英国法国语言政策笔记.doc

Language Policy in Britain and FranceChapter 1Theoretical considerations: sociolinguistics, policy studies and language planning1. Cooper (1989, 31,183), defining language planning as deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of their language codes rejected definitions of language planning which: restrict language planning to activities undertaken by governments, government-authorised agencies, or other authoritative bodies, i.e. organisations with a public mandate for language regulation.2. Fasold (1984, 250) agreed that language planning is an explicit choice between alternatives, he suggested that there are two ways this can be done: the instrumental - planners choose a language or improve one, since language is a tool to greater efficiency; or the sociolinguistic - planners try to solve a social problem, taking into account the symbolic value of languages and weighing the social consequences of their choice.3. Chaudenson and Robillard, 1989, 24) noted that language planning as a field of study originated among English-speaking specialists involved with the social and economic problems of newly independent States, mainly after the Second World War. 4. (policy) as all national choices concerning language and culture, specifying general long-term objectives (educational levels, training, employment, function and status of languages, etc.) and founded on an analysis of the starting position.(planning) would apply to any long-, short- or medium-term operation aimed at putting the objectives defined by policy into operation, taking into account the means provided and the procedures envisaged.(language management and control) very diverse actions leading to the concrete realisation of operations defined in the preceding two categories, and made it clear that for him amenagement linguistique was not to be confused with corpus planning.5. The types of language behaviour such actors have tried to influence have been acquisition planning (teaching and learning), corpus planning (the structure of language) and status planning (the functional allocation of languages or language varieties). Language planning activities can usually be classified and distinguished from each other under these headings, and useful distinctions in terminology have followed from clarification of the activities.6. Acquisition planning can apply to the teaching and learning of first languages (LI), sometimes referred to as native languages, mother tongues or maternal languages, or as vernacular languages; to second languages (SL or L2), which are those used as vehicular languages to enable the learner to participate in his or her society; and foreign languages (FL), those learnt later for a variety of reasons involving communication with other societies, but which are not in normal everyday use within the learners society.7. Acquisition planning generally has had clear social purposes in influencing the behaviour of those who will be societys future members. Thus the adoption of a new foreign language in the schools responds to the new political commitments - Swedish and Finnish start to be taught throughout Europe as Sweden and Finland become members of the European Union; Armenian is accepted at baccalaureat level because Armenian is the language of a large immigrant group in France which society should recognise; French must be the language of education in all French schools because it is the language of the State, and only through knowledge of French can social integration be assured.8. Corpus planning is normally understood as action to improve the ability of a language to respond to change; it is often, though not always, concerned with modernising the word stock of the language. George Thomas (1991, 76-81) discussed corpus planning as social behaviour, examining the attitudes different types of purism revealed. Archaising purism thus demonstrates reverence for the past; ethnographic purism, seeking purer language in folk dialects and in popular and rural forms is one manifestation of the rejection of advanced urban society; elitist purism embodies a negative, proscriptive attitude to substandard and regional usage, aiming at promoting the language, values and social ideology of the elite. Reformist purism may involve the repudiation of a foreign model, or of a language associated with former political domination, and requires the planner to modernise, to reform, regenerate, renew or resuscitate a language in order to support a new sense of social belonging. Xenophobic purism derives from a rejection of foreigners or foreign customs. All these motivations, except possibly the xenophobic, are intended to have some improvement of the language as an end result, although anti-purism tries to correct the effects particularly of xenophobic purism. Finally Thomas, perhaps at a loss to explain some types of purist action in terms of their effect on social behaviour, also felt that some apparently non-rational actions originated in pure play: there are instances where purism is an end in itself, little more than a literary or aesthetic game.9. Status planning involves attempts to change the relative prestige in which a particular political or ethnic community holds a language or language variety. It is usually carried out to raise prestige, through ensuring that the language is used in some prestigious domains such as those of public life, rather than in non-prestigious ones like the home or the local cafe. Generally speaking, the greater the number of domains of use, and the more significant they are to the public and official life of the community, the higher the status; the higher the status, the greater the prestige that will then be accorded to the language (Mekacha, 1994).The significance of language use depends on the functions to which it, or a variety or code of language, is