Language politics
This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2008) |
Part of the Politics series |
Politics |
---|
Politics portal |
Language politics is the way language and linguistic differences between peoples are dealt with in the political arena. This could manifest as government recognition, as well as how language is treated in official capacities.
The topic covers many related issues. As such, this page serves as a central resource for multiple articles relating to the topic of language and politics. Below are some categories dealing with the overlap between language and politics, along with examples and links to other relevant pages.
Language planning and policy
Language planning refers to concerted efforts to influence how and why languages are used in a community. It is usually associated with governmental policies which largely involve status planning, corpus planning and acquisition planning. There are often much interaction between the three areas. Status planning involves giving a language or languages a certain standing against other languages[1] and is often associated with language prestige and language function. Corpus planning often involves linguistic prescription as decisions are made in graphization, standardization and modernization of a language.[2] Acquisition planning fundamentally involves language policies to promote language learning.[3]
Status planning
- Legal status of a language as an official language in a country, state, or other jurisdiction. This generally means that all official documents affecting a country or region are published in the official language(s), but not in those that are not. Evidence in a court of law may also be expected to be presented in an official language.[4]
- In countries where there are more than one main language, there are often political implications in decisions that are seen to promote one group of speakers over another, and this is often referred to as language politics. An example of a country with this type of language politics is Belgium.
- In countries where there is one main language, immigrants seeking full Australian politics.
- At various times minority languages have either been promoted or banned in schools, as politicians have either sought to promote a minority language with an aim of strengthening the cultural identity of its speakers, or ban its use (either in teaching, or on occasion an entire ban on its use), with an aim of promoting a national identity based on the majority language. An example of recent promotion of a minority language is the promotion of Welsh or Leonese by the Leonese City Council and an example of official discouragement of a minority language is of Breton.
- Language politics also sometimes relate to dialect, where speakers of a particular dialect are perceived to speak a more culturally 'advanced' or 'correct' form of the language. Politicians may therefore try to use that dialect rather than their own when in the public eye. Alternatively, at times those speaking the dialect perceived as more 'correct' may try to use another dialect when in the public eye to be seen as a 'man/woman of the people'.
Corpus planning
Corpus planning consists of three traditionally recognised forms: graphization, standardization and modernization. Graphization involves the development of written scripts and orthography of languages.[5] Standardization involves giving a selected variety of a language precedence over the other varieties as the "standard" form for others to emulate.[6] Modernization often involves expanding the lexicon of a language as a result of language shift over time.
- To promote national identity, what are strictly dialects of the same language may be promoted as separate languages to promote a sense of national identity (examples include Danish and Norwegian, and Serbian and Croatian – the latter two also use different scripts for what is linguistically the same language – Cyrillic for Serbian and roman script for Croatian). Whether or not something is a language can also involve language politics, for instance, Macedonian.
- On the contrary, to unify the country, China worked towards a common national language with a standard written script (see: Chinese script. After the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China continued the efforts of a common national language, renaming the standard language from 国语 guóyǔ ("national language") to 普通话 pǔtōnghuà ("common speech") in 1955.
- 'Political correctness' describes the situation where language forms must be used (or not used) to comply with national (or group) ideology
- Co-existence of competing spelling systems for the same language, associated with different political camps. Examples:
- Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters
- Bolsheviks in 1918, after which the "old orthography" became associated with the White movement.
- The two spelling systems for the Belarusian language, one of which is associated with the country's political opposition.
Language is also utilised in political matters to unify, organise and criticise in order to unify a political group.
- The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet preserved in Transnistria.
Acquisition planning (language in education)
Acquisition planning often manifests in education policies after the status and corpus planning policies have been introduced.[9] These policies can take in the form of compulsory language education programmes, enforcing a specific language of instruction in schools or development of educational materials. In some countries, mainstream education is offered in one language: English in the United States, Italian in Italy, Russian in Russia, just to name a few. In some countries, mainstream education provide education in several languages. This is especially common in countries with more than one official languages. Some countries promote multilingualism in their policies: bilingual policy in Singapore, three-language formula in India, just to name a few.
Linguistic discrimination
Linguistic discrimination, or linguicism, refers to unequal treatment of speakers of different languages or language varieties. It can be observed with regard to spoken language, where speakers may be discriminated against based on their regional dialect, their sociolect, their accent, or their vocabulary. In terms of language planning, linguistic discrimination can occur at different stages, such as the choice of one or more official languages, choosing the language of instruction, the availability of essential services such as health care in minority languages, and the protection or lack thereof of minority languages and dialects.
