hornberger&johnson2011 (1)

8/2/2019 Hornberger&Johnson2011 (1)

1/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456

DISCUSSION AND

SYNTHESIS

821 11-Ethnography-11.indd 271 15/9/10 09:35:05


2/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444



3/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456

11 The Ethnography of Language

PolicyNancy H. Hornberger and David C. Johnson

Introduction

With roots going back to the 1980s, the ethnography of language policy has gath-

ered significant momentum in the past decade. Canagarajah (2006) charts the

rationale, development, and contributions of ethnographic methods in language

policy, highlighting the potential of ethnographic research to provide knowledge

on specific situations and communities as a starting point for language planning

and policy (LPP) model-building, point to cases of language planning from the

bottom up (cf. Hornberger, 1996), and counteract the unilateral hold of domi-

nant paradigms and ideologies in LPP. He reviews findings of early ethnographic

LPP studies which illuminated paradoxical tensions within communities (Horn-

berger, 1988, on Quechua and bilingual education in Peru) or across LPP levels(Davis, 1994, on multilingual education in Luxembourg), local classroom-level

resistance to official LPP (Canagarajah, 1995, 1997; Heller and Martin-Jones,

2001), the power of community involvement in bilingual education (Freeman,

1998), and the paradoxical unintended consequences (Jaffe, 1999, on Corsica),

positive side effects (King, 2001, on Quichua in Ecuador), or covert underlying

motivations (Schiffman, 2003, on Tamil in Singapore) in educational LPP.

The present volume comes on the heels of an accelerating trajectory of ethno-

graphic studies of LPP, including three recent international edited volumes on

reclaiming the local in language policy (Canagarajah, 2005), imagining multilin-

gual schools (Garca, Skutnabb-Kangas, & Torres-Guzmn, 2006), and schoolssaving Indigenous languages (Hornberger, 2008). Other recent work includes, in

the UK, Arthur (2004) on the multilingual repertoires of young Somali girls in a

community-led Somali literacy course in Liverpool, where policies accord neither

recognition nor support to immigrant languages; and Creese (2004) on how the

UK policy of mainstreaming bilingual students in English classrooms plays out

in the actual classroom practices of six Turkish/English bilingual teachers

working alongside subject area mainstream teachers in three London secondary

schools. In Tanzania, Blommaert (2005a) accounts for the seemingly

contradictory successes and failures of the promotion of Swahili as national

language and medium of instruction by casting an ethnographic eye on howlinguistic resources are actually employed, while Wedin (2005) sheds light on

how Tanzanian language policy and language ideologies play out in five primary



4/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444

274 N. H. Hornberger and D. C. Johnson

schools of northwest Tanzania, showing how patterns of classroom language useposition Swahili and English as high- status languages while devaluing

Rumyambo, the local language. In India, Cowies (2007) ethnography in an

accent training center focuses on staff interpretation and trainee responses toaccent training policies aimed at ridding speakers of mother tongue influence,while Ramanathan (2005) carried out an eight-year ethnographic study of Eng-lishGujarati language policies and practices in three higher education institu-

tions in the city of Ahmedabad, exploring how the English-vernacular dividestratifies people, but also how people resist and counter such policies and prac-tices (see also Ramanathan, this volume). In the US, Varghese (2004) looks eth-nographically at a three-session professional development series for bilingualteachers in a large northeastern city, revealing how contestation of languagepolicy and bilingual teachers roles occurs among the teachers and teacher edu-

cators themselves, and not only in the wider public debate.Several studies turn ethnographic lenses on how Californias Proposition 227,

English Language Education for Immigrant Children, passed in 1999, hasplayed out in classrooms, schools, and school districts: Stritikus (2002) and Wiese(2001) analyze the agentive role that teachers played in responding to Californias

Proposition 227, sometimes resisting the English-only focus to meet the needs oftheir classrooms, while Baltodano (2004) explores southern California Latinoparents changing attitudes toward bilingual education in the wake of Proposi-tion 227 and ensuing discourses equating bilingual education with learning disa-bility. Manyak (2006) shows how the two focal teachers in his study effectively

resisted Proposition 227s monolingual mandate within the limits of their grade12 classrooms, using and explicitly supporting students use of Spanish, creatingclassroom spaces where Spanish was held in equally high esteem with English,and thereby enhancing their students biliteracy development; conversely, Olson(2007) finds that the two bilingual grade 2 teachers in her study organized theirSpanish language arts instructional units around the states English-languageSAT-9 assessment test, prioritizing direct instruction and workbook activities

over more robust literacy practices (see Combs et al., this volume, for parallelstudies of Arizonas Proposition 203).1

Since the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policies in the US in 2002,

ethnographers have begun to document the implementation and interpretationof NCLB in settings around the country: a theme issue of theJournal of AmericanIndian Education on Native American education in the era of standardization, forexample, included two ethnographic studies of the impacts of NCLB in Indiancountry (McCarty, 2008), with Patrick (2008) providing a teacher-researchersperspective at the school level, and Watanabe (2008) addressing Indigenousteacher preparation. In the urban northeast, Menken (2008) looks inside NewYork City secondary schools, showing how NCLBs standardized testing amounts

to de facto language policy, while Johnsons (2007, 2009a, 2009b) multi-sited eth-nography of language policy and bilingual education in the School District of

Philadelphia illuminates how a succession of administrators interpreted the sameset of federal, state, and local policies in ways that alternately opened up or con-strained ideological and implementational spaces for multilingual education.



