A Language Policy for Australia

Abstract

Questions of language policy in Australia have rarely been addressed in a comprehensive manner. Migrant communities have long been concerned with an array of issues covering maintenance of their own languages, and access to suitable English teaching and to services through translating and interpreting, but policy in these areas has developed in a haphazard manner, with often little sustained interest shown by Australian institutions.A good deal of interest therefore has been created by the deliberations of the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts, which has since May 1982 been considering the “development and implementation of a co-ordinated language policy for Australia”. The establishment of such an inquiry was pressed both by ethnic representative bodies (migrant and Aboriginal) and by organizations of language professionals – linguists, applied linguists, language teachers and academics. Indeed the language issues that have often troubled migrant communities have also in various ways animated language professionals, who have had to cope for example with a decline in foreign language studies in schools, difficulties in establishing and maintaining community language programs, disorganization of translator/interpreter services, serious underresourcing of English as a Second Language (ESL) courses, and above all a severe lack of data and information which could be used as a basis for planning.The Commonwealth Department of Education has been a prime mover for such an inquiry since the mid-1970s, and through its contacts, especially with language professionals, has had a chance to develop a coherent outlook on language – at least those aspects related to education. Also, the Department has assisted or itself conducted most of the important investigations into language teaching in Australia over the last decade: no fewer than 22 reports or submissions are documented by the Department since 1975, attesting to the quiet but persistent growth of interest in this area. The work of a small group within the Department resulted in an important document that appeared just after the announcement of the Senate inquiry – Towards a National Language Policy. Written to encourage interest in language policy and to test community reactions, it set out an extensive agenda of issues that are closely reflected in the actual terms of reference of the Senate inquiry [see pp. 45-46 Terms of Reference].