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= Language planning =
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Introduction
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Language planning (also known as language engineering) is a deliberate
effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of
languages or language varieties within a speech community. Robert L.
Cooper (1989) defines language planning as "the activity of preparing
a normative orthography, grammar, and dictionary for the guidance of
writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community� (p. 8).
Along with language ideology and language practices, language planning
is part of language policy - a typlogy drawn from
[
https://english.biu.ac.il/faculty/spolsky-bernard Bernard Spolsky]'s
theory on language policy.
According to Spolsky, language management is a more precise term than
language planning. Language management is defined as "the explicit and
observable effort by someone or some group that has or claims
authority over the participants in the domain to modify their
practices or beliefs� (p. 4)
Language planning is often associated with government planning, but is
also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations such as
grass-roots organizations as well as individuals. Goals of such
planning vary. Better communication through assimilation of a single
dominant language can bring economic benefits to minorities but is
also perceived to facilitate their political domination. It involves
the establishment of language regulators, such as formal or informal
agencies, committees, societies or academies to design or develop new
structures to meet contemporary needs.
Language ideology
======================================================================
Four overarching language ideologies are purposed to explain
motivations and decisions:
*Internationalization: the adoption of a non-indigenous language as a
means of wider communication, as an official language or in a
particular domain, such as the use of English in India, Singapore, the
Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and South Africa.
*Linguistic assimilation: the belief that every member of a society,
irrespective of their native language, should learn and use the
dominant language of the society in which they live. An example is
the English-only movement of some residents of the United States.
*Linguistic pluralism: the recognition and support of multiple
languages within one society. Examples include the coexistence of
French, German, Italian, and Romansh in Switzerland; and the shared
official status of English, Malay, Tamil, and Mandarin Chinese in
Singapore. The coexistence of many languages may not necessarily
arise from a conscious language ideology, but rather related to the
relative efficiency in communication of a common language.
*Vernacularization: the restoration and development of an indigenous
language, along with its adoption by the state as an official
language. Examples include Hebrew in the state of Israel and Quechua
in Peru.
Goals
======================================================================
Eleven language planning goals have been recognized (Nahir 2003):
# Language purification - prescription of usage norms in order to
preserve the "linguistic purity" of language, protect language from
foreign influences, and guard against perceived language deviation
from within
# Language revival - the attempt to restore to common use a language
that has few or no surviving native speakers
# Language reform - deliberate change in specific aspects of language
or extralinguistic elements, such as grammar and orthography, in order
to facilitate use
# Language standardization - the attempt to garner prestige for a
regional language or dialect, developing it as the chosen major
language, or standard language, of a region
# Language spread - the attempt to increase the number of speakers of
a language
# Lexical modernization - word creation or adaptation
# Terminology unification - development of unified terminologies,
primarily in technical domains
# Stylistic simplification - simplification of language usage in
lexicon, grammar, and style. That includes modifying the use of
language in social and formal contexts.
# Interlingual communication - facilitation of linguistic
communication between members of distinct speech communities
# Language maintenance - preservation of the use of a group's native
language as a first or second language where pressures threaten or
cause a decline in the status of the language
# Auxiliary-code standardization - standardization of marginal,
auxiliary aspects of language, such as signs for the deaf, place
names, or rules of transliteration and transcription
Types
======================================================================
Language planning has been divided into three types:
Status planning
=================
Status planning is the allocation or reallocation of a language or
variety to functional domains within a society, thus affecting the
status, or standing, of a language.
