This book describes the ways in which politicians, religious leaders, the leaders of nationalist movements and other agents try to influence our use of the language. Language planning is a form of social planning, therefore a form of intervention that raises questions of official policy and social change. Professor Cooper argues that language planning is never an end in itself, but is carried out to achieve non-linguistic ends such as national integration, political control, economic development, the creation of new elites, or the maintenance of existing ones, the planning of minority groups and the mobilization of the masses. Drawing from numerous examples, such as the revitalization of Hebrew as a spoken language, feminist campaigns aimed at eradicating the sexist use of the language, adult literacy campaigns, the language simplification movement, orthography reform movements, or ca...read more
