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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 760

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Language planning in Norway and Flanders: a comparative analysis.

Authors: Belsack, Els A.
Submitted by: Belsack, Els A.F. (Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium)

During the long 19th century (1794-1914) many of the contemporary European nation states were formed. Their newborn governments all faced the same problem: how to unite the people of the state by means of one national language?

Selecting this specific standard language implied a choice between different languages or language varieties, some of which ‘won’ and were promoted through language planning measures from the government, institutions or individuals. Other languages ‘lost’ and their use was discouraged (or at least neglected).

Norway and Flanders were two textbook examples in this respect with highly comparable political, cultural and sociolinguistic histories and with remarkably similar standard language selection processes involving two competing possibilities. In Norway, two potential standards were proposed: Dano-Norwegian (later on also referred to as Riksmål and Bokmål) and Landsmål (also known as Nynorsk). In Flanders, the conflicting views between the integrationists and the particularists divided the intellectual elite: should Flanders have an own southern standard language or adopt the northern Dutch standard?

Despite the evident interest for language planning typology, there has been no in-depth comparative analysis of both cases to date. As such, this contribution will confront a series of crucial elements from both situations. Who where the prominent actors in the ‘battle’ between the two opposing standard language candidates? Which arguments did they use to promote their variety or to attack the other, or in other words: why was their proposed language/variety supposedly a ‘better’ candidate to become the national standard language? Which similarities and dissimilarities can be detected when comparing the Nynorsk and particularist movements on the one side, and Bokmål and integrationist camp on the other side? Can some of the tendencies discussed here be generalized in a broader Nordic or European context? The discussion will feature examples from the ongoing analysis of primary archive material and is intended to stimulate further discussion about the nature of the historical language planning processes in Flanders, Norway and beyond.