7 Critical ethnography of language policy A semi-confessional tale (original) (raw)
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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.
Critical discourse analysis and the ethnography of language policy
Critical Discourse Studies, 2011
This article explores the compatibility of ethnography and critical discourse analysis for the study of language policy. A perennial challenge facing the field of language policy is how to make connections between the macro and micro, between macro-level policy texts and discourses and micro-level language use. Hornberger & Johnson (2007) propose the ethnography of language policy as a method for examining language policy processes within and across the multiple layers of policy creation, interpretation, and appropriation. This paper further explores how Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be integrated into ethnographic studies of language policy and proposes that the combination of CDA and ethnography is particularly useful for revealing the connections between the multiple layers of policy activity. Based on a 3-year ethnographic study of bilingual education policy and practice in the School District of Philadelphia, this paper examines the intertextual and interdiscursive links between policy texts and discourses to uncover how the recontextualization of macro-level language policy impacts bilingual education.
Re-Examining and Re-Envisioning Criticality in Language Studies: Theories and Praxis
As critical perspectives in language studies have gained legitimacy and even mainstream status in applied linguistics, it is necessary to re-examine the meaning of criticality in language studies and to re-envision criticality for further development. The authors explore criticality from several theoretical perspectives as well as from the notion of praxis. They review three major theoretical threads-namely, postmodernist constructionism including poststructuralist theory, Marxist-influenced theories, and postcolonial theories-and examine how these frameworks have influenced critical applied linguistics and how their criticisms of other perspectives within the critical framework are historically, ideologically, and geopolitically implicated. Although these theories constitute the core of conceptual criticality, praxis is essential for critical enactment. The authors thus unpack the meaning of praxis and discuss how reflexivity, action, and transformation must inform the continuing (re)envisioning of criticality in contemporary society and institutions where it is necessary to confront neoliberalism as a new kind of domination Correspondence should be addressed to Ryuko Kubota,
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?
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.
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.
Metapragmatics in the Ethnography of Language Policy
The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning, 2018
This chapter traces briefly the origins and development of the ethnography of language policy. It argues that, although this tradition has put ethnography firmly on the language policy research agenda since the turn of the 21st century, it has not yet sufficiently addressed some persistent challenges. These include: a) the reproduction of dichotomies, such as that of agency/structure, that go against well-established developments in both social theory and communication studies; b) a focus on explicit commentaries on policy documents by participants, which are taken as the primary context of interpretation; c) an event-based entry point to data collection/analysis that is taken as the relevant platform to understand the implementation and appropriation of policies in a given context, even in multi-sited research where a compound of events is defined a priori by researchers; and d) a tendency towards portrayals where research participants appear as mere ciphers in the matrix. Against this background, matepragmatics is presented as suitable epistemological framework to overcome some of these challenges, one that draws from two contemporary shifts in the study of texts, contexts and meanings within the fields of linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics, namely: 1) a departure from emphasis on denotational meanings, towards closer description of performative actions; and 2) a displacement of the analytical entry point, from communicative events to trajectories of identification. These shifts are examined with reference to some existing work in LPP, and illustrated via previous ethnographic work that is revisited through the proposed lens. Some of the implications are also derived in relation to the study of LPP processes under conditions of late modernity.