英国法国语言政策笔记

Language Policy in Britain and FranceChapter 1Theoretical considerations: sociolinguistics, policy studies and language planning 1.Cooper (1989, 31,183), defining language planning as 'deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of their language codes' rejected definitions of language planning which: restrict language planning to activities undertaken by governments, government-authorised agencies, or other authoritative bodies, i.e. organisations witha public mandate for language regulation.2. Fasold (1984, 250) agreed that language planning is an 'explicit choice between alternatives', he suggested that there are two ways this can be done: the instrumental - planners choose a language or improve one, since 'language is a tool' to greater efficiency; or the sociolinguistic - planners try to solve a social problem, taking into account the symbolic value of languages and weighing the social consequences of their choice.3.Chaudenson and Robillard, 1989, 24) noted that 'language planning' as a field of study originated among English-speaking specialists involved with the social and economic problems of newly independent States, mainly after the Second World War.4.('policy') as all national choices concerning language and culture, specifying general long-term objectives (educational levels, training, employment, function and status of languages, etc.) and founded on an analysis of the starting position.('planning') would apply to any long-, short- or medium-term operation aimed at putting the objectives defined by policy into operation, taking into account the means provided and the procedures envisaged.(language management and control) very diverse actions leading to the concrete realisation of operations defined in the preceding two categories, and made it clear that for him amenagement linguistique was not to be confused with corpus planning.5.The types of language behaviour such actors have tried to influence have been acquisition planning (teaching and learning), corpus planning (the structure of language) and status planning (the functional allocation of languages or language varieties). Language planning activities can usually be classified and distinguished from each other under these headings, and useful distinctions in terminology have followed from clarification of the activities.6.Acquisition planning can apply to the teaching and learning of first languages (LI), sometimes referred to as native languages, mother tongues or maternal languages, or as vernacular languages; to second languages (SL or L2), which are those used as vehicular languages to enable the learner to participate in his or her society; and foreign languages (FL), those learnt later for a variety of reasons involving communication with other societies, but which are not in normal everyday use within the learner's society.7.Acquisition planning generally has had clear social purposes in influencing the behaviour of those who will be society's future members. Thus the adoption of a new foreign language in the schools responds to the new political commitments - Swedishand Finnish start to be taught throughout Europe as Sweden and Finland become members of the European Union; Armenian is accepted at baccalaureat level because Armenian is the language of a large immigrant group in France which society should recognise; French must be the language of education in all French schools because it is the language of the State, and only through knowledge of French can social integration be assured.8.Corpus planning is normally understood as action to improve the ability of a language to respond to change; it is often, though not always, concerned with modernising the word stock of the language. George Thomas (1991, 76-81) discussed corpus planning as social behaviour, examining the attitudes different types of purism revealed. Archaising purism thus demonstrates reverence for the past; ethnographic purism, seeking purer language in folk dialects and in popular and rural forms is one manifestation of the rejection of 'advanced' urban society; elitist purism 'embodies a negative, proscriptive attitude to substandard and regional usage', aiming at promoting the language, values and social ideology of the elite. Reformist purism may involve the repudiation of a foreign model, or of a language associated with former political domination, and requires the planner to modernise, to 'reform, regenerate, renew or resuscitate a language' in order to support a new sense of social belonging. Xenophobic purism derives from a rejection of foreigners or foreign customs. All these motivations, except possibly the xenophobic, 'are intended to have some improvement of the language as an end result', although 'anti-purism' tries to correct the effects particularly of xenophobic purism. Finally Thomas, perhaps at a loss to explain some types of purist action in terms of their effect on social behaviour, also felt that some apparently non-rational actions originated in pure play: 'there are instances where purism is an end in itself, little more than a literary or aesthetic game'.9.Status planning involves attempts to change the relative prestige in which a particular political or ethnic community holds a language or language variety. It is usually carried out to raise prestige, through ensuring that the language is used in some prestigious domains such as those of public life, rather than in non-prestigious