Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language Policy and Planning 157
have direct bearing on LP since policy as argument is ultimately an issue
of language, and the object of LP is language itself.
The next section describes a wider approach to LP that moves towards
a non-mechanistic understanding supported by these developments in
the policy sciences. It will serve as a preamble to an account of how the
regular work of language teachers forms a crucial component of an
overall approach to LP.
Armed with these indications of a more comprehensive approach, where
do we look to fi nd language policy? Where is LP located? People usually
look to two main sources, implied in the cited defi nitions, to identify
language policies. These are public texts and public discourse (or debate).
Observing how LP and how language changes come about however,
requires the addition of a third rich source of LP activity. This refers to the
modelling of language behaviours by key individuals, referred to here as
performance. The three sources of LP activity in this view are texts, argument-discourse
and performance, or performative action.
Public texts
The term public texts refers to the offi cial documentation issued by a
state or its agencies. A national constitution is the most obvious and highest
example of a public or offi cial state text. Many countries have constitutional
clauses devoted to language, sometimes simply acknowledging a
widely spoken national language as offi cial (prevailing practice becoming
formal policy), sometimes declaring offi cial a language which is not widely
spoken (New Zealand and Ireland are examples), sometimes declaring
equal status for more than one language. Most name a single language as
offi cial, but the South African Constitution designates 11 languages offi -
cial while India schedules national and regional offi cial languages. Formal
declarations about the role and standing of languages seem straightforward,
but because constitutional declarations can be symbolic as well as
practical and can enshrine or seek to change an existing state of affairs,
constitutional language clauses carry meaning beyond their declarative
intent. While constitutions are slow-acting and long-lasting, they are often
present in debates about what is intended, permitted, or desired, as suggested
in the expression ‘the spirit of the constitution’. Collective engagement
with the meanings of the constitution is ‘constitutionalism’ (Tully,
1997) suggesting a political community’s relationship with its founding or
key documents. Beyond the political accommodations they contain, public
texts symbolise nationality and give direction and order to the expressive
and collective life of the political community.
LP has serious practical consequences and constitutions as public texts
are the ultimate expression of the resolution of LP disputes and struggle
between interests among society’s component groups. For example,