Munene Mwaniki: Language Planning in South Africa: Towards a Language Management Approach

Abstract

It has become increasingly evident in recent years that the initial burst of scholarly enthusiasm surrounding questions of language policy and planning (LPP) which accompanied and followed South Africa’s transition to democratic rule has begun to run out of steam somewhat. This is no doubt chiefly due to the conspicuous lack of progress made towards the institution of genuinely representative multilingual practices in public life which has led to a kind of creeping fatalism taking hold in certain quarters. This monograph can be seen as an attempt to correct such attitudes and reinvigorate interest and belief in the material potentialities of a theoretically coherent approach to language management. Mwaniki’s ambitious study represents a thoroughgoing, if at times confounding, engagement with the task of establishing just such an approach. The chief motivation behind the study is to highlight and account for what the author rightly sees as the post-apartheid state’s resounding failure to implement multilingual language planning measures in line with the provisions of the South African constitution. Rejecting what he labels the political, economic and sociolinguistic explanations as inadequate, the author lays the blame primarily at the door of language planning theory and in particular the epistemology underlying the so-called positivistic tradition which he identifies as an outgrowth of an excessive scientism in language-sociological research. This is indeed an important and pertinent criticism; too many language planning approaches have exhibited and continue to exhibit a lack of self-questioning reflexivity as regards the theoretical assumptions upon which they are founded, evincing a dubious belief in the essentially rational nature of the enterprise. However, one cannot escape the feeling that the author is rather overstating his case here. The implied notion that all would be relatively straightforward with LPP implementation if only language scholars would get their theory in order is questionable to say the least. Indeed, I am strongly