Ch.+30+Methodologies+for+Policy+and+Planning


 * Chapter 30 **
 * Methodologies for Policy and Planning **


 * By Richard B. Baldauf, Jr. **

In applied linguistics very little attention has been paid to the proper methodology for language policy and planning, hereafter LPP (Eastman 1983b, Ch.6; Kaplan and Baldauf 1997, Ch.4). The chapter is based on a corpus review of published LPP literature in the period from 1973 to 1998 as in //Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)//. Using this kind of corpus of studies has both advantages (the abstracts of the materials are published, readily available and computer searchable in WebSPIRS) and disadvantages (government reports do not exist in the materials, selection criteria can be different in different times, as well as there may be limitations in bias in favor of a particular language, particularly English).


 * An Overview of Language Policy and Planning Publication **

LPP is a relatively new but growing field of applied linguistics. The corpus for this study contains 5,898 LPP articles related to //language policy // and 150,186 related to //language planning//. In recent years the number of publications decreased due to the long period of adding the article to the database. In LLBA database there is a variety of sources of LPP, that is 565 book reviews and 5,333 research-based items out of 5,898 articles related to language policy. Of this number 57 % is written in English, 13.3 % in German, 12.4 in French, 2.9 in Spanish, 2.6 % in Russian, 2.0 % in Italian, with almost 9.8 % in other or uncoded languages. Language planning related articles constitute 150, 186 articles, 70.6 % of which are written in English, 8.9 % in German, 8.3 % in French, 3.0 % in Russian, 1.8 % in Spanish, 1.6 % in Italian, while 5.8 % in other or uncoded languages. This pattern suggests that LPP items come from a more diverse source of language backgrounds than language items in general.


 * Methodology as Represented in the LPP Corpus **

According to the author methodologies are related to those disciplinary questions that the researcher wants to answer. Many studies have been carried out to demonstrate different types of LPP studies in literature, which fall under four categories: //Methodological. //A great number of authors wrote different articles dealing with methodological issues. Haarmann (1990) reviews the “functional ranges of language planning and methodology” and argues for the roles of individuals and groups in that plannings. Schiffman (1994) provides an alternative approach to language policy and focuses his attention mostly on the role of linguistic culture in LPP development. Poth (1996) offers a “methodological outline of LPP for the introduction of national languages into schools in Africa”. //Historical. //The author assumes that the historical context is vital in understanding LPP in a particular polity and it has been integrated into a number of recent politywide LPP studies.
 * Methodological studies
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Prelanguage policy and planning studies
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Evaluative” studies
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Ex post facto”/descriptive studies

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Language attitudes can have an important role in language planning as they have close connection with an individual’s attitudes towards language change. Attitudes serve to identify the particular problems that languages may have.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is a considerable lack of data for evaluating the language planning. Though in corpus there are many items related to language planning evaluation but not very closely connected with it. They refer to more to issues of testing and proficiency.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Comparative analysis helps to understand the issues that particular languages may have. This kind of study is very useful, as there are languages, the study of which would not be so effective if carried out in isolation.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Proficiency is another essential component of LPP. It gives information on the way of developing proficiency standards. But unfortunately there is little evaluation of proficiency.