5/19


6/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444


crucial to ethnographic understanding of the layers of the LPP onion, as research-ers undertake what Martin-Jones tellingly characterizes as vertical and horizontal

slicing: vertical slicing to build case studies of individual bilinguals, and horizon-

tal slicing to identify commonalities and differences across the case studies(Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Ivanic et al. 2009; cf. Hornberger & Johnson, 2007 onslicing the LPP onion).

All these studies involve multilingual research in multilingual settings, and all

take up the complexities of language shift, maintenance, and revitalization,mainly of Indigenous or vernacular languages (Corsican on Corsica, NativeAmerican languages in North America, Ma-ori in New Zealand, Quichua inEcuador, Welsh in Wales), merging also into immigrant (Latinos and Spanishin the US), postcolonial (Gujarati in India, Afrikaans and Indigenous languagesin Namibia), and diaspora experiences (Sri Lankan Tamil speakers in London,

Toronto, and Lancaster, California). In every case, too, the pressures toward ashift to English as a global language are evident: from those where English hashistorically been and/or is currently imposed as medium of instruction Arizonaand the Southwestern US, Gujarat, Namibia, New Zealand, Wales, and in the sitesof Sri Lankan diaspora to those where English has only more recently become a

competitor to official languages, such as French on Corsica or Spanish inEcuador.

Differential power relations among languages is a theme across the chapters,in keeping with the critical ethnographic (May, 1997) approach the authors take.Beyond a pervasive critical recognition of language inequality (cf. Hymes, 1996),

there is also in some cases a questioning of language itself as category. Canagara-jah and Jaffe cite Blommaert (2005b) and Makoni and Pennycook (2007) respec-tively in their explicit call for a critical ethnographic approach to constructs suchas language, identity, ethnicity, and nation, and the presumed relationshipsbetween them, arguing that these cannot be taken as given. Crucial to an ethno-graphic perspective, though, Jaffe goes on to note that:

even though we can analytically deconstruct foundational myths andideologies related to languages and identities as bounded, isomorphicentities, it does not mean that these ways of conceptualizing language are not

meaningful to people as they go about constructing a minority identity inthe contemporary world.

Critical ethnography is evident not only in the acknowledgement of powerand inequality and the questioning of conceptual categories, but also in theemphasis on transformative, action-oriented methods, as exemplified in McCartyet al.s incorporation of community research collaborators as key participants inher LPP research and her highlighting of the potential role of the youth research

subjects themselves as political and social actors in Indigenous language revitali-zation. Hopson calls for reconstructing ethnography away from anthropologys

historic involvement in colonial racist ideologies by paying attention to issues ofsocial power and social change, and Ramanathan shows us how to criticallyreflect on our research practices and revisit our data and findings. Her work is



7/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456

The Ethnography of Language Policy 277

reminiscent of Bourdieus revisiting his 1960s fieldwork in Algeria in order topeel off the layers of reinterpretations that tend to cover fieldwork impressions

. . . because of the deeply contextualized nature of perception and understanding

in the field (Blommaert, 2005c: 224). Just as there was no way Bourdieu, as aFrench person among Algerians in the 1960s, could not be influenced by theeffects of Algerias then recent war of liberation against French colonial rule(Blommaert, 2005c, p. 225), so Ramanathan acknowledges that, in her original

studys foregrounding of the value of vernacular medium education and theinterests of vernacular medium teachers and students, she perhaps tended to lookthe other way with respect to a troubling vernacular chauvinism or overvaluingof Hindu culture in ways that excluded Muslim, Christian, and Jewish students.Using her own retrospective look as illustration, she advocates a position of self-critique, revisiting ones prior research practices and texting choices in order to

unravel deeper layers of meaning.Ramanathan also revisits her own positioning and performing of several selves

in the course of her research, recounting how she, as researcher, Indian, and non-Christian, traversed and re-traversed language, culture, class, and nationalboundaries in the course of collecting, selecting, analyzing, and translating her

ethnographic data, and cautioning us to reflect on how our own identities andideologies may get inserted into our ethnographies via the data we select toinclude or translate. Hill and May explicitly take up researcher positioning in eth-nography; as non-Ma-ori researchers, they outline a Kaupapa Ma-ori researchapproach specifically designed to be sensitive to Ma-ori cultural expectations, to

incorporate Ma-ori cultural values, and to satisfy the overarching need to achievecollective benefits for the participants involved an approach operationalizedvia principles of (shared and negotiated) initiation, accountability, legitimization,benefits, and representation.

