Lecture (5) National languages and language planning Paraguay - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Lecture (5) National languages and language planning

• Paraguay provides a clear case of stable

broad diglossia, with Spanish, the H language, used in formal contexts, for administration, a great deal of education and legal business, and Guaraní, the L language of solidarity, the language of love, humour and poetry.

• though Spanish and Guaraní both have
• fficial status, it is Guaraní which most

people regard as their real national

• language. Guaraní is felt to be the

language which best expresses their distinctive culture and traditions.

• Many Paraguayans consider that Guaraní

is an important symbol of Paraguayan identity.

• People feel that you cannot be a true

Paraguayan unless you can speak the language.

• Some claim that there are things they can

say in Guaraní which are more difficult to express in Spanish.

• A national language is the language of a political, cultural and

social unity. It is generally developed and used as a symbol of national unity. Its functions are to identify the nation and unite its people. (affective/ideological dimension)

• An official language , by contrast, is simply a language which

may be used for government business. Its function is primarily utilitarian rather than symbolic. (referential/instrumental dimension)

• It is possible, of course, for one language to serve both

functions.

National and official languages

• In multilingual countries, the government often declares a

particular language to be the national language for political reasons.

• The declaration may be a step in the process of asserting the

nationhood of a newly independent or established nation, for instance, as in the case of Swahili in Tanzania, Hebrew in Israel, Malay in Malaysia and Indonesian in Indonesia.

National and official languages

• Where this national language cannot serve all the internal

and external functions of government business, however, it has then been necessary to identify one or more official languages as well.

• So French is an official language in many countries, such as

the Ivory Coast and Chad, where France was previously a colonial power, and Arabic is an official language in Israel alongside Hebrew.

National and official languages

• The identification of official languages

may also be necessary when the choice of national language is problematic.

• In

multilingual India, for example, attempts to give Hindi sole status as the national language have not succeeded.

• Fourteen regional Indian languages are

recognised as official languages alongside English and Hindi for the country as a whole, and in addition different states each have their own official languages.

National and official languages

Official status and minority languages

• Maori was declared an official language
• f New Zealand in 1987. What that means,

however, is far from clear.

• Cynics have described it as merely a

cosmetic procedure aimed at quietening the demands of Maori activists. But the declaration clearly gave the language a status it did not have previously, and acknowledges its symbolic importance to the country as a whole, as well as to the indigenous Maori people in particular.

Official status and minority languages

• It could also be regarded as a positive

statement of intent – a first step in a process which could encourage the use of Maori in an increasing number of official institutional domains such as the law courts, official government ceremonies and transactions, and in education.

Official status and minority languages

• Many minorities would like to gain official status for their

languages, but the costs in terms |of providing services and information in all official languages are considerable, and most governments count them carefully.

Official status and minority languages

• In earlier centuries, the national language of a political entity
• ften emerged naturally and relatively unselfconsciously over a

period of time. English in England, French in France, Japanese in Japan, Spanish in Spain seem obvious examples.

What price a national language?

• the number increased dramatically, especially in the nineteenth

century as linguistic nationalism in Europe grew.

What price a national language?

• the number has almost doubled again in the twentieth century

with the emergence of colonised countries from colonial rule into independent nation-states.

What price a national language?

• In the struggle to establish a distinct

national identity, and to secure independence from colonial rule, the development of a national language has

• ften

played an important part.

• The symbolic value of a national language

as a unifying rallying point in the fight for independence was quickly appreciated in countries such as Tanzania, where more than 120 languages are spoken.

What price a national language?

• Where there is a single dominant group,

the issue of which language to choose as the

• fficial language to represent the nation

generally doesn’t arise.

• Somali is the first language of 90 per cent
• f the people of Somalia and the national
• fficial language of the country.
• Danish

is the national language

• f

Denmark, and the first language of 98 per cent of the people.

• Numerical dominance is not always what

counts, however. Political power is the crucial factor.

What price a national language?

• In multilingual countries, the significance
• f political power in the choice of national

language is particularly clear (e.g. Philippines).

• The

choice of Tagalog reflected the political and economic power

• f

its speakers who were concentrated in the area which included the capital, Manila.

• Its relabelling as Filipino was an attempt

to help it gain acceptance more widely, but resentment at the advantages it gives to a particular ethnic group is still keenly felt.

What price a national language?

• In Indonesia, by contrast, the government did not select the

language of the political and social elite, the Javanese, as the national language.

