Critical discourse analysis and the ethnography of language policy (original) (raw)
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Ethnography of language policy
Language Policy, 2009
While theoretical conceptualizations of language policy have grown increasingly rich, empirical data that test these models are less common. Further, there is little methodological guidance for those who wish to do research on language policy interpretation and appropriation. The ethnography of language policy is proposed as a method which makes macro–micro connections by comparing critical discourse analyses of language policy with ethnographic data collection in some local context. A methodological heuristic is offered to guide data collection and sample data are presented from the School District of Philadelphia. It is argued that critical conceptualizations of educational language policy should be combined with empirical data collection of policy appropriation in educational settings.
TESOL Quarterly, 2007
While theoretical conceptualizations of language policy have grown increasingly rich, empirical data that test these models are less common. Further, there is little methodological guidance for those who wish to do research on language policy interpretation and appropriation. The ethnography of language policy is proposed as a method which makes macro–micro connections by comparing critical discourse analyses of language policy with ethnographic data collection in some local context. A methodological heuristic is offered to guide data collection and sample data are presented from the School District of Philadelphia. It is argued that critical conceptualizations of educational language policy should be combined with empirical data collection of policy appropriation in educational settings.
Critical Discourse–Ethnographic Approaches to Language Policy
This chapter focuses on the synergy that researchers in language policy have developed by integrating two other subfields of sociolinguistics: critical discourse analysis and critical ethnography. The chapter begins by discussing the meanings of the three key concepts used in these approaches, albeit sometimes in significantly different ways: critique, ethnography, and discourse. It then examines how these concepts are relevant to contemporary analyses of language policy, focusing particularly on their potential to open new and innovative avenues of research. To demonstrate how an integrated critical discourse and ethnographic approach can be applied in concrete empirical research, the chapter presents an analysis of language policy and practice in the European Union before providing an overview of other relevant studies in the area.
Implementational and ideological spaces in bilingual education language policy
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2010
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.
7 Critical ethnography of language policy A semi-confessional tale
The confessional tale (Van Maanen, 2011 ) -in which researchers refl ect on fi eldwork and their research fi ndings in ways that illuminate researcher subjectivity -is a popular genre in ethnographic writing. They are "confessional" because the authors open up about lingering concerns relating to analytical decisions, relationships in the fi eld, or the portrayal of participants. They are almost always written in the fi rst person, directing the attention away from the participants and towards the researcher. Confessional tales are important contributions in the pantheon of ethnographic writings because they reveal precisely what more objectivist accounts obfuscate -how frustrating, diffi cult, and confusing the research process can be, especially when given the benefi t of time and refl ection. I do not want this chapter to be a confessional tale but I agree with Ramanathan ( 2011 ) that it is increasingly crucial for language planning and policy (LPP) scholars to openly question the ethics that motivate our decisions, rendering transparent the typically gauzy façade that shrouds our researching-texting practices. That goal motivates this chapter.
Languages in Education: A Critical Ethnography of a Micro-level Policy
Journal of NELTA, 2021
This article explores the language policy in education (henceforth, LPE) at the local level. Adopting the critical ethnography study for 6 months at Vyas Municipality, I reveal what ideological awareness the policymakers and arbiters have on LPE and how do they interpret and appropriate it in multilingual school setting. The information collected through in-depth interviews, FGD, participant observation, and document reviews have been analyzed, interpreted, and triangulated critically. The study shows three major fi ndings regarding LPE in local government; fi rst, LPE has created a public debate and ideological discrepancy in multilingual school contexts; the second, the local LPE has diverse interpretation, appropriation, and practices; and the last, the English language policy (ELP) appears as a 'black hole', which has been gradually swallowing other local and indigenous languages. However, the language policymakers and arbiters have been gradually raising critical awareness for appropriate LPE and its practices that seems a positive advancement at the local level.
Appropriating Language Policy on the Local Level: Working the Spaces for Bilingual Education
Negotiating Language Policies in Schools: Educators as Policymakers, 2010
Educators in the United States who want to promote bilingualism face many challenges including English-focused legislation on the federal and state level and widespread confusion, conflict, and controversy about bilingual education. Not only have antibilingual education initiatives passed in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts but also the current federal educational policy-the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)-ignores the value of bilingualism and bilingual education and instead focuses on English language acquisition. Despite this focus on English, we argue that School District language policy and empowered educators, should and can promote bilingualism. Our focus is on the power of administrators, teachers, and action-oriented researchers working collaboratively to develop research-based, pedagogically sound, and contextually appropriate language policies and programs for bilingual learners.
Officialising language : a discourse study of language politics in the United States
2008
This is a study of the discourse contest concerning the officialisation of English in the United States. It consists of an analysis of the language of that discourse shaped by a belief that discourse is a rather neglected but potentially illuminating area of examination of language and literacy policy. The study seeks to understand the processes and content of language policy as it is being made, or performed, and is influenced by a critique of the theory and practice of language policy which tends to adopt technicist paradigms of examination that insufficiently elucidate the politics of the field. Accordingly a systematic gathering of the texts of language disputation in the US was collected. These texts were organised in response to the methods of elicitation. Semi-elicited texts, elicited texts and unelicited texts were gathered and tested to be sure that they constituted a fair representation of the concourse (what had been said and was being said about the issue) over a 15 year period. Those statements, or texts, that had particular currency during the 104 th Congress were selected for further use. An empirical examination of the subjective dispositions of those activists involved in the making of official English, or of resisting the making of official English, was conducted. This examination utilised the Q methodology (inverted factor analysis) invented by William Stephensen. The data from this study provided a rich field of knowledge about the discursive parameters of the making of policy in synchronic and diachronic form. Direct interviews were also conducted with participants, and discourse analysis of 'naturally occurring' (unelicited texts) speeches and radio debates and other material of persuasion and disagreement was conducted. These data frame and produce a representation of the orders of discourse and their dynamic and shaping power. Against an analysis of language policy making and a document analysis of the politics of language in the United States the discourses are utilised to contribute to a richer understanding of the field and the broad conclusion that as far as language policy is concerned it is hardly possible to make a distinction with political action. The theoretical implications for a reinvigorated language policy theory constitute the latter part of the thesis. In the multi-epistemological context that postmodernity demands, with its skepticism about the possibility of 'disinterest', the thesis offers its own kinds of data triangulation, and the making central of subjective dispositions and political purposes and engagements of the principal anatagonists.
Negotiating methodological rich points in the ethnography of language policy
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2000
Building on Agar's (1996: 26) notion of rich points as those times in ethnographic research when something happens that the ethnographer doesn't understand, methodological rich points are by extension those points where our assumptions about the way research works and the conceptual tools we have for doing research are inadequate to understand the worlds we are researching. When we pay attention to those points and adjust our research practices accordingly, they become key opportunities to advance our research and our under standings. Drawing for illustrative purposes on ethnographic research on bi lingual intercultural education policy and practice in the Andes carried out by Indigenous students for their Master's theses at the University of San Simoń's Program for Professional Development in Bilingual Intercultural Education for the Andean Region (PROEIB Andes) in Bolivia, I highlight methodological rich points as they emerge across language policy texts, discourses and practices. Framing the methodological rich points in the context of basic questions of re search methodology and ethics, I borrow as organizing rubric the paradigmatic heuristic for sociolinguistic analysis first offered by Fishman (1971: 219) and here adapted to the ethnography of language policy to ask: who researches whom and what, where, how and why?