Abstract
Language management refers to state administrative regulations, policies, and activities on the language(s) use within educational, legal, and other public domains and to the scientific discipline which studies this phenomenon. We argue that during COVID-19 health emergency, the concept of language management might need revision as new topics and contexts have come to light within the discussion on language use amid the current pandemic. We explore key dimensions of this discussion representation in public communication, identify language-use related topics which have been mentioned in this discussion, study its levels and major actors. The texts from official sites of international organizations, national governments, public and non-profit social agencies, mass media were selected. The corpus of 238 sources with a total of 193478 words was subject to manual and computer-based thematic content coding and clustering. The results reveal language-use related topics within the information and discussion topics during the COVID-19, specify the levels at which the above topics discussed, outline those actors who initiate/take part/form the target audience within the discussion on language use during the COVID-19. The research also leads to the conclusion on the critical importance of such issues as the style of international and national leaderships addresses, production and timeliness of multilingual data on the pandemic, countermeasures against misinformation and anti-nation bias, development of protocols for the use of fact-based rational language. The mentioned items are considered as the key components of a language management framework for policy and actions which need a coordinated interagency response within local and global contexts during the COVID-19.
Highlights
Academia has shaped a comprehensive theoretical background, integrating such concepts as language policy, planning, and management which have been explored and revisited across 20–21st centuries.Historically the concept of language planning mostly focuses on grounds and argumentation for norm selection, codification, implementation, and elaboration (Haugen,1959, Costa-Carreras, 2020)
The study reveals that COVID-19 has promoted the discussion on language use, its values, and its risks during the healthcare emergency
The language-use related topics which have been discussed by the public during the COVID-19, the identification of international, regional, and national dimensions for their discussion, the mapping of actors who initiate and promote the discussion on language use during the COVID-19 confirms the need to revisit language management concept with regard to current and prospective health emergencies
Summary
Academia has shaped a comprehensive theoretical background, integrating such concepts as language policy, planning, and management which have been explored and revisited across 20–21st centuries.Historically the concept of language planning mostly focuses on grounds and argumentation for norm selection, codification, implementation, and elaboration (Haugen,1959, Costa-Carreras, 2020). The phenomenon of language policy has always been associated with a set of societal goals and needs-oriented activities with regard to language use in various domains in settings, with account of state vision of political, economic, cultural goals (Rubin & Jernudd, 1971). The latter have been shaped and introduced through relevant administrative legal regulations (Kaplan & Baldauf,1997). They lay grounds for language planning, which might lead to prevailing interests of some social groups and inequality of others (Tollefson, 1991). The idea of language management as theory and practice of actions (Spolsky, 2009, Neustupny, 2012) has become crucial for language policy and planning (Nekvapil, 2016)
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