Language Policy

1
Language Policy

• LG474 notes
• Language Rights
• Peter L Patrick
• Univ of Essex

2
What is Policy?

• A linear, rational, systematic process? Created
  by individuals on the basis of research and
  vision?
• A product of socio-cultural and political
  contexts? Expressing the peoples will and
  prejudices?
• A product of institutional histories
  contingencies?
• Development predictable via costs/benefits/budgets
  , or chaotic/contradictory due to rhetoric
  clashing of local/national agendas?
• How much effect do individuals targeted by policy
  have on making or altering it?

3
What is language policy?

• Planned interventions pronounced and implemented
  by states, supported/enforced by law
• Nearly always in multi-lingual/-cultural
  ecologies
• theories/practices for managing linguistic
  ecosystems (Fettes 97)
• Policies compare/evaluate language
  status/function and differentially impact the
  varieties they recognize
• As well as those that were left out for whatever
  reasons
• Necessarily reflect power relations among groups
• Various political economic interests internal
  external
• Latter include (ex-)colonial powers,
  international business concerns, neighbour
  states, politically aligned groups, etc.

4
Language Policy /Or Planning?

• Some argue policy should be the output of
  planning,
• Or necessarily includes it, eg Schiffman, Ricento
• But a great deal of language policy-making...
  is haphazard or uncoordinated... far removed
  from the language planning ideal (Fettes 1997
  14)
• Others argue policy subsumes planning, eg Spolsky
• All recognize they are linked and intertwined, so
• LPP is a common and useful shorthand for this
• Theories/practices for managing linguistic
  ecosystems

5
Accounting framework for LPP

• More generally, as Cooper (198998) asks,
• What actors attempt to influence
• which behaviors
• of which people
• for what ends
• under which conditions
• by what means
• through what decision making process
• with what effect?

6
LPP Types and Approaches

• Hornberger (1994) typology (in Ricento ed.)
• Contrasts types of LPP
• Status allocating functions w/in a speech
  community
• Acquisition focus on users, language
  learning/teaching
• Corpus changes for or structure of language
• with approaches to LPP
• Policy macro focus on nation/society, Standard
  Lgs
• Cultivation micro focus on literacy, ways of
  speaking
• Cross-cut focus society (status/acq) vs language
  (corpus), with function (cultivation) vs form
  (policy)

7
(No Transcript)
8
TheoryDataValueCost/Benefit

• Language theory/analysis of acquisition, use,
  shift, revitalization, loss has little value
  per se as a tool to argue for specific language
  policies (Ricento 200611)
• Instead, academics need to demonstrate
  empirically the costs/benefits to society of
  particular policy choices,
• Defining the value of their recommendations
  explicitly,
• Backed up by data from a range of disciplines and
  perspectives, which support the value of their
  choice.
• While not yet LgPol, this is a necessary
  component in attempts to influence public policy
  choices outcomes

9
Examples of official LPs

• Assam Language Act 1960 made Assamese compulsory
  in govt, led to ethnic tensions/violence
  w/Bengali migrants
• Tanzania changed language of secondary education
  from English to Kiswahili (2001) however,
• Ghana changed from using vernacular languages in
  first 3 years of primary school to English (2002)
• Council of Europe (2001) urged govt. of Macedonia
  to allow use of Albanian in schools, courts
  administration
• Egyptian govt requires fire extinguishers in
  Cairo taxicabs to have instructions written in
  Classical Arabic
• In fact most taxi drivers cannot read them

10
Examples of un-official LPs

• Consider non-official policies, too states may
  be dysfunctional, contested, newly-formed,
  multinational
• Kansas City school suspends child for using
  Spanish in class no policy? school board
  rescind suspension (2005)
• Arab funding of Somalian schools leads to Arabic
  replacing Somali as language of education (2004)
• Linguistic landscape studies (street signs, site
  and place names) show different bilingual
  patterns in Israel
• Hebrew/English in Jewish areas, Arabic/Hebrew in
  Arab ones, Arabic/English in East Jerusalem.
• (Official languages are Hebrew and Arabic.)

