Language Planning and Student Experiences: Intention, Rhetoric and Implementation (Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 93) - Softcover

Lo Bianco, Joseph; Aliani, Renata

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783090030 ISBN 13: 9781783090037

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

This book is a timely comparison of the divergent worlds of policy implementation and policy ambition, the messy, often contradictory here-and-now reality of languages in schools and the sharp-edged, shiny, future-oriented representation of languages in policy. Two deep rooted tendencies in Australian political and social life, multiculturalism and Asian regionalism, are represented as key phases in the country's experimentation with language education planning. Presenting data from a five year ethnographic study combined with a 40 year span of policy analysis, this volume is a rare book length treatment of the chasm between imagined policy and its experienced delivery, and will provide insights that policymakers around the world can draw on.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joseph Lo Bianco is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne and a noted language planning scholar and researcher. He is currently President of Tsinghua Asian-Pacific Forum on Translation and Intercultural Studies and Past President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Renata Aliani is an experienced researcher, programme manager and educator at the Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Language Planning and Student Experiences

Intention, Rhetoric and Implementation

By Joseph Lo Bianco, Renata Aliani

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2013 Joseph Lo Bianco and Renata Aliani
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78309-003-7

Contents

Figures, viii, 
Tables, ix, 
Aims, Limitations and Questions, xi, 
1 Remaking a Nation Through Language Policy, 1, 
2 Australia's Italian and Japanese, 40, 
3 The Research Approach and the Schools, 62, 
4 Student Subjectivity, 83, 
5 Pushing Policy To Be Real, 122, 
Appendices, 134, 
References, 139, 
Index, 146, 

CHAPTER 1

Remaking a Nation Through Language Policy

there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new....

Niccolo Machiavelli, 1515: The Prince, Chapter VI

Texts, Debate, Behaviour

The Machiavelli quote underscores the view, too often neglected in language planning theory, that making and implementing language policies is a political act, intended to introduce a 'new order of things'. Any desired 'new order' will give rise to a complicated and shifting group of positions, in both support and opposition. Success will depend on cleverness of design and on pragmatic constraints, but also on the interplay between supporters and opponents. In this work we focus on language planning in Australia and the introduction of two particular new orders of things: Asia literacy and multiculturalism. The first is an umbrella term used to describe the linguistic reconstruction of Australia as linked to Asia, of Australia as a 'part of' Asia or of Australia as having a population of citizens who know about and identify with 'the region'. The second is also an umbrella term, one which has aimed to reconstruct Australian society as culturally and linguistically plural, or, rather, to invoke policies that reflect and sustain the demographic pluralism of the population. To some readers it will appear that these are essentially the same, or varieties of the same, vision. However, in the specific context of Australia the two policy ambitions of Asia literacy and multiculturalism have different origins, different audiences, different histories and a complex and not always comfortable history of interaction. At times they have constituted antagonistic policy discourses, while at other times they have been complementary visions of social improvement.

The term 'language policy' is not as straightforward as it first appears. Mostly we look for something called 'policy' on or about 'language' in laws, constitutions or regulations. But governments, states and regulations are not the sole means by which and where language teaching is influenced and regulated. If we look deeper, it soon becomes clear that decisions influencing language teaching are made outside the realm of government or officialdom. In the present discussion we are concerned only with the recent history and current reality of second language education, but it should be acknowledged at the outset that all language policy actions are ultimately interrelated, so that decisions about English and communication in general cannot be divorced from decisions about minority or foreign languages. While it is certainly true that language policy is usually located in official texts, that is, in the laws, proclamations and regulations, it is too limiting to take these as the totality of what constitutes language policy. Much analysis of language education policy is weakened by relying on such a narrow view of where language policy is made and by whom.

To get a clearer picture of language policy it is important to extend analysis to include public debates, civil society discourse and citizen advocacy. This is especially clear when debate or public action contradicts or only half-heartedly supports what official texts declare. This more inclusive view of where language policy resides also renders analysis of its effects more realistic, because taking official statements as the sum total of language policy provides only a mechanistic account of what is really going on in practice, and reduces teachers and administrators to the status of mere implementers of external plans. Including debates and discourse in our interpretation of what constitutes language policy is, however, still insufficient, because language policy, as this volume shows, is also made in the personal communicative behaviours of individuals and groups. Actual language behaviours – what people do when speaking or not speaking in particular ways, what teachers and students actually do in classroom interaction – is a neglected part of much language policy analysis. This wider view we call 'language planning policy', an approach that embraces all levels and layers where the intention to change language is encountered.

The language choices and attitudes of critical parties – teachers as implementers of language policy and learners as subjects and objects of language plans, but also parents and community members – form a complex ecological ensemble of communication choices essential to a comprehensive account of language planning. Whether these parties are adult citizens, students or new arrivals (i.e. current full members of the polity or future ones), their linguistic choices, in English and in the target languages of public policy, are like sovereign acts of decision-making, offering models available to be emulated or rejected by others. The daily interaction between those tasked to implement policy and those expected to acquire the skills envisaged by policy is a semi-autonomous domain where language use patterns are never entirely the result of official texts or public discourse alone, but are shaped and developed in local interaction, as well as in the professional roles occupied by the participants, and are influenced by the lived world of ordinary interaction in the communities in which the schools are located (Lo Bianco, 2010a, 2010b).

Intention, interpretation, implementation

Here we are proposing a dynamic model of analysis of this network of 'language planning policy'. The entire process can be seen as a chain of texts around intended language futures: texts with authority, issued by categories of people charged juridically with the control of public resources; texts of debate, interpretation, contestation or affirmation of the official texts; and texts of implementation and reception, but which have the power to confirm, modify and even subvert or redirect the language policy plans. Official texts distil decisions and are issued by bodies with formally constituted authority to allocate resources and manage implementation. Debates and discussion about those texts or rival ones arise because the official texts require public legitimacy and confirmation to succeed. The texts of implementation and reception are mainly those of professional categories of implementers – teachers and others – but, importantly, also of students, and these texts include communications in schools and in the community. That is, these three levels – the official, the civic and the interpersonal – are respectively manifested as formal texts, iterative debate and communicative behaviour. The formal texts are declarations of intention; iterative debate involves...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783090030
• ISBN 13: 9781783090037
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 164
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland