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Language Policy

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Title: Language Policy


1
Language Policy
  • LG474 notes
  • Language Rights
  • Peter L Patrick
  • Univ of Essex

2
What is Policy?
  • A linear, rational, systematic process? Created
    by individuals on the basis of research and
    vision?
  • A product of socio-cultural and political
    contexts? Expressing the peoples will and
    prejudices?
  • A product of institutional histories
    contingencies?
  • Development predictable via costs/benefits/budgets
    , or chaotic/contradictory due to rhetoric
    clashing of local/national agendas?
  • How much effect do individuals targeted by policy
    have on making or altering it?

3
What is language policy?
  • Planned interventions pronounced and implemented
    by states, supported/enforced by law
  • Nearly always in multi-lingual/-cultural
    ecologies
  • theories/practices for managing linguistic
    ecosystems (Fettes 97)
  • Policies compare/evaluate language
    status/function and differentially impact the
    varieties they recognize
  • As well as those that were left out for whatever
    reasons
  • Necessarily reflect power relations among groups
  • Various political economic interests internal
    external
  • Latter include (ex-)colonial powers,
    international business concerns, neighbour
    states, politically aligned groups, etc.

4
Language Policy /Or Planning?
  • Some argue policy should be the output of
    planning,
  • Or necessarily includes it, eg Schiffman, Ricento
  • But a great deal of language policy-making...
    is haphazard or uncoordinated... far removed
    from the language planning ideal (Fettes 1997
    14)
  • Others argue policy subsumes planning, eg Spolsky
  • All recognize they are linked and intertwined, so
  • LPP is a common and useful shorthand for this
  • Theories/practices for managing linguistic
    ecosystems

5
Accounting framework for LPP
  • More generally, as Cooper (198998) asks,
  • What actors attempt to influence
  • which behaviors
  • of which people
  • for what ends
  • under which conditions
  • by what means
  • through what decision making process
  • with what effect?

6
LPP Types and Approaches
  • Hornberger (1994) typology (in Ricento ed.)
  • Contrasts types of LPP
  • Status allocating functions w/in a speech
    community
  • Acquisition focus on users, language
    learning/teaching
  • Corpus changes for or structure of language
  • with approaches to LPP
  • Policy macro focus on nation/society, Standard
    Lgs
  • Cultivation micro focus on literacy, ways of
    speaking
  • Cross-cut focus society (status/acq) vs language
    (corpus), with function (cultivation) vs form
    (policy)

7
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8
TheoryDataValueCost/Benefit
  • Language theory/analysis of acquisition, use,
    shift, revitalization, loss has little value
    per se as a tool to argue for specific language
    policies (Ricento 200611)
  • Instead, academics need to demonstrate
    empirically the costs/benefits to society of
    particular policy choices,
  • Defining the value of their recommendations
    explicitly,
  • Backed up by data from a range of disciplines and
    perspectives, which support the value of their
    choice.
  • While not yet LgPol, this is a necessary
    component in attempts to influence public policy
    choices outcomes

9
Examples of official LPs
  • Assam Language Act 1960 made Assamese compulsory
    in govt, led to ethnic tensions/violence
    w/Bengali migrants
  • Tanzania changed language of secondary education
    from English to Kiswahili (2001) however,
  • Ghana changed from using vernacular languages in
    first 3 years of primary school to English (2002)
  • Council of Europe (2001) urged govt. of Macedonia
    to allow use of Albanian in schools, courts
    administration
  • Egyptian govt requires fire extinguishers in
    Cairo taxicabs to have instructions written in
    Classical Arabic
  • In fact most taxi drivers cannot read them

10
Examples of un-official LPs
  • Consider non-official policies, too states may
    be dysfunctional, contested, newly-formed,
    multinational
  • Kansas City school suspends child for using
    Spanish in class no policy? school board
    rescind suspension (2005)
  • Arab funding of Somalian schools leads to Arabic
    replacing Somali as language of education (2004)
  • Linguistic landscape studies (street signs, site
    and place names) show different bilingual
    patterns in Israel
  • Hebrew/English in Jewish areas, Arabic/Hebrew in
    Arab ones, Arabic/English in East Jerusalem.
  • (Official languages are Hebrew and Arabic.)

