Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language Policy and Planning 159
original authors are generals, lawyers and politicians; ‘downstream’
changes are in the hands of teachers, literary fi gures and celebrities.
Constitutions fi t Cooper’s test for LP of deliberate efforts to infl uence
functional roles and acquisition of language codes of a society and match
Fishman’s test that LP involves authorities pursuing organised solutions
to language problems and allocating resources to implement solutions.
Neither defi nition captures the dynamic interaction of agitation, political
demands and popular legitimacy. Although participation in constitutional
formation is legalistic and authorship resides with powerful individuals
and groups, constitutionalism involves interaction across the whole society,
what Tully (1997) has called a ‘multi-logue’. In this way, a constitution
can be imagined as a conversational practice. Constitutionalism refers to
this process of ongoing deliberation about the ultimate political text of a
nation, embedding language policy in ongoing LP.
Even so, not all nations have declared offi cial, or national, languages,
indeed, not all states have full or comparable constitutions, and the standing
and public use of languages is often determined according to other
procedures.
Public discourse
Offi cial documentation such as constitutions, laws, regulations and
procedures refl ect the intentions of powerful groups and individuals
towards language. However, these intentions are framed in public debate/
discourse or argument, and, in most political systems, require popular
legitimacy. The need for legitimation connects public texts to popular discourse
permitting wider social groups participation in discussion and
argument on language issues as public texts are promulgated, interpreted
or challenged.
Argument is a key mechanism of LP, consisting of a collection of statements,
discussion and public attitudes that accompany, respond to or precede
public texts. This is an essential component of LP because formal
declarations are rarely unambiguous, and even when clear and specifi c,
they are often not implemented. Sometimes public texts are deliberately
ambiguous, essentially political rhetoric to placate lobby groups without
really endorsing their claims, or they can be genuine statements at the
declarative level but their enactment is hindered by rival interests. For
these reasons, even policy statements which are clear and sincerely
intended can still be contested by groups disadvantaged or aggrieved by
the policy, or who desire different policy content.
Policy discourse is also important for more mundane reasons such as the
contrast between the generality of constitutional provisions and the specifi
city required in implementation, or because public attitudes change, or
new possibilities emerge that had not been anticipated. In 1918, education