Stephan Elspaß, University of Salzburg, Stephan.Elspass@plus.ac.at Bernhard Pöll, University of Salzburg, Bernhard.Poell@plus.ac.at

Between formal and informal standards. ‘Double standards’ in French, German and (Brazilian) Portuguese compared

Abstract

This article presents results from an explorative comparative study on ‘double standard’ constellations in French, German and (Brazilian) Portuguese. The concept of 'double' or even ‘multiple standards’ is based on the observation that many current standard languages are not homogeneous. Rather, the divergence of written and spoken standards, the emergence of informal standards and pluricentric/pluriareal situations have often resulted in the coexistence of different standard varieties/standard language registers. The aim of our study is to identify and discuss ‘double standard’ situations in three major languages against the background of the respective standardisation histories and current developments. Despite their different standardisation ages, ‘double standard’ constellations have emerged in all three languages, firstly, between written and spoken standard varieties, and, secondly, between different spoken registers – albeit with very different manifestations, ranging from a continuum between formal and informal registers (French) and the emergence of a ‘Neo-standard’ (with regional features) parallel to a conservative spoken standard (German) to the increasing integration of informal registers into a post-colonial standard variety (Portuguese in Brazil). In all three cases, the developments in the spoken standard can be seen as a process of demotisation. Although informal registers have become increasingly prevalent, the popular idea of a ‘best language’ remains unchallenged.

Keywords

German, French, (Brazilian) Portuguese, standardisation, destandardisation, demotisation, neo- standard, standard language ideology, double standards.

Energeia IX (2024), 166-205 ISSN 1869-4233

Résumé

Fruit d’une étude exploratoire à visée comparative, le présent article a pour objectif d’analyser l’émergence de « standards doubles » en français, en allemand et en portugais brésilien. Le postulat de « standards doubles », voire « multiples », est sous-tendu par le constat que de nombreuses langues standard modernes manquent d’homogénéité. En effet, les écarts observables entre standards parlés et standards écrits ainsi que l’émergence de standards informels et de constellations pluricentriques ont souvent abouti à la coexistence (et concurrence) de différentes variétés standard au sein de la même communauté parlante. En analysant l’histoire de leurs « bons usages » et les évolutions récentes qu’ils ont connus, nous nous appliquons à déceler des constellations à « standards doubles » dans les langues / variétés mentionnées ci-dessus. Bien que leur standardisation se soit produite à des époques différentes, de telles configurations peuvent être observées partout. L’on pourrait penser, par exemple, aux tensions entre standards écrits et standards parlés ou bien aux nombreuses situations caractérisées par la coexistence de différents registres oraux. Leur gamme va du continuum entre registres formels et informels (français) à l’intégration croissante de traits vernaculaires dans une variété post-coloniale (portugais brésilien) en passant par la naissance d’un « néo- standard » (teinté de régionalismes) à côté d’un standard parlé établi et plus conservateur (allemand). Nous montrerons entre autres que dans les trois langues / variétés à l’étude, les évolutions récentes de la langue standard parlée peuvent être appréhendées comme des cas de démotisation. Toutefois, et en dépit de l’impact grandissant des registres informels, la croyance populaire qu’il existe une variété supérieure aux autres n’est remise en cause dans aucune des trois communautés linguistiques.

Mots-clés

Allemand, français, portugais (brésilien), standardisation, déstandardisation, démotisation, néo- standard, idéologie de la langue standard, « standards doubles ».

1. ‘Double standards’ – background and aim of the comparative approach

   Against the background of recent dynamics of the concept of standardisation, in this article, we take a comparative look at the standard language situation in two Romance languages, French and Portuguese, and one Germanic language, namely German. With regard to the topic of this special issue, ‘Informal Standardisation and the Regionalisation of Language Norms’, we adopt

   the notion of ‘double standards’ suggested in the call for papers. Looking back at recent research on standardisation, various forms of double – or even multiple – standards can be identified, see the following list, which makes no claim to be exhaustive:

   
   

   1. ‘old’ and ‘new’ (or ‘neo’) standards (cf. e.g. Auer 2017; Cerruti / Vietti 2022),

   2. written and spoken standards (cf. e.g. Subačius 2001),

   3. formal and informal standards (cf. e.g. Trudgill 1999),

   4. codified and emergent standards (cf. e.g. Rutten/Vosters/Vandenbussche 2014),

   5. pluricentric and pluriareal standard languages (cf. e.g. Meer/Durgasingh in press).

   All these differentiations have in common that they question the typologically simplified view of largely homogeneous standard languages. By taking up the notion of double and/or multiple standards, we home in on more recent sociolinguistically informed standardisation research, which seeks to redefine the concept of standardisation against the background of coexisting and, in some cases, competing standard varieties.

   For a long time, the standardisation of European languages was largely driven by the standard language ideology, understood as “a metalinguistically articulated and culturally dominant belief that there is only one correct way of speaking (i.e. the standard language)”. (Swann et al. 2004: 296; after Milroy/Milroy 1999) This has led to a strict interpretation of what is defined as a standard language and which varieties should be regarded as standard varieties. Various recent developments have led to a softening of the strict concept of ‘the standard’

   –viewed from a normative perspective– or –seen from a more neutral point of view– to a redefinition of the concept of ‘the standard’, which also implies a certain expansion of what can be regarded as standard language. Several concepts and terms have been proposed to account for these developments. Following Coupland/Kristiansen (2011) and Kristiansen (2021), we use the following terminology in this article:

   Destandardisation describes a situation in which the “established standard language loses its position as the one and only ‘best language’”; “[s]uch a development would be equal to a radical weakening, and eventual abandonment, of the ‘standard [language] ideology’ itself”, as in the case of Norwegian. (Coupland/Kristiansen 2011: 28)

   Restandardisation is used for instances of “‘within-border’ changes of a more radical kind, where changes are not conceived of as a development of the existing standard, but as the addition of a new standard, intended to coexist with the old one, in the interests of particular

   social groups or social functions”, e.g. the emergence of Ebonics/African American Vernacular English as a medium of instruction in the US and standard spoken Tamil. (Kristiansen 2021: 679)

   Demotisation refers to a situation in which a new (spoken) standard emerges, while “the belief that there is, and should be, a ‘best language’ is not abandoned […], but the idea of what this ‘best language’ is, or sounds like, changes” (Coupland/Kristiansen 2011: 28), such as in the case of modern spoken Standard Danish, which developed from low-status Copenhagen speech.

   In practice, a clear differentiation between restandardisation and demotisation will be difficult, as Kristiansen (2021: 678) admits for the Danish case.

   What all these developments share is that they are preceded by changes in both language usage and developments in attitudes towards ‘the standard’.

   Developments in language usage include, for example, the emergence of new relations between dialects and standard varieties, which were described and typologised by Auer (2005, 2011) in a comprehensive overview. In some language communities, e.g. German-speaking Switzerland and Norway, the new endoglossic standard varieties emerged as varieties of writing (Auer’s type A). These written standards can sometimes, as in German-speaking Switzerland, also serve as the basis for a formal spoken standard, whereas local dialects continue to serve as the spoken everyday language (type B). In these language communities, relatively stable diglossic relationships have developed, which can lead to code-switching in communication depending on the addressee and situation. In such constellations, the validity of the standard language remains largely unchallenged.

   The situation is different in language communities in which intermediate varieties have emerged between standard and dialect as a result of convergence and advergence developments1 (cf. the tussentaal in Flanders as a prominent example). However, these intermediate varieties are often hard to distinguish from both dialects and near-standard varieties. Depending on the addressee and situation, speakers in such communities shift rather than switch between standard and dialect. In a further step of development, dialects as the prototypical spoken everyday language have often been replaced in many societies by such intermediate varieties, often also by various near-standard varieties. As a consequence, the

   
   

   ‌1 Following Auer (2011: 491), we understand ‘advergence’ as a unidirectional form of convergence towards a variety with higher overt prestige; a prominent case is ‘dialect-to-standard advergence’, in which “the most dialectal ways of speaking […] are given up by some speakers and in some situations […] in favour of more widespread, ‘regiolectal’ ones.”

   boundaries between standard and non-standard are increasingly blurring (e.g. in Danish, German in southern regions of Germany).

   Regionalisation, i.e. the emergence of regional forms of standard languages, has been identified as a further consequence of these dynamics in the standard/non-standard constellations. In the spoken language, this development seems to have been promoted by the diffusion of informal registers in the broadcast media or their ‘vernacularisation’ (cf. Auer/Spiekermann 2011: 174 for German; Coupland/Kristiansen 2011: 3-32 for Danish and English(es)). In written language, the introduction and spread of ‘social media’ and text types such as chat, SMS, WhatsApp etc. seems to be facilitating the emergence of regional forms of standard language. (cf. Androutsopoulos 2011; Bellamy 2021)

   Changing attitudes towards ‘the standard’ have contributed to a decline in the acceptance of traditional standard languages (including standard authorities) and the valorisation of alternative ways of speaking or writing. Kristiansen (2021: 673) cites Norway as a (rare) case of such destandardisation “in the sense that a previously existing and commonly shared belief in (the need for) such a standard has vanished”. Other European languages offer a different picture. Not the conviction that there is a ‘best language’ has been abandoned, but only the language users’ views of what exactly represents the use of the ‘best language’ has changed. As for recent developments in Danish and Italian, where a kind of ‘neo-standard’ has emerged in parallel to the traditional standard and is gaining increased acceptance, Kristiansen (2021: 681) prefers to refer to such ‘double standard’ situations as instances of demotisation.

