Local Language Policies Research Articles

Language, locality, and transnational belonging: remitting the everyday practice of cultural integration

ABSTRACTThis article explores how ‘ordinary’ German migrants in the United States reflected upon their local integration and transnational belonging with reference to their language practice in the period 1820–1970. The analysis is based on approximately 8,000 letters sent by around 700 German-speaking migrants who wrote, over varying time periods, to family members and friends still living in their places of origin. These letters provide insights into the migrants’ transnational communication networks over an extended time and from across the United States. Until the emergence of a fully centralised bureaucracy during the interwar period, most legislation affecting the living conditions of migrants varied significantly between US states. This raises the question whether the practices and narratives of belonging captured in the personal letters vary accordingly across locations, especially with regard to the balance between local and transnational belonging. Tracing this variation in sub-national destination characteristics, we argue that feelings of transnational belonging are not directly responsive to shifts in political conditions and resulting policies but rather pragmatic adaptations tailored to a particular local context. The maintenance of the German language or German community ties expressed in the letters also conveys an everyday practice of resistance or adaptation to local language policies in the US and remits concrete ideas about what it means to uphold a German identity.

The impact of socioeconomic status and population size on the use of the Tatar language at home

Based on econometric methods, we found that Tatar children from families with better material conditions and those who live in bigger cities are more likely to use the Russian language at home. Although Tatar seems to be well protected, thanks to local language policies after perestroika, we found some warning signs for the reformulation of public policies for the maintenance and development of minority languages in Russia.

Teacher language ideologies mediating classroom-level language policy in the implementation of dual language bilingual education

Drawing on multiple measures of language ideology, this paper examines the language ideologies of two third grade teachers tasked with implementing a dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program to explore the relationship between teachers’ language ideologies and local language policy. After situating the classrooms within their respective broader language ideological contexts, the language ideologies of each teacher are presented followed by a discussion of its relationship to classroom-level language policy. Each teacher espoused both hegemonic and counterhegemonic language ideologies, which was reflected in classroom language practices. The cases illuminate the ideological struggle of each teacher within their own contexts, including how different levels of language policy (i.e. district, program, school) shaped or constrained teacher agency. While both teachers constructed pluralist classroom spaces for students to draw on their full linguistic repertoires, each classroom was simultaneously embedded within a transitional language ideology and influenced by the monoglossic ideologies of standardized assessments.

Ensino de língua portuguesa, interculturalidade e políticas de letramentos

The present article analyzes two documents Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais – Lingua Portuguesa (BRASIL, 1998) and Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais – Temas Transversais – Pluralidade Cultural (BRASIL, 1998b), conceiving these documents as constituents of language policies (RICENTO, 2006; SHOHAMY, 2006) and literacy policies, and it focuses the intercultural dialogues/conflicts that these documents promote when guiding that the teaching of the language should have as main object the text and indicating which genres should be privileged. Thereby, the text deals with language policies, more specifically focusing in literacy policies (bringing to bear the concept of literacy formulated by the New Literacy Studies (STREET, 1984, 1993, 2003; BARTON; HAMILTON, 1998; SIGNORINI, 2001) and interculturality (JANZEN, 2005). The analysis of the documents is undertaken to the light of the bakhtinian conception of language and it mobilizes the following concepts of the Circle of Bakhtin: dialogism, utterance and genres of speech. Furthermore, this text is based methodologically on the orientations of the authors of this Circle for the study of the language (BAKHTIN/ VOLOSHINOV, 1986; BAKHTIN, 2003). The analysis indicates that the official documents, when promoting literacy policies, also promote intercultural conflicts, because they privilege the dominant literacies, silencing other literacy practices. We understood that this silencing and invalidating local literacy 428 SIGNUM: Estud. Ling., Londrina, n. 19/1, p. 426-458, jun. 2016 practices has implications for the constitutions of the students’ identities and local language policies.

“We speak English in here and English only!”: Teacher and ELL youth perspectives on restrictive language education

ABSTRACTThis study operationalizes Ruiz’s language orientations framework (1984) and builds on his later work (e.g., 1997, 2008) by examining the ways in which local language policies influence the learning experiences of 12 multilingual youth and the teaching experiences of four of their classroom teachers. Using ethnographic and qualitative research approaches (i.e., observations, participant observation, interviews, a focus group, and artifact collection), over 150 hours of audio-recorded classroom interactions were collected, indexed, transcribed, and thematically analyzed. The analysis focuses on how restrictive language ideologies and policies mediate the everyday talk and classroom practices of both classroom teachers and ELL youth. Findings demonstrate that ideologies of language that privilege English monolingualism influenced restrictive language policies and practices and helped to shape the teachers’ and students’ beliefs about language and their own language use. Findings show that ideologies of language contributed to a linguistic hierarchy that positioned English at the top, followed by Spanish, then additional languages of students in the classroom. However, the analysis also illuminates how teachers and youth might resist ideologies, policies, and practices that devalue multilingualism by engaging in practices that allow and promote language-as-a-resource orientations.

