ABSTRACT
THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION AND THE VERNACULARIZATION OF LITERACY - 1988 WORKSHOP In this chapter I bring together points made in their short presentations and in the extensive subsequent discussions by my fellow-members of the International Group for the Study of Language Standardization and the Vernacularization of Literacy (IGLSVL) at their workshop at the University of York (England) in April 1988, immediately prior to the Hong Kong conference (see Bibliography, Abstracts). I have tried in doing so to bring out major recurrent themes which seemed to be significant in relation to the progress (or lack of it) of mass literacy and in relation to sociolinguistic and psycho linguistic theory and to the ontological status of those concepts with which linguists work. I have had, for reasons of space, to confine myself mostly to the non-European communities discussed, though the underlying problems concern the European communities also and are briefly touched upon in that context.
