This paper examines mediated sociolinguistic change, specifically in standard language ideology in Bulgaria. While discussion of a standard Bulgarian had begun in the early 19th, public discourse about the nature of a standard... [ view full abstract ]
This paper examines mediated sociolinguistic change, specifically in standard language ideology in Bulgaria. While discussion of a standard Bulgarian had begun in the early 19th, public discourse about the nature of a standard intensified with the expansion of serial publications in the second half of the century. Throughout the history of standardization of Bulgarian mass media has been played a critical role in the processes of selection, codification, elaboration and acceptance of norms (Haugen 1966). The stability of the norms established in 1945, when several contentious issues of selection and codification were decided, and their apparent acceptance was facilitated by the strong state control over public media under communism. With the post-1989 loosening of this control over mass media, however, public discourse has seen a revolution not only in terms the appearance of language variants which previously had been out of public hearing (a phenomenon that Lunde and Roesen 2006 have termed "Landslide of the Norm"), but also heated debates over what is and is not acceptable language by both language elites and the general public. What has emerged then in these media spaces is a struggle between centripetal (standardizing) and centrifugal (de-standardizing) forces (Coupland, Thøgersen & Mortensen 2016: 27) which reflects a change not in sociolinguistic variants but rather the evaluation of these sociolinguistic variants, what Bucholtz 2003 terms a process of authentication. The discussion and analysis of this data will contribute to the study of media-induced sociolinguistic change, i.e. a change in language ideology (Androutsopoulos 2014).
Androutsopoulos, J. (ed.) 2014. Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change. De Gruyter.
Bucholtz, M. (2003). Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7.3: 398-416.
Coupland, N., J. Thøgersen, and J. Mortensen. 2016. Introduction: Style, media and language ideologies. In Coupland, N., J. Thøgersen, and J. Mortensen (eds.) Style, media and language ideologies. Novus Press. Oslo.
Haugen 1966 Dialect, Language and Nation. American Anthropologist 68.4: 922-935. Lunde, I. and T. Roesen (eds.) 2006. Landslide of the Norm: Language Culture in Post-Soviet Russia. (Slavica Bergensia 6). Bergen
