Lived Standardization A Language Management Approach by Jiří Nekvapil

Lived Standardization A Language Management Approach by Jiří Nekvapil

This collection examines language standardization as a dynamic, lived practice that is initiated, assessed, implemented, or challenged through a range of interconnected social interactions occurring at both micro and macro levels.

The volume explores how standardization, commonly understood as organized activities of particular social groups to advance language development gaols, can be discursively contested in everyday social life. The book interrogates the connections between standardization process reflected in the “simple management” of everyday speakers and “organized management” at the institutional level across different dimensions. Chapters are grouped accordingly around key thematic connection points: language, identity, and social justice; education and globalization; technologies and new media; and language consulting and codification. Taken together, the collection provides unique insights into the gradual development of language standardization processes across societal levels, offering the view of standardization as lived practice.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in language policy and planning, sociolinguistics, language education, and applied linguistics.

Jiří Nekvapil is a sociolinguist at Charles University, Prague. His research focuses on the issues of language interaction, language diversity in multinational companies, and the ethnomethodologically based analysis of media discourse. He recently co-edited The Place of Language Surveys and Censuses in Language Planning and Policy (special issue of Current Issues of Language Planning, issue 4, vol. 27, 2026).

Tamah Sherman is a researcher at the Czech Language Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences. Her work focuses on multiplex approaches to the sociolinguistic situation in the contemporary Czech Republic, with a specific emphasis on the management conducted by and toward immigrants. For over twenty years, she has worked as an editor of the journal Slovo a slovesnost.

Petar Vuković is a professor at the Department of West Slavic Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. His research focuses on language standardization and historical sociolinguistics in Central Europe and the Slavic-speaking countries, with a particular focus on Czech and Croatian.