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How does language planning help governments choose and standardize official languages?

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Ferdinand de Saussure seated in a formal pose, wearing a dark suit with a vest and sporting a thick mustache, circa 1900. — Linguistics Much of the foundation of 20th-century sociolinguistics was created by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913).

Language planning is a field of applied linguistics that provides governments, particularly in newly formed states, with expert advice on selecting and standardizing official languages.1

Governments often designate the language of a core national group as the official language to foster national integration and sustain commitment to the state. Once a language or dialect is chosen, standardization helps stabilize its use in administrative, educational, and economic spheres. This process typically involves:23

Creating Norms: Scholarly institutions and government intervention help develop dictionaries and grammars to establish consistent linguistic rules.3
Minimizing Variation: By promoting a specific dialect—often based on the speech of a capital city or a major cultural center—governments work to reduce linguistic variation and establish a model for formal communication.3
Institutional Support: Standard languages are reinforced through education and official usage, ensuring that the majority of the population can use the language in formal settings while potentially maintaining local dialects for informal use.3

This purposive interference ensures that a unified language can effectively serve the needs of the state and its citizens.4