Language planning
Encyclopedia
Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community
. It is often associated with government
planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organization
s, such as grass-roots organizations and even individuals. The goals of language planning differ depending on the nation or organization, but generally include making planning decisions and possibly changes for the benefit of communication
. Planning or improving effective communication can also lead to other social changes such as language shift or assimilation, thereby providing another motivation to plan the structure, function and acquisition of languages.
Language engineering involves the creation of natural language processing
systems whose cost and outputs are measurable and predictable as well as establishment of language regulators, such as formal or informal agencies, committees, societies or academies as language regulators to design or develop new structures to meet contemporary needs. It is a distinct field contrasted to natural language processing and computational linguistics
. A recent trend of language engineering is the use of Semantic Web technologies for the creation, archival, processing, and retrieval of machine processable language data.
motivate decision making in language planning. The first, linguistic assimilation, is the belief that every member of a society, irrespective of his native language
, should learn and use the dominant language of the society in which he lives. A quintessential example is the English-only movement
in the United States
. Linguistic assimilation stands in direct contrast to the second ideology, 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 status of English
, Malay
, Tamil
, and Chinese in Singapore
. The coexistence of many languages may not necessarily arise from a conscious language ideology, but rather from the efficiency in communication of a common language. The third ideology, vernacularization, denotes 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
. The final ideology, internationalization, is the adoption of a non-indigenous language of wider communication as an official language or in a particular domain, such as the use of English in Singapore, India
, the Philippines
, and Papua New Guinea
.
and William Stewart. Both Kloss and Stewart stipulated four qualities of a language that determine its status. While Kloss and Stewart’s respective frameworks differ slightly, they emphasize four common attributes:
Together, origin, degree of standardization, juridical status, and vitality dictate a language’s status.
William Stewart outlines ten functional domains in language planning:
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 merely a symbol
of the state. Cooper also adds two functional domains to Stewart's list: mass media and work.
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 involves planners with greater linguistic expertise. There are three traditionally recognized types of corpus planning: graphization, standardization, and modernization.
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. However, this view ignores the possibility that isolated relic areas of the 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 inventing 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 an invented 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 alphabet
s of the neighboring peoples.
s of a language. This variety comes to be understood as supra-dialectal and the ‘best’ form of the language. The choice of which language takes precedence has important societal 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 the 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 and literary purposes, this variety became entrenched as the prestigious variety of English. After the creation of grammar
s 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 standard norm for the English language.
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 domain
s. 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 heavy 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.
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.
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:
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.
became an independent state, a movement began to restore Irish
, as the nation’s official language, predicated on a widespread sentiment for Irish nationalism and cultural identity. Irish had always competed with English and Scottish dialects in Ireland, but not until the Irish War for Independence from Britain did the movement gain momentum. The Gaelic League
was soon created to promote the acquisition of Irish in schools, thus “de-Anglicizing” Ireland. Immediately after Ireland’s 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 them.
The program implementation however, was mostly left to the individual schools, which did not consistently adhere to the program’s rules. Additionally, educating a generation is a long process for which the League was not prepared. There was no general consensus as to how Irish should be reinstituted and system assessment plan to monitor progress and the people’s desires was lacking. As a result, the movement lost strength and English remains the nation’s second official language and most spoken first language, leading to the failure of Ireland’s attempt at language revitalization.
’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. 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.
, 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 allophone
s of the vowel
s /i/ and /u/ with separate letters /e/ and /o/, 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 only been applied to the written language, not the spoken language and no attempt was made to change the spoken language of native speakers. Rather the standardization process was motivated by the need to have 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 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 that combine 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.
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.
Speech community
Speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language. Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon, distinct social groups like high school students or hip hop fans , or even tight-knit groups like families and...
. It is often associated with government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
s, such as grass-roots organizations and even individuals. The goals of language planning differ depending on the nation or organization, but generally include making planning decisions and possibly changes for the benefit of communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
. Planning or improving effective communication can also lead to other social changes such as language shift or assimilation, thereby providing another motivation to plan the structure, function and acquisition of languages.
Language engineering involves the creation of natural language processing
Natural language processing
Natural language processing is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages; it began as a branch of artificial intelligence....
systems whose cost and outputs are measurable and predictable as well as establishment of language regulators, such as formal or informal agencies, committees, societies or academies as language regulators to design or develop new structures to meet contemporary needs. It is a distinct field contrasted to natural language processing and computational linguistics
Computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....
