Language Planning

Language planning has no underlined and definite definition (Cooper, 1989:29). Its meanings vary depending on the context, goals and its use. One of its definitions is that Language planning is a plan of activities used in order to identify language use and its problems in communities. It could be defined as 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 (Kaplan and Baldauf, 1997:3). Uriel Weinreich first used language planning for a 1957 seminar held at Columbia University and later used in the literature by Haugen in 1959 (Cooper, R., 1989:29-30; Hornberger, 2006:25-26). All definitions given to language planning by various scholars based on their specializations, awareness, ideology, perceptions and knowledge. For example, Haugen, himself, attempted to define language planning as follows:

By language planning, I understand the activity preparing a normative orthography, grammar and dictionary for the guidance of writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community. In this practical application of linguistic knowledge, we are proceeding beyond descriptive linguistics into an area in the form of choices among available linguistic forms (Haugen, 1993:109 and 1959:8).

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Haugen argued that planning does not only refer to an “attempt to guide the development of a language in a direction desired by the planners” and “predicting the future on the basis of the available knowledge concerning the past”, but also it is a” deliberate effort to influence it”. Thus, language planning refers to explicit and premeditated strategies employed by the local communities and the societies in order to advance or change their use of language through government policy or educational practice (Tonkin, 2005:120). Tonkin continued saying that language planning was a highly political and ideological activity and was normally policy- driven. This means that language planning can be influenced by the government or the authorities appointed by the government bodies in order to intervene the existing language ecology and language problems. In this view, the government can dominate policy makers or language planners through the legal constitution that may favour a dominant language or languages at the expense of the other local languages. In this view, linguistic planning could also result in the creation of linguistic hegemony and it empowers those dominant linguistic groups to control of power in the aspects of resources, economy and politics in a country. As a result, the unwanted social changes and social segregations may be created and disturb language ecology. This disruption of language ecological systems explicitly or implicitly affects people’s ways of living and their psychological makeup that leads to societal chaos and obliteration of human heritage.

In communities where there is a plan for social change because of ideological and political changes, language planning could also be adjusted to the changes made in the society. Thus, arguments and practices of language planning have gone beyond the issues of orthographic, grammar and lexical codification as language planning was a widespread and long-standing practice. Language planning was also preferred as any activity used to modify the language form and its use in the 1950s and 1960s as sociologists were interested in its study (Spolsky, 1998: 66). It was established in the 1960s when a large number of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia faced the question of national language(s) selection. These issues of planning and using indigenous languages are also linked to conventions and declarations on various issues of human right. The conventions and declarations enabled each independent state to think about their linguistic rights and the right of their nations to use their indigenous language in all aspects of

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nation building and development without any discrimination because of their societal backgrounds in spite of many constraints they faced in language planning (Heugh and Skutnabb- Kangas, 2010: 33-34).

Therefore, language planning is one of the means in which the independent African states and other nations can plan to solve language related problems in their societal development. In this sense, language planning is used as a procedural activity for the regulation and improvement of the existing language situation. It represents a coherent effort by individuals, groups or organizations to influence language use or development. Thus, it affects all areas of language use, but typically concentrates on the observable ones and is deliberate efforts that can affect the structure, function and acquisition of languages (Tollefson, 2008: 3).

Language planning and language policy emerged as a distinct field of research in the 1960s within educational institutions (Tollefson, 2008:3), whereas language policy refers to rules, regulations and guidelines employed to implement languages in education. In this regard, Tollefson (Ibid) states that:

When official bodies, such as ministries of education, undertake language planning, the result may be language policies in education, that is, statements of goals and means for achieving them that constitute guidelines or rules shaping language structure, language use, and language acquisition within educational institutions.

Accordingly, language planning is a plan of action enabling the use of a language for economic, political, societal and socio-cultural reasons. It also intends to influence the structure, function and acquisition of language in a given community to promote language use within educational institutions (Tollefson, 2008:3). According to Skutnabb-Kangas and McCarty (2008: 8), language planning is socio-cultural process undertaken by government, schools, local communities and families in order to promote language changes through status, corpus and acquisition planning.

Thus, language planning is an attempt made by the planners or decision makers to modify the linguistic behaviour of a particular community for some reasons. These reasons could be

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complex, ranging from the trivial notion that one does not like the way a group talk, to sophisticated idea that the community can be assisted in preserving its language (Kaplan and Baldauf, 1997:3-4). Various actors both at macro and micro levels to modernise and standardise the language for technological and political purposes can carry out these modifications of linguistic behaviour. In language planning processes, in the first case, it is vital to carry out a needs analysis, involving a socio-political analysis of communication patterns within the society. Then, depending on socio-cultural, historical and sociolinguistic contexts, the planners can involve the selection of a language or language variety for planning purposes.

In general, the definitions given to language planning constitute three major aspects of language planning (Cooper, 1989:31-33). One is the status planning in which the functional allocation is given to a particular language in order to specify the right of speakers to use their languages. The other one is corpus planning in which the development of a language is determined in terms of its codification of words, expressions and phrases and the creation of a standard language register. The third subarea of language planning is acquisition planning which spells out the increase in the number of users and speakers of the language in the society.