Language Planning and Policy in Taiwan: Past, Present, and Future

This paper takes a language ecology perspective (Haugen, 1972; Hornberger, 2003) and uses Cooper’s language planning framework for status planning, acquisition planning and corpus planning (1989) to provide an overview analysis of language policy and planning (LPP) in Taiwan since the 17th century. The paper investigates how languages have interacted with one another and with their sociocultural and political contexts, and how different policies at different times have altered the local language ecology. Three emerging factors that are changing the local ecology are further identified. As the first step to successful LPP is a detailed understanding of the local language ecology (Kaplan & Baldauf, 2008), it is hoped that the analysis presented here will provide insights for future LPP in Taiwan.