KALBA

RITA MILIŪNAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

STANDARD LANGUAGE PRESCRIPTIVISTS AND THE EMERGING SOCIETY OF DIGITAL MODERNISM

In Lithuania, strong traditions of prescriptive work and standard-language oversight have taken shape: codification works are compiled and published, prescriptive databases are created, written-language texts are edited, and language reviews of various publications are published. Entire generations of prescriptivists have been trained, actively contributing—and continuing to contribute—to the establishment, implementation, and functioning of standard-language norms. To a considerable extent, this has been and remains a counterbalance to the influence of other languages—first Slavic languages, and now English. Thus, standard-language prescription in Lithuania is a prominent branch of linguistics and perhaps the one most visible to society. That is why, for people, linguists are first and foremost those who concern themselves with linguistic correctness.

Over time, the role of prescriptivists in society, the problems they face, and their relationship with standard-language users have changed. But the methods of prescriptive work have probably changed the least. This is one reason why, in recent years, a newly liberalized society has been sparing in its criticism of linguists over current language policy and specific prescriptive activities^*. The main complaints concern two things: 1) an allegedly closed sect of linguists that makes abnormal decisions; 2) linguists make people’s lives harder with constant prohibitions, nitpick too much, and, instead of limiting themselves to language research, restrict freedom of expression. In general

* This article was prepared before the polemic about the meaning and methods of language prescription began in early 2011. (The author’s note while reading the article proofs – R. M.)

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publicly expressed comments about linguistic correctness can be torn to shreds at any time and by anyone¹.

A part of society is already quite different and lives in a different world than it did a couple of decades ago. So-called paradigm shifts are taking place across various systems of thought. Contemporary globalization, the spread of the internet and the rapid development of new information technologies, as well as various ideologies that often grow to extremes (feminism, political correctness, genderism², antisexism, etc.), actively affect language use and also pose new challenges for language prescriptivists. It is therefore unsurprising that the traditional means of prescriptive work are increasingly failing to meet society’s needs. On the other hand, as research shows, society has both a need for a standard and dissatisfaction when the Lithuanian language is corrupted. People are eager to discuss language issues; they criticize only the ways in which language prescriptivists introduce or change norms.

This situation encourages a closer look at prescriptivists and an examination of the problems in their work from within, especially since we have almost no such studies. In light of the changes taking place in contemporary society in connection with processes of internetization, this article examines where prescriptivists should direct their efforts so that the results of their work will be more acceptable to society.

1. STANDARD LANGUAGE CODIFIERS: AUTHORITIES AND SUBJECTS

Various schemes and models of the active social forces that shape the standardization process can be found in the linguistic literature. In sociolinguistics, discussions of theoretical issues concerning language norms sometimes draw on the work of Swedish-born

¹ One illustrative recent example is the reaction of internet commenters to a complaint submitted to the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language by a sports viewer calling himself Rimvydas Ž. The complaint concerned Robertas Petrauskas, a TV3 sports commentator who was broadcasting a World Basketball Championship game live from Turkey and had incorrectly used the prefixed verb nugriūti instead of pagriūti (the prefix clearly distinguishes the meanings). See www.delfi.lt: <http://sportas.delfi.lt/wbc2010/krepsinio-aistruolis-apskunde-netaisyklingai-kalbanti-komentatoriu.d?id=36165731> (accessed 2010 09 06, 1242 comments); www.balsas.lt: <http://www.balsas.lt/naujiena/500696/kalbos-komisija-sulauke-skundo-del-netaisyklingos-krepsinio-komentatoriaus-kalbos> (accessed 2010 09 06, 9 comments). When news of the complaint was published on internet news portals, their commenters, rather than acknowledge that the commentator ought to correct himself, launched a massive attack on the letter’s author, asking how he could even dare to nitpick over such trivial matters. Of course, basketball’s hold on Lithuania is incomparably stronger than respect for language, but those comments also clearly revealed just how much intolerance toward language correction at least some members of society—those active in online spaces—had accumulated.

² Apie genderizmo sąsajas su kalbos pokyčiais žr. Patackas, Žarkus 2010.

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suomio filosofo Georgo Henriko von Wrighto (Wright 1963) normos samprata, pagal kurią skiriami normų autoritetai ir normų subjektai³. Šis skyrimas svarbus kalbant apie normintojų ir visuomenės santykius.

An authority on norms is an actor who issues a prescription, that is, confers normative force on a norm. Normative force is directed at the subjects of norms: the authority guides them, permitting or prohibiting them from doing something.

In the theoretical literature on language planning, language planners—that is, active forces that consciously influence language development—are conventionally divided into four groups (cf. Haarmann 1990: 120–121; Baldauf 2006: 151–154):

• the official political level – decisions made by the country’s government,

• the institutional level – state institutions (in science, education, etc.),

• the level of social formations – various organizations (associations) and groups,

• the individual level – individual personalities.

