Nationism

In determining language policies, Fishman contends that a country needs to balance the concerns of nationalism (the feelings that develop from a sense of group identity) and nationism (the practical concerns of governing).

For these nations language was a prior criterion of national identity, in the sense of ‘nationalism’, and only later became and issue at the level of ‘nation’, once these societies had made the transition from nationalism to nationism.

Instead of this, the dominant role of language in nation-building in many states, at least in the early post-independence era, has been […] pragmatic nationism rather than aggressive nationalism.