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Applied Sociolinguistics

Applied Sociolinguistics

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LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING

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  • Applied Sociolinguistics

  • Page 2

    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

  • Page 23

    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 Planning

    Wider communication: the use of a language as a medium of communication across language boundaries within the nation (lingua

    franca) (Stewart 1968).

    e.g. Swahili in Kenya and Tanzania, Hindi and

    English in India.

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    Status Planning

    International: the use of a language as a major medium of communication which is

    international in scope, e.g. for diplomatic

    relations, foreign trade, tourism, etc. (Stewart 1968).

    e.g.: in medieval Europe, Latin was the major

    medium of international communication. Today

    it is English.

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    Status Planning

    Capital: the use of a language as a major medium of communication in the area of the

    national capital. The function is especially

    important in countries where political power,

    social prestige, and economic activity is

    centered in the capital (Stewart 1968).

    e.g.: the provinces in Belgium have either Dutch

    or French as a provincial official language. The

    capital Brussels, however, is bilingual.

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    Status Planning

    Group: the use of a language primarily as the normal medium for communication among the

    members of a single group, such as a tribe,

    settled group of foreign immigrants, etc. (Stewart 1968).

    e.g.: Jamaican Creole functions as a group

    language among Afro-Caribean immigrants in

    Britain.

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    Status Planning

    Educational: the use of a language as a medium of primary or secondary education,

    either regionally or nationally (Stewart 1968).

    e.g.: in Norway, the local dialects are widely

    used in primary education.

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    Status Planning

    School subject: the language is commonly taught as a subject in secondary and/or higher

    education (Stewart 1968).

    e.g.: French is taught as a school subject in

    most German high schools.

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    Status Planning

    Literary: The use of a language primarily for literary or scholarly purposes (Stewart 1968).

    e.g.: Latin was used as the main language of

    literary and particularly scientific writing in

    Europe until the early eighteenth century.

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    Status Planning

    Religious: The use of a language primarily in connection with the ritual of a particular

    religion (Stewart 1968).

    e.g.: religions such as Islam and Judaism

    require the use of a sacred language (Arabic

    and Hebrew respectively) for the recitation of

    religious texts and prayers.

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    Status Planning

    Language Status

    A concept distinct from language prestige and

    language function.

    Language status is the position or standing of a

    language vis-a-vis other languages

    A language garners status according to the

    fulfillment of four attributes (Heinz Kloss and William

    Stewart)

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    Status Planning

    1. Language origin

    2. Degree of standardization

    3. Juridical status

    4. Vitality

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    Status Planning

    1. Language origin whether a given language is indigenous or imported to the speech

    community

    2. Degree of standardization the extent of development of a formal set of norms that

    define correct usage.

    3. Juridical status

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    Status Planning Juridical Status

    a. Sole official language (e.g. French in France

    and Turkish in Turkey)

    b. Joint official language (e.g. English and

    Afrikaans in South Africa; French, German,

    Italian and Romansh in Switzerland)

    c. Regional official language (e.g. Igbo in

    Nigeria; Marathi in Maharastra, India)

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    Status Planning Juridical Status

    d) 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)

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    Status Planning Juridical Status

    e) Tolerated language neither promoted nor proscribed; acknowledged but ignored (e.g.

    Native American languages in the United

    States)

    f) Proscribed language discouraged by official sanction or restriction (e.g. Galician, Basque

    and Catalan during Francisco Francos regime in Spain; Macedonian in Greece)

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    Status Planning Juridical Status

    4. Vitality

    The ratio, or percent, of users of a language to

    another variable, like the total population.

    Together, origin, degree of standardization,

    juridical status, and vitality dictate a languages status.

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    Corpus Planning

    Refers to the strict intervention in the forms of a

    language, 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.

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    Corpus Planning

    Unlike status planning, which is primarily undertaken

    by administrators and politicians, corpus planning

    generally involves planners with greater linguistic

    expertise.

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    Corpus Planning

    Haugen (1966, 1987) developed a useful framework

    for the description of the process of language

    planning which typically consists of four stages:

    1. Selection

    2. Codification

    3. Implementation

    4. Elaboration.

  • Page 46

    Corpus Planning - Selection

    The choice of a language or language variety to

    fulfill certain functions in a given society: e.g. official

    language, medium of instruction, religious language

    and so on.

    The most prestigious dialect or language is chosen,

    e.g. French - based on the prestigious dialect

    spoken in the region around Paris.

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    Corpus Planning - Codification

    Codification refers to the creation of a linguistic

    standard or norm for a selected linguistic code and

    is commonly divided into three stages:

    a. graphization (developing a writing system),

    b. grammatication (deciding on the rules/norms of

    grammar) and

    c. lexicalization (identifying the vocabulary)

    (Haugen 1987)

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    Corpus Planning - Implementation

    Once a decision has been made, the chosen

    language needs to be officially implemented and

    used in all sorts of official settings: education,

    parliament, media, etc.

    This will raise its social consideration and it will

    become a prestige language, probably used in

    literary and academic circles.

