Language policy

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Several measures in language planning will be presented and explained to the students (policies aiming at promoting bilingualism or language feminization, policies against linguistic anglicization, educational policies regarding language quality, management of language use in multilingual companies, state regulation of language use at work, in advertising, etc.).

Cases analyzed will be chosen in a way to meet different spheres of activity (public services, private companies, education system, etc.) and various aspects of language use (language rights, language quality, spelling reforms, terminology, attitudes towards language, etc.). A diversity of linguistic situation will be examined, with a preference for situations involving the French language.

By the end of the course, the student shall be able to :
- understand the social, economic and political issues of language planning in mono- and multilingual contexts;
- take a critical stance towards some examples of language policies, relating them to their underlying ethical and normative principles;
- identify useful scientific methods in a way to evaluate the potential or actual impact of some language policies;
- conceive such policies in response to given empirical situations.

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

The assessment is based on students' personal research, which will be synthesized in a written paper and presented verbally. During this oral presentation, students should also be able to answer questions regarding the general content of the course.

The course is made up of lectures and debating sessions on issues of linguistic policy. Active participation is required of students, each of whom is required to contribute to the class discussion by doing one of the tasks suggested by the lecturer.

The course will start with a general introduction focusing on the major concepts of research on langue policy (e.g. language planning, status vs corpus), on the main disciplines linked to this research field, and to its scientific and social stakes.

The course will then study several actual language policies, in a way to catch their ethical and political groundings, their underlying language ideology, their modalities of implementation and their linguistic, social and political consequences. The focus will be first on policies aiming at regulating the use of languages within a State (e.g. Belgium, Quebec, USA, Great-Duchy of Luxembourg) or an institution (e.g. teaching languages at school, selecting the language used in the workplace), and then on policies aiming at modifying the way to use a particular language (e.g. feminisation, orthographical reform, struggle against Anglicism).

See the document entitled  'Bibliography'  on the iCampus course website.

http://icampus.uclouvain.be/claroline/document/document.php?cidReset=true&cidReq=ROM2460_001

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