DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Language planning
Development
Natural resources (deposits such as oil and minerals, water, fertile land and fisheries) are at the disposal of states and subject to policies of various kinds. Populations are also resources, their abilities and, through education, their qualifications and skills. One such ability is the languages spoken in the community and those which the community wishes to promote. Whether the community has an explicit view of its language situation or not it will inevitably have a language policy which determines such matters as which language(s) are to be recognized as the official language(s) of the state, which languages are to be used as medium of instruction in schools, as the medium of broadcasting, in the legal system and so on. Official intervention by the state in some cases requires the institutionalizing of a state body which oversees prescriptive issues, bodies such as the Academie Française and the Malaysian National Languages Board. Even where there is no such official state body there will be some para-statal body (such as the BBC in the UK), publishing houses and newspapers that shape attitude and emphasize norms. Further there will be a policy, again explicit or not, indicating the official attitude towards minority languages used in the community and determining which languages are to be taught as foreign languages in schools. Such community (usually national) policies come under the general label of language planning.
The need for a national language plan is acute in newly formed communities which are faced with immediate decisions about which language(s) to select as the official state language. Newly independent states in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were faced with such a decision. In the main the majority chose to continue with the existing situation, which explains why so many former British colonies still use English as their official language, however many other languages may be current within their borders and however few nationals actually use English as their main means of communication. Inertia, continuation of their British connection, scarcity of resources to provide the necessary materials (textbooks and other reading materials) in an indigenous language, unwillingness to compel a choice among the competitor indigenous languages for selection as the new official language, reasons such as these have tended to continue the language status quo.
While the need always exists for language planning on a small scale, such as which languages to offer in a school curriculum over the next period, it is rare, even in the newly emerging states mentioned above, to be given the opportunity to develop a national language plan. Such an opportunity did arise in Australia in the 1980s where Joe Lo Bianco was invited to develop a National Policy on Languages. Australia was not a newly emerging state, but, like Canada which had some years earlier produced its own national policy of bilingualism, Australia did need to come to terms with its new multi-racial (and multilingual) population, following the largescale immigration of the 1950s. At the same time it needed to adjust to its geoeconomic reality of being a ‘European’ country in the Asian-Pacific region. And very late in the day there was the abiding recognition of the injury to indigenous communities whose languages were dying if not dead. What was needed, it was decided, was an informed view of the linguistic ecology of Australia which would allow practical and ethical decisions to be made. This is a classic applied linguistics problem since it required a balance of political, educational and linguistic understanding. Such a combination can be found in the report by Joe Lo Bianco published in 1987 The National Policy on Languages.
The activity of language policy formulation is, writes the author:
known as language planning when explicit statements and programs are made and enacted to respond to urgent problems of a linguistic nature. Choices and priorities need to be made and set since language pervades all of public and private life. The context means that the federal nature of Australia, consisting of at least eight governments, influences the type of language planning possible in Australia. Therefore, it is necessary that broad statements with clear principles be enunciated so that the language problems which face the country as a whole can be tackled at the various relevant levels by the appropriate authorities.
(Lo Bianco 1987: 189)
The proposed policy is comprehensive and takes account of what are called the ‘language problems which confront Australia’. These, summarized, are:
English:
• inadequate past attempts to tackle illiteracy levels
• persistently high levels of inability to use/comprehend English among immigrants
• deficiencies in ESL for children
LOTEs:
• lack of take-up, especially among boys
• lack of recognition and use of migrant L1s
• decline of aboriginal languages
Also mentioned are the demands of tourism and the needs of interpreting and translating. In both cases there is insufficient recognition of the needs and possible opportunities.
The National Policy on Languages has been very influential in Australia. It is probably the case that it would not have had the impact it has had without its overarching applied-linguistic vision.
