Language Policy and Planning

Language Planning and Policy (definitions)

Language Planning and Policy.
1- By theory
a) Top-down language planning and policy
b) Bottom-up language planning and policy
2- By kinds or activities
a) Status planning
b) Corpus planning
c) Prestige planning
3- By participants
a) Politicians
b) Powerful community leaders
c) Bureaucrats
d) Consultants and language experts and education planners and administrations
4- By purpose
a) Official language
b) National language
c) Second and foreign language
d) Educational language(s)


A) Language Planning and Policy:
‘Language planning’ and 'language policy' are "two different yet related concepts", which "share some common characteristics”. They are both top down, "involving deliberate and organized efforts to solve language problems, which very often have a social, political and/or economic orientation" (cited in Poon, 2004).

The major difference between these two constructs is that language planning is "a macro sociological activity at a governmental and national level" only, whereas language policy can be "either a macro- or micro sociological activity at a governmental and national level or at an institutional level” (cited in Poon, 2004).

Language planning deals with status planning and corpus planning while language policy deals with corpus planning and acquisition planning (cited in Poon, 2004).

Language policy may operate at either a governmental or an institutional level in absence of language planning. Therefore, language policy covers a wider range of situations than
Language planning, which is government-directed and deals with status planning and corpus planning only. (Poon 2004).

Language planning (during the 1950s and 1960s), and language policy (in the late of the 1980s) are terms refer to any effort to modify language form and use (Spolsky 1998).

Language planning is a body of ideas, laws and regulations (language policy), change rules, beliefs, and practices intended to achieve a planned change in the language use in one or more communities. Language planning involves deliberate future oriented change in systems of language code and or speaking in a societal context (Kaplan 1997).

Kaplan (1997) classifies four categories of language planning (government agencies, education agencies, non government organizations, and other organizations).

“Language Planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behavior of others with respect to the acquisition, structure [corpus], or functional allocation [status] of their language codes” (Cooper 1989)

“If we look at developments in the language policy in post-independence Malaysia, we can observe a careful balance between traditional nationalism and pragmatism in the process of reducing the importance of English (Gill 2002).

“The ultimate aim was to reduce the prominence of English and replace it with Bahasa Malaysia” (Gill 2002).

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