Useful things to know and think about for Language Policy
Schiffman's 'Laws' of Language Policy
- There is no such thing
as
'no language policy'
. If there doesn't seem to be an explicit language policy,
the policy is implicit, covert, de facto, unwritten, customary, laissez-faire.
- Language policies, however explicit, are typically
underspecified. That is, no matter how specific they are, they are
never explicit enough to cover all contingencies. (See 'unintended
consequences', below).
- Implementation. When language polices fail (or get into trouble), it is
typically when it comes
to implementation
of the policy. Language policy planners typically fail to
anticipate all the ramifications of implementation (costs, time, follow-up, cultural
factors, demographic changes) and often act as if vaguely-worded policies, guided by
a lot of wishful thinking, will somehow take care of themselves. They thus
fail to deal with unintended consequences
or
unanticipated developments, or factors beyond their control. Language policies are
(as someone put it in reference to other kinds of policies) not
self-implementing. Another way of putting it is (as someone said) "Hope
is not a policy." (More on the problems of implementation
here.)
- Costs: Language policies have a cost,
whether this be the financial costs of implementation, training of
teachers, publication of teaching materials, verification and enforcement of the
policy, testing, etc., or the typically unreckoned human costs (confusion, wasted
human resources, inconvenience, suffering, alienation...). Polities often fail to
balance costs with benefits, or they ignore certain costs or certain benefits. And
they also often fail to follow through the entire calendar of implementation,
budgeting for costs 5 or 10 years in the future. Or, regimes change, priorities
change, and the commitment to paying for the costs fizzles.
- Self-implementing and Self-Perpetuating Policies. Policy planners tend to
think a policy can be developed, set in stone, enshrined in law, and that the issue
is then solved once and for all. (I.e., they act as
if they are self-implementing, and in perpetuity.)
Retrospectively, people act as if policies developed years or centuries ago will
remain valid, and must be treated as if still valid (even if conditions have
changed.) They fail to see the evolutionary aspects of policy, and that policies
(like regimes, like populations, like attitudes), typically evolve and change (or
that if they fail to evolve, that they will fail). We might refer to this (borrowing
a term from discussions of our Supreme Court) as "strict constructionism." (By this
way of thinking, the abolition of slavery was not part of the original intent
of those who wrote the US Constitution, so we should still be maintaining it,
despite amendments to the constitution since then.)