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Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2015

Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2015

Editors in Chief: Frances Kvietok Dueñas and Yeting Liu

 

Editor's Note (PDF), Frances Kvietok Dueñas and Yeting Liu

Ways of Talking (and Acting) About Language Reclamation: An Ethnographic Perspective on Learning Lenape in Pennsylvania (PDF), Nancy H. Hornberger, Haley De Korne & Miranda Weinberg

Negotiating Ideological and Implementational Spaces for Indigenous Languages in Peru (PDF), Frances Kvietok Dueñas

Outlooks in Italy: CLIL as Language Education Policy (PDF), Andrea R. Leone

Foreign Language Education Planning in China Since 1949: A Recurrent Instrumentalist Discourse (PDF), Yeting Liu

Private Education as De Facto Language Policy in South Korea (PDF), Heejin Kim



Editor's Note (PDF)

Frances Kvietok Dueñas and Yeting Liu

 

Ways of Talking (and Acting) About Language Reclamation: An Ethnographic Perspective on Learning Lenape in Pennsylvania (PDF)

Nancy H. Hornberger, Haley De Korne & Miranda Weinberg

The experiences of a community of people learning and teaching Lenape in Pennsylvania provide insights into the complexities of current ways of talking and acting about language reclamation. We illustrate how Native and non-Native participants in a university-based Indigenous language class constructed language, identity, and place in nuanced ways that, although influenced by essentializing discourses of language endangerment, are largely pluralist and reflexive. Rather than counting and conserving fixed languages, the actors in this study focus on locally appropriate language education, undertaken with participatory classroom discourses and practices. We argue that locally responsible, participatory educational responses to language endangerment such as this, although still rare in formal higher education, offer a promising direction in which to invest resources.

Negotiating Ideological and Implementational Spaces for Indigenous Languages in Peru (PDF)

Frances Kvietok Dueñas

This paper draws on the concepts of ideological and implementational spaces (Hornberger, 2002) to understand how different actors, at different historical moments characterized by the emergence and development of multilingual policies, and at different layers of the language planning and policy onion (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996), have sought to carve up, fill in and re-imagine spaces for the inclusion of Indigenous languages in Peru. Following a historical-textual analysis, I offer a historical and contemporary analysis of four instances of multilingual policy negotiation, addressing their contributions and shortcomings as well as pointing to areas of future research. Implications are offered for language policy and planning research and practices that seek to promote linguistic and cultural diversity for all.

 

Outlooks in Italy: CLIL as Language Education Policy (PDF)

Andrea R. Leone

The recent implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in the fifth and final year of secondary schools in Italy carries with it a number of important implications for teachers, students, and policymakers. This paper seeks to demonstrate that at the local, national, and supranational levels, CLIL raises questions about education quality, access, and equity. Italy’s CLIL mandate is conceptualized here as a national language education policy situated within the larger European plurilingualism discourse as defined by the goal of “mother tongue plus two.” This discussion also seeks to demonstrate that CLIL, as it is conducted in Italian secondary schools, requires more than scarce national funding and local-level expertise in order to be implemented successfully.

 

Foreign Language Education Planning in China Since 1949: A Recurrent Instrumentalist Discourse (PDF)

Yeting Liu

Foreign language education planning (FLEP) has been caught in the political turmoil and hustle of ongoing economic reform in the People’s Republic of China for several decades. This paper situates a recurring instrumentalist discourse of FLEP in China in the underlying language ideologies and historical contexts from 1949 to present day. Utilizing Cooper’s (1989) guiding question of “who makes what decisions, why, how, under what conditions, and with what effect?” (p. 88), this paper examines the decision-making process in language planning across several decades. A discussion of the repercussions of this instrumentalist approach to FLEP in different time periods in China calls attention to the difference and significance between treating language as a tool and as a resource (Ruíz, 1984, 2010).

 

Private Education as De Facto Language Policy in South Korea (PDF)

Heejin Kim

South Korea is well known for its distinctive, sometimes excessive, enthusiasm for education. This education fever is derived from South Koreans’ concern with the pursuit of education as a way of achieving socioeconomic status and power, and thus, competitions to score well on tests have been valorized in South Korea. Now that English has become the language of power and opportunity in South Korea, this paper aims to examine how education fever has promoted de facto English language policy over top-down English language policy. By referring to Cooper’s (1989) and Kaplan and Baldauf’s (1997) frameworks, this paper interprets private education in South Korea as de facto policy, which exercises greater influence on how language policy is developed in practice than a top-down statement can.