„Standartinė kalba?“

ALDONAS PUPKIS STANDARD LANGUAGE? In 2016, the online scholarly journal Lietuvių kalba (www.lietuviukalba.lt) published an article by Irena Smetonienė, Antanas Smetona, and Audrius Valotka entitled “On the term standard language” (hereafter: Smetonienė et al. 2016). The article raises the question “whether it would be appropriate to start using the term standard language rather than common language” (p. 1). Since the article’s conclusions summarize that “we must use the term standard language” (emphasis mine. – A. P.), it is worth examining more closely why, and on what arguments, a rather revolutionary decision is being proposed for Lithuanian linguistic terminology. The article’s introduction explains why this question is being raised. The authors consider the external reasons arising from communication with foreign scholars to be the most important: supposedly, we have begun to misunderstand one another because of terms that have not been discussed in our linguistic scholarship (their concepts and terminological synonymy). The authors also give specific examples of terms that, in their view, have not been discussed (and presumably cause these misunderstandings): how we understand the terms loanword and foreign word, neologism, new word and neologism; how we explain the relationship between language policy and language planning1; whether, when discussing morphology, it is better to use the terms marker or marker; and what to do about the competing terms bureaucratic, technical and administrative style in stylistics. The authors also indicate the direction of usage they favor: “[t]here is an increasing tendency to choose an international rather than a Lithuanian term, because this makes it easier to communicate with scholars from other countries” (Smetonienė et al.: 2016: 1). They claim the situation is similar with the terms common and standard language. In the authors’ view, “the term standard language better reflects the normative character and official status of a particular variety of language, as well as a consistent and systematic understanding of the language system and the application of the results of that understanding in language standardization and language policy processes” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 1). Regarding the latter terms—common and standard language—the argument is as follows: “Clearly, without changing the content, any term can easily be replaced by another (this is only a matter of agreement and expediency 1 It is difficult to understand the reasoning behind including the relationship between language policy and language planning among the examples of terms that have not been discussed: one of the co-authors of the article in question recently published a detailed article (see Valotka 2015) on the relationships between the content of those concepts. BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 2 question), <...>, [and] international practice shows that a local term remains local and causes problems when translated into other languages” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 1). The authors also try to identify a “difference in content, manifested in the naming of different stages in language development” between the two terms. They also consider it an important argument that common language, according to the authors, is translated in scholarly works and documents as the English common language, yet it reflects “an early phase in the development of a standard language, which has not yet reached the modern-language stage” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 2); this, then, would be the pre-codification stage. However, at least as regards terms used in scholarly works, this claim is wholly unfounded (see the table). TABLE. Data on the use (translation) of the terms common language, standard language in the keywords sections of the online Lituanistika database2 Lithuanian keyword English translation of keyword Number of occurrences 1. common language standard language 1503 2. common language common language 64 3. standard language literary language 45 4. standard language standard language 56 On the other hand, if we translate standard language as standard language, its relationship to common language will remain unclear. So, without much deliberation but manipulating the claims in another paper (Cizikaitė 2002), the authors write on p. 2 that standard language / common language denotes the pre-codification phase of a language, although Dalia Cizikaitė argues that it is precisely common language, that is, common language, that refers to that pre-codification phase. This is evident from the quotations from both articles given below. 2 Viewed June 1–4, 2017. 3 This figure does not include nearly 20 instances in which only standard language is mentioned, with no English equivalent for the term either among the keywords or in the abstracts (here and elsewhere, the calculations may contain an insignificant margin of error). 4 The term occurs inconsistently, and it is not always clear who entered it into the database (for example, the keywords of articles published in Jonas Klimavičius’s Terminology (2000) and Arnoldas Piročkinas’s Native Word (2004) are not listed at all; other articles were published in Poland or in publications little known in Lithuania’s academic world). 5 The terms are used incidentally and are not systematic (cf. footnote 4). 6 Among them are also the keywords standard (common) language listed in an article published in Giedrius Subačius’s 2002 collection Res Balticae <...>. Another article by Subačius, published in the journal Metmenys in 2004, is not included in the Lituanistics database; its title is phrased similarly: “Chronology of the History of Standard (Common) Languages” (vol. 84, pp. 97–115). BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 3 (1) Smetonienė et al. 2016: 2: However, if we translated standard language as Standard language, the problem of its relationship to common language would still remain. Standard language / common language denotes a “language phase that could be called pre-codification. It is one of the early stages in the development of a standard language, when there are not yet generally recognized works (grammars, dictionaries) that record uniform language codes (norms) (Cizikaitė 2002: 274; this should have been p. 275. – A. P.). (2) Cizikaitė 2002: 274–275: The term common language (a common language), unlike literary and national language <...