Language Policy最新文献

In this article, a social movement lens is applied to examine the dynamics of an urbanbased language revitalization movement in the Autonomous Community of Galicia (North-western Spain). The potential of Resource Management Theory is explored as a way of systematically analysing the dynamics of urban-based language revitalization movements. It does this by identifying factors which both helped fuel the emergence and growth of this Galician grassroots movement as well as those constraining its potential development. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations collected over six months of ethnographic fieldwork in one of Galicia’s main cities, social movement theory is used to analyse the role of Galician social movement activists as social agents in shaping the success of their language revitalization initiative. We argue that a social movement lens provides a useful analytical toolkit to focus on the grassroots efforts of social agents involved in peripheral ethnolinguistic mobilization in minority language contexts such as Galicia. Ultimately, we aim to show that these social movement revitalization initiatives go beyond language as an object and are centred around language-based struggles which not only address strategy dilemmas but also scaffold social relations and ties among speakers as they mobilize within particular institutional fields.

It seems impossible to explain language choice and practice in the multilingual, understudied context of an asylum law firm by simply referring to official policy texts and linguistic (human) rights. Based on linguistic-ethnographic data (in the form of participant observations, recordings and interviews conducted in the Belgian context), this study integrates a top-down perspective (focusing on the influence of language management) with a bottom-up perspective (by eliciting the research participants’ language attitudes and ideologies and by investigating what actually happens in practice). Approaching these different parameters of language policy from a discourse analytical perspective, shows how a clear framework of linguistic (human) rights to regulate lawyer-client communication is missing. Because of the lack of concrete stipulations on how to make language choice acts, interpretation of linguistic needs is left to the individual assessment of lawyers. This leads to highly situated decision-making practices, where lawyers draw on their own experience as well as the input of others to organise multilingual interaction. Although a top-down policy exists, practice shows a lack of regulation and transparency in the selection of linguistic strategies/support on the ground.

The current study builds an argument for using Vygotskian perezhivanie as a theoretical perspective to explore the becoming and being of family language policy (FLP). We shift the focus from the three components constituting FLP – language beliefs or ideologies, language practices, and language planning or management – to the individual. Namely, we suggest focusing on the individuals who sift their explicit and implicit FLP decisions through their emotional lived experiences – perezhiviniya. The study draws on interviews with two single Russian-speaking mothers in Finland. It explores how they refract their experiences connected to language use (i.e., Finnish and Russian) through the prism of perezhivanie, focusing on individual dramatic events that shape family language policies. The analysis illustrates that participants attach different or even controversial, however, co-existing, meanings to their FLPs. Furthermore, it accentuates the non-linear nature of individuals’ development, and, as a result, the development of their FLP. Above all, tracing the two mothers’ development through the lens of perezhivanie allowed making visible the complex trajectories that led them, despite struggles and obstacles, to gain the volition to act and implement a bilingual language policy in their families.

The dynamic nature of multilingual families and their language policies has been touched upon by numerous studies. Adding to the field, the present study assesses the stability of family language policy in a standardised and quantitative manner. To this end, a linguistically heterogenous sample consisting of 488 multilingual families raising young children in Belgium’s Flemish Community was surveyed twice, eighteen months apart. Based on the collected longitudinal survey data, the present study offers statistically verifiable evidence for the (partially) dynamic character of family language policy. Firstly, parental beliefs in a multilingual advantage were strengthened and a change was found in language-specific beliefs regarding children’s language acquisition. Secondly, the families’ practices demonstrate a shift towards the Dutch institutional language, particularly in parental language use when communicating with each other and with their child, and in the child’s overall exposure. The observed shift in practices and beliefs underscores not only parents’ continuous assessment of their children’s linguistic needs and development, but also the societal environment influencing this assessment and adjustment. However, while significant changes in language beliefs and practices were uncovered, the more conscious and explicit component of language management proved stable across time, corroborating the independent character of the three family language policy components.

This analysis examines an archaeology of statal narratives as they relate to the multilingual linguistic milieu of the Philippines since independence at mid-20th century. Critical transformations to statal narratives linked to language over the last century have been shaped by interacting, sometimes competing discourses, deriving from a paradoxical mix of influences: on one hand, contemporary narratives of language have been shaped by modernist discourses focused on the unification of the nation through language, but more recently, these discourses have shifted to focus also on the possibilities of figuring certain local and regional languages in pragmatic terms that index an increasing orientation to preoccupations inherent in discourses of late modernity. In late modern contexts, discourses of multilingualism and multiculturalism in the Philippines have been intertwined with ideological orientations that promote regional peace, cooperation, and economic growth in part informed by the country’s involvement in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), where the recognition and maintenance of the multilingual and multicultural character of participating nations are framed as key mandates. By examining the emergence and transformation of discourses from modern to late modern ones at the level of the statal narrative, this analysis sheds light on emergent forms of nationalist narratives focused on both the instrumental value of global languages such as English, but also the valuation and figuration of certain local and regional languages in new ways and the contentious processes in history though which these discourses have taken hold.

In this special issue, we focus on how family language policy (FLP) as a field of enquiry has evolved over the ten years since the publication of the first thematic issue on FLP in Language Policy in 2013. We explore how some of the long-standing issues, such as language shift, language status and language attitude, have been addressed through the lens of raciolinguistic and critical theories, and how new challenges, such as digital communications, have shaped family language practices. We further explore how political conflicts have influenced families of forced migration and families in diasporic contexts, to redefine their identities through aspiration and illusion. By comparing with the first thematic issue, we outline in this volume how the contributing papers differ in their theoretical perspectives, epistemological stances and varied data sources to approach different aspects of FLP. The contributors herein explore different aspects of FLP in relation to multilingualism, involving indigenous and minority languages and in the contexts of UK, Norway, Finland, Mexico, Singapore and New Zealand. Entering into a new phase of FLP at a time with heightened political crisis and war in Europe and the Middle East, we argue that more interdisciplinary synergy should be sought to advance the field of FLP.