Language Planning in Education
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L A N G U A G E P L A N N I N G I N E D U C AT I O N
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LANGUAGE PLANNING IN EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to affect the structure, function, and acquisition of languages. In education, the most important language planning decisions are about the choice of medium of instruction (Tollefson and Tsui, 2004)—which variety or varieties should be used as the medium (or media) of instruction? In many settings, it is widely assumed that the obvious choice is a standard variety, normally with high prestige and spoken by powerful groups, including the upper-middle class. Particular varieties become standardized as a result of complex social processes in which powerful groups shape language attitudes, and linguistic norms are codified (e.g., in dictionaries and grammar books). When official bodies, such as ministries of education, undertake language planning, the result may be language policies in education, that is, statements of goals and means for achieving them that constitute guidelines or rules shaping language structure, language use, and language acquisition within educational institutions. This chapter summarizes research on the role of language policy and planning (LPP) within educational institutions. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
LPP emerged as a distinct field of research in the 1960s. The term language planning was initially used in Haugen’s (1959) study of the development of standard Norwegian, and referred to both corpus planning and status planning. Corpus planning entails efforts to affect the structure of language varieties, and includes processes such as standardization, graphization, purification, and terminology development. Status planning involves efforts to affect the status of language varieties —which varieties should be used in government, the media, the courts, schools, and elsewhere? The initial period of development in the field of LPP took place through a series of influential publications in the 1960s and early 1970s (Fishman, 1968a, 1972, 1974; Fishman, Ferguson, and Das Gupta, 1968; Rubin and Jernudd, 1971). Much of the earliest research in LPP focused attention on devising a conceptual framework for LPP and on a limited range of practical concerns, primarily involving corpus planning in newly emerging S. May and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, 3–14. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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J A M E S W. T O L L E F S O N
nation-states. Thus in its early years, LPP was closely linked with “modernization” and “development” programs in “developing” countries, and it was heavily influenced by modernization theory (Rostow, 1960). Although LPP in education was not a major focus of this initial research, it soon emerged as a central concern, because corpus-planning issues such as language standardization and script reform necessarily involve educational institutions. It was widely believed that LPP in education could play a significant role in the
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