3.3. Language security, language conflict and language planning

Week 3 Part 3 will help you to:

• understand the essence of language security, status and function.

To reach these goals you are expected to:

• watch the introductory video lecture that explains the aspects and types of language security;
• read more precisely about how different types of language policies affect language status and functions;
• to check your knowledge and understanding with a quiz.

 Video

Now, watch a short video lecture about the language security in the society.

Reading

Managing linguistic diversity: language policy and language planning

As you learned from Part 1 and 2 of this week, language and power are closely connected within a state. Positioning a language as a state language, the rulers create a tool of political power similarly to taxation or military conscription. When assigning rights and power to a language that is a mother tongue for one part of population, which is not necessarily but often a majority, another, often a minority or minoritized part of population either disenfranchised or put in to a less favourable position.

For example, a government of a new state may have two language political dilemmas: to legitimize past struggles for independence with reference to that language and to persuade language minorities that the same national language serves to promote civic unity (Busch 2010).

However, neither languages nor technological advances are the cause of these dilemmas. Instead, language policies are designed to influence speakers of certain languages in order to reap economic and/or political benefits. In other words, there is neither contact nor conflict between languages, but between speakers and communities. Thus, language policy and planning issues are, as a rule, outside the domain of linguistics and they are not linguistic in their nature. However, the scope of sociolinguistics reaches out and involves political matters too, e.g. what impact has corpus planning on language use, how forced migrants are interrogated, etc. Language use is socially conditioned; it may involve political aspects. Language policy “may be the choice of a specific sound, or expression, or of a specific variety of language. It may be the choice regularly made by an individual, or a socially defined group of individuals, or a body with authority over a defined group of individuals” (Spolsky 2004: 217). In this context, the latter or power relations between various socio-cultural groups are the most significant.

Language policy may involve different actors, domestic and international sub- and supra-state. For example, the international legal linguistic rights provide a minimum of rights which may or may not be used to establish a language regime or a language policy model. Language policy models include:

• Minority protection model where an ethnolinguistic group has achieved, usually through mobilization, the legal protection of its language. In this case language features ethnic identity and ethnolinguistic issues are prominent in the society, securitizing this as the life- or-death question for the minority community.
• Language ecology model for indigenous peoples and their languages which social existence is limited. There is a community of a number of speakers, for whom the language is the essential tool of communication and information in all areas of human experience. Therefore, its challenge lies in the elaboration of the language, i.e. to extend it to new functional domains, securing simultaneously its social environment and self-sustainability.
• In nation-building model a state policy actors attempt to solve language problems through rational planning, similarly to to economic planning, by producing language strategies and language programmes for domains such as terminology projects. These models focus on building and strengthening a state as a sovereign unit where a distinct language is used in most of the domains.
• The model of language spread involves linguistic imperialism and is closely tied with the colonial expansion, but also with globalisation and regionalisation. Salikoko Mufwene (2010: 50) concludes: “Much of the impetus that today’s globalization has given to the spread of English is also largely attributable to the earlier role that colonization played in expanding the language geographically and demographically”. The major agent is usually a state, either global or regional superpower (e.g. British Empire) that is keen to expand or apply its political control beyond its current borders. To exploit raw materials or take advantage of its geographic position, colonial actors recruited locals and taught them colonial languages but never all colonized or occupied nations switched to a colonial language in corpore.
• In laissez-faire language policy model language planning issues are treated as secondary. The role of language is determined by other policies (foreign relations, religion, economy, etc.). However, other policies may have language political effect, e.g. the free movement of labour in the EU.

Language planning is “the deliberate, future-oriented  systematic change of language code, use and/or speaking, most visibly undertaken by government, in some community of speakers” (Baldauf 2006: 148) and involves proficient number of actions and social sites (school, media, research) in the whole language environment. At the macro level, language planning activities may be implemented by state governments and international organizations such as the EU, the UN. However, on the micro or everyday level private persons and organisation are involved in language planning as well. Their aims, methods, and indicators may vary. There are four dimensions of language planning which focus on society, language, learning, respectively:

Status planning (Kloss 1969) involves policies by which a language is attributed a recognized status and functions nationally, regionally and institutionally. Planning activities are implemented in the domains of legislation, management and marketing. The latter is sometimes differentiated as a dimension on its own or prestige planning (Haarmann 1990; Baldauf 2006).

Corpus planning (Haugen 1983; Maurais 1993) is aimed at the structure and lexicon of a language by establishing the literary norm or standard. It The referential and non-referential potential of the language and its potential for translation are at its core. Codification planning, terminological planning, name planning and translation (plus interpretation, adaptation, etc.) planning are its sub-domains.

Acquisition planning (Cooper 1989) or language planning-in-education (Baldauf &Kaplan 2003) involves teaching and acquiring languages and their literary norm as a socially valued and recognised skill. It also deals with literacy, various educational programs in multilingual environment (incl. second language and native language planning, linguistic accommodation of immigrant pupils) or with multilingualism aims (foreign language planning), teacher training and preparation of language learning materials.

Technological planning provides speakers and learners with technological support, both oral and written. It also involves speech technology and text processing and language resources (incl. corpora) and software.

The self-sufficiency and development of a language is ensured with competitive functioning in all language planning dimensions. The success of language planning is based on conformity and intersectionality: language use must be provided through language as a tool of communication (language corpora and technology), regulated by law, allocated to high-status functions and sustained through intergenerational transmission (socialisation into language and teaching it).

Sources:

Baldauf , R. B., Jr. (2006) Recalulating the Case for MicroLanguage Planning in a  Language Ecology Context. Current Issues in Language Planning 7(2,3), 147-170.

Busch, B. (2010) New national languages in Eastern Europe. In N. Coupland (Ed.), Handbook of language and globalization (pp. 182-200). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2010). Globalization, Global English, and World English(es): Myths and Facts. In N. Coupland (Ed.), Handbook of language and globalization (pp. 31-55). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Spolsky, B. (2004) Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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  Activity

Check your understanding with the quiz.

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