L23A: Sociology of Language
Language Planning
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LANGUAGE PLANNING

Why is language planning necessary?

Language planning options available to a nation or state:

1.
Internationalism – retaining an internationally used language – eg. English,
French, Arabic, Spanish, Dutch.
2.
Vernacularization – promoting the language of the mass of the population. Eg.
Greece
3.
Pluralism - developing a vernacular or use a regional variety to be used
alongside either an official or post colonial language.
Eg. Canada: French used alongside English
4.
Assimilation - the society can decide that all citizens must use the dominant
language and therefore be assimilated linguistically. Eg. immigrants in US
(particularly Hispanic population).
Cost-Benefit-Analysis
(Thorburn, 1971:page 259
in Can Language Be Planned? )
L23A: Sociology of Language

Language Planning
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What is involved in the planning process to arrive at this stage?
Haugen (chapter 26 in prescribed text)
(1) Selection of norm - the selection may be accepted or rejected.
Example: the selection of urban Haitian Creole for use in Haitian corpus planning.
(2) Codification of norm – setting up a writing system
(3) Implementation - the spread of the selected and codified norm through books, the media,
educational material, etc.
(4) Elaboration of function
Continued monitoring of the selected and codified norm to see that it can fulfill all its
functions – terminological development is a good example of this.

Two basic areas of language planning: Status Planning and Corpus Planning
a. allocation of function (status)
b. structural innovations (corpus)
STATUS PLANNING
Status planning – making of the necessary moves to change the function of a language
variety and therefore the rights of the people who use it.
Language status planning can then (according to Cobarrubias) be:
(i)
Moral & rational
(ii)
Moral & irrational
(iii)
Immoral & rational
(iv)
Immoral & irrational
CASE STUDIES IN STATUS PLANNING
 African nations – Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria
 Others – Language revival – Irish, Hebrew
 Caribbean nations – Curacao, Haiti
Readings: General – Wardhaugh: revival of Catalan, African nations (pg. 353-356)
Other readings: Holmes, J. Paraguay – pg. 95-97; Tanzania – pg. 103-104
Jernudd & Rubin – Revival of Irish (ch.4)
Devonish, H. – Language & Liberation
Valdman - Haiti
L23A: Sociology of Language
Language Planning
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CORPUS PLANNING
Corpus planning – refers to the necessary changes in vocabulary, structure, spelling,
orthography for the language variety to function as the society would like it to.
(1) Corpus planning of Lexicon/Phonology
(2) Corpus planning of Syntax
(3) Development of writing systems
CASE STUDIES IN CORPUS PLANNING
 Turkey
 Indonesia
 Norway
Readings:
Wardhaugh: Turkey, Papua New Guinea (pg. 354, 361)
Holmes, J. Norway pg. 106-108
Jernudd & Rubin
Hebrew–Corp. Plan.(ch. 5); Indonesia – (ch. 9)
Fishman, J. (1974)
Sociology of Language
Devonish, H.
Language & Liberation