   A diatopic dimension of the ‘double standard’ or ‘multiple standard’ situation comes into play when demotisation allows for a regionalisation of the standard, as seems to be the case with Dutch in the Netherlands (Grondelaers/van Hout 2011), or in the case of pluricentric or pluriareal languages. In pluricentric and pluriareal paradigms (cf. Norrby et al. 2020; Meer/Durgashing in press), older monocentric models are seen as being driven by the standard language ideology and rejected as no longer adequate. To a certain extent, the preferences for pluriareal, pluricentric or plurinational models go hand in hand with either usage-based, attitude-oriented approaches or concepts which may be superimposed by political and/or ideological considerations. (cf. for example for German Auer 2021a; Dollinger 2019; Elspaß in press; Lenz/Soukup/Koppensteiner 2022; Niehaus accepted)

   A major shortcoming of previous studies on standardisation is that they mostly focus on individual languages and, thus, hardly allow any conclusions to be drawn about overarching developments. In particular, single-language studies will not be able to capture the various forms of ‘double standards’ referred to in the call for papers of this special issue in an

   overarching theoretical and methodological approach. In an upcoming volume (Elspaß et al., accepted) we argue for a comparative approach, aiming at what Joseph (1987: 13) aptly termed “comparative standardology”. Such an approach seeks to compare the historical developments of different European standard varieties with a view to their impact on present-day representations of such standard varieties in language discourse and particularly in educational contexts. Previous efforts to work on a “comparative standardology” have been made in the field of Germanic (cf. Deumert/Vandenbussche 2003), Romance (cf. Lebsanft/Tacke 2020) and Slavic languages. (cf. Wingender 2013) However, there is a lack of recent work across language families.

   In the present exploratory study, we carry out such a cross-linguistic comparison for French, German and (Brazilian) Portuguese. The aim of our article is to identify and discuss ‘double’ and ‘multiple standards’ situations in these three ‘big’ languages. We will look for similarities and differences and attempt to find possible explanations in the light of the respective histories of standardisation and current developments. For our exploratory study, this can of course only be conducted on the basis of a very limited number of languages. The particular choice of Brazilian Portuguese (alongside German and French) is motivated by the question whether a prototypical post-colonial setting differs inherently from old world settings with respect to possible processes of destandardisation, restandardisation and demotisation (as defined above).2 Each ‘language portrait’ in Section 2 will begin with a summary of the standardisation history, drawing on Haugen’s (1966) standardisation model with its “four aspects of language development […] in taking the step from ‘dialect’ to ‘language’, from vernacular to standard”, that is “(1) selection of norm (2) codification of form (3) elaboration of function, and (4) acceptance by the community” (Haugen 1966: 933). This will form the background for analysing the current dynamics of the relevant standard language. In the second part of each case study, selected grammatical phenomena are used to examine criteria for the assignment of variants to the standard language against the background of possible processes of destandardisation, restandardisation or demotisation in these languages.

   The discussion in Section 3 will focus on the similarities and differences in the ‘double standard’ situations in the three languages and will attempt to identify key sociolinguistic factors for divergent developments. On a conceptual level, we will discuss in particular the extent to which the differentiation between restandardisation or demotisation is applicable to

   
   

   ‌2 The case of Brazilian Portuguese is prototypical in that the ex-colony gained full political independence. Thus, it is similar to Spanish in the Americas but differs sharply from French in Canada/Quebec where a change of political and linguistic domination took place during the colonial period.

   the situation in the three languages – or can be maintained at all. The article will conclude with an outlook on future work in comparative standardology.

   
   

2. ‘Double standards’ in French, German and (Brazilian) Portuguese

   
   

   1. French

      
      

      1. The emergence of a formal standard in French

         French is commonly considered to be a “communauté linguistique exigeante”, meaning that respecting standard language norms has a high priority. Without their full mastery social integration (for foreigners/migrants) and social advance (for anybody) are difficult to achieve. This particular situation has to do with nation building and the role the French language played in this process. To describe this process of standardisation, we will refer to some aspects of Haugen’s (1966) framework.

         “Selection of norm”, viz. the selection of a variety destined to be codified, began as early as the second half of the 12th century with Paris becoming the de facto capital of the French kingdom and turning into the locus of best French. Baptised francien by 19th century philologists, the central variety gained more and more ground to the detriment of other scriptae/regional varieties and eventually became French. (cf. Pöll 2020: 400s. for a more detailed description) “Codification” set in in the 16th century and focussed primarily on orthography, following the generalisation of the printing press. As is still clearly noticeable today (and makes the acquisition of French orthography painful), the etymologist current with respect to spelling prevailed, which led to a phonologically deep spelling system at least as complicated as that of English. Proposals aiming at an orthographic system based on actual pronunciation were dismissed, and no substantial reform has been realised since then.

         Whereas the geographical parameter as regards the standard was already fixed (Paris and the Ile de France region), the question whether the usage of the Palais (the royal court) or the Parlement (the law experts) should be exemplary was not resolved before the 17th century. With Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585-1650) and his Remarques sur la langue françoise (2009 [1647]) the issue was settled. According to the first director of the Académie française, the “bon

         usage” of French should rely first and foremost on the “façon de parler de la plus saine partie de la cour”3 and secondly on “les meilleurs autheurs du temps”. (Vaugelas 2009 [1647]: 68-70)

         This model, which allowed for both the group of the model speakers and the model writers to change over time, was “perverted” in the following century. (cf. Wolf 1983) Its dynamic component was eliminated, and the authors of the 17th century were turned into the sole model of good French. What is more, also the hierarchy was inverted, so that the literary language of the 17th (and later also the 18th and 19th) century became virtually the only measure of good French. The 18th century also brought about a modification of the social basis, as the members of the high nobility –in their role as normative models– were replaced by writers, philosophers and intellectuals. From that time on, the norms of spoken French have been strongly influenced by written Standard French, which contributed to the huge gap between spontaneous speech and formal French, especially when written.

         In post-Revolutionary 19th century France, the rising bourgeoisie also adopted this model, which represented a valuable cultural capital for its members, since linguistic correctness, based on the usage of the best authors, became a value of utmost importance. At that time, the indissoluble tie between language and nation, whose hallmarks were the promotion of French to official status in 1539 and the foundation of the Académie française (as a tool of the absolute monarchy’s cultural policy) in 1635, had long been fully realised. In this respect, the title of a school grammar by the Bescherelle brothers, which was widely used throughout the 19th century speaks for itself: Grammaire nationale ou Grammaire de Voltaire, de Racine, de Fénelon, de J.-J. Rousseau, de Buffon, de Bernardin de St-Pierre, de Chateaubriand, de Lamartine, et de tous les écrivains les plus distingués de la France (1835/36). The language as used by the best authors incarnates the French nation.

         The various tensions arising from a highly elitist and sophisticated normative model which was brought even to the most remote parts of France through compulsory schooling from 1881/82 onwards, are known as the “crises du français”. However, although since around the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, the relevant normative works, e.g., authoritarian dictionaries published by private publishing houses such as Larousse and Le Robert, have stopped drawing their examples from the literature alone, a substantial change did not occur. “Acceptance” (in the sense of Haugen) of this normative model is still given, not only among those who dominate it.

         
         

         ‌3 Note that Vaugelas’ wording has nothing to do with health: la plus saine partie is a word-by-word translation of Latin pars sanior, a formula from ecclestical law that refers to a specifically qualified minority. Its judgments can overrule those of a minority. (cf. Janik 1984)

      2. Modernisation of the Standard in French? or: the immunity of formal written French

         The relation between written Standard French and spontaneous spoken (or vernacular) French is sometimes described in terms of internal diglossia. (e.g. Massot 2010) Some scholars go as far as to postulate different grammars to capture this situation. (cf. Rowlett 2013) However, as far as formal and informal spoken French is concerned, the situation is probably best described by positing a continuum which includes the possibility for features coming from different points of the variation continuum to cooccur within one utterance. (cf. Gadet 1998) Spoken Standard French is characterised by the fact that even in highly formal settings features of vernacular speech can be heard. (cf. Pöll 2018) Such features may be tied to a region, such as a particular “accent” and certain lexical items, or supraregional, e.g., the reduction of word- final consonant clusters.