> is quite rare. <...> common language reflected an early phase of standard-language development, one that had not yet reached the stage of modern language development, but already differed clearly from a dialect <...>. Such a language phase could be called pre-codification. It is one of the early stages in the development of a standard language, when there are not yet generally recognized works (grammars, dictionaries) that record uniform language codes (norms). By interpreting others’ claims so inaccurately and presenting the authors with falsified data, they prompt the conclusion that “in presenting ourselves to the world in this way, we look rather strange (in fact, backward)” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 2). Once the acrobatics of these claims have been disentangled, it is still not easy to make sense of the jumble of ideas, summed up in the paragraph’s final word: we are backward. So it is necessary to clarify in what respect we are backward—is it because we do not know how to translate, because we confuse terms, or for some other reason? The first section of the article (for some reason called a part, although sections are mentioned later), “Terminology in Other Countries,” recounts a paper published almost fifteen years earlier in an academic journal by literary scholar (not linguist) Cizikaitė, on the history of the English term standard language and its equivalents in Lithuanian (Cizikaitė 2002: 273–284). One can see why the authors of the article under review first look to other English-speaking countries, not directly but through a single intermediary, rather than to the legacy of their own linguistic history. On the other hand, they could have investigated for themselves the content and definitions of the terms in question not only in the languages mentioned by Cizikaitė, but also in those of other countries (what is particularly lacking is an analysis of the development of the German term, since it could have had—and did have!—a considerable, perhaps even decisive, influence on the terminology in this area of the Lithuanian language, as well as an overview of terms in Estonian, Finnish, Norwegian, Hungarian, and other languages). Cizikaitė’s article is not in any way exceptional, but it is worth briefly reviewing, since the authors mentioned rely on it as their sole source. BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 4 One cannot disagree with the author’s claim that the term standard language outcompeted earlier terms in English (Cizikaitė 2002: 280); it is increasingly being adopted in the practice of other European languages as well, and in many places it is becoming the principal term. One may also add another author’s claims that “the term standard language represents ‘a specific Western concept disseminated by a cultural tradition’” (Birštonaitė 2002: 266), and that “[t]he concepts of national or standard languages <...> are wholly unsuited to the linguistic situation of the former British Empire” (Birštonaitė 2002: 265). The conclusions of Dalia Cizikaitė’s article are formulated rather inconsistently. Discussing the Lithuanian term in this field, the author states that “standard language, unlike the English common language, is a fully-fledged term” (Cizikaitė 2002: 280); its “definitions contain almost all the most important and the same semes as those of English standard language: national, codified, standard, common, having written and spoken forms, exemplary, and used in many spheres. Thus, what is called standard English in English linguistics is designated in Lithuanian linguistics by the term standard language. It was best suited to describe a new stage in the development of the Lithuanian language and a new conception of language that took shape at the beginning of the nineteenth century” (Cizikaitė 2002: 281). Yet the final conclusion states that “[t]he terms written language, standard language, and literary language are too narrow to designate the codified and normative Lithuanian language. The term standard language is particularly inconvenient when comparing the histories of several languages” (Cizikaitė 2002: 281–282). The second section of the article under review surveys the changes in the terms under discussion in Lithuania. The survey is brief, incomplete, and selective. At times one gets the impression that sophistic tricks have been employed: only those cases useful to the authors are discussed, and the survey of these changes ends in 1980 (more precisely, in 1972). First of all, it is surprising that the article entirely overlooks one of the most comprehensive accounts of the development of this term, by Prof. Arnoldas Piročkinas (1970), which notes that the term written language may first have been used by Frydrichas Kuršaitis (I would add that the term Schriftsprache also occurs in Augusto Šleicher’s writings on Lithuanian. – A. P.), rather than by Jonas Jablonskis, as the article under review might lead one to believe. Moreover, in a scholarly work, when mentioning Jablonskis, the authors should have indicated where he established that choice and the deliberate distinction from spoken language. On the other hand, by “forgetting” Piročkinas’s article, they omit much information about the emergence of the term in question, changes in its form, and other terms; ultimately, we also learn nothing of the article’s author Piročkinas’s position. BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 5 After briefly mentioning the term written language without elaborating on its content, the article discusses at considerable length the term standard language, coined by Pranas Skardžius in 1927 and introduced into usage. Here an attempt is made to rely, as it were, on a distinctive-feature methodology. Both in quoting and paraphrasing Skardžius, the authors place particular emphasis on the feature of c o m m o n n e s s characteristic of this language variety: “...for the term’s creator, it was important to emphasize the commonality of the language—as an aspect that unites the state <...