Language Policy

Key Topics in Sociolinguistics

by Bernard Spolsky

Language policy is an issue of critical importance in the world today. In this 2003 introduction, Bernard Spolsky explores many debates at the forefront of language policy: ideas of correctness and bad language; bilingualism and multilingualism; language death and efforts to preserve endangered languages; language choice as a human and civil right; and language education policy. Through looking at the language practices, beliefs and management of social groups from families to supra-national organizations, he develops a theory of modern national language policy and the major forces controlling it, such as the demands for efficient communication, the pressure for national identity, the attractions of (and resistance to) English as a global language, and the growing concern for human and civil rights as they impinge on language. Two central questions asked in this wide-ranging survey are of how to recognize language policies, and whether or not language can be managed at all.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Politics

264 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Bernard Spolsky was educated at Wellington College and Victoria University and received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Montreal.

He has been the head of the English Department, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Director of the Language Policy Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, where he is currently Professor of English.

Bernard Spolsky has conducted and published research in language testing, second language learning, computers in the humanities, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and language policy. He has been President of TESOL, held a Guggenheim fellowship and a Mellon fellowship, and has been Senior Research Fellow at the National Foreign Language Center in Washington.

He has written several books for Oxford University Press: Conditions for Second Language Learning, Measured Words and Sociolinguistics.

Reviews

[Pompom]

Just the type of book you find surprisingly interesting but could never share with your non-geek friends.

You're all alone.

[Iulia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't planning on reading this book. It was on one of my reading lists for my faculty. The professor wrote us that we can read one of the three books he sent us for his seminar and this was the shortest of them all.
I don't necessarily regret reading it, it's just that I had other priorities in terms of reading and I didn't focus as I would have liked when reading it.
Language policy, as another study field, is quite interesting. It combines politics, culture, ethnic issues, economics as well. Language is seen as a tradable commodity. Maybe it seems too much, but if you come to think of it, taking into account globalization, if you are pretty proficient in English (and here I'm talking about those who don't have English as mother-tongue, like me, for instance), there are chances that you'll be better paid, it gets you a sort of prestige.
At first, Spolsky tries to give his definitions for the concepts discussed (being a quite new field then - when Spolsky got his book published - and now as well, a consensus wasn't reached at the level of terminology) in his book and after that, analyzes different ethnic and language policy issues. One of the problems he brought to attention is the language policy of the English speaing countries and former colonies, as well, and possible causes for the language reaching the status lingua franca.
It's a quite exhaustive study and you need to have patience while reading the analysis and to let it sink in.

[Amber]

I'm just going to retake the class, at which time
I will read the whole book.