ones like the home or the local cafe. Generally speaking, the greater the number of domains of use, and the more significant they are to the public and official life of the community, the higher the status; the higher the status, the greater the prestige that will then be accorded to the language (Mekacha, 1994).The significance of language use depends on the functions to which it, or a variety or code of language, is assigned within such domains. Status planning hence aims at influencing society's functional allocation of language codes. Stewart (1968, quoted in Cooper, 1989, 99-119), listed such allocations as:o: official (politically or culturally representative purposes);p: provincial (provincial or regional official language);w: wider communication (across language boundaries within the nation);i: international (e.g. diplomatic relations, trade, tourism);c: capital city;g: group (i.e. tribe, settled group of immigrants); e: educational; s: school subject;1: literary; r: religious.Cooper adds two more: mass media and work, and we shall return to the question of domains and functions when considering the contribution of sociolinguistics to identifying types of community as targets of language policy.10.It is useful to keep clear the distinctions between status, corpus and acquisition policy in order to clarify the types of behaviour it is intended should be influenced, although much language policy is not in practice restricted to one or other of these main types: choosing one language rather than another to be learnt in the foreign language classroom often affects its relative status within society at large, and writing a new dictionary -standardising the language as an act of corpus policy - makes acquiring the language easier, or in some cases possible. Indeed, language policy -particularly where matters of status are concerned - may often really be a cover for some other type of policy altogether, while social policy - on education, social benefits or voting rights, for example - may well have linguistic consequences. Chapter 2The development of the standard language1.SelectionIn England, the dialect which had probably gained ascendancy after the arrival of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes from 449 until just before the Norman Conquest was West Saxon, which had achieved the status of a national preferred literary form and, as the language of Alfred the Great, was politically important if not pre-eminent. The Norman Conquest of 1066 however - the 'most significant historical event' in the history of the language (Finegan, 1987) - prevented the selection of a pre-existing dialect of English as the standard, and might well have imposed Norman French as both standard and official language on the conquered populations. Indeed, Norman French was the official language for at least a century and a half after 1066, a period during which diglossia characterised the country and individual bilingualism is not thought to have been very widespread.The turn of the linguistic tide is usually dated as 1204, when King John lost Normandy and he and successive kings were forced to concentrate on their possessions in Britain. After this time, and particularly after the Black Death of 1348, English became more widespread and gained prestige. Following the Statute of Pleading of 1362, which required English rather than French or Latin to be used in the law courts, 'English again became the language of England and of her literature' (Finegan, 1987, 84). By 1362 'English', heavily affected by the impact of the French and then the Anglo-Norman dialect of the conquerors, was in fact already the spoken language of the courts, although Latin was retained as the language of written record. But which dialect form of this new 'English' would be selected? Throughout the period 1400-1600 the five regional dialects (Southern, South-Eastern, West and East Midlands, and Northern) all continued to be used, with 'important Middle English texts in every one' (Price, 1984, 175). By about 1470, however, most writing seemed to reflect East Midlands usage. The process of dialect selection in England was probably based on bureaucratic practice (the language of the king's clerks) in addition to literature (Chaucer), education and learning (Oxford and Cambridge), political power (the London Court) and the prestige of the written form (after Caxton's invention of the printing press in 1476), so the selection was as much social as political, and certainly not so 'military' as that of France (cf. Grillo, 1989, 155-62, who characterises the influences as 'Chaucer, Chancery and Caxton').There was, of course, no question of selecting any of the regional languages, even in Wales, Scotland or Ireland. The aim of converting Catholics to Protestantism was one of the main motivating factors for the spread of English into these countries, although it was by no means the only one. The education of the masses, for example, was thought to be hindered by their use of indigenous languages, so even as late as the 1847 'Blue Books' (reports of the Commissioners on the state of education inWales), officials could cheerfully state that 'the Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people' (quoted in Grillo, 1989, 87). Religion and education were, however, inextricably linked: if for some, progress could only come through the use of the standard language, for others, using the standard language meant