Language planning

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Language planning

Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of language. Typically it will involve the development of goals, objectives and strategies to change the way language is used. At a governmental level, language planning takes the form of language policy

Language policy

Many 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 protect and promote regional and ethnic langu...
. Many nations have language regulatory bodies

List of language regulators

This is a list of bodies that regulate standard languages....
which are specifically charged with formulating and implementing language planning policies.

term language planning has often been identified with a third world context, being seen as a tool for the establishment of standardised national languages as a part of modernisation and nation building.

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Language policy

List of language regulators

This is a list of bodies that regulate standard languages....
which are specifically charged with formulating and implementing language planning policies.

Characteristics

The term language planning has often been identified with a third world context, being seen as a tool for the establishment of standardised national languages as a part of modernisation and nation building. In fact, language planning is neither a modern phenomenon nor is it confined to the third world.

Language planning is not necessarily conducted at the national level. It can also be carried out by ethnic, religious or occupational groups. In the case of language communities that are divided by borders, language planning may also involve more than one country (on the governmental or non-governmental

Non-governmental organization

Non-governmental organization is a term that has become widely accepted for referring to a legally constituted, non-business organization created by natural or legal persons with no participation or representation of any government....
level) or international or regional bodies and conferences.

One international organization (based in the U.S.) that is involved in considerable amount of language planning around the world, especially for people with unwritten languages, is SIL International

SIL International

SIL International is a United States, worldwide Evangelicalism non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document lesser-known languages, in order to expand linguistics knowledge, promote literacy and aid minority language development....
.

Language planning can also go from the bottom up, such as the movement for non-sexist language in the U.S., which originated with grass-roots feminist groups, or the N'Ko

N'Ko

N'Ko is both a writing system devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script....
movement in West Africa

West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries distributed over an area of approximately 5 million square km:...
.

Category

Language planning can be divided into three sub-dimensions:

Corpus planning

Corpus planning refers to prescriptive

Linguistic prescription

In linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language is to be used. These rules can cover such topics as standards for spelling and grammar or syntax, or rules for what is deemed Etiquette or Political correctness correct....
intervention in the forms of a language. This may be achieved by creating new words or expressions, modifying old ones, or selecting among alternative forms. Corpus planning aims to develop the resources of a language so that it becomes an appropriate medium of communication for modern topics and forms of discourse, equipped with the terminology

Terminology

Terminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words that are used in specific contexts. Not to be confused with "terms" in colloquial usages, the shortened form of technical terms which are defined within a Academic discipline or speciality field....
needed for use in administration, education, etc. Corpus planning is often related to the standardisation

Standard language

A standard language is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. As it is usually the form promoted in schools and the media, it is usually considered by speakers of the language to be more "correct" in some sense than other dialects....
of a language, involving the preparation of a normative

Norm (sociology)

A Social norm is the sociology term for the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. They have been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors....
orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Orthography is derived from Greek language ????? orth?s and ???fe?? gr?phein ....
, grammar

Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
, and dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a book of Alphabetical order listed words in a specific language, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of alphabetically listed words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon....
for the guidance of writers and speakers in a speech community. Efforts at linguistic purism and the exclusion of foreign words (see linguistic protectionism) also belong to corpus planning, as do spelling reform

Spelling reform

Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....
and the introduction of new writing systems (e.g. that of the Turkish language

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
). For a previously unwritten language, the first step in corpus planning is the development of a writing system

Writing system

A writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language....
.

Status planning

Status planning refers to deliberate efforts to allocate the functions of languages and literacies within a speech community. It involves status choices, making a particular language or variety 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 territory. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration....
', 'national language

National language

A national language is a language which has some connection - de facto or de jure - with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy....
', etc. Often it will involve elevating a language

Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
or dialect

Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is 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, such as social class....
into a prestige variety

Prestige dialect

A prestige dialect is the dialect spoken by the most prestige people in a speech community which is large enough to sustain more than one dialect....
, which may be at the expense of competing dialects. Status planning is often part and parcel of creating a new writing system. Status planning tends to be the most controversial aspect of language planning (see article on Language policy

Language policy

Acquisition planning

Acquisition planning concerns the teaching and learning of languages

Language acquisition

Language acquisition is the study of the processes through which learners acquire language. By itself, language acquisition refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whereas second language acquisition deals with acquisition of additional languages in both children and adults....
, whether national languages or second

Second language

A second language is any language learned after the First language . Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas....
and foreign language

Foreign language

A foreign language is a language not spoken by the people of a certain place: for example, not only English language but also Late Old Japanese is a foreign language in Japan....
s. It involves efforts to influence the number of users and the distribution of languages and literacies, achieved by creating opportunities or incentives to learn them. Such efforts may be based on policies of assimilation

Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation is when an individual or individuals adopts some or all aspects of a dominant culture . Cultural assimilation is a process of socialization....
or pluralism

Cultural pluralism

Cultural pluralism is a term used when small groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities. One of the most notable cultural pluralisms is the caste system, which is related to Hinduism and also the example of Lebanon where 18 different religious communities co-exist on a land of 10,452 km?....
. Acquisition planning is directly related to language spread. While acquisition planning is normally the province of national, regional, or local governments, bodies such as the British Council

British Council

The British Council is a Quango based in the United Kingdom which specialises in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is a non-departmental public body, a public corporation incorporated by royal charter, and is registered as a charity in England....
, Alliance française

Alliance française

The Alliance Fran?aise is an organisation whose mission is to promote French language and French culture outside France. Its primary concern is teaching French as a second language....
, Instituto Cervantes

Instituto Cervantes

The Cervantes Institute is a worldwide non-profit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. It is named after Miguel de Cervantes , the author of Don Quixote and perhaps the most important figure in the history of Spanish literature....
, Goethe-Institut

Goethe-Institut

The Goethe-Institut is a non-profit Germany culture institution operational worldwide, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and relations....
, Società Dante Alighieri, Instituto Camões

Instituto Camões

The Instituto Cam?es is an institution created for the promotion of the Portuguese language and culture world-wide. The Instituto Cam?es has administrative and patrimonial autonomy, that, under the supervision of the Portugal Minister of the Foreign Affairs, assures the co-ordination and execution of the external cultural policies of Portuga...
, and latterly the Confucius Institute

Confucius Institute

Confucius Institute is a non-profit public institute which aims at promoting Chinese language and Culture of China and supporting local Chinese teaching internationally through affiliated Confucius Institutes....
are also very active internationally promoting education in their respective languages.

International language planning

There have been numerous efforts to create and promote language planning at the international level.

The science of international language planning is called Interlinguistics

Interlinguistics

Interlinguistics is the study of various aspects of international communication. This may include, for example, changes in languages related to contacts between two or more languages....
. The term usually refers to research on the possibilities of optimizing international communication, usually involving international auxiliary languages

International auxiliary language

An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language....
or IALs. This phrase is used to refer to planned or constructed language

Constructed language

A planned or constructed language?known Colloquialism or informally as a conlang?is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary have been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved natural languagely....
s proposed specifically to ease worldwide international communication, such as Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed language international auxiliary language in the world. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L....
, Ido

Ido

Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages....
, and Interlingua

Interlingua

Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association . It is the second or third most widely used IAL and the most widely used International auxiliary language#Classification IAL: in other words, its vocabulary, grammar and other characteristics are largely...
.

Language planning

Characteristics

Category

Corpus planning

Status planning

Acquisition planning

International language planning

Further reading

See also