Language Planning and Policy: Language Planning in Local Contexts
298
Language Planning and Policy: Language Planning in Local Contexts
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847690630 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2008 |
| Series: | Language Planning and Policy , #9 |
| Pages: | 298 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.70(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Richard B. Baldauf, Jr is Associate Professor of TESOL in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and a member of the Executive of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). He has published numerous articles in refereed journals and books. He is co-editor of Language Planning and Education in Australasia and the South Pacific (Multilingual Matters, 1990), principal researcher and editor for the Viability of Low Candidature LOTE Courses in Universityies (DEET, 1995), co-author with Robert B. Kaplan of Language Planning from Practice to Theory (Multilingual Matters, 1997) and Language and Language-in-Education Planning in the Pacific Basin (Kluwer, 2003), and co-author with Zhao Shouhui of Planning Chinese Characters: Revolution, Evolution or Reaction (Springer, 2007).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Rearticulating the Case for Micro Language Planning in a Language Ecology Context
Richard B. Baldauf Jr School of Education, University of Queensland, Australia
Language planning is normally thought of in terms of large-scale, usually national planning, often undertaken by governments and meant to influence, if not change, ways of speaking or literacy practices within a society. It normally encompasses four aspects: status planning (about society), corpus planning (about language), language-in-education (or acquisition) planning (about learning), and (most recently) prestige planning (about image). When thinking about these aspects, both policy (i.e. form) and planning (i.e. function) components need to be considered as well as whether such policy and planning will be overt or covert in terms of the way it is put into action. Language policy and planning on this scale has dominated current work in the field. However, over the past decade language planning has taken on a more critical edge and its ecological context has been given greater emphasis, leading to an increasing acceptance that language planning can (and does) occur at different levels, i.e. the macro, meso and micro. This shift in focus has also led to a rethinking of agency – who has the power to influence change in these micro language policy and planning situations. Given this break with the dominant macro history, the question may be asked, is this developing notion of micro language planning and local agency actually language planning? If so, what are its parameters? Micro language planning studies are examined to illustrate trends in the literature.
Keywords: language planning, micro language policy, language ecology, agency
Introduction
Since an earlier review of micro language policy and planning (LPP) was completed in 2003 (Baldauf, 2005a), there have been a number of studies completed, creating the need to rearticulate this area of language planning study. Although there continues to be traditional 'modernist' LPP work done, a range of studies are now appearing that take a more critical position, that extends the notion of language policy (and planning) to local contexts. These studies also tend to use discursive methods and are concerned with issues of agency, harking back to recommendations found in the early work of Luke et al. (1990).
In a more recent overview volume on the field of language policy and planning, Kaplan and Baldauf (1997: 52) suggested that language planning occurred at several levels, the macro, the meso and the micro. Although they provided several examples in the volume of micro-level planning (e.g. a company requiring business translation in North America (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 254ff)), this application of the principles of language policy and planning to micro situations was not a significant focus of the volume nor was it developed in any detail. As they indicated in their introductory chapter, when applied linguists think of language planning, they normally think of it in terms of large-scale, usually national, planning, often undertaken by governments and meant to influence, if not change, ways of speaking or literacy practices within a society. Nevertheless, Alan Davies, in a review of that volume, argued that the authors had been less convincing than they might have been about the centrality of applied linguistics to language planning and policy. He suggested that the authors tried to 'claim too much: language planning is best restricted to governmental activity, difficult as that may be to encompass' (Davies, 1999: 123).
Governmental activity is, of course, precisely where early language planning studies and practice had their roots, in macro sociolinguistics and related disciplines (see e.g. Fishman, 1974; Fox, 1975; Rubin & Jernudd, 1971) and it continues to be the site of the majority of language planning and policy related studies (and critiques). Furthermore, the notion of agency often lies with government officials, who are the prime actors in language planning activity (Baldauf & Kaplan, 2003). But, studies arising from this tradition raise the question of whether language policy and planning activity, almost by definition, is restricted to such large-scale (macro) governmental activity or can the frameworks that have been developed be applied differentially, but in an equally valid manner, to micro situations? Or, to put it another way, does language planning operate on a continuum from the macro to the micro? Is the resultant micro work still language policy and planning, or does it (should it) then fall into some other sub-field of applied linguistics or of some other discipline; e.g. sociolinguistics, education, critical discourse studies (CDA) or business studies?
More recently there has been some discussion of, and a number of specific studies reporting on language planning that has occurred at the micro level (i.e. language planning for businesses, educational bodies and other organisations). Although such studies often use different methodology – a focus on discourse, it might be argued that many of the same issues that can be found in the macro policy and planning frameworks and literature are relevant to the micro. To contextualise this question, it is helpful to examine briefly what is meant by language planning – and how this might relate to micro studies – the nature of the macro models and frameworks that have been developed and how those relate to the micro. Following this review, the available literature related to micro studies is then examined in an attempt to understand how this emerging area is developing. The studies in this volume provide further examples of the phenomenon.