         The question now is whether written Standard French is on a par with spoken Standard French. Does it allow grammatical features traditionally labelled as non-standard to appear in formal written French texts, and if so, to what extent?

         Drawing on Koch/Oesterreicher (2012 1985]; passim), Dufter/Stark (2002) propose a list of features pertaining to “français de l’immédiat”, viz. French as used in settings where the symbolic distance between the speaker/writer and the listener/reader is reduced. If we limit ourselves to those which are not exclusive to the spoken medium (code phonique), the list goes as follows:

         1. Negation without ne

         2. Absence of passé simple

         3. Absence of interrogative inversion

         4. on replacing nous

         5. ça replacing cela

         6. Absence of concord with passé composé

         7. des instead of de before NPs with a preposed adjective (de bons vins)

         8. Absence of expletive il in impersonal constructions (il y a …, il faut …, etc.)

         9. Object preposing (trois fils j’ai eus)

         10. Higher frequency of futur proche (in comparison to the synthetic future tense)

         11. Loss of subjunctive after declarative verbs

         12. Left and right dislocation

             These features are potential candidates for restandardisation tendencies in formal written French. But there is no need for an abundant corpus research to show that –perhaps with the exception of (7) and (11) – no general tendency can be observed to include or accept them in the textual genres associated with this variety. For instance, if ne is omitted (1) in formal textual genres or the subtle rules for concord (6) are not respected, we are dealing with unsystematic deviations, i.e. mere parole phenomena, which are due to inattention or the overcomplexity of the rules. The passé simple is also vital (2), especially when it comes to reporting (historical) facts in the written medium, and on with the value of “nous” (4) may well appear in literary texts (cf. Charaudeau 1992: 130), but it remains essentially a “pronom de dialogue” (Berthonneau 2021: 1073), limited to spoken French and informal written texts. The same holds true for non-SVO orders: left dislocation (11) sometimes appears in the written medium, but as right dislocation (11) and object/focus fronting (9), such linearizations are generally not found in formal texts. (cf. Combettes 2021: 1931; Cappeau/Gadet 2021: 117s.)

             In sum, written Standard French in France is largely immune to the incorporation and “upgrading” of features that characterize spoken (Standard) French, be they widespread as those of the afore-mentioned list or regionally marked as the use of the passé surcomposé in some regions of France. As for the latter phenomenon, note that the attestations for this tense (with its regionally marked existential reading) discussed in the relevant literature (cf. e.g. Apothéloz 2010, Borel 2018) come mainly from spoken French or informal writing, such as Internet blogs etc.

             If a non-standard feature does appear in formal written French this is likely to be related to a problem rooted in the language system. A case in point is probably the tendency to use the imperfect indicative (instead of the subjunctive) following the conjunction bien que ‘although’. The examples given below illustrate the phenomenon:

         13. Les égyptiens sic] portaient des cheveux courts et laissaient les oreilles bien dégagées bien que certains étaient rasés et portaient les cheveux mi-longs, bouclés ou dégradés pour former une sorte de bonnet. (https://rogerpara.fr/egypte-antique/)

             ‘The Egyptians used to wear their hair short and left their ears uncovered, although some were shaven and wore their hair half-length, curled or layered to form a kind of cap.’

         14. Bien qu’il n’était pas possible de cocher plusieurs réponses dans le questionnaire Labortho, il s’avère que plusieurs orthophonistes exercent plusieurs autres activités en parallèle de l’orthophonie. (http://www.labortho.fr/etude-orthophonie-2/)

             ‘Although it was not possible to tick more than one answer in the Labortho questionnaire, it appears that many speech and language therapists carry out several other activities in addition to speech and language therapy.’

         15. La Nissan Sentra n’a jamais connu le même genre de succès continu que la Honda Civic ou la Toyota Corolla. Bien que ses ventes étaient bonnes, elle n’est jamais sortie de l’ombre créée par ses rivales japonaises. (https://www.auto123.com/fr/actualites/occasion-nissan-sentra-1995-1999/54771/)

             ‘The Nissan Sentra never enjoyed the same kind of ongoing success as the Honda Civic or the Toyota Corolla. Although its sales were good, it never emerged from the shadow created by its Japanese rivals.’

             Taking as an example the verb être in the 3rd person singular, bien que allows for the following forms (according to the rules of traditional normative grammar):

         16. bien qu’il soit (subjonctif present: expresses simultaneity with respect to a present event in the main clause)

         17. bien qu’il ait été (subjonctif passé: expresses anteriority with respect to a present or past event)

         18. bien qu’il fût (imparfait du subjonctif: expresses simultaneity with respect to a past event)

             
             

             The problem is that fût is an archaic form which appears only in formulaic expressions in present-day French (e.g., ne fût-ce que ‘if it were not’), so that soit has taken over the function of expressing simultaneity with present and past events. However, this form is strongly associated with the present. To express simultaneity in the past, subjonctif passé is no option, because it has perfective aspect, so that it is hard to get a simultaneity reading.

             Hence, to avoid a speech time-related reading of the subordinate clause, the authors of

             (13) and (14) opted for the imparfait, which suits better than the perfective aspect conveyed by the subjonctif du passé. The latter mode would have been possible in (14), but the wish to express imperfective aspect was stronger than the grammatical/normative constraints. Similarly, in (15) the subordinate clause appears in a prototypical context for a tense form with imperfective aspect to express simultaneity with the past and accomplished events of never having the same success (… n’a jamais connu le même genre de succès…) and never coming

             out from the shadows of the competitors (…n’est jamais sortie de l’ombre …). The phenomenon is widespread and gives rise to criticism, for instance in educational institutions.4 Summarizing to this point, French features some characteristics of a ‘double standard’ situation, in the sense that there is a spoken standard strongly influenced by the norms for formal writing, but nevertheless open to (grammatical and phonetic) features traditionally labelled as “familier” (or even “populaire” in some cases). This qualifies as restandardisation (or demotisation). However, as regards French in general, and written Standard French in particular, no signs of destandardisation can be observed, meaning that the standard language ideology is still effective and makes formal writing a domain which is largely immune to the

             integration of features from lower registers.

             
             

   2. German

      
      

      1. The emergence of a formal standard in German – and its present-day dynamics

         As with French in France, the written standard language is of eminent social importance in the German-speaking countries. Regardless of the different dialect-standard constellations5 and the significance of a spoken standard in these countries (see 2.2.2), mastering the written German standard is the main goal of German instruction at school. Without a functional mastery of the written standard, social progress in all areas of professional life in which the written word plays a major role (education, politics, administration, etc.) is hardly possible.

         For German, too, we try to trace core aspects of the standardisation process using Haugen’s framework. Compared to French, German is a relatively young standard language. Unlike in France and England (but very much like in Italy), the German-speaking countries lacked a political and economic centre (such as Paris and London) whose variety would have

         
         

         ‌4 Consider the following quotation from a report on the results of a translation exam at the École normale supérieure: “Si le rapport de l’an passé avait été lu, l’omission du subjonctif après ‘though more closely related to mammals than to reptiles’ aurait été évitée chez les candidats, lesquels ont traduit *bien qu'il était, au lieu de: ‘bien qu'il fût’. Ce subjonctif peut être néanmoins évité en utilisant: ‘même s'il était …’.” (https://www.ens.fr/IMG/file/concours/2010/BCPST/bcpst-ecrit-anglais-lv1.pdf) The advice given here is indicative of the weakness in the language system. To avoid the archaic form (fût) and the “faute de français” (était), complete rephrasing is the proposed solution.

         ‌5 The situation in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the westernmost Austrian province of Vorarlberg and South Tyrol can be described as diglossia in a strict sense (with local dialects as varieties of informal everyday language and written and spoken standard German reserved for formal contexts). The constellations in most parts of southern Germany and Austria can be characterised as diaglossia1 (with a continuum between dialect and spoken standard depending on the degree of formality of the situation). For the northern part of Germany, one can speak of diaglossia2 (between regiolects and spoken standard) or even monoglossia (with the exclusive use of the spoken standard).

         formed the main basis for the later dominant standard variety. “The point of departure for the standardization of the German language was […] a decentralized communicative space with several larger regional written dialects, which functioned within their own regions as linguistic norms”. (Mattheier 2003: 214) The standardisation of German in the 16th century did therefore not begin as a process of encoding the spoken variety of a dominant centre in writing, but as both a convergence and a ‘verticalisation process’ on the level of written language varieties. (cf. Reichmann 1988)