. A recent trend of language engineering is the use of Semantic Web technologies for the creation, archival, processing, and retrieval of machine processable language data.
Language planning and language ideology
Four overarching language ideologiesLanguage ideology
In sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, a language or linguistic ideology is a systematic construct about how particular ways of using languages carry or are invested with certain moral, religious, social, and political values, giving rise to implicit assumptions that people have about a...
motivate decision making in language planning. The first, linguistic assimilation, is the belief that every member of a society, irrespective of his native language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
, should learn and use the dominant language of the society in which he lives. A quintessential example is the English-only movement
English-only movement
English-only movement, also known as Official English movement, refers to a political movement for the use only of the English language in official government operations through the establishing of English as the only official language in the United States...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Linguistic assimilation stands in direct contrast to the second ideology, linguistic pluralism - the recognition and support of multiple languages within one society. Examples include the coexistence of French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and Romansh in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and the shared status of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
, Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
, and Chinese in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. The coexistence of many languages may not necessarily arise from a conscious language ideology, but rather from the efficiency in communication of a common language. The third ideology, vernacularization, denotes the restoration and development of an indigenous language along with its adoption by the state as an official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
. Examples include Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
in the state of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Quechua in Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
. The final ideology, internationalization, is the adoption of a non-indigenous language of wider communication as an official language or in a particular domain, such as the use of English in Singapore, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, and Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
.
Language planning goals
Eleven Language Planning Goals have been recognized (Nahir 2003):- Language Purification – prescription of usage in order to preserve the “linguistic purityLinguistic purismLinguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
” of language, protect language from foreign influences, and guard against language deviation from within - Language Revival – the attempt to turn a language with few or no surviving native speakers back into a normal means of communication
- Language ReformLanguage reformLanguage reform is a type of language planning by massive change to a language. The usual tools of language reform are simplification and purification. Simplification makes the language easier to use by regularizing vocabulary and grammar...
– deliberate change in specific aspects of language, like orthographyOrthographyThe orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
, spellingSpellingSpelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. In addition, the term often, but not always, means an accepted standard spelling or the process of naming the letters...
, or grammarGrammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
, in order to facilitate use - Language Standardization – the attempt to garner prestige for a regional language or dialect, transforming it into one that is accepted as the major language, or standard languageStandard languageA standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
, of a regionRegionRegion is most commonly found as a term used in terrestrial and astrophysics sciences also an area, notably among the different sub-disciplines of geography, studied by regional geographers. Regions consist of subregions that contain clusters of like areas that are distinctive by their uniformity... - Language Spread – the attempt to increase the number of speakers of one language at the expense of another
- Lexical Modernization – word creation or adaptation
- Terminology Unification – development of unified terminologiesTerminologyTerminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words that in specific contexts are given specific meanings, meanings that may deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. The discipline Terminology studies among other...
, primarily in technical domains - Stylistic Simplification – simplification of language usage in lexiconLexiconIn linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
, grammar, and style - 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 languageSecond languageA second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
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 transliterationTransliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
and transcriptionTranscription (linguistics)Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
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.Language status
Language status is a concept distinct from, though intertwined with, language prestige and language function. Strictly speaking, language status is the position or standing of a language vis-à-vis other languages. A language garners status according to the fulfillment of four attributes, described in the same year, 1968, by two different authors, Heinz KlossHeinz Kloss
Heinz Kloss was a German linguist and internationally recognised authority on linguistic minorities....
and William Stewart. Both Kloss and Stewart stipulated four qualities of a language that determine its status. While Kloss and Stewart’s respective frameworks differ slightly, 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 AfrikaansAfrikaansAfrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
in South AfricaSouth AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
; French, German, Italian and Romansh in Switzerland) - Regional official language (e.g. IgboIgbo languageIgbo , or Igbo proper, is a native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group primarily located in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 20 million speakers that are mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is a national language of Nigeria. It is written in the Latin...
in NigeriaNigeriaNigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
; MarathiMarathi languageMarathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
in Maharastra, 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. SpanishSpanish peopleThe Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
in New MexicoNew MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
; West African Pidgin EnglishWest African Pidgin EnglishWest African Pidgin English, also called Guinea Coast Creole English, was the lingua franca, or language of commerce, spoken along the West African coast during the period of the Atlantic slave trade...
in CameroonCameroonCameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
) - Tolerated language – neither promoted nor proscribed; acknowledged but ignored (e.g. Native American languagesIndigenous languages of the AmericasIndigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) - Proscribed language – discouraged by official sanction or restriction (e.g. BasqueBasque languageBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
and CatalanCatalan languageCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
during Francisco FrancoFrancisco FrancoFrancisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
’s regime in Spain; MacedonianMacedonian languageMacedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
in GreeceGreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
)
- 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%. According to Stewart, on the other hand, the six classes are determined by the following percentages: 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%, and less than 5%.
Together, origin, degree of standardization, juridical status, and vitality dictate 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 constitutionConstitutionA constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
. - Provincial - A provincial language functions as an official language for a geographic area smaller than a nation, typically a provinceProvinceA province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Etymology:The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province," which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia," which referred to...
or regionRegionRegion is most commonly found as a term used in terrestrial and astrophysics sciences also an area, notably among the different sub-disciplines of geography, studied by regional geographers. Regions consist of subregions that contain clusters of like areas that are distinctive by their uniformity...
(e.g. French in QuebecQuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
) - 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. HindiHindiStandard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
in India; Swahili languageSwahili languageSwahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
in East AfricaEast AfricaEast Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
) - International - An international language functions as a medium of communication across national boundaries (e.g. English)
- Capital - A capital language functions as a prominent language in and around a national capital (e.g. DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
and French in BrusselsBrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
) - Group - A group language functions as a conventional language among the members of a single cultural or ethnic group (e.g. Hebrew amongst the JewsJewsThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
) - Educational - An educational language functions as a medium of instruction in primaryPrimary educationA primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
and secondarySecondary educationSecondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
schools on a regional or national basis (UrduUrduUrdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
in West PakistanWest PakistanWest Pakistan , common name West-Pakistan , in the period between its establishment on 22 November 1955 to disintegration on December 16, 1971. This period, during which, Pakistan was divided, ended when East-Pakistan was disintegrated and succeeded to become which is now what is known as Bangladesh...
and BengaliBengali languageBengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
in East PakistanEast PakistanEast Pakistan was a provincial state of Pakistan established in 14 August 1947. The provincial state existed until its declaration of independence on 26 March 1971 as the independent nation of Bangladesh. Pakistan recognized the new nation on 16 December 1971. East Pakistan was created from Bengal...
) - School subject - A school subject language is a language that is taught as a subject in secondary school or higher educationHigher educationHigher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
(e.g. LatinLatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Ancient GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
in English schools) - Literary - A literary language functions as a language for literaryLiteratureLiterature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
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 ChurchRoman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
; Arabic for the reading of the Qur'anQur'anThe Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
)
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 merely a symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
of the state. Cooper also adds two functional domains to Stewart's list: mass media and work.
Corpus planning
Corpus planning refers to the prescriptiveLinguistic prescription
In linguistics, prescription denotes normative practices on such aspects of language use as spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. It includes judgments on what usages are socially proper and politically correct...
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 involves planners with greater linguistic expertise. There are three traditionally recognized types of corpus planning: graphization, standardization, and modernization.
Graphization
Graphization refers to development, selection and modification of scriptsWriting system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
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
Charles A. Ferguson
Charles Albert Ferguson was a U.S. linguist who taught at Stanford University. He was one the founders of sociolinguistics and is best known for his work on diglossia. The TOEFL test was created under his leadership at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC...
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
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
, grammatical structures
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
and phonological structures
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
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. However, this view ignores the possibility that isolated relic areas of the 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 inventing a new one. The Ainu
Ainu people
The , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
chose to adopt the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
’s katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
syllabary
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
as the writing system for the Ainu language
Ainu language
Ainu is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....
. 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
Syllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
are consonants by a subscript version of a katakana symbol that begins with the desired consonant. An example on an invented script includes the development of the Armenian script
Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and contained originally 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages...
in 405 AD by St. Mesrop Mashtots
Saint Mesrob
Saint Mesrop Mashtots was an Armenian monk, theologian and linguist. He is best known for having invented the Armenian alphabet, which was a fundamental step in strengthening the Armenian Church, the government of the Armenian Kingdom, and ultimately the bond between the Armenian Kingdom and...
