Language Policy and Identity in Mauritania. El Hacen Moulaye Ahmed
entire society in some direction deemed “good” or “useful” by the government. The exercise of language planning leads to, or is directed by, the promulgation of a language policy by government. (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997, p. xi)
The citation shows that the two phrases, “language policy” and “language planning,” represent two different aspects in the process of language change. In Orman’s words, language planning is an “action-orientated dimension of language policy” (2008, p. 40). It is shown above also that language planning and language policy are primarily enacted by body of governmental institutions, but such argument is inappropriate. Just as language policy, as the aforementioned definitions revealed particularly that of McCarty, is generated by multilayered actors, society and government, language planning is “planned by organizations established for such purposes or given a mandate to fulfill such purposes” (Rubin, 1977, p. 282). Rubin’s observation also demonstrates that language planning is included in language policy.
Furthermore, Poon (2000) distinguished between the two closely related phrases. “A macrosociological activity . . . at a governmental and national level” only [italics in the source], whereas language policy can be “either a macro- or microsociological activity . . . at a governmental and national level or at an institutional level” (pp. 116–117). Clearly, whereas language planning is always a government-led activity, language policy might be carried out by individuals, organizations, and/or government. Another distinction between the two phrases runs in Eastman’s lines: “The absence of conspicuous, concrete language planning measures within a speech community does not, necessarily, imply the absence of a language policy. One may have language policy without language planning but no society is without a language policy” (Eastman, 1983, p. 6). As stated earlier, the dependence of language planning on language policy is clear.
Theories of Language Policy
As an outset, it is required to define the constructs of the heading. Having defined the phrase “language policy,” the term “theory” remains begging. According to Grimes (2014), the term “theory” traces its roots to the Greek philosophers of the classical era, especially Plato and Aristotle. It comes from the Greek word theoria, which means “to look at.” “In its ancient Greek sense, theoria is not a passive gaze. It is an act of deep receptivity. Theoria is what happens when spectatorship is transformed into visual and emotional participation” (Grimes, 2014, p. 166). In contemporary arts and humanities, the term “theory,” however, has at least two meanings. “In one usage, it labels almost any collection of terms or concepts used to frame discrete bits of information. In a second usage . . . the term ‘theory’ refers to concepts capable of orienting a transformation or intervention” (Grimes, 2014, p. 166). From the different definitions of the term theory, it can be said that the term “theory” refers to a set of assumptions that are intended to explain or resolve an issue related to a particular phenomenon. As such, a rehearsal of theories of, or about, language policy is laid out in the upcoming pages.
The emergence of language policy as an academic discipline is relatively new, with the first use of the phrase “language planning” attributed to Haugen’s (1959, p. 8) description of the development of a new standard national language in Norway after its independence from Denmark in 1814 (Karam, 1974, p. 105; Fettes, 1997, p. 13). Ever since, the phrase and the discipline were subjected to many changes due to the enormous interest they were given. The changes or evolutions can be summarized in two stages. However, such changes do not imply a lack of interaction. Rather, they complement each other. The early stage of language policy, which lasted from the late 1950s to the late 1980s, was revolutionized by many works among which are the works of Haugen (1959); Fishman (1968a, 1972, 1974); Kloss (1969); and Cooper (1989). The scholars’ works were intended to answer the sociopolitical needs of the time. That is, decolonization and formation of new statehoods across Africa and Asia, after the Second World War, led many scholars to seek solutions to the issue of selecting and developing national language in multilingual settings. Fishman (1968b) spelled out the reason quite explicitly in the following lines:
Precisely because the developing nations are at an earlier stage in development . . . the problems and processes of nationhood are more apparent in such nations and their transformations more discernible to the researcher. As a result the developing nations (“new nations”) have come to be of great interest to those sociolinguists who are interested in the transformations of group identity in general as well as to those interested in societal (governmental and other) impact on language-related behavior and on language itself. (p. 6)
Given the perceived needs of these “new states,” early works focused on typologies and approaches to language planning. For example, Haugen (1959) developed a language planning model in which he addressed the codification of language. For him, language planning is “the activity of preparing a normative orthography, grammar, and dictionary for the guidance of writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community” (p. 8). The model was later known as corpus planning which is concerned with the manipulation of the form of language. Extending Haugen’s model, some scholars called for a new one that would take into consideration the use of the codified language in the society. In this regard, Kloss (1969) introduced a distinction between corpus planning and status planning. The former is concerned with language itself, grammar, spelling, vocabulary and so on while the latter is concerned with language selection (p. 81).
After Kloss’s introduction to status planning, scholars started to develop theoretical frameworks of language planning. One influential model was the one developed by Haugen.
a. Selection of a norm (i.e., selecting a language variety for a particular context)
b. Codification—development of an explicit, usually written, form
c. Implementation—attempt to spread the language form
d. Elaboration—continued updating of the language variety to “meet the needs of the modern world.” (Haugen, 1983, p. 273)
For Haugen, selection and implementation are status planning, and codification and elaboration are corpus planning (1983, p. 275). To the status-corpus planning, Cooper introduced another phrase, “acquisition planning” to language planning which he identified as “increasing the numbers of users—speakers, writers, listeners, or readers of a language through promoting its learning by giving people the opportunity and the incentive to learn it” (1989, p. 33).
While some scholarly works, in the first phase, concentrated on devising models of language planning, other works focused on social, economic, and political effects of language contact. That is, the issue of selecting a national level and its ramification was brought to the fore. In this regard, while some scholars said that ideology should be the engine that drives language planners, others vocalized the necessity of divorce between ideology and the selection. For instance, Tauli (1974) insisted that languages can be categorized objectively according to their usefulness. For him, ethnic languages are less developed than those of the colonizer (p. 51). That is, he developed a hierarchical scale in which he listed the indigenous languages as primitive and the colonizer’s as the more developed. Haugen (1983), nevertheless, opposed such division arguing that any selection must remain very objective even though “a stand on difficult value judgment” is unavoidable (p. 276).
A reflection of the debate bred taxonomy of bi/multilingualism and diglossia. However, the supposed neutrality of diglossia and multilingualism which were devised as means of national development and stability were called into question since historical inequalities and conflicts did not diminish. The selection of indigenous people’s languages that could function in particular domains beside the colonizers’ languages perpetuated socioeconomic asymmetries between the societies of one nation rather than omitting them (Ricento, 2000, p. 16). Such orientation led to the persistence of the colonizers’ languages because they were codified and adequate for education and other governmental institutions, observed Ricento (2006, p. 12). Omitting nuance, for the sake of rough generalization, one can observe that most of the early scholars saw language diversity as an obstacle to state-building. Extending this observation, Ferguson (2006) asserted that the early people who were involved in language policy, in the spirit of earlier European nationalists, used to consider language diversity as primarily a problem, and thus a hindrance to state-building.