The Norm of Language

The notion of the norm mainly refers to the literary language and always presupposes a recognized or received s t a n d a r d. At the same time it likewise presupposes vacillations of the received standard.

There is no universally accepted norm of the standard literary language, that there are different norms and that there exist special kinds of norm which are called sty­listic norms. Indeed, it has long been acknowledged that the norms of the spoken and the written varieties of language differ in more than one respect.

But anyway there may be an abstract notion of the norm. Each style of language will have its own invariant and variants.

There are a lot of different terms of the norm.

The norm presup­poses the oneness of the multifarious. There is a conscious attitude to what is well-formed against what is ill-formed. Well-formness may be represented in a great number of concrete sentences allowing a considerable range of acceptability.

The norm, therefore, should be regarded as the invariant of the pho­nemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in language-in-action at a given period of time. Variants of these patterns may sometimes diverge from the invariant but they never exceed the limits set by the invariant lest it should become unrecognizable or mis­leading. The development of any literary language shows that the va­riants will always center around the axis of the invariant forms. The variants, as the term itself suggests, will* never detach themselves from the invariant to such a degree as to claim entire independence. Yet, nevertheless, there is a tendency to estimate the value of individual style by the degree it violates the norms of the language.

The problem of variants of the norm, or deviations from the norm of the literary language, has received widespread attention among lin­guists and is central to some of the major current controversies. It is the inadequacy of the concept 'norm' that causes the controversy. At every period in the development of a literary language there must be a tangible norm which first of all marks the difference between literary and non-literary language. Then there must be a clear-cut distinction between the invariant of the norm (as an abstraction) and its variants (in concrete texts). As will be seen later almost every functional style of language is marked by a specific use of language means, thus estab­lishing its own norms which, however, are subordinated to the norm-invariant and which do not violate the general notion of the literary norm.

One of the most characteristic and essential properties of the norm is its flexibility. A too rigorous adherence to the norm brands the writ­er's language as pedantic, no matter whether it is a question of speech or writing. But on the other hand, neglect of the norm will always be regarded with suspicion as being an attempt to violate the established signals of the language code which safeguard and accelerate the process of communication. At the same time, a free handling of the norms may be regarded as a permissible application of the flexibility of the norm.

It must be acknowledged that to draw a line of demarcation between facts that illustrate the flexibility of the norm and those which show its violation is not so easy.

But "silent thunder", "the ors and ifs" and the like may from one point of view be regarded as a practical application of the principle of flexibility of the norm and from another—as a violation of the semantic and morphological norms of the English language. Variants interacting with the rigorous rules of usage may reveal the potentialities of the lan­guage for enrichment to a degree which no artificial coinage will ever be able to reach. This can be explained by the fact that semantic changes and particularly syntactical ones are rather slow in process and they reject any sudden imposition of innovations on the code already in action. There is, a constant process of gradual change taking place in the forms of language and their meaning at any given period in the development of the language. It is therefore most important to master the received standard of the given period in the language in order to comprehend the correspondence of this or that form to the recognized norm of the period.

Some people think that one has to possess what is called a "feeling for the language" in order to be able to understand the norm of the lan­guage and its possible variants. But this feeling is deeply rooted in the unconscious knowledge of the laws according to which a language func­tions, and even in its history, which explains much concerning the di­rection it has progressed. When the feeling of the norm, which grows with the knowledge of the laws of the language, is instilled in the mind, one begins to appreciate the beauty of justifiable fluctuations.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 5263