| |
Language development, however, does not always follow the dotted line. There are moments in the history of a language when strong external forces overwhelm its natural course of development. Sudden political changes, war, colonization, decolonization, rapid socio-economic activities, intellectual and technological spurts and strong language contact situations are some important forces that not only predetermine the communicative roles of language but also make heavy demands on the structure of the language - its phonology, orthography, lexicon, grammar, sentence form, registers and even thought patterns. In such a situation communicative roles are predetermined either by superimposing one language over the other, as in the case of a colonial political victory, or by elevating the subordinate language to the position of a standard and allocating its role and functions which were so far being performed by the superordinate language in the communicative network of the society, as in the case of decolonization or democratization. These are two extreme situations, but there can as well as be a situation where two languages - superordinate and subordinate -are allocated communicative roles that are largely complementary to each other, i.e, their domains of use are mutually distributed, as in the case of many decolonized, underdeveloped or developing nations, in all the three situations there is an undercurrent of linguistic tension, overt or covert, between the standard or vernacular, the subordinate and the superordinate, the national and the international. A situation like this often calls for conscious organized efforts.
The urge amongst the aspiring nations to elevate the languages to meet the linguistic needs of modern science and technology has set in motion processes which may vary from nation to nation as also the strategies and solutions. But some issues are obviously common, like the modus operandi of language adaptation, the evolution of technical terminology, the adaptation of terminological codes, the norms of standardization, the social acceptance of innovation, the existence of a standard alternative code of an alien language already in command of the user, the problem of enforcing the usage of innovations, legitimizations of codes, production of up-to-date scientific and technical literature and above all the vexing question of national and cultural pride.
A complex situation like this calls for a conscious organized effort. A conscious effort calls for planning. Planning by definition involves a new entity, the planner, who formulates a policy and modus operandi to implement that policy. The planning authority is normally the government or an academy of excellence. |
