Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

154 Part 2: Language and Society
language planning for their own purposes’ (Fishman, 1994: 96). This
response acknowledges some of the impossible and reductionist ideals
that had come into LP during its ‘scientifi c’ period. After all some of the
most repugnant regimes in history have been active language planners,
the most extreme being the ‘mother-tongue fascism’ of the Nazi Third-
Reich and its ‘science of language’ (Hutton, 1999).
Critics of LP make valid points regarding negative consequences and
poor theorisation, but go too far. Few offer alternatives and most fail to
acknowledge that LP is rapidly expanding across the world, in response to
growing real-world communication problems in the wake of economic
globalisation, mass migration and communication technologies. LP is
associated with both democratic enfranchisement and with institutionalised
discrimination. LP was a key feature of Apartheid’s practices of
domination, and in the early 1990s, the unjust LP of apartheid was replaced
with offi cial recognition of 11 national languages and rights to universal
literacy (Webb, 2002). In this new policy dispensation, new and more participatory
practices of LP were also explored. Reform to LP as an applied
method of sociolinguistics and as a fi eld of research is warranted, and
criticism of shortcomings can be helpful to encourage refl ection and
improvements, but are unlikely to produce professional and disciplinary
renewal. Fishman’s (1994: 97) sobering observation that ‘. . . very little language
planning practice has actually been informed by language planning
theory’ shows that neither LP theory, nor criticism of LP theory, has much
traction in real-world language policy making. Most actual LP work continues
to be done by non-specialists, language policies rarely draw on academic
theory or concepts and most assume that planning language is
merely an unproblematic subset of general public policy. The insistence
by classical LP scholars that LP must be deliberate and conscious, and
undertaken by authoritative bodies and that it is then implemented by
teachers, among others, has blinded observers to the dynamic, daily practice
of LP that resides in concrete activities, especially teaching.
A key argument of this chapter is for an expanded understanding of
what counts as LP, and to see all teaching, and especially language and
literacy teaching, as intimately involved in LP. The past tendency of LP
scholars and practitioners to rigidly separate ‘planning’ from ‘implementation’
hinders appreciation of what is an essentially continuous sequence
of actions of ‘acting on’ language. While it is unlikely that there will ever
be full agreement about the entire fi eld of LP, a coherent account depicting
the distinctive roles of policy makers, academic specialists and teachers of
language and literacy would be valuable. The following anecdote, from a
2004 conference convened by Defense and Education agencies of the US
Federal Government to write a joint policy on the foreign language needs
of Defense personnel, underscores this point. Late in the conference a
senior Defense offi cial became frustrated by the educators and language