Language planning

LANGUAGE POLICY AND LANGUAGE PLANNING

 Language planning: any effort to modify language form or use (term proffered -1950s,
1960s)

 1980s – neutral-seeming term: Language policy

 Status planning: any attempt to set up norms or rules for when to use which language in
a situation where there are two or more languages available (which one will be official,
which one should be used in schools, or in church etc.)
 Corpus planning: any attempt to modify the structure of a language once it has been
fixed as appropriate for use in a specific situation (in schools, print or as the official
language) – e.g. the French efforts to remove English words, the Young Turk policy to
remove Arabic words from Turkish
 Language standardization: one aspect of corpus planning - attempts to standardize
grammar and pronunciation towards some norm that is discovered or invented by
some officially appointed or self-proclaimed group of language guardians (also
called normativism or prescriptivism by linguists who study it, or ‘keeping the
language pure’ by those who carry it out’)

 Language acquisition planning/ language education policy – some people need to

learn a language they do not normally speak (Finland, both Finnish and Swedish
are official, so Swedes learn Finnish and Finns, Swedish); also the government
decides which foreign languages are to be taught in school.

 Language diffusion policy – a country or specific social groups try to encourage

other people to learn their language (Soviet activities to spread Russian
throughout the USSR; the French policy to spread la francophonie).
STATUS PLANNING
 Especially important when a country becomes independent
 Language-status policy – political activity (decisions made by government or elected parliament,
linguists sometimes consulted) – the status decision determines which language or languages are to
be used in various public functions, by government, the legal and educational system.
 Newly independent Norway proclaimed its freedom in moving away from Danish power and language influence –
eventually decided to recognize the official equality of two varieties: Riksmål and Nynorsk
 Colonial countries - Colonial language – official language of the new state (colonial language is spoken,
imperfectly by a small educated elite) – e.g. France in all its territories and Portugal in its colonies
 New Zealand – with the Treaty of Waitangi obtained sovereignty over the Maori in 1840 – Maori should be official
language besides English
 Post-apartheid South Africa – appropriate status for the many languages spoken by the African majority alongside
Afrikaans and English
 US – English the only official language
 Israel – Hebrew and Arabic formally recognized as official languages for certain purposes & de facto recognition
that most public signs are in English as well
RELIGION
Religious bodies have significant language status policies
Roman Catholic church changed the language of the Mass from Latin to the local vernacular
 Hinduism, Orthodox Judaism, Islam and Greek and Russian Orthodox Christianity have
language policies which support maintenance of the status of a sacred language
 CORPUS PLANNING
A language whose status has been changed needs to be modified to a more elaborate level of
standardization or to an expanded set of functions
- Need for modernization and elaboration of vocabulary (improvement of technology for instance –
vocabulary connected to computer technology)
- A language can take an old word (e.g. drive or screen) and give it a new meaning.
E.g. a computer in the Oxford English dictionary (1993 edition) is a person who does calculations …
now it has a different meaning
- Coin a new term e.g. diskette, megabyte – by combining existing words or morphemes into more
or less transparent forms (English coined many new words based on Latin and Greek)

 Orthography – planning in terms of the rules of writing.

 The Roman alphabet is quite commonly used under the influence of European languages.
 The Stalinist policy of linguistic centralization – change from Roman and Arabic orthography to Cyrillic.
 A major component of the Turkish westernization movement was to change from Arabic to Roman script.
 NORMATIVISM AND PRESCRIPTIVISM

 Western educated people expect that language rules are set, clear, unambiguous and enforced
 Teachers of EFL complain about the differences between British and American usage
E.g. In some Elizabethan books there is no ‘correct’ spelling – it varies. As printing and education spread, the
notion of correctness became increasingly important.
- George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is an accurate account of how changes in speech and dress permitted a
Cockney flower-girl to move into the high society from which she was otherwise barred

 Prescriptivism is a development in a mass education system where successful learning of prestige speech
styles is a first step in social upward mobility. However, that doesn’t mean that speakers of non-standard
varieties are less intelligent or less inherently capable than standard speakers.
 Language acquisition planning or
language education policy

 Teaching the standard language, with emphasis on literacy – the first task of most
educational systems
 In cases of two official languages – both are taught.
 E.g. in Finland, all Finnish speakers are expected to learn Swedish and all Swedish
speakers to learn Finnish.
 In Quebec, all English speakers learn French and all French speakers learn English.
 In Israel, Arab children learn Hebrew, and Arabic is compulsory for Hebrew speakers.
 The task of religious schools – develop literacy in the languages of the sacred texts
(Hebrew for Jews, Classical Arabic for Moslems, Sanskrit for Hindus, Old Church Slavonic
for Russian Orthodox)
 Language diffusion policy or linguistic imperialism
1. Unplanned
- Political and military conquest –major causes of language spread
- trade (e.g. Swahili in Africa)
- missionary activity (sacred texts need to be translated if they are to be
understood)
2. Planned
(deliberate policy of the government or other institution to change language acquisition and
use)
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1. External – the conquered land of colonies (it can have internal diffusion too)
2. Internal (when a country decides that all its inhabitants should learn the national
language e.g. the British required English in Welsh schools, when France would not allow
Occitan, Breton or Basque in its schools, Stalin pushed for the use of higher status of
Russian in all Soviet schools etc.)
 The spread of English – imperialism or hegemony?

 World-wide diffusion of English

 Conscious planning by the governments and experts of English speaking countries
like the UK, the US, Canada, South Africa and Australia
 Reason - association of English with modern technology, economic progress and
internationalization ; 1920s, Japanese and Chinese business leaders started to
value knowledge of English
 Many observers believe that this growing hegemony of English is dangerous and
harmful