Peru's history of language planning begins in the 16th century with
Spanish colonization. When the Spanish first arrived in Peru, Quechua
served as a language of wider communication, a lingua franca, between
Spaniards and Peruvian natives. As the years passed, Spaniards
asserted the superiority of the Spanish language; as a result, Spanish
gained prestige, taking over as a language of wider communication and
the dominant language of Peru. In 1975, under the leadership of
President Juan Velasco Alvarado, the revolutionary government of Peru
declared Quechua an official language of the Peruvian state, "coequal
with Spanish." Four years later, the law was reversed. Peru's 1979
constitution declares Spanish the only official language of the state;
Quechua and Aymara are relegated to "official use zones," equivalent
to Stewart's provincial function described above. Quechua has
officially remained a provincial language since 1979. Today, Quechua
also serves a limited international function throughout South America
in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador;
communities of Quechua speakers outside Peru enable communication in
Quechua across borders. Still, because of Quechua's low status,
Spanish is almost always used as the lingua franca instead. Recently,
Quechua has also gained ground in the academic world, both as a school
subject and a topic of literary interest.
Language status
=================
The concept of language status is distinct from, though intertwined
with, language prestige and language function. Language status is the
given position (or standing) of a language vis-� -vis other languages.
A language garners status according to the fulfillment of four
attributes, described in 1968 by two different authors, Heinz Kloss
and William Stewart. Both Kloss and Stewart stipulated four qualities
of a language that determine its status. Their respective frameworks
differ slightly, but they emphasize four common attributes:
# Language origin - whether a given language is indigenous or imported
to the speech community
# Degree of standardization - the extent of development of a formal
set of norms that define 'correct' usage
# Juridical status
##Sole official language (e.g. French in France and Turkish in Turkey)
##Joint official language (e.g. English and Afrikaans in South Africa;
French, German, Italian and Romansh in Switzerland)
##Regional official language (e.g. Igbo in Nigeria; Marathi in
Maharashtra, India)
##Promoted language - lacks official status on a national or regional
level but is promoted and sometimes used by public authorities for
specific functions (e.g. Spanish in New Mexico; West African Pidgin
English in Cameroon)
##Tolerated language - neither promoted nor proscribed; acknowledged
but ignored (e.g. Native American languages in the United States in
the present day)
##Proscribed language - discouraged by official sanction or
restriction (e.g. Galician, Basque and Catalan during Francisco
Franco's regime in Spain; Macedonian in Greece; indigenous American
languages during the boarding school era)
#Vitality - the ratio, or percent, of users of a language to another
variable, like the total population. Kloss and Stewart both
distinguish six classes of statistical distribution. However, they
draw the line between classes at different percentages. According to
Kloss, the first class, the highest level of vitality, is demarcated
by 90% or more speakers. The five remaining classes in decreasing
order are 70-89%, 40-69%, 20-39%, 3-19%, and less than 3%. Stewart
defines the six classes are determined by the following percentages of
speakers: 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%, and less than 5%.
Together, origin, degree of standardization, juridical status, and
vitality express a language's status.
William Stewart outlines ten functional domains in language planning:
#Official - An official language "function[s] as a legally appropriate
language for all politically and culturally representative purposes on
a nationwide basis." Often, the official function of a language is
specified in a constitution.
#Provincial - A provincial language functions as an official language
for a geographic area smaller than a nation, typically a province or
region (e.g. French in Quebec)
#Wider communication - A language of wider communication is a language
that may be official or provincial, but more importantly, functions as
a medium of communication across language boundaries within a nation
(e.g. Hindi in India; Swahili language in East Africa)
#International - An international language functions as a medium of
communication across national boundaries (e.g. English, formerly
French as a diplomatic and international language)
#Capital - A capital language functions as a prominent language in and
around a national capital (e.g. Dutch and French in Brussels)
#Group - A group language functions as a conventional language among
the members of a single cultural or ethnic group (e.g. Hebrew amongst
the Jews)
#Educational - An educational language functions as a medium of
instruction in primary and secondary schools on a regional or national
basis (Urdu in West Pakistan and Bengali in East Pakistan)
#School subject - A school subject language is a language that is
taught as a subject in secondary school or higher education (e.g.
