Examines the position of Tamil as the language of an ethnic minority in Malaysia and Singapore, placing the issue of Tamil and language maintenance within the larger sociolinguistic milieu in the two countries and drawing conclusions about the role of language policy and planning in the determination of linguistic outcomes. (SM)

Discusses South Africa's adoption of nine indigenous languages to join Afrikaans and English as official languages and the expanding role of English at the expense of these languages. Analyzes studies on South African Englishes, examining the way expanded use and domains for Black South African English (BSAE) speakers will have a significant…

Presents a survey of recent developments in teaching Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) in North Africa and discusses current issues and future challenges. (Author/VWL)

This paper examines the effect of the recent European Union (EU) enlargement on minority language policies in the Baltic states, and in particular in Latvia and Estonia. I first look at the so-called Copenhagen political criteria conditioning EU accession and at the European Commission's monitoring system for assessing applicant countries'…

One of the powerful ideologies that govern English language learning and teaching in the Sultanate of Oman is the "colonialist/culturalist" ideology and the various paradigms embodied within it. This ideology is present in the various statements made by the different agents involved in ELT in Oman, in particular "The Philosophy and…

Australia's language-in-education policy documents have consistently included references to the place of "culture" in language teaching. This paper seeks to examine how the major national policies conceptualise culture and interculturality in relationship to languages education. For each policy, this study will analyse the language…

This paper analyses Malaysia's English language policies, especially since the mid 1990s, in the light of more recent claims for a united Malaysian nation (under the banner of "bangsa Malaysia") and in the context of English language and its potential for Malaysia to forge more of an externalised identity. It examines the impact of…

This paper applies the management model of language to Romani in the Czech Republic, showing how intellectualisation processes in discourse lead to the solution of problems associated with the creation of functional dialects or Languages for Special Purposes (LSP). These problems include, but are not limited to, the building-up of terminologies.…

This paper proposes a range of improvements to international science communication. It pictures the contemporary language situation in international scientific communication as well as its recent history with the rise of English as its most notable feature and offers explanations for this development. It discusses in which sciences languages other…

Language planning is normally thought of in terms of large-scale, usually national planning, often undertaken by governments and meant to influence, if not change, ways of speaking or literacy practices within a society. It normally encompasses four aspects: status planning (about society), corpus planning (about language), language-in-education…

This paper discusses pupil choice in relation to foreign language (FL) planning as an instance of micro-language planning. Borrowing from established language planning theory (Haugen, 1983; Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997), FL planning is conceptualised and defined here as the consideration of those aspects of language planning that reflect social,…

The position of English "vis-a-vis" Swedish in Sweden is gaining attention because of a growing concern that the encroachment of English in certain domains may result in Swedish losing ground. A current language policy proposal, entitled "Mal i mun," commissioned by the Swedish Government, addresses this concern, in part, by…

That English has become a necessary tool in the modern scientist's intellectual equipment, seems to be unquestionable nowadays. English is most likely chosen as the most convenient medium of international communication when the local academic community decides to communicate with the external world. Most Israeli scholars, including those who…

This study focuses on the research literature available in the United States on the evolution of language policy and planning issues involved in bilingual education programs in Mayan communities in Guatemala. I begin with general comments regarding language policy and planning for bilingual programs for ethnic groups within the borders of…

A selection of 27 papers from 1972 to publication includes works on a variety of topics whose unifying theme is the relationship of language and ethnicity. The papers are presented in six groups, on these topics: (1) what ethnicity is and how it is linked to language: phenomenological and socio-historical considerations; (2) language maintenance…