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Selasa, 2 Julai 2013

LANGUAGE PLANNING FOR THE MINORITY LANGUAGES IN BRUNEI

Dr. Paolo Coluzzi

After a general introduction on Brunei and its linguistic repertoire, the paper goes on to describe the level of ethno linguistic vitality for the minority languages present in the country:  Brunei Malay, Kedayan, Tutong, Belait, Dusun, Bisaya, Murut (Lun Bawang), Iban, Penan, Mukah, which are all Austronesian languages, in addition to various Chinese varieties spoken by the local Chinese population: Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hainanese, Teochew, Foochow.

The second part of the paper looks at language planning, the discipline that deals with the maintenance and/or revitalization of languages in general, particularly minority languages. After a general outline on how language planning works, specific suggestions are put forward as far as the promotion of the languages of Brunei are concerned. These suggestions comprise the three stages or areas in which language planning is normally divided into: corpus planning (i.e. the elaboration of the linguistic code, divided into: graphization, standardization and modernization), status planning (i.e. the process of giving status and prestige to the language by extending the functions for which it is going to be used) and acquisition planning (i.e. any effort leading to the acquisition of the language on the part of the people targeted by the language planning). So far in Brunei, with regards to minority languages, only some aspects of corpus planning and acquisition planning have been dealt with, and not for all languages.

The paper closes with some general considerations about the importance of linguistic diversity.


Key words: Acquisition planning, corpus planning, language planning, language vitality, minority languages, status planning.

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