LANGUAGE PLANNING IN MODERN NORWAY

Abstract

the past century Norway has been the scene of an unusually interesting experiment in language planning. Ideas concerning linguistic engineering have here reached out from the quiet studies of linguists to the market place, where they have affected every citizen and his children. Little by little an avalanche has been set in motion which is still sliding and which no one quite knows how to stop, even though many would like to do so. When the movement began, Norway had a stable written language; today it is blessed with two competing ones, neither of which is stable. One of them claims to be the more civilized, the other the more Norwegian. Whatever truth these claims may contain, they leave the average Norwegian in the confusing position of not being quite sure whether he can manage to be both.1 By language planning I understand the activity of preparing a normative orthography, grammar, and dictionary for the guidance of writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community.2 In this practical application of linguistic knowledge we are proceeding beyond descriptive linguistics into an area where judgment must be exercised in the form of choices among available linguistic forms. Planning implies an attempt to guide the development of a language in a direction desired by the planners. It means not only predicting the future on the basis of available knowledge concerning the past, but a deliberate effort to influence it. In

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