• Instead, they developed and standardised a variety of Malay

which was widely used in Indonesia as a trade language.

What price a national language?

• Like India, some African countries have avoided selecting just
• ne language as the national language, since the wrong choice could

easily lead to riots and even war.

• Tanzania, however, successfully adopted Swahili as its national

language,

What price a national language?

What is involved in developing a code or variety (whether dialect

• r language) so that is suitable for official use involves issues

relating to the form of the variety, the functions it serves, and the attitudes that people hold towards it.

Planning for a national official language

There are generally four interrelated steps: 1. Selection : choosing the variety or code to be developed. 2. Codification : standardising its structural or linguistic features. This kind

• f ‘linguistic processing’ is known as corpus planning.

3. Elaboration : extending its functions for use in new domains. This involves developing the necessary linguistic resources for handling new concepts and contexts. 4. Securing its acceptance (implementation): The status of the new variety is important, and so people’s attitudes to the variety being developed must be

• considered. Steps may be needed to enhance its prestige, for instance, and

to encourage people to develop pride in the language, or loyalty towards it. This is known as status planning or prestige planning.

Planning for a national official language

Planning for a national official language

CASE 1: Tanzania

Planning for a national official language

CASE 1: Tanzania

• I. Selecting a code
• The

first President

• f

Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, chose Swahili, a language of the Bantu language family, which was widely used throughout the country as a lingua franca in many contexts.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 1: Tanzania

• II. Codifying and elaborating Swahili
• Swahili was being used in primary

education and for administration meant standardisation was essential.

• Its codification involved developing a

standard spelling system, describing the grammar of the variety selected as the new standard, and writing a dictionary to record its vocabulary.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 1: Tanzania

• II. Codifying and elaborating Swahili
• Following Tanzanian independence in 1961, Swahili was used

in more and more contexts for education, administration, politics and law.

• Its vocabulary was expanded to meet the demands of new

contexts by borrowing freely from Arabic and English as appropriate.

Planning for a national official language

Planning for a national official language

Planning for a national official language

CASE 1: Tanzania

• III. Attitudes to Swahili
• People have often seen the success
• f Swahili as the national language

in Tanzania as due to its ‘neutral’ status – it is not identified with a particular tribe. But its widespread acceptance was also due to the fact that Tanzanians developed a strong loyalty towards the language which united them in working towards uhuru (‘freedom’).

Planning for a national official language

CASE 1: Tanzania

• III. Attitudes to Swahili
• it is important to remember that

the story

• f

how Swahili became the national language

• f Tanzania might be told rather

differently by a group whose tribal vernacular was a competing lingua franca.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway In 1814, Norway became independent after being ruled by Denmark for four centuries. The government was then faced with a diglossia situation with Danish as the H language and a range of Norwegian dialects as the L varieties, but no standard Norwegian language.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• I. Selecting a code

Essentially the Norwegian government had the choice

• f

developing a national language from standard Danish or from local Norwegian dialects. Standard Danish was not used widely for informal interaction, especially in rural areas, and people’s attitudes towards the language were generally at least ambivalent, if not hostile.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• I. Selecting a code

choosing a variety from among the regional Norwegian dialects raised problems relating to the form and new functions required

• f

a standard language. Any dialect selected would need codifying and would require extensive functional elaboration.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• I. Selecting a code

Two different approaches were taken to developing a standard written variety of Norwegian.

• 1. a variety based on Danish, with some orthographic and

morphological modifications based

• n

educated urban Norwegian speech. This eventually developed into Bokmål.

• 2. creating a new Norwegian written standard by drawing on a

range of rural Norwegian dialects. It was first called Landsmål (‘language of the country’), and later, after several reforms, Nynorsk (‘new Norwegian’).

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• II. Codification and elaboration

Since the late nineteenth century, then, Norway has had Bokmål and Nynorsk as two competing official written varieties. During the first half of the twentieth century, language planners tried to bring the two closer together (into Samnorsk or ‘united Norwegian’) through continued codification efforts.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• II. Codification and elaboration

Official documents are printed in both varieties, and schoolchildren are taught to read and write both, though local councils decide which variety is to be used as the main vehicle of instruction in the local schools.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• III. Acceptance

Though Norwegian nationalists enthusiastically welcomed Nynorsk, the Norwegian-based variety, and rejected the modified Danish alternative, many influential educated city-dwellers did not. If Nynorsk was to be accepted at all, government support was

• essential. And it was also necessary to persuade influential public

figures to endorse and to use the new variety in public contexts.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• III. Acceptance

Many people use both Bokmål and Nynorsk depending on the context. What is more, Bokmål forms continue to displace Nynorsk forms rather than vice versa. Though some people insist on Nynorsk as the only possible variety for a ‘true’ Norwegian to use, and stress its significance as a more democratic variety, many dislike its ‘country bumpkin’ associations.