Latin and Ancient Greek in English-language schools)
#Literary - A literary language functions as a language for literary
or scholarly purposes (Ancient Greek)
#Religious - A religious language functions as a language for the
ritual purposes of a particular religion (e.g. Latin for the Latin
Rite within the Roman Catholic Church; Arabic for the reading of the
Qur'an)
Robert Cooper, in reviewing Stewart's list, makes several additions.
First, he creates three sub-types of official functions: statutory,
working, and symbolic. A statutory language is a language that a
government has declared official by law. A working language is a
language that a government uses as a medium for daily activities, and
a symbolic language is a language that is a symbol of the state.
Cooper also adds two functional domains to Stewart's list: mass media
and work.
Corpus planning
=================
Corpus planning refers to the prescriptive intervention in the forms
of a language, whereby planning decisions are made to engineer changes
in the structure of the language. Corpus planning activities often
arise as the result of beliefs about the adequacy of the form of a
language to serve desired functions. Unlike status planning, which is
primarily undertaken by administrators and politicians, corpus
planning generally is performed by individuals with greater linguistic
expertise. There are three traditionally recognized types of corpus
planning: graphization, standardization, and modernization.
The three main types of corpus planning are all evident in the
development of Quechua languages in Peru since the colonial era.
Graphization has been in process since the arrival of the Spanish in
the region, when the Spanish imperialists attempted to describe the
exotic sounds of the language to Europeans.
When Quechua was made an official language in Peru in 1975, the
introduction of the language into the education and government domains
made it essential to have a standard written language. The task of
adopting a writing system proved to be a point of contention among
Peruvian linguists. Although most agreed to use the Latin alphabet,
linguists disagreed about how to represent the phonological system of
Quechua, particularly in regards to the vowel system. Representatives
from the Peruvian Academy of the Quechua language and the Summer
Institute of Linguistics wanted to represent allophones of the vowels
/i/ and /u/ with separate letters and , which creates an apparent
five-vowel system. They argued that this makes the language easier to
learn for people who are already familiar with written Spanish.
However, other Peruvian linguists argued that a three-vowel system was
more faithful to the phonology of Quechua. After several years of
debate and disagreement, in 1985 Peruvian linguists proposed the
Pan-Quechua alphabet as an accurate representation of the language,
and this was adopted in intercultural bilingual education programs and
textbooks. However, the Peruvian Academy and the SIL both refused to
adopt it and continued to propose new alphabets, leaving the issue
unsettled. For more information, see Quechua writing system and
Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift. Another of the primary issues
disagreements was about how to reflect the phonological differences
apparent in different dialects of Quechua. For example, some distinct
dialects utilize aspirated and glottalized versions of the voiceless
uvular stop /q/, while others do not and some language planners found
it important to reflect these dialectal differences.
The search for a unified alphabet reflects the process of
standardization. Unlike other cases of standardization, in Quechua
this has been applied only to the written language, not to the spoken
language, and no attempt was made to change the spoken language of
native speakers, which varied by regions. Rather, standardization was
required in order to create a uniform writing system to provide
education to Quechua speakers in their native language.
Language planners in Peru have proposed several varieties to serve as
the supradialectal spoken norm. Some saw Qusqu-Qullaw as the natural
choice for a standard norm, as it is recognized to be the variety
closest to that spoken by the Incas. Others argued that Ayacucho
Quechua is a better option, as the language is more conservative and
similar to the proto-language, while Qusqu-Qullaw has been influenced
by contact with the Aymara language.
Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino proposed a standard literary norm, Southern
Quechua that combines features of both these dialects. This norm has
been accepted by many institutions in Peru.
Lexical modernization has also been critical to the development of
Quechua. Language planners have attempted to create new Quechua words
primarily through Quechua morphemes, which are combined in new ways to
give new meanings. In general, loanwords from other languages are
considered only when there are no possibilities to develop the word
through existing Quechua structures. If loanwords are adopted into the
language, linguists attempt to phonologically adapt the word to match
typical Quechua pronunciation norms.
