Variation, structure and norms

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Review of Cognitive Linguistics 10:2 (2012), 294–314. DOI 10.1075/rcl.10.2.03harISSN 1877–9751 / E-ISSN 1877–976X © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Variation, structure and norms

Peter Harder

After a period when the focus was essentially on mental architecture, the cogni-tive sciences are increasingly integrating the social dimension. The rise of a cog-nitive sociolinguistics is part of this trend. The article argues that this process re-quires a re-evaluation of some entrenched positions in linguistics: those that see linguistic norms as antithetical to a descriptive and variational linguistics. Once such a re-evaluation has taken place, however, the social recontextualization of cognition will enable linguistics (including sociolinguistics as an integral part), to eliminate the cracks in the foundations that were the result of suppressing the sociocultural underpinnings of linguistic facts. Structuralism, cognitivism and social constructionism introduced new and necessary distinctions, but in their strong forms they all turned into unnecessary divides. The article tries to show that an evolutionary account can reintegrate the opposed fragments into a whole picture that puts each of them in their ‘ecological position’ with respect to each other. Empirical usage facts should be seen in the context of operational norms in relation to which actual linguistic choices represent adaptations. Variational patterns should be seen in the context of structural categories without which there would be only ‘differences’ rather than variation. And emergence, individ-ual choice, and flux should be seen in the context of the individual’s dependence on lineages of community practice sustained by collective norms.

Keywords: variation, structure, linguistic norms, social facts, community v. individual

1. Introduction

The rise of a cognitive sociolinguistics (cf. Geeraerts, 2003a; Geeraerts, Kristiansen, & Peirsman, 2010; Kristiansen & Dirven, 2008) is part of a wider development that affects not only cognitive linguistics, but cognitive science as a whole. This development is a shift, or rather an expansion, in focus — from properties of the individual mind to the properties of minds in interaction. This significant

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Variation, structure and norms 295

transformation has taken place over a range of disciplines, saliently so in anthro-pology, cf. Kronenfeld (2008). Like other aspects of the ‘social turn’ (cf. Harder, 2010), a cognitive sociolinguistics therefore needs to consider the overall implica-tions of placing the mind in social space.

In addressing this question, I will take up three interconnected issues that are central both in sociolinguistics and in the usage-based tradition represented by Cognitive Linguistics: variation, structure and norms. Of these, norms is the most basic issue. In accordance, on the one hand, with recent progress in understanding the cognitive infrastructure specific to human beings (cf. Tomasello, 1999, 2008), and, on the other, a tradition in social science going back to Durkheim (cf. e.g., Durkheim, 1893; Garfinkel, 1972), and in the linguistic context Itkonen (1978), I will argue that norms are fundamental — in under-appreciated ways — to under-standing community-level phenomena, including language.

This view necessitates a reconsideration of positions based on the classic posi-tivist distinction between normative and descriptive statements. In spite of the dismantling of unified science that has been under way in the past half-century, this dichotomy has by no means lost all its force — especially as motivated by what has been called ‘hygienic positivism’: the use of value-free science to com-bat categorization without factual foundations (e.g. categories from Nazi ideology such as ‘Aryan’). In linguistics, it underlies the distinction between normative and descriptive linguistics that is foundationally significant for the rise of linguistics as an independent discipline.

The under-appreciated implications of the role of norms challenge two well-entrenched dichotomies that are often understood as defining for descriptive linguistics, including sociolinguistics: First, between norms and actual linguistic practices, and second between a structural and a variational approach. The claim presented here is that when the foundational role of social norms is recognized, it will no longer be possible to uphold an approach based on the two simple dichoto-mies. This rules out as untenable a linguistic approach which defines its objective as ‘real language-in-use — irrespective of norms and structural systems’.

In arguing against such a position I am not claiming that this is an accurate representation of the descriptive practices of any particular linguist — if for no other reason, because I believe it is impossible to do linguistics on such premises. However, I am suggesting that there is a broad orientation in the linguistic com-munity that would sympathize with a manifesto of this kind, and that it is there-fore relevant to point out where it may be misleading.

The alternative that I argue for includes a claim that the language system (langue) is a normative feature of the community. This view of langue is a direct reflection of the shift of perspective that this paper argues for: asserting the role of the social community goes with a re-assertion of the macro-perspective that


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has been backgrounded during the recent age of deconstruction, emergence and flow. This period concentrated on exploring a valuable insight: there is no overall systemic determination of the language (and identity generally) of individuals. Social reality is constituted by myriad different, and partly conflicting, processes rather than dictated by inflexible overall laws. In re-asserting the role of the overall pattern, I am not attempting to reverse that process, only to redress the balance.

The balance I argue for includes a commitment to variation, i.e., language as a feature of the community is not a Procrustean bed, but a range of options: ‘these ways (plural!) are how we do it here’. Langue, understood as a set of community norms, includes the spectrum of variation in the community. Further, the onto-logical priority has rightly been shifted so that systems and norms emerge from the flow — rather than usage being derivable from a static system. Once norms and systems have emerged, they have an existence that goes beyond the local, indi-vidual event — but systematicity and normativity are multiplex and partial (as in all evolutionary systems) rather than monolithic (cf. e.g. Grondelaers, Speelman, & Geeraerts, 2008). A heightened appreciation of these points is an example of how the placing of the mind in social space may improve understanding both of features in the individual mind and of the social space that constitutes its natural habitat.

