Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Language practices, ideology and beliefs, and management and planning
- 2 Driving out the bad
- 3 Pursuing the good and dealing with the new
- 4 The nature of language policy and its domains
- 5 Two monolingual polities – Iceland and France
- 6 How English spread
- 7 Does the US have a language policy or just civil rights?
- 8 Language rights
- 9 Monolingual polities under pressure
- 10 Monolingual polities with recognized linguistic minorities
- 11 Partitioning language space – two, three, many
- 12 Resisting language shift
- 13 Conclusions
- References
- Index
9 - Monolingual polities under pressure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Language practices, ideology and beliefs, and management and planning
- 2 Driving out the bad
- 3 Pursuing the good and dealing with the new
- 4 The nature of language policy and its domains
- 5 Two monolingual polities – Iceland and France
- 6 How English spread
- 7 Does the US have a language policy or just civil rights?
- 8 Language rights
- 9 Monolingual polities under pressure
- 10 Monolingual polities with recognized linguistic minorities
- 11 Partitioning language space – two, three, many
- 12 Resisting language shift
- 13 Conclusions
- References
- Index
Summary
The theory developed so far claims that language policy for any independent nation state will reveal the complex interplay of four interdependent but often conflicting factors: the actual sociolinguistic situation; a set of beliefs influenced by national or ethnic identity claims (with the number of Great Traditions critical); the recent pull of English as a global language; and the even more recent pressure for attention to the rights of linguistic minorities. This theoretical model needs to be tested against actual cases. We have already looked at two monolingual policies, and we continue.
The hypothesis for these policies, following Fishman (1971), is that nations which had a consensual single Great Tradition at the time of independence will tend to attempt to select the associated indigenous language as the national language. In the absence of an agreed Great Tradition, the tendency will be to continue with the metropolitan colonial language as national language.
POST-COLONIALISM 1 – MONOLINGUAL IN A LOCAL INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE
The transition from colonial status to independence provides an opportunity for a country to decide or reconsider its language policy. The proclamation of national monolingualism, on the principle of “one nation, one state, one language,” in a language other than that of the previous colonial power was (and remains) an obvious method of asserting real independence. A number of nations tried to do this.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language Policy , pp. 133 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003