This article makes the case for conducting ethnographic research of a multi-scalar nature that links language policy processes and ideologies of language with everyday practices, on the ground, in local schools and classrooms. As with other researchers engaged in the ethnography of language policy (e.g. McCarty, 2011; Johnson, 2013), my concern is…

This Regional Dossier focuses on the Austrian federal province of Carinthia, where the vast majority of the Slovene-speaking minority in Austria lives. The Slovene language belongs to the South Slavic language group. It was the official language of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia in former Yugoslavia and has been the state language of…

Although Singapore, a linguistically and ethnically diverse city-state, uses four official languages, namely Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English, which are supposed to enjoy equal status, there appears to be a pecking order to these languages. English seems to be the dominant language when taking into consideration the bilingual education policy,…

Cameroon, host to around 280 local languages, two European official languages (English and French) and Pidgin English, has been struggling since the 1960s to achieve official bilingualism for national unity and integration. This policy implies that each citizen should learn and use both official languages. The greatest means to implement this…

This article presents a systematic review of research on language and multilingualism in mathematics education published in the South African journal Pythagoras from 1994 to 2021. This time frame was chosen as the year 1994 marked the acknowledgement of 11 official languages in the new democratic South Africa (including 9 indigenous languages),…

Language education policies contain discourses that have language ideologies embedded within them. This study explores the language ideologies in official language education policy documents of Pakistan from 2000 to 2020. Using Corpus Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis techniques, a 1.28 million-word-corpus was generated from 32 policy documents…

Recently, there has been some redesigning in the English language teaching curriculum in Turkey as a consequence of overall educational reforms. However, there has, so far, been no research that has investigated the current high school English curriculum in light of the recent linguistic developments in the field of English language teaching.…

This article analyses the construction of linguistic value and recognition of linguistic resources in educational spaces in Finland, where Swedish is the second national language and in Sweden, where Finnish is one of five official minority languages. Drawing on ethnographic methods, critically informed notions of language policy and spatial…

Ever since the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997, policy makers in Hong Kong have instituted a series of de-colonising language policies, notably Mother Tongue Education (Education Department, 1997. "Medium of instruction guidance for secondary schools."…

Language is something many individuals take for granted. It is usually when we discover that our language (or language variety) is different from and perhaps less valued than, the language of others or that our options are somehow limited, either because 'we do not speak/understand a language or language variety, or use it inappropriately or…

East and Southeast Asia represents a linguistically and culturally diverse region. For example, more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia alone. It is against this backdrop of diversity that the ten countries that comprise Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have recently signed the ASEAN Charter which, while calling for respect…

This article offers a critical examination of language ideological constructions, advocating for language practices that favor culturally and contextually appropriate practice. Although discourses on multicultural inclusive practice in England are not new, the position of minoritized languages in early years education is still absent and highly…

This study examines the language practices in educational settings in Pakistan, taking the multilingual groupings in society into account. In Pakistan, each province is linked to the single or multiple identities of its people and the languages spoken by the majority. The national language Urdu is limited to educational settings and its function…

This paper analyses the participatory space for political debate opened up by social media in Vanuatu with reference to the implementation of a recent language-in-education policy, jointly funded by the governments of Vanuatu, Australia and New Zealand. Although Vanuatu appears to have been debating the same language issues for several decades,…

This article focuses on the inequalities of an educational policy that favours English over the national language and the resulting impacts on young people. While the constitution identifies Dhivehi to be the official language of the Maldives, and the National Curriculum recognises both Dhivehi and English as languages of instruction, English has…