Focusing on language education policies in Bangladesh, this article shows how the policies have distracted people's attention from the harms inflicted on the country's Indigenous communities and their languages. I discuss two factors that have contributed to policy distractions in this context: a strong form of Bangla linguistic nationalism and a…

This paper discusses how the political interplay between English-in-society and English-in-education policy in the Global South(s) facilitates what I term 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' in postcolonial spheres that were colonised by languages other than English. 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' is…

The notion of validity encapsulates the echo of the physical within the technical. The technical force of a language course, test or plan needs to be evaluated for its effects. On the norm side, this yields a design principle that asks whether the design is adequate, and can be validated. That kind of technical validation is perhaps most prominent…

For many years Denmark has had a reputation for being laissez-faire in language matters. There is no explicit language legislation, and the Danish Language Council has mainly descriptive functions. However, there is a powerful standard language ideology, and in other societal domains such as education or immigration, language is heavily regulated.…

Mother-tongue education has increasingly become a keyword in formulations of development goals, especially the Sustainable Development Goals (2015). Achievement of these goals acquires a grave sense of urgency in light of the ever-increasing threat to the very fabric of our linguistic diversity. The basic premise of this article is that Gandhian…

Language is on display all around us, all the time, and the study of this linguistic landscape is one of the fastest-growing areas of research in applied linguistics. This book provides an overview of how the field of Linguistic Landscape Studies has emerged and developed over the past 20 years, combined with an in-depth exploration of the…

Zambia is home to a complex set of language practices, which involve languages being used in different ways across social contexts. Historically written communication has typically been associated with English with African languages mainly associated with used spoken contexts. Recently, however, there has been a shift in this pattern with African…

Uganda's "early exit" language policy positions African languages ambiguously in public education provision. Runyoro-Rutooro and Runyankore-Rukiga are spoken in Western Uganda in public spaces where translanguaging happens as a matter of course. These languages are heard at pre-primary and lower primary levels but are superseded by…

The article "Some Important Facts about Language Teaching/Learning: Basics and Assumptions" by Dr. Mahmoud M. S. Abdallah explores the foundational elements of language teaching and learning. It emphasizes the importance of language proficiency for personal, social, and professional success, highlighting the cognitive and societal…

Language education policy in Arizona has been on a rollercoaster over the last five years. Between 2019 and 2024, the state shifted from strict English-only enforcement to loosening restrictions and encouraging dual language approaches, then back to strict English-only enforcement. In this forum piece, we use approaches from critical discourse…

Though our technical imagination is not restricted to the aesthetic, analogies of the latter in the former do give pause to consider anew the role of creativity and invention in language intervention design. On the norm side, aesthetic anticipations in the technical sphere appeal to the designers of language interventions to bring their solutions…

Language planning and policy (LPP), as a field of research, emerged to solve the "problem" of multilingualism in newly independent nation-states. LPP's principal emphasis was the reproduction of one-state, one-language policies. Indigenous languages were systematically erased through top-down, colonial medium-of-instruction policies,…

A national language policy reflects how a state looks at the languages used by its people. It assigns certain roles to languages, and addresses the issues of language education and language of education. Pakistan, a multilingual country, has yet no language policy at national level. This absence of policy has caused many issues, including the…

A critical approach to "neofalante," newspeakers of Galician and their theoretical framework, is presented. In order to do so, we take as a case study some of its documented cases as a popular notion, its transformations, and its mobilisation in the planning discourse, along with its construction and evolution as an analytical category…

This paper discusses the 'fuzziness' of Hungarian legal language as an issue of language planning addressed in the Hungarian language strategy to be published by the Hungarian Research Centre for Language Planning. First, we give a concise historical overview on the status of Hungarian language in Hungary, only to make it evident how its status…