Language Planning

“Language planning is called for when a linguistic situation for any reason is felt to be unsatisfactory.” Haugen. Language planning is typically carried out for the attainment of monolingual ends such as consumer protection, scientific exchange, national integration, political control, economic development, the pacification or cooption of minority groups. These non-linguistic objectives are primarily sought by the state though that its efforts usually take the shape of solving language or communication problems. Language policies are of two major types: status policies and corpus policies. Those two types are interrelated to the point that they both have to go side by side in great consistency.

Language status policies are either prohibitory or permissive, or facilitative. If policies are prohibitory they oppose and penalize the public use of particular language for particular societal functions. Permissive language policies are presumably neutral. While they permit nongovernmental efforts on behalf, or in opposition to, particular languages, they neither obligate the government positively nor negatively with respect to such languages. Supportive policies are either multifunctional or functionally specific in their focus. Canada supports cultural programs publications, creative artists and curricular materials preparation for the immigrant languages (termed ̀heritage languages ́ to differentiate them from founding languages).

Language corpus policy involves the policies which government usually calls upon to devise writing systems, establish spelling norm, and promulgate standardized grammatical conventions. They are most of the time entrusted by academies of linguistic specialists. Corpus planning is exposed to two different sources of influence. The first is acceptability among the target group and the second is the ideological interpretation given to such efforts by the public authorities. Of course, all languages whose communities are engaged in interactive modernization with the Western world are exposed to linguistic influences as a result thereof. Corpus policies that limit the interaction with and exposure to the west are faced by a dilemma from which there is no easy escape.

Obviously, status planning and corpus planning policies are also pragmatically closely interdependent. When one policy emphasis (whether status or corpus) is too far in advance of the other, then this lack of synchronization is itself a major policy problem. Accordingly, all language policy efforts require both linguistic expertise and political expertise in order to move ahead productively in connection with their language goals. In any case, the goals and means employed in conjunction with linguistic policy reflect the historically deeply ingrained linguistic culture of its sponsoring power base. Language policies are expressions of a long-lasting linguistic culture.