Language nonformalism and formal style

This paper deals with one of the language ideologies that are used to stigmatize formal style – language nonformalism, based on quotations from two representative publications of traditional Hungarian language cultivation, the Nyelvművelő kézikönyv (Language Cultivation Handbook) and the Nyelvművelő kéziszótár (Concise Language Cultivation Dictionary). Language nonformalism is one of the language ideologies that the representatives of traditional language cultivation use to ensure that language forms they consider inappropriate are eliminated from use. Such ideologies are called language correctness ideologies. In the substantive part of the paper, first formal style is briefly described, and then, with the help of quotations from these two publications – which are said to be of outstanding importance for Hungarian language cultivation –, the ideology of language nonformalism will be presented, together with other language ideologies that can be observed in the quotations. Examples of correctness judgements on four language phenomena are given: 1. postpositions and postposition-like nouns; 2. conjunctions; 3. light verb constructions; 4. past participles used predicatively. In several instances, the validity of the language cultivators’ claims about language use is checked with data from the Hungarian National Corpus and from the publications under study themselves.