Language policy is an interdisciplinary academic field. Some scholars such as
Joshua Fishman
Joshua Fishman ( Yiddish: שיקל פֿישמאַן — Shikl Fishman; July 18, 1926 – March 1, 2015) was an American linguist who specialized in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity. ...
and
Ofelia García consider it as part of
sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of ...
. On the other hand, other scholars such as
Bernard Spolsky
Bernard Spolsky (born in New Zealand in 1932; died in Israel August 20, 2022) was a professor emeritus in linguistics at Bar-Ilan University (Israel), specializing in sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, and applied linguistics.
Spolsky d ...
Robert B. Kaplanand
Joseph Lo Bianco
Joseph Lo Bianco AM (born 7 July 1953) is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, and serves as Past President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (the first ...
argue that language policy is a branch of
applied linguistics
Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, communication res ...
.
As a field, language policy used to be known as
language planning
In sociolinguistics, language planning (also known as language engineering) is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of languages or language varieties within a speech community.Kaplan B., Robert, and Richard ...
and is related to other fields such as
language ideology
Language ideology (also known as linguistic ideology or language attitude) is, within anthropology (especially linguistic anthropology), sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies, any set of beliefs about languages as they are used in their so ...
,
language revitalization
Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a l