We make this path by walking: The practices and principles of the First International Working-Class Academics Conference

2022 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Shukie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Academic Conference ◽  
Surface Changes

The values of an academic conference might best be defined by the themes of that conference, the disciplines covered and the intended level of delegation. In almost every case we had experienced as a working-class academics organizing group, these were only surface changes, and the entire conference process remained the same across disciplines. Such academic process and practice appear rooted in an archaic series of expectations and conventions that insist on a certain way of being in the Academy. To create an inclusive space in practice and process that goes beyond inclusion as merely themes, but exclusion as actual practice, took reimagining. This article outlines the ways in which we attempted to shift beyond the conventional to create an alternative conference approach that challenged exclusion, actively sought meaningful inclusion and disrupted a culture of conformity. Our focus was on working class academics, as a body of people huge in number, diverse in background but continually obscured in language, policy and practice.

scholarly journals Space and ethnic identification in a Danish prison

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 580-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mie B Haller ◽  
Torsten Kolind
Keyword(s):  
Drug Treatment ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Institutional Level ◽  
Prison Life ◽  
High Security ◽  
Spatial Policy

Ethnicity has come to play an increasing role in contemporary Danish prison life. This development not only reflects the growing number of prisoners in Danish prisons with ethnic minority backgrounds. It also reflects changes in prison spatial policy and institutional classifications. Based on seven months of fieldwork in a Danish high security prison, we investigate how such changes at the institutional level and at the level of policy have affected prisoner’s everyday ethnic identifications. We focus especially on the way prisoners reinforce and essentialize ethnic differences by reference to institutional spatial divisions; particularly the division between regular wings and drug treatment wings. We find that ethnic Danish prisoners spending time in a treatment wing are often viewed as ‘soft’ and ‘weak’ by prisoners with ethnic minority backgrounds in regular wings, whereas these prisoners in regular wings are in turn perceived as troublemakers and chaotic by the ethnic Danish prisoners in drug treatment. We also show how ethnic categories are at times blurred in actual practice. We conclude by discussing the implication for policy and practice; especially, we debate whether new spatial prison policies may unintentionally partake in accentuating ethnic stereotypical thinking.

Critical Discourse–Ethnographic Approaches to Language Policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Wodak ◽  
Kristof Savski
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Key Concepts

This chapter focuses on the synergy that researchers in language policy have developed by integrating two other subfields of sociolinguistics: critical discourse analysis and critical ethnography. The chapter begins by discussing the meanings of the three key concepts used in these approaches, albeit sometimes in significantly different ways: critique, ethnography, and discourse. It then examines how these concepts are relevant to contemporary analyses of language policy, focusing particularly on their potential to open new and innovative avenues of research. To demonstrate how an integrated critical discourse and ethnographic approach can be applied in concrete empirical research, the chapter presents an analysis of language policy and practice in the European Union before providing an overview of other relevant studies in the area.

scholarly journals Language policy and practice in multilingual production workplaces

Multilingua ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorte Lønsmann ◽  
Kamilla Kraft
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Working Life ◽  
High Status ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Policies And Practices

AbstractTransnational mobility results in a diversification of languages and cultures in the workplace. A common means of managing this diversity is to introduce language policies that often privilege English or the locally dominant language(s). In contrast, managing their everyday working lives may require employees to draw on a range of multilingual and non-verbal resources. Such tensions between policy and practice in multilingual workplaces may impact structures and processes of inequality and power in the workplace. By looking at two sites within logistics and construction, this article offers a critical look at multilingual policies and practices and their consequences for speakers within the workplace. The article investigates how language is conceptualised in language policies and enacted in language practice. From this point of departure we discuss how the tensions between policies and practices impact on the daily working life and professional opportunities of the workers. Our findings suggest that even though multilingual practices are crucial for the flow of everyday work interactions on the floor, the language requirements within the workplace mirror the repertoires and practices of high-status employees, and therefore their competence is valued more highly than the more multilingual repertoires of their subordinates. A consequence of this unequal valorisation of the different linguistic repertoires is the maintenance of existing hierarchies in the workplace and the creation of new ones.

LANGUAGE POLICY AND PEDAGOGY: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF A. RONALD WALTON. Richard D. Lambert and Elana Shohamy (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000. Pp. xii + 279. $65.00 cloth.

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-123
Author(s):  
Timothy Reagan
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Foreign Language Education ◽  
Deputy Director ◽  
Language Policy And Planning ◽  
Language Education Policy ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policy And Planning

Language policy and pedagogy, as its subtitle suggests, is dedicated to A. Ronald Walton, who died quite young in 1996. Walton had served as the deputy director of the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) in Washington, D.C., since its founding in 1986, and the contributors to this volume all have had direct or indirect connections to the NFLC. Further, the essays in this volume are all related to issues and areas that were of concern to Walton during the course of his career. All of that having been said, this work is considerably more than a typical Festschrift; it is in fact a timely and important contribution to the growing literature dealing with both language policy and planning studies and contemporary issues in U.S. foreign language education policy and practice.

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