Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- Editors’ note
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Chapter 1 Conditions under which language policy affects social stability
- Chapter 2 The case of the Catalan language: Some lessons
- Chapter 3 Language and hegemonic power: How feasible is conflict management by means of language policy?
- Chapter 4 The language issue and the quest for lasting peace in Africa: Prospects and challenges
- Chapter 5 The role of language in the process of constructing, preserving and reinforcing peace in Africa
- Chapter 6 Language policy and identity conflict in relation to Afrikaans in the post-apartheid era
- Chapter 7 Linguistic politics and the Northern Ireland peace process
- Chapter 8 Language policy and conflict management: A view from Galicia
- Chapter 9 Overcoming ethno-liguistic divisions: Developing educational materials in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Chapter 10 On language and peace: Some theological remarks
- Abbreviations and glossary
- Author biographies
Chapter 1 - Conditions under which language policy affects social stability
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- Editors’ note
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Chapter 1 Conditions under which language policy affects social stability
- Chapter 2 The case of the Catalan language: Some lessons
- Chapter 3 Language and hegemonic power: How feasible is conflict management by means of language policy?
- Chapter 4 The language issue and the quest for lasting peace in Africa: Prospects and challenges
- Chapter 5 The role of language in the process of constructing, preserving and reinforcing peace in Africa
- Chapter 6 Language policy and identity conflict in relation to Afrikaans in the post-apartheid era
- Chapter 7 Linguistic politics and the Northern Ireland peace process
- Chapter 8 Language policy and conflict management: A view from Galicia
- Chapter 9 Overcoming ethno-liguistic divisions: Developing educational materials in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Chapter 10 On language and peace: Some theological remarks
- Abbreviations and glossary
- Author biographies
Summary
Language policy is an unavoidable aspect of social policy, even if this is seldom acknowledged in situations where the language question is not rendered prominent by one or other aspect of societal contradiction. This is the meaning of Halliday and Martin's statement in Writing science (1993) to the effect that ‘the history of humanity is not only a history of socio-economic activity; it is also a history of semiotic activity’.
Class struggles about the distribution of resources in a social system and about the character of a given society constitute the matrix within which all social policy is shaped and articulated. These struggles, however, seldom manifest themselves as struggles about economic goods as such. They are usually coloured by and couched in terms of historically evolved inter-group or inter-community relations, so that a certain measure of fetishism is always present. For this reason, too, it is impossible to formulate a neat set of (even) necessary conditions under which language policy and practice will affect social stability one way or another.
My use of the term ‘social stability’ should be read as referring to situations where there is no overt, large-scale conflict in the medium to long term and where the hegemony of a given set of social relations is generalised and experienced by most individuals as common sense. There is, however, a frame of reference within which my question can be meaningfully analysed. In this connection, work by Brian Weinstein in particular provides us with a set of guidelines that I find very helpful. In his introductory chapter to Language policy and political development, published as early as 1990, he makes the assertion that, based on historical evidence, language policy has been, and can be, used in order (1) to maintain a social order; (2) to reform a social order; or (c) to transform a social order. The book itself consists of a series of case studies that are calculated to demonstrate this thesis.
Formulated in this way, we may be tempted to equate the expression ‘language policy’ with the current professional practice of ‘language planning’ understood as an aspect of the discipline of the sociology of language that was pioneered by scholars such as Haugen, Fishman and Ferguson.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language Policy and the Promotion of PeaceAfrican and European case studies, pp. 1 - 4Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2014