INTRODUCTION
Language, just like any other natural resource must be planned in order to ensure its appropriate utilisation. The challenges of language planning are more evident in multilingual settings where several languages exist side by side. Language is planned so that the users can derive the maximum benefits from such languages.
In this unit, we shall be examining the idea of language development and planning. In addition, we shall also look at language shift and language death.
3.1 Language Development and Language Maintenance
Language, like any other phenomenon develops, advances and is better organised in terms of its functions. Just like any other phenomenon, language has to be maintained if it has to grow and use more effectively. Language is a crucial part of a people’s culture and a powerful instrument for preserving and transmitting values and systems from one generation to another. People with a well-developed language will naturally be developed because language is the vehicle for the expression of concepts in our culture. Well-maintained languages will naturally develop in terms of the roles and functions they are used to perform.
3.1.1 Language Planning
Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure or functional allocation of languages. It involves the development of goals, objectives
and strategies to change the way language is used in a community.
Language planning involves the following:
(a) Evaluation: placing value on language. Such values may result in
its selection and assignment of roles.
(b) Regulation: controlling language by means of rules and policies.
This then determines the extent to which such a language can be used.
(c) Decision making: choice and judgment on what is best to do at a point in time. This presupposes that there were problems and difficulties.
Language planning is not only done by the society, it is also done by individual bilingual or multilingual, who makes conscious choice of what language to use at any particular time.
The basis of language planning is that the society needs common publicly standardised language. The objective is to establish, maintain and develop such a language. Language planning is more necessary in multilingual settings, typically in Africa and Asia. In such multilingual communities, the choice of a common language among the indigenous languages for inter-ethnic communication is always a difficult task. The result is the adoption of a neutral language, typically, the language of the ex-colonial rulers for political stability. Language planning leads to the adoption of language policy by the government.
Language planning usually takes place through government agencies and academic centers. The typical tasks of such agencies are to:
(a) devise orthographies for unwritten languages
(b) revise spelling systems
(c) coin new words
(d) produce literature and textbooks in the language.
In developing nations, the first task in language planning is to determine which language or languages should perform the role of national language. This is called language selection. The government also considers the roles of the minority languages. By assigning minority languages certain roles, they are helped to develop and not decay. Other things done in the process of language development include the following:
(a) Codification: making explicit statements on the code through dictionaries, grammars, pronunciation, spelling, punctuation and pronunciation guides. Codification leads to the establishment of a standard variety.
(b) Graphisation: the reduction of spoken language to writing or devising graphic symbols to represent the spoken form. The first decision in graphisation is the choice of alphabet or scripts
(c) Modernisation: Making the language to belong to the world community of languages that can express modern terminologies. This will necessitate the expansion of the lexicon and creation of lexical items to talk about the modern scientific and industrial world
3.1.2 Factors Influencing Language Planning
Certain factors influence the planning of language in any community. They are discussed below:
(a) Socio-demographic factors: The number of languages spoken, the
number of speakers, and the geographical distribution of the languages.
(a) Linguistic factors: similarities and dis-similarities between languages, the degree of modernized development, the literary tradition.
(b) Socio-psychological factors: Attitudes of people towards their language and towards other languages around them.
(c) Religious factors: The functions of the languages in relation to the religious inclinations in the community. For instance, the Christian mission promoted the local languages for their evangelical interest.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
Choose two African countries, two Asian countries and two European countries and describe how they planned their languages.
3.2 Language Shift
It is sometime referred to as language transfer. Language shift is the process whereby an entire speech community shifts to speaking another language. Language shift is determined by the rate of assimilation, which refers to the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak another language often at home. The process whereby a community of speakers of a language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shift allegiance to the second language is called assimilation. When language shift involves the loss of the first language, it can lead to cultural disintegration and a variety of social problems.
Language shift results mostly when language is not maintained. The ultimate result of shift is language death. The language users simply become a sub-set of speakers of another language. The rate at which a language is transferred to another generation determines whether the language will survive, shift or ultimately die. For instance in Nigeria, quite a number of educated parents are bringing up their children as monolingual speakers of English. This may eventually lead to language shift by the time the generations of the children of these speakers grow up. They will eventually bring up their own children in the same manner.
3.3 Language Death
Language death also known as language extinction is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language is decreased. Language death may manifest itself in the following ways:
(a) gradual language death;
(b) total language death;
(c) sudden language death (linguicide)
Gradual language death is a process in which a language is being lost as a result of the speakers’ abandonment of such language.
Total language death occurs when no speaker of a particular language remains where the language was previously used (i.e, all native speakers die.
Sudden language death occurs when all the speakers of a language are wiped out through genocide or any natural disaster.
The most common process of language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another
language and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original language. This process is called assimilation. It may be voluntary or forced. A language is effectively dead when it is no longer used actively for communication. This may not necessarily mean that all the speakers have died.
Language death is a slow process. For instance, when all a language has left are a few elderly speakers, such a language is declared moribund and the process of its death has already begun. When each generation learns less of their first language and more of their second language, the language has started the process of death. A stage in the process of language death is language attrition – the loss of a portion of a particular language by the speech community.
4.0 CONCLUSION
Language is like any other human resource and if it is not well maintained and developed, it could be lost. The process of language loss begins with the attitude of the speakers of the language to their language and other languages around them. For instance, if the speakers have a negative attitude to their own language and a positive attitude to another language, the tendency is that they would lose their language for the other language. The extreme of language loss is language death, when the language ceases being used by anybody.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, we examined the concept of language maintenance and development and how these affect language retention and loss. We discussed how planning helps to make a language develop. We also looked at the role of attitudes in determining language development. We observed that language death is hardly a sudden phenomenon (though there may be rare instances of sudden language loss if a whole community of speakers is wiped out). Language death begins as a process from negative attitude to linguistic attrition, to shift and then death.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1. What is language planning?
2. Discuss factors that influence language planning.
3. Explain the process of language shift.
4. How does a language die?
5. Identify those things that can be done in order to make a language to develop.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Adegbite, W. (2003). ‘Mulitiligualism and national Development”. In: L. Oyeleye & M. Olateju. (Eds). Readings in Language and Literature. Ile-Ife: OAU Press.
Fishman, J. (2000). “Can Threatened Languages be Saved?”
Multilingual Matters.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rigsby B. J. (1987). “Indigenous Language Shift and Maintenance In Fourth World Setting.” Multilingual Matters, 6. 4.
Sacks, H. Schegloff, E.A. & Jeffersons, G. (1974). “A Simplest Systematics for the Organisation of Turn-Taking in Conversation”. Language, Vol. 50, Number 4, pp 696-735.
Leave a comment behind