11
Elements of language policy 1

• Language practices of community or polity
  patterns of selection from linguistic resources
  /repertoire, for particular domains
• Domains constellations of institutional factors
  which affect language selection (Fishman 1965,
  1972) typically,
• settings, occasions and role relationships
• Or, locations, topics and participants

12
Elements of language policy 2

• Language ideologies and attitudes about language
  and use
• Ideology a system of symbolic forms which work
  to create and support systems of social power
• Language ideologies systematically associate
  language choices and speakers with e.g. economic,
  political, and moral dimensions
• Language planning then is an attempt to
• change practices, which must engage with
• language ideologies.

13
Contrasting definitions of LP

• Spolsky (2004) Language policy is comprised of
  all three components (practices ideology
  planning)
• Shohamy (2006) Language policy falls between
  ideology and practice.
• Includes both overt covert mechanisms which
  create maintain both official policies de
  facto ones (practices)
• "Real" policy may be covert need decoding of
  such tools
• Examples of such mechanisms
• Overt school language policy, citizenship or
  voting test
• Covert street sign, school language test,
  monolingual health info

14
Contrasting definitions of LP

• Schiffman (1996) Language is main vehicle for
  the construction, replication, transmission of
  culture itself
• Language policy is primarily a social construct,
  rests primarily on other conceptual elements
• Belief systems, attitudes, myths
• Whole complex can be treated as linguistic
  culture
• "Language policy is not only the specific, overt,
  explicit, de jure embodiment of rules in laws or
  constitutions,
• but a broader entity, rooted in covert, implicit,
  grass-roots, unwritten, de facto practices that
  go deep into the culture."

15
Covert practices vs overt policy

• Latter 2 views stress that covert practices shape
  the overt policies, given their effect on
  everyday practice
• They promote ideologies favored by state/powerful
  groups,
• Marginalize or exclude minorities, or powerless
  majorities
• But they could be used to raise language
  awareness, change attitudes, protect language
  rights reform policy.
• Ie, LP could be a way to turn language ideology
  into practice.
• Overt LPs can afford to pay lip service to
  inclusive language, diversity and democratic
  processes,
• as long as covert mechanisms are functioning to
  execute policies with contrary aims.

16
Economics of Language (Policy)

• First wave of research effects of language on
  income
• Early research heavily embedded in national
  contexts
• Quebecois analyses of French/English differential
  in Canada
• US focus on earnings gap between Hispanics
  Anglophones
• Emphasis on native language as an ethnic
  attribute affecting earnings connect w/language
  discrimination
• 2nd wave language (usually 2ndL) as human
  capital
• Eg whats rate of return for US Hispanics on
  acquiring English?
• Later language as criterion for distributing
  resources costs of minority-language
  maintenance/promotion, etc

17
Economic nature of Language

• Language differs from most other economic goods
• W.r.t. its function as a communication tool, The
  more its used, the more value it acquires for
  its users.
• Goes beyond non-rival consumption, eg of public
  lighting, which are not zero-sum and consumption
  cant be limited to those who have paid for it,
  to
• Super-public goods or hyper-collective goods
• Of course, the assumption is too narrow Language
  is far more than just a communication tool...

18
Types of Market failure in LPP

• Why should state intervene in LPP? Why not just
  leave language matters to the free market, which
  provides adequate goods/services at minimum cost?
• Cases of market failure justify state
  intervention
• Super-public goods or hyper-collective goods
• Lack of info for actors to make good decisions
• Transaction costs prevent deals of mutual benefit
• Absence of markets (eg language futures)
• Market imperfections (eg monopolies)
• Externalities As behavior affects Bs welfare
  w/o economic compensation (ex pollution from SUV
  vs homeowners)
• All kinds of MF occur but even 1 is enough (Grin
  2006)

19
Past Focuses of LPP Activity 1950s-1960s

• Solving language problems of developing nations
• New nations of Africa, Asia, S America/Caribbean
  needed grammars, dictionaries, orthographies for
  indigenous languages ie, mostly Corpus Planning
• Language development
• Graphization, standardization, modernization
• Nation-building seen as primary mission
  (StatusP)
• Choose national language variety for various
  functions
• Unifying separatist participatory historicity
  authenticity
• A positivist approach neutral, technical,
  objective
• Later negative effects, limits of development
  models
• Modernization emphasized 1-nation,
  1-(std)-language