assigned within such domains. Status planning hence aims at influencing societys functional allocation of language codes. Stewart (1968, quoted in Cooper, 1989, 99-119), listed such allocations as:o: official (politically or culturally representative purposes);p: provincial (provincial or regional official language);w: wider communication (across language boundaries within the nation);i: international (e.g. diplomatic relations, trade, tourism);c: capital city;g: group (i.e. tribe, settled group of immigrants); e: educational; s: school subject; 1: literary; r: religious.Cooper adds two more: mass media and work, and we shall return to the question of domains and functions when considering the contribution of sociolinguistics to identifying types of community as targets of language policy.10. It is useful to keep clear the distinctions between status, corpus and acquisition policy in order to clarify the types of behaviour it is intended should be influenced, although much language policy is not in practice restricted to one or other of these main types: choosing one language rather than another to be learnt in the foreign language classroom often affects its relative status within society at large, and writing a new dictionary -standardising the language as an act of corpus policy - makes acquiring the language easier, or in some cases possible. Indeed, language policy -particularly where matters of status are concerned - may often really be a cover for some other type of policy altogether, while social policy - on education, social benefits or voting rights, for example - may well have linguistic consequences.Chapter 2The development of the standard language1.SelectionIn England, the dialect which had probably gained ascendancy after the arrival of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes from 449 until just before the Norman Conquest was West Saxon, which had achieved the status of a national preferred literary form and, as the language of Alfred the Great, was politically important if not pre-eminent. The Norman Conquest of 1066 however - the most significant historical event in the history of the language (Finegan, 1987) - prevented the selection of a pre-existing dialect of English as the standard, and might well have imposed Norman French as both standard and official language on the conquered populations. Indeed, Norman French was the official language for at least a century and a half after 1066, a period during which diglossia characterised the country and individual bilingualism is not thought to have been very widespread.The turn of the linguistic tide is usually dated as 1204, when King John lost Normandy and he and successive kings were forced to concentrate on their possessions in Britain. After this time, and particularly after the Black Death of 1348, English became more widespread and gained prestige. Following the Statute of Pleading of 1362, which required English rather than French or Latin to be used in the law courts, English again became the language of England and of her literature (Finegan, 1987, 84). By 1362 English, heavily affected by the impact of the French and then the Anglo-Norman dialect of the conquerors, was in fact already the spoken language of the courts, although Latin was retained as the language of written record.But which dialect form of this new English would be selected? Throughout the period 1400-1600 the five regional dialects (Southern, South-Eastern, West and East Midlands, and Northern) all continued to be used, with important Middle English texts in every one (Price, 1984, 175). By about 1470, however, most writing seemed to reflect East Midlands usage. The process of dialect selection in England was probably based on bureaucratic practice (the language of the kings clerks) in addition to literature (Chaucer), education and learning (Oxford and Cambridge), political power (the London Court) and the prestige of the written form (after Caxtons invention of the printing press in 1476), so the selection was as much social as political, and certainly not so military as that of France (cf. Grillo, 1989, 155-62, who characterises the influences as Chaucer, Chancery and Caxton).There was, of course, no question of selecting any of the regional languages, even in Wales, Scotland or Ireland. The aim of converting Catholics to Protestantism was one of the main motivating factors for the spread of English into these countries, although it was by no means the only one. The education of the masses, for example, was thought to be hindered by their use of indigenous languages, so even as late as the 1847 Blue Books (reports of the Commissioners on the state of education in Wales), officials could cheerfully state that the Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people (quoted in Grillo, 1989, 87). Religion and education were, however, inextricably linked: if for some, progress could only come through the use of the standard language, for others, using the standard language meant rejecting their identity. Throughout Britain churches and groups such as the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, the Irish Hedge Schools, and the Edinburgh Gaelic School Society, made the Bible and other texts available in the local language, and taught in Welsh or (Irish and Scottish) Gaelic, keeping the indigenous languages alive, in some cases even against the law (teachers of Irish were proscribed in Ireland until 1792).The Education Acts of 1870 and 1872 ensured more direct state, rather than religious, involvement with education, although the system was locally managed and controlled. Neither Act made provision for teaching in languages other than English, although local codes of practice made provision in Welsh, Scottish and Irish Gaelic possible in the elementary and later in the intermediate schools.2.Codification, the