This article seeks to explore the operation of the phenomenon of language planning and language policies as it operates within a traditional multilingual community. Among the Bafut people, language and culture are the most important things that build up peace, understanding, cooperation, obedience and abidance to authority. Language planning/policy issues are not set from the top as sort for and imposed by most governments. Rather, these are natural and take a bottom-top circulation cycle. The bases are the surveys of the culture, customs and traditions that are transmitted from one generation to another. These set out to be the duty and responsibility of all and not a few in the position of authority. It is the intention of this paper to prove that language planning is not an imposed activity as a means to seek solutions to language problems but an art and act of the science of governance that brings in awareness of language use in controlling a society. It is shown that the norms of a society are determined by language practices that jointly bind users at all levels and that language in itself is a planner of society.

Keywords : language planning, language policy, language management, language practices .