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The discipline of language planning 11 globalisation and the loss of indigenous languages (see Chapter 4), all of which have brought into clear focus the prospect, real or imagined, of diminished linguistic diversity, and the need, therefore, for interventions to reduce the likelihood of this actually occurring. Influential also, perhaps, in converting opinion to the desirability, inevitability even, of diversity are late twentieth-century intellectual developments, which, in opposing grand narratives and universalised ideologies, can be seen as sympathetic toward heterogeneity and pluralism of perspective. The contemporary intellectual climate, then, is more favourable to diversity of various kinds, and LP, in common with other socially oriented disciplines, has not escaped its influence, turning a more critical eye as a result on traditional LP nation-building interventions that involve any suppression of diversity – for instance, the promotion of a single standardised national language over other language varieties. Also contributing to this greater academic scepticism towards nation-building activity in LP, is, Wright argues (2004: 98), an emergent post-nationalist ethos that globalisation has done much to foster as we move, she suggests (2004: 251), ‘beyond the national model’ into a post-national era. Some aspects of this thesis may be overstated, however. To be sure, the powers of the nation state have been considerably attenuated economically and politically by globalising forces, but there is as yet no firm evidence that it has been superseded as the dominant form of political organisation or as an important locus for popular sentimental attachments. Indeed, as Giddens (2004) has suggested, far from witnessing the demise of the nation state we may be living through an era of its universalisation, marked by the emergence of new states from the debris of older empires (e.g. the Soviet Union) and by the claims for recognition as distinct nations which minority groups within old nation states have recently advanced. 11 That said, it does seem that global, supranational developments are impinging more and more on the nation-state unit, and that LP is attending more to the interface of the national and local with the global. One might agree, therefore, that – in academic circles at least – nationalism as a motivating force in LP is more critically regarded than previously, and that there is greater concern that nation-building projects, where they continue, should be more accommodating to minority cultures and aspirations than has historically been the case. We can conclude, then, that, alongside a broadening in the range of topics studied within the discipline, the principal changes in LP since the early days of the 1960s have been ideological in character, with two tendencies particularly salient: first, linguistic diversity has been revalorised so that contemporary language planning interventions aim as much, or more, to maintain diversity as to restrain it; second, responding perhaps to the critiques of critical theorists, the discipline displays greater concern with issues of social disadvantage, equality and access to state institutions as they affect minority groups, this being signalled most clearly by the growth of literature on minority language rights.
12 Language Planning and Education 1.4.3 The interdisciplinary character of language planning In the area of minority language rights, as in others, LP has maintained its traditionally interdisciplinary character, the influence in this instance coming from political and legal theory, whose impact may be expected to increase as political theorists engage more with language diversity and language rights (see Kymlicka and Patten (2003), for example). Economics, too, is a discipline to which language planners have traditionally looked for guidance, 12 and its influence continues through the work of scholars such as Grin (2002, 2003a, 2003b), who has argued (2003a: 87) that its principal contribution lies in the provision of a framework for explicitly identifying alternative policy alternatives, and for assigning costs and benefits to them; in short, for facilitating policy analysis. He admits (2003b: 5), though, that because language policy-making is fundamentally a political process and because non-market values (e.g. matters of identity and culture) attach to languages individually and collectively, economics can never be central, only complementary, as an instrument assisting decision-making. 1.4.4 The limitations of language planning and language policy The final point one may make regarding contemporary language planning/policy is that there now seems to be a greater readiness to acknowledge its often limited efficacy in a range of policy areas such as revitalising threatened languages and curbing the spread of English. Wright (2004: 169), for example, points out that topdown policy has a limited capacity to contain, let alone reverse, the spread of lingua francas like English, whose success owes much to ‘factors largely outside the control of individual governments’ (see Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion). Romaine (2002: 3), too, is similarly sceptical about the efficacy of language policies – in this case those aimed at supporting endangered languages. She attributes their ineffectiveness mainly to ‘weak linkages between policy and planning’, meaning by this that policies are frequently announced but much more rarely implemented. For example, Quechua was declared a co-official language with Spanish in Peru in 1976, but resistance from the dominant Spanish-speaking majority has impeded meaningful implementation. Six African languages have been declared official in Senegal, but lack of resources and political will severely limit their use in education (Romaine 2002: 13). Romaine’s wider point, however, is that language policy is not autonomous from the economic, social, political and attitudinal forces that shape patterns of language use, and is rarely effective when it attempts to operate against rather than with sociological dynamics. Spolsky (2004: 223), meanwhile, citing the inability of government action to revitalise the Irish language, draws attention to LP’s unimpressive record: ‘there are comparatively few cases where language management has produced its intended results’. The same theme of past failure and consequent loss of optimism also surfaces in Tollefson’s (2002b) paper entitled ‘Limitations of Language Policy and Planning’.
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