>. Indeed, at the time it was the best choice; it accorded with the political and historical spirit of Lithuania at that time” (Smetonienė ir kt. 2016: 6; emphasis mine. – A. P.). The discussion then turns to the Russian term literary language, which replaced the term = translated from Russian. – A. P.) literary language in 1950. It is said to have been no better (presumably than standard language, though no reason is given), and to have had no tradition in Lithuania (although it and its equivalents had been in use for as long as 100 years; see Piročkinas 1970: 31). Neither Lithuanian linguists nor those living abroad were satisfied with this senseless change: Pranas Skardžius and Petras Jonikas had written about it more than once, and Lithuanian linguists had also actively discussed it (I am unaware of the latter claim in the literature—the discussions began only nearly 20 years later). The term standard language began to be revived in 1969, and the article indicates where it was first used. Not all linguists agreed, and several discussion articles were published. Of these, the view of Jonas Palionis (1975) is particularly noteworthy: beyond the term’s gaining currency, what matters greatly is that “when translating the Lithuanian term standard language into other languages, especially those of the Soviet peoples, one should either use the equivalents of those peoples’ term literary language, or explain in each case the concept denoted by the term standard language” (Palionis 1975: 32). The authors of the article under discussion acknowledge that Palionis’s words have become the leitmotif of their article: “it is impossible to use the term standard language properly in other languages—though now these are Western languages” (Smetonienė ir kt. 2016: 7). But despite the discussions (= and ideological and bureaucratic resistance. – A. P.) the term standard language took hold, and this was “a great ideological victory, demonstrating the Lithuanian linguists’ backbone” (Smetonienė ir kt. 2016: 7; emphasis mine. – A. P.). The restored term later acquired “other semes” (the claim by Jonikas (1972: 1) is cited that standard language “may be called a type of cultural and civilizational language intended for the whole nation”), but, in Jonikas’s view, the term also had shortcomings: it was supposedly difficult to define the concept of “commonality” more precisely, since the speech of individual families, villages, and parishes also has this commonality. Aleksas Girdenis (1973: 45) defined standard language as the language of a nation’s public life, and the “publicness seme” was also incorporated into the Encyclopedia of the Lithuanian Language (1999, 2008). Yet here the conclusion is immediately drawn that such an expansion of the term’s content (as if it were some kind of BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 6 exception in terminological practice) and its convergence with the globally spreading term standard language “is not good, because in other countries standard language is viewed as a subsequent (? – A. P.) stage; therefore, we too should consider this issue bearing in mind that the Lithuanian language does not stand still either, that standard language was also a certain period in its development, but that period, as in other countries, has ended” (Smetonienė ir kt. 2016: 8). The third section is entitled “Why should the term standard language be used in Lithuania today?” There we should find a clear and logical explanation of why the established, traditional term standard language cannot be supplemented with new semes; why the development of all, or at least many (as the article’s context may suggest), languages has already reached (or entered) a new period of development; how this period should be characterized; why the old stage in the development of standard language has ended or is ending in English, the languages of post-Soviet and other postcolonial countries, and the languages of developing states; and what this means. Thus, a watershed in language development (indeed, a revolution) must have occurred worldwide, noticed, perhaps for the first time in Lithuania, by the authors of the article under discussion (or perhaps they borrowed the idea from Cizikaitė (2002), or from Giedrius Subačius’s 2002 article, although they did not include the latter in their bibliography), who decided that we too should not lag behind these processes and should therefore keep pace with English (the British imperial tradition) and adopt the term that has become widely established there. What is more, this new term would also reflect “consistent and systematic understanding of the language system and the application of that understanding in language standardization and language policy processes” (Smetonienė ir kt. 2016: 1). This is indeed a novel idea: that a change in terminology could fundamentally stimulate research in an entire branch of linguistics, since, it would seem, the term standard language is incapable of doing so. Unfortunately, the article offers no fuller explanations on this or any other matter. It is simply full of arguments that are not easy to understand and are expressed mostly through quotations from various sources or authors; therefore, all that remains is to offer a few observations arising from these arguments and try to assess the proposal made by the article’s authors. It seemed more than strange to read in the article under review the claim that, as early as 1980, I myself, in my Foundations of Language Culture, had brought the concept of the term standard language closer to the term standard language already in use in Europe at the time (does this mean that I had already discerned the beginning of this new stage in the development of Lithuanian standard language?). What is more, in that book the authors also discover my proposal concerning the use of the term standard language in Lithuania (Smetonienė ir kt. 2016: 8; emphasis mine. – A. P.). Having read about such discoveries, it is necessary to recall the exact formulation of my idea in Foundations of Language Culture: “Standard language differs from other language varieties (dialects, jargons, sociolects) primarily in that it is codified, more or less elaborated BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 7 system. This distinguishing feature is manifested in codification, that is, the