rejection of dialect and specialist terms and the reduction of the language to an efficient, usable instrument, was carried out by many different hands, although the most visible forms were those affecting literary and courtly language.The codification of English took place also from about the sixteenth century, through the publication of dictionaries and grammars, many of them intended to teach the language to rural squires or to the Welsh gentry after the 1536 Act of Union between England and Wales. Written standard English was codified through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although Jonathan Swifts Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue appeared in 1712, the grammar of Bishop Lowth in 1762, and Samuel Johnsons dictionary did not appear until 1755. Throughout this codification process three influences were again paramount: the kings English, in the form of the administrative and legal language; literary English, in the form of the language accepted as that used by great literature -and used for printing and publishing; and Oxford English, or the English of education and the Church - its main provider. At no point in this process was the State openly involved.Codification also affected the spoken form of the standard language. Received pronunciation was codified through the influence of education, particularly that of the nineteenth-century public schools, followed from the early twentieth century by cinema, radio and television (BBC English). Nonetheless it is estimated that only 3-5 per cent of the population of Britain speak received pronunciation today (Trudgill and Hannah, 1982), and hence this particular form of the spoken language is accepted by society only in the sense that it is widely understood.Codification of English has produced at least two standard languages - the British and the North American, although the differences between the two are matters of pronunciation and the lexicon, rather than affecting anything more seriously structural. Any work by an academy to codify either of the two standards has been consistently rebuffed, and any suggestion of an international academy would almost certainly be met with international ridicule (Finegan, 1987, 101), so the two codified norms have separate existence, with separate authorities being consulted - Websters Dictionary (first edition 1828) for America and the Oxford English Dictionary (first instalment of the first edition 1884) for the British.2.SelectionIn England, the dialect which had probably gained ascendancy after the arrival of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes from 449 until just before the Norman Conquest was West Saxon, which had achieved the status of a national preferred literary form and, as the language of Alfred the Great, was politically important if not pre-eminent. The Norman Conquest of 1066 however - the most significant historical event in the history of the language (Finegan, 1987) - prevented the selection of a pre-existing dialect of English as the standard, and might well have imposed Norman French as both standard and official language on the conquered populations. Indeed, Norman French was the official language for at least a century and a half after 1066, a period during which diglossia characterised the country and individual bilingualism is not thought to have been very widespread.The turn of the linguistic tide is usually dated as 1204, when King John lost Normandy and he and successive kings were forced to concentrate on their possessions in Britain. After this time, and particularly after the Black Death of 1348, English became more widespread and gained prestige. Following the Statute of Pleading of 1362, which required English rather than French or Latin to be used in the law courts, English again became the language of England and of her literature (Finegan, 1987, 84). By 1362 English, heavily affected by the impact of the French and then the Anglo-Norman dialect of the conquerors, was in fact already the spoken language of the courts, although Latin was retained as the language of written record.But which dialect form of this new English would be selected? Throughout the period 1400-1600 the five regional dialects (Southern, South-Eastern, West and East Midlands, and Northern) all continued to be used, with important Middle English texts in every one (Price, 1984, 175). By about 1470, however, most writing seemed to reflect East Midlands usage. The process of dialect selection in England was probably based on bureaucratic practice (the language of the kings clerks) in addition to literature (Chaucer), education and learning (Oxford and Cambridge), political power (the London Court) and the prestige of the written form (after Caxtons invention of the printing press in 1476), so the selection was as much social as political, and certainly not so military as that of France (cf. Grillo, 1989, 155-62, who characterises the influences as Chaucer, Chancery and Caxton).There was, of course, no question of selecting any of the regional languages, even in Wales, Scotland or Ireland. The aim of converting Catholics to Protestantism was one of the main motivating factors for the spread of English into these countries, although it was by no means the only one. The education of the masses, for example, was thought to be hindered by their use of indigenous languages, so even as late as the 1847 Blue Books (reports of the Commissioners on the state of education in Wales), officials could cheerfully state that the Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people (quoted in Grillo, 1989, 87). Religion and education were, however, inextricably linked: if for some, progress could only come through the use of the standard language, for others, using the standard language meant rejecting their identity. Throughout Britain churches and g