This article examines "de jure" language officialization policies in Andorra and Luxembourg, and addresses how these are discursively reproduced, sustained or challenged by members of resident migrant communities in the two countries. Although the two countries bear similarities in their small size, extensive multilingualism and the…

This paper examines the implications and implementation of official language policy designed to support endangered Indigenous languages in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil. The policy, in place since late 2001, declared three of the region's many Indigenous languages (Nheengatú, Tukano, and Baniwa) to be…

Where censuses are concerned, politics and ideology are pervasive. The 2011 census in Scotland (a semi-autonomous part of the United Kingdom) was the first to ask a question about Scots, a close relative of English, which is historically the vernacular in many parts of Scotland. While at one time Scots had high status as the national language of…

This essay is based on a June 2014 interview with Bernard Spolsky, in which he discussed his life with educational linguistics. A self-described "accidental professor," Spolsky directed the first study of Navajo sociolinguistics, established educational linguistics as a field of study and practice, co-created a national language policy…

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in two towns in the Republic of Ireland, this article explores the local negotiation, endorsement, and contestation of two community-level Irish language advocacy organizations' attempts to regulate the use of Irish in business by mobilizing discourses of language commodification to position Irish as a commercial…

This paper looks into failed attempts by the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) minority government (2000-2008) to alter Taiwan's Mandarin-dominated language regime by drafting law proposals recognizing the languages of all Taiwanese ethnic groups as equal national languages. This paper argues that the failure to enact language regime change in…

The language policies adopted, imposed, or rejected in minority language media highlight the complexities of multilingualism and its regulation or ordering in contemporary contexts. In this article, we discuss convergence and divergence in the language policing of three minority language media contexts, namely Basque, Irish and Sami. All of the…

Suggests that a policy of multilingualism must aim for maintenance of a functional network of languages from which the maintenance of individual languages evolves. It must recognize limitations and special interests orientation of the government as the prime agent of language policy and allow agency to communities and individuals to shape policy…

Examines the impact of language policy in Ukraine on language utilization patterns of school children in Kyiv. Using quantitative data from student responses to a questionnaire focusing on subject background, native and home language, including reported usage of interactive and interpretive language, examines the extent to which language shift or…