One notable change over the more than a century of the development and standardization of standard Lithuanian has been the changing conception of codifiers and their role in society: from an authoritative individual, to an organized collective, and ultimately to state institutions for language management and standardization.

The work of standardization itself, both at the dawn of standard Lithuanian in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century East Prussia and during the periods of Aušra and Varpas, was collective (see Pupkis 2010: 13). At the very end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, however, Jonas Jablonskis stood out most prominently among the intelligentsia as an authoritative individual who laid the foundations for the norms of standard Lithuanian—thus, the individual level came to the fore (Pupkis 1995: 2):

Lithuania, lacking a traditional native upper class (until the beginning of the twentieth century it was largely Polonized or Russified), had not developed the kind of prestigious language characteristic of other countries. Indeed, for at least a couple of decades Jablonskis and his writings served as the model of a prestigious language, but chiefly for language codifiers and language teachers, not for society as a whole; the latter regarded the far from exemplary language of newspapers and books as a model.

After J. Jablonskis’s death in 1930, the period of an organized collective of codifiers began. In prewar Lithuania, the Lithuanian Language Society was active; its members included Pranas Skardžius, Antanas Salys, Petras Jonikas,

³ Dar žr. Ammon 2004: 277; Takahashi 2004: 173–174 – apie normų propaguotojus, pasipelnytojus iš normų, normų piktadarius, normų aukas ir kt.

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Leonardas Dambrauskas and others) discussed the theoretical foundations of standard-language codification and carried out practical codification work (see Miliūnaitė 1991: 7–21). This marked a transition to another level.

During the Soviet period, codification work was carried out by the then Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature and university departments; in the 1960s, the Lithuanian Language Commission was established under the Academy of Sciences. Although the work was now collective, prominent authoritative individuals also stood out, whose influence on society was due in no small part to the media: Kazys Ulvydas, Juozas Pikčilingis, and others. After independence was restored, the Language Commission acquired the status of a state commission, and a state language-supervision institution—the State Language Inspectorate—was also established. Thus, in Lithuania today, the greatest weight in codification work rests at the institutional level, while individual authorities capable of having a strong influence on society have disappeared.

The question of authority, however, is not so simple. Attitudes toward authorities—symbolically, above all toward J. Jablonskis—reveal the greater or lesser differences in the views of language specialists themselves (Pupkis 1995: 3):

Unfortunately, Jablonskis’s authority has completely faded in society today; codifiers refer to Jablonskis far too rarely in their work, and often only when their views coincide with the great linguist’s assertions. In other cases, the opinion of the greatest codifier of the standard language is readily disavowed, and attempts are made to rely on criteria that are not always clear or have not been universally considered. The tradition of codification itself is also forgotten: from Jablonskis—through Balčikonis, Skardžius, Salys, and Jonikas—to the present day.

Bronys Savukynas had already described the clash between supporters of J. Jablonskis’s ideas and ideas stemming from the post-Jablonskis generation as disputes between “populists” and “modernists” (Diskusija 2005):

We cannot now return to the kind of standard Lithuanian language that Jonas Jablonskis had begun to establish in 1922–1930. That model is already outdated, has been outgrown, and does not meet the needs of the 21st century. The very understanding of the standard language has also changed. Jablonskis considered only the language of the people to be a source of the norm. The journal “Gimtoji kalba” (1933–40) had already formulated the principle that the main criterion for the standard language is its current usage. During the Soviet period, when the Lithuanian Language Section was being established under the Society for Local History and plans were being made to publish “Mūsų kalba,” supporters of the “living language of the people” criterion again began to make their voices heard; they remain active to this day. [...] Work on language culture still consists mostly in reinstating J. Jablonskis’s corrections. But we must also see and hear what Jablonskis never even dreamed of. [...] Thus, we must strive to raise the prestige of the standard language in society. Its prestige has already fallen considerably, and this decline is due to the disputes and disagreements among linguists themselves—“populists” and “modernists.”

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Finding an acceptable relationship with tradition is work that requires renewed effort from every generation of codifiers. Today, probably no one speaks of blindly “reinstating Jablonskis’s corrections,” but fundamental traditional and time-tested principles remain, and, in light of changed conditions in society, they can and should be given new meaning.

Because of the half-century-long Soviet occupation, changes in phenomena that shape the general meaning of culture in Lithuania remain uneven, while various ideologies and cultural currents arriving from the West make their way through the multilayered strata left by earlier systems of thought and coexist for quite a long time with phenomena from past periods. It is therefore unsurprising that at the beginning of the 21st century people were still talking about populists and modernists, and that traces of romantic ideology can be found in contemporary codification work on standard Lithuanian (see Vaicekauskienė 2008: 36), even though in Western European culture the transition from industrial to consumer society began in the second half of the 20th century, and postmodern trends replaced modernism over the last three decades of the 20th century (cf. Lyotard 2010: 17; Žmuida 2010: 189). If we understood postmodernism more broadly—not merely as a cultural and artistic phenomenon, but also, more generally, as a way of thinking and acting that asserts only the “here and now” and is characterized by a skeptical view of the world (see Pennycook 2006: 62–63)—we could say that only recently, and considerably later than elsewhere, have younger generations of language specialists in Lithuania increasingly embraced it.

