Ruska Stancheva
Papers of BAS. Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 6, 2019, No. 1
Language attitudes and the codification
of standard linguistic norms
Ruska Stancheva
Abstract. The paper discusses the interaction between language attitudes and the codification practice and advances the idea that the intersection of that interaction are the symbolic functions of the standard language. In so far as language attitudes are an indicator of the degree of the representation of symbolic functions and the codification is oriented towards maintaining the latter, language attitudes can also serve as a measure of the success of the codification. From that perspective, the paper offers an analysis of data from a representative sociological survey of Bulgarians’ language attitudes. The results of the analysis are corelated to specific codification decisions that illustrate the way codification props the symbolic functions of Bulgarian standard language. The correlation is done with a view to the effectiveness of the codification at present.
Keywords: language attitudes, codification, symbolic functions of standard language, Bulgarian standard language