A Critical Language Policy and Planning Approach to the Word-Formation Processes of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature

Document Type : Research Article

Author

• Alireza Rasti

Department of English Language Salman Farsi University of Kazerun, Kazerun, Fars, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/jlts.2021.72904.1078

Abstract

The Academy of Persian Language and Literature as an institute with (inter)national remit, whose policies and plans could have far-reaching consequences not only in linguistic domains but also in social and political ones, must be regularly subjected to internal and external evaluation. The resultant feedback could then contribute to its maximal efficiency. In keeping with this, and having adopted an advocacy-participatory approach, and having applied some principles and concepts from the interdisciplinary Language Policy and Planning to the mechanism involved in the performance of the institute and especially its word-formation processes, the present study has set out to not only lay bare the inadequacies inherent in its functioning but also draw more increasingly the Persian Language policy-makers' attention to them. Using qualitative documentary analysis, the researcher sought to critically, as required of an advocacy-participatory stance, examine and analyze the Academy's linear process of language policy. The findings indicate that the Academy, in its functioning, (un)consciously has assumed a positivistic and stagist standpoint likely to cause the resistance of language agents in various levels and domains of the Iranian pluralistic society. Another finding of the investigation is a lack of recognition of a conflict of interest among the various actors involved in language policy in the documentary data analyzed. Moreover, the adoption of an elitist stance, especially on the issue of word formation, has led to a lack of recognition of the native speaker's linguistic intuition as an invaluable resource for helping with the selection, use, and acceptability of neologisms in Persian.

Keywords

• The Academy of Persian Language and Literature
• Language Policy and Planning
• The Advocacy-Participatory Approach
• Documentary Analysis

20.1001.1.22285202.1401.55.3.3.1

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