National Languages and Language Planning

National and Official Languages

In sociolinguistics the distinction between a national language and an official language is generally made
along the affective-referential dimension, or more precisely in this context, the ideological-instrumental
dimension. A national language is the language of a political, cultural and social unit. It is generally
developed and used as a symbol of national unity. Its functions are to identify the nation and unite its
people. An official language, by contrast, is simply a language which may be used for government
business. Its function is primarily utilitarian rather than symbolic. It is possible, of course, for one
language to serve both functions. Many countries make no distinction between a national language and
an official language. In countries which regard themselves as monolingual nations, the same language
serves both purposes. In multilingual communities, however, all kinds of permutations have been used
in order to satisfy both political and social goals on the one hand, and more practical and utilitarian
needs on the other.
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 Indonesian in Indonesia.
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.

Official Status and Minority Languages

Because of its colonial history, as well as its value as a world language and international lingua franca
English is an official language in many countries throughout the world., such as Pakistan, Fiji, Vanuatu,
Jamaica and the Bahamas. Often it shares this official status with an indigenous language. such as Malay
in Malaysia, Swahili in Tanzania and Gilbertese in Kinbati. But, interestingly, English is not legally an
official language of England, the USA, or New Zealand, In these countries it has not been considered
necessary to legislate that the language of the majority is an official language. In New Zealand, ironically,
although English is de facto (in fact or actuality) the official language of govemment and education,
Maori and New Zealand Sign Language are the two languages which have legal or de jure status as
official languages.

What Price a National Language?

Over the last hundred years, nationhood and independence have been very important political issues
throughout the world. In the struggle to establish a distinct national identity. and to secure
independence from colonial rule, the development of a national language has often 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 multilingual countries, such as Indonesia, where there are large populations
speaking hundreds of different vemaculars, a national language is not only a useful lingua franca and
official language, it also serves a symbolic unifying function for these nations.
Planning for a National Official Language
Form, Functions and attitudes
What is involyed in developing a code or variety (whether dialect or language) so that is suitable for
official use? Addressing this challenge involves issues relating to the form of the variety, the functions it
serves, and the attitudes that people hold towards it. 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 of 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. 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 devel op pride in
the language, or loyalty towards it. This is known as status planning or prestige planning. socially
prestigious groups. So selection and acceptance are steps which involve social and political factors.
Codification and elaborating the code to handle a wider range of functions are, by contrast, essentially
linguistic processes. Producing a dictionary and ensuring there are words available for teaching science
in the variety, for instance, are problems for linguists. In practice, however, all these steps are closely
interrelated.

The Linguist's Role in Language Planning

1. Developing Vocabulary
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 often 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. A specific example of the kinds of choices which
faced the Maori Language Commission in this area is illustrated by the problem of providing Maori
names for Government institutions, including themselves. They were called at first Te Kdmihana md Te
Reo Maori, Te reo is a widely known Maori phrase meaning 'the language', but the title also includes the
word kDmihana which simply borrows the English word commission and adapts it to the Maori sound
system. The transliteration is quite predictable, with |k| substituting for |c|. |h| substituting for |s|
(since Maori has no |s|, and |h| is the usual fricative substitution), and a final vowel, since Maori is a
language in which all syllables end in vowels. The Commission changed its name however to Te Taura
Whiri i te Reo Maori (literally 'the rope binding together (the many strands of) the Maori language'). This
is a Maori name for the Commission not one borrowed from English. The commissioners felt that such a
label had greater linguistic and cultural integrity. and this provides an insight into how they see their
task.
2. Acceptance
The Maori Language Commission can recommend that certain linguistic forms be adopted by the media
and used in schools, just as the Norwegian government regularly publishes its lists of approved words.
But people have to accept and use them. This is what finally determines whether a proposed form
succeeds or not, and this applies as much to an individual word as to a new code selected to serve as a
standard official language. The adoption of forms by the media can contribute to the process. But finally
the people will decide. The Norwegian government's ambivalence between Bokmål and Nynorsk in
Norway has been a source of irritation to people. And the government's regular pronouncements in the
media on new 'official usages' which represent attempts at compromise have not always been accepted.
In Singapore, for example, the government's Speak Mandarin Campaign has been similarly successful in
persuiading the dialect-speaking Chinese population to switch within the space of a generation to
Mandarin from Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hockchew, Hainanese, Hakka and other Chinese dialects.
Phyllis Chew describes it as 'perhaps the world's most successful language-engineering campaign'. The
percentage of Chinese households using Mandarin as the dominant language in Singapore rose from
13% in 1980 to 45% in 2000
3. Acquisition Planning
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. Language planners may be asked to advise about a range
of issues such as who should be the target of the language promotion efforts, the most effective
language teaching methods in particular contexts, what materials should be used, and how the
programmes should be evaluated. Should everyone have access to language teaching, for instance? How
much say should a local community have in the way a language is taught, or the materials used , as
opposed to a top-down uniform approach monitored by the government?
In many countries, the education system plays a crucial role in acquisation planning, and issues of
access, curriculum, methodology and evaluation are decided by government departments.