Beyond these critical perspectives on language and ethnographic method, thevolumes authors also share and perhaps differ in framing their ethnographieswithin sociocultural, sociolinguistic, sociopolitical, and sociohistorical concep-

tual approaches. McCarty (Introduction) proposes a view of language policy as asociocultural process, conceptualized as language-regulating modes of inter-action, negotiation, and production mediated by relations of power, an approach

that allows us to examine LPP as covert and overt, bottom up and top down and to illuminate cross-cutting themes of cultural conflict and negotiation, iden-

tity, ideology, and linguistic human rights (see also McCarty, 2004, p. 72;McCarty, Romero-Little, & Zepeda, 2008, p. 161). King and Haboud adopt thissociocultural approach in examining the impact of transmigration on Quichualanguage practices and locally constructed language policy, in particular chil-drens Quichua language learning possibilities in family contexts. In a similarvein, Nicholas approaches her ethnographic study of language practices among

Hopi youth as language policy situated in the linguistically and socioculturallystructured environment (Ochs, 1988, p. 21), and Combs et al. base their meth-

odological attention to the details of social practices on the Vygotskyan socio-cultural principle that childrens learning and literacy development is embeddedin sociocultural contexts and everyday practices (Vygotsky, 1978). McCarty et al.,



8/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444


in their analysis of the complexities of Native American youths language prac-tices and language ideologies, takes up Bakhtins (1981) notion of heteroglossia,

and Garcas (2009, p. 7) application of it to the translanguaging practices of

bilingual education. Complementarily, McCarty et al. draw on the sociolinguisticconcept of communicative repertoire (Martin-Jones & Jones 2000; cf. Gumperz,1968 on verbal repertoire).

In addition to communicative repertoire, sociolinguistic conceptual frames

include language minority rights, language use and attitudes (Canagarajah); lan-guage diversity and change, identity and language revitalization (Jaffe); languageuse and attitudes, maintenance, shift, and revitalization (King and Haboud); andbilingualism, bilingual education, and language revitalization (Martin-Jones).Other authors work primarily from sociopolitical and sociohistorical frames.Combs et al. and Ramanathan attend explicitly to the sociopolitical context of

language policy Proposition 203 in Arizona and English vs vernacular mediumeducation in India, respectively. Hopson, following Tollefson (1991), locates hisstudy of St Marys School in Namibia in the historical structural approach to lan-guage policy, which acknowledges that language policy is always inextricablylinked to historical, sociopolitical contexts [and] marked by competing interests

between groups. In all, whether invoking primarily sociocultural, sociolinguistic,sociopolitical, or sociohistorical conceptual frames, the crucial ethnographicinsight shared across all the chapters is the situated and contextual nature of lan-guage policy, language practice, identity, ideology, and learning.

LPP Types and Processes

For the first time in a single volume, we see the broad range of language policytypes and processes that ethnography is uniquely suited to explore. Not justacross the different chapters but even within one study, ethnography can illumi-nate official and unofficial, de jure and de facto, macro and micro, corpus/status/acquisition planning, national and local language policy, and, importantly, the

links (or lack thereof ) between policy and practice. The studies examine theinteraction between top-down and bottom-up LPP and one or more differentprocesses of the LPP cycle creation, interpretation, and appropriation which

are not always predictable based on the macro-level policy text alone; indeed, thepolicy discourse trajectories and the circulation of embedded ideologies and

especially the indistinct voices, invisible instances, covert motivations, and unin-tended consequences of LPP are revealed precisely because of ethnographicmethodology.

The ethnography of language policy reveals itself as a method uniquely suitedto explore the connections (or lack thereof ) between top-down and bottom-up.Many of the chapters investigate the interaction between macro-level language

policies, minority or Indigenous language maintenance, and multilingual educa-tion. For example, Hill and May find that macro-level language policy support

for the maintenance of Ma-ori has led to both increasing Ma-ori immersion edu-cation and, in the bilingual school focused on Te Wharekura o Rakaumanga-manga high levels of bilingualism and biliteracy. Similarly, Martin-Jones shows



9/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456


that macro-level Welsh language policies notably the Welsh Language Act of1993 have helped engender bilingual education in 30.5 percent of all primary

schools in Wales. Both studies reveal how top-down language policies can open

up implementational spaces for minority language maintenance through acquisi-tion planning that promotes language parity in multilingual education (Horn-berger & Johnson, 2007). On the other hand, Combs et al. examine the impact ofArizonas Proposition 203, a language policy that has restricted access to bilingual

education in Arizona. The enactment of Proposition 203 followed a series ofother anti-immigrant measures, which, they argue, have demoralized an alreadymarginalized population, including families of school-aged children. Despitethis depressingly draconian crackdown on the rights of Spanish speakers, Combset al. find that even within the mandated structured English immersion class-rooms (which took the place of bilingual education) children can create hybrid

or third spaces in classrooms in which their funds of knowledge can be used as aresource. They attribute this possibility to administrators and teachers who openup ideological spaces for multilingual communication among students despite arestrictively English-only language policy.

