This article considers the role that the examination of text plays in empirical language policy research. It begins by examining the state-of-the-art in language policy, observing that a core focus on action represents a shared characteristic of the various strands of discursive and ethnographic research over the last two decades. That is, the…

This study examines the discourses of educators in Pakistan through the lens of Critical Multilingual Language Awareness (CMLA) to demonstrate how their lack of critical awareness reinforces and reproduces subtractive language policies and practices in a diverse multilingual setting. CMLA stands for the understanding of the social, political and…

Linguistic landscape (LL) research seeks to account for the visible displays of multilingualism on public signage. While surveys of signage in the LL produce quantitative descriptions of language contact in a given area, such analyses shed little light on people's interpretations of multilingual signs. Moreover, even within more qualitative…

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…

Citizenship is not a neutral word; it evokes numerous interpretations and connotations in various policies, discourse, and practices. Its significance is motivated by current narratives of rights and responsibilities of a citizenry, (illegal) immigration, and English-only ideologies. The basis for this investigation is the perception that the U.S.…

This article presents the findings of a corpus-based study of the use of English vis-à-vis Cantonese and Putonghua in Hong Kong's Legislative Council in the past four decades. The objective of the study was to track the changing fortunes of the three languages in a key government institution during a period of unprecedented political, economic and…

The globalization of English in Sweden is examined as it takes shape in educational policy and practice. Following in the tradition of a "new wave" of language policy and planning research that emphasizes connections between policy and how it is interpreted by local stakeholders, this investigation focuses on textual data from Swedish…

This article examines how political discourse, language ideologies, recent Chinese curriculum reforms, and their representations in the media are inextricably related. Using the "Speak Mandarin Campaign" as background for the inquiry, I focus on textual features of the various media sources, TV advertisements, campaign slogans, official…

The aim of this monograph is to provide a detailed account of language policy and language planning in Cyprus. Using both historical and synchronic data and adopting a mixed-methods approach (archival research, ethnographic tools and insights from sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis), this study attempts to trace the origins and the…

The adoption of the English language paradigm and the subsequent implementation of bilingual policies worldwide are generating new linguistic hierarchies. These have an effect on the linguistic diversity at the sub-national level and on individuals' linguistic human rights. This article reports the results of a case study on an individual's…

Globalisation has accelerated the spread of English internationally, challenged nationalisms and put nation states in a dilemma in which they have to promote English, a foreign language, in addition to their national languages. Focusing on the proposal in January 2000 to establish English as an official language of Japan, this study attempts to…

Describes how Oyster Bilingual School's (Washington, DC) two-way Spanish-English language plan functions in its sociopolitical context. It is noted that this plan is part of a larger identity plan aiming to promote social change by socializing children differently from the way they are socialized in mainstream US educational discourse. (46…