Planning For A National/Official Language

Language Planning

Planning for a National/Official Language

Language Planning - the deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or
acquisition of a language within a speech community.
Choosing a variety depends on factors like:

1. The form of the variety.
2. The functions it serves.
3. The attitudes people hold towards it.
There are generally four interrelated steps:
1. Selection: choosing the variety or code to be developed.
2. Codification: the creation of a linguistic standard or norm for a selected linguistic code.
It is divided up into three stages:
a. Graphization – developing a writing system
b. Grammaticalization – deciding on rules/norms of grammar
c. Lexicalization – identifying the vocabulary
3. Elaboration: extending its functions for use in new domains.
4. Implementation(Acceptance) – Promoting of the decisions made in the stages of
selection and codification which can include marketing strategy, production of books,
pamphlets, newspapers, and textbook using the new codified standard.
Types of Language Planning
Corpus Planning - Corpus addresses language form, the code itself, and seek to
engineer changes in the structure of the language (Ferguson: 2006).
Corpus planning activities often arise as the result of beliefs about the adequacy of the
form of a language to serve desired functions.
Standardization - is the process by which conventional forms of a language are
established and maintained. Standardization may occur as a natural development of
a language in a speech community or as an effort by members of a community to impose
one dialect or variety as a standard.
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.
Status planning - addresses the function of language in society, and typically
involves the allocation of languages to official roles in different domain(Ferguson: 2006).
Usually, the process of allocation the function of a language occurs spontaneously,
however, it may also occurs as the result of language planning.
According to Kloss and Stewart (1968), there are four common attributes in status
planning:
1. Language origin – refers to the status of language whether it is a given language or
imported to the speech community.
2. Degree of Standardization – It refers to the extent of the development of a formal set
of norms that define correct usage of the language.
3. Juridical Status – It refers to the status of the language whether it serves as an official
language, national language, lingua franca or vernacular.
4. Vitality – refers to the ratio or percent of users of a language to another variable, like
total population.
Acquisition Planning
• In addition to corpus planning and status or prestige planning, which were discussed
above, sociolinguists may also make a contribution to organized efforts to spread a
linguistic variety by increasing the number of its users. This is sometimes called
acquisition planning, and, since the most widespread method of encouraging the
acquisition of a language is to use the education system, it is also known as language-in-
education planning.
• In China, newspapers and radio contributed to early efforts to promote knowledge of
Mandarin: a demonstration radio programmed promoted the approved pronunciation,
while newspapers in Mandarin printed in transcribed characters. In Japan, although there
are substantial minority groups speaking Korean and Chinese, Japanese is the only official
language. Acquisition planning currently focuses only on English which all children are
required to study throughout the school system.
• In Tanzania, Norway, Singapore and many other countries, the education system plays a
crucial role in acquisition planning, and issues of access, curriculum, methodology and
evaluation are decided by government departments.
Norm (Political planning) Function (Cultivation)
1. Selection 3. Implementation/Acceptance
Social (decision procedures) (educational spread)
2. Codification 4. Elaboration
Linguistic (Standardization (functional development)
procedures)
According to Haugen (1990), numbers 1 & 3 are responsibility of the society and
numbers 3 & 4 are taken care of linguists and authors.
Ideologies of Language Planning
Language planning always involve some ideologies. Cobarrubias (1983) has
described four typical ideologies that may motivate actual decision making in
language planning in a particular society:
1. Linguistic Assimilation
2. Linguistic Pluralism
3. Vernacularization
4. Inter-nationalism
1. Linguistic Assimilation
- It is the belief that everyone, regardless of origin, should learn the dominant
language of the society.
2. Linguistic Pluralism
- It is the recognition of more than one language, also takes a variety of forms. It
can be territorially or individually based or there may be some combination of the two.
3. Vernacularization
- It means the restoration or elaboration of an indigenous language and its
adoptation as an official language.
4. Internationalism
- It means the adoption of a non-indigenous language of wider communication
either as an official language or for such purposes, as education or trade.
The Process of Planning
 Selecting a variety to be developed is often a political decision.
 Linguists help in pointing out the different linguistic problems represented by selecting
one variety than another.
 The acceptance of the chosen variety by the people will require the support of the
politicians and socially prestigious groups.
Linguist’s Role in Language Planning
 Language academies, committees and commissions are interested in language
planning.
 Individuals can be language planners, too, mainly sociolinguists and lexicographers.
 Example: Lexicography - The craft of writing, compiling or editing dictionaries.
The main concerns of language planners are: Language codification and Vocabulary
expansion.
Purposes of Language Planning
1. Language Purification
- to prescribe the usage in order to preserve the “linguistic purity” of a language
and protect it from foreign influences.
2. Language Revival
- to attempt to turn a language with few or no surviving native speakers back into
a spoken means of communication.
3. Language Reform
- to deliberately change specific aspects of a language such as orthography or
grammar in order to facilitate its use.
4. Language Spread
- to attempt to increase the number of speakers of one language at the
expense of another.
5. Terminology Unification
- to develop unified terminologies, primarily in technical domains.
6. Language Maintenance
- to preserve the use of a group’s native language as a first or second
language where pressure cause a decline in the status of the language.
Language Codification “Orthography”
In the past, the church was the main influence on the written form of unwritten
languages when they translated the Bible into them.
When developing the spelling system, there were some problems like:
1. Symbols did not correspond to the pronunciation.
2. Different views on how to indicate the length of a vowel.
Vocabulary Expansion
 When the linguists want to expand the vocabulary of a variety to include the H or L
functions it lacks, they either CHOOSE:
1. A borrowed word from another language.
2. An equivalent in the same language which might not be well-known or with a slightly
different meaning that can be adapted.
3. A newly created word from the same language.
Conclusion
 Language planning is defined most simply as deliberate language change.
 This covers a wide variety of activities including the introduction of new labels
for fruit, the reform of spelling systems and the provision of advice on non-sexist
terminology.
Language planners generally focus on specific language problems. Their role is to
develop a policy of language use which will solve the problems appropriately in
particular speech communities.

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Language Planning

Planning for a National/Official Language

Choosing a variety depends on factors like:

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