20
But LP in whose interests?

• Q of how language is used to reproduce social and
  economic inequality, role of experts, loomed
  larger
• Use of post-colonial Euro language in
  technical/formal domains, Indigenous/Vernacular
  for others, led to
• Imposed stable diglossia, status loss for I/V,
  and privileging of educated elites, like colonial
  model
• How are language policies used as instruments of
  Western extension of control over other peoples?
• Do they favor majority/elite/client interests
  over those of minorities/masses/independence-seeke
  rs?

21
Postmodern views of language I

• Shohamy further argues that the very conception
  of language/s by most linguists as
  socially-bounded, grammatically-closed systems,
  is manipulated for political/ideological agendas
  that cast languages as
• Fixed, stagnated, pure, unchanging, hegemonic,
  standard, oppressive
• Through school teaching, mass media and other
  ideological agents.
• This postmodern critique problematizes idea of
  language-as-fixed-code (Hopper, Shohamy,
  Pennycook)
• New emphasis on ideology, agency, ecology in LPP

22
Postmodern views of language II

• Instead of distinct languages, only shared
  discourses
• Systematicity is an illusion, born of overlapping
  community practices communicative experiences
• In this view, Languages can't have fixed
  functions, statuses or values attached to them
  open to change
• Thus linguicide or linguistic imperialism (LHR)
  are seen as naïve - English carries no cultural
  baggage
• Also because of changing geopolitical/global
  realities
• Are states really best seen as the primary,
  powerful actors, controlling populations in their
  jurisdiction?
• Focus shift from Languagesgt Discourses, Ideologies

23
Attack on core linguistic concepts

• In this view, linguists had not described reality
  but rather created new languages (think status
  not corpus)
• Failed to question/reproduced, positivist/modernis
  t idea language as discrete/finite/bounded,
  structure-driven
• Ignored speakers experience of code choice
  process as flexible, dynamic, agentive,
  speaker-driven
• Concepts such as diglossia seen as an
  ideological naturalization of sociolinguistic
  arrangements
• Native speaker, mother tongue, competence
  questioned or abandoned as inadequate invested
  by Critical LPP
• (Can language analysis/description be done from
  here?)

24
Critical views of language shift

• Are Western ideas of monolingualism and cultural
  homogeneity with diglossia as 2nd-best
  fallback
• And a rational-choice model of
  decision-making, with capitalism and market
  values underlying it,
• Assumed as prerequisites for modernization,
  social/ economic progress, democracy and national
  unity?
• Histories of standardization reveal it as product
  of modern state-formation processes and
  ideologies
• Why is this pathway presumed good for developing,
  multilingual countries w/indigenous diverse
  peoples?

25
Linguistic Imperialism LHR

• Societal multilingualism should be set as the
  norm,
• Accepted as prerequisite for functioning
  democracy.
• Groups can better participate on level ground
  with institutional recognition given their
  language/culture.
• Is Lx assimilation of minorities a legitimate LPP
  goal?
• LHR is one way to champion such goals both at
  level of states and international protections
  instruments.
• LHR also aimed against linguistic imperialism
  the continued dominance/exploitation by large
  powers, using their languages as weapons and
  contributing heavily to language shift and loss
  (so its argued).

26
Linguistic hegemony at home

• Monolingualism but is common among nations
• Hegemony of one national or official language,
  named in a constitution or legislation, but with
• Tolerance for 1 or more regional/minority
  languages achieved by (variously enforceable)
  legal means
• Eg, US 14th Amendment and Civil Rights Act Title
  VI
• One LPP goal is to codify such tolerance,
  determine who it should extend to, make it
  accessible to them
• NB such Lx tolerance only makes sense where
  ethnic/nationalist monolingualism is assumed to
  rule
• Paradigm set by Act of Union, French Revolution,
  post-1812 treaties, then German Italian
  nationalism...

