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Language planning involves changing a language, with various motivations such as assimilation, pluralism, vernacularization, and internationalization. It can be achieved through state, corpus, or acquisition planning. Different philosophies promote the use of dominant languages or multiple languages within a society. Governments may perform status and acquisition planning, while linguists handle corpus planning. Examples include the English-only movement in the US, Switzerland’s four official languages, Quechua revitalization in Peru, and Swahili as a lingua franca in Africa.
Language planning is any attempt to change a language. Various language planners are motivated by linguistic assimilation, linguistic pluralism, vernacularization and internationalization philosophies. Language planning can be accomplished through state, corpus, or acquisition planning.
Linguistic assimilation is the philosophy that states that every person within a society should be fluent in that society’s dominant language. In the United States, the English-only movement advocates that everyone should speak English well, regardless of their first language. Additionally, the Gaelic League in Ireland believes citizens should speak Irish Gaelic as their primary language instead of English.
The reverse is known as linguistic pluralism. This philosophy teaches that it is better to have multiple languages within a company. With four official languages each, Switzerland and Singapore both operate on this principle. Switzerland speaks French, German, Italian and Romansh and Singapore speaks English, Malay, Tamil and Chinese.
Vernacularization is the philosophy of restoring a native language to a commonly spoken language. Many officials in Peru have attempted to revive the original Quechua since the 1970s. This linguistic revitalization has had limited success, but Quechua is still officially a provincial language. In Israel, the Hebrew language has been revived with great success.
The fourth language planning philosophy is internationalization, which promotes the adoption of a non-indigenous language to more easily communicate with other nations. Throughout the twentieth century, many schools around the world taught children English as a language of international commerce and business. In much of Africa, Swahili is taught as a second language and lingua franca of the region.
Status planning is the type of language planning performed primarily by government officials. Politicians may want to elevate a local language by making it an official language or demoralize a group of people by discouraging its use. In Quebec, politicians have raised the status of French by mandating that signs in both English and French must emphasize French.
Acquisition planning is done by government officials or private organizations that control textbook and dictionary publications. When the minister or secretary of education issues a statement requiring all public schools to teach one language or teachers to teach in a specific language, that is acquisition planning. In 1922, Irish officials mandated that Irish Gaelic be used for at least one school hour each day.
Linguists, not politicians, do corpus planning by modifying the body, or corpus, of a language. Corpus planning can be divided into three separate areas. Graphitization deals with changing the written form, while modernization adds vocabulary, typically for new technologies. Standardization is linguistic planning that chooses a dialect as correct and standardizes the language for a region.
