This article draws on the case of conflict-affected and multilingual Cameroon to analyze how education materials address national unity and multilingualism amidst an identity crisis fueled by tensions between Anglophones and a central government accused of favoring Francophones. Through a discourse analysis of one policy document, 13 curricula,…

This article is inspired by Lo Bianco's theory of discourse planning. Using the case of Indonesia's second president Soeharto, the article demonstrates the usefulness of Lo Bianco's theory to understand how language was instrumental in the discourse planning of "Pembangunan" [Development], and as such, in understanding the nexus of…

This article responds to recent calls to investigate the role of agents and the connections between layers of agency in the development and implementation of language policy and planning (LPP). Using a corpus linguistic and discursive approach to language policy, we identify interventions made in plenary sessions by Secretary-Generals and Member…

In Bourdieusian theory, the use of so-called 'legitimate' language serves to maintain dominant power structures, with 'legitimacy' determined by an array of economic and social conditions inherent in speech communities. Standard languages function as normalised products and are imbued with a greater degree of legitimacy than non-standard varieties…

The global spread and hegemony of English as a medium of teaching, learning and research has come to be closely associated with neoliberalisation of higher education in the universities across the world, and has negatively impacted on epistemic issues, especially in Global South universities. No permanent solution has been found on challenges of…

One of the products of globalization in sociolinguistics is the emergence of transnational regimes in language policy, in which power is exercised across boundaries of traditional nation states. This paper engages with audit culture, a transnational policy mechanism which involves the continuous evaluation of nation states' performance through the…

Drawing on theory from critical language policy literature, this article explores the impact of discourses on in-migration on Welsh language policy. By focussing on discursive debates surrounding the subject of in-migration, the article analyses how a range of actors produce and reproduce discourses on in-migration in Wales and how these…

The Republic of Cyprus is a country characterised by a long-term conflict which resulted in the geopolitical division of the island. Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots have lived in separation for more than 30 years until the border re-opened in 2003, allowing people to cross and visit 'the other side'. One of the crossing points is located in…

Contemporary analyses of language policy often tend to presume ideological uniformity, rather than focus on the contrasts between various positions, and the power struggles that those differences bring about. In this paper, I present an approach that implements the notion of voice in language policy analysis to denote the ideological positions and…

The concept "language legitimacy", which entails issues of social class, ethnicity and culture as well as those of dominance and power, is a very important one with implications for both educational policy and practice. This article begins with a brief discussion of the two major ways in which the concept of "language…

As the power of tests lies in their uses, language tests that are used to assess immigration eligibility exercise enormous power. Critical Language Testing calls for exposing the power of tests by examining the intentions of introducing tests and their effects on individuals and society, especially from the perspective of test-takers. This case…

The Swedish educational policy for upper secondary English, which took effect in 2011 and adopts a globalised perspective on language, is explored with respect to how skills and awareness related to local, national, and international roles of English are represented in policy documents. A discourse analytic approach to language policy is used to…