In this paper we explore the nexus of language policy, ideology and power in the linguistic landscape of urban Rwanda. In post-genocide Rwanda, English has been promoted and gained status. This has led to an increased usage of English on shop signs in the streets of Kigali and other towns in Rwanda at the expense of both French and Kinyarwanda.…

This paper examines how children and teachers negotiate the official Turkish only language policy as they manage their linguistic resources (Turkish and Kurmanji) in one Turkish preschool serving predominantly emergent bilingual Kurdish minority children. Using a critical ethnographic lens to language-in-education policy making (Martin-Jones and…

This paper examines the impact of the local tea industry on the language ecology of the geographically remote Blang community in China. The paper takes an ecology perspective in language planning where all languages in the locality are given equal attention. These languages in the context of this paper include Blang, Putonghua, and English as the…

This paper analyses how teachers and toddlers enact participation frames in bidialectal early education in Limburg, the Netherlands. Teachers' language choice is often context-bound as they use the national language, Dutch, for instruction and the regional language, Limburgish, for playful or social-emotional situations with individual children.…

This polity study is about the language policy situation in the People's Republic of China (China) with a focus on one official minority language, Zhuang. The paper offers an examination of the language policy and planning (LPP) framework nationally as it relates to official minority languages, and regionally as it relates to the Zhuang minority…

During the Spanish regimen, Puerto Rican education was limited and restricted to Spanish language as the medium of instruction. It was not until the U.S. colonization of the island that public education was introduced. As a result, English replaced Spanish as medium of instruction in the new educational system. Immediately after, Puerto Rican…

This study explores language ideologies of English at a Korean university where English has been adopted as an official language. This study draws on ethnographic data in order to understand how speakers respond to and experience the institutional language policy. The findings show that language ideologies in this university represent the…

The article addresses the actual and perceived roles of national organisations and bodies, such as language "academies" or "councils", in recent history. In particular, the article seeks to shed light on the question what may prompt national governments in modernity and late modernity to establish and fund such bodies to…

Monolingual speakers of a national language continue to be the ideal figures on which national identities and senses of community are built. Yet this longstanding equation between nation and language is being contested by other ideologies. Alternatives are emerging from such disparate social locations as the European Union, now advocating for…

The Valencian Community is an area in Spain where Valencian, a variety of Catalan, is the co-official language along with Spanish. Differently from other bilingual areas in Spain, the unique historical circumstances that the Valencian Community underwent have led to the current linguistic and ideological conflict in the area. The historical…

One of the common practices in many basic schools in Ghana is the constant reminder to students to speak English at all times, and the threat of sanctions to those who do not abide by this language regulation. Considering that Ghana is a multilingual country, one would have thought that any of the Ghanaian languages can be used by students at…

This monograph describes the historiography of language ideologies that led to the politicisation of Arabic and the Arabicisation of politics in the Sudan, starting from British colonial rule until the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was a precursor to the separation of the South as an independent state. The monograph shows that the…

This paper examines how competing discourses about the ownership of the Irish language in an increasingly multiethnic Ireland and the extent to which it is associated with a sense of "Irishness" influence the formulation of recent Irish-language policy at institutional and national levels. As part of a broader study on the language…

Purist language policies in Iceland have preserved and modernized Icelandic up until the present time. However, the impact of globalization and global English has led to the perception that the language is less secure than in the past and has prompted efforts by policy makers towards greater protection of Icelandic. This monograph presents the…

The unavoidability of language makes it critical that language policies appeal to some notion of language neutrality as part of their rationale, in order to assuage concerns that the policies might otherwise be unduly discriminatory. However, the idea of language neutrality is deeply ideological in nature, since it is not only an attempt to treat…