2. Norms as foundations

One of the reasons why the normative foundations of linguistic categories have remained marginal in linguistic awareness (in spite of Itkonen’s repeated efforts from 1978 to 2008; cf. Itkonen, 1978, 2008) is uncertainty about the precise rela-tions between norms and empirical facts about language. A key issue in this area is the relation between the kind of norms that can have foundational status and the kind of norms that are rightly understood to be antithetical to empirical, descrip-tive linguistics.

Although no consensual version of such a distinction is available, the exis-tence of two different kinds of norms, for which I adopt the terms ‘explicit’ vs. ‘implicit’, is a commonplace in everyday life and as well as in the linguistic litera-ture. The distinction is usually understood in psychological rather than sociologi-cal terms, as conscious vs. unconscious (or subconscious) norms (cf. Labov, 1972; T. Kristiansen, 2009): explicit norms are those which people profess when they are asked what they consciously think, while implicit norms are those that are inferred from behavioural evidence of various kinds. In organization theory, it corresponds to Schein’s (1985) distinction between values and assumptions: the explicit values of an organization can be found in annual reports and on home pages, while im-plicit assumptions guide actual organizational practices.



From a social rather than a psychological perspective, this last feature is the crux: norms may be said to be operational (cf. Harder, 2010, p. 312), when they have the causal power to regulate community practices. An example is the ‘convict code’ described by Wieder (1974) as a feature of life in a halfway house for narcot-ics offenders. The norm against snitching to staff about inmates’ dodgy activities is the centrepiece: ‘snitching’ basically never occurred. Central to the argument here is that a living language works in the same way: the existence of norms specifying what expressions mean in a living language community goes with the fact that when you say, e.g., horse, it really does mean ‘horse’ to its members. As expressed in Grondelaers, Geeraerts, Speelman, and Tummers (2001, p. 93), the basic as-sumption is that a common language norm triggers uniform linguistic behaviour.

Explicit norms, the kind that Schein (1985) calls ‘values’, have a more uncer-tain relation with actual practices. They exist as explicit mental representations in speakers, and their mode of being is to constitute part of the ‘common lore’ of the community along with other forms of cultural knowledge such as fairy tales, religion, gossip and school knowledge. Just as you can have (more or less shared) representations of the way the world actually is, you can have representations of the way it ought to be, and the two do not have to coincide with each other, or with the way the world actually works.

While the standard discussion has taken its point of departure in the more or less conscious status of norms in the individual mind, in terms of understanding the foundational role of norms the crucial property is the extent to which they are operational, i.e. drive actual practices in the community. In the case of the ‘convict code’, the model is in fact fully accessible to conscious awareness, and the point of Wieder’s book is to describe the acts of ‘telling the code’ which he argues is the essential mode of existence of the code itself. To take a classic sociolinguistic example, there is no reason to rule out cases where, for instance, a speaker is fully aware of his preference for non-standard L features, as manifested in his actual speech, because the H forms are associated with the high and mighty, although this type of preference is classically associated with less conscious awareness than adherence to the prestige norm (cf. also the argument in T. Kristiansen (2009) for speaking of ‘subconscious’ rather than ‘unconscious’ norms).

When Emile Durkheim as the founder of sociology asserts the role of the ori-entation towards shared norms as the basic fabric of society (cf. Durkheim, 1893), this position necessarily implies the same ‘efficacy’ criterion, cf. Harder (2010, p. 310). The importance of norms is reflected in Durkheim’s concept of anomie as a condition where the normative ground is slipping, resulting in heightened rates of suicide and other undesirable effects. Hence, in an age suspicious of norms, it is perhaps useful to point out that the basic role of norms is to assign positive value to a form of behaviour: it is good to understand what words mean in the


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community, it is good to be able to play soccer football if you are a Danish boy, etc. By implication, of course, the fact that some things are good inevitably introduces a ranking whereby others are less good; but derogation is not the point.

Returning to the individual mind, if I reject the degree of conscious awareness as the critical factor in the individual, what is it in the individual that corresponds to an operational norm? I suggest that the relevant factor is the neurocognitive infrastructure that enables and prompts individuals to respond in accordance with the norm. Norms could not drive practices unless individuals in the community had the neurocognitive apparatus to respond readily and to some extent automati-cally when norm-relevant occasions arise. This response apparatus consists largely of spontaneous and non-volitional aspects, including motor routines and expe-riential qualia, in the case of linguistic as well as non-linguistic behaviour. When someone speaks what in your community is the ‘right’ way to speak, it automati-cally triggers understanding as well as a sense that this is the appropriate way to speak. An analogous sense of rightness arises when other community practices are conducted in accordance with norms — as when someone scores a goal in soccer football, for instance (preferably your side, of course!). A norm that is fully inter-nalized (i.e. one that the individual is fully adapted to) means that what is good feels good, not just that it comes out as good when tested against an explicit mental model. The way you respond to it is part of who you are, not just an aspect of what you think. We return to the implications of this below.

According to this view, norms are facts — one type of social facts. Considered as facts, norms are descriptively unwieldy because they are not empirically given. In this, they are like laws of nature — but because they are anchored in commu-nity practices rather than in the eternal nature of matter, they cannot be inferred with the same eternal reliability. To make matters worse, they have variable rela-tions with actual performance: the fact that it is good to score goals in soccer matches does not in all cases translate smoothly into actual goal-scoring behav-iour. Nevertheless, at a particular stage in community life, they exist as social facts that may be understood as behavioural targets (On linguistic norms as community targets, cf. Labov, this issue).

