This chapter traces the genealogy of the critical ethnographic turn in research on language policy and planning (LPP). The first part of the chapter shows how different strands of ethnographic research contributed to this intellectual movement, eventually moving us beyond the divide between “micro” and “macro.” Here, we consider the specific contributions of research in the ethnography of communication, interactional sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, critical sociolinguistic ethnography, and the ethnography of language policy. The second part of the chapter focuses on the particular advantages that accrue from adopting critical ethnographic approaches. Here, bringing ontological and epistemological perspectives into the frame and highlighting the need for researcher reflexivity, we consider critical ethnography as a way of seeing, as a way of looking and of building knowledge, and, lastly, as a way of being as a researcher.
Urban schools and English language education in late modern China: A critical sociolinguistic ethnography
