Fishman Ausbau Abstand Revisited 08

Rethinking the AusbauAbstand dichotomyinto a continuous and multivariate system

JOSHUA A. FISHMAN

Abstract

There are several advantages to reconceptualizing Heinz Klosss dichotomy

Ausbau vs. Abstand as separate continuous variables, only the former ofwhich (Ausbau) is needed for corpus planning studies. Such a reconceptu-

alization would not only be preferable from the point of view of measuring

the connectedness between degree of Ausbauization and various population

attitudes and academy implementation successes, but also to furthering con-

tinuous variable measurement in general sociolinguistics and to appreciat-

ing the co-presence possibilities of various other measures of corpus plan-

ning eorts that have most recently been introduced. One of the greatest

gifts of Heinz Kloss to macro-sociolinguistics was the formulation of a po-

lar opposite distinction between any two contrasted languages or varieties

such that they are each either (a) easily recognized (i.e., judged) to be

functionally independent from one another due to the major and natural

(that is, not man-made) dierences have already transpired between them,

referred to as being independent by Abstand, on the one hand, or (b)

those whose functional independence is recognized only as a result of the

human eort that has been expended in order to make them appear su-

ciently dierent from one another, so that the smaller and weaker of the

two can be recognized as independent from the larger and stronger one

and, therefore, referred to as being independent by Ausbau. Thus, the

major theoretical contribution of Kloss, initially made well before his Nazi

days (see Hutton 1999) was essentially a tripartite one,1 one which was si-

multaneously (1) judgmental and perspectival, (2) focused upon the impor-

tance of organized human intervention into the natural language-change

processes in order that prestige- and power-related societal functions for,

as well as the independence of, the contextually weaker variety were to

have a chance of being recognized at all, and (3) preoccupied with dialect

avoidance eorts more generally as a major desideratum governing inter-

varietal comparisons in the realm of social power. The above-mentioned tri-

01652516/08/01910017 Intl. J. Soc. Lang. 191 (2008), pp. 17266 Walter de Gruyter DOI 10.1515/IJSL.2008.022

partite considerations may be highly interrelated but they are, nevertheless,

suciently independent from one another to also be considered separately,

rather than necessarily only jointly. Finally, Ausbau and Abstand, rather

than being totally separate, are also independently related to various yet

other language planning dimensions and it is these last-mentioned relation-

ships that actually disclose the major importance of Ausbau to the entire

language planning venture in various polities (Schiman 1996; Kalogjera

1985).

1. What is the opposite of Ausbau?

One of the conceptual characteristics of dichotomies is that both of their

alternatives must be on the same dimension. However, rightly conceived,

Ausbau and Abstand are not really on one and the same dimension. If Aus-bau signies building away eorts in corpus planning (or as I once ten-

tatively renamed them: the concern for fostering dissimilarity-focused

interventions in corpus planning) and if such eorts are conceptualized

as being located at one end of a dimension, than the truly opposite end

of that same dimension should by rights be termed Einbau, the concern

for fostering similarity-focused emphases, instead of Klosss proposed

Abstand. Indeed, the latter term, Abstand, is entirely unneeded in any lan-

guage planning typology because it lacks any reference to human agency.While the building (-bau) emphasis that we are accustomed to ex-

pect at one end of a human-engineered distancing dimension is needed,

indeed, it manifests itself in many dierent ways (see below), but Ab-

stand per se is not one of them. As the two morphs of its German name

(ab-/stand ) imply, its rightful meaning is merely state or condition of

separation and neither the directional, nor the authoritative human

agency, nor the amount or degree of distancing that are matters of su-

preme concern for language planning are at all properly identied by theterm. Abstand merely connotes easily and often already recognized dis-

tancing between two varieties and, therefore, actually not a distancing

that needs to be fostered by language planning eorts. Perhaps our own

relatively poor German and the masterful reputation of Kloss, both as a

typologist (with a particular fondness for dichotomies) and as a German-

ist, have long misled us into not recognizing the logical inconsistency into

which he misled us by stressing both Ausbau and Abstand as if they were

two equally prominent and legitimately opposite ends of one and thesame dimension.

18 J. A. Fishman

2. The usefulness and the quantiability of dichotomous categories

As our experience with societal data grows and develops (i.e., with the

data of societal behavior through and toward language/languages or,

more generally, variety/varieties), the more researchers will recognize the

inherent problems surrounding true dichotomies. If these problems are

not consensually solved by the investigators themselves, there is alwaysthe possibility of conscious or unconscious errors of grouping. Dichoto-

mies are rarely natural or true in nature and the more we examine

those few that have withstood the stresses of time the more we recognize

that even these few constitute vis-a`-vis more precise data of the world per

se that. If male/female can be further analyzable into degrees of

maleness and degrees of femaleness (as certain psychological tests cur-

rently claim and demonstrate), then certainly this is equally true with re-

spect to degrees of ausbauness and degrees of inbauness. In principle,we should be able to entertain the question of whether a certain Flemish

text and a contrasted Nederlands text are closer together or further apart

than another or than a certain Nynorsk text and a Bokmaal text that we

may want to compare to them.