Graphization
==============
Graphization refers to development, selection and modification of
scripts and orthographic conventions for a language. The use of
writing in a speech community can have lasting sociocultural effects,
which include easier transmission of material through generations,
communication with larger numbers of people, and a standard against
which varieties of spoken language are often compared. Linguist
Charles A. Ferguson made two key observations about the results of
adopting a writing system. First, the use of writing adds another
variety of the language to the community's repertory. Although written
language is often viewed as secondary to spoken language, the
vocabulary, grammatical structures and phonological structures of a
language often adopt characteristics in the written form that are
distinct from the spoken variety. Second, the use of writing often
leads to a folk belief that the written language is the 'real'
language, and speech is a corruption of it. Written language is viewed
as more conservative, while the spoken variety is more susceptible to
language change. Isolated relic areas of the spoken language may be
less innovative than the written form, or the written language may
have been based on a divergent variety of the spoken language.
In establishing a writing system for a language, corpus planners have
the option of using an existing system or creating a new one. The Ainu
of Japan chose to adopt the Japanese language's katakana syllabary as
the writing system for the Ainu language. Katakana is designed for a
language with a basic CV syllable structure, but Ainu contains many
CVC syllables that cannot easily be adapted to this syllabary. As a
result, Ainu uses a modified katakana system, in which syllable-final
codas are consonants by a subscript version of a katakana symbol that
begins with the desired consonant.
An example on a created script includes the development of the
Armenian script in 405 AD by St. Mesrop Mashtots. Though the script
was modeled after the Greek alphabet, the original script
distinguished Armenian from the Greek and Syriac alphabets of the
neighboring peoples. Similarly, in the early 19th century, Sequoyah
(Cherokee) created an orthography for written Cherokee in the
Southeast of the present-day United States. It uses some Latin
characters but also introduces new ones.
Standardization
=================
The process of standardization often involves one variety of a
language taking precedence over other social and regional dialects of
a language. Another approach, where dialects are mutually
intelligible, is to introduce a poly-phonemic written form that is
intended to represent all dialects of a language adequately but with
no standard spoken form. If one variety of a language is chosen, that
variety comes to be perceived as supra-dialectal and the 'best' form
of the language.
The choice of which language takes precedence has important social
consequences, as it confers privilege upon speakers whose spoken and
written dialect conforms closest to the chosen standard. The standard
that is chosen as the norm is generally spoken by the most powerful
social group within the society, and is imposed upon the less powerful
groups as the form to emulate. This often reinforces the dominance of
the powerful social group and makes the standard norm necessary for
socioeconomic mobility. In practice, standardization generally entails
increasing the uniformity of the norm, as well as the codification of
the norm.
The history of English provides an example of standardization
occurring over an extended time period, without formally recognized
language planning. The standardization process began when William
Caxton introduced the printing press in England in 1476. This was
accompanied by the adoption of the south-east Midlands variety of
English, spoken in London, as the print language. Because of the
dialect's use for administrative, government, business, and literary
purposes, this variety became entrenched as the prestigious variety of
English. After the creation of grammars and dictionaries in the 18th
century, the rise of print capitalism, industrialization,
urbanization, and mass education led to the dissemination of this
dialect as the cultural norm for the English language.
Modernization
===============
Modernization is a form of language planning that occurs when a
language needs to expand its resources to meet functions.
Modernization often occurs when a language undergoes a shift in
status, such as when a country gains independence from a colonial
power or when there is a change in the language education policy. The
most significant force in modernization is the expansion of the
lexicon, which allows the language to discuss topics in modern
semantic domains. Language planners generally focus on creating new
lists and glossaries to describe new technical terms, but it is also
necessary to ensure that the new terms are consistently used by the
appropriate sectors within society. While some languages, such as
Japanese and Hungarian, have experienced rapid lexical expansion to
meet the demands of modernization, other languages, such as Hindi and
Arabic, have failed to do so. Rapid lexical expansion is aided by the
use of new terms in textbooks and professional publications, as well
as frequent use among specialists. Issues of linguistic purism often
play a significant role in lexical expansion, but technical vocabulary
can be effective within a language, regardless of whether it comes
from the language's own process of word formation or from extensive
borrowing from another language. While Hungarian has almost
exclusively used language-internal processes to create new lexical
items, Japanese has borrowed extensively from English to derive new
words as part of its modernization.
