ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4 we explored discourse analysis as a tool that applied linguists use to understand how speakers, signers and writers employ language to represent themselves and others in given contexts. In this chapter we focus on the area of applied linguistics known as language policy and planning, defined by Robert Cooper (1989, p. 45) as ‘deliberate attempts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of their language “code”’. Thus, language planners are concerned with decisions about language use by, and on behalf of, a wide range of clients of applied linguistics. Like the students and practitioners whose concerns we’ve discussed in the rest of Part A, language planners and policy-makers are concerned with aspects of language in everyday use, and in understanding and solving a broad range of contemporary problems in which language is sometimes the target or end and sometimes the means or tool by which other (non-linguistic) issues can be resolved. An example of the former is the government of China’s decree that Mandarin Chinese be the obligatory language of schooling across the nation:
Article 10 of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Use of Language and Script . . . ordains that all schools and other educational institutions in China must adopt Mandarin and standard Chinese written characters as their primary teaching language and written form.
