Language Problems and Language Planning - Volume 44, Issue 1, 2020

Abstract

Language planning and policy has been a recurring topic among Nigerian educators. Although the Nigerian National Policy on Education stipulates multilingual education, such provision has remained an object of criticism, rejection, and is therefore not implemented. While some of the issues often raised as hindering its implementation are well-founded, there is also a lack of political will to champion the course of language planning and policy implementation. Meanwhile the government’s intention has been to make the policy receive public acceptance; yet, it has failed to address some of the recurring problems that hinder the achievement of such goal, to the detriment of both the educational and public sectors. This article looks at the dynamics of language planning and policy in Nigeria and why the government must match her rhetoric with action by paying attention to the major issues that hinder the realisation of multilingual education in the country to enhance development.

Abstract

This paper reports on a study that looked at Portuguese public universities setting out to identify and discuss institutional stakeholders’ social representations concerning the use of languages in scientific research and the development of institutional language policies within this area of higher education activity. In order to do so, institutional stakeholders responsible for research activities at six Portuguese public universities completed a questionnaire and participated in in-depth interviews. The findings indicate there are common tendencies regarding the identified social representations that point, mainly, to a tension between, on one hand, the existence of reported practices that centre on “English-mainly” research language policies, reflecting the current monolingual scenario of global science and, on the other hand, the need for a more plurilingual science and the privileging of Portuguese as a science language.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis of effects of language policies on the competition between languages. At the core of this framework is a language competition model that takes into account four pivotal factors for the evolution of the linguistic composition of a society: intergenerational language transmission, formal language education, adult language learning and migration. In contrast to the majority of models available in the literature, our model operates with parameters that can be estimated from empirical socio-linguistic data. It allows the reconstruction of past and simulate future dynamics. Language policies can be modeled as changes in model parameters. Therefore, projections derived from the model can be utilized to compare the effects of different policy options. We use Basque and Spanish within the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain to illustrate the application of the model.

Abstract

After over twenty years of debate over Cornish orthographies, recognition by the UK government according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2003 led to the creation of what was initially intended as a “single written form” for use in official contexts. However, the inevitable impossibility of finding a compromise that pleased opposing groups of speakers with differing ideologies meant that the eventual Standard Written Form (SWF) was pluricentric, comprising two “main forms”. While these were initially stated to be of equal status, this has been hard to maintain since the SWF’s implementation: with more speakers using Middle Cornish forms, the Late Cornish forms are less visible and commonly believed to be subsidiary. Drawing on such perceptions, along with learning materials and other resources, this paper examines the status of the SWF today and offers some reflections on this unsuccessful attempt at pluricentricity in a minoritised language.

Abstract

Esperanto is neither an official nor a commonly spoken language anywhere in the world and, due to the limited number of people who speak this language from birth and who teach it to the next generation, the persistence of this speech community cannot rely on intergenerational language transmission. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in France, mainly in Paris, this article explores continuities and discontinuities in the Esperanto community and movement bylooking at how present-day young Esperanto speakers use the language online and through networks of sociability. In asking what is transmitted from one generation of Esperanto speakers to the next, and how new communication technologies impact the ways in which people use the language, I analyse how the concentration of speakers from different age groups around distinct technologies creates a segmentation in this community that leaves some issues incommunicable and hard to transmit. I argue that, on the one hand, engaging with Esperanto through Esperanto associations and, on the other hand, through social media and non-institutionalised gatherings, shapesdifferent perceptions of the language, marking a shift from Esperanto as a forward-looking cause for activists to Esperanto as a tool for sociability and an intellectual game for language-lovers.

This article reviews Vaietut ja vaiennetut. Karjalankieliset karjalaiset Suomessa

This article reviews Brexit, language policy and linguistic diversity

This article reviews Antaŭ unu jarcento: La granda milito kaj Esperanto