3. Langue as a normative feature of the community

The established geography of linguistics puts structural and normative dimen-sions in opposite corners: the birth of descriptive linguistics was at the same time the birth of structural linguistics, with the inherent and autonomous structure of language as a counterweight to ‘a priori’ norms imposed from the outside by pundits and prophets of various kinds. From the view of the position I criticize



(‘real language irrespective of norms and systems’) it would be very convenient to say that structural description is inherently normative — because it would make it possible to kill two birds with one stone: Since variational description can be un-derstood as inherently opposed to both abstract ‘pure’ structure and norms associ-ated with the standard language, we can get rid of both in one fell swoop by tying them together as artifactual, non-empirical forms of language description. While this view makes a valid point in the case of explicit norms and language policies (cf. the discussion of the standard-vs.-dialect issue below), the point I am making is the opposite: in the case of operational norms, structure and normativity, act-ing in unison, are foundational to linguistic communities, including variation. All living varieties share with the standard language a necessary normative grounding in the community, since the use of non-standard forms is just as dependent on community norms as the use of standard forms (we return to this below). This view goes with a reconstruction of the Saussurean concept of langue as constituted by the community norm set for how to express oneself by linguistic means (cf. Harder, 2010, p. 227).

According to this view, the crucial error in the classic concept of langue is not that it posits structural relations that lie behind individual utterances, but that it is understood to be invariant and monolithic. The normative grounding that sus-tains community language use consists of a myriad of different, partly conflicting norms, of which a salient example is the frequent co-existence of a prestige norm and a community norm that assign partly opposite evaluations to vernacular and official varieties of the language. Both varieties, however, are structured — since structure is one of the design features of human language.

This fact has been obscured by the circumstance that in present-day argu-ments against a structure-oriented approach to language, the target tends to be Chomskyan generative linguistics, where variation is ignored and language is viewed as a mind-internal object. However, Chomsky’s notion of competence is very different from that of the structural tradition going back to Saussure. Locating the object of description solely in the individual, abstracting away from the social dimension, is not a necessary concomitant of an interest in linguistic structure. Saussure’s concept of langue was formulated at the time when Durkheim was de-veloping his sociological theory, and Saussure regarded langue as a sociological as well as a psychological fact — but in Cours de linguistique générale language is mostly discussed in psychological terms, and there is no theory of the relations between the two sides (cf. Geeraerts, 2003b; Labov, 1972).

As further argued in the next section, the relationship can be understood in terms of a distinction familiar in evolutionary theory between individual-level facts and population- (or community-)level facts. The most obvious illustration of why we need to understand language as a community-level fact is that for a


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pre-linguistic child, the system that she needs to master is something that on the one hand exists as a relevant fact in her world, but on the other hand is not (yet) part of her individual cognitive infrastructure. Langue captures the mode of being of language as a set of options that other speakers ‘out there’ use as part of com-munity life. In order to acquire membership status, individuals need to adapt their own cognitive infrastructure to comply with the norms that are operational in the community. I adopt the term ‘competency’ (with a –y) as a successor concept to Chomsky’s (cf. Harder, 2010, p. 174) in order to have a name for the system of op-tions that have been internalized by an individual speaker.

It may not be obvious in what sense a set of linguistic options (as opposed to actual utterances) can exist in the community, as opposed to an individual mind. It should therefore be stressed that communities arise as aggregate complexes of individual minds; there is no assumption that language can exist in the absence of individual minds. The point is that from the individual speaker’s perspective, the existence of an aggregate complex of individual minds is part of the environ-ment, not a merely mind-internal property. For the role of expression options that are current in the social environment, I borrow Gibson’s (1979) term ‘affordance’: from the point of view of the individual, the existence of a set of linguistic norms for how to express what you want to say constitutes an affordance, analogous to other features of the environment that ‘make a difference’ to the individual.

Further, it may not be obvious in what sense these options constitute a ‘system’ rather than just an inventory. This is a complex issue (cf. Langacker, 1987, p. 29 on the ‘rule-list fallacy’); but for the purposes of this article the point is the uncon-troversial one that human languages are so designed that a linguistic unit can be composed with other units to form complex utterances, and thus in order to have a working linguistic competency you need to know more than just the pieces — you need to know how to choose between them and how to put them together. An analogy that may be illustrative from the social point of view is that of an education system: For a citizen, the education system constitutes a set of options that you can draw on — whether you actually do it is not criterial for its existence. If you use the system, you can choose between the options and put them together, but not just any way you like: some units presuppose other units and if you omit certain units your education counts as incomplete — etc.

With this distinction between language and competency, we have the basic terminological apparatus to address the issue of systematicity in language in a way that avoids conflating individual-level and community-level facts. This conflation has persisted from Saussure onwards and is shared between cognitivism (cf. Talmy, 2000, p. 373) and social constructionism (Gergen, 1996), although from opposite points of view. As recently demonstrated by Dabrowska (fc), individuals have vari-able command not only of vocabulary, but also of grammar; and this issue can



only be addressed adequately in a framework that recognizes both a population level and an individual level of linguistic description.