         In this process, after a long period of gradual convergence of formerly independent regional written varieties of the Middle Ages (mainly through correspondence), two supra- regionally intelligible written varieties gradually emerged in the early modern period through ‘variant selection’. One variety was based primarily on features of East Central (and partly North Upper) German and spread rapidly, especially through Reformation writings. The other written variety was more strongly anchored in East Upper German with variants long favoured by the elites in the Catholic territories. The end of the 18th century marked the abandonment of the latter variety when the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresia and her son, Emperor Joseph II, opened the Austrian education system to the East-Central German variety and normative works based on this variety, such as Johann Christoph Gottsched’s (1748) Deutsche Sprachkunst, literally ‘The art of German language’. (cf. Wiesinger 1995) “Corpus elaboration” took place in that the East Central German variety, which eventually gained the upper hand, extended its scope of use as language of science, higher education (at the expense of Latin), the language of the courts, diplomacy and upper-class correspondence (against French) and also in the newly emerging popular advice literature. (Mattheier 2003: 230-234) As far as “acceptance of the norm” is concerned, it has been argued that this aspect cannot be viewed independently of norm codification and literacy. (cf. Elspaß 2005b) From the point of view of the vast majority of language users, “norm acceptance” could not have taken place earlier than the end of the 19th century for two simple reasons. Firstly, the codification of language norms was not achieved until the end of the 19th century.6 (cf. von Polenz 1999: 229-263) The first official regulation of spelling –largely based on Konrad Duden’s (1880) orthographical dictionary– did not take place until 1901, and orthography remains the only authoritatively standardised area of the German language to this day. As for grammatical norms, Johann Christoph Adelung’s prescriptive work, above all Adelung (1789), was groundbreaking for normative grammar throughout the

         
         

         ‌6 The early grammars in the 16th century were descriptive works and as such had little influence on the (later) standardisation of German; the first “codification” efforts started in the 17th century. But it was not until the late 18th century, and then especially the 19th century, that prescriptive works were published.

         19th century and well into the 20th century. However, despite the countless prescriptive and descriptive grammars that have appeared since then, grammatical standardisation has still not achieved the authoritative status that orthography has. Moreover, the grammar of spoken German has never been codified – not only for practical but also for ideological reasons, since for a long time it was tacitly assumed that the grammar of written German would also apply to spoken German.7 Secondly, early prescriptive norms may have met with broad acceptance in the educated bourgeoisie, but a large part of the population was not literate before the end of the 19th century and certainly not even familiar with the prescriptive norms at the time.8

         As with French, the standardisation of German has been dominated by powerful language ideologies since the first prescriptive efforts in the 18th century. The subtitle of Gottsched’s (1748) Sprachkunst explicitly identifies ‘the best writers’ as the model of the ‘best language’. Until the end of the 20th century the works of male writers, and since the 19th century occasionally also women writers, served as a blueprint for written Standard German. Only the 7th edition of the Duden grammar (Dudenredaktion 2005), the most widely used grammar of German, and the 6th edition of Duden Zweifelsfälle, a reference guide to ‘correct’ German (Dudenredaktion 2007) moved away from this tradition and proposes the language as used in non-literary texts (above all newspapers texts), as the benchmark of the present-day ‘best German’. Three recent reference works go one step further and explicitly consider the existence of regional variants of the standard language – for lexis the Variantenwörterbuch ‘Dictionary of variants’ (Ammon/Bickel/Lenz 2016), for grammar the Variantengrammatik ‘Variational grammar’ (Dürscheid/Elspaß/Ziegler 2018), and for pronunciation the Duden Aussprachewörterbuch ‘Duden pronunciation dictionary’ (Kleiner/Knöbl 2023), which is based on pronunciation variants recorded for the Atlas zur Aussprache des Schriftdeutschen ‘Atlas on the pronunciation of written [Standard] German’. (Kleiner 2011–)

         Even though current codices of Standard German tend to be orientated towards usage norms, the standard language ideology has remained relatively stable. As in other European countries, the common language played a central role in the constitution of the nation. (cf. Anderson 1983: 67-82) In the 19th century, the standard language developed into an important symbol of identification for the aspiring educated bourgeoisie. It served this new middle class as a powerful instrument of linguistic demarcation both upwards –towards the nobility and the

         
         

         ‌7 As for spoken Standard German, only pronunciation has been codified, initially solely with a view to pronunciation on the theatre stage. (Siebs 1898)

         ‌8 There is an increasing body of written evidence of ‘common writers’ from the 16th to the 19th century, which impressively demonstrates that functional writing, based on conventional norms of usage, was possible even before the conclusion of the standardisation ‘from above’ process. (cf. Elspaß 2020, 2023)

         financial bourgeoisie– and downwards –towards the broad, barely or non-educated masses. (Mattheier 1991) For a long time, even the syntax of public speeches and cultivated conversation in bourgeois circles was modelled on the written language. (von Polenz 1999: 59) This has prompted prescriptivists to measure the correctness of spoken language features (see section 2.2.2) against the written language. Today, the pertinence of the standard language ideology and other relevant language ideologies (language conservatism, elitism, purism etc.) in the present-day German-speaking countries has not least given rise to new, self-appointed language norm authorities. (Elspaß/Maitz 2012)

      2. Present-day German: restandardised, demoticised, pluriareal and/or multi-standard?

         In order to establish which of the developments outlined in Section 1 the standard varieties of modern German are following today, we will again focus on grammatical features. The historical standardisation processes and the historical trajectories of present-day features are taken into account throughout.

         Taking up the notion of ‘double standards’, we will first focus on the present-day differences between more or less supra-regional norms of ‘oral’ and ‘written’ German and later consider regional/diatopic norms. By favouring the terms ‘oral’ and ‘written’, we refer to the continuum between the two poles of conceptually ‘oral’ language (‘language of immediacy’) and conceptually ‘written’ language (‘language of distance’) – as opposed to the purely medial distinction between the graphic and the phonic medium –, as introduced by Koch/Oesterreicher (2012 [1985]).

         For several decades, various authors have postulated the existence of a separate spoken variety of Standard German that is clearly distinct from written Standard German, creating a kind of ‘double standard’. Since 2005, the Duden grammar, which mainly focuses on written German, has a separate chapter on spoken language. (Dudenredaktion 2005) According to Auer (2021b: 162), the grammar of spoken Standard German includes features that owe their existence ‘to the temporal and interactional emergence of linguistic utterances’, such as in examples (19) to (25) (from Dudenredaktion 2005 and Auer 2021b).

         1. Left dislocation: un * die lehrer die 'saßen da alle auch * um so größere 'tische herum

            (‘and the teachers – they were all sitting around such big tables’)

         2. apo-koinou constructions: das ist was furchtbares ist das (lit. “that is something terrible is that” ‘that is something terrible, so it is’)

         3. topic drop: [Ø] War für mich genau richtig (‘[this] was just right for me’)

         4. projecting constructions: kurz und gut – wir können uns das * 'abenteuer nicht leisten

            (‘in short, we can’t afford the adventure’)

         5. verb second use with the epistemic connector weil (‘because’; instead of verb-final position with weil as factual connector): der hat sicher wieder gesoffen * weil * sie läuft [V2] total deprimiert durch die gegend (‘he must have been drinking again because she is walking around totally depressed’)

         6. extraposition: weil die to'ta:l unter'drückt sind in china (‘because they are totally oppressed in China’; instead of weil die in china total unterdrückt sind)

         7. paratactic constructions and use of indicative (instead of subjunctive) in reported speech: … und hab (–) im Grunde genommen (…) einfach gesagt so ah! Ok, dann: muss man’s einfach selber machn (‘and I basically just said: So, ah, ok then – you just have to do it yourself’)

            Auer (2021b) identifies such grammatical features as characteristics of a German ‘neo- standard’. Apart from grammatical features, the German neo-standard also includes phonological reduction phenomena, e.g. nich for nicht ‘not’, is for ist ‘is’, monosyllabic instead of bisyllabic structures (due to syncope of schwa in the unstressed syllable), such as ein for einen ‘a’ (nom.acc.sg.), and additional assimilation phenomena such as (wir) ham for (wir) haben ‘(we) have’. Pröll (accepted) demonstrates that such reduction phenomena leading to a loss of bisyllabic structures can be observed even in the speech of professional newsreaders and that such phonological features can have an effect on entire grammatical paradigms. In his study on the pronunciation of indefinite articles in TV news programmes, Pröll finds that more than one third (37.87 %) of all instances of the accusative form masculine singular einen was realised as [ʔaɪn]. Assuming that this proportion is much higher in the spoken standard language of non- professional speakers, a complete syncretism of the masculine and neuter singular forms can be expected in the long term.

            Neo-standard phenomena as those mentioned in Auer (2021b: 165) for Italian, Danish and Flemish viz. restandardisations, including an upgrading of features from non-standard varieties (italiano popolare, københavnsk, tussentaal), can also be documented for German – not only in spoken language but even in sources of historical orality such as private correspondence (cf. Elspaß 2005a: 200-316, 439-455; Elspaß 2005b: 83-88; Schiegg 2022:

            237-249).

