Sociolinguistics
National language and
language planning
By
:
FourthGroup
/ PBI 3 B
NelaFitria 2313.050
Nisa
Amelia 2313.051
Nova
Anggrainy 2313.053
Lecture
Consellor :
Irwandi,
S.S.,M.Pd.
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTEMENT
SEKOLAH
TINGGI AGAMA ISLAM NEGERI ( STAIN )
SJECH
M.DJAMIL DJAMBEK BUKITTINGGI
2014/2015
Chapter
I
Preface
A. Background
There
are many different social reason for choosing a particular code or variety in a
multilingual community. A choice is there for those who speak lesserused a
languange in a community where the people in power used a word language such as
English? How do the economic and political factors influence language choice?
The various constrains or language choice face by different communities are
explore, as well as the potential a longer term affects of these choice a language
shift or language death.
Formula of Problem
1. What
isPlanning National and Official Language?
2. What
is for a National Official Language?
3.
What is Developing a Standard Variety in
Norway?
4. What
is the Linguist’s Role in Language Planning?
B. Purpose Of The Complilation
1.
To knowNational and Official Language.
2. To
know Planning for a National Official Language.
3.
To knowDeveloping a Standard Variety in
Norway.
4. To
know the Linguist’s Role in Language Planning.
ii
Chapter 1
National
Language and Language Planning
A. 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 the people of the nation. An official
language, by contrast, is simply a language, which may be used for government
business. Its function is primary utilitarian rather than symbolic. It is
possible, of course, for one language to serve both functions.
In
multilingual countries, the government often declares a particular language to
be national language for political reasons. The declarations 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 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. So
French is an official language in many countries, such as Zaire, the Ivory
Coast and Chad, where France war previously a colonial power, and Arabic is an
official language in Israel alongside Hebrew.
In
many countries there is no one languages which can adequately serve as the only
official language. A world languages such as English is often used as an
official language for external official functions, alongside a local language
which serves internal official functions (e.g. Philippines, Tanzania,
Paraguay). In some countries, giving more than one language the status of
official languages is a recognition of the linguistic and culture diversity
within the country (e.g. India, Papua New Guinea, Singapore).
a. Official
Status and Minority Languages
Official status with an
indigenous language such as Malay in Malaysia, Swahili in Tanzania and
Gilbertese in Kiribati. But interestingly, English is not legally an official
language of England, the United States of America, 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 in fact the official
language of government and education, Maori is the only language which has been
legally declared an official
language.Maori was declared an official language of New Zealand in 1987. Maori
activists campaigned for many years for the right to use Maori in official and
administrative contexts. Most used peaceful means but minority groups have
often taken very radical action in order to get official recognition for their
languages. Many minority would like to gain official status for their
languages, but because cost in terms of providing services and information in all
official language are considerable and most government count them carefully.
b.
What Price a National Languages?
Many countries have regarded development of a
single national language as a way of symbolising the unity of a nation. ‘One
nation, one language’ has been a popular and affective slogan. In earlier
centuries the national language of a political entity often emerged naturally
and relatively unselfconsciously over a period of time.
B. Planning
for a National Official Language
a.
Forms, Functions, and Attitudes
There are generally
four interrelated steps:
1.
Selection: choosing the variety or code
to be developed
2.
Codification: standardizing its
structural or linguistic features this
kind of linguistic processing is sometimes called corpus planning
3.
Elaboration: extending its functions for
use in new domains, this involves developing the necessary linguistic resources
for handling new concept and contexts
4.
Securing its acceptance: the status of
the new variety in important and so people’s attitudes to the variety being
developed must be considered, step may be needed to enhance is prestige, for
instance and so encourage people to develop pride in the language or loyalty
towards it.
b.
Tanzania
1. Selecting
the code
Tanzania face the dilemma of which language
to choose as its official national language, choosing one language from over a hundred
indigenous language, each associated with a particular tribe, would have
simply provoked discontent, if not intertribal warfare.
