Discusses the background and implications of the 1990 Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord signed by the seven nations that have Portuguese as their official language. Concludes that while most of the debate over the accord revolves around issues of linguistic efficiency, the accord and its proponents are primarily concerned with political and…

Assesses efforts to standardize the Malian languages, including the standardization of orthography and the creation of terminology in the Mandingo-Peul Project. Points to conflicts between technical and political considerations, and between local tendencies and balances among languages and the need to respect the ecolinguistics of the country.…

Discusses the independent Namibian government's goal of making English (currently the mother tongue of less than 5 percent of the population) the official language to unite various race and speech communities into one national entity, and proposes a systems approach to enable language planners to see the relationships between plans and other…

The academic literature on issues related to the Philippine English language and literature is substantial. This bibliography surveys relevant work on such related fields as the sociology of language and language planning, Bilingualism, bilingual education, and languages in education, language attitudes, code-switching and code-mixing, Philippine…

Sociolinguistic data are presented in the form of sophisticated maps and tables in this pioneering study on the status of the Basque language. Based on information collected from the 1986 census, the major demographic characteristics of Basque are examined in order to ascertain the factors and processes that have contributed to its current status.…

The development of biliteracy programs designed for adults involves a broad range of sociolinguistic questions that can be approached from a language planning perspective. As a problem-solving activity, language planning is the realization of language policy that a government adopts in respect to such issues as language diversity, minority…

This study attempts to give an account of the position of English in Finland, where both Swedish and Finnish are official languages and taught in the schools of both Swedish and Finnish areas of the country. To provide a better understanding of the position of English, a brief historical sketch is provided, with emphasis on the development of…

The article outlines past and present approaches to initial literacy teaching to speakers of indigenous vernaculars in Australia and New Zealand. It comments on the implications of this experience in the wider context of teaching literacy, and of teaching English literacy in Southeast Asia as a whole. (CLK)

This study attempts to do the following things: (1) to identify values and assumptions as they influence research on bilingual education; (2) to identify and delineate the major theories employed in explaining and predicting phenomena in bilingual education; and (3) to explore alternative explanations of identical phenomena, and to show that…

The areas of language planning and the language of oppression are discussed within the theoretical framework of existential sociolinguistics. This tradition is contrasted with the contemporary models of positivism with its assumptions about constancy and quantification. The proposed model brings in social history, intent, consciousness, and other…

The paper draws attention to communication in multilingual states which may be said to exist at three levels: sub-state, state, and inter-state level. Communication at the sub-state level may involve an "in-group" language or a regional one, and hence a multilingual model is required at this level. At the state level, on the other hand,…

The present Information Circular covering the language situation in East Africa has been prepared as a bibliographic reference tool for specialists, universities, and libraries. The introductory section describes the work of EARIC (East African Research Information Centre), which is sponsored by the East African Academy and financed by the Ford…

This volume contains nine papers presented at a discussion session on language planning at the 1972 Georgetown University Round Table. Papers by Bjorn H. Jernudd and Joan Rubin emphsize language planning as only one kind of treatment for language problems. Aaron Bar-Adon and T. P. Gorman discuss language treatment activities, indicating that local…

Outlines the various uses of English, explains the problems of teaching it, and then concludes with suggestions based on situation factors relevant to English language instruction in West Africa. (FB)

Overviews 20 years of language planning in Quebec and examines the effect of the province's institutional instability on the economy, language planning, and relations between ethnolinguistic groups. Elucidates the causes of Quebec's efforts to preserve its language and culture and concludes that the province needs its Anglophone population for the…