Language Policy and Ethnic Conflict

Abstract

This chapter explains a linguistic anthropological approach to how language policies have been used in situations of ethnic conflict. Language rights and access to education have been at the center of ethnic conflicts in postcolonial nations. The chapter discusses how postcolonial language and education policies reinforced linguistic inequalities and ethnic divisions in Asia and Africa. It reviews ethnographic approaches to the study of language policy that focus on the process by which dominant ideologies of language and social difference are reproduced and contested across institutional and non-institutional settings, and how power relations shape communicative possibilities. Ethnographic work on language policy has stressed education inside and outside schools as a key domain for language policy studies. Attention to the implementation of multilingual education initiatives through the politics of interaction inside and outside schools can illuminate the challenges of ameliorating conflict in postcolonial nations through language policy and education reform.