Český furor orthographicus? Role Alexandra Sticha ve sporech o pravopis prizmatem (historické) sociolingvistiky

The aim of the paper is to present Alexandr Stich’s understanding of orthography, as it can be observed in his scholarly and journalistic articles and in the argumentation he and his opponents used; subsequently, this description serves as a basis for a short reflection on the nature of orthography, as viewed by some researchers in the (historical) sociolinguistics of spelling, and on the strengths and weaknesses of Stich’s approach. Given Stich’s grounding in the tradition of the Prague School, I begin with a brief overview of the functional-structuralist approach to orthography. Then, I discuss individual relevant articles Stich published or participated in. Since most of them were written in response to some external stimulus, usually an article or a book with which he disagreed, I also touch on these texts and the argumentation they contain. Most space is devoted to the controversy stirred up by the preparation and publication of the 1993 edition of the Rules of Czech Orthography. I show what Stich’s position was, which arguments he most often used and how his argumentation differed from that of his opponents. Consequently, I summarize the main features of Stich’s understanding of the nature and function of orthography and whether or not they changed over the years. Finally, I briefly introduce current sociocultural and sociopolitical approaches to orthography, developed within the (historical) sociolinguistics of spelling since roughly the 1990s. On their basis, I point out the limitations of Stich’s (or functional-structuralist) conception of orthography and its blind spots, and I suggest that the sociolinguistic interpretation of what actually happened during the 1993 controversy appears more plausible.