This is certainly a dierent kind of question (and a far more dicult

one) than we could previously have entertained using the Klossian (or

Klossian-type) designations of whether Ausbau or Einbau were present in

either of the above cases. Furthermore, using these designations as con-tinuous measures also alerts us to their essential combinability pertaining

to any particular text, rather than only to their inherent opposition. There

is no good reason why any particular passage cannot reveal both certain

Ausbau and certain Einbau characteristics. Even if this were not possible

for any particular subset of the same few words (a possibility that we will

need to leave for later), it is eminently possible for successive clauses, not

to mention sentences. Although whole variety characterizations may

still be operative for folk-linguistic or popular political purposes, theyare certainly not the only ones that are permitted to exist (that is, they

are not necessary restrictions that must obtain even for research purposes)

and this represents a welcome expansion of opportunity for the textual

microanalyst in sociolinguistics. Such expansion would be inherently sim-

ilar in type to questions being pursued in connection with authorship and

provenance of texts (Is it likely that the same author wrote both of these

two texts? is a question not unlike Is it likely that both of these excerpts

stem from the same variety or Ur-text?).

Rethinking the AusbauAbstand dichotomy 19

3. Can opposite directions in language planning be implemented on the

very same dimension?

As is evident in much other human behavior, so also sociolinguistic be-

havior reveals the co-presence of opposite or opposing tendencies within

the same text or within the same variety. This is even more so (although

by no means inevitably so) when we combine both attitudinal and linguis-tic data. Advocates of the opposition to New High Germanisms within

the Yiddish fold (among the Avek fun daytsh Yiddishists such as M.

Weinreich 1980 [1973] and M. Schaechter 1986) will still permit them-

selves and others to utilize the greeting a freylekhn shabes a happy Sab-

bath, although its rst component may be questionable because it is rec-

ognizably of German origin. Yiddish ausbauists who would cringe at

geburtstog (favoring, instead, the more home-grown geboyrn-tog) usually

see nothing at all objectionable about a freylekhn shabes. The same istrue of Swiss-German ausbauists who eschew Germanisms in their Ro-

mansh when confronted with multi-componential expressions such as

Merci viel mal. Foreign-markedness is not all of one piece of cloth; some

swatches of taboo-origin clear through the self-imposed censorship of

the standard language border regulators much more easily and quickly

than do others. Ultimately, any policy must be implemented at the micro-

level and not just at the macro-level, as Klossians want to do.

However, some combination of possible opposites is even more ger-mane to any discussion of Ausbauization when it is reviewed at a more

macro-level, although the implications and consequences of such combi-

nations may well be recognizable at many low levels as well. At the

more macro-levels, the speech communitys awareness of the functional

dierentiation of language varieties is usually present at a more conscious

level. Varieties in contact often have separate names and this builds col-

lective consciousness about them and their functionally proper or more

appropriate use(s). Nevertheless, notwithstanding the eorts of teachers,editors, proof-readers, and other gatekeepers and name-givers, it is in the

nature of diglossic arrangements to display more or less leakage and

the functional border area(s) between the varieties in contact are the ones

most commonly aected thereby. In a period of social tension and social

stress, should a folksy letter between relatives, both of whom moved from

a common rural to separate urban areas decades ago, and who now al-

most never interact face-to-face but who used to always do so in Land-

smaal when they were youngsters, now be in Landsmaal or in Ryksmaal,and if in Landsmaal, should it now be in the variety orthographically

most distant from Ryksmaal or in a more proximate one? There are all

kinds of written Landsmaal (or Ryksmaal) still in use and the exact ones

20 J. A. Fishman

to use between two individuals are often inuenced by social variables,

including education, income, and socially patterned and interpreted indi-

vidual intentions. Thus, Ausbauization becomes a sliding scale that each

individual may try to adjust, upwards or downwards, both in individual

and societally meaningful (and meaningfully interpreted) ways. Being

matters of degree, they can also be regarded as indicative of degrees of

social acceptance between two interlocutors. However, matters of degreeare manifestly unrecognized (or under-recognized) if measured only via

dichotomies and can come into their own only when continuous measure-

ment is employed.

4. Internal and external boundary setting

Where to draw the line between Ausbau and Einbau eorts may be noeasier than drawing the line between any two other varieties that are on

a cline. If and when such lines succeed in being generally accepted for

decades or centuries, then they may seem valid enough to most of those

involved in upholding them. The line between Asturian and Castillian

is a very delicate matter, but it seems clearer and realer to many

viewers now than it did until quite recently (Moreno-Fernandez 2007)

and, as expected, this is done partially along self-interest lines, as is often

the case when continua must be replaced by rigid boundedness. However,now that Madrid has recognized the co-ocial nature of Asturian (2007),

the recognizability of the boundary between them (Castillian and Astur-

ian) may take on somewhat greater clarity (not to say urgency) to larger

numbers of interlocutors, just as the usage line between Valencian and

Catalan may have faded somewhat due to recent authoritative an-

nouncements that they are both merely dialects of the same Catalan

language. This would lead us to expect that Ausbau eorts between the

two will diminish in number and intensity from the Asturian side, just asEinbau circumstances and eorts between them may come to predomi-

nate, at least in certain functions and in certain speech networks on the

Castillian side.

The recognition and accentuation of Ausbauization is also a factor that

operates in the coming into being of new languages, although it has not

yet received its due in that connection. The birth and death of lan-

guages may go a long way toward explaining why more languages

seem to be dying than ever before, at the same time that more languagesthan ever before are constantly being added to the language lists main-

tained by SIL and other gatekeepers to language status. The very fact

that entire families of languages have achieved literacy at roughly the


same time (Fishman forthcoming) gives testimony to the fact that literacy

may also be an areal phenomenon that spreads and has already long

spread by interactional contagion (via religious, economic, and political

bacilli). The latter may well have been fostered by Ausbau attitudes and

sentiments that have marched across Europe, from West to East, from

the fourteenth to the eighteenth and even into the nineteenth and twenti-

eth centuries. Einbauization has been a much rarer phenomenon in Eu-rope, noted only in the Flemish/Netherlandish case with respect to liter-

acy, the Landsmaal/Ryksmaal case (via the requirement that all new

words in either be introduced as Sammorsk), and in the Moldavian/

Rumanian case, but may yet have greater appeal on other continents

(particularly in Africa and Latin America) where the extension of literacy

and ocialization to more indigenous languages has only recently begun

to gather steam and may encourage the amalgamation of smaller entities.

Ultimately, some of the latter may need to institute self-saving Einbauiza-tion toward some of their own more minor varieties. Thus, Einbauization

versus Ausbauization are by no means steady states, xed forever and a

day, but, rather, distinctions between varieties that can be in fairly con-

stant tension as sociocultural change rises and falls in conjunction with

turbulence within and between their speech communities. That being

said, the spread of English and of Islam (and, subsequently, of spoken

Mandarin within the Sinosphere) will probably serve to make for more

structural and functional similarities across hitherto dissimilar languagesthan Englishes alone would have done. The permissiveness of the En-

glish error (i.e., the development of non-native written Englishes) not

only encourages minority-language continuity, but new variety birth and

stabilization as well.

5. Ausbauization and diglossia

Since I myself have been responsible for a good bit of the constant discus-

sion concerning the role of diglossia in connection with the stabilization

(or the destabilization) of the entire system of language-use balances and

boundaries that are intricately involved in Ausbau/Einbau distinctions, a

few words might well be pardoned here about diglossia in connection

with them. Ausbauization sometimes grows into and fosters a diglossic ar-

rangement between the varieties that are involved. This arrangement is

very likely to come into being whenever the two varieties have co-existedwithin the same speech community for centuries, whether they are now

considered related languages or not. If we add a stress on functional spe-

cialization to the expected stresses on structural distancing that has gone

22 J. A. Fishman

on over many years (particularly vis-a`-vis literacy and other statusful pur-

suits in the religion and power domains of the culture), then we have ac-

counted for the major dierentia that can and do often make for diglos-

sia. When both Ausbauization and diglossia co-exist, the latter is bound

to be the older of the two since it requires a longer historical co-presence

between its constituents, a characteristic that structural distancing both

intensies and is fostered by in turn. Thus, Ausbauization neither requiresnor fosters diglossia, but diglossia requires and fosters both and does so

over a considerable length of time. Both are found to obtain rst among

higher social circles and more prestigeful text-proximate pursuits and ac-

tors. As a result, the U (upper) variety may have little if any inuence on

the more informal varieties of speech and the speech networks restricted

to them. This may very well indicate that we can look forward to the fu-

ture continuumization of diglossia, as ever larger proportions of societies

the world over become literate. This will not necessarily spell the end ei-ther of diglossia or of Ausbauization, but will more denitely make either

one harder to attain or maintain.