2. CHALLENGERS OF THE STANDARD LANGUAGE. ANTI-AUTHORITIES AND NEW INTELLECTUALS

Modernism emphasized ideals such as rationality, objectivity, and progress, while postmodernism asks whether the existence of these ideals is possible at all (cf. http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernizmas). This is why the question of the authority of language standardizers has become rather acute in our society today. Previously, the subjects of standardization, that is, society, were generally viewed as a fairly passive force that was expected merely to carry out the standardizers’ decisions. Today, however, we see something different. The relationship between standardization authorities and subjects is changing: authorities—including J. Jablonskis—are being turned into anti-authorities, while their work is being devalued or even openly mocked. There is growing discontent in society with standardizers and doubt about the purpose of their work (cf.

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“Although for a long time I myself encountered language controllers only indirectly, the phenomenon of language regulation always seemed to me unjust, pointless, and generally somehow exceptionally unpleasant and hurtful”; Azguridienė 2009: 276).

Jonas Klimavičius writes about this postmodern generation of new Lithuanian intellectuals (quoting notices in Naujasis židinys-Aidai, a journal characteristic of this tendency) (Klimavičius 2008: 94):

I have long described the youngest generation’s provincial new Lithuanians as having unspoken words that seem to radiate from all their self-importance: before us there was a flood—well, unless perhaps Greimas, but certainly not Jablonskis.

And yet, it turns out, J. Jablonskis was there too. But in the eyes of the new intellectuals he becomes... the autocratic progenitor of cultural extremism: “dissatisfaction with the undemocratic nature of norms, the restriction of individual and situational linguistic expression, and conservative attitudes toward standardization allow us to suspect precisely that the standardization of language contains the beginnings of cultural extremism” (Vaicekauskienė 2010: 170), since the footnote to this claim reads:

Interestingly, resistance to autocratic language planning had already emerged in the 1920s, when well-known writers rebelled against what they called Jablonskis’s “dictatorship” and demanded the right to create the standard language without relying solely on the criterion of correctness. During the Soviet era, this resistance was called “dialectal anarchy.”

Such ideas would not seem strange—rather, they would seem inevitable—if we understood the basis for their emergence in the shift in the paradigm of thought. One might only consider what weight and meaning such claims would have if we were drawing on not one hundred but three or four hundred years of the oversight and functioning of a codified standard Lithuanian language, as is typical of more than one standard language in Western European countries (cf. Milroy, Milroy 1999: 24–33; Subačius 2004). Perhaps a little over a hundred years is simply an unforgivingly short period of time if the edifice of the standard Lithuanian language built up during it can be casually turned upside down.

Without attempting to cover all the issues of postmodernism in this article, even those related to linguistics and, more specifically, language planning (for more, see Pennycook 2006: 60–76), it is worth noting only that the essence of the postmodernist position is to remain at the margins, to foreground subjective experiences and the individual over collective agreement; postmodern culture and art are associated with fragmentation and playfulness, irony, hybridity, eclecticism, intertextua-

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nihilism and narcissism, when the boundaries of time and space disappear, chronology and linear analytical thought lose their meaning, and one distances oneself from general theories (cf. Pennycook 2006: 60; Arnatkevičiūtė 2006; Baranova 2006). Postmodernists are generally characterized by a radical reassessment of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language, and the demythologization of established values, declaring this to be a reaction to modernism and its drift toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism (see Kasparavičius 2010). One current within postmodernism—skepticism—takes aim at many traditionally cherished concepts and ways of thinking: man, woman, class, race, ethnicity, nation, identity, consciousness, language, power, politics and so on are accepted not as immutable but as concepts constructed for a particular case (cf. Pennycook 2006: 62).

Acknowledging the positive aspects of postmodernism, it is said that “[p]ostmodernism did not seek to proclaim that we can successfully do without the wisdom accumulated by our predecessors before us, but to recreate the positive values of the past. [...] The positive qualities of postmodernism lie in its intention to uncover a hidden treasure that may lie beneath the surface of an unsuitable method, approach, or strategy” (Clark 2010). Today, however, the concept of postmodernism is most often used to refer to an almost complete rejection of the values, aspirations, and goals of earlier generations: “Unfortunately, in its worst form, postmodernism proves to be just another pretext for doing as one pleases and casting off all restraints, under the cover of newly adopted cultural norms. [...] The greatest challenge of postmodern culture is that it allows one to disengage from any clear points of reference [...]” (Clark 2010).

In Lithuania, postmodern attitudes began to manifest themselves more strongly in the post-Soviet period, as so-called free-market relations took shape and all the grimaces of late capitalism were adopted along with them. It is believed that postmodernism runs much deeper in post-Soviet countries than in the West, because relativism and nihilism here are practical rather than theoretical in nature (see Žukauskaitė 2002 and the article by A. Sverdiolas cited there). This can be viewed as a natural development of cultural thought, since in Lithuania, as noted, a generation of intellectuals for whom postmodern ideas are close is only now becoming established: national myths are being deconstructed, and a single identity associated with language is disappearing.

Although Eugenijus Žmuida writes about the context of the modernist work of Alfonso Nyka-Niliūnas in Lithuanian culture, comparing it with later postmodern literature, his observation reaches considerably further and seems to offer a snapshot of the postmodern condition in contemporary Lithuania (2010: 194–195):

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Postmodern man has released himself from burdensome obligations. [...]. Postmodernism desacralizes art itself, seeking values neither in the world nor within itself. Everything becomes equally relative, important and unimportant at the same time. Everything is liberalized. To play as inventively as possible, without attaching importance to it but while gaining something from it—perhaps the only slogan. A carnival without hierarchical values, or one value alone: pleasure. [...] In the postmodern condition, the concepts of homeland and birthplace lose their significance [...]. It does not matter where you live, because one country differs little from another; one’s homeland can be the place that ensures well-being and domestic comfort while demanding as little idealistic commitment as possible.

It can be said that the most striking changes of our time, which affect the foundations of society, are occurring to a considerable extent because the once-clear link determining human identity—land–nation–language—is rapidly breaking apart; national identity is being separated from territory. Accepting this as inevitable (and often seeing no reason to resist it), people declare the liberal idea that “a thinking individual is more important than a collective, a community, a nation”; and that in our society today, “the anachronistic state and national consciousness of the nineteenth century and the Smetona era, preserved in aspic by the Soviet period, is being deconstructed, and it is high time to deconstruct it. A new state and national consciousness must emerge” (Venclova 2010).

Acknowledging that demythologizing history is necessary in itself, Andrius Martinkus also reveals another side of this process—the fear of responsibility and commitment (Martinkus 2003):

After all, it seems that the deconstructors of old myths and breakers of taboos are brave, fearless young men, carrying out a great cultural mission and leading our “conservative,” “puritanical” society toward a “normal” life and a “civilized” world. The point is that good birth, an honorable past, as well as high office, impose obligations and compel one to assume a responsibility that is not usually demanded of individuals more disadvantaged by fate, poorly educated, and with less life experience. That is where the rub lies. [...] In our country, behind criticism of old myths and mockery of the romantic idealization of Lithuania’s past (which, it must be acknowledged, is not without naivety), there often lurks a fear of the responsibility imposed by the history of Lithuanian statehood, the past of the Lithuanian nation, and its historical aspirations and ambitions. A real history of Lithuania, neither embellished nor belittled, imposes greater obligations on some than the consoling comfort of satisfying their creative impotence with the notion that we are small and insignificant, backward, and eternal students forever trying to catch up with the West.

And indeed, in our multilingual society, buffeted between provincialism and globalism, extreme manifestations of postmodernism also flourish. An identity changed according to circumstances becomes hypocrisy, responsibility becomes indifference, cri-

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— nihilism. At the level of the Lithuanian language, one of the most striking points of intersection emerges: individual freedom versus the “dictatorship” of standard-language norms. Language finds itself in a boundless world, where every act of language regulation means restricting individual freedoms. It is therefore unsurprising that, through irony, ridicule, and the manipulation of quotations, the traditional tendency among standard Lithuanian language regulators to support moderate language development and pursue a fairly strict public-language policy—compared with that of some other European countries—is attacked. This confrontational stance declares an ambition to liberalize substantially the codified norms of the standard language (see Vaicekauskienė 2008, 2010). Language regulators are being pushed to the margins of postmodern society, alongside the so-called traditionalists, who still “base identity primarily on national memory, customs, and values of a worldview, subordinate human rights and individual freedom to collective national morality, and regard openness to other cultures and globalization primarily as a threat to national identity” (Švarplys 2010). Yet the individual freedom proclaimed by postmodernists seems to lead nowhere. L. Jonušys’s response to L. Vaicekauskienė’s article on language-regulation ideologies (Jonušys 2010; Vaicekauskienė 2010) is therefore symptomatic:

This scholarly historical overview challenges the “holiest of holies”—the prescriptive principle of language regulation. This is interesting, but two things are missing: a comparative perspective (after all, all languages continue to be regulated to a greater or lesser extent) and practical suggestions—should anything and everything be allowed?