existence of fixed rules. Other characteristics of the standard language cited by various authors may not be absolute, may be characteristic of not all languages or not all epochs” (Pupkis 1980: 7). Of the several terms used to name this language variety, which have one shortcoming or another, “[t]he term standard language would best indicate the specific nature of the standard language (standard is defined in the Dictionary of International Words as ‘a norm, an example’; the word can also mean ‘a template, a stencil’—the standard language is not a templated, stencil-like language), but it has no tradition whatsoever in Lithuanian linguistics” (Pupkis 1980: 8). Thus I am quite unable to discern any “bringing closer” or “suggestion” here. In discussing the terms for the standard language and its characteristics that I cited, the authors rearrange all of this in the manner of a loose paraphrase and claim that at the time I distinguished four features of the standard language: 1) a normalized, more or less elaborated linguistic system; 2) codification—fixed rules; 3) written form and monologue; 4) its most important function—communication. But in the book these features (characteristics) are arranged in a somewhat different order, and they are not quite as the authors have modeled them. As already mentioned, the distinctive interpretation of other authors’ ideas is one of this article’s characteristics, prompting doubts about many of its other claims and conclusions as well. For instance, as one reads on, it may seem that I spoke about the standard language and its term only that one time, and that this was my final opinion. But my views, like those of more than one other linguist, are not set in concrete and can change over time. Why, for example, is there not even a word about my characterization of the standard language (the concept and the term) in Studies in Language Culture (2005)? There, it seems to me, without departing very far from the 1980 conception, the discussion moves forward in a certain sense, stating that the standard language is not only a consciously elaborated but also a historically formed variety of the national language, used to meet the needs of communication among the entire nation, thought, and political, economic, and cultural life, and to express national identity and representation (Pupkis 2005: 30). Here, I would venture to say, the functions of the standard language are brought into sharper focus, among which the functions of national identity and representation are especially important. The authors evidently did not consider it necessary to study the books and articles of other Lithuanian linguists on the standard language—its term, characteristics, definitions, formation, history, and so forth. The article does not even mention the books of the most prominent historians of the Lithuanian language, Jonas Palionis and Zigmas Zinkevičius, the terms used in them, their periodization, and so forth, nor the earlier articles by Pranas Kniūkšta and Albertas Rosinas, or the works from the beginning of this century by Jonas Klimavičius, Rita Miliūnaitė, and others, which address, in one way or another, many questions related to the article under discussion. BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 8 Returning to the issue of the commonality of the standard language—a characteristic that the authors repeatedly emphasize as supposedly not entirely clear to them (it should be recalled that Cizikaitė 2002: 280 regards commonality as a social, rather than linguistic, feature of the standard language)—one may recall that they claim to have found people questioning it even in earlier times (recall the doubts of Jonikas mentioned above, although he (1972: 1) unhesitatingly called the standard language “a type of cultural and civilizational language intended for the entire nation”). This “commonality,” its cultural and civilizational character, correlates directly with Girdenis’s (2000: 316) notion of the “public nature” of the standard language (“The standard (literary) language is the language of the nation’s public life (writing, school, literature, mass media)”). The same point is emphasized in my Studies in Language Culture (2005). And here, although indirectly, apparently apart from the quotations cited above, the authors state what they are really seeking to achieve: “Indeed, we create traditions ourselves, and today there is no longer any need or point in emphasizing commonality alone or listing the spheres in which the norm-governed language must be used” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 8), and they propose emphasizing the characteristics I mentioned in 1980, in which the commonality of the standard language is not singled out as its most important characteristic. But if we regard commonality as a linguistic rather than a social phenomenon, we must acknowledge that the very essence of the standard language, as Giedrius Subačius writes (2003: 63), is based on the idea of the integration of language forms, that is, their convergence and standardization, which are needed to consolidate the society or community that uses that language. Thus, commonality is not some defect or contentless construct, but an idea that brings society together and unites it—an idea wholly at odds nowadays with the widely disseminated neoliberal principles of disintegration. Continuing along the path of summation, several more fundamental questions need to be addressed. First, as I mentioned, what seems most important to the authors is that, with the term standard language, we have supposedly lagged behind Western Europe, which is far advanced in the development of languages. Here, they seem to be trying to address internal needs for terminological change, but become completely confused. They claim that different terms denote different stages in language development, reflecting the quality level of those languages. Such reasoning might be logically possible, but the article leaves two essential components of the topic unexplained: 1) which stages in the development of the Lithuanian language are being discussed here, and what are their chronological boundaries; 2) how the quality of the Lithuanian language is measured (or whether it has already been measured). Nothing at all is said about the