Acquisition planning
======================
Acquisition planning is a type of language planning in which a
national, state or local government system aims to influence aspects
of language, such as language status, distribution and literacy
through education. Acquisition planning can also be used by
non-governmental organizations, but it is more commonly associated
with government planning.
Frequently, acquisition planning is integrated into a larger language
planning process in which the statuses of languages are evaluated,
corpuses are revised and the changes are finally introduced to society
on a national, state or local level through education systems, ranging
from primary schools to universities. This process of change can
entail a variety of modifications, such as an alteration in student
textbook formatting, a change in methods of teaching an official
language or the development of a bilingual language program, only to
name a few. For example, if a government decides to raise the status
level of a certain language or change its level of prestige, it can
establish a law that requires teachers to teach only in this language
or that textbooks are written using only this language's script. This,
in turn, would support the elevation of the language's status or could
increase its prestige. In this way, acquisition planning is often used
to promote language revitalization, which can change a language's
status or reverse a language shift, or to promote linguistic purism.
In a case where a government revises a corpus, new dictionaries and
educational materials will need to be revised in schools in order to
maintain effective language acquisition.
Since Quechua is no longer an official language of Peru, Quechua
literacy is not consistently encouraged in schools. Peru's education
system is instead primarily based on Spanish, the nation's official
language. Despite its low prestige, Quechua is still spoken by
millions of indigenous Peruvians, a large portion of whom are
bilingual in Quechua and Spanish. There is a desire to preserve the
uniqueness of Quechua as a language with its own attributes and
representations of culture. Some argue that promoting a diverse
literacy program gives students diverse perspectives on life, which
could only enhance their educational experience. Before 1975, Peru had
bilingual education programs, but Quechua was not taught as a subject
in primary and secondary schools. After the 1975 education reform,
Quechua and Spanish both had standing in bilingual programs, but only
in restricted speech communities. These experimental programs were
then canceled due to a change in government planning, but again
reinstated in 1996. Even with national intercultural bilingual
education programs, teachers at local schools and members of the
community often prefer using Spanish, destabilizing support for
bilingual education. This underscores the importance of community
support as a goal for the education sector as mentioned earlier. Some
believe that due to Spanish's higher national prestige, it is more
socially and economically beneficial to learn and speak Spanish. It is
debatable whether these education programs will benefit education or
raise the status of Quechua.
The education sector
======================
The education ministry or education sector of government is typically
in charge of making national language acquisition decisions based on
state and local evaluation reports. The responsibilities of education
sectors vary by country; Robert B. Kaplan and Richard B. Baldauf
describe the sectors' six principal goals:
# To decide what languages should be taught within the curriculum.
# To determine the amount and quality of teacher training.
# To involve local communities.
# To determine what materials will be used and how they will be
incorporated into syllabi.
# To establish a local and state assessment system to monitor
progress.
# To determine financial costs.
Problems
==========
Although acquisition planning can be useful to governments, there are
several problems that must be considered. Even with a solid evaluation
and assessment system, the effects of planning methods can never be
certain; governments must consider the effects on other aspects of
state planning, such as economic and political planning. Some proposed
acquisition changes could also be too drastic or instituted too
suddenly without proper planning and organization. Acquisition
planning can also be financially draining, so adequate planning and
awareness of financial resources is essential. It is important
therefore that government goals, such as those described above, be
organized and planned carefully.
Multilingualism
=================
There is also a growing concern over the treatment of multilingualism
in education, especially in many countries that were once colonized.