And just as the postmodernist ideology begins to gain momentum among the new generation of Lithuanian cultural figures, as a predictable shift in post-Soviet social thought, Western Europe—having sensed the threat posed by the supremacy of individual freedoms (which also opens the way to conflictual manifestations of multiculturalism) over society’s common goals—proclaims: postmodernism is dead⁴. At the beginning of the 21st century, a new, digital society gradually begins to emerge from the postmodern, ironic consumer society.

⁴ Various sources even link this to specific dates and events: the terrorist attack carried out in the United States on September 11, 2001 (two skyscrapers, the so-called Twin Towers, were destroyed by hijacked planes) fundamentally changed the global community, and postmodernism was said to have been buried in their ruins; in 2007, one of the most famous theorists and ideologues of postmodernism, Jean Baudrillard, died; and in 2010, information disseminated and made public by the “Wikileaks” website—information that particularly compromised the policies of major powers—fundamentally changed humanity’s attitude toward publicity and the impact of digital technologies on it.

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3. ON THE WAY TO DIGITAL MODERNISM

By the end of the 20th century, it had begun to be acknowledged around the world that postmodernism had gone out of fashion. New cultural manifestations and movements emerged (collectively referred to as post-postmodernism), but none is dominant⁵. This is understandable: while a new era is only just beginning, it is difficult to describe its most important features precisely. It is nevertheless clear that most of the changes are connected with globalization and the spread of new technologies, especially the internet.

Among the various accounts of what postmodernism is becoming, the concept of digital modernism stands out. It is one way of structuring changes in culture, broadly understood, in contemporary society. It enables us to better understand entirely new processes related to how language functions in that society and to the deliberate influence exerted on its development.

So, what is digital modernism?

In 2006, contemporary British cultural theorist Alan Kirby published an article in which he stated: “Postmodernism is dead and buried.” (Kirby 2006). A new paradigm of authority and knowledge creation is coming to take its place as a reaction to postmodernism, propelled by new information technologies and current social forces, and clearly changing the stereotypes of postmodern society. Kirby called it pseudomodernism, and a few years later renamed it digital modernism (English: digimodernism). In the autumn of 2009, this author’s book was published in the United States: Digital Modernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture.

Alan Kirby’s ideas create a new context for reviewing and researching ideas not only in cultural studies but also in linguistics, sociology, and sociolinguistics. Through its philosophical orientation, cultural postmodernism was linked to poststructuralism—the deconstruction of structuralism. Building on postmodernism, this conception of language, Kirby suggests, will have to be displaced or supplemented by another, but that is a matter for the future.

At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, new technologies transformed many familiar things into digital forms. The essence of digital modernism as a cultural phenomenon is the encounter between text and new technologies.

⁵ Among the more prominent manifestations of post-postmodernism are altermodernism (Nicolas Bourriaud), transmodernism (Michailas Epšteinas), postmillennialism (Eric Gansas), hypermodernism (Gilles Lipovetsky), performatism (Raoul Eshelman), and others. For more, see http://www.answers.com/topic/post-postmodernism, and also http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm (accessed 2010 08 17).

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technologies which, in Kirby’s view, restructured the author, the reader and the text, as well as the relationships between them. Current cultural production shows that postmodernism is no longer contemporary art; one can speak only of its remnants. Having become acquainted with postmodern fiction studied at universities in Great Britain, Kirby concludes that those texts were published in another world, one that had not yet seen computers, the internet, email or mobile phones.

According to Kirby, being impermanent, new cultural products have no lasting value, because they are created only in the present, without any sense of the past or the future. Optimists therefore see them as the democratization of culture, while pessimists regard them as unbearable banality and meaninglessness. Bearing in mind the long-observed disparities between the rapid development of technology and the lagging progress of the humanities, the British cultural theorist does not conceal his critical view of the new culture. Nevertheless, one would like to think that the primitiveness of its content is temporary, while the workings of new technologies are being tested and greater attention is focused on form, and that in time more substantial, mature works will emerge. Moreover, the first generation nurtured by digital modernism is only now beginning to reach adulthood, and Lithuania need not feel very far behind in this respect: universal mobility and electronic communication make it possible to considerably narrow the historically established differences between the development of our society and that of more advanced countries.

A few of the most important features of digital modernism will now be outlined, while considering where its manifestations in our present-day society open up new opportunities for language standardizers as well.

3.1. Text

According to Kirby, the essence of digital modernism is a revolution in text: rediscovering the mechanics of text, mastering a new—digital—form and exploring its possibilities. Text has become the center of everything, the paradigmatic form of cultural products.

Thus, when digitalization encounters the forms of culture and art, a new kind of text emerges. Its features are instability, impermanence and transience; it unfolds forward, is based on chance, and is unfinished (it has a beginning but no end). For example, when an internet address is cited as a link in a publication, the date of access is usually given, because the text may change substantially or the page may simply cease to exist.