. Though the script was modeled after the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, the original script distinguished Armenian from the Greek and Syriac alphabet
Syriac alphabet
The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC . It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, and the traditional Mongolian alphabets.-...
s of the neighboring peoples.
Standardization
Standardization is the process by which one variety of a language takes precedence over other social and regional dialectDialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of a language. This variety comes to be understood as supra-dialectal and the ‘best’ form of the language. The choice of which language takes precedence has important societal 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
Codification (linguistics)
In linguistics, codification is the process of standardizing and developing a norm for a language.Codifying a language can vary from case to case and depends on the stage of standardization that already exists...
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
William Caxton
William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
introduced the printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1476. This was the accompanied by the adoption of the south-east Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
variety of English, spoken in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, as the print language. Because of the dialect’s use for administrative and literary purposes, this variety became entrenched as the prestigious variety of English. After the creation of grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
s and dictionaries in the 18th century, the rise of print capitalism
Capitalist mode of production
In Marx's critique of political economy, the capitalist mode of production is the production system of capitalist societies, which began in Europe in the 16th century, grew rapidly in Western Europe from the end of the 18th century, and later extended to most of the world...
, industrialization, urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
, and mass education
Mass education
Mass education refers to a massive educational system funded and run by the state to educate people on the state's interest....
led to the dissemination of this dialect as the standard 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 countryCountry
A country is a region legally identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with a previously...
gains independence
Independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
from a colonial power
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
or when there is a change in the language education policy
Education policy
Education policy refers to the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems.Education occurs in many forms for many purposes through many institutions. Examples include early childhood education, kindergarten through to 12th grade, two and four year colleges or...
. The most significant force in modernization is the expansion of the lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
, which allows the language to discuss topics in modern semantic domain
Semantic domain
Semantics is a term that refers to how meaning is assigned in language . A domain is essentially a specific place or territory . A semantic domain is a specific place that shares a set of meanings, or a language that holds its meaning, within the given context of the place...
s. Language planners generally focus on creating new lists and glossaries
Glossary
A glossary, also known as an idioticon, vocabulary, or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms...
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
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
have experienced rapid lexical expansion to meet the demands of modernization, other languages such as Hindi and Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
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
Linguistic purism
Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
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
Word formation
In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning...
or from heavy borrowing
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
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
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
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
Language shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
, 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.
The education sector
The education ministryMinistry (government department)
A ministry is a specialised organisation responsible for a sector of government public administration, sometimes led by a minister or a senior public servant, that can have responsibility for one or more departments, agencies, bureaus, commissions or other smaller executive, advisory, managerial or...
or education sector of government is typically in charge of making national language acquisition
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
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 curriculumCurriculumSee also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
. - 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 assessmentAssessmentEducational assessment is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community , the institution, or the educational system as a whole...
system to monitor progress. - To determine financial costCostIn production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in which case the amount of money expended to acquire it is counted as cost. In this...
s.
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 multilingualismMultilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
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
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
. 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 impact 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 students are exposed to in schools. Although these organizations do not hold official power, they influence government planning decisions, such as with educational materials, effecting acquisition.Ireland
Before IrelandIreland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
became an independent state, a movement began to restore Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, as the nation’s official language, predicated on a widespread sentiment for Irish nationalism and cultural identity. Irish had always competed with English and Scottish dialects in Ireland, but not until the Irish War for Independence from Britain did the movement gain momentum. The Gaelic League
Conradh na Gaeilge
Conradh na Gaeilge is a non-governmental organisation that promotes the Irish language in Ireland and abroad. The motto of the League is Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin amháin .-Origins:...
was soon created to promote the acquisition of Irish in schools, thus “de-Anglicizing” Ireland. Immediately after Ireland’s 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 them.
The program implementation however, was mostly left to the individual schools, which did not consistently adhere to the program’s rules. Additionally, educating a generation is a long process for which the League was not prepared. There was no general consensus as to how Irish should be reinstituted and system assessment plan to monitor progress and the people’s desires was lacking. As a result, the movement lost strength and English remains the nation’s second official language and most spoken first language, leading to the failure of Ireland’s attempt at language revitalization.
