National languages and language planning  An Introduction to Sociolinguistics JANET HOLMES

1. Chapter 5
National languages and language
planning
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics JANET HOLMES

2. National and official languages
(pg 102)
• 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
its people.
• An official language, by contrast, is simply a
language which may be used for government
business. Its function is primarily utilitarian rather
than symbolic. It is possible, of course, for one
language to serve both functions.

3. Examples
• the Paraguayan situation changed again in 1992, when
Guaraní was granted official status alongside Spanish. So
Paraguay now has two official languages and one national
language, Guaraní. The same pattern is found in
multilingual Tanzania with one national language, Swahili,
but two official languages, Swahili and English. Similarly, in
Vanuatu, the national language is Bislama, a Pacific creole,
and it is also an official language alongside French and
English, the languages of the previous colonial
administrators. Many countries make no distinction
between a national language and an official language. In
countries which regard themselves as monolingual nations,
the same language serves both purposes.

4. • The identification of official languages may also be necessary when
the choice of national language is problematic. In multilingual India,
for example, attempts to give Hindi sole status as the national
language have not succeeded. Fourteen regional Indian languages
are recognised as official languages alongside English and Hindi for
the country as a whole, and in addition different states each have
their own official languages. Telegu, for instance, is the official
language of the state of Andhra Pradesh. Some multilingual
countries have nominated more than one national language. The
Democratic Republic of the Congo-Zaire, for instance, has four
African languages as national languages, Lingala, Swahili, Tshiluba
and Kikongo, alongside French as an official language. Lingala is,
however, the official language of the army. In Haiti, the 1983
constitution declared Haitian Creole a national language alongside
French, but it was not until 1987 that the Creole was granted official
status

5. Exercise
Can you fill in the following table? Why do you think some
countries have more than one language with official status?
• Country Official language(s)
• Australia
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• Finland
• France
• India
• Indonesia
• Kenya
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Papua New Guinea
• Paraguay
• Philippines
• Singapore
• Tanzania

6. Official status and minority
languages
• Because of its colonial history, as well as its value
as a world language and international lingua
franca, English is an official language in many
countries throughout the world, such as Pakistan,
Fiji, Vanuatu, Jamaica and the Bahamas.
• Often it shares this offi cial status with an
indigenous language, such as Malay in Malaysia,
Swahili in Tanzania and Gilbertese in Kiribati.

7. Conti…
• But, interestingly, English is not legally an official
language of England, the USA, or New Zealand.
• In these countries it has not been considered
necessary to legislate that the language of the majority
is an official language.
• In New Zealand, ironically, although English is de
facto (in fact or actuality) the official language of
government and education, Maori and New Zealand
Sign Language are the two languages which have legal
or de jure status as official languages.
 de jure = existing or holding a specified position by legal right

8. • Read Pg 105, where you will find examples of
Moari langauge, Quebac, Languages in
Pakistan, Canada etc.

9. What price a national language?
• any countries have regarded the development of a single national language as a
way of symbolising the unity of a nation. ‘One nation, one language’ has been a
popular and effective slogan. In earlier centuries, the national language of a
political entity often emerged naturally and relatively unselfconsciously over a
period of time. English in England, French in France, Japanese in Japan, Spanish in
Spain seem obvious examples. There were very few languages with this kind of
status before about 1500. Then the number increased dramatically, especially in
the nineteenth century as linguistic nationalism in Europe grew. It has almost
doubled again in the twentieth century with the emergence of colonised countries
from colonial rule into independent nation-states. Over the last hundred years,
nationhood and independence have been very important political issues
throughout the world. In the struggle to establish a distinct national identity, and
to secure independence from colonial rule, the development of a national
language has often played an important part. The symbolic value of a national
language as a unifying rallying point in the fight for independence was quickly
appreciated in countries such as Tanzania, where more than 120 languages are
spoken. In other multilingual countries, such as China, the Philippines and
Indonesia, where there are large populations speaking hundreds of different
vernaculars, a national language is not only a useful lingua franca and official
language, it also serves a symbolic unifying function for these nations. (pg 106)

10. • Where there is a single dominant group, the issue
of which language to choose as the offi cial
language to represent the nation generally
doesn’t arise. Somali is the fi rst language of 90
per cent of the people of Somalia and the
national offi cial language of the country. Danish
is the national language of Denmark, and the fi
rst language of 98 per cent of the people.
Numerical dominance is not always what counts,
however. Political power is the crucial factor.

11. • I n multilingual countries, the signifi cance of political power in the choice
of national language is particularly clear. There are over one hundred
vernacular languages spoken in the Philippines. When they gained
independence in 1946, Pilipino (now Filipino) was declared the national
language. It was so closely based on Tagalog, however, the ethnic language
of one particular group, that it has never been unanimously accepted.
Tagalog has around twelve million native speakers, but Cebuana, for
example, has over ten million speakers, and Ilocano, another indigenous
language, over fi ve million speakers. The choice of Tagalog refl ected the
political and economic power of its speakers who were concentrated in
the area which included the capital, Manila. Its relabelling as Filipino was
an attempt to help it gain acceptance more widely, but resentment at the
advantages it gives to a particular ethnic group is still keenly felt. I n
Indonesia, by contrast, the government did not select the language of the
political and social elite, the Javanese, as the national language. Instead
they developed and standardised a variety of Malay which was widely
used in Indonesia as a trade languag

12. Planning for a national official
language (pg 107)
• Form, functions and attitudes
• W hat is involved in developing a code or variety (whether dialect or
language) so that is suitable for official use? Addressing this challenge
involves issues relating to the form of the variety, the functions it serves,
and the attitudes that people hold towards it. There are generally four
interrelated steps:
• 1. Selection : choosing the variety or code to be developed. 2.
Codification : standardising its structural or linguistic features. This kind
of ‘linguistic processing’ is known as corpus planning. 3. Elaboration :
extending its functions for use in new domains. This involves developing
the necessary linguistic resources for handling new concepts and contexts.
4. Securing its acceptance. T he status of the new variety is important,
and so people’s attitudes to the variety being developed must be
considered. Steps may be needed to enhance its prestige, for instance,
and to encourage people to develop pride in the language, or loyalty
towards it. This is known as status planning or prestige planning.

13. Reading activity
• Read page 108 to 114
• Example of Tanzania and Norway ,how they
selected a national language, process of
codification and finally acceptance.

14. The linguist’s role in language planning
• language academies have existed for centuries, but it is also true that individuals
have often had an enormous influence on language planning, and especially on
the standardisation or codification of a particular variety. Samuel Johnson’s
40,000-word dictionary was a landmark in the codification of English, though, as
example 7 demonstrates, he had few illusions about the lexicographer’s role.
Ivar Aasen in Norway created a composite variety of Norwegian from a range of
dialects. In Israel, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was the most influential proponent of the
vernacularisation of Hebrew. Francis Mihalic wrote the first authoritative grammar
and dictionary of Tok Pisin in the 1950s. And in New Zealand Harry Orsman
completed the fi rst dictionary of New Zealand English on historical principles in
1997. More often these days, the nuts and bolts of language planning are handled
by committees, commissions or academies. Moreover, the focus of much language
planning activity has altered from the promotion of national and official languages
in countries trying to establish their autonomy, to include concern for minority and
endangered languages. The Kanak Languages Academy, for example, has been
established to preserve the indigenous languages of New Caledonia. Codification
and vocabulary expansion are typically of prime concern for language academies,
and in the next section, I briefly illustrate these processes, drawing mainly on
Maori for exemplification