Bottom-Up Approach to Language Policy and Planning in Kazakhstan

Abstract

National and world news is constantly accompanied by inter-group dramas which are permeated by the dynamics of language use and attitudes. Conflicts can arise between the state insisting on an official language and the family and community who may support the preservation or revitalisation of heritage languages. Kazakhstan is an example of how languages (official Kazakh, the language of communication Russian and international English) coexist peacefully. Language policy and planning depend on the ability and willingness of individual members of the speech community to adopt a language. Language planning is often seen as a top-down, government-controlled activity. This paper shows that language planning can also be carried out from below. Here, we analyze the main initiatives of grassroots movements in promoting the status of the Kazakh language and the emergence of new bottom-up approaches facilitated by the Internet and present sociolinguistic survey results regarding the roles, importance and prestige of languages for the people of Kazakhstan. The focus of the study reported in this article is to monitor the transformative character of bottom-up approaches to language-policy study in Kazakhstan.