latter, not even what was meant or what the content of this claim is. BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 9 If the term standard language reflects a phase of standard language that has not yet reached the modern-language stage, then where should the boundary of that modern language be drawn? From when can normalized Lithuanian be considered modern—from the time of Aušra, from the time of Varpas? But perhaps it was from the beginning of the restored independence of Lithuania in 1918, when the language became the state language and functional language styles began to develop rapidly? But then the term standard language did not yet exist. Perhaps, then, from 1927, when the term standard language appeared? Or is the pre-Jablonskis era meant, or even an earlier one (in which the term standard language is nowhere to be found)?7 From another perspective, historical dates are being confused: the exact time when this new stage of the standard language began (in Western Europe and Lithuania) should have been specified, given that in 1980 I had already, as the authors write, brought the conception of the term standard language in Fundamentals of Language Culture closer “to the term standard language already in use in Europe at the time” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 8)8. Thus, if the choice of term is supposed to be determined by “the language’s quality level,” who will explain what level is meant here and convince us that the terms discussed by the authors and the levels in question are not contradictory? I am convinced that this confusion would not have arisen if the authors had approached Lithuanian linguistic terminology through Lithuanian linguistic sources rather than relying first and foremost on foreign practice. In our linguistics, the terms in this field have long been established, and it would have sufficed to look at Palionis’s works, for example, for everything to have fallen into place. For instance, in the book History of the Written Language, Palionis (1995) calls the language of texts from the so-called pre-national period written language, discusses at length the formation of the Lithuanian standard written language in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and throughout the rest of the book uses only the latter term (Palionis 1995: 3–5). He also emphasizes that here, “following the earlier tradition and in view of current usage trends, the term literary language was abandoned (although, in his opinion, it is not a very bad one), and the terms written language and standard language were restored in its place. However, the latter term is used only in the sense of the written and spoken (‘standard’) language that developed from the time of Aušra and is common to the entire Lithuanian nation” (Palionis 1995: 7). Had they also read Cizikaitė’s article carefully, it would have been easy to understand that the term common language mentioned by her, translated in parentheses as “a common language,” and then explained as simply ‘any 7 Kiek anksčiau Smetonienės (2014) buvo pasakyta aiškiau: svarbiausiais standartinės kalbos (pradžios) metais laikytini 1922 m., kai Konstitucijoje lietuvių kalba paskelbta valstybine, Švietimo ministerija Jablonskio gramatiką pripažino standartu, o Kaune buvo įsteigtas universitetas. Klausimą dėl šio teiginio čia reikėtų formuluoti kitaip: ar kalbos istorijos periodizacija priklauso nuo istorinių politinių, socialinių ar kultūrinių aplinkybių, kad ir labai svarbių visuomenės gyvenime, ar nuo kokybinių ir (ar) kiekybinių pačios kalbos struktūros (sistemos) ir vartosenos pokyčių? 8 It would have been possible to draw on, or discuss, for example, the schema of the development of contemporary codified Lithuanian presented in my book Studies in Language Culture (see Pupkis 2005: 45–46). BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 10 bendra kalbá (Cizikaitė 2002: 274, 275), kuri Palionio knygoje atitinka rašomąją kalbą, bent ikijablonskinį jos laikotarpį. Second, when changing terms, one must not lose sight of adjacent terms in the field that together encompass the entire microsystem of that group. We must agree with the article’s authors that the terminology in this field (the theory and practice of the standard language) has not been fully organized or adequately discussed. But the authors distance themselves from reviewing the microsystem as a whole, leaving the work of organizing it to others. They merely conclude that “the terms *general language* and *standard language* are confused in the context of Lithuanian linguistic thought—the former implies both the national and pre-national periods in the development of the general language?—A. P.), while for some reason the latter is avoided” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 11). It should be added here that it is not avoided for some mysterious reason, but because it is in fact scarcely used; so how can these terms be confused? Thus, although the term standard language is not widely used, its introduction “would allow us to disentangle ourselves from the web of terms currently in use and being proposed” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 11). Or perhaps this very proposal is weaving that web? It turns out that this web supposedly arose because the terms currently in use are Lithuanian language, general language, state language, official language, while some are proposing that we also introduce a standardized general language, supposedly because, in the opinion of some linguists, dialects and so on also fall within the concept of general language. Such talk in a scholarly article without citing a source (especially in the latter case) is empty. Instead of considering how the terms mentioned here differ—terms that are more or less clear to most researchers and users of the general language—the authors should at least have delineated the boundaries of the microsystem under discussion. For example, if we replace general language with standard language, would it not have been worth briefly explaining what the relationship between the terms norm and standard would then be, whether we should replace norm-setting (in other words, the formation of a general language) with standardization, what its relationship to normalization would then be, and so