Deciding on which language of instruction would be most beneficial to
effective communication on the local and state level is a task
requiring thoughtful planning and is surrounded by debate. Some states
prefer instruction only in the official language, but some aim to
foster linguistic and thus social diversity by encouraging teaching in
several (native) languages. One reason some states prefer a single
language of instruction is that it supports national unity and
homogeneity. Some states prefer incorporating different languages in
order to help students learn better by giving them diverse
perspectives.
Non-governmental organizations
================================
In addition to the education sector, there are non-governmental
sectors or organizations that have a significant effect on language
acquisition, such as the Académie française of France or the Real
Academia Española of Spain. These organizations often create their own
dictionaries and grammar books, thus affecting the materials which
students are exposed to in schools. Although these organizations do
not hold official power, they influence government planning decisions,
such as with educational materials, affecting acquisition.
Ireland
=========
Before the partition of Ireland, a movement began which aimed at the
restoration of Irish, as the nation's primary language, based on a
widespread sentiment for Irish nationalism and cultural identity.
During and after colonisation, Irish had competed with English and
Scots; the movement to restore the language gained momentum after the
Irish War of Independence. The Gaelic League was created to promote
the acquisition of Irish in schools, thus "de-Anglicizing" Ireland.
Immediately after Ireland gained independence in 1922, the League
declared that Irish must be the language of instruction for at least
one hour in primary schools nationwide. Irish-speaking teachers were
recruited, and preparatory colleges were established to train new
ones.
The program implementation was mostly left to the individual schools,
which did not consistently carry it out. Additionally, educating a
generation is a long process, for which the League was not prepared.
There was no consensus as to how the Irish language should be
reinstituted; the League and schools did not develop a system
assessment plan to monitor progress. As a result, the movement lost
strength, and the number of native Irish speakers has been in steady
decline.
See also
======================================================================
*Abstand and ausbau languages
*Gender-neutral language
*Language acquisition
*Language death
*Language education
*Language ideology
*Language policy
*Language revitalization
*Linguistic relativity
*Language shift
*Linguistic imperialism
*Linguistic purism
*Linguistic rights
*Interlinguistics
*Prestige (sociolinguistics)
* Languages in censuses
Further reading
======================================================================
* Bastardas-Boada, Albert.
[
https://www.scribd.com/doc/3025205/Language-Planning-and-Language-Ecology-Towar
ds-a-theoretical-integration
"Language planning and language ecology: Towards a theoretical
integration."] 2000.
* Cobarrubius, Juan & Joshua Fishman, eds. 'Progress in Language
Planning: International Perspective'. The Hague: Mouton, 1983.
* Cooper, R. L. 'Language Planning and Social Change'. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
* Hult, F.M., & Johnson, D.C. (eds.) (2015). 'Research Methods in
Language Policy and Planning: A Practical Guide.' Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell .
*Kadochnikov, Denis (2016). Languages, Regional Conflicts and Economic
Development: Russia. In: Ginsburgh, V., Weber, S. (Eds.). The
Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language. London: Palgrave
Macmillan. pp. 538-580.
*Rubin, Joan, Björn H. Jernudd, Jyotirindra Das Gupta, Joshua A.
Fishman and Charles A. Ferguson, eds. 'Language Planning Processes'.
The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1977.
*
Relevant journals
======================================================================
*'Current Issues in Language Planning' (Routledge)
[
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journal
Code=rclp20#.Vgm9lXpViko
Home page]
* 'Language Policy' (Springer)
[
https://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/linguistics/journal/10993
Home page]
* 'Language Problems and Language Planning.'
[
https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/lplp/main Home page]
External links
======================================================================
*
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20140326223349/http://www.journalofwestafricanlangu
ages.org/Planning.aspx
Articles on language planning in West Africa] (Journal of West African
Languages)
*
[
http://7brands.com/news/blog/language-news/worlds-weirdest-language-7brands/
Infographic: World's Weirdest Language Laws]
License
=========
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning
