scholarly journals Language policy and practice in multilingual production workplaces

Multilingua ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorte Lønsmann ◽  
Kamilla Kraft
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Working Life ◽  
High Status ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Policies And Practices

AbstractTransnational mobility results in a diversification of languages and cultures in the workplace. A common means of managing this diversity is to introduce language policies that often privilege English or the locally dominant language(s). In contrast, managing their everyday working lives may require employees to draw on a range of multilingual and non-verbal resources. Such tensions between policy and practice in multilingual workplaces may impact structures and processes of inequality and power in the workplace. By looking at two sites within logistics and construction, this article offers a critical look at multilingual policies and practices and their consequences for speakers within the workplace. The article investigates how language is conceptualised in language policies and enacted in language practice. From this point of departure we discuss how the tensions between policies and practices impact on the daily working life and professional opportunities of the workers. Our findings suggest that even though multilingual practices are crucial for the flow of everyday work interactions on the floor, the language requirements within the workplace mirror the repertoires and practices of high-status employees, and therefore their competence is valued more highly than the more multilingual repertoires of their subordinates. A consequence of this unequal valorisation of the different linguistic repertoires is the maintenance of existing hierarchies in the workplace and the creation of new ones.

scholarly journals “Employers could use us, but they don’t”: voices from blue-collar workplaces in a northern periphery

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-416
Author(s):  
Anna-Elisabeth Holm ◽  
Bernadette O’Rourke ◽  
Mike Danson
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Blue Collar ◽  
Faroe Islands ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Language Management ◽  
Policies And Practices

Abstract This article analyses labour market experiences of migrants of non-Nordic origin who have settled in the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic archipelago with a population of about 51,000 people. By examining the experiences of educated migrant workers who are employed in three different blue-collar workplaces: a cleaning company and two fish-processing plants, evidence is drawn from a cross-disciplinary study on language and migration in the Faroe Islands. This study explores the experiences of migrants in acquiring, using and becoming “new speakers” of Faroese and the challenges they face regarding labour market access and participation. In this article, framed within an ethnography of language policy, we highlight the institutional language policies which may be shaping migrants’ experiences, and how migrants enact their own language policy decisions and practices on the ground. We focus in particular on internal communication and language management in the three blue-collar worksites, comprising views and voices of both employers and employees, on the language policies and practices observed in these workplaces, and on workers’ views on language learning opportunities in blue-collar workplaces. Added to this, attention is drawn to implications of limited language learning opportunities in blue-collar jobs (which become the main barrier to accessing skilled jobs), to underutilisation of professional skills, and to long term implications of present macro- and micro-level language policies and practices affecting lived realities of workers of migrant origin.

Language Policy and Planning, Institutions, and Neoliberalisation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Codó
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Work Environments ◽  
Language Policy And Planning ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Workplace Education ◽  
The Third ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Policy And Planning ◽  
Institutional Regimes

This chapter maps out the empirical research conducted on language policy and practice in neoliberalising institutional spaces. The chapter is divided according to three main types of institutional spaces: the workplace, education, and civil society organisations. The analysis examines individual subjectivities, institutional regimes, and political economy in contemporary institutions. The first section reviews studies that have investigated changing language policies and practices in relation to labour processes in the neoliberalised work environments of late modernity. The second section refers to the ways in which the neoliberalisation of education has impacted on and been achieved through language policies in that domain. The third section discusses research that has addressed the study of language policy in nongovernmental organisations providing services outsourced by the state. The chapter concludes with a discussion of possible avenues for further investigation of language policy and planning (LPP), institutions, and neoliberalisation.

Multilingual policies as dystopia: From less to more desirable futures in education

2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032110140
Author(s):  
Sandro R Barros ◽  
Darshana Devarajan
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Analytical Method ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Territorial Disputes ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Point Of Departure

In ‘Literature and Life’, Deleuze remarks that all literature manifests as delirium, and, as such, the destiny of literature is to play itself out between two poles that create and reflect life back to itself: what the human desires, and the constant changes life imposes onto us. Taking Deleuze’s statement as a point of departure concerning the power of social fiction, this article mobilizes the dystopian imagination as a tool to evaluate what language policies do as they channel human desire to shape linguistic practices. Specifically, this article explores the extent to which the literary dystopian lens can help us plot more desirable futures for multilingualism in education. Through a critical fabulation about India’s three-language policy’s effects in schools, we bear witness to this language policy’s disciplinarian action, which reinforces linguistic hierarchies and territorial disputes present in this nation’s history. Indeed, decisions on policies meant to assist linguistically minoritized students have often rested on complicated assumptions about what language means. These assumptions operate under liberal and neoliberal ideologies that commodify and narrow citizens’ linguistic choices, thereby framing one’s authority over language as something that exists outside the human mind. By approaching India’s three-language policy as a futuristically fabulated case study, we reflect on the potentiality of dystopian narratives to function as an analytical method and a critical lens to anticipate ethical problems in language policies’ design.

