Applied Sociolinguistics
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Language Policy
A course or principle of action
adopted or proposed by a
government regarding a given
language.
What do governments do with
languages either officially
through legislation or by court
decisions?
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Language Policy
o determine how languages are used
o develop language skills needed to meet
national priorities, or
o establish the rights of individuals or groups to
use and maintain languages
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Language Policy
Language policy is sometimes used as a
synonym for language planning. However,
more precisely, language policy refers to the
more general linguistic, political and social goals
underlying the actual language planning process.
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Language Policy
Language planning is actually part of a language
policy that a given government adopts regarding
one or more of the languages spoken in the
country.
e.g. Catalan forbidden during Franco's dictatorship 1937-
1976. Catalan not allowed in schools and no books or
newspapers could be published in that language - it was
considered of importance for the Catalan movement, which
was believed to threaten the union of Spain.
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What is Language Planning?
A deliberate effort to influence the function,
structure, or acquisition of a language or language
variety within a speech community.
In multilingual countries LP results from the need of
implementing a language policy regulating the
scope and use of the languages and/or language
varieties within their territories.
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Language Planning
A few decades ago, decisions concerning language
planning were characteristic of developing countries
which often needed to make decisions on whether
to use the former colonial language or other national
languages as a unifying code.
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Language Planning
More recently, LP has become an issue in western
societies - a social demand to preserve minority
languages or a political demand to expand the use
of international languages to promote intercultural
and supranational communication (e.g., the EU).
The factors affecting language planning (economic,
educational, historical, judicial, political, religious
and social) give an idea of its complexity.
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
Cobarrubias (1983)
Four typical ideologies
Language Planning
Linguistic Assimilation
Vernacularization Internationalism
Linguistic Pluralism
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
Linguistic Assimilation
The belief that everyone, regardless of origin,
should learn the dominant language of the society.
France applied this policy to various peoples within its borders.
The U.S. applied it both, internally with immigrants and externally (The Philippines and Puerto Rico)
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
This seems a reasonable decision for the
integration of minority groups, but it raises the
problem of conservation and respect for minority
group identities and cultural heritage, which are
often supposed to disappear under this motivation
for language planning.
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
Eg. The case of Russification in the former Soviet
Union where Soviet rulers tried to spread the
Russian language and culture throughout the
whore Soviet Union.
A different action could be simply lack of official
actions undertaken to preserve a language, which
can also lead to language assimilation.
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
In Australia, there were about 200 languages at the
time of the European conquest and only around 20
were still spoken by younger generations in the
1990s.
A major factor in Aboriginal language death in
Australia was the linguistic assimilation policy
undertaken up to the 1970s with their 'English only policy in schools.
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
Linguistic pluralism
The acceptance of various languages or varieties,
centered on individual or geographical criteria, i.e.,
an individual may be stimulated to maintain his/her
language in the case of a multilingual setting,
where his/her language represents a minority that
does not identify with a specific geographical area
(immigrants in a big city)
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
It can also be the case of a multilingual state that
adopts various official languages as they are
spoken in different geographical areas (e.g.,
French and English speaking Canada; French
and Dutch-speaking Belgium; and, English and
Afrikaans-speaking South Africa).
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
Vernacularization
Entails the reconstruction or renewal of an
indigenous language that is not used by a
wide group of speakers but after some
changes (the alphabet, pronunciation,
relexicalization, etc.) becomes widespread
and adopted as an official language
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
e.g., Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea,
Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia, Tagalog
renamed Filipino in the Philippines and
Quechua in Peru.
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
Internationalism
It is reached when the motivation in language
planning is to adopt a non-vernacular language for
wider interethnic communication as a political
solution to an internal problem often arising from
equally powerful minorities, one of them aiming at
imposing their language as the official language,
or the language of education and trade, for all.
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Factors motivating decision-making in language planning
e.g. English in Singapore, India and the
Philippines.
English and French are the languages that have
been most internationalized.
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Factors affecting language planning
a) Socio-demographic factors
b) Linguistic factors
c) Socio-psychological factors
d) Political factors
e) Religious factors
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Aims of Language Planning
Eleven Language Planning Goals have been
recognized (Nahir 2003):
1. Language Purification
2. Language Revival
3. Language Reform
4. Language Standardization
5. Language Spread
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Aims of Language Planning
6. Lexical Modernization
7. Terminology Unification
8. Stylistic Simplification
9. Interlingual Communication
10.Language Maintenance
11.Auxiliary-Code Standardization
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Types of Language Planning
Heinz Kloss (1967), distinguished three basic
types of language planning:
Status planning - all efforts undertaken to change the use and function of a language or language variety within a given society.
Corpus planning - concerned with the internal structure of the language
Acquisition planning - aims to influence aspects of language, such as language status, distribution and literacy through
education.
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Status Planning
Refers to the allocation or relocation of new
functions to a language (such as using the
language as medium of instruction or as an
official language).
Status planning affects the role a language
plays within a given society.
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Status Planning
The decision to use Hebrew as a medium of
instruction in Jewish schools in Palestine from
the end of the nineteenth century is an example
of status planning.
Previously, classical Hebrew had not been used
in everyday communication, and its use had
been restricted to prayers and religious as well
as scholarly writings.
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Status Planning
Language-planners distinguish many possible
functions a language can occupy in society.
Official: the use of a language as legally appropriate language for all politically and
culturally representative purposes on a
nationwide basis. In many cases, the official
function of a language is specified
constitutionally. E.g. Irish and English have official status in Ireland.
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Status Planning
Provincial: the use of a language as a provincial or regional official language. In this
case, the official function of the language is not
nationwide, but is limited to a smaller
geographic area (Stewart 1968).
e.g In the Canadian province of Quebec,
French is the only official language (since
1974), while both English and French have
official status in the other provinces of Canada.
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Status
