scholarly journals Officiality and strategic ambiguity in language policy: exploring migrant experiences in Andorra and Luxembourg

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Hawkey ◽  
Kristine Horner
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Strategic Ambiguity ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
Linguistic Behaviour ◽  
Textual Strategies ◽  
Official Status ◽  
Individual Speaker

AbstractThis article examines de jure language officialization policies in Andorra and Luxembourg, and addresses how these are discursively reproduced, sustained or challenged by members of resident migrant communities in the two countries. Although the two countries bear similarities in their small size, extensive multilingualism and the pride of place accorded to the ‘small’ languages of Catalan and Luxembourgish respectively, they have adopted different strategies as regards according official status to the languages spoken there. We start by undertaking a close reading of language policy documents and highlight the ways that they are informed by ‘strategic ambiguity’, wherein certain key elements are deliberately left open to interpretation via a range of textual strategies. We then conduct a thematic analysis of individual speaker testimonies to understand how this strategic ambiguity impacts on the ways that speakers negotiate fluid multilingual practices while also having to navigate rigid monolingual regimes. In given contexts, these hierarchies privilege Catalan in Andorra and Luxembourgish in Luxembourg, particularly in relation to the regimentation of migrants' linguistic behaviour. In this way, the paper provides insights into the complex ideological fields in which small languages are situated and demonstrates the ways in which language policy is intertwined with issues of power and dominance.

scholarly journals An Analysis of an EFL Teachers' Guide: A Case Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nazari
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Teaching Objectives ◽  
Efl Teachers

This paper is an attempt to analyse one of the documents which may affect the classroom activities of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, namely teachers' guides. It also explores the context at which the document is aimed and critiques how EFL teachers are advised to teach as well as how EFL is taught. As such, the paper stands where critical discourse analysis and language policy come together in the study of language policies in education. The teachers' guide chosen and the analysis carried out here are not necessarily concerned with their representativeness and typicality but with the opportunity they provide to the researchers and teachers to learn about such language policy documents and how language and language teaching objectives are represented in them. The issues raised in this paper will have relevance to the EFL teachers' guides and EFL education in other contexts, as these issues are likely to be true of other EFL milieux.

scholarly journals Language choice among rural Mari families and their motives

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (64) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Vedernikova
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Language Practice ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Individual Speaker

Language choice is a core value of language policy that consists of three elements: management, or direct efforts to manipulate a language situation: practice, a sum of sound, word and grammatical choices that an individual speaker makes; and ideology, a set of beliefs about appropriate language practice (Spolsky 2004). Motives are related to the last component. As stated by researchers, language usage within a family can be determined by even one of these factors. This article presents the results of an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data collected during my fieldwork in Mari El (Russia). Comparative analysis of the survey data confirmed the process of weakening of intergenerational language transmission among rural Maris and the fact that the linguistic behavior of family members varies by generation. Usage of Russian or Mari within a family is mainly the result of different values attached to each language and their social roles among certain sectors of society.

University language policies and language choice among Ph.D. graduates in Estonia: The (unbalanced) interplay between English and Estonian

Multilingua ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep Soler-Carbonell
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
National Language ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Discussion Section ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Global Language ◽  
A Site

AbstractThe role of English as a global language and its consequences for the internationalization of higher education are matters that have increasingly drawn the attention of researchers from different fields of language and communication. In this paper, an overview of the situation in Estonia is presented. The Estonian context has not previously been analyzed along these lines. The author suggests looking at Ph.D. dissertations as a site of tension between the need to effectively incorporate English as an academic language and the need to maintain Estonian as the national language. The article views this question in the context of some relevant language policy documents and other macro indicators. It then focuses on the number of Ph.D. dissertations defended at four main public universities in the last few years and the languages they have been written in. It appears that, although the language policy documents seem to correctly capture this tension between English and Estonian, the language most commonly used when writing dissertations is overwhelmingly English, with only the humanities providing some counterbalance to that trend. The current situation is different from that of past decades, when English was absent from Estonia’s scientific production and Estonian was significantly employed in that context, alongside Russian. In the discussion section, some lines for further inquiry are presented, together with a proposal for integrating complexity theory in such analyses.

The roles of field and capital in negotiating language policy in the Slovene parliament

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristof Savski
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Historical Ethnography ◽  
Policy Strategy ◽  
Nexus Analysis ◽  
Sources Of Capital

Abstract The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of integrating Bourdieu’s notions of field and capital in discursive analyses of language policy. The paper presents an analysis of a debate in a committee session of the Slovene parliament, where different actors negotiated about the contents of a language policy strategy. The study draws on nexus analysis by focussing on the situated nature of discursive actions in particular settings, and presents a historical ethnography which combines analysis of transcripts with interviews and a detailed examination of policy documents. The analysis uncovers the efforts of actors to legitimize their authority and achieve their goals with the support of capital accumulated in different fields, and focusses particularly on the dynamics involved in translating the value of sources of capital across the borders of different fields.

