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 people’s 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 (1989:98) 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)

8. Theory+Data+Value+Cost/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 2006:11) • 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 • Languageplanning 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 what’s 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 it’s 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 can’t 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: A’s behavior affects B’s 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” • Focus on widely-accepted orthography and “prestige (standard) dialect to be imitated by socially ambitious” • 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

20. Past Focuses of LPP Activity: 1950s-1960s • A positivist approach: neutral, technical, objective • Assumptions: • Competition & selection are necessary • validity of European standard-language models • right of ‘foreign experts’ to advise/administer them • Right of IMF/World Bank/etc. to require, fund them • Later: negative effects, limits of development models • All LPP lingu8istic aims serve sociopolitical goals • Modernization emphasized 1-nation, 1-(std)-language

21. 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-seekers?

22. 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

23. Postmodern views of language II • Instead of distinct languages, only shared discourses • Systematicityis 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 Languages> Discourses, Ideologies

24. 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/modernist idea: language as discrete/finite/bounded, structure-driven • Ignored speakers’ experience of code choice process as flexible, dynamic, agentive, speaker-driven, political • Concepts such as diglossiaseen as “an ideological naturalization of sociolinguistic arrangements” • Native speaker, mother tongue, competencequestioned or abandoned as inadequate & invested by Critical LPP • (Can language analysis/description be done from here?)

25. 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?

26. 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 (soit’s argued).

27. 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...

28. 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

29. 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.

30. 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. • “We’re 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.

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

34. Case Study: Tanzania, IV • Modern Herderian: 1 language/culture/territory/state • 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: it’s 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

35. 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?