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Patterns of Language Planning in the New States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Jacob Ornstein
Jacob Ornstein
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
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Extract

The proliferation of new sovereign states, well over sixty since World War II, has created language problems on a scale unknown in the past. In many of the emergent lands there is a great diversity of tongues, with none of them predominant. Ethnic and tribal rivalries quite often are so acute that the choice of any one language over the others would evoke stubborn opposition and fan already existing resentments. For example, Nigeria with some two hundred distinct languages simply saw fit to adopt English as the over-all official medium, although several important vernaculars are employed for primary education and local administration.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , October 1964 , pp. 40 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1964

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References

1 The best general treatment of this topic, country by country, is to be found in Rundle, Stanley, Language as a Social and Political Factor in Europe (London 1944)Google Scholar. Consult also Vendryes, J., Language: A Linguistic Introduction to History (London 1931).Google Scholar

1 See Ornstein, Jacob, “Soviet Language Policy: Theory and Practice”, Slavic and East European Journal, III (Spring 1959) 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bilinsky, Yaroslav, “The Soviet Education Laws of 1958–59 and Soviet Nationality Policy”, Soviet Studies, XIV (October 1962), 138–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a Soviet view, consult “K izucheniyu sostoyaniya i razvitiya natsional'nykh literaturnykh yazykov narodov sovetskogo soyuza” [For the study of the status and development of the national literary languages of the peoples of the Soviet Union], Voprosy Yazykoznaniya (Moscow), No. 4 (1962), 3–8.Google Scholar This is an unsigned lead article presumably written by the editorial staff.

3 See Kloss, Heinz, Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen von 1800 bis 1950 (Munich 1952).Google Scholar

4 A vast number of articles have appeared on this subject in Indian, Pakistani, British, and American periodicals. See particularly Pictrzyk, Alfred, “Problems in Language Planning: The Case of Hindi”, in Varma, B. N., ed., Contemporary India (London 1964), 247–70.Google Scholar Some useful books are Ferguson, Charles A. and Gumperz, J. J., eds., Linguistic Diversity in South Asia (Bloomington, Ind., 1960)Google Scholar; Harrison, Selig S., India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton 1960), particularly 55–95 and 278–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, W. Norman, The United States and India and Pakistan (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 226–34.Google Scholar

5 Here again the bibliography on this subject is an enormous one, consisting of numerous articles scattered throughout a wide variety of periodicals appearing in the respective countries and abroad. See, for example,Whitely, W. H., “Language and Politics in East Africa”, Tanganyika Notes and Records, Nos. 47–48 (September 1957), 159–74Google Scholar; Sutherlin, Ruth E., “Language Situation in East Africa”, in Rice, Frank E., ed., Study of the Role of Second Languages in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Washington 1962), 66–78.Google Scholar A series of articles on the language problems of different regions of Africa will appear in the Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the Inter-African Committee on Linguistics (Symposium on Multilingualism), held in Brazzaville, July 16–21, 1962. These are to be published in London under the editorship of M. Guthrie, . Some pertinent books are John Spencer, ed., Language in Africa (London 1963)Google Scholar; Center for Applied Linguistics, Second Language Learning as a Factor in National Development in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Washington 1961).Google Scholar

6 For the most convenient summary of the major official and nonofficial languages utilized in the African, Asian, and Latin American states up to 1962, see the charts in Janet Roberts, “Sociocultural Change and Communication Problems”, in Rice, ed., Study of the Role of Second Languages, 112–20.

7 Consult the following works, which explore a wide range of problems related to the process of standardization: Ray, Punya Sloka, Language Standardization: Studies in Prescriptive Linguistics (The Hague 1963)Google Scholar, and his “Language Standardization”, in Rice, ed., Study of the Role of Second Languages, 91–104; Jakobson, Roman, “The Beginnings of National Self-Determination in Europe”, Review of Politics, VII (January 1945), 45–58Google Scholar; Deutsch, Karl W., Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), esp. 97–126 and 2O4ff.Google Scholar; and also Weinreich, Uriel, Languages in Contact (New York 1953).Google Scholar

8 See Haugen, Einar, “Planning for a Standard Language in Modern Norway”, Anthropological Linguistics, I (March 1959), 8–21.Google Scholar

9 See de Francis, John, Nationalism and Language Reform in China (Princeton 1950)Google Scholar; Mills, Harriet C., “Language Reform in China”, Far Eastern Quarterly, xv (August 1956). 517–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 O'Huallachain, Colman L., , O.F.M., “Bilingualism in Education in Ireland”, in Georgetown University Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, E. D. Woodworth and R. J. di Pietro, eds., xv (1962), 75–84.Google Scholar

11 See Blanc, Haim, “The Growth of Israeli Hebrew”, Middle Eastern Affairs, V (December 1954), 385–92Google Scholar; idem, “Hebrew in Israel: Trends and Prospects”, Middle East Journal, XI (Autumn 1957), 397–408.Google Scholar

12 Nugroho, R., “The Origins and Development of Bahasa Indonesia”, Publications of the Modern Language Association, LXXH (April 1957), 23–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 In this connection, consult UNESCO, The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education (Paris 1953)Google Scholar. This touches upon problems of language planning and education in many parts of the world.

14 Up to this writing, not a single monograph has appeared on the subject of language planning, although there seems to be an increase in the amount of periodical literature devoted to it.