Language Policy and Planning in Hungary, Finland and Sweden: Some Common Issues

Robert B. Kaplan

Professor Emeritus, Applied Linguistics, University of Southern California. Postal address: PO Box 577, Port Angeles, WA 98362 USA (rkaplan@olypen.com)

Richard B. Baldauf Jr.

Associate Professor of TESOL, School of Education, University of Queensland, QLD 4072 Australia (r.baldauf@bigpond.com)

Introduction

Methodological and historical barriers to language policy and planning (LPP) research have often made generalizability of results difficult if not impossible – sometimes because comparable information has not been produced, but often because basic data is simply unavailable. In many polities, Côte d'Ivoire (Djité, 2000) for example, conditions and the state of academic research (i.e., not only the work published about the polity, but access to journals and recent books, computer facilities, time to do research, adequate salaries and working conditions, let alone funds for travel and research projects, etc.) are such that many LPP issues, such as those represented by the 22 questions suggested for these studies, simply could not be adequately addressed (Baldauf & Kaplan, 2004: 7).

Furthermore, LPP research, unlike science, does not have a rich culture of controlled experiments – nor perhaps, despite some early thinking to the contrary (see, e.g., Rubin&Jernudd, 1971), is such work possible. Instead, a wide variety of methodological perspectives have been used to examine various aspects of LPP (see, Baldauf, 2002), but central to this body of work, a descriptive culture of citing 'best practice' has evolved, which is inherently anecdotal (see, e.g., Kaplan & Baldauf, 2003). Furthermore, as Noss (1985) noted twenty years ago in relation to language-in-education planning, evaluation of language planning is relatively rare. This remains the case, and what evaluative work is done, at least at the macro level, is often poorly funded, empirical reports and experimental follow-ups that describe the 'effects' of some recent 'innovation,' often forgetting the basic tenet of science that association is not causation.

Thus, there has been a global tendancy to view LPP research as one fad (or one 'innovation') after another, each with a typical life span of five to ten years (often tied to the life of a political administration) (see, e.g., Kaplan & Tse, 1982). It is rare that anyone critically examines the evidence that validates one or another new practice. This soft approach to LPP research has led to redundancy and has inspired cynicism and existential fatigue among policy makers, journalists, and the public. In the process, LPP research has become a low-status undertaking, increasingly open to critique, although unfortunately much of the critique has focused on the way the discipline is seen to operate through its 'involvement' in issues like 'linguistic imperialism' or 'minority language rights', rather than on developing research based studies that appropriately address and try to understand the issues involved.

Another recent direction taken by some scholars has been to attempt to deal with language policy activities in terms of a dichotomy of success and failure. Given that language policy activity is commonly an on-going or continuous process, it is quite impossible to dichotomise LPP outcomes in such terms, though there are other attempts at structuring order that may be more useful.

For example, Pennycook (1998) provides a critical analysis of English and the discourses of colonialism, especially the tension between views of 'the self' and 'the other', between the 'insider' and the 'outsider', the emic and the etic. His primary focus of analysis is on colonialism – both historic and in its Eurocentric neo-colonialist forms – and the positive manner in which Europeans portrayed themselves versus the way they portrayed the colonised others. Following from this, he points out that there is a need to look 'more contextually ... at the sites and causes of the development of colonial discourses on language ...' as there is a 'constant negotiation of colonial language policy images of the Self and the Other' where 'culture and language were always being produced, developed and redefined' (1998: 128). This dichotomy and interaction between the Self and the Other – which Pennycook illustrates with Hong Kong as an example – is also characteristic of the tension in perspectives that individual LPP authors bring to their studies (Kaplan & Baldauf, 2004: 8).

Another obstacle to dichotomising outcomes – i.e., as successes or as failures – lies in the matter of the actors. Key actors in language policy designs can warp those designs to support quite different objectives (e.g., Kaplan & Baldauf 2003, the discussion of the role of Kim Il Sung in North Korea). In some polities, language policy activity has had a quite specific political objective, often without reference to the realities of language use in the polity, and sometimes to the detriment of the speaker population. As Kayambazinthu points out (Baldauf & Kaplan, 2004: 79), in her study of language planning in Malawi, '... language planning practices (past and present) present an interesting case study of pervasive ad hoc and reactive planning, based more on self-interest and political whim than research.' In such cases, dichotomising outcomes becomes futile.

Furthermore, policy efforts may show some successes and some failures simultaneously. But, as we have pointed out earlier, '... there is a great deal of language planning that occurs in other societal contexts [not necessarily at governmental level] at more modest levels for other purposes' (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 3). At these more micro levels, it is virtually impossible meaningfully to discuss success and failure. In short, dichotomising outcomes on a two-part scale seems not to constitute a useful activity – the world is not 'black and white'; rather it consists of many shades of grey. Indeed, there is a variety of policy and planning that occurs without planning (e.g., Baldauf, 1994; Eggington, 2002) – i.e., a situation in which some language planning occurs as fall-out from some other planning activity; e.g., the multi-polity accords of the International Postal Union on the required mode for addressing envelopes to assure international delivery.

A purpose of this series is to work with authors, involved in LPP in their polities, to bring together the available research in its socio-historical context, exploring with them what has happened, and the extent to which this has been documented in...