Language Policy最新文献

Through ethnographic fieldwork and sociological theory drawing from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this article describes possibilities and restrictions for Chinese language education for Chinese-diasporic youth in the San Francisco area, 50 years after Lau v. Nichols. I examine four sites of this education, all of which serve these youth across a range of socioeconomic and language backgrounds in the metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area: a longstanding community-based school in San Francisco Chinatown, a private after-school program in an affluent suburb, a public high school in an affluent suburb, and a public high school in a working-class and ethnically diverse city in the East Bay area. These sites are variably defined and distinguished by social struggles to acquire and define what Bourdieu called linguistic cultural capital, or the communicative practices culturally and economically valued within a social context. I argue that educational affordances suited specifically to the diasporic-multilingual backgrounds and competences of these youth remain limited, such that the “monolingual orthodoxy” of language education prevails due to multiple social factors, ranging from the rising eminence of Mandarin language to progressive ideals of racial educational equity.

This study examined how three champion principals of Asian language dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs—Cantonese, Korean, and Mandarin—in California have navigated the oscillating language-in-education policies after the Lau decision. We explored principals' various roles through a lens of agency in a social justice leadership framework, specifically considering the opportunities and challenges for agentive leadership from three different phases: foregrounding and engaging, planning and implementing, and evaluating and sustaining. Findings demonstrate that the success of DLBE programs goes beyond the overarching language policies that supposedly enable bilingual education; rather it hinges on the bottom-up commitment, collaboration and resilience of principals, teachers, and parent communities. The blanket policies at the state level often overlooked Asian languages and the unique needs of Asian teachers and communities in DLBE schools, limiting principal agency. Within these confines, principals consistently engaged in advocacy work, such as in teacher recruitment, hiring and work distribution, and curriculum design and assessment, contributing to the growth and sustainability of their programs. By elevating these champions and their experiences and perspectives, this study reflects upon the politicized path to bilingual education 50 years after the Lau case and contributes valuable insights to inform future implementational research, practice, and policy, ensuring the continued flourishing of Asian language bilingual education for the growing constituency of Asian-identifying students.

This paper is describes the author’s personal involvement with issues of policy and implementation that were sparked by the Lau decision. Topics included are student assessment, the bilingual education wars, the role of research, the paradigm shift with the advent of standards, and California state policy in the education of English learners.

Many classrooms include students who use multiple languages other than the school-sanctioned or teacher’s language(s). This study asks how English-medium teachers develop language ideologies that support critical translingual literacy instruction. Using a collective case study, we ask how five English-medium teachers in a U.S. graduate course name and act on their language ideologies through literacy instruction. The cross-case analysis indicates the teachers’ language ideologies viewed students’ L1 use as a source of pride/identity and as a way to promote equity and social justice. These ideologies supported critical translingual literacy instruction through classroom actions (incorporating new texts, initiating family engagement, and positioning students as experts). Implications illustrate the need for literacy teacher education to focus on language ideologies, using literacy instruction as a powerful vehicle to effect language policy. Thus, focusing on critical translingual literacy instruction can support English-medium teachers to act as both literacy and language policymakers.

English is known as a language of domination and hegemony making. But in certain contexts, it can function as a liberatory tool that can be used to overcome hindrances for emancipation and progress. The objective of this paper is to exemplify how Dalits—marginalised and oppressed communities—in India view English as a means of resisting injustice and freeing themselves from oppressive conditions. This article reports findings of an attitude study: specifically, it looks at the English attitudes found among the Dalit community in Tamil Nadu. The findings are derived from the analysis of 57 questionnaires filled up by research students and 25 teacher interviews. Although English, in most circumstances, does have an upper caste monopoly, findings show that it is also seen as a language of democracy and an emancipatory tool, as it provides an opportunity for social mobility and escape from the caste identity encoded in their mother tongues. We conclude that English is important for the Dalits in Tamil Nadu. They recognise and appreciate the instrumental and enriching role it plays in their lives. But mother tongue remains equally important for them.

South Africa immediately springs to mind as the epitome of multilingual language policies. In fact, its Constitution granted official status to 11 languages in 1996, and the Language Policy in Higher Education passed by the Ministry of Education in 2002 required universities to develop and use the indigenous official languages as academic languages, in addition to Afrikaans and English. With this multilingual milieu in mind, this study aimed at giving students voice in an attempt to unveil their language ideologies and attitudes by analysing their views on multilingualism and the use of English as main medium of instruction. Eleven focus groups with a total of 30 university students from different degrees at Stellenbosch University (SU) were organized to delve into four main issues: students’ perceptions on the university’s multilingual language policy; the actual use of the three official languages (Afrikaans, English and Xhosa) at SU; the impact of the use of English as the main medium of instruction; and the implementation of translanguaging practices. Despite the multilingual language policy of SU, our results reveal that there is a neatly established language hierarchy, where English reigns supreme at the top of the pyramid, followed by Afrikaans, while Xhosa remains at the base. Therefore, the preponderance of English as the language of academia only contributes to consolidating it as a strong identity factor in our interviewees’ multilingual identities, to the extent that Xhosa home language speakers disavow their own language in the academic domain.

This article will explore the impact of various language education policies and their measures on Irish Sign Language (ISL) in Irish deaf education. The focus will be on how previous and current policy decisions regarding language education have affected the use and recognition of ISL as a legitimate language in the education system. The article will discuss both deaf schools and mainstream schools. The article will briefly provide an overview of ISL's history in Ireland, including its recognition as a language in 2017 by legislation (ISL Act 2017) and the current policies regarding its use in education. The impact of these policies on the development and use of ISL in deaf education will be concisely examined, including issues of access to education, teacher training, and curriculum development. Additionally, attitudes towards ISL will be briefly examined. The article will conclude with the ongoing challenges and opportunities for improving the status of ISL in Irish deaf education through policy reform and community advocacy.

This paper utilizes raciolinguistic genealogy (Flores, in International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2021:111–115, 2021) to explore an historical case study of Spanish Franciscan missionaries in Alta California during an early period of colonization spanning the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries. In the study, I apply a raciolinguistic lens to investigate the racialized and racist basis for a language ideology of contempt (Dorian, in: Small-Language Fates and Prospects (pp. 264–283). Brill). Imported from Europe, this ideology devalued both Indigenous languages and Peoples, acting as a filter for language policymaking at multiple levels of the Spanish Empire and the mission institution. Guided by this ideology, Franciscan missionaries strategically implemented both monolingual and multilingual pedagogies for forced assimilatory religious schooling, which was intended to contribute to a project of linguicide among local Indigenous Peoples in the region. This structural “killing of languages without the killing of speakers” (Bear Nicholas in Briarpatch 40:5–8, 2011: 4) would contribute to Spanish settler colonization in New Spain and Alta California, which sought to dominate Indigenous Peoples and extract their labor power through “elimination via absorption” (Wolfe, in: Traces of history: Elementary structures of race, Verso Books, 2016). The concept of genocidal multilingualism is offered to interpret the missionaries’ strategy to learn and expropriate the languages of local Indigenous communities for the purposes of linguicide and forced assimilation. Today, multilingualism is often affiliated with political support for linguistic and cultural diversity and challenges to hegemonic monolingualism (Kubota in Applied Linguistics 37:474–494, 2016). However, the current neoliberal political context in California and the U.S. may be similarly influenced by a raciolinguistic ideology of contempt that devalues minoritized languages and users, including Indigenous Peoples and their languages, reproducing the linguicidal language shift that characterizes the historical legacy of colonization in the United States.