Main ideas of the functional-pragmatic view of language history

Up till now, theories on the emergence of the New High German standard lang uage have been restricted to the field of linguistic geography. Other facto rs involved in linguistic standardisation have not been adequately research ed. On the basis of a feature model for defining modern Kultursprachen, the approach adopted here advocates a functional-pragmatic view of language hi story alongside theories from linguistic geography, focussing primarily on the process of the polyfunctionalisation of communication as part of the li nguistic standardisation process.