On the concept of standard language in grammar paratexts: Introductions

Abstract

According to Haugen (1983), grammar codification is a part of corpus planning for standard languages. On the other hand, according to Genette (2001), texts are introduced by paratexts that give information about them. Therefore, we believe that grammar introductions, as paratexts, can serve not only as a statement of principles for codification itself but can also give us information about the kind of standard language presented. In line with these ideas, the main aim of this study is to analyse and compare, using discourse analysis (Calsamiglia & Tusón, 1999), the introductions of Catalan, Spanish, English and French grammars. All these grammars are reference books for the standardization of these languages and they shed light on their language model.

Keywords: grammaticography, standard language, paratext, codification, discourse analysis.