forth (the table on p. 10 of the article tells us nothing substantive about this)? Moreover, no distinction is made between the codification of the general language and its actual use. What place would the term standard pronunciation have in this scheme? How should we assess competition among variants in usage (not only pronunciation), which would hardly be possible in a standard? There are more questions than possible answers. And the reasoning that the confusion of terms supposedly arose because the definition of the term general language conflated the national and pre-national periods in the development of the general language is, to put it mildly, worthless, since the boundaries of those periods and the essence of the terms used in them have not been clarified. By the way, BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 11 it would have been better if the authors had formulated their conclusions not out of thin air but, for example, had tried to engage with the terms I use in my book (Pupkis 2005: 30 ff.), such as generalization, codification, and so on. Changing the terms in question cannot be considered separately from issues of Lithuanian stylistics. My 1980 book already noted that the term standard language, which contains the word standard, meaning not only “norm, model” but also “template, formulaic quality,” leads to the view that the general language can be understood as a templated, formulaic language (Pupkis 1980: 8). The authors themselves quote the Russian linguist Leonid Krysin as saying that the term standard language has not taken root in Russia because of the negative connotation of the word standard, whose meaning is associated with the concepts “template” and “cliché” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 3). But perhaps the key issue here is not that, but how to connect (or not connect at all) standard language with the poetic (artistic) function of language, where clichés and standards of all kinds are signs of inferior texts of that type. Or, if we agree that such a colloquial (everyday) style exists, how then should we assess the many nonstandard elements found in it? This is therefore a much more complex question than it might seem at first glance, and we should understand that one cannot simply propose replacing one term with another without taking the broad terminological context of the field into account. Third, once neither external nor internal advantages of one term over another remain, one must resort to extralinguistic arguments. One such argument is translation. It is strange to read that other languages will use the Lithuanian term (not its translation?!) general language. As noted, during the Soviet period Palionis wrote that difficulties arose in translating the term general language into other languages, especially those of the Soviet nations (Palionis 1975: 32), whereas it is now claimed that “[t]he term general language is particularly inconvenient when comparing the histories of several languages. Of course, new terms should not be coined, since creating ex novo what already exists as a long-established model is a pointless waste of energy <...>. When necessary, one can draw on the experience of other languages (perhaps English)” (Cizikaitė 2002: 281–282). Both views lead to the pragmatics of language use—the former toward the East, the latter toward the West, in the latter case with an unmistakable attempt to pander to the English-language tradition. It is rather symptomatic that these positions, oriented in two different directions, coincide. I recall that during the Soviet period Moscow’s language policy (the work of sociolinguists, resolutions of the Tashkent conferences) energetically encouraged linguists from the Soviet nations to create as large (broad) a common stock of international words (terms) as possible for all Soviet nations (understandably, based on Russian usage), so that the Soviet nations might converge more quickly; their governments had been tasked with cultivating homo sovieticus as rapidly as possible. Now our own linguists are actively BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 12 encouraged to cultivate another group of cosmopolitan mankurts, homo liberalis, for whom international words would more readily become part of their (own-language) identity and displace as many good, traditional words of our own making as possible. It seems to me that it is not the translation of the terms in question that makes communication with foreign colleagues difficult. Rather, it is the inferiority complex that has grown into every one of our cells, and the resulting preference for humbly copying others instead of creating independently. The fact that one can manage perfectly well with Lithuanian terms is shown not only by the earlier quotations from Cizikaitė’s article but also by more than one passage in the aforementioned article by Palionis (1970). Fourth, the same author, Cizikaitė, emphasizes in her article that “[i]n the work of Lithuanian linguists, the equivalent of standard language, standard language, has not yet [as of 2002] been used” (Cizikaitė 2002: 280). Her explanations might give the impression that Subačius began introducing the English-origin term into Lithuanian9, undoubtedly under the influence of the English-speaking (American) environment. His doctoral students Cizikaitė and Birštonaitė naturally tried to respect their supervisor’s opinion whenever it was communicated to them. But that English calque, which surfaced in usage more than a decade ago, does not seem to have been widely used thereafter; only in recent years have the authors of the article under review recalled it and taken to promoting it in their writings and lectures to students. They even provide a short list of those who support their view (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 12): besides the already mentioned Subačius10 and Birštonaitė, it includes Smetonienė, Jūratė Lubienė and Dalia Pakalniškienė, Daiva Aliūkaitė, and Audrius Valotka. Scholars at Vilnius University also use the English-origin term in articles for the general public, public lectures, and discussions. They even calculated that on August 26, 2016, the search engine Google returned 1,784 instances of the term used in various cases. The number is certainly impressive, but they do not say in what sense the term is being used (perhaps also “formulaic”?). On the other hand, when there is nothing to compare it with (in this case, the term general language), such a study is no more than a crude smokescreen11. 