The Akademi Kernewek: perpetuating the modernist construction of a standard language
6 November 2016
6 a vis Du 2016
Recent changes to the structure of official language planning services in Cornwall have caused the Cornish Language Partnership to be recast as the Cornish Language Office. While not yet apparent on its website (ongoing funding cuts and staffing reductions presumably making it more and more difficult to keep the site up to date), this change has been acknowledged in emails and in Kevren, the CLO’s monthly newsletter.
With this change of name came a subtle change of function. If we divide language planning into language-internal and language-external components—that is, corpus planning versus status/acquisition planning—this provides a schema by which the change of the CLO’s function can be understood. Initially, the CLP was responsible for all strands of language planning related to Cornish; in changing to the CLO, it has decreased in function, now concerned only with language-external aspects: advising Cornwall Council on the continued implementation of bilingual signage, promoting Cornish, and so on.
Who, then, is now responsible for internal language planning for Cornish? The answer is the newly formed Akademi Kernewek.1 The initial plans for its creation were put forward, I believe, sometime in 2015. Funding uncertainties delayed the Akademi’s launch until recently, but its existence is now confirmed by its online presence in the form of http://www.akademikernewek.org.uk (and, so far, little else). The CLP’s former ‘Signage Panel’, which deals with the ‘translation’ of Cornish2 place names into Cornish,3 has accordingly been transferred to the Akademi, which also comprises, as well as a management committee, panels entitled ‘dictionary’, ‘terminology’, and ‘research’. Three of the four panels therefore deal specifically with the revived Cornish lexicon: the ‘terminology’ panel with the development of this lexicon in general; the ‘dictionary’ panel with the implementation of this lexicon in the context of the existing online dictionary (and perhaps the mythical printed dictionary rumoured to be in the pipeline since 2008); the ‘signage and place-names’ panel with a specific subset of the lexicon.
Cornish is therefore in a somewhat unusual position among the languages of the broadly anglophone world for having a language academy, explicitly named as such and specifically for the purpose of language-internal language planning processes. For Welsh and Irish, bodies exist that promote the languages but appear to focus exclusively on the language-external aspects of language planning. The name ‘Akademi Kernewek’ very much invokes the Académie française (will they wear the costume, I wonder?). The presence of this strong model institution in France causes a clear contrast with the situation in the British Isles, as its influence can be seen in the case of the various authorities that deal with regional language planning on French territory. For Breton and Occitan, information on norms and technical vocabulary are provided, the latter in the form of searchable online databases, by the Office public de la langue bretonne and Lo Congrès respectively.
Close attention to corpus planning in the case of the regional languages of France seems to have come about as a result of the need to strengthen them against the threat of the dominant majority language by (paradoxically?) moulding them in its highly standardised shape. Where the dominant language is English, such a situation is accordingly absent, except in the case of the Akademi Kernewek. Its website certainly suggests that a single, homogeneous variety of Cornish is the desired end product: it is responsible for “setting standards for the language” and “developing the dictionary” (implying that the various dictionaries that currently exist will be superseded), and is granted hegemony in this respect through its being “recognised by Cornwall Council as the definitive body responsible” for Cornish. This reliance on state structures as a source of overall authority perpetuates the ideologies of modern nationalism that shape dominant languages: minority languages such as Cornish, which are potentially in a position to break free of this paradigm, seem instead unable to escape its influence. Cornish language activists often try to avoid the English/majority state model in linguistic terms; when it comes to ideologies, whether deliberately or subconsciously, they reproduce it.
The death of ‘Cornish’ (and the birth of The Cornish Language?)
I’ve previously noted that usage of the word ‘Cornish’ seems to be declining in pro-Cornish contexts, where, inexplicably, the Cornish term ‘Kernewek’ is frequently used instead. Academi Kernewek seems to be contributing to this trend: on its website, we read that it is “the definitive body responsible for Kernewek, the Cornish language.” I’m pleased to see that other references to Cornish on the site don’t do this, although they do somewhat timidly insist on using the term ‘the Cornish language’ rather than ‘Cornish’. While I recognise that the word ‘Cornish’ can be an ambiguous signifier—potentially referring to ‘something from Cornwall’ rather than something necessarily linguistic—the context of the Akademi’s website surely makes it obvious which use is intended. ‘Cornish’ is, after all, a legitimate English noun, and using it would reinforce the identity of Cornish as a distinct language, showing that it is a valid part of the anglophone conceptual world. Using ‘Kernewek’ in an English context instead draws attention to the term, flagging it, effectively, as foreign.
The Cornish equivalent, for the Akademi, seems to be the use of the phrase “an Yeth Kernewek” (the Cornish language) with Initial Capitals. A capital K on Kernewek would be expected, but the capital Y on Yeth is more unusual, and again marks out the phrase visually. To me, this seems uncomfortably grandiose, and perhaps betrays insecurities about the language’s status.
It will be interesting to see how language planning for Cornish progresses.
All quotations taken from http://www.akademikernewek.org.uk
Footnotes
1 This is the orthography the Akademi has chosen to use for its own name, but is not the only one permitted by the Standard Written Form. Using Traditional Cornish variants, the first word could be written ‘Academy’. Using Late Cornish forms, the second would be ‘Kernowek’. The Akademi’s spelling of its own name reinforces the message that Middle Cornish/Main Form SWF takes precedence.
2 Here I use ‘Cornish’ to mean ‘in Cornwall’, although many of the place names concerned are also in the Cornish language. With such ambiguity, perhaps we should avoid using the word …
3 Here I use ‘Cornish’ to mean ‘the Cornish language’, although in this specific context it also happens to mean ‘idealised fifteenth-century Cornish’.