Theorizing language contact, spread, and variation in status planning

Abstract

A theoretical model, managed community second language acquisition (SLA), is proposed to provide a comprehensive view of nine studies of language contact, spread, variation, and attitudes of Chinese, which are shaped by nearly a century of language planning. The model has been reformulated on the basis of the individual SLA modle and it is intended to make the notions of macroacquisition and planning acquisition operational. It has two linguistic factors (input and output) and two sociolinguistic factors (language identity and language marketability) that can be managed or manipulated in status planning. The two sociolinguistic factors, language identity and marketability, appear to have played the most significant roles in language spread, variation, and attitudes in status planning, at least in China. This model also serves as the basis to make a theoretical distinction between interference and borrowing, a distinction that helps to sort out the consequences of language contact and provides indexes of language shift under status planning conditions.