STANDARDIZATION OR RESTANDARDIZATION - THE CASE FOR STANDARD SPOKEN TAMIL

The Tamil language has had its current standard written form since the 13th century; but because of increasing diglossia, spoken Tamil diale cts have now diverged so radically from earlier norms, including the w ritten standard (LT, or Literary Tamil) that no spoken dialect, region al or social, can function as the koine or lingua franca. Because LT i s never used for authentic informal oral communication between live sp eakers, there has always been a need for some sort of spoken ''standar d'' koine for inter-dialect communication. Aside from interpersonal co mmunication, one hears this inter-dialect koine most clearly in the so -called ''social'' film, which arose out of its antecedent, the popula r or ''social'' drama. Conversational portions of novels and short sto ries also exhibit spoken forms, though not always as clearly ''phoneti c'' as a phonetician might expect. The goal of this paper is to examin e the concept of ''language standardization'' as it has been applied t o other languages, focusing on the role of literacy and writing in thi s process; then to present evidence for, as well as the sources of, ko ineization of ''Standard Spoken Tamil''; and then to determine whether SST is in fact an emergent standard, given the challenges of literacy and writing.