Variation and Change in Language Norm

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce a call for papers on the Issue of variation and change in language norm. By “variation” we mean geographical, sociocultural, historical, functional, or stylistic diversity; “change” refers to the evolution by adding, transforming, or losing features; “language” covers all the linguistic varieties regardless of their degree of codification and standardization in general; and “norm” includes both objective implicit social habits and prescriptive explicit codifications.

All theoretical and methodological frames are welcome. Comparative analyses (of how different theoretical or methodological approaches address variation or change, comparative analyses of languages, etc.) will be especially appreciated.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution to the Guest Editors (joan.costa@upf.edu; miquelangel.pradilla@urv.cat) or to the Languages Editorial Office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

• Abstract submission deadline: 31 May 2021
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 30 June 2021
• Full manuscript deadline: 30 November 2021

References

Amorós Negre, Carla (2019). “Los procesos de restandarización lingüística en la hispanofonía: prescripción y norma mediática de la CNN en español”. En: Greuβlich, Sebastian / Lebsanft, Franz (Eds.): El pluricentrismo de la cultura lingüística hispánica. Reflejos en los medios de comunicación masiva. Editorial: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht unipress

Ayres-Bennett (2019). “From Haugen’s codifcation to Thomas’s purism: assessing the role of description and prescription, prescriptivism and purism in linguistic standardisation”. A: Language Policy , s. num., doi.org/10.1007/s10993-019-09521-4.

Cerruti, Massimo; Crocco, Claudia et al. (2017) Towards a New Standard: Theoretical and Empirical Studies on the Restandardization of Italian. London /New York: De Gruyter.

Costa-Carreras, Joan (2019). “És la “variació lingüística social” una categoria operativa per a la planificació lingüística de corpus?” [‘Is social linguistic variation a useful category for language corpus planning?’]. Caplletra, 67 (Tardor 2019), p. 93-113.

Costa-Carreras, Joan (2020). “La relació entre l’estàndard i els dialectes en català: una visió des de l’equitat” ['The relationship between the standard and the dialects in Catalan: the equity viewpoint']. A: Boix, Emili; Perea, Maria Pilar (ed.). Llengua i dialectes: esperances per al català, gallec i basc, Barcelona, Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, p. 75-103.

Costa-Carreras, Joan (2020). “La gestión de la variación lingüística en vasco y en A Fala del Valle de Jálama: “policéntrica” o “composicional”?”. Études romanes de Brno, 41, 1, p. 85-98.

Costa-Carreras, J. (2020/2021?). “Compositionality, Pluricentricity, and Pluri-areality in the Catalan Standardisation”. In: Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio; Martines, Vicent ed. (2020/2021?) History of Catalonia and Its Implications for Contemporary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict. Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA: IGI Global, p. 182-197.

Dollinger, Stephan (2019). The Pluricentricity Debate. On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties. Vancouver: Routledge.

Joseph, J. E. (1987). Eloquence and power: The rise of language standards and standard

Koch, Peter; Oesterreicher, Wulf (2007). Lengua hablada en la Romania: español, francés, italiano. Madrid: Gredos. [Spanish translation from the original Gesprochene Sprache in der Romania: Französisch, Italienisch, Spanisch, 1990.]

Kristiansen, Tore/Coupland, Nikolas (Eds.) (2011). Standard languages and language standards in a changing Europe. Oslo: Novus.

Lebsanft, Franz/ Tacke, Felix (eds.) (2020): Manual of Standardization in the Romance Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Lenz, Alexandra N.; Plewnia, Albrecht (Eds.) (2010). Grammar between Norm and Variation. Varolingua. Nonstandard- Standard- Substandard, 40. Frankfurt am Main/ Berlin/ New York: Peter Lang.

Pradilla, Miquel Àngel (2015). La catalanofonia: Una comunitat del segle XXI a la recerca de la normalitat lingüística. [‘The Catalanophonie: a XXIst century community looking for linguistic normality’] Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Pradilla Cardona, Miquel Àngel (2020). “Social and Functional Variation in Catalan”. In: Argenter, Joan A.; Lüdtke; Jens. Manual of Catalan Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 397-420.

Walsh, Olivia (2016). Linguistic Purism. Language Attitudes in France and Quebec. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Dr. Joan Costa-Carreras
Dr. Carla Amorós Negre
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.