            Surprisingly, Auer (2021b: 164) excludes ‘regionalisms and substandard features’ from the ‘typical’ characteristics of the German neo-standard and explicitly mentions negative concord, relativisers such as (der/die) wo (‘who’), and case syncretisms. Just like the relativiser

            (die) wo, negative concord is considered non-standard and a regionalism in German – but used to be widespread and was only prevented from being included in the emerging standard after a long process of stigmatisation (cf. Davies/Langer 2006: 241-260). Counter-evidence regarding the exclusion of case syncretisms from the spoken standard is provided by the above-mentioned study by Pröll (accepted). As for regionalisms, it appears implausible to exclude them from the spoken neo-standard in view of the fact that even the written standard is clearly characterised by regional patterns. This is amply documented in the Variantengrammatik (Dürscheid/Elspaß/Ziegler 2018); examples (26) to (30) present just a selection of regional standard features from this reference work.

         8. verb first position in subject and objects clauses, e.g. Schade, haben wir erneut verloren. (vs. Schade, dass wir erneut verloren haben ‘It’s a shame that we lost again.’)

         9. gender variation, e.g. der vs. das Match (‘the match’)

         10. variation of the position of the finite verb in verb clusters in subordinate clauses, e.g.

             
             

             a. dass er sich	hatAuxfin	schämenFullinf	müssenModinf	= 1-3-2
             b. dass er sich	schämenFullinf	hatAuxfin	müssenModinf	= 3-1-2
             c. dass er sich	schämenFullinf	müssenModinf	hatAuxfin	= 3-2-1

             (‘(It was so embarrassing) that he must have felt ashamed.’)

         11. discontinuous vs. continuous constructions of particle verbs, e.g. Sie erkannten das Spielergebnis an. vs. Sie anerkannten das Spielergebnis. (‘They recognised the match result.’)

         12. auxiliary selection with position verbs, e.g. Er hat / ist auf der Reservebank gesessen.

             (lit.: “He has/is sat on the bench.” ‘He was being benched.’)

             Furthermore, even previously stigmatised regionalisms have entered the spoken and even the written standard language. Two prominent examples are the am-construction and discontinuous constructions of pronominal adverbs. In recent decades, the am-construction – especially when used to express the progressive aspect (e.g. ich bin noch am überlegen ‘I am still thinking’) – has spread from western Germany and German-speaking Switzerland to the entire German-speaking world.9 Discontinuous constructions of pronominal adverbs, e.g. da … gegen or da … dagegen instead of dagegen (‘against that’), da … von or da … davon instead of davon (‘thereof’), have also emerged in standard varieties. As in examples (19) to (25), this

             
             

             ‌9 Cf. the AdA maps Verlaufsformen « atlas-alltagssprache (2005), Verlaufsformen mit „am“ « atlas-alltagssprache (2013) and sein + am / beim / im + Infinitiv – Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen (ids-mannheim.de). The first written evidence of the am-construction comes from 19th c. private correspondence. (Elspaß 2005a: 268-275)

             feature can be explained by the information structure in oral interaction.10 When the preposition begins with a consonant, the discontinuous construction comes in two regional variants, (a) the ‘split construction’, e.g. da … gegen, da … von, and (b) the ‘double PRO construction’, e.g. da

             … dagegen, da … davon. In spoken (Standard) German11 as well as in written Standard German,12 the ‘split construction’ is mainly used in the north of Germany. (cf. Negele 2012: 120-122) In written Standard German, both the am-construction and the discontinuous variant of pronominal adverbs surface mainly in the reproduction of spoken language, e.g. in printed interviews.

             The patterns of regional variation in Standard German can vary considerably. Sometimes, there are clear national variants, such as Helvetisms in examples (26) and (27). In addition, there are many instances in which the present-day regional distribution of standard variants corresponds to old dialect areas, e.g. the distribution of variant (28) b. in the Bavarian dialect area, or a concentration of the continuous variant in example (29) in the Alemannic dialect area. Finally, there are cases in which the regional distribution of two variants shows a general north- south divide in the German-speaking area, as in example (30).

             To sum up, the standard language constellations in the German-speaking countries are characterised by a ‘double standard’ situation both on the level of usage and attitudes. In terms of usage, ‘double standards’ manifest themselves (a) regarding written and spoken –or rather: ‘conceptionally oral’– instantiations of the standard(s) and (b) with respect to the regional/diatopic dimension.

             1. The written standard is no longer rooted in literary usage, as was the case in the codification endeavours from the mid-18th until the end of the 20th century. Rather, since the turn of the millennium, the codified standard –for written as for spoken German– has been aligned with usage norms in formal contexts. Newspaper texts are the main point of reference for usage norms in writing. In addition, after a long prevalence of a written language bias, the autonomy of a spoken standard language has been postulated since the end of the 20th century. Many grammatical features that are specific to spoken Standard German –and the spoken ‘Neo- Standard’ in particular– have emerged on the basis of media-related verbalisation strategies of

                
                

                ‌10 The deictic pro-element, which refers to the previous context, is usually placed at the beginning of the sentence before the finite verb, while the prepositional part is placed at the end of the clause (but before a possible 2nd part of a verbal bracket), e.g. Da habe (VFIN) ich nichts gegen/dagegen. (‘I have nothing against that.’)

                ‌11 Cf. the maps of the AdA (Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache ‘Atlas of colloquial German’), damit/davon/daran (Wortstellung von Pronominaladverbien) « atlas-alltagssprache (2005).

                ‌12 Cf. Spaltung von Pronominaladverbien – Variantengrammatik des Standarddeutschen (ids-mannheim.de).

                spoken communication, and their spread has been accelerated by broadcasting and, more recently, online media.

             2. While it is claimed that the neo-standard in German largely excludes ‘regionalisms and substandard features’, it can be argued that neither the spoken nor the written Standard German is –and, in principle, cannot be– free from regional variation. This regional variation in written and spoken Standard German is impressively documented by a series of dedicated reference works (see 2.2.1). Without having to decide here whether present-day pluricentric German should rather be modelled as ‘plurinational’ or ‘pluriareal’, it can be postulated that at the diatopic level of usage we are currently not dealing with a ‘double standard’, but rather a ‘multi-standard’ situation in German (cf. Auer 2021a).

                In contrast to such ‘double’ or even ‘multiple standards’ on the level of language usage, a strong ‘standard language ideology’ still prevails on the part of the attitudes of language users. This ideology is reflected in the persistent assumption that there is a ‘best language’, which manifests itself in written German in a standardised grammar and a vocabulary with, at best, regional or national characteristics associated with, e.g., institutions (such as the terms Bundestag in Germany, Nationalrat in Austria and Switzerland, and Landtag in Liechtenstein for ‘national parliament’). As for spoken Standard German, the situation is more complicated. While in Germany, the acceptance of the ‘neo-standard’ (with a northern German touch) appears to be increasing (Auer/Spiekermann 2011), Austria seems to be characterised by a ‘double standard’13 situation, i.e. “one standard that emerged due to the attitudinal upgrading of what used to be considered an Austrian regional form alongside another standard that is supra-regional” (Auer 2021a: 34; cf. Niehaus accepted). In contrast, in Switzerland, which has four official languages, no such enregisterment of a spoken variety as a national variety of Standard German has taken place, largely due to the diglossic situation in its German-speaking parts (see section 2.1). Many speakers of Swiss German are reported to have a rather detached relationship or even negative attitudes towards the oral use of the standard language (Ammon/Bickel/Lenz 2016: LI).

                From this language portrait it can be concluded that present-day German is by no means subject to a process of destandardisation. Rather, the development can be described as demotisation in the sense described in Section 1: Structurally, spoken Standard German is moving further and further away from the written standard.14 Recent decades have seen the

                
                

                ‌13 Or “dual standard”, in Auer’s (2021a: 34) terms.

                ‌14 However, this also has to do with the fact that in situations of linguistic uncertainty, fuelled by the standard language ideology, writers develop structures that they want to distinguish from the spoken word. One example is

                emergence of an informal ‘neo-standard’ that has been spreading via broadcast and online media. At the same time the idea of a ‘best language’ is being maintained and is now associated with the neo-standard in terms of its spoken form. As this process does not include ‘the addition of a new standard, intended to coexist with the old one’, it seems less plausible to characterise this process as restandardisation – in the sense of Kristiansen’s (2021) definitions (cf. Section 1). At the same time, current developments in the standard varieties of German –as is well attested by relevant reference works– are still open to regionalisation, which even allows the integration of previously stigmatised regional forms (such as the am-progressive).

                
                

   3. (Brazilian) Portuguese

      
      

      1. The emergence of a formal standard in Portuguese

         The history of standardisation in Portuguese differs in some significant respects from what we have seen in the case of German and French (and would have seen in other Romance languages as well). As paradoxical as it may sound, a formal standard for Portuguese arose without major formal intervention. Two factors can be held responsible for this exception within the Romance family.