4. Evolutionary linguistics and the causality of niche construction

As anticipated above, the complexity that arises when individual cognitive systems are viewed against a larger social background can be addressed by means of the type of dynamics that is characteristic of evolutionary systems (cf. Croft, 2000; Harder, 2010; Hull, 1988). At the same time, such a theory will provide a larger framework within which one can re-evaluate and upgrade some of the ‘system’ features of a structural understanding of language.

As pointed out by Croft, a central part of evolutionary architecture is the in-terplay between the individual-level fact of reproduction (or replication) and the population-level fact of selection. It is an individual, local event when an animal reproduces, or a linguistic unit is (re-)used — while it is a population-wide question whether particular (biological or linguistic) forms proliferate more or less success-fully. Keller (1990), who uses the invisible-hand metaphor about population-level events, gives the example of the extinction of the sense ‘angelic’ of the German word englisch. The fact that an individual chooses to use (or not use) the word in that sense on a particular occasion feeds into an aggregate process in which its frequency may drop below the critical level, thus rendering it obsolete — but non-use by an indi-vidual does not constitute obsolescence. The issue of proliferation vs. obsolescence cannot be addressed at the level of individual choice — it can only be addressed at the level of the complex aggregate unit that constitutes a community of individuals.

Viewing the life of a linguistic unit in terms of reproduction/selection dynam-ics in an evolving system also entails a transcendence of the Saussurean dichotomy between synchronic and diachronic description (Saussure, 1916, p. 134, included a panchronic approach in his theory, but reserved it for the most abstract and general laws). The objects of description in an evolutionary system constitute lin-eages (cf. Croft, 2000) across evolutionary time: a temporal series of reproduced versions of ‘the same’ linguistic unit. Like biological species, linguistic expres-sions are reproduced in slightly different forms across generations, and in order to understand what is going on one has to capture both the sameness and the differences. The place of an animal in an evolutionary system must be understood simultaneously in terms of ‘synchronic’ relations with other biological features, including other species in the same system, and in ‘diachronic’ terms addressing the sequence of forms that constitute successive phases of the animal’s lineage. The same applies to the reproduction of words and expressions: the process depends both on the relations with other linguistic units and the factors that have shaped


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the reproduction of the form across time. To return to Keller’s englisch case: the obsolescence of the sense ‘angelic’ can plausibly be understood as involving both the increasing salience of the sense ‘English’ in German conversation during the 19th century, and hence an increasing risk of misunderstanding, and the existence of an alternative expression, the word engelhaft which ended up monopolizing the sense ‘angelic’.

Panchronic interplay between individual and environment has received in-creasing interest also in evolutionary theory. Even at a purely biological level, the activities of organisms may change the environment, blurring the distinction be-tween what is due to inherent features of the organism and what is due to the en-vironment (the nature-nurture issue). As pointed out by Deacon (1997), beavers are adapted to landscapes with dams (built by beavers). A human example is the rise of lactose tolerance in human communities that domesticate cattle (cf. Laland, Odling-Smee, & Feldman, 1999); among others, Europeans are adapted to a cattle-keeping cultural environment (created by Europeans). However, there is a special feature which radically increased the power of niche construction in the case of the human environment. This feature has to do with the role of culture. As pointed out by Andersen (2006), there is a disanalogy between evolutionary biology and language in the nature of language as a system based on conscious awareness and cultural understanding. This does not eliminate the analogy between two systems when it comes to the role of the distinction between the individual and the popula-tion level, but it points to an extra element that needs to be included so as not to ‘naturalize’ social facts in a reductionist biologist fashion.

The factor that increased the scope for niche construction is the ‘ratchet effect’ (cf. Tomasello, 1999). Since human children adapt not only to the physical and biological environment, but also to an environment defined in terms of shared understanding, the dynamics of reproduction and selection can operate without requiring either changes in the physical conditions of life (in the environment) or genetic changes (inside the individual). Cultural evolution (cf. also Richerson & Boyd, 2005) is triggered when changes in sociocultural condition favour cer-tain behaviours over others. On most points, the process reflects the same causal structure as biological evolution based on reproduction and selection (including the absence of any inherent direction and value-orientation — ‘evolution’ does not translate into ‘progress’). But it does not depend solely on random mutation-like changes at the individual level, as in genetically driven evolution. The presence in human communities of joint awareness means that the invisible hand is not alone on the scene — it is possible to interfere consciously with the aggregate processes, e.g. by collective policies of various kinds (‘the visible hand’). To take an example from another discipline that includes evolution-type dynamics, a centrepiece in economic theory is the role of incentives as a way to change individual behaviour



in ways that are beneficial at the aggregate level — and incentive-driven policies are based on intentions rather than mutations.

The combination of niche construction and cultural evolution provides a foun-dation that was not available in Saussure’s day for understanding the link between language as an individual possession and language as a feature of the community. The presence of a langue in the community works in a way that is analogous to the presence of physical and biological affordances in the environment: as something that gives differential selective fitness depending on how well adapted to the envi-ronment an individual is. The competency that arises in the cognitive system of an individual has its own specific features but can no more be understood apart from the language in the environment than colour vision as a cognitive accomplishment can be understood in the absence of differentially coloured features of the envi-ronment (such as ripe fruits or nectar-carrying flowers). The need to distinguish between a set of norms as a feature of the environment and as a feature of indi-vidual competency comes out in an episode described by Wieder (1974), where a new inmate was insufficiently attuned to the force of the convict code in the com-munity, and the staff (!) had to protect him from violating it (to avoid getting him killed by the other inmates).

