Introduction to thematic issue: language policies and health

Abstract

Lang Policy (2010) 9:1–7 DOI 10.1007/s10993-009-9154-7 Introduction to thematic issue: language policies and health Vaidehi Ramanathan Published online: 23 October 2009 O The Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Where do our disciplinary concepts come from? What are the processes by which they begin to garner particular associations and take root? In what ways do policies—understood most broadly in a variety of spaces in our world—enforce and thicken associations (and by extension inequities) and why is it important that we, applied linguists, seek contexts whereby our default understandings of concepts and their terms are challenged? These questions form the backdrop against which the present localized discussions of the terms ‘language’, ‘policy’ and ‘health’ are discussed and which frame this thematic issue of Language Policy. The term ‘language policy’ has typically been thought of as ‘rules’ or ‘mandates’ about language use—its governance, maintenance, reproduction—at a variety of state, national and family levels (Schiffman 1996; Spolsky 2004; McCarty 2002, 2005; Wiley 2004; Wiley and Wright 2004; Ricento 2006; King and Fogle 2006), and as institutionalized mandates in contexts such as testing (Shohamy 2001, 2006; McNamara 2000; McNamara and Roever 2009). It has only been in recent years that local enactments of and around policies has begun to gain attention (c.f. Hornberger and Johnson 2007; King 2001; King et al. 2008; McCarty 2005; Ramanathan 2005). In the ESL context, Bhattacharya et al. (2007), for instance, write of the policy- practice nexus in English-language lessons in Delhi, Johannesburg, and London, while Diane Dudzik (2007) speaks of the effects of language policies around curricular reform in postcolonial Djibouti. Situated in Wales, Baker (2003) writes about transliteracy in the Welsh national curriculum, while Clarke (2007) describes policy issues around language teacher education in the United Arab Emirates. This shift in attention to the more grounded and lived realities of language policies is not as ordinary and commonplace as first it might appear, since it casts floodlights on engagements—on how humans, programs, institutions, states, nations negotiate V. Ramanathan (&) Linguistics Department, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA e-mail: vaidehi.ramanathan@gmail.com