6. Other polarities involved in the total language planning process

Ausbauization and Einbauization are opposite poles (A and Ei) on the

structural distancing dimension within the total status and corpus plan-ning enterprise. As Figure 1 reveals, there are other distancing dimensions

as well, some of a more specic nature and others of a more general kind.

Ausbauization (along the dimension parallel to the base line) marks, as

we have seen, attempts to escape from perceived excessive structural

similarity that makes the weaker party appear to be merely a dialect for

those who do not know its true merits, which are already known to

language activist insiders. A slightly dierent concern preoccupies those

that pursue Uniqueness (U maximal distancing from any and allother languages that, nevertheless, retains its structural harmony with

previous word formation traditions), a route which led Estonian to an

ex nihilo method of creating new words out of nonsense syllables during

the 1920s, a view that necessarily distanced Estonian from Finnish and

the other members of the Finno-Ugric family of languages. Most practi-

tioners of Purity (Pu) planning, however, are less traumatized by any

and all similarities to other varieties than they are by historically ac-

knowledged borrowings from those languages/varieties that they havelong struggled with, e.g., as French has with English or (in former centu-

ries) with German. Finally, we must also mention Classicization (C),

a retreat into a genuine (or, in the cases of Pannication (Pa), into a


mythic) great tradition, such as will cause other related languages/

varieties to envy and to dream about those who have had the good luck

to have been tempted by the siren songs of Illyria, of Malphilindo, or of

Dravidistan, or of other similar mirages. A classic past that the wholeworld admires and treasures is too much of a prize for a small or now rel-

atively forgotten people to give up, even though it may pose endless prob-

lems and extra burdens for those who elect it is as their path to modern-

ization via language planning. The simultaneous application of all eight

dimensions (including both distancing and approximation) is uncommon

but not impossible in accord with the model illustrated here.

7. Closing observations

When viewed as but one member of a club of alternative language plan-

ning routes to modernization via withdrawal or distancing, it becomes

easier to recognize Ausbauization as a continuum (a solution of degree)

rather than as part of a dichotomy, such as Klosss model originally sug-

gested. Ausbauization may be furthered via purication eorts, or via

uniqueness eorts or via classicization eorts, all of which provide dis-tancing with a specic direction, avor, and historical justication. After

all, distancing must have a rationale, rather than being considered as

providing its own automatic choices among alternatives. The latter

Dimensions: A(usbau)E(inbau); U(niqueness)Westernization; P(urication)

V(ernacularization); C(lassicization)P(annication). Poles in italics are

distancing.

Figure 1. Visual portrayal of one members views of the proper goals of the language plan-

ning agency for language X (from Fishman 2006: 115)

24 J. A. Fishman

choices are derived from the fears, grievances, deprivations, insults, and

injuries that are the normal lot in life of all small and late-modernizing

languages that are widely viewed as being excessively and suspiciously

structurally similar to their larger and more powerful neighbors. In mod-

ern times, this has been the disease for which language planning (and

even linguistics more generally) has been called upon to devise therapeu-

tic approaches. The need for converting dichotomies into continua, forcombining approaches that aim in disparate or in roughly similar direc-

tions, for coping with the combinability of and reversibility of human mo-

tives, and for a greater mastery of quantitative methods among research-

ers should make the future of corpus planning research (and of language

planning practice) considerably dierent and, hopefully, more eective, in

the future than it has been in the past. The continuumization of the tradi-

tionally dichotomous Ausbau-related dimension will also render Ausbau-

ization more relevant to other major sociolinguistic topics from which ithas thus far been unnecessarily separated (e.g., language birth, language

death, language change, language policy, language politics, language dis-

tance, etc., all have already been conceptualized as continua in earlier

years).

Stanford University

Notes

1. Heinz Kloss went to considerable pains, several times, to convince me and Uriel Wein-

reich that he had never been a member of or sympathizer with the Nazi party. Even his

admitted membership in the German armed forces during World War II was purport-

edly as an ambulance driver and even that was involuntary. Huttons more recent reve-

lations (1999) conrm those of a number of other post-War scholars concerning the po-

liticized views and self-serving eorts of various German language specialists during the

years of Nazi rule. Kloss was, in many ways, a very ne scholar and his case is instruc-

tive for sociolinguists even today. More than most other language scholars, we run the

risk of being co-opted by dominant ideologies that may be able to facilitate our careers

and research eorts. I am not at all sure how many of us could resist such temptation;

obviously Kloss could not.

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26 J. A. Fishman

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Fishman Ausbau Abstand Revisited 08