         First, the process of “selection of norms” was characterised by the absence of sharply distinct dialects that would compete with each other. In fact, it was only the more or less homogeneous galaico-português that was brought to the south of the western strip of the Iberian Peninsula. Contact between speakers of similar dialects coming from the north and those present in the reconquered area in the south (previously occupied by the Arabs) led to koineization and linguistic innovation whereby linguistic features of the North became more and more stigmatised.

         Second, in the middle of the 13th century, when the territorial envelope of the centralised medieval Portuguese monarchy was already that of the modern Portuguese republic, Lisbon became the capital of the Portuguese kingdom, which was proclaimed in 1139 and officially recognised in 1143. Together with Coimbra –the former capital and first location of a university on Portuguese soil–, it was at the centre of a region where a rather homogeneous exemplary form of the Portuguese language was in use, at least from the late Middle Ages onwards (cf.

         
         

         the recent overuse of prepositions which require the dative case with the genitive (e.g. entsprechend or entgegen des Beschlusses instead of entsprechend / entgegen dem Beschluss ‘in accordance with / contrary to the decision’).

         Woll 1994: 386). In fact, as early as 1438 the then king Duarte alluded to a “geeral boo custume de nosso fallar” (‘general good use of our language’; cf. Faraco/Zilles 2017: 132).

         As in other parts of the Romance speaking world, the 16th century saw the first systematic descriptions of the vernacular. Both Fernão de Oliveira, the author of a Gramática da linguagem portuguesa (1536) and João de Barros, who signed a Gramática da língua portuguesa (1540), subscribe to Quintilian’s principle according to which the “good use” of the language is closely linked to erudition. Their aim was to describe the “bom costume [dos que] mais sabem” (’the good use of the erudite’, Oliveira) and the “uso e autoridade dos barões doutos” (’use and authority of the cultivated men’, Barros) (cited after Faraco/Zilles 2017: 145). Fernão de Oliveira also gives a testimony of the afore-mentioned supremacy and prestige of the Portuguese language as used in southern Portugal. (cf. Woll 1994: 388)

         As in the case of German, the actual impact of these early grammars was very limited because Latin was taught at that time, not the vernacular language. However, both grammarians inaugurate a tradition, still vital today in both Portugal and Brazil,15 which consists in referring to the best authors to illustrate what good Portuguese is. (cf. Laferl 2007: 70s) This is pervasive in lexicography, e.g. in Rafael Bluteau’s Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino (1712–1728) and its continuation by António de Moraes Silva (1789), and also in grammars, of which António José dos Reis Lobato’s Arte da grammatica da lingua portugueza (1770) and Soares Barbosa’s Grammatica philosophica (1822) are good examples. In contrast to Oliveira’s and Barros’s works, these grammars were widely used and vehiculated a written norm based on the most important literary works from a period beginning as early as in the 16th century. “Acceptance” of these written norms did not encounter any major obstacle.

         The same holds true for spoken Standard Portuguese which is diatopically rooted in the same area. The capital Lisbon should gain even more importance with respect to standardisation and the irradiance of new features that were to become part of the standard. Two phenomena may suffice to illustrate this evolution. The first concerns the system of rhotics, knowingly instable in many languages, amongst them Portuguese. As its sister language Spanish, Portuguese had initially an opposition between the multiple vibrant /r/ (carro ‘car’) and the tap

         /ɾ/ (caro ‘expensive’). Probably during the second half of 19th century, the point of articulation

         
         

         ‌15 Two examples may suffice: In their Nova gramática da língua portuguesa (Cunha/Cintra 1984; several reprints since then), Brazilian linguist Celso Cunha and his Portuguese colleague Lindley Cintra make an exclusive use of literary quotations to illustrate correct Portuguese; the authoritarian Dicionário da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (DAC 2001) is based on a huge corpus of literature, journalistic texts and didactic prose; numerous examples in this dictionary are taken from 19th and 20th century fiction.

         of the vibrant changed and turned it into a uvular sound /ʀ/. This change, associated with the capital, spread all over the country (cf. Teyssier 1982: 65) and led to a situation whereby the older /r/ became linked to rurality and the speech of peasants. The second important change affects the pronunciation of <e> in front of the palatal consonants ʎ], ɲ], j], ʒ]. Depending on the vowel quality of the etymon, the traditional pronunciation –still vital in Brazil (cf. Neto 1992: 692) and parts of Portugal– was either e] (e.g., in vejo ‘I see’ < VIDEO or abelha ‘bee’ < APICULA) or ɛ] (e.g., in velho ‘old’ < *VECˈLU or venho ‘I come’ < VENIO). According to contemporary observers of the 19th century, the change towards a simplified pronunciation as

         ɐ] originated in the lower classes of the Portuguese capital but spread among speakers of bourgeois extraction and in other parts of the country. Eventually, it became the standard pronunciation for (European) Portuguese, as witnessed for instance by the transcriptions of the Dicionário da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (DAC 2001). However, as far as its “acceptance” is concerned, it is still felt as typically Lisbonian by some speakers.

         Until the independence of Brazil in 1822, it was only natural that the norms of (European) Portuguese were valid on Brazilian soil as well. Due to the absence of higher education institutions in Brazil before 1808, the members of the colonial elites had to send their offspring to Portugal. This way, contact with the (exemplary) language of the metrópole was maintained for a small fringe of the population. This was not the case for the vast majority of those settlers/colonists who came in the 17th and especially in the 18th century for mining gold and diamonds. In fact, a huge proportion of them was illiterate.

         
         

      2. Destandardisation, restandardisation or demotisation in Brazilian Portuguese: the tensions between the (inofficial) standard of educated speech and the (official) norms for formal writing

         As in other post-colonial settings, reaching national independence went parallel with endeavours to underscore differences with the former motherland also on the level of language. Following the foundation of the Brazilian empire in 1822, this is witnessed by proposals to give the Portuguese language another name, e.g. língua brasileira ‘Brazilian language’ or simply língua nacional ‘national language’. Whereas the former was less pervasive, which may be due to a possible confusion with the indigenous language Tupí, the latter gained more widespread acceptance. However, it has never displaced Portuguese as a glottonym.

         Heated debates about what the exemplary language of Brazil should look like were prompted some 40 years later by the publication of José de Alencar’s romantic novel Iracema

         (1865), where the author made use of local/regional lexis to depict the Brazilian rural reality. The result was harsh criticism by authors and critics from both Portugal and Brazil. The ideological background in Brazil was the urban elite’s desire to establish an essentially white nation state and to do away with anything that could compromise such an idealised construct. (cf. Pagotto 1998: 55)

         Another polemical debate, which strengthened the position of the purists, arose at the beginning of the 20th century in connection with the drafting of the Brazilian Civil Code. In his famous pamphlet against the alleged bad quality of the draft version of this law (Réplica às defesas da redacção do Projecto da Camara dos Deputados, 1904), Rui Barbosa, an influential member of the Brazilian Senate, explains what good Portuguese in Brazil should be based upon, viz. the language as used by the classical authors, amongst them the fine fleur of early 19th century Portuguese literature. (cf. Laferl 2007: 81) This excessively elitist model with its intricacies, virtually identical with the formal standard for the written (and the spoken) language in Portugal, is disconnected from the spoken language of even educated speakers in Brazil (cf. Faraco 2008: 80ssq) but became the measure for good (written) Portuguese in this country. For an influential part of the Brazilian elites, who adheres to the traditional standard language ideology, it still has that function and, as such, dominates in the educational system. In Portugal, this model is unproblematic, because it reflects the actual usage of “model writers” and “model speakers”, whereas in Brazil, it creates a situation whereby millions of pupils and students are obliged to obey rules that are not acquired in a naturalistic environment and are never used outside the realm of formal writing.

         As regards the norms of spoken Portuguese in Brazil, some kind of “liberation” took place with the advent of literary Modernism (Semana de Arte moderna, 1922), which rehabilitated the (grammatical) traits of spoken Brazilian Portuguese. As a consequence, the present-day situation as far as language norms in Brazil are concerned is probably best described by Duarte et al.’s (2016: 54) words: “The conflict between ‘what we can say’ and ‘what we must write’”. This is a prototypical ‘double standard’ situation, with an unofficial but unquestioned spoken standard that contrasts sharply with the official standard for the written language.

         This conflict relates to several aspects of Portuguese grammar. For space reasons, we will limit ourselves to the most salient ones. First, there is a fundamental difference between spoken (formal) Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and (Standard) European Portuguese (EP) with respect to the pronominal system. While there is a general tendency in BP for proclisis of object pronouns (even in sentence initial position), EP tends towards enclisis, with subtle rules determining the

         cases where proclisis must (not) occur.16 In formal registers, EP still has mesoclisis, viz. with the synthetic future tense and the conditional,17 whereas this pattern is virtually inexistent in BP. Besides, BP speakers prefer either null (direct) objects over overt object clitics if the context is rich enough or use the nominative strong pronoun instead of the accusative clitic (Context: “Did the director see him? – EP O diretor vi-o. ‘The director saw him’ vs. BP O diretor o vi

         proclisis] or O diretor vi null object] or O diretor vi ele subject pronoun as object]).

