This article explores the multilingual and multicultural aspects of community-building, networking and communication in the European Union's (EU) political and administrative system. We investigated the networking and communicative preferences of EU civil servants and lobbyists using survey data and thematic interviews. Our aim was to gain a…

This article describes and analyzes how rural Nicaraguan teachers and NGO leaders are working with a US university-based team to develop a locally responsive, critical, and inquiry-based approach to the Ministry of Education requirement for English in secondary school. This requirement has placed a new and challenging expectation upon rural…

In many language policy and political theory discussions, there is an overt skepticism, and at times outright hostility, towards the ongoing maintenance of private and, especially, public multilingualism, particularly when these include/incorporate the languages of linguistic minorities. For linguistic minority individuals, ongoing multilingualism…

The study focuses on local people's expressions of attitudes and ideologies in the light of proposed Sami-Norwegian bilingual policies in their Northern Norwegian hometown. The local politicians' plan to introduce the bilingual regulations of an "administrative area for the Sami language" in the town of Tromso encountered conflicting language…

Ideology can be understood as a guide to action, and therefore, language ideology can be viewed as a link between language ability on the one hand, and language use on the other. In this respect, language ideology plays a central role in the success of language revitalization movements. In an effort to understand how new language ideologies are…

In this paper, it is argued that the existing conceptual framework of "language policy" should be expanded to include perspectives from the emerging field of "language governance", as the latter pays attention to the multi-faceted internal and external contexts in which institutions and organisations seek to develop language policy. The paper…

This paper explores a period of advocacy on behalf of Spanish language education in the United States from 1914 to 1945. It interrogates claims made by policy actors about the centrality of Spanish language education to US geopolitical and economic interests in Latin America. I make two arguments: first, that realization of US economic and…

The main purpose of the present paper is to draw attention to contexts where two conceptions of linguistic rights--the rights of languages and the rights of speakers--come into conflict. To illustrate such conflict, I will examine justifications of language laws adopted in two post-Soviet countries, Latvia and Ukraine. I will begin with an…

This paper draws on theories that describe interrelationships between identity, language and the media to investigate how the Kurds utilise two forms of electronic media--satellite television and the Internet--to construct their identities. The data for this study is generated from four sources: a Kurdish satellite television channel (Kurdistan…

The evolution of Rwanda's language policies since 1996 has played and continues to play a critical role in social reconstruction following war and genocide. Rwanda's new English language policy aims to drop French and install English as the only language of instruction. The policy-makers frame the change as a major factor in the success of social…