Language Problems and Language Planning - Volume 24, Issue 1, 2000

Since LMLP, the precursor of LPLP, began publication over thirty years ago, the field of sociolinguistics and language policy has changed. Dedicated to the study of the terrain where languages intersect, the journal began in an environment in which the principal problem was the failure of information to flow across language barriers; today the issue is not porosity but homogeneity: English has pulled ahead of its competitors as globalization continues. LPLP has had mixed success over the years in promoting the study of international aspects of language contact and policy. What can it do today to increase that success? Should it be renamed, to take into account a shift in overall scholarly interest from language planning to language choice? Should it continue to encourage submission of manuscripts in languages other than English? Should the content of the journal change to match changing times? Should the journal be linked with other means of communication, e.g. a website for updates and reader comments? Above all, what can it do to stimulate more research and writing in its chosen fields of language policy, language choice, and multilingualism?

Two new models of language planning are proposed in this paper. The approach is similar to that used in business planning of viewing industries and organisations as sets of interrelated activities, as an aid to analysis and planning. The first model develops a three-level view of language planning and aims to develop a more strategic approach. The three levels in the model are ‘Status Planning’, ‘Language Planning’, and ‘Functional Language Planning’. The second model, the Integrated Language Planning Model, is related to the second level of language planning, and is designed to facilitate a comprehensive and integrated approach to reinforcing targeted languages. The model disaggregrates language reinforcement efforts into two types of activities — primary activities and support activities. The primary activities are those that are designed to directly influence changes in language behaviour. The support activities support the primary activities and each other by managing and facilitating the language reinforcement effort.

The current linguistic regime in the institutions of the European Union is highly complex. The EU considers that equal status for its official languages goes to the heart of what the Union is all about. Actually, the member states are not willing to grant another language recognition. Bourdieu’s publication Language and Symbolic Power (1992) helps explain this unwillingness: an official language can be considered as “linguistic capital” which affords its holders “symbolic power”. On the other hand, when new countries join the European Union it is not inconceivable that, for reasons of a utilitarian and financial-economic nature, there will be a shift in favour of the exclusively institutional use of English in the long term. Bourdieu’s analysis of the mechanisms which underlie the process of linguistic unification during the construction of the French nation state in the nineteenth century answers the question whether the mechanisms which led to the use of French as common language for France also apply to the language choice in the EU.

Van die skoliere in die Verenigde State wat ’n vreemdetaal-opsie uitoefen, neem slegs ongeveer 3.5% een van die “minder-algemeen-onderrigte tale”. In hierdie artikel wil ons nagaan wat dit is wat verskillende subversamelings van die “minder-algemeen-onderrigte tale” van mekaar onderskei, en wat sommige van die sosiale, politiese, ekonomiese, kulturele en ideologiese elemente is wat op hierdie tale inwerk, veral met betrekking tot hul aanwesigheid — of gebrek aan aanwesigheid — in die leergange van openbare skole. Ons doel is om die algemeen-aanvaarde, hoewel grootliks onverwoorde tale-hiërargie rondom die “minder-algemeen-onderrigte tale” te belig, en om oor die implikasies van hierdie hiërargie vir die taalonderrigpraktyk te besin. Om kort te gaan, hierdie artikel wil die saak uitmaak dat daar ’n behoefte bestaan aan ’n “sosiale grammatika” van die “minder-algemeen-onderrigte tale”. Alhoewel die argumente wat hiermee voorgelê word uit die konteks van die openbare onderwys in die Verenigde State voortspruit, het die hele aangeleentheid duidelike en belangrike implikasies ook vir ander samelewings.

Language attitudes are long-term phenomena that tend to become more specific over generations. The stigmatization of Khoekhoegowap in Namibia shows how negative images of minority languages are generated by external forces, but also how these forces may also be reinforced by corresponding internal forces. The case of Khoekhoegowap is examined on three levels: (1) the external level (how political doctrine may influence the observations of language planners), (2) the theoretical level (how language stigmatization and similar problems result from a wide variety of factors), and (3) the empirical level (how members of a speech community can intentionally create negative stereotypes of another language to destabilize the development of that language and reduce the status of its speakers in society, and how this, in turn, can become internalized and lead to language decline).

The inaugural issue of a new journal of Esperanto Studies provides insights into research traditions and current directions.