The teaching and learning of Irish in primary school is both an important educational issue and central to the national language revitalization effort. The findings of Irish-language programme evaluations, therefore, are invariably scrutinized very closely by different sectors. This paper examines how the later stages of a major evaluation took…

In his latest survey of the prospects for English language teaching in the next 50 years, David Graddol claims that over half the world's international students are taught in English and that universities are increasingly offering courses in English. This seems to be a necessary condition for achieving excellence and prestige. At the same time,…

Two main bodies of literature are identifiable in minority education policy studies in China. Many adopt a descriptive approach to examining policy documents and general outcomes in their historical contexts while others focus on evaluating preferential policies made to address inequality issues in minority education. In most discussions,…

In a globalised world, literacy in local languages is affected by at least three significant trends: globalisation, regionalisation and nationalism. Literacy in local languages plays a major role in language maintenance and the management of identity. Local literacies in local languages can also be a source of resistance to the rapid sociocultural…

This article discusses citizenship policies in Israel within the context of language, ideology, and nationalism. According to the "Law of Return", Jewish immigrants are entitled to be granted citizenship with no prior conditions; Arabs who were living in Palestine in 1948 (the time the state was founded) and their children are entitled…

This paper presents the beginning of an approach to the study of language use and religion, a sub-area of language and religion that has been little explored. Essential features of the approach include segmenting a religious service into its constituent parts and checking what language is used in what part and for what purpose. The proposed…

This study examined linguistic patterns in the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, a group that has rarely been studied from a sociolinguistic perspective. Participants were 92 girls, 10-12 years old, who attend a school where Yiddish is the language of instruction and Hebrew, Israel's official language, is studied only in religious…

This study reports on the uneasy compromise in language and education policies in the post-Soviet Republic of Moldova since its first moves toward independence in 1989. Taking an approach that posits language policies as needing to be anchored in both international norms and the idiosyncrasies of local conditions, the discussion explores the…

English-only policies and the expiration of the "Bilingual Education Act," which is now replaced by "No Child Left Behind," make it clear that English is the official language of schools in the United States with the emphasis moved from the goal of maintaining students' home languages while learning English to a focus of ignoring minority…

Background/Context: As a case study in minority language restriction, the German example provides a useful historical counterpoint to more recent debates regarding the place of non-English languages in American schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study and Research Design: This historical analysis examines the role of education…

This article focuses on the papers presented in a colloquium on issues related to minority languages that constitute research topics. The papers from this colloquium touch upon a number of research issues and their social implications. In particular, the papers pay attention to ethical questions, which relate to the social sciences in general, but…

Language choice is often studied as choices made by the state at the level of national language planning or as individual choice of language or variety in language use. There has been little research to directly connect these two aspects of language choice. This paper attempts to incorporate the two aspects and other related phenomena in a…

This monograph discusses the language situation in Japan, with an emphasis on language planning and policy. Japan has long considered itself to be a monoethnic and therefore monolingual society, despite the existence of substantial old-comer ethnic minorities, and this--with the instrumental exception of English--has been reflected in its language…

Among linguistic minorities of industrial nations proficiency speaking the dominant national language increases earnings and wages, but do similar results apply to autarkic linguistic minorities of developing nations? We contribute to studies of the returns to language skills by applying the human-capital approach to a society of hunters,…

This paper focuses on Turkish language policy. Seven sections look at the following: (1) "Historical Background to Turkish Language Policy," (between the 10th and 20th centuries, the status of the Turkish language did not increase in line with the political and military power of the Turkish State, and as Turkey became more multilingual…