The Concept of Minimal Intervention (CMI) is a “methodological bill” concerning linguists and their approach toward the language and its speakers. CMI represents one possible approach to language, implying programmatic character. CMI prerequisites are: 1) There is no reason why linguistics should infringe upon language development through its interventions and thus disqualify speakers for their (natural) linguistic behavior. 2) The language has been evolving into a sensible instrument of communication, needing no assistance from linguists. 3) The arbitrary nature of linguistic means draws on their usage, and involves the ways of using constituents; it is thus not beneficial when linguistics violates, through its interventions, the very fact of this choice taken by the majority. CMI is delimited by the endeavor to minimize linguists’ interventional pressure on language and its speakers; CMI’s goal is to bring the language situation as close to the condition marked by the existence of a spontaneously constituted order of norms which is “only” passively recorded by linguists. Since zero intervention is irreconcilable with the existence of linguistics, it is necessary to deliberately weaken potential linguistic interventions through a pluralism of descriptions which should expressly declare the goals they pursue and which (communicative) functions they favor.
Since the publication of the Concept of Minimal Intervention (Cvrček 2008a, Cvrček 2008b), three critical reactions have been published (Adam 2009, Beneš & Prošek 2011, Homoláč & Mrázková 2011) defending the current language policy (based on the Theory of Language Cultivation). This paper discusses the most important points of their criticism: axiology in the concepts of language regulation, prescriptivism in the Czech language situation and the means of measuring it, the role and nature of current and future codifications, speakers’ attitudes toward language and the validity of their elicitation in linguistic research, the notion of the “literariness” of language, etc. This paper also enriches the original Concept of Minimal Intervention with observations and conclusions based on the experience of making the first non-interventional description of Czech, the Grammar of Contemporary Czech (Cvrček et al. 2010). The paper emphasizes three crucial differences between the Concept of Minimal Intervention and interventional approaches (esp. the Theory of Language Cultivation): preoccupation with literary language in the language regulation in current language policy, the priority of the noetic potential of the discipline over the public demand for language regulation, and the perception of linguists’ activity as an artificial part of the language situation.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.