Given the fact that Steppistan is an ethnically diverse country, the task of selecting and standardizing a single language as the new national linguistic code is incredibly difficult.
Therefore, in the process of language planning, cultural, socio-economic and political factors are to be taken into account alongside linguistic factors. Despite the fact that none of the languages of the ethnic groups would yield a perfect solution, it seems that the language spoken by Caspians is the best solution with respect to linguistic, socio-economic, cultural and political criteria.
Linguistically, there are reasons to believe that Caspian is the best solution for the new national language. First off, it is quite important that the new language be felt as linguistically close to the rest of the country, or, at least, to the majority of its citizens. Caspian belongs to the Turkic language family, which is desirable because the languages of the three other ethnic groups belong to this family.
The fact that the language is genetically related to Dushani, Arali and Baku makes for a good linguistic reason to select it as the official language since the other three groups will not feel completely alienated from it, as it would be the case if Esmaili were to be selected.
Of course, this alone is not a good enough reason to prefer it over the other three languages, but together with other arguments makes for a reasonable solution. In addition, Caspian also uses a Roman script, which is very useful given the fact that one of the goals of the new nation is joining the global economic currents, and using a Roman script would certainly be one step towards cultural and linguistic integration.
Socio-economic factors are perhaps the crucial reason why Caspian should be selected as the official language of Steppistan. One of the reasons in this group would certainly be that the capital city of the new country is located on the territory where Caspian is the majority language. Having the new language spoken in the capital city is one of the best ways to disseminate it throughout the country though the media and public administration.
Furthermore, this new capital also hosts the only center of higher education, a public university, where lectures are given in Caspian. Promoting the higher education in the rest of the country would certainly mean having more and more speakers of Caspian and a more unified country. Next in the line of socio-economic reasons as to why Caspian should be chosen as the new official language is the fact that its speakers seem to constitute the middle class whose values of tolerance and secularism are crucial for a multiethnic country.
The income among Caspians is more diversified; about half of the population is secular and does not belong to any of the traditional religions; and Caspians are well-educated and open to the Western cultural tradition as about half of the population speaks English. It is also important to note that Caspians have a large population, though not the largest of all the ethnic groups.
Finally, there are strong political reasons to prefer Caspian over the other four languages. Reducing the risks of nationalist revolts is certainly one of the crucial aspects of political life in newly unified countries. It is a positive fact that not all the ethnic groups have gone through mutual conflicts.
The only national conflict took place between the Dushans and the Arals. The conflicts were quite brutal as in 1991, the Arals carried out an act of ethnic cleansing against the Dushans. This is the main reason why one should avoid selecting one of these two languages as the official language of the new country as major resentment might emerge among the members of the other group.
This is particularly important because, otherwise, both the Arals and Dushani would be good candidates for the official language as the Arals are economically the most powerful nation due to large oil reserves they possess, and the Dushani have the most numerous population. For that reason, choosing Caspian would be a neutral solution in terms of reducing nationalism, but also because it is the language of the second largest population consisting mostly of the middle class.
Having chosen Capsian as the official language of the new country, language planners should proceed to standardize it. Standardization of a language is an extremely complex process that consists of many levels. On the first level, a careful examination of the grammatical structure of Caspian should take place, and decisions should be made about which rules to include in the standard variety.
This level also includes writing grammars and dictionaries of the standard variety in accordance with the newly established rules. At this point, a good decision would be to foster the tendency that Caspian has for borrowing from Russian and English because that would facilitate the integration of the new country into global trends.
The fact that the only university is located on the territory where the Caspians live once again shows that choosing Caspian would be a good decision as an institution of higher learning is the ideal place where language experts can carry out the process of standardization. As the next step in this process, the development of orthography should take place. Here, also, we can see that Caspian is the best choice as it already has the developed written form realized as the Roman alphabet, which would save a lot of time and effort.
The third and very important step is the development of literature in the standard language. It can be very useful to start a project of rewriting the national literatures of all the ethnic groups in the new standard language as a way of unifying traditions. The first great project that would have immense positive consequences would be a project of translating the Dushani literary tradition into Caspian.
This would be beneficial because the Dushani would certainly be delighted to lead the cultural development of the new nation, and others who appreciate the artistic value of Dushani literary tradition would enjoy the possibility of reading about it, thereby learning the new standard form. As the last step in the process of standardization, the institution that is in charge of the process should launch a great project of vocabulary expansion in order to make the language appropriate for use in all contexts.
In that light, as it has already been mentioned the trend of borrowing from English and Russian should not be fought against, but rather promoted. Also, it is very desirable to promote borrowing from the other four languages as well, particularly in the areas related to their culture and way of life because doing so would definitely help in creating a more harmonious linguistic community.