9 Subačius himself most often uses the term general language in his articles, while standard language is used rarely, mostly in earlier articles written in America (see the Database of Lithuanian Studies). 10 See footnote 9. 11 The Google Internet search engine Google returned the following results for the phrases “general language” and “standard language”: the former was found 19,600 times, the latter 1,030 times. It should be noted that standard language is used here both in reference to other languages (e.g., Chinese) and to standards applied in information technology, as well as to the standardized nature of administrative language, that is, its formulaic quality, and so on (accessed 2017 06 19). BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 13 The authors of the article, reading these lines and hearing criticism of the newly introduced term standard language, may easily retort that Girdenis and Pupkis acted in precisely this way when, back then, they began reviving the term general language. But there are several essential differences: at that time we were reviving a prewar term condemned by the Soviets, trying to abandon the term literary language imposed by the authorities, and there was no need to create anything new, whereas the term now being introduced has no long-standing tradition. It should not be forgotten that times were entirely different then: no terms (dictionaries, grammars,...) were officially codified, whereas now, in a state governed by the rule of law, general language is enshrined as the principal and sole term in the Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania12, whose creation was also contributed to by Irena Smetonienė, then chair of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. Of all people, the former chair of the Language Commission should know the status of the term general language far better than other members of society (the term standard language is absent from that bank). It is all the more regrettable that a term that has not been considered or discussed and that runs counter to the Language Commission’s decisions has been inserted into the text of a Lithuanian-language textbook for sixth grade that it is preparing. Fifth. The State Commission of the Lithuanian Language has repeatedly declared one of the most important principles of the codification and use of general language: the stability of language norms. In this respect, general language, as a linguistic term, is one of the most stable facts of language use in Lithuanian. Moreover, it is significant as a sociocultural term (and phenomenon) as well. It is the only term used in encyclopedias published during the restored independence of Lithuania (especially the Encyclopedia of the Lithuanian Language, the Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia), in legislation, school literature and educational practice, the media, and many other contexts. It is very important that the newly proposed term standard language has no foothold whatsoever in the minds of language users. There are even linguists who have stated that, now, in the twenty-first century, general language has become universally used, although new variants of that language are supposedly emerging (Kalėdienė 2013: 22). If that were really the case, the authors of the article under discussion could (=should, ought to) at least have connected this claim to the opinion they express and not kept silent about it, but commented on it, assessed it, and perhaps tried to incorporate it into their scheme (for example, even considering whether the beginning of the twenty-first century might be regarded as the start of a new stage in the development of the Lithuanian language). 12 It is cited from the following sources: 1) Dictionary of Linguodidactic Terms / Meilutė Ramonienė, Jelena Brazauskienė, Nida Burneikaitė, Jurga Daugmaudytė, Eglė Kontutytė, Joana Pribušauskaitė. Vilnius: Vilnius University, Vilnius University Press, 2012; 2) Draft Law Amending the Law on the State Language of the Republic of Lithuania No. XP-1320(3) (accessed 2017 06 14). BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 14 As already mentioned, by advancing this proposal, the authors of the article under review are clearly disregarding the principle of stability of general-language norms, and they do not always observe it in some of their other works either (including proposals to abolish the writing of nasal letters in the roots of certain words; sharp and even insistent advocacy for the letters W, X, Q in the Lithuanian alphabet; the establishment of optional punctuation, which continues to cause confusion in schools and reverberates in the media; failure to prevent revision of the traditional system of women’s surnames, etc.). Such steps certainly do not contribute to stabilizing general-language norms; some have even seriously unsettled them and caused considerable confusion in more than one social group. This disintegration of language norms does not bring people and their communities together, but divides them. It should also be added that, in keeping with the old traditions of the Department of Lithuanian Language at Vilnius University, the most important task of its lecturers was not to announce reforms to language norms, but to write major research works on general language, of which the entire humanities community was so proud until quite recently. Sixth. Without setting myself the task of examining in detail all the claims made in the article under discussion, I wanted here to show that the work under review withstands no criticism regarding scholarly quality. It is a collection of quotations from linguists’ articles and paraphrased ideas, turned into a veritable textual hodgepodge. The omission of claims and problems raised by many other authors, manipulation of various linguistic facts and quotations, and poverty of the literature consulted point to a meager, simply superficial familiarity with the question under investigation, the exaggeration of incidental claims, an overall poverty of scholarly