5. The individual level, emergence and the causal role of community-level facts

The evolution-based picture has implications for the understanding of what a us-age-based linguistics (cf. Barlow & Kemmer, 2000) must be like. At one level, it provides a solid theoretical foundation for the key usage-based assumption that the level of individual (re)production of utterance tokens is the basic phenome-non, without which no other parts of the whole system would be possible, cf. Croft (2000, 2009). But it also illustrates why individual acts of (re)producing linguistic expressions cannot be understood as the only things that exist. With a diachronic illustration, the existence of language changes (like fashion changes) necessarily requires both an individual and a collective level in order to be possible. Without the population level, it would not make sense to postulate that languages and fash-ions change — there would only be individual acts of speaking and dressing, which in themselves do not constitute changes in language or fashion. (The biological analogy is a change in the species as opposed to the birth of a deviant specimen.)

Usage-based linguistics has concentrated on one part of the evolutionary cy-cle: the role of usage in driving change. The synchronic correlative is the primacy of the bottom-up perspective in understanding language, assigning a focal role to individual and local usage as opposed to overarching constructs. Geeraerts (2010,


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p. 239) gives an illustrative diagram of the relation between system and usage un-der such a variationist interpretation, where the aggregate level hovers above the individuals, who each have their own ‘systems’.

The position I am arguing for is compatible with the diagram as such — but not with one specific aspect of its bottom-up interpretation. This is because in Geeraerts’s diagram only the individuals’ systems (what I call ‘competencies’) are real, while aggregate-level generalizations are seen as ‘epiphenomenal’. Obviously linguists’ abstractions frequently go beyond ecological validity, also at the aggre-gate level: such generalizations are possible ways of subsuming usages under an abstract common denominator, but these abstractions play no role in the way lan-guage is actually used — and are in that sense epiphenomenal. But in an evolution-ary system, adaptive pressures are necessarily outside the individual — and they are not epiphenomenal. By analogy, the overarching community system (langue) viewed as a source of adaptive pressures is part of the way the world works, not just of linguists’ imaginations. Adaptation involves abstractions across individuals: the target is an area in social-cognitive space, not a specific individual variant.

William Labov (this issue) gives an illustrative example of the key role of the community level in determining what variants individual speakers adopt. This theory is directly opposed to a theory where the adoption of variants is an out-come of a myriad of purely individual-level input events, and thus stresses the importance of a causal factor that goes beyond the single individual. In a study of the Philadelphia speech community, Labov found that virtually no impact could be found from the language spoken in the home of the individual informant, while macro-level factors such as gender, age, and class had a significant role in the vari-ation patterns found among speakers moving into the community.

For the purposes of this argument it is also significant that Labov takes an-other step away from the local, individual perspective by illustrating the force of factors that operate across several generations and across hundreds of cities. Going back to settlement patterns in the 19th century, there is a difference between a set of linguistic developments associated with a belt of Northern cities and a set as-sociated with a ‘Midland’ belt, with sharp boundaries between them. As against a purely usage-based explanation type (represented by Bloomfield) based on density of communication across group boundaries, Labov demonstrates that this can-not account for the Northern/Midlands divide: communication links are in most districts just as dense across as within the two macro-areas. Instead, Labov links the rise of such linguistic norms with broader community norms of the kind that would fit readily into a Durkheimian description of norms as the basic fabric of so-ciety — in the case of the Northern Yankee cities, values with a strong emphasis on collective moral responsibility. This exemplifies how a pattern of cultural identifi-



cation is superimposed on the myriad of distributed usage events that constitute the raw level of usage-based linguistic change.

The attraction of evolutionary theory as I see it is that it insists on both the population and the individual level. Labov in one passage (this issue) takes his emphasis on the force of the aggregate level to the point where he asserts that the individual is not a relevant unit in linguistic analysis — but that would run counter to the position I defend. Explaining why this is so simultaneously highlights two key advantages of a cognitive sociolinguistics.

First of all, an approach predicated on the dynamics between an individual and a community level entails a dual focus, of which one pole is the role of the individual cognitive system, including linguistic ‘competency’. Barlow (2010) has shown that there are clear-cut regularities, going well beyond random fluctuation, in the individual’s own set of linguistic practices, and thus that the term ‘idiolect’ refers to a genuine descriptive target. The dual setup of the evolutionary frame-work makes it possible to say that there is one sense in which idiolects clearly do exist, namely as “competencies” — and there is also another sense that high-lights the point made by Labov: an idiolect-as-competency has to be understood as an adaptation to community norms. With a take on Labov’s terms, an idiolect is “what has been learnt” — rather than “what is to be learnt”; but both sides are part of the picture.