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Chance determines the text’s multidirectionality; because of constant change, the lasting value of a specific tangible text is lost. One of the most characteristic examples is the internet encyclopedia, known to everyone, created collectively by internet volunteers in various languages of the world (according to the so-called wiki principle) and constantly changing—being expanded and edited—Wikipedia, which has existed since 2001. Democratic working conditions have been created there, without authoritarian decisions; although there is a site founder, there is no single site administrator. By the way, we have not only a Lithuanian but also a Samogitian version of Wikipedia (see fig.).

Traditional dialects are moving onto the internet: this is what the logo of the Wikipedia written in Samogitian looks like.

The aim of this new culture is to create a high-quality product, but not so much by producing new content as by working with what is already available. The hypothesis of digital modernism is that computerization has restructured, or will yet restructure, all forms of textuality known to us, and not only in internet culture (Kirby 2006)⁶.

Works codifying the standard language in Lithuania are also being transferred to electronic media, giving users (although, as noted, they are no longer merely passive readers) new opportunities. People need reliable information on the internet that is convenient to use, equipped with modern software tools and interoperable interfaces, and regularly updated. Language-codification products—databases, online dictionaries, corpora and the like—should be oriented more strongly toward meeting this need. Quite a few are already available on the Lithuanian internet, but this is only the first step, inevitably marked by fragmentation and dispersion. The standardizers’ primary goal, then, must be to make easily accessible

⁶ Language itself, as a multifaceted tool created by humans, undergoes this transformation too. Kirby does not seem to discuss specific transformations of language in the digital space, but we can clearly observe them with little effort. As a form of textuality, language has recently undergone changes in the electronic medium that were previously unimaginable (text becomes hypertext, new internet genres emerge, along with distinctive styles, and so on). Traditional forms of language are also deconstructed in the electronic medium, and familiar words are transformed. In Lithuanian, for example, the words pelė, svetainė and tinklas have acquired new meanings. We can still just about recognize the original forms of words such as tinklaraštis, tinklalapis, tinklalaidė, vebinaras (“internet seminar”), vikinomika (“an economy created according to the wiki principle, or a swarm economy”), and so on.

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the information already available on the internet, so that qualitatively new content can be created from it, involving the internet community in that creative process as well. The technical conditions for developing digital products in Lithuania are favorable, since it is acknowledged that, compared with other European countries, our country has a high penetration of electronic devices (both the internet and mobile technologies), which indicates society’s openness to innovation.

3.2. Author and Reader

Postmodernism, like modernism and romanticism before it, attached great importance to the author. Postmodernism was imagined as a spectacle before which the individual sat helpless—as before a cinema or television screen, where the problems of reality were examined, while the consumer could only engage with a text and its meanings prepared in advance, but not create it. In other words, people read, listened, and watched. The “consumer” of digital modernism is active in their own right: writing, clicking a mouse, choosing, sending or downloading something.

Although some features attributed to digital modernism can also be discerned in postmodern culture (“[a] work of art may have no author, or its author may be a collective,” “[a]nyone who turns on a computer can become an artist—compose poetry, write music, or post their photographs. Create and publish immediately.”; see Žmuida 2010: 194), this most likely indicates only a continuous transition from one state to another.

Digital modernism re-creates older cultural forms: an individual’s participation—physical intervention in the creative process—is a necessary condition for a cultural product to come into being. For example, some TVR programs—reality shows, lotteries, as well as dating channels and the like—are sustained by viewers and listeners who call in or send messages directly to the programs, and who partly determine the content and course of the program itself⁷. Computer games also belong here, in which players create their own content, as do collections of musical works which, unlike authorial compact discs (that is, a compositionally and conceptually unified

⁷ The same can be said of a new journalistic genre—reports published online in real time (especially of sporting events), with responses to readers’ comments appearing right there (cf. Chovanec J. Online quasi-interactions: Male bonding in live text commentary. – Negotiating Transnational Space and Multilingual Encounters. Sociolinguistics Symposium 18, abstracts, 2010, available online: <http://www.southampton.ac.uk/ss18>; accessed 2010 11 05). For example, a sports commentator provides a live written commentary on a match online, inserting quotations from messages sent to them by viewers who are also watching the match online. Thus, authorship of the report no longer belongs entirely to the journalist alone: a temporary group of people communicating virtually comes together for this purpose.

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musical text), the listener assembles on digital media according to their preferences. Even the terms viewers and listeners have become less precise, because these people are often no longer merely passive observers of reality.

