EL 104 4th | PRELIMS

LESSON 4: LANGUAGE POLICY -- WHAT IS IT AND WHAT IT CAN DO

CONTENT
 Language Policy Meaning
 What is Language Policy and What can it do.
 Importance of Language Policy

OBJECTIVES
At the end of the discussion, the students should be able:
1. To define the meaning of Language Policy.
2. To know what Language Policy is.
3. To determine what Language Policy can do.

LANGUAGE - a system of communication used by a particular country.

POLICY- prudent or expedient (improper and immoral action) conduct or action.
LANGUAGE POLICY – is what a government does either officially through legislation, court decisions or
policy to determine how languages are used, cultivate language skills needed to meet national priorities
or to establish the rights of individuals or groups to use and maintain languages.

INTRODUCTION – LANGUAGE POLICY

 According to Kaplan and Baldauf (1997), “A language policy is a body of ideas, laws, regulations,
rules and practices”
 Lo Bianco defines the field as specific history and local circumstances influence.
 McCarty (2011) defines language policy as "a complex sociocultural process [and as] modes of
human interaction, negotiation, and production mediated by relations of power.
 Spolsky (2007), language policy has three “interrelated, but interdependent” components.
o Language ideology

o Language practices

o Language management

DISCUSSION
Language policy is one mechanism for locating language within social structure so that language
determines who has access to political power and economic resources. It refers to explicit or implicit
language planning by official bodies, such as ministries of education, workplace managers, or school
administrators.

LANGUAGE POLICY/PLANNING OFFICIALLY BODIES ARE:

EDUCATION – disseminating knowledge at varied levels.
WORKPLACE – employees are expected to communicate in an honest, clear, efficient, client-oriented,
polite, and professional way.
SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS - language Policy Across the Curriculum and Oral Language Across the
Curriculum.

Many countries have a language policy designed to favor or discourage the use of a particular language or
set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one
official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to protect and
promote regional and ethnic languages whose viability is threatened. Language Policy is what a
government does either officially through legislation, court decisions or policy to determine how
languages are used, cultivate language skills needed to meet national priorities or to establish the rights
of individuals or groups to use and maintain languages.

This may be explained by the fact that language policy is often based on contingent historical reasons.
 The 1994 Toubon law made the use of French mandatory in all TV broadcasts, meaning all
foreign-language programs are dubbed, while radio stations must play at least 40 percent of
French music for most of the day.

Language Policy can do?

 Language policy influence the right to use and maintain languages, affect language status, and
determine which languages are nurtured.

Importance of Language Policy

 Language policy have a major impact on language vitability and, ultimately, on the rights of the
individual.

CONCLUSION
Overall, we can say the language policies’ goal is to sustain, reinforce, and expand our local languages and
to provide the foundation skills for acquisition of English and other international languages. Most
importantly, we need to maintain language policies to ensure the access of minority populations to
prestigious forms of national standard languages and literacy.
Language Policy
According to some linguist, language policy refers to all language practice, beliefs, and management
decision of a community. It constitutes an attempt by someone to manipulate the linguistic behavior of
some community for some reason,

MODEL OF LANGUAGE POLICY (3 INTERRELATED BUT, INTERDEPENDENT COMPONENTS)

Language Practices/ Ecology
 this are the observable behaviors and choice of what people actually do which include the choice
of linguistic features and the language variety. This is the practice of working the language.
Language Beliefs/ Ideology – kung ano yung paniniwala ng mg ana dapat gamitin sa isang lugar –
yun yung gagamitin na language
 Values that assigned to the variety and features of language.
 Ideology plays a role in shaping and influencing linguistic structure and speech forms
 Linguistic Ideology – a concept uses primarily within the fields of anthropology
o Linguistic Anthropology is the anthropological subfield that focuses on language and its
importance to understanding human history, culture, and biology.
 College Student in US – they encountered evidence of language ideology everywhere (menu,
poems and when people critique or praise their speaking, billboards)
Language Management/ Planning – sila yung may control | required – rules of their participants
(wala tayong choice)
 Explicit and observable effort by someone or by group that claims to have authority of the
participants on the domain to modify their practices and beliefs
 A discipline that consists of satisfying the needs of people who speaks multiple different languages
same country, cultural of international institution where one must use multiple languages.
 Upon entrance to school, children of diverse culture are force to abandon their cultural roots and
their mother tongue to benefit of the normative language chosen by the school (school has the
power)
 Research has shown that school by acting to transmit a country ---- contribute to the destruction
of diversity and can even create in certain children a rejection of their mother tongue that is
shown to the cause of their learning difficulties.
 One must use multiple languages
Immigrants’ parents persuade their parents to learn the new language – Language Management
Immigrants’ parents persuade their children to use their mother tongue at home - Language Beliefs