literary language

 

A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary (vernacular) forms is more marked in some languages than in others. Where there is a strong divergence, the language is said to exhibit diglossia.

Classical Latin was the literary register of Latin, as opposed to the Vulgar Latin spoken across the Roman Empire. The Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia or Dacia was not identical to the Latin of Cicero, and differed from it in vocabulary, syntax, and grammar.^[1] Some literary works with low-register language from the Classical Latin period give a glimpse into the world of early Vulgar Latin. The works of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with many characters who were slaves, preserve some early basilectal Latin features, as does the recorded speech of the freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius Arbiter. At the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language — either in the rustica lingua romanica (Vulgar Latin), or in the Germanic vernaculars — , since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin.

Literary English

For literary uses of English see: Literary techniques

For formal English see: Standard English

For written English see: Standard Written English

Literary English differs from spoken English in a number of particulars.

• It is "formal;" which is to say, it is an acrolect. Contractions and similar spoken forms are avoided or are written out in full.

• It uses a different lexicon.

• It observes the rules of prescriptive grammar much more attentively/effectively than spoken English.

• It has a simplified syntax. This observation seems counterintuitive at first. Written documents may well contain complex sentences that contain multiple subordinate clauses and similar grammatical features. However, their basic structure tends to break down into simple subjects and predicates. Pronouns tend not to proliferate in writing as they do in speech; the methods of voice inflection and other disambiguating devices that clarify their referents are not available in writing. Long emphatic negating phrases like there aren't hardly any seldom occur in literary English, because while they seem more colloquial, they are syntactically complex. They too can be disambiguated in speech much more easily than in writing.

Other languages

See also: Standard language

Arabic

See main article: Standard Arabic

Standard Arabic is the literary and standard register of Classical Arabic used in writing. It is part of the Arabic macrolanguage. Many western scholars distinguish two varieties: the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an and early Islamic (7th to 9th centuries) literature; and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the standard language in use today. The modern standard language is closely based on the Classical language, and most Arabs consider the two varieties to be two registers of one and the same language. Literary Arabic or classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of Arabic taught in schools at all stages.

The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia–the use of two distinct varieties of the same language, usually in different social contexts. Educated Arabic-speakers are usually able to communicate in MSA in formal situations. This diglossic situation facilitates code-switching in which a speaker switches back and forth between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. In instances in which highly educated Arabic-speakers of different nationalities engage in conversation but find their dialects mutually unintelligible (e.g. a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), they are able to code switch into MSA for the sake of communication.

Chinese

See main article: Classical Chinese

Literary Chinese, Wényánwén (文言文）, "Literary Writing", is the form of written Chinese used from the end of the Han Dynasty to the early 20th century when it was replaced by vernacular written Chinese, or Baihua (白話）. Literary Chinese diverged more and more from Classical Chinese as the dialects of China became more and more disparate and as the Classical written language became less and less representative of the spoken language. At the same time, Literary Chinese was based largely upon the Classical language, and writers frequently borrowed Classical language into their literary writings. Literary Chinese therefore shows a great deal of similarity to Classical Chinese, even though the similarity decreased over the centuries.

Finnish

The Finnish language has a standard literary variant, literary Finnish, and a spoken variant, spoken Finnish. Both are considered a form of non-dialectal standard language, and are used throughout the country. Literary Finnish is a consciously created fusion of dialects for use as a literary language, which is rarely spoken at all, being confined to writing and official speeches.

Greek

See main article: Katharevousa

From the early nineteenth century until the mid twentieth century Katharevousa, a form of Greek, was used for literary purposes. In later years, Katharevousa was used only for official and formal purposes (such as politics, letters, official documents, and newscasting) while Dhimotiki, ‘demotic’ or popular Greek, was the daily language. This created a diglossic situation until in 1976 Dhimotiki was made the official language.

Italian

When Italy was unified, in 1861, Italian, existed mainly as a literary language. Different languages were spoken throughout the Italian peninsula, many of which were Romance languages which had developed in every region, due to the political fragmentation of Italy. Now it is the standard language of Italy.

