1. INTRODUCTION
Noss (1994) defines language planning as a process whereby authority formulates and coordinates:
1.1 policies on the use and promotion of specific language varieties in particular roles within its jurisdiction,
1.2 policies on the identification and/or
codification of the language varieties concerned, and subsequently
implements these policies, evaluates the implementation, and if
necessary, evaluates the policies later.
Ignace (1998) defines language planning as
the development of goals, objectives and strategies to change the way a
language is used in a community. It involves some intervention or
“social engineering” of language use. The intervention and social
engineering of the language use could include policies, as stated by
Noss (1998), an authority or government carries out to achieve certain
goals. As Rubin and Jernudd (1971, cited in Coronel-Molina, 1999)
summarizes it,
“Language planning is a body of ideas, laws
and regulations (language policy), change rules, beliefs, and practices
intended to achieve a planned change (or to stop change from happening)
in the language use in one or more communities. To put it differently,
language planning involves deliberate, although not always overt, future oriented change in systems of language code and/or speaking in a societal context.”
Language planning is important because it
serves several purposes. Some of the aims of language planning are to
achieve national unity and harmony, as a nation building tool, to
strengthen communicative integration, either domestically or
internationally, to revitalize a language, to modernize and standardize a
language, to reverse language shift, and thus prevent language death
(Asmah, 1994; Noss, 1994; Coronel-Molina, 1999; Kavanagh, 1999; and
Ignace, 1998).
2. WHAT IS PLANNED?
According to Coronel-Molina (1999), language
planning involves three components, which are status planning, corpus
planning and acquisition planning.
2.1 Status Planning
Basically, status planning refers to the
efforts to allocate the functions of the particular language within the
speech community. Usually, this involves the functional domains of the
language. Stewart (1968, cited in Coronel-Molina, 1999), developed a
list of language functions, which includes:
2.1.1 Official – a legally appropriate
language for political and cultural representation of a country. This
gives the language a “statutory” official status. For example, the
status of Malay as an official language in Malaysia.
2.1.2 Provincial – a language used as the
official language of a province or region, but not the nation. For
example, the Canadian French in Quebec, Canada.
2.1.3 International – a language used as a medium of communication internationally, such as the current status of English.
2.1.4 Group – a language used as a medium
of communication among members of a single cultural or ethnic group,
such as settled group of foreign immigrants. For example, Hebrew as a
marker for Jews.
2.1.5 Religious – the use of a language
in connection with the ritual of a particular religion, such as Latin
for Roman Catholics before Vatican II, Hebrew for Judaism, and Arabic
for Islam.
2.1.6 Wider communication – a language
used as a medium of communication across language boundaries within a
nation. This excludes languages which already serve an official or
provincial function.
2.1.7 Educational – a language used as
the medium of primary or secondary school. Coronel-Molina (1999) noted
that this function does not include post-secondary education. The choice
of a language of education also very often has strong political roots.
2.1.8 School subject – a language that is
taught as a school subject at the secondary or higher education levels.
This is not necessarily the medium of instruction. An example of a
language being taught as a school subject is Sanskrit, which is being
taught at tertiary level in India.
2.1.9 Literary – a language used primarily for literary or scholarly purposes. (Coronel-Molina, 1999)
2.2 Corpus Planning
Corpus planning is related to the language
itself. Cooper (1989, cited in Coronel-Molina, 1999), said that it is
“the creation of new forms, the modification of old ones, or the
selection from alternative forms in a spoken or written code”. Corpus
planning involves several steps:
2.2.1 Graphization – for previously
unwritten language, or a language without a systematic writing system.
There are several aspects to consider in graphization, that are:
2.2.1.1 orthographic conventions,
2.2.1.2 whether to represent allophones with separate symbols,
2.2.1.3 alphabets versus syllabaries,
2.2.1.4 political and/or social issues which might affect acceptance of the alphabets/syllabaries,
2.2.1.4 how easy the new alphabets/syllabaries are to learn, write, read and transfer between languages.
