China has had an ambivalent policy for the learning and teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) over much of its history. The explicit and implicit implementation of language policy has had a significant impact on the content of EFL textbooks and the ideologies underlying them. However, studies exploring such ideologies remain sensitive…

This study uses Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (CDA) paradigm to analyse Korean Ministry of Education (MOE) policy documents legitimising the National English Ability Test (NEAT) and consolidating a testing regime wherein educational testing is strongly positioned as a social technology facilitating practical English use. Focusing on…

In the early twenty-first century Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) emerged as a distinctively European pedagogy for raising additional language competence. Although CLIL scholarship has been abundant and has taken many different directions, there is a dearth of ethnographic research to shed light on the situated ambivalences of CLIL…

Building on the recent studies revealing that official bilingualism policies in Canada are often used to reinforce a specific racial and linguistic order, this paper addresses the impact of these federal-level policies on education policies at the provincial level. From the policy genealogy perspective, we examine Ontario's Heritage Languages…

This article analyses language policies in higher education (HE) in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, as well as the European Union (EU). We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the intertwined nature of local, national, and international language policies in HE. We are particularly interested in the construction of…

Internationalisation is a buzzword in European higher education, and many universities work hard to devise and implement strategies that will help facilitate increased transnational student mobility. In this context, English is commonly seen as the "natural" choice for university internationalisation, and English is accordingly promoted…

The Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse nations in Southeast Asia. The post-1975 government's policies regarding ethnic minority peoples are often considered to represent an ideological shift from earlier monocultural orientations to a discourse of interethnic equality and solidarity.…

Having been the scene of language planning for more than a century in relation to the two competing written standards of Norwegian, Norwegian language planners are now facing a new challenge: how to deal with what has been termed "domain loss" where Norwegian is perceived as losing out to English in important sectors of society,…

Existing research on language in South African schooling frequently draws attention to the problematic hegemony of English and the lack of access to quality education in the home language of the majority of learners, often drawing on the metaphor of a gap or a disjuncture between post-apartheid language in education policy (LiEP) and its…

With its recent entry into the European Union (EU) and the adoption of multiethnic democracy as a national policy, a key challenge for Poland is to transform its education policy and practice in ways that are consistent with multicultural and pluralist values. This paper examines Poland's efforts to address these issues by exploring changes in the…