The unavoidability of language makes it critical that language policies appeal to some notion of language neutrality as part of their rationale, in order to assuage concerns that the policies might otherwise be unduly discriminatory. However, the idea of language neutrality is deeply ideological in nature, since it is not only an attempt to treat…

There have been few Australian studies of language maintenance amongst immigrant languages from the Indian subcontinent. The present study focuses on Tamil speakers in Melbourne from Sri Lanka or India, who are Hindus or Christians. Tamil is a pluricentric language that has been under the domination of English in these countries, at least amongst…