2. Codifying
and elaborating Swahili
The fact that it was being used in primary education and for
administration meant standardization was essential. Its codification involved
developing a standard spelling system, describing the grammar of variety selected
as the new standard, and writing the
dictionary to record its vocabulary. In 1961, Swahili was used in more and more
context foe education, administration, politics and law. Its vocabulary was
expanded to meet the demands of new context by borrowing freely from Arabic and
English as appropriate.
c. Attitudes
to Swahili
The role of Swahili, in unifying the
people in Tanzania to work for independence guaranteed it prestige and positive
attitudes. The story of the acceptance of Swahili as nations language of
Tanzania its therefore an interesting one, Swahili as serves as lingua franca
in a county with hundreds of different tribal vernaculars. It provides an economical solution to the
problem of which language to use for local administrations and primary
education, it provides a culturally acceptable symbol of unity. Linguistic diversity can seem problematic to those working for
political unification, it is potentially divisive, Swahili has provided a very
convenient compromise in Tanzania. But finally it is important to remember that
the story of how Swahili became the national language of Tanzania might be told
rather differently by a group whose tribal vernacular was a competing lingua
franca.
C.
Developing a Standard Variety in 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
dialect as the L varieties, but no standard Norwegian language. Upper-class
people spoke Danish with Norwegian pronunciation in formal situation, and a
compromise between that and local Norwegian dialect in informal contexts.
Lower-class and rural people used Norwegian dialect, with some Danish influence
evident in the speech of townspeople.
1.
Selecting Code
Essentially the
Norwegian government had the choice of developing a national language from
standard Danish or from local Norwegian dialect. choosing a variety from among
the regional Norwegian dialects raised problems relating to the form and new
functions required of a standard language. Any dialect selected would need
codifying and would require extensive functional elaboration. And the problem
of which dialect to select raised obvious headaches in relation to people’s
attitudes. Two different attempt were
made to solve the problem. One attempt involved a variety based on Danish with
some modification in the direction of Norwegian pronunciation. The eventually
developed into Bokmal. The other approach created a new Norwegian standard by
drawing on a range of rural Norwegian dialects. It was first called Lansmal
(language of the country), and later Nynorsk (new Norwegian).
2.
Codification and Elaboration
The
Nynorsk solution, which involved amalgamating features from several dialects,
is the most intriguing from a linguistic point of view. Rural dialects resource
also solved the problem of functional elaboration, or extending the use of
Norwegian into domains where Danish had previously been the only appropriate
code. New words were needed for many concepts which had previously been
discussed only in Danish so Aasen used dialect forms as his main resource for
creating new words.
Since the late nineteenth century then,
Norway has had these two competing official written varieties. Language
planners have been trying to bring the two closer together (into samnorsk or
‘united Norwegian’) through continued codification efforts. the two varieties
are now very close. They are certainly mutually comprehensible. Their sound
systems are identical (that is, they have the same number of contrasting
sounds), though particular pronunciation differ. Their syntax is almost
identical. The differ mainly in the form
of particular words (e.gheimligevsheimlege), and in spelling (e.gfravsfra). So
the arguments are essentially about the appropriate form of a written Norwegian
standard.
3.
Acepptance
Though
Norwegian nationalists enthusiastically welcomed Nynorsk, the Norwegian-based
variety, and rejected the modified Danish alternative, the influential educated
city-dwellers did not. They regarded a standard based on rural dialects as
rustic and uncivilized. 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. In some countries a standard dialect of a
language, suitable for official uses and acceptable as a national symbol, has
emerged naturally, with little or no help from government agencies or
linguistic experts. In Norway, as in many more recently developing nations,
thing have not been so simple. It has been necessary to make deliberate
choices, to accelerate the process of language standardization, and to
legislate on the status of particular varieties. It is clear that language
planning is a fascinating mixture of political and social considerations, as
well as linguistic ones.
D. The
linguist’s role in language planning
Language
academics have for centuries, but it is also true that individuals have often
had an enormous influence on language planning, and especially on the
standardisation or codification of a particular variety.