         The use of subject pronouns is also different in the two varieties. EP is a consistent null subject language, so that –just like in Italian or Spanish– omission of the subject pronoun is the default case. Concomitantly, pronouns are hardly ever used for inanimate referents. By contrast, BP is innovative in a typologically relevant way (cf., for instance, Pöll 2015), featuring a high amount of overt subject pronouns for both animate and inanimate referents.

         A second field of variation between the two varieties is the subcategorisation of numerous verbs. For example, whereas EP uses an indirect object with verbs such as dar ‘to give’, dizer ‘to say’ or contar ‘to tell’, these verbs are subcategorised for a PP in BP (e.g. EP Dei o documento ao funcionário vs. BP Eu dei o documento para o funcionário ‘I gave the document to the clerk’). Several verbs, for instance assistir ‘to assist’ or obedecer ‘to obey’ take a direct object in EP but an indirect object in BP.

         Apart from these contrasts, there are numerous differences between the two varieties in other fields of the grammar (cf. Zanatta 2009 for details and further examples), e.g. “simplified” relative clauses (omission of prepositions; BP: O livro que eu gosto… vs. EP: O livro do que gosto… ‘The book I like …’), the verb ter in presentative constructions (BP Tinha muita gente na praia vs. EP Havia muita gente na praia ‘There were many people on the beach’), and contraction of the preposition and a pronoun (or determiner) with the personal infinitive (BP O fato dele beber agrava a situação vs. EP O fato de ele beber … ‘The fact that he drinks makes things worse.’)

         The conflict between spoken Standard BP and the artificial norms that regulate formal written BP (which is essentially equivalent to Standard EP) has several consequences. First, educated writers often feel insecure about the exact shape of the normative model for formal

         
         

         ‌16 While clitics never occur in sentence-initial position in EP, no such ban exists for speakers of BP, irrespective of their level of education.

         ‌17 In SEP, mesoclisis competes with proclisis; if there is no trigger for proclisis, for instance negation, it must occur, compare Cantaria o hino nacional ‘S/he would sing the national anthem’  Cantá-lo-ia ‘S/he would sing it’ (mesoclisis, with allomorphic variation of the clitic and assimiliation of what was initially an infinitive ending) with Não o cantaria. ‘S/he would not sing it.’ (proclisis triggered by the neg item).

         writing and are thus likely to make hypercorrections. The following example, which comes from a translation18, illustrates this phenomenon:

         1. Entre a Lusitânia romana e o nascimento do Reino de Portugal, passaram-se sete séculos, durante os quais sucederam-se as invasões germánicas …] (Walter 1997; translated by Sérgio Cunha dos Santos)

            ‘Between the Roman Lusitania and the birth of the Portuguese kingdom seven centuries went by, during which period there were successive Germanic invasions

            …]’

            In the matrix clause (Entre a …sete séculos), the translator correctly obeys the rule of enclisis but overgeneralises it in the relative clause (durante os quais …). Since embedding is one of the triggers for proclisis, the sentence should read …] durante os quais se sucederam

            …] in all varieties of Portuguese.

            Another consequence of the afore-mentioned conflict is precisely a tendency towards a modification / expansion of the existing standard. Model writers actually do neglect the traditional norm to some extent and use structures of spoken Standard BP in formal writing as well. The phenomenon is easy to document, for instance in texts published in quality newspapers or in didactic/scientific prose (cf., for instance, Valle 2019, who analyses editorials in the Folha de São Paulo and research papers in the field of law studies). However, it comes as no surprise that the inclusion of traits of formal spoken BP is subject to a lot of variation, in the sense that there is some kind of filter.19 We illustrate this with examples taken from a recent book on the history of Portuguese:20 História do Português (Faraco 2019). The text instantiates the “language of distance” (Koch/Oesterreicher 2012; passim) and is aimed at university students. The author has worked a lot on the topic we are dealing with and can therefore held to be particularly sensitive to the question.

         2. a. O centro político se deslocou da pessoa do soberano para a entidade impessoal da nação ou do povo […] (p. 17)

         
         

         ‌18 As is well known, translators are committed to standard norms and are particularly prone to monitor their output. The fact that even a language professional commits such a “mistake” gives an idea of how precarious the situation is for the average speaker/writer.

         ‌19 Not all traits appear in formal writing, and those which appear do so with intra- and interindividual variation.

         ‌20 The translation from which we have taken the hypercorrection example offers good examples as well. Although compliant with the traditional norm as regards clitic placement, the translator makes use of subject pronouns for inanimate objects on the same page (Ela não possuía território ao norte de Portugal …] Pode-se observar também que ela englobava … ‘(literally:) She had no territories north of Portugal ...] One can say also that she comprised …’; ela refers to the province of Lusitania, mentioned before in the text).

         ‘The political centre shifted from the person of the sovereign to the abstract entity of the nation or the people …]’

         1. Acredita-se que os moçárabes eram bilíngues […] (p. 67) ‘Mozarabs are assumed to have been bilingual ...]

         2. A velha nobreza tinha se aliado a Castela e acabou por perder espaço (p. 93) ‘The old nobility had allied itself with Castile and eventually lost territory.’

         3. Esse perfil de insulamento só começou a se alterar com a descoberta do ouro (p. 126)

            ‘This situation which was characterised by isolation only began to change with the discovery of gold.’

         4. A Coroa lhes delegava a tarefa da missionação e da tutela das populações indigenas [...] (p. 140)

            ‘The Crown assigned them the task of evangelising and protecting the indigenous populations ...].’

         5. […] umi dos mitos a se quebrar é o do Brasil como país monolingue. Elei perturba nossa capacidade de nos perceber como pais multilingue e multicultural. (p. 154) ‘[...] one of the myths to be destroyed is that of Brazil as a monolingual country. It harms our ability to perceive ourselves as a multilingual and multicultural country.’

         With the exception of (32b), the clitic position in these sentences is not in line with the traditional norm: in (32a) and (32e), there is no “trigger” for proclisis. The proclitic position of se (with respect to the participle) is deviant according to the official norm (and SEP), the same holds true for (32d), where only enclisis (with the infinitive being the host) would be admitted. Example (32e) is particularly interesting because delegar is a verb that often appears with a PP (para + NP) in BP; however, the author opted for the traditional subcategorisation (indirect object) with the clitic lhes. It appears in proclitic position, a clear violation of the traditional norm. Finally, the example (32f) illustrates the use of subject pronouns for inanimate referents.

         Further research will be needed to determine if the above-mentioned filter, which bans for instance sentence-initial clitics in the text under scrutiny (and apparently also in many other formal BP texts) leads to stable patterns as regards the modification of the existing standard for formal writing.

         Finally, we have to address the question whether these changes should be interpreted as instances of destandardisation, restandardisation or demotisation. The answer is straightforward as regards the first concept because it is clear that a “radical weakening, and

         eventual abandonment of the ‘standard language] ideology” (Coupland/Kristiansen 2011: 28) does not take place and cannot be foreseen. The ongoing change involves elements of restandardisation in that the new standard adds to the old one and would permit the language user to adhere to the traditional norm or to opt for the new one. However, if restandardisation implies “the integration of formerly stigmatized forms” (CfP), as in the case of African American Vernacular English, the term is inadequate for our situation. The relevant forms are not stigmatised as such and do not belong to colloquial or popular speech but are fully unmarked in the spoken “language of distance” in Brazil. Hence, what can be observed in this language community is best described as demotisation. Note that such processes of demotisation in BP have not yet led to the integration of the respective features in normative grammars for Brazilian Portuguese. (cf. da Silva 2020, 685)

3. Discussion and conclusion

The aim of our article was to identify and discuss ‘double’ and possibly ‘multiple standards’ situations in three major standard languages, namely French, German and (Brazilian) Portuguese. In a comparative perspective, our goal was to look for similarities and differences and attempt to find possible explanations against the background of the respective standardisation histories and current developments. With these research objectives in mind, we will discuss the results of the language portraits (Section 2) in the following synopsis.