Multilayered perspectives on language policy in higher education: Finland, Estonia, and Latvia in comparison

ABSTRACTThis article analyses language policies in higher education (HE) in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, as well as the European Union (EU). We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the intertwined nature of local, national, and international language policies in HE. We are particularly interested in the construction of national language(s) and the language(s) of internationalisation in our case countries. Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share common features as relatively small non-Anglophone countries in the Baltic region, while simultaneously having somewhat differing political and cultural histories. The results of our discursive analysis indicate that while the three countries have relatively different national language policies, regarding, for example, the position of the national language(s), the institutional policies are more similar in the three cases. For universities, the positioning of English as the de facto language of internationalisation turns the ideology of language choice in HE into a practical rather than political question. However, at the state level, the promotion of English runs contrary to national policies. The EU HE language policy seems to acknowledge the institutional level’s practical demands of English as de facto language of internationalisation rather than follow its own formal language policy of official languages.

Meaning-making across languages: a case study of three multilingual writers in Sápmi

ABSTRACTSápmi is a geographical area that runs across the Kola Peninsula in Russia to northern Finland, Norway and Sweden. All Sami languages have been going through a rapid language change process and many of the traditional language domains have disappeared during the last decades due to previous national and local language policies. Nevertheless, recent growth of positive attitudes towards Sami languages and culture both within and outside the Sami group has given new momentum to the language revitalisation process. At the same time, English is becoming more present in the Sami context through tourism, media and popular culture. This study investigates 15-year-old writers' meaning-making in three languages they meet on a daily basis: North Sami, the majority language Finnish/Norwegian/Swedish and English. Data were collected in schools where writers wrote two texts in each language, one argumentative and one descriptive. Using a functional approach, we analyse how three writers make meaning across three languages and two genres. Results show that writers made use of similar ways of expressing meaning on the three levels we investigated: ideational, interpersonal and textual, but also how the production differed between the texts, and how context and content interacted with writers’ meaning-making in the three languages.

“You're Trying Hard, but It's Still Going to Die”: Indigenous Youth and Language Tensions in Peru and the United States

This article discusses emerging research on youth and Indigenous languages. Based on a comparative and international Indigenous education study in Peru and the United States, the intersection between Indigenous community spaces, schools, and languages is examined. Given global trends of Indigenous language loss, comparative research provides the opportunity for exploration of these challenges in distinct settings where youth can help redefine local and national language and education policy as critical stakeholders and actors.

The dilemmas and complexities of implementing language-in-education policies: Perspectives from urban and rural contexts in Uganda

Language-in-education policies are a highly debated topic in Africa and at the root of understanding inequalities in Africa's education systems. This article explores the implementation of Uganda's recent local language education policy; how it has been received and practiced in urban and rural contexts, and the major challenges and implications addressed by education stakeholders in each context. The study confirms that the use of local languages as the language of instruction has contributed to the improvement of literacy skills, children's participation in lessons, and their understanding of content. Nevertheless, the local language policy was fiercely disputed by teachers, parents and various authorities at district and national levels, as many appeared to be concerned with the policy constraining children's academic success at upper primary levels and limiting their transition to secondary education. Through the study, the authors highlight critical misconceptions and assumptions in language-in-education within both policy development and in local education practices and perceptions. The article points to a review of language-in-education in its entirety; across mediums of instruction and assessment for lower and upper primary levels; across teaching methodologies for second language acquisition in multilingual environments; and across socio-economic divides in rural and urban regions of the country.

"Aqui somos protegidos pelas nossas quatro paredes. Aqui nós falamos alemão": histórias de letramentos interculturais no Vale do Itajaí, SC

O objetivo deste trabalho é refletir sobre as práticas sociais de leitura e de escrita em um cenário de imigração alemã, no Médio Vale do Itajaí, SC. Parte-se dos registros de uma pesquisa interpretativista¹ que teve como principal objetivo compreender como se deram os acessos ao(s) letramento(s) em língua alemã e em língua portuguesa por parte de indivíduos teuto-brasileiros que vivenciaram o período da segunda campanha de nacionalização do ensino (1937-1945) e o período pós-guerra. O estudo descreve histórias de letramento desses indivíduos e sua relação com a escolarização, com questões de identidade étnica e com as políticas linguísticas nacionais e locais. O principal instrumento de pesquisa utilizado foi a entrevista narrativa, realizada com sujeitos nascidos entre 1916 e 1934. O viés teórico adotado na análise dos registros da investigação orientou-se pelos Estudos do Letramento, em consonância com teorias que envolvem a escolarização em contextos de línguas minoritárias no âmbito da Linguística Aplicada. As narrativas construídas pelos atores sociais desta pesquisa trazem à tona (i) conflitos gerados pela imposição de uma identidade nacional única, (ii) ressentimentos decorrentes do processo de assimilação forçada e (iii) estratégias de resistência desses grupos em manterem sua língua de herança. Além disso, a reconstituição das memórias dos sujeitos participantes do estudo desvelam histórias de letramento em que os significados da escrita transcendem a esfera escolar, uma vez que são produzidos na inserção dos sujeitos em práticas de letramentos vivenciadas na família, na esfera religiosa, entre outras esferas. Assim, o acesso aos letramentos em língua alemã não se deu apenas pela escola, mas outras agências de letramento foram determinantes nesse sentido.

