DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Language planning
Research
The distinction between Development and Research is not easy to make, but there are differences. The essence of research is that it sets up a hypothesis (research question) which it attempts to investigate. What a development does, on the other hand, is to proceed on the basis of the best evidence available. The larger the enterprise, the more difficult it is to conduct research. The outcome of a research question can always be used to repeat the research in some revised mode. But if the enterprise is a national or semi-national plan/policy there is little likelihood that repetition will be possible. Development should of course draw on research findings and research outcomes but with national plans there is inevitably a dearth of relevant research. What can be done, as we saw with the Australian language policy, is to embed the thinking behind the plan in the nexus of considerations, all of which will have their own research to draw on.
Language planning – or language policy (Kachru 1981, Baldauf and Kaplan 1997, Ferguson 2006) – offers opportunities for research in applied linguistics, not so much in its careful reporting of plans, maintenance, survival, shift and so on but in its categorization which permits methodical investigation. Ferguson’s diglossia proposal (Ferguson 1959) and Stewart’s functional language use idea (Stewart 1968) have been influential in language planning development. Here I want to refer particularly to Einar Haugen’s 1966 essay on the relation between dialect and standard language.
What Haugen succeeds in doing in this discussion is to explain both what standardization means in terms of the language–society interface and at the same time to provide a methodology for determining the extent to which a language code has achieved the status of a standard language. Haugen offers a table which has been much used and now underpins much of applied linguistic thinking about standard languages; it has helped explain why standard languages are necessary (see Table 2.1).
Haugen argues that all standard languages are dialects that have become accepted, given status. (We can of course also say that they are dialects in power, dialects with an army; but that is a negative view since it is equally true of other characteristics of societies, from politeness to dress to housing and education, status tends towards the more powerful.) This is why linguists say that all languages/dialects are equal: what is meant is that potentially they are; it does not mean that they are equal socially. (It is not wholly clear that they are equal even linguistically, certainly not in terms of, for example, technical vocabulary, as we see when comparing Standard English with an unwritten language at this point in time.)
How does a dialect become a standard language? Haugen charts its normal progress (and it is its generalizability which makes his categorization of theoretical value):
The four aspects of language development … isolated as crucial features in taking the step from ‘dialect’ to ‘language’, from vernacular to standard, are as follows: (a) selection of norm, (b) codification of form, (c) elaboration of function, and (d) acceptance by the community. The first two refer primarily to the form, the last two to the function of language. The first and last are concerned with society, the second and third with language. They form a matrix within which it should be possible to discuss all the major problems of language and dialect in the life of a nation. (Haugen 1966/1972: 110)
Haugen’s terminology may need explanation:
1. Selection of form: one of the existing dialects is chosen for standardization purposes. The chosen dialect is likely to be the one spoken by the more powerful and better educated groups living in or near the capital.
2. Codification of form: the selected dialect is provided with a written grammar and a dictionary so that it can be used in official documents, taught in schools and learnt by foreigners.
3. Elaboration of function: where necessary, ways of talking and writing about technology and other developments needed for modern education and commerce will be developed by an academy or language bureau. In the first instance it may be necessary to borrow or invent vocabulary lists.
4. Acceptance by the community: neither codification nor elaboration will succeed unless the community agree that the right dialect has been selected.
The relevance of Haugen’s work to applied linguistics is that it provides a methodology for examining language in use. It abstracts and theorizes from actual language data, the dialect continuum, the existence of standard languages, the decisions by society as to which dialect to select for standardization purposes. It is this actualization which gives it its robustness and which makes it an applied linguistic endeavor. It is not linguistics alone, nor political science alone nor sociology alone. It is the bringing together of these viewpoints to focus on a language problem in society which allows us to call it applied linguistics.