Along with these examinations of acquisition planning, analyses of corpus and

status language planning are present, as well as the interaction between them.Hopson looks at status planning for English as part of British colonization inNamibia. As has often been the case, however, the British used acquisition plan-ning efforts to marginalize non-English languages by enforcing English- only pol-icies in St Marys at Odibo, a school which used to be an arm of the British

colonial educational mission. Jaffe examines the interaction between status,corpus, and acquisition planning. As she argues,

all interventions that shape the uses or social functions of a particularlanguage [i.e. status planning] have implications for language form [i.e.corpus planning] both in terms of the frequencies with which particularforms get used and in terms of the value that is attributed to them.

(brackets ours)

Official Corsican language policy has sought to increase the functions of Corsi-

can (status planning), primarily through the implementation of Corsican/Frenchbilingual education (acquisition planning). In her examination of a bilingual

classroom, Jaffe discovers that educators engage in a sort of micro- level corpusplanning as they seek to enforce Corsican purity by ignoring Frenchified Corsi-can. Macro- level official Corsican language policy, which has promoted balancedbilingualism, is reinforced by micro-level unofficial language policy, which seeksto maintain the autonomy and purity of French and Corsican.

Current work on language policy might be characterized by a tension between

structure and agency, between critical theoretical work that focuses on the powerinvested in language policy to disenfranchise linguistic minorities, and ethno-

graphic and action-oriented research emphasizing the powerful role that practi-tioners play in language policy processes (see, for example, Johnson, 2009b). Theethnography of language policy offers a way to resolve this tension by marrying a



10/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444


critical approach with a focus on LPP agency, and by recognizing the power ofboth societal andlocal policy texts, discourses, and discoursers. In keeping with

the sociocultural approach adopted in this volume, the focus is less on detailed

analyses of macro-level policy texts than on how language policies are interpretedand appropriated by creative agents, illuminating the power of local communitiesand individuals to make policy on their own terms. For example, McCarty et al.examine the everyday on the ground language policies and practices of Native

American youth, via a consideration of their hybrid communicative repertoiresand contradictory language ideologies, in a context of historical language shift,even linguicide. Also, as Martin-Jones shows in her study of Welsh language revi-talization, ethnography can capture the specific ways in which language policiesand new forms of language education are made and remade, by teachers and stu-dents, in the daily routines of educational life. Yet, hegemonic societal and policy

discourses are evident as well, in the adoption of Spanish and even Englishamongst Quichua youth (King and Haboud), in the confluence of anti-Latinoand anti-Spanish laws in Arizona (Combs et al.), and in the appropriation ofEnglish and concomitant loss of Tamil in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora (Cana-garajah).

The power of a policy discourse may rely on the language of a policy text, yet,in the chapters that do explicitly contend with top-down policies, we find thateither (1) official top-down policies are inconsistent, and/or (2) local policy andpractice may trump top-down intentions. For example, Jaffes examination ofCorsican revitalization as it relates to macro and micro, official and unofficial

language policy, shows that official Corsican language policy has followed twodistinct paths with text that on the one hand emphasizes balanced bilingualism,and on the other eschews balanced bilingualism in favor of a range of (poten-tially imbalanced) types and levels of linguistic competencies (a much morepractical goal, according to Jaffe). Furthermore, even local language policies thatpromote bilingual education do not necessarily lead to balanced bilinguals, as itis difficult for schools to overcome dominant language ideologies favoring domi-

nant languages (here, French). While de jure Corsican language policy has pro-moted French/Corsican bilingual education, these bilingual schools maylegitimate language considered pure or authentic while marginalizing vari-

ation, and thus hegemonic ideologies about linguistic purity are perpetuateddespite ostensive attempts to promote multilingualism.

Similarly, King and Haboud, examining Quichua language shift and revitaliza-tion efforts in the Ecuadorian Andes, find that despite official QuichuaSpanishbilingual education policy, the ideological spaces within local communitiespromote Spanish and even English, as Quichua is viewed as less and less useful byyoung learners. Indeed, local language policy text and discourse may officiallyadopt bilingual education in Quichua and Spanish, but such de jure policies, and

appropriation of those policies into bilingual schools, is not enough to overcomethe appeal of Spanish and English as languages of power and prestige. They write,

Whether Quichua and other Indigenous languages can maintain a footholdin the republic depends to great measure not on the creation of future



11/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456


additional national-level language policies, but rather on how the localecology and micro-constructed language policy and actual language practice

continues to change in relation to migration and other global phenomena.

An important finding in this volume, and in the LPP literature in general, is thatofficial policy texts whether developed at the macro or micro level may betrumped by the power of dominant language ideologies.

The sociocultural approach to language policy focuses on how people makepolicy in everyday social practice, thus emphasizing local agency to potentiallychallenge hegemonic discourses which privilege some languages and speechcommunities while marginalizing others. A sociocultural approach to languagepolicy redefines notions of bottom and top, since individual agents areallowed to make or enact policy through everyday interaction. For example,

Nicholas examines how Hopi culture is transmitted through language prac-tices. Focusing on three young Hopis, she finds that they [carry] out and[make] language policy in their everyday social practices through their varieduses of Hopi language. The conclusion is that to speak Hopi is to be Hopi (andvice versa), since the essence of Hopi culture is not detachable from Hopi

language.This agency to make and remake language policy, however, does not neces-

sarily translate into minority language maintenance. For example, Canagarajahfinds very rapid language shift to English for Sri Lankan Tamils (SLTs) whoimmigrate to English-dominant contexts a shift motivated by Englishs

history in Sri Lanka as a colonial and powerful language of prestige. Interest-ingly, because Canadian, British, and US English varieties are considered moreprestigious than Sri Lankan English, lower caste SLTs who did not have accessto English in Sri Lanka, and therefore acquire Canadian, British, or US varie-ties, can socially leap-frog higher caste members who speak Sri Lankan English.Canagarajah characterizes the strong assimilation of English into the reper-toires of diasporic SLTs as an English craze which is not good news for Tamil

maintenance.Therefore, Canagarajahs findings raise an interesting problem, not just for the

sociocultural approach, but for language policy in general: as Canagarajah asks,

Can scholars and policy makers succeed in acquisition planning when commun-ity members assign different valuations for the competing languages according totheir priorities and value systems? In other words, if local communities agen-tively eschew minority languages in favor of languages of power, what ramifica-tions are there for language policy scholars and ethnographers interested inminority language revitalization and social justice?

Canagarajah and others raise questions about accepted definitions of defacto language policy. Very often language policies are not official macro-policy

texts, but are unofficial and characterized by many as de facto language policies(Schiffman, 1996; Shohamy, 2006). Yet these chapters challenge us to consider:

What exactly is a de facto language policy? Is to be Hopi is to speak Hopi a defacto language policy? Similarly, is the abandonment of Tamil and concomitantacquisition of US, Canadian, and British varieties of English (as opposed to Sri



12/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444


Lankan English) a de facto language policy? Because they are able to do somesocial-class leap-frogging through their acquisition of more prestigious English

varieties, is it a de facto language policy that colonial Englishes are a springboard

for social-class advancement in the SLT diaspora?

Ethnography of Language Policy

We began this chapter by suggesting that the ethnography of language policyoffers the possibility of illuminating and informing the development of LPP inparticular contexts, in its various types status, corpus, and acquisition planning and across various processes of the LPP cycle creation, interpretation, andappropriation. In particular, we argue that LPP ethnography sheds light on inter-actions between bottom-up and top- down LPP layers, while also uncovering

indistinct voices, covert motivations, embedded ideologies, invisible instances, orunintended consequences of LPP.

The ethnographies herein contribute multiple insights into the constraintsand possibilities both the opening and closing of implementational and ideo-logical spaces across LPP layers, processes, types, and contexts. Among the trou-

bling constraints illuminated are: the ways language education policies mayperpetuate ideologies of language inequality or linguistic purity (Combs et al.;Jaffe), and educational disadvantage for vernacular language students (McCartyet al.; Ramanathan); disjuncts between language policy and literacy practices, inand out of school (Martin-Jones; McCarty et al.); pedagogical limitations even in

an overall successful biliteracy education program (Hill and May); disruptiveimpacts of globalization via migration and interrupted family socializationprocesses on progressive local language revitalization policy (King andHaboud); and mounting pressures toward the shift to English in settings as far-flung as the Hopi reservation, Ecuadorian Quichua highlands, Namibian border-lands, and Tamil diaspora (Nicholas; King and Haboud; Hopson; Canagarajah).

Among the hopeful possibilities illuminated are: the continuing and evolving

success story of Ma-ori language revitalization through Ma-ori immersion school-ing, along with a changing emphasis from Ma-ori-only to biliteracy developmentin Ma-ori and English (Hill and May); bottom-up language planning by teachers

via pedagogical innovation in the face of material constraints on implementationof bilingual education policy (Martin-Jones); a pedagogy of hope over against a

pedagogy of control even within the constraints of a monolingual languagepolicy (Combs et al.); schools potential role in language revitalization by provid-ing not just more speakers or more use of the language, but defining linguistic/sociolinguistic identities and new communities of practice for the language(Jaffe); and creative agency of local actors in exploiting sociolinguistic spaces andhybrid language practices, as in Tamil speakers caste leap-frogging via English

(Canagarajah), the Namibian postcolonial elites appropriation of English assymbol of freedom and resistance (Hopson), socioeconomic mobility for

Quichua-speaking youth (King and Haboud), or Hopi/Tamil youths mainte-nance of Hopi/Tamil tradition via cultural practices around corn, clan, andritual/music and dance (Nicholas; Canagarajah).



13/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456


Withal, there remain unanswered questions and challenges for LPP ineducation, highlighted also by these ethnographies. We take up here only two key

challenges that reverberate across these cases and the ethnography of language

policy more generally: (1) how to bridge from micro-level ethnography tomacro-level LPP (and back) in systematic and principled ways, and (2) how toreconcile tensions between research-based language policy processes thatpromote minority language maintenance and multilingualism, and a commun-

itys own language policy goals and practices, especially if they instead promotelanguage shift to a colonial language.

Regarding the latter, a rephrasing of Canagarajahs question (cited above) isrelevant across all the contributions and all LPP types: Can scholars and policy-makers succeed in status, corpus, and acquisition planning when communitymembers assign different valuations for the competing languages according to

their priorities and value systems? Canagarajah (2006) earlier posed this sameissue in terms of the relativism of ethnography, noting that the tendency for eth-nographers to treat the views and interests of the community as always right canlead to a dilemma when the community members take up a perspective prejudi-cial to other groups in a multilingual context, or espouse a position seen by

scholars, educators, and policy-makers as uninformed. A way out of thisdilemma, he suggests, lies precisely in one of ethnographys great methodologicalstrengths the rapprochement between what Geertz (1983) calls experience- nearand experience-far views (Canagarajah, 2006, p. 163), or what others havereferred to as stepping in and stepping out (Wax, 1971), or the insider/outsider,

emic/etic dialectic (Pike, 1967[1954]; Hymes, 1990; see also Hornberger 1992,2006). Citing Jaffe (1999), Canagarajah points out that ethnographers, in suchcircumstances, can reflexively bring both insider and outsider views into play,actively help[ing] the community think critically about their linguistic future,rights, and statuses (Canagarajah, 2006, p. 164)

Jaffe continues to develop this argument in her contribution in this volume, asa way of addressing the paradoxes/tensions she uncovers in both Corsican lan-

guage policy and classroom practice between a balanced bilingualism of Frenchand a linguistically pure (essentialized) Corsican language on the one hand, andCorsicans mixed, bilingual or translingual competencies on the other. She sug-

gests that the purpose of the ethnography of language policy is not to identifyany one best educational practice for a particular context, but rather that it can

be a tool for identifying the underlying ideological issues and implications ofvarious choices and for opening up school-society dialogue about what schoolscan or should do. In other words, the ethnography of language policy can, itself,open up ideological spaces that allow for egalitarian dialogue, and discourses thatpromote social justice and sound educational practice.

Among the possible implications or strategies that might emerge from such a

dialogue, she mentions outreach to society to increase awareness of school lan-guage practices and outcomes; design of assessments focusing on bilingual com-

petencies and repertoire rather than on balanced bilingualism per se (as well asassessments of other outcomes of bilingualism such as metalinguistic awarenessand attitudinal dispositions towards languages); more acceptance in school of



14/19


15/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456


texts (cf. Ball, 2006), and therefore the importance of the connection between,say, interaction in a bilingual classroom and official language policy text, is

diminished in favor of the view that what is going on in the classroom islanguage

policy with or without the macro-level support. Yet by broadening the definitionof language policy in these ways, we are left with the question, what isntlan-guage policy? How does this conceptualization of policy distinguish itself fromother sociolinguistic terms already in existence, such as discourse and norms

of interaction? Certainly language policies can appropriate and/or resist domi-nant discourses, and can influence or be influenced by norms of interaction, butare discourses and norms of interaction, in and of themselves, language policies?

Further, allowing for this broadened definition of language policy, we cannotignore the power of official macro-level language policy texts and discourses toopen and close implementational and ideological spaces for different kinds of

interaction and schooling (see, for example, Combs et al.). Despite the power oflocal ecologies, restrictive language policies have the ability to close implementa-tion and ideological spaces for multilingualism. Nor can we deny the reality thatimplementational and ideological spaces created by top-down language policiesthat promote Indigenous or vernacular language maintenance or revitalization

are not necessarily powerful enough to overcome societal discourses, languageideologies, or the force of history (Hornberger, 1998, p. 445). While macro-levelpolicy support may be essential, it may not be sufficient. Through ethnographyof language policy, we learn that the interpretation and appropriation of top-down language policy is not necessarily predicated on the intentions of the

policy.In this volume, ethnography of language policy proves its worth as a method

capable of capturing the impact of closing and opening of spaces for schools andcommunities. Yet the undeniable, undeniably encouraging, and somewhatubiquitous finding (at least in this volume) is that language practices in schoolsand society are not necessarily controlled by top-down policies. Educators andother human beings are not simply cogs in the machine of dominant discourses,

the wheels of which are turned by hegemonic language policies they canagentively interpret, appropriate, and/or ignore such policies in creative ways

With the accumulating evidence that LPP itself is multilayered (Ricento &

Hornberger, 1996) and plays out from both the top down and the bottom up(Hornberger, 1996), both globally and locally (Canagarajah, 2005), in overt and

covert ways (Schiffman, 1996), and in de jure and de facto forms (Shohamy,2006), there is also growing recognition that the ethnography of language policyis not so much about uncovering how macro-level LPP acts on people at themicro-level, or even about conveying on-the-ground information back to policy-makers, but rather it is about how people themselves actively create, contest, andmediate LPP at multiple levels micro, meso, and macro. To this end, the work

of Dell Hymes, an early advocate of the value of ethnographic research for anunderstanding of language policy (see Hornberger, 2009), offers a useful model

for ethnographic bridging across policy levels. Hymess vision of ethnographicresearch itself comprehends micro, meso, and macro levels (van der Aa, 2009);his ethnopoetics involves close, micro-level linguistic analysis and uncovering of



16/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444


poetic organization within Native American oral traditions; his ethnography ofcommunication is about describing and interpreting patterns of spoken and

written language use and meaning in communities, at meso level; and ethnology,

for Hymes, is cumulative, comparative ethnographic study across communitiesand societies, at the macro level (Hymes, 1980, pp. 119125).Just such a multilayered ethnographic approach is what the authors in this

volume take up, in relation to LPP. The studies, collectively, demonstrate that

casting an ethnographic eye at language planning at individual, classroom,school, community, regional, national, and global levels can and does serve touncover the indistinct voices, covert motivations, embedded ideologies, invisibleinstances, or unintended consequences of LPP as it is created, interpreted, andappropriated in particular contexts. We can expect that the ethnography of lan-guage policy will not only continue to prove its worth in illuminating complex

language policy processes, but also its value in championing language diversity,multilingual education, and social justice around the world.

Note

1. The authors are grateful to Elaine Allard, PhD student in educational linguistics at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, for locating and summarizing these recent ethnographicstudies of language policy.

References

Arthur, J. (2004). Language at the margins: The case of Somali in Liverpool. LanguageProblems and Language Planning,28(3), 217240.

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Ball, S. J. (2006). Education policy and social class: The selected works of Stephen J. Ball.

London and New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.

Baltodano, M. (2004). Latino immigrant parents and the hegemony of Proposition 227.

Latino Studies,2(2), 246253.

Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies. London, UK: Routledge.

Blommaert, J. (2005a). Situating language rights: English and Swahili in Tanzania revis-

ited.Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9 (3), 390417.

Blommaert, J. (2005b). Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press.Blommaert, J. (2005c). Bourdieu the ethnographer: The ethnographic grounding of

habitus and voice. The Translator, 11 (2), 219236.

Canagarajah, S. (1995). Functions of codeswitching in the ESL classroom: Socialising

bilingualism in Jaffna. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16 (3),

173196.

Canagarajah, S. (1997). Safe houses in the contact zone: Coping strategies of African

American students in the academy. College Composition and Communication, 48 (2),

173196.

Canagarajah, A. S. (ed.). (2005). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice.

Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Canagarajah, S. (2006). Ethnographic methods in language policy. In T. Ricento (ed.), An

Introduction to language policy: Theory and method(pp. 153169). Malden, MA: Black-

well.



17/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456


Cowie, C. (2007). The accents of outsourcing: the meanings of neutral in the Indian call

centre industry. World Englishes, 26(3), 316330.

Creese, A. (2004). Bilingual teachers in mainstream secondary school classrooms: Using

Turkish for curriculum learning. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilin-

gualism, 7(2 & 3), 189203.

Davis, K. (1994). Language planning in multilingual contexts: Policies, communities, and

schools in Luxembourg. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Freeman, R. D. (1998). Bilingual education and social change. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual

Matters.

Garca, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. Malden, MA:

Wiley-Blackwell.

Garca, O., Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & Torres- Guzmn, M. (eds) (2006). Imagining multilingual

schools: Languages in education and glocalization. Clevedon, UK, Multilingual Matters.

Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York,

NY: Basic Books.Gumperz, J. (1968). The speech community. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sci-

ences(pp. 381386). New York, NY: Macmillan.

Heller, M., & Martin-Jones, M. (eds) (2001). Voices of authority: Education and linguistic

difference. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Hornberger, N. H. (1988). Bilingual education and language maintenance: A southern Peru-

vian Quechua case. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hornberger, N. H. (1992). Presenting a holistic and an emic view: The Literacy in Two

Languages project. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 23 (2), 160165.

Hornberger, N. H. (ed.) (1996). Indigenous literacies in the Americas: Language planning

from the bottom up. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hornberger, N. H. (1998). Language policy, language education, language rights: Indigen-ous, immigrant, and international perspectives. Language in Society,27(4), 439458.

Hornberger, N. H. (2002). Multilingual language policies and the continua of biliteracy:

An ecological approach. Language Policy, 1 (1), 2751.

Hornberger, N. H. (2006). Negotiating methodological rich points in applied linguistics

research: An ethnographers view. In M. Chalhoub-Deville, C. A. Chapelle, & P. Duff

(eds), Inference and generalizability in applied linguistics(pp. 221240). Philadelphia, PA:

John Benjamins.

Hornberger, N. H. (ed.) (2008). Can schools save Indigenous languages? Policy and practice

on four continents. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hornberger, N. H. (2009). Hymess linguistics and ethnography in education. Text and

Talk, 29(3), 347358.Hornberger, N. H., & Johnson, D. C. (2007). Slicing the onion ethnographically: Layers

and spaces in multilingual language education policy and practice. TESOL Quarterly,41

(3), 509532.

Hymes, D. H. (1980). Language in education: Ethnolinguistic essays. Washington DC:

Center for Applied Linguistics.

Hymes, D. H. (1990). Epilogue to The things we do with words. In D. Carbaugh (ed.),

Cultural communication and intercultural contact(pp. 419429). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence

Erlbaum.

Hymes, D. H. (1996). Ethnography, linguistics, narrative inequality: Toward an understand-

ing of voice. Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis.

