| Summary: | Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of African Languages at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2000. === The primary intention of this study is that it will contribute to the theoretical and practical body of knowledge in the development of how effective policies are formulated, implemented and evaluated. The study therefore hopes to go some way towards contributing to knowledge in adequate planning and implementation of policy statements based on procedures offered by professionals. In this light the main debate is between linguistic conservationism and linguistic pragmatism. Here the study seeks to explore how the conflicts between these two views could possibly be reduced, if planning could focus more on domains and contexts of national language use.
This process of narrower focusing, it is hoped, should be thoroughly informed by real and serious effort to integrate language policy with actual language use. This is in the hope that such an approach could lead to the identification and the addressing of language problems in Malawi- problems which are incompatible with the realisation of more substantive goals for all citizens. These include language in early education and language for access to social, economic and political development for all.
Emerging from this study is the revelation that there is the absence of congruence between what policies stipulate and the practice on the ground. This incompatibility has led to a situation where languages are used for the benefit of agendas for politicians and the elite in achieving their goals at the expense QT other indigenous languages being used as instructional media and other regional and national purposes.
The study therefore argues that language policies should be seen in the context of the roles they serve, the interest of the state and the various ethnolinguistic groups that the country has within its structure. As a state function, language policies should act as vehicles of transforming multilingual societies, through linguistic empowerment in which other ethnolinguistic groups do not feel threatened or excluded in the socio-economic and political advancement of the national life.
The existence of the hegemony of particular chosen or selected languages, as we observe in this study, is the result of the predominance of undemocratic structures established by the status quo. The argument, therefore, is that linguistic diversity should be the norm in policy decision-making. The analysis of the current policies in Malawi reveals that a democratic commitment toward policy formulation translates into a struggle for language rights for all towards access and attainment of individual and national growth through equity in language use.
Emanating from the findings from both the field study and secondary sources, suggestions of how an effective policy should be formulated are proposed, along with suggestions for further research related to this area of study.
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