Topics covered in this volume include: the emergence and diffusion of standard Afrikaans; standard German in the 19th century; 200 years of language planning in Belgium; and the standardization of Luxembourgish.

1. Introduction (by McLelland, Nicola); 2. I. DIFFUSING AND SHAPING THE STANDARD; 3. Standardization and social networks: The emergence and diffusion of standard Afrikaans (by Deumert, Ana); 4. Dutch orthography in lower, middle and upper class documents in 19th-century Flanders (by Vandenbussche, Wim); 5. Standard German in the 19th century?: (Counter-) evidence from the private correspondence of 'ordinary people' (by Elspass, Stephan); 6. On the importance of foreign language grammars for a history of standard German (by Langer, Nils); 7. Norms and standards in 16th-century Swedish orthography (by Zheltukhin, Alexander Y.); 8. II. STANDARD AND IDENTITY; 9. Emerging mother-tongue awareness: The special case of Dutch and German in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period (by Grauwe, Luc De); 10. Two hundred years of language planning in Belgium (by de Groof, Jetje); 11. Political inflections: Grammar and the Icelandic surname debate (by Willson, Kendra); 12. Standardization, language change, resistance and the question of linguistic threat: 18th-century English and present-day German (by Hohenhaus, Peter); 13. III. NON-STANDARDIZATION, DE-STANDARDIZATION AND RE-STANDARDIZATION; 14. The standardization of Luxembourgish (by Newton, Gerald); 15. Language planning in Norway: A bold experiment with unexpected results (by Sandved, Arthur O.); 16. 'Democratic' and 'elitist' trends and a Frisian standard (by Feitsma, Anthonia); 17. Yiddish: No state, no status - no standard? (by Kleine, Ane); 18. Standardization processes and the mid-Atlantic English paradigm (by Modiano, Marko); 19. Index

Die in dem Band zusammengetragenen Referate bieten einen Einblick in aktuelle Forschungsfelder zu nationalen Standardisierungstendenzen. Vor allem hinsichtlich der historischen Bedingungen liefert das empirisch fundierte Buch reichen Ertrag.