Some Brief Definitions
Traditionally, language planning has been seen as the deliberate, future-oriented systematic-change of language code, use and/or speaking, most visibly undertaken by government, in some community of speakers. Language planning is directed by, or leads to, the promulgation of a language policy(s) – by government or some other authoritative body or person. Language policies are bodies of ideas, laws, regulations, rules and practices intended to achieve some planned language change (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 3). Language policy may be realised in very formal (overt) language planning documents and pronouncements (e.g. constitutions, legislation, policy statements, educational directives) which can be either symbolic or substantive in form, in informal statements of intent (i.e. in the discourse of language, politics and society), or may be left unstated (covert). While the distinction between language policy (the plan) and language planning (plan implementation) is an important one for users, the two terms have frequently been used interchangeably in the literature.
A Language Planning Goal-oriented Framework
Over the roughly 35 years that language planning has been developing as a field – drawing on a variety of academic traditions, a number of language planners have put forward their ideas about what might constitute a model for language policy and planning (e.g. Cooper, 1989; Ferguson, 1968; Fishman, 1974; Haarmann, 1990; Haugen, 1983; Neustupný, 1974), while others (e.g. Annamalai & Rubin, 1980; Bentahila & Davies, 1983; Nahir, 1984) have contributed to our understanding of the field by concentrating on defining the nature of language planning goals. Hornberger (1994, 2006) and Kaplan and Baldauf (1997) independently have explicitly brought these two strands together in a single framework while the latter have argued that any such framework is situated within an ecological context. Kaplan and Baldauf (2003) have developed a revised and expanded framework with illustrative examples for each of the goals, drawn from polities in the Pacific basin. Several alternative conceptualisations to this framework exist, but with different scope and foci, e.g. the continua of biliteracy (Hornberger, 2002) or language management (Neustupný & Nekvapil, 2003), but in some respects one could argue that they can be seen as complementary approaches. The latter, which has predominantly developed in a French language context, has evolved somewhat separately and is briefly discussed in the next section of this paper.
This evolving framework reflects the changes that have occurred in language planning itself, which was an outgrowth of the positivistic economic and social science paradigms that dominated the three post-World War II decades. Since the 1990s critical approaches to, and the broader context of, the discipline have taken on greater importance (see Ricento, 2000a for a historical overview, and 2006 for a summary of theory, methods and issues) as those involved have confronted issues such as language ecology (e.g. Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997; Mühlhäusler, 2000), language rights (e.g. May, 2001, 2005), and the place of English and languages other than English (e.g. Maurais & Morris, 2003; Pennycook, 1998; Ricento, 2000b).
The framework, set out in Table 1, suggests that the practice of overt (explicit, planned) or covert (implicit, unplanned – see e.g. Baldauf, 1994; Eggington, 2002) language policy and planning may be one of four types: status planning – about society (see e.g. van Els, 2005), corpus planning – about language (see, e.g. Liddicoat, 2005), language-in-education (acquisition) planning – about learning (see e.g. Baldauf & Kaplan, 2005) and prestige planning – about image (see e.g. Ager, 2005). Each of these four types of language planning can be realised under one of two approaches: a policy approach – with an emphasis on form: basic language and policy decisions and their implementation, or a cultivation approach – with an emphasis on the functional extension of language development and use. These eight language planning perspectives can be best understood through the goals that planners set out to achieve, which may be at the macro, meso or micro levels, with macro top-down goals predominating. But, however useful these perspectives may be for mapping the discipline, most of the goals in the framework are not independent of each other, e.g. policy-planning goals normally need cultivation-planning support. A particular language planning problem may also have a number of different goals, some of which may even be contradictory, e.g. the widespread introduction of a strong foreign language (like English) may potentially conflict in the school curriculum with goals related to local or regional language maintenance. Nor are goals normally implemented in isolation, but as part of a broader (even if covert or unstated) set of objectives. Thus, while it can be argued that LPP by can be implemented by progressively moving through the framework, in practice goals are often tackled independently. As Ingram (1990: 54) has pointed in relation to language-in-education planning, it 'is more often unsystematic, incidental to other policy-making, and piecemeal than it is rational, systematic, integrated, or comprehensive'.