11
Elements of language policy 1
  • Language practices of community or polity
    patterns of selection from linguistic resources
    /repertoire, for particular domains
  • Domains constellations of institutional factors
    which affect language selection (Fishman 1965,
    1972) typically,
  • settings, occasions and role relationships
  • Or, locations, topics and participants

12
Elements of language policy 2
  • Language ideologies and attitudes about language
    and use
  • Ideology a system of symbolic forms which work
    to create and support systems of social power
  • Language ideologies systematically associate
    language choices and speakers with e.g. economic,
    political, and moral dimensions
  • Language planning then is an attempt to
  • change practices, which must engage with
  • language ideologies.

13
Contrasting definitions of LP
  • Spolsky (2004) Language policy is comprised of
    all three components (practices ideology
    planning)
  • Shohamy (2006) Language policy falls between
    ideology and practice.
  • Includes both overt covert mechanisms which
    create maintain both official policies de
    facto ones (practices)
  • "Real" policy may be covert need decoding of
    such tools
  • Examples of such mechanisms
  • Overt school language policy, citizenship or
    voting test
  • Covert street sign, school language test,
    monolingual health info

14
Contrasting definitions of LP
  • Schiffman (1996) Language is main vehicle for
    the construction, replication, transmission of
    culture itself
  • Language policy is primarily a social construct,
    rests primarily on other conceptual elements
  • Belief systems, attitudes, myths
  • Whole complex can be treated as linguistic
    culture
  • "Language policy is not only the specific, overt,
    explicit, de jure embodiment of rules in laws or
    constitutions,
  • but a broader entity, rooted in covert, implicit,
    grass-roots, unwritten, de facto practices that
    go deep into the culture."

15
Covert practices vs overt policy
  • Latter 2 views stress that covert practices shape
    the overt policies, given their effect on
    everyday practice
  • They promote ideologies favored by state/powerful
    groups,
  • Marginalize or exclude minorities, or powerless
    majorities
  • But they could be used to raise language
    awareness, change attitudes, protect language
    rights reform policy.
  • Ie, LP could be a way to turn language ideology
    into practice.
  • Overt LPs can afford to pay lip service to
    inclusive language, diversity and democratic
    processes,
  • as long as covert mechanisms are functioning to
    execute policies with contrary aims.

16
Economics of Language (Policy)
  • First wave of research effects of language on
    income
  • Early research heavily embedded in national
    contexts
  • Quebecois analyses of French/English differential
    in Canada
  • US focus on earnings gap between Hispanics
    Anglophones
  • Emphasis on native language as an ethnic
    attribute affecting earnings connect w/language
    discrimination
  • 2nd wave language (usually 2ndL) as human
    capital
  • Eg whats rate of return for US Hispanics on
    acquiring English?
  • Later language as criterion for distributing
    resources costs of minority-language
    maintenance/promotion, etc

17
Economic nature of Language
  • Language differs from most other economic goods
  • W.r.t. its function as a communication tool, The
    more its used, the more value it acquires for
    its users.
  • Goes beyond non-rival consumption, eg of public
    lighting, which are not zero-sum and consumption
    cant be limited to those who have paid for it,
    to
  • Super-public goods or hyper-collective goods
  • Of course, the assumption is too narrow Language
    is far more than just a communication tool...

18
Types of Market failure in LPP
  • Why should state intervene in LPP? Why not just
    leave language matters to the free market, which
    provides adequate goods/services at minimum cost?
  • Cases of market failure justify state
    intervention
  • Super-public goods or hyper-collective goods
  • Lack of info for actors to make good decisions
  • Transaction costs prevent deals of mutual benefit
  • Absence of markets (eg language futures)
  • Market imperfections (eg monopolies)
  • Externalities As behavior affects Bs welfare
    w/o economic compensation (ex pollution from SUV
    vs homeowners)
  • All kinds of MF occur but even 1 is enough (Grin
    2006)

19
Past Focuses of LPP Activity 1950s-1960s
  • Solving language problems of developing nations
  • New nations of Africa, Asia, S America/Caribbean
    needed grammars, dictionaries, orthographies for
    indigenous languages ie, mostly Corpus Planning
  • Language development
  • Graphization, standardization, modernization
  • Nation-building seen as primary mission
    (StatusP)
  • Choose national language variety for various
    functions
  • Unifying separatist participatory historicity
    authenticity
  • A positivist approach neutral, technical,
    objective
  • Later negative effects, limits of development
    models
  • Modernization emphasized 1-nation,
    1-(std)-language

