Bottom-Up Approach to Language Policy and Planning in Kazakhstan
Tlepbergen D. Akzhigitova A. Zabrodskaja A.
February 2023MDPI
Societies
2023#13Issue 2
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.
bottom-up approach , grassroots processes , Internet space , language planning , language policy , language prestige , micro-level planning
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Faculty of Philology, L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, 010000, Kazakhstan
Baltic Film, Media and Arts School, Tallinn University, Tallinn, 10120, Estonia
Faculty of Philology
Baltic Film
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026