Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Chapter 2
The practice of language planning:
an overview of key concepts
In this chapter we turn to a review of key concepts in the study of language planning
practices, starting with some initial terminological clarification regarding the scope
of the terms ‘language policy’ and ‘language planning’, which are sometimes used
interchangeably and sometimes to mark distinct domains.
For commentators such as Baldauf (1994), Schiffman (1996) and Kaplan and
Baldauf (2003) there is a clear difference in denotation, the former (language policy)
referring to decision-making processes and the setting of goals, and the latter
(language planning) to the implementation of plans for attaining these goals. The
distinction seems justified when one considers the frequency with which policies are
declared but not implemented (see Bamgbose (2000) for examples). But it also tends
to encourage a view of language planning as primarily a set of technical activities, or
managerial operations, undertaken after the really important decisions have been
made by politicians or administrators; a characterisation resisted by some language
planning scholars on the grounds that political and social considerations intrude as
much into implementation as they do into initial decision-making.
Some, therefore, would subsume policy formation under language planning (LP),
an example being Rubin (1971), whose influential framework of LP procedures
provides for four separate phases: fact-finding, policy determination (formulation),
implementation and evaluation.
Clearly, then, there is a certain indeterminacy about the range of reference of the
two terms, a complicating factor being that it is sometimes difficult, as Schiffman
(1996: 13) and others note, to ascertain just what policies are actually in force – there
being some that are formalised and overt but many others also that are inchoate,
de facto and highly informal. It may be preferable, therefore, not to overplay the
discreteness of planning and policy as separate categories but instead regard them
as so closely related that they can profitably be brought together for purposes of
exposition and analysis, this being an increasingly common tendency, it would
appear, if one considers the co-ordinate phrase ‘language policy and language
planning’ in the title of Wright’s (2004) recent volume.
A similar indeterminacy attaches to the vertical scope of language policy/planning;
that is, to the question of whether families, individuals even, may be said to have