Language politics

Language politics is the way language and linguistic differences between peoples are dealt with in the political arena. This could manifest as government recognition, as well as how language is treated in official capacities. The topic covers many related issues. As such, this page serves as a central resource for multiple articles relating to the topic of language and politics. Below are some categories dealing with the overlap between language and politics, along with examples and links to other relevant pages. Language planning Language planning refers to concerted efforts to influence how and why languages are used in a community. It is usually associated with governmental policies which largely involve status planning, corpus planning and acquisition planning. There are often much interaction between the three areas. Status planning involves giving a language or languages a certain standing against other languages and is often associated with language prestige and language function. Corpus planning often involves linguistic prescription as decisions are made in graphization, standardization and modernization of a language. Acquisition planning fundamentally involves language policies to promote language learning. Legal status of a language as an official language in a country, state, or other jurisdiction. This generally means that all official documents affecting a country or region are published in the official language(s), but not in those that are not. Evidence in a court of law may also be expected to be presented in an official language. In countries where there are more than one main language, there are often political implications in decisions that are seen to promote one group of speakers over another, and this is often referred to as language politics. An example of a country with this type of language politics is Belgium. In countries where there is one main language, immigrants seeking full citizenship may be expected to have a degree of fluency in that language ('language politics' then being a reference to the debate over the appropriateness of this).