Sessions /
Language Planning: An Example from Africa #1161

Linguistic concepts and explanations can be foreign to the layman. However, if you tell someone that language planning forms part of language, their attentiveness might raise a level. If you mention this to someone in a country where more than one language is accepted as an official language and convey to them that their specific language is being planned, then you will have their full attention. In this presentation I will use Cooper’s 1989 framework to describe and evaluate the impact language planning had on the education of black South Africans from 1948 to 1994. This time frame of world history is commonly known as apartheid. I chose this time frame as it is an excellent example of how important the role of language planning is in a country. The language planning in South Africa during this time controlled mother-tongue education, which led to black people rejecting mother-tongue education. Black people felt that they were forced to study the language of their oppressors. This ultimately led to a separate department of education and riots against the language-planning policies, the end result being the eventual fall of apartheid.

*** Part of the Graduate Student Showcase; this presentation, itself, is ~25 minutes long. ***