Critically examines existing government and constitutional provisions that amount to a national language policy in Nigeria. An alternative policy in which the three indigenous Nigerian languages in the present policy are replaced with a neutral one is proposed. (21 references) (GLR)

To keep the balance between internal and external needs in a modern world regional languages should be used as the media of instruction at the elementary level. Standardized link languages should be introduced at some point in the secondary level to ease the transition from monolingualism to multilingualism. Available from Humanities Press, Inc.,…

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.…

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)

Bilingual education in the United States has been directed by various language education policies to which there are three dimensions: (1) the language or dialect the child speaks on entering school; (2) the type of language policy in the school, which may be monolingual or one of three types of bilingual policies; (3) the divisions of language…

Using as a framework Ferguson's diglossia model with its division into a high and a low variety of the language used, the linguistic situation in the Sudan in described as a continuum. At one end is found the very formal classical Arabic, used for special occasions. At the other end is a casual form which dominates meetings and social gatherings…

The English-Only movement attacks bilingual education and attempts to have English declared the official language of the U.S. Feeding on the fear and anger many experience when dealing with non-English speakers, the movement provides no positive direction but draws on and encourages racism and bigotry. (LHW)

Implementation of a language modernization process such as one occurring in the Pacific basin is as important as the policy development behind it. Three critical factors in implementation are teacher training, the development of good teaching materials, and a plan for evaluating program effectiveness. Attempts to meet the need for good…

The national re-emergence of Scotland is accompanied by the desire for cultural and linguistic autonomy and identity. Issues at hand include language standardization, bilingual education, the language problems of immigrants, the role of Gaelic as compared to the continuum of linguistic varieties that go from Standard English to Scots, the adoption…

The Arabization process in the Maghreb countries--Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia--is unique in that these countries are officially committed to the use of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) while widespread use of French, a colonial language, persists, and the formal Arabic used in Arabization differs from the colloquial forms used in each country. The…

This volume contains the proceedings of the symposium on African language, culture and society held at Ohio State University. Six of the papers deal with the related issues of language reform and language planning, including such aspects as the choice of national and official languages. They include both general proposals for theoretical models as…

This master's thesis considers the linguistic situation of Malaysia and the need for language planning to establish one language as a common link across many diverse ethnic and linguistic groups. The development of the present-day multilingual situation in Malaysia is described. The country is characterized by language islands created by a lack of…

This is a collection of eight essays dealing with various aspects of language treatment in Egypt. The first essay attempts a tentative typology characterizing the role of the Arabic language as a unifying or divisive force within and among the countries in which it is spoken as a native language. This essay also makes some initial reflections on…

Reports of language research in the 1996 issue include: "Corpus Planning for the Southern Peruvian Quechua Language" (Serafin M. Coronel-Molina); "Foreign Language Planning in U.S. Higher Education: The Case of a Graduate Business Program" (Mitchell A. Furumoto); "Charting New Directions: Of Communication in a Social…