We just learned that a standard language doesn't really exist except as a conept, although the forms that have been identified as standard forms do appear in some of the varieties of a language. Other forms may once have been used more regularly than now, but have been kept on as the preferred standard form.

The question is, who decides which form is chosen as the standard form while other forms are set aside as nonstandard, even though they may be extremely common across many speech communities? There is more than one answer to that question.

Language Academies

Some countries have established academies whose purpose is to authorize and propagate a standard variety of a language. There is an academy for French, and another for Spanish. There is no academy for English.

Academies exist largely in order to maintain a language’s “purity” and avoid corruption from the borrowing of foreign language elements. They were often sought by writers who feared that great language change would render their work, and their fame, obsolete.

Academies do not succeed in managing the language as well as they would like. If they did, they would not need to exist! Think about it: if an academy succeeded in getting every French speaker on the planet to speak exactly the same way--the academy would no longer have a purpose.

Language Planning

Academies are one aspect of language planning. Some countries seek to maintain control over not only what is the most desired variety of language but also what particular languages are spoken in the country.

Such control issues are referred to as language planning. Language planning typically takes three forms:

1) Policies and institutions whose job it is to promote one particular variety as the standard.

• Language academies, such as the French Academy, are an example of this.
• In the absence of an academy, language mavens, such as William Safire can be self-appointed. Safire had a sense of humor, though. Check out his list of rules -- every sentence that presents the rule breaks the rule it presents!

2) Policies and institutions whose job it is to eliminate varieties of a language or entire languages altogether

• This is often referred to as language banning; when the government takes on the role of eliminator.
• This happened in the US with many Native American languages; some were banned even on the reservations at one time.
• It is still a current practice, as evidenced by a 1995 court case and other active groups.
  • English First seeks to make English the official language of the U.S.
  • U.S. English, like English First, seeks to make English the Official language of the U.S.
  • James Crawford tracks the language policy issues around the country. The achives on his web site have much information on the topic.

3) Policies and Institutions whose job it is to revive a language.

• Language revival seeks to bring back a dead or nearly dead language.
  
  • One example of this is Hebrew in the country of Israel. Hebrew had largely been discarded as a language and was replaced by the languages of the speech communities that Jews found themselves living in or by a combination of Hebrew elements with local language elements such as in Yiddish.
  • Multiple organizations are also reviving other lost languages:
    • Various Native American Languages
    • Celtic
    • Hawaiian

Language, Prestige, and Identity

The goals of language planning typically are to create group solidarity by building up one feature, language, that is shared by all. All too often what happens is a power differential; speech separates those with prestige from those without prestige.

When a language variety is viewed as superior, speakers of another variety may consciously attempt to alter their language behavior toward the prestige variety. When the target variety is the dominant variety, the target variety is said to have overt prestige.

• A fictional example of this is seen in the plot of My Fair Lady,where a linguist tries to pass off a lower class woman as an upperclass woman by changing her speech from the sociolect of the lower class to one of the upper class.
• A real life example of a speaker of a nondominant variety seeking to conform to a dominant variety is when someone from the south tries to eliminate their Southern drawl.

If the target variety is a nondominant variety, but is still targeted by speakers as having some kind of prestige, the target variety is said to hold covert prestige.

• Frequently, attempts to change language behavior to more closely resemble a nondominant form is subconscious in nature.

Language policies exist primarily to bind people of a large, multidialectal or multilingual area together.