1. Codification
of orthography
A century earlier in New Zealand, Thomas kendall,
the first resident missionary, produced a rough attempt at an orthography for
maori in 1815.Missionaries were often good linguists who produced a spelling
system which closely reflected the
pronunciation of the language. Inevitably there were problems, however. In
samoan, for instance, the sound [ɧ] represent in English as ngwas accurately identified as a single
sound rather than two separable sound.Samoan therefore write laga (‘weave’) but say something which
sounds to English ears like langa. The
write galu but say something which
sounds like ngalu. Consequently
English speakers generally mispronounce words likemogamoga when they first see samoan written down. In maori,
however, where [ɧ] also occurs, this single sound was written as two letters,ng. as a result maori words like tangi
(‘weep’) which are almost identical in pronunciation to samoantagi, are
nevertheless spelt differently. However, the samoanorhography is strictly a
more precise reflection of its sound system-one symbol is used for one sound.
This illustrate the influence a missionary could have on the codification
process.A recent problem in standardizing the spelling of maori is the choice
between a macron over the top of a vowel letter marking its length ā vs a
double vowel, aa.
2. Developing
vocabulary
A
specific example of the kinds of choice which faced the maori language
commission in this area is illustrated by the problem of providing maori names
for government institution, including themselves. They were called at first tekōmihanamote reo māori. Te reo is a
widely known maori phrase meaning ‘the language’, but the title also includes
the word komihana 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 language in
which all syllables end in vowels. The commission changed its name , however,
to tetaurawhiri o te reo māori
(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. In
advising others on usage, they are often faced with the dilemma of which of
these options to recommend:
a. A
word borrowed from English
b. An
equivalent maori word which is perhaps not well known or with a slightly
different meaning which could be adapted.
c. A
word newly created from maori resource.
The commission takes the view that its task is not
simply a mechanical one of making maori a suitable instrument for official
communication. It recognizes another more symbolic and less instrumental
dimension to its task. Consequently where possible the commission uses native
resource, trying to ‘remain true to the spirit of the language’: but of course
this is not always achievable.Coining words is another solution. The term reo irirangi literally ‘spirit voice’
uses native resource to label a modern object, the radio.
3. Acceptance
The
maori language commission can recommend that certain linguistic forms be
adopted, just as the Norwegian government regularly publishes its lists of
approved words. But people determine have to use them. What people accept and
use will finally determine 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.Nevertheless it is generally true that government
support plays an important part in gaining acceptance for a code. In China,
Putonghua (or mandarin) has been promoted by the chinese government as the
standard variety of chinese since 1949 when the people’s republic was
established. The government’s unwavering attitude and deliberate efforts to
promote its use in a wide variety of contexts have led to its gaining wide
acceptance among the 1100 million or so chinese who make up the republic.
Putonghua uses the pronunciation Northern Chinese dialects, and the vocabulary
of modern colloquial Chinese. These choice have also helped people to accept
it. A variety begins which some status always has a useful headstart.
Chapter
III
Conclusion
Language
planning is defined most simply as deliberate language change. This covers a
wide variety of activities including the introduction of the new labels for
fruit, the reform of spelling systems, and the provision of advice on
non-sexist terminology such as Ms and
chairperson. It also includes the
development of national language and standard dialect.
Language
planner generally focus on specific language problems. Their role is to
developed a policy of language use which will solve the problems appropriately
in particular speech communities. A few specific cases of language planning in
order to exemplify some of the issues which have to be resolved by language
planners, and some of the ways which have been used to resolved them. We have
seen for instance that language planners may need to developed a variety
upwards into new H domains, as with Swahili, tokpisin and Indonesian, and
Nynorsk, or alternatively downwards into new L domains as in the case of
Hebrew, Bokmāl, and to some extent Mandarin Chinese.
This
chapter has been concerned mainly with the language policies of countries and
states rather than the language behaviour of individuals. Yet it has been clear
that ultimately it is the patterns of linguistic behaviour of individual
language users that determine whether a national policy will succeed or not. If
people do not use an official language then it will simply wither away. If
recommendations about approved or preferred spellings are ignore, they will
become defunct. The reasons why people adopt one form and not another are
complicated. Language expresses identity and membership of particular groups as
well as notionhood.
Multilingualism
highlight linguistic diversity and makes it easier to perceive, as we have been
in the first part of this book. But it is
clear that there is rich linguistic diversity within languages too. Members of
monolingual speech communities use this diversity to signal their attitudes and
allegiances, just as multilingual people use their different languages for
these purposes. Kalala signaled his ethnic group membership when he used Shi.
He signaled his friendship group and age when he used Indoubil. His variety of
Swahili reflected his regional and social background.