Juridical status : It depends on origin, degree of standardization, juridical status, and vitality.

Sole official language (e.g. French in France and Turkish in Turkey)

Joint official language (e.g. English and Afrikaans in South Africa; French, German, Italian and Romansh in Switzerland)

Regional official language (e.g. Igbo in Nigeria; Marathi in Maharastra, India)

Promoted language – lacks official status on a national or regional level but is promoted and sometimes used by public authorities for specific functions (e.g. Spanish in New Mexico; West African Pidgin English in Cameroon)

Tolerated language – neither promoted nor proscribed; acknowledged but ignored (e.g. Native American languages in the United States)

Proscribed language – discouraged by official sanction or restriction (e.g. Basque and Catalan during Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain; Macedonian in Greece)

Vitality – the ratio, or percent, of users of a language to another variable, like the total population. Kloss and Stewart both distinguish six classes of statistical distribution. However, they draw the line between classes at different percentages. According to Kloss, the first class, the highest level of vitality, is demarcated by 90% or more speakers. The five remaining classes in decreasing order are 70-89%, 40-69%, 20-39%, 3-19% and less than 3%. According to Stewart, on the other hand, the six classes are determined by the following percentages: 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%, and less than 5%.

Together, origin, degree of standardization, juridical status, and vitality dictate a language’s status.

William Stewart outlines ten functional domains in language planning:

Official - An official language " function[s] as a legally appropriate language for all politically and culturally representative purposes on a nationwide basis." Often, the official function of a language is specified in a constitution.

Provincial - A provincial language functions as an official language for a geographic area smaller than a nation, typically a province or region (e.g. French in Quebec)

Wider communication - A language of wider communication is a language that may be official or provincial, but more importantly, functions as a medium of communication across language boundaries within a nation (e.g. Hindi in India; Swahili language in East Africa)

International - An international language functions as a medium of communication across national boundaries (e.g. English)

Capital - A capital language functions as a prominent language in and around a national capital (e.g. Dutch and French in Brussels)

Group - A group language functions as a conventional language among the members of a single cultural or ethnic group (e.g. Hebrew amongst the Jews

Educational - An educational language functions as a medium of instruction in primary and secondary schools on a regional or national basis (Urdu in West Pakistan and Bengali in East Pakistan]

School subject - A school subject language is a language that is taught as a subject in secondary school or higher education (e.g. Latin and Ancient Greek in English schools)

Literary - A literary language functions as a language for literary or scholarly purposes (Ancient Greek)

Religious - A religious language functions as a language for the ritual purposes of a particular religion (e.g. Latin for the Latin Rite within the Roman Catholic Church; Arabic for the reading of the Qur'an)

Robert Cooper, in reviewing Stewart's list, makes several additions. First, he creates three sub-types of official functions: statutory, working, and symbolic. A statutory language is a language that a government has declared official by law. A working language is a language that a government uses as a medium for daily activities, and a symbolic language is a language that is merely a symbol of the state. Cooper also adds two functional domains to Stewart's list: mass media and work.

Corpus planning

Corpus planning refers to the prescriptive intervention in the forms of a language, whereby planning decisions are made to engineer changes in the structure of the languageUnlike status planning, which is primarily undertaken by administrators and politicians, corpus planning generally involves planners with greater linguistic expertise. There are three traditionally recognized types of corpus planning: graphization, standardization, and modernization.

Graphization

Graphization refers to development, selection and modification of scripts and orthographic conventions for a language.

Standardization

Standardization is the process by which one variety of a language takes precedence over other social and regional dialects of a language. This variety comes to be understood as supra-dialectal and the ‘best’ form of the language.

Modernization

Modernization is a form of language planning that occurs when a language needs to expand its resources to meet functions. Modernization often occurs when a language undergoes a shift in status, such as when a country gains independence from a colonial power or when there is a change in the language education policy.

Acquisition planning

Acquisition planning is a type of language planning in which a national, state or local government system aims to influence aspects of language, such as language status, distribution and literacy through education. Acquisition planning can also be used by non-governmental organizations, but it is more commonly associated with government planning.

7 What is a Global Language? There is no official definition of " global" or " world" language\

— large number of speakers;

— a substantial fraction of non-native speakers (function as lingua franca);

— official status in several countries;

— association with linguistic prestige;

— use in international trade relations;

— use in international organizations;

— use in the academic community;

— significant body of literature;

— association with world religions.

The influence of any language is a combination of three main things:

· the number of countries using it as their first language or mother-tongue,

· the number of countries adopting it as their official language,

· and the number of countries teaching it as their foreign language of choice in schools.

Is a Global Language Necessarily “A Good Thing”?

While its advantages are self-evident, there are some legitimate concerns that a dominant global language could also have some built-in drawbacks. Among these may be the following:

· There is a risk that the increased adoption of a global language may lead to the weakening and eventually the disappearance of some minority languages (and, ultimately, it is feared, ALL other languages). It is estimated that up to 80% of the world’s 6, 000 or so living languages may die out within the next century, and some commentators believe that a too-dominant global language may be a major contributing factor in this trend.

· There is concern that natural speakers of the global language may be at an unfair advantage over those who are operating in their second, or even third, language.

· The insistence on one language to the exclusion of others may also be seen as a threat to freedom of speech and to the ideals of multiculturalism.

· Another potential pitfall is linguistic complacency on the part of natural speakers of a global language, a laziness and arrogance resulting from the lack of motivation to learn other languages. Arguably, this can already be observed in many Britons and Americans.

Is English a Global Language?

As can be seen in more detail in the section on English Today, on almost any basis, English is the nearest thing there has ever been to a global language.

q The UN currently uses five official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese;

q 85% of international organizations have English as one of their official languages (French comes next with less than 50%);

q one third of international organizations use English only, and this figure rises to almost 90% among Asian international organizations.

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