recent developments in malaysia have brought forth many issues vis-à-vis language planning, notably including the return to english as a medium of instruction. the present review addresses current linguistic issues and their implications for malay as the national official language, bringing together linguistics, sociology, education, psychology, communication, geography, history, politics, finance and management, in a nation which is not only multilingual but also multiethnic, multi-religious and multicultural. to make the matter more complex still, the immigrant population is almost as large as the so-called indigenous ‘majority’.
Kim Il Sung’s 1964 and 1966 conversations with linguists are appropriately deemed important as the establishment of the North’s “cultured language” as a standard, as well as guidance related to language purification and script. In the analysis of inflection point related to language planning and policy in the North, is the often guidance on re-enshrinement of teaching “Chinese characters” (hanja) in North Korean education. Clearly this was official pronouncement of functional, synchronic digraphia, which has been preserved and operationalized down to the present. Scholarship on these conversations, amounting to policy guidance, attribute the shift in policy related to script as an inflection point. The author of this article concurs with its importance, but with respect to digraphia in the North, the conversations related to hanja instruction served as a confirmation for what was a broad trend in North Korean language planning during the years 1953-1964, a language planning and policy fait accompli, diminishing the portrayal of the conversations as a digraphic inflection point in North Korea.
This chapter examines language ideologies in a small community (Guernsey, Channel Islands) which reflect wider issues concerning the aims and effectiveness of language-related activities. Ideologies are largely unstated yet they profoundly influence language planning and policy at both personal and public levels. Although there has been a shift over the last 30 or so years towards broadly positive overt attitudes in favour of maintenance of Guernsey’s indigenous language, it seems that ingrained covert negative attitudes linger in some sections of the community. From these observations the authors identify two main divergent trends in beliefs and ideologies concerning who has authority to speak on behalf of ‘the community’, and to make decisions regarding the future of an endangered language. The authors relate their observations to the concept of prior ideological clarification, and compare rhetoric on language maintenance and revitalization with actions and outcomes.
Questioning North Korea’s digraphic inflection point: Kim Il Sung’s 1964 and 1966 conversations with linguists reconsidered