2.2.2 Standardization of the language
– it is a process where a variety of a language become widely accepted
by the speech community as “the best form of the language – rated above
regional and social dialects,” (Ferguson 1989, cited in Coronel-Molina,
1999). Standardization of a language includes codification, language
rules and rules on how to use the language. Coronel-Molina (1999) added
that “grammars, dictionaries etc. serve to codify language and “fix” or
standardize the lexicon in a more or less permanent form.”
2.2.3 Modernization or elaboration of
the language – which refers to the constant and permanent cultivation
and development of the language. It is the “process whereby a language
becomes an appropriate medium of communication for modern topics and
forms of discourse (Cooper 1989, cited in Coronel-Molina, 1999). The
process mainly includes the development of the language at lexical
level, such as creating and developing new terms/words for new items or
new concepts.
2.2.4 Renovation, which is similar to
modernization, is an effort to change a developed code to make it
efficient, aesthetic or to serve political ideology. For example, the
purification of the French language in an attempt to eliminate foreign
loan-words, and the feminist campaign for find gender-neutral terms,
such as “chairperson” as oppose to “chairman” (Ignace, 1998 and
Coronel-Molina, 1999).
2.3 Acquisition planning
Acquisition planning involves efforts to
influence users and the number of users of the language, and the
distribution of language and literacy by creating or improving
opportunities or incentives to learn them. Coronel-Molina (1999) says
that there are several goals of acquisition planning of a language,
which are:
2.3.1 the acquisition of the language as a second or foreign language,
2.3.2 the reacquisition of the language
by populations for whom it was either a vernacular, such as revitalizing
Maori in New Zealand, or a language of specialized function, such as
written Chinese in Taiwan,
2.3.3 language maintenance, such as attempts to prevent language death of Irish Gaelic in the Gaeltacht.
In order to reach these goals,
Coronel-Molina (1999) stated that three types of methods are designed,
that are methods designed to create or improve the opportunity to learn
the language, to create or improve the incentive to learn the language,
and to create or improve both the opportunity and incentive to learn the
language.
3. SUCCESSFUL LANGUAGE PLANNING
3.1 Hebrew in Israel
According to Ignace (1998), Hebrew, the
language of the Jews, is often named as a language that has been
successfully revived. Being suppressed in their religion and culture,
Jews scattered throughout Europe and America during the World War I and
World War II. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the
speaking of Hebrew had been kept alive, often in secret, religious
ceremonies and was confined to religious texts. The Jews who moved to
Israel after the establishment of the State of Israel were from many
different language backgrounds (Russian, English, French, German, etc.),
and needed a common language to communicate in. The reviving Hebrew was
symbolic as well as practical communicative functions. It was selected
for its symbolic function of common religion and nationhood. It was
enforced as the national language in all public institutions in Israel
after 1948.
By 1961, Hebrew was spoken as the primary or
only language of 75 % of the population of Israel. Some strategies
utilized for its revival included:
3.1.1 Berlitz type teaching in schools, and in evening and weekend classes,
3.1.2 the establishment of Hebrew speaking societies, where people gathered to practice speaking the language,
3.1.3 the coining of new words and terms to modernize the language,
3.1.4 developing official terminology through the Hebrew Academy (Ignace 1998).
3.2 Maori in New Zealand
Maori has been called a “language that has
risen from its deathbed” (AFN 1990, in Ignace, 1998). The Maori Language
Bill of 1987 declared Maori an official language of New Zealand. It
also established the Maori Language Commission, which issue certificates
of competency to interpreters and translators. Since 1960 and continues
till 1980s, there was increased pressure on the New Zealand government
to establish immersion and bilingual schools. Schools, home and social
institutions work hand-in-hand in order to revive Maori.
Maori revival is successful due to the
creation of a popular movement in the context of towards cultural and
political autonomy, and flexible boundaries of ethnicity whereby there
is no predetermined “Indian status”. Thus, anyone who professes to Maori
identity and cultural roots can be incorporated into the community. As a
result, Maori has been revived and now spoken widely in New Zealand
(Ignace, 1998).
3.3 Mohawk in Kahnawake
During the 1970s, the Mohawk people of
Kahnawake in Quebec were experiencing language shift, which had been
replaced by French and English. According to Ignace (1998), in 1978,
Quebec enacted Bill 101, the French language charter, which reduced
education and services in languages other than French.
Following that,
the Kahnawake Mohawk established the Kanien’kehaka Raotitiohkwa Cultural
Center to preserve their language and cultural heritage. In addition,
in 1980 they established a Mohawk immersion program modelled on French
immersion programs in Quebec, in order to reintroduce the use of the
language to younger generation in the community. It was the first
Aboriginal language immersion programme in Canada, and it has become a
model for other Aboriginal communities in North America.
According to Hoover (1992, cited in Ignace,
1998), recent research has shown that the immersion programme has had a
positive effect on the knowledge and use of Mohawk in the community. The
Mohawk immersion program for elementary school children has proven to
be successful because there is a rise in the ability to speak Mohawk,
especially in the younger generation, an increase in the mixing of
Mohawk with English and an increase in the private speaking of Mohawk
among the new generation.
3.4 Malay in Malaysia
In Malaysia, according to Asiah Abu Samah
(1994), Malay was given the status of national language in The Razak
Report in 1956, and backed by The Rahman Talib Report in 1960. Both
reports became the basis of the Education Act 1961, which states that
the national language (Malay) is the main medium of instruction, phasing
out English in the education system. By the end of 1980, the conversion
from English to Malay-medium in secondary schools was completed.
Malay is given the status as the national
language for several reasons. Other than a language to unite all the
ethnic groups in Malaysia and to strengthen communicative integration,
one of the reasons is to give Malaysia a national identity. In the aim
to make Malay an esteem national language, Language Institute was set up
in 1957 to improve the quality of teaching of Malay. Another agency,
the Language and Literary Agency was established for the purpose of
planning, development and publishing in Malay. Asiah Abu Samah (1994)
stated that we can see language planning in Malaysia as successful due
to the fact that the development of Malay has been impressive,
linguistically, pedagogically and stylistically. All academic
disciplines at tertiary level are now conducted in Malay. It has become
the language of communication at all levels, both in formal or informal
settings.
4. CONCLUSION
The government or authority is one of the
most important key players in any language planning programmes. This is
because all the policies and decisions which determine the future of the
language are in their hands. However, family, the community and social
institutions also play a vital role in promoting the use of the language
in their circle. In short, everyone is the community must work
hand-in-hand to ensure the success of the revival and/or revitalization
of the language.
Many countries and provinces have carried
out language planning for various reasons, politically or socially
driven. Careful language planning which take into account various
variables in the society and the users of the language is many a times
proven to be successful and has achieved their goals. The revival of
Hebrew, Maori and Mohawk, and revitalization of Malay are some examples
of successful language planning in the world.
REFERENCE
Asiah Abu Samah. (1994). Language Education Policy Planning in Malaysia: Concern for unity, reality and rationality. In Language Planning in Southeast Asia. Abdullah Hassan (Ed.) Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka: Kuala Lumpur
Asmah Omar. (1994). Nationism and Exoglossia: The case of English in Malaysia. In Language Planning in Southeast Asia. Abdullah Hassan (Ed.) Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka: Kuala Lumpur
Coronel-Molina, S.M. (1999). Language and Literacy Planning. In Summer Literacy Training Program 1999. International Literacy Institute. <http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scoronel/SLTP-1999-presenta-index.html> Viewed: 19th Aug. 2003
Doshi, A. (2003). Language Planning. In Analysis of Lexical Transfer between Languages. University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur
Ignace, M.B. (1998). A Handbook for Aboriginal Language Program Planning in British Columbia. First Nations Education Steering Committee: British Columbia <http://www.schoolnet.ca/aboriginal/fnesc/inex-e.html> Viewed: 19th Aug. 2003
Kavanagh, B. (1999). The Aboriginal Language Program Planning Workbook. First Nations Education Steering Committee: British Columbia <http://www.fnesc.bc.ca/publications/pdf/language%workbook2.pdf> Viewed: 19th Aug. 2003
Noss, R.B. The Unique Context of Language Planning in Southest Asia. In Language Planning in Southeast Asia. Abdullah Hassan (Ed.) Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka: Kuala Lumpur
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