Lithuanian language ideals
Research on the standardization ideologies
From the formal point of view, the system of Lithuanian language normalisation, maintenance and supervision was established only after the restoration of Independence in 1990. However, from the ideological point of view, its origins stretch into pre-war period of the Republic of Lithuania, and the development of the system as such has started during Soviet period. Thus, in order to grasp in what forms (and why) power relations occur, how they operate, and how the authorities of language policy and practice function today, it is necessary to investigate ideas, ideologies and institutions of language normalisation and maintenance (standardisation) from the historical perspective.
In the study of ideologies of the standard it is important to accomplish the following:
1) to register the most influential ideas of standardisation during the Lithuanian Revival (in the junction of 19th and 20th centuries) and pre-war period.
2) to evaluate the most significant features of the history of language policy and standardisation in the Soviet Union (since the thirties).
3) to explore post-Stalin period in Lithuania under the Soviet rule (since the fifties until the Perestroika and the Reform Movement of Lithuania) in the following aspects:
- in what wa ys and on what basis did the language supervision operate during Soviet period (through ideology, (auto)censorship, editors, etc.)?
- how were the institutions of language supervision established? What were their functions? How their activities were related with both partially controlled and partially self-governed processes of standardisation, unification and Russification?
- wh at role did these institutions and language policymakers (party ideologists and other public figures) play in language standardisatio n?
4) to examine the features of language standardisation today and through historical perspective, highlighting adopted manifestations of power ideology and their transformations.
The main sources:
a) unpublished: mostly archives and manuscripts from the Soviet period which are held at the Lithuanian Central State Archives, the Lithuanian Special Archives, the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and the Library of Vilnius University. Among them especially interesting and not yet studied are the documents of the Lithuanian Language Commission, the Terminology Commission, and the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature, its research board, and initial party organisation; also files from various editorial and publishing houses;
b) published (documentary and subjective); among the main sources is the representative compendium which was compiled for the purposes of this particular research and consists of various texts from 1960-2010 periodicals (about 1000 items in total);
c) targeted thematic semi-structured interviews with linguists, editors and other personalities related with institutionalised language standardisation. The qualitative group interviews from the schools of 9 regional centres will also be used as a supplementary resource.
Read more about the findings of the research