Purism

Purism is the striving to preserve the purity of a language, to protect it from foreign borrowings, dialectisms, jargon and other elements perceived as "contamination." Linguistic purism rests on the ideal of a distinctive, standardised literary language and is often accompanied by the replacement of borrowings with native or newly created equivalents. Moderate purism plays a positive role in the formation and defence of a national language, especially under conditions of assimilation pressure, as was the case in the history of the Ukrainian language. At the same time, excessive, extreme purism may hinder the natural development of a language by rejecting already assimilated and needed words. Purism is closely linked to the culture of language, language policy and standardisation and is studied by sociolinguistics in the aspect of the conscious influence of society on the development and preservation of a language.