rejecting their identity. Throughout Britain churches and groups such as the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, the Irish 'Hedge Schools', and the Edinburgh Gaelic School Society, made the Bible and other texts available in the local language, and taught in Welsh or (Irish and Scottish) Gaelic, keeping the indigenous languages alive, in some cases even against the law (teachers of Irish were proscribed in Ireland until 1792).The Education Acts of 1870 and 1872 ensured more direct state, rather than religious, involvement with education, although the system was locally managed and controlled. Neither Act made provision for teaching in languages other than English, although local codes of practice made provision in Welsh, Scottish and Irish Gaelic possible in the elementary and later in the intermediate schools.2.Codification, the rejection of dialect and specialist terms and the reduction of the language to an efficient, usable instrument, was carried out by many different hands, although the most visible forms were those affecting literary and courtly language. The codification of English took place also from about the sixteenth century, through the publication of dictionaries and grammars, many of them intended to teach the language to rural squires or to the 'Welsh gentry' after the 1536 Act of Union between England and Wales. Written standard English was codified through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although Jonathan Swift's 'Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue' appeared in 1712, the grammar of Bishop Lowth in 1762, and Samuel Johnson's dictionary did not appear until 1755. Throughout this codification process three influences were again paramount: the king's English, in the form of the administrative and legal language; literary English, in the form of the language accepted as that used by great literature -and used for printing and publishing; and 'Oxford English', or the English of education and the Church - its main provider. At no point in this process was the State openly involved.Codification also affected the spoken form of the standard language. 'Received pronunciation' was codified through the influence of education, particularly that of the nineteenth-century public schools, followed from the early twentieth century by cinema, radio and television ('BBC English'). Nonetheless it is estimated that only 3-5 per cent of the population of Britain speak received pronunciation today (Trudgill and Hannah, 1982), and hence this particular form of the spoken language is 'accepted' by society only in the sense that it is widely understood.Codification of English has produced at least two standard languages - the British and the North American, although the differences between the two are matters of pronunciation and the lexicon, rather than affecting anything more seriously structural. Any work by an academy to codify either of the two standards 'has been consistently rebuffed, and any suggestion of an international academy would almost certainly be met with international ridicule' (Finegan, 1987, 101), so the two codified norms have separate existence, with separate authorities being consulted - Webster's Dictionary (first edition 1828) for America and the Oxford English Dictionary (first instalment of the first edition 1884) for the British.2.SelectionIn England, the dialect which had probably gained ascendancy after the arrival of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes from 449 until just before the Norman Conquest was West Saxon, which had achieved the status of a national preferred literary form and, as the language of Alfred the Great, was politically important if not pre-eminent. The Norman Conquest of 1066 however - the 'most significant historical event' in the history of the language (Finegan, 1987) - prevented the selection of a pre-existing dialect of English as the standard, and might well have imposed Norman French as both standard and official language on the conquered populations. Indeed, Norman French was the official language for at least a century and a half after 1066, a period during which diglossia characterised the country and individual bilingualism is not thought to have been very widespread.The turn of the linguistic tide is usually dated as 1204, when King John lost Normandy and he and successive kings were forced to concentrate on their possessions in Britain. After this time, and particularly after the Black Death of 1348, English became more widespread and gained prestige. Following the Statute of Pleading of 1362, which required English rather than French or Latin to be used in the law courts, 'English again became the language of England and of her literature' (Finegan, 1987, 84). By 1362 'English', heavily affected by the impact of the French and then the Anglo-Norman dialect of the conquerors, was in fact already the spoken language of the courts, although Latin was retained as the language of written record. But which dialect form of this new 'English' would be selected? Throughout the period 1400-1600 the five regional dialects (Southern, South-Eastern, West and East Midlands, and Northern) all continued to be used, with 'important Middle English texts in every one' (Price, 1984, 175). By about 1470, however, most writing seemed to reflect East Midlands usage. The process of dialect selection in England was probably based on bureaucratic practice (the language