A Review of: The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization

From the outset, I was taught, as a descriptive linguist, to be suspicious of attempts at language standardization, especially since they are often accompanied by prescriptive attempts to make usage conform to the dialect of privileged rule-makers.My responsibility as a linguist was to avoid being prescriptive.I preferred to let any reduction in variation within a language community happen naturally, as people representing different varieties interacted with each other and adjusted their language use to facilitate communication across dialect boundaries.From reading the papers in this volume, I learned that sociolinguists recognize both approaches to standardization, often described as standardization "from above" and "from below."Further, although I may not appreciate efforts at standardization from above, they certainly exist, and from a descriptive perspective, it is important to understand them.