Japanese

Until the late 1940s, the prominent literary language in Japan was Classical Japanese language (文語 "Bungo"), which is based on the language spoken in Heian Period (Late Old Japanese) and is different from contemporary Japanese language in grammar and some vocabulary. It still has relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo, although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect, and fixed form poetries like Haiku and Tanka are still mainly written in this form.

In Meiji period, some authors started to use the colloquial form of the language in their literature. Following the government policy after the World War II, the standard form of contemporary Japanese language is used for most literature published since 1950s. The standard language is based on the colloquial language in Tokyo area, and its literary stylistics in polite form differs little from its formal speech. Notable characteristics of literary language in contemporary Japanese would include more frequent use of Chinese origin words, less use of expressions against prescriptive grammar such as "ら抜き言葉", and use of non-polite normal form ("-だ/-である") stylistics that are rarely used in colloquial language.

Javanese

In the Javanese language alphabet characters derived from the alphabets used to write Sanskrit, no longer in ordinary use, are used in literary words as a mark of respect.

N'Ko

N'Ko is a literary language devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa. It blends the principle elements of the mutually unintelligible Manding languages. The movement promoting N'Ko literacy was instrumental in shaping the Maninka cultural identity in Guinea, and has also strengthened the Mande identity in other parts of West Africa. ^[2] N'Ko publications include a translation of the Qur'an, a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics and geography, poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers.

Tamil

Tamil exhibits a strong diglossia, characterised by three styles: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language, a modern literary and formal style, and a modern colloquial form. These styles shade into each other, forming a diglossic continuum.^[3]

The modern literary style is generally used in formal writing and speech. It is, for example, the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. Novels, even popular ones, will use the literary style for all description and narration and use the colloquial form only for dialogue, if they use it at all. In recent times, however, the modern colloquial form has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of the modern literary style: for instance most cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio.

Yorùbá

Main article: Standard Yoruba

Standard Yoruba is the literary form of the Yoruba language of West Africa, the standard variety learnt at school and that spoken by newsreaders on the radio. Standard Yoruba has its origin in the 1850's, when Samuel A. Crowther, native Yoruba and the first African Bishop, published a Yoruba grammar and started his translation of the Bible. Though for a large part based on the Ọyọ and Ibadan dialects, Standard Yoruba incorporates several features from other dialects^[4]. Additionally, it has some features peculiar to itself only, for example the simplified vowel harmony system, as well as foreign structures, such as calques from English which originated in early translations of religious works. The first novel in the Yorùbá language was Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (The Forest of A Thousand Demons), written in 1938 by Chief Daniel O. Fagunwa (1903-1963). Other writers in the Yorùbá language include: Senator Afolabi Olabimtan (1932-1992) and Akinwunmi Isola.

References

1. ^ L. R. Palmer The Latin Language (repr. Univ. Oklahoma 1988, ISBN 0-8061-2136-X
2. ^ Oyler, Dianne White (1994) Mande identity through literacy, the N'ko writing system as an agent of cultural nationalism. Toronto : African Studies Association.
3. ^ Harold Schiffman, "Diglossia as a Sociolinguistic Situation", in Florian Coulmas (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. London: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1997 at pp. 205 et seq.
4. ^ Cf. for example the following remark by Adetugbọ (1967, as cited in Fagborun 1994:25): "While the orthography agreed upon by the missionaries represented to a very large degree the phonemes of the Abẹokuta dialect, the morpho-syntax reflected the Ọyọ-Ibadan dialects".

Bibliography

• Crystal, David (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Cambridge, 2003) ISBN 0-521-53033-4
• McArthur, Tom (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the English Language (Oxford, 1992), ISBN 0-19-280637-8
• McArthur, Tom, The English Languages (Cambridge, 1998) ISBN 0-521-48582-7

See also

• Classical language
• Official language
• Sacred language
• Standard language
• Acrolect
• List of languages by first written accounts

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