Linguistics

4. Conclusions 
In Romanian linguistics, Coșeriu’s theory was not widely embraced, but its adoption, 
at a theoretical and practical level, has intensified lately, particularly due to the constant 
efforts of the Centre for Integralist Studies in Cluj, coordinated by Professor Mircea 
Borcilă. Similarly, diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic differences of the Romanian 
language have not generally been approached in the light of Coșeriu’s concept of 
linguistic norm. 
Ioan Milică’s recent research (2012) regarding the Romanian argot – a 
phenomenon understood not as vocabulary, but as norm 
–, undertaken in the spirit of 
Coșeriu’s linguistics, represents a singular and revealing contribution in this respect.
In Romanian linguistics, there is a constant tendency to refer back to standard 
language 
– the “exemplary language,” in Coșeriu’s terms – and to resort to it repeatedly, 
thus ignoring an important part of the concrete phenomenon of language. Admittedly, 

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diachronically speaking, standard Romanian is rooted in dialect and has intersected 
extensively with other variants of the Romanian language, but at the synchronic level 
this type of relations do not persist as such. For instance, the so-called literary style of 
the Romanian language can no longer be related to the standard language, since it 
represents the full functional richness of the language, while the standard language 
represents a variety with numerous and strict norms (cf. Coșeriu 1994, 153). 
It should be noted that, paradoxically, linguists accept that certain norms of the 
vernacular language or other units of the Romanian language, norms which are not 
characterized by a high degree of generalization, become norms of standard Romanian, 
in the context in which they (linguists) are the only institution which has the power to 
intervene by its decisions between the (commendable and in fact inevitable) creativity of 
the speaker, and a variant of the language which should be less open to change, more 
rigid than other variants of the language, and more autarchic.