Second, it highlights the issue of the dual forces that are at work in shaping language. There is both a set of causal factors emerging from individual usage events and a set associated with the aggregate level, and the two are inextricably in-tertwined in the selection-cum-reproduction processes that constitute evolution-ary dynamics. Keller’s scenario for how German englisch = ‘angelic’ became obso-lete was one driven by a desire to avoid misunderstanding; individual choices of reproduction (or not) yielded (at the aggregate level) a frequency below a critical level for selection by the next generation. In addition to illustrating the invisible hand, it also illustrates how an aggregate norm is at the mercy of individual usage events. This can be compared with a potential scenario for the English word gay. Robinson (2012) has investigated the relations between the senses gay = ‘lame’ and gay = ‘happy’ in South Yorkshire. She has given an account of how individual us-age and attitudes are related as well as the role of mutual assessments of older and younger speakers. However, in addition to these processes with the main focus on usage and attitudes at the individual level, there is another process in opera-tion with a focus that is clearly tied up with an aggregate-level norm: when the word gay came (by a new convention with international scope) to denote sexual orientation, this changed the conditions for usage of gay as a word for ‘happy’ in all subcommunities that were not insulated from the new norm. We may specu-late that the older sense may have fallen prey to the well-known mechanism of


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avoiding taboos that drove out English coney = rabbit (cf. Burridge, 2005, p. 125) — and in that case it is a new norm that creates the new risk of misunderstanding, rather than a strictly usage-level factor (such as increasing salience of Englishness in 19th-century German conversation). Thus causal effects go in both directions.

This paper combines two ways of invoking aggregate-level properties that usu-ally belong in separate compartments: the force of (socio)linguistic norms, and the status of langue as a supra-individual system of linguistic expressions and the rela-tions between them. While Labov mainly discusses norms for phonetic expressions, the combination suggested depends on the claim that the norm for grammatical alternatives are of the same kind. The norm for adjective position which licenses postposed position in French as opposed to English (cheval blanc as opposed to white horse) is upheld by the same force that applies to (socio)phonetic variants: a recognition in the relevant community that this is an appropriate way of talking.

Emphasizing the role of aggregate-level norms as part of a picture that in-cludes usage level variation both at the structural and social level goes against the main trend of the past generation — which has focused on individuals, emergence and flow. Why there is a point in stressing the dual picture can be illustrated by ref-erence to the tendency pointed out by Dahl (e.g. 2004) for ‘emergentism’ to oscil-late between reductionism and anti-reductionism. The anti-reductionist point that I am arguing for is that if something emerges from usage, it is no longer submerged in it. In other words, emergence involves acquiring an independent role that did not exist before. In a sociolinguistic context, the tendency to stress the process of emergence, at the cost of downplaying the independent role of phenomena that have emerged, can be illustrated with the view expressed by Eckert (2000, p. 45):

It is impossible for a social theory of language to view langue as a pre-existing con-vention, for a social theory of language must be about the process of convention-alization. By the same token, it is impossible for a social theory of language to view the individual speaker’s competence as a simple internalization of convention. Convention and individual competences are mutually produced and reproduced in practice, thus linguistic practice is not simply the consensual use of a common system. Convention is not a thing but a process…

Introducing the panchronic, evolutionary picture to replace the classic structural-ist dichotomy between synchronic stability and diachronic change has the advan-tage of showing that langue does not have to be viewed as unchanging in order to be a pre-existing feature of social reality. What pre-exists is a structured set of lineages, not eternal Platonic objects (cf. also Kristiansen, 2008); all elements as well as the relations between them are on gradients of change. But that obviously does not prevent them from being very real features of the environment at any given time — just as the fact that predator species are undergoing evolutionary



change does not mean that the (equally evolving) prey species can safely ignore the evolving predators. All aggregate-level social units exist in the same way, including whole societies (pace Margaret Thatcher and postmodern theory): even as they are changing as a reflection of pressures from myriad dispersed events, they constitute powerful sources of adaptive pressure on individuals.

Evolutionary systems work by (population-level) selection among (individu-al-level) variants (cf. Croft, 2000, 2009). This process depends on mechanisms that tend towards greater uniformity as well as mechanisms that create greater varia-tion. Hence, discussing whether uniformity or variation constitutes the ultimate truth is not a useful way to promote understanding. Greater uniformity can result when one variant offers sufficiently superior selective fitness — but note that this process could not work unless there were several variants available. The dynamics of evolution, as stressed by Croft (2000), provides an account of the crucial role of variation: in order for adaptation to take place, there has to be a range of variant features of which some can be selectively favoured in the process of reproduction.

However, this type of background variation is not the type that is central to so-ciolinguistics. Strictly speaking, no two variants are exactly identical, and this type of ubiquitous variation may be called ‘fluctuation’. The sociolinguistically signifi-cant type of variation is when a particular variant acquires adaptive significance in the community — and in order for that to happen, it is necessary that (fluctuating) instantiations of a particular form become recognizable as manifesting not only that form, but also as a particular subcategory of manifestations (with or without postvocalic –r, for instance). This, rather than fluctuation, is what sends shivers down the spine of investigating sociolinguists.

In the context of this article, this has the key consequence for variational so-ciolinguistics that it has the same object as (reconstructed) langue linguistics does: it is about conventions that emerge out of usage. The classic difference between the two endeavours is that structural linguistics used to aim for a single mono-lithic form (cf. Geeraerts, 2010) — but as already argued, that was a misguided goal. Structural linguistics should not assume monolithic invariance, any more than biology should aim for a description that rules out species-internal varia-tion. Another way of making the same point is that variational linguistics takes structural linguistics and adds an extra dimension of descriptive adequacy to it: it covers an additional set of conventional properties, namely the range of socially significant variants.

