The aim of this paper is to show that the current discourse on languages, constructed as meaningful for Europe's establishment and maintenance as a geopolitical unit, is just the latest round in a much longer debate on managing the diversity of languages taking place within the Council of Europe. From a critical sociolinguistic perspective, this…

A language policy document on English teaching asserted that in India, "the colonial origins [of English are] now forgotten or irrelevant" (NCERT 2006: 1). Using data obtained in the course of a longitudinal ethnographic investigation into the language and literacy practices of young multilingual boys living at an "anathashram"…

Using media texts from a Korean newspaper archive, this article describes the process through which the state took up the ideology of linguistic nationalism during the period of Japanese colonisation of Korea (1910-1945). This was particularly aimed at a modernisation project in order for the legacy of the Joseon dynasty, which had ruled Korea for…

This case study describes how a beginning teacher struggled to meet her students' needs in an ESL classroom. Her struggle demonstrated the interrelated nature of policy and practice: Policy effects in her school isolated her and made her feel solely responsible for the achievement of her newly arrived English-learning (EL) students. Her case…

This paper takes language policing as an ideospace, a space where multiple language ideologies are constructed and contested. Drawing on critical language policy and linguistic anthropology, it unravels how participants in a Nepalese Facebook group construct and reproduce language ideologies that both challenge and impose homogeneity and…

Using a multilayered, ethnographic and critical approach to language policy and planning, this article examines a language policy favoring Quechua in Apurímac in the Southern Peruvian Andes, which is being imagined as an integrated community unified by the local language. This study presents a case in which top-down policies open up ideological…

The paper illuminates links between state politics and language politics in Lithuania during different historical periods: (a) the thaw period, (b) the stagnation period, (c) the liberalization periods of Soviet socialism, and (d) the two post-Soviet decades characterized by both nationalism and liberalization. Based on analysis of the texts by…

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…

This article explores the diminished use of Judeo-Spanish among Jews living in Turkey and asks the following research question: What factors, ideologies, and practices contribute to the demise of Judeo-Spanish? To address this question, we employed life history inquiry based on two oral history archives documenting elderly Turkish-Jewish community…

San Lucas Quiavini is a community of Zapotec (Otomanguean) speakers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Since the 1970s, the community has seen large-scale migration to Los Angeles, California, where about half the community now resides. Participant observation and interviews conducted over nine years in both locales, with a focus on interactional patterns in the…

This article reports a case study of two Chinese-English bilingual families in Singapore and illustrates the importance of incorporating two hitherto disconnected fields of research--family language policy and family literacy practices--to an understanding of early language and literacy acquisition in the familial milieu. Specifically, this work…

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…

This article ethnographically analyzes the everyday negotiations of a language policy at a private religious educational institution whose explicit educative mission is the transmission of religious beliefs, values, and practices. Specifically, it explores a Hebrew-only language policy at a Jewish day school located in New York City, and focuses…

The article addresses the actual and perceived roles of national organisations and bodies, such as language "academies" or "councils", in recent history. In particular, the article seeks to shed light on the question what may prompt national governments in modernity and late modernity to establish and fund such bodies to…

This paper investigates the Chinese state's English language ideologies as reflected in official Chinese foreign language education policies (FLEP). It contends that the Chinese FLEP not only indicate a way by which the state gains consent, maintains cultural governance, and exerts hegemony internally, but also shows the traces of the combined…