thinking, and other shortcomings characteristic of immature work. This resembles a simulation of scholarship rather than a well-considered treatment of the question, logically supported by arguments. Seventh, the formal aspects of the article should also be mentioned: citation, scholarly apparatus, and proofreading. First, various distortions of quotations, and especially the disregard for their typefaces, catch the eye. For example, on p. 6, in a quotation from an article by Pranas Skardžius (Skardžius 1997: 631–632), the term general language is given in ordinary roman type (italic in the original; likewise general, common, spoken, written language), whereas the words apple and straw, set in ordinary roman type in Skardžius’s text, are set in italics here. In addition, an ellipsis after the word whole has been omitted. In another quotation from Skardžius’s writings (p. 6; see Skardžius 1997: 35), words printed with letter spacing are printed without it; here, instead of the original vaidinim, the text reads vadinam. On this occasion, I cannot fail to mention the quotation given in the article from my 1980 book (see p. 8). In it BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 15 The first two words of the term standartinės kalbos are italicized in the original, but set in roman type in the quotation; the conjunction bet ‘but’ in the quotation has been replaced by tačiau ‘however.’ The typefaces used for the terms under discussion vary in the article and elsewhere. In some places, too, the quotation is not entirely exact; for example: “literary language – this is the variant considered the best (‘as the best’), used ir in literary texts” (Cizikaitė 2004: 277; emphasis mine. – A. P.) and by the authors: “a variant used in literary texts” (Smetonienė et al. 2016: 2). Other matters are not always handled properly either. For instance, the Girdenis article listed in the bibliography is entitled “Bendrinė kalba” [Standard Language], not “Bendrinė (literatūrinė) kalba” [Standard (Literary) Language]. Why are several of Skardžius’s articles cited from his Rinktinių raštų (vol. II, pp. 34 ff., 587–599, 631–632), while another, printed in the same volume (pp. 337–368), is listed in the bibliography only in its online version (perhaps because only quotations were searched for, rather than the writings themselves being studied systematically)? I had to puzzle over what the Tarybinė enciklopedija mentioned in footnote 11 was. I worked out that the reference may have been to the so-called Didžioji tarybinė enciklopedija (in Russian), but neither the edition (which one?), nor the year, volume, or page is specified. In some other footnotes (3, 5), it would have been appropriate to give the dates on which the cited materials were accessed. No attention was paid even to proofreading the authors’ own article. On p. 2, no comma is needed after the word (Queens [should be: Queen’s language); at the top of p. 10, it should read kalbos, not kabos. One wonders whether specialists in the standard language should use the colloquial word šiomkart ‘this time’ (p. 1; it is not even in DŽₑ) in scholarly work, rather than in some piece of journalism; whether they should leave the surnames Dantės [Dante] and not only Petrarkos [Petrarch] uninflected (p. 3); and whether linguists’ position should be called vieninga ‘united’, rather than vienoda, bendra, suderinta ‘uniform, common, coordinated’ (p. 7). Or perhaps this is another step toward language reform: disregarding the recommendations currently given in dictionaries and language guides. This is also suggested by a sentence in the authors’ article’s Introduction: tarptautinė praktika rodo, kad lokalus terminas ir lieka lokaliu (p. 1). Until now, that instrumental case ending was considered a serious language error, yet here it is used as if nothing were amiss. Thus, the article under discussion does not meet the requirements for scholarly articles, either in substance or in form. This naturally raises the question of how one can trust texts replete with factual inaccuracies, all kinds of distortions, and poor proofreading. Such publications also call into question the scholarly competence of this journal’s reviewers and do little to enhance the standing of the scholarly journal itself. BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204 ALDONAS PUPKIS. Standartinė kalba? | 16 LITERATŪRA Birštonaitė R. 2002: Kai kurie anglų, slovakų ir lietuvių šnekamųjų standartinių kalbų formavimosi bruožai. – Archivum Lithuanicum 4, 265–272. Cizikaitė D. 2002: Anglų kalbos terminai common language, national language, literal language, King’s language, standard language ir jų lietuviški atitikmenys. – Archivum Lithuanicum 4, 273–282. Girdenis A. 1973: Bendrinė kalba. – Mūsų kalba 3, p. 45–47. – Tas pats: Aleksas Girdenis. Kalbotyros darbai 1, 2000, 316–318. Jonikas P. 1972: Lietuvių bendrinės rašomosios kalbos kūrimasis antrojoje XIX a. pusėje. Čikaga: Pedagoginis lituanistikos institutas. Kalėdienė L. 2013: Urnėžiūtė R., Valskys V. Dvidešimtoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Gimtoji kalba 10, 21–24. Palionis J. 1975: Literatūrinė kalba, bendrinė kalba ar kaip kitaip? – Kalbos kultūra 29, 28–32. Palionis J. 1995: Lietuvių rašomosios kalbos istorija. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla. Piročkinas A. 1970: Literatūrinės kalbos terminas ir jo analogai. – Kalbos kultūra 19, 25–32. Pupkis A. 1980: Kalbos kultūros pagrindai. Vilnius: Mokslas. Pupkis A. 2005: Kalbos kultūros studijos. Vilnius: Gimtasis žodis. Skardžius P. 1997: Rinktiniai raštai 2. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. Smetonienė I. 2014: Kalbos vieta valstybių politikoje: standartinių kalbų susikūrimas. – Parlamento studijos 16. Prieiga internete: http://www.parlamentostudijos.lt/Nr16/16_kalba_2.htm. Smetonienė I., Smetona A., Valotka A. 2016: Dėl standartinės kalbos termino. – Lietuvių kalba 10. Prieiga internete: www.lietuviukalba.lt. Subačius G. 2003: Standartinė kalba – valdžios nuosavybė. – Kultūros barai 12, 63–64. Valotka A. 2015: Kalbos planavimo ir kalbos politikos terminai. – Parlamento studijos 18, 84–101. Prieiga internete: www.parlamentostudijos.lt/Nr18/files/5. Gauta 2017 06 20 ALDONAS PUPKIS [email protected] BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351–7204