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    Corpus Planning - Implementation

    As a result of continuous and prestigious use, it will

    spread as the norm, and its presence in dictionaries,

    grammars and literary works will consolidate its

    status as the norm.

    This includes the production of books, pamphlets,

    newspapers and textbooks in the newly codified

    standard as well as its introduction into new

    domains, especially the education system.

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    Corpus Planning - Elaboration

    Elaboration or modernization

    Technological and scientific developments probably

    require modernization of specific vocabulary and

    very often a decision needs to be made on whether

    to adopt loan words or to coin new terms based on

    indigenous roots.

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    Corpus Planning - Elaboration

    Thus it involves the terminological and stylistic

    development of a codified language to meet the

    continuing communicative demands of modern life

    and technology.

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    Acquisition Planning

    A type of language planning in which a national,

    state or local government 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.

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    Acquisition Planning

    This implies 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

  • Page 54

    Acquisition Planning

    This process of change can entail modifications as

    the following:

    - alteration in student textbook formatting

    - a change in methods of teaching an official

    language

    - the development of a bilingual language program.

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    Acquisition Planning

    If a government decides to raise the status level of a

    given 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 languages script.

    This, in turn, would support the elevation of the

    languages status or could increase its prestige

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    Acquisition Planning

    Often used to promote language revitalization

    (changing a languages status, reverse language shift, or promote linguistic purism)

    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.

    .

  • Page 57

    Acquisition Planning

    The responsibilities of education sectors vary by

    country. These are the sectors six principal goals:

    1. To decide what languages should be taught within the curriculum.

    2. To determine the amount and quality of teacher training.

    3. To involve local communities.

    4. To determine what materials will be used and how they will be

    incorporated into syllabi.

    5. To establish a local and state assessment system to monitor

    progress.

    6. To determine financial costs.

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    Acquisition Planning - 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.

  • Page 59

    Acquisition 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 be organized and planned

    carefully.

  • Page 60

    EU Language Planning and Policy

    The need to convert the rich heritage of diverse

    languages and cultures in Europe from a barrier to

    communication into a source of mutual

    understanding.

    The aims

    - to unify millions of speakers under a political and

    economic administration

    - to find a common ground for interaction without

    losing either cultural or linguistic identity.

  • Page 61

    EU Language Planning and Policy

    The linguistic situation within the EU - 25 countries

    with 22 different official languages (three working

    languages: English, French and German)

    All the countries include linguistic minorities, only

    Portugal can be considered 'officially' monolingual

    although it contains speech communities using a

    dissimilar language from the official one.

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    In all the other countries there are areas where a

    different language is learned as a mother tongue

    (the distinction between languages and dialects is

    not always clear and is often determined by

    sociopolitical matters).

    This situation gives us a picture of the diversity of

    the state of affairs in the EU.

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    Policy makers established some guidelines to

    promote the use of international languages for

    intercultural communication,

    They have also undertaken some actions regarding

    the maintenance of minority languages.

    So far, the following documents have been already

    elaborated:

  • Page 64

    EU Language Planning and Policy

    a. The European Charter for Minority or Regional

    Languages.

    b. The CE Framework Convention for the Protection of

    National Minorities.

    c. The Oslo Recommendations regarding the Linguistic

    Rights of National Minorities within the Organization for

    Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

    d. The Hague Recommendations Regarding the Education

    Rights of National Minorities.

  • Page 65

    EU Language Planning and Policy

    The EU has taken some action regarding the

    second and foreign language teaching and learning

    within the member states.

    A document published in 1995 states as a general

    objective that everyone, irrespective or his/her

    academic training should gain proficiency in two

    languages apart from their mother tongue so that

    they can communicate in those languages.

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    With this aim, the EU reached a strong consensus

    on the fundamentals for foreign language teaching

    and some programs were developed for the

    exchange of students and teachers to favor the

    learning of other EU languages, to aid teacher

    training, to encourage awareness-raising, and to

    promote the cultural exchange among different

    educational systems.

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    Some of these programs are Socrates (including

    Erasmus, Lingua and Socrates), Leonardo

    (exchange programs in the vocational field) and

    Tempus (for the development of higher education

    systems).

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    The Common European Framework of Reference

    for Languages is a document that provides a

    practical tool for establishing certain standards at

    successive stages of learning and evaluating

    language knowledge.

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    Aims of the Common European Framework of

    Reference for Languages:

    - To provide the basis for setting common standards

    within the EU at an international level

    - To provide the basis for the mutual recognition of

    language qualifications within the EU, and

    therefore facilitating educational and occupational

    mobility.

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    The Framework describes:

    a) The competences necessary for communication;

    b) The related knowledge and skills;

    c) The situations and domains of communication.

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    EU Language Planning and Policy

    The framework paves the way for a comprehensive

    definition of teaching and learning objectives and

    methods, and is therefore, of special interest to

    course designers, textbook writers, testers, teachers

    and teacher trainers, and the whole academic

    community as a whole.