Ivanic, R., Edwards, R., Barton, D., Martin-Jones, M., Fowler, Z., Hughes, B., Mannion, G.,Miller, K., Satchwell, C., & Smith, J. (2009). Improving learning at college: Rethinking lit-

eracies across the curriculum. London, UK: Routledge.



18/19

1111

11111

12222

2222223

333

33

333344

44

444


Jaffe, A. (1999). Ideologies in action: Language politics on Corsica. Berlin, Germany: Mouton

de Gruyter.

Johnson, D. C. (2007). Language policy within and without the School District of Phila-

delphia. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Educational Linguistics, Univer-

sity of Pennsylvania.

Johnson, D. C. (2009a). Ethnography of language policy. Language Policy,8 (2),139159.

Johnson, D. C. (2009b). Implementational and ideological spaces in bilingual education lan-

guage policy. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13 (1), 6179.

King, K. A. (2001). Language revitalization processes and prospects: Quichua in the Ecuado-

rian Andes. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. (eds) (2007). Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Cleve-

don, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Manyak, P. C. (2006). Fostering biliteracy in a monolingual milieu: Reflections on two

counter-hegemonic English immersion classes. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 6

(3), 241266.Martin-Jones, M., & Jones, K. (eds) (2000). Multilingual literacies: Reading and writing dif-

ferent worlds. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

May, S. A. (1997). Critical ethnography. In N. H. Hornberger & D. Corson (eds), Research

methods in language and education (pp. 197206). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

McCarty, T. L. (2004). Dangerous difference: A critical-historical analysis of language edu-

cation policies in the United States. In J. W. Tollefson & A. B. M. Tsui (eds), Medium of

instruction policies: Which agenda? Whose agenda?(pp. 7193). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence

Erlbaum.

McCarty, T. L. (guest ed.) (2008). American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian

education in the era of standardization and NCLB. Theme issue, Journal of American

Indian Education, 47(1).McCarty, T. L., Romero-Little, M. E., & Zepeda, O. (2008). Indigenous language policies in

social practice: The case of Navajo. In K. A. King, N. Schilling-Estes, L. Fogle, J. J. Lou, &

B. Soukup (eds), Sustaining Linguistic Diversity: Endangered and Minority Languages

and Language Varieties(pp. 159172). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.

Menken, K. (2008). English learners left behind: Standardized testing as language policy.

Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Ochs, E. (1988). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language

socialization in a Samoan village. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Olson, K. (2007). Lost opportunities to learn: the effects of education policy on primary

language instruction for English learners. Linguistics and Education18(2),121141.

Patrick, R. (2008). Perspectives on change: A continued struggle for academic success andcultural relevancy at an American Indian school in the midst of No Child Left Behind.

Journal of American Indian Education, 47(1), 6581.

Pike, K. (1967 [1954]). Etic and emic standpoints for the description of behavior. In K.

Pike (ed.), Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior(pp.

3772). The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton.

Ramanathan, V. (2005). Rethinking language planning and policy from the ground up:

Refashioning institutional realities and human lives. Current Issues in Language Plan-

ning, 6(2), 89101.

Ricento, T. K., & Hornberger, N. H. (1996). Unpeeling the onion: Language planning and

policy and the ELT professional. TESOL Quarterly,30(3), 401428.

Robinson-Pant, A. (2001). Womens literacy and health: Can an ethnographic researcherfind the links? In B. Street (ed.), Literacy and development: Ethnographic perspectives(pp.

152170). London, UK: Routledge.



19/19

0123

45678

90123

4567890

123

45

678901

23

456


Schiffman, H. F. (1996). Linguistic culture and language policy. London, UK: Routledge.

Schiffman, H. F. (2003). Tongue-tied in Singapore: A language policy for Tamil?Journal of

Language, Identity, and Education,2(2), 105125.

Shohamy, E. (2006). Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches. New York, NY:

Routledge.

Stritikus, T. (2002). Immigrant children and the politics of English-only. New York, NY: LFB

Scholarly Publishing.

Tollefson, J. W. (1991). Planning language, planning inequality: Language policy in the com-

munity. London, UK: Longman.

Van der Aa, J. (2009). English and education in postcolonial Barbados: Restoring creole com-

municative competence. Unpublished manuscript.

Varghese, M. (2004). Professional development for bilingual teachers in the United States:

A site for articulating and contesting professional roles. International Journal of Bilin-

gual Education and Bilingualism, 7(2 & 3), 222237.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Watanabe, S. (2008). Because we do not know their way: Standardizing practices and

peoples through habitus, the NCLB highly-qualified mandate, and PRAXIS I exami-

nations.Journal of American Indian Education, 47(1), 118135.

Wax, R. H. (1971). Doing fieldwork: Warnings and advice. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Wedin, A. (2005). Language ideologies and schooled education in rural Tanzania: The case

of Karagwe. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 8 (6),

568587.

Wiese, A. M. (2001). To meet the needs of the kids, not the program: Teachers constructing

policy, program, and practice in a bilingual school. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Gradu-ate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.

hornberger&johnson2011 (1)

Documents