Bookshelf 📖

Week 2

• assignment one
  • how to promote a certain form of language
• Languages with special roles: national and official languages (large, dominant and powerful languages)

Official Languages

• legal system, schooling, offical languages for certain kind of activities
  • area of life/activity
  • geographical area
    • whole country
    • subpart of country = state or providence

National Languages

• projection of nationla identity = symbolic
• royality to other members = strong national identity
  • national athema, national flag, celebration (independence day)
  • symbolic events
• language can be used in bring a populaiton together
• belonging of a single nation
• increase feelings of unity
• for countries which the ethinic is mixed, the more feeling of belonging = national identity = national languages

OL and NLs

• in different countries, there are different solutions
• different combinations
• best suited for best practical role
• occur in countries with a high degree of ethnic homogeneity
• a single language can bring the both role
• pratical + symbolic
• countries with more mixed population
  • think different factors of different populaiton
• NLs are symbols of a nation’s special identity, and are promoted to unify populations with a common, national spirit. = belonging
• OLs are established for pragmatic reasons to help people in their daily activities. OLs are not symbolic. = pratical

On the difference between NLs and OLs

• depends on different population
• different choices
• what you have available as local languages

Language Planning/LP 2 The majority type of language planning

• status planning
  • selection of a particiualr language of a particular role, planning the status of language of special roles, selecting the right language to these roles
• corpus planning = develop the language you identify in the step one
  • develop languages with special resources you need to standarize it

Corpus Planning activities a. develop vocabulary for use in all areas of life create new words for science, medicine, law etc b. create dictionaries + determine which words are to be used as the standard forms of the language c. decide which pronunciations are standard d. describe the grammatical rules of the language e. decide how people should write the language, including choice of script ( graphization ) which writing system to use: Roman alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Arabic script, Chinese characters etc. = writing system Activities a-e result in the standardization of a language.

• polistic and linguistics factor

Step (3): Promotion of new NLs/OLs

• promoting your newly identified nl and ol
• give people the oppunities to learn and be proficent in this newly identified languages
• increase peope’s profiency
• employees are giving bonuses, qualify foe promotion, you need to pass a language test

Not be recommended (but sometimes done) • Some governments which aggressively promote new NLs/OLs also use negative deterrents to stop people speaking other languages, e.g.: •negative propaganda ––‘Speaking your home language is backward and unpatriotic use the NL/OL!’ • fines e.g. imposed on government employees in France in the 20thC for using borrowed English words in place of French words • punishments in school , for children using their home languages not the new NL/OL

Step (4) Winning acceptance (of the new NL/OL)

• Encourage people to use the new NL/ OL. • Emphasize the practical value of a new NL/ OL. • Emphasize that the NL/OL is a prestigious language to be proud of speaking it gives you higher personal status/respect. = be proud of it becuase it’s the national language

• you can go through all of the steps and still fail at step 4, in the end people they just don’t want to use the language
• tagalog is in fillian, they took their language and give it a different language and say it’s a seperate language

• people in the south, don’t want to use it for many years • Goal: make people become naturally enthusiastic to use their NL/ OL.

• Modern Japanese: very sucessful naitonla language
• we need a national language, they saw it from other countiries, and decide to have a national language of japan, then what forms of japanese?
• the variety spoken in the upper class of tokyo as the model
• spread through the mass education/media and widespread acceptance was won for the new form of japanese
• they talked about how important this jpanese is for japan, it distrinis people from the neighboring countries
• sucessful unilingual of the same language = only one language

More difficult situations

• newly idependent country
• many ethnical groups come to incomprate into different groups
• how are you going to apply national languages into nationla identity

Different NL/OL approaches

• multi-ethnic countries tried with different approaches
• national identity stregth most if you identify the single language as national language
• try to build a new national identity
• But sometimes identifying a single language as NL is difficult → different solutions are tried.

Multiple NLs

• more than 1 national language
• Democratic Republic of Congo : 4 NLs = not to favor one particular region or tribual groups
  • 4 regional identities = lose the unifying force as a single national language
• Advantage: avoids major inter ethnic/regional discontent and conflict due favoring a single NL
• Disadvantage: weakens the potential binding/unifying force of having a single NL
• Cameroon : all 250 indigenous languages declared NLs… purely symbolic, no practical effects
  • they give up that all the languages are the national languages

When a NL is not suited to serve OL functions

• national language symbolize the country but does not have all the words we need
  1. rapidly develop the NL with new words and standardize the NL as quickly as possible
  2. add another language as OL, wither permanently or temporarily while the NL is being developed
     • english is benning retained = becuase it’s useful

Multiple OLs

• multiple official languages
  • advantages: all segments of a population gave equal linguistic advantages
  • Disadvantage: very expensive as a policy all official materials have to be produced in multiple languages.
    • they may have money available to prepare these materials

Another kind of policy: no NL, only an OL

• afarid it’s going to look like favoritism
• you just have OL language for daily purpose
• Advantages: (a) ethnically neutral (b) the OL is already standardized, ‘ready to go’ as an OL.
• Disadvantages: (a) no stimulation of national unity via a NL, (b) the OL may have negative colonial associations, (c) learning a non indigenous language may be hard. (e) unevenly access to eduction, children in wealthy family have access to school which teaches english well (states with mixed populaitons, Found in some very mixed states, e.g. Togo (OL: French),)

NLs vs. OLs • NLs: symbolic, representative, binding • OLs: utilitarian, non symbolic • In some countries, these terms are used ‘incorrectly’. • Polish is called an OL, but it also fulfills all typical NL functions. • Japanese is called a NP, but it also performs all OL functions. • When a single language effectively serves as both a NL and OL, we can call it a national official language

Individual case studies • What can we learn from past attempts at NL/OL planning? • First, two cases highlighting problems that can arise when the selection of a NL/OL causes a bias and disaffection: Pakistan and Sri Lanka • Second, an example of good selection of a single indigenous OL in a multi ethnic state: Indonesia • Third, an example of a successful multi OL policy linguistic pluralism Singapore