Language Planning; Language Policy; Czech Republic

Explores the sources, processes and consequences of various forms of language planning which ultimately led to the current situation in Czech as a mother tongue. A point stressed in the chapter, which has special significance for any discussion on language planning, is the rejection by a substantial number of Czech linguists, Czech society in general, and the government itself of state interference in most forms of language-use-and-development activity, in the period since the dismantlement of the socialist/communist system in the early 1990s. Particular attention is paid to disputes, since the start of the new era, between linguists with sharply opposing views on the merits of prescribing norms for language use and development.