of the king's clerks) in addition to literature (Chaucer), education and learning (Oxford and Cambridge), political power (the London Court) and the prestige of the written form (after Caxton's invention of the printing press in 1476), so the selection was as much social as political, and certainly not so 'military' as that of France (cf. Grillo, 1989, 155-62, who characterises the influences as 'Chaucer, Chancery and Caxton').There was, of course, no question of selecting any of the regional languages, even in Wales, Scotland or Ireland. The aim of converting Catholics to Protestantism was one of the main motivating factors for the spread of English into these countries, although it was by no means the only one. The education of the masses, for example, was thought to be hindered by their use of indigenous languages, so even as late as the 1847 'Blue Books' (reports of the Commissioners on the state of education in Wales), officials could cheerfully state that 'the Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people' (quoted in Grillo, 1989, 87). Religion and education were, however, inextricably linked: if for some, progress could only come through the use of the standard language, for others, using the standard language meant rejecting their identity. Throughout Britain churches and groups such as the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, the Irish 'Hedge Schools', and the Edinburgh Gaelic School Society, made the Bible and other texts available in the local language, and taught in Welsh or (Irish and Scottish) Gaelic, keeping the indigenous languages alive, in some cases even against the law (teachers of Irish were proscribed in Ireland until 1792).The Education Acts of 1870 and 1872 ensured more direct state, rather than religious, involvement with education, although the system was locally managed and controlled. Neither Act made provision for teaching in languages other than English, although local codes of practice made provision in Welsh, Scottish and Irish Gaelic possible in the elementary and later in the intermediate schools.3.ElaborationIn English, 'generally speaking, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the centuries of vocabulary expansion in response to the need for functional elaboration of the developing standard - in science, philosophy and literature' (Milroy, J., 1984, 13). Like French, English borrowed extensively - from French in particular, from which language it took not merely vocabulary items but also a range of derivational systems of prefixes and suffixes. In science and technology, English borrowed, and still does, extensively from Latin and Greek, although 'mastery of the Latinate vocabulary of English is difficult and requires the support of a strong educational system' (Milroy, J., 1984, 28).4.AcceptanceThe acceptance of standard language throughout the British speech community is by no means general, and much of the debate over questions of identity, of the teaching of the standard language in a national curriculum, over 'sloppiness' in language use, and over the assimilation of immigrant communities through language is related to intra-language variation and to social dialects. Gillian Shephard, Secretary of State for Education, put the case for accepting standard English as an entitlement for all citizens succinctly at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1994, and indeed repeated the message at the 1995 conference:For too long we have been too slack in our treatment of English. And we haveimpoverished our children in the process. That is why the National Curriculum . . . puts the emphasis firmly on standard English. Children must be able to master these essential tools if they are to express themselves clearly and make their way successfully in the world.The opposite point of view was expressed by Alan Howarth in an article in the Guardian (15 October 1994). A former Conservative Minister of Education, he noted that 'the prosperous are nervous about the poor' and described the concern with standard English as 'cultural authoritarianism', based on potentially 'ugly and dangerous values': 'Presumably if the underclass and immigrants won't understand about subordinate clauses and the subjunctive mood, they are beyond the pale.' His distaste for some of these feelings may have contributed to his departure from the party in October 1995.Chapter 4Constituent, corpus and acquisition policiesACQUISITION POLICIESThe teaching of English in BritainIt is in this area that recent British governments have been most active in recent years, slowly developing a national policy for English whose aims and purposes are mixed: to improve the learning and teaching of the language but also to ensure that a certain type of English - and the associated cultural 'baggage' - is transmitted through the schools.The Bullock Report of 1975 had advocated an awareness of and sympathy for the 'linguistic and cultural diversity' of children, meaning by this 'the language and culture of the home', which 'no child should be expected' to 'cast off as he crosses the school threshold and the curriculum should reflect those aspects of his life'. This attitude of respect for social as well as cultural diversity, elevating working-class culture to the level of that of the elite, had changed somewhat in the Swann Report of 1985, which saw standard English as having a major role in unifying the country. The process continued