Legacies of NALA: The Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act and Implications for Language Revitalization Policy and Practice

This article traces the development and implementation of the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act as a legacy of the 1990/1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA) as well as ongoing policy considerations within the larger context of the Native American language revitalization movement. While both educational and language policies for Native Americans remain highly complex and contradictory, NALA and Esther Martinez illuminate changing ideologies at both the local and national levels. This article explores how local community practice has changed whereby communities are choosing to revitalize and maintain their languages, creating official policies to support those languages and thereby creating new speakers. NALA as an official policy created a foundation for the possibility and development of other policies at the tribal, state and federal levels and has paved the way for policies like Esther Martinez as well as other local and tribal language policies.

Balancing between heritage and host languages in bilingual kindergarten: viewpoints of Russian-speaking immigrant parents in Germany and in Israel

This study analyses Russian-speaking immigrant parents' beliefs and attitudes toward the education of their children in German and Israeli bilingual kindergartens. Why did the parents chose bilingual education? Which convergences and divergences exist in parents' beliefs, expectations and attitudes toward bilingual kindergartens in Germany and Israel? A quasi-experimental design was employed to evaluate the effect of the sociocultural context on how immigrant parents relate to their children's pre-school bilingual development. The main difference found between German and Israeli parents was their general representation of the optimal model of bilingual development. While German parents seem to be more oriented to a balanced development of both target languages, the Israeli parents prefer the ‘first language first’ approach. These findings are discussed in light of state and local language policies in Germany and Israel as well as in light of the language teaching models adopted by kindergarten policy makers.

Planning micro-level language education reform in new diaspora sites: two-way immersion education in the rural Midwest

Discontinuities are often found between top-down language education policies and local language policy enactments, as de facto language policymaking results from stakeholders’ negotiation and interpretation of policy mandates. Teachers occupy a particular role in the execution of language education policies, as they are the “final arbiters” of what takes place in the classroom. Due to the spreading of the Latino Diaspora to non-metropolitan areas, US rural school districts experiencing a flow of English language learners represent salient new contexts for language policy implementation. Since 1973, the state of Illinois has mandated a top-down K-12 Transitional Bilingual Education policy for English language learners, which some school districts have contested by creating two-way immersion programs. Drawing on teacher and administrator personal narratives, this study describes a case of primarily White teachers’ reintepretation and “correction” of macrolevel language policies and development of a two-way immersion program in rural Illinois. It traces the processes educators experienced when enacting state language policies with limited educational resources and no professional expertise. It also unveils how the implementation of subtractive bilingual education and professional development opportunities shaped teachers’ language ideologies and transformed them into resisters of top-down mandates and enactors of a bottom-up dual language policy. While the interplay of macrolevel language policies, teachers’ individual professional experiences and evolving language ideologies generated imple- mentational and ideological spaces challenging remedial educational approaches, programmatic choices were also constrained by social forces, as community members challenged the teachers’ choice of bilingual teaching for all children.

Enacting and Transforming Local Language Policies

Exploring language practices, beliefs, and management in a first-year writing program, this article considers the obstacles to and opportunities for transforming languagepolicy and enacting a new multilingual norm in U.S. postsecondary writing instruction. It argues that the articulation of statements regarding language diversity, co-developedby teachers and program administrators, is a valuable step in viewing and constructing the classroom as a multilingual space.

Language planning and language-in-education policy in Iran

This paper explores the effects of different political ideologies on language, using as examples three historical stages and three political periods in the history of Iran, and the differing policies adopted in these eras concerning language and language education. Over the years, political ideologies have served as a barrier as well as a contributor to language use (whether first or foreign) and to language teaching. The paper then turns to explore local language policies and the status of the Persian language in the modern era, focusing particularly on foreign language teaching policies after the Islamic revolution and their implications for teaching and learning activities and practices in Iran’s educational system. Finally, using several Iranian political periods as an example, this study demonstrates how globalization has influenced the teaching of foreign languages, especially English.

