codify what has been sanctioned by the social linguistic convention. The author of this paper considers the identification of two levels of the language standard: the model standard and the functional (popular) standard, the most significant achievement of the Polish prescriptivism. The concepts by Danuta Buttler, Andrzej Markowski, Jan Miodek, Jadwiga Puzynina, Stanisław Gajda, Mirosław Bańko, which are discussed in this paper in detail, have all contributed to that. All researchers regard diversification of the standard as satisfaction of the needs of language users but they disagree on the concepts concerning its codification. An innovative manner of approaching the language standard at the time of the “digital breakthrough” was formulated by Katarzyna Kłosińska, who argues that the approaches to the language standard applied to date do not correspond to the essence of online communication. The researcher warns codifiers against ethnocentrism and suggests that a set of “prescriptive universals” be used for standard codification.

• Details
• Contents