Free English Language Essays - Language Planning: With a Focus on Korea
Q. Identify the functions that language-planners consider a language to fulfill in society. Explain how the consideration of these functions affected the process and outcome of language planning policy in one named country or region of the world.
The first function of language for society is communication: written language communicates ideas (of theology, philosophy, history) across time and thus language preserves for a people their literary, philosophical and religious heritage. One consideration of language-planners then is how to promote total literacy so that all people have access to the written wisdom of their language. Literacy too is necessary for contemporary education and news about politics, international news, war etc., when this is recorded in written forms such as newspapers, journals, academic books or novels. A second function of language is to communicate these ideas as well as commerce, diplomacy and technology to other nations and continents. For both functions language-planners must refine their language so that it is as clear as possible for both internal and international dissemination of ideas. Written language depends upon the alphabet, and it is refinements and improvements to the alphabet and to grammar that have consumed the attention of language-planners throughout history, and which continue to do so today. Another major historical aim of language-planners such as Leibniz, Dalgarno, and Zamenhof has been to invent an artificial international language that would be used as a second language by all world-citizens in addition to their own native tongue so as to eliminate the confusion and wars that are caused because of imprecise communication between peoples of different languages. This essay however is a short one, and it examines how the communicative peculiarities of the Korean language and alphabet have affected the policies of Korean language-planners. In Korea language-planning always focuses upon the Korean script hangul and this makes it fascinating sociologically.
Before the invention of the hangul script, transferring spoken Korean into written form was cumbersome and imprecise because Koreans had to rely upon a convoluted alphabetic script inherited from the Chinese. Korean is a polysyllabic language and Chinese monosyllabic and the Koreans dependence upon an alien script adversely affected their ability to communicate and preserve Korean thought properly. Korean language-planners therefore needed to invent a script of their own: to improve communication within the nation. What the Koreans achieved was an immense simplification of the Chinese script so as to fit the idiosyncrasies of sound and meaning of the Korean language – something they named idu (official reading). Thus in 1446 the work of King Sejong’s language-planners was officially initiated in the book hunmin-chong-um (Correct Sounds for Teaching the People, and so the Korean people had their own, more precise and exact, script to communicate Korean life amongst themselves. The simplicity and scientific applicability of hangul has ever since been recognized by national and international language-planners alike as a model of precision and accuracy. Thus the work of the Korean language-planners enormously improved communication horizontally, across geography, and vertically, down time, for the Korean people. Eventually literacy would improve, knowledge of national history and philosophy broaden and deepen, and a stronger sense of national identity would be forged through the strengthening of the Korean language.
In the twentieth-century Korean language-planners continued the communicative achievements gained from this precedent. Even though the invention of hangul had vastly clarified communication in Korean, the language still depended heavily upon Chinese script, and the history of twentieth-century Korean policy was to try to reverse this. Following political separation different policies were pursued in both North Korea and South Korea.
In 1948 South Korea abolished the use of Chinese characters in the Korean script – though this abolition today remains incomplete: many newspapers, for instance, still use Chinese symbols. Nevertheless, the language-planners have made much progress. Novels, schoolbooks, official papers as well as academic works are written in hangul. This success is evidenced by the declining percentage of Chinese symbols found in the major Korean newspapers, which is now at only 10-20% compared with 95% in 1900. The South Korean language-planners believe that this reduction of alien Chinese characters purifies and therefore makes more precise and clear communication amongst Koreans. This hewing of Chinese from Korean has however met some opposition amongst Korean language-planners: most of whom contend that China’s imminent economic and military world-supremacy makes it sensible for Korea to align itself with China. Phrases such as segyehwa (globalization) and kukchehwa (internationalization) are used in this context, and there are growing calls for the reintroduction of teaching of Chinese characters for young children – these being scrapped by Pak Chung Hi in 1970. From a linguistic point too, campaigners for the inclusion of the Chinese symbols argue that they are a gateway to the rich literature and philosophy of China.
The history of North Korean language-planning in the past sixty years is an example of how language can be manipulated to preserve and embalm the doctrines and ideologies of a particular state. When this happens, the function of language reverses so that the quality of communication is reduced. Seeking to distance themselves from South Korea, the north proclaimed the dialect of pyongyang to be the official language of Korea. North Korea spoke of a ‘language revolution’ and of a new ‘cultural language’: though in reality the ‘new’ dialect is hardly distinguishable from South Korean and yet has not kept up with the communicative improvements made by the South Koreans in the past fifty years. The policy of politicizing language began in 1964 with the maltadumgi undong (Language Regulation Movement) produced a revision of Korean orthography and a partial abolition of Chinese characters. Kim Il-Sung proclaimed that all foreign technical words should be expelled and substituted with solely Korean words. This move obviously undermined the technical vocabulary of the Korean language. A further, distressing, policy is the substitution of personal names for men and women if they do not coincide with the convictions of the regime.
In the end, North Korean language-planning is an example of a prudent response to the demands of international commerce and conversation, whilst that of North Korea shows evidence of ossification and its corresponding lack of precision.
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