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.