Thus, the recipient of the text becomes the most important: they become a partial or full author. The traditional individual author disappears; they often create only the initial parameters of a product, or at least the sequence of its components, and their role diminishes, leaving them mostly on the sidelines. For instance, web pages are often not personalized to the extent that everyone knows who created or maintains them. Authorship is no longer something separate and individual: it is neither elevated nor entirely rejected, but becomes multiple, partly or entirely anonymous, distributed across an unknown number of users in unpredictable places, while the product being created is different each time, unique. This is connected with the growing number of internet users themselves.

Language norm-setters must make much greater use of this social activity than they have so far. There are good examples. New and unexpected was the internet discussion on computer terminology, held in 2003 and lasting almost several months, by the authors of the then-in-progress Dictionary of Computer Terms. Everyone who wished was given the opportunity to discuss and submit suggestions, and the dictionary certainly benefited from this⁸. In general, however, we still lack valuable online discussions involving professionals as well as members of the public who are not merely outraged by everything—most likely because of fears about the generally low standard of public online communication.

3.3. Relationships and attitudes

It has been mentioned that digital modernism, according to Kirby, changes not only the text, author, and reader, but also the relationships between them. As cultural forms of communication change and new genres transform the traditional nature of speaking (writing), the habits of readers (users) of texts change as well. The computer

⁸ On the website www.svarstome.lt, the following was written in 2003: “When discussion of the draft Explanatory Dictionary of Computing Terms began on October 3, as might be expected, no one remained indifferent. Passions ran high as people debated whether neologisms were needed at all in a field such as computing, which terms would be more precise, and which were altogether unacceptable... In just over 10 days, more than two hundred opinions were submitted. It is interesting that the participation rate was particularly high: 212 opinions were received on this topic after it had been visited by 344 different visitors (out of 857 visitors to the terminology topic overall). More than one in four visitors leaves an opinion, and about 60% of visitors are not one-time users; they return to the discussion website regularly.” In total, the site received 4159 visits, of which 1684 were unique visitors (for more, see <http://www.musicalia.lt/svarstome/terminija/details.php?pid=3> (accessed 2010 09 27).

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makes people use it constantly, because the internet creates an illusion of constant novelty. The relationship with a text is no longer linear, proceeding sequentially from beginning to end, but circular (though this is no longer Kirby’s idea⁹): on the internet, people often browse the same places over and over, hoping to find something new.

The emotional relationship of the author or reader with reality is changing: from that of the ironic postmodern observer to that of an active, sincere participant (this sincerity is also clearly visible, for example, in Lithuanian blogs). Postmodern self-admiration is beginning to be overcome by faith, trust, and dialogue. The new generation is free, independent, resourceful, expressive, and dynamic, and open to the world. To them, postmodernism and everything that came before it seem elitist (that is, distant and constrained), foolish, because communication in those days was formal and consisted of monologues.

A particularly important feature of the internet community is altruism. It is the opposite of the egoism fostered by postmodernism. It is no longer consumers who are becoming active, but creators, who want to share their knowledge with others and seek to be heard, or at least to express themselves publicly. Wiki-based website creators, without postmodern hypocrisy, emphasize that the purpose of their work is to benefit society¹⁰.

The internet makes it possible to speak freely and publicly (even if anonymously) about various matters that concern people. It is therefore no surprise that language discussions, article comments, and forums¹¹ clearly reveal the many usage problems faced by journalists, writers, translators, editors, teachers, and so on—in short, by everyone who writes in standard Lithuanian. They also show how people try to help and advise one another selflessly. Moreover, blogs, social networks, and internet forums are the setting for the genuine, unrestricted, uncontrolled, and unpredictable creativity of contemporary language. Neologisms and new means of stylistic expression are being created. This should be studied and encouraged. Never before have conditions been so favorable for revealing the power of linguistic creativity latent within society itself.

⁹ See Adams T. Do e-books herald the end of great creativity? – Šiaurės Atenai, 2010 01 29.

¹⁰ Operating on a similar principle and with similar motivations, the website “Wikileaks,” mentioned above, was created at the end of 2006 and recently became famous as “the first intelligence agency of the people”; it publishes information exposing large-scale criminal activity for the public (http://wikileaks.org; for more, see Lietuvos rytas, 2010 07 27), as does the Lithuanian website www. ekspertai.eu.

¹¹ For example, one of the most popular internet forums, www.supermama.lt, has separate sections for Lithuanian-language teachers, translators, editors, and so on.

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Codifiers, too, should make the fullest possible use of such opportunities for altruistic collaboration—raising problems and solving them: they should provide the initial impetus, indicate a direction, formulate clear objectives and, above all, create a creative environment for supporting the Lithuanian language. Of course, it would be wrong to say that language planners in Lithuania make no effort at all to build ties with society. There are good initiatives from the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language and other language institutions. Efforts are being made to establish traditions of national dictation and various quizzes, and people are being asked to coin neologisms (Lithuanian equivalents for foreign words). But regaining public trust and authority will still take considerable work and time.