Tolerance and Control. Developing a language policy for an EMI university in Uzbekistan

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-237
Author(s):  
Andrew Linn ◽  
Anastasiya Bezborodova ◽  
Saida Radjabzade
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Language Ecology ◽  
English Only ◽  
English Medium Instruction ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

AbstractThis article presents a practical project to develop a language policy for an English-Medium-Instruction university in Uzbekistan. Although the university is de facto English-only, it presents a complex language ecology, which in turn has led to confusion and disagreement about language use on campus. The project team investigated the experience, views and attitudes of over a thousand people, including faculty, students, administrative and maintenance staff, in order to arrive at a proposed policy which would serve the whole community, based on the principle of tolerance and pragmatism. After outlining the relevant language and educational context and setting out the methods and approach of the underpinning research project, the article goes on to present the key findings. One of the striking findings was an appetite for control and regulation of language behaviours. Language policies in Higher Education invariably fall down at the implementation stage because of a lack of will to follow through on their principles and their specific guidelines. Language policy in international business on the other hand is characterised by a control stage invariably lacking in language planning in education. Uzbekistan is a polity used to control measures following from policy implementation. The article concludes by suggesting that Higher Education in Central Asia may stand a better chance of seeing through language policies around English-Medium Instruction than, for example, in northern Europe, based on the tension between tolerance on the one hand and control on the other.

scholarly journals An Analysis of an EFL Teachers' Guide: A Case Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nazari
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Teaching Objectives ◽  
Efl Teachers

This paper is an attempt to analyse one of the documents which may affect the classroom activities of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, namely teachers' guides. It also explores the context at which the document is aimed and critiques how EFL teachers are advised to teach as well as how EFL is taught. As such, the paper stands where critical discourse analysis and language policy come together in the study of language policies in education. The teachers' guide chosen and the analysis carried out here are not necessarily concerned with their representativeness and typicality but with the opportunity they provide to the researchers and teachers to learn about such language policy documents and how language and language teaching objectives are represented in them. The issues raised in this paper will have relevance to the EFL teachers' guides and EFL education in other contexts, as these issues are likely to be true of other EFL milieux.

A minoritized language on both sides of the border: legal framework and language policy of Catalan in Andorra and Catalonia

Multilingua ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Juan Jiménez-Salcedo
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
State Schools

Abstract This article analyzes the legislation of the two territories that have the most advanced legal framework regarding language policies towards Catalan: Andorra and Catalonia. The study of the legislation in relation to contexts of social and institutional use shows how this legal framework is not sufficient to change Catalan from being a minoritized language, since the phenomenon of minoritization is innate to the ecosystem in which languages develop. This ecosystem is conditioned by the presence of Castilian as a lingua franca on both sides of the border between Andorra and Catalonia. In the case of Andorra, its status as a cross-border microstate makes it a plurilingual space with Castilian as a socially cross-cutting language; moreover, the fact that until recently there was no network of state schools hindered Catalan language normalisation efforts. Catalonia, on the other hand, is an even more complex example on account of how the implementation of llengua pròpia policy contradicts the constitutional control the Spanish state exercises on this.

Gendered and extended work: research and policy needs for work in later life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Vickerstaff ◽  
Debra Street ◽  
Áine Ní Léime ◽  
Clary Krekula
Keyword(s):  
Working Life ◽  
Later Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Policy ◽  
Individual Country ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Extended Work

The conclusion briefly summarises the contributions of each of the individual country chapters; to highlight major cross-national similarities and differences; to emphasise topics where more research is needed to better understand the myriad implications of extended working lives, and to consider some policy directions that could improve prospects for extended working life by countering the increasing polarisation of later life opportunities which current policy trajectories will create. While not denying the materially better conditions in Sweden or the United States than, say, Portugal or Ireland, there is not as much variation across the countries covered as might otherwise have been expected when extended working life is considered through a gendered lens. If older women's disadvantage is to be minimised or addressed, it is certain that the private sector alone cannot accomplish that. Only governments can redistribute resources and life chances in ways that would give future women (and vulnerable men) a fighting chance at good employment in later life and adequate income in old age.

Theoretical and conceptual issues in the extending working lives agenda

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clary Krekula ◽  
Sarah Vickerstaff
Keyword(s):  
Older Workers ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Job Opportunities ◽  
The One ◽  
New Research ◽  
Individual Choices

The policy debate on older people's extended participation in working life is not based on a social movement, such as the one putting forward demands on job opportunities for women, and has, by means of categorical stereotypes, mostly characterised older people as the problem. This narrative of individual choices and decisions presents older workers as de-gendered, de-classed individuals, shorn of their individual biographies and social contexts. It also treats the issue of extending working life as a phenomenon disconnected from surrounding society and trends. This line of reasoning points to the need for more sophisticated theoretical foundations. This chapter therefore provides a more encompassing framework for the discussion of extending working lives and outlines a new research agenda, including a power perspective with potential to shed light on age-based inequality, an intersectional perspective and a masculinity perspective which challenges the homogenous descriptions of older workers, a feminist understanding of work and a life course perspective which provides a framework which links the previous three.

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