Thus conceived, it is clear why variational description presupposes structural abstractions rather than undermining them: if one did not have the structural cat-egory (such as post-vocalic –r), there would be no basis for seeing different speech sounds as variants of that category. Selection biases can be more or less complex (as in biology, so also in culture); a community with multiple cultural sub-niches


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can in principle drive a ‘Darwin-finch-style’ spectrum of linguistic differentiation. In a postmodern scenario, alternating variants are all part of the aggregate com-munity ‘system’: the aggregate ‘we’ is constituted by a complex pattern of smaller interlocking and overlapping sub-‘we’s.

This approach points to some of the same things as Altendorf’s argument (2010) for a three-way division, where there is a middle level at which structural norms and individual variants meet. However, the approach is perhaps more appropriately viewed as gradualist rather than tripartite, since structurally well-defined systems are viewed as prototypes that can differ gradually and shade off into idiosyncratic individual patterns. From my point of view, the gradual properties are better cap-tured by being viewed as a change in the way we understand the level of langue, rather than as a middle ground between language and parole. The way norms exist in society, prototype status is one of the social configurations that they can have, in which case they serve as ‘reference points’ (as pointed out by Kristiansen & Dirven, 2008; cf. Altendorf, 2010). In the structural tradition as discussed by Altendorf, the middle ground is traditionally described with the term ‘norms’ — but once langue as such is cast in the role of a norm, there can no longer be a clear separation between the messier norms and an abstract ideal monolithic system: the pure and monolithic system is simply no longer assumed to have any role in linguistic real-ity. The mode of being of norms, in contrast, has exactly those properties that are essential to the middle level: they depend on the shifting properties of populations and sub-populations, from which they emerge and erode over time.

In relation to the question posed by Altendorf about the status of ‘Estuary English’, this dual approach entails that if we want to find out whether it is a fig-ment of linguists’ imagination or a feature of social reality, we need to find out whether it exists as the target of adaptation for some speakers, such that it is un-derstood as ‘the way we do it’ by those speakers. This does not necessarily entail that it reflects their own actual usage patterns in any direct way, but patterns of convergence such as those uncovered for the Northern Cities in Labov (this issue) should eventually be demonstrable if this is the case. The most obvious alterna-tive hypothesis is that ‘Estuary English’ is simply a result of a general trend of dialect levelling, a point on a trajectory between a previous greater dialect differ-entiation and a future coalescence, in a process whose course is partly shaped by a weakening of the adaptive pressure exerted by RP English. Its status would then be equivalent to what some speakers refer to as a ‘Mid-Atlantic’ accent — which is not maintained by adherence to the norms of a Mid-Atlantic community, but which is the result of a combination of independent developments with no shared normative status that can constitute an attractor in its own right. One cannot get an answer by looking strictly at empirical differences between sub-varieties within



what is called ‘Estuary English’ — because that would not differentiate between a current stage of levelling and a target area with normative status.

6. The ‘anti-normative’ stance

As announced in the introduction, at the folk level of the sociolinguistic and us-age oriented community, there is a family of positions that reflect a generalized dichotomy between linguistic norms (bad) on the one hand and individual varia-tion (good) on the other. This stance has roots in the critical revolt following ’68 but also fits naturally into the postmodern cultural climate (cf. Geeraerts, 2003c), in one version as a feature of social constructionism: normative systems are so-cial constructions masquerading as truth, and thus can have no legitimate author-ity, because individuals are free to assert their own sets of values and practices. This goes also for the freedom to speak and write as one chooses, instead of being bound by normative conventions. For socially aware linguists, this is especially obvious in the case of a standard language that is associated with the rich and powerful: a (standard) language is a dialect with an army and a navy — but it is not inherently better than other languages.

Let me make clear that I strongly support the struggle against oppressive poli-cies designed to get dialect speakers to give up the language that they consider their own, and to impose one form as the only ‘correct’ one. But oppressive policies are different from operational norms (the subject of this article). Oppressive poli-cies can simply be stopped — but the argument offered above should make clear why this is not true of operational norms: if there were no linguistic norms in op-eration, language would be impossible (because there would be no mechanism to assign meaning to expressions) — and if the only way to avoid norms of the kind that make certain forms ‘feel more appropriate’ in specific social situations would be to stamp out sociolinguistic variation entirely.

There is, therefore, a clear difference between the liberty of the individual to move around freely and the liberty to use any linguistic expressions she wants — even if they may sound as equally basic freedoms. Language use only works inside the field of social forces underpinned by norms. Hence, the freedom of the individual can only consist in a licence to place oneself in the desired position within the field of normative forces. This also has implications for the relevant understanding of the coercive force exerted by linguistic norms as opposed to laws restricting the freedom of movement. While constraints on freedom of movement work by preventing people from going where they want, linguistic norms work by assigning conventional social significance to what people choose to say (including low prestige to certain forms).


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The status of norms as affordances in the community means that the outsider begins by being simply nowhere in relation to the norms, rather than by being in a state of subjection. In the course of socialization, which in principle is a lifelong process, the individual ends up somewhere in the field of social forces. Because these forces also constitute affordances, this is not only inevitable, it is also a condi-tion for acquiring a fully human identity, the alternative being a ‘wolf-child’ exis-tence. Exactly where individuals end up depends on both external circumstances (population-level) and individual choice (including identity construction). In Piaget’s terms, the process happens by the interplay between accommodation and assimilation, a process of mutual adjustment between the environment and the individual. In Eckert’s data, American high school students face a set of social norms associated with a ‘jock’ identity and one associated with a ‘burnout’ identity — but identity construction does not happen by social forces press-ganging the individual into one of these. The clearest indication of this is that most students define themselves as ‘in between’ — i.e. they situate themselves in a position within the field of social norms that exist in the community, but without being coerced into a particular position. The ‘social dupe’ (cf. Eckert, 2000, p. 44), who adopts a set of norms wholesale, is a theoretical possibility, but in evolutionary terms it is likely to be a sub-optimal form of adaptation.

