Language Planning and Language Status in a Multilingual Community

Language Planning and Language Status in a Multilingual Community

Introduction

A 'state' is a territorially bounded organization in the permanent business of rule. All states, at least in their early periods of development have encompassed populations in which there are many speech communities, and therefore were in their origins multilingual states. (A multilingual individual is a person who is competent in more than one language; a multilingual state is a political entity in which there is more than one speech community.) For many states an important component in the business of rule has been to effect language change in the population within their boundaries so that all official communication can be transacted in the language preferred by the rulers. It is possible, through individual multilingualism, to have a single official language in a multilingual state. But, historically, the imposition of a single official language has fashioned monolingual societies, which provided a cultural foundation for a 'nation-state.'

A nation is a modern, socially differentiated society, in which most of the people imagine themselves to be members of 'community.' Since uniformity of language creates an aura that all inhabitants of the state form a natural community, the homogenization of language helps to create, but is not a necessary condition for, a nation-state. Not all states become nation-states; many remain multinational, with each national community within the state relying on its own language. Societal multilingualism may persist because leaders do not seek to create language uniformity or because substantial numbers of people refuse to learn the language favored by the ruler. Why some states construct language uniformity within their boundaries and others does not remain an important research question in political science. Political scientists also seek to discern the consequences of different language outcomes in the process of state-building, especially for economic growth and democracy.

Discussion

This paper will be analyzing a case study “The phenomenon of bilingualism and implications for cognitive development of the individual” published in an article that shows the complexity of the subject's mental organization bilingual, and its dual communicative competence, allowing you to become a subject cognitively enriched compared to monolingual. It also reviews the problems traditionally attributed to the phenomenon of bilingualism, and in fact result from the way it has taken this phenomenon in society. It concludes by highlighting the fact that bilingualism itself is an attribute and brings benefits to the subject to their cognitive development in general; the disadvantages brought against him are the result of an unequal relationship of languages ??in contact within a community.

This article shows the complexity of the mind of a bilingual organization individually, as well as his / her dual communicative competence that allows him / her to become cognitively enriched in comparison to a monolingual individual. Likewise, the problems traditionally attributed to the phenomenon are bilingual and are studies shown in reality to be a consequence of the way society regards in which concludes this article by emphasizing phenomenon. The disadvantages are a consequence of an ...