in the Kingman Report of 1988, which outlined four reasons for supporting the teaching of standard English (defined as an 'overarching' variety) to all pupils: it contains the best of the national heritage, it is the language all Britons have in common, it is the only variety not associated with territory, and it is that best suited for the transmission of culture, for literature and for literacy.1988The 1988 Education Reform Act required the Secretary of State to make orders specifying the content of the National Curriculum, in English as in other subjects. Just prior to the passage of this Act, the Kingman Report had given some idea of the direction the debate would take and of the way in which policy towards the teaching of English would reflect the concerns of national identity and 'return to basics' characteristic of the government of the day. The Kingman Report was followed by National Curriculum draft orders ('Proposals') in 1989. These were revised in 1990, 1992, 1993 and again in 1994. Their general orientation was to ensure that standard English would beconsistently taught and that the 'canon' of great writers in English would be a necessary component in every child's education.1994The general thrust and purpose of the English curriculum after 1995, after its major changes, the battles that have been fought over the succession of Reports - Bullock (1975), Swann (1985), Kingman (1988), Cox (1989) and succeeding working parties - is to includemore emphasis on grammar, spelling and punctuation;a clear and more rigorous requirement for pupils to be taught written and spokenstandard English; withproper attention to correct English as a requirement across the curriculum for the first time;more emphasis on high quality literature. (DfE Press Release, 13 October 1994)Generally speaking, the changes which have taken place in pursuance of Conservative education policy since 1979 have aimed at establishing exactly these principles, in opposition to what has often been presented as the wish of the teaching profession for less prescription, a free choice of reading, greater attention to language variety and to knowledge about language, and a desire to weaken the link between English language and the English nation (i.e. to aim for a multicultural understanding, rather than a specifically English one).The general requirements for English are introduced in the 1994 orders {NCO, 1994). According to these, 'English should develop pupils' abilities to communicate effectively in speech and writing, and to listen with understanding. It should also enable them to be enthusiastic, responsive and knowledgeable readers'. In order to develop these skills, pupils should 'use the vocabulary and grammar of standard English; formulate, clarify and express their ideas; listen, understand and respond appropriately to others'. Such general requirements apply also to the development of pupils as effective readers, and here the selection of texts involved should enable them to 'read, analyse and evaluate a wide range of texts, including literature from the English literary heritage and from other cultures and traditions'. The aims also include the requirement that students should 'participate confidently in public, cultural and working life', and in order to do this, 'pupils need to be able to speak, write and read standard English fluently and accurately'. The approach to the curriculum based on the concept of rights and entitlement is clear in the following statement:All pupils are therefore entitled to the full range of opportunities necessary to enable them to develop competence in standard English. The richness of dialects and other languages can make an important contribution to pupils' knowledge and understanding of standard English. Where appropriate, pupils should be encouraged to make use of their understanding and skills in other languages when learning English. (NCO, 1994)In Wales however, special provisions were thought to be necessary, and although the language and cultural knowledge of Welsh-speakers should be recognised and used, they should nonetheless 'be given access to the full scope of the programmes of study'.The question of standard English required special provisions, particularly in defining what standard English was meant to be:4. Pupils should be given opportunities to develop their understanding and useof standard English and to recognise that:standard English is distinguished from other forms of English by its vocabulary and by rules and conventions of grammar, spelling and punctuation;the grammatical features that distinguish standard English include how pronouns, adverbs and adjectives should be used and how negatives, questions and verb tenses should be formed; such features are present in both the spoken and written forms, except where non-standard forms are used for effect or technical reasons;differences between the spoken and written forms relate to the spontaneity of speech and to its function in conversation, whereas writing is more permanent, often carefully crafted, and less dependent on immediate responses;spoken standard English is not the same as Received Pronunciation and can be expressed in a variety of accents. (A/CO, 1994)The details of the Programmes of Study and the Level Descriptions for Attainment Targets up to Key Stage 3 (age 14) are also specified. Criteria for attainment targets at Key Stage 4 are those of GCSE, which were specified in 1994.。