Status planning
PeruPeru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
’s history of language planning begins in the 16th century with Spanish colonization. When the Spanish first arrived in Peru, Quechua
Quechua languages
Quechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...
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
Juan Velasco Alvarado
Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado was a left-leaning Peruvian General who ruled Peru from 1968 to 1975 under the title of "President of the Revolutionary Government."- Early life :...
, 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
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
declares Spanish the only official language of the state; Quechua and Aymara are relegated to “official use zones,” equivalent to Stewart’s provincial function. Quechua has officially remained a provincial language since 1979. Today, Quechua also serves a limited international function throughout South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, and Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
; 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.
Corpus planning
The three main types of corpus planning are all evident in the development of Quechua languages in Peru. 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 that the Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, 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
Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua
The Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua AMLQ in Cusco is a private institution, founded in 1990, concerned with the 'purity' of the Quechua language....
and the Summer Institute of Linguistics
SIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
wanted to represent allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s of the vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s /i/ and /u/ with separate letters /e/ and /o/, 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
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
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
Intercultural bilingual education
Intercultural bilingual education or bilingual intercultural education is an intercultural and bilingual model of education designed for contexts with two cultures and languages in contact, in the typical case a dominant and an underprivileged culture...
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
Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift
In recent years, the spelling of place names in Peru and Bolivia has been revised among Quechua and Aymara speakers. A standardized alphabet for Quechua was adopted by the Peruvian government in 1975; a revision in 1985 moved to a three-vowel orthography....
. 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
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
and glottalized
Glottalization
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice...
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 only been applied to the written language, not the spoken language and no attempt was made to change the spoken language of native speakers. Rather the standardization process was motivated by the need to have 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 norm. Some saw Qusqu-Qullaw
Qusqu-Qullaw
Qusqu-Qullaw is a variety of the Quechua language family, spoken throughout southern Peru , Bolivia, and northern Argentina, including the prestige dialect of Cusco Quechua. With about four million speakers, it is one of the largest dialects, along with Ayacucho Quechua...
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
Ayacucho Quechua
Ayacucho is one dialect of the Quechua language, spoken in the Ayacucho region of Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacucho in Lima. With roughly a million speakers, it is one of the largest dialects of the language along with Cusco 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
Aymara language
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
. Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino proposed a standard literary norm, Southern Quechua
Southern Quechua
Southern Quechua , or only Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 5 million speakers...
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 that combine 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.
Acquisition planning
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 educationIntercultural bilingual education
Intercultural bilingual education or bilingual intercultural education is an intercultural and bilingual model of education designed for contexts with two cultures and languages in contact, in the typical case a dominant and an underprivileged culture...
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.
See also
- Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache
- Gender-neutral languageGender-neutral languageGender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality is linguistic prescriptivism that aims to eliminate reference to gender in terms that describe people...
- Language acquisitionLanguage acquisitionLanguage acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
- Language deathLanguage deathIn linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
- Language educationLanguage educationLanguage education is the teaching and learning of a foreign or second language. Language education is a branch of applied linguistics.- Need for language education :...
- Language ideologyLanguage ideologyIn sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, a language or linguistic ideology is a systematic construct about how particular ways of using languages carry or are invested with certain moral, religious, social, and political values, giving rise to implicit assumptions that people have about a...
- Language policyLanguage policyMany countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
- Language revitalization
- Language shiftLanguage shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
- Linguistic imperialismLinguistic imperialismLinguistic imperialism, or language imperialism, is a linguistics concept that "involves the transfer of a dominant language to other people...
- Linguistic protectionism, also called linguistic purism
- Linguistic rightsLinguistic rightsLinguistic rights are the human and civil rights concerning the individual and collective right to choose the language or languages for communication in a private or public atmosphere...
- Prestige (sociolinguistics)
Further reading
- Cooper, R. L. Language Planning and Social Change. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
- Cobarrubius, Juan & Joshua Fishman, eds. Progress in Language Planning: International Perspective. The Hague: Mouton, 1983.
- Rubin, Joan, Björn H. Jernudd, Jyotirindra Das Gupta, Joshua A. Fishman and Charles A. Ferguson, eds. Language Planning Processes. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1977.
- Bastardas-Boada, Albert. "Language planning and language ecology: Towards a theoretical integration", 2000.