As we have seen, French, German and Portuguese have very different standardisation histories. French can be regarded as a relatively old standard language, whereas German is relatively young. German developed a written standard as from the late 18th century onwards, mainly in the 19th century –earlier grammars had little normative impact–, and spoken standards as from the second half of the 19th century. Portuguese is also an old standard language but contrasts with French in that standardisation was largely informal, i.e. prescriptive grammars and dictionaries simply mirrored a well-established exemplary usage. The creation of a Brazilian form of spoken Standard Portuguese started not earlier as the 1920s as a consequence of the impact of the literary movement of Modernismo. The French and (European) Portuguese standard languages spread from the political and economic centres of their countries (Paris/Île- de-France and Lisbon/the Lisbon-Coimbra area respectively), while German started as a supra- regionally written variety which had emerged from an originally decentralised communicative area after centuries of convergence and verticalisation processes. Due to its emergence in a post-colonial setting, Brazilian Portuguese is a special case among the standard varieties considered here. Crucially, the artificial model for a formal written Standard Brazilian

Portuguese variety was not imposed by the former colonial power, but by the Brazilian elites. The ideological background to this is that the white elites of Brazil wanted to distinguish themselves linguistically from the uneducated language of the (coloured) illiterates and put the Brazilian standard variety at the service of the creation of a white nation state. A model for such an instrumentalisation of the standard can be found in 19th century Europe, where the standard language was used to foster nation building in countries like France and Germany (but significantly less so in Switzerland and Austria). Furthermore, in France and Germany, in particular, the educated bourgeoisie considered the standard language a valuable cultural capital and used it to distinguish itself from the lower social classes. This is the time when the standard language ideology as the idea of the existence of a ‘best language’ developed, which, as we have seen, continues to have a strong impact in all three languages to this day.

However, the idea of what represents the ‘best language’ and thus ‘the standard’ has been changing since then. In the three languages considered here, the literary language has gradually lost –to different degrees– its sometimes centuries-old position as the stronghold of the ‘best language’. Concomitantly, an upgrading or valorisation of non-literary texts at the level of written standard varieties took place, and new spoken varieties, which are referred to in the research literature as ‘informal standards’ or ‘neo-standards’, arose. As a result, today we can observe ‘double standard’ if not ‘multiple standard’ constellations in various forms, which have different effects on the current (re)standardisation / demotisation processes.

In French, we find a ‘double standard’ situation with respect to the relation between spoken and written Standard French as well as within spoken Standard French. While some researchers claim that the relationship between written standard French and spontaneously spoken (or vernacular) French constitutes a situation of (medial) diglossia, with underlying different grammatical systems, the situation is certainly more nuanced with respect to the spoken language. In recent decades, spoken Standard French has seen a convergence between the traditional formal standard of spoken French, which is largely calqued on written Standard French, and more informal registers of the spoken standard. The latter increasingly incorporates vernacular features (phonetic and grammatical) and lexical regionalisms, but to varying degrees, depending on the speaker/addressee and the formality of the situation. Currently, the traditional formal standard is mostly represented by professional speakers such as newsreaders in the broadcast media (television and radio), whereas ordinary ‘model speakers’ (e.g. politicians) make use of more dynamic registers that encompass the aforementioned vernacular features. The situation of spoken Standard French is probably more adequately summarised as a continuum between formal and informal registers and corresponding structures (‘diaglossia’).

This means that, in principle, vernacular features and (lexical) regionalisms can also extend into the formal spoken standard, and therefore a process of demotisation can be observed. By contrast, written Standard French is largely immune to such tendencies with the standard language ideology being fully effective. In sum, there are no traces of destandardisation observable in French, and tendencies towards demotisation are limited to the spoken language. German is somewhat similar to French in terms of the increasing divergence between spoken and written Standard German. However, there are significant differences between the two languages due to (a) their particular standardisation histories and (b) the various dialect- standard constellations, which today range from diglossia to diaglossia to monoglossia,

depending on the country or region in the German-speaking area.

The standard language constellations in the German-speaking countries are characterised by a ‘double standard’ situation both on the level of language usage and language attitudes. Firstly, as mentioned, this concerns the difference between spoken and written language. For a long time, exemplary spoken German –similar to French– was modelled on the formal written standard, even right down to the grammatical structures.21 This changed with the advent of informal speech in broadcast and social media and led to a popularisation and upgrading of phonetic and grammatical features of spoken German and the emergence of a German ‘neo- standard’. On the level of attitudes, the acceptance of this ‘neo-standard’ (with a mainly northern German accent) appears to be increasing. This development constitutes a typical case of the demotisation of a spoken standard variety. Similar to French, a distinction is thus made between a written and a spoken standard for contemporary German. These are reflected in independent grammatical structures, which can ultimately be traced back to the different media conditions of spoken and written language and corresponding ‘verbalisation strategies’ (Koch/Oesterreicher 2012). Contrary to the written standard, however, the grammar of spoken standard German is not codified. And unlike in French (in France), both the spoken and the written standard in German allow for regionalisation. Regional differences in the written German standard (which of course also apply to the spoken standard) are evident in more recent specialised codices for lexis and grammar. Regional variation is also codified for the standard of formal pronunciation. The strong regional factor in recent codices of spoken and written Standard German can be attributed to two crucial factors: first, the recognition of regional traditions of speaking and writing in the German-speaking areas; second, the increasing focus

‌21 This is implied in the saying jemand redet druckreif, literally “sb. speaks ready to print” ‘sb. speaks in a polished style’.

of codices on (non-literary) standard language usage, which is still very heterogeneous today due to the highly diversified dialect-standard constellations in German-speaking countries.

A special ‘double standard’ situation arises in Austria where a national standard variety which has emerged from a regional variety competes with a supra-regional variety with (northern) German features.

Portuguese in Brazil has a ‘double standards’ history since the beginning of the 19th century. The elite of the colonial settlers were in close contact with the standard of European Portuguese, which persisted as a high variety –both spoken and written– after the founding of the Brazilian Empire in 1822, not least in the education system. Over time, a sharp contrast developed between the spoken language of the lesser educated or even illiterate speakers in the rural areas and the formal spoken standard language of the members of the urban, educated elite, creating a prototypical ‘double standard’ situation on the level of speech. The (informal) spoken standard language eventually rehabilitated some of the (grammatical) traits of spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Another ‘double standard’ situation arises from the contrast between the written and the spoken Portuguese standard in Brazil. The written standard, which is virtually identical to written Standard European Portuguese, follows a traditional and artificial normative model, whereas the informal spoken standard incorporates some of the grammatical features of spoken interaction. At first sight, this situation resembles a typical diglossic constellation, such as in German-speaking Switzerland. The crucial difference is that it is unthinkable for Brazilian speakers of Portuguese to apply rules of the traditional norms for writing in their speech (not even in highly formal situations), and even educated Brazilians have difficulties mastering the artificial written standard “correctly”. The resulting uncertainties manifest themselves in hypercorrections, even among experienced writers, but also in a strong tendency, visible for instance in journalistic and scientific/didactic prose, to incorporate features of spoken Standard Portuguese into written formal Portuguese. This qualifies as demotisation, since such features belong to the speech of educated speakers and are by no means stigmatised (at least in spoken Brazilian Portuguese). In a situation where the former colonial power Portugal has no reference value whatsoever for Brazil (and its elites), such a tendency is not surprising.

To sum up, ‘double standard’ situations arise in all three languages with regard to differences between the written and the spoken languages and also with respect to different forms of the spoken standards. The divergence between spoken and written standards is the result of the increasing detachment of the spoken from the written standard and the recognition of independent structures of the spoken language. The ‘double standard’ constellations in the oral varieties range from a continuum between formal and informal registers (French) and the

emergence of a ‘Neo-standard’ (with regional features) parallel to a conservative spoken standard (German) to the increasing integration of informal registers into a post-colonial standard variety (Portuguese in Brazil). These different constellations can be traced back to individual socio-historical conditions and developments in the three languages.

However, there are no indications of current destandardisation processes in any of the three languages. None of the respective language communities has abandoned the idea of a ‘best language’. Despite the different ages of the respective standard languages –with French and Portuguese being the oldest of the three– the standard language ideology is very much alive in all three language communities. Our case studies also show that the functioning and effectiveness of this ideology is independent from “old world settings” (Germany, France) vs. postcolonial settings (Brazil).

Furthermore, in none of the three languages do we find a case of restandardisation as defined by Kristiansen (2021: 679), i.e. a situation in which a new standard has emerged “intended to coexist with the old one, in the interests of particular social groups or social functions”, such as in the case of African American Vernacular English or spoken Standard Tamil. Rather, new spoken standard varieties have emerged in all three language communities without the idea of a ‘best language’ having been abandoned, and these new varieties appear to be more or less compatible with the idea of the ‘best language’. These interpretations depend, of course, on the definition of ‘restandardisation’ and ‘demotisation’. However, with regard to the definitions provided by Coupland/Kristiansen (2011) and Kristiansen (2021) (Section 1), we would prefer to characterise the current processes in all the standard language communities in France, the German-speaking countries and Brazil as demotisation, not as restandardisation.

As mentioned at the outset, our study is exploratory in nature. However, it demonstrates that comparative standardology is a rewarding and promising area of research, especially when conducted across language families – inside and outside Europe. Future research will not only be fruitful in comparing the development of standard varieties and the relationships between written and spoken, formal and informal standards, etc. (cf. Section 1) but especially in shedding light on the sociolinguistic factors that have led to similarities, but also to differences. The results may not always be such pronounced ‘double standards’ as in the languages examined here. However, the notion is a useful starting point for future comparisons of (re-/de-)standardisation and demotisation processes.

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