Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Towards a theory of language management
- 2 Managing language in the family
- 3 Religious language policy
- 4 Language management in the workplace: managing business language
- 5 Managing public linguistic space
- 6 Language policy in schools
- 7 Managing language in legal and health institutions
- 8 Managing military language
- 9 Local, regional, and national governments managing languages
- 10 Influencing language management: language activist groups
- 11 Managing languages at the supranational level
- 12 Language managers, language management agencies and academies, and their work
- 13 A theory of language management: postscript or prolegomena
- References
- Index
2 - Managing language in the family
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Towards a theory of language management
- 2 Managing language in the family
- 3 Religious language policy
- 4 Language management in the workplace: managing business language
- 5 Managing public linguistic space
- 6 Language policy in schools
- 7 Managing language in legal and health institutions
- 8 Managing military language
- 9 Local, regional, and national governments managing languages
- 10 Influencing language management: language activist groups
- 11 Managing languages at the supranational level
- 12 Language managers, language management agencies and academies, and their work
- 13 A theory of language management: postscript or prolegomena
- References
- Index
Summary
Managing speech and linguistic communities
Students of language management commonly deal with the activities of the state or nation, perhaps considering it the sole “centering institution” (Silverstein 1998: 404) or, more cautiously, one of the most central of such institutions (Blommaert 2005: 396). Silverstein himself recognizes “local linguistic communities” to be groups of people “by degree evidencing allegiance to norms of denotational (aka ‘referential,’ ‘propositional,’ ‘semantic’) language usage” (1998: 402). He contrasts local communities with global processes such as formation of empires and nation-states, the growth of global economies and communication, and the emergence of diasporization of people with multiple cultural allegiances. Blommaert, in his study of language management in Tanzania, notes the inadequacies of state language planning when it came up against the forces at the local level, on the one hand of “transnational centering institutions” such as capitalism, democracy, and transnational ideas of prestige, and international educational models on the other. These supranational institutions assign values to the elements and clusters of elements that define language varieties, and so help account for the nature of language practice, language attitudes, and the motivation and effect of language management at the national level. Understanding the nation, then, requires recognizing forces that impinge on it from above and below. This is the goal of this book.
The many levels at which language policy occurs is a partial explanation of “unplanned language planning,” a concept proposed by Baldauf (1994) and developed further by Kaplan (1997: 298) and by Eggington (2002) to account for what goes wrong in language policy.
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- Information
- Language Management , pp. 10 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009