The framework of
abstand and ausbau languages is a tool used in
sociolinguistics to analyse and categorise the distinctiveness of related language
varieties.
Heinz Kloss coined the
German terms
Abstandsprache (literally: "distance language") and
Ausbausprache (literally: "elaboration language," i.e. developed and
standardized language) in 1952 to denote two separate and largely independent sets of criteria and arguments for deeming a variety to be an independent "
language" rather than a "
dialect": one linguistic, based on its objective structural properties, and the other sociological, based on its social and/or political functions.