But perhaps we could aim for a neutralization of a particular kind of norm that is not necessary for language to make sense — the norm according to which some ways of saying the same thing are more highly valued than others. Couldn’t we just agree that it is forbidden to look down on other people’s languages, and all languages and variants are equally good?

The principle has the same status as a hypothetical proposal that all clothes be regarded as equally chic. It assumes that social evaluation of different cultural practices can be suspended in a particular domain (one in which, historically, evaluative dimensions of normativity have been rampant). I think this is where the sociolinguistic community has retained a pocket of ‘hygienic positivism’: if we eliminate all value judgments, we are left with pure reality, which we can then by rational argument teach to everyone. An illustration is when Milroy & Milroy (1991, p. 103) say that “the linguistic sign is arbitrary and value-free”. Needless to say, from the position I have defended, no practice sustained by community norms can be value-free.

Let me emphasize that I am strongly in favour of asserting the distinction between categories grounded in fact and categories without factual foundation, and of using that for hygienic purposes. The problem is that operational norms are a type of facts. Moreover, they are a type of facts which have foundational status for human communities. Like sex, as famously quipped by Groucho Marx,



they are here to stay. Being against them in general, I suggest, would therefore be unprofessional for linguists, including sociolinguists.

Further, the evidence suggests that an explicit position of being against norms that operate at the implicit level has little if any bearing on community-wide lin-guistic reality. An empirical survey of the situation in Denmark by T. Kristiansen (2009) goes into the issue of both explicit, conscious attitudes, and the implicit, operational attitudes that can be inferred indirectly from response patterns to samples of language. The findings support a number of very interesting conclu-sions, one of which is that there is a systematic and pervasive difference between explicit and implicit attitudes of Danish informants. Where explicit attitudes put local speech as the most preferred variety, implicit attitudes universally put Modern Copenhagen first.

Among other things, this illustrates the force of aggregate-level norms (i.e. beyond the immediate communities-of-practice). But it also illustrates the pow-erlessness of explicit norms-as-values, which in this case strongly favour local dialects. Even if such explicit attitudes may result in concrete action, it does not necessarily give the desired result. The former director-general of Danish National Broadcasting once reported that an initiative to get local news spoken in the local dialect on the radio was discontinued because of local protests: How like these arro-gant media people to make fun of our dialect! The choice of the dialect ‘felt wrong’ by implicit appropriateness standards, and that was, quite literally, the end of it.

It is natural for linguists to be in favour of linguistic diversity, just as it is natu-ral for biologists to be in favour of biodiversity. I am, too — but in terms of the picture I have defined, this means being in favour of linguistic norms — the more, the merrier! The condition of survival of languages is that as actual operational norms in the community, they exert enough adaptive pressure to ensure selection and replication across generations. This applies also to what has been called ‘multi-ethnolects’ (cf. Quist, 2008) — the practice in urban communities of freely using linguistic expressions from different sources: it thrives because it is in accordance with the community norm. Such an operational norm is incompatible with a situ-ation in which it does not matter whether people use the community language or not, and each person decides on a purely individual basis.

When sociolinguists are asked, as professionals, how to act in the face of lin-guistic norms, they should therefore make clear that operational norms are facts of life, and the stuff sociolinguistics is made of. Individuals may also try to change them, as they may try to change other unwanted features of the real world — but that attempt, too, will be evaluated on whether they manage to make new norms operational in the community. Eliminating unwanted prestige differences means getting a norm on its feet according to which variations are evaluated with exactly the same social status. The task is one of norm-building, not norm-elimination.


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7. Summary and final remarks

Placing the mind in social space enables linguistics, including sociolinguistics as an integral part, to make ends meet in a new way. Structuralism, cognitivism and social constructionism introduced new and necessary distinctions, but in their strong forms they all turned into unnecessary divides. An evolutionary account can reintegrate the opposed fragments into a whole picture that locates each of them in their ‘ecological position’ with respect to each other.

Empirical usage facts should be seen in the context of operational norms in re-lation to which actual linguistic choices represent adaptations. Variational patterns should be seen in the context of structural categories without which there would be only ‘differences’ rather than variation. And emergence, individual choice, and flux should be seen in the context of the individual’s dependence on lineages of community practice sustained by collective norms.

In the light of this reassessment of the linguistic landscape, some intellectual positions can be seen to be both professionally and socio-politically flawed — and this may ideally serve to channel civic and professional energy towards those bat-tles that both can and should be won.

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Author’s address

Peter HarderDepartment of English, Germanic and Romance StudiesNjalsgade 128, 24.22300 Copenhagen, Denmark

[email protected]

About the author

Peter Harder is full professor of English Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He received his dr.phil. (habilitation) in 1996 and became a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1999. He was visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego in 1994, and visiting professor at Berkeley in 2003. His research interests include the semantics of grammar, language politics and normativity, grammaticalization and linguis-tic theory. His main works are Functional Semantics (1996) and Meaning in Mind and Society (2010), both at Mouton de Gruyter.

mailto:[email protected]

Variation, structure and norms

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