DY, YVA JOY B.

Topic: Language Policy and Language Planning, Status

Planning & Corpus Planning

LING604: ENGINEERING LANGUAGE USE AND FORM

Language could be a powerful tool for better communication, imposing well a plan to be
equipped with this is of a great advantage. The every planned intervention by a subnational, national, or
supranational political organization refers to language planning and language policy which is directed to
regulate the development of a language or any of its varieties. This term language planning in the 1950s
and 1960s used to refer to any effort to modify language form or use while in the late 1980s the regular
failure of national planning activities seems to have encouraged the more neutral seeming term which is
language policy. And there are several conditions why people want to engineer language or language
choice itself. Furthermore, language planning and policy covers status planning which concerns about
languages and language varieties and corpus planning which concerns about structural linguistic
activities.

Why people want to engineer language or language choice itself? There are several reasons for
this. First, it is because language is very central to social life. Second is the value of language as a means
of access to power and influence. For example, in 19th and 20th century nationalist movements generally
included a choice of a national language in their ideological package. That is why it also covers status
planning. Lastly, the most sensitive reason is due to the symbolic value of language in establishing social
class and ethnic identity. Taking those into consideration is important.

With that being said, language policy covers status planning. What is status planning? Well, this
pertains to any attempt to set up norms or rules for when to use two or more languages available in a
situations. Cases of status planning include the decision to make one language official or to bar; another
from use in school, or to conduct church services. Cite for example newly independent Norway struggle
as to what form of language to use after the proclamation of its freedom in moving away from Danish
power and finally recognized the official equality of two varieties which are Riksmal and Nynorsk. This
planning is an important activity in countries where there is a clear recognition of the existences of two or
more respected languages and associated ethnic groups. The Irish nationalist movement took the
restoration of Irish as its goal. The Zionist movement proclaimed its interest in the restoration of Hebrew
as a national language. In India, the costly and uncertain solution was to recognize seven languages in the
constitution. Thus, planning what language to be used must be weighed well considering not just the
majority but the minority as well.
 Status planning involves political and religious activity. Language-status policy is by its very
nature a political activity. Linguists are sometimes consulted, but decisions are made by the government
or elected parliament and sometimes form part of the constitution. The status decision determines which
language or languages are to be used in various public functions, by government, the legal system, the
media, and the educational system. Religious bodies also often have significant language status policies.
Like Hinduism, Orthodox Judaism, Islam, and Greek and Russian Orthodox Christianity have language
policies which support maintenance of the status of a sacred language. The decision of the Roman
Catholic Church to change the language of the Mass from Latin to the local vernacular echoed a decision
made four centuries earlier in the Reformation by the Protestant churches.

How about corpus planning? Speaking of language as the central means to socialize, societal
developments impacts language growth and changes. To keep up with the new developments to deal with
the modern world, the need for corpus planning arise. And it is very interesting, right? There comes new
words, there comes new terms and there comes new ideas- how then will it be incorporated in a certain
language? Lately, according to the study of [ CITATION Jos2 \l 13321 ] Filipinos tend to Filipinized
English lexicons. Is it acceptable? Is it not comprehensible enough? How about to other languages? How
do they incorporate new concepts from foreign influence into their language? Humans as social beings
interact, and such interaction influence discourse affecting the language use as their media. The
development of an orthography is one of the earliest kinds of corpus planning. Writing has not been
invented very often, but more commonly has been borrowed and adopted from one language to another.
Cite for example a major component of the Turkish Westernization movement was to change from Arabic
to Roman script. Developing an orthography is only a first step in the process of standardization and
modernization. Mass literacy is another thing to be looked into. Thus, corpus planning that concerns
about structural linguistic activities is also considered for imposing rules in the modification of language
form and use.

Just like in the study of Almahmoud (2013), he found out that for Arab students they prefer the
use of Colloqial Arab Standard as the medium of instruction because it makes their learning become
easier however at the same time they uphold the position of Standard Arabic as the most important
marker of ethnic culture and religious identity. His study shows the kind of diglossia happening in Arab
as well as it shows Arabs functional speech repertoire. It describes the situation in which the Arab
community which strictly uses high variety such as that of newspapers, magazine or any formal situation
while low variety in ordinary conversation. Nevertheless in my own stance, I guess using the standard one
is more sophisticated and the purpose why we educate ourselves is for us to be able to upgrade ourselves
despite the fact of language complexity. The more educated we are, the more formal language we use that
gives us that kind of sense of authority and credibility in expressing or delivering our ideas to our target
audience. Thus engineering language form and use or imposing well a plan to be equipped with language
that allows successful exchange of information is an advantage.

References
Almahmoud, M. (2013). Investigating status planning through studying language attitudes.
Retrieved from http:// www.ipedr.com/vol68/011
Gramley, S. (n.d.) Language planning and policy.

Hao, N. (2018). Theory and practice in language studies. 8(7), 888-892.

Magno, J. M. (2017). Oral Interlanguages of Second Language (L2) Learners of Filipino and English.
Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Art and Sciences, 60-67.

Spolsky, B. (n.d.). The handbook of sociolinguistics. Retrieved from Lauron (2020) PPT