20
But LP in whose interests?
  • Q of how language is used to reproduce social and
    economic inequality, role of experts, loomed
    larger
  • Use of post-colonial Euro language in
    technical/formal domains, Indigenous/Vernacular
    for others, led to
  • Imposed stable diglossia, status loss for I/V,
    and privileging of educated elites, like colonial
    model
  • How are language policies used as instruments of
    Western extension of control over other peoples?
  • Do they favor majority/elite/client interests
    over those of minorities/masses/independence-seeke
    rs?

21
Postmodern views of language I
  • Shohamy further argues that the very conception
    of language/s by most linguists as
    socially-bounded, grammatically-closed systems,
    is manipulated for political/ideological agendas
    that cast languages as
  • Fixed, stagnated, pure, unchanging, hegemonic,
    standard, oppressive
  • Through school teaching, mass media and other
    ideological agents.
  • This postmodern critique problematizes idea of
    language-as-fixed-code (Hopper, Shohamy,
    Pennycook)
  • New emphasis on ideology, agency, ecology in LPP

22
Postmodern views of language II
  • Instead of distinct languages, only shared
    discourses
  • Systematicity is an illusion, born of overlapping
    community practices communicative experiences
  • In this view, Languages can't have fixed
    functions, statuses or values attached to them
    open to change
  • Thus linguicide or linguistic imperialism (LHR)
    are seen as naïve - English carries no cultural
    baggage
  • Also because of changing geopolitical/global
    realities
  • Are states really best seen as the primary,
    powerful actors, controlling populations in their
    jurisdiction?
  • Focus shift from Languagesgt Discourses, Ideologies

23
Attack on core linguistic concepts
  • In this view, linguists had not described reality
    but rather created new languages (think status
    not corpus)
  • Failed to question/reproduced, positivist/modernis
    t idea language as discrete/finite/bounded,
    structure-driven
  • Ignored speakers experience of code choice
    process as flexible, dynamic, agentive,
    speaker-driven
  • Concepts such as diglossia seen as an
    ideological naturalization of sociolinguistic
    arrangements
  • Native speaker, mother tongue, competence
    questioned or abandoned as inadequate invested
    by Critical LPP
  • (Can language analysis/description be done from
    here?)

24
Critical views of language shift
  • Are Western ideas of monolingualism and cultural
    homogeneity with diglossia as 2nd-best
    fallback
  • And a rational-choice model of
    decision-making, with capitalism and market
    values underlying it,
  • Assumed as prerequisites for modernization,
    social/ economic progress, democracy and national
    unity?
  • Histories of standardization reveal it as product
    of modern state-formation processes and
    ideologies
  • Why is this pathway presumed good for developing,
    multilingual countries w/indigenous diverse
    peoples?

25
Linguistic Imperialism LHR
  • Societal multilingualism should be set as the
    norm,
  • Accepted as prerequisite for functioning
    democracy.
  • Groups can better participate on level ground
    with institutional recognition given their
    language/culture.
  • Is Lx assimilation of minorities a legitimate LPP
    goal?
  • LHR is one way to champion such goals both at
    level of states and international protections
    instruments.
  • LHR also aimed against linguistic imperialism
    the continued dominance/exploitation by large
    powers, using their languages as weapons and
    contributing heavily to language shift and loss
    (so its argued).

26
Linguistic hegemony at home
  • Monolingualism but is common among nations
  • Hegemony of one national or official language,
    named in a constitution or legislation, but with
  • Tolerance for 1 or more regional/minority
    languages achieved by (variously enforceable)
    legal means
  • Eg, US 14th Amendment and Civil Rights Act Title
    VI
  • One LPP goal is to codify such tolerance,
    determine who it should extend to, make it
    accessible to them
  • NB such Lx tolerance only makes sense where
    ethnic/nationalist monolingualism is assumed to
    rule
  • Paradigm set by Act of Union, French Revolution,
    post-1812 treaties, then German Italian
    nationalism...

