Re-orienting to language users: humanizing orientations in language planning as praxisKaveh, Yalda M.
doi: 10.1007/s10993-022-09645-0pmid: N/A
The field of language policy and planning (LPP) has increasingly expanded its focus beyond legislative measures and macro-level policies toward understanding the power of social actors and their interpretation, appropriation, and creation of language policies in societies. This article aims to advance LPP theory and research by offering a critical and decolonial lens for conceptualizing and analyzing language policy in research, education, and language planning. This critical lens expands on one of the most influential LPP models: Ruiz’s (1984) framework for Orientations in Language Planning. Ruiz’s framework was proposed as a “meta-model” for language planning specialists to examine and advocate for new policies. This article invites researchers of language use in society to consider an epistemological shift from defining languages with fixed orientations, such as problem, resource, and right, toward looking at the intersectional roles of the listening and speaking subjects in defining the orientation(s) to languages in various contexts. This conceptual framing situates LPP research and critical studies of language in society in the context of broader critical theories, including intersectionality, human as praxis, humanization, and decolonizing research from ownership to answerability. The goal is to forge humanizing language policy research that is responsive to issues in our immediate and broader global contexts.
The ambivalent role of Urdu and English in multilingual Pakistan: a Bourdieusian studyAshraf, Hina
doi: 10.1007/s10993-022-09623-6pmid: 35340722
Pakistan, one of the eight countries comprising South Asia, has more than 212.2 million people, making it the world’s fifth most populous country after China, India, USA, and Indonesia. It has also the world’s second-largest Muslim population. Eberhard et al. (Ethnologue: languages of the world, SIL International, 2020) report 77 languages used by people in Pakistan, although the only two official languages are Urdu and English. After its Independence from the British colonial rule in 1947, it took much deliberation for the country to make a shift from its monolingual Urdu orientation to a multilingual language policy in education in 2009. This entailed a shift from the dominant Urdu language policy for the masses (and English exclusively reserved for elite institutions), to a gradual and promising change that responded to the increasing social demand for English and for including regional languages in the curriculum. Yet English and Urdu dominate the present policy and exclude regional non-dominant languages in education that themselves are dynamic and unstable, and restructured continually due to the de facto multilingual and plurilingual repertoire of the country. Using Bourdieu’s (Outline of a theory of practice Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977a, The economics of linguistic exchanges. Soc Sci Inform 16:645–668, 1977b, The genesis of the concepts of habitus and field. Sociocriticism 2:11–24 1985, Language and symbolic power Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991) conceptualization of habitus, this study analyzes letters to the editor published between 2002–2009 and 2018–2020 in a leading English daily of Pakistan. The analysis unveils the linguistic dispositions that are discussed in the letters and their restructuring through market forces, demonstrating a continuity between the language policy discourse and public aspirations. The findings also indicate the ambivalences towards Urdu and English in relation to nationalistic ideologies, modernity and identity.
Motivations for service provision spectrum: needs assessments and language policy approachesEaslick, Kathleen
doi: 10.1007/s10993-022-09625-4pmid: N/A
This paper examines the role of language policy and needs assessments in the provision of public services to regional minority and immigrant language speakers in the UK and Finland. Semi-structured interviews with service providers in Helsinki, Rovaniemi, Manchester, and Cardiff revealed how language policy and language needs are conceptualised differently for particular language groups. The paper introduces the Motivations for Service Provision Spectrum, which illustrates the interconnected nature of language policy, practice, and discourse. This model maps how individual service providers may draw from policy and needs assessment data to facilitate or resist multilingual practices within public service provision. The typologies of policy included in the model construct and frame the public sector environments in which local policy providers exercise their agency. The different policy approaches and needs assessment practices are two salient aspects of local policy actor decision-making. By comparing the provision of services to regional minority languages to that of immigrant languages in the UK and Finland, the study reveals how institutional actors interpret, enact, and explain service provision in increasingly diverse and multilingual settings.
Amid signs of change: language policy, ideology and power in the linguistic landscape of urban RwandaRosendal, Tove; Amini Ngabonziza, Jean de Dieu
doi: 10.1007/s10993-022-09624-5pmid: N/A
In this paper we explore the nexus of language policy, ideology and power in the linguistic landscape of urban Rwanda. In post-genocide Rwanda, English has been promoted and gained status. This has led to an increased usage of English on shop signs in the streets of Kigali and other towns in Rwanda at the expense of both French and Kinyarwanda. Unique quantitative language data documented in streets before 2008 are in this study compared to data collected in 2018, in the same streets. This forms the background for analysis of official discourse, targeting language policy changes, especially after the 2008 decision to appoint English as the language of administration as well as the medium of instruction throughout the educational system from grade 1 on. This decision was made despite the fact that Rwanda has a national language, Kinyarwanda, known by 99.4 per cent of the population. The analysis shows that political aspects of language policy decisions are downplayed. Officially, both discursively and in practice, the Rwandan government, that is the English speaking elite in power, legitimize their decisions by pretending that imposing English is an inevitable, pragmatic and rational measure for economic development. This narrative reveals ideas about inherent qualities of specific languages while simultaneously discarding others. Additionally, in public discourse all four official languages are equal. Reality is different. In a society where the status language is only acquired through education and used as medium of instruction, power differences and socioeconomic inequalities are neglected and obscured.
Anglonormativity in Norwegian language education policy and in the educational trajectories of immigrant adolescentsBeiler, Ingrid Rodrick
doi: 10.1007/s10993-022-09632-5pmid: N/A
In the Nordic countries, policy debates about English often highlight the threat of domain loss for national languages, but the high status of English may also have a differential impact on people in Nordic societies. This article investigates a policy gap in Norwegian upper secondary education, whereby an advanced English subject requirement may hinder graduation for immigrant adolescents with little previous English instruction, despite English not being the medium of education in Norway. The aim of the study is to examine the impact of the upper secondary English requirement and of sheltered instruction as a local policy solution for such students. I use nexus analysis (Hult, 2015) to analyze ethnographic data from one upper secondary school that created an ad hoc sheltered English class. Data include field notes, classroom video and audio recordings, language portraits, and interviews with one school leader, one teacher, and six students. I draw on decolonial theory (e.g., García et al., 2021; Santos, 2007), notably Anglonormativity (McKinney, 2017), to trace discursive, interactional, and personal policy scales. I found that the sheltered class reflected discourses of integration and Anglonormativity, but nonetheless offered greater affordances for participation than a mainstream English class. Furthermore, comparing the emphasis on English remediation with students’ broader repertoires surfaced possibilities for reframing students as resourceful multilingual learners. I discuss policy options that might better address underlying issues of epistemic justice, compared to solutions limited to increasing students’ proficiency in languages of power like English.