Das Forum Language and Society ist eine Reihe von Gastvorträgen zu Themen der Soziolinguistik. Doktorierende der GSAH können sich die Teilnahme als Zuhörende mit 0,25 ECTS pro Vortrag anrechnen lassen. MA Studierende der Soziolinguistik können sich nach Teilnahme an 6 Vorträgen 1 ECTS anrechnen lassen.
In many regards, Norway has an unparalleled history of language planning throughout the 19th and 20th century, which has prompted scholars to label it “a linguistic experiment”, “a sociolinguistic laboratory”, and the like. Among the most noticeable outcomes of this “experimentation” are a comparatively weak standard ideology, a prevalent polylectality in everyday life, and an extensive tolerance of linguistic variation. Even though the language issue is less politicised in Norway nowadays, the present sociolinguistic “climate” is inevitably wrought out by these historical processes, and I argue that they ought to be taken into consideration when we seek to understand the linguistic behaviour of present-day Norwegians. In this talk, I will discuss some traits of this somewhat exceptional speech society, focussing on normativity, norm awareness, and the relation between the spoken and the written domains. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how these historical and ideological conditions underlie young Norwegians’ linguistic practices in social media. The relatively sparse exploration of digitally mediated language use in Norway, indicates that vernacular writing is widespread. The so-called “dialect writing” appears to be a linguistic normality within many Norwegians’ everyday literacy. However, as I will show in this talk, the writers clearly orient toward several co-occurring norms, displaying what Blommaert (2010) has called a “polycentric normativity”.