scholarly journals The policy and policing of language in schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Cushing
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Partial Product ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Policy Language ◽  
Teacher Interviews ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Language Policing

ABSTRACTThis study investigates cases of language ‘policing’ as educational language policies, and the way that these are represented across different policy levels. Focusing on UK schools and using discursive approaches to language policy as a theoretical framework, I critically examine the motivations and justifications that institutions provide for designing and implementing policies whereby nonstandardised forms are ‘banned’, and how these are reported in metalinguistic discourse. Drawing on a range of data including media discourse, policy documents, teacher interviews and linguistic landscapes, I textually trace how educational language policies (re)produce prescriptive and linguicist ideologies, often using metaphors of crime, and often using language as a proxy for social factors such as academic achievement, employability, and standards. Overall, I argue that micro- and meso-level language policies are a partial product of the linguistic conservatism as found within current macro-level educational policy. (Language policy, language policing, schools, language ideologies)*

English in Swiss higher education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Studer ◽  
Aisha Siddiqa
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
National Language ◽  
Policy Planning ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
The Status ◽  
National Languages ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Language Question

This chapter reviews the current discourses surrounding English in higher education, focusing on the impact Englishization has had on education and language policy-planning in Switzerland. While English is in direct competition with national languages at the obligatory school levels, and the debate about the status of English is evident in national language policymaking, higher education institutes (henceforth HEIs) have taken a pragmatic approach, broadening their educational offerings to include English-medium courses and programmes at all levels. Taking legal, strategy and policy documents as its basis, this chapter discusses themes that impact thinking about language in higher education in a small multilingual nation and reviews how the language question has been addressed by policymakers at the national and institutional levels.

scholarly journals How and to what extent is health considered in English housing policy: a thematic analysis of national Government housing policy documents since 2010

The Lancet ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 394 ◽  
pp. S43
Author(s):  
Katja Gravenhorst ◽  
Michael McGrath ◽  
Dalya Marks ◽  
Vanessa Er ◽  
Elizabeth McGill ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Housing Policy ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
National Government ◽  
Policy Documents

scholarly journals Power, policing, and language policy mechanisms in schools: A response to Hudson

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Cushing
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Language Education Policy ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Lead Teachers ◽  
Policy Mechanisms

AbstractThis discussion is a response to Richard Hudson's response to my article, ‘The policy and policing of language in schools’ (Cushing 2019). Hudson argues that current education policy in England generally rejects and avoids prescriptivism and sets out to illustrate this in reference to a number of policy documents. As in my original article, I conceive of language policy as p/Political and one way in which language ideologies get turned into practices, through a series of policy mechanisms such as curricula, tests, and guidance for teachers. I show how these mechanisms do not ‘reject’ prescriptivism, but explicitly perpetuate it, and thus act as a system of coercion which can lead teachers into reproducing these ideologies in their practice. I argue that Hudson's argument is limited because of its depoliticised stance and understanding of key sociolinguistic concepts and issues, such as ‘Standard English’, ‘linguistic correctness’, and language education itself. (Language education policy, language ideologies, critical applied linguistics, schools, England)*

scholarly journals The Role of Language Policy Documents in the Internationalisation of Multilingual Higher Education: An Exploratory Corpus-Based Study

Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Villares
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Institutional Policies ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Support Measures ◽  
Institutional Expectations ◽  
Spanish Universities ◽  
Local Languages

Using corpus methods, this study explores the role of Language Policy (LP) documents in the internationalisation process of Spanish universities. It aims at understanding how non-Anglophone universities integrate English and local languages in the functions of education, research, and administration. Content analysis was used for the identification of key themes, and discourse analysis examined how those themes were textually expressed. Consistent with previous literature, this study shows that relevant strategic areas of LP deal with training, regulation, accreditation, and support measures. Results also highlight the role played by institutions in LP and the presence of language hierarchies between English and local languages. The discussion of these findings leads to further inquiry of mismatches between top-down institutional expectations and bottom-up realities regarding the design and implementation of institutional policies.

“The same blinding void as before”: Irish Neutrality in Samuel Beckett’s nouvelles

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 346-360
Author(s):  
José Francisco Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Cost ◽  
Cost Of War ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
Official Status

AbstractWhen the Second World War ended, Samuel Beckett returned to his flat in Paris and set about writing. The experiences that he had gone through during the conflict (his subversive activities with the Resistance, his two-year period of hiding in Roussillon, his first-hand knowledge of the human cost of war as a hospital attendant in Saint-Lô) found their tortuous expression in the literary production that ensued. The Irish government’s official status as neutral over the previous five years was also a matter of concern for the exiled intellectual in Paris, and his opinions on this matter can be gleaned from a close reading of his nouvelles, particularly “The Calmative,” a narrative in which the blinding lights of the city of Dublin stand out as a disturbing element that demands an interpretation.

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