27
Print Capitalism Nations
  • Print capitalism
  • dissemination of the written word in the
    standardized form of a national language, as
    commercial enterprise
  • was crucial to the formation of modernity
    building of nation-states.
  • Print capitalism also was agent for the
    development and marketing of language ideologies,
  • which place citizens within national contexts by
    linguistic means. - Greeks speak Greek, wherever
    they are
  • Educational systems were organised, in part, to
    guarantee the success of this enterprise, and of
    the new national identity it supports and is
    emblematic of

28
Selling National Language Ideology
  • A principal type of successful language ideology
  • 1) Creates hierarchies of language,
  • 2) Valuing most highly the written standard form
    of a national language, abstracted from elite
    speech,
  • 3) Makes it subject to (upper middle) class norms
    through education, and
  • 4) Sells it to the whole society as the Only True
    Form of Language.
  • 5) Other forms are then erased made
    Not-Language.

29
Functions of a Monoglot Ideology
  • Monoglot ideology invests in monolingualism as
    a fact, and denies evidence of linguistic
    diversity.
  • How? by coupling belief in pure standard
    language,
  • With membership of ethnolinguistically-defined
    group
  • Right to reside in a region occupied by them.
  • Were English. We speak English here!
  • Herder Volk language territory
    nation-state
  • This ideology produces identities (of citizens),
    and
  • Works effectively to prohibit public linguistic
    diversity.

30
Case Study Tanzania, /
  • Multilingual nation, c36 million population today
  • De facto national languages are (Ki)Swahili,
    English
  • 200,000 Arabic speakers in Zanzibar 430k Maasai
  • Bantu speakers (3.2m Sukuma, 1.3m Gogo, 1.2m
    Haya, 1.2m Nyamwezi, 1m Ha, 0.75m Hehe, 0.7m
    Luguru, 670k Bena, 500k Asu, over 100 other
    languages)
  • German colony, then British, independence in 1961
  • Shares ethnolinguistic groups with Kenya, Uganda,
    Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Zambia, Mozambique
  • Nyerere govt committed to pan-African socialism,
    ujamaa

31
Case Study Tanzania, II
  • English used after 1961 for while in govt,
    parliament, but no longer still the language of
    high courts
  • 1984 official linguistic policy Swahili L of
    political and social sphere, primary and adult
    education
  • English used in 2ary/university, but Sw now mixed
    in
  • Some Swahili L1 traditionally, most speak local
    L1 (mostly Bantu) learn Sw at 1ary, Eng at 2ary
    school
  • Double-overlapping diglossia away at 2ary,
    students use Swahili for L functions, English for
    H
  • Swahili has ousted English in many public
    functions

32
Case Study Tanzania, III
  • Sw defined as Lg of ujamaa socialist values
    ideal mwananchi citizen socialist,
    Swahili-monolingual
  • National identity thus not ethnic but
    political/linguistic
  • Success would be a monolingual-Sw nation,
    homo-geneous in language and socialist values
    hence,
  • Other languages/ideologies must disappear not
    only
  • English (capitalist/imperialist/oppressor
    language),
  • but indigenous ones (pre-colonial backward
    cultures)
  • and urban non-standard Swahili code-switching

33
Case Study Tanzania, IV
  • Modern Herderian 1 language/culture/territory/sta
    te
  • LP to achieve this by purification
    standardization, but use colonial methods
    Western expertise, formal education aiming at
    normative literacy (incl. English)
  • English as reference point Swahili to be
    comparable in elaboration, range of functions,
    correctness
  • Spread of Std Swahili achieved its the public
    code, used for one idealized national identity
    (mwananchi)
  • But not the monoglot ideal other varieties
    maintained, involved in other identities no
    totalizing hegemony- you can plan specific
    domains, but as niched activity

34
Discussion questions
  • Who should be involved in creating LPP?
  • Is LP really a form of public policy like policy
    for transportation, health, environment? Why?
  • What is market failure? how is it relevant to
    LPP?
  • Can you find exs. of how covert policy
    (practice) differs from overt LPP in your own
    experience?
  • How true is it that British people are
    aggressively monolingual? Are there any
    justifications for this? What problems does it
    create or reinforce?
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