Taalplanner

Taalplanner, or language planner, is a term used in sociolinguistics to describe individuals or organizations responsible for designing and implementing language policy. Language planning aims to influence the use and status of languages within a society, often addressing questions of official language status, education, and public communication.

The field distinguishes several dimensions of planning. Status planning deals with the public role of languages, including official recognition, language rights, and language use in government and media. Corpus planning focuses on codes and resources, such as spelling conventions, grammar codification, terminology standardization, and the development of dictionaries and term banks. Acquisition planning targets language learning and transmission, typically through schooling, teacher training, and media production.

Practitioners work within government ministries, linguistic institutes, or think tanks, and they collaborate with educators, norm developers, broadcasters, and communities. Policy instruments include legislation, official language acts, education curricula, orthographic reforms, terminology databases, and support for language technologies. Public consultation and sociolinguistic research inform decisions.

Examples of language planning can be observed in Welsh in Wales, Maori in New Zealand, Basque and Catalan in parts of Spain, and various minority languages in Canada and Finland. The effectiveness of taalplanning depends on political support, resource allocation, community engagement, and compatibility with social attitudes, and it often raises debates about cultural identity and linguistic rights.