Language Planning as a Sociolinguistic Experiment: The Case of Modern Norwegian

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2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Norwegian nation following centuries of Danish rule. This book gives a comprehensive account of that entire 200-year period, and analyses how Norwegians defined, fought over, and developed their own independent Scandinavian language, differentiating it from Danish and Swedish, through language planning. The almost two centuries of Norwegian language planning and conflict encompassed an extraordinary sociolinguistic experiment which led to decades of intense linguistic struggle and which has had no parallel anywhere else in the world.

This fascinating book-length case study provides students and scholars in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, language planning and language policy with a richly detailed insight into the uniqueness of the Norwegian language development.