Transmission des langues natives aux deuxièmes générations : le cas de la diaspora indienne en Europe Nordique et occidentale

In the matter of migrant families the language transmission and language practices are often subjected to issues related to national, family and local language(s) policies. This paper aims to explore the salient features of these issues concerning four Indian families as an in-depth case study, who have migrated to France, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Here fewer investigations have been conducted related to transmission of native languages on the migrant Indian community. Through the prism of sociolinguistic-ethnographic approach, it was possible to sift various measures taken by the authority and family members in order to transmit the language to the second generation. The national language policy on education of the concerned host societies prescribes the role, function and infrastructure for the teaching and development of migrant languages which is however ineffective as claimed by immigrant parents. In such event, the role of parents becomes crucial to formulate and execute decisive steps regarding implementation of the native languages inside the home.

Implementational and ideological spaces in bilingual education language policy

This paper presents results from an ethnography of language policy which examined language policy appropriation for bilingual learners in a large urban US school district. The purpose of this article is to explore the space left by current US language policy for developmental bilingual education and, specifically, the focus is on how a group of educators appropriate top-down language policies while engaging in their own local language policy creation. The process of creating the policy illustrates how spaces for bilingual education are pried open by a community of educators who fostered an ideological space which supported multilingualism as a resource for all students. A strong characteristic of this ideological space is the empowerment of bilingual teachers to take ownership of language policy processes and appropriate language policy in a way that benefits bilingual learners.

Promoting Local Languages in Ugandan Primary Schools: The Community as Stakeholder

Abstract: The community is an important stakeholder in language education, and community views are critical for the successful implementation of new language policies. This article reports on a study on multilingual language policies conducted in two primary schools in two communities in eastern Uganda, one rural and one urban, from 2005 through 2006. The study focused on community responses to the new language education policy, which promotes the teaching of local languages in the first four years of schooling, using questionnaires, individual interviews, and focus-group discussions to collect data from the two communities, each linked to a local primary school. The findings show that in both communities, although participants were generally aware of the new local-language policy, they were ambivalent about its implementation in their school. They recognized the importance of local languages in promoting identity and cultural maintenance, but a higher priority was their children's upward mobility and the desire to be part of wider and more international communities. Further, while area languages such as Luganda and regional languages such as Kiswahili were perceived to have some benefits as languages of wider communication, it was English that received unequivocal support from both communities. The study concludes that parents and communities need to be better informed about the pedagogical advantages of instruction in the local language and that communities need convincing evidence that the promotion of local languages will not compromise desires for global citizenship.

Spanish Only for Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES): Competing Discourses in Local Language Policy

Abstract: Teaching Spanish has become increasingly popular in the United States due to demographic shifts. This study focuses on a Spanish‐only initiative for an existing Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) program proposed by a southeastern public school district's school board. It analyzes discourses underlying the policymakers' rationales and resistance from teachers, students, and community members. Analysis of documents, video recordings of school board meetings, newspaper articles, and e‐mail exchanges reveals competing discourses that constructed particular views on language, language learning, and the benefit of Spanish for Latino and African American students. Characteristics of these discourses include language ideologies, racialization of the arguments, hospitality as a reaction to “language panics” (Hill, 2001, p. 245), and the constructed nature of Latino parents' knowledge. The study suggests the importance of multilingualism for world language education.

Local community perspectives and language of education in sub-Saharan African communities

Abstract The use of local languages in formal education is a widely debated educational strategy in sub-Saharan Africa. National-level policies abound which permit mother-tongue instruction in primary grades, and yet successful implementation of those policies is not merely so common. The reasons for this are varied, but one powerful reason has to do with the perspectives and desires of stakeholders in the education process who reside in the local community: teachers, parents, community leaders, school authorities, and the children themselves. Responding to their particular historical, social and economic context, these stakeholders have developed their own perspectives on the nature and outcomes of formal education as well as beliefs about the utility and proper place of the local language. As stakeholders in the local education process, each of these groups has an impact on the successful implementation of formal programs of mother-tongue-mediated learning. Thus, as Stroud [2003. Postmodernist perspectives on local languages: African mother-tongue education in times of globalisation. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6.1, 17–36.] has noted, community participation in the development and use of minority languages can help to keep linguistic globalization at bay; however, the effectiveness of this process is profoundly dependent on the language attitudes of the community members. This paper examines the perspectives of people living in several rural African communities regarding the purposes and outcomes of formal education, as well as their perspectives on the “proper” language choice for schooling. Examining data from language communities in Cameron (the Bafut, Kom and Nso’), Mali (the supyire and Bamanankan [Bambara]) and Kenya (the Kipsigis [Kalenjin] and Tharaka), the paper examines commonalities and distinctions among stakeholder groups across these language communities. The interaction of stakeholder perspectives with the range of national and local language policies in place is also discussed.