Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and figures
- Preface
- Abbreviations and acronyms
- Central terms and concepts
- Introduction
- Prologue: The essentialist paradox in intellectual discourse on African languages
- Part One African language empowerment: concept formation and intellectualisation
- Part Two Language planning, terminology development and dictionaries
- 3 Language planning in South Africa: a history
- 4 Language and terminology development in isiXhosa: a history
- 5 Multilingual terminology and cognition in assessment
- 6 IsiXhosa dictionaries, language learning and intercultural communication
- Part Three Language in education
- Part Four Language in the professions: law, media, science and language technology
- Part Five Language, culture and intercultural communication
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Index
3 - Language planning in South Africa: a history
from Part Two - Language planning, terminology development and dictionaries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and figures
- Preface
- Abbreviations and acronyms
- Central terms and concepts
- Introduction
- Prologue: The essentialist paradox in intellectual discourse on African languages
- Part One African language empowerment: concept formation and intellectualisation
- Part Two Language planning, terminology development and dictionaries
- 3 Language planning in South Africa: a history
- 4 Language and terminology development in isiXhosa: a history
- 5 Multilingual terminology and cognition in assessment
- 6 IsiXhosa dictionaries, language learning and intercultural communication
- Part Three Language in education
- Part Four Language in the professions: law, media, science and language technology
- Part Five Language, culture and intercultural communication
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
Defining language planning
In this chapter, we cover three themes. In this section we introduce and define language planning. In the next section, we present a brief history of language planning in South Africa prior to 1994, building on the material provided in chapter 2. In the final section, we discuss post-democratic language planning in South Africa.
Language planning has been practised for many years. However, as an academic discipline, language planning began to develop in the 1960s, generally located within the field of sociolinguistics. Today it is a discipline that boasts mainstream peer-reviewed journals such as Current Issues in Language Planning (see Kamwangamalu [2001] for an article on South Africa's language planning situation), Language Problems and Language Planning (see volume 28 number 2, 2004, for a special issue on South Africa) and Language Policy. In South African and other journals, there are numerous articles on the language planning situation in South Africa, with special attention being paid to the post-apartheid era during which the country's official language policy has been transformed from legislating only two official languages (English and Afrikaans) to legislating eleven official languages (English, Afrikaans and nine African languages), a transformation driven by the country's Constitution.
We now offer a definition (or definitions) for the key term ‘language planning’. Various definitions have been offered. For example, Cooper (1989) refers to at least 12 definitions of language planning, noting that in some literature, language planning, language regulation, language management and language engineering are used synonymously. For the current chapter, we take language planning to be a ‘deliberate, systematic, and theory-based attempt to solve communication problems of a community by studying its various languages or dialects, and developing an official language policy concerning their selection and use’ (Crystal 1992: 220). Applied to the case of South Africa, language planning entails a systematic and theory-based attempt to address the country's linguistic communication challenges. Among other things, this means taking into consideration the linguistic profile of the entire nation and coming up with appropriate language policies for particular domains, such as education, the South African Broadcasting Corporation or the military.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Multilingualism and Intercultural CommunicationA South African perspective, pp. 63 - 75Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2017