27
Print Capitalism Nations

• Print capitalism
• dissemination of the written word in the
  standardized form of a national language, as
  commercial enterprise
• was crucial to the formation of modernity
  building of nation-states.
• Print capitalism also was agent for the
  development and marketing of language ideologies,
  
• which place citizens within national contexts by
  linguistic means. - Greeks speak Greek, wherever
  they are
• Educational systems were organised, in part, to
  guarantee the success of this enterprise, and of
  the new national identity it supports and is
  emblematic of

28
Selling National Language Ideology

• A principal type of successful language ideology
• 1) Creates hierarchies of language,
• 2) Valuing most highly the written standard form
  of a national language, abstracted from elite
  speech,
• 3) Makes it subject to (upper middle) class norms
  through education, and
• 4) Sells it to the whole society as the Only True
  Form of Language.
• 5) Other forms are then erased made
  Not-Language.

29
Functions of a Monoglot Ideology

• Monoglot ideology invests in monolingualism as
  a fact, and denies evidence of linguistic
  diversity.
• How? by coupling belief in pure standard
  language,
• With membership of ethnolinguistically-defined
  group
• Right to reside in a region occupied by them.
• Were English. We speak English here!
• Herder Volk language territory
  nation-state
• This ideology produces identities (of citizens),
  and
• Works effectively to prohibit public linguistic
  diversity.

30
Case Study Tanzania, /

• Multilingual nation, c36 million population today
• De facto national languages are (Ki)Swahili,
  English
• 200,000 Arabic speakers in Zanzibar 430k Maasai
  
• Bantu speakers (3.2m Sukuma, 1.3m Gogo, 1.2m
  Haya, 1.2m Nyamwezi, 1m Ha, 0.75m Hehe, 0.7m
  Luguru, 670k Bena, 500k Asu, over 100 other
  languages)
• German colony, then British, independence in 1961
• Shares ethnolinguistic groups with Kenya, Uganda,
  Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Zambia, Mozambique
• Nyerere govt committed to pan-African socialism,
  ujamaa

31
Case Study Tanzania, II

• English used after 1961 for while in govt,
  parliament, but no longer still the language of
  high courts
• 1984 official linguistic policy Swahili L of
  political and social sphere, primary and adult
  education
• English used in 2ary/university, but Sw now mixed
  in
• Some Swahili L1 traditionally, most speak local
  L1 (mostly Bantu) learn Sw at 1ary, Eng at 2ary
  school
• Double-overlapping diglossia away at 2ary,
  students use Swahili for L functions, English for
  H
• Swahili has ousted English in many public
  functions

32
Case Study Tanzania, III

• Sw defined as Lg of ujamaa socialist values
  ideal mwananchi citizen socialist,
  Swahili-monolingual
• National identity thus not ethnic but
  political/linguistic
• Success would be a monolingual-Sw nation,
  homo-geneous in language and socialist values
  hence,
• Other languages/ideologies must disappear not
  only
• English (capitalist/imperialist/oppressor
  language),
• but indigenous ones (pre-colonial backward
  cultures)
• and urban non-standard Swahili code-switching

33
Case Study Tanzania, IV

• Modern Herderian 1 language/culture/territory/sta
  te
• LP to achieve this by purification
  standardization, but use colonial methods
  Western expertise, formal education aiming at
  normative literacy (incl. English)
• English as reference point Swahili to be
  comparable in elaboration, range of functions,
  correctness
• Spread of Std Swahili achieved its the public
  code, used for one idealized national identity
  (mwananchi)
• But not the monoglot ideal other varieties
  maintained, involved in other identities no
  totalizing hegemony- you can plan specific
  domains, but as niched activity

34
Discussion questions

• Who should be involved in creating LPP?
• Is LP really a form of public policy like policy
  for transportation, health, environment? Why?
• What is market failure? how is it relevant to
  LPP?
• Can you find exs. of how covert policy
  (practice) differs from overt LPP in your own
  experience?
• How true is it that British people are
  aggressively monolingual? Are there any
  justifications for this? What problems does it
  create or reinforce?