In the United States, speakers of
Colonialism
These conflicts between states regarding names still nevertheless indicate a conflict over ownership or belonging. For example, the
Recognition of importance of names
The
- 'encourage national and international geographical names standardization;
- 'promote the international dissemination of nationally standardized geographical names information; and
- 'adopt single romanization systems for the conversion of each non-Roman writing system to the Roman alphabet.'[30]
The UNCSGN occurs every five years, and the
Other names
The politics applied to naming places can also applies to naming ethnic groups. For example, it is generally offensive to use words which are considered by some to have negative implications (
As another example, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy writes that although they have been 'called the Iroquois Confederacy by the French, and the League of Five Nations by the English, the confederacy is properly called the Haudenosaunee Confederacy meaning People of the long house.'[32] The rejection of the exonym 'Iroqouis' (which is still the name used in, for example, the Wikipedia page) is inherent in the statement that the confederacy (and the people) are properly called 'Haudenosaunee'.
References
- ^ Edwards, John. "Language, Prestige, and Stigma," in Contact Linguistics. Ed. Hans Goebel. New York: de Gruyter, 1996.
- ^ Ferguson, Gibson. (2006). Language Planning and Education. Edinburgh University Press.
- ^ Cooper, Robert L. (1989). Language planning and social change. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- S2CID 143178621. Retrieved September 7, 2018.
- ^ Liddicoat, Anthony J. (2005). "Corpus Planning: Syllabus and Materials Development," in Eli Hinkel, Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning, Routledge, pp 993-1012.
- ^ Christian, Donna (1988). "Language Planning: the view from linguistics", in Frederick J. Newmeyer, Language: the socio-cultural context, Cambridge University Press, pp 193-211.
- ISBN 978-0-521-64572-0
- ^ ISBN 978-0-691-01468-5
- ^ Ferguson, Charles A. "Sociolinguistic Settings of Language Planning." Language Planning Processes. Ed. Rubin, Joan, Björn H. Jernudd, Jyotirindra Das Gupta, Joshua A. Fishman and Charles A. Ferguson. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1977
- ^ Freeman, E. B. (1982). The Ann Arbor decision: The importance of teachers' attitudes toward language. The Elementary School Journal, 83(1), 41–47. https://doi.org/10.1086/461291
- ISSN 0013-175X.
- ISBN 978-3-11-086639-1
- S2CID 145358972.
- ^ CiteSeerX 10.1.1.109.2253.
- ^ "English | Ethnologue".
- ^ Billings, Linda. (2015). Does Science Need a Global Language? English and the Future of Research. by Scott L. Montgomery. Technology and Culture. 56. 261-263. 10.1353/tech.2015.0013.
- ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-05-03.
- ^ Hammond, Alex (2014-03-06). "How did English become the world's most spoken language? | ESL". ESL language studies abroad. Retrieved 2023-05-03.
- ^ Crystal, D. (2006). English worldwide. In R. Hogg & D. Denison (Eds.), A History of the English Language (pp. 420-439). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511791154.010
- ^ Phillipson, Robert (2008). "Lingua franca or lingua frankensteinia? English in European integration and globalisation1". World Englishes. 27 (2): 250–267. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.2008.00555.x. ISSN 1467-971X
- ^ Davies, Alan. 1996. “Review Article: Ironising the myth of Linguicism.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 17:6, 485-596.
- ^ Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ISSN 1573-1863.
- ^ Reagan, T. (2006). Language policy and sign languages. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An introduction to language policy. Theory and method (pp. 329–345). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
- ^ a b c Vuolteenahi, Jani; Berg, Lawrence D. (2009). "Towards critical toponymies". In Berg, Lawrence D.; Vuolteenaho, Jani (eds.). Critical toponymies: The contested politics of place naming. Ashgate.
- ^ a b c d e f Helander, Kaisa Rautio (2009). "Toponymic silence and Sámi place names during the growth of the Norwegian nation state". In Berg, Lawrence D.; Vuolteenaho, Jani (eds.). Critical toponymies: The contested politics of place naming. Ashgate.
- ^ a b c d e Kearns, Robin; Berg, Lawrence D. (2009). "Proclaiming place: Towards a geography of place name pronunciation". In Berg, Lawrence D.; Vuolteenaho, Jani (eds.). Critical toponymies: The contested politics of place naming. Ashgate.
- ^ S2CID 128707537.
- ^ doi:10.3986/AGS48103.
- ^ United Nations Statistics Division (n.d.). "UNGEGN Mandate". Retrieved 28 March 2021.
- ^ United Nations Statistics Division (n.d.). "United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN)". Retrieved 28 March 2021.
- ^ Haudenosaunee Confederacy (n.d.). "Who We Are". Retrieved 9 Apr 2021.