Status Planning
Status planning concerns itself with the conscious choice of the varieties that will become the official language of the state, the medium of its institutions, and the means for interaction between state and citizens. Involves all efforts sanctioned by law or tradition to change the use and functions of a language within a given society. Several categories of language status include national language status, such as as official language status, regional language status and minority language status.
An example would be making English the medium of instruction in all spheres whether it be political, educational or religious.
Corpus Planning
Refers to activities aimed at changing the internal structure of a language so as to standardize a particular language and hence facilitate the development of terminology and orthographies, the compilation of grammar books, spelling norms and dictionaries.
An example would be to broaden the current terminology of a specificfor teaching in modern school subjects such as Chemistry, Biology and Physics.
Prestige Planning
Prestige planning is a receptive or value function which influences how corpus and status planning activities are acted upon by actors and received by people. Is aimed at creating a favourable psychological background to support language policy and planning activities. Prestige planning is crucial in the case of languages such as South Africa`s previously marginalized indigenous that currently function as low-culture languages.
Acquisition Planning
Refers to efforts to spread and promote the learning of a specific language. concerns the teaching and learning of different languages, whether national languages or secondary languages. It involves efforts to influence the number of users and the distribution of languages and literacies, achieved by creating opportunities or incentives to learn them.
An example would be that institutions are set up and supported by the government in spreading and promoting African languages in tertiary institutions by giving black students the freedom to choose their specific native language as a subject.