Planning for a national official language

CASE 2: Norway

• III. Acceptance

In Norway, as in many more recently developing nations, things have not been so simple. The government has considered it necessary to make deliberate choices, to accelerate the process of language standardisation and to legislate on the status of particular varieties.

Planning for a national official language

Researchers in the area of linguistic landscapes usually distinguish between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom- up’ signs.

• ‘top-down’ signs are official signs, designed by

public authorities,

• ‘bottom-up’ signs are non-official signs, usually

produced by individuals or groups.

• Nicholas Coupland suggests that all linguistic

landscaping is generated ‘from above’, since people’s reasons for choosing what to portray are influenced by language ideologies.

‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ signs

‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ signs

An analysis of the linguistic landscape can provide useful clues to the gap which often exists between official language policy and actual linguistic practices. What the government legislates and what happens on the ground is

• ften quite different as illustrated in example 6.

‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ signs

• Tetun the indigenous official language was

not evident at all on official signs in the linguistic landscape surveyed. Most surprising perhaps was the dominance of English.

• Monolingual English signs accounted for

60 per cent of the signs surveyed, and signs involving English and another language accounted for a further 15 per cent.

• The linguistic landscape of Dili (the capital

city) thus provides a dramatic example of the gap between official language policy and actual language practice in Timor-Leste.

‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ signs

‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ signs

• Samuel Johnson’s 40,000-word dictionary was

a landmark in the codification of English

• Ivar Aasen in Norway created a composite

variety of Norwegian (Landsmål/Nynorsk) from a range of dialects.

• In Israel, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was the most

influential proponent of the vernacularisation of Hebrew.

• Francis Mihalic wrote the first authoritative

grammar and dictionary of Tok Pisin in the 1950s.

• in New Zealand, Harry Orsman completed the

first dictionary

• f

New Zealand English

• n

historical principles in 1997.

The linguist’s role in language planning

• More often these days, the nuts and bolts of

language planning are handled by committees, commissions

• r

academies.

• Moreover, the focus of much language planning activity has

altered from the promotion of national and official languages in countries trying to establish their autonomy, to include concern for minority and endangered languages.

• governments often get involved with spelling reform.
• Missionaries were often good linguists who produced a

spelling system which accurately represented the pronunciation

• f the language.
• Printers and publishing houses

The linguist’s role in language planning

Developing vocabulary

• Hebrew faced the problem of finding words for everyday

colloquial things which had previously been referred to in people’s vernacular languages.

• More often a language will need vocabulary for more

specialised or formal domains, as was the case with Swahili, Tok Pisin and Malay, or for concepts and objects introduced from another culture, as with Navajo in the USA.

• In New Zealand, the Maori Language Commission has
• ften been asked for advice on vocabulary for new contexts

and uses of Maori, as people want to use it for new functions such as writing official documents, and teaching mathematics and geography.

Developing vocabulary

• In advising others on usage, the Maori Language Commission

are often faced with the dilemma of which of these options to recommend:

• 1. a word borrowed from English
• 2. an equivalent Maori word which is perhaps not well known
• r with a slightly different meaning which could be adapted
• 3. a word newly created from Maori resources.

where possible the Commission uses native resources, trying to ‘remain true to the spirit of the language’; but of course this is not always achievable.

Developing vocabulary

Acceptance

• the

government’s regular pronouncements in the media on new ‘official usages’ which represent attempts at compromise may have not always been accepted.

• In Norway, people finally vote with

their tongues, and it seems Bokmål is emerging as the de facto written standard in many areas.

• A variety which begins with some

status always has a useful head-start.

Acceptance

• In addition to corpus planning and status or prestige

planning, which were discussed above, sociolinguists may also make a contribution to organised efforts to spread a linguistic variety by increasing the number of its users.

• This is sometimes called acquisition planning , and, since the

most widespread method of encouraging the acquisition of a language is to use the education system, it is also known as language-in-education planning.

Acquisition planning