{"id":1455,"date":"2011-04-08T22:00:58","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T20:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1455"},"modified":"2011-03-30T12:29:43","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T10:29:43","slug":"language-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1455","title":{"rendered":"Language management"},"content":{"rendered":"
Language management.<\/strong> By Bernard Spolsky<\/strong>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp, 308. ISBN 9780521735971<\/a>. $45.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Haitao Liu<\/strong><\/a>, Communication University of China<\/em><\/p>\n

Language policy and planning frequently involve choices. In bilingual or multilingual situations, people often have to choose between two or more languages. Some of these choices reflect a conscious effort by language managers to control the options. In this book, Bernard Spolsky presents a theory of language management.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 1 (1\u20139), S presents the reasons for a theory of language management and suggests how to develop such a theory.<\/p>\n

Ch. 2 is concerned with language management within the family (10\u201330). Upon the establishment of a family, its members must decide on a certain language variety to be the home language. S maintains that this decision is usually made in accordance with the sociolinguistic ecology inside and outside the home as well as the parents\u2019 beliefs about the best strategy.<\/p>\n

Religious language policy is the topic of Ch. 3 (31\u201352). S notes that religious institutions are often the focus of language conflict. Therefore, the religious impingements, or the religious efforts committed to inflicting such impingements, have a great significance on language, practices, and policies. To develop some general principles, S surveys the language policies, beliefs, and management efforts of several major religions.<\/p>\n

Ch. 4 discusses language management in the workplace (53\u201364). S focuses on employers who manage the language of their employees, suggesting that the perceived value of a language is a major force in driving management efforts to change language practice in the workplace.<\/p>\n

Ch. 5 (65\u201389) focuses on public linguistic space\u2014that is, places that are neither private nor institutional. Public linguistic space may include written material (e.g. public signs, newspapers, magazines, books), spoken content (e.g. announcements, radio, television), or computers and the Internet. S arrives at the conclusion that, although it seems theoretically appealing to treat it as a single domain, in practice it is advisable to observe public linguistic space as many smaller subdomains.<\/p>\n

Without doubt, the language policy adopted by an educational system is one of the most powerful forces in language management; therefore, this topic is discussed in Ch. 6 (90\u2013114). S points out that the school domain is probably the ultimate test of a theory of language management.<\/p>\n

Ch. 7 (115\u201328) covers both legal and health institutions because they have many features in common. S contends that the legal and health domains offer classic cases of organized language management and that the solutions for these cases are the result of a complex interplay between the various participants inside and outside of the domains.<\/p>\n

Armies, navies, air forces, and other military formations have special communication needs and problems, which are discussed in Ch. 8 (129\u201343). S argues that the military domain confirms the usefulness of the domain approach and that it is helpful to clarify the complexity introduced when external forces attempt to influence a domain or a domain attempts to affect others.<\/p>\n

Ch. 9 (144\u201380) reviews the roles of and relationship between the local, regional, and national governments in language management. S suggests that an appreciation of language management at the level of the nation-state can be greatly enhanced with an understanding of the international activists and supranational organizations, which are dealt with in Ch. 10, \u2018Influencing language management: Language activist groups\u2019, (181\u2013205), and Ch. 11, \u2018Managing languages at the supranational level\u2019 (206\u201324).<\/p>\n

Ch. 12, \u2018Language managers, language management agencies and academies, and their work\u2019 (225\u201348), investigates language agencies, which, as active participants in language management, aim to solve long-term communication problems by changing participants or modifying the language.<\/p>\n

In the final chapter (249\u201361), S argues that the construction of a testable predictive theory of language management may encounter extreme difficulties. He concludes this book with two fundamental questions: can language be managed? And if it can, should it be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language management. By Bernard Spolsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp, 308. ISBN 9780521735971. $45. Reviewed by Haitao Liu, Communication University of China Language policy and planning frequently involve choices. In bilingual or multilingual situations, people often have to choose between two or more languages. Some of these choices reflect a conscious effort by language […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1456,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions\/1456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}