4. CONCLUDING REMARKS

More and more people are becoming indirectly involved in the process of language planning. Are language planners capable of withstanding the diversity of their opinions? Can this be managed in some way? These questions can be addressed by examining and structuring the more specific problems faced by language planners and seeking ways to solve them. Over the course of the history of the formation of Standard Lithuanian, not only the role of language planners but also the problems they have addressed have changed markedly. At first, in line with the developmental patterns of standard languages, it was necessary to decide on the basis for the standard language, codify its fundamental norms, and develop functional styles. At present, in view of the prospects for digital society discussed above, the most important problems facing language planners of Standard Lithuanian in Lithuania, or matters requiring new solutions, can be described as follows:

• the scholarly basis for codification: how can codification theory be updated and its relationship with tradition defined?

• usage research: how can it incorporate and assess the medialects that function on the internet?

• opportunities for language modernization: how can Standard Lithuanian be adapted to present-day needs (including expanding the lexicon, creating new terms, and updating the vocabulary and syntax of administrative language, particularly in connection with translations of EU documents)?

• organization of the codification process: how can changes in codification be regulated and the transition made to language planning?

• continuity and prospects of language-planning work: how can language-planning specialists be trained?

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• relations between language standardizers and language users: how can new forms of communication based on mutual trust be created?

A forum of language specialists would be very useful for discussing these matters, but the conditions for one are probably only now beginning to emerge.

CONCLUSIONS

The recent prominence in post-Soviet Lithuanian society of the deconstruction of Lithuanian identity and national myths, the overturning of authorities into anti-authorities, and, alongside this, criticism of traditional standardization practices and the desire to liberalize the norms of the standard language so that they do not constrain personal freedom and self-expression can be explained by the natural emergence and development of postmodern thought. Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century, the world is already speaking of the end of postmodern ironic consumer society and of new directions in culture, art, and philosophy, whose emergence is encouraged by globalization and the development of new information technologies, especially those associated with the spread of the internet. Such new manifestations are also present in Lithuania.

One of the new post-postmodernist movements—digital modernism—is characterized by changes in general cultural forms brought about by new information technologies. The British cultural theorist Alan Kirby, who proposed the concept of digital modernism, emphasizes that it is not an ideology but a cultural force field resisting postmodernism: the impact of computerization on culture, art, and textuality. It does not address human rights or freedoms, nor responsibility. For this reason, the author does not yet offer a clear answer to the question of what authority is and what role it plays in the new digital society.

However critically one may view some emerging manifestations of digital modernism, it is impossible to ignore the processes it promotes in society. It is important for standardizers to assess new opportunities, since understanding the laws governing the development of the new digital society may help them adapt better to its needs.

Under the conditions of emerging digital modernism, the role of the linguistic community as an active force becomes especially important. Admittedly, in Lithuania it still most often acts as a merciless critic of standardizers, but there is

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a favorable environment emerging for reducing this opposition between standardizers and society. Language standardizers must take advantage of this to improve the codification process:

seek ways to structure the spontaneous process through which new usage norms are formed and disseminated;

involve active language users in the creation and discussion of norms;

purposefully guide society’s creative capacities;

create and continually update digital codification works accessible to the public, with a focus on their quality—reliable data and a rapid response to change.

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Gauta 2010 11 08

PRESCRIBERS OF STANDARD LANGUAGE AND THE EMERGING MODERN DIGITAL SOCIETY

Summary

The article presents the changing perception of language prescribers and users, or authoritative personalities and target audiences, and their role in the development of Standard Lithuanian. One of the changes involves a shift from an authoritative personality (Jonas Jablonskis) to an institutionalized state authority or, currently, an anti-authority.

The criticism of authorities and the traditional standardization process as well as different attempts to apply liberal unrestrictive norms could be accounted for by a natural development of post-modern ideas and shifts in the post-soviet Lithuanian society. The beginning of the 21^st century, however, marks the end of the post-modern consumer society and brings out new artistic and philosophical cultures and directions whose appearance has been mainly stimulated by globalization and new technologies, the Internet among them.

One of the most distinctive interpretations of the postmodern transformation is the concept of the digital modernism. It proposes a structural view of cultural changes in the modern society. The author of the article relies on the ideas of the modern British culturologist Alan Kirby to distinguish peculiarities of the digital modernism. These peculiarities may contribute to a better understanding of social processes and, consequently, ease the current tension between language prescribers and the society at large.

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The digital modernism relates cultural shifts to the increased role of the digital text in private and public life. Clearly, the new IT technologies have essentially changed the nature of the author, addressee (reader) and the text itself. Realizations of the digital modernism, one of them being the rise of the language community as an active force, provides grounds for a new standardization products and allows to involve in the standardization process the most active members of the community.

RITA MILIŪNAITĖ

Lietuvių kalbos institutas

P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius

[email protected]

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