[Lingtyp] Suggestion: “Lect” instead of “language/dialect”

[Matías GN]

Isn't that more or less the same proposal Cysouw and Good made in 2013?
https://dlc.hypotheses.org/623

El vie, 19 de nov. de 2021 a la(s) 16:48, JOO, Ian [Student] (
ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk) escribió:

> Dear all:
>
> I have a suggestion:
> *Let’s stop using “language” or “dialect” to refer to specific language
> varieties. Let’s call them “lects”.*
> Reason:
> When conducting typological research, we oftne have to choose whether to
> call a language variety a “language” or “dialect”.
> For example, when a researcher encounters in the field two language
> varieties that are mutually intelligible to some degree, are they dialects
> of the same language, or two different languages?
> In such cases, there is no clear-cut answer. This is because* the
> distinction between language and dialect is inherently sociocultural*.
> We can bring up several reasons to call a variety either a language or a
> dialect, such as mutual intelligibility and genealogical distance. But in
> the end, intelligibility and genealogical distance have little to do with
> language/dialect dichotomy. There are many mutually unintelligible
> varieties socially labelled dialects, and vice versa.
> We often set European languages as standards to argue for the languagehood
> of distinct varieties. For example, a researcher could say that “the
> intelligibility between A and B are lower than the intelligibility between
> German and Dutch. Because German and Dutch are separate languages, A and B
> should also be considered separate languages."
> But such usage of European languages as standards is essentially
> Eurocentric. There’s no reason why the scale of dialecthood in Europe
> should apply to non-European languages.
> In the end, *because the dialect/language distinction is sociocultural,
> we should not employ sociocultural terms to refer to genealogical
> divisions.*
> As an alternative,* I suggest abandoning this dichotomy altogether and
> referring to any language variety as a lect.*
> If we want to refer to two related lects as a whole, we can refer to them
> as a *supralect.*
> If we want to refer to the different varieties of a single lect, we can
> refer to them as *sublects.*
> For example:
> Swiss German is a dialect of the German language. -> Swiss German is a
> sublect of the German supralect.
> The Chinese language consists of many dialects, such as Mandarin and
> Cantonese. -> The Chinese supralect consists of many sublects, such as
> Mandarin and Cantonese.
> The main difference is that this is not a binary distinction, but
> multi-layered distinction.
> For example, the Chinese supralect has Cantonese as a sublect, which also
> has Guangzhou Cantonese, Hong Kong Cantonese, etc. as sublects, and so on.
> Logically speaking, a family could be the highest layer of a lect
> (“Indo-European lect”, “Sino-Tibetan lect”), although there would be little
> practical need to employ the term “lect” in those contexts.
> As for the term “language”, I suggest only using it to refer to the
> language as a phenomenon (*langage* in French), not specific varieties (
> *langue *in French), such as in “the human language.”
> I suggest that this could save us from the typologically meaningless
> debate over what is a language or a dialect (which could still be
> meaningful in sociolinguistics, just not in typology).
> Please let me know what you think about this suggestion. I, for one, have
> decided to use the term “lect” instead of “language/dialect” throughout my
> doctoral thesis.
>
> From Hong Kong,
> Ian
>
>
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