Tracing orthographic debates through history: sociolinguistic perspectives on nineteenth-century spelling proposals for Galician and Luxembourgish

Abstract Discussions of orthography for recently standardised languages frequently focus on the extent to which spelling proposals resemble orthographic models of dominant existing standard languages, leading to tensions around notions of hybridity, differentiation and equivalence. This article examines an influential spelling proposal in the 19th century for Luxembourgish and one for Galician respectively in a comparative analysis of relationships in these early codification works between the nascent standard, the orthographic influence of dominant existing standard languages and the metalanguage of the text. The comparative methodology combines discursive approaches with a social semiotic analysis of the proposed spellings to develop a comprehensive framework for identifying both explicit and implicit meaning conveyed through the proposed orthographies. Whereas the authors’ metacommentaries explaining the proposed spellings aligns largely with a dominant standard language model (for example, German or Spanish respectively in these case studies), the iconic representations at the graphemic level suggest other convergences (for example, French or Portuguese) that are not always expressly formulated in the metalinguistic explanations. The fluid shifting between the influential orthographic norms of other languages continues to emerge in discussions about the spelling of Luxembourgish and of Galician from the 19th century until the present-day.