LANGUAGE PLANNING. The attempt to control the use, status, and structure of a language through a language policy developed by a government or other authority. Normally carried out by official agencies, such planning usually passes through several stages: a particular language or variety of a language is selected; codification is undertaken to stabilize it, for example by agreeing writing conventions for previously non-literate languages; the codified language is adjusted to enable it to perform new functions, for example by inventing or borrowing scientific vocabulary; and mechanisms are devised, such as teaching syllabuses and procedures for monitoring the media, to ensure that the language is used in conformity with the policy. This sequence is rarely appropriate for English, whose dominant role in the world gives it a unique position, but English is nonetheless officially planned into national education systems in various ways. In Britain, WELSH has been promoted through the National Curriculum in Wales as a subject to be compulsorily learnt within Wales, but is not compulsorily available to Welsh speakers or others outside Wales. In post-colonial nations the relationship of English to indigenous languages is often carefully defined: as the language of secondary and tertiary education in Tanzania while SWAHILI is the national language; as an official language recognized for legal purposes in India; as a library language in some subjects in some South American universities. Planning policy may be achieved through agencies at a number of levels in a state hierarchy. Governments may define their language policy throughout a country, ministries of education may define it within education, and institutions may contribute to planning through their own policies: for example, in the UK in the 1980s, local education authorities and individual schools attempted to define the roles of various especially migrant languages like Punjabi and Cantonese within particular regions or institutions. See ACADEMY, STANDARD.