It turns up the vigorous field of terminology. Term management is globally networked and hierarchically organized, public as well as private, comprehensive as well as sectoral. I find it disturbing that terminological literature reveals a striking lack of overlap of reference and personnel between it and the college of language planners.

The empirical approach turns up the rapidly expanding language industry; language management as a significant component of localization in the private sector; and it recognizes document management, administration, and simply communications in private businesses as in regional and international organizations (such as the European Union). Technical writing, publishing, the media... a range of activities that so far have remained outside the scope of language management enquiry.

The language teaching industry is highly organized, global, rigorous. Yet it is curiously disconnected from the communicative lives of the speech communities whose languages are taught.

These empirically recognizable activities with their own theories, idioms, networks, organizations and personnel are all kinds of directed language management. They all solve language problems that have arisen out of or been predicted to arise in actual discourse.

c) Kinds of language management by time and place

This multitude of directed responses to language problems can be ordered in yet another way, as responses to the kinds of language problems that arise in a particular socioeconomic organization of society, at its time and place. There is every reason to surmise that kinds of language management at one time in the development of a speech community imply particular other kinds of language management at another.

The modern nation-state plans, standardizes, disfavors variation; the post-modern state endorses variation, in fact, becomes one among many itself by entering into regional political arrangements. There is progression because of speech community maturation, a developmental vector; another vector may depend on speech community integration in international economy and political organization. Consequently, the study of language management will reflect the Zeitgeist and show progression of differential problems and differential interests.

Language planning became a field of study as new nations grappled with national communication problems. Intellectual maturation of that study diffracted it into, among other approaches of study, language management.

Interestingly, times have also revived interest in language planning. One reason is that European political integration has stimulated local self-assertion of minor speech communities (whether in defense or as a result of active localization policies or as a result of the opportunity to skip the national level in seeking support). Another reason is the massive in-migration of other-speaking peoples into European countries; a third is the fact of European political integration which pitches a language-in-common solution to joint work at the center of the union against the full participation by all citizens in European affairs in their own languages (2).

In the parallel language cultivation tradition, a contemporary topic is Eurospeak, raising the issue of equality of participation in the European Union political process by citizens of the many constituting speech communities; and another issue is the full equal development of functions of member communities' languages (in German, Fortbestehen).

What kind of language management is language planning?

Language planning could be defined as the kind of organized language management that is managed from within the state bureaucracy, with comprehensive scope and in many states quite rigorously. Also, language planning is a long-term process, authorized by legislation.

Members of the college of language planning are now in a position to benefit from a definition of language planning. This would considerably help development of thought about planning language. The disciplinary perspective from language management promises a definition. Agreeing on a definition, within any disciplinary framework, would help us answer questions such as the following. When does language planning occur? What motivates state action towards language? Whose interests are represented? How does policy process interact with planning process? What is legitimate planning of language in terms of avoiding violations of human rights? What indeed is language planning as distinct from ethnic management or simply an attempt by one group to dominate another through yet one more means of rationing or control? Language management theory provides a clear criterion: what problems in actual communication are removed by planning acts?

Insufficiency and invitation

Language management bases the study of language planning as behavior towards language on actual discourse. This is a severe limitation on a behavior that involves so much else than communicative considerations. The political science perspective obviously complements the perspective from language management. Sociology and history provide rich texture. Economics elucidates relations of language planning processes to resource scarcity. I invite presentations of other disciplinary perspectives and discourses on the study of deliberate behavior towards language, and of language planning.