Summaries- "Introduction to Sociolinguistics," by Janet Holmes. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

National Languages and Language Planning

Difference between official and national language:

Definition:

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. However, the official language is a language which may be used for government business. Its functions are utilitarian rather than symbolic. One language of these two can serve both functions.

Their use by government:

Governments use the terms official and national according to their political aims.

Paraguay

                                    National                              official

                                 Guarani, Spanish                    Spanish

Tanzania

                                    National                               official

                                     Swahili                         Swahili, English

Vanuatu

                                    National                                official

                                 Bislama                         Bislama, French, English

Many countries do not make a distinction between the national and the official language. In monolingual nations, the same language serves both purposes.

In multilingual nations, the government declares a particular language to be the national language for political reasons. For example, it may be an attempt to assert the nationhood of a state just like Swahili in Tanzania, Hebrew in Israel, Malay in Malaysia, and Indonesian in Indonesia.

If this language is not capable of serving internal and external functions like government or administration, another official language is needed, just like French in Ivory Coast, Chad and Zaire. Also, Arabic is an official language in Israeli besides Hebrew.

When the choice of a national language is problematic in a multilingual nation, an official language must exist. For example, India has failed to label Hindi as a national language; therefore there are 14 official languages along side English and Hindi. Zaire has four African languages as national languages. Haiti has two national languages: Haitian Creole and French, but French is the official language.

Official status

English is an official language in countries like Pakistan, Jamaica and Vanuatu, and often shares this status with one of the indigenous languages such as Malay, and Swahili in Tanzania.   

In countries like USA, England or New Zealand, the language of the majority is not legally described as the official language. In New Zeeland, although English is the language of administration and government and education, Maori is legally declared as the official language. This declaration gave the language a symbolic meaning that acknowledged the importance of the country. In Wales, the government made Welsh the language of education and government, but it has no official status in Britain.

In India, linguistic minorities have rioted over the governmental ignorance of their demands. In Canada, although English and French were given equal status in all aspects of federal administration, the Quebec government was not happy over the English domination. 

Many minorities would like to gain official status for their languages but the costs of providing services and information in all official languages are considerable.

What price the National Language

A national language of a political entity would emerge as the official language. “One nation, one language” was an effective slogan. Linguistic nationalism in Europe grew by the 19^th century.

It then doubled in the 20^th century when colonized countries became independent. At that time Nationhood and independence were important political issues around the world.

-       In multilingual countries like Tanzania, Indonesia and China and Philippine, the symbolic value of a national language in the face of colonization became very strong.   

-       In a single dominant group, the issue of choosing an official language does not arise. In Somalia, Somali is the first language, and the national official language.  In Denmark, Danish is the first and the national language.

Political influence in multilingual countries plays a role in choosing the national language. For example: when Philippines gained independence, Pilipino became the national language. It was based on Tagalog (the language of the most influential political group in the country).  However, this is not the case in Indonesia, where the language of the elite Javanese is not selected as the national language, but rather Malay that was widely used as a trade language. It was more neutral than Javanese which had a complicated politeness system. India and a number of African countries avoided selecting a national language because the wrong choice leads to riots. However, this is not the case in Tanzania which successfully adopted a national language.

Part Two (planning)

The process of selecting the national language (Planning)

   Four steps are crucial for making a language suitable for official use:

1-   Selection (choosing the variety to be developed). It is usually based on a political decision 

2-   Codification (corpus planning – linguistic processing) it has to do with standardizing the structural and linguistic features of the variety.

3-   Elaboration (extending the functions of the variety to be used in more domains. this involves developing the necessary linguistic resources for handling new concepts and contexts).

4-   Securing its acceptance: status of the variety and attitudes of the people towards it must be taken in consideration.

Selection and acceptance are based on social and political factors. However, codification and elaboration are related to linguistic factors. The linguists must make sure of the availability of linguistic resources for that language in terms of words and structures.

The planning process of a national official language in a large multilingual country (Tanzania) where the competing varieties are distinct languages.  

Selection: the first president of Tanzania chose Swahili as the official national language. It was difficult to choose English as it was the language of the colonizer. The choice was based on the facts that Swahili was already the language of education. It also served as a lingua franca of the anti-colonial movement, and strengthened social relations between different groups that were subject to colonization. Swahili is also identified s an African language, as it belongs to the Bantu family.

Codification and Elaboration:

v Standardization began by the British Administration before independence.

v A southern variety of Swahili was selected as the basis for the standard.

v The codification involved developing spelling system, describing grammar, and writing a dictionary for the vocabulary.

v After independence, Swahili was used for many contexts like education, administration, politics and law. The vocabulary expanded to cover the needs of new contexts by borrowing from English and Arabic. 

v The president recommended that Swahili would be used for post-primary education, high courts and governments. This required more vocabulary for making new technical terms needed for different fields.

Attitudes

Because Swahili was used to unite the people of Tanzania it was regarded in a positive way. Tanzanians were very loyal to the language that united them in working towards freedom. The language also acquired the charisma of the president who used Swahili in different occasions rather than English. Literary works of Shakespeare were also translated into Swahili. Swahili had a neutral status because it was not identified with a particular tribe.

Developing a standard variety in Norway:

Selection: In Norway there was a Diglossia situation where Danish was the H Variety and the language of the oppressor from whom Norway gained independence. Other Norwegian vernaculars are the L varieties. The attitudes towards Danish were hostile, and it was not used by people at rural countries. On the other hand, choosing from the regional Norwegian varieties also stirred problems in relation to people’s attitudes, as well as form and function.

So, there were two approaches taken to develop a standard written variety of Norwegian. One approach selected a variety based on Danish with some orthographic and morphological modification reflecting Norwegian educated speech. (Bokmal). The other approach created a New Norwegian written standard by drawing on a range of Norwegian rural dialects. (Landsmal or later Nynorsk) also called New Norwegian.

Codification and elaboration:

   The New Norwegian was subject to a process of codification and elaboration by Ivar Aasen, a school teacher who:

Ø Wrote a grammar and a 40.000 word dictionary.

Ø Identified common grammatical patterns in different dialects, and chose vocabulary from a range of different dialects also. He chose the forms that were the least corrupted and influenced by Danish.

   Rural dialects solved the problem of functional elaboration or extending the use of Norwegian into domains where Danish had been regarded as the appropriate code.

   By the 20^th century, language planners tried to bring Bokmal and Landsmal together through codification efforts. After WW2, there was a gap between the two languages, and the gap widened by 1990 when there were arguments about the appropriate written form of Norwegian.

   The two languages, though different, share common syntactic features and morphological variants. However they differ in terms of words. Pronouncement is made by the Norwegian Language Council which identifies the appropriate pronouncement.

Glossary

Official language اللغة الرسمية

National Language اللغة القومية

Nationalism القومية

Indigenous أصلي

Riots أعمال شغب

Codification إرساء ووضع القواعد  

Elaboration الاستفاضة

Orthographic إملائي