Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language Policy and Planning 169
orientations. Assimilationist LP combines a pedagogy of strictly monolingual
and monoliterate dominant language instruction with ideological
messages of equality tied to cultural sameness. Diglossic LP combines a
pedagogy of language transfer and hierarchy, with ideologically positive
messages about bilingualism and multiculturalism confi ned to private
domains. Pluralist LP combines a pedagogy of active multilanguage and
multiliterate communication with ideologically affi rmative messages of
linguistic human rights and social justice.
LP fuses with linguistic socialisation and educational linguistics (see
Duff, this volume). Conventional ways to see LP would fail to recognise
many of the language education activities of schools and classroom teachers
as LP because these fail the tests of being overt, conscious or deliberate,
thereby reducing school and teacher LP to simply giving effect to mandates
from outside, or refl ections of existing social practices. This is an
unduly restrictive notion of what counts as LP and more dynamic understandings
suggested above are warranted in the light of the deep consequences
that fl ow from teaching. In a study on US Spanish-English
programmes, Shannon (1999) shows how in the absence of explicit policy,
teachers and schools revert to a default position, the position of current
attitudes, rather than researched or refl ected or studied alternatives. Past
practice is default policy in the absence of explicit current policy.
Teacher voice
The absence of formal policy merely obscures operational or enacted
language policy. The present argument is premised on this understanding
of LP as embedded in the routine and dynamic activities of teaching,
including in conversations that surround the practice of imparting knowledge
and skill. In this way, conversations that are pedagogically oriented
bring about specifi c micro kinds of language change. Teaching involves
expanding the semiotic potential of learners’ communication abilities, and
a dynamic, fl uid, and participatory approach to LP opens this to an
expanded view of how LP is done, when and by whom. Expanding LP to
include how language change can be effected in pedagogical activity and
conversation has the added advantage of identifying the infl uence teaching
can bring to public debates about language issues and problems.
Classical defi nitions restrict LP to overt, deliberate or conscious managerial
decisions, the ‘tips of icebergs’, with the effect of restricting the roles and
infl uence of teacher voices. The less mechanistic approach proposed here
grants teachers conversational credibility in formal LP formulation based
on a more accurate appreciation of their role as active language planners.
Even formal analytical approaches to policy require citizenship validation
and public legitimacy through the political process. This legitimation
and validation is sought in debate and voting, voice and vote democracy.