A Language Ecology-oriented Framework
Although the goal-oriented framework just described also includes a consideration of language ecology, McConnell (2005) has summarised the somewhat different direction that those writing about language planning (aménagement linguistique) in French, and in particular about Québec, have taken where language ecology has been given more prominence. Building on the same foundations as the previous framework (i.e. Haugen's (1983) categories of policy, codification, elaboration, implementation and later evaluation) and with an interest in terminology and jurisprudence, the ecological model:
... was in some ways an extension of the (LP) model, but it went beyond and covered territory not included in the (LP) macro model. In a sense what was proposed was both a macro and micro model: data on language attitudes or representations were largely specific to the micro approach. What was then established was both a structuralist-functionalist and an ethnographic model combined. (McConnell, 2005: 10)
McConnell goes on to suggest that Calvet (1999: 16), who proposed a four-tiered model of language in society or social communication as a framework for understanding language planning and the relationship between the macro and the micro provides one theorisation for this approach. The four tiers consisted of the gravitational – a macro focus on the geolinguistic situation or the relationships between languages, the homeostatic – a macro self-regulatory focus for languages, the representational – a micro focus that operates at the level of individuals or groups, and the transmission tier, which deals with change and evolution across tiers. McConnell (2005: 11) further suggests that while this is not a well-integrated model, it is ecological in that it examines the relationships not only between languages, but with society at large. McConnell cites Heller's (2002: 185) view that the contrast between the two traditions found in this model is that the macro aims at fixed objects or structures, while the micro aims at processes, relations and dynamic activities. Neustupný and Nekvapil (2003) provide an alternative way of viewing these same phenomena, arguing that language management issues may either be 'organised' – involving multiple participants and ideologies in the management process or 'simple' – dealing with specific often individual problems.
The macro and the micro are often simultaneously at work. McConnell (2005: 13) provides the example of the French Language Charter legislation in Québec (macro policy) where it was possible to change language behaviours relative quickly in public workplaces and state dominated domains (e.g. schools), but much more difficult – even after 25 years – in manufacturing and sales (or micro, personal, in-group) situations. In Figure 1 a language planning framework is outlined which could be used to map language policy and planning development taking this perspective. By mapping the extent to which a language is present in all dimensions, i.e. (1) policy or judicial status, (2) codification or corpus tools, (3) elaboration or corpus texts – genres, and (4) implementation or domains and functions, one can see some of the relationships between languages – by using multiple charts – and within a language across macro and micro domains like schools or manufacturing.
McConnell (2005: 14) concludes by arguing that it is clear 'that macro processes cannot account for all aspects of language-in-society variation and certainly not for representations' (social psychology). 'On the other hand micro processes are often so localised as to be undetectable or absent at the macro level.' Thus, while some combination of the macro and micro might be useful, he says that Heller (2002) has argued that 'the macro processes prevent us from developing a "critical analysis", i.e. one concerning the interaction of social actors and their environment'. While his suggestion that this discontinuity may be a blessing for minority languages whose activities may be too micro to be affected by macro policies, it also raises the question of whether the macro-micro continuum is conceptually valid.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Introduction1. Language Planning in Local Context: Agents, Contexts and Interactions – A. J. Liddicoat & R. B. Baldauf Jr.
2. Rearticulating the Case for Micro Language Planning in a Language Ecology Context - R.B. Baldauf Jr
Language Communities
3. From Language to Ethnolect: Maltese to Maltaljan – R. Bovingdon
4. Community-level Approaches in Language Planning: The Case of Hungarian in Australia – A. Hatoss
5. Micro-level Language Planning in Ireland – D. Mac Giolla Chríost
6. Preserving Dialects of an Endangered Language – S. Tulloch
7. The Ecological Impact of a Dictionary – A. J. Liddicoat
8. Prestige From the Bottom Up: A Review of Language Planning in Guernsey – J. Sallabank
9. Language Planning in American Pueblo Communities: Contemporary Challenges and Issues – C. P. Sims
10. Terminology Planning in Aboriginal Australia – J. Troy and M. Walsh
11. Changing the Language Ecology of Kadazandusun: The Role of the Kadazandusun Language Foundation – R. Lasimbang and T. Kinajil
Educational Contexts
12. Singaporean Education Planning: Moving From the Macro to the Micro – C. S. K. Chua
13. ‘Trajectories of Agency’ and Discursive Identities in Education: A Critical Site in Feminist Language Planning – J. Winter and A. Pauwels
14. UniversityStudents’ Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Bilingual Classrooms – C. van der Walt
15. Pacific languages at the University of the South Pacific – J. Lynch and F. Mugler
16. Micro Language Planning for Student Support in a Pharmacy Faculty – H. Marriott
Work Contexts
17. Negotiable Acceptability: Reflections on the Interactions Between Language Professionals in Europe and NNS Scientists Wanting to Publish in English – J. Burrough